It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 01, 2023
US ignored own scientists' warning in backing Atlantic wind farm
by Jennifer A Dlouhy, Bloomberg News
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
U.S. government scientists warned federal regulators the South Fork offshore wind farm near the Rhode Island coast threatened the Southern New England Cod, a species so venerated in the region a wooden carving of it hangs in the Massachusetts state house.
The Interior Department approved the project anyway.
The warnings were delivered in unpublished correspondence weeks before Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management authorized the 12-turbine South Fork plan in November 2021. And they serve to underscore the potential ecological consequences and environmental tradeoff of a coming offshore wind boom along the U.S. East Coast. President Joe Biden wants the U.S. to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by the end of the decade.
The nascent U.S. industry is already facing mounting challenges from supply-chain struggles and surging costs, including interest rates, prompting the developers behind a separate project near Massachusetts to seek a delay in planning for the venture.
Ecological challenges represent another headwind for offshore wind. Although conservationists argue that building more emission-free renewable power is critical to combat climate change and bolster dwindling ocean species threatened by warming oceans, the short-term impacts on marine life can be significant.
Marine scientists have warned that projects along the New England coast could imperil endangered North Atlantic right whales. And in August, the New England Fishery Management Council identified Atlantic waters already leased for offshore wind development as a "habitat area of particular concern," a designation that encourages the government take a more stringent and cautious approach to permitting.
Concerns about South Fork, the 132-megawatt project being developed by Orsted AS and Eversource Energy, focused on its overlap with Cox Ledge, a major spawning ground for cod and "sensitive ecological area that provides valuable habitat for a number of federally managed fish species," a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assistant regional administrator said in an October 2021 letter to Interior Department officials. Based on in-house expertise and peer-reviewed science, the agency said "this project has a high risk of population-level impacts on Southern New England Atlantic cod."
The Southern New England Atlantic cod's populations have declined amid overfishing and warming ocean waters, prompting conservationists to seek bans on commercial and recreational fishing of the iconic species.
"Our cod stocks are not in great shape," bemoaned Tom Nies, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council. "We've been struggling to rebuild our cod stocks for some time, but they're still not producing like they should."
The Interior Department took some steps to blunt impacts on Atlantic cod, including by carving out some areas of Cox Ledge from leasing. Developers, who are required to monitor cod activity at the site from November through the end of March, plan to adjust work plans to avoid any spotted spawning areas. And the final South Fork plan was scaled down from 15 turbines to 12 after warnings from NOAA.
Still, the oceanic agency faulted the Interior Department for shrugging off other recommendations to protect cod, saying the bureau had based some decisions on flawed assumptions not supported by science. That includes a decision to not block pile driving at the very start of the spawning season in November, even though NOAA said the noise could deter the activity and force some cod to abandon the area.
An Orsted spokesperson declined to comment, and representatives of Eversource did not comment on the matter.
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management representatives did not specifically comment on the final warnings from NOAA. However, more comprehensive mitigation efforts are underway. In an emailed statement, the bureau stressed it was using spatial modeling to guide its leasing decisions in the Gulf of Mexico, central Atlantic and waters near Oregon.
BOEM is also reviewing public feedback on its proposed blueprint for limiting offshore wind's impact on fishing through better project siting and design, as well as financial compensation.
2022 Bloomberg L.P. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Taxing the superprofits to win the inflation battle, and defend human rights
Magdalena Sepúlveda
Pandemics, wars, and recessions do not exempt states from meeting their human rights commitments. They must tax multinationals and the richest more to finance targeted policies protecting the most vulnerable against the cost-of-living crisis.
For many, it began with cancelling a doctor’s appointment, not buying clothes for their children, giving up on visiting relatives because of the cost of transportation, and paying only the most urgent bill. Quickly, they were forced to cut back on food, by reducing first quality and then quantity, and then even skipping meals. Even though they are working and receiving a salary, today, they find themselves lining up at food banks to feed their children and themselves.
Everywhere, families are losing the inflation battle. Once their coping mechanisms are exhausted and nothing more can be dispensed, what remains are feelings of anguish, and lack of control. They no longer have a say in decisions affecting their lives, they are forced to depend on others resulting in a loss of dignity. This is, in fact, a violation of their human rights.
At the forefront of the victims of the cost-of-living crisis are, as always, the most vulnerable: children, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, minorities, and migrants. In England, for example, where 2.2 million more people are forced this year to sacrifice expenses that are essential to their well-being. The New Economics Foundation calculates that soaring costs weigh 9 times more on the poorest people than on the richest 5%, in proportion to their income. In the U.S., while 38% of white households say they are facing serious financial problems, among Latino families the proportion rises to 48%, with 55% for their black counterparts, and peaks at 63% among Native Americans.
Worldwide, women, especially when also single parents, are the primary victims of the price spike, which the Institute for Women's Policy Research in the U.S. calls “she-flation”. And the impact on children is devastating: a recent report by UNICEF and the World Bank calculates that, worldwide, three quarters of households with children have experienced a drop in income since the beginning of the pandemic. In one in four households, adults have gone without food for days at a time to try to feed their children.
It is obviously in developing countries, which are even more exposed because of the pandemic, the rise in interest rates on their debts, and the volatility of capital, that the situation is most worrying. In Brazil, a country that had been off the UN hunger map since 2014, 33 million people now have nothing to put on their plates. Even in Asia, when inflation pressures remain more moderate compared with other regions, they hurt the most vulnerable. According to a World Bank calculation, the increase in the global price of cereals and energy, the poverty rate will surge by at least 3,7% in the Philippines, impoverishing 3,85m people and by at least 6% in Thailand. A very worrying situation when we remember that last year, even before prices started rising in the region, one in five South-East Asians—or 139m people— lacked consistent access to food.
Let's be clear: economic recovery, which is highly hypothetical, will not be enough. And it is just as obvious that the austerity programs that several states are implementing will only make the situation worse by reducing the resources of public services that are already very fragile. They are, however, along with social protection systems, the most effective instruments that states have to fight poverty and inequality. Similarly, if governments persist in trying to replenish their coffers by relying on indirect taxes, such as VAT, this is once again at the expense of the poorest, on whose shoulders this tax weighs proportionally more heavily.
Austerity is not inevitable. States can increase their fiscal space by taxing companies and the super-rich more. Let’s consider the energy multinationals, which have recorded unprecedented profits. ExxonMobil, for example, broke records with its profits in the third quarter of 2022, raking in $19.7 billion in net income, a $2 billion increase from its second quarter, which had already prompted President Joe Biden to say that the company “made more money than God this year”. But ExxonMobil, Total, BP, Shell and the others owe it only to the political situation - and in particular to the war in Ukraine- and not to a jump in their productivity. Everywhere, taxes on superprofits must be put in place, as recommended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and as some countries, especially in Europe, have already started to do.
But focusing on the energy sector is not enough, as explained by ICRICT, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, of which I am a member, along with such figures as Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, and Thomas Piketty. Pharmaceutical companies have seen their profits soar thanks to the pandemic, especially as vaccines were developed thanks to public subsidies. The food sector, where oligopolies are common, has also benefited greatly from the situation. It is by speculating on the markets of basic food products such as wheat that another sector, finance, is now making unprecedented profits. And let's not even talk about digital companies, the big winners of the pandemic and the champions of tax avoidance strategies.
Multinationals are not phantom entities. When their profits explode, it is their main shareholders who benefit, even if they do so discreetly. Take Cargill, which controls, along with three other companies, 70% of the world's food market: the company made more than $5 billion dollars in profit last year, the highest in its 156-year history, and is expected to do even better this year. Thanks to this windfall, the family now has 12 billionaires. There were "only" 8 of them before the pandemic. Like them, 573 new billionaires emerged in the first two years of the pandemic, or one every 30 hours, according to Oxfam calculations. The total wealth of billionaires is now equivalent to 13.9% of the world's GDP, three times more than in 2000, and the world's 10 richest men have more wealth than the poorest 40% of humanity - or 3.1 billion people - combined.
As the world celebrates International Human Rights Day on December 10, we must remember that pandemics, wars, and recessions, terrible and painful as they are, do not exempt states from meeting their human rights commitments, nor do they allow them to prioritize other issues. On the contrary, it is in the midst of crises that the commitment to human rights is most meaningful, as is through social protection and public services, that states succeed in protecting the livelihoods, as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights, of the most vulnerable. This is also the only way to make democracy meaningful for all.
Magdalena Sepúlveda is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and a member of the Independent Commission forthe Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). From 2008-2014 she was the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.@Magda_Sepul.
PROVOCATUERS South Korea president Yoon asks US for greater role in managing nuclear weapons
The Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted Mr Yoon as saying the joint planning and exercises would be aimed at a more effective implementation of the US’ “extended deterrence”. PHOTO: REUTERS
SEOUL- South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said his government is in talks with the US on taking a more active role in managing nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, which would mark a significant shift in a decades-old policy among American allies to deter North Korea.
“While the nuclear weapons belong to the US, intel sharing, planning, and training should be done jointly,” Mr Yoon told South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper in an interview published on Monday.
“The US’s stance is quite positive,” he added, telling the newspaper that the policy should be conducted under the concept of “joint planning and joint exercise”. South Korea’s presidential office confirmed the remarks.
Mr Yoon said the strategy of “nuclear umbrella” or “extended deterrence” is no longer reassuring for the public now that North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and a range of missiles to deliver them.
Since taking power last May, Mr Yoon has sought to put South Korea on a path of overwhelming military strength against North Korea, which has launched scores of missiles in defiance of United Nations resolutions and is preparing for another nuclear test.
In September, South Korea and the US agreed to cooperate more closely in their first formal talks on extended deterrence in about four years.
Nuke Envoys of S. Korea, US, Japan Condemn N. Korea's Missile Launch
Written: 2023-01-02
Photo : YONHAP NewsThe top nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan talked on the phone for a second day on Sunday over the latest missile launch by North Korea.
According to Seoul's foreign ministry, Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Kim Gunn spoke with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts Sung Kim and Takehiro Funakoshi after the North’s launch of a short-range ballistic missile early Sunday morning.
The three sides strongly condemned the North's latest provocation, saying that they deplore that North Korea opened the new year with an illegal act that violates multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The envoys also said that it is "unreasonable and a challenge to the international community" that the North announced it would spur efforts to strengthen its self-defensive capabilities in response to moves to isolate the country.
The nuclear envoys then warned that continued provocations by the North will be met with deeper isolation, stronger security cooperation among the three nations and a unified and stern response by the international community.
The top envoys added, however, that the three nations are keeping the door open for dialogue with Pyongyang.
The envoys held virtual talks on Saturday as well following the North's firing of three short-range ballistic missiles.
Yoon says South Korea, US discussing exercises using nuclear assets South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks at an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, Nov 28, 2022. (File photo: Reuters/Daewoung Kim)
02 Jan 2023
SEOUL: South Korea and the United States are discussing possible joint planning and exercises using US nuclear assets in the face of North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said in a newspaper interview.
The Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted Yoon as saying the joint planning and exercises would be aimed at a more effective implementation of the US "extended deterrence".
The term means the ability of the US military, particularly its nuclear forces, to deter attacks on US allies.
"The nuclear weapons belong to the United States, but planning, information sharing, exercises and training should be jointed conducted by South Korea and the United States," Yoon said, adding Washington is also "quite positive" about the idea.
Yoon's remarks come a day after North Korean state media reported that its leader Kim Jong Un called for the development of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and a larger nuclear arsenal to counter US-led threats amid flaring tension between the rival Koreas.
The North's race to advance its nuclear and missile programmes has renewed debate over South Korea's own nuclear armaments, but Yoon said maintaining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons remained important.
At a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party last week, Kim said South Korea has now become the North's "undoubted enemy" and rolled out new military goals, hinting at another year of intensive weapons tests and tension.
Inter-Korean ties have long been testy but have been even more frayed since Yoon took office in May.
On Sunday, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile off its east coast, in a rare late-night, New Year's Day weapons test, following three ballistic missiles launched on Saturday, capping a year marked by a record number of missile tests.
Yoon's comments on the nuclear exercises are the latest demonstration of his tough stance on North Korea. He urged the military to prepare for a war with "overwhelming" capability following North Korean drones crossing into the South last week. Analysts say the tensions could worsen.
"This year could be a year of crisis with military tension on the Korean peninsula going beyond what it was like in 2017," said Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, referring to the days of the "fire and fury" under the Trump administration.
"North Korea's hardline stance ... and aggressive weapons development when met with South Korea-US joint exercises and proportional response could raise the tension in a flash, and we cannot rule out what's similar to a regional conflict when the two sides have a misunderstanding of the situation," Hong said.
Source: Reuters/rj
Kim Jong Un Vows North Korea Will 'Exponentially' Increase Nuclear Arsenal
North Korea fired about 70 ballistic missiles in 2022, the most in a single year.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed Sunday to “exponentially” increase the number of nuclear weapons in his country and further advance his antagonistic intercontinental ballistic missile program.
Kim delivered the message after a meeting of his ruling party this weekend, declaring South Korea the country’s “undoubted enemy” and amping up his aggressive posture amid a slate of recent missile launches that will likely set the tone for the year. North Korea followed up those statements with a test of short-range ballistic missiles on New Year’s Day that Kim said could reach anywhere in South Korea.
The efforts are largely seen as an attempt by Kim to force the international community to negotiate with North Korea and offer legitimacy to his government. The country is still subject to harsh economic and diplomatic sanctions and has been deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol responded to the threat this weekend with a firm statement of his own, saying Seoul would punish any provocations to prevent a war on the peninsula. Yoon has taken a much harder line on the North than his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, calling the South’s northern neighbor a “principal enemy.”
A TV screen shows footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Yongsan Railway Station in Seoul. Kim stressed the need to "exponentially" increase the number of the country's nuclear arsenal and develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the new year, Pyongyang's state media reported on Jan. 1. SOPA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
“Our military should certainly punish any enemy provocations with a firm determination not to avoid going to war,” Yoon said, per Yonhap News. “I call on you to bear in mind that our troops’ firm mental readiness posture and realistic training can only guarantee strong security.”
North Korea fired about 70 ballistic missiles in 2022, Yonhap reported, the most in a single year. Speculation has grown that the country could conduct a nuclear test in the coming months, what would be its first in years and a guaranteed uptick in international tensions.
“As we greet the New Year, we urge North Korea to come out onto a path for peace on the Korean Peninsula and common prosperity for Koreans rather than sticking to a wrong path,” the South Korean military said in a statement Monday.
The two sides agreed to “explore avenues to enhance alliance strategic readiness through improved information sharing, training, and exercises, as they relate to nuclear and non-nuclear threats, including better use of table-top exercises”, according to a US statement at the time.
Mr Yoon’s remarks come a day after North Korean state media reported that its leader Kim Jong Un called for developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles and pledged to increase his nuclear arsenal to counter US-led threats to stifle US and South Korean hostile acts following a nearly weeklong party meeting.
Mr Kim left almost no opening for a return to long-stalled disarmament talks, calling instead for an “exponential increase” of his nuclear arsenal. Analysts say the tensions could worsen.
“This year could be a year of crisis with military tension on the Korean peninsula going beyond what it was like in 2017,” said Dr Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, referring to the days of the “fire and fury” under the Trump administration.
“North Korea’s hardline stance... and aggressive weapons development when met with South Korea-U.S. joint exercises and proportional response could raise the tension in a flash, and we cannot rule out what’s similar to a regional conflict when the two sides have a misunderstanding of the situation,” Dr Hong told Reuters.
On Sunday, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile off its east coast, in a rare late-night, New Year’s Day weapons test, following three ballistic missiles launched on Saturday, capping a year marked by a record number of missile tests.
Amid talk of South Korea’s own nuclear armaments, Mr Yoon said maintaining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons remained important.
Last week, Mr Kim’s regime sent five drones across the border into South Korea, temporarily disrupting flights at major airports.
With little threat of new sanctions and plans already afoot to further develop weapons including drones, submarines and missiles, Mr Kim has been honing his ability to deliver a credible nuclear strike against the US and its allies, such as South Korea and Japan.
The North Korea leader has raised tension to levels not seen in years by firing off more than 70 ballistic missiles in 2022, lowering his guardrails for the use of nuclear weapons and saying he sees no need to going back to the bargaining table for talks on winding back his nuclear arsenal in return for relief from sanctions that have largely cut the nation off from the world economy.
BLOOMBERG
Kim Jong-un calls for mass-production of nuclear weapons and bigger arsenal amid alleged threats
JANUARY 01, 2023
North Korean leader leader Kim Jong-un attends the 12th Meeting of the Political Bureau of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released on Dec 31, 2022 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Reuters
SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles and a larger nuclear arsenal to counter US-led threats, state media said on Sunday (Jan 1), amid flaring tension between the rival Koreas.
At a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, Kim highlighted the need to secure "overwhelming military power" to defend its sovereignty and security.
The meeting came amid cross-border tensions over last week's intrusion by North Korean drones into the South, and the North's series of missile launches, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol, during phone calls with military chiefs, called for "solid mental readiness and practical training" to ensure any North Korean provocations will be met with retaliation, according to a statement from his office.
Kim accused Washington and Seoul of trying to "isolate and stifle" Pyongyang with US nuclear strike assets constantly deployed in South Korea, calling it "unprecedented in human history."
He vowed to develop another ICBM system "whose main mission is quick nuclear counter-strike" under a plan to bolster the country's nuclear force, the official KCNA news agency said.
"The prevailing situation calls for making redoubled efforts to overwhelmingly beef up the military muscle... in response to the worrying military moves by the US and other hostile forces," it said.
South Korea has become "our undoubted enemy" being "hell-bent on imprudent and dangerous arms buildup" and hostile military moves, Kim said.
"It highlights the importance and necessity of a mass-producing of tactical nuclear weapons and calls for an exponential increase of the country's nuclear arsenal," Kim said, adding these would be a "main orientation" of the 2023 nuclear and defence strategy.
As part of the plan, the country will also launch its first military satellite "at the earliest date possible" by accelerating its drive to build a spy satellite, with preparations in the final stage, KCNA said.
'Super-large rocket launcher'
The report came hours after North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile off its east coast, in a rare late-night, New Year's Day weapons test.
The isolated country also launched three ballistic missiles on Saturday, capping a year marked by a record number of missile tests.
KCNA said in a separate dispatch that it was testing a new 600 mm super-large multiple rocket launcher capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Kim lauded the munitions industry for delivering 30 units of the system, calling it a "core, offensive weapon" with all of South Korea within its range, and an ability to conduct a surprise and precision launch.
"We have declared our resolute will to respond with nuke for nuke and an all-out confrontation for an all-out confrontation," Kim told a delivery ceremony on Saturday, ordering more powerful weapons to "absolutely overwhelm the US imperialist aggressive forces and their puppet army."
Inter-Korean ties have long been testy but have grown even more tense since Yoon took office in May pledging a tougher line against Pyongyang.
The recent drone intrusion rekindled criticism over South Korea's air defences, and Yoon on Sunday again urged the military to stand ready to retaliate.
"Our military must resolutely retaliate against any provocation by the enemy with the determination to fight," Yoon told the military chiefs.
The latest missile flew about 400 kilometres (249 miles) after being fired around 2.50am local time (1.50am Singapore time) from the Ryongsong area of the capital Pyongyang, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The JCS strongly condemned the North's series of missile tests as "grave provocations" and urged an immediate halt.
Japan's coast guard said the missile reached an altitude of around 100 km and flew around 350 km. Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada said Tokyo had protested to North Korea over the launch via diplomatic channels in Beijing.
The US Indo-Pacific Command said the launch did not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory but highlighted the destabilising impact of North Korea's weapons programme.
North Korea fired an unprecedented number of missiles in 2022, pressing on with weapons development amid speculation it could test a nuclear weapon for a seventh time.
In November, the North also resumed testing ICBMs for the first time since 2017, successfully launching the massive new Hwasong-17, potentially able to strike anywhere in the United States.
In a new firsthand account of the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, the department’s former chief blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee. The federal government’s multibillion-dollar security network, built after 9/11 to gather intelligence that could warn of a looming attack, provided no such shield on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund writes in a new book. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even his own agency’s intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn’t take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries, delayed sending help.
And, Sund warns in “Courage Under Fire,” it could easily happen again. Many of the factors that left the Capitol vulnerable remain unfixed, he said.
The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the book, which will be published Jan. 3.
In his account, Sund describes his shock at the battle that unfolded as an estimated 10,000 protesters inflamed by President Donald Trump’s rally earlier in the day broke through police lines and punched, stabbed and pepper-sprayed officers, outnumbering them “58 to 1.”
Sund said his shock shifted to agony as he unsuccessfully begged military generals for National Guard reinforcements. Though they delayed sending help until it was too late for Sund’s overrun corps, he says that he later discovered that the Pentagon had rushed to send security teams to protect military officials’ homes in Washington, none of which were under attack.
Sund reserves his greatest outrage for those Pentagon leaders, recounting a conference call he had with two generals about 2:35 p.m., 20 minutes after rioters had broken into the Capitol and as Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers scurried to hiding places.
Sund writes that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told him he didn’t like the optics of sending uniformed Guard troops to the Capitol, but could allow them to replace police officers at roadside checkpoints. Listening incredulously and trying to explain that he needed help to save officers’ lives, Sund said, he felt both “nauseated” and “mad as hell.”
“It’s a response I will never forget for the rest of my life,” Sund writes. While on the call, Sund recalls hearing the frantic voice of an officer being broadcast into the command center: “Shots fired in the Capitol, shots fired in the Capitol.”
Sund’s anger boiled over and he shouted the report of gunfire into the conference call: “Is that urgent enough for you now?” Then Sund hung up to deal with this new crisis.
A Pentagon spokesman, asked to respond to some of Sund’s claims, did not answer a question about his assertions that the military had beefed up security for top military officials’ homes on Jan. 6. The spokesman referred to a timeline released by the Defense Department spelling out leaders’ “planning and execution” related to the attack on the Capitol.
Piatt had initially denied saying anything about optics but later acknowledged that he had conferred with others on the call, and that it was possible he made comments to that effect. He testified he didn’t think he was rejecting using the Guard and instead was just saying that the military needed to create a plan for its use.
On Jan. 6, Sund had been chief of the Capitol Police for about 18 months after a 25-year career with the D.C. police in which he had received plaudits for his security planning for Washington’s many inaugurations and protests. He writes that he holds himself and many others responsible for what happened during the attack on the Capitol, but that the ultimate purpose of the book is to answer a key question about the insurrection:
“Why were we so unprepared?”
The answers form the broader message Sund delivers, calling out systemic failures that left his agency and the country flatfooted despite clear signs intelligence agencies had received of a gathering storm.
“The security and information-sharing policies and mandates put in place after September 11 failed miserably on January 6,” Sund writes. “We failed miserably to see the apparent warning signs and the danger, like a ‘gray rhino,’ charging right at us.”
Sund said he was never warned about those red flags the FBI, DHS and his own intelligence unit had received: plots for protesters to come armed, attack Capitol tunnels and be willing to shoot police.
Sund resigned a day after the riot when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) publicly called for him to step down over the department’s inability to secure the Capitol. “No one holds themselves more accountable than I do” for the officers’ gruesome experience that day, he writes, “and I wish I could have done more.” Still, Sund said he regrets resigning before the full picture emerged about intelligence he never received — which would have spurred a much different security plan.
He warns that many flaws in his agency’s power structure — in which congressional leaders’ political concerns can overrule the chief’s security judgments — remain.
Three days before Jan. 6, in anticipation of large crowds, Sund had asked that the National Guard be placed on standby. But his request was batted down by the two sergeants-at-arms hired by Senate and House leaders; Sund says he later learned the two believed that Pelosi would never allow it.
“Almost two years after the events of Jan. 6, the department is not in a better place or on a readier footing,” he writes. “Few people in the department feel there is a viable plan to move the agency into a better position. Hundreds of officers have left the department since Jan. 6 and many feel it is only going to get worse. ”
Sund writes that senior leaders in his department failed, too: The “biggest intelligence failure was within my department,” he wrote.
Starting on Dec. 21 and continuing to Jan. 5, the Capitol Police intelligence division had received emails and tips that carried frightening warnings about plots for Jan. 6. Intelligence collected on Dec. 21 revealed that prospective rallygoers were discussing how to coordinate an attack using the Capitol’s underground tunnel system, and attaching a map of the complex. They urged burning down the homes of Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).
The assistant chief overseeing the intelligence division at the time, Yogananda Pittman, told Congress this intelligence should have been circulated to top leaders in the agency. Sund said he and other commanders never received it. An internal review found no evidence that the warnings were ever shared outside Pittman’s division. Sund said the Capitol Police head of protection for congressional leaders was also not alerted to the threats against Pelosi and McConnell.
The department’s intelligence division did widely share an updated internal threat report on Jan. 3 — three days before the attack — that carried a worrisome warning about the potential for violence at the Capitol. The memo cited the desperation of Trump supporters who saw Jan. 6 “as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election” and would target “Congress itself.”
Sund said he didn’t remember being struck by the report’s language, as it was loaded with qualifiers about the possibility of violence and never referenced specific plots to target Capitol tunnels, congressional leaders and police.
After Sund resigned, Pittman briefly served as acting chief. Pittman has announced that she plans to retire in February. Capitol Police leaders said they have made vast changes to improve intelligence-sharing and readiness since the attack.
Sund also warns in his book that the department’s command structure — with political leaders dictating decisions for security officials — “is a recipe for disaster,” and had grave consequences on Jan. 6.
He recommends that congressional leaders empower future Capitol Police chiefs to execute their own security plans alone, rather than having to report to a three-member Capitol Police Board made up of the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the architect of the Capitol, a cumbersome structure that he says makes it impossible for the chief to act independently.
“The security apparatus that exists on Capitol Hill creates a no-win situation for whoever is chief. You have the Capitol Police Board, four oversight committees, and 535 bosses plus their staffs telling you what to do,” Sund writes.
In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, Sund struggled to make sense of the military’s inaction that day, something he considered a dereliction of duty. Sund urges in his book that the Pentagon follow its established policies that call on the military to provide immediate support for state and local governments and police departments facing a life-or-death situation.
The rapid dispatch of security teams to guard the homes of military leaders in the D.C. area confirmed for Sund that on the afternoon of Jan. 6, “the Pentagon fully understands the urgency and danger of the situation even as it does nothing to support us on the Hill.”
Sund writes he also later learned that, during the riot that afternoon, a large phalanx of National Guard troops returned to their command center to clock out at the end of their shift. One crew went off duty as scheduled, to be replaced by a new one, as if it were a normal day, all while Capitol Police and assisting D.C. police battled for their lives just 22 blocks away.
At 4:30 p.m. that day, two hours after Sund’s urgent request for help, Pentagon leaders reported they had completed their planning for reinforcements and could now send the National Guard.
“For the past several hours, we have been battling a mob at the Capitol and the fight has been televised around the world,” Sund writes. “We have multiple fatalities including a shooting inside the Capitol. We have had to secure members of Congress, the vice president and his family and the next three levels of succession to the president of the United States. And the military has made no effort whatsoever to help end this.”
The first National Guard troops arrived at 5:40 p.m., when the violent attack was over and Capitol Police along with D.C. police and FBI SWAT teams had cleared the Capitol and the campus of rioters. The D.C. National Guard’s leader at the time, Gen. William Walker, later confided to Sund his shame, Sund writes. The local Guard’s headquarters is two miles from the Capitol, yet Pentagon officials did not authorize Walker to deploy for more than three hours as they crafted a plan for actions the Guard would take. New Jersey State Police beat the troops to the scene.
“Steve, I felt so bad. I wanted to help you immediately ... but they wouldn’t let me come,” Sund recounts Walker saying. “Imagine how I felt. New Jersey got here before we did?”
Carol D. Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Twitter
The Biden administration’s jarring revisionism on economic policy toward China (and by extension the world) is reviving discussions (most acute during the Trump and George W. Bush years) about whether it’s right to label the United States a revisionist power.
There’s a lot at stake in whether the United States is perceived as—or actually is—a “revisionist” (vice “status quo”) power.
Theories predicting war are built out of the distinction between revisionist and status quo states. And if the world understands the United States as revisionist, then it is the one upending patterns of world order. That doesn’t mean others aren’t also revisionist. But in certain (if rapidly narrowing) ways, it remains the preeminent global power. That makes the case for resisting or subverting America’s politically volatile whims more compelling than in a different historical conjuncture.
The thing is, this is thoroughly covered ground in international relations. But, as with most things that are important, there’s nothing remotely like a consensus about the United States.
The baseline presumption permeating the field is of course that the United States is a status quo power. Many, many IR scholars have theorized revisionism in one way or another. The tendency has been not weighing in definitively about whether the United States is a revisionist power while also subtly implying (in my reading anyway) that they think the United States is a status quo (not revisionist) power. An unsurprising bias in a US-centric field.
Most versions of hegemonic stability theory—which present hegemonic concentrations of power as a stabilizing force in world politics—suggest the United States is a status quo power. The same could be said for power-transition theory, even though it technically allows for the dominant power to be a revisionist punching down at the rising power (one of two paths to war in that frame).
Much of the work on liberal hegemony and “liberal international order” also intrinsically positions the United States in an exceptionalist posture—a nation defending standards it previously set and/or inherited from the British empire. So a status quo power.
Of course, offensive realists believe we’re all revisionist, some are just more capable than others. Alex Cooley and Dan Nexon’s work during the Trump years showed pathways of US revisionism that was leading toward the end of US hegemony.
And some empirics-heavy work has hinted at US revisionism. David Shambaugh, for example, finds some analytical merit in the longstanding Chinese accusations that the United States is a revisionist of global proportions. Steve Chan, Weixing Hu, and Kai He establish clear standards for what constitutes a revisionist orientation (policy statements, institutional participation, and the direction of UN votes), finding that the United States has some very revisionist coloring—at least compared to China. After Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, moreover, many governments perceived the United States as revisionist (I mean, how could they not?).
In Robert Jervis’s rendering of the security dilemma (which for my money is the most important concept in security studies), the question of revisionist intentions is vital because whether accommodative or coercive policies toward a competitor make more sense depends on the revisionist-status quo distinction. By definition, you cannot even have a security dilemma if one of the powers involved in a situation is a revisionist. The dilemma is that policies you implement to make yourself secure even though you’re a status-quo actor get misperceived as proof of your revisionist intentions, which is why the other guy reciprocates and yadayadayadah—we’re all less secure.
For Jervis and many security scholars, revisionism is specifically about the willingness to use and threaten force for political ends. Hitler, or imperial Germany, is what a lot of scholars have in mind. For most others, revisionism is about a desire to alter patterns of global order, which may or may not require force.
But what if America is both? Well, that’s complicating—both in terms of our self-image and in terms of what to do about it.
In my new book, Pacific Power Paradox, I show that you can’t really understand the perils and promise of Asia’s regional order today unless you recognize that the United States has been both a revisionist and status quo power since the 1970s—sometimes simultaneously. Contra so much US foreign policy orthodoxy, I take pains to show how assuming the United States is only a status-quo power (paradoxically) increases the risks of war. Denying American revisionism makes US foreign policy more dangerous than it might otherwise be.
Common sense should dictate that to be the hegemon is to be the preeminent revisionist power. Hegemons impose orders that didn’t exist before and expect others to sign up. Hegemons risk and wage wars in order to realize some aspect (real or imagined) of their preferred “orders.” Hegemons deploy forces abroad globally and out-arms-race themselves for the sake of “order maintenance,” leaving officials in the awkward position of labeling the lower-rung competitors “pacing threats” that are also somehow existential threats. Of course, the high-minded rhetoric of American exceptionalism obscures this reality.
What we’re seeing from the Biden administration in real time—and at a global level—suggests that the US pursuit of primacy is forcing it into revisionism toward prevailing patterns of global order, risks of war be damned. Changes in economic policy are what’s drawing attention, but these moves would only shock those who naturalized America’s past revisionist behavior.
Power in international terms has traditionally been defined in ‘hard’ terms in the context of military and economic strength. In the post-cold war era, the concept of ‘soft power’ gained much prominence among foreign policy discussions, and the US was considered the bastion of soft power.
China joined much later and enthusiastically promoted its soft power image in world politics. As the contest between the US and China intensifies, some academics like Maria Repnikova, the author of ‘Chinese Soft Power’, predict another dimension of competition, with Washington and Beijing vying to make their political and economic models more attractive to the rest of the world through soft power.
The term was coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye in his book ‘Bound to Lead’ in which he defined soft power as “getting others to want what you want”. He set out three primary pillars of soft power: political values, culture and foreign policy. Unlike hard power which rests on the ability to coerce and use of force that grows out of the country’s military and economic power, soft power is the ability of a country to persuade others by shaping their preferences, without force or coercion, by making its political values, culture and foreign policy goals attractive.
The American concept of soft power, ideologically, propagates itself as the chief defender of the liberal democratic order. The Obama and Trump administrations echoed these sentiments in varying degrees. The Biden Administration captured the essence of this view in US President Joe Biden’s inaugural address where he said, “we will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.” In December 2021, Biden hosted the virtual ‘Summit for Democracy’ with the aim of building democratic alliances against authoritarian powers.
American soft power is also shaped by the private sector’s cultural exports – from Hollywood films to Michael Jackson, Google to Harvard, Coca Cola to McDonalds. During the cold war era, the US State Department sponsored writers and publications and promoted American jazz musicians and artists to act as cultural ambassadors. So alongside military and economic strength, Nye argued, the US enjoyed massive advantage over potential rivals due to its abundant soft power which rested on “intangible resources: ideology, culture [and] the ability to use international institutions to determine the framework of debate.”
The idea of American soft power that enabled the US to sustain its hegemony slowly became popular and enticing for many regions. The country which embraced it most ardently is China that has emphasized its cultural confidence, reinforced economic development and extended generous material endowments to win the hearts of other countries. China has operationalized the idea of soft power in a distinct way, seeking to blend its cultural and commercial appeal.
Cultural and language centres known as Confucius Institutes have been established in 162 countries; soft power is bolstered through education and state-sponsored training programs for countries in the Global South. Chinese universities with their low tuition fees and availability of scholarships are popular destinations for many students in the Global South as graduates also get a chance to apply to various Chinese companies for employment opportunities.
Chinese soft power tends to be visible through its model of economic development, technological advances, political mobilization against poverty and corruption, and grandiose infrastructure and development projects such as railways, bridges, highways and ports in Central Asia, Africa and Asia, Latin America as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In the US, cynicism about its eroding democratic values, selective commitment to human rights, pervasive racial discrimination and attacks on reproductive rights at home could harm its soft image. Also, failure to galvanize much of the Global South in confrontation with Russia reflects ample mistrust.
Chinese soft power has had little impact in the US and other Western industrialized democracies owing to the preexisting scepticism of communism and authoritarianism. However, China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy under Xi using antagonistic rhetoric with the US and military intimidation in the South China Sea could dim its reputation. In the wake of pandemic isolation and slowing economy, which has hindered people-to-people exchanges dramatically, it remains to be seen how much an effort China has to make in doling out large chunks of material endowments to retain its soft image in the world.
Although it looks that Washington and Beijing are engaged in a soft-power competition, the reality seems like ‘soft-power coexistence’, says Maria Repnikova. Their success depends not on outmanoeuvring each other, like the technology competition, but on refining their appeal and attractiveness to others. The world is not interested in any particular American or Chinese model. Instead, they are happy, according to Repnikova, to have both models trying to win them with their respective visions and appeals. “What Washington and Beijing see as zero-sum, much of the world often sees as win-win,” Repnikove concludes.
The writer holds an LLM degree ininternational economic law from the University of Warwick. She can be reached at: beelam_ramzan@yahoo.com
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M ROBBER BARON 2.0
Twitter sued for not paying rent on San Francisco HQ since Elon Musk takeover
Twitter is being sued by its landlord for ducking out on rent for its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform reportedly went through heavy cost-cutting under new CEO Elon Musk.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday by Columbia Property Trust.
Twitter’s freeloading was reported early last month by the New York Times, which wrote Musk and his advisors hoped to renegotiate terms of lease agreements after mass layoffs.
The downsizing has already begun.
Twitter closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported Friday — cutting janitorial and security services. Employees were left bringing their own toilet paper to work, according to the report.
Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October and has been cutting costs ever since, amid what Musk admitted was a “massive drop” in revenue.
Cleaning and security staff were also laid off from the company’s New York and San Francisco offices, where workers struck for higher pay. In San Francisco, Musk condensed the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four floors to two, the Times reported.
Twitter’s San Francisco officers are located in the Hartford Building at 650 California Street.Getty Images
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered staff out to a data center in Sacramento to shutdown key servers as a cost-cutting measuring, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, layoffs have continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy divisions last week, the report said.
Employees have been directed to delay paying contractors or vendors — including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, the Times reported.
The company is also being sued for failing to pay almost $200,000 for private charter flights made the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs to come, the report revealed.The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the suit filed Thursday by landlord Columbia Property Trust.
Twitter did not return a request for comment regarding the new lawsuit.
Musk has pledged to step down from leading the company after conducting a poll on whether he should step down. A successor has yet to be chosen.
The multi-billionaire’s purchase of the social media company made him the first person ever to lose $200 billion, a report found.
Capitol police officers defend a door to the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021.
SHAY HORSE/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, Twitter employees raged at their own company and its leadership, blaming them for the social media giant’s inept handling of Donald Trump and other top MAGA figures’ incitement to violence.
“Do you want to have more blood on your hands?” one staffer asked a top executive, Del Harvey, when she questioned whether Trump could inspire more violence in the insurrection’s aftermath.
The exchange, relayed by former Twitter employees to the Jan. 6 committee, was included in a summary of investigative findings prepared by committee staff and obtained by Rolling Stone. The 120-page document contains insights about the role of social media in the insurrection — most of which were not included in the committee’s final report — and paints a picture of Twitter as bumbling and gunshy in its efforts to stop extremists from using the platform in the run-up to the insurrection.
In its final report, the Jan. 6 committee mostly avoided conclusions about how social media companies responded to insurrection and the weeks of extremist rhetoric leading up to it. Committee members punted the issue to Congress and asked oversight committees to “continue to evaluate policies of media companies that have had the effect of radicalizing their consumers.”
In the draft summary, written by the committee’s “purple” or social media team, staffers were more pointed about what they saw as the failures of big social media companies.
“The sheer scale of Republican post-election rage paralyzed decisionmakers at Twitter and Facebook, who feared political reprisals if they took strong action,” the summary concluded.
Twitter reportedly told the committee that it instituted the draft coded incitement to violence policy once rioters made it inside the Capitol, but former employees said the on-the-fly implementation was vague, confused, and ad hoc. The result of the delay, they argued, meant that “members of the Safety Policy Team were manually taking down violent tweets, including those including ‘#ExecuteMikePence,’ using only the Twitter search function.”
The draft also paints a picture of Twitter leadership that seemed to have little idea about the far-right figures on its platform. In an email exchange excerpted in the draft summary, a senate aide emailed a Twitter executive to express disbelief that the company was still allowing Ron Watkins, the administrator of the Internet’s ground zero for the QAnon movement, to continue tweeting on Jan. 6. The unnamed Twitter executive emailed back with a question: “Who is Ron Watkins?”
And even days after the insurrection, former Twitter employees told the committee that executives were still slow to recognize the risk Trump could pose in inciting future violence. After Trump tweeted that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, Safety Team employees testified that they saw “the exact same rhetoric and the exact same language that had led up to January 6th popping underneath” his tweets, leading to fears of another act of mass violence.
The report’s release comes as Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has suggested that the company’s old regime employed a moderation policy that consciously favored Democrats and strategically censored pro-Trump voices. But the bipartisan panel paints a picture of a company adrift, handling moderation in an ad hoc manner with little internal logic.
The draft relies in part on depositions of Anika Collier Navaroli, a former senior Twitter Safety Team official, and an anonymous former Twitter employee referred to only by the pseudonym “J. Johnson.”
Both committee staff and former employees who gave depositions singled out former Twitter Vice President for Trust & Safety Del Harvey as an obstacle to tougher enforcement against election-related extremism in the run-up to the insurrection. Harvey, the 120-page summary concludes, “personally obstructed” the creation of a coded incitement to violence policy drafted by Twitter Safety employees in the months before the insurrection.
Harvey did not respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
Under Musk, Twitter no longer has a mechanism for responding to press inquiries.
Collier Navaroli drafted a coded incitement to violence policy after President Trump’s “stand back and stand by” shout-out to the Proud Boys during the September presidential debates. The policy was meant to capture content that would skirt existing policies on violent incitement by avoiding obvious keywords, according to the summary.
But during a Nov. 9 meeting with Safety staff, former employees claimed Harvey argued against the policy. Harvey, the summary wrote, pointed to hashtags forbidden under the policy, including “locked and loaded,” and claimed they “could be a reference to self-defense and should not be the target of content moderation.”
Former employees told the committee that they were overwhelmed by the workload as tweets flooded in from the Capitol with enough specificity to tell which specific parts of the building had fallen to the mob.
And as rioters streamed through the Capitol, at least one senate aide pleaded with the company to take their platform’s responsibility in stopping the violence more seriously. “I am telling you emphatically that you need to put out a statement about where your redline is and be prepared to draw it,” the aide wrote. ‘Platforms are going to bear a lot of responsibility for helping facilitate this. I really hope you do more than watch today.”
NewYork-Presbyterian nurses reach tentative agreement as nurses at other city hospitals still intend to strike
By Celina Tebor, Liam Reilly and Alaa Elassar, CNN Published Sun January 1, 2023 Ambulances fill the bay at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, in New York, on November 17, 2021.Richard Drew/AP/FILE CNN —
Nearly 4,000 union nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital have reached a tentative agreement on a contract, while approximately 12,000 nurses at seven other hospitals will move forward with their intention to strike beginning January 9.
New York State Nurses Association members at NewYork-Presbyterian reached a tentative deal just hours before their contract expired Saturday “and one day after delivering a 10-day notice to strike,” according to a news release from the group.
The notice allows time for the hospitals to plan patient care in case of a strike. Nearly 99% of the union members voted last week to authorize the strike, which would affect seven hospitals in all five boroughs of the city. Massive health care strike: 15,000 Minnesota nurses walk off the job
Nurses at the seven remaining hospital facilities are expected to continue negotiations this week, according to the union.
“Nurses are expected to be back at the bargaining table all week at the seven other facilities,” the release noted. “They have been sounding the alarm about the short-staffing crisis that puts patients at risk, especially during a tripledemic of COVID, RSV and flu.”
The union argued hospitals are not doing enough to keep caregivers with patients, and they say hospitals need to invest in hiring, and retaining nurses to improve patient care.
“Striking is always a last resort,” union president and nurse Nancy Hagans said in a news release last week. “Nurses have been to hell and back, risking our lives to save our patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes without the PPE we needed to keep ourselves safe, and too often without enough staff for safe patient care.”
The last-minute negotiations are the latest example of a growing trend of unions leveraging strike threats to improve working conditions. Unions representing workers of train crews at the nation’s freight railroads, mental health
Dr Albert W Noll: The Fairy, the Fire Fiend and the Fiddle
The author came across Dr Albert W Noll while researching the recent publication COON: more holes than swiss cheese. The young Boston dentist enjoyed notoriety for his appearances on the Boston stage during the 1890s. He usually performed in drag, either as a white woman or in blackface as a ‘mammy’ caricature.
Born into Boston society, Noll graduated as a dentist in 1895. Apparently content to work extracting teeth, Dr Noll claimed that he never considered a professional stage career. However, the young dentist’s musical compositions proved popular. Sheet music sales provided him with substantial extra income. He also performed on stage in a semi-professional capacity.
Nero, or the Fairy, the Fire Fiend, and the Fiddle
In 1896, Dr Albert W Noll enjoyed acclaim for a grand operatic burlesque loosely based on the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. He wrote Nero, or the Fairy… to showcase his own particular talent. Previous to this production, he specialised in ‘skirt, ballet and other dances’ in minstrel shows — blackface drag. Nero, or the Fairy… was his theatrical debut or ‘coming out’ as a white woman.
Veteran local thespian F W Bailey played the title role of Nero. However, Noll as the female lead was the real star. The Boston Globe described him as ‘the gay soubrette who toys with Nero’s affections’.
That newspaper’s coverage of Noll and his friends was always notably sympatico. It seems the writer moved in the same circles and shared similar interests. (Hint, hint. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more.) The Globe journalist even appears to have indulged in a little ‘between friends’ bitchiness. Although production notes name Noll’s character as Actæa, the Globe referred to her as Acne.
“The star, Acne, enacted by Dr Noll, is flirting with Nero, but really her affections are centred on Tenoris.”
Ouch! Bad skin and a floozy!
Image: The Boston Globe 28 April 1896
Somewhat gay in disposition
The Boston Globe described Nero, as portrayed by F W Bailey, as ‘somewhat gay in disposition’. Judging by the production sketches, Fred Bailey indeed looked somewhat gay in disposition. His short toga featured a starched collar and ruff adorned by a bowtie. A tophat and splendidly waxed walrus moustache completed the bizarre get-up. A piano shop manager by day, Fred couldn’t have looked gayer in disposition if he’d hoiked up his toga and allowed all 15 of his Praetorian Guards to tickle his ivories.
Nero, in addition to his day job as emperor, also owns a dry goods emporium. Somewhat financially constrained, he sets Rome ablaze after first taking out heavy insurance on his store. The burning of Rome climaxed the second act. The spectacle much-impressed reviewers with the appearance of conflagration achieved by stage lighting and billowing red fabric.
Consisting of three acts, the opera took place over a like number of hours. It was a grand all-male affair. Aside from the 15 lead actors, 8 men joined Albert Noll in the corps de ballet — bewigged, rouged, en pointe and in tutus. Another 51 played minor male roles and 20 more frocked up to play Roman ladies. A 12 piece orchestra provided the music with 45 choristers and 16 boys from St John’s Church choir.
A Drag Party
“The house was filled with the cream of society,” boasted the Boston Globe.
“A drag party of 20 came up from Winthrop. Dr Noll was very much in evidence… When [he] stepped upon the stage, he received a warm ovation from the house of his friends.”
(At the time, the phrase ‘drag party’ meant two different things. From the 1880s, American newspapers referred to illegal gatherings of male cross-dressers raided by the police as ‘drag parties’. However, ‘drag’ also described a large carriage drawn by a team of horses. Groups of friends wanting to travel together to an event sometimes hired a horse-drawn coach or ‘omnibus’. They dressed up in their most ostentatious race day finery and partied en route to their destination. That form of ‘drag party’ was named for the style of conveyance. Think of it as an 1890s version of hiring a stretch limo to get pissed with friends on the way to a concert.)
“As the curtain fell, there were loud calls of ‘Noll, Noll’, and the doctor appeared before the curtain to bow his acknowledgements. He was presented with a large floral wreath and a basket of flowers.”
Albert W Noll’s theatrical career
Following his operatic triumph, Noll appeared onstage less often. He focussed on writing racist songs for blackface performers.
His most successful composition was the lullaby ‘Doan Ye Cry Ma Honey’. Although Noll claimed authorship and collected the royalties, the song’s description as a ‘darky song’ probably means he simply adapted the lyrics from a traditional slave lullaby.
At the time, white composers frequently appropriated traditional African American songs. They rewrote the lyrics in an exaggerated and demeaning ‘black dialect’ for white performers to sing in blackface. Known as ‘coon songs’, the compositions firmly established the slur ‘coon’ in the American vernacular. Picked up in Australia during visits by blackface minstrel shows, the epithet also became common in this country. By the 1920s, ‘coon’ was in everyday use against all People of Colour in Australia, including Asians and First Nations people.
Kraft Cheese Radio Hour
In 1930, Australia’s Kraft-Walker Cheese Company produced the Kraft Cheese Radio Hour to promote its foodstuffs. The show featured the Kraft Orchestra and the Kraft Revellers, a white male quartet who specialised in ‘negro spirituals’ and ‘coon songs’.
Noll’s ‘Doan Ye Cry Ma Honey’ was one of their selections. Given Noll’s history as a ‘skirt dancer’ in minstrel shows, he likely composed the song to sing himself — dressed as a ‘mammy’ — a standard minstrel character.
Queen of the ballet
It appears Albert W Noll gave his last stage performance in 1898. He helped the young women of the East Boston Athletic Association to organise a ‘negro minstrel show’. The young society dames blacked up with burnt cork and sang ‘negro’ songs. Noll wrote a new ‘negro’ ditty, especially for the occasion. However, it seems Albert Noll missed the spotlight. Unable to resist the opportunity to frock up, he arranged a surprise.
With no warning to the performers, nine unknown dancers suddenly took over the stage. Contrary to the advertised program, these women were not in blackface. They wore white dresses with ‘delicate green and pink skirts’.
According to the newspapers, it took a while for the penny to drop.
It was Albert and some of his friends. Albert had again convinced some talented mates to dress in drag and put on a show.
“Dr Noll was Queen of the ballet…
“The boys were all old hands at the business, and carried the thing through very cleverly.”
It seems that was the last occasion on which Albert took to the stage in drag.
In 1902, the star of a Boston theatre production sang a ‘dainty coon serenade’ composed by Noll. However, a newspaper reported that the composer was absent, ‘studying overseas’.
Whether Albert tired of performance or a scandal caused him to take a lower profile is not known. However, in the following two decades, he only made the papers for directing the occasional church benefit. He also stopped writing ‘coon songs’.
Dr Albert W Noll gives up dentistry
But, yanking out rotting molars no doubt loses its appeal over time. In the early 1920s, despite previous protestations, Dr Albert W Noll put down his dental appliances and began a fulltime career in music. He moved to New York and became musical director of the famed Carnegie Hall. He also organised ‘glee’ clubs at local YMCAs for young men who enjoyed singing together.
You can stay there, and I’m sure you will find Many ways to have a good time.
(Of course, Noll did not write the song ‘YMCA’. Victor Willis of the Village People did. And ‘YMCA’ is not about illicit gay sex. Definitely not! Victor Willis said it is not. And he also said he would sue the next media organisation to say it was. No. That song is purely about going to a place where you can hang out with all the boys and do whoever whatever you feel.)
Noll’s sudden departure from the world of blackface minstrel music still causes some mystery among admirers of the genre. Fans of ‘Doan Ye Cry Ma Honey’ argue over whether the lullaby can be definitively classified as racist because the author’s race is unknown.
We can clear that up. Dr Albert W Noll was white. The song was, and is, racist.
But was Albert racist?
More than two decades after he stopped performing in blackface and writing ‘coon’ songs, Dr Albert W Noll did something rather pleasantly surprising. In 1924, his boss at Carnegie Hall, Mrs Anne Wolter, accomplished what African American newspaper the New York Age described as her dream. She set up the National Ethiopian Art Theatre to provide training and employment for black American actors.
Dr Albert W Noll volunteered as director of music and choirmaster. No ‘coon songs’. Indeed, black newspapers offered plaudits for his contribution. He received a standing ovation at the first concert given by the students.
When this author first wrote about Dr Albert W Noll, it was with great disappointment. I liked the guy. He obviously loved life and lived it to the fullest — and as his authentic self. But he also exploited African American culture and cruelly mocked the very people he profited from with demeaning lyrics and degrading impersonations.
Therefore, it was a great joy to since discover that Dr Albert W Noll later redeemed himself by helping the very people he previously hurt.
