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, July 31, 2022
UK
Mick Lynch takes apart Liz Truss over plans to effectively ban industrial action
“She’s seeking to make effective industrial action illegal, so people people will have to use other means to take action and respond to the employers."
RMT boss Mick Lynch has taken apart Liz Truss over her plans to effectively ban meaningful industrial action as rail strikes continued today.
Truss who is the favourite to replace Boris Johnson, has said that she would introduce minimum service levels on critical national infrastructure in the first 30 days of government under her leadership. As a result, teachers, postal workers and those working in the energy sector could be prevented from going on strike.
The Tory leadership hopeful has also proposed raising the minimum threshold for voting in favour of strike action from 40 to 50 percent. Other measures include raising the minimum notice period for strike action from two weeks to four weeks and implementing a cooling-off period so that unions can no longer strike as many times as they like in the six-month period after a ballot.
Speaking to the BBC Lynch said he thought Truss was a ‘right-wing fundamentalist’, warning that the country would have one of the most extreme leaders should she win the race to replace Johnson.
Lynch said: “This is a direct attack on one of the main pillars of our democracy one of the founding basis of any democracy is the right for a trade union to freely organise and take appropriate industrial action.
“She’s seeking to make effective industrial action illegal, so people will have to use other means to take action and respond to the employers.
“Whose been held to ransom at the moment is the British worker right across the economy.”
He said Truss wants the unions to “surrender” so we have a “low-paid, cowed workforce” in the UK.
“The rest of the country, if you believe in democracy and believe in a liberal economy, cannot support what she’s standing for, because it’s oppression of working people.”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito mocked foreign leaders who criticized the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and called out ‘hostility to religion’ in viral Rome speech Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has been criticized for his keynote
address on religious freedom in Rome.
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
‘Remember: it was Alito’s opinion that leaked. That fact paired with his politicized remarks below should be alarming to anyone.’
That’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacting, on Twitter, to a viral speech that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gave in Rome.
A bearded Alito delivered a keynote address for Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative on Thursday that focused on religious freedom. It courted controversy by mocking “foreign leaders” — including outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron — who spoke out against the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to repeal Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. for decades.
As Ocasio-Cortez noted, Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May, more than a month before the Supreme Court went public with the decision on June 24. Alito did not comment on the leak during his speech. And it is not publicly known whether the Court is investigating the leak, as Chief Justice John Roberts ordered in May.
“I had the honor this term of writing, I think, the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders,” Alito said Thursday, adding that these officials felt “perfectly fine commenting on American law.”
He mistakenly referred to Johnson as a “former prime minister,” even though Johnson won’t step down until September. Alito joked that Johnson, felled by several scandals, had “paid the price” for commenting on the Roe decision, which drew laughs in the audience. He then noted that Macron and Trudeau are “still in office.”
Alito claimed that a “growing hostility to religion” has emerged in the West, adding that “religious liberty is under attack in many places, because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power. It also probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human DNA — a tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves.”
Critics including Ocasio-Cortez questioned the appropriateness of Alito’s remarks about religion and foreign leaders, noting the comments put the impartiality of the justice himself as well as that of highest court of the land into question. “The Supreme Court is in a legitimacy crisis,” the second-term House Democrat wrote.
Alito’s speech went viral, leading his name to trend on Twitter on Friday. “These [justices] are rightwing political actors and aren’t even trying to hide it,” tweeted MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.
SOFIA — Semiconductors from refrigerators and dishwashers brought as “spoils” from the war in Ukraine control the remote weapon systems of Russian tanks. Such a statement was made by US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a statement to the Senate nearly two months ago. “We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment, it’s full of semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators,” Raimondo told a Senate hearing.
Robin Patterson, a spokesman for the Commerce Department, said Ukrainian authorities told Raimondo that when they opened up captured Russian tanks, they found components intended for refrigerators and commercial and industrial machinery. Semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, lasers, avionics, and marine technology are subject to Russian export controls.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, social media has been full of photos of Russian soldiers burdening household appliances. A part of the “spoils of war” goes to the homes of Russian soldiers, others appear to the Uralvagonzavod for “reuse”.
Sanctions
BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that despite reports from Russian media about weekly deliveries of weapon systems for the Russian army from Uralvagonzavod, the enterprise has stopped working several times in the past almost six months.
Economic sanctions imposed by the west are part of the reason. The lack of materials, components, and such important chips causes serious difficulties in the production process of Uralvagonzavod. Burnt bodies and entire tanks are being returned for repair, but the plant can do little as the supply of metal has also dropped drastically.
BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that Uralvagonzavod was forced to send mobile repair teams to the front in Ukraine to repair on the spot the damaged engines of the combat armored vehicles – APCs, tanks, howitzers, etc.
U.S. technology exports to Russia have fallen nearly 70 percent since the sanctions began in late February, while more than 30 other countries have adopted similar export bans, Gina Raimondo told Congress.
More ‘inovations’
Although individual voices against the sanctions against Russia are already starting to be heard, one cannot fail to take into account the fact that precisely these sanctions, against the supply of raw materials, materials, and chips, are perhaps the most effective against Russian military production.
Photo: Twitter
Using components and parts from everyday products and integrating them into military systems is not unfamiliar territory for the Russians. BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that Ukrainians captured a Russian drone whose fuel tank was made from a plastic water bottle.
Nichelle Nichols, who starred as Lt Uhura in Star Trek, dies aged 89
31 July 2022, 21:14
Actress Nichelle Nichols, known for her most famous role as communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the popular Star Trek television series, displays her Lego astronaut ring while visiting the aBuild the Futurea activity where. Picture: PA
Her role in the 1966-69 series earned Nichols a lifelong position of honour with the series’ fans.
Nichelle Nichols, who found fame as communications officer Lt Uhura in the original Star Trek television series, has died at the age of 89.
Her son, Kyle Johnson, said she died on Saturday in Silver City, New Mexico.
Johnson wrote on her official Facebook page on Sunday: “Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away.
Nichelle Nichols as Lt Uhura (Alamy/PA)
“Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration.
“Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.”
Her role in the 1966-69 series as Lt Uhura earned Nichols a lifelong position of honour with the series’ fans, known as Trekkers and Trekkies.
It also earned her accolades for breaking stereotypes that had limited black women to acting roles as servants and included an inter-racial on-screen kiss with co-star William Shatner that was unheard of at the time.
She often recalled how the Rev Martin Luther King Jr was a fan of the show and praised her role and personally encouraged her to stay with the series.
Like other original cast members, Nichols also appeared in six big-screen spinoffs, starting in 1979 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and at Star Trek fan conventions.
She also served for many years as a Nasa recruiter, helping bring minorities and women into the astronaut corps.
More recently, she had a recurring role on television’s Heroes, playing the great-aunt of a young boy with mystical powers.
By Press Association
UK
Disputes Quick Read: Climate change litigation – successful challenge to government's Net Zero Strategy
Quick read
The High Court has held that the government's Net Zero Strategy is unlawful and, in some respects, inadequate. The government has been ordered to produce a new, more detailed version of the Net Zero Strategy by March 2023.
The challenge, made by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and Good Law Project, was that in setting the Net Zero Strategy, the Secretary of State had not acted in accordance with their legal duties, as laid down in the Climate Change Act 2008.
The Climate Change Act (CCA) requires the government to achieve net zero by 2050. The Act also imposes shorter-term obligations on the Secretary of State: they must set a carbon budget every five-years and publish policies on how they will meet these budgets. These policies (ie the Net Zero Strategy) must be presented to Parliament.
The main grounds of challenge were that:the Secretary of State had not been fully briefed by their department before signing off the Net Zero Strategy the Net Zero Strategy did not contain enough information about how the policies would reach net zero.
The claimants won on both grounds.
The Secretary of State had been legally obliged to consider certain information when setting the Net Zero Strategy, including:the amount by which each policy was expected to reduce emissions which policies were being relied on to make up a 5% shortfall in the carbon budget.
This information was missing from the Secretary of State's briefing, and therefore they could not have taken it into account when the Net Zero Strategy was approved. This was unlawful.
The same information was also missing from the Net Zero Strategy itself. This meant that Parliament, and the wider public, were not able to properly understand how the government intended to meet its statutory net zero target. The court concluded that the Net Zero Strategy was too vague and needed to be published again with more detail. Comment
The decision is noteworthy because the Court has intervened and ordered the government to republish the Net Zero Strategy with more detail.
The judge emphasised that the Court's role is to ensure that the government follows the procedure laid down in the CCA. It is not to review the efficacy of the policies in the Net Zero Strategy, or to make political, social or economic choices about how to achieve net zero.
Nevertheless, in this case the CCA was interpreted in a way that placed a more substantial burden on the Secretary of State regarding the way in which the Net Zero Strategy was reached.
When writing about this case in March this year, we predicted that judges might be cautious about taking on that sort of mandate quite so soon. This decision demonstrates, however, that attitudes towards climate-related disputes are developing and that courts may be more receptive to these types of challenges in the future. Specifically, it shows an increasing acceptance by the UK judiciary of a supervisory role over the government's progress towards net zero, by ensuring meaningful compliance with the CCA.
Courts elsewhere in the world have also proved willing to uphold climate change challenges against governments. Most notably, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 in Urgenda that the Dutch Government has a legal duty to take climate mitigation measures, and to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020 (compared with 1990 levels).
This case was not as groundbreaking as Urgenda, but it fits into a general global trend of courts playing an increasing role in the fight against climate change.
A full judgment and a summary of the judgment can be found here.
Revealed: the decades-long surveillance of Chicago's Arab and Muslim Americans
How police 'demonstrably criminalised Arabs and Muslims' across Illinois under the guise of public safety
Itedal Shalabi, Co-Founder and Executive Director at Arab American Family Services. Photo: @Itedalshalabi1
It’s been more than 20 years since a pair of FBI agents showed up at Itedal Shalabi’s Chicago home late one evening a few weeks after 9/11, but she recalls it as if it were yesterday.
“They were two women. My kids were in the basement and [the agents] asked to meet them, so I had to call them up, one by one,” she says.
Ms Shalabi, who went on to co-found the non-profit Arab American Family Services, says the agents had received a tip from a member of the public that her son, who was 8 years old at the time, had made a controversial comment during a pro-Palestine protest that had been quoted by a local newspaper.
It has been more than 20 years since the September 11 attacks, but for some, little has changed.
A recent report by the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network and others has highlighted how city police and other agencies have reportedly been involved in the racial profiling of Arab, Muslim and other minority residents in America’s third largest city.
The report, conducted in collaboration with the Policing in Chicago Research Group at the University of Illinois Chicago, claims that police agencies have “demonstrably criminalised Arabs and Muslims across Illinois under the guise of ‘public safety’, while vastly expanding local, state and federal systems of racialised surveillance”.
Published in May, the report highlights information gleaned through a lawsuit after prior freedom of information requests were denied. It shows that between 2016 and 2019, 235 so-called Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs, were documented by FBI fusion centres, which enable information and intelligence sharing at the federal level.
The report states that residents of majority Muslim and Arab communities in the metropolitan Chicago area have been reported for activities such as holding or using cameras or binoculars, speaking in a language other than English, and photographing famous buildings.
Other reported incidents include a “suspicious male individual, possibly Middle Eastern” who, during a Major League Baseball game in September 2016, “appeared out of place while taking various photographs”.
Another involved a college, which reported how the father of one of its students had enquired about obtaining chemicals for his product-testing job.
Members of the public also made contact with Illinois’s Statewide Terrorism Intelligence Centre (Stic) about four men speaking Arabic while buying shoes and an African-American man who briefly visited a synagogue.
The authors of the report say that under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign, “the entire population is deputised to surveil one another”.
It added that fusion centres “have become key nodes in the expansion of racialised surveillance” through the use of federally funded, high-tech surveillance equipment, intelligence sharing, the promotion of inter-agency co-ordination and helping build “the web of criminalised surveillance that criss-crosses the US”.
“What we’re seeing is that the war on terror is not something that only happens abroad. It happens in our cities,” says Andy Clarno, who co-ordinates the Policing in Chicago Research Group.
A worshipper sits in a prayer room at the American Islamic College in Chicago. It may be more than 20 years since the September 11 attacks, but for some, little has changed. AP
“The way that Arabs and Muslims have been systematically targeted, especially since 9/11, really demonstrates the extent of the surveillance state that’s been expanded to target communities of colour in cities such as Chicago.”
The report says incident reports can be stored by federal intelligence agencies for decades.
“The fusion centres have become high-tech surveillance centres, not only for analysing suspicious activity reports and facilitating flows of information between local police and federal agencies, but they’ve also been integrated into the everyday operation of local police departments,” Mr Clarno says.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a leading rights organisation, has called for “cutting off funds to fusion centres that do not have a narrowly tailored law enforcement mission, strict guidelines to protect Americans’ privacy and independent oversight to prevent abuse”.
Emails from The National to the Department of Homeland Security seeking information on whether SARs had ever generated actionable information that has led to the arrest or prosecution of any individual on terrorism-related charges went unanswered.
“Stic adheres to federal and state laws regarding privacy and civil liberties. Stic accepts suspicious activity reports from law enforcement and vetted public safety partners only,” Illinois State Police told The Chicago Tribune in May.
That’s a stance that has been contested by many. Mr Clarno says that official documents show that the language of the war on terror — built up around Muslim and Arab communities over decades — is being used to expand surveillance technology in black and Latino neighbourhoods.
The monitoring of Muslims in Chicago far predates 9/11, however, with roots going as far back as the early 1990s.
As part of the FBI’s Operation Vulgar Betrayal, thought to be the largest pre-9/11 surveillance effort by the US government, Arabs and others from immigrant backgrounds were subjected to widespread surveillance in their homes, places of worship and neighbourhoods under the guise of investigating terrorism financing inside the country.
The operation was uncovered by Assia Boundaoui, an Algerian-born filmmaker who grew up in Chicago and experienced the surveillance campaign first-hand.
A worshipper reads the Quran before taraweeh at Chicago's Muslim Community Centre. AP
In 2019, Ms Boundaoui directed and co-starred in the award-winning The Feeling of Being Watched, a film examining how FBI agents monitored and intimidated Arab Americans living in the Bridgeview district of the city for decades.
Years previously, Ms Boundaoui had begun filing freedom of information and privacy requests with the Department of Justice seeking details on the alleged surveillance of Bridgeview residents.
When the FBI responded that it would take years to gather the more than 33,000 documents, Ms Boundaoui sued, prompting a federal judge in 2017 to order the agency to speed up the process by releasing 3,500 documents per month. Most of the documents she received, however, had been heavily redacted.
Operation Vulgar Betrayal ended in 2000 after thousands of pieces of information were collected on residents of the Bridgeview area and on local Arab-American community organisations. No terrorism-related arrests ever resulted from the operation.
For members of Chicago’s Arab-American community, such as Ms Shalabi, the consequences of living for decades in a climate of government surveillance can be devastating for entire families, leading to the erosion of Muslim and Arab-American identity.
“We are seeing people change their names from Mohammed to Moe, from Dawoud to David,” she says.
“[There was] the loss of trust, the loss of feeling proud of your identity, feeling proud of who you are.”
Others say a system that encourages members of the public to monitor and report each other to law enforcement could have long-lasting, damaging effects.
“We have to recognise that anti-Muslim racism is being encouraged and activated by programmes like suspicious reports,” Mr Clarno says.
“This is the government telling people: ‘Look out for things that are suspicious, look out for people who could be terrorists.’”
Tickets for Trump's Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament selling for as little as $1 as event draws thin crowds, report says
Former President Donald Trump plays in the pro-am round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, NJ., Thursday, July 28, 2022.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Tickets for the LIV golf tour at a Trump golf course are being sold for as little as $1.
The controversial Saudi-backed event has drawn light crowds, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump has faced criticism for hosting the event because of the Arab kingdom's human rights record.
Tickets for the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, are selling for as little as $1, as the controversial event fails to draw large crowds, a report says.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Saturday tickets were sold for as little as $1 on the ticket website StubHub, and "light crowds were spread across much of the vast grounds."
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman oversees Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which is bankrolling the event.
Former President Donald Trump has faced criticism for hosting the event at one of his golf courses in light of allegations of human rights abuses against the Arab kingdom, such as the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The 9/11 Justice group, composed of family members of 9/11 victims, has criticized Trump for hosting the tournament despite what they describe as "clear" evidence linking Saudi Arabia to the terrorist attack.
Some 9/11 family members and survivors protested near the event on Thursday.
Family members and survivors from the organization 9/11 Justice protest against the Saudi Arabian-funded golf series and its tournament being held at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., July 29, 2022. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Trump made various remarks to reporters throughout the event, The Wall Street Journal said, including talking about Trump Doral, his Miami property that will host a second LIV event this year.
When asked how much he was being paid to work with LIV, Trump said it was "very generous" but added, "I don't do it for that," per the outlet.
In a video posted on Twitter, a heckler yells at golfer Phil Mickelson as he prepared to tee off.
"Do it for the Saudi royal family!" yelled the heckler, part of a comedy duo called The Good Liars, known for pranking public figures.
While speaking to reporters from the golf course on Thursday, Trump defended Saudi Arabia and claimed that "nobody's gotten to the bottom of 9/11."
In their open letter to Trump, the 9/11 Justice group noted that in a 2016 interview, Trump blamed Saudi Arabia for the attack.
Despite the criticisms, Trump has participated in the event, playing alongside his son Eric and LIV golfers.
He previously told The Wall Street Journal that he believed the tournament has been an "incredible investment" for the "image of Saudi Arabia."
Donald Trump is accused of burying Ivana at his Bedminster golf club to take advantage of TAX BREAK offered to cemeteries: Previously claimed the same land was a farm to avoid levies
A sociology professor at Dartmouth has queried whether Donald Trump buried his first wife at his golf club to take advantage of a tax break
In New Jersey, cemeteries are exempt from income, property and sales tax
According to tax laws in the Garden State, there is no minimum number of human remains that need to buried on the land in order to qualify for the break
Due to a previous deal that Trump made with the local government, Bedminster is already subjected to a mega tax break because it's designated as farmland
That is because part of the property produces mulch for gardening
Trump first announced plans for a family cemetery at Bedminster in 2007
Those plans expanded into a nearly 300-plot cemetery for members of his exclusive club The ex-president has also stated his desire to one day be laid to rest at Bedminster, although he has flip-flopped on the issue of burial
Donald Trump has been accused of burying first wife Ivana at his New Jersey golf club to exploit state tax exemptions on cemeteries.
Dartmouth sociology professor Brooke Harrington, who brands herself a tax researcher, tweeted: 'I was skeptical of rumors Trump buried his ex-wife in that sad little plot of dirt on his Bedminster, NJ golf course just for tax breaks.'
She concluded: 'So I checked the NJ tax code & folks...it's a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated.'
Harrington later tweeted that there no stipulation on the amount of human remains necessary in order to qualify for the break.
The academic also shared a screen grab of the New Jersey state laws on tax breaks for cemeteries to prove her point.
Plots of land in New Jersey that are designated for use as a cemetery are not subjected to property, income or sales tax.
Ivana was buried in a plot close to the first tee of the golf course following her funeral in Manhattan on July 20. The former Czech model was found dead in her home on July 14 after falling down some stairs. She was 73 years old.
Ivana's final resting place is marked with a wreath of while flowers and a glossy granite stone which is engraved with her name and date of birth to date of death
It is surrounded by trees and backs onto a small dip near the entrance to the course, the first plot in the ten which have been sectioned off for the Trump family cemetery
Dartmouth sociology professor Brooke Harrington, who calls herself a tax researcher, concluded that Trump is avoiding three types of taxes with the cemetery
Phoebe Wall Howard of USA Today tweeted: 'New Jersey law exempts land used for cemetery purposes from income, sales and use taxes. The #ivanatrump burial site at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster likely delivers a huge tax break.'
Howard followed that up by saying: 'Business and inheritance taxes are exempt, too. Also, cemetery property is exempt from sale for collection of judgments.'
The break applies as long as the plot of land is less than 10 acres. The designated land at Bedminster is 1.5 acres, meaning any tax exemption wouldn't apply to the entirety of the golf club.
Trump previously designated the plot as a farm to benefit from further tax breaks, as it produced mulch used for gardening.
The full law on taxation and cemeteries reads: 'Graveyards and burial grounds used or intended to be used for the interment of bodies of the dead or the ashes thereof not exceeding ten acres of ground, and cemeteries and buildings for cemetery use erected thereon, and all mausoleums, vaults, crypts or structures intended to hold or contain the bodies of the dead or the ashes thereof, and solely devoted to or held for that purpose shall be exempt from taxation under this chapter.
According to a 2017 Washington Post feature, Trump's company wrote in filings: 'Mr. Trump... specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property.'
In the same feature, it was detailed thanks to the Trump Organization successfully having the land where the cemetery is located classified as farmland.
Thanks to New Jersey's pro-farm taxation policies, Trump only pays $16.31 per year in taxes on the plot.
In 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bedminster was home to a herd of goats which contributed the organization's claims that the area was farmland. The Trump family leave church after attending funeral of late Ivana
Ivanka Trump with Donald, Melania and the rest of the family leaving the funeral home
The Journal estimated that without the farmland tax break, Trump would have to pay around $80,000 per year in levies.
Prior to her burial, the Trump Organization had the land at Bedminster consecrated 'so that she could have a traditional Catholic burial,' according to the New York Times.
Ivana's grave cannot be seen from the Bedminster clubhouse.
In 2014, the Trump Organization received permits for 10 burial plots on his land for members of his plan.
The organization upped the ante in 2017 when they applied for nearly 300 plots on the golf course to be sold to members of the club who shell out $300,000, reports NJ.com.
His consultant Ed Russo told the website: 'It’s one thing to be buried in a typical cemetery but it’s another if you’re buried alongside the fifth fairway of Trump National, where golfers will hold memberships over many generations.'
The Mayor of Bedminster, Robert Holtaway, told the Washington Post that members were 'baffled' by the petition.
Holtaway said: 'It never made any sense to me. We don't question motives. We're there as a land-use board.'
The former president has flip-flopped on where he wants to be buried Close friends and family members attended the burial service at Trump's Bedminster Golf Club following the service
Ivana Trump on July 14, after falling in her Upper East Side townhouse. She was last seen on June 22, walking around the Upper East Side with the help of an assistant (left). She is pictured, right, in Paris in 1991
Trump began making plans for the graveyard in 2007. The former Apprentice host was quoted by the New York Post at the time saying: 'It's never something you like to thinks about, but it makes sense.'
He continued: 'This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest place in the country.'
The Post reported at the time that the graveyard plans also included plans for a wedding chapel. In 2009, Trump's daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner were married on the property.
The original plan for the cemetery was for a Trump family mausoleum with an altar, six vaults and four 19-foot high stone obelisks.
Although Trump backed away from those plans due to local objections.
The former president has flip-flopped on where he wants to be buried. His late parents rest in a family plot in Queens, while he also has the option of being buried at Arlington, like all other former presidents.
Ed Russo told NJ.com at the time: 'He was uncomfortable with the discussion, so he stepped back. Then I did some soul-searching myself and talked to members who loved the idea of a cemetery, and I was smart enough to bring it to Mr. Trump and he thought it was a great idea.'
On the first anniversary of Trump's inauguration as president, an activist group named INDECLINE sneaked on the property during the night and set up a mock graveyard. Headstones were placed mourning the loss of 'decency' and 'our future.'
The piece was called Grave New World. A spokesperson for the group said that they were inspired to do the piece after reading about Trump's plans for a cemetery on the land.
He said: 'We were just helping him break ground.'
Despite Deaths, Africa Left to Fight Monkeypox Without Vaccine
The vast majority of deaths due to monkeypox have been registered on the African continent. Africa remains the only part of the world with no doses of the vaccine, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Let us get vaccines onto the continent," acting head of the African Centre for Disease Control, ACDC, Ahmed Ogwell, said in a weekly media briefing on Thursday, pointing to another instance of 1.3 billion people on the continent without access to a vaccine, as in the Covid-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organisation declared monkeypox a new global health emergency after 20,000 cases were reported in 77 countries. Some 75 people have died in the 11 African countries where the disease was recorded, according to Ogwell.
While the disease was already present on the continent in central and west Africa before the global spread, it was detected in Europe, North America and Asia in May as it spread.
Monkeypox on the African continent was mainly spread to people via infected rodents, while in Europe and North America, people with no links to animals or recent trips to the African continent seems to be contracting the disease.
Important on #monkeypox@AfricaCDC In 2022, 2,031 cases, 75 deaths (CFR 3.7%) in Africa from 9 endemic and 2 non-endemic countries. !!️"Although MPX is an endemic disease in Africa, the continent has NO vaccines, while access to test kits is very limited"https://t.co/45kuP5EptK-- Matthew Kavanagh (@MMKavanagh) July 25, 2022
WHO has stressed that anyone can be infected with monkeypox if they are in close contact with someone with the disease or they touch contaminated clothing or sheets. However, researchers are still looking into how it is spread via skin-to-skin contact. Race for the vaccine
Both the US and Europe have secured doses after a number of delays; the European Commission reported it has purchased 160,000 vaccines, while the US has obtained some 800,000 doses that will soon be distributed.
Africa CDC has been working to get vaccines to the continent, but Ogwell said that it could not yet indicate when this would happen.
"The solutions need to be global in nature," he said, a point well-learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, where the West put their own populations first before the African continent. "If we're not safe, the rest of the world is not safe."
African governments worked together with international bodies to create their own vaccines after the significant lag time in getting Covid-19 doses.
WHO has said it is creating a vaccine-sharing mechanism for the monkeypox vaccine without giving any details, so it is not evident whether African countries will have priority.
Both in Europe and the US, most infections have occurred in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can contract the virus.
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