Fox News panel struggles to cope with the network’s own devastating new polling on Trump

 June 26, 2020 By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet


There’s a new Fox News poll out surveying key swing state opinions about the 2020 race for the White House, and it paints a bleak picture for President Donald Trump’s chances:

 FOX NEWS POLL 
FL: Biden 49, Trump 40
GA: Biden 47, Trump 45
NC: Biden 47, Trump 45
TX: Biden 45, Trump 44

— Ashley Moir (@ashleymoirDC) June 25, 2020

As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out, Biden doesn’t need to win a single one of these states to prevail in the election. If Biden wins any of these states, he’s most likely already surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president. I wouldn’t bet on him winning all four states; the idea that Biden will win Texas, in particular, seems farfetched — if not impossible — despite what this poll found. But Biden’s 9-point lead in Florida should be particularly concerning for Trump. The president absolutely needs to hold the Sunshine State to maintain his grip on the presidency, and this poll — as well as many others — makes it look like a real challenge for Trump.

In the face of this grim news for the president, a Fox News panel struggled to spin the findings to offer comfort to its Trump-loving viewers. The result was an outright comedic display of searching for caveats and extraneous considerations to avoid grappling with the truth. Of course, despite this poll, and many others like it, Trump could still win. Major upsets do happen in politics. But there’s no comfort to be found in these results for the president.

Brett Baier, a regular Fox News anchor, began the spinning right away, suggesting many “everyday Americans” might not yet be tuned in to the election. This might be true, to some extent, whatever it means. But the fact is that Trump and Biden are two of the most recognizable figures in American life. Respondents to the polls know who they’re talking about.

But it was Charlie Hurt, opinion editor for the Washington Times, who really spun hardest for the president.

“I think you gave a very good rundown on why some of these polls, this early out, are to be taken with at least a slight grain of salt,” he said. “And I think those caveats become even greater when you look around at the environment that we’re looking at right now where you have, you know, one of the reasons that people are reluctant to talk to pollsters has a lot to do with, you know, the toxic environment that we’re in.”

It’s not clear why people are any more “reluctant” to talk to pollsters right now than at any other time. This just seems like a made-up claim.

He continued: “And so with that caveat, I think it’s important to also note that the campaign has just begun. Obviously, as anybody would note, you know, you want to be ahead in the polls at all times.” (Indeed!) “But the campaign has just begun and when people look around and they see the lawlessness in the streets and they see we’ve just been through a pandemic, an economic collapse the likes of which this country has never seen before, you know, it’s going to be a full three-, four- or five-month campaign before these issues start to get sorted out.”

One would typically think that a deadly pandemic, economic collapse, and public unrest would all be bad for a sitting president, but that’s clearly not the message Hurt wanted to send.

It seems to be something of an article of faith among many on the right that the “lawlessness in the streets” will work for Trump’s benefit. Much of this supposed lawlessness has been exaggerated in right-wing media, but such as it exists, there’s no reason to think it doesn’t reflect badly on Trump himself. Trump is the president. He’s overseeing the disorder. The idea that he’s the solution to it is hard to believe.

Baier, too suggested that the trend of statues being torn down, and the lack of consensus in Congress on police reform, might somehow “boomerang” back against Democrats. He didn’t consider the possibility that it could make things worse for Trump.

Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal said the answer to Baier’s question has “yet to be seen.” Again, he didn’t consider that the issue could hurt Trump as much as it may hurt Biden. He did admit, though, that while the White House wouldn’t be “panicking” about the new numbers, it should be concerned, and it’s clear Trump is behind where he was against Hillary Clinton this time in 2016.

Watch the clip below:

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WATCH: Driver ignites firework at Black Lives Matter protest — but protester tosses it back into his car

 June 26, 2020 By Sky Palma


A video taken in Riverside, California, shows a driver lighting a firework during a protest, only to have someone toss the explosive back in his car.

ABC7 reports that police released video of the incident that took place on June 1, and it shows the vehicle stopping at an intersection and the driver getting out to light a large firework. A person in the crowd then tosses it back in the vehicle, prompting the driver to run off. The firework then explodes into a fireball inside the vehicle.

Police say a “group of onlookers and the suspect driver” then attacked the person who threw the firework into the vehicle.

The driver was identified as 20-year-old Gabriel Castillo, who is currently on probation for evading police. He was arrested this Tuesday.

Watch ABC7’s report on the story below:

FROM THE BOOKSHELF

Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race
By Jeffrey b. Perry


May 3, 2013


The Invention of the White Race, Vol. I: Racial Oppression and Social Control (New Expanded Edition, Verso Books, November 2012)

Theodore W. Allen’s two-volume The Invention of the White Race, republished by Verso Books in a New Expanded Edition, presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as “The Great White Assumption” – “the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the ‘white’ identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct.” Its thesis on the origin and nature of the “white race” contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges master narratives taught in the media and in schools, colleges, and universities. With its equalitarian motif and emphasis on class struggle it speaks to people today who strive for change worldwide.

Allen’s original 700-pages magnum opus, already recognized as a “classic” by scholars such as Audrey Smedley, Wilson J. Moses, Nell Painter, and Gerald Horne, included extensive notes and appendices based on his twenty-plus years of primary source research. The November 2012 Verso edition adds new front and back matter, expanded indexes, and internal study guides for use by individuals, classes, and study groups. Invention is a major contribution to our historical understanding, it is meant to stand the test of time, and it can be expected to grow in importance in the 21st century. 

“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.” 

That arresting statement, printed on the back cover of the first (1994) volume, reflected the fact that, after pouring through 885 county-years of Virginia’s colonial records, Allen found “no instance of the official use of the word ‘white’ as a token of social status” prior to its appearance in a 1691 law. As he explained, “Others living in the colony at that time were English; they had been English when they left England, and naturally they and their Virginia-born children were English, they were not ‘white.’” “White identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be only after the passage of some six crucial decades” that the word “would appear as a synonym for European-American.”

Allen was not merely speaking of word usage, however. His probing research led him to conclude – based on the commonality of experience and demonstrated solidarity between African-American and European-American laboring people, the lack of a substantial intermediate buffer social control stratum, and the “indeterminate” status of African-Americans – that the “white race” was not, and could not have been, functioning in early Virginia.

It is in the context of such findings that he offers his major thesis — the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” and 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also “disastrous” for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.

In Volume I Allen offers a critical examination of the two main lines of historiography on the slavery and racism debate: the psycho-cultural approach, which he strongly criticizes; and the socio-economic approach, which he seeks to free from certain apparent weaknesses. He then proceeds to develop a definition of racial oppression in terms of social control, a definition not based on “phenotype,” or classification by complexion. In the process, he offers compelling analogies between the oppression of the Irish in Ireland (under Anglo-Norman rule and under “Protestant Ascendancy”) and white supremacist oppression of African Americans and Indians.

Allen emphasizes that maximizing profit and maintaining social control are two priority tasks of the ruling class. He describes how racial oppression is one form of ruling class response to the problem of social control and national oppression is another. The difference centers on whether the key component of the intermediate social control stratum are members of the oppressor group (racial oppression) or the oppressed group (national oppression).

With stunning international and domestic examples he shows how racial oppression (particularly in the form of religio-racial oppression) was developed and maintained by the phenotypically-similar British against the Irish Catholics in Ireland; how a phenotypically-similar Anglo bourgeoisie established national oppression in the Anglo-Caribbean and racial oppression in the continental Anglo-American plantation colonies; how racial oppression was transformed into national oppression due to ruling class social control needs in Ireland (while racial oppression was maintained in Ulster); how the same people who were victims of racial oppression in Ireland became “white American” defenders of racial oppression in the United States; and how in America racial oppression took the form of racial slavery, yet when racial slavery ended racial oppression remained and was re-constituted in new form.

In Volume II, on The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, Allen tells the story of the invention of the “white race” in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Anglo-American plantation colonies. His primary focus is on the pattern-setting Virginia colony, and he pays special attention to the fact that England alone, of all the European colonizing powers, exported so many of its own surplus poor laboring population. He also pays particular attention to the process by which tenants and wage-laborers in the majority English labor force in Virginia were reduced to chattel bond-servants in the 1620s. In so doing, he emphasizes that this reduction was a qualitative break from the condition of laborers in England and from long established English labor law, that it was not a feudal carryover, that it was imposed under capitalism, and that it was an essential precondition of the emergence of the lifetime hereditary chattel bond-servitude imposed upon African-American laborers under the system of racial slavery.

Allen describes how, throughout much of the seventeenth century, the status of African-Americans was being fought out and he documents significant instances of labor solidarity and unrest, especially during the 1660s and 1670s. Most important is his analysis of the civil war stage of Bacon’s Rebellion when, in the final stages, "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage.

It was in the period after Bacon's Rebellion, in response to class struggle, that the “white race” was invented as a ruling-class social control formation. Allen describes systematic ruling-class policies, which conferred “white race” privileges on European-Americans while imposing harsher disabilities on African-Americans resulting in a system of racial slavery, a form of racial oppression that also imposed severe racial proscriptions on free African-Americans. He emphasizes that when African-Americans were deprived of their long-held right to vote in Virginia and Governor William Gooch explained in 1735 that the Virginia Assembly had decided upon this curtailment of the franchise in order "to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros & Mulattos," it was not an "unthinking decision." Rather, it was a deliberate act by the plantation bourgeoisie and was a conscious decision in the process of establishing a system of racial oppression, even though it entailed repealing an electoral principle that had existed in Virginia for more than a century.

The key to understanding racial oppression, Allen argues, is in the formation of the intermediate social control buffer stratum, which serves the interests of the ruling class. In the case of racial oppression in Virginia, any persons of discernible non-European ancestry after Bacon's Rebellion were denied a role in the social control buffer group, the bulk of which was made up of laboring-class "whites." In the Anglo-Caribbean, by contrast, under a similar Anglo- ruling elite, "mulattos" were included in the social control stratum and were promoted into middle-class status. For Allen, this was the key to understanding the difference between Virginia’s ruling-class policy of “fixing a perpetual brand” on African-Americans, and the policy of the West Indian planters of formally recognizing the middle-class status “colored” descendant and other Afro-Caribbeans who earned special merit by their service to the regime. This difference, between racial oppression and national oppression, was rooted in a number of social control-related factors, one of the most important of which was that in the West Indies there were “too few” poor and laboring-class Europeans to embody an adequate petit bourgeoisie, while in the continental colonies there were '’too many’' to be accommodated in the ranks of that class.

The references to an “unthinking decision” and “too few” poor and laboring class Europeans are consistent with Allen's repeated efforts to challenge what he considered to be the two main arguments that undermine and disarm the struggle against white supremacy in the working class: (1) the argument that white supremacism is innate, and (2) the argument that European-American workers “benefit” from “white race” privileges and that it is in their interest not to oppose them and not to oppose white supremacy. These two arguments, opposed by Allen, are related to two master historical narratives rooted in writings on the colonial period. The first argument is associated with the “unthinking decision” explanation for the development of racial slavery offered by historian Winthrop D. Jordan in his influential, White Over Black. The second argument is associated with historian Edmund S. Morgan’s similarly influential, American Slavery, American Freedom, which maintains that, as racial slavery developed, “there were too few free poor [European-Americans] on hand to matter.” Allen’s work directly challenges both the “unthinking decision” contention of Jordan and the “too few free poor” contention of Morgan. Allen convincingly argues that the “white race” privileges conferred by the ruling class on European-Americans were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans; they were also against the class interest of European-American workers.

The Invention of the White Race is a compelling work that re-examines centuries of history. It also offers Allen’s glimpse of “the future in the distance.” When he completed Volume II sixteen years ago, the 78-years-old Allen, in words that resonate today, ended by describing “unmistakable signs of maturing social conflict” between “the common people” and “the Titans.” He suggested that “Perhaps, in the impending . . . struggle,” influenced by the “indelible stamp of the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1960s,” the “white-skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-à-vis those of the ruling class.” It was with that prospect in mind, with its profound implications for radical social change, that the independent, working class intellectual/activist  Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) concluded The Invention of the White Race.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/theodore-w-allen-s-the-invention-of-the-white-race-by-jeffrey-b-perry/

Theodore W. Allen and The Invention of the White Race - Jeffrey B. Perry

•Jun 28, 2016

 
 
 

Jeffrey B. Perry

This slide presentation/talk on “Theodore W. Allen and ‘The Invention of the White Race’" by Jeffrey B. Perry was presented on Sat., June 18, 2016, at a "Multiracial Organizing Conference" on "Organizing Poor and Working Class Whites: The Challenge of Building a Multiracial Movement," at the Beloved Community Center, Greensboro, NC. The conference pulled together a “multiracial” group of organizers from the South, who are doing work among poor and working people, and who oppose class exploitation and oppression and emphasize the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to social change efforts. Organizer Ben Wilkins coordinated the two-day conference and other speakers included long-time activists Joyce Johnson, Rosalyn Pelles, Bob Zellner, and Al McSurely. Special thanks to Eric Preston (and Fusion Films) for his work on this video. Please share this video with others! The struggle against white supremacy is central to efforts at social change! For a 2012 video on this topic see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gq77... "When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years." Theodore W. Allen (Written after searching through 885 county-years of Virginia's colonial records) Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," with its focus on racial oppression and social control, is one of the twentieth-century's major contributions to historical understanding. This two-volume classic (Vol. 1: "Racial Oppression and Social Control" and Vol. 2: "The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America") details how the "white race" was invented as a ruling-class social control formation and a system of racial oppression was imposed in response to labor solidarity in the wake of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77), how the "white race" was created and maintained through "white race" privileges conferred on laboring class European-Americans relative to African-Americans, how these privileges were not in the interest of African-Americans or laboring class European-Americans, and how the "white race" has been the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination in America. (See http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... ) "The Invention of the White Race" presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as "The Great White Assumption" -- "the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the 'white' identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct." Its thesis on the origin and nature of the "white race" contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges master narratives taught in the media and in schools, colleges, and universities. With its equalitarian motif and emphasis on class struggle it speaks to people today who strive for change worldwide. Jeffrey B. Perry contributed new introductions, back matter, internal study guides, and expanded indexes to Verso Books' new expanded edition of "The Invention of the White Race." See http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... For information on Dr. Perry and his work on Hubert Harrison "the father of Harlem radicalism" (1883-1927) and Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) see http://www.jeffreybperry.net 1) For comments by scholars and activists About “Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918” http://www.jeffreybperry.net/disc.htm 2) For information by and about Hubert Harrison http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... 3) For information by and about Theodore W. Allen http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... 4) For information on Hubert Harrison’s “When Africa Awakes: The ‘Inside Story’ of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World” see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/_center_... For the video “Hubert Harrison, Theodore W. Allen, and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcuvU... For a video on Hubert Harrison the “Father Harlem Radicalism” and Founder of the “New Negro Movement” -- in 2016 see https://youtu.be/5V9UEEqB5aM For a 2014 video on Hubert Harrison see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heBKm... For a 2016 video on “Hubert Harrison” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szp7e... For videos of an interview with Theodore W. Allen by Stella Winston see http://youtu.be/EtS7yUyCsvU and at http://youtu.be/7JYYnNzjJrU For the article “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” by Jeffrey B. Perry, which offers the fullest treatment of the development of Allen’s thought, see http://www.jeffreybperry.net (Top Left) or see http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/2010.html

How coronavirus might change farming

The COVID-19 shutdowns severely disrupted many of our vital sectors – not least agriculture. From cracking down on factory farming to a rise in urban gardening, here's how the pandemic could transform our food chain.

DW PHOTO ESSAY

Factory farming on the outWhile scientists don't yet know exactly how COVID-19 originated, recent pandemic virus threats such as swine flu and bird flu almost certainly evolved at pig and chicken factory farms. With a link already established between intensive animal agriculture and an increased pandemic risk, it might be the moment to rethink factory farming at its current scale.

Meat industry exposed

The pandemic has also cast a light on the poor conditions in the meat processing industry. Germany has seen several coronavirus outbreaks among meat factory employees, and has even put two districts in western Germany in quarantine after more than 1,550 workers at the Tönnies slaughterhouse were infected with the disease. Calls are growing for better regulations throughout the meat branch.

Moving away from wildlife farming

Experts believe the coronavirus likely came from wildlife sold at a wet market in Wuhan, China. In the wake of the pandemic, China clamped down on the wildlife trade, shutting down almost 20,000 wildlife farms. Some Chinese provinces are now offering government support to help wildlife farmers transition away from the practice, and switch to growing crops or raising pigs or chickens instead.

A more resilient sector

The pandemic has impacted our food supply chain. An industry evolved to feed a globalized world has been scaled back to the local level in some cases. From reduced access to animal fodder to shortages of labor, farmers are having to consider how to adapt to a new and uncertain future.

Urban farming flourishes

Forced to spend more time at home, increasing numbers of people have been trying their hand at growing their own food. This could be a positive development in the long run. With more than two-thirds of the world's population projected to live in cities by 2050, urban farming will become more crucial - and it requires less fossil fuel for transport and less land than conventional agriculture.

Giving land back to nature

With our planet's population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, there's no escaping the fact that food production around the world needs to increase. While opening up more land was once seen as an obvious solution to this problem, a stronger focus on urban farming and concerns over the consequences of encroaching into nature could spark a rethink of how we use land.

Switching to plant-based

As awareness of the potential health costs of the meat market grows, China has witnessed an increasing interest in plant-based products. The West has already experienced a trend towards plant-based diets over the past few years, and that is likely to continue as consumers become more concerned over the origins of meat products.

Increasing food security in developing countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to impact developing countries heavily – particularly in terms of food security. The UN has already warned of famine "of biblical proportions" as resources become scarcer. Alongside immediate aid, mitigating widespread famine in the long-term will require better land protection, more diversified crops and more support for smallholder farmers who are most at risk

German labor minister demands meat company pay coronavirus compensation

More than 1,300 people have tested positive at a Tönnies slaughterhouse, causing Germany's transmission rate to rocket. Germany's labor minister says the firm should pay compensation.

German Labor Minister Minister Hubertus Heil demanded the meat processing company behind a massive coronavirus outbreak should pay damages, in comments on Sunday evening.

More than 1,300 people have tested positive for the virus after an outbreak at the Rheda-Wiedenbrück meat processing plant, in the district of Gütersloh near Bielefeld, operated by German meat giant Tönnies.

"There must be a civil liability of the company," Heil told a Bild online broadcast, adding that the company had "taken an entire region hostage" by violating the coronavirus rules.

Heil said that his trust in the Tönnies company was "equal to zero." He said that the company not only endangered its own employees, but also "public health."

Read more: Coronavirus: German slaughterhouse outbreak crosses 1,000

Reproduction rate surges

Regional officials said the virus had largely been contained to the factory's mostly Romanian and Bulgarian workers, but the outbreak has prompted fears of wider community transmission and a return to large scale lockdowns.

The plant's 6,500 workers, who live in cramped company-provided accommodation, have been forced into quarantine. However, authorities have been hampered by poor documentation by the company.

Schools and daycare centers in the area have been ordered to shut and the plant has been closed.

Following the outbreak, Germany's coronavirus all-important reproduction rate surged to 2.88 — almost three times what it needs to be to contain the outbreak. The reproduction rate, or 'R' value, estimates how many people an infected person passes the virus to. Experts say a rate of less than 1 is needed to eliminate the disease.

The 7-day 'r' value, which tends to fluctuate less dramatically, increased from 1.55 on Saturday to 2.03 on Sunday.

Read more: NRW's Laschet walks back 'Romanians and Bulgarians' coronavirus commen

Tönnies blames its workers

Company boss Clemens Tönnies, who initially blamed his Eastern European workers for the outbreak, publicly apologized on Saturday saying he was "fully responsible," but refused to step down.

Green faction leader Anton Hofreiter appealed to the billionaire to cover the costs incurred by the virus outbreak from his own coffers.

If Tönnies meant his apology seriously, "he would pay the costs out of his private assets — not out of the company's assets," Hofreiter told the same show.

Calls for change

Heil told the broadcast: "The exploitation of people from Central and Eastern Europe, which has obviously taken place there, is now becoming a general health risk in the pandemic with considerable damage." Therefore, "there has to be a fundamental change in this industry."

Heil's colleague and SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans called for higher meat prices and a debate on distributive justice in Germany.

"Meat is a product that is produced with a high input of energy and other raw materials. Its value and price are often in stark disproportion," Walter-Borjans told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group.

He said the Tönnies case showed "how little attention is paid to the question of how food — our most important basis of life — is produced." Everything is "subordinated to the pursuit of profit and efficiency."

Read more: Germany's meat industry under fire after COVID-19 outbreaks

aw/msh (AFP, dpa, epd)

DW RECOMMENDS

'Employees are not to blame' for coronavirus outbreaks

Labor adviser Elena Strato says meatpacker Tönnies is cynically trying to pin blame for a coronavirus outbreak on foreign workers. She says companies must be forced to sustainably improve dangerous working conditions. (19.06.2020)

Coronavirus: Over 600 people test positive at German slaughterhouse

Yet another German slaughterhouse has registered a massive outbreak of the coronavirus. Roughly two-thirds of the test results so far have come back positive. (17.06.2020)

How does Germany's meat industry work?

Germany's meat industry is a valuable part of its economy, but it is being heavily criticized following multiple coronavirus outbreaks. DW looks at the money big companies make, and conditions for workers. (19.06.2020)

Japan confirms scrapping US missile defence system

Issued on: 25/06/2020 -
 

Japanese Defence Minister Taro Kono apologised that the situation with Aegis Ashore 'has come to this' Eric BARADAT AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

Japan has scrapped the deployment of a multi-billion-dollar US anti-missile system, the government confirmed Thursday, days after saying the programme had been suspended.

Interceptors for the Aegis Ashore system were to be placed in two regions under the costly and controversial programme.

But the government reversed course under pressure from local residents concerned about the risks posed by a missile defence system in their backyard.

"The National Security Council discussed this matter and reached the conclusion that the deployment of Aegis Ashore in Akita and Yamaguchi is to be rescinded," Defence Minister Taro Kono told a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

"I want to deeply apologise that it has come to this."

Later Thursday, Kono said Tokyo and Washington were discussing how to fend off missile threats from Pyongyang after dropping the defence system plan.

"There's a threat coming from North Korea," Kono told reporters.

"We have been talking with the United States on how to improve our ballistic missile defence capability or integrated air-missile defence capability," he added.

"So we are trying to make maximum use of what we have contracted with the United States."

The government had originally guaranteed that interceptor missile gear would not land in residential areas near where the system was based.

But last week, when initially announcing that deployment of the system had been suspended, Kano said maintaining that promise would require a costly and time-consuming hardware upgrade.

The Aegis Ashore system, the purchase of which was approved in 2017, was estimated to cost Japan $4.2 billion over three decades.

However, there have been competing claims about whether initial estimates would fall short of the real cost.

The deal to buy the system was seen both as part of attempts by Tokyo to bolster defensive capabilities after North Korean missile launches, as well as a way to foster closer ties with Washington.

US President Donald Trump has pushed allies to buy more American products, including military equipment.

Japan's armed forces have long been restricted to self-defence and the country relies heavily on the US under a bilateral security alliance.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week his government was committed to considering alternatives to the Aegis Ashore system.

"There should not be a gap in our country's defences. We want to hold discussions on the necessary measures," he said.

© 2020 AFP

THE RESCUE OF THE FABULOUS LOST LIBRARY OF DEIR AL-SURIAN 




By Philip McCouat

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF BEING LOST

On the morning of 29 December 1935, the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took off from Paris en route to Cochin-China, as a participant in the long-distance Paris-to-Saigon air race. That night, flying towards Casablanca across the dark vastness of the Sahara Desert, with no landmarks, he got lost and crashed. Although the crash site was not far from the isolated ancient monastery settlement of Wadi el-Natrun, it was four days before the parched and ravenous St Exupéry and his co-pilot, exhausted and delusional, would finally be rescued by Bedouin tribesmen [1].


For Saint-Exupéry, it must have seemed like an all-time low – out of the air race, physically and mentally depleted, and with his plane a wreck. But at least he was alive, and the incident would later pay substantial dividends – it would form the basis of his famous book Wind Sand and Stars, and inspire his classic The Little Prince, later voted as the best novel of the 20th century in France. In retrospect, getting lost was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.


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Fig 1: Saint-Exupéry standing at the wreck of Caudron C630 Simoun (Bureau d’Archives des Accidents d’Avions)
Strangely enough, in a quite different context, Wadi el-Natrun itself – and, in particular, its legendary library – would also come to experience the benefits of getting lost. In this case, those benefits would turn out to be virtually priceless. To understand why, we have to backtrack, quite a few millennia.

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PASTNowadays, Wadi el-Natrun has been nominated for status as a World Heritage site [2] and is quite easily accessible – you will eventually come upon it if you travel from Cairo, into the great Western Desert, and head towards the Mediterranean seaport of Alexandria. ​

Fig 2: Approaching the Syrian Monastery at Wadi el-Natrun
It’s best known now as a destination for travellers wishing to see the four stunning Coptic Christian monasteries, the only survivors of dozens that were built as part of a Christian settlement at the Wadi dating back to the 4th century -- St Macarius, St Pshoi, the Monastery of the Romans and the Monastery of the Syrians [3].

Fig 3: Inside the Syrian Monastery at Wadi el-Natrun
As old as these buildings are, however, the human history of the Wadi goes back even further, in fact over 4,000 years, to the ancient Egyptians. Back then, the Wadi was one of the principal sources of “natron”, the salt which gives the Wadi its name [4]. This natron occurs in solution in a number of seasonal alkaline lakes dotted round the surrounding desert, fed from an underground water table that stretches from the Nile Delta, where the Nile reaches the Mediterranean. These lakes dry out during summer, leaving white evaporitic deposits of natron forming a crust around their edges and in deposits on their bottom [5].

Fig 4: Otto Pilny, At the Wadi Natron Salt Lake (1901), showing evaporative deposits
For the ancient Egyptians, and later the Romans, natron was a precious commodity. It was used to make glass and ceramics, as a soldering agent, medicines, soap and cleaning, toothpaste, mouthwash and food preservative. In addition, as we have discussed elsewhere, the Egyptians used natron as an ingredient in the creation of a blue pigment that was used extensively in Egyptian art (see our article on Egyptian Blue). Even more importantly, natron’s most prominent use was in the process of mummification, a central aspect of Egyptian religious practice, as detailed in our article on Mummy Brown. This central role in both business and cultural life led to the Wadi being known to the Egyptians as the “Field of Salt” and becoming part of a major trade route [6]. 

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PETITE BOURGEOIS MORALITY

FROM THE ROKEBY VENUS TO FASCISM
PT 1: WHY DID SUFFRAGETTES ATTACK ARTWORKS?

By Philip McCouat

THE ATTACK ON THE ROKEBY VENUS

Just on 100 years ago, a small soberly-dressed woman carrying a sketch book entered the National Gallery in London and physically attacked one of the most famous nude paintings in the world (Fig 1). 

Fig 1: Diego Velásquez, Venus at her Mirror (1647-51)

It was just after 10 o’clock on the morning of 10 March 1914 [1]. The painting, Velásquez’s so-called “Rokeby Venus” [2], was standing on an easel in Room 17, temptingly accessible. The woman stepped forward, took a narrow meat chopper which had been concealed up her sleeve and began swinging, getting in what she later described as several “lovely shots”, smashing the protective glass and making numerous large slashes in the painted canvas (Fig 3). The room attendant’s initial belief that the breaking glass was coming from a skylight gave the woman precious time to carry out the attack, and the delay in stopping her was compounded by the attendant slipping on the recently-polished floor when running to intervene. However, the attacker was eventually restrained, and arrested. On the next day, now identified as the well-known militant suffragette Mary Richardson (Fig 2), she was convicted on charges of malicious damage, and sentenced to the maximum penalty of six months imprisonment.

Fig 2: Mary Richardson

Fig 3: The slashed canvas

After Richardson’s arrest, she explained her actions on the basis that, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas” [3]. “Mrs Pankhurst” was Emmeline Pankhurst, the campaigner for women’s voting rights and leader of the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), who had been arrested in extraordinarily violent circumstances the day before. Richardson’s view was that if people were outraged about her own attack on the painting, which was a mere representation of physical beauty, they should be equally or more outraged over the government’s treatment of Pankhurst, a real embodiment of moral beauty.

Richardson insisted that as a student of art herself it had been difficult for her to damage such a beautiful work, but that her hand had been forced by the government’s indifference to the suffragist cause [4]. She also added “You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs Pankhurst" [5]. In her autobiography [6], Richardson also said that the high financial value of the painting made it a suitable surrogate for the high value of Mrs Pankhurst. A less elevated consideration emerged in an interview Richardson gave some decades later: “I didn’t like the way men visitors to the gallery gaped at it all day” [7].

“A BODY FOR DON JUANESQUE FANTASIES” 

In many ways the Rokeby Venus was an ideal target for suffragette attack. As the commentators Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen say, it was originally painted to display “a body for Don Juanesque fantasies” in a country (Spain) in which extreme machismo was the hallmark and women were regarded as “inferior, voiceless and … easy prey”. They add that “few other paintings celebrate, so aesthetically and alluringly, the reduction of Woman to a physical body, to the object of male desire. Venus's face, which might reveal something of her individuality and mind, is blurred in the mirror, while her curving pelvis is placed in the centre of the composition. The dark sheet sets off Venus's skin to particular advantage and is almost like a dish on which the beautiful goddess is presented” [8].

Although being regarded as the first known painting of a nude by a Spanish artist [8A] – the next one would not be until Goya's Naked Maja more than a century later – the Venus escaped censure from the Inquisition only by the fact that it was nominally of a mythological subject, and had been painted under the personal protection of the licentious Spanish King Philip IV. All in all, then, the idea of attacking it could well seem attractive to a fighter for women's rights. As an added bonus, attacking the painting would enable Richardson to come as near as possible to blood-shedding without actually infringing the suffragettes’ policy of not endangering human life [9].

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BRITISH ARYANISM BECOMES POLICING
FROM THE ROKEBY VENUS TO FASCISM
PART 2: THE STRANGE ALLURE OF FASCISM

By Philip McCouat
THE PATH TO A "GREATER BRITAIN"?
After the war, Mary Richardson, the hero/villain of the Rokeby Venus attack, adopted a son and settled in Cambridgeshire to raise ducks with a friend, and to pursue her literary career. It is difficult to imagine a more striking contrast with her earlier life of high excitement. Evidently, however, she still hankered for a public platform. She stood for Parliament a number of times, though with little success [49], and it must have seemed that her action days might be behind her. She was, however moving rapidly to the Right. In 1933, after previously flirting with the New Party in 1932, she joined the charismatic Oswald Mosley's recently- formed British Union of Fascists (BUF).
---------------------------------------
For Part 1 of this article, see here. and for other articles on art and war, see:
The Isenheim Altarpiece Pt 2: Nationalism, Nazism and DegeneracyThe Isenheim Altarpiece Pt 2: nationalism, nazism and degeneracy
Bellotto and the reconstruction of Warsaw
The shocking birth and amazing career of Guernica
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She quickly rose up through the BUF’s ranks. By 1934, she was Chief Organiser of the Women’s Section of the party, a highly prestigious and responsible position that had originally been held by Mosley's wife Cynthia. She opened a national Club for Fascist Women in London, spoke at BUF branch meetings, was a fiery chief speaker at outdoor and street corner meetings, wrote regularly for the Fascist press, and even organised the quaintly-named Blackshirt Cabaret Ball.

She said that she saw Fascism as the “only path to a 'Greater Britain'” and that she felt “certain that women will play a large part in establishing Fascism in this country” [50]. However, despite these high initial hopes, she ultimately left the BUF in 1935/6 for reasons that are disputed, but seem to have involved her having organised a meeting protesting against the unequal remuneration of women employed by the movement [51].

You may wonder why a person such as Richardson, who had dedicated and sacrificed herself to the cause of gaining the vote, would have joined an organisation which favoured an undemocratic, totalitarian government with ultimate power vested in a supreme leader. However, Richardson herself claimed that there was a logical continuity with her militant suffragette activities: “I was first attracted to the Blackshirts because I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service and the ability to serve which I had known in the suffragette movement. When I later discovered that Blackshirts were attacked for no visible cause or reason I admired them the more when they hit back and hit back hard” [52].

For Richardson, it was similar to the overwhelming almost-religious conversion she had experienced years earlier when she heard Mrs Pankhurst speak. She later recalled that at her first meeting with the BUF leader Mosley, “I cannot remember a single word of what was said on that momentous occasion. But the words did not matter. In some strange way I was inspired by the atmosphere of that great gathering. ‘We will fight’, I kept on repeating to myself”[53].

THE OTHER SUFFRAGETTE FASCISTS

Of course, the vast majority of ex-suffragettes did not embrace Fascism as Richardson did. Many, such as Sylvia Pankhurst, actively opposed it. But in addition to Richardson there were two other notable ex-suffragettes that later went on to prominent positions in the Fascist movement. They were Norah Elam [54] and Mary Sophia Allen [55]. The careers of both of these women are instructive in considering the motives, or claimed motives, of the various types of person that Fascism attracted.

For Allen, Mrs Pankhurst's closure of the militant campaign on the outbreak of war came as a “bewildering blow”. “I won’t pretend that we like it!” she wrote later. At the time, she said, she was “actively – and shall I admit it, delightedly – planning some further burnings of empty houses, in which we had been so successful of late” [67]. The change of focus left her bereft of adventurous ways of serving her country. Hardly surprisingly, she scorned the offer of a job as organiser for Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild (!), and along with a number of other suffragette women she joined the first Women Police Service (WPS) – a somewhat ironic choice, given her criminal record and history of resisting police. She became second-in-command to Margaret Dawson – who became her partner – and some years later took over as Commandant after Margaret died [68].

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PRIDE MONTH FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

REVOLUTIONARY LOVE 

 REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY 

 "OUR ARMY IS AN ARMY OF LIBERATION

 OF THE PROLETARIAT"

J. STALIN 1939