Jammu, July 10 (GNS): Bodies of Ranbir Singh Bali, Director of Finance, Forest, Ecology and Environment Department, and son were recovered from a gorge near Pannar bridge along Mughal road on Monday.
Official sources told GNS that the accident took place at 1940 hours yesterday when a swift car (JK02BD -4635) on way to Surankote from Kashmir Valley via Mughal road. Three among those travelling in the car died on the spot and another was injured and evacuated to nearby hospital by rescuers including locals and police.
The deceased included Ranbir Singh Bali (Director of Finance, Forest, Ecology and Environment Department), his wife Parvinder Kour and son Irvan Singh. Condition of his daughter Mahreen Kour is stated to be out of danger. Later, they said, body of Parvinder Kour was retrieved but that of Bali and Irvan Singh could not be recovered immediately, they said. This morning, they said, both bodies were recovered by locals, police, SDRF, DGPC Poonch and army’s 16RR after hectic efforts.
Poonch, July 10 (GNS): Body of 21-year-old youth was recovered from a field, around 3-kilometers from his residence in Banola in Mendhar area of Poonch district on Monday, officials said.
They said the body of the youth, Wasid Ahmed (21) son of Mohammad Aslam was found under mysterious conditions by a police party which reached the spot immediately after being informed about it.
When contacted SHO Mendhar told GNS that proceedings have been initiated and the body has been shifted to hospital for postmortem. (GNS)
Srinagar, July 10 (GNS): Lieutenant Governor Shri Manoj Sinha interacted with Indian Wushu team athletes & their coaches bound for 19th Asian Games, at Raj Bhavan, today.
The Lt Governor conveyed his best wishes and blessings of entire J&K UT to the players, attending training camp at Srinagar.
“I am confident that our contingent will win laurels and make the country proud,” the Lt Governor said.
The Wushu players are attending the National Coaching camp in Srinagar organised by Sports Authority of India, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports after which they will leave for China on August 5, 2023. (GNS)
For the most part, this irony-laden variety of homophobia remains a relatively fringe position on the online right. But its prominence in DeSantis’ latest campaign video suggests that it could be seeping into the conservative mainstream, and that might pay dividends among a group of Republican voters. “After all, [DeSantis’s backers] are seeking out the Trump voter,” said Daniel Adleman, an assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Toronto who was written about the overlap between pop-culture and far-right ideologies. “They are trying to demonstrate that DeSantis doesn’t just talk the talk, but he walks the walk — that Trump is all full of lip service, but that DeSantis is the one who makes good on quasi-Trumpian promises.”
To help piece it all together, here’s your definitive guide to the memes and images from DeSantis’ recent video. This might be the first time you’re encountering them, but it likely won’t be the last if you pay close attention on Twitter, Threads, or whatever social new social media platform launches next week.
GigaChad
This meme, depicting a chiseled bodybuilder with a massive chin and a manicured beard, is a staple of discourse in the manosphere. Often referred to as “GigaChad,” the name borrows from the popular internal slang word “chad,” which is used refer to a stereotypical alpha male. The origin of the meme is shrouded in mystery — it’s rumored to have been taken from a series of photoshopped images of bodybuilders taken by a Russian photographer — but it first made its way online in 2017, when a version of the image was posted to the popular message board 4chan. The post introducing the meme defined GigaChad as, “The perfect human specimen destined to lead us against the reptilians” — a nod to a fringe conspiracy theory that posits that the world is run by humanoid reptiles.
Since its introduction, though, the meme has come to symbolize an ideal male form that, according to certain strains of thinking on the right, is being wiped out by the alleged feminization of American culture and media. Consider it the manosphere’s statue of David.
Patrick Bateman
You may recognize him from the 2000 film American Psycho — based on the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis — but Christian Bale’s character has taken on a whole new life in the manosphere. In the movie, Bateman is a chauvinistic and status-obsessed Wall Street banker who — spoiler alert — may (or may not) lead a secret life as a serial killer and cannibal. (The movie leaves open the possibility that Bateman’s murderous activities are part of an elaborate, delusional fantasy.) Ironically, Bateman idolizes Donald Trump, a symbol of New York’s well-heeled nouveau riche during the 1980s.
Online, Bateman and other erstwhile Wall Street icons such as The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort (who also makes a brief appearance in the DeSantis video) have come to symbolize the set of hypermasculine virtues the manosphere is propagating. “If you’re a superficial reader of Patrick Bateman, he represents an avatar of the Reagan era, self-asserting, shameless, impudent man who’s able to make the best possible use of neoliberalism as it existed in the 1980s and, by extension, as it exists now,” Adleman said. “I could see that might be appealing to the alt-right, 4chan crowd in this post-Trumpian era.”
Yes Chad
Giga is not the only Chad popular among this crowd. In mid-2019, an image of a cartoon figure with blonde hair, blue eyes and a thick blonde beard started making its way around Twitter and other online message boards. The illustration was captioned was a single word: “Yes.” Since then, the image has become the template for a universe of memes known as “Yes Chad,” featuring illustration of men — yes, always men — who project an air of masculine authority and steely male confidence. (Sometimes, the meme is paired with an illustration of a blonde woman in a blue dress, symbolizing the so-called “trad wife.”) The meme also carries some not-so-subtle racist undertones, as it depicts the ideal man as an Aryan archetype.
In the video, meanwhile, a cartoon of DeSantis in the style of the “Yes Chad” flashes in between a clip of the governor giving a speech and a scene of him walking with his coterie. What, exactly, DeSantis is saying “Yes” to is left up to the viewer to decode.
Thomas Shelby
The fictional protagonist of the British television drama Peaky Blinders, Tommy Shelby —portrayed by Cillian Murphy — is the leader of a crime gang who evades the law and rival gangs in post-World War I England to expand his criminal empire. But online, Murphy’s character has become associated with the trope of the “sigma male,” a type of man who — in contrast to the stereotypical “alpha male,” who sits atop a social hierarchy — has transcended societal norms to play by his own set of rules. A quick Google search turns up pages of YouTube videos with titles like “12 Reasons why THOMAS SHELBY Is The Ultimate SIGMA MALE.” (In a statement released Wednesday, the team behind Peaky Blinders disowned any association with the DeSantis ad.)
Presumably, the comparison between Shelby and DeSantis is intended to highlight the latter’s willingness to play dirty and buck conservative convention — like, for instance, fighting with Disney or sending planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and California.
Bodybuilders
“I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last weekend when asked about DeSantis’ video — apparently referring to several shots of slick-looking male bodybuilders flexing their bulging muscles. But in certain corners of the online right where the popularity of bodybuilding is on the rise, it’s not strange at all. For one possible explanation of this trend, look no further than Tucker Carlson’s much-discussed documentary The End of Men, which advanced the argument that the destruction of men’s bodies through poor nutrition and poor exercise habits is part of a broader globalist plot to take over the world. Understood in this context, rebuilding a man’s physique isn’t just good for his health — it’s also a critical first step toward overthrowing the power of the corrupt global elite.
DeSantis has not revealed whether weightlifting is a major part of his recent weight-loss efforts, but on the campaign trail he has certainly has leaned into the anti-elite rhetoric that’s tied up with the bodybuilding fad.
Achilles
Is that Brad Pitt staring out from behind that bronze helmet? Yes, yes, it is. As film buffs and mythology nerds will know, Pitt portrayed the ancient Greek hero Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy, based on Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. As in the Iliad, Pitt’s Achilles emerges as the hero of the film, bursting onto the battlefield toward the end of the conflict to revenge the death of his comrade Patroclus at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector.
As many commentators online have pointed out, there a poignant irony to the fact that a video targeting LGBTQ people included an image of Achilles, given that many scholars have interpreted Achilles’ friendship with Patroclus as a type of homosexual relationship. But the valorization of Achilles fits neatly within a broader far-right obsession with ancient Rome and Greece, which some conservatives hold up as the cradle of “Western civilization.” Ever heard of “Bronze Age Mindset”? We bet the creators of this video have.
[ad_2]
#Investigated #Deepest #Darkest #Corners #Internet #Understand #Ron #DeSantis #Bizarre #Video
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
This time, the riots followed the point-blank police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk after a car chase. The cost of the riots in a mere week — over $1 billion in damages to businesses — towers above that of 2005, but perhaps more notable is that the discussion of the banlieues has receded, or is mediated through, the lens of the police. (In fact, this echoes a different French film, Ladj Ly’s 2019 crime thriller Les Miserables; the last prophetic image is of a young boy beside himself with trauma and anger brandishing a Molotov cocktail in the face of a cop with a gun.) Today the majority of rioters don’t have an immigrant background, and most of them are minors, some as young as 12 — in other words only a few years younger than the victim. It is their extreme youth combined with what has been characterized as their hyper violence that makes headlines.
The images we see are shocking, yes. There’s almost a one-upmanship on social media that pits three burnt busses against one gutted city hall (and I’ll raise you two looted McDonald’s). The scale of the destruction is breathtaking; it’s frequently symbolic, but often merely opportunistic — and sometimes downright incomprehensible in its perversity, like the assaults on the medical personnel trying to put some of these kids back together.
But today, despite all that is dystopian in these scenes of enraged children driven to trash their very own environment, almost everyone gets it. Few are actually surprised.
This is why 2023 is different from 2005. Regardless of the mindlessness of some of the destruction, the young people rampaging across French cities and towns are also expressing a deep anger rooted in humiliation that is felt across the country, not just in the banlieues. You could argue that for many French people, regardless of where they live, the nature of governance and decision-making in the past few years means that they all feel like “riff-raff” now.
What’s important to remember is that Macron’s governance is not incompetent — far from it. In comparison to the manner in which other major advanced democracies handled Covid, the energy crisis or inflation, France has done quite well. The trouble is that the people — the French rather than France — feel like they keep drawing the short straw when it comes to their voices and preferences being taken into account, their political and civic rights respected, their humanity protected.
From the often violent repression of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest movement) and Macron’s broken promises of a changed governing style, to the ramming through of pension reform (without a vote) in the face of massive, violent protests, the current government, despite its technocratic prowess, has given nearly every segment of French society, across all demographics and regions, cause to feel that they are governed sometimes competently but almost always with humiliating impunity. And too many have been injured or killed by police in the process; statistics show that French police kill four times more today than they did in 2010, fueling cycles of protest and repression.
That’s not to diminish the hardship and injustice faced far too often by some in French society rather than others. But the reality is, the oxygen behind these waves of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent displays is in part the fact that everyone in France has had at least a small taste of the humiliation that many have endured for decades — aside from those whose thirst for an order based exclusively on exaction and punishment drives them to the harder edges of the right.
In these early days of summer 2023, what floats above the smoldering remains of the riots, is the shared sense across French society that their problems are being systematically exacerbated by the actions of the police — and by those of a judiciary that tends to criminalize the victims and treat their families with disdain. It is an irony that this is what may finally provide a shared point of reference across French towns, communities, classes and creeds: That enough is enough and that root-and-branch police reform is not only necessary but urgent after decades of combined neglect and empowerment. But instead, as already pointed out by some, France has systematically passed legislation to further arm the police year after year over the last two decades.
The cycle of violence, from police and rioters, is taking place in a fragmented political landscape that is only going to get tougher to navigate. The riots are driving the right and far-right closer together — a tendency that is present across many European democracies and that will have profound consequences for next year’s European Parliament elections. But they also create pressures on a deeply-divided left — torn between their desires for social justice and the demands of a base that is increasingly receptive to the far-right’s promises of order.
Macron must confront this dilemma or risk making injustice and humiliation the exclusive drivers of French politics — an outcome that will only lead to further destruction and potentially catastrophic results in the presidential election of 2027.
[ad_2]
#Opinion #French #Riots #Disturbing
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The resulting report confirmed much of what tribes had complained about for decades: unfinished infrastructure projects that had been promised long ago as part of federal settlements, onerous restrictions on where and how tribes could put their water to use, and some 500,000 acre-feet a year that flowed down the river without compensation. Historically, tribes pursued settlements independently. “If you know one tribe, you know one tribe,” goes an axiom Vigil and others often repeat in relation to tribal water rights. But the tribal water study also underscored the consequences of their common history: There’s a difference between having a legal right to water and having a foothold in the federal apparatus that actually manages the river.
In 2019, nearly two decades into the megadrought affecting the Southwest, the seven Colorado River states adopted a drought contingency plan overseen by the Bureau of Reclamation to manage the changing hydrology on the river. In the years since, users in the lower basin and Mexico have had their water allotments cut by close to 1 million acre-feet, a more than 10 percent reduction.
Earlier this year, as the seven basin states scrambled to come up with a compromise to cut their 2023 allocations by a further 2 million acre-feet, Amelia Flores was working with partners in the state and federal government toward another milestone. Flores is chair of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, whose lands straddle the river on the California-Arizona border. For more than 20 years, CRIT’s leaders had been pushing for legislation that would allow the tribes to lease some of their water to users outside the reservation. With senior rights to more than 700,000 acre-feet a year, CRIT is one of the largest rights holders in the basin, providing water both to commercial farmers who lease tribal land — this part of the Southwest grows the bulk of the country’s winter vegetables — and to blunt the impact of shortages across in the system. Since 2016, through agreements with the federal Bureau of Reclamation, CRIT has fallowed enough farmland to leave 200,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead, preventing the reservoir’s levels from dropping even faster toward the critical “dead pool” level where power cannot be generated.
On Jan. 5, President Joe Biden signed legislation freeing the tribe to lease its water to users outside the reservation for the first time. But even as the tribe pushed that bill over the line, it wasn’t party to negotiations among the states about the shape of future cuts. As the tribe’s longtime attorney, Margaret Vick, explained recently in a joint phone interview with Flores, allowing tribal participation in those talks wouldn’t require an act of Congress. “What that would require is a phone call,” Vick said.
When the Bureau of Reclamation’s Feb. 1 deadline arrived without a deal, news outlets around the country reported on the proposal that came closest to consensus: Every state but California signed onto an arrangement that would leave the Golden State, which receives some 4.4 million acre-feet, by far the largest share of Colorado River water, to absorb the bulk of the cuts. To Flores’ surprise, the deal also called for CRIT to give up 45,000 acre-feet without compensation. Asked whether she’d had any prior notice from Arizona or its counterparts, Flores was blunt: “None, zero.” For the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the river is both the center of a sacred homeland and the backbone of government services: Agriculture represents about 80 percent of the tribal government’s revenue. Uncompensated water cuts could affect everything from health care to college scholarships for tribal members.
“Still to this day we don’t believe states really understand the dynamics of tribal water rights,” Flores said. “We need to be at the table.”
This dynamic is felt most acutely in Arizona, home to 22 tribes with claims to Colorado River water. When I asked Tom Buschatzke, director of the state’s water resources department, about negotiations with tribes, he touted a state program established in 2004 to buy farmland and leave it fallow in order to create a pool of Colorado River water rights the government could assign to future tribal settlements. Unfortunately, he explained, two decades on, most of that theoretical pool of water has literally evaporated with the changing hydrology of the river.
“That makes it difficult to push forward with settlements,” Buschatzke said. “I’m not going to offer a tribe something that would only be there 5 percent of the time.” There is, of course, a more reliable pool to draw from — the water that already flushes the toilets and irrigates the golf courses of Arizona’s cities and towns — but what Arizona politician is going to propose giving tribes that water?
“Wow,” Vigil says. “There’s an opportunity to start thinking about how we feed ourselves, where we feed ourselves and all those kind of things, and that’s one of the things that’s missing.”
About 70 percent of the basin’s water is allocated to agriculture, mostly to feed cattle. “And there is no structured place that I know of where those conversations are being had. Seventy percent of the water is [for] agriculture!” he repeated. “How are we not talking about that?”
While indigenous people have held a variety of top posts at Interior Department agencies going back 20 years or more, Biden’s appointment of Deb Haaland, the first Native American secretary of the Interior, signaled a commitment to Native points of view in the upper echelons of power at the White House. It did not take long for tribes to be disappointed. In late 2021, Vigil coordinated an effort that saw the leaders of 20 tribal nations sign a letter to Haaland, outlining a list of shared demands of federal officials, including a framework for leasing privileges similar to those won by CRIT. Haaland held a listening session with the signatories the following spring, one of “more than a dozen meetings” an Interior Department spokesperson highlighted of the government’s commitment to “robust consultation” with tribes. But to Vigil, it was part of a familiar pattern: Federal agencies seem always willing to talk but never to respond to specific demands.
This past February, federal officials announced the states had missed a second deadline to make further cuts, totaling 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, and that the Bureau of Reclamation would have to make the decision instead. In April, the Biden administration sketched out its plan to meet that target, setting aside distinctions between “senior” and “junior” rights holders, and asking California, Arizona and Nevada to reduce Colorado River water usage across the board by an additional 25 percent.
To avoid the bruising politics of choosing California alfalfa over Arizona subdivisions, the administration’s proposal put cities and towns with water rights dating to the 1960s on the same footing as irrigation districts with claims dating back to the 19th century. Settled tribal rights, too, would have to flow from the same bucket. But the threat of federal officials unilaterally imposing reductions on the states for the first time in history was finally enough to compel broader agreement. With the help of a wet winter and $1.2 billion in federal funds, Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to cuts of roughly 13 percent across the lower basin, enough to stave off the immediate crisis. The plan is expected to gain final federal approval, but it will not materially change the role of tribes in future negotiations.
When I asked Vigil if he felt he’d seen any significant inflection points in tribal participation in the river’s governance after 15 years of advocacy, there was a long pause. Finally, he said, “You know the reason why that’s a tough question? Because nothing has really changed. We don’t have a formal place in the policymaking process. … And until that happens, that means our sovereignty is not being fully recognized.”
[ad_2]
#Forgotten #Sovereigns #Colorado #River
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The edicts prompted a furious backlash by an architecture world that was already primed for a fight. The preferred-style rule was the handiwork of a traditionalist Washington nonprofit called the National Civic Art Society, which fights for “the classical tradition” and has condemned modern architecture as “dehumanizing.” The organization had long criticized the American Institute of Architects, the professional association that voiced outrage against Trump’s new rule.
Trump had earlier named the Civic Art Society’s president, a conservative architecture critic named Justin Shubow, to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, which oversees new buildings in the capital. In January of 2021, as Trump left office, Shubow — who, professionals sniffed, was not even an architect — was elevated to the commission’s chairship.
Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden rescinded the executive orders and removed all but one of Trump’s appointees from the Fine Arts Commission, replacing Shubow with the celebrated contemporary architect Billie Tsien.
But as with so many other disruptions of the Trump years, things didn’t simply go back to normal — in part because Shubow is a determined advocate, and in part because the traditionalists have a point, or at least half a point.
And that half a point is: There are a lot of hideous federal buildings out there!
The growth of government in the decades after World War II happened to take place during one of the most maligned periods in public architecture. Like college campuses, government properties have been among the modernist era’s most conspicuous offenders, perhaps because the people commissioning the buildings were not the ones who would have to live or work in them. When it’s their own private home or business, people tend to be much less deferential to the artistes drawing up the blueprints.
In Shubow’s telling, that deference is the problem — baked right into the 1962 Moynihan document his rivals want to enshrine in law. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government,” it declares, “and not vice versa.” Rather than a gesture of support for creativity, he says, the language essentially orders public servants to abandon their duty of keeping an eye on the contractors. (He notes that the AIA, which has blasted the GOP bill in the name of free expression, isn’t quite a dispassionate academic group: It’s a trade association for architects, ie those very same contractors.)
Shubow’s organization has commissioned a poll demonstrating that, by a significant percentage, Americans favor more traditionalist forms of architecture. Shouldn’t a democratically elected government make sure that its buildings don’t alienate the citizens who pay for them?
Well, sure. But the new bills do more than that. In elevating the stature of the Greek- and Roman-inflected buildings favored by Thomas Jefferson and his cohort, it adopts a grimly backward-looking posture in a country that has always been about dynamism and change.
So while it’s true that the capital was launched by people who obsessed about (small-r) “republican” style as they set about creating a fledgling republic in an age of monarchies, it’s also true that said obsession extended well beyond architecture to things like clothing — which, thankfully, no one is trying to legislate in the year 2023.
The idea of writing one particular style into law also ignores the tendency of tastes to change and perspectives to vary. Plenty of people — including me — adore the look of D.C.’s Federal Triangle, the massive 1930s constellation of Neoclassical government buildings including the Justice Department, the National Archives and the Department of Commerce. Others think its sweep of columned edifices looks kind of fascist, an association that no one could have imagined when the project was first envisioned in the 1920s.
[ad_2]
#Republicans #Mandate #Single #Style #Architecture #Washington
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In recent years, Georgetown and the Maryland Jesuits became an early example of an institution attempting to atone for its past in the slave trade. In 2019, the school announced it would provide preferential admissions to descendants of enslaved people, and its Jesuit operators announced millions in funding for racial reconciliation and education programs.
It’s uncertain whether last week’s Supreme Court decision overturning race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions will affect Georgetown’s program for descendants of enslaved people. Georgetown president John J. DeGioia wrote in a statement that the university was “deeply disappointed” in the decision, and that the university will“remain committed to our efforts to recruit, enroll, and support students from all backgrounds.”
As the college system braces for the fallout of that Supreme Court decision — and amid a simmering cultural debate about how, or even whether, to teach the kind of history Swarns has unearthed in schools — we had a wide-ranging discussion about book bans, the history of the Catholic Church (and her own connection to it) and the future of campus diversity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Naranjo: Obviously the Catholic Church is not the only institution involved in slavery in the U.S. Do you think all institutions with a history of enslaving people have a duty to provide a full accounting of their involvement in doing so?
Swarns: You’re absolutely right. My book is about the Catholic Church and Georgetown University and their roots in slavery, but they are far from alone. Slavery drove the growth of many of our contemporary institutions — universities, religious institutions, banks, insurance companies. Many of those institutions are grappling with this history and I think it’s really important and urgent for them to do that work. I think it helps us understand more clearly how slavery shaped Americans, many American families and many of the institutions that are around us today. So to me, this is critical work.
Naranjo: I understand you are Catholic yourself. Has your personal relationship with the church been affected during your research?
Swarns: I had been writing about slavery and the legacy of slavery, and so I stumbled across the story in this book about the Catholic Church and Georgetown. But it just so happened that I also happen to be a Black, practicing Catholic, and when I first heard about this slave sale that prominent Catholic priests organized to help save Georgetown University, I was flabbergasted. I had never known that Catholic priests had participated in the American slave trade. I had never heard of Catholic priests enslaving people. I was really astounded, and I’ve been doing this research, going through archival records of the buying and selling of people by Catholic priests to sustain and help the church expand, even as I am going to Mass and doing all of that. And so it has been an interesting time for me because of that.
One of the things, though, that has been fascinating is that, as I tracked some of the people who had been enslaved and sold by the church, I learned that many of them — even after the Civil War, even after they were free people — they remained in the church that had betrayed them and sold them. And they remained in the church because they felt that the priests, the white sinful men who had sold them who had done these things, did not own this church. The church — God, the Holy Spirit, the Son — they did not control that. And their faith that had sustained them through all of this difficult period of enslavement continued to sustain them. And not only that, many of these individuals became lay leaders and some even became religious leaders in the church and worked to make the church more reflective of and responsive to Black Catholics and more true to its universal ideals. And so, in a strange way, learning that history, learning about these people and their endurance and their resilience and their commitment to their faith has been really inspiring to me. So, I’m still practicing, I’m still going to Mass.
Naranjo: As you note in the book, Catholicism in the U.S. has often been perceived as a Northern religion. And you show us how that’s not necessarily the case. But what do you think its role in enslaving people means for conversations about culpability and reparations, given that many people view slavery as a Southern thing?
Swarns: I think that explains a bit of the disconnect for people. Many of us as Americans view the Catholic Church as a Northern church, as an immigrant church. Growing up in New York City, that’s certainly the church that I knew. The truth is that the Catholic Church established its foothold in the British colonies and in the early United States and in Maryland, which was a slaveholding state and relied on slavery to help build the very underpinnings of the church. So the nation’s first Catholic institution of higher learning, Georgetown, first archdiocese, the first cathedral, priests who operated a plantation and enslaved and sold people established the first seminary. So this was foundational to the emergence of the Catholic Church in the United States, but it’s history that I certainly didn’t know and most Catholics don’t know. And most Americans don’t know.
In terms of grappling with this history, the institutions have taken a number of steps. Georgetown and the Jesuit order priests, who were the priests who established the early Catholic Church in the United States, they’ve apologized for their participation in slavery and the slave trade. Georgetown has offered preference in admissions to descendants of people who were enslaved by the church, and it’s created a fund — a $400,000 fund — which they’ve committed to raising annually to fund projects that will benefit descendants. They’ve also renamed buildings and created an institute to study slavery.
The Jesuits, for their part, partnered with descendants to create a foundation and committed to raising $100 million toward racial reconciliation projects and projects that would benefit descendants. So those are the steps that have been taken so far by the institutions that I write about in my book.
Descendants, I think, have different feelings about whether or not this is adequate, whether or not more should be done. Most of the people that I speak to believe that these are good first steps, but that more needs to be done.
Naranjo: In your reporting process, did you experience any pushback into looking into a history that maybe some would like to have forgotten?
Swarns: In this instance, I was dealing with institutions that were trying to be transparent and trying to address this history. For both institutions, I would say there are more records that I wish I had that I don’t have. And that’s often what we journalists encounter. And part of the challenge, frankly, beyond institutional willingness or unwillingness, is just the marginalization of enslaved people during our history. Enslaved people were barred by law and practice from learning to read and write. So the records that would give great insight into their lives, letters and journals that historians and writers used to document the lives of other people, say, in the 1800s, are really, really, really, really scarce. And so that’s an enormous challenge for anyone trying to unearth the lives of enslaved people.
Naranjo: I was reading the book last week, after the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Years before that, Georgetown had embarked on this process and, as noted in the book, implemented a program for preferential admission for descendants of people enslaved by its Jesuit founders. What responsibilities do you think institutions with similar histories of enslaving people have to descendants?
Swarns: Universities all across the country are obviously grappling with the implications of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. More than 90 universities have already identified historic ties to slavery and have committed to addressing that history. There’s actually a consortium of universities studying slavery. And what the Supreme Court decision means for them and for their efforts, I think, remains uncertain.
Georgetown issued a statement last week like many universities did, saying that they remain committed to ensuring diversity on campus and valuing diversity. How this will all play out — I mean, I think we’re all going to have to wait and see. In terms of the responsibilities for universities that have identified their roots in slavery? I’m a journalist, so to me, I think it’s so important to document this history. To search in the archives, to make materials available and easily available to families to identify descendants. And to reach out and to work with descendants. I’m a journalist, I’m not a policymaker, and so there will be others who can hammer out what policies institutions feel are best and what policies that the descendants, if there are any identified, feel would be best. But for me as a journalist and as a professor, I feel the urgency of documenting this history and making sure that it is known. And collaborating with descendant communities, when those communities are identified, in terms of deciding on policies and programs.
[ad_2]
#Broke #News #U.S #Catholic #Church #Sold #Enslaved #People #Shes #Mass
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
POLITICO Magazine commissioned this poll because we thought, despite some initial polling shortly after Trump’s federal indictment, that we could dig deeper into the public’s sentiment. How much do people really understand about the charges facing Trump and do they believe he’s guilty? What kind of punishments do they think fit the crimes if he is convicted? And, of course, what impact could all of this have on Trump’s presidential candidacy?
The poll was conducted from June 27 to June 28, roughly three weeks after Trump’s federal indictment and nearly three months after Trump was criminally charged by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. The poll had a sample of 1,005 adults age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points for all respondents.
At this point, roughly half of the country believes that Trump committed the crimes alleged against him.
Forty-nine percent of respondents — including 25 percent of Republicans — said that they believe Trump is guilty in the pending federal prosecution, which alleges that he willfully retained sensitive government documents after leaving office and obstructed a subsequent federal investigation. A nearly identical 48 percent of respondents — including 24 percent of Republicans — believe that Trump is guilty in the Manhattan DA’s pending prosecution, which alleges that Trump falsified business records in connection with a payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election in order to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual relationship between the two.
On the question of timing, however, there was more unity.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents (62 percent) said that the trial in the pending federal prosecution should take place before the presidential election next November — a figure that includes nearly half of Republican respondents (46 percent). A lower number, but a still-solid majority, said that the trial should take place before the Republican primaries begin early next year (57 percent of all respondents, including 42 percent of Republican respondents).
The findings could bolster the position of federal prosecutors, who have been pushing for a trial date as early as this December. Trump is expected to try to drag out the proceedings for as long as possible, particularly because he would likely be able to shut the prosecution down if reelected. But the federal statute that governs the setting of trial dates requires judges to account for not only the defendant’s interest but “the best interest of the public” as well.
What should happen to Trump if he gets convicted? Forty three percent said he should go to prison, but most were willing to spare him jail time. Nearly a quarter of respondents said that Trump should incur no punishment at all (22 percent), while 18 percent said he should receive probation and another 17 percent said he should face only a financial penalty.
The results were roughly similar when respondents were asked what the punishment should be if Trump is convicted in Manhattan. Most respondents said that Trump should not go to prison and that he should instead receive either no term of imprisonment, probation, or a financial penalty only (21 percent, 17 percent and 22 percent, respectively).
In both instances, a clear partisan breakdown was evident. For the DOJ case, 73 percent of Democrats thought Trump should go to prison if convicted, compared to 16 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of independents. For the Manhattan DA’s case, 65 percent of Democrats backed prison time, compared to 14 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of independents.
The results also complicate the post-indictment narrative that the charges have improved Trump’s chances of winning his party’s presidential nomination. It’s true that he’s gained support in the polls since the indictments, but our survey suggests that they haven’t fundamentally changed Republicans’ opinion of his campaign. While 21 percent of GOP respondents said the federal indictment on mishandling classified documents made them more likely to support Trump, 23 percent said it made them less likely; fully 50 percent said it had no impact and 6 percent said they didn’t know. The results were similar for the Manhattan DA’s indictment over the hush money payment.
Among the broader public, a conviction in either case would be damaging to Trump’s electoral chances. An identical number — 41 percent of all respondents — said that a conviction in either the federal case or the Manhattan DA’s case would make them less likely to support the former president. Despite all the commentary that he’s Teflon Don, it’s clear that some of his missteps can cost him.
The results also suggest that the numbers could get worse as Americans learn more about the pending charges. Roughly one-third of respondents said that they are not particularly familiar with the allegations in either case.
That number could decrease as media coverage continues, particularly in the run-up to potential trials. A trial date in the Manhattan DA’s case is currently set to begin on March 25, though it is conceivable that, as a practical matter, Trump could have the nomination locked up by then if dynamics in the GOP primary do not change. So far, most of his opponents have struggled to articulate a message that distinguishes themselves from Trump while appealing to a voter base that is largely sticking with him despite his mounting legal problems.
The public’s preference for a relatively speedy trial date in the federal prosecution against Trump could prove tricky to accommodate. Many legal observers are skeptical that a trial is possible next year, particularly given the complexities of a case that involves classified documents and a defendant who has historically proven adept at mounting aggressive delay strategies.
Indeed, according to the most recent statistics available, the median time from filing to disposition in felony cases in the Southern District of Florida, where the federal case against Trump is pending, is nine months. But that figure is almost surely dragged down by the fact that the significant majority of federal criminal cases are resolved by guilty pleas and that very few trials in the district, if any, have posed the sort of complexities that the first-ever criminal prosecution against a former U.S. president will pose, particularly involving classified information.
Still, if prosecutors and the presiding judge want to look to the law and satisfy the public’s interest, they can point to the results from this poll.
[ad_2]
#Poll #Trump #Indictments #Surprising #Result
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Putting Michigan “on the right side of history,” Whitmer assured the slacks-and-sportcoat crowd, “is going to be good for business.”
This was before jokes about Mackinac-induced hangovers, “Yoopers and trolls” — those who live on both of Michigan’s peninsulas, longings for her adult daughters to remain in the state and a softball q-and-a with the Detroit Chamber chief during which Whitmer mused about luring Disney to Michigan. There was also a discussion of what Michigan State basketball legend Tom Izzo had termed the “KMA phase” of one’s career.
“You know what the a is and the first two letters are kiss my,” she said in a Michigan accent so thick that Vernor’s Ginger Ale could bottle it and sell it as part of a Pure Michigan line.
That Whitmer, 51, is decidedly not in that KMA phase was evident when I spoke to her at the to-die-for governor’s residence atop Mackinac (don’t call it a mansion!). She ruled out running for president next year even if Biden forgoes reelection, but allowed a resounding “maybe” to pursuing the White House down the road.
“Might I have the fire in the belly?” she said. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t tell you.”
Pointing to the tension between her Midwestern modesty and the demands of running for president, she chuckled about having “to get comfortable bragging.”
A subsequent announcement, however, made it clear she’s willing to try. Whitmer is creating a federal PAC, called “Fight Like Hell,” to boost Biden and congressional candidates next year, offering her a platform for a visible role in the 2024 campaign and a foothold to mount a presidential bid in 2028.
Which is not as soon as some of her admirers would like. Democrats in Michigan’s congressional delegation have pleaded with Whitmer to run, I’m told by officials familiar with the conversations, and the lawmakers have themselves been nudged by colleagues from other states to push her. Notably, that roster of congressional Democrats from other states eager for a Whitmer bid included members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
These backstage conversations have taken place as Biden’s approval ratings show little sign of improvement and increasingly appear impervious to external events, for good or ill. Of course, Democrats are betting that the most significant external event of all — Republicans renominating a candidate with more baggage than O’Hare at Thanksgiving — will tip the election again to Biden.
Yet even their assumedly strong odds in such a rematch have not soothed Democrats.
Spending time on this car-free Great Lakes summer idyll, where much of Michigan’s political class heads each June to plot and gossip over local whitefish, fudge and IPAs, is to be reminded of a pattern I’ve noticed since the midterms: the Biden gap. The further up a Democrat is on the political food chain, the more publicly supportive and even defensive they are of the president. The closer a Democrat is to the grassroots, though, the more they sound like many of their own voters in openly pining for another nominee.
So whether it was Whitmer, other statewide officials or legislative leaders, each offered emphatic praise for Biden.
“There’s a distinction between waiting your turn and supporting leadership that you appreciate,” Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist told me, pushing back on the suggestion that Whitmer was being deferential to a relatively unpopular, octogenarian president.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson went even further contorting herself, making an impassioned case for diverse representation until I pointed out that Biden was not exactly an avatar of the new face of America. “But his Cabinet,” Benson began, before citing her friendship with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.These defenses of Biden are understandable: Michigan leaders want to remain close to the White House, some of them are truly fond of Biden and none want to be responsible for doing anything that can be perceived as undermining the incumbent in the face of Donald Trump’s return.
Yet to speak to others on the island, those who maybe have not been in the motorcade for a presidential visit and are not overly conscious of future statewide primaries, is to elicit much more direct answers.
“I think it’s time for Joe to move on,” Livonia Mayor Maureen Brosnan told me, adding that she thought Whitmer would “be a great president.”
Jen Eyer, an Ann Arbor city councilor, put it this way: “’That woman from Michigan’ would be amazing against Trump.”
Eyer was alluding to Trump’s insult of Whitmer at the height of the pandemic, which the governor embraced as a badge of honor.
It’s partly why, in Michigan especially, Biden’s decision to run again is so poignant.
It was in Detroit — the night before he won the Michigan primary, effectively claiming the Democratic nomination as Covid arrived on America’s shores — where Biden memorably vowed to be “a bridge” to the next generation of Democrats.
Among those standing behind him on stage as he made that pledge were his future vice president and the woman many high-level Democrats were hoping he’d make his future vice president: Whitmer.
In the more than three years since that night, the governor has helped Biden win Michigan, claimed her own reelection by double-digits, flipped the state Legislature and pocketed a raft of progressive accomplishments in a state Democrats lost in 2016. The years since have, well, not gone as well for Kamala Harris.
But it’s Harris who’s vice president, a near-lock to be on the ticket again next year and who could, by virtue of her office, ultimately block Whitmer from the nomination.
That’s much to the chagrin of many of those same Democrats who were pushing Whitmer-for-vice president in 2020 and think her moment to run for president may be next year. After all, by 2028, she may face not only Harris but contemporaries like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats just elected governor last year, such as Maryland’s Wes Moore, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Maura Healey of Massachusetts.
If Whitmer is bitter about being passed over for vice president or Biden attempting to hold the presidency into his mid-80s, she’s hiding it pretty well.
“I feel really lucky to be here, I really do,” she told me, “not just because we’re literally in maybe the best place you can sit in the United States of America.”
She’s right about the view — there may not be a better state-owned property in the country than the Michigan governor’s summer residence.
And Whitmer is one of the few potential presidential candidates I’ve covered whose insistence about loving her current job is at least plausible.
When I was pressing her whether she’d be disappointed to miss her best opening to run for president, she dismissed my question. I pointed out that she didn’t seem like she was in the Bill Clinton mold of eyeing the White House from before adolescence.
“Like I was born to run, no,” she interjected.
What was less plausible were her claims about not even expecting to be governor.
Her parents may have hailed from different parties, but Whitmer was born into Michigan political royalty.
Her mom, the Democrat, was an assistant attorney general for the state’s long-serving attorney general (Frank Kelley held the post for so many years he became known as the “eternal general”) and her dad, the Republican, served as state commerce secretary before running Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan.
Whitmer attended Michigan State for undergraduate and law school, an important political credential for those here who believe the East Lansing institution is the flagship university for actual Michigan residents.
She won a seat in the Michigan House before she turned 30.
Now she’s governor of the only state she’s ever lived in, a thoroughly rooted politician in an era of fading regionalism with the Midwestern Nice style along with that accent.
“One of the best things about Michiganders is we’re humble, but that humility sometimes doesn’t work in our favor when we’re telling our story about how great the opportunity is here,” Whitmer told me.
I don’t buy it.
Whitmer has honed her Michigan Miracle pitch about the state’s unemployment rate dropping below 4 percent for only the third time since the 1970s — two of those times on her watch. .
What’s more, she has a ready-made case for people and businesses ready to leave the pricey coasts but uneasy about Red America.
“One of the things that we boast is that every person is protected and respected under the law in Michigan,” says Whitmer, pointing to abortion rights and gay rights. “That’s not true in Texas.”
What I wonder is how much of her political reluctance owes less to Midwestern restraint and more to a lack of a male ego, something she invited with her Beto-adjacent “born to run” dismissal.
She will only tiptoe there, by praising other women governors — she has hosted a group of them on Mackinac — and calling them all doers. “They don’t get out there and grandstand, they get shit done,” Whitmer says.
They also, I can’t help but note, don’t run for president while nothing seems to stop a succession of male governors every four years, no matter how remote their prospects.
This prompts another chuckle. “A lot of dudes who were just born think they should [run],” Whitmer says.
One of Whitmer’s fellow female governors is more candid, though.
“It is sort of an outrageous situation, with all due respect to all the men in the Republican primary now and all the men in the Democratic primary in 2020,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told me. “The notion that men will just do it and women have to be asked.”
As I point out the Dakotas dynamic — South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem prepared for years to pursue the White House but then decided against it while North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum up and decided to run so he did — Lujan Grisham doesn’t even wait for me to finish the thought.
“Men know this leads to other powerful positions!” she says about the downpayment of running for president.
Lujan Grisham is a strong Biden supporter, but says 2028 “has to be” the year her party turns to a woman. “That’s going to be a real challenge for men,” she says,” because the country is going to say: Where are the women?”
It was a question I was asking myself the weekend after Mackinac, when I was in Des Moines for the annual barbecue and motorcycle ride hosted by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), which becomes a GOP candidate forum this close to the state’s presidential caucuses. It was jarring to see Ernst and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speak at the outset before turning the program over to a series of mostly male presidential contestants, some of whom lacked the governing experience and most of whom lacked the appeal of the opening acts.
For the moment, though, Whitmer is pushing to complete her Michigan story, one she knows won’t be fully successful without addressing the twin challenges of her time: retaining her state’s auto advantage in the transition to electric vehicles and reversing its population decline.
She used the chamber gathering here to unveil a dedicated “chief growth officer” — a Detroiter so dedicated to Michigan she has both peninsulas tattooed on her forearm — and a bipartisan commission tasked with addressing the state’s population loss.
The Republican co-chair of the commission is a longtime donor and Romney family retainer, John Rakolta, who made his peace with Donald Trump in 2016 and got rewarded with the ambassadorship to the UAE.
Yet as Rakolta made his way to the ballroom for Whitmer’s keynote speech, he seemed to have entered what Coach Izzo calls the KMA stage of life.
I asked him about Whitmer and 2024, and he quickly noted that she’s the future at a time both parties seem intent on tying themselves to the past.
“It’s the same with us,” said Rakolta, alluding to the looming presidential rematch. “Why would you look backward?”
[ad_2]
#Bypassing #Biden #Democrats
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
