A provocative Politico article that came out this week, entitled Trump Doesnt Understand Todays SuburbsAnd Neither Do You. But this isnt about Trumpits about us.

As the article notes, Suburbs are getting more diverse, but that doesnt mean theyre woke. Thomas Sugrue says if you want to understand where American politics is going, look how suburban whites are sorting themselves out.

While Thomas Sugrue, director of metro studies at NYU points out, Trump has misread the reality of todays suburbs, he argues most of the rest of us have, too.

What he argues is, Its not simply that suburban America is increasingly diverse, nor that a majority of Black Americans live in the suburbs, nor even that a majority of new immigrants settle in suburbs, not cities. Instead, its that Americas suburbs are ground zero for a major schism among white suburbanites one remaking the electoral map before our eyes, and revealing why that old suburban playbook just doesnt work anymore.

Were seeing a suburban political divide quite different from the one that played out after World War II, when well-to-do, middle-class and even some working-class whites living in suburbia found common ground by looking through their rearview mirrors with horror at the cities they were fleeing, says Sugrue.

Another time, we will talk about the national implications of this. But I want to discuss Davisbecause it remains a curious study. Fifteen years ago when I started getting active, Davis was an upper class white community. It was nominally liberal.

But the history of Davis has been contentious, in part because of the battle between different forcesuniversity versus town. Progressive in the form of environmentalism, but also slow growth and exclusive.

The Vanguard in July 2006 emerged because of this duality. This is a city that, two years after it shut down its Human Relations Commission (temporarily) due to advocacy for police oversight, turned around and by overwhelming numbers supported Barack Obama in his bid to become the first Black president in America.

Davis has progressed a lot in 15 years. We have seen the installation of that same civilian police oversight body in 2018 that caused the HRC to be shut down in 2006. We saw over 1000 people marching for Black Lives in June. We saw 2000 people sign a petition to put the school boards appointment on the ballot because they appointed another white person to the board.

On the other hand, Blacks in Davis are four times more likely to be stopped by police than whites, continuing the trend from 15 years earlier and the common complaint among Black people especially of being pulled over for DWB (Driving while Black or Brown). Meanwhile, as cities across the country have placed Black Lives Matter on their streets, Davis had to recently remove theirs when others wanted to put contrary messages.

But, as the Politico article notes, perhaps the big issues are on the land use front.

It turns out Davis is not alone in this regard.

White liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing, says Sugrue. We cant just think about it as torch-bearing angry white supremacists. If they were the only obstacles to equality in suburban housing, we would have come a lot farther than we have.

Here Sugrue notes, In modern American history, race and class have been fundamentally intertwined. Its impossible to understand economic inequality and how it plays out without understanding its racial dimensions.

He continues: Race became, for many Americans, an easy marker for class, and class often became a way to obscure the racial dynamics at play in shaping housing markets. And along with that goes a rhetoric of colorblindness shared by many white Americans, regardless of their political orientation: I dont see people by the color of their skin, or I would have anybody be my neighbor red, white, black, yellow or purple. I cant tell you how many times Ive heard that as a way of professing supposed indifference to race.

But this point is critical: White liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing.

This is the original critique of the Vanguardthe dark underbelly of Davis, if you will. We think of racism and white supremacists, but what we dont think about is obstacles to equality in suburban housing and the upper middle class white liberal communities. As Mayor Gloria Partida has pointed out, some of the most progressive communities are the most racially segregated.

Sugrue points out that one area of really important bipartisan convergence is the politics of homeownership the notion that property values need to be protected and, in particular, the politics of NIMBY, or not in my backyard.

He argues that there are liberals who profess to be progressive on matters of race who profess and support the idea of a racially diverse society, who say that they would like their children to go to racially mixed schools but when it comes to the questions of changing the landscape of their neighborhoods or changing the color of their neighbors or their kids school classmates, these folks start to sound a lot like conservatives, even if theyre ostensibly liberals.

This, he argues, manifests itself in significant opposition to the construction of multifamily housing.

He argues that its not even couched in the rhetoric of class.

Its not, I dont want multifamily housing in my neighborhood because I dont want lower-class people living here.

Instead, its, This is going to change the character of the neighborhood, or Its going to jeopardize my property values, or Its going to bring congestion.

Sound familiar?

David M. Greenwald reporting

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Monday Morning Thoughts: We Resemble This Politico Article the Clash of Suburbs, Housing and Race - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

On 1 July, Australia unveiled its 2020 defence strategic update, which redefines the countrys strategic priorities and its response to the rapidly evolving regional security landscape. From Cambodias point of view, two key components in the revised defence policy warrant mentioning.

The first is Australias plan to direct greater attention and resources to its immediate region, ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West Pacific. The update aims to shape Australias strategic environment, to deter actions against its interests, and to respond to threats with credible force.

To attain this goal, Canberra has committed $270 billion over the next decade to boost the capabilities of the Australian Defence Force. The update has a strong focus on offensive capabilities in the land, maritime, air, space and cyber domains. That will include acquisitions of long-range combat systems, such as Lockheed Martins AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile, or LRASM, and hypersonic weapon programs, which will increase the costs for adversaries planning to attack Australia and deter those threatening its interests.

Viewed from Cambodia, the updates second key aspect is its grim assessment of the deteriorating security landscape in the Indo-Pacific. As the United States and the Peoples Republic of China ramp up their strategic competition, Australia sees stability declining more rapidly than anticipated and considers the prospect of a high-intensity interstate conflict unlikely but less remote than four years ago.

This disturbing assessment provides a signal to Cambodian leaders about the risks and challenges lying ahead of them.

Cambodia may well entertain the notion that the US and China are engaging in a Cold Warstyle strategic contest in Asia. Rhetoric between leaders in Washington and Beijing, inflamed by the Covid-19 pandemic, a shift in the USs position in the South China Sea maritime disputes, and Chinas increasingly aggressive foreign policy and military postures around the world, seems to have pushed the trajectory of their bilateral relationship towards more hostile territory. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has warned that Southeast Asia may need to choose between Washington and Beijing. Given what has occurred so far in 2020, that may happen sooner than expected.

The most viable foreign policy option for Cambodia is to continue to promote a rules-based regional order that embraces not only the US and China but also middle powers such as Australia to keep the Indo-Pacific free of great-power competition and open to free trade, cooperation and peace. This can be done bilaterally with foreign partners and multilaterally through regional platforms led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting is one forum in which Cambodia can act collectively with fellow member states to engage in regional security dialogues, promote practical partnerships in military and non-military areas, and build confidence and lessen the risk of miscalculations.

The update recognises the erratic, if not declining, nature of the US presence in the Indo-Pacific, especially under President Donald Trump. Even though its a US ally, Australia realises the need to be able to deter threats against its interests.

Cambodia should view the update as a sign of Australias determination to uphold a rules-based regional order, from which the region can benefit diplomatically and economically. Phnom Penh should step up its political, economic and military engagement with Canberra to ensure that this middle power remains a robust contributor to a liberal international order in Asia.

This does not necessarily mean that Cambodia should side with Australia and its US ally against China. As a small state, Cambodia should continue to hedge by concurrently engaging multiple external partners through pragmatic cooperation on issues of shared interest, candid assessment of policy differences, people-to-people exchanges, partnerships between academic and policy communities, and governmental dialogues.

In the update, Australia has indicated a bold and long-term interest in maintaining a stable, peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific in which big, middle and small powers can co-exist peacefully. Cambodia should view the revised policy as an opportunity to invigorate its bilateral ties with Australia and, through ASEAN, engage this middle power deeper into regional security structures. A militarily capable and regionally involved Australia is critical for Cambodias foreign policy and for the future of stability and peace in the Indo-Pacific.

Read more here:

The implications of Australia's strategic update for Cambodia - The Strategist

Teriyaki Chicken stir fry and author J. Courtney Whites mystery book, The Sun

The summer heat is upon us and with it, we long for light and easy meals that keep the kitchen cool. One of my favorite summer dishes I have made since moving to Roswell in 1999 is teriyaki chicken stir fry. My late husband David looked forward to it and would eat the entire pan in one sitting.

The first time I made the dish was on our shopping tour to Cannon Air Force Base, which happened every three months or so. My husband was a 100% disabled retired Marine Corps Veteran and enjoyed the international section on base that had German, Thai and Japanese food. We usually stayed overnight there the first day we would shop for dried goods, like German dumplings and spices. The next day, I shopped for fresh produce and meat.

I always loved to try out something new and on one of those first shopping tours, I found a bottle of ready-made teriyaki marinade. When we got home, I followed the recipe and was addicted. It was 2000 and Roswells grocery stores didnt yet have the variety of products that we have today. The internet was there, of course, but it was not as easy to find people who posted recipes. So, when I ran out of the teriyaki marinade, I walked down to our Roswell Public Library to see if they had a cookbook on how to make teriyaki sauce. Long story short, I found several books and started experimenting.

You might find it interesting that teriyaki sauce is a typical American sauce that was created by Japanese immigrants in the 1960s in Hawaii. There are many varieties and I experimented quite a bit myself. Here is my favorite:

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Teriyaki chicken stir fry

Serves 4 (or one very hungry Marine)

Ingredients

For the sauce:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup pineapple juice

1 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp minced ginger

1/2 Tbsp hot red chile flakes

1 Tbsp cornstarch

For the stir fry:

1 Tbsp cold-pressed olive oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into pieces (you can also use fajita-cut chicken)

5 cups chopped mixed vegetables that are in season (at the moment squash, bell peppers, broccoli, snap peas, mushrooms and onions)

1 8 oz can sliced water chestnuts, drained; and if they are thick, chopped

Preparation:

Either the night before, or early in the morning, prepare the sauce by adding all ingredientsexcept the cornstarch in a sauce pot and bring to a boil. Mix the cornstarch with 2 Tbsp of cold water until there are no lumps. While stirring, pour the cornstarch water into the sauce. Cook, while constantly stirring, for 15 minutes or until the sauce is reduced and appears syrupy. Take 1/2 cup from the sauce and keep in a separate covered jar and refrigerate.

Let the rest of sauce cool for 10 minutes before pouring it over the raw chicken cubes in a covered bowl. Refrigerate overnight or at least 4 hours.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan until it glistens, but doesnt smoke. Add the chicken and fry until it is light brown. Remove the chicken and keep warm on a separate plate.

Add a little more oil and add vegetables, stir-frying them for 5 minutes on high. Return the chicken to the pan and add the 1/2 cup of sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve by itself, with rice or rice noodles. You can easily double the portion and freeze part of it for later.

You can also decorate the plates with toasted sesame seeds or sliced green onions.

Books for comfort

The Sun

Today, I have quite a treat for fans of mystery stories. Santa Fe native J. Courtney Whites 365-page book, The Sun, has everything a good mystery book needs: Murder, quirky characters and the vast openness of New Mexicos ranch lands. Though White was born in Philadelphia, he headed West to Phoenix at the age of six and his love for the American West kept him in the region. His work brought him to the Sierra Club in 1994 when he became an activist wanting to conserve Americas West. He worked on the front lines of collaborative conservation and regenerative agriculture, exploring on-the-ground solutions to global issues, including land restoration. In 2014, he was inspired by his distant cousin, William Faulkner, and started his path into writing fiction. The Sun is the first in a mystery series set on a historic ranch in northern New Mexico during the tumultuous years of 2008-09.

I laughed out loud reading the reaction of the hero of the book, Bostonian pediatric oncologist Bryce Miller, when she arrives at the ranch The Sun, somewhere in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. She had inherited 140,000 acres from her estranged uncle, who had dropped dead in France, leaving her the ranch and cattle. Though she doesnt even know the front end of a cow from its back, she talks to her uncles foreman to expect her arrival, only he is not there when she drives up to the ranch house; his truck has the key in the ignition and his tuna fish-eating cow dog is waiting in the back of the truck bed, almost giving her a heart attack when he barks at her. Her inner monologueand thoughts of how New Mexicans are is hilarious.

The book is a well-written, fast-paced murder-mystery that pulls the reader in from the start, when Miller meets neighbor Earl Holcombe, the only one who is helpful and on herside. He is a Republican who was friends with her uncle, despite him being a liberal Democrat. He extends this friendship to Miller, though she admits being a urban-dwelling New York Times-reading latte-drinking, East Coast liberal.

The mystery about the vanished foreman, a stolen rodeo horse and very unsavory characters who want to buy the ranch, show that author White knows what he is talking about. After all, for 20 years, White helped create a radical center among ranchers, conservationists, agencies and others to build economic and ecological health in Western working landscapes. Theres no doubt that one or another of the characters are based on real-life encounters. There is a country club developer, an oil and gas man, a naturalist with a fierce hate of fish-stomping cows, and a mysterious stranger, and they all try to convince Miller to sell out to them. Throw in a mysterious black helicopter and a Sasquatch hunter on the loose, and you have a wild ride ahead, trying to find out what, or rather who, actually caused the demise of spoiler alert the dead foreman.

Even if people dont particularly care for a mystery, Whites astute insight into New Mexicos ecological, economic and social challenges that he packs into this fiction are thoroughly entertaining. Through the chapters, love for a rural way of life shines through, and despite the differences at the end, love for New Mexicos New West triumphs. I did not see the ending coming, quite like Miller who is so far out of her comfort zone.

For me, it was a page-turner until the last chapter, which is rare, and I cant wait for Volume 2.

The book The Sun is available as aneBook and paperback at all online book stores.

For more information, visit jcourtneywhite.com.

Link:

Comfort food and books for comfort - Roswell Daily Record

KEY FACTS

2:36 p.m. The NHL says it has had no positive COVID-19 test results in its first two weeks in secure zones in Edmonton and Toronto.

10:13 a.m. The head of the World Health Organization predicted that the number of people infected by the coronavirus will hit 20 million this week.

9:10 a.m. Windsor-Essex will move into Stage 3 of reopening on Wednesday

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Monday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

3:42 p.m. The Hockey Hall of Fame has postponed its 2020 induction ceremony due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ceremony was originally scheduled to take place Nov. 16 in Toronto.

The 2020 class of forward Jarome Iginla, winger Marian Hossa, defencemen Kevin Lowe and Doug Wilson, Canadian womens goaltender Kim St. Pierre and longtime general manager Ken Holland was announced by the Hockey Hall of Fame in June.

In a release Monday, the hall said rescheduling plans for the induction celebration will be addressed at its board of directors meeting on Oct. 29.

Hockey Hall of Fame chair Lanny McDonald said the most likely scenario is to postpone the ceremony to November 2021, either by waiving the 2021 election or combining the 2020 and 2021 classes.

McDonald said the hall has ruled out a virtual induction ceremony.

3:28 p.m. Maple Leaf Foods says 23 employees at its meat processing plant in Brandon, Man. have tested positive for COVID-19.

But neither the company nor Manitoba public health officials believe transmission is happening within the workplace.

Manitoba chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin says there is a cluster of 64 cases in Brandon, east of Winnipeg, and that there is evidence of some community transmission.

He says imposing stricter regional restrictions is on the table, but theres nothing specific in the works right now.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, which represents 2,000 Maple Leaf workers in Brandon, has called for the plant to be shut down until the spread is under control.

Maple Leaf vice-president Janet Riley says the workplace is safe and theres no reason to suspend operations.

Simply put, based on all the evidence, COVID-19 is not being spread at our plant, she said in an emailed statement.

It is important to note that 144 members of our Brandon plant team have tested negative for COVID-19.

Manitoba reported 16 new cases on Monday, bringing the provincial total to 558.

3:08 p.m. Antonio Banderas says he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is celebrating his 60th birthday in quarantine.

The Spanish actor announced his positive test in an Instagram post on Monday. Banderas said he would spend his time in isolation reading, writing and making plans to begin to give meaning to my 60th year to which I arrive full of enthusiasm.

I would like to add that I am relatively well, just a little more tired than usual and hoping to recover as soon as possible following medical instructions that I hope will allow me to overcome the infection that I and so many people in the world are suffering from, wrote Banderas.

Earlier this year, Banderas was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Pedro Almodvars Pain & Glory.

3:08 p.m . Mississippi legislators have returned to the state capitol for the first time since a coronavirus outbreak in early July hospitalized several legislators and killed one person.

Mississippis state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said Monday that 49 total legislators tested positive in the outbreak more than one-fourth of the entire body.

Lawmakers left the building July 1 after working there throughout the month of June, many without wearing masks or following social distancing regulations. The first cases in the group were confirmed in the early days of July.

The health officer said at least four legislators were hospitalized and three required intensive care. Dobbs said that at least 12 others, including lobbyists and staff, were infected, including one non-legislator who died.

Among those who tested positive in the heavily Republican body are the GOP presiding officers, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

2:36 p.m. The NHL says it has had no positive COVID-19 test results in its first two weeks in secure zones in Edmonton and Toronto.

The league says it administered 7,245 tests in its second week, from Aug. 2-8, with no positive results.

In the first week, from July 27 to Aug. 1, the league says it had no positive results in 7,013 tests.

Testing is done daily on all 52 members of each teams travelling party.

Eight of 24 teams have now been eliminated and have exited the secure zones.

Players and staff in the secure zones are separated from the general public and no fans are in attendance at games.

2 p.m. Mayor John Tory, at todays COVID-19 news conference from City Hall, says the total number of cases in Toronto is now 15,532, an increase of 18 new cases.

1:52 p.m. Quebecs updated back-to-school plan requires students in Grade 5 and up to wear masks in all common areas of school buildings, except classrooms.

Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said today the governments new strategy aims to make communication between teachers and students as easy as possible.

Roberge says each classroom will be its own bubble, and students will not be required to maintain a two-metre distance with their classmates.

And while all elementary and high school students will be expected to return to school at the end of the month, children with significant health problems will be offered a remote learning option.

Roberge says in order to protect children from harm, schools need to fully reopen in order to offer students the ability to properly socialize and learn.

Quebec reported one new death in the past 24 hours attributed to COVID-19 and 98 new cases of the virus the lowest daily number of cases since July.

1:42 p.m. The British government is laying off 6,000 coronavirus contact tracers and deploying the rest to work in local teams, in an acknowledgment that the centralized track-and-trace system is not working well enough.

The U.K. has been criticized for failing to keep track of infected peoples contacts early in the pandemic, a factor that contributed to the countrys high death toll of more than 46,500, the most in Europe.

Since May the country has rapidly set up a test-and-trace system to try to contain the outbreak, recruiting thousands of staff in a matter of weeks. But the system, which relies on telephone call centres, has failed to reach more than a quarter of contacts of people who have tested positive for the virus.

Some frustrated local authorities have set up their own contact-tracing networks, which have proved more effective because they know communities better and can go door-to-door if needed.

The national test-and-trace program said Monday it was officially adopting that localized approach. Some 6,000 contact tracers will be laid off this month, and the remaining 12,000 will work with local public health authorities around the country.

The government also abandoned plans to create a contact-tracing phone app, but says it will be reintroduced in some form in the near future.

1:42 p.m. Greeces culture ministry is closing down the Museum of the Ancient Agora, a major archaeological site in central Athens, for two weeks after a cleaner there was diagnosed with COVID-19.

A ministry statement Monday said the museum would be comprehensively disinfected, while the actual site of the Ancient Agora, which was the administrative, political and social centre of the ancient city, will remain open.

Greek sites and museums are open to visitors, with the wearing of masks obligatory in museums.

The closure also comes as Greece has announced 126 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the last day, bringing the countrys total to 5,749, and one more death for a total death toll of 213 amid a spike in daily infections.

Of the new cases, 17 were migrants who arrived on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos who arrived from the nearby Turkish coast.

The government announced new measures Monday to curb the spread, including orderings bars, restaurants and cafes in several regions to shut between midnight and 7 a.m. Other measures include requiring those arriving in the country from land borders, as well as those flying in from several European countries, to have proof of a negative coronavirus test.

12:20 p.m. Ontario reported 115 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, ending a seven-day stretch with fewer than 100 new infections a day.

It was a sharp increase from 79 new cases Sunday and 70 on Saturday as health officials keep a close watch on daily tallies with most of the province in Stage 3, where the risk of spread is higher if people do not take proper precautions such as physical distancing and wearing face coverings.

Health Minister Christine Elliott cautioned against reading too much into a one-day jump in the case count.

While a slight uptick and an end to our steak, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that thanks to your efforts the trend in the province remains downward, she said on Twitter as Premier Doug Fords government allowed Windsor-Essex to move to Stage 3.

Over the weekend, the active number of cases across the province dropped below 1,000 for the first time since the virus peaked and now sits at 994, the Ministry of Health said in its daily status report based on figures reported by health units at 4 p.m. the previous day.

Eighteen of Ontarios 34 public health units had no new cases and 10 regions had fewer than five new infections. The highest numbers were 20 in Ottawa, 19 in Peel and 16 in Toronto.

Read more from the Stars Rob Ferguson: Ontario ends weeklong streak of COVID-19 cases below 100

12:18 p.m. The federal Liberals are defending their decision to have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. oversee a rent-relief program for small businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The opposition Conservatives have questioned why the CMHC, rather than the Canada Revenue Agency, was asked to run the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program, given the revenue agency manages several other pandemic-related support programs.

Finance Minister Bill Morneaus spokeswoman Maeva Proteau says the CMHC was considered the best fit because it deals with mortgages and understands Canadas real estate market.

She says going with the Crown corporation was seen to be fastest because it could make payments to businesses without requiring new legislation, which would have further delayed the rent program.

The CMHC later contracted mortgage firm MCAP to administer the rent program another choice the Tories have questioned, since an executive vice-president at the company is married to Katie Telford, chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Ministers Office says Telford followed proper ethical procedures when it came to the governments dealings with MCAP, while the Liberals and CMHC say the $84-million contract was awarded independent of any political involvement.

12 p.m. From the most romantic spots along the Seine to popular shopping streets, residents and visitors in Paris were required to wear face masks in some outdoor areas of the French capital starting Monday amid an uptick in reported coronavirus cases.

Police are authorized to issue a 135-euro ($159) fine to people who do not follow the new public health requirement.

One location covered by the measure is the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin, among the citys most popular outdoor spots for lunch or an aperitif with friends.

In the morning when there is nobody on the canal, I think it is a bit of a drastic measure, lawyer Helene Rames said after the face mask rule took effect.

But it is true that at night and on the weekends, you can see many young people here close to each other, which is scary, she added. If its for the health of our elders then lets wear it.

11:56 a.m. Thailand is making plans to allow at least 3,000 foreign teachers to enter the country, even as it continues to keep out tourists and tightly restricts other arrivals to guard against new coronavirus infections.

Attapon Truektrong, secretary-general of the Private Education Commission, said Monday that those who have registered include teachers returning to their jobs after leaving during the pandemic, as well as newly employed teachers.

The teachers, who come from countries including the Philippines, New Zealand, the United States and Britain, will have to be quarantined for 14 days after arrival. Thailand barred scheduled passenger flights from abroad in early April

Thailand hosts many international schools and there is a general shortage of qualified teachers of English and other non-Thai languages.

11:56 a.m. Students have begun returning to some Florida university campuses as the state reports its lowest number of new daily cases in more than a month.

Classes for new students started Monday at Stetson University. Students moved into dormitories over the weekend at the DeLand campus as well as at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

In Orange County, public school students started the school year with two-weeks of online learning. At the end of the month, they will get to choose between continuing with virtual learning or going to in-person classes.

Meanwhile, Florida reported 4,155 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the smallest daily caseload increase since the end of June.

11:56 a.m. The number of day-to-day increases in new COVID-19 infections in Italy dropped significantly on Monday. But frequently numbers provided by the Health Ministry on Mondays tend to be on the low side, reflecting often incomplete reports from regional public health offices during the weekend.

Still, the 259 cases nationwide registered in the 24-hour period ending on Monday evening was a steep decrease from the 463 infections registered on Sunday.

Outstripping northern Lombardy, the region which had by far suffered the brunt of the pandemic, were Emilia-Romagna, also in the north, and Lazio, the south-central region which includes Rome.

Lazio health authorities said at least nine of its latest 38 cases were confirmed in tourists who returned from vacations on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Spains Ibiza. Sicily and Puglia, two southern Italian regions popular for its beaches, also registered more cases than in Lombardy.

11:56 a.m. The incoming president of the United Nations General Assembly has praised Pakistan for quickly containing the coronavirus, saying the South Asian nations handling of the pandemic is a good example for the world.

The Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir made his comment Monday at a news conference in the capital, Islamabad.

Bozkir was recently elected as the president of the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Upon his arrival in Islamabad, he met with the countrys prime minister, Imran Khan, who wants international financial institutions and rich nations to give a debt relief to poor countries whose economies have badly been affected by the new virus.

Bozkirs visit comes amid a steady decline in COVID-19 deaths and infections in Pakistan.

Pakistan reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus in February and in March it imposed a nationwide lockdown, which has gradually been lifted in recent weeks. Pakistan on Monday reported 15 fatalities from coronavirus in the past 24 hours, raising its total COVID-19-related fatalities to 6,097.

11:56 a.m. Veterans who werent given military funeral rights when they were buried during the coronavirus pandemic have been given a final salute at the Fargo National Cemetery.

United Patriotic Bodies and Fargo Honor Guard volunteers were at the cemetery Saturday when three rifle volleys were fired and taps were played individually for 14 different families of veterans.

United Patriotic Bodies Cmdr. Jason Hicks says the salute is an honour and a duty to those who sacrificed for their country.

Gary Varberg came to the cemetery to honour his brother, Roger Nelson. KVLY-TV reported that the two served in Iraq together and decades in the National Guard.

Nelson was just one of the many veterans who wasnt given military rights and honours when he was buried during the global pandemic.

This means we get to say our final goodbye to our brothers and sisters, Fargo Honor Guard Chaplain Russel Stabler said.

11:56 a.m. The family of a fourth worker who died from the coronavirus during an outbreak at Tyson Foods largest pork processing plant is suing the company over his death.

The lawsuit says that Isidro Fernandez, of Waterloo, Iowa, died April 26 from complications of COVID-19, leaving behind a wife and children.

The lawsuit is similar to one filed in June by the same lawyers on behalf of the estates of three other deceased Waterloo employees.

The lawsuits allege Tyson put employees at risk by downplaying concerns and covering up the outbreak to keep them on the job. They allege the company failed to implement safety measures, allowed some sick and exposed employees to keep working, and falsely assured the public that the plant was safe.

Link:

Today's coronavirus news: NHL reports no positive tests in first two weeks in Edmonton, Toronto; Global COVID-19 cases expected to hit 20 million this...

Julian Bond and Bayard Rustin at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Getty / Bettmann)

In May of 1969, Ebony magazine ran a profile of Julian Bond, the activist and civil rights leader who had recently been reelected to the Georgia House of Representatives. With the United States mere weeks away from putting a man on the moon and the war in Vietnam still raging, the magazine wanted to take stock of where Black America found itself at the end of the decade. It was a moment of both retrospection about the civil rights movement and excitement about what the future held for African American politics. Yet Bond had been fighting for freedom and justice for more than a decade, and it showed. Ebonys David Llorens wrote, Attractive cat that he is, Julian Bond looks tired.1Ad Policy Books in Review

The profile sought to examine what it meant for a radical stalwart, struggling against a broken system from the outside, to become a politician struggling to effect change from within it. Bonds shift from protest to politics, as Bayard Rustin put it in an article earlier in the decade, was a measure of how far the movement had changed Southern society. That Bond was one of the first Black people to serve in the Georgia legislature generations after Reconstruction was also a measure of how much further the nation as a whole had to go.2

After describing Bonds work as a state representative, his speaking tours at colleges, and his deepening involvement in the Democratic Party as its New Deal coalition started to unravel, Llorens moved on to discuss the twin pillars of pride and ambivalence that supported Bonds new role. These were the same pillars that held up the aspirations and fears of so many African Americans in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement. As Llorens wrote, Julian Bond, as a politician, represents hope for the freedom of black people, but it was a hope entirely dependent upon the possibility that white people are capable of a humane and non-racist America. For Llorens, this hope was real and somewhat tangible. But as he noted at the end of the passage, it depended on a radical change in the thought and action of white Americanssomething that in 1969 still appeared far off because of a continuation of the backlash politics that had defined American political, social, cultural, and intellectual discourse ever since Reconstruction.3

That mix of felt urgency and anxious uncertainty about how much change could be made in American society would define Bonds efforts for much of his career. His time in office, like his time as an activist, would be characterized by both his hopes for greater social equality and the continuing need to fight for such change when these hopes were too often thwarted. This tension was central to nearly all of his writing, much of which is now collected in a new book, Race Man, edited by the historian Michael G. Long.4

Race Man captures the full output of Bonds long and distinguished career, first as an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, then as a member of the Georgia legislature (in the House and later in the Senate), then as a traveling academic who taught about his experiences in the social upheavals of the 60s, and finally as a writer and aging lion of the civil rights movement still fighting to hold on to the ideals of his youth. Along the way, the book also makes clear a set of themes and quandaries that have troubled so much of the history of the American left: What is lost in the movement from protest to politics? How can lasting change be achieved in the face of unsatisfying compromise? How can radicals and activists carry the torch of emancipation and equality in an age in which both major parties and many voters appear, at best, apathetic to meaningful change and, at worst, downright hostile to it?5

Bonds years as an activist also offer a guide through the intellectual and political history of the left in the second half of the 20th century. As Long argues in his introduction, Bonds importance to the history of the United States and the American left in particular is nearly impossible to overestimate today. Very few Americans, he writes, had sought more consistently and doggedly to establish solid connections between the black civil rights movement and the many progressive movements it sometimes unpredictably inspired.6

Julian Bond was born in 1940 in Nashville. His father, Horace Mann Bond, was the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia and later became the first Black president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, both historically Black institutions. While serving as a college president, Horace Bond participated in the intellectual ferment of the World War II and early Cold War years. He did considerable research to support the NAACPs arguments in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 and served as a prominent civil rights advocate during the period. The elder Bonds participation in the rarefied world of African American educators and intellectuals meant that his son was exposed to many of the leaders of Black America from an early age. A famous image of Julian Bond as a young boy, for example, shows him side by side with the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson. The photograph itself is a testament to the intergenerational links between the different civil rights cohorts.7Current Issue

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Yet Bonds early exposure to the intellectual creativity and political activism of Black America would hardly shield him from the racism and violence spawned by white supremacy. In the Jim Crow South, Bond saw racism and discrimination all around hima radicalizing experience that never left him, even after he and his family moved to Pennsylvania when his father became the head of Lincoln University. Bonds growing politicization throughout the 50s was only deepened by his years at the George School, a prep school founded by Quakers, where he began to develop his long-term fascination with pacifism.8

In 1957, Bond returned to Georgia to attend Morehouse College. Long a hotbed of Black struggle and uplift, the school helped launch his career in civil rights activism. He met Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 while at Morehouse, and that year he cofounded, with fellow student Lonnie King, the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights, which eventually led to his involvement in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond immediately understood the significance of SNCC and the role that students could play in expanding the civil rights movement. The younger generation of Black Americans was ready to use new tactics to fight for the kind of social change their parents and grandparents sought in previous eras. Reflecting on the rise of these new organizations, Bond wrote, The struggle for human rights is a constant fight, and one which the students do not plan to relinquish until full equality is won for all men.9

Against the backdrop of African nations declaring their independence abroad and civil rights agitation growing at home, 1960 saw a wave of sit-ins, starting in Greensboro, N.C. Four students at North Carolina A&T, a Black college, decided to stage a sit-in, adopting the tactics of nonviolent direct action already being used by various civil rights organizations. Word of the sit-ins spread across the South, spurring even more sit-ins as well as Bonds participation in Atlanta. Why dont we make it happen here? Lonnie King said to Bond in February 1960. That brief conversation, between two young men who yearned to be part of the great moral and political issue of their age, sparked Bonds lifelong service to the movement.10

Bond participated in the sit-ins in Atlanta that year and in a whirlwind series of campaigns across the South as the communications director of SNCC. Leaving Morehouse to dedicate himself to this work full-time, Bond, like many other young Black Americans, accepted that he would have to relinquish the comforts of the college campus and risk life and limb in the fire of activism. At this time, he began to think in broader terms about the idea of human rights, looking beyond Americas shores to recognize the violence and oppression that the country inflicted on various peoples of color elsewherean internationalism that he would soon marry to his domestic egalitarianism.11Related Article

By the mid-60s, after five years of working with SNCC, Bond began to grow frustrated. While he recognized the changing nature of struggle, he had always imagined SNCC as an organization that would embrace everyone, and he became worried about its increasingly separatist politics. I didnt like the direction it seemed to be taking, he recalled, especially as SNCC embraced the idea of becoming an exclusively Black organization.12

Despite Bonds ambivalence about SNCCs separatist turn, the organization continued to exert a major influence on his life, especially with its anti-imperialist politics in the middle of the decade. SNCC denounced the Vietnam War, and Bond grew increasingly active in anti-war efforts. He also began to consider running for office. In early 1965, Rustin made his appeal to civil rights activists to turn from protest to politics, arguing that the problems they would continue to face, even after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, required more than demonstrations. By then, Bond was preparing a run for the Georgia House of Representatives, and he was joined by the many different strands of the Black freedom strugglethe mainstream civil rights movement, Black nationalists, and the growing number of African Americans active in the Democratic Partythat were also making the move.13

After his election, Bond found himself at a curious intersection of local, national, and international politics when the state House refused to seat him because he had endorsed SNCCs anti-war stance. SNCC, Martin Luther King Jr., and other activists rallied to defend Bonds right to represent his constituency in Atlanta. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled, 90, in Bond v. Floyd that his right to free speech had been violated by the state Houses vote to deny him a seat.14

After Bond became a legislator, he found that more of his peers were following in his footsteps. People like John Lewis, Marion Barry, and Jim Clyburn, after years in the streets demanding change, were now running for office as they sought to secure and extend the gains they had helped win. It seemed the logical next step, even if the change that could be achieved in state legislatures sometimes appeared small compared with what could be done at the federal level. And yet, as Llorens wrote in Ebony, that kind of work mattered as well: Basic services like streetlights, garbage removal, sewage, repairing roads, and draining water from flooded basements were some of the things we need as Julian sees it, and he takes pride in being able to use his political weight to deliver them. Those are things my constituents werent always able to get in the past, he says. Nor are most of his constituents, whoare victims of poverty, apt to forget the water removed or the street repaired.15

The essays in Race Man nicely illustrate this trajectory from college activist to elected official (and beyond). Broken into 10 sections, the book traces Bonds political formation throughout these periods of his life. The problems of white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and misogyny were his fights throughout, even if they all changed shape. From the struggle against Jim Crow to the battle for LGBTQ rights, he remained convinced that it was necessary to agitate on behalf of the powerless outside the halls of power, but as he got older, he became convinced one had to do it from inside them as well. Whether as an activist struggling for voting rights or as a politician in the Georgia legislature redrawing district boundaries, Bond insisted that only through a combination of movements and policy could social change be achieved.16

Bonds essays capture the intellectual world that inspired him and that he helped inspire in turn. Though dedicated to egalitarian politics, he often found himself in heated debate with other elements of the left. This was especially true in the late 60s, as the hope of nonviolent civil disobedience peacefully changing American society began to buckle under the strain of Vietnam, the half-hearted War on Poverty, and the ever-present specter of white backlash. The rise of the Black power movement offered Bond and other civil rights activists a unique challenge: They embraced many key components of this more radical turn but also struggled to find their way among its constituency, one that increasingly seemed to view the gains they had won as limited and incomplete.17

Of course, in many ways those gains were incomplete, and reading Bonds response to his more radical contemporaries, one can see that he might have missed how their militant spiritnot to mention their ability to continue to find common cause with social movements all over the worldhelped, in the long run, to solidify the reforms he and his colleagues had won. An example of this is seen in his writings about South Africa and the growing movement to divest from the apartheid state, in which Bond sounded far more like his more radical peers. There is an inseparable connection between black Africa and black America, he argued in 1978 while participating in a protest against a Davis Cup match between the United States and South Africa in Nashville. This was not a coincidence: After all, Bond was also in pursuit of an equality far greater than the federal government was willing to offer, and the civil rights liberalism that their protest spawned was, in their view, only the beginning, not the end point. Likewise, Bond, who hewed steadfastly to pacifism early in his public life, also began to doubt, with his more radical colleagues, its efficacy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and while he lauded the achievements of the sit-ins, he came to recognize the clear limits of early civil rights activism. Indeed, that was one of the reasons he turned to electoral politics.18

Bonds ambivalence about the growing radicalism of SNCC was also rooted in his desire for more concrete action. Intimately aware of the organizations internal discord, he concluded that it had become mired at times in what he called too much democracy and a lack of decision-making by its leaders. He did not appear to question SNCCs democratic goals, but he felt that by 1967 its leadership was no longer taking responsibility for the groups decisions, in terms of both immediate tactics and long-term strategies.19

One policy change in particular frustrated him: the separatism that no longer sought to build a multiracial membership in SNCC. Bond opposed this separatism on principle as well as for practical reasons, writing in 1967 that it would lead to near unanimous condemnation and cause SNCC activists to narrow the scope of their activities, effectively contained by their own unwillingness to trust the outside world. For Bond, part of the lesson of the 60s was that activism alone was not enough; one had to have a programmatic plan of action for both grassroots organizing and building political power in the face of rampant white backlash.20 MORE FROM Robert Greene II

Once in office, that was exactly what Bond attempted to do. He wanted to find a way around the dead end that movement politics appeared to face in the late 60s and the political weaknesses of white liberal complacency in the early 70s. While serving in the Georgia legislature, he amassed a national reputation, and by 1972, he began contributing serious ideas to the political ferment of that era.21

Bond participated in the discussions across the South that led to the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Ind. His criticism of both the American left and mainstream liberalism grew more pointed as the decade progressed, when he repeatedly expressed his deep ambivalenceif not outright hostilitytoward the presidential campaign and then presidency of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. Southern Baptists are fond of saying that prayer changes things, Bond wrote. Jimmy Carters religiosity has certainly had that effect on him, in fact has changed him from left to right to center so many times that converts to the Carter cause ought to take a cue from an earlier apostle, Thomas, who doubted. In the end, Bond was one of the few mainstream Black civil rights activists turned politicians who refused to back Carter during his 1976 run.22

For Bond, Carters candidacyas well as his backing by so many prominent African Americanswas less a betrayal than a reminder of how weak the Black vote was as a bloc within or, if need be, outside the Democratic Party. American politics has always been group politics, Bond wrote in 1977, during the first year of Carters administration, and Black movements and politicians needed to embrace this fact and form a cohesive electoral faction.23

Bonds arguments mirrored those put forth a decade earlier in the book Black Power by Charles V. Hamilton and the future Kwame Ture about the necessity for independent political action, now applied to electoral politics. And he was not wrong, either. During Reconstruction, Southern Black men formed the backbone of the Republican Party below the Mason-Dixon Line and thus wielded considerable power. During the New Deal era, both major parties sought Black voters while carefully trying to not antagonize pro-segregation white Southerners. In the 70s, with the New Right on the rise and liberalismas well as the broader ideas of social democracyunder threat across the Western world, Bond believed it was more urgent than ever for Black Americans to acquire sustained political power. The sooner we realize the difference between elections and governing, the better able well be to form ourselves into a political bloc, he wrote.24

This came, ironically, after Bond argued in 1972 that coalition politics always weakens at least one partner in the coalition rather than strengthens both partners (a fear Hamilton and Ture also voiced). Such questions, of course, are still with us, especially concerning the direction of the Democratic Party and whether it has taken generations of Black voters for granted.25

One of the advantages of Race Man is that instead of shuffling Bonds writings together by theme, Long presents them in chronological order so we can chart Bonds evolution as well as his consistency. We can see his thinking change over time on a wide variety of topicssometimes dramaticallyand while we can see the shifts in his tactics and strategies, we also see just how consistent his principles remained. However, the books chronological structure slightly overdetermines Bonds changes: We lose sight of the complicated nature of the broader civil rights and Black power movements, and at times it can be difficult to situate his arguments in the context of national politics and international tumult. From almost the outset of his career, Bond was writing from within the milieu of a Black freedom movement that inspired and was inspired by other movements in pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality elsewhere in the world.26

This is why Bonds seamless movement from domestic campaigns to international policy mirrored a broader awareness among Black Americans of the need to get more involved in global affairs. It was also why there were sometimes moments of fierce friction, as displayed in the arguments Bond had in the 70s with the growing environmental movement. Pleading with its champions to look past a narrow politics of conservation and local resistance, he insisted, much like climate change activists today, that environmental pollution is only a symptom of the moral and political pollution at its core. Long before industrial filth fouled the rivers, lakes, and air of this continent, the bitter salt of slaves sweat and tears soured the [once] fertile soil and the blood of noble red men soaked the fields and plains.27

Bonds insistence that the environmental movements rhetoric about a ticking population bomb was equally misguided anticipated the birth of a more diverse and robust movement that sought to think more systemically about environmental problems. The growth of the environmental justice movement in the 70s and 80sa Blacker, poorer relative of the better-known movement that spawned Earth Day in 1970ameliorated Bonds fears by tapping into long-held concerns by Black Americans and others about the relationships between racism, land ownership, and environmental waste. This more sophisticated environmentalism also drew Bond into its movement, and he got arrested in 2013 at the White House while protesting the Keystone XL pipeline alongside members of the Sierra Club and in defiance of the nations first Black president.28

Bond was likewise concerned about a growing disconnect between activists and ordinary people in the 1970s. As Black power gave way to a Black liberalism safely ensconced in the Democratic Party, he continued to wonder if activists had lost their way. It suggests that the supposed and alleged security of the college campus is not the proper place from which to engage in social criticism of people who seldom see any book but the Bible from year to year, he warned, critiquing what he saw as an activism that had become too comfortable in the ivory tower, far removed from the everyday needs of working people.29

By the late 70s and early 80s, Bond had become, for many Americans, an avatar of the civil rights movement and its legacy. He lent his voice to the groundbreaking miniseries Eyes on the Prize, serving as a one-man Greek chorus for the now-iconic struggle. He hosted an early episode of Saturday Night Live, cementing his status as a national public figure. But there was an increasing sense that Bond had failed to live up to his early promise on the political stage and that as his celebrity grew, so did his distance from his constituents in Georgia. In a bruising 1986 race for the US House of Representatives that pitted him against his friend and colleague from the civil rights movement John Lewis, Bond was criticized for having lost his way. Rumors that he used drugs were whispered about in Atlanta and were blown wide open when Lewis challenged him to a drug test. I love Julian like a brother, Lewis said in a 1990 profile of the two men in Atlanta magazine. But he fumbled the ball. He had unbelievable opportunities. He just didnt take advantage.30

Part of what hurt Bonds campaign, as The New York Times pointed out after his defeat, was the concern that his thousands of speaking engagements and television appearances elsewhere hampered his ability to be an effective voice in the Georgia Senate. That lost him the trust and goodwill he needed to win what turned out to be his toughestand finalpolitical campaign. After the election, Bond accepted teaching positions at several distinguished institutions, including Harvard and American University, and he reflected on the charge that he had failed to live up to his potential as the man who could have been the nations first Black vice president, perhaps even its first Black president. I cant do what other people want me to do, he said. Im absolutely content and fulfilled right now [teaching and lecturing]. Its enough for me. Im confused as to why its not enough for anyone else.31

Bond remained active in left political circles for the rest of his life, and he continued to consider how one could be radical and yet work within the system, sounding the alarm during George W. Bushs and Barack Obamas presidencies on a range of issues, especially the erosion of voting rights and the need to fight for LGBTQ rights.32

It is difficult to imagine a thorough history of the American left after 1960 that doesnt include Bond and the many roles he played: as a communications director for SNCC, as a state legislator for 20 years, as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a position he assumed in 1971), as the voice that millions of people associated with the civil rights movement thanks to Eyes on the Prize, and as an elder statesman of the movement before his death in 2015. His balancing act between radicalism and reform, between movements and party politics, still speaks to the divides and the cohesiveness of the left. Fighting for freedom in the streets, in the classrooms, and in the halls of power was all part of Bonds tool kit. Reading his essays, we are reminded that the challenges of forging a principled yet practical path forward are nothing newand that Bond is someone who might serve as a guide in our own uncertain times. We cannot be afraid of difficult debates or of changing tactics when necessary. Julian Bond proved that, time and time again.33

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Julian Bonds Life in Protest and Politics - The Nation

A grand temple to Lord Ramachandra in his birthplace, Ayodhya, should be cause for celebration and reverence, rather than politics and polemics. The return of Sri Rama to rule the city of his birth after a long vanvaas, banishment, of 14 years. His defeat of the evil Ravana, who had abducted his wife, Sita. And his reign as the righteous ruler. All these are etched into the very soul of India and the fabric of its eternal consciousness, which we call Sanatana Dharma.

Nor is the narrative of this maryada purushottama, embodiment of rectitude, virtuous monarch endowed with all good qualities, praised by humans and Gods, unknown outside India. The Ramayana story, in its hundreds of versions, has influenced the entire region where Indian culture flourished in the days of yore. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Korea, Japan. And in more recent times, because the Tulsi Ramayana was so much a part of the interiorised survival toolkit of the girmitiyas, our diaspora of labour, the legend of King Rama spread to even more distant parts of the world, from Suriname to Fiji.

From the dying syllables of mahatmas like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to the ubiquitous chant that accompanies the already dead on their last journey to the cremation ground and beyond, the name of Rama, some have claimed, is greater than the god-hero himself. The mantra of Sri Rama Jai Rama Jai Jai Rama, credited to Samarth Ramdas, the guru of Shivaji, also links Rama to our struggle for svarajya, freedom from bondage and slavery. When all else fails, we say nirbal ke bal RamaRama is the strength of the weak. Only Rama.

Thats all you need. Rama nama, the name of Rama is the tarak mantra, the surety of safe passage across the treacherous seas of samsara. Rama, thus, is not just a person, real or legendary, but another name for the Supreme Consciousness itself. What better way to return to his capital, Ayodhya, the city of eternal peace, for this great symbol of Indian unity, truth and moral perfection, than through a non-violent, constitutional resolution of the dispute over the shrine commemorating his place of birth? What then of the destruction of the Babri Masjid?

Yes, it was brought down, but it was one mosque as opposed to the thousands upon thousands of temples, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh, ravaged by Islamic conquerors. Have Islamists uttered one word of apology or regret for so much destruction, an entire people, culture, civilisation oppressed and brought almost to extinction? All is justified, still vaunted, by its more extremist proponents.A grand temple to Lord Rama in Ayodhya! An aspiration fulfilled after nearly 500 years of prayers. A movement spearheaded some three decades ago, in independent India, at last coming to fruition. Who would object to it? But such is the contentious nature of our public culture that you will find a headline such as Ram, I will not find you there, shouting at you. But, then, why should it surprise you at all?

Even if its author is Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a respected and learned liberal champion, known both for his courage and good sense. Of course, he is entitled to his opinion. Thats not the point. The question is, what is the basis for his assertion? So, a closer look is called for. The author says, Ram is enough. No need for Sri as a prefix, let alone Jai, or victory. Sri or Siya stands for Ramas spouse, Shakti, or, more specifically Goddess Lakshmi, since Rama is considered an avatar of Vishnu.

The conjoint address of Sri Rama or Siya Rama thus includes his female aspect, like Radha Krishna or Sambashiva (sah-Amba-Shiva, the Lord with his consort, the Divine Mother), typical of Hindu modes of understanding, in which God is the Shiva-Shakti or Yin-Yang compound of Absolute Reality. As Supreme Spirit, formless and timeless, Rama, of course, is everywhere. So how can he not be found in Ayodhya? The notion is metaphysically and theologically preposterous. As the RSS Sarsanghachalak, Mohan Rao Bhagwat, said in his consecration address, Rama resides not just in Ayodhya, but in our manmandir, the temple of our mind and heart.

What commenced in Ayodhya on August 5 was thus an external manifestation or realisation of the temple to Rama already within. How can we then say that Rama should only remain inside, but never be given a proper habitation he so richly deserves in his own city? Is the only good Hindu one who externally and compulsorily appears non-Hindu, who always passively and helplessly complies to the destruction of the symbols of his faith, never having the courage to defend it?

Nobody has waged war in Ramas name. Using specious constitutional arguments to gloss over the terrible history of devastation and violencenearly a thousand years of war and misrule against the very ethos of the landis only a sad testimony to our own hypocrisy and denial. Lets not be such bad losers, dear Le-Lis! The restoration of Lord Rama to his city was effected through judicial means, not street fights or armies of vandals. Come! Ayodhya invites us all to pay homage to the Lord on his triumphant return. Even Mehta, whose version of Rama differs from mine, is most welcome.

Makarand RParanjapeDirector, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Views are personal(Tweets @MakrandParanspe)

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Sri Rama: Back to Ayodhya - The New Indian Express

Algonquin wolves can be legally killed in many parts of Ontario PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Harming dogs is a criminal act in Ontario, but shooting wolves is a sport. And while animal welfare legislation was recently strengthened, protection for Algonquin wolves could soon be set back if the government invokes changes made last year to the Endangered Species Act.

When Ontario shut down in March, resources rightly focused on public health. By then, however, the government was already far behind on its obligation to protect and recover the Algonquin wolf. Listed as threatened on June 15, 2016, the law at the time required immediate protection and mandated a formal Algonquin wolf recovery plan within two years.

The previous Liberal government protected hotspots, but exempted areas in between. Then in January 2018, they posted a draft recovery strategy for public comment, followed by a request for more time to review feedback. While we waited, Ontario elected a new Conservative premier.

A year later, the new government passed Bill 108, the More Homes, More Choice Act into law, revising the Endangered Species Act with amendments that impede wildlife conservation.

The changes privilege development over habitat protection, extend the timeline for a government response to listing recommendations to up to five years, undermine the expertise of scientists and allow the environment minister to bypass legal protection for species and their habitat when its convenient.

For Algonquin wolves, the ongoing government delay allows hunting and trapping to continue and raises concerns that the government could ignore science-based recommendations in favour of organizations that lobby against wolf hunting bans. There is precedent.

In August 2019, the government proposed easing restrictions on grey wolf and coyote hunting in Northern Ontario to protect moose. The move was based on recommendations from a government-appointed Big Game Management Advisory Committee made up of hunters, trappers and commercial outfitters.

The proposal ignores the work of research scientists who say this will do little to improve moose numbers, and disregards issues of habitat, disease and climate change. Notably, the previous government rejected the same proposal due to lack of scientific evidence.

Algonquin wolves face an uncertain future primarily because they can be legally shot and trapped in many parts of Ontario. In most unprotected corridors, certified hunters can shoot two wolves between September 15 and March 31 with a small game license and a wolf tag. In others, it is open season all year. No tags required.

This harsh truth often comes as a shock to many. Especially since fewer than 1,000 mature Algonquin wolves remain and half are in Ontario. Most are within central Ontarios provincial parks, including Algonquin and Killarney. Beyond that, protected areas are patchy and separated by swaths of land where wolves often meet their demise at the hands of humans.

As a case in point, when captive wolves escaped from the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre into an unprotected corridor on New Years Day in 2013, the outcome was quick and predictable. Within 24 hours someone shot two of the four and left them to die. The fate of the others remains unknown, but their chances were slim. A wealth of research shows that beyond protected areas more wolves die from hunting and trapping than from all other causes combined.

Thats why the draft Algonquin wolf recovery strategy recommends connecting protected areas across central Ontario to create an Algonquin Wolf Recovery Zone. But the process remains, inexplicably, in limbo.

Algonquin wolves are unique to Canada because they have a distinctive genetic signature. Why is that important? Think of it like saving money for a rainy day, except the wolves currency is genetic variation and the rainy day is climate change. Species depend on genetic variation to protect them against unexpected upheavals in their environment. Fewer animals means less variation and higher risk of extinction.

The Algonquin wolf has at its core a unique North American wolf genome (the eastern Canadian wolf), with some genetic signal from coyotes and, to a lesser extent, grey wolves.

Their evolutionary history places them alongside coyotes, solely within North America. Grey wolves, on the other hand, migrated to North America from Eurasia thousands of years ago.

In 2018, a team of international researchers analyzed the largest dataset to date on Algonquin wolves. The conclusion? Algonquin wolves unique genomic composition and their fragmented protection in central Ontario make them a conservation priority.

A significant challenge, however, is a common misunderstanding of how science defines species. Some people protest that Algonquin wolves are just hybrids a made-up species that doesnt warrant conservation. By that logic, humans must also be a fiction because we have bits of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genome.

Advances in genome sequencing have revolutionized our understanding of how species interact and evolve. Interbreeding between closely related species creates mixed genomes in a wide array of plants and animals. Hybrid origins is the new normal.

We need wolves. They help maintain the natural order of ecosystems. Their presence improves the health of deer populations by weeding out the old and sick, and prevents the widespread destruction of plant life that sustains the biodiversity we rely on for goods (such as medicine) and services (such as tourism).

At the same time, wolves like dogs nurture our spirit and improve our well-being simply by being there. They represent and protect what environmentalists, First Nations, conservation scientists and hunters alike may value most: untamed and untouched wilderness.

Yet Ontarios hunting and trapping organizations continue to lobby for relaxed wolf harvest regulations and seek to discredit recommendations of the recovery strategy.

But researchers first flagged Algonquin wolves as distinct just 20 years ago, at which point hunting, wolf culls and bounties had already taken their toll. Beyond reducing numbers, intensive hunting exacerbates hybridization with coyotes and the current population size equates to dangerously low levels of genetic potential.

Many people including many hunters question wolf hunting on ethical grounds. Wolves are not food, so researchers Chris Darimont and Paul Paquet from the University of Victoria argue that wolf hunting regulations in this country are embarrassingly out of step with societal values. They suggest that attempts to legitimize trophy and sport hunting use a smokescreen of scientific wildlife management. Public opinion polls in British Columbia support that claim.

After a 2007 update, Ontarios Endangered Species Act was one of the strongest pieces of legislation in North America. It has since been diluted for convenience and short-sighted economic gains, first by the Liberal government in 2013 and again in 2019 by the current Conservative government.

Premier Doug Fords response to the COVID-19 pandemic was impressive in large part because it relied on independent research and was resolutely non-partisan. Its this type of foresight and resolve that will be needed to save Algonquin wolves. In the end, all voices need to be heard, but science should prevail.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The erosion of Ontario's Endangered Species Act threatens iconic Algonquin wolf - CanadianManufacturing.com

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Secularism, however one defines it, is in crisis. But the bigger worry is the tendency to find scapegoats for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs dominance in polity. The latest target is the English elite. The proposition is that the RSS has succeeded because it communicates with people in Indian languages they understand; whereas the English-speaking liberal intellectuals have failed to connect with people.

While a contemptuous hierarchy does often exist between English and other languages, which has twisted the literary-academic discourse, the above proposition is flawed and problematic. It disproportionately grants more power to the English intelligentsia than they actually possess, and more responsibility than they should fulfill. The English-speaking elite do enjoy great clout, but if you move away from capitals and big metro cities, you would find that while English does generate awe, its influence gradually weans away and the native languages come to determine mainstream discourse.

The Op-eds written by eminent liberals in English newspapers, and acclaimed books on social sciences and history find little echo in smaller cities, towns, and villages. I lived in a state capital, Raipur, for over four years, reporting for The Indian Express. The reports of a national newspaper did occasionally stir the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi, but they ruffled few feathers in towns like Sukma or Surguja in Chhattisgarh. The narrative on the ground, I soon came to learn, is mostly set by local Hindi media.

Also read: Secularism gave up language of religion. Ayodhya bhoomi pujan is a result of that

Political activist Yogendra Yadavs recent attack on the English elite, in which he wrote that secularism was defeated because its custodians disavowed our languages, is partially correct insofar the disavowal is concerned. But it is otherwise erroneous. First, it wrongly assumes that those who write in English are the only custodians of secularism. The duty to build a secular society in a multicultural nation doesnt rest with the practitioners of any one language, whatever power the language may enjoy. The English community does need to communicate with other languages, but the need for this is as vital as it is for, say, Hindi or Bengali intelligentsia to reach out to those who speak Kannada or Malayalam or Manipuri, and vice versa. Various languages are expected to be in a conversation with each other in a multilingual society.

Cultural critic Mathew Arnold once wrote that to be a good English critic one needs to learn English, at least one contemporary European language, the classical European languages of Greek and Roman, as well as Eastern antiquity, that is Sanskrit or Chinese.

Each language carries with it a distinct cultural code. Several languages working together at various planes restrict the formation of an authoritarian centre. A thriving linguistic diversity is a natural hedge against political-cultural authoritarianism, just like a vibrant religious diversity is.

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One of the reasons secularism is in crisis today is because although India boasts of being a multilingual society, we have stopped producing bilingual, let alone multilingual, writers in the last few decades. Many Indian writers born before Independence were effortless polyglots, but the eminent ones from the last few decades seem cocooned in their own languages. Surprisingly, as well as ironically, writers of a multilingual nation find little intellectual stimulation to work in more than one language. It cannot be a mere coincidence that the shrinking of the bilingual space has coincided with the surge of the Hindutva project.

Also read: The mother tongue fanatics are keeping India a poor, backward country

The second reason why I disagree with Yogendra Yadavs hypothesis is that one must move beyond English and question the role of writers in various other languages to nourish secularism. I will confine my argument to Hindi, the language whose inner politics, literature, and media I am familiar with. Apart from being the first language of nearly ten states, the Hindi-speaking zone is also from where the RSS has reaped its richest harvest.

First, the print media. For several decades after Independence, there were formidable Hindi publications like Dharmyug, Saptahik Hindustan, Sarika, Dinman that were headed by people of high calibre and integrity. All these publications were shut down around the 1980s-90s again no coincidence the phase that also saw the explosion of Hindutva politics. The last standing beacon was Prabhash Joshi and his newspaper Jansatta, which gradually lost its armoury after his death.

At present, almost every major Hindi newspaper enjoys a higher readership than an English daily, and has writers and poets at senior positions. Under their editorial watch, these Hindi publications have been compromised at various levels of functioning, much before the English media and the Hindi electronic media began to take a nosedive. Despite massive circulation and advertisement revenues, Hindi print media has invested very little in original reporting, happily rehashing copies from wire agencies or translating stories from its sister publications in English. The Hindi weekly of the behemoth media network India Today is mostly a translation of its English counterpart, week after week. I didnt hear any protest within or outside the newsroom as these prestigious publications capitulated to political and market pressure.

In fact, the Hindi media had begun undergoing a transformation during the Ram Mandir movement in the late 1980s. While English publications called the demolition of Babri Masjid a national shame, several Hindi dailies like Dainik Aaj were euphoric. The papers circulation shot up in Uttar Pradesh in no time, but the Hindi literati could not counter it. If you analyse Hindi dailies of the last six years, you cant help but ask where are the columns and essays of dissenters who speak the language of the masses? When several English dailies ran Op-eds supporting the #MeToo movement in 2018, eminent Hindi newspapers questioned the protesting women and often lent credence to the version of the accused.

Also read: This Hindi book on Indian secularism could have exposed liberals, but it was ignored

The state of Hindi academia is another sorry tale with its track record of negligible work in social sciences, a fact that the Hindi world laments over almost daily, but has not found a way to course correct. Of late, Facebook has added another layer to the smugness of the Hindi world. A large number of Hindi writers are seen writing cheesy posts and one-liners against the BJP government. But there is little attempt to seriously engage with the issue. Abhay Kumar Dubeys recent work, Hindu-Ekta Banam Gyan ki Rajniti, is among the very few exceptions. It is a book that underlines how the secular liberal failed to grasp the transformation within the RSS.

The only sphere in which the Hindi language has excelled is its literary output. There have been an impressive number of poets and fiction writers in the last 70 years, several of them undoubtedly greats. But such is the bitterly divided world that the dominant Left lobby takes no time dubbing someone reactionary over slightest differences. A little love for Indian classical music, arts, or Sanskrit texts quickly earns an epithet of regressive. Even somebody like poet and literary critic Ashok Vajpeyi, who is among the voices who have been consistently writing against the current establishment, has faced bitter accusations by the progressives for decades. (Disclaimer: I have often been termed a Right-winger in the Hindi circle.)

Consider another instance of Hindis smugness. In the early 1980s, when Bhopal was becoming the capital of the Hindi literati and a major centre for various arts, the Naxals made their first entry into Bastar from Andhra Pradesh. Police officers posted in Bastar sent nervous alerts to their political and bureaucratic bosses in Bhopal. At that time, Bhopal was hosting some of the worlds finest poets and artistes, all of them led by Madhya Pradeshs Hindi literati. But they had little time for the Naxal issue. In 1999, the Naxals chopped sitting minister Likhiram Kawre into pieces at his Balaghat home, but the insurgency still left no mark on Bhopals literary consciousness.

The poor intellectual engagement of the Hindi world with two major political issues in their very own backyard Hindutva politics and Naxal insurgency is appalling. Ever since the 1970s, Naxalism has been spreading in Hindi-speaking states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. And yet, few Hindi writers have engaged with the issue. If the government announces talks with the Maoists, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel may not find any Hindi writer with some understanding of the issue, from his state, or even his erstwhile state Madhya Pradesh, to become an interlocutor. Compare this with the vibrant intelligentsia in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, who often formed a buffer zone between the state and the insurgents when the two states faced regular violence.

The writer community that misses no opportunity to stake claim for the national language status for Hindi, which is also the first language of some half of Lok Sabha MPs, has failed to lead in two prime spheres media and intelligentsia.

Secularism in India faced its earliest defeat because the land where the first and the most decisive battle began, the Hindi heartland, failed to grasp the challenge. Because the Hindi intelligentsia, with all its reach and resources, couldnt communicate with people. Because they couldnt anticipate and prevent their region from turning into a project of the Sangh Parivar.

The author is an independent journalist. His recent book, The Death Script, traces the Naxal insurgency. Views are personal.

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Dont blame only English elite. Indian secularism failed in Hindi heartland first - ThePrint

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We do not need this CSG from Narrabri as there is a glut of gas with many tankers waiting to unload gas and nowhere to go. Also, the federal government wants us, on the east coast, to pay twice the price of any other country as there is no domestic reserve. More gas will not make it any cheaper for us. - Felicity Davis, Bayview

Is it our short electoral cycles that produce such pathetic short-termism in our own national and state policies? ("Business to PM: invest for sustainable revival", August 10). Science says urgently reduce carbon emissions for our very survival. Surely then, the only solution to the short-termism of the Narrabri gas proposal is to transform the national cabinet into a war cabinet, have federal and state government, opposition leaders and scientists all work together to fulfil our Paris climate commitments? Business is on side, the community is on side. Only our governments fear for their own short-term political survival, not the nation's. - Sue Young, Bensville

Stuart Ayres could become the minister for dam(n) stupidity ("Parks service blasts impact of raising Warragamba's wall", August 10). Not only will his Warragamba Dam project to raise the wall damage nature, but it will fail to protect the proliferating and vulnerable floodplain communities downstream. He needs to shut out the weasel words of property developers and consult some maps. Downstream of the dam are wild inflows from the Grose and Colo Rivers, coming from the mountains to flood the plains. The Nepean also enters the Warragamba River downstream of the dam, so raising it will not protect the Camden floodplain. It simultaneously will become more exposed to the risk of increased hard-surface flows, as the whole Macarthur region becomes urbanised. The Minister should also imagine this scenario from his seat in Penrith. The vast tarmacs of the new Badgery's Creek Airport and the associated extra mass of bitumen and concrete around industries and housing in the sub-catchments will dump a huge local flood upon it. The new dam wall, way upstream, does nothing for that. So dreaming on, the next engineering marvel could be to blast away those river-hugging sandstone cliffs downstream on the Hawkesbury. Without those pesky barriers, flood dispersal into the sea will be so efficient. The flattened landscape will be a developer's delight. - Sharyn Cullis, Oatley

Amanda Vanstone would be wise to advise our Liberal/National government of her tip that people shouldn't live downstream from a dam in China ("We don't have to play bully game", August 10). Raising the Warragamba Dam wall clears the floodplain downstream, making land available to build houses. My tip is: do not live downstream from Warragamba Dam. Floodplains are so named because they flood. - Suzanne Wicks, Potts Point

"The community needs to have a clear understanding of the direct impacts of the proposal," the National Parks and Wildlife Service review rightly stated, but sadly it seems that this would not have happened had it not been for leaked information reported by the Herald. As so often occurs, it seems likely from Peter Hannam's article that once again money (for developers) will trump environmental protection at every turn. - Bridget Wilcken, Mosman

After Warragamba Dam was built most of Burragorang Valley was lost forever. Little remains but what is amazing is that two extraordinarily beautiful river systems the Coxs and the Kowmung still run in what remains of the nearby valleys. These will be flooded and lost forever if the dam wall is raised. We need to unite in outrage to stop the raising of the dam wall. Saying sorry when it's too late will never be able to bring back this the sacred world hertiage site and its beautiful rivers. - Gai Lloyd, Cammeray

If we cant point the finger at Planning Minister Rob Stokes for Sydneys planning, who can we blame ("Dont blame planning for woes: Stokes", August 10)? Id suggest Mr Stokes take a trip to Singapore, as I did recently, to witness planned high-rise apartments, set in tropical gardens with plenty of space between them. Compare this with the so-called planning that has resulted in miscellaneous tower apartments (often shoddily constructed) heaped almost on top of each other. Is this what our Planning Minister calls planning? Now we have Stokes latest initiative, the missing middle. Cute name but a nasty, community-dividing measure in which a homeowner is persuaded by a rapacious developer to put four dwellings on a suburban block, destroying the streetscape, reducing green coverage, exacerbating parking problems and over-building on the site, leaving his neighbours to pay the price for his miserable profit. It makes you want to cry for our beloved city. - David Catchlove, Newport

It is pleasing to finally hear Stokes admit that high-rise apartments come with a "massive potential cost to everyone else" in NSW from higher urban density, heritage impacts and the need to retrofit utilities, hospitals and schools. Growth is the disease masquerading as the cure. Its time to stop overdevelopment and start planning a sustainable Australia that is better, not bigger. - William Bourke, Wollstonecraft

It is unfortunate that universities such as UTS will be losing income as a result of the fall in international student enrolments ("UTS fears decline in student numbers could cost 500 jobs", August 10). However, there is an anomaly in this claim in light of the government's intention to reduce the cost of degrees such as nursing in order to attract more students. If student numbers in nursing increase as a result of the government's sweetener, does UTS plan to retain staff to teach them, or can nursing students continue to be taught by casual, often inexperienced staff who are cheaper to employ? What about student-to-lecturer ratios? If UTS is most concerned about its losses of up to $200 million, then it is a corporation and no longer a university. - Patricia Farrar, Concord

Its not so much our sense of shared burden starting to fray ("Great test of our togetherness", August 10) but recognising the unequal burden Victorians are shouldering right now. Politicians may snipe from the sidelines but we should reject the idea that Victoria has let the side down. Yes, some states are in much better shape and good luck to them. Were not offended by their hard border closures. But we should be sending Victorians, including their embattled Premier, a big virtual hug. We do appreciate the sacrifices they are all making, particularly healthcare workers, more than 1000 of whom have contracted COVID-19 in the line of duty. Each deserves a medal from a grateful nation. - Margaret Johnston, Paddington

If, like me, you hanker to have faith in a politician, watch Jacinda Arderns election campaign launch speech. In a packed town hall with no social distancing and no masks (thanks to 100 days with no community transmission), Ms Ardern speaks eloquently and passionately without notes. She makes more sense in one speech than anything I have heard recently from our state or federal leaders. - Graham Cochrane, Balmain

I have fond memories of Eric's Seafood Cafe at Crows Nest (Letters, August 10). Not only was it my favourite stop on the way home from school (two potato scallops for 3d) but, as the location of many fish 'n' chips-fuelled committee meetings, it can be credited as one of the birthplaces of FM radio in Australia, in 1974 (2MBS-FM, now Fine Music Sydney). - David James, Russell Lea

Erics Seafood Cafe? Be still my beating heart (and stomach). Fresh scallops, grilled barramundi, chunky chips and a decent riesling. Thus refreshed and fortified, we young tearaways would return from lunch to the 2pm This Day Tonight production meeting ready to do battle with timid producers and our repressive ABC management. Erics wonderful meals and hospitality were unsung heroes in that memorable era of current affairs television. - David Salter, Hunters Hill

One wonders if Dominic Perrottet has ever heard of the Westminster convention of ministerial responsibility (Letters, August 10). As a conservative, isn't he supposed to be the trustee of time-honoured and valued mores and codes of conduct? More and more it seems in this country politicians of the right seem to have the palsied hand of Trumpism on them. Admit nothing, apologise for nothing and take responsibility for nothing. Well, it works for Donald Trump, I suppose. Maybe. - Peter Spencer, Glebe

It beggars belief that our frontline healthcare staff are running short of essential equipment ("Mask use limited for one in five doctors, nurses", August 10). The last thing they need is number-crunchers doing an Ebenezer Scrooge and tut-tutting at the amount of PPE that is being used. - Genevieve Milton, Newtown

I welcome the article by Sarah Ayoub with its many interesting details about Lebanese Australians ("Chance to extend hand of comfort to Lebanese", August 10). In our neighbourhood, we have Lebanese Australian extended families living next door and directly opposite. They were all here before we moved in, and from our very first day, they welcomed us warmly and generously. They are all truly our neighbours. In their grief and trauma, I hope that we may be the kind of neighbours that they have been to us. - Susan Emeleus, Ermington

$15 billion to rebuild Beirut? That's the same price as building two road tunnels from Rozelle to Balgowlah. Really? And we're still waiting on the business case as to why two road tunnels were assessed to be the most effective option to reduce congestion and travel time over all other alternatives. - Kristina Dodds, Northbridge

When Volvo developed the three-point car seat belt in 1959, it realised the life-saving potential far outweighed any issue of a patent and shared the idea with the world. Let us hope that whoever comes up with COVID-19 vaccine will be as philanthropic. - Michele Thomas, Mollymook Beach

Never mind the Jaffas (Letters, August 10). I remember going to see The Ten Commandments at the Toonie (Toongabbie) Rocket. After half an hour, the movie was stopped so staff could scrape all the chewing gum missiles from the screen, and management warned that if it happened again they'd call the whole session off. - Mickey Pragnell, Kiama

You could get a lot with threepence at the flicks in the 1950s. Unfortunately, all those Fantales, Jaffas, Minties and Choo-Choo bars have proved very profitable for my dentists over the years. - Tony Everett, Wareemba

There were three cinemas in Bankstown in the 1940s: the Regent, which I attended with my grandparents to watch a double-bill of serious, old movies and to take part in community singing with a bouncing ball over the words on screen; the upmarket Civic, where the latest releases were shown; and the Jewel, where, when sport was washed out, I could join the raucous Saturday arvo Jaffa-rollers to watch westerns and Bulldog Drummond serials. - Ray Alexander, Moss Vale

Rick Johnstons recollection of staying seated during the national anthem (Letters, August 10) reminds me of my first venture into a London movie theatre about a week after arriving from Australia in 1966. When God Save the Queen was played, in spite of my republican inclinations, I automatically stood, alone amongst the English patrons who remained seated while at least half lit up their cigarettes. - Brian Milton, Avalon

While we stood for the national anthem at the Capitol Theatre, Tamworth, in the 1950s, the teenage girls and boys readied themselves psychologically for a session of slap-and-tickle. (For the benefit of your younger readers, slap and tickle meant kissing and cuddling.) - Paul Hunt, Engadine

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This recovery will require more than fossilised ideas - Sydney Morning Herald

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Ambassador Bill Hagerty relied on President Donald Trump's endorsement to earn him the GOP nomination to compete for Tennessee's U.S. Senate seat.

Bill Hagerty, the former ambassador to Japan and state economic and development commissioner, chalked up a modest win for the Republican Party establishment Thursday night in the U.S. Senate primary. But it was a hollow victory as far as the establishment is concerned.

Hagerty is the overwhelming favorite to replace Lamar Alexander in the Senate after defeating outsider candidate Manny Sethi, a surgeon who looked to tread the same path as former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist before him. Hagerty for many months was the undisputed front-runner, but his easy lap at the polls by more than 10 percentage points belied what most observers saw as a tightening race in the final weeks.

Everything was calm as long as the race was perceived as not very close. Hagerty was just your good ol Sumner County boy made good. Really good. And by the way, Donald Trump endorsed him.

Bill Hagerty speaks after defeating Manny Sethi in the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Tennessee. Nashville Tennessean

Hagertys campaign trotted out the Trump endorsement every chance itgot. Thats not an exaggeration. Every chance. In commercials, in news releases, the first four words of campaign email blasts were Trump endorsed Bill Hagerty.

So Sethi struck back by of course saying he loved Donald Trump, too. In fact he loved Donald Trump more. The closer the race was perceived to be, the more Hagerty and Sethi turned on each other.

Sethi became Massachusetts Manny, in some sort of stretch reference to how Sethi might once have said something or belonged to an organization that maybe indicated something other than outright hatred for the Affordable Care Act.

Manny Sethi speaks following being defeated by Bill Hagerty in the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Tennessee Nashville Tennessean

Hagerty became Romneys guy, in reference to his previous support for Massachusetts Gov. turned Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. Of course, every Republican in Tennessee, presumably Sethi too, were Romney guys in 2012.

More: Meet Republican candidates running for US Senate in Tennessee

Republican Bill Hagerty waves to supporters who came to see him and Donald Trump Jr. on Jan. 28, 2020. Trump came to Gallatin to help raise money for Hagerty in his bid for an open U.S. Senate seat.(Photo: Larry McCormack / The Tennessean)

In short, the campaign became a farce something seemingly taken from a novel about a parody of a political campaign. Policy was in short supply. Especially on TV, the campaign became dominated by fears of immigrants and liberal mobs, evidently a big threat in the state, according to these two men. One commercial in support of Sethi even branded Alexander and Hagerty liberals, a claim so ridiculous that saying it with a straight face is an impossibility.

It seems like beating a dead horse at this point to once again say the Tennessee Republican Party wasnt always this way. It was once a party of ideas, and sometimes on the state level still is. This was the case not the least under Alexander as governor. In those days the right flank of the Democratic Party reached further than the left flank of the Republicans.

Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns.

In such an overlapping landscape, extremists were heard but generally ignored, if not outright ridiculed. This is not to say there were not spirited debates, or that everyone was committed to high principle, but look at what were putting up with now in a Republican land of personality cult.

Who is the most Trumpian Trumper of the Trumpists? That is what the Republican primary became.

Nobody commanded more affection among Republicans than did Ronald Reagan. For many years he maintained his 11th commandment:Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican. It was hardly of pure motive that Reagan adopted the commandment, but it was a fresh touch that does not exist now.

The reality is that the Republican Party is growing smaller nationally as Trump increasingly wears out the electorate. The outcome is a party of only the truest believers.

As a result, candidates like Sethi and Hagerty have to go more and more vicious on one another on the only issue that seems to matter: their loyalty to the president. And it all may not matter because Trumps electoral prospects arent terribly bright at the moment. What a shame it would be to have based your entire campaign on your loyalty to a man whom you pass going the opposite way as you enter Washington. And what would you stand for then?

Republicans long for the days of Reagan. And well they should, for he was the partys last hero, their last real vote-getter, wrote the historian H.W. Brands. But theyre not going to see another Reagan until they revive their Eleventh Commandment and stop beating up on one another.

Alex Hubbard is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. Email him at dhubbard@tennessean.com or tweet to him at @alexhubbard7.

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As Trump wears out the electorate, his anointed favorite Bill Hagerty is one step closer to D.C. | Opinion - Tennessean

Cassy O'Connor MP | Greens Leader

Proponents of a private cable car on the publicly owned summit of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington are treating the planning system and people of Hobart with contempt.

In January, Hobart City Council deemed the cable car development application non-compliant, and requested a complete package of assessment reports. MWCC has again failed on this front, and seem more worried about making excuses than actually meeting council requirements.

It begs the question. Why is MWCC so casual about the Hobart City Council planning process?

Are they just biding time until the Liberal and Labor parties pass the divisive, developer-driven Major Projects legislation?

The mountain and its summit are public land.

To show so little regard for the Council and public owners of the pinnacle says much about where MWCCs priorities lie.

And, its not with good planning process, or transparency.

MWCC clearly wants to get around having to deal with public involvement in its plans.

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MWCC Contemptuous of Planning Process and Public Input - Tasmanian Greens MPs

Updated: August 9, 2020 11:02:58 am

Elder by a year to independent Indias midnights children, I have aged with our beloved nation. I have seen this country face several crises but I could never imagine that a disaster of this scale would strike us. I feel deeply saddened with the lives lost due to the present pandemic but experience has taught me to grin and bear it, to not succumb.

There had been another time in my life when I had been confined at home, worrying about my safety and that of my family. That was in October 1984, when the country was witnessing the anti-Sikh violence. A few months earlier, in June, I was one of the two beneficiaries of the Cricketers Benefit Fund Series (CBFS) in Sharjah, along with Imran Khan. With the money I got, I bought some farmland outside Delhi, hoping to settle in the peaceful countryside. But when even the capital wasnt safe for us, it was unthinkable for a Sikh family to live in a secluded area on its outskirts. For close to nine months, my family and I had no roof over our heads. Sometimes, we would stay with friends who were gracious enough to host us, and, at other times, we were at my employers Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) guesthouse.

Sunday Eye| Uttara Baokar: Anything that begins has an end

Fearful of the future, I went to a senior bureaucrat, also a cricket administrator, posted at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. I told him I was thinking of selling my land and moving to my hometown Amritsar, where I would feel safe but would have nothing to do. The other option was to leave the country. I thought he would be sympathetic and, perhaps, help me get government accommodation in Delhi. Without much thought, he told me, Bishan, if I were you, I would leave the country. Imagine, the countrys top bureaucrat, sitting in Rashtrapati Bhavan, asking a former India captain to leave the country!

I didnt say a word but I was fuming inside. I left without any dua-salaam, reached home and told my wife that we are removing the For Sale sign from the land and we would build a house there. If I get killed, so be it. I will not leave this country. I have every right to be here, I told her. I stuck around, the land wasnt sold and the house was built. When pushed into a corner, you worry for your life. However, if you take it as a challenge and fire yourself up, you get the strength to tide over bad times. This time, its the virus, but, for me, the antidote remains the same.

The wars India fought brought more grim times. My memories of 1965 (India-Pakistan war) are of an amusing day in Amritsar when my father, a civil-defence warden, gathered the simple folks of our mohalla for a war-training session. He first initiated everyone into the blackout protocol, and, later, asked them to lie on the ground for a firing session. I, too, joined and tried imitating my father who was pulling the trigger with gusto. The shoulder-smashing recoil of the heavy rifle made me surrender my weapon Mujhe ball phekni hai, yeh lijiye aapki bundook.

In 1971-72, we were touring Australia at the time of the Bangladesh Liberation War. When I called home, my father assured me everything was fine, even though I could hear guns booming in the background. Next on line was my mother. In a muffled voice, she whispered, Only the Almighty knows if we will meet again. Their contrasting statements left me puzzled. Now, years later, I can laugh about that traumatic day. The human minds partiality in preserving pleasant moments and air-brushing the dire parts helps us move on in life. With years, this, too, shall pass the pandemics trauma will fade away.

Right now, however, there are a few heartbreaking images stuck in my head like the one of a daughter who pedalled over 1,000 km with her sick father. It highlights the utter lack of compassion in our politicians, who enforced the sudden and complete lockdown. Honesty and transparency, too, are missing when it comes to coronavirus numbers. I am not naming or blaming any political party. But I ask, What is the need to camouflage figures? You havent created this pandemic. If they stuck to the truth, the situation would have been handled better.There arent many speaking out, though. Do we have the freedom of thought, expression and conviction in our country? Not yet such liberal ideas get ingrained with time. We are still young, we will learn. But first we need to fight illiteracy and impoverishment. Of late, I feel worried. We have become increasingly regressive and narrow-minded. The other day, I tweeted Eid Mubarak. It was a simple and secular message, but on my timeline there were posts that said: Bedi saab, kabhi Hindus ko bhi kar diya karo. Come on, this is Eid, its a Muslim festival!

But above everything else, the one thing that has really pulled this nation down is sycophancy. I have experienced this in the past and now I see it all the time. While I was at SAIL, in the days following the armys entry into the Golden Temple, a reporter came to me for my reaction. I told her, Every Sikh is not a terrorist but every Sikh is hurt that the army has gone into the Golden Temple. And I am one of them. Thats it, nothing more, nothing less.

This reached the minister-in-charge at SAIL. Without talking to me even once, he suspended me. In that atmosphere of mistrust, the Sikh community felt, Bishan Singh Bedi tu shaheed ho gaya (Youve become a martyr). That the government is not even sparing sportsmen now. Soon my photographs started appearing on the walls of gurdwaras in America and Canada.The repercussions of my suspension got people at SAIL worried. So I was called by the top guy, who asked me: Whats happening, Bish? I said thats exactly what I want to know. The big man had a climbdown, and, in a conciliatory tone told me, See, before anybody could question me from 1, Safdarjung Road, I had done my job.When you always think of pleasing those at the top, you make wrong calls, you become servile, you lose self-respect. Thats happening even today. Theres this one from my fraternity squirming for a seat in the commentary box, bending over his back to please the powers that be all this for saying something that was anything but offensive. He had a readymade platform to take on the establishment. But no, the courage of conviction was missing. It makes me cringe to see him begging for the BCCI job.

We are constantly reminded that we are a nation with a high percentage of young and progressive minds. For me, its a mirage. Even the young and the educated are joining the political conundrum and are reluctant to raise their voice. The reason: sycophancy.I, fortunately, had the gumption and the strength of character. When I was young, and so was India, I was able to stand up and be counted. Now, it is too late in life. But I am not a pessimist, I have faith in my spirituality and I have hope. We survived wars and invasions and we will survive the political pandemic, too.

The writer, 74, is a former India cricket captain

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Dedicated readers of President Trumps Twitter feed were treated this July to a new theme, former Vice President Joe Bidens supposed desire to abolish suburbs.

Trump has warned the suburban housewives of America that Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. The tweets are dog whistles aimed at reviving a failing presidential campaign. But formally speaking, these are allusions to the administrations plan to withdraw the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule.

On July 29, Trump tweeted that, thanks to him, suburbanites will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood. He claimed this initiative to make housing less affordable will guarantee that crime will go down.

At an event in Midland, Texas, later that same day, Trump further elaborated that under his watch there will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs.

Its been going on for years, Trump said. Ive seen conflict for years. Its been hell for suburbia.

Narrowly, this is a fight about an Obama administration rule with few practical consequences. But its also about one of the most important issues in American politics, which is the systematic underproduction of housing due to excessive regulatory barriers. Trumps campaign to rally suburbanites against the cause of increasing housing stock is important because it could shape how an influential voting bloc thinks about these issues.

Somewhat ironically, the Trump administration itself had been on the other side of this fight until this summer. Most conservative economists think the Obama administrations instincts on land use regulation were broadly correct. But then, Trump decided to turn a bit of regulatory quibbling into a culture war hammer. And conversely, many Democrats eager to jump on the presidents tweets and accuse him of racist dog whistling have yet to confront the reality that policy in their home states is often uncomfortably Trump-like in reality.

An interesting lacuna to Americas mostly market-oriented economy is building houses. Most of the population lives in places where this activity is subject to a comprehensive regime of central planning, which states and which parcels of land can have houses built on them, what the minimum size of a parcel is, how many dwellings can be built on a given parcel (typically just one), how tall the building can be, how much yard space and parking there needs to be, etc.

Some of the regulation of house-building is about safety electricity needs to be up to code and sewage needs to be able to be disposed of in a responsible way. But most of it isnt. Theres nothing unsafe about a 12-unit, four-floor apartment building its just illegal to build one in most places. Building rows of houses that share exterior walls is a space-efficient and cost-effective means of creating single-family homes, but its illegal to build them in most places. Big, shiny condo towers only make sense in places where land is very expensive, but there are some parcels of very expensive land where its illegal to build them.

These rules profoundly shape the built environment in almost every American metropolitan area. But they are particularly significant for metro areas where land is in short supply due to a coastal location, proximity to mountains, or both.

The basic problem is that land use regulatory decisions are made at a localized community level, which as William Fischel observes in his book, Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation leads to a kind of systematic undervaluing of the value of building more houses. Any new construction causes localized nuisances (more noise, more traffic, less parking) but the benefits of more abundant housing are fairly diffuse. In their recent book Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and Americas Housing Crisis, Katherine Levine Einstein, David Glick, and Maxwell Palmer show this is exacerbated by the tendency of community meetings to empower a self-selected group that is whiter and richer than the population as a whole.

The fundamental dynamic exists essentially everywhere, but its especially severe in big coastal metro areas that are also very politically liberal. While traditionally, criticism of this dynamic has come largely from right-of-center economists (the kind of people who love to complain about regulation), as Conor Dougherty details in his recent book Golden Gates: Fighting for housing in America, a new generation of progressive activists in West Coast cities have been fighting for change.

A subset of the problems with American land use policy relates to race and segregation. Back in 1917 long before the main era of civil rights victories in federal courts the Supreme Court held in Buchanan v. Warley that cities and towns could not establish explicit racial segregation rules on their land use policies. As Christopher Silver explores in his article The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities, this simply created a situation in which cities hired prominent planning professionals to fashion legally defensible racial zoning plans.

In other words, zoning schemes were drawn up with the intention of de facto upholding patterns of racial segregation. As Jessica Trounstine explores in her book, Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities, neither the Civil Rights Act nor the subsequent Fair Housing Act really ever accomplished much to alter the pattern of de facto housing segregation in part because the systems that generated segregated living patterns were formally race-neutral dating all the way back to the 1920s.

The Obama administration tried, in a modest way, to improve the situation.

The Obama administration clearly took the view that regulatory barriers to creating new housing supply were an economic problem. His Council of Economic Advisers put out a report about this, and Chair Jason Furman gave a speech on the topic and repeatedly highlighted it as an issue. In September 2016, the council introduced a housing development toolkit a set of best practices for jurisdictions looking to reduce barriers. They also offered some technical assistance to local communities that wanted to rezone for more housing supply.

In 2015, the council promulgated a new regulation the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that essentially required local governments to try harder to comply with Fair Housing Act objectives. That meant, in practice, requiring local governments to identify rules that could contribute to patterns of racial segregation and develop plans to undo them.

This was always controversial in conservative circles, but the controversy essentially took two forms.

One, exemplified in this 2018 article by the Cato Institutes Vanessa Brown Calder, was essentially technical. She wrote, If policymakers are interested in determining the cause of racial segregation in cities, they dont have to collect data and guess at it. A major cause of racial segregation is already known: zoning regulation. Zoning regulation segregates by race because race is frequently correlated with income. She believed we should reduce zoning barriers, not create a new checkbox compliance process.

The other, exemplified in this 2015 National Review article by Stanley Kurtz, took a culture war approach and darkly warned that the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning Americas suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities.

As far as critiques go, Brown Calders is much closer to the mark. As historian Tom Sugrue argued on July 29, the reality was that AFFH, the Obama fair housing rule, was having a marginal impact at best and scrapping it would not change much in practice.

However, while the Trump administrations Housing and Urban Development Department has always been critical of AFFH, this summer Trump has gotten personally involved with the issue hes switched the administrations stance from Brown Calders technical critique to Kurtzs demagogic one.

Housing policy has not been much of a topic of public debate in the Trump years. But in its official statements, Trumps HUD under Ben Carson has essentially agreed with the Obama administrations diagnosis: Excessive regulatory barriers to housing construction are an economic problem for the country.

In the fall of 2018, Carson vowed to look at increasing the supply of affordable housing by reducing onerous zoning regulations.

A year later, Trumps Council of Economic Advisers diagnosed excessively strict zoning rules as a major contributor to rising homelessness, writing that President Trump signed an executive order that will seek to remove regulatory barriers in the housing market, which would reduce the price of homes and reduce homelessness.

Like Obamas actions on this front, Trumps actions did not amount to very much. The federal government is a marginal player in land use politics and will continue to be one unless Congress enacts new legislation empowering more serious changes.

Conceptually, Trump and Obamas economic teams were reading from the same playbook rules should be changed to allow denser development on expensive land, especially in the highest-priced metro areas. Joe Bidens housing plan, unlike Trumps or Obamas, could actually make this a reality by calling for Congress to create a program that would link HUD and Department of Transportation grant money to zoning changes. Doing so and forcing jurisdictions to allow denser housing types would not, in the real world, abolish the suburbs. Most people would keep living in single-family homes under pretty much any regulatory scheme. But conceivably, Americas expensive suburbs could come to be dotted with sporadic clusters of townhouses or mid-rise apartments, increasing affordability and reducing segregation.

Trump is now promising to save the suburban housewives of America from that fate.

Democrats denounce this as racism or worse with Sen. Chris Murphy (CT) calling Trump a proud, vocal segregationist.

But realistically, just as Obama wasnt abolishing the suburbs, Trump isnt creating segregation. Hes simply saying that he will let Americas local governments maintain the land use regimes they have regimes that have created incredibly segregated patterns of dwelling in places like Murphys home state of Connecticut. Nothing that Trump says or does is preventing Connecticuts Democratic state legislature and Democratic governor from tearing down those barriers. But they remain in place as do comparable barriers throughout the suburban Northeast because voters and elected officials have chosen to leave them there.

Given the marginal federal role in land use issues, the biggest question going forward may be less whether Trump demagoguery convinces suburbanites to vote for him than whether it convinces blue state suburbanites that the land use status quo Trump is defending genuinely reflects his values rather than theirs. On a conceptual level, after all, MAGA anti-immigration politics and progressive anti-development activists rallying cry of defending neighborhood character really do have a lot in common, and a lot of good could be accomplished if blue states decide that's a reason to embrace diversity and change practical land use policy in theory and rhetoric.

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Trumps tweets about the Suburban Lifestyle Dream and US housing law, explained - Vox.com

Oh long may it wave, Oer the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

Francis Scott Key

On Sept. 13, 1814, a few weeks after the British attacked Washington, D.C. and burned the president's house and the capital, the British began the bombarding of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. Throughout the night, American lawyer Francis Scott Key watched the British annihilate Boston with rockets and explosives. Key felt there was no way America could beat the British.

Key felt hopeless as darkness arrived and all through the night the sky was blood red. But as the smoke cleared to "dawn's early light," the American flag, not the Union Jack, flew high, announcing Americas victory! Tattered and torn, sailing in the wind, it sent a message to the British:

We fight with a purpose, and fight we must and this be our motto: In God is our trust.

Francis Scott Key

Baltimore was a key American shipping port and the British blasted the former colonies with their entire arsenal. Key, trapped aboard his vessel during the battle, had penned his thoughts during the night. But it was not until the next day in his hotel room that he scribed his notes into cadence with an English folk song. And this humble effort gave birth to our anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.

Keys brother-in-law distributed his song under the name "Defense of Fort M'Henry," and soon the Baltimore Patriot printed it, naming it "The Star-Spangled Banner." Within weeks, every newspaper in the nation featured it. Little did Key know, his one act to patronize those brave Americans who fought in the Battle of Baltimore in his own words would forever pay the highest tribute to the flag of his great nation.

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Francis Scott Key

The Star-Spangled Banner was always the national anthem for most Americans and our military. When the U.S. entered World War I, it was played daily around the nation. But it was not until 1919, when radio engineer Frank Conrad broadcasted it, that President Woodrow Wilson designated it as Americas national anthem. In March of 1931, Congress passed the official act and Hoover signed it into law.

During the first game of the 1918 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the rival Chicago Cubs, the band began to play The Star-Spangled Banner. The fans rose from their seats and put their hands over their hearts and began to sing. The players followed, placing their caps over their hearts. They turned toward the centerfield flagpole and sang with them. Following a thunderous applause, the band played it again and they have never stopped playing it for the last 150 years.

Singing The Star-Spangled Banner that day showed Americas deep respect for our nation. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee was so proud he began each game playing Americas song. Soon, every team played it before every game. It became such a hit, after the war ended, the song was played at all baseball games. In 1942 during World War II, with so many brave players fighting for world freedom, the National Football League joined baseball by playing the anthem to show support for our troops.

No patriots ever thought our national anthem would be used to de-unify our nation. Yet today, our anthem is a protest platform with NFL players. When Nike hired NFL protester Colin Kaepernick for their Just Do It" campaign, many retailers pulled their shoes off the shelves. And that ignited the current trend criticizing the 150-year connection between our anthem and sports.

Men may argue ingeniously against our faith, but what can they say in defense of their own?

Francis Scott Key

On Aug. 14, 2016, when Kaepernick first chose to remain seated during the national anthem at an NFL game, the liberal media started a campaign to discredit those who did not support him. But the fans claimed his behavior was disrespectful to the nation and the military and continued to criticize him. While Kaepernick contends this was a protest against racial injustice, most fans still disagree.

After speaking with former U.S. Army Green Beret Nate Boyer, Kaepernick amended his protest, opting to instead take a knee to emphasize he was not disrespecting the military, yet many in the military disagreed. Like cancer, this spread to other sports and has fueled disrespect for our flag and America by violent protesters around the nation who see this as way to get what they want.

Since Kaepernick and others are role models for our youth, the result of their on-field antics create a false perception among thousands of gullible Americans; it is cool to emulate these high profile athletes and disrespect the national anthem also. And this misbehavior leads to violent unpatriotic assaults against innocent citizens and horrific illegal acts against government and our leaders.

The new left claims these players have a right to do this under the First Amendment. They say it is political, not unpatriotic. Yet protesters are using our anthem to defame America for anything they dislike. Most Americans consider this disrespecting the flag, police and military. They claim they have no right to do this when they pay their salaries and franchise owners make the rules for work.

I do not believe there are any new objections to be discovered to the truth.

Francis Scott Key

Under pressure from fans who threatened to boycott sporting events, on May 23, 2018, the league clarified their policy requiring all players to stand during the anthem, or remain in the locker rooms during its performance. Owners sided with their fans and their 150 year history of singing The Star Spangled Banner at all events, which has been a tradition since first played during World War I in 1918.

Although the NFL agreement was reached unanimously by the league owners, the players union cried the blues. Commissioner Roger Goodell replied, We want players to respect the national anthem. Weve been sensitive giving them choices, but we expect them to stand and show respect for us.

No business finances any employee to participate in political protests while they should be working. And no employers would tolerate any who tried to do this. And those who imprudently did would be fired in a New York City minute!

Employers dont pay people to express their emotions.

Simon Sinek

The moment these prima donnas enter the playing field they are on company time. Since the fans are the stock holders and pay the bills, and team owners write the work rules to maintain the fan base, these players are obligated to do what the owners want while on the field. They have no right to carry on personal protests while on the job. Any other person who acted like this would be given a pink slip. Thats why no other American pro football team will give Colin Kaepernick a job today.

Francis Scott Key wanted to honor the men who fought for his country. His only motive was to pay tribute to our nation and our troops. Keys patriotic rendering still stands today as the benchmark of respect for our nation and its troops. It has nothing to do with politics. Its not just a tradition; it is an obligation we must respect our anthem.

Then in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

Frances Scott Key

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Op-Ed: The national anthem is more than a sports tradition - The Center Square

Harming dogs is a criminal act in Ontario, but shooting wolves is a sport. And while animal welfare legislation was recently strengthened, protection for Algonquin wolves could soon be set back if the government invokes changes made last year to the Endangered Species Act.

When Ontario shut down in March, resources rightly focused on public health. By then, however, the government was already far behind on its obligation to protect and recover the Algonquin wolf. Listed as threatened on June 15, 2016, the law at the timerequired immediate protection and mandated a formal Algonquin wolf recovery plan within two years.

The previous Liberal government protected hotspots, but exempted areas in between. Then in January 2018, they posted a draft recovery strategy for public comment, followed by a request for more time to review feedback. While we waited, Ontario elected a new Conservative premier.

A year later, the new government passed Bill 108, the More Homes, More Choice Act into law, revising the Endangered Species Act with amendments that impede wildlife conservation.

Read more: Doug Ford is clear-cutting Ontario's environmental laws

The changes privilege development over habitat protection, extend the timeline for a government response to listing recommendations to up to five years, undermine the expertise of scientists and allow the environment minister to bypass legal protection for species and their habitat when its convenient.

For Algonquin wolves, the ongoing government delay allows hunting and trapping to continue and raises concerns that the government could ignore science-based recommendations in favour of organizations that lobby against wolf hunting bans. There is precedent.

In August 2019, the government proposed easing restrictions on grey wolf and coyote hunting in Northern Ontario to protect moose. The move was based on recommendations from a government-appointed Big Game Management Advisory Committee made up of hunters, trappers and commercial outfitters.

The proposal ignores the work of research scientists who say this will do little to improve moose numbers, and disregards issues of habitat, disease and climate change. Notably, the previous government rejected the same proposal due to lack of scientific evidence.

Algonquin wolves face an uncertain future primarily because they can be legally shot and trapped in many parts of Ontario. In most unprotected corridors, certified hunters can shoot two wolves between September 15 and March 31 with a small game license and a wolf tag. In others, it is open season all year. No tags required.

This harsh truth often comes as a shock to many. Especially since fewer than 1,000 mature Algonquin wolves remain and half are in Ontario. Most are within central Ontarios provincial parks, including Algonquin and Killarney. Beyond that, protected areas are patchy and separated by swaths of land where wolves often meet their demise at the hands of humans.

As a case in point, when captive wolves escaped from the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre into an unprotected corridor on New Years Day in 2013, the outcome was quick and predictable. Within 24 hours someone shot two of the four and left them to die. The fate of the others remains unknown, but their chances were slim. A wealth of research shows that beyond protected areas more wolves die from hunting and trapping than from all other causes combined.

Thats why the draft Algonquin wolf recovery strategy recommends connecting protected areas across central Ontario to create an Algonquin Wolf Recovery Zone. But the process remains, inexplicably, in limbo.

Algonquin wolves are unique to Canada because they have a distinctive genetic signature. Why is that important? Think of it like saving money for a rainy day, except the wolves currency is genetic variation and the rainy day is climate change. Species depend on genetic variation to protect them against unexpected upheavals in their environment. Fewer animals means less variation and higher risk of extinction.

The Algonquin wolf has at its core a unique North American wolf genome (the eastern Canadian wolf), with some genetic signal from coyotes and, to a lesser extent, grey wolves.

Their evolutionary history places them alongside coyotes, solely within North America. Grey wolves, on the other hand, migrated to North America from Eurasia thousands of years ago.

In 2018, a team of international researchers analyzed the largest dataset to date on Algonquin wolves. The conclusion? Algonquin wolves unique genomic composition and their fragmented protection in central Ontario make them a conservation priority.

A significant challenge, however, is a common misunderstanding of how science defines species. Some people protest that Algonquin wolves are just hybrids a made-up species that doesnt warrant conservation. By that logic, humans must also be a fiction because we have bits of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genome.

Advances in genome sequencing have revolutionized our understanding of how species interact and evolve. Interbreeding between closely related species creates mixed genomes in a wide array of plants and animals. Hybrid origins is the new normal.

We need wolves. They help maintain the natural order of ecosystems. Their presence improves the health of deer populations by weeding out the old and sick, and prevents the widespread destruction of plant life that sustains the biodiversity we rely on for goods (such as medicine) and services (such as tourism).

At the same time, wolves like dogs nurture our spirit and improve our well-being simply by being there. They represent and protect what environmentalists, First Nations, conservation scientists and hunters alike may value most: untamed and untouched wilderness.

Yet Ontarios hunting and trapping organizations continue to lobby for relaxed wolf harvest regulations and seek to discredit recommendations of the recovery strategy.

Read more: Killing sharks, wolves and other top predators won't solve conflicts

But researchers first flagged Algonquin wolves as distinct just 20 years ago, at which point hunting, wolf culls and bounties had already taken their toll. Beyond reducing numbers, intensive hunting exacerbates hybridisation with coyotes and the current population size equates to dangerously low levels of genetic potential.

Many people including many hunters question wolf hunting on ethical grounds. Wolves are not food, so researchers Chris Darimont and Paul Paquet from the University of Victoria argue that wolf hunting regulations in this country are embarrassingly out of step with societal values. They suggest that attempts to legitimize trophy and sport hunting use a smokescreen of scientific wildlife management. Public opinion polls in British Columbia support that claim.

After a 2007 update, Ontarios Endangered Species Act was one of the strongest pieces of legislation in North America. It has since been diluted for convenience and short-sighted economic gains, first by the Liberal government in 2013 and again in 2019 by the current Conservative government.

Premier Doug Fords response to the COVID-19 pandemic was impressive in large part because it relied on independent research and was resolutely non-partisan. Its this type of foresight and resolve that will be needed to save Algonquin wolves. In the end, all voices need to be heard, but science should prevail.

Excerpt from:

The erosion of Ontarios Endangered Species Act threatens iconic Algonquin wolf - The Conversation CA

Micah Helle 18 works with herbs at the Square Roots farm campus in Brooklyn, New York.

Micah Helle 18 is helping to redefine what the future of urban agriculture looks like using controlled environment technology.

As a member of the yearlong Next-Gen Farmer Training Program at Square Roots, a mushroom farmer at Smallhold, and now a hydroponic farmer with Pillsbury United Communities, Helle is cultivating and increasing access to local, sustainably grown food. Their motivation to change ideas about farming and what a modern farmer looks like inspired them to work in urban agriculture.

I was worried about the future of local food and small-scale agriculture work. Thats what turned me to urban agriculture and working with Square Roots, Helle says. I was determined to find another way of getting good food to people everywhere, and year round.

Square Roots Next-Gen Farmer Training Program provided the perfect jumping-off point. Square Roots is a tech-enabled urban farming company that grows local, pesticide-free and non-GMO greens by developing human-centered farming technologies and empowering young farmers. As a Next-Gen Farmer, Helle participated in a one-year urban farming apprenticeship at the Square Roots Brooklyn farm campus in New York.

Seven other farmers and I were in charge of learning the ins and outs of hydroponic farming within our modular farms through hands-on training and a classroom-based curriculum, Helle says. We also introduced customers to our products and started meaningful dialogue around local food and the need for innovation within the industry.

Although Helle was not always sure what they wanted to do after college, they credit their experiences at St. Olaf with preparing them for a career in agriculture. It all started with their first visit to campus.

I stepped on campus and felt that everyone I met took an interest in me as a person and not just as a prospective student, Helle says. It was the personal notes and phone calls from students during the application process that made me feel welcome. I also chose St. Olaf because I felt that the liberal arts education would allow me to explore areas outside my biology major.

The support at St. Olaf helped Helle land summer internships that would nourish their love for food and agriculture. For two summers, Helle interned at the Liberty Prairie Foundation, a nonprofit in Illinois that supports ecological, local food enterprises. They served as communications intern the first summer and community food systems intern the next. As the community food systems intern, they led a food rescue program where they recruited teams of volunteers and taught them how to harvest, wash, and pack fresh produce in the field to be later delivered to local food pantries.

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Classes on campus also helped Helle make connections between their studies and their career interests. In particular, a bioinformatics course that Helle took their senior year sparked their interest in the crossover between science and agriculture.

The class was a blend of computer science and a continuation of intermediate genetics, Helle says. It was also the hardest course Ive ever taken, but it was so rewarding.

And Helle was right about St. Olafs liberal arts approach: While they majored in biology and took many environmental studies courses, they were also able to take advantage of off-campus opportunities to study Spanish in Ecuador, classics in Rome, and sociology and anthropology in Thailand. Outside the classroom, they co-captained the womens varsity soccer team, played Ultimate Frisbee with St. Olaf Vortex, and served on the St. Olaf Athletic Advisory Board.

Helle completed the Next-Gen Farmer Training Program in 2019 and then worked as a mushroom farmer at Smallhold, an organic mushroom farm that grows their produce inside controlled environment minifarms in grocery stores and restaurants around New York City, through early 2020. Their job at Smallhold not only built off of their previous work with Square Roots, but also involved more technical aspects as well.

At Smallhold, I also troubleshooted HVAC, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and micro-controllers in the units with our small farm team, Helle explains. Like Square Roots, Smallhold is mission-aligned and wants to provide real, local food to people in urban areas.

Helles work at Smallhold helped them diversify their knowledge of crops and gain more experience in agricultural technology. I enjoyed the challenge of understanding different farm systems, because no two farms look the same, Helle says.

Having recently returned to Minnesota after several years in New York City, Helle is now working with Pillsbury United Communities, a community-building organization working to co-create societal change and justice, as their hydroponic farmer. As part of Pillsbury Uniteds urban agriculture and food security enterprise, Helle works at their shipping container hydroponic farm in North Minneapolis, which provides food that is distributed to grocery stores around the metro area.

Its a very holistic job and Im wearing a lot of hats, which is great, Helle says. Whereas Helle used to work on larger teams in New York, they now hold a more independent role at Pillsbury United as they work on maintenance, irrigation, commercial production, crop planning, and seed-to-shelf logistics. Its more responsibility than Ive had before. But it also comes at a time where I feel good about leading and teaching. Im happy to get back to my roots in the nonprofit space by focusing less on revenue and more on impact.

Working in Minnesota with Pillsbury United has brought things full circle for Helle. While hydroponics technology is growing in popularity on the East Coast, it still lacks support in the Midwest, and Helle wants to fill that gap. For me, to come back and be able to share this technology with the Midwest region that really needs year-round growing capabilities is huge, Helle says. But I would also personally love the opportunity to train people of color in these systems, because agtech can push to be more racially diverse. We have an opportunity to redefine what the future of this food system looks like, and we have a responsibility to make sure that is as inclusive as possible.

As Helle continues to pursue urban agriculture, they want to help take controlled-environment agriculture to new heights. I would love to become more involved in research and development in this space to help direct the commercialization of new products in the industry, says Helle. I am interested in pushing the limits on what types of food we can grow indoors with farmer-assisted technology. My goal is to preserve the farmers story and livelihood and to inspire the next generation of farmers to think outside the box.

See more here:

St. Olaf graduate is sowing the seeds of hydroponic farming - St. Olaf College News

From High School Musical to Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, these are Zac Efron's best and worst roles, according to IMDb.

Zac Efrons career started in the early 2000s with a series of relatively unknown films before he shot to fame at the center of the High School Music franchise. At the same time, he took on a few well-loved roles before attempting to leave his career as a teen icon behind and move towards more serious acting.

RELATED: Zac Efron Reimagined as 7 Different Superheroes

Now, he is one of the most famouspeople in the world, more well-known for his excellent talent than his time at the center of a childrens franchise.

Ifthere is oneZac Efron film which is about as far from High School Musical as is physically possible, thenit'sExtremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, one of Efron's most recent prominent roles.Efron ditches the schoolboy look in favor of a realistic portrayal of one of the most famous serial killers of all time. Of course, his natural good looks and charm help him form the misleadingly delightful side of Bundy, but the murderous side is a new direction for Efron.

Scoob! makes a lot of controversial decisions that harm the legacy ofScooby-Doo. Not only did the film replace Frank Welker as Fred (he has voiced Fred consistently for more than fifty years) with Efron himself, but it left behind the charm the animated series once had.

RELATED: Zac Efrons 10 Best Movies (According To IMDb)

There was a lot of hype surrounding this release, and then a whole lot of disappointment from fans whowere looking for a revival of big-budget Mystery Inc. adventures.

Period dramas are often a hit or miss genre, with their success determined by characterization.Me And Orson Wellesmanages to land a place in Zac Efrons top five, thanks to well throughout writing. He takes on the lead role of Richard Samuels, a teenager performing in the Orson Welles stage adaptation of Julius Caesar. Both Efron and Christian McKay were well-received.

Relatively fresh from High School Musical, Zac Efron landed a leading role in At Any Price back in 2012. While Roger Ebert enjoyed the film, critics and audiences were much more mixed in their reviews, citing melodramatic acting from across the cast and cliched moments as the films weakest points. Of which there were many.

While Efron doesnt take a major role in this film, he was put into a position that allows him to add a much more eccentric side to his personality than usual. He played Nat, a college student and friend of John Magaros Dean. The comedy-drama wasnt a big player at the box office but made a splash at film festivals.

Before High School Musical, Efron had already established himself an acting career, appearing in a variety of small pictures. One of those is 2005s The Derby Stallion, a film about Efrons character caring for a horse and eventually entering a race. The film hasn't been well-remembered by critics or audiences alike,who cite an uninteresting story and an abundance of cliches as reasons behind their negativity.

Just like Liberal Arts, Efron doesnt have a major role in The Disaster Artist. In fact, he appears in just one scene and his role is particularly interesting.

RELATED: Hogwarts Houses Of Zac Efron Characters

His character, Dan Janjigian, portrayed Chris R in The Room, so the majority of the time Efron is on screen, he is playing someone who is playing someone else. Quitethe acting inception. He mirrors Janjigians performance just as well as everyone else in The Disaster Artist does, making this a subtle and well-used cameo.

If there was one thing no-one ever needed to be remade, it was Baywatch. Seth Gordon allowed Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron to team up and star in the fateful comedy which managed to perform well at the box office despite universally negative reviews. One particular accolade the film did land Efron was a Worst Actor nomination at the Golden Raspberry Awards in 2017; the filmas a whole was nominated for Worst Picture.

As a film, The Greatest Showman achieved an incredible amount of attention and made bucket loads of money. This was mostly down to some truly excellent songs and a few particularly strong performances (including Efron) but it was criticized for overuse of artistic license. On the whole, however,critics and audiences must have found a lot to love.It was nominated for the Musical/Comedy variant of the Best Motion Picture Golden Globe.

Whilecritics could argue that the previous twoHigh School Musicalare hard to call good examples of cinema,audiences and reviewers alike seem to view the conclusion to thetrilogy as mediocre and disappointing. It was brought into action after the previous installments became successful, but failed tomake the same impact on young fans, whose excitement trailed off. This film ends up with a 4.8 IMDb average and is Efron's worst-rated film role so far.

NEXT: 10 Best Zac Efron Movies (According To Rotten Tomatoes)

Next Harry Potter: 10 Things That Make No Sense About Sirius Black

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Zac Efron: His 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Roles According To IMDb - Screen Rant

To celebrate his 40th birthday last week, Adam Partington and his partner, Gemma Cann, took to the River Cam on new paddleboards with a goodies hamper strapped to the front.

After gliding past Cambridges ancient colleges, the couple stopped at Grantchester Meadows at the edge of the city for a picnic and celebratory glass of bubbly before paddling back to their starting point.

Its so liberating and refreshing, said Partington who has been working from home near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, since March of his new pursuit. It has its own pace. Weve had fewer options since lockdown, so Im not surprised so many people have taken it up.

The couple are among thousands who have taken to Britains inland waterways in the past few months. British Canoeing has seen a 40% rise in members since last year, with 19,000 people signing up in the past three months.

The Canal & River Trust, the Outdoor Swimming Society and the Angling Trust are all reporting a surge in interest.

Red Paddle Co, a paddleboard retailer, said it had seen an unprecedented 300% rise in sales and enquiries, making 2020 its busiest year and leaving stores short of stock.

The recent boom has been driven by the accessibility of the sport, gyms being closed for so long, the desire to do something socially with friends and the sun shining, said co-founder John Hibbard.

Jenny Spencer of British Canoeing said: Literally, from the day lockdown was eased a little bit and we were allowed outdoors, paddle sports just took off. People had spent a long time being cooped up indoors, and some were getting fed up with running and cycling.

A big proportion of new paddlers are families, and almost four in 10 are female. Growth has been mainly among those aged between 30 to 60, said Spencer.

Thousands of miles of waterways in the UK mean most of the population is within reach of a river or a canal. Its peaceful and calming. People like having a new perspective on their surroundings, she said.

And it helps that social distancing is built into paddle sports.

Its been a lot of fun exploring the waterways. Its exercise, relaxation and fresh air all rolled into one

Jonathan Sullivan, 40, had been toying with the idea for years but had never got round to venturing out on the Trent and numerous canals around his home in Long Eaton, Derbyshire.

Then lockdown happened. Sullivan and his wife, Michala, juggled working at home with caring for and home-schooling their two children, six-year-old William and Niamh, almost five.

We ran out of ways to entertain them. There wasnt much to do, or many places to visit, Sullivan said.

They invested in a three-person inflatable kayak and a paddleboard. Its been a lot of fun exploring the waterways. The family has gone wild swimming and taken picnics on paddling trips. Its a great way to spend time together.

Sullivan has also used paddling as a way to de-stress after long days at his computer. I go on my own in the evening. Its exercise, relaxation and fresh air all rolled into one.

A licence is required to paddle on waterways maintained by the Environment Agency and the Canal & River Trust, and the Norfolk Broads. In Scotland, there is a right to roam over land and water.

Some 95% of rivers in England are in private hands with limited access. Less than 2,000km out of 57,600 have a statutory public right of navigation and are open for people to go wild swimming or canoeing.

Two members of the House of Lords Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the former Paralympian athlete, and Liberal Democrat peer Lord Addington have proposed amendments to the agriculture bill, currently going through parliament, to allow the public better rights of access to rivers.

Grey-Thompson said water activities helped peoples mental health and gave them a greater connection with nature. There is something very calming about being near water the sound of it, on a summers day, there is nothing that is more perfect, she said in a recent podcast.

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Up the creek with 19,000 paddles as UK takes to the water - The Guardian

Its not simply that suburban America is increasingly diverse, nor that a majority of Black Americans live in the suburbs, nor even that a majority of new immigrants settle in suburbs, not cities. Instead, its that Americas suburbs are ground zero for a major schism among white suburbanites one remaking the electoral map before our eyes, and revealing why that old suburban playbook just doesnt work anymore.

Were seeing a suburban political divide quite different from the one that played out after World War II, when well-to-do, middle-class and even some working-class whites living in suburbia found common ground by looking through their rearview mirrors with horror at the cities they were fleeing, says Sugrue.

In past decades, that commonality made appeals to suburbanites fears about those cities and the people of color they were fleeing a potent political weapon. Now, white stratification within the suburbs is changing that.

The whitest suburban places are often at the suburban-exurban fringes places where middle-class whites who are attempting to flee the growing racial diversity of cities and nearby suburbs are moving, says Sugrue. By contrast, many of the older suburbs, particularly those with late 19th-, early 20th-century charming housing and excellent schools, have been attracting well-to-do and highly educated whites.

Were seeing the results of that play out in elections. Trump supporters are more likely to be clustered in the outlying, more heavily white suburbs, and Democrats are making real inroads into the communities with more heterogeneity and better-off whites, says Sugrue. Thats a really big change.

But theres a whole lot more to the story. Just because certain suburbs are trending blue doesnt exactly mean theyre woke to the racial politics that have long plagued suburbia. White liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing, says Sugrue. We cant just think about it as torch-bearing angry white supremacists. If they were the only obstacles to equality in suburban housing, we would have come a lot farther than we have.

To sort through all of this what we mean when we talk about the suburbs, how theyre changing and the implications that has for American life POLITICO spoke to Sugrue on Tuesday. A transcript of the conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.

Stanton: Recently, President Trump has been particularly vocal in his appeals to white suburbanites, tweeting that he is happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood. Theres a lot to unpack there. As someone who has spent decades researching issues of housing, race, cities and suburbs, whats your reaction when you hear something like that?

Sugrue: Well, there are a lot of different ways to react to the presidents tweet. Hes appealing to the hard-core racial sentiments of his base in particular, fears of African-Americans, Latinos and low-income residents moving into homogeneous, mostly white suburban communities. But hes evoking a suburbia from, in many respects, the past. This is not the land of Leave it to Beaver anymore. Suburbs are more diverse and heterogeneous. Today, a majority of African Americans live outside of central cities and in suburban places. Suburbs have become gateway communities for new Americans: A majority of new immigrants to the United States live in suburban places.

This is not the land of Leave It to Beaver anymore.

Thomas Sugrue

That said, while in the aggregate, suburbs are more diverse, the distribution of nonwhites isnt random. Metropolitan America is not a place of free housing choice. Its still very much shaped by deep patterns of racial inequality and a maldistribution of resources. A lot of the nonwhite newcomers to suburbia live in what I call secondhand suburbs places that have become increasingly unfashionable for whites, often older suburbs closer to central cities, with declining business districts and decaying housing stock.

And just as the distribution of minority groups across suburbia is not random, the distribution of whites across suburbia has really significant political implications. Were seeing a suburban political divide quite different from the one that played out after World War II, when well-to-do, middle-class and even some working-class whites living in suburbia found common ground by looking through their rearview mirrors with horror at the cities they were fleeing. By the early 2000s, you have growing divisions among white suburbanites. The whitest suburban places are often at the suburban-exurban fringes places where middle-class whites who are attempting to flee the growing racial diversity of cities and nearby suburbs are moving. By contrast, many of the older suburbs, particularly those with late 19th-, early 20th-century charming housing and excellent schools, have been attracting well-to-do and highly educated whites.

And I think were seeing that play out in elections both the 2018 midterms and in 2020, where Trump supporters are more likely to be clustered in the outlying, more heavily white suburbs, and Democrats are making real inroads into the communities with more heterogeneity and better-off whites. Thats a really big change.

Just as the distribution of minority groups across suburbia is not random, the distribution of whites across suburbia has really significant political implications.

Thomas Sugrue

The suburban lifestyle dream is really different depending on who you are. Theres not one single suburban lifestyle dream. For immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, its getting access to the plentiful service-sector jobs available in suburban places. For educated, well-to-do whites, its having a charming house in an older, walkable neighborhood with first-rate public schools. For middle-class whites alienated by the growing diversity of society, its having a place closer to open fields and farms, with brand-new housing stock and racially homogenous public schools. We have to talk about the diversity of suburban lifestyle dreams, and see that theres not just one. And thats where I think Trump has really misread the reality of todays suburbs.

Stanton: It seems like theres some question as to what we even mean when we say suburbia. Why do we have such a fixed idea of the suburbs the Leave It to Beaver image even as theyve changed drastically?

Sugrue: Well, suburbs occupy a distinct place in American popular culture. The way they were represented in films, novels, memoirs and by a whole generation of social scientists was as a place where well-to-do whites lived separate from each other in houses surrounded by green lawns. And that reflects a reality based in the extraordinary period of growth following the Second World War, when the suburbs expanded exponentially and largely followed a model of single-family detached housing and accessibility by car.

But suburbs didnt freeze in time circa 1950 or 1960; they continued to evolve and transform. And those transformations were largely overlooked by political commentators, journalists, social scientists, novelists and pop culture. You saw, for example, beginning in the 1960s and expanding in the 70s and 80s, the emergence of clusters of multifamily housing apartments, townhouses and condominiums in suburban places. And as the housing market opened, a lot of new immigrants chose suburban places as points of settlement because suburbs offered access to jobs. In the post-WWII period up to the present day, most American job growth has been in suburban places office parks, industrial parks, shopping malls, stores, restaurants, the construction industry, all sorts of service jobs. And those changes are crucial to understanding the remapping of metropolitan America. They capture a more complex reality than the post-WWII image of the suburbs.

Stanton: At recent telerallies, President Trump has said that under his administration, youre not going to have low-income housing built right next to you, which drives down your housing value, and a lot of crime comes in. What is the history hes drawing on?

Sugrue: Charles Tilly, one of the great sociologists of our time, coined a term: opportunity hoarding. His notion was that certain groups can accumulate all sorts of advantages that reinforce their political power or socioeconomic advantages. The post-WWII American suburb was a place where whites could opportunity hoard particularly by getting access to a well-funded, first-rate public education and during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, civil rights activists made the case that the way to move toward racial equality was by opening up housing opportunities in places that were exclusive. During the late 60s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development a Cabinet-level agency created by President Lyndon Johnson made it its task to build affordable housing in suburban places. Interestingly, it was Republican President Richard Nixon and his HUD Secretary, George Romney, who pushed aggressively to open suburban places to affordable housing. But that was extraordinarily controversial politically, and over the course of his first term, Nixon increasingly marginalized both HUD and Romney because of the high political costs of attempting to open up suburban places. We live in a world that hasnt changed [that policy] too much since Nixon began to withdraw HUD from the construction of affordable housing in suburbs. The federal government has put less and less energy over the last 4050 years in diversifying housing stock and opening up predominately suburban places, particularly white and well-off places, to low-income housing. Theres very little political will for it.

The federal role is largely invisible. But the federal government underwrote suburbia.

Thomas Sugrue

And this gets to another critical dimension of suburban history: The federal government played a major role in creating suburbia. It provided subsidies to homeowners through programs like the Veterans Administration, the Federal Housing Administration and its predecessor, the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which made possible the dramatic expansion of single-family housing. When you drive through new suburban housing developments, you dont see a sign that says, you know, Whispering Forest: Brought to you by the federal government. The federal role is largely invisible. But the federal government underwrote suburbia by providing significant funding for highway construction. It played a critical role in changing suburban economics by providing tax breaks particularly in the form of tax appreciation for new commercial developments in suburban places. It encouraged the decentralization of industry, particularly the defense industry, which was a boon for suburbia in places like Orange County, California; Suffolk County, Long Island; and suburban Phoenix.

The federal government played a critical role in the rise and growth and prosperity of suburbia. But it has not played a significant role in making the advantages of suburbia available to lower-income Americans. And thats critical: When Trump talks about the federal government inflicting low-income housing on communities that dont want it not messing with the suburban lifestyle dream hes invoking the aspirations of federal policy that were seldom actually put into practice.

The federal government played a critical role in the rise and growth and prosperity of suburbia. But it has not played a significant role in making the advantages of suburbia available to lower-income Americans.

Thomas Sugrue

Stanton: Whats the political effect of the governments role in the suburbs effectively being invisible?

Sugrue: For a long time, it meant that many white suburbanites who benefited hugely from these invisible programs attributed suburban homeownership simply to their own discipline and hard work. It meant that persistent, deeply entrenched housing segregation and discrimination were explained away as individuals expressing their own preferences, or freedom of choice to live where they want to live. It made it very hard for white Americans to interpret racial segregation or disinvestment from predominantly minority and largely urban neighborhoods as something that was the result of public policy that it was not the result of individual recklessness or irresponsibility, which is the way that it often got framed. Instead, homeownership equals good citizenship and responsibility. And then, when you see signs of disinvestment and decline and decay, it seems that those must be the result of irresponsibility and recklessness. And that rhetoric remains really deeply entrenched in American politics.

Stanton: Regarding rhetoric, my understanding is that during the Nixon era, there was a realization that politically and legally, you couldnt really defend racial segregation of housing. But you could defend economic segregation of neighborhoods. So when we talk about low-income housing, is that just a shorthand for talking about racial desegregation?

Sugrue: Its something of both. In modern American history, race and class have been fundamentally intertwined. Its impossible to understand economic inequality and how it plays out without understanding its racial dimensions. Race became, for many Americans, an easy marker for class, and class often became a way to obscure the racial dynamics at play in shaping housing markets. And along with that goes a rhetoric of colorblindness shared by many white Americans, regardless of their political orientation: I dont see people by the color of their skin, or I would have anybody be my neighbor red, white, black, yellow or purple. I cant tell you how many times I've heard that as a way of professing supposed indifference to race.

We cant just think about it as torch-bearing angry white supremacists. If they were the only obstacles to equality in suburban housing, we would have come a lot farther than we have.

Thomas Sugrue

Also, one thing thats important to consider are the ways in which white liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing. In other words, we cant just think about it as torch-bearing angry white supremacists. If they were the only obstacles to equality in suburban housing, we would have come a lot farther than we have.

Stanton: Explain that. What have white liberals done?

Sugrue: So, one of area of really important bipartisan convergence is the politics of homeownership the notion that property values need to be protected and, in particular, the politics of NIMBY, or not in my backyard. And there are liberals who profess to be progressive on matters of race who profess and support the idea of a racially diverse society, who say that they would like their children to go to racially mixed schools but when it comes to the questions of changing the landscape of their neighborhoods or changing the color of their neighbors or their kids school classmates, these folks start to sound a lot like conservatives, even if theyre ostensibly liberals.

One of the consequences of that are the fierce battles over even modest or token efforts to bring diversity to predominantly white suburban school districts, and really significant opposition to the construction of multifamily housing. And its not even couched in the rhetoric of class. Its not, I dont want multifamily housing in my neighborhood because I dont want lower-class people living here. Instead, its, This is going to change the character of the neighborhood, or Its going to jeopardize my property values, or Its going to bring congestion.

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Trump Doesnt Understand Todays SuburbsAnd Neither Do You - POLITICO

It was August 5, 2020. Times Square in New York had been rented to promote Hindutva (Hinduness). There were functions held in numerous western capitals. All of India was agog.

Except for Indias 200-million strong Muslim minority. Their mosque, the Babri Masjid, was torn down by Hindu zealots in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya. Many Hindus alleged that the mosque had been built by in turn tearing down a Hindu temple. So they wanted the temple restored.

Narendra Modi became Indias prime minister for the second time in 2019. Some months after his reelection, the Indian Supreme Court in a judgment dated November 9, 2019, stated that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was illegal. It also said that there was no evidence to suggest that a Hindu structure stood underneath the mosque.

Yet, the Court handed over the disputed land to Hindus to construct their temple, while at the same time awarding a large tract of land in Ayodhya for the construction of a new mosque. Modi hailed the verdict in his by now all-too-familiar television addresses.

I am a Hindu. A devout Hindu. Perhaps not as devout a Hindu as Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of India. Yet Gandhi gave his life for Indias Muslims. Gandhi hails from the Indian state of Gujarat, the state of Modi. In his office, Modi has a statuette of Gandhi.

But does Modi follow Gandhis ideals? India is one of the biggest, most-diverse nations on earth. Gandhi wanted India to strictly separate church from state, and handed India to the atheist Jawaharlal Nehru to run for close to two decades. In 1984, there was a watershed election. The Hindu right, almost always marginalized until then, won only two seats in parliament.

They didnt know where to look. Their leader, LK Advani, latched onto the temple-mosque issue to gain power. It became a matter of pride for Hindus. Hindu pride.

But Hindu pride is not like white pride. Hinduism is one of the worlds oldest and one of the most peaceful religions in the world. Unlike some other religious groups, Hindus do not proselytize. Circa 1000 AD, Muslim invaders started arriving in the subcontinent and by 1200 AD they had captured almost all of India.

They ruled uninterrupted until the British arrived in the mid-eighteenth century. Nehru himself acknowledges in his Independence Day speech on the night of August 14, 1947, that the soul of India had been long suppressed. By the soul of India he meant the soul of Indias Hindus.

But Gandhi wanted every wind to sweep through the house of India. Advani stirred and shook the nation with a violent, traumatic journey across the country in 1992 to promote the temple. His partys seats grew to almost a hundred, still nowhere near enough to form a government.

But he knew he was on the right track. In 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the PM, and in 2014, Modi. Modi marginalized him and made him a part of the path-showing council, which is neither path-showing nor a council. It is defunct. Advani, the architect of Hindutva, was made defunct. Power does that.

He did not attend the foundation laying ceremony of the temple in Ayodhya. Maybe because its because of Covid, maybe because Modi did not want him to. Modi was of course the chief guest. This was not a Hindutva opportunity to be missed.

As many of Indias exult, almost all of Indias Muslims cow down in shame. Modis regime has not been kind to them. Cow vigilantism has led to numerous attacks of lynchings on Indias Muslims. The Muslim majority-state of Kashmir has been under a brutal lockdown for a year. Modi has given refuge in India to persecuted minorities in Indias neighborhood like Hindus, Sikhs and even Christians (in a sign of clear concession to the West), but not to Muslims.

Today the Indian Muslim lies almost comatose. He is at the bottom of the countrys societal and economic totem pole. No real programs are launched to help him. Many Hindus rejoice at his fate, who they consider their former tormentor.

The Babri Masjid was built circa 1520, almost five hundred years ago. Modis supporters say that with the construction of the temple, he has accomplished what no one had for five hundred years. But Indias soul is being torn apart. Gandhis ashes are being singed.

Modis supporters mock Hindus like me to be bad Hindus, just as Trumps supporters mock liberal whites to be bad whites. But what would Modi say about Gandhi? Does he pray to him only to show the world, while internally he regards him as a relic. Gandhi won India its freedom. Why not let his thoughts linger on for a while? Must we all breathe from the putrid stench of hate.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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The day a communitys pride was hurt - The Times of India Blog