Category Archives: Government Oppression

PARIS The council of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg imposed on Monday sanctions on 25 individuals and eight entitiesin Syria it holds responsible for theproduction and trafficking of narcotics,notablyCaptagon.

The individuals sanctioned include Wasim Badi al-Assad, Samer Kamal al-Assad, Mudar Rifaat al-Assad, all cousins of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Others sanctioned include Lebanese nationals, arms smuggler Nouh Zaitara, and Hassan Dekko known as the king of Captagon.

The entities included in the category of supporting state oppression include for instance theal-Areen Foundation, directed by First Lady Asma al-Assad. This alleged charity group is accused of being closely affiliated with Syrian militias and supporting the goals of the government. Private security companiesoperating in Syria, such as Al-Jabal Security and Protection, Castle for Security and Protection and Aman for Protection and Security were also sanctioned for their roles in oppressing the Syrian people. According to the EU, these entities also act asshell companies for pro-government militias.

Finally, the Russian engineering company Stroytransgaz, currently controlling Syrias largest phosphate mines, is accused of benefitting from and supporting the Syrian government.

Any assets in EU territories belonging to the individuals and entities that appear on the new sanctions list have been frozen. The individuals on the list are banned from entering EU countries. Also, EU individuals and companies are prohibited from doing business with these parties.

While most of the individuals and entities on the new EU list were sanctioned for their involvement in alleged large-scale drug trafficking involving the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the list also includes two more sanctions categories. The second targets those responsible for oppressing the Syrian population, and the third relates to economic deals with Russia that are harmful to the Syrian people.

Mondays decision by the EU brings the total number of people and entities subject to sanctions in view of the situation in Syria to 322 persons, targeted by both an assets freeze and by an EU travel ban, and81 entitiessubject to an asset freeze.

In parallel to the decision sanctioning Syrian individuals and entities, the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union also adopted a new wave of restrictive measures Monday against eightindividuals and one entityresponsible for serious human rights violations in Iran. With this new wave of sanctions, the EU list on Iran includes restrictions against 211 individuals and 35 entities.

On Monday, the USTreasury sanctioned four other senior officials of the Law Enforcement Forces of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), responsible for the brutal suppression of the protests in the country. On the same day, the United Kingdom also sanctioned Iranian entities and individuals over breaches of human rights. A statement issued by the British Foreign Ministry said its new package of sanctions targeted "four IRGCcommanders, under whose leadership IRGC forces have opened fire on unarmed protestors resulting in numerous deaths, including of children, and have arbitrarily detained and tortured protestors."

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EU slaps Captagon sanctions on relatives of Syria's Assad - Al-Monitor

The news media plays a key role in shaping public perception about artificial intelligence. Since 2017, when Ottawa launched its Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, AI has been hyped as a key resource for the Canadian economy.

With more than $1 billion in public funding committed, the federal government presents AI as having potential that must be harnessed. Publicly-funded initiatives, like Scale AI and Forum IA Qubec, exist to actively promote AI adoption across all sectors of the economy.

Over the last two years, our multi-national research team, Shaping AI, has analyzed how mainstream Canadian news media covers AI. We analyzed newspaper coverage of AI between 2012 and 2021 and conducted interviews with Canadian journalists who reported on AI during this time period.

Our report found news media closely reflects business and government interests in AI by praising its future capabilities and under-reporting the power dynamics behind these interests.

Our research found that tech journalists tend to interview the same pro-AI experts over and over again especially computer scientists. As one journalist explained to us: Who is the best person to talk about AI, other than the one who is actually making it? When a small number of sources informs reporting, news stories are more likely to miss important pieces of information or be biased.

Canadian computer scientists and tech entrepreneurs Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Jean-Franois Gagn and Jolle Pineau are disproportionately used as sources in mainstream media. The name of Bengio a leading expert in AI, pioneer in deep learning and founder of Mila AI Institute turns up nearly 500 times in 344 different news articles.

Only a handful of politicians and tech leaders, like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, have appeared more often across AI news stories than these experts.

Few critical voices find their way into mainstream coverage of AI. The most-cited critical voice against AI is late physicist Stephen Hawking, with only 71 mentions. Social scientists are conspicuous in their absence.

Bengio, Hinton and Pineau are computer science authorities, but like other scientists theyre not neutral and free of bias. When interviewed, they advocate for the development and deployment of AI. These experts have invested their professional lives in AI development and have a vested interest in its success.

Most AI scientists are not only researchers, but are also entrepreneurs. There is a distinction between these two roles. While a researcher produces knowledge, an entrepreneur uses research and development to attract investment and sell their innovations.

The lines between the state, the tech industry and academia are increasingly porous. Over the last decade in Canada, state agencies, private and public organizations, researchers and industrialists have worked to create a profitable AI ecosystem. AI researchers are firmly embedded in this tightly-knit network, sharing their time between publicly-funded labs and tech giants like Meta.

AI researchers occupy key positions of power in organizations that promote AI adoption across industries. Many hold, or have held, decision-making positions at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) an organization that channels public funding to AI Research Chairs across Canada.

When computer scientists make their way into the news cycle, they do so not only as AI experts, but also as spokespeople for this network. They bring credibility and legitimacy to AI coverage because of their celebrated expertise. But they are also in a position to promote their own expectations about the future of AI, with little to no accountability for the fulfilment of these visions.

The AI experts quoted in mainstream media rarely discussed the technicalities of AI research. Machine learning techniques colloquially known as AI were deemed too complex for a mainstream audience. Theres only room for so much depth about technical issues, one journalist told us.

Instead, AI researchers use media attention to shape public expectations and understandings of AI. The recent coverage of an open letter calling for a six-month ban on AI development is a good example. News reports centred on alarmist tropes on what AI could become, citing profound risks to society.

Bengio, who signed the letter, warned that AI has the potential to destabilize democracy and the world order.

These interventions shaped the discourse about AI in two ways. First, they framed AI debates according to alarmist visions of distant future. Coverage of an open letter calling for a six-month break from AI development overshadowed real and well-documented harms from AI, like worker exploitation, racism, sexism, disinformation and concentration of power in the hands of tech giants.

Second, the open letter casts AI research into a Manichean dichotomy: the bad version that no onecan understand, predict, or reliably control and the good one the so-called responsible AI. The open letter was as much about shaping visions about the future of AI as it was about hyping up responsible AI.

But according to AI industry standards, what is framed as responsible AI to date has consisted of vague, voluntary and toothless principles that cannot be enforced in corporate contexts. Ethical AI is often just a marketing ploy for profit and does little to eliminate the systems of exploitation, oppression and violence that are already linked to AI.

Our report proposes five recommendations to encourage reflexive, critical and investigative journalism in science and technology, and pursue stories about the controversies of AI.

1. Promote and invest in technology journalism. Be wary of economic framings of AI and investigate other angles that are typically left out of business reporting, like inequalities and injustices caused by AI.

2. Avoid treating AI as a prophecy. The expected realizations of AI in the future must be distinguished from its real-world accomplishments.

3. Follow the money. Canadian legacy media has paid little attention to the significant amount of governmental funding that goes into AI research. We urge journalists to scrutinize the networks of people and organizations that work to construct and maintain the AI ecosystem in Canada.

4. Diversify your sources. Newsrooms and journalists should diversify their sources of information when it comes to AI coverage. Computer scientists and their research institutions are overwhelmingly present in AI coverage in Canada, while critical voices are severely lacking.

5. Encourage collaboration between journalists and newsrooms and data teams. Co-operation among different types of expertise helps to highlight the social and technical considerations of AI. Without one or the other, AI coverage is likely to be deterministic, inaccurate, naive or overly simplistic.

To be reflexive and critical of AI does not mean to be against the development and deployment of AI. Rather, it encourages the news media and its readers to question the underlying cultural, political and social dynamics that make AI possible, and examine the broader impact that technology has on society and vice versa.

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News coverage of artificial intelligence reflects business and government hype not critical voices - The Conversation

The Global Assault on Environmentalists

Earth Day arrives only weeks after the main U.N. body on climate change cited the work of many hundreds of scientists in this grim consensus: Climate change is now so grievous a threat to human well-being and planetary health that our window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all is rapidly closing.

Those most endangered include Indigenous people, over 475 million, who safeguard their ecosystems and the bulk of Earths remaining biodiversity with their traditional, generations-old expertise. Communities such as the Amazons Yanomami and Karipuna, or northeast Indias Khasi, are attacked as governments, industries and other powerful interests seize lands to mine, drill for oil, clear-cut timber or dam rivers. Attackers kill four environmental defenders every week 1,733 of them since 2012 and this murderous pace has accelerated, reports the human rights group Global Witness. In 2021, 40 percent of those killed were Indigenous, with most attacks in Latin America and Asia.

Activists in a coalition known as ALLIED document a wider campaign of attacks, including death threats, beatings, sexual assault, smear campaigns and arbitrary imprisonment or judicial harassment. In five of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines hundreds of non-lethal attacks have presaged deadlier violence. The group reports that most governments do not specifically monitor attacks on environmental defenders, leaving that task to civil society and thus failing to effectively counter the violence.

One campaign against Indigenous environmentalists roils Indias eight northeastern states. There, 45 million indigenous people of 272 ethnicities live amid forested mountains and valleys a region almost as large as Burkina Faso or Colorado. At the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains, northeast India falls within one of Earths 36 hotspots where environmentalists say biodiversity is at particular risk.

For decades, Indias northeast has faced border clashes with China, communal conflicts and insurgencies that have killed more than 50,000 people. In the region, India has leaned heavily on its Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which provides impunity for violence by the military. Under this historically militarized governance, the northeasts Indigenous peoples have been killed, and their visions for development and governance ignored, by authorities. Indias Supreme Court ordered government investigations into civic groups accounts of 1,528 extrajudicial killings by Indian forces just between 2000 and 2012 in the state of Manipur. Nearly six years later, prosecutions have not begun.

Central government power, allied to business interests, drives most deforestation in the northeast, which is 8 percent of Indias territory but has 24 percent of its forest cover. Forestlands are slashed for farming by settlers; government-backed oil, gas and mining projects; and, most threatening of all, dams. The government aims to make the northeast Indias future powerhouse by building more than 100 dams, including massive projects that would inundate entire valleys. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says negotiations with insurgents have let the government lift the special military powers in many areas and accelerate development. In the northeast, obstacles such as corruption, discrimination, violence and [partisan] politics were removed, Modi declared.

A grassroots movement, led largely by Indigenous people, students and women, opposes the dam-driven model of development. They cite the northeasts severe risk of earthquakes; flood disasters created by existing dams; and the displacement of thousands of families by a single dam in Tripura state. Indian authorities arrest and harass campaigners who oppose government-backed projects. Environmentalists have been shot dead, their killers never identified. Few cases are as publicly reported as the 2016 arrest of a Buddhist lama, Lobsang Gyatso, for opposing dam construction. People protesting his arrest were shot dead six of them by police, according to a local environmental group. Officials continue to detain and threaten Indigenous activists, northeast civil society organizations declared last month.

As moneyed, powerful elites slash Latin Americas globally vital forests for more farmland, minerals and timber, international attention via books, films, protests, even lawsuits has focused heavily on Brazil. But most Latin American states continue to allow the dual assault on Indigenous peoples and their biodiverse homelands.

A struggle often overlooked is Nicaraguas. Indigenous andcampesinocommunities led protests to halt an attempt by President Daniel Ortegas government to build a massive Chinese-funded canal that would have smashed through pristine forestlands of Miskito, Rama and other Indigenous peoples. In 2018, Nicaraguans protested what they said was the governments poor response to massive firesacross the Indio Maz biological reserve. The reserve is Nicaraguas second-largest lowland rainforest, part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and home of the Rama-Kriol people. Those protests energized the years-long civic uprising against Ortegas rule.

More than 260,000 Nicaraguans have fled violence and oppression as refugees, mainly to the United States and Costa Rica and violent struggles over resources have embroiled Indigenous people and their lands. Farmers clear Indigenous forestlands to raise cattle; settlers illicitly clear forest for its timber. Ortegas government has allowed such incursions and has promoted gold extraction by issuing mining permits some within legally protected reserves, according to reports from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the nongovernmental Oakland Institute and the Nicaragua-based River Foundation. Whether passive or active, official facilitation of encroachment has fueled killings, rapes, forced displacement and other violence against Indigenous peoples by armed gangs aligned with land-grabbers, environmental activists and independent analysts say.

In Venezuela, Indigenous peoples, about 3 percentof the population, remain the most marginalized. Although the 1999 Constitution established state protections for Indigenous languages, cultures, and territorial rights, those communities still face extreme violence and oppression by state and non-state actors. Yet Indigenous peoples plightis overshadowed by Venezuelas national humanitarian and political crises. Indigenous communities bear the brunt of the Nicols Maduro governments extractive mining policies, particularly in the rural Amazonas and Bolivar states bordering Brazil. Of Venezuelas 40-plus ethnic groups, the Yanomami and Pemn are among the most victimized. Deep in the Amazon rainforest, the Yanomami suffer deaths and displacement from attacks, abuses and diseases inflicted by illegal miners, the Venezuelan military and non-state armed groups. As the Pemn people in Bolivar resistmining activities, security forces severely suppress their protests, killing, detaining and reportedly torturing Pemn activists or community members.

Preserving our planets endangered ecosystems requires all the resources and allies we can muster. U.S. and international policymakers should recognize indigenous environmental defenders as irreplaceable allies, and should strengthen policies and practices to protect them. Key steps include:

Earths degrading climate speaks clearly: Our modern states and economies have erred disastrously in silencing and ignoring our Indigenous neighbors plea for respect and care toward our shared planet. Preserving a viable Earth for our children means first hearing and heeding those neighbors voices.

The authors work at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Chris Collins is a senior program assistant and Emmanuel Davalillo Hidalgo is a program officer in the Institutes Climate, Environment and Conflict unit; Binalakshmi Nepram is a senior advisor and Mona Hein is a visiting scholar on the Religion and Inclusive Societies team.

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To Secure Shared Environments, We Must Protect Indigenous ... - United States Institute of Peace

The University of Akrons Center for Conflict Management sponsored a panel on Thursday, April 20, to discuss the social justice ramifications surrounding the death of Jayland Walker.

The panel was organized by social justice student Jameel Anderson, who wanted to promote social justice and equality through discussion.

Students, faculty, and attendees had the opportunity to engage in dialogue after each of the three speakers addressed the audience.

The panelists, Ben Holda, Imokhai Okolo, and Professor David Licate offered expertise on social justice, legal, and criminal justice aspects of Jaylands case and the community response.

Ben Holda, Coordinator of the National Guild Branch, was the first to take the podium. He offered the caveat that he was speaking from his own point of view as a former student and an academic, and what he shared was not the opinions of or endorsed by the National Guild Branchs beliefs.

Focusing on systemic issues involving the Akron Police Department, Holda described an open season on peaceful protestors that he has observed since last summer.

I want you to know that policing in this city goes beyond the systemic and that the issues we see and think are somewhere off in another community- happen every day, happen with members of The University of Akron police department, Holda said.

Holda believed that systemic repression is embedded in everyday branches of local government, with injustices increasing since the protests for Walker started in 2022.

What is most troubling is the record of malicious prosecution by the city, he said. The city knows that they beat people, that they violated civil rights. That people were peacefully assembled and ordered to disperse, which is illegal.

But what seemed to impact the audience the most was Bens recap of what he and other legal observers witnessed at this past Wednesdays protest on April 19.

According to Holda, what started off as a non-violent movement in Hawkins Plaza, quickly turned as police aggressedthe protestors, using crowd-control-level amounts of chemical irritants.

Holda described the Akron Police Department that evening as having an arbitrary timer, moving to threatening manners as that timer ran out.

According to him, they moved back when the protestors were commanded to move back. APD asked them to move back again, but before finishing their sentence this time, APD began teargassing.

How many of you have seen tear gas? How many of you have felt tear gas? How many of you have seen a three-year-old get tear-gassed? I saw a three-year-old get tear-gassed, Holda said as the audience sat in somber silence.

After the panel, there have been more breaking stories about the April 19 protest. The Akron Bail Fund shared on their Instagram account that they had filed a lawsuit against the city regarding the treatment of protestors.

On Saturday morning, various news outlets reported that a stipulated restraining order had been reached between the two groups as facilitated by an Akron magistrate.

Saturday evening, the Akron Police Department released an edited video that included non-time-stamped aerial footage and limited body camera views. The chief of police asserted that protestors initiated the violence. However, the Akron Bail Fund attorney is reported to have said that the illegal actions of one of two bystanders did not give the police license to revoke the first amendment rights of the peaceful marchers.

The community on social media appears in turmoil about the events of April 19, not unlike the events of the shooting of Jayland Walker.

Next to take the podium was Imokhai Okolo, attorney, and former Akron Police Oversight Committee Candidate.

The thing is, the law is not fair. We operate off this thing called fairness the law is not, Okolo said, speaking of his struggle to balance fighting the system while also working in it.

Okolo repeated a question throughout his speech: What is Justice for Jayland Walker? Okolo believes black and marginalized people have been fighting systemic oppression since, as he put it, the dawn of time.

When this system says youre supposed to have a trial, each side gets to tell their sides of the story, give their two cents. Jayland Walkers family still doesnt have their two cents, he said. Weve been out in the streets trying to give it to them, but I ask, are we going to be able to? Did we get it for Emmet Till? Okolo asked members of the audience.

After explaining that black and marginalized people have been organizing for freedom since the slaves were first brought to America on ships, he stated that slavery is still alive and well- its just changed form.

Okolo says he cannot tell people the exact step-by-step process of how we as a people make a change. He sees it coming only if people get outside and take their first step in getting involved with reformation groups.

I struggle to figure out how were going to get forward, he said. How are we as a people going to move forward? Because its happening day in and day out. The only way forward is to get out in the streets, organize, and experiment with ways to make change, said Okolo.

He suggests that increased brain power and stronger relationships are the only way people can become truly liberated.

Stay mad, stay vigilant because there is no other alternative, Okolo said.

Last to take the podium was Professor Dave Licate, Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice Studies.

Licate focused on what police do and the why behind what they do on the street. Part of his research has included working with police departments in Northern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and doing frequent ride-alongs.

Licate says he has seen both the good and the bad in the criminal justice system.

Have I seen things that shake the foundations of trust in the community? Yes. Have I seen the police stop people of color without constitutional basis to do so, or do things I wouldnt recommend that bordered on illegal and unconstitutional? Yes, he said.

On the other hand, Licate has also observed the positive aspects of policing.

Have I seen the police do things that are incredible in terms of rescuing children, and other heroic activities to protect us? Yes, he said.

According to him, reform comes from building healthy and intelligent organizations from the inside.

If youre sick and not feeling well, are you going to run a marathon? Licate asked. Its the same thing with our organizations, when our organizations are ill and dont have good administrative practices, policies, procedures, training, and technology; theyre more susceptible to corruption, theyre more susceptible to deviation, he said.

Licate believes in building healthier policing organizations through better training and various research-based approaches.

He emphasized, however, that the intergenerational strife and mistrust between the public and police are more complicated.

Until you address that issue of trust and legitimacy, those reforms arent going to take. Or even if they do, if no one believes that theyve actually occurred, whats the point? Licate said. Building trust and legitimacy becomes the focus of what we need to look at now.

Licate says the lack of trust was not born overnight and similarly will not be quickly rebuilt in three months or even a year.

He described a model in which there needed to be internal and external pressure to move the needle.

You need a sustained plan change effort, he said. You need to do it in conjunction with the police department, who also has to have a sustained plan change effort, and you need to keep the pressure on both internally and externally to move forward, he said.

Licate also addressed the issue of limited immunity, which may limit the ability of the public to hold police accountable.

I think we need to discuss the issue of limited immunity that protects police officers right now, he said. Im all about balance, but at this point, its virtually impossible to use civil rights laws to hold police accountable, said Licate.

He also believes that lawmakers should codify a duty to act that would make it mandatory for officers who see injustice to act out to stop it in the moment and to report it after the moment.

This would allow officers to speak out about injustice without fear of being alienated by the department. This is often why officers do not speak against other officers.

Licate offered the example of George Floyd.

Theres a cultural issue here that might need to be overcome. Officers do need to be protected because they could be vulnerable if they say something about an officer of higher rank, he said. So, we need to codify and put in a policy that says if an officer sees somebody with their knee on somebodys neck, they need to say back off.

Transparency and participation of the community are ways to build legitimacy, truth, and reformation, according to Professor Licate.

Following the panelists speeches, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and or make comments. The majority focused on specific steps that can be taken to create change in the system and how individuals can be involved without directly protesting.

Both Holda and Okolo shared similar views of the system being designed to keep minority and poor individuals where they are.

Black Panther Party- some of the most successful reform has come from radical people on the outside, Okolo said, supporting Holdas view on the system being inherently designed for oppression.

Regarding steps the public can take, the panelists agreed on multiple tips, such as educating oneself to better understand society at large. Another was getting involved with community organizers and programs like the Akron Bail Fund.

Another point of agreement was making strides towards integrating the police academy with the education process and possibly requiring officers to obtain a degree before entering their field.

Near the end, one attendee raised her hand simply to have everyone take a deep breath together following the intensity of the discussions.

Try to find balance. Allow yourself to enjoy life. That (indulgence of enjoyment) just cant be the only thing you do, said Okolo

Though the speakers were emotional at times, the panelists did leave the room on a lighter note. All encouraged the initial step of getting out and involved with the community.

Excerpt from:

Speakers at Panel on Social Justice and Jayland Walker Leave ... - The Buchtelite

The worst-case scenario is coming to pass, apparently, in Sudan. That is, at any rate, the apocalyptic message streaming out of Khartoum in the Western media.

US President Joe Biden lent credence to the alarmist perception by confirming that on his orders, the US military had conducted an operation to extract government personnel from Khartoum.

According to the US Department of State, about 16,000 American nationals are currently in Sudan. The US Embassy in Khartoum had an excessive staff strength on par with its Mission in Kiev which was unwarranted by the scale and volume of US-Sudanese bilateral ties, leading to speculation that it was a key intelligence outpost.

In the Horn of Africa, the Arab Gulf states traditionally took a deep dive into the complexities of power projection, political rivalry and conflict across the Red Sea, which has lately re-emerged as a geo-strategic space in which competing global and regional players have sought to project influence.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other, intensely competed to counter each others influence and project their rivalries on to the politics of the Horn, but after years of fierce competition, signs have appeared lately that theyve begun cautiously recalibrating their respective roles.

The post-Covid strain on their financial resources, the drawdown in Yemen, and the eagerness of the Gulf states to appear as constructive and reliable partners, adopting a more pragmatic approach on regional issues all these contributed to the notable signs of dtente replacing the intense intra-Gulf competition in the Horn of Africa.

In Sudan, Saudi and Emirati efforts to shape the political transition after Omar al-Bashirs ouster in April 2019 led to partial successes but also significant difficulties, as they came at a severe reputational cost under scrutiny from both the Sudanese population and the international community.

The US and the European Union saw Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as useful partners in the Horn in terms of their surplus capital to invest that Western powers lacked, as well as their good personal networks. The Faustian deal between the Donald Trump administration, Israel and the Gulf states to lure the Sudanese military leadership into the Abraham Accords in 2020 was a defining moment.

However, that dalliance proved short-lived, and the Western powers game plan to ride on the wings of the Gulf states to counter the growing influence of Russia and China in the Red Sea met a sudden death too, as the ground beneath the feet of the US-Saudi alliance shifted dramatically under the Biden presidency and Riyadh began strengthening its ties with Moscow and Beijing.

This, in turn, compelled the Western powers to explore the opportunity to push for greater coordination and constructive engagement directly with the generals in Khartoum, banking on their own efforts and resources running parallel with the Gulf states recalibration of their involvement in the Horn.

In a nutshell, the crux of the matter is that the Western understanding of stability and sustainable development in Sudan through the prism of the neocon ideology that permeates the Biden administration lies at the core of the aggravation of the sluggish internal political crisis in Sudan that has been brewing since 2019 between the army led by the de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and armed formations led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

The immature, unrealistic political settlements promoted by the Western liberal democracies significantly fueled the militarys infighting.

The Anglo-American dealmaking was largely limited to the Transition Military Council and the Forces for Freedom and Change, an inchoate coalition of hand-picked civilian and rebel Sudanese groups (Sudanese Professional Association, No to Oppression Against Women Initiative, etc) that by no means represented the national forces in Sudan.

Unsurprisingly, these neocon attempts at imposing exotic settlements on an ancient civilization were doomed to fail.

The spin propagated by the Western media reduces the present crisis in Sudan manifesting it as conflict within the military establishment is a grotesque oversimplification and attempt at a cover-up. Simply put, this crisis cannot be reduced to a personal dispute between the two generals Burhan and Hemedti who had been friends for a very long time.

The crisis can be resolved only through a security solution, which means an integration process involving the Rapid Support Forces in an appropriate manner as a political partner in governance, not just a military force affiliated with the army.

Lest it is forgotten, Sudan is a vast country of great ethnic and regional diversity, inhabited by something like 400-500 tribes. The countrys stability depends critically on an optimal model of interaction between the elites and clans.

Basically, what drives the special forces in the current conflict is their expectation to increase their importance in the domestic political process of the country. It must be understood that the current strife is not about access to some military resource, but about control over the economy and the distribution of power.

Meanwhile, the clumsy, inept handling of the formation of the new government by United Nations representative Volker Perthes significantly contributed to the present crisis. Perthes, a German establishment think-tanker, fired up by the neocon ideology, was the wrong man to handle such a sensitive mission.

This is yet another edifying example of the legacy of UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres to prefer Westerners as envoys to those hotspots where the Wests geopolitical interests are at stake.

The UN meeting on March 15 exposed that the overzealous Perthes was detached from reality by rushing through the transfer of power from the military administration to the civilian one rather than concentrating on helping to form a government and creating a committee to draft a new constitution which, alas, provoked the intensification of confrontation between the warring parties.

The good part is that there is not yet any sign ofradicalization in this conflict on religious grounds. Nor is there any power vacuum that could be exploited by a terrorist group. At the same time, mediation by external powers is required.

The countries of the region can help resolve the conflict. A comprehensive settlement may not happen soon, since the internal contradictions that accumulated over time require compromises,and so far at least, the parties are not ready for this.

In the present climate of conflict resolution enveloping regional politics in the West Asian region and the Persian Gulf in particular, there are no objective prerequisites for the conflict to move to the regional stage. The main countries that are associated with the warring factions have come up with peacekeeping initiatives the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

In addition, other external partners, especially Russia and China, will make efforts to prevent a prolonged open conflict. By the way, Sudan has an external debt under US$60 billion, and most of it falls on China and Russia, on the other hand, is well placed to foster rapprochement between Burhan and Dagalo.

Russia takes a balanced position. During his visit to Sudan in February, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with the leaders of both opposing sides. Russia is a stakeholder in Sudans stability.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, The dramatic events taking place in Sudan cause serious concern in Moscow. We call on the parties to the conflict to show political will and restraint and take urgent steps towards a ceasefire. We proceed from the fact that any differences can be settled through negotiations.

However, the Anglo-American agenda remains dubious. Their focus is on internationalizing the crisis, injecting big power rivalries into the Sudanese situation and willy-nilly create pretexts for Western intervention.

But any attempt to reignite the embers of the Arab Spring will be hugely consequential for regional security and stability. The Gulf states and Egypt will need to be particularly watchful.

Sudan would have figured in the phone conversation between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 21.

This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times.

M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. Follow him on Twitter @BhadraPunchline.

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Alignment of incendiary forces torching Sudan Asia Times - Asia Times

The intent of the Constituent Assembly and Dr Ambedkars words that the fundamentals of the Constitution should not be nullified resonated in the basic structure doctrine expounded by the Supreme Court in theKesavananda Bharati judgment.

TODAY marks the 50th anniversary of the invocation of the doctrine of basic structure of the Constitution by the Supreme Court in itsKesavananda Bharati judgmenton April 24, 1973. This is a landmark event in Indias arduous journey anchored in the constitutional scheme of governance.

The historic order of the Supreme Court in that case, that the Parliament, by exercising the procedure to amend the Constitution underArticle 368of the Constitution, cannot alter its basic structure, has beendescribedby Chief Justice of India Dr D.Y. Chandrachud as the north star always guiding the judiciary and the country to remain wedded to the Constitution and to uphold it.

Also read:Keshavananda Bharati of basic structure fame dies

It is quite tragic that the Union Law and Justice MinisterKiren Rijiju and even the Vice President of IndiaJagdeep Dhankharhave taken public stands against the basic structure doctrine, and articulated statements in several public fora against it, in complete contrast to theoaththey have taken owing allegiance to the Constitution. Such open and blatant defiance of the Constitution shocked the whole nation beyond measure, and constituted an attack on the Supreme Court and the very Constitution, the basic structure of which cannot be altered.

No constitutional functionaries such as the Law Minister and the Vice President of India, who is the ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, have ever so brazenly attacked the basic structure doctrine post the Kesavananda Bharati judgement.

Against this background, it would be illuminating to understand the legislative intent of the Constituent Assembly, when it discussed Article 304 of the draft Constitution on September 17, 1949.

Discussions in the Constituent Assembly on the above Article throw light on the significant fact that some Members of the Assembly, including the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Dr B.R. Ambedkar used phrases such as fundamentals of the Constitution and principles of the Constitution, and indicated that those fundamentals and principles should not be altered easily.

It is quite tragic that the Union Law and Justice Minister Kiren Rijiju and even the Vice President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar have taken public stands against the basic structure doctrine, and articulated statements in several public fora against it, in complete contrast to the oath they have taken owing allegiance to the Constitution.

Dr Ambedkar, while replying to the discussion on Article 304, made it clear that if the power of the states in their legislative, administrative and financial spheres were to be altered by the Union government by employing two-thirds majority of the Parliament without in any way allowing the states to have any voice, it would mean, in his words, nullifying the fundamentals of the Constitution.

Social activist and farmer leader Dr P.S. Deshmukh used the phrase principles of the Constitution in his amendment to the aforementioned article in the Constituent Assembly. He moved an amendment to the effect that if the President of India felt that an amendment would not vitiate or abrogate the principles of the Constitution but was necessary, then that could be passed by simple majority.

Dr Ambedkars emphasis on principles of the Constitution and Dr Deshmukhs usage of the phrase the principles of the Constitution in the Constituent Assembly, and their views that these were not to be vitiated, clearly underlined the doctrine of basic structure of the Constitution, albeit in an embryonic form.

The intent of the Constituent Assembly and Dr Ambedkars words that the fundamentals of the Constitution should not be nullified resonated in the basic structure doctrine expounded by the Supreme Court in the Kesavananda Bharati judgment.

Also read:Basic structure and unwritten constitutional principles: analysing the Canadian Supreme Courts recent ruling in relation to the position in India

It is worthwhile to dive deep into the other elaborate statement of Ambedkar while replying to the discussions in the Constituent Assembly on Article 304 of the draft Constitution. That statement, in fact, signalled that the there was no absolute power vested in any organ of the State, and the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the authority of those organs. He cautioned that the purpose of a Constitution is not merely to create the organs of the State but to limit their authority, because if no limitation was imposed upon the authority of the organs, there will be complete tyranny and complete oppression.

Stating that [t]he Constitution is a fundamental document and it defines the position and power of the three organs of the Statethe executive, the judiciary and the legislature, Dr Ambedkar made it clear that[i]t also defines the powers of the executive and the powers of the legislature as against the citizens, as we have done in ourChapter dealing with Fundamental Rights.

Without such limitations, Dr Ambedkar cautioned,The legislature may be free to frame any law; the executive may be, free to take any decision; and the Supreme Court may be free to give any interpretation of the law. It would result in utter chaos.

Stating that a model Constitution could be sustained only on two bases, he said that one base would constitute the foundation for a parliamentary system of government and another base could nourish a totalitarian or dictatorial form of government. Then he hastened to emphasise that, If we agree that our Constitution must not be a dictatorship but must be a Constitution in which there is a parliamentary democracy where government is all the time on the anvil, so to say, on its trial, responsible to the people, responsible to the judiciary, then I have no hesitation in saying that the principles embodied in this Constitution are as good as if not better than, the principles embodied in any other parliamentary constitution.

Dr Ambedkar cautioned thatthe purpose of a Constitution is not merely to create the organs of the State but to limit their authority, because if no limitation was imposed upon the authority of the organs, there will be complete tyranny and complete oppression.

The words of Dr Ambedkar that the government is at all times responsible to the people and to the judiciary, must be marked and paid heed to by everyone, especially those in government. On that count, he said that the principles embodied in our Constitution were equal in importance to any other parliamentary constitution.

Also read:On the Trajectory Shown by Ambedkar

The basic structure doctrine expounded by the Supreme Court embodied in it those principles which would enrich parliamentary democracy and negate any attempt to usher in a dictatorship.

Thecomplete washing awayof the recent Budget session of the Parliament because of the calculated measures by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentarians to paralyse the proceedings of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and the attack on the basic structure of the Constitution by the Law Minister and the Vice President of India, signal an ominous trend for our democracy.

Dr Ambedkars vision articulated in the Constituent Assembly in defence of the principles of the Constitution needs to be invoked to defend its basic structure. This is the meaning and significance of the fiftieth anniversary of the invocation of the basic structure doctrine by the Supreme Court to save the Constitution.

See more here:

Legislative intent of the Constituent Assembly resonated in basic ... - The Leaflet

A glimpse at Israel at 25, 50, and now 75 offers three touchpoints through which to reflect on the countrys evolution as a modern state and my relationship with it.

In 1973, when Israel turned 25, I was a senior at UC Berkeley, headed to Israel that summer to live in Jerusalem for my first year of rabbinical school. Four months later, the Yom Kippur War would start.

The 1967 Six-Day War had transformed Israel and the relationship between American Jews and Israel. Six years later, American Jews love affair with Israel was still going strong. For many of us, Israel was a source of Jewish pride, a miracle in the desert with a can-do spirit, an incubator of unbounded creativity, determined to balance the realities of living in a tough neighborhood with a strong moral code. It represented Jewish history coming to life every day.

We idealized the socialist kibbutz model while simultaneously protesting on behalf of fiercely anti-socialist Soviet Jews for whom the right to live in Israel represented the fulfillment of their Zionist dreams and their refuge from Soviet oppression. On Israels 25th, some may have looked ahead at looming issues, but we mainly basked in the joy of watching Israel continue to grow as a new, still-struggling country with tremendous promise.

In 1998, when Israel turned 50, I was the executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, which took the lead in organizing both the communitywide celebration in Golden Gate Park and a major Israel at 50 conference with renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz as the keynote speaker.

Israel, by then, had gone through the first intifada starting in 1987. It was in the final shaky stages of the Oslo peace process that began in 1993 with a dramatic handshake on the White House lawn and the promise of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. The peace process continued after the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before ending with the start of the second intifada in 2000.

During the Oslo period, I was on a panel with Gary Rosenblatt, then editor of the New York Jewish Week, who commented on a poll indicating that 82% of American Jews supported the peace process. I remember him saying that if the poll was accurate, he personally believed hed heard from every one of the other 18%. In short, the critics felt much more passionate and were much louder than the supporters in part because Yasser Arafat was reviled by so many and deemed wholly untrustworthy.

Divisions in Israel were even more intense, captured in a Washington Post article written two months prior to Israels 50th that highlighted the one area of possible agreement. As Israel prepares to launch its 50th-anniversary celebrations, most of its 5.9 million citizens seem united for once on one thing: Practically no one is in a mood to celebrate. American Jews, by and large, while not ignoring the mood in Israel, were far less ambivalent about celebrating. Reaching half a century after 2,000 years without a Jewish state was appropriately a big deal.

What about at 75?

Israel is at a precarious moment with anti-democratic and extremist voices within the government threatening to do what external enemies have been repelled from doing since 1948: weaken the very foundations of the State of Israel. The extraordinary protests that have been waged this year against judicial reform efforts demonstrate the depth of outrage and polarization. They stand out because they have been nonviolent and fiercely patriotic. This is not the action of anti-Israel activists. These protests have been the expression of passionate Zionists who care deeply about their countrys future.

So, having marked Israels earlier quarter-century anniversaries, where do I come out on this one? Here is my bottom line: Not even a profoundly troubling Israeli government should detract from our joy of Israel turning 75. I am not talking about unrestrained joy but rather reflective joy combined with a redoubled commitment to an Israel that strives to live up to its founding principles as a Jewish and democratic state.

Countless countries, including ours, are dealing with deep divisions, doubts and anti-democratic pressures. Israel is hardly unique. But that is also not the whole story. It is important to hold onto a fuller picture of Israels evolution over 75 years.

The diversity of the country, within and beyond the Jewish population, is breathtaking. The waves of immigration have contributed greatly to that diversity as Jews from other Middle Eastern nations, the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia fled oppression and made aliyah to the historic homeland of the Jewish people. In 1948, Israel had a population of 800,000. Today it has over 9 million people. Israels innovation as a startup nation is world class. Its efforts to improve the quality of life for all Israelis is inspirational. And though a small country, Israel punches way above its weight when providing humanitarian aid to other countries hit by major natural disasters.

Israel is not the country I wish it to be. I am profoundly disappointed in its current leadership that puts selfish interests ahead of the nations. At the same time, Israel lives in the real world, not in my idealized post-1967 world. The continued terror attacks and missile attacks, including those of recent days, are a constant reminder that modern Israel has been built not on a tranquil island but in the midst of a tough neighborhood. Even while the last 50 years have witnessed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan along with the more recent Abraham Accords, Israel still faces constant threats from those bent on destroying the only Jewish state.

Israel is still a young nation. After all, in 1851 when our country turned 75, Millard Fillmore was president, the New York Times and Western Union were founded and the Gold Rush was still going strong in the new state of California.

There is a lot more to unfold as Israel celebrates 75, and I believe that the good will continue to far outweigh the bad. This is more likely if we ramp up our engagement rather than withdraw. That, more than anything, is the lesson from Israels first 75 years.

Read the rest here:

FIRST PERSON: Remembering Israel at 25, 50 and now 75 J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

Introduction and summary

The importance of household wealth has become abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wealth is the difference between what families ownfor instance, their savings and checking accounts, retirement savings, houses, and carsand what they owe on credit cards, student loans, and mortgages, among other debt.

Yet wealth is vastly unequally distributed across the United States. Black households have a fraction of the wealth of white households, leaving them in a much more precarious financial situation when a crisis strikes and with fewer economic opportunities. Wealth allows households to weather a financial emergency such as a layoff or a family members illness. The pandemic brought multiple such emergencies to American families across all demographics. However, the lack of financial security combined with disproportionate exposure to the deadly coronavirus has had especially disastrous results for the Black community.

Wealth also provides families the means to invest in their childrens education, to start a business, relocate for new and better opportunities, buy a house, and have greater participation in the democratic process. Many households in Black communities cannot afford to pay for reliable internet or electronic devices to facilitate remote learning.1 White workers have been more likely to work remotely during the pandemic and have resources to devote to their childrens remote learning environment, while Black workers are more likely to still be going to work in person. The pandemic has created the perfect storm of factors that will drive wealth for African Americans and white households even further apart.

Wealth is not only a question of financial savings; it provides access to the political process and, therefore, exerts political influence. Households with wealth have a measure of economic security and can donate time and money, thereby influencing the political process and the policies that are important to their communities. Yet, Congress has not devoted enough attention to both the physical and economic harm the coronavirus crisis has wrought on African American communities.

The persistent Black-white wealth gap is not an accident but rather the result of centuries of federal and state policies that have systematically facilitated the deprivation of Black Americans. From the brutal exploitation of Africans during slavery, to systematic oppression in the Jim Crow South, to todays institutionalized racismapparent in disparate access to and outcomes in education, health care, jobs, housing, and criminal justicegovernment policy has created or maintained hurdles for African Americans who attempt to build, maintain, and pass on wealth.

In 2019, the Center for American Progress invited a number of leading national experts on racism and wealth to join the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap2 to make eradicating this racial disparity a pressing policy goal for the next presidential administration and to identify steps necessary to accomplish it. This group engaged in a yearlong discussion guided by the following principles:

The importance of addressing the Black-white wealth gap

In 2019, the median wealth (without defined-benefit pensions) of Black households in the United States was $24,100, compared with $189,100 for white households. Therefore, the typical Black household had 12.7 percent of the wealth of the typical white household, and they owned $165,000 less in wealth. The average gap is somewhat smaller in relative terms but much larger in dollar terms. The average Black household had $142,330 in 2019 compared with $980,549 for the average white household. This means that, on average, Black households had 14.5 percent of the wealth of white households, with an absolute dollar gap of $838,220.

The massive Black-white wealth disparity is nothing new in this country. It has persisted for centuries and has been apparent in consistent, nationally representative data for at least three decades. The gap between Black and white households appears to have widened again in the latter part of 2020 as the pandemic and deep recession took hold, especially hurting Black Americans. Black households needed to rely more on their savings to cover both health care emergencies and the economic fallout from layoffs than white households. Just a few months into the pandemic, average wealth for Black households was growing more slowly than that of white householdsa reversal of the pre-pandemic trend.

Low wealth among many Black Americans left them especially vulnerable to the myriad risks of the coronavirus crisis. Black workers were more likely to lose their jobs even as they faced greater health care risks. They worked in jobs with greater exposure to the coronavirus and lived in communities with weaker health care infrastructures. As risks and costs soared, they quickly experienced more material hardship. Hunger, the threat of eviction or foreclosure, and an inability to pay bills were more prevalent among Black households than among white ones. More than two-thirds68.1 percentof Black families with incomes from $35,000 to $100,000 who had lost work during the pandemic indicated that they could not afford all of the food they needed, faced eviction or foreclosure, or had difficulty paying all of their bills from August 2020 to December 2020.3 These situations applied to 49.3 percent of white households in this income category. All types of families have suffered during the recession, but Black families have struggled more because they have fewer savings to fall back on.

Black households face systematic obstacles in building wealth

The persistent Black-white wealth gap is the result of a discriminatory economic system that keeps Black households from achieving the American dream.4 This system has always made it difficult for Black households to acquire and keep capital, and this lack of capital has created a persistently large racial wealth disparity, as African Americans have had less wealth to pass on to the next generation than white households. There are several other obstacles to building wealth:

The unjust obstacles to building wealth for Black households have existed for centuries, and the iterative nature of wealth begetting more wealth means that without public interventions, it will be virtually impossible for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts. White families are better situated to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. White households first benefited from the dehumanizing system of slaverydirectly, in this case, as a white slaveholding plantation classbut also from the discriminatory institutions that emerged and persisted after the Civil War. White households have been able to build wealth for themselves and their descendants, while whatever wealth Black families could amass was regularly stripped away. Private businesses and governments institutionalized racism and discrimination. They also encouraged and sanctioned violence targeting Black lives and property. The destruction of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 serves as one of many horrid and systematic examples.6

Following centuries of oppression of Black households, white households are much more likely to receive an inheritance from their parents and grandparents, and their inheritances are much larger than those of Black households.7 Moreover, white households have access to larger and wealthier social networks that they can tap into for job and career opportunities for them and their children. Addressing the persistent Black-white wealth gap means countering the centuries-old institutions that have kept Black households from building and growing wealth at the same rate as is the case for white households.

Novel policy proposals that can help shrink the Black-white wealth gap

The National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap developed a range of novel policy proposals throughout 2020 that followed the aforementioned principles. These policies are especially targeted toward Black Americans, building and expanding on several existing proposals that could reduce the wealth disparity between Black and white households by helping Black Americans gain more wealth.

Derived from a CAP issue brief published in November 2020, this proposal recommends that the executive branch explicitly prioritize eliminating the Black-white wealth gap, as it is the result of the collective and compounding impact of centuries of oppression. Now there must be a full-scale, intentional, and strategic plan that reaches across the entire federal government and puts in place actual infrastructure to tackle racial inequality. The issue brief provides the Biden administration with a menu of options, many of which have been adopted already.9 They include creating a White House Racial Equity Office; appointing a senior adviser to the president on racial equity; directing the Office of Management and Budget to conduct racial equity assessments on policy measures; adding more principal function to the National Economic Council focused on eliminating the racial wealth disparity; establishing an interagency task force that would provide steps each agency could take toward increasing wealth for Black communities and communities of color; and encouraging agencies to prioritize addressing racial wealth inequality. This menu of options is intended to provide mechanisms by which the federal governmentincluding the White House and federal agencieswould hold itself accountable to the goal of centering race and equity in policymaking.

Black workers and their families have a rare source of opportunity and security in public sector jobs. Government jobs alone cannot solve structural racism, but public sector jobs offer Black workers a greater measure of economic security than they can often find in private sector employment. Secure employment with predictable wages and benefits, a stable working environment, and stronger protections for workers in the public sector has been a significant source of security for Black workers. That also means that slowing growth in government employmentespecially in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009represents a disproportionate shrinking of economic opportunities for African American workers.

Amid the fallout from the pandemic, state and local governments have made deep cuts to public sector jobs. Black workers have seen economic gains thanks to their hard work in the public sector. These income and wealth gains are now at risk again. In September 2020, 211,000 fewer Black workers had a job in the public sector than was the case in September 2019.11

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government can ensure that state and local governments are receiving the funding they needfor instance, with the passage of the American Rescue Plan. Now, these additional funds need to lead states and local governments to bring back jobs in an equitable manner; otherwise, they would risk endangering the financial security of millions of middle-class Black households, threatening to make the wealth gap even harder to solve and undermining one of the only means of substantially reducing racism and racial wealth disparities.

Many households lack access to mainstream banking institutions, which contributes to households being either unbanked or underbanked. This is especially acute for communities of color. Policymakers will need to make long-term structural changes to achieve more equitable outcomes for Black households as the country considers the necessary next steps to rebuild its economy and society after the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis. Postal banking should be a core part of the U.S. Postal Services mission to deliver services to almost every community in the country. The federal government could provide vital access to financial services by broadening the mandate of the Postal Service to offer postal bankingsuch as a stable bank account for those who are underbanked or unbanked, small loans, and check-cashing serviceswhich could reduce the wealth-stripping effect that exclusionary and predatory financial institutions can cause. Such a system could also serve as a public distribution method for federal and state benefits such as the economic impact payments in the CARES Act or the quarterly or monthly distribution of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. Postal banking would overcome a structural barrier for African Americans in the U.S. financial system and would reduce the damage done to many Black households and communities that regularly face predatory lenders and lose large shares of their wealth.

African Americans own fewer than 2 percent of small businesses with any employees, but they make up 13 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, white households own 82 percent of small employer firms, even though they account for only 60 percent of the U.S. population.

Wide and persistent inequities in wealth and access to capital cause these disparities in small business ownership. The federal government can play an important role in creating a more equitable business environment, even though in the past, it has often perpetuated rather than mitigated these inequities. The Biden administration could help cut small business disparities if it decided to overhaul a long-neglected agency that is part of the U.S. Department of Commercethe Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). A reenvisioned MBDA could then take the following steps:

Black researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs face large hurdles in receiving federal research and development (R&D) funds in the current design and application of such funds. The Biden administration and Congress can lower racial gaps in R&D funding and offer a pathway for R&D dollars that both dedicate funding to Black-led research and establish an innovation dividend.

The proposal, developed in a previous CAP report, envisions additional financial support for R&D by Black inventors and entrepreneurs:

The proposal further envisions the creation of an innovation dividend. The federal government would have to spend $125 billion annually in new R&D, which is higher than the current low of about $100 billion per year. Underlying this calculation is the assumption that the federal governments annual R&D spending will grow with gross domestic product, based on the Congressional Budget Offices (CBO) long-term economic projections. Each new and successful investment is assumed to last for 20 years. This is equal to the usual patent protection length. The calculation further assumes that all investments create an average noninflation-adjusted rate of return of about 3 percent. This is close to the long-term, risk-free rate of return assumed by the CBO but well below historical averages. The federal government can receive the extra value of these investments. Private companies profits then only come from private sector investments. The federal government can pay out these funds as innovation dividendstypically in the form of targeted cash paymentsto Black Americans, who have been left out of innovation funding for decades.

Even with innovative policy solutions, the Black-white wealth gap will persist

The data for the past three decades show large and persistent disparities in wealth, assets, and debt between Black and white households. Wealth is the difference between what households owntheir assetsand what they owetheir debt. For most households, assets are larger than debt, meaning they own at least some wealth. Assets include peoples houses, their retirement accounts, their checking and savings accounts, and their cars, for example. The expected future income from an employers pension is a somewhat unique asset. On the one hand, it provides households with a secure stream of income in the future; on the other hand, it is not an asset that households can borrow against or pass on to their heirs. The table below shows wealth inequality between Black and white households both with and without defined-benefit pension wealth.

The data highlight several key points. First, Black households have a fraction of the wealth of white households. For instance, the median wealth of Black households with defined-benefit pensions was $40,400 in 201915.5 percent of the $258,900 in median wealth for white families. (see the downloadable table)15 The smallest relative gap that can be found between Black household wealth and white household wealth exists for average wealth that includes defined-benefit pensions as part of household wealth. Using this measure, Black households wealth amounts to 22.5 percent of white households wealth. (see Figure 1) In comparison, the largest gap that can be found between Black and white household wealth is median wealth without defined-benefit pensions included. Using this measure, Black households own 12.7 percent of the wealth of the median white household. No matter which wealth measure is used, Black households have far less wealth than white ones.

Figure 1

Second, defined-benefit pensions have a slightly equalizing effect. The Black-white wealth gap shrinks somewhat when the imputed value of defined-benefit pensions is counted as an asset. This equalizing effect is larger for average wealth than for median wealth. For example, average Black household wealth increases from 14.5 percent of average white household wealth without defined-benefit pensions to 22.5 percent with defined-benefit pensions; the Black-white wealth gap shrinks by 8 percentage points. At the median, the effect is only a 1.8 percentage-point decrease. That is, the effect of a little more wealth equality thanks to defined-benefit pensions matters mainly for higher-income earners with stable jobs. Since such opportunities are often rare for Black workers in the private sector, the effect is much smaller at the median.

A key point, which is not shown in Figure 3 but is apparent in the same data, is that Black workers have more access to stable jobs with good benefitsincluding defined-benefit pensionsin the public sector than in the private sector. As a result, wealth inequality among public sector workers is much smaller than among private sector workers.16 This effect becomes even larger when comparing public sector workers in unionized jobs with their private sector counterparts who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement.17 Access to stable, well-paying jobs with decent benefits is rarer for Black workers than for white ones. Such accesswhich is more common in the public sector than in the private sectorcan help shrink but not eliminate the Black-white wealth gap in large part because of the value of a defined-benefit pension.

Third, there is no long-term trend toward a smaller Black-white wealth gap. In fact, the relative difference between Black households wealth and that of white households was generally smaller from 1992 to 2007 than in the years after the Great Recession. For instance, the median wealth with defined-benefit pensions of Black households amounted to 20.1 percent of white households in 1998 and 19.8 percent in 2004. Since the Great Recession, this ratio of Black households median wealth to white households median wealth reached its highest point of 15.5 percent in 2019. Black households wealth has always been far below that of white households in the past three decades.

Fourth, the wealth gap persists even when the data account for income differences. Black households have much lower wealth-to-income ratios than white households do. For example, the median wealth-to-income ratio that includes the imputed wealth of defined-benefit pensions has rarely exceeded 100 percent for Black households. (see the downloadable table)18 However, it has never fallen below 300 percent for white households, and it stood at 395.5 percent in 2019. That is, the large Black-white wealth gap does not follow from lower incomes among Black households.

In the same vein, the data show large Black-white wealth gaps among separate subpopulations. (see Table 1) The table breaks the data down by education, family status, age, and income in addition to race. In all groups, white households have vastly more wealth than Black households. The overall Black-white wealth gap is then not a result of differences in these characteristics. For example, white households with high school degrees have $151,651 more in wealth on average than Black households with a college degree. In fact, white households without a high school degree have similar wealth levels as Black households with college degrees$230,165 compared with $270,288. Other research at the more regionally granular level has regularly found that white households without a high school degree have, on average, more wealth than Black households with a college degree.19 Put differently, Black Americans gaining more education does not close the Black-white wealth gap. The data indicate similar conclusions about income levels and marital status.20 Black Americans clearly encounter massive and systematic obstacles that make it impossible to catch up to their white counterparts.

Table 1

The data in Table 1 on wealth by age in fact suggest that these obstacles are cumulative. The Black-white wealth gap tends to be larger for older groups of households than for younger ones. Data for married couples broken down by cohorts show that the Black-white wealth gap widens as people get older.21 Black Americans encounter systematic obstacles and systemic racism when trying to save for their future, while white households receive additional help from their familiesfor example, in the form of more frequent and larger inheritancescausing the Black-white wealth gap to grow over peoples lifetime.22

Fifth, Black households wealth declined more after the Great Recession than was the case for white households. And white households wealth grew faster in the immediate aftermath of that financial and economic crisis than was the case for Black households wealth. Regardless of the measure of wealthmedian or mean, with or without defined-benefit pensionsthe gap between Black households and white households wealth was larger in 2019 than in 2004 and 2007, before the Great Recession started.

Additional Federal Reserve data suggest that the recession of 2020 could show a similar pattern of a widening Black-white wealth gap during a recession. Figure 2 shows the average wealth with defined-benefit pensions for Black and white households.23 The Black-white wealth gap widened over the course of the recession through September 2020. The average wealth of Black households was $241,951, which was 0.7 percent below the $243,764 recorded at the end of 2019, before the recession started. In contrast, average white household wealth was 3.3 percent higher with $1.17 million in September 2020 compared with $1.13 million at the end of 2019. Black households wealth recovered more slowly than that of white households, widening the wealth disparity continuously throughout the recession.

Figure 2

Several reasons account for this widening disparity between Black and white wealth during recessions. First, on average, Black workers always have worse labor market experiences than white workers. (see Figure 3) They suffer from higher unemployment, longer spells of unemployment, earlier layoffs in a recession, later rehiring in a recovery, more job instability, and lower wages.24 Less access to good, stable jobs means that African Americans have fewer opportunities to save money as well as more need to rely on their savings because they face more labor market risks.

Figure 3

Second, Black households are less likely to own stocks than white households, often because they face more economic risks such as higher chances of layoffs and medical emergencies than white households.25 They also have less access to retirement benefits through their employers, which is one key pathway for more saving and stock market investments for American families.26 African Americans then see fewer wealth gains from a booming stock market, as typically happens starting from the later stages of a recession.

Even worse, the combination of higher unemployment during the recession and fewer stock market investments to begin with means that Black households have fewer opportunities to take advantage of low stock prices in the middle of a recession than white households.27 Black households have less money to invest at a time when the opportunities to invest in the stock market are best because of low stock prices. White households, on the other hand, are more likely to still have a job with higher incomes and more access to stock market investments through employer-sponsored retirement accounts. They can take advantage of low stock prices in the depths of a recession and thus see higher rates of return on their wealth.

Third, Black households are less likely to own their own houses than white households.28 Housing prices have largely stayed strong and even increased in this recession. Black households see fewer gains from such price increases than white households. Worse, even when Black households own their homes, they see smaller price gains than white homeowners do. Their home values increase at a lesser rate because of housing and mortgage market discrimination, fewer public services, and less access to good jobs in predominantly African American communities.29 In essence, wealth leads to more wealth, and this pattern becomes readily apparent in a recession.

As discussed above, the differences in Black-white wealth overall and in rates of return stem from massive gaps in assetsnot from more debt among African Americans. On the contrary, Black households typically have less debt than white households do, often because they are shut out of formal credit channels due to financial market discrimination.30 Black households instead owe a lot of so-called consumer credit such as car and student loans as well as credit cards. Yet they are less likely to have a mortgage due to greater loan denial rates and less access to down payment help from family. The heavy reliance on consumer debt means that the amount of consumer loans to consumer durablesa measure of how much families need to use debt for ongoing expensesis higher for African Americans than for any other racial or ethnic group. Black households essentially use consumer debt to cover part of their expenses, while white households go deeper into mortgage debt to invest in an asset that appreciates.31 African Americans then owe more costly and risky debt such as car loans and credit card debt and thus often pay more for their debt than white households do, but the amount of debt that Black households owe is smaller in absolute terms and relative to income than is the case for white households.32 High-cost and high-risk debt is a key aspect of wealth stripping in the African American community, but it is not the overarching contributor to the Black-white wealth gap. A systematic lack of access to opportunities for owning and maintaining assets is the primary cause.

Conclusion

The work of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap shows two important things. First, it is possible to develop and enact in short order a number of policies that could have a meaningful long-term effect on reducing the Black-white wealth gap. Second, a smallerbut still substantialBlack-white wealth gap would persist, even if policymakers enacted all policies mentioned in this report in addition to several large-scale proposals proposed by CAP and others. Eliminating the disparities between Black and white wealth is a generational undertaking, but it is one that this country can and must tackle.

The proposals summarized in this report show that it is possible to enact novel policies to shrink the Black-white wealth gap. These proposals expand the portfolio of possible new measures to address this massive inequality. Other policies that can also shrink this wealth disparity include so-called baby bondsannual payments to children under the age of 18 that are tied to parents income or wealth.33 They also include debt-free college education, universal retirement accounts,34 full enforcement of civil rights legislation in housing markets, and strict regulation and enforcement of financial market regulation in all credit and asset markets.35

A key difference between the novel proposals laid out in this report and already-proposed policies is that the new approaches focus solely or primarily on lifting up wealth for African Americans, while other proposals largely favor Black households but also provide help to white families in building wealth. That is, these new proposals could have a substantial effect on shrinking the Black-white wealth gap.

But a substantial Black-white wealth gap will remainat least between average wealth for Black families and average wealth for white familieseven if all of these proposals were immediately enacted. Broad measures that benefit both Black and white households have a diffuse effect on the Black-white wealth gap at the average, although they can substantially shrink this wealth disparity at the median.36 At the same time, targeted proposals laid out in this report will take time to have a meaningful effect. Moreover, the sum of these proposals does not fully erase the massive intergenerational advantage that white households have in building wealth.

These intergenerational wealth transfers come in the form of gifts and inheritances as well as access to social networks. For the years 2010 to 2019, white households in which the heads of household were between the ages of 55 and 64 years old had received gifts and inheritances equal to $101,354 (in 2019 dollars). In comparison, Black households had received $12,623 at that time. Furthermore, older white households expected to get an additional $75,214 as gifts and inheritances, while Black households expected $2,941. This represents a total gap of $161,004 in received and expected gifts and inheritances and does not count additional intergenerational wealth transfers such as nepotism and access to social networks.37

In this regard, it is important to note that experts, researchers, and policymakers are considering the rationale, design, and effects of reparations to Black households to address the lasting economic impacts of slavery. One legislative vehicle currently pending in Congress to study and put forward a plan for implementation of reparations is H.R. 40.38 Originally introduced by the late Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) every year between 1989 and 2017, and subsequently introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), H.R. 40 would create a commission to study and submit to Congress a report on reparations for the government-sanctioned institution of slavery and ensuing discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants. Notably, this bill only proposes a study and recommendations; passage of the bill would not necessarily lead to reparations. Unless legislation to study reparations passes, the executive branch should engage with cultural and historical resourcessuch as the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Park Serviceto promote historical education for the public to increase awareness of the myriad underlying causes that have contributed to the massive and persistent Black-white wealth gap.

Moreover, public and private policies need to be regularly revisited and revamped to eliminate racial biases that systematically disadvantage Black households. Without large, long-term investments in addressing the Black-white wealth gap, massive differences in economic security and opportunity will not only continue to persist but may widen for generations.

About the authors

Christian E. Weller, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center and a professor of public policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Lily Roberts is the managing director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Acknowledgments

The Center for American Progress would like to thank the members of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap for all of their time, hard work, inspiration, and thought leadership. We are especially grateful to co-chairs Darrick Hamilton and Kilolo Kijakazi for sharing their critical insights, deep expertise, and long-standing commitment to racial justice. This project would not have been possible without the vision and untiring commitment to racial equity from Danyelle Solomon, former vice president for Race and Ethnicity at the Center for American Progress. To learn more about the council, read: CAP Announces Formation of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap.

Appendix

Kilolo Kijakazi, institute fellow, Urban Institute; co-chair

Darrick Hamilton, executive director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University; co-chair

Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law, University of California, Irvine

Lisa D. Cook, associate professor of economics and international relations, Michigan State University

Henry Louis Skip Gates, Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University professor and director, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University

Ibram X. Kendi, professor of history and international relations and founding director, Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American University

Trevon Logan, professor of economics andassociate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University

Anne Price, president, Insight Center

Richard Rothstein, distinguished fellow, Economic Policy Institute; senior fellow, emeritus, Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and of the Haas Institute at the University of California, Berkeley

Rhonda Sharpe, founder and president, Womens Institute for Science, Equity, and Race (WISER)

Original post:

Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap Is a Generational Challenge

By Nick Erickson

George Washington University senior Melody Tajalli will never tire of shouting the same three wordswomen, life and freedomno matter how many times she repeats them. She and millions of other people in the name of humanity and dignity have taken to the streets to protest an oppressive Iranian regime in the three weeks since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of Irans morality police after being arrested for showing too much hair under her hijab, punishable by law in the country.

Those words sound simple when youre chanting them over and over again, but they never lose meaning, said Tajalli, an international affairs major with a concentration in conflict resolution whose father is from Irans capital city, Tehran. While we are able to scream those words here, someone else is dying for existing as a woman.

Aminis death on Sept. 16 has sparked an uprising in Iran, as women have taken to the streets and shed their hijabs, which they are required by law to wear in public settings, in a plea for their own autonomies and liberties.

This is our time, Tajalli said. We need to keep the conversation going.

President Mark S. Wrighton encouraged the community to support one another and said in a message that he has heard from students, faculty and others who are personally affected by the events in Iran and who fear for their loved ones.

I have been reflecting on these messages and the passionate calls for freedom of expression and political protest and equal rights for women, Wrighton said. These are among the important values of our university, and they are critical to fulfilling our academic mission by encouraging rigorous discourse and ensuring all have equal opportunity to succeed.

Aminis death is the final line in the sand for a lot of people who have lived with the authoritarian Iranian government that came to power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when an Islamic republic overthrew the Pahlavi government that had made considerable progress in womens rights. In the 40 years since, leaders of the new regime have incorporated a structure of discrimination into the law of the country, with women being the subjects of some of the most disproportionate burdens.

People are simply fed up with tyrant ways of governing, said Milken Institute School of Public Health Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management Ali Moghtaderi, who is from Iran.

For example, a girl as young as 13 years old can marry, while girls even younger can legally marry with judicial and paternal consent.Women also inherit half of what a man would, and compensation for the death of a woman is also half. Also under current law, all hair and skin must be covered in public, an offense of that is subject to punishment.

Thats why these protestswith women risking their lives by directly disobeying current law to fight for their freedomshave been so significant.

A lot of them know they're going into it with the possibility of dying and with the possibility of facing precautions that may not be something they can come back from, Tajalli said. But for them, their freedom and their liberties and the future of women in Iran is more important, and thats bravery that I just cant even put into words.

These protests have also come at a heavy price. Violent counteractions from the government and police forces have filled Iranian skies with smoke, fire and mourning. And theres no way to truly account for all the damage, as the government has limited the countrys access to internet.

The Iran Human Rights Group reported on Oct. 4 that at least 133 people have been killed by authorities since the protests. That number could be much higher, Moghtaderi said, because access to information has been all but cut off.

On Oct. 2, Iranian police stormed the campus of Sharif University in Tehran, where Moghtaderi attended during his undergraduate years, and brutally beat and shot at students who were peacefully protesting. People he is still in contact with in Iransay, its like a warzone.

The scenes are unsettling, and the situation is mysterious and unsafe. Even speaking out against the government can lead to repercussions for not just the individual, but also for their friends and families, as a few GW students did not wish to be identified for this story to protect the safety of family and friends in Iran.

[The Iranian government] knows that in order to control the society, they should basically control the process of sharing thoughts and ideas, and they have been very harsh on media and news outlets if you basically publish something that is just damaging to them, Moghtaderi said. More importantly, they can deny the knowledge of their brutality to the rest of the world. The playbook is the same. You see the same thing that Russia is doing with Ukraines war.

The government, for example, has said illness rather than blows or beating caused Aminis death despite her family saying she had no previous medical conditions. In addition, the journalist who broke the news of Aminis death was subsequently arrested. From afar, Tajalli hopes fellow students and people in the GW community will use their social media accounts to learn about the situation in Iran.

The GW Iranian Student Association put out this statement on its Instagram page: Our hearts are with the people of Iran who are affected by the current heavy events. If you are a GW student and need emotional support, we are here for you.

The association also offered students a chance to direct message them for further conversation.

For members of the university community seeking support, resources are available through theOffice for Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement;Counseling and Psychological Services;Student Affairs;Human Resources; orFaculty Affairs.

Original post:

Iranian Protests Show Bravery Amid Oppression and Violence - GW Today

Having moved to Bumpass two years ago from New Hampshire, I am impressed with the ease of early voting. There is no excuse for not voting, and I believe that this November 8th mid-term is probably the most important in at 150 years. We are in a bad place in Washington, and we need to select representatives who are virtuous and wise enough to make the changes required to get us going in the right direction. The founders created our liberal democracy, while realizing the fragility of this radical experiment in government. They had an expectation that our system of liberal democracy could not last unless the voters made wise choices in electing leaders.

The letter by Dave Stone and Aggie Zed (Oct 6) has me concerned. Josh Throneburg says he wants to do something about the climate crisis. And he wants to dismantle systems of oppression. I am a retired mechanical engineer who has spent many hours studying these issues. In Washington, doing something about the climate crisis means throwing lots of money at schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. The result would be spending many billions of dollars to achieve reductions that produce atmospheric temperature reductions that are too small to measure. Climate change has always occurred due to changes in the level of radiation received from the sun. Studies have shown changes over cycles of about 1500 years which have caused temperature variation of about 4 degrees C. The most recent cycle involved warming during the time of the Romans, through cooling in the medieval period in the early 1000s. There was no human activity over this period which could have had any effect on climate.. There have been other cycles, with periods of 50 t0 100,000 years which have resulted in glacial periods. Much of Northern America and Europe were covered by mile thick sheets of ice. These have been related to changes in the earth orbiting around the sun, and the incline of the earth in orbit. The billions that we are throwing at reducing the tiny human contribution to climate change would be better spent in adaptation. There will be billions of disadvantaged people who need help to adapt to the heating and cooling that will come with climate change. It is important that we elect leaders who are wise enough to understand the true nature of this natural phenomenon.

The systems of oppression that Throneburg wants to dismantle relate to creations of leftist ideology such as Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is claimed that non-members of the oppressed group are inherently racist. CRT is a subset of Critical Theory, an array of movements aimed at fomenting feelings of grievance in various segments of society. The goal is to create friction among the groups that is manifested as a system of identity politics. The identity groups include racial, gender, LBGTQ, cultures, economic groups, and others with supposed grievances against society. Affirmative action is demanded to reduce inequities. With the divisions caused by identity politics, the functioning of democratic government is severely compromised. Critical Theory was transferred from Europe to academia in the 1970s. It has been spread widely with generations of graduates from US colleges. It has spread even to the grade schools throughout America. We need politicians with the wisdom to recognize that the systems of oppression are the manufactured explanations for the presumed transgressions by society against the aggrieved members of the identity groups.

Please consider these issues in deciding how to vote on Nov. 8th.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Systems of oppression are manufactured explanations - The Central Virginian