Category Archives: Government Oppression

Justice Markandey Katju-

To Honble the Prime Minister of India

New Delhi

31.5.2020

Dear Modiji,

I read your letter dated 30.5.2020 to the people of India, and on behalf of the people of India wish to respond.

I have no doubt about your personal integrity. No one has ever accused you of personal corruption or siphoning off funds to foreign secret havens, which was being done on a large scale in the UPA regime.

However, there are three appeals I wish to make to you with great respect on behalf of the Indian people :

(1) End this lockdown immediately as it has created havoc.

I have explained in several articles that thedecision.to impose a lockdown was a grave mistake. A lockdown means that the whole nation and much of the economy is brought to a total standstill. Such a serious decision should not have been taken in a haste but only after wide consultation with scientists, economists, administrators as well as experts in various fields. Instead, it appears the decision was taken in a huff at 8.30 p.m. on 24th March to be effective from midnight giving only 3 1/2 hours notice to the public. The result is for everyone to see total chaos throughout India, crores of people deprived of their livelihood and on the verge of starvation with their families, migrants trekking hundreds of kilometers with their families, many dying on the way (reminiscent of the plight of migrants described in John Steinbecks great novel Grapes of Wrath ). The economy, which had already tanked before the lockdown, has been sent spiraling downwards.

These are the links of some of my articles and video links in this connection :

I have also said that the danger of corona has been greatly exaggerated.

https://bit.ly/2AqXTkA

(2) Form a National Government immediately

Though I have no doubts about your sincere desire to serve the people, the problems facing the country are too big for a single individual or single political party to handle. The economy is in terrible shape and has been sent further spiraling downwards due to the ill-advised and ill-considered decision to impose a lockdown. Crores of people who have been deprived of their livelihood are being driven to starvation with their families. Food riots may break out anytime and law and order may break down, as happened in France before the French Revolution of 1789, or at the time of the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Please see my articles given below in this connection.

https://bit.ly/2XGKHQG

https://bit.ly/36Mj2Cb

https://bit.ly/2zEmiDw

In this situation, you should rise to the occasion, forget political and ideological differences, suppress your ego, and emulating Winston Churchill and Israel immediately form a National Government by including leaders of other political parties, scientists, economists, administrators and others in your government. The whole nation must be united to face the colossal economic challenges ahead, just as England was united by Churchill in May 1940 when faced with the imminent danger of Nazi invasion, or as Israel has been united under a National Govt today.

(3) Please stop the atrocities and oppression of Muslims, as this is tearing the nation apart.

https://bit.ly/2TX4NVT

Yours respectfully,

Justice Markandey Katju

Former Judge, Supreme Court of India

31.5.2020

[Justice Markandey Katju is former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are their own].

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Reply on behalf of the Indian people to the Honble Prime Minister of India - indica News

ALBANY City and community leaders Sunday grappled with the fallout from Saturday demonstrations against police brutality that were at first peaceful, but then turned into aggression toward police officers, vandalism and looting - the likes of which the city has not seen in recent memory.

Dozens of businesses worked Sunday to board up broken windows and clean-up the inside of their destroyed storefronts, as others prepared for what might happen Sunday night after both Albany and Schenectady instituted curfews. The same scene was played out in cities across the nation this past weekend in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis on May 25 after a police officer placed his knee on Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes while he was handcuffed on the ground.

"This set us back years, said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, who said 82 members of his department assisted in the city of Albany Saturday night. Apple spoke at Albany County Executive Dan McCoy's daily coronavirus press briefing Sunday morning, which was turned into a talk about the confrontations. What happened in this county, this city last night was despicable.

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan held a press conference Sunday morning on the steps of City Hall to address what happened Saturday about an hour after peaceful protests ended at the city police's South Station.

Officials acknowledged that the shutdowns in response to the pandemic which has caused people stress, depression and anxiety has only fueled people's dismay about continued abuses against the black community. But Sheehan said the people who committed the violence late Saturday were not those who had peacefully marched earlier in the day.

I acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of pain. There is pain because of what we witnessed with a police officer literally suffocating an individual in custody, Sheehan said.

However, she continued, the violence that emerged in Albany later Saturday night was not about a protest that violence was about a riot.

She issued a curfew for the city from 7 p.m. Sunday to 7 a.m. Monday in an attempt to maintain order. Businesses were putting plywood over their windows Sunday late afternoon worried that the violence would continue for a second night. Schenectady instituted a curfew also fearing violence would erupt in that city. On Sunday afternoon, protests were peaceful in the Electric City as Schenectady Police Chief Eric Clifford and other officers were seen in a photo shared on twitter taking a knee in solidarity with protestors.

This is not about the police stopping and hassling people for being out, she said. This is about a curfew that we are putting out there as a signal to our residents to be safe.

But community activists say the emotions that led to the violence were real and valid, and the conversations focusing on the violence misses the perspective of what is at stake.

Theres a moment happening across our nation, and its happening peacefully and its happening with uprisings, said Amy Jones, a community organizer with Citizen Action of New York. These are people with no structural power. What theyre seeing and feeling is a moment of empowerment. But pain plus trauma can equal rage. And the oppressor cannot tell oppressed people how to protest their oppression.

Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said the city has gotten anecdotal comments from those at the incidents that they did not recognize the people who were responsible for some of the violence. Police are investigating those comments. Hawkins was pressed by reporters about where he was Saturday, and he eventually confirmed he was not in Albany. But he refused to explain where he was or why. "I had other business. I was communicating all day with my command staff," Hawkins said.

One officer was sent to the hospital Saturday night after they were hit with a brick and sustained a head injury. The officer has since been sent home. Two people were arrested during the confrontations, but police said it was for burglary charges that were unknown to have been related to the violence.

Meanwhile, other gun violence continued in Albany, as a 15-year-old and 18-year-old were both injured in gunfire during unrelated incidents.

READ MORE:Damage on South Pearl Street after Saturday violence

Businesses and government buildings along South Pearl Street and Central Avenue had their windows smashed late Saturday night, in addition to people throwing rocks, lighting fireworks that were directed toward police horses and setting fire to objects around the police's South Station. People stole cash registers and cell phones out of stores. Graffiti was also written on buildings on South Pearl Street. A truck driver also lost the items in his flatbed after people set the contents on fire, Apple said.

"We are better than what happened last night," Sheehan said. "We will come together, we will work together. Today is a day for all of us to take a deep breath. We need to stay home, keep your kids home."

McCoy said 30 windows were smashed at the Board of Elections on South Pearl Street. Windows were also broken at the county's probation building, department of mental health and the Albany County Judicial Center. Looters also smashed open a glass door at Colonie Center and ran around the empty mall; Colonie police were unsure if items were taken.

"It's troubling to me to see the protestors who take advantage of a situation and turn things upside down," McCoy said, adding "you were being terrorists. It's shameful."

READ MORE:Albany community organizer calls for clean-up after Saturday riots

But local activists stressed that some of Saturdays protesters were grieving the losses of their own George Floyds loved ones who died at the hands of the police or otherwise.

I think everyone personalized it. It opened a wound, Albany County Legislator Carolyn McLaughlin said at a Sunday rally in the South End. Because when you think about this stuff, it brings tears to your eyes, and to think that nobody cares So last night, you dont care about me, I dont care about you either. Right or wrong.

At her press conference, Sheehan criticized that many of the businesses targeted were black- and brown-owned. However, Jones said some of the damage she saw done was by people who didn't live in the immediate neighborhood.

I was at the South Station, she said. It was white kids with backpacks and bandanas covering their faces who threw bricks through the windows of the police car.

Albany police announced Sunday evening that James Vail, a 21-year-old white man from Delmar, had been charged with throwing the brick that hit an Albany police officer around 7 p.m. Saturday. The officer sustained a concussion and was treated at a local hospital.

Barbara Smith, a nationally recognized black feminist, said people are fed up with what she described as the disregard and dehumanization of black life. She, and other activists, believe the focus must not be on the vandalism and burglaries.

I cannot equate a lynching with the destruction of property, Smith said.

And while the fact that many of the targeted Albany businesses are minority-owned is upsetting, Smith said, property destruction during rebellions in response to injustice has been the norm from the Jim Crow-era she lived through and beyond.

Its excruciatingly painful to think about the loss of peoples livelihoods and businesses, she said. But it just is not in the same category as someone having their life choked out of them on video with three other officers standing around watching.

Continued here:

Protests against police brutality turn to violence in Albany - Times Union

The crowd is untruth.-Soren Kierkegaaard

The crowd, cautioned Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, is untruth. Nowhere is the concise wisdom of this 19th century warning more plainly apparent than in Donald Trumps despairing United States. Even today, even after so much rancorous presidential dissemblance and chicanery, this fragmenting and unhappy nation too often accepts incoherent political dogma as proper authority and conspicuously vile political gibberish as truth.

Even now, even when a derelict president elevates his own contrived and illiterate judgments concerning epidemiology above the authoritative opinion of Americas distinguished scientists and physicians, millions of his supporters still offer a visceral amen. In essence, these obedient citizens stand in stubbornly open support of untruth or anti-Reason. Why?

How can this unchanging self-destructiveness be suitably explained?

It gets even worse. In certain refractory instances, this irrational hierarchy of US citizen preference has led hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Americans to consume potentially lethal medications against Covid-19. What are these obedient people thinking? This is a president, let us not forget, who thinks human bodies can somehow undergo beneficial anti-viral cleanings with commercially-available disinfectants. If it can kill virus on tabletops, reasons Trump openly, why not take the remediating substance internally?

Credo quia absurdum, affirmed the ancient philosophers. I believe because it is absurd. Still, this is a president of the United States in the year 2020. How can such preposterous reasoning be accepted by literally millions of Americans?

There is more. How shall such normally incomprehensible behaviors be explained more gainfully? At one level, at least, the answer is obvious. America is no longer a society that sincerely values knowledge, education or learning. Led by a retrograde man of commerce who never reads books indeed, who proudly reads nothing at all this has become a know nothing country, a nation that wittingly and shamelessly spurns both intellect and truth.[1] For whatever deeply underlying reasons, docile Trump minions seek to keep themselves anesthetized.

In this active form of complicity with self-destruction, these Americans are not passive victims. Rather, they insistently hold themselves captive by a lengthening string of embarrassingly false presidential reassurances and by clinging to endlessly mindless Trump simplifications of complex problems.[2]

In her magisterial two-volume work, The Life of the Mind (1971), political philosopher Hannah Arendt makes much of the manifest shallowness of historical evil-doers, hypothesizing that the critically underlying causes of harm are not specifically evil motives or common stupidity per se. Rather, she concludes controversially but convincingly, the root problem is thoughtlessness, a more-or-less verifiable human condition that makes a susceptible individual readily subject to the presumed wisdom of clichs, stock phrases and narrowly visceral codes of expression.

There are always a great many who will be susceptible. This does not mean only those who lack a decent formal education. Significantly, in Donald Trumps fragmenting America, just as earlier in the Third Reich, well-educated and affluent persons have joined forces with gun worshippers and street fighters to meet certain presumptively overlapping objectives. In the end, we may learn from both history and logic, each faction will suffer grievously alongside the general citizenry.

Both sides will lose.[3]

For philosopher Hannah Arendt, the core problem is this: a literal absence of thinking. In her learned and lucid assessment, evil is not calculable according to any specific purpose or ideology. Rather, it is deceptively commonplace and altogether predictable. Evil, we may learn from the philosopher, is banal.

There is more. Fundamentally, the mass man or mass woman (a Jungian term[4] that closely resembles Arendts evildoer) who cheers wildly in rancorous presidential crowds, and whatever the articulated gibberish of the moment, favors a constant flow of empty witticisms over any meaningful insights of reasoning or science. Living in a commerce-driven society that has been drifting ever further from any still-residual life of the mind, this susceptible American is a perfect recruit for Trumpian conversion.

This obedient citizen, after all, has absolutely no use for study, evidence or critical thinking of any kind. Why should he? Der Fuhrer will do his thinking for him.[5]

Could anything be more convenient?

With Arendt and Jung, the anti-Reason culprit is unmasked. It is the once-individual human being who has wittingly ceased to be an individual, who has effectively become the unapologetic enemy of intellect and a reliable ally of thoughtlessness. Using the succinct but incomparably expressive words of Spanish philosopher Jose Oretga yGassett, he or she thinks only in his own flesh.[6] Following any such antecedent triumphs of anti-Reason in the United States, it becomes more easy to understand the hideous rise and political survival of dissembling American President Donald J. Trump.

Americas most insidious enemy in this suffocating Trump Era should now be easier to recognize. It is an unphilosophical national spirit that knows nothing and wants to know nothing of truth.[7] Now facing unprecedented and overlapping crises of health, economics and law,[8] sizable elements of We the People feel at their best when they can chant anesthetizing gibberish in mesmerizing chorus. Were number one; were number one,these Americans still shout reflexively, even as their countrys capacity to project global power withers minute by minute, and even as the already ominous separations of rich and poor have come to mimic (and sometimes exceed) what is discoverable in the most downtrodden nations on earth.

Most alarmingly, among these manifold catastrophic American declensions, the badly-wounded American nation is still being led by an utterly ignorant pied piper, by a would-be emperor who was stunningly naked from the start and who has now managed to bring the United States to once unimaginable levels of suffering. In this connection, the Corona Virus pandemic was not of his own personal making, of course, but this relentless plague has become infinitely more injurious under Trumps unsteady dictatorial hand.

Nonetheless, the champions of anti-Reason in America will still generally rise to defend their Fuhrer. He did not create this growing plague, we are reminded. He is, therefore, just another victim of a plausibly unavoidable national circumstance. Why keep picking on this innocent and brilliant man? Instead, let us stand loyally by his inconspicuously sagacious counsel.

Sound familiar?

Recalling philosopher Hannah Arendt, such determinedly twisted loyalties stem originally from massive citizen thoughtlessness. Though Donald Trump is not in any way responsible for the actual biological menace of our current plague, he has still willingly weakened the American nations most indispensable medical and scientific defenses.[9] It is well worth mentioning too, on this particular count, that meaningful national defense always entails more than just large-scale weapons systems and infrastructures.[10] Looking ahead, moreover, this country has far more to gain from a coherent and science-based antivirus policy than from a patently preposterous Trumpian Space Force.[11]

Thomas Jefferson, Chief architect of the Declaration of Independence, earlier observed the imperative congruence of viable national democracy with wisdom and learning. Today, however, many still accept a president whose proud refrain during the 2016 election process was I love the poorly educated. Among other humiliating derelictions, this refrain represented a palpable echo of Third Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels Nuremberg rally comment: Intellect rots the brain.

Americans are polarized not only by race, ethnicity and class, but also by inclination or disinclination to serious thought. For most of this dreary and unhappy country, any inclination toward a life of the mind is anathema. In irrefutable evidence, trivial or debasing entertainments remain the only expected compensation for a shallow national life of tedious obligation, financial exhaustion and premature death. This sizable portion of the populace, now kept distant from authentic personal growth by every imaginable social and economic obstacle, desperately seeks residual compensations, whether in silly slogans, status-bearing affiliations or the manifestly deranging promises of Trump Era politics.

Even at this eleventh hour, Americans must learn understand that no nation can be first[12] that does not hold the individual soul[13] sacred. At one time in our collective history, after American Transcendental philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, a spirit of personal accomplishment did actually earn high marks. Then, young people especially, strove to rise interestingly, not as the embarrassingly obedient servants of destructive power and raw commerce, but as plausibly proud owners of a unique and personal Self.

Alas, today this Self lives together with increasingly unbearable material and biologically uncertain ties. Whether Americans would prefer to become more secular or more reverent, to grant government more authority over their lives, or less, a willing submission to multitudes has become the nations most unifying national religion. Regarding the pied piper in the White House, many Americans accept even the most patently preposterous Trump claims of enhanced national security. Credo quia absurdum.

Upon returning to Washington DC after the Singapore Summit, President Trump made the following statement: Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.[14]

Its not just America. Crowd-like sentiments like these have a long and diversified planetary history. We are, to be fair, hardly the first people to surrender to crowds. The contemporary crowd-man or woman is, in fact, a primitive and universal being, one who has uniformly slipped back, in the words of Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, through the wings, on to the age-old stage of civilization.

This grotesque stage is not bare. It is littered with the corpses of dead civilizations.[15] Indiscriminately, the crowd defiles all that is most gracious and still-promising in society. Charles Dickens, during his first visit to America, already observed back in 1842: I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country in the failure of its example to the earth.

To this point, at least, Americans have successfully maintained their political freedom from traditional political tyranny and oppression, but plainly this could now change at almost any moment. Already, we have come to accept in once unimaginable terms the kind of presidential manipulation and bullying that can shred and pull apart well-established constitutions. As corollary, Americans have also cravenly surrendered their liberty to become authentic persons. Openly deploring a life of meaning and sincerity, a nation stubbornly confuses wealth with success, blurting out rhythmic chants of patriotic celebration even as their cheerless democracy vanishes into meaninglessness, pandemic disease and a plausibly irremediable despair.

Whatever its origin, there is an identifiable reason lying behind this synchronized delirium. In part, at least, such orchestrated babble seeks to protect Americans from a potentially terrifying and unbearable loneliness. In the end, however, it is a contrived and inevitably lethal remedy . In the end, it offers just another Final Solution.

Still, there remain individual American citizens of integrity and courage. The fearlessly resolute individual who actively seeks an escape from the steadily-poisoning crowd, the One who opts heroically for disciplined individual thought over effortless conformance, must feel quite deeply alone. The most radical division, asserted Jos Ortega y Gasset in 1930, is that which splits humanity. those who make great demands on themselvesand those who demand nothing special of themselves In 1965, the Jewish philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, offered an almost identical argument. Lamenting, The emancipated man is yet to emerge, Heschel then asked each One to inquire: What is expected of me? What is demanded of me?

Why are these same questions so casually pushed aside by current American supporters of a rancorous president who opposes emancipation in any conceivable form?

There is more. It is time for camouflage and concealment in our pitiful American crowd to yield to what Abraham Joshua Heschel called being-challenged-in-the-world. Individuals who would dare to read books for more than transient entertainment, and who are willing to risk social and material disapproval in exchange for exiting the crowd (emancipation), offer America its only real and lasting hope. To be sure, these rare souls can seldom be found in politics, in universities, in corporate boardrooms or almost anywhere (there are some exceptions still) on radio, television or in the movies. Always, their critical inner strength lies not in pompous oratory, catchy crowd phrases, or observably ostentatious accumulations of personal wealth (Trump. Trump, Trump), but in the considerably more ample powers of genuineness, thought and Reason.

There is much yet to learn. Currently, not even the flimsiest ghost of intellectual originality haunts Americas public discussions of politics and economics, even those organized by intelligent and well-meaning Trump opponents. Now that Americas largely self-deceiving citizenry has lost all residual sense of awe in the world, this national public not only avoids authenticity, it positively loathes it. Indeed, in a nation that has lost all recognizable regard for the Western literary canon, our American crowdsgenerally seek aid, comfort and fraternity in a conveniently shared public illiteracy.

Inter alia, the classical division of American society into Few and Mass represents a useful separation of those who are imitators from those who could initiate real understanding. The mass, said Jose Ortega y Gasset, crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Today, in foolish and prospectively fatal deference to this Mass, the intellectually un-ambitious American not only wallows lazily in nonsensical political and cultural phrases of a naked emperor, he or she also applauds a manifestly shallow national ethos of personal surrender.

America First, yes, but only in Covid-19 mortality.

By definition, the Mass, or Crowd, can never become Few. Yet, someindividual members of the Mass can make the very difficult transformation. Those who are already part of the Few must announce and maintain their determined stance. One must become accustomed to living on mountains, says Nietzsche, to seeing the wretched ephemeral chatter of politics and national egotism beneath one. It was Nietzsche, too, in Zarathustra, who warned presciently: Never seek the Higher Man at the marketplace.

Aware that they may still comprise a core barrier to Americas spiritual, cultural, intellectual and political disintegration, the Few, resolute opponents of the Crowd, knowingly refuse to chant in chorus. Ultimately, they should remind us of something very important: It is that both individually and collectively, doggedly staying the course of self-actualization and self-renewal a lonely course of lucid consciousness rather than self-inflicted delusion is the only honest and purposeful option for an imperiled nation.

Today, unhindered in their endlessly misguided work, Trump Era cheerleaders in all walks of life draw feverishly upon the sovereignty of an unqualified Crowd. This Mass depends for its very breath of life on the relentless withering of personal dignity, and also on the continued servitude of all independent citizen consciousness. Oddly, We the people, frightfully unaware of this dangerous parasitism, are being passively converted into the fuel for the omnivorous machine of Trumpian democracy. This is a pathologic system of governance in which the American citizenry is still permitted to speak and interact freely, but which is also an anti-intellectual plutocracy.

In the early 1950s, Karl Jaspers, well familiar with the seminal earlier writings of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, sought to explain what a dissembling Crowd had brought to his native Germany and Germanys captive nations. Publishing Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time in 1952, the distinguished German philosopher explained the formidable difficulties of sustaining Reason among many who would prefer the fog of the irrational. Now, Jaspers earlier observations about Nazi Germany may apply equally well to Donald Trumps dissembling America:

Reason is confronted again and again with the fact of a mass of believers who have lost all ability to listen, who can absorb no argument and who hold unshakably fast to the Absurd as an unassailable presupposition.

Here, in essence, Jaspers here underscores the fraudulent freedom of obedience in any society that might seemingly will itself to be a democracy, but is actually just an oblique celebration of tyranny, moreover, the singularly arch-tyranny of anti-Reason. In earlier times, such perverse celebrations were unexceptional or even de rigeur, but they also set the stage for what Americans are experiencing so painfully at the present moment. To some extent, at least, for America to be freed from the false freedom of obedience will demand the whole society be placed in status nascens, as if newly born.

, When, in 1633, Galileo Galilei kneeled before the Inquisitorial Tribunal of Rome and was forced to renounce the compelling science of Copernicus, he revealed the vulnerability of Reason to the mortal seductions of anti-Reason. In this case, history deserves notable pride of place. When Americans watch the evening news depicting US President Donald Trump railing thoughtlessly against well-established theories of biology and medical science, they should finally begin to appreciate something utterly primal. Such flagrant seductions of anti-Reason are not only sinister, but also lethal.

The crowd is untruth.

[1] In this regard, consider the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsches succinct warning in Zarathusrtra: Never seek the higher man at the marketplace.

[2] One may be usefully reminded of Bertrand Russells trenchant observation in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916): Men fear thought more than they fear anything else on earth more than ruin, more even than death.

[3] Said Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1934: Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state. Later, in 2019, Donald Trump echoed this dreadful sentiment: I have the support of the street, of the police, of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they dont play it tough until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very bad. In a similar vein, during a 2016 rally in Las Vegas, Trump told a wildly cheering crowd that hed like to punch the protestors in the face. I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when theyre in a place like this, theyd be carried out on a stretcher, Then, identifying a specific target person in the audience, Trump added: Id like to punch him in the face.

[4] See the pertinent writings of Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung, especially The Undiscovered Self (1957).

[5] A current example is flag-waving Trump supporters who hold signs blaming distinguished epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci for tyrannical closure policies, and simultaneously urging greater medical authority for President Donald J Trump.

[6] The mass-man, we were warned earlier by Ortega in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh. Nothing could be more conspicuously clarifying than this graphic metaphor.

[7] Apropos of truth in Platos The Republic: To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

[8] See, by this author, Louis Ren Beres: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/04/the-trump-presidency-a-breathtaking-assault-on-law-justice-and-security/

[9] This virus is going to disappear, said Trump, on February 27th, 2020.

[10] On this matter, of course, one ought also note this presidents withdrawal from treaties with Russia and from the United Nations World Health Organization. Credo quia absurdum.

[11] The United States Space Force was created by US President Donald Trump on December 20, 2019, under terms of the National Defense Authorization Act. Although it is intended to bolster this countrys overall military power in any expanding strategic competition with Russia, its most likely effects will be contractive, corrosive and destabilizing. The critical underlying US policy error being committed in this creation is conceptual and historic. In essence, it consists of failing to recognize that millennia of belligerent geopolitical competitions have resulted not in peace, but in assorted forms of international war. At a unique time when the United States faces a new and unpredictable set of dangers from worldwide disease pandemic, shifting large sums of money needed for public health to a space-centered arena of future international conflict represents mistaken national priorities. Of course, from what we ought already have learned about Reason and Anti-Reason, before this miscalculation can be changed, Americas leaders will have to appreciate the fundamentally intellectual antecedents of US foreign policy decision-making at every level.

[12] This presidents self-serving refrain of America First ignores an absolutely overarching empirical truth: America is first in Covid-19 deaths, but not in any other tangibly enviable standard of civilizational quality or improvement. Always, we have the biggest bombs and missiles, but little else to show for even the most basic expectations of human empathy and compassion. For this president and his retrograde followers, caring about others is a sign of weakness. Nothing else. To wit, in the presidents currently most evident example, wearing a mask against Covid-19 infection is described as little more than political correctness.

[13] Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung thought of soul (in German, Seele) as the very essence of a human being. Neither Freud nor Jung ever provides a precise definition of the term, but it was not intended by either in any ordinary religious sense. For both psychologists, it was a still-recognizable and critical seat of both mind and passions in this life. Interesting, too, in the present context, is that Freud explained his already-predicted decline of America by various express references to soul. Freud was disgusted by any civilization so apparently unmoved by considerations of true consciousness (e.g., awareness of intellect and literature), and even thought that the anti-intellectual American commitment to perpetually shallow optimism and to crudely material accomplishment would occasion sweeping psychological misery.

[14] The worst expression of such incoherent presidential reassurance would likely be a nuclear war. For authoritative early accounts by this author of nuclear war effects, see: Louis Ren Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis Ren Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: Americas Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis Ren Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis Ren Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israels Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israels Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018).

[15] Dostoyevsky reminds us soberly: And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, Id say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty. (See Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground, 108 (Andrew R. Mac Andrew, tr., New American Library, 1961 (1862).

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Donald Trump, "The Crowd" And A Nation's Bitter Despair - Modern Diplomacy

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right, Thoreau. (Efe)

ByLawrence W. Reed

In defiance of orders from their respective governors, a significant number of houses of worship will open for services beginning tomorrow. As John Dale Davidson ofThe Federalistnotes, most of them will be doing so while maintaining social distancing measures that are at least as thorough as those at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, hair salons, or the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will nonetheless be engaged in civil disobedience.

Where do you stand on this issue? Is civil disobedienceeverjustified? Does it constitute official discrimination against the practice of religion when government declares that liquor stores and abortion clinics are essential services that can stay open while it deems your spiritual health non-essential and orders your church, synagogue, or mosque shut? Does it bother you that if a house of worship performed abortions or served alcohol, it would stand a better chance of earning the states blessing?

I concede there may be room for differing views on these matters among people of good will. But if you are in the camp that categorically opposes even non-violent civil disobediencefor any purpose, against any stupidity or oppressionI have a few more questions for you:

This is a country born in civil defiance of a monarchy 3,000 miles away. If you could go back in time and walk the streets of Boston in the early 1770s, could you have urged the citizens, Pay that Stamp Tax, let those troops quarter in your home, stop criticizing the King!?

Harriet Tubmanand tens of thousands of others defied the law to escape slavery. Could you have looked any one of them in the eyes and exhorted, Go back, youre breaking the law!? If an escaped slave showed up on your front porch, would you have turned him in or helped him out? If you say you would have helped him out, then you too would be a lawbreaker.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama, she was engaged in civil disobedience. If you were the bus driver, could you have told her, Get in the back or get off!?

Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process. No court ever heard evidence and convicted any of them of anything. They were incarcerated because they had names like Toshio instead of Bob. Could you have addressed them through a loudspeaker with words like, You havent harmed anybody but just in case you might, we have to put you away for a few years? If one of them escaped, would you have reported him?

History is full of stories of people who practiced peaceful resistance in defense of sound principles in the face of official stupidity and oppression. Sometimes it has been the best way, if not the only one, to get bad policies changed.

One hundred and seventy years ago, a famous American figure wrote,

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign hisconscienceto the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

That figure was Henry David Thoreau. Born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, he was an eminent philosopher, poet and essayist. His best-known works are his bookWalden: Life in the Woodsand his essay,Civil Disobedience. The latter proved influential far beyond his time and place, shaping the thoughts and actions of eminent dissidents the world over. As we ponder the civil disobedience rising in reaction to coronavirus policies, now is a perfect time to give Thoreaus essay another look. Toward that end, I offer some excerpts below.

One last thing before I do that: I want readers to know that, speaking strictly for myself, I endorse the re-opening of houses of worship (and many other things, for that matter), whether the government officially allows it or not. If that perspective makes life a little uncomfortable for the power-hungry at this time, so be it. The additional articles listed below reflect my reasoning.

Now, to Henry David Thoreau:

Thanks for listening. See you in church.

Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus and Humphreys Family Senior Fellow at FEE, having served for nearly 11 years as FEEs president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Convictionand Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism.

Thisarticleis republished with permission from Fundation for Economic Education.

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Is Civil Disobedience Justified in Defense of the Freedom to Worship? - PanAm Post

As outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis continues to be felt across the continent, protestors are taking to the streets in cities across North America to make their voices heard.

In Vancouver, police tweeted just before 7 p.m. on Saturday that Protestors have taken over the intersection of Main and Hastings, and traffic is blocked in all directions.

Police advised drivers to avoid the area.

Videos posted to social media show around 100 people, most of whom wore masks and appeared to leave space between themselves and other protestors, marching through downtown Vancouver carrying handwritten signs and chanting Black lives matter.

However, another moreformalprotest organized by Jacob Callender (@boy_pollo on Instagram), backed by @blackvancouver, is set to take place in Vancouver on Sunday evening, May 31.

Callender outlined the details of Sunday's peaceful protest in an IGTV video posted on Saturday afternoon. Hesaid he's currently expecting to see between 1,000 and 2,000 people show up.

The local anti-racism rallies come as a response to the killing ofFloyd, who died after a police officer knelt on hisneck until the man became unresponsive, as well as the death of 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who died after falling from the balcony of her Toronto apartment on Wednesdaywhile policeofficers were inside.

As public health officials continue to urge British Columbians to maintain physical distancing due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, rallyorganizers are encouraging attendees to wear masks and stay two metres apart.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) explained in a Facebook post that while members have been in touch with the organizers of this event, BLM has respectfully declined to participate as members do not feel that we can ensure the safety of our community in public protest at this time.

The post continued, Black Lives Matter EVERYDAY. Indigenous Solidarity, ALWAYS. Not just when we are collectively traumatized by another guileless savage gang of cops. We appreciate this act of solidarity and the coming together of Black and Indigenous people to facilitate healing from and amidst police brutality.

We are very much interested in helping organize something similar in the future. Black and Indigenous community members can come together to dream up this offering. Our communities have both suffered immensely from systemic oppression and white violence. With unity, we have and will survive ... Right now, our priority and concern is keeping Black people safe and promoting some rest.

The post also contained some advice for white Vancouverites wondering what they can do helpsupport anti-racism efforts.

Please research options for dealing with community distress, it read. Community solutions exist, and educate yourself on what they may be. We need you to stop calling the cops for situations that they do not know how to handle. Call out anti-Black racism when you see it. Acknowledge the fruits of Black culture, and stop appropriating it. Dont ask to use the word N****r. You cant. Pressure your city government to de-fund police budgets. Support the families of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, George Floyd and Samwel Uko. Fund organisations like Black Mutual Aid BC, Hogans Alley Society and numerous others like ours, working for the Black community.

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Vancouverites are taking to the streets to speak out against racism amidst deaths of George Floyd, Regis Korchinski-Paquet - Vancouver Is Awesome

Mans Thoughts of Black Stepson Prompted George Floyd Demonstration in Madison Heights

Mans Thoughts of Black Stepson Prompted George Floyd Demonstration in Madison Heights

(Crystal A. Proxmire, May 30, 2020)

Madison Heights, MI Among the 250 or so people standing in front of the Madison Heights Library Saturday afternoon to honor George Floyd and take a stance against racism and unchecked police brutality, was Kevin and Keleila Wright.

The Wrights have been married five years, and each has children from their previous marriage, with six children and one grandchild.

Kevin is the one who started the idea of a demonstration, posting on Facebook that hed be standing there with a sign saying George Floyd did not deserve to die, and anyone was welcome to join in.

My wife is African-American and I have a 15-year-old stepson who is black. I have two sons of my own from a previous marriage who are white. They are equals in our house. Three brothers who do all the things brothers do.

I dont know if my stepson has ever felt the sting of racism yet, but I know he will. I know my sons never have and never will. In a few years, one of them will no longer be treated as an equal in society because of the color of his skin. I couldnt for the life of me figure out why. I just could not stay silent one more time and look myself in the mirror.

I expected to be out there by myself on Saturday, Wright said. But this thing exploded. A friend suggested I create a public event page on Facebook, so I did. I was overwhelmed by the response. My original post was shared over 100 times.

George Floyd died on Monday, May 25 after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck while he pleaded for life and said he couldnt breathe. Other officers failed to intervene. The death of Floyd is one of many deaths of a black man at the hands of police that has raised the issue of racism across the county.

The death hit home for Wright.

I could not stay silent any longer. Seeing the image of the police officer kneeling on George Floyds neck haunted me. I asked my wife a couple days ago, What can I do about it?

The demonstration was the answer, bringing together Madison Heights neighbors with handmade signs with phrases like Black Lives Matter, I cant breathe, Being black is not a crime, and Justice 4 George.

Id also like to say my purpose in organizing this protest was not to be anti-police, and that it was in no way aimed at the Madison Heights Police Department. I have the utmost respect for the job these brave men and women do every day to protect and serve our community.

A significantly larger protest took place in Detroit Friday afternoon and into the night. There Detroiters and suburbanites gathered Downtown until being disbursed by police with riot shields and pepper gas. There was property damage, as well as one teenager dead of a gunshot. The protest was mild compared to riots that destroyed parts of Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York and other cities around the county and the globe.

Among the 40 US Cities with protests are Albuquerque, Omaha, Fort Wayne, Dallas, and Columbus.

I was thankful there was such a great turnout of people to honor George Floyds family and say, as a community, we did not condone the actions of the police officers that led to his death. I am thankful the protest was peaceful, Wright said.

Madison Heights Councilperson Kymmburleigh Clark commended the Wrights for doing the right thing. She stood with the demonstrators who lined 13 Mile and John R. When asked why she was there, she said For me as a member of an ALL WHITE city government, it is important for me to show our black neighbors that they have allies in our city, and that our city is a safe place for them to live and work and prosper.

My family and I showed up today to support them, and to show white supremacy we are not afraid to do so. It is important that our neighbors of color see they have support in the government, in the police department, from our schools, clubs, and organizations.

When we rally around those who are vulnerable, we help make them stronger, and help to bring a louder voice to their cries for help. The people who showed up today demand more from our leadership. We must show them we are listening, and now, more than ever, it is crucial to implement this kind of change. We are rebuilding once again due to a pandemic, it seems like an opportune time to right some wrongs in the way we operate our government and rebuild our infrastructure.

Barbara Ingalls was also at the demonstration. I went to Madison Heights today because I wished to show solidarity and support for the family of George Floyd, and because my heart hurts at the continuing oppression of African Americans in the United States. In the words of Florence Reece, which side are you on?

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Man's Thoughts of Black Stepson Prompted George Floyd Demonstration in Madison Heights Oakland County Times - Oakland County 115 News

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --As China continues its brutal repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan, what China calls Xinjiang, the US Senate just held a session in which they unanimously passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act.

Senator Marco Rubio tweetedearlier that "moments ago we passed our Uyghur human rights bill in the Senate which holds the Communist Party of China accountable for grotesque actions."

"The Uyghur people have been anxiously waiting on the US Congress to pass a Uyghur Act for over a decade, especially since the building of concentration camps starting in 2016," saidSalih Hudayar, the recently elected Prime Minister of theEast Turkistan Government in Exileand Founder of theEast Turkistan National Awakening Movement. "We have high hopes that this bill will help to alleviate if not end China's oppression of East Turkistan's people."

TheEast Turkistan National Awakening Movementhas been pushing for a Uyghur Act since June 4, 2018 and has organized numerous demonstrations, events, and lobbying days to apply pressure on Congress to pass the Uyghur bill.

On December 3, 2019, theUS House of Representatives passed the Uyghur human rights billwith an overwhelming majority of 408 against 1. The bill would call for tough sanctions on China over its Uyghur concentration camps. China later announced it released Uyghurs from the "vocational training centers" which many human rights groups and lawmakers have called concentration camps. However, there was no confirmation of detainees being released, in fact numerous reports emerged stating that some Uyghurs were being transferred to prisons while otherswere being transferred to Chinese provinces for forced labor.

"China continues to intern millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps and prisons," Hudayar said. "Tens of thousands of Turkic people are being transferred into Chinese provinces for slave labor, while tens of thousands of Chinese are being brought into to colonize East Turkistan."

While the world remains largely silent on the East Turkistan / Uyghur oppression, the East Turkistan Government in Exile hopes that passage of this bill will encourage other countries to follow suit and pass similar bills to push back against China's persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.

Media Contact:Hashimjan Turak[emailprotected]202-599-2244

SOURCE East Turkistan Government in Exile

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East Turkistan Government in Exile Applauds US Senate Passing of Uyghur Human Rights Bill - PRNewswire

Almost by the minute, data and research are pouring in confirming that government at the local, state and federal levels has disastrously overreacted to SARS-CoV-2.

The news is almost universally encouraging. Yet the stay-at-homers will not relent.

Neither critiques by a multidisciplinary cohort of credible scientists nor tens of millions of lives harmed (if not ruined) by a self-inflicted economic catastrophe have proven to be persuasive. From a disturbingly unhinged New Jersey teacher screaming at teens tossing a ball in a park to elected officials preening that if a single life can saved to the sob-sistering of anyone who writes for The Atlantic, defenders of government lockdowns zealously focus on the negative, confidently postulate that the worst is yet to come and slander all who do not share their perspective.

Many Americans fighting to liberate their country from intolerable COVID-19 controls must be asking a Seinfeldian question about their opponents: Who are these people?

Plenty of theories have been proffered. Media elites, concentrated in the New York City tri-state area, are unaware that not everyone uses a subway to get to work. Professional pols fear that the loss of just a few votes could torpedo their lifelong goal of escaping the perils of the private sector. Coronavirus Karens, seething at their ex-husbands, and/or enraged at their spoiled kids, and/or regretting their poor career choices, love power trips, virtue-signaling and day drinking.

But self-absorption alone does not adequately explain the psychological posture of the stay-at-homers. The COVID-19 policy smackdown even more than advocacy for national health care, endless government-school expenditures for the children or compulsory unionism exposes fundamental ethical contrasts in modern American ideology.

The work of Jonathan Haidt, who explores the origin of the concept of right and wrong, is must reading for anyone drilling toward the core of this issue. Author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, the New York University professor has distilled the six taste receptors of morality: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation and Liberty/Oppression.

Care/Harm, Haidt avers, evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children, and it makes Homo sapiens sensitive to signs of suffering and need and despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering. Unsurprisingly, liberals, across many scales, surveys and political controversies turn out to be more disturbed by signs of violence and suffering, compared to conservatives and especially to libertarians.

Fairness/Cheating, at least for those on the left, manifests itself as concerns about equality and social justice prompting the accusation that wealthy and powerful groups are gaining by exploiting those at the bottom.

Few of us would volunteer to live in a world without kindness and sympathy. Few of us would volunteer to live in a world without comity among individuals and equal treatment at least in theory under law. But with their Care/Harm and Fairness/Cheating knobs cranked to 11, doctrinaire liberals leave no room for the other moral foundations. People are hurting, and the underprivileged are being victimized most of all! We must act, now! Theres no time to consider any unintended consequences!

Morality, Haidt explains, both binds and blinds. Aligned ideologues bond with one another over the virtues they treasure but frequently fail to note the existence of other noble principles.

Is it any wonder, then, that in the COVID-19 conflict, Sanctity/Degradation (people of faith not being allowed to pray, worship, confess and atone side-by-side with their brethren) and Liberty/Oppression (mutually beneficial exchange between buyer and seller is the best mechanism to generate economic growth, itself an important source of health) are ignored by the stay-at-homers?

Heavy-handed measures pitched as tools to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus have already induced, among other things, massive unemployment and a huge uptick in mental-health trauma. But with blinders set to recognize only care and fairness, those who encourage, and acquiesce to, every control imposed in the name of public health reveal their adherence to an unsophisticated, and destructively narrow, ethical standard.

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D. Dowd Muska: Stay-at-home folks overreacting to COVID-19 protocols - Waco Tribune-Herald

The shutdown was sudden, but the reopening has resembled more of a snails pace than the sprint some believed wed see once the economy began to restart.

One could count more television reporters from across the Ohio River in New Albanys downtown Monday than customers out and about deciding which restaurant to enter. Understandably our neighbors to the south are curious as to how we will handle the partial reopening, and Mondays arent exactly the busiest day of the week for restaurants, but largely the citys dining establishments appeared to be waiting to open their doors to in-person service as opposed to rushing back into business as usual after two tough months of being regulated to curbside pickup or delivery.

This is emblematic of the crisis to date. Do we need government regulations forced upon us in order to keep ourselves safe, or are most of us smart enough and disciplined enough to follow the suggestions of those who know more about health than what they gleaned from a Facebook post?

Unfortunately, the jury is still out.

We are a society that focuses on the extremes and the polar opposites. Those who make the most noise get the most attention, even if they represent a small minority of public thought.

We know some are upset that businesses were ever required to close, and theyve protested at statehouses and loudly opposed basic precautions such as wearing a face mask because they argue that it threatens their freedom.

As an aside, we are really going to be in a pickle if were attacked by another country or face an obstacle that requires total sacrifice. The fact that some believe that wearing a face mask and working from home for a few months is oppression shows just how spoiled weve become as a society.

On the polar opposite side of the extremism coin, we have those who believe we should shut everything down for months on end and not step outside our homes for fear that we may be infected with COVID-19. While it may be comforting to some to place themselves in a bubble where they have complete safety, its just not practical. We have to find a medium where people can practice social distancing while businesses are allowed to operate as long as they follow health and safety guidelines.

The past week in Southern Indiana has shown that can occur, and its also proven that we have a long way to go before masses of people will feel comfortable eating inside a restaurant.

Most people are sensible enough to protect themselves and arent going to hoard into the local diner or pub until they feel its reasonably safe. But there are outliers, and there are those who wont listen to the advice of medical professionals, so there must remain some government oversight to thwart a second wave of the coronavirus.

Business will increase as more people feel comfortable re-entering the public domain, but were a long way from recovery and normalcy. There will have to be some creative thinking for businesses to survive even after capacity restrictions are lifted because consumers are scared about the future after seeing how quickly our economy can crumble.

Theres also the unknown as to whether the virus will be even more widespread during the fall and winter. We are living the definition of a fluid situation.

The hesitancy to dive back into normal life isnt just affecting businesses. Many churches declined to reopen last weekend despite the governor lifting the order that closed in-service worship.

Ultimately, well all have to make our own decisions about what chances we feel are appropriate to take. Our government is watching, and no, Im not talking about a 5G conspiracy. Officials are observing how we handle reopening and if the virus spreads at a much higher rate as a result.

It behooves us to be responsible. The door to our old way of life is nudged slightly open. Lets not have it slammed shut because of careless actions.

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SUDDEATH COLUMN: Slow reopening hints at long road to recovery - Evening News and Tribune

NEIL Davidson devoted his life to fighting a system responsible for inequality and oppression. On Sunday, May 3, Scotland lost a great thinker and fighter for a more just and humane world.

I knew Neil for more than 33 years. He was a great friend and comrade who was kind and generous with his time.

Neil was born in 1957 in Aberdeen to Dougie and Margaret. His younger sister, Shona, followed. After attending Aberdeen Grammar School, Neil started work as a clerical officer with Grampian Health Board. He became a policy adviser for the Scottish Government in 2008.

Neil was a socialist and a highly innovative Marxist historian. He was the author of many books and essays. In The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, Neil demolished the idea of a timeless Scottish national consciousness stretching back to the Declaration of Arbroath. He pointed out that Scottish national feeling emerged alongside British national consciousness. Discovering The Scottish Revolution was awarded both the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher memorial prize and the Saltire Societys Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun award.

Neil was awarded an Open University degree in 1992. He and his friend and comrade Alex Law refused to wear the archaic graduation gown. Neil became an OU lecturer in sociology, encouraging many working-class students to undertake a degree. His writing allowed him to embark on a second career as an academic in 2008 at Strathclyde University and from 2013 at Glasgow University.

He challenged the Scottish intellectual giants Tom Nairn and Alasdair Macintyre. Along with numerous journal articles, he published four collections of essays. Discovering The Scottish Revolution led to his magisterial How Revolutionary Were The Bourgeois Revolutions? Neils reputation began to reach an international audience and his work was translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin. His academic work was always linked to his political commitment. He was an active trade unionist throughout his working life.

In 1999, Neil was a founding member of the Edinburgh Campaign Against War in Europe (ECAWE). The group mobilised for demonstrations, one of which was addressed by the newly elected Nicola Sturgeon MSP. It helped lay the basis for the hugely successful Stop the War Coalition in the city.

While Neil supported Scottish independence, he did so from an internationalist perspective. He had no truck with sentimental Scottish civic nationalism that posited Scotland as inherently more progressive. He challenged this in the books Neoliberal Scotland and No Problem Here.

Neil was one of the key intellectual influences in the development of the Radical Independence Campaign. He went on to become a founding member of Conter a left-wing group based in Scotland and RS21 based in England.

Neil maintained a devoted partnership with his beloved Cathy. They loved to have guests stay over to enjoy their food and company. Neil would often entertain with his dry Doric wit.

He was passionate about music, theatre, film, literature and the arts. He could hold his own in conversation about 1970s disco, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Debbie Harry or 1980s hip-hop. His cultural breadth was immense.

Neil was one of the foremost public intellectuals in recent decades and has been taken from us too soon. We mourn his loss but will also want to celebrate his life. The best way to do this will be to employ and develop the arguments he helped create and the movement to which he devoted his life.

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Scotland's lost a great thinker and fighter after Neil Davidson's death - The National