Category Archives: Government Oppression

GABY RUSLI WRITES (in a series of reviews on Indonesian classics still in print) It is a well-known fact that many great revolutions started from the circulation of finely written, brave literature. For the Indonesian natives who were growing weary of endless backbreaking work and hunger,MultatulisMax Havelaar(1860) represented what many can only dare to repress.

Max Havelaartells the story of Batavus Droogstoppel, a Dutch coffee trader in Amsterdam who had ambitions of writing a detailed book about coffee auctions of the Dutch Trading Company. Not knowing how to write a book, Droogstoppel collaborated with his new employee, Stern. However, Stern was not interested in writing a book on coffee auctions and would only write if he were free to write whatever he wanted. Despite Droogstoppels objections, Stern wrote about a Dutch civil servant named Max Havelaar a modest man with the purest intentions. Unlike his corrupt colleagues, he sought to reform the system and help Indonesian natives have a better chance of sustainable and independent lives. Though Havelaar eventually failed in his endeavors, his story exposed the colonial governments corrupt and inhumane system to the world.

Multatuli is a pen name used by Eduard Douwes Dekker. The Latin word multatuli translates to I have suffered greatly, implying thatMax Havelaarwas created to give voice to the voiceless natives who were worked to death. Dekkers experience working for the Dutch government in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and his trademark satirical voice made him one of the Netherlands greatest authors. Additionally, he was one of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freuds favorite authors and the inspiration behind many other writers, including Karl Marx.

WhileMax Havelaarwas revered by many, Havelaar was merely doing what was rightly required from his position as a civil servant and as a human being. Many failed to see Dekkers attempt to portray the sad and surreal reality for the enslaved native Indonesians where basic human decency was a rare commodity and not a standard. The common occurrence of such misinterpretation may be due to Dekkers dense and dry writing style. Without utter commitment to allocate ones full attention, one can repeatedly re-read the same pages before fully comprehending the intended meaning.

Dekker also pointed out one critical fact that changes ones perspective: the enslavement of the natives was a part of a mutually beneficial transaction between the Dutch and Indonesias aristocratic ruling class. Dekker shifted the standard narrative that emphasized that a Dutch takeover of Indonesia was imminent as the former was an all-powerful force and the latter was unrefined and defenseless. He reminded the natives that their failure in fighting against the Dutch was not for lack of trying but because many of their own were fighting alongside the Dutch to maintain privileged status. ThoughMax Havelaaris anything but an exhilarating adventure novel, Indonesians should read Multatulis epochal work to understand Indonesias deep colonial past not to mention modern Indonesias proclivity for corruption and intolerance. It is a historical book that inspires the courageous task of bettering Indonesias present and future.

New Book Reviewer, Gaby Rusli, is an International Relations graduate and environmentalist who is passionate about Indonesian and Southeast Asian political affairs.

Edited by book review editor-in-chief, Ella Kelleher.

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BOOK REVIEW: MAX HAVELAAR (1860) BY MULTATULI REVISITING THE FUEL THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION AGAINST CENTURIES OF DUTCH OPPRESSION - Asia Media...

I saw a silly meme shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine and shortly after Canadas Prime Minister invoked the Emergencies Act to shut down Canadas Freedom Convoy. Sadly, the silliness of the meme (shared widely on social media) seemed lost on many.

The meme had a photo of hundreds of cars lined up bumper-to-bumper leaving Kyiv. The meme also had the following text:

Traffic westbound out of Kyev yesterday. Thats what a freedom convoy looks like, in the face of tyranny and oppression. Note a distinct lack of bouncy castles.

The apparent point of the meme was to draw an analogy between Ukraines and Canadas motor vehicle caravans, put emphasis on the horror of the situation in Ukraine, and thereby dismiss the importance of Canadas Freedom Convoy.

I think that the analogy is faulty and that the importance of Canadas Freedom Convoy remains.

Both convoys are for the sake of freedom, for sure. But the motorcade in Ukraine would be better described as a Fleeing Convoy, not a Freedom Convoy.

The analogy breaks down because the people in the Ukrainian vehicles are running away from the tyranny and oppression of the invading Russian army, whereas the people in the Canadian vehicles are standing up against the possibility of Canadas government becoming tyrannical and oppressive.

A better (albeit hypothetical) analogy to Canadas Freedom Convoy would be this: the citizens of Russia taking their vehicles to the street to protest Russian President Putin before he became a tyrant.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) provides us with a warning that we should take seriously.

Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago. This book (three large volumes) is about the far flung system of Soviet forced labour camps in which millions of people perished. Solzhenitsyn describes how Soviet society succumbed to the horrors of a government bent on imprisoning and murdering its own citizens. Solzhenitsyns work no doubt helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union.

These words (from chapter two of Solzhenitsyns first volume) should give us pause:

If people had been heroic in exercising their civil responsibilities, there would never have been any reason to write either this chapter or this whole book.

I think Solzhenitsyns point has to do with the importance of citizens to exercise their civil responsibilities BEFORE dark forces get control, as a pre-emptive strike against the rise of tyrannical and oppressive government bent on imprisoning and murdering its own citizens.

I would add: and before requiring its own citizens to war on other countries such as Ukraine.

Yes, fleeing westward from Kyiv is important (and understandable), and peoples with freedom should provide aid (humanitarian aid as well as ammunition).

Important, too, and perhaps even more important so we can provide aid in the first place is that free peoples of the world should stand up against their governments when those governments show inklings towards squelching freedom.

Canadas Liberal government was very apparently infringing on the constitutional rights of Canadians during the COVID pandemic (see the Peterson-Peckford discussion below for evidence). Hence Canadas Freedom Convoy and its importance.

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. Dr. van der Breggen is double vaccinated, and he is inclined to think vaccinations are wise (depending...More by Hendrik van der Breggen

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War in Ukraine, Freedom Convoy in Canada, and a silly meme - MercatorNet

Photo: Statue of Charles Darwin, Shrewsbury Library, by Bs0u10e01 / CC BY-SA.

I have been reviewingDarwin Day in America: How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, by Discovery Institute Vice President John West. See my post from yesterday, Darwinism and the So What? Question.

In the following section of the book, Dr. West considers a subject near and dear to me as a surgical oncologist, and that is life and death. He covers abortion and pre-birth issues, but also euthanasia, various forms of assisted suicide, and every moment in between birth and death. In my work, I was surrounded by the possibility of death on a daily basis. In an ethical context, the prolongation of the dying process can be as evil as its acceleration. As a physician, I found it easy to identify those colleagues who had a low view of human life, with their callous disregard for the patient as a person. In the academic setting, the unnecessary prolongation of life in order to support the effectiveness of an experimental treatment plan, or perhaps in order to improve hospital statistics, or to increase federal reimbursements, was the norm and not the exception.

It seems bewildering that there would be perplexity as to when human life begins. No one is uncertain about that in the breeding of a racehorse or in the gestation of an embryo belonging to an endangered species. So, whats different about the human embryo? What is so difficult about recognizing the beginning of a human life, such that the pundits of this age have excused the slaughter of the unborn, and even of the born, as Dr. West documents? There is trouble only when an ideological fog inhibits the cerebral function of the Darwinist. If humans really are nothing more than the product of chance events in the primordial slime, then perhaps it doesnt matter how we treat each other.

Its odd that so many Darwinists demean humanity even as they aver that humans represent the pinnacle of evolution,given the evolution of speech, superior intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity. In a nature rights perspective, these are all to be trashed in order to spare the lower forms of evolution, whether animals or plants. Stranger is the fact thatonlyhumans are sentient and able to appreciate the lower forms of beings on our planet. Beauty does not exist in the mind of an endangered yellow-legged frog as he glances at a flower-covered meadow, or foliose lichen growing on the side of a tree that overlooks a majestic mountain scene.

The chapter on death is a difficult and troubling one. West presents and discusses the Shiavo and Cruzan cases. These are two exceptional cases, both of which were mismanaged (in my estimation), and neither of which should set a precedent for medical ethics. The main point that West tries to drive home is that the personal worth of the individuals, Shiavo and Cruzan, was devalued by those who thought that the termination of life was the most viable option for their care. Does this mean that virtually every effort must be extended in order to prolong life? I mentioned above that the prolongation of death can be as immoral as the prolongation of life. In addition, the patients quality of life becomes a confounding issue that muddies any discussion. Respect for life remains of utmost importance. However, in a world where the survival of the fittest selects out who shall live, the law of the jungle (Wests term) prevails. Financial, social, personal, and other concerns are judged to be more important than the life of the patient.

In his conclusion, West offers a succinct and well-written summary of his thesis, including a defense of the theory of intelligent design. It would have been the best chapter in his book had he not added a later addendum.

The afterword, on Totalitarian Science, published in 2015, shows John West as a prophet of things to come. We now see science wielded in defense of any sort of nonsense and untruth imaginable. In my years as a doctoral student in the cell biology laboratory, I heard many lectures on integrity in research. This was because the notable academies of science were finding evidence of a troubling trend toward fraud.

This was in the 1980s, and the situation is much worse today. Its a perfect example of Darwinism in the performance of science. The publish or perish mentality among academics is simply another form of survival of the fittest. Before the Enlightenment, theology was known as the Queen of the Sciences. Rather than being in competition with science, theology was understood as the foundation for all science. Indeed, science did quite well as long as there was understood to be a theological basis for it. With theology stripped from its place at that foundation, we must not be surprised that the house of science is crumbling around us.

West wrote this afterword before the Covid crisis, in which the name of science has been tossed about as a support for any sort of government oppression. Meanwhile, the mega-media complex aggressively strips the population of free speech, all in the cause of defending the edicts of those who call themselves scientists. West was able to see all of this coming a few years before it happened. Yet prophets most often go without honor, and I dont expect West to get the acclaim that he deserves. If he did, his book would be on theNew York Timesbestseller list.

Go here to see the original:

Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism - Discovery Institute

BHOPAL: Angered by the comments of Indian Administrative Service officer Niyaz Khan wherein he has suggested that a film should also be made on the sufferings of Muslims, authorities in the BJP-ruled Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have decided to serve a show cause notice to him.

According to Kashmir Media Service, the IAS officer Niyaz Khan, while giving his response to the controversial film The Kashmir Files, had tweeted: Kashmir File shows the pain of Brahmins The producer must also make a movie to show the killings of large number of Muslims across several [Indian] states. Muslims are not insects but human beings and citizens of country.

Khan, who is working as Deputy Secretary in the Public Works Department, also said that he was planning to write a book highlighting the massacre of Muslims so that a movie like The Kashmir Files could be produced by someone to bring the pain and suffering of minorities before Indians.

Talking to reporters in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra said, this is a serious issue as Khan is crossing and violating the limit set for government officials, adding the state government will issue a show-cause notice to him and seek his reply.

Separately, state Medical Education Minister Sarang, calling for Khans removal, had said he was going to write a letter against Khan to the personnel department. He alleged that the IAS officer was talking about sectarianism.

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State oppression: Notice to be issued to Muslim Indian officer for comments on social media - Pakistan Today

Since storming back to power the Taliban have rolled back two decades of gains made by Afghanistan's women, who have been squeezed out of many government jobs and barred from travelling alone

Across the country, groups of jubilant girls had arrived at schools on Wednesday morning carrying their bags and books, greeting their former classmates with grins and chatter. AFP

Kabul: Women's rights activists pledged Sunday to launch a wave of protests across Afghanistan if the Taliban fail to reopen girls' secondary schools within a week.

Thousands of secondary school girls had flocked to classes on Wednesday after the hardline Islamists reopened their institutions for the first time since seizing power last August.

But officials ordered the schools shut again just hours into the day, triggering international outrage.

"We call on the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open girls' schools within one week," activist Halima Nasari read from a statement issued by four women's rights groups at a press conference in Kabul.

"If the girls' schools remain closed even after one week, we will open them ourselves and stage demonstrations throughout the country until our demands are met."

The Taliban should be building more schools for girls in rural areas rather than shutting existing facilities, said the statement, which comes after several women's activists were detained in recent months.

"The people can no longer tolerate such oppression. We do not accept any excuse from the authorities," it said.

On Saturday, about two dozen schoolgirls and women staged a protest in Kabul demanding the reopening of the schools.

"Women, teachers and girls should come out on the streets and protest," said student Zarghuna Ibrahimi, 16, who attended the press conference.

"The international community should support us."

The education ministry has so far not given a clear reason for its policy reversal, but senior Taliban leader Suhail Shaheel told AFP that some "practical issues" were still to be resolved before reopening the schools.

Separate days at parks

Since storming back to power the Taliban have rolled back two decades of gains made by Afghanistan's women, who have been squeezed out of many government jobs, barred from travelling alone, and ordered to dress according to a strict interpretation of the Koran.

The Taliban had promised a softer version of the harsh Islamist rule that characterised their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.

But many restrictions have still crept back, often implemented locally at the whim of regional officials.

Some Afghan women initially resisted the curbs, holding small protests where they demanded the right to education and work.

But the Taliban soon rounded up the ringleaders, holding them incommunicado while denying that they had been detained.

Since their release, most have gone silent.

On Sunday, the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.

Women are now permitted to visit parks on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, while the remaining days were reserved for men, a ministry notification said.

But the Taliban soon rounded up the ringleaders, holding them incommunicado while denying that they had been detained.

Since their release, most have gone silent.

On Sunday, the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.

Women are now permitted to visit parks on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, while the remaining days were reserved for men, a ministry notification said.

"It is not the Islamic Emirate's order but our God's order that men and women who are strangers to each other should not gather at one place," Mohammad Yahya Aref, an official at the ministry, told AFP.

"This way women will be able to enjoy their time and freedom. No man will be there to trouble them," he said, adding that religious police were already implementing the order.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News,Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Activists threaten to launch protests if girls schools not reopened by Taliban in a week - Firstpost

LAHORE: Leader of Opposition in National Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday asked the people to join the Mehngai Mukao March (end inflation march) of the opposition against the government.

In a statement, Shehbaz Sharif asked the masses to get out of their houses and join PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz and Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz to get rid of inflation and the oppressive government.

He said inflation, corruption and incompetence were realities and the people should come out against those realities.

Remember, you and your children are becoming poor because of the corruption. This government has made your life a hell through oppression of inflation, he said.

Read more: Sherry Rehman slams govt for rising commodity prices with arrival of Ramadan

Referring to Prime Minister Imran Khan, the PML-N president said the corrupt ruler was misleading the government for his sinking politics. People should come out against his lies and give the message that they had rejected inflation and the government which brought the inflation, he maintained.

The masses should know that their rights have been eaten up by the corrupt and incompetent rulers. If they do not come out against them then they will consume the entire country, he said.

At the moment, the country was besieged by serious issues and dangers, he said adding that the people would have to play their roles in getting rid of them.

The Mehngai Mukao March is a movement to eradicate issues like incompetence, unqualifiedness, corruption and inflation, he said.

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You, your kids becoming poor because of corruption, Shehbaz tells nation - BOL News

As there is no Kakwenza Rukirabashaija around, government has had to create one. So, it seems, Isaac Ssemakadde is the nominated candidate to fill this vacancy.

Police has already warned Ssemakadde that they shall not tolerate the use of abusive language on social media by him or any other member of the public.

Accordingly, Crime Investigations Division (CID) spokesperson Charles Twine said they summoned Ssemakadde with respect to his alleged offensive communication and cyber stalking of Justice Musa Ssekaana of the High Court and other high-ranking government officials.

Taking exception to what they term as Ssemakaddes character assassination of government employees, police sought to interrogate him on his choice of words when choosing to vent his outrage.

(These) Acts of criminality that target people who are diligently doing their work shall be given priority to ensure this vice is decisively fought, Twine said.

The CID spokesperson said police will spare no effort in ensuring that nobody speaks their mind.

You cant just wake up in the morning and abuse the Speaker, then you abuse the judge and then the head of State. That cant be tolerated. And they do it with impunity. We have heard some people even arrogantly say it is their right to abuse. They call you foolish or dimwit and they call it their right, he added.

Predictably, Twine said police will start examining the mental status of those who choose the path of candour over capitulation before any charges are brought against them.

What is happening in Uganda is not only dictatorship, it is atavism--- the reversion to ancient practices.

It is akin to Socrates being sentenced to drink poison in 399 BC for supposedly violating the political code of his time.

So wrongheaded is the state of Ugandas politics that those who live by the pen shall perish by the sword.

As this conflict between freedom and oppression mounts, the authorities will introduce sterner controls on what Ugandans can say or think under the pretext of national security, while clamping down ever harder on freedom of expression organisations such as the media, civil society and others bastions of Ugandas otherwise comatose democracy.

When criticised, government, to confuse those who often miss the forest for the trees, will point to farcical institutions such as elections and Parliament to claim Ugandans have rights.

The sting in the tail here is that the worst crimes continue to repeat themselves under the rather thin veneer of these institutions.

Beyond this, government will start classifying its critics as mad after they have been examined by the shrinks at CID headquarters.

In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (written in 1949 by George Orwell) this thought police was predicted.

Thinkpol, or the thought police, are the Orwellian secret police of the government who discover and punish thought crimes or personal and political thoughts unapproved by the state.

Already, as in Orwells 1984, informers are everywhere monitoring Ugandans and arresting those who have committed the thought crime of challenging the status quo wrought by the NRM government.

Thus, there are sure to be more Kakwenzas and Ssemakaddes as the State takes off its velvet gloves to expose its iron fists.

The beauty of this scenario, however, is that as Ugandans are reduced to desperation, they will have nothing to lose but their chains and then we shall see.

Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn said it better, You only have power over people as long as you dont take everything away from them. But when youve robbed a man of everything, hes no longer in your powerhes free again.

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter

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Live by the pen and perish by the sword - Monitor

SACRAMENTO

When more than 100 Walt Disney Co. workers walked out of their Burbank offices to protest the companies lackluster opposition to Floridas unforgivable dont say gay, law this week, it seemed like a heartening example of California rising to its reputation as a beacon of inclusivity and action.

And it was.

But California is not all rainbows and sunshine, especially for marginalized people, Judah Joslyn told me over coffee this week, as a homeless man outside the caf door yelled about Gods wrath for those who dont follow a particular interpretation of the Bible. Thats got to be a metaphor for something, though nothing good. Joslyns point is that hate isnt a place, and doesnt respect geographic boundaries.

Joslyn, who is transgender, is executive director of the Trans and Queer Youth Collective in Sacramento. Every day, Joslyn (who prefers not to use pronouns) helps run online groups where a mix of 95 nonbinary kids age 12-17 come for camaraderie and understanding a lifeline because many of them have little of either in their offline realities. That some will try to un-live themselves, as Joslyn refers to suicide, is an ever-present danger too common in transgender communities. It has been intensified by years of pandemic isolation and now a national attack by far-right zealots who are pushing laws targeting LGBTQ+ people and their families across the country.

The kids fears of violence, rejection, oppression and now even being separated from their parents are real, whether they live here or elsewhere, as some of the group members do, because the attacks are genuine attempts to erase them, and strip away their civil rights. If you are not safe everywhere, are you safe anywhere?

If you or someone you know is exhibiting warning signs of suicide, seek help from a professional by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-TALK (8255). You can reach Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 and the Trevor Project at (866) 488-7386.

Legal attacks on LGBTQ+ people arent going to happen in California, but your head would have to be deep in the sand to think they dont matter here.

The far-right has a plan, and, as Rachel Laser of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State puts it, Florida and Texas are harbingers of worse to come. The two states are the canary in the coal mine of oppression and repression, she said. Targeting LGBTQ+ communities is a great test for those who believe the United States should be a patriarchal, Judeo-Christian nation. They hope after four years of Trumpism that the Land of the Free is ripe for a return to so-called traditional values that enshrine sexism, racism and a whole bunch of other ugly.

Like many who track extremism, especially of the religious variety, Laser sees the recent wave of anti-gay legislation as an attack on democracy. These punches from Texas and Florida arent about sexuality or gender. They are about the mainstreaming of Christian nationalism and its attempt to break down the separation between church and state. This is a well-organized segment of the far-right that is flush with cash.

Kae Ragas and Judah Joslyn are a nonbinary couple raising three kids.

(Judah Joslyn)

Adding a religious exemption for bakers who dont want to make a cake for a gay wedding was dessert before dinner for this intolerant flank. Theyd rather see an outright ban on gay weddings. Or how about banning abortions? Making it harder for minorities to vote? Adding prayer to schools, or making it mandatory to display the national motto of In God We Trust?

All those are part of what Christian nationalists would like to accomplish, and what they have been peddling at the state and local level with organizations such as Project Blitz, which offer up ready-made legislation aimed at keeping white, Christian supremacy alive and well. If you think the recent events in Florida and Texas are unrelated, or anything but coordinated attacks, its time to wake up.

The Jan. 6 insurrection, an attempt to take over the federal government, energized these forays into state and local politics as a more realistic option to overturning the election. Along with an angry view of Christianity, its adherents are often rooted in bitter delusion including the QAnon conspiracy of kids being tortured by Democrats in a D.C. pizza parlor basement. That has fed rhetoric about the need to save the children, along with grievances ranging from immigration to gender identity, as they cloak themselves in false virtuosity by using the language of freedom and family.

What we see is the white Christian nationalist movement coming for all marginalized communities who have made strides in recent years, Laser said when we talked. No one is safe.

Laser wants to be clear that Christian nationalism isnt Christianity, but rather a sullying of that religion by extremists who seek to seize political power as changing demographics push them from the majority. She points out that the U.S. hasnt had a white, Christian majority since 2014.

But two things in particular make it easy for Christian nationalists to target nonbinary communities as they try to turn their agenda into state law. First, society has long marginalized and discriminated against LGBTQ+ communities, making them targets that are both easy and expected. Another instance of cruelty and abuse, even an egregious one, doesnt provoke the outrage it should.

That insidious use of stigma is furthered by the complexities of our ideas about gender and sexuality, and their evolution. Identities and ideas that only a few years ago were foreign to the mainstream now have currency, such as the growing acceptance that sexuality is a spectrum or the increasingly common practice of people choosing their pronouns. But those changes come with confusion, even for the well-meaning. And confusion is always fertile ground for those who seek to sow dissent and fear.

And so we see legislation across the country testing out our tolerance for bigotry and hate. It may not be within the borders of our state, but like the Disney workers, its on us to take a stand, because the effects dont stop at our borders.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who legalized gay marriage while mayor of San Francisco before it was federally sanctioned, tweeted at Disney a few days ago that its Florida workers were welcome back in California. Wednesday, when I asked his office if anything further was coming about recent events, said he agreed it was a coordinated attack.

Its a cynical, divisive ploy to hold on to power by demonizing vulnerable groups, Newsom said. For those of us who want to defend progress, not privilege, we need to collectively raise our voices and do more to defend our values.

Joslyn thinks statements like that are mostly virtue signaling, and thats of course got truth in it. Joslyn wants to see money and action. But its at least a declaration of righteousness in a time of increasing bleakness for democracy. Id rather have a Newsom than an Abbott, or God save me, a DeSantis men who in my book are stomping both on democracy and my personal values, and maybe yours.

My mom was a lesbian, at a time in the Midwest when that wasnt acceptable. She spent her entire life coming to terms with it, not living her authentic self until she was in her sixties and then busted out with trips to Fire Island and WNBA season tickets.

Joslyn has three kids, one of whom just decided this week he is transgender. Joslyn, who is Black, would like to see the same energy that ignited us in 2020 around racial justice come to bear as LQBTQ+ people face these attacks for future generations, if not the now. Whatever government says, real change, real help, Joslyn believes, comes from everyday, ordinary people, like those who walked out of Disney for their co-workers.

We need genuine support from the broader population to keep us safe, Joslyn said. Its not the government that makes it a sanctuary. Its the communities, its the people.

In California, I hope our government proves Joslyn a bit wrong. Christian nationalism has no place in our borders, as a state or country. And lets not wait to see who they come for next. We should all take this personally, because keeping LGBTQ+ people safe is vital to keeping us all safe.

To keeping democracy safe.

Originally posted here:

How anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the U.S. affects California - Los Angeles Times

Part of our series on Americas struggle for forgiveness.

Karen Hughes White searched for Robert Hughes for 30 years. Her grandfathers brother wasnt listed alongside his other siblings in the 1910 census records. She searched elsewhere, too coroners inquests, news accounts, grand jury summons. Within the family, it was said that Robert Hughes simply went off.

White is a researcher of African American history, including that of the Hughes family, who are descendants of several enslaved families at Monticello. Robert Hughess absence from that history made her suspect that he might have been lynched, both because of how he seemed to vanish and when. At that time in America, that is what lynchings did. They were a cruelty that existed, purposefully, outside the lines of the law.

White, along with family members, confirmed the truth last year. On October 6, 1907, a white mob entered the Allegany County jail in Cumberland, Maryland, and pulled an 18-year-old man known as William Burns from his cell. Burns was Robert Hughes; its not clear why he was using, or was referred to, by the name Burns.

Hughes had been arrested a few days earlier after an alleged altercation with a police officer that had left the officer dead. The mob, which local reports said swelled to as many as 2,000 people, beat Hughes and shot him, again and again. When a white attorney went to the police station to get help, he said he found four officers sitting in the station house, the door locked and lights dimmed. Not one person, out of thousands, was arrested for Hughess killing.

In all her research of African American history, White said, nothing shook her to her core quite like learning of Hughess fate. It is one thing to understand that lynchings happened, White said. When it is your family, and you connect to this theme of American history, it is totally something else.

In October 2021, White and her sister, Angela Hughes Davidson, testified alongside others before a county panel aimed at uncovering this history, for the descendants of those connected to it and for the rest of society. The panel was the first held as part of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established by the states legislature in 2019 following advocacy efforts by historians and activists whod been working to document and memorialize Marylands lynching victims. Between 1854 and 1933, according to the legislation establishing the commission, at least 40 African Americans were lynched by white mobs in the state of Maryland. It is the first state-level truth and reconciliation commission in the United States to investigate racial terror lynchings, called so because they were not just acts of violence against individuals but against whole communities, intended to intimidate Black Americans and prove where the power lay.

Other truth and reconciliation commissions have convened in the United States at the local and state level, most notably in Greensboro, North Carolina, which investigated the November 1979 massacre of anti-Ku Klux Klan protesters by Klansmen and Nazis; and in Maine, which exposed the disproportionate removal of Indigenous Wabanaki children from their homes. Other truth-seeking initiatives have cropped up from Alaska to New York City to Iowa to confront racism and other abuses. In 2021, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced legislation to form a Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Commission to look at the effects of slavery and institutional racism in America.

There is no one-size-fits-all truth commission, but in the past 50 years, this form of transitional justice has become a common tool to help societies move away from war or authoritarianism. More than 40 countries have used them in the aftermath of a major rupture the fall of a dictatorship, a civil war, a genocide. Perhaps the worlds most well-known truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), established in South Africa in 1995, held hearings with victims and perpetrators of apartheid, a system of institutionalized racism against Black and brown nationals under the post-colonial Afrikaner government.

The best truth commissions, experts say, are those that center victims, specifically the people or communities most marginalized by abuses or atrocities. This often means giving victims or their descendants a chance to testify, sometimes publicly, about how abuse or oppression affected them or their communities. Sometimes, commissions invite perpetrators, too, to testify or admit their roles in violence or abuse. Sometimes, they are there solely to bear witness to the harm theyve caused.

Victims and perpetrators are black-and-white terms for situations that are almost always more complicated, and those distinctions can blur in times of war and oppression. Truth commissions exist because they deal with issues that are too big and too systemic to fit into the parameters of, say, a criminal trial. They operate under a radical concept: that all of society has a right to fully know what happened, and how, and why. They expose the extent of the atrocities and aim to unravel what allowed them to happen, in the hope that the knowledge could prevent them from happening again.

Such commissions look at the past, said Matiangai Sirleaf, a law professor at the University of Maryland who studies international and post-conflict law, to inform the present and to offer recommendations for how to reform institutions.

The truth is supposed to reveal what needs to be repaired, who needs redress. You get the truth to do something, said Kelebogile Zvobgo, a transitional justice expert at the College of William and Mary.

That something is usually reconciliation, which has become a kind of catchall for the not easily defined goals of healing, justice, and accountability.

Practitioners recognize that reconciliation can be a fraught term because it evokes a kind of easy kumbaya moment in the wake of unspeakable tragedy, leaving victims to feel they may have to take on the additional burden of forgiving perpetrators, or that perpetrators will escape accountability, for the sake of the larger community. Many practitioners say that TRCs shouldnt create an expectation of individual forgiveness, but it still exists. Instead, commissions are trying to restore the society as a whole, rather than thinking about individuals having to forgive other individuals, said Gloria Y.A. Ayee, an expert in truth commissions at Harvard University. The government is taking actions to restore the well-being of the community.

Efforts on behalf of the community can come at a cost, too. The definition of reconciliation at its most basic level is forgoing revenge: We can live together and beyond this, but were not going to seek retribution for the wrongs that you have done, and were not going to try to do what you have done to us, said Nicholas Creary, a professor at Moravian University whose research influenced the creation of Marylands commission. That trade-off is supposed to come with a promise: that truth and reconciliation will fix the forces that pushed a community or country to the extremes of cruelty, of repression, of making a purposeful spectacle out of the murder of a young man. When a society fractures to that point, however, one commission cannot possibly repair it.

It is why, experts said, there are such high expectations for truth and reconciliation commissions, and why they often fall short of their goals. Yet a long, arduous path toward something like reconciliation has to start somewhere. You have to have truth first, Creary said, before we can even have any hope of any kind of meaningful reconciliation or justice.

A 1974 commission investigating hundreds of disappearances of Ugandans during the early years of Idi Amins rule is largely seen as the worlds first truth commission, though it didnt use the name and didnt quite live up to its mission. Amin established the commission under public and international pressure and then interfered with and tried to intimidate those attempting to uncover the truth. Colombias Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition Commission, set up as part of a 2016 peace deal, is currently investigating the countrys more than five-decades-long armed conflict. There are less than 100 days left in its three-year mandate.

Dozens more have existed between the 70s and now, from Sierra Leone to El Salvador, South Korea to the Solomon Islands. Of them all, South Africas TRC is perhaps the worlds best-known.

After the transition from the apartheid regime to a democratic government in 1994, the new African National Congress-led government set up the commission to investigate and establish as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights that occurred between 1960 and the end of apartheid. The commission gathered testimony from survivors and victims, as well as perpetrators, who, in exchange for a full public disclosure of their crimes, could apply for amnesty as long as they could show their crimes were politically motivated and they testified truthfully. This was controversial and came with an apparent incentive to seek amnesty: If a violator failed to come forward, then he could face prosecution.

The commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, convened in 1996. It collected testimony from approximately 21,000 victims and received more than 7,000 applications for amnesty. About 2,000 victims testified at public hearings wrenching, televised testimony. Victims spoke about murders and beatings and poisonings, and what these crimes did to them and their families.

The public testimony helped to show, especially to white South Africans, the personal and collective pain of apartheid, making it much harder to deny the violence and institutionalized racism of the former regime. It managed to get the story right of what had happened during apartheid and why it was that we had to endure those kinds of horrendous violations and infringement of the rights of so many people, said Howard Varney, a senior expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice who consulted on South Africas TRC and continues to represent apartheids victims.

Embedded in the process was the belief that an act of confession would help create the conditions for national healing and national unity. One of the monikers of the South African TRC was that revealing is healing, said Jermaine McCalpin, chair of African and African American studies at New Jersey City University and an expert in truth commissions. This idea that it is in revelation that people are unburdened those who were victimized but also those who committed atrocities. Because the point of truth and reconciliation commissions is to humanize and dignify the victimized, but also to humanize the perpetrators.

If that was the ideal, it did not always match reality. Victims families worried that amnesty came at the expense of criminal prosecutions or civil suits, denying them the accountability they sought. Some protested that people confessed to gain amnesty but refused to name accomplices or, most critically, point to those giving the orders. Members of the old apartheid regime described it as an ANC witch hunt. South Africas commission had subpoena power, though it had its limits since the apartheid government destroyed many of its records on its way out. The TRC documented this deliberate destruction, which itself told a truth about the apartheid regime. All these elements carried over into the countrys effort to plot its next step: reconciliation.

Unlike South Africa, the United States is not in the middle of an obvious political transition. Where do you start? is a hard question to answer for a nation with 400 years of history that includes so many injustices, overlapping with so many groups the stealing of Indigenous lands, slavery, Jim Crow, systemic racism, and other forms of racist and religious injustice that spiral into the present day.

Truth commissions in the US have tended to focus on specific events or communities, rather than a wholesale reckoning. The Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a clear mandate: to investigate documented lynchings in Maryland, a slave-holding Union state that also passed Jim Crow laws. The commission is extracting a piece of history and putting it under scrutiny, but also putting it into a larger context of the state and its history.

Creary, the MLTRC commissioner, was one of the people compiling a record, researching previously unknown Maryland lynchings with a team of students. Creary said he began to think about accountability. That got me thinking: What can we do? Creary said. The South African historian in me is like, Well, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Why couldnt we do something like that here?

The legislation establishing the commission passed unanimously in Marylands General Assembly, but it came with compromises, like tweaks to the language (investigate was changed to research); how the commission did its work (instead of counties, its technically by regions); and money (there is none). It has subpoena power but has not exercised it. The Department of Justice awarded the commission a $300,000 grant; it now has a part-time project manager, but the commissioners themselves are volunteers, and that has meant a degree of turnover. The Covid-19 pandemic has complicated the ability to hold hearings. The commissions mandate was recently extended until 2023.

Investigating lynchings, more than a century later, is a challenging task. The goal of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to fill out a history that was distorted or one-sided, told often by the institutions police, local officials, and newspapers that were complicit. That means reexamining old sources, but also trying to track down the descendants of victims and communities terrorized by lynchings to tell their stories, uninterrupted. That can offer catharsis, said Clory Jackson, an activist and co-lead of the Allegany County Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it also gets it on the record in a way it hasnt been put on record before.

I see this as an effort to restore the humanity to these victims of lynchings, Creary said, of the commissions work.

The investigatory work is being done by volunteers historians and genealogists, but also activists and amateur researchers. None of these cases had a proper investigation. Full stop, said Charles Chavis, an MLTRC commissioner, historian, and the author of The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State.

In Allegany County, the largely white-owned newspapers that reported on the lynching of Robert Hughes referring to him as William Burns presumed him guilty, though he never had a trial. That narrative hardened. It was told through the oral history of white folks the story of, Well, hes just a cop killer. And thats it, said Jackson. And through Black folks, it was: You barely talk about [the lynching] at all. Theres a way in which things are just too painful to carry on.

When it first began the work in Allegany, the local truth and reconciliation committee were hitting dead end after dead end trying to understand who William Burns was. Finally, in one article, a volunteer researcher and historian, Heidi Gardner, discovered a throwaway line about Burns leaving behind laundry with a different name in the tags. Gardner says it was written in such a way as to suggest that Burns was untrustworthy. She followed up on it and discovered Burnss real name was Robert Hughes.

The discovery of his name unlocked his family, and from there, his descendants. He was the granduncle of two sisters, White and her sister, Angela Hughes Davidson, both of whom testified before the county panel.

So did Renee Page, the great-granddaughter of Jesse Page, who had been arrested and implicated as an accomplice of Hughess. Page was released from jail after Hughes vouched for him an act that saved his life. What you hope you get across is that this incident that occurred really has affected our family, Page said, months later, about her testimony. Not just him, but for the rest of our lives, we are forever different. I forever did not know who my great-grandfather was.

For the descendants of Hughes, there was the trauma of discovery, even as it brought closure to something they had wondered about for years. He is a part of the history a strong part of history that smacks us in the face again, this American history, Angela Hughes Davidson said.

Im still glad we found out about it, she added. I dont feel better about his death and the way he died.

How we deal with the truth after its telling defines the success of the process, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in 2014, 20 years after South Africas transition to democracy. And this is where we have fallen tragically short.

The South African TRC provided an authoritative historical account of past violence. But the problem was what came after: the governments failure to fully implement the reforms the commission recommended. It did not address structural issues, it did not fundamentally change how people were experiencing political life, Zvobgo said.

The TRC, for example, proposed an ambitious reparations program, which the South African government only partially filled in 2003 Some advocacy groups are still pushing for reparations, saying that tens of thousands of people left out of the TRC process should still be given redress. The truth for amnesty program was not supposed to allow all perpetrators to escape with impunity, but for the thousands who were refused amnesty or did not confess, the consequences that were promised havent come.

South Africas TRC also had a very specific mandate: to investigate human rights abuses. Yasmin Sooka, a human rights activist who served on the South African and Sierra Leone Truth Commissions, said this was a fundamental flaw of the commission, one they saw in retrospect because its impossible to separate political violence from the social and economic structures underlying it. For many Black South Africans, the social divisions and economic inequality in todays South Africa show that the economic injustice of apartheid continues. Quoting a saying popular in the nation, Claire Crawford, an instructor at Occidental College who spent time in South Africa, said: They gave us the throne but kept the jewels.

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, which surveys public perceptions about reconciliation, found in 2021 that 72 percent of South Africans believe reconciliation is still needed.

Reconciliation is something that has to be continuously worked on. Its not something that emerges immediately in the wake of truth-telling, McCalpin explained.

There is a sense that Black South Africans, in particular, took on the burdens of the TRC, reliving their trauma through testimony, and having to forgive the past for the promise of moving forward. If you do not change the material conditions of those who have suffered, Zvobgo said, then you have made them share their trauma, and expose themselves to critique and ostracism and all of these different issues and challenges that present themselves to those who would testify before a commission.

This is not a problem exclusive to South Africa. There is a problem there, as to what transitional justice promises and what it can deliver. And it promises a lot. It promises heaven on earth, said Hakeem Yusuf, a professor of law and researcher at the University of Gibraltar. Yusuf served in 2011 as a commissioner on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Osun in southwest Nigeria, an effort that came together after civil unrest following a contested election.

Yusuf said those hearings, like South Africas, were public and televised, which helped create broad acceptance for the process. It helped legitimize the new government, he said, but that new government also failed to follow through on many of the commissions recommendations. And at the end of the day, these people still didnt get justice, Yusuf said. I feel they will feel used. I think they will think that we were agents of the government to serve some purpose other than the purpose of securing the rights of victims, and that is really painful.

The Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reconciliation in its name, but David Fakunle, the commissions chair, said that it is not all they are seeking. Internally, we are not operating under the notion of truth and reconciliation, Fakunle said. It is our name, but its not how were operating. Were operating under the goals of healing, truth, and justice.

Reconciliation assumes there was something to get back to, he added. That is not the case. Theres nothing to get back to.

Instead, they are intentional about healing first and foremost for the descendants of lynching victims, and then for communities that experienced terror lynchings. Fakunle said they want people to know the story of lynching in their state, know that this is a part of Marylands history, whether you like it or not, and you shouldnt like it. Thats also the point. Because this is an affront to humanity. And if you can agree that this is an affront to humanity, then we hope that you would agree that this is something that shouldnt happen again.

Memorializing and testifying about the lynching of Robert Hughes at least opened the possibility of that conversation in Allegany County, said Tifani Fisher, the head of the local NAACP chapter. By telling this story, we can build off of it.

The truth-seeking process, in a formal setting like a truth commission, can help give societies a roadmap to move forward, but it ultimately requires political will to implement and execute those changes, and it comes with real costs. If youre saying these groups are to blame for what happened to these other groups, then you are redistributing legitimacy in the polity, said Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos, a transitional justice expert at Oxford University.

And then there is the question of forgiveness; whether reconciliation requires it of those who have been harmed. Many transitional justice experts said this isnt, and really cant be, the goal of such a commission, as it puts undue burden on victims where victims feel like they have to forgive the perpetrators in the interest of moving the nation forward, said Virginie Ladisch of the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Sooka, a commissioner in South Africa, also said this was a misperception about the South African TRC. You cannot really ask victims to forgive if they dont know who or what they are forgiving. And so that process of uncovering the truth and having a full disclosure was quite critical. We also saw that as a very private question the victims and perpetrators would have to deal with on an individual basis, and not something that the commission could deliver on, she said.

Beyond Marylands efforts, there are increasing calls in the United States for national versions of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ways for the country to reckon with its history. The Booker-Lee proposal of a Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Commission would look at 400 years of racial injustice. As Rep. Lee told Vox, the truth-telling commission is critical for our democracy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Reps. Sharice Davids (D-KS) and Tom Cole (R-OK) have reintroduced the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act to look at the countrys policies toward Indigenous families.

Marylands commission may be a test case for how such an initiative could operate on the national level. As those involved in the committee said, it is a learning process, but one that has a fixed core: Nothing can happen without the truth.

Correction, March 26, 3:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this story misstated the history of the Hughes family. The Hughes are descendants of enslaved families at Monticello, Thomas Jeffersons plantation in Virginia.

Excerpt from:

The impossible task of truth and reconciliation - Vox.com

Ben: You know, obviously Russia Today is a ridiculous and sort of filthy channel. But the main priority, I felt, definitely for the U.K., was not to get BBC Russia blocked. And if that meant letting this sort of ridiculous thing stream away, I was happy to have it, as long as BBC Russia with its huge, million-strong audience was left there. I just dont think that enough people are thinking strategically about a lot of this right now. Like if youre dealing with a regime crossing into totalitarianism thats been half-blockaded from the world, half-closing itself off from the world, engaging in a war of conquest with, like, delirious mobilization campaigns, youve got to just think very carefully about all of these different things that are being done and what will the second-order consequences be for what could be a very long confrontation?

Alex: Yeah, thats true. It strikes me that what you described here is, and I think Americans in particularAmericans who dont pay attention to Russia, Americans who dont make an effort to learn about Russiacould get the sort of caricatured view that Putins Russia has been this authoritarian state the whole time. And while it was a managed democracy with a thug at the head of it, with fake elections, for a long time, as you described, he was allowing this liberal society to continue to exist, to continue to produce journalism; foreign reporters to continue having freedom of movement in Russia, for the most part. And that is what has been lost now. Its a huge change. I do think its important for Americans to understand that a Rubicon has been crossed, basically, especially in the sense of the accurate information we will be able to get about life on the ground in Russia.

Ben: I really agree with you that a Rubicons been passed in Russia in terms of oppression, and I think we have to change how we look at Russia and how we talk about Russia, especially when it comes to policymakers. So I have seen the former ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, tweeting feverishlyand by that I really mean feverishlythat Russians should be running into the streets and mass protesting and quitting their jobs and speaking up now. I want him to realize, and Ive told him, this is not the Russia of 2012 or 2011, when you could do that as a professor, as a public figure, as a journalist, and then go back to work the next day and not fear devastating consequences. We are in a situation now where you could be risking 15 years in prison. Are you sure that thats what you want to be asking for? And in terms of lurid speculation about palace coups and the coming collapse of Russia and people with firmer prognostication than Nostradamus about what the second-order consequences of this war are going to be, I really want them to stop, take a deep breath, possibly turn the app off for 48 hours, and go: The majority of the expert class in the United States did not see this war coming. And thats because Russias elite, Russian journalism, the remains of that, and Western journalism, were not able, even when they were in Russia, to predict that this was happening next. So I think we need to take a bit of intellectual humility here and recognize that Putins mind and how the Kremlin operates is a lot more of a black box than we realized, and not just swap one set of assumptions for another overnight.

Alex: Yeah, I mean, it does strike me that, and I say this as someone who, Im not a foreign policy expert, but just reading everything I read about this before the invasion, I was like, it seems like the war might not happen. And I turned out to be wrong. I didnt make that prediction publicly, but it does seem like intellectual humility is the correct answer for this.

Ben: Im actually really quite worried about the information environment Im seeing in U.S. political discussion and managing whats going to be a long confrontation with Russia, because Twitter is incentivizing pundits to shout the loudest, to get the most likes, to get the most clicks in order to be heard. I think that would have been really dangerous in the worst moments of the Cold War.

Alex: Imagine Cuban missile crisis Twitter, my God. Wed be dead.

Ben: Appalling. Exactly. And Twitters also bringing, like, a lot of conspiracy theories from Ukraine into the Washington mix, and [they] are being disseminated and talked about by people who should really know better. And its also giving us a false impression of the battlefield, quite frankly. Twitter is not a neutral environment. It is under absolute Ukrainian dominance in terms of the information war. Western governments are actively trying to promote an image of Ukraine standing firm and victorious. Look at the U.K. government or the French governments daily battle mapsIm sorry, those are not neutral battle maps being drawn up. And then all of these open-source intelligence guys from their bedrooms or their offices drawing up analysis of the videos that are posted there, when we know for a fact that the Russians have been very bad about the fact that Ukrainians are filming them. Ukraines been very good about not filming themselves. Were not seeing any videos of Ukrainian defeats or columns being blown up. And a lot of people are drawing analysis off this very, very partial world, thinking its impartial. I think that thats just quite a risky situation to be in. You can come to a lot of very false conclusions about whats going on.

Laura: Ben Judah, thank you so much for coming on.

Ben: Oh, thank you very much. That was great.

Alex: Ben Judahs article, The Russia We Have Lost, was published at Unherd. Hes the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin.

Alex: The Politics of Everything is co-produced by Talkhouse.

Laura: Emily Cooke is our executive producer.

Alex: Myron Kaplan is our audio editor.

Laura: If you enjoy the show and you want to help support it, one thing you can do is rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts. Every review helps.

Alex: Thanks for listening.

Excerpt from:

The End of Russia Today - The New Republic