Category Archives: Government Oppression

Our current political vernacular often conflates conservative and right wing.

While these terms have historically been used synonymously, in recent years they have become mutually exclusive in several contexts.Critical Race Theory (CRT) exemplifies this divergence.

Republican politicians across the country have introduced a wave of legislation aimed at suppressing critical race theory. Unsurprisingly, Republican politicians have been swift in introducing their own educational clampdown in the form of HB 18, AN ACT relating to prohibited instruction (and declaring an emergency).

But there is nothing conservative about prohibiting CRT. On the contrary. It flies in the face of bedrock conservative values, undermining the principles of limited and unintrusive government, the free market of ideas in public discourse, and local autonomy. Simply put, banning CRT reflects ideological hypocrisy.

The bills sponsors admit that they want to prohibit instruction of, one (at the time of this writing) particular idea: critical race theory. Two of Americas most venerated thinkers Thomas Jefferson and James Madison strongly rejected this strand of social philosophy. They each denied a role for government in the thought life of our citizenry. Jefferson perhaps said it most succinctly when he stated, the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.

Traditional conservatives promote free markets and open market mechanisms. Let the market decide, they intone when it comes to economic issues.

Yet the marketnot the governmentshould determine ideas of policy, too. Thats why Jefferson and Mill argued for the marketplace of ideas.

The merits or flaws of CRT aside, do we as citizens of the commonwealth want members of our General Assembly to assume the privilege of determining which ideas deserve a platform and which should be suppressed? James Madison answered this question unequivocally, Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is danger of oppression. Preventing government from having any role in our thought life will prevent a dystopian future in which lawmakers determine Truth.

Most of us have flirted with, entertained, or even temporarily embraced ideas we later rejected. A notion can seem useful or powerful for a while, but time and argument reveal its flaws. Good and bad ideas come and go. The best ones stand the test of time. Bad ones lose traction and adherents.

We witness the invisible hand of the marketplace of ideas at work, organically. This process lies at the heart of what education is.

HB 18 will deny our young people the practice of assessing and deciding for themselves what may be the best ways to think about Americas racial past. Indeed, this bill will shut down the robust conversations we need to develop strong-minded thinkers who will lead Kentuckys future. These bills and the attitude that produced them do the exact oppositethey set us on a path to create weak-minded automatons, dependent on others to tell them what to think or what not to think.

Those are the practical, real-world effects of government intrusion on the intellectual development and curiosity of Kentuckys students and teachers.

And its interesting how we could see Ronald Reagan, the godfather of Americas most recent style of conservatism, standing in direct opposition to Right Wing Republican legislators attempts to prohibit instruction when he spoke, There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Constraints and barriers are being erected in Frankfort.

Ironically, Reagan didnt just wax poetic about education in the United States. During his first administration, he sought to eliminate the newly created Cabinet-level Department of Education. The 1996 Republican Party Platform advocated the same. So, you see, conservative thought has sought for decades to remove government from education.

Conservatives prioritize local control. As much as possible, they maintain, difficult issues should be decided at the local level. This is, again, a belief deeply held by our Founding Fathers. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #36 that local citizens are to communicate knowledge of local circumstances to their state legislators. He did not write that state legislators are to inform residents on issues of their common and usual concern.

Sadly, this is one theory of government that HB18 tramples, and HB18 is just one example.

When it comes to an idea that Republican politicians seem to understand poorly, or choose not to take the time to vet thoroughly, they push one-size-fits-all, sweeping legislation. School boards, principals, teachers, and parents are far better equipped to determine the content and direction of instruction in their hometown classrooms across the commonwealth.

The stakes in this legislation are high. They represent fundamental questions about the limited role of government, the free market of ideas, and local autonomy historic building blocks of conservative ideology. Anyone who self-identifies as conservative and who supports this copy-cat legislation is providing us with a teachable moment. They simultaneously define Right Wing and duplicitous.

Tip Moodys past work experience includes the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Dole for President, Vice-President Dan Quayle, and the Republican National Committee.

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Un-conservative conservatism and Critical Race Theory - Winchester Sun - Winchester Sun

A Haitian migrant father shares a moment with his daughter at an improvised refugee shelter in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Sept. 24, 2021, across the Rio Grande river from Del Rio, Texas, after being denied the right to apply for asylum in the United States. | Fernando Llano / AP

The American understanding of Haiti is stained with poverty, natural disasters, and political turmoil. As a result, some Americans think Haitians just need to figure it out and stop putting their hands out, while others take a paternalistic approach and think the United States should interfere and help even if that is not what Haitians want. These sentiments are bolstered by misrepresentations of Haiti in the media and in academia.

The production of history is shaped by power; Haitian Scholar, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, wrote about this in his book,Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Trouillot suggests that our knowledge and understanding of history is limited and incomplete because a lot of what actually happened is left out, intentionally or unintentionally. This has to do with who has the power to write history. Many Americans find it difficult to accept history as it actually happened, which allows them to view current events with a narrow lens and form opinions that lack historical and factual basis.

On September 17, the last of nearly 14,000 asylum-seeking Haitian migrants who had gathered under an international bridge at the border in Del Rio, Texas were forcibly removed.The injustice at the border became a crisis for President Joe Bidens administration when both the special envoy for Haiti and the State Departments senior legal advisor resigned in protest of the treatment of Haitian migrants.

But lets make this clear: Biden administration officials will go to sleep at night in their beds. Its unlikely they will worry about where their next meal will come from. The true crisis is this: The United States has created the very conditions that Haitians are fleeing from. The American government has tried over and over to wash their hands clean of responsibility for Haitis corruption. Now, President Biden joins the long line of presidents who have turned their back on Haitians when they are facing the consequences of American imperialism.

They say history is written by the victors, but in the spirit of reframing our understanding of history, Ill say this: History is written by the colonizers for the colonial gaze. Its important to keep that in mind when looking at countries like Haiti. And when attempting to understand Haitis current state, we have to go way back.

The history of exploitation in Haiti is extensive and spans hundreds of years. Well have to go back all the way to 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola, the island that would eventually become Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Through trade with the Indigenous people, the Tano, Columbus discovered they had a lot of gold and the following year began colonizing the Caribbean with brutal zeal. The Spanish enslaved the Tano and within 25 years had killed most of the Indigenous people by enslavement, massacre, or disease brought by the colonists. By 1535, the Tano culture and people were nearly wiped out from the island. In 1697, Spain gave up a portion of the island (now Haiti) to the French. This portion of Haiti became Frances most profitable colony because they forced people into slavery to mass-produce crops.

With the Tano people decimated, the French had to look elsewhere for relatively cost-free labor. In less than 100 years, more than 800,000 people were stolen from West Africa and sent to Haiti to work. More than a third of the Atlantic slave trade landed in Haiti. Slavery in Haiti was brutal and severe; enslaved people faced inhumane conditions. Enslaved people in Haiti produced 60% of coffee and 40% of the sugar exported to Europe in the 1780s. The life expectancy for an enslaved person at the time was 21 years.

In 1791, the enslaved population launched an uprising against the French that sparked a 13-year war, resulting in the largest successful revolution of enslaved people in history. When American leaders heard of the revolt, they provided support for the white colonists on the island and allowed them to come to America as refugees with the enslaved people they owned. In 1804, Haiti was declared an independent nation, second only to the United States in the Western Hemisphere, the first Black republic and the first nation to be run by formerly enslaved people.

What was more remarkable and perhaps unknown to most, the first constitution of Haiti was among the first written national constitutions in the modern world. Under their constitution, Haiti was the first nation to permanently outlaw slavery. Out of fear and disbelief, the United States refused to recognize Haiti as an independent sovereign nation for almost 60 years. They feared this would inspire slave insurrections in the States, but they also found it hard to wrap their minds around the fact that the enslaved population had the desire, much less the capacity, to wage a war against the French Army, win, establish their own nation, and have a robust constitution.

The world was silent around the Haitian Revolution. How is it that a groundbreaking revolution, that yielded more liberty and human rights than the American and French Revolution, heard crickets from the international community then and now, too? Its probably not good for the narrative of Haiti as a country of poor Black people who cant govern themselves.

In 1825, after recognizing Haitian independence, France threatened to invade them again if they wouldnt reimburse them for the loss of their propertythe Haitian people themselves and their labor. Haiti paid 150 million gold francs, the equivalent of $21 billion, to France to assure they would never return to slavery. France demanded more money than they knew was possible, causing Haiti to default on the payments and sending the young country into economic decay. Again the world said nothing.

Capitalizing on this silence, in 1915, at the first sign of opportunity, the United States invaded Haiti to advance and promote their economic interests. The U.S. Marines sought to change the Haitian constitution to allow foreigners to own land and also to move Haitis financial reserves to the United States. The U.S. Department of State also made the Haitian Senator Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave the head of state against the popular consensus of Haitians. The United States used Dartiguenave to dismantle any attempts to remove U.S. influence in Haiti. During his presidency, the Haitian Army was disbanded, the legislature was dissolved, and less than 5% of the population voted during elections to change the constitution.

During the occupation, the U.S Marines brought infrastructure, ordering the building of roads, schools, and hospitals by Haitians who were forced to work and paid little to no money. For almost 20 years, the United States occupied Haiti and crushed Haitians who opposed it. Fifteen thousand Haitians were killed for several reasons during this time. In 1934, the United States withdrew from Haiti but still controlled the purse strings and maintained heavy influence.

Haiti was vulnerable and fell under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers from 1957 to 1986. They were a father and son who ruled the island under violence and political and social oppression supported by the U.S. government in order to prevent the island from falling to communism. Nearly 30 years of U.S.-backed political corruption, violence, and terror plummeted the island further into extreme poverty, with 80% of the population illiterate and out of work. This caused many to flee the island.

The U.S. government decided that the Haitians who began arriving in the 1980s, seeking asylum, were not political refugees, but rather economic refugees seeking a better life and better jobs. This made them ineligible for asylum.

During the Carter administration, President Jimmy Carter sought ways to help the Haitian immigrants, making Haitian and Cuban immigrants eligible to apply for the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Program (CHEP) in order for them to be granted asylum, but only if they were in the country before Oct. 10, 1980. If any Haitians or Cubans attempted to arrive after that they would be charged and deported.

When Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency, he enforced these rules. The Coast Guard intercepted and seized any ships and boats carrying refugees and sent them back to Port-au-Prince in Haiti. While on the boat to the capital, the Coast Guard conducted interviews to possibly grant asylum to some of the Haitian immigrants. Out of 25,000 applications, only 28 were granted asylum.

In 1990, Haiti had what was considered to be a free and fair election. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected as president with 67% of the vote. Aristide had a hopeful message for Haiti: to end the ethical and economic battles of the poor. This did not go over well because the countrys rich and elite, who opposed him, were forced to pay high taxes. Aristide was ousted by a military coup led by Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, causing over 40,000 people to leave the country. Many of these people fled on makeshift boats, risking their own lives and the lives of their families and children to make it to Florida. Again, there was only silence from the world.

Under Cedras, Haiti sunk further into despair. All the work and promises made by Aristide could not be kept, all those removed from power by the Aristide administration were restored to their previous positions, the army took control over the prisons, and many other aspects of Haitian life. The military created a culture of fear and violence, targeting the poor, women, and anyone who stood in their way. Again, tens of thousands of Haitians fled Haiti in hopes of gaining political asylum.

On May 24, 1992, President George H.W. Bush enacted Executive Order 12807, Interdiction of Illegal Aliens. In this order, he suspended the entry of Haitian immigrants coming by sea to the United States without necessary documentation, to establish reasonable rules and regulations regarding, and other limitations on, the entry, or attempted entry of aliens into the United States and to repatriate aliens interdicted beyond the territorial sea of the U.S. The reasoning given by the Bush administration was that the influx of refugees was causing a dangerous and unmanageable situation. After 18 Haitian people died when their boat capsized on their way to Florida, the Bush administration used the tragedy to halt Haitian immigration under the guise of preventing any more deaths due to the unsafe boat conditions.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that over a thousand Haitians were killed following the coup led by Cedras, so it must have been human rights violations the Haitians were fleeing from. Even so, the Bush administration did not change its mind, and the policy stayed in effect.

When Bill Clinton was running for president, he rebuked Bushs decision to turn his back on the Haitian people and said that he would change things if elected. This promise rang hollow when Haitians who arrived by boat continued to be forcibly returned. Clinton clarified that his plan to help Haitians was not to accept them into the country, but rather to improve the conditions that led them to flee in the first place, leaving countless Haitians who hoped a Clinton presidency would improve chances for asylum with few options.

Shortly after Clinton began his term as president, he made clear his intention to remove the military faction that ousted Aristide to restore a democratically elected leader and rebuild the economy. On Sept. 19, 1994, with the support of the United Nations Security Council, the United States intervened and Aristide was restored to the presidency. Operation Restore Democracy, as it was called, was lauded as a success by the U.S. government, but at great cost to the Haitian people.

In exchange for American intervention, Haiti was bound to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program, which transitioned the country into a market economy. Haiti suffered under these neoliberal policies that privatized national enterprises. The Clinton administration forced the country to lower its tariffs, which allowed cheap American-grown crops to take over the agricultural markets. Many rural Haitians worked as farmers for a living. Under these new policies, the Haitian government had to remove the subsidies on things people needed to make a living.

Lets also keep in mind that due to centuries of agricultural exploitation starting from the colonial plantation system, less than 1% of Haitis natural forests remain. Haiti is one of the most deforested countries on Earth, causing many types of environmental issues like erosion and species extinction, that ultimately left the soil barren. This created a dependency on imported goods. Haitian businesses could not keep up with the international market. This resulted in a transfer of wealth out of Haitian farmers into the subsidized farmers in the developed world. Many Haitian farmers were pushed off their land.

Haiti has more NGOs per capita than any country in the world, giving it the most privatized social service sector in the west. These unelected organizations are unaccountable to the Haitian people; they call the shots and can profit off of the people they are supposed to help. The phrase NGO is kind of a misnomer because in Haiti they are 70% funded by North American governments.

In 2010, Haiti was rocked by an earthquake that ended a brief period of prosperity. Thousands died, and those who survived faced famine and disease. After the earthquake, when disaster relief money poured in from various organizations around the world, less than one cent of each dollar went to the Haitian government; meanwhile, NGOs got forty-three cents, and thirty-three cents ended up with the U.S. military. Billions of dollars were donated to the Haitian Earthquake Relief, but because of the lack of transparency and accountability for the NGOs that raised all that money, theres no way to know how it was actually spent.

Most of the organizations failed to deliver the long-term promises they made to the Haitian people. Instead, NGOs spent a lot of money on temporary solutions to long-term problems; there were temporary shelters, but no homes, so survivors found themselves homeless again.

The American Red Cross (an NGO) raised $500 million and continued to raise money after they reached their relief goal, but after almost 11 years, people are confused as to where the money went because conditions in Haiti have not improved.

NPR and ProPublica launched an investigation to find out where the Red Cross spent the money. They found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending, and dubious claims of success. The Red Cross says it provided homes to 130,000, but records show it only builtsixpermanent homes. They over-promised and under-delivered. They didnt have any real plan for what would actually work for the Haitian people because they did what they thought would generate good publicity, and they were out of touch with the needs and wants of the people they were helping.

In the past several years, political unrest, instability, and violence have become the norm, and last year was no exception. Haitian President Jovenel Mose was assassinated last summer. Weeks later, the country was struck by another earthquake that killed thousands.

The Haitian people are resilient and strong, but they are exhausted. They are carrying centuries of generational trauma with no end in sight. Its time for the United States and the entire world to do right by Haiti. Its time for the people of Haiti to stop paying the price for Liberation.

Bay kou. bliye, pote mak sonjeis a Haitian proverb that means, The culprit forgets, the victim remembers. It is time for us to be honest about Americas role in destabilizing Haiti as punishment for having the audacity to imagine freedom and having the courage to fight for it and win. Its time for us to acknowledge the fact that the United States was largely responsible for the accumulation of migrants at the border in September 2021. Offering Haitian migrants asylum is not just the right thing to do, it is the least that is owed to the Haitian people.

Still, President Biden decided to send people back to a country they did not destroy, where their future is uncertain and bleak. The situation at the border in Del Rio, Texas, may soon be forgotten by the American public and the world. President Biden joins a line of U.S. presidents that upheld the same silence that dismissed and minimized one of the most significant human rights revolutions in history.

There is no quick fix to the issues Haiti is facing right now. There are centuries of oppression to rectify. One thing is certain, until the people of Haiti are given what theyre owed, we will continue to see the same pattern weve seen throughout history.

If you find yourself wondering why people would leave their home with only a bag, cross through multiple countries in South America, risk getting beaten by Border Patrol, risk detention in inhumane U.S. immigrant facilities, endure hunger and thirst, and put their lives and the lives of their families in harms way, remember this quote from Toussaint Louverture, one of the most famous leaders of the Haitian Revolution:

We have known how to face dangers to obtain our liberty, we shall know how to brave death to maintain it.

Remember that Haitians fought for 13 years for freedom, remember that they made makeshift boats and braved the sea, remember they packed up their entire lives. We should not make the same mistake of underestimating what people will do for freedom and what they will risk to attain it. The silence must be broken.

This article originally appeared in South Side Weekly. As with all op-eds published by Peoples World, this article reflects the opinions of its author.

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After centuries of oppression, asylum is the least U.S. could offer Haitians - People's World

New York, USA Chinese authorities were committing crimes against humanity as part of a widespread and systematic attack on Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkestan, including mass detention, torture, and cultural persecution. Tibetans continued to be subjected to grave abuses, including harsh and lengthy imprisonment for exercising their basic rights, said Human Rights Report 2022.

On 13 January 2022, Human Rights Watch published the 32nd edition of its World Report 2022, highlighting cases of repression of dissent in Hong Kong, repression of Uighurs in East Turkestan, and oppression of Tibetans in Tibet, as well as attempts to silence those who have exercised their human rights, and propagates disinformation, and tighten the reins on technology giants.

According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report 2022, Tibetan areas continue to severely restrict freedoms of religion, expression, movement, and assembly. They also fail to address popular concerns about mining and land grabs by local officials, which often involve intimidation and unlawful use of force by security forces.

Following a November 2020 announcement tightening controls on online communications that undermine national unity, there was a surge of reported detentions of Tibetans in 2021 for alleged online offenses. In particular, Tibetans who communicated with people outside China were harassed and punished, regardless of the content of their communications, the World Report 2022 added.

The (Chinese) government stepped up coercive assimilationist policies. Chinese language classes were already compulsory for school teachers, local officials, and vocational trainees. In July, authorities announced that kindergartens in ethnic minority areas must use Chinese as a medium of instruction. In August, President Xi emphasized the subordination of minority identities to a single national identity at the national Ethnic Work conference, the report stated.

Authorities heightened surveillance and intimidation at all levels, from online to neighborhoods to schools, and have rendered protestssuch as those over the downgrading of the minority language in Inner Mongolia in 2020virtually impossible in Tibetan areas, the Human Rights report said.

At least eight Tibetan prisoners or suspects were released due to ill health, some due to torture, four of whom died soon after, though the true number is unknown due to extreme information controls in Tibet, the Human Rights Watch said.

In Tibet, the authorities stepped up coercive assimilationist policies and heightened surveillance and intimidation at all levels, it stated.

The Chinese governments heightened repression at home, and use of hostage diplomacy and confrontational wolf-warrior diplomacy abroad generated international pushbacks against its human rights record, HRW said.

President Xi Jinpings New Era has not only entrenched him as Chinas leader, but also entrenched oppression across China, said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2022 is 752 pages long and reviews human rights practices in nearly 100 countries in 2021.

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Tibetans continued to be subjected to grave abuses for exercising their human rights: HRW Report 2022 - Tibet Post International

In the late hours of January 12, 2022, the Nigerian government announced the discontinuation of its Twitter ban seven months after it was placed. According to a statement by the National Information Technology Development Agency, signed by President Buhari, the primary cause for lifting the ban was the social media platforms agreement to open a local office.

Twitter has been a major tool that young Nigerians have used to air their grievances against their government, and foster communities to seek change. The platform served as a strong force during the #EndSARS protests as a virtual protest point, helping circulate important information that peacefully mobilized protesters and secured the release of detained protesters.

"The voices of young Nigerians are often placed in a box by the ruling class, never to be heard," comments journalist Nasir Ahmed Achile. "But the communities formed on Twitter reinforced the idea of strength in numbers and the understanding that were all so alike, facing similar struggles, fighting the same oppression."

It came as a big blow on the 8th of June 2021, when the Nigerian government decided to place a ban on Twitter after the platform deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, which threatened citizens in the southeast region following destruction of public property.

We are pleased that Twitter has been restored for everyone in Nigeria. Our mission in Nigeria & around the world, is to serve the public conversation. nWe are deeply committed to Nigeria, where Twitter is used by people for commerce, cultural engagement, and civic participation.

So many businesses have been affected by the Twitter ban, small and big alike," says Cosmas Ojemen, the Creative Director of Pith Africa. "Some existing and potential customers stopped using the app altogether because of the extra steps it took to login each time with a VPN. And businesses themselves faced the anxiety of possible government action against them. Im glad its back.

The decision to ban the social network at the time was condemned by many nations including the UK, Canada, the US, and members of the EU, however, the Nigerian government stood firm in saying that the removal of the tweet was disappointing.

According to the government statement, the decision to lift the ban was made after Twitter agreed to meet all conditions set by the Nigerian government. Those conditions include "managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian law, and addressing issues of operations and tax, CNN reported.

"The new global reality is that digital platforms and their operators wield enormous influence over the fabric of our society, social interaction, and economic choices. These platforms can be used as either a tool or a weapon. Therefore, our action is a deliberate attempt to recalibrate our relationship with Twitter to achieve the maximum mutual benefits for our nation without jeopardizing the justified interests of the company. Our engagement has been very respectful, cordial, and successful," the Nigerian government said in its Wednesday statement.

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Nigeria's Government Has Lifted Its Twitter Ban - OkayAfrica

Associate professor of history Edmund Abaka remembers Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist who received an honorary degree at the University of Miamis 2018 spring commencement.

Only Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu can describe the first voting experience as something like falling in love. This gentle giant was a teacher, Anglican bishop, archbishop, Nobel Laureate (1984), fearless defender of the defenseless, and a voice of the voiceless.

He was an apostle of civil rights when the dogs of war had been unleashed on South Africans of color by a shamelessly white supremacist government that believed in separateness.

If there were a one-line summation of the life and legacy of Tutu, it would be that he opened his mouth for the voiceless who were under the heel of apartheid, a political system of racial discrimination that turned people of color in South Africa into second- and third-class citizens whose rights, if they had any at all, no white person was bound to respect.

What made Tutu an influential world-historical figure was his adherence to the principles of truth, righteousness, and moralityprinciples by which he lived and died. He used those principles to fight against the awfulness of apartheid and the gravy train mentality of the African National Congress, South Africas post-apartheid ruling government.

One surprising thing about Tutu registered vividly in my mind when I had the distinct honor of meeting him at Florida International University a few years back. From newspaper and television reporting of the work of this larger-than-life figure who heroically and courageously confronted the evils of apartheid, one gets the impression of an imposing individual and a commanding presence.

But the revered archbishop was relatively diminutive and often dressed simply in a purplish shirt and a clerical collar, sometimes topped with a suit jacket. The point? The simplicity and humility of so enormously popular an advocate of social justice, of equal rights, of the humanity of people, of a rainbow nation in which people of all races would proudly feel part of, and of the goodness of humanity (while cognizant of the evils of humanity) is overwhelming.

He was against the oppression of black by white and white by black. He personified a worldview animated by a popular African philosophy: I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am. By implication, ours is a shared responsibility and shared humanity. Any injustice or discrimination diminishes us all. That personifies the world champion of the rights of oppressed people that Tutu was.

The smiling archbishopand I call him the dancing archbishop with the wicked sense of humorhas taught us what we can be, in our own right, in our work, and in our lives. He would ask us to see the humanity of people, eschew acts of intolerance, pursue knowledge in areas where we fall shortincluding biasand nurture inclusiveness to make the world a better place for all. It is not for nothing that the University of Miami conferred an honorary doctorate degree on Tutu at the 2018 spring commencement ceremony.

A graduate of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, West Africa, Edmund Abaka is an associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu was 'an apostle of civil rights' - University of Miami

DetailsBy Williamson Chang & Abbey Seitz - Next CityJanuary 14, 2022

Guest Opinion The discussion on affirmative action usually involves workplaces or higher education, but never housing.Why not? In Hawaii, there is a century-old land and housing program for native Hawaiians, arguably one of the nations longest running affirmative action programs. Despite the lack of national attention this program has received, it offers a hundred years of lessons for any new effort that a city, state or federal government might design to counteract historic and ongoing racial discrimination.

[NOTE: This op-ed originally appeared on Next City, a nonprofit news organization with a solutions-journalism focus that amplifies solutions to the problems that oppress people in cities. It is reprinted here with permission. All rights reserved.]

Everywhere you look, policy makers are discussing how to address racial inequities, stemming from colonization, enslavement, segregation, and ongoing oppression. A commonly known and controversial strategy is affirmative action, which refers toprograms intended to affirm the civil rights of designated classes by taking positive action to protect them from, in the words of Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the lingering effects of pervasive discrimination.

Most scholars believe affirmative action was not legally established in the United States until the late 20th centurythrough a series of court decisions interpreting the Civil Rights guarantees within the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, affirmative action policies had already taken hold in Hawaii through a housing and land program for native Hawaiians, created by theHawaiian Homes Commission Act(HHCA), in 1920.

This groundbreaking piece of legislation was born from harrowing events for the Hawaiian people. Pre-Western contact, an estimated 400,000 to over 800,000 people lived in the Hawaiian Islands. However,by 1840, the number of Native Hawaiians had declined by 84%due to disease and displacement by foreign settlers. In 1893,a U.S.-backed group of sugar and pineapple plantation owners deposed Queen Liliuokalani and lobbied the U.S. president for annexationof Hawaii, which occurred in 1898. Leading up to, and following the U.S. overthrow, Hawaiians were forcibly removed from their land, and denied the right to practice their native culture, religion, or language.

To combat this dire situation, in 1920,Prince Jonah Khi Kalanianaoledelivered an impassioned speech to Congress, in which he proclaimed: The Hawaiian race is passingand if conditions continue to exist as they do today, this splendid race of people, my people, will pass from the face of the earth. In response, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which set aside 200,000 acres of land across the islands for homesteading by native Hawaiians. Today, the homesteading program is managed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which provides thousands of beneficiaries with 99-year homestead leases at $1 per year to live on, grow crops, or raise animals.

Full-length books can and should be dedicated to the HHCA to discuss all of its successes and faults, but for now, here are a few major lessons that can be gleaned for future affirmative action efforts, particularly for housing and land programs:

Defining an ethnic, racial or cultural group is difficult, and can lead to division.The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act provides benefits to people deemed native Hawaiians. While not the original intention of Prince Kuhio, when the HHCA was passed, it defined a native Hawaiian as someone with 50 percent or higher Hawaiian blood quantum. This was done because of the influence of plantation owners who understood that as Hawaiians increasingly mixed with foreigners, this blood quantum threshold would reduce the number of people eligible for the program. Then and now, these requirements have caused dividing lines between Hawaiians who qualify as beneficiaries and those who do not, and are seen as less than. (native Hawaiian (lower case n) refers to persons with 50 percent or higher Hawaiian blood quantum. Native Hawaiian (capital N) refers to all persons of Hawaiian ancestry regardless of blood quantum.)

Affirmative action programs must be paired with a plan.Since Hawaiis statehood, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL), has been responsible for managing homesteading. The agency is under scrutiny for its inability to meet the growing housing demand of native Hawaiians. Critics of DHHL highlight the agencys underperformance: Only 10,000 homesteads have been leased since the program began and today over 29,000 beneficiaries are on the DHHL waiting list. This is attributed to bureaucratic constraints, underfunding, limited land and infrastructure, among other factors. Every grand vision, including affirmative action, needs a plan.

Acknowledge the history and meaning of the program.While DHHL is described as a housing lottery program, it represents so much more.Chapter 43 of the United States Codenotes that the United States has a special responsibility for the welfare of the Native peoplesincluding Native Hawaiians, and that the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act was intended to rehabilitate a landless and dying people. The dire impacts caused by Western colonization and the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy was further affirmed in the1993 Apology Resolution, in which President Clinton apologized on behalf of the United States for participating in the removal of the independent monarchy by force.

In Hawaii and abroad, there is little discourse on why this homesteading program was created, or fact that it is a revolutionary effort that aims to correct the wrongs of genocide and colonization. With more public discourse, we could shift the narrative away from what DHHL is doing wrong, to how this program could be improved understanding that land and housing is only one aspect of a much larger toolkit needed for Hawaiians to live and thrive in their homeland.

To broadly characterize the Hawaiian homesteading program as a success or failure seems misguided. Focusing solely on the programs underperformance would gloss over the fact that it has allowed thousands of Hawaiians to stay rooted to their land, an achievement that is invaluable to many indigenous communities. Like many government undertakings with a grand and virtuous vision, the results are mixed.

Despite July 2021 marking the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, it has received no national attention. At a moment when affirmative action programs and similar reparation efforts are beingdiscussed more than ever, we must acknowledge that we have a precedent that is a century in the making, and is still impacting thousands of people at this very moment.

At the very least, this program should encourage policy makers and urban planners toconsider the possibility of implementing affirmative action housing policies elsewhere in the United States. Although Native Hawaiians have faced unique oppression and discrimination, which persists today, the movement to affirm the rights of Hawaiians through access to land and housing provides lessons for reconciling our dark history with Black and Brown communities throughout this country.

By studying this effort, and other similar programs across the globe, we are better equipped to understand the factors that make implementing affirmative action programs so complex, and how, with the right vision and plan, affirmative action can lead to transformative change that our society so desperately needs.

Williamson Chang, professor of law, has taught at the William S. Richardson School of Law since 1976. He has been active in serving the Native Hawaiian community and in 2017 he was recognized as the Native Hawaiian Patriot of the year.

Abbey Seitz is a professional community planner and freelance writer with a masters in Urban & Regional Planning from the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. She foundedPlanning for Community LLC, a housing and transportation consultancy firm.

The truth about Indian Boarding Schools

This month, were asking our readers to help us raise $10,000 to fund our year-long journalism initiative called The Indian Boarding School Project: A Dark Chapter in History. Our mission is to shine a light on the dark era of forced assimilation of native American children by the U.S. government and churches. Youll be able to read stories each week and join us for Livestream events to understand what the Indian Boarding School era has meant to Native Americans and what it still means today.

This news will be provided free for everyone to read, but it is not free to produce. Thats why were asking you to make a donation this month to help support our efforts. Any contribution of any amount big or small gives us a better, stronger future and allows us to remain a force for change.Donate to Native News Online today and support independent Indigenous journalism. Thank you.

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Op-ed: Lessons from More Than a Hundred Years of Affirmative Action in Hawai'i - nativenewsonline.net

The fight between the federal government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) took on a new phase after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed decided to lead the war from the front lines. Moments after Abiy's decision, the government media aired footage showing him wearing military dress while prompting the federal troops. Although it was unverifiable, Abiy appeared to be at the battleground. His decision brought a tangible military gain as the federal troops forced the TPLF to withdraw from the territories they had captured and retreat to their home region as their leadership announced. This swing of the pendulum occurred after months of federal troops being on the back foot and TPLF forces reaching up to a day's drive away from Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia's current conflict goes back to 2018 when Ethiopia's political turbulences saw Abiy ascend to the premiership. To implement his reform agenda, Abiy seems to have been convinced from the outset of the inevitable need to take power from TPLF affiliates and consign them to the margins. Hence, the government embarked on purging Tigrayans from critical positions, particularly military and intelligence posts. Also, the government dissolved the infamous Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that, besides the TPLF, had three other satellite parties under its umbrella. In addition to that, Abiy made a historical rapprochement with the isolated state of Eritrea the staunch enemy of Ethiopia for the last three decades. The opening to Eritrea brought international prestige to Abiy, culminating in his winning of the Nobel prize. On the other hand, it was part of a bigger move aimed at squeezing the TPLF.

The relatively settled down fight as it seems now broke out on November 2020 after the TPLF launched an attack on the Northern Command of Ethiopia's National Defense Force (ENDF). With the help of the Eritrean troops and paramilitary militias from the Amhara ethnicity, the ENDF captured the capital city of the Tigray region (Mekelle) within a few days. According to human rights organizations, the forces that entered Mekelle committed crimes against humanity such as extra-judicial killing, torture and mass rape against Tigray women. Also, the government imposed a total embargo on the region including the suspension of humanitarian aid entering the region. The collective punishment by the federal government sparked a huge international outcry, with some observers even warning of a potential genocide if the violence continued. Part of the fallout of the deadly conflict is the existence of more than 9 million people who are in a dire situation and need urgent humanitarian assistance according to the United Nations.

One thing for sure is that Ethiopia's dilemma isn't a novel one that started with the TPLF. It emerged long before, during the second half of the 19th century when the northern Abyssinians, backed by Europeans, subjugated the southern people for the purpose of exploiting their resources needed by the European entrepreneurs. At that time, European colonizers bolstered the Abyssinians at the expense of the colonized southern people by creating a unique system not implemented in other parts of Africa an internal dependent superstructural colony that served the interest of the Europeans. In their seminal book "The Invention of Ethiopia," Bonnie K. Holcomb and Sisai Ibssa stated that in order for the Ethiopian regime to maintain existence it has had to successfully manage three basic requirements:

Thus, the tight control and oppression policy against the colonized nations have been part of keeping the state together; otherwise, the very existence of Ethiopia would be threatened.

Certainly, the state dominated by Abyssinians failed to embrace other nationalities through a creed-based state project, rather, they sought legitimacy through coercion and tight control. The state harnessed every available brutality to subjugate their colonized populations in the interior, like the Oromo, Afar and Somali people, with the land of the colonized people grabbed and distributed as booty to Abyssinian garrisons sometimes through spurious land-reform justifications.

By the same token, the TPLF regime, which ruled the country for nearly 30 years, followed the same path of coercion and subjugation with uninterrupted financial and technical support from Western powers. Since the turn of the 20th century, successive tragedies revealed the essence of the problem, which was a state project forcefully compelled by certain ethnic groups from Ethiopia's highlands at the expense of the subjugated majority who have been rejecting the project. The West's outcry against what is happening in northern Ethiopia is by no means a sign of goodwill, but only aims to sustain the miserable dictatorial system that serves the West's neo-colonial agenda.

In conclusion, the 13-month conflict achieved nothing and prolonged conflict will only lead to further bloodshed. Hence, the federal government and the TPLF should come to gather at the table of negotiation to prevent a metastasizing hostility. The government's victory over the TPLF could be a starting point for an alternative approach, particularly given the TPLF's announcement that they have pulled back in order to give space for negotiations. An incremental approach should be devised. Hence, a deal that firstly stipulates the cessation of hostilities should be reached so that other daunting issues can be dealt with at a later time.

Surely, reaching a settlement on the Tigray issue is not enough to solve Ethiopia's centennial dilemma, because the country's troubles stem from lack of popular legitimacy and deep resentment. Hence, listening to the voice of the subjugated people and searching for their acceptance is inevitable. Sorting out the current conflict in the north should not be the last object but rather a stepping stone to solving the other complex situations in the rest of the country.

As part of discovering a comprehensive solution, a practical step would be to call for an ambitious truth and reconciliation conference that aims to discuss and fix Ethiopia's future. First and foremost, the results of such a gathering should lead to the recognition of past atrocities committed by the ruling elite (highlanders) and should set the blueprint through which people could determine their destiny if they prefer to be within Ethiopia or not, or if they opt for a federal or confederated Ethiopia. Contrary to that, trying to use force for unity will open a Pandora's box of violence across Ethiopia that will have a negative impact on the stability of the region.

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Ethiopia's conflict and need for comprehensive settlement | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Charles Loves Race Crazy: BLM, 1619, and the Progressive Racism Movement arrives in the midst of a glut of books about The 1619 Project, Black Lives Matter, and the various incarnations of the modern woke movement. While many of these books are fine contributions to the corpus chronologizing Americas disturbing descent into tribal conflict, a decade from now, Loves booka brilliant admixture of deep-dive journalism and social commentaryis the book that will be remembered because of its patriotic ambition.

How is Race Crazy patriotic and how is it ambitious?

To appreciate the book, it would be helpful to explain what the book is most certainly not. Anyone looking for a polemic against left-leaning America or a screed bemoaning every policy position of the modern Democratic Party will be disappointed. It is not a political book in the modern sense of the term. Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden make any significant appearance.

It is a book that seeks to explain that there is a pernicious and stealth movement in modern America seeking to both undermine, and in some cases, dismantle, the basic tenets of Americas liberal traditions and institutions.

Love places himself squarely and proudly in the tradition of Jeffersonian liberalism, Madisonian constitutionalism, the redemption of Gettysburg, and the 14th amendment, as well as the titanic achievement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He juxtaposes this tradition of individualized liberty and personal agency with what he calls the progressive racism movement.

As he writes, The 1960s Civil Rights movement championed by Dr. Martin Luther King and other courageous advocates of racial equality, has been stood on its head. In our now race-obsessed society, ones identitylong regarded as personal and self-createdhas reverted to being tribal and genetically determined.

As Love sees it, there are two pillars to the progressive racism movement that are deeply misunderstood. The first one is BLM.

Anyone with a scintilla of political awareness now recognizes that there is a colossal chasm between affirming the sentiment that black lives matter versus offering financial, corporate, or political support for the ideals of the Black Lives Matter organization itself.

As Love writes, Corporations who donate to them are contributing to their own demise, blacks who march with them are marching for perpetually bad neighborhoods, and whites who support them are supporting their future unemployment. Do it at your own peril and the peril of the country.

The half of the book focusing on Black Lives Matter is not just a redundant denunciation of the Marxist roots of its founders or the violence it has been said to perpetuate. Instead, Love takes a deep journalistic dive into the Black Lives Matter organization. What he discovers would shock and surprise most Americans.

Black Lives Matter, he discovers and argues through voluminous research, is just the arm of a much wider but secretive organization called the Movement for Black Lives. As Love writes, While their anonymity is intriguing, their beliefs are dangerous. What they describe on their website is nothing short of an operational plan for takeover of the country.

Love describes the byzantine maze of funding for BLM that is both difficult to decipher and shrouded in deep secrecy. As he vividly illustrates, The Movement for Black Lives is a force, yet they have remained in the shadows. I hope you will do internet searches to see what comes up. You will find mentions, but youll be surprised how few there are and how none are associated with any person. We at least know the faces of the women who started Black Lives Matter, though they are largely figureheads today.

He provides numerous chapters describing the Movement for Black Lives 2020 Platform, using this segment of the book as an exegesis tackling a variety of issues including incarceration, crime, drug laws, and education.

The second pillar of misunderstanding is The 1619 Project. Love is quite charitable to many of the features of the project. He claims much of it is eloquently written, fascinating, and replete with a lot of information that Americans should know about. But, he warns, the entire Project focuses only on Americas flaws. This will bring nothing but misery to all involved.

He then asks the question that reveals the thrust of his concern: Why should people who hold contempt for the country be allowed to educate our children, particularly about the country they despise?

Loves articulation of the stakes involved when a large segment of the nation decides to embrace pseudo-historic narratives over well-established historic facts is both eloquent and guttural. The basic questions of American identity that American schools have traditionally served to answerwhat are the self-evident truths of Jefferson, what does it mean to be a Madisonian when trying to understand the American regime, what did the Framers mean by the phrases limited government, natural law, or due processare simply missing from the educational orbit of todays educational system. The 1619 Project would double-down on this exercise in political ignorance, and a hearty embrace of 1619 curricula would have a profound impact on the experiment of self-government.

Heres why: the real agenda of the 1619 Project is to reformulate what America has always been about, away from the traditional view that America has historically fallen short of its ideals, yet steadily working from generation to generation to inch closer to them, and towards a more radicalized and deeply cynical narrative in which racism is in the nations DNA, that oppression was not really a contradiction of Americas founding, but was the very raison detre for the creation of the nation itself.

As Love writes, The 1619 Project is reframing American history to make it solely synonymous with slavery. They are succeeding at making this perspective mainstream and bringing this toxic approach to the classroom.Love uses the word danger frequently, and he is right to do so.

If being an American is not grounded in established churches, divine monarchs, or rigid class structures, but instead is the fragile consequence of a people believing in shared truths as articulated in our founding documents, then what is the logical consequence of a generation professing no belief in these truths? A generation that has no love or veneration for our founding documents? Who believe the real story of the nation is not one of nobly struggling for liberty, justice for all, and equality under the law, but instead is a sprawling and infinite tale of permanently subjugating large swathes of the country?

When President Obama eulogized John McCain in 2018, he perfectly articulated the fragility of the American creed: John understood, as JFK understood, as Ronald Reagan understood, that part of what makes our country great is that our membership is based not on our blood line, not on what we look like, what our last names are, not based on where our parents or grandparents came from or how recently they arrived, but on adherence to a common creed that all of us are created equal.

The 1619 Project suggests there is no common creed, only a stealth employment of highfalutin language in our founding and governing documents to hide what many revisionist historians now believe to be truethat America was never truly aiming for real justice.

Instead, sophisticates of the left believe modern enlightenment is synonymous with becoming hyper-aware of the truth of ubiquitous oppression, understanding that the country has not really made great strides towards racial justice and harmony, but has merely pivoted to camouflaged forms of injustice, cloaked in systemic or implicit structures of discrimination.

As Love phrases the matter, Where critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter Movement hold that racial problems are systemic, The 1619 Project goes further. The problem is not a few misguided, racist laws here and there. It is that slavery and its remnants are alive today.

My criticisms of Race Crazy are few. There is but a single section on how it is now Time to Act. An entire section devoted to the question of what now? would have been welcomed.

Also, while most of the book was probably written before the recent surge in parental interest about education, it would have been powerful to see Loves response to those who argue they simply believe CRT and the 1619 Project are merely trying to tell the complete story of America, blemishes and all, asking schools to expand beyond a sanitized version of American triumphalism.

Love is answering the call Lincoln makes in his much under-appreciated 1838 Lyceum Address, in which he states, If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

Race Crazy is the tonic we need to avoid this national suicide.

Jeremy S. Adams is the author of the recently released book "Hollowed Out: A Warning About America's Next Generation" (Regnery, August 2021). He has been a high school and university civics teacher for 24 years in Bakersfield, California.

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Why Fighting Divisive Racial Narratives Is A Patriotic Necessity - The Federalist

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, extremists have sought to exploit the pandemic environment to their own ends. Where most of the population sees an enduring health catastrophe, extremists tend to see opportunity.

Over the past two years, we have seen hospitals targeted by extremists, infrastructure attacked, and extremist narratives go viral. This has been most marked in western democracies, including Australia.

Funded by a Charles Sturt University COVID-19 Research Grant, we examined the Australian security context to better understand how extremists were understanding and responding to the pandemic. Our key consideration was what extremist responses would mean for the security of Australians both now and into the future.

Read more: In COVID's shadow, global terrorism goes quiet. But we have seen this before, and should be wary

Our focus quickly became extreme ideologies. Ideologies were important to our study because they helped us make sense of the link between knowing and doing, between thought and action. By observing extremist statements and behaviours, we were able to identify and map ideology in action.

Ideology can be divided into three parts:

it provides an explanation of the current state of affairs. That is, why the world is as it is

it imagines an alternative and preferred order.

it proposes a method of political action to achieve that alternative. For extremists, that method of political action is through severe, lethal violence that meets the threshold for terrorism.

This is important, because ideology shapes strategy. It is a significant factor in who extremists determine are valid targets of their violence. With reports of attacks against Australians of Asian descent early in the pandemic, we believed it was important to investigate these ideologically motivated behaviours.

To understand this better, we mapped narratives and activities of three primary extremist threats over 2020. These included violent Salafi jihadists, the extreme right, and the extreme left in Australia.

While we found little data on the extreme left, we had four key outcomes from the data collected on the extreme right and violent Salafi jihadists with respect to Australia. They were active in using the emerging pandemic to support their own beliefs.

Read more: Why hundreds of westerners are taking up arms in global jihad

First, and most significantly, we identified ideological buttressing. This meant extremists were integrating the pandemic environment into their existing beliefs. For example, extremists incorporated COVID-19 to decry globalism, immigration, and modern society in general. This strengthened their existing narratives, which in turn positively influenced their ability to recruit.

This comes with national security implications. Extremists were able to cement beliefs and positions, thereby deepening the divide and distrust between fringe elements and their government. Buttressing ensures that the threat of lone actor and group terrorism will endure. It will also challenge future deradicalisation practices.

Second, we identified changes in existing ideologies what we called diversification. That is, we found extremists adopting new or contradictory beliefs in addition to their former positions. Often, this occurred where extremists who were diverse in ideological affiliation gathered in the same space (albeit with differing goals). For example, traditional White supremacists adopted some of the sovereign citizen movement ideas on government oppression.

Read more: 'Living people': who are the sovereign citizens, or SovCits, and why do they believe they have immunity from the law?

What this means is that extremists were exposed to different ideas, goals, and people. Their ideology was shifted by having a more diverse range of people in their networks, but often with chaotic results: supporters held seemingly contradictory positions simultaneously.

This shifting will challenge the efficient identification and categorisation of an extremist or group of extremists: the pandemic has made everything messier. There could be, as a result, flow-on effects, both to the community in reporting suspected extremists and the authorities investigating extremists.

The third outcomes was what we call idiosyncratisation. This is where extremists integrated specific conspiracies into their narratives. Conspiracies are not usually ideologies in a technical sense, because they rarely provide a alternative order. Nonetheless, we saw the adoption of objectionable and disconnected beliefs, such as 5G causing COVID-19 across both extreme left and extreme right movements.

Finally, our fourth outcome was that despite COVID-19 countermeasures the sharing of ideologically motivated ideas did not solely occur online, as might have been expected in a pandemic environment. Instead, misinformation and ideological content was shared offline, and in some cases, in person. While the internet was a highway for COVID-19 narratives around the world, it was not the only one.

Read more: Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about

The context created by COVID-19 has complicated Australias national security environment. We have seen new leaders emerging and new ideas being adopted. At the same time, old movements are transforming and old ideologies being reinforced.

As we move into 2022 and the pandemic continues, there will be critical considerations for the national security landscape. Those include the increasing complexities associated with extremists and how they are using COVID to further their own means. The four key outcomes identified in our study shed light on this ever-evolving threat to our national security.

Excerpt from:

How extremists have used the COVID pandemic to further their own ends, often with chaotic results - The Conversation AU

Justice is an imaginary concept because those who get it are those who can pay top lawyers while those who cannot, dare not approach a polyvocal Supreme Court. This is why Law Minister Kiren Rijijus axiom of a cordial relationship between the government and the judiciary is worrying. Perhaps that may explain why the top court initially did not come to the migrants rescue in 2020.

Compare the alacrity with which retired Justice Indu Malhotra was appointed to probe the breach of security in Punjab for Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the tardiness of the apex court to issue directions in the petitions against those at Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh who called for genocide against the Muslims. What makes Rijiju happy should make us unhappy. It took over 76 public intellectuals, like a retired Admiral of the Indian Navy, and retired Justice Madan Lokur to point out the Supreme Court seemed to have abdicated its responsibility to uphold the fundamental rights of civil society.

This may explain why today there are few dissenting judgments in the apex court which sits in benches of two or more, unlike the 25 high courts where judges sit singly. Agreeing with the government is easy when the latter decides who will enter the Supreme Court. The government will never allow maverick judges like Akil Kureshi to enter the Supreme Court for consent guarantees ascent within the judiciary while great dissenters like the late Justice K Subba Rao, who dissented 48 times during his nine-year-term in the Supreme Court will never be replicated.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of judgments, the majority judgments, the concurring judgments and the dissenting verdicts. Conservative judgments stay strictly within the law while liberal judgments like the Ayodhya and Rafale judgments are delivered by forward-looking judges who look forward to post-retirement sinecures.

These liberal judgments traverse beyond law to be influenced by economics, politics + religion of contemporary society. Even dissenting judges will not risk offending the same society from where they have been elevated, opined an advocate well-known for his dissenting arguments, Mathews Nedumpara, who founded the National Lawyers Campaign for Judicial Transparency and Accountablity.

Majority verdicts are delivered by judges who agree, perhaps not in frequently, with the government perspective. Conversely, concurring judgments must give reasons which differ from the majority. But a dissenting judgment takes courage and skills to point out the flaws in the reasoning of their brother judges. These dissenting judgments are scholarly expositions of the law, upholding the peoples rights against state oppression.

Dissenting judges like M Hidyatullah declared in the habeas corpus case that life existed before the Constitution came into force which was why it could not be suspended during an Emergency. Such dissenting judgments uphold democracy while majority verdicts may succumb to autocracy. The unanimous five-judge Ayodhya judgment was exactly what the government wanted. And the five judges celebrated their unanimous verdict at Taj Mansingh hotel in Delhi to uphold their conviviality. Two of them were future CJIs. Soon after he retired, CJI Sharad Bobde visited the RSS shrine at Nagpur, which betrayed his ideology, for an ideal judge keeps a blank mind.

This is why great minds like those of the former CJIs Ranjan Gogoi, Sharad Bobde and our future CJI D Y Chandrachud find it much easier to conform to than confront the government on emotive issues of religion, or foreign policy. This is why the Supreme Court junked a petition asking the judiciary to direct the Modi government to take action against China which used the coronavirus to commit genocide. And in Kerala, a judge imposed hefty costs on a litigant for daring to challenge Modis mugshot on his vaccination certificate.

Rarely, very rarely, and in secrecy, a chief minister may direct a judge what to write, as Justice Ranjan Gogoi confessed in his book, Justice for the Judge, describing how a former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, told his (Justice Gogois) mother to influence his judgment. The government is interested injust 0.5per cent of the cases before the apex court while it is indifferent to the rest.

Having judges like former Justice Arun Mishra in the Supreme Court who was an unabashed admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi minimises dissent just as the former CJI P N Bhagwati congratulated the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on her electoral success just as he congratulated the Janata Party prior to that. Judges like Arun Mishra and Bhagwati may have always looked forward to their careers.

The last dissenting judgment which made waves was J Chelameswars dissent in the NJAC case, which struck down the 99th amendment and the NJAC Act, as it encroached on judicial independence. Chelameswar declared the collegium was a cabal of opacity where a CJI or some other senior judge proposed his own candidate for elevation as a judge with the favour being returned. Since October 2017, Chelameswar succeeded in getting the then CJI Deepak Misra to upload collegium resolutions.

The next crop of seven future CJIs are also unlikely to challenge the diktat of populist governments. Indias first-ever woman CJI will have a tenure of three months but she is no iron lady who will oppose tradition. Her counterpart in Pakistan, Justice Ayesha Malik, an Oxbridge elitist, has been appointed to Pakistans Supreme Court despite strong opposition from President Abdul Latif Afridi and the Pakistan Bar Council. Like Justice Bangalore Nagarathna, she too may consent but not dissent.

And so, behind-the-scenes, a judge like Ranjan Gogoi is happy when his daughter marries the son of the late Justice Valmiki Mehta, just as Justice Shelat was allegedly unhappy when a brother of the late Justice Bhagwati refused to marry his daughter, according to Supreme Whispers by Abhinav Chandrachud. These are human failings, which make us realise that judges, like the rest of us, eat, drink and arrange marriages for their offspring with other judges offspring in the hope that one day, their offspring might also make it to the Supreme Court. It is all in the family, one might conclude.

(To receive our E-paper on whatsapp daily, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)

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Dissenting judges now a rarity in the Supreme Court - Free Press Journal