Category Archives: Government Oppression

October 25, (THEWILL) In this interview the Bayelsa state commissioner for Ijaw National Affairs , Hon Erasmus Ucheowaji spoke to our Correspondent, DAVID AMOUS OWEI the mission and vision of the ministry and other issues .Excerpts:

May we know you?My name is Erasmus Ucheowaji Patrick.By the grace of God am the Honorable Commissioner for Ijaw National Affairs.

May we know why the Bayelsa state created a separate ministry for Ijaw National Affairs ?

The ministry of Iaw National Affairs was created specifically to handle Ijaw National Affairs by the former governor of Bayelsa state and the distinguished senator representing Bayelsa West senatorial district,Senator Henry Seriake Dickson in 2012 as a platform for fast tracking the needs of the Ijaws worldwide.Bayelsa state remains the Jerusalem of the Ijaws all over the world and the only homogenous Ijaw state , the idea behind the creation of this unique ministry was purely for Ijaw affairs accros the globe.So when the miracle governor Senator Douye Diri was inaugurated as governor of Bayelsa state in 2020 excised the culture component to Tourism to form a ministry of Culture and Tourism and by that arrangement, the ministry was named the Ministry of Ijaw National Affairs as a full fledged ministry of Ijaw National Affairs to leverage on what senator Seriake Dickson created to fast track and articulate the needs of the Ijaws world wide.Bayelsa state is the homeland of all Ijaw people.The ministry therefore,is an instrument of the previous government.

As a Ministry has the reasons behind its creation achieved from your assessment as the commissioner ?

The ministry for Ijaw National Affairs as the name implies is a service oriented ministry which l met and it is poised to tackling every fundamental needs of the average man are brought ,partners and talk with Ijaw extractions their requests, demands and with the ultimate of presenting them to governments.Also,the ministry gave rise the to establishment of Ijaw Heroes park.The idea behind the Heroes park was to immortalize and bury Ijaw departed ones that had made their marks.It is for all Ijaws. So far so good ,a few of illustrious departed Ijaw sons have been buried therein and more would come.The ministry also oversees and partners with Ijaw National Congress and work in hand with its leadership to fast track, facilitate government administration. So far apart from Ijaw National Congress, the ministry also as an oversight functions handles the Ijaw Youth council matters too.Another beauty and uniqueness of the ministry is the study of Ijaw Language in private and public schools within the state. And this is a work in progress.Very soon,to be precise, by November 8 2021 it will be unveiled as a deliberate policy and experts have been sent for further trainings to acquire necessary skills to ensure that our children are taught Ijaw Language and to ensure that the Ijaw Language does not go into extinction .The ljaw child by the time the the policy is implemented would speak Ijaw Language fluently without any flaws.The state Executive council has given nod to make the Ijaw Language a compulsory subject in both private and public schools.The initial plan was to domicile a centre for study of Ijaw Language.But Exco approved the second prayers to make it compulsory for the learning of Ijaw Language and this will made public on November 8 , 2021.This is not only a work in progress but a dream that must be realized. In Bayelsa state in order to promote our cultural heritage,there is an approved dress code which was put in place by the immediate governor of the state now senator Seriake Dickson who made it mandatory for all civil servants to dress in Ijaw attire to work every Friday.Hence,every Friday our ladies go to work dressed in wrapper and head tie to match while their male counterparts also put on etibo and bowlar hat to match and to further enhance it, the commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Dr Iti Orugbani has sent a memo to the present governor for all commissioners to appear during Executive council in traditional attire and the state governor had graciously approved it. Very soon it will be extended to all corporate organizations operating in Bayelsa state to adopt the dress code.Arising from inter ministerial committee drawn from ministry of Education, ministry of Ijaw National Affairs, Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the commissioner of Education my colleague Dr Gentle Emelah is the chairman and plans have been included to implement the the teaching of Ijaw Language in all schools.

You were a former Senior Special Adviser to the state governor on Ijaw National Affairs and Culture and you are now a commissioner, was there any advise you offered that were not implemented.?

Government is a contininun and as SSA l had working relationship with the pioneer Commissioner for Ijaw National Affairs and Culture , Dr Felix Tuodolo and Dressman the second commissioner.Am trying to move the Ijaw Culture forward and my office is widely opened for any positive and progressive ideas that would promote and project the Ijaw Affairs in every ramifications. Government is one , whether my advises were not implemented remained immaterial.I gave the best l could.

Before you came onboard there were always crisis whenever the umbrella pan Ijaw organization ,INC and IYC conducted their elections to elect their leaders.But your tenure has witnessed peaceful conduct of elections, what will you say is responsible for the peace and stability?

Who else will l attribute these peaceful elections to other than God almighty and l must not fail to also extend my kudos and appreciation to our miracle governor, senator Douye Diri who graciously approved the memo l sent for the conduct of the Ijaw National Congress election and his timely release of funds made the work very easy for me and other stakeholders.l recalled that during my screening at the state house of assembly l was bombarded with barrage of questions on how l would be able to fix the moribund Ijaw National Congress which was without leadership for many years, so when l was to conduct the election l put my profound proposals to the governor.I also embarked on prayers and before the elections, there prayer sessions every Tuesday and Thursday for fervent prayers by all the staff of the Ministry of Ijaw National Affairs.Everybody was enjoined to pray in their closet for a peaceful elections as previous elections history were too ugly experience to witness again.With God all things are possible.I also took steps such as the introduction of e voting and the Vice chancellor of Niger Delta University ,Prof Samuel Edoumiemokumo and Prof Fubara from Rivers state and when l told the governor who also gave me his words that he had no particular candidates , neutrality in whoever would emerge and implored all the contestants to go out and test their popularity. I also commended him for his wise counsel and when l gave my briefs on e- voting he gave his nod , considering the fact that when he was in the National Assemblies , House of Representatives and Senate ,he was an advocate of e- voting and with the convinction from the Vice Chancellor of NDU who had used it to conduct a free and fair election in the university community, he qickly obliged the idea.Initially most of the aspirants kicked against the e voting,but after due consultations they all keyed into it. I promised the governor that with the calibres of people as umpire, the election would be transparent , free and fair without rancour.Also ensured that further steps were taken.First l took permission from His Excellency to barricade the express way and the ministry was also shutdown to all staff and also warned IYC to stay aware from the ministry where their office is domiciled. I also warned them that I didnt want to see their shadow. The governor gave me the go ahead and IYC cooperated and kept their distance through out the duration.Then, the INC Central Zone election, though was within the ministry, but was under the umbrella body the Ijaw National Congress and the ministry only supervised it in collaboration with notable stakeholders. Again another professor from NDU, Prof Ambly Etekpe with his electoral officers also conducted another free and transparence election that produced leaders for the Central Zone and they have been inaugurated by the National president of INC, Prof Benjamin Okaba.In all of these elections l gave God the glory .

What is the position of the Ijaws on torny issues such as PIA, Resources control and restructuring ?

The Ijaws are the fourth largest ethnic group in the country and being the oldest inhabitants in the Niger Delta will continue oppose any form deprivation, neglect, marginalization , oppression ,inequality and other obnoxious tendencies from the federal government and until the Ijaws are given their rightful attention and provision they will continue to agitate and fight for their rights. Hence, we have not shifted grounds on the PIA, Resources control and true federalism. Until the federal government agree to accept 70 percent and allow us to manage the 30 percent there will continue to be agitation and feeling of neglect and oppression will still resonate. Nobody can tell us the quantum of oil produced from the Niger Delta region , the Ijaw land as the Federal government continue to feign ignorance of 70 percent proceed tax. This is undisputable and cant be compromised. What is due us should be given to us. Their argument that if they give us 10perecent we shall fight ourselves is not tenable ,we assure them no life will be loss and we remain resolute and despite the insecurity across the nation, the Niger Delta remained peaceful to investors and residents. How long will NDDC forensic audit last and the appointment interim administrator is thwarting the aims and objectives of the interventionist agency. We want authentic board of NDDC to fast track the infrastructural deficit in the Niger Delta in spite of its contributions to the economy of the country. We applaud president Muhamadu Buhari for the reapontintment of Col Millad Dixon Dikio as Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Program ( PAP) Though from its inception till the tenure of Kingsley Kuku who initiated scholarships and human development programs that had impacted the lives of the ex agitators, for the period s of Col Boro and Prof Dokubo,they are left for history to judge. But Col Dikio has brought a lot of reformations that brought a paradigm shift, today he has brought the program nearer to the grass root where the ex agitators lived and with the introduction of the entrepreneurial scheme and cooperative the ex agitators will no longer rely on the #65,000 monthly stipends, but it will not only make them become self reliance,but employers of labour and with reappointment these noble programs will be achieved for the over all peace and stability in the Niger Delta region.

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Why The Ministry Of Ijaw National Affairs Was Created Erasmus Patrick - thewillnigeria

Till 1990, we lived mostly under military ruling, apart from a brief period of three and a half years at the beginning. So I will not consider that period of time for this discussion. From 1991 till date, there have been numerous attacks on the Hindu, Buddhist, Santal, Chakma and Marma communities on this land; many people from these communities have been killed or lost everything they had to vandalism and arson. How many of these incidents have been properly investigated, and how many perpetrators have been caught and prosecuted?

Democracy has not been fully established in our country, but we are not under military rule either. Political parties like the Awami League and the BNP have been ruling the country since 1991. For the last 13 years, Awami League has been at the helm of the government. The popular belief is that Awami League shows sensibility towards the minority communities. The very same Awami League is not only in power, but they are also holding on to unchallenged poweralmost every Awami League leader boasts that they have no competitors.

But how many times have the minority groups been attacked during the current ruling period of the Awami League? Who is to be blamed for the mayhem at Chattogram's Buddhist colony?

In recent years, attacks have been carried out against Hindus in Abhaynagar of Jashore, Santhia of Pabna, Nasirnagar of Brahmanbaria, and Shalla of Sunamganj. This time around, members of the community in question were attacked in Cumilla and several other parts of the country. After the Awami League was defeated in the 2001 polls by the BNP, the Hindu community was put under siege. Hindu communities in different areas of the country were attacked; some incidents of rape took place. At that time, the whole country was outraged; the citizens were protesting against the attacks. The then BNP government refused to shoulder the responsibility for the attacks, but the blame went to them in the end. The duty of preventing attacks on the citizens falls upon the party in power; BNP failed to perform that duty in 2001, and for that they have been criticised, and will continue to be criticised in future as well.

However, people who were vocal in 2001 seem to have chosen to stay mute in 2021. The concept of actively protesting injustice has taken a back seat. Now, people react to communal attacks by being ashamed on social media, and some seek forgiveness.

As for these attacks, the government sometimes accuses the BNP, and at other times some invisible forces. BNP, in the meantime, solely and directly points fingers at the government.

There are questions about the Cumilla incident that are yet to be answered. Why did the police not respond immediately after receiving information about it? Why was there no response even after a call to the 999 hotline? These are the complaints from the local residents which should get the highest level of priority during the investigation. Is the investigation being conducted accordingly? Did it gain the right momentum? A Hindu community leader pointed his finger towards a local MP of the ruling party; will this accusation be investigated? Considering the past, these accusations hold deep significance.

During the 2016 attack in Nasirnagar, the issue of rivalry between two ruling party lawmakers was reported by the media, but we never got to know whether any follow-up investigation was conducted regarding those incidents. Three of the accused and implicated individuals behind the attack were recently nominated by the Awami League for union parishad elections, but later on, nominations of two candidates were cancelled. The other accused retained his nomination.

Why should we forget these incidents, refrain from protesting, and feel ashamed or seek forgiveness instead? People who vandalised houses and temples, desecrated idols, and looted and plunderedthey are the actual criminals. They attacked people, and people lost lives, which makes the attackers killers too. We should be agitated by them and we should protest against them. We need to demand proper investigation and justice for the recent incidents. We also have to demand explanations for why the perpetrators of the past events did not get prosecuted. We have to hold the government responsible for not investigating the accusations raised, and we have to raise our collective voice in a manner similar to the reaction to the 2001 attacks, when a lot of questions were raised and a significant number of protests were carried out.

When Muslims go through oppression in Palestine or Myanmar, we feel pained and we get agitated. But we, the very same people, proceed to attack our own countrymen who are a minority. No matter who is ruling the nation, no one prosecutes these attackers. They only do politics. This is not something that should make you or me feel ashamed; it is something worth protesting.

"None of the attackers will be spared"what is the meaning or significance of this statement? Why are such statements made year after year, instead of delivering justice to the people who are victims?

In certain areas, the UNOs told journalists that they were helpless and could not control the attackers. In that case, why were enough police personnel or the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops not deployed in those areas? Any attempts to initiate a political procession or assembly by the opposition party gets thwarted with strictness and agility, but why was no such action seen in the case of communal vandalism? The attacks continued on because of the submissive attitude of the law enforcement members. Some may point out in this case that when the law enforcement forces take a strict stance, guns are fired and people lose their livesas was seen in Chandpur where four people were killed. This raises another question: Does the law enforcement agency's strictness directly translate to gunshots and killings? Do they not have any other way to deal with such incidents without violence? Strictness cannot be synonymous with opening fire at people in order to prevent them from ransacking temples. This kind of mindless shooting and killing will only worsen the situation.

The homes and houses of worship of the minority citizens are coming under siege. They are being exposed to heinous crimes like oppression and execution in broad daylight. Some insane individuals are conducting these despicable actions in the name of religion. Some politicians are sheltering, indulging, and controlling these lunatics. The people who are in power have been "hiding" them for the last 30 years. You and I may not have the capability to demolish the walls sheltering them, but we have the capacity to protest their actions and raise questions. If we feel ashamed or ask for forgiveness instead of protesting, then we will not be much different from the people who are providing shelter to the perpetrators of violence.

Golam Mortoza is a journalist at The Daily Star. The article has been translated from Bangla.

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Why be ashamed, why not protest? - The Daily Star

Black people and women who continue to be underrepresented in the South African media must be aggressive in tackling this injustice.

This is according to activist and author Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, who delivered a keynote address during the 11th Annual Percy Qoboza Memorial Lecture on Tuesday.

Mpofu-Walsh said the injustice against black people and women in the media landscape is aggressive in its oppression.

The lecture was hosted by the National Press Club in partnership with the University of South Africa and Qobozas family in order to commemorate the events of October 19 1977, the day known as Black Wednesday.

On that day, the apartheid government banned Black Consciousness organisations, publications and people critical of the state at the time, including Qoboza, who was the editor of The World and Weekend World newspapers.

The theme of the lecture on Tuesday was "the role of the media in the digital age. How far will it go in serving as the voice of the dispossessed and as a channel of change and real democracy?

Mpofu-Walsh urged leaders in the media to deliberately and urgently chart a programme to address the shortage of black people and women in the media space.

He noted "notable exceptions which rise to prominence in public debate and we think that things are changing and moving in the right direction".

"We have not been aggressive enough to attack injustice. We need to be aggressive against injustice because injustice is stubborn and aggressive in its oppression, he said.

Mpofu-Walsh recently published a book titled The New Apartheid: Apartheid did not die; it was privatised. According to Mpofu-Walsh, the book explores how there are still remnants of the apartheid state in SA post-1994 and how a mere removal of apartheid legislation has not uprooted the economic, social and political order of the racist system.

I believe firmly that apartheid did not die and that it was privatised. We need to turn our attention to the private realm, to those who wield private power, to understand how apartheid has taken a new life in the current moment," Mpofu-Walsh said.

He said apartheid, which is essentially an ideology of minority control, still prevailed in SA's media space.

"A situation where despite the demographic make-up of SA, and the predominance of black South Africans, in the spaces that matter where real decisions are made and real choices are taken, the demographic majority becomes a minority.

Mpofu-Walsh added the majority is still the minority in the media space "both in terms of race and extremely crucially in our time in terms gender".

"According to the latest published state of the newsroom report from the Wits School of Journalism, 49% of SA's newspapers editors are black African. This is no reason for celebration. In fact, it is a shocking indictment on how little has changed in the South African mediascape in three decades. While 28% are white.

How in our so-called miracle [at dawn of democracy] have we allowed a situation in which three decades later, we have a vast and disproportionate overrepresentation of white voices in our editorial spaces and a chronic underrepresentation of black voices. And I am afraid the situation gets deeper when we look at the question of gender. 67% of newspaper editors in SA are gendered as men and a meagre 33% as women.

He said statistics have shown that black representation "is at a staggering and shocking 39%... white representation is at 30%, still nearly rivalling black representation."

"In terms of gender we have 72% of men represented at the boardroom table and 28% of women. If we look at black women, we can half that figure."

He said when the country celebrated the victory over apartheid it did so while the patterns of apartheid still existed and were a reality three decades later into democracy.

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Blacks, women must be aggressive in tackling this injustice in media Mpofu-Walsh - SowetanLIVE

Not being secular in this country is the worst kind of crime that you can do as a patriot, Shah Rukh Khan had said in 2015.

A year after Narendra Modi-led NDA came to power in 2014, a group of Indian writers and thinkers started returning the Sahitya Akademi Award to protest the incidents of so-called communal violence in India. They cited the killing of rationalists MM Kalburgi and Govind Pansare, as well as the lynching of a man over suspicions he consumed beef, as examples of rising intolerance in India.

Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, in an interview to NDTV, spoke at length on this issue, which later earned him hostile reactions from the right wing.

In comments that could have not been perceived well by the ruling class, SRK said: there is intolerance, there is extreme intolerance there is, I think there is growing intolerance.

The actor also said that he respected people returning awards to protest against intolerance.

We have made a huge thing about our meat-eating habits. How can the food habits of people be an issue? he asked.

It is stupid It is stupid to be intolerant and this is our biggest issue, not just an issue Religious intolerance and not being secular in this country is the worst kind of crime that you can do as a patriot.

Shah Rukhs statement caused chatter on social media. While many supported his argument, many blamed him for siding with anti-India forces to defame the country.

On the other hand, the bollywood actor has cautiously stayed away from being seen with those in power, at a time when celebrities flaunt their selfies with the prime minister. Except one event called for the governments campaign to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan has not attended any meetings or interactions with Prime Minister Modi.

Moreover, he also chose not to speak in favour of the government after numerous celebrities, including his colleagues from the film fraternity, tweeted against pop-star Rihannas tweet in favour of protesting farmers.

Though the bollywood star has shied away from criticising the Modi government openly since the 2015 episode, he has also not praised or stood in support of the government, like many others.

Picked up from a cruise party by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in its drug bust, actor Shah Rukh Khans son Aryan Khan has now spent almost three weeks in jail, after sessions court refused to grant him bail in multiple hearings. Aryan Khans lawyer has now moved high court and his plea will be heard on October 26. The stars son is likely to remains in Arthur road jail in Mumbai till then.

It should be noted that on the very next day after the cruise arrests, the NCB had told the court that no drugs were found on Aryan Khan. The investigating officer (IO), while seeking Aryan Khans further custody, admitted that no illegal drugs were recovered from Aryan Khan.

Aryan has been charged for consumption, although niether was he in possesion of drugs and nor was he intoxicated at the time of the raid. The NCB said that he and his friend Arbaz had planned to consume drugs on the cruise ship. He is also accused of being in constant touch with someone who procured drugs, with the NCB attaching his chats that show his connection to an alleged to international drug syndicate.

After Aryans bail was rejected on Wednesday, Shah Rukh Khan reached Arthur road jail on Tuesday morning to meet his son. The visuals of his visit to the jail have been doing rounds on social media since morning.

#WATCH Shah Rukh Khan leaves from Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail after a brief meeting with son Aryan pic.twitter.com/A9y2exXtn4

ANI (@ANI) October 21, 2021

If thas was not enough TRP opportunity for the television Moguls, the NCB officers shortly reached Mannat, Shah Rukh Khans residence in Mumbai, for what was reported as a raid. Telivision channels broadcast the raid visuals live. However, it was clarified later that the NCB had gone to Shah Rukhs residence for some paperwork and it was not a raid.

Many users on social media, for a few days now, have been complaining that the actors son has been used to settle score with Shah Rukh Khan. The raid that wasnt on Tuesday has added more substance to the question of whether the NCB has targeting Shah Rukh Khan on the orders of those who shall not be named. Many also questioned if it was an honest investigation or media-hyped witch hunt by the NCB to garner limelight.

Wankhede raids Shahrukh Khans home after tipping off his pals in the media. Is this a professional investigation by the NCB or a media hyped witch-hunt?

Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) October 21, 2021

Some critics of the Modi regime believe that it is using the case to break the morale of ordinary Muslims. Journalist and author Aatish Taseer tweeted: Its so clear whats happening: the wish to break the morale of the Indian Muslim by showing him/her that even the most powerful among you, the most assimilated, is nothing. If Shah Rukh Khans son is rotting in jail, what are you?

Similar allegations were made by NCP leader Nawab Malik, who raised serious questions over the credibility of the raid conducted by the NCB. Nawab Malik said Shah Rukh Khan was being targeted for not toeing the government line.

Is our system conspiring against the star to make the process his punishment? The bollywood actor has been incessantly targeted after his sons arrest, with one educational app pulling down his advertisements, while others demanding a boycott of the products he endorses.

He and his family have been made fun of and humiliated by clickbait articles, TV debates, and non-stop trolling on social media sites.

Many anti-establishment activists often blame bollywood celebrities for not using their voice against government oppression or atrocities. The country, like the bollywood, has been increasingly polarised, and there is constant battle among conservatives and progressives to set up the narrative. The progressives think that their fellow countrymen like Shah Rukh Khan, who enjoy a mass following and can make an impact with thier opinions, should speak up more often against the Modi government.

Hey @iamsrk ,

Your silence is the reason for your kids harassment ..

SPEAK UP like u did 10 years ago..

| Arif Khan | (@ArifKIndian) October 20, 2021

Many think that it is because of the silence by the likes of Shah Rukh and others in bollywood that the central government is emboldened to armtwist them using agencies or media. Shah Rukh Khan is now being reminded by people on social media of First they came , the poetic form of a 1946 post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemller. It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergyincluding, by his own admission, Niemller himselffollowing the Nazis rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Shah Rukh Khans supporters, along with progressives and Muslims, want him to stand up to what they believe is bullying and harassment of the actor. They want the actor to speak his mind freely like he did earlier during the intolerance row.

But the question remains- Will the real King Khan stand up and speak?

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Will The Real King Khan Stand Up & Speak? | HW English - HW News English

By Lekgantshi Console Tleane

One of the major weaknesses of post-structuralism as a school of thought and methodical frame is its rejection of dialectical thinking. The latter focuses on contradictions and sometimes even the antagonisms between phenomena.

Dialectical thinking would therefore see phenomena for what it is, in its simplest representation. Post-structural scholars often endeavour to excavate more issues or use analytical approaches that may in effect obscure that which should be plain to see.

In Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile, the eminent scholar Janet Hodgson unearths data about the princess that could only be accomplished through painstaking archival study that traversed different collections locally and some in Britain. It also involved an examination of the ways of life of the people of the Eastern Cape and oral history.

Born during the early 1840s, Princess Emma, whose African name is not known, was the daughter of Mgolombane Sandile, a Warrior King who led his people during the Frontier Wars against British occupation and aggression.

To understand the conditions under which Emma was raised, it must be remembered that the year 1820 saw the arrival of the British Settlers in the latter-day Eastern Cape. This was therefore a period of land annexation by the British, consolidating their early conquest in 1815; taking over from the Dutch who had in turn conquered the land in 1652.

Sandile would be arrested in 1841 after the wars of resistance against the British. Defeated, he agreed for his daughter to be taken to what would be known as Zonnebloem College in Cape Town, established for the education of the children of indigenous leaders (so-called Chiefs) under the British colonial system.

Inducting the children of the indigenous leaders into the Western education system formed part of the British colonial strategy which differed from that of the French and Portuguese on the African continent.

Whereas, the French sought to assimilate Africans and turn them into dark French men and women, and the Portuguese sought to destroy and adulterate and finally integrate so-called detribalised Africans into Portuguese society, the British opted for indirect rule by assimilating some of the indigenous leaders who would become their proxies in the economic exploitation of the land.

This would be achieved through inculcation of Western education on the children of these leaders, and at times the leaders themselves, while allowing them to still live their so-called traditional lifestyles.

Zonnebloem College was built by the British colonial government led by George Grey. It was however administered by the Church of England through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. Emma was baptised a year-and-a-half after arriving at the college.

What was ostensibly an offer to educate the children of leaders was in fact a broader strategy to assimilate them into the colonial ways of life; teaching them that their own cultures were inferior to that of the colonists.

It is here that the role of the church as a handmaiden of colonialism became clearly pronounced. Not only did the church collaborate with colonial powers by blessing conquest, it participated actively in colonising the minds of indigenous peoples throughout the world through missionary educational establishments.

There may be those who may want to argue that these establishments did produce the early African intellectuals such as Tiyo Soga and many others who went on to articulate early Africanist thought. That should not however take away sharp criticism against the churchs complicity in colonial conquest, whose ramifications we continue to live with, to this day.

Apart from Governor Grey, another central figure in the formative years of Emma within a colonial setting was the Anglican Bishop of Cape Town at the time, Robert Grey.

Wanting to return home in the Eastern Cape, Emma was prohibited by Governor Grey who feared that she would be married to a non-Christian King. Instead, and clearly in an attempt to appease her, Grey gave her a farm in the Eastern Cape, ostensibly to cover the costs for her schooling.

This has led to the view that Emma was the first black woman to own land. What escapes historians is that the very act of giving Emma a farm and celebrating her as the first black woman to own land is an insult to black people whose land was forcibly annexed over time through colonial land dispossession.

This is historical negationism at its most insulting. That which was annexed through force cannot and should never be celebrated as a generous gift and achievement when it is given back to one whose people were conquered.

Eventually returning to the Eastern Cape, Emmas fate turned into a struggle between his father, Sandile, and Bishop Grey. Sandile wanted his daughter to marry King Gecelo but Bishop Grey opposed that, and instead, wanted her to be married to Ngangelizwe, who was viewed by Grey to be open to Christian persuasion.

The marriage did not take place. From then on Emmas life became a story of twists and turns. She would stay with, as well as associate with different colonist families, being assimilated into a Christianised Western way of life while longing for her African roots.

The issue around the planned marriages that King Sandile wished for his daughter to enter into should not only be the correctness, or not, of a patriarchal society imposing certain decisions upon women. Black women and youth have proven over time to be capable of initiating and advancing organic resistance against archaic patriarchal practices of treating black women as inferior beings whose lives must be decided upon by men.

At issue, is the ubiquity of whiteness, then in the form of Bishop Grey, wanting to impose his will on who Emma could marry, and even now, when black people are not allowed the space to address certain aspects of their cultural practices, which may be outdated, without the self-arrogated tutelage and say so of whiteness.

Emma went on to become a teacher and eventually got married to another of the Abathembu Kings, Stokwe Ndlela, who was eventually killed by the British during the revolt of 1881. She inherited Stokwes farm, which would later become the subject of legal contests right into the1980s. Although her exact date of death and place of burial are not known, it is estimated that she died circa 1893, and was survived by four daughters and a son.

Although not focused sharply on colonial conquest, and rather, highlighting the quest of one woman to manage the contradictions between her African traditions and an imposed Christianised Western culture, Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile, is an important book that illustrates the deep roots of oppression and exploitation.

Other historians whose focus is on conquest and those employing materialist conceptions may well expand on the timelines and themes that Hodgson has ably outlined.

Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile is published by Best Red (imprint of HSRC Press) and is available from bookstores and online outlets. Prices range between R199 to R239.

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Princess Emma Sandile - an important book that illustrates the deep roots of oppression and exploitation - IOL

Music has always had a powerful influence on Cuban culture. Its unique blend of West African and European styles has made Cuba one of the richest and most influential music regions in the world. But Cuban music has also acted as a vehicle for social and political critique.

Run by a socialist government since 1959, Cuba has faced political dissent from its citizens throughout history. Cuban musicians have used their voices to critique their government and speak out against political, social and economic injustices. As a result, many musicians have been censured, arrested and detained for their political expression.

On July 11, 2021, Cuban citizens erupted into a series of protests against the Cuban government and the ruling Communist Party of Cuba. Thousands took to the streets in various parts of the island to protest the failing economy, the ongoing food and medicine shortage and the government's response, or lack thereof, to the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic in Cuba.

The 11-J protests (as referred to by Cubans) are considered one of the country's largest anti-government demonstrations in decades, resulting in hundreds of arrests and calls for U.S. intervention by some Cuban Americans.

Susan Thomas, a musicology professor and director of the College of Musics American Music Research Center, studies popular music and arts culture both in Cuba and in the wider Cuban diaspora and their relationship to state policy and political change. She spoke with CU Boulder Today about the role musicians and artists played in the 11-J demonstrations and in Cuban protests throughout history.

Susan Thomas, director of CU Boulder's American Music Research Center

Musicians, especially singer-songwriters, have been a voice for public consciousness since the 1960s, pushing back against restrictions and abuses while continuing to work within the system. Artists positioned themselves as mouthpieces for the people, for the goal of free expression and better opportunity. But musicians have historically been supportive of socialist ideology. So while they wrote songs that might be critical of the way things were playing out, they always expressed that criticism within a strong support of socialist values.

But artists commitment to socialist ideals was not always enough. Censorship and blacklisting kept many artists from having access to venues or recording studios, and some were even imprisoned for their perceived deviance from ideological norms. In more recent years, some artists have used music to voice more direct criticisms of the government and faced severe censure from the state and even arrest and detention.

The kind of widespread eruption of dissatisfaction in the 11-J protests hadnt been seen since before the 1959 Revolution. People on the island are fed up with shortages of food, medicine, housing and other basic necessities. Theyre fed up with the governments response to the economic and health impacts of COVID-19, and with the general lack of opportunities and government restrictions on information and freedom of expression.

What is interesting about the 11-J protests, compared to other Cuban protests in recent years, is that the demonstrations took place across the country. Even looking back just six months prior, a series of demonstrations in support of the San Isidro Movementwhich protested government censorship in the artswere mostly held in Cubas capital city of Havana.

The San Isidro Movement was also led largely by Cubas artistic elite: intellectuals, filmmakers, visual artists and musicians drawn from jazz and alternative musicgenres viewed with relative favor by state institutions. In contrast, the 11-J protests stemmed from Cubas poor and working classthose without a voice, who neither identify as intellectuals or artists and whose musical tastes lean more towardthe institutionally disdained, but incredibly popular, reggaetn genre.

The 11-J protests were quickly identified with a reggaetn song, Patria y Vida (homeland and life) that was created in early 2021 to criticize the governments restrictions on artistic expression. It takes the revolutionary slogan Patria o muerte (homeland or death) and turns it on its head to illustrate Cubans desires for a life of possibility.

The accompanying music video directly attacks government oppression, depicting scenes of police detention and abuse. When the protests erupted in July, Patria y Vida filled the air and its title appeared on makeshift signs all over the island.

Cuba has always been home to a wide variety of musical practices, some of which have been embraced by state and commercial institutions, and some of which have not. This tension really exploded over the last two decades as reggaetn became increasingly popular across the country.

Reggaetn was associated with marginalized communities, especially with darker-skinned Cubans from the eastern side of the island.It was viewed disdainfully by some music and institutional elites, who perceived its deep Caribbean roots as foreign, and who pointed to the amatuer status of disenfranchised musicians as proof of the musics artistic deficit. It has been roundly criticized as marginal, vulgar, misogynistic and foreign, and efforts were even made by state institutions to ban the playing of reggaetn in public spaces.

In the 11-J protests, thousands of marginalized Cubanspeople who are often invisible in state discoursetook to the streets. So the fact that a reggaetn song, Patria y Vida, became the anthem for the protests is very significant.

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The role of music in Cuban protests | CU Boulder Today - CU Boulder Today

One of the pipe dreams the international diplomatic community has held for a number of years is that the Taliban has changed its core values since it began actively negotiating with Western nations. Nearly two months into the new reign of fear by the Taliban terrorist network in Kabul, that myth has been exposed in many ways.

It has now been 26 days since the Taliban banned girls from secondary education. They continue to stop women teachers from performing their full duties as well. World leaders and Afghans continue to press the Taliban to fully restart education for females, but the Taliban are trying to use this human rights violation as a leverage point to gain international recognition of their illegal assumption of power in Kabul. Some girls have been lucky enough to have access to online teaching and others have seen the return of hidden classrooms, like those necessary under the previous Taliban regime.

As the Taliban/Haqqani regime sorted out its cabinet duties they made promises to the world that they would not hunt down former Islamic Republic government members for retribution. While the most visible and senior people have mostly been safe, many others have not. Especially at-risk are members of the Afghan special operations community. They and their families are being hunted down door-to-door for torture and murder without cause. This follows the ongoing public hunt for former Afghan military pilots and their families. Additionally, the members of the court have been targeted for retribution. The judges and prosecutors that once jailed Taliban members and other terrorists are now being hunted by the freed criminals they put away. Another heavily targeted group of Afghans are the former interpreters that supported the US and other nations, and the families of Afghan-American U.S. servicemembers that still live in Afghanistan. There are hundreds of thousands of at-risk Afghans in the security sector alone.

The world saw the latest mass-terrorism attack occur in Afghanistan during the October 8 suicide bombing of a Shia Mosque in Kunduz killing over 100 people and disfiguring more. This attack is believed to have been done by the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), and they have claimed responsibility. As reports throughout the last few years have shown that there has been no split in the relations between the Taliban, Haqqani, and Al Qaeda terrorist groups, the likelihood of terrorist events decreasing in Afghanistan is not high.

In other parts of the country, the Shia (mostly Hazara) and other non-Sunni Muslim religious groups have been targeted with disappearances, attacks, torture, and forced displacement. Amnesty International is tracking the slowly unfolding, possibly genocidally-intended, murders. In August Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, including a 17-year-old girl, in Afghanistans Daykundi province. In this case there was a connection between the surrender of the victims (some former Afghan security forces) to the Taliban, but this is not the reason for most of the persecution and violent focus on the non-Hanafi Sunni Afghan minorities.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a resolution to install a special rapporteur for human rights. This person and their team of experts will not be installed in Afghanistan until next March, by which time many thousands of abuses will have taken place. Of course, Pakistans Iron Brother China fought other UN nations vigorously to not install any human rights monitoring body in Afghanistan as they seek to exploit the nations resources and continue to support the Pakistani-backed proxy force of terrorists sitting in Kabuls palaces and government buildings.

Human rights under the Taliban regime have been stained by atrocities in the past and so far, no indication of change has been seen.

Excerpt from:

Taliban Haven't Changed: Reality Check for Negotiations to End Oppression of Afghans - ClearanceJobs

Two Uyghur women walk through a security entrance to a bazaar in Hotan, a city in China's Xinjiang region. (Greg Baker / AFP via Getty Images)

Where is your ID! the police contractor yelled at me in Uyghur. I looked up in surprise. I had been avoiding eye contact, trying to attract as little attention as possible. In April 2018, in the tourist areas of Kashgarwhere there were checkpoints every 200 yardscontractors usually recognized a bespectacled white person as a foreigner. But over the years that I had lived and worked as an anthropologist in Xinjiang, a region in Northwest China, I had often been mistaken for a Uyghur.

I dont have a local ID. Im a foreigner. I only have a passport, I responded in Mandarin. At another checkpoint, a Uyghur police contractor had advised me to stop speaking Uyghur if I didnt want to raise suspicion. So I had adopted the tactic of only speaking or writing Chinese at checkpoints.

Oh! Well, show me your passport then, he said, switching to Mandarin, his tones nearly as flat and imprecise as my own. He leafed through my passport, pausing at my picture. Thats a big beard, he commented. Thats the style of a lot of young people in my hometown in the United States, I responded. In 2014, the Religion Section of Xinjiangs United Front Work Department had identified beards on men under the age of 55 as a possible sign of religious extremism and terrorism.

Eventually, a Han man, a real police officer who was allowed to carry a gun, showed up. He asked me about my background, why I was traveling, how I learned Chinese. He said they had looked me up in the system, so they knew all about me.

Despite this, I was allowed to leave. Unlike so many people I knew, I was not held in a camp or assigned a low-wage factory job. My data had been harvested, but I had the protection of my US passport to protect my property and labor from being legally stolen. In a general sense, just by living within a global capitalist economy and the imperial histories that built it, I was implicated in the system of control and reeducation that I was studying. The digitization of social life, the Global War on Terror, and the drive for low-cost commodities are facts of life almost everywhere. But, as a protected citizen, the fear I felt was a momentary glimpse of the surveillance systems that dominated the lives of the Uyghurs I saw at the checkpoints. For them, there was no way out.

Over the past few years, I have developed a conceptual framing that helps me explain the political and economic forces at work in the checkpoints, camps, and factories of Northwest China. I call the concept terror capitalisma type of capitalist frontier-making that exploits the perceived threat of ethnic and racial differences to generate new forms of capital accumulation and state power. Building new frontiers of capitalism means turning things that were previously outside of the marketplace into commodities. In the past, this has involved mining natural resources, turning the lands of the colonized into property, and forcing racialized people to work for low wages or no payment at all as part of industrial production. In the contemporary moment, when breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are transforming human existence, previously uncommodified aspects of social lifelike behavioral and biometric dataare being used to create products that can measure and predict things like efficiency, desire, and criminality. This fourth industrial revolution of technology-assisted data assessment highlights the pivotal role of military-industrial complexes in building technological innovation and national economies from China, United States, Israel, and elsewhere, and the way governments and corporations adapt military and policing tools to expand tech industries into new domains of life. Across the world, states and companies use information infrastructuredigital forensics tools, biometric checkpoints, and image-recognition systemsto control people and manipulate the workforce.

Terror capitalism links technological oppression to the global economy. The first form of capital that is created beyond the intellectual property inherent in systems of surveillance and policing infrastructure is data. Defining Xinjiang as a war zone has created a data-intensive environment that allows some of Chinas largest private and state-managed technology companies to develop new tools in digital forensics, image and face recognition, and language recognition. From face portraits to iris scans to voice signatures to digital histories, the companies are continuously collecting patterned data from the 15 million Muslims in the region. This system mirrors and expands on data-harvesting done by private corporations in Europe and North America, from Google to Palantir, but in the case of the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim populations in Northwest China, the tacit consumer consent and legal rights available to protected citizens in the West have been stripped away. Current Issue

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The second form of capital is in the unfree human labor that is facilitated by the digital enclosure system. Since 2018, Xinjiangs regional development authority has been describing the camp and reeducation system as a carrier of the economy, on the same scale as oil, natural gas, cotton, and tomato resources that had drawn Han Chinese settlers to the region in the 1990s. The internment camps hold hundreds of thousands of detainees in a camp-to-factory pipeline. A surveillance systemsmartphone tracking, checkpoints, face scans, and so onhold Uyghurs and Kazakhs in place, ensuring a docile workforce. Importantly, much of what is produced in this system is destined for export. This is why it is important to understand Uyghur coerced labor as a frontier of global capitalism.

Terror capitalism uses War on Terror rhetoric to justify state and private capital investment in data- and labor-intensive industries and produce detainable workers. The Chinese government used technological innovation to detect and produce an imagined Uyghur and Kazakh threatan entire population of hundreds of thousands of terrorists in hiding, allowing the state and its Han citizens to legally appropriate their land and labor. In an ethnography called Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City, I elaborate on the way colonial projects act as frontiers of capitalist expansion, arguing that colonialism and capitalism are co-constitutive. In a second nonfiction book titled In the Camps: Chinas High-Tech Penal Colony, I examine how the systems that Uyghurs confront are linked to surveillance and how these systems open up the labor of unprotected populations to intensified forms of exploitation.

It was not until the 1990s, as China developed a market economy oriented to global capitalism, that the Uyghur majority areas of southern Xinjiangwhere Uyghurs represented more than 90 percent of the populationbecame the target of an internal settler colonial project. While previously the state had established isolated settler colonies in the northern part of the region, it was only when global market and the state incentivized mass migration into Uyghur majority areas that the major features of a settler colonydispossession of Uyghur land and way of life, domination of Uyghur institutions such as the mosque, schools, and banks, and settler occupationbegan to emerge. It was during this period that the oil and natural gas reserves of the region became the focus of profit-oriented state-owned or -managed corporations. Since then, Xinjiang has become the source of around 20 percent of Chinas oil and natural gas. It has an even higher percentage of Chinas coal reserves and now produces around 20 percent of the worlds cotton and tomatoes. Uyghur scholars working within the Chinese academy have shown that as settlers began to take over local governments they created highly exploitative systems of tenant farmingwhich required Uyghur farmers to grow particular crops, sell them to state-arranged buyers, and pay exorbitant feesand forced Uyghurs to migrate from rural areas to urban centers in search of work. All of this led to wide-scale under-employment among Uyghurs.

In 2009, following a lynching of two Uyghur workers at a factory in eastern China, these tensions escalated to large-scale Uyghur street protests, police violence, and rioting in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. The local authorities responded with militarized hard strike campaigns across the region. At the same time, land seizures increased across southern Xinjiang as the state incentivized Han settlement. In late 2013 and early 2014, Uyghur civilians violently attacked Han civilians in Beijing, Kunming, and Urumqi. In response to these attacks, state authorities began to describe Muslim practices such as regular mosque attendance and fasting during Ramadan as signs of the spreading mental illness of religious extremism. A Peoples War on Terror in effect became a program to prevent Uyghurs from being Muslim and, to a certain extent, from being Uyghur.Related Articles

The state agencies outsourced authority to private companies and police contractors and built hundreds of massive internment camps. Private industrialists and Han settlers, who had benefited from the natural resource economy, were mobilized through a dramatic increase in public-private partnerships to create a surveillance industry at the cutting edge of contemporary technological systems. In 2016 and 2017, the state invested an estimated $7.2 billion in the Xinjiang information security industry as part of an increase of over 90 percent in public security spending. Over the same years, the state awarded an estimated $65 billion in private contracts to build infrastructure and $160 billion more to government entities in the regionan increase of nearly 50 percent. The majority of this spending increase was to build detention facilities, but it also was used to construct a grid of 9,000 facial-recognition checkpoints and hire more than 60,000 low-level grid-workerswho were given devices to scan the smart phones of Muslims for micro-clues of past religious and political behavior.

As University of Sydney scholar David Brophy has demonstrated, the system established in the region was grounded in the same counterterrorism strategies practiced by governments across the world, especially those of Israel and the United States. Chief among these influences was counter-insurgency theory or COIN. This dominant form of military and policing science is premised on three elements: full-spectrum intelligence of the entire population, fracturing the social network of those identified as insurgents, and winning the hearts and minds of the remaining population. Soon after the Petraeus Doctrine of COIN was introduced in Afghanistan and Iraq in the late 2000s, policing and military theorists in China began to think about how it could be applied in their country. They also started to consider how so-called preventive policing programs in Europe and North Americaoften called Countering Violent Extremism or CVEcould be used among Chinese Muslim populations. As scholars of critical terrorism studies such as Arun Kundnani have shown, these programs rely on the false idea that pious Islamic practice leads to violent action. In effect, COIN and CVE institutionalizes Islamophobia.

As I show in a recent article, in police academies across China and in Xinjiang in particular, theorists and state authorities began to combine both of these models and apply them to Chinese counterterrorism strategy. In China, counterterrorism really applies only to Turkic Muslims and primarily to Uyghurs. The Xinjiang Public Security Bureau adopted these frameworks to systematize intelligence operations and their assessments of the population. Even the use of camps mimics and expands on the way the US military reinvented the category of the detainee in Iraq and the pre-criminal spaces created by CVE programs.

Aside from its scale, what makes the camp system in Xinjiang different is the way it emphasizes thought reform. Here they are building on a Maoist legacy of reeducation camps. In the case of Iraq, winning the hearts and minds of the nation that the US armed forces had just destroyed and occupied was less about installing an American settler colony and more about installing a US franchise government that would protect the interests of US capital. As such, it was instituted by leaders drawn from the Iraqi population but with US military support. In contrast, in Xinjiang there is both a punitive and transformational aspect to the program, and it is imposed and managed by non-Muslim state authorities and their settler proxies.

What I have described so far is the way private technology companies expand their market share and harvest data in the service of state power and their own economic interests. But how do such systems of control work to extend capital accumulation in relation to labor?

Since 2017, factory owners from cities across Eastern China have arrived in Xinjiang to take advantage of newly built industrial parks associated with a reeducation camp system and the cheap labor and subsidies that accompany them. By relocating part of their manufacturing base to Xinjiang, factory owners ensure that the political standing of their businesses will be protected by state authorities in their home provinces, while at the same time they can safely expand their production with the assistance of camps and security systems. Xinjiang is home to around 85 percent of Chinese cotton, and is where the state hopes to relocate around 10 percent of garment-manufacturing jobs.

Most of the world of these workers takes place inside the factory complex. Like migrant workers in other parts of China, they are housed in the same compound as the production site. The labor scholars Pun Ngai and Chris Smith have described such an arrangement as a dormitory labor regime. Their work shows that this allows factory owners to more easily demand overtime and weekend work and garnish wages to compensate for housing costs. The same is true in the reeducation labor regime in Northwest China, but Uyghur and Kazakh workers are also prevented from leaving by surveillance systems, material barriers, and the threat of internment. Inside the factories, camera systems, tracking devices, and minders monitor the workersapplying the logics of smart factory and warehouse systems used around the world. The surveillance infrastructure in the factories means that all aspects of their lives are monitored. Factory authorities decide if and when workers can go to the toilet, what food they eat, if they are permitted to carry or use phones, what language they speak, when and how long they work, when and how long they sleep, and even what theyre allowed to do when they are not working.

While the system that is being implemented in Northwest China is unique in terms of its scale and the depth of its systemic cruelty, the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are not the only marginalized groups of people who are being partitioned by surveillance infrastructure and unfree labor systems. In many countries, these new forms of power are consistently aimed at controlling minorities and refugee populations, many of whom are Muslim. In the West Bank, for instance, Israel targets Palestinians with similar forms of infrastructural powercheckpoints, biometric surveillance, and data harvesting.

Over the past several years, I have collaborated with the anthropologist Carolina Sanchez Boe in seeking to understand the parallels and differences between these systems. Sanchez Boe shows that asylum seekers from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia who enter the United States at the southern border are being released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers with GPS monitors attached to their ankles, under an Intensive Supervision and Appearance Program. In a derivation of the no-fly lists used for terrorism suspects, they are placed on watch lists that prevent them from traveling. Increasingly, ICE requires them to submit face scans performed with an app developed by Behavioral Interventions Incorporated, with advanced mapping services provided by Google Maps and data services from Verizon.Related Article

In the United States, the surveillance infrastructures that arose after the attacks of 9/11 push unprotected refugee and immigrant populations into gray zones, at the margins of cities and into low-wage work. In Xinjiang, the goal of the surveillance system is to monitor Uyghurs in order to exploit them, rather than to push them out of public view.

Despite these differences, the reeducation labor system in China and contingent undocumented work in the United States are part of the same continuum of unfreedom. For asylum seekers in the US, the stigma associated with tracking devices is combined with the sense of threat that they feel from not knowing their movements are being tracked and how the data might be used. A Guatemalan asylum seeker told Sanchez Boe that she feared that the digital grillete (the Spanish for shackle) was allowing ICE agents to look at where I meet with other people, to know where undocumented migrants congregate. Three weeks after she said this, ICE conducted one of the largest immigration raids in a decade at a poultry manufacturing plant in Mississippi, arresting 680 workers, leaving their children to come home from school to empty houses. The affidavit of the arrests reveals that federal agents relied on surveillance data from GPS monitors strapped on the ankles of Latin American women who had found work at the factory.

The simultaneous occurrence of racialized surveillance and exploitation in Mississippi and Xinjiang reminds me of an older moment in racialized global capitalism. The historian Jason Moore once wrote that behind Manchester stands Mississippi, noting that what made Manchester the heart of global textile manufacturing in the 19th century were the enslaved people in Mississippi picking cotton. Perhaps, under conditions of terror capitalism, we might say that behind Xinjiang stands Mississippi.

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How Terror Capitalism Links Uyghur Oppression to the Global Economy - The Nation

Mayor Andy Beerman and his challenger, Park City Councilor Nann Worel, appeared during a recent candidate forum at the Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library, covering a range of topics that are seen as the keys to the City Hall election this year.

At the outset of the event, and another one focused on the Park City Council election, though, a statement was read to the crowd that was notable in a community where social equity is one of the priorities of leaders like Beerman and Worel.

Diego Zegarra, an activist and the Park City Community Foundation vice president of equity and impact, delivered what is known as a land acknowledgment statement, something that is designed to highlight the history of the American Indians who inhabited the continent prior to the arrival of Europeans in the New World. The event was held on Oct. 11, which was Columbus Day and a day marked by some as Indigenous Peoples Day.

The statement by Zegarra, as prepared for delivery, read: Today, on Indigenous Peoples Day, we sit on the traditional and stolen homelands of the Ute and Eastern Shoshone who are the original stewards of the land since time immemorial. It is an individual and institutional responsibility to recognize the People, culture, and history from which we all benefit. Consistent with our commitment to equity and allyship it is important to be proactive in broadening awareness, act against systems of oppression, and to remember we are on Indigenous Peoples land.

Zegarra is a key figure in Park Citys broad social equity efforts, with his role at the foundation putting him in a position of influence.

Social equity is among the priorities at City Hall, and the municipal government and the foundation are seen as having close ties. The social equity efforts are designed to ensure Park City welcomes people of various races, ages, genders and socioeconomic status, among others. There was rising concern in the years after the recession of more than a decade ago about a loss of community diversity.

Latinos are the only minority inside Park City in significant numbers. The U.S. Census Bureau in 2019 estimated just 0.3% of the Park City population was American Indian or Alaskan native. American Indian issues are only occasionally put to the elected officials in Park City, such as discussions about marking Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day in the community.

The two mayoral candidates provided prepared statements regarding the land acknowledgment in response to an inquiry by The Park Record.

Beermans statement: I was happy we opened the PCCB_PCCF candidate forum with a land acknowledgement. This was especially poignant on Indigenous Peoples Day. We are learning the importance of small gestures, which can serve as positive beacons to those that may feel marginalized. Whether its raising a pride flag, providing gender neutral bathrooms, or a land acknowledgement, these actions show we are listening, acknowledge our history of inequity, and invite new voices to the conversation.

Worels statement: Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I was surrounded by the art, culture and stories of the First Nations. I have deep respect for those that came before us as well as horror and shame for the way their land was taken from them by colonizers. Land acknowledgments help us understand the longstanding history of the land we call home, the ongoing rights of First Nations, and a more equitable future on the land we are privileged to share with our Indigenous neighbors. The acknowledgement of the Eastern Shoshone and Ute offered by Diego Zegarra was important on Indigenous Peoples Day, particularly as we went on in the mayoral debate that followed to discuss issues related to social equity. It is not possible to root change anywhere other than in a bed of acknowledgment, and what better place for us to begin as Parkites than with the dirt we stand on.

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Park City political events held on 'traditional and stolen homelands' of American Indians - The Park Record

The University of Bristol has sacked political sociology Professor David Miller with immediate effect, primarily on the basis of allegations that his criticisms of US militarism and Israels oppression of the Palestinian people were offensive.

This dangerous attack on freedom of speech and academic freedom follows a vicious, two-year-long campaign for his dismissal by pro-Zionist lobby groups and MPs.

The university admitted that a Queens Counsel (QC) lawyer had found that the comments Miller allegedly made did not constitute unlawful speech. It therefore sought to justify its decision by claiming that Millers dismissal was prompted by its duty of care to students and the wider community, following a disciplinary hearing that concluded he did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff.

Such sanctimonious statements express the wholesale erosion of democratic principles and mechanisms within academia and British capitalist society, including the protection of freedom of expression in higher education institutions in the 1986 Education Act.

The universities routinely ignore the duty of care to their students as they herd them back to the campuses and in-person learning even as cases of COVID-19 among young people continue to rise.

If the right to criticise the policies and actions of Israel or any other ally of Washington and London contravenes the duty of care to students and the wider community, what other views can be outlawed and suppressed? Opposition to policies restricting the spread of the coronavirus? Or to imperialist war? Criticism and questioning of the demonization of Muslims and migrants? Or the war on terrorism and humanitarian intervention pretexts used to justify predatory military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere based on lies?

Professor Miller is well known for his research on Islamophobia, state and corporate lobbying, propaganda and spin. He founded and directed the non-profit company Public Interest Investigations that runs Spinwatch and Powerbase and has co-authored and edited books including Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief; What is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State; The Israel Lobby and the European Union; and The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Giving Peace a Chance?

Miller has received support from hundreds of academics at the University of Bristol and elsewhere and from students in the UK and internationally, as well as from Jews and Muslims. He has said he will challenge the decision through the universitys procedures and, if unsuccessful, will take the case to an employment tribunal.

The sacking of such a senior academic is aimed at intimidating the political left and overturning basic democratic rights. It is one expression of the poisonous and repressive atmosphere whipped up to silence opposition to British preparations for potentially catastrophic US-led wars against China or other perceived threats to Washingtons global hegemony. Millers case follows similar tactics used against other academics: Joseph Massad, Steven Salaita, Cornel West, Marc Lamont Hill, Sami al-Arian and Norman Finkelstein in the US, as well as Tim Anderson in Australia and Farid Hafez in Austria.

Professor Millers research earned him the hatred of the pro-Israel lobby, the most ardent militarists in both the Conservative and Labour Parties, and the Israeli government, which after Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015 whipped up a hysterical campaign accusing him and other left-wing members of anti-Semitism. A Blairite cabal, with links to Israeli lobby groups such as the Community Security Trust (CST) and the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), justified the mass expulsion of Corbyns supporters and then Corbyn himself using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

The IHRA definition equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, most notoriously in its list of examples of anti-Semitism that include describing the establishment of Israel as a racist endeavour. Israels own nation-state law passed in 2018 defines Israel as a nation-state for the Jews alone, declaring, The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) raised the alarm over the significance of this right-wing campaign, writing in 2016, A political amalgam has been established that equates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, with the aim of charging the entire left with this crimeon the basis that all Jews identify with the state of Israel. Any criticism of the historical actions of the Zionist movement, and, above all, any equation of Israels brutal treatment of Palestinians with that suffered by Jews under fascism, is outlawed.

In subsequent articles, the WSWS warned that the strident accusations of anti-Semitism are aimed at shifting the domestic and foreign policy not just of Labour, but of the entire British political establishment sharply to the right.

This right-wing offensive had no historical legitimacy or popular support. It was the spearhead for a state-orchestrated conspiracy, led by the Blairites acting with the Conservative Party, the media, the military and intelligence establishment and the Israel lobby. This cabal sought to extend their campaign to local authorities and the universities with same methods. Last year, then Conservative Education Secretary Gavin Williamson wrote to the universities threatening to withhold funding if they failed to adopt the IHRA definition.

The campaign to force the university to sack Miller began in 2019 after he cited the Zionist movement as one of five sources of Islamophobia in a lecture on the subject and showed a diagram linking various Jewish organisations in Britain to Zionist lobbying. The Community Security Trust lobbied Bristol to censor him, while the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) pushed to have Miller fired. The universitys Jewish Students Society (JSoc) claimed that Millers identification of Israeli lobbying efforts was akin to the anti-Semitic trope that Jews wield a covert influence on political affairs. The university initially rejected their complaint on the basis that his lecture could not be considered as anti-Semitic because it did not contain any material that was hostile to Jews.

JSoc launched a campaign claiming they felt unsafe and unprotected on campus. The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Board of Deputies and Rupert Murdochs Times newspaper also leapt into the fray, while 100 parliamentarians wrote to the university accusing the professor of inciting hatred against Jewish students and anti-Semitic conspiracy fantasy. The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) began a legal suit against the university, claiming it had both breached its duty of care to its students and was liable in its own right, for unlawful conduct in breach of the Equality Act.

In March, the university announced that it had launched the investigation that has now concocted a flimsy pretext for Millers sacking.

That the anti-Semitism witch-hunt of the left has reached such an advanced stage is devastating proof of how Corbyns political cowardice has demobilised the working class and young people and given the right-wing its head. The WSWS explained how Corbyn refused his popular mandate to drive the Blairites from the Labour Party and instead used all his political authority among workers to preserve the control of the right-wing, opposing all popular moves to expel them while insisting on party unity.

It was this which enabled the Blairites to pursue their plans to remove the Corbynites, centred on the anti-Semitism witch-hunting of his leading allies, including former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, black Jewish activist Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson MP, and countless rank-and-file members. They then retook control of the party following the electoral disaster of December 2019.

The defence of fundamental democratic rights necessitates the independent mobilisation of the working class and young people, in opposition to social inequality and the drive to war. The demand must be raised for the reinstatement of Professor Miller and a halt to all attacks on academic and intellectual freedom.

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University of Bristol sacks Professor David Miller for criticising US militarism and Israel's oppression of the Palestinians - WSWS