Category Archives: National Vanguard

Dec 4th 2021

The War of Jenkins Ear. By Robert Gaudi. Pegasus Books; 408 pages; $29.95 and 22

IT SOUNDS MORE like a bad visit to the otolaryngologist than an important conflict between empires. The incident that gave the War of Jenkins Ear its name occurred in 1731, when a Spanish coastguard commander mutilated the captain of a British privateer suspected of smuggling in the Caribbean. Jenkins severed appendage was preserved in a bottle and presented to King George II of Britain as proof of Spanish barbarity. The ensuing conflict lasted from 1739 to 1742.

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Yet as Robert Gaudi writes in his new history, the wars causes went beyond a single outrage. Tension had simmered over a dispute about fees for Britains contract to provide slaves to the Spanish colonies. British ships ran contraband to and from the West Indies in defiance of bilateral agreements. And then there was the strange case of the Italian castrato opera star, whom King Felipe V of Spain whisked from London and made his personal divo in Madrid. One journal summed up the sentiment in Britain: What are the taking of a few Ships, and the cutting off the Ears of the Masters of our Merchantmen, to the loss of our dear, dear Farinello?

The war proved disastrous for Britain. It assembled an armada and intended to invade the Spanish ports at Cartagena (now in Colombia), and Santiago, Cuba. The Cartagena operation was a fiasco, bogged down by tropical weather, mosquito-borne disease and indecisive leadership. Bad planning and squabbling commanders meant that the Santiago campaign was over before it could even begin. Spain suffered defeats of its own, failing to take Georgia in the North American colonies. Led by James Oglethorpe, the British joined Native Americans and used ambushes to repel the larger Spanish force.

Among the engagements at sea was an action at Porto Bello, Panama, which yielded one of Britains few victories. Mr Gaudi, though, is less interested in the detailed narration of naval fracases than in sketching some of the vivid characters who fought them. The British succeeded at Porto Bello largely because of Admiral Edward Vernon, boisterous and bellicose, who became an instant national hero. (The song Rule, Britannia! was written in the afterglow of his achievement.) On the Spanish side was the pugnacious Don Blas, famous after an earlier incident in which, when he was only 15, his leg was amputated in the heat of battle.

Why does this forgotten war matter now? For two reasons, suggests Mr Gaudi. First, a different result could have changed the fate of North America. Had the Spanish invasion of Georgia succeeded, he speculates, Spain and not Britain might have become the dominant imperial force on the continent. Second, the war nurtured the resentment of Britain that ultimately led to the American revolution. The British recruited 3,000 Americans to fight in the Cartagena campaign, but held them back from the vanguard out of mistrust and fear of desertion.

The most heroic moment in the war came at the end, and softened the sting of Britains dismal showing. In an effort to attack Spanish possessions from the west, Britain had sent a fleet across the Pacific in 1740. Of the 1,600 men who set out, only 188 survived. But the flagship, Centurion, engaged and captured one of the fabled Manila galleons near the Philippines in June 1743. The prize was said to be so loaded with gold and gems that it took 32 wagons to unload it on the docks of London. That was some consolation for the king.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Message in a bottle"

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The forgotten importance of the War of Jenkins' Ear - The Economist

Seventy years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. published his keening lament for American higher education, God and Man at Yale. Chagrin pervaded GAMAY, as Buckley later branded the book, but it also stung in a satisfying waya high-handed swat at the Ivy League by a debonair twerp whod only recently graduated. GAMAY has since inspired seven decades of tribute acts by more and less debonair conservatives.

Then, just this month, the college administrator and Shakespeare scholar Pano Kanelos announced that he and a cadre of renegade ideologues are starting a school in Texas expressly to exorcise from academia the nameless ghosts that have spooked conservatives since GAMAY. The casting call seems to be for self-styled outlaws with lively online newsletters or massive fortunes, along with credible claims to having been canceled.

Read: The attack on Yale

Buckley wouldnt have qualified. He achieved blockbuster success, first with GAMAY, then with some 60 other books; his long-running TV show, Firing Line; and National Review, which he founded in 1955. He was popular with the liberals of his caste, who loved to debate him (many won; see: James Baldwin). Its hard to imagine he ever knew the anguish of so much as a Maidstone Club snubbing. Nor would he, in 1951, have stood with those who opposed diversity, political correctness, or wokeness, if only because the Yale of his time was almost uniformly white and eminently male, an institution that wouldnt admit substantial numbers of Black men for another 15 years and women for another 20. The perceived persecution of white men and commitment to feminism and anti-racism that addle Buckleys intellectual offspring didnt touch him in the 1940s, as there were no other races or sexes at Yale to offend, mistreat, envy, or fear.

I reread GAMAY this fall to try to understand why American universities so reliably disappoint conservatives, decade after decade after decade. Calling higher education possibly the most fractured institution in broken America, Kanelos, in his manifesto for the University of Austin (UATX), slags off every other college as a finishing school. Historians will study how we arrived at this tragic pass, he concludes. And though its presumably premature to play historian to the tragic pass of November 2021, I figured Kaneloss tragic pass would bear at least a passing resemblance to the numberless tragic passes at colleges confronted by reactionaries before him. I thought that GAMAY would contain, if not the first-ever tragic passthe Eden of tragic passesat least a kernel of the unceasing heartbreak delivered to so many right-wing college graduates by colleges. I imagined Id find a pedagogic program in Buckleys book that would speak to Kanelos and all the others affronted by the nations finishing schools. I did not.

Buckleys notion of what students and alumni needed from mid-century colleges is nowhere in the literature for the new UATX. Kanelos mentions students in his manifesto only to ticket them for terrorizing conservative faculty. Unlike Buckley, who dabbled in anti-intellectualism, Kanelos is squarely on the side of the professoriate. His concern is for heterodox professors to whom students object; Buckleys concern is for students who object to heterodox professors. Seven decades after GAMAY warned readers that colleges were failing to inculcate orthodoxy in their students, conservatives now fear theyre doing so only too effectively. Theyre just worried its the wrong orthodoxy.

Buckleythe devoutly Roman Catholic, homeschooled polyglot son of a globe-trotting oil wildcatter who grew up largely in Mexico and Paris and learned English in London as a third languagewas just too different from most American college students, conservative and otherwise, then and now, to share an animus with them. His nemeses at college were his own: Yale professors who did not affirm a belief in Jesus Christ as God and SaviourBuckley favored Anglo orthographyand anyone who mentioned the economist John Maynard Keynes.

Buckley seemed sincere in this. Heresy in GAMAY does not describe stock right-wing positions on immigration or trans politics, which are evidently warmly welcomed at UATX. Heresy, to Buckley, meant heresy. Buckley was shocked, he wrote, to find that many on the Yale facultyincluding the Jewish scholars Paul Weiss and Robert Cohenwere not catechizably Christian and willing to go full Nicene from the podium. (Buckley especially worried that caustic asides, such as Weisss statement that Christ was a minor prophet, might shake the Christian faith of Yalies.) Buckley boldly proposed to narrow the existing orthodoxy at Yale, and make sure that Christianity was championed and promulgated on every level and at every opportunity on campus. Its hard to convey just how eccentric a book GAMAY is, but Ill give it a shot.

Read: The conservative war on education that failed

This desire to re-center Christian doctrine in the Yale curriculum is only the first weirdness of GAMAY. In the books second section, Buckley calls out lectures and textbooks in which Keynes (as much a meme as an economist, then as now) gets a hearing he considers too robust. Buckley had no beef with the study of evolutionary biology, which often set off 20th-century Christians, but he was anxious that professorial support for interventionist solutions to economic problems would crush the enterprising spirit of young American men. Buckley thus rejected #Keynes in favor of what he considered the implicit ideology of Gold Rush miners, who, in the words of a Yale dean whom Buckley admired, formed the vanguard of the vast and colonial movement which increased immeasurably the health and strength of the country. This elevation of the 49ers as a Yale beau ideal might be intriguing, except that precious few 19th-century adventurers had been to college. Maybeas some in Silicon Valley have proposedthe best way to create a college for the entrepreneurial vanguard really is to abolish it altogether.

Buckley was just 25 when he wrote GAMAY, and its shot through with underproofed righteousness. Its a delight anyway. In it are traces of the imperiousness that became Buckleys stock in trade. Lockjaw is almost audible in the prose, and of course gall, as Buckley, who at the time lacked all scholarly, political, or literary achievement, staked a claim to a wide intellectual terrain. This time around, GAMAY struck me as not a polemic but a perverse anti-bildungsroman, the story of a young man, utterly unwilling to learn, who sees himself as a native-born executive and his instructors as woefully underperforming employees.

He inspired a legion of successors, mostly college-educated men who made their names denouncing liberal arts as too liberal, including Allan Bloom (University of Chicago, 1949), David Horowitz (Columbia University, 1959), Roger Kimball (Bennington College, 1976), Heather Mac Donald (Yale, 1978), Dinesh DSouza (Dartmouth College, 1983), Peter Thiel (Stanford University, 1989), Jonathan Haidt (University of Pennsylvania, 1992), Mary Katharine Ham (University of Georgia, 2002), Ben Shapiro (UCLA, 2004), and Charlie Kirk (Wheeling High School, 2012). But they are tilting at different windmills. Kanelos cites approvingly Yales recent commitment to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeablea program that would have appalled Buckley, with his bold intention to narrow Yales existing orthodoxy to nothing but the supremely mentionable Christian doctrine.

If conservatives who have Chicken Littled about higher education for 70 years dont share an ideology, what do they share? Easy: career ambitions and superb trolling reflexes. Buckleys prose, as Michael Lee wrote in 2010, was gladiatorial, reflecting a flashy, combative style whose ultimate aim is the creation of inflammatory drama. Reading the work of todays conservatives, or hearing their disquisitions on Fox News, its hard to imagine that the right-wing idiom ever had any other aim.

If Buckleyism failed as a philosophy of education, it succeeded beyond measure as an aesthetic. Inflammatory drama now abounds. We await the historian who will one day comprehensively mourn all the tragic passes. And American colleges truck on. Last year, 46,905 people applied to Yale; only 2,169 were admitted. I looked to the current list of best sellers about higher education to find the latest critiques of college as apocalyptically liberal. But the list was dominated by titles about getting in.

The rest is here:

What Conservative Critics of Higher Education Share - The Atlantic

By Elle Reeve, CNN

A key federal defendant accused of conspiracy over the 2017 Unite the Right rally was forced this week to confront his own explicit calls for violence and who should do the actual fighting in the months before the deadly event unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Christopher Cantwell is among 25 defendants being sued for his role in the gathering that brought together far-right groups and racists for a weekend the main organizer had privately billed as The Battle of Charlottesville.

Cantwell, whos known as the crying Nazi, has tried to make the case that the threat that weekend from counterprotesters, including far-left antifa activists who track White nationalists online and try to disrupt their rallies, justified the White nationalists acts of violence.

But on the stand, Cantwell had to listen to recordings of his own podcast, including one from January 2017 some eight months before the deadly Charlottesville rally in which he discussed Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine people at a Black church in South Carolina.

Roof had no future and so was exactly the kind of person who should be committing acts of mass murder, said Cantwells guest, a guy from the neo-Nazi gossip blog The Daily Stormer. Cantwell agreed: Not everyones going to be a professional propagandist, shall we say. Some of us got to be fucking cannon fodder for the race war.

Plaintiffs in the Charlottesville suit argue the chaos that erupted there was intentional and planned by the defendants in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence. They have presented thousands of pages of evidence private messages, podcasts, chat logs, even an ex-girlfriends testimony detailing how the alt-right anticipated violence and how they approached the critical issue of who among them could be counted on to enact it.

What has become clear over three weeks of trial is that, for all their talk of brotherhood and unifying the White race, some in the White power movement expected others to carry out violence for the sake of their cause and considered those people disposable.

It is perhaps not surprising that a movement that dehumanizes large groups of people would treat its own members with casual cruelty. Still, its one reason theyre turning on each other with spectacular bitterness in court.

So, who exactly was to be that cannon fodder?

The Charlottesville organizers have long said they didnt know James Alex Fields, who murdered Heather Heyer with his car in the chaos after the Unite the Right rally, and that the violence wasnt their fault. But their private communications unearthed by the plaintiffs reveal the White nationalists apparently anticipated violence in Charlottesville, even as they framed it among themselves as self-defense.

The White power movement has long been divided by class, a phenomenon its members call boots vs suits. By 2015, it was also divided along generational lines, which White nationalists referred to as White Nationalism 1.0 versus White Nationalism 2.0.

The 1.0 version associated with the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, poor White Southerners and those less educated and with less internet illiteracy was being pushed aside by the alt-right, which wanted to look younger, wealthier and better educated. White Nationalism 1.0 was a sausage fest, one teenage fascist told me in 2016, using slang for a party that doesnt have enough women. He said he aimed to change that. (He has not.)

Within White power, this debate is referred to as optics. The racist beliefs are largely the same, though the alt-rights misogyny has stunned old-school neo-Nazis, theyve told me.

Alt-right advocates have said in interviews, private messages and public memes they thought they could win over more people by looking clean cut and friendly and by saying racist stuff with ironic detachment, compared to skinheads, whose lack of subtlety they thought turned off the general public.

But as the evidence unfolding in the Charlottesville federal case Sines v. Kessler shows, behind the scenes, the new alt-right had the same affinity for violence: They might have wanted to look classier, but the point was the same.

In May 2017, in his first messages about Unite the Right, its main organizer, Jason Kessler, referred in a group chat to a huge brawl a month earlier between alt-right groups and antifascists, writing: I think we need to have a battle of Berkeley situation in Charlottesville.

During that scrum, Nathan Damigo, now also a defendant in the Charlottesville case, was caught on video punching a woman in the face. Damigo had founded Identity Evropa, which members told me was intended to look like a preppy, aspirational, White nationalist fraternity. Video of the punch became an alt-right meme, and it brought a surge in applications to Identity Evropa, or IE, according to conversations among members presented at the Charlottesville trial by plaintiffs, who are funded by the non-profit Integrity First for America.

This is what Kessler wanted to drum up, but with more groups or, as he said in one a group chat for planning alt-right events, to assemble every motherfucker you can. Kessler wanted to bring together Damigo, Richard Spencer, the Proud Boys and a guy known as Based Stickman for beating people with a stick at a rally, and fight this shit out, according to messages he affirmed at trial were his.

He wanted the Charlottesville event PUBLICIZED so that antifa would show up. They bring everything theyve got and we do too, Kessler said in the same chat.

In fact, Kessler was deeply invested in getting antifa to show up and fight the alt-right. He urged one White power group not to wear guns because it would be too much of a deterrent. If you want a chance to crack some Antifa skulls in self-defense, dont open carry. You will scare the shit out of them and theyll just stand off to the side, Kessler said in a June 2017 Charlottesville planning group chat presented at trial.

He advised more subtle weapons: I recommend you bring picket signposts, shields and other self-defense implements which can be turned from a free speech tool to a self-defense weapon should things turn ugly.

Again, in the same group chat, Kessler returned to optics: Please do not open carry. We want to avoid that optic for both the media and Antifa. We ultimately dont want to scare them from laying hands on us if they cant stand our peaceful demonstration.

The alt-right is a dangerous movement. It feeds on the chaos energy of our unchecked racism bantz, Kessler said in a chatroom in May 2017, closing with the slang for ironic online banter. But in IRL (in real life) activism you have to be more like a civil rights movement for whites.

Kessler continued to say he was happy to fight without the jokes to secure a future for my people. He added: This is war.

When encouraging other White nationalists to post public messages that would goad antifa into fighting them, Kessler said in July in the Charlottesville planning group chat, I want to talk shit but as the event organizer I can only do so much. People need to bullycide them into confronting the alt-right in Charlottesville.

Kessler acknowledged during the trial that he delegated some Unite the Right planning to Matthew Heimbach, who led the Traditionalist Worker Party, a White power group that advertised itself as working-class. Heimbach is now a codefendant.

Kessler asked Heimbach to reach out to two skinhead gangs, the Hammerskins and Blood & Honour Social Club, Heimbach testified. Plaintiffs attorney Karen Dunn repeatedly asked Heimbach if he invited those groups because they were known for violence; he claimed it was to deter violence.

Heimbach testified that anti-fascist counterprotesters would be intimidated by the skinheads, that they would be less likely to want to assault members of the Hammerskins than college students in white polos. That was a reference to the white polos worn by members of Identity Evropa, whose collared-and-khaki uniform became infamous after Charlottesville.

Heimbach testified that he invited other groups to Unite the Right that were also more explicitly extreme or known for street fights, like the National Socialist Movement, whose members have been known to wear swastika armbands and brownshirt uniforms. The group is familiar with violence: In 2006, a member insulted another White power group at a Klan concert, sparking a brawl in which five National Socialist Movement members were beaten by almost 50 skinheads, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported; its 2009 anti-immigration demonstration in Riverside, California, caused a brawl.

Heimbach also said he invited Vanguard America, a fascist group. In July 2017, Heimbach texted Vanguard Americas leader about the National Front, or NF an umbrella group that included his own Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, National Socialist Movement and the League of the South saying, We need plans. The NF has been charged with taking the ground early, so I need to talk to you and get our security leaders talking to one another.

At trial, Dunn asked Heimbach about a July 2017 private message exchange between him and a person he testified was Vanguard Americas security representative for Charlottesville.

Less than a month ahead of the rally, they were anticipating counterprotesters would block their access to the event site, Emancipation Park, and that only the more explicitly extreme hard right groups could secure the site for Unite the Right.

Heimbach: Its really up to us. If we dont take the park, its over before it began.

Vanguard representative: Exactly. And we cant depend on anyone outside of, as Ike (Baker, of League of the South) described it, the hard right. Im trying to get an official stance from IE right now. If they wont assist, I want it on record.

Dunn asked what that meant. Identity Evropa and the Traditionalist Worker Party and other organizations had a fraught relationship that was also very much at odds with one another due to subcultural and class differences, Heimbach said.

But did it mean the hard right could be relied upon to be more violent or aggressive? Dunn asked.

Heimbach again reframed it as a question of self-defense: I would say the discipline and organization of groups such as myself were more reliable to ensure that there wouldnt be violence. We were used to, unfortunately, being attacked by anti-fascists at demonstrations.

Dunn asked again yes or no did it have something to do with violence? Self-defense, yes, Heimbach said.

Dunn: And you didnt think IE would be willing to do that?

Heimbach: No, they were more the boat shoes, bougie types.

What the White nationalists wore and what those outfits communicated were clearly important.

In May 2017, Kessler texted Heimbach that he was concerned that a KKK rally planned for that July in Charlottesville will hurt the overall pro white message, and wondered if they could be convinced to come to Charlottesville in plain clothes, just as hed asked the National Socialist Movement to do. Whatever his class differences with Identity Evropa, Heimbach indicated he saw the value in the optics-friendly preppy look. Lets set the dress code now, khakis and a polo, he texted.

But Heimbachs group was required to wear head-to-toe black, according to a detailed email sent to Traditionalist Worker Party members about uniform requirements for Charlottesville. When asked why those members wore black Dickies-brand work clothes, Heimbach testified, because we are a working-class party, and thats typical working-class attire for factory workers across America.

Dunn then read from Heimbachs August 2020 deposition:

Question: Isnt it true that one of the reasons that you believed your members should wear all black is because black is a good color to hide blood?

Heimbach: Yes. If someone is injured, it isnt a good look if theyre bleeding all over a white polo shirt.

Heimbach has repeatedly expressed frustration at his perception that alt-right leaders like Spencer and Identity Evropa were classist, complaining to me once that when the Traditionalist Worker Party did security at one of Spencers events in 2018 and its members got injured, Heimbach asked Spencer for some money to get his guys some health care. Heimbach said Spencer hung up the phone. Ive asked Spencer about this, and he didnt deny it. After this rally, Spencer quit speaking at colleges, saying, Antifa is winning.

At the Unite the Right trial, a lawyer for Kessler and Identity Evropa, James Kolenich, asked Heimbach if he considered them to be hard right. Heimbach said no. Would your organization have relied on Identity Evropa or Kessler for physical defense at a public event? He said no.

A few days before Unite the Right, the rally had lost its permit. Organizers planned to go to the same park anyway, according to testimony and interviews with CNN. In considering this tactic, Cantwell confirmed at trial that he texted Spencer, Im willing to risk a lot for our cause, including violence and incarceration, but I want to coordinate to make sure its worth it for our cause. Spencer responded, Its worth it. At least to me.

But Spencer did not do any of the fist-fighting. Before Charlottesville, Spencer was the most prominent figure associated with the alt-right, but hed spent much of the previous years publishing books on scientific racism and going to conferences of older racist professors and lawyers like Kevin MacDonald and Sam Dickson.

Once the alt-right wave began to swell in 2015, Spencer became the subject of both fascination and ridicule within the movement for wearing fancy suits and speaking in a fancy way.

Spencer, who is representing himself at the Charlottesville trial, asked Heimbach what hed thought of him back in 2017. Heimbach answered, Kind of always viewed you as a bit of a dandy.

Spencer asked, There was a discussion during your testimony about relying on people at this rally. Could you rely on me? Heimbach said no.

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The Unite the Right trial is exposing the chasm between who plans White nationalism's battles and who does the fighting - ABC17News.com

The National Assembly is expected to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of a House of Representatives correspondent of the Vanguard Newspaper, Tordue Salem, as questions continued to be raised over the accounts of the police on the incident.

The House of Representatives Press Corps has written to the leadership of the House of Representatives to call for an independent inquiry when the lawmakers resume plenary on Tuesday.

Also, the Minority caucus of the House of Representatives, in a statement issued on November 13 by its leader, Ndudi Elumelu, had urged the police to leave no stone unturned in addressing all conflicting issues related to the disappearance and death of the journalist.

Mr Salem was last seen alive in Area 8 in Garki area of Abuja on October 13.

Twenty-nine days after he was declared missing, a report that triggered intense media coverage, the police announced that his body had been found in the mortuary of Wuse General Hospital, Abuja, saying it had been deposited at the facility after his death in a hit and run accident on the night of his disappearance.

The spokesperson of the police, Frank Mba, later at a press conference paraded one Clement Itoro, who claimed to be the driver that fatally knocked down Mr Salem.

Mr Itoro said at the event that after knocking down Mr Salem, he reported himself to the police at a checkpoint but was not detained.

According to Mr Itoro, the accident happened close to the Federal Ministry of Works headquarters in the Mabushi area of the Abuja metropolis.

The person ran into me, I knocked down the person, and I moved on. The reason why I did not stop in that place, they have attacked me before that same place, it is on my phone that same month, Mr Itoro said.

So I turned around that place where they had that checking point to report that I knocked down someone. I talked to the police, afterwards, I went to park my car because my vehicle was damaged, he said.

Mr Mba also said three identity cards, including a National Assembly Temporary ID card, Vanguard Newspaper ID card and Nigeria Union of Journalists ID card, were found on the body.

Curiously, however, despite the three identification materials, the hospital did not contact any of the organisations that issued them to report the death of Mr Salem. This was also in spite of widespread reportage of his disappearance.

Family disputes identification

The family of Mr Salem, which was not represented at the press conference addressed by Mr Mba, later contradicted the police claim that the family members had identified the body.

On Monday, Jeffery Kuraun, the brother-in-law of Mr Salem, said the family was yet to confirm the identity of the body.

Mr Karaun, who spoke on behalf of the family when the House of Representatives Press Corps paid a condolence visit to the family, said he only saw the body for a few minutes before the press briefing by Mr Mba.

He said he was unable to ascertain if the body was that of Mr Salem.

The unfortunate thing was that I was trying to identify the body while there was a briefing in which the police announced that the family had positively identified the body. That was the statement. I am still saying it, I am sorry, the body I saw, I cannot say if it is 100 per cent Tordue. Yes, the frame looked like him.

His legs are completely gone, twisted and messed up. He was a tall guy, but I did not see that. So I was trying to look at the face. Is it him? I just need answers. Luckily, I called him (Mr Mba) to ask, what next? We are looking for an opportunity for the family to have the body.

Tordue does not shave clean, that person I saw shaved clean. Maybe he shaved my wife has a saloon that is where he shaved. We have questions, and I have contacted the police, they said they will address all these issues. I am grateful and hoping all will be addressed.

Mr Karaun also faulted Vanguard Newspaper for breaking the news of Mr Salems death without informing the family.

I said why is Vanguard in a hurry? Yes, I criticised it. I am not a journalist and I have no experience, but I thought that because they have our contact, it would be better to put a call through. You know what, I have bad news, and we are going to publish it. We would have prepared our minds.

Mr Salems sister, Elizabeth Karaun, could not contain her emotions during the condolence visit. While demanding justice, she said she had been unable to sleep or eat since the news of his death.

When I sleep, I see Tordue I cant sleep. He is telling me he wants justice. Please, you guys are journalists look at his daughter. Please help us get justice. The real killers, they should come out.

Because when they were investigating this thing, I got two conflicting reports. IRT was telling me something else, SWAT or SARS was telling something else, two conflicted stories. People are calling me in my village. They dont believe that story.

There is a video that is circulating that Tordue was packed in a bag. The body in the mortuary, down is burnt. I dont eat, because anytime they give me food, I tell them that it is like they have butchered my brother and given me to eat. I want justice. I dont believe anything that was shown to us on that television.

Mr Mba, the police spokesperson, did not pick calls placed to his phone number or respond to a text message sent to him.

Efforts to find missing Mr Salem

After Mr Salem was declared missing on October 13, his family members and journalist colleagues launched a campaign for his rescue, with the initial suspicion being that he had been kidnapped.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the family only checked the Garki General Hospital, acting on an alleged information from the police that Mr Salem was last seen around Area 8 in Garki.

When asked by this reporter why the family did not check all the hospitals in the city, Mr Karaun said that the family was expecting him to return, therefore, it did not occur to anyone to check the mortuaries.

A dive into Mr Salems social media

Prior to his disappearance in October, most contents of Mr Salems Facebook account relate to the governorship campaign of his in-law, Jeffery Karaun, and posts in support of the federal government.

Mr Karaun appears to be nursing the ambition of contesting for the Benue State governorship election in 2023 under the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Press corps turn to National Assembly for an independent inquiry

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Press Corps, Grace Ike, informed PREMIUM TIMES that the corps has written to the leadership of the House of Representatives to move a motion on Tuesday for an independent inquiry into the issue.

Ms Ike said, like most Nigerians, the corps was not buying the hit and run story.

Questions for police

The alleged hit and run driver, Mr Itoro, had claimed that he reported himself to police officers at a checkpoint after the accident. But the police did not identify the officers or disclose what action they took after the report?

Mr Mba claimed that three ID cards were found on Mr Salems body but also did not explain why it took the police almost a month to discover this?

The family of Mr Tordue said the body at the mortuary was crushed from the thighs down and burnt but the police have not clarified if and why this was the case.

Not much has also been disclosed about the alleged hit and run driver, Mr Itoro. Who is he? What does he do for a living and where does he live? Does he have a previous case with the police or a criminal record?

An independent inquiry will provide answers to these and more questions.

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Tordue Salem: Journalists ask National Assembly to order independent inquiry into death of missing reporter - Premium Times

Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabis Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT), yesterday announced that the emirate plans to create two new museums in addition to the Frank Gehrydesigned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Norman Fosterdesigned Zayed National Museum, both of which are slated for completion by 2025, The Art Newspaper reports. Al Mubarak revealed the news November 17 at the preview of Abu Dhabi Art 2021.

Though he offered few details, Al Mubarak confirmed that the new institutions were already under construction and that they differ from two earlier planned projects, respectively designed by Tadao Ando and the late Zaha Hadid, that were originally planned for the Saadiyat cultural district before being scuttled. Abu Dhabi has been under lockdown for much of the past two years, during which time, Al Mubarak said, the emirate made a very clear and conscious decision to invest in culture, and investing in culture does not just mean buildings. Were investing in infrastructure, both soft and hardwhether its institutions, music programs, or school curricula.

The new museums will join the already completed Jean Nouveldesigned Louvre Abu Dhabi on Saaidayat Island. To date, construction of all three known museumsthe Louvre, the Guggenheim, and the Zayedhas been fraught. However, the region is poised to enjoy a global shift away from Western-centric collecting; additionally, Abu Dhabi has worked to address its reputation as an expensive and socially conservative emirate that does not freely offer visas to artists.

We will always be involved in projects of scale, but we are also in a position to incentivize and subsidize different artists and create opportunities for them here, not just from the UAE but regional artists, from Lebanon or Jordan, noted Al Khalifa (eliding the fact that Abu Dhabi recently announced a halt to visas for Lebanese nationals). Were organizing creative visas, golden visas [visas unattached to employment], creating space for artists in residence. We are involved at every levelwere even in discussion with developers about an affordable residential product to help these artists come set up in Abu Dhabi.

Read more:

Abu Dhabi to Welcome Two New Museums in Addition to Guggenheim and Zayed - Artforum

ByAndrew Myers

It may be hard to imagine now, but there was once serious debate about whether families or schools played a more important role in a student's education. Today, most agree that families and schools share that responsibility. One of the key proponents of that intellectual evolution is sociologist Joyce Epstein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and founder of the National Network of Partnership Schools, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall.

Epstein began her research in the early 1980s, at a time when, as she recalls, academics across the country had spent over a decade arguing about the question.

NNPS traces its roots to the famous Coleman Report, written in 1966 by Johns Hopkins sociologist James Coleman and his colleagues. Coleman conducted the first large, national study of the educational conditions in the U.S., and the equality of educational opportunities in schools for students with diverse backgrounds. Among its more provocative findings, the report revealed that the family had the most important role in a child's academic achievement, regardless of family background. In academia, this inspired debates, new studies, and many publications about whether the finding was true and how to better measure and understand the effects.

"It was, indeed, a social fact that when families are engaged in their children's education, regardless of background, their children do better in school," Epstein says.

But that fact hides two unacceptable inequalities, she cautions: Not all families are welcomed by schools as partners in education, and as a result, not all children benefit from family support for education. "I thought researchers were asking the wrong question," Epstein says. "It wasn't a contest at all. Both home and school are crucial for student achievement and well-being, and they need to work together."

So, she changed the research question, asking instead, if families are so important to their children's education, how can all schools engage all families in ways that contribute to student success?

Starting in the early 1980s, Epstein and her colleagues planned a programmatic research agenda that devoted 15 years to exploring increasingly detailed connections between schools and families, and their influence on students' education. Epstein developed a theory of "overlapping spheres of influence" to explain the results of their studies. When she founded NNPS and the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships in 1996, enough research by many scholars confirmed that school, family, and community partnerships were components of good school organization, and promoted greater equity in education.

Joyce Epstein

Director, NNPS

In 2001, Epstein was joined by Steven Sheldon, an educational psychologist, to conduct research and help translate the theory and research results for use in practice. Sheldon, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, remains a key figure in the center and NNPS, and a champion of research, development, and dissemination on family and school engagement.

"The National Network of Partnership Schools is not just about applying research in practice," Sheldon says. "There also is a key feedback loop in which practice informs our research, fuels further studies, and helps us refine the tools and training that we provide to districts and schools." This reciprocal relationshipitself something of a partnership-- creates a cycle of ongoing research and program improvement that has kept NNPS in the vanguard of this field of study.

Epstein and Sheldon's research and applications in practice continue to have a profound influence on policy and practice at the federal, state, district, and school levels in this and other countries. NNPS currently includes about 500 member schools and more than 90 districts and organizations that want to use evidence-based strategies to nurture welcoming schools, engage all families, and increase student success. Epstein estimates that over the course of its 25 years, NNPS has assisted more than 5,000 schools and several hundred districts and organizations to plan, implement, evaluate, and continually improve their partnership programs.

Today, hundreds of researchers around the world study the many nuances of school, family, and community conditions and connections, and the field continues to widen its net. NNPS remains a unique organization that provides professional development to guide practitioners in applying research-based strategies and tools in practice.

"NNPS began with this once-revolutionary, now de facto, notion that schools and families must work together to help students learn," Sheldon says. "The pervasiveness and the impact of that key idea in the world today owes much to the life-work of Joyce Epstein. Twenty-five yearsand countingof leading NNPS is a testament to that fact."

NNPS publishes a widely read handbook, School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action (Corwin Press, 2019), now in its fourth edition. It produces an annual book, Promising Partnership Practices, in which members of the network share their best engagement activities with each other and the public.

"What good are research studies and confirmed results if they sit unused?" Epstein asks, rhetorically. "It is educators' professional responsibilitytheir jobto engage families as partners in their children's learning. And it is our mission to help them do it."

"As our dean, Chris Morphew, points out, research, development, and disseminationRD&Dare important aspects of our work," says Epstein. "Our RD&D agenda has helped us identify the essential structures and processes for effective and equitable partnership programs.

"Today, every district, and schools at all grade levels and in any community, can be confident that NNPS tools and guidelines will help them implement excellent programs of partnerships, engage all families, and increase positive results for students," she says. "That is what is most important to me."

Original post:

25 years of school and family connections | Hub - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

By using cheap green energy as a national advantage, the government can attract investors to relocate all manner of industrial production to SA starting in Gauteng.

Second, the Gauteng provincial government will need to explore ways to initiate green hydrogen as an energy source for mobility opportunities focused on publicly owned and publicly subsidised bus fleets.

This will be accomplished by leveraging the bus subsidy and working with municipalities on phasing green hydrogen cell power into bus rapid transit (BRT) fleets.

The provincial governments partnership with Busmark, one of a cluster of investors in its N12 Corridor SEZ in the West Rand, directly supports this, as does the investment by Isondo Minerals, a fuel cell manufacturer, in its OR Tambo SEZ.

Third, a dedicated green hydrogen skills academy will need to be established to focus on the new competencies demanded by this fast-evolving sector with respect to production, value chain management and maintenance. This will potentially be embedded as a feature of the provinces expanding SEZ network.

Lastly, the provincial government is embedding strategic localisation, enterprise and supplier development initiatives with respect to the manufacturing of components, installation and servicing of renewable energy systems.

This is being done to facilitate a cohort of black industrialists and energy companies in providing and running the LSEG capabilities for industry. Both are critical because 70%-80% of the jobs created will be in the installation and maintenance part of the value chain, while a large percentage of the monetary benefit will go to the renewable energy manufacturers.

Engendering climate-resilient economies by investing in green hydrogen powerfuels is essential for humanity and nature. It will guarantee a shared future for all.

This article was paid for by the Gauteng department of economic development.

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Gauteng government at the vanguard of SAs green economy plans - Business Day

At the 2021 U.N. conference on climate change in Glasgow, more than 100 world leaders pledged on Nov. 1 to halt deforestation by 2030. In the Declaration on Forests and Land Use, countries outlined their strategy, which focuses on supporting trade and development policies that promote sustainable production and consumption. Governments and private companies have pledged over $19.2 billion to support these efforts.

From my research on social and environmental issues in Latin America, I know that four consumer goods are responsible for the majority of global deforestation: beef, soy, palm oil and wood pulp and paper products. Together these commodities are responsible for the loss of nearly 12 million acres annually. Theres also a fifth, less publicized key driver: organized crime, including illegal drug trafficking.

Among major products that promote deforestation, beef is in a class by itself. Beef production is now estimated to be the biggest driver of deforestation worldwide, accounting for 41 percent of global forest losses. In the Amazon alone, cattle ranching accounts for 80 percent of deforestation. From 2000 to 2011, beef production emitted nearly 200 times more greenhouse gases than soy, and 60 times more than oil palm in tropical countries with high deforestation rates.

Together, soy and palm oil drive nearly 10 percent of deforestation annually almost 2.5 million acres.

Clearing land for palm oil plantations fuels large-scale rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia, where most of the worlds palm oil is produced, destroying habitat for endangered and threatened species such as orangutans, elephants and tigers. More recently, palm oil production has expanded to other parts of Asia, Central and South America and Central and West Africa.

Soy production has doubled globally in the past 20 years. Nearly 80 percent of global soy is fed to cows, chickens, pigs and farmed fish. This demand reflects the tripling of global meat production over the past 50 years.

The remaining soy is largely used to produce vegetable oil and biodiesel. Humans directly consume just 6 percent in the form of tofu, soy milk, edamame and tempeh.

The United States and Brazil produce nearly 70 percent of the worlds annual 350 million-ton soy crop. Brazil has rapidly caught up to U.S. production in the past 30 years, with disastrous consequences for tropical forests in the Amazon.

Wood products are responsible for about 5 percent of annual global deforestation, or about 1.2 million acres yearly. Wood is widely used for home construction and furniture, and also as a pulp source for paper and fabric. And in low-income nations and rural areas, its an important fuel source for heating and cooking.

The three largest paper-producing countries are the U.S., Canada and China, but tropical countries have also become important pulp and paper sources. Timber plantations account for a growing share of tropical wood products, but theres disagreement about whether this approach is more sustainable than logging natural forests.

Making the supply chains for these four commodities more sustainable is an important strategy for reducing deforestation. But another industry plays an important role, especially in tropical forests: organized crime. Large, lucrative industries offer opportunities to move and launder money; as a result, in many parts of the world, deforestation is driven by the drug trade.

In South America and Central America, drug trafficking organizations are the vanguard of deforestation. Drug traffickers are illegally logging forests in the Amazon and hiding cocaine in timber shipments to Europe. In my research, I have analyzed how traffickers illegally log and raise cattle in protected areas in Central America to launder money and claim drug smuggling territory. Other scholars estimate that 30 percent to 60 percent of deforestation in the region is narco-deforestation.

Legal and illegal activities also interweave along the commodity chains for palm oil and soy. Forest Trends, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes market-based approaches to forest conservation, estimates that nearly half of deforestation for commercial products like cattle, soy, palm oil and wood products is illegal. According to the groups analysis, exports tied to illegal deforestation are worth $61 billion annually and are responsible for 25 percent of total global tropical deforestation.

Not all large-scale illegal deforestation is linked to drug trafficking organizations. But it is almost always tied to organized crime that depends upon corruption to operate.

Promoting sustainable production and consumption are critical to halting deforestation worldwide. But in my view, national and industry leaders also have to root organized crime and illicit markets out of these commodity chains. Until they do, global pledges to halt deforestation will have limited effect.

Jennifer Devine is an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at Texas State University. This piece was first published by the Conversation.

Read more:

Opinion: Organized crime is a top driver of global deforestation and climate change - Houston Chronicle

Austin American-Statesman

November is National Alzheimers Disease Awareness Month & National Family Caregivers Month.

As the Alzheimers Association Capital of Texas Board Chair, I recognize that caring for someone with the disease requires family caregivers to juggle competing priorities, including work and other family responsibilities.

While caring for our mom who suffered from dementia in her later years, our family was blessed with friends and family who were able to assist. This month, we are asking all Central Texas residents to reach out and lend a hand to support caregivers for people with Alzheimers. Run errands, help with a household chore, give caregivers a break by spending time with the person with dementia, and educate yourself about the disease the more you know, the easier it will be to help, visit https://www.alz.org/texascapital.

These small gestures can make a big difference and offer well-deserved support to those who give so much.

PatMiller,Alzheimers Association Capital of Texas Board Chair, Austin

Re: Nov. 9 commentary, "Democrats would be wise to confront their privilege."

David Brooks says Trump was necessary to smash the old GOP and to turn the party into a vanguard of anti-elite resistance. And he states that a lot of the reaction against Democrats is pushback against elite domination.

Unfortunately, Brooks is overlooking the true center of elite domination in this country.Its not the cultural, urban and information-age elites;rather, its the wealthiest 1/10 of one percent of the population who pull the strings in politics today.

They are unwilling to pay their fair share of taxes to support the infrastructure of this country, especially public schools and colleges, which are probably the most important element of providing equal opportunity to all the people of the United States.

When Trump smashed the old GOP he didnt smash the dominance of the 0.1 percent. The pushback against Democrats is just a sideshow to distract attention from the real problem.

Mike Wernicke, Austin

Re: Nov. 8 article, "The magic 1.5:Climatetalks key elusive goal."

Commitments to mitigate the climate emergency appear grossly inadequate. Consequences of high carbon dioxidelevels are extremely precarious and vicious cycles will accelerate the worsening of catastrophic weather events.

Without delay, we must decrease energy use, consumerismand waste. It is essential that industries build trains, including narrow-track light-rail lines, to all neighborhoods and towns, and light, bicycle technology-based 2-4-wheel electric vehicles. Agriculture and land management should be reformed, re-establishing forests, etc., and diets become mostly plant-based. Builders should exclusively use carbon-cured concrete and,as feasible, wood, bamboo and recycled materials should be used to build houses and light vehicles these materials sequester carbon.

Any greenhouse gas releases must be highly taxed. Public-private partnership enterprises must lead the dramatic restructuring of the economy. Governments should create money for climate-related projects and a universal basic income while severely restricting lending by financial institutions to decrease indebtedness and prevent inflation.

Heinz Aeschbach, Austin

Originally posted here:

Letters to the editor: Lend a hand to these family caregivers - Austin American-Statesman

The University of Chicago will present honorary degrees to four distinguished scholars at its Convocation ceremony in June 2022, in recognition of their significant contributions to their fields of study.

The recipients are Cora Diamond, a philosopher at the University of Virginia; Katherine H. Freeman, an organic biogeochemist at Pennsylvania State University; Mercedes Garca-Arenal, a historian at the Spanish National Research Council; and Nergis Mavalvala, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cora Diamond, a distinguished philosopher, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Diamond has produced groundbreaking work in three major areas: the philosophical foundations of logic; the interpretation of 20th-century Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; and the ethical treatment of animals. She also has produced important work on gender studies, literary theory and care ethics.

The Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Virginia, Diamonds scholarship has joined these disparate subjects together in ways that illuminate the contributions that philosophy can make to the broader culture. She also has shaped the trajectory of philosophical scholarship around the world: Her work has been collected and published in multiple languages, and entire essay collections and conferences have been devoted to discussions of her work in moral philosophy.

Diamond has been an author, editor or contributor to 10 booksincluding works in Italian, French and Germanand more than 100 journal articles and essays, with others forthcoming. Her most recent book is Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethics(2019). She is a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Katherine H. Freeman, a world-renowned organic biogeochemist, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science. Freeman studies ancient organic molecules and their stable isotopeswork that has given fundamental insights into the study of climate change over millions of years

The Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences and Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, Freemans development of the paleo-carbon dioxide proxy record has had wide-ranging implications for the study of climate change. She also contributed to the invention of compound-specific stable isotope analysis, and continues to develop new measurement techniques that will allow deeper understanding of ancient molecular structure than ever before. As a leader in molecular isotope paleontology, she has studied areas ranging from the earliest recognized life on Earth to modern biological processes.

Freeman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Geochemical Society, the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Geophysical Union. She is also a recipient of the Alfred Treibs Award from the Geochemical Society, the highest honor in organic geochemistry; the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America; andthe2020 Nemmers Prize In Earth Sciences from Northwestern University.

Mercedes Garca-Arenal, one of Europes most eminent historians and a leading scholar of religion in post-Franco democratic Spain, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

She has studied the Muslim inhabitants of Europe in the late medieval and early modern period; the Spanish Inquisition; and Iberian-North African history, opening new areas of inquiry in historical analysis and the study of religious minorities. She is currently a research professor at the Spanish National Research Councils Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East.

A major area of focus in Garca-Arenals scholarship has been the study of the Moriscospeople whom the Spanish Crown forced to convert from Islam to Christianityand their descendants. Her work on the history of Iberia and North Africa also has been transformational, examining how the flows of people and ideas changed both Islam and Christianity in the West.

With nearly 40 authored or co-authored books and hundreds of articles, she also serves as the sole historian and humanist on the scientific committee of the European Research Council. She is a recipient of Spains highest honor for academic research, the Premio Nacional de Investigacin Ramn Menndez Pidal.

Nergis Mavalvala, a leading astrophysicist, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science. A leader in the observation of gravitational waves and quantum measurement, Mavalvala is noted for her work on the discovery of gravitational waves, and for developing precision quantum opticaltools that improved scientists ability to measure extremely small motions of large objects.

The Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has been at the vanguard of a new field of researchknown as quantum optomechanicsthat has led to revolutionary advances in fundamental physics and precision measurement. Her work has been credited as being integral to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. She is now studying the relationship between the macroscopic world and the quantum world underlying it.

She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She also serves as the dean of the MIT School of Science.

Excerpt from:

University of Chicago to award four honorary degrees at 2022 Convocation - UChicago News