Category Archives: New Utopia

Back in Liverpools chaotic, Militant-led 1980s, even Margaret Thatcher did not send in people directly to deal with a city council that she despised. Now, one of Englands largest cities is confronting the ignominy of a Conservative government sending in commissioners to run some of its affairs. Given the rotten state of the mayoralty and council, not many will argue against the verdict.

This is a city with a Labour mayor and where 80% of the councillors are Labour. Liverpool has not seen a Conservative-controlled council in 50 years, a Conservative MP elected since 1979, or a Conservative councillor voted in since 1994.

Liverpools voters might wonder what the point will be of heading to the polls in six weeks time to elect their new mayor and councillors. No one will be electing the commissioners arriving in the city. They are accountable only to the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Robert towns fund Jenrick and that well-known friend of Liverpool, Boris Johnson. The commissioners will tell the councillors and mayor what to do, not the other way round.

Todays council inspection report, authored by Max Caller, a veteran cleaner-up of other authorities, makes exceedingly damning reading. It refers to multiple failures including a serious breakdown of governance; what Jenrick describes as the awarding of dubious contracts; retrospective documentation (or its location in skips); an overall environment of intimidation; a pervasive culture of rule avoidance and the absence of ethics. The report is as bad as it gets.

Doing nothing was not an option for the government. Critics will lambast the arrival of commissioners as a Tory takeover. But that is far too simplistic, even if the optics are not great.

Commissioners are genuine experts in local government, and apolitical. The Conservatives have sent them in to run one of their own problem councils, Northamptonshire. They will work alongside the respected chief executive, Tony Reeves, who remains in overall control. The chief executive tends to be the power and the brains behind the operation on most councils anyway. Liverpool might be better governed, but it wont be democratic.

For the next three years, the commissioners and the chief executive will run the biggest problem areas planning, highways and regeneration most closely associated with the lamented regime of the previous mayor, Joe Anderson. The commissioners, not the council or the new mayor, will hold the purse strings in these arenas.

A decade ago, the Conservative government placed great faith in directly elected mayors as city saviours. They were to be the standard bearers of local democracy, directly accountable to the council taxpayers electing them.

Anderson, Liverpools council leader, eagerly swapped his job title to mayor, keen to seize pots of funding offered by a government otherwise noted for cuts. So keen, indeed, was he that he bypassed the referendum that all other cities contemplating the change offered their voters in 2012. Only Bristol said yes. On mayoral election days, almost 70% of Liverpools electors have found better things to do than vote.

Callers report shows a starkly different reality from the democratic utopia once envisaged. Local government by cabal, not council is the message. Meanwhile, Merseyside polices investigation into allegations of corruption which forced the government to act continues apace. That has seen Anderson arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation. Four other men were also arrested as part of the investigation, as was the citys director of regeneration, dismissed by the council this week. All six deny wrongdoing and none have been charged.

Those wanting a full restoration of local democracy face a long wait. The government has used powers of intervention under the 1999 Local Government Act a mere three times. It took three years to restore local power in each case and Jenrick has indicated a similar timeline here. Liverpool follows Northamptonshire, Rotherham and Tower Hamlets. Special measures are sustained ones.

Todays verdict gives vent to the criticisms of the mayor and alleged council cronyism, expressed in forthright terms on social media for years. The shenanigans of the 1980s, when Derek Hatton and the city council took on Thatcher, might have been crazy and futile but at least had a political cause. The Liberal Democrats took charge in 1998, but lost to Labour in 2010. The Liberal Democrat leader, Warren Bradley, was convicted of perjury after an electoral fraud investigation. His successor as council leader was Anderson. Liverpool doesnt do controversy-free.

Liverpool is a remarkable city that has made huge strides, despite brutal central government financial allocations. It deserves better.

The Conservative government may be nervous about intervening in Tory-free Liverpool. The citys red wall is one of the few sections that remains impregnable. But Labour nationally also seems fearful of Liverpool Labour. It supports Jenricks move, embarrassed by the antics of the mayor and some council members.

Labour nationally decides the partys Liverpool mayoral candidate to replace Anderson this May. Its selection committee has already decided that three female councillors, with a combined 43 years of council experience, are not good enough. Their candidacies were halted, and each told, humiliatingly, they need not reapply. A new surprise shortlist of two novice councillors emerged, the choice imminent.

A belated referendum on whether the city should have an elected mayor is scheduled for 2023. All-out elections will also take place, to put in place a new, cleansed and streamlined council. But we already know the winner of the 2021 contests: Robert Jenrick.

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Liverpool is a remarkable city. Its people deserve better than shoddy governance - The Guardian

On an overcast Saturday afternoon in December, a convoy of 30 cars, led by a red Chevrolet pickup truck, set off from the car park of an east-London Asda with hazard lights flashing. The motorists, who formed a festive motorcade, wore Santa hats as they made their way slowly through the borough of Hackney before coming to a halt outside the town hall a couple of hours later.

They had gathered to register their outrage at being the victims, as they saw it, of a grand experiment that has been taking place on Englands roads since the start of the pandemic. As the national lockdown eased last summer, swathes of Hackney, stretching from Hoxtons dense council estates at the boroughs western border with Islington to the edge of the River Lea marshland near Stratford in the east, had been closed to motor traffic (with exceptions made for delivery vans, residents cars and emergency vehicles).

Locals found their usual routes were shut off with little warning. Danielle Ventura Presas, one of the protesters, told me that she now struggled to get her disabled cousin to day care while also dropping off her two children at school on time. As we rolled through Clapton, another campaigner got out of her car and slowed the convoy to a walking pace, leading chants of reopen our side roads! on a megaphone.

The road closures formed part of a wider scheme to tackle Londons growing congestion problems. Between 2009 and 2019, miles driven on its residential streets increased by 70%, in part due to the rise of Uber, online delivery services and GPS technology. Air pollution, meanwhile, plays a role in the premature deaths of nearly 10,000 Londoners each year. When the pandemic arrived, this trend was briefly interrupted: the roads fell quiet, and the novelty of car-free streets encouraged more people to go out on their bikes. In May 2020, the government tried to capitalise on the bike boom by announcing the biggest ever investment in active travel walking, cycling or scooting. The short-term aim of the fund was to make it easier for people to get around without using public transport. The broader vision reducing reliance on the private car was more radical.

In London, the Streetspace plan unveiled by mayor Sadiq Khan and Transport for London (TfL), demanded an urgent and swift response to the crisis. The strategy funnelled money from the governments new active-travel fund to Londons boroughs for low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and other projects to encourage walking and cycling, such as temporary cycle lanes and timed road closures outside schools. By the end of last year, there were about 100 in London, where they have been most widely adopted, but they are now being rolled out in Manchester, Birmingham and other cities.

LTNs block motor traffic from sidestreets with physical barriers such as planters or bollards, or with number plate recognition cameras at their boundaries which local authorities use to issue fines to drivers entering the zone. Residents inside LTNs can still drive to their home, but they may have to take a longer way round. The theory is that by reducing the amount of road space for cars, people will find other ways to make short journeys. (In London, almost half of car journeys are less than 2 miles.) That means more walking and cycling, which ultimately means less pollution, less congestion, quieter, safer streets and healthier citizens.

Critics of LTNs say closing sidestreets increases congestion elsewhere, but early monitoring of new LTNs in Hackney and Lambeth found that traffic on main roads hardly increased at all. Data from established LTNs in Walthamstow showed the opposite, although transport academic Rachel Aldred suggests that it is hard to draw conclusions about the specific impacts of these schemes as traffic in the area was rising more generally at the time.

Enthusiasm for LTNs brought about a rare consensus between the Conservative government and the Labour mayor of London, as well as Greens and pro-cycling groups. But an opposition also sprang up, bringing together an equally unlikely alliance of anti-gentrification activists, professional drivers, Labour and Conservative backbenchers, local councils, motoring lobbyists and a raft of new grassroots campaigners who shared their outrage on neighbourhood Facebook groups. On social media, each side conjured up its own vision of life in low-traffic neighbourhoods: one a utopia of families cycling happily together on quiet streets, with children wobbling out in front; the other a nightmare of permanently congested roads, with emergency vehicles snared in the gridlock.

The protesters in the Hackney motorcade stressed that they had only brought their cars in order to respect social distancing and allow disabled people to participate. But the exuberant procession of cars, with their horns honking and engines revving, seemed to suggest something bolder: motorists reasserting their right to take up space on urban streets.

Several cars in the motorcade had cabbage leaves lodged under windscreen wipers or taped to their doors, a reference to one of the most bitter exchanges in the conflict. Over the summer, Hackneys cabinet member for transport, the Liverpudlian Jon Burke, had become a hate figure for opponents of LTNs after he responded to tweets which called for him to go home by tweeting: If it wasnt for immigrants, born n bred Londoners would still be eating cabbage with every meal.

For anti-LTN campaigners, who sometimes caricature cycling advocates as a privileged elite, this was incendiary provocation. What hes having a go at is the white working class, said Niall Crowley, one of the organisers of the protest. Thats really incensed people. In September, Burke received a handwritten death threat, and at the start of this year, he announced he would resign as a Hackney councillor in order to stand in his home citys mayoral race. A newsletter issued by the Hackney protesters proclaimed his departure their victory.

After the UKs first lockdown ended in July, the traffic soon returned and talk of the governments promised cycling revolution faded, while some objectors continued to vandalise its remnants. In Hackney, the new street signs were spray painted, and someone cut the cables on an expensive new traffic enforcement camera. In Ealing, bollards were removed one night and the holes they left behind filled in with concrete. Meanwhile, opponents of the mayors walking and cycling plans have pursued numerous legal challenges to the new policies.

Burke told me LTNs were just one part of a complete reimagining of the boroughs public spaces for a low-carbon future. Were introducing huge amounts of cycle storage, the largest electric vehicle charging programme in the country, and were massively improving the quality of our public realm with the largest tree planting programme in Europe. I get emails from people saying youre the most hated man in Hackney, he said. And I want to have a dialogue with those people, but Im not going to tell them theres a solution to the problems we face that allows them to continue driving to the same extent they were previously.

The next few months will be decisive, as councils push for temporary schemes to become permanent, and objectors fight for the right to drive wherever they need to go. Londons great traffic experiment hangs in the balance.

For many Conservative voters and MPs, the partys apparent shift from championing the car to promoting bikes is cause for alarm. In May 2020, Boris Johnson, himself a committed cyclist, announced a new golden age for cycling, as part of the Conservatives broader green industrial revolution strategy. This stated aim to reduce transport emissions which was somewhat undermined earlier this month when Johnson announced his intention to cut taxes on domestic flights has created an internal schism in a party that has traditionally represented the motorists interests. Motorists did not vote for the Green party in the general election. But that is what weve got, Howard Cox, the founder of the pro-driving campaign FairFuelUK, told me by email.

As polling shows, people tend to like green policies in theory but less so when they are the ones being inconvenienced by them. Last year, a YouGov study found that the average British person was an environmentally concerned recycler, who takes their own bag to the supermarket but also likes their meat, and balks at the thought of paying more tax to fund policies for tackling climate change.

After Conservative-controlled Kensington and Chelsea council removed a major cycle lane just seven weeks into its trial period, the Daily Mail reported that the prime ministers transport adviser, Andrew Gilligan, called the council to let it know Johnson had gone ballistic at its decision. Gilligan, who worked with Johnson at the Spectator and later served as cycling commissioner during Johnsons second term as mayor of London, has been instrumental in pushing the Tories to invest record sums in walking and cycling, according to several interviewees working in the transport sector.

During his stint at City Hall, Gilligan gained a reputation for his hard-nosed operating style. When we agreed, it was great, it was going to move forward very fast, there would be no obstacles in his path, said Simon Munk, an infrastructure campaigner at the London Cycling Campaign. But when you disagree with him and you become one of those obstacles, its quite a full-on experience. Gilligan has shown the same single-mindedness at No 10. In May, when the Department for Transport invited all councils to bid for a fund to create temporary walking and cycling schemes, one of the conditions of the first wave of funding was that schemes had to be in place within 12 weeks.

The problem weve ended up with is because boroughs have been encouraged by the government to introduce them at such speed, said Caroline Pidgeon, a Liberal Democrat member of the London assembly and a longstanding member of its transport committee. People feel its being done to them rather than feeling like theyve been brought along.

A government spokesperson said: We want to ensure people have more opportunities to choose cycling and walking for their day-to-day journeys, as part of our wider plans to boost active travel benefitting both the nations health and the environment. Thats why we have committed a significant 175m to create safe spaces for cycling and walking as surveys and independent polls show strong public support for high-quality schemes.

Among the many dissenters to the introduction of LTNs across the country are 14 Tory MPs, who signed a letter in November to the transport secretary Grant Shapps, calling on the government to stop the uncalled-for war on the motorist and withdraw the blockades and dedicated cycle lanes eating into our town and city roads. The spectre of the war on the motorist, in which the longsuffering driver is constantly thwarted in his efforts to get around, while being made to pay more and more for the privilege of doing so, has been with us since at least the 60s, despite having little basis in fact.

In 2011, the coalition government declared an end to the conflict, promising to quell Whitehalls addiction to micromanagement. Unsurprisingly, that wasnt the end of the story. Earlier this year, a Telegraph editorial called on Conservatives to once again take a stand against Sadiqs Khans war on cars.

The MPs letter was organised by the campaign group FairFuelUK, which works with mostly Conservative politicians in an all-party parliamentary group, arranging meetings with motoring campaigners and planning political actions. Backbench Tories have told me theyre uncomfortable with the governments focus on the privileged cycling few, said Cox. The prime minister and his Lycra-clad advisers are out of touch with economic reality and majority opinion.

Niall Crowley, the Hackney roads protester who will stand as a candidate in council byelections in Hoxton East and Shoreditch, agrees. Frustrations about low-traffic neighbourhoods, he told me, are really about the fact that people resent top-down decision-making and feel excluded from local democratic processes. Everything I read, its were doing this and you have to get used to it. If youre going to treat residents as a problem to be managed or nudged, then what kind of democracy is that?

In September, a group of black cab drivers and their supporters gathered outside City Hall in London to accuse mayor Sadiq Khan of destroying London. A campaigner gave a speech on the concourse outside the mayors office, grimly predicting that the black cabs days were numbered if road closures were not reversed. This is the endgame, he told the crowd.

During the summer, TfL had barred taxis and other private vehicles from Bishopsgate, an ancient road that takes its name from the defensive wall built by the Romans around the city. The road runs past Liverpool Street station and into the financial district; cars, cabs, buses and cyclists compete for space. Cab drivers were also angry about TfLs decision to exclude them from some central London bus lanes, which they can ordinarily use to drive around the city more quickly. They also protested about about losing access to other main roads under restrictions that allow only buses, cyclists and emergency vehicles to pass through.

Although taxi drivers have been the vanguard of the resistance to Khans active travel plans, Steve McNamara, the chair of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, said cabbies were not always opposed to new cycle lanes. Its much less stressful for them if theyre driving their cab and the cyclist is in a nice segregated lane next to them, he said. But what we dont support are these ones that are banged in with very little planning, that look like theyve been designed on the back of a fag packet.

In interviews, McNamara repeatedly returns to a theme that cyclists are a privileged minority making life more difficult for working-class drivers in the suburbs. If you can afford to live centrally, and youve got a well-paid job in the city or central London, its great for you to be able to ride to work, McNamara said. But equally if you live in the suburbs, as most Londoners do, and you have to get the bus to work, or youre driving a lorry, its not so good.

Some of Londons suburban boroughs, which are less well served by public transport and have higher rates of car ownership, have embraced new cycling and walking schemes, and received 30m from City Hall to become flagship mini-Hollands. But others remain resistant: in Barnet, councillor Roberto Weeden-Sanz said the Conservative group would take a stand against the war on drivers by refusing to implement LTNs. Barnet has a proud history of opposing traffic reforms: in 2003, the councils environment committee chair Brian Coleman ordered the removal of 1,000 speed humps in the borough. A triumphant Telegraph column compared Coleman to Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery.

There is no evidence that LTNs disproportionately benefit the better-off. A new study has shown that, contrary to one of the most common objections, road closures have not shifted traffic from wealthier areas into more deprived ones. Polling in London has repeatedly shown that more people support LTNs than oppose them. Burke, the former Hackney councillor whose comment about cabbage enraged his opponents, believes that car reduction advocates shouldnt be afraid of arguments over class. What Im not willing to do, as someone who comes from a working-class background, is cede an inch of ground to people who have tried to make this a class issue, he told me. Seventy percent of the households in Hackney dont own cars, so why should cars own 100% of the roads? LTNs are an exercise in redistribution.

But statistics have not dispelled a popular narrative that car reduction measures are unwanted policies imposed by the metropolitan elite on the poor. McNamara is eager to frame car reduction measures as a class war. And lets be honest the working classes are losing badly, he said.

McNamara is playing on familiar stereotypes. In the 2010s, the folk figure of the hipster had three essential characteristics: a beard, a love of artisan coffee and a fixed-gear bike. The urban cyclist does not cause gentrification, but he becomes a powerful symbol of it. He is able to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing urban environment in a way that established working-class communities are not. He is also visible in a way that the structural causes of the housing crisis are not. As such he and his bike have become a focus for anger about inequality and displacement.

In his study of cycling culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, the geographer John Stehlin did not find a causal link between bike lanes and gentrification. But he argued that initiatives to make streets more livable, while often motivated by progressive ideals, also became useful marketing tools for developers of high-end housing.

However, Mohammad Rakib, a community activist in the borough of Tower Hamlets, which borders Hackney to the south and has the highest poverty rates in London, believes LTNs play a more active role in attracting middle-class newcomers to deprived areas and squeezing out the long-term working-class residents. These policies are more about social cleansing than they are about reducing pollution, Rakib told me.

Rakib sometimes makes memes depicting cyclists as urban colonialists, combining cycling helmets with the imagery of empire. His point that the users of bike lanes do not reflect the diversity of areas like Tower Hamlets, however, is undeniably true. In 2019, according to TfL research, 85% of cyclists on TfLs cycle routes were white.

These areas and communities have waited generations for this level of investment, he said. Now that money has been made available, it is not being spent as the community have been asking for it to be spent. LTNs suit a certain class of people who are by no stretch the majority within these areas.

Cycling hasnt always been seen as the preserve of the metropolitan elite. In the mid-20th century, the bicycle was a primary mode of transport for the working class, while the motorcar remained unaffordable to most. In his celebratory 1949 work Leisure (Homage to Jacques-Louis David), the French artist Fernand Lger depicted a gang of workers taking a trip out of the city on their bikes a vision of the labour-saving potential of the humble bicycle. That same year, 37% of all journeys in Britain were cycled, according to Carlton Reids book Bike Boom. From that peak, the figure has fallen to about 2% today.

the mid-20th century is a what if? moment, where one possible future was blotted out by the ascendancy of the car. A two-part plan to build a network of national cycle routes and a motorway system, conceived in 1939, was delayed by the war. In the end, only the motorways were built. From the 50s onwards, car ownership became an aspiration of the middle classes and a symbol of a new age of affluence. By the 60s, Britain had become a car-owning democracy, in the words of Simon Digby, the MP for Dorset west at the time.

As cars became more common, so did congestion and pollution. In response, in the 60s transport minister Ernest Marples introduced a raft of new driving restrictions, including yellow lines and parking wardens. Marples said in 1964 that an enraged motorist had once thrown one of his new parking meters through his drawing room window. I am accused of declaring war on the motorist, he said in a 1963 speech to the Passenger Transport Association. That is a complete travesty of the truth.

During the 70s, concerns about the environmental impacts of the car grew, particularly around emissions from leaded petrol. By the time Margaret Thatcher announced that her government would oversee the largest road building programme since the Romans in 1989, a growing ecological movement responded with a series of militant actions, among them a protest camp on the site of the planned M3 expansion at Twyford Down in Hampshire. Almost a year later, the camp was evicted and the motorway was built.

Out of this anti-roads scene came a group called Reclaim the Streets, which crashed into public consciousness in May 1995 with a daring piece of street theatre. At a busy traffic intersection in Camden in north London, two cars driven by activists collided. Their drivers got out and began to argue. The argument escalated until both drivers took out sledgehammers and smashed up the cars, creating a DIY barricade and allowing other members of the group to set up a sound system and a childrens play area, turning the busy high street into a carnival. The group, which was immersed in 90s rave culture and the movement against the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, went on to hold dozens of similar events all over the UK.

A year after we were being branded as terrorists, Islington council organised a very similar party to the one wed hosted, said one former activist Roger Geffen. This idea that you should close city streets to motor vehicles and open them up to people it was already starting to go mainstream. When I asked Chris Knight, a former Reclaim the Streets activist, about the groups philosophy, he said: It was quite simple: kill the car! A car just captures so much: private ownership, privatised space, isolation, egocentrism, deafness to the world around you. Kill the car was just beautiful.

This group of anarchists and radicals wanted to take back space from cars and promote walking, cycling and public transport for everyday use the same ideas that would resurface 25 years later among the policies of a Conservative government. Geffen, now director of policy at advocacy group Cycling UK, exemplifies the way car reduction policies have gone from a fringe belief to the mainstream: his march through the institutions took him from illicit raves and squatting to Buckingham Palace, where he received an MBE for services to cycling in 2015. Its been an interesting trajectory, he said.

On a September evening between lockdowns, I watched a cricket match happening in the middle of Rye Lane, a narrow high street in Peckham, south-east London, which used to be choked with traffic until it was closed to cars by Southwark council in July. A makeshift wicket was set up outside a local institution, Khans Bargains, and people spilling out of bars jostled for a chance to bowl. It was exactly the sort of creative use of public space that Reclaim the Streets wanted to inspire, and a rare moment of genuine collective joy.

Will we look back on the past year as another what if moment, a bold but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reduce the cars domination of our roads and cities? By the winter of 2020, more than 30 councils across the country had withdrawn or scaled back new traffic-reduction schemes in the face of opposition. Some of these projects were only ever intended to be temporary, but TfL and the boroughs had stated their ambition for new bike lanes and LTNs to become permanent if the data showed they were working effectively.

In December, a few days after Kensington and Chelsea council announced it would scrap a new cycle route along Kensington High Street, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists and cycling campaigners gathered in an attempt to stop the removal of the lane. Wearing hi-vis jackets and carrying placards, a small group of protesters climbed on to construction vans and prevented the workers from pulling out the bollards separating cyclists from the traffic on the busy east-west road. Donnachadh McCarthy, the founder of the Stop Killing Cyclists campaign, told me the group had held protests here before to commemorate cyclists killed nearby 15 people have been killed while walking or biking along the high street in the past three years but this was the first time his group had used such militant tactics.

The following night, after a second protest was dispersed by the police, the council succeeded in removing the bollards. A few weeks later, the route was still busy with cyclists, who now mingled with buses, taxis and high-performance cars. The scars where the bollards used to be were still visible on the asphalt.

The recent reforms suffered another blow in January, when Mrs Justice Beverley Lang ruled that TfL had acted unlawfully in using emergency measures to introduce changes to road layouts. The judge ruled that the process behind the decision to exclude taxis from Bishopsgate and the overarching Streetspace plan were seriously flawed and did not recognise the special status of taxi drivers.

The ruling also found TfL had not sufficiently researched or mitigated the potential adverse impacts of Streetspace projects on taxi passengers with disabilities. Transport for All, a charity advocating for accessible transport, found many disabled people felt their concerns [about LTNs] have been ignored, creating feelings of anger and frustration. However, the organisation has pointed out that traffic reduction schemes do not necessarily need to be scrapped, but rather modified with features such as tactile paving and exemptions for disabled drivers.

TfL points out the ruling did not make any direct findings on the lawfulness of low-traffic neighbourhoods, but with the legality of the Streetspace plan itself in doubt, some councils are worried the judgment could have a wider impact. While most schemes remain in place pending TfLs appeal, Sutton and Croydon councils have withdrawn LTNs. Sutton council said in a statement: Some schemes were working well, but we have no choice given the legal judgment. In June 2021, a separate set of judicial reviews will challenge the future of active travel schemes in the boroughs of Lambeth, Hounslow and Hackney.

With TfL on the back foot in Kensington, cycling advocates have called on the mayor to use his statutory powers to take back control of the high street from the council. At the cyclists protest in Kensington in December, the transport historian Christian Wolmar said that the boroughs bike lanes had long been the site of a broader power struggle over the future of the city. As police officers hovered and tried to disperse the protesters, Wolmar recalled the council scrapping cycle lanes in Kensington and Chelsea more than 30 years ago, amid a wider conservative backlash against the leftist policies of the Greater London council, which included an early attempt at a London-wide cycle network. I asked how he felt about having the same arguments 30 years on. Everything we know about urban planning shows that cities that give themselves to car dominance become less pleasant places to live. Who would want to live in Los Angeles if you could live in Copenhagen, for Christs sake?

Across Europe, increasingly radical car-free policies have been met with vocal opposition. In Paris, a major pedestrianisation scheme faced a protracted court battle (which the scheme ultimately won), while Berlins pop-up bike lanes launched during the pandemic faced a legal challenge from the far-right Alternative fr Deutschland party.

But when I asked Wolmar if he thought the backlash in London could kill the citys car reduction plans, he was confident it would not. Theyll win a few battles, he said, but theyll lose the war.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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Traffic wars: who will win the battle for city streets? - The Guardian

From Cosmopolitan

By now, you've likely heard rumblings or seen social media posts about the supposed (and totally false) link between the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility.

It may surprise you to learn that false claims linking vaccines and fertility are nothing new. The trope that vaccines affect your fertility is played out over and over again, says Zev Williams, MD, PhD, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center in New York City. HPV vaccines, for instance, have been wrongly linked to causing premature menopause in women that would render them infertile.

In the case of COVID-19, the never-before-used mRNA technology in both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines is adding an extra degree of fear, says Dr. Zev Williams. Plus, there's the fact that all three of the vaccines were approved through emergency use authorizations as opposed to the traditional FDA approval process (which can take years as opposed to months).

It also doesnt help that the now-cancelled Amazon Prime miniseries Utopia features a vaccine that sterilizes people in an effort to thin out the population. This show is a remake of a UK series from 2013long before we ever lived by the phrase social distancing, but nonetheless, it easily stokes these anxieties.

Just to be clear: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) calls allegations linking the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility unfounded and scientifically disproven.

Here's everything you need to know about how the vaccine works, and why you shouldn't worry about it impacting your fertility.

How does the COVID-19 vaccine work again?

Right now, there are two different types of vaccines (from three different companies) approved for use in the U.S.

Johnson & Johnsons vaccine, which requires just one shot, is whats called a viral vector vaccine. This is the same type of vaccine that's used against the flu every year. As the CDC explains, it uses a modified version of a different virus to prompt our cells to produce the spike protein found on the virus that causes COVID-19. This is harmless to you, but it allows your immune system to recognize the spike protein and produce antibodies against it. Your immune system will remember how to fight off the virus in the future.

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The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are both messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. This is a new type of vaccine, never before given to the public. Nonetheless, the technology has been studied for years. The vaccine contains material from the virus that causes COVID-19, which teaches your cells to make a harmless piece of the spike protein thats found on the virus, explains the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This gives your immune system the ability to recognize that protein and mount antibodies against it.

At the end of 2020, rumors swirled around social media claiming that the Head of Pfizer Research had sounded the alarm that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine would result in female sterilization.

Fears circulated that a spike protein on the virus, syncytin-1, was similar to a protein found on the surface of the placenta, and that antibodies developed to fight against this protein would also damage a developing placenta.

However, that's just not true. We and others have analyzed this. While youll never find two large proteins that have nothing in common, there are very little similarities between the two proteins, says Dr. Zev Williams.

The Associated Press also quickly debunked these rumors, noting that there's no proof anyone who ever served as "Head of Research" at Pfizer even made these claims. They also confirmed with several medical experts that there is no evidence that proteins found in the Pfizer vaccine will cause infertility or problems with the placenta.

First, it's important to know that there haven't been specific studies examining the link between the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility. Still, "while more data will be needed to know with certainty, there is no evidence suggesting that the vaccines cause infertility, and there isn't any reason to suspect that the vaccines could cause infertility," says Dr. Zev Williams.

So, what makes doctors say that? Because there's plenty of data from existing clinical trials for the vaccine that supports it. "No loss of fertility has been reported among trial participants or among the millions who have received the vaccines since their authorization, and no signs of infertility appeared in animal studies," a joint statement from ACOG, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) said.

There's been no link between COVID-19 vaccines or miscarriage, either. "We do have early data comparing miscarriage rates among women in the clinical trials for the vaccines and in the follow-up and there is no higher rate of miscarriage in those who received the vaccine," says Dr. Zev Williams.

As soon as patients tell Nicole Williams, MD, founder of the Gynecology Institute of Chicago, that theyre pregnant, she advises they get the vaccine. That is in line with ACOGs recommendation that COVID-19 vaccines should not be withheld from pregnant individuals.

They also note that pregnant women are more likely to develop a severe COVID-19 infection, and that there is growing evidence that more severe illness is associated with higher rates of cesarean section and preterm birth, according to a study in Obstetrics & Gynecology on 241 women. In another study, severe infection also increased the risk of hospitalization and death for pregnant people compared to non-pregnant individuals.

Though there is currently limited safety data on the COVID vaccines and pregnancy, the CDC does say that based on an understanding of how mRNA vaccines work, they do not anticipate any unique risk. But again, more research needs to be done. Vaccine trials specifically excluded pregnant and lactating people (though a small number became pregnant during the trial).

Remember: Your doctor can also offer specific advice about vaccination based on your individual risks.

The bottom line: There's no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine will cause infertility in women.

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Why You Shouldnt Believe Those Rumors About the COVID-19 Vaccine and Infertility - Yahoo Lifestyle

This show contains a good selection of small pictures from those early days by artists such as Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Mick Namarari Tjapaltarri, Uta Uta Tjangala, Pinta Pinta Tjapananka and Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, the latters Water dreaming with rain and lightning (1972) being the most complex and layered of compositions.

Makinti Napanangka, Untitled (Rockhole Site of Lululnga), 2001(detail)Credit:Utopia Art Sydney

Disputes and confusion over money hastened the end of Bardons time at Papunya, a tragic episode covered in the documentary Mr. Patterns (2004), which is screening in one corner of this exhibition. The film does justice to Bardons achievements in a series of interviews recorded at the end of his life when he was ravaged by ill health.

Over the past two decades, there have been a series of important exhibitions devoted to the Papunya Tula story, starting with Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2000, along with further surveys at the National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 2008, Vivien Johnson published Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists, and in 2018, Melbourne University Press brought out a landmark edition of Geoff Bardons writings, Papunya: A Place Made After a Story. The most notable recent publication is Alec OHallorans full-scale biography of Mick Namarari, The Master from Marnpi (2018), which also serves as a history of the desert art movement.

When it comes to writing about Papunya Tula, there is a huge amount of material. The good news is that one need know nothing at all about the complexities of Indigenous art to appreciate the show at the S H Ervin.

The paintings are their own best argument, especially as we watch the artists beginning to work on canvas, some on a massive scale. The most accomplished in this regard may have been Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, who is represented in this survey by only one substantial work, Ngarlu Love Story (undated).

Clifford Possum Tjapaljarri, Ngarlu love story (detail)

During the 1980s, the energy slowly drained out of Papunya, but this was only the prelude to an entirely new phase, when the women started painting. By the mid-1990s, the pace was being set by artists such as Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Ningura Napurrula, Naata Nungurrayi, all of them well represented in this selection.

Among other highlights, pause to consider Makinti Napanangkas Untitled (Rockhole site of Lupulnga) (2001), which is as distinctive as anything in the show, with its wavering lines of ochre and lavender; or an Untitled painting of 2017 by Mantua, so finely detailed its a miracle of patient application.

Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Untitled, 1998 (detail)Credit:Utopia Art Sydney

To give some impression of the amazing variety of styles that emerged from under the Papunya umbrella, Hodges has assembled two large blocks of small, square canvases comprising a total of 75 panels.

Its a showstopping presentation, but probably not as impressive as a wall on which we find a sequence of large-scale works by Naata Nungurrayi, Mick Namarari, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula and Ningura Napurrula. These paintings, by two women and two men, could not be more distinctive or accomplished.

If I had to pinpoint the distinctive feature of the best Papunya painting, it would be the effortless sense of grandeur one finds in these canvases.

With Turkey Tolson in particular, it seems as if there was never a moments hesitation when it came to laying in a long, straight line of dots. If it wasnt a cultural non-sequitur, it would be tempting to ascribe a classical spirit to this work.

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Then again, perhaps Papunya Tula does deserve to be called classical. Not only does so much of this work display an extraordinary sense of calm and equilibrium, the community served as the birthplace for an efflorescence of Indigenous painting that would engulf the Australian art world.

Before the early 1970s, Aboriginal artists had never painted their stories with acrylic on canvas using a traditional lexicon of signs and symbols.

That groundbreaking innovation, engineered by Geoff Bardon, translated one of the worlds oldest living artforms into an utterly contemporary movement.

It was a moment in which the foundations of Australian culture underwent a tectonic shift. Half a century later, looking at these works, one can still feel the earth trembling.

Papunya Tula: 50 Years 1971-2021

S.H.Ervin Gallery, until April 4.

John McDonald is an art critic and regular columnist with Good Weekend.

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Papunya Tula: 50 years since wood off-cuts inspired tectonic shift - Sydney Morning Herald

The bourgeois of France had always come away with everything. Since the revolution of 1789, they had been the only ones to grow rich in periods of prosperity, while the working class had regularly borne the brunt of crises. But the defeat of Napoleon III during the Franco-Prussian War offered an opportunity for a change of course. The prospect of a conservative government that would leave social injustices intact, heaping the burden of the war on the least well-off, triggered a new revolution on 18 March.

Adolphe Thiers and his army had little choice but to decamp to Versailles. To secure democratic legitimacy, the insurgents decided to hold free elections at once. On 26 March, an overwhelming majority of Parisians (190,000 votes against 40,000) approved the motivation for the revolt, and 70 of the 85 elected representatives declared their support for the revolution. On 28 March a large number of citizens gathered in the vicinity of the Htel de Ville for festivities celebrating the new assembly, which now officially took the name of the Paris Commune.

Although it would survive for no more than 72 days, it was the most important political event in the history of the nineteenthcentury workers movement, rekindling hope among a population exhausted by months of hardship. Committees and groups sprang up in the popular quarters to lend support to the Commune, and every corner of the metropolis hosted initiatives to express solidarity and to plan the construction of a new world.

One of the most widespread sentiments was a desire to share with others. It was not the impetus of a leader or a handful of charismatic figures that gave life to the Commune; its hallmark was its clearly collective dimension. Women and men came together voluntarily to pursue a common project of liberation. Self-government was not seen as a utopia. Selfemancipation was thought of as the essential task. Two of the first emergency decrees to stem the rampant poverty were a freeze on rent payments and on the selling of items valued below 20 francs in pawn shops.

Nine collegial commissions were also supposed to replace the ministries for war, finance, general security, education, subsistence, labour and trade, foreign relations and public service. On 19 April, three days after further elections to fill 31 seats that became almost immediately vacant, the Commune adopted a Declaration to the French People that contained an absolute guarantee of individual liberty, freedom of conscience and freedom of labour as well as the permanent intervention of citizens in communal affairs.

The conflict between Paris and Versailles, it affirmed, cannot be ended through illusory compromises; the people had a right and obligation to fight and to win! Even more significant than this text were the concrete actions through which the Communards fought for a total transformation of political power. A set of reforms addressed not only the modalities but the very nature of political administration. The Commune provided for the recall of elected representatives and for control over their actions by means of binding mandates (though this was by no means enough to settle the complex issue of political representation).

Magistracies and other public offices were also subject to permanent control and possible recall. The clear aim was to prevent the public sphere from becoming the domain of professional politicians. Policy decisions were not left up to small groups of functionaries, but had to be taken by the people. Armies and police forces would no longer be institutions set apart from the body of society. The separation between state and church was also a sine qua non. But the vision of political change was not confined to such measures: it went more deeply to the roots.

The transfer of power into the hands of the people was needed to drastically reduce bureaucracy. The social sphere should take precedence over the political ~ as Henri de SaintSimon had already maintained ~ so that politics would no longer be a specialised function but become progressively integrated into the activity of civil society. The social body would thus take back functions that had been transferred to the state. To overthrow the existing system of class rule was not sufficient; there had to be an end to class rule as such.

All this would have fulfilled the Communes vision of the republic as a union of free, truly democratic associations promoting the emancipation of all its components. It would have added up to self-government of the producers. The Commune held that social reforms were even more crucial than political change. They were the reason for its existence, the barometer of its loyalty to its founding principles, and the keyelement differentiating it from the previous revolutions. The Commune passed more than one measure with clear class connotations. Deadlines for debt repayments were postponed by three years.

Evictions for non-payment of rent were suspended, and a decree allowed vacant accommodation to be requisitioned for people without a roof over their heads. There were plans to shorten the working day, the widespread practice of imposing specious fines on workers simply as a wage-cutting measure was outlawed on pain of sanctions, and minimum wages were set at a respectable level. As much as possible was done to increase food supplies and to lower prices.

Social assistance of various kinds was extended to weaker sections of the population ~ for example, food banks for abandoned women and children ~ and discussions were held on how to end the discrimination between legitimate and illegitimate children. All the Communards sincerely believed that education was an essential factor for individual emancipation and any serious social and political change. School attendance was to become free and compulsory for girls and boys alike, with religiously inspired instruction giving way to secular teaching along rational, scientific lines. Specially appointed commissions and the pages of the press featured many compelling arguments for investment in female education.

To become a genuine public service, education had to offer equal opportunities to children of both sexes. Moreover, distinctions on grounds of race, nationality, religion or social position should be prohibited. Early practical initiatives accompanied such advances in theory, and in more than one arrondissement thousands of working-class children entered school buildings for the first time and received classroom material free of charge. The Commune also adopted measures of a socialist character. It decreed that workshops abandoned by employers who had fled the city, with guarantees of compensation on their return, should be handed over to cooperative associations of workers.

Theatres and museums ~ open for all without charge ~ were collectivized. The Commune was much more than the actions approved by its legislative assembly. It even aspired to redraw urban space, as demonstrated by the decision todemolish the Vendme Column, considered a monument to barbarism and a reprehensible symbol of war, and to secularize certain places of worship by handing them over for use by the community. There was no place for national discrimination and foreigners enjoyed the same social rights as French people.

Women played an essential role in the critique of the social order. In many cases, they transgressed the norms of bourgeois society and asserted a new identity in opposition to the values of the patriarchal family, moving beyond domestic privacy to engage with the public sphere. The Womens Union was centrally involved in identifying strategic social battles. Women achieved the closure of licensed brothels, won parity for female and male teachers, coined the slogan equal pay for equal work, demanded equal rights within marriage and the recognition of free unions, and promoted exclusively female chambers in labour unions.

When the military situation worsened in mid-May, with the Versaillais at the gates of Paris, women took up arms and formed a battalion of their own. Many would breathe their last on the barricades. The Paris Commune was brutally crushed by the armies of Versailles. During the semaine sanglante, the week of blood-letting between 21 and 28 May, a total of 17,000 to 25,000 citizens were slaughtered. A young Arthur Rimbaud described the French capital as a mournful, almost dead city.

It was the bloodiest massacre in the history of France. The number of prisoners taken was 43,522. One hundred of these received death sentences, following summary trials before courts martial, and another 13,500 were sent to prison or forced labour, or deported to remote areas such as New Caledonia. Passing over the unprecedented violence of the Thiers state, the conservative and liberal press expressed great relief at the restoration of the natural order.

And yet, the insurrection in Paris gave strength to workers struggles and pushed them in more radical directions. Paris had shown that the aim had to be one of building a society radically different from capitalism. The Commune embodied the idea of social-political change and its practical application. It became synonymous with the very concept of revolution, with an ontological experience of the working class.

The Paris Commune changed the consciousness of workers and their collective perception. At a distance of 150 years, its red flag continues to flutter and to remind us that an alternative is always possible.

(The writer is Professor of Sociology, York University, Toronto)

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Strength to Struggle - The Statesman

Two weeks into VICE TV's Dark Side of the Ring: Confidential, and host Conrad Thompson and docuseries creators Evan Husney and Jason Eisener have taken viewers into a deeper dive into their previous looks at the mysteries surrounding the death of "Gorgeous" Gino Hernandez as well as the unanswered questions involving Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Vince McMahon, and "The Montreal Screwjob," the series returns with a new chapter Tuesday night. Re-examining the most explosive episodes from the first two seasons and featuring never-before-seen moments, unanswered questions, and secrets uncovered, this week's spotlight turns to the triumphs, tragedies, and hopeful future on one of professional wrestling's legendary families with a look back at "The Last of the Von Erichs."

Here's a look at the trailer for this week's episode- and don't forget what's still ahead for the remaining five episodes. March 30: "The Killing of Bruiser Brody"; April 6: "The Life and Crimes of New Jack"; April 13: "The Last Ride of the Road Warriors"; April 20: "The Final Days of Owen Hart"; and April 27: "Cocaine & Cowboy Boots: The Herb Abrams Story."

Here's a look at the video the producers put together of scanned family images from Kevin Von Erich, set to "Utopia Theme" by Todd Rundgren's Utopia:

Here's a look back at the official trailer and overview for Dark Side of the Ring: Confidential:

Dark Side of the Ring: Confidential: Through deleted scenes, bonus clips, and new interviews, the trio will expand on the stories told in some of the most popular episodes of Dark Side of the Ring, tackling unanswered questions, taking viewers behind-the-scenes of the making of each episode and digging deep with special guests including Tommy Dreamer, The Blue Meanie, Savio Vega, and former WWE referee Mike Chioda. Each episode will explore a major moment from the series, including the Von Erich brothers' tragic deaths, The Montreal Screwjob, conspiracy theories surrounding Gino Hernandez's death, and more.

"We are putting the finishing touches on season three of 'Dark Side of the Ring' and the excitement is building but the fans absolutely demanded more, sooner!" said Morgan Hertzan, Executive Vice President and General Manager, VICE TV. "We wanted 'Dark Side' fans to know we're listening and we've made 'Dark Side of the Ring: Confidential' just for them as a way to thank them for their incredible loyalty to this hit franchise with new, bonus content to tide them over. Evan Husney and Jason Eisner are masters of their craft and 'Dark Side' superfans will get to sit down with them to get the inside track on everything that's remained behind-the-scenesuntil now."

Before the year wrapped, Vice TV announced that two spinoff serieswould join the third season of Dark Side of the Ring in 2021. Produced by Jailbirds producer 44 Blue Productions,Dark Side of the Football will shine a light on stories that live in the shadows of America's favorite sport. It will explore the sometimes-flawed men behind the masks; the coaches, teams, and leagues who control their fates; and the untold story behind bizarre and tragic off-the-field events facts often hidden to shield fans from discovering unsettling truths about the game they love.

Produced by America's Top Dog producer Railsplitter Pictures and Battle of the Blades producer Insight Productions,Dark Side of the '90s will look at the most captivating pop-culture moments, trends, and personalities of the decade through interviews with people who studied the time period. Each episode will dissect the nostalgia, uncovering the surprising dark truths underlying the glitz, the glamour, and the headlines.

Serving as Television Editor since 2018, Ray began five years earlier as a contributing writer/photographer before being brought onto the core BC team in 2017.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Talentopia, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-Based Remote Talent Company has merged with Impactian, an Extraordinary Talent on Demand platform. EToD platform first started to leverage cutting-edge technologies to provide the innovative 'Talent as a Service' hiring model to enterprises, startups or law firms. Effective immediately, Impactian'sEToD platform will be known as Talentopia. The merger shows Talentopia's growth, position, and most importantly, long-standing commitment to acquiring the best and the brightest talent in the world.

The merger is to run a new hiring and interview platform that companies can utilize to find their talented remote developers and professional writers. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-Based Talentopia will take advantage of the innovative EToD platform's thorough vetting process to further grow an elite talent network of developers and writers. Employers who hired pre-vetted candidates would be sure to get the exact candidate they needed.

The new brand name, Talentopia,and its platform, Talentopia.com, will now focus on bothonline remote developer sphere andskilled legal and technology writers for various application domains. Similar to Impactian, Talentopia will work to gather the top 2% professionals of each field and match them with jobs and independent cases that best match their expertise and interests. Talentopia nowseeks to find hundreds of highly motivated and experienced writers who are interested in the following:

Candidates should be equipped with:

To optimize the recruitment process and identify the top-notch talents and to meet the future trend of remote jobs and gig economy transformation, Talentopia has consistently invested in innovative technologies to accelerate and optimize the recruiting process while retaining strong cloud-based vetting system. Despite the merger, the core value and culture of recruiting top talents will remain intact. Talentopia will continue to operate as a utopia for talents and empower them to grow their professional career.

Before joining Talentopia, interested writers will need to undergo two steps of challenging assessments. If you think you would like to be one ofthe extraordinary talents in the new Talentopia network, please click hereto expedite the screening process by finishing the 60 mins test in advance. For more information on this role, please visit Talentopia's website via the following link https://www.talentopia.com/technical-writer-jobs. Visit https://hire.talentopia.comto apply now!

CONTACT:Talentopia, Inc.Public Relations Department1.617.315.4828[emailprotected] https://www.talentopia.com125 Cambridge Park Drive, Suite 301, Cambridge, MA 02140, United States of America

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A culture is far deeper than politics. Its a national identity encompassing history, education, arts and entertainment, science, health, relationships everything constituting the core values of any country.

Individualism has traditionally been the common denominator anchoring all other aspects of Americas cultural distinctiveness. Valuing sovereignty of the individual makes American culture exceptional; therefore, Cancel Culture warrants attention.

It is understood that cancelling individuals, books, monuments, etc. is a form of banishment because they express something objectionable or offensive. Objectionable or offensive to whom follows, but lets now focus on the culture part. In essence, cancelling someone or something means erasing behavior or beliefs which really means erasing ideas.

Remember Barack Obamas 2008 Obama-Biden-ticket presidential campaign statement, We are five days away from fundamentally transforming [basically changing] the United States of America.

Now, President Bidens continuation of transforming America also includes cancelling ideas. So: America is basically changing into what, and whos doing the transforming and cancelling?

What seems to be a re-imagination of an idyllic Utopia, and the transforming-cancelling is effectuated by the socially agitated and politically aggressive Woke. *

Utopia has meant different idyllic places for different purposes. Sir Thomas Moore first coined the term (as a pun) by taking the Greek ou-topos no place and combining it with eu-topos a good place. So, ironically, Utopia means that in reality a good place is nowhere.

Marx sold communism as a workers Utopia. Hitler sold fascism as Aryan Utopia. Todays power-players are selling socialism as nondiscriminatory, non-merit-oriented, equity-for-all Utopia.

Of course, we know from the Bibles Garden of Eden story that even Adam and Eves idyllic Utopia vanished once their real human nature (free will) was activated by exercising choice (eating the apple) and gaining knowledge (carnal sex and the existential world).

Communism, fascism, and socialism differ in name only. In practice they are identical because they all are collectivist social systems powered by an elite who control the economy, the means of production, and the cultural zeitgeist.

But since outright communism (Russia) and fascism (Germany) failed, the largest socialist organization in the United States the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has to be more inventive in selling their brand of collectivism. The organization is a member of Socialists International which reveals global aspirations, but its name cleverly obscures the presently active but hidden agenda for America.

From the DSAs official website (operative words in bold):

We [Democratic Socialists] are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.

Translation: voters put us in power (democratic), but we share a vision to control globalized planning, execution of production, and distribution of goods; we define meaningful; we decide what is healthy and sustainable; we demand preferences for those we decide need equality (we define equality); and we decide who is oppressing whom.

Who now pavesthe way and keeps the socialists in power? The Woke and the implementation of cancelling Americas culture of individualism. Woke activists find or create what can be sold to an ignorant/apathetic/indoctrinated public as racial-social discrimination or injustices while encouraging certain fabricated-into-group-members to become victims and assuring that others of different fabricated-into-group-members are made to feel guilty about the victimization.

Cancelling activists are silencing opposition to the Wokes claims. To facilitate cancelling, Political Correctness is employed to make the task easier by forbidding incorrect freespeech, thus preventing as many independent thinkers as possible from actually saying anything objectionable or offensive on threat of cancelation.

Self-muzzling individuals who swallow the poison pill of Political Correctness (coated with sweet promises of Utopia to cover the venom) make the cancellers job even easier. There has never been nor will there ever be a dictatorship that does not crush dissent one way or another.

Ergo: The real purpose of Cancel Culture is to obliterate the fundamental values of advanced civilization liberty, individualism, and reason. Because of Americas prominence, to accomplish that global goal this countrys entire culture of individualism must be destroyed first, meaning everything from language to eating habits.

Collectivist elites are writing new scripts to old playbooks, directing the current show, and working their prestidigitation behind a curtain that now encircles the globe to surround what has become theater-in-the-round. Here are a few of them:

The first two are the biggest stars in the Democratic Socialist galaxy. Barack Obama A Saul-Alinsky-community-activist-political-heir. His publically acknowledged mentor? Frank Marshall Davis, a card carrying communist. Bernie Sanders I dont mind people calling me a communist.

Joe Bidena self inflated-lecturing-opportunistic front for functional elites like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. Harris (Americas next president!) is daughter of a Marxist professor, talks the collectivist talk Medicare for all and raised bail for looting rioters.

Buttigieg? An active socialist since a teenager. His Marxist-scholar father? A devotee of Antonio Gramsci who wrote, Karl Marx is for us a master of spiritual and moral life He is the stimulator of mental laziness, the arouser of good energies which slumber and which must wake up for the good fight.** Hows that for Woke?

The true-targeted-non-fabricated victims of all this? American culture and the sovereignty of each individual who inherited it from thinkers who understood human flourishing to be served by individual exercise of free will, rational personal choices, and factual knowledge in this here-on-earth real world instead of an existing-nowhere utopian world peddled by wannabe tyrants.

Americans needing to wake up are not the Woke. They are. . .Who? Look around, near as well as far.

* Must-read companion books: George Orwells 1984 is a brilliant (and chilling) fictional tale of the future endgame for tyrants everywhere. Evan Sayets The Woke Supremacy is a brilliant (and chilling) examination of Americas current real-life fast-step march to reach the endgame of tyranny here and now.

** Il Grido del Popolo, 4 May 1918

Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation (www.art-21.org). She has written for many publications, including Readers Digest and The New York Times. Her latest book is Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks. Read Alexandra Yorks Reports More Here.

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Marvel's What If revealed an even darker version of the Age of Apocalypse with its depiction of a world devoid of both Charles Xavier and Magneto.

The original "Age of Apocalypse" storyline was jumpstarted by Legion, the powerful but unstable son of Charles Xavier, venturing into the past on a mission to kill Magneto. Reasoning that doing so would allow his father to create a peaceful utopia uncontested, Legion's efforts instead resulted in the premature death of Xavier -- setting up Magneto to lead a ragtag bunch of freedom fighters against a more aggressive Apocalypse.

But in one reality -- as shown in 2007's What If? X-Men: Age of Apocalypse by Rick Remember, Dave Wilkins, Anthony Washington and Nate Piekos -- things could have gone even worse for the world.

In this reality, the temporal assault Legion attempted resulted in many more deaths than the young mutant intended -- with a mysterious blast of energy resulting in his demise as well as the deaths of both Xavier, Magneto, and scores of civilians. A fully terrified humanity united against mutants, with camps erected and protected by Sentinels to contain the mutant race. With neither Xavier or Magneto around to rally mutants, things turned for the innocent mutants all around the world. While non-mutant heroes became popular and a handful of mutants went into hiding within the Savage Land, Apocayplse bided his time and raised an army in secret.

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Eventually, the villain staged a massive and sudden assault that resulted in the deaths of almost every hero (such as most of the Fantastic Four, who were wiped out after refusing to become Apocayplse's horsemen) while what few survivors were left (such as Namor) were forced to serve under the rule of Apocalypse. Two of the mutants to escape to the Savage Land were Scott Summers and Jean Grey, who got to spend years together raising their son, Nathan. When the forces of Apocalypse finally reached the Savage Land though, Nate's parents were killed in the assault. Nate was only saved by the efforts of their friend, Sauron, who took him to a handful of remaining allies who'd been waiting for Nate, as the now-deceased Doctor Strange believed him to be the one being capable of beating Apocalypse.

Brought to the ruins of New York by Sauron's ally Wolverine, Nate meets the rest of the resistance, known as the Defenders. Led by the new Sorceror Supreme Brother Voodoo, the handful of other remaining heroes -- a Mjolnir wielding Captain America, Brian Braddock clad in an Iron Man suit, a mechanically enhanced Thing, Wolverine, Sauron, Colossus, and Molecule Man -- were the last line of defense against the rule of Apocalypse. Notably, Brother Voodoo refused to allow Nate to try and alter the past in honor of Stephen Strange's final fears about breaking the timeline -- and instead led the group in a massive attack against the ancient villain.

Approaching his fortress and fending off attacks from a horde of symbiote Spider-Men, the battle took a dark turn upon the arrival of Holocaust, resulting in the deaths of Thing, Sauron, and Colossus. The Defenders barely escaped by venturing into Dormamu's realm. But Brother Voodoo was forced to stay behind to cover their exit from the Dark Dimension, and Nathan stole the Eye of Agamotto so it could be further used in battle, dooming Voodoo. The remaining Defenders made quick work of this world's Horsemen -- Namor, Storm, Juggernaut, and Hulk -- at the cost of Brian Braddock's life. Finally confronting Apocayplse, Nathan and Molecule Man were able to destroy the tyrant.

RELATED:What If: How the New Fantastic Four Could've Stayed Together

But Nathan's full plan -- to use Apocayplse's armor and the Eye of Agamotto to venture into the past and save everyone -- results in the demise of the Molecule Man. Captain America was forced to unleash a massive blast of lighting to stop Nathan from becoming "another tyrant" in his efforts to save a broken world. The blast killed Nathan and moved through the now open time portal -- becoming the unstoppable blast of energy that killed Xavier, Magneto, and Legion so many years ago and doomed this world.

In the end, only Wolverine and Captain America survive the battle, setting out afterward to explore the wreckage of the world. This is a reality where everything fell apart for the heroes due in part to the brutal methods they had to embrace to just survive, and Nathan Summers only made things worse in his attempts to fix everything. It's a word so dark, that even Captain America ends up giving in to more grisly solutions to their problems. It's proof that while the original Age of Apocalypsepainted the picture of a horrific world, the alternative could have been even worse.

KEEP READING:Spider-Man: How MJ's Death Would Have Driven Peter Parker Over the Edge

Heroes Reborn Becomes Heroes Return in Marvel's June 2021 Solicitations

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X-Men: What the Age Of Apocalypse Could Have Been Without Xavier OR Magneto - CBR - Comic Book Resources

With a 60-year career behind him, German painterMarkus Lpertz is one of the most influential artists of postwar Germany.

In recent years, he has had major retrospectives at Munichs Haus der Kunst (2019) and the Hirshhorn Museum and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (2017).

The eccentric paintera literal Bohemian born in Liberec in 1941 in the present-day Czech Republichas been working for four years in studios in Germany and Italy on the works that he is preparing to show atMichael Werner Gallery in London. The works combine Southern and Northern European painting traditions, from Renaissance paintings to Greek statuary, and revolve around the theme of Arcadia, a pastoral utopia that is at once ancient and contemporary.

We caught up with Lpertz at his studio in Mrkisch Wilmersdorf, Germany, where he told us about taking inspiration from Old Masters, his love of jazz music, and how much he loves a good bottle of wine.

Markus Lpertz Studio. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Mrkisch Wilmersdorf.

What are the most indispensable items in your studio and why?

Foremost are my painting tools, a table where I hold my drawings, crayons, brushes, and paints, and a chair so I can step back and look at the work in progress from a distance. Then, natural daylight with northern exposurejust the essentials you need to get to work.

I often work on several canvases simultaneously. Our times stymie imagination with media overload, so I dont have a cell phonenever had. There is no outside distraction. I work diligently all day. Inspiration comes through the work and process itself, so you can find me in the studio early in the morning throughout the day, working like an artist in a classic 19th- or 20th-century studio. My job as painter is to reveal the world as I see it.

Is there a picture you can send of your work in progress?

This is my studio last fall preparing for the upcoming exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery in London. The show focuses on the theme of Arcadia, a classic, pastoral utopia.

Markus Lpertz Studio. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Mrkisch Wilmersdorf.

What is the studio task on your agenda tomorrow that you are most looking forward to?

In my early work, I wasnt as concerned with populating the horizon in my paintings; that only came later when I turned to bronze. When you populate a horizon, you have a sky and the earth, so you put objects there. On Earth, you have the devil and the humans and your imagination. And in the sky, you have floating objects. Its all just a game. So I work between two studios: the painting studio and the plaster and bronze workshop. In this sense, tomorrow is a continuation of today, letting my imagination either transform the canvas, or takeshape in space.

What kind of atmosphere do you prefer when you work? Do you listen to music or podcasts, or do you prefer silence? Why?

I am a classic and actual Bohemian, a man of the humanities. The visual arts were and are always part of the performing arts, and all are important to me: poetry and literature, and music, opera, operetta, jazz.

Since 2003, I have published the magazine Frau und Hundwhich also includes some of my own writings. And I am also a jazz musician, regularly playing the piano. I have designed several sets for opera, and so music is often part of my studio practice.

Markus Lpertz Studio. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Mrkisch Wilmersdorf.

What trait do you most admire in a work of art? What trait do you most despise?

Since the 1960s, we have seen a lot of isms, like the avant-garde. I have a theory that avant-gardism as a whole kept painting from developing further. Avant-gardism opened up painting, and that was a truly important epoch in art history. For a specific period of time that was necessary, as a liberation from politics, religion, academicism, all these things. But avant-gardism, like everything revolutionary, has become entrenched and therefore bourgeois. Today, avant-gardism has become a credo with its own rituals.

I strive to move past that and define something new and unique. For this, I often look back at Old Masters, [whom] I navigate between in order to arrive at a very specific visual language, a visual language of our time. I try to discover paintings where I think theyre hidden.

What snack food could your studio not function without?

I would never neglect a very good bottle of wine, but usually after dusk. Or a classic beer shared with friends playing skat.

Markus Lpertz Studio. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Mrkisch Wilmersdorf.

Who are your favourite artists, curators, or other thinkers to follow on social media right now?

I dont use social media, although you could certainly consider me social.

When you feel stuck in the studio, what do you do to get un-stuck?

I travel to workshops or change the studio. Travelling south to Tuscany to observe the way the sun hits the Italian landscape changes my perspective.

What is the last exhibition you saw (virtual or otherwise) that made an impression on you?

The works in the London show include references to a recent visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. There is always a Vermeer, Rembrandt, Gentileschi, Fssli, or Poussin waiting to enthral me.

Markus Lpertz Studio. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Mrkisch Wilmersdorf.

If you had to put together a mood board, what would be on it right now?

My worktable in the studio is my mood board, you can find everything there that I need to get to work. The rest is in my head.

Markus Lpertz: Recent Paintings is on view at Michael Werner Gallery, London, April 13 through May 15.

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Studio Visit: German Artist Markus Lpertz Is Painting Pictures of Arcadia and Drinking the Best Wine He Can Find - artnet News