9/3/15 REDUX: School Choice A Funded Vestige Of Integration Avoidance

politico |  In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero. 

In  Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening. 

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes. 

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.” 

But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990. 

The  Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.” 

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans. 

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject. The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus. 

Bob Jones University did, in fact, try to placate the IRS—in its own way. Following initial inquiries into the school’s racial policies, Bob Jones admitted one African-American, a worker in its radio station, as a part-time student; he dropped out a month later. In 1975, again in an attempt to forestall IRS action, the school admitted blacks to the student body, but, out of fears of miscegenation, refused to admit  unmarried African-Americans. The school also stipulated that any students who engaged in interracial dating, or who were even associated with organizations that advocated interracial dating, would be expelled.

The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption. 

For many evangelical leaders, who had been following the issue since  Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw. As Elmer L. Rumminger, longtime administrator at Bob Jones University, told me in an interview, the IRS actions against his school “alerted the Christian school community about what could happen with government interference” in the affairs of evangelical institutions. “That was really the major issue that got us all involved.”

5/11/16 REDUX: Public School Choice Tied To Neighborhood You Can Afford (Hidden Structure)

WaPo |  "We always think, well, we’re never going to have integrated schools as long as we have such highly segregated neighborhoods," she says. "I want to point out maybe we’ll never have integrated neighborhoods if we have segregated schools."

If we found ways to integrate schools — as former District Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) controversially proposed two years ago — that might take some of the exclusivity out of certain neighborhoods. School quality is capitalized into housing prices, making those neighborhoods unaffordable to many families. Imagine, for instance, if all the public schools in the District or the Washington region were integrated and of comparable quality. Families might pay more to live in Northwest to be near Rock Creek Park. But you'd see fewer home-bidding wars there just to access scarce school quality. More to the point, homes families already paid handsomely to buy might lose some of their value.

Politically, the two topics that most enrage voters are threats to property values and local schools.  So either of these ideas — wielding housing policy to affect schools, or school policy to affect housing — would be tough sells. Especially to anyone who has secured both the desirable address and a seat in the best kindergarten in town. Parents in Upper Northwest, for instance, deeply opposed the idea of ending neighborhood schools in Washington. And Gray's proposal never came to pass.

But, Owens says, "I feel more hopeful in studying these issues today than I did five years ago." At least, she says, we are all now talking more about inequality and segregation.

9/12/13 REDUX: Killing Public School Integration Reset And Cloaked The Structure Of American Racism

NYTimes | In many northern cities, the 1974 United States Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley killed any hopes of integrating the public schools. That ruling, involving Detroit and its suburbs, said that a mandatory plan to achieve integration by busing black children from Detroit across district lines to mainly white suburbs was unconstitutional. The result accelerated white flight to the suburbs, leaving the schools in urban centers even more segregated than they had been. 

Most famously, this happened in Boston, where court-ordered integration resulted in a busing plan that wound up mainly moving children of color around the city. 

But busing had greater success in some places, particularly those where the plans were carried out countywide, reducing the chances of white flight. They included Louisville-Jefferson County, Raleigh-Wake County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. 

This week’s Retro Report video, “The Battle for Busing,” follows the story of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, which became a national model for racial integration for 30 years only to resegregate about a decade ago, after a court ruling lifted the mandatory integration plan.

When the Charlotte busing plan began in 1971, there were whites who threatened to go to jail before they would let their children attend schools with blacks. The open racism voiced by whites in the Retro Report’s archival footage is vicious and ugly; students were injured when fistfights broke out between whites and blacks. 

But by 1974, the district was being singled out in the news media as a national model, particularly West Charlotte High, which had previously been all black. The impact of integration was visible almost immediately at the school. When whites arrived, the facilities were upgraded, said a former chairman of the school board, Arthur Griffin. A gravel parking lot was paved, and the football stadium and the gymnasium were renovated. 

Over the years, researchers like Prof. Roslyn Mickelson at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, conducted studies concluding that children of any race who attended diverse schools were more likely to succeed, in areas like graduating, avoiding crime and attending college. 

But in the end, the same federal courts that had ushered in integration helped kill it. In the late 1990s, Judge Robert D. Potter of Federal District Court essentially said that the Charlotte district had met its constitutional duty by successfully creating a single school system serving all children regardless of race and that no more need be done.

In a few years’ time, West Charlotte High, which had been roughly 40 percent black and 60 percent white in the 1970s, became 88 percent black and 1 percent white. And it wasn’t just Charlotte. Today, nearly two-thirds of the school districts that had been ordered to desegregate are no longer required to do so, including Seminole County, Fla. (2006); Little Rock, Ark. (2007); and Galveston County, Tex. (2009). 

The New York City system is more segregated than it was in the 1980s: half the schools are more than 90 percent black and Hispanic. For more about the nation’s “steady and massive resegregation,” see this Reporter’s Notebook from Retro Report. 

This week’s Retro Report is the 10th in our documentary project, which was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 12 journalists and 6 contributors led by Kyra Darnton. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. The videos are typically 10 to 12 minutes long.

Nah Jim, Black America Didn't "Opt Out" - White America Violently Rejected Integrating Black Children

I was fetching around for a way in which to try and integrate today's dismissals of both BLM and the black political mainstream, with tomorrow's refresher course on American racism and living memory history. Tomorrow is REALLY important.  That said, I suspect that even here, short attention span theater predominates - such that a simple succinct six minute turn that Irami Osei Frimpong offered - will have been lost even on my audience.

For sure what has been lost is the fundamental, core living memory experience of racism that shaped my life, largely i'm guessing, because it had little to no impact on any of your lives. What I'm referring to is public school desegregation attempted in the 70's and flatly and legally and politically rejected by white Americans of all socioeconomic and political persuasions. 

Kunstler entirely misses this in his haste to blame black folks for their exclusion and alienation from the American mainstream. See, I and a number of my peers, my immediate personal cohort, were among the lucky and durable ones who integrated public and private schools during the 70's, survived, got tough, and thrived, all the while learning everything there is to know about white America. 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, don't get me wrong. I'm not crying about anything, I'm not playing a victim card, and I sincerely believe and exemplify the ethos "that which does not kill you". But the simple fact of the matter is, that when white Americans refused to accept integration of public schools and shifted themselves in very dramatic macro-scale fashion in response to the prospective horror of little Cindy Lou sitting next to young Tyrone in the 3rd grade, well..., that kind of set the mold for much of what has followed over the next 50 years.

kunstler |  That business was the full participation of Black citizens in American life. The main grievance now is that Black Americans are still denied full participation due to “systemic racism.” That’s a dodge. What actually happened is that Black America opted out and lost itself in a quandary of its own making with the assistance of their white dis-enablers, the well intentioned “progressives.” 

Let me take you back to the mid-20^th century. America had just fought and won a war against manifest evil. The nation styled itself as Leader of the Free World. That role could not be squared with the rules of Jim Crow apartheid, so something had to change. The civil rights campaign to undo racial segregation under law naturally began in the courts in cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954). So-called public accommodations — hotels, theaters, restaurants, buses, bathrooms, water fountains, etc. — remained segregated. By the early 1960s, the clamor to end all that took to the streets under the emerging moral leadership of Martin Luther King and his credo of non-violent civil disobedience.

Many acts of non-violent street protest were met by police using fire-hoses, vicious dogs, and batons to terrorize the marchers. This only shamed and horrified the rest of the nation watching on TV and actually quickened the formation of a political consensus to end American apartheid. That culminated in the passage of three major federal laws: the Public Accommodations Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Meanwhile, something else was going on among Black Americans: not everybody believed in Dr. King’s non-violence, and not everybody was so sure about full participation in American life. Altogether, Black America remained ambivalent and anxious about all that. That full participation implied a challenge to compete on common ground. What if it didn’t work out? An alternate view emerged, personified first by Malcolm X, who called MLK an “Uncle Tom,” and then by the younger generation, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers and others retailing various brands of Black Power, Black Nationalism, and Black Separatism. It amounted, for some, in declining that invitation to participate fully in American life. “No thanks. We’ll go our own way.” That sentiment has prevailed ever since.

So, the outcome to all that federal legislation of the 1960s turned out not to be the clear-cut victory (like World War Two) that liberals and progressives so breathlessly expected. The civil rights acts had some startling adverse consequences, too. They swept away much of the parallel service and professional economy that Blacks had constructed to get around all the old exclusions of everyday life. With that went a lot of the Black middle-class, the business owners especially. In its place, the liberal-and-progressive government provided “public assistance” — a self-reinforcing poverty generator that got ever worse, especially in big cities where de-industrialization started destroying the working-class job base beginning in the 1970s.  Fist tap Big Don.

Removing Statues A Distraction That Obfuscates The Actual Structure Of American Racism

gatestoneinstitute |  The idea that in the United States there is "structural racism" (defined by the Aspen Institute as "a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity") has led, it seems, to a form of obsessive expiation. Films have been removed from streaming services. Gone with the Wind will now be shown with five-minute disclaimer. (One minute would not have been enough?)

The film is probably just first on a lengthening list. A reporter from Variety recently listed "10 Problematic Films That Could Use Warning Labels". They include Forrest Gump: for a brief moment, the title character is described, in an ironic fashion, as having been named after a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Consumer product brands, such as Uncle Ben's Rice and Aunt Jemima syrup are abruptly having their names and logos changed. Princeton voted to expunge the name of Woodrow Wilson from its public policy school. Demands have been made that universities and corporations show that they are not racist by declaring their support for Black Lives Matter. Many have bowed to the demand.

Of course there is still some racism among individuals, but the idea that the United States today is a society where "structural racism" exists is contradicted by decades of political decisions to repair the damage and, as in, for example, affirmative action programs, to favor equality for all Americans. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an American author who fled her homeland of Somalia, wrote:

"The problem is that there are people among us who don't want to figure it out and who have an interest in avoiding workable solutions. They have an obvious political incentive not to solve social problems, because social problems are the basis of their power. That is why, whenever a scholar like Roland Fryer brings new data to the table—showing it's simply not true that the police disproportionately shoot black people dead—the response is not to read the paper but to try to discredit its author."

For many years, American films dealing with racial questions have been explicitly hostile to any racial discrimination, and it would be impossible to find a book put out by a U.S. publishing house supporting racial discrimination, unless it dates from an era long gone. Rewriting history by falsifying it is simply an attempt to replace history with propaganda. Removing films and other information that do not correspond to a predetermined vision of history has long been the practice of totalitarian despotisms. Dictating that universities and corporations face severe consequences if they refuse to bowdlerize the past is simply a fascistic, tyrannical means of coercion. Worse, the submissive attitude of so many universities and corporations is what enables the bullying to continue.

1/23/14 REDUX: Respectable Negroe Politics NEVER Question The Existing Economic Order

libcom |  Coexisting with this egalitarian ideology was the Civil Rights movement's appeal to a functionalist conception of social rationality. To the extent that it blocked individual aspirations, segregation was seen as restricting artificially social growth and progress. Similarly, by raising artificial barriers such as the construction of blacks' consumer power through Jim Crow legislation and, indirectly, through low black wages, segregation impeded, so the argument went, the free functioning of the market. Consequently, segregation was seen not only as detrimental to the blacks who suffered under it, but also to economic progress as such. Needless to say, the two lines of argument were met with approval by corporate liberals.[31]

......

Outside the South, rebellion arose from different conditions. Racial segregation was not rigidly codified and the management sub-systems in the black community were correspondingly more fluidly integrated within the local administrative apparatus. Yet, structural, generational and ideological pressures, broadly similar to those in the South, existed within the black elite in the Northern, Western, and Midwestern cities that had gained large black populations in the first half of the 20th century. In non-segregated urban contexts, formal political participation and democratized consumption had long since been achieved: there the salient political issue was the extension of the administrative purview of the elite within the black community. The centrality of the administrative nexus in the "revolt of the cities" is evident from the ideological programs it generated.

Black Power came about as a call for indigenous control of economic and political institutions in the black community.[33] Because one of the early slogans of Black Power was a vague demand for "community control," the emancipatory character of the rebellion was open to considerable misinterpretation. Moreover, the diversity and "militance" of its rhetoric encouraged extravagance in assessing the movement's depth. It soon became clear, however, that "community control" called not for direction of pertinent institutions — schools, hospitals, police, retail businesses, etc. — by their black constituents, but for administration of those institutions by alleged representatives in the name of a black community. Given an existing elite structure whose legitimacy had already been certified by federal social-welfare agencies, the selection of "appropriate" representatives was predictable. Indeed, as Robert Allen has shown,[34] the empowerment of this elite was actively assisted by corporate-state elements. Thus, "black liberation" quickly turned into black "equity," "community control" became simply "black control" and the Nixon "blackonomics" strategy was readily able to "coopt" the most rebellious tendency of 1960s black activism. Ironically, Black Power's supersession of the Civil Rights program led to further consolidation of the management elite's hegemony within the black community. The black elite broadened its administrative control by uncritically assuming the legitimacy of the social context within which that elite operated. Black control was by no means equivalent to democratization.

Permitted Negroe Politics - NEVER Question The Existing Economic Order

fivethirtyeight |  It’s not surprising that prominent Black political figures aren’t aligned on every issue — and there’s nothing new about that at all. But these particular divides are illustrative of major shifts happening within Black politics, by which I largely mean the world of activists, elected officials and other power brokers in the United States who are Black.¹ We are in an era where one man (Barack Obama) is no longer the center of Black politics. So among the major power centers are the activist movement linked to Black Lives Matter that is as skeptical of Black elected officials as non-Black ones; a rising left wing of the Democratic Party that includes many Black voices; and a Black establishment that is arguably more powerful than ever before on Capitol Hill.

There are now, in my view, at least seven fairly distinct camps among Black political figures — concentrated in the Democratic Party but also stretching into the GOP. These groupings — which come from my own reporting and talking to experts, rather than any specific data set — are mostly informal. But the idea is to explain some common patterns and themes we are seeing, not necessarily to perfectly describe the politics of any particular person or faction in the party. I should also emphasize that these camps do not correspond exactly to rank-and-file Black voters, although I will talk about some places where there is overlap between activists and voters.

I have tried to order the camps by size, from largest to smallest. They are:

Mars Will Not Be Without Its Own Hypnotically Exotic Delights...,

universetoday |  This movie was created using an imagery from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC).  The images are normally taken looking straight down (nadir), and the video combines topography information from the stereo channels of HRSC to generate a three-dimensional landscape, which was then recorded from different perspectives, as with a movie camera, to render the flight shown in the video.

Korolev Crater is 82 kilometers (50 miles) across and at least 2 km (1.25 miles) deep. This well-preserved crater is located the northern lowlands of Mars, just south of a large patch of dune-filled terrain that encircles part of the planet’s northern polar cap (known as Olympia Undae).

That’s not snow you’re seeing, but this crater is constantly filled with water ice, and its central mound is about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) thick all year round. It’s one of the largest reservoirs of non-polar ice on Mars.

This view reminds me of a flight I took where I flew over Meteor Crater in Arizona USA. But for comparison, Meteor Crater is less than a mile across (.737 miles/1.186 km) and just 560 feet (170 m) deep.

You may be thinking, how can this ice remain stable in Korolev Crater; doesn’t water ice sublimate away in Mars thin atmosphere? Just like dry ice does here on Earth, water ice on Mars usually goes from solid to gas with the low atmospheric pressure. (Mars has approximately 8 millibars while on Earth the average, atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1013.25 millibars, or about 14.7 pounds per square inch.)

Who Is The Target Of This Epstein Appeasement And Why Right Now?

tatler |  The news comes following a public back and forth between the US Department of Justice and Prince Andrew’s legal team over the royal’s alleged lack of cooperation in the ongoing investigations into Epstein. But one of the US prosecutors leading the enquiries, Geoffrey Berman, has now been sacked from his role as Attorney for the Southern District of New York by Donald Trump after refusing to stand down.

According to the Times, the US Attorney General, William Barr, asked President Trump to remove Berman – who had also overseen the prosecution of a number of Trump’s associates. Berman initially responded by stating that he had ‘no intention of resigning’ after Trump ally Barr unexpectedly announced that Berman was ‘stepping down’.

Earlier in June it was reported that the US Department of Justice had asked the Home Office to help it question Andrew over his links to Epstein. The Duke of York’s legal team accused the DoJ of ‘breaching their own confidentiality rules’, claiming that the royal had ‘offered his assistance as a witness’ on at least three occasions this year.

Berman retaliated by stating that Andrew had ‘yet again sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and willing to cooperate.’ He added that in fact, the Duke ‘has not given an interview to federal authorities, has repeatedly declined our request to schedule such an interview, and nearly four months ago informed us unequivocally – through the very same counsel who issued today's release – that he would not come in for such an interview… If Prince Andrew is, in fact, serious about cooperating with the ongoing federal investigation, our doors remain open, and we await word of when we should expect him.’

It was subsequently reported that Andrew would not cooperate with the Epstein investigation unless American investigators offer him ‘an olive branch’. The Duke of York has consistently denied any wrongdoing in regards to his links with his former friend.

Detained "Insidious Creature" Fitna Squeal Like A Pig Caught Under The Gate

dailymail |  Speaking to The Sun, Epstein's former employer Steven Hoffenberg said the paedophile's ex-girlfriend Maxwell 'knows everything' and will 'totally co-operate' after her arrest. 

Hoffenberg, a convicted fraudster who employed Epstein at Towers Financial in the 1980s, said 'there's a lot of people very worried' about what Maxwell could reveal. 'She's going to cooperate and be very important. Andrew is definitely, definitely concerned,' Hoffenberg said. 

On Thursday, a source close to the Duke of York's legal team told DailyMail.com that he was 'bewildered' by prosecutors' remarks that they wanted to speak to him.  

'The Duke’s team remains bewildered given that we have twice communicated with the DOJ in the last month and to-date, we have had no response.'

On Thursday, Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said the investigation into Epstein's decades of abuse is ongoing and that she'd 'welcome' Prince Andrew 'coming in to provide a statement', prompting speculation that he may among people investigators may focus their attention on next.

'We would welcome Prince Andrew coming in to talk to us. We would like to have the benefit of his statement. Our doors remain open. We would welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his statement,' she said. 

It opens the door to questions of jurisdiction and whether or not US Attorney Strauss may charge for alleged incidents that happened in London and not America. Among the claims in the indictment is that Maxwell groomed one of the victims in London. At her press conference, Strauss said some of the sexual abuse also happened at Maxwell's house in London. 

US attorney Lisa Bloom, who represents one of Maxwell's accusers, said 'all others accused of enabling Jeffrey Epstein's predations must immediately be brought to justice as well'.  

'Maxwell's brutal, ruthless behaviour caused my client tremendous pain,' Ms Bloom said in a statement, adding that she and her client applauded the socialite's 'long overdue arrest'. 

One Epstein accuser, Michelle Licata, has previously voiced hopes that prosecutors looking into Epstein were 'going to start digging into his life... and start pulling out this spider web of people that were related to it', according to the New York Post. 

Former federal prosecutor Jessica Roth told Bloomberg: 'There is no way for prosecutors to present a case against her without going into all the evidence they had against Epstein, because the charges here are intertwined.

'The original indictment against Jeffrey Epstein made it clear that he didn’t act alone and that the government had evidence that other people were also involved.' 

Celebrating Maxwell's arrest, Prince Andrew's accuser, Roberts said last night: 'Thank you to the FBI, Southern District of New York and anyone involved in the arrest of this insidious creature. Hope the judge throws the book at her. So so so happy- she’s finally where she belongs.'

Q Gillum: "What We Gone Do Boss?!?!?!"

kmbc |  Mayor Quinton Lucas is calling on a special session of the Missouri General Assembly to address violent crime in Kansas City.

On Friday, Lucas released a letter she sent to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson calling the situation in Kansas City a ‘crisis point.’ In the letter, he asks Parson to call for a special session of the assembly to allow state senators and representatives to vote on legislation to enhance witness protection funding in Missouri.

“We need state legislative action on several items we have previously discussed to address our problem,” Lucas said in the letter. “While we will continue to pursue a broad set of social services and other tools to address violent crime now and in the future, specific action from Jefferson City can help us apprehend and incarcerate murderers currently walking the streets of Kansas City and protect witnesses in our neighborhoods who are frequently scared to speak.”

[ READ FULL LETTER FROM LUCAS ]

Lucas said additional help is also needed to provide more tools for law enforcement and prosecutors to “interrupt conspiracies to commit murder and other violent acts, particularly offenses committed by felons using deadly weapons.”

“Kansas City is too fine a city, and Missouri too fine a state to allow violent criminality to define our way of life,” Lucas wrote. “We will persevere through these challenges, but our children, our law enforcement community, and all Kansas Citians need change quickly."

Coincidence Theory: Ghislaine Maxwell Headed To The MCC Epstein Kill Box

bloomberg |  Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein arrested Thursday for helping him sexually abuse underage girls, could wind up in the same jail where he committed suicide last year.

Maxwell, 58, was arrested early Thursday morning in New Hampshire and is set for an afternoon hearing in federal court there. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who are handling the case, are opposing bail and seeking to have her held in custody before trial.

“We will be seeking detention,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan said in a press conference announcing charges. Prosecutors said Maxwell helped Epstein entice girls as young as 14 into sex from 1994 through 1997, then lied about it under oath in 2016.

Prosecutors warn that Maxwell has a “strong incentive” to flee if she’s not detained because she faces years in prison. “That risk is only amplified by the defendant’s extensive international ties, her citizenship in two foreign countries, her wealth, and her lack of meaningful ties to the United States,” they wrote in a detention memo. “In short, Maxwell has three passports, large sums of money, extensive international connections, and absolutely no reason to stay” in the U.S.

Back to New York

Unless the judge in New Hampshire releases her on bail, Maxwell will either be held overnight in a local jail there or transported immediately back to New York, said Jack Donson, a consultant who formerly worked for the federal Bureau of Prisons. In New York, she would likely be transferred to one of two federal lockups, the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan or the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Federal Judge Continues Cleanup On Epstein Aisle Three...,

Newsweek |  "I oppose the destruction of evidence that may contain smoking gun proof that my false accuser made up her story," Dershowitz said. "I want all the evidence preserved because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I did nothing wrong. The evidence to be destroyed may also contain proof of wrongdoing by others. It should be preserved for appeal and for history. Destroying evidence risks destroying truth."

Upon returning from a trip to France in 2019, Epstein was arrested. Indictment documents alleged that Epstein had "sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations." Epstein also allegedly "created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit." Investigators also reported finding incriminating photographs of underaged naked girls inside a safe in Epstein's Manhattan home.

Giuffre claimed that she had been brought into Epstein's circle by Epstein's lover Ghislaine Maxwell. While involved with Epstein, Giuffre alleged that she had been involved in sexual relations with Prince Andrew while she was 17 years old at Epstein's behest.

Prince Andrew denied the allegations, saying in a 2019 statement that he "deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage and such behavior is abhorrent."

Epstein pleaded not guilty to the charges. While awaiting trial, Epstein died by hanging in his prison cell. After it was discovered that prison guards had failed to perform safety checks on Epstein, some believed that Epstein had actually been murdered. However, the coroner officially ruled Epstein's death a suicide.

In Case You Were Wondering About Pleasing White Light And Cleansing Blue Fire...,

nuclearwarsimulator |  The goal of this project is to build a realistic simulation and visualization of large-scale nuclear conflicts with a focus on humanitarian consequences. There are currently over 13000 nuclear weapons on this planet of which over 9000 are in military stockpiles. This software should help you answer the question: what will happen if Russia and United States or India and Pakistan use their arsenals?

There are a lot of interlocking systems and processes in a nuclear conflict: the command and control system, locations and movement of forces, weapons delivery systems and humanitarian consequences. By simulating the most relevant of these systems you should be able to tell a credible story about how nuclear conflicts play out and what are the consequences.

The simulation is developed in Unity and will be distributed as a stand-alone application.

Currently implemented features:

• visualise and calculate effects of nuclear weapons (thermal radiation, overpressure, fallout and mass fires) on a high-density population grid (similar to Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP)
• visualisation of overpressure, thermal radiation, radiation dose from fallout, areas affected by mass fires, population density and casualties density (prompt radiation is not considered)
• effects from hundreds to thousands of explosions can be calculated and visualised in seconds
• design and place nuclear forces to recreate current, past or future arsenals using an intuitive UI
• create attack plans and conflict scenarios and share them with others
• place yourself, your family and your friends inside the simulation and calculate the probability of your survival
• simulate the dynamics and timing of the conflict and effects of a first strike using a damage model based on CEP and overpressure
• simple production cost model: how many weapons can a country build if it wants to?

Some more details can be found in the screenshots-section. Technical details on the models and databases being used here will be added soon. Follow me on twitter to stay updated.

FBI Arrests Ghislaine Maxwell

nbcnewyork |  Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and heiress who became a confidante of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and was later implicated in his alleged sexual crimes, has been arrested by the FBI.

She was arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire around 8:30 a.m. Thursday on charges she conspired with Epstein to sexually abuse minors, and is expected to appear in a federal court later today.

The six-count indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that Maxwell helped Epstein groom girls as young as 14 years old, going back as far as 1994. She faces up to 35 years in prison.

"This case against Ghislaine Maxwell is the prequel to the earlier case we brought against Jeffrey Epstein," Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said at a news conference on the indictment. The FBI said that it had been tracking her movements for some time, though she was not indicted until June 29.

I Want To Live Under The Sun And High In The Clouds...,

mashable |  “We have better topographic data from Pluto than we do from Venus,” says Darby Dyer, the current chair of NASA’s Venus Exploration Advisory Group, with a frustrated chuckle. “NASA and the majority of planetary scientists have bought into the notion that Mars is the most likely place to have water and evidence of life. Overturning that paradigm is a tough battle, but we’re fighting it.”

Dyer is 62; the days when Venus was thought to be a swamp planet are within her living memory. She also remembers being in grad school at MIT in the 1980s, on the day Ronald Reagan canceled a NASA mission that was going to take an orbital radar to Venus. 

“There were people crying in the corridors,” she says. “Ph.D.s whose whole theses vanished in an instant.” The Venus community gathered its energy and pushed back enough to create one final mission, planned for 1986, which was delayed by the Challenger shuttle explosion until 1989. That was Magellan. 

Still, even with that Magellan data and our limited Earth-based spectroscopy, what wonders and mysteries we’ve been able to uncover. There are the strange dark patches, large enough to affect the planet’s weather, which may be where those microorganisms are hanging out. A 2020 study says that Venus’ volcanoes are still active, erupting as we speak.

And it’s only been four years since a groundbreaking study that suggested we might have been right all along about Venus being covered in liquid water; we just got the wrong era. Turns out Venus had oceans between 4 billion and 1 billion years ago — way longer than liquid water existed on Mars, and more than enough time for it to develop life. 

“If you had water for 3 billion years, life probably arose on Venus before it did on Earth,” says Dyar. “Maybe they had trilobites in those oceans; maybe they got as far as whales.” 

We may raise CO2 in the atmosphere to the point where it threatens the threads of human civilization, but only a growing sun can boil the oceans and burn the land, creating enough CO2 to dominate the atmosphere for a full-on runaway greenhouse effect. 

But! It’s also possible that Venus was slammed by multiple impacts, including a possible former moon, which might explain why the whole place is spinning upside-down and so slowly. You know what would help us figure it out? More data. 

Right now we don’t even know what Venus’ core is made of, or whether it has tectonic plates like Earth, or whether there’s evidence of old oceans to be found in the atmosphere, or exactly what kind of organisms have clung to it like mushrooms thriving in the radioactive ruin of Chernobyl’s old reactor. 

It won’t be dinosaurs, but life on Venus may well have, uh, found a way. 

The question is: How soon can we?

After The Panicdemic Reset?

yanisvaroufakis |  You said that “either we unite with progressives around the planet in a shared struggle for justice, or we surrender to the forces of nationalism and free-market fundamentalism”, how could reuniting progressives help in any way?and what is your plan beside the website?  

Let me give you a simple example: During every recent crisis, bankers banded together and forced governments to apply socialism – for them! The price was austerity and hardship for almost everyone else. This led to discontent. Discontent then breeds fascism, xenophobia, nativism, ultra-nationalism. The representatives of this misanthropic type of politics unite across borders (look at the love in between Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Le Pen, Salvini etc.). Is it not the time for progressives to band together in the interests of the majority in every country, on every continent?

This is what our Progressive International is about. How are we organising this, besides a website? In two ways. First, by putting together a global plan for shared, green prosperity. (We must be able to answer questions such as “How much should we spend on fighting climate change? Where will the money come from? How will we redistribute wealth from the few to the many and from the Global North to the Global South?”) Secondly, by organising global actions in support of local causes (e.g. a global campaign in support of a few striking women workers in, say, India). To accomplish these hugely hard, but essential, tasks the Progressive International has put together a Council, comprising leading activists from around the world, and a Cabinet, consisting of a few dedicated organisers working on our campaigns on a day-to-day basis. Our next meeting will take place on 18^th September in Iceland, under the aegis of Katrin Jacobsdottir, the country’s Prime Minister.

What should be the role of the state in all of this, specially after the Covid 19 and critics to capitalism and private sectors which was not able to cope with the crisis?

The state’s role is crucial. Even politicians inspired by small-government libertarianism have had to call for governments to step in and, effectively, save everyone. The question is not whether the state has a role. The question is: On whose behalf is the state acting?

“It’s almost like someone thinks there’s a benefit to keeping people divided.”

nakedcapitalism |  The racial categories of white and black were developed around 1600. Probably a little after by wealthy Americans who used it to keep divided Black slaves, poor often indentured Whites, and the often enslaved Indians. These people were not disposable because they were useful as workers, but who often worked and even socialized frequently. As a group they had potentially considerable political power during the 1600s. This was deliberately dealt with. The Blacks were brutally suppress with (the category of Black indentured was eliminated. There was no Southern style chattel slavery for Blacks at first). The Whites were placated with some very modest reforms. The Indians (labeled as savages) were just driven off at gunpoint. This is also where the Southern Slave Patrols started to terrorize and keep down the slave population as well as keep down any poor whites. Where they started asking for people’s papers.

When my Irish great whatever grandfather stepped off the Coffin Ship around 1850, he was barely considered human, never mind white, and about on par with the black community. This was true for decades as were the “Irish need not apply signs” and the creation of the Paddy Wagons. Would you consider him having White Privilege?

It was only after the development of political power over multiple generations that the Irish-Americans were given the status of being both human and white, which only really happened during the early 20th century. Similarly with the Italians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Greeks, and so on. 

Then there are the Jews. The Italians only finally became real whites after the Second World War although I do not think that they were quite as abused as the Irish. Going up to an individual in these groups at anytime before the 1960s and saying that they have White Privilege would have had them laugh at you in your very face. Today, they have been giving the category of White with its very real privilege of being treated like a human being, so long as you are not poor. But in the past?

During the Antebellum South and after Reconstruction when a poor white farmer or laborer even got friendly with a black person, the local wealthy white landowner and his hired goons would often beat up the offending white man. After Reconstruction, the allied white and black reformists in the South were literally extirpated via guns and the rope. If they were lucky and in the government, they were merely deposed, and run out of town by armed white supremacists during actual coups. Much like the American led coups in the Americas and elsewhere.

When a leader, especially a black one, becomes successful in his leadership and starts to bring up class and poverty, to suggest crossing class and race as well as mentioning our common humanity they often wind up dead like MLK and Fred Hampton. Working just on racism is much less dangerous.

Actually in the South and Southwest during the 19th century Blacks, Hispanics, and the very, very occasional White who were too successful as business owners were sometimes lynched for just that reason. To destroy the opposition.

There are a number of ways to destroy reformists movements besides murder especially those that threaten the power and money of the elites. Hell, you can find elite co-option, police and goon squad assassinations in the labor movement, equal rights movement, even in feminism (no murders, but plenty of false arrests and beatings). All of these movements were captured by elitists who expunged first the non-whites, then the socialists, then the working class from what became their movement. Any economic benefits from these “reforms” only accrued to the Upper Class Whites.

Why do cries of racism become so strident and the very real problem of racism become something that must be solves right now, today when cries of poverty and want are also raised. Every single time? Do you think that the current debates about racism just happened right after Bernie Sanders near success and the rise of an actual American Left fifty years after it was destroyed is a coincidence? Really?

If this was really and truly about racism or even poverty, why are the Native Americans, trapped on their Reservations with the highest poverty, drug use, rape and murder statistics of any group of Americans, bar none, not mentioned. They have the most police brutality as well and some of the reservations, due to legal loopholes, are happy hunting grounds for rapists coming from outside of some of the reservations. Their leaders usually do not have political power and wealth and they are isolated and beaten down at least compared to the national political leadership. So just under three million people are ignored and targeted.]

People are finally taking some notice of the shrinking middle class and of the increasing homeless population. If you wanted, I can take to some of the skosh less then fifteen thousand homeless in San Francisco. Or the over one hundred thousand throughout the state. At least half of whom are White. Are there any real protest over them? We can look at the millions wasted every year by San Francisco with cushy jobs being created, but not much progress. However, there are fine demonstrations on racism, which is good because racism and also police brutality with no mention of the increasing poverty in this country. Even now large sums of cash are used to “deal” with the problems, nationally. Problems that always get worse.

So cui bono? At least half of any negative statistic one could name, with the possible exception of prison, which IIRC only one-third are White. Unemployment, poverty, drug use, police brutality and police murders. Poor and struggling people are much easier to manipulate, aren’t they?

However, when there are protests about those issues it very often morphs into one about just racism. Let’s tear down some statues. Yah! When ever there is smart, hardworking, talented, and dedicated reformist or a successful non-profit making progress dealing with those issues, including racism, money from somewhere drops from the sky like manna. So long as small concessions are made. Or a slick person applies for a job there. Always has money somehow and eventually takes over or at least co-opts the organization. Or cushy jobs are offered elsewhere to certain people. In the old days like the 1960s and before, if that didn’t work s*** would happen, sometimes fatally. Sometimes nothing needs be done because often college educated are already brainwashed into uselessness by Neoliberal propaganda. The wealth and power of the Haves remain protected.

As an aside, Social Darwinism and Eugenics were created and spread by very wealthy people and foundations in the United States. Much like racism. If one doubts this, I can recommend some books I have. A good start would be War Against the Weak by Edwin Black.

So, in two part harmony, the Black Misleadership Class starts it latest performance along with the Backup of the White Misleadership Class (what else should I label Pelosi, Schumer, and McConnell? Or the leaders of the entire state of California?). Racism, the horror! And the police, oh my! Screaming, shouting (a whisper about poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment.) Perhaps Obama pops out and says some soaring nonsense or some very poor white fool is interviewed. A fantastic tempest in a teapot with nothing every actually getting done.

Then some Alt-Right creeps pop out and start saying you are White or not, and that’s all that matters! There is no American nationalism, only White Nationalism. White Power! Join us! (and don’t forget the Jews!) Finally, lies like the 1619 Project or propaganda like White Fragility are published.

Yes, racism does exist, and as a percentage of all the ills of our American nation, Blacks get it the worse excepting the Native Americans, of course. White Privilege is a real thing. But just as the categories of White and Black, of racism were deliberately created in the 17th century, for benefiting the powers that be, I wonder about Identity Politics and Cancelling. That blend of Nazi racialism and Maoist thought control. I wonder how racism and its pernicious child Identity Politics has been created, nurtured, fed a steady diet of hate, and then used as a weapon upon those who would care about everyone regardless of there supposed identity. I also wonder what would happen if I approached the man sleeping on cardboard, perhaps in the usually three month rainy season, or that family living in their car/van/RV on some out of the way road, that the do have White Privilege, which the do and usually means being treated as a human being. I also wonder about my nose.

Mark Stop Playing And Get Patty Her Own Chopper (Patty, The Chrome LCP Is Not A Crowd Control Weapon)

stltoday | ST. LOUIS — As protesters made their way to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home on Sunday night, demanding her resignation, they marched and shouted along private Portland Place. They were met by a couple pointing guns and telling protesters to get away. 

Protesters chanted to a drumbeat of “Let’s go!” Hundreds of them filed by. The couple, Mark T. and Patricia N. McCloskey, stood outside with weapons. They are personal-injury lawyers who work together in The McCloskey Law Center and own a million dollar home.'

“Private property!” Mark McCloskey shouted repeatedly at the crowd, as he held a rifle. “Get out! Private property, get out!” Patricia McCloskey pointed a small handgun.

Someone in the crowd replied, “Calm down.” A woman protester yelled, “Then call the (expletive) cops, you idiot!” and “It’s a public street (expletive).”

The Post-Dispatch photographed the exchange. A video on Twitter had been viewed more than 10 million times by Monday morning. President Trump retweeted an ABC News account of the confrontation.

The couple’s renovation of their storied Renaissance palazzo mansion on Portland Place was featured in St. Louis Magazine. City records show the property is appraised at $1.15 million. The couple could not be reached Monday morning to talk about the incident. The windows at the couple's law firm were boarded up; no one responded to a knock on the door of their home.

Karen ELATED To Be Out'Chere Snitching On Mask Defiance And Non-Compliance

kshb |  Mayor Quinton Lucas's face mask mandate went into effect in Kansas City, Missouri, Monday. 

Anyone going inside a public building is now required to wear a face covering. 

The Kansas City, Missouri Health Department will be enforcing the mandate by asking customers and businesses to hold each other accountable. 

As of 5 p.m. there were 21 Health - Communicable Disease 311 complaints according to the city's 311 database.

The Health Department will follow up with businesses in those complaints one by one, beginning with a phone call to determine if the business needs a reminder about the rule or if it is actively ignoring it.

Joe Zwillenberg, owner of the Westport Flea Market Bar and Grill, said he welcomes the oversight by the public and the government.

"You might get that new employee who just moved here that maybe doesn't know about the ordinance going on and fell through the cracks," Zwillenberg said. "The last thing any restaurant wants to do is get somebody sick."

After an initial follow-up call from the health department, next steps, if necessary, include sending a certified letter, visiting the business, sending a mitigation order and pulling the occupancy permit. 

The Health Department wants to stress that customers hold the power. If they see a business not allowing for distancing or not enforcing mask-wearing they should leave.

Quivering, Age-Spotted Old Poodle ALL-IN On The Great Reset

cnbc |  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday said that a federal mandate on wearing masks is “long overdue,” as state governors call for a consistent national message on the issue amid a surge in coronavirus cases across the nation.  

Pelosi said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the use of masks to reduce the spread of the virus but never mandated it as to “not offend” President Donald Trump.

The president has repeatedly flouted public health guidelines by refusing to wear a mask in public since the start of the outbreak. 

“The president should be an example. Real men wear masks, be an example to the country, wear a mask,” Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s not about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting others.” 

Mask wearing has become a point of contention across the U.S., despite research showing that face coverings prevent coronavirus transmission.

U.S. coronavirus cases surged by more than 45,000 in one day on Friday, a record breaking spike that brought the nation’s total to more than 2.5 million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday deflected a question about a federal mandate requiring Americans to wear masks, and said people should listen to what state and local officials are saying about wearing masks in public. 

The vice president said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “every state has a unique situation” and “we believe people should wear masks wherever social distancing is not possible.”

Replacement Negroes And Fundamental Physics Open Thread

"No-Fault" Containment Of Promethean Humanity Is The Reset's Biggest Challenge

strategic-culture |  With the specter of a New Great Depression hovering over most of the planet, realpolitik perspectives for a radical change of the political economy framework we live in are not exactly encouraging.

Western ruling elites will be deploying myriad tactics to perpetuate the passivity of populations barely emerging from de facto house arrest, including a massive disciplinary – in a Foucault sense – drive by states and business/finance circles.

In his latest book, La Desaparicion de los Rituales, Byung-Chul Han shows how total communication, especially in a time of pandemic, now coincides with total vigilance: “Domination impersonates freedom. Big Data generates a domineering knowledge that allows the possibility of intervening in the human psyche, and manipulating it. Considering it this way, the data-ist imperative of transparency is not a continuation of the Enlightenment, but its ending.”

This revamping of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish coincides with reports about the demise of the neoliberal era being vastly overstated. Instead of a simplistic plunge into populist nationalism, what is on the horizon points mostly to a Neoliberalism Restoration – massively spun as a novelty, and incorporating some Keynesian elements: after all, in the post-Lockdown era, to “save” the markets and private initiative the state must not only intervene but also facilitate a possible ecological transition.

The bottom line: we may be facing a mere cosmetic approach, in which the deep structural crisis of zombie capitalism – barely moving under unpopular “reforms” and infinite debt – still is not addressed.

Meanwhile, what is going to happen to assorted fascisms? Eric Hobsbawm showed us in Age of Extremes how the key to the fascist right was always mass mobilization: “Fascists were the revolutionaries of the counter-revolution”.

We may be heading further than mere, crude neofascism. Call it Hybrid Neofascism. Their political stars bow to global market imperatives while switching political competition to the cultural arena.

That’s what true “illiberalism” is all about: the mix between neoliberalism – unrestricted capital mobility, Central Bank diktats – and political authoritarianism. Here’s where we find Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro.

Color Me Cynical - But I Don't See These Human Livestock Managers Ceding Control To You Peasants

WEF  |  Geneva, Switzerland, 3 June 2020 – “The Great Reset” will be the theme of a unique twin summit to be convened by the World Economic Forum in January 2021. The 51st World Economic Forum Annual Meeting will bring together global leaders from government, business and civil society, and stakeholders from around the world in a unique configuration that includes both in-person and virtual dialogues.

“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind. We have to decarbonize the economy in the short window still remaining and bring our thinking and behaviour once more into harmony with nature,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

“In order to secure our future and to prosper, we need to evolve our economic model and put people and planet at the heart of global value creation. If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time,” said HRH The Prince of Wales.

“The Great Reset is a welcome recognition that this human tragedy must be a wake-up call. We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face,” said António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, New York.

“A Great Reset is necessary to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being,” added Schwab “The global health crisis has laid bare the unsustainability of our old system in terms of social cohesion, the lack of equal opportunities and inclusiveness. Nor can we turn our backs on the evils of racism and discrimination. We need to build into this new social contract our intergenerational responsibility to ensure that we live up to the expectations of young people.”

“COVID-19 has accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We have to make sure that the new technologies in the digital, biological and physical world remain human-centred and serve society as a whole, providing everyone with fair access,” he said.

“This global pandemic has also demonstrated again how interconnected we are. We have to restore a functioning system of smart global cooperation structured to address the challenges of the next 50 years. The Great Reset will require us to integrate all stakeholders of global society into a community of common interest, purpose and action,” said Schwab. “We need a change of mindset, moving from short-term to long-term thinking, moving from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder responsibility. Environmental, social and good governance have to be a measured part of corporate and governmental accountability,” he added.

Trump And BoJo Stepped In The Path/Timeline Of A Specific Elite Agenda

WEF |  The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a hub for global, multistakeholder cooperation to develop policy frameworks and advance collaborations that accelerate the benefits of science and technology.

Emerging technologies inevitably have both merits and risks. The extent to which the benefits are maximized and the risks mitigated depends on the quality of governance protocols – policies, norms, standards and incentives that shape the development and deployment of technologies. Governance must be stable, interoperable, predictable and transparent enough to build confidence among investors, companies, scientists and the general public, but also agile enough to remain relevant in the face of rapid advances in technology.

Policy governing emerging technologies is currently piecemeal: Some areas are regulated heavily, others hardly at all. Often, mechanisms for policy-makers to interact with people at the cutting edge of research simply do not exist.

There is a need for a global and trusted space where leading technology companies, dynamic start-ups, policy-makers, international organizations, regulators, business organizations, academia and civil society can collaborate to develop the agile policy norms and partnerships needed to stimulate the enormous potential of science and technology, deliver rapid growth and generate sustainable, positive impact for all.

Drawing on the World Economic Forum’s global convening power, community creation and insight generation, the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco aims to accelerate cross-sector cooperation for Fourth Industrial Revolution governance. The Centre will develop, pilot and scale agile and human-centred governance tools that can be adopted by policy-makers, legislators and regulators worldwide to address challenges related to emerging technologies.

The Centre is co-designing and piloting policy frameworks and governance protocols across six areas of focus. Learn more. To help companies and governments accelerate the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Forum also has projects dedicated to Precision Medicine, Digital Trade and Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth.

Elites Not Done With Panicdemic Reset - Time To Ratchet Up Coronavirus Horror

LATimes |  The new coronavirus’ reputation for messing with scientists’ assumptions has taken a truly creepy turn.

Researchers exploring the interaction between the coronavirus and its hosts have discovered that when the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects a human cell, it sets off a ghoulish transformation. Obeying instructions from the virus, the newly infected cell sprouts multi-pronged tentacles studded with viral particles.

These disfigured zombie cells appear to be using those streaming filaments, or filopodia, to reach still-healthy neighboring cells. The protuberances appear to bore into the cells’ bodies and inject their viral venom directly into those cells’ genetic command centers — thus creating another zombie.

The authors of the new study, an international team led by researchers at UC San Francisco, say the coronavirus appears to be using these newly sprouted dendrites to boost its efficiency in capturing new cells and establishing infection in its human victims.

Their research was published Friday in the journal Cell.

The scientists also believe they have identified several drugs that could disrupt the viral takeover of cells and slow the process by which COVID-19 takes hold. These compounds, many of which were designed as cancer treatments, seem likely to work because they block the chemical signals that activate filopodia production in the first place.

Among the seven drugs they identified as potentially useful against COVID-19 are Silmitasertib, a still-experimental drug in early clinical trials as a treatment for bile duct cancer and a form of childhood brain cancer; ralimetinib, a cancer drug developed by Eli Lilly; and gilteritinib (marketed as Xospata), a drug in use already to treat acute myeloid leukemia.