theconversation | Research we have just had published sheds new light on this Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. We focus on what platinum can tell us about it.
Platinum is known to be concentrated in meteorites, so when a lot of it
is found in one place at one time, it could be a sign of a cosmic
impact. Platinum spikes have been discovered in an ice core in Greenland as well as in areas as far apart as Europe, Western Asia, North America and even Patagonia in South America. These spikes all date to the same period of time.
Until now, there has been no such evidence from Africa. But working
with two colleagues, Professor Louis Scott (University of the Free
State) and Philip Pieterse (University of Johannesburg), I believe there is evidence from South Africa’s Limpopo province that partly supports the controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.
The new information has been obtained from Wonderkrater,
an archaeological site with peat deposits at a spring situated outside a
small town to the north of Pretoria. In a sample of peat we have
identified a platinum spike that could at least potentially be related
to dust associated with a meteorite impact somewhere on earth 12,800
years ago.
The platinum spike at Wonderkrater is in marked contrast to almost
constantly low (near-zero) concentrations of this element in adjacent
levels. Subsequent to that platinum spike, pollen grains indicate a drop
in temperature. These discoveries are entirely consistent with the
Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.
Wonderkrater is the first site in Africa where a Younger Dryas
platinum spike has been detected, supplementing evidence from southern
Chile, in addition to platinum spikes at 28 sites in the northern
hemisphere.
We are now asking a question which needs to be taken seriously:
surely platinum-rich dust associated with the impact of a very large
meteorite may have contributed to some extent to major climatic change
and extinctions?
neweconomicperspectives | Goldberg’s column is unusually honest for a Democrat like Goldberg.
It includes two important admissions about Joe and Hunter Biden’s poor
judgment in dealing with Ukrainian matters.
As all this was happening, Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on
the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company that Zlochevsky
co-founded, at some points earning $50,000 a month. Zlochevsky might
have thought he could ingratiate himself with the Obama administration
by buying an association with the vice president. All available evidence
suggests he was wrong.
We need to put Hunter Biden’s $50,000 per meeting in perspective, he
began receiving it in 2014, when the purchasing power parity (PPP) per
capita GDP figure for Ukraine was slightly over $8,500. In a single
month, Hunter Biden received fees over six times what a typical
Ukrainian received in a year. Hunter Biden had no relevant expertise to
be on the Ukrainian firm’s board of directors. The only disagreement I
have with Goldberg’s description is her use of the word “earning”
instead of “received.” Hunter Biden does not “earn” his money. He
makes money off those who seek to get in good with his dad. The Trump
children, of course, have super-charged this sleaze.
Hunter’s one real job miraculously led to his ludicrously rapid
promotion to EVP of a major bank. The bank, of course, was a major
contributor to his dad. Hunter’s miraculous advancement to EVP is a
typical sleazy payoff to elite politicians’ kids. Both parties do it.
The sole reason Zlochevsky hired Hunter was to try to influence
favorably his dad and the Obama administration. This too is typical
elite sleaze. Yes, we should remember that Trump’s spouse, children,
and their spouses, make Hunter look like a highly competent saint when
it comes to cashing in on their tawdry Trump ties.
Goldberg correctly notes the modest nature of the sleaze in the
Bidens’ case. There is no evidence that hiring Hunter Biden ingratiated
the Ukrainian firm with the Obama administration. There is no evidence
that hiring Hunter Biden ingratiated the Ukrainian firm with Joe
Biden. Joe Biden’s successful effort to fire the corrupt non-prosecutor
increased the chances that the Ukrainian government would
sanction the firm. Trump’s claim that the fired prosecutor was an
anti-corruption hero investigating Hunter’s purported corruption is a
double lie. Trump’s attacks on Joe and Hunter Biden are lies. This
should not surprise us. First, Trump always lies. Second, Joe and
Hunter Biden’s sketchy actions are not crimes or ethical violations.
They may be ‘corrupt’ in the broad sense of that word in everyday usage,
but not in the legal sense of statutes against corruption. Trump,
therefore, has substituted lies for the nuanced reality.
quillette | Understanding American politics has become increasingly confusing as
the old party labels have lost much of their meaning. A simplistic Left
vs. Right worldview no longer captures the complexity of what’s going
on. As the authors of the October 2017 “Pew Survey of American Political
Typologies” write,
“[I]n a political landscape increasingly fractured by partisanship, the
divisions within the Republican and Democratic coalitions may be as
important a factor in American politics as the divisions between them.”
To understand our politics, we need to understand the cultural values
that drive it. The integral cultural map developed by philosopher Ken
Wilber identifies nine global cultural value systems
including the archaic (survival), tribal (shaman), warrior (warlords
and gangs), traditional (fundamentalist faith in God), modern (democracy
and capitalism), and postmodern (world-centric pluralism). When
combined with Pew’s voter typologies, Wilber’s cultural levels offer a
new map of America’s political landscape.
Of Wilber’s nine global value systems, the Traditional, Modern, and
Postmodern categories are most useful to understanding our moment.
Traditional culture values disciplined adherence to assigned gender and
social roles: men are providers and heads of households, marriage is
between one man and one woman, and the institutions of the military, law
enforcement, and the clergy are all highly respected. Historically,
traditional cultures were monarchies or states ruled by “strongmen.”
Modern culture superseded traditional systems in the West during the
Enlightenment, and values rationality, democracy, meritocracy,
capitalism, and science. Individual rights, free speech, and free
markets harness an entrepreneurial spirit to solve problems.
Postmodern culture offers a borderless, geocentric political view
that values pluralism. It challenges a pro-American narrative by
focusing on the horrors of American history, including the exploitation
of Native Americans, slavery, and persistent inequality
disproportionately affecting historically disadvantaged groups. Those
left behind by modernity and progress now seek recognition, restoration,
and retribution via a politics of protest, and show little interest in
building political organizations or institutions. We are currently
living in a postmodern political moment of disruption, best described by author Helen Pluckrose in her Areo essay “How French Intellectuals Ruined the West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained”:
If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of
power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire,
postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now
science, reason, humanism and liberalism. Consequently, the roots of
postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a
destructive or, as they would term it, deconstructive way.
When we overlay Pew’s data with Wilber’s Value levels, six cultural
political categories emerge: Traditional Left and Right, Modern Left and
Right, and Postmodern Left and Right.
senate.grassley.gov | Two Senate chairmen want to know whether the Justice Department has
acquired information from Ukrainian prosecutors that may contradict the
stated reasoning behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s threat to
withhold U.S. assistance from Ukraine. They are also renewing an inquiry
into the department’s response to reported efforts by Ukrainians, in
coordination with Democratic Party associates, to acquire damaging
information on Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. In a letter to Attorney General William Barr,
Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson
(R-Wis.) are seeking additional information about the department’s
review of the Russia investigation’s origins, including the DNC’s
reported work with Ukraine to undermine candidate Trump.
“Ukrainian
efforts, abetted by a U.S. political party, to interfere in the 2016
election should not be ignored. Such allegations of corruption deserve
due scrutiny, and the American people have a right to know when foreign
forces attempt to undermine our democratic processes,” the Senators wrote in the letter.
The letter follows a July, 2017, inquiry from Grassley to the department referencing reports that
a DNC consultant coordinated with the Ukrainian government to acquire
opposition research on Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
According to a Politico investigation, “Ukrainian government
officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump” and “helped
Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his
advisers…” Though media reports indicate that U.S. Attorney John Durham
is investigating whether Ukraine played a role in the
counterintelligence probe during the 2016 election, the Justice
Department has yet to confirm whether it has begun an investigation into
coordination between the Ukrainian government and individuals
associated with the campaign of Hillary Clinton or the Democratic
National Committee.
Separately, a report yesterday revealed
new documents that call into question the stated reasons behind a 2016
ultimatum by then Vice-President Biden to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor
who had investigated a company for which Biden’s son was a board member.
According to the report, Ukrainian officials have tried to forward
documents related to the matter to the department, to no avail. Grassley
and Johnson are requesting details on any actions the department is
taking to review the material referenced in the report.
tomluongo | Trump’s strengths and weaknesses as a political player have been on
full display from the beginning. And he’s made a number of errors which
have cost him dearly to this point.
Most of these have to do with foreign policy, which I have outlined
in gory detail nearly every day for three years. And it was these
deals he’s made on foreign policy, outsourcing it to advisers like H.R.
McMaster, John Bolton and James Mattis, to gain time to deal with his
domestic enemies that have done the most damage.
I think Trump now sees the traps set for him and how badly they will
boomerang on him this election season. He’s begun changing course on
issues like Iran, Syria and, yes, Ukraine.
And for this he is now being targeted, quite amateurishly, for removal from office. Of this I’m convinced at this point.
Since Ukraine cuts across so many different narratives of the past
few years, going all the way back to 2013 EU accession talks, it is no
wonder that President Trump calls to the new Ukrainian President, who
isn’t one of ‘our guys’ like Poroshenko was, would be heavily
scrutinized.
Anything that sniffed even vaguely like Presidential overreach would
be used against Trump to remove him from office. This is the standard
Alinsky tactic of accusing your opponent of what you are guilty of to
de-legitimize any information that comes out of the investigation.
This tactic is nothing new. It’s all they ever do folks, because Trump has already proven he’s immune to ‘Nuts and Sluts.‘
thescientist | Caltech’s Frances Arnold, who advanced a technique called directed evolution to shape the function of enzymes, has received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today (October 3). She shares the honor with George Smith, now emeritus professor of the University of Missouri, and Gregory Winter,
emeritus group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of
Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. Smith and Winter are both
recognized for their work on a lab technique known as phage display in
the directed evolution of new proteins—in particular, for the production
of antibody therapeutics.
“I’d like to congratulate this year’s
laureates for their tremendous breakthrough work in using chemistry to
speed nature's own processes,” Peter Dourhout, president of the American
Chemical Society, says in a statement.
“The breakthroughs from these researchers enable that to occur
thousands of times faster than nature to improve medicines, fuels and
other products. This is truly directed evolution using chemistry.”
First reported
by Smith in 1985, phage display involves the introduction of foreign
DNA coding for a protein, such as an antibody, into a bacteriophage—a
virus that infects bacteria. That protein is then displayed on the
surface of the phage. Researchers can use these protein-displaying
phages to screen for interactions with other proteins, DNA sequences,
and small molecules.
Speaking to the Associated Press
this morning, Smith emphasized the role of others’ work in his
achievement. “Very few research breakthroughs are novel,” he says.
“Virtually all of them build on what went before. . . . That was
certainly the case with my work.”
Winter, who cofounded the
biotech company Cambridge Antibody Technology in 1989, developed the
technique for the purpose of finding novel therapeutics. In 1993, his
research group used phage display to successfully isolate fragments of
human antibodies that could bind specific antigens. The genes for these
fragments could be expressed in bacteria, the team reported, and could
offer a “promising alternative” to mouse-based methods for the
“production of antibodies against cell surface molecules.”
In
2002, adalimumab (Humira), a therapeutic produced by this approach, was
approved by European and US regulators for the treatment of rheumatoid
arthritis. Speaking in 2006, Winter called the approval “the sort of
thing I’m most proud of.” The technique has since been used to isolate molecules against autoimmune diseases, multiple cancers, and bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis—the cause of anthrax.
Counterpunch | Otis Rush was born in 1934 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, one of the
most racially mixed towns in the Delta. In Rush’s youth the population
of Philadelphia was almost equally divided between whites, blacks and
Choctaw Indians. As a consequence, Philadelphia was also one of the most
racist towns in Mississippi, a hotbed of Klan activity and, of course,
site of the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James
Chaney and Michael Schwerner. In 1980, Reagan picked the Neshoba County
Fair in Philadelphia as the locale to give his first post-convention
speech, an attack on the federal government that launched his own
race-baiting “Southern Strategy.” J.L. Chestnut, one of two black people
in the huge audience, recalled Ronald Reagan shouting that “‘the South
will rise again and this time remain master of everybody and everything
within its dominion.’ The square came to life, the Klu (sic) Kluxers
were shouting, jeering and in obvious ecstasy. God bless America.”
Like many black youths in the Delta, Otis sat near the radio every
day at 12:15, tuning in to KFFA, broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas, for
the King Biscuit Time show, hosted by Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert
Lockwood, Jr. For half an hour Williamson and Lockwood played live in
the studio, often featuring other rising stars of the blues, such as
B.B. King, James Cotton and Pinetop Perkins (who was an original member
of the studio band, called the King Biscuit Entertainers.) Otis decided
he wanted to be a blues player. He began playing the blues harp at the
age of six and later his father rigged him a makeshift one-string guitar
out of a broom handle and baling wire.
Rush’s father was a sharecropper, toiling in the parched red clay
soils of eastern Mississippi. But mechanization was slowly drawing this
brutal way of life to a close. In 1948, Rush’s father moved the family
(there were 8 Rush children) to Chicago. At the age of 14, Otis began
working 12-hour days in the stockyards. At night he played the blues
with two other young stockyard workers, Mike Netton, a drummer, and
“Poor Bob” Woodfork, a guitar player recently migrated up from Arkansas.
The band began to get some paying gigs in some of the new clubs
springing up on Roosevelt Avenue. One night when Rush was 18, Willie
Dixon walked into the Alibi club on the West Side of town. Dixon, one of
the true geniuses of American music, had just left Chess Records in a
bitter dispute over royalties. The great bassist and arranger had taken a
job with the new Cobra Records, a small Chicago label run by a TV
repairman. Dixon was enthralled by Rush’s uniquely expressive, almost
tortured guitar-style and signed him on the spot.
In the studio, Dixon, the real architect of the Chicago Blues sound,
assembled a small talented R&B combo to back Rush, featuring Shakey
Horton on harmonica, Harold Ashby on tenor, veteran drummer Odie Payne,
Little Brother Montgomery hammering the piano and Dixon himself on
stand-up bass. The first song Rush recorded was Dixon’s “I Can’t Quit
You, Baby.” Dixon said he wrote the song about an obsessive relationship
Rush was having with a woman at the time. Dixon wanted to provoke an
emotional response from the singer and he got one. “I Can’t Quit You,
Baby” opens with a chilling falsetto scream, then Rush launches into a
staccato guitar attack unlike anything heard before it. Led Zeppelin
(and dozens of other bands) would cover Rush’s version of the song but
never capture the excrutiating fervency of the original. The recording
was released in the summer of 1956 as Cobra’s first single. The song hit
number 6 on the Billboard R&B charts.
Over the next two years Rush and Dixon would release eight more
records, each of them dazzlingly original. The sound was aggressive and
confident, like the hard-charging jump blues “Violent Love,” where
Rush’s slashing guitar chords seem to be engaged in a romantic combat
with the horns. Rush’s own composition, “Checking on My Baby,” is an
eerie, minor key blues that sweats sexual paranoia. This is not the
blues of despondency and despair, but of defiance and, at times, rage.
It’s music with an edge, sharpened by the metallic sounds of urban
streets, of steel mills, jail cells and rail yards.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez needs the center-left —
surely emboldened by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s primary victory last week —
to warm to her, to imagine that she isn’t going to tear down the
castles. How terrifying can someone dressed as though she had just left a
meeting with six venture capitalists with a rare bottle of scotch
really be to the occupants of the higher tax brackets?
When
the castigating got traction, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez shot back at her
critics, pointing out the obvious — that she did not buy the clothes she
wore for the shoot. They were lent to the magazine for the purpose of
taking pictures.
Tennis umpires are reportedly considering a boycott of Serena Williams matches. The public statement of boycotting Serena’s games underscores beyond any shadow of a doubt the specific nature of this particular tempest on a tennis court. Even in the twilight of her career, the disparate economic influence of the GOAT on the worldwide enterprise of tennis vs. the butt hurt bleetings of some expendable little men - will be most interesting to observe and measure.
There have been rumblings for years about replacing these overpaid and underperforming accessories to the match with computers, taking the element of human error (and human sensitivity) out of the equation. If the umpires go on strike, it will be a perfect opportunity to begin testing a new and improved HawkEye system which does a bit more than accurately track tennis ball ballistics.
In the interim, while the final and permanent disintermediation of highly fallible human umpires is developed, it will not be difficult to find other umpires to replace the ITF's little men with their panties in an ill-considered bunch. Technology has advanced to the point where umpires aren't really necessary.
The victorian-era rules of tennis are a little archaic and arbitrary to being with, the fact that they are selectively enforced means it's overdue time for a change.
medium |Serena’s
unhinged outbursts in yesterday’s US Open Championship, was an
embarrassment and an eyeopener to who and what she’s become. We can go
back and forth on what other male players have said and gotten away
with, one has nothing to do with the other in this case. Serena’s issues
over her career have not been because she was a woman but because she
was Black. It’s disingenuous of those who claim to be woke, to not
acknowledge that Serena used every liberal and feminists excuse, except
for the real issue that’s plagued her career; her skin color.
This
intersectionality game that Feminist play to ensure that White women
are the real benefactors in all things related to womanhood and civil
rights, is becoming irritating. The fact that Serena did not acknowledge
her Blackness as the real issue she has been constantly discriminated
against, was a slap in the face for Black women and more importantly
Black female athletes. Serena has attempted to use her giving birth and
being a mother as somehow a foreign thing in women’s sports. She has
also bought into the social media hype and White liberals newfound love
and praise for her because she’s a mother.
theatlantic | Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had been swayed
by crude and ambitious politicians who had played on their emotions. The
demagogue Cleon was said to have seduced the assembly into being more
hawkish toward Athens’s opponents in the Peloponnesian War, and even the
reformer Solon canceled debts and debased the currency. In Madison’s
view, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the
Revolutionary War, he had observed in Massachusetts “a rage for paper
money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That
populist rage had led to Shays’s Rebellion, which pitted a band of
debtors against their creditors.
Madison referred to impetuous
mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group
“united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest,
adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and
aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when
public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the
public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather
than short-term gratification.
To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening
liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in
government. “A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a
small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in
person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” Madison
wrote in “Federalist No. 10.” The Framers designed the American
constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative
republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the
public good. They also built into the Constitution a series of cooling
mechanisms intended to inhibit the formulation of passionate factions,
to ensure that reasonable majorities would prevail.
The people would directly elect the
members of the House of Representatives, but the popular passions of the
House would cool in the “Senatorial saucer,” as George Washington
purportedly called it: The Senate would comprise natural aristocrats
chosen by state legislators rather than elected by the people. And
rather than directly electing the chief executive, the people would vote
for wise electors—that is, propertied white men—who would ultimately
choose a president of the highest character and most discerning
judgment. The separation of powers, meanwhile, would prevent any one
branch of government from acquiring too much authority. The further
division of power between the federal and state governments would ensure
that none of the three branches of government could claim that it alone
represented the people.
According
to classical theory, republics could exist only in relatively small
territories, where citizens knew one another personally and could
assemble face-to-face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens
capable of self-government at 5,040. Madison, however, thought Plato’s
small-republic thesis was wrong. He believed that the ease of
communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily
formed majorities to oppress minorities. “Extend the sphere” of a
territory, Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties
and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole
will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if
such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel
it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each
other.” Madison predicted that America’s vast geography and large
population would prevent passionate mobs from mobilizing. Their
dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.
Sports is one arena where the insistence on some objective fact (the ball was in or out? was it a catch?) has devolved into a set of rules so convoluted as to be indecipherable. We don't trust the discretion and judgement of the human official (in or out, ball or strike, safe or out), and demand something objective like "Hawkeye" to "get the call right" and "make the game fair."
Our enforcement of the law would be quite different if there wasn't the discretion of the arresting officer, the discretion of a prosecutor, and the discretion of a judge involved. We know as fact that more young black men are prosecuted for drug offenses than young white men, even though young white men and young black men use and sell drugs at roughly equal rates.
The bottom line is that we all rejoice when that person gets what he or she deserves, but none of us wants what we really deserve.
This statement was admiringly blurted out by political vlogger Jamarl Thomas on his program The Progressive Soapbox last week. What he was talking about was a recent interview that Aaron Maté, producer, journalist and on-air talent at Paul Jay’s Real News Network,
did with veteran journalist James Risen, currently of The Intercept.
What did they discuss? The jailing of Reality Winner—Risen’s source for a
leaked NSA document about potential Russian digital interference in the
2016 U.S. presidential primary.
It stands to reason that Thomas calls him Aaron “Buzzsaw” Maté. Even
during his youthful Democracy Now days, Maté showed a genuine talent for
interviewing people with a dogged focus on facts and an absolute
inability to let his interviewees get away with bullshit, regardless of
their perceived status.
As I listened to this interview with Risen, I started having
flashbacks to all the Columbo reruns I watched as a kid. If you’ve ever
seen the old detective show with the inimitable Peter Falk, there was a
formula: the disheveled working class Columbo would ask an endless
stream of seemingly basic questions of his suspects, who were usually
impatient and annoyed wealthy white people who thought he was far
beneath them in the pecking order. Eventually, they would crack under
the pressure of his incessant queries, realizing too late that he’d been
amassing reams of factual evidence against them while they’d been too
busy feeling superior to notice.
theatlantic | Judges, who are mostly technical people, help weave a fabric of
practices, rules, regulations, customs, agreements, and working
arrangements—some local and some regional, some formal and some
informal. The fabric, like that of Penelope, sometimes comes undone
during the night; but we must simply continue to work on the problems
before us. I have always liked FDR’s advice: “It is common sense to take
a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But
above all, try something.”
Third, and finally, my
legal examples suggest the importance of looking to approaches and
solutions that themselves embody a rule of law. To achieve and maintain a
rule of law is more difficult than many people believe. The effort is
ancient, stretching back to King John and the Magna Carta, and still
earlier. And the effort does not always succeed. I often describe to
judges from other countries how, in the 1830s, a president of the United
States, Andrew Jackson, when faced with a Supreme Court decision
holding that northern Georgia (where gold had been found) belonged to
the Cherokee Nation, is said to have remarked, “John Marshall [the chief
justice] has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Jackson sent
troops to Georgia, but not to enforce the law. Instead they evicted the
tribe members, sending them along the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, where
their descendants live to this day.
Not for more than a century, a
period that included the Civil War and decades of racial segregation,
would the Supreme Court hold, in Brown v. Board of Education, in
1954, that racial segregation violated the Constitution. Yet the country
did not abolish segregation the next year or the year after that. When,
in 1957, a judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, ordered Central High School
desegregated, the local White Citizens’ Council, supported by the
governor, rallied in front of the school, letting no black child enter.
It took more than judicial decisions to end segregation. It took a
president’s decision to send 1,000 paratroopers to Arkansas. It took
Martin Luther King Jr., and the Freedom Riders, and the words and deeds
of countless Americans who were not lawyers or judges. Today the public
has come to accept the rule of law. When the Court decided Bush v. Gore,
a case that was unpopular among many, and was (as I wrote in dissent)
wrongly decided, the nation accepted the decision without rioting in the
streets. That is a major asset for a nation with a highly diverse
population of 320 million citizens.
We do not have to convince judges or lawyers that maintaining the
rule of law is necessary—they are already convinced. Instead we must
convince ordinary citizens, those who are not lawyers or judges, that
they sometimes must accept decisions that affect them adversely, and
that may well be wrong. If they are willing to do so, the rule of law
has a chance. And as soon as one considers the alternatives, the need to
work within the rule of law is obvious. The rule of law is the opposite
of the arbitrary, which, as the dictionary specifies, includes the
unreasonable, the capricious, the authoritarian, the despotic, and the
tyrannical. Turn on the television and look at what happens in nations
that use other means to resolve their citizens’ differences.
For my generation, the need for law in its many forms was perhaps best described by Albert Camus in The Plague.
He writes of a disease that strikes Oran, Algeria, which is his parable
for the Nazis who occupied France and for the evil that inhabits some
part of every man and woman. He writes of the behavior of those who
lived there, some good, some bad. He writes of the doctors who help
others without relying upon a moral theory—who simply act. At the end of
the book, Camus writes that
the germ of the plague never
dies nor does it ever disappear. It waits patiently in our bedrooms,
our cellars, our suitcases, our handkerchiefs, our file cabinets. And
one day, perhaps, to the misfortune or for the education of men, the
plague germ will reemerge, reawaken the rats, and send them forth to die
in a once-happy city.
The struggle against that germ
continues. And the rule of law is one weapon that civilization has used
to fight it. The rule of law is the keystone of the effort to build a
civilized, humane, and just society. At a time when facing facts,
understanding the local and global challenges that they offer, and
working to meet those challenges cooperatively is particularly urgent,
we must continue to construct such a society—a society of laws—together.
WaPo | Both sides are missing a crucial dimension — one
that ultimately bends in the direction of the pro-Williams camp. Just
like the criminal-justice system, tennis and many other sports depend on
the subjective discretion of neutral arbiters to apply a set of supposedly objective “rules.”
Ramos
did indeed follow the code, and each of the three sanctions had some
justification, thus satisfying the “rules” camp. But for two of the
three violations (the racket smashing was unambiguous), he used his
discretion to punish Williams for acts — coaching and heated exchanges
with an umpire — that occur routinely in tennis but are seldom punished.
Within the criminal-justice system, the same
principle of discretion also applies, with much more severe and damaging
consequences on human lives than the outcome of a tennis match.
At
every stage, criminal-justice officials regularly justify individual
decisions based on their discretionary interpretation of a rule. When a
police officer makes a “routine traffic stop” for a car that changed
lanes without signaling, or decides to arrest someone found with
recreational drugs, technically the decision is warranted — even if
numerous other people commit the same “infractions” without any
consequences. Prosecutors have tremendous discretion to decide, for
example, whether to charge a child as an adult, add additional
enhancements to press for a plea bargain or seek the death penalty.
Judges often make discretionary sentencing decisions (recall the Stanford University swimmer case).
And prison officials have almost full discretion in issuing
disciplinary infractions and sending inmates to solitary confinement.
In
all of these instances, one can always say, “Well, this person didn’t
follow the rules,” and on an individual basis that may seem sufficient
to justify the consequences. What gets lost, however, is that rules are
rarely applied regularly, consistently or fairly.
Without
diminishing Osaka’s level of play or achievement, and without excusing
Williams’s behavior, the outcome of the U.S. Open may have been
determined by an umpire’s discretionary decisions that were far outside
the norm. Rather than fool ourselves about the universality of rules, we
should question the vast and often unchallenged use of discretion in
both sports and criminal justice.
newyorker | The I.C.C., from its inception, has been impossibly compromised by
the simple, definitive fact that many of the world’s most lawless
countries, along with some of its most powerful—including the U.S.,
Russia, and China, the majority of permanent members of the U.N.
Security Council—reject its jurisdiction. After sixteen years with no
major triumphs and several major failures to its name, it would be
easier to make the case for it if there were reason to believe that it
could yet become the court of last resort for all comers that it is
supposed to be, rather than what it is: a politically captive
institution that reinforces the separate and unequal structures of the
world. Maybe the best that one can hope for the court, in its current
form, is that it can yet inspire some people who seek the rule of law to
find a way to achieve it. Bolton rejected the very idea that it could
inspire any good, simultaneously exaggerating the power of the I.C.C. as
an ominous global colossus and belittling it as a puny contemptible
farce. The only historically proven deterrent to “the hard men of
history,” he declared, is “what Franklin Roosevelt once called ‘the
righteous might’ of the United States.”
So what, really, was the
point of Bolton’s speech? Where was the news in this “major announcement
on U.S. policy?” He noted that Israel, too, faces the prospect of an
I.C.C. investigation and announced that, in solidarity, the State
Department was closing down the Palestine Liberation Organization office
in Washington. But then he said that the closure wasn’t necessarily
about the court but rather a general punishment of “the Palestinians,”
because “they refuse to take steps to start direct and meaningful
negotiations with Israel.” Beyond that, nothing that Bolton
threatened—by way of shutting out, sanctioning, and declaring war on the
I.C.C., and treating its personnel or anyone in the world who assisted
it as criminals—went much beyond a rhetorical amplification of what he
acknowledged has been established in U.S. law since the American
Service-Members’ Protection Act. This wasn’t foreign policy. It was
swagger.
Bolton has, thus far, enjoyed an absence from the
Woodwardian accounts of Trump White House backbiting, subterfuge, and
dysfunction. So it is tempting to think that he was deployed to deflect
attention from the White House
chaos, while his boss spent the day issuing uncharacteristically
Presidential tweets about the hurricane bearing down on the Carolinas.
Bolton, however, left out one point from his old Journal
piece in this week’s speech, and the omission seems telling: “The ICC
prosecutor,” Bolton wrote, “is an internationalized version of America’s
‘independent counsel,’ a role originally established in the wake of
Watergate and later allowed to lapse (but now revived under Justice
Department regulations in the form of a ‘special counsel’). Similarly,
the ICC’s prosecutors are dangerously free of accountability and
effective supervision.”
So the threat comes from within, after
all. The problem is the existence of the prosecutor, who endangers
sovereignty, which in Trump-speak means being above the law. The
President and the nation cannot be held to account or supervised, so the
prosecutor has to be. The President and the nation cannot be criminals,
so the prosecutor must be. The prosecutor cannot be recognized. The
prosecutor must be disempowered.
theguardian | The game’s top umpires are considering forming a union because they
believe Carlos Ramos was “hung out to dry” by the authorities during and
after the US Open women’s final despite upholding the rules in sanctioning Serena Williams.
Many officials were also left angry with the fact that the
International Tennis Federation took nearly 48 hours to defend Ramos, on
Monday afternoon, by which time the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA)
and United States Tennis
Association (USTA) had supported Williams’s claims of sexism after she
was given a game penalty for her behaviour during her defeat by Naomi
Osaka.
Umpires are not allowed to speak out publicly under the terms of
their contracts, and are employed by grand slams and men’s and women’s
tours, which means many are reluctant to say anything for fear of losing
their jobs. However, one senior figure told the Guardian that privately
there was widespread concern about how the USTA and WTA had rushed to
support Williams – which had led to vitriol and abuse on social media
for Ramos.
“There is a lot of unhappiness in the umpiring community because no
one is standing up for officials,” the senior figure told the Guardian.
“Umpires keep asking: ‘What if it was me in that chair on Saturday?’
There is a widespread feeling that Carlos was hung out to dry for nearly
48 hours and that no one is standing up for officials.”
In the absence of any official support for Ramos until Monday, it was
left to two former senior umpires, Mike Morrissey and Richard Ings, to
defend the Portuguese official. “I have had lots of messages saying this
is a joke,” said one source. “There is a lot of anger out there.”
telegraph | As the sport continued to tear itself apart over the Serena Williams sexism row, the International Tennis Federation stepped in on Monday night to defend beleaguered umpire Carlos Ramos.
In the absence of any representative body to speak for
tennis officials, it fell to the ITF to say what should be evident to
all: despite Williams’s repeated insistence that Ramos owes her an
apology, he was just doing his job when he penalised her a point and a
game during Saturday’s tumultuous women’s US Open final.
“Carlos Ramos is one of the most experienced and respected
umpires in tennis,” said the ITF, which is Ramos’s employer. “[His]
decisions were in accordance with the relevant rules and were
re-affirmed by the US Open’s decision to fine Serena Williams for the
three offences.
“It is understandable this high-profile and regrettable
incident should provoke debate. At the same time, it is important to
remember Mr Ramos undertook his duties as an official according to the
relevant rule book and acted at all times with professionalism and
integrity.”
The statement might not have been necessary were it not for
the further accusations of sexism that were levelled at Ramos on Sunday
by two of tennis’ major stakeholders. First Katrina Adams, the head of
the United States Tennis Association, told ESPN: “We watch the guys do
this all the time, they’re badgering the umpire on the changeovers.
Nothing happens. There’s no equality. There has to be some consistency
across the board. These are conversations that will be imposed in the
next weeks.”
counterpunch | Nike changes its brand more often than Madonna and more profitably.
In the company’s latest transformation, Nike has risked–make that
sought–the ire of Donald Trump and his drones by making Colin Kaepernick
the face of its latest campaign under the inspiring slogan: “Believe in
something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Kaepernick’s brief
presence in an otherwise sentimental ad triggered a tweet from Trump
and a boycott by the Deplorables, who took to burning their
overpriced footwear. It was precisely the response Nike wanted and sales of Nike products have surged
over the last week. With social justice icon Kaepernick fronting the
brand, no one will be thinking about Nike’s wretched labor practices
inside its sweatshops in Honduras, Indonesia and Vietnam.
This is a
proven formula for the company. When Nike was under intense public
scrutiny in the 1990s, it recruited civil rights legend Andrew Young to
whitewash the company’s record. The image changed, but the cruel
conditions didn’t.
Now, with the company rocked by sexual harassment charges against some of its top executives,
Nike’s betting that Kaepernick will refrain from speaking out against
the dismal practices of his employer. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and
LeBron James have all remained mute about the savage treatment of the
workers who make the shoes and apparel that are sold under their image.
So as a reminder who Nike really is under the patina of its
pitchmen, we’re running this excerpt from my book Born Under a Bad Sky.–J
wikipedia |Eugenics in Japan has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century.
Originally brought to Japan through the United States (like Charles Davenport and John Coulter), through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarkian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[1] Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch,
the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to
close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along
with colonialism and its justifications.[2]
The concept of pureblood as a criterion for the uniqueness of the Yamato people
began circulating around 1880 in Japan, while eugenics in the sense of
instrumental and selective procreation, clustered around two positions concerning blood, the pure blood (純血junketsu) and the mixed blood (混血konketsu).[2]
Popularity of the pure-blood eugenics theory came from a homegrown racial purity or monoculture national belief that has been part of Japanese society since ancient times[citation needed]. The local movement was however less focused on modern scientific ideals and more on the "outside person" vs the "native or inside person" and blood purity.[2]
Later legal measures were supported by certain politicians and movements that sought to increase the number of healthy pure Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people suffering mental retardation, disability, genetic disease and other conditions that led to them being viewed as "inferior" contributions to the Japanese gene pool.[3][4]
Opposition to the eugenics movement persisted amongst several right-wing factions, including members of the Diet of Japan
and obstetricians, who perceived eugenics as suggesting that the
Japanese people were only animals, not inhabitants of the "country of
the kami" (神国shinkoku) as believed by the Japanese national Shinto tradition.[5] Yoshiichi Sōwa (曽和義弌), author of "Japan's Shinto Revolution",[6] wrote in 1940, "When we look up into the past, the people of our country are descended from the kami. Are they claiming we must sterilize these people?"[7] Similar resistance to these theories occurred within conservative and traditional Christian communities in the United States.
wikipedia | Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism.[62] The Meiji era Japanese showed a contempt for other Asians. This was exemplified in an editorial titled Datsu-A Ron, which advocated that Japan treat other Asians as other western empires treat them. The Shōwa regime preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on nature of Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of Emperor Hirohito's teachers: "Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority."[63]
According to the An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a classified report in 1943 of the Ministry of Health and Welfare completed on July 1, 1943, just as a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia "eternally" as the head of the family of Asian nations.[64] The most horrific xenophobia of the pre-Shōwa period was displayed after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, where in the confusion after a massive earthquake, Koreans were wrongly maligned as poisoning the water supply. A vicious pogrom resulted in the deaths of at least 3,000 Koreans, and the imprisonment of 26,000.
Racism was omnipresent in the press during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Greater East Asia War and the media's descriptions of the superiority of the Yamato people was unwaveringly consistent.[66] The first major anti-foreigner publicity campaign, called Bōchō (Guard Against Espionage), was launched in 1940 alongside the proclamation of the Tōa shin Shitsujō (New Order in East Asia) and its first step, the Hakkō ichiu.[67]
Mostly after the launching of the Pacific War,
Westerners were detained by official authorities, and on occasion were
objects of violent assaults, sent to police jails or military detention
centers or suffered bad treatment in the street. This applied
particularly to Americans and British; in Manchukuo at the same period xenophobic attacks were carried out against Chinese and other non-Japanese.
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