Pride Month this June commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots in Greenwich Village, where gay men and women fought back against police raids. Stonewall is often associated with the start of the modern LGBT rights movement, but in actuality, efforts to stop government mistreatment of gay people went back more than a decade before 1969.
The Lavender Scare, which aired on PBS during Pride Month, documents President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order launching an official purge of homosexual federal employees. In the midst of fears of Communist spies infecting the government, gay men and women were declared to be security risks because their secret lives made them susceptible to blackmail.
This move was of course heaping injury upon injury, as the cultural belief at the time that homosexuality was a form of psychological perversion was what made gays feel they needed to keep that part of their identities secret. At any rate, there was little evidence to justify the blackmail fears, but thousands of Americans were hounded out of their jobs and had their careers ruined. Some, like astronomer and activist Frank Kameny, fought back, picketing the White House years before Stonewall. It would take decades for the order to be fully rescinded under President Bill Clinton.
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Pride Month this June commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots in Greenwich Village, where gay men and women fought back against police raids. Stonewall is often associated with the start of the modern LGBT rights movement, but in actuality, efforts to stop government mistreatment of gay people went back more than a decade before 1969.
The Lavender Scare, which aired on PBS during Pride Month, documents President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order launching an official purge of homosexual federal employees. In the midst of fears of Communist spies infecting the government, gay men and women were declared to be security risks because their secret lives made them susceptible to blackmail.
This move was of course heaping injury upon injury, as the cultural belief at the time that homosexuality was a form of psychological perversion was what made gays feel they needed to keep that part of their identities secret. At any rate, there was little evidence to justify the blackmail fears, but thousands of Americans were hounded out of their jobs and had their careers ruined. Some, like astronomer and activist Frank Kameny, fought back, picketing the White House years before Stonewall. It would take decades for the order to be fully rescinded under President Bill Clinton.
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What if politics were a strategic, underhanded, zero-sum game that was actually kind of fun? Welcome to Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game.
Developed by Lafair Family Games and funded via Kickstarter, the board game is supposed to simulate the cutthroat stakes of the once-per-decade reapportionment process in which states redraw their congressional districts. In June, the Supreme Court ended a yearslong constitutionality debate by deciding that “gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” So now it’s your turn to try. Four players pick their parties—Elephants, Donkeys, Leaves, or Porcupines—and take turns drawing segments of a congressional district border that must include at least four of the 73 “counties” on the board.
Each county contains a randomly assigned vote tally for one of the four parties. Once a prospective district is fully enclosed, the party with the highest vote total inside the boundaries wins it. Win the most districts and you win the game.
Mapmakerpresents an overly optimistic scenario. The Porcupines and Leaves, for example, are given equal opportunity to draw district lines. Compared to reality—where gerrymandering serves as a way for the two major parties to entrench their duopoly—the game offers a surprisingly fair exercise in democracy.
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What if politics were a strategic, underhanded, zero-sum game that was actually kind of fun? Welcome to Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game.
Developed by Lafair Family Games and funded via Kickstarter, the board game is supposed to simulate the cutthroat stakes of the once-per-decade reapportionment process in which states redraw their congressional districts. In June, the Supreme Court ended a yearslong constitutionality debate by deciding that “gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” So now it’s your turn to try. Four players pick their parties—Elephants, Donkeys, Leaves, or Porcupines—and take turns drawing segments of a congressional district border that must include at least four of the 73 “counties” on the board.
Each county contains a randomly assigned vote tally for one of the four parties. Once a prospective district is fully enclosed, the party with the highest vote total inside the boundaries wins it. Win the most districts and you win the game.
Mapmakerpresents an overly optimistic scenario. The Porcupines and Leaves, for example, are given equal opportunity to draw district lines. Compared to reality—where gerrymandering serves as a way for the two major parties to entrench their duopoly—the game offers a surprisingly fair exercise in democracy.
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Visiting dignitaries were given gifts of his portrait, and rightfully so: To many Zimbabweans, Robert Mugabe, the strongman who ruled the East African nation for 30 years until he was ousted in a bloodless coup two years ago, was a complex figure. He was a symbol of liberation and hope – a leader of the quasi-Communist ZANU-PF who helped free his country from oppressive British rule, according to the NYT.
Mugabe was 95 at the time of his death.
Later, when food stocks started to run low, Mugabe’s true nature became apparent. He authorized oppressive crackdowns and indefinite detentions of suspected political opponents. Some suspected him of torture and unspeakable treatment of suspected political opponents.
But Mugabe wasn’t alone in this. Many in his generation of African revolutionary political leaders believed that, since they had freed the country from colonial rule, it was theirs to govern – as Mugabe put it – “until God says ‘come.'”
And he almost made it. In November 2017, army officers, fearing that Mugabe would anoint his second wife, Grace Mugabe (some 40 years his junior), as his political heir, moved against him. Within a dramatic few days he was placed under house arrest and forced by his political party, ZANU-PF, to step down.
Yet remarkably for a Continent where strongmen leaders are typically shown little, if any, mercy, Mugabe and his wife were treated well by his successor and the party he had formerly led. The military insisted that Mugabe’s ouster wasn’t tantamount to a coup.
Mugabe’s death was announced by his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who issued the following statement on Twitter, praising Mugabe as a competent
“It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday, using the abbreviation for comrade. “Mugabe was an icon of liberation, a pan-Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation and empowerment of his people. His contribution to the history of our nation and continent will never be forgotten.”
Last month, Zimbabwe’s government had disclosed that Mugabe had spent several months in Singapore undergoing treatment for an undisclosed illness.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HRdlrj Tyler Durden
I know you’re very preoccupied panic-buying essential drugs and spare body bags (for when some of your family members inevitably die following a no-deal Brexit).
I know you’re seething with social-media-meme-induced rage about – well, you aren’t totally clear but you know BoJo is behind it all – and are too busy hammering out hysterical status updates to think too much. Even if thinking were your strong suit, which, let’s be honest Pearl, it isn’t.
I know you’re worn out from listening to that nice Owen Jones squeaking about ‘democracy’ at all those #stopthecoup rallies you went to with your Guardianista chums. And you have a dozen ready meals to prepare for the freezer (for when the EU takes away all our food), and biofuel to buy for the generator (for when the EU turns off the electricity).
But can I just grab a quick moment of your time, Pearl? Just to point out one small fact you might want to consider.
Here’s a thought experiment for you.
* * *
You are a landlord.
A not very nice landlord.
One day one of your tenants comes to you and says he wants to leave. He asks for his deposit back in full.
You say actually he forfeited his deposit because his dog wrecked the carpets and there’s paint on the kitchen tiles. But you’ll agree to him having a partial refund, provided he lets you keep his furniture.
The tenant says ‘but my furniture is worth more than the deposit, so no thanks.’
You say, ‘well that’s the deal, take it or leave it.’
The tenant says ‘I’ll leave it thanks.’
He leaves it and moves out with his furniture
* * *
Now re-run that scenario, only THIS time a new law means the tenant can’t leave without accepting a deal.
What will you do now? Bear in mind, YOU can refuse the deal, but HE can’t. YOU can offer almost any terms you want. HIS only option is to ask nice for something better. So, will you:
Offer him better terms than before because he asks nice?
Screw him every frickin which way you can and give him an even worse deal than before – because he literally can’t refuse?
With this in mind, what do you think the media hysteria about No Deal might actually be about?
Do you still believe neoliberal warmonger austerity-fan Hilary Benn was thinking about YOU when he tabled that bill?
I know the Guardian and its shrieking sisters have all been telling you that No Deal Brexit is even worse than just regular Brexit, and that probably it will mean everyone in the country dies (instead of just most of us), the sun boils and the Kraken wakes from the depths to devour all those who still breathe upon our shores.
But you see, Pearl, that’s reductionist garbage.
Forget Boogeyman BoJo and the blaring Carnival of Fear, and think. In the real world outside the perceptual insanity of media memes being able to walk away with No Deal is an essential part of any negotiation isn’t it? Without it you can’t deal at all.
And if you’re negotiating with a jerk who refuses to budge from his unacceptable terms then walking away is all you can do.
It’s definitely not better to say ‘oh well, I can’t have no deal so I guess I just take whatever you got.’
All Boris’s antics and Hilary’s timely intervention has done is bring us to this pass where the UK population is cheering the fact they have handed themselves over to the oligarchs wholesale.
Oh and, according to George Galloway, John McDonnell et al even persuaded Corbyn to vote against an election – against his own best instincts.
It’s quite clear now that #Corbyn wants an October 14 #GeneralElection2019 but he is being held hostage by the 5th Column Triumvirate of Thornberry Starmer and McDonnell.This is all on the public record. I remind Mr Corbyn of the fatal error made by Mr Callaghan in 1978 #Brexit
The media will tell you this was sound tactics because Corbyn would certainly lose.
Well, maybe, but let’s not forget if Corbyn loses an election, the old Blairite rump get to force a leadership contest and maybe foist Benn or Phillips on us. And let’s not forget Phillips and others are on record saying they don’t want a Corbyn government.
So, I suggest it’s possible the Labour Right doesn’t want an election because they know Corbyn could win.
Further they’ve managed to spin this so that Corbyn is now associated with Remain – thus alienating much of his natural base.
It’s all round so far a victory for the status quo, the centrists, the anti-democrats, the 1%.
BoJo seems passing good at not getting what he allegedly wants but what the ruling elite need, doesn’t he?
So, Pearl, do you feel silly now for basically campaigning for the oligarchs to shaft you?
Yup, you should.
How long before the cheering Left clue into the silent coup just pulled on them?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZUxkeK Tyler Durden
Growth in the world continues to collapse into late summer, so much so that Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) had to “temporarily suspend” their AE2/Swan Asia to North Europe loop until mid-November, removing 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) a week from trade, reported The Loadstar.
Collapsing demand and plunging shipping container rates have led to pain for carriers who sail their vessels along the route. This is the second time Maersk and MSC have suspended the circuit, and the last time this happened was last fall.
Maersk and MSC said it’s working hard to “balance its network to match reduced market demand for the upcoming [Chinese factory shutdown] Golden Week.”
Maersk and MSC said the AE2/Swan suspension would “help us to match capacity with the expected weaker demand for shipping services” from Asia to Europe.
Maersk and MSC said the service would resume “in line with demand pickup,” suggesting the suspension could be extended into 1H20 as global trade isn’t expected to pick up for the next six to eight months.
Maersk and MSC adopted a similar strategy last year, suspending AE2/Swan Asia to North Europe loop from September to December, this was right around the time when stock markets across the world crashed from October to December, on fears the world economy was slowing. It just so happens that the global synchronized slowdown is much worse this year, likely the world has entered a manufacturing/trade recession in late summer 2019.
The suspension of AE2/Swan loop will see 12 17,800-20,500 TEU vessels idled for the next several months.
The last time the AE2/Swan loop was halted, it was during the period when world stocks collapsed last fall.
Freightos freight data for China to Europe 40 ft shipping containers shows muted price recovery over the last several years.
Global rates for 40 ft shipping containers also show depressed prices, which usually means global trade is weak.
As for global trade, the Merchandise World Trade Monitor by CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis shows peak globalization in 2017 and 2018, and the index is now sliding for the first time since the financial crisis.
It should be no mystery why the world’s largest shipping companies are idling vessels – it’s because a global recession has likely started.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZEEY0V Tyler Durden
Diana Sanchez spent five hours in labor, screaming in pain and calling for help, before giving birth in a Denver jail cell last year. In a statement, the sheriff’s office noted that the cell was in the jail’s medical unit but says it has changed its policies so “pregnant inmates who are in any stage of labor are now transported immediately to the hospital.”
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Diana Sanchez spent five hours in labor, screaming in pain and calling for help, before giving birth in a Denver jail cell last year. In a statement, the sheriff’s office noted that the cell was in the jail’s medical unit but says it has changed its policies so “pregnant inmates who are in any stage of labor are now transported immediately to the hospital.”
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A Swedish behavioral scientist has suggested that it may be necessary to turn to cannibalism and start eating humans in order to save the planet.
Appearing on Swedish television to talk about an event based around the “food of the future,” Magnus Söderlund said he would be holding seminars on the necessity of consuming human flesh in order to stop climate change.
Environmentalists blame the meat and farming industry for a large part of what they claim is the warming of the earth.
According to Söderlund, a potential fix would be the Soylent Green-solution of eating dead bodies instead.
He told the host of the show that one of the biggest obstacles to the proposal would be the taboo nature of corpses and the fact that many would see it as defiling the deceased.
Söderlund also acknowledged that people are “slightly conservative” when it comes to eating things they are not accustomed to, such as cadavers.
The discussion took place accompanied by a graphic of human hands on the end of forks. Lovely.
Another proposal to save the earth which has been promoted by numerous mass media outlets and environmentalists is only somewhat less disgusting – eating bugs.
No doubt Greta Thunberg and Prince Harry will be first in line for when cockroaches and human flesh is being dished out at the next international climate summit.
* * *
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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZNZB6F Tyler Durden
