Tag Archives: empire

A jail built on a landfill is at the center of America’s coronavirus outbreak

New York City is the epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak — and perhaps nowhere is that outbreak more dangerous than in the city’s most notorious jail complex: Rikers Island.

As of Tuesday morning, across the city 287 inmates (most of them at Rikers) and 406 corrections department staff members had already tested positive for COVID-19. On Sunday, the New York Times reported the first coronavirus death of a Rikers Island inmate. Recent news reports have indicated that inmates at Rikers lack even the luxury of basic precautions such as hand-washing (due to reported shortages of soap) and social distancing, which advocates and former inmates say is impossible to practice in the cramped facility.

Rikers Island, built on a landfill and surrounded by polluting infrastructure, has long suffered hazardous environmental conditions like extreme summer heat, flooding, and noxious pollution. These hazards exemplify the facility’s unpreparedness for a public health crisis like the novel coronavirus — and may have primed its inmates and staff to be especially vulnerable to the most severe effects of COVID-19.

Vidal Guzman remembers these hazards well. He was arrested twice as a teenager and spent a combined three years incarcerated on Rikers Island, awaiting trial.

“Living in Rikers means understanding not to drink the water, understanding how to be careful when rats and rodents are running around,” Guzman told Grist. “Having a rule to stay six feet away from each other for protection against the coronavirus — that is impossible in Rikers.”

Guzman, now 28, ultimately served five years in a state prison before going on to become the outreach and engagement organizer for Just Leadership USA, an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform. He recalls the “crazy rotten egg smell” that lingered at Rikers. The foul odor came from the landfill buried underneath the facility, which releases methane as the garbage decomposes over time and degrades the island’s air quality. The Poletti power plant, which was known as the biggest polluter in the Empire State before it closed in 2010, sat within a mile of Rikers when Guzman arrived there.

“Being around people who were young and with asthma — I saw them having problems with their breathing,” Guzman said. “There were individuals on Rikers who were saying things like, ‘I got asthma, I can’t breathe.’ And the elders are saying, ‘Well, you can’t breathe because the ground we’re standing on is built on landfill.’”

“That’s when I started to put things together,” Guzman remembered.

Vidal Guzman pictured on Rikers Island during a land use review process in 2019. Courtesy of Vidal Guzman.

More than 10,000 people are normally incarcerated on the island at any given time. Roughly 90 percent of them are people of color, and 67 percent have not been convicted of a crime and are simply awaiting trial. Though the inmate population is currently around 5,000, the crowded shared spaces present unique challenges for social distancing. Guzman described beds that are only two to three feet apart in the dormitory housing units, an arrangement that appears to persist even as the facility faces down a pandemic. According to the New York City Department of Correction website, officials are attempting to ensure there is an empty bed in between inmates “where possible.”

“We are following the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene guidance to identify any individuals with whom patients had close contact,” the department told Grist in an email. “The health and well-being of our personnel and people in custody is our top priority.”

Public defenders and criminal justice reform advocates have been demanding the release of all inmates with preexisting medical conditions, anyone jailed for parole violations, and the elderly. The government response has been painstakingly slow, advocates say. Hundreds of inmates are now being held in isolation or in quarantined groups after being exposed to someone who tested positive. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently boasted that 900 inmates had been released from the city jail system, bringing the inmate population to the lowest it has been since 1949.

Last Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo quietly introduced changes to the state budget’s legislative text that would completely overhaul the Empire State’s recent criminal justice reform, which has only been in effect for three months. The new provisions, which the state legislature voted to pass days later, would expand pretrial detention powers. Advocates fear that the new changes could exacerbate the coronavirus outbreak.

“As someone who was incarcerated and had $25,000 bail at 16 years old, I am very disappointed,” Guzman told Grist. “The new reform would undermine the presumption of innocence, dramatically increase jail populations across the state, and exacerbate racial disparities.”

Governor Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

After seven years of incarceration, Guzman returned home at 24 and has been working and organizing with a campaign to close the Rikers Island facilities and improve conditions within the New York City jail system. In 2019, the New York City Council approved an ambitious $8 billion plan to shutter the jail complex by 2026. Queens Councilmember Costa Constantinides, who represents Rikers Island and is the chair of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, has long advocated to transform the 413-acre island into a renewable energy hub. To make that vision a reality, he introduced the Renewable Rikers Act alongside other lawmakers last June.

The Renewable Rikers Act would hand over control of the island from the Department of Correction to the Department of Environmental Protection. It would also invest in studies to determine if the island could be home to a wastewater treatment plant and explore the feasibility of building renewable energy sources such as solar panels and battery storage facilities on the island.

For now, however, advocates and medical professionals are focused on getting the city’s thousands of inmates and jail staff through the pandemic alive.

“The most important part, being in a pandemic right now, is staying in touch with our family members, especially the black and brown communities who are feeling the most of this,” Guzman said. “I’m gonna tell you straight up: I’m in fear of what’s next.”

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A jail built on a landfill is at the center of America’s coronavirus outbreak

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Tauntauns, seahorses, and lotsa babies: Mike Lee trolls the Green New Deal

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Senator Mike Lee of Utah gave a speech about the Green New Deal Tuesday morning on the floor of the U.S. Senate that included references to Star Wars, Aquaman, and the SyFy channel’s Sharknado series. While acknowledging the skill involved in relating the bold climate proposal to anything involving Steve Sanders from Beverly Hills 90210, Lee’s rant should sicken any American who has even a passing interest in living in a country with a functioning government.

Lee wasted more than 10 minutes of taxpayer time and money (which included the printing of five massive color photos) to lambast the proposed Green New Deal, introduced last month by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey.

In debating the resolution, Democrats, ever the Charlie Brown gearing up to kick a phantom football, are talking about the seriousness of climate change, the impacts on their constituents, and the moral obligation to act. Meanwhile, Republicans are talking about the end of airplanes and the end of cows — two elements that aren’t in the resolution, but were alluded to in a FAQ mistakenly circulated via Ocasio-Cortez’s office — and are bringing an end to anything approaching a serious conversation about one of the most important issues facing the country and the world.

But it’s Lee whose speech really plumbed the depths of civil discourse in the halls of American government today. In it, as he attempted to take down the Green New Deal, he debased himself, his chamber, and the American people who rely on his unabashedly awful judgement to help make decisions about our future.

Here are some choice nuggets from a speech that should fill every American with rage, not just because of the climate denial on display but because of the total mockery that it makes of representative democracy.

He opens with some garden-variety climate denial: “Unlike some of my colleagues, I’m not immediately afraid of what carbon emissions unaddressed might do to our environment in the near-term future or our civilization or our planet in the next few years.”

Next, a ham-fisted attempt to liken the Green New Deal to a caricature of Ronald Reagan “fighting” in the Cold War: “I rise today to consider the Green New Deal with the seriousness it deserves. This of course is a picture of former President Ronald Reagan, firing a machine gun, while riding on the back of a dinosaur. … This image has as much to do with overcoming Communism in the 20th century as the Green New Deal has to do with overcoming climate change in the 21st.“

Time for more misinformation, specifically about travelling without airplanes. Lee suggests looking to The Empire Strikes Back and cartoons for transportation inspiration: “How are we supposed to get around the vast expanses of, say, Alaska, during the winter? Well, I’ll tell you how: This is a beloved species of repto-mammals native to the ice planet of Hoth. … Not only are Tauntauns carbon neutral, but according to a report a long time ago and issues far, far away they may be fully recyclable and usable for their warmth especially on a cold night. What about Hawaii? … All residents of Hawaii would be left with is this. This is a picture of Aqua Man, a superhero from the undersea kingdom of Atlantis and notably here a founding member of the Super Friends. I draw your attention, Mr. President, to the 20-foot impressive sea horse he’s riding. Under the Green New Deal, this is probably Hawaii’s best bet.”

Even more bullshit, this time on the elimination of cows (also not called for under a proposed Green New Deal): “I visited different areas in Utah. Every cow I spoke to said the same thing: ‘Boo.’”

Back to climate denial, starring sharks: “Critics will no doubt chastise me for not taking climate change seriously, but please, Mr. President, nothing could be further from the truth. No Utahan needs to hear lectures of the gravity of climate change from politicians from other states for it was only in 2016, as viewers of the SyFy network will remember when climate change hit Utah, when our own state was struck not simply by a tornado, but a tornado with sharks in it. These images are from the indispensable documentary film Sharknado 4.”

Hark? Is this an actual alternative solution to climate change? “Mr. President, this is the real solution to climate change: babies. … It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and more of all technological innovation. And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they are solved by more humans, more people, bigger markets for more innovation. … The courage needed to solve climate change is nothing compared with the courage needed to start a family.”

Let’s take Senator Lee seriously for a moment. How about more babies? Set aside the fact that a bumper crop of kids would likely make climate change worse. It would really be passing the problem to still-unborn geniuses that will do the work Lee is too cynical to do himself. I’d like to think that whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, you’d feel like what Lee rose to say in the Senate chamber on Tuesday was not a masterclass in “owning the libs,” but instead was one of the clearest pieces of evidence that our government isn’t working for our benefit right now. It’s broken.

It’s not enough that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, is gleefully bringing up the non-binding resolution — an ambitious plan to tackle climate change and inequality that is just lacking, well, a plan — but his GOP colleagues are turning what’s supposed to be the country’s foremost deliberative body over to discussion of what is simply a mission statement. Surely they have actual legislation to debate rather than playing out this political stunt. (In contrast, New Zealand’s legislators swiftly made over the country’s gun laws days after a horrific mass shooting.)

Yes, Lee’s antics were laughable. But it’s a reflection of how unseriously he takes one of the greatest threats imaginable. Sit on that for a second and, regardless of how you feel about climate change, see if it doesn’t fill you with anger, anxiety, and anguish.

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Tauntauns, seahorses, and lotsa babies: Mike Lee trolls the Green New Deal

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Empire Antarctica – Gavin Francis

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Empire Antarctica

Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins

Gavin Francis

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 16, 2013

Publisher: Counterpoint Press

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


“It is difficult to read this engaging memoir without a smile on one’s face . . . moments of sheer joy . . . [a] mesmerizing and memorable book.” — The Economist   Chosen as a Book of the Year by the Scotsman , the Financial Times , and the Sunday Herald Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica—so remote that it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.   Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Following penguins throughout the year—from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness—Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of below-zero temperatures and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community brings. Empire Antarctica is the story of one man’s fascination with the world’s loneliest continent, and the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him.   Includes maps and illustrations   “Part travelogue, part memoir, part natural history book, a fascinating, lyrical account of one of the strangest places on earth and its majestic inhabitants.” — Esquire   “Highly readable, enjoyable . . . the author writes vividly of auroras, clouds, stars, sunlight, darkness, ice and snow . . . A literate, stylish memoir of personal adventure rich in history, geography and science.” — Kirkus Reviews

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Empire Antarctica – Gavin Francis

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Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion

Mother Jones

After Donald Trump announced he was appointing Stephen Bannon to a top job in the White House as chief strategist, I sent out a tweet referring to a Mother Jones story that reported on how Bannon, when he was head of Breitbart News, the far-right conservative site, provided a haven for white nationalists. In response, Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and conspiracy theory advocate (he wrote a book claiming Lyndon B. Johnson killed John F. Kennedy), tweeted at me: “‘White Nationalist’ my ass. Stop with the childish name calling….we don’t call you a communist.”

There was a major problem with his tweet: I am not a communist, and Bannon is indeed a champion of white nationalists and white supremacists. And this is according to an expert on this matter: Stephen Bannon.

In July, Bannon, who soon would leave Breitbart to become a top campaign aide to Trump, was interviewed by journalist Sarah Posner. He proudly declared of Breitbart, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.” The alt-right is an extreme but not well-defined wing of the conservative movement that rants against immigrants, Muslims, the globalist agenda, and multiculturalism and that generally advocates white nationalism (if not white supremacism—in this world, there is a difference). The alt-right also generates a hefty amount of anti-Semitism. (For more on the alt-right, see here and here.)

In that interview, Bannon did claim that not all alt-righters were racists and anti-Semites. “Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right?” he said. “Maybe. Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that’s just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements.” But that was whitewashing. How do we know? Because of Breitbart‘s own coverage.

In March, the website published an article headlined “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” which was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, a prominent figure in the movement. It noted that the alt-right opposed “full ‘integration'” of racial groups: “The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved.” This piece cited Richard Spencer, a 30-something Duke Ph.D. dropout, and his AlternativeRight.com website as “a center of alt-right thought.”

What does Spencer, the intellectual guru of the movement, advocate? He is quite explicit: an all-white United States. This is not a secret. In a recent interview with Mother Jones, Spencer explained his belief that America’s white population is endangered, due to multiculturalism and immigration, and he advocated “a renewed Roman Empire,” a dictatorship where only white people could be citizens. “You cannot view another white person as your enemy,” he remarked. His goal is a white ethnostate. How to get there may be unclear. He added that he hoped America’s nonwhites can be convinced to leave the country on their accord: “It’s like presenting to an African that this hasn’t worked out. We haven’t made each other happier. We are going to have to take part in this paradigmatic shift together.” During the campaign, Spencer declared, Trump “loves white people.”

Race is central to the alt-right. Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor, notes, “The alt-right, in a nutshell, believes that Western culture is inseparable from European ethnicity.” That is, being white. Whether its activists prefer white nationalism (saying that different races can’t get along so nonwhites should somehow be separated from white America) or white supremacism (saying that whites are inherently superior to others), this is a racist movement. And its activists have also traded in anti-Semitism, often hurling anti-Semitic jabs at journalists who write about the alt-right or Trump. By the way, Bannon’s ex-wife did once accuse him of making anti-Semitic remarks. (Bannon denied making the comments.)

There are not many dots to connect in this picture, and the lines between them are clear. Whatever he might believe, Bannon is a self-proclaimed ally of the alt-right. (Shapiro notes that Bannon may not buy all its guff, but “he’s happy to pander to those people and make common cause with them.” And regarding Bannon, Lisa De Pasquale, a Breitbart contributor, on Monday said on the To the Point radio show that promoting the alt-right at Breitbart was “good for his business model.”) And the alt-right promotes white nationalism (if not white supremacism). So journalists who do not report that Trump has selected for a top spot in the White House an enabler of white nationalists—which certainly could qualify Bannon as a white nationalist himself—are doing the public and the truth a disservice. Thanks to Trump, a comrade of racists—many of whom are now cheering his appointment—is slated to help run the US government. This fact should be front and center, as the nation heads toward the Trump era.

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Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion

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Baton Rouge Cop Killer Was a "Sovereign Citizen." What the Heck Is That?

Mother Jones

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On July 17, in the second (at least) targeted attack on police in just over a week, 29-year-old Gavin Long shot six cops, three fatally, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The former Marine had posted YouTube selfie videos in which he commented on the need to respond to “oppression” with “bloodshed,” and praised the recent shooting of 11 officers in Dallas as “justice.” Long also appears to have been part of the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement. Last May, he filed official documents in Jackson County, Missouri, declaring a name change and identifying himself as a member of the Empire Washita de Dugdahmoundyah—a black group that espouses some of the movement’s ideas. According to the Daily Beast, Long was also carrying an ID card from the Empire at the time of the shooting. Here’s what you need to know about sovereign citizenship, and the branch Long subscribed to.

Sovereign citizen ideology is modeled on Posse Comitatus. A government-hating, right-wing Christian group, Posse Comitatus was founded around 1970 in Oregon. Its members claimed that white Americans, not Jews—whom members accused of manipulating government and financial institutions—were the true descendants of the Biblical tribe of Israel. Posse members rejected the authority of government officials, judges, and police officers. They claimed that because blacks were granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment (an act of government) they were bound by the government’s laws and were slaves to the state. But white citizenship predates the Constitution, the Posse claimed, so whites were bound only by “common” law, which made them “sovereign” and free—and not, for example, compelled to pay taxes.

Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks anti-government groups, says Posse members traveled around during the 1970s and 1980s teaching financially stressed whites—chiefly farmers who were losing their land during the agricultural crisis of those decades, or people facing foreclosure and debt—that the group’s ideology could help them out of their money binds. The Posse’s solution? Declare sovereignty and separate one’s legal “shell”—the named entity tied to social security numbers, birth certificates, and other forms of government identification—from one’s actual personhood. A person who did this, the Posse said, would no longer need to abide by rules of the state. Sovereign citizens played a major role in the formation, during the 1990s, of so-called “patriot” militia groups. (There was a resurgence of such groups after President Barack Obama was elected.)

Sovereign citizens are notorious for “paper terrorism”: Members of the movement often travel without drivers licenses, passports, or other state-issued ID. They are known to drive with fake license plates and often present police officers with travel cards and bogus insurance paperwork when they get pulled over. Faced with a traffic ticket, or when involved in other dealings with government agencies, sovereign citizens are notorious for flooding the agencies with hundreds of pages of documents—written in somewhat nonsensical “common law” language—arguing for the rights to which they claim entitlement. In one 2010 case, a sovereign submitted 10 such filings in a bid to get out of a $20 dog licensing fee. It worked. A state prosecutor dropped the case after two months of back and forth. Sovereign citizens have also been known to squat on vacant property and lay claim to it using phony deeds, and file bogus property liens against adversaries. Some have convened citizen tribunals, declaring government officials guilty of corruption, and acquitting themselves of any charges against them by the state.

The movement is growing, and spreading to new demographics. Based on IRS data on tax protesters, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that the sovereign movement has about 300,000 members. The SPLC has seen an uptick in participation since 2010, Lenz says, largely due to the housing crisis. Naturally, the ideology spreads quickly online, in chat rooms and YouTube comment sections. Newer recruits may be unaware of the movement’s racist roots; ideas espoused by Black sovereign citizen groups, Lenz says, “seem to affirm black personhood in the presence of a dominant white narrative.” And the anti-government sentiment often takes the form of leftist pan-Africanism and black separatism.

One strain of the ideology popular among black Americans is rooted in the Moorish Science Temple of America: It holds that blacks predated Native Americans in North America, and thus have indigenous rights. (Wesley Snipes, convicted of tax evasion in 2008, had ties to one of the first known black sovereign groups, the Nuwabians.) According to J. J. MacNab, an expert on sovereign citizens at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, sovereign ideology is most common among blacks in East Coast cities such as Philadelphia and DC, and in the South—particularly Florida, Tennessee, and the New Orleans area. After the 2014 Ferguson protests, the St. Louis area also became a hotbed for black sovereign citizenship. “You’re going to find chiropractors and dentists and doctors and all kinds of wealthy professionals in this movement as well—not just poor,” MacNab says.

Gavin Long hailed from Kansas City, Missouri. In Long’s county filings, MacNab told me, he declared that he was shedding the name associated with his legal shell—he’s “Cosmo Setepenra” in the YouTube videos—and that he was only subject to indigenous common law. Sovereign citizenry may have begun as a right-wing movement, she says, but “by the time you’re in the fringe, left-wing, right-wing doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Members of Long’s “Moorish” offshoot, the Empire Wishitaw de Dugdahmoundyah, insist that much of the land acquired by the United States in the Louisiana purchase belongs to their ancestors. (Fredrix Washington, an Empire leader, told me he does not consider it a sovereign citizen group, that the Empire no longer producers false identification documents, and that he denounced Long’s killing of police officers. The group sells bogus license plates on its website, however, and some of its members were investigated by the federal government in the late 1990s for money laundering, offshore banking fraud, and selling illegal license plates, which they said were justified under common law.)

Members of other black groups, such as the African American Homeland Association and the New Black Panther Party (not to be confused with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense) also express sovereign ideas, MacNab says, but so-called Moorish sovereigns probably represent just 5 to 10 percent of the overall movement. Many black Americans subscribe to “patriot” sovereign ideology, which has been around longer and is largely championed by whites. There are “hundreds of strains of thought as to what sovereign citizenry is,” Lenz notes.

Police see sovereign citizens as their biggest threat: While the movement’s chief tactic is legal warfare, sovereign groups have been prone to physical violence against police, judges, and government officials. In a 2015 survey of nearly 400 law enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement research group, 74 percent said they considered sovereign citizens to be the top threat facing law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security also considers sovereigns a domestic terror threat.

From 2010 through 2014, there were at least 24 violent incidents involving sovereign citizens, according to CNN. In 2010, a father-son sovereign duo in West Memphis, Arkansas killed two police officers with an AK-47 during a traffic stop. In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson protests, two men were accused of plotting to kill the Ferguson’s police chief and top prosecutor, and blow up a police station. The men, who ultimately pleaded guilty to weapons charges, had ties to the New Black Panther Party. One, like Gavin Long, identified himself as a Moorish national, according to the Star Tribune. Only “a tiny little group of people” within the larger movement have been linked to violence, MacNab notes. But younger sovereigns may be more amenable to it: “The older generation will do a decade of paperwork before they give up” and lash out.

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Baton Rouge Cop Killer Was a "Sovereign Citizen." What the Heck Is That?

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Black Movie Directors are Hosting an Oscars-Night Fundraiser in Flint

Mother Jones

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Not really feeling the Oscars this year? Well, there’s another star-studded event you can tune into Sunday night—this one is in Flint, Michigan. Blackout for Human Rights, an activist coalition co-founded by directors Ryan Coogler (Creed, Fruitvale Station) and Ava DuVernay (Selma) is hosting #JusticeforFlint, a live benefit to raise funds for residents of the lead-stricken city. The shindig, hosted by comedian Hannibal Burress, will feature the awesome singer Janelle Monae—who led several Black Lives Matter protests last summer during stops on her nationwide music tour—Empire‘s Jussie Smollett, Jesse Williams of Grey’s Anatomy, and other prominent black actors and performers. It’s free to the public, but attendees can donate to a Flint fund at the event. The event coincides with Oscars day, but that’s just a coincidence, according to Coogler, who was snubbed for the Best Director category for Creed. (DuVernay was snubbed for Selma last year.) The date was chosen because it was the last weekend of Black History Month.

“We will give a voice to the members of the community who were the victims of the choices of people in power who are paid to protect them, as well as provide them with a night of entertainment, unity, and emotional healing,” Coogler said in a statement to BuzzFeed. “Through the live stream we will also give a chance for people around the world to participate, and to donate funds to programs for Flint’s youth.” #JusiceforFlint will be live-streamed exclusively on revolt.tv, the online counterpart to the RevoltTV network founded by hip-hop mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs. The event airs at 5:30 p.m. ET, 90 minutes before the Oscars’ Red Carpet coverage commences. So if you’re interested, you can probably catch most of both.

Blackout for Human Rights also held an MLK Day event in New York City last month where black entertainers including Chris Rock, Michael B. Jordan, and Harry Belafonte read speeches by civil rights icons. Rock is hosting the Oscars on Sunday. He’s expected to deliver a monologue on diversity in Hollywood.

Flint has been in the national news since last October, when news broke that the city’s water had been contaminated with lead for well over a year, despite pleas to local and state officials. Check out this article about the Flint mom who helped bring the scandal to the nation’s attention. It’ll make your blood boil.

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Black Movie Directors are Hosting an Oscars-Night Fundraiser in Flint

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Your Jargon-Busting Guide to the Paris Climate Change Talks

It’s all about the brackets. chungking/Shutterstock On Monday, more than 140 world leaders will gather in Paris to kick off tense two-week treaty negotiations over the fate of a planet in crisis. If this were about any topic other than climate change, it might even make the news. Granted, there’s been a lot of other news out of France recently—a major climate-themed march in Paris will be canceled for security concerns. And there is going to be a lot of coverage of the Paris climate talks. But it will be nothing compared to the attention that would be paid to a last-ditch meeting to avoid a nuclear standoff—even though climate change is no less dangerous. As Climate Home previews, “a treaty at this scale has never been accomplished before, and the one under construction will affect the way the entire global economy operates.” Maybe climate change tends to take a back seat because the talks themselves are a jargon-filled monstrosity of diplomatic protocol, which means no one—not even the diplomats themselves!—understands what’s happening half of the time. Read the rest at Slate. Link to original:   Your Jargon-Busting Guide to the Paris Climate Change Talks ; ; ;

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Your Jargon-Busting Guide to the Paris Climate Change Talks

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GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan

Facing a tough re-election bid, Ayotte stakes out a moderate position on power plants. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) came out in favor of the Obama administration’s effort to cut carbon pollution by power plants on Sunday, bucking Senate leadership that has worked to derail the emissions plan. The Obama administration announced final regulations on emissions from both new and existing power plants in August. Dubbed the Clean Power Plan, the rules are part of the administration’s larger push to curb emissions that cause climate change. The Clean Power Plan has faced opposition from many conservative politicians. In supporting the rules, Ayotte cited the work her state has already done to reduce emissions. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Link:  GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan ; ; ;

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GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte Backs Obama’s Climate Change Plan

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The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

Mother Jones

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MANHATTAN—New York City has the best bagels in America. This is a truth handed down from generation to generation. Why are the bagels here better than the bagels in Boston, Boise, Birmingham, or even cities that begin with letters other than B? Legend has it that it has something to do with the water that’s piped down here from upstate. That’s never really felt right. I’m not a water scientist but it just seems like some nonsense that sounds like it could be true so what the hell, sure, it’s true! Doctor Oz probably credits NY bagels to the water.

So, anyway, some cats from the American Chemical Society got together and ran some tests and spoke to some chefs and concluded that indeed it’s not the magical properties of the Empire State’s water supply that makes NYC bagels unique, but rather the unique competence of NYC bakers. Yes, the softness of the water plays a role but not an integral one. The baking method used in New York is just better than the baking method bakers in other cities use—but there is no reason why those bakers couldn’t start using the NYC method (with some slight modifications), or so sayeth the video.

Is this video accurate? I have no idea. I am not a professor of baked goods. It sounds maybe reasonable to me. It sort of makes sense, right? Because, yeah, New York has the best bagels but I’ve certainly had good bagels other places. But those bagels are normally the exception to the bagel culture of the area. I’ve definitely had one or two okay bagels in LA. Maybe those bakers are using the NY method? I don’t know. What do you think?

Originally from:

The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

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Future President Ben Carson Wrote 6 Books. We Read Them So You Don’t Have To.

Mother Jones

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Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson rallied Republicans at the Iowa Freedom Summit on Saturday, stirring up speculation once more that the conservative activist will seek his party’s presidential nomination next year. Carson has never run for office and only recently registered as a Republican, but as the author of six books over more than two decades, he does have a considerable paper trail—and it’s starting to get him into trouble.

In his 1992 book Think Big, for instance, Carson proposed a national catastrophic health care plan modeled on federal disaster insurance, which would be funded by a 10-percent tax on insurance companies. He also proposed re-thinking best practices concerning end-of-life care, advocating for a “national discussion that would help us all rethink our culture’s mind-set about death, dying, and terminal illness”—similar to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that conservatives now dismiss as “death panels.” (A Carson spokesman told BuzzFeed last week that the health care proposal is “as relevant to his view today as our current military action in Afghanistan is compared to our military strategy in Afghanistan two decades ago.”)

Although filled with inspiring stories of medical miracles and his own rough-and-tumble roots, Carson’s books also reflect the views of a social-values warrior whose anti-gay comments recently caused him to withdraw as a commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins University, his longtime employer. A sampling:

On intelligent design (from Take the Risk):

From what I know (and all we don’t know) about biology, I find it as hard to accept the claims of evolution as it is to think that a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could somehow assemble a fully equipped and flight-ready 747. You could blow a billion hurricanes through a trillion junkyards over infinite periods of time, and I don’t think you’d get one aerodynamic wing, let alone an entire jumbo jet complete with complex connections for a jet-propulsion system, a radar system, a fuel-injection system, an exhaust system, a ventilation system, control systems, electronic systems, plus backup systems for all of those, and so much more. There’s simply not enough time in eternity for that to happen. Which is why not one of us has ever doubted that a 747, by its very existence, gives convincing evidence of someone’s intelligent design.

On the failing of the fossil record (from Take the Risk):

For me, the plausibility of evolution is further strained by Darwin’s assertion that within fifty to one hundred years of his time, scientists would become geologically sophisticated enough to find the fossil remains of the entire evolutionary tree in an unequivocal step-by-step progression of life from amoeba to man—including all of the intermediate species.

Of course that was 150 years ago, and there is still no such evidence. It’s just not there. But when you bring that up to the proponents of Darwinism, the best explanation they can come up with is “Well…uh…it’s lost!” Here again I find it requires too much faith for me to believe that explanation given all the fossils we have found without any fossilized evidence of the direct, step-by-step evolutionary progression from simple to complex organisms or from one species to another species. Shrugging and saying, “Well, it was mysteriously lost, and we’ll probably never find it,” doesn’t seem like a particularly satisfying, objective, or scientific response. But what’s even harder for me to swallow is how so many people who can’t explain it are still willing to claim that evolution is not theory but fact, at the same time insisting anyone who wants to consider or discuss creationism as a possibility cannot be a real scientist.

On abortion (from America the Beautiful):

This situation perhaps crystallizes one of the major moral dilemmas we face in American society today: Does a woman have the right to terminate another human life because it is encased in her body? Does ownership convey absolute power of life and death over the owned subject? If it does, then NFL quarterback Michael Vick was unfairly imprisoned for torturing and killing dogs in Atlanta.

On gay parents (from The Big Picture):

Recently a homosexual couple brought a child in to be examined on one of our neurosurgical clinical days. During lunch, after the couple had left, one of my fellow staff members commented favorably on the couple’s obvious love and commitment to the child. He said to me, “I know you don’t approve of homosexual relationships and wouldn’t consider their home a healthy atmosphere in which to raise a child. But I was impressed by that couple. I think their sexual orientation is their business. Think what you want, but it’s just your opinion.”

My response wasn’t nearly that politically correct. “Excuse me, but I beg to differ,” I said. “How I feel and what I think isn’t just my opinion. God in his Word says very clearly that he considers homosexual acts to be an ‘abomination.'”

On how gay marriage brought down the Roman Empire (from America the Beautiful):

I believe God loves homosexuals as much as he loves everyone, but if we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.

On WashingtonRedacted owner Dan Snyder (from One Nation):

On the other hand, many of the greatest achievers in our society never finished college. That includes Bill Gates Jr., Steve Jobs, and Dan Snyder, who is the owner of the Washington NFL franchise.

(Carson elsewhere defended Snyder’s refusal to change his team’s name and called the oft-criticized owner “far from the demonic characterization seen in the gullible press that allows itself to be manipulated by those wishing to bring about fundamental change in America.”)

On Independence Day (from Think Big):

I do not get to see many movies, but when I watched the video of Independence Day with my sons, I was struck by the portrayal of the resistance efforts mounted against the alien invaders from outer space. The frail and arbitrary distinctions so often made between various segments of society, even between different countries and ideologies, instantly melted away as the people of the entire world focused not on their differences but upon a common threat and the common goal uniting them—the protection of the planet from alien invaders.

Unlike some of his fellow candidates, though, Carson has made little effort to sugar-coat his most polarizing views. Even before he revealed any political ambitions, he’d moonlighted as a traveling Creationism advocate, giving speeches on the subject and even debating skeptic Richard Dawkins on evolution in 2006:

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Future President Ben Carson Wrote 6 Books. We Read Them So You Don’t Have To.

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