Time: Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later

Eighty years ago this month, on Nov. 15, 1937, a raid took place at La Paloma nightclub in an unincorporated part of Dade County (modern-day Miami-Dade County). Unlike at Stonewall, law enforcement was not behind this Miami-area raid. Instead, nearly two hundred women and men from the Ku Klux Klan—wearing long, white hooded robes that both concealed their identities and struck fear—burned a fiery cross on public property and inducted several dozen new members that night. They then stormed La Paloma, roughed up staff and performers, and ordered the nightspot closed. They had been trying to shut it down for some time. At La Paloma, women performed stripteases on stage. Performers then known as “female impersonators” entertained paying customers, and effeminate men (or “pansies”) made crude sexual jokes to the audience’s delight. Gender and sexual non-conforming people not only staffed the club, they also represented a part of its clientele. As one contemporary observer recalled, “Homosexuals in evening gowns, trousered lesbians, and prostitutes” were among those who forged community in spaces like La Paloma. [...]

In the end, these raids, and several that occurred before and after, proved ineffective in silencing queer voices and experiences. La Paloma, for example, soon reopened and, according to its manager, offered “spicier entertainment than ever.” One of the new skits rehearsed for its reopening was a satire of the Klan’s raid at its club, including performers wearing the white hooded robes.

Although wildly different, the reason the events at Stonewall and La Paloma share some general overlapping threads is that queer joints have historically been key sites of resistance, change and even revolution. There are dozens more examples of such raids: Turkish Baths (New York City, 1929), Cooper’s Donuts (Los Angeles, 1959), Gene Compton’s Cafeteria (San Francisco, 1966), and Black Cat (Los Angeles, 1967), among others.

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openDemocracy: The colonial roots of Trump’s discourse on Iran

The current US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, is a staunch anti-Iran operator. She apparently played a significant role in shaping Trump’s position on Iran. Haley appears to be working on the deal, but she actually talks a lot about Iran without really mentioning the deal. Her sole relevant point is that Iran ‘might be cheating on the deal’, that Iranians have hidden nuclear sites and are violating the deal in secret, that Tehran has two faces, one shown to the world, one kept to itself.

The idea of hiding ‘real’ face also emerged in Trump’s belligerent UN speech: ‘The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.’ Iran hides its reality, and unless we rend the mask asunder, Iranians will not show their real faces to the world. For Trump and Haley, the problem with Iran is not what Tehran actually does. It is framed as a moral one. They are mad that Iranians act stealthily and deviously. [...]

The first wave of books about Persia, including travelogues and diplomatic accounts and novels, appeared in early 19th century. They constitute a seemingly disparate set of documents produced by quite different people. Yet, a closer look reveals that they largely consolidated various aspects of one image. A substantial portion of those texts attempt to capture the essence of ‘Persian character’. Despite the different experiences of their authors, they reached surprisingly similar conclusions. [...]

In his exhaustive study of Persian and Persians, Lord Curzon encourages close relationship with Persia, because according to him, the white ancestors of Persians moved to Europe and birthed the white race. Curzon implies that since Persians were not Semitic, they were not exactly the ‘other’ of the west. They were the poor, shunned cousin, corrupted by intermingling with other races. Therefore, Persians have always had the volatile status of being intimate and distant at the same time. Unlike the brazen imperial swaggering the British demonstrated in the Arab world, they were never quite sure how to deal with Persia.

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Haaretz: Israel Is Shooting Itself in the Foot by Declaring Its Ties to Saudi Arabia, Expert Warns

Because the Saudi government is promoting vast projects involving infrastructure, green energy, cyber and so on, which are being implemented by foreign companies. They don’t allow the use of Israeli components or workers in these projects – but if the situation were to change, the Israeli economy could benefit to the tune of billions. That’s the estimate of experts, not mine. In any event, I think it’s a mistake for Israel to refer publicly – implicitly or directly – to the nature of its relations with Saudi Arabia. A statement such as “Israel’s relations with countries with which it has no relations of peace are unprecedented,” is extremely problematic, because it pushes Saudi Arabia into a corner in terms of the Arab world [in general], and endangers the cooperation as such. [...]

With all due respect to the desire to fight corruption, there were of course many opposition figures among those arrested; it’s not clear whether this is an authentic attempt to quash corruption or a case of political liquidation in a respectable guise. At the level of sheer vested interest, the prince wants to attract foreign investors, who of course do not want to invest in a corrupt country. On the other hand, corruption really is part of Saudi Arabia’s DNA, and the royal house is far from constituting a model of virtue in this regard. Last year, King Salman went on a vacation in Morocco that cost $100 million.  [...]

Exactly. Young Saudis are suffocating from the cost of living. It’s difficult for them to find housing, and I’m talking about rental, because buying is out of the question. It’s hard for them to find jobs, and they can’t marry, because the bride price is very high in Saudi Arabia, and they have nothing to offer the fathers, who ultimately sell their daughters. So bachelorhood is a growing phenomenon among both women and men, as is the phenomenon of Saudi men marrying foreign women. Sixty-four percent of the marriages of Saudi men to non-Saudi women are said to be to Filipinas. It’s a safe assumption that these are not passionate love marriages. [...]

But the present generation is itself angry at the religious establishment, which is disconnected from the people and speaks an archaic language, which limits them. Until recently, culture was unavailable in Saudi Arabia. There is no cinema, because it’s not considered modest, and because men and women are liable to sit together in the same hall. There is no music, because it’s not moral. All that remains for the country’s younger people is to watch on the internet as their brethren in the West enjoy all the abundance, and to be envious. Mohammed bin Salman understands that this pressure cooker has to have a release, and that people must be allowed to start enjoying themselves. He commissioned an American company to start building multiplexes. Gradually other cultural events are also starting to happen. Last month there was a motorized acrobatics show, and thousands of people flocked to it, there’s a huge thirst.

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Vox: Why cities are full of uncomfortable benches

 When designing urban spaces, city planners have many competing interests to balance. After all, cities are some of the most diverse places on the planet. They need to be built for a variety of needs.

In recent years, these competing interests have surfaced conflict over an unlikely interest: purposefully uncomfortable benches.

Enter the New York City MTA. They’ve installed 'leaning bars’ to supplement traditional benches & save platform space. But designs like this carry an often invisible cost: they rob citizens of hospitable public space. And the people who experience this cost most directly are those experiencing homelessness. 

A few notes of thanks: First to Historian A. Roger Ekirch who kindly got me up to speed on the expansion of streetlights in historic western city districts.

Another thanks goes to author Veronica Harnish, who outlined some of the pitfalls that people experiencing homelessness face when choosing between sleeping rough or utilizing emergency shelters. You can read her blog here: http://car-living.blogspot.com/

A third thank you goes to the staff at the Unites States Interagency Council on Homelessness — they supplied the map in this video, as well as some aggregate statistics of the United States homeless population. Those numbers come from a variety of annual ‘Point-In-Time’ counts. 

Haaretz: Netanyahu Needs a War. He Needs It to Be With Iran. And He Needs It Soon

Netanyahu needs a war because he’s desperate, and because a war might answer two of his more immediate needs: First, an overarching, delaying-action distraction, and second, in the event a war should succeed even as his career fades, the single thing the prime minister wants the most in this life: a legacy.

He’s desperate now because he’s losing ground fast in the latest opinion polls. He’s desperate because after all these many years in power, obsessed by his place in history and his own wishlist comparisons with Winston Churchill, Netanyahu still has no legacy beside the number of all these many years in power. [...]

He’s desperate because police detectives and investigative journalists are closing in on him. He pretends that the allegations center on innocent favors traded for innocently modest luxuries. But the security-minded public knows only too well that Netanyahu may be involved in malfeasance in securing the purchase of several advanced German-built submarines – potentially Israel’s most potent strategic weapon in its continuing confrontation of Mutually Threatened Destruction with Iran. [...]

Citing Iran’s mounting presence in Syria, Netanyahu’s defense minister has demanded that the military budget be hiked by well over a billion dollars. The demand is particularly extraordinary in view of the fact that the army’s chief of staff reportedly sees no need for the increase. [...]

In the past, hardline Israeli leaders under the threat of police probes have opted for a dramatic shift to the left, hoping to ride a peace push to save their premiership. But Netanyahu has worked so long and so well to block any meaningful avenue toward peace that he has himself choked off much of his own room to maneuver.

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Al Jazeera: Is Russia afraid of losing Syria?

The rest of Syria is either under the control of the regime or the US-allied Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Thanks to two years of Russian intervention and attacks by ISIL and HTS, a significant part of the real armed opposition was liquidated, and we can say that the period of active hostilities has come to an end. The issues of peace and stability have become much more important to Syrians than problems of power and the future political order. [...]

Russia, however, does not have the financial capacity to invest heavily in Syria after the end of the conflict. In this context, its positions in Syria no longer seem so convincing. This has forced Moscow to realise that alliances with Tehran and Ankara in Syria might not be so beneficial in the future and that it needs to find new allies for the post-conflict period. As a result, the Russian government has upped its efforts on keeping the negotiating process under its control to make sure it is not ousted from its position as kingmaker in Syria. [...]

Particularly revealing in this respect was the "unexpected trick" with Bashar al-Assad showing up in Sochi. This was Assad's second trip out of his country since 2011; in 2015 he went again to Russia to meet Putin. For Moscow, the Syrian president is a kind of a "liquid asset", which the Russian leadership is trying to convert into diplomatic success. His visit was meant to reinforce Russia's monopoly over the Syrian file. It sent a clear message to the international community that Moscow holds the keys to Damascus and is the only patron of the regime able to push it to the negotiations table.  [...]

Despite its crucial role in the Syrian negotiating process, its resources and capabilities are clearly not enough to hold it. Russia needs another partner in Syria which is able to guarantee funds for reconstruction in the post-conflict period. And that partner needs to be willing to route the financial flows through Moscow.

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Deutsche Welle: Ex-AfD leader Frauke Petry launches comeback tour

he Blue Party manifesto reads like a toned-down version of the AfD's Islamophobic, anti-migrant rhetoric. Where the AfD maintains that "there is no place for Islam in Germany," the Blue Party takes the softer line of denouncing "political Islam." [...]

Carrying her youngest child, only a few months old, on her hip and speaking in more muted tones than she has become known for, Petry couched her opposition to Islam in terms of support for Israel and her anti-migrant beliefs as a matter of border security. She added that she did not stand for the "ethno-patriotism" of the far-right, but rather of protecting one's own culture. [...]

She spoke of the need for real conservative politics in the age of Chancellor Angela Merkel's centrism, garnering scattered applause for her defense of supporting "classic" family models in the face of, from her view, too much ado about "gender politics" in Berlin. In contrast to the AfD, which tends to be more Moscow-friendly, she spoke of a need to balance relations between Russia and the US. [...]

Assembling this kind of group could be a clever calculation on Petry's part. She made clear in her speech that the Blue Party should be seen not as a normal political party, but as a grassroots movement with few career politicians, and as unbeholden to special interest groups as possible.

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The Guardian: Brexiters nowhere to be seen as UK raises white flag over EU divorce bill

Faced with such an ultimatum, Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, said he believed Britain had little realistic choice but to cave in on money, citizens’ rights and the Irish border if it wanted to get to phase two talks on trade. “It is dressed up as a negotiation, but it’s really been a story of the British taking time to realise that they have got to accept what the EU demands of them,” he said. “The EU is intelligent enough not to pursue this in a humiliating way, but the truth is that we have to accept.” [...]

Meanwhile, the prime minister prepared the ground among her Brexit hardliners in government, first at a subcommittee of the cabinet last week and then a meeting of the full cabinet on Monday. If the final loose ends can be tied up by Robbins and Weyand on Ireland and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ) in protecting citizens’ rights, May is expected to present Britain’s final offer in person to the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, next Monday. [...]

“The truth is if you want to join, you join on their terms. You can quibble about the details, but the broad lines are decided by the EU and dressed up as a negotiation. Similarly, when you leave the EU, once you declare your red lines, the ECJ and free movement being two important ones, then the range of opportunities for the future relationship are very limited.”

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The Guardian: Pope Francis’s failure to say the word ‘Rohingya’ shows he is no peacemaker

The men who run the Vatican aren’t on the whole risk-takers, which is both why the current pope is a breath of fresh air, and also why he has so many enemies within his own kingdom. But nor are they back-downers: so although the political situation has made the trip more and more dodgy, they ploughed on with it; and the uncomfortable result is that, in the week Oxford announces it is withdrawing the freedom of the city from the Myanmar leader, one of its most prominent alumni, in protest at what is happening to the Rohingya, pictures are beamed around the world of her meeting the pope – and, worse, he has bowed to pressure not to refer to them by name. [...]

The truth is, and this visit has made this abundantly clear, the primary role of the pope is as the leader of the Roman Catholic community. The first people he must protect are his own; which is not unreasonable for any leader. So when his representative in Myanmar, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, warned him that if he used the word “Rohingya” he might compromise the situation of the country’s tiny Catholic minority, Francis felt he had no option but to back down.

The Catholic church has many strengths, including in its humanitarian work – after all, it has representatives across the planet, and for all the bad apples we’ve become increasingly aware of, there are many good men and women working tirelessly to improve the living conditions of people who live in challenged situations. But it has weaknesses too, including the fact that its leader, while he might look like a world peacemaker, must look out first and foremost for his own people. And that, it seems, is what has had to happen here.

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