For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
2 May 2018
The Guardian: The future of sex work – a photo essay
In 1995 New South Wales became one of the first places in the world to decriminalise sex work. Against a backdrop of the Aids epidemic and a recommendation to fight police corruption from a royal commission into the state’s police service, sex workers succeeded in lobbying the government for change. [...]
There is still a lot of confusion about the difference between legalisation and decriminalisation. When sex work is decriminalised, that means it’s no longer in the criminal code. Obviously, we are subject to criminal laws just like everybody else. It’s just that our work itself isn’t seen as a crime. When it’s legalised there are still provisions that regulate sex work in the criminal code. Essentially, the many things around sex work – brothels, clients, etc – are made illegal to obstruct the work. These stigmatising and obstructing regulations do not help but hinder sex workers’ rights and safety. [...]
Sex workers aren’t always passive victims. They aren’t always slaves to the patriarchy. They aren’t people who need to be saved or have decisions made for them. I work – mainly – with a community of women and I love the support that comes from that. I find it life-affirming. I define myself as a feminist. But I have a fraught relationship with mainstream feminism. They silence sex workers by refusing to recognise our work and autonomy. And, in doing so, have committed a great act of violence against us.
The Atlantic: Netanyahu's Strange Presentation on Iran
It is not clear what Netanyahu was hoping to achieve with his presentation. His skepticism about Iran’s intentions and its commitment to the nuclear agreement is well known. Those hoping for a smoking gun of Iran’s cheating on the deal it signed with world powers to curb its nuclear program were likely to be disappointed. The fact that Iran was at one point pursuing nuclear weapons will likely be a surprise to no one—and indeed was a rationale for concluding the nuclear agreement in the first place. Many of the slides Netanyahu showed pertained to the period between 1999 to 2003, when the U.S. has also cited evidence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program, and after which a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate said the program had been shut down. His main evidence that Iran had cheated on the nuclear deal was that it had not fully disclosed the details of its past nuclear programs to the International Atomic Energy Agency as required by the nuclear deal. [...]
As to the Obama-era nuclear agreement itself, President Trump has it “the worst deal in history.” Although his advisers, as well as his European allies, had hoped to persuade him to remain in the JCPOA, arguing it was achieving what it was intended to do—preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon—French President Emmanuel Macron told French media last week, after his visit to Washington, that he believed Trump “will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.” Trump has until May 12 to decide. Netanyahu’s speech could help give him a rationale to withdraw—or, should he want to save the deal, give him wiggle room to reimpose nuclear sanctions without fully withdrawing. [...]
And the Israeli-Iranian confrontation goes beyond diplomacy. Fearful that Iran is seeking a permanent military presence inside Syria, Israel has struck several times inside the country—most recently, apparently, Sunday night, after which at least 22 people were reported killed. There was no claim of responsibility for that strike, though that was not the case earlier this month when Israel struck a military base, the T4 base, inside Syria where Iran is known to operate, reportedly killing 14 people. Israel says Iran uses the base to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. Israel also struck the base in February after an Iranian drone launched from the base entered Israeli territory. Tehran has so far done little to retaliate.
The Atlantic: Theresa May's Incredible Vanishing Government
Rudd didn’t resign over her office’s handling of the Windrush generation, nor did she resign because of the government’s deportation aims. Rather, she resigned because she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers about the deportation targets—first by claiming they didn’t exist, and then by saying she wasn’t aware of their existence. Both apparently proved to be false—though Rudd claimed she did not see or approve targets for removal, a private letter she wrote to May about the targets in January 2017 refers to such targets directly.
As was the case with previous cabinet resignations, it wasn’t the scandal itself that proved to be the sackable offense—it was lying about it. Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, resigned in November after making false claims that the U.K.’s Foreign Office was aware of her undisclosed visits with Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a family holiday (they weren’t). A month later, former first secretary of state Damien Green resigned because of “inaccurate and misleading”statements he made about the presence of pornography on his office computer. The remaining ministers to have left May’s cabinet include former Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who resigned in November over allegations of sexual harassment, and former Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, who resigned in January for health reasons. [...]
Still, Javid’s appointment marks a major shift in other ways. Not only will he be the first ethnic minority to serve as Home Secretary, but he will also shake up the political balance of May’s cabinet: Though Javid, like his predecessor, voted to remain in the European Union, he is also a self-dubbed Euroskeptic and opposes the U.K. remaining in the EU’s customs union.
Politico: What Kim Jong Un Wants From Trump
When Kim came to power in 2011, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, he inherited not only the family-run North Korean dictatorship, but also the Kims’ longstanding goal of reunifying the Koreas. Kim has upheld that goal in his rhetoric, both internal and external. While there has never been much detail about what unification is supposed to look like from North Korea’s perspective, the prevailing assumption has always been that it does not include a U.S. alliance with South Korea or a U.S. troop presence in the South. North Korean (and even leftist South Korean) propaganda has always portrayed the United States as an obstacle to unification, even though its notion of unification can’t possibly be the same as the South’s presumption of absorbing North Korea or extending democratic governance northward. That’s certainly not what Kim has in mind.
But because unification is a somewhat abstract aspiration, it also doesn’t have a deadline. Kim has more concrete goals that are evident in North Korea’s word and deed, and that happen to also propel North Korea toward the meta-goal of unification, but on terms favorable to the North. Kim has sought to 1) secure his rule against internal challengers, 2) achieve and demonstrate a reliable nuclear deterrent, 3) improve his people’s quality of life, and 4) elevate North Korea’s international standing as a nuclear state. Until very recently, his priority has been the first two goals. Having made significant progress on them, with his current charm offensive, Kim is now aiming to do the same for the latter two. [...]
With a firmer grip on the regime and a strengthened nuclear strike capability, all this diplomacy moves Kim closer to his remaining goals of prioritizing the economy and elevating North Korea’s international standing as a nuclear state. The fact of hosting friendly meetings with foreign delegations and presenting them with memorabilia commemorating the recent success in “perfecting the national nuclear forces” is a nuclear status fait accompli. And even if North Korea can’t rejoin the international community in full because of continuing human rights abuses and opaque economic practices, going on the diplomatic offensive is a smart way of discouraging the international community—and especially China—from stringently implementing an increasingly suffocating international sanctions regime. Diplomacy is a low-cost means of getting sanctions relief, which will help improve the North Korean standard of living. At the same time, an extended process of reconciliation with South Korea holds out the promise of much needed economic investment and assistance. Already there’s talk of an energy corridor running from Russia, through North Korea, down to the South. That all this encourages greater friction in the U.S.-South Korea alliance and mutes the preventive war narrative that was building last year in Washington is simply a bonus. [...]
And even if Americans disagree about the answers to questions like these—and I suspect they do—the absence of any meaningful discussion about them makes it entirely likely that Trump and Kim reach a deal that’s good for each of them personally but not good for the United States. It’s plausible, for example, that Kim and Trump could agree to a peace treaty ending the Korean War and a commitment to rollback North Korea’s nuclear arsenal so that it no longer includes ICBMs but does allow Kim to retain some nukes. That would do significant damage to the credibility of U.S. alliances in the region, turning them into the depreciating asset—or increasing liability—that Trump always viewed them as anyway.
Haaretz: Putin’s Gambit Could Backfire
Now Assad is indebted to Putin and relies on him for further military support, which includes Russian aircraft and missiles. The use of Russian mercenaries for fighting on the ground allows Putin to claim that no Russian ground forces are involved in the fighting and that the Russian military presence on the ground is limited to the Russian naval and air bases. The use of mercenaries is a ruse that was already used to cover the Russian involvement in Ukraine. Although quite transparent, it seems to be working. It has become part of the inventory of methods used to spread Russian influence beyond Russia’s borders. The world seems to be getting used to it. [...]
Undoubtedly a few of the old-timers at the Kremlin remember the effect that the introduction of Soviet surface-to-air missiles in Egypt in 1970 had on the War of Attrition, and then during the Yom Kippur War, when they managed to neutralize the Israel Air Force. They probably hope that now the supply of the S-300 missiles to Syria will have a similar effect. [...]
Is it possible that the Israeli Air Force will know how to deal with the S-300 missile system if it is deployed in Syria? That no doubt is of concern to Putin and his generals. Such a scenario is liable to constitute a harsh blow to Russian weapons technology, hurting the Russians’ marketing efforts for this missile system to other countries, such as Iran, and even raising questions as to the continued Russian-Iranian alliance in Syria.
NBC News: Did another advanced species exist on Earth before humans?
Finding fossilized bones is a slightly better bet, but if another advanced species walked the Earth millions of years ago — if they walked — it would be easy to overlook their fossilized skeletons — if they had skeletons. Modern humans have been around for just 100,000 years, a thin sliver of time within the vast and spotty fossil record. [...]
Using human technology as their guide, Schmidt and Frank suggest zeroing in on plastics and other long-lived synthetic molecules as well as radioactive fallout (in case factions of ancient lizard people waged atomic warfare). In our case, technological development has been accompanied by widespread extinctions and rapid environmental changes, so those are red flags as well.
After reviewing several suspiciously abrupt geologic events of the past 380 million years, the researchers conclude that none of them clearly fit a technological profile. Frank calls for more research, such as studying how modern industrial chemicals persist in ocean sediments and then seeing if we can find traces of similar chemicals in the geologic record.
The Guardian: Christians in Jerusalem's Old City 'under threat' from settlers
Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem and the most senior Christian leader in the Holy Land, told the Guardian: “Today the church faces a most severe threat at the hands of certain settler groups. The settlers are persistent in their attempts to erode the presence of the Christian community in Jerusalem.
“These radical settler groups are highly organised. Over the last years we have witnessed the desecration and vandalism of an unprecedented number of churches and holy sites and receive growing numbers of reports from priests and local worshippers who have been assaulted and attacked. [...]
In a separate development – but one that church leaders say is part of a pattern of targeting Christians – Jerusalem city council issued churches with a demand in February for nearly $200m (£143m) in back taxes. In protest, the church denominations closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for an unprecedented three days, during which thousands of pilgrims were locked out. [...]
The bill has the support of 40 members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, who say the Greek Orthodox church is selling off land at discount prices to private developers, which puts leaseholders at risk. The Greek Orthodox church owns about a third of land in the Old City and key sites around Jerusalem, including the land on which the Knesset, government offices and the Israel Museum are built.
The Huffington Post: Muslims Are Internalizing Islamophobia, And Negative Media Coverage Is To Blame
The study found that Muslims are more likely than members of other faiths to agree with the sentiment that their community is “more prone to negative behavior than other people” — at 30 percent, compared with 13 percent of Jews and 12 percent of Catholics. [...]
Internalizing racism involves “ingesting, often subconsciously, acceptance of the dominant society’s stereotype of one’s ethnic group,” according to a similar study conducted by the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research in 2016, “Exploring the Faith and Identity Crisis of American Muslim Youth.” The report corroborates the ISPU’s findings and documents the effects of Islamophobic rhetoric on the religious identity and perceptions of Muslim youths. The study found that 1 in 3 children surveyed wanted to tell others that they are Muslim and that 1 in 2 did not know whether they could be both Muslim and American. [...]
On a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 the lowest level of prejudice, the report found that on average Muslims scored 17 on the Islamophobia index. By comparison, nonaffiliated respondents came in at 14; Jews and Catholics, 22; the general public, 24; Protestants, 31; and white evangelicals, 40.
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