Whitlam papers to be made public, high court rules

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Whitlam papers to be made public, high court rules

Letters between the Queen and the governor-general who dismissed Gough Whitlam should be released, the High Court has ruled.

The so-called palace letters between Buckingham Palace and Sir John Kerr about the time of the 1975 dismissal had been deemed personal communications by the National Archives of Australia and the Federal Court.

Friday’s judgment follows a legal battle relating to whether letters between the Queen and Sir John Kerr, who dismissed prime minister Gough Whitlam, should be publicly released.
Jenny Hocking with a photo of Gough Whitlam and the Dismissal letter. (AAP)

The so-called palace letters between Buckingham Palace and Sir John about the time of the 1975 dismissal had been deemed personal communications by the National Archives of Australia and the Federal Court.

Her legal team argued that despite being the personal letters of Sir John, they relate to the exercise and function of the governor-general’s power. And, as they are commonwealth property, they should be subject to the same laws that allow cabinet documents to be released after 20 years.

The Federal Court had previously ruled the letters – given to the national archives by Sir John – were personal, meaning they can’t be released until 2027, and only then with the permission of the Queen.

Gough Whitlam speaks to reporters in 1975 following his dismissal by then-Governor-General John Kerr. (Getty)

The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, has been described as the greatest political crisis in Australian history.

It culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Kerr, who then commissioned the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as caretaker prime minister.

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North Korea Threatens to Punish Parents and Teachers for Teenage Sex

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North Korea Threatens to Punish Parents and Teachers for Teenage Sex

Authorities in North Korea say “sexual immorality” among the country’s teenagers is on the rise, warning that the randy teens’ “impure acts” are considered treasonous, and that their teachers and parents could be punished if they are caught.

While high school students engaging in sexual activity with each other is an issue that most countries would say is caused by raging hormones, North Korea says it is due to “decadent capitalist influences,” meaning pornographic materials from Japan and elsewhere, and movies from South Korea and the U.S. The contraband media materials usually enter the country by way of the porous Sino-Korean border and are distributed from person to person using mobile phones or USB flash drives.

The illicit files in some ways are the only accessible resources about sex and relationships for many young North Koreans, who live in a socially conservative country that borders on reactionary, where there is almost no sex education to speak of.

A 2005 report by New Focus International interviewed several North Koreans who had escaped to South Korea who explained that they didn’t learn about sex at school or at home.

One said that at the age of 16, she believed that a woman could become pregnant by simply holding hands with a man and falling asleep. Another said that he and his friends learned about sex from Japanese pornographic videos, which were being widely circulated on video CDs at the time.

Now, just like 15 years ago, teens are learning about sex from pornography, which does little to educate youth about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. But rather than instituting a nationwide sex-ed program in the country’s high schools, North Korea is instead looking to punish not only sexually active teens, but their parents and teachers for improperly educating them.

“Recently more and more high school boys and girls are engaging in immoral sexual deviance, and the Central Committee [of the Korean Workers’ Party] has issued a directive calling for strong measures against them,” a source from North Pyongan province, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFA’s Korean Service Wednesday.

“The reason behind this order is that the local Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League in Sinuiju [a city on the border with China] inspected high school students, and found that some high school boys and girls hang out with local gangsters, live together, and commit immoral acts such as prostitution,” the source said.

The league is the country’s main youth organization, modeled after the Soviet Komsomol.

According to the source, the Central Committee wants to crack down on teen sex to preserve the foundation of society.

“The immoral sexual behavior of students, who are influenced by capitalist lifestyles, has become a problem,” the source said.

“[The committee] defined sexual promiscuity among teenagers as a treasonous act that helps the enemy to destroy our society. And since they are warning of strong punishment, students are shaking with fear,” said the source.

The source said the government identified the cause of the promiscuous behavior, saying it comes from media passed around on mobile devices.

“The Central Committee pointed out that the reason why [sexual promiscuity] is so common in students these days is because they are imbued with decadent capitalist culture, due to the increase in electronic media, including mobile phones,” said the source.

“In order to prevent this, they ordered [schools] to check students for phones or other devices they might have with them,” the source added.

Though smartphone use is allowed in North Korea, the country’s smartphones all have an application called “Red Flag” running in the background that keeps a log of webpages visited by users and randomly takes screenshots. These can be viewed, but not deleted with another app called “Trace Viewer.” The screenshots can be checked by authorities at any time, making surveillance relatively easy.

Schools are now paying more attention to the problem and doing more to report on the deviant behaviors of students by investigating their private lives.

“They are taking measures to control [the teens’] unhealthy sexual activity,” the source said.

“Members of the youth league, as well as school teachers, are calling for various measures including taking charge of troubled students and educating them individually,” the source added.

Another source suggested that the various organizations dealing with the youth should discuss the problem regularly.

“There should be a meeting at least once a month with school principals, party secretaries, and senior members of the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League to discuss students’ unhealthy sexual behaviors,” the resident of North Hamgyong province, who requested anonymity for legal reasons, told RFA.

The second source said that there was a sense of alarm among those who run these various organizations.

“Teachers are anxious because of the warning that school principals, advisors to the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League and the Korean Children’s Union, and school teachers, will also be punished if there is a serious sexual violation among students,” the second source said.

It was not immediately clear if the “serious sexual violation” referred to sexual crimes like rape or prostitution, or if it also included sex between willing teenaged participants.

The second source also said that many believe that the increase in deviance was related to the postponement of the school year, as schools have not been in session since before the winter break due to the coronavirus.

“As students do not go to school and are staying at home, they naturally approach impure media with curiosity and share it with each other, so there is an increasing number of these [immoral sexual] behaviors.”

RFA reported in mid-May that a major crackdown on illegal smartphone content among the country’s youth has been underway since April, mostly geared at eliminating South Korean cultural influences spreading among North Korean youth.

Youth were made aware of the crackdown during meetings of the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League and according to sources, pulled all-nighters desperately trying to delete the illegal content from their devices.

In that crackdown also, warnings were issued that parents and teachers would be punished if the youth were caught with the contraband media.

Reported by Myungchul Lee for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.



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Coronavirus Australia live news: NSW eases restrictions on weddings and funerals as Victorians ordered to continue working from home – latest updates

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Coronavirus Australia live news: NSW eases restrictions on weddings and funerals as Victorians ordered to continue working from home – latest updates

Well, they’re very appreciative, mate, of the 35 years. I mean, people who are listening to you over the last few years or longer than that. It’s an extraordinary career by any estimation. And beyond that, there’s a broader contribution to public life on so many issues, which your program this morning is rehearsing all of those.

But can I recall one on behalf of the grateful members of the Southern Districts Rugby Club. Back in 2007, I was running for parliament and that year the then-New South Wales rugby union was trying to boot Southern Districts out of the premiership, together with Penrith and who are sadly … sorry, not Penrith, Illawarra and Penrith. And you stood up with us and, I mean, you came out to the club and you’ve been to the club many times since then.

And Southern Districts has gone on from strength to strength since then and so I’m sure all of them would want me to pass on to you, mate, our thanks for that.

But there are so many stories like that everyone can tell. Some were at a big national global scale, but some of them are just saving a great footy club. So, mate, thanks very much, and Jenny and I want to wish you all the best for your future.

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Trump says right-wing voices are being censored. The data says something else

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Trump says right-wing voices are being censored. The data says something else

But data from Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, pours cold water on the assertion that conservative voices are being silenced.

In fact, according to CrowdTangle, a data-analytics firm owned by Facebook, content from conservative news organizations dominates Facebook and often outperforms content from straightforward news organizations. 

Additionally, over the last month on Facebook, Trump has captured 91% of the total interactions on content posted by the US presidential candidates, according to CrowdTangle. Biden has captured only 9%.

CrowdTangle computes interactions by totaling the number of likes, comments, and shares a post receives. 

Over the last month, the top performing news organization in the US was Fox News, a conservative network which largely echoes the Trump White House’s messaging. 

Fox News captured 13% of all interactions among US news organizations with more than 29 million likes, comments, and shares, according to CrowdTangle.

The second top-performing page belonged to Breitbart, a right-wing website that is largely supportive of the President and has close ties to the White House. Its Facebook page accounted for 9% of the total US media interactions over the last month with more than 20 million likes, comments, and shares.

The third best performing US news organization was CNN, with 7% of the interactions; the fourth was ABC News with 5%; the fifth was NPR with 4%.

When sorting by US political media, the data skews largely in favor of conservative news organizations, according to CrowdTangle. Six of the top 10 US political media pages belonged to conservatives. 

Ben Shapiro, the prominent conservative news personality, generated more than 25 million interactions over the past month on his page, accounting for 29% of the total share from US political media on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle. 

The second top US political media page belonged to Breitbart, with 23% of total interactions. 

Other conservative outlets in the top 10 for US political media over the last month: The Western Journal in fifth with 4% of the total interactions; TheBlaze in seventh with 3% of the total interactions; IJR in eight with 2% of total interactions; and the Washington Examiner in ninth with 2% of interactions. 

Trump and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly accused Facebook and other social media platforms of bias, painting the companies as villains in a longstanding culture war used to excite the conservative base. 

Technology platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have banned certain users in the past for violating hate speech policies.

In a widely covered move, Facebook, YouTube, and Apple booted right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from their platforms in 2018 for violating hate speech and harassment policies. The companies maintained that they do not discriminate against users for their political beliefs. 

But the nuance has been lost on Trump, Republican leaders, and members of the conservative media.

Republicans and right-wing media outlets have been all too happy running with the narrative that social media companies are censoring conservatives, regardless of the facts. Fox News, Breitbart, and other outlets have amplified claims that conservatives are under fire on social media platforms. 

In addition to the president, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump Jr. have been among some of the Republicans to promote this narrative.

Claims of social media bias and censorship have also made their way to Congress. Lawmakers have held hearings on the so-called practice of “social media filtering” where right-wing personalties have been asked to testify about the discrimination they’ve supposedly faced at the hands of the companies.

The narrative is unlikely to go away anytime soon. The politicians and media outlets on the right that push it do not seem moved by the facts. Instead, they seem more interested in a narrative that resonates with and whips up the conservative base.

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Twitter Users Offer Encouragement After Trump Riffs About Deleting Account

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Twitter Users Offer Encouragement After Trump Riffs About Deleting Account

President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that he’d love to delete his Twitter account ― and users on the platform were very supportive of that idea.

The comment came as Trump signed an executive order devised to reduce legal protections for social media companies. In a first earlier this week, Twitter had flagged two of the president’s tweets, which contained unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting, with fact-check warnings.

Trump ― who generally uses the platform to bash his rivals, spread baseless theories and promote himself and his allies ― declared this move a suppression of free speech and made the apparent move to punish the company.

When a reporter asked why Trump doesn’t simply leave the platform he has so many issues with, he replied, “There’s nothing I’d rather do than get rid of my whole Twitter account.”

However, the president claimed, he keeps it so he can challenge news coverage he deems “fake.”

While many skeptics doubted Trump’s ability to part ways with his Twitter account, other users optimistically offered their full encouragement.



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Foster kids struggling during the pandemic are getting much needed support from a CNN Hero

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Foster kids struggling during the pandemic are getting much needed support from a CNN Hero

Some don’t have access to technology needed to continue distance learning. Those who’ve aged out of the system often don’t have a support network to fall back on — and they already face a higher risk of homelessness.

“For so many of us, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a lot of confusion and fear,” said Danielle Gletow, a 2013 CNN Hero. “But for those in foster care, and particularly those who aged out of foster care, this has been an exceptionally difficult time because a lot of their support systems have been removed.”

Gletow, a foster and adoptive mother, started the non-profit One Simple Wish in 2008. The organization grants wishes to children in foster care across the country and those who’ve aged out. Last year, the group reached 20,000 youth.

Each wish is posted online, and anyone can cover the cost to make that wish come true — from tangible items like a bicycle, a varsity jacket or school supplies, to an experience such as music lessons or a trip to the theater.

But when Covid-19 hit, Gletow knew this population would have much different needs.

“We immediately created a Covid-19 response fund and started focusing on the things that we knew our young people were going to need,” Gletow said.

The biggest request the organization has seen is for laptops and other technology for children’s remote learning. And often, these laptops are important for more than school.

“Kids were doing weekly visits with siblings and biological parents, but once the pandemic hit this was no longer possible,” Gletow said. “Now, the only way for them to do these things is virtually through tablets or laptops.”

For young adults who’ve aged out of foster care, job loss or furloughs can be devastating. And those in college no longer have the housing they relied on. So, Gletow’s non-profit is assisting former foster youth with rent and utility assistance, along with food and other essentials, during the pandemic.

One college senior in New Jersey is among them. Living with her eight siblings, they all help take care of each other.

“As one of the oldest in my family, I have many responsibilities such as helping provide food, money, time, and basically raising my younger siblings along with the help of my older siblings,” the student said.

With support from One Simple Wish, the family has been able to keep up with necessities such as food and gas.

“They’ve been providing us with ShopRite gift cards, Target gift cards, gas cards to help us pay for our groceries and everything,” she said. “It’s greatly appreciated.”

Former foster youth Amber Whitaker has also received support from the organization during Covid-19, including tuition assistance for her graduate degree.

“I really hope to be able to help children in a similar circumstance as to what I was brought up in,” Whitaker, 31, said. “And One Simple Wish helped to make that happen.”

Sia reveals she adopted teen boys who were aging out of foster care

Gletow said her group has seen more than a 300% increase in needs coming from foster children and former foster youth during the pandemic and the organization is able to fill these needs very quickly without a lot of red tape.

“It’s important to us that nobody ever feels like they are not being seen or heard,” Gletow said. “We’re able to reach out to those cases that don’t necessarily perfectly fit into larger programming.”

Gletow wants to make sure this population knows they can come to her organization for assistance with anything and they will be met with zero judgment.

“We just want to make sure that everybody is safe and protected,” Gletow said, “and that everybody has a sense of support at a time when the whole world feels completely out of control.”

Want to get involved? Check out the One Simple Wish website and see how to help.

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Iran claims nuclear program will continue after end of US waivers

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Iran claims nuclear program will continue after end of US waivers

May 28, 2020

The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behrouz Kamalvandi, has shrugged off the latest decision by the United States to end the waivers for Iran’s nuclear program, which were among the few remaining elements of the 2015 nuclear deal the Trump administration exited in 2018.

“America is trying to distract world public opinion with these actions given Iran’s powerful actions in the world and the continuation of its nuclear program,” Kamalvandi told the Iranian Students’ News Agency on May 28. He said Iran’s ability to sell fuel to Venezuela despite US threats against doing so, Iran’s “strength on the free seas of the world” and Iran’s “impressive advancement” in its nuclear program forced the United States to make this decision to create news.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced May 27 that in two months the United States would no longer allow waivers for European, Russian and Chinese help on various aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, specifically at the Arak heavy water reactor and Tehran Research Center. The Trump administration had previously argued that such waivers would constrain Iran’s nuclear program but Pompeo’s latest statement is a reversal of that position.

Kamalvandi said, “The end of US waivers on nuclear cooperation according to the nuclear deal will have no impact on the process of Iran’s work.” He continued, “This is just media noise and nothing more and they know this reality well.” 

On the specific waivers and Iran’s work with other nations, Kamalvandi said Iran has no problems accessing its fuel from Russia and in the future will produce its own fuel without help from any country. Currently Russia supplies Iran with nuclear fuel for the Bushehr plant. On the redesigning of the Arak nuclear reactor, Kamalvandi said China and other European countries are assisting Iran but that the “primary work of redesigning the reactor and the fuel is being done by us.”

In other news, conservative politician Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been elected speaker of Iran’s parliament. Former Speaker Ali Larijani had held the position since 2008. Ghalibaf was mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017 and had unsuccessfully run for president. While he is a conservative politician and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force, he is not part of the new and younger generation of hard-line politicians. 

The current parliament is dominated mostly by conservatives after Reformist politicians were mostly disqualified from running. The biggest problem for this parliament will be the economy and working with the current and next administration in creating a budget for the country. President Hassan Rouhani’s approach of opening up the country to foreign investment received a blow after the US exit from the nuclear deal and the reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions. Now with the country still fighting the coronavirus, parliament and the president in his final year will have to live with each other until the next presidential election in 2021.    



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Federal authorities pledge ‘robust’ investigation into George Floyd’s death; Minnesota National Guard activated: What we know

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Federal authorities pledge ‘robust’ investigation into George Floyd’s death; Minnesota National Guard activated: What we know

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George Floyd’s death has caused hundreds of protesters to take over the streets all over the U.S. including Minneapolis, Memphis and Los Angeles.

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MINNEAPOLIS — Grief and anger have turned to violence and clashes with police in Minneapolis and Saint Paul as tense protests continue following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was pinned down by a white police officer who held his knee to Floyd’s neck.

Federal and state authorities on Thursday promised a swift and thorough investigation as the city’s leaders called for peace to be restored and Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order to activate the Minnesota National Guard.

“That video is graphic and horrific and terrible and no person should do that,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said at a press conference. He said investigators needed time to determine if the video showed a criminal offense: “We have to do this right.”

Four officers were fired shortly after video of the encounter spread on social media showing Floyd struggling and telling the officers he couldn’t breathe.

Investigators took an unusual step in announcing an in-progress federal investigation, U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said. She joined Freeman and other officials in offering condolences to Floyd’s family and pleading for peaceful protests.

Calling the Floyd’s death a “disturbing” loss of life, MacDonald promised a “a robust and meticulous investigation” and said the Department of Justice is making the case a “top priority.” 

Floyd’s death has sparked a national outcry for justice in other cities, as well.

Follow the George Floyd story: Get USA TODAY’s Daily Briefing in your inbox

Here’s what we know Thursday:

Minnesota National Guard activated

Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order to activate the Minnesota National Guard, a move that came at the request of local leaders after “peaceful protests evolved into a dangerous situation for protesters and first responders,” according to a release.

“As George Floyd’s family has said, ‘Floyd would not want people to get hurt. He lived his life protecting people.’ Let’s come together to rebuild, remember, and seek justice for George Floyd,” the release quotes Walz.

The order also declares a peacetime emergency, allowing the a State Emergency Operations Center to be activated. The center is also involved in coordinating support amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The National Guard will work to protect peaceful demonstrators and small business owners, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan said, according to a in the release.

Police report continued violence, looting Thursday

Police say they are working to disperse crowds in Saint Paul on Thursday afternoon amid reports of looting and violence. 

“Officers are giving dispersal orders to groups gathered in various areas of the city, damaging property and attempting to steal from businesses,” the Saint Paul Police Department tweeted.

Minutes later, the department tweeted: “Officers are having rocks, liquor bottles and bricks thrown at them in the area of the Target on University Avenue.”

A video tweeted by Minnesota Public Radio reporter Tim Nelson shows a large crowd clashing with a police presence outside the store.

A short distance away from that location, cars lined up to Big Top liquors, where cases of alcohol were unloaded out of a back door in broad daylight. Three officers huddled by a nearby GNC store watched from about 100 yards away, but did not intervene.

Metro Transit of Minneapolis and St. Paul says bus and light rail service will be suspended starting at 4 p.m. through Thursday “out of concern for the safety of our riders and our employees.”

Minneapolis still reels; mayor says feeling sadness and anger is ‘right’

Smoke still billowed from buildings Thursday morning after another night of protests.

A video shared on Twitter by Minnesota Public Radio photojournalist Evan Frost showed people gathering again outside police’s Third Precinct by mid-morning. Officers stood with face shields around the building and on its roof.

Photos from journalists around Minneapolis showed buildings burnt, windows smashed, debris thrown about and empty store shelves from overnight looting.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that he was authorizing the use of a central command so that Minneapolis police could restore peace and security in the city.

Frey said he understood that the anger and sadness that led to protests has been “built up” over 400 years and comes not just from Floyd’s death. “If you’re feeling that sadness and that anger, it’s not only understandable, it’s right,” Frey said.

“We must restore the peace so that we can do this hard work together,” Frey said. “This could be a point in time, when several years from now, we can look back to know that we rose to right the wrongs of the past. Not just with words but with action.”

During the news conference, Minneapolis Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins sang the opening of “Amazing Grace.”

“We feel as if there was a knee on all of our collective necks – a knee that says black life does not matter,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said city leaders would be working with black community leaders to set up a “healing space” at the site of the third precinct, where people could gather to “grieve, express their concerns, their anger, in a safe and humane way.”

Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said the majority of protests were peaceful, some of the protesters “were not recognized” as being from the city.

“The vast majority of our Minneapolis community was not participating in the criminal conduct that occurred last night,” Arradondo said.

Clashes between police, protesters as flames, looting engulf Minneapolis

The Minneapolis Fire Department said in a statement Thursday that firefighters responded to approximately 30 fires overnight, including at least 16 structure fires.

The department said no civilians or firefighters were injured in the blazes, but protesters hurled rocks and projectiles at fire vehicles. Assistant Chief Bryan Tyner said in an email that he wasn’t sure how many fires were set individually versus jumping from building to building.

Photos shared on social media showed massive flames, including a building under construction.

Star Tribune video journalist Mark Vancleave tweeted that neighbors sprayed their homes with garden houses to try to stop the flames from spreading to other structures.

An AutoZone store was also ablaze, and many smaller stores appeared to have windows shattered. Videos showed a nearby Target being looted.

Vancleave also tweeted that protesters lit fireworks toward police. Officers were in riot gear, and the National Guard was called out to the local police precinct, the Star Tribune reported.

At one point, officers fired noise devices and projectiles toward a crowd of dozens gathered outside the Third Precinct. The nonlethal shots were fired after a group of protesters rolled dumpsters onto the street.

The protests continued for hours, with some throwing objects at police and officers spraying water from low-pressure hoses to keep control.

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Other videos in Floyd’s death

New cellphone, surveillance and body camera videos released since the original video of Floyd’s death show the details surrounding how police arrested and detained Floyd.

One video shows Minneapolis police officers pulling Floyd from a blue Mercedes SUV as they put handcuffs on him.

Minneapolis police’s statement about Floyd’s arrest says that “he physically resisted officers” after getting out of the vehcile, however, the video shows two officers grabbing Floyd and pulling him from the vehicle.

Another surveillance video shows the officers handcuffing Floyd and walking him toward the wall of a building. Floyd sits handcuffed on the ground before an officer lifts him up. Floyd appears to speak with the officer though there is no sound. Another officer walks over and they both bring Floyd across the street.

KARE 11 reported that the video came from Dragon Wok, a business at the intersection where Floyd was arrested.

Minneapolis Park Police also released heavily redacted body camera footage from an officer who arrived at the scene. KMSP-TV reported that the park police officer was responding to a request for assistance from Minneapolis Police but not involved in Floyd’s arrest. Video shows the officer standing by the car from which Floyd was arrested.

George Floyd’s brother: Minneapolis police ‘executed my brother’

In an interview with CNN Thursday morning, Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, also called for peaceful protests in Minneapolis.

Philonise Floyd said he wanted to see the officers involved arrested immediately. The four officers were identified Wednesday, but no charges have been filed despite pleas from the Floyd family, Frey and others in the city.

“These officers, they need to be arrested right now. They need to be arrested and held accountable for everything,” Floyd told CNN.

Asked whether he had seen the video of the officer holding his knee to his brother’s neck, Floyd said, holding back tears: “I watched the video. It was hard but I had to watch the video. As I watched the video, those four officers, they executed my brother.”

Ben Crump, an attorney representing the Floyd family, told CNN that the family would be seeking an independent autopsy. The city has not yet released an autopsy report in Floyd’s death.

“They offered him no humanity while keeping his knee on his neck. Members of the public were the only ones trying to deescalate the situation. Not the police,” Crump said.

Jesse Jackson: George Floyd could have been any one of my sons

Rev. Jesse Jackson urged further “disciplined” protests and came to Minnesota on Thursday to speak with religious leaders.

Jackson, 78, speaking with USA TODAY, implored Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to press charges against the four officers.

“You murder somebody, you don’t get fired, you get charged with murder,” Jackson said. “If Floyd had done this to a white person, he’d be in jail today, bond too high to reach.”

Jackson said Floyd could have been any one of his three sons, who are near the age of Floyd, who was 46.

Protesters should continue to take action until charges are announced, Jackson said. He said black people have been “brutalized without consequence” for decades. Damaging demonstrations, which included looted businesses and burnt buildings Wednesday, are the result of decades of military-like policing tactics all across the country, Jackson said. 

“I understand the pain and the frustration. Seeing as all else has failed, they need this to get attention,” he added.

Previous complaints had been filed against fired Minneapolis officers

Police identified the officers Wednesday as Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng. Attorney Tom Kelly said he was representing Chauvin, the officer seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck.

The service records of the four officers involved in the incident were no longer public, as they were part of the ongoing investigation, Minneapolis police said Wednesday.

According to The Associated Press, Chauvin was one of six officers who fired their weapons in the 2006 death of Wayne Reyes, who police said pointed a sawed-off shotgun at officers after stabbing two people. Chauvin also shot and wounded a man in 2008 in a struggle after Chauvin and his partner responded to a reported domestic assault.

In 2011, Chauvin was one of several officers put on temporary leave after a police shooting in a residential community, according to local news reports.

Thao was sued for excessive use of force in 2017, according to the Star-Tribune.

Several complaints have been filed against both officers, according to Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Twin-Cities based organization. Chauvin received three oral reprimands as well as seven other closed complaints for which he was not disciplined. Thao was not disciplined in five closed complaints. One case remains open.

Minnesota politicians ‘outraged’ by George Floyd’s death

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said on on SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show” said that he was worried about both under or over charging the officers invovled in the case.

“I will tell you that if this was just charged, if the top count was negligent homicide, that would be a shame,” Ellison said. Ellison also said that if charges are filed and the case were to go to trial, he wouldn’t support moving the trial to a different jurisdiction. He said he wanted “a just outcome.”

“Don’t you remember Rodney King? You know, those guys were acquitted. The guy who killed Walter Scott, that jury was a hung jury. We’ve got to make sure this thing is done right if you want to make things go according to a just outcome,” he said.

“Speechless” and “outraged” were the words state Sen. Jeff Hayden, representing the southern Minneapolis district where George Floyd was killed, used to describe his feelings of Floyd’s death.

“Every Minnesotan should feel safe in their community and every part of our state,” said Hayden, a Democrat who represents District 62. “This tragedy has left our entire community in grief.”

One of Hayden’s concerns was the power of the Minneapolis Police Department’s union, saying the organization is “part of the problem” when trying to weed out bad officers.

Hayden implored people to focus on justice for Floyd as opposed to the damage to property.

“Not that we wanted (businesses destroyed) but they can be rebuilt. We can’t bring back Mr. Floyd,” he said.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow USA TODAY’s Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/28/george-floyd-updates-minneapolis-police-protests-fires-looting/5272579002/



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Vale Arief Budiman (1941-2020): liberated intellectual in authoritarian times – New Mandala

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Vale Arief Budiman (1941-2020): liberated intellectual in authoritarian times – New Mandala

When I last met him, in his stylish bamboo-walled house in Salatiga in April last year, I thanked him for what he had done for me. Arief looked puzzled. “You taught me politics,” I said. Then he smiled. My hair had grown white. His body, eleven years older than mine, was wasted by Parkinsons. We both remembered those golden years in the late 1980s, the height of the authoritarian New Order, when politics really seemed to matter.

I had come to Salatiga from Australia in 1984. He had arrived only a couple of years earlier, from Jakarta, still fresh from sociology studies in the US. His lovely and beloved wife S. Leila Chairani wrote a popular psychological advice column in the national daily Kompas. Salatiga was a cool, sleepy Central Javanese town on the lower slopes of the dormant volcano Merbabu. Horse-drawn two-wheelers called dokar (dog-cart) still supplied much of local public transport. The main institutions in town were a military base, a huge vegetable market, our private university Satya Wacana, and more churches than mosques.

Photo courtesy of Helene van Klinken

Arief and Leila built a large, breezy house near the campus. Their remarkable priest-novelist-architect-social activist friend YB Mangunwijaya designed it. Students and foreign academics came there for discussions about politics. Honking geese guarded against intruders – the military at times posted observers outside. I only ever saw Arief riding around town on a Vespa.

Yet somehow this small-town life was visible all over Indonesia. Even years later, if I told a Jakarta taxi driver I used to teach at Satya Wacana, their face would light up: “Arief Budiman, very good!” They all seemed to know Satya Wacana Christian University booted him out under military pressure (that was in 1994). They all knew he had protested against Suharto (in the late 1960s and early 1970s).

Indonesia had no shortage of sociologists in the 1980s. Most were “professionals” (to use a phrase of the American sociologist Michael Burawoy). They taught public administration classes on campus. Or they were “policy” sociologists, consulting on government development plans. Arief was one of the few “public” sociologists. Widely read magazines published interviews he gave based on the sociology he knew. He wrote accessible books for a broad audience. In these books was bohemian poet Chairil Anwar, women and the division of labour, developmentalism and humanism, and (later) “bureaucratic capitalism,” North-South dependency, and the democratic socialism of Chile´s Allende. All completely secular, by the way, despite his university´s name.

Academics around the world commonly held left-wing perspectives in the 1980s. But in Indonesia they were forbidden from expressing such views outside the campus. Arief was one of the few who did anyway. It helped that the Indonesian public has never been anti-intellectual. And that socialist ideas had been fundamental to public life from the 1945 Revolution until the mid-1960s – then still in living memory for many. People were intrigued that Arief spoke to the New Order as if he were a defector. He had been an anti-Sukarno demonstrator in 1966, riding around on military trucks. Now he openly regretted his naivety then.

The military did not have it all their way, even in the 1980s. Or perhaps, as Graham Greene would have said, intellectuals were not in the “torturable class.” I attended a huge public lecture at Satya Wacana once given by General (retired) Soemitro. He was known as Soemitro Gendut (Fat Soemitro) to distinguish him from another New Order official of the same name. Suharto had sacked him after he had failed to control anti-government protests in Jakarta in 1974. “I lost my job due to Arief Budiman,” he laughed. The hall laughed thunderously with him, as if to say, “Suharto can sack who he likes but we the people are with Arief.” I do believe Arief quietly maintained a number of senior military contacts from 1965. He never criticised them too harshly.

At the same time, a little private university in a vegetable marketing town—though mostly out of sight—was not in a strong position to resist concerted military pressure. In the early 1990s a new military area commander for Central Java, Major-General Erwin Suyono, asked the new rector of Satya Wacana to do something about his critical public intellectuals. That is when Arief lost his job. Ariel Heryanto and George Aditjondro soon followed. All three ended up enriching academic life in Australia. (The Satya Wacana University board later apologised to Arief in Melbourne for the hurt it had caused him.)

I came to Satya Wacana a physicist; I left it determined to retrain as a social scientist with a zeal for Indonesian human rights. Asia politicised me, and Arief Budiman perhaps more than any other person. He did that for a new generation of activists. We sat around on the floor with sweet black tea and fried cassava at a little discussion club he inspired called Yayasan Geni. We all felt we could change the world, if only the world would read more Marx. These were not golden years for the victims of Suharto´s militarised developmentalism, but for those critical students, they were. Later, when millions of demonstrators brought an end to the New Order, some of Yayasan Geni´s members really did go on to change the world for the better. Arief, in Melbourne, stood behind them. In an interview he gave in May 1998, he said People Power had created a new political reality. Unlike his own student generation in 1966, they had done it without the help of the military.

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Michigan Court Orders Defiant Barber To Close His Shop

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Michigan Court Orders Defiant Barber To Close His Shop

DETROIT (AP) — A Michigan court on Thursday ordered a barber to close his shop and stop defying the state’s coronavirus restrictions, though he vowed to keep cutting hair.

The Michigan appeals court overturned a decision by a Shiawassee County judge and directed him to sign an injunction sought by state regulators.

Karl Manke, 77, said he’s not backing down. He told The Associated Press that he got the news while cutting someone’s hair and he doesn’t intend to comply with it.

“I could care less,” he said by phone from his shop in Owosso, about 70 miles northwest of Detroit. “If they want to put me in jail, put me in jail. … I will be governed — fair governing — but not ruled. This is a police state action.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has kept barbershops and hair salons closed for weeks, citing a high risk of virus transmission as stylists cut hair and people wait for their turn.

“Uncontroverted evidence clearly revealed that COVID-19 is a highly communicable illness,” the appeals court said in a 2-1 decision. “Uncontroverted evidence revealed that COVID-19 is spread by infected persons showing no symptoms that could serve to warn others of the possibility of infection.”

Manke’s attorney, David Kallman, later asked the Michigan Supreme Court to intervene.

Manke reopened his shop on May 4, saying he needed to make money and declaring that the “government is not my mother.” He has been ticketed for violating Whitmer’s orders. Separate from the court case, he’s had his shop and barber’s licenses suspended. Nonetheless, customers have traveled from all over the state to get a haircut and endorse his defiance.

Manke gave free haircuts last week during a protest at the state Capitol. Texas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed for opening her shop, appeared at a rally outside Manke’s business.

Elsewhere in Michigan, state regulators inspected Ardor and Grit Salon in Holland, according to the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. The owner, Sarah Huff, participated in the Capitol protest, and her shop has been open since May 15.

“She needs to make a living and she believes she can do so safely,” attorney Patrick Wright said.

In Springfield, Missouri, Great Clips salons were temporarily closed after receiving threatening messages. Two hairstylists who tested positive for the coronavirus might have exposed 140 clients to the illness.

Check out more of the AP’s coronavirus coverage at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Follow Ed White at https://twitter.com/edwhiteap



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