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      Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working

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      On Saturday morning, I woke up to a nightmare of notifications. On Sunday, it got worse. Elon Musk had tweeted and amplified inflammatory lies about me and Tesla Takedown, a growing national grassroots movement peacefully protesting at Tesla showrooms that I’m proudly a part of. Musk tweeted: “Costa is committing crimes.”As a longtime local activist and organizer in Seattle, I’m accustomed to some conflict with powerful forces. The intention of the Tesla Takedown movement is to make a strong public stand against the tech oligarchy behind the Trump administration’s cruel and illegal actions, and to encourage Americans to sell their Teslas and dump the company’s stock. Protests like these – peaceful, locally organized, and spreading across the world – are at the heart of free speech in a democracy and a cornerstone of US political traditions. So it’s telling that the response from so-called “free speech absolutist” Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that’s followed his post has been frightening.It’s also proof that the Tesla Takedown campaign is working.I’d like to address the lies spread about me by the world’s richest man and X users. I have not committed any crimes. I have not been funded by ActBlue, or by George Soros – that name is simply a tired antisemitic dog whistle. I’m not inspired by Luigi Mangione nor have I ever said that I am. I am not encouraging any vandalism. Nobody is getting paid to come to these protests. I am not the leader of Tesla Takedown. In fact, no one is.Here is the truth: Tesla Takedown is a completely decentralized movement with hundreds of protests taking place around the globe, drawing many thousands of people out of their homes and on to the public sidewalks to stand up for programs that support poor people, older people, veterans, the sick. Out of care and concern for others – a foreign concept to those currently in power – people are offering what they can to help. I’ve offered to schlep supplies, and helped someone find a bullhorn. The environmentally focused Seattle organization I’m a part of, Troublemakers, hosts a map where other people and groups can post the locations of forthcoming demonstrations. Troublemakers has about $3,500 in its bank accounts. All of this is a bare-bones, low-budget, people-powered movement – which is exactly why Musk is afraid of it, and casting about to find a villain.There are currently 91 Tesla Takedown protests planned across the world this coming weekend, and there will be more the weekend after that. If there isn’t one at the Tesla showroom nearest you, you can start one just by showing up with some friends or family, maybe making some cardboard signs. This exercise of our fundamental first amendment right to peaceably assemble is giving an effective outlet to the outrage this administration has caused here and around the globe, and we’re making a difference. Tesla stock has fallen precipitously, losing a quarter of its value in the months since the protests began. On Wednesday, JP Morgan analysts told Quartz: “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.” Donald Trump even got on X this week to defensively claim that he’ll be buying a Tesla to support his good friend Musk. More and more people are unloading the company’s stock and selling their cars. The movement is growing and the administration is taking notice. When enough of us come together to do what we can, this is what effective opposition can be.Musk’s false accusations against me won’t stop this movement, because he is inflicting real harm on the American public and people around the world. In fact, Musk and Trump are the ones committing crimes. Just this week they have announced their intentions to slash social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and food stamps. They are gutting public institutions, stripping environmental protections, destabilizing the economy and people’s lives. Musk is openly and gleefully firing federal workers en masse and dismantling programs that serve millions at home and across the globe. They’ve ignored multiple judicial orders, and refused to restart payments that they were ordered to. The unofficial agency Musk leads, the “department of government efficiency”, is digging into systems and pushing out public servants, when its own staff hasn’t received so much as a background check. Musk’s conflicts of interest are piling up without any disclosures. All of the programs this administration is destroying are paid for by people like you and me through our taxes. Tesla – a billion-dollar company – shelled out zero income tax last year. Justice through government processes will be slow, if it comes at all.If we can’t show our opposition to what the government is doing, we are living in a dictatorship. If we are criminalized for calling out the rich and powerful for their illegal actions, that is a dictatorship. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.Make no mistake, it’s scary to be personally called out by the richest man in the world on the platform he owns. It’s scary to be targeted by a seemingly endless number of his devoted trolls and bots. To be doxxed, to have one’s life pored over and exposed, to be smeared, attacked, and falsely accused. It’s scarier still when the FBI director gets tagged into the threads and asked to investigate. But I’m not backing down – and even if I did, it wouldn’t make a dent in this movement. Hundreds if not thousands of people have participated in the ways that I have.The truth is, the people are powerful. I’ve always believed that. And now we know that Elon Musk does too.

      Valerie Costa is the co-founder of Troublemakers and a longtime activist for environmental justice More

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      in US Politics

      ‘People feel drained’: anti-Trump Americans face temptation to tune out

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      In late 2016, soon after Donald Trump was elected to his first White House term, many women were diligently knitting pink “pussy” hats to wear at a huge march where they protested against the election of a man who had recently boasted that he would “grab” women.There were other protests too. And across much of non-Trump-voting America, there was a sense of activism and engagement amid the shock of a Trump victory as many ordinary Americans galvanized themselves for what turned out to be one of the most chaotic presidencies in US history.Eight years later, the response of many centrist and left-leaning Americans to a Trump second term has been more muted. For many anti-Trump voters – and even some institutions – the return of Trump prompts a feeling of just wanting to ignore it all, including politics more broadly, and focus their energy elsewhere.In New York City, residents were once shocked that one of their own – Donald Trump, a man once close to Democratic power brokers in the city – had been elected, as a Republican, over Hillary Clinton. In the aftermath of November’s shock national election, they are more apt to say, “Well, we got whipped,” and move on to other topics.The left-leaning media outlet MSNBC has lost 47% of its audience since election day, according to Nielsen Media Research, while the Los Angeles Times and especially the Washington Post saw subscribers flee by the hundreds of thousands after the billionaire owners of each paper chose at the last minute not to make a presidential endorsement.After a year of intense energy, propelled by political events including two Trump assassination attempts and Joe Biden stepping down from his campaign, the mood in New York has deflated: call it the great tune-out of late 2024.It is, said Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the National Organization for Women NYC, “a coping method”.“Women’s relationship to politics is like a bad romance: you call a friend to remind you how toxic it is,” Ossorio said. “Coming to terms with the election and feeling a sense of instability about the future is personal right now, and people feel drained. It will take time and needed collective reflection to regroup.”In New York’s Washington Square Park, the site of 2016 anti-Trump protests that segued seamlessly into protests for #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the overturning of Roe v Wade, Ukraine, Gaza and more, today there’s almost no overt sign of resistance to Trump 2.View image in fullscreen“For me it’s an exhaustion,” said Josh Marcus, a 39-year-old tech worker from El Paso, Texas, who was visiting the park with his partner, Marisha Hicks, a stay-at-home mother. The pair had come on vacation to gauge whether it might be time to move back to New York, in part to leave Texas politics behind them.“We went from disappointment that Biden was staying in,” Marcus said, which changed when “he dropped out, Kamala came in and we felt a little bit better and she had a chance. But it was the complete opposite when it came to election day.”Hicks, 45, said she was in a period of mourning. “The first time it happened I was in complete shock. This time, I almost expected it. So now I’m personally focused on strategizing for the next four years.”Both said too many losses to Trump – whether it be the Russia investigation, two impeachments, the failure of federal prosecutions and a felony conviction that appeared to do little to slow his momentum, if not the reverse – had led to a sense of inevitability.“It kept happening,” said Marcus. “We’d be thinking, ‘Surely he’s not going to get past this?’ But then you just come to expect he will – and he did.”Hicks said she had hopes that the non-politically motivated, those who did not vote at all, would now be the ones to start a revolution.“I voted, but I can totally empathize with those who didn’t. People are definitely giving Trump less attention. I certainly don’t want to read his tweets this time around.”Jaylen Alli, a street artist in the park, said he wasn’t “too big on politics in general. I don’t waste my energy, my opinions or my thoughts on these kinds of constructs. Politics is a selfish machine that doesn’t help the people.”A new study from the Cambridge Judge Business School analyzed the relationship between traditional media and social media and found that news articles were being influenced by the latter to adopt a more negative tone.“In the aftermath of the US election, people might well feel overwhelmed by the volume of negative news they’ve been exposed to,” said the study’s co-author Joe Watson.“Taking a break could be important for many reasons, including to recover.”Rosie Creamer, 54, a fashion shoot producer who was shopping for the Thanksgiving holiday on Sixth Avenue last week, said: “I can’t live my life in a future trip about what’s going to happen.” She added: “Trump said he’d build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Did that happen? No.”Creamer said she had started to pay less attention to media reports, and to take them with a bigger grain of salt. “Every time I read an article saying ‘This could happen,’ I stop reading. It also means it could not. So we’ll see. I’ll proceed accordingly.”Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director at Women’s March, is planning another march on Washington in January for which the group, she says, has collected 100,000 signatures. At least 470,000 people were at the women’s march in 2017, and more than 2 million were estimated to have joined protests around the world.“I think we’re seeing a different reaction” this time around, Carmona said. “Folks are stunned and taking time to figure out what this means.”One change could be for protest to become more localized, moving away from the kind of tightly choreographed marches that characterized Trump’s first term. The protest group Indivisible has put out a new protest manual that notes political power resides in many places.According to Carmona, the diffusion of protest from national to local is an option, but she believes marches remain useful – perhaps even more so now – because she believes they bring new people into movements. “They help tell our story and demonstrate our agenda to people where they are at. They bring the movement to the people, not the people to the movement.“I’m sure that once folks are rested, they will be back in their lane, fighting,” she added. “But not every intervention is for every person.” More

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      ‘Fascism comes not with goose-steps but dance moves’: European writers react to Trump’s win

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      Ece Temelkuran: ‘Some, who you assume to be your people, will normalise Trump’Dear American friend,By the time my letter reaches you, you’ll have heard all the clever ways of saying, “We are fucked!” Thousands of soundbites will have told you, “Get up and fight.” Others will have shared tips on mourning and healing. The strange thing is that even though you’ll be in the same dark circus of emotions, everything you hear from your political side will add to your anger. That is what defeat the second time around does: the shame of losing morphs into self-hatred. You begin to be enraged by your ilk more than the opponent. That is why I am writing directly to you. Because in the coming months, your emotional state will impact domestic and global politics.View image in fullscreenSure, you remember. In 2016, when you were in a similar state of rage and depression, the collective consolation was political humour and the idea that Trump would quickly crash and burn. This time around, whenever he comes up with an outrageous idea or promises some other lunacy, you’ll again see people saying, “No, he wouldn’t do that.” Because when people feel helpless, they soothe themselves with wishful thinking. This was what we witnessed in my home country of Turkey, as well as Italy, India, and all the other countries that have been down the same road.Yet, the new chapter will come with an additional surprise: you will experience the magnetic magic of power. Some, who you assume to be your people, will decide tonormalise Trump and find ways to make themselves at home with the insanity. Hopefully, it won’t happen, but just in case, prepare yourself for the most painful bit. The absolute desperation when you witness some friends, first hesitantly murmuring, then confidently saying, “It is not as bad as we imagined.” You will watch in horror as they fall in line without being forced.Then, you’ll notice that the new morality created in the White House trickles down to the people. The fundamental moral values you assumed were non-negotiable will be debated shamelessly. They will not right away cancel women’s rights, but they will begin to float questions about those rights. They will not destroy the rule of law tomorrow afternoon, but you’ll hear Trump’s pundits say how courts are slowing down the process of “making America great again”. Trump will not walk into the White House with military boots, but here and there, you’ll see more police violence on campuses and hear people saying, “Well, the protesters were crossing the line anyway.” The political debate will be turned into such a mess that you’ll forget that in the 21st century, fascism comes to power not with goose steps but through elaborate dance moves.Meanwhile, in about one or two years, you will have shouted “No” so often and against so many things that you will be exhausted. Many will ask again, “So, where is hope?” However, you’ll realise that this time, it is not hope but something more essential that is lost: faith – in politics and your people. And that is the loss that will turn you into a neutral element, a zero in the political equation.So, this is a friendly warning to stop the emotional spiralling in its early stages. Try to put self-sabotaging emotions in the freezer for four years. Your job is not to have quarrels with Trump supporters now or get pissed off with your side. If I may, your job is to replace your anger with attention. Trump surely will drive you crazy every day with new outlandish stuff, but that is only showmanship. The dangerous bit happens through the change in the institutions. Keep your eye on the institutions.It is not as thrilling as the blame game on your own side, but it is essential to keep it together so you can tell the Democratic party to get serious. Tell them that Trump is the strange fruit of the political system, not a deviation. To change the broken system, Democrats must consider how to achieve equality, dignity and justice for all. They must restore trust in politics and cure the nihilism and cynicism that had taken overlong before Trump came on to the scene.And please, this time around, don’t assume that what happened in all those “crazy countries” won’t happen to you. Because, for us, it started just like this. How To Lose A Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Fascism by Ece Temelkuran is out now published by Canongate.Joseph O’Connor: ‘He might see it as a badge of honour to be dissed by liberal countries’View image in fullscreenCaptain Punchdown returns. The man who once publicly mocked a disabled reporter. And it’s no more Mister Nice Guy. Political thugs all over the world will be emboldened. The anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol will be memorable. He’ll probably make it a national holiday.I think it will mean the end of the Democratic party in its current demonstrably unelectable form, and that will be no bad thing, although the splits will be painful. It will also pour concrete on the grave of the McCain-era Republican party. Far from making America great, Trump Redux will see the United States become a further-divided nation that is increasingly misunderstood and disliked around the world. Probably he doesn’t care; he might see it as a badge of honour to be dissed by countries where they have liberal fripperies like a social welfare system. But the isolationism will isolate. It’s sad.The return of the wall-builder-in-chief is extraordinarily damaging to the valuable and honourable idea that electoral politics is a profession best begun with an apprenticeship of service. The victory of a four-times criminally indicted, twice impeached felon will encourage a particular type of newcoming extremist. That’s what’s most worrying. His cabinet will look like the cantina in Star Wars.It will set back the progress on climate change by a decade we don’t have to spare. Women will be looked after, ‘whether they like it or not’. The suffering of the Palestinian people will worsen, if such a thing may be imagined. Immigrants and asylum seekers will be targets for even viler abuse. It is hard to see how his promise to deport 15 million people could be carried out, but it seems likely that mass expulsion at gunpoint will become an everyday reality in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Families will be separated. More children will spend time in cages.Here in Dublin, where I live, the news has been greeted with gloomy resignation in government circles and with much practice of the ancient art of putting on a brave face. The relationship between Ireland and the United States is old and close, but there are concerns that Trump’s planned tariff war and tax changes will rock the Irish economy. Irish membership of the EU is valued deeply by most of our people; there’s a sense that pro-European sentiment will be regarded as a shootable offence in the White House and that the affection of recent American presidents for Irish culture will, for a variety of reasons, not be continuing. Seamus Heaney may not be quoted quite so often, let us say.In essence, Putting America First means seeing everywhere else as an inconvenience. The Irish know a bit about what that feels like. His rhetoric about immigrants could come straight from the ugly pages of Punch magazine in the 1850s, in which refugees to England from the Irish famine are portrayed as apes and murderers, bringers of terrorism and disease.Once, during the campaign, he made me laugh. Onstage at a rally, wearing a truck driver’s fluorescent safety vest, he quipped that it made him look thin. But most things he said ranged from disconcerting to truly terrifying. Presumably, that’s what they wanted, the millions of decent, betrayed Americans who voted for him: a guy who doesn’t play by the rules. Be careful what you wish for. The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor will be published by Penguin in January.Andrey Kurkov: ‘Without American aid, Ukraine may find itself in a hopeless situation’View image in fullscreenTrump’s victory in the US presidential election initially silenced Ukraine. Only weapons – all along the more than 500 miles of the front line – continued to roar, while Russian missiles and drones made ever fiercer attacks against Ukrainian cities and villages.In silence, Ukrainians mourned the loss of one more shield of hope. Pre-election commentaries from journalists and political scientists, and the speeches of Trump himself, had made it very clear that Trump in the White House would mean greatly reduced military aid to Ukraine and that this would force President Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Vladimir Putin.The outcome of such negotiations is easy to predict. Russia continues to demand that the Ukrainian leadership “recognise reality”. This is shorthand for saying that Ukraine must give up to Russia the territories which have been captured and occupied, and also the areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions which are currently free. These free territories are huge and include two major cities: Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.But today the shock wave has passed. People are beginning to share their dark visions of the future. In his video address about the US election, Zelenskyy tried to calm Ukrainians, assuring them that he and Donald Trump had established cordial relations and that, during a personal meeting in September, Donald Trump heard everything that Volodymyr Zelenskyy wished to tell him.Ukrainians are waiting for Trump himself to address them, as Biden did on his visit to Ukraine. Ukrainians need to hear Trump promise not to abandon them to their fate. Few believe the president-elect will make any such promise. It is not in his character or on his agenda. Neither will Zelenskyy be pushed into unfavourable, not to say dangerous, negotiations with Putin. There will most likely be a reduction in military and financial aid.The “Ukrainian problem” will be handed over to the European Union as the leaders, and some of them have already taken up the baton. Trump’s victory in the presidential election will force the EU to focus on its own military doctrine and a common defence policy. European military aid to Ukraine will continue, but, as before, it will be delivered haltingly, preventing Ukraine from planning ahead in general, let alone planning for a counteroffensive.Ultimately, without American aid, Ukraine may find itself in a hopeless situation, and then unfavourable negotiations with Russia may become inevitable. This in turn will lead to more migration from Ukraine, especially of young people.The silence has been broken, but Ukrainians are still only murmuring their disappointment. The discussions on social media are muted. In the US, the majorityof the older generation of the Ukrainian diaspora voted for Donald Trump, but this is not discussed here either. Ukrainians who know about it keep quiet, understanding that this sector of the US population, just like most post-Soviet US citizens, want a “firm hand” in politics and in the economy. And in this they are somewhat similar to today’s citizens of the Russian federation. More

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      ‘I did all that I could’: A look back at the life and career of Harry Belafonte – video

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      Harry Belafonte, a trailblazing Caribbean-American artist, has passed away at the age of 96 due to congestive heart failure, according to his spokesperson who gave the news to the New York Times. Belafonte was a multifaceted talent who made an indelible impact on music and film. He was not only a chart-topping singer but also a renowned actor and television personality, known for his captivating performances in films such as Buck and the Preacher and Island in the Sun.

      However, Belafonte’s legacy extends far beyond his artistic achievements. Throughout his career, he used his platform to advocate for racial and social justice in America and around the world. Belafonte was a prominent civil rights activist who worked closely with Dr Martin Luther King Jr and was a key figure in the movement for racial equality. More

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      in US Politics

      Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and tireless activist, dies aged 96

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      Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist who broke down racial barriers, has died aged 96.As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his spokesman told the New York Times. Figures including the rapper Ice Cube and Mia Farrow paid tribute to Belafonte. The US news anchor Christiane Amanpour tweeted that he “inspired generations around the whole world in the struggle for non-violent resistance justice and change. We need his example now more than ever.”Bernice King, daughter of Dr Martin Luther King, shared a picture of Belafonte at her father’s funeral and said that he “showed up for my family in very compassionate ways. In fact, he paid for the babysitter for me and my siblings.” The Beninese-French musician Angélique Kidjo called Belafonte “the brightest star in every sense of that word. Your passion, love, knowledge and respect for Africa was unlimited.”Belafonte was born in 1927 in working-class Harlem, New York, and spent eight years of his childhood in his impoverished parents’ native Jamaica. He returned to New York for high school but struggled with dyslexia and dropped out in his early teens. He took odd jobs working in markets and the city’s garment district, and then signed up to the US navy aged 17 in March 1944, working as a munitions loader at a base in New Jersey.After the war ended, he worked as a janitor’s assistant, but aspired to become an actor after watching plays at New York’s American Negro Theatre (along with fellow aspiring actor Sidney Poitier). He took acting classes – where his classmates included Marlon Brando and Walter Matthau – paid for by singing folk, pop and jazz numbers at New York club gigs, where he was backed by groups whose members included Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.He released his debut album in 1954, a collection of traditional folk songs. His second album, Belafonte, was the first No 1 in the new US Billboard album chart in March 1956, but its success was outdone by his third album the following year, Calypso, featuring songs from his Jamaican heritage. It brought the feelgood calypso style to many Americans for the first time, and became the first album to sell more than a million copies in the US.The lead track was Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), a signature song for Belafonte – it spent 18 weeks in the UK singles chart, including three weeks at No 2. His version of Mary’s Boy Child was a UK chart-topper later that year, while Island in the Sun reached No 3. He released 30 studio albums, plus collaborative albums with Nana Mouskouri, Lena Horne and Miriam Makeba. The latter release won him one of his two Grammy awards; he was later awarded a lifetime achievement Grammy and the Academy’s president’s merit award.Bob Dylan’s first recording – playing harmonica – was on Belafonte’s 1962 album, Midnight Special. The previous year, Belafonte had been hired by Frank Sinatra to perform at John F Kennedy’s presidential inauguration.Belafonte maintained an acting career alongside music, winning a Tony award in 1954 for his appearance in the musical revue show, John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, and appearing in several films, most notably as one of the leads in Island in the Sun, along with James Mason, Joan Fontaine and Joan Collins, with whom he had an affair. He was twice paired with Dorothy Dandridge, in Carmen Jones and Bright Road, but he turned down a third film, an adaptation of Porgy and Bess, which he found “racially demeaning”.He later said the decision “helped fuel the rebel spirit” that was brewing in him, a spirit he parlayed into a lifetime of activism, using his newfound wealth to fund various initiatives. He was mentored by Martin Luther King Jr and Paul Robeson, and bailed King out of a Birmingham, Alabama, jail in 1963 as well as co-organising the march on Washington that culminated in King’s “I have a dream” speech. He also funded the Freedom Riders and SNCC, activists fighting unlawful segregation in the American south, and worked on voter registration drives.He later focused on a series of African initiatives. He organised the all-star charity record We Are the World, raising more than $63m for famine relief, and his 1988 album, Paradise in Gazankulu, protested against apartheid in South Africa. He was appointed a Unicef goodwill ambassador in 1987, and later campaigned to eradicate Aids from Africa.After recovering from prostate cancer in 1996, he advocated for awareness of the disease. He was a fierce proponent of leftwing politics, criticising hawkish US foreign policy, campaigning against nuclear armament, and meeting with both Castro and Chavez. At the meeting with Chavez, in 2006, he described US president George W Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world”. He also characterised Bush’s Black secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as being like slaves who worked in their master’s house rather than in the fields, criticisms that Powell and Rice rejected.He was a frequent critic of Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, over issues including Guantanamo Bay detentions and the fight against rightwing extremism. He criticised Jay-Z and Beyoncé in 2012 for having “turned their back on social responsibility … Give me Bruce Springsteen, and now you’re talking. I really think he is Black.” Jay-Z responded: “You’re this civil rights activist and you just bigged up the white guy against me in the white media … that was just the wrong way to go about it.”He continued to take occasional acting roles. In 2018, he appeared in the Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman. In 2014, 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen announced he was working with Belafonte on a film about Paul Robeson, though it wasn’t developed.Belafonte was married three times, first to Marguerite Byrd, from 1948 to 1957, with whom he had two daughters, activist Adrienne and actor Shari. He had two further children with his second wife, Julie Robinson: actor Gina and music producer David. He and Robinson divorced after 47 years, and in 2008 he married Pamela Frank, who survives him. More

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      ‘We need action’: how an Iranian soccer player is using his fame to fight the regime

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      ‘We need action’: how an Iranian soccer player is using his fame to fight the regimeMahmood Ebrahimzadeh is one of a network of former athletes living in exile and urging global support for the uprising rocking Iran Can soccer change the world? Mahmood Ebrahimzadeh, an Iranian international who played for his country in the Fifa World Cup, believes it can.Ebrahimzadeh is one of a network of retired Iranian soccer players now living in exile and urging global support for the uprising currently rocking the country’s theocratic regime. The group is preparing a joint letter to Joe Biden calling for the president and the US to help the Iranian people just as they are helping the people of Ukraine.“A lot of actors, a lot of singers, a lot of soccer players in the world are supporting the movement in Iran right now,” said the 69-year-old, who lives in Woodbine, Maryland. “The only people that need to come to the same line are the governments, European and American.”Spontaneous protests have erupted in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab headscarf in an “improper” way. Scores of people have been killed and hundreds arrested over three weeks.The upheaval vibrates within Ebrahimzadeh, whose political activism disrupted his soccer career in Iran in the 1970s. He played as a striker for the national team – “I think it was 15 times,” he says – including World Cup and Olympic qualifying matches. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution brought chaos and oppression, he felt his dissident views froze him out of the national team.Finally, in 1982, when the team’s coach invited Ebrahimzadeh back to play in the Asian Cup, the regime saw an opportunity to seize him along with two other players. “They captured those two,” he recalled. “They put them in the jail and then they killed one of them.“I had the chance to run away in the night-time and go and meet my wife and my son Maboud, who was nine months old. We left through Kurdistan and we left the country. It was hard, 10 days and nights walking through the mountains in snow, 20 degrees minus, and we were not familiar with the roads. No passport or nothing.”The family crossed the border into Turkey, then went on to Germany, which – despite a language barrier – Ebrahimzadeh recalls as “heaven” compared to the freezing Zagros Mountains. He said Germans’ learning he was a soccer pro “was the key to open all the doors” for him.He went on to play for renowned German club VfL Wolfsburg and proved a prolific goalscorer. He moved to the US in 1986 and joined a Chicago indoor team but a broken leg forced him into premature retirement. He ran a US-based soccer school for AC Milan before becoming a travelling representative for the Italian club, then directed Olympic development programmes in Maryland.Ebrahimzadeh is still in touch with at least 20 Iranian former soccer players living in America and Europe who, like other prominent figures, are showing solidarity with the protesters in Iran.Ali Karimi, an ex-Iranian captain and Bayern Munich player now based in Dubai, was charged in absentia by Iran over social media posts supporting the protests, including on Instagram, where he has nearly 12m followers. Ebrahimzadeh reflected: “They’re supporting the young generation in the streets. They’re supporting human rights. They’re supporting the movement right now.”The political potency of soccer was evident last year when England’s players took the knee during the European championships to express support for racial justice after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in the US.Ebrahimzadeh noted that some current members of the Iranian national team have also spoken out at great personal risk. “On social media they said this is not way to treat the people, this is their right, this is their choice. The government has to respect them and killing is not the solution. You have to open up democracy further.”But the government crackdown under hardline president Ebrahim Raisi has been draconian. Ebrahimzadeh continued: “Anybody that speaks out against the government and supports the woman’s movement right now, they capture them, they put them in the jail.“Of course non-soccer players, regular people, they can kill easier. They can hardly kill soccer players or singers or actors but they put them in a jail and that’s happened to a couple of the national team players.”Ebrahimzadeh said reports of a 16-year-old soccer player being jailed were enough to bring him to tears.The Iranian government seeks to restrict TV coverage of European soccer leagues in Iran but the big clubs still have a following. Ebrahimzadeh called on Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, to play its part by barring Iran from the World Cup finals in Qatar. The team’s campaign is to begin against England on 21 November.He likened the move to sporting organizations suspending Russia from competition after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.“Fifa knows that the federation of Iran and all the clubs [there] are controlled by military generals,’” he said. “A bunch of terrorists is running a federation that is part of Fifa.”Leaderless, protean and durable, the protests go on, largely fuelled by the middle and upper classes. They pose the biggest threat to the authoritarian government since the 2009 green movement brought millions to the streets.Ebrahimzadeh, who last visited his homeland five years ago, said he dreams of an Iran free from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime.In order to realise that dream, he wants America to focus on human rights in Iran rather than negotiations to restore a nuclear deal struck under President Barack Obama which, he fears, would release tens of millions of dollars to Tehran.“Don’t pay them,” Ebrahimzadeh said. “The money that they release from here is going to be weapons, bullets and killing our young kids over there.”Instead he wants to see the US rally the international community and “support the people” by pressuring Iran’s regime through boycotts.“We need action,” Ebrahimzadeh said. “We need them to stand up for us.”TopicsIranActivismUS politicsReuse this content More

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      ‘Enough is enough’: thousands rally across US in gun control protests

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      ‘Enough is enough’: thousands rally across US in gun control protestsThe March for Our Lives rallies come after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York

      New Yorkers join march for gun reform
      01:59Rallies for gun reform were held in Washington, New York, other US cities and around the world on Saturday, seeking to increase pressure on Congress to act following a spate of mass shootings.‘Caring and giving’: funeral for Uvalde victim held amid gun law protestsRead moreIn Washington, the son of an 86-year-old victim in the Buffalo supermarket shooting said: “Enough is enough. We will not go quietly into the night.”The March for Our Lives rallies came less than a month after 10 people were killed in the racist attack in Buffalo, New York and 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.Other mass shootings, widely defined as shootings in which four people or more excluding the shooter are hurt or killed, have also helped put the issue center-stage.March for Our Lives was formed in 2018 after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three adults were killed. Organisers estimated a million people, mostly young, joined protests then.The group helped force Republicans in Florida to enact reforms including raising the age to buy long guns, including AR-15-style rifles, from 18 to 21; enacting a three-day gap between purchase and access; allowing trained school staff to carry guns; and putting $400m into mental health services and school security.Florida lawmakers also approved a “red flag law” that can deny firearms to individuals believed to pose a danger to themselves or others.Organisers on Saturday were focusing on smaller marches at more locations. The DC protest was expected to draw 50,000. The 2018 march filled downtown Washington with more than 200,000 people.By noon on Saturday, thousands had gathered around the Washington Monument. Protestors held signs demanding justice for the victims of Uvalde and Buffalo. Speakers included activists, family members of those killed and shooting survivors.Garnell Whitfield, son of Ruth Whitfield, an 86-year-old killed in Buffalo, told the crowd he and his family were “still in a state of shock”. When she was killed, Ruth Whitfield was buying groceries after visiting her husband at a nursing home.Happening now: March for our Lives in Buffalo #MarchForOurLivesJune11 pic.twitter.com/QHPtmTzbor— Gabriel Elizondo (@elizondogabriel) June 11, 2022
      “We are being naive to think that it couldn’t happen to us,” Garnell Whitfield said. “Enough is enough. We will not go quietly into the night as victims. We hear a lot about prayer, and prayer is wonderful and we thank you for your prayers. But prayer is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s an action. You pray, then you get up and you work.”The parents of Joaquin Oliver, a 17-year-old killed in the Parkland shooting, wore shirts bearing a picture of their son.“I was hoping to avoid attending a march like this ever again,” Manuel Oliver said, standing next to his wife, Patricia. “Our elected officials betrayed us and have avoided the responsibility to end gun violence.”The crowd heard from two founders of March for Our Lives, David Hogg and X Gonzalez, both Parkland survivors.“All Americans have a right to not be shot, a right to safety,” Hogg said. “Nowhere in the constitution is unrestricted access to weapons of war a guaranteed right.“We’ve seen the damage AR-15s do. When we look at the innocent children of Uvalde, tiny coffins horrify us. Tiny coffins filled with small, mutilated and decapitated bodies. That should fill us with rage and demands for change.”Hogg emphasized state and local gun legislation passed since 2018. He noted a red flag law that saw a court-ordered disarming of an individual who sent his mother a death threat. He encouraged the crowd to bring the issue of gun control to the polls.“If our government can’t do anything to stop 19 kids from being killed and slaughtered in their own school and decapitated, it’s time to change who is in government,” Hogg said.Gonzalez gave an impassioned rebuke to Congress.“I’ve spent these past four years doing my best to keep my rage in check. To keep my profanity at a minimum so everyone can understand and appreciate the arguments I’m trying to make, but I have reached my fucking limit. We are being murdered. Cursing will not rob us of our innocence.“You say that children are the future, and you never listen to what we say once we’re old enough to disagree with you, you decaying degenerates. You really want to protect children, pass some fucking gun laws.”Gonzalez said Congress had started treating mass shootings as a “fact of life”, like natural disasters. She criticized politicians for their relationships with gun lobbyists, saying: “We saw you cash those fucking checks. We as children did the heavy lifting for you. Act your age, not your shoe-size, Congress. You ought to be ashamed.”Yolanda King, who spoke at the 2018 March for Our Lives rally when she was nine, spoke of hope for action after Uvalde and Buffalo. Now 14, she evoked her grandfather, Martin Luther King Jr.“My grandfather was taken from the world by gun violence. Six years after his death, his mother, my great-grandmother, was killed in church during Sunday service. We have all been touched by tragedy, we have all been lifted up by hope.“Today we’re telling Congress, we’re telling the gun lobby and we’re telling the world this time is different. This time is different because we’ve had enough. We’ve had enough of having more guns than people here in America. Together, we can carve that stone of love and hope out of that mountain of death and despair. Together we can build a gun-free world for all people.Dozens of other rallies saw protesters call for stronger legislation. In Buffalo, hundreds protested outside the supermarket where the shooting happened. The group held a moment of silence and chanted “Not one more”.March for Our Lives has called for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks for gun purchases and a national licensing system.The US House has passed bills that would raise the age limit to buy semi-automatic weapons and establish a federal “red flag” law. But previous such initiatives have stalled or been watered down in the Senate. The new marches were to take place a day after senators left Washington without reaching agreement in guns talks.On Saturday, Joe Biden tweeted his support.“I join them by repeating my call to Congress: do something,” the president said, adding that Congress must ban assault weapons, strengthen background checks, pass red flag laws and repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity to liability.“We can’t fail the American people again,” the president wrote. More

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      US Capitol attack: is the government’s expanded online surveillance effective?

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      US Capitol attack: is the government’s expanded online surveillance effective?The Brennan Center for Justice explains how the US government monitors social media – and how ‘counter-terrorism’ efforts can threaten civil rights and privacy In the year since the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, federal authorities have faced intense scrutiny for failing to detect warning signs on social media.After the 6 January insurrection, the US agency tasked with combatting terrorism and extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has expanded its monitoring of online activity, with officials touting a new domestic terrorism intelligence branch focused on tracking online threats and sharing information about possible attacks. A senior DHS official told the Guardian this week the department aims to track “narratives known to provoke violence” and platforms that have been linked to threats. The primary goal, the official said, was to warn potential targets when they should enhance security.In the days leading up to the anniversary of the riot, for example, the agency saw an uptick in activity on platforms tied to white supremacists and neo-Nazis and warned law enforcement partners when appropriate, the official said. This monitoring relies on DHS analysts, not artificial intelligence, and doesn’t target “ideologies”, the official added, but rather “calls for violence”.The Guardian spoke with Harsha Panduranga, counsel with the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a not-for-profit organization that has tracked police and government entities’ online surveillance programs, about the US government’s monitoring of social media in the wake of 6 January.Although DHS says its online efforts are consistent with privacy protections, civil rights and civil liberties, the expansion of social media monitoring still raised concerns, Panduranga argued. Without proper safeguards, a new report from the center warns, the expanded social media surveillance could be both ineffective at preventing attacks and harmful to marginalized groups that end up targeted and criminalized by “counter-terrorism” efforts.The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Which US government agencies monitor online activity?Many federal agencies monitor social media, including DHS, the FBI, the state department, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the US Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Marshals Service and the Social Security Administration (SSA). Our work has primarily focused on DHS, FBI and the state department, which make extensive use of social media for monitoring, targeting and information collection.Revealed: LAPD used ‘strategic communications’ firm to track ‘defund the police’ onlineRead moreWhy do these agencies monitor civilians’ social media?The FBI and DHS use social media monitoring to assist with investigations and to detect potential threats. Some of those investigations do not require a showing of criminal activity. For example, FBI agents can open an “assessment” [the lowest-level investigative stage] simply on the basis of preventing crime or terrorism, and without a factual basis. During assessments, FBI agents can search publicly available online information.Subsequent investigative stages, which require some factual basis, open the door for more invasive surveillance, such as the recording of private online communications. The FBI also awarded a contract to a firm in December 2020 to scour social media and proactively identify “national security and public safety-related events” not yet reported to law enforcement.DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division says it relies on social media when investigating matters ranging from civil immigration violations to terrorism. Government entities also monitor social media for “situational awareness” to coordinate a response to breaking events.How broad is this surveillance?Some DHS divisions, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the National Operations Center (NOC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), keep tabs on a broad list of websites and keywords being discussed on social media platforms. The agencies’ “privacy impact assessments” suggest there are few limits on the content that can be reviewed. Some assessments list a sweeping range of keywords that are monitored, including “attack”, “public health”, “power outage”, and “jihad”. Immigration authorities also use social media to screen travelers and immigrants coming into the US and even to monitor them while they live here. People applying for a range of immigration benefits also undergo social media checks to verify information in their application and determine whether they pose a security risk. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents can also look at publicly available social media content for a range of investigations, including probing “potential criminal activity” and are authorized to operate undercover online and monitor private communications.How has this surveillance expanded in the wake of the insurrection?The main new DHS effort we’re aware of is an initiative monitoring social media to try to identify “narratives” giving rise to violence. DHS says they’ll use social media to pinpoint tips, leads and trends. In September, for example, DHS warned there could be another attack on the Capitol in connection with a Justice for J6 rally. But reports showed that law enforcement personnel [and journalists] outnumbered the protesters, and there was no indication of violence at the protest. This shows how difficult it is to predict violence relying on social media chatter.How concerned are you about the potential for civil rights violations in the wake of 6 January?January 6 seems to be accelerating this emphasis on social media monitoring without sufficient safeguards. And the monitoring to identify “narratives” that may lead to violence is broad enough to sweep in constitutionally protected speech and political discussion on various issues. We’ve long seen that government monitoring of social media harms people in a number of ways, including wrongly implicating an individual or group in criminal behavior based on their online activity; misinterpreting the meaning of social media activity, sometimes with severe consequences; suppressing people’s willingness to talk or connect openly online; and invading individuals’ privacy. Authorities have characterized ordinary activity, like wearing a particular sneaker brand or making common hand signs, or social media connections, as evidence of criminal or threatening behavior. This kind of assumption can have high-stakes consequences.Can you share some specific examples that illustrate these consequences?In 2020, DHS and the FBI disseminated reports to law enforcement in Maine warning of potential violence at anti-police brutality demonstrations based on fake social media posts by rightwing provocateurs. Police in Kansas arrested a teenager in 2020 on suspicion of inciting a riot reportedly based on a mistaken interpretation of his Snapchat post, in which he was actually denouncing violence. In 2019, DHS officials barred a Palestinian student arriving to study at Harvard from entering the country allegedly based on the content of his friends’ social media posts. The student said he had neither written nor engaged with the posts, which were critical of the US government. In another case of guilt by association, the NYPD was accused of wrongly arresting a 19-year-old for attempted murder in 2012 in part because prosecutors argued his “likes” and photos on social media proved he was a member of a violent gang. That same year, British travelers were interrogated at Los Angeles international airport and sent back to the UK reportedly due to a border agent’s misinterpretation of a joking tweet.Is social media surveillance effective at identifying legitimate threats?Broad social media monitoring for threat detection purposes generates reams of useless information, crowding out information on real public safety concerns. Government officials and assessments have repeatedly recognized that this dynamic makes it difficult to distinguish a sliver of genuine threats from the millions of everyday communications that do not warrant law enforcement attention. The former acting chief of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) said last year, “Actual intent to carry out violence can be difficult to discern from the angry, hyperbolic – and constitutionally protected – speech and information commonly found on social media.” And a 2021 internal review of I&A reported that searching “for true threats of violence before they happen is a difficult task filled with ambiguity”. The review observed that personnel collected information on a “broad range of general threats” that provided “information of limited value”, including “memes, hyperbole, statements on political organizations and other protected first amendment speech”. Similar concerns cropped up with the DHS’s pilot programs to use social media to vet refugees.US citizens v FBI: Will the government face charges for illegal surveillance?Read moreWhat groups are most impacted by this kind of surveillance?Black, brown and Muslim people, as well as activists and dissenters more generally, are especially vulnerable to being falsely labeled as threats based on social media activity. Both the FBI and DHS have monitored Black Lives Matter activists. In 2017, the FBI created a specious terrorism threat category called “Black Identity Extremism” , which can be read to include protests against police violence. This category has been used to rationalize continued surveillance of Black activists, including monitoring of social media activity. In 2020, DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis used social media and other tools to target and monitor racial justice protestors in Portland, Oregon, justifying this surveillance by pointing to the threat of vandalism to Confederate monuments. DHS then disseminated intelligence reports on journalists reporting on this overreach. Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian communities have often been particular targets of the US government’s discriminatory travel and immigration screening practices, including social media screening.How do you think the government should be responding to the intelligence failures of 6 January?A Senate committee report from last year found that DHS failed to produce a specific warning connected to what would happen on 6 January. An FBI field office had circulated a warning about an online threat with a specific call for violence, but it didn’t convince officials to better prepare for the attack. I think one takeaway from these failures is that broadly monitoring social media for scary things people are saying, without any further reason to suspect wrongdoing, tends to flood warning systems with useless information. This makes it harder to pick out what matters and sweeps in thousands of people who haven’t or wouldn’t do anything violent. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies already have ample and potent tools to investigate far-right violence without relying on indiscriminate social media monitoring, but they are not using these tools as effectively as they should. Instigators of the 6 January riot, for example, were members of groups that were already known to law enforcement. Some of them had previously participated in organized far-right violence, yet authorities did not bring charges or fully investigate the criminal activities of these organizations. So more indiscriminate surveillance isn’t the answer – in fact, such measures are much more likely to harm the very communities that are already at greater risk.TopicsUS Capitol attackSurveillanceUS politicsProtestActivismRacefeaturesReuse this content More