1. The Devil’s Advocate
Time Stamp: 7:32
- Who are you?
- What experiences craft you?
- Do you have a role in your own life?
- Can we craft a version of ourselves that we can be happy with?
- Is knowing yourself in the moment, satisfactory to practice Lesser Magic?
- The most important part is to keep moving forward as you examine yourself.
2. Infernal Informant
Time Stamp: 37:06
- Nearly all Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful despite Trump narrative, report finds
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-black-lives-matter-protests-are-peaceful-despite-trump-narrative-report-finds- The vast majority of the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests this summer have been peaceful, with more than 93% involving no serious harm to people or damage to property, according to a new report tracking political violence in the United States.
- But the US government has taken a “heavy-handed approach” to the demonstrations, with authorities using force “more often than not” when they are present, the report found.
- And there has been a troubling trend of violence and armed intimidation by individual actors, including dozens of car-ramming attacks targeting demonstrators across the country.
- The organization launched a new “US crisis monitor” project this year, concerned that the US is “at heightened risk of political violence and instability going into the 2020 general election”.
- The results of the study present a stark contrast to claims made by the Trump administration, and widely circulated by Fox News and other rightwing media outlets, that the US is being overrun by violent leftwing protesters and “domestic terrorists”.
- Between late May and the end of the August, Acled and Princeton researchers documented 7,750 demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in more than 2,000 different locations across the United States, as well as more than 1,000 protests related to Covid-19. About a third of the Covid-19 protests were linked to schools reopening, the report found, all of them peaceful protests. There were also at least 70 documented protests over Covid-19 involving healthcare workers, and at least 37 demonstrations focused on the eviction crisis.
- Government authorities were more likely to intervene in Black Lives Matter protests than in other demonstrations, and also more likely to intervene with force, like using teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray or beating demonstrators with batons, the researchers found.
- They documented 392 incidents this summer in which government authorities used force on Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
- Journalists covering Black Lives Matter protests were also met with violence from government forces in at least 100 separate incidents across dozens of states this summer.
- Violent intervention from government forces did not make protests more peaceful, the report concluded. In Portland specifically, the report found that intervention from federal authorities in the protest “only aggravated unrest”, with the number of “violent demonstrations” rising from 53% to nearly 62% of all events “after federal agents arrived on the scene”.
- Armed individuals were documented at at least 50 protests this summer.
- “Individual perpetrators – sometimes linked to hate groups like the KKK – have launched dozens of car-ramming attacks targeting demonstrations around the country,” the researchers wrote.
- Trump targets federal agencies’ anti-racism training as ‘anti-American’
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-05/trump-targets-white-privilege-training-as-anti-american- President Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to take aim at federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”
- OMB director Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil.”
- The memo comes as the nation has faced a reckoning this summer over racial injustice in policing and other spheres of American life. Trump has spent much of the summer defending the display of the Confederate battle flag and monuments of Civil War rebels from protesters seeking their removal, in what he has called a “culture war” ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
- Meanwhile, he has rejected comments from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and others that there is “systemic racism” in policing and American culture that must be addressed.
- Vought’s memo cites “press reports” as contributing to Trump’s decision, apparently referring to segments on Fox News and other outlets that have stoked conservative outrage about the federal training.
- Vought’s memo says additional federal guidance on training sessions is forthcoming, maintaining that “the President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”
- “The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed,” he added. “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”
3. Creature Feature
Time Stamp: 1:04:05
- David Bowie: Blackstar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_(album)- the twenty-fifth and final studio album by English musician David Bowie
- released worldwide on 8 January 2016, coinciding with Bowie’s 69th birthday
- largely recorded in secret between the Magic Shop and Human Worldwide Studios in New York City with Bowie’s longtime co-producer Tony Visconti and a group of local jazz musicians – comprising saxophonist Donny McCaslin, pianist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana; guitarist Ben Monder joined the ensemble for the final sessions
- Two days after its release, Bowie died of liver cancer; his illness had not been revealed to the public until then.
- Visconti described the album as Bowie’s intended swan song and a “parting gift” for his fans before his death
- The artwork for Blackstar was designed by Jonathan Barnbrook
- Blackstar Song
- “Blackstar” is an art rock[5] and jazztronica[6] song. Also described as an “avant jazz sci-fi torch song,” it features a “drum and bass rhythm, [a] two-note tonal melody with hints of Gregorian chant, [and] shifting time signatures.”[7] In the bluesy slow middle section, the song shifts from an acid house-ish groove to a languid, R&B-flavored interlude
- The song was originally over eleven minutes long, but after learning that iTunes would not post singles over ten minutes in length, Bowie and Visconti edited it down to 9:57, making it Bowie’s second-longest track behind “Station to Station”. Bowie did not want to confuse listeners by releasing different single and album versions