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US Navy Quietly Conducts Exercises Off The Coast Of Southwestern India

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While the world is paying attention to larger events, a small story that has received little discussion is a recent series of US Naval exercises conducted off the southwestern coast of India in the Lakshadweep Islands.
<blockquote readability="52.863166953528">
In a highly unusual move, the publicly declared it conducted “freedom of navigation operations” in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) near Lakshadweep earlier this week, without deliberately seeking New Delhi’s prior consent, drawing an Indian response that the American warship was “continuously monitored” and concerns were conveyed to the Biden administration.
The strongly-worded nature of the US Seventh Fleet statement was evident as it said India’s requirement of prior consent is inconsistent with international laws and the “freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs)” was intended to challenge its “excessive maritime claims”.
Coming close on the heels of a Quad summit hosted by President Joe Biden, which was seen as strong strategic convergence among the US, India, Japan and Australia, the American naval deployment raised more than a few eyebrows.
“India requires prior consent for military exercises or maneuvers in its EEZ or continental shelf, a claim inconsistent with international law. This FONOP upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging India’s excessive maritime claims,” the US Navy statement said.
Responding to the provocative statement issued by the US Seventh Fleet, which incidentally undertook gunboat 
diplomacy against India during the 1971 war, the external affairs ministry on Friday said, “India’s stated position on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is that the convention does not authorise other States to carry out in the EEZ and on the continental shelf, military exercises or manoeuvres, in particular those involving the use of weapons or explosives, without the consent of the coastal state.”
“The USS John Paul Jones (US guided missile destroyer) was continuously monitored transiting from the Persian Gulf 
towards the Malacca Straits. We have conveyed our concerns regarding this passage through our EEZ to the US government through diplomatic channels,” added the MEA.
The US — which has not ratified the UNCLOS unlike India, China and many other countries — does regularly conduct FONOPs in the contentious South China Sea to challenge China’s aggressive territorial claims as well as in other areas including the Indian Ocean Region. (<a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/us-navy-conducts-freedom-of-navigation-patrol-within-indias-exclusive-economic-zone/articleshow/81983624.cms">source</a>)
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It is impossible that India did not know about this well before. Likewise, it is also very likely that, while the Indian government will not publicly admit this, she fully consented to these exercises.
The US has been building close alliances with India for over a decade due to the threat of a coming global conflict that most likely, among other issues, will put the US against China in the Asian theater. It seems that a part of US strategy is going to be to use the Indians against the Chinese, and is why she is backing them as well as conveniently ignoring real Christian persecution in India, but will talk about it in China, because the latter is politically exploitable while the former is not.
Whether or not India will become a stronger naval power is something yet to be seen. She already has a long naval history, and so she could potentially, with some development, build up her presence in the Indian Ocean more than what it already is.
Also, notice the important emphasis on freedom of economic movement. This is a point I have said before that is a cornerstone of US as opposed to Russian policy and power grabs. The US prefers to conquer by economic influence, so that people on all sides make money and have better lives, and in doing so can better win public approval and long-term support. The Russian approach tends to be to grab power first, but not do a lot of economic development, and in doing this, tends to make people angry, because if one is going to be dominated by another country, at least with the US, one becomes wealthier, more comfortable, and has more fun things to use, as opposed to becoming poorer, less comfortable, and with fewer fun things.
The move here might be seen as a ‘three-in-one’ approach- maintain US hegemony over the seas, build up her influence with India, and maintain the economic machine that she uses to keep the global power balance shifted to her favor.
<h3 class="p1"><a>Donate now to help support the work of this site. When you donate, you are not donating to just any commentary group, but one that is endlessly observing the news, reading between the lines and separating hysteria and perception from reality. In shoebat.com, we are working every day, tirelessly investigating global trends and providing data and analysis to tell you what lies for the future.</a></h3>
 
 
source <a href="http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/us-navy-quietly-conducts-exercises-off-the-coast-of-southwestern-india/">http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/us-navy-quietly-conducts-exercises-off-the-coast-of-southwestern-india/</a>

armageddon US Navy Quietly Conducts Exercises Off The Coast Of Southwestern India

While the world is paying attention to larger events, a small story that has received little discussion is a recent series of US Naval exe...

Hindu Terrorists Accused Of Harassing Catholics Nuns Let Free On Bail

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While the world watches China with horror, far too many continue to ignore the growing crisis in South Asia, where Hindu nationalist terrorists, with the direct consent and even assistance of the Indian government, are harassing Christians and engaging in open persecution.
In a story out of northern India and reported on by UCA News, three Hindu nationalist terrorist have been released on bail following accusations of harassing several Catholic nuns.
<blockquote readability="33.845571536715">
A court in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has granted bail to three Hindu activists accused of harassing two Catholic nuns and their students.
Railway police arrested student leader Ajay Shankar Tiwari, Anchal Arjaria, president of Rashtra Bhakt Sangathan, and Purgesh Amaria, secretary of Hindu Jagran Manch, on April 2 in connection with the incident.
They were granted bail on April 7 by Jhansi District Court and must attend another hearing on April 22.
Two nuns of the indigenous Sacred Heart Congregation and two postulants were forced to get off a train in Jhansi on March 19 after the nuns were accused of conducting religious conversion.
According to officials in Jhansi, they were detained after right-wing Hindu activists gave a written complaint that two women were being taken forcibly for religious conversion. Uttar Pradesh has a law that aims to curb religious conversions done by force and fraudulent means.
However, the nuns were allowed to continue their journey after an inquiry at the railway station established that there was no conversion involved. Police said there was no basis for the complaint and all four women took the next train to their destination in Odisha.
The decision to grant bail to the the three Hindu activists brought a mixed reaction from Catholic figures. (<a href="https://www.ucanews.com/news/bail-for-hindus-accused-of-harassing-indian-nuns/92052">source</a>)
</blockquote>
An unfortunate story, but not a surprise.
Based on current trends, India is plowing full speed ahead towards a genocide of her Christian population. The warnings have been around for years, and so few have paid attention to them. The fact is, the government of India largely gives full support to Hindu terrorism against Christians, and they are using it to build their own clout as part of a philosophical-religious-political vision they have for India’s future, a part of which means ‘purging’ out those considered ‘undesirable’, and Christians are one of the first peoples on the block to be targeted.
<h3 class="p1"><a>Donate now to help support the work of this site. When you donate, you are not donating to just any commentary group, but one that is endlessly observing the news, reading between the lines and separating hysteria and perception from reality. In shoebat.com, we are working every day, tirelessly investigating global trends and providing data and analysis to tell you what lies for the future.</a></h3>
 
 
source <a href="http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/hindu-terrorists-accused-of-harassing-catholics-nuns-let-free-on-bail/">http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/hindu-terrorists-accused-of-harassing-catholics-nuns-let-free-on-bail/</a>

armageddon Hindu Terrorists Accused Of Harassing Catholics Nuns Let Free On Bail

While the world watches China with horror, far too many continue to ignore the growing crisis in South Asia, where Hindu nationalist terro...

Convicted Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard Declares In Shocking Interview “If We’re Jews, We Will Always Have Dual Loyalty”, “Loyalty To Your Fellow Jews ...

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Sometimes there are interviews or discussions with people that are so direct, so candid, so frank, that they are surprising. They are uncommon, but they do exist.
Such recently happened with convicted Israeli spy against the US <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard">Jonathan Pollard</a>, who after being deported to Israel recently gave a shocking interview reported by the Jerusalem Post in which he said that Jews “will always have dual loyalty”, and that “loyalty to your fellow Jews is more important than your life.”
<blockquote readability="59.854132901135">
Jonathan Pollard, the convicted spy for Israel whose story haunted the American Jewish community’s relations with the US government for decades, is unrepentant.
“The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty,” Pollard said in an interview published Thursday in Israel Hayom, his first extensive remarks since his release from prison in 2015.
Pollard recalled how much of the Jewish leadership did not stand up for him following his 1985 arrest, when he was a civilian analyst for the US Navy who was found to be spying for Israel.
“If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable,” he said. 
The US Jewish leadership eventually softened in its outlook, and some Jewish leaders lobbied for Pollard’s release, saying his life sentence was excessive.
Pollard’s full interview will be published Friday. In an earlier excerpt published by Israel Hayom, he said he knew he “crossed a line” when he relayed the information to Israel, but added that he believed the United States was withholding from Israel intelligence critical to its security.
Pollard’s arrest and eventual conviction complicated ties between US Jews and sectors of the government. Jews seeking entry into or advancement in the national security apparatus were often rebuffed, with Pollard cited as the reason. The Pollard narrative in part drove the espionage charges brought in 2004 against two top staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — a case that fell apart but drastically changed how AIPAC operated.
Pollard suggested that Jews were deluding themselves if they thought of America as a home and suggested he would counsel a young US Jew working in the American security apparatus to spy for Israel.
“I’d tell him, not doing anything is unacceptable. So simply going home [to Israel] is not acceptable. Making aliyah is not acceptable,” Pollard said. “You have to make a decision whether your concern for Israel and loyalty to Israel and loyalty to your fellow Jews is more important than your life.”
Pollard was paroled from his life sentence in 2015. The terms of his parole were not renewed last year and he flew to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted him at the airport. Sheldon Adelson, the late owner of Israel Hayom, provided a private plane for Pollard to fly to Israel. (<a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/pollard-jews-will-always-have-dual-loyalty-and-should-consider-spying-for-israel-663285">source</a>)
</blockquote>
One of the points that Ted, Walid, and I have tried to emphasize is balance. Loyalty is a good thing, but it cannot come at the cost of truth or moral right. This is the grave error that resulted in the murder of Christ- this concept of “loyalty” to “the tribe” was valued as being more important than Truth itself, which resulted in the Jewish leaders choosing to murder the Messiah and release in his place a known criminal and revolutionary, Barabbas, because Christ said that to be a Jew is not a blood tie to a certain group, or the belief in the supremacy of a certain group, but to accept the teachings that God revealed through the groups but which are meant for the whole world. Thus a Jew in the true sense is not just members of the tribe of Judah by blood, but it could be a Roman named Cornelius, an African named Bachos (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_eunuch">Ethiopian Eunuch</a> in Acts 8), or a man of any race, tribe, and tongue, for God came to save the human race, and the true chosen people are those who choose to love God and serve Him as He desires that He is to be served. While nations, races, and tribes are good, God does not favor them except to the extent they obey His commands as above, for God did not create some men to be the playthings of other men in a darwinistic struggle between groups lasting forever, but rather He came to put an end to the darwinistic cycle of revolution caused by Original Sins. Thus there would be many peoples, many races, many differences, but bound by one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism under the Empire of Christ over which Christ is Lord and King, Who bows to no one and to Whom all bow to Him. This is the true march to freedom, prefigured by the return from the Babylonian exile of Judah, and perfected by Christ.
Thus to be a Jew, in the fullest sense, is to embrace the end purpose for which Judaism existed, and that is the Messiah, who came and will come again not as a baby, but in full power and regal glory to give justice to the wicked and succor to the suffering.
Thus it is the reason why such a conflict exists still in what is called Judaism today, for if Christ truly is the Messiah, and He is, and one does not recognize being a Jew as anything more than a common ethnic designation (in the sense that one might say one is “American”, “German”, “Chinese”, or so on, then it necessarily must embrace something of the moral or philosophical errors of post-crucifixion Judaism, which instead of marching out of Babylon with Christ, rejects Him, and necessarily claims the trial and crucifixion was just and thus marches right back into Babylon and crowns oneself king of the city.
If one calls such a statement “anti-semitic”- somehow equivocating parasitic, evil behavior that must be called out in any group with racial animosity in an attempt to reframe an argument in order to nullify discussion of the matter -then what is one to say of the many passages in the Old Testament where God Himself expresses rage at the Hebrews and later, tribe of Judah for endless sins without repentance until disaster strikes, and even then having only some repent? One might venture to say that under such terms, the very Creator is an “anti-semite” because of the criticism He gives.
This concept that Pollard is expressing in this interview is not something new. It is something that is as ancient as the Old Testament, it was hated by the prophets and holy men of old who suffered and died for sake of opposing it, and finally was the reason why God Himself, when sent to save His people, was murdered by them, because this idea of ‘racial solidarity’ was even more important than God Himself.
For all the criticism that one can give Pollard, one must thank him for his honesty, as his words may be painful for many, but are also the truth.
<h3 class="p1"><a>Donate now to help support the work of this site. When you donate, you are not donating to just any commentary group, but one that is endlessly observing the news, reading between the lines and separating hysteria and perception from reality. In shoebat.com, we are working every day, tirelessly investigating global trends and providing data and analysis to tell you what lies for the future.</a></h3>
 
 
source <a href="http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/convicted-israeli-spy-jonathan-pollard-declares-in-shocking-interview-if-were-jews-we-will-always-have-dual-loyalty-loyalty-to-your-fellow-jews-is-more-important-than-your-life/">http://shoebat.com/2021/04/09/convicted-israeli-spy-jonathan-pollard-declares-in-shocking-interview-if-were-jews-we-will-always-have-dual-loyalty-loyalty-to-your-fellow-jews-is-more-important-than-your-life/</a>

armageddon Convicted Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard Declares In Shocking Interview “If We’re Jews, We Will Always Have Dual Loyalty”, “Loyalty To Your Fellow Jews ...

Sometimes there are interviews or discussions with people that are so direct, so candid, so frank, that they are surprising. They are unco...

The controversial autopsy at the heart of the Chauvin trial, explained

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On May 25, 2020, the world witnessed the final moments leading up to George Floyd’s death: Police officer Derek Chauvin pinned a handcuffed Floyd to the ground with his knee for more than nine minutes until he became unresponsive. The bystander video of the incident, with Floyd muttering his last words, “I can’t breathe,” sparked racial justice protests around the globe. Now, nearly a year later, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/3/27/22350040/derek-chauvin-murder-trial-george-floyd">Chauvin is on trial</a> facing charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
But despite what people saw, both virtually and in person last May, at the center of the trial is the question: What ultimately killed Floyd? The prosecution has argued that it was Chauvin’s knee, constricting Floyd’s neck and airway, that ultimately led to his death. Meanwhile, the defense has argued that it was Floyd’s history of drug use and underlying conditions that caused his death.
Two autopsy reports — one by a private medical examiner commissioned by Floyd’s family and another by the <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/MNHENNE/2020/06/01/file_attachments/1464238/2020-3700%20Floyd,%20George%20Perry%20Update%206.1.2020.pdf?referringSource=articleShare">Hennepin County Medical Examiner</a> — reached the same conclusion: that Floyd died of homicide, meaning death at the hands of someone else. But the <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/05/read-george-floyd-autopsy-report-with-cause-of-death-and-other-factors/">medical examiner report also highlighted</a> that Floyd suffered from other “significant conditions,” such as fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use. These latter conditions are what the defense is using to argue that Chauvin is not responsible for Floyd’s death.
On Friday, Hennepin County chief medical examiner Andrew Baker, who performed the county autopsy, took the stand. In documents last year, Baker described the “<a href="https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/new-court-docs-say-george-floyd-had-fatal-level-of-fentanyl-in-his-system/89-ed69d09d-a9ec-481c-90fe-7acd4ead3d04">fatal level of fentanyl</a>” in Floyd’s system and told federal investigators that if the victim was “found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be an acceptable overdose.” Baker also cautioned, “I am not saying this killed him.”
During cross examination, Baker clarified further. When the defense asked Baker whether fentanyl could have caused the abrasions on Floyd’s lung that were revealed during the autopsy, Baker said that underlying health conditions were “contributing” and not “direct causes” of Floyd’s death.
“In my opinion, the law enforcement, subdual restraint, and the neck compression was just more than Mr. Floyd could take by virtue of those heart conditions,” Baker said.
Floyd’s history of drug use is expected to be the most contentious part of the trial. So far, the prosecution had Floyd’s girlfriend take the stand to preemptively humanize his addiction. “Our story is a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids,” Courtney Ross said during her testimony. “We both had prescriptions but ... we got addicted and tried really hard to break that addiction many times.”
The prosecution also brought in witnesses, such as the paramedics and the doctor who treated Floyd as well as a police surgeon and national breathing expert, who have said Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen. Even Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the city’s first Black chief, testified that Chauvin pinned Floyd for too long and that restraints should have stopped “once Mr. Floyd stopped resisting.”
To get a conviction, prosecutors don’t have to prove that Chauvin’s actions were the sole cause of Floyd’s death, according to the <a href="https://www.startribune.com/cause-of-death-at-issue-in-chauvin-trial-as-prosecution-questions-medical-examiner-s-findings/600041966/?refresh=true">state’s jury instruction guidelines</a>. “The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not relieve the defendant of criminal liability,” the guidelines note. By emphasizing Floyd’s drug use, the defense is just trying to muddy the waters, john powell, a law professor at the University of California Berkeley and civil rights scholar, told Vox.
“The prosecutors shouldn’t have to make the case that Floyd didn’t have drugs in his body or that drugs were a contributing factor,” powell said. “All they have to do is make the case that Chauvin’s knee on the neck for nine minutes and 20 seconds substantially contributed to Floyd’s death.”
Despite similar conclusions ruling Floyd’s death a homicide, there is a key difference in accounts of what caused it. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office states that the cause of death was a “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression” — which means physical restraint (handcuffs and Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck) was a significant factor in Floyd’s cardiac arrest. But the private autopsy report found the cause was actually “mechanical asphyxia” that made Floyd’s heart stop, implying that there were no underlying conditions that may have played a role.
In their opening statement, prosecutors said they would make the case that Floyd died of asphyxia, or insufficient oxygen, which was not mentioned in the county report. On Monday, the prosecution brought to the stand Bradford Wankhede Langenfeld, a senior resident at the Hennepin County Medical Center who worked to recover Floyd but eventually pronounced him dead. Langenfeld said that based on the information he had, asphyxia was “more likely than other possibilities” to have caused Floyd’s cardiac arrest. But under cross-examination by the defense, Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson stuck with questioning Floyd’s use of drugs and asked if high levels of fentanyl and methamphetamine could also cause insufficient oxygen. The doctor agreed.
Martin J. Tobin, a pulmonologist and breathing expert, offered perhaps the most striking medical testimony in the prosecution’s case. On Thursday, Tobin took the stand and provided a detailed account of how Floyd died — including that Chauvin had placed more than 90 pounds on Floyd’s neck and that 85 percent of Floyd’s airways were restricted. Ultimately, Tobin said, Floyd died from “a low level of oxygen” caused by police restraint. “A healthy person subjected to what Mr. Floyd was subjected to would have died,” he said.
Tobin pushed back against Nelson’s questioning about Floyd’s drug use, saying he saw no evidence of an overdose in the footage, as Floyd seemed to be breathing fine before police restrained him. Seven medical experts who spoke to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/george-floyd-fentanyl/2021/03/10/c3d4f328-76ec-11eb-9537-496158cc5fd9_story.html">Washington Post</a> last month also warned against calling the situation an overdose, arguing that Floyd wouldn’t have had the same energy or behavior interacting with the police as he did if he were on his way to an overdose.
In his testimony Friday, Baker clarified why he ruled Floyd’s death a homicide. According to Baker, Floyd had severe underlying heart disease and hypertensive heart disease, meaning his heart weighed more than it should. But these conditions didn’t cause Floyd’s death. What caused Floyd’s death were conditions created by Chauvin and other officers that caused Floyd’s heart to work harder to provide oxygen during the encounter. He also explained the language he used on Floyd’s death certificate — “complicating” means “in the setting of.” In other words, Floyd’s heart stopped because of Chauvin’s neck restraint.
So far, the defense’s argument has relied largely on Floyd’s history of drug use and the result of the Hennepin County toxicology report. But Baker’s testimony — that drugs were “not a direct cause” — has hindered this argument.
The defense’s strategy of focusing on Floyd’s drug use has drawn parallels to <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/22373806/george-floyd-trial-derek-chauvin-minneapolis-black-lives-matter">a long history of painting Black men killed by police as criminals and drug addicts</a>. “Part of the [defense’s] argument is really just saying Floyd is not worthy of our concern and respect, and you saw this on Fox News like ‘why are people so upset this guy has a criminal record, he was on drugs, he was trying to pass off a fake dollar bill, he’s not a hero,’” powell said. “It’s like immediately Floyd became on trial. It’s not the police on trial; it’s the person who has been killed who is on trial. It’s Michael Brown. It’s Eric Garner. … It’s Rodney King.”
While the prosecution has called a handful of medical experts to the stand so far, the defense has 15 medical experts queued up as potential witnesses when it presents its case next week — though it is unknown how many will testify. Multiple medical testimonies, notes powell, may confuse and overwhelm the jury.
“The defense has to prove that there’s reasonable or some doubt,” powell said. “Sometimes, what lawyers do is that if you have good facts, you try to confuse people, so any contradiction or anything to make the jury question like, ‘When you look at all these things are you sure this is what caused his death?’”
The trial’s outcome may hinge on whether the prosecution has built a strong enough case with medical and police testimony to erase doubt that Chauvin played “a substantial causal factor in causing” Floyd’s death. The proceedings are expected to last another two weeks.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22373351/george-floyd-autopsy-medical-examiner-report">https://www.vox.com/22373351/george-floyd-autopsy-medical-examiner-report</a>

vox The controversial autopsy at the heart of the Chauvin trial, explained

On May 25, 2020, the world witnessed the final moments leading up to George Floyd’s death: Police officer Derek Chauvin pinned a handcuffed...

Why the author of Girl, Stop Apologizing had to apologize twice in a week

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Earlier this week, influencer and bestselling self-help author Rachel Hollis apologized for appearing to compare herself to Harriet Tubman. “I know I’ve caused tremendous pain by mentioning prominent women — including several women of color — whose struggles and achievements I couldn’t possibly understand,” the author of Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing wrote <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CNTwpjNBU3B/">in an Instagram post</a>. The post served as her second apology over the controversy, which has been roiling on social media for nearly two weeks.
Hollis’s ill-fated Harriet Tubman comparison emerged in a now-deleted TikTok video posted in late March, in which she responded to charges that when she talks about “this sweet woman” in her employ who “cleans the toilets,” she sounds “unrelatable.”
“What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable?” Hollis asked rhetorically. “No, sis. Literally everything I do in my life is to live a life that most people can’t relate to.”
After outlining some of the ways in which she sees herself as exceptional, including her willingness to wake up at 4 am and fail publicly when she has to, Hollis comes to her conclusion: “Literally every woman that I look up to is unrelatable,” she says. “If my life is relatable to most people, I’m doing it wrong.”
The video’s caption reads, “Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian … all Unrelatable AF. Happy Women’s History Month.”
For many observers, the post appeared clumsy at best and racist at worst. Was Hollis really saying that her struggles to build a brand as a lifestyle guru — a brand built on the sense she has created that she is just like her fans — was the same as Harriet Tubman escaping slavery and then going back to help other enslaved people escape? And was she really trying to tell her followers that she never wanted to be relatable after selling thousands of books telling them all the ways in which <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/how-rachel-hollis--a-texas-mom-of-four--ended-up-writing-one-of-the-years-biggest-books/2018/11/10/59d3e89e-d9e1-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html">she was the same kind of person they were</a>? And was she really doing it while simultaneously referring to her housekeeper as the “woman who cleans her toilets”?
“EVERYONE works as hard as you do,” <a href="https://twitter.com/bittergertrude/status/1378560835602157572">wrote one Twitter responder</a>, “especially the woman on her hands and knees scrubbing your toilet while you prance around making videos abt how much better you are than she is & call it ‘work.’”
“The privilege to fail so majorly so often is one I, or any Black woman, do not have,” <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CNQAcvqMlQ0/">said the self-help author Luvvie Ajayi Jones on Instagram</a>. “People try to destroy us for much less. Meanwhile, she goes to sell 2 million books without effort while saying appalling things. She still has 1.7 million followers. That is privilege.”
On April 4, Hollis made her first apology — but it was an apology that displaced all blame for what happened onto those who, Hollis said, had misinterpreted her, and a “team” that had failed to do its job correctly. In a now-deleted Instagram post, she maintained that <a href="https://twitter.com/irenemcho/status/1378727101700796424?s=20">she had not actually been comparing herself</a> to any of the women that she had mentioned, and that “to believe that because I mentioned them, I am comparing myself to them is ludicrous.”
She added that she had waited so long to respond to the backlash over her original video because she believed her “team” when they said they could handle things, and instead, “I should have listened to my gut.”
In the face of widespread criticism, Hollis would eventually delete this apology and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CNTwpjNBU3B/">replace it with another</a>. “I am so deeply sorry for the things I said in my recent posts and the hurt I have caused in the past few days,” she wrote, adding, “By talking about my own success, I diminished the struggles and hard work of many people who work tirelessly every day.”
The Rachel Hollis controversy has had legs for a few reasons. There’s the hypocrisy of an influencer claiming that her goal has never been to be relatable, when relatability is at the core of her brand. There’s the implication that her achievements as a self-help author are on the same level as the achievements of women like Harriet Tubman. There’s the casual dehumanization involved in referring to a housecleaner as someone who “cleans the toilets.” There’s Hollis’s insistence that the reason other people are not as successful as she is — including, we would have to presume, her housecleaner — is that they are not working as hard as Hollis is at her job as a lifestyle and self-help influencer.
But the controversy is also lasting as long as it has because it is in certain ways unsurprising.
It has become bizarrely common in recent years for prominent figures in the quasi-feminist “lean in, girl” corporate white women’s empowerment movement to compare their own struggles to the much higher-stakes obstacles faced by famous women of color.
Hollis herself has cycled through variations of this controversy before. In 2019, she <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/rachel-hollis-girl-wash-face-accused-plagiarizing-quotes">appeared to plagiarize multiple inspirational quotes on her Instagram</a>, mostly quotes from women of color. She’s fond of sassy white lady use of African-American Vernacular English, from her choice to call her imagined interlocutor “sis” in the Harriet Tubman video to the title of the Girl, Wash Your Face franchise.
But Hollis is not the only white figure who has appropriated the struggles of women of color to dress up her own. Ivanka Trump’s 2017 self-help book Women Who Work used a quote from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, about an enslaved woman who killed her baby in order to prevent the child from being taken into slavery, to introduce the idea that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ivanka-trump-quotes-toni-morrison-on-slavery-2017-5">women who work are sometimes slaves to their schedules</a>.
And this sense of appropriation goes all the way to the roots of the self-help movement Hollis champions. Hollis’s Girl, Wash Your Face brand is based on the idea of wellness and self-care, on the notion that putting in the work to care for one’s self is a brave and radical act, and that it can look as simple as, well, washing your face.
But when self-care was invented, it was an explicitly political act. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence,” wrote Audre Lorde in A Burst of Light and Other Essays in 1988, in a phrase that has now been reproduced on inspirational Instagrams across the internet. “It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Lorde’s self-care was different from the bath bombs and yoga classes today’s wellness influencers prescribe. Lorde was a Black lesbian poet who got a single mastectomy after she was diagnosed with cancer. She was someone who our culture treated as disposable, and she was trying to love herself and care for herself anyway, with honesty, in the best way that she could.
So self-care for Lorde meant refusing to get a breast implant or wear a false breast after her mastectomy. It meant insisting on dressing and grooming herself well, even single-breasted, as a sign that she valued herself when the world refused to value her. That insistence on self-care was genuinely subversive and anti-capitalist — and it was part of how Lorde readied herself to engage in political activism. She took care of herself so that she could find the strength to change the world.
The wellness and self-care at the center of Hollis’s brand is not about changing the world, and it is not anti-capitalist. It is about buying stuff, and specifically about buying Hollis’s books and tickets to her retreats ($65 a ticket for the virtual version).
“Wellness is being commodified,” <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CNNVrYnnz1P/">wrote the influencer Rachel Cargle on Instagram</a> in response to the Hollis controversy, urging her followers to “meditate AND call your senator. Go to yoga AND vote.”
In the caption of her text post, Cargle added, “The issue I have with many celebrated white wellness spaces and women’s empowerment influencer or brands is that they oddly seem to equate ‘success’ to getting what white men have and wielding that power in the exact same oppressive inhumane way that white men have been doing for generations.”
The issue Cargle identifies is, in the end, the biggest act of appropriation in the entire corporate white feminist enterprise, the whole project that Hollis is selling. It’s the decision to take a political movement built to deconstruct our existing systems of power — and use it to do nothing but support the status quo.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22373865/rachel-hollis-controversy-harriet-tubman-girl-wash-your-face-stop-apologizing-unrelatable">https://www.vox.com/culture/22373865/rachel-hollis-controversy-harriet-tubman-girl-wash-your-face-stop-apologizing-unrelatable</a>

vox Why the author of Girl, Stop Apologizing had to apologize twice in a week

Earlier this week, influencer and bestselling self-help author Rachel Hollis apologized for appearing to compare herself to Harriet Tubman....

The British media narrative of Prince Philip’s death is about Meghan Markle

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Ordinarily, the death of a 99-year-old man wouldn’t raise much suspicion. But because Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, isn’t your typical long-lived man, his death on April 9 provides a window into the recent woes of the British royal family — and the media’s fixation on its contentious relationship with Meghan Markle.
Prince Philip was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56413762">hospitalized for a full month</a> in February, reportedly for treatment of a preexisting heart condition. As he was nearing his 100th birthday, his death is hardly a surprise. According to the royal family’s <a href="https://www.royal.uk/announcement-death-duke-edinburgh">official statement</a>, His Highness “passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”
It didn’t take long, however, for anticipation to spread throughout social media that the press would find a more disruptive cause for Prince Philip’s death than illness or old age. Amid the many memes that began circulating online once the news broke, a prominent theme emerged: British media placing the blame on Meghan Markle.
Markle has spent the last year mired in controversy, first for <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/19/harry-and-meghan-make-final-split-with-british-royal-family.html">formally resigning</a> her royal duties along with her husband Prince Harry and second for a <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22319714/meghan-markle-prince-harry-oprah-interview-cbs-explained">March 7 interview with Oprah Winfrey</a> in which the couple spoke out against the family’s treatment of her. Among the most shocking revelations to come out of that interview were the couple’s statements that the family had professed “<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22318918/meghan-markle-oprah-race-archie-harry-british-royal-family">concerns</a>” over the color of their unborn child’s skin, had refused to provide the couple with a security detail in violation of protocol, and had refused to help Markle seek treatment after she became suicidal — in part due to a barrage of racist harassment from the press.
It’s no secret that the British media, particularly tabloid journalism, has lost little love for Markle since she became the latest member of the royal family. From the moment she began dating Prince Harry in 2016, Markle has faced <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/1/17/21070351/meghan-markle-prince-harry-leaving-royal-family-uk-racism">racist and sexist backlash</a>, criticizing everything from her perceived unlikability to her “exotic DNA.”
And in the aftermath of the Oprah interview, <a href="https://twitter.com/eliseb009/status/1380490837348474880">Piers Morgan</a>, in particular, has led the charge of many British journalists in accusing Markle of, essentially, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22323961/meghan-markle-fakery-piers-morgan-authenticity">lying about everything</a> — pushing an unsubstantiated idea of “fakery” that led to him <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/piers-morgan-quits-good-morning-britain-following-meghan-markle-comments">walking off and ultimately quitting his news show Good Morning Britain</a>. Hence the nearly immediate assumption that the British press would find a way to <a href="https://twitter.com/timelinetBACKUP/status/1380477890492575747">shift the focus</a> off Prince Philip and <a href="https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1380503080245063681">onto Markle</a>.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Two pieces Daily Mail columnists can have ready to go right now:
1. Why Meghan Markle’s presence at the funeral is an insult, designed to overshadow a somber occasion.
2. Why Meghan Markle’s absence from the funeral, is an insult, designed to overshadow a somber occasion.
— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) <a href="https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1380503080245063681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Sometimes the <a href="https://twitter.com/JonathanPieNews/status/1380502602257948677">predictions</a> that a narrative around “Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview contributing to Prince Philip’s untimely death” were uncanny in how they bore out.
It didn’t take long, for example, for <a href="https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/1380518817860829189">the Daily Mail to trot out a piece that emphasized Prince Philip’s “tough final year”</a> and the way the end of his life was marred, in part, by “bitter fallout from ‘his favourite’ grandchild Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit ‘the firm.’”
Notably, however, it was American outlet Fox News that seemed to get there first.
The predictability of this response by certain media outlets, particularly conservative ones, cannot be overstated. It suggests that, at least where the royal family is concerned, a uniformly monotone kind of coverage has been established: Foment outrage and fear, attack, repeat. The fact that memes anticipating precisely this kind of news coverage preceded the coverage itself suggests that racist press coverage of Markle has been both transparently flimsy and largely ineffective as a form of persuasion to the average media consumer — whether they’re thoroughly informed or only half-paying attention on social media.
Markle and Prince Harry, by giving such a momentous interview to Oprah Winfrey, explicitly engaged the American public in the broader debate over the family’s treatment of them. One result is a clear assumption on the part of many observers worldwide, and Black observers in particular, that any and all coverage of struggle or tragedy within the royal family will somehow involve a return to implicit racism toward and perpetual attacks against Markle.
The “Meghan is to blame” memes — and the overall tone of the other snarky, cynical, and critical memes that have emerged — also suggest a distinct breakdown between media coverage of Prince Philip’s death and the popular impression of it.
While plenty of news outlets have struck a more typical tone of somber respect, social media has largely been full of irreverence, with users across various platforms employing memes and general insouciance to <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%22one%20less%20nazi%22">remind</a> us that Prince Philip <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/12/185268/prince-philip-sister-cecile-nazi-the-crown-season-2">came from a family with Nazis in it</a> (though he opposed Hitler), to imagine Princess Diana <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=diana">greeting him</a> in heaven with animosity (in fact they were <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/prince-philip-dianas-dearest-pa-letter-duke-of-edinburgh-offered-help-princess-949373">very close</a>), and to recall his <a href="https://twitter.com/SNM1Michael/status/1380523429149937669">long history</a> of alleged racist remarks — with the kind of bluntness the press has largely eschewed.
For example, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-10224525">one BBC obituary</a> glossed over the issue of Prince Philip allegedly making racist comments by framing them as part of his “tendency to be forthright” and offering other euphemistic spins — which led to <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1380483869602938880">criticism</a> of both Philip and the outlet.
Along with mournful “RIP” threads, Twitter has been rife with people celebrating Philip’s death on behalf of Black citizens presumably offended by his treatment of Markle.
The levity isn’t all related to politics: On TikTok, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/princephilip?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">memes about Philip’s death</a> have been circulating for the past few weeks, with the jokes largely centering on the prince’s suspected immortality — or suspicions that he actually already died weeks ago. But that more typical flavor of online humor has been vastly overshadowed by the recent royal family brouhaha. It’s a reminder that the family is no closer to figuring out how to handle strong, independent women in its midst today than it was <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22323456/harry-meghan-markle-diana-oprah-interview-cbs">during Diana’s ascendance</a>.
TikTok’s take on the topic seems closer to the truth than that of the tabloids: The Duke of Edinburgh was 99 years old. Any efforts to place blame for his death reveal far more about the state of the media than about Meghan Markle.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/4/9/22375557/prince-philips-death-meghan-markle-british-media-racism">https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/4/9/22375557/prince-philips-death-meghan-markle-british-media-racism</a>

vox The British media narrative of Prince Philip’s death is about Meghan Markle

Ordinarily, the death of a 99-year-old man wouldn’t raise much suspicion. But because Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, isn’t your typical ...