That's trash!

 

 

Every Wednesday morning, I roll the trash and recycling bins out to the curb, and sometime during the day, Republic Trash takes the contents to another part of the city, but I have no idea where they go.

When I was a kid, in the early 1950’s, we did not have garbage trucks that went through the alley – but we did have a milkman, who came to the house a couple of times a week.

 Dad had a 50-gallon drum at the end of the driveway that he used to burn paper and household garbage. He saved up the large items, and every month or so he would load them into the trunk of his 1948 Chevrolet, and we would make a trip to “the dump”, which was an area or low-lying land just uphill from the Mississippi river, and a mile or so from Mounds Park.

There are plenty of people today who would consider modern art to be trash. In the case of a Brazil-born artist named Vik Muniz, they would be more correct than you might think.

Vik Muniz (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈvik muˈnis]; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional materials such as tomato sauce, diamonds, magazine clippings, chocolate syrup, dust, dirt, etc., Muniz creates works of art, referencing old master's paintings and celebrity portraits, among other things, and then photographs them. His work has been met with both commercial success and critical acclaim, and has been exhibited worldwide. He is currently represented by Galeria Nara Roesler based in New York and Brazil.

In 2010, Muniz was featured in the documentary film Waste Land. Directed by Lucy Walker, the film highlights Muniz's work in one of the world's largest garbage dumps, Jardim Gramacho, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The film was nominated to the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 83rd Academy Awards

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vik_Muniz

I monitored an art class earlier this week, and we watched “Waste Land”.

Filmed over nearly three years, Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jarim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic army of catadores – or garbage pickers. The catadores are the ultimate marginalized population: unemployed in any traditional sense of the word, they resort to picking valuable recyclable materials from the garbage thrown away by those in Brazil more fortunate than themselves. But they display remarkably good spirits and camaraderie in the face of their lot in life, forming friendships and in the case of the elderly Valter, declaring the crucial and meaningful role they play in remediating the results of the modern culture of overconsumption and careless disposal. Under the leadership of the young, charismatic picker Tiao, they have even created a co-operative to pool their labor and resources to maximize their income.

Muniz spent three years interviewing and photographing the workers at the landfill.

Muniz doesn’t just talk about the transformative power of art; he puts it into action in Brazil. He decides that all proceed from the photographs he creates of the finished pieces go back to the catadores, which they use to improve their living conditions, go to school, invest in the co-op, keep their trucks in working order, and even build a library. The pickers report that the project has helped lift some of the social stigma surrounding their profession, and the Brazilian government is now using the film to promote recycling.

Some of the people who worked at the landfill for decades, and most of them had little, if any education – but they all took pride in their work.

About a year before the landfill closed, filmmaker Luck Walker posted her comments about the place, which you can read at the link below:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/20/worlds-largest-rubbish-dump-brazil

If you want to watch the documentary, you can view at Kanopy.com. You’ll need a library card to set up an account, but after that you can view 5 movies a month for free.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pimalibrary/

 There are two conclusion that you can draw from the documentary.

One is that garbage, when displayed property, can be a thing of beauty.

The second is that even one man, using his creativity, can make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of people.

 

 

The most corrupt American president

 

In July of 2020, columnist Matt Ford published an article that explained why Donald Trump is considered to be American’s most corrupt president.

 

https://newrepublic.com/article/158471/trump-commutes-roger-stone-sentence-most-corrupt-president-american-history

 

Although it is worthwhile to read the entire article, you also may want to read an article that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/12/after-helping-princes-rise-trump-kushner-benefit-saudi-funds/

 

Here are some of the highlights:

 

In early 2021, as Donald Trump exited the White House, he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner faced unprecedented business challenges. Revenue at Trump’s properties had plummeted during his presidency, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters made his brand even more polarizing. Kushner, whose last major business foray had left his family firm needing a $1.2 billion bailout, faced his own political fallout as a senior Trump aide.

 

But one ally moved quickly to the rescue.

 

The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner’s firm structured those funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source, according to previously unreported details of Securities and Exchange Commission forms reviewed by The Washington Post. His business used a commonly employed strategy that allows many equity firms to avoid transparency about funding sources, experts said.

A year after his presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president’s family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman.

 

The substantial investments by the Saudis in enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office — helping the crown prince’s standing by scheduling Trump’s first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia, backing him amid numerous international crises and meeting with him repeatedly in D.C. and the kingdom, including on a final trip Kushner took to Saudi Arabia on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

 

New details about their relationship have emerged in recently published memoirs, as well as accounts in congressional testimony and interviews by The Post with former senior White House officials. Those revelations include Kushner’s written account of persuading Trump to prioritize Saudi Arabia over the objections of top advisers and a former secretary of state’s assertion in a book that Trump believed the prince “owed” him.

 

They also underscore the crucial nature of Trump’s admission that he “saved” Mohammed in the wake of the CIA’s finding that the crown prince ordered the killing or capture of Post contributing opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Retired military personnel are required under ethics rules to obtain approval to work for foreign governments like Saudi Arabia. But there’s no requirement for Trump, a former commander in chief, nor for former senior White House officials such as Kushner, to disclose if they have financial ties to foreign governments, according to Don Fox, former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics. He said their work has exposed a glaring shortfall in ethics laws that needs to be fixed by Congress.

At the outset, the Saudis had decided the incoming Trump administration could offer a reset to U.S. relations with the kingdom, despite Trump’s campaigning by saying that “Islam hates us” and calling for a “Muslim ban” of immigrants, Kushner wrote in his memoir.

Kushner “was learning diplomacy on the fly,” he wrote in his memoir. Mohammed’s associates sensed Kushner’s inexperience during a post-election meeting. In a summary of the 2016 talk by Saudi officials reported by the Lebanese publication Al Akhbar, Mohammed’s advisers wrote: “Kushner made clear his lack of familiarity with the history of Saudi-American relations.”

 

It soon became clear that Kushner effectively was running foreign policy on Saudi Arabia.

 

As his administration ended, Trump’s brand was troubled. His family’s hotels, resorts and other properties had lost $120 million in revenue in 2020 thanks to the pandemic and his polarizing presidency. He faced multiple investigations into his business practices and actions seeking to overturn his 2020 defeat; then in December 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud.

 

Kushner, meanwhile, faced potential difficulties because of both his association with Trump and his own failings. Kushner’s family company had already required a bailout in 2018 from a Canadian firm because of his decision to buy a $1.8 billion office building in New York. An ongoing congressional investigation is looking into whether the bailout was partially financed by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Now, despite having no experience running a private equity fund, Kushner was in search of billions of dollars for his new venture.

 

Saudi Arabia, however, soon invested in both men.

 

 

The above paragraphs are just a sample of the problems highlighted in the Washington Post article.

 

I’m not smart enough to predict how we should deal with Saudi Arabia, but it’s clear that it will not be the same as is was during the Trump era.

 

You’re not going to find a list of the 10 most corrupt presidents, but “Insider Monkey” awarded the #1 spot to Richard Nixon. However, since JFK, LBJ, Harry Truman, and Bill Clinton also made the list, don’t take the list as gospel.

 

Remember, Nixon was the man who said, “I am not a crook”. Compared to Trump, though, Nixon was a saint.

 

 

Donald Trump still has millions of supporters, but (for a variety of reasons) he is NOT going to be elected president again.

 

For that, we can give thanks.

 

 

 

Big Brother is watching

 

This morning at school, a couple of contractors came into the classroom that I was in to determine the best place to install some surveillance cameras. They said that the purpose of the cameras was to improve school safety, and I can see their point.

 

In May of 2022, the Arizona Republic published an article that discussed the advantage of camera from the standpoint of public safety:

 

https://www.azfamily.com/2022/05/27/four-arizona-counties-implementing-new-school-safety-system-emergencies/

Four counties in Arizona are in the process of implementing a new school safety emergency response system that will connect law enforcement to the public and allow for faster response times.

“What our technology does, it connects other technology like panic buttons, and door-locking mechanisms and cameras and things like that really give law enforcement that critical information needed to respond and puts it directly in the hands of law enforcement,” explained Chrissie Coon, the Chief Strategy Officer of Mutualink.

Mutualink was born out of the communication challenges from 9/11 that first responders had; now, their technology can be used in any public emergency. In recent years, they started seeing the need for it to be used in schools.

School staff and teachers can use the app on their phones, which has a panic button. “They get direct push-to-talk communication with law enforcement. Instead of picking up the phone, dialing 911 and trying to get through that way,” Coon said.

When the panic button is pushed, an alert is sent to the 911 dispatch center, letting them know where the emergency is and what is going on. Dispatchers will then get automatic access to the school’s surveillance cameras and a map of the school layout.

“On the school side, the school teachers and staff are able then to use their phones — almost like a walkie-talkie — and just be able to have push-to-talk communication directly with law enforcement who is coming to the scene,” Coon said.

This system is already being used in several other states, like Florida. Eight counties in Arizona have the funding through legislation to use Mutualink. Four of them are currently in the process of putting it into effect by the upcoming school year in the fall.

“In an urban setting, we’re looking to save seconds here, we’re looking to save minutes, and if we can save minutes on any little thing, it’s very valuable to us,” said Navajo County Sheriff David Clouse.

Despite their obvious safety advantages, cameras in classrooms DO have some disadvantages. In 2021, failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake came out in favor of cameras because they would allow administrators (and parents) to guarantee that teachers weren’t teaching critical race theory, or assigning banned books.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2021/11/29/kari-lake-classroom-camera-idea-votes-not-accountability/8798357002

Arizona, of course, not the only state that has nutty politicians.

In Florida, teachers can now be fined it they have banned books visible on their classroom shelves.

Sone pundits have said that Florida is like Germany in the 1930’s, but with amusement parks.

 Kari Lake’s real purpose in proposing cameras, though, is more basic – and it’s all about politics. By proposing cameras in every classroom, Lake is appealing to the more conservative members of society, hoping that they would help her get elected.

She did not get elected – but still has not conceded to the actual winner, Democratic governor Katie Hobbs.

 For what it’s worth, even Doug Ducey was not in favor of cameras in classrooms.

https://kjzz.org/content/1739168/gov-ducey-criticizes-kari-lakes-idea-put-cameras-classrooms

Gov. Doug Ducey criticized gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s proposal to put cameras into classrooms Tuesday, saying it could lead to predators monitoring children. 

The former TV news anchor suggested the idea of putting cameras in classrooms to monitor teachers to make sure they are sticking to the curriculum. Her idea would allow parents to access the videos. 

Ducey says while engaged parents are good for students, there are better ways to promote transparency in the classroom. 

"Parents are welcome to participate of course in their child's education. There's no bigger force multiplier than a good school along with an involved parent. But we want to do it through transparency in the curriculum," he said. 

Ducey added that he’ll seek legislation to achieve that starting in January but did not provide specific details.

If you’ve read George Orwell's “1984”, you are aware that one of the main characters Big Brother, who is watching everybody.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four)

However, the fact remains that we are already at that point.

Although China DOES have a lot of cameras, the United States is a world leader when it comes to cameras per capita.

https://aithority.com/news/top-10-countries-and-cities-by-number-of-cctv-cameras/

China has at least 200 million cameras installed in the country. This is the nation with the most significant number of cameras installed for surveillance in the world. However, China is not alone; other countries such as the United States and Germany have 50 million and 5.2 million CCTV Cameras each.

The list goes on with other countries with more than 1 million cameras. The United Kingdom has 5 million CCTV cameras installed, followed by Japan with 5 million, Vietnam with 2.6 million, France with 1.65 million, South Korea with 1.03 million, and the Netherlands with 1 million.

The United States has 15.28 CCTV cameras every 100 individuals, followed by China with 14.36 and the United Kingdom with 7.5. Other top 10 countries include Germany with 6.27 cameras per 100 individuals, Netherlands 5.8, Australia 4, Japan 2.72, France 2.46 and South Korea 1.99.

In the 1960’s (and before) Allen Funt produced a show titled “Candid Camera”. Since you are likely going to be on camera almost everywhere you go, you might as well follow Funt’s advice”

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBH1PpAu9UZ0Dkn6qGqGsmg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candid_Camera

“Smile, you’re on Candid Camera”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indian Removal Act

 

It is now the first week of Black History Month, so it’s time for a history lesson.

 

Due in large part to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black History Month has been celebrated in America since 1976, but its origins go back a lot further in history.

Negro History Week was started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1926. Although it’s impossible to know his motivation for doing so, it’s likely that the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the 1924 meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey may have influenced his actions.

Long before the first slaves came from Africa in 1619, the land that is now the United States was occupied by its original inhabitants, who we now call Native Americans. In spite of the fact that they spend hundreds of years living here before the first white settlers arrived here from Europe, it was not until 1990 that the government finally declared a Native American Heritage month. That month is November.

On August 3, 1990, President of the United States George H. W. Bush declared the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month, thereafter commonly referred to as Native American Heritage Month. The bill read in part that "the President has authorized and requested to call upon Federal, State and local Governments, groups and organizations and the people of the United States to observe such month with appropriate programs, ceremonies and activities". This landmark bill honoring America's tribal people represented a major step in the establishment of this celebration which began in 1976 when a Cherokee/Osage Indian named Jerry C. Elliott-High Eagle authored Native American Awareness Week legislation the first historical week of recognition in the nation for native peoples. This led to 1986 with then President Ronald Reagan proclaiming November 23–30, 1986, as "American Indian Week".

This commemorative month aims to provide a platform for Native people in the United States of America to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. This gives Native people the opportunity to express to their community, both city, county and state officials their concerns and solutions for building bridges of understanding and friendship in their local area. Federal Agencies are encouraged to provide educational programs for their employees regarding Native American history, rights, culture and contemporary issues, to better assist them in their jobs and for overall awareness.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Indian_Heritage_Month

The list of events occurring during that month can be found in the link below:

https://www.nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/

 

The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative." The first publication from the project was in The New York Times Magazine of August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia These were also the first Africans in mainland British America, though Africans had been in other parts of North America since the 1500s. The project also developed an educational curriculum, supported by the Pulitzer Center, later accompanied by a broadsheet article, live events, and a podcast. Historians, journalists, and commentators have described the 1619 Project as a revisionist historiographical work that takes a negative view of traditionally reverenced events and people in American history, including the Patriots in the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, along with later figures such as Abraham Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War. On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize board announced that they were awarding the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones for her introductory essay.

 

In essence, the 1619 Project looks at what effect systematic racism has had on our society.

About 30 years prior to the publication of the 1619 Project, a workshop was started to study racism in America, and it was called critical race theory.

Critical race theory (CRT), is an intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans. Critical race theorists are generally dedicated to applying their understanding of the institutional or structural nature of racism to the concrete (if distant) goal of eliminating all race-based and other unjust hierarchies.

The link below goes into much detail about critical race theory (which is now taught as a COLLEGE LEVEL course. It is NOT taught at the k-12 level in schools, although numerous Republican officials (Glenn Youngkin, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ron DeSantis) have prohibited it from being discussed in colleges and schools.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory  

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Andrew Jackson was president when the Indian Removal Act was enacted in 1830. This is what he had to say a few years later:

 “If give me great pleasure to announce to Congress that the Government’s benevolent policy of Indian removal has almost been achieved.

We have wept over the fate of the natives of this country, as one by one many tribes have disappeared from the earth. However, we must accept this, the way we accept when an older generation dies and makes room for the younger.

 We would not want to see this continent restored to the condition in which our forefathers found it. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and occupied by a few thousand savages to our great Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, decorated with art and industry, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

 The United States will pay to send the natives to a land where they may live longer and possible survive as a people.

 Can it be cruel when this government offers to purchase the Indian’s land, give him new and extensive territory, pay the expense o his removal, and support him for the first year in his new home? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of moving West under such conditions!

 The policy of the Government towards the red man is generous. The Indian is unwilling to follow the laws of the State and mingle with the population. To save him from utter annihilation, the Government kindly offers him a new home, an proposed to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.

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 Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Although often praised as an advocate for ordinary Americans and for his work in preserving the union of states, Jackson has also been criticized for his racial policies, particularly his treatment of Native Americans.

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi." During the Presidency of Jackson (1829-1837) and his successor Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) more than 60,000 Indians from at least 18 tribes were forced to move west of the Mississippi River where they were allocated new lands. The southern tribes were resettled mostly in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The northern tribes were resettled initially in Kansas. With a few exceptions the United States east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its Indian population. The movement westward of the Indian tribes was characterized by a large number of deaths occasioned by the hardships of the journey, which is now called “the trail of tears”.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act

 Once settled in their new territory, life was not easy for the natives. The land they were moved to was largely barren landscape. When rich deposits of oil were discovered in Oklahoma, white Americans murdered numerous members of the Osage County tribe that controlled the new wealth.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon

Although hundreds of treaties were signed by the government and the natives, they were frequently violated by the government, which led to the Indian wars. Although they officially started in 1609, the peak years were between 1850 and 1890, and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 190 was the culmination of decades of strife. The majority of the battles took place in what is now present-day Arizona.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

https://www.britannica.com/place/Wounded-Knee

 

There are politicians today (are you listening, Ron DeSantis?) who claim that racism does not exist in our country – but that is simply not true.

For a period of time, Indian boarding schools existed in this country, and their purpose was to eradicate native culture and replace it with white culture Their motto was “kill the Indian, and save the man.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/12/indian-boarding-schools.html

 There are states today where you could not read about the information that I have shown above. In fact, Florida just killed an AP program that is related to African-Americans because “it had no educational value”. It was the very first time that ANY AP course in the country had been banned.

 The Indian Removal Act is still an unfamiliar topic for many American citizens, but it’s part of history that should be more widely known.