A SONG LED THEM HOME

https://www.harrisnecklandtrust.org/amelia-s-song

In 1933 African American linguist Lorenzo Turner and musicologist Lydia Parish visited Harris Neck and recorded 53-year-old Amelia Dawley singing a song that had been taught to her by her mother.  The song, in a language unknown to Mrs. Dawley, had been passed down in her family from mother to daughter as far back as anyone in Harris Neck could remember.

 

In 1997 Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran, and other members of the Moran family were invited to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they were welcomed in Freetown by Sierra Leone’s President and then flown by helicopter to the country’s interior.  There, in the small village of Senehun Ngola, Mary and Bendu Jabati met and sang this song together for the first time.  Years earlier, Bendu’s grandmother had told her that this song, which had been passed down in her village from mother to daughter for centuries, would one day reunite her to long-lost relatives.

 

Through a series of amazing and perhaps miraculous events – and lots of hard work – beginning in the late 1980s, anthropologist  Joseph Opala first rediscovered this song and then, with the help of musicologist Cynthia Schmidt and others, traced the song from Senehun Ngola to Harris Neck.  

The Resentment Fueling the Republican Party Is Not Coming From the Suburbs

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opinion/rural-voters-republican-realignment.html

Urban-rural “apartheid” further reinforces ideological and affective polarization. The geographic separation of Republicans and Democrats makes partisan crosscutting experiences at work, in friendships, in community gatherings, at school or in local government — all key to reducing polarization — increasingly unlikely to occur.

Geographic barriers between Republicans and Democrats — of those holding traditional values and those choosing to reject or reinterpret those values — reinforce what scholars now call the calcification of difference. As conflict and hostility become embedded in the structure of where people live, the likelihood increases of seeing adversaries as less than fully human. 

The First Interview with the Panama Papers Whistleblower

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-first-interview-with-the-panama-papers-whistleblower-the-russian-government-wants-to-see-me-dead-a-9f830d70-297a-472a-b0cc-9632ff2f514a

DER SPIEGEL: What kind of instability do you mean?

Doe: The rise of fascism and authoritarianism globally, from China to Russia to Brazil to the Philippines, but especially now in the United States. America has made some terrible blunders in its history, but it has served as a balancing force against the absolute worst regimes when needed most. That balance has functionally ceased to exist.

DER SPIEGEL: Tax havens seem to be of crucial importance for strongmen in autocratic regimes.

Doe: Putin is more of a threat to the United States than Hitler ever was, and shell companies are his best friend. Shell companies funding the Russian military are what kill innocent civilians in Ukraine as Putin's missiles target shopping centers. Shell companies masking Chinese conglomerates are what kill underage cobalt miners in the Congo. Shell companies make these horrors and more possible by removing accountability from society. But without accountability, society cannot function.

The Problem with Polling Might Be Unfixable

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-problem-with-polling-might-be

But what if the problem is that Republican voters are the type of people that don’t talk to pollsters? And the few Republicans that do talk to them are unrepresentative of the party itself? If this were the case, then there would be no clear fix. A recent paper by Vanderbilt University professor Joshua Clinton and two colleagues called “Reluctant Republicans, Eager Democrats? Partisan Nonresponse and the Accuracy of 2020 Presidential Pre-Election Telephone Polls” indicates that this is exactly what is happening.

The authors looked at 12 competitive states in the 2020 election. Telephone surveys as part of the National Exit Poll by Edison Research were conducted between October 19 and November 1, 2020. In some states, those making the phone calls had access to the party registration of the people they were trying to reach, while in others potential respondents were given an imputed partisan lean based on demographic characteristics. Republicans were 3.2 points less likely than Democrats to cooperate with pollsters, and Independents were even more non-responsive. 

The Soldiers I Remember

https://www.thefp.com/p/hr-mcmaster-the-soldiers-i-remember

In World War II, America lost 291,557 military lives in combat. But, as Pulitzer Prize–winning author Rick Atkinson wrote, “each death is as unique as a snowflake or a fingerprint. The most critical lesson for every American is to understand, viscerally, that this vast host died one by one by one; to understand in your bones that they died for you.” 

Perhaps back then, it was easier for more Americans to feel that reality in their bones. These days, with a relatively small all-volunteer force, the American people are more distant from those who fight in their name.

Combat veterans suppress dreadful memories of battles, but never forget their comrades who fell alongside them one by one. Their countenances, often smiling or laughing, flash before our mind’s eye. I see them unexpectedly. Sometimes they come in waves.  

How to Raise $89 Million in Small Donations, and Make It Disappear

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/14/us/politics/scam-robocalls-donations-policing-veterans.html

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

Federal inquiry details abuses of power by Trump's CEO over Voice of America

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/21/1177208862/usagm-michael-pack-voa-voice-of-america-investigation-trump-abuse-of-power

The 145-page report independently corroborates many of the whistleblower complaints. It also lends new weight and depth to earlier reporting by NPR, inquiries by a U.S. inspector general and rulings by a federal judge and a local District of Columbia judge.

Taken together, they depict Pack's brief tenure as an ideologically driven rampage through a government agency to try to force its newsrooms and workforce to show fealty to the White House.

Pack punished executives who objected to the legality of his plans, interfered in the journalistic independence of the newsrooms under his agency, and personally signed a no-bid contract with a private law firm to investigate those employees he saw as opposed to former President Donald Trump. The law firm's fees reached the seven figures for work typically done by attorneys who are federal employees.