France takes a small step in the right direction

This isn’t world-changing, but it’s a first (to me, at least), and an encouraging thing to see. France has banned short-distance air travel along routes for which there exists a train ride of two and a half hours or less. This is, in case it needs to be said, a very narrow ban, clearly designed to cause as little disruption in daily life as possible. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the people most upset about this are exactly the people who should be upset – rich dingdongs with private jets.

France has been given the green light to ban short haul domestic flights.

The European Commission has approved the move which will abolish flights between cities that are linked by a train journey of less than 2.5 hours.

The decision was announced on Friday. The changes are part of the country’s 2021 Climate Law and were first proposed by France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate – a citizens’ assembly tasked with finding ways to reduce the country’s carbon emissions.

France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.

Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.

The super rich are not accustomed to having to follow rules, so we shall see whether they are held to this, or whether they manage to buy their way out of it. This is a trial run that will be re-assessed after three years, but I hope it’s just the start of a broader shift from air to rail travel, at least within Europe. I don’t have extremely high hopes for the U.S., but wouldn’t it be nice to have high-speed rail tying all of the Americas together? One baby-step at a time, I suppose.

Initially, the ban will only affect three routes between Paris Orly and Nantes, Lyon, and Bordeaux where there are genuine rail alternatives.

If rail services improve, it could see more routes added including those between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Lyon and Rennes as well as journeys between Lyon and Marseille. They currently don’t meet the criteria for the ban because trains to airports in Paris and Lyon don’t allow passengers to arrive early in the morning or late in the evening.

Others – such as routes from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Bordeaux and Nantes – weren’t included because the journey time is more than the 2.5 hour limit.

Connecting flights will also have to follow these new rules.

It’s a glimpse of a better world, if we can build it.

‘Cause to be victorious, you must find glory in the little things.

Scientists looked at school masking requirements and you will probably believe what they found!

Tegan and I started wearing some form of face covering, even if it was just a bandana, early in 2020. Everything we’d seen indicated that some covering was better than none, and that still seems to be the case. As the pandemic progressed, we decided that once it was “over”, we’d keep masking in most indoor, public areas. Ireland has had consistently low COVID numbers since August, and vaccination rates are high, so the vast majority of people have stopped wearing them.

It seems that the U.S. is not doing so well, partly because of the consistent politicization of vaccines and mask-wearing by the right wing. One of the more shameful versions of this has been the insistence that children are not at risk from COVID, and so there should be no measures taken to protect them or their teachers. This is often supported by the claim that “masks don’t work anyway” (for those who don’t claim that masks on children are literal child abuse). One might hope that such obvious bullshit wouldn’t need correcting, but if one actually believed that, one would be extremely naïve. Of course it needs debunking, and while I have little hope that this will reach those who most need to hear it, here’s some research:

The lifting of masking requirements in school districts outside of Boston in February 2022 was associated with an additional 44.9 COVID-19 cases per 1,000 students and staff in the 15 weeks after the statewide masking policy was rescinded. This represented nearly 12,000 total COVID-19 cases or 30% of all cases in those school districts that unmasked during that time, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Boston Public Health Commission, and Boston University School of Public Health.

“Our study shows that universal masking is an important strategy to reduce transmission in schools and one that should be considered in mitigation planning to keep students and staff healthier and minimize loss of in-person school days,” said Tori Cowger, corresponding author and Health and Human Rights fellow in the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard Chan School. “Our results also suggest that universal masking may be an important tool for mitigating structural inequities that have led to unequal conditions in schools and differential risk of severe COVID-19, educational disruptions, and health and economic effects of secondary transmission to household members.”

Basically, because different school districts ended mask requirements at different times, the researchers were able to compare infection rates, and tie the increase in cases to the change in policy.

The findings also showed that the effect of school masking policies was greatest during periods when COVID-19 incidence was highest in surrounding cities and towns, suggesting that implementing universal masking policies during times of high transmission would be most effective.

“This study provides clear support for the importance of universal masking to reduce transmission of COVID-19 in school settings, especially when community COVID levels are high,” said study co-author Eleanor Murray, assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. “Masking reduces COVID-19 transmission in schools in an equitable and easy to implement way and should be part of any layered mitigation strategy.”

There may be valid reasons to be concerned about universal mask-wearing. Leaving aside matters of personal preference, I could see them being extremely isolating for people who rely on lip-reading for communication. It also wouldn’t shock me to learn that masking in school could mess with social development in some ways – I honestly don’t know, though I presume we’ll see research on that at some point.

But I think the larger takeaway here is clear – masks should be something we use a lot more, going forward, than we used to. COVID isn’t the only illness they can help with, and it’s also unlikely to be the last pandemic in our lifetimes. There’s also the simple fact that we have no real way of knowing how many immunocompromised people we come across in our day to day lives, or how many simply cannot afford the wages they’d lose from a week of sickness. I’m going to keep wearing a mask, and that’s no great burden. I know there are some places back in the U.S. where doing so might be inviting harassment, but the most I get here is the occasional odd look, and I get those anyway.

In general, just wear a mask when you’re in indoor public places.

SLoSSing out climate conservation policy

There’s an old debate in the field of conservation, about what strategy is best when setting aside land for conservation. Should our efforts go into getting large contiguous areas, or would it be better to have a collection of smaller reserves distributed over a wider area: Single Large, or Several Small (SLoSS).

There are good arguments for both. A single, large area can allow for habitats that cannot occur in a smaller space. The edge of a forest, for example, lets light and wind penetrate into the understory from the side, spurring the growth of less shade-tolerant plants, different animals, and even affecting things like soil moisture. Deep forest habitats are much darker, tend to have less undergrowth, and can harbor very different kinds of life. This distinction is reliable enough, that undergraduate ecology students often do “research” on these dynamics as part of their training. It’s not generally a way to learn something new, so much as a way to practice the skills, knowing the results you should be getting. I know less about it, but I’m sure similar things exist in aquatic ecosystems, accounting for stuff like depth, fishing and other human activities, proximity to pollution sources like farms and factories, and so on.

The “Several Small” perspective is also generally about a diversity of habitats, but accounts for the way the changing landscape allows for different conditions over much wider areas. A mountaintop will have different life from a river, which will be different from a forest, or a plain, or a lake, or the boundary between those habitats. While one large place can encompass a good amount diversity in that regard, spreading your reserves out can cover more ground, so to speak. Having scattered nature reserves can also serve to create vital safe “pit stops” for migrating birds.

Both of perspectives are a form of triage, in the face of the relentless, escalating environmental destruction being driven by capitalism. The “ideal middle ground” could be described as a number of large reserves, connected by corridors, but that’s rather difficult to arrange in a world where capitalists get what they want by default most of the time.

I think this research supports my preferred approach of ending capitalism, and integrating our development into our surrounding ecosystems as much as possible (I mean, they don’t actually talk about capitalism, but in my opinion a growth-obsessed system like that can never allow for the kinds of change we need). Not only may the heat tolerance of sub-populations vary, but a population starting in a cooler area has more “room” for warming before temperatures start to get dangerous. This means that if you want a species to be able to survive global warming, the best thing you can do is make sure that the populations are not fragmented, and have space to move and change.

By conducting a metanalysis of 90 previously published studies, from which Cheng and his co-authors mined data on 61 species, the team was able to construct a set of “upper thermal limits”—specific temperatures above which each species could not survive. However, by zooming in further and looking at 305 distinct populations drawn from that pool of 61 species, they found that different populations of the same marine species often had widely different thermal limits. This suggests that some populations have evolved different abilities to tolerate high temperatures. The key then, is to keep different populations of the same species connected so that the populations that have adapted to the higher temperatures can pass this advantage on to the populations with the lower thermal limits.

In other words, imagine a wide-ranging marine species, such as the diminutive Atlantic killifish, which occurs from the warm Florida coast of the United States north to the frigid waters of Newfoundland, Canada. The northern killifish populations may be better able to withstand warming waters if some of their southern kin are able to naturally shift their range to the north.

“Scale matters,” says Matthew Sasaki, a marine biologist and evolutionary ecologist who completed this research as part of his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Connecticut and is the paper’s lead author. “The patterns you see across species aren’t the same you see within species, and the big-picture story doesn’t necessarily match what is happening on the local level.”

In case you need the refresher, working to preserve biodiversity can help us deal with climate change. That’s why I like the idea of, to the greatest degree possible, bringing nature into our cities and other developed spaces, both by setting aside land around us for wildlife, any by making “our” territory safer. Less dependence on cars for transit (and more rail and foot traffic) would also make it a lot safer for animals to move through our landscape as they go from place to place.

When it comes down to it, they key seems to be having a clear understanding of the local conditions, and the needs of local ecosystems. What works for one place, one species, or one community of interacting species, may not work for another:

In yet another twist, the team, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and was composed of biologists specializing in terrestrial as well as marine ecosystems, discovered that this intra-species variability was primarily a feature of animals living in the ocean and intertidal areas. Populations of widespread species that live on land or in freshwater exhibit far more homogeneity in their thermal limits, and thus could be more sensitive to rising temperatures. However, on land, plants and animals can take advantage of microclimates to cool down and avoid extreme temperatures, by moving into shady spots, for example.

Taken together, the research suggests that a one-size-fits-all-species approach to conservation and management won’t work. Instead, write the authors, we need to understand how populations have adapted to their local conditions if we want to predict their vulnerability to changing conditions. A more effective approach would include ensuring that marine species can find wide swaths of undamaged habitat throughout their entire range, so that different populations of the same species can mix and pass on the adaptations that help them survive warmer waters. And on land, we need to maintain large patches of cool ecosystems—such as old-growth forests—that terrestrial species can use as refuges.

“The glimmer of hope here,” says Cheng, “is that with conservation policies tailored to individual populations, we can buy them time to adapt to the warming world.”

As with antifascist action, and human climate adaptation, local understanding, local communities, and local solutions are going to be key. The big advantage we have over more locally-focused societies of the past, is that we can retain the ability to communicate and trade globally. We really can make this world more peaceful, just, and more beautiful, all as a part of saving ourselves from the disastrous conditions we’ve created.

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Video: Timbah on Toast takes an empathetic and educational look at Ye, and bipolar disorder

A couple days ago, I called Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) a fascist, while talking about the company he’s been keeping lately. I’m comfortable saying that, because of the misinformation and hate that he’s spreading, and because of the people and ideas he’s empowering. He is, as the philosophers say, “doing fascism”. There’s no excusing that, and I think that he’s in a quagmire mostly of his own making, from which he’ll have trouble escaping. Because of his cultural stature, he’s someone whose actions we need to consider, at least from time to time, and in doing so, it seems like a good idea to know at least a little bit about bipolar disorder. It’s also something that’s just generally good to know about, because the odds are decent that there are people in your life who have to deal with that set of symptoms.

Timbah on Toast has done a number of excellent videos on different subjects, and in my very inexpert opinion, this one is worth watching as well. It gives an overview of what bipolar is and how it manifests, as well as a description of what it’s like for the person living through those manifestations. The video also talks about treatment, and about Ye specifically. The combination of wealth (Beau of the Fifth Column likes to call money “power coupons”), cultural influence, existing bigotry, and bad company seems to act like a bit of a perfect storm for driving Ye into these waters. That said, there’s one prediction that Timbah makes that I worry may be overly optimistic.

He correctly points out that the people who’ve been encouraging and enabling Ye lately don’t care about his wellbeing. He’s profitable for them, and for some, he’s a potential pathway to power. Where I fear Timbah may be going wrong, is in the prediction that when Ye goes into a depressive episode, having pushed away the people who cared about him, his current crowd will abandon him.

They might, I suppose, but looking at the situation, I’m reminded of the radicalization funnel that’s been guiding people towards the extreme right. For that, extreme low points are often an important part of the process. That’s when you can really convince someone that everyone else has abandoned them, and that only you, the fascist benefiting from his involvement, can be trusted to take care of him, and to guide him when he needs it. I don’t know if someone like Fuentes, Yiannapoulis, or Owens will be the one to do that, and I don’t know whether they’ll succeed if they try, but I think it is inevitable that someone in his current orbit is planning to take advantage. For all these are horrible people, they’re perfectly capable of being kind and caring when they think it will pay off. I don’t think it’ll be hard to convince Ye that nobody will forgive him, and that they’re the only ones he can rely on.

I could be wrong, obviously. I hope I’m wrong. I don’t know the man, and I know very little about him. With luck, he’ll extricate himself and go spend some time out of the spotlight. People do de-radicalize themselves all the time, when they have a way out, and it sure seems like someone of Ye’s stature has a number of options in that regard. Time will tell, I suppose, but regardless of how all this turns out, it’s a nasty situation.

Fascists have escalated to attacking infrastructure

Part of the reason I feel comfortable saying that fascists and other conservatives want the violence we’ve been seeing, is that they have been told, at every step of the way, what the result of their hateful rhetoric would be. It was true of the pro-life movement’s love of stochastic terrorism. It was true of the horrors we’ve seen since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade. It’s true of the current violence against LGBTQIA people.

Mass murder is the desired outcome. When I use terms like “genocide” for this, I mean it quite literally – they want queer people to stop existing.

In Abigail Thorne’s excellent video on the philosophy of Antifa, she says that while fascists can non-violently make themselves safe from anti-fascist activists by ceasing to “do fascism”, the targets of fascism cannot make themselves safe from fascists, because their mere existence is why they’re under attack. The only way to make the fascists happy is for them to stop existing.

This also means that as a fascist movement gains power and confidence, they will keep escalating attacks on the groups they’re scapegoating. You can’t claim that a group of people is causing the downfall of civilization forever, without doing something about it, and as we’ve seen, they’ve reached the stage where they’re openly saying, “if you don’t want to be murdered, follow my rules“.

The response to the Club Q shooting was an escalation. It marked the point at which many conservatives felt safe enough to shed the pretense of disapproval, and to openly support the violence. We’ve now had another escalation, in North Carolina:

Much of Moore County — more than 40,000 homes and businesses — remain without power following an attack to electrical substations. Authorities have confirmed that at least two substations were damaged by gunfire on Saturday night.

Damage assessments are still underway and estimates for the return of power to almost all of southern and central Moore remain uncertain. For now, Duke Energy has estimated restoration by 10 p.m. Sunday night, but that was before full estimates of the damage were available.

This coordinated attack coincides with rhetorical attacks on a drag show that was in one of the affected businesses, and has been followed, as with the Club Q shooting, by right-wing extremists making not-so-subtle implications:

Unsurprisingly, they claim that their god is responsible – who knew he used guns?

As usual, their “all-powerful” deity needs fanatical zealots to interpret and carry out its wishes.

I’ve talked before about how bigots are more than willing to hurt themselves and those they claim to care about, if it means hurting the people they hate more. In this case, shutting down one drag show was apparently worth cutting off power to tens of thousands of people, no matter how much harm that does to anyone else. The long history of blaming natural disasters on “the gays” has primed them to accept massive amounts of collateral damage in their war on most of humanity. If “God” is angry about the drag show, then he’s punishing everyone who lost power for not being bigoted enough towards that show, and towards the people who are OK with such things.

It will not stop here.

This shouldn’t be required for anyone to fight back, but it won’t stop with trans people either, or gay people, or any other group. Fascism is a pyramid scheme fueled by hatred – it always needs new targets. They are coming for queer people right now, and the only way they will stop is if we make sure they no longer have the power to keep going.

The exact mode of opposition is going to vary from place to place. Anti-fascist action tends to be locally organized, and tailored to the needs of the moment. It may be that cancelling an event is the best course of action in a given moment, to avoid an armed confrontation. It may be that groups like the John Brown Gun Club will run a security operation to defend an event. If you think things are safe where you are, and you want to help out somewhere else, follow local leadership.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution here, beyond the importance of collective action. Work with others. Do not assume the police are on your side (they aren’t). This is dangerous. People are getting killed, and the trend is towards more violence, not less. The people who’ve been warning about fascism have not been exaggerating or making stuff up – it is happening here, and without real, organized opposition, it will keep happening.

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I forgot Trump had another mask to take off…

I’ve had a bit of a political journey over the last five years. I have the cringe-inducing memory of telling an anarchist that “I’d vote for an anarchist for president”, to actually having enough understanding to know that I’ll be a bit embarrassed by that for the rest of my life. There’s a problem I’ve noticed, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just “a me problem” – it’s far to easy to assume that my journey of understanding mirrors that of other people who’ve lived through the same world events. I’ve debunked fossil fuel propaganda more times than I can count in the last decade, to the point where it feels as though everyone must have seen through the lies by now. I’ve learned about fascism as it has become more relevant in the world, to the point where it must be obvious to everyone what’s going on in the US right now.

And now I’m at the point where I realize that no, it really has just been me and some number of other people, who’ve gone from being some breed of liberal, with a mild curiosity about the loud folks carrying red and black flags at a protest, to being one of the weirdos who won’t shut up about fascism. The world has not accompanied me.

To be fair, a great deal of the world has accompanied me. I think a lot of the people – particularly on the right – who claim that Trump’s movement isn’t fascist are either lying, or so deep in denial that they may lack original thoughts on the matter entirely. And so, for all it has been glaringly obvious to many of us, some people will have trouble coping with Trump’s recent declaration that:

“A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.”

At this point, I doubt Trump will lose much support over this. The “mask” he wore of respecting the constitution and rule of law was already paper-thin and so full of holes you could see the swastika peeking through even when the hot air wasn’t on full blast. There were so many holes I forgot the damned mask was even there. Some people may denounce this, but I think we should not trust the displays of shock from anyone who supported him and his lies up till this point. The goals of Trump and his movement have never been clearer, and as they continue their genocidal campaign against LGBTQIA people, they will probably be increasingly open in their efforts to establish fascist rule in the United States.

It may be that the GOP leadership will finally deign to rule Trump ineligible to hold the presidency, though I doubt it, but it’s been clear for a while that the world they want is the same as the world Trump wants. As I’ve said before, the GOP is a white supremacist, Christian fascist party, and they will not stop unless they are forced to.

CNN calls out Biden admin on the rail strike, ignores its own contribution to the problem

One of the most frustrating aspects of the fight for workers’ rights in the United States, is the way that both governing parties, while claiming to be “the party of the working class”, will screw the working class every chance they get. This is possibly even more consistent when you look at media corporations.

Over this past few months, the various rail worker unions have been trying to get paid sick leave for the first time in U.S. history. I’ll say that again – rail workers in the United States have never had paid sick leave. The deal that was rejected by most of the unions also didn’t give paid sick leave, but it did give a raise that was not requested. This is doubly a problem because rail corporations have been laying off their workers wherever they can, while raking in billions in profit. The result of this has been over-work, and an inability to get time off for emergencies or illness. They have paid vacation time, but that has to be scheduled in advance, and may be denied if someone can’t be found to cover your shift.

Which is likely, because as I mentioned, they’ve been laying off as many workers as they can, to resounding cheers from Wall Street. Most of the coverage of this mess has been, in my view, criminally biased in favor of the bosses. Remember Rutger Bregman’s description of Tucker Carlson? “A millionaire funded by billionaires”? Yeah, that’s not just that particular fascist, or even Fox News. That’s every major news corporation, and that describes their attitude on reporting anything to do with labor disputes. They love to ask rail workers if they’re “ok” with causing billions in economic harm, just for a few sick days, while ignoring that they currently have zero sick days, and ignoring the vicious greed of the bosses.

That’s why it was kinda shocking to see Jake Tapper actually calling out the Transportation Secretary over the Biden administration’s decision to weigh in on the side of the bosses.

As I’ve said, this is a consistent problem, so it’s nice to see it getting attention on corporate media. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that this segment aired when it did, because it had pretty much no chance of affecting the outcome. Too little, too late. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but it’s frankly shocking how often the bosses end up getting their way from both parties, while some politicians claim they did their best, even though they never actually fought for a better outcome. CNN did everything they could to maintain the situation that Tapper’s talking about, and I think he should do a segment on that as well.

I’m not going to hold my breath.

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Barbadian call for reparations targets a fortune built on slavery and murder

Whenever the subject of reparations for slavery and colonialism comes up, the objections are almost always framed to pit the “white working class” against those to whom reparations are owed. This is, of course, a dishonest framing, rooted in the lie of capitalist meritocracy. Those opposing reparations tend to believe (or claim to believe) that the atrocities in question are in the distant past, part of a different system from the one in which we live, and therefor entirely divorced from the fortunes and struggles of our era. The slave owners are all dead, so they say, and so any reparations would be paid for by people who had no role in maintaining or profiting from slavery. It’s an effective bit of propaganda, and like all such misinformation, it’s re-used over and over again, no matter how many times it’s debunked.

The reality is that the era of colonialism and chattel slavery was the foundation of capitalism as we understand it today, and the inequalities and injustices of that era were built into the infrastructure of our current economy. A number of major corporations that exist today profited off of chattel slavery, though some of those fortunes have been laundered by buyouts, mergers, and the like. More than that, since reparations were primarily paid to slave owners for the loss of “their property”, there are a great number of extant individual fortunes that also tie directly to those atrocities.

That can’t be too surprising, right? We live in a world where the Windsor family still holds the British crown, and the billions in resources that come with that, and other “noble” families, still retain vast fortunes, even if they’re not always directly involved in government. These are fortunes built on conquest, genocide, and slavery, but when the question of reparations comes up, suddenly we’re told that those demands are being made of the working class? It’s such obvious bullshit that you’d think it wouldn’t fly, and yet that same social infrastructure of white supremacy serves to lend undue credence to the lies.

Fortunately, some people are fighting back. A little over a year ago, Barbados ended its relationship with the British Monarchy. Now, they are suing to get back some of the wealth that was stolen from them by a powerful family within the former British Empire:

The government of Barbados is considering plans to make a wealthy Conservative MP the first individual to pay reparations for his ancestor’s pivotal role in slavery.

The Observer understands that Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, recently travelled to the Caribbean island for a private meeting with the country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley. A report is now before Mottley’s cabinet laying out the next steps, which include legal action in the event that no agreement is reached with Drax.

Barbados became a republic a year ago after it removed Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.

The Drax family pioneered the plantation system in the 17th century and played a major role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the US.

Barbados MP Trevor Prescod, chairman of Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, part of the Caricom Reparations Commission, said the UN had declared slavery to be a crime against humanity: “If the issue cannot be resolved we would take legal action in the international courts. The case against the Drax family would be for hundreds of years of slavery, so it’s likely any damages would go well beyond the value of the land.”

Countries in the Caribbean community (Caricom) have been campaigning for the payment of reparations by former colonial powers and institutions which profited from slavery. This is the first time a family has been singled out.

This is wonderful. They’re taking it directly to the people who profited from the unpaid labor of the Barbadian people. I’m sure there will still be some who oppose this, of course (aside from the Drax family, whose opinions should be disregarded), but it’s impossible to argue that Drax has not benefited from his family’s history of theft and murder. I will happily accept the argument that Richard Drax should not be subjected to the kinds of punishment that might be due to his ancestors, but that does not mean that he has a legitimate claim to the wealth they took.

Among the plans being considered are that 17th-century Drax Hall is turned into an Afro-centric museum and that a large portion of the plantation is used for social housing for low-income Bajan families. There is also a recommendation that Richard Drax pays for some of the work.

David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to Caricom and deputy chairman of the task force, said that besides Drax, other families whose ancestors benefited from slavery are being considered including the British royal family: “It is now a matter that is before the government of Barbados. It is being dealt with at the highest level.

“Drax is fabulously wealthy today. The Drax family is the central family in the whole story of enslavement in Barbados. They are the architects of slavery-based sugar production. They have a deep historical responsibility. The process has only just begun and we trust that we will be able to negotiate. If that doesn’t work, there are other methods, including litigation.

“Other families are involved, though not as prominently as the Draxes. This reparations journey has begun. The matter is now for the cabinet of Barbados. It is in motion. It is being dealt with.”

Drax came under the spotlight in December 2020, after the Observer revealed he had not declared his inheritance of the 250-hectare (617 acres) Drax Hall plantation. He did so only after official documents surfaced which named him as the owner. He had inherited the plantation, valued at Bds$12.5m (£5.25m), from his father, Walter, in 2017.

Drax, 64, lives at the family’s mansion in Charborough Park, Dorset. He and his family are worth at least £150m and own 23.5 square miles in Dorset, and an estate and grouse moor in Yorkshire. The family also own 125 Dorset properties personally or through family trusts and a £4.5m holiday villa on nearby Sandbanks.

Drax’s ancestor, Sir James Drax, was one of the first Englishmen to colonise Barbados in the early 17th century. He part-owned at least two slave ships, the Samuel and the Hope.

The Drax family also owned a plantation in Jamaica, which they sold in the 19th century. When slavery was abolished across the British empire in 1833, the family received £4,293 12s 6d, a very large sum in 1836, in compensation for freeing 189 enslaved people.

Prescod added: “The Drax family had slave ships. They had agents in the African continent and kidnapped black African people to work on their plantations here in Barbados. I have no doubt that what would have motivated them was that they never perceived us to be equal to them, that we were human beings. They considered us as chattels.”

As we fight for a better world, it’s important that we push back against the all-too-common lie that history is “in the past”, and so not relevant to questions of justice going forward. I hope it’s obvious to you, dear reader, that justice has not been served when the family of slavers is still rich and powerful, while those they enslaved still deal with poverty and over-exploitation. It’s frankly disgusting that Drax still owns anything in Barbados, let alone the plantation where his family enslaved and tortured people.

I don’t know where this goes from here. The history of countries like Barbados trying to get justice is not particularly uplifting, and for all the British Empire is no more, England retains a disproportionate amount of global influence, as a result of its era of conquest. The same is true of all the colonial empires, including the United States. That will continue being an obstacle to justice for as long as those countries are governed by the same people and philosophies that created the problem in the first place.

I’ll try to keep an eye on this story, and I hope to see many more like it in the coming years. More than that, I hope to see success beyond simply seizing back the stolen land. I suppose there’s a chance I may be proven wrong about this, but I think that if these struggles for justice are to be successful, it will require the people living in the countries in question to apply organized political pressure to their own governments. That means organizing, of course, and pushing back against attempts by people like Drax to conflate their fortune with that of their country’s working class. It also means paying close attention to the people to whom reparations are owed. This struggle will probably need the help of white folks, but it does not need our “leadership”. Our role is to make sure that those who wish to keep their ill-gotten gains can’t rely on distance and racism to protect them from justice.

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Video: The Continually Escalating Anti-LGBT Rhetoric

Jessie Gender is a good source of information on trans issues and Star Trek. She has done a number of deep dives into the propaganda and misinformation surrounding trans people and the movement for trans rights, and this video is no exception. The United States (and that country is not alone) is currently in the midst of a murderous campaign to erase queer people from existence. Obviously, I think there’s validity in pointing to hypocrisy, inconsistency, and projection from conservatives, but it’s far more important that those of us who support trans rights understand what’s happening. The violence we’ve seen is the goal of this rhetoric.

This will not go away by itself. Genocide is the right word for this project. The goal here is exterminationist mass murder, and it’s up to us to stand up to the fascists, and to take away their power to do what they’re doing. This video is a good breakdown of the whole situation, in my view, and worth your time.

Conservative projection: a rule to live by

By now it’s an overused trope: The conservative pundit or politician who rants the most about the evils of homosexuality will turn out to be either gay or bisexual. It’s happened so many times that you can rely on it being brought up in response to most homophobic rants, and it goes far, far beyond just that one issue. Likewise, the people who have been pushing us toward the genocide of trans people in the United States by claiming they’re “groomers” all seem to have a record of things like advocating for shit like child marriage, supporting people with a record of preying on children, or themselves being involved in the assault of children, or in covering up said assault.

When I was a kid, a classmate did a science fair presentation on the dangers of smoking. I didn’t know it at the time, but at that point she had been smoking cigarettes for a year or two already. I’m often struck by the immaturity of thought among conservatives, and this is no exception. They accuse others of their own crimes, because they think it helps hide said crimes. What’s worse, is that conservative “followers” seem to fall for the lie every single time. I don’t know of a way around this problem, short of just building the power we need to win, because it honestly seems that these people are incapable of learning this lesson.

I’m sure some of them genuinely care about children, in their reflexive, unthinking way, but when they participate in these moral panics, they fill the air with so much bullshit, it acts to obscure the real harm being done. Why is this energy not being aimed at, for example, those known to have associated with Jeffrey Epstein?

It seems like their hatred outweighs whatever actual concern they have, and they’re willing to hurt children if it also means hurting the people they hate.