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How racism functions and shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic

How racism functions and shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic

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4 years ago

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Mahlikah Awe:ri along with thousands of people demonstrates during a Black Lives Matter protest in Toronto on June 19, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Imagine putting on a pair of kaleidoscope glasses: now look through them to see the myriad and fractured ways racism is playing out in Canada today.

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified public attention to the unequal vulnerability of Indigenous and Black people and amplified other racialized inequalities inherent in society: from exposing exploitable labour in the front lines to inadequate care and resources.

Some argue that Canada doesn’t have a problem with racism. Others vigorously demonstrate the systemic and insidious effects of structural and everyday racism. Still others want to study the issue, call witnesses to verify that systemic racism exists. That was the take of the Bloc Québecois, which resulted in accusations of racism and the expulsion of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh from the House of Commons.

How much further study is required? How many witnesses need to be called to establish the reality of racism and the violence it authorizes?

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill on June 18, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

As someone active in Canadian critical race studies for over three decades, I wrote Discourses of Denial to demonstrate the entrenched denial around racism that is often camouflaged under the veneer of Canadian politeness and a token celebration of diversity.

More than a decade later, governments and institutions at all levels continue to deny the reality of racism. When acknowledged, the talk shifts quickly to managing diversity or tokenizing difference.

Naming and evading racism

Inequalities are structured in dominance, as British cultural theorist Stuart Hall explained in a 1980 essay. They manifest in what peace researcher Johan Galtung described as structural violence.

Structurally embedded racism is made possible by power. Power’s enactment of racist policies and practices is mediated by everyday norms, values, attitudes and habits that cognitively coalesce in the form of stereotypes.

Kaleidoscope glasses show multiple, fractured views. (Malcolm Lightbody/Unsplash)

Yet, the “systemic” nature of racism is perplexing to politicians like Québec Premier François Legault, who continues to deny its existence in Québec. In his view:

“Quebecers are not racist, but there is still racism here as (exists) everywhere, and we must admit it and we must fight it.”

To this, the social democrat Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Manon Massé countered:

“Systemic does not mean systematic. It does not mean everyone. It means there is a system that tolerates this.”

Different issues underpin this denial. First, it assigns racism to an abstract system and thus evades the agency of racists. Second, it suggests that racism is in the air — much like the coronavirus — and we just have to fight it. Third, it implies that racists are the minority, perhaps some ignorant folks out there. This doesn’t account for systemic racism within institutions like the police or academia or the proliferation of far right racist groups in Canada. Fourth, it erases the histories of racialized groups and the changing permutations of racism as it shifts according to social and political conditions.

Racism as deep structure

The timing of this latest denial of systemic racism is striking. It is part of the systemic nature of the white gaze. This gaze that turns the wheel of the kaleidoscope, shifting our focus from one frame to another, without reflecting the reality of a hierarchical society.

Pre-pandemic, the threat to society was crafted in the language of a war on terror (and before that: the war on poverty, and war on drugs, etc.). In that war, the quintessential enemy are the Muslims. Today, the tendency would be to deny this. However, the reality of Bill 21 in Québec, not to mention the escalating Islamophobia, contests such denial.

People hold signs during a demonstration supporting M-103, a motion to condemn Islamophobia in Canada in Montréal, March 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

In the background, percolating through all these decades if not centuries, has been anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, both pillars of a colonial settler society anchored in white supremacy.

Shifting frames

The pandemic ushered kaleidoscopic frames mediated by a white gaze.

First in the public limelight was anti-Asian racism, partly sparked by the rogue MP Derek Sloan who accused Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam of having divided if not dubious motives. He asked, “Does she work for Canada or for China?” with a caption on his video that read, “Dr. Tam must go!”

The stereotype of the diseased Asian body persists. It is part of the constructed threat of a “yellow peril.”

Read more: Anti-Asian racism during coronavirus: How the language of disease produces hate and violence

A recent Angus Reid survey reveals that “almost one-third of Chinese Canadians report being physically attacked during COVID-19.” In Montréal, documentation collected by law student Lilly Maya Wang helped to pass a city council motion condemning racism against Asians.

Read more: Dear white people, wake up: Canada is racist

With the murder of George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, the kaleidoscopic lens shifted to Black bodies and police violence. Scholars have been arguing about this connection for decades. And the Black Lives Matter movement has continuously struggled to keep the issue in the public limelight.

The Black Lives Matter movement highlights police violence against Black bodies. (Clay Banks/Unsplash)

Recently, the gaze is shifting back to violence against Indigenous peoples in Canada with the terrible revelation of the RCMP assault on Chief Allan Adam.

Racism is a system of violence

What does racism as a form of violence accomplish and for whom? Racism functions in the interests of power by maintaining a hierarchy. Here the colonial framework is highly relevant.

Read more: Election shows Canadians still don't understand what it means to be racist

The colonizers maintained power by subjugating racialized groups in different ways. At the bottom, were those considered dispossessed (Indigenous) and disposable (Black slaves), and in between, were the classic middlemen minorities (Brown, Asian peoples). Sandwiched in between, Brown people then become the buffer zone between those at the bottom and those at the top, and subject to different forms of violence.

The lived realities of racialized groups vary.‘ (Julian Wan/Unsplash)

While fighting racism, we cannot fall into the trap of an “Olympics of oppression” that pits one group against another. We must remember the specific historical conditions and lived realities of different racialized groups.

Structural racism makes the white gaze invisible. Whiteness continues to be the powerful backdrop against which Indigenous, Black and people of colour stand out as demanding minorities making unverifiable and highly subjective truth claims. Hence, the need for the constant proof from inquiries, reports, panels and commissions.

Yasmin Jiwani receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

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Home buyers must now navigate higher mortgage rates and prices

Rates under 4% came and went during the Covid pandemic, but home prices soared. Here’s what buyers and sellers face as the housing season ramps up.

Published

36 mins ago

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March 17, 2024

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Springtime is spreading across the country. You can see it as daffodil, camellia, tulip and other blossoms start to emerge. 

You can also see it in the increasing number of for sale signs popping up in front of homes, along with the painting, gardening and general sprucing up as buyers get ready to sell. 

Which leads to two questions: 

  • How is the real estate market this spring? 
  • Where are mortgage rates? 

What buyers and sellers face

The housing market is bedeviled with supply shortages, high prices and slow sales.

Mortgage rates are still high and may limit what a buyer can offer and a seller can expect.  

Related: Analyst warns that a TikTok ban could lead to major trouble for Apple, Big Tech

And there's a factor not expected that may affect the sales process. Fixed commission rates on home sales are going away in July.

Reports this week and in a week will make the situation clearer for buyers and sellers. 

The reports are:

  • Housing starts from the U.S. Commerce Department due Tuesday. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted rate of about 1.4 million homes. These would include apartments, both rentals and condominiums. 
  • Existing home sales, due Thursday from the National Association of Realtors. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted sales rate of about 4 million homes. In 2023, some 4.1 million homes were sold, the worst sales rate since 1995. 
  • New-home sales and prices, due Monday from the Commerce Department. Analysts are expecting a sales rate of 661,000 homes (including condos), up 1.5% from a year ago.

Here is what buyers and sellers need to know about the situation. 

Mortgage rates will stay above 5% 

That's what most analysts believe. Right now, the rate on a 30-year mortgage is between 6.7% and 7%. 

Rates peaked at 8% in October after the Federal Reserve signaled it was done raising interest rates.

The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey of March 14 was at 6.74%. 

Freddie Mac buys mortgages from lenders and sells securities to investors. The effect is to replenish lenders' cash levels to make more loans. 

A hotter-than-expected Producer Price Index released that day has pushed quotes to 7% or higher, according to data from Mortgage News Daily, which tracks mortgage markets.

Home buyers must navigate higher mortgage rates and prices this spring.

TheStreet

On a median-priced home (price: $380,000) and a 20% down payment, that means a principal and interest rate payment of $2,022. The payment  does not include taxes and insurance.

Last fall when the 30-year rate hit 8%, the payment would have been $2,230. 

In 2021, the average rate was 2.96%, which translated into a payment of $1,275. 

Short of a depression, that's a rate that won't happen in most of our lifetimes. 

Most economists believe current rates will fall to around 6.3% by the end of the year, maybe lower, depending on how many times the Federal Reserve cuts rates this year. 

If 6%, the payment on our median-priced home is $1,823.

But under 5%, absent a nasty recession, fuhgettaboutit.

Supply will be tight, keeping prices up

Two factors are affecting the supply of homes for sale in just about every market.

First: Homeowners who had been able to land a mortgage at 2.96% are very reluctant to sell because they would then have to find a home they could afford with, probably, a higher-cost mortgage.

More economic news:

Second, the combination of high prices and high mortgage rates are freezing out thousands of potential buyers, especially those looking for homes in lower price ranges.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal noted that online brokerage Redfin said only about 20% of homes for sale in February were affordable for the typical household.

And here mortgage rates can play one last nasty trick. If rates fall, that means a buyer can afford to pay more. Sellers and their real-estate agents know this too, and may ask for a higher price. 

Covid's last laugh: An inflation surge

Mortgage rates jumped to 8% or higher because since 2022 the Federal Reserve has been fighting to knock inflation down to 2% a year. Raising interest rates was the ammunition to battle rising prices.

In June 2022, the consumer price index was 9.1% higher than a year earlier. 

The causes of the worst inflation since the 1970s were: 

  • Covid-19 pandemic, which caused the global economy to shut down in 2020. When Covid ebbed and people got back to living their lives, getting global supply chains back to normal operation proved difficult. 
  • Oil prices jumped to record levels because of the recovery from the pandemic recovery and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What the changes in commissions means

The long-standing practice of paying real-estate agents will be retired this summer, after the National Association of Realtors settled a long and bitter legal fight.

No longer will the seller necessarily pay 6% of the sale price to split between buyer and seller agents.

Both sellers and buyers will have to negotiate separately the services agents have charged for 100 years or more. These include pre-screening properties, writing sales contracts, and the like. The change will continue a trend of adding costs and complications to the process of buying or selling a home.

Already, interest rates are a complication. In addition, homeowners insurance has become very pricey, especially in communities vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. Florida homeowners have seen premiums jump more than 102% in the last three years. A policy now costs three times more than the national average.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

 

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Mistakes Were Made

Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that…

Published

21 hours ago

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March 17, 2024

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Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that a bit during these past few years, but, if there’s one thing they’re exceptionally good at, it’s taking responsibility for their mistakes. Seriously, when it comes to acknowledging one’s mistakes, and not rationalizing, or minimizing, or attempting to deny them, and any discomfort they may have allegedly caused, no one does it quite like the Germans.

Take this Covid mess, for example. Just last week, the German authorities confessed that they made a few minor mistakes during their management of the “Covid pandemic.” According to Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health, “we were sometimes too strict with the children and probably started easing the restrictions a little too late.” Horst Seehofer, the former Interior Minister, admitted that he would no longer agree to some of the Covid restrictions today, for example, nationwide nighttime curfews. “One must be very careful with calls for compulsory vaccination,” he added. Helge Braun, Head of the Chancellery and Minister for Special Affairs under Merkel, agreed that there had been “misjudgments,” for example, “overestimating the effectiveness of the vaccines.”

This display of the German authorities’ unwavering commitment to transparency and honesty, and the principle of personal honor that guides the German authorities in all their affairs, and that is deeply ingrained in the German character, was published in a piece called “The Divisive Virus” in Der Spiegel, and immediately widely disseminated by the rest of the German state and corporate media in a totally organic manner which did not in any way resemble one enormous Goebbelsian keyboard instrument pumping out official propaganda in perfect synchronization, or anything creepy and fascistic like that.

Germany, after all, is “an extremely democratic state,” with freedom of speech and the press and all that, not some kind of totalitarian country where the masses are inundated with official propaganda and critics of the government are dragged into criminal court and prosecuted on trumped-up “hate crime” charges.

OK, sure, in a non-democratic totalitarian system, such public “admissions of mistakes” — and the synchronized dissemination thereof by the media — would just be a part of the process of whitewashing the authorities’ fascistic behavior during some particularly totalitarian phase of transforming society into whatever totalitarian dystopia they were trying to transform it into (for example, a three-year-long “state of emergency,” which they declared to keep the masses terrorized and cooperative while they stripped them of their democratic rights, i.e., the ones they hadn’t already stripped them of, and conditioned them to mindlessly follow orders, and robotically repeat nonsensical official slogans, and vent their impotent hatred and fear at the new “Untermenschen” or “counter-revolutionaries”), but that is obviously not the case here.

No, this is definitely not the German authorities staging a public “accountability” spectacle in order to memory-hole what happened during 2020-2023 and enshrine the official narrative in history. There’s going to be a formal “Inquiry Commission” — conducted by the same German authorities that managed the “crisis” — which will get to the bottom of all the regrettable but completely understandable “mistakes” that were made in the heat of the heroic battle against The Divisive Virus!

OK, calm down, all you “conspiracy theorists,” “Covid deniers,” and “anti-vaxxers.” This isn’t going to be like the Nuremberg Trials. No one is going to get taken out and hanged. It’s about identifying and acknowledging mistakes, and learning from them, so that the authorities can manage everything better during the next “pandemic,” or “climate emergency,” or “terrorist attack,” or “insurrection,” or whatever.

For example, the Inquiry Commission will want to look into how the government accidentally declared a Nationwide State of Pandemic Emergency and revised the Infection Protection Act, suspending the German constitution and granting the government the power to rule by decree, on account of a respiratory virus that clearly posed no threat to society at large, and then unleashed police goon squads on the thousands of people who gathered outside the Reichstag to protest the revocation of their constitutional rights.

Once they do, I’m sure they’ll find that that “mistake” bears absolutely no resemblance to the Enabling Act of 1933, which suspended the German constitution and granted the government the power to rule by decree, after the Nazis declared a nationwide “state of emergency.”

Another thing the Commission will probably want to look into is how the German authorities accidentally banned any further demonstrations against their arbitrary decrees, and ordered the police to brutalize anyone participating in such “illegal demonstrations.”

And, while the Commission is inquiring into the possibly slightly inappropriate behavior of their law enforcement officials, they might want to also take a look at the behavior of their unofficial goon squads, like Antifa, which they accidentally encouraged to attack the “anti-vaxxers,” the “Covid deniers,” and anyone brandishing a copy of the German constitution.

Come to think of it, the Inquiry Commission might also want to look into how the German authorities, and the overwhelming majority of the state and corporate media, accidentally systematically fomented mass hatred of anyone who dared to question the government’s arbitrary and nonsensical decrees or who refused to submit to “vaccination,” and publicly demonized us as “Corona deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “far-right anti-Semites,” etc., to the point where mainstream German celebrities like Sarah Bosetti were literally describing us as the inessential “appendix” in the body of the nation, quoting an infamous Nazi almost verbatim.

And then there’s the whole “vaccination” business. The Commission will certainly want to inquire into that. They will probably want to start their inquiry with Karl Lauterbach, and determine exactly how he accidentally lied to the public, over and over, and over again …

And whipped people up into a mass hysteria over “KILLER VARIANTS” …

And “LONG COVID BRAIN ATTACKS” …

And how “THE UNVACCINATED ARE HOLDING THE WHOLE COUNTRY HOSTAGE, SO WE NEED TO FORCIBLY VACCINATE EVERYONE!”

And so on. I could go on with this all day, but it will be much easier to just refer you, and the Commission, to this documentary film by Aya Velázquez. Non-German readers may want to skip to the second half, unless they’re interested in the German “Corona Expert Council” …

Look, the point is, everybody makes “mistakes,” especially during a “state of emergency,” or a war, or some other type of global “crisis.” At least we can always count on the Germans to step up and take responsibility for theirs, and not claim that they didn’t know what was happening, or that they were “just following orders,” or that “the science changed.”

Plus, all this Covid stuff is ancient history, and, as Olaf, an editor at Der Spiegel, reminds us, it’s time to put the “The Divisive Pandemic” behind us …

… and click heels, and heil the New Normal Democracy!

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 23:20

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“Extreme Events”: US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In “Large Excess Over Trend”

"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend"

Cancer deaths in the United States spiked in 2021…

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1 day ago

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March 16, 2024

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"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend"

Cancer deaths in the United States spiked in 2021 and 2022 among 15-44 year-olds "in large excess over trend," marking jumps of 5.6% and 7.9% respectively vs. a rise of 1.7% in 2020, according to a new preprint study from deep-dive research firm, Phinance Technologies.

Algeria, Carlos et. al "US -Death Trends for Neoplasms ICD codes: C00-D48, Ages 15-44", ResearchGate, March. 2024 P. 7

Extreme Events

The report, which relies on data from the CDC, paints a troubling picture.

"We show a rise in excess mortality from neoplasms reported as underlying cause of death, which started in 2020 (1.7%) and accelerated substantially in 2021 (5.6%) and 2022 (7.9%). The increase in excess mortality in both 2021 (Z-score of 11.8) and 2022 (Z-score of 16.5) are highly statistically significant (extreme events)," according to the authors.

That said, co-author, David Wiseman, PhD (who has 86 publications to his name), leaves the cause an open question - suggesting it could either be a "novel phenomenon," Covid-19, or the Covid-19 vaccine.

"The results indicate that from 2021 a novel phenomenon leading to increased neoplasm deaths appears to be present in individuals aged 15 to 44 in the US," reads the report.

The authors suggest that the cause may be the result of "an unexpected rise in the incidence of rapidly growing fatal cancers," and/or "a reduction in survival in existing cancer cases."

They also address the possibility that "access to utilization of cancer screening and treatment" may be a factor - the notion that pandemic-era lockdowns resulted in fewer visits to the doctor. Also noted is that "Cancers tend to be slowly-developing diseases with remarkably stable death rates and only small variations over time," which makes "any temporal association between a possible explanatory factor (such as COVID-19, the novel COVID-19 vaccines, or other factor(s)) difficult to establish."

That said, a ZeroHedge review of the CDC data reveals that it does not provide information on duration of illness prior to death - so while it's not mentioned in the preprint, it can't rule out so-called 'turbo cancers' - reportedly rapidly developing cancers, the existence of which has been largely anecdotal (and widely refuted by the usual suspects).

While the Phinance report is extremely careful not to draw conclusions, researcher "Ethical Skeptic" kicked the barn door open in a Thursday post on X - showing a strong correlation between "cancer incidence & mortality" coinciding with the rollout of the Covid mRNA vaccine.

Phinance principal Ed Dowd commented on the post, noting that "Cancer is suddenly an accelerating growth industry!"

Continued:

Bottom line - hard data is showing alarming trends, which the CDC and other agencies have a requirement to explore and answer truthfully - and people are asking #WhereIsTheCDC.

We aren't holding our breath.

Wiseman, meanwhile, points out that Pfizer and several other companies are making "significant investments in cancer drugs, post COVID."

Phinance

We've featured several of Phinance's self-funded deep dives into pandemic data that nobody else is doing. If you'd like to support them, click here.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 16:55

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