Scapegoating

• WHAT: Migrant workers, students, refugees, undocumented people, and supporters marking International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and launching #MigrantSpring.
• Spring is set to begin on March 19, and Parliament will rise for two weeks following the week starting on March 18, 2024.
• Why #MigrantSpring launch to mark International Day for Elimination of Racism:
  Immigration Minister Marc Miller pledged to bring regularization to the Cabinet in the Spring.
• #MigrantSpring calls for a program that ensures permanent resident status for all undocumented people without exclusions.

• Others think concern over disinformation is just a moral panic or merely a symptom rather than the cause of our societal ills.
• Given that nearly 25% of elections are decided by a margin of under 3%, mis- and disinformation can have important influence.
• By contrast, among prior Obama voters who believed at least two fake headlines about Clinton, only 17% voted for her.
• There are more indirect consequences of disinformation too, such as eroding public trust and participation in elections.

The power of prebunking

• In contrast, “prebunking” is a new way to prevent false beliefs from forming in the first place.
• Such “inoculation” involves warning people not to fall for a false narrative or propaganda tactic, together with an explanation as to why.
• Misinforming rhetoric has clear markers, such as scapegoating or use of false dichotomies (there are many others), that people can learn to identify.
• Like a medical vaccine, the prebunk exposes the recipient to a “weakened dose” of the infectious agent (the disinformation) and refutes it in a way that confers protection.
• For example, we created an online game for the Department of Homeland Security to empower Americans to spot foreign influence techniques during the 2020 presidential election.

• Lee McIntyre advises the UK Government on how to fight disinformation.
• He also receives funding from Jigsaw (a technology incubator created by Google) and from UK Research and Innovation (through EU Horizon replacement funding grant number 10049415).

• Rappers and rap fans can’t help but take notice that their peers and favorite rappers are dying young.
• Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul, 53, passed away in February 2023 after a battle with congestive heart failure.
• Rapper Jim Jones has claimed that rap is the most dangerous profession due to rappers being violently killed so frequently.

The (un)exceptional spectacle of American gun violence

• News media are quick to report on violence in hip-hop to support their view that the music and the people who make it are exceptionally violent.
• Violence, death and conflict attract attention.
• Though they were all taken by the very American plague of gun violence, news and historical accounts often amplify the spectacle of violent Black death, even when they claim to honor those who are killed.
• It is also the topic addressed in the song “ANKH” from my forthcoming mixtap/e/ssay, “V: ILLICIT”: “He died by the gun but they blamed the music.
• Another heartbreaking consequence is that some rappers only gain wide popularity and realize financial success after they’ve died.

Deadly diseases

While violence brings about headlines, guns are not the only cause for concern. Diseases – many of them preventable – are also a factor. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes and renal disease are among the top 10 causes of death among Black men and Hispanic men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It makes sense that these causes also prominently figure in the deaths of hip-hop artists.

Gone before retirement

• Heavy D (44) experienced a pulmonary embolism that led to his death.
• Prince Markie Dee (52) of the Fat Boys passed away from congestive heart failure.
• Phife Dawg (45) of A Tribe Called Quest, Tim Dog (46) and Biz Markie (57) all passed away from complications related to diabetes.
• Guru (48) of Gangstarr, Bushwick Bill (52) of the Geto Boys, Hurricane G (52) and Kangol Kid (55) died from cancer.

A renewed focus on health

• The occasion of celebrating 50 years of hip-hop provides a moment to reflect and honor some of the artists who contributed to the culture and are not here to celebrate this golden anniversary.
• It’s also, perhaps, an opportunity to consider some of the outcomes of systemic barriers to health and wellness, such as access to affordable health care, varied dietary options and mental wellness resources.

• With an 8-foot wingspan and striking white markings, these birds tower over their bald eagle cousins.
• Steller’s are sublime, but they aren’t beautiful in the way people often sentimentalize animals.
• No wonder they can fight off brown bears and hunt on the sea ice of the Russian Arctic.
• Biologists have learned remarkable things about migratory birds’ navigational skills and how they can malfunction because of weather or illness.

The language of vagrancy and belonging

• Terms like vagrant, native, invasive, migrant and colonist all emerge from centuries of political discourses describing which persons belong where.
• Vagrancy laws punished the itinerant poor beginning in Elizabethan times, scapegoating “vagabonds” for spreading disease, disorder and idleness.
• In the 19th-century U.S., a new wave of vagrancy laws targeted freed Black Americans and then migrant laborers from southeastern Europe.

Birds as machines

• In response, both ornithologists used the same word to describe the birds they study and admire: machines.
• Wilson summarized, “All animals, while capable of some degree of specialized learning, are instinct driven, guided by simple cues from the environment that trigger complex behavior patterns.” But reducing nonhuman animals to machines lacking agency ignores the surprising history of machines.
• Machines have always been more than just machines.

Birds as persons

• These findings are driving exciting investigations into animals’ inner lives and their capacity for joy and spontaneity.
• In contrast to Western cultures, many Indigenous peoples – along with believers in animism – live in a world shared with diverse persons, only some of them human.
• A global “rights of nature” movement is gaining ground as a legal strategy rooted in such Indigenous ideas of relating to nonhuman persons.

Symbol or anomaly?

• This deadly event sent temperatures plummeting below freezing in Texas and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz fleeing to Cancún.
• Only some 6,000 Steller’s remain, because of climate change and human disturbance – especially Russian oil production around Sakhalin.
• Scientists now think that vagrants may be playing an important role as “first responders” to environmental changes, and “vanguards” of range shifts.

Beyond categories

• This theme is central to “Moby-Dick” and is why the book inspires more symbolic readings than perhaps any other novel.
• Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari read the white whale as a provocation to see beyond dualistic categories and symbols.
• They see the whale as “The Anomaly” – a dangerous flight from normative categories like normal/abnormal, human/nonhuman.
• Like this sea eagle, Moby-Dick “is neither an individual nor a genus; he is the borderline.” He resists the very possibility of categorization, not merely the categories themselves.