Speak!

I was in graduate school, when the protests gathered momentum in Tiananmen Square.  As a news junkie, as one who always wondered whether India or China had a better development model, and as one who was increasingly devoted to individual rights and democracy, I had been reading news reports about the student demonstrations and getting pumped up myself.  

The sight of something like a Statue of Liberty in the middle of the protests was remarkable and inspiring.

Only a couple of days after the quickly assembled statue of the lady with the torch went up, the Chinese government sent in the military.  We watched on television the remarkably surreal video of a lone man standing up to a column of military tanks.

The sight of tanks was ominous, and echoed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that we had read about and watched with tears rolling down the dramatization of those events in the movie Gandhi,

As tRump reminds us, political structures that do not respect and value individual rights and lives have always gone to extremes to squash protests and eliminate dissent.  Even when they are fully aware that the world is watching.

In tribute, and as a reminder, I leave you with this:

Speak
By Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith's shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.

The revolution will be live

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to my colleagues about one thing that I am confident about in the age of the coronavirus: Everything happens way faster than what we might expect.  Overnight things change.

It turns out that even aspects of life that have nothing to do with the coronavirus are changing at warp speeds.

History is unpredictable. We should have learnt that from history, but then we really do not!

As I noted in this post four years ago, I remember the excitement when the Berlin Wall fell.  To this day, I am amazed at how the experts never saw that coming.  Just like that, the wall came down.  

The young people of today might think we were stupids not to have seen that coming, but, really, there was no way that one could have predicted that.  History just happens, more often than not.

Yet again, we are living in a moment when history just happens in unpredictable ways.

A week ago, the country was worried about the coronavirus, and about how to relax the lock down that has been in place since March.  The nutcases who are the base of the 63 million who elected the demagogue to power even walked around with guns and without masks threatening anybody--even governors of states.  

That was the situation a mere week ago.

Now, we don't have any time to talk about the coronavirus. 

Every minute and day, we talk, think, and write about the ongoing protests and racism in America. And about the demagogue's reactions.  With the entire world watching us.

It is almost as if the revolution is being televised.

Here's the poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron:

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre
And will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because
The revolution will not be televised, brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae
Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner
At 8:32 on report from twenty-nine districts
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young
Being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins
Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit
That he has been saving for just the proper occasion

"Green Acres", "Beverly Hillbillies", and "Hooterville Junction"
Will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane
On "Search for Tomorrow"
Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists
And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys
Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash
Engelbert Humperdinck, or The Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be right back
After a message about a white tornado
White lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom
The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat

The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live

The new normal: Tear gas in the age of the Coronavirus

It happened right outside the White House.

Here is what was happening outside the White House as President Trump was giving his Rose Garden address and saying he is an “ally of all peaceful protestors.” Peaceful protestors being tear gassed outside of the WH gates. I confirmed because I was teargassed along with them. pic.twitter.com/yg0wbSrIXn

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 1, 2020

Why the tear gas?

Trump gave a speech at the White House emphasizing the importance of law and order. Federal officers then used force to clear a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators from the street between the White House and the church, apparently so Trump could make the visit.

So that he could walk across and hold the Bible up for a photo shoot!

Such is life in the land of the strongman that 63 million elected to power!!!

Why would people invent something like tear gas, right?  That's what we humans call progress!  We invent new ways in which we can kill and maim people.  Scientists are always eager to participate in such research to help humanity!  We are fucked up!

I wrote about this back in November 2018.  Yes, literally about tear gas.

In that post, I wrote, "So, in free societies, if these talented kids grow up and then voluntarily assist in the development of products that hurt humanity, then ... isn't there something wrong with this picture?"

The more we disconnect the humanities from science and technology, the more we create problems for humans.  Is it a surprise at all that mArk zUckerberg does not understand the harm that Facebook does?  It is one thing to code, but another to think about the impacts of developing a system to rank the hotness of female undergraduates, which is how zUkcerberg developed Facebook, remember?  The uber-smart coder has no fucking clue about the evil that he engages in.

The next time you hear students of any age being advised that philosophy or any other humanities subject is a waste, and that they should just focus on science, worry a lot about the evil that could unfold without an understanding of the human condition.

The following is the post from November 29, 2018.

**********************************************

Imagine a bunch of talented kids who are very good in math and science.  They go to college where they learn more about science, and delve deep into science.  They then begin to apply that science and assist in the development of products.

So far, so good, right?

Are you sure?

What if they are not developing products that help humanity, but hurt humanity?

Especially if they do this in democratic societies. Scientists and technologists being pressured by dictators is an entirely different topic.

So, in free societies, if these talented kids grow up and then voluntarily assist in the development of products that hurt humanity, then ... isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Yes, of course, plenty of people have thought about this, written about this, talked about this.  But, I am always at a loss imagining how individuals willingly choose to participate in something that they know will not be the best for humanity.

When I saw photographs of women and children also being tear gassed at the US-Mexico border, I couldn't stop wondering what makes people develop such tools. 

Source

And then the nerd in me wondered what tear gas is; the oracle that the internet is delivers right away: "they’re not gases; they’re powders that billow into the air as a fine mist."

I had no idea.  I thought they literally shot gas into the crowds!

So, what happens when one is on the receiving end?

Before the tearing, the choking and the pouring mucus, tear gas burns. It causes searing pain in the eyes, skin, lungs and mouth—or anywhere it touches. “It can be overwhelming and incapacitating. You can be forced to shut your eyes and cannot open them,” says Sven-Eric Jordt, an anesthesiologist at Duke University. And then comes the coughing and the nausea and the vomiting.

Now, think about this: These are not found naturally, but are manufactured by humans.  A bunch of talented nerds had nothing better to do than to create tear gas?

Tear gas agents activate one of two pain receptors, TRPA1 or TRPV1,

The first category, TRPA1-activating agents, includes the chemical called 2-chlorobenzalmalonitrile or CS gas. This is one of the agents used by U.S. law enforcement and, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson, is what CBP officers fired into crowds of men, women and children at the U.S. southern border on Sunday. “A lot of children fainted. My daughter also got hit. There were pregnant women there and a lot of older men, too,” a witness told the Washington Post on camera on Monday. 

It affects children a lot worse.  Why?

Children are particularly at a high risk for injuries from these agents, Jordt says, because they are so small. “They are shorter, and there are increased concentrations are near the ground. They also have a smaller body surface and lungs so the potential for injury is higher,” he says.

Apparently such a chemical ain't enough!

“More and more, there’s a higher-level version called CS2 or sometimes CX,” she says. “They [contain silicon] so that they can last longer in the environment and don’t disintegrate as quickly.” The result is a more harmful tear gas that can continue to affect an area for several days.

How awful!

Keep in mind the two pain receptors, TRPA1 or TRPV1.  Before we learn about the other one, anything else?

There are two other TRPA1-activating agents used for riot control: CR gas (dibenzoxazepine) and CN gas (chloroacetophenone, also used in bear spray). Both are more potent than CS gas, Jordt says.

Ok, can we move on to the other one?

There are two compounds in common use in this category: OC gas, a concentrated solution of natural capsaicin, and PAVA, a mix of synthetic capsaicin also used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “This has fewer chemical or allergic reactions, but it’s also an oil so it’s much harder to get off and can last longer,” Haar says. “It can also cause corneal abrasions if you’re shooting it directly into someone’s eyes.”

This is insane!  "Haar says that there are almost no scenarios where the use of tear gas makes sense for controlling crowds."

But, worryingly, this is perhaps the new normal :(