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The death of Queen Elizabeth II mostly evoked fond memories in South Asia, where we still think of the English as jolly good fellows who taught us the pleasures of cucumber sandwiches and buttered scones, the crack of willow on leather and the romance of the rails. Of course, there is an uneasy understanding that the railways were developed to open up hinterlands and speed up troop movementsthe need was keenly felt after 1857rather than to help the natives holiday. But never mind, the English and their royals were all right, even if they did pinch the Kohinoor and now charge exorbitant sums to let you see it in the Tower of London.

But times are changing rapidly, and the old admonition against speaking ill of the dead is out of datethat, too, was a British import, derived via the Enlightenment from Chilon of Sparta (6th century BC). Bashing Nehru is a profitable industry, and other worthies of the period are not immune. Earlier, UK dignitaries visiting India only feared demands for an apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Now that its been Indianised into an entertainment venue with a laser show, attention has shifted to the Kohinoor, which is of more material value. The Shri Jagannath Sena of Odisha wants the hot rock returned to the Lord of the World and has asked the President, who will attend the Queens funeral, to do the needful.

Queen Elizabeth II assumed the throne in 1952, in another period of rapid change. Ten days before she became Queen, Black Saturday rioters burned down the business district of Cairo, particularly targeting British businesses. Nine months later, the Crown declared martial law in Kenya and viciously suppressed the Mau Mau rising, in which at least 11,000 were killed. Ironically, that was precisely where the Queen was honeymooning in a treehouseamidst a large company including Jim Corbettwhen she received news of her fathers death, and the princess who climbed a tree famously came back down a queen. In Asia, the Jewel in the Crown went native, with Jawaharlal Nehru heading the first elected government in May. When Elizabeth took the throne, it was sunset in the empire on which the sun had never set. Its shrinkage has continued, and today, the UK is neither united nor a real kingdom. She kept up appearances in an institution that has been irrelevant for 75 years but memories of occasional brutality and systematic extraction, especially in Africa, remain.

Some African interests have reacted sharply to the Queens death. The South African party, Economic Freedom Fighters, said it does not mourn the Queen because she never acknowledged or apologised for the empires atrocities. Indeed, the argument that the Queen was restricted to a ceremonial role by the institutional protocol is a poor excuse. Institutions are made up of people who have agency and choice. The voice of Elizabeth would have drowned out that of the establishment had she chosen to settle historical accounts. But out of respect, most of the former colonies let it pass.

Over a century ago, the Irish trade unionist James Connolly pointed out that deference to royalty interferes with mental hygiene: The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kingscapitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks. Thus, coronation and kings visits [George V was swimming into Connollys ken at the time] are by our astute never sleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy.

Black Lives Matter has made the UK itself aware of its historical lack of democratic values. In 2020, protesters in Bristol dumped the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in the drink. There is uneasiness about the dirty money from slavery and conquest in the very foundations of Britains institutions. The East India Company was the worlds first transnational narcotics cartel, forcing peasants in Bihar and UP to grow poppy and attacking China to create a market for opium. The Doctrine of Lapse used against Indian states like Awadh and Jhansi was blatant trespass. And the Queens prime minister Winston Churchill is understood to have precipitated the Bengal Famine of 1943. By modern conceptions of rights, these were criminal projects, and the Queens death brought them up again.

But it also resurrected a delightful tradition: telling the bees. The day after she died, John Chapple, 79, the beekeeper of Buckingham Palace, bound the beehives with black ribbons and told their inhabitants that their mistress was dead, that King Charles III was their new master. They should be nice to him and not buzz off because you cant live life king-size without a spot of honey on your breakfast toast.

Telling the bees is an ancient Celtic tradition, from when bees were believed to flit between worlds. But maybe its only because until colonialism began in earnest, Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court, was perhaps the only European to have encountered sugarcane. Until the slave-powered Caribbean cane plantations were set up in Britain, sweetness meant honey. No wonder Melissa (honeybee in Greek) remains a popular name.

The UK press dismissed telling the bees as superstition. They had earlier ridiculed Prince Charles for conversing with plants and trees, which kept him somewhat sane. But when it was discovered that plants could communicate, they declared that he was ahead of his time.

Bees also have a languagean aerial dance which workers perform to point their colleagues to a good patch of flowers by describing the angle at which the sun strikes the eye. Maybe the Queens bees understood what the beekeeper told them. Maybe they danced in reply. If not, perhaps King Charles III would be happy to talk to them about it.

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Telling the bees the Queen is dead - The New Indian Express

Illustration by Beth Suzanna

There has never in the history of the United States of America been anything like this five-year-old city. On the southwest outskirts of Atlanta, it is a mostly suburban municipality with a population of some 108,000 in which nine of every 10 of the residents are Black. Of places of its size, it is statistically the Blackest by far.

A hundred or so years after hundreds of thousands of rural Black people began to alter the contours of national politics by migrating toward better jobs and lives in cities, then suburbs, across the country, the existence and the autonomy of South Fulton would seem like a welcome culmination of a long evolution from powerlessness to power.

But the city is tearing itself apart.

Its mayor, khalid kamau a gay, Christian, socialist, self-described Black nationalist, a former film student, flight attendant, bus driver, Black Lives Matter organizer says that he wants to create a real-life Wakanda, a city thats Black on purpose. But hes brushed up against the incremental, integrationist, typically more moderate politics of Atlantas Black elite shared by much of the rest of South Fultons local government. And now, hes accusing the city of hiding public records. Hes attempted to fire the city attorney. Hes reiterated his request to hire a therapist for the city.

Michael Kruse, Brittany Gibson and Delece Smith-Barrow went to this strange, singular capital for our latest installment of The Next Great Migration where they began to hear whispers of a next Next Great Migration. Because while South Fultons leaders debate issues of identity, most of its residents are wondering if they should stay in a city that promised economic prosperity and security but is instead delivering political strife.

Read the story.

You are a donkey, Mr. Danger.

Can you guess what foreign head of state said this about President George W. Bush in a televised speech in 2006? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**

When Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wanted to pull a political stunt this week, he got almost effortless media attention by sending two planes full of migrants to, of all places, Marthas Vineyard.

Republican governors have actually sent more migrants to Chicago, New York and Washington D.C., but theres a reason the Vineyard story blew up. Its a blue bubble within a blue bubble, the kind of place rich Democrats go when they want to get away from political turmoil. Heres what to know about the enclave that DeSantis just crashed:

- If you go there, its just called the Vineyard.

- Despite its old-line WASPy reputation, the Vineyard has an immigrant community already and has long been a popular vacation spot for Black families.

- In the summer, theres reliably a big-money Democratic fundraiser on the social calendar. Just last month, Barack Obama jumped into the midterm fight by headlining an event with Eric Holder.

- It's one place in America you can reliably visit a nude beach and seeAlan Dershowitz.

- It's where Obama gets away even from his friends. His 60th birthday, celebrated on the Vineyard, was famous for how many people he disinvited. Notably still on the list: Jay-Z, Tom Hanks, Eddie Vedder.

- A Vineyard scandal once took down a Democratic presidential hopeful.

Michael Beschloss speaks during a taping of NBC's Meet the Press on Oct. 30, 2005 in Washington, D.C. | Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press

History With a Kick Historian Michael Beschloss loves the archives. His Twitter is an oddly compelling stream of archival images that has gotten him a touch more than 800,000 followers over a decade. For most of that run, his history lessons have tended towards the anodyne. But in the Trump era, Beschloss has found his inner online provocateur, tweeting out pictures of the Rosenbergs as news broke that federal agents found nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago, or the Munich Beer Hall Putsch on Jan. 6th.

Is he that way irl? Michael Schaffer went to see him for this weeks Capital City column, on a mission to figure out whether Beschloss is the classic TV historian, the guy with the quick Twitter fingers or something beyond either of those public personas.

58 percent of voters who strongly approve of President Joe Bidens performance also have a favorable opinion of King Charles III. Thats compared to just 45 percent of Democrats writ large.

Photograph by Michelle Gustafson for POLITICO

A Biblical Campaign Josh Shapiro is trying to become a new kind of Jewish politician as he runs for governor of Pennsylvania. Instead of downplaying his religion out of a fear of appearing different, he thinks he can use his faith he describes himself as a middle-class Conservative Jew as a tool to win over voters in his fight against Doug Mastriano. On a bright September morning in Philadelphia, as Shapiro speaks with more than a dozen powerful pastors of nearby A.M.E. churches who could help him turn out Black voters in November, it seems to be working, writes Holly Otterbein.

POLITICO illustration / AP /iStock

What AOC and Nixon Have in Common While ire towards the Supreme Court comes mostly from the left these days, in 1970, angry with a series of liberal rulings, then-President Richard Nixon directed a congressman from Michigan by the name of Gerald Ford to target liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas for impeachment. In a two-hour address, the normally mild-mannered Michigan congressman tore into the veteran sitting justice, accusing Douglas of giving legitimacy to the militant hippie-yippie movement, attacking his personal life and linking him with porn and even the Mafia. Frederic J. Frommer looks into the fallout from Fords crusade and why getting someone off the bench is never a simple proposition.

These presidential soap busts (yes, we said presidential soap busts), pictured September 1947, were the work of J. T. Taylor from San Antonio, Texas. The soap artist wrote to Harry S. Truman to ask for a portrait of the president without glasses so the sculptor could carve his likeness, as he had done for all prior presidents, writes Ella Creamer.

Presidents and political symbols have often been the subjects of bathroom supplies: The Secret Service once called a California businesswoman to ask if she would stick the presidential insignia on her toiletry range and sell it in the White House gift shop.

Presidents are actually responsible for paying for general household items like toothpaste, toilet paper and deodorant themselves. Since presidents cant easily pop into a local CVS (and rarely carry a wallet), a White House staff member will pick up those items and then bill the president.

**Who Dissed? answer: It was then-President of Venezuela Hugo Chvez, who repeatedly called Bush "Mr. Danger" and also called him (in Spanish) a liar, drunk, coward and psychologically sick.

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A 'real-life Wakanda' is tearing itself apart - POLITICO

Black Lives Matter protests on June 6

Sources: Crowd Counting Consortium, Edwin Chow and New York Times analysis | Note: The Times partnered with Edwin Chow, an associate professor at Texas State University, to count the protesters based on available aerial images from June 6 and added those estimates to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium. Counting efforts are still ongoing, so the map is not comprehensive and totals shown are an average of high and low estimates.

The recent Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that still continue to today.

Four recent polls including one released this week by Civis Analytics, a data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks.

These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the countrys history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts.

Note: Surveys are of the adult population in the United States

Ive never seen self-reports of protest participation that high for a specific issue over such a short period, said Neal Caren, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who studies social movements in the United States.

While its possible that more people said they protested than actually did, even if only half told the truth, the surveys suggest more than seven million people participated in recent demonstrations.

The Womens March of 2017 had a turnout of about three million to five million people on a single day, but that was a highly organized event. Collectively, the recent Black Lives Matter protests more organic in nature appear to have far surpassed those numbers, according to polls.

Really, its hard to overstate the scale of this movement, said Deva Woodly, an associate professor of politics at the New School.

Professor Woodly said that the civil rights marches in the 1960s were considerably smaller in number. If we added up all those protests during that period, were talking about hundreds of thousands of people, but not millions, she said.

Even protests to unseat government leadership or for independence typically succeed when they involve 3.5 percent of the population at their peak, according to a review of international protests by Erica Chenoweth, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School who co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, which collects data on crowd sizes of political protests.

Precise turnout at protests is difficult to count and has led to some famous disputes. An amalgam of estimates from organizers, the police and local news reports often make up the official total.

But tallies by teams of crowd counters are revealing numbers of extraordinary scale. On June 6, for example, at least 50,000 people turned out in Philadelphia, 20,000 in Chicagos Union Park and up to 10,000 on the Golden Gate Bridge, according to estimates by Edwin Chow, an associate professor at Texas State University, and researchers at the Crowd Counting Consortium.

Source: EarthCam

Across the United States, there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protests began in Minneapolis on May 26, according to a Times analysis. Turnout has ranged from dozens to tens of thousands in about 2,500 small towns and large cities.

Protests against racism and

police violence per day

Protests against racism and

police violence per day

Protests against racism and

police violence per day

Source: Crowd Counting Consortium

The geographic spread of protest is a really important characteristic and helps signal the depth and breadth of a movements support, said Kenneth Andrews, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

One of the reasons there have been protests in so many places in the United States is the backing of organizations like Black Lives Matter. While the group isnt necessarily directing each protest, it provides materials, guidance and a framework for new activists, Professor Woodly said. Those activists are taking to social media to quickly share protest details to a wide audience.

Black Lives Matter has been around since 2013, but theres been a big shift in public opinion about the movement as well as broader support for recent protests. A deluge of public support from organizations like the N.F.L. and NASCAR for Black Lives Matter may have also encouraged supporters who typically would sit on the sidelines to get involved.

The protests may also be benefitting from a country that is more conditioned to protesting. The adversarial stance that the Trump administration has taken on issues like guns, climate change and immigration has led to more protests than under any other presidency since the Cold War.

According to a poll from The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said that they had participated in a protest since the start of the Trump administration, and 19 percent said they were new to protesting.

More than 40 percent of counties in the United States at least 1,360 have had a protest. Unlike with past Black Lives Matter protests, nearly 95 percent of counties that had a protest recently are majority white, and nearly three-quarters of the counties are more than 75 percent white.

Percentage of population that is white

in counties that had protests

Percentage of population that is white

in counties that had protests

Percentage of population that is white

in counties that had protests

Percentage of population that is white

in counties that had protests

The New York TimesSource: 2018 Census via Social Explorer; Crowd Counting Consortium protests database; New York Times protests database

Without gainsaying the reality and significance of generalized white support for the movement in the early 1960s, the number of whites who were active in a sustained way in the struggle were comparatively few, and certainly nothing like the percentages we have seen taking part in recent weeks, said Douglas McAdam, an emeritus professor at Stanford University who studies social movements.

According to the Civis Analytics poll, the movement appears to have attracted protesters who are younger and wealthier. The age group with the largest share of protesters was people under 35 and the income group with the largest share of protesters was those earning more than $150,000.

Half of those who said they protested said that this was their first time getting involved with a form of activism or demonstration. A majority said that they watched a video of police violence toward protesters or the Black community within the last year. And of those people, half said that it made them more supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The protests are colliding with another watershed moment: the countrys most devastating pandemic in modern history.

With being home and not being able to do as much, that might be amplifying something that is already sort of critical, something thats already a powerful catalyst, and that is the video, said Daniel Q. Gillion, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on protests and politics.

If you arent moved by the George Floyd video, you have nothing in you, he said. And that catalyst can now be amplified by the fact that individuals probably have more time to engage in protest activity.

Besides the spike in demonstrations on Juneteenth, the number of protests has fallen considerably over the last two weeks according to the Crowd Counting Consortium.

But the amount of change that the protests have been able to produce in such a short period of time is significant. In Minneapolis, the City Council pledged to dismantle its police department. In New York, lawmakers repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret. Cities and states across the country passed new laws banning chokeholds. Mississippi lawmakers voted to retire their state flag, which prominently includes a Confederate battle emblem.

It looks, for all the world, like these protests are achieving what very few do: setting in motion a period of significant, sustained, and widespread social, political change, Professor McAdam said. We appear to be experiencing a social change tipping point that is as rare in society as it is potentially consequential.

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Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks have not only served to reignite the Black Lives Matter movement, but also the furor at its most common rebuttal: "all lives matter."

The back and forth has been going on for seven years, and just last week, when pressed repeatedly on his refusal to say "Black lives matter," Vice President Mike Pence echoed those words on "Face The Nation": "I really believe all lives matter."

While some purposely say "all lives matter" to provoke conflict, others see it as a harmless, even inclusive remark. But that isn't the way most Black people experience it.

"My life matters," said Jason Reynolds, author of "All American Boys." "And if you say, 'No, all lives matter,' what I would say is I believe that you believe all lives matter. But because I live the life that I live, I am certain that in this country, all lives [don't] matter. I know for a fact that, based on the numbers, my life hasn't mattered; that black women's lives definitely haven't mattered, that black trans people's lives haven't mattered, that black gay people's lives haven't mattered... that immigrants' lives don't matter, that Muslims' lives don't matter. The Indigenous people of this country's lives have never mattered. I mean, we could go on and on and on. So, when we say 'all lives,' are we talking about White lives? And if so, then let's just say that. 'Cause it's coded language."

Some members of the Black community emphasized to CBS News that the phrase "Black Lives Matter" does not mean "Black lives matter more." It means, "Black lives matter, as well." And some of the hurtful confusion could very well stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of that.

For lifestyle blogger Ayana Lage, whether the phrase is posted with ill intentions or good ones, the effect is the same. It derails the conversation.

"It's the same as when people bring up 'black-on-black crime' when you are discussing police brutality, or say 'well, why don't you care about Chicago?' Literally anytime that I mention anything about Black Lives Matter or police reform, I get comments about 'well, what about the looters.' And I'm kind of like, well that's not what we're talking about," she told CBS News. "The talking points are almost all the same when you're having conversations with people: black-on-black crime, Chicago, I don't see color, you want to be a victim, all lives matter. I mean, you just hear the same things from people and you just start to think, 'Man, maybe some people are committed to misunderstanding what we're trying to do here.'"

"No one's saying that your life doesn't matter," Lage continued. "What we're saying is all lives can't matter until black lives matter."

"When [all lives matter] first became a hashtag, it felt like such a knee-jerk response to something that was not understood. It almost heightened the Black Lives Matter movement in a way because it was like, so you really don't get it," said fitness influencer Bryce Michael Wood, who hosts the Zoom series, "For Your Discomfort." "Like, how is that your response to me saying 'Black Lives Matter?' Because before Black Lives Matter, before that movement, no one was saying 'all lives matter.' No one felt the need to position themselves that way."

Sonya Renee Taylor, author and founder of "The Body Is Not an Apology," likens it to your wife asking you if she's pretty and you responding "all people are pretty."

"It's probably not going to go over very well in your family, right?" said Taylor. "Your wife is probably going to have a problem with that. Because what she wants in that moment is specificity. You know, what's desired in that moment is to be seen in her unique experience with you. And that's what Black people are asking for right now: to be seen in our unique experience in the world. To actually be seen and valued."

Trending News

Christina Capatides is CBS News' Vice President of Social Media and Trending Content. She is also a senior producer and reporter, focusing on culture and gender equity.

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Why saying "all lives matter" communicates to Black people that their ...

Protesters carrying a Black Lives Matter flag march inside a fountain at Veterans Memorial Park following a march from the Grand Rapids Police Department.Photo: Daniel Shular (AP)

On Monday, a lawyer for one of two brothers who have been detained since June for felonies they apparently committed during the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said his clients actions were comparable to those who participated in Black Lives Matter protests.

Adam Jackson, and his brother Brian Scott Jackson, face a slew of charges including: committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings, disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, civil disorder, resisting, assaulting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon and physical violence.

Even though prosecutors allege that Adam Jackson threw an orange traffic cone at police guarding the entry to the building before charging at them while holding a stolen police riot shield, his lawyer Joseph McBride argued that somehow Black Lives Matter protesters were given a pass and seemingly didnt understand the difference.

How do you say youre a white supremacist without saying youre a white supremacist?

McBride stated:

No matter how you feel about Jan. 6, or no matter how anybody feels about George Floyd and that situation, there is some commonality there. Im referring to the fact that lots of people, when it came to the Black Lives Matter protests, participated in acts of violence, but they were largely given a pass. Why were the given a pass? Because society, the court system, the media recognizes that when those people left their front door, they left for political, constitutionally protected reasons.

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US District Judge Rudolph Contreras who is overseeing the case wasnt amused by McBrides comparison. The one violent Black Lives Matter protester that came to me went to prison, so some arguments are going to resonate more than others, he retorted.

However, a comparison simply cannot be made. Those who participated in storming the Capitol on January 6 took an unfathomably violent approach to desperately keep former president Donald Trumpa fascistin office. Because he glorified violence and increased militarization of homeland security agencies. Because he was instrumental in separating immigrant families by placing their children in cages. Because he relished in the belief that people of color are racially inferior.

Because he wasand isthe embodiment of white supremacy.

The people who took to the street in solidarity with BLM brought awareness to how we are the ones being shot and killed by police like clockwork (and were lucky if the officers responsible are punished for their crimes). They used their individual power to come together and try to save lives, not destroy them.

Studies have shown that in more than 93% of protests associated with Black Lives Matter over the course of 2020, those who participated were not violent or destructive. More than 2,400 locations documented peaceful protests, while fewer than 220 locations reported violent demonstrations.

In addition, 900 people have been charged in the January 6 insurrection, while 2020 BLM protests saw only around 300 people arrested. The mob who took it upon themselves to protect a second Trump presidency were heavily armed, stormed government property, attempted to detonate pipe bombs and assaulted nearly 150 officers.

They used sheer terror and quite frankly, whiteness, to be able to execute in such an abrasive and dangerous stunt. No, the insurrection is nothing like Black Lives Matter demonstrations. To entertain such an absurdly false equivalence wouldnt just make someone ignorantbut a bonafide racist as well.

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Only Racists Would Equate The Capitol Riot To Black Lives Matter Protests - The Root