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Wednesday, September 14, 2016
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Coates describes racism in the U.S. Jill Stein to speak Coates presented at in Northampton Amherst College By Stuart Foster Collegian Staff
Ta - N e h i s i C o at e s described racism in the United States as a structure specifically designed to advance the economic interests of the country at a talk at Amherst College on Sept. 13. Coates, an Atlantic correspondent and the writer of the non-fiction book “Between the World and Me,” spent much of the talk describing a concept in his book he referred to as the dream. The dream was described as an ideal American society that is ignorant to the impact of racism on black Americans and how racism has benefited white Americans. “I was born in a certain portion of America where fear was a defining reality,” Coates said to the roughly 1,000 people filling LeFrak Gymnasium. “It’s striking to be a young kid in West Baltimore in the ‘80s and
not just be afraid yourself but to understand that your parents are afraid.” Coates read an excerpt from “Between the World and Me,” written in the form of a letter to his son about his experience as a black male in the U.S., which illustrated different experiences he had witnessing fear in black Americans. Coates recalled this fear as present in his father, who “beat [him] as if someone might steal [him] away.” A young boy waving a gun at Coates when he was 11 years old was referred to as the moment when he learned his life “was in constant jeopardy.” “He had affirmed my place in the order of things, that I could be easily selected,” he said. “Death could easily rise up from the nothing of a boring afternoon.” Referring to television shows he watched as a child, such as “Mr. Belvedere” and “Family Ties,” Coates said these shows depicted an ideal white suburban life that he could not connect to
his own life in Baltimore. Coates explained that shows such as these could make him less faithful in his institutions, as the world he lived in was so distant from the portrayals he saw on television. He described the schools in these shows as wildly different from his own, where he felt like he was being “taught how to fit into a box.” “There is a no excuses culture that is put on black and brown kids,” Coates said. “When I got to schools like the one my son goes to now that isn’t the case.” Coates went on to question the way Americans typically think of racism, particularly as a logical and primitive descendent of the concept of race in general. Instead, Coates called it a relatively recent invention, and talked about how blacks in the United States first worked alongside white indentured servants, with little racial separation. Coates said that as the history of the U.S. progressed, “a slow legal separation” began to emerge between blacks and whites.
“All of the liberties America was supposed to have had to be secured by having a definitive working class that could always be relied upon,” Coates said about the eventual enslavement of blacks in the United States. Coates said that while a vast majority of Americans did not own slaves, many were willing to defend the institution of slavery because they believed they could eventually own them. Many political developments commonly viewed by Americans as important to the progress of the country, Coates said, were designed in specifically racist ways. “Much of the policy that progressives today uphold from the New Deal was the same,” Coates said, describing institutions such as Social Security. “The dream depended on keeping black people out.” Coates also talked about the upcoming presidential election, which he said marks a turning point “where we decide whethsee
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Playing charades
Stein to visit First Churches Sept. 18 By Nujhat Purnata Collegian Staff
nate student debt, which she says will also free those who have already graduated from debt servitude. She will also speak about “A Green New Deal,” a plan to create millions of jobs by transitioning to 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture and conservation. The event, co-sponsored by the Green Rainbow Party, the International Socialist Organization of the University of Massachusetts and the Jill Stein campaign, will also focus on issues of racial, social, economic and environmental justice. “The public is ready to hear a message for the greater good and not settle for the lesser of two evils,” said Guerin.
Jill Stein, the official nominee of the Green Party in the 2016 presidential election, will be visiting Northampton to speak at the First Churches of Northampton on Sunday, Sept. 18 from 7-9 p.m. She will be addressing the students from the Five College area as well as the general public regarding her election platform. “Jill will describe her vision of a future that puts people, planet and peace over profit. A future that is possible and very much within our reach,” said Jamie Guerin, volunteer coordinator for the Green Rainbow Party and Massachusetts Volunteers for Jill Stein on the event Facebook page. Stein will be talking Nujhat Purnata can be reached at about her plan to elimi- npurnata@umass.edu.
Amherst to host fifth annual block party Thursday Students, families invited to attend By Hannah Depin Collegian Staff
ERICA LOWENKRON/COLLEGIAN
Members of the Muslim Students Association played the charades game “Heads Up!” during the first meeting of the semester on Tuesday evening.
attraction at this point,” she said. La Cour added that the block party will include circus characters, trapeze performers and light displays. There will also be three stages along the half-mile route to host live music and a DJ. In years past, attendees have showcased their own musical, dance and artistic talents at the block party as well. “We encourage it to be organic, and that’s always fun,” said la Cour. The event also presents an opportunity to bring together Amherst families, visitors and college students, according to la Cour. “It’s a fun, safe night,” she said. “And the students are a great part of that. That’s part of the fun, and why it’s such a great community event.”
Local restaurants, vendors, musicians, and performers will take over downtown Amherst on Sept. 15 for the fifth annual Celebrate Amherst Block Party. The event, organized by the Amherst Business Improvement District, will close down N. Pleasant St. between 5 and 9 p.m. from the intersection of Amity and Main St. to Kendrick Park. The favorable weather predicted for Thursday night may draw as many as 5,000 people to the event, according to Sarah la Cour, executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District. Hannah Depin can be reached at “It’s sort of a regional hdepin@umass.edu.
Report: Median incomes up sharply, poverty rates down By Don Lee Tribune Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Steady job growth and the biggest earnings boost in a decade helped sharply lower the nation’s poverty level last year and finally provided relief to the long-running problem of stagnant wages. In its annual report on income and poverty, the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the share of people in the U.S. living in poverty dropped to 13.5 percent in 2015, marking one of the biggest annual declines
in decades. That was down from 14.7 percent in the prior year, but still considerably higher than the 12.3 percent poverty rate in 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, and the 40-year low of 11.3 percent in the year 2000. The report also provided some encouraging news for a change on average American incomes. The median household income _ the point at which half make more and half less _ was $56,500 last year.
That was up a substantial 5.2 percent from $53,700 in 2014, after adjusting for inflation. American families still have some distance to go to recover fully from more than a decade of declining and stagnant earnings: The median household income was $57,900 in 1999. “The good news is, maybe we’ve turned the corner,” said Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, who like other experts following poverty and income
issues had expected some improvement but nothing this large. “I’m certainly more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time,” he said of the broad-based gains in income and poverty measures. “The prospects look good, at least for 2016 for being an improvement over 2015.” The bureau also reported Tuesday that the number of people in the U.S. without health insurance fell further last year to 9.1 percent from 10.4 per-
cent in 2014. The drop was expected, thanks mostly to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which saw its second full year of impact in 2015. With many more Americans signing up for private insurance through new marketplaces created by Obamacare, the number of people who were uninsured for part or all of last year came down to 29 million, from 33 million without medical coverage in 2014. Some of the health insurance gains likely came
from more people working last year in full-time jobs, which generally provide some form of employmentbased medical coverage. An increase in people with full-time, year-round work last year, and higher minimum wages pushed through in some parts of the country, almost certainly helped boost median household incomes. Still, slow economic and productivity growth have hampered wage gains. And see
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THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
THE RU N D OW N ON THIS DAY... In 1960, The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded. The core members were Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
AROUND THE WORLD
American bombers train with Japan, South Korea after nuclear test TOKYO — Two U.S. Air Force B-1B strategic bombers capable of delivering an atomic weapon conducted training with both Japan and South Korea on Tuesday in response to North Korea’s fifth nuclear test last week. The Guam-based bombers trained with Japanese aircraft, which later conducted a handoff in international airspace with South Korean fighter jets, according to a statement from the U.S. Forces Japan. The American and South Korean aircraft then conducted a low-level flight in the vicinity of Osan, south of Seoul, it said. “These flights demonstrate the solidarity between South Korea, the United States, and Japan to defend against North Korea’s provocative and destabilizing actions,” U.S. Pacific Command chief Harry Harris said in the statement. “North Korea continues to blatantly violate its international obligations, threatening the region through an accelerating program of nuclear tests and unprecedented ballistic missile launches that no nation should tolerate.” The U.S. and its allies have threatened to increase sanctions against North Korea, which has increased the frequency of ballistic missile and atomic-weapon tests in a bid to establish a credible nuclear deterrent. China, the main ally of North Korea, on Monday questioned the effectiveness of sanctions and called on the U.S. to help ease tensions. The B-1B Lancers, longrange supersonic strategic bombers, returned to Guam after the flight over South Korea, according to the statement. The U.S.-Japan exercise was the first of its kind in response to a North Korean provocation, according to Major John Severns, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces Japan. “Today’s operation was a novel example of the capabilities of all three nations,” he said by email. The U.S. flew a B-52 longrange bomber over South Korea in a similar show of force after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January. Separately Tuesday, the U.S. reconfirmed its commitment to defend South Korea against North Korean threats, saying in a statement after a meeting of the nations’ defense officials that it has “extended deterrent capabilities, including conventional, missile defense, and nuclear capabilities.” “The U.S. also reaffirmed its long-standing policy that any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons will be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming,” according to a statement released by South Korea’s Defense Ministry. Bloomberg News Distributed by MCT Information Services
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many households that once had middle-class incomes have not recovered since losing work in manufacturing and other higher-paying jobs, with some of them dropping out of the labor force and becoming impoverished. The nation’s poverty rate reached a two-decade high of 15.1 percent in 2010, a year after the Great Recession ended. In sheer numbers, the poor in America peaked at 46.7 million adults and children in 2014. That declined
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a plea from Ohio Democrats who had sought to restore an extra week of early voting that was used by more than 80,000 people in their state to cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election. Instead, the justices _ without comment or dissents _ let stand a decision by Ohio’s Republicancontrolled Legislature to eliminate the so-called golden week, which had permitted voters to register and cast a ballot in one trip to the county’s election center. Democrats had maintained that AfricanAmerican voters were most likely to take advantage of this early voting week, in part to avoid long lines at polling places in Cleveland and other cities. But Republican state attorneys countered that
Ohio allows 23 days for early voting, and the Democrats “could not identify a single person who would be unable to vote under Ohio’s broad schedule.” Tuesday’s order marks the third time in the last three weeks when the eight-member high court has refused to intervene in a partisan election dispute. The justices, split 4-4, refused a plea from North Carolina Republicans to revive several voting restrictions that have been struck down as racially biased. They also turned away a bid by Michigan Republicans to eliminate straight-ticket voting this year. In Ohio, a federal judge ruled in May that reducing the early voting period would have a discriminatory effect on black voters, and he ordered the state to open the polls five weeks before election day. But in August, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his decision on a 2-1 vote.
Clinton to resume campaign travel By Seema Mehta Los Angeles Times
Hillary Clinton will resume campaign travel on Thursday following a break as she recovered from pneumonia, according to a campaign spokesman. The Democratic presidential nominee remained at home on Tuesday, said spokesman Nick Merrill. “She has spent the day catching up on reading briefings, making calls, and she watched President Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on TV,” Merrill said in a statement.
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to 43.1 million last year. The poverty rate for children, or those under 18, stood at 19.7 percent last year. And that was down from 21.1 percent in 2014. The Census Bureau records children and adults as poor if they are living in households below the poverty line, which was about $24,000 for a family of four. The bureau’s poverty measure does not count non-cash incomes such as foodstamp benefits and tax credits.
No extension for Ohio early voting By David G. Savage Tribune Washington Bureau
COATES
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Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday but did not reveal the health development until hours after she struggled to stand and was forced to abruptly leave a 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday. She had planned to campaign and raise money in California and Nevada on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. She canceled those plans and dispatched husband Bill Clinton to some of the events. On Thursday, Clinton is scheduled to speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala in Washington.
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National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke about race relations in America at Amherst College Tuesday night. er the dream is going to destroy us or not.” Particularly disappointing to Coates was what he described as a failure of the mainstream news to report figures that a high volume of Donald Trump supporters believe President Obama is a Muslim or was not born in the United States. “Looking at all these powerful people handle it, I think ‘What world are you living in?’” Coates said. “You’re living in the world of the dream.”
Coates was greeted with a standing ovation when he walked out to the audience. Amherst College students who attended the talk praised Coates’ discussion of race. “I thought it was excellent,” said Amherst College senior Brittanie Lewis. “It’s frustrating when people come to Amherst [College] and come in with a huge vocabulary and jargon. He made what he was saying super accessible.” Takudzwa Tapfuma, an
Amherst College senior from Zimbabwe, said that he wanted to better understand the struggles of black Americans, and how they are different from black Africans. “It was great. I really liked his part on selfreflection and how important that is to forward the conversation on race,” Tapfuma said. Stuart Foster can be reached at stuartfoster@umass.edu or followed on Twitter @Stuart_C_ Foster.
$3.8 billion aid package approved for security for Israel despite public rift By Tracy Wilkinson and Joshua Mitnick Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a major new 10-year package of security assistance for Israel despite sharp disagreements between the two allies. The agreement, a “memo of understanding,” is to be signed Wednesday at the State Department, which called the deal “the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history.” Officials said the package will increase U.S. aid from about $3.1 billion a year to as much as $3.8 billion a year. The deal emerged in prolonged negotiations that followed a public rift between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the nuclear deal with Iran, the Palestinian peace process and other issues. Officials in both countries had said the deal was near completion for some time. However, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had criticized the package and indicated that he believes Israel should receive more aid. Until Tuesday, the White House was reluctant to announce the deal if there were a chance Graham would try to undercut it. Obama is eager to put the aid in place before he leaves office in January, however. Analysts said he wants his legacy to show a strong commitment to Israel’s security independent of his clashes with Netanyahu. Netanyahu plans to visit New York next week to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly. Officials have not said if he will meet with Obama. Obama administration officials say U.S. security cooperation with Israel has reached record levels over the last year despite the disputes with Netanyahu’s government. The new U.S. aid package would be the largest ever to
a single country. It will allow Israel to buy high-end U.S.made military hardware to help it maintain a clear technological advantage over its foes. Palestinians and other critics of Israel complained that the new aid package and its decadelong duration, from fiscal year 2019 to 2028, essentially rewards the Netanyahu government despite its expansion of much-criticized settlements in the West Bank and other points of contention. “Israel will not be held accountable (for) anything,” Basel Ghattas, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, said recently in Washington. But the State Department responded that actions the Obama administration may not like, such as settlement expansion, have to be “compartmentalized” from the United States’ “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” Israeli critics of the aid negotiations say Israel could have received a more generous aid package if Netanyahu had engaged in talks last year when Obama was trying to secure Israel’s backing for a nuclear deal with Iran. “The aid has important symbolic value. If the aid is seen as going down, or not going up significantly, it will be seen as a barometer of Israel’s position in Washington,” said Jonathan Rhynold, a professor of political science at Israel’s Bar Ilan University and an author of a book on U.S.-Israeli ties. After an initial deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program was concluded in April 2015, Obama publicly appealed to Israel to start talks aimed at boosting security cooperation and expanding military aid. “That was very clear language: Let’s sit down and talk about what we can do for you,” said a diplomat familiar with the often-fraught relationship. ‘”The prime minister didn’t want to engage, so the issue lingered.” Analysts said Netanyahu, who was waging a campaign in the U.S. Congress to block the Iran deal, delayed the aid
talks to avoid the appearance of giving up his opposition in exchange for more assistance. “We could have and should have obtained a more generous package that better answers our needs,” Uzi Arad, a former national security advisor to Netanyahu, said in a June interview with the Israeli financial website Calcalist. Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and the director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israel’s decision to pass up a deal last year was “mistaken” and that it hurt Israeli security interests. Under the terms of the new package, Israel will no longer be able to spend one-fourth of the U.S. aid for purchases at Israeli companies _ a change that could be a blow to the country’s defense industry. The Obama administration also insisted _ to Israel’s chagrin _ that the country will no longer be able to rely on Congress to approve funds separate from the aid package. Some Israeli officials speculated that Obama’s successor may be inclined to offer the Israelis a better package, and one of Graham’s arguments was that the president has no business effectively removing the issue of appropriations from Congress. Beyond the aid package, the two governments still have not formulated a joint policy on Iran following the nuclear deal. Obama has insisted that the deal, under which Iran has mothballed or destroyed most of its nuclear infrastructure, has made Israel safer by removing the nuclear threat for at least a decade. A number of Israeli security officials apparently agree. Over the last year, they have muted their public criticism of the Iran deal and warnings of a looming nuclear threat. The relative silence reflects Israel’s recognition that it’s too late to block the accord and that the threat of Iran using a nuclear weapon has indeed become more distant.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2016
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India swiftly rejects UN request for a visit to Kashmir By Shashank Bengali Los Angeles Times
MUMBAI, India — India on Tuesday rejected a request by the United Nations' human rights chief for a visit to gather information on the disputed territory of Kashmir, where security forces have been accused of using excessive violence in trying to quell unrest. Zeid Raad Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, called for “access that is unconditional to both sides of the Line of Control,” the boundary between India and Pakistan that runs through Kashmir. Speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Hussein said his request was granted by Pakistan, which accuses Indian forces of human rights violations in the Himalayan territory that the countries have skirmished over for seven decades. “I believe an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides,” Hussein said. New Delhi swiftly responded that
an external inquiry was unnecessary and that it was “fully engaged in normalizing the situation as soon as possible.” “Indian democracy has all that is required to address legitimate grievances,” the Indian external affairs ministry said in a statement. At least 81 people – nearly all civilians – have died in the Indiancontrolled portion of Kashmir since July 9, when protests erupted after Indian security forces killed Burhan Wani, a 22-year-old separatist. Stone-throwing demonstrators have attacked police stations and government buildings. Indian paramilitary police have responded by firing live rounds, tear gas and pellets from pump-action shotguns, often striking demonstrators in the head. In the main government hospital in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, more than 800 people have been treated for eye injuries caused by the pellets, which are made of metal and encased in a thin rubber coating. Many of them have lost at least partial eyesight. The violence continued Tuesday when two people were killed, includ-
ing a 19-year-old man, and dozens injured in clashes with security forces who were enforcing a rare curfew on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Authorities imposed the curfew across all 10 districts of Kashmir to thwart plans by separatist groups to march to the local offices of the United Nations, Indian news media reported. India and Pakistan each control portions of Kashmir but claim the territory in its entirety. Separatists in the Muslim-majority territory have taken up arms to seek independence from Hindu-dominated India or a merger with Pakistan. Under a controversial security law, Indian authorities enjoy broad powers to crack down on unrest in Kashmir. Human rights groups have assailed tactics used by security forces, accusing paramilitary police of firing pellets that have injured or blinded peaceful demonstrators and even children sitting in their homes. “These weapons are inherently indiscriminate and always carry the risk of causing serious injury to people who are not engaging in violence,” said Amnesty International's
India director, Aakar Patel. “There is simply no proper way to use these weapons, and they should be prohibited.” On Sept. 2, Indian officials approved an alternate to the pellets – a shell packed with a compound derived from chili peppers – that it said would be used only in rare cases. But Amnesty said more than 100 cases of pellet injuries were reported at hospitals in Srinagar in the first week of the month. India has defended its actions in Kashmir, saying its forces have shown “tremendous restraint” and accusing Pakistan of supporting
militant groups. Relations between the nucleararmed rivals have deteriorated markedly since last Christmas, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unannounced visit to his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Hopes that the meeting would help re-launch peace talks quickly collapsed after a militant raid on an Indian air base that New Delhi said was sponsored by Pakistan. In recent weeks, Modi has referred to Pakistan, without naming it, as the “one country” spreading terrorism in South Asia.
UMER ASIF/PACIFIC PRESS/SIPA USA/TNS
Protesters engage Indian police in clashes in Srinagar, on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016.
Majid Khan returns to Minneapolis police attempt Guantanamo war court to stem gang bloodshed
By Carol Rosenberg Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - U.S.educated al-Qaida volunteer Majid Khan returns to the war court Wednesday for the first time since 2012 for a brief hearing with a new judge and prosecutor and expanded defense team. Khan, 36, who was held for more than three years in the CIA black sites, is awaiting sentencing in 2018 on a guilty plea for joining al-Qaida, serving as a courier of $50,000 linked to a 2003 terrorist bombing of a Marriott hotel in Indonesia and agreeing to be a suicide bomber in an unrealized plot to murder former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Under the plea agreement, he pledged to turn government witness and, with consideration, would get out of prison no later than 2037, at age 57. But he has only appeared once at court, to plead guilty, and no other case has gone to trial. Since then, both the Senate and Khan's attorneys have released lurid descriptions of his treatment in agency custody, including having pureed food pumped into him rectally during a hunger strike, water torture and systematic deprivation of sunlight. Khan spent his high school years near Baltimore, graduated from Owning Mills High School in 1999, and had a tech job before returning to his native Pakistan, after the 9/11 terror attacks. He was captured in Karachi in 2003. The reason for the hearing is to let him withdraw a guilty plea on one of the charges - providing
material support for terrorism - because two federal appeals courts ruled it illegitimate, not a war crime at the military commissions created by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. First, however, lawyers for Khan get to question a new case judge, Army Col. Tara A. Osborn, on whether she can preside impartially. Osborn, an Army officer since 1988, has never served at Guantanamo before. In 2012, she presided at the capital court-martial of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas. Hasan is now on Death Row at Fort Leavenworth, appealing his sentence. Other new lawyers at this week's hearing include lead prosecutor Bill Schneider, a former Maine attorney general and judge, and Army Maj. David Abdalla. The chief defense counsel has also added two more attorneys to Khan's team: Navy Lt. Tia Suplizio and Natalie Orpett from Jenner & Block. Jenner's Katya Jestin was already on the case, as were Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson and Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Khan's first lawyer at Guantanamo. Khan pleaded guilty in February 2012 to murder, spying, conspiracy and other charges for, among other things, acting as a courier of cash linked to the Aug. 5, 2003, terrorist bombing of a Marriott in Jakarta. Eleven people were killed and at least 81 were wounded in the suicide truck bombing, which occurred after Khan was in CIA custody.
JANET HAMLIN/MCT
Majid Khan, 32, seen in this artist rendering, at his guilty plea at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday, February 29, 2012.
Jackson told reporters the day of the plea that Khan was “going to join Team America, do the right thing to make sure that he has a chance for a productive, meaningful life.” But he has yet to testify in any case. Prosecutor Schneider is a West Point graduate and former Green Beret who was paralyzed in a car accident and has used a wheelchair throughout his law career. The Office of Military Commissions recently undertook some renovations at this remote base to accommodate people who use wheelchairs at Guantanamo Bay, and the prison has been discussing adding ramps inside the Detention Center Zone for aging detainees. Khan's stipulation of guilt, a long narrative of his activities disclosed at his 2012 hearing, describes him deciding to leave the United States in January 2002 to marry in Pakistan, learn about jihad and consider living under Shariah law in Afghanistan. The U.S. war on al-Qaida and the Taliban was already underway, and Khan left the United States for Pakistan a week before the Pentagon opened Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo. Once there, at one point, he recorded the “martyrdom video” of a suicide bomber. The narrative of his confessed al-Qaida activities names several other captives currently at Guantanamo as having a role in or directing his terrorist activities. They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ammar al Baluchi, both awaiting a death-penalty trial as alleged architects of the Sept. 11 attacks. Khan's guilty plea narrative also describes him seeing Yemeni Hassan bin Attash assembling a suicide bomb vest and how Khan delivered cash to a Malaysian captive known as “Zubair,” Mohd Fariq Bin Amin, in Thailand while traveling there in the company of his recent bride. Neither Bin Attash nor Zubair has been charged with crimes.
LEILA NAVIDI/MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE/TNS
Lt. Jeff Rugel, head of the Minneapolis Police Department gang unit, speaks during an interview on Sept. 8, 2016.
By Libor Jany Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
MINNEAPOLIS — On paper, it had all the makings of a revenge shooting. Minneapolis police detectives figured that the perpetrator crept up to the dining room window under the cover of darkness one night last week, and squeezed off a trio of shots from a semiautomatic handgun. All three bullets found their intended target, a man in a wheelchair who police say was hit in the torso, wrist and leg, but is expected to survive. It wasn’t his first brush with death, either - the victim, who was unnamed in a police report, had been shot twice before: once in a 2008 drive-by shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and again earlier this year when gunfire erupted at a large parking lot gathering, leaving one man dead and another wounded. Both incidents are thought to be tied to a furious and complex gang war in parts of the city’s North Side that has contributed to the majority of the city’s homicides and dozens of shootings, while leaving residents both fearful and jaded by the violence outside their doorsteps. The 25-year-old New Hope man has the regrettable distinction of being counted twice among the roughly 170 gunshot victims in north Minneapolis - and 245 citywide -
through Sept. 5, roughly the same number as were shot across the city during the same period last year. While fewer people have been killed this year than last, police say the drop is as much a testimony to bad marksmanship than anything else. The latest violence flared over the weekend, when a 21-year-old man was shot in the face after an argument at a house party in the Hawthorne neighborhood that was attended by members of rival gangs, according to police. No one has been arrested in the homicide, the city’s 24th of the year. Police estimate there are about 20 to 25 gangs with another 20 or more smaller subsets, called “cliques” - in operation across the city, said Officer Corey Schmidt, a police spokesman. Among the 25 gangs, there are some alliances that allow members to freely associate with one another. The number also includes ethnic and immigrant gangs, along with larger biker gangs. Schmidt said a majority of this year’s homicides are attributed to “some type of a gang relationship or affiliation.” “However, we cannot confirm the exact number until all cases would result in an arrest of a suspect,” Schmidt said. As a result of the escalating gang war, several crews have banded together to form two larger factions, the High End and Low End, their territory
roughly divided by West Broadway. The recent bloodletting bears little resemblance to gang conflicts of the past, authorities say. In the past, larger, established street gangs like the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, which for all of their violent tendencies, police say, operated under a strict code of conduct for members as they fought over lucrative drug-selling real estate. No longer. In their place are brash new groups with names like Skitz Squad, Emerson Murder Boyz, Loudpack and T-Blocc, whose members are noticeably younger and quicker to resort to violence, often because of a perceived slight on social media or over an incendiary YouTube video. Lt. Jeff Rugel, commander of the department’s five-man gang squad, said most violence is the work of a small number of teenagers and young men, eager to settle long-standing beefs with rival gang members. “A guy could’ve shot someone five years ago, and they went to prison, and now they’re out of prison, and they’re shot at because the gang doesn’t think that justice was served,” said Rugel, who also runs the department’s intelligence-gathering center.
Opinion Editorial THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
“Tell the truth and you won’t have so much to remember.” - Abraham Lincoln
Editorial@DailyCollegiancom
Increase mental The myth of eradicated racism health services
I have always been passionate about mental health awareness and support. While I think that mental health should be
Emilia Beuger talked about and supported at a younger age than college, I think it is important for a university to have mental health services. Coming to UMass, I was excited to hear about the services provided by the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health. It was exciting to see a service on campus to assist students in such a complex and stigmatized area of their lives. Now, some of my peers weren’t lucky enough to discover these services early on (at a school so large, CCPH’s outreach can get buried). But, even those who have heard of or taken advantage of CCPH don’t always have the best luck. The center gives students four free sessions of counseling and provides support groups. This may sound great, but for many students, this is the end of their psychological support. While some students are able to afford outside therapy or treatment, many students are unable to
dents in a timely manner. My purpose for this article was to point out how complex the issue of mental health is and that the University is not taking the issue seriously. When I say the University, I mean the whole University. I mean the professors, the Resident Assistants, the Registered Student Organizations and the administration should be supporting mental health awareness. This is not a new issue. Time and time again, the Collegian has published columns on issues with mental health and CCPH’s location. It is not enough to put a flyer up with a phone number. It is not enough for a student to be sacrificing their mental health because they cannot afford more than the four free appointments. It is not enough to say that we have these centers. We should be showing what these centers can do and provide for students. Students should not be scared of being judged nor should they be denied resources. This is not to say that the CCPH and UMass do not help students in terms of psychological services. Many students benefit from these services everyday. But if the University
“With such a huge student body, one would think that more resources would be allocated to the CCPH to assist students struggling.” receive psychological care unless they receive it for free. Most mental health issues take longer to deal with than with just four sessions. Another issue is that some students may need to see someone right away, but they are unable to get in to see someone due to insufficient staff. Now this is not the fault of the CCPH. This is a problem with administration of funding and staffing. With such a huge student body, one would think that more resources would be allocated to the CCPH to assist students struggling. Due to the understaffing and the funding issues, there are complications getting in for appointments and getting the proper care at the correct time. With only 21staff members and over 28,000 students, getting in for an appointment and taking advantage of resources and opportunities is difficult to fit into a student’s schedule. Sometimes these issues lead to students not wanting to go back. Students should not have to worry about the cost of their visit or hold off a visit because they are trying to save their four visits for a matter they see as more pressing in the future. The CCPH is in a building that is far from the center of campus, extremely understaffed and not always able to serve stu-
wants all students to be able to seek help and continue receiving help, they should be funding it. Many schools, such as University of Maryland, are unable to keep students for long-term treatment, instead offering short-term treatment. But even giving students a few more sessions or a few more opportunities for treatment could go a long way. Not every student is going to need mental health services and that is okay. Some students are going to need mental health services and that is okay. It is just like physical health services where resources and materials should be adequately provided. The University should take care of mental health the way it takes care of physical health. Student mental health is a vital aspect of a succesful school year. In my opinion, the University could do so much more than they are doing now. We can start with funding and more resources. And if there are existing resources, make them known. I do not want to be searching and searching for posters. I want answers on how to approach mental health and I want UMass to take the lead.
I want to talk about white privilege. We hear about it all the time and yet I consistently run into white people who believe it doesn’t exist. This disbelief, in my optimistic opinion, is often
Christin Howard caused by a fundamental misunderstanding of what white privilege means and how it affects the American population. The anti-political correctness movement generally posits that we live in a post-racial society and that we have begun to swing to the other extreme in an effort to be PC. My goal here is to simply explain what white privilege is and to demonstrate that discrimination against black people, both on a small scale and more importantly on a systematic and often-unconscious level, is still a huge issue. The confusion people often run into is this: I am white and yet I don’t feel as though I have any special privileges. I still struggle. I am not rich, happy, or comfortable. Just because I am white and struggle, since I myself do not experience this privilege, it must not exist. This logical jump can be best disproved if we think of privilege not as a positive (the gaining of something), but simply as the standard. This means that white privilege is simply the condition of being allowed a fair chance at success in society. White privilege is the norm while minority groups live in the absence of this fair chance. If you lived your whole life with a certain standard of fair social living, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that you would not notice that this standard is not equally shared with all members of society. White privilege means that your race does not negatively affect your overall experience of life. It means that the system has been constructed for your benefit. It does not mean you will have a good life; it just means that your race is not one of the factors that contributes to any sort of destitution or struggle you may experience. This is hard for some
people to grasp because society has agreed that racism is a bad thing. This means you are not allowed to be outright racist. Many people mistakenly conflate this with the death of racism. However, it is important for us to remember that Jim Crow was only abolished 40 years ago, and so those same issues of systematic and internalized racism that existed then have lingered into the 21st century, and there are statistics to prove it. Let’s start with job discrimination. A study published by John Nunley, Nicholas Romero, Richard Seals and Adam Pugh for the Auburn University Department of Economics found that job applicants with “black sounding names” were a whopping 16 percent less likely to get called in to interview for a job than their white counterparts, even when their resumes were otherwise identical. Housing discrimination is also an issue. A new report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that when searching for a new home to rent, black people are shown 17 percent fewer available homes than white people. The biggest issue is the hugely disproportionate numbers of black citizens (especially black males) who are currently incarcerated. According to the Bureau of Justice, in 2009 black people accounted for 39.4 percent of the prison population while whites accounted for only 34 percent. Blacks make up only 12.3 percent of the American population while whites make up a 63 percent. This means that the incarceration rate for black people is over six times higher than that of white people. Now, many racists claim that this is just because black people are somehow more naturally violent or prone to crime. Let’s examine that claim further. New York City recently lost a federal civil rights lawsuit about their stopand-frisk policies because the NYPD stopped over 500,000 people annually without any indication a crime was committed. Of those stopped, 80 percent were black or Latino.
In addition, black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. Black drivers are searched by police at traffic stops two times more than white drivers. Additionally, 15 percent of all inmates in the United States are jailed on drug-related offenses. Of this 15 percent, 32.6 per-
area means many unfortunate outcomes. It means schools are most likely underfunded and understaffed, making it difficult to get a good education. It means violence and crime is likely to be higher and thus easier to take part in. This simply means that for a poor black child growing up in a poor black area,
“White privilege means that your race does not negatively affect your overall experience of life.” cent is white and 38.4 percent is black. Again, when adjusted for differences in black and white population, black people are six times more likely to get arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses. Almost half of these drug arrests are due to marijuana. According to a 2010 study by the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and Health, despite the fact that marijuana use among blacks and whites remains constant, black people are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than their white peers. According to the Department of Justice, African Americans account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. Again, clearly disproportionate. Now these statistics show that today America is still a racist society. If you are black you are more likely to have trouble finding housing and getting a job. You are more likely to be pulled over, searched, arrested, incarcerated and shot. But what about the fact that crime rates are in fact disproportionately higher in black urban areas? Poverty affects black citizens disproportionately. In 2008, the Bureau of Justice found that 34 percent of black children were living in poverty while only 10 percent of white children shared the same conditions. Blacks are more likely to live in what are called high-poverty census track neighborhoods. This means neighborhoods where most people are poor. Living in a very poor
it is incredibly difficult to achieve any upward mobility and ascend out of poverty and crime. Combine that with the higher incarceration and high stop-and-frisk rates, you have a recipe for high crime rates among a minority group. To underscore that, black and white crime rates in middle and upper class neighborhoods remain the same. This was no accident. During the Jim Crow era America was systematically set up to segregate black people to ghettos in which they were not given proper access to education, health care and food. When you think about racism in America, it is important to remember that our society was fundamentally constructed out of slavery and then segregation. Yes we, as society, agree that racism is bad today but that does not mean that the systematic issues which have plagued our country since its inception have somehow been eradicated. If you are white and reading this, I urge you to consider these facts. Saying that you have white privilege does not mean that you are somehow a bad person or have led an easy life; it simply means that these statistics don’t apply to you. You do not have to worry about being discriminated against based on your race from employers, realtors, police and justices. It means that you have not had to contend with the systematic oppression of your race throughout your lifetime. Christin Howard is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at christinhowa@umass.edu.
Emilia Beuger is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at ebeuger@umass.edu.
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The Massachusetts Daily Collegian is published Monday through Thursday during the University of Massachusetts calendar semester. The Collegian is independently funded, operating on advertising revenue. Founded in 1890, the paper began as Aggie Life, became the College Signal in 1901, the Weekly Collegian in 1914 and the Tri–Weekly Collegian in 1956. Published daily from 1967 to 2014, The Collegian has been broadsheet since January 1994. For advertising rates and information, call 413-545-3500.
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Arts Living THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
“The beating I’m about to put on him is going to be indescribable.” - Zakk Wylde
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ALBUM REVIEW
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds deliver a stunning elegy By Jackson Maxwell Collegian Staff
Though the majority of the songs on Nick Cave’s sixteenth album with the Bad Seeds, “Skeleton Tree” (released Sept. 9) were written in and around 2014, they are completely enshrouded by the aftershocks of an event that took place the following year. In July 2015, while the initial sessions for “Skeleton Tree” were coming to a close, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur fell from a cliff to his death near his family’s home in Brighton, England. Perhaps unsur prisingly—considering Cave’s history of crafting impersonal, but deeply affecting allegorical tales steeped in gothic imagery—no lyrics on “Skeleton Tree” directly reference Arthur Cave’s passing. And yet, the lack of direct connections at hand for the listener only serves to heighten the album’s power. Stricken equally by overwhelming grief and a desperate need to stay resilient, Cave paints the brutally spare, grey walls of music around him with some of the most dazzling
wordplay of his 35-year career. Immersing yourself in it is a genuinely difficult and heartbreaking experience, but one that is also profoundly moving. Though Cave studiously avoids injecting personal, specific details, he seems to get the inevitable out of the way with the album’s very first line. Over buzzing guitars that have almost been stripped of their musicality, Cave opens “Jesus Alone” by deadpanning “You fell from the sky and crashlanded in a field near the river Adur.” With that devastating scene set, the chorus—comprised solely of “with my voice/I am calling you”— hits incredibly hard, and sets the uncompromising tone the remainder of the album diligently follows. “Magneto” throbs anxiously, with muted guitars, distant feedback and mournful piano chords that accent the song rather than drive it. Cave numbly intones “mostly I never knew which was out,” as he tries to quell his devastation. Soon though, he comes clean to the listener, admitting, “Oh, the urge to kill somebody was
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‘Skeleton Tree’ is a passionate work of love, grief and resilience. basically overwhelming/I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket cues.” The song is “Skeleton Tree”’s deepest valley, with Cave entirely disregarding the idea of melody, instead letting the brutal realities of grief dance off his tongue in mesmerizing cadences. “In love, in love, you laugh,” he sings in one chorus, declaring “In love, in love, I love, you love, I laugh, you love” on another. Sounding dazed and overwhelmed, Cave is forced to look inward for what love means for him at the most basic level.
ALBUM REVIEW
He examines the same subject, with equally intense focus, on the soul-baring “I Need You.” “Nothing really matters, nothing really matters when the one you love is gone,” he tells us with disarming urgency. Turning in his best, and most searing, vocal performance on “Skeleton Tree,” Cave returns repeatedly to this simple concept that drives the song in the chorus, twisting the words “I need you” in almost grotesquely beautiful ways. “Rings of Saturn” brings to mind the best of The National, a band Cave has left a clear stamp
on. Surrounded by the only thing approaching an upbeat instrumental on the entire album, Cave loses himself. Declaring “And I’m breathing deep and I’m there and I’m also not there/And spurting ink over the sheets but she remains, completely unexplained/Or maybe I’m just too tongue-tied to drink it up and swallow back the pain,” Cave lets his frayed words loose in a tidal wave. “Rings of Saturn” is all the more remarkable in the moments it focuses on Cave’s wife. “And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be/And this is what she does and this is what she is,” says Cave in the chorus, punctuating each word with immeasurable reverence and adoration for someone he has come to heavily depend on. Having exhaustively combed over himself in every way on the previous seven tracks, Cave masterfully closes the doors he so hesitantly opened to the listener on the album’s last and title track. Led by a mournful synth and steady, hushed percussion, “Skeleton Tree” feels like a gospel song.
The world it inhabits is a desolate place, defined by “fallen leaves, thrown across the sky” and a “jittery TV/glowing white like fire.” Cave ruminates on two conclusions, the first being that “nothing is for free.” The second, repeated as the album’s final line, is the album’s most powerful conclusion. After opening the album with the origin of his discombobulated state (“You fell from the sky and crashlanded in a field near the river Adur,”) Cave’s final lyric on “Skeleton Tree”— echoed by a choir—is “and it’s alright now.” “Skeleton Tree” is an album that requires full commitment. Its world—in a reflection of the state of the dynamic artist who created it—is a broken one that listeners have to piece together for themselves. The full picture, though, is a truly extraordinary album: a tour de force of grief, love and resilience with few parallels in the annals of popular music. Jackson Maxwell can be reached at jlmaxwell@umass.edu, and followed on Twitter at @JMaxwell82.
COLUMN
Angel Olsen’s stirring vision Underground spotlight: from ‘My Woman’ is a Daniel Lanois to Ian Sweet dark, twisty triumph These new LPs are worth your time
By Jackson Maxwell Collegian Staff
There is something unshakeably familiar about the synthesizer that hums behind “Intern,” the opener of Angel Olsen’s new album, “My Woman.” Its movements sound excitable and welcoming, like the background music of an advertisement directed at tourists or prospective students. Over its pulse, one can picture bustling streets, plenty of smiling faces and bountiful green space, ending with a message imploring you to come see it all for yourself. Of course, even a cursory look below the shimmering surface of “Intern” will actually reveal that the creator of this seemingly idyllic environment wants nothing but to leave it. “I am going to fall in love with you some day/I’m gonna fall in love and run away,” Olsen sings, injecting lifetimes of wanderlust into every note and equal amounts of disconcerting sunniness into the song’s plastic, synthdriven background. “My Woman,” released Sept. 2, lives off of this dichotomy. The music that churns restlessly behind Olsen’s raw songwriting is a misleading frame, painting rose-colored pictures that Olsen never fails to disrupt. Olsen calls Asheville, N.C.—long a crossroads of rock, folk and country–home, and it shows. While the music constantly dips into the inherent warmth of these genres, Olsen openly flouts their boundaries in her words, almost all of which hit like a train. Musically, “Heart Shaped Face” is a wonderful dash of soul. Like the best of its contemporaries in the genre, each instrument seems to have a perfect sense of time, keeping their statements brief and to the point, before ceding the spotlight back to their
By Alexander Beebe Collegian Staff
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On ‘My Woman,’ Angel Olsen remakes established genres in her own image. conductor. For Olsen herself, “Heart Shaped Face” is the portrait of a disintegrating relationship, a slow-to-develop storm delivered with awe-inspiring tranquility. “I’ve seen you, changing,” she repeats to open the track, before immediately questioning the song’s subject. “Was it me you were thinking of ?/All the time when you thought of me,” “Was it a feeling you thought I could dig up or erase?” she coolly demands. Before the song’s subject can reclaim lost ground, Olsen ends the interaction with a sweetly delivered, but absolutely brutal kiss-off. “Have whatever love you wanna have/But I can’t be here anymore.” On “Shut Up Kiss Me,” Olsen is just as blunt and convincing. Over the most bonesimple of countrified garagepunk backing tracks, she turns in perhaps the most convincing revival of glam rock in this millennium. The chorus, anchored on Olsen’s spewing of “shut up, kiss me hold me tight,” virtually makes the versesrrelevant. Just as impactful, though, are the times when Olsen seems to lose that effortless cool, her self-assuredness in shattering the listener’s first conceptions of her and the environments that she builds. Olsen cloaks “Those Were the Days” in memories, oscillating uncertainly between nostalgia and regret. The
blissful guitars, drenched in reverb, make the song feel like a dream, whereas Olsen’s painfully vivid self-doubt keeps it anchored in reality. Olsen opens the track with the question “Do you remember the way that it used to be?”, morosely grasping at the straws of a place, time and feeling that are increasingly fading from her memory. She soon proves to be a bit of an unreliable narrator though, cooing “See how you’re laughing with those you don’t know as well/I hear you saying I’m the one but I wish I could tell.” Though the resigned waltz playing behind her suggests a perfect memory and a blackand-white divide between the highs and lows of the relationship, the listener is left with those words with the same uneasiness Olsen is writing about. “My Woman,” and Olsen herself, are remarkable in that way. She takes great pains to build immersive, comfortable worlds for the listener and then takes equal pains to distort and cloud them. In a time when Americana has become tired as a genre, Olsen takes its elements and remakes its sound in her own remarkable image. Jackson Maxwell can be reached at jlmaxwell@umass.edu, and followed on Twitter at @JMaxwell82.
a Los Angeles-based rapper who has developed his own method of making conscious hip-hop appealing in the current rap landscape. The MC’s latest offering “Prey for the Devil” is densely packed with heavy political subject matter, but Bambu manages to lighten the mood by opting for a playfully boastful and rhythmic flow rather than the intensity of his contemporaries. Furthermore, Bambu’s effortless delivery over both jazzy boom bap beats and trap-flavored bangers gives the album a nice balance of vintage and modern vibes.
So much music is readily available now that it’s just as easy to miss out on new music as it is to discover it. This regular series aims to help remedy that by recommending five superb releases in hip hop, metal, punk, indie and the avant-garde that likely flew under the radar of many. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of music the internet allows access to or simply looking for Daniel Lanois: something new that has “Goodbye to not been buzzed about, Language” allow these lists to make choosing what to listen to Although the solo work an easier process. of Daniel Lanois has Diploid : “Is God Up focused on his talents in the acoustic and rootsy There?” as a singer/songwriter, Out of seemingly his production endeavors nowhere, up-and-coming have always revealed a Australian hardcore outfit strong interest in ambiDiploid has released one ent soundscapes. With of the most adventurous his latest experiment, and genre-bending albums “Goodbye to Language,” this year. While “Is God Lanois has found a way to Up There?” may be a punk merge these two once-disrecord at its core, the dis- parate eras of his career torted and caustic guitars into something wholly take after black metal and unique and original. The post-hardcore, the vocals album is a collection of are influenced by screamo, euphoric ambient pieces and the manic pacing is made completely with lap more similar to grindcore steel guitars. Lush, medithan anything else. A furi- tative, and expansive, ous ball of chaos raging these songs bring to mind under thick lo-fi produc- post-rock with an added tion, “Is God Up There?” Southern twang, or pershows that DIY music can haps the score to a psychestill produce fresh and cre- delic Western. If one were ative ideas in 2016. to coin a term, this might Bambu: “Prey for the just be the first ever ‘country drone’ album. Devil”
perfect example of how greater numbers lead to a greater array of influences. While previous releases have shown a lack of focus, “Obnoxious” finds the band sounding more driven while still remaining as inspired as ever. Colosso has now committed to being a ruthless and savage death metal band. Each riff produces a deafening crunch that could shatter concrete, and even with all of these searing rhythms the band still finds surprising ways to experiment, such as the completely out of left field ambient techno song “Seven Space Collisions.”
Ian Sweet: “Shapeshifter”
On the rise from Los Angeles, Ian Sweet’s debut record “Shapeshifter” establishes the trio as a group to watch in the indie pop scene. Though it shares many elements in common with a glut of indie rock bands such as fuzzy production, garage aesthetic and squeaky vocals of, in their case, f ro n t wo m a n Jillian Medford, these aspects are presented in a way that is unlike any band of their ilk. These tracks take the style of cutesy jangle pop and slow it down to the pace of slowcore and shoegaze; even incorporating some noisy crescendos for good measure. Combine that with the aching nostalgia and melancholic introspection of Midwest Colosso: “Obnoxious” emo and the resulting Political hip-hop is a waning sub-genre now- Starting out as a one- sound is intoxicatingly adays due in part to its man band, Colosso has washed out and sunbaked, overt seriousness, under- grown into a five-piece like old summer polaroids. standably grim tone and metal act over the years. loyalty to golden age-style The band’s sophomore Alexander Beebe can be reached at production. Enter Bambu, album, “Obnoxious,” is a asbeebe@umass.edu.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2016
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HOROSCOPES Jan. 20 - Feb. 18
When things get hectic, just take a deep breath, step back, slide to the left, and cha-cha real smooth.
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I wish we could go back to the days when teachers would reward us with stickers instead of points.
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Even if your not the main character in the story, there’s always a position for comic relief.
Everytime I pass by the Amazon Center, I’m so tempted to make a fort out of all of those discarded boxes.
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Legend says that if you visit the FAC late at night, you can still hear the groans of music majors practicing until 3 am.
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DEFENSE
SOCCER
continued from page 8
toes throughout the contest, launching 13 shots in his direction. Becerra made three saves: two in the first half and one in the second. “For the most part we gave up two silly goals but we defended vigorously,” O’Leary said. “It’s a funny game, you can defend well for 89 minutes but if you have one lapse, these things happen. Overall I was very pleased with our team.” The Minutemen held Albany (2-2-1). UMass went into halftime with a 1-0 lead, but saw it van-
ish in the 62nd minute when Afonso Pinheiro was able to dodge a charging Becerra away from the net to narrowly slip it by him and put the ball in the back of the net. Albany had multiple chances in the second half to take the lead, but could not buy a goal. O’Leary hopes his team can cut out “silly mental mistakes” and continue to show improvement going forward. He has a young group that he hopes will learn and move on from this and hopes the team
can continue playing the way they did today. “We have to keep working on defending the box on our set pieces but overall—to man to goalkeeper to forwards—I thought it was a courageous performance against a very talented team,” he said. “We’ll take a day off, dust ourselves off and get ready for the next one.” UMass will return to action Saturday as Brown visits Rudd Field at 4 p.m. Thomas Johnston can be reached at tjohnston@umass.edu.
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Midfielder and captain Tyler Goncalves evades defenders in Tuesday afternoon’s 2-1 defeat to the Great Danes.
NCAA
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championships. And why? Over partisan politics, a silly law that doesn’t even have any enforcement provisions and serves only to sanction government discrimination against the LGBT community. Meanwhile, the ACC continues to be curiously passive, sticking to its wait-and-see approach with its own events in North Carolina. The ACC should have followed the NBA’s lead in June instead of waiting for its fall meetings next month. Now, in the wake of the NCAA’s action, it looks craven, more concerned about ruffling political feathers in its home state than pro-
tecting the rights of its athletes and students of its member schools. There are a lot of things the NCAA gets wrong. There’s no reason why Olympic medalists should be allowed to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in medal bonuses when a Charleston Southern football player gets suspended for spending his excess book money on school supplies in the school bookstore. It clings to “the amateur ideal” as a billion-dollar business. Its enforcement of its own complex, arcane rules is arbitrary and erratic (arguably, the only thing left about the NCAA that’s truly amateur). And so on.
Once in a while, though, it uses its considerable muscle for good. It took a stand against the Confederate flag in South Carolina and Mississippi. It took a stand against Indiana’s anti-LGBT law, getting it amended in days ahead of the 2014 Final Four. And it is taking a stand here, on behalf of its LGBT athletes, fans and anyone else who might feel unwelcome in North Carolina because of HB2. It used to be basketball and barbecue were the two areas where North Carolinians shared common ground regardless of politics. Now we’re down to barbecue.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
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push downfield, the game was over. It was a brutal loss for O’Leary’s club, who are still looking for their first victory of 2016. Their effort Tuesday was the best to this point, but there is much work to be done. “We defended well on
FOOTBALL Young knows his early results haven’t been what he or the team was hoping for, but he isn’t going to put too much stock into those struggles. “Of course you get frustrated, but it’s part of the game,” Young said. “I’m just trying to stay patient. I keep telling the offensive line that eventually one of those holes is going to open up.” All blame can’t be placed on Young for his slow start, as his offensive line hasn’t done him much favors. Last Saturday against the Eagles, UMass allowed eight sacks and struggled to contain the Boston College defenders from swarming the box and wrapping up Young before he even had room to make a move. Redshirt senior Michael Boland is no stranger to the pressure of being on the offensive line, starting at guard every game for the past two seasons. He knows his unit has to step up their game to aid the rest of the offense. “The offensive line gets
set pieces except for the last one, and that was the one that counted,” said O’Leary. “There’s no need to change things up, I thought the performance was very good. Overall, from the goalkeeper to the forwards, I thought it was a very brave, courageous performance against a
very talented team.” “For the most part, we defended vigorously,” he added. “It’s a funny game if you can defend well for 89 minutes, but if you have a wee lapse, these things happen.” Henry Brechter can be reached at hbrechter@umass.edu.
continued from page 8
the offense going,” Boland said. “We need to establish our will early with the run game and the pass game and take the will out of the defensive line and the linebacker’s blitzing. They ultimately won’t blitz anymore if we make them pay.” Luckily for the Minutemen, they may have already seen the two best run defenses they will see all year. This week, UMass hopes to see better results on the ground and the Minutemen’s next opponent might have come at the perfect time. UMass gets ready to take on Florida International (0-2) this Saturday at McGuirk Stadium. The Golden Panthers started off their season with two matchups against Big Ten opponents, Indiana and Maryland, losing both games by more than 20 points. FIU comes into the game with one of the worst ranking run defenses in the country, allowing 242.5 yards per game on the ground, good for 15th worst
in the nation. If the Minutemen are looking to break out in the rushing game, this may be their week to do so. “We’re just sticking to our game plan,” Young said, keeping the focus on how his team is preparing. “We’ve been one person away or one play away, so everyone’s just trying to do their job and hopefully we’ll have success running the ball.” With both teams coming at 0-2, the stakes of Saturday’s matchup will be high as UMass and the Golden Panthers look to right the ship of their season. “One of us has to come out hungrier than the other team,” Young said. “We don’t want to sleep on any teams. We want to come out and prepare like we prepared for Florida.” Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. Saturday at McGuirk Stadium. Adam Aucoin can be reached at aaucoin@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @aaucoin34.
JUDITH GIBSON-OKUNIEFF/COLLEGIAN
Marquis Young hopes he and the UMass offensive line can produce agaisnt Florida International Saturday.
MLB
Pomeranz, Boston fall to O’s Baltimore bests Sox at Fenway Park, 6-3 By Edwardo A. Encina The Baltimore Sun
BOSTON – As Dylan Bundy’s pitch counts have escalated, so too have his walk totals, which has made for some unsteady sailing for the Orioles rookie righthander over the past month. But in a game the Orioles needed to win to remain afloat in the division race, Bundy battled through early command issues to keep baseball’s best batting order at bay in a 6-3 win over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. With the win, the Orioles (79-65) pick up ground on
both teams ahead of them in the AL East standings, moving into a tie for second with the Toronto Blue Jays and two games back of the division-leading Red Sox with 18 games left in the regular season. The Orioles also took a two-game lead over the Detroit Tigers for the second AL wild-card spot. The Orioles offense staked Bundy to a big early lead with a five-run second inning against Red Sox lefthander Drew Pomeranz. The big blow of the inning was shortstop J.J. Hardy’s three-run homer over the Green Monster on a fullcount fastball over the outer half of the plate. Hardy reached base three times, adding two walks, and is
hitting .306 (11-for-36) in 11 September games. With three homers, the Orioles increased their major league-leading home run total to 231. Nolan Reimold followed Hardy with a two-run blast in the second and Jonathan Schoop, who had three hits, opened the ninth with a solo homer over the Green Monster that provided added cushion. Bundy labored through a 33-pitch second inning, uncharacteristically issuing a pair of one-out, bases loaded walks to No. 9 hitter Ryan Hanigan and leadoff man Dustin Pedroia. He was able to avoid further damage by striking out Xander Bogaerts and inducing an inning-ending groundout
from David Ortiz. The 23-year-old then seemed to find his groove, despite a high pitch count. Over one stretch, he retired eight of nine batters before allowing a leadoff homer to Bogaerts to open the fifth. Bundy (9-5) left a man on and exited the game two outs shy of a quality start. Reliever Tommy Hunter came in and induced an inning-ending double-play ball from Hanigan. Bundy issued four walks, and has walked 17 batters over his last five starts (he walked just six over his first five starts). The Orioles stranded eight baserunners, including three in the eighth when Adam Jones struck out with BETHTENSER/FLICKR the bases loaded. J.J. Hardy hit a three-run home run against the Red Sox Tuesday night at Fenway.
THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Sports@DailyCollegian.com
@MDC_SPORTS
MEN’S SOCCER
HEARTBREAKING FINISH
UMass defense can’t stop Albany Minutemen hold UA till last moment Thomas Johnston Collegian Staff
SAM ANDERSON/COLLEGIAN
The Minutemen and Great Danes were locked in a 1-1 tie in the 90th minute before Carlos Clarke netted the game winning goal with 23 seconds to play.
UMass bested by 90th minute corner By Henry Brechter Collegian Staff
Sixty-five minutes into the men’s soccer game on Tuesday afternoon at Rudd Field, it looked like the University of Massachusetts may secure its first victory, leading 1-0 in a highly competitive affair. Twenty-five minutes later, it was heartbreak once again. The Minutemen (0-5-1) struggled defensively down the stretch and made crucial mental mistakes, surrendering two late goals to Albany and falling 2-1. The gamewinner, scored by Albany sophomore Carlos Clarke, came with just 30 seconds left to play. “It’s disappointing, but
we’ll just dust ourselves off and we’ll go again,” said coach Fran O’Leary postgame. “I thought we played very well today, playing the American East Conference preseason favorites. They’re chock full of experienced international players. We’ve given as good as we got throughout the course of the game, we failed to defend our box, and it cost us the game.” In the first half, UMass controlled the game. Though Albany was winning the possession battle, the Minutemen were quick to react on offensive chances, while stifling Great Dane (2-2-1) opportunities. Fifteen minutes in, midfielder and captain Ty Goncalves fired a shot from 30 yards out. The goalie leaped, tipping it over his head and into the back of the net. UMass took the lead on what would be its only
registered shot on goal of the game. Albany had its chances in the first half, but the Minutemen defense stood strong. Two saves by goalkeeper Jorge Becerra and solid place kick defense kept the Great Danes off the board. The Minutemen had arguably played their best soccer of the season in the first half. The second half was a different story. After a few near misses at the start of the final 45 minutes, Albany got on the board when junior forward Afonso Pinheiro scored on a breakaway. It was Pinheiro’s third goal in five games, and marked a large momentum shift in the game. UMass had two chances in the 69th and 70th minute, but could not convert. A free-kick from junior forward Alex Desantis sailed
over the net, as did a sliding shot from freshman forward Andrew Barrowman moments later. Barrowman’s shot was the last real chance for the Minutemen to score in the game. Tough defense followed, and each team exchanged several possessions before Albany was awarded its fifth corner kick in the 89th diminute. It appeared UMass had it defended well, but the referees called a handball, and a re-kick was ordered. The Great Danes finally converted on their sixth corner of the game. After the initial kick, the ball was deflected out to the right side of the box. Albany junior defender Moosah Khanat crossed it for Carlos Clark, who finished the job. The ball beat Becerra to his left, and after one last UMass see
SOCCER on page 7
With just under 30 seconds to play in a tightly contested 1-1 game, it looked certain the University of Massachusetts men’s soccer team was headed to overtime. Carlos Clark and the Albany Great Danes had different plans. He scored a header off a corner kick to derail a Minutemen (0-5-1) upset. UMass head coach Fran O’Leary went into the game knowing the Minutemen needed to defend set pieces well in order to emerge victorious. The team was able to stop the first four corner kicks with ease, and blocked a free kick from around 25 yards out that was sent directly into the wall of UMass defenders. All the improvement will be overlooked by the final goal, though. O’Leary knows his team must continue focusing on defending against free kicks going forward. “We defended well on set pieces except for the last one and that was the one that counted,” O’Leary said
after the game. “We failed to defend our box, and it cost us the game.” O’Leary was proud of the way his team competed throughout the contest, and the way they defended free kicks early in the game. “I thought we played very well today,” he said. “(Albany’s) chalk-full of experienced international players so we gave it as good as we had throughout the game.” Sophomore defenseman Konrad Gorich said the team defended free kicks through yesterday’s practice and was disappointed with the results. He knows his team will continue to try and improve in this area by working on it in practice and will only get better going forward. “We stayed focused on good shots and making good corners and I think we did that well and we will keep working on that,” Gorich said. While the set piece was what lost the Minutemen the game, the defense was stout throughout, holding strong against a fierce Albany attack. The Great Danes kept UMass goaltender Jorge Becerra on his see
DEFENSE on page 7
SAM ANDERSON/COLLEGIAN
The Minutemen led Albany 1-0 before allowing two unanswered goals.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
FOOTBALL
Minutemen searching NCAA moves basketball for quick rushing attack champioships from N.C. Legislation forces move from NCAA
Young looks to run over FIU Saturday By Adam Aucoin
By Luke DeCock The News & Observer
Coming into the 2016 season, the rushing attack was supposed to provide a major spark for the University of Massachusetts football team. UMass (0-2) had just lost two of its biggest offensive threats in former quarterback Blake Frohnapfel and former wide receiver Tajae Sharpe and the Minutemen’s stable of running backs was supposed to carry a major load going into the new season. Two weeks into the season, it appears they have failed to live up to expectations. UMass ranks dead last—128 in the country— in total rushing yards this season, with only 23 yards as a team. Only two other teams, Oregon State (89) and Kansas State (92), have less than 100 yards rushing thus far. The Minutemen’s
If Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina legislators who have failed to repeal or otherwise fix House Bill 2 didn’t see this one coming, they just weren’t paying attention. The NCAA made it explicitly clear at the Final Four that if there weren’t changes to HB2, the state was at risk of losing NCAA events, including the basketball tournament. Less than six months later, the NCAA showed just how serious it was. Instead of skipping North Carolina in the next bid cycle, the NCAA pulled events from the state immediately _ including the beloved first and second rounds of the men’s basketball tournament in Greensboro, N.C. in March. McCrory and the legislators were warned. They chose a narrow-minded
Collegian Staff
CHRISTINA YACONO/COLLEGIAN
UMass starting RB Marquis Young has rushed for just 86 yards through two games. first two opponents, Florida and Boston College, are known for having stout run defenses, but UMass head coach Mark Whipple will be the first to tell you his team needs to be better on the ground. “We just haven’t gotten pop,” Whipple said after practice Tuesday. “We just haven’t gotten Marquis [Young] free. It works together.” Marquis Young has epitomized the Minutemen’s
struggles in the rushing game early in the 2016 season. Young finished last season with a bang when he rushed for 240 yards against Buffalo in the season finale. This season, the sophomore has failed to duplicate that success. Through two games, Young has rushed for just 86 yards and his biggest asset, his speed, has been kept in check with his longest run being just eight yards. see
FOOTBALL on page 7
bathroom bill over basketball (among other, more important principles). The NCAA never blinked. It wasn’t waiting for the election in November. It had enough of this nonsense right now. Having already lost the 2017 NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte because of HB2, North Carolina took it in the basketball solar-plexus again, and in doing so, deprived Duke and North Carolina of a pretty good chance to start the tournament close to home, in front of their fans (and where the Tar Heels are 33-1 in the tournament). Not only is the damage immediate, in terms of opportunities lost and dollars unspent within these borders, but it has the potential to linger. Events for 2017-18, including the first and second rounds of men’s basketball on Charlotte, are probably safe until this time next year. But the NCAA is also in the middle of a bid cycle for events running from 2019-22. If it’s willing to pull events from North Carolina with less than
three months of warning, there’s no chance it’s giving out any new ones. The NCAA was supposed to announce those sites in December. It announced Monday night it would push that deadline back indefinitely, presumably to give North Carolina a chance to get its act together. But the danger is there: If HB2 is still on the books when the NCAA decides on those bids, basketball, and everything else, is going to be shut out for four years. And once that decision comes down, repealing HB2 won’t change anything until 2023. Cary was particularly hurt by this, losing four important events. It had tried for a long time to host the Division I women’s lacrosse championship. Gone. It had hosted the Division II baseball tournament since 2009 to rave reviews. Gone. Also gone are the women’s soccer College Cup, back in Cary for what would have been the eighth time, and the Division III men’s and women’s tennis
see
NCAA on page 7