World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the raging conflict in North Kivu makes the Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo more dangerous than the historic 2014-2015 epidemic in West Africa.  More than 11,000 people died from the Ebola virus by the time it was contained in 2016. 

WHO Director-General Tedros returned Sunday from a visit to Beni and Mangina, the epicenters of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.  He says he was worried before he went on this mission, but he is more worried now after having observed first-hand the dangers and difficulties posed by the active conflict in North Kivu.

He says more than 100 armed groups operate in the region.  He says there have been 120 violent incidents this year involving killings, kidnappings, rapes and other atrocities.

“That environment is really conducive for Ebola actually to transmit freely because in that area there are places called Red Zones, inaccessible areas because there are many armed groups that operate in that region … And, these Red Zones could be hiding places for Ebola,” said Tedros.

Tedros is calling on the warring parties for a cessation of hostilities, warning this extremely contagious virus is dangerous for everyone.  Despite the many concerns, he says WHO and partners are moving ahead aggressively with the operation to contain this deadly virus.  

He says more than 216 health workers and 20 people from the community have been vaccinated against Ebola.  He says more vaccinators have been deployed from Guinea to speed this process along, and DRC authorities have given the greenlight for the use of several experimental Ebola drugs.

Tedros says health workers have begun working on case identification and contact tracing, as well as community outreach and educational programs.  He says WHO is working with countries neighboring DRC, and is helping Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan strengthen their surveillance and screening programs to try to prevent the deadly Ebola virus from crossing their borders.  

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Forty-one people have died in the latest outbreak of Ebola in DRC, health authorities said on Tuesday, adding that doctors were using a novel drug to treat patients.

Out of 57 recorded cases as of Monday, 41 were fatal, the Congolese Health Ministry and UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said. Fourteen of the deaths had been confirmed by lab tests, the ministry said.

Last Friday, the ministry put the tally at 37 deaths, either confirmed or suspected.

The outbreak is the country’s 10th since 1976, when the disease was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) near the Ebola River, a tributary of the Congo.

Its epicenter is Mangina in the region of Beni, in the strife-torn eastern province of North Kivu.

For the first time since the outbreak was announced on August 1, one fatality was recorded outside of North Kivu — in the neighboring province of Ituri, the ministry’s directorate for disease control said.

It added that doctors in Beni had started to use a novel treatment called mAb114 to treat patients with Ebola.

The treatment is “the first therapeutic drug against the virus to be used in an active Ebola epidemic in the DRC,” it said.

Developed in the United States, the prototype drug is a so-called single monoclonal antibody — a protein that binds on to a specific target of the virus and triggers the body’s immune system to destroy the invader.

The antibody was isolated from a survivor of an Ebola outbreak in the western DRC city of Kikwit in 1995, it said.

In May, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said it was carrying out the first human trials of mAb114 to test it for safety and tolerance.

Fighting could hamper treatment

Use of the experimental treatment in the field comes on the heels of deployment of an unlicensed vaccine in an earlier outbreak of Ebola in the DRC this year.

The decision to use the vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV, came after trials during a pandemic in West Africa showed it to be safe and effective, the WHO says.

Immunization with rVSV-ZEBOV was given to front-line health workers to provide them with additional protection — a tactic that has been repeated in the latest outbreak.

Ebola causes serious illness including vomiting, diarrhea and in some cases internal and external bleeding. It is often fatal if untreated.

The WHO has expressed concern that the violence in North Kivu — entailing militias who often fight for control of resources, including a notorious Ugandan rebel force called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — could hamper the fight against the new outbreak.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visiting the area, on Sunday called for “free and secure access” for health workers, the agency said in a statement.

The outbreak in North Kivu was declared a week after WHO and the Kinshasa government hailed the end of a flareup in northwestern Equateur province which killed 33 people.

In the worst Ebola epidemic, the disease struck the West African states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2013-15, killing more than 11,300 people.

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Constance Wu had resigned herself to the fact that “Crazy Rich Asians” was not going to work out for her. She was under contract for her sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” both were filming in the fall, and that was that. “Crazy Rich Asians” would be the first studio-made Asian-American movie in 25 years, and Wu, who has established herself as a crusader for Asian-American representation in Hollywood, would have to sit this historic moment out.

But then, feeling “kind of dramatic,” and thinking about the significance of the project to her and untold number of Asian-Americans who make it a point to tell her their stories because of her tweets and “Fresh Off the Boat,” Wu decided to give it one last shot and composed an email to “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu.

“I said, I know the dates don’t work out and whoever you cast, I will be the first in line and I will be their No. 1 fan and supporter, but I did want to let you know that I would put 110 percent of my heart into this project and I know what to do with it and how to carry a movie and if you can just wait for me, I don’t think you’ll regret it,” Wu, 36, said. “I did NOT think this email would work. I did it more for me so that I felt that I had told my truth. But then he read it and said, “You guys, we’ve got to push the production.”

Sitting in a restaurant at the Beverly Wilshire, a hotel famous for co-starring in another “Cinderella” story, “Pretty Woman,” and sipping on a “cocktail” of grapefruit juice and sparkling water, Wu is describing how “Crazy Rich Asians,” out nationwide Wednesday is also a kind of “Cinderella” story. Based the first book in author Kevin Kwan’s popular trilogy, Wu’s character Rachel Chu is a middle-class economics professor from the U.S. who finds herself navigating the upper echelons of Singapore’s wealthy classes when her boyfriend Nick Young takes her home for a wedding and to meet his disapproving family and all the jealous women also vying for the attention of the “prince.”

“It’s a fairy tale, it really is,” Wu said. “And there are a lot of different shoes in the movie!”

A native of Richmond, Virginia, and a classically-trained theater actress with a passion for musicals, Wu has been working toward a moment like this her whole life, and taking it very seriously. During the shoot, she wouldn’t go out with her co-stars for karaoke nights or have a drink after a long day of work. She wanted to be clear of mind and she’d already promised her director that she was going to give it her all.

She knew how unlikely it was that she’d ever get an opportunity as an Asian-American woman to lead a studio movie.

“Even a terrific actress like Sandra Oh was always No. 2 or No. 3 in the movie, she was never No. 1 unless it was an independent movie,” said Wu, who is not shy about saying that she only wants to go out for roles where she is the No. 1 star. It’s a drive that has made some uncomfortable.

“People are like, ‘Who do you think you are?’ And it’s like, I guess I think I’m a talented actor and I guess I’m not a person who is going to let you make me feel small anymore,” she said.

But Wu isn’t interested in making people feel comfortable at the expense of her truth, which is why at least part of her time is spent amplifying underrepresented voices on twitter, even knowing that it’s affected her employment opportunities.

Wu once heard that a friend’s liberal boyfriend said he didn’t like Wu’s politics.

“I’m like, ‘Does he not like my politics or does he not like that I have politics?’ And she asked him and he was like, “Oh I guess it’s that,’” Wu said.

Fame, she said, is silly in that regard. She thinks it’s “dumb” that she has a bigger voice than other people, like journalists or academics who are more studied in discourse on race and intersectionality. But, she also realized that while she has this platform, she can at least do some good with it.

Henry Golding, who plays Nick, is in awe of Wu’s fortitude.

“She’s such a role model for so many people. She has a backbone, which a lot of people don’t. She’s not afraid of saying what’s on her mind and really driving home what she thinks should be done, or what’s not happening in the industry that should be happening,” said Golding. “She’s going to go down as a real fighter and someone who can act the socks off anything. She is Rachel Chu.”

As for what’s next, Wu said she thinks she’s going to have a lot of choices in the coming years.

“I’m very privileged and lucky and I’m at a point where I can sort of get to decide where I want to go with my career,” Wu said.

And first up on her wish-list? A musical.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Tesla’s handling of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s proposal to take the carmaker private and its failure to promptly file a formal disclosure has raised governance concerns and sparked questions about how companies use social media.

Musk stunned investors last Tuesday by announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private in a potential $72 billion transaction and that “funding” had been “secured.”

Tesla’s shares closed up 11 percent before retrenching after the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had asked Tesla why Musk announced his plans on Twitter and whether his statement was truthful.

Musk provided no details of his funding until Monday, when he said in a blog on Tesla’s website that he was in discussions with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other potential backers but that financing was not yet nailed down.

Musk said his tweet and blogs were issued in his personal capacity as a private bidder for Tesla’s stock. A Tesla spokesman pointed Reuters to Musk’s blog in response to a request for comment.

Putting aside whether Musk misled anyone, the unorthodox manner in which he announced the news and Tesla’s failure to promptly clarify the situation with a regulatory filing is a corporate governance lapse that raises questions about how companies use social media to release market-moving news, securities lawyers said.

“Management buyouts or other take-private transactions already suffer from serious information asymmetry between management and public shareholders,” said Gabriel Rauterberg, a University of Michigan law professor.

SEC rules typically require companies to file an 8-K form within four business days of a significant corporate event.

While several securities lawyers said Musk’s tweets alone did not trigger this obligation, such a filing would be prudent given the unusual circumstances, David Axelrod, a partner at law firm Ballard Spahr LLP, said.

“An 8-K would provide some more details, it would say what stage negotiations are in, and provide more information than 53 characters in a tweet,” he added.

Full and fair disclosure

SEC guidelines published in 2013 allow companies and their executives to use social media to distribute material information, provided investors have been alerted that this is a possibility. Tesla did this in a 2013 filing.

But such disclosures have to be full and fair, meaning the information is complete and accessible by all investors at the same time, a bar that Musk’s tweets may not have met.

“Twitter is not designed to provide full and fair disclosure. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t, but in a series of 20 to 30 characters I’m not sure you’re getting full disclosure,” said Zachary Fallon, a former SEC attorney and principal at law firm Blakemore Fallon.

The SEC declined to comment Monday.

Securities lawyers said there was also a question mark over whether Musk selectively disclosed information on the possible terms of the deal when he subsequently replied to followers, two of whom claim in their handles to be investors.

Those tweets were not immediately visible to all followers of Musk’s main feed until he retweeted them.

History of Twitter use

The 47-year-old billionaire’s history of joking about Tesla and using twitter to bait his critics also appears to have undermined trust in Musk’s feed as a reliable source of company information, with many investors initially believing Tuesday’s tweet was a prank.

In his blog, Musk said he made the announcement on Twitter to ensure all investors were aware of his plan before speaking with the company’s largest shareholders.

But his claim to have done so as a private person presents a potential conflict of interest, said Nimish Patel, a lawyer with Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.

“If you’re speaking on behalf of the company using resources like Twitter and the company website, while at the same time saying you’re a private individual expressing your own personal views, you are being inconsistent and creating confusion for investors. And when there’s confusion, the SEC is likely going to get involved,” he added.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Glenn Close may be known for playing strong, often ruthless women, but like her long-subdued character in The Wife she says she’s only just starting to feel comfortable in her own skin.

Close plays Joan, the self-effacing spouse of a successful novelist in The Wife, which opens in the United States on Friday as women in Hollywood and beyond are demanding a louder voice.

Decades of suppressing her own talents and desires in support of her husband’s career begin to unravel when he wins the Nobel Prize for literature and a biographer probes the couple’s life.

“The film took 14 years to get made and who knew that it would be incredibly relevant?” Close, 71, told Reuters. The film is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Meg Wolitzer.

Close’s performance has won rave reviews, sparking talk of a potential seventh Oscar nomination next year. The Hollywood Reporter said the actress “commands the center of The Wife: still, formidable and impossible to look away from.”

Despite a 40-year career, three Emmy awards, three Tonys and six Oscar nominations, the star of Fatal Attraction and the TV drama Damages says she feels she is just beginning.

“I’m a very late bloomer. It took me a very long time to learn some basic things. That’s why it’s kind of wonderful and ironic for me to be at this point at my life and feel like it’s just the beginning,” she said.

Close launched her acting career in the theater in the 1970s and said she feels lucky to have found success in job she is so passionate about.

“I think I’m at a time in my life where I’ve finally accepted certain things about myself, and it’s OK. The fact that I’m not a hugely social person, that I’m very much in my head is OK,” she said. “I feel happier and more calm and more excited about life than I ever have.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, embroiled in a bitter dispute with the U.S., a NATO ally, contended Sunday the plunging value of his country’s lira currency amounted to a “political plot” against Turkey.

Erdogan, speaking to political supporters in the Black Sea resort of Trabzon, said, “The aim of the operation is to make Turkey surrender in all areas, from finance to politics. We are once again facing a political, underhand plot. With God’s permission we will overcome this.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has feuded with Erdogan over several issues, including the detention of an American pastor in Turkey, whom Turkey has held since 2016 and accused of espionage. Turkey last month released the evangelical preacher from a prison, but is still detaining him under house arrest pending his trial, despite the demands of the U.S.

With the dispute intensifying, Trump on Friday doubled steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey, sending the beleaguered lira plunging 16 percent, part of a 40 percent plummet for the currency this year. In early Asian trading Monday, the lira fell to a record low of 7.06 against the dollar.

“What is the reason for all this storm in a tea cup?” Erdogan said. “There is no economic reason for this … This is called carrying out an operation against Turkey.”

Erdogan renewed his call for Turks to sell dollars and buy lira to boost the currency, while telling business owners to not stockpile the American currency.

“I am specifically addressing our manufacturers: Do not rush to the banks to buy dollars,” he said. “Do not take a stance saying, ‘We are bankrupt, we are done, we should guarantee ourselves.’ If you do that, that would be wrong. You should know that to keep this nation standing is … also the manufacturers’ duty.”

Erdogan signaled he was not looking to offer concessions to the United States, or financial markets.

“We will give our answer, by shifting to new markets, new partnerships and new alliances,” said Erdogan, who in recent years has built closer ties with countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. “Some close the doors and some others open new ones.”

He indicated Turkey’s relationship with Washington was imperiled.

“We can only say ‘good-bye’ to anyone who sacrifices its strategic partnership and a half century alliance with a country of 81 million for the sake of relations with terror groups,” he said. “You dare to sacrifice 81-million Turkey for a priest who is linked to terror groups?”

American pastor Andrew Brunson, if convicted, faces a jail term of 35 years. Trump has described his detention as a “total disgrace” and urged Erdogan to free him immediately.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The U.N. refugee agency reports it is stepping up efforts to reduce the risk of the spread of the deadly Ebola virus as refugees flee DR Congo. Latest estimates put the number of confirmed and probable cases of Ebola in eastern DRC at 49, including 38 deaths.

The U.N. refugee agency is working closely with DRC authorities and other agencies on actions to contain Ebola on the national and regional level. But, its main focus is to monitor possible Ebola infections among refugees fleeing across the border, mainly to Uganda, from conflict ridden North Kivu and Ituri.

UNHCR spokesman, William Spindler says the number of newly arriving refugees into Uganda from these two Ebola affected provinces increased during July from 170 a day to 250 a day. He says the majority currently is crossing at the Kisoro border point.

“So UNHCR is working with WHO, UNICEF and other partners and with the Ministry of Health of Uganda to intensify screening for Ebola at all border entry points. And, additional health workers have been deployed in the border districts to improve response capacity,” he said.

Spindler notes the World Health Organization is not recommending any restriction on the movement of people. Therefore, he says UNHCR is urging countries neighboring DRC to allow refugees in need of protection to enter their territory and to include them into preparedness and response plans and activities.

The UNHCR says refugees are at the same risk of contracting and transmitting the Ebola virus disease as local farmers, merchants, business people and others moving through the area. Therefore, it urges governments and local communities not to adopt measures that single out refugees. Those measures may not be scientifically sound and will only serve to stigmatize and restrict refugees’ freedom of movement.

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

A meteor shower lit up the skies above eastern Bosnia Saturday night, giving star gazers a rare opportunity to see a display of shooting stars with the naked eye.

“I think that everybody should see this,” said Miralem Mehic, a Bosnian from an international group of star gazers who watched the light show at the Sand Pyramids, an area of naturally occurring sand columns, near the town of Foca.

The so-called Perseids meteor shower returns to the skies every August and are best viewed in the northern hemisphere in isolated areas where there is little light pollution.

They arise when the Earth passes through the debris of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862.

Meteors are parts of rock and dust that hit the Earth’s atmosphere, heat up and glow. Most vaporize as they descend, but some explode.

“This year the moon is young and will not obstruct the vision, so we will be able to see 100 ‘shooting stars’ an hour,” Muhamed Muminovic, a member of the Sarajevo Orion astrological society, told Reuters.
…

From: MeNeedIt

A NASA spacecraft rocketed toward the sun Sunday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.

The Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, that was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within 3.8 million (6 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the sun in a way never before possible.

No wonder scientists consider it the coolest, hottest mission under the sun, and what better day to launch to the sun than Sunday as NASA noted.

“Fly baby girl, fly!!” project scientist Nicola Fox of Johns Hopkins University tweeted just before liftoff. She urged it to “go touch the sun!”

Protected by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wonders, the spacecraft will zip past Venus in October. That will set up the first solar encounter in November. Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to the sun on the seven-year, $1.5 billion undertaking.

​Parker watches namesake go

For the second straight day, thousands of spectators jammed the launch site in the middle of the night as well as surrounding towns, including 91-year-old astrophysicist Eugene Parker for whom the spacecraft is named. He proposed the existence of solar wind, a steady, supersonic stream of particles blasting off the sun, 60 years ago.

“All I can say is, ‘Wow, here we go.’ We’re in for some learning over the next several years,”  Parker said.

It was the first time NASA named a spacecraft after someone still alive, and Parker wasn’t about to let it take off without him. Saturday morning’s launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble.

“I’m just so glad to be here with him,” said NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen. “Frankly, there’s no other name that belongs on this mission.”

The Delta IV Heavy rocket thundered into the pre-dawn darkness, thrilling onlookers for miles around. NASA needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the diminutive Parker probe, the size of a small car and well under a ton, racing toward the sun.

From Earth, it is 93 million miles to the sun (150 million kilometers), and the Parker probe will be within 4 percent of that distance. That will be seven times closer than previous spacecraft.​

Speed record on agenda

Parker will start shattering records this fall.On its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 15.5 million miles (25 million kilometers), easily beating the current record set by NASA’s Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976. By the time Parker gets to its 22nd orbit of the sun, it will be even deeper into the corona and traveling at a record-breaking 430,000 mph (690,000 kilometers per hour).

Nothing from Planet Earth has ever hit that kind of speed.

Even Fox has difficulty comprehending the mission’s derring-do.

“To me, it’s still mind-blowing,” she said. “Even I still go, ‘Really? We’re doing that?’”

Zurbuchen considers the sun the most important star in our universe — it’s ours, after all — and so this is one of NASA’s big-time strategic missions. By better understanding the sun’s life-giving and sometimes violent nature, Earthlings can better protect satellites and astronauts in orbit, and power grids on the ground, he noted. In today’s tech-dependent society, everyone stands to benefit.

With this mission, scientists hope to unlock the many mysteries of the sun, a commonplace yellow dwarf star around 4.5 billion years old. Among the puzzlers: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun and why is the sun’s atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating, as the University of Chicago’s Parker accurately predicted in 1958?

“The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun,” Fox said. “We’ve looked at it. We’ve studied it from missions that are close in, even as close as the planet Mercury. But we have to go there.”

The spacecraft’s heat shield will serve as an umbrella, shading the science instruments during the close, critical solar junctures. Sensors on the spacecraft will make certain the heat shield faces the sun at the right times. If there’s any tilting, the spacecraft will correct itself so nothing gets fried. With a communication lag time of 16 minutes each way, the spacecraft must fend for itself at the sun. The Johns Hopkins flight controllers in Laurel, Maryland, will be too far away to help.

​Technology catches up to the dream

A mission to get close up and personal with our star has been on NASA’s books since 1958. The trick was making the spacecraft small, compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds, while surviving the sun’s punishing environment and the extreme change in temperature when the spacecraft is out near Venus.

“We’ve had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams,” Fox said. “It’s incredible to be standing here today.”

More than 1 million names are aboard the spacecraft, submitted last spring by space enthusiasts, as well as photos of Parker, the man, and a copy of his 1958 landmark paper on solar wind.

“I’ll bet you 10 bucks it works,” Parker said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Talk about going green. One British soccer team has made it its goal to become the first professional sports team in the world to be certified carbon neutral. It’s an official designation recently awarded to the team by the Secretary in charge of Climate Change at the United Nations. But that’s not all. The team may also be the world’s first 100 percent vegan football club. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo has more.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Australian scientists have test driven two cars powered by a carbon-free fuel derived from ammonia.  A team from the Australian government’s research agency, the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), says the pioneering technology will allow highly flammable hydrogen to be safely transported in the form of ammonia and used as a widely available fuel.  

Researchers have found a way to use a thin membrane to turn Australian-made hydrogen into ammonia.  This could be shipped safely to markets in Asia, as well as parts of Europe.  At its destination, the liquid ammonia would then be converted back into hydrogen, and used to power cars and buses,  as well as for electricity generation and industrial processes.

David Harris, CSIRO research director says “the special thing about the technology that we have is that it allows you to produce very pure hydrogen directly with a membrane system from ammonia.”

The technology has the support of Japanese car maker Toyota and South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Company.

‘Watershed moment’

Scientists say hydrogen, a highly-flammable gas that can be volatile and hard to transport safely, creates a low emission fuel for cars.  The Australian team describes the membrane technology that separates hydrogen from other gases as a “watershed moment for energy.”

Claire Johnson, the chief executive of Hydrogen Mobility Australia, an industry association, says the pioneering research could forever change the transport sector.

“We see that as a really exciting opportunity to decarbonize the transport sector, but also position Australia as one of the lead suppliers of hydrogen around the world.  There is some competition to play that role, however.  Norway, Brunei and Saudi Arabia have all flagged that they wish to be an exporter of hydrogen around the world.”

There are only a handful of hydrogen-powered cars in Australia, but there are tens of thousands across Japan, South Korea and Singapore.  The South Korean government has recently announced plans for 16,000 more hydrogen-fueled cars and 310 special refilling stations.  

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

In the documentary ALT-RIGHT: Age of Rage, filmmaker Adam Lough looks at the rise of the alternative right movement in America and its ideological components.

The “alt-right” movement, as it is often called, is a political grouping that combines racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism. The term has been embraced by white supremacists and white nationalist groups when referring to themselves and their ideology, an ideology that emphasizes the preservation and protection of the white race in the United States.

WATCH: ‘ALT-RIGHT: Age of Rage’ Documentary on the Political Polarization in America

“You can’t define the ideology of the ‘alt-right’ without mentioning white identity,” said filmmaker Adam Lough, who documents the rise of the movement and its leaders before, during and after the violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2018.

The alternative right organized the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville to show its support for preserving Confederate monuments, memorials to the Confederate side of the American Civil War. The rally turned violent when white nationalists chanting racist slogans clashed with counter demonstrators. Many of the counter-demonstrators identified themselves as Antifa, an abbreviation for anti-fascists.

ALT-RIGHT: Age of Rage documents the rally and the violence culminating in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer, who was run down by a car. The driver, a neo-Nazi supporter, has been charged with murder and other counts. His trial is scheduled for November.

What’s fueling the movement?

Lough says various factors, including the economy, immigration and even feminism, have fueled much of the anger in the “alt-right” movement. 

“The idea of white Identity and there being a crisis in the country that white people are being pushed to the back of the line, so to say, by people of color, by immigrants, by Muslims, and in a big way, by women. They would prefer that women play the role they had back in America of the ’50s, where they were in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, they feel that women were happier back then when life was better.”

Lough also points out that this extreme fringe conservative movement rejects mainstream conservatism. 

“They consider mainstream Republicans to … have sold out their party, so they reject the mainstream Republican line of the party,” the filmmaker said.

WATCH: Trump Blames Both Sides for Racial Violence at Virginia Rally

In his film, Lough shows how white nationalist social media has bolstered the “alt-right” and how the movement was emboldened by President Trump’s controversial comments regarding “alt-right” violence in Charlottesville, saying responsibility lay “on many sides.” 

“One can see that Donald Trump has been dog-whistling at the ‘alt-right’ since the very beginning, going as far back as the birther movement,” Lough said. “The birther movement is basically about Barack Obama not being a American U.S. citizen. Being a citizen of Kenya, being a Muslim. So, if you want to go back into Donald Trump’s legacy with the ‘alt-right,’ I think that’s where it starts. I think it ratcheted up during the election and kind [of] came [to] a head with Charlottesville when he at first refused to even condemn the violence that had happened on that particular side by the ‘alt-right,’ and claimed that both sides were evenly guilty.”

Lough also looks at the leadership of the “alt-right” and its role in the growth of the movement.

Among them is Richard Spencer who coined the phrase “alt-right” in 2008. Another white nationalist, Jared Taylor, wrote the book “Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century” and advocates for the creation of an ethno-racial state. 

“Jared Taylor is very much the godfather of the ‘Alt-Right’ and of modern white nationalism. He has an incredible influence amongst that group of people. He has “The American Renaissance.” It used to be a magazine, now it’s a website that is viewed on a daily basis by all those in the white nationalist, white pride community.”

The documentary also looks at the antifa, a combustible mix of activists who have become the nemesis of the “alt-right.”

“Antifa is on the polar opposite of the spectrum from the ‘alt-right.’ They are far left, hard left. Antifa runs the gamut from your garden variety socialist, to a more extreme communist to almost a militarily guerrilla warfare style communist, who are advocating violence against the ‘alt-right,’” Lough said.

Lough says long simmering socio-economic forces have given rise to extreme ideological differences, spelling the end for the moderate middle. Sooner or later he says, proponents of the “alt-right” on one hand, and the antifa on the other are set on a collision course. 
…

From: MeNeedIt