Chris Hedges's Blog, page 324

Women Fight for an Even Break in Aussie Football

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who are dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

Editor’s note: The sport known as soccer in the United States and Canada is called football, or association football, in many other countries. Australian rules football differs from both American football and soccer in many ways. Among the differences from soccer: An oval-shaped ball is used and players are allowed to use their hands or bodies to tackle others. Australian rules football has only a handful of similarities to North American football.  In this article, the women who play in the national Australia rules football league are referred to as semiprofessional because they are paid, but not enough to make a living. The women must hold other jobs or have other sources of income.

“It was bigger than football.”

This is one of the remarks that open the award-winning audio documentary “The First Friday in February.” The show features voices of women who were among the 24,500 spectators packed into the stands of Princes Park in Melbourne on Feb. 3, 2017, to watch the first-ever game of the AFLW—the competition known as AFL Women’s, operated by the Australian Football League.

For many women, the occasion meant so much that their societal lives could now be divided, as one of the participants in the documentary said, into two parts—“before AFLW and after AFLW.”

The Australian Football League (AFL) was not prepared for women’s semiprofessional football to take off the way it did—even if all the signs had indicated it would succeed. Before the inauguration of the AFLW, women’s exhibition games had been played during the AFL men’s season in 2015 and 2016, with TV viewership in some cases exceeding that of the men’s games held on the same weekend.

The AFL originally opted to hold the opening match of the AFLW at Olympic Oval, a stadium with a capacity of just 7,000. Eventually the contest was shifted to the much larger Princes Park. That Princes Park was packed to capacity, with thousands more turned away, spoke volumes about the AFL’s failure to see the value and potential of a division for women’s play.

Thanks to the runaway success of its first season, the AFLW created spectacular grassroots momentum. Participation in amateur women’s football soared, with a 76 percent increase over the previous year in the number of girls’ and women’s teams. This included a 78 percent increase in the number of women playing in registered club competitions in some states and territories. If ever one needed evidence of the adage “you can’t see what you can’t be” in a sporting context, this was it.

How Times Have Changed

During the AFLW’s first season, the AFL executive branch appeared enthusiastic about the women’s success, with CEO Gillon McLachlan terming it a “revolution.” Media hailed the resulting surge in amateur football.

After its launch in 2017, the AFLW’s success was called a “revolution.” (Wikimedia Commons / Tigerman 2612)

To recount this history at the beginning of the AFLW’s third season, however, is to lament how administrative and media perception has changed in a short time. Although the AFLW is still very popular with the public, the AFL’s willingness to promote the competition flagged noticeably in the second season, according to AFLW chief Nicole Livingstone. (AFLW officials say a more concerted marketing push is planned for this season.)

The AFLW initially was scheduled to launch in 2020, and many Australians were surprised when McLachlan announced that it would begin in 2017 instead. Despite the eagerness this change suggested, the AFL has come up short in supporting the new league.

In season three, most AFLW players are receiving only $9,483 (in U.S. dollars) for the 20-week season—a 38 percent increase from last year’s paychecks but still equivalent only to the average Australian’s earnings over an eight-week period. This is about 4 percent of the average pay of the men playing in the AFL.

The male players at the AFL’s professional level are paid handsomely. A 2017 article said the average salary increased the previous year from US$218,728 to US$262,652. According to a February 2018 article, “nine players earned more than $1 million (US$707,936) last season.”

While some justify the women’s low salaries as the inevitable starting point for a fledgling competition, others point to the fact that in 2017 the nonprofit AFL posted a net surplus of US $34,784,581.

Some observers claim the AFL fears its own women’s competition will have too much overlap with the men’s football season and the summer season of other popular Australian sports such as tennis and cricket. This may be partly why the AFL decreased the number of games in the AFLW’s third season, even as it added two new teams.

More teams and a shorter season result in less play—to the point that, in 2019, each team is unable to compete against every other team. AFLW supporters want to see an expansion of the season—and growth of the women’s competition—for the sake of broader cultural change and increased revenue in the future. They feel the AFL should concentrate less on short-term profit and take a longer view in promoting this women’s elite competition.

Media Attacks

After displaying initial backing, much of the mainstream media either has stayed silent on the subject or has been dominated by those critical of the women’s league.

One example is sports radio station SEN opening its microphone in January to former AFL men’s star Kane Cornes, who defended criticism of the AFLW by saying that it “has received more leg-ups than any other sport in Australia.” Cornes pointed to the fact that fans do not have pay to attend AFLW games and claimed that the AFL had supported the women’s competition by distributing “promotional material everywhere.”

Cornes’ comments did not go without rebuttal. To argue that the AFLW has received more leg-ups than any other sport in Australia is “simply false,” columnist Erin Riley wrote in Eureka Street, an Australian online magazine. According to Riley, men historically have had inordinate advantages over women in sports, made possible by patriarchy and its associated marginalization of women. “It is precisely men like Kane Cornes who have benefited from this massive cultural leg-up,” Riley wrote.

Another round of anti-AFLW rhetoric came from Mark Robinson, head football writer at the popular tabloid The Herald Sun. When the AFL decreased the number of games in the women’s season, many AFLW players took to social media to say that such a move undermined the integrity of the competition.

In reaction, Robinson launched a tirade in print, writing that AFLW players were demonstrating a “sense of entitlement” by expecting a season in which teams would play each other at least once. He went on to demean the women’s game, claiming it was of “average” standard and played in “slow-motion.” He added that “half of the population wouldn’t give (the AFLW) a second thought.”

In September 2018, former AFL coach Mick Malthouse added another angle to anti-AFLW criticism. Appearing on a TV panel, Malthouse said he would not want his granddaughters to play a game that was “rough and tough.”

He elaborated: “I don’t like (AFLW) in its present format … they subject themselves to massive injuries. I suggested the ball should be smaller and (there) should be no bumps and only tackle, (and that they) not go to ground. That would make it uniquely women’s football.”

Malthouse’s comments reflect the cultural attitude that traditional gender norms are violated if women participate in contact sports. His comments ignore the fact that women have advocated for having Australian rules football teams since the end of the 19th century and participated in competitive matches for more than 100 years.

The War on Women (in Sports)

Why has such a sense of threat and competition accompanied the development of a national, semiprofessional women’s football league? One answer is offered in Susan Faludi’s classic book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”

The Adelaide Crows were the 2017 season champions. (Wikimedia Commons/Michael Coghlan)

According to Faludi, perceived or real strides toward gender equality are predictably accompanied by a backlash. “If fear and loathing of feminism is a sort of perpetual viral condition in our culture, it is not always in an acute stage,” she wrote. “Such flare-ups are hardly random… (and) they have always arisen in reaction to women’s progress.”

No exception is to be found in sports, being one of the last bastions of patriarchy—or at least a particularly resolute stronghold. While outbursts in the media by respected voices in the game such as Cornes, Robinson and Malthouse are the most obvious examples of backlash, more insidious instances abound.

In season one, coach Bec Goddard led the Adelaide Crows to the AFLW premiership, or season championship. It was a stunning achievement given that her players lived in two states in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Players trained separately, Goddard conducted team meetings via Skype and the team only came together on weekends for matches. That such an enormous logistical challenge resulted in a premiership was a remarkable achievement for Goddard and her players. In season two, the Crows were again in premiership contention and narrowly missed out for a spot in the finals.

Despite Goddard’s success, the Crows announced in April 2018 that she would no longer continue as coach of the club, and she was later replaced by AFL assistant coach Matthew Clarke. In a messy public fallout, this information emerged: Goddard had asked for a year-round, full-time coaching role, which, given the short AFLW season, also would have entailed assisting in the men’s program. The club claimed it could not give Goddard a role in the men’s program and instead offered her a full-time role as an “administrative assistant” as well as AFLW coach.

Goddard, who reportedly was one of the lowest paid AFLW coaches, walked away from the insulting offer. Clarke accepted the AFLW coaching role plus a bonus: the year-round, full-time coaching position (across the men’s and women’s programs) that Goddard had wanted. A similar position went to Paul Groves, coach of the Western Bulldogs, the team that won the competition in season two. To retain Groves, that club gave him a coaching position in the Bulldogs’ men’s program in addition to his AFLW position.

No Female Coaches

This kind of double standard has led to a serious end result: After two full seasons and the departure of Goddard and Michelle Cowan, another female coach, not one woman currently is serving in a senior coaching role in the AFLW. (Cowan reportedly left due to lack of team resources and coaching development opportunities.)

Former AFLW coach Bec Goddard. (Wikimedia Commons / Flickerd)

Last month, Mark Brayshaw, chief executive of the AFL Coaches Association, was asked about the lack of female coaches at the senior level. Brayshaw said, “Seventy-five percent of the male coaches are ex-players. And in our view, in a short period of time, there’ll be enough ex-AFLW players (who) can become coaches.” Brayshaw ignored the fact that Goddard previously had played football and later switched to coaching, and he also ignored many examples of great coaches (both women and men) who have not played the game.

Brayshaw announced a program to train women for senior coaching positions in the future. However, critics say the problem isn’t a lack of women available to do the job, but that those who demonstrably can do the job are not retained and supported.

“What are we doing for the coaches who already have the expertise they need?” said Susan Alberti, former vice president of the Western Bulldogs and longtime financial donor to women’s football. In a recent interview with this reporter, Alberti elaborated: “They (Goddard and Cowan) had to go back to their old jobs for income security. We’re not making it possible for them in their career (to coach).”

AFLW supporters fear the women’s league will continue to be held back and undermined by the AFL and by men who have made their names and careers in the sport.

Those supporters say the emergence of the women’s competition must be reframed significantly. Instead of the notion that it is taking something away from the men’s competition, the success of the AFLW should be seen as a win for everyone involved in sports.

“The message we have to get out there is that it’s not men versus women or vice versa,” Alberti said. “We need to complement each other, work together, because we (all) love our game. Not their game, our game. That’s what I want to see, everybody working together.”

Giving S.F. Public Defender Jeff Adachi a Hero’s Send-Off

Editor’s note: We’re reposting this episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” which originally ran on Sept. 28, 2018, as a tribute to Public Defender of San Francisco Jeff Adachi, who died unexpectedly on Feb. 22 in his hometown.  After hearing the news, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer called Adachi a “true hero” and pointed to Mission Local’s “terrific obit” as a particularly worthy panegyric.

“Jeff Adachi defended the hell out of the public,” wrote Mission Local’s Joe Eskenazi, who also declared that Adachi’s legacy “lives in the people society makes a point of not seeing.”  Listen to Scheer’s interview with Adachi to find out why Scheer couldn’t agree more with Eskenazi’s take.

In this week’s “Scheer Intelligence,” elected Public Defender of San Francisco Jeff Adachi, whose parents were confined in an Arkansas internment camp during World War II, recalls how he knew that his parents were “in jail” for being Japanese-American and describes how that understanding affected his life. “That experience—that they didn’t have a trial, that there was never any Japanese-American who was charged with espionage—really ingrained in me the notion that you have to fight for your rights,” he says. “It’s not something that you can take for granted.”

Adachi kicks off the conversation by discussing the new bail law in California, which was purportedly designed to make the existing system more fair. But he and other initial backers decided to drop their support when California Gov. Jerry Brown and judicial advisers made substantive changes to it.

For Adachi, the old system offered a way to “buy your freedom,” which seems to run counter to the vaunted ideal of liberty and justice for all, especially since, as he puts it, “85 percent of the people who are behind bars are there because they cannot post bail.” He opposes the new bill because, he says, it “gives all the power to the judges” to use preventive detention, which precludes the possibility of posting bail and can result in a person sitting in jail indefinitely, even in misdemeanor cases. That strategy is particularly onerous if the person in question is innocent.

Over the course of his career, Adachi has fought for basic constitutional rights and against police and prosecutorial misconduct. “In the immigration court,” he says, “you don’t have the right to a lawyer, even if you’re a child,” so he’s established an immigration unit in the public defender’s office to provide representation to any immigrant who is detained or in custody, including the undocumented and green-card holders.

The discussion takes a lively turn when Adachi suggests that “America at its best is a place where everyone is welcome … [in which] everyone who wants to be part of this great society is able to do that.”

Catch the full episode below:

Ex-Trump Campaign Staffer’s Lawsuit Challenges Nondisclosure Agreements

Alva Johnson, a staff member of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, sued the campaign in a Florida federal court on Monday, Ronan Farrow reports in The New Yorker, alleging “that she experienced ‘racial and gender discrimination’ while working for the campaign, that she was paid less than male and white colleagues, and that Trump once kissed her partially on the mouth, without her consent.”

Johnson, who is African-American, had multiple roles on the campaign, including director of outreach and coalitions in Alabama and administrative field-operations director in Florida. In addition to Johnson being paid “substantially less” than white men in similar roles, as the lawsuit alleges, Farrow reports that “campaign staffers made comments about race that made her uncomfortable.”

Four people on the campaign, plus Johnson’s mother, father, and partner, report hearing about the kiss. Two people who were said to be near Trump and Johnson at the time, campaign staffer Karen Giorno and Trump surrogate Pam Bondi, both denied the incident. Bondi told Farrow, “Had it happened, I feel I would have seen it, because I was there the entire time.”

However, the most legally significant part of the case, Farrow suggests, may not be the contentions of discrimination or inappropriate kissing, but “something the complaint does not explicitly address: the pervasive use of nondisclosure agreements by Trump during his campaign and in his administration.”

Johnson had signed an NDA, and Farrow reports hers is “at least the sixth legal case in which Trump campaign or administration employees have defied their nondisclosure agreements.” Three, he observes, were filed the same month. The agreement Johnson signed banned her from exposing information that would be “in any way detrimental to the Company, Mr. Trump, any Family Member, any Trump Company or any Family Member company.” Johnson believes Trump, and his campaign’s, actions were abhorrent enough to justify breaking the NDA.

“We expect that Trump will try to use the unconscionable N.D.A. and forced arbitration agreement to silence Ms. Johnson,” said Johnson’s attorney Hassan Zavareei, Farrow reports. “We will fight this strong-arm tactic.”

Last week, The Daily Beast reported the Trump administration, increasingly paranoid about leaks, is requiring interns to sign nondisclosure agreements. White House counsel, reporter Asawin Suebsaeng wrote, warned interns “that a breach of the NDA—blabbing to the media, for instance—could result in legal, and thus financial, consequences for them.” As Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker reported in The Washington Post last year, Trump, “has long relied on such agreements in his business career” and had continued to do so well into his presidency.”

As Dawsey and Parker point out, while such agreements are common in the business world, NDAs “have not been widely used by past administrations outside the transition time between presidents, in part because most legal experts believe such agreements are not legally enforceable for public employees.”

In Johnson’s case, one unnamed staff member Farrow spoke to accused Johnson of having “an agenda” in response to her wage discrimination claims. As Farrow points out, however, “an analysis by the Boston Globe in June, 2016, found that female staffers on the Trump campaign were paid, on average, three-quarters what their male counterparts received.”

“I am suing because my work holds the same value as the work of my white male counterparts,” Johnson told Farrow, adding, “I am suing because this predatory behavior should not be minimized, especially when committed by the most powerful man in the world.”

Read Farrow’s story here.

The Judiciary Won’t Save American Democracy

Now that President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to pave the way for construction of his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the question is whether anyone or anything can stop him.

On Tuesday, the House is expected to pass a joint resolution terminating the emergency. The resolution will then head to the Senate, which should vote on it by mid-March. In addition, at least six high-profile federal lawsuits have been filed to contest the emergency decree.

Unfortunately for anyone concerned with preserving the last vestiges of American democracy, the emergency declaration is likely to stand. Before explaining why, it’s helpful to recall how we got here.

Trump proclaimed the emergency on Feb. 15 in a rambling, self-centered, stream-of-consciousness Rose Garden speech more suited to a psychiatric session than a presidential event. Careening from such far-flung topics as his personal relationship with China’s Xi Jinping and his admiration of China’s death penalty for drug offenders to the second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the status of Brexit and the latest military developments in Syria, Trump finally got to the point and explained he was dissatisfied with the $1.375  billion Congress had appropriated for 55 miles of new border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley to avert another government shutdown.

Declaring a national emergency, he continued, would free up nearly $7 billion in additional funding to build “a lot of wall.” A “White House Fact Sheet” distributed along with the emergency declaration clarified where the added money would come from:

$601 million from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture fund,
$2.5 billion from Department of Defense funds earmarked for support of counterdrug activities, and
$3.6 billion from Department of Defense military construction projects.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters following his speech, however, Trump admitted there was, in fact, no actual emergency at the border. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” he said, referring to the alternative of continuing to negotiate with Congress. “I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”

In truth, in terms of illegal immigration and drug smuggling, there is no crisis along the U.S.-Mexico frontier. Undocumented immigration has dropped to the lowest levels in decades, and the vast majority of drug contraband—heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl—crosses into the U.S. at ports of entry rather than through unfenced areas of the border.

Both undocumented immigration and drug trafficking are chronic conditions that should be addressed through regular legislative channels. There are, moreover, already 654 miles of walls, barriers and fences along the border, and that number that will soon rise to 709 with Congress’ recent appropriation.

The problem, legally, is that the National Emergencies Act (NEA) of 1976, the law that enabled Trump to make his declaration, provides an easy pathway to abuse of power. Enacted in the aftermath of Watergate to place congressional checks on the emergency authority of the president, the act has proved to be a dismal failure in practice.

First and foremost, among the NEA’s defects is that the act contains no definition of an emergency. As I outlined in a previous column, the NEA gives the president complete discretion to decide when and if an emergency exists.

Once a declaration is issued, the president can access emergency powers contained in 123 federal laws, some of which permit the reallocation of funds previously appropriated by Congress to address the emergency. Trump’s declaration cites a statute (Title 10, Section 2808 of the United States Code) that allows the president to direct the Secretary of Defense to undertake military construction projects in times of war or national emergency.

In 1990, during the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush invoked Section 2808 in an emergency declaration. And in 2001, George W. Bush invoked the statute in response to the 9/11 attacks. Before Trump, however, no president had declared a national emergency to reallocate funds that Congress explicitly had declined to appropriate.

Prior to Trump’s Feb. 15 proclamation, a total of 59 national emergencies had been declared under the NEA. Thirty-one remain in effect, including the first emergency declared under the NEA, issued by President Carter in 1979, which froze Iranian government assets in the U.S.

As originally written, the NEA gave Congress the power to override an emergency declaration by a simple majority of each chamber. In 1983, however, Supreme Court held in an unrelated case (INS v. Chada) that such “legislative vetoes” are unconstitutional.

This means that a two-thirds majority of both the House and Senate would have to vote in favor of the pending joint resolution to terminate the border emergency to overcome an anticipated Trump veto of the measure. Given the GOP’s shameless and complete capitulation to the president on virtually all matters of national policy, that simply isn’t going to happen.

To ensure that the GOP-controlled Senate remains loyal, Trump sent out an urgent tweet Monday morning, saying: “I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats ‘trap’ of Open Borders and Crime!”

There is slightly more reason for optimism on the litigation front. To date, major lawsuits have been filed to overturn the emergency declaration by 16 states led by California; the County of El Paso, Texas; the ACLU; the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Public Citizen Litigation Group. In addition, the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint to compel the Trump administration to release the records it has relied on to support its claims of a border crisis.

Although filed in different federal courts stretching from San Francisco to El Paso and Washington, D.C., the lawsuits contend the situation at the border is a fake crisis, citing Trump’s Rose Garden admission that he did not need to proclaim an emergency. The lawsuits also contend that only Congress holds the “power of the purse” to appropriate federal funds under Article I of the Constitution, and that building a border wall cannot be deemed a military construction project under Section 2808 or any other provision of federal law.

Such arguments, if presented persuasively, may convince some lower-court federal judges that a presidential coup d’état is underway, but they may nonetheless fall short before the Supreme Court if the legal challenges advance that far.

Last year, in Trump v. Hawaii, in a hotly contested 5-4 decision, the court approved the third version of the president’s Muslim travel ban. In reaching its conclusion, the court reasoned that while Trump’s anti-Muslim public statements could be considered in determining if the ban discriminated on the basis of religion, the text of the ban was more important. The text, the court held, was neutral on its face, and the ban thus fell well within the president’s discretion.

The majority opinion in the travel ban case was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. Now widely viewed as the court’s new swing justice, Roberts will have to distinguish the travel ban from the border emergency if Trump is to be thwarted this time around.

Worker Visas in Doubt as Trump Immigration Crackdown Widens

NEW YORK — Immigrants with specialized skills are being denied work visas or seeing applications get caught up in lengthy bureaucratic tangles under federal changes that some consider a contradiction to President Donald Trump’s promise of a continued pathway to the U.S. for the most talented foreigners.

Getting what’s known as an H-1B visa has never been a sure thing — the number issued annually is capped at 85,000 and applicants need to enter a lottery to even be considered. But some immigration attorneys, as well as those who hire such workers, say they’ve seen unprecedented disruptions in the approval process since Trump took office in 2017.

“You see all these arguments that we want the best and the brightest coming here,” said John Goslow, an immigration attorney in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Yet we’re seeing a full-frontal assault on just all aspects of immigration.”

For American businesses, there is a bottom-line impact.

Link Wilson, an architect who co-founded a firm in Bloomington, Minnesota, said finding enough qualified workers within the U.S. has been a problem for years. That’s due to a shortage of architects, but also because his firm needs people with experience developing senior housing. He said employers who turn to international applicants do so as a last resort, putting up with legal fees and ever-expanding visa approval times because they have no other choice.

“We’re just at the point where there’s no one else to hire,” said Wilson, who hired an architect under an H-1B visa last year after enduring a long wait. He estimates his firm turned away about $1 million in projects in 2018 because it didn’t have enough staff to handle them.

Three months after taking office, Trump issued his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , directing Cabinet officials to suggest reforms to ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the “most-skilled or highest-paid” applicants to help promote the hiring of Americans for jobs that might otherwise go to immigrants.

Subsequent memos have allowed for greater discretion in denying applications without first requesting additional information from an applicant, tossed the deference given to people seeking to renew their H-1Bs, and raised concern that the government would revoke work permits for the spouses of H-1B holders. One order restricted companies’ ability to use H-1B workers off-site at a customer’s place of business, while another temporarily rescinded the option of paying for faster application processing.

Attorneys who handle these applications say one of the biggest shifts is an increase in “requests for evidence,” or RFEs, from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. An RFE can delay a visa for months or longer as applicants and employers are forced to submit additional documentation over things such as the applicability of a college degree to a prospective job or whether the wage being offered is appropriate. If the responses are unsatisfactory, a visa may be denied.

“They’re just blocking the avenues so that employers will get frustrated and they won’t employ foreign nationals,” said Dakshini Sen, an immigration lawyer in Houston whose caseload is mostly H-1B applications. “We have to write and write and write and explain and explain and explain each and every point.”

USCIS data released on Friday shows an increase in the number of completed H-1B applications receiving an RFE, from about 21 percent in the 2016 fiscal year to 38 percent last fiscal year. The number continued to rise in the first quarter of this fiscal year, to 60 percent.

A growing number of applications with such requests were ultimately denied, while the approval rate among all applicants has fallen. Approvals also dipped in two other visa programs for foreign workers, including one for individuals with extraordinary abilities in areas such as science, sports and the arts.

Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for USCIS, linked the changes to the president’s executive order, saying the goal was to reduce “frivolous” petitions and that “it is incumbent upon the petitioner, not the government” to prove eligibility.

Some employers note traditional three-year renewable terms of H-1Bs have also been changing; one lawsuit by an organization representing information technology companies claims some visas were valid for only a few days or had expired before they were even received.

Meantime, a vague entry published in the Federal Register last fall advised that the Department of Homeland Security would propose additional revisions to focus on attracting “the best and the brightest” and to “ensure employers pay appropriate wages” to H-1B visa holders, which has raised alarms that the administration will move to narrow the definition of who qualifies.

Caught in the crosshairs of all this are workers like Leo Wang.

Wang, 32, spent six years after college in his native China learning all he could about data and analytics. He got into the University of Southern California, interned at a major venture capital firm and wasted no time after finishing his master’s before starting on another degree. He couch-surfed, passed up an enticing foreign job offer and amassed educational debt all in pursuit of the dream that ultimately came true: A six-figure Silicon Valley job.

As long as it took Wang to achieve his goal, it disappeared in record time.

Wang was working at Seagate Technology under an immigration provision known as Optional Practical Training, which gives those on student visas permission to work. But that expired last year, and because his H-1B application was in flux, he was forced to take a leave from Seagate and withdraw from the master’s program he was pursuing at Berkeley. He says he and his company dutifully responded to an RFE, compiling examples of his work at Seagate. But on Jan. 11, Wang got a final answer: He was denied an H-1B.

“All I wanted was to be able to see my American dream,” he said.

Sandra Feist, an immigration attorney in Minneapolis, said talented foreigners discouraged by the visa process are beginning to look at opportunities in other countries, and she questions what that means for America’s future, especially if top-tier researchers who could contribute to science and medicine are turned away.

One of her clients, a computer systems analyst from India with a master’s degree from a U.S. college, filed his petition for an H-1B in April 2017 with 101 pages of documentation. He received an RFE, and a 176-page response was filed, with additional paperwork attempting to prove just how complicated the position was. He was denied. Feist filed a 282-page appeal, requesting that the file be reopened. Though the appeal was approved, there was a second RFE, which Feist said raises the same issues she already responded to.

With a U.S. work visa unlikely, that client is applying for permanent residency in Canada with his wife and U.S. citizen child.

CEOs for companies including Apple, Ford and Coca-Cola penned a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in August, saying immigration policy changes were undermining economic growth. “At a time when the number of job vacancies are reaching historic highs due to labor shortages,” they said, “now is not the time to restrict access to talent.”

A provision for immigration based on skills, education and employer needs dates back to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and the visa now known as the H-1B has until recently enjoyed wide support among politicians on both the left and the right. A Pew Research Center survey last year found broad approval for high-skilled immigrants among the public, as well, with support at 83 percent among Democrats polled and 73 percent of Republicans.

Trump has vacillated on the issue. During a March 2016 presidential debate, then-candidate Trump was asked about his opposition to visas for skilled workers, to which he said “I’m changing” and that he saw such policies as a way to keep top international students in the U.S. “We absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country,” he said.

His campaign followed that with a statement saying: “The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay.”

Last month, Trump again reverted to a more conciliatory note, tweeting that H1-B holders “can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship.”

Back in China now, Wang isn’t sure what to make of Trump’s words. He’s talked to a friend from Seagate, now at a Swedish firm, about openings there, and a former boss in Singapore has some prospects for him as well.

“I still believe in the American dream,” he says. “It’s just that I personally have to pursue it somewhere else.”

The Academy’s ‘Green Book’ Debacle Should Come as No Surprise

Every year it is the same story: the Academy comes so close to catching up with the rest of the film world, only to award the Oscar for Best Picture to the most middling of the bunch.

Many cinephiles the world over were likely scratching their heads, or rolling their eyes, or perhaps throwing something at the television, when Julia Roberts called out “Green Book,” a film the L.A. Times later dubbed “the worst Best Picture winner since ‘Crash.’ ”

The film is the story of an unlikely friendship between musician Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his driver Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), as they tour America’s South in the 1960s. It sits in a long line of Hollywood films that feature a white protagonist “saving” the black character, who is rendered passive in the process.

The film has been denounced by Shirley’s family for its depiction of him as an isolated figure, estranged from his three brothers and the black community. (In hindsight, maybe “Crash” wasn’t that bad?)

“BlacKkKlansman” director Spike Lee was apparently so incensed by the Best Picture announcement that he stormed to the back of the theater only to be ushered back into his seat. He and director Jordan Peele reportedly did not clap for the winners. Later, with a drink in hand, Lee told the press room that the “ref made a bad call.”

Director Spike Lee said that when “Green Book” won, he thought “the ref made a bad call.”

 

That a film with a white savior narrative won the big prize shouldn’t really be much of a shock though.

The Academy Awards have battled with a number of controversies over the last few years, from #Oscarssowhite to “La La Land” being mistakenly read out as the winner of Best Picture in 2017 over “Moonlight“. An L.A. Times report in 2016 identified 91% of Oscar voters as white and 76% male.

It’s clear that the Academy needs to continue to up its game in diversifying the voting demographic.

The role of campaigning, and studios selecting which films to push, also stops the awards from genuinely reflecting the best works. Other films, notably by female directors, were shut out this year. Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here” and Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me” are just two that deserved wider recognition.

The big takeaway message from this year’s ceremony, if it wasn’t clear already, is that we shouldn’t look to the Academy for any enlightened thinking.

A sea of safeness and whiteness

The optics of the “Green Book” team accepting their award could not have been more glaring. A collection of predominantly white men (and Mahershala Ali and Octavia Spencer to the side) pronounced that the film, to paraphrase, is about love and loving each other despite our differences and finding out that we are the same people.

For a film that is meant to be about race relations in America, all we got from the speech was a sea of safeness and whiteness.

In 2010, the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to up to 10 nominees. This change also saw the introduction of preferential voting. All voting members rank the year’s nominees from first through to eighth. If the film with the most first place votes doesn’t break 50%, then the film with the lowest first place votes is eliminated and its votes redistributed according to preferences.

This will then occur with the next lowest ranking film until a film cracks the 50% margin. As such, second and third place votes begin to count just as much as first place votes.

This preferential voting system results in a more agreeable film winning over a divisive one. This is perhaps why “The Shape of Water” won last year over “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

It also creates an interesting divide between critics and much of the film-going public and the Academy voters. Leading up to the awards, critical consensus saw “Roma” as the more agreeable choice, with “Green Book” being the divisive nominee. Turns out, this perspective was reversed in the world of the Academy and “Green Book” was deemed the most agreeable.

A year of backpedaling

The awards this year were contentious before the ceremony even began. Kevin Hart’s previous homophobic remarks resulted in him stepping down. Four awards – cinematography, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, and live-action short – were going to be cut from the live broadcast. The Oscars also initially snubbed nominated songs from the show, which is not a new occurrence.

The Academy then did a lot of back peddling. There was no main host, all awards were included in the live broadcast and four of the nominated songs were performed live, with the omission of All the Stars by Kendrick Lamar and SZA from “Black Panther” due to “logistics and timing”. The Academy is really bad at reading the room until it’s too late.

John Ottman, accepting the award for Best Editing of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” said the production was a labor of love with everyone bonding together. This perspective was an odd contrast to recent statements made by Rami Malek, in which he said that working with the film’s sometime director Bryan Singer “was not pleasant.”

In his acceptance speech for Best Actor, Malek also identified “Bohemian Rhapsody” as being about an unapologetically gay immigrant, yet it has been reported that Mercury was bisexual. If only the film could have been celebratory of Mercury’s sexuality. Still, the homophobic moralizing will most likely be overshadowed by “Green Book’s” win.

One other glaring lowlight of the show was Broadway actress Carol Channing being omitted from the In Memoriam section. While there are eyebrow-raising omissions every year, to not include Channing, who was show business personified, is sad indeed.

Highlights

In the sea of disappointment, there were several delightful moments. The choices of presenters seemed laughably odd. Serena Williams introducing “A Star is Born” and Queen Latifah introducing “The Favourite” were interesting to say the least. Barbra Streisand introduced “BlacKkKlansman” because apparently she and Spike Lee both grew up in Brooklyn.

Lee, who won an honorary Oscar in 2016, won this year for Best Adapted Screenplay. The reception the film received was notably more rapturous than the one given to “Green Book” for Best Original Screenplay. The difference was palpable. Lee noted that February was Black History Month in the U.S.:

1619, 2019. 400 years. 400 years our ancestors were stolen from mother Africa and brought to Jamestown, Virginia enslaved. Our ancestors worked the land, from can’t see at morning to can’t see at night.

The ceremony did see a significant number of female artists of color taking to the stage to collect awards, from Hannah Beachler, production designer for “Black Panther,” to Regina King winning for her role in “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

Other highlights included Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s performance of the Best Original Song, “Shallow,” which evoked old school Hollywood glamour. The chemistry between the two is palpable.

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform “Shallow,” winner of Best Original Song at this year’s Oscars.

 

Joyous upsets included Olivia Colman winning Best Actress over the hot favorite Glenn Close, who was nominated for her seventh time. Colman gave a scattered and heartwarming speech which won’t be forgotten any time soon.

Olivia Colman accepts the award for Best Actress at the 2019 Oscars.

 

The ceremony tried to pitch itself as being liberal, with several mentions of metaphorically tearing down walls. It’s clear though, that in Hollywood, this will always happen on the power players’ terms. The Academy Awards will never be as progressive as we want them to be. If that’s what you are looking for, then tune into the Indie Spirit awards.

In the end, final Oscars presenter Julia Roberts was drowned out by music emanating from the orchestra in the pit as she closed the show. Even the producers were done. Let’s just remember the select moments of joy and forget the rest ever happened.

Stuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Brazil Is Now Effectively Run by a Military Junta

It was a little more than 45 days of the most bizarre power experiment in Brazilian history, but it’s over. The Jair Bolsonaro government, as the victorious power arrangement that won at the ballot box in 2018, no longer exists. A new phase two is beginning, of a regime that is ending the period of the people’s Constitution of 1988. A military junta is taking power in a government in which it already dominated. There are four generals encapsulated in the Presidential Palace: Augusto Heleno, Hamilton Mourão, Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz and Eduardo Villas Bôas. In the next few days, the Junta may incorporate General Floriano Peixoto Neto, who is slated to substitute General Secretariat Minister Gustavo Bebianno, Bolsonaro’s campaign coordinator who was recently ousted on money laundering charges.

It is not exactly a coup d’état. The coup took place in 2015-16. They were already there. Now they occupy all of the key positions in the government. They have taken the power that was left vacant by the cartoon caricatures of Bolsonaro and his sons. Captain Jair may continue living in the Presidential Palace and even play video games in his office in the Capital building. All he has to do is obey his commanding officers, the generals.

The most prominent member of the Military Junta will probably be Villas Bôas. He was the great strategist, the negotiator, the man who took the initiative to betray democracy, ordering the Supreme Court to block Lula’s freedom and impeding the ex-President’s candidacy and with this, guaranteeing the rise of a new regime. The decisive role of Villas Bôas, which should have remained in the shadows, turned public in a pathetic manner – like everything in this process – by the clumsy Jair Bolsonaro. During the January 2 inauguration ceremony for Defense Minister, General Fernando Azevedo e Silva (one more general), the now zombie President publicly mumbled, “General Vilas Boas, what we spoke about privately will remain a secret. You are one of the people responsible for me being here.”

Villas Bôas is like a post-modern Augusto Pinochet, at a time when coups are no longer mobilized with military troops, bombings or blood on the streets – for now. Nominated by Dilma, as Pinochet was nominated by Allende, he will probably now be the boss of the Military Junta. If this doesn’t happen, it will only be due to the fact that he has a serious and fatal illness, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which confines him to a wheelchair and a respirator. But his mind is sharp and, despite his health problems, he is a clear member of the Junta.

With Villas Bôas’ disability, the man who is taking charge is the Chief of the President’s Institutional Security Cabinet, General Augusto Heleno, who played a decisive role during the election campaign and is respected in the Army officer corps. He and Government Secretary General Santos Cruz are friends who form the “Haitian nucleus” inside the Junta, and they will join forces with General Peixoto Neto. They all served in the UN Minustah forces in Haiti. Heleno was the first, and this stands him out from the others. He was Minustah commander in 2004-2005. Santos Cruz took over from 2006-2009, and Floriano Peixoto took over in 2009-2010.

Vice President Hamilton Mourão comes into the Junta almost like a fish out of water. He is not from the same group, is not an intimate friend of any of the others and is always seen as an outsider. But he has something that none of the others possess: he is Vice President of the Republic and, therefore, impossible to fire. But that which would be an enormous difference in the civilian and democratic world may not have so much weight in the relationship of a new power scheme in the capital. Mourão is un-firable as Vice President. But can anyone from the Military Junta really be fired? What we can see now is that the dormant tensions in the government are deepening.

The Military Junta takes power with broad support from civilian elites. The military is seen as, maybe, the last chance to implement a project for the Nation that aims to alienate all of the natural resources and concentrate wealth at a scale that has never been seen before, under a discourse of “competence”, of ultra-neoliberalism and under the guidance of the “market”.

Bolsonaro is a loose screw. The elites have already concluded that he will get nothing off the ground due to the leaked conversations between him and Bebianno, which irreparably damage both father and sons. The editorials of O Globo and Estado de São Paulo this Tuesday were definitive: it’s over. “It would be naive to believe that Bolsonaro, from one minute to the next, will start acting like a President and take on the responsibilities of the Government,” said the Estado de São Paulo. The Marinho family [owners of Globo], doing justice to their long tradition as coup actors, did not stutter. They publicly asked for a Military Junta to take control of the government from the chaos of the Bolsonaro clan. They know what they want.

This article originally appeared in Portuguese on 247 and was translated, with permission, by Brian Mier

The New York Times Won’t Stop Pushing Crank Economics

It’s not uncommon to read news stories that quite explicitly identify economic mismanagement. For example, news reports on the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe routinely (and correctly) attribute the cause to the poor economic management by its leaders. We will see similar attributions of mismanagement to a wide range of developing countries.

One place we will never see the term mismanagement or any equivalent term applied is in reference to the austerity imposed on the euro zone countries by the European Commission, acting largely at the direction of the German government. In fact, major news outlets, like the New York Times, seem to go out of their way to deny the incredible harm done to euro zone economies, and to the lives of tens of millions of people in these countries, as a result of needless austerity.

A decade ago, it would at least have been an arguable point as to whether austerity, meaning budget cuts, in the wake of the Great Recession, was reasonable policy. There was some research suggesting that the boost to confidence from lower budget deficits could spur enough investment and consumption to offset the impact on demand of reductions in government spending.

Since then, however, we have far more evidence on the impact of deficit reduction in the context of an economy coming out of recession. There have been numerous studies, most importantly several from the International Monetary Fund’s research department, which show that lower deficits in this context slow growth and raise unemployment.

Furthermore, they show that periods of high unemployment have a lasting impact as a result of workers losing skills, and companies and governments in a downturn foregoing investment that they would have undertaken if the economy were closer to its potential level of output. This means that insistence on deficit reduction not only led to one-time drops in output and employment, but could reduce potential output by trillions of dollars over subsequent years.

At this point, the advocates of fiscal austerity, in the context of economies that are operating well below potential GDP, are ignoring a large body of evidence in favor of personal prejudices. These people should be viewed like global warming deniers or creationists. They are not credible people, and their policies have inflicted enormous damage where they have been put in place.

Incredibly, instead of pointing out that the advocates of austerity have been shown wrong, most reporting continues to treat their policies as being credible, and in fact often works to hide evidence of its failure. The New York Times (2/14/19) gave us a great example of this practice in an article on the decline of the middle class across Europe, with a focus on Spain.

Spain has been especially hard hit by the demands for austerity. In contrast to Greece and Italy, Spain had actually been running budget surpluses in the years leading up to the crisis. Its debt to GDP ratio was just 22.3 percent when the crisis hit, less than half of Germany’s, so there was no story of profligate government spending.

What Spain did have was a massive housing bubble, fueled largely by German banks, who apparently were not very good at their business. When the bubbles burst in Spain and elsewhere, the economy in Spain was especially hard hit, with the unemployment rate crossing 26 percent in 2013. While the unemployment rate has come down in the last five years, the number of people employed is still more than 1 million less than before the crisis.

Spain is a country that could have benefited enormously from a large-scale stimulus program, both domestically and the across the eurozone, since much of its GDP is exported. Instead, the great minds in charge of the euro zone’s economic policy insisted that Spain had to reduce its budget deficits to comply with the euro’s rules.

Given this history, the cause of the decline of the middle class in Spain seems about as clear as the causes of a person’s mobility problems after they have been run over by a truck. Instead, the New York Times made it all seem very mysterious, telling readers:

Spain’s economy, like the rest of Europe’s, is growing faster than before the 2008 financial crisis and creating jobs. But the work they could find pays a fraction of the combined 80,000-euro annual income they once earned. By summer, they figure they will no longer be able to pay their mortgage. [The “they” refers to a formerly middle-class couple who lost jobs in the downturn, and had to find new jobs at far lower pay.]

It is a precarious situation felt by millions of Europeans.

Since the recession of the late 2000s, the middle class has shrunk in over two-thirds of the European Union, echoing a similar decline in the United States and reversing two decades of expansion. While middle-class households are more prevalent in Europe than in the United States — around 60 percent, compared with just over 50 percent in America — they face unprecedented levels of vulnerability….

The hurdles to keeping their status, or recovering lost ground, are higher, given post-recession labor dynamics. The loss of middle-income jobs, weakened social protections and skill mismatches have reduced economic mobility and widened income inequality. Automation and globalization are deepening the divides.

Just about every part of this story is wrong. Spain and most other European countries are not growing faster than before the recession. According to the IMF, Spain’s economy grew at a 2.7 percent rate in 2018 and is projected to grow 2.2 percent this year. By comparison, it grew at an average rate of more than 3.9 percent in 2006 and 2007, the last two years before the recession.

But more importantly, the immediately relevant factor is cumulative growth, not a single year. As a result of its sharp downturn and weak recovery, Spain’s per capita GDP was just 3.0 percent higher in 2018 than it was in 2007. By comparison, coming out of the Great Depression in the United States, per capita income in 1940 was more than 8.0 percent higher than in 1929.

Given these basic growth numbers, it would be surprising if Spain’s middle class had not taken a big hit. While other factors, like the weakening of labor market protections, have made its plight worse, the dismal story on growth goes a very long way in explaining the decline in Spain and Europe’s middle class.

Unfortunately, this sort of story in the New York Times is not an exception. The paper has repeatedly told readers that policies that undermined the welfare state and redistributed money upward, were being done for the purpose of revitalizing the economy. This was especially the case with Emanuel Macron in France (here, here and here). In these and other cases, the media took at face value the claims of politicians that the reason for the measures was to help workers, not to reduce their bargaining power, which is their immediate effect.

To be clear, labor market regulations can be excessive, and there are certainly contexts in which streamlining them would end up benefiting most of the labor force, even if such streamlining could hurt narrow groups of workers. But the idea that excessive labor market regulation, rather than inept macroeconomic policy, is the main problem limiting growth and reducing employment in France, Spain and elsewhere in Europe does not have any evidence to support it.

David Howell, Andrew Glyn, John Schmitt and I did a study showing the limited impact of labor market protections on employment more than a decade ago. Based on our work, the OECD did its own analysis, and reached similar conclusions.

In short, the New York Times and other media outlets have been engaged in a great exercise in misdirection. While the blame for Europe’s economic problems over the last decade can very clearly be laid at the doorstep of its leaders who have insisted on austerity, the media consistently ignore evidence that is as clear as day. They instead treat the problems facing Europe’s workers as being mysterious in origin, or due primarily to an overly generous welfare state and excessive regulations that protect workers. This is some seriously biased and/or misinformed reporting.

Microsoft Workers Demand End to Army Contract in Powerful Letter

Declaring to chief executives that they refuse “to become war profiteers,” a group of Microsoft workers on Friday demanded the company cancel a contract with the U.S. Army that they say would “help people kill” and turn warfare into a “video game.”

Their open letter is addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, and, according to the “Microsoft Workers 4 Good” Twitter handle, which posted the document, it got over 100 employee signatures in its first day.

On behalf of workers at Microsoft, we’re releasing an open letter to Brad Smith and Satya Nadella, demanding for the cancelation of the IVAS contract with a call for stricter ethical guidelines.

If you’re a Microsoft employee you can sign at: https://t.co/958AhvIHO5 pic.twitter.com/uUZ5P4FJ7X

— Microsoft Workers 4 Good (@MsWorkers4) February 22, 2019

At issue is Microsoft’s $479 million contract to supply the military’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program with augmented reality headsets. It’s for a platform that the government says is intended to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide, and engage before the enemy.”

Microsoft would use it HoloLens technology for the contract.

Taking this step, however, would be something Microsoft has never before done: “cross[ing] the line into weapons development,” the workers write.

“It will be deployed on the battlefield, and works by turning warfare into a simulated ‘video game,’ further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed,” the letter states. “Intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology.”

Smith’s suggestion that workers who find a project “unethical” find a different project to work on is problematic, the workers explain:

There are many engineers who contributed to HoloLens before this contract even existed, believing it would be used to help architects and engineers build buildings and cars, to help teach people how to perform surgery or play the piano, to push the boundaries of gaming, and to connect with the Mars Rover (RIP). These engineers have now lost their ability to make decisions about what they work on, instead finding themselves implicated as war profiteers.

[…]

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to do more. But implicit in that statement, we believe it is also Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to do good. We also need to be mindful of who we’re empowering and what we’re empowering them to do. Extending this core mission to encompass warfare and disempower Microsoft employees, is disingenuous, as “every person” also means empowering us. As employees and shareholders we do not want to become war profiteers. To that end, we believe that Microsoft must stop in its activities to empower the U.S. Army’s ability to cause harm and violence.

In addition to ending the IVAS contract, the workers demand that Microsoft:

Cease developing any and all weapons technologies, and draft a public-facing acceptable use policy clarifying this commitment; and
Appoint an independent, external ethics review board with the power to enforce and publicly validate compliance with its acceptable use policy.

Microsoft, for its part, confirmed on Friday its commitment to helping the military.

Technology giant Google faced similar criticism from workers last year for its work on drone and artificial intelligence (AI) technology with the U.S. military. Following the outcry, Google announced it would not renew its contract on the Pentagon program known as Project Maven.

‘Green Book’ Captures Best Picture in Oscars Upset

LOS ANGELES — The segregation-era road-trip drama “Green Book” was crowned best picture at the 91st Academy Awards, delighting those who see the film as a feel-good throwback but disappointing others who ridicule it as an outdated inversion of “Driving Miss Daisy.”

In a year when Hollywood could have made history by bestowing its top award on Netflix (“Roma”) or Marvel (“Black Panther”) for the first time, the motion picture academy instead threw its fullest support Sunday behind a traditional interracial buddy tale that proved as popular as it was divisive. But Peter Farrelly’s “Green Book” weathered criticism that it was retrograde and inauthentic to triumph over more acclaimed films and bigger box-office successes.

It was an unexpected finale to a brisk, hostless ceremony that was awash in historic wins for diversity, including Spike Lee’s first competitive Oscar. More women and more individual black nominees won than ever before.

The Oscars otherwise spread awards around for Ryan Coogler’s superhero sensation “Black Panther,” Alfonso Cuaron’s black-and-white personal epic “Roma” and the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Lee, whose “Do the Right Thing” came out the same year “Driving Miss Daisy” won best picture, was among those most visibly upset by the award handed to “Green Book.” After presenter Julia Roberts announced it, Lee stood up, waved his hands in disgust and appeared to try to leave the Dolby Theatre before returning.

“Green Book” also won best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali and best original screenplay.

“The whole story is about love,” said Farrelly, a filmmaker best known for broad comedies like “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary.” ″It’s about loving each other despite the differences and find out the truth about who we are. We’re the same people.”

Backstage, Lee clutched a glass of champagne while reflecting on the 30 years between “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Green Book.” ″I’m snake bit,” he said, laughing. “Every time somebody’s driving somebody, I lose!”

Lee’s win for best adapted screenplay for his white supremacist drama “BlacKkKlansman,” an award he shared with three co-writers, gave the ceremony its signature moment. The crowd rose in a standing ovation, Lee leapt into the arms of presenter Samuel L. Jackson and even the backstage press room burst into applause.

Lee, whose film includes footage of President Donald Trump following the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, urged mobilization for the upcoming election.

“Let’s be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love and hate,” said Lee, who was given an honorary Oscar in 2015. “Let’s do the right thing! You knew I had to get that in there.”

One of the biggest surprises of the night was in the best actress category. Olivia Colman won for her Queen Anne in the royal romp “The Favourite,” denying Glenn Close her first Oscar. Close remains the most-nominated living actor never to win, with seven nominations.

“Ooo. It’s genuinely quite stressful,” said a staggered Colman, who later turned to Close to say she was her idol, “and this is not how I wanted it to be.”

The night’s co-lead nominee “Roma” won best director and best cinematography for Cuaron, whose film also notched Mexico’s first foreign language film Oscar. Cuaron and his “Three Amigos” countrymen — Alejandro Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro, who presented Cuaron with best picture — have had a stranglehold on the category, winning five of the last six years.

Cuaron, who becoming the first director to ever win for serving as his own director of photography, referenced an especially international crop of nominees in one of his three acceptance speeches.

“When asked about the New Wave, Claude Chabrol said there are no waves, there is only the ocean,” said Cuaron, referring to the French filmmaker. “The nominees tonight have proven that we are a part of the same ocean.”

The wins for “Roma” gave Netflix its most significant awards yet, but “Green Book” denied the streaming giant the best picture win it dearly sought. Netflix remains to some a contentious force in Hollywood, since it largely bypasses theaters. The wins for “Black Panther” — along with best animated film winner “Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse” — meant the first Academy Awards for Marvel, the most consistent blockbuster factor Hollywood has ever seen.

The lush, big-budget craft of “Black Panther” won for Ruth Carter’s costume design, Hannah Beachler and Jay Hart’s production design, and Ludwig Göransson’s score. Beachler had been the first African-American to ever be nominated in the category. Beachler and Carter became just the second and third black women to win non-acting Oscars.

“It just means that we’ve opened the door,” Carter, a veteran costume designer, said backstage. “Finally, the door is wide open.”

Two years after winning for his role in “Moonlight,” Mahershala Ali won again for his supporting performance in “Green Book” — a role many said was really a lead. Ali is the second black actor to win two Oscars following Denzel Washington, who won for “Glory” and “Training Day.” Ali dedicated the award to his grandmother.

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” which kicked off the ABC telecast with a performance by Queen, won four awards despite pans from many critics and sexual assault allegations against its director, Bryan Singer, who was fired in mid-production for not showing up. Its star, Rami Malek, won best actor for his full-bodied and prosthetic teeth-aided performance, and the film was honored for editing, sound mixing and sound editing.

“We made a film about a gay man, an immigrant who lived his life unapologetically himself,” said Malek who after the ceremony fell and was checked out by medics before making the rounds at post-show festivities. “We’re longing for stories like this. I am the son of immigrants from Egypt. I’m a first-generation American, and part of my story is being written right now.”

Queen launched Sunday’s ceremony with a medley of hits that gave the awards a distinctly Grammy-like flavor, as Hollywood’s most prestigious ceremony sought to prove that it’s still “champion of the world” after last year’s record-low ratings.

To compensate for a lack of host, the motion picture academy leaned on its presenters, including an ornately outfitted Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry and a Keegan-Michael Key who floated down like Mary Poppins. Following Queen, Tina Fey — alongside Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph — welcomed the Dolby Theatre audience to “the one-millionth Academy Awards.”

Rudolph summarized a rocky Oscar preamble that featured numerous missteps and backtracks by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: “There is no host, there won’t be a popular movie category and Mexico is not paying for the wall.”

The trio then presented best supporting actress to Regina King for her pained matriarch in Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The crowd gave King a standing ovation for her first Oscar.

The inclusivity of the winners Sunday stood in stark contrast to the #OscarsSoWhite backlash that marked the 2016 and 2015 Oscars. Since then, the academy has worked to diversify its largely white and male membership, adding several thousand new members and opening the academy up internationally. Still, this year’s nominations were criticized for not including a female best director nominee or a best-picture nominee directed by a woman.

Though the once presumed front-runner “A Star Is Born” saw its chances flame out, it won, as expected, for the song “Shallow,” which Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper performed during the ceremony. As she came off the stage, Cooper had his arm around Gaga as she asked, “Did I nail it?”

Best documentary went to Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Free Solo,” which chronicles rock climber Alex Honnold’s famed, free solo ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan, a 3,000-foot wall of sheer granite, without ropes or climbing equipment. “Free Solo” was among a handful of hugely successful documentaries last year including the nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG” and the snubbed Fred Rogers doc “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.”

“Thank you Alex Honnold for teaching us to believe in the impossible,” said Vasarhelyi. “This film is for everyone who believes in the impossible.”

Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” won makeup and hairstyling for its extensive physical transformations. The category was one of the four that the academy initially planned to present during a commercial break and as its winners — Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia Dehaney — dragged on in a litany of thank-yous and were the first to have their microphone cut off.

To turn around ratings, Oscar producers pledged a shorter show. In the academy’s favor was a popular crop of nominees: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” ″A Star Is Born” and, most of all, “Black Panther” all amassed huge sums in ticket sales. Typically, when there are box-office hits (like “Titanic”), more people watch the Oscars.