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Oct 21, 2016; Miami, FL, USA; National Anthem singer Denasia Lawrence kneels as she sings the anthem prior to the game between the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia 76ers at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports.
A singer knelt while performing the national anthem at a Miami Heat basketball game on Friday and opened her jacket to reveal a shirt that read “Black Lives Matter,” a variation on a protest that has punctuated many U.S. sporting events since the summer.
[…]
Lawrence, a social worker, wrote on Facebook that the opportunity at the preseason Heat game “was bigger than me.”
“Right now, we’re seeing a war on Black & Brown bodies – we’re being unjustly killed and overly criminalized,” she continued. “I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel; to show that we belong in this country AND that we have the right to respectfully protest injustices against us. I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel to show that, I too, am America.”
Well done, Ms. Lawrence, you’re a light in the world.
Full story here.
I have mentioned, often, that in uStates, the highest percentage of extrajudicial killings are of Indigenous people. To say this isn’t well known would be quite the understatement. It isn’t known at all, and when people do find out, they don’t much care. The Guardian has kept track, along with all the other groups of people who are consistently killed by cops. Very few of these murders get any press at all. The murder of Loreal Tsingine got a little bit, and so did the murder of John T. Williams. Those people who read Indian publications are aware of most of the others, but they don’t get any write up at all. Indigenous people also have the highest rates of dying in captivity, and cops casually toss off excuses like “hey, she overdosed on meth”, as they did in the case of Sarah Lee Circle Bear, who was only 24 years old. The cops neglected to explain how she could have died from a meth overdose while in custody for two days. Sarah’s case, and that of so many others, has been a cause of deep outrage in Indigenous circles, but once again, if you aren’t reading native publications, you aren’t likely to know about any of them.
Chase Iron Eyes started NLM in 2014, but once again, it’s been a slow take because about the only people who care about native lives are natives. In These Times has a very good article about Native deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and the bigotry Natives face every single day. Please, go read. Please, share. I thank you.
Donald Trump in Cleveland prayer huddle — (YouTube screen grab)
Over at The Oak Initiative (never heard of it before today, yet another dominionist Christian joint), a case is being made for God’s Alpha Male, which is, of course, Trump.
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Trump could be a modern-day Cyrus and as President a great defender of the Christian religion and the church. Only time will tell.
I suppose it would be a plus if Mr. Trump had the external character of President Jimmy Carter, who had one marriage, was a Southern farmer and Baptist Sunday School teacher. But then again, Mr. Carter as President didn’t work out too well, remember?
The Carter/Trump comparison is an excellent example of the two-fold nature of a man’s character. Jimmy Carter was the first well-known “born again” Christian in our modern era to run for the Presidency, yet was one of the worst Presidents. Carter had impeccable outward character of speech, fidelity, and humility, yet he greatly lacked in the internal character traits of what God intended for men. Trump on the other hand is often flawed in visible outward character, but excels in his internal manly attributes. By internal standards, he exhibits tremendous alpha male characteristics of courage, fearlessness, and aggressiveness blended with a natural ability to lead people. These internal God-given traits are what would make Trump an exceptional President leading and protecting a nation.
Let me end this letter to encourage you in faith and practice to understand that God’s ways are not our ways and He often does things and works His plan with vessels we cannot understand. For who can know the mind of God?
Oooh, he’s just bristling with internal manly manliness! If anyone can whip those beta males in line, it would be him, oh yes. Sure, he’s crude, and toxic, nastier than all hells, and shallow as pond scum, but the manly, you cannot ignore the manly! Trump’s being a con-man, fraud, and criminal? Oh, just manliness at work! I think we need more nasty women. Also standing up for the poor maligned Alpha Male of all Males is Jesse Lee Peterson, who is not content with ‘nasty women’, oh no. No, women are Accusers, which he is at pains to point out, is a kenning for…Satan! Oooh. Yeah, I’m just shakin’ here. Apparently, like all women, I have lived my whole life for no other purpose than to falsely accuse every single man I have run across. I’ve been busier than I thought.
“Every man is guilty now, every man, and these accusers pour that out at will,” Peterson said on his radio program yesterday. “They get angry about something, you don’t return their call or text, they can just accuse you, because generation after generation of young girls have been taught to do this.”
In a clip from the show that Peterson posted on his YouTube channel, which he labeled “Trump’s ‘Sexual Assault’ Accusers Are Literally Satan’s Daughters,” he accompanied this assertion with an image of Bill Cosby.
“Did you know that Satan was called ‘the Accuser’?” he asked. “That was his primary name. Satan’s primary name was ‘the Accuser.’ Just let that sink in. Satan’s primary name is ‘the Accuser.’ And that’s what we have in our country now, accusers.”
Peterson lamented that boys today go out and “in their minds they are having a good time not realizing that the accuser is lurking.”
Sigh. And here I thought this was going to be yet another busy day of painting, but no. I am going to have to go seek out men to destroy. A woman’s work, never done.
This was left on my apartment door today at University House. Absolutely disgusting. pic.twitter.com/aBdjH8gRF1
— cip (@ClarkePerkins) October 20, 2016
LSU political science junior Clarke Perkins tweeted Wednesday night that her door decoration was damaged and “go back 2 Africa N— monkeys” was written on its side.
Perkins said she noticed that the decoration was damaged when she was leaving her apartment at University House at 6 p.m.
She shared a photo of the decoration online on Twitter Wednesday night. The tweet gained traction, being retweeted more than 2,200 times by Thursday afternoon, prompting LSU President F. King Alexander to release a statement.
“I am sorry this happened to you,” Alexander tweeted. “If the culprit is not a student, we will contact the district attorney for swift action. Let me be clear: LSU will not tolerate this behavior.”
Perkins said she met with Alexander in person Thursday. She said he plans to put pressure on University House and demand that the apartment complex takes steps to protect students.
University House is an off-campus complex on West Chimes Street just north of LSU’s campus. A spokesperson for University House said that they will release a statement Thursday.
Perkins said that she does not know whether she or her four other roommates were specifically targeted. She said she has lived at the apartment since Fall 2015 and has never had an issue before. She is now considering her other housing options.
For me, it’s early, and I have not had tea yet, so not much to say here. What is there to say? This sort of garbage is happening more and more, with bigots feeling happy and smug, wallowing in their poison troughs.
Via KTBS.
If I had a real life irony meter, I’d be dead from the massive explosion caused by Pat Buchanan. Pat is once more weeping salty tears over the marginalization and oppression of white men, and the dismal state of patriarchal control. If anyone reading has a shiny Acme™ Irony Meter, get rid of it, it will never take the strain.
Is the system rigged? Ask yourself.
For half a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has systematically de-Christianized and paganized American society and declared abortion and homosexual marriage constitutional rights.
Where did these unelected jurists get the right to impose their views and values upon us, and remake America in their own secularist image? Was that really the Court’s role in the Constitution?
Oh, come now, Pat. You were just fine with assholes like Scalia, who imposed their views and values on people, and in doing so, crushed more lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness than you could shake a stick at. As someone who had an abortion, Pat, I’ll remind you of something: none. of. your. business. I’m thankful mine took place before the mega-assholes of morality decided to involve themselves. Health-wise, I was safe rather than bleeding to death in a room somewhere, and that termination allowed me to keep my sanity. Never been in the slightest way sorry for it, either. Just relieved. (And yes, I would have taken the risk of bleeding to death in a room somewhere, that’s how strongly I felt, and my reasons? My business.) Everyone allowed to marry? Yes, why not? In case you weren’t looking Pat, that fight took many years, mostly because of those unelected jurists who thought exactly the same way you do. You’re a toddler having a tantrum.
How did we wind up with an all-powerful judicial tyranny in a nation the Founding Fathers created as a democratic republic?
Hey, you started it. Liked it well enough when decisions were going your way.
There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants here, with millions more coming. Yet the government consistently refuses to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.
Yeah, about that…even the incredibly white-washed history texts in uStates could explain this one to you, Pat.
Why should those Americans whose ancestors created, fought, bled and died to preserve America not believe they and their children are being dispossessed of a country that was their patrimony — and without their consent?
Sigh. Fuckety fuck. Oh, you mean those Americans whose ancestors happened on Turtle Island, a place which had been long inhabited, who fought, raped, pillaged, and slaughtered everyone in sight in attempted genocide to steal “America” be dispossessed of a country they stole, without the consent of the inhabitants? Stealing is wrong, Pat. I was under the impression even Christians think so. Something about commandments and being all morally superior. As for your patrimony, oh, you can shove that one, Pat. Really deep.
When did the country vote to convert the America we grew up in into the Third World country our descendants will inherit in 2042?
Perhaps you should find a place you could legally acquire, and start setting up White Patriarchs Paradise. Then everyone could be happy. You could wage war on the sun, in order to preserve that wondrous pasty whiteness, proving for once and all the might of white.
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a Congressional majority voted to end discrimination against black folks. When did we vote to institute pervasive discrimination against white folks, especially white males, with affirmative action, quotas and racial set-asides? Even in blue states like California, affirmative action is routinely rejected in statewide ballots.
You make it sound like this happened because a bunch of old white dudes were sitting around one day, and decided to be all loving and stuff. That’s not quite what happened, Pat. There was a long and ferocious road to acknowledging people of colour as full human beings, and a whole lot of people died to make that happen. It was hardly trivial, and it was only a first step. We remain racist, with too many white people refusing to budge so much as a quarter step toward actual equality. You’re one of the assholes who thinks the Civil Rights Act fixed everything.
Yet it remains regime policy, embedded in the bureaucracy.
Oh, you’re one of those folks who buys into that “Obama Regime” noise. That’s not unexpected, with you being one of the old guard white men, wailing, gnashing your teeth, and lamenting your loss of absolute dominion over other people. You can’t be toppled soon enough, Pat.
Via Right Wing Watch.
A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.
Melissia Hill was eating crepes with her 5-year-old son, Phoenix, at a Brooklyn cafe this summer when he asked her, “Is Donald Trump a bad person? Because I heard that if he becomes president, all the black and brown people have to leave and we’re going to become slaves.”
Next he wanted to know, “What is a slave?” and, “Where are we gonna go?”
Hill was taken aback, and well aware of the wide-eyed interest Phoenix’s questions attracted from neighboring tables. She asked him where he’d heard these things. His answer: from another child at his local YMCA day camp.
[…]
And kids like Phoenix aren’t waiting to see what happens on November 8 before they absorb these views, repeat them, and integrate them into the set of perspectives that combine to make up how they see themselves and others. Many, according to a recent survey of teachers’ perceptions of their students, are using them as fodder for bullying. Others are anxious and scared as a result of the taunts and the real-life threats to their families.
Nobody — not even those who study the development of racial attitudes in kids or the impact of racial trauma — can say with certainty what the long-term effects of this unprecedented dose of high-profile animosity will be on the young people who are steeped in it.
This spring, Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, took an informal poll of educators to gauge how this campaign had affected schools so far.
Maureen Costello, the director of Teaching Tolerance, said the organization’s interest in the election’s effect on school-age kids was piqued by news reports about high school sporting events where chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” and “Build a wall” were used against predominantly Latino teams.
“We wondered, is this the tip of an iceberg? Is there something beneath this?” she said.
The organization sent queries to the teachers who subscribed to its weekly newsletter. “We weren’t trying to be scientific. We were trying to find out, ‘Is there anything going on?’ I compare it to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] asking doctors to report if there are measles outbreaks,” Costello said.
The organization’s conclusion from the thousands of comments it received: Yes, something is going on. More than two-thirds of teachers reported that students — mainly immigrants, children of immigrants, and Muslims — had expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election:
Teachers used words like “hurt” and “dejected” to describe the impact on their charges. The ideas and language coming from the presidential candidates are bad enough, but many students — Muslim, Hispanic and African-American — are far more upset by the number of people, including classmates and even teachers, who seem to agree with Trump. They are struggling with the belief that “everyone hates them.”
There were reports of tears shed in classrooms from second grade to high school. Concerns about being “sent back” transcended immigration status, as in Phoenix’s case, to affect African-American kids:
African-American students aren’t exempt from the fears. Many teachers reported an increase in use of the n-word as a slur, even among very young children. And black children are burdened with a particularly awful fear that has been reported from teachers in many states — that they will “be deported to Africa” or that slavery will be reinstated. As an Oklahoma elementary teacher explains, “My kids are terrified of Trump becoming [p]resident. They believe he can/will deport them — and NONE of them are Hispanic. They are all African American.
According to the report, even children who did not face, or did not believe they faced, direct threats as a result of Trump’s policies, perceived the same pattern as the white supremacists who support Trump: that the candidate’s vision for a return to a “great’ version of America was dismissive of people of color.
I highly recommend reading the whole article at Vox. This is heartbreaking, to say the very least. Institutionalized, systemic racism is bad enough in uStates, what with it being the very core and framework of this country, now there’s the storm of ugly Americanism breaking right over the heads of these children. I remember growing up under the cold war and the constant threat of nuclear war, you heard about it constantly, and it was a very real fear. Even that pales in comparison to the depth of fear facing non-white children now. Do people truly want to claim this legacy? A legacy of hate, fear, and bigotry? A legacy of gleeful traumatization? There is already a deep divide in schools when it comes to white children and non-white children. I was reading an article about Seattle teachers donning BLM t-shirts, and there was mention of children of colour not seeing themselves in curriculum or histories. No kidding. And if people think that’s bad for Black and Hispanic children, think about what it’s like for Indigenous children. I have mentioned, so many times, just how white-washed uStates ‘history’ is – if you aren’t white, you’re definitely going to be the villains in one way or another, if you are represented at all. About the only people who actively campaign to have special history modules taught in school are various Indigenous tribes, who are damn tired of the lack of representation, combined with ugly, racist, inaccurate representation. There’s not been any concerted effort to have accurate history texts, and with Texas in charge of school textbooks, it’s not likely that will ever happen.
Now, with Trump opening up Ugly Americanism, with way too many people diving into that ugly headfirst, we’ll have at least one generation of children who, already standing at the edge of a deep divide, will be traumatized and living in fear of their very lives. Way to go, America.
Full story at Vox. Via Black Lives Matter.
GQ has an in-depth interview with Raeford Davis, a former South Carolina cop (until 2006). It’s good reading, I recommend it. Just a bit here:
When you first became a police officer, what sort of training did you get for de-escalating a potentially violent encounter?
Very little. My academy manual was approximately 1,500 pages long. Of that, maybe 10-20 pages cover effective communication and verbal de-escalation techniques. It wasn’t really until you got out with your field training officer that they would say, “Look you’ve got to talk to people and settle things without getting worked up.” In a lot of ways, when you got on the street you were unlearning a lot of the worst case scenario training that you learned at the academy.
I don’t think the disgrace of so-called police training here in uStates is much of a mystery to most people anymore, but I really wonder if any cops are actually unlearning that garbage anymore.
Were there any mechanisms in place to weed out people who weren’t suited for the job?
Most people wash out based on academic issues and obvious physical issues, like a bad knee, that would prevent them from performing their duties than anything else. As far as spotting over-aggressive or mentally unstable red flags, no, I didn’t see where that would come up and it certainly didn’t with my group. How people washed out from the academy beyond that would be off-campus problems, like getting a DUI or, as happened to one guy, getting into a road rage incident and flashing his badge and gun at people. But it’s the barrel that’s bad, regardless of the apples.
So, what are some of the things you learned about how to behave in those worst case scenarios?
We have this “use of force” continuum. It changes depending on the agency, but there’s a basic format. You can increase your level of response based on the reaction of the individual. You start off with your mere presence, then you have verbal commands, and if that doesn’t work you can put your hands on someone. If they pull back, then you can maybe use a pressure point technique. If they take a swing at you, then you can escalate to a baton. The main takeaway I got from my training concerning individuals armed with a knife or similar weapon was the “21 foot rule.” Basically if you confront anyone with a knife and they get within 21 feet, you can shoot them.
The full interview is at GQ. Via Black Lives Matter.
Major General Donald Jackson. Mary Annette Pember.
As with most issues between Indian country and the federal government, the important bits are steeped in legalese and long numerical references to laws and regulations. The very stuff of life and its protection, however, is referenced and hidden within these dryly-worded documents.
A set of regulations created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) called Appendix C is one such example, and it may determine the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline project as well as other projects for which the Army Corps is responsible for issuing federal permits.
It turns out that tribes have been complaining about the legality of Appendix C for a very long time, and with good reason. Appendix C spells out how the Corps will meet its obligation to fulfill Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), created to protect places of historic, architectural and/or cultural significance.
Part of the NPHA’s Section 106 requires that agencies carry out the process in consultation with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPO) and identify and assess impacts to properties of traditional religious and cultural significance to tribes. Although all federal agencies are allowed to create their own means by which they fulfill the requirements of Section 106, the Army Corps chose to streamline the process by creating its own regulations that tribes and other federal agencies argue not only fail to meet the requirement of the NHPA’s Section 106, but are also in direct conflict with the law.
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) is an independent federal agency charged by Congress with overseeing implementation of the NHPA. The Corps contradicts several of ACHP’s regulations through use of its own process spelled out under Appendix C.
The differences between Section 106 regulations and Appendix C are substantial. Chief among these differences includes the Corps’ decision in the Standing Rock case to review each river crossing of the Dakota Access pipeline as a separate project rather than consider the entire pipeline as one project.
“This allows the Corps to dismiss the potential for effects to historic properties that may be located within the broader project area of an undertaking,” according to an August 2, 2016 letter from the ACHP to the Corps.
(AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan).
Officers with assault rifles, backed by a huge armored grenade launcher, square up to a crowd furiously denouncing the killing of a young black neighbor.
It is a scene which could have been taken from archive footage of Mogadishu in 1990s Somalia or countless other battles, but this conflict is closer to home — the streets of small-town America.
The images, captured in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, open “Do Not Resist” — a disturbing documentary charting the transformation of police across the US into forces that look like military units.
The explosive film is set to fuel an already bitter debate raging in America over heavy-handed law enforcement, following a litany of police killings of black men that have sparked protests from Ferguson and Charlotte to Chicago.
Director Craig Atkinson, whose movie is opening across the US having won best documentary feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, says the American law enforcement ethos has changed “from a mentality of peacekeepers to that of an occupying army.”
Another eye-opening scene shows officers in black fatigues firing volley after volley of automatic rounds at cardboard targets, as if they were preparing for war rather than to “protect and serve.”
A khaki-clad instructor explains that security forces must prepare for all kinds of attacks, “including the Islamic State.”
MRAPs, the armored trucks that protect troops from roadside bombs planted along the dusty roads of Iraq and Afghanistan, are now ubiquitous across the US.
[…]
In another shocking scene, a SWAT team arrives in an MRAP at a tree-lined street in Columbia, South Carolina, to execute a search warrant in a drug case.
The officers, whose equipment looks barely distinguishable from that of an infantry division, end up badly damaging a family home in a raid that nets a small amount of loose cannabis.
Atkinson’s father, a retired policeman from Detroit, Michigan, spent over a decade in one such SWAT team, the New York-based filmmaker explains.
“In his time, his team intervened 29 times in 13 years. Now they are taking part in 200 raids a year,” Atkinson tells AFP.
[…]
Campaigners against police militarization accept that SWAT teams and their heavy-duty hardware have a vital role in combatting the rare instances of terrorism in the US.
But they point out that, due to prolonged mission creep, this is no longer how these resources are used.
Peter Kraska, a criminology professor at the University of Eastern Kentucky, says there are now at least 50,000 SWAT raids a year, up from 3,000 in the 1980s.
Most of the activities of these highly specialized units have little to do with the reasons for their inception, such as dealing with hostage situations, terrorist attacks and drug cartels.
According to Atkinson, one of the architects of the “warrior culture” is a hugely successful police trainer named Dave Grossman, head of a consulting firm called the Killology Research Group.
“We are at war and you are the frontline troops in this war. What do you fight violence with? Superior violence,” Grossman hollers at an audience of mesmerized police in one session filmed for the documentary.
The retired army lieutenant colonel has lectured throughout the US, according to his website, and Atkinson believes his influence has spread to every American law enforcement agency.
For those who are woke, none of this will come as a surprise, but I’d say this is necessary viewing for us all, and this ongoing militarization not only must be stopped, it needs to be revoked. It’s time to take all those shiny toys away from all the bully boys out there. If cops want to continue playing military, I suggest they quit being a cop, and join up.
Via Raw Story.
George Takei (MSNBC).
George Takei has an open letter at The Daily Beast, and a message many of us sorely need to hear. Just an excerpt from the middle here:
You see, I am ever an optimist. A poll taken in August of voters aged 18-34 showed that the vast majority favored Clinton over Trump—64 percent to 29 percent. That split tells me the same thing that the polls for same-sex marriage told us years ago: Over time, reason and fairness will win out, while bigotry and hatred literally would die off. In 20 years, you will all be in charge, and demonstrate far less appetite or patience for Trump’s brand of nativist rhetoric and race baiting. Trump and his supporters understand they are on borrowed time, and while they may seem resurgent today, this in fact could be their last chance to take control. Our country is rapidly moving on from their discredited and archaic worldview. Perhaps that is why the death throes of their campaign are so spectacular.
You are in many ways wiser to the world than your older counterparts. You came of age in a time where there was greater cause for skepticism, and you’re accustomed to the non-stop barrage of social media. Unlike your parents, you understand that we all live in an echo chamber, and that it is up to each of us to depart from it to hear alternative points of view. You are more likely to place your trust in science and embrace diversity, to reject hate while celebrating love in all its manifestations. You are more focused on racial justice and equality of opportunity than the two generations before you. And contrary to common myth, you are not disengaged. In this election cycle, millions of young voters made their concerns heard and very nearly succeeded in realigning the entire election. Nor are you impractical; even when your favored candidate did not succeed, you stuck by your convictions and goals, and in overwhelming numbers now support the party that will best advance them.
A drawing by a 16-year-old girl from Iran on Nauru. CREDIT: Amnesty International.*
Most people will have a passing awareness of what’s been happening to refugees attempting to reach Australia. To say the Australian government has a lot to answer for is one hell of an understatement. This is open, unapologetic torture, and right now, it doesn’t look like anyone much cares that the main effect of this “open air camp” is suicide. When death becomes a preferable option, you get an idea of just how bad things are. These people, already carrying heavy burdens of trauma, are being treated as untouchable, nasty things, and as Esme Weatherwax pointed out, all the ills in the world begin there, with treating people like things. Although reading, it seems to me they are more being treated like inconvenient garbage that someone littered about. This is a terribly ugly story, filled with terribly ugly people, who cannot manage to dredge up the smallest sliver of concern. All around the world, we human beings are failing at being human, in a most spectacular way.
Refugees and asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat are turned away and detained in refugee processing centers on the Pacific island of Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The Australian government has argued that the policy acts as a good deterrence against human smugglers and people who might choose to undertake the journey to its shores. But those who wind up on these offshore detention sites face indefinite and unlawful detention, an ordeal so disastrous that refugees and asylum seekers are turning to self-harm to cope, according to a new human rights organization report released Monday.
The Amnesty International report found that it was not uncommon for detainees to try and kill themselves, based on field and desk research that happened between July and October 2016. One man failed to kill himself twice in a span of ten weeks. Another Iranian refugee who tried to kill herself multiple times every week was eventually put in a medical ward. And a man found his pregnant wife in the bathroom with rope marks on her neck.
[…]
Some service-providers at the detention center described practices that made refugees and asylum seekers feel less than human. One guard forcibly took away candy from a girl. Some asylum seekers were taken from showers after two minutes, with shampoo in their hair. Others had to wait weeks or months for basic necessities like underwear and shoes.
In a conversation with a seven-year-old boy from Iran, a service-provider told Amnesty International that the child would keep asking him questions. “He’d say ‘I don’t understand this place. Prisons are for bad people, right? Bad people are the men who hurt my father [in Iran]. Why am I in prison? Does that mean I am a bad person?’”
Nauru’s refugee processing center is described as an “open” center meaning that once people are recognized as refugees, they are moved into accommodation outside the refugee processing center on the same island, roughly one-third the size of Manhattan. But much of the island is uninhabitable, now environmentally ravaged by generations of phosphate mining.
Even refugees and asylees living outside detention grounds face Nauru police who fail to adequately investigate their complaints. One father, who told the police about a man who tried to rape his daughter, was told that the judge was “off duty.” An Iranian refugee who tried to report a robbery got the run-around from police who said that “their computer was broken.” When he offered to give handwritten testimony, he was told that they didn’t have paper.
[…]
Many of the abuses that Neistat found are consistent with previous accounts of abuse detailed by other refugees and asylum seekers. In late April, at least two refugees tried setting themselves on fire. One died from the self-immolation, while the other refugee suffered critical injuries. In August, The Guardian reported on 2,000 reports of abuse and neglect, which found that children were “vastly overrepresented in the reports.”
People set themselves on fire. On fire, for fuck’s sake. If this does not break your heart, if this does not make you ask questions, if this does not make you angry, something is very, very wrong.
The Australian government spends $419,425 per person, per year on offshore processing. In comparison, the U.S. government spends about $59,860 per person, per year on detention. Yet as the allegations show, the costs do not reflect the care that refugees and asylum seekers receive.
After clicking all the links, and doing all the reading, I would really like to know just where in the hell all that money is going, because it most certainly is not going into care of and for refugees and asylum seekers. The stench of corruption is wafting about.
* I probably have nothing to worry about here, but if you’re the type of asshole who thinks it would be pertinent to comment about how your two year old could draw better than that 16 year old, you’ll be banned so fast you’ll end up with whiplash.
The full story is at Think Progress.
Americans, so gosh darn fun and creative, right? Yes, well, they certainly excel at being nasty, hateful, awful asshole bigots, who often wouldn’t be able to figure their way out of a wet paper bag. Isn’t much room for thought when you have a head full of toxic hate. I have no doubt whatsoever that every person involved would describe themselves as good, patriotic, Christian Americans, who aren’t at all bigoted, oh no. There’s yet another black mark on the blight that is Christianity. How these fucking people can even claim it, I don’t know. It does continue to confirm that their god is every bit as horrible as they are. Let’s see what these gosh darn fun and creative Americans are up to, shall we?
Shirts with a rifle scope trained on Colin Kaepernick selling for $10 outside of Ralph Wilson stadium. pic.twitter.com/bSuxF3G5qq
— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) October 16, 2016
Shirts with a rifle scope trained on Colin Kaepernick selling for $10 outside of Ralph Wilson stadium. [One shirt has Wanted Notorious Disgrace to America on it, with a photo of Kaepernick and a rifle scope superimposed; the other shirt pictured has a stylized Kaepernick kneeling, with the text Shut Up and Stand Up! Kaeperdick.]
Isn’t that just wacky and adorable? Those are such wonderful American ideals to show off to your family, friends, and all the children everywhere, especially those little brown children, because they had best know to grow up and keep their damn proper place, right? Might as well be sure you let them know they have absolutely no business whatsoever going around thinking they are full human beings, with full human rights or anything. Without making sure they won’t be uppity, why one of them might grow up to think the constant and continual extrajudicial killings of people of colour are something to protest and fight against. Those damn uppity…well, you know.
We have not yet plumbed the depths of said American creativity. Let’s have a look at what else is available:
White privilege as fandom in this crude $5 #Kaepernick tshirt at #BuffaloBills tailgate #nfl #blacklivesmatter #nfl #49ers #bills pic.twitter.com/rUpWJgJBsl
— Patrick McCurdy (@pmmcc) October 16, 2016
For $5, you can get a white T-shirt, with an image of Kaepernick kneeling, with the text “Hey Colin… While You’re Down There, in red. What’s more American than comparing a man to the absolute worst possible creature, a woman? Because it really wouldn’t be that exceptional American evil without tossing in some misogyny, and making sure there’s at least a slight diss towards all those women, y’know, the gay dudes. Also, in case you can’t make it out, one of the sellers of this garbage is wearing a Chick-fil-a T-shirt, so Christian LGBTIAQ hater confirmed.
This is not in the least unexpected. That does not lessen the absolute sickness of it, the evil of it, which so many Americans have happily embraced in these particularly troubled times. To say this is deplorable is not enough. To say this is disgusting is not enough. This is evil, in all its banality, proffered and taken by Americans who are more than ready to proclaim their goodness. I’d spit on them, but it would be a waste of spit. These people are worth less than shit on a shoe, and they are doing absolutely nothing except spreading shit everywhere they go, and with that shit, the disease of hatred.
If you read this, and bristle over being tarred with a broad brush, examine how complicit you are in the current wave of toxicity. Do you see such things and speak out? Do you hear friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances spilling this poison, and start to examine the floor? Do you turn away? Are you outraged because you are one of the good Christians? Once again, I ask, where are you? Why are you not speaking out? Where is the outcry of Not Acceptable?
Via Think Progress.