#Empathy and the Trump verdict | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mysticalmagician · 5 months ago

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"...State Duma member Oleg Matveychev said that unless Trump's conviction leads to civil war, America should officially be declared 'a fascist country'..." State Duma member Oleg Matveychev should reexamine his mind, for I see little intelligence and understanding in it. He also ought to take a look at what the meaning of fascism is, perhaps in a dictionary, which I am sure he has never touched before. His views and thoughts, along with all of the other people mentioned in this article are fascistic themselves; fascism has been defined in many ways by many people in the past, but a preferred definition would be by Lawrence Britt, detailed in one of his writings; in it, he defines the primary 14 characteristics of fascism as a way of defining it, in studying multiple fascistic regimes throughout history. I'll add a link to this as well below, and encourage all to read it. One of these characteristics is a controlled mass media, which these people, including Oleg Matveychev, are a part of, spreading lies and propaganda for their benefit and the benefit of their authritarian leaders and government. What a disgrace to humanity all of these people are! Have some fucking shame and morals! You all dare to call yourselves Christians, yet you do not follow the word of Christ in any form at all! You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

They would likely say that empathy, kindness, and freedoms and humans rights are all signs of weakness, in a macho attempt to appear strong. This is pure fascistic delusion by definition as well, and quite literally, is only a stupid and weak man's idea of strength. True strength and meaning lies in empathy, kindness, and love. Working together as a species despite out differences is what will bring strength to all of us; we can all help each other rise and to live good lives, but fascistic morons, such as Oleg here, are impeding all of our and our entire species' progress for their own selfish reasons, and for the selfish reasons of their corporate and government benefactors.

As Dr. Lawrence Britt lists and describes, the intertwining of religion and government is another characteristic of fascism; clearly visible in Russia. The protection of corporate power and supression of labor power is another aspect of fascism; something that is indeed occuring in the USA, but it is the policy and goal of the GOP, and of the party of Trump, rather than anyone else. The clear support for Trump, and therefore these policies and ideas, by these russian fascist propagandists and idiots, is a clear form of projection.

Powerful and continuous nationalism, supremacy of military, distain and lack of human rights, anti-intellectualism, all signs of fascism, and all very clearly present in the media and goverment of modern Russia. Oleg Matveychev himself, should be identified as a fascist, along with all other propagandists mentioned in the article. Trump was rightfully convicted for felony crimes by a jury of twelve of his American peers, as is right, and was found guilty by each one of them. This is not fascism, this is justice, truth, and courage. This is progress, and the work of actually good humans to maintain and progress our freedoms, lives, and rights. The future of humanity is empathy, love, and kindness, not hate and fascism. Let freedom ring, and let justice prevail.

Oleg Matveychev, if God is real, you better be worried. So goes for all other fascists reading this.

For any morally good people reading, do not fall into the trap of bullshit, Russian government propaganda, which is all entirely devised to increase our division, and cause strife and chaos amongst us in our country. Why else would they be hoping for civil war or for a criminal and fascist president? It is expressly propaganda to further enrich themselves and gain more power over us, and over their neighbors, and we must fight against it, and help our fellows and family not fall for such lies.

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, by Lawrence Britt, Spring 2003 (ratical.org)

#magic #mysticalmagician #writing #design #life #god #flowers #politics #leftism #russian #russian imperialism #russian propaganda

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militantinremission · 5 years ago

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If U ever wondered what Anglo-Americanophilia looked like:

I don't know what the Jean Family were promised, but it looks like the 'Butter Biscuits' are in the oven... Mainstream Media is calling this shameful display a 'Moment of Grace', but there is nothing graceful about kowtowing before a Homicidal Racist like Amber Guyger. To put on such a Show during the Sentencing Phase of this Convicted Murderer's Trial, is a straight insult to the Whole Black Community.

Why are Black Christians so beholden to White Christians that wish them Dead??? This nonsense goes back at least 100Yrs- to so called 'Race Riots' (curiously coinciding w/ periods of Recession w/i Mainstream [White] America). Back then, delusional Black World War I Veterans dressed in full uniform, and stood at their front gates, saluting- as angry White Mobs descended upon them w/ no remorse. These Men thought that they would be spared the Mob's fury, because they Served; like many in those Mobs.

The biggest threat to Black America has always been 'The Sellout'. From the Era of Denmark Vessey, to the Present, these Opportunists have put personal advancement over The Needs of the Black Collective. White Supremacy thrives on the Oppression of Black America, and Meritorious Manumisson has been a useful tool in keeping the Black Masses in check. A handful of goodies, given to a chosen few 'Operatives'- THAT has been The Recipe over the last 243Yrs.

Brandt Jean is being called a 'Future Leader', because he gracefully(?) forgave the woman that callously murdered his brother- where is the Leadership in that? Sounds more like the Goat that leads the Sheep to Slaughter. Botham's father, Bertram Jean also hugged his son's murderer, and told her that he hoped that they could become friends some day(???) I understand that people have a Right of Expression, but This Narrative was about Justice for Botham Jean, not forgiveness of Amber Guyger.

In an already unprecedented Trial Case, Judge Tammy Kemp stands out. First, for her effort to confuse Jurors by introducing the (inapplicable) 'Castle Doctrine' before deliberations, and later w/ an unprecedented display of bootlicking towards the [Guilty] Defendant. Combined w/ her Court Officer's 'display of empathy' towards the Convicted Murderer, the Jury saw 'The Fix was In', and complied appropriately.

Post Trial interviews w/ several Jurors revealed that they were prepared to level a hefty Sentence on Guyger, but the reaction of the Jean Family and Judge Kemp led them to believe that it would go against the Family's wishes... But what about Justice for Botham? Amber Guyger took The Stand, and played the 'Polly Pure-Bred' Card: Crying, Scared for her Life, and So, so Sorry for what she did! The Jury saw past it all, and focused on her intent to kill- thanks to the the testimony of Joshua Brown.

Joshua Brown put his life in jeopardy, when he came forward to testify on behalf of Botham Jean. He wasn't the only witness. 'Bunny' was the first to contradict Amber Guyger's account. She was the first to detail Guyger's actions in the minutes following the gunshots. After giving an interview to Phil Scott on 'The Advise Show' (African Diaspora News Channel), Bunny's employer fired her, to avoid 'Exposure'.

Bunny tried to set up a Go Fund Me account, in an effort to keep herself going, while supporting the Jean Family. After that, Bunny faded from view... Even Mainstream Media admits that Joshua Brown was a 'reluctant witness', who feared reprisal or even worse, Death. The Prosecutor subpoenaed him to testify. Despite his fears, Joshua displayed amazing Courage by giving his account of Guyger's actions. His Murder, only Days after her conviction, speaks Volumes about American Culture, and the role of Night Riders in 'Patrol Cars'.

In essence, Black America is supposed to forgive the murderers of Our Family members, but Police Officers can't even be expected to accept facts when one of their Own is found Guilty, and deserves to be punished? Amber Guyger was Sentenced to 10Yrs, but Everyone KNOWS that she will probably serve no more than 5Yrs of them. That said, the actions of Judge Kemp and her Court Officer may jeopardize the chance of Guyger serving any Time at all.

Amber Guyger has the Right to Appeal her Guilty Verdict. Judge Kemp broke protocols - particularly that regarding Separation of Church and State, when she came off the bench to hand a Convicted Murderer her Personal Copy of the King James Bible. The hug was just over the top. What Judge- Black or White, has hugged a [noticeably remorseful] Black Convicted Murderer, or even handed him/ her their Personal Copy of The Bible? The Act says that White Lives Matter MORE than Black Lives. That assuaging White Fragility trumps Respect for ANYTHING Black... What about Justice for Botham?

The Jean Family takes their 'Show of Grace' to Dr. Phil, and Joshua Brown is [not so] mysteriously Executed- We don't need tea leaves, to get the Message being sent. Lucky for Us, Brandt Jean's Style of Leadership will not be required; Black America is adopting The Black Agenda... We are going beyond the sway of Leadership that can be influenced by the Trinkets of White Privilege. -The Warriors know what comes next.

#SocialConditioning

#ColorCodedJustice

#TheBlackAgenda

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96thdayofrage · 3 years ago

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Arizona Woman Who Voted In Her Dead Mother’s Name Blamed Her Grief Before Receiving Probation. Her Slap on the Wrist Has Critics Calling Out the Glaring Inconsistencies.

An Arizona woman convicted for casting a ballot in her dead mother’s name will not face jail time, sparking debate over racial disparity in sentencing.

Tracey Kay McKee, a 64-year-old white Republican, was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay fines and do community service on Friday for voting in her mother’s name in Arizona’s November 2020 general election.

McKee’s mother died on Oct. 5, 2020.

A tearful McKee blamed her decision to perform the illegal act on grief and asked the judge for compassion on Friday. Even though prosecutors argued that McKee lied to investigators and should spend 30 days in jail, she was awarded the empathy that some said Black voters had not been afforded.

“Your Honor, I would like to apologize,” McKee told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret LaBianca. “I don’t want to make the excuse for my behavior. What I did was wrong and I’m prepared to accept the consequences handed down by the court.”

McKee has now become the face of Republican voter fraud, a paradox after the months-long effort by former President Donald Trump to uncover widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Arizona’s Republican Party upheld the unfounded theory.

Arizona GOP Chairman Dr. Kelli Ward celebrated the thought of “perp walks and prosecutions” on April 6 when state Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that investigators found “problematic system-wide issues” with Arizona’s early voting after a review of ballots. It turned out that Brnovich’s office uncovered nine voting fraud cases, including McKee and six incarcerated people.

McKee herself also believed there was rampant voter fraud. A clip of her interview captured during the investigation reveals the ironic twist that still wasn’t enough to persuade the judge.

“The only way to prevent voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a ballot,” McKee told the investigator. “I mean, voter fraud is going to be prevalent as long as there’s mail-in voting, for sure. I mean, there’s no way to ensure a fair election.

“And I don’t believe that this was a fair election,” she continued. “I do believe there was a lot of voter fraud.”

The news of McKee’s verdict has also made her model for an unbalanced scale in sentencing. Many on social media are comparing McKee to two Black women sentenced to years in prison because of voting fraud and making her the poster woman for “voting when white.”

“I’m not saying SHE should be in jail. I’m saying the Black people they almost die to arrest shouldn’t be in jail either,” wrote Twitter user Angela Brown-Vann.

Unlike McKee, who admitted wrongdoing, Pamela Moses and Crystal Mason said they voted illegally in error.

Moses, a Black Matter activist, was sentenced to six years and a day in prison in January for trying to register to vote in 2019.

Moses, who has prior felony convictions, was told her right to vote had been restored by Tennessee officials.

A Memphis judge said Moses “tricked” probation officials and had “nothing but contempt for the law and acts as though she believes herself above the law.” But, later emails uncovered by The Guardian revealed that a probation officer admitted to erroneously giving Moses the nod to register to vote.

While Moses was cleared of the charges late last month, Crystal Mason, a Black woman in Texas, is appealing a five-year sentence she was given for illegally casting a provisional ballot despite also insisting that she did not know she was ineligible to vote while on probation in 2016.

“The system isn’t broken—it’s working as intended,” wrote Human Rights lawyer Qasim Rashid comparing Mason’s and McKee’s cases on Twitter.

State laws determine criminal penalties, sentencing guidelines and judicial discretion, and they differ by state. Previous criminal convictions can also impact sentencing.

McKee’s defense attorney argued on Friday that no one in Arizona had ever served time for voter fraud.

Among the recent convictions in the state was Joseph John Marak, who pleaded guilty to voter fraud in March. Marak was convicted on 18 felony charges in 2011 and spent six years in prison. He admitted to illegally voting in six federal elections since 2016 and was sentenced to 30 months probation and fined.

Chad Armstrong, a white Wisconsin man, was still on probation when he voted in the 2018 election. He was sentenced to five days in jail after pleading down from a felony to a misdemeanor. Another white man Glen Tank lost his right to vote in 2016 but said he thought it was restored when he registered to vote in Iowa in 2012. He accepted a plea deal in 2016 and was subjected to a fine.

However, in Texas, Hervis Rogers could face up to 40 years in prison for voting in the 2020 general election while on parole. Democrats have linked Rogers’ case to another systemic issue, voter suppression.

“The unwarranted criminalization of Hervis Rogers’ error is a grave miscarriage of justice. By casting his ballot in the 2020 primary, Hervis Rogers was simply attempting to fulfill his civic duty. Now he is potentially facing decades in prison,” a coalition of Democratic attorneys general said in a July statement.

“This prosecution is a clear attempt to intimidate voters, deter participation, and stoke fears of fictitious voter fraud.”

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philosworkbench · 3 years ago

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When the Break Room is a Bullhorn

I've been watching the moralizing on Facebook about the "Slap Heard 'Round the Internet." At last night's Oscars, Chris Rock made an ableist joke at Jada Pinkett Smith's expense and her husband, Will Smith, took to the stage and slapped him.

Immediately, social media was a buzz with hot takes. The absolute wrongness of violence. The problem of toxic masculinity. The sanctity of free speech. The tradition of men usurping the agency of their minds.

Instantly, my Facebook feed became a 300-level Ethics class that I don't remember signing up for.

What's interesting was what one said:

"If I was sitting at an event and someone insulted my spouse about a medical condition, I would feel so..."

"If I was a comic doing my act and a peer came up on stage and physically attacked me, I would feel so..."

Those sentiments were absent from my feed. A great deal of moralizing; no empathy. (Maybe I just have the wrong friends.)

Eerily Familiar - Remember that Joke about Barron Trump?

In (I believe) 2016, an SNL writer whom I admire made a joke that referenced President Trump's eldest son, a child. I maintain that the joke was not about Barron, but I appreciate why everyone lost their minds. A child was mentioned. Time to scream on Facebook for the writer's head.

Again, I noticed what no one said:

"If I was a parent, even a famous one, and my child was invoked to make fun of me, I would feel so..."

"If I was a comic who was also a woman, watching an alleged serial abuser elected to office, I would feel so..."

As someone pushing 50 years old, I'm bewildered. Were we always this way? When did we become so pious, detached, and sanctimonious? When did we decide that -- at every given moment -- what the world really needs is not our empathy, but our hastily written morality plays? When did we begin framing everything in terms of the broadest possible narrative of right and wrong, rather than having any emotional connection?

Some would say not to be fooled: those moralizing are processing their emotions out loud. But that's interesting considering that most of the posts I read omit any mention of emotion.

So what is missing in today's society?

The Break Room: Facebook for Workers of the 90s

Did I mention I'm old? I worked almost every odd job I've ever worked during the 1990s: Landscaping, Horse Stall Mucking, Bookselling, Espresso-slinging, Maintenance Department-ing.

These jobs had one constant thread: a Break Room. Granted, it wasn't always an actual room. It could be a corner of a barn or the shade of truck. But there was a place and time to bullshit with coworkers.

Bullshit (n.) - Something that isn't true.

Bullshit (v.) - Talking about things that don't matter but with people who do.

Bullshitting was how you knew you were friends. You'd get into ridiculous arguments that couldn't possibly be relevant in your little corner of the country.

I'm not suggesting the Break Room was a haven for deep, empathetic talks, but I can guarantee you something someone would say that I'm not seeing a lot of online:

"If someone had joked like that about my wife, I would have..."

"Well, if someone had slapped me over a f***ing joke, I would have..."

But I see almost none of that. When controversies arise now online, 20+ years later, I never see anyone identify with the people they make their moral pronouncements about.

The Bullhorn has Replaced the Breakroom

Facebook is now a place we all take to with our "Hot Takes," so everyone else can learn what we think about something. How awful.

I'm not appalled because people are jumping up in the Public Square or that social media makes the Public Square everywhere. What's galling is the absolute high people get off their own performed piety.

"Will Smith should have never..."

"Chris Rock should not have..."

"Those people. Over there. Living lives I can watch over from my perch. I, who have never been angry to the point of rage, find him guilty. I, who have never punched down, deliver my verdict. To Facebook! I must address the nation."

This wasn't the way of the Break Room, which, seeing through the soft glow of memory, was a place where people put themselves in the shoes of those they discussed.

Of course, I'm doing the same thing.

It doesn't escape me that a time-honored trope in social media is to criticize social media using a post on social media. (Granted, this is Tumblr, so I feel justified. I'm actually typing this with both my pinkies extended.)

So maybe I should come clean. If I was sitting next to my spouse and someone made fun of a medical condition, I would probably start to stand. She would probably grab my arm. Her knowing stare would remind me that she is a fully capable human being who can defend herself. She'd make it clear in a glance that it's not my place to co-opt her anger for my own chance to play out the toxic masculinity I saw everywhere growing up. I would sit back down, and glare at the comic. And yes, if I had an opportunity to hit him later, I might go for it, knowing all the while that I was totally in the wrong. Sometimes you know you're wrong, and you still do wrong.

It's not moral; it's just human.

Our humanity -- base, amoral, and "problematic" -- is what we used to acknowledge in the Break Room. I'm not sure the moralizing of the Bullhorn is an improvement.

#will smith #chris rock #jada pinkett smith #academy awards

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marymosley · 4 years ago

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Did CNN’s Stelter Shatter The Sandmann Confidentiality Agreement?

There is an interesting fight brewing between the lawyers for Covington Catholic High School student Nichola Sandmann and CNN. We recently discussed how the Washington Post reached a settlement with Sandmann and how many in the media are still abusing this teenager despite the fact that he was not, as reported, the aggressor in an incident with a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The posting notes that CNN also reached a confidential settlement. Now, however, CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter and its legal analyst Asha Rangappa have commented on the settlement — dismissing it as involving just a small payment to end a nuisance lawsuit. Sandmann’s counsel Lin Wood has cried foul that this is a violation of the confidentiality terms which bar public comments on the agreement. Yet, Stelter and Rangappa are put on the air to discuss public controversies. These agreements are designed particularly to prevent comments to the media, but what if the party is the media? This is a major public controversy. The question is whether analysts discussing a news story is the same as CNN as an entity discussing terms of the agreement or disparaging the settlement. Wood clearly believes so.

Wood objected to a retweet from Stelter of a tweet from attorney Mark Zaid, who wrote “Those with zero legal experience (as far as I can tell) should not be conjecturing on lawsuits they know nothing about. What kind of journalism is that? I’ve litigated defamation cases. [Sandmann] was undoubtedly paid nuisance value settlement & nothing more.”

It is a rather ironic tweet since presumably Zaid has no knowledge or involvement in the settlement. Whatever “kind of journalism” or lawyering is involved, there is no way for any of us to know what was paid to Sandmann.

Wood went on the attack after the retweet: “This retweet by @brianstelter may have cost him his job at @CNN. It is called breach of confidentiality agreement. Brian Stelter is a liar. I know how to deal with liars,” Wood tweeted with a screenshot of Stelter’s retweet.

CNN analyst Asha Rangappa also weighed in and agreed with Zaid that “I’d guess $25K to go away.”

Wood also responded to that retweet by saying “Heads are going to roll at CNN or @N1ckSandmann is going to filing another lawsuit & reveal truth.”

At the outset, as I stated in the recent blog column, I find it astonishing and frankly disgraceful that media figures continue to downplay what happened to this 16-year-old boy in false accounts that ran nationally on his encounter. Neither he nor his lawsuit should be described as nuisances or improper. It was chilling to see a kid treated to such an abusive media frenzy including comparisons to George Zimmerman who killed an unarmed African American. The lack of empathy by figures like Stelter and Rangappa is striking in suggesting that this complaint should just “go away” like a strike suit or nuisance action filed by some crank. The media was wrong in its abuse of this kid. Terribly wrong. Yet, media figures continue to attack him for somehow causing this controversy.

Now to the legal issue. We do not know the language of the confidentiality agreement anymore than Zaid does. Often these agreements include provisions that bind the employees of the signatories. That is meant to avoid precisely this danger of companies attacking the other party through its employees while claiming adherence to the agreement as a corporate entity.

That however is tough when the entity is a new organization and this is news. For example, people look to Rangappa for legal analysis and she was analyzing the story. Of course, that is the dilemma faced by CNN when it signs a sweeping agreement.

There is an interesting analogy to confidentiality agreements limiting future analysis or comments. Some confidentiality agreements seek to limit the ability of lawyers to represent individuals in the future. Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.6 states that a lawyer shall not participate in “an agreement in which a restriction on the lawyer’s right to practice is part of the settlement of a client controversy.”

Here the agreement would contain a restriction of a news organization covering or discussing the settlement as part of a national news story.

The question could come down to the language. There are actually two types of provisions that could come into play, not one. First, there can be a confidentiality provision barring comments on the settlement other than an approved statement. These agreements often not only cover “disclosure” of terms but also comments on such terms. Thus, parties will sometimes agree that they will not allow anyone to make “statements or otherwise permit or cause any publicity, directly or indirectly, concerning any Settlement Information.”

Second, there is often a non-disparagement provision preventing “heirs, assigns, agents, employees and attorneys shall not disparage or make any derogatory remarks whatsoever about any of the other parties thereto or their heirs, assigns, agents, officers, directors, employees and attorneys.”

CNN’s lawyers obviously knew that this would be a newsworthy story so they had a choice of allowing their employees to discuss the settlement or barring such comments. If they did the latter, the attorneys would ordinarily send around a memo informing all employees that they are not to comment on the settlement or go beyond an approved statement.

It will come down, therefore, to terms. However, much like not knowing about the money exchanged in any settlement, we do not know the terms. There is no reason to assume that there was a tiny payment for nuisance value any more than a windfall. As we discussed earlier, the complaint against the Washington Post was dismissed as opinion but a court reinstated part of the complaint on appeal. That does not mean that it was a strong case for trial but there are plenty of settlements are reached on meritorious actions to avoid discovery or trial or the risk of an adverse trial verdict.

The attorneys for CNN may be the most miffed. Media lawyers are often the ones pushing for confidentiality because they do not want to encourage future lawsuits by stories of settlement payments. If these CNN employees are covered in the agreement, it could permit the filing of a new action for breach and a demand for damages. This could prove a couple of costly tweets for the company. However, if it turns out that way, the story shows the difficulty faced by media counsel in crafting non-disclosure agreements on issues of national concern. Ironically, in that respect, CNN finds itself in the same type of controversy over non-disclosure agreements that it has covered with respect to President Trump.

Did CNN’s Stelter Shatter The Sandmann Confidentiality Agreement? published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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sinrau · 4 years ago

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(CNN) Ever since the coronavirus began its deadly march through the US, Donald Trump has been accused of lacking the empathy presidents typically draw on to lead and soothe a nation in crisis.

This week the question of presidential compassion was a consistent storyline.

You could pick your lyrics: Was the President like the Tin Man from the “Wizard of Oz,” plaintively singing, “If I only had a heart.” Or was he suffering from, as the 80s hit song put it, “a total eclipse of the heart”?

We saw a President who slammed the Supreme Court for blocking his effort to subject 650,000 Dreamers to deportation. He also bemoaned the court’s historic ruling Monday that LGBTQ people can’t be fired because of their sexuality. His former national security adviser John Bolton claimed in a book excerpt that Trump had encouraged China’s leader to set up concentration camps for the Uyghur minority. He plowed ahead with a non-socially distanced rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, even as coronavirus cases mounted.

Yes, some rallygoers could get sick, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, but “it’s a very small percentage.”

In a private meeting with the families of Black victims, though, Trump was “very compassionate,” according to the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot to death while jogging in Georgia. But in his public remarks, the President made law-and-order his primary message.

“Trump went on the attack against his political rivals and doubled down on his hard-line, ‘law and order’ stance, a political calculation solidified by his use of the words ‘safety and security’ and his statement that Americans ‘demand law and order,'” wrote Issac Bailey. “His effort to address growing national suffering and protest over police brutality was, at best, a thinly veiled excuse to defend law enforcement and signal to white voters where he stands.”

A chilling view of the private Trump emerged from the Bolton book. It painted a credible “portrait of the most amoral, autocratic and unprepared man to ever serve as president of the United States,” wrote John Avlon. “This is not a partisan attack by activists from the opposition party. This is the first-person view of the President’s former national security adviser, bolstered by contemporaneous notes, a standard which is admissible in court. It is a damning portrait of a president untethered to anything resembling morals, who cannot separate his self-interest from the national interest and doesn’t even care to try.”

Jen Psaki viewed the book through the lens of the upcoming election: “All of the observations, accusations and specific anecdotes are about one person — Donald Trump — and whether he is fit to lead the country and the lasting damage he would inflict if given four more years.”

In fact, the revelations show Bolton as complicit, in Elie Honig‘s view: “John Bolton has offered the nation a staggering profile in cowardice…Bolton directly witnessed not one but multiple acts that could have been cited in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. But Bolton did nothing about it while he held a powerful post in the Trump administration. And he stayed quiet and took cover when Congress and the nation pleaded with him to speak out during the impeachment process.”

Writing about China policy, Bolton gave this devastating description: “The Trump presidency is not grounded in philosophy, grand strategy or policy. It is grounded in Trump.” As if to prove that such a verdict applies more broadly, on Friday night Attorney General William Barr ousted Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of NY which has been investigating and prosecuting Trump’s associates. “The news of Berman’s ouster is one more piece of evidence that Trump is the anti-law-and-order President, despite his claims to the contrary. Trump touts law and order when it suits him, but attacks the courts and erodes our judicial system when it comes to his agenda and actions,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

One critic described Bolton’s book as a slog. “It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged,” wrote Jennifer Szalai in the New York Times. “Still, it’s maybe a fitting combination for a lavishly bewhiskered figure whose wonkishness and warmongering can make him seem like an unlikely hybrid of Ned Flanders and Yosemite Sam.”

Another book Trump may be dreading is due out in July from the President’s niece, Mary L. Trump, who is a psychologist. Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio wrote that the book promises to shed light on the President’s fraught relationships with his father and elder brother, Fred Trump Jr., who was Mary Trump’s father. “Three and a half years into the Trump era, endless words have been spent illustrating the chaotic and cruel personality that can, to cite just one example, schedule a huge ego-gratifying rally in the middle of a deadly pandemic caused by a viciously contagious virus,” noted D’Antonio.

A rally fizzles

Given that cases of Covid-19 have been rising sharply in Tulsa County, wrote infectious disease expert and Oklahoma native Dr. Kent Sepkowitz in advance of Trump’s Saturday rally there, “from a strict public health perspective, the selection of Tulsa is a terrible decision.”

Trump’s first rally since the pandemic began was “supposed to trumpet his return to greatness — and the country’s return to normalcy,” wrote Frida Ghitis. But it “instead brought embarrassing scenes of empty bleachers, a dismantled stage and a familiar speech unsuccessfully trying to reignite public fears…The speech was typically self-centered, with a bizarre more than ten-minute long riff on his ultra-slow descent from the West Point ramp, and absolutely no words of compassion for the nearly 120,000 people in this country who have died during the pandemic.”

Days of freedom

Friday was Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the US. Another historic day of freedom came on October 1, 1962, when James Meredith became the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. He had to sue for his right to an education there, and it took the courts, hundreds of federal marshals and thousands of troops to overcome rioting and protect Meredith.

“The gates of higher education in the United States were opened for all Americans,” Meredith wrote. “This victory for me and for the US Constitution shattered the system of state-sponsored white supremacy in Mississippi…”

“When I see people across America — and around the world — peacefully marching for racial justice and honoring the memory of George Floyd and other martyrs like Medgar Evers…I am filled with both joy and hope. White supremacy may be the most evil beast that’s ever stalked the halls of history, and today it may finally be mortally wounded.”

Some companies and some states marked Juneteenth as a holiday, but it should be observed nationally, wrote Peniel Joseph. It “would spur not only conversation about the origins of our current racial and political conflicts, but would also prompt vitally necessary education about white supremacy and its manifestations in policies and political actions that are anti-Black, anti-democratic and anti-human,” wrote Joseph.

Rayshard Brooks’ own words

Months before he was shot to death by Atlanta police, Rayshard Brooks took part in an interview for a research project. A video of that February interview aired on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 show Wednesday, and in it, Brooks described the lasting burden of being on probation: “I just feel like some of the system could, you know, look at us as individuals. We do have lives, you know, just a mistake we made, and you know, not just do us as if we are animals.”

Van Jones noted that for people on probation “any contact with a police officer — for any reason — means an almost certain return to the horrors of a jail cell. It is safe to assume that Brooks did not want to go back to jail over sleeping in his car or failing a sobriety test, lose everything he had and be forced to start his life over again.”

“In other words, we do not know why the Atlanta police officer chose to shoot a man who was running away from him. But we can guess why that man chose to run, in the first place. Brooks didn’t want to lose his liberty. Instead, he wound up losing his life.”

Melvin Carter, the first African American mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, is the son of a police officer who served his city for 28 years. But even with that background, he doesn’t think the answer to public safety is solely a matter of spending billions on police and prisons. “Our country’s enforcement-heavy approach to safety isn’t designed to address the root causes of crime, but the symptoms,” he wrote. “Instead of equipping us all with tools to guard our own future security, it further alienates those on the outer edges of society and impedes funding for critical social infrastructure like schools and housing.”

A former mayor, Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, wrote that the US Justice Department was investigating his city’s police department when he took office. A consent decree which is still ongoing has resulted in a dramatic improvement in how residents view the police, but there’s more work to be done, Landrieu wrote. “We must go further. We can no longer ask police to handle the failures of our social and educational systems.”

Anne Milgram, the former New Jersey Attorney General, worked on the reinvention of policing in what was once America’s most dangerous city, Camden. “We had a police department that had no idea of what it was doing or whether it could do better. It lurched wildly from 911 call to 911 call, sometimes taking hours to respond to calls of serious violence. It failed to solve serious crimes…that plagued the city, and yet hundreds of arrests were being made for low-level crimes, driven most often by drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, poverty and homelessness.” New leadership, new systems and ultimately a new police department made a difference — the city is “the safest that it has been in more than 50 years” and the police department is a model for others, Milgram wrote.

Supreme surprises

When Donald Trump ran for President, he promised to appoint conservative justices to the federal courts — and he’s been true to his word, naming Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and scores of others for lower courts.

But it was Gorsuch who wrote the majority opinion this week upholding civil rights for LGBTQ Americans, rejecting the Trump administration’s position in declaring that the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protect gay and transgender people. “It’s surprising that it’s taken this long,” wrote John D. Sutter. “Until this week in the United States of America, many LGBTQ workers lacked these simple legal protections.

“In over half the states in America, you could be fired for being gay. Until now.”

Then on Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, sided with the court’s four liberals in blocking the Trump administration’s effort to kill the Obama-era DACA program, which shields young people who had been brought to the United States as children from deportation. DACA “was life-changing for hundreds of thousands of people — Americans in all but the paperwork — who were now free to work, go to school, seek promotions and continue their academic careers without fear of being detained and sent back to countries they barely knew,” wrote Raul A. Reyes. The decision was “a win for Dreamers, for the American ideal of welcoming immigrants — and for the independence of the high court.”

Happy Father’s Day

Mother’s Day this year came as most Americans were still locked down, and a lot of the holiday get-togethers were virtual. Today is Father’s Day and the advice from Kent Sepkowitz is consistent with what he recommended for the earlier holiday: get together with your father on Zoom, Facetime or whatever platform you prefer. America’s “approach to reopening — which has been unscientific and uncoordinated — has failed miserably. Rather than cautiously peeling back the various Covid-19 containment safeguards, most states have supported an ‘everybody-back-in-the-pool’ return, as if we were all teens partying during Spring Break.”

“Besides, let’s be honest — Father’s Day is no Mother’s Day, “wrote Sepkowitz, noting that total US spending on Mother’s Day gifts is more than 50% higher. “As a dad myself, this junior varsity status is fine by me. This year in particular, I want nothing to do with celebrating a holiday in the middle of a poorly managed pandemic.”

For more on Father’s Day:

Marcus Mabry: A Father’s Day message to all dads

Arick Wierson: George Floyd was my wake-up call

After Aunt Jemima

The debate over systemic racism touched off by the killing of George Floyd rippled into many parts of America. Consumer-facing companies reacted, with Quaker Oats announcing that it would end the 131-year-old Aunt Jemima brand, noted Elliot Williams.

As a Black child, it was upsetting for him to discover that the light-pink Crayola crayon was labeled “flesh” colored. “I put it back in the bin, pulled out ‘burnt sienna’ or ‘raw umber’ and continued whatever (probably “Star Wars” themed) self-portrait I was working on… By implying that the only color called ‘flesh’ looked like white skin, Crayola decided who was ‘normal.’ Everyone else had to work around that.” (The “flesh” color was phased out in 1962, replaced by “peach.”)

“In the midst of a national debate on life-and-death matters around racism and public safety, fussing about the logo on instant rice may seem trivial,” Williams wrote. “It’s not. The images our society chooses to elevate are reflective of who we are, and more importantly, whose voices — and yes, even lives — matter.”

Now that Aunt Jemima has been retired, wrote Crystal Echo Hawk, what should be next? She argued that the many uses of Native American images and symbolism in sports must end. “Professional sports have the power to influence and inspire people of all ages. In this unprecedented moment of solidarity, t hey have the opportunity to take a strong stand and show — not just say — that racism will not be tolerated.”

Covid-19 is still here

America’s top two elected officials did their best this week to argue that Covid-19 is going away, despite clear signs to the contrary. “Other countries whose governments addressed the crisis forthrightly have managed to wrestle down the curve, and now they are carefully, safely reopening,” wrote Frida Ghitis. “In the US, the curve is trending up, not down, even if Vice President Mike Pence deceptively declared in an op-ed this week, ‘We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy,’ unctuously declaring that the good news is ‘a testament to the leadership of President Trump.'”

As Ghitis noted, “On Monday, during a roundtable discussion on senior citizens, Trump said ‘If you don’t test, you don’t have any cases,’ a belief reminiscent of a baby thinking you disappear if he covers his eyes. To state the obvious, if we stopped testing, people would continue to become infected and die.”

Don’t miss:

Kamala Harris: The fight continues to protect Americans’ health care from Trump.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.: Trump’s tweet exploits and defames toddlers

Vicky Ward: Telling the truth makes a huge difference

David Gergen and Caroline Cohen: The next Greatest Generation

Merrill Brown: Federal government abdicates duty to inform public on coronavirus

Claire McMullen, Yael Schacher and Ariana Sawyer: Trump’s cold-blooded move to shut out desperate asylum seekers

Jeff Yang: It turns out your favorite movie is racist. What now?

Nayyera Haq: Why Stacey Abrams deserves applause

AND…

At last, summer

A summer like no other begins this weekend. In the first of a new series of weekly columns for CNN Opinion, biologist Erin Bromage wrote, “Our choices over the coming months will determine the trajectory of this pandemic. If we continue to pursue activities that pose a high risk for infection, such as large indoor gatherings, then we will hear the roar of that second wave sooner than later.”

“If we take a more measured approach, by improving hand hygiene, limiting daily interactions with other people, maintaining physical distance and increasing face mask use when we can’t maintain the distance, then businesses can operate safely, people can return to work and the activities our children are missing can resume.”

But even in the midst of the pandemic, Bromage wrote that he’s looking forward to some traditional summer activities: “my first meal at a restaurant (dining outdoors), visiting with more than one or two households at a time, and spending time at the beach. These interactions will be a little different than last summer.

“We will have to keep personal risks and risk mitigation measures in mind, but these adjustments are well worth the payoff of getting to enjoy some of my family’s usual summertime activities.”

Donald Trump’s heartless week #web #website #copied #to read# #highlight #link #news #read #blog #wordpress post# #posts #breaking news# #Sinrau #Nothiah #Sinrau29

#IFTTT #WordPress

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pardontheglueman · 7 years ago

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The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump / Edited by Bandy Lee

In the week that Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s dirtbag blockbuster on life inside Donald Trump’s dysfunctional White House, detonated without warning on the president’s front lawn, blowing the gaff on, amongst other things, the president’s paranoia over food poisoning, his concern that other people might have been touching his toothbrush, and the revelation that POTUS and the first lady lead separate but equal lives in the boudoir dept, it’s worth noting that an altogether more serious work, documenting major concerns over Trump’s fitness to hold office, was published in the U.S.A. last year with a barely a ripple of interest from the nations’ readers.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Bandy Lee, Assistant Clinical Professor in Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, is a fascinating and terrifying analysis of the mental well-being (or otherwise) of the world’s most powerful man. Within two months of Trump’s inauguration in January of last year, Lee had become so troubled by the former reality T.V. star’s unpredictable behaviour that she set about organising the Yale conference “Does Professional Responsibility Include a Duty to Warn”, which gathered together some of America’s most prominent mental health professionals to debate the ethical case for setting aside the long-standing “Goldwater rule” (1973), which prohibits clinicians from diagnosing public figures unless they have first examined them. The conference formed the basis of this book, in which many of America’s most respected psychiatrists make the case that ‘while a physician’s responsibility is first and foremost to the patient, it extends as well to society’. Some clinicians, in their defence, cite the “Tarasoff doctrine” (1976) a landmark court decision in California which places an obligation on mental health therapists to speak out when they have determined that an individual is dangerous to another person or persons.

It is to the authors’ credit that they devote a foreword, Our Witness to Malignant Normality, by Robert Jay Lifton, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Columbia University, a prologue, Professions and Politics by Judith Lewis Herman, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard School, and an introduction Our Duty to Warn, by Lee herself, all with the intention of debating the ethical case for overriding the Goldwater rule in the case of a national emergency. It should be noted that many of the contributors here have been impelled to question the continued observance of this commandment by the recent decision of the American Psychiatric Association to double down on its interpretation of the rule, or gag, as some of the writers contend, making it impossible now for any mental health professional to give an opinion, let alone a diagnosis of President Trump, without risking censure.

Having established, at least to my own satisfaction, that the dedicated professionals who contribute to this book are doing so because they are motivated by genuine concern for the safety of their fellow citizens rather than any partial political expediency, I feel able to read this book with a clear conscience. Of course, many of those writing here are progressives openly opposed to Trump’s populist agenda, so there is no way to depoliticise the book entirely. On balance, then, even though the “patient” under discussion is subjected to an extremely painful public evaluation, I believe this is a book that had to be written. The stakes are simply too high for the profession to have remained silent in the face of the overwhelming evidence detailed here which suggests that the president is demonstrably unwell and a considerable danger to mankind.

The portrait of President Trump that emerges from over 350 pages of expert testimony won’t come as a surprise to anyone (aside, that is, from the congregation of religious extremists, hard-nut republicans and white supremacists who make up a significant proportion of the Donald’s “base”), but the wide range of serious mental health disorders that seemingly afflict POTUS is simply astonishing and should be cause for the gravest concern.

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The book makes a thoroughly convincing case that Trump is an extreme present hedonist – a person who will say or do anything at anytime for the purpose of self-aggrandisement – also that Trump displays all the traits of a narcissist personality, a disorder which incorporates fantasising about power and attractiveness, feelings of superiority, outbursts of jealousy & a tendency toward lying (in 2015, the fact-checking website Politifact, running it’s “Lie of the Year” contest, checked 77 separate statements by Trump and estimated that 76% of them were false or mostly false). Furthermore, there is evidence of a bullying personality at work too (including sexual, prejudicial and cyberbullying). At this point, you might well feel that you concur with the book’s damning verdict on Trump, after all, as clinical psychologist John D. Gartner states, Donald Trump is so visibly psychologically impaired that it is obvious even to a layman that “something is wrong with him”. However, you may be astonished to know that we are still only in Chapter one!!! If you are not already in a state of total despair at the thought of this man being in charge of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal then you soon will be.

Next into the witness box is Lance Dodes, M.D., a retired Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who walks us through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for determining “antisocial personality disorder” or, to put it another way, whether someone might be considered a sociopath. Key traits to look out for, include evidence of deceitfulness and impulsivity, as well as predatory, bullying and dehumanising patterns of behaviour. Factor in an absolute lack of empathy and runaway paranoia and you are ‘severely emotionally ill’.

Trump’s penchant for paranoid conspiracy theories are also examined in detail by Gartner; before the election, Right Wing Watch listed 58 conspiracies that POTUS had posited were true, these include his well known claim that Obama was born outside of America (“Birtherism”), which Trump has subsequently developed into an accusation that the former president had a Hawaiian government bureaucrat murdered to cover up the “scandal” and also that Senator Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the plot to assassinate JFK. Gartner also labels Trump a sadist (another trait equated with malignant narcissism), citing his constant delight in verbally “punching down” on people who are weaker than him, usually women, immigrants or the disabled.

No respectable psychiatric study of a patient would be complete without reference to its subject’s childhood. And here, it is possible, if only for a fleeting moment, to feel a sliver of pity for Donald Trump! Leaving aside the small matter of whether Trump’s father, Frederick Christ Trump Snr, was a racist (probably), a Klansman (possibly), Trump’s account of his childhood, as told to biographer Michael D’Antonio, is disturbing enough in its own right. Trump recalls his father “dragging him” around tough neighbourhoods in Brooklyn collecting rents and teaching him a life-lesson that the world was divided into “killers” and “losers”. Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, lawyer to gangsters and the notorious red-baiter Joseph McCarthy, said that when it comes to his feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump “pisses ice water”. Or, as Trump himself puts it, “The world is a vicious and brutal place. Even your friends are out to get you: they want your job, your money and your wife”.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is, in fact, an open and shut case. As worthwhile as this book is, there is no mystery to be solved here. We don’t really need the testimony of twenty-seven expert witnesses to tell us what we can see very well with our own eyes – that President Trump is a seriously ill man, a man who suffers from a whole range of harmful disorders, any one of which might lead him, at any moment, to act in a way that endangers us all. And yet, despite the fact that Trump is a crook, a charlatan, a racist, a sexual predator and so gravely mentally ill that he could conceivably bring life on our planet to an end as a result of a Twitter spat, the GOP saw fit to nominate him for the Republican ticket in the general election of 2017 and continues, to this day, to support him in the face of all the horrifying evidence laid out here. Let’s not forget, either, that this book went to the publishers some months ago and Trump’s many conditions are visibly worsening by the day. None of this matters, though, to the super-wealthy eyeing the prize of another massive tax cut, nor to the evangelists who beef up Trump’s base, the very zealots who championed a suspected paedophile, Alabama’s Roy Moore, in last month’s senate race, and who remain determined that the commander-in-chief stay in office long enough to appoint a bunch of pro-life Judges to sit on the Supreme Court. What, too, of the American voter? Trump may have lost the popular vote, trailing Clinton by 2.9 million votes, despite the best efforts of partners in crime Wikileaks and Russia, but there were still 62,979,879 individual voters prepared to place Donald Trump in charge of America’s nuclear codes!

On the subject of those that support Trump, the concluding part of the book, The Trump Effect, seeks to place the victory of the new president in the appropriate context by examining the culture that has allowed him to triumph. In an article entitled Trump and the American Collective Psyche, Thomas Singer, a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in San Francisco, theorises that ‘Donald Trump uncovered a huge sinkhole of dark, raw emotions in the national psyche for all of us to see. Rage, hatred, envy and fear surfaced in a forgotten, despairing, growing white underclass who had little reason to believe that the future would hold the promise of a brighter, life-affirming purpose. Trump tapped into the negative feelings that many Americans have about all the things we are supposed to be compassionate about – ethnic, racial, gender and religious differences…. Trump tapped into the dirty little secret of their loathing of various minorities, even though we may all be minorities now’.

Where will it end? Dodes, unable to offer us any comfort, warns of what we can expect from Trump in the future, ‘Over time these characteristics will only become worse, either because Mr. Trump will succeed in gaining more power and more grandiosity with less grasp on reality, or because he will engender more criticism, producing more paranoia, more lies and more enraged destruction’. Perhaps that is why Noam Chomsky, in the books epilogue, calls our attention to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and it's world-renowned Doomsday Clock which estimates how near we are as a species to extinction. If the hands on the clock reach midnight, the jig is up for mankind. Within a week of Trump taking office the hands of the clock were moved to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. That’s the closest we have been to destruction since 1953!

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newstechreviews · 5 years ago

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Scott Warren, a geographer and humanitarian aid worker based in southern Arizona, has been found not guilty on two counts of harboring unauthorized migrants in a case that has gained international attention and called into question the role of humanitarian aid during a time of contentious crackdown on immigration by the federal government.

The 37-year-old had been facing up to ten years in prison. “The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren told a crowd gathered outside the courthouse in Tucson, Ariz. after the announcement of the verdict. “Everyone here did diligent, detailed and amazing work… I love you all.”

He was arrested on Jan. 17, 2018 by Border Patrol agents who had been surveilling a base used by humanitarian aid groups in Ajo, Ariz. that leave out water and food for migrants who make the deadly, and unauthorized, trek across the Sonoran Desert. The desert has claimed the lives of at least 7,000 migrants who have tried to cross it since the 1990s. Warren first started volunteering six years ago with the group No More Deaths.

“Yet again, No More Deaths has withstood the government’s attempts to criminalize basic human compassion,” wrote No More Deaths in a tweet. “We will continue to provide food, water, and medical aid to all those who need it, until the day that no one dies or disappears while crossing the deserts and oceans of the world.”

BREAKING: Dr. Scott Warren found NOT GUILTY on all charges for providing food, water, shelter, and medical care to two undocumented men. Yet again, No More Deaths has withstood the government’s attempts to criminalize basic human compassion.

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) November 20, 2019

On the day of his arrest, Border Patrol agents found Warren with two migrants from Central America. Warren said that he gave them shelter, food and first aid. However, the Border Patrol agents claimed Warren was helping the migrants evade custody and prosecutors charged Warren with two counts of harboring undocumented immigrants and one count of conspiracy to harbor and transport. After facing trial in June, a jury failed to reach a verdict and the government sought a retrial that dropped the conspiracy charge. After a 6-day retrial in Tucson, Ariz., that began Nov. 12 — during which Judge Raner Collins prohibited the mention of President Donald Trump or the Administration’s policies — a 16-member jury found Warren not guilty after about two hours of deliberation.

Warren also faced two misdemeanor charges, including abandonment of property for leaving water in the desert and for operating a motor vehicle on a wilderness refuge. Judge Collins has reportedly acquitted Warren of the abandonment charge, but he might still face legal consequences for the charge of operating a vehicle.

Warren faced 20 years in prison during the previous 9-day trial for his felony charges that ended in a hung jury. The federal government immediately requested a retrial and reduced the penalty to 10 years.

Warren, who sat down with TIME for an interview in September, says he has only acted out of empathy, motivated by his religious beliefs.

“You have blisters, you’re dehydrated, you’re cold, you’re hot, you’re tired — of course I’m going to provide that care, provide that relief,” Warren said. “It’s a little different than like going and protesting the wall being built.”

But prosecutors argued Warren knowingly assisted the migrants in hiding from Border Patrol. In sworn testimony during both trials, the two agents who arrested Warren said they saw him talking to the migrants and gesturing toward areas of the desert where they are less likely to be arrested by Border Patrol. Warren denied that claim, saying he was helping to orient the men to ensure they didn’t wander into more dangerous and deadly terrain.

The case has ramifications that go beyond Warren’s verdict.

“The government certainly wants to send a strong message to people who are providing aid to migrants,” Katherine Franke, professor of law at Columbia University and faculty director of the school’s Law, Rights and Religion Project, tells TIME.

What are the implications of this case?

Since the start of the Trump Administration, there has been an uptick in prosecution and harassment against humanitarian aid workers and lawyers who assist migrants along the southern border with Mexico. Several cases have been documented by organizations including the United Nations and Amnesty International. Since 2017, eight other No More Deaths volunteers have faced misdemeanor charges in connection with their volunteer work. Lawyers and journalists who cover the southern border have also been surveilled, searched and detained by government officials, according to a study by Amnesty International.

But the case against Warren has been the most severe of all charges faced by humanitarian aid workers by far.

Warren told TIME ahead of the retrial that he worried a guilty verdict could similarly mean the targeting of volunteers and aid workers who do not have as many resources as he has had, and that people in families with mixed immigration statuses could be at risk.

“You’re buying food for your uncle who is undocumented, so now we’re going to go prosecute you for harboring. You drive your kids or your family to the park for a picnic or something — is the government going to arrest you and say that you’re smuggling or you’re transporting?” he said in September. “That’s the other fear that I have, that they will try to keep using these laws in new ways to target more people.”

Bijal Shah, an associate professor of law at Arizona State University, says Warren’s case fits into a larger violation of international law by the U.S. government that is implementing policies aimed at keeping refugees and asylum-seekers from entering the country.

“Charging Scott Warren in this context is part of a broader framework of governmental interest in dissuading people from supporting non-citizens” she says. “By discouraging people from assisting non-citizens we are discouraging people from maintaining the United State’s humanitarian commitments.”

But the jury’s decision to acquit Warren sends a message to prosecutors, Franke says. She believes Warren’s faith-based actions convinced the juries in his first trial and the retrial that criminal prosecution is not necessary and inappropriate. “I think it sends a kind of message of a kind of humanity, of showing up for people in a desperate, really deadly situation, and that something is needed there but criminal law is certainly not it,” she says.

Zaachila Orozco, a No More Deaths volunteer, says no policy or prosecution can deter humanitarians from doing their work. She was one of the eight volunteers previously charged with misdemeanors related to their humanitarian aid work in Ajo. “I did what I did because I believe that everybody deserves the right to survive in this world,” she tells TIME ahead of the trial. “Frankly, our government is making it so much harder than necessary.”

People will follow their own moral and ethical code when it comes to saving another person’s life, Orozco adds, no matter the consequence.

But Shah adds that, despite the not guilty verdict, the fact that a prosecution occurred in the first place might be enough discourage future humanitarian assistance. “The fact that this was brought to the floor, the fact that it’s been so highly publicized in and of itself strikes fear in the hearts of people who might be involved in humanitarian efforts,” she says. “The general sense is ‘hey, this guy was trying to help non-citizens and look what happened to him, if I try to give them water or try to make sure that they’re safe, the same thing might happen to me.'”

What’s been the response to the verdict?

Activists and aid organizations across the country have expressed support for Warren and are celebrating the verdict on social media. Some spent days gathered in front of the court house in Tucson hosting prayers and demonstrations in support of Warren

Amnesty International released a statement celebrating the not-guilty verdict Wednesday evening. “Sense has prevailed today with the jury exonerating Dr. Scott Warren for a simple reason: humanitarian aid is never a crime,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director. “The Trump administration is wrong to try to prosecute people who are only trying to save lives. By threatening Dr. Warren with a decade in prison, the U.S. government sought to criminalize compassion and weaponize the deadly desert against people who make the perilous journey to the United States in search of safety.”

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus also chimed in, saying “Human compassion shouldn’t be illegal. Providing food & water to those in need should not be illegal. We must stand by our values & help immigrants in need, just as Scott did,” in a tweet.

Some good news – Scott Warren has been found not guilty after providing migrants in need with aid.

Human compassion shouldn’t be illegal. Providing food & water to those in need should not be illegal.

We must stand by our values & help immigrants in need, just as Scott did. https://t.co/k4YxHG6iwb

— Hispanic Caucus (@HispanicCaucus) November 20, 2019

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.

Who is Scott Warren?

It was Warren’s pursuit of a PhD in Geography at Arizona State University that first brought him to Ajo in 2009. By 2013, Warren was living in Ajo, dividing his time between lecturing at ASU and volunteering for groups like No More Deaths and Ajo Samaritans.

His long-held faith compelled him to begin volunteering in the desert after seeing first-hand the mass casualties that result from dehydration, hypothermia and exposure. His first experience encountering human remains in the desert happened shortly after he began volunteering in Ajo. The discovery, he says, embodied the gravity of deaths at the border.

“I remember this sense of being like, ‘oh wow, this is really big.’ All the connections and all the ways that in that tragedy there’s also a really enormous cycle,” Warren told TIME.

He’s encountered dozens of remains on at least 100 water drops and search and rescue operations he’s participated in.

Since his arrest in January 2018, Warren continued to volunteer for humanitarian aid groups in Ajo despite the charges against him.

#Blogger

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

Link

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) November 20, 2019

Warren, who sat down with TIME for an interview in September, says he has only acted out of empathy, motivated by his religious beliefs.

The case has ramifications that go beyond Warren’s verdict.

What are the implications of this case?

But the case against Warren has been the most severe of all charges faced by humanitarian aid workers by far.

People will follow their own moral and ethical code when it comes to saving another person’s life, Orozco adds, no matter the consequence.

What’s been the response to the verdict?

Some good news – Scott Warren has been found not guilty after providing migrants in need with aid.

Human compassion shouldn’t be illegal. Providing food & water to those in need should not be illegal.

We must stand by our values & help immigrants in need, just as Scott did. https://t.co/k4YxHG6iwb

— Hispanic Caucus (@HispanicCaucus) November 20, 2019

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.

Who is Scott Warren?

“I remember this sense of being like, ‘oh wow, this is really big.’ All the connections and all the ways that in that tragedy there’s also a really enormous cycle,” Warren told TIME.

He’s encountered dozens of remains on at least 100 water drops and search and rescue operations he’s participated in.

Since his arrest in January 2018, Warren continued to volunteer for humanitarian aid groups in Ajo despite the charges against him.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

viralnewstime · 5 years ago

Link

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) November 20, 2019

Warren, who sat down with TIME for an interview in September, says he has only acted out of empathy, motivated by his religious beliefs.

The case has ramifications that go beyond Warren’s verdict.

What are the implications of this case?

But the case against Warren has been the most severe of all charges faced by humanitarian aid workers by far.

People will follow their own moral and ethical code when it comes to saving another person’s life, Orozco adds, no matter the consequence.

What’s been the response to the verdict?

Some good news – Scott Warren has been found not guilty after providing migrants in need with aid.

Human compassion shouldn’t be illegal. Providing food & water to those in need should not be illegal.

We must stand by our values & help immigrants in need, just as Scott did. https://t.co/k4YxHG6iwb

— Hispanic Caucus (@HispanicCaucus) November 20, 2019

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees Border Patrol, did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment.

Who is Scott Warren?

“I remember this sense of being like, ‘oh wow, this is really big.’ All the connections and all the ways that in that tragedy there’s also a really enormous cycle,” Warren told TIME.

He’s encountered dozens of remains on at least 100 water drops and search and rescue operations he’s participated in.

Since his arrest in January 2018, Warren continued to volunteer for humanitarian aid groups in Ajo despite the charges against him.

#Blogger

0 notes

theprattleronline-blog · 7 years ago

Photo

Marshall Matters: Eminem and Political Change

Article by Sage Kelley

This may not come as a surprise: Eminem has been angry since he began his rap career in 1996. During the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards, the rapper released a freestyle titled “The Storm” attacking President Donald Trump. The four minute track features Eminem screaming, calling Trump “The Thing” from The Fantastic Four comics, and supporting Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel. He’s rapping (more of a strange slam poem) in a parking garage with a group of black men nodding behind him. It’s odd and cringeworthy, but his efforts have taken social media by storm.

I’m not going to state my opinion on the freestyle or the politics. Firstly, I’m not an Eminem fan. Secondly, everyone knows the consensus on Trump. So my question is whether Eminem has any influence on our contemporary political climate, and whether music in general has ever had an influence on politics.

During the ‘60s and ‘70s, folk music fought against the war in Vietnam and tackled social issues. The ‘hippies’ spearheaded the new sound. The most influential hippie of the decade was, of course, Bob Dylan. He played at protests, sang of the inequalities and became popular amongst America’s youth. In 1975, Dylan released a protest song “The Hurricane”, which spoke to the racism and injustice behind boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter’s conviction for murder. He played a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, raising over $100,000 for Carter’s defense. Dylan’s show brought publicity to the trials, but didn’t change much else. Carter was verdict was changed to not guilty twenty years after his imprisonment, ten years after the Dylan record was released. The federal judge who overturned the conviction stated that he had never listened to the song, but his grandson probably did.

The late ‘80s and early ‘90s featured the rise of hip-hop and its connection to police brutality. Compton-based N.W.A. rapped about racism in the Los Angeles police force. Their 1988 song “Fuck tha Police” brought the genre to the forefront of society. Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power” brought rap about racial-injustice to the East Coast, saying “Our freedom of speech is freedom or death / We got to fight the powers that be / Lemme hear you say / Fight the Power.” These songs, like Dylan’s before them, were the soundtrack to the 1992 L.A. riots.It’s impossible to say that these songs and artists caused the protests. It’s impossible to think that they were the only reason people began to speak out against the issues. But, they may have been factors.

Music pinpoints emotions. It can make us cry, laugh, and smile. Bob Dylan, Public Enemy, and countless others utilized an emotional gateway to broadcast their messages. These artists had a wide audience and knew their platform could create empathy where others mediums couldn’t.

During Trump’s rise to power, numerous protest songs were released. A major issue, however, was that none were pioneered by mainstream artists. Loudon Wainwright III, Fiona Apple, A Tribe Called Quest, and several others released Trump attacks, and while this isn’t to say they aren’t well-known or accomplished musicians, they simply aren’t leaders of the modern music industry. Where was Drake’s protest song? Where was Taylor Swift’s “Fuck tha Police”? There were a few lines here and there, but it was nothing close to Bob Dylan pushing the masses. Popular musicians can tweet their dislike for Trump all they want, but music sparks feelings that 140 characters cannot. Tweets lose traction, disappearing after a day or two. Songs last forever.

Eminem’s freestyle is all over the Internet. I’m not sure how much this will shake things up. But at least he’s using his medium, not just his following, to bring attention to the state of our democracy. What’s more, he’s a white rapper. Maybe that will gather an audience that black rappers would not. Maybe this will push Trump protests further. I doubt it’ll lead to anything monumental, but it may swing a few opinions, and that counts for something.

Personally, I’m not sure any form of music has swayed my political thoughts. Music has set an emotional backdrop for my beliefs, but it has not created them. And yet, a high school acquaintance of mine often posts on social media about his love for Trump and fights dissenters. After the freestyle, said acquaintance posted “Eminem really has me swaying my opinion on the President.” So, that’s a success, and persuasion via Eminem could be a trend.

Music has the ability to hit some emotional sweet spots many mediums can’t reach; and although we may not be able to tabulate pop-music statistics in correlation with political polls, music is necessary to express, relate and relay emotions or hardship.

Illustration by Hua Chen

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yes-dal456 · 7 years ago

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I've Broken This Mortifying Office Taboo — And I Bet I'm Not Alone

Here’s an awkward piece of personal trivia: I’ve cried at every job I’ve had. When I was navigating an endless first-job search and grabbed a coffee with my internship supervisor, I soaked an unsuspecting chocolate croissant in tides of frustrated tears. Then there was that afternoon I had a low-key cubicle weep after jamming a printer with the universe’s stickiest mailing labels and was dressed down by the angry office manager. Even in my current role, I’ve furtively re-applied a few swipes of waterproof mascara on days when the dizzying pace of digital media catches me off guard. And each time, as I’ve waited for my face to lose its post-outburst splotches, I’ve wondered exactly why these emotional moments are considered so taboo. Isn’t it a universal truth that you just can’t cry at work?

Sure, openly sobbing to colleagues on a regular basis doesn’t exactly look professional. Yet, offices are environments defined by competition and conflict. Considering the stakes — both your own success and the success of your employer — it’s bizarre to me that we’ve cast the occasional breakdown as the Kleenex-white albatross of corporate culture.

If bawling is the ultimate workplace taboo, it’s also a viscerally gendered one. While red-faced man-babies from Andy Bernard to Donald Trump justify their tantrums as the logical side-effect of their desire for power, crying is construed as the ultimate sign of weakness. Who could forget Stanley Tucci’s pitiless verdict in The Devil Wears Prada when Anne Hathaway ducks into his studio for some real talk about Miranda Priestly? “Oh Andy, you are not trying; you are whining,” he scolds. “Man up,” he’s essentially saying, because, office politics are ruled by the Trumps and the Bernards, and women need to leave their so-called “feminine” feelings at the turnstile.

Naturally, it would be impossible to meet our daily responsibilities if — most of the time — we weren’t doing our best to stay level-headed and composed. But there’s value in pushing back against this idea that work doesn’t collide, often painfully, with a deeper desire for recognition or fulfillment. After all, how could a career not be inherently caught up in the uneven, fragile nest of personality? It’s literally the thing we spend the most time doing. And as we willingly volunteer for stretch assignments, competing with co-workers to translate project wins into salary bumps, it’s hard to imagine that “professional” could ever really mean “unemotional.” In the end, isn’t there a jagged grain of truth in Michael Scott’s claim that “business is always personal”?

At the risk of soaring too close to the blissed-out platitudes of a Pinterest quotes board, or the equally vacuous rhetoric of Ivanka Trump’s awe-inspiringly tone-deaf Women Who Work, I’ve often struggled to untangle my job from my sense of identity. I’m betting I’m not alone. Millennials were brought up aspiring to knit their passions to their paychecks — the dream of professional freedom dashed by 2008’s financial crisis. We’re grappling with the overwhelming expectation to, as one syrupy corner of the Internet gushes, “be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire” while also making rent. Frankly, my eyes get a little watery just thinking about it. So if crying at work is inevitable — yet taboo — what is an ambitious young woman to do to recover after one of these embarrassing incidents?

My usual routine after an in-office meltdown is to adjust my contacts, down a massive iced-coffee, and pretend it never happened (until it happens again) — clearly, I’m no expert on the correct professional response. So I spoke with certified personal finance coach and founder of the Fiscal Femme, Ashley Feinstein Gerstley, to see if she had any tips for chipping away at the stigma. “It’s so counterintuitive, but telling yourself not to cry usually ends up making you cry more,” she says. “You’re using all your energy to hold it together, trying to defuse an awkward situation, but there’s so much built-up pressure that the tears will almost inevitably come. If emotional displays were more accepted, and you could relax a little, they might actually happen less.”

Taking some of the stress off can also create an opportunity for deepening the communication with your supervisor or colleagues. By letting go of the weird shame woven into the situation, you’ll remember that you still have the power to shape the dialogue, tissues in hand. “Women tend to over-apologize, especially at work. If you do end up getting upset, it can be helpful to excuse yourself from the situation, take a minute to get it together, and come back ready to have a more composed exchange. Don’t feel like you have to fall down the rabbit hole of saying ‘sorry’ over and over again,” Gerstley advises. “Our feelings are invested in our careers, and having a human moment with someone in the office can be spun as a positive.”

Being occasionally vulnerable has reminded me of the empathy buried in the corporate world.

Studies have confirmed that women’s workplace breakdowns often encapsulate these complex emotional layers, topped-off by the fresh humiliation of having actually let them out as a cry. Anger or frustration — instincts comfortably displayed by men literally anywhere — have always seemed off-limits to professional women striving for respect in corporate arenas. As Gerstley notes, the struggle to compress those feelings only amplifies our sense of panic, twisting already fraught encounters into a so-called “out-of-control,” tear-soaked display.

Except maybe there’s some power in crying. I’ve definitely found that breaking the taboo can lead to greater clarity with colleagues. I’ve noticed how tears have helped knead out a disconnection or problem that might otherwise have gone unresolved. Not to say that I’m sure I’ll ever fully get over the electric urge to hide those emotions, much less overcome the reflex to apologize for them. But being occasionally vulnerable has reminded me of the empathy buried in the corporate world — and, in its disarming way, located new paths for collaboration and honesty. Rather than succumbing to its stifling mortification, I’m hoping to recognize, if not celebrate, the rare office cry as a hidden chance for greater candor — the little flicker of understanding between tired, stressed-out coworkers that Andy Sacks was asking for.

No lie: My self-deprecating texts to friends about the day’s office weep will probably never contain praise hands emojis. But I’m hanging onto the essential belief that my work is worthy of a few tears. For now, I’ll leave the Kleenex nearby.

By: Rachel Selvin

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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#http://www.happiness2arab.tk/2017/06/ive-broken-this-mortifying-office-taboo.html

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imreviewblog · 7 years ago

Text

I've Broken This Mortifying Office Taboo — And I Bet I'm Not Alone

Being occasionally vulnerable has reminded me of the empathy buried in the corporate world.

By: Rachel Selvin

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://bit.ly/2s61RIK

#Healthy Living - The Huffington Post

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