#though I will request that people not call this the Muslim travel ban because I know it was targeted at/meant to keep out Muslims but

[makerofmadness]

I feel like venting a bit right now because I just remembered something that brought back some bad memories:

Being in like elementary/middle school (I can't remember which exactly) during the US travel ban with the Middle East, as a Persian kid, was... I'm not sure if I can say terrifying, but it was certainly stressful. Especially when a lot of the other kids in my class where like. conservative/in conservative families and obviously very pro-trump. I remember talking about it and complaining about it (though obviously I had a somewhat limited understanding since I was in like 5th/6th grade at the time) and them just defending it and it was so frustrating to sit through.

Like they wanted to keep out immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, and both my parents were immigrants from Iran. it felt really tense for me, and I was just a young kid who didn't even really understand why the ban was happening in the first place.

like I was just lucky that pretty much any family member I ever really interacted with lived outside of Iran because if they didn't then I would've been cut off from seeing them. I knew another Persian kid (his family and mine are friends) and I remember him talking about how his grandparents weren't able to visit him because of the travel ban. and yet I still had to deal with several classmates trying to justify it constantly. They didn't care.

It's making me feel sick just thinking about it. Like, especially since most of the kids who were like that also picked on me a lot later down the line (I'm not sure if it was specifically because I'm Persian, I was openly bi and had undiagnosed autism. I feel like it would've been easier to recognize if it was targeted at me for being Persian if there was like a concrete term for discrimination like that but I don't think there is one [it's not racism, we're considered white in the US, and xenophobia doesn't feel quite right to me 'cus it's defined as hatred of people from other countries and I was born in the USA).

I'm not sure if I'd exactly call it traumatic but it was definitely a deeply distressing experience at least.

[creepingsharia]

“An Injustice Crying Out to Heaven”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, July 2020

by Raymond Ibrahim

A Muslim man broke into the historic Holy Cross Church in Turkey and started crying “Allahu Akbar.”

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July, 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: A group of Muslims beat and drowned a pastor and another Christian for sharing the Gospel with their coreligionists.   Peter Kyakulaga, pastor of the Church of Christ, and church member Tuule Mumbya, had begun to sail across Lake Nakuwa, where they would meet and evangelize to Muslims.  More “hard-line” Muslims disliked this:  “We have discovered that your mission is not to fish but to hold Christian meetings and then convert Muslims to Christianity,” a man told them.  “We are not going to take this mission of yours lightly. This is our last warning to you.”  On the next day in late June, Christian villagers came knocking on the door of David Nabyoma, a local leader:

They were requesting help, saying Muslims from Lugonyola had invaded the area around the lakeside, and several Christians were reported to have been injured, including my son.  Immediately we rushed to the scene of the incident with several Christians. We hired four boats and drove to the lake and found out that two of the Christians had been badly beaten and drowned in the lake and died instantly.

Pastor Peter, 25, is survived by a wife and two children, 2 and 4; congregant Tuule, 22, is survived by a wife and a 2-year-old child.

Mozambique: Islamic militants have been responsible for “escalating extremist violence” in Cabo Delgado Province, where they have been attempting to carve out an Islamic state [on August 14, ISIS captured the port], and “where multiple churches have been burnt, people beheaded, young girls kidnapped, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the violence,” according to a July 23 report.  More than one thousand have been slaughtered since 2017, when the Islamic uprising began.  In one week in June, 15 people were beheaded in the Christian-majority nation.  Discussing the situation, Bishop Lisboa said:  “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.  We do not yet have the solidarity that there should be.”  One of the worst incidents occurred on Good Friday, when the terrorists torched a church and massacred 52 people.  After explaining how five or six chapels were torched in just one recent month, the bishop described what happened to the historic Sacred Heart of Jesus mission:

They attacked the church and burnt the benches and a statue of Our Lady, made of ebony. They also destroyed an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom the parish is dedicated. Fortunately, they were unable to burn the building itself, only the benches.

What is happening is “an injustice that is crying out to heaven” he concluded.  Paulo Rangel, a Portuguese Member of the European Parliament, also discussed the situation in Mozabique: “The international community is nowhere to be seen in regard to the problem,” he said:

The people were already living in extreme poverty, facing grave difficulties. [The] problem is that at the present moment these people are facing the threat of death, of losing their homes, of becoming uprooted…. At present we know that there are young girls who have been abducted and enslaved, forced into sexual slavery by some of these guerrillas, these insurgents, these terrorists…We know that the recruitment of boys and adolescents, some of them very young, aged 14, 15, 16, is also happening. It is obvious that these young boys are under coercion. If they refuse to join the group, they could be killed.

Nigeria: In a 35-second video posted July 22, Islamic terrorists executed five men, three of whom were Christians. Blindfolded and on their knees, with the executors standing behind them, one of the terrorists said,

This is a message to all those being used by infidels to convert Muslims to Christianity.  We want you out there to understand that those of you being used to convert Muslims to Christianity are only being used for selfish purposes.  And that is the reason whenever we capture you, they don’t care to rescue you or work towards securing your release from us; and this is because they don’t need you or value your lives. We therefore, call on you to return to Allah by becoming Muslims. We shall continue to block all routes you travel.  If you don’t heed our warning, the fate of these five individuals will be your fate.

Then the speaker says bismillah—meaning, “in the name of Allah”—and the executioners shoot their captives in the backs of their heads.

Additionally, at least 171 Christians were slaughtered by Muslim Fulani herdsmen in the space of roughly three weeks: Summaries of some follow:

On July 10, Muslim herdsmen massacred 22 Christians — “mostly women and children” — and torched many homes. “They killed two of my children [and husband],” recalled Bilkisu James from her hospital bed. They also “hacked another five of Bilkisu’s relatives to death with machetes including a mother and her baby daughter and a mother and her two sons.”

On July 11, a neighboring village was raided: “ten women, a baby and an elderly man were burnt to death in a house where they had taken refuge. Another seven villagers were injured and four houses burnt out.”

On July 19, people attending a wedding celebration were among at least 32 Christians massacred in Fulani attacks.

On July 23, a “horrific night attack [was launched] during a torrential rain storm … [A]t least seven Christians died… as militants brutally hacked unarmed men and women and children to death with machetes.” The report adds that “This was the second attack on the village within days, with seven murdered in an attack days earlier.”

On July 29, Muslim herdsmen murdered another 14 Christians — 13 of whom belonged to one extended family. Only one member of the family remained alive; his wife, all his children, aunt, uncle, brother, and other relatives were slaughtered.

Attacks on Christian Churches

Turkey:  A Muslim man broke into Holy Cross, a historic Armenian cathedral in eastern Turkey, and proceeded to recite the adhan—the Islamic call to prayer traditionally made from mosques—while others videotaped him.   He repeatedly chanted “Allahu Akbar,” and proclaimed the Islamic creed or shahada.  He also wrote graffiti on the church walls:   “Raising the Adhan in the church’s sanctuary has brought life back to it.”  The July 2 report adds that,

Most churches and monasteries in Turkey have been left abandoned following the genocides of Christian peoples in the early 20th century and the mass emigration of Christians from the country due to decades of persecution. As a result, many churches in Turkey were left to ruin or turned into mosques or stables for animals.

In a separate incident, right before the start of Sunday worship service on July 12, a Turkish man appeared at the Antalya Bible Church and asked to speak to church leadership.  He was told to return on the next day, and did so—only to issue death and arson threats to a pastor: “You and Özgür [another church leader] are dead. I broke the window of this church a few months ago, will attack again and, if necessary, burn it.”  Security intervened and he was asked to leave before police were involved.  Later it was revealed that police had apprehended him when he first broke the church’s windows, but released him because he had expressed “regret.”

Pakistan:  A church was forced to take down its cross.  Barnabas, a Christian resident of the village, explains:

 We constructed three floors of minarets on a church and fixed the cross on top of that.  However, it was removed after we received threats from local Muslims. The Muslims demanded we remove the cross and all three floors of the minarets, therefore, we had to obey them. Now, the building does not look like a church. It’s just a room and therefore we are sad.

“With broken hearts,” a local pastor added, the congregation agreed to take the cross down—even though “it was an illegal demand against Pakistan’s constitution, which guarantees religious freedom to all citizens.”

We took this decision for the safety and protection of Christians in the village…. Muslims threatened that if we don’t remove the cross, they will ban the prayer services and take the church property.… The authorities must look into this matter and ensure freedom of religion to all the segments of society.

In a separate incident, police violently interrupted a Christian prayer service.  According to a brief July 13 report,

A priest was leading a prayer before providing a free meal for the poor when police officers appeared, and without further notice, they started damaging the stuff for prayer service….  Policemen turned down the meal, thrashed the pastor and people present. They captured the small sound-system, and beat men and women.

Another report offers more details concerning the fate of Raja Walter, the event organizer, who works to “raise funds to help people who are unfortunate or who have been severely affected by the coronavirus”:

[A]rmed policemen without a badge identifying them came to the food point and attacked him. He was beaten and tortured. Agents also smashed the loudspeaker he uses to motivate people and recite prayers before handing out food.  The attack began as Raja was handing out food. As they struck him, the agents threw away his heart medicines and mobile phone. When they tried to arrest him, women present at the scene began to cry and pray for Walter, who by then had lost consciousness.

“It is ridiculous to treat Mr. Raja Walter like that,” a beneficiary of the free food said:  “He has never done anything wrong to anyone. He is like an angel; he supports the poor and needy.”  The attack, notes the report, “was likely caused by the use of speakers for praying.”

Canada: On July 28, a 16-year-old Muslim refugee from Syria pleaded guilty to four counts of terrorism.  His schemes—including “a solo operation in the next few days”—were shared with and exposed by an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow ISIS supporter online.  “Churches,” the Muslim youth had written, and other “crowded places filled with crucifix believers” were among his primary targets.  “Detonators, containers filled with white powders that turned out to be explosives, and diagrams of improvised explosive devices were among the 95 exhibits they seized. It was a bomb lab,” says the report.   His sentencing is set for September.

France: After fire broke out in the Cathedral of Nantes—caused by an asylum seeker—“Muslim [social media] users, mostly of Arab origin, and their leftist fanboys in Central Europe express[ed] their enthusiasm and glee online, according to a July 19 German-language report.  Such expressions appeared all throughout social media, but “especially Facebook,” where “the sympathizers of Islamization bluntly celebrated their satisfaction: through laughing or smiley emoticons or ‘like’ clicks they expressed what they think of burning Christian houses of worship.”  The report further observed that “this type of expression of opinion … does not lead to the deletion and blocking of the users by social media teams—whereas masses of [other types of] comments are deleted as ‘hate speech.’”

Attacks on Converts to Christianity

Kenya: A pack of seven Muslims beat Fozia, a Christian woman, aged 21, till she lost consciousness.  They also broke the teeth of her sister, Asha, aged 19, and beat their 18-year-old brother.  Problems began when “Muslims started questioning us why we were not attending Friday worship at the mosque,” Fozia explained.  “This interrogation continued for several months.”  Then one day, when the siblings went outside their home to restore its water supply, they saw a raucous group of Somalis approaching: “There were noisy shouts calling us infidels,” recalled Fozia:

They said, “We know you do not belong to us. We have got hold of you today – we have no mercy on you people. You need to return to where you came from.”  They began hitting me with sticks and a blunt object, which injured my back and my right hand.  There I fainted for five hours and regained consciousness at the hospital [where she remained for two days].

“The attackers injured me by hitting my head against the wall,” her sister Asha added. “My two front teeth got broken, and the attack caused the left side of my body to swell…”  According to their widowed mother, the family has been “running for their lives from Muslims of Somali descent who have attacked them for nearly 10 years:

[And now we] are receiving threats that my children should withdraw the case from police if we are to remain safe.  But we demand compensation for my three ailing children and medication for them. Three weeks have now gone by, and my children are constantly on pain killers.

These are not the first attacks on the apostate family; according to the report,

In 2016 Somali Muslims attacked another of her adult sons, beating him unconscious. Muslim Somalis in Nairobi had seriously injured the same son on Oct. 27, 2011, after they learned that family members had become Christian. The Somali neighbors hit him with a metal bar on his forehead and face, and he lost two teeth and sustained knife wounds to his hand. They left him for dead. Her family has suffered various attacks since embracing Christ. After she filed a police complaint about an attack by Somali Muslims in Kenya in 2014, no fewer than 10 Islamic elders visited her to warn that she was risking her life by doing so. Somalis generally believe all Somalis are Muslims by birth and that any Somali who becomes a Christian can be charged with apostasy, punishable by death.

Morocco: “Converts to Christianity in Morocco have been repeatedly arrested by police as part of a campaign clamping down on the Faith,” says a July 17 report; some have been arrested as many as three times in one week.  Jawad Elhamidy, president of the Moroccan Association of Rights and Religious Liberties, elaborated:

Most are released after interrogation—but are often put under pressure to return to Islam, and face abuse when they refuse….  The penal code holds that all Moroccans are Muslims, so those who convert to Christianity face legal problems, beside threats to their security.

As one example, he gave the story of Mohamed al-Moghany, who converted to Christianity, and “whose employer had waved a gun at him and threatened to kill him.”

When Mr. Al Moghany filed a complaint with police, he was told not to speak about his conversion and threats were made against his family.  Six months later, following an argument with his employer, he was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. His wife was interrogated as well….  If a Moroccan enters a church, one of two things can happen—either a policeman sitting in front of the church arrests him or her, or the cleric in charge of the church asks the person to leave, unless the purpose is tourism….Moroccan Christians worship in secret house churches to avoid state sanctions or harassment from society.

The report elaborates:

[I]t is even more dangerous for Christian converts when allegations of blasphemy are made—Christians have been held for several days and there have been incidents of violence….  Unlike foreign Christians, converts do not enjoy freedom of worship under the law….  Foreign clergy are said to discourage Moroccan Christians from attending their churches because of fear of being criminally charged with proselytism.  Under Moroccan law, proselytising or converting to another religion is a criminal offence punishable by between six months and three years in prison.

Generic Abuse of Christians

Pakistan: A group of 12 Muslim men, led by one Muhammad Irfan, broke into a Christian man’s household, “and tried to kidnap his [13-year-old] daughter, Noor, who they planned to rape and forcefully convert to Islam,” says a July 26 report.   When the man and his family intervened, the Muslims thrashed them.   “He often teased and disturbed my daughter in the streets, but we always ignored,” explained the girl’s mother:

Finally, Irfan forcibly entered into my house and intended to kidnap my daughter. However, we resisted. In response, he attacked and beat my entire family who got multiple injuries. My husband and others got injuries in the attack.  However, police have not registered the case against Irfan and medical staff have not provided medical aid to the injured.

The report adds that “Local supporters of Irfan have issued threats against the family… [They] have threatened to burn down their house if they pursue legal action against Irfan and the other attackers.”

Yemen: “Christians living in Yemen,” a July 28 report says, “request prayer as they experience persecution amidst ongoing war, food shortages, and COVID-19.”

These challenges have created a significant burden of isolation, both spiritually and physically. The Christian population, which once numbered approximately 40,000, is reduced to only a few thousand. Most live unaware of each other’s existence and in great fear of discovery from their neighbors…  [The current] environment has led to persecution that keeps the church underground.

Germany: Two knife-wielding Muslim men attacked and injured a Christian refugee from Syria in the streets of Berlin.  According to the July 7 report, the victim, Kevork Almassian, who is of Armenian descent, had started receiving death threats a year ago, after “Syrian Islamist activist” Nahla Osman began accusing the Christian refugee of spreading “hate” through his work at a German magazine, which eventually capitulated to Islamist protests and fired Kevork.

Lebanon/Turkey:  As a sign of growing Turkish influence, Neshan Der Haroutiounian, a Lebanese television host of Armenian descent, will stand trial in Lebanon for “insulting the Turkish president and the Turkish people,” apparently in the context of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians. At one point during the live show he accused someone (unclear if a caller in or panelist) who was accusing him of being a dishonest troublemaker of being “A son of a million malicious people … Erdogan, the regime, the Ottomans, and the Turks.”  Turkey’s authorities responded by calling on the Lebanese Foreign Ministry to take measures against the television host; the Turkish Embassy mobilized protesters in front of the television station.  They “raised Turkish flags, chanted slogans in support of the Ottoman Empire and Erdogan and called on Al Jadeed TV and those in charge of the programme to ‘apologise for what happened.’”  The Beirut public prosecutor responded by announcing that charges would be filed against Haroutiounian, who is scheduled to stand trial in October. The report notes:

A Lebanese journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that there were no grounds for the judicial charges against Der Haroutiounian.  “This is a matter of a historical dispute that has no prospect, knowing that it is about a great crime against the Armenian people — a crime that Turkey refuses to recognise. This in itself continues to provoke Armenians wherever they are,” the journalist told The Arab Weekly…. Some Lebanese Armenians’ harsh criticism of Turkey seems to embarrass Lebanese authorities, who have tried to intimidate them into observing certain ‘red lines.’ There are numerous external forces pressuring Lebanon, starting with Iranian proxy Hezbollah. Turkey is now attempting to curb Lebanon’s hard-fought freedoms, of which its citizens are rightly proud, by also exerting pressure on Lebanese authorities.

Egypt: A Christian wife and mother who disappeared for nearly three months—supposedly because she had willingly converted to Islam and no longer wanted any connection to her “infidel” husband and three young daughters—was finally returned to her family.  Ranya ‘Abd al-Masih, 39, a high school teacher of English had disappeared on April 22.  A few days after her family contacted state security, she appeared in a one minute video dressed in a black niqab (female Islamic attire).  In the video, and in between tears, Ranya insisted that she had finally and formally converted to Islam, which—“praise be to Allah”—she had been secretly following and concealing from her family for nine years.  Accordingly, she no longer wanted anyone—her husband, children, family—to bother about her anymore.  From the start, her family refused to believe the video and gave compelling reasons why.  “We’ve no problem for her to go [to Islam] of her own free will—based on conviction—but not as a person who is threatened and coerced into doing so,” her brother, Remon, explained: “She was definitely kidnapped and forced to make that video, due to threats against her or her husband and children if she refused to comply.”  For nearly three months, Ranya’s family and the Coptic Church pleaded with local authorities—even sending a special petition to President Sisi—until she was finally returned, on July 15.  A Christian spokesman said that Ranya and her reunited family are currently staying in an undisclosed location, “until calm returns” to the region.  Due to the delicate nature of the situation, the spokesman gave no other details concerning her disappearance and reemergence, other than to say that “Ranya remains a Christian who never once converted to Islam.”

Tunisia: A July 21 report sheds light on the “lack of full citizenship” rights and “societal stigmas” surrounding the Christians of arguably the world’s most tolerant Arab nation.  According to its abstract:

Although Tunisia is usually presented as ethno-religiously homogenous when compared to other countries in the region, its minorities have long undergone a process of invisibilisation and/or assimilation into the dominant Arab-Muslim identity. Moving from a status of dhimmi [second class citizens] under Muslim empires … is the quest of Tunisia’s religious minorities for full citizenship still ongoing?… [T]he research shows that religious minorities, although having acquired a certain set of rights, still lack full citizenship to some extent and face societal stigma.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the recent book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

[sorryiano]

Helping Hand

We all know that we are humans we live in our normal lives others do some work others takes their study some of us went to parties to enjoy or to take a break and some of us travelled so they can relax and do some new things we as a human has always a differences and that makes us special but we as a human facing a lot of issues in our lives especially the one who is not in the upper class and some suffering into a situation where for them it is difficult to overcome. And other persons become the one who drags down the people who keep striving hard to rise into the top, they forgot to become a real human because they feel that if someone is better than them it can be bad for them or they help for someone to rise up they feel that they are being missing if they help or maybe others would not help because they think that they don’t know the person and why they should help, that kind of mindset  it is sad that other people has that kind of mentality so we need to a Hope for Humanity so let us break down each words so Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. And Humanity is the human race; human beings collectively. We Human has always has human issue and some of it are the race, believes appearance and social status and because of that the other issues of the humans arise there are a lot of examples but I will give few of them for example: suicide, rallies, low self-esteem and other human issues. And because of that we fall apart and we fail as a human being so we need to have a hope for humanity because in this era twenty first century the humanity Is starting to collapse and some of us already forget how to become a human, they already forget  how to be understandable and more patient they already forget how to become happy without money because other person forget to become human because the hunger in money they want more money even though there things that they do is not already good and already a problem. some of us already forget to become a human because of their position in the society they forget that they are also a normal person they always feel that everyone surrounds them is their slaves or they feel that every people who surrounds them is not worth for their respect and they always belittle the person who has a less capabilities than them and some people forget to be human because they lack of attention or they lack of love because they feel that all the person in her surrounding doesn’t love him/her and some people forget to become  human because of their desires they keep reaching their desires and forgets to choose which is more important or their number one priority is their desire and they don’t intend to take another path so there are a lot of ways to rebuild or to hope for the humanities first is you need to stay your feet in the ground always turn back where did you start because people who forgets where did they started always forgets how to become a human being and forgets the values that is needed so that their respect for you is acquired.

To restore the humanity we need some news that not negative we need something that for  us inspiring to become better as a human being if you are confuse because of the news that their report are always negative find some articles, documentary, videos that makes you inspired and make you feel that you need to be tough in this days  there are some tips so that you can restore the humanity inside of you we need to start from ourselves before we request a change for  our society and we need to do it if we want some change if you are the person who is in my examples that forgets to be human because of money, desire, and other reason find something that inspires you to make a change it can be tough but it is worth it not for you but for everyone. First step so you can restore humanity in you is that you bounce back better from tougher problems People rationalize divorces, demotions, and diseases, but not slow elevators and uninspired burgundies. The paradoxical consequence is that people may sometimes recover more quickly from the reality which is distressing experiences than from slightly distressing ones (Aronson & Mills, 1958; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966; Zimbardo, 1966). The second tip is that Regret is not scary We anticipate regret will be much more painful than it actually is. Studies show we consistently overestimate how regret affects us…margins of loss can have an impact on emotional experience, and our studies merely suggest that however powerful that impact is, it is not as powerful as people expect. because of that regret, you can change your lifestyle and you can learn things because of that regret and decides better next time. The next tip is “What Does Not Kill you Makes You Stronger” Individuals who went through the most awful events came out stronger than those who did not face any adversity.it means that if you try something even it's awful or not you will become better for yourself and not going to regret something that you don’t even try. In a month, 1,700 people reported at least one of these bad events, and they get our studied tests as well. We are surprised, individuals who’d experienced one bad event had more intense strengths (and therefore higher well-being) than individuals who had none. Individuals who’d been through two bad events were stronger than individuals who had the least, and individuals who had three— raped, tortured, and held captive for example were stronger than those who had two. Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. The fourth tip is that Reverse PTSD Exists: Sometimes Terrible Events Make Us Better People Tragedy not only can make us stronger; it can also make us better human beings. through The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That generates Success and Performance at Work: Thanks to the study, today we can say for certain, not just anecdotally, that over suffering or trauma can lead to a positive change across a wide range of experiences. After March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, for example, psychologists discover many residents experienced good psychological improvement. So too do the majority of women diagnosed with cancer in the breast. What kind of improvement? Increases in spirituality, compassion for others, openness, and even, eventually, overall life satisfaction. After trauma, people also report enhanced personal strength and self-confidence, also as a heightened appreciation for, and greater intimacy in, their social relationships. Maybe it can be a negative effect in the start but times by yourself can figure out things that it can help better for yourself and for the people who surround you. the fifth tip is that Get involved by volunteering to help those in need of joining a movement Volunteering is good for your well-being. You might hear “thank you” from fellow volunteers and the people you’re helping and witnessing others “pay it forward” can be incredibly inspiring. This can cause expansive feelings of being a part of something greater than yourself. And though it may seem not good at times, attending rallies, signing petitions, putting up signs, and calling your government representatives can be elevating too, says what is the right and wrong “It is morally elevating to be surrounded by like-minded people coming together for a cause that they care deeply about,” she says. Volunteering and political participation might not always inspire you, of course. People might argue and snap at each other, and there can be moments when it feels pretty thankless. But the research suggests that you’ll still experience a net gain in well-being and sometimes the struggles you face will make your efforts even more meaningful over the end of the day. The sixth tip is that be clever about what you are posting on social media It may feel good at the moment to argue with people who disagree with you on social media in a word exchange, but you’re probably not going to change anyone’s mind. Instead, try posting positive stories about what’s happening within the world. Even if people support some policy that you simply find deplorable like travel bans against Muslims you'll share stories of ethical courage rather than stepping into a battle of words. Though there will always be cynics who won’t see the good in any moral act, says Siegel, most people will be moved by stories like these…and may even experience decreased bias. Plus, you'll feel better for having shared something hopeful instead of spiteful, a minimum of within the future. The seventh tip and the last one is that makes moral elevation a part of your everyday emotional hygiene. instead of checking your emails or the news headlines very first thing within the morning, take 20 minutes approximately to hunt experiences of ethical uplift. Just like getting to the gym or meditating, a habit of ethical elevation will have better results than an occasional elevation experience. “If you don’t make it a part of "> a part of your schedule if you don’t say that this is often a crucial part of your life, you’re not getting to get thereto,” says Siegel. “There will always be something else to try to to .” Saturn recommends not only seeking daily moral elevation ourselves, but spreading it around to others, too. “Moral elevation has been shown to promote altruism and it is very contagious,” she says. “So, make an effort to shine some light on some of the wonderful things the human condition is capable of doing.” By adding more moral elevation to our lives, we can all find hope in the midst of darkness and not give up on humanity. Who knows? If we take the research to heart and make moral elevation a part of our daily routine, we may even be moved to.

That is the seventh tips that I can give in  hoping for Humanity it can be applicable for others but for others not it depends on you if you in the first place will going to allow yourself to change for yourself and humanity having hopes for the humanity is not bad it is good in way that you care for the person that surrounds you and to the person who is involve in the society being a human is not always making big changes also little things can help a lot like for example helping a old granny to cross at the pedestrian lane because he can’t walk as fast as you can walk and also helping other person who is struggling lifting something my point is that giving a hand even in a way that we  interact every day and also giving some way to others is a humanitarian action it can be good for  you and for the person who help you and someday that person or other person will pay back for your kindness maybe the effect is not immediately but for sure it will come and  always remember that in a world that we are living there are a lot of differences and always do not lose the word respect not just for your boss, parents, friends but to every one also inspiring the younger generation can be a humanitarian action and we can guarantee that the future generation can maintain the humanity not just the humanity but our culture, believes and because of that simple action it can be a habit to everyone and every one of us lives in a harmonious way as we could.  

[z5146667-blog]

Lectures & Tutorial 07

Richard gave a lot of homework this week...

Homework: 

Tutorial Case Study: Privacy and Biometrics Previously I was not highly concerned with the collection of my personal data by Google,  Facebook, Apple, etc; and the main reason behind this is for the convenience. Google maps suggests automatically the places I frequently travel to, like work, home and uni. I use Face ID on my phone to make payments and login to my accounts. I enjoy this ease of use. After the tutorial I reflected upon how much data I am giving away and how that data could be exploited for objectives that do not align with my intentions. For example, Apple aggregating my expense information to better market products to me: I have no choice over this...

Top ten web security risks

Injection

Broken Authentication and Session Management

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Insecure Direct Object References

Security Misconfiguration

Sensitive Data Exposure

Missing Function Level Access Control

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities

Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

Link.

NIST NATIONAL VULNERABILITY DATABASE This is actually great as I have just started to investigate the possibilities of XSS and SQLI. This vulnerability database lists many current and fresh issues that give some insight into what approaches should be taking when testing web apps. Link.

Read up about the NSW LPI and think about what assets they have and what risks arise from them having been privatised The NSW LPI was the division responsible for land titles, property information, valuation, surveying, and mapping and spatial information in the Australian state of New South Wales. Privatising these assets releases their control and jurisdiction of these assets to financially driven entities. This means that the enforcement on assets that hold cultural value and significance such as historical buildings and park-lands might be re-zoned to align with the economy’s interests. There exists a higher risk to lose the assets with non-financial value. Link. Work out the current state of bio-metrics as an authentication strategy Bio-metrics are regarded as the best (single) means of user authentication to the casual intruder. They also prevent against password stealing ware (PSW) which grabs auto-fill data and saved payment card details. Most tech companies such as Apple and Google who provide bio metric authentication are pushing for this to be a common method of authentication for websites and apps. This would be another measure towards improving user authentication. Link.

Read about Transport for NSW idea of using facial recognition rather than opal cards This is a controversial topic. For Opal to use face recognition to authenticate and identify it’s passengers, means that it would have to store mass amounts of customer data - both images and video - which creates a very high value target for hackers. This data is also connected with location and time tracking. The guardian, linked below, discusses the privacy risks this would pose, HOWEVER, the public concern is more focused on the fact of whether or not it is technologically feasible, not on the fact it would pose major privacy risks. Link.

Read about the San Francisco ban on bio-metrics San Francisco has banned the use of bio-metrics by police. This is because of the fear that the technology will be overused and move the United States in the direction of an overly oppressive surveillance state. There was a recent push for the use of these bio-metric systems following this mass shooting, however, there was a widespread public backlash as many showed strong discomfort with the idea. In this case, the American people seem to value their personal privacy over the additional security of widespread bio-metric identification. Link.

Read about the uni research allegedly helping Chinese security forces use to track and detain Muslim Uyghur citizens in Xinjiang Apparently in 2017 UTS signed a lucrative deal with CETC (Chinese state-owned military tech company) that developed software for Chinese security forces to use to track and identify citizens; however recently this same technology was used to track and detain Muslim Uyghur citizens in Xinjiang. I don’t what UTS was expecting when they assisted in the development of this, it seems quite intuitive that this could and will eventually be misused by the military for purposes UTS possibly found as a human ethics violation. Link.

China’s goals and recent developments with bio-metrics: China’s goals and implementation:

Identify a person from the 1.3 billion population in just 3 seconds using facial recognition.

Security personnel wearing eye-wear to detect people

Face-reading drones

Wearable microchips in uniforms that help with admin tasks such as authentication and monitoring

AI generated media... (news anchors)

Loudspeakers to yell at children when they got too close to water

Livestock farming and monitoring using AI

Link.

How can you detect Man in the Middle eavesdropping?  One method of detecting a MitM attack is by constantly validating if the certificates presented to you by the website is issued by a legitimate CA. The best method of doing this is using a tool to keep track of the changes relating to the certificates you use, so if there is a major change, such as Google updates its private key, you can check manually if this is actually the case.

Web of trust (PgP) and PKI. (how PGP does authentication - web of trust) Public Key Cryptography Infrastructure (PKI) can be implemented in two different ways: first using certificates and certificate authorities, secondly, using trust relationships between regular users. The first implementation is the commonly used method of certification used by websites. The second implementation was first used by OpenPGP. This is implemented by GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPGP) which nearly all linux distributions rely on for package integrity verification. Link.

10 Risks of PKI

Anyone can become a CA with enough work, and then they are by default ‘trusted’

Your private key is ‘steal-able’ 

You cannot detect a ‘compromised’ CA

Only a single CA is needed to validate a website, PKI doesn’t cross verify

CA verifies certificates but is not an authority over the contents of the certificate

User’s aren’t included in the security design (they could play a role in the validation process)

A CA could actually be a CA + Registration Authority (RA). The RA+CA model is less secure as the link between the two could become compromised

The CA could possibly misidentify the certificate holder (a malicious individual could impersonate the certificate holder)

If/When the technology progresses and updates to a new encryption standard, all the certificates need to be updated or revoked using the Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL)

PKI was implemented as due to a minimal impact solution and even though it is not a perfect system, the industry is run by “business and the prominent voices are those with something to sell.”

Link.

Find examples of (serious) fraudulent certificates being issued For this I researched a company called DigiNotar, a Dutch Certificate Authority. This company ‘detected’ a security breach on September 3rd 2011 which resulted in fraudulent issuing of certificates. 300,000 Irinian Gmail users were the target of the hack and Bruce Schneier says that the attack may have been “either the work of the NSA or exploited by the NSA.” however, this has been disputed with others saying NSA had only detected a foreign intelligence service using the fake certificates. Some are even pointing fingers at the 21 year old Irinian student who claimed to have hacked 4 other certificate authorities. Once 500 fake certificates were identified, DigiNotar became blacklisted. Link.

Learn about the steps in a TLS handshake Here is a summary of the steps published by IBM (steps in [ ] are optional):

Client sends ‘hello’ containing:

random byte string

SSL or TLS version

CipherSuits supported

Data compression methods

Server responds with ‘hello’ containing:

Chosen CipherSuite

Session ID

Another random byte string

Digital certificate

[Client certificate request]

Client verifies certificate

Client sends to server containing:

Random byte string encrypted using server public key

[Client certificate or ‘No digital certificate’]

[Server verifies client certificate]

Client sends server ‘finished’ message encrypted with secret key

Server sends client ‘finished’ message encrypted with secret key

They now exchange messages encrypted with the shared secret key

Link.

[wolfandpravato]

Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether a Colorado law compelling a baker to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex marriage violates his First Amendment rights. IJ has filed an amicus brief, urging the court, no matter how it resolves the case, to explicitly reject the lower court’s dangerous holding that compensated speech is entitled to less protection than uncompensated speech.

Green Party/Libertarian Party: Our candidates were excluded from the 2012 presidential debates, which is a violation of antitrust law. D.C. Circuit: Novel, but this is not something antitrust is meant to address. Moreover, plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim is completely devoid of merit.

Man sets up fake email accounts, impersonates scholars whose views on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls are not consonant with his own. Second Circuit: “Confessing” to plagiarism (in emails to students, colleagues, and administrators) was intended to injure, so those convictions, for criminal impersonation and forgery, stand. But convictions reversed for other emails, which were more likely intended to embarrass than cause real harm.

Nursing student is suspected of drug use, declines drug test. She’s expelled. District court: Which deprived her of a property interest. Pay her $1 million. Third Circuit: Reversed. The private hospital running the program (in partnership with a public university) is not a state actor.

Four off-duty Pittsburgh, Penn., police shoot at car that fled traffic stop and is weaving between inbound and outbound lanes of traffic along street crowded with pedestrians. They hit plaintiff (the driver’s mother, a passenger in the vehicle) in the face and a pedestrian in the back. Third Circuit: Qualified immunity all around (except for one officer who perhaps fired after the vehicle had crashed).

Fayette County, W.Va., officials ban drilling companies from injecting wastewater underground. Fourth Circuit: No can do. The feds and the state have complex permitting systems meant to ensure safe wastewater disposal, and plaintiff has permits.

Allegation: State investigator intentionally falsified DNA analysis that put Lewisburg, Tenn., man behind bars for 11 years for rape he did not commit. Sixth Circuit: He can sue. Dissent: The analyst got it wrong, but there’s no reason to think she did it on purpose. Case should be dismissed.

Resident objects to exclusively Christian prayers led by Jackson County, Mich., commissioners before public meetings; commissioners criticize him; one calls him a “nitwit.” Which was bad manners, says the Sixth Circuit (by a 9-6 vote), but a non-Christian could get elected and lead non-Christian prayers (or none at all). No need for us to “hover over each town hall meeting in the country like a helicopter parent,” policing Establishment Clause violations.

Sexagenarian’s pants slip to mid-thigh, causing him to trip as Macomb County, Mich., jail officers escort him to medical evaluation. Officers say he intentionally pulled them to ground, drag him to cell. Though he’s handcuffed, a 300-lb. officer kneels on him. He dies. Sixth Circuit: No qualified immunity.

Convicted fraudster, who employed former strippers to help bilk nearly $100 million from southeast Michigan banks, does not report to prison, is apprehended after a manhunt, attempts to escape from jail. At hearing, he slams the prosecutor’s head into a table repeatedly. Sixth Circuit: The table counts as a “dangerous weapon,” so he gets a sentence enhancement.

Allegation: IRS agents investigating tax evasion seize over $3 million from family’s safe at their Delta, Ohio scrap-metal business, pocket nearly $2 million of it, and turn the rest over to the gov’t for civil forfeiture. (No charges are ever filed against the family.) Sixth Circuit: The family missed the six-month deadline to file suit after the IRS rejected their administrative claims, and it doesn’t matter if it was their lawyers’ fault.

Financial adviser is convicted of cheating clients, ordered to pay $290K restitution. Seventh Circuit: Affirmed. Judge Posner, dissenting: Comparing the defendant to Bernie Madoff, who defrauded his investors to the tune of $12 billion, was disreputable conduct by the DOJ. For that and other reasons, he should get a new trial.

Allegation: Hackers steal man’s credit card info from grocery store; he notices a fraudulent charge and gets the card replaced. Enough of an injury for him to sue the grocery store? Indeed, says the Eighth Circuit, though there is little to no risk the hackers will be able to open unauthorized new accounts in his name (as the stolen info did not include his SSN, birth date or other necessaries).

Man avers that he is going to Costco to buy food, which DEA agents believe is code for illicit dealings. Ninth Circuit: No need to suppress the evidence from search of the man’s truck. Judge Kozinski: “This is a green light for the police to search anyone’s property based on what officers subjectively believe — or claim to believe — about someone’s everyday conduct…. I dissent, and I’m off to Costco to buy some food.”

Third-party company uses “zombie” cookies (which continue collecting data even after being deleted) to track Verizon customers’ web-browsing habits. Customers file a class action against the cookie company. Ninth Circuit: Which doesn’t go to arbitration. Customers agreed to arbitrate disputes with Verizon, and the agreement does not extend to the cookie company.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled that (for the time being) an executive order banning travelers from six Muslim countries cannot be enforced against people with a bona fide relationship to a person in the U.S. Ninth Circuit: Contrary to the Administration’s position, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers- and sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins are all bona fide. Moreover, an additional 24,000 people, refugees who have been vetted, may enter while the suit pends.

Does qualified immunity protect a Nevada Highway Patrol major who ordered officers not to discuss a K9 unit that allegedly condoned unconstitutional searches? No, says the Ninth Circuit, the First Amendment clearly prohibits such a blanket ban on speech.

Prosecutors: The gov’t can forfeit $11.5K man paid to bail his wife out of jail because they would have spent the money on drugs if they hadn’t used it on bail. Ninth Circuit: Even if that’s what they intended, there’s no evidence they acted on that intent; hundreds of years of common law says no punishing people solely for their thoughts. (In the Latin: Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur.)

Mentally ill man declines to drop knife; San Jose, Calif. officer shoots him in the back, rendering him paraplegic. Neighbor (a former cop): The man wasn’t threatening the officer. Jury: Excessive force. Ninth Circuit: No need to reconsider the jury’s verdict; it’s too late for the officer to appeal denial of qualified immunity.

Seeking to stymie environmental activists, Wyoming officials enhance the penalties for those who trespass for the purpose of collecting data about things like soil and water quality. Tenth Circuit: The law targets the creation of speech. Punishing trespassers more merely because they’re collecting data implicates the First Amendment.

Military sergeant is suspected of violating a no-contact order by, among other things, posting online nude photos of his wife, who has accused him of sexual assault. He requests counsel, but questioning continues; he surrenders the password to his phone. Appeals Court for the Armed Forces (over a dissent): Suppress the evidence.

And in en banc news, the Tenth Circuit will not reconsider its denial of qualified immunity to officers who allegedly lied about tea leaves testing positive for marijuana (which led to a SWAT raid on an innocent family). We did a podcast on the case.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Indiana officials can no longer seize vehicles under the state’s civil forfeiture laws, which lacked robust safeguards to prevent innocent people from losing their property. One reason such safeguards are necessary, the judge wrote, is that law enforcement gets to keep what they take. Indeed, in Indianapolis, police and prosecutors keep 100 percent of the proceeds from forfeiture, an arrangement that is the subject of a separate, ongoing IJ lawsuit because the Indiana Constitution requires all forfeiture proceeds to go to schools. To read more about the decision and IJ’s suit, click here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/12/short-circuit-a-roundup-of-recent-federal-court-decisions-72/

[seecantrill]

Beirut

We arrived late in the evening to Beirut and pulled into the driveway of the Smallville Hotel on Damascus road. “The road to Damascus” I thought to myself; two hours away by car I was told when I asked. Syria, the neighboring country embroiled now in devastating civil war. Yes, here I am. In the Middle East.

I immediately flashback to July 4th, 1987, the summer when I first went overseas to Germany. Because it was the US holiday, we went by car to a branch office of the US Embassy near Bonn where they were planning to host a barbecue and fireworks. Upon arriving at the gate, security guards with automatic rifles approached the car and asked for our IDs. Large concrete blocks and metal barricades surrounded the guard stand, and now the car, and extended all the way over to and around the buildings beyond. At 17 I hadn’t quite seen anything like this before (although I would soon see more very soon in Berlin). I remember asking what was happening and I was told that a US embassy had been bombed in Beirut, Lebanon.

It is now 30 years later and I have just returned from a trip -- a vacation of sorts -- to Beirut, the place that so captured my imagination that summer. Traveling there with my partner Jack who was invited to be a guest of International Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP), an organization his company supports, I ended up spending a remarkable week becoming familiar with IRAPs work while getting a bit of a feel for the city and its history and learning more about the war now raging less than two hours away.

Beirut today is a bustling vibrant city of neighborhoods and many Lebanese told us they were happy to be at peace and felt safe; they wanted the highlights of their city to be appreciated and shared. Despite struggling with the struggles around them, the neighborhoods were filled with young men and women spending time together often with drinks and also shisha pipes. Political murals adorned many walls throughout the city, and modern buildings sat next to pocketed shells of buildings; several in fact still face each other across intersections, making very vivid current politics and the reality of a 15-year civil war.

Beirut is a diverse and multiethnic place, and is known to be one of the most open and free cities in the Middle East even though we were told that it can shift from block to block. The colonial heritage is alive with the French language, along with English and Arabic, being still taught in schools.  The older architecture -- and several buildings in their full glory still exist -- are a mix of Lebanese and French style, along with Turkish or Ottoman. The food was a similar mix along with Armenian. Zatar on flatbread with vegetables or Laban and Turkish coffee made for delicious morning meal, while hummus, pita, mezze were available everywhere throughout the day. Beaches sit along the eastern Mediterranean waterfront and, quite amazingly, west of the city rises rapidly into snow capped mountains.

As supporters of IRAP,  we were invited to participate in what was the real focus of this trip -- ie. training mostly US-based law students on the refugee situation in the region and having them do an initial intake interview with Syrian refugees. The goal in the Beirut office was to engage this group of students and, us as supporters, to help IRAP prioritize its resources around advocacy and resettlement efforts; efforts whose pipeline continues to get smaller and smaller as the need continues to expand. Although no longer officially counted by the Lebanese government, most people seem to believe that there over 1.5 million Syrians now in Lebanon not able to obtain legal residency or related social services.

We were told many times that Syrians and Lebanese have a long history, at war and also at peace. After the civil war and Syrian occupation, Syrians traveled freely to Lebanon and work there. When the Syrian war broke out, people either crossed the border or were already in Lebanon and simply did not go back. So although there are tented settlements of Syrian refugees in Lebanon (mostly outside the city and close to the Syrian border), there are also many living in crowded houses, apartments and with extended family doing underground work in the cities.

Jack has written about this trip and about how protected we were from the actual situation; it’s true. Throughout the trip we remained in the city, visited NGOs, and the families we were interviewing came to us at the IRAP office. This was intentional of course; not only were there real security concerns but also our job was not to be there to get involved at that level. Instead they needed us to do some work for them and that’s what we focused on doing -- by Thursday of that week I was sitting next to a law student, passing a computer back and forth, as we interviewed a Syrian family about their situation and worked to document the details of their lives and their related request for resettlement. This interview took approximately four hours, and we shared our notes with the IRAP staff lawyers who would determine the next steps for each situation.

IRAP both works directly in places like Beirut and Amman doing this kind of direct legal advocacy for refugees (mostly Syrians at this point) and it does it by engaging young law students, and a few supporters like us, from around the US and beyond. They also have a litigation office in New York City which spends their time suing the current U.S. Administration over its immigration bans and related xenophobic policies. As an educator, therefore, IRAP’s work struck me as as both creatively strategic and also pedagogically smart -- not only was the organization tapping into a well of often-underutilized human resources (ie. students) needed to do this work, it was also amassing, by working in real time on the ground, the very particular knowledge needed to fight for refugee and resettlement rights and develop the field of refugee law, in US Federal courts and beyond.

It’s been a few weeks now that we’ve been back in Philadelphia since this trip; last weekend Jack and I attended a panel discussion on the topic of displacement that is part of a larger event called Friends, Peace and Sanctuary out at Swarthmore. This project has been engaging artists and people newly arrived to the US, mostly from Syria, with the peace archive at the college. A local artist friend, Erik Ruin, was one of the artists on the project and a panelist talked about how the idea of “displacement” for him as not only being about the global movements of refugees of war, but also being about the displacement of people, mostly poor and working people of color, from his West Philly neighborhood. His comments reflect my own feelings after returning from the Middle East and thinking back to my early years of being in Europe; it was there that I started to realize how both the history and presence of war exists at the same time. And that a core capacity we need, on a local as well as the global front, is to see each other and the very real implications of our actions on other people’s lives.

You’ve probably run into IRAP yourself -- they were the ones who, through their clubs at US law schools, helped to mobilize national protests at the airports when the first Trump Administration Muslim Ban was announced and several clients that they had supported through a resettlement process were stuck in the air or at the borders unable to reach their destination. I remember being at the Philadelphia Airport that evening and feeling grateful for the community that had engaged this protest even though I didn’t know who they were.

I was there that night because my friend Kate, a pediatric researcher who works with refugee families, had told me soon after the US election in 2016 that “they will come for the immigrants first.” And indeed, they have. I am extremely thankful of and support the work of IRAP and the extended legal community that is working so hard to keep tyranny at bay. And I continue to wonder how we as educators can best respond locally as well as globally to these challenges of displacement. How do we continue to build these core capacities that we need in order to attend to the damage of our actions on other people and our very connected lives?

[newstfionline]

Young or Old, Saudi Women Live Under Male Relatives’ Control

AP, May 19, 2017

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates--First she’s in the hands of her father, then she moves to her husband. Often, she ends up under the power of her son.

From childhood through adulthood into old age, every Saudi woman passes from the control of one legal guardian to another, a male relative whose decisions or whims can determine the course of her life.

Under Saudi law, the guardian’s permission is required for a woman to get a passport, to travel abroad or to marry. It is also often demanded whenever a woman tries to do any number of things, including rent an apartment, buy a car, undergo a medical procedure or take a job. As a result, women are consigned to the legal status of minors.

Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving is what often grabs the most attention, but rights advocates say guardianship laws are the factor that most powerfully enshrines inequality for women. President Donald Trump heads to Saudi Arabia this weekend to cement ties with the deeply conservative kingdom.

Guardianship was a major reason for the outrage when Saudi Arabia last month was elected to a U.N. commission tasked with promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The kingdom was nominated to the post by the Asia-Pacific region, and normally nominees are rubber-stamped automatically. In this case, the U.S. requested a secret ballot vote, a move seen as a symbolic objection, though the kingdom won with 47 out of 54 votes.

The Geneva-based rights group UN Watch denounced the acceptance of Saudi Arabia on the commission, calling it the “world’s leading oppressor of women.”

Saudi law is based on one of the most conservative interpretations of Islamic Shariah, and no other Muslim countries enforce such strict guardianship measures.

The Associated Press spoke with three generations of women from a single family about its impact on their lives:

THE GRANDMOTHER: Naila Mohammed Saleh Nasief, an outspoken 96-year-old, finds it frustrating and humorous that her son has been her guardian for the past three decades.

“I need his permission for everything,” she said. “My son, who I gave birth to and raised and made a man. Does this make sense?”

Her father, who worked in the Finance Ministry, and her husband, a doctor who at one time served as health minister, were both open-minded men and gave her freedom of choice, she said. She raised her sons and daughters as equals. Breaking with another cultural norm, Nasief has never worn the black face veil, known as the niqab, which most Saudi women don.

Since her father and husband’s deaths, her eldest son has also been accommodating.

But that doesn’t mean things are easy.

In one case, in her 60s, she went to the airport to fly to the United States. But she had forgotten the piece of paper from her son granting her permission to travel. Her brother, his children, and her son-in-law and grandchildren were all flying with her--but not her son.

So airport officials barred her from boarding the plane. She and her 18 relatives had to wait for five hours for someone to bring the document to the airport. Nowadays, guardians can give travel permissions electronically.

“I felt I am not human,” she said of the experience.

The system leaves women dependent on the goodwill of their male relatives--fathers, husbands or sons, or in some cases a brother or uncle. Guardians are free to refuse permission. Women have complained of being abused, forced to hand over salaries to their guardians, barred from marriage or forced into unwanted marriages. Women who flee abusive homes can be imprisoned or put in a shelter, requiring the consent of her guardian to leave.

Nasief said the rules aim to keep women at home and quiet. She lamented that some women support the system, seeing it as protecting them.

“I don’t think these laws will change, not even in 50 years, because people’s minds are closed,” she said. “If you hear people talking, they say it’s better for men to rule us than to be out in the wild.”

“Religion doesn’t say to do this,” she said. “There isn’t anything in the Quran that says a man rules over women.”

THE MOTHER: Sahar Nasief, Naila’s daughter, was 53 when her son became her guardian.

When she divorced her husband, her guardianship was transferred back to her father, Hassan Nasief. After he died, her three sons joked over who would be responsible for their mother, she says. In the end, she picked her middle son, then 32.

She had to get his consent when she rented an apartment and when she bought a car. The dealer even demanded he co-sign on the car, even though Nasief, a now 63-year-old retired university professor, bought the car with her money.

In 2013, when she defied the ban on women driving and got behind the wheel of car as part of a nationwide movement to push for women’s rights, she was pulled over by police, who wouldn’t release her until her son signed a pledge vowing his mother would never drive again.

When raising her three daughters, she taught them never “to take any nonsense from anyone” and made sure not to teach them “this nonsense about ‘you have to obey your husband for life’.”

“My daughters and sons were raised like this, as equals sharing and exchanging roles,” Nasief said.

Nasief says guardianship translates into “ownership” of women.

THE DAUGHTER: Lubna Jamjoom, Sahar’s daughter, is a 40-year-old interior designer with three children. But she needed her husband to accompany her to the bank in order for her to open an account for her children and she needed him to get her children passports.

“It doesn’t make sense that he can decide these things for me as an adult and the mother of his children,” she said.

Unlike many Saudi women, Jamjoom knew her husband before marrying him. That was important for her, knowing how much sway he would have over her life. “Even if the guy is kind or good, he can make a woman’s life difficult,” she said.

She has access to the family’s identity book, an official document listing the parents’ and children’s names. It is issued only to the father, and women whose husbands keep hold on it have no way to prove their relationship with their children and so, for example, can’t enroll them in school without the father’s consent. It was only last year that widowed and divorced women could receive the book.

Jamjoom said she wants her daughter to grow up and be able to make their own decisions instead of relying on a man for nearly everything.

“This is the right God gave us,” she said. “We are born free.”

[unrepentantwarriorpriest]

You missed the point of the Loki scene if you love Trump and the State as much as you claim

Thank you for dropping by my favorite of grey faced friend, let me start out by saying:

I’m not at all surprised that a Lib would equate that scene to Trump, since everything is a Nazi these days. However you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

To start, the left likes to portray actions by anyone who does not fit their exact flavor of silly on any given day as evil. I won’t go into depth about the huge hypocrisies involved, even within the last few months, as that will side track this conversation. Maybe my grey faces fan we will go into it at length on a different post. Today the Libs have decided that travel bans, illegals, refugees and minorities, are the popular evils. Those positions by the Conservatives are not evil or fascist, and if you believe they are you are ignorant, but

The travel ban, it is not unconstitutional, it is not unlawful, it is not fascist. Obama has enacted more travel bans then the last 3 Republican (including Trump) presidents. The countries in the ban are from a threat list the Obama administration created, so your moral outrage is hypocritical and aimed at the wrong person. Since if this is evil and unlawful, your Lord and Savior Obama is the worst offender in the history of the United States. 

The travel ban is temporary, if memory serves it is only 90 days, it actually effects very few people with only, if memory serves, a few hundred turned away so far. Beyond that several of our Arab and Muslim allies think the ban is a great idea and have also placed bans on these areas (if further proof was needed for how dangerous these areas are). 

Trump is against ILLEGAL immigrants, NOT IMMIGRANTS, our nation is founded by immigrants and still lives up to the inscription on the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”. Our nation allows around a million legal immigrants into the country each year, far more than almost any other nation. The claim is made that illegals are fleeing their countries because of danger or for hope of a better life. If true they actually have a fantastic chance of legally entering the country because America once again is one of the largest takers of refugees and givers of political asylum each year. So far from uncaring monsters America as bad as you think it is, holds the moral high-ground when it comes to helping the disposesed. That is before we go into any of the foreign aid or humanitarian efforts we do each year around the globe. 

Now about illegals, this is not a race thing. I don’t care if you are an illegal from Canada, Kenya, or Mexico, if you are an illegal then you are here ILLEGALLY and once found it is the LEGAL obligation to deport them, especially if they are found guilty of other crimes. I wont go into the costs for schools, states, and gov programs, etc that are incurred, the crime stats, or the proven voter fraud seeing as this is already getting a bit long. I will however point out another blaring hypocrisy OBAMA DEPORTED MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT.  So if you suddenly care about illegals now where were you when they were actually at risk? 

What about the fact that NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH lets you illegally enter the country and then gives you benefits. NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH will not throw you in jail/immediately deport you if you are caught illegally entering the country. Jail and deportation are the nice punishments in other countries, it gets much worse. So once again America far from being the evil monster you like to make it out as is the NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH is as as good to the disposesed as we are. 

As for the Wall, there is nothing illegal, inhumane, or unconstitutional about it. In fact your fav OBAMA GAVE MILLIONS TO FOREIGN POWERS TO HELP THEM BUILD BOARDER WALLS. Bill Clinton ran of a platform of boarder security, and even had an ILLEGAL CHILD kidnapped at gunpoint from his relatives in the states to be sent to Cuba. Enjoying the hypocrisy yet? So...

On the topic of refugees, even though the US takes in the most refugee’s a year we HAVE NO OBLIGATION to take in even a SINGLE refugee. Add to that the CURRENT VETTING process LITERALLY let one of the SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTERS into the country. So far from being fascist reevaluating current vetting standards that obviously don’t work is a practical and elementary decision. The current refugee crisis in Europe, adds additional reason for concern, especially since if memory serves the majority of those refugees are from those 7 nations on the ban list. Then the most damning piece of evidence as to why we need reevaluated vetting is the fact that ISIS HAS LITERALLY SAID THEY SEND INFILTRATORS IN WITH THE REFUGEES. So to say that there is no threat when ISIS has told us that refugees are LITERALLY there strategy, especially when they can be linked to many attacks within the continental United States. Traditionally women and children out of uniform are non-combatants however with the rise of ISIS more women and more children are being employed in terror attacks, and other acts of violence. Making any refugee’s from these countries like a bowl of poisoned M&M’s. Another dangerous sign is the number of military aged males who are now “refugees” is ridiculous. Now I have heard libs state that this is not true because Statistics state that women and children do in fact make up a large percentage. I have no doubt that their statistics are correct, the issue becomes that ILLEGALS DO NOT FILL OUT PAPERWORK ON BEING ILLEGALS. So the hordes of military aged males flooding into Europe right now who are doing so illegally and not as refugees go uncounted for in those statistics since their number and demographic can not be accurately calculated. So in matters of security, far from facist, we’re trying to be functional, so...

The UN has an entire initiative based around helping refugees, and it has come out and stated that for the price of relocating 1 refugee to the United States, it could help 12 in their own countries. Ironically the money Obama set aside is many times what the UN’s ENTIRE REQUESTED BUDGET FOR THE ISSUE IS. So long story short: it is easier, more cost effective, and safer for all involved to help them in their own countries. Now for those of you thinking “but they live in a war zone,” yes they do, a war zone Obama made possible, and Hillary armed. We have the ability to protect them even, we could crush ISIS if we were allowed but libs don’t want us to interfere in other countries. So instead we have contracted with several countries in the region, Saudi Arabia for instance to create, and protect safe zones within their countries. So once again Trump and conservatives have the moral high ground, having once again done more for the disposesed. And Trump did that week 1, he did more for the disposesed of the middle east DURING HIS FIRST WEEK AS PRESIDENT, than Obama managed in the last 8 years. Shall we also discuss the fact that this entire refugee crisis was actually CAUSED BY OBAMA AND HILLARY. Obama destabilizing the region by pulling out of Iraq despite repeatedly being told by military advisers that it was a bad idea. Then Hillary giving weapons to ISIS in Syria. 

Liberals have been bullying and using fear tactics against minorities since the beginning of time, but they��ve been laying it on thick since the election. Telling minorities that now that Trump is president that they will be carted off to concentration camps, that they need to live in fear because Trump will get them. You only have to look at Youtube to see lib parents fear mongering their children like this. While the only reported incidents have turned out to be libs faking or false reporting incidents. While their are dozens of confirmed incidents of Trump supporters being attacked, people have even been attacked for “looking like a Trump supporter.” That’s before we mention all the riots, like the last one over words, that weren’t even said, THE VIOLENCE STARTED BEFORE THE SPEECH. 

Truth is that Pence is not trying to create gay camps or electro therapy anyone, he is not pushing some anti-gay agenda. He is talking about expanding LGBT insurance, allowing for new procedures to be covered. While the Left views this as a negative, this could set a precedence,and expand what insurance will cover in the future for members of the LGBT community.     

When you look at all the facts, you call Trump, Hitler, but Obama has in every case actually done more, and worse than pretty much every other President in our beloved nations history. I hate to break this to you but, your fav, is at the very least more Hitler by your own meter stick than Trump ever was. 

As for Nazi

[eretzyisrael]

HOW A PRO-PALESTINIAN AMERICAN REPORTER CHANGED HIS VIEWS ON ISRAEL AND THE CONFLICTBYHUNTER STUART  FEBRUARY 15, 2017 12:17

A year working as a journalist in Israel and the Palestinian territories made Hunter Stuart rethink his positions on the conflict.

The author walks past Ofer Prison near Ramallah, during a Palestinian protest outside the facility in November 2015. (photo credit:COURTESY / JONATHAN BROWN)

IN THE summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak. Boy was he right.

Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.

The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.

“I believe Israel should relinquish control of all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank,” I wrote on July 11, 2015, from a park near my new apartment in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. “The occupation is an act of colonialism that only creates suffering, frustration and despair for millions of Palestinians.”

Perhaps predictably, this view didn’t play well among the people I met during my first few weeks in Jerusalem, which, even by Israeli standards, is a conservative city. My wife and I had moved to the Jewish side of town, more or less by chance ‒ the first Airbnb host who accepted our request to rent a room happened to be in the Nachlaot neighborhood where even the hipsters are religious. As a result, almost everyone we interacted with was Jewish Israeli and very supportive of Israel. I didn’t announce my pro-Palestinian views to them ‒ I was too afraid. But they must have sensed my antipathy (I later learned this is a sixth sense Israelis have).

During my first few weeks in Jerusalem, I found myself constantly getting into arguments about the conflict with my roommates and in social settings. Unlike waspy New England, Israel does not afford the privilege of politely avoiding unpleasant political conversations. Outside of the Tel Aviv bubble, the conflict is omnipresent; it affects almost every aspect of life. Avoiding it simply isn’t an option.

During one such argument, one of my roommates ‒ an easygoing American-Jewish guy in his mid-30s ‒ seemed to be suggesting that all Palestinians were terrorists. I became annoyed and told him it was wrong to call all Palestinians terrorists, that only a small minority supported terrorist attacks. My roommate promptly pulled out his laptop, called up a 2013 Pew Research poll and showed me the screen. I saw that Pew’s researchers had done a survey of thousands of people across the Muslim world, asking them if they supported suicide bombings against civilians in order to “defend Islam from its enemies.” The survey found that 62 percent of Palestinians believed such terrorist acts against civilians were justified in these circumstances. And not only that, the Palestinian territories were the only place in the Muslim world where a majority of citizens supported terrorism; everywhere else it was a minority ‒ from Lebanon and Egypt to Pakistan and Malaysia.

I didn’t let my roommate win the argument early morning hours. But the statistic stuck with me.

Less than a month later, in October 2015, a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jewish-Israelis began. Nearly every day, an angry, young Muslim Palestinian was stabbing or trying to run over someone with his car. A lot of the violence was happening in Jerusalem, some of it just steps from where my wife and I had moved into an apartment of our own, and lived and worked and went grocery shopping.

At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Israelis. Actually, I felt hostility. I felt that they were the cause of the violence. I wanted to shake them and say, “Stop occupying the West Bank, stop blockading Gaza, and Palestinians will stop killing you!” It seemed so obvious to me; how could they not realize that all this violence was a natural, if unpleasant, reaction to their government’s actions?

IT WASN’T until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. As the “Stabbing Intifada” (as it later became known) kicked into full gear, I traveled to the impoverished East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story I was writing.

As soon as I arrived, a Palestinian kid who was perhaps 13 years old pointed at me and shouted “Yehud!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends who’d been hanging out nearby were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. “Yehud! Yehud!” they shouted. I felt my heart start to pound. I shouted at them in Arabic “Ana mish yehud! Ana mish yehud!” (“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Jewish!”) over and over. I told them, also in Arabic, that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget. Later, at a house party in Amman, I met a Palestinian guy who’d grown up in Silwan. “If you were Jewish, they probably would have killed you,” he said.

I made it back from Silwan that day in one piece; others weren’t so lucky. In Jerusalem, and across Israel, the attacks against Jewish Israelis continued. My attitude began to shift, probably because the violence was, for the first time, affecting me directly.

I found myself worrying that my wife might be stabbed while she was on her way home from work. Every time my phone lit up with news of another attack, if I wasn’t in the same room with her, I immediately sent her a text to see if she was OK.

Then a friend of mine ‒ an older Jewish Israeli guy who’d hosted my wife and I for dinner at his apartment in the capital’s Talpiot neighborhood ‒ told us that his friend had been murdered by two Palestinians the month before on a city bus not far from his apartment. I knew the story well ‒ not just from the news, but because I’d interviewed the family of one of the Palestinian guys who’d carried out the attack. In the interview, his family told me how he was a promising young entrepreneur who was pushed over the edge by the daily humiliations wrought by the occupation. I ended up writing a very sympathetic story about the killer for a Jordanian news site called Al Bawaba News.

Writing about the attack with the detached analytical eye of a journalist, I was able to take the perspective that (I was fast learning) most news outlets wanted – that Israel was to blame for Palestinian violence. But when I learned that my friend’s friend was one of the victims, it changed my way of thinking. I felt horrible for having publicly glorified one of the murderers. The man who’d been murdered, Richard Lakin, was originally from New England, like me, and had taught English to Israeli and Palestinian children at a school in Jerusalem. He believed in making peace with the Palestinians and “never missed a peace rally,” according to his son.

By contrast, his killers ‒ who came from a middle-class neighborhood in East Jerusalem and were actually quite well-off relative to most Palestinians ‒ had been paid 20,000 shekels to storm the bus that morning with their cowardly guns. More than a year later, you can still see their faces plastered around East Jerusalem on posters hailing them as martyrs. (One of the attackers, Baha Aliyan, 22, was killed at the scene; the second, Bilal Ranem, 23, was captured alive.)

Being personally affected by the conflict caused me to question how forgiving I’d been of Palestinian violence previously. Liberals, human-rights groups and most of the media, though, continued to blame Israel for being attacked. Ban Ki-moon, for example, who at the time was the head of the United Nations, said in January 2016 ‒ as the streets of my neighborhood were stained with the blood of innocent Israeli civilians ‒ that it was “human nature to react to occupation.” In fact, there is no justification for killing someone, no matter what the political situation may or may not be, and Ban’s statement rankled me.

SIMILARLY, THE way that international NGOs, European leaders and others criticized Israel for its “shoot to kill” policy during this wave of terrorist attacks began to annoy me more and more.

In almost any nation, when the police confront a terrorist in the act of killing people, they shoot him dead and human-rights groups don’t make a peep. This happens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh; it happens in Germany and England and France and Spain, and it sure as hell happens in the US (see San Bernardino and the Orlando nightclub massacre, the Boston Marathon bombings and others). Did Amnesty International condemn Barack Obama or Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or Angela Merkel or François Hollande when their police forces killed a terrorist? Nope. But they made a point of condemning Israel.

What’s more, I started to notice that the media were unusually fixated on highlighting the moral shortcomings of Israel, even as other countries acted in infinitely more abominable ways. If Israel threatened to relocate a collection of Palestinian agricultural tents, as they did in the West Bank village of Sussiya in the summer of 2015, for example, the story made international headlines for weeks. The liberal outrage was endless. Yet, when Egypt’s president used bulldozers and dynamite to demolish an entire neighborhood in the Sinai Peninsula in the name of national security, people scarcely noticed.

Where do these double standards come from?

I’ve come to believe it’s because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeals to the appetites of progressive people in Europe, the US and elsewhere. They see it as a white, first world people beating on a poor, third world one. It’s easier for them to become outraged watching two radically different civilizations collide than it is watching Alawite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims in Syria, for example, because to a Western observer the difference between Alawite and Sunni is too subtle to fit into a compelling narrative that can be easily summarized on Facebook.

Unfortunately for Israel, videos on social media that show US-funded Jewish soldiers shooting tear gas at rioting Arab Muslims is Hollywood-level entertainment and fits perfectly with the liberal narrative that Muslims are oppressed and Jewish Israel is a bully.

I admire the liberal desire to support the underdog. They want to be on the right side of history, and their intentions are good. The problem is that their beliefs often don’t square with reality.

In reality, things are much, much more complex than a five-minute spot on the evening news or a two paragraph-long Facebook status will ever be able to portray. As a friend told me recently, “The reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so intractable is that both sides have a really, really good point.”

Unfortunately, not enough people see it that way. I recently bumped into an old friend from college who told me that a guy we’d both known when we were freshmen had been active in Palestinian protests for a time after graduating. The fact that a smart, well-educated kid from Vermont, who went to one of the best liberal arts schools in the US, traveled thousands of miles to throw bricks at Israeli soldiers is very, very telling.

THERE’S AN old saying that goes, “If you want to change someone’s mind, first make them your friend.” The friends I made in Israel forever changed my mind about the country and about the Jewish need for a homeland. But I also spent a lot of time traveling in the Palestinian territories getting to know Palestinians. I spent close to six weeks visiting Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron, and even the Gaza Strip. I met some incredible people in these places; I saw generosity and hospitality unlike anywhere else I’ve ever traveled to. I’ll be friends with some of them for the rest of my life. But almost without fail, their views of the conflict and of Israel and of Jewish people in general was extremely disappointing.

First of all, even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100 percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution ‒ what they want is to return to their ancestral homes in Ramle and Jaffa and Haifa and other places in 1948 Israel, within the Green Line. And they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land.

To me, however morally complicated the creation of Israel may have been, however many innocent Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes in 1948 and again in 1967, Israel is now a fact, accepted by almost every government in the world (including many in the Middle East). But the ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward- looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it.

The other thing is that a large percentage of Palestinians, even among the educated upper class, believe that most Islamic terrorism is actually engineered by Western governments to make Muslims look bad. I know this sounds absurd. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s comical until you hear it repeated again and again as I did. I can hardly count how many Palestinians told me the stabbing attacks in Israel in 2015 and 2016 were fake or that the CIA had created ISIS.

For example, after the November 2015 ISIS shootings in Paris that killed 150 people, a colleague of mine ‒ an educated 27-year-old Lebanese-Palestinian journalist ‒ casually remarked that those massacres were “probably” perpetrated by the Mossad. Though she was a journalist like me and ought to have been committed to searching out the truth no matter how unpleasant, this woman was unwilling to admit that Muslims would commit such a horrific attack, and all too willing ‒ in defiance of all the facts ‒ to blame it on Israeli spies.

USUALLY WHEN I travel, I try to listen to people without imposing my own opinion. To me that’s what traveling is all about ‒ keeping your mouth shut and learning other perspectives. But after 3-4 weeks of traveling in Palestine, I grew tired of these conspiracy theories.

“Arabs need to take responsibility for certain things,” I finally shouted at a friend I’d made in Nablus the third or fourth time he tried to deflect blame from Muslims for Islamic terrorism. “Not everything is America’s fault.” My friend seemed surprised by my vehemence and let the subject drop ‒ obviously I’d reached my saturation point with this nonsense.

I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. Countless Palestinians told me they didn’t have a problem with Jewish people, only with Zionists. They seemed to forget that Jews have been living in Israel for thousands of years, along with Muslims, Christians, Druse, atheists, agnostics and others, more often than not, in harmony. Instead, the vast majority believe that Jews only arrived in Israel in the 20th century and, therefore, don’t belong here.

Of course, I don’t blame Palestinians for wanting autonomy or for wanting to return to their ancestral homes. It’s a completely natural desire; I know I would feel the same way if something similar happened to my own family. But as long as Western powers and NGOs and progressive people in the US and Europe fail to condemn Palestinian attacks against Israel, the deeper the conflict will grow and the more blood will be shed on both sides.

I’m back in the US now, living on the north side of Chicago in a liberal enclave where most people ‒ including Jews ‒ tend to support the Palestinians’ bid for statehood, which is gaining steam every year in international forums such as the UN.

Personally, I’m no longer convinced it’s such a good idea. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who’s to say they wouldn’t elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel’s destruction? That’s exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Fortunately, Gaza is somewhat isolated, and its geographic isolation ‒ plus the Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade ‒ limit the damage the group can do. But having them in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem is something Israel obviously doesn’t want. It would be suicide. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction.

So, now, I don’t know what to think. I’m squarely in the center of one of the most polarized issues in the world. I guess, at least, I can say that, no matter how socially unacceptable it was, I was willing to change my mind.

If only more people would do the same.

[creepingsharia]

Muslim Group, Emgage, That Hosts Homophobic Imams and Terrorist Defenders Endorses Joe Biden

Isn’t that 99.9% of imams if not all?

Emgage is one of the insidious groups seeding sharia-supporting Muslim candidates in towns and cities all across America.

Emgage also recently parted ways with one of its leaders who joked about blowing up a school that contained “white people.”

Joe Schoffstall

A George Soros-backed Muslim group, which cohosts a conference that in recent years drew speakers who called homosexuality a "disease" and defended terrorist groups, announced its endorsement of Joe Biden for president.

Emgage, which bills itself as the largest Muslim PAC in the country, on Thursday announced it would switch its endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) to Biden. The group cited Biden's promises to end President Donald Trump's travel bans, increase the refugee admissions cap, and overhaul the immigration system. Biden said he was "honored" to receive the endorsement.

Emgage has collaborated with a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group on events that in recent years attracted speakers who openly opposed LGBT rights and supported terror groups. Last year, Emgage became an official cohost of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conferences. ISNA was previously revealed to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood network—though it claims it is no longer associated with the group.

The 2018 ISNA conference featured an array of homophobic speakers. One was Omar Suleiman, an imam who has called homosexuality a "disease" that will "destroy your children." Another, former ISNA president Muzammil Siddiqi, said he "supported laws in countries where homosexuality is punishable by death." Imam Shamsi Ali, an attendee who was described as a "moderate" on ISNA's website, has stated that homosexuality is an "unbearable plague."

Meanwhile, ISNA has disinvited pro-LGBT groups Muslims for Progressive Values and the Human Rights Campaign, because they "don’t fit in."

The 2018 conference also featured individuals who have come to the defense of terrorist organizations. One speaker, Council on American-Islamic Relations executive Zahra Billoo, has regularly defended Hamas and refers to Israel as an "apartheid state."

Khalid Griggs, who spoke on a panel with Billoo, has referred to al Qaeda as the "presumed perpetrators" of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said the U.S. government used the tragedy to wage war on "legitimate resistance fighters" in the Middle East. Griggs previously launched a petition calling on the Obama administration to pardon former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, better known as H. Rap Brown. Brown is serving a life sentence as a convicted cop killer.

Also included in that year's speaker lineup was Suhaib Webb, a Boston-based imam who held a fundraiser for Brown's criminal defense fund. Webb hosted the event with Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam who preached to two of the 9/11 hijackers, joined al Qaeda, and was eventually killed in a drone strike.

Anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, who in 2004 called for a violent "intifada" in the United States, also spoke on a panel at the conference. During the panel Sarsour warned against "humanizing" Israelis, according to audio published by the Algemeiner. Hatem Bazian, head of American Muslims for Palestine, the agent of which has defended terrorists in court, was on the panel with Sarsour.

Emgage sponsored an "Organizing Engagement in the Age of Hate" panel at the event that year and became a cohost of the conference the following year. The gathering has attracted politicians, including Sanders, former presidential candidate Julian Castro, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), as speakers.

Emgage Action, the group's nonprofit arm, received a $1 million donation for organizational support from the Open Society Policy Center, Soros's lobbying shop, in late 2019.

The group's PAC received just $3,775 in contributions this cycle. Its activities are primarily focused in Florida, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, and the District of Columbia.

Biden's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

-------------------------------------------------------

More on Emgage:

Emgage was founded in 2006 by Khurrum Wahid, a defense attorney for many of the world’s most notorious terrorists and former lawyer for the Hamas-related Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). According to the Miami New Times, Wahid, himself, was placed on a federal terrorist watch list, in 2011. Both CAIR and Islamic Relief, a group that has been banned in a number of countries, are listed as ‘Partners’ on Emgage’s most recent annual report. Emgage is a member organization of the South Florida Muslim Federation (SoFlo Muslims), a terrorist umbrella group for South Florida’s various radical Muslim outfits, and Emgage holds events at terror-related mosques.

[numinous-queer]

Judge halts deportations as refugee ban causes worldwide furor

The Washington Post

A federal judge in New York blocked deportations nationwide late Saturday of those detained on entry to the United States after an executive order from President Trump targeted citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn granted a request from the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the deportations after determining that the risk of injury to those detained by being returned to their home countries necessitated the decision.

Minutes after the judge’s ruling in New York, another came in Alexandria when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary restraining order to block for seven days the removal of any green-card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport. Brinkema’s action also ordered that lawyers have access to those held there because of the ban.

Trump’s order reverberated across the world Saturday, making it increasingly clear that the measure he had promised during his presidential campaign was casting a wider net than even his opponents had feared.

Confusion and concern among immigrant advocates mounted throughout the day as travelers from the Middle East were detained at U.S. airports or sent home. A lawsuit filed on behalf of two Iraqi men challenged Trump’s executive action, which was signed Friday and initially cast as applying to refugees and migrants.

But as the day progressed, administration officials confirmed that the sweeping order also targeted U.S. legal residents from the named countries — green-card holders — who were abroad when it was signed. Also subject to being barred entry into the United States are dual nationals, or people born in one of the seven countries who hold passports even from U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom.

The virtually unprecedented measures triggered harsh reactions from not only Democrats and others who typically advocate for immigrants but also key sectors of the U.S. business community. Leading technology companies recalled scores of overseas employees and sharply criticized the president. Legal experts forecast a wave of litigation over the order, calling it unconstitutional. Lawyers and advocates for immigrants are advising them to seek asylum in Canada.

Yet Trump, who centered his campaign in part on his vow to crack down on illegal immigrants and impose what became known as his “Muslim ban,’’ was unbowed. As White House officials insisted that the measure strengthens national security, the president stood squarely behind it.

“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “You see it at the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely, and we’re going to have a very, very strict ban, and we’re going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.”

In New York, Donnelly seemed to have little patience for the government’s arguments, which focused heavily on the fact that the two defendants named in the lawsuit had already been released.

Donnelly noted that those detained were suffering mostly from the bad fortune of traveling while the ban went into effect. “Our own government presumably approved their entry to the country,” she said at one point, noting that, had it been two days prior, those detained would have been granted admission without question.

Photos from the scene of protest at New York’s JFK airport against Trump’s executive order halting refu­gee admissions  (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Entry to the United States is being refused to legal residents, including green-card holders, from seven mostly Muslim countries who were abroad when the executive order was signed Friday by the president, and some travelers were detained at U.S. airports. 

During the hearing, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt informed the court that he had received word of a deportation to Syria, scheduled within the hour. That prompted Donnelly to ask if the government could assure that the person would not suffer irreparable harm. Receiving no such assurance, she granted the stay to the broad group included in the ACLU’s request.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official had no comment about the rulings late Saturday and said the department was consulting with its lawyers.

The official said enforcement of the president’s order on Saturday had created minimal disruption, given that only a small number of the several hundred thousand travelers arriving at U.S. airports daily had been affected.

Nationwide, he said, 109 people had been denied entry into the United States. All had been in transit when Trump signed the order, and some had already departed the United States on flights by late Saturday while others were still being detained awaiting flights. Also, 173 people had not been allowed to board U.S.-bound planes at foreign airports.

The official said that officers doing case-by-case reviews had granted 81 waivers so far to green-card holders.

DHS began implementing the president’s order immediately after he signed it, according to the official. He declined to say whether the department had an operational plan ready at that time.

In New York, when news of the decision to block the deportations reached the crowd outside the courthouse, a roar of approval went up. For some time after, hundreds of people chanted and danced along with a drum circle. “Get up! Get down! New York is an immigrant town,” the crowd said. The diverse group of mostly young people continued to grow despite the cold weather. “No hate! No bigotry! No Muslim registry.”

Jonah Baum, 11, was at the protest with his mother, Terri Gerstein, 48. Asked why he thought it was important to come, Baum said, “It's so bad what he's been doing to this country. I felt like I needed to do something about it.” Baum's grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Germany.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted late Saturday, “I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution. This is not who we are.”

Though several congressional Republicans denounced the order, the majority remained silent, and a few voiced crucial support — including, most prominently, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who had rejected Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals during the campaign. “This is not a religious test, and it is not a ban on people of any religion,’’ Ryan said Saturday. “This order does not affect the vast majority of Muslims in the world.”

The president’s order, signed Friday, suspends admission to the United States of all refugees for 120 days and bars for 90 days the entry of any citizen from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. That list excludes several majority-Muslim nations — notably Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia — where the Trump Organization, now run by the president’s adult sons, is active and which in some cases have also faced troublesome issues with terrorism.

According to the text of the order, the restriction applies to countries that have already been excluded from programs allowing people to travel to the United States without a visa because of terrorism concerns. Hewing closely to nations already named as terrorism concerns elsewhere in law might have allowed the White House to avoid angering powerful and wealthy majority-Muslim allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Amid widespread confusion on Saturday about how the order will be enforced, some administration officials acknowledged that its rollout had been chaotic. Officials tried to reassure travelers and their families, pointing out that green-card holders in the United States will not be affected and noting that the DHS is allowed to grant waivers to those individuals and others deemed to not pose a security threat. It can take years for someone to become a green-card holder, or lawful permanent resident authorized to permanently live and work in the country.

“If you’ve been living in the United States for 15 years and you own a business and your family is here, will you be granted a waiver? I’m assuming yes, but we are working that out,’’ said one official, who could not be more specific because details remained so cloudy. A senior White House official later said that waivers will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and that green-card holders in the United States will have to meet with a consular officer before leaving the country.

But officials made clear that the federal officers detaining refugees and migrants with valid U.S. visas and restricting them from entering the country were following orders handed down by top DHS officials, at the White House’s behest.

The order drew outrage from a range of activist and advocates for Muslims, Arabs and immigrants. More than 4,000 academics from universities nationwide signed a statement of opposition and voiced concern the ban would become permanent. They described it as discriminatory and “inhumane, ineffective and un-American.”

The executive action has caused “complete chaos” and torn apart families, said Abed Ayoub, legal and policy director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

At Dulles, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) addressed more than 100 people protesting Trump’s order. He said: “I remind everybody we are a land of immigrants … Discriminatory tactics breed hatred.’’

In New York, lawyers for two Iraqi men detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport — one of whom served the U.S. military mission in Iraq — filed a federal lawsuit challenging the order as unconstitutional.

[Read the complaint]

One of the men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released Saturday afternoon without explanation from federal officials. “This is the humanity, this is the soul of America,’’ he told reporters. “This is what pushed me to move, to leave my country and come here … America is the land of freedom — the land of freedom, the land of the right.’’

Other advocates promised further legal challenges. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the order and said it would file a lawsuit challenging it as unconstitutional.

In a conference call with reporters, immigration lawyers and advocates said Trump’s order violated the Constitution, along with U.S. and international laws that guarantee migrants the right to apply for asylum at the border and the Immigration and Nationality Act, which forbids discrimination in the issuance of visas based on race, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration levels, praised Trump.

“It’s a prudent measure,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the Statue of Liberty crying. The reaction has been hyperbolic.”

At Dulles, shortly after 9 p.m., about 200 protesters continued to sing, chant and cheer international passengers as they arrived. They chanted "let them in" and sang, "This land is our land, this land is your land."

About three dozen volunteer lawyers gathered nearby in the international arrivals area. Cheers erupted as one of the lawyers announced that the ACLU had been granted a national stay in New York.

Dan Press, a Washington area bankruptcy lawyer volunteering at the airport, then announced Brinkema’s temporary restraining order that granted lawyers access to people being held at Dulles and prevented lawful permanent residents — people with green cards — from being removed.

“You guys get ready!” Press told the throng of lawyers. “Form teams to go back!”

By 9:45 p.m., the lawyers were still waiting to get down the long hallway guarded by three police officers that would take them to the area where a reported 50 to 60 people — mostly people from the seven countries who also have green cards — have been held since earlier this afternoon.

Hassan Ahmad, a Northern Virginia immigration lawyer, said he knew of a 71-year-old Iranian man with a green card who had been held at Dulles with his wife since they arrived at 3:45 p.m. on a flight from Tehran via Frankfurt. Ahmad said the man's family was worried because he had a heart condition, and they had been unable to reach him by cellphone.

Ahmad and his colleague, Humza Kazmi, said they consider their client to be detained.

“He's not free to go,” Ahmad said.

Ahmad said both airport police and Border Protection officers had refused to let them see their pro bono client.

Ahmad said another client — an Iraqi couple with two children — had been released at Dulles after 4 1/2 hours. The father had a green card under a program for Iraqi citizens who had assisted the U.S. military as translators. The man's wife and children also had green card as his dependents, he said.

Philip Bump in Brooklyn, Louisa Loveluck in Beirut, and David Nakamura, Philip Rucker, Mike DeBonis, Lori Aratani, Carol Morello and Rachel Weiner in Washington contributed to this report.

SOURCE

[nothingman]

Two weeks ago, Sidd Bikkannavar flew back into the United States after spending a few weeks abroad in South America. An employee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Bikkannavar had been on a personal trip, pursuing his hobby of racing solar-powered cars. He had recently joined a Chilean team, and spent the last weeks of January at a race in Patagonia.

Bikkannavar is a seasoned international traveller — but his return home to the US this time around was anything but routine. Bikkannavar left for South America on January 15th, under the Obama Administration. He flew back from Santiago, Chile to the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas on Monday, January 30th, just over a week into the Trump Administration.

He was detained by Customs and pressured to give up his phone and access PIN

Bikkannavar says he was detained by US Customs and Border Patrol and pressured to give the CBP agents his phone and access PIN. Since the phone was issued by NASA, it may have contained sensitive material that wasn’t supposed to be shared. Bikkannavar’s phone was returned to him after it was searched by CBP, but he doesn’t know exactly what information officials might have taken from the device.

The JPL scientist returned to the US four days after the signing of a sweeping and controversial Executive Order on travel into the country. The travel ban caused chaos at airports across the United States, as people with visas and green cards found themselves detained, or facing deportation. Within days of its signing, the travel order was stayed, but not before more than 60,000 visas were revoked, according to the US State Department.

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

His ordeal also took place at a time of renewed focus on the question of how much access CBP can have to a traveler’s digital information, whether or not they’re US citizens: in January, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed complaints against CBP for demanding that Muslim American citizens give up their social media information when they return home from overseas. And there’s evidence that that kind of treatment could become commonplace for foreign travelers. In a statement this week, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said that people visiting the United States may be asked to give up passwords to their social media accounts. "We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?" Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee. "If they don't want to cooperate then you don't come in."

Seemingly, Bikkannavar’s reentry into the country should not have raised any flags. Not only is he a natural-born US citizen, but he’s also enrolled in Global Entry — a program through CBP that allows individuals who have undergone background checks to have expedited entry into the country. He hasn’t visited the countries listed in the immigration ban and he has worked at JPL — a major center at a US federal agency — for 10 years. There, he works on “wavefront sensing and control,” a type of optics technology that will be used on the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Bikkanavar’s reentry into the country should not have raised any flags

“I don’t know what to think about this,” Bikkannavar recently told The Verge in a phone call. “...I was caught a little off guard by the whole thing.”

Bikkannavar says he arrived into Houston early Tuesday morning, and was detained by CBP after his passport was scanned. A CBP officer escorted Bikkannavar to a back room, and told him to wait for additional instructions. About five other travelers who had seemingly been affected by the ban were already in the room, asleep on cots that were provided for them.

About 40 minutes went by before an officer appeared and called Bikkannavar’s name. “He takes me into an interview room and sort of explains that I’m entering the country and they need to search my possessions to make sure I’m not bringing in anything dangerous,” he says. The CBP officer started asking questions about where Bikkannavar was coming from, where he lives, and his title at work. It’s all information the officer should have had since Bikkannavar is enrolled in Global Entry. “I asked a question, ‘Why was I chosen?’ And he wouldn’t tell me,” he says.

The officer also presented Bikkannavar with a document titled “Inspection of Electronic Devices” and explained that CBP had authority to search his phone. Bikkannavar did not want to hand over the device, because it was given to him by JPL and is technically NASA property. He even showed the officer the JPL barcode on the back of phone. Nonetheless, CBP asked for the phone and the access PIN. “I was cautiously telling him I wasn’t allowed to give it out, because I didn’t want to seem like I was not cooperating,” says Bikkannavar. “I told him I’m not really allowed to give the passcode; I have to protect access. But he insisted they had the authority to search it.”

NASA

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Courts have upheld customs agents' power to manually search devices at the border, but any searches made solely on the basis of race or national origin are still illegal. More importantly, travelers are not legally required to unlock their devices, although agents can detain them for significant periods of time if they do not. “In each incident that I’ve seen, the subjects have been shown a Blue Paper that says CBP has legal authority to search phones at the border, which gives them the impression that they’re obligated to unlock the phone, which isn’t true,” Hassan Shibly, chief executive director of CAIR Florida, told The Verge. “They’re not obligated to unlock the phone.”

Nevertheless, Bikkannavar was not allowed to leave until he gave CBP his PIN. The officer insisted that CBP had the authority to search the phone. The document given to Bikkannavar listed a series of consequences for failure to offer information that would allow CBP to copy the contents of the device. “I didn’t really want to explore all those consequences,” he says. “It mentioned detention and seizure.” Ultimately, he agreed to hand over the phone and PIN. The officer left with the device and didn’t return for another 30 minutes.

NASA employees are obligated to protect work-related information, no matter how minuscule

Eventually, the phone was returned to Bikkannavar, though he’s not sure what happened during the time it was in the officer’s possession. When it was returned he immediately turned it off because he knew he had to take it straight to the IT department at JPL. Once he arrived in Los Angeles, he went to NASA and told his superiors what had happened. Bikkannavar can’t comment on what may or may not have been on the phone, but he says the cybersecurity team at JPL was not happy about the breach. Bikkannavar had his phone on hand while he was traveling in case there was a problem at work that needed his attention, but NASA employees are obligated to protect work-related information, no matter how minuscule. We reached out to JPL for comment, but the center didn’t comment on the event directly.

this is from an IRL friend of mine. this is NOT my america. EVER. #MuslimBan Siid is a US Citizen. @CustomsBorder u say "Welcome Home" #NASA http://pic.twitter.com/W4UtF88rJy

— Nick Adkins (@nickisnpdx) February 6, 2017

Bikkannavar noted that the entire interaction with CBP was incredibly professional and friendly, and the officers confirmed everything Bikkannavar had said through his Global Entry background checks. CBP did not respond to a request for comment.

He posted an update on Facebook about what happened, and the story has since been shared more than 2,000 times. A friend also tweeted about Bikkannavar’s experience, which was also shared more than 7,000 times. Still, he’s left wondering the point of the search, and he’s upset that the search potentially compromised the privacy of his friends, family, and coworkers who were listed on his phone. He has since gotten a completely new device from work with a new phone number.

“Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this.”

“It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn’t even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there,” he says. “You can say, ‘Okay well maybe it’s about making sure I’m not a dangerous person,’ but they have all the information to verify that.”

Bikkannavar says he’s still unsure why he was singled out for the electronic search. He says he understands that his name is foreign — its roots go back to southern India. But it shouldn’t be a trigger for extra scrutiny, he says. “Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this. Maybe you could say it was one huge coincidence that this thing happens right at the travel ban.”

via The Verge

[andrewromanoyahoo]

Trump’s other Steve: Stephen Miller’s rocket ride to power in the White House

  Did you see the photograph released earlier this month of Donald Trump glowering at the camera from behind a secluded, scholarly Mar-a-Lago reception desk as he touches the fat tip of a Sharpie to legal pad tilted to conceal the words that are, or are not, there?

If you did, and if the image convinced you that Trump was, in fact, writing his own inaugural address, as he claimed, we have some bad news for you: Trump did not write his inaugural address.

Instead, the speech was written by a skinny, balding, previously obscure 31-year-old former Capitol Hill aide named Stephen Miller.

Normally this information would be of little importance to anyone outside the Beltway. Presidents have been outsourcing their speechwriting duties since James Madison and Alexander Hamilton helped George Washington compose his farewell address in the late 1700s, and modern presidents — including Barack Obama, who is considered more literary than most — typically employ whole teams of writers to put words in their mouths.

But speeches aren’t the only things Miller is writing for Trump. According to a recent Politico report, Miller — now Trump’s senior White House adviser for policy — is also penning the president’s executive orders, including the divisive ban on immigrants and travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries that triggered worldwide chaos over the weekend.

What’s more, Miller — along with former Breitbart CEO turned chief Trump strategist Steve Bannon — is writing these unilateral decrees without consulting lawyers from the affected agencies or lawmakers on Capitol Hill, “stoking fears,” as Politico put it, that “the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.”

Questioned Monday evening on MSNBC about the decision by acting Attorney General Sally Yates not to defend the entry ban, Miller responded piously: “It’s sad that our politics has come so politicized.”

This is new territory.

And so now, given that Stephen Miller is, for all intents and purposes, rewriting the laws of the United States of America — even though Miller is not a lawyer, or an elected official, or even particularly experienced in governance — it’s probably worth knowing a little more about him.

Stephen Miller at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Bangor, Maine. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Here’s a quick primer.

Miller reached out to Trump shortly after the Manhattan mogul announced his presidential run in June 2015; he officially joined the Trump campaign as a senior adviser in January 2016. He soon became Trump’s top policy guy and sole speechwriter. (Trump famously improvised most of his campaign speeches.)

How did Miller crack Trump’s inner circle? Likely by reminding Trump of himself. It’s not just that the two men both subscribe to a far-right, anti-immigration, anti-free-trade nationalism. It’s that they are both inveterate self-promoters — provocateurs skilled at attracting attention, building their brands and gratifying their own egos by courting controversy.

Miller started his gadfly act early. Raised in a Jewish and Democratic family in the toniest section of ultraliberal Santa Monica, Calif., he was inspired — in part by a copy of National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre’s 1994 book, “Guns, Crime, and Freedom” and in part by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 — to reject his parents’ politics while still in high school, “resolv[ing] to challenge the campus indoctrination machine” instead.

Young and aggressive, Miller saw leftist, peacenik, multicultural conspiracies everywhere. He railed against his school’s Spanish-language announcements, claiming that such concessions only served to hold Hispanics back. “Latino students recall Miller telling them dismissively that they would do better to work on their English language skills rather than spend their time forming clubs based on ethnicity,” the Los Angeles Times recently reported. “Some called him racist.”

Miller went on to complain, in a column titled “Political Correctness Out of Control,” about the availability of condoms on the Santa Monica High School campus. He took issue with the administration’s acceptance of gays and lesbians, later writing that “just in case your son or daughter decides at their tender age that they are gay, we have a club … that will gladly help foster their homosexuality.” He griped that his fellow students weren’t being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or to learn how heroic their predecessors were. Maybe American soldiers shouldn’t have killed Indians? Miller asked, sarcastically. “Or, better yet,” he continued, “we could have lived with the Indians, learning how to finger paint and make tepees, excusing their scalping of frontiersmen as part of their culture.”

“For many people, the things [Miller] would say and do were offensive heresies,” Ari Rosmarin, former editor of the school newspaper and now a New York attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Los Angeles Times. “He loved playing that role, loved drawing people’s outrage. He loved the performance.”

“He would take the opposing position and almost shock people,” said one acquaintance. “He would sort of chuckle and enjoy that.”

Miller also realized early on that Santa Monica High School was too small a stage for him. So, as Politico’s Julia Ioffe has pointed out, Miller didn’t just invite button-pushing Southern California arch-conservative David Horowitz to speak on campus; he immediately claimed that the administration had denied his request, then documented the injustice in Horowitz’s publication, FrontPage Magazine. While still a teenager, Miller reached out to conservative talk radio personality Larry Elder, becoming a regular guest on Elder’s show and inspiring listeners from around the country to call the Santa Monica High switchboard to complain about liberal bias run amok. Shortly after graduation, Miller published a column titled “How I Changed My Left-Wing High School.”

“Stephen Miller, 17 years old, just graduated from Santa Monica High School,” read his bio at the bottom. “Since his Junior year in High School, he has been a guest on local and national radio over thirty times.”

Miller continued to provoke — and promote his own provocations — at Duke University. His microphone was a biweekly column in the Duke newspaper called “Miller Time,” which Miller used as “a way to court angry reaction and put himself at the center of major campus controversies,” according to Ioffe:

He wrote that interacting with the population outside the campus was overrated. “Durham isn’t a petting zoo,” he chided. “The residents won’t get lonely or irritable if we don’t play with them.” He was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and called Ted Kennedy a “traitor” for criticizing American use of torture. He went after professors for being registered Democrats. He blamed 9/11 on “politically correct domestic security” and unenforced immigration laws. He wrote about black students’ racial “paranoia” and their mistaken understanding of where true racism resides. The problem is not rich, conservative white people, he wrote. It’s “Democrats [who] continue to fuel the destructive vision of a powerful, racist white oppressor from which they need to protect black voters in order to keep their lock on that vote.” He wrote that “worshipping at the altar of multiculturalism” undermines American culture and ignores the fact “we have shared with the world the cultural value of individualism and liberty, a value rooted in our unique and glorious history of settlers, pioneers and frontiersman [sic].” Although he identified himself as “a practicing Jew,” he lamented the “War on Christmas,” saying “you’d probably find more Christmas decorations at your local mosque.” Maya Angelou, in Miller’s mind, was “a leftist” full of “racial paranoia” who shouldn’t be allowed to give the opening address at the start of the school year. In a column called “Sorry, Feminists,” he wrote that the gender pay gap was actually because of women working fewer hours and choosing lower-paying professions. “Women already have equal rights in this country,” he wrote. “Sorry, feminists. Hate to break this good news to you.” (“It’s not chauvinism,” he signed off. “It’s chivalry.”)

Miller “very much knew the impact of his work, and he planned and plotted,” a fellow Duke Chronicle alumnus told Politico. “He was very businesslike about it. … It smacked of architecture, like he intentionally provoked people, and it worked for him because he was making a name for himself.”

Stephen Miller departs after attending meetings with President Trump at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

According to Richard Spencer, the white nationalist alt-right founder, he and Miller met each other and clicked as members the Duke Conservative Union (DCU). In October, Spencer told Mother Jones that “Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007 featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow.” Another former member of the DCU confirmed to Mother Jones that Miller and Spencer worked together on the event. At meetings of the Conservative Union, Miller “denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating,” a former DCU president told the magazine.

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” Spencer said. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”

(“I have absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer,” Miller wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “I completely repudiate his views, and his claims are 100 percent false.”)

After appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” and the “Nancy Grace” show to defend the white Duke lacrosse players who were falsely accused in 2006 of raping a black stripper — “Being a white, male lacrosse player was all it took,” he wrote at the time — Miller went to Washington. He first worked as a press secretary for Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Shadegg before landing with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2009. (Horowitz recommended Miller for the job.) Miller soon became Sessions’ right-hand man, “providing,” as Tucker Carlson told Politico, “the intellectual architecture for a [nationalist] insurgency against the Republican Party.”

“When I was in Sessions’ office, this movement for nation-state populism, the intellectual framework for that was being formed,” Miller explained in the same story, noting that he fought to kill the Gang of Eight immigration bill in 2013. “A big part of my day was being in touch with the people who were the key players in that. … We saw ourselves as a kind of think tank for immigration issues and linking that to the larger questions of globalism and populism.”

Always the media-savvy operator, Miller developed a symbiotic relationship with Bannon’s Breitbart — “the platform for the alt-right,” as Bannon himself once put it. Miller fed the site scoops; the site promoted Miller’s media appearances. “Stephen Miller is a jewel,” Bannon said in June, before signing on with Trump. “We try to get as many of his TV things as we can. Some of them have been epic.”

On the Trump campaign, Miller transferred his talents to the stump, often serving as the candidate’s warm-up act. “Everybody who stands against Donald Trump are the people who have been running the country into the ground, who have been controlling the levers of power,” Miller would shout. “They’re the people who are responsible for our open borders, for our shrinking middle class, for our terrible trade deals. Everything that is wrong with this country today, the people who are opposed to Donald Trump are responsible for!” No other speechwriter has ever taken on such a role at rallies. It was yet another example of how much influence someone can amass, in Trump World, if the boss decides he likes you.

Now that Bannon and Miller are ensconced in the West Wing — Trump lovingly refers to them as “my two Steves” — their influence seems limitless. For instance, Bannon and Miller not only devised Trump’s controversial travel ban; Miller in particular spent Saturday directing how it would be implemented, overruling Homeland Security officials and insisting, according to reports, that green card holders would also be barred from entering the country unless granted waivers on a case-by-case basis. On the same day, Miller “effectively ran the National Security Council principals meeting” — an unprecedented move. In terms of policy, Miller — who knows his way around Capitol Hill and remains close to Sessions, Trump’s attorney general nominee — is probably even better positioned than Bannon to steer Trump in his desired direction, even though he’s a less familiar boogeyman among liberals.

“You could not get where we are today with this movement if it didn’t have a center of gravity that was intellectually coherent,” Bannon himself said in June. “Stephen Miller was at the cutting edge of that.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

Trump defends travel ban amid fierce backlash

ACLU raises more than $10M since immigration order signed

Where will Trump’s aides draw the line on lies?

[lodelss]

We Said We Would See Him in Court and We Did

Several months into the Trump administration, my wife was doing The New York Times crossword puzzle and came across this clue: “Group that told President Trump, ‘We’ll see you in court.’” I’m not generally much use when it comes to the crossword, but on that one I could help. She didn’t really need the assistance of course, as the ACLU is my employer, and she, The New York Times crossword puzzle drafters, and much of the country already knew that it was the ACLU who told the president we’d see him in court.   

In fact, we told him that before he took office. Just days after he improbably won the presidential election, we took out ads in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times telling the president-elect that if he sought to implement some of the programs he had promised on the campaign trail — denying legal access to abortion, implementing restrictive immigration practices, undermining voting rights and more — we would sue. We kept our promise.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1144797689030348801

As we mark three years since we put President-elect Trump on notice, we’ve filed over 100 lawsuits, and over 140 other legal actions — Freedom of Information Act requests, administrative complaints, and other legal mechanisms to halt illegal policies — against the president, his administration, or those inspired by his victory to cut back on civil rights and civil liberties. We’ve won many of them, and in the process, protected the rights of millions of people to be treated with dignity and respect for their basic constitutional rights.

IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS

In his first week in the Oval Office, President Trump issued an executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. The ACLU quickly responded by filing and winning the first legal challenge to the Muslim ban that very weekend. A federal court held an emergency hearing on a Saturday night, and enjoined its implementation the day after he put the policy in place. When the first ban was declared unconstitutional by the courts, Trump was forced to issue a revised ban. When we and others successfully challenged that revised ban, he issued still a third version. That, too, was struck down by the lower courts, although the Supreme Court upheld it on a 5-4 vote along party lines. But that third ban, while still a Muslim ban, was narrower than the first two, and we continue to challenge its implementation in the courts. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/825532347839836161

The lion’s share of our Trump-related work has focused on defending immigrants, because that is where the president has directed his most virulent, egregious and systematic attacks.

Trump has particularly targeted those seeking asylum, and we’ve countered him at every point. His goal is to deter asylum applicants — regardless of the validity of their claims to facing persecution at home. In what is surely the cruelest of his many anti-asylum initiatives, he separated children from their parents, in hopes that this would discourage other families from seeking refuge and safety here. We sued, obtained a ruling barring the practice, and continue to press the administration to reunite the thousands of families it so heartlessly separated. The ACLU has helped reunite more than two thousand families, but we keep discovering more who were separated, and we won’t rest until we’ve reunited them all.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1000403709237583872

Trump has also locked up asylum applicants without hearings in which they could show that they pose no flight risk or danger, and therefore should be freed. In our view, the government cannot constitutionally detain people absent a demonstrated reason for doing so, and where an asylum seeker poses neither a flight risk nor a danger, she cannot constitutionally be deprived of her liberty. Here, too, the courts have blocked the administration’s practice thanks to litigation by us and our allies, requiring it to hold hearings and release those who pose no threat.

The Trump administration also sought to change the legal standard in order to make it more difficult to get asylum based on fears of gang violence or domestic abuse in one’s home country. Again, we sued. And again, a federal court blocked the administration from implementing that policy.  

Trump issued an executive order denying asylum to anyone who entered the country other than at an official port of entry — even though the asylum statute provides that asylum is available to all who face persecution at home, regardless of how or where they entered the U.S. The courts blocked that policy, too. He then sought to deny asylum to anyone who has traveled through another country to reach the U.S. and has not applied for and been denied asylum there. Again, the courts declared the policy illegal. The Supreme Court has temporarily stayed that injunction pending the government’s appeal, but our legal challenge continues.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1146471278532071424

Trump also sought to deny legal protections to immigrants from countries that either would not take their citizens back, or where conditions were so bad that we had long afforded their nationals temporary protected status, which allowed them to live and work among us. When Trump sought to revoke their status en masse, the ACLU and our allies sued, and obtained injunctions barring the wholesale denial of legal status to over 400,000 people.   

Most recently, Trump sought to expand so-called “expedited removal,” a summary deportation process that short-circuits many of the essential procedural protections generally afforded to immigrants in deportation proceedings. These procedures have long been limited to persons apprehended within 100 miles of the border and within two weeks of illegal entry. Trump wants to expand exponentially the number of people who could be swiftly deported under this process, to include anyone who had entered illegally within the past two years, apprehended anywhere in the nation. Once again, we sued, and a federal judge blocked the initiative as illegal. 

Trump has attempted, virtually since the day he took office, to build a wall at the southern border. He repeatedly asked Congress for funding to build the wall, and repeatedly they refused. He went ahead and ordered the wall built anyway, declaring a fake national emergency and diverting funds appropriated for other purposes. We sued to stop the diversion of funds, and the lower courts ruled the spending illegal. The Supreme Court granted a temporary stay, but the challenge continues with an argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on November 12. 

We are not the only ones to see Trump in court. Other groups have successfully challenged his revocation of protection for the approximately 800,000 so-called Dreamers, young undocumented people brought here by their parents, to whom the Obama administration gave deferred action status, allowing them to live, work, and go to school here. And the courts have also blocked Trump’s efforts to expand the definition of persons deportable as “public charges” to encompass immigrants who even briefly fall on hard times and need virtually any sort of government assistance.

In short, judicial review has been critical to protecting the basic human rights of tens of thousands of immigrants throughout this country.  That that’s only the beginning.   

REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM

As a candidate, Trump promised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision protecting abortion access, and in response, seven states have enacted laws banning abortion. We’ve challenged five of the state bans and obtained injunctions against each of them; our ally, the Center for Reproductive Rights, has blocked the other two. The states are appealing, but we will continue to defend this fundamental right. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1189194439765438464

We also successfully blocked the Trump administration’s own ban on abortion. This prohibition was applied selectively to some of the most vulnerable women in this country: undocumented teens held in U.S. custody. When one such teen, detained in Texas, learned that she was pregnant and sought to exercise her constitutional right to an abortion, the Trump administration refused to let her out of its facility to go to the clinic for the procedure. We sued in federal court, and won. We now have a nationwide injunction against the practice. 

And most recently, a federal judge blocked President Trump’s so-called “conscience rule,” which would have allowed  doctors, nurses, and other health care providers nationwide to place their own views over the needs of their patience and refuse to provide health care to which they object on moral or religious grounds.  The court held that the rule was arbitrary and rested on demonstrably false assertions by the administration.

VOTING RIGHTS

The president tried to rig the census, by adding a question about citizenship that would have deterred tens of thousands of immigrants from filling out the census form. The Census Bureau itself objected to the plan, because they knew it would lead to undercounting of people in areas where immigrants live, often urban areas that the administration sees as likely to vote Democratic. The Constitution requires the census to count all people, not just citizens. The undercounting would have translated into fewer representatives in Congress for districts with large immigrant populations, and less federal support for all the people who live there, citizen and noncitizen alike. The initiative’s pre-textual rationale was initially drafted by a Republican gerrymandering specialist who advised in a confidential memo that it would advantage “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” We sued and won. In June 2019, the Supreme Court affirmed our victory, finding that the administration’s justification for adding the question was pre-textual — or in plain English, a lie. Trump bristled at the defeat, and only after his entire legal team resigned over his direction to find a way to reinstitute the question did he admit defeat and abandon the effort. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1144257601364008960

ENEMY COMBATANTS

Trump vowed to expand the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, although he has not yet dared do so. His administration did lock up a U.S. citizen as an “enemy combatant” in secret in Iraq, without access to a lawyer, without a hearing, and without any criminal charges. The ACLU sued and won. We first obtained an order requiring the administration to give him access to our attorneys. Then, we challenged the legal basis for detaining a U.S. citizen indefinitely without charges, and the government gave in and released him. The Trump administration has not held a U.S. citizen as an “enemy combatant” since. 

LGBTQ RIGHTS

Trump has also declared war on the LGBTQ community.  Here, too, we’ve challenged him every step of the way. He barred transgender people from serving in the military, despite the military’s finding that there was no basis for excluding them. We obtained an injunction against the ban, and forced Trump to water it down, allowing currently enlisted transgender soldiers to remain. But the revised ban still bars entry to new transgender enlistees. That, too, was blocked, but the lower court’s injunction was temporarily stayed by the Supreme Court pending the government’s appeals, which continue.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1116794914795216899

The Trump administration also reversed the federal government’s position on whether LGBTQ individuals are protected by federal civil rights law from being fired or otherwise discriminated against because of who they are. We won victories in the federal appeals courts, which ruled that firing someone for being gay or transgender is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by federal law. In October, we argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of a gay man and a transgender woman who had been fired because of who they are. The Trump administration argued the other side.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1176181332390621186

In many of these cases, the courts have served their intended purpose: Protecting the vulnerable from abuses directed at them by the president, upholding the rule of law, and stopping arbitrary and cruel treatment of hundreds of thousands of people. We are proud to have led the legal resistance, with full participation of many of our allies in the immigrants’ rights, reproductive rights, and civil rights communities.

OUTSIDE THE COURTS

But we have not limited our response to the courts. We are committed to defending liberty through all available means, and in a democracy, the political process must also be an essential part of that defense. In the wake of President Trump’s election, our membership soared from 400,000 to 1.8 million, and many of our supporters said they wanted not only to join and donate, but also to take action. The ACLU launched People Power, a nationwide mobilization platform that empowers ACLU volunteers to fight for liberty at the local level. Over half a million people have since taken action with us as People Power volunteers — visiting a legislator or town council, participating in a demonstration, or gathering signatures and getting out the vote for ballot initiatives furthering civil liberties, among others. They have encouraged local sheriffs and police chiefs to adopt immigrant-friendly law enforcement policies; advocated for the expansion of voting rights; gathered over 150,000 signatures for Amendment 4 in Florida, which paved the way to re-enfranchise over 1.4 million previously incarcerated people; and showed up at demonstrations at the border and in many cities to protest anti-immigrant policies. Today, People Power volunteers are pressing presidential candidates of all parties to endorse critical civil liberties initiatives, including reducing mass incarceration. Judge Learned Hand, one of the great federal judges of all time, once said that “liberty lies in the hearts of men and women.” We are deploying People Power to nurture that spirit and spread it through direct action. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1011734566514634755

We also engaged in the 2018 midterms in ways that were not possible before. We spent more than $5 million and devoted thousands of hours of volunteer and staff time to the fight in Florida for Amendment 4. We supported similar voter access reform measures in Nevada and Michigan, both of which passed. We supported a successful referendum to end non-unanimous jury verdicts in Louisiana, a Reconstruction era practice that was designed to nullify the votes of Black jurors. And we helped to defeat a transphobic ballot measure in Massachusetts. In key elections, we also did substantial voter education and outreach to ensure that citizens were aware of the civil rights and civil liberties stakes, reminding voters to “Vote like your rights depend on it.”  President Trump’s election posed immediate and wide-ranging threats to civil liberties. The threats have grown, not diminished, over time. But we have been there every step of the way, fighting to defend the civil rights and civil liberties of all. Most of these legal fights are ongoing, and we will almost certainly have to mount new legal challenges to other unlawful, unconstitutional, or un-American policies. For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has steadfastly fought battles large and small, to secure freedoms and advance equality, no matter who occupies the Oval Office. Great challenges may lie ahead, but rest assured that, with your help, we stand ready to fight for a more perfect union.

Published November 8, 2019 at 03:25AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2WQrMSI

[nancydhooper]

We Said We Would See Him in Court and We Did

Several months into the Trump administration, my wife was doing The New York Times crossword puzzle and came across this clue: “Group that told President Trump, ‘We’ll see you in court.’” I’m not generally much use when it comes to the crossword, but on that one I could help. She didn’t really need the assistance of course, as the ACLU is my employer, and she, The New York Times crossword puzzle drafters, and much of the country already knew that it was the ACLU who told the president we’d see him in court.   

In fact, we told him that before he took office. Just days after he improbably won the presidential election, we took out ads in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times telling the president-elect that if he sought to implement some of the programs he had promised on the campaign trail — denying legal access to abortion, implementing restrictive immigration practices, undermining voting rights and more — we would sue. We kept our promise.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1144797689030348801

As we mark three years since we put President-elect Trump on notice, we’ve filed over 100 lawsuits, and over 140 other legal actions — Freedom of Information Act requests, administrative complaints, and other legal mechanisms to halt illegal policies — against the president, his administration, or those inspired by his victory to cut back on civil rights and civil liberties. We’ve won many of them, and in the process, protected the rights of millions of people to be treated with dignity and respect for their basic constitutional rights.

IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS

In his first week in the Oval Office, President Trump issued an executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. The ACLU quickly responded by filing and winning the first legal challenge to the Muslim ban that very weekend. A federal court held an emergency hearing on a Saturday night, and enjoined its implementation the day after he put the policy in place. When the first ban was declared unconstitutional by the courts, Trump was forced to issue a revised ban. When we and others successfully challenged that revised ban, he issued still a third version. That, too, was struck down by the lower courts, although the Supreme Court upheld it on a 5-4 vote along party lines. But that third ban, while still a Muslim ban, was narrower than the first two, and we continue to challenge its implementation in the courts. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/825532347839836161

The lion’s share of our Trump-related work has focused on defending immigrants, because that is where the president has directed his most virulent, egregious and systematic attacks.

Trump has particularly targeted those seeking asylum, and we’ve countered him at every point. His goal is to deter asylum applicants — regardless of the validity of their claims to facing persecution at home. In what is surely the cruelest of his many anti-asylum initiatives, he separated children from their parents, in hopes that this would discourage other families from seeking refuge and safety here. We sued, obtained a ruling barring the practice, and continue to press the administration to reunite the thousands of families it so heartlessly separated. The ACLU has helped reunite more than two thousand families, but we keep discovering more who were separated, and we won’t rest until we’ve reunited them all.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1000403709237583872

Trump has also locked up asylum applicants without hearings in which they could show that they pose no flight risk or danger, and therefore should be freed. In our view, the government cannot constitutionally detain people absent a demonstrated reason for doing so, and where an asylum seeker poses neither a flight risk nor a danger, she cannot constitutionally be deprived of her liberty. Here, too, the courts have blocked the administration’s practice thanks to litigation by us and our allies, requiring it to hold hearings and release those who pose no threat.

The Trump administration also sought to change the legal standard in order to make it more difficult to get asylum based on fears of gang violence or domestic abuse in one’s home country. Again, we sued. And again, a federal court blocked the administration from implementing that policy.  

Trump issued an executive order denying asylum to anyone who entered the country other than at an official port of entry — even though the asylum statute provides that asylum is available to all who face persecution at home, regardless of how or where they entered the U.S. The courts blocked that policy, too. He then sought to deny asylum to anyone who has traveled through another country to reach the U.S. and has not applied for and been denied asylum there. Again, the courts declared the policy illegal. The Supreme Court has temporarily stayed that injunction pending the government’s appeal, but our legal challenge continues.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1146471278532071424

Trump also sought to deny legal protections to immigrants from countries that either would not take their citizens back, or where conditions were so bad that we had long afforded their nationals temporary protected status, which allowed them to live and work among us. When Trump sought to revoke their status en masse, the ACLU and our allies sued, and obtained injunctions barring the wholesale denial of legal status to over 400,000 people.   

Most recently, Trump sought to expand so-called “expedited removal,” a summary deportation process that short-circuits many of the essential procedural protections generally afforded to immigrants in deportation proceedings. These procedures have long been limited to persons apprehended within 100 miles of the border and within two weeks of illegal entry. Trump wants to expand exponentially the number of people who could be swiftly deported under this process, to include anyone who had entered illegally within the past two years, apprehended anywhere in the nation. Once again, we sued, and a federal judge blocked the initiative as illegal. 

Trump has attempted, virtually since the day he took office, to build a wall at the southern border. He repeatedly asked Congress for funding to build the wall, and repeatedly they refused. He went ahead and ordered the wall built anyway, declaring a fake national emergency and diverting funds appropriated for other purposes. We sued to stop the diversion of funds, and the lower courts ruled the spending illegal. The Supreme Court granted a temporary stay, but the challenge continues with an argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on November 12. 

We are not the only ones to see Trump in court. Other groups have successfully challenged his revocation of protection for the approximately 800,000 so-called Dreamers, young undocumented people brought here by their parents, to whom the Obama administration gave deferred action status, allowing them to live, work, and go to school here. And the courts have also blocked Trump’s efforts to expand the definition of persons deportable as “public charges” to encompass immigrants who even briefly fall on hard times and need virtually any sort of government assistance.

In short, judicial review has been critical to protecting the basic human rights of tens of thousands of immigrants throughout this country.  That that’s only the beginning.   

REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM

As a candidate, Trump promised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision protecting abortion access, and in response, seven states have enacted laws banning abortion. We’ve challenged five of the state bans and obtained injunctions against each of them; our ally, the Center for Reproductive Rights, has blocked the other two. The states are appealing, but we will continue to defend this fundamental right. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1189194439765438464

We also successfully blocked the Trump administration’s own ban on abortion. This prohibition was applied selectively to some of the most vulnerable women in this country: undocumented teens held in U.S. custody. When one such teen, detained in Texas, learned that she was pregnant and sought to exercise her constitutional right to an abortion, the Trump administration refused to let her out of its facility to go to the clinic for the procedure. We sued in federal court, and won. We now have a nationwide injunction against the practice. 

And most recently, a federal judge blocked President Trump’s so-called “conscience rule,” which would have allowed  doctors, nurses, and other health care providers nationwide to place their own views over the needs of their patience and refuse to provide health care to which they object on moral or religious grounds.  The court held that the rule was arbitrary and rested on demonstrably false assertions by the administration.

VOTING RIGHTS

The president tried to rig the census, by adding a question about citizenship that would have deterred tens of thousands of immigrants from filling out the census form. The Census Bureau itself objected to the plan, because they knew it would lead to undercounting of people in areas where immigrants live, often urban areas that the administration sees as likely to vote Democratic. The Constitution requires the census to count all people, not just citizens. The undercounting would have translated into fewer representatives in Congress for districts with large immigrant populations, and less federal support for all the people who live there, citizen and noncitizen alike. The initiative’s pre-textual rationale was initially drafted by a Republican gerrymandering specialist who advised in a confidential memo that it would advantage “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” We sued and won. In June 2019, the Supreme Court affirmed our victory, finding that the administration’s justification for adding the question was pre-textual — or in plain English, a lie. Trump bristled at the defeat, and only after his entire legal team resigned over his direction to find a way to reinstitute the question did he admit defeat and abandon the effort. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1144257601364008960

ENEMY COMBATANTS

Trump vowed to expand the detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, although he has not yet dared do so. His administration did lock up a U.S. citizen as an “enemy combatant” in secret in Iraq, without access to a lawyer, without a hearing, and without any criminal charges. The ACLU sued and won. We first obtained an order requiring the administration to give him access to our attorneys. Then, we challenged the legal basis for detaining a U.S. citizen indefinitely without charges, and the government gave in and released him. The Trump administration has not held a U.S. citizen as an “enemy combatant” since. 

LGBTQ RIGHTS

Trump has also declared war on the LGBTQ community.  Here, too, we’ve challenged him every step of the way. He barred transgender people from serving in the military, despite the military’s finding that there was no basis for excluding them. We obtained an injunction against the ban, and forced Trump to water it down, allowing currently enlisted transgender soldiers to remain. But the revised ban still bars entry to new transgender enlistees. That, too, was blocked, but the lower court’s injunction was temporarily stayed by the Supreme Court pending the government’s appeals, which continue.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1116794914795216899

The Trump administration also reversed the federal government’s position on whether LGBTQ individuals are protected by federal civil rights law from being fired or otherwise discriminated against because of who they are. We won victories in the federal appeals courts, which ruled that firing someone for being gay or transgender is a form of sex discrimination forbidden by federal law. In October, we argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of a gay man and a transgender woman who had been fired because of who they are. The Trump administration argued the other side.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1176181332390621186

In many of these cases, the courts have served their intended purpose: Protecting the vulnerable from abuses directed at them by the president, upholding the rule of law, and stopping arbitrary and cruel treatment of hundreds of thousands of people. We are proud to have led the legal resistance, with full participation of many of our allies in the immigrants’ rights, reproductive rights, and civil rights communities.

OUTSIDE THE COURTS

But we have not limited our response to the courts. We are committed to defending liberty through all available means, and in a democracy, the political process must also be an essential part of that defense. In the wake of President Trump’s election, our membership soared from 400,000 to 1.8 million, and many of our supporters said they wanted not only to join and donate, but also to take action. The ACLU launched People Power, a nationwide mobilization platform that empowers ACLU volunteers to fight for liberty at the local level. Over half a million people have since taken action with us as People Power volunteers — visiting a legislator or town council, participating in a demonstration, or gathering signatures and getting out the vote for ballot initiatives furthering civil liberties, among others. They have encouraged local sheriffs and police chiefs to adopt immigrant-friendly law enforcement policies; advocated for the expansion of voting rights; gathered over 150,000 signatures for Amendment 4 in Florida, which paved the way to re-enfranchise over 1.4 million previously incarcerated people; and showed up at demonstrations at the border and in many cities to protest anti-immigrant policies. Today, People Power volunteers are pressing presidential candidates of all parties to endorse critical civil liberties initiatives, including reducing mass incarceration. Judge Learned Hand, one of the great federal judges of all time, once said that “liberty lies in the hearts of men and women.” We are deploying People Power to nurture that spirit and spread it through direct action. 

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1011734566514634755

We also engaged in the 2018 midterms in ways that were not possible before. We spent more than $5 million and devoted thousands of hours of volunteer and staff time to the fight in Florida for Amendment 4. We supported similar voter access reform measures in Nevada and Michigan, both of which passed. We supported a successful referendum to end non-unanimous jury verdicts in Louisiana, a Reconstruction era practice that was designed to nullify the votes of Black jurors. And we helped to defeat a transphobic ballot measure in Massachusetts. In key elections, we also did substantial voter education and outreach to ensure that citizens were aware of the civil rights and civil liberties stakes, reminding voters to “Vote like your rights depend on it.”  President Trump’s election posed immediate and wide-ranging threats to civil liberties. The threats have grown, not diminished, over time. But we have been there every step of the way, fighting to defend the civil rights and civil liberties of all. Most of these legal fights are ongoing, and we will almost certainly have to mount new legal challenges to other unlawful, unconstitutional, or un-American policies. For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has steadfastly fought battles large and small, to secure freedoms and advance equality, no matter who occupies the Oval Office. Great challenges may lie ahead, but rest assured that, with your help, we stand ready to fight for a more perfect union.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/we-said-we-would-see-him-in-court-and-we-did via http://www.rssmix.com/

[democratsunited-blog]

Trump missteps fuel new energy in Democrats' campaigns

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=6448

Trump missteps fuel new energy in Democrats' campaigns

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As Democratic congressional candidate Abigail Spanberger mingled with supporters at a Richmond brewery, one person hung like a shadow over the gleaming brew tanks and grilled food truck pizza.

As they watched their kids play with Legos in the corner of the bar Wednesday night, Kristen Martin and William Caulder grumbled about President Donald Trump’s latest scandal, a controversial news conference with Russia’s president. Liberal activists made their way through the crowd, recruiting people to attend a Russia-themed protest later that night outside the office of Republican Rep. Dave Brat, the district’s current congressman. When Spanberger stood at the front of the room to answer questions, Melissa Dart, a Democratic voter, sought a response to the “uniquely sobering” events in Helsinki.

“This week has been a really difficult-to-watch week,” Spanberger replied, saying Americans must accept that Russia interfered in the U.S. elections. “From an intelligence perspective and from a national security perspective, the concern that I have is: What are they going to interfere with next?”

Another difficult week for Trump is a good week for Spanberger, one of dozens of Democrats running strong in Republican territory thanks, in part, to the president. While Republicans grappled with how to respond to Trump’s performance in Helsinki, Democrats’ path was clear. Across the country, Trump’s ability to constant court controversy is providing weekly shots of adrenaline to already-energized Democratic voters.

This week’s developments were tailor-made for Spanberger, a 38-year-old former CIA operative equally comfortable discussing undercover anti-terrorism operations and the work of Parent Teacher Associations.

Still, even with Spanberger on the ticket, Democrats shouldn’t have a serious chance in this district, which stretches from the suburbs west of Richmond to rural towns at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Trump won the area by eight points in 2016 and Brat, famous for ousting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor four years ago, had a 15-point re-election victory.

But Democrats have a not-so-secret weapon: Trump. From suburban Virginia to southern California, the president has sparked a Democratic renaissance, prompting candidates, activists and voters to pour their outrage, money and time into local races across the country. After years of bashing the GOP establishment, Republican lawmakers and operatives say Brat is now begging for financial support from the national party. Brat declined multiple interview requests.

Strategists from both parties agree that opposition to Trump alone isn’t enough to win a congressional race. And Democrats and Republicans doubt the election will be decided by any singular action taken by Trump. While polling shows most Americans disagreed with Trump’s handling of his summit with Putin, opinions largely divided along party lines.

“The Russia stuff is going to be a footnote at the end of this,” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman who once headed the GOP’s campaign committee. “There’s so much happening and this is the crisis du jour.”

Democrats see it slightly differently: Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who’s hosting a fundraiser for Virginia Democratic House candidates at his home this weekend, said the steady stream of controversy reminds Democrats why they need to show up at the polls.

“Every day is one more notch in the belt of people who think Trump is plain insane,” he said. “This is going to be a big turnout year because of Trump.”

Gretchen Metzroth, a soft-spoken 62-year-old, never considered herself particularly political. That changed in November 2016. Since then, she’s joined a protest choir, and regularly writes letters, emails and calls Congress. “I can’t even watch the news when the president is on because it just gets me so angry,” she said, standing with protesters on a patch a grass in front of Brat’s congressional office. “But it also makes me want to do something.”

Trump’s win has helped Democrats recruit scores of first-time candidates, even in places the party typically loses. Some of those newly minted politicians are veterans and intelligence experts, which could help the party speak to national security issues that have often played to Republicans.

Like many of the new Democratic candidates, Spanberger was at least partially motivated to run by Trump’s foreign policy, specifically his early push to pursue a ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries. This week, Spanberger assailed Trump for his meeting with Putin. But typically, she says, she doesn’t spend much time talking about foreign policy or the president. “What the president has done is he has created a level of uneasiness for many people,” she says. “But I want people to vote for me. It’s not enough to have people vote against Donald Trump.”

The party has flocked to her candidacy. She raised $1.35 million to Brat’s $1.34 million, though she spent the bulk of that to win the competitive primary leaving her with less in the bank than Brat. She’s backed by top national and state officials and Democratic groups like EMILY’s List. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Richmond native who has a comfortable lead in his re-election race, and McAuliffe are eagerly helping Spanberger with joint campaign appearances, campaign dollars and organization support.

Spanberger has also courted the new activism flowing into the party. She’s refused to take corporate PAC money and said she won’t back House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arguing the party needs new energy.

Supporters in places like Goochland County are thrilled to see the Spanberger signs suddenly cropping up on their neighbors’ lawns.

“I’m a Republican in recovery,” said Linda Caldwell, a retiree proudly wearing a “Brat is the Wurst” pin. “She is talking about solving problems. David Brat just talks about things that make people angry.”

Despite such enthusiasm, Spanberger faces an uphill climb. Many Republican voters in the area like the president’s agenda, even if they don’t always agree with how he expresses it.

“It’s his personality that has just thrown everybody because you expect your president to be calm and agreeable, but he’s anything but,” said Judy Tunstile, as she finished up her shopping at the Costco in Chesterfield, Virginia. “But he’s getting things done.”

Brat faces some unique challenges. He’s failed to win back more establishment Republicans who supported Cantor. Some Republicans say he has little real organization and struggles to keep staff. His office has one of the highest turnover rates in the House, according to LegiStorm, a non-partisan website that tracks Capitol Hill’s workforce. And some believe controversial Republican senate candidate Corey Stewart will depress turn-out statewide.

Unlike some Republican incumbents, who’ve stressed their independence from the president, Brat has remained one of Trump’s strongest supporters. He said on social media that the U.S. government should oppose foreign interference in elections, blaming former President Barack Obama for having “emboldened” Putin.

That kind of support is exactly what infuriates Democrats.

“It’s simple,” said Toni Bolt, a retiree from Chesterfield. “Brat’s for Trump, so I’m not for him.”

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