(2/3)  “After I was granted asylum, I moved in with some cousins…

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(2/3)  “After I was granted asylum, I moved in with some cousins in the Bronx.  My first job was washing dishes in the kitchen of an adult home.  I was paid $297 every two weeks.  But I noticed that the private nursing assistants were paid a lot more, so I enrolled in some classes and received my certification.  My first assignment was a quadriplegic named Hector.  I ended up staying with him for six years.  I fed him, changed his diapers, helped him go to the bathroom, everything.  I really loved him.  We went all over the place.  We drove to Chicago and California.  My shift was the overnight, so sometimes I’d drive him to the club and he’d go dancing in his wheelchair.  I’d stand right next to him the entire time.  During the day I took classes at Lehman College.  I majored in health services.  After my graduation, the whispers began once more.  Family members were urging me to come home and take my rightful position on the throne.  So I said ‘goodbye’ to Hector and moved back to Ghana.  I got a job in business until the last king passed away in 2011.  And this time when the elders called on me, I was ready.”
(Akwamufie, Ghana)

(3/3) “It’s not easy being king.  I have to follow many of the…

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(3/3) “It’s not easy being king.  I have to follow many of the old rituals.  I cannot be seen in public without an escort.  I must always eat alone.  And the power isn’t what it used to be.  We’re living in a different time.  We aren’t battling for territory anymore.  We aren’t petitioning the colonies.  The palace still rules on minor disputes, but mainly my power is indirect.  I advocate for my people when the national government is setting its agenda.  I enjoy the role.  I want to improve the lives of all my subjects.  I want them to have clean water.  I want them to have quality education.  But my main focus is development.  I want our kingdom to become a tourist hub.  The income would transform so many lives, and we have so much to offer.  We have a beautiful river.  We have a great history.  And we have some of the oldest artifacts in Ghana.  In 1680 the Dutch built a castle on our shores, and my people captured it.  It was the first time in history that a black man owned a castle.  We held it for several years.  Eventually we gave it back, on one condition: they had to let us keep the keys.”
(Akwamufie, Ghana)

This is truly dramatic, if true. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly recorded on his Apple watch and transmitted outside. https://twitter.com/therynheart/status/1050596257402503170 …

via aleksey godin – had not thought of that – must have set watch to send/share info with wife?

This is truly dramatic, if true. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly recorded on his Apple watch and transmitted outside. https://twitter.com/therynheart/status/1050596257402503170 …

Bill Browder on Twitter: “This is truly dramatic, if true. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly recorded on his Apple watch and transmitted outside.… https://t.co/O0GEy562Gt”

“This is truly dramatic, if true. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly recorded on his Apple watch and transmitted outside. https://t.co/tr9Ot61GIF”

John Roberts is at Least as Big a Threat to Democracy as Donald Trump

Trying to disenfranchise more than 50% of Native Americans living on reservations.

North Dakota Republicans want to disenfranchise enough voters to take a Senate seat, and who’s going to stop them — the Supreme Court of the United States?

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court order requiring voters in North Dakota to present certain forms of identification and proof of their residential address in order to cast a ballot in next month’s elections. A case challenging this requirement on behalf of the state’s sizable Native American populations alleged that the requirement would disenfranchise tribal residents, many of whom lack the proper identification and do not have residential addresses on their identification cards.

The Supreme Court’s order will likely make it harder for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, considered the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, to retain her seat in November. Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012 with strong backing from Native Americans, and she is the only statewide elected Democrat. North Dakota Republicans began changing voting rules to make it harder to cast a ballot months after Heitkamp’s victory six years ago. Republicans have claimed the changes to voter ID requirements are intended to stop voter fraud, even though in-person fraud is exceedingly rare.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in on Monday, did not partake in the decision, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.

North Dakota’s 2017 voter law ID was challenged by Native residents who alleged that the law disproportionately blocked Native Americans from voting. In April, a federal district court judge blocked large portions of the law as discriminatory against Native voters. “The State has acknowledged that Native American communities often lack residential street addresses,” Judge Daniel Hovland wrote. “Nevertheless, under current State law an individual who does not have a ‘current residential street address’ will never be qualified to vote.” According to the website of the Native American Rights Fund, which represents the plaintiffs, many native residents lack residential street addresses because “the U.S. postal service does not provide residential delivery in these rural Indian communities.”As a result, tribal IDs use P.O. boxes, which are not sufficient under North Dakota’s new law—a specification that seems designed to disenfranchise native voters. Hovland’s ruling was in place during the primaries this spring.

To clarify for people who aren’t Supreme Court nerds, the fact that Breyer and Sotomayor didn’t join the dissent doesn’t mean they didn’t vote for the stay, which requires five votes.

Ginsburg:

The Roberts Court is essentially what would happen if you took Ely’s “representation-reinforcement” theory and did the opposite. And on voting rights, Kavanaugh doesn’s shift the Court to the right — Kennedy, as on so many other issues, was every bit as terrible as Roberts.

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Judge orders Palestinian-American student to remain in Israeli custody | +972 Magazine This is kidnapping, illegal arrest, abducting US citizen without cause!

A Tel Aviv District Court ordered Lara Alqasem, the 22-year-old Palestinian American who was denied entry into Israel due to her political views and has been held by Israeli authorities for the past nine days, to remain in detention on Thursday.

Source: Judge orders Palestinian-American student to remain in Israeli custody | +972 Magazine

Fear of Russian hacking of election is real in Georgia, USA | Americas| North and South American news impacting on Europe | DW | 12.10.2018

Two years after Russian election meddling, many US states are ill-prepared to prevent a repeat in the midterms. Georgia, with its electronic-voting-only system, is one of the most vulnerable targets.

Source: Fear of Russian hacking of election is real in Georgia, USA | Americas| North and South American news impacting on Europe | DW | 12.10.2018