All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

The Case for Investigating Facebook

Why I am calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook for violating antitrust laws.

‘I was raised an American’: Liberians await possible deportation from US

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Trump administration told DED holders last March to leave voluntarily or face deportation, but a year on, little has changed

Like many of the thousands of Liberians in the US who face possible deportation at the end of this month, Nyensuahtee Fofana, 23, is anxiously awaiting any sign the Trump administration might reverse course.

Related: She fled Liberia’s civil war 24 years ago. Now Trump wants her to go back

Continue reading…

Tuesday Open Thread | Trump Encourages Violence

Donald Trump this week issued a thinly veiled threat of violence against his opponents, saying that members of the police, military and biker gangs could “play it tough” if they “reach a certain point.”

It was a disturbing remark, but even more disturbing is the fact that it’s part of a long history of Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in violence. Largely unchecked by his party’s leadership, Trump’s rhetoric has become normalized despite its real-world ramifications.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump,” Trump told Breitbart in the interview, which he later tweeted. “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump,” Trump told Breitbart in the interview, which he later tweeted. “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

“I think it sounds very much to me like he’s encouraging them to engage in something that’s probably illegal such as assaulting people, you know behave in a dangerous way,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told MSNBC. “That sounds like a threat to me. I think it’s appalling.”

What Our Response to New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern Reveals about our Political Leanings

By Nisha Susan

Jacinda Ardern. Photo credit: Wikimedia

What does a leader look like? To many people round the world, the picture of a leader remains male. In a recent CNN News 18 short docu about women’s political representation, Bangalore’s only woman MLA Sowmya Reddy tells this story — “I was at an event and someone was introducing me and said here is the MLA. Everyone was like where?” It was only when someone said ‘Lady MLA’ that eyes focused on her. It is this kind of ingrained thinking that allows political parties around the world to justify not even nominating women candidates. It is also this ‘male as neutral’ thinking what probably led to the former Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes (now accused of enormous scams) reportedly even faking a deep baritone to go with the Steve Jobs costume she wore every day. What is the meaning of a Jacinda Ardern then? What is the meaning of her leadership after the massacre in Christchurch?

It is hard to get away from the fact that Ardern is a woman. She is New Zealand’s third woman prime minister. Ardern’s ‘womanness’ has been underlined in our visual-loving and odd-news loving world by her youth (she is only 38) and by her giving birth to a child while in office. But now what has brought Ardern to the attention of the world this week is her generous and compassionate response to the killing of 50 Muslims in a mosque by a white supremacist terrorist. Her speech underlined the grief and fear that the shooting inspired. It left no wriggle room for the kind of thinking that justifies rage against immigrants and/or Muslims as natural or ‘just’ backlash, the kind of thinking that has got prominence through Brexit, through Donald Trump and our own right-wing government in India. The killings were wrong. The man who did it was wrong. He shouldn’t be deified and there would be laws put in place to ensure it never happened again. This is what her response has been. And then she put on a headscarf when visiting the mourning families, prompting even more goggling and googling.

Plenty of observers are now arguing that it is her gender that prompted her humane response and who am I to say it is not? We can try to understand whether it is Jacinda Ardern’s gender that has prompted her to a response (first in words and then in action) that did not make a tragedy worse. Or was it the progressive political movements that she has been part of her entire life? Certainly we should look around and see whether the political parties around us have nominated any women at all these upcoming elections in India and ask ourselves what that means. When we vote for women we cannot possibly do any worse than voting for the men who have been offered to us for 70 years.

What does interest me is how swiftly we have arrived at a place in the last decade where the simple response of a politician to an incident that should be unequivocally a Bad Thing (killing random people = Bad) invites so much scrutiny. We have arrived at this ridiculous place because of our search of Authenticity. A political cartoon I saw a few years ago summed it up the best. A flock of sheep are standing in front of a political hoarding featuring a wolf. The wolf’s slogan is “I am going to eat you.” The sheep say to each other, “at least he is honest.”

Around the world, we see people saying they will vote for the politician ‘who says it like it is,’ and ‘who doesn’t pretend.’ Almost always these are politicians who have taken on the job of voicing meanness and articulating our most ill-formed prejudices. This honesty doesn’t extend to not taking bribes. It doesn’t extend to challenging the rich and mighty. It doesn’t even extend to fiscal responsibility. No, what it does is give you a politician much like our relatives who justify their worst behaviour with what they see as their finest trait – their lack of hypocrisy. It gives you a politician who will undertake the job of quickly dismantling the protection of minorities that a country has usually built painfully and usually over many, many decades. Let us blow this popsicle stand, they announce and vast voting populations applaud because what else could it be but a joke, this idea that minorities, women, people with disabilities and queer people deserve protection from the mean impulses of the world.

As a deeply shallow person, I am very much in favour of hypocrisy, dishonesty and politicians who pretend to believe in the popsicle stand. Regardless of the state of their soul or their inner convictions, I would like them to not make fun of the dyslexic as our Prime Minister recently did. I would like them to not use casteist slurs. I would like politicians to say aloud that mass shootings of Muslims are terrible. I would like them to pretend they believe in democracy and not that they intend to cancel elections in 2024, as the most honourable Sakshi Maharaj has.

We should be as interested in the authentic and honest politician as we are in authentic chow mein.

 Co-published with Firstpost.com

 

The post What Our Response to New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern Reveals about our Political Leanings appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

Waiting For ISIS To Die

The barbarous group known as ISIS is cornered in a small village in Eastern Syria…..they are being pounded by the Kurds and the SDF and yet they hang on to life and fight back viciously….

As we sit and wait for ISIS to die there are a few thoughts that we need to consider…..

The U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched an operation March 1 backed by U.S. artillery and air support in an effort to defeat the remnant core fighters of the Islamic State in the last sliver of the militant group’s self-declared “caliphate,” the term it used to describe the territory in Syria and Iraq it conquered and governed under its austere interpretation of Sharia. With the destruction of the so-called caliphate imminent, many have begun to wonder if the jihadist group could ever recover. But this is the wrong question. Instead of asking whether the Islamic State core can recover as many — including Stratfor — did when the group was on the ropes in Iraq in 2010, the proper question is whether the Islamic State core will be permitted to recover again. The difference between these two questions is subtle, but vitally important

 
The West has fought this extremism but is it possible we may have gotten somethings wrong?
 
The ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis has become fashionably outdated but still shapes the way we understand the connection between Islam, terrorism and the Middle East.  In 2019, it is time to ‘forget the Middle East’ and change the way we perceive Islam.  Vera Mironova, in ‘The New Face of Terrorism’, claims that the way Westerners think about ‘Islamist terrorism has grown dangerously outdated’, and the terrorist attacks at Western targets have been increasingly coming from militants of the former Soviet Union, not the Middle East. Following on these insights, I argue that it is time not only to ‘forget the Middle East’ but also stop essentializing Islam in the Middle East.
 
 
They, ISIS, may be suffering staggering losses in Syria and could possibly be defeated (not destroyed) but they will raise their ugly head once again in Southeast Asia….
 

Across the islands of the southern Philippines, the black flag of the Islamic State is flying over what the group considers its East Asia province.

Men in the jungle, two oceans away from the arid birthplace of the Islamic State, are taking the terrorist brand name into new battles.

As worshipers gathered in January for Sunday Mass at a Catholic cathedral, two bombs ripped through the church compound, killing 23 people. The Islamic State claimed a pair of its suicide bombers had caused the carnage.

The lesson we should learn is one that is being overlooked with all the glad handing for victory…..we cannot defeat an idea and ISIS will rise again to continue their push for extremism…..

By sentencing human rights defender Oyub Titiev to 4 years in a penal colony on the most absurd of fabricated charges, Russia makes itself look ridiculous… …and also further emboldens Ramzan Kadyrov, the abusive governor of Chechnya. http://bit.ly/2ThJFGy pic.twitter.com/TlP9TEel6R

By sentencing human rights defender Oyub Titiev to 4 years in a penal colony on the most absurd of fabricated charges, Russia makes itself look ridiculous…

…and also further emboldens Ramzan Kadyrov, the abusive governor of Chechnya. http://bit.ly/2ThJFGy  pic.twitter.com/TlP9TEel6R

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Elon Musk never sought approval for a single Tesla tweet, U.S. SEC tells judge | Reuters – Thinks he is above the law and is delusional.

Chief Executive Elon Musk has never sought pre-approval for a single tweet about Tesla Inc since striking a court-approved deal about how to communicate important information about the electric vehicle maker, the top U.S. securities regulator told a judge on Monday.

Source: Elon Musk never sought approval for a single Tesla tweet, U.S. SEC tells judge | Reuters

Preparing for a Public Debate About Vaccines

There is no debate. Pigs can’t fly just because you want them to. People who believe pigs can fly, are grifters, people who “feel” everything is out of their control, and deluded, fearful people who think they have found a truth that others want to take away from them.

Need some advice about preparing for a public debate about vaccines?

That’s easy.

“If you are invited for a public discussion you must first decide whether or not to accept the invitation.”

How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public

Don’t do it.

Preparing for a Public Debate About Vaccines

Wait, why wouldn’t you want to have a debate about vaccines?

Remember, a good debate implies that there are two valid sides to the issue. Or at least that one side has some arguments that aren’t based on myths and misinformation.

What are you debating?

That vaccines are safe, with few risks, and that they are necessary.

What’s there to debate?

Don’t allow false balance to create a fake debate.

Think about it.

Should Robert F. Kennedy, Jr be given an opportunity to tell folks his opinions about the “perceived dangers” of vaccines, when those perceived dangers include that vaccines are associated with autism, have been untested on pregnant women, are sold by the CDC, and a lot of other conspiracy type stuff?

“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

Remember, Kennedy is the guy who published the retracted Deadly Immunity article. And he continues to focus on the dangers of mercury in vaccines, even though only a very small minority of flu shots still contain thimerosal and studies have shown that the thimerosal that kids have been exposed to in vaccines is not a danger.

He’s an environmental lawyer who continues to focus on vaccines in the age of climate change and as EPA regulations are being rolled back.

Neither Kennedy nor anyone else in the anti-vaccine movement should be given a stage to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

More on Preparing for a Public Debate About Vaccines