All posts by nedhamson

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

Rodrigo Duterte tells police not to cooperate in drug war investigation

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International criminal court opens case after complaint accusing Philippines president of crimes against humanity

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the Philippines’ police and soldiers not to cooperate in any investigation into his bloody war on drugs, amid international calls for an external probe.

Western countries and rights groups have expressed alarm over the killing by police of more than 4,000 Filipinos since Duterte took office in June 2016, plus hundreds more killings of drug users by unknown gunmen.

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‘Discharged to the streets’: a homeless man’s struggle in freezing London

May – does she care?

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Richard Curtis, 66, was released from hospital as a snowstorm loomed. His story is typical

You have to be fast to survive on the streets, they say. That’s one thing Richard Curtis is not. Panting and stopping every 10 metres to catch his breath, Curtis drags his suitcase through the brown slush in Covent Garden on Wednesday night on his way to a weekly street handout.

With an air temperature of -4C, for Curtis it was like trying to breathe soup. The 66-year-old suffers from lung disease – stage IV chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – which cold air and large changes in temperature can badly aggravate. For a rough sleeper on the coldest week of winter, it is a major handicap.

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Ex-Trump adviser sold $31m in shares days before president announced steel tariffs

#TraitorTrump pays off buddy with insider trader/traitor!

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Carl Icahn sold $31.3m of shares in a company dependent on steel imports days before the commerce department mooted stiff tariffs on imports

Carl Icahn, a former special adviser to Donald Trump, sold $31.3m of shares in a company heavily dependent on steel imports last week, shortly before Trump’s announcement of new tariffs sent its shares plummeting.

Icahn, a billionaire investor who was a major Trump supporter, started selling shares in the crane and lifting equipment supplier Manitowoc Company on 12 February, days before the commerce department first mooted plans to impose stiff tariffs on foreign steel imports.

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Take the Words “Judeo-Christian” Out of Your Damn Mouth

Recently on Twitter, human-shaped windsock Senator Marco Rubio was victimized by a gang of grieving teenagers from Parkland, FL, so he tweeted out some very wounded word salad, which included this sentence: “We claim a Judea-Christian [sic.] heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting.” In response, Rabbi and author Danya Ruttenberg tweeted, “This might be a good time to note that ‘Judeo-Christian’ is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.”

This is a very simple concept. No Jew has ever used the term “Judeo-Christian,” because like the Sinbad movie Shazaam, it does not actually exist. We, the Jews, would like you to please stop fucking using it.

This might be a good time to note that “Judeo-Christian” is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.

— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) February 28, 2018

I could stop this article there. That’s all I should have to say—and all Rabbi Ruttenberg should have had to say. It’s a small appeal to basic decency, like “please wash your hands” or “don’t fart in an elevator.” But because Twitter is to basic decency as hydrogen gas was to the Hindenburg, noted collared-shirt-wearer Ben Shapiro, decided that no, the Rabbi was wrong about Judaism. He tweeted that what she had said was “nonsense,” and proceeded to explain to her, and to his 1.22 million followers, that “Judaism and Christianity are deeply intertwined. American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.”

So now we have to unpack this fragrant bullshit. First of all, the word “intertwined.” An interesting choice! I think from now on I will think of Jesus as “intertwined” with the cross, and while he was up there, the crown of thorns as “intertwined” with his skull. I feel less bad for Leonardo DiCaprio, knowing he just wound up “intertwined” with that bear in The Revenant. I mean, I might have gone with something a little more descriptive, like “systematically brutalized for 2000 years,” but maybe Ben was running low on characters?

Judaism and Christianity are deeply intertwined. American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 28, 2018

I’m going to just pass over the mention of the “Old Testament,” because Ben, being Jewish, knows how irritating that term is to Jews (I mean, we’re still using that book, but we can’t help it, we’re early adopters). He just doesn’t care. I mean, I get it, you have to have a thick skin when you’re selling out your people to the religious right.

But I’m going to dig in to that last line, where Ben definitely thinks the goyim are making a nice compliment! “The roots,” they call us! And you know, Ben, I get it: I definitely like to think of us as the lowest, most primitive rung on the evolutionary ladder of religion. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read about Jewish cemeteries being desecrated, or Nazis out for a nighttime stroll shouting “Jews will not replace us!,” it definitely soothes me to think of how lovingly American Christians have tended to those roots throughout our history. I am sure that the nine hundred Jews on the USS St. Louis in 1939 were deeply reassured, even as their ship was forced to turned away from the lights of Miami and head back to Germany, to know that someday they would be remembered as fertile soil for the “tree of Christ.”

I guess it’s easy to think of us as the roots when they’ve buried so fucking many of us, Benjamin.

Now look. I understand that dunking on an amoral dipshit like Ben Shapiro is rather like trash-talking a small child you have vanquished in a go-kart race. But the fact that this simpering shanda has never had an original thought in his life means that the stuff that falls out of his mouth mirrors what many, many Americans believe. And the reason they believe this particular toxic thing is because it has been parroted by politicians of virtually every flavor and make.

Many, many people use the word “Judeo-Christian.” Most of these people are very nice! I’ve probably used it, too! English is a rich tapestry, full of terms we use unthinkingly, like “rule of thumb.” Most people who aren’t Jews probably think it’s fine, even benevolent. But that’s exactly what makes “Judeo-Christian” so insidious—it sounds benign because it purports to involve Jews in the conversation. As if they’re doing us a favor by remembering we exist. But the people who do it the most, like Mike Pence, view that existence as a necessary evil: 77% of US evangelicals like him believe that the Rapture will come in their lifetimes, and their explicit goal is to route all the Jews back to Israel so it can happen. This is well-documented.

And even when they aren’t zealots like Pence, there are only two reasons why people like Rubio and Shapiro insist on saying “America is a Judeo-Christian nation.” One, because they want to say “Christian” country, but they don’t want to piss off AIPAC donors, or two, because they really want to say “white,” or “not Muslim.” I guarantee you that they also do not mean to include Sephardic Jews, and they definitely don’t mean to include Black Jews. Everything about the term is predicated on bad faith. It needs to die.

Striking a term from a national vocabulary isn’t easy, especially when that term carries a false veneer of respect. But it’s worth trying. Whether you mean it or not, to say “Judeo-Christian” is to conscript Jews into a vision of a Godly, purified America, and that has never, ever, ever worked out well for us. It’s co-opting, it’s colonizing, and it’s condescending. It has comprehensively infected our national political discourse, but so did syphilis, once upon a time, and we figured out how to cure that.

Saying “Judeo-Christian” is like saying “post-racial.” It allows Christians to think that everything’s fine with the Jews now, that we’re cool. That we’ve forgotten.

We have absolutely not forgotten. We are not cool.

Stop fucking saying it.

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Feature image by Christian A. Schröder, via Wikimedia Commons.

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All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018

All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018:

tzikeh:

A quick and easy guide to finding their opponents, and then donating your time and/or money to anyone willing to stand up against these assholes. 

And let’s reinforce the lesson everyone should have taken away from the 2016 election:

THE PERFECT IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE GOOD.

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF THE PERSON RUNNING AGAINST THE WHITE SUPREMACIST DOESN’T THINK COLLEGE SHOULD BE FREE

OR THAT WE SHOULD HAVE UBI

OR ISN’T A FUCKING VEGAN 

OR WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER IS UP YOUR ASS TODAY

YOU VOTE AGAINST THE WHITE SUPREMACIST.  

PERIOD.

AND IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH NOT TO HAVE A WHTIE SUPREMACIST RUNNING IN YOUR DISTRICT, FIND ONE SOMEWHERE ELSE AND GIVE YOU TIME AND MONEY TO THEIR OPPONENT.

THIS ISN’T FUCKING ROCKET SCIENCE.

Trigger warnings for basically every-fucking-thing.

After 136 Years, L.A. Times Journalists Win Their Union


March 01, 2018 / Kristina Bui and Nastaran Mohit
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Journalists at the L.A. Times on January 19 received the news we had long awaited—with a landslide of 85 percent, the staff voted to unionize and join the NewsGuild, an affiliate of the Communications Workers.

DACA Recipients and Xavier President Urge Congress to Pass a Clean Dream Act

Father Michael Graham, Xavier University President, comments on need for clean Dream Act

On Thursday, March 1 at 11:00 a.m., 30 community members gathered alongside DACA recipients and the president of Xavier University to call on our local members of Congress to support a clean Dream Act. Following the failure of a bipartisan Senate proposal two weeks ago, and with the coming expiration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on March 5th, Congress must get back to work immediately to protect hundreds of thousands of Dreamers from losing protection from deportation and work permits.

José Cabrera, a DACA recipient and senior at Xavier University said, “We want a clean Dream Act, we do not want a DACA fix. We want a clean Dream Act that will give us a pathway to citizenship. A clean Dream Act that will not put any of our family members in danger.” Heyra Avila, another DACA recipient, echoed Cabrera’s sentiment by saying, “I don’t want my DACA if it means that my parents will face risk of deportation.”

Samantha Searls, Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, explained, “DACA recipients are in school and they have deadlines for their projects so we need to set a good example for our students and make sure that Congress meets the deadline that has been set for them.”

Fr. Michael Graham, SJ, president of Xavier University spoke in support of a clean Dream Act saying, “Beyond this being a common sense nonpartisan cause, it’s a moral issue and a profoundly moral issue. Our stand here at Xavier is grounded not just in our own sense of what is right and wrong, as a Catholic Jesuit university, but also in church teaching.”

On Tuesday, three Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati traveled to Washington, DC to be part of a Catholic Day of Action for Dreamers. Sr. Andrea Koverman framed their decision to participate: “You might think that women who take a vow of obedience would not intentionally break the law, but there is a higher calling than the law of man. We have been taught from Jesus himself that when the laws of man do not align with the laws of God, that we have a moral obligation not to comply. We made the choice to engage in civil disobedience and were arrested in the rotunda with about 40 others.”

When asked why he decided to stand up and speak about DACA, Fr. Graham said “We are a university. As a university we welcome students who come to us from all kinds of different circumstances in their past. We know them up close and personal as talented people who have great futures ahead of them, and enormous amounts to offer the world.”

The post DACA Recipients and Xavier President Urge Congress to Pass a Clean Dream Act appeared first on IJPC | Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center | Cincinnati Ohio.

In a Case of Awful Timing, Trump Administration Seeks Shutdown of New School Safety Research

by Ted Gest

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut at the end of 2012, Congress scrambled to do something in response to the nation’s worst school shooting.

Lacking agreement on gun control measures, lawmakers did what they do best in such situations: spend money on studying the problem.

Thus was born the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI), which aimed at throwing a large pot of federal funds to researchers to examine just about every aspect of what might lead people to commit violence against students of all ages.

The $75 million annually awarded to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) was an especially large sum for a single crime problem, more than the agency normally spends on researching every other crime issue combined. (The appropriation dropped to about $50 million this year.)

In a case of bad timing, the Trump administration on Feb. 12 asked Congress to bring the program to a halt.

The Office of Management and Budget had no way of knowing that only two days later, a teenage gunman would enter a Florida high school from which he had been expelled and kill 17 students and staff members, an event that like the Newtown, CT, shooting more than five years earlier would start a new scramble in Congress and elsewhere to find ways of preventing a repeat episode.

The question now is whether Congress will pay attention to one of the latest Trump budget-cutting moves, which was buried at the bottom of page 719 of the lengthy spending plan sent to Capitol Hill.

The answer may not be as simple as it may seem at first glance.

That is because some insiders believe it was questionable for Congress to throw so much money at one crime and safety question and expect quick results.

What has happened is that hardly any of the research commissioned as a result of Congress’ 2013 spending action has been completed. That is not surprising, given that major research projects in criminal justice and many other fields of study take several years to complete.

That fact led officials of the Trump-led Justice Department to seek a pause in the school safety research.

Asked to comment on the budget request, which was not highlighted when the DOJ budget was released, the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which includes NIJ, noted that school safety research had received a total of $275 million in the last three fiscal years but that “this program was not intended to be a permanent funding stream.”

The agency added that, “The results of currently funded projects will continue to provide evidence about what works (and what does not) in keeping our schools safe and to inform future resource decisions. Almost all CSSI-funded projects are still active and final reports have not yet been published.”

Nearly a year ago, in its first budget message to Congress, the Trump White House sought to cut back but not eliminate the school safety research program. Lawmakers rejected the request and kept it going with about $50 million.

As The Crime Report reported last spring, at the time NIJ described the results of a few studies that had been completed. In one, the Rand Corp. made several recommendations, such as that “technology developers should turn their focus to the general area of communications, including devising low-cost ways to allow teachers to have direct, layered, two-way communication with a central command and control system.”

NIJ lists the ongoing school safety research on its website, at least some of which could provide information relating to the kind of shooting that hit Parkland, Fl., this month.

For example, a grant was given to John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City to do several things, such as providing “a comprehensive understanding of the perpetrators of school shootings and test causal factors to assess if mass and non-mass shootings are comparable.”

Researcher Joshua Freilich said his work is not yet finished. He notes that because school crime encompasses disparate activities such as non-school related incidents such as a drug deal gone bad, workplace violence, suicide, and the intentional targeting of students and employees as happened in Florida, the John Jay project will provide “a typology of event types and their prevalence so as to provide policy makers an accurate assessment of the nature of the phenomenon.”

Examples of grants under the program last year include about $7 million to the Leidos Innovations Corporation of suburban Washington, D.C., to operate a “National Criminal Justice Technology Resource Center,” and another $7 million to the Rand Corp., with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Nebraska Department of Education “to scale-up the Good Behavior Game (GBG),” described as “an evidence-based classroom behavior management approach emphasizing positive reinforcement.”

One expert with an insight into the program is Greg Ridgeway of the University of Pennsylvania’s criminology department, who was acting NIJ director when CSSI began.

Ridgeway says that the initial $75 million provided by Congress may have been an “overinvestment” and that eliminating the program now “would undercut the progress.”

A better way to fund such research, he suggests, would be a smaller but steadier amount each year. He gave the example of research on violence against women, which has received about $4 million annually for more than two decades.

“That modest but sustained investment has resulted in a large body of research, a cadre of researchers and students studying the problem, a comprehensive understanding of the issues, and findings on what works,” he says.

Applying that idea to schools, he says that reducing the funding to about $10 million a year for seven more years would save a lot of money “while still keeping the research community engaged in figuring out what works in school safety.”

Officers of the Crime and Justice Research Alliance, which represents two major criminology organizations, issued a statement Monday saying in part, “We were surprised and troubled to see that the President’s FY 2019 Budget Request–released just two days before the Parkland shooting–did not request a continuation of this funding.”

The group’s leaders added that, “Termination of the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative would result in less research and knowledge to improve school safety in our public schools, and detract from efforts to reduce/avoid future school shootings and violence.” They noted that “one year of funding for CSSI research projects represents approximately three tenths of one percent of the cost of the proposed $25 billion US/Mexico border wall.”

Not everyone will support a liberally funded school crime research program. Kenneth Trump, a Cleveland-based school safety advocate (who is not related to the president) said that the federal program should be continued “but not to the tune of the millions and millions that the Obama administration put into it.”

Kenneth Trump believes that federal funding on school safety “needs to be balanced out with programs putting resources directly into local schools.”

It is too early to say what will happen to the school safety research program now, but it is a fair bet that after the Florida school shooting, Congress will again spurn the Trump administration and keep it going, albeit at a more modest level.


Ted Gest is president of Criminal Justice Journalists and Washington bureau chief of The Crime Report where this first appeared. The Crime Report provides comprehensive reporting and analysis of criminal justice news and research in the U.S. and abroad.

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Photo from Columbine High School shooting security video, courtesy of Wikipedia 

‘It’s disgraceful’: Trump announces tariffs on steel, aluminium imports

Disgraceful is a proposal to push up costs for building in US, increase profits for a few companies that will not grow any jobs and lie about past industrialists in US who let Europe and Japan lead in innovation while they hid behind tariffs in 1950s and 1969s!

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After a “night of chaos” in the White House, Donald Trump catches top officials off guard as he declares the US will impose hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, dramatically raising the possibility of a showdown with China and other key trading partners.