Category Archives: human rights

Trump’s Manchurian Candidate Denial was Un(President)ed | La Prensa San Diego

By allowing Russia to gain standing on the world stage, Trump is diminishing the foreign policy work laid since the end of World War II when the U.S. saved

Source: Trump’s Manchurian Candidate Denial was Un(President)ed | La Prensa San Diego

If Trump isn’t working for them, he’s not really work for us either. By allowing Russia to gain standing on the world stage, Trump is diminishing the foreign policy work laid since the end of World War II when the U.S. saved Russia.

The Cold War was waged over Russia’s desire for an expanded political role among world superpowers through a build up of nuclear weapons and the coercion of witting partners. After three decades of decline, Putin has put them back at the main table with Trump as his wing man.

‘Example to the world’: Sri Lanka president plans to copy Duterte’s war on drugs | World news | The Guardian – Lost soul in search of an icon – embraces summary assassination as his theme

President Maithripala Sirisena

Source: ‘Example to the world’: Sri Lanka president plans to copy Duterte’s war on drugs | World news | The Guardian

Largest collection of breached data ever seen is found | Technology | The Guardian – Time to just give up or… fund an international policing agency to track and disrupt the hackers and hack traders?

Store of 770m email addresses and passwords discovered after being posted to a hacking forum

Source: Largest collection of breached data ever seen is found | Technology | The Guardian

Fed up with myths, these American Jews are challenging their Israel education

For Michal, a pro-Israel program in Israel was the tipping point, and the first time she considered that not everything she had been taught about Israel was true. “Aish HaTorah, [the organization] that runs Hasbara Fellowships, were teaching us talking points: here is a template for advocating for Israel on campus, here are the points your opponents will use, and here is how you turn it around on them and humiliate people in the process. Then they would have us practice — one person would play the aggressive pro-Palestine advocate and we would have to use the arguments they gave us. I remember being so embarrassed because I just couldn’t do it. I’m a really bad bullshitter. They’re using the word ‘apartheid,’ and I’m supposed to say ‘there are Israeli Arabs in the cabinet.’ I couldn’t memorize all those steps and then spit them back out like I was supposed to do.” “What tipped me off was when they took us to Hebron. You walk there and it’s a ghost town with [Palestinian] shops boarded up. There is a barrier in the main street that separates Palestinians from Israelis. And you have menacing settlers. Something felt off: it was the first inkling I had of ‘is this really necessary in

Source: Inoreader – Fed up with myths, these American Jews are challenging their Israel education

Migrant caravans are making their way to the US border — but the journey is far from easy – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

We spent three days with that boy. His name is Daniel and he’s one of perhaps 10,000 people from Central America who’ve arrived at the US border since November. He can’t go home because the gangsters would likely murder him. And he can’t cross the border because Donald Trump calls asylum seekers invaders. But this child is still glad he’s escaped what used to be his home.

Source: Migrant caravans are making their way to the US border — but the journey is far from easy – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Time for a Real Conversation Around Border Security : Immigration Impact

In years past, most arrivals were Mexican migrants who came into the United States for seasonal work. However, as Mexico’s economy improved, migration patterns began to change and fewer Mexicans  chose to come to the United States. This change from economic migrants to refugees and asylum-seekers requires a new response. Many arriving today are children and families fleeing extreme levels of violence and political corruption in their native countries and risk persecution and death if they are forced to return. Our laws make clear that anyone arriving at the border has the right to apply for asylum. Yet, asylum seekers are being turned away as if they were not fleeing for their lives. Worse, many are met with tear gas and are illegally refused access to the asylum process. We owe it to ourselves to have a discussion around what these changes mean for border security, how we should respond to instability in Central America, and how we keep America safe and prosperous. The discussion on the border wall relies on an over-simplistic and expensive solution to economic migration and a cruel response to asylum-seeking migration. Instead of focusing on erecting a largely symbolic struct

Source: Time for a Real Conversation Around Border Security : Immigration Impact

Inoreader – Admitting he didn’t commit a crime, IDF puts teen in admin. detention for Facebook post

The army prosecutor readily admitted to the judge that the photos Makhtoob published on Facebook did not constitute a crime, but that secret evidence handed over to the judge — which neither Makhtoob nor his lawyer were allowed to see — justified keeping him behind bars. Zaher demanded that the court bring charges against Makhtoob rather than hold him indefinitely without trial. The judge, however, accepted the prosecution’s argument that the secret evidence was enough to keep him behind bars for the time being, and extended his remand by another three days. On January 7, a senior Israeli army officer ordered Makhtoob be held in administrative detention for six months. He has not been accused of committing a crime.

Source: Inoreader – Admitting he didn’t commit a crime, IDF puts teen in admin. detention for Facebook post

William Barr: Roe v. Wade Was ‘Wrongly Decided and Should Be Overruled’

The Justice Department finally rid itself of Jeff Sessions, but Donald Trump’s nominee to replace him, William Barr, is of course also a bad man, just of a different type. An example: Barr, who previously served as attorney general under the first Bush administration, believes that abortion should not be a constitutionally protected right.

Source: William Barr: Roe v. Wade Was ‘Wrongly Decided and Should Be Overruled’

Democratic Leadership Resist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal

On Sunday, newly-sworn in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was interviewed on 60 Minutes about something that should be, at this point, easy enough to agree on: the planet is heading toward climate disaster unless world leaders take radical, purposeful, and sustained steps to mitigate the crisis. But Anderson Cooper’s questions about Ocasio-Cortez’s vision on climate—a program called the Green New Deal that advocates hope can serve as a road map to developing the kinds of policies required to meet the problem in force—did not engage with the substance of the program and instead focused on whether or not a 70 percent tax rate on the super wealthy was politically “radical.”

Source: Democratic Leadership Resist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal