Category Archives: human rights

Kansas man indicted on hate crime charges for killing Indian national | US news | The Guardian

A man accused in a bar shooting in suburban Kansas City that left one Indian national dead and another wounded was indicted by a federal grand jury on hate crime charges, the US justice department announced Friday. The indictment against Adam Purinton, 52, comes after a 22 February shooting at Austin’s Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas. Witnesses have said Purinton, who is white, yelled “get out of my country” at two 32-year-old Indian nationals, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, before he began shooting. Kuchibhotla died and Madasani was injured. A third man, Ian Grillot, was wounded when he tried to intervene.The shooting raised fears of more attacks on immigrants following Donald Trump’s election and his push for a ban on immigrants from some countries. Officials in India also expressed concern about their citizens’ safety in the US, where many work.An affidavit released in March said Madasani told detectives that the gunman asked if their “status was legal” before he opened fire.

Source: Kansas man indicted on hate crime charges for killing Indian national | US news | The Guardian

Do Not Cut Off Senator Kamala Harris, Or Twitter Will Come For You : LAist

Senator Kamala Harris was shut down mid-sentence (and mid-interrogation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein) by the Senate intelligence committee’s chairman, who clearly did not learn from the “Nevertheless, she persisted” debacle that when you cut off firebrand Democratic senators, Twitter comes for you, and it comes for you hard.CNN has a full transcript of the tense moment, in which Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr interjected as Harris questioned Rosenstein over whether he would sign a letter to give Special Counsel Robert Mueller full independence from the Justice Department. Committee chairman Richard Burr cut Harris off as she pressed Rosenstein for “a yes-or-no answer,” asking her to “provide the witnesses the courtesy…for questions to get answered.” “As a career prosecutor and former Attorney General, Kamala Harris has run countless investigations, and she will follow the facts wherever they lead to get to the truth on behalf of the American people,” a spokesperson for Senator Harris’s office told LAist, adding, “That can only happen if witnesses answer questions.”

Source: Do Not Cut Off Senator Kamala Harris, Or Twitter Will Come For You : LAist

When Did Running for Office Become So Dangerous? | Dame Magazine

the 12th (death threat), well, that’s the one that changes your life; it’s the picture of your home or your office, it’s the one with white powder in the envelope, it’s the one that mentions the hair color of your teenage daughter, or with screencaps of your teenage son’s Snapchats. It comes from a person who is really committed to fucking with you, the kind of crazy person you imagined was behind the first threat you ever received, it’s the one that makes the jaw of the cop who responds to your freaked-out call tighten as he tried to keep his poker face but you can tell he’s worried. It’s the one that makes you take an unscheduled vacation, or break your lease, or drop out of your political race or stop writing on the internet for a while; it’s the one that makes you question whether you should’ve been so sanguine about numbers one through 11, because maybe they’re more realistic than they sounded at the time.They’re the kind of threats that upend the basis of our democracy and our society, by silencing and scaring away and driving out everyone but  the people who would never be silent or scared, no matter how realistic the risk—and, goodness knows, having rational actors who think through risk and reward is reasonably important in government—and by driving out the people more likely to receive the more serious threats. They’re the kind of threats that true public servants, even those who benefit, ought to condemn and discourage, not dismiss and ignore.Or else, you’re essentially guaranteeing that there will be more. And, with 2018 coming, there probably will be.

Source: When Did Running for Office Become So Dangerous? | Dame Magazine

A White Gay Male Faction of White Nationalism is Rising and No, That’s Not a Joke | Race Files

I have no sympathy for white nationalist queer movement leaders. People like Jack Donovan, featured in the article, require none of our compassion. Rather than try to reason with the leadership, I strongly believe that we should use compassion as a wedge between people like Donovan and the people he is trying to recruit.And, believe me, there are plenty of potential recruits. I was recently recalling my years of working with the National LGBTQ Task Force while on the road with Tarso Ramos, Executive Director of Political Research Associates, preparing rural pro-democracy activists to fight right wing paramilitary groups. While on the road in the 1990s traveling from state to state with my white gay male (and former corporate guy) colleague, we would occasionally be consigned to what amounted to segregated housing. He would be bunked with A-List white gay men, and I would be bunked with lesbians (wonderful lesbians!). And in every community, a marginal but no less real minority of activists we encountered would complain about “P.C.” lesbians, talk sh*t about trans people, and refer to people of color by ugly, overt racist terms that are best not repeated. Queers, like everyone else, are by no means immune to bigotry.There’s a potential base for the Jack Donovan’s of the world. But that potential base ought not be characterized in terms that foreclose on the possibility that they might choose against white nationalism and, as they do, may become the best defense against it among white gay men.

Source: A White Gay Male Faction of White Nationalism is Rising and No, That’s Not a Joke | Race Files

Mayor of London calls for cancellation of Trump’s visit to UK | 3CHICSPOLITICO

 

Donald Trump mocked Mayor Sadig Khan b/c he is Muslim. No other reason. He also attacked a Gold Star family, Khizr & Ghazala Khan, who lost their son in the Iraq war. What kind of monster insults & mocks a friend who has suffered a horrible tragedy? When you’ve had no home training & been an ignorant bully all of your life, then it’s no surprise what the ignoramus did to people in the UK & the Khans. If someone mocked, insulted & piled on to my pain after I’ve suffered a tragedy, I’d cut them off for good. I hope you’re listening, UK? Cancel the visit.

Source: Mayor of London calls for cancellation of Trump’s visit to UK | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Not falling down – sister-hood magazine. A Fuuse production by Deeyah Khan.

Since the aftermath of 9/11, the US has been in a state of perpetual reeling. The Bushies exploited the pain and fear of 9/11 to pursue their own warped dream of burning the Middle East to its ashes in the hope that a Phoenix (one kowtowing to the US oil and corporate interests) would arise. In the name of the 3000 killed on 9/11, we, as American voters and taxpayers, enabled the massacre of an estimated million in Iraq. The numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan are rarely ever talked about. Then as the years went by, with hubris we went to Libya and left another massive chaos. On Syria we equivocated having understood some of the lessons of Iraq and Libya. But somehow that caution vanished when the Saudis threw a hissy fit and demanded an attack on Yemen. We – the Obama administration – went in with them, fuelling their planes, selling them arms – along with the UK and France of course. So today, we are elbow deep in blood and cholera, with no exit strategy.With the election of no. 45, the US is reeling ever more crazed and clumsily around the world, hugging dictators, dropping drones and bombs, and denigrating other leaders. It is all made worse by the fact that the US president wants to project his own ignorance and arrogance on the rest of us.We need a reality check on this 16 years of militarized reeling. Enough. Enough of all the violence. By us, by our governments, with our taxes. Enough of the giddy reeling by the defence and security industry that has become so bloated and deadly. Enough of the cosying up to the Saudis, who are the progenitors of all the warped groups who claim to represent Islam. Enough of the violence by inhumane men who think they’re entitled to kill or believe that terror gives them a fast track to heaven.Enough of all of it. Let’s admit militarism begets extremism that begets militarism that begets more violent extremism. It’s time to stop reeling and get back to the drawing board. Because right now, this US government is caught in an unreal reel that is taking us all closer to the edge of the abyss. That is just. not. tolerable.

Source: Not falling down – sister-hood magazine. A Fuuse production by Deeyah Khan.

Inoreader – Profiting from the Working Class: How the Opioid Epidemic Echoes the Mortgage Crisis

How successful was that marketing campaign? Very. As the Charleston Gazette-Mail noted in an explosive report on the epidemic, between 2007 and 2012 pharmaceutical companies sold 780,000,000 hydrocodone and oxycodone pills in West Virginia. That’s 433 pills for every man, woman, and child living there. Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, and New York have also been flooded with these drugs.

Source: Inoreader – Profiting from the Working Class: How the Opioid Epidemic Echoes the Mortgage Crisis

Nine Russians killed over drunken quarrel | News | DW | 04.06.2017 RIP. Where’s Trump’s Twitter storm to not allow Russians to travel to US?

Russian police have detained a 45-year-old Muscovite, suspected of shooting multiple people to death in a village northwest of the capital. The man allegedly got into an argument with his companions while drinking.

Source: Nine Russians killed over drunken quarrel | News | DW | 04.06.2017

Loud, Angry and Naked. How 120 Argentinian Women Protested Gender-Based ViolenceThe Ladies Finger

The end of the video is a loud, heartbreaking and collective shout. It’s anguish about a rigid system that doesn’t seem to change; it’s a reminder of just how hard women have to fight to achieve gender equality

Source: Loud, Angry and Naked. How 120 Argentinian Women Protested Gender-Based ViolenceThe Ladies Finger

Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub

The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too. One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.

Source: Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub