Category Archives: Just strange

Duterte says Philippines might leave UN over criticism of drug trafficker killings | World news | The Guardian  – Trump and Putin being Trumped by Duterte?

“You now, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 [about you]. I tell you, you are an inutile. Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killing.”Asked about the possible consequences of his comments, he said: “What is … repercussions? I don’t give a shit to them.”He said the UN should have acted according to protocol by sending someone such as a rapporteur to talk to him.“You do not just go out and give a shitting statement against a country,” he said.

Source: Duterte says Philippines might leave UN over criticism of drug trafficker killings | World news | The Guardian

Ditch Jeremy Corbyn before it’s too late, Sadiq Khan tells Labour | Politics | The Guardian – Labour “Elitists” never accepted vote of their members. Corbyn should ditch the old Blair/Brown losers!

In an interview with the Observer last weekend, Corbyn blamed any failure to get his messages on policy across on mutinous and disloyal MPs and others who had never accepted his leadership. “We have done our best to get our message out,” he said. “It hasn’t been helped that prominent people in the Labour party – Labour MPs – have spent the last 10 months actively being unsupportive of our policies that have been generally agreed and supported. Now everyone agrees that anti-austerity is the right line to be taking.”Corbyn said he was using his second campaign for the leadership in 12 months as a dry run for a general election: “Since the resignations in July and the leadership contest, then clearly the public mind has become focused on the leadership contest rather than the future. I’m trying to turn this leadership campaign into a campaign of how we would run a general election. How we would win back those areas of Britain that have become disillusioned – left-behind Britain.”

Source: Ditch Jeremy Corbyn before it’s too late, Sadiq Khan tells Labour | Politics | The Guardian

France’s Burkini Bigotry – The New York Times

After bans on full-face veils, head scarves in schools and rules about students’ skirt lengths, France’s perennial problem with Muslim women’s attire has taken its most farcical turn yet with a new controversy over the “burkini,” body-covering swimwear whose name is an amalgam of burqa and bikini. As of Thursday, five French mayors had banned the burkini, calling it, variously, a threat to public order, hygiene, water safety and morality, tantamount to a new weapon of war against the French republic. Thierry Migoule, an official with the city of Cannes, the first to ban the burkini, declared the swimwear “clothing that conveys an allegiance to the terrorist movements that are waging war against us.”This hysteria threatens to further stigmatize and marginalize France’s Muslims at a time when the country is listing to the Islamophobic right in the wake of a series of horrific terrorist attacks. And with presidential elections scheduled for next spring and the right-wing National Front’s popularity on the rise, French officials and politicians have leapt to support the mayors.

Source: France’s Burkini Bigotry – The New York Times

The Rise Of The Right Isn’t All Just About Class | Race Files

Consider the religious right. Are they a class movement? I argue no. They’re self-described cultural warriors, organized out of a born-again evangelical movement that rose as a response to sudden changes brought about by the baby-boom/free love/civil rights/anti-war/feminist uprising of the mid-last century by leaders who politicized what it meant to be “born-again,” exploiting the conservatism that dominated a cultural movement. During the height of religious right wing attacks against LGBTQ people and abortion, we were in a growing economy. The spoils of that growth may have been hoarded almost exclusively by the top ten percent, but the perception of good times was widespread throughout the middle class, and was demonstrated through the enthusiasm with which so many middle-classers responded to dot.com bubble investment opportunities that went bust. Never has the stock market been such a popular forum for the articulation of “hope” married to individualism than during the tech-bubble 90s.So let’s get this one straight so that class reductionists don’t steal the real opportunity presented by the fight against the right: class matters absolutely, but the rise of the right isn’t near as much about class as it is about culture, who gets to control it, and what that means about American cultural identity.I know opponents of “identitarianism” (the term for identity activists who they equate with neoliberals) will hate this, but those of us they’ve labeled “identitarians” include a not inconsiderable faction that understands that identity politics is, maybe, one of the most virulent expressions of anti-intellectualism out there. That’s right, we are able to hold a critique of identity politics while also having the sensitivity to recognize that you have to start with people where they’re at when you’re organizing a popular front for change. It’s an act of walking and chewing gum at the same time that I strongly recommend.Culture and identity are inseparable. We are cultural animals. This is what makes people distinct from other species. Identity is what holds cultures together. In order to win a more just world, we need to put political change in the context of cultural transformation and acknowledge this reality and not waste our effort trying to wish it away.

Source: The Rise Of The Right Isn’t All Just About Class | Race Files

Would a Trump America walk away from NATO? | US elections 2016 | DW.COM | 15.08.2016

But a growing number of Republicans are declaring themselves unwilling to be part of a Trump government. Former Ambassador Volker says he and his counterparts with deep experience look at each other and say “I don’t want to [serve in a Trump administration], but I want YOU to do it” – he chuckles – “because we want sane people, good people who know policy, who know what they’re doing.”It’s unclear who might be left to ask. Last week, 50 more former officials went public with their opposition to Trump. In an open letter described as “unprecedented” for its big names and fervent views, a list of prominent Republicans who “served in senior national security and/or foreign policy positions in Republican Administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush” laid out the reasons to stop Trump.The letter states the candidate “has little understanding of America’s vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances, and the democratic values on which US foreign policy must be based. At the same time, he persistently compliments our adversaries and threatens our allies and friends. Unlike previous presidents who had limited experience in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”Trump would be, they warn, the “most reckless president in American history.”The Trump campaign responded to the letter by thanking the group for “coming forward so everyone in this country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.”

Source: Would a Trump America walk away from NATO? | US elections 2016 | DW.COM | 15.08.2016

Once Unthinkable, More British Jews Seek German Citizenship – The New York Times

Until Britain voted to leave the European Union, Philip Levine never thought deeply about his Jewish heritage.But looking for a way to ensure that he could still work and live in Europe once Britain leaves the bloc, Mr. Levine, 35, who was born in Britain and lives in London, decided to do what some Jews, including his relatives, might consider unthinkable: apply for German citizenship.He did so by employing a provision of German law that has been on the books since 1949 but that has been little used in recent years. It allows anyone whom the Nazis stripped of their German citizenship “on political, racial or religious grounds” from Jan. 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945, and their descendants, to have their citizenship restored. Most of those who lost their citizenship during that period were Jews, though they also included other minorities and political opponents.He is not alone in turning to the German law after Britain’s decision to end its membership in the European Union, also known as Brexit. Since the vote in June, the German embassy in London said it had received at least 400 requests from Britons for information about German citizenship under a legal provision known as Article 116.

Source: Once Unthinkable, More British Jews Seek German Citizenship – The New York Times

Trump Spokesperson Katrina Pierson: Afghanistan Is ‘Obama’s War’ – The Daily Beast

 

Speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign to CNN on Saturday, spokesperson Katrina Pierson claimed that President Barack Obama was responsible for starting the war in Afghanistan. That war began following the September 11th attacks under President George W. Bush, seven years before Obama was elected president. In an attempt to defend Donald Trump’s assertion that Obama is the “founder of ISIS,” Pierson referenced the 2007 troop surge in Iraq before stating, “Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem.” When CNN anchor Victor Blackwell asked her if she believed Obama “took the country into Afghanistan post 2009,” Pierson replied, “That was Obama’s war, yes.” Earlier this month, Pierson also said President Obama was responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq in 2004, four years before he took office.

Source: Trump Spokesperson Katrina Pierson: Afghanistan Is ‘Obama’s War’ – The Daily Beast

Sadder than sad :>(

https://youtu.be/OZynXM2mgxo

I am breaking with my tradition of posting only one article on weekends so I can spend more time doing stuff other than thinking about the world going to crap. Since I was young and living in Europe I have been a Ferrari fan…..I was living on the island of Mallorca and one day I […]

via This Is Just Wrong! — In Saner Thought

Donald Trump’s achilles heel is that he is truly un-American | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

 

What Trump had done was violate a core American ideal: the notion – not always honoured, admittedly – that no matter where your family came from, if you were born in the US or had come there and subscribed to its founding principles, then you were as American as a direct descendant of those who landed on Plymouth Rock. This was what set the US apart, the belief that national identity did not reside in blood or soil, but in loyalty to the nation’s constitution and its bill of rights.Or consider Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US; it was again attacked by Republicans as well as Democrats because it contradicts America’s founding purpose, to be a haven from religious persecution, a purpose encapsulated in the constitution’s first amendment guaranteeing the “free exercise” of religion. Or reflect on Trump’s little joke this week, suggesting the way to deal with Clinton might be a bullet – at odds with America’s professed determination to resolve its differences through a constitution, the law and elections.The common thread is that all these moves by Trump are not just reactionary or bigoted or dangerous. They contradict the ideals that all Americans are meant to regard as sacred. Perhaps this is the way to attack Trump: as truly un-American. He says he wants to make America great again. The truth is, he would stop America being America.More comment TopicsDonald Trump US constitution and civil liberties Republicans DemocratsShare on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Save for laterReuse this contentAdvertisementMost popular in USHope Solo calls Sweden ‘a bunch of cowards’ after USA falter at Olympics Rio Olympics 2016: women’s football, tennis, athletics and basketball – live! San Jose Mercury News says sorry for ‘insensitive’ Simone Manuel headline Donald Trump: it’s all a joke Have we detected an alien megastructure in space? Keep an open mind | Seth Shostak

Source: Donald Trump’s achilles heel is that he is truly un-American | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

Most states’ child abuse and neglect laws have religious exemptions | Pew Research Center – Time has come to think again!

All states prosecute parents whose children come to severe harm through neglect. But in 34 states (as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico), there are exemptions in the civil child abuse statutes when medical treatment for a child conflicts with the religious beliefs of parents, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Additionally, some states have religious exemptions to criminal child abuse and neglect statutes, including at least six that have exemptions to manslaughter laws.These exemptions recently drew renewed attention in Idaho when, in May, a state task force released a report stating that five children there had died unnecessarily in 2013 because their parents, for religious reasons, had refused medical treatment for them. The report has prompted some of Idaho’s legislators to begin pushing for a repeal of state laws that protected the parents of these children from civil and criminal liability when they refuse to seek medical treatment for religious reasons.

Source: Most states’ child abuse and neglect laws have religious exemptions | Pew Research Center

Children are not their parent’s property; they are our future!