Category Archives: racism

Myanmar plans nationwide project to determine citizenship for minorities – Channel NewsAsia

Another step toward ethnic cleansing – no doubt!

Myanmar is planning to conduct a national assessment to determine whether members of minority groups are Myanmar citizens or illegal immigrants, from next year. It is using a pilot project from a town in the troubled region of Rakhine as a blueprint for the programme.

“After we finish the citizenship verification process for that area (Rakhine), other people, other Bengalis living in other townships will understand the reality, and they will envy the Bengali people who intend to become Myanmar citizens and can enjoy the freedom of movement, and then if they want to apply for the passport, it will be very easy,” said Khin Yi, Myanmar immigration and population minister.

via Myanmar plans nationwide project to determine citizenship for minorities – Channel NewsAsia.

Canada’s Ebola visa ban is dumb, xenophobic, and illegal – Vox

It’s right wingnut politics in both cases – trying to look tough on security and race without seeming racist as both are!

Canada is a country built by and still composed mostly of immigrants. It’s a country that prides itself on being a good global citizen. It’s a country that lobbied against — and was economically scarred by — short-lived travel restrictions following the SARS outbreak of 2002-03.

Now, Canada is one of only two developed countries to issue a visa ban for people from Ebola-stricken West Africa — a wrong-headed decision that is xenophobic, bad science, and against international law.

Following Australia, the federal government’s department of citizenship and immigration announced last week that it would no longer grant travel visas to Canada for residents and citizens of Ebola-affected countries, including Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. It’s also halting the residency applications of folks from these countries. The restrictions don’t actually apply to Canadian travelers — but only to West Africans themselves.

via Canada’s Ebola visa ban is dumb, xenophobic, and illegal – Vox.

The Farmworker Story Behind Your Cheap Food | Earthjustice

My name is Andrea Cabrera Hubbard. I started working in the fields as a child, picking squash for half the day and then going to school the other half. At school, my classmates would bully me for working in the fields. I made it to fourth grade and then quit. After that, I worked all day, every day, cutting tomatoes in Mexico. Sometimes the tomato cans were heavier than I was and sometimes we would work 14 to 16 hours a day.

In 2001, I came to the United States and began to work in the fields here in Santa Paula, California. I had a lot of fear and didn’t want to come here, because before I arrived, I had heard that this is the land of the slaves.

Today, I don’t work in the fields anymore, and I am studying English. I’m united with the organization Lideres Campesinas to help other women so they don’t have to live the life I had to live. Working in the fields, there’s a lot of abuse. The bosses, foremen and supervisors are the most abusive to the workers. I think most field workers would share their stories but because of the fear, nobody speaks up. The laborers think they are going to be deported, so they would rather keep silent and hold back the pain from all the chemicals they use.

via The Farmworker Story Behind Your Cheap Food | Earthjustice.

Misty Mourning

As the clouds rolled to and from the sky above Misty’s vigil, the sounds of the drums and songs carried out on the warm fall afternoon. Misty’s beautiful face shone through the flowers, balloons and candles surrounding her photos. It is hoped, as Misty’s sister, Amanda said, that Misty could see how loved she was, how much she will be missed, the grace she brought to her family and Indian Country, and the role model she was.

As I left Misty’s vigil and drove up a very crowded Interstate-5 towards Seattle, the clouds parted over the snow cone of Mount Rainier; known in Indian Country as Tahoma, the mountain that graces the seal of the Muckleshoot Tribe. A stray beam of light bounced up to the sky, creating a rainbow that lasted for a moment and then blinked away. Sometimes, the beauty lasts only a moment before it is gone. But in that moment, in that moment, nothing is more graceful, precious, or lovely that that beam of light.

via Misty Mourning.

Israeli “teabag” and racist rightists hold anti-Palestinian demo at light rail station | Maan News Agency

Dozens of Israeli rightists late Thursday protested at the site of a suspected attack which left a three-month-old baby dead, witnesses said.

Protesters held aloft signs reading “Death to Arabs!” and “Revenge” by the Ammunition Hill light rail station in Sheikh Jarrah.

There were reports of attempted assaults on Palestinians as they crossed the road in the area, with Israeli forces deploying to prevent such incidents.

Israel immediately labeled the incident on Wednesday as a “terrorist” attack, while the Palestinian suspect’s family denied that it was intentional.

via Israeli rightists hold anti-Palestinian demo at light rail station | Maan News Agency.

Forbes trying to out Fox Fox with fear-mongering? How To Stop Ebola: Ban Air Travel From Liberia, Sierra Leone, And Guinea

{So, the next fear-mongering line will be: blockade the three stricken countries – let no one in or out and let them die or survive on their own!}

So much as I hate to admit it, Bobby Jindal is right: we need a travel ban if we want to keep the Ebola virus out of the U.S.

via How To Stop Ebola: Ban Air Travel From Liberia, Sierra Leone, And Guinea.

So, I step across the border, buy a passport from another nation and take my vacation to Miami or Dallas/Ft. Worth…

Help then improve screening there and help to end outbreak – better than trying to erect a false border in our mind.

Just because they can because the government lets them and protects them! Israeli settlers take over 25 homes in E.Jerusalem: residents | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

Mohammed al-Khayat, whose family owns three apartments in one Silwan building, told AFP settlers had broken the locks on empty properties and then changed them.

A police spokeswoman said clashes flared later when one Palestinian man tried to get into one of the buildings.

She said the properties belonged to settlers, who had presented documents proving they had purchased them.

Elad, a hardline settler organisation that seeks to increase Jewish settlement in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, told AFP that a company called Kendall Finance had purchased the properties.

But Mohammed Dahla, a lawyer representing the Palestinian owners, said they denied selling them.

A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, quoted by news agency Wafa, slammed “the occupation by settlers of buildings in Silwan close to the Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Silwan, an Arab neighbourhood were a few hundred hardcore settlers live, is often the scene of violence between the two sides, or between young Palestinians and police.

via Israeli settlers take over 25 homes in E.Jerusalem: residents | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

NYT’s David Brooks, WaPo’s Michael Gerson to Speak at Top Antigay Funding Confab | TWO Care

Recently, government-encouraged outbreaks of mob violence against LGBT persons in countries from Uganda to Russia, and draconian new anti-gay legislation in those countries too, have gained growing media notice – some of which has focused on the role American evangelicals have played in inciting such hatred.

But the American culprits are not being funded from the margins. Tens of millions (possibly evens hundreds of millions) of dollars for that project is coming from the foundations whose representatives assemble yearly at an event known as The Gathering, where multimillionaire and billionaire evangelical funders of the culture wars from the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Maclellan, Friess, Ahmanson, and others, and heads of the mammoth National Christian Foundation – gather, dine, and strategize.

This Thursday September 25th, at the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel in Orlando, Florida, an evening series of briefings will kick off the premier funding event of the evangelical right in America, a four-day annual conference known as The Gathering. Scheduled to speak at the conference are David Brooks of the New York Times (also a National Public Radio commentator) and Michael Gerson of the Washington Post.

via NYT’s David Brooks, WaPo’s Michael Gerson to Speak at Top Antigay Funding Confab | TWO Care.

The Catholic Bishops: the recognition of the “Aramean” nationality aims to divide the Palestinian Christians from others – Fides News Agency

The decision of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior that Christian Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel can now change their registration in the Ministry from Arabs to “Arameans” is denounced as “an attempt to separate the Christian Palestinians from other Palestinians” by the Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land, who in a communiqué issued by the Justice and Peace Commission of the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries denounce the spurious and ideological motivations of the measures taken in this direction by the Government of Israel.

via The Catholic Bishops: the recognition of the “Aramean” nationality aims to divide the Palestinian Christians from others – Fides News Agency.