Category Archives: racism

Donald Trump accuses NFL players of ‘total disrespect’ as protests continue | Sport | The Guardian – “But his calling the widow of a fallen soldier a liar is not disrespectful”

On Monday morning, Trump tweeted his displeasure. “Two dozen NFL players continue to kneel during the National Anthem, showing total disrespect to our Flag & Country,” he wrote. “No leadership in NFL!” The president’s viewpoint will play well in large parts of America. Surveys have shown a majority of white Americans disapprove of the protests; in contrast a majority of African Americans view the players’ stance favorably.

Source: Donald Trump accuses NFL players of ‘total disrespect’ as protests continue | Sport | The Guardian

Nivea’s latest ‘white is right’ advert is the tip of a reprehensible iceberg | Media | The Guardian

Shadism, pigmentocracy – the idea of privilege accruing to lighter-skinned black people – and other hierarchies of beauty are a complex picture in which ads such as Nivea’s are only the obvious tip of an insidious iceberg. Celebrities with darker complexions, such as the Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech – nicknamed Queen of the Dark – and actors such as Lupita Nyong’o, are so often discussed in the context of having achieved the seemingly impossible by being both dark and beautiful, that they become the exceptions that prove the rule.It is often observed that light-skinned black women are more likely to become global superstars, the Beyoncé-Rihanna effect. They are, however, still black women and therefore not immune from the pressure to lighten – most recently by fans following a new Photoshopping trend of posting pictures of whitened versions of their faces and remarking upon the improvement.In countries such as Ghana, the intended audience for the Nivea ad, and Nigeria – where an estimated 77% of women use skin-lightening products – the debate has so far, understandably, focused on health. The most toxic skin-lightening ingredients, still freely available, include ingredients such as hydroquinone, mercury and corticosteroid. It’s not unusual for these to be mixed with caustic agents ranging from automotive battery acid, washing power, toothpaste and cloth bleaching agents, with serious and irreversible health consequences. There is no suggestion that global brands such as Nivea or Lancôme are using any of these illegal and harmful ingredients, and African countries are moving towards greater regulation of the products themselves. Ghana, for example, has banned hydroquinone.These powerful corporations are, however, still freely operating in a context where millions of low-income women experience the high-end messaging of their glossy billboards, but can only afford to opt for cheaper, black market products. Advertising standards have been enforced against beauty conglomerates for adverts that are overly retouched, but only India, another of the biggest markets for skin lightening products, has banned adverts depicting people with darker skin as inferior. Maybe it is time that changed. This is an industry expected to reach $31bn by 2024, as growing awareness of dangerous, toxic products drives extra demand for a “fairness solution with natural, herbal and organic ingredients”, according to market analysts.

Source: Nivea’s latest ‘white is right’ advert is the tip of a reprehensible iceberg | Media | The Guardian

Highlighting rift between Israel and U.S. Jews, Netanyahu won’t address annual Jewish Federation confab – U.S. News – Haaretz.com – ultra-right wing everywhere cannot stand diversity and sides with bigots of worst type!

Many American Jewish leaders were livid with Netanyahu when in June, under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, he decided to back out of his commitment to create a special area at the Western Wall where Reform and Conservative Jews could hold mixed-gender prayer services. The overwhelming majority of affiliated Jews in North America identify either as Conservative or Reform. The decision to create the egalitarian prayer space had been approved by his government in January 2016 but was never implemented.

Source: Highlighting rift between Israel and U.S. Jews, Netanyahu won’t address annual Jewish Federation confab – U.S. News – Haaretz.com

Military Members and Their Families Respond to John Kelly’s News Conference – The New York Times

‘The immediate family are not the only people devastated.’Gen. Kelly’s conduct here is disgraceful and dishonorable.I write this as a member of a proud military family. I am the wife of a Naval Academy graduate and former Navy pilot who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. I have spoken to my husband about Gen. Kelly’s actions.How dare Gen. Kelly criticize Congresswoman Wilson, who was in the car with Sgt. Johnson’s family when the President called. She is grieving, too — she had a long personal relationship with Sgt. Johnson since he was a child, which is why she was invited by his family to be in the car when they went to the airport to meet his coffin. Surely Gen. Kelly knows that the immediate family are not the only people devastated by the death of one of our brave members of the military! Unlike Gen. Kelly, the congresswoman heard what Trump said. She heard it because Sgt. Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, a pregnant 24-year old with two small children, put the call on the speakerphone. Mrs. Johnson was devastated because Trump didn’t even know Sgt. Johnson’s name, which is what Congresswoman Wilson stressed, not his incredibly tone-deaf comment that “he knew what he signed up for.”This is the same Gen. Kelly who is not offended by Trump’s disgraceful attacks on John McCain and the Gold Star Khan family. Wow, just wow!— CA Reader, in California

Sonoma County Sheriff Blasts ICE And Breitbart For ‘Misleading, Inflammatory’ Statements About Immigrant Arson Suspect: SFist

Giordano reiterates that to the Press Democrat saying, “This isn’t the guy who lit the fires, and to equate that is misleading and inflammatory and distracts from the mission we have helping our community recover from these fires.”Further, Giordano said that Homan’s claim that the Sheriff’s Office had failed to inform them of Gonzalez’s earlier releases was untrue. “Gonzalez has been in our jail approximately 8 times for minor misdemeanor offenses,” Giordano wrote in his statement. “We have notified ICE about his release in several of those arrests as they took place before our recent [sanctuary-related] policy change. We will continue to notify ICE if it complies with law and our policy. But as I stated earlier, they can seek a warrant and we will hold him.”ICE issued a detainer request for Gonzalez, and Sonoma County typically addresses these requests by informing ICE when undocumented suspects are released from their jail. Regardless of this policy, Giordano says, Gonzalez is currently being held in lieu of $200,000 bail, and is awaiting his next court date.”ICE attacked the Sheriff’s Office in the midst of the largest natural disaster this county has ever experienced,” Giordano says. “Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, many people have lost their homes and 23 people have died from this firestorm. ICE’s misleading statement stirs fear in some of our community members who are already exhausted and scared.”In addition to Breitbart trying to connect one undocumented man to the fires — which sprang up nearly simultaneously in eight separate counties the night of October 8 during intense wind conditions — another spurious news source suggested this week that Mexican drug cartels were responsible, in an effort to impede the growing legal marijuana growing industry in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. That report, like the Breitbart piece, had no evidence to cite for this.

Source: Sonoma County Sheriff Blasts ICE And Breitbart For ‘Misleading, Inflammatory’ Statements About Immigrant Arson Suspect: SFist

Trump feud continues as Florida congresswoman calls John Kelly a liar | US news | The Guardian – Kelly lied to score points for his boss and dis a Black-African-American woman Congressperson!

Wilson said Trump’s comments were “not a good message to say to anyone who has lost a child at war”.Advertisement“You don’t sign up because you think you’re going to die,” Wilson said. “You sign up to serve your country. There’s nothing to misinterpret. He said what he said. I just don’t agree with it. I just don’t agree with that’s what you should say to grieving families.”Johnson’s mother was also offended by Trump’s tone, telling reporters this week: “President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.”Kelly also attacked Wilson for allegedly taking credit for securing funding from Barack Obama for an FBI field office, at a 2015 ceremony which he also attended.Wilson said she was not a member of Congress in 2009 when the funding mentioned by Kelly was secured. Her role, she said, was in having the building dedicated to two FBI agents who were killed in a 1986 shootout in Miami.“That’s a lie,” Wilson said of Kelly’s characterization. “How dare he?”She added: “I feel sorry for General Kelly. He has my sympathy for the loss of his son. But he can’t just go on TV and lie on me.”A video of Wilson’s remarks at the ceremony, published by the SunSentinel on Friday, support the congresswoman’s account. She briefly discusses her efforts to dedicate the building for the fallen agents, but at no point takes credit for securing funding.Wilson said she was seeking answers about the attack in Niger, in which Johnson reportedly became separated from the rest of his unit. The Pentagon has offered few details, prompting the Arizona senator John McCain to threaten the White House with a subpoena to elicit more information.“Why did it take 48 hours to find him?” Wilson said. “Was he still alive? Was he kidnapped? I am distraught and so is the family. There are so many questions that should be answered.”

Source: Trump feud continues as Florida congresswoman calls John Kelly a liar | US news | The Guardian

Twitter and White Supremacy, A Love Story | Dame Magazine – does anyone need another reason to leave Twitter? Encourage celebrities to leave as well!

Indeed, the kind of harassment Leslie Jones faced is exactly what Black women have had to deal with on Twitter, day-in, and day-out, for years.  But without the prominence of being Leslie Jones, one doesn’t get the benefit of personal intervention from Jack Dorsey.“It’s the gamificiation of hate,” says author Mikki Kendall. “I was going to leave Twitter at one point. It just wasn’t usable for me. I would log on and have 2,500 negative comments. One guy who seemed to have an inexhaustible energy would Photoshop my image on top of lynching pictures and tell me I should be ‘raped by dogs,’ that kind of thing.” When Kendall was living in Tennessee, she says she received a picture of her and her family in a photo that “looked like it had been sighted through a rifle.” She was also doxxed—that is, had her address posted online. She moved shortly thereafter. “I had two minor children in my home then. I had to do something different.” She lives on the southside of Chicago now and says she feels much safer.  “No one’s going to come for me here. If they do, I’d like to watch them try.”Kendall has been deft at figuring out tech-savvy ways to both document and battle online harassment. She did a “race swap” experiment with a white guy—they traded Twitter avatars. “For me, it was like, Oh my God, it’s so quiet! People told me how smart I was and perceptive,” she says. Kendall has also figured out how to turn the tables on the algorithms by coding her own auto-blockers that sniff out potentially harmful Twitter accounts and blocks them.When I asked her why she thought Twitter wasn’t more responsive to reports of abuse on the site, she said, “Being a white guy on Twitter is a whole other world. I think that what’s happening with Jack and Biz (Twitter executives) is they’re experiencing a whole other Twitter.”White supremacists have used Twitter to target Jews, as well, in ways both banal and life-threatening. In June 2016 several highly visible Jewish political reporters began to report a barrage of online harassment that involved a symbolic gesture: triple parentheses placed around their names, like (((this))). The ADL added the triple parentheses to their catalog of hateful symbols. One report called them “the digital equivalent of a yellow star,” intended to separate Jews from the rest of the population and pave the way for worse.

Source: Twitter and White Supremacy, A Love Story | Dame Magazine

Austria’s neo-Nazis finds friends in Israel | The Electronic Intifada

Europe’s new fascists and Israel’s right have also found an alliance in their common hatred of Muslims.In June, Strache welcomed to Vienna Likud lawmaker Yehuda Glick, a leader in the so-called Temple Movement, which aims to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple.A photo posted on Strache’s Facebook page shows the pair in a friendly meeting.European Jewish organizations have condemned Israeli outreach to Europe’s far right, including the Freedom Party. Last November, the leader of the Vienna Jewish community published a letter calling on Israeli politicians to shun such meetings and “to draw a very clear red line between us and those who represent hate, neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism.”

Source: Austria’s neo-Nazis finds friends in Israel | The Electronic Intifada

Settlers attempt to torch village mosque, south of Hebron – PNN

Israeli settlers from Ma’on settlement, which is located on West Bank lands in the southern Hebron hills, on Sunday overnight attempted to torch the mosque of Twaneh village, as part of their systematic attacks on the village to intimidate and deport its residents.According to eyewitnesses, extremist settlers stormed the area and tried to set fire to the mosque. Then, a number of citizens woke up to the noises, and forced them to leave.Locals also said that the settlers attacked the homes in the area, adding that Israeli occupation forces, who were present in the vicinity of the village, fired tear gas at the village, causing several cases of teargas inhalation.

Source: Settlers attempt to torch village mosque, south of Hebron – PNN