Category Archives: Viva!

Border Patrol Agents Are Passing Around A Commemorative Coin Mocking Care for Migrant Kids

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by Dara Lind

An unofficial commemorative coin has been circulating among Border Patrol agents at the U.S./Mexico border, mocking the task of caring for migrant children and other duties that have fallen to agents as families cross into the U.S.

On the front, the coin declares “KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING” under an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag — a caricature of the “caravan” from last fall, which started in Honduras and attracted thousands of people as it moved north. (While the caravan included many women and children, the only visible figures on the coin appear to be adult men.)

The coin’s reverse side features the Border Patrol logo and three illustrations: a Border Patrol agent bottle-feeding an infant; an agent fingerprinting a teen boy wearing a backwards baseball cap; and a U.S. Border Patrol van. The text along the edge reads “FEEDING ** PROCESSING ** HOSPITAL ** TRANSPORT.”

The coin appears to poke fun at the fact that many border agents are no longer out patrolling and instead are now caring for and processing migrants — including families and children.

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Government officials told ProPublica the coin was not approved or paid for by the government, unlike official “challenge coins” that go through an agency approval process. One Customs and Border Protection official, who was not authorized to give his name, characterized the coin as “something that somebody’s doing on their free time” — comparing it to woodworking. “A lot of the agents have little hobbies on the side, they build little wooden figures that they have at their homes,” the official said.

It’s not clear who created the coin or how widely it’s been circulated among border agents. But Border Patrol agents in California and Texas — on opposite ends of the U.S./Mexico border — had seen the coin circulated at their workplaces. One of the agents received a coin in April when a colleague brought several to pass around at the office; the other was shown an online order form for the coins by a colleague at work.

Both said the coins were promoted via the secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol officials that, as ProPublica recently detailed, included racist and violent posts.

The coin is part of a tradition of unofficial “challenge coins” — which generally outnumber official ones — which are common in the military and law enforcement as a way for members to celebrate achievements and build camaraderie.

But outside observers found this particular coin anything but harmless.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, who worked at CBP under the Bush and Obama administrations, said that the coin was evidence (like the 10-15 Facebook group) of “reflexive dehumanization” by Border Patrol agents, and that the “tolerance for shenanigans” by supervisors and leadership had gone too far. “You have to say, ‘This is affecting the integrity and authority of us all.’”

The coin appears to have been designed, ordered and distributed months into the surge of Central American families at the border. Coins were being distributed to agents by late April, before the current wave of public attention and outrage over conditions for migrants in Border Patrol custody.

Customs and Border Protection officials said they did not know about the coin until contacted by ProPublica. They said they would investigate it for potential trademark violation since the coin includes the Border Patrol’s logo.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has a firm policy on the use and production of challenge coins bearing CBP identifiers,” a CBP official said, including the U,S. Border Patrol logo. “The coin in question is not an officially approved CBP coin. CBP intends to investigate the matter and will make a determination when all the facts are known.”

However, officials implied that if the coin had not used the official logo, it would be beyond their control. “If it’s something that somebody’s doing on their free time,” said the official who asked not to be named, it is not something the agency can control.

Hector Garza of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, said he had not seen the coin either. When shown pictures of it by ProPublica, and in response to follow-up questions, he said, “I have no thoughts about the coin.”

Challenge coins have spread throughout the federal government, but are especially popular within Border Patrol. They depict individual offices or stations or particular missions. If official visitors come by to tour a station, a coin may be presented.

In this case, the “mission” being mockingly commemorated is the unprecedented amount of migrant care and processing Border Patrol agents did in the spring of this year.

Taking care of migrants (including children) in short-term custody is part of the Border Patrol’s job. When the intake system for migrant children is overwhelmed, as it was in 2014 and has been again in 2019, Border Patrol often holds children for longer than the 72 hours prescribed by the federal Flores settlement (a court agreement that governs the treatment of children in immigration custody), often in spaces not designed for children — or anyone. In recent weeks the government has greatly reduced the number of children in Border Patrol custody, thanks in large part to funding from Congress that expanded the intake system’s capacity.

Some agents say that childcare and support have an opportunity cost: Any time an agent spends driving a van full of children to a child-only facility, for example, is time not spent “in the field” apprehending people who are trying to get away.

“Us caring for kids and families, that’s not the frustration,” Garza said. “Drugs coming into the country? That is a frustration. People with criminal records coming in and us not being able to catch them? That is a frustration.”

That tradeoff appears to be fueling the emotions expressed by the coin — with the back side depicting the tasks that agents must do instead of being out “on the line,” and the front side referring to the legal “loopholes” that make it harder to detain and deport migrants under 18 and families.

One Border Patrol agent, when asked about morale among agents detailed to care and transport, replied with a photo of a dumpster floating down a flooded river.

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US mayors fight back and pledge help for migrants targeted in Ice raids

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  • Officials to support undocumented migrants in their cities
  • ‘We’re doing everything we can … to push back against Trump’

America’s leading mayors have been teeing up resources in anticipation of helping those targeted by immigration raids slated to start on Sunday.

Related: Lunatic 19s: A Deportational Road Trip – powerful US immigration drama

Continue reading…

La Bufadora in Ensenada, Mexico

love it been there many times

A small spray blows over the crowd.

Mexico‘s Punta Banda (Banded Point) is named for the geological strata that dominate the underlying landscape. But it also features yet another geological site of intrigue: one of the most notable blowholes in North America. 

The ocean’s waves push air and water through a narrow passage in the rocks. The seawater then flows through a partially submerged chamber before erupting into the air, creating one of Earth’s largest marine geysers. 

Expect to get wet! Waves crash into the ocean cliff as frequently as you would imagine. Even on a calm day, this can blast a ton of water 100 feet or more above the sea. The geyser height relates to the tide level and the size of waves, so expect a better show during rough seas at high tide.

Old lore has it that a whale became wedged in the rocky point and blew water to attract its pod’s attention. Eventually, the whale turned to stone, never to be free again.

Star Wars: Why Billie Lourd Asked to Share Scenes with Her Late Mother, Carrie Fisher

Star Wars: Why Billie Lourd Asked to Share Scenes with Her Late Mother, Carrie Fisher:

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mummiesandlightsabers:

When The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams figured out how to include the late Carrie Fisher in the final installment of the Skywalker saga, he felt he “suddenly had found the impossible answer to the impossible question.” Painstakingly stitching cut scenes from The Force Awakens into this new Star Wars installment, Abrams could bring out an entire performance from Fisher as General Leia—allowing her to live again on-screen in a way that, Abrams hoped, would be a comfort for her fans. And, much to Abrams’s surprise, it was a valuable process for her daughter, Billie Lourd, who plays one of Leia’s lieutenants, and opposite her mother, in new scenes in The Rise of Skywalker.I purposely had written her character in scenes without Carrie, because I just didn’t want it to be uncomfortable for her,” Abrams says. Instead, he recalls, Lourd told him, “I want to be in scenes with her. I want it for my children when I have kids. I want them to see.

Abrams calls the process of digging out Fisher’s performance a “bizarre kind of left side/right side of the brain sort of Venn diagram thing, of figuring out how to create the puzzle based on the pieces we had.The Rise of Skywalker team wrote scenes around the existing Fisher footage, and shot other angles, matched lighting, and put together a finished product “as if we were doing a re-shoot and doing someone’s side, which happens all the time.

Due to this careful digital patchwork that nonetheless leaves Fisher’s full human performance untouched, Leia’s integration into the film is so complete, she physically interacts with some of the other characters in The Rise of Skywalker. The film’s teaser reveals Leia tenderly embracing Daisy Ridley’s Rey. “You see it in that scene with her hugging,” Abrams says. “And it’s like she gets to be in this movie where we would have wanted this moment.

Abrams says there are also moments in the film in which we’ll see Fisher’s Leia and Lourd’s Lt. Connix talking and touching as well. In some instances, Abrams says, Lourd became overwhelmed during filming. “She would get emotional and sort of have to excuse herself for a minute,” he recalls. “I know it was hard for her for a while.

A digitally de-aged Leia made a poorly received cameo at the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which was released weeks before Fisher’s death in 2016. As a result, Abrams and Lucasfilm are particularly sensitive that the digital artistry involved in incorporating Leia into The Rise of Skywalker not distract from what will likely be Fisher’s final on-screen performance. “I hope when people see it, they are not thinking about that,” Abrams says. “Of course, some will, but I think it’s one of those things. It sort of goes away after a moment, because it’s not quite a magic trick; it’s sort of more of a trick of editing.

It does seem fitting for this version of Fisher to return to a franchise already populated with Force ghosts like Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Yoda, who appear to impart wisdom and emotional closure to the next generation. “There is an element of the uncanny, spiritual, you know,” Abrams says. “Classic Carrie, that it would have happened this way, because somehow it worked. And I never thought it would.

They wrote an entire story around her footage.

Goddamn right they did.

Hear the First Recording of the Human Voice (1860) | Open Culture

When inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang a nursery rhyme into his phonoautogram in 1860, he had no plans on ever playing this recording back. A precursor to the wax cylinder, the phonoautogram took inputs for the study of sound waves, but could not be turned into an output device.

Source: Hear the First Recording of the Human Voice (1860) | Open Culture

Russian authorities have brought unfounded terrorism charges against 24 Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to the Crimean Peninsula. Daily Brief: https://trib.al/0Q6R4PO pic.twitter.com/H6ZbVIzMU2

via aleksey godin

Russian authorities have brought unfounded terrorism charges against 24 Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to the Crimean Peninsula.

Daily Brief: https://trib.al/0Q6R4PO  pic.twitter.com/H6ZbVIzMU2

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