Category Archives: Viva!

Trump’s Anti-Media Rhetoric Resonates Worldwide

Donald J. Trump. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2018 (IPS)

A former French president once remarked: Never pick a fight with a little kid or the press. The kid will throw the last stone at you and the press will have the last word.

But that obviously does not apply to a teflon-coated Donald Trump because nothing apparently sticks on him – even as he survives a barrage of criticisms from the mainstream media while he continues to utter falsehoods and mouth blatant lies.

As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan never said: Trump may be entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts.

The leader of the free world, according to some critics, is fast emulating the authoritarian lifestyle of a tin pot third world dictator.

At a highly confrontational press conference last week, Trump lashed out at Jim Acosta, the chief White House correspondent for Cable News Network (CNN) for his sharp questioning of the US president– specifically on Trump’s deliberate mischaracterizations of the Central American migrant caravan.

As a result, the White House, in an unprecedented move, suspended Acosta’s press credentials while also threatening to blacklist other reporters —including Peter Alexander of National Broadcasting Company (NBC), April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks and Yamiche Alcindor of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)– “if they did not treat the White House with respect”.

Trump’s decision is a violation of the basic right of journalists to cover the government. He characterized one reporter as “very nasty” and dismissed another reporter for asking “a stupid question”.

But Trump’s authoritarian tactics and his hostility towards the mainstream media—dismissing negative stories as “fake news” – are increasingly influencing other right wing and dictatorial leaders, including in the Philippines, Hungary, Egypt, Myanmar, Turkey, China, Poland and Syria, who are following in his footsteps.

Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times UN Bureau Chief, told IPS “it isn’t only authoritarian regimes that may be taking heart from Trump — in fact it may be the other way around.”

She said Trump admires their strong-man behavior. And more democracies are also putting journalists and intellectuals in many fields into harm’s way, she added.

Maria Ressa is right now under extreme pressure and legal threats in the Philippines, and in India, which prides itself on its democratic credentials, journalists and academics have been threatened, assaulted and in some cases killed by extreme Hindu nationalist mobs spawned in a way very similar to Trump’s unleashing of white supremacists.

Among the victims killed in India was Gauri Lankesh, an internationally known journalist who had been critical of the Hindu nationalists, said Crossette, who was a former New York Times chief correspondent for South and Southeast Asia.

CNN, which has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for the suspension of Acosta’s press credentials, said “if left unchallenged, the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers elected officials.”

In a statement released November 13, CNN demanded the return of Acosta’s credentials arguing that “the wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acosta’s First Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.”

Zeke Johnson, senior director of programs at Amnesty International USA, told IPS Trump’s contempt for the press and his decision to bar certain reporters from the White House not only is an affront to the right to free speech, and anathema to good governance, but also sends a dangerous signal to other leaders.

“We have seen governments around the world try to silence journalists just for reporting on uncomfortable truths or expressing a difference of opinion from the ruling power,” he pointed out.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been imprisoned in Myanmar for nearly a year for exposing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya.

Johnson said President Erdogan of Turkey has a history of shutting down outlets and imprisoning journalists. Trump’s actions are especially galling coming so recently after the horrifying disappearance and murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“While Khashoggi’s case may be an extreme example of the dangers reporters face, Trump’s insistence that reporters show him deference or face consequences only emboldens those who see a free press as a threat to authoritarian rule.”

Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said journalists should be able to do their job without fear that a tough series of questions will provoke retaliation.

“The White House should immediately reinstate Jim Acosta’s press pass, and refrain from punishing reporters by revoking their access–that’s not how a free press works.”

“In the current climate, we hope President Trump will stop insulting and denigrating reporters and media outlets, it’s making journalists feel unsafe,” added Radsch.

Meanwhile, in a New York Times piece last week, Megan Specia pointed out how Trump’s words have justified aggressive and undemocratic actions by several political leaders worldwide.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked “fake news” to denounce his critics. So has Poland’s right wing government.

Responding to an Amnesty International report on thousands of deaths in Syrian prisons, President Bashar al-Assad was quoted as saying: “You can forge anything these days. We are living in a fake news era.”

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Trump’s Anti-Media Rhetoric Resonates Worldwide appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us | George Monbiot

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Climate breakdown could be rapid and unpredictable. We can no longer tinker around the edges and hope minor changes will avert collapse

It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

Continue reading…

Canada registers sixfold increase in US citizens seeking asylum in 2017

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Americans were the third largest group seeking asylum, spurred by fears they would be deported by the Trump administration

Tiroude and Gislyne are Haitians by birth and migrants by necessity.

The couple’s 18-month-old daughter, however, was born in Fort Lauderdale, and – as an American by birth – she is part of a growing number of US citizens seeking refuge in Canada.

Continue reading…

Cuba to pull doctors out of Brazil after President-elect Bolsonaro comments

They’ve elected a fascist fool!

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  • Bolsonaro demands contract changes and questions training
  • 11,420 Cuban doctors work in poor and remote parts of Brazil

Cuba has announced it will withdraw thousands of its doctors from Brazil after the South American nation’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro questioned their training and demanded changes to their contracts.

Related: How dangerous is Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president? – podcast

Continue reading…

Hamas continues to collect the ​victory

“There is a disaster in the Palestinians called leadership…..

No wonder Hamas continues to rise with victories. …

of course, there is no need to mention the Arab countries who were rushing secretly and publicly in defense of Israel”

نادية حرحش

Israel announces a seize fire

Lieberman, the war minister, resigns

Parallel,

Israelis in Sderot settlement and Ashkelon take the streets in protest for the seize fire. Who would imagine that the poor Israelis suffering from Hamas rockets do not want a seize fire for their safety!

Some Palestinians, of course, don’t want Hamas to take the grip of any victory in this situation, it is either a scheme between Israel and Saudi Arabia to allow Saudi Arabia to continue its massacres in Yemen!!!!! or it is Hamas hideous plans to seize a moment of some gains for future negotiations with Israel!!!!!

Yes, I know this is what sounds like baloney.

As a Palestinian, who believes in resistance as the only way to claim rights in a difficult situation as vicious as occupation, I look into what Hamas did as a package of different victories. First and most importantly is regaining the trust…

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UPS Vote No Activists Take Over Big Dallas Local


November 14, 2018 / Alexandra Bradbury
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Reformers in the Teamsters have the wind at their backs. A rank-and-file slate swept to victory November 10 at Local 767 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, the largest UPS local in the South.

The 767 Teamsters United for Change won an outright majority in a four-way race. President-elect Brian “Smokewagon” Perrier, a 29-year UPS driver, got nearly twice as many votes as the incumbent president.

Cartoon: What Racism Is(n’t) About


If you like these cartoons, please help me make more by supporting my Patreon! A $1 pledge really helps.


This comic strip deals with the tendency of white people to argue that their personal purity of heart is the essential subject to focus on when the subject is racism.

And this is a tendency I entirely understand! I’m white; I know that emotional/denial place is so easy to jump to. Plus, we’re all humans, and being human tends to overlap a lot with being self-centered.

But it’s a knee-jerk reaction we should resist. And maybe cartoons like this one will help whites like me remember to resist.

****

A bit of trivia about the making of this cartoon: As I think I’ve mentioned, I recently turned fifty. And, technically, I have been working on this cartoon since my thirties.

You see, I write more cartoons than I complete. Very often, when I write a cartoon, I’ll decide that it’s not good enough to draw – but there’s still a seed of an idea there that I believe can work. In those cases, I’ll leave the cartoon lying around in a folder labeled “unfinished.” Every now and then, I browse old ideas in that folder, in case my brain comes up with a way to make any of them work.

So, in September of 2008 (so I was 39 and 11 months old), I made this layout for a cartoon. (I think I must have been in a hurry – you can see that I just cut and paste the same minimalistic lollypop-stickfigures from panel to panel).

I remember, when I wrote this strip, I thought “that” was a pretty devastating final line.

But when I looked at it again, a few days or weeks later, it just seemed too obscure to me, and might leave some readers scratching their heads. Would the theme – that the white character was entirely self-focused, ignoring what’s going on with the Black character – come through?

Plus, the comic strip was so static.

So it just sat in my “unfinished” file for an entire decade. I was too fond of the idea to throw it out, but never had an idea for fixing it.

Until I did.

The idea – “the comic strip starts out entirely focused on the white character, a metaphor for his self-involvement, and the view gradually widens until the reader can see what he’s ignoring” – is pretty simple. But I like it, and I’m pleased I waited a decade for it rather than drawing my original conception for the cartoon.

(Of course, now that I’ve said that, someone will tell me they think the original version was better. That’s always how it goes. :-p )


Transcript of Cartoon

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1

A middle-aged white man, balding, with glasses, a van dyke beard and a v-neck long-sleeved tee, is speaking. He’s in a park, with trees and grass. He holds one palm out in an “explaining” gesture. This is a fairly close shot, mainly showing his head and shoulders.

He is facing towards the left. An unseen person off-panel, on the right, responds to him.

WHITE PERSON: When you say I’ve benefited from racism, it hurts my feelings.

OFF-PANEL PERSON: Racism isn’t about your feelings.

PANEL 2

The camera backs up a bit, but the other speaker is still off-panel. The white guy closes his eyes and puts one hand over his heart, as if he’s swearing a vow.

WHITE PERSON: In my heart, I don’t even see color!

OFF-PANEL PERSON: Racism isn’t about what’s in your heart.

PANEL 3

The camera has backed up enough so we’re seeing the white guy from his waist up. We can also see, just barely in panel, the head of the other speaker, who is a Black man. They seem to be walking The white man is holding up a forefinger to make a point, smiling, and looking ahead rather than looking at the Black man. The Black man looks stressed and is sweating.

WHITE PERSON: My intentions are good!

BLACK PERSON: Racism isn’t about your intentions.

PANEL 4

The camera has backed away enough so we can see both characters from head to toe. The white man, still looking ahead, is making another “explaining” gesture as he walks. The Black man is bent over double as he walks, due to the enormous boulder he’s straining to carry on his back.

WHITE PERSON: Well, if it’s not about my feelings, my heart, or my intentions, then what’s left?

BLACK PERSON: Do you even hear yourself?

Why You Should Actually Be Terrified Right Now

Why You Should Actually Be Terrified Right Now:

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raedusoleil:

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.

The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae Ngai, during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.

There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.

First, they came for the Hispanics and I did nothing.

Then they came for (fill in the blanks) and I did nothing.

Then, when they came for me, there was no one to do nothing.

GUYS.

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY.

IT WILL HAUNT NOT ONLY YOU BUT YOUR CHILDRENS CHILDREN.

DONT BE SILENT. PASS THIS AROUND. Let everyone know it’s happening!

Never again.