Some stories you might have missed..

Tags: 

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

> Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
> Article II
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed
> with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
> religious group, as such:
> a. Killing members of the group;
> b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
> bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camps-19...

> The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or
> confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of
> arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/25/18715725/children-bord...

> In practice, they’re being held for days, sometimes weeks, in facilities
> without enough food or toothbrushes — going days without showering,
> overcrowded and undercared for.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/inside-a-texas-building-where-the...

> Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or
> family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions
> at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed
> more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order
> to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates
> that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of
> Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers
> found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children
> were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of one another because
> of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility
> for weeks.

https://apnews.com/article/46da2dbe04f54adbb875cfbc06bbc615

> A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few
> girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe
> the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn
> that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and
> sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol
> station.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/holocaust-survivor-yes-the-border-detentio...

> [Holocaust survivor] Bloch said the conditions reported at the border camps
> sound painfully similar to her own. “It’s the same conditions I lived through
> —we never had soap, but we had water, cold water, and not necessarily a
> shower. No toilet paper. It was inhuman.”

https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1...

> Ms. Wooten also stated that detained women expressed to her that they didn’t
> fully understand why they had to get a hysterectomy. She said: “I’ve had
> several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had
> hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.” And
> if the immigrants do understand what they’re getting done, “some of them a
> lot of times won’t even go, they say they’ll wait to get back to their
> country to go to the doctor.”

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/20/621489166/family-separation-is-trumps-imm...

> "[T]his implementation of the court decision that says children need to be
> separated from their parents because their parent is being prosecuted — that
> has never happened before in the past from the time that this settlement took
> place through other administrations, both Democratic and Republican
> administrations," Meissner said.

That covers the genocide bits.

https://apnews.com/article/0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67

> The 15,000-word Times report contradicts Trump’s portrayal of himself as
> a self-made billionaire who started with just a $1 million loan from his
> father.
> The Times says Trump and his father, Fred, avoided gift and inheritance
> taxes by setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax
> authorities.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

> Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the
> presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He
> had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely
> because he reported losing much more money than he made.
[..]
> The records show that the pageant was the most profitable Miss Universe
> during Mr. Trump’s time as co-owner, and that it generated a personal payday
> of $2.3 million — made possible, at least in part, by the Agalarov family,
> who would later help set up the infamous 2016 meeting between Trump campaign
> officials seeking “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton and a Russian lawyer connected to
> the Kremlin.

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/meet-the-many-small-business-owners...

> Meet the (Many) Small Business Owners Stiffed by Donald Trump

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-foundation-shutting-down-amid-allegat...

> President Donald Trump has agreed to shut down his family's embattled
> Trump Foundation, following investigators' allegations the charity misused
> funds by directing them to Mr. Trump or his businesses. The attorney
> general alleged the foundation engaged in a "a shocking pattern of
> illegality."

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/how-everyone-is-quietly-lining-t...

> “One of the Most Significant Potential Conflicts of Interest in American
> History”: How Everyone From Foreign Governments to Federal Contractors
> Is Quietly Lining Trump’s Pockets

> MAGA is a religious cult that worships a fake past, a mythology of America
> that never existed and was only used as a weapon for political and economic
> power.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/24/nearly...

> Nearly 500 generals, admirals and former national security officials from
> both parties [..] blasted President Donald Trump as "not equal" to the
> challenges of the job

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/25/trump-hhs-ads-coronavirus-421957

> Caputo's team in June requisitioned $300 million that Congress had previously
> appropriated to the CDC. According to three people with knowledge of the
> deliberations, the request was abrupt and HHS offered minimal detail to CDC
> officials on how the money would be spent for the upcoming campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/22/covid-funds-pentagon/

> Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine
> parts and body armor

> Most people who know the name Sophie Scholl know she was a 21 year old German
> student activist who was executed by the Nazis for distributing anti-Nazi
> pamphlets on her college campus. But people don’t talk about what happened
> leading up to her execution, or what happened after.
> No one talks about this janitor, Jakob Schmid. He got a cash reward and a
> promotion for turning in Sophie and Hans. The University of Munich threw him
> a celebration. Hundreds of students attended and cheered for him. He thanked
> them with a Nazi salute.
> After the war, Jakob Schmid was arrested and put on a trial of his own. He
> said he only turned the Scholls in because distributing pamphlets was against
> university policy - it wasn’t because of the content of the pamphlets.
> When you think of Nazis, you probably think of uniformed officers. But the
> Nazis were a political party of everyday people. So also think of a janitor
> tsk-tsking that someone wasn’t protesting “the right way.” A student at
> rally applauding him. A judge towing the party line.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a32948548/what-is-white-privilege/

> If you are white, you might be surprised that your "normal" way of life
> is a privilege that Black people don't get to enjoy.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/09/23/patriot-coalition-far-right-c...

> The leaked chat logs appear to reveal that some members of the Patriot
> Coalition have taken part in multiple violent rallies throughout the summer,
[..]
> A user identified as Paige summed up the general feelings of the group in a
> post made ahead of a what turned out to be a bloody ‘Back the Blue’ rally on
> August 22nd in Portland when she wrote: “I’m waiting for the presidential go
> to start open firing.”

https://www.justsecurity.org/70507/white-supremacist-infiltration-of-us-...

> An FBI intelligence assessment—titled “White Supremacist Infiltration of
> Law Enforcement” and published in 2006 during the administration of
> President George W. Bush—raised alarm over white supremacist groups’
> interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law
> enforcement personnel.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-terror-threa...

> White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States,
> according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/03/how-white-supremacy-i...

> How white supremacy infected Christianity and the Republican Party

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/03/18/executive-summary-2019-year-hate

> The number of white nationalist groups rose for the second straight year,
> a 55 percent increase since 2017, when Trump’s campaign energized white
> nationalists

https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.go...

> In 2016, internal analysis at Facebook found 64% of all extremist group
> joins were due to their own recommendation tools.
[..]
> We didn’t simply create something useful and fun. We took a page from Big
> Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-race-record/2020/...

> After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews
> “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic
> allegiance that exceeds other loyalties

https://truthout.org/articles/conspiracy-theories-by-cops-fuel-far-right...

> it is clear the vast majority of the violence is coming from either the
> police or right-wing vigilantes, not the protesters themselves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-p...

> Who caused the violence at protests? It wasn’t antifa.

https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-media-social-media-kentuck...

> Michael Johnson and others were certain that school buses full of radical
> left-wing extremists from big cities were coming to Leitchfield, Kentucky,
> where about 50 of their neighbors had gathered on the courthouse lawn to
> chant, “Black lives matter!” and wave signs in solidarity with the
> nation’s surging protest movement.
[..]
> The buses didn’t show, but that didn’t mean everyone accepted it was just
> a baseless rumor.
[..]
> “That’s a rumor,” the sheriff said. “People are pretty detailed when they
> make up stories.”

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article245926935.html

> Baptist preacher Jesse Hursey spoke at an Alamance County Trump rally at
> Ace Speedway on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020. Afterwards, he joined a parade,
> videos from which show Hursey yelling "white power" from his truck near
> Elon University

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/real-stakes-fight-over...

> A teacher does not need to lie about the Confederacy being founded on the
> principles of intergenerational torture and human bondage when the
> Confederates said as much in their declarations of secession.
[..]
> But the truth is that our country is not made worse by young people
> reckoning fully with the legacy of slavery. Such reckoning better prepares
> them to make sense of how our country has come to be, and how to build
> systems and institutions predicated on justice rather than oppression.
> Nothing is more patriotic than that.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-police-union-power-helped-i...

> How Police Unions Enable and Conceal Abuses of Power

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/history/perspective--the-origins-of...

> The origins of policing in America

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/09/the-cop-who-quit-inste...

> “We want you to police in here, and we’re going to give you a section
> of Bedford Pines to actually have office space. And I want you to lock
> up as many people as possible so we can make these apartments vacant
> and we can knock ’em down.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-city-budget-police-defunding/

> unrelenting demand from protesters in city after city: Defund the police.
> But after months of demonstrations, that rallying cry hasn’t translated
> into reality.

https://www.theroot.com/god-is-white-1844686619

> They are not Christians. They aren’t even conservatives. They are just
> the modern incarnation of a centuries-old American lie that power and
> privilege are gifts from God.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racial-anxiety-is...

> Two new studies find racial anxiety is the biggest driver of support
> for Trump

More reading:
https://www.salon.com/2020/06/29/trumps-white-power-tweet-our-president-...
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/15/trumps-darkness-white-supremacy-christi...

https://www.dictionary.com/e/what-is-stochastic-terrorism/

> Here’s the idea behind stochastic terrorism:
> * A leader or organization uses rhetoric in the mass media against a
> group of people.
> * This rhetoric, while hostile or hateful, doesn’t explicitly tell someone
> to carry out an act of violence against that group, but a person,
> feeling threatened, is motivated to do so as a result.
> * That individual act of political violence can’t be predicted as such,
> but that violence will happen is much more probable thanks to the
> rhetoric.
> * This rhetoric is thus called stochastic terrorism because of the way it
> incites random violence.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/08/10/trump-denies-secret-service-spoke...

> “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the
> Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-incitement-violence/

> “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will”
> “If you do (hurt him), I’ll defend you in court, don’t worry about it”
> “Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal
> fees”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-ral...

> Such is the intimacy of Trumpism: innuendo and intimation, the wink and
> the revelation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-transition-crisis...

> Trump escalated his months-long campaign to undermine the legitimacy of
> the Nov. 3 election with comments Wednesday that, taken together and at
> face value, pose his most substantial threat yet to the nation’s history
> of free and fair elections.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations-idUSKCN1VV09J

> States across the American South have closed nearly 1,200 polling places
> since the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting-discrimination law in
> 2013

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-strikes...

> “The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision”
> and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,”

https://www.gregpalast.com/palast-offer-lawsuit-threat-to-georgia-sos-ra...

> The Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, admitted to CNN
> that they did not use a postal service licensee to check the names and
> addresses of voters on their purge list to verify that they had moved
> This means that his entire 2019 purge is illegal under the National
> Voter Registration Act, Section 8(c)(A).

https://www.ic3.gov/media/2020/200922.aspx

> Foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change
> existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media
> content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the
> electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.

Once you've read the above, listen to this podcast, especially season two:
* http://www.sceneonradio.org/

How to reply

Care to add your own 2 cents? Let me know via Twitter or my contact page.