A gulag for children: Stalin would be so envious.

Stalin’s Soviet Union was a vicious place, where at any moment the secret police could arrest you and send you off to the gulag concentration camps. Children under the age of 2 got sent with their families, while children above the age of 2 went to relatives or state-run orphanages. One thing that was *not* done was to rip children away from their families and send them to separate concentration camps just for children. Granted, the orphanages weren’t exactly cushy places. But they weren’t concentration camps. Unlike this:

This is a detention center for unaccompanied children. It is set up in an abandoned Walmart store. But this is a cushy detention center. Why, they’re given mattresses to sleep on, instead of being required to sleep on the raw concrete! That at least makes it better than the detention cages on the border:

The cages on the border are where the children are kept for one to three days before they can be shipped off to the “cushy” detention center. They’re not given food during that time, and are not given a mattress or blankets. Because it is a “temporary” holding facility, Homeland Security claims they don’t need to provide any of that.

Note that this photograph dates to 2014, during the Obama regime. Which shows that the Republican lie of Obama not being “tough on immigration” was utterly false. Obama was no friend of immigrants, just as the black community, as a whole, is no friend of immigrants, who they view as having come into America and taken “their” jobs. And so the cycle of viciousness towards our fellow man goes on, despite everything that God says:

Hell, even the Southern Baptists, who are as regressive as you can get without being a total Bircher, are rather queasy about the whole be-mean-to-immigrants thing:

God commands His people to treat immigrants with the same respect and dignity as those native born … we desire to see immigration reform include an emphasis on securing our borders and providing a pathway to legal status with appropriate restitutionary measures, maintaining the priority of family unity, resulting in an efficient immigration system that honors the value and dignity of those seeking a better life for themselves and their families … any form of nativism, mistreatment, or exploitation is inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is especially hypocritical is people like Vice President Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions who claim to be Christian advocating treating immigrants badly, even to the point of wanting to send migrant kids to tent cities in the fierce Texas summer heat, something would have made Stalin chortle with delight since he did the same thing with adults when he sent them to the frozen Siberian north. But Stalin never claimed to be Christian. I mean, if you claim to be Christian, shouldn’t you, like, obey the word of Christ? Isn’t that, like, the whole point of being Christian? But I guess their Christianity stops when they exit the churchyard door.

And so we continue treating children in ways that would make Stalin envious in their utter cruelty….

– Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

Advertisements

Read Full Post »

Of moral equivalencies

Hamas is a terrorist organization.

There, I said it. They’re a terrorist organization.

What makes them a terrorist organization? Simple: They target unarmed civilians. That is what makes them a terrorist organization.

So a friend of mine posted a photograph on her Facebook page of Razan al-Najjar, the 21 year old paramedic who was targeted and killed by an Israeli sniper from close to 300 yards away while helping people who had been injured. And an Israel defender said: “Why don’t you post Israeli victims of Hamas?” I.e., the Israeli government isn’t doing anything that Hamas doesn’t do.

So he was saying that a terrorist organization targeting civilians is exactly equivalent to the Israeli government targeting civilians so we should post photos of both?

Well, I suppose we could. But the tens of thousands of unarmed civilians killed by Israel far outnumber the hundreds of unarmed civilians killed by Hamas, so we’d mostly be posting photos of Palestinian civilian faces anyhow.

Besides, I thought the Israeli government wasn’t supposed to be a terrorist organization. Even though they’re killing unarmed civilians, unarmed medical personnel even, which is exactly what terrorist organizations do.

But this person apparently believes that because Hamas is a terrorist organization, the fact that Israel’s government is behaving like a terrorist organization is fine and dandy.

So there you have it, straight from an Israel defender: Israel’s government is a terrorist organization. Hey, he said it first — though he apparently didn’t realize what it was that he was saying!

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Read Full Post »

The job of a police officer is to deal with criminal offenses, not administrative offenses

An administrative offense is something like a OHSA violation, where you are violating rules and regulations. When you are cited for an administrative offense and are penalized with a fine or other administrative action, you appear before a hearing officer and argue your case that you should not have to pay the fine or comply with the administrative action. You are never convicted of a crime as part of this, and you never have a criminal record as a result of this.

Immigration removal of those without a valid visa, here in the United States, is an administrative action. Those who have overstayed their visas or entered without a visa appear before an administrative law judge, who then either orders them to be released, or orders them to be administratively removed. These people are not convicted of a crime as part of this administrative action, and do not have a criminal record as a result of this administrative action. Because, as I’ve previously pointed out, if it were charged as a crime, then the Constitution requires a grand jury to indict, requires providing a lawyer, and requires a jury for conviction. Thus ICE deliberately does not charge immigrants slated for deportation with any crime, because that would trigger civil rights protections that they don’t want triggered.

So anyhow: In 2016 the NYPD received 80 “administrative detainer” requests from ICE of prisoners slated for release who they claimed had criminal records. The NYPD investigated those claims, and in those cases where prisoners had a felony record, released the prisoners into ICE custody. This was done as a favor to ICE, which in turn has done favors in the past for the NYPD such as deporting a felon they really don’t want released back to the streets. It is not the job of the NYPD to spend significant resources dealing with administrative actions associated with another agency altogether and they have no obligation under the Constitution or under New York law to do so.

In 2017, however, after Trump unleashed them for an overall war on immigrants, ICE sent a whopping 1,526 detainer requests to the NYPD claiming that immigrants were felons who needed to be deported upon release — or basically one for every single immigrant slated for release. After the first few dozen didn’t pan out as being felons, the NYPD basically started waste-binning these requests. The NYPD investigated the first few, and after a few dozen proved to not have criminal records the NYPD started returning the detainer requests wholesale rubber stamped “Unable to verify criminal record.” Because really, if ICE lies to you a dozen times, why bother validating that they lied to you the other 1,500 times?!

Police officers are not immigration agents. Their job is to maintain public order and arrest people who commit crimes in order to prosecute them as criminals in a court of law. Note that undocumented immigrant are never prosecuted for being undocumented. That would give them rights, such as the right to an attorney and trial by jury. Instead, they are removed from the United States via an administrative action that requires only an administrative hearing with far fewer rights. This administrative action does not result in a criminal record for the immigrant, because it is an administrative action, not a criminal action. Requiring police officers to treat people as criminals who have never been convicted of any crime in the United States and never *will* be convicted of any crime in the United States is un-American and utterly ridiculous, and attempting to use police officers in order to enforce administrative actions rather than to enforce criminal law is a complete and total waste of their resources.

In short, it is not surprising to me that the NYPD started wholesale refusing these detainer requests. Once you want them to be enforcing administrative actions rather than enforcing criminal law, you’re no longer an ally — you’re the enemy. Because their sole reason for existing is to enforce criminal law. End of story. Asking them to do something outside their reason for existing is okay for a few times a year as a favor, but if you’re demanding massive use of their resources that they should be using to chase and prosecute criminals, you are their enemy.

– Badtux the Law Penguin

Read Full Post »

I’m back, and the world still sucks

So:

Donald Trump insults Navajo Nation by holding a ceremony underneath the portrait of Indian-killer Andrew Jackson and referring to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas”. As others have pointed out, Pocahontas was a young Native American girl who was kidnapped, held hostage in order to blackmail her father, and sexually assaulted and forced into marriage with an older man. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing you really want to bring up in a gathering of Navajo elders — a young girl who was raped by an older white man who basically used her as his property? Really?

So yeah, Donald Trump fucking sucks. And water is wet. What next?

Well: Alex Jones and his ilk of conspiracy theorists continue their reign of terror against survivors of mass shootings by siccing their hoards of brainwashed sycophants upon any who dare speak out rather than cower in terror. The relatives of those killed in mass shootings, and survivors of mass shootings, are systematically hunted and terrorized by these right wing terrorist bastards. These are some fucking sick despicable deplorable scumbags who in a better world would be buried under so many lawsuits for defamation and terrorist threats that they would be reduced to ranting to an audience of three hobos under a bridge somewhere, one of whom is busy talking to his imaginary friend, the other who is more interested in petting his dog than in listening to the scumbag, and the third of whom is busy cooking a pigeon on a stick over a coffee can stove and has no time for Alex Jone’s insane rants. Sadly, that world is not our world, where people like Alex Jones become rich and famous by terrorizing people who have already been terrorized by jerkwads bearing guns.

And finally: Volunteer physician assistants hiking the woods and creek beds are the only health care that homeless people get in much of the country. The greatest nation on Earth. SNRK!

– Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

Read Full Post »

Happy Veterans Day from the veterans who have been deported

No, this is not a joke. It is estimated that there are thousands of veterans who have been deported. They qualify for benefits but can’t get them because they’re not allowed back in the United States. They fought for this country but have been banished to Mexico or other countries because they were not U.S. citizens.

Wishing a Happy Veterans Day to veterans who have been deported is like wishing Merry Christmas to a rape victim that was just raped. It ought to raise some eyebrows. Alas, it doesn’t, because they’re just unseemly brown people, after all.

SIGH.

– Badtux the Celebrating Veterans Penguin

Read Full Post »

More right wing bullshit from MAGAts about roads and hospital ships

“The roads are all open!”

Not according to the latest FEMA map as of September 28. PR-52 is open between San Juan (the port) and Salinas (on the opposite coast) as well as PR-53 towards Guayama. Roads to the east or west are largely closed due to flooding, mud slides, washed out bridges, or the road simply sliding off the side of the mountain. Most roads that can be cleared by hand labor have been cleared by the locals without any FEMA help, but hand labor isn’t going to make much of a dent in a mud slide that has buried a road under hundreds of feet of mud, and can’t rebuild a bridge.

So who should I believe — FEMA, which is actually on the ground, or some random right-wing blogger in his mommy’s basement?

“There is a hospital ship offshore, I can see it in the video!”

Perhaps they’re seeing one of the cruise ships that have volunteered to help. That’s not a hospital ship, though, unless it is some other navy’s hospital ship, because the USNS Comfort left Norfolk, VA two days ago and will arrive off of Puerto Rico tomorrow night at the earliest, but more likely on Tuesday. San Clemente class oil tankers are driven by steam turbines and have a top speed of 16.5 knots, that’s 19mph, and it is 1400 miles from Norfolk to Puerto Rico. That’s 73 hours if they were cruising at top speed, or 3 days. Thus why they’re not going to arrive in Puerto Rico until tomorrow at the earliest, and why anybody who claims there’s already a U.S. hospital ship offshore off of Puerto Rico is full of shit.

– Badtux the Fact-based Penguin

Read Full Post »

Right wing creates a bogus “strike” by Puerto Rican truck drivers out of thin air and bad Spanish translations

So, across my tweetstream came a tweet by a deplorable (she even says she’s a deplorable) saying that the reason Puerto Rican relief supplies are piling up in the ports is because there’s a strike by the Teamster’s Union.

Nevermind that the Teamsters and AFL-CIO are mobilizing to send truck drivers to help with Puerto Rican relief.

Nevermind that Puerto Rico’s governor says they can only reach 20% of the truck drivers, the rest cannot be reached to call them in to work. Perhaps their homes washed away and they’re in shelters?

Nevermind that the Teamsters themselves say there no strike and that they’re assisting their Puerto Rican subsidiary with everything they can, given that most of their Puerto Rican drivers are now homeless living in shelters with no phone service and no easy way to locate them.

No, the problem is unions, because, well, because they want it to be unions, I guess. This all appears to be based upon one video on YouTube that is on Univision and in Spanish. In the video a Teamsters official is apparently saying (in Spanish) something about how he has trucks to move the supplies but the port won’t release them. He also claims (in Spanish) that FEMA is hoarding diesel fuel and won’t release it to truckers. He also says that, despite all this, he did manage to get seven trucks loaded with fuel out of the port to get fuel to gas stations. This video was shared by a Spanish-speaking Trump supporter in Miami who then posted a snarky comment about how apparently the truckers were on strike until the red tape gets cleared up to their satisfaction. Despite the fact that the same FEMA red tape is preventing doctors from receiving medical supplies even if they show up at the port where the supplies are available for distribution.

From there, it spread around the right wing blogosphere despite the fact that none of the bloggers spreading this story, other than the original blogger, speak Spanish and none of them have the slightest idea what the person in the video is saying. They are apparently relying on a translation by that Miami Trump supporter (who appears to be one of the Cubanos, i.e., one of the right-wing anti-Communist Republicans). Said translation appears to be, from my reading of the Spanish, quite incomplete and takes things out of context in multiple places. Granted, I’m not a native Spanish speaker, I can read a little Spanish but I’m hopeless if you try to hold a conversation with me. But I can turn on the closed captioning on the videos and read the Spanish that’s coming out, and it does appear that the Miami Trump supporter is taking some statements out of context in order to paint a deceptive picture of what’s being said by the clearly angry Teamsters official.

So what’s happening in Puerto Rico? Well: I don’t know, actually. What I do know is that a right-wing Trump supporter supplying a misleading translation of a Univision video isn’t sufficient for me to assume that truck drivers are refusing to move cargo, given no other supporting evidence. I would want to see some reporting on the ground by reporters who talk to actual officials that are willing to say this. Like the governor. He’s a centrist who has had no trouble signing anti-union legislation in the recent past, so I’d think that he would come out swinging against the union if the union was striking. But he hasn’t. He’s implied instead that the truck drivers who aren’t showing up are simply unreachable because of the lack of phone service and possibly because their homes got washed away and they’re in a shelter. I somehow suspect that if he thought the drivers were malingering, he would have come out hard against them. But maybe that’s just me being reasonable…

– Badtux the “Some people jump to conclusions, others leap whole heartedly with no compunctions” Penguin

Read Full Post »