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Wednesday 20 June 2018

Jorge Ramos: A Prophecy ("Trumplandia, a twisted utopia of walls and hate") | Ed Sanders: Broken Glory: Who Programmed Polka-Dot? | Stephen Radcliffe: "light coming into fog..."

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#India A pair of lesser whistling ducks search for food in polluted river Daya during a hot afternoon on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar: Photo @Asitkumar_AFP #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 19 June 2018


 #Russia Women eat in a neighbourhood in Ekaterinburg, one of the host cities for the #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 19 June 2018

Untitled | by xuhin 
Untitled [Russia]: photo by Ksenia Tsykunova, 16 June 2015
Untitled | by Bazzerio


L1330758-paris2018 | by Emil Gataullin

L1330758-paris 2018: photo by Emil Gataullin, 19 June 2018

DSCF8640 | by Pierre Wayser

... | by Fermin Guzman


#US #Mexico Trump's temporary detention centre for illegal underage immigrants in Tornillo, Texas #AFPphoto by @HerikaMartinez7: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


Inside a tent city for immigrant children in Texas, many of whom have been separated from their parents under a new "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration: Photo Mike Blake: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 19 June 2018


#US #Mexico Trump's temporary detention centre for illegal underage immigrants in Tornillo, Texas #AFPphoto by @HerikaMartinez7: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


#US #Mexico Trump's temporary detention centre for illegal underage immigrants in Tornillo, Texas #AFPphoto by @HerikaMartinez7: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


#US #Mexico Trump's temporary detention centre for illegal underage immigrants in Tornillo, Texas #AFPphoto by @HerikaMartinez7: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018

Mister @realDonaldTrump it’s 4 PM est and a 10-year-old with Down syndrome is still at a detention center in McAllen, Texas, without her mother (as reported by the Mexican Foreign Minister). This is urgent. When are you going to do something about it?: tweet via Jorge RAMOS @jorgeramosnews, 19 July 2018

Son las 4 de la tarde, hora de Washington, y el presidente Trump aún no ha reunido con su madre a una niña de 10 años, con síndrome de Down, detenida en un centro de detención en McAllen, Texas, según reportó el gobierno mexicano. Así le paga Trump a @EPN la invitación a Los Pinos.: tweet via Jorge RAMOS @jorgeramosnews, 19 July 2018

Jorge Ramos: Trumplandia: A twisted utopia of walls and hate

. Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, asks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a question about his immigration proposal during a news conference, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos was later taken from the room. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, asks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a question about his immigration proposal during a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos was later taken from the room.
: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015


. A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
   
A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, from a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal.: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015
Trumplandia: El horror: Jorge Ramos Avalos, Univision, 16 Agosto 2015  
No human being is "illegal" / Ningún ser humano es "ilegal": tweet via JORGE RAMOS @jorgeramosnews, 26 August 2015

Vamos a imaginarnos el país que quisiera Donald Trump. Trumplandia tendría un gran muro de 1,954 millas en la frontera con México. En una gigantesca operación de limpieza migratoria deportaría a más de 11 millones de indocumentados. Sus hijos nacidos en Estados Unidos no tendrían pasaporte ni país y, eventualmente, también serían deportados. Así, y solo así, Estados Unidos volvería a ser una gran nación.

Esa es la utopía que Donald Trump le está vendiendo a los norteamericanos. Pero esa utopía es una mentira. Los indocumentados no son responsables de los principales problemas del país. Lo que Trump propone es imposible de lograr. Trumplandia sería como una muy mala y tenebrosa película de ciencia ficción.


Para que Trumplandia se quedara sin indocumentados primero tendría que vivir el terror. Imagínense el horror de detener en casas, trabajos y escuelas a millones de hombres, mujeres y niños. Para lograr eso a corto plazo sería necesario usar al ejército, a la policía y a todos los agentes del servicio de inmigración. Las cortes quedarían paralizadas, desbordadas y habría violaciones masivas a los derechos humanos.
 

Tras las brutales redadas, sería necesario detener en estadios o en enormes lugares públicos a los indocumentados para luego ser deportados en autobuses –- a México -- y en aviones al resto del mundo. ¿El costo? Unos $137,000 millones de dólares, es decir, $12,500 dólares por inmigrante, según un cálculo de ICE. Los $10,000 millones de dólares que Trump dice tener no alcanzarían ni siquiera para deportar a un millón de personas.

Si Trumplandia cambiara la Enmienda 14 de la constitución y le quitara la ciudadanía a los hijos de indocumentados nacidos en Estados Unidos, primero tendría que deportar a 4.5 millones de esos niños que ya viven en el país. Pero ¿a qué país? Si el papá es de México y la mamá de Honduras ¿a dónde se envía un niño sin patria y sin pasaporte?
¿Qué pasaría con las madres indocumentadas después de dar a luz y con sus bebés? Sería patético meterse en el terrible e inhumano negocio de deportar bebés, niños y estudiantes.

El problema de Trumplandia, claramente, es con los mexicanos, no con los canadienses. Por eso Trump construiría un muro para separar a Estados Unidos de México. Pero, en cambio, no tocaría la frontera más grande del mundo, la que comparte por 5,525 millas con Canadá.

Construir muros es un mal negocio: cuestan mucho y no sirven. Cada milla cuesta, al menos, $16 millones de dólares (según reportó el NYT). De las 1,954 millas de frontera, ya hay muros, bardas y vallas en 670 millas. Pero en 1,284 millas no hay nada. Poner ahí un muro costaría, al menos, $20 mil millones de dólares. La fortuna de Trump alcanzaría solo para la mitad. 

Pero construir ese muro sería una increíble pérdida de tiempo y dinero. Casi 40 por ciento de los indocumentados que entra a Estados Unidos lo hace por avión y, simplemente, se queda más allá del límite de sus visas. Eso no lo detiene ningún muro. Además, el muro es innecesario. La frontera sur está más segura que nunca -el número de indocumentados bajó de 12.2 millones en 2007 a 11.3 en el 2014- y tiene más de 20,000 agentes patrullándola. De hecho ya en el 2013 entraron a Estados Unidos más inmigrantes de China (147,000) que de México (125,000), según reportó el WSJ. ¿Qué piensa hacer Trump al respecto: construir otra muralla china?

Trump se equivoca. México no es parte de ninguna conspiración para enviar criminales y violadores a Estados Unidos. De hecho, su gobierno está bastante ocupado lidiando con sus propios problemas como el escape de El Chapo, la narcoviolencia, varios casos de corrupción y la acelerada devaluación del peso. Y es importante aclararlo: la mayor parte de los inmigrantes que vienen de México no son delincuentes. Todos los estudios coinciden en que los niveles de criminalidad entre los inmigrantes son menores que entre los nacidos en Estados Unidos. Punto.

Trumplandia –- esa utopía llena de muros y de odio contra los inmigrantes -- no es el Estados Unidos que yo conozco. Trumplandia sería el reino de la intolerancia, la xenofobia y la división. 

Las grandes naciones se definen, no por la manera en que tratan a los ricos y a los poderosos, sino por la forma en que cuidan de los más vulnerables. Hoy, en Estados Unidos, los indocumentados y sus hijos son los más vulnerables. Y Trump decidió ir contra ellos.

Trumplandia es el horror.


. A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) 
  
A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal.: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015

Jorge Ramos: Welcome to Trumpland, Fusion, 26 August 2015

(NOTE: This article was written before Ramos' encounter with Donald Trump in Iowa on Tuesday.)

Let’s imagine for a moment the kind of country that Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential hopeful, wants America to become if he’s elected.
“Trumpland” would feature a 1,954-mile-long wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, to be constructed after the deportation of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. Of course, Trump would ensure that the U.S.-born children of these immigrants lose their right to American citizenship, so they’d be deported as well. As Trump sees it, with the border wall up and the immigrants out, the U.S. could be a great nation again.

Obviously, Trump believes that immigrants from Latin America are to blame for many of the country’s woes, and he’s trying to sell voters on his utopian vision. 
But the truth is that Trump’s vision is nonsense, better suited as the plot of a creepy sci-fi movie than as a political platform.
 
Undocumented immigrants are not responsible for the country’s major problems. Moreover, the massive deportations that Trump proposes would be impossible to achieve. Just consider the logistics.

For Trumpland to be free of undocumented immigrants, terror would necessarily reign. Imagine authorities across the country, raiding homes, workplaces and schools, violating the human rights of millions of men, women and children. President Trump would have to send soldiers, police officers and every agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to round up immigrants. After these brutal raids, the undocumented would need to be held in stadiums or other giant facilities while they wait to be put on buses or planes back to their countries of origin.

And how much would this all cost? About $137 billion dollars, or $12,500 per immigrant, according to estimates from ICE.

But let’s not forget that in Trumpland, the 14th Amendment would be repealed, so the children of undocumented immigrants would be stripped of their citizenship. That means that 4.5 million children -- from newborn babies to students getting ready to attend college -- would also be leaving the country. 

What if a child’s father was from Mexico and his mother was from Honduras? 

Where do you deport a kid without a country or a passport? These are details that Trump has yet to address.
 
Once the deportations were done, it would be time to build the wall. Mexicans, not Canadians, would be the main concern in Trumpland, so construction would begin on a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico, while the northern border would stay as is. Of course, building walls is bad business because they cost a lot and don’t work as a deterrent. According to estimates recently reported in The New York Times, each mile of the border wall would cost about $16 million.
 
It’s also worth pointing out that the nation’s borders are already pretty secure. The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. dropped from 12.2 million in 2007 to 11.3 in 2014, and more than 18,000 agents are patrolling the southern border. But almost 40% of undocumented immigrants who enter the U.S. arrive by plane and then simply overstay their visas. How would a wall stop them? In fact, in 2013 more undocumented immigrants from China entered the U.S. (147,000) than from Mexico (125,000), according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. What does Trump plan to do about that?
 
The bottom line is that Trump is wrong about most border issues, including his allegations that Mexican officials are sending criminals and rapists to the United States. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are not criminals -- in fact, studies have concluded that crime rates among immigrants are lower than those among U.S.-born residents. Period.
 
In the end, Trumpland, a twisted utopia of walls and hate, looks nothing like the America I know. The billionaire real estate mogul’s grand scheme would not lead to a greater nation; it would only give birth to a realm of bigotry, xenophobia and divisiveness.
 
Trump should be reminded that great nations are defined not by how they treat the rich and powerful, but by how they care for the most vulnerable. In today’s political climate, undocumented immigrants and their children are our most vulnerable neighbors. Yet Trump wants to round them up and throw them out.
 
Trumpland: What an awful place.

Jorge Ramos, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is the host of Fusion’s new television news show, America With Jorge Ramos, and is a news anchor on the Univision Network. Originally from Mexico and now based in Florida, Ramos is the author of nine best-selling books, most recently, A Country for All: An Immigrant Manifesto.


#Italy A girl, member of the Roma community, is pictured at the "River Village" Roma camp, managed by the Onlus Isola Verde association on the outskirts of Rome. Photo @AlbertoPizzoli #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 19 June 2018

Far-right Italy minister vows 'action' to expel thousands of Roma: Matteo Salvini shrugs off critics who say policy reminiscent of fascist past: Stephanie Kirchgaesssner in Rome, The Guardian, 19 June 2018

Matteo Salvini vowed to turn “words into action” in his drive to root out and expel thousands of nomadic Roma from Italy as he shrugged off critics who said the far-right interior minister was adopting illegal policies reminiscent of the country’s fascist past.

Salvini, who has seen a jump in his approval ratings in the little under three weeks he has been in office, has called for a new census of Roma and for all non-Italian Roma to be expelled from the country.

He also praised on Twitter the demolition of an “illegal” house used by Roma in Turin - which had been ordered by a local council controlled by Salvini’s League party - even as he was condemned by rival politicians and a top Jewish leader.

Salvini’s move against the Roma comes amid a hard line against migrants into Europe, which last week saw him to refuse to allow a ship carrying more than 600 people rescued from Mediterranean from docking in Italy, forcing it to divert to Spain.

The EU was on Tuesday considering plans for processing centres in North Africa as the continent is convulsed by a row over migration. Hungary, which has one of Europe’s most avowedly anti-migrant governments, on Tuesday announced it would levy a 25% tax on groups that support immigration.

The developments in Italy have caused the first major rift between Salvini and his Five Star Movement coalition partner. Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment M5S, called Salvini’s order for the creation of a new Roma registry “unconstitutional”. A similar census pitched by the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was blocked by an Italian court.

It was also lambasted by Noemi Di Segni, the president of Italy’s union of Jewish communities, who said the proposal recalled the fascist race laws of the late 1920s and 1930s. The former centre-left prime minister Paolo Gentiloni also tweeted his disgust, saying: “Yesterday the refugees, today the Roma, tomorrow guns for all.”

At first, Salvini seemed prepared to back down from his new policy but in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon he promised to stand by his call for mass expulsions.

“I don’t quit and we’re moving forward,” he said in a tweet. He also pointed to a 2012 proposal by politicians in Milan, which included a call for a census of the Roma community in the city. That register, according to an article in Corriere della Sera, was part of a project to help families and children overcome “discrimination and the denial of dignity” and opposing “irregularity and illegality”.

Salvini said such proposals were deemed good when they came from the left, but racist when they were proposed by him. “Italians and their security comes first,” he wrote.

The row is the first sign of a potentially serious split between Salvini and Di Maio, who has been overshadowed in the first weeks of government and appears eager to rein in the far-right leader. The two parties – Salvini’s League and Di Maio’s M5S – are both populist, but the League has tended to be much more outspoken about its xenophobic and racist attitudes towards migrants and non-Italians.

Salvini’s intense focus on immigration and “foreigners” has collided with M5S’s priorities of economic fairness and labour policy.

Even if M5S tries to wrestle the agenda from Salvini, polls show that Italians are backing the interior minister, who is now polling about equal to Di Maio, at 29%, in terms of popularity.

The Roma community has long been a target of Salvini, whose rise to prominence often involved press appearances at Roma camps, which he has frequently threatened to raze. 

Few minorities are treated with as much contempt in Italy as the Roma, who face prejudice and stereotypes that are deeply ingrained in the social consciousness.

On Monday Salvini ordered the census and the removal of all non-Italian Roma – which he called an “answer to the Roma question” – and said he wanted to know “who, and how many” there were.

“Unfortunately we will have to keep the Italian Roma because we can’t expel them,” Salvini said on Telelombardia.

Salvini is on record as having praised Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader, and his new policy has sparked comparisons by the centre-left Democratic party to ethnic cleansing rules introduced in the late 1920s that also targeted the Roma.

“The interior minister does not seem to know that a census on the basis of ethnicity is not permitted by the law,” Carlo Stasolla, president of the Associazione 21 Luglio, which supports Roma rights, told the Ansa news agency.

“We also recall that Italian Roma have been present in our country for at least half a century and sometimes they are ‘more Italian’ than many of our fellow citizens.”

Francesco Palermo, a former senator in Italy and human rights expert who has defended the rights of Roma, said it would be legally impossible to pursue the creation of an ethnic-specific census and expulsions as Salvini described, because the issue had already been taken up by Italian courts in the past, where it was rejected.

But he said the bigger problem was that the reaction to Salvini was generally positive, and that his popularity was growing despite the extreme nature of his positions.

“It is very simple and very scary. Except for intellectuals and certain journalists, most people would say there is nothing wrong with this, and that is the tricky point. Salvini knows this. It is a just a means to get political support,” Palermo said.

He added that reactions would be different if Salvini was targeting other groups of people who face discrimination, but that racist views about the Roma are “innate” among many people in Italy.

Salvini’s actions were also denounced by Roberto Speranza, a lawmaker for the leftwing Freedom and Equality group, who said he had reported the interior minister for inciting racial hatred. “Enough is enough,” Speranza said.

Up to 180,000 Roma live in Italy, about 43% of whom are Italian citizens.

About 4,000 Roma live in state-sanctioned ghettos in Rome, according to a 2013 report by Amnesty International. These out-of-city ghettoes consist of pre-fabricated containers or mobile homes in fenced-off areas, often without adequate sanitation or clean drinking water. Inhabitants are excluded from other social housing despite many having lived in Italy for generations.


Matteo Salvini attends a local election rally in Cinisello Balsamo, near Milan, on Sunday.: photo by Fabrizio Radaelli/EPA, 19 June 2018


epa editor's choice 19 June 2018: #protester #Mortar #protest #Revolution #Revolt  #Daniel Ortega #Masaya #Nicaragua #epaphotos Photo epa-efe / @Ro_Sura: image via epaphotos @eaphotos, 19 June 2018 
 

#Nicaragua Anti-government demonstrators fire a hand-made mortar while taking cover behind a barricade, during clashes with riot police and members of the Sandinista youth, in Masaya. #AFPphoto by @intiocon: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018\



#Nicaragua Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitaries moved to reassert control over the city of Masaya by force Tuesday after residents of the opposition bastion declared themselves in rebellion against President Daniel Ortega. #AFPphoto by @intiocon: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


#Nicaragua Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitaries moved to reassert control over the city of Masaya by force Tuesday after residents of the opposition bastion declared themselves in rebellion against President Daniel Ortega. #AFPphoto by @intiocon: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


 #Nicaragua Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitaries moved to reassert control over the city of Masaya by force Tuesday after residents of the opposition bastion declared themselves in rebellion against President Daniel Ortega. #AFPphoto by @intiocon: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


#Nicaragua Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitaries moved to reassert control over the city of Masaya by force Tuesday after residents of the opposition bastion declared themselves in rebellion against President Daniel Ortega. #AFPphoto by @intiocon: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 June 2018


4 comments:

TC said...

"Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?"

Dion DiMucci: Abraham, Martin and John (live @Joe's Pub, 2012)

Marvin Gaye: Abraham, Martin and John

On the day and hour Bobby fell to whatever phantom hand, was it the cia, was it murican fate, I was sitting on a driftwood beam next to a propane tank 50 yards from the crest of a hill that thereupon dropt off steeply into Duxbury Reef, a promontory jutting into the north Pacific ocean, listening to the radio. Breezy day, fog blew off early, the cypresses up Nymph Road were as every other day inclined to follow their destiny, shaped long before by the prevailing ocean winds. This was exactly thirteen unpaved dirt plat blocks from and facing also toward the mountain seen from the place where Steve now dwells and, at this hour, is doubtless rising, to witness and record the epiphenomena, before I get to be a Phoenix, as the song says.

TC said...

Glen Campbell (covering Jimmy Webb): By the Time I Get To Phoenix (live)

Mose23 said...

Steve is always the guardian of beauty and I am thankful for the respite.

Trumplandia. I don't think I can bear much more of this.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Thanks Tom, just about right on target with your time there -- took that photo of window at 5:33 yesterday morning, actual "light coming into fog above top of shadowed ridge" (in the world that is, not just those words, though maybe that's "real" too, in some way). And if a "respite" from the daily onslaught of Trumplandia that floods our airwaves and screens and the lives of real people here and far away from here (El Horror, as Jorge Ramos calls it) so much the better, maybe there's some point in doing it, putting those words and photo out there in the face of all that's going on elsewhere . . . .

Steve