#i believe power is also racist /j /j but she would never be accountable for an L

[guiiay]

denji vs. the racism devil

[gracereadstoomanybooks]

answering questions I’ve been asked on TikTok✨

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QUESTION: how did you get into reading?

So, when I was in middle school (many moons ago) we had this thing called AR Testing. Basically, you read a book and take a test on it—the questions were things that happened in the book, it was really simple. If you got a good grade, you got points. The more points you earned, the more eligible you were for the reading party at the end of each semester. Me, being the nerd I am, got top of my class because I went through 8th grade level books like it was nothing. The librarian at my school brought me books from the high school to read since everything was easy for me, and alas, my addiction began. And now that I have adult money, it’s a true addiction. Also, telling my father “I’m bored” and his response being, “go read a book or something” so thanks dad.

QUESTION: what’s one book you ALWAYS recommend to people?

This one is tough because I’ve read THOUSANDS of books, but if I had to choose one, it would probably be Confess by Colleen Hoover. I fell in love with her work in high school when I first read Ugly Love, but Confess is the type of book that pulls at your heart strings, y’all. It has everything people love: humor, sexual tension, drama, love. GO BUY THE DAMN BOOK. Or honestly any book by Colleen Hoover—she’s a fucking amazing author.

QUESTION: outside of making TikToks, what do you do for a living?

I currently work at a restaurant and hate every second of it. If anyone tells you to become a server, DONT. It’s not worth the hassle, I promise you. Sure, you can make decent money but the amount of rude customers and shitty tips you receive each shift is very disheartening. If you really need a job, do anything BUT work in the food industry.

QUESTION: what’s your wattpad story about?

First question: which one? I have about 30 drafts sitting there waiting to be posted. But, I’m going to assume you’re talking about the Harry Styles fan fiction I’ve been working on for the past 4 years and haven’t had the courage to post. I’ll tell you a little about it: Elaine Aldridge is forced into a betrothal to a man she’s never met & loathes. She goes to his court and realizes things aren’t what they truly seem. And the guard her future husband sticks on her??? None other than Mr. Harry Styles. Add in some magic & deaths and you’ve got my story— The First Prince. (Honestly, that’s an extremely shitty description so if you wanna check it out go to my wattpad account)

QUESTION: how old are you?

Ahem. . . twenty-one.

QUESTION: what is your dream career?

Being a published author and having people rave about my books. That’s all. Or, an editor for a publishing company. Imagine reading all day and being paid for it🤩

QUESTION: what was your least favorite read of 2020?

I already KNOW I’m gonna get shit for this but....... the wicked king. YALL I LITERALLY COULDNT GET THROUGH IT IM SO SORRY, I STILL HAVENT FINISHED IT

QUESTION: current favorite author?

Sarah. J. Maas. I don’t know what it is about her writing style, but it’s addicting. Throne of Glass is hands down the best series I’ve ever read. A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first book I’ve EVER reread. Her stories truly suck you in and hold onto you—you get lost so easily in her writing and it’s like once you’re done with a series, nothing will compare. Or, at least that’s how I felt after finishing Kingdom of Ash. Honorable mentions: Jennifer L. Armentrout, Penelope Douglas, L.J Shen, Elle Kennedy and Kennedy Fox.

QUESTION: any recommendations/tips to give to a new reader?

I’ve always given this advice to people who want to get into reading: find what you like and start with that. If you like romance, I’ve got a list for you to choose from. Mystery? Another list. Sci-fi? I GOT YOU. Fantasy? Yes! Sports fiction? It might take me a second but I’ll find you a book. Nonfiction? I’m zero help in that category, honestly. The point of the matter is that you’re never going to enjoy a book if you aren’t interested in the underlying topics.

QUESTION: do you ever find yourself comparing your life to fictional life?

Yes. All the time. I daydream about being apart of the Inner Circle and living in Terrasen with Aelin and Rowan. I think about what it would be like to have real powers and a mate. It drives my boyfriend crazy—but he loves me anyway.

QUESTION: what are your most anticipated books of 2021?

Here’s a list:

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

The Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Gods and Monsters by Shelby Mahurin

Crescent City 2 (Untitled) by Sarah J. Maas

A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer (I just ordered this one & it arrives tomorrow)

Blessed Monsters by Emily A. Duncan

QUESTION: why did you start a Tumblr?

Honestly, I used to love tumblr when I was in grade school (way too young to be on here then but what else is new). I like having an extra space to get my questions and comments out without having to compress it into a 60 second video for TikTok to see. Tumblr is a good place to blog & post things like this.

QUESTION: what’s your favorite song right now?

I’ve listened to Carry You by Novo Amor every day for the past two months and I cry each time.

QUESTION: why write Harry Styles fan fiction?

Simple: I love Harry Styles. I’ve been a fan of him and One Direction since they were on X FACTOR. Read that again. X. Factor. I used to watch their performances on YouTube before WMYB even came out. Of course, I love all of the 1D boys but I was always a Harry gal. And I look up to him in a way—I’ve read things about people wishing they knew him personally and honestly? I would never want to meet him. I like the version of him I’ve cooked up in my brain over the past 10 years. I like the symbiotic relationship I have with his music. Fine Line is a ✨masterpiece✨. HS1 is a ✨work of art✨.

now, some topics I’ve been asked way too many times and want to finally get to:

QUESTION: political views?

the saying “anyone but trump” has been in my brain for the past four years. No, I’m not a republican. No, I’m not a democrat. I like to think of myself as a progressive (ahem, liberal) Did I vote for a democratic candidate? Yes, and I’d do it again and again until the US isn’t one of the worst countries—I’m sorry, businesses— to be apart of. I wanted Bernie but got Biden, and I’m alright with that. And my girl Kamala🥳

QUESTION: how did you feel about the BLM protests?

I went to multiple BLM protests and donated a lot of funds to BLM & other organizations. It’s 2021, people... stop being fucking RACIST. And don’t be afraid to call racist people out! Black Lives Matter, even if no one is posting about it anymore.

QUESTION: thoughts on abortion?

your body your choice, queen! not my uterus, not my problem.

QUESTION: there was a comment on an old video of yours talking about r*pe, why did you delete the comment?

I made a video when I first started my account on TikTok about reading in public and feeling “turned on” by it. Go watch it if you don’t know what I’m talking about. BUT, some ignorant male decided to comment and say “this is how girls get r*ped”. Whew. So. I deleted the comment because ....

I am a victim of sexual assault. Along with a lot of other women. 1 in 5 women have been victims of sexual assault. Talking about being r*ped isn’t funny.

No one else needed to see his comment. I reported it immediately and his account was shut down.

I never got justice for what happened to me, and the fact that some random male—who had never even met me or seen me before my video showed up on his FYP—had the nerve to comment that? Unacceptable.

this question isn’t as controversial but

QUESTION: what’s the best way to get out of a toxic relationship?

okay, let me just start off by saying that the people around you who love and support you are going to be your backbone. Leaving a toxic situation is hard, and every situation is different, but my best piece of advice to offer you is don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your loved ones are going to be there for you when you need them, even if you don’t believe they will. If you explain what’s happening, someone you know and love will drop whatever it is their doing to make sure you get out safely. good luck my babes.

now, back to our regularly scheduled program:

QUESTION: any tips on making tiktoks?

Literally none. I post what I think is funny and relatable and if anyone agrees, I’m satisfied. Even if it’s one view, it’s good enough for me. So I guess my one tip is to not base your life off of an app and followers.

QUESTION: favorite Harry Styles fanfic?

DONT MAKE ME CHOOSE. Duplicity is up there, along with Stall 1&2, and Kiwi. After? Absolutely not.

QUESTION: favorite WEBTOON?

y’all already KNOW. LORE OLYMPUS BY USEDBANDAID. Rachel is a genius and I have reread the series a million times. Hades is my soulmate and Apollo can rot in the fiery pits of the Underworld. also, if we’re talking about other webcomics, reading Walk on Water on mangadex...🤫

QUESTION: favorite movie?

Howls Moving Castle. I will be getting my “a heart is a heavy burden” tattoo very very soon.

QUESTION: I read your Elain theory on tumblr, can you explain a little more?

I thought I was pretty straightforward but I’ll say it again: she is always the “good” one and it’s too suspicious. SJM has already given one Archeron sister a happy ending, Nesta’s is obviously inevitable, but Elain? She has too many options for a happy ending. Lucien, who is her “mate”. Azriel, who is intrigued by her slightly. Her human guy—I don’t remember his name—who is disgusted that she’s not human anymore. Or, alone, planting flowers all day. BUT! My point is that she’s not truly happy. She was forced into the Cauldron just like Nesta. She was ripped away from the life she loved so dearly and didn’t want to give up. The man she was going to marry now hates her guts because she’s a High Fae. She has the perfect set up for a villain plot line and I’m all here for it.

well, that’s all I feel like doing tonight. hope you enjoyed my little q&a! be kind, and talk to you later! byeeee!

[kob131]

What do you feel about the post about Vic mignogna by ultraericthered

https://ultraericthered.tumblr.com/post/183990672385/im-sick-of-the-rangers-spamming-vics-tag-with

Let’s break this down.

Vic is absolutely guilty of inappropriate behavior, misconduct, sexual harassment, and possibly (just possibly) sexual assault towards others. This has been established by his pattern of behavior for years. Monica and the others are being entirely honest in their stories and the allegations are very likely honest as well. How this is even in question, I have no idea, but it upsets and disturbs me that there are so many who are quick to jump to Vic’s defense while simultaneously vilifying his opponents and accusers (and possibly victims).

A, He hasn’t been proven guilty of exual harassment OR assault and inapporiate behavior means nothing.

And B. yeah, no. Monica has been lying via omission for months now, refusing to give ANY details on any incidents DESPITE the fact that those details are REQUIRED to convict him. And before you say she’s scared: she’s openly threatened vic supporters with legal action. Over asking her for info. That is not the behavior of an innocent person.

Oh and C. NOTHING came to light about Vic for MONTHS. The ProJared shit started and ended in the same month.

What gives credibility to the side of Monica Rial, Jamie Marchi, Jamie McGonnigal, Marzgurl, etc. is that not only do their words and allegations line up with accounts of Vic’s skeevy behavior towards fans and women that have been going around the internet for YEARS (It’s honestly astonishing just how far back some of this goes), but how many other VAs, people actually in the industry who might’ve worked alongside Vic and would be there to witness his actions, have come out in Vic’s defense? Can’t really think of much. Meanwhile, how many have been coming out in support of the alleged victims? Quite a handful, even J. Michael Tatum, himself a victim of sexual assault in the past. Apparently, Vic being a primadona and a skeevy womanizing creeper has been an open secret in the VA industry since forever.

And of these guys:

Monica has evaded legal action and refused to give details NECESSARY to convict him

Marzgurl has sactively ENOCURAGE VIOLENCE

And Jamie has been proven to bully people into dropping Vic from cons.

As for the ‘accounts”: they’re eitehr anonyomous accounts, too old to prove...or taken out of context of the people involed.

And by the way. how many famous people probably came out and said ‘that guy’s a commie’ back during the Red Scare? People coming out to help doesn’t MEAN anything without proof. People in the wrong can still come out in droves. And if that doesn’t convince: does that mean rape victims who don’t have public support while their rapists DO are the ones in the wrong then? Same logic of ‘One party has more public support than the other, therefore they’re right.’

What’s damning on Vic’s side of things? Well not only was a thorough investigation into the sexual harassment allegations conducted during the time of the Broly movie’s production prior to Funimation’s decision to lay Vic off (something his fans don’t even seem to realize happened) -

You mean the one where they didn’t give any info and was probably a ‘cut off the controversial figure for profit’ decision?

- but Vic’s response to the whole situation has…just not been how I think an absolutely innocent man getting his career and livelihood threatened by accusation of things he absolutely never did and would never do would respond. Vic’s been pretty sincere and professional throughout this and I give him props for that, but his “defenses” against the allegations have always been along the lines of “I remember things differently” or “I didn’t realize she felt that way - I thought that thing we had was consensual and mutual.” Of course he’s not going to recall those incidents as being ones where he committed sex offenses because he did not see his actions as being such when he committed them. He fails to recognize how and why his behavior is so wrong. He doesn’t knowingly think of himself as a sex fiend and harasser when he acts that way - he really thinks he’s being nice (backed up by the allegation where he repeatedly asked his victim to “let me be sweet to you.”). But those moments were not consensual. The girls and women he touched or romanced were not comfortable with it.-

And Monica has threatened legal action and Marzgurl thretaened PHYSICAL VIOLENCE.

You wanna judge this based on public reaction? Show me where Vic threatens anyone who questions him.

What his intentions were at the time don’t matter when put next against how his victims internalized his actions and how they were made to feel -

No, intentions DO matter. That’s why ‘self defense’ and ‘murder’ are different concepts.

And on top of that, look at how Monica Rial worded her own account:

This, by contrast, is Vic’s wording of his side of things. He “got lazy.” He’s “a work in progress like everyone else.” And my personal favorite: “Voice actors are no different from you: we’re bozos. We’re all dumb humans just trying to do our best.” The emotions are sincere, but the words are unrefined and a bit try-hard in trying to paint a sympathetic image of himself.

And Monica, by your own standards, is trying to appeal to basic human empathy to trick people into believing her. Thing is, Vic is consistent in his actions. Monica has acted contradictory MANY times.

And what’s damning on the side of Vic’s fans and defenders? Well, I could not help but notice that they can be found all over Youtube, hive of the Far Right that it’s become-

Strike 1.

I also could not help but notice that whenever I clicked a video made for supporting Vic and tearing down his opposition and accusers (who, again, could very well be his victims), it was literally ALWAYS a dude speaking.

Strike 2.

It was always some man speaking in defense of this other man who he probably doesn’t even personally know in a situation he wasn’t there to experience and knows next to shit about, and demonizing “waamen” that he also doesn’t personally know. And in all of this, I have not once seen any valid reasoning for why Vic absolutely must be innocent of the allegations made against him other than “he’s a super popular, charming, beloved VA” and “he seems like such a nice guy”. It’s frankly quite terrifying that the immediate default for these people is to stand with the popular, prolific, powerful man (and I don’t want to be an SJW here, but that Vic is handsome, white, straight/cis, and Christian might be a huge part of it

Strike 3-

Not only is this gonna EMBOLDEN the assholes on Vic’s side-

But Monica’s defenders (like YOU) have focused on gender and bullshit instead of anything FACTUAL. You act like anyone whose accused of sexual assault is IMMEDIATELY guilty if the accuser is a woman and teh accused is a man. Never mind how most of these accusations come down to simple miscommunication between the parties and nevermind how if a guy tries coming to the police about being raped, it’s likely HE’LL be arrested. Let alone what happens if the woman gets pregnant and can sue for child support...even if she committed STATUTORY RAPE.

Oh, and Vic’s italian and that culture is very touchy feely. So guess what? You’re racist by your own logic.

and denounce the women who come forward to accuse him as being liars because this is exactly why women who are victimized by men of such power and popularity tend to NOT come forward with stories of their victimization immediately after it happens. Yes, anyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but that doesn’t mean the accusers should be denounced as liars and demonized for daring to mess with the man - they ought to be shown support and respect IF in the case what they say is true and they really were hurt by that man. If they’re proven liars beyond any doubt, THEN they can be given well deserved scorn. But brushing them off beforehand is Not OK. Especially if it’s with conspiracy theories about how this is some big coordinated feminist effort to tear down a great man and destroy his livelihood, or it’s a retaliation from yaoi fangirls who hate that Vic dares to be anti-yaoi and Conservative in regards to gay people.

And yet you condemn Vic before he is proven to be lying.

Sorry, either condemn yourself or be better.

These assclowns have also constantly resorted to the defense of “Oh, hugging other people and kissing them in places not on the lips totes isn’t sexual harassment”. Totally ignoring the little details of the girls getting the hugs typically being total strangers to Vic outside of being fans of his work who are thus underage girls being touched by a grown man who has absolutely no relation to them, that he might have done the same with female co-workers behind the scenes, and that he has done these things on a whim, without the recipient’s consent and without paying any mind to how it might make them feel.

Also ignoring if they give consent like that time someone tried portraying Vic touching a supposedly underage girl only to BACKFIRE as the womana spoke out in defense of the man.

This has been a consistent pattern of behavior with him,

Consistently unproven.

and allegedly, he’s justified it with saying “silence gives consent.” Like a girl or woman absolutely has to verbally say “no” or tell him outright that he’s making them feel uncomfortable for it to be considered wrong and unwarranted. Basically “a lack of a No makes it a Yes.” I can’t begin to describe how gross that is.

So Vic has to be a fucking MINDREADER or else.

Great to know, especially considering how my own condition would make this shit damn near impossible to see.

The worst part is how these IStandWithVic cultists demonize Monica Rial. A woman who, by her own admission, was a victim of rape as a teenager.

Says the man who demonizes Vic.

A woman who has shown nothing but emotional and intellectual honesty and kindness on social media, who has acknowledged that even Vic and his fans don’t deserve to be harassed and hurt, to the point of stating this:

https://twitter.com/Rialisms/status/1095156641543192576

Funny how she says this TWO DAYS LATER than your picture.

But she’s both painted as a vicious liar who’s out to destroy a good, innocent man’s life and career, and is ALWAYS being written off by these dudes as just “the VA for Bulma.” As though she’s had no other notable roles in her long career of voice acting aside from that one character (as opposed to the oh-so talented, versatile and legendary star that is Vic). As though that character has had only one English VA. As though Monica just plain doesn’t matter when put next to a fellow VA in the industry who happens to be a handsome white, straight/cis, Christian male.

Keep being a bigoted douchebag, I can hear the alt RIght cumming.

And as though Monica had any feasible reason to lie about her experiences with Vic and assassinate his character on social media.

*points at you and your blind defense of her*

the pro-Vic crowd seems to think she’s greedy or jealous or just resentful towards Vic as a person, and is out to get him so that she can get money or respect or more roles or petty revenge or whatever.

Literally change ‘vic’ to ‘monica and that’d describe you.

But if that were really the case, how does that account for the friends and family who support her claims? How does it account for the fellow VAs (Jamie Marchi, Jamie McGonnigal, J. Micahel Tatum, Josh Grelle, Justin Briner, Daman Mills) who’ve all supported her claims and have said “Yeah, Vic’s been like that forever.

‘Get social brownie points’

How does it account for the fans and congoers who have been sharing their stories of uncomfortable experiences and encounters they’ve had with Vic FOR YEARS?

‘Stories’ are not truth.

The deck is NOT stacked in Vic’s favor here, so “he’s successful, popular, funny, friendly, charming, talented and a classic VA who’s so well loved in the anime community” is NOT going to cut it as an assumption of his innocence or a defense for his character.

No, that’s the legal system that says ‘innocent until proven guilty.’

He needs to be held accountable for his misdemeanors against people who gave no consent to being touched, hugged, kissed, stalked, romanced, or squicked out by him.

And yet Monica threatening legal action and Marzgurl making THREATS OF VIOLENCE? A-Ok.

It’s a Michael Jackson type of situation - even if he’s NOT done the things he’s being accused of, that does NOT make his creepy behavior towards underage fangirls excusable or alright.

Funny thing about Micheal Jackson-

The accusations, when you actually pay attention, are complete bullshit. Events don’t line up, accounts vary wildly, facts contradict stories. And yet he STILL suffered until the day he died and BEYOND. So thanks for remindidng why, as much as I hate Yellow Flash, Hero Hei and Nick Riekta-

You idiots are the worse evil.

Tl;dr: I shall from now on be referring to this VA as “Vic Cosby Mignogna.” ‘Cause even if he’s not guilty of the heinous shit that Bill Cosby is guilty of, his case is still all too eerily similar.

#IStandWithMonica

So does that mean if I call Monica ‘Monikkka’- She’s a KKK member now?

Oh wait, you wouldn’t give two shits if the places were reversed would you? For your cry of ‘I’m not an SJW!’- You sure do sound like the fucking strawman it represents.

[theliterateape]

The Angels of Our Better Nature Are a Lesson Away

By Don Hall

I managed to avoid watching or listening to a single speech by Donald J. Trump in all four years of his presidency.

I never watched George W. Bush give a speech but clamored to hear every word spoken by Barack Obama.

On the morning of January 20, 2021 I finally watched Trump give his farewell speech as the plane was set to dispatch he and his family of plastic creatures off to Florida (really the only place I can think of fitting with its cadre of septuagenarians and shirtless idiots).

It was exactly as I thought it would be.

Did we learn anything from him or at least from the now very real possibility of him?

It turns out that 74 percent of the online conflicts on Reddit were instigated by one percent of the users. 

Out of 900,000 active police officers employed in the United States, roughly 1,000 are involved in situations that result in the death of civilians. That's O.1 percent of police who use their authority and kill others.

One percent of the population of the country is responsible for 63 percent of all violent crime.

A new paper suggests that between 5 and 20 percent of people account for most overt acts of racism.

Reframing it a second and it looks like the vast majority of people are not engaged in conflict, violence, and overt racism in the country. 

At one point as the Bar and Slots Manager in the casino, I noticed a policy that our servers could comp out almost every drink and liquor imaginable except for Red Bull. No matter how high-level the guest, Red Bull was off the menu unless they paid for it.

I never thought too much about it but one afternoon I asked the swing shift bartender why we made that exception.

"Oh. We had a manager a few years ago who was comping Red Bulls out for himself every day. The GM just decided to eliminate Red Bulls altogether after that."

"Punish everyone for the grift of one guy? That's a little shortsighted."

"Yeah. But what're you gonna do?" and she shrugged.

I put Red Bull back on the comp list. That's what I did. The assholery of one dude should not dictate the policy of the place.

Trump was one dude. One toxic, broken man with a big mouth, a pathological need to trumpet himself out of sheer low self-esteem, and the money given to him from his far more ruthless and intelligent mega-racist father.

For a host of reasons, some obviously anti-social and representing the worst among us but some logical and perhaps reactionary, seventy-five million Americans voted for him to continue his reign of incompetence for another four years. Most of that number are not Wear-a-Viking-Helmet-Shirtless-Assholes. Most are your neighbors. I don’t understand why they voted that way but to reduce them down to an image of a militia-wannabe with a Confederate flag is no better than the diminution of the #BLM movement to the picture of some asshole torching a CVS.

There are a lot of assholes out there but a lot more who are not assholes. You know what an asshole is: he's been our president for four years.

An asshole:

Shouts you down

Makes up facts

Calls people demeaning names

Lacks specifics

Is more concerned with ego than cooperation

Requires loyalty

Does everything in his power to cancel others who disagree with him

The best thing I can imagine anyone doing in the wake of Trump leaving the Oval Office is to simply not behave in any way like him.

He used social media as a weapon. Don't do that.

He positioned his every argument as an emotional hot button. Don't do that.

He was often irrational and unapologetic. Don't be irrational and try to display some level of humility.

According to my former staff at the casino, I am an excellent manager. As much as I'd love to embrace that as somehow my natural inclinations and abilities, I can't. I've learned from some extraordinary bosses over my many avenues to income, from Sharon Hayes (my first school principal) to Daniel Ash (my boss at WBEZ) to Jeffrey Smith (the General Manager of the casino).

I've also learned from a few terrible managers and, in some ways, those lessons were even more valuable than the positive examples.

I believe that each of us is a sum total of the many people we encounter. I am parts of my grandfather, my mom, my wife. I am also parts of my domestic abusing first stepfather, the bullies in high school, and the manager who went out of her way to take credit for my work while complaining that I was incompetent.

Like the above statistics, the vast plurality of people in my life, summed up as they are in synthesis in my character, have been non-assholes. Most have been decent humans doing the best they can with a loaded deck and fewer chips than they would like at the felt.

So what do we learn from four years of the Orange Goblin?

The worst of us will be exactly like him.

The best of us will do our damnedest to be as far from like him as humanly possible.

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

It’s really obvious Joe Quesada was responsible for One More Day guys, not J. Michael Straczynski

Another reason why blaming Straczynski for One More Day is wrong?

The worst parts of it were the deal and the involvement of Mephisto.

And I strongly suspect that those elements were Quesada’s doing not Straczynski’s.

Not gonna lie some of this is based upon cultural prejudices so you’ve been warned.

Simply put the big notion that JMS would be responsible for Mephisto’s involvement is premeditated upon the idea that magic and mysticism was a major theme in his run on Spider-Man.

But here is the thing though.

Traditionally in the Western world AND in the Marvel universe there has usually been subtle lines of delineation between the kind of worldly mysticism and magic of other cultures, stereotypical ‘the wise old man from the East’, and the occult devil worshiping kind.

How many ‘wise man from the East who knows ancient magic’ have you (unfortunately) seen wherein their portrayed in a way that conveys wisdom, power and other positive attributes (not saying this means it’s not racist, but you see what I mean).

In contrast you have the people who help out Damien in the Omen movies, who’re decidedly agents of utter evil.

This applies to the Marvel Universe too. Not unsurprisingly given that these are American characters, written by American writers set usually in fictional American settings.

Consequently you have the kinds of magic and mystical sources Doctor Strange, the Norse Gods and other entities are associated with but in-universe guys like Mephisto, Ghost Rider and Damian Hellstorm are narratively coded differently. 

Doctor Strange might fight forces of evil but they are usually Eldritch Abominations akin to something from Lovecraft. They’re broad forces of nature a lot of the time and even the ones who aren’t tend to be incredibly powerful magical jerks.

The Norse Gods are more grandiose and traditionally Epic, as are the members of the Greek pantheon.

Mephisto and characters associated with demons and Hell though are often portrayed as sadistic and encounters with them have horrible personal costs that usually play out as Aesop fables of some kind.

Why is recognizing this distinction important?

Because throughout his run Straczynski on Spider-Man expressed a clear preference for the former types than the latter. Even evil characters associated with mysticism weren’t strictly speaking demonic. His concept was to emphasise the spider aspect of Spider-Man. The animal and nature connection, hence Morlun, Shathra and the Other were magical but all connected in a ‘circle of life, law of the jungle’ kind of way. 

Morlun and Shathra were evil but basically just wanted to eat Spider-Man. In the Other Peter died and was reborn as a spider in real life sheds its skin. Encounters with Doctor Strange similarly presented the forces of magic as relatively neutral, bigger than distinctions between good and evil but subject to abuse by individual people (huh, almost like it was riffing on ‘great power comes great responsibility’ or something)? 

Same deal with Loki in JMS’ run. Loki wan’t presented as evil and the force he and Spidey teamed up against was just a force of trickery and chaos, not strictly evil but a threat to public safety all the same. Even Dormammu is more an 1960s fever dream conception of evil than strictly speaking clearly demonic within a Judea-Christian context.

What I am saying is for Straczynski to then turn around and make use of Mephisto actually seems to go against his preferences in dabbling with magic and mysticism. It’s too obvious for him, too black and white.

But then we have Quesada.

Quesada who famously was raised Catholic. And not just incidentally Catholic. Catholic to the point where he is majorly associated with the most famous Catholic superhero ever who also just so happens to dress as a devil. I am of course speaking about Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil.

Providing artwork along with the writing of fellow Catholic Kevin Smith, Quesada infamously produced the Guardian Devil storyline in the late 1990s and early 2000s and thereby helped save Marvel (and secure start him on the road to becoming EIC) by introducing the Marvel Knights line of comics.

So prolific was this story that the ramifications of it are still felt to this day in Daredevil and artwork from it is still used in promotional material for the character.

And WHAT does the Guardian Devil storyline happen to involve?

It involves Daredevil believing he’s encountering the anti-christ and the death of his long time love interest Karen Page, thereby making him single, something people at Marvel were evidently interested in since the story itself tries to have Daredevil call up his ex Black Widow for sex even before Karen has died.

....Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Not convinced?

Okay.

How about the fact that Quesada once tried to justify One More Day by putting across a weird, weird story about his mother:

Let me digress for a bit, I promise there’s a point to this story.

I was raised by a very middle-class family. We went through some very rough financial times, but for the most part we were eventually okay. Both my mom and dad were old-school: To them, what was most important was that their kid had more in life and more opportunities than they had growing up. Many years ago, after my grandfather passed away, my father inherited the house owned by my grandfather. My dad was an amazing man, but he wasn’t great with money and he had a tendency to worry about things to extremes. My mom, having known him for so many years, knew this all too well. They had separated for some time and eventually reunited, so there was a lot of water under that bridge. Sometime after receiving the house, both he and my mom decided that they wanted to sell it, take the money and move to Florida, and buy a house there. My mom was especially pleased with this idea because owning a house was a proper inheritance to hand down to their son when the time came.

So, as planned, off they went to good ol’ Miami. My mom was thrilled, but only momentarily. They had some money in the bank, but my dad decided to rent a home instead of buying one. For three years, he rented, despite my mom and I encouraging him to stop wasting money on rent buy a proper home. My dad always panicked when it came to big money issues and I suspect that’s why he hesitated. But one day he finally gave in and decided to go house shopping.

After months and months of looking and finally finding a place, and then going through all of the time it took to close the deal, he did it — he signed on the dotted line. The very next day, my mother showed him a half dollar-sized bruise and lump over one of her breast. It was cancer and it was very advanced. We were both floored. How could she hide this from us? I asked my mom how long she knew she had the lump, and she said that she’d discovered it right around the time that my dad started to get the itch to buy a house. She had decided not to say anything because if my father had known that she had this medical issue, he would have begun worrying about medical bills and would have never bought the house.

I was furious at her; I understood why she did it, but the cancer eventually took her from us way to soon. In her world, she wanted to make sure that our family had a home and she put that above her health. After knowing my dad for all those years, she knew exactly how he would have reacted. The truth of the matter is that she was right — he would have stopped looking for a home, he would have worried himself sick about what was coming down the road. What she failed to see, however, was that no house, no inheritance, could ever make up the loss of her in my life.

So, to me, MJ was doing the same thing. Not only did she force the issue, but she did everything she could to make sure that Mephisto wouldn’t screw Peter in the deal. And then in the end, when Peter is at the crossroads, she gives him the okay and the confidence to join her in the pact when she simply says, “Be my hero.

Putting aside how a house isn’t the same thign as a fucking wife and relationship, that story sounds waaaaaaay too personal and waaaaaay too close to One More Day for him to just conveniently have it as an appropriate analogy to explain someone else’s  story decisions.

And frankly a story like that would turn psychiatrists’ eyes into dollar signs. 

It’s really fucked up and even more fucked up that he walked away thinking and feeling about it this way.

Basically it HEAVILY implies OMD was half about him working through his issues with his mother’s death as much as it was about him hating Spider-Man being married (and apparently wanting him to sleep with a woman called Carlie who was named after his daughter and  no I’m not making that up).

Take all this context into account and it becomes really, really unlikely that the ideas to use Mephisto and erase the marriage via a deal with him was Straczynski’s doing.

[deniscollins]

Why This Iowa Campus Is Erasing Political Chalk Talk

College students have long participated in the tradition of “chalking” sidewalks with comments, and during election time many of them are political in nature. What would you do if you were a college administrator and student groups complained that bigoted and hateful messages were appearing in chalk on campus, sometimes alongside political slogans, and requested that you ban chalking: (1) ban chalking to minimize incivility, or (2) allow chalking due to tradition and encouraging First Amendment freedom of speech? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The well-trodden pathways at Iowa State University are usually caked with chalk during an election year. Students streaming past the domed administration building, hunched against the biting cold, could look down at their phones and expect to see “Trump 2020” or “Pete!” in dusty block letters.

Instead, the sidewalks are bare.

With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the university has effectively banned the tradition of political chalking in the name of civility, provoking a standoff over free speech that some students say has only deepened divisions on campus.

“It is strange for the sidewalk to be naked now,” said Daniel Hayes, 20, a junior majoring in political science who is backing Senator Elizabeth Warren for president. “I personally miss it a lot.”

On college campuses, chalking — for all its impermanence and association with childhood games like hopscotch and skully — has become a potent weapon in the arsenal of rival political groups and ideologies. Provocative chalking that spread across campuses during the 2016 presidential race, often in support of Donald J. Trump, became known on social media as #TheChalkening.

Some schools have banned or limited the practice. Wesleyan University issued a chalking moratorium in 2003, and the University of Iowa imposed restrictions about a decade ago.

This year, the frenzy of the presidential election has only added to the dispute. Iowa State instituted its anti-chalking rule in November, under pressure from student groups who complained that bigoted and hateful messages were appearing in chalk on campus, sometimes alongside political slogans.

A fledgling civil liberties group, Speech First, sued the university this month, arguing that the new policy violated the First Amendment. The federal lawsuit also challenges a policy barring students from using university email accounts for mass political mailings.

From a distance, clashes over the chalking issue appear to fall along partisan lines. Many members of the university’s College Democrats have lined up in support of the restrictions, while the College Republicans are largely against them.

The law firm representing Speech First, Consovoy McCarthy, is known for supporting conservative causes. It is one of the firms that brought a suit against Harvard over its race-conscious admissions policies, and one of its partners, William S. Consovoy, is representing President Trump in his fight to keep his financial records private.

But in this potential battleground state, on a campus where staunch Trump supporters mix with die-hard liberals, the chalking debate has been anything but clear-cut. Many left-leaning students support the chalking restrictions with a strong dose of ambivalence, and some are against them, arguing that the best antidote to hate speech is not censorship but persuasion.

“Countering bad ideas is the best way to promote good ideas,” said Ben Whittington, 22, a political science major from Chicago who was lining up recruits for Senator Bernie Sanders one afternoon this month. “I don’t think a few bad apples can remove a tool students use to promote themselves politically.”

In a statement, Iowa State’s president, Wendy Wintersteen, said that the university had to balance its commitment to free speech with its obligation to protect students from “illegal discrimination and harassment.” University officials declined to comment further.

Iowa State’s policy, which is similar to the University of Iowa’s, says that only recognized student groups can chalk, and only to advertise events in a strict format: the group’s name, a title for the event (up to seven words), a place and a time. Messages that violate the rule are power-washed away.

Sitting in a Starbucks near campus recently, Taylor Blair, 26, a senior and a former president of the College Democrats, said that chalking had its upsides. He did it himself as the campaign manager for a fellow student who won a seat on the Ames City Council last year.

But he thought some limits were needed. “There was horrendous chalking this past semester,” said Mr. Blair, who is studying industrial design. “White supremacist, anti-Semitic, transphobic.”

“BUILD THE WALL” and “It’s ok to be white” appeared on sidewalks, students said. Then came what some students called the chalking wars, in which messages were defaced and turned into hate speech. “Smash the Patriarchy” was crossed out and rewritten as “Smash the Hooknose,” students said. “Eat the Rich” became “Eat the (((Rich))),” with the triple parentheses as a code for Jews. And “HH” — for “Heil Hitler” — appeared next to “MAGA.”

Mr. Blair said that, as a gay man who had experienced discrimination, he believed that speech and symbols could be inherently violent. “Maybe we should ban the Confederate flag,” he said.

A group called Students Against Racism formed last October to combat the chalking and other incidents they perceived as racist. Alexa Rodriguez, a sophomore who helped found the group, cited “the mental exhaustion that comes from seeing these types of messages.”

Nobody seems to know the identities of the perpetrators, who apparently acted at night, sometimes wearing masks, Ms. Rodriguez said. Left-wing students suspect the mischief was wrought by Trump supporters, and conservatives say it may have been sabotage, to make them look bad.

Ryan Hurley, president of the College Republicans, said his group was not to blame. Mr. Hurley, a sophomore majoring in business, waited outside the campus bookstore on a recent morning wearing a T-shirt that condemned sex trafficking. He showed off a photo of 800 sticks of chalk, ordered on Amazon, as if it were a cache of ballistic missiles.

He would never have written something like “HH,” he said, adding that he did not even know what it stood for until the chalking appeared. “I thought it was Hulk Hogan, honestly,” he said.

To defend themselves, Trump supporters started videotaping all of their chalking as they did it, Mr. Hurley said. They blanketed the campus with chalked American flags and wrote “Keep America American,” a message they considered patriotic.

Sehba Faheem, the president of the College Democrats, said students were so upset by some of the chalk messages last semester that they would try to wash them away using water bottles. She recalled recoiling at a message that said, “Send them home.”

Ms. Faheem, 21, a junior studying biological systems engineering, said that stealth chalking made it easier to be hurtful. “Chalking you can do in the middle of the night,” she said. “When you’re handing out fliers, you have to do it face to face. You’re standing behind what you say.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, a Republican, signed a law last March that forbids public universities to create free speech zones that are set aside for protests and demonstrations. But the university encourages students to advertise their political views in an area called the Agora, a stretch of high-traffic sidewalk near the library. A sign marking the spot reads: “In ancient Greek society, the ‘agora’ was the place citizens would gather to discuss matters of their shared civic life.”

On a recent weekday, volunteers for Mr. Trump, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders prowled the Agora, trying to win over fence-sitters.

To defend themselves, Trump supporters started videotaping all of their chalking as they did it, Mr. Hurley said. They blanketed the campus with chalked American flags and wrote “Keep America American,” a message they considered patriotic.

Sehba Faheem, the president of the College Democrats, said students were so upset by some of the chalk messages last semester that they would try to wash them away using water bottles. She recalled recoiling at a message that said, “Send them home.”

Ms. Faheem, 21, a junior studying biological systems engineering, said that stealth chalking made it easier to be hurtful. “Chalking you can do in the middle of the night,” she said. “When you’re handing out fliers, you have to do it face to face. You’re standing behind what you say.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, a Republican, signed a law last March that forbids public universities to create free speech zones that are set aside for protests and demonstrations. But the university encourages students to advertise their political views in an area called the Agora, a stretch of high-traffic sidewalk near the library. A sign marking the spot reads: “In ancient Greek society, the ‘agora’ was the place citizens would gather to discuss matters of their shared civic life.”

On a recent weekday, volunteers for Mr. Trump, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders prowled the Agora, trying to win over fence-sitters.

Mr. Hurley complained that students had become too sheeplike and were treating the area as if it were a mandatory free speech zone. In the fury of anti-Trump sentiment, he said, the normal rules of civil liberties had been willingly suspended.

The past few months have brought a flurry of Democratic candidates and their surrogates to campus ahead of the traditional first-in-the-nation nominating contest on Monday. But students say it is not the same without chalking.

Mr. Hayes is making do by turning himself into a roving signpost, a kind of Pied Piper with a Warren button on his chest and a sign jutting out of his backpack on which he writes his message of the day. “Anything is possible,” read one, which was disputed by his philosophy professor.

The day after the Democratic primary debate in Des Moines this month, his sign offered a quote from Ms. Warren about courage. It got compliments, Mr. Hayes said, but he still missed the spontaneity of chalking.

Regarding the new policy, Mr. Hayes offered a quotation from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

[thisdaynews]

House Dem impeachment support gains new momentum

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/house-dem-impeachment-support-gains-new-momentum/

House Dem impeachment support gains new momentum

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has tried to hold back efforts to impeach President Donald Trump, but his recent actions could make the task more difficult. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

congress

The spike in public backing for impeaching Trump could cause headaches for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Public support among House Democrats for impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump is growing despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to halt the effort.

More than two dozen Democrats who hadn’t previously taken a position voted Wednesday to advance a measure to impeach the president over his racist attack on their colleagues. Before Wednesday, about 85 Democrats had publicly called for an impeachment inquiry — over one third of the 235-member House Democratic caucus.

Story Continued Below

The new outpouring comes before next week’s Capitol Hill testimony by former special counsel Robert Mueller, which is expected to inspire many more lawmakers to join them. Pelosi’s resistance to impeachment, while firm, could be undercut if enough Democrats sign on publicly to remove the president.

If all 27 of the Democratic lawmakers who for the first time sided with Green were to publicly seek an impeachment inquiry, it would put nearly half of House Democrats in that camp.

One of them, Rep. Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey, said he supports an impeachment inquiry but hadn’t confirmed it publicly until now because he hadn’t been asked. Another, Rep. Karen Bass of California, chair of the influential Congressional Black Caucus, would support opening an impeachment inquiry against Trump if it comes up for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee, an aide said.

And Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s office confirmed that the California Democrat supports an “impeachment inquiry to determine whether or not there are legal grounds for impeachment.”

But the situation is complex. POLITICO reached out to all 27 lawmakers who voted Wednesday to advance Al Green’s narrowly tailored articles of impeachment. In interviews or statements from their offices, several revealed they were ready to publicly call for Trump’s ouster or for impeachment proceedings to begin. But others said they joined Green only for technical legislative reasons that had little to do with seeking Trump’s immediate impeachment.

The camp of outright impeachment supporters now includes Reps. Peter Welch of Vermont and Rick Larsen of Washington. Larsen, said he became motivated to support impeachment after Trump’s comments urging four minority congresswomen to “go back” to their home countries — including three who were born in the United States

“I do not come to this decision lightly,” Larsen said in a statement. “His comments do not protect the concept of U.S. citizenship. They undermine it. He should not be the President of the United States.”

Others took a more nuanced view. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he voted with Green because he personally believes Trump has committed offenses worthy of impeachment — but added he’s hesitant to formally seek an inquiry that would be doomed in the Senate.

“Personally, I think he has obstructed justice and has done all these things that would qualify for impeachment. That’s why I vote the way I did,” Pallone said. “Because the Senate will never take up an impeachment, it’s not something I think we should spend our time on.”

Similarly, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel of New York said he voted with Green simply to keep open the option of impeachment, even though he’s not ready to embrace an impeachment inquiry.

Despite the new groundswell of support, a slew of others who sided with Green said they did so over a procedural technicality: that the measure should have been referred to the Judiciary Committee instead of summarily blocked.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York cited this procedural dispute as the reason he sided with Green, as did the No. 2 Democrat on his committee, Zoe Lofgren of California and a freshman member of the panel, Sylvia Garcia of Texas. Reps. Mike Thompson of California, Dina Titus of Nevada, Anthony Brown of Maryland and Grace Meng of New York, who aren’t members of the committee, also said they voted with Green because they backed Nadler’s position.

“I will support an impeachment inquiry when it becomes necessary in order to get the truth for my constituents,” Meng said in a statement.

Meng noted, though, that she’ll carefully eye Mueller’s testimony next week as she weighs her decision. So did Lori Trahan of Massachusetts.

“Her vote makes clear that Congress stands ready to hold the president accountable and will not hesitate to assert its authority. She looks forward to special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony next week,” a Trahan spokesman said.

One notable vote with Green was Rep. Mike Levin, a freshman California Democrat from a swing district who hadn’t taken a definitive stand on whether to support an impeachment inquiry. In a statement, Levin said he joined Green for the same technical reason as Nadler but noted he’s looking ahead to Mueller’s testimony next week.

“I will support an impeachment inquiry when it becomes necessary in order to get the truth for my constituents,” Levin said.

Other Democrats who voted with Green cited philosophical reasons — but not the desire necessarily to pursue Trump’s impeachment.

“What is this country coming to?” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.). “I’m not ready for impeachment, but I’m just disgusted by the rhetoric in this country.”

Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida said she’s “torn” about what to do but has worried that a failed attempt at impeaching Trump could play into his hands.

California lawmakers Jimmy Gomez and Jerry McNerney said they’d support an impeachment debate on the House floor.

At least eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus who hadn’t previously sought Trump’s impeachment voted to advance Green’s articles of impeachment. But several of them told POLITICO they were making a broader statement about Trump’s racist comments rather than aligning with the impeachment effort.

“I think it represents a larger more important conversation that we need to have about … what we’re willing to tolerate as a citizenry from our commander in chief,” said Andre Carson (D-Ind.). “What responsibility the commander in chief has to the electorate in terms of not fanning the flames of Islamophobia, xenophobia and outright hatred.”

Five of the 27 Democrats who voted with Green — Reps. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, Nita Lowey of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Doris Matsui of California and David Scott of Georgia — did not respond to requests for comment. A sixth, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, declined to comment.

Notably, more than a dozen lawmakers who already favor an impeachment inquiry voted to sideline Green’s articles of impeachment. Several argued that Green’s focus on Trump’s racism excluded other evidence of potentially impeachable offenses like obstruction of justice.

“We’re not going to take someone and say, ‘Well let’s charge him with manslaughter when he committed mass murder,’’” said Rep. Val Demings of Florida.

Andrew Desiderio contributed to this report.

Read More

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Exclusive: Omarosa Said Former TV Contestant Played Tape Of Racist Slur For Her In White House, Sources Say

http://fashion-trendin.com/exclusive-omarosa-said-former-tv-contestant-played-tape-of-racist-slur-for-her-in-white-house-sources-say/

Exclusive: Omarosa Said Former TV Contestant Played Tape Of Racist Slur For Her In White House, Sources Say

Former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman told at least three longtime Donald Trump aides that a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” Troy McClain, played a tape for her in the White House that included the president saying a racial slur while he was wearing a microphone during a taping of the reality show, sources have told HuffPost. Manigault-Newman told one staffer that hearing the tape was what led her to resign that evening (Dec. 12, 2017) and that she informed White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that she had heard the tape. But the account that Manigault-Newman offered to these Trump aides is vastly different from the one she’s been offering publicly in her book and on her media tour.

Manigault-Newman told multiple Trump aides last December that the audio played for her by McClain included Trump allegedly used a racial slur in referring to a black “Apprentice” contestant, Kwame Jackson. In an interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Monday night, Manigault-Newman said that she had heard the alleged tape, that it was three minutes in length and that Trump used the slur in speaking about Jackson. She did not say who played the tape for her. Manigault-Newman also said that the tape of the audio was in possession of “Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt.

Jackson did not reply to requests for comment.

Reached by phone last Saturday, Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump organization aide who now is a top official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, recounted the phone call she received from Manigault-Newman the night the White House aide was fired. Patton said that Manigault-Newman told her last December that McClain played her the audio, which Manigault-Newman told her was in Pruitt’s possession. Two other Trump aides received such calls, they confirmed to HuffPost. Those two aides asked to remain anonymous.

Pruitt caused a stir before the 2016 presidential campaign after the now infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked to The Washington Post, when he tweeted, “As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of [The Apprentice] I assure you: when it comes to the Trump Tapes there are far worse.” In interviews, Pruitt said that Trump would regularly make racist and anti-Semitic statements. But he has aggressively denied that he was in possession of any such tapes, which contradicts Manigault-Newman’s claims both to Trump aides like Patton and to Matthews on his MSNBC program.

McClain, reached by phone, confirmed that he met with Manigault-Newman in the White House in December 2017, while she was director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, but when McClain was asked if he played a recording for her of the president using a racial slur, he laughed and said, “You’ve got to be bullshitting me. Is this a joke?”

McClain denied that he ever played such a recording and said that Manigault-Newman would never say he did. But multiple sources familiar with her communication about the meeting with McClain confirm that she said he played the audio file for her or that he discussed that he had heard the audio with her.

Multiple attempts to reach McClain a second time were unsuccessful.

Eight sources spoke to HuffPost for this story. They were granted anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press or are bound by non-disclosure agreements.

A source close to Hicks said Manigault-Newman did bring up the conversation she said she had with McClain about the possible existence of a tape, but that she never said that the contestant played such an audio for her. Manigault-Newman approached Hicks with the information about the alleged tape after she had been fired by Kelly in the White House Situation Room.  Sources who spoke to HuffPost now believe that Manigault-Newman brought up the audio in an attempt to salvage her job in the White House, especially given that she brought up the audio after she was terminated by Kelly.

In a tweet posted Monday evening, Trump said, in part, “[Mark Burnett] called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”

.@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018

Six former Trump campaign and White House staffers describe Manigault-Newman as obsessed with finding out more about the alleged tape, saying she brought it up constantly. Manigault-Newman said that, on a campaign bus trip with Katrina Pierson, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman; Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law; Patton, a longtime Trump Organization aide now at HUD; and Diamond and Silk, two major African-American Trump supporters, she had heard about the “n-word tape” but was unaware of the context in which Trump might have used the racial epithet. She added, according to two sources familiar with the conversation, that people in possession of the tape were nervous about releasing it should they come in the crosshairs of Mark Burnett, the powerful television producer who was the executive producer of “The Apprentice,” which starred Trump. Burnett and his wife, actress and producer Roma Downey, sold their production company to MGM in 2014 and 2015, and Burnett now serves as chairman of MGM Television. 

According to multiple sources, Manigault-Newman called Patton the evening she was terminated by Kelly. She told Patton that McClain, who competed on the first season of the NBC competition program, had come to visit her in the White House. Manigault-Newman’s office was in the Old Executive Office Building, which sits across from the West Wing, separated by a private driveway. It’s unclear if she met with McClain in her office or in another part of the White House complex. 

She told Patton that McClain was anxious and scared and shared that he had an audio file he wanted to play for her. In an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Manigault-Newman said her source was terrified to come forward. 

Manigault-Newman told Patton that in the tape, described audio from a microphone Trump was wearing on the TV show set,  Trump could be heard complaining that his makeup artist didn’t use latex gloves that day (Trump is a self-described germaphobe), that he was eager to wrap up the day early because the microphone pack was hot and causing him discomfort. He then talked about Jackson. Omarosa said he referred to Jackson as a “n****r.” 

Manigault-Newman also brought up the tape, according to one person familiar with her conversations, when she whipped some campaign staffers into a frenzy before one of the presidential debates in the fall of 2016. According to two people familiar with her warnings, she told staffers that she heard Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign had obtained the alleged “Apprentice” outtakes and was planning to release it the night of the debate. No such tape was ever released by Clinton’s campaign or anyone else. 

Since her new book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the White House, was published, Omarosa has offered conflicting accounts of the alleged audio recording of Trump using a racial slur. In her book, she says she received a call from a person (whom she declines to name): “On this phone conversation, I was told exactly what Donald Trump said ― yes, the N-word and others in a classic Trump-goes-nuclear rant ― and when he’d said them. For over a year I’d been so afraid of hearing the specifics from someone who’d been in the room. Hearing the truth freed me from that fear. And only now that it’s gone, do I realize just how heavy it’s been.” 

In an interview with NPR, Manigault-Newman claimed that she heard the tape, but when NPR’s Rachel Martin pointed out that in her book she says that a person who called her described the tape to her. Manigault-Newman replied that “hearing the truth” meant she heard the tape.

As the contradictions continue to build, Manigault-Newman’s claims have been difficult to track. She told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that she had heard the audio after her book was published. She told multiple Trump staffers that she heard the audio the day she was fired. 

What’s clear is that Manigault-Newman has stirred up the kind of chaos she has always thrived in, whether it be on a reality show or working for the most powerful man in the world.

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

[republicstandard]

The Rot in Academia

“Unlimited tolerance is a paradox. We don’t have to tolerate the intolerant.”-Lindsay Briggs

The hostility toward the notion of individual liberty and freedom of speech is evident everywhere you look these days, perhaps no more apparently than on college campuses. With alarming regularity, from moral panics to “anti-fascist” riots to professors with ties to ISIS, it has been incident after incident illustrating how deeply corrupted academia has become. From the lunacy of a Vanderbilt professor blaming 9/11 on racism, slavery, and the Navajo genocide to a Diablo Valley College professor smashing someone’s head with a bike lock, the modern academy—with its Cult-Marx professoriate, bloated bureaucracies that ensure “compliance” with the ruthless efficiency of the NKVD, and SJW student-activists—is no longer the bastion of open inquiry and debate it was intended to be. George Waldner, president emeritus of York College, stated:

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In the last five years, we’ve certainly had an increasing number of free speech confrontations on many campuses across the country. Halloween costumes at Yale, the ‘Trump’ chalkings at Emory University …There have probably been 30 or 40 of these [incidents] in the last five years.

“All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” ~George Ciccarillo-Maher

I would venture it’s been many more than that, especially if you include the on-campus hate crime hoaxes. A university education looks ever-more like a combination of a Soviet re-education camp and a day-care. The student body seems to be regressing to a median age of about five, Marx’s dictums spoon-fed to them by doughy professional axe-grinders, agitators, and grievance-mongers. If sticks and stones break their bones, then words are what really hurt. As Jim Goad wrote in The Redneck Manifesto:

HATE SPEECH is the most Orwellian concept to emerge from the twentieth-century twilight. It is especially deceptive because it hides behind a Happy Face mask. Most people want to be on the side of love, right? Like all dangerous ideas, the notion of hate speech sounds good until dismantled piece by piece. The first problem is with the term’s vagueness. Hate speech, apparently, has become anything they hate. Through relentless exposure to well-meaning, soft-suds imagery, otherwise intelligent people have been brainwashed to believe that “hate” is a satisfactory explanation for any human action. Reducing complex sociopolitical struggles to a matter of “hate” is as simplistic as blaming it on “sin,” but they fall for it.

And boy are they falling for it. The omnipresence of “hate” appears to be the main preoccupation of the professoriate and the administrative commissars, and is certainly one of the central fixtures of campus life. Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams took to his Twitter account to use the hashtag #LetThemFuckingDie in reference to white males; similarly, former Drexel professor George Ciccarillo-Maher opined that, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” Texas A&M professor Tommy Curry advocated violence against whites as a corrective measure to perceived racism in a podcast interview back in 2012. Now-terminated Essex County College professor Lisa Durden taunted whites on Tucker Carlson when the host pressed her on her support for racially-exclusionary events:

“Boo-hoo-hoo, you white people are just angry you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter all-black Memorial Day celebration.”

University of Delaware anthropology professor Kathy Dettwyler declared on Facebook that Otto Warmbier “got exactly what he deserved” when he was tortured to death by North Korea because he was “typical of a mind-set of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males.” According to Boston University professor Saida Grundy, “White masculinity isn’t a problem for America’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.” John Griffin of the Art Institute of Washington believes that Republicans “should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole.” Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar gloated over the death of Barbara Bush on Twitter (sic):

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. I’m happy the witch is dead. Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. Byyyeeeeeeee.”

Kevin Allred, formerly of Rutgers University, had the following to say on Twitter: “Will the Second Amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no …?” Another Boston University professor, Kyna Hamill, published a paper condemning “Jingle Bells” for its “racist history” as a jingle in blackface. Sarah Bond of the University of Iowa lamented the fact that sculptures from the classical world are now primarily associated with white marble. Princeton University Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor made the deeply revealing and insightful comments during her commencement address at Hampshire College that Donald Trump is a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.”

As Middlebury, Yale, Evergreen State, and Berkeley have shown, the students are just as eager to get in on the action. Lucía Martínez Valdivia, a mixed-race “queer” assistant professor of English at Reed College, had a lecture about Sappho disrupted by students protesting the college’s mandatory humanities class as “white supremacist.” Just when you think the Left cannot get any more preposterous, there you go—protesting a queer, mixed-race woman’s lecture on a queer female poet. The protesters also indicted Aristotle and Plato for good measure. Martínez Valdivia states:

Nuance and careful reasoning are not the tools of the oppressor, meant to deceive and gaslight and undermine and distract. On the contrary: These tools can help prove what those who use them think — or even what they feel — to be true. They make arguments more, not less, convincing, using objective evidence to make a point rather than relying on the persuasive power of a subjective feeling…Ultimately, this is a call for empathy, for stretching our imaginations to try to inhabit and understand positions that aren’t ours and the points of view of people who aren’t us. A grounding in the study of the humanities can help students encounter ideas with care and…realizing — and accepting — that no person, no text, no class, is without flaws. The things we study are, after all, products of human hands.

She’s absolutely correct, but the un-reasoning Left refuses to consider what is actually a very insightful commentary on the nature of creation so fundamental to the arts, and on the beauty and tragedy of a fatally-flawed humanity. This idea that empathy does not need to be divorced from logic and reason—that it is in fact inextricably intertwined and that rationality and critical thinking aren’t “tools of white supremacy” but are instead universally applicable and vital to processing the world and the people in it in all their dimensionality—is increasingly becoming antithetical to the deeply sentimental worldview of the Left wing, where the Western logos itself has become the enemy of emotive, panicked hysteria masquerading as a coherent set of principles. In this infantile worldview of good-and-bad, “hate,” as the Jim Goad quote discusses, is a sufficient explanation for people’s motivations, and for anything that falls outside the ideological confines of Leftist “thought.”

One thing is clear—dissent will not be tolerated. Will Creeley, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), expresses concern that the:

“U.S. Supreme Court’s stark warning in Sweezy v. New Hampshire will prove prophetic: ‘Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.’”

Though he is dead wrong about group identity and has of late turned into a bit of a Zionist shill, Dr. Jordan Peterson is a very astute observer of the Cultural Marxism that has taken firm hold of the university campuses in North America and beyond. Peterson refers to the Leftist buzzwords of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusivity” as the Unholy Trinity, and I might be so presumptuous as to add a fourth: trauma. This is the lynchpin of the push for safe spaces, the conflation of speech with violence, and the drive to dis-invite and de-platform speakers who run afoul of the egalitarians. Nevertheless, these poisonous ideas have seeped deep into the fabric of academia, where they are not only perpetuated and remain unchallenged, but spread into our society’s daily discourse as a direct result of sustained attempts at indoctrination in the academy, and increasingly even earlier in K-12.

The reason things seem to be deteriorating on campus has everything to do with its closed environment, where dissenting opinions are discouraged and forced out, and mutually reinforcing viewpoints are encouraged and advanced. Essentially you then have an echo chamber environment where bad or at least faulty ideas are perpetuated and due to viewpoint uniformity (and hostility to different perspectives) the ideas and suppositions advanced in the academy are never challenged, and in the rare instances where dissenting evidence emerges from the university setting (such as Dr. Richard Lynn’s IQ research), the data is suppressed and the individual responsible is punished or marginalized in some way. Political orientation is a pretty good proxy for worldview; for all of the talk of diversity, in this crucial area it is sorely lacking. From a 2016 survey, we see that liberal professors in New England outnumber conservatives 28-to-1. From a study conducted by UCLA published in 2012, we can see the growing uniformity among the professoriate nation-wide is approaching a totality of the profession:

CHART

By 2014, a mere 10% of professors identified as conservative. They remain largely confined to business and the hard sciences. In a sample of fifty-one of the top sixty liberal arts colleges studied by the National Association of Scholars’ Mitchell Langbert this year, 39% of faculties had zero Republicans, and out of a pool of nearly 8,700 professors, registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans ten-to-one.

As uniform in their beliefs as professors generally are, John Wilson, an editor of the AAUP’s “Academe” blog, believes that it is the administrators who are really the problem as the architects and enforcers of the censorship and speech codes that are so prevalent on college campuses. As one example of the blood-engorged ticks that are collegiate bureaucracies/administrations, the University of Michigan has ninety-three full-time diversity and equity staff, twenty-six of whom earn six figures, while nationally 49% of college classes are taught by adjunct (part-time) professors with no semester-to-semester guarantee of classes and no benefits (to their credit Ann Arbor only has 17% of its classes taught by adjuncts). Jon Marcus from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting illuminates:

The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures. The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years. From 1987 until 2011-12…universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day, according to the analysis of federal figures…“There’s just a mind-boggling amount of money per student that’s being spent on administration,” said Andrew Gillen, a senior researcher at the institutes. “It raises a question of priorities.” Universities have added these administrators and professional employees even as they’ve substantially shifted classroom teaching duties from full-time faculty to less-expensive part-time adjunct faculty and teaching assistants…Since 1987, universities have also started or expanded departments devoted to marketing, diversity, disability, sustainability, security, environmental health, recruiting, technology, and fundraising, and added new majors and graduate and athletics programs, satellite campuses, and conference centers… “It’s almost Orwellian,” said [economist Richard] Vedder. “They’ll say, ‘We’ll save money if we centralize.’ Then they hire a provost or associate provost or an assistant business manager in charge of shared services, and then that person hires an assistant, and you end up with more people than you started with.”

All of this should rightly beg the question of what purpose all of this administrative bloat serves. It certainly isn’t to benefit the quality of the education students receive, and it only adds to the onerous costs of attaining a college degree. The aforementioned AAUP is responsible for the 1915 document that still stands as the golden standard of the mission statement of what a university’s actual purpose should be:

To promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge;

To provide general instruction to the students; and

To develop experts for various branches of the public service.

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Nowhere is there an imperative to produce “professional activists” or advocate for that most nebulous of terms: social justice. Public service in this context is to contribute to society in a productive and meaningful way, be it as an engineer, a rocket scientist, or a teacher. Instead, students learn the wonders of communism (according to a 2017 survey, 44% of Millennials surveyed preferred to live under a socialist system), whites learn to hate themselves, and everyone else learns to hate them. A recent event at The College of William & Mary sponsored by the ACLU entitled “Students and the First Amendment” was shut down due to Black Lives Matter protesters, who exercised the “heckler’s veto” and asserted, among the usual tripe, that “Liberalism is White Supremacy.” Where else can you go from there? What common ground can there be when the Left is saying its own professed values of pluralism and tolerance are white supremacy?

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2KzaJOd via IFTTT

[ramialkarmi]

At Vice Media's once high-flying ad agency Carrot — a founder is out and insiders describe a hostile culture toward women

Founded in a Connecticut basement in 2005, digital ad agency Carrot Creative was a success story — eventually being acquired by Vice in 2013.

As of Tuesday, cofounder and Vice digital chief Mike Germano is no longer with the company following an investigation into sexual misconduct.

Current and former employees at Carrot have spoken with Business Insider and described a workplace that, they said, was littered with sexism and misogyny.

The incidents they have described range from being casually told to look pretty and dress well for client meetings to being pulled into Germano’s lap and facing lewd comments.

The acute power imbalances at Carrot also impeded women from ascending to leadership roles, several former staffers said.

Carrot Creative was a success story.

The digital advertising agency was founded by three college students in a Connecticut basement in 2005, and it hustled its way to the top, eventually being bought by Vice Media in 2013 for about $15 million.

But Carrot’s company culture apparently never really left that basement.

On Tuesday, Carrot cofounder and Vice digital chief Mike Germano left the company following an investigation into sexual misconduct. Carrot is now going to be folded into Virtue, Vice’s in-house creative agency.

Germano's removal followed a New York Times investigation in December that described Vice Media's problematic culture for women. The report included two specific allegations against the executive. Shortly after the Times story ran, Germano was suspended.

Since then, current and former employees at Carrot have spoken with Business Insider and described a workplace that, they said, was littered with sexism and misogyny.

Nine women described instances of sexual misconduct that they experienced, witnessed, or were told about, including lewd language used toward women in public settings and unwanted physical contact.

That sexism — which, they said, has run rampant throughout Carrot — may have flowed from Germano at the top.

"He could have said, 'I acknowledge my mistakes, I see very clearly that my naïveté hurt other people, and I regret not putting policies in place to protect against such actions.' But he didn’t do anyone any favors in how he handled the recent news he's involved in," Gabrielle Schaefer, who worked at Carrot as director of communications, told Business Insider.

Schaefer said she left Carrot after an encounter with Germano in 2014. She said at a company event he pulled her onto his lap. Schaefer said she complained to HR the next day and remained unsettled by the experience and eventually decided to leave the company.

In an email to Business Insider, Germano said that reports that he had been fired were "not true at all" and that he had evidence to refute some of the allegations made against him. He did not respond to further requests for comment.

For its part, Vice Media declined to provide details on Germano's departure, saying only that he was no longer with the company. A Virtue spokesperson provided the following statement: 

"The behavior described is unacceptable and a disservice to the talented employees at Carrot and the award-winning work they do every day. Given all that we are doing to take action on complaints like these and transform our workplace culture, we hope that the integration of Carrot into Virtue will give Carrot employees confidence that they’re part of a company at which they can thrive."

A boys' club

Schaefer said she feels Germano never really understood the implications of the culture he created at Carrot. Former employees described Carrot's culture as "douchey and patriarchal," "belittling and disrespectful," and "broey and frat-like."

Female staffers were routinely assigned tasks outside their remit, while a group of men — internally known as the "Core Four" — called the shots. They were Germano, cofounder and chief experience officer Chris Petescia, former Carrot president and current chief operating officer of Virtue Ryan Mack, and current Carrot president Adam Katzenbach.

Germano was a towering personality, the women said. It wasn't unusual for him to casually make comments seen as inappropriate, either, such as in the tweet below.

Averie Timm, a former executive assistant and copywriter, described an incident where he shouted "Hey, you!" at her across the office and demanded that she go get him whiskey, Red Bull, and a box of tissues. Stunned, she did as he asked, she said, but she shook up all the Red Bull cans before stocking the fridge out of spite.

"I've never experienced a culture that was a boys' club to that degree," Timm, who worked at the agency for almost four years, told Business Insider. "It was not only prominent at Carrot, but in fact was widely celebrated."

A current female employee defended Germano, saying his magnetic, larger-than-life personality could sometimes lack a filter.

"He's unfortunately learning the hard way why that’s a problem," she said. "But that bravado and personality has also been one of his biggest attributes as a leader."

This preceded the acquisition by Vice, which is widely known for its risqué culture, former employees told Business Insider. If anything, when Vice acquired Carrot, those running Carrot took it as a stamp of approval.

"Both companies sought to define culture with their own rules," Schaefer wrote in a Medium post. "They don't break them; they make them."

Another former employee said: "I believe that the culture was always this way and that they only got more emboldened with the Vice acquisition. The acquisition told them that everything they'd been doing was exactly right."

Female staffers said they were casually told to look pretty or dress well for client meetings, or were subjected to banter wherein male leaders would debate whether a female coworker's breasts were real or enhanced. But it didn’t end there.

Two other women shared their personal accounts of misconduct at the company with Business Insider. A former director at Carrot said she was asked by a male group-account director when he could "suck on those titties" at her farewell party, before being forcibly kissed on the mouth. Two other employees who were told about the incident separately described it to Business Insider. The account director was fired from his job after the woman complained.

"I had warned them about him in advance, that he was an incorrigible person," she told Business Insider. "He had overstepped his boundaries with inappropriate comments before."

Timm added that she had barely stepped foot into the agency when she encountered her first uncomfortable situation. During an interview with Germano, she said, he poured her a glass of whiskey and then asked if she had a boyfriend. Timm said he also asked whether she was smarter than her mother and whether she had "daddy issues" after she had told him that her boyfriend was older than she was.

"I remember thinking that it was really inappropriate and really weird," Timm said. "I should have taken it as a warning sign. But it I really badly wanted a job, so I let it slide."

But this encounter does not seem to have been an isolated one.

"I try to only hire girls with daddy issues," Schaeffer said Germano had once told her. Two other employees said Germano often said this, too, suggesting that he thought these candidates could be more easily controlled in the workplace.

Not always a problem

Staffers who complained didn't always view Carrot's culture as problematic.

Like many ad agencies, Carrot was full of young people just out of college. Long work hours and perks like beer and pizza meant that staffers regularly socialized and drank together. "It was the perfect place to transition out of college and into the real world," a former employee said.

It was big on community too. When employees joined, they were enamored by how close everyone seemed to be and how committed to the tagline "Hustle. Team. Adventure." they were.

"One of the things that drew me was how diverse they were," a current employee working in account management told Business Insider. "They hire eclectic groups of people from all walks of life."

One of Carrot's many new-hire rituals apparently involved the person leading the entire office in a chant, something that might more closely resemble a football-stadium mob or a frat-hazing ritual than an agency's onboarding activity.

Asif Khan, a former head of strategy at the agency, wrote that he seized the opportunity to make the entire office chant his name when he joined in 2014, which he detailed in a blog post.

"I must've sensed this was literally my only opportunity to feel like Rocky and jumped at it," he wrote.

And this wasn’t entirely an accident. Germano made no qualms about saying how he had modeled Carrot's culture after the group dynamics of cults, staffers said. He apparently even gave a presentation on the topic at an industry conference in Arizona in 2013, according to copies of the slides posted online.

"I, admittedly, was often caught up in it all and surfing the same wave of cultish individualism," Schaefer wrote on Medium. "I even actually believed that the abnormal work behaviors were essential to our process, or special because they were dreamed up by those never jaded by another job before."

An industry problem

Cultural issues in the advertising industry clearly extend beyond Carrot. The kind of behavior portrayed in "Mad Men" — the hit AMC show about male-dominated advertising firms in an earlier era — is alive and well at some agencies on Madison Avenue. It’s hardly a secret to those in the business, but in recent years the behavior has begun to seep out publicly.

J. Walter Thompson's chief communications officer, Erin Johnson, for example, filed an explosive lawsuit against its global CEO, Gustavo Martinez, in 2016. She accused him of routinely making racist and sexist slurs.

Other leading agency executives, including the Martin Agency's Joe Alexander, Publicis Seattle’s Andrew Christou, and Droga5’s Ted Royer, have all unceremoniously departed from their agencies amid allegations of sexual harassment in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Carrot was neither an anomaly nor the worst, the women said. But that doesn’t make any of it appropriate.

Cindy Gallop, a former advertising executive and entrepreneur, has been calling on people in the ad industry to share their stories of sexual harassment since the news about Harvey Weinstein broke. She said she's gotten hundreds of responses since she put the call out last fall, and that sexual harassment is endemic in the industry.

"I always knew that it was a problem, but I never realized it was this bad," Gallop told Business Insider. "I am horrified and disgusted at the scale, scope, and the timelines."

Equality is a distant dream until sexual harassment is stamped out, she said.

No women in leadership

The acute power imbalances at Carrot contributed toward its toxic work environment and impeded women from ascending to leadership roles, several former staffers said.

"Sexual assault was just the most egregious manifestation of the manipulative culture," Caroline Tseng, an associate director of strategy who worked at the agency for two years, told Business Insider. "But it absolutely occurred in many different ways."

Tseng, who worked at Carrot until 2017, said she felt this way when she didn’t receive credit for work she was doing and endured a couple of humiliating professional exchanges. She recalled a client meeting with Germano, who she said kicked her under the table to stop her from talking. She turned to look at him and found him glaring at her.

She said she was more or less running her department for a period of at least six months after her boss, Asif Khan, left — but without being given a higher title, raise, or promotion. She also said she asked for a formal written review to try to see where she could improve, but never got one, despite asking time and again.

At least two other former Carrot employees echoed Tseng's views. At Carrot, women rose up the career ladder only to a point, they said. There were a handful of director-level spots held by women, but the C-Suite was almost exclusively reserved for men.

Germano was also quick to blame the women, saying on more than one occasion that he couldn't hire women as leaders because they always leave or end up quitting, three women told Business Insider.

"Women are just not in the consideration set," a former employee said. "I wasn’t either."

Glassdoor, the anonymous workplace-review site, includes some accounts from current and former employees detailing negative experiences at Carrot.

The sentiment wasn’t limited to women. Steve Brauntuch, a group-account director who worked at Carrot from 2015 to 2017, said he felt personally attacked by Germano, calling him an "arrogant and obnoxious bully."

There was a noticeable change in the environment, he said, when Germano came back to run Carrot’s daily operations in the fall of 2016 after spending some time at Vice’s headquarters as its chief digital officer. "Everything took a turn for the worse when Mike returned — it became a toxic place to work at," Brauntuch said. "Carrot no longer remained the open, meritocratic democracy it used to be and became an ego trip that permeated all the way down."

Management tried to address issues and grievances, but, some said, their efforts sometimes backfired. An executive-led panel on feminism with Glassbreakers CEO Eileen Carey, which followed a number of sexism complaints, was widely perceived as "tone-deaf."

Similarly, when Germano held a company meeting to address a particularly heavy flood of negative Glassdoor reviews, he joked that he would create a dedicated website for complaints called MikeGermanoSucks.com for people to submit anonymous comments instead. The site, which was actually created by the developer team, was seen by some as a "highly insecure and defensive" response.

The steps ahead

Amid all the backlash, Carrot's parent company, Vice, said it was intent on making the culture better and was already taking steps to prevent workplace problems.

Last summer, for instance, it revamped its workplace-training programs and also committed itself to implementing pay parity by enlisting Columbia Law School’s Suzanne Goldberg to guide the process, a representative told Business Insider.

The company has also expanded its human-resources department and set a goal for 50-50 representation of women and men at all levels of employment by 2020. It has also established Diversity and Inclusion Employee Councils across its offices, which consist of staff members who have volunteered to help the company to improve.

It recently began mandatory anti-harassment training and has clarified its employee handbook, which carried its infamous nontraditional-workplace agreement that made some female employees feel as if they couldn't speak out against sexual harassment at the company.

While some of these changes may seem long overdue, they are positive steps in the right direction, the women said.

"You can't erase the hurt of the past," said Schaefer. "But every woman wants acknowledgment and change for the future."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why most scientists don't care about these incredible UFO videos

[bejaermi]

Two Mondays ago Jemele Hill from ESPN was suspended for asking fans to boycott the advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys. Her tweet was in response to a new rule made by the Cowboys and Jerry Jones, who two weeks before kneeled with his team in solidarity and then did a reversal and announced he’d fire/suspend any player who kneeled during the National Anthem. Jones’s actions have now spurred a debate between owners who are conflicted over what rules to place on a league that is almost 80 percent black. [1] Like many others Jemele was upset the owner of the richest franchise in the NFL would respond so harshly to his players exercising their first amendment rights. So she went to Twitter and told people to stop buying Dallas Cowboys merchandise.

Then in response to another tweet she said fans should go further and boycott the advertisers and sponsors of the Cowboys.

For this ESPN suspended her citing that she had violated their social media policy. Seeing that they were fine with (mostly) men attacking her on her Twitter feed and saying nothing, so it seems suspect to many that now ESPN is concerned about Hill’s social media account. Unless you remember that ESPN is an actual company, and Jemele Hill is only an employee. Oh and she’s a black woman.

Hill did not start this war, she’s merely a casualty, along with Colin Kaepernick. The title of shitstarter belongs to our 45th president who, has not passed any major legislation in the last 9 months, and decided to stir up an imaginary controversy to accost the NFL and its players. The outward reasons for this war are unclear, and are only a blip in the line of idiotic things this president has done in the last year. #45 loves conflict. Whether it’s John McCain, a Gold Star Family, or little Marco Rubio, Donald J. Trump likes to stir the pot. And now that he’s commander-in-chief he owns the big spoon. As for definitive reasons on why Trump talked about Kaepernick and called him a son-of-a-bitch is anyone’s guess. Only #45 really knows why he did it. Critics have speculated that as president he’s getting back at his enemies in a way he never could before. (Trump’s hatred and/or jealously of the NFL goes all the way back to the 1980s when he was the owner of the USFL New Jersey Generals and sued the NFL for anti-trust violations.)[2] Maybe he said what he said because he needed a diversion when he spoke to the great people of Alabama, (where he was campaigning for Luther Strange, but instead campaigned for himself and possibly the 2020 election),would love to hear. Or he was just his usual Queens, NY self [3] and used a person of color as a shield so his constituency wouldn’t see that he’s clueless when it comes to how to run the country.

  Again, no one knows for sure, but the fact is that on September 23rd, Trump declared war on the players of the NFL, especially Colin Kaepernick, whom though he didn’t mention directly, the implication was crystal clear. Trump then went further and distorted what Kaepernick and other players were doing. Telling the audience that they were disrespecting the flag and shitting on America.

  “That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for…Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now Out! He’s fired!’ “[4]

  The roar of the crowd is deafening, then the chants of “USA! USA! USA!”,  start. Trump, in his candy cane colored tie and his dark untailored suit smiles like a triumphant svengali. He walks back and forth, throwing his hands in the air, as though telling imaginary political aides, “See, I told you, they’re like putty in my hands.”  Trump then walks back to the podium ready to sort of help Luther Strange. Whom everyone knows has taken a huge backseat to the omnibus that is Donald Trump and a Trump rally. [5] He was never there to help Luther anyway, he barely knew who Luther was. He just wanted the roaring cheers from the crowd and the soundbites that he knew would make the Evening News. Trump took a small issue that was really only discussed by sports journalists, black folks, and stalwart football fans and made it a national story filled with angst and hate against players who are just demonstrating their first amendment rights.

  President Trump may understand that there is a constitution, but he doesn’t like the parts that give citizens rights, except for the 2nd amendment. Protests are and will always be part of the American fabric. But protests are meant to be confrontational, they are meant to disturb and disrupt. See the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movements. As a citizen, Trump, like Jemele Hill and Colin Kaepernick, has the right to speak his mind on the NFL. But why would a president insert himself into what is simply a labor matter. No one asked him a question like they did President Obama when Skip Gates was arrested outside his home and what eventually lead to the “Beer Summit”,[6] Trump decided to get his constituents riled up against some black boys, albeit rich black boys, but black boys none the less. While we can all agree that Trump should be more worried about North Korea, we also have to concede, that he’s not the first person to suggest that Kaepernick be ostracized, nor is he even the first to suggest that kneeling should be prohibited. [7] But unlike Hue Jackson (coach of the Cleveland Browns) who has some skin in the game, Trump’s has no skin that is remotely near the game. What he does have is a mind  filled with bile and vitriol, and his words tend to infect anyone who believes them.

After the president spoke and the Dallas Cowboys knelt during the anthem, while their fans booed, and the Pittsburgh Steelers (except for Alejandro Villenueva) stayed in their tunnel instead of standing up for the anthem and Ray Lewis did his “half protest prayer.” Fans took to their social media sites and burned Kaepernick jerseys, Steelers paraphernalia and any item that had anything to with any player that dared to exert their first amendment rights.  Yells of , “Protest on your on time!” or “I will never support anyone who doesn’t support our troops or our flag!” were pasted on websites, Twitter and broadcast on the Evening News. These same “patriots”, also went online and added Mike Tomlin to an imaginary lists of  “no-good niggers”.[8] This is what a few moments of our president’s speech moves citizens to do, not only deny their fellow citizens their constitutional rights but creates hate tsunamis.

  Which brings us back to Jemele Hill.  Jemele[9] is no stranger to bringing her experiences and speaking her mind on issues that intersect social and sports issues. A lot of her writing and reporting is similar to that of Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, who interposes fashion with social issues and the feminist gaze, giving the reader a more nuanced and fuller look at what the fashion world really is. Jemele does the same thing. In 2005 she was the only black woman sports journalist working for a major newspaper. She’s paid her dues, she spent six years at the Detroit Free Press covering Michigan State sports, where she is also an alumni. Her opinion on Sheryl Swoopes coming out as lesbian was clearly based in a feminist gaze that analyzed sports while making room for a critique about rampant over masculinity,

“Sorry, but Swoopes’s coming-out doesn’t have enough shock value to make us learn anything. Lesbians don’t pose a threat and have a certain appreciation in a male-dominated culture. And sadly, the prevailing stereotypes of female athletes as lesbians will probably reduce Swoopes’s emotional admission to a raunchy, tasteless joke by the end of the week. The only way we’re going to address homophobia in sports is if Peyton Manning, the NFL’s MVP last season, makes a similar disclosure. Or Brett Favre. Or Michael Jordan.”[10]

She also compared the Barry Bonds drugging scandal with the invisible case against Lance Armstrong in 2006. She claimed that race was instrumental in the investigation, when it was clear there was as much circumstantial evidence against Armstrong as there was against Bonds.[11] (In an Oprah Winfrey 2013 interview, Lance Armstrong admitted to doping and had his tour de France championships taken from him. )[12] You only have to look at her Twitter feed every day especially the hour before she anchors ESPNs main Sportscenter at 6p every weeknight (with her co-host Michael Smith.) Many of the tweets are vulgar, misogynistic, and openly racist in nature, and most have almost nothing to do with her on-air performance.

  Many of the purveyors of “ill will” to Jemele are white men of all ages and from all across the country.  Jemele answers almost of all of the “well wishers” individually in order to let them know their ignorance and their vileness will not and has not deterred her from spreading her what she knows is right.[13] And like many women of color, Jemele learned what was right by learning from other women in her family. In Jemele’s case her grandmother.[14]

The vein of doing what was right and continuing to speak truth to power, last month Jemele called the president, “A White Supremacist.”

  She pissed off a lot of people. She also energized a lot of folks, especially black women.

But is Jemele’s statement true?  The President and his Press Secretary don’t agree. And as a result they were the first to call for Jemele’s dismissal from ESPN.

…but I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders  9/15/17[15]

Why is the President worried about a sports journalist? The easy answer, because she dared to say anything negative against the President. This president has the thinnest skin of any president in modern history. Which is especially astounding since president #44 was the first black president, and #43 was the president who was in office when 9/11 happened. If those presidents took the criticism that was doled out to them, why can’t Trump. The only obvious reason is that Jemele is a black woman in a very white male profession. Like racism, misogyny is a problem that America doesn’t want to acknowledge exists. Yet if the Harvey Weinstein story is any indication, we’ll have to address it sooner than later. The critics, the media, even Trump’s aides are afraid to dig further into what Trump’s racial ideology is. They can’t stomach that their fellow citizens, maybe even family members, elected a bigot. Even his own aides don’t know. In Charlottesville when he waited until his third press conference to condemn white supremacists, no one was sure whether he was just ignorant, a white supremacist or white supremacist adjacent.

In the meantime Jemele kept being Jemele.  She continued to tweet about Insecure, defend herself against trolls, and comment on social issues that intersected with her job, covering sports. Her comments regarding the president only reiterated what much of the President’s own cabinet is saying about him. (Rex Tillerson thinks his boss is a fucking moron like many of us do. A statement that Tillerson later refused to dignify with an answer, which means of course that he said it.)[16] After she called the president a white supremacist and she went to the president of ESPN and cried in his office explaining that she never meant to bring shame to the company or to her colleagues. She wasn’t admitting she existed wrong (because she’s entitled to her opinion, especially when it’s right), but she was doing what so many women of color do, recognizing an error in her delivery, but not in the substance. The way you know that your ex-husband is an asshole, you will continue to treat him like one, but you probably shouldn’t call him an asshole in front of your children.

But as her tweeting continued, NFL players had started kneeling in larger

numbers. Where her  first tweets had been born in response to Trump’s actions regarding Charlottesville, Trump’s tweets were now targeted at Jemele and how she had single handedly brought down ESPN rating. The ball was now in Jemele’s court, repsonding was never a question. The question was would her bosses have her back this time? Trump  was making statements about sports and how sports management should be carried out.  How could she resist taking him on? She’s a journalist, who has written for ESPN.com, was a sports journalist with “His and Hers,” has battled with many of the best sports writers and reporters and has held her own. She’s not merely eye candy,  the way some women sportcasters are displayed though she is incredibly attractive, has a fabulous hair/makeup team and dresses fiercely when she’s on the screen, she is the real deal. A Michigan State alumni who is a fierce Spartan fan, she can hang with the “boys” on predictions, fantasy football rankings, what an injury report can mean, and what a football formation looks like. (Yes, Cam Newton, there are actually women who know football, can wear a knee high boot, and win the sports pool.) [17] Jemele is the culmination of what happens when a young black woman decides to combine the social realities of the US with sports. She sees and understand the juncture of both and as a result she takes the mantle from male journalists like Mike Lupica, Jimmy Breslin, and William Rhoden and puts a spin on sports stories that show that the political is always personal. Trump had just made his quips and nonsense political statements personal.

  After his infamous Alabama speech,  the NFL showed a rare and swift sense of brotherhood and solidarity; by protesting against a micromanaging president who had no business trying to control them. The shows of owners and their teams kneeling, linking arms, and some not showing up at all were remarkable, if not exactly authentic. It wasn’t as if any of the owners were going to hire Kaerpernick while giving the president the proverbial middle finger. In fact, CK was almost forgotten in the two weeks after the president’s comment. Instead message became, “either honor the flag the right way or take your privileged ass somewhere else.” The term that was on many of my threads were “Oppressed Millionaires.” As though black millionaires were immune to the brutalism and microagressions that occur in America. Ask the Seattle Seahawks, at least four of their players have been stopped, detained or arrested by police for no reason.[18]

While Charlottesville was the impetus for Jemele’s first tweet, her second tweet to boycott the Cowboy’s sponsors was tied to  the backpedaling of the NFL. As of a week ago rumors were flying that the NFL was going to suspend or fine those who didn’t stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Then Jerry Jones not only backpedaled he did a somersault and said he would fire anyone who did not honor the flag or the fans. Is anyone really surprised that Jerry Jones did that? (I was more surprised he was kneeling.) Dallas Cowboys merchandise is the number one merchandise sold in the NFL shop. The Steelers, Patriots, Raiders, and 49ers are some of the other the other teams that bring millions of dollars to the owners who receive amlost all of the proceeds from those sales. Jones also backslided because the viewership and the attendance for NFL games have slipped significantly. And the lukewarm response from owners, Roger Goddell and the NFL towards scandals like the CTE coverup, deflated footballs and explicit cheating, domestic abuse, and Colin Kaepernick have made the public leary of the NFL. The public is choosing to watch repeats of Everyone Loves Raymond and the Golden Girls over the boring games that come on every Sunday night with Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth. Jones and his fellow owners are worried. They have huge stadiums paid by taxpayers, they are their own economic tsunamis and if they lose public approval they are dead. What to do? Well take the side of the president of course.

ESPN is a company that has chosen not to examine Trump’s ideology beliefs, but instead to take the middle ground. Instead they decided to take the pussy way out and stand by their money.  Specifically they supported their advertisers and sponsors more than they did the anchor of their flagship show. a sponsor stance. There was no way that they could lose their major sponsors on their main sportscast of the day. Men came home from work to just sit in front of Sportscenter, possibly with their hands down the front of the their pants, but we can’t know for sure. The last thing that these Bud drinking, Stihl having, John Deere mowing, and Ford F-150 driving would tolerate seeing is a black woman talking about politics with their sports.  They still haven’t accepted that Jemele Hill has the job she has, now she wants them to think too? And the sponsors jumped at the chance to not take a side and instead threatened to pull their ads unless action was taken.  But one of the tipping points were the ESPN employees themselves.

If there were many ESPN employees in agreement with Jemele, it was hard to find one in the tweets and emails that were “leaked” to the press. Many of Jemele’s colleagues  were upset about what Jemele said and wanted some kind of discipline put on her. Many referred to other journalists who had been fired or “phased out” after they used words and references that were out of bounds and none of them were to the president. But ESPN has never been consistent when disciplining their journalists, Bill Simmons was disciplined when he spoke out against Roger Goddell, but Colin Cowherd wasn’t disciplined when he spoke out against Sean Taylor.[19] I’m not sure how ESPN can continue to keep up the façade of neutrality when they pay their journalist to also be commentators and opinion makers. What do you think the NFL Insiders on NFL countdown are? They may know the game, but they (Chris Mortensen, Louis Riddick, and Adam Schefter) get their information from the various NFL Deep Throats and reporting that “news” as fact. They are like the Hot Topics bunch on Wendy Williams.

And while ESPN has suspended Jemele, the NBA has not suspended Greg Popovitch, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry for their free speech about the President. Nor has the NFL (and now according to Roger Goddell they won’t) fine/suspend any of the players (current or former) who have kneeled in the past or will kneel in the future. (That’s good news for Ray Lewis, he won’t have to pretend kneel this time.) Other men have also come out for Jemele, black male sportcasters of the NABJ have come out in support of Jemele.  Mike Lupica wrote that Jemele has the right to speak her truth at ESPN. Dave Zirin has been a staunch supporter of Jemele’s writing pieces and arguing on Twitter about Jemele’s right to free speech.

Jemele felt that was inexcusable and said so. ESPN had already changed face and suspended her, for what they felt was insubordination. Yet other white male sportscasters had also called for a boycott and decried the stomping of players rights.[20]In fact many journalists had called for a boycott of the entire season, citing all the problems the NFL had including Kaepernick. But none of those writers were fired, suspended or disciplined. Again, what does Jemele have that many of the sports journalists don’t?

Let me say it loud so those in the cheap seats can hear it.

She’s a black woman.

Jemele is a persecuted woman of color, more specifically she is a black woman speaking truth to power. US history is clear about what happens to black women when they choose to speak truth to power, they are continually tormented and abused until they bend, and sometimes then break. Look up Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer. Shirley Chisolm. Look at the women who started and continue to maintain the Black Lives Matter movement. And of course they tried to make our former first lady bend as well.

Michelle[21] was supposed to sit behind Barack and say nothing. The last first lady who had an agenda and didn’t know how to bake cookies was Hilary Clinton, and that ended very badly. Go Google, “Michelle Obama insults,” and the results are horrifying. Make sure your children aren’t in the room, because it won’t be pretty. The mild insults are about her wearing shorts, going on long trips, or wearing fancy clothes. The worse ones are when the white men of the senate told her to put her arms in some sleeves for the formal portrait.  Or when governors, city directors and other “government officials” around the country sent pictures of an ape and in one instance called it “A ape in heels.” Or when a washed up television star posted a picture that said, “He (President Obama) wakes up to this?[22] This rage and hate was aimed at a first lady whose national agenda was for children to eat well, and the Republicans said, “Bring back the French fries and chicken nuggets!”

Michelle, Serena, Viola, and Jemele also have to navigate gender. What I haven’t seen is feminist groups come out in support of Jemele and her right to free speech. Where are the white women, besides Samantha Bee? Why aren’t prominent white women standing up for Jemele? In recent years white women have done some dumb things and have advernnatly or inadvertently scrubbed women of color (in this case black women) from spaces  because they feel ignored and devalued. With Sophia Vergara being the highest paid television actress at the moement, white women may be feeling very vulnerable. Remember Patricia Arquette’s speech (that Jennifer Lopez inexpicably stood up for) that spoke of how ungrateful other folks were for the work white women did for them  and how now white women have to look out for themselves?[23] Or the dismissal of Viola’s speech at the 2015 Emmys about inequality and lack of roles for women that a soap opera actress with no accolades even close to Viola’s felt was silly and hallucinatory. Or Maria Sharapova’s recent story of Serena Williams calling her a bitch and how terrible Serena was (during the time the story had been about Serena’s new baby), when she conveniently for the terrible drag impression she did of Serena with padding that gave her a huge butt and enormous breasts. Or the idea that Ellen would create a Halloween costume of Nicki Minaj and her cotume consisted of a large ass and a bad wig. Is this solidarity? Or the silence from groups like NOW during the 2008 presidential campaign when right-wingers were calling Michelle Obama a radical black panther because of a fist bump with her husband and her Princeton senior thesis that was pro-black in nature. Or the criticism that came when Michelle said she was going to be “Mom-in-Chief” for a while in order to get her children acclimated to the white house and their new school. White women excoriated her for choosing to be a mother first, forgetting that the whole purpose of feminism is to give women choices, whether those choices are popular or not are inconsequential. And forgetting or ignoring the intersectionality that shows that for black women, staying home and not going into bankruptcy while doing it,was a radical event.

So why shouldn’t the Michelle Obamas, Serena Williamses, Viola Davises and Jemele Hills shout out loud about the inequality they see in their nation? And again why would the President of the United States care?

ESPN’s slow response to suspend Jemele was not because they were feeling benevolent or because they see Jemele Hill as irreplaceable. They were slow to make a decision because they were in a quandary. How to discipline Jemele without looking like racists and a misogynists. Could they do what they had done to Sage Steele the year before[24] and make her disappear into a vortex? No, she had spoken about the  president. ESPN hoped all of it would just disappear. It didn’t. This is Donald Trump, the most thin skinned President in modern history the White House couldn’t let it go. So they had to wait and see what happened. And Jemele kept being Jemele and ESPN finally had their opening to suspend her and if all reports are correct her contract won’t be renewed.

So who will talk about what’s right in the sportworld? Jason Whitlock, Stephen A Smith, Bomani Jones? Their columns and on air responses have run from super conservative and misogynist (Whitlock) to non committal and dismissive (Smith). What will we as sports fan lose if we lose Jemele? What will black women lose? But the person who has truly been lost in all of this is Colin Kaepernick. Remember him? How will any of this get him his job back? Can he afford to wait on others to help him or does he have to take the owners and the NFL on and fight for himself.  We’ll find out, on October 16, 2017, Kaepernick filed a lawsuit against the NFL and its owners. Claiming that the owners colluded to keep him out of the NFL and without a job because he used his 1st amendment right.

It seems Kaepernick has decided to use his 7th amendment right, the right to have a jury of your peers in a civil case over 20.00.

It’s about time.

  *************************************************************************************

  [1] https://theundefeated.com/features/the-nfls-racial-divide/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/donald-trumps-long-stormy-and-unrequited-romance-with-the-nfl/2017/09/23/979264a4-a093-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.d7a4b6cd0b0e  Trump won the case against the NFL, but the court determined that the USFL was imploded on it’s own. Trump won $1.00. But since you earn triple earnings in anti-trust proceedings, he received, $3.00.

[3] No offense to Queens, NY

[4] https://youtu.be/vrW-GI_9IL8

[5] Luther Strange loses his bid to be re-elected despite Trump coming to save him.  Trump later tells the media, “I guess I backed the wrong guy.”

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_controversy

[7] Hue Jackson, the coach of the Cleveland Browns isn’t a fan of NFL players protesting, http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/browns-coach-hue-jackson-against-national-anthem-protest-patriotism/1lrihp1r2yv7710y7olb8equrs

[8] http://www.theroot.com/fire-chief-says-pittsburgh-nfl-coach-mike-tomlin-added-1818808004

[9] From this point, I’m just going to refer to Jemele Hill as Jemele. That’s how us black folks do. She’s in distress and I don’t have time to be formal.

[10] http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/jemele_hill_on_being_black_fem.php

[11] http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/jemele_hill_on_being_black_fem.php

[12] http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/health/armstrong-ped-explainer/index.html

[13] https://theundefeated.com/features/jemele-hill-on-doing-the-right-thing/

[14] I too learned from the women in my family and have heard this same refrain from may of the women of color who are successful and speak truth to power.

[15] https://ww.si.com/tech-media/2017/09/13/sarah-huckabee-sanders-tells-press-jemele-hill-should-lose-job-over

[16] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/15/tillerson-trump-moron-castration-243785

[17] http://time.com/4970126/cam-newton-jourdan-rodrigue-routes/

[18] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seahawks-michael-bennett-says-police-officer-held-gun-to-his-head/

[19] In 2011 Colin Cowherd made a statement about the recently deceased Washington Redskins player that not on besmirsched his character, but insinuated that because he was black and was in trouble with the law it’s no surprise that he’s dead. Cowherd made a small non-apology but was not disciplined.

In 2014, Bill Simmons one of ESPNs biggest sports journalists was suspended because of his remarks against Roger Goddell during the Ray Rice tape incident. Simmons called Goddell a liar and was suspended for 3 weeks.

[20] https://www.thenation.com/article/nfl-owners-and-espn-bosses-are-showing-which-side-they-are-on/

[21] I was going to say Shelly, but she was the FLOTUS. So I’ll just keep it to first names. Just like Jemele. They’re all my besties in my head.

[22] http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37985967

[23] http://variety.com/2015/film/news/patricia-arquette-comments-oscars-2015-controversy-1201439814/

[24] Steele lost her coveted post for ESPN’s NBA Countdown when she made derogatory statements about the protesters fighting the president’s travel and how it was forcing her to be late for her flights. She has since been moved to Sportscenter on the Road one of ESPN level B shows. )

Sistahs, Brothas, and Presidents Two Mondays ago Jemele Hill from ESPN was suspended for asking fans to boycott the advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys.

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100 Ways In 100 Days: Here's How Trump Has Threatened Human Rights Around The World

Activists at Amnesty International have catalogued 100 ways Donald Trump’s administration has threatened human rights at home and abroad during the first 100 days of his presidency. Assembling the list, according to the group’s U.S. head, “didn’t take long.”

Amnesty USA executive director Margaret Huang said the new list of Trump threats highlights a “level of abuse and fear” that’s unprecedented in the grassroots organization’s 55-year history. I stands in stark contrast to a White House tally of claimed accomplishments since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Unlike his predecessors, who have at least rhetorically talked about the importance of human rights as a U.S. national interest, this president has been dismissive of human rights, dismissive of communities who’ve been subjected to some of the worst violations, and has rejected efforts to hold other governments or his own appointments accountable for protecting human rights,” Huang told HuffPost on Thursday.

It took Amnesty staffers just “a few days” in “a really easy effort” to assemble 100 Trump administration human rights threats, Huang said. In fact, “we had to pare it down,” she added. 

Trump has armed, emboldened and repeatedly failed to condemn human rights abusers. He has downplayed hate crimes and proposes potentially devastating funding cuts to foreign aid. He also has issued direct threats to some demographics, including those within the U.S.

Here are some of the groups whose human rights have been threatened under Trump, according to Amnesty: 

Black Americans

Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite damning allegations against the former Alabama senator of racism toward black people. A Senate committee had previously denied Sessions a federal judgeship after multiple reports of racist remarks, including using a racial slur and joking about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions has dismissed the accusations as false.

Since taking office, Sessions has moved to roll back Justice Department oversight of local police forces that was meant to curb such abuses as racial profiling and brutality.  

Follow HuffPost’s Black Voices coverage for more.

Immigrants And Refugees

Little more than a week after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning residents of seven Arab nations from entering the U.S.

International panic ensued as family members were separated, and foreign governments scrambled to respond. The ban was delayed by a federal court amid concerns that it was unconstitutional. The Trump administration modified and reissued the ban, but that version, too, was blocked by courts.

Under the latest Trump policy, refugees are temporarily blocked from resettling in the U.S. The number of annual refugee admissions has been slashed from 110,000 to 50,000.

Trump during his campaign regularly demonized Syrian refugees, and vowed to deport Syrians who had already resettled in the U.S.: “I’m putting people on notice,” he threatened. “If I win, they’re going back!”

Follow WorldPost’s coverage for more.

"@DiCristo13: @realDonaldTrump let's have the policy speeches on immigration, economy, foreign policy, and NATO! http://pic.twitter.com/Uuit2hWmhW"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2016

Trump also has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Despite international condemnation, Trump’s administration is moving forward with plans to construct a multi-billion-dollar wall along the southern border.

Trump infamously said during the campaign that when Mexico “sends its people ... they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump has given broader powers to deport people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without adequate oversight, Amnesty notes. The rights group asserts that increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing into the country illegally.

“Cartels and gangs prey upon immigrants waiting to enter the U.S., leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual assault,” Amnesty’s report says. “Instead of deterring people from making a dangerous journey, the administration is placing them in greater jeopardy.”

Follow HuffPost’s Latino Voices coverage for more.

Indigenous Peoples

Trump’s proposed border wall threatens to separate indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border from their religious and cultural sites.

Moreover, his administration granted permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to drill under the Missouri River north of Standing Rock to complete the petroleum pipeline. Opponents say the project poses a risk to the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and other downriver tribes.

According to Amnesty, this could “destroy Native America cultural sites,” and it “totally [ignores] the rights of Indigenous Peoples to consent to such projects.”

See HuffPost’s Standing Rock coverage for more. 

Jewish People

The Trump administration was slow to condemn a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jewish Community Centers throughout America, inaction that was “contributing to a climate of impunity for hate-based violence,” according to Amnesty.

Trump’s team also failed to mention Jews during a statement about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. More astonishing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Adolf Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during WWII, suggesting Hitler wasn’t as cruel as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, Hitler’s Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Follow HuffPost’s continued JCC coverage for more.

Journalists And Activists

Trump’s persistent media bashing has already damaged press freedom in the U.S., according to Reporters Without Borders.

The president has unleashed a barrage of insults and threats against members of the press, even dismissing some major news outlets as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” 

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

He vowed to “open up” libel laws, warning those who offend him, “We’re gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists labeled Trump a threat to press freedom before he was even elected.

His administration has revoked press credentials for certain news organizations that have produced unflattering coverage, and has threatened to punish others.

Trump’s actions have provoked protests across the nation, but he seems to believe his rights are more important than citizens’.

As Amnesty points out, Trump’s lawyers argued that his First Amendment rights were infringed by protestors who interrupted a campaign stop in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016.

This sets “an ominous precedent for how the president interprets free expression,” Amnesty warns.

Follow HuffPost Media’s coverage for more.

LGBTQ People

Trump reversed federal protection for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. For transgender children, “this revocation puts them at increased risk for violence and harassment,” Amnesty said.

Trump also rescinded protections implemented under his predecessor, Barack Obama, that helped ensure federal contractors could not discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Roger Severino, Trump’s appointment to head the Office for Civil Rights, has been a vocal critic of policies protecting LGBTQ rights, as has Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Follow HuffPost’s Queer Voices coverage for more.

Muslims

Trump’s travel ban was widely characterized as a Muslim ban, because it directly targeted residents of Muslim-majority countries. He also issued a laptop ban affecting passengers on flights between the U.S. and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump’s election has been “staggering,” according to ThinkProgress, which has been carefully monitoring such incidents.

Amnesty says this is largely because Trump’s ban and rhetoric “appear to have emboldened anti-Muslim behavior and attitudes.”

When asked about increased reports of Islamophobia and other hate crimes during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said simply: “Stop it.”

See HuffPost’s Islamophobia tracker for more.

Scientists And Environmentalists

Any threat to the environment is a threat to human rights.

Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint proposes massive funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, sparking intense backlash. The agency’s new head, Scott Pruitt, has already started to roll back environmental regulations.

To the alarm of scientists, Pruitt ― America’s top environmental official ― said human activity is not “a primary contributor” to global warming.

The Trump administration also has been accused of muzzling the government’s environmental scientists and attempting to limit their communication with the public. 

Follow HuffPost Green’s coverage for more.

Students, Youth And Children

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has no personal experience with public education. The billionaire’s lack of experience and understanding of issues surrounding education in America were put on clear display during her confirmation hearing in January, when she struggled to answer question after question.

Devos has backed Trump’s proposed $9 billion budget cuts to the Department of Education, which would curb after-school programs for low-income children that provide additional instruction and food aid.

“Such cuts could have far-reaching impact on the human rights to education and freedom from hunger enshrined in international law,” notes Amnesty.

Follow HuffPost Education’s coverage for more.

Women And Girls

On his third day as president, Trump swiftly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign aid for groups that offer abortion services, including education on safe abortions. He also signed a bill enabling states to withhold government money from organizations that offer abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

As a result, Amnesty says, “thousands of people — particularly low income women and girls — will not be able to access basic health care, including cancer screenings, pregnancy health, birth control, and safe abortion services.”

Trump also revoked the previous administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which had been implemented to eliminate wage disparity between men and women, and ensured protection for parental leave as well as fair processes surrounding workplace sexual harassment.

Follow HuffPost Women’s coverage for more.

Huang said the resistance to Trump’s anti-human rights words and actions has been “incredible.”

“From the Women’s March the day after his inauguration, to the spontaneous protests at airports after the refugee ban, to the ongoing protests that are happening across the country ― it’s a reflection of a recognition that the only way to stand up to this sort of rhetoric and bad policy is for people to take action,” she said.

Read Amnesty’s full list of 100 threats by Trump and ways to take action here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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100 Ways In 100 Days: Here's How Trump Has Threatened Human Rights Around The World

Activists at Amnesty International have catalogued 100 ways Donald Trump’s administration has threatened human rights at home and abroad during the first 100 days of his presidency. Assembling the list, according to the group’s U.S. head, “didn’t take long.”

Amnesty USA executive director Margaret Huang said the new list of Trump threats highlights a “level of abuse and fear” that’s unprecedented in the grassroots organization’s 55-year history. I stands in stark contrast to a White House tally of claimed accomplishments since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Unlike his predecessors, who have at least rhetorically talked about the importance of human rights as a U.S. national interest, this president has been dismissive of human rights, dismissive of communities who’ve been subjected to some of the worst violations, and has rejected efforts to hold other governments or his own appointments accountable for protecting human rights,” Huang told HuffPost on Thursday.

It took Amnesty staffers just “a few days” in “a really easy effort” to assemble 100 Trump administration human rights threats, Huang said. In fact, “we had to pare it down,” she added. 

Trump has armed, emboldened and repeatedly failed to condemn human rights abusers. He has downplayed hate crimes and proposes potentially devastating funding cuts to foreign aid. He also has issued direct threats to some demographics, including those within the U.S.

Here are some of the groups whose human rights have been threatened under Trump, according to Amnesty: 

Black Americans

Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite damning allegations against the former Alabama senator of racism toward black people. A Senate committee had previously denied Sessions a federal judgeship after multiple reports of racist remarks, including using a racial slur and joking about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions has dismissed the accusations as false.

Since taking office, Sessions has moved to roll back Justice Department oversight of local police forces that was meant to curb such abuses as racial profiling and brutality.  

Follow HuffPost’s Black Voices coverage for more.

Immigrants And Refugees

Little more than a week after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning residents of seven Arab nations from entering the U.S.

International panic ensued as family members were separated, and foreign governments scrambled to respond. The ban was delayed by a federal court amid concerns that it was unconstitutional. The Trump administration modified and reissued the ban, but that version, too, was blocked by courts.

Under the latest Trump policy, refugees are temporarily blocked from resettling in the U.S. The number of annual refugee admissions has been slashed from 110,000 to 50,000.

Trump during his campaign regularly demonized Syrian refugees, and vowed to deport Syrians who had already resettled in the U.S.: “I’m putting people on notice,” he threatened. “If I win, they’re going back!”

Follow WorldPost’s coverage for more.

"@DiCristo13: @realDonaldTrump let's have the policy speeches on immigration, economy, foreign policy, and NATO! http://pic.twitter.com/Uuit2hWmhW"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2016

Trump also has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Despite international condemnation, Trump’s administration is moving forward with plans to construct a multi-billion-dollar wall along the southern border.

Trump infamously said during the campaign that when Mexico “sends its people ... they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump has given broader powers to deport people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without adequate oversight, Amnesty notes. The rights group asserts that increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing into the country illegally.

“Cartels and gangs prey upon immigrants waiting to enter the U.S., leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual assault,” Amnesty’s report says. “Instead of deterring people from making a dangerous journey, the administration is placing them in greater jeopardy.”

Follow HuffPost’s Latino Voices coverage for more.

Indigenous Peoples

Trump’s proposed border wall threatens to separate indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border from their religious and cultural sites.

Moreover, his administration granted permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to drill under the Missouri River north of Standing Rock to complete the petroleum pipeline. Opponents say the project poses a risk to the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and other downriver tribes.

According to Amnesty, this could “destroy Native America cultural sites,” and it “totally [ignores] the rights of Indigenous Peoples to consent to such projects.”

See HuffPost’s Standing Rock coverage for more. 

Jewish People

The Trump administration was slow to condemn a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jewish Community Centers throughout America, inaction that was “contributing to a climate of impunity for hate-based violence,” according to Amnesty.

Trump’s team also failed to mention Jews during a statement about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. More astonishing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Adolf Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during WWII, suggesting Hitler wasn’t as cruel as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, Hitler’s Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Follow HuffPost’s continued JCC coverage for more.

Journalists And Activists

Trump’s persistent media bashing has already damaged press freedom in the U.S., according to Reporters Without Borders.

The president has unleashed a barrage of insults and threats against members of the press, even dismissing some major news outlets as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” 

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

He vowed to “open up” libel laws, warning those who offend him, “We’re gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists labeled Trump a threat to press freedom before he was even elected.

His administration has revoked press credentials for certain news organizations that have produced unflattering coverage, and has threatened to punish others.

Trump’s actions have provoked protests across the nation, but he seems to believe his rights are more important than citizens’.

As Amnesty points out, Trump’s lawyers argued that his First Amendment rights were infringed by protestors who interrupted a campaign stop in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016.

This sets “an ominous precedent for how the president interprets free expression,” Amnesty warns.

Follow HuffPost Media’s coverage for more.

LGBTQ People

Trump reversed federal protection for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. For transgender children, “this revocation puts them at increased risk for violence and harassment,” Amnesty said.

Trump also rescinded protections implemented under his predecessor, Barack Obama, that helped ensure federal contractors could not discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Roger Severino, Trump’s appointment to head the Office for Civil Rights, has been a vocal critic of policies protecting LGBTQ rights, as has Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Follow HuffPost’s Queer Voices coverage for more.

Muslims

Trump’s travel ban was widely characterized as a Muslim ban, because it directly targeted residents of Muslim-majority countries. He also issued a laptop ban affecting passengers on flights between the U.S. and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump’s election has been “staggering,” according to ThinkProgress, which has been carefully monitoring such incidents.

Amnesty says this is largely because Trump’s ban and rhetoric “appear to have emboldened anti-Muslim behavior and attitudes.”

When asked about increased reports of Islamophobia and other hate crimes during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said simply: “Stop it.”

See HuffPost’s Islamophobia tracker for more.

Scientists And Environmentalists

Any threat to the environment is a threat to human rights.

Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint proposes massive funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, sparking intense backlash. The agency’s new head, Scott Pruitt, has already started to roll back environmental regulations.

To the alarm of scientists, Pruitt ― America’s top environmental official ― said human activity is not “a primary contributor” to global warming.

The Trump administration also has been accused of muzzling the government’s environmental scientists and attempting to limit their communication with the public. 

Follow HuffPost Green’s coverage for more.

Students, Youth And Children

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has no personal experience with public education. The billionaire’s lack of experience and understanding of issues surrounding education in America were put on clear display during her confirmation hearing in January, when she struggled to answer question after question.

Devos has backed Trump’s proposed $9 billion budget cuts to the Department of Education, which would curb after-school programs for low-income children that provide additional instruction and food aid.

“Such cuts could have far-reaching impact on the human rights to education and freedom from hunger enshrined in international law,” notes Amnesty.

Follow HuffPost Education’s coverage for more.

Women And Girls

On his third day as president, Trump swiftly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign aid for groups that offer abortion services, including education on safe abortions. He also signed a bill enabling states to withhold government money from organizations that offer abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

As a result, Amnesty says, “thousands of people — particularly low income women and girls — will not be able to access basic health care, including cancer screenings, pregnancy health, birth control, and safe abortion services.”

Trump also revoked the previous administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which had been implemented to eliminate wage disparity between men and women, and ensured protection for parental leave as well as fair processes surrounding workplace sexual harassment.

Follow HuffPost Women’s coverage for more.

Huang said the resistance to Trump’s anti-human rights words and actions has been “incredible.”

“From the Women’s March the day after his inauguration, to the spontaneous protests at airports after the refugee ban, to the ongoing protests that are happening across the country ― it’s a reflection of a recognition that the only way to stand up to this sort of rhetoric and bad policy is for people to take action,” she said.

Read Amnesty’s full list of 100 threats by Trump and ways to take action here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pIeI4e

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

100 Ways In 100 Days: Here's How Trump Has Threatened Human Rights Around The World

Activists at Amnesty International have catalogued 100 ways Donald Trump’s administration has threatened human rights at home and abroad during the first 100 days of his presidency. Assembling the list, according to the group’s U.S. head, “didn’t take long.”

Amnesty USA executive director Margaret Huang said the new list of Trump threats highlights a “level of abuse and fear” that’s unprecedented in the grassroots organization’s 55-year history. I stands in stark contrast to a White House tally of claimed accomplishments since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Unlike his predecessors, who have at least rhetorically talked about the importance of human rights as a U.S. national interest, this president has been dismissive of human rights, dismissive of communities who’ve been subjected to some of the worst violations, and has rejected efforts to hold other governments or his own appointments accountable for protecting human rights,” Huang told HuffPost on Thursday.

It took Amnesty staffers just “a few days” in “a really easy effort” to assemble 100 Trump administration human rights threats, Huang said. In fact, “we had to pare it down,” she added. 

Trump has armed, emboldened and repeatedly failed to condemn human rights abusers. He has downplayed hate crimes and proposes potentially devastating funding cuts to foreign aid. He also has issued direct threats to some demographics, including those within the U.S.

Here are some of the groups whose human rights have been threatened under Trump, according to Amnesty: 

Black Americans

Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite damning allegations against the former Alabama senator of racism toward black people. A Senate committee had previously denied Sessions a federal judgeship after multiple reports of racist remarks, including using a racial slur and joking about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions has dismissed the accusations as false.

Since taking office, Sessions has moved to roll back Justice Department oversight of local police forces that was meant to curb such abuses as racial profiling and brutality.  

Follow HuffPost’s Black Voices coverage for more.

Immigrants And Refugees

Little more than a week after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning residents of seven Arab nations from entering the U.S.

International panic ensued as family members were separated, and foreign governments scrambled to respond. The ban was delayed by a federal court amid concerns that it was unconstitutional. The Trump administration modified and reissued the ban, but that version, too, was blocked by courts.

Under the latest Trump policy, refugees are temporarily blocked from resettling in the U.S. The number of annual refugee admissions has been slashed from 110,000 to 50,000.

Trump during his campaign regularly demonized Syrian refugees, and vowed to deport Syrians who had already resettled in the U.S.: “I’m putting people on notice,” he threatened. “If I win, they’re going back!”

Follow WorldPost’s coverage for more.

"@DiCristo13: @realDonaldTrump let's have the policy speeches on immigration, economy, foreign policy, and NATO! http://pic.twitter.com/Uuit2hWmhW"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2016

Trump also has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Despite international condemnation, Trump’s administration is moving forward with plans to construct a multi-billion-dollar wall along the southern border.

Trump infamously said during the campaign that when Mexico “sends its people ... they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump has given broader powers to deport people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without adequate oversight, Amnesty notes. The rights group asserts that increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing into the country illegally.

“Cartels and gangs prey upon immigrants waiting to enter the U.S., leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual assault,” Amnesty’s report says. “Instead of deterring people from making a dangerous journey, the administration is placing them in greater jeopardy.”

Follow HuffPost’s Latino Voices coverage for more.

Indigenous Peoples

Trump��s proposed border wall threatens to separate indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border from their religious and cultural sites.

Moreover, his administration granted permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to drill under the Missouri River north of Standing Rock to complete the petroleum pipeline. Opponents say the project poses a risk to the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and other downriver tribes.

According to Amnesty, this could “destroy Native America cultural sites,” and it “totally [ignores] the rights of Indigenous Peoples to consent to such projects.”

See HuffPost’s Standing Rock coverage for more. 

Jewish People

The Trump administration was slow to condemn a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jewish Community Centers throughout America, inaction that was “contributing to a climate of impunity for hate-based violence,” according to Amnesty.

Trump’s team also failed to mention Jews during a statement about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. More astonishing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Adolf Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during WWII, suggesting Hitler wasn’t as cruel as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, Hitler’s Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Follow HuffPost’s continued JCC coverage for more.

Journalists And Activists

Trump’s persistent media bashing has already damaged press freedom in the U.S., according to Reporters Without Borders.

The president has unleashed a barrage of insults and threats against members of the press, even dismissing some major news outlets as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” 

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

He vowed to “open up” libel laws, warning those who offend him, “We’re gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists labeled Trump a threat to press freedom before he was even elected.

His administration has revoked press credentials for certain news organizations that have produced unflattering coverage, and has threatened to punish others.

Trump’s actions have provoked protests across the nation, but he seems to believe his rights are more important than citizens’.

As Amnesty points out, Trump’s lawyers argued that his First Amendment rights were infringed by protestors who interrupted a campaign stop in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016.

This sets “an ominous precedent for how the president interprets free expression,” Amnesty warns.

Follow HuffPost Media’s coverage for more.

LGBTQ People

Trump reversed federal protection for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. For transgender children, “this revocation puts them at increased risk for violence and harassment,” Amnesty said.

Trump also rescinded protections implemented under his predecessor, Barack Obama, that helped ensure federal contractors could not discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Roger Severino, Trump’s appointment to head the Office for Civil Rights, has been a vocal critic of policies protecting LGBTQ rights, as has Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Follow HuffPost’s Queer Voices coverage for more.

Muslims

Trump’s travel ban was widely characterized as a Muslim ban, because it directly targeted residents of Muslim-majority countries. He also issued a laptop ban affecting passengers on flights between the U.S. and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump’s election has been “staggering,” according to ThinkProgress, which has been carefully monitoring such incidents.

Amnesty says this is largely because Trump’s ban and rhetoric “appear to have emboldened anti-Muslim behavior and attitudes.”

When asked about increased reports of Islamophobia and other hate crimes during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said simply: “Stop it.”

See HuffPost’s Islamophobia tracker for more.

Scientists And Environmentalists

Any threat to the environment is a threat to human rights.

Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint proposes massive funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, sparking intense backlash. The agency’s new head, Scott Pruitt, has already started to roll back environmental regulations.

To the alarm of scientists, Pruitt ― America’s top environmental official ― said human activity is not “a primary contributor” to global warming.

The Trump administration also has been accused of muzzling the government’s environmental scientists and attempting to limit their communication with the public. 

Follow HuffPost Green’s coverage for more.

Students, Youth And Children

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has no personal experience with public education. The billionaire’s lack of experience and understanding of issues surrounding education in America were put on clear display during her confirmation hearing in January, when she struggled to answer question after question.

Devos has backed Trump’s proposed $9 billion budget cuts to the Department of Education, which would curb after-school programs for low-income children that provide additional instruction and food aid.

“Such cuts could have far-reaching impact on the human rights to education and freedom from hunger enshrined in international law,” notes Amnesty.

Follow HuffPost Education’s coverage for more.

Women And Girls

On his third day as president, Trump swiftly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign aid for groups that offer abortion services, including education on safe abortions. He also signed a bill enabling states to withhold government money from organizations that offer abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

As a result, Amnesty says, “thousands of people — particularly low income women and girls — will not be able to access basic health care, including cancer screenings, pregnancy health, birth control, and safe abortion services.”

Trump also revoked the previous administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which had been implemented to eliminate wage disparity between men and women, and ensured protection for parental leave as well as fair processes surrounding workplace sexual harassment.

Follow HuffPost Women’s coverage for more.

Huang said the resistance to Trump’s anti-human rights words and actions has been “incredible.”

“From the Women’s March the day after his inauguration, to the spontaneous protests at airports after the refugee ban, to the ongoing protests that are happening across the country ― it’s a reflection of a recognition that the only way to stand up to this sort of rhetoric and bad policy is for people to take action,” she said.

Read Amnesty’s full list of 100 threats by Trump and ways to take action here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pIeI4e

[repwincostl4m0a2]

100 Ways In 100 Days: Here's How Trump Has Threatened Human Rights Around The World

Activists at Amnesty International have catalogued 100 ways Donald Trump’s administration has threatened human rights at home and abroad during the first 100 days of his presidency. Assembling the list, according to the group’s U.S. head, “didn’t take long.”

Amnesty USA executive director Margaret Huang said the new list of Trump threats highlights a “level of abuse and fear” that’s unprecedented in the grassroots organization’s 55-year history. I stands in stark contrast to a White House tally of claimed accomplishments since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Unlike his predecessors, who have at least rhetorically talked about the importance of human rights as a U.S. national interest, this president has been dismissive of human rights, dismissive of communities who’ve been subjected to some of the worst violations, and has rejected efforts to hold other governments or his own appointments accountable for protecting human rights,” Huang told HuffPost on Thursday.

It took Amnesty staffers just “a few days” in “a really easy effort” to assemble 100 Trump administration human rights threats, Huang said. In fact, “we had to pare it down,” she added. 

Trump has armed, emboldened and repeatedly failed to condemn human rights abusers. He has downplayed hate crimes and proposes potentially devastating funding cuts to foreign aid. He also has issued direct threats to some demographics, including those within the U.S.

Here are some of the groups whose human rights have been threatened under Trump, according to Amnesty: 

Black Americans

Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite damning allegations against the former Alabama senator of racism toward black people. A Senate committee had previously denied Sessions a federal judgeship after multiple reports of racist remarks, including using a racial slur and joking about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions has dismissed the accusations as false.

Since taking office, Sessions has moved to roll back Justice Department oversight of local police forces that was meant to curb such abuses as racial profiling and brutality.  

Follow HuffPost’s Black Voices coverage for more.

Immigrants And Refugees

Little more than a week after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning residents of seven Arab nations from entering the U.S.

International panic ensued as family members were separated, and foreign governments scrambled to respond. The ban was delayed by a federal court amid concerns that it was unconstitutional. The Trump administration modified and reissued the ban, but that version, too, was blocked by courts.

Under the latest Trump policy, refugees are temporarily blocked from resettling in the U.S. The number of annual refugee admissions has been slashed from 110,000 to 50,000.

Trump during his campaign regularly demonized Syrian refugees, and vowed to deport Syrians who had already resettled in the U.S.: “I’m putting people on notice,” he threatened. “If I win, they’re going back!”

Follow WorldPost’s coverage for more.

"@DiCristo13: @realDonaldTrump let's have the policy speeches on immigration, economy, foreign policy, and NATO! http://pic.twitter.com/Uuit2hWmhW"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2016

Trump also has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Despite international condemnation, Trump’s administration is moving forward with plans to construct a multi-billion-dollar wall along the southern border.

Trump infamously said during the campaign that when Mexico “sends its people ... they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump has given broader powers to deport people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without adequate oversight, Amnesty notes. The rights group asserts that increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing into the country illegally.

“Cartels and gangs prey upon immigrants waiting to enter the U.S., leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual assault,” Amnesty’s report says. “Instead of deterring people from making a dangerous journey, the administration is placing them in greater jeopardy.”

Follow HuffPost’s Latino Voices coverage for more.

Indigenous Peoples

Trump’s proposed border wall threatens to separate indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border from their religious and cultural sites.

Moreover, his administration granted permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to drill under the Missouri River north of Standing Rock to complete the petroleum pipeline. Opponents say the project poses a risk to the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and other downriver tribes.

According to Amnesty, this could “destroy Native America cultural sites,” and it “totally [ignores] the rights of Indigenous Peoples to consent to such projects.”

See HuffPost’s Standing Rock coverage for more. 

Jewish People

The Trump administration was slow to condemn a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jewish Community Centers throughout America, inaction that was “contributing to a climate of impunity for hate-based violence,” according to Amnesty.

Trump’s team also failed to mention Jews during a statement about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. More astonishing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Adolf Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during WWII, suggesting Hitler wasn’t as cruel as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, Hitler’s Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Follow HuffPost’s continued JCC coverage for more.

Journalists And Activists

Trump’s persistent media bashing has already damaged press freedom in the U.S., according to Reporters Without Borders.

The president has unleashed a barrage of insults and threats against members of the press, even dismissing some major news outlets as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” 

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

He vowed to “open up” libel laws, warning those who offend him, “We’re gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists labeled Trump a threat to press freedom before he was even elected.

His administration has revoked press credentials for certain news organizations that have produced unflattering coverage, and has threatened to punish others.

Trump’s actions have provoked protests across the nation, but he seems to believe his rights are more important than citizens’.

As Amnesty points out, Trump’s lawyers argued that his First Amendment rights were infringed by protestors who interrupted a campaign stop in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016.

This sets “an ominous precedent for how the president interprets free expression,” Amnesty warns.

Follow HuffPost Media’s coverage for more.

LGBTQ People

Trump reversed federal protection for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. For transgender children, “this revocation puts them at increased risk for violence and harassment,” Amnesty said.

Trump also rescinded protections implemented under his predecessor, Barack Obama, that helped ensure federal contractors could not discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Roger Severino, Trump’s appointment to head the Office for Civil Rights, has been a vocal critic of policies protecting LGBTQ rights, as has Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Follow HuffPost’s Queer Voices coverage for more.

Muslims

Trump’s travel ban was widely characterized as a Muslim ban, because it directly targeted residents of Muslim-majority countries. He also issued a laptop ban affecting passengers on flights between the U.S. and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump’s election has been “staggering,” according to ThinkProgress, which has been carefully monitoring such incidents.

Amnesty says this is largely because Trump’s ban and rhetoric “appear to have emboldened anti-Muslim behavior and attitudes.”

When asked about increased reports of Islamophobia and other hate crimes during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said simply: “Stop it.”

See HuffPost’s Islamophobia tracker for more.

Scientists And Environmentalists

Any threat to the environment is a threat to human rights.

Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint proposes massive funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, sparking intense backlash. The agency’s new head, Scott Pruitt, has already started to roll back environmental regulations.

To the alarm of scientists, Pruitt ― America’s top environmental official ― said human activity is not “a primary contributor” to global warming.

The Trump administration also has been accused of muzzling the government’s environmental scientists and attempting to limit their communication with the public. 

Follow HuffPost Green’s coverage for more.

Students, Youth And Children

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has no personal experience with public education. The billionaire’s lack of experience and understanding of issues surrounding education in America were put on clear display during her confirmation hearing in January, when she struggled to answer question after question.

Devos has backed Trump’s proposed $9 billion budget cuts to the Department of Education, which would curb after-school programs for low-income children that provide additional instruction and food aid.

“Such cuts could have far-reaching impact on the human rights to education and freedom from hunger enshrined in international law,” notes Amnesty.

Follow HuffPost Education’s coverage for more.

Women And Girls

On his third day as president, Trump swiftly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign aid for groups that offer abortion services, including education on safe abortions. He also signed a bill enabling states to withhold government money from organizations that offer abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

As a result, Amnesty says, “thousands of people — particularly low income women and girls — will not be able to access basic health care, including cancer screenings, pregnancy health, birth control, and safe abortion services.”

Trump also revoked the previous administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which had been implemented to eliminate wage disparity between men and women, and ensured protection for parental leave as well as fair processes surrounding workplace sexual harassment.

Follow HuffPost Women’s coverage for more.

Huang said the resistance to Trump’s anti-human rights words and actions has been “incredible.”

“From the Women’s March the day after his inauguration, to the spontaneous protests at airports after the refugee ban, to the ongoing protests that are happening across the country ― it’s a reflection of a recognition that the only way to stand up to this sort of rhetoric and bad policy is for people to take action,” she said.

Read Amnesty’s full list of 100 threats by Trump and ways to take action here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pIeI4e

[rtawngs20815]

100 Ways In 100 Days: Here's How Trump Has Threatened Human Rights Around The World

Activists at Amnesty International have catalogued 100 ways Donald Trump’s administration has threatened human rights at home and abroad during the first 100 days of his presidency. Assembling the list, according to the group’s U.S. head, “didn’t take long.”

Amnesty USA executive director Margaret Huang said the new list of Trump threats highlights a “level of abuse and fear” that’s unprecedented in the grassroots organization’s 55-year history. I stands in stark contrast to a White House tally of claimed accomplishments since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Unlike his predecessors, who have at least rhetorically talked about the importance of human rights as a U.S. national interest, this president has been dismissive of human rights, dismissive of communities who’ve been subjected to some of the worst violations, and has rejected efforts to hold other governments or his own appointments accountable for protecting human rights,” Huang told HuffPost on Thursday.

It took Amnesty staffers just “a few days” in “a really easy effort” to assemble 100 Trump administration human rights threats, Huang said. In fact, “we had to pare it down,” she added. 

Trump has armed, emboldened and repeatedly failed to condemn human rights abusers. He has downplayed hate crimes and proposes potentially devastating funding cuts to foreign aid. He also has issued direct threats to some demographics, including those within the U.S.

Here are some of the groups whose human rights have been threatened under Trump, according to Amnesty: 

Black Americans

Trump picked Jeff Sessions as attorney general, despite damning allegations against the former Alabama senator of racism toward black people. A Senate committee had previously denied Sessions a federal judgeship after multiple reports of racist remarks, including using a racial slur and joking about the Ku Klux Klan. Sessions has dismissed the accusations as false.

Since taking office, Sessions has moved to roll back Justice Department oversight of local police forces that was meant to curb such abuses as racial profiling and brutality.  

Follow HuffPost’s Black Voices coverage for more.

Immigrants And Refugees

Little more than a week after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning residents of seven Arab nations from entering the U.S.

International panic ensued as family members were separated, and foreign governments scrambled to respond. The ban was delayed by a federal court amid concerns that it was unconstitutional. The Trump administration modified and reissued the ban, but that version, too, was blocked by courts.

Under the latest Trump policy, refugees are temporarily blocked from resettling in the U.S. The number of annual refugee admissions has been slashed from 110,000 to 50,000.

Trump during his campaign regularly demonized Syrian refugees, and vowed to deport Syrians who had already resettled in the U.S.: “I’m putting people on notice,” he threatened. “If I win, they’re going back!”

Follow WorldPost’s coverage for more.

"@DiCristo13: @realDonaldTrump let's have the policy speeches on immigration, economy, foreign policy, and NATO! http://pic.twitter.com/Uuit2hWmhW"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2016

Trump also has taken aim at Mexican immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Despite international condemnation, Trump’s administration is moving forward with plans to construct a multi-billion-dollar wall along the southern border.

Trump infamously said during the campaign that when Mexico “sends its people ... they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump has given broader powers to deport people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without adequate oversight, Amnesty notes. The rights group asserts that increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing into the country illegally.

“Cartels and gangs prey upon immigrants waiting to enter the U.S., leaving them vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual assault,” Amnesty’s report says. “Instead of deterring people from making a dangerous journey, the administration is placing them in greater jeopardy.”

Follow HuffPost’s Latino Voices coverage for more.

Indigenous Peoples

Trump’s proposed border wall threatens to separate indigenous communities along the U.S.-Mexico border from their religious and cultural sites.

Moreover, his administration granted permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to drill under the Missouri River north of Standing Rock to complete the petroleum pipeline. Opponents say the project poses a risk to the water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and other downriver tribes.

According to Amnesty, this could “destroy Native America cultural sites,” and it “totally [ignores] the rights of Indigenous Peoples to consent to such projects.”

See HuffPost’s Standing Rock coverage for more. 

Jewish People

The Trump administration was slow to condemn a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jewish Community Centers throughout America, inaction that was “contributing to a climate of impunity for hate-based violence,” according to Amnesty.

Trump’s team also failed to mention Jews during a statement about this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. More astonishing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Adolf Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during WWII, suggesting Hitler wasn’t as cruel as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, Hitler’s Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Follow HuffPost’s continued JCC coverage for more.

Journalists And Activists

Trump’s persistent media bashing has already damaged press freedom in the U.S., according to Reporters Without Borders.

The president has unleashed a barrage of insults and threats against members of the press, even dismissing some major news outlets as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” 

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

He vowed to “open up” libel laws, warning those who offend him, “We’re gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists labeled Trump a threat to press freedom before he was even elected.

His administration has revoked press credentials for certain news organizations that have produced unflattering coverage, and has threatened to punish others.

Trump’s actions have provoked protests across the nation, but he seems to believe his rights are more important than citizens’.

As Amnesty points out, Trump’s lawyers argued that his First Amendment rights were infringed by protestors who interrupted a campaign stop in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016.

This sets “an ominous precedent for how the president interprets free expression,” Amnesty warns.

Follow HuffPost Media’s coverage for more.

LGBTQ People

Trump reversed federal protection for transgender students that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. For transgender children, “this revocation puts them at increased risk for violence and harassment,” Amnesty said.

Trump also rescinded protections implemented under his predecessor, Barack Obama, that helped ensure federal contractors could not discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Roger Severino, Trump’s appointment to head the Office for Civil Rights, has been a vocal critic of policies protecting LGBTQ rights, as has Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence.

Follow HuffPost’s Queer Voices coverage for more.

Muslims

Trump’s travel ban was widely characterized as a Muslim ban, because it directly targeted residents of Muslim-majority countries. He also issued a laptop ban affecting passengers on flights between the U.S. and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes since Trump’s election has been “staggering,” according to ThinkProgress, which has been carefully monitoring such incidents.

Amnesty says this is largely because Trump’s ban and rhetoric “appear to have emboldened anti-Muslim behavior and attitudes.”

When asked about increased reports of Islamophobia and other hate crimes during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said simply: “Stop it.”

See HuffPost’s Islamophobia tracker for more.

Scientists And Environmentalists

Any threat to the environment is a threat to human rights.

Trump’s “America First” budget blueprint proposes massive funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, sparking intense backlash. The agency’s new head, Scott Pruitt, has already started to roll back environmental regulations.

To the alarm of scientists, Pruitt ― America’s top environmental official ― said human activity is not “a primary contributor” to global warming.

The Trump administration also has been accused of muzzling the government’s environmental scientists and attempting to limit their communication with the public. 

Follow HuffPost Green’s coverage for more.

Students, Youth And Children

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has no personal experience with public education. The billionaire’s lack of experience and understanding of issues surrounding education in America were put on clear display during her confirmation hearing in January, when she struggled to answer question after question.

Devos has backed Trump’s proposed $9 billion budget cuts to the Department of Education, which would curb after-school programs for low-income children that provide additional instruction and food aid.

“Such cuts could have far-reaching impact on the human rights to education and freedom from hunger enshrined in international law,” notes Amnesty.

Follow HuffPost Education’s coverage for more.

Women And Girls

On his third day as president, Trump swiftly reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which restricts U.S. foreign aid for groups that offer abortion services, including education on safe abortions. He also signed a bill enabling states to withhold government money from organizations that offer abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

As a result, Amnesty says, “thousands of people — particularly low income women and girls — will not be able to access basic health care, including cancer screenings, pregnancy health, birth control, and safe abortion services.”

Trump also revoked the previous administration’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which had been implemented to eliminate wage disparity between men and women, and ensured protection for parental leave as well as fair processes surrounding workplace sexual harassment.

Follow HuffPost Women’s coverage for more.

Huang said the resistance to Trump’s anti-human rights words and actions has been “incredible.”

“From the Women’s March the day after his inauguration, to the spontaneous protests at airports after the refugee ban, to the ongoing protests that are happening across the country ― it’s a reflection of a recognition that the only way to stand up to this sort of rhetoric and bad policy is for people to take action,” she said.

Read Amnesty’s full list of 100 threats by Trump and ways to take action here.

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