There are so many topics to write about. I picked two – Immigrant kids and Anti Russia Sentiments. Not that they actually have much to do with each other besides being elements of Donald Trump’s ambience
Abuse of kids – now there is a topic that can cause mists of red to rise before our eyes – well those of us who give a damn anyway. And immigrant kids? For some people, not so much.
I wonder how it is that people can see “the other” as less than them just because they are different – skin colour, sexual preference, political party, brand of beer.
I mean we all have our culture and our preferences, but nobody is higher up the ladder in the evolution stakes.
Zero Tolerance, Mega Chaos
President Donald Trump and his Zero Tolerance policy have created evil chaos with these family separations. Now here is a man who believes that White is superior. We heard his repeated calls last week to Europe to get a grip on immigration because it is changing their culture.
President Trump closed a little-known door for family reunification when he ended Obama’s Central American Minors Program, leaving refugees stranded https://t.co/NDVSZgEE5A pic.twitter.com/O54NOqeR8i
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 15, 2018
The Trump folk were great at the separations but don’t seem to be that good with the family reunifications. On 10 July CNN reported that “The Trump administration was only able to reunite fewer than half of the eligible separated migrant families in its care by a court-ordered deadline Tuesday — as the fates of thousands more remain in limbo.”
So with the help of DNA tests and who know what other methods to find them taking ages, the children have to be cared for until the government can return them to their parents
It is true that discrimination begets even more discrimination. The US Government tears families apart to prove a political point. Then they have no idea how to find the children they separated from their parents – that is over and above the unaccompanied minors from the past that they have lost track of. And now they can’t find these kids that they have recently separated?
Religious Objections for Foster Families
Did you know, however that private charities housing undocumented immigrant children in several states are permitted by law to reject prospective foster families based on religious objections.
Right now, the US Department of Health and Human Services oversees more than 100 shelters in 17 states, a number of which are operated by nonprofit providers housing kids separated at the border by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. In nine states, providers are protected by law if they reject an applicant (or child) on religious grounds.
Not the religious beliefs of the child, but those of the agencies. They can refuse single women, gays and lesbians, people of faiths other than Christian.
The Daily Beast also reports that for at least the past few years, a Texas nonprofit now looking after separated immigrant children has said on its website that all foster parents “must attend a Christian church.”
Helsinki Summit – Arms Race
This week started off with a bang with President Donald Trump cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. The US president tells his Russian counterpart: ‘I really think the world wants to see us get along’. Really? Imagine how much less the US would spend on defense if they didn’t have an Enemy. I can just imagine these two leaders talking themselves up – my army is bigger than yours.
Right now the US spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined – these countries being China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan. (And many of these buy arms from the US.
In this article, the Daily Beast calls Pamela Anderson a “cultural icon” who has “turned hardened activist. She has also apparently grown close to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is a friend of Vladimir Putin.
Although the headline signals an article about anti-Russian sentiment, it is actually about Pamela’s fab new life in the South of France and her causes – Safe Rides, the #MeToo movement, her poetry etc, Putin and then a throw-away line about anti-Russian sentiment. “America can be very annoying, how everything is so anti-Russia.”
So nothing really substantial on the anti-Russian sentiment front. I’ll stick with my huge defense spending and needing an enemy to fuel it theory for now.
