Human Rights

Yesterday, June 21st, Donald Trump signed an executive order that he claimed would end the policy of separating children of asylum seekers and other immigrants from their families at the border and putting them in camps until they are parceled out to non-profits, trafficked, or simply lost. 65 children are “processed” in this way on the Texas border alone each and every day. The executive order does not end family separation and in fact makes it worse and permanent.

A picture went viral on the internet two days ago on May 27th. It was a shocking picture of a prison bus with car seats for toddlers. It was alleged that the bus was used to transport immigrant children after they were separated from their parents on the direct permanent orders of pro-segregation Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Anyone who reads the Mockingbird regularly knows that that this author, whether writing elsewhere or writing here as editor-in-chief officially doesnt like Jeff Bezos. He is the richest man on Earth and he made a hefty payday off the CIA, which he spent on the Washington Post. The editorial and business policies noticably took a turn for the shady soon thereafter. Jeff Bezos is a fan Tthe Expanse, has read all the books, and directed Amazon to get that show. This was not altruism on his part.

When my grandparents came here as infants and toddlers in the early 1920s, the great lady of the harbor said “give me your tired, your poor huddled masses yearning to be free.” Today children are greeted at the border with a different refrain. According to the ACLU they are tossed into cages alone and told “Right now, we close the door, we rape you and fuck you.” by Border Patrol Agents.

If you are a part of the political class in America, nothing turns you on like a dead brown baby. The Democratic Party pushed forward a congressional leader to justify what Republicans high fived on the street. The bare facts of last week's massacres, plural, in Palestine is that they are part of an ongoing program of genocide that has broad bipartisan support. The death toll, when examined proves this. Since the Republicans spoke first, their choicest statement will be addressed first. It provides a lead in to the facts of the death toll.

The unproven concept that Russian intelligence directly attack American election systems in 2016 keeps being repeated as fact in the media. The details are either shallow or classified. One person, Air Force Veteran and private contractor Reality Winner, remains held without bail still awaiting trial for leaking a single memo on the subject to The Intercept.

The Trump administration has instructed it's DHS personnel to build a database of journalists and “media influencers.” Presumably since the President equates “fake news” with “said bad stuff about the me” this database will be used to retaliate either through direct punishment or denial of access or both. The Free Speech and Freedom of the Press implications are obvious and are being discussed, but not with the details of implementation. Those details do not make the implications more palatable to anyone who lacks a totalitarian heart.

The whole internet has told David Benihoff and D.B. Weiss not to do it, but intoxicated with success from the hit series Game of Thrones they announced another partnership with HBO to create “Confederates,” a series based on the South winning the civil war. Rather than back off from the backlash against a bad idea, they did something I learned to never do on my Grandfather's knee, that is to double down on a bad hand.

The Foundations of Trump's wall go back over a decade to 2001. The 2001 fence was conceived to keep Islamic terrorists out of the United States because George W. Bush's infinite wisdom assured him that they must be coming from Catholic Mexico where they would surely blend in. It was an extension of the fence that Bill Clinton instituted near Sand Diego in 1994 to coincide with an expansion in free trade with Mexico and the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA. Congressional wrangling over Bush's border fence landed it partial funding in 2006 and the funded part is still incomplete.