Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 749
June 14, 2016
Americans are hoarding their pain pills as opioid abuse reaches “epidemic” level
(Credit: Tish1 via Shutterstock)
A few weeks after I’d had my first major cancer surgery, I sat in my oncologist’s office and asked what I thought was a relatively commonplace post-op question. How, I wondered, should I safely dispose of my leftover Percoset? Should I give them to her? Should I crush them and throw them in the trash? She paused to consider my query and replied, “You know, no one’s ever asked me that before.” She’s been a doctor for over 20 years, by the way.
I’ve been thinking about that exchange a lot lately. I thought about it this winter, when the White House proposed a staggering $1.1 billion in funding to combat America’s epidemic of opioid and heroin abuse, and reported that “More Americans now die every year from drug overdoses than they do in motor vehicle crashes.” I thought about it earlier this month, when it was officially confirmed that Prince could be added to that list of overdose deaths. And I’ve thought about it again this week, in the wake of a report from researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research and the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy that indicates that just like me, more than half of all patients prescribed opioids wind up with leftovers. But alarmingly, as UPI reports, “Many shared the drugs or failed to store them securely.” Hm, I wonder if there’s any correlation between all these stories?
The Johns Hopkins study surveyed more than 1,000 patients prescribed medications like OxyContin or Vicodin and found that nearly half of those people couldn’t recall being told about safe storage or disposal. Only a third of those who remembered getting any of that information said they’d received it from a doctor or nurse, with the rest relying on their pharmacists or the drug package. Among those who kept the leftovers, 60 percent assumed they’d hang on to them for “future use.” And of those who shared their medications with friends or family, “Nearly three-quarters said they gave their spare meds to someone they knew who also struggled with pain.” That’s an incredible amount of amateur drug dispensing.
I am fortunate that any time I’ve ever been prescribed opioids it’s been for pain that is not chronic. I’m fortunate that the side effects have always been sufficiently unpleasant to make me eager to stop as soon as possible, even if I do also acutely recall the initial pang of heartbreak I felt in the hospital when they turned off my morphine drip.
I believe it’s cruel when doctors unthinkingly treat patients like potential addicts and hand them Tylenol when they’re clearly in severe distress. I will never forget the game-changing moment a nurse who saw me writhing in agony handed me two Percoset and told me, “You deserve to not suffer.” Yet it’s also obviously a major problem that too many doctors are too generous with the prescription pad, and are overlooking the crucial element of sensible dialogue with their patients. I don’t know a single person who’s in recovery for addiction or alcoholism who has had a doctor ever ask them if it’s cool to prescribe them a potentially addictive medication. And I have friends who don’t have substance abuse problems who nonetheless have a fond attachment to the pills they got after a surgery, pills that they’re hanging on to for some future recreational occasion or imagined upcoming pain. And all of that can be ascribed to a glut of overprescription and under-communication.
How hard is it for doctors to take two minutes to ask about risk factors and outline safe disposal methods? How many lives could be saved with just that kind of investment of time? “These painkillers are much riskier than has been understood,” says study leader Alene Kennedy-Hendricks. “And the volume of prescribing and use has contributed to an opioid epidemic in this country.“
Noam Chomsky: “The Republican Party is becoming a danger to decent human survival”
Noam Chomsky (Credit: AP/Hatem Moussa)
In January 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its famous Doomsday Clock to three minutes before midnight, a threat level that had not been reached for 30 years. The Bulletin’s statement explaining this advance toward catastrophe invoked the two major threats to survival: nuclear weapons and “unchecked climate change.” The call condemned world leaders, who “have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe,” endangering “every person on Earth [by] failing to perform their most important duty — ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.”
Since then, there has been good reason to consider moving the hands even closer to doomsday.
As 2015 ended, world leaders met in Paris to address the severe problem of “unchecked climate change.” Hardly a day passes without new evidence of how severe the crisis is. To pick almost at random, shortly before the opening of the Paris conference, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab released a study that both surprised and alarmed scientists who have been studying Arctic ice. The study showed that a huge Greenland glacier, Zachariae Isstrom, “broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat,” an unexpected and ominous development. The glacier “holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 18 inches (46 centimeters) if it were to melt completely. And now it’s on a crash diet, losing 5 billion tons of mass every year. All that ice is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean.”
Yet there was little expectation that world leaders in Paris would “act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe.” And even if by some miracle they had, it would have been of limited value, for reasons that should be deeply disturbing.
When the agreement was approved in Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who hosted the talks, announced that it is “legally binding.” That may be the hope, but there are more than a few obstacles that are worthy of careful attention.
In all of the extensive media coverage of the Paris conference, perhaps the most important sentences were these, buried near the end of a long New York Times analysis: “Traditionally, negotiators have sought to forge a legally binding treaty that needed ratification by the governments of the participating countries to have force. There is no way to get that in this case, because of the United States. A treaty would be dead on arrival on Capitol Hill without the required two-thirds majority vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. So the voluntary plans are taking the place of mandatory, top-down targets.” And voluntary plans are a guarantee of failure.
“Because of the United States.” More precisely, because of the Republican Party, which by now is becoming a real danger to decent human survival.
The conclusions are underscored in another Times piece on the Paris agreement. At the end of a long story lauding the achievement, the article notes that the system created at the conference “depends heavily on the views of the future world leaders who will carry out those policies. In the United States, every Republican candidate running for president in 2016 has publicly questioned or denied the science of climate change, and has voiced opposition to Mr. Obama’s climate change policies. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who has led the charge against Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda, said, ‘Before his international partners pop the champagne, they should remember that this is an unattainable deal based on a domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, and that Congress has already voted to reject.’”
Both parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period of the past generation. Mainstream Democrats are now pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” Meanwhile, the Republican Party has largely drifted off the spectrum, becoming what respected conservative political analyst Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call a “radical insurgency” that has virtually abandoned normal parliamentary politics. With the rightward drift, the Republican Party’s dedication to wealth and privilege has become so extreme that its actual policies could not attract voters, so it has had to seek a new popular base, mobilized on other grounds: evangelical Christians who await the Second Coming, nativists who fear that “they” are taking our country away from us, unreconstructed racists, people with real grievances who gravely mistake their causes, and others like them who are easy prey to demagogues and can readily become a radical insurgency.
In recent years, the Republican establishment had managed to suppress the voices of the base that it has mobilized. But no longer. By the end of 2015 the establishment was expressing considerable dismay and desperation over its inability to do so, as the Republican base and its choices fell out of control.
Republican elected officials and contenders for the next presidential election expressed open contempt for the Paris deliberations, refusing to even attend the proceedings. The three candidates who led in the polls at the time — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson — adopted the stand of the largely evangelical base: humans have no impact on global warming, if it is happening at all.
The other candidates reject government action to deal with the matter. Immediately after Obama spoke in Paris, pledging that the United States would be in the vanguard seeking global action, the Republican-dominated Congress voted to scuttle his recent Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut carbon emissions. As the press reported, this was “a provocative message to more than 100 [world] leaders that the American president does not have the full support of his government on climate policy” — a bit of an understatement. Meanwhile Lamar Smith, Republican head of the House’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, carried forward his jihad against government scientists who dare to report the facts.
The message is clear. American citizens face an enormous responsibility right at home.
A companion story in the New York Times reports that “two-thirds of Americans support the United States joining a binding international agreement to curb growth of greenhouse gas emissions.” And by a five-to-three margin, Americans regard the climate as more important than the economy. But it doesn’t matter. Public opinion is dismissed. That fact, once again, sends a strong message to Americans. It is their task to cure the dysfunctional political system, in which popular opinion is a marginal factor. The disparity between public opinion and policy, in this case, has significant implications for the fate of the world.
We should, of course, have no illusions about a past “golden age.” Nevertheless, the developments just reviewed constitute significant changes. The undermining of functioning democracy is one of the contributions of the neoliberal assault on the world’s population in the past generation. And this is not happening just in the U.S.; in Europe the impact may be even worse.
The Black Swan We Can Never See
Let us turn to the other (and traditional) concern of the atomic scientists who adjust the Doomsday Clock: nuclear weapons. The current threat of nuclear war amply justifies their January 2015 decision to advance the clock two minutes toward midnight. What has happened since reveals the growing threat even more clearly, a matter that elicits insufficient concern, in my opinion.
The last time the Doomsday Clock reached three minutes before midnight was in 1983, at the time of the Able Archer exercises of the Reagan administration; these exercises simulated attacks on the Soviet Union to test their defense systems. Recently released Russian archives reveal that the Russians were deeply concerned by the operations and were preparing to respond, which would have meant, simply: The End.
We have learned more about these rash and reckless exercises, and about how close the world was to disaster, from U.S. military and intelligence analyst Melvin Goodman, who was CIA division chief and senior analyst at the Office of Soviet Affairs at the time. “In addition to the Able Archer mobilization exercise that alarmed the Kremlin,” Goodman writes, “the Reagan administration authorized unusually aggressive military exercises near the Soviet border that, in some cases, violated Soviet territorial sovereignty. The Pentagon’s risky measures included sending U.S. strategic bombers over the North Pole to test Soviet radar, and naval exercises in wartime approaches to the USSR where U.S. warships had previously not entered. Additional secret operations simulated surprise naval attacks on Soviet targets.”
We now know that the world was saved from likely nuclear destruction in those frightening days by the decision of a Russian officer, Stanislav Petrov, not to transmit to higher authorities the report of automated detection systems that the USSR was under missile attack. Accordingly, Petrov takes his place alongside Russian submarine commander Vasili Arkhipov, who, at a dangerous moment of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, refused to authorize the launching of nuclear torpedoes when the subs were under attack by U.S. destroyers enforcing a quarantine.
Other recently revealed examples enrich the already frightening record. Nuclear security expert Bruce Blair reports that “the closest the U.S. came to an inadvertent strategic launch decision by the President happened in 1979, when a NORAD early warning training tape depicting a full-scale Soviet strategic strike inadvertently coursed through the actual early warning network. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was called twice in the night and told the U.S. was under attack, and he was just picking up the phone to persuade President Carter that a full-scale response needed to be authorized right away, when a third call told him it was a false alarm.”
This newly revealed example brings to mind a critical incident of 1995, when the trajectory of a U.S.-Norwegian rocket carrying scientific equipment resembled the path of a nuclear missile. This elicited Russian concerns that quickly reached President Boris Yeltsin, who had to decide whether to launch a nuclear strike.
Blair adds other examples from his own experience. In one case, at the time of the 1967 Middle East war, “a carrier nuclear-aircraft crew was sent an actual attack order instead of an exercise/training nuclear order.” A few years later, in the early 1970s, the Strategic Air Command in Omaha “retransmitted an exercise… launch order as an actual real-world launch order.” In both cases code checks had failed; human intervention prevented the launch. “But you get the drift here,” Blair adds. “It just wasn’t that rare for these kinds of snafus to occur.”
Blair made these comments in reaction to a report by airman John Bordne that has only recently been cleared by the U.S. Air Force. Bordne was serving on the U.S. military base in Okinawa in October 1962, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a moment of serious tensions in Asia as well. The U.S. nuclear alert system had been raised to DEFCON 2, one level below DEFCON 1, when nuclear missiles can be launched immediately. At the peak of the crisis, on October 28th, a missile crew received authorization to launch its nuclear missiles, in error. They decided not to, averting likely nuclear war and joining Petrov and Arkhipov in the pantheon of men who decided to disobey protocol and thereby saved the world.
As Blair observed, such incidents are not uncommon. One recent expert study found dozens of false alarms every year during the period reviewed, 1977 to 1983; the study concluded that the range is 43 to 255 per year. The author of the study, Seth Baum, summarizes with appropriate words: “Nuclear war is the black swan we can never see, except in that brief moment when it is killing us. We delay eliminating the risk at our own peril. Now is the time to address the threat, because now we are still alive.”
These reports, like those in Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control, keep mostly to U.S. systems. The Russian ones are doubtless much more error-prone. That is not to mention the extreme danger posed by the systems of others, notably Pakistan.
“A War Is No Longer Unthinkable”
Sometimes the threat has not been accident, but adventurism, as in the case of Able Archer. The most extreme case was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the threat of disaster was all too real. The way it was handled is shocking; so is the manner in which it is commonly interpreted.
With this grim record in mind, it is useful to look at strategic debates and planning. One chilling case is the Clinton-era 1995 STRATCOM study “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence.” The study calls for retaining the right of first strike, even against nonnuclear states. It explains that nuclear weapons are constantly used, in the sense that they “cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict.” It also urges a “national persona” of irrationality and vindictiveness to intimidate the world.
Current doctrine is explored in the lead article in the journal International Security, one of the most authoritative in the domain of strategic doctrine. The authors explain that the United States is committed to “strategic primacy” — that is, insulation from retaliatory strike. This is the logic behind Obama’s “new triad” (strengthening submarine and land-based missiles and the bomber force), along with missile defense to counter a retaliatory strike. The concern raised by the authors is that the U.S. demand for strategic primacy might induce China to react by abandoning its “no first use” policy and by expanding its limited deterrent. The authors think that they will not, but the prospect remains uncertain. Clearly the doctrine enhances the dangers in a tense and conflicted region.
The same is true of NATO expansion to the east in violation of verbal promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev when the USSR was collapsing and he agreed to allow a unified Germany to become part of NATO — quite a remarkable concession when one thinks about the history of the century. Expansion to East Germany took place at once. In the following years, NATO expanded to Russia’s borders; there are now substantial threats even to incorporate Ukraine, in Russia’s geostrategic heartland. One can imagine how the United States would react if the Warsaw Pact were still alive, most of Latin America had joined, and now Mexico and Canada were applying for membership.
Aside from that, Russia understands as well as China (and U.S. strategists, for that matter) that the U.S. missile defense systems near Russia’s borders are, in effect, a first-strike weapon, aimed to establish strategic primacy — immunity from retaliation. Perhaps their mission is utterly unfeasible, as some specialists argue. But the targets can never be confident of that. And Russia’s militant reactions are quite naturally interpreted by NATO as a threat to the West.
One prominent British Ukraine scholar poses what he calls a “fateful geographical paradox”: that NATO “exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
The threats are very real right now. Fortunately, the shooting down of a Russian plane by a Turkish F-16 in November 2015 did not lead to an international incident, but it might have, particularly given the circumstances. The plane was on a bombing mission in Syria. It passed for a mere 17 seconds through a fringe of Turkish territory that protrudes into Syria, and evidently was heading for Syria, where it crashed. Shooting it down appears to have been a needlessly reckless and provocative act, and an act with consequences.
In reaction, Russia announced that its bombers will henceforth be accompanied by jet fighters and that it is deploying sophisticated anti-aircraft missile systems in Syria. Russia also ordered its missile cruiser Moskva, with its long-range air defense system, to move closer to shore, so that it may be “ready to destroy any aerial target posing a potential danger to our aircraft,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced. All of this sets the stage for confrontations that could be lethal.
Tensions are also constant at NATO-Russian borders, including military maneuvers on both sides. Shortly after the Doomsday Clock was moved ominously close to midnight, the national press reported that “U.S. military combat vehicles paraded Wednesday through an Estonian city that juts into Russia, a symbolic act that highlighted the stakes for both sides amid the worst tensions between the West and Russia since the Cold War.” Shortly before, a Russian warplane came within seconds of colliding with a Danish civilian airliner. Both sides are practicing rapid mobilization and redeployment of forces to the Russia-NATO border, and “both believe a war is no longer unthinkable.”
Prospects for Survival
If that is so, both sides are beyond insanity, since a war might well destroy everything. It has been recognized for decades that a first strike by a major power might destroy the attacker, even without retaliation, simply from the effects of nuclear winter.
But that is today’s world. And not just today’s — that is what we have been living with for 70 years. The reasoning throughout is remarkable. As we have seen, security for the population is typically not a leading concern of policymakers. That has been true from the earliest days of the nuclear age, when in the centers of policy formation there were no efforts — apparently not even expressed thoughts — to eliminate the one serious potential threat to the United States, as might have been possible. And so matters continue to the present, in ways just briefly sampled.
That is the world we have been living in, and live in today. Nuclear weapons pose a constant danger of instant destruction, but at least we know in principle how to alleviate the threat, even to eliminate it, an obligation undertaken (and disregarded) by the nuclear powers that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The threat of global warming is not instantaneous, though it is dire in the longer term and might escalate suddenly. That we have the capacity to deal with it is not entirely clear, but there can be no doubt that the longer the delay, the more extreme the calamity.
Prospects for decent long-term survival are not high unless there is a significant change of course. A large share of the responsibility is in our hands — the opportunities as well.
June 13, 2016
Orlando shooter supported conflicting Islamist groups that are fighting each other, FBI says
Omar Mateen (Credit: AP/Balkis Press)
The shooter who massacred 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, Florida on Sunday appeared to be ignorant about the conflicting Islamist groups he expressed support for.
Federal investigators say Omar Mateen backed militant groups that are enemies, and are actively fighting each other in Syria.
FBI Director James Comey said at a news conference on Monday that Mateen had previously made “inflammatory and contradictory” statements about Islamist groups to his coworkers.
Mateen called 911 before the attack early Sunday morning and told the dispatcher he was attacking the Pulse nightclub on behalf of ISIS, the FBI said.
Yet the 29-year-old gunman, who was born in New York, also said he was partially inspired by an American suicide bomber with al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which is an enemy of ISIS.
And before that, Mateen claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, a Shia militia that opposes the violent Sunni extremism of both ISIS and al-Qaeda.
In Syria, Hezbollah is aligned with the government and is fighting both al-Nusra and ISIS; al-Nusra, on the other hand, is aligned with the anti-government rebels and is fighting Hezbollah and ISIS. The self-declared Islamic State is fighting all of them.
These blatant contradictions call into question whether Mateen really knew what he was supporting. As journalist Ali Abunimah commented, the “Orlando killer previously claimed to be member of Hizbullah, a mortal enemy of ISIS. He was delusional and disturbed.”
After the attack, ISIS claimed the gunman as a member. But President Obama stressed that there is no evidence that Mateen was actually materially linked to any of these groups.
He was “inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet,” Obama said, calling it a case of “homegrown extremism.”
“We see no clear evidence that he was directed externally,” Obama added. “It does appear that at the last minute, he announced allegiance to ISIL. But there is no evidence so far that he was in fact directed by ISIL, and at this stage there’s no direct evidence that he was part of a larger plot.” ISIL is another name for ISIS, or the Islamic State.
Mateen had worked for nine years with the global mercenary corporation G4S, the world’s largest private security company. In a report Monday on G4S’ “tainted” record, the Associated Press cited an attorney who previously sued the corporation. He said that, because of its low wages and high turnover, the company is “pretty desperate to hire people” and doesn’t do law enforcement checks.
When he was hired in 2007, Mateen received a firearms license issued by the state of Florida and a security officers’ license.
Reporter David Ovalle said a co-worker at G4S told him that Mateen frequently used slurs attacking gay people and black Americans.
A woman who knew Mateen said he had U.S. Marine stickers on his car, including one that read Semper Fi, and appeared to be patriotic, saluting her on Memorial Day. Two widely circulated selfie photos also show him wearing NYPD shirts.
Mateen massacred 49 people and injured another 53, most of whom were Latinos, in the attack, before being killed by a SWAT team. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
A team of police negotiators that worked at the scene of the attack recalled, “He really wasn’t asking for anything.” It appeared to be a suicide mission, although authorities did not comment further.
The FBI had investigated Mateen twice. Comey said the first time was in 2013, when Mateen told co-workers that he had relatives connected to the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda while simultaneously claiming he was a member of the Shia militia Hezbollah.
“FBI agents closed their 2013 investigation into Mateen after concluding that he didn’t understand how al-Qaeda operated and had not committed a crime,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “He told investigators he had been lying and blustering about his terrorist ties.”
In the second investigation, in 2014, the FBI said Mateen had been watching al-Qaeda propaganda videos and attending a mosque with Moner Abu Salha, a man who became a suicide bomber for al-Nusra.
On Sunday morning, Mateen allegedly told the 911 dispatcher that he was partially inspired by Abu Salha to carry out the attack on the nightclub, yet Mateen died fighting for an extremist group that opposes ISIS.
Mateen also previously expressed support for the 2013 Boston bombers. The FBI said that, during his 911 call, he referred to the Boston Marathon bombers as his “homeboys.” The Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the April 15, 2013, attack, killed three people and injured more than 260.
Even further complicating the background is the fact that Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, who hosts a TV show about Afghan politics, has expressed support for the Afghan Taliban, another Sunni extremist group.
Seddique Mateen forcefully condemned his son’s attack, however, dubbing it an act of terrorism and calling the victims “my family.” He told reporters he never suspected his son would do such a thing, noting, “If I did know of 1 percent that he’s committing such a crime, my son, I would arrest him myself. I would have called the FBI.”
Mateen’s father, nevertheless, added that he feels homosexuality is forbidden by God.
Mustafa Abasin, the gunman’s brother-in-law, told reporters that he had never heard Mateen discuss politics or violence.
Mateen bought both of the guns he used in the attack legally, approximately a week apart, roughly 10 days before the shooting.
American crime: Maybe Omar Mateen used “radical Islam” as an excuse, but his heinous actions are all too familiar
(Credit: Salon/Benjamin Wheelock/AP/debibishop via iStock)
Don’t let the merchants of hate and the evangelists of fear fool you. What just happened in Orlando, casting a dark shadow of grief and suffering across a spectacular summer weekend, was an American crime. It was a perfect storm of bad things in an all-too-familiar combination: easy access to firearms, untreated mental illness and a private, toxic stew of bitterness and rage. It is far more similar to the incidents in Charleston and Sandy Hook and San Bernardino (yeah, I know; I’m throwing that in deliberately) and the dozens of other mass shootings in the United States in recent decades than to the organized attacks carried out by ISIS militants in Paris last year.
If Omar Mateen swore allegiance to ISIS amid his orgy of murder I suppose we have to take him at his word. That too becomes part of the dreadful framework for this crime, the worst of its kind in American history. I’m not saying that religion is an irrelevant factor in this case, or that Mateen’s religion can be held blameless. I’m certainly not claiming that Islam, in its craziest, most inbred and most “radical” forms — there’s your mantra, Republicans! Now please shut up and go away — does not fuel bigotry, hatred and violence. But what could be more American, going back to the Salem witch trials, than deranged religious fervor?
At this moment in our history, a crazy Muslim may be more likely to commit a spectacular violent crime than a crazy Christian. It’s a fine distinction, and one liable to be proven false at almost any moment, but I don’t think the left does itself any favors by ducking that issue. That only feeds the overt Islamophobia of Donald Trump, and the more nuanced, “liberal” Islamophobia of Bill Maher or Sam Harris. But if such a distinction exists it results from complicated historical factors — and the scale by which we measure whose religion is more violent is highly subjective, to put it mildly. “Islam is creepy and Muslims freak me out” might be an understandable reaction — if we were in a second-grade class in rural Tennessee. As the dominant opinion of a significant American minority, and the position of a major-party presidential nominee, it’s nothing short of terrifying.
It may not be possible for Donald Trump to do anything so repulsive that his supporters will turn against him. But Trump’s unconcealed Twitter glee at his perception that the Orlando killings justified his constricted and hateful worldview felt like new depths of vileness and inhumanity. On a Sunday morning when the entire nation was paralyzed with shock and grief, when dozens of bodies were being carried out of that nightclub on South Orange Avenue, when parents and lovers and spouses across Central Florida were waiting to learn whether a loved one who went out to party on Saturday night was ever coming home, the Republican Party’s standard-bearer-to-be could think of nothing better to say than “I told you so.”
I suppose Trump would deny feeling delighted that all those people had died to supply him with political ammunition, and might grudgingly admit to having expressed himself poorly. But as they say in writing class, Donald, “First thought, best thought.” An ugly truth was exposed in that utterance, which is that Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care about the lives of a bunch of predominantly gay, predominantly Latino young people in an Orlando nightclub, except as political ammunition. How much distance is there, really, between Those people died and that proves we have to crack down on the Muslims, and Those people died because they were perverts leading an outrageous lifestyle, a view evidently shared by ISIS and, if you believe Twitter outrage, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas? Those are parallel streams of bigotry, which are not identical but intersect and overlap at various points.
Because panic and ignorance and paranoia are the order of the day in American politics, and because the second-grade mindset I described earlier defines much of our public and media discourse, many of the things we are saying and hearing about Orlando right now miss the point. I don’t care whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or anybody else uses the words “radical Islam.” That’s not a magical incantation, and Democrats have committed a tactical error in allowing the right to invest it with so much power. But this is an American crime, and an American story. Anyone who tries to convince you that the massacre in Orlando was the work of a shadowy international cabal of “terrorists,” rather than the result of explosive forces within our own society, is not merely lying but surrendering to a worldview strikingly close to that of ISIS.
We don’t know for sure whether Mateen had any contact with self-styled Islamic radicals, either in the real world or online. He was born in New York, grew up in New Jersey and moved to Florida as a teenager. He reportedly visited Saudi Arabia twice, on pilgrimage to Mecca, and officials have yet to uncover any darker motive for those trips. Otherwise, it does not appear that he ever traveled to any location more exotic than Miami Beach, where he was apparently outraged to see men kissing on the street. There is no imaginable universe in which any of Donald Trump’s nonsensical policy proposals would have done anything to stop him, unless Trump is actually prepared to go all the way to interning all Muslims or revoking the 14th Amendment and deporting native-born American citizens to ancestral countries they have never visited. (None of which, in fairness, is entirely inconceivable.)
Mateen was investigated several times by the FBI for making grandiose and hateful comments, and they apparently concluded that he did not belong to any known militant organization and did not attend a mosque known for extremist rhetoric. He basically sounds like a blowhard bigot who talked too much, which is not a criminal offense — a fact for which Trump should be grateful. Other than being the child of recent immigrants who belonged to a minority religion, which at this point in our century is not rare or exceptional, everything we know about Omar Mateen so far fits the classic profile of the disturbed American loner who commits an unprovoked act of large-scale violence.
Mateen’s father and ex-wife have said they don’t remember him as especially devout — but they do remember him as having a violent temper and an irrational hatred for gay people. A co-worker remembers him as using the N-word, while expressing a wish to kill as many African-Americans as possible. One could build a dime-store psychological profile built on that fragmentary evidence, but it wouldn’t have much to do with religion in general or Islam in particular. Maybe we will find out that Mateen was strongly motivated by the poisonous ideology of ISIS, and maybe we will find out that it was just an excuse, a convenient container for his deteriorating mental state and his unreasoning hatred of people he found threatening.
Whatever we discover about this person, who evidently lived in such unbearable pain and darkness that he decided to inflict his trauma on the bodies of strangers enjoying a Saturday night of love and celebration, and on the collective consciousness of our nation, I suspect “radical Islam” will be a marginal issue at best. Those who try to push that topic front and center because it paralyzes the public mind and trumps all other concerns (ha ha), and who seek to ignore all the other blindingly obvious reasons why these kinds of atrocities keep happening are steering us down the path of greater evil, not less. Whatever else he may have been, Omar Mateen was a 21st-century American, who committed the ultimate American crime.
Do it for Emily Doe: 10 ways to turn your Brock Turner anger into action
Brock Turner Mugshot (Credit: Stanford University Department of Public Safety)
Before June 2, when Brock Turner was sentenced for sexually assaulting a woman behind a dumpster following a Stanford fraternity party, his victim, given the pseudonym “Emily Doe” to protect her identity, had been represented by the media as the anonymous “unconscious, intoxicated woman.” But in a 12-page impact statement she read to the court, she shared her story in unflinching detail, brought light to some of the struggles faced by rape survivors in the wake of their attack and denounced a culture of victim blaming. After Turner received a pittance of a sentence–a six-month stint in a county jail, half of which he won’t even serve–Doe’s statement was published in full by Katie Baker at Buzzfeed and has since gone viral. For many of the millions of people who have read it, Emily Doe has been transformed from a random, faceless victim into a friend, a sister, a daughter, or their own reflection.
By bringing her impact statement to the public, Emily Doe has done something nothing short of incredible. She’s forced America to start a conversation it hadn’t quite been ready for, even after a year in which high-profile sexual violence stories, including those of the dozens of women speaking out against Bill Cosby and pop-singer Kesha’s allegations against producer Dr. Luke, among others, have been widely discussed in the news and social discourse, and in a time where young women are increasingly calling out those who perpetuate sexism, misogyny and gender-based violence in public forums. After all, it is still a culture in which real discussions about rape are rare but images of sexual violence are everywhere, in which creepshots and revenge porn are things women legitimately need to worry about, and in which the rights of women to make decisions over their medical health and family planning are being increasingly threatened and legislated by governing bodies. If general social conscience is in turmoil, Emily Doe has circumvented it by grabbing individual hearts. Still, even though millions have read her words and have expressed their compassion and support, taking steps toward educating people to better understand the impact rape can have on the individual, it is still only a baby step forward in the grand scheme of progress.
Aside from the enormous public response over the last few weeks, both to Emily Doe’s statement and other components of the case, including a disturbingly tone-deaf letter to the court penned by Turner’s father, the only other thing that is truly remarkable about the Stanford case, which could otherwise get lost in a sea of similar campus rape stories, is that as short and unjust as Turner’s sentence may be, in a country where only 6 out of 1000 rapists (white college athlete or otherwise), ever serve a day in prison, it is a small miracle he will serve any time at all.
Much of the outcry has revolved around how Turner’s whiteness, status as a prized athlete, and relative affluence may have influenced Judge Aaron Persky’s decision to hand him such an anemic sentence, and rightly so. Ours is a justice system fraught with a long and storied history of racism and classism. The same goes for our media, that demonstrated this time and time again in its representation of Turner compared to the negative depictions of many black men accused of sexual or non-violent crimes, for example running a photo of him smiling in a jacket and tie versus his mug shot.
This critical look at Turner’s race and privilege and how it impacted the events leading up to and the outcome of his trial is essential, but it is just part of the picture of how privilege plays out in sexual assault cases. Despite the passionate support for Emily Doe over the past few weeks and months our society is still very much skewed against victims of sexual assault, no matter who attacked them, and bias can enter the justice process under various guises and forms. Therefore, conversations about privilege and sexual violence should ultimately start with them.
Emily Doe highlights some of these biases several times throughout her statement, for example how she was relegated to “unconscious, intoxicated woman,” in media coverage, which effectively cast her as being complicit in her own rape while the same articles listed Turner’s swimming accomplishments in their endnotes. Or how Turner’s lawyer tore her apart on the witness stand, trying to paint a picture of her as a wanton party girl with an alcohol problem and Turner as a good boy led astray by campus drinking culture and whose version of the events was more reliable than hers (despite witnesses and medical evidence that corroborated her testimony) because hey, at least he was conscious enough to remember.
But as brutal as these incidents, and the repeated traumas Emily Doe has suffered–from waking up on a hospital gurney following her attack, covered in dried blood and lacerations, to her daily struggles with PTSD–her story and the support she has gleaned from the public since it went viral touches on another elephant in the room when it comes to privilege and sexual violence. Privilege impacts the experiences of sexual assault victims, as well as those of the accused, and our society continues to allow it to happen.
Without diminishing her experience even a millimeter–no one should ever have to suffer what she has–it is important to consider how different the public response to her statement might have been had she been perceived as poor, uneducated, transgender, homeless or otherwise disenfranchised, a person of color (given the stereotypes of fraternity culture it is fair to argue that many who read her letter presume her to be white), or a sex worker. What if Brock Turner had not attacked an “unconscious, intoxicated woman” he met at the party that night, but instead had been caught raping an “unconscious, intoxicated man?” Would over five million people have taken time out of their day to read the impact statement of that person and be as openly moved by their words? Would public figures such as Vice President Joe Biden have felt compelled to respond personally?
For sexual assault victims, privilege can play out not only in how they are treated by the media, the legal system, and society at large, but also in access to resources, whether it is appropriate mental health services, time off of work to deal with medical or legal needs, the ability to move out of their home if they feel unsafe, or anything else that come up in the wake of their attack. It can affect which victims are believed and taken seriously, and which cases are given priority for investigation, though the issue of “priority” in criminal investigations is also arguably a result of overloaded, understaffed police departments. Even in states that have funds (paid into by felons during their prison sentences) reserved to compensate crime victims for some of the economic costs of their ordeal (an ambulance ride, for example), simply filing the paperwork and following up to make sure it is processed in a timely, efficient manner can be an arduous task that can take months or years to resolve and requires a victim or family member to be able to constantly advocate on their own behalf. Gender can have an impact on resources too. For example, Nathaniel Penn’s extensive coverage of the military rape crisis for GQ shined a light on how ill-equipped many agencies (including the VA) are to deal with the needs of male survivors. Needless to say, each piece of this picture can be personally and emotionally exhausting.
The intense rage over Turner’s minescule sentence is an unprecedented moment in the national discussion of sexual violence, especially when it comes to campus rape, but it’s crucial that we start to address what will happen once the buzz surrounding the story dies down. To look at the case as an isolated incident of race and class privilege, or to focus solely on campus rape sidesteps the bigger picture of injustice within the legal system and bias within our society where sexual violence is concerned. It also risks missing opportunities to help make things better for all survivors, not just those that fit the narrative of the “classic rape victim” (read: white, educated, middle-to-upper class cis-women). Even a successful effort to unseat Judge Persky won’t address the fact that injustice towards rape survivors plays out across the system every day, and all the online support in the world for Emily Doe won’t scratch the surface of the issues unless that spirit is propelled into positive action.
If you’re feeling angry again, good. Now is your chance to do something about it. The issue of sexual violence in our society is way, way too important to allow it to become another “flavor of the week” in Internet chatter. And along with supporting sexual assault survivors on an individual basis, we must also take steps to make our justice system better and more accessible for anyone caught in its wheels. “Survivors understand that there is a lot of things that are out of control of a police officer or a prosecutor,” said Sharmili Majmudar, the Executive Director of Rape Victims Advocates, a non-profit group that works on behalf of hundreds of rape and sexual abuse survivors in the Chicago Metropolitan area each year. “They know the process might not end in a result they are happy with, they just want the process to unfolds in a way that is fair and respectful, and really upholds their dignity as human beings, let alone survivors of crime.”
Here are 10 ways you can help:
1. Know the laws in your state
RAINN even has an online database where you can easily access information regarding the definition of consent and sentencing policies in your state.
2. Vote
Do your research so you can make informed decisions about which candidates on your ballot can make a difference.
3. Work to educate public officials
“We often hear that judges are inadequately prepared to address sexual violence because they have [their own preconceptions], as many of us do, because we are a society that believes a lot of myths about sexual violence,” Majmudar said. “It’s not about whether the judge doesn’t understand the law, but understands sexual assault, trauma, and impact. There’s a level of that we’re not necessarily going to be able to touch, but we can do a better job educating people who are going to become judges or who are in other parts of the legal system, the police, the prosecutors as well. Issues of victim-blaming are rampant in the system.”
4. Demand faster testing of rape kits
Although rape kits, which are used to collect evidence of assault, including, potentially, the DNA of the attacker, have become crucial to achieving justice in sexual assault cases, many communities have a backlog of kits that need to be tested. “As you know, [sexual violence] cases move really slowly,” says Majmudar. “So we are following them from year to year and can really not say how soon a case is going to go from beginning to end, especially when we have cases where police are telling us that their investigation are pending the return of the evidence collection kit. In Illinois, the average evidence collection kit is taking 367 days to be processed. That’s already beyond a full year at that point… This is pre-arrest, pre-charges. Having to wait that long, the process gets really delayed.”
5. Demand transparency and accountability from public universities
Press institutions to communicate about sexual violence incidents on campus and what they are doing to make it better. Also demand that incidents of rape be referred to law enforcement, rather than handled by campus disciplinary boards alone. Writing for the Washington Post, KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. argue that as unsatisfactory as the outcome of the Turner case may have been, it still proved that despite its flaws, the system works and is therefore a preferred means to seek justice rather than panels of school officials or students with little procedural experience. “Indeed, had this case been initially channeled through the school, critical evidence — including Turner’s highly incriminating statement to police — might have been lost,” they said.
6. Work with state coalitions to help impact policy
“Connect with state coalitions or local rape crisis centers on what legislative or policy agenda they have. Most state coalitions have a legislative agenda someone could be a part of that, whether that means talking to your legislatures, providing testimony, writing letters, or just encouraging other people to support it. I think that can be an important piece,” Majmudar said.
7. Support victim advocacy organizations
“There is a significant amount of research about how having support from advocates, in terms of successfully making reports and staying connected to the case in a way that is not re-traumatizing. So, basically ensuring there are resources to support rape crisis services so that we can be there for survivors,” Majmudar said. Many organizations offer direct ways to get involved through volunteering as an emergency room or court advocate, community outreach, fundraising, and more.
8. Speak out about mass incarceration
Promote efforts in your community to reduce mass incarceration and recidivism, especially by increasing opportunities for non-violent and juvenile offenders. It is arguable that the disastrous “war on drugs” and the staggering high number of Americans in and out of incarceration is part of what is clogging up public resources for victims of rape and other violent crimes. There is also the often-ignored epidemic of prison rape that affects approximately 200,000 people serving time each year, to consider as well.
9. Keep the conversation going
“We are not necessarily going to be able to incarcerate our way out of this problem, which means we really have to invest in sexual violence education and comprehensive sex-ed,” Majmudar said. “We have to do so, in developmentally-appropriate ways, starting in primary school. We can’t wait until someone is 18 and a college freshman before we’re having important conversations about consent and about respect.” She adds that Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, the two Swedish grad students who intervened during Emily Doe’s assault offer another reference point in the discussion. “We can now say to people, ‘if you’re going to be any guy in this situation, that’s who you want to be, and it is possible to step in in a way that is meaningful,’” she said.
10. Listen to survivors and support their choices
Finally, remember that justice is not defined the same way by every survivor of sexual assault. “It is important to honor the various ways that survivors define justice for themselves,” Majmudar said. “For some survivors having someone locked away for life is not their definition of justice. We need to make more options available for survivors and support them in choosing them if we can.”
Call the Orlando massacre a hate crime: This was an attack on the LGBT community—and that matters
(Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake)
On June 24, 1973, 32 people died in what was then the most gruesome mass murder of LGBT people in U.S. history. That Sunday marked the end of the city’s Pride weekend; 60 people gathered at UpStairs Lounge to listen to pianist David Gary perform, while others discussed an upcoming fundraiser for children with disabilities. UpStairs was a gay bar located at the corner of Chartres and Iberville in the French Quarter—where regulars came together to sing songs around the piano and put on “nellydramas,” campy melodramas performed in drag.
Just four years after the Stonewall riots kickstarted the movement for queer liberation, the bar acted both as a watering hole and a safe haven for a community that was more visible and more threatened than ever before. Although the city today is known for annual Southern Decadence event, which is today the largest Pride event in the South, it wasn’t always gay-friendly. LGBT people in the 1970s faced widespread harassment, violence, and prejudice in New Orleans. Meanwhile, gay bars across the country were frequently raided by police and bashings were extremely common. Even the American Psychiatric Association classified being gay as a mental illness until 1973.
That fateful June evening, the illusion of safety that UpStairs Lounge offered was shattered when a man set fire to the building—allegedly after being ejected from the establishment. According to reports, the stairwell reeked of lighter fluid as the flames trapped patrons inside. The windows were barricaded by bars, and the bar’s primarily male clientele clawed at these cages as they were burned alive.
The city did not embrace or mourn its dead. Many churches refused to hold services for the victims, while some families even declined to claim the bodies of their loved ones. Instead the unclaimed would be thrown into a mass grave. The police, who were slow to respond to the event, never prosecuted a suspect in the case, while news coverage reports on the incident were virulently homophobic. One story quoted a local cab driver who infamously remarked, “I hope the fire burned their dresses off.” Meanwhile, a local radio host joked, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.”
But while the victims’ brutal deaths became punchlines, their identities were erased. National news stories often ignored the fact that the UpStairs Lounge was an attack on the emerging LGBT community. Many didn’t even identify the establishment as a gay bar.
That silence, however, might be familiar to you following the horrific attack in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.
On Saturday night, a lone shooter murdered 50 people, while severely wounding 53 more. Something that was conspicuously missing, though, from early reports on the tragedy (including a New York Times write-up on the event) was that Pulse is a gay club. Barbara Poma opened the establishment in 2004 as a tribute to her brother, who died of HIV-related complications in 1991. As Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder reports, Poma “named the bar not after the throb of an EDM remix, but to memorialize [his] heartbeat.”
What could have motivated such an act of violence? According to the gunman’s father, Seddique Mir Mateen, the shooter (whose name will not be identified here) recently became outraged after witnessing a public display of affection between same-sex partners. “We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music,” Mateeen told NBC News. “And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”
But the attacker’s homophobic intent has gotten buried in the response to the event—with news organizations, politicians, and public figures reticent to label the act a “hate crime.” In a statement, Rep. Paul Ryan, the former Vice Presidential nominee and current House Speaker, never even says the word “gay.” He states that the attack is a reminder that we are a “nation at war with Islamist terrorists.” Ryan stated, “As we heal, we need to be clear-eyed about who did this. … Our security depends on our refusal to back down in the face of terror. We never will.”
Meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized President Barack Obama on Twitter for not overtly labeling the attack as an act of religious extremism, suggesting that the commander in chief should resign from his position following the omission. “Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen—and it is only going to get worse,” Trump further claimed in a statement. “I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore.”
This is despite the fact that as of yet, it’s not conclusively proved the attacker was motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. Reports on the subject seem to conflict. ISIS has taken credit for the attack, and the shooter allegedly stated his association with the group in a 911 call before the tragedy; in fact, the man was previously investigated twice on suspicions that he had terrorist ties. Some who knew him, though, have rejected that characterization. The shooter’s ex-wife told the Washington Post that he “wasn’t very devout and preferred spending his free time working out at the gym.” Others disagree, saying his views became more extreme over time.
It may be likely that the shooter was motivated by faith-based hate, but to suggest that his religion was the sole motivating factor is an act of dangerous erasure. It ignores that this is merely the latest attack on a gay establishment in the United States and the latest reminder that queer people are not safe from being victims of a hate crime, even in spaces that are supposed to be havens for us. While the rate of LGBT hate crimes is dropping nationally, violence against transgender people and people of color remains on the rise—from Orlando to Iowa and the streets of Los Angeles.
Of the 100,000 hate crimes reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigations between the years of 1991 and 2007, sexual orientation ranks as the third-biggest factor in motivating violent prejudice. Seventeen percent of attacks, according to the Human Rights Campaign, were anti-gay in nature. Data on the subject, however, is famously unreliable. The Associated Press found that only 40 percent of hate crimes are ever brought to the attention of authorities, and police departments routinely fail to report these incidents to federal prosecutors. In Indiana, half of local law enforcement agencies declined to report hate crime data between 2009 and 2014.
Although race and religion remain larger motivating factors than sexual orientation, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told The Atlantic that the number of LGBT people who have been the victims of hate crimes is extremely high—because of the community’s modest size.
“LGBT people are more than twice as likely to be the target of a violent hate-crime than Jews or black people,” Potok said. “They are more than four times as likely as Muslims, and almost 14 times as likely as Latinos.”
Gay bars are frequently the sites of such violence. Two years ago, Seattle’s Neighbours Nightclub was set ablaze shortly after the clock struck midnight on New Years’ Eve, the site of a terrifying arson attack. The establishment’s 750 patrons were unharmed. The assailant’s defense blamed it on the alcohol during his eventual court case, but those who knew him described the arsonist as having a “general hostility towards homosexuality.” Investigators spoke to a close friend of the defendant, who allegedly told him that “what these people are doing is wrong.” He would be sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crime.
Seventeen years earlier, Olympic Park Bomber Eric Rudolph targeted Otherside Lounge, a lesbian bar in Atlanta. On February 21, a projectile bomb was set off—injuring four people. As the New York Times reported, police “found a backpack containing a second bomb in the club’s parking lot” but were able to diffuse it before the device was activated. Rudolph, who also attacked abortion clinics, was part of Army of God, a right-wing terrorist organization with a history of anti-gay antipathy. After three gay men were beheaded in Saudi Arabia in 2002, the organization’s chaplain, Rev. Michael Bray, called the punishment an act of God. “Let us give thanks,” he said.
The Pulse incident, though, wasn’t just an intentional, coordinated attack on LGBT people. The gunman particularly targeted those who face the disproportionate brunt of violence in our community. On Saturday, the club was celebrating its monthly “Latin Night,” an event frequented by Latinos, trans people, and gender nonconforming folks. The poster advertising the event prominently featured two drag queens, and Kenya Michaels, who is Puerto Rican, was slated to perform that evening.
A majority of those who are murdered every year in anti-LGBT acts of violence are precisely those whose lives were ended this weekend: people of color. In 2014, the National Coalition for Anti-Violence Programs found that an alarming number of queer and trans homicide victims were non-white (80 percent), and a majority of that population (60 percent) was black. This issue rose to national attention last year when 22 transgender people were murdered in the U.S., a historic number that primarily consisted of women of color (86 percent). 2016 isn’t even half over, and 10 transgender women have already been killed.
Forty-three years ago, the UpStairs Lounge fire proved an important tipping point in the lives of New Orleans’ LGBT population. According to the Times-Picayune, the tragedy “forced the gay community out of the closet.” There’s a famous anecdote about a memorial for the fallen held at Mark’s United Methodist Church. Because of media presence at the event, mourners had the option of using a separate entrance to avoid being seen. Many of the attendees likely weren’t out to friends, family, or coworkers, and having your picture wind up in the paper at a gay memorial could end in unemployment. Even today, it’s legal to fire someone in the state of Louisiana for being LGBT.
But as the paper reports, the city’s queer community didn’t choose the side door. “Instead, most of the 300-plus attendees chose to exit through the front of the church,” the Times-Picayune’s Helen Freund writes. Four decades later, we must do the same thing: We must choose the front door. We must be visible. We must demand accountability. And we must honor those who lost their lives by naming the homophobia and transphobia that killed them, rather than allowing their deaths to be exploited by those who hope to further their right-wing political agenda.
Silence isn’t just death. It will allow tragedies like these keep happening over and over again—until we finally stand up and say enough.
The city of Orlando is releasing the names of those who have lost their lives as they are identified and families notified. As of press time, here are their names:
Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old
Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old
Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old
Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old
Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old
Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old
Kimberly Morris, 37 years old
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old
Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old
Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old
Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old
Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old
Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old
Amanda Alvear, 25 years old
Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old
Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old
Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old
Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old
Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old
Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old
Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old
Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old
Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old
Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old
Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old
Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old
Cory James Connell, 21 years old
Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old
Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old
Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old
Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old
Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old
Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old
Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old
Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old
Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old
Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old
Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan, 24 years old
Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old
Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old
Frank Hernandez, 27 years old
Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old
Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old
Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old
Trump’s clampdown on the press continues: Washington Post latest media outlet to have press credentials revoked
Donald Trump just announced that he plans to revoke the press credentials for the Washington Post, adding the newspaper to the growing list of press outlets that have been banned from directly covering the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
During a morning news victory lap following the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history, Trump suggested to multiple news programs on Monday that President Obama allowed the murderous rampage in Orlando, Florida, to take place.
“He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands,” Trump told Fox News, implying that the president of the United States secretly sympathizes with terrorists.
When asked directly what he meant by his provocative suggestions about President Obama’s involvement with the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since Septemeber 11, 2011, Trump refused the opportunity to distance himself from his nasty Birtherism.
“Well, you know, I’ll let people figure that out for themselves,” Trump said on the Howie Carr Show, according to Buzzfeed. “Cause to be honest with you there certainly doesn’t seem to be a lot anger or passion when he – when we want to demand retribution for what happened over the weekend.”
Trump’s comments linking President Obama to the Orlando shooter were widely reported and roundly criticized, but it was the coverage from the Post that apparently bothered the notoriously thin-skinned candidate the most.
“Trump suggests President Obama was involved with the mass shooting in Orlando,” the original Post headline read Monday morning.
Late Monday afternoon, Trump announced he was adding the Post to the list of media outlets banned from his campaign that includes, Politico, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and Buzzfeed:
“The Washington Post is being used by the owners of Amazon as their political lobbyists so that they don’t have to pay taxes and don’t get sued for monopolistic tendencies that have led to to the destruction of department stores and the retail industry,” Trump claimed in a statement, accusing the national paper of putting its “need for ‘clicks’ above journalistic integrity.”
In a statement, Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said Trump’s decision was “nothing less than a repudiation of the role of the free and independent press.”
Donald Trump today revoked press credentials for @washingtonpost. My statement here. pic.twitter.com/irSKhrpYiK
— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) June 13, 2016
Ken Burns trashes Donald Trump at Stanford commencement — without even mentioning his name
(Credit: Richard Shotwell/invision/ap)
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns delivered the commencement address at Stanford University on Sunday. Burns dedicated a noteworthy amount of his speech to bashing GOP nominee Donald Trump — without even mentioning his name.
“Before you do anything with your well-earned degree,” Burns told graduates, “you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance.”
Burns called Trump’s campaign “a political Ponzi scheme” and said “asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.”
“I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and — they feel — powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that — as often happens on TV — a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions,” he continued. “They can’t.”
(h/t BuzzFeed)
Trump’s Orlando terror speech roundly mocked by conservatives on Twitter: “This is like right-wing def poetry”
(Credit: CNN)
Donald Trump delivered an anti-terror speech on Monday, condemning the U.S. immigration system for the terror attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando over the weekend and vowing to prevent future acts of terror on U.S. soil by unconstitutionally restricting further immigration on the basis of religion. Trump’s scripted, yet incoherent, speech was so off-the-rails it even provoked widespread criticism and mockery from conservatives.
“The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here,” Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire, after seemingly lying (or misspeaking) about the gunmen’s birthplace.
“That is a fact and a fact we need to talk about,” Trump said, repeating his attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton for not more forcefully condemning “Radical Islam.”
“Her plan is to disarm law-abiding Americans, abolishing the 2nd amendment. and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns,” Trump said of Clinton. “She wants to take away Americans’ guns, then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.”
Trump said that, “When I’m elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats.”
Needless to say, Trump’s insanity was apparently too tone-deaf for even some Republicans to handle.
Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s former political strategist:
An idiot is running for president. https://t.co/GLGRnjGKyF
— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) June 13, 2016
This is what big government nationalism looks like. https://t.co/EwgnKMSBzF
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 13, 2016
This pre-written speech really is a dumpster fire. Can only imagine what it would be like if not pre-written https://t.co/Zmp1aTVRZf
— Alicia Smith (@Alicia_Smith19) June 13, 2016
Thank god Manafort’s got a handle on this campaign or this speech really could have gone off the rails.
— Michael Goldfarb (@thegoldfarb) June 13, 2016
this is like right-wing def poetry
— Michael Goldfarb (@thegoldfarb) June 13, 2016
There is a point in @realDonaldTrump's speech that marks the exact moment when @Reince's shock collar remote ran out of batteries.
— Marybeth (@MBGlenn) June 13, 2016
And some Republicans reportedly complained of Trump’s focus on the fact the Pulse nightclub victims were from the LGBT community:
Spoke with a former Cruz supporter now backing Trump who said he was "disappointed" w/Trump's focus on LGBT community, said it was divisive.
— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) June 13, 2016
On CNN, however, Trump’s speech was treated like a serious policy speech worthy of analysis and apparently full of substantive points.
Carl Bernstein told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin that “despite his almost neo-fascist rhetoric,” Trump’s speech was “effective” in pointing out that liberals have not forcefully enough called out Muslim-Americans for failing to condemn terror attacks in the name of their religion.
CNN’s Dana Bash noted that Trump sounded markedly more liberal in his direct acknowledgement that the attack on Pulse nightclub was an attack on the LGBT community specifically than other prominent Republicans. While CNN’s David Gergen argued that Trump’s speech will prove persuasive to Trump’s base.
Alex Jones claims Orlando was “false flag” attack due to Muslim migration, yet shooter was born in U.S.
Alex Jones (Credit: AP/Tony Gutierrez)
Far-right conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump supporter Alex Jones claims the massacre at a gay club in Orlando, Florida on Sunday that left 49 civilians dead was “a false flag terror attack” and a consequence of Muslim migration, even though the shooter was born in the U.S.
The right-wing pundit published a video to YouTube shortly after the attack in which he claims the U.S. government purposefully let the shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino happen in order to impose restrictions on free speech and take away Americans’ guns.
“Our government and the governments of Europe allowed these huge hoards of radical jihadis in, and even allowed them in without vetting them on record, landing in airports and not even checking their passports, IDs or visas,” he said.
“Our governments are bringing these people in and they’re allowing them to operate in our society, so they can attack us and then have our freedoms taken,” Jones continued.
Orlando shooter Omar Tareen was actually a U.S. citizen, however, not a refugee or migrant. He was born in New York in 1987.
The exact opposite of what Jones claims about Muslim refugees and migrants is true. Western governments have been very antagonistic, not welcoming, to asylum-seekers fleeing wars they have fueled in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
In Europe, governments are forcing refugees into squalid camps and subsequently deporting them to Turkey, where their lives may be endangered, in a deal that experts say is illegal and immoral.
Former Greek Finance Minister and left-wing leader Yanis Varoufakis has even gone so far as to call these militarized, cramped refugee camps “concentration camps.”
The U.S. has been particularly unwelcoming. In September, the White House pledged to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. As of May, seven months into its pledge, the Obama administration had resettled just 1,736. Germany, which has one-quarter of the U.S. population, took more than 1 million refugees in 2015 alone.
Moreover, when refugees are even allowed to enter the U.S., they face an incredibly long, intensive and bureaucratic vetting process.
The Refugees Welcome Index, a survey commissioned by Amnesty International, found that nearly two-thirds, 63 percent, of Americans think the U.S. government should do more to help refugees.
In the video, Alex Jones also calls Islam “a civil war religion of destabilization and slavery” and claims the “globalists” “funded the Arab Spring,” referring to the 2011 uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.
In reality, the U.S. and Western allies opposed the pro-democracy uprisings in allied countries in the region.
In Egypt, the site of the largest revolt, the Obama administration continued backing its allied 29-year dictator Hosni Mubarak until his last days in power. In 2013, the U.S. then supported the military coup (although it refused to call it a coup) that toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected government, and is now closely allied with the new Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, the U.S. sided with its longtime ally, dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. International law professor Richard Falk characterized Ben Ali’s Tunisia as the model U.S. client state.
In Saudi Arabia, the U.S. backed the regime, which brutally repressed protesters. When Western allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded neighboring Bahrain to crush the pro-democracy uprising there, the U.S. again supported it.
At the same time, the U.S. backed and intervened on behalf of uprisings in countries it was not allied with, namely Syria and Libya, the latter of which it bombed in the 2011 NATO war.
Jones’ far-right website InfoWars advances a variety of extreme right-wing conspiracies. He claims the 9/11 attacks and Sandy Hook shooting were also “false flag” operations condoned by the U.S. government, and insists climate change and the United Nations are communist conspiracies to take over the world.
Jones has spoken very highly of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has appeared on InfoWars before, dubbing him a contemporary George Washington.
You can watch the video below:
