The Hemingway Report

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Had to laugh when I read this one

Somali terror group Al-Shabaab bans PLASTIC BAGS to ‘protect human and animals’ despite slaughtering thousands of innocents

ONE of the world’s most barbaric terrorist organizations has banned plastic bags - because they believe they harm life on Earth.

The Somali terror group al-Shabaab, known for butchering thousands of people across East Africa, has banned them in an apparent re-branding exercise to show they care about the planet.

The sinister group's main mouthpiece, Radio Andalus, broadcast news of the ban on Sunday, reports Huffington Post.

The propaganda said discarded plastic bags “pose a serious threat to the well-being of humans and animals alike”.

The jihadist outfit - who openly boast about their violence - also want to halt logging of native trees.

Mohamed Abu Abdalla, the group’s governor for southern Somalia’s Shabelle regions, said details of how the new rules will be enforced will be announced later.

Plastic bags bad... violent terrorism good?

But given their reputation for being ultra hard-line, a fine and a nice leaflet are unlikely penalties.

Raffaello Pantucci, counter-terror expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said the move was designed to show the world that the group could govern.

So far they have only shown how they can kill.

In one outrage last year, they carried out a truck bombing in 2017 that killed more than 500 people.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

WaPo...Separating children from parents at the border isn’t just cruel. Its torture.

We already knew it was inhumane. It also violates international law.

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I got one answer.

If separating children at the border is 'torture' WTF do you call this?!?

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In two speeches last week in the border states of Arizona and California, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that as a matter of enforcement, if an unauthorized migrant brings a child across the United States-Mexico border without documentation, “we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

This means undocumented children and parents will be separated — a tactic meant to deter migrant parents, including many asylum seekers, such as those who’ve traveled through Central America in a caravan in recent weeks, from crossing the border in the first place. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have argued that this policy change is inhumane, and it is. But evidence from developmental neuroscience suggests it is more than inhumane.

It’s also, by definition, torture.

Under federal law, which adopts the United Nations definition, torture is: “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as … punishing him or her for an act he or she or a third person … has committed or is suspected of having committed.” And though in theory any action inflicting such suffering is banned, that is what is inflicted by separating parents and children in border detention.

Children arriving at the U.S. border in search of asylum are frequently a particularly vulnerable population. In many cases fleeing violence and persecution, they also encounter hunger, illness, and threats of physical harm along their hazardous journey to the border. This combination of experiences puts migrant children at high risk for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Such anxiety and mood disorders can be debilitating and intractable, particularly when they start in childhood. By the time many migrant children arrive in the United States, they have already faced harrowing events, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be traumatized by parental separation.

Parenting is, after all, a crucial ingredient in our species’ recipe for survival. It is so crucial that children’s brains have evolved to need it the same way that their bodies require nutrition and rest. Various studies demonstrate that being close to parents can buffer children against feelings of stress and threat. While children are remarkably flexible about who parents them — biological or adopted parents, other family members or even significant nonfamily members — they are inflexible about their need for caretaking.

The strongest evidence for the importance of close caregivers comes from children who have experienced caregiver deprivation. Even when their physical needs are met, children raised in institutional orphanages commonly exhibit stunted growth, cognitive impairments, heightened anxiety and stress-related health problems that often persist even after being adopted into highly nurturing homes. Even mere instability of caregivers early in life is disruptive to children’s development. For example, youth in foster care who experience multiple transient placements are significantly more likely to drop out of high school, be unemployed as adults and develop mental and physical illnesses.

The science leads to the conclusion that the deprivation of caregiving produces a form of extreme suffering in children. Separating migrant children from parents, then, increases the likelihood that their experience in immigration detention will cause lasting mental and possibly physical health problems.

Yet last year, citing cost, the Trump administration defunded a family detention program that catered to mothers with young children and pregnant women. Absent these family detention centers, there’s a risk that once they’re separated, children could wind up in facilities incapable of adequately safeguarding them while simultaneously depriving them of their most vital coping resource — their parent. That’s one reason a Texas judge held in 2016 that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services could not license an immigration detention center as a child-care facility.

By contrast, safe and healthy alternatives to separating asylum-seeking parents and children not only are practiced in other Western industrialized countries, but they’re also meant to take child welfare into account. The European Commission’s 2016 proposal for standards for the reception of applicants for international protection calls for conditions “adapted to the specific situation of minors, whether unaccompanied or within families, with due regard to their security, physical and emotional care and are provided in a manner that encourages their general development.” Moreover, research findings clearly support that families need to be kept together. One study in Belgium concluded that “refugee adolescents separated from both parents experienced the highest number of traumatic events compared to accompanied refugee adolescents.”

If the United States won’t meet this standard, the effect will be punitive and will place the burden of a complex international challenge on the most vulnerable migrants — children. In any context, exhibiting this kind of cruelty is un-American, but particularly so in this situation. The practice of separating families at the border is morally reprehensible and — based on the science — goes against international and U.S. law, because the suffering it inflicts constitutes torture of children.

Monday, July 2, 2018

Should I be surprised?

These are the activities they participate in when they're not brainwashing your kid.

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UCLA professor dies in 'mummification' ritual at Hollywood executive's home

Doran George, 48, died inside the home of a Hollywood executive in November 2017. (UCLA)

A California university professor died during a bondage session at the home of a Hollywood executive that went horribly wrong.

Doran George, 48, was found dead inside the home of Skip Chasey, an executive for Hollywood’s William Morris Endeavor agency and known in the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Dominance and Submission) community as “Master Skip,” on Nov. 19, 2017.

George, who was born Duncan Gilbert and did not use gendered pronouns, had been wrapped “head to toe in plastic wrap and gaffer’s tape, with small breathing holes at the nose and mouth,” according to an autopsy report obtained late last week by Variety.

“The decedent’s partner observed that the decedent was not reacting properly,” the report states. “The partner checked the decedent closer and realized that the decedent was not breathing. The partner called 911 and began cutting off the plastic and tape.”

George, who had a 16-year relationship with a man named Barry Shils that allowed for sexual activity outside their partnership, had become a regular playmate of Chasey's over the course of seven months preceding his death.

When parademics arrived, they were unable to revive George.

The coroner’s office was unable to determine the cause of death and Chasey has not been charged with any wrongdoing, reports Variety.

Chasey’s lawyer, John Duran, told Variety that the two were participating in consensual activity and noted that the coroner did not conclude that the wrapping was the cause of George’s death.

UCLA professor Doran George died inside the home of a leading Hollywood agent in November 2017. (Reuters)

“It’s been very sad and traumatic for Skip,” Duran said. “It’s someone he had an ongoing relationship with. Nobody expected it to end this way.”

According to a remembrance note published by UCLA, George had a successful career as a child in musical comedy in the United Kingdom before joining the Culture and Performance Ph.D. program at the university’s Department of World Arts and Cultures in 2008. They developed expertise in areas of LGBTQ and Disability Studies, earned their doctorate in 2014, taught several classes and were “highly respected, revered and adored" by peers and students alike.

"Those of you who had the honor of taking this course or being in one of Doran’s discussion sections know that their heart was as big as their laugh, and that their dedication to social justice was informed by their own queer immigrant experience," said Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a UCLA professor, in a separate note to colleagues.

The room in which George was found — replete with padded floor tiles, a metal cage and a padded examination table — was described as being “outfitted as a BDSM style dungeon” in the autopsy report.

The incident received renewed attention when it was discussed on a podcast called The Grey Zone.

For its part, the William Morris Endeavor agency has no plans to take action against Chasey.

“While we were unaware of the circumstances surrounding this personal matter until now, we understand that the police file is closed and no charges were brought. If other facts develop, we will re-evaluate the situation and determine any appropriate action to take,” the agency said in a statement to Variety.

Their partner has been left with a sense of guilt over what took place.

"In my grief, I’m hitting myself — like it was like watching my lover shoot heroin and not saying anything," Shils told The Hollywood Reporter. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think he was going to end up dead."