That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Raging Trump" and it and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Joni (live) at Newport" went up over the weekend.
Alexander Vargas is a 19-year-old college student. His biggest worries should revolve around getting good grades, figuring out what kind of a career he wants after college, and deciding what he wants to do for fun every weekend.
Instead the Stetson University psychology major is always reminding himself to steer clear of public men's restrooms so he won't get fined for using bathrooms that align with his gender identity, but not the gender he was assigned at birth. Stetson officials have set him up with a one-person restroom he can use on campus, but once he leaves school property, bathroom access becomes a problem again.
He's also adjusting to new state government rules that have made it more complicated for him to get the testosterone his doctor prescribes so he can more fully live as a male.
The young transgender man is trying to figure out if he should move to another state where basic day-to-day living wouldn't be such a struggle, and he could escape the worsening anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida.
"Moving out of Florida is a last resort if things get worse, like if I can't receive my gender-affirming care," Vargas said. "I could move to another state and switch schools. It would be the easiest way to do it."
He has both a "Plan B" and a "Plan C," but he hopes he never feels compelled to use either one. Vargas would prefer to stay right where he is.
Vargas has a very supportive family he still lives with in eastern Volusia County. His partner and job are in the area.
He would love to finish his last two years of college at Stetson as he progresses toward his goal of working with autistic children and using art therapy as a form of communication for the kids when they become nonverbal.
"My life is here, and the thought of uprooting it is terrifying," he said.
Vargas has been called a freak and he's had slurs hurled his way.
He's seen others in Florida subjected to the same things.
"I have trans friends who've been to hell and back because of who they are," Vargas said.
Two years ago, when he was a senior at Spruce Creek High School, he found the courage to speak out.
Vargas attended a school board meeting to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the wake of a board vote that shot down recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school superintendent eventually decided the week should be acknowledged.
Vargas knows his family and friends have his back, and that empowers him to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. But if things ever do get bad enough for him in Florida, he'll start a new chapter somewhere else.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
•
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat
The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.
But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.
Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.
US ambassador Caroline Kennedy told SMH on Monday that a plea deal could be on the cards in regard to Australian journalist Julian Assange, who’s been held in a UK maximum-security prison at the behest of the White House in prolonged isolation for more than four years now.
Kennedy said that as the US justice department is dealing with the case, “it’s not really a diplomatic issue” but “there absolutely could be a resolution”, although she did note US state secretary Anthony Blinken’s recent curt words as to the “very serious harm” the WikiLeaks founder had posed.
Townsville-born Assange published thousands of classified US military files regarding US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaked to him by US army soldier Chelsea Manning, in 2010. Having redacted these documents first, Assange then exposed the war crimes and lies of the US empire to the globe.
The potential deal has been likened to a “David Hicks-style plea bargain”. Hicks was an Australian man detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay detention camp for over five years ending in 2007, due to his having visited an al-Qaeda training camp, and our government did nothing to assist him.
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton asserts that Kennedy’s flagging the deal reveals that the Biden administration want Julian’s case “off their plate”, and with an escape route laid out in the raising of the Hick’s solution, this development may bode well for the long-tortured Australian citizen.
Lara Giddings, who was Premier of Tasmania from January 2011 until March 2014 as well as being Attorney-General in that State from 2008 to 2011 also voiced her concerns about the treatment of Assange. “Regardless of what views people might have of Julian Assange, this man has had his freedom taken away from him for over eleven years. His on-going detention cannot be justified regardless of the rights or wrongs of his WikiLeaks exposé. He does not deserve to be left to the mercy of the United States legal system, where, if found guilty, he may well die in jail,” Ms Giddings said.
Tasmania’s first female Attorney-General Judy Jackson, who held the role from 2002 until 2006, also expressed disquiet about the plight of Assange.
“His treatment, as opposed to Australian journalists, is deeply troubling, given that in both cases the right of the public to know about war crimes, wherever and whenever they are committed, is crucial,” she said.
Former Queensland Attorney- General Rod Welford said that the indefinite jailing of Assange was unjust and had to be brought to an end.
Assange was speaking to Dominique Pradalié the president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), who visited him in prison earlier today (Tuesday 8 August). She was able to tell him that journalists, and many others, around the world are campaigning each day for his release and that his International Press Card has been renewed. Assange is a long-time member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (the Australian journalists’ union).
Pradalié said: “I visited as a friend of Julian’s wife, Stella. I am pleased to say that he was in good spirits and maintains a keen interest in world affairs”.
The International Federation of Journalists, which represents 600,000 journalists in more than 140 countries, has campaigned against Assange’s extradition since publication of the US charges.
Pradalié said: “The charges against Julian – finding a whistleblower and encouraging them to share evidence – are actions that any investigative journalist might take. If this prosecution is successful, it will pave the way for the US to pursue any reporter who is handed classified documents, as well as legitimising repressive regimes the world over when they try to make the lives of journalists difficult. It is also worth noting that the truth of Assange’s revelations has never been disputed.”
Assange reports that he has a caged window in his cell, and a radio that allows him to keep up with the world outside. He does, however, request, that he be granted a typewriter, so that he may efficiently record his thoughts. He has lodged a request with the prison authorities that he be allowed one, but to date one has not been forthcoming.
Pradalié undertook to press the issue of a typewriter, and promised to return to visit again in the near future.
For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16
The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 146 countries
A French soldier has been killed in a tragic road accident in Iraq while actively engaged in a training mission for the Iraqi armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday.
Sergeant Baptiste Gauchot “was very seriously wounded when his vehicle went off the road,” France’s armed forces ministry said, as AFP cited.
After receiving immediate medical attention at Arbil Hospital, the soldier, unfortunately, succumbed to his injuries despite undergoing emergency surgery. Meanwhile, the ministry said another soldier accompanying him during the incident is currently undergoing treatment at a military hospital in Baghdad.
Authorities in Iraq's capital Baghdad ordered the shutdown of LED advertisement screens installed across the city after a hacker showed a pornographic film on one of them, security forces said. The suspect has been arrested, officials said. “A person managed to hack into an advertising screen in Uqba bin Nafia Square” which is a major intersection at the centre of the city, AFP reported. The hacker "showed a pornographic film for several minutes before we cut the power cable," the report added quoting an official.
The “immoral scenes” led to the authorities turning off all advertising screens in the capital while they reviewed their security measures.
The interior minister also announced that a suspect had been arrested, but didn’t give details.
Screens that usually show adverts for household goods and political candidates were also reportedly switched off on Sunday morning.
Conservative Iraq announced in 2022 that it was banning p*rn websites, although many still remain available.
The government has targeted many social media content makers in recent years, accusing them of sharing “indecent content”.
In a statement, the movement said that it “will not participate in the provincial council elections at its upcoming date due to the delay in convening its first general conference to elect a new leadership.”
Iraq will hold provincial council elections on December 18, the first of their kind since 2013. The councils, created by the 2005 Iraqi constitution following the fall of Saddam Hussein, are powerful bodies that hold significant power in the country, including setting the budgets for several sectors such as education, health, and transport.
The provincial elections will mark the return of the controversial Sainte-Laguë voting method, reverting back to the single-constituency per province system instead of the multiple-constituency system that was adopted for the 2021 parliamentary elections.
The future of public school libraries in Florida seems to be imperiled in the debate over book challenges. Last year, Julie Miller purchased chairs instead of new books. And she has not been cleared to make any acquisitions for the approaching school year either. DeSantis’s new law does away with earmark percentages of school district funding for specific departments, allowing school boards to curtail or redirect library funds to different categories if they so choose.
All of this suggests it might be easier to defund libraries and winnow collections rather than venture the social and political risks associated with fighting a culture war with a governor who’s currently using the state legislature as his personal armory.
In a Clay county school board workshop meeting from last month, the chief academic officer Roger Dailey seemed to cast aspersions on the very utility of libraries, referring to them as glorified copy rooms, and admitting that his own teenage children have never checked a book out of their high school library because they “consume their literature in different formats, most of it digitally on their devices”, he says.
“I don’t even know if my own sons know where the library is in their school.”
Drafting more joyful warriors, as the summit was set up to do, involves its own indoctrination, a process that may feel more like being given secret knowledge about how things really work—including such vintage conspiracy-theory stuff as secret Communists recruiting in every schoolhouse. The more contemporary threat, according to Moms for Liberty, is that a “dangerous cult” is seeking to “trans” children. This is part of the ubiquitous anti-trans panic at the summit and on Moms for Liberty social media feeds. If you take up the group’s cause, you will be given a mission. As Tiffany Justice put it after the summit, Moms for Liberty is “redrawing the boundary between school and home.”
But whose home? And redrawn by which means? In her afternoon session at the summit, Hermann armed her audience with a version of the Constitution, one that maximally protects the preferences of—for instance—parents who deny their child is trans and want to force their child’s school to misgender them. There’s not much of a legal argument here, only marching orders: The Constitution is on their side, and what they want as moms represents the real America. Yet when one Texas mom of a queer child reached out to a Moms for Liberty chapter for guidance, members convinced her to deny him access to counseling from an LGBTQ youth support project, claiming the group wanted to make her son trans. When the child later attempted suicide, a Moms for Liberty member then advised the mother to sue the support project. “They were trying to indoctrinate me to be a foot soldier for their cause,” she later said.
Such maternalist recruitment, marketed as extending the domain of motherhood into the public square, has been an underrecognized yet persistent force in American politics for decades—back to the mid-century’s massive resistance to desegregation, and even earlier, in the temperance movement of the nineteenth century. Moms for Liberty operates in an updated version of this well-worn style, in which mothers and children are presented as fundamentally innocent, and mothers who flex political power are just doing what any mother wants: to decide what is best for their children. “Because no one is going to fight for a child like a parent,” Justice told an education reporter at the summit. “Love is an expertise.”
Moms for Liberty members can position themselves as just regular moms somehow outside politics because, as religion scholar Sara Moslener has argued, white womanhood and white Christian nationalism reinforce each other. The mothers’ moral authority is perceived to endow them with perpetual innocence, and the United States is perceived to inherit its moral authority from Christian founders—rendering both the mothers and the nation incapable of committing injustice. The several hundred protesters outside the summit, some of them mothers themselves who held signs about protecting free public libraries and celebrating trans kids, aren’t like these moms at all, co-founder Tiffany Justice told the closing-night gala dinner guests. Inside the convention hotel, “we’re having a great time,” she said, adding abruptly and ominously, “If you don’t stand now, what is the future for your children? It will be bleak, it will be dark, there will be death.”
This is the kind of political work—preparing themselves, much as a militia might, for a coming conflict between good and evil—for which Moms for Liberty was designated this year by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an “anti-government extremist” group. Descovich and Justice accused SPLC of “[n]ame-calling,” while Ziegler called it “a leftist attack.” But there have long been traceable links between Moms for Liberty and two of the groups that played a leading role in the January 6 insurrection. Some Moms for Liberty members maintain relationships with the Proud Boys. Moms for Liberty even invited a member of the Oath Keepers to speak at the Philadelphia summit.
That is the true face of Moms for Liberty. It’s not that white Christian nationalists are somehow using these “regular moms” for their own ends. That would absolve these women, who in fact share those ends. And they are working toward them, methodically and unapologetically, in far more public view.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Raging Trump" went up Saturday night and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Joni (live) at Newport" went up Sunday. The following sites updated:
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Muddled idiot Krysten Sinema1 day ago
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Tori Amos1 day ago
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‘I Want to Outlive AIDS’3 days ago
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