NationStates

Postauthoritarian America wrote:

Shrillland wrote:
Trust me, nobody here at NSG is rejoicing over this. We're political and history nerds, so we've seen it all before.

I'm still holding out hope that the inevitable collapse of the Republican Party clears the way for a true Socialist party in the US. I can dream, can't I?

Either that or it's Civil War II. Oh well, Costa Rica isn't such a bad place to live in I guess.

North Washington Republic wrote:

Kowani wrote:AQ for you

I know a lot of lefties are rejoicing at the fact the GOP has gone batshit crazy, but this will not end well and we may be seeing the last years of our Democratic Republic and Constitutional government.

Political Geography wrote:

Senkaku wrote:Would you prefer "putschists"?

Some of them, yeah.

Yes, because violently seizing key administrative targets in the nation's capital and trying to capture lawmakers for subsequent planned public executions is rather more serious than ransacking the local Apple store or shooting some rando.

Breaking doors and windows is not a violent crime. "Seizing" consisted of entering. I'm seeing a whole lot of break and enter, some vandalism and theft, assault and battery particularly outside, and at least one serious national security violation.

Anyone who entered the House chamber or anywhere else there were staff or congressers, openly armed, I'd give them the harshest treatment.

What exactly is gained by calling some or all of the putschists "terrorists"? Do you want longer sentences, possibly served in solitary or near-solitary conditions (to prevent them communicating evil terrorist intelligence to other terrorists). Do you want them executed?

Anti-terrorism laws are mostly bad laws, which should not be legitimized by use.

Meanwhile, using the label freely about people who haven't even been to court yet, then saying "oh I didn't mean it legally" is a bit like calling someone a murderer because she got an abortion.

There are dozens of words (like Putschist) which fit just fine in a non-legal sense. Can't we avoid the word which unwitting invokes the PATRIOT Act?

Political Geography wrote:

Kowani wrote:okay, then, a workaround
Very first link, "“Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding”

Thankyou.

I dunno how rigorous they are (yet) but I appreciate this:

We use this measure to test theories of democratic expansion and backsliding based in party competition, polarization, demographic change, and the group interests of national party coalitions. Difference-in-differences results suggest a minimal role for all factors except Republican control of state government, which dramatically reduces states' democratic performance during this period

North Washington Republic wrote:Joy Reed tears Tucker Carlson a new one.

Varkaria wrote:

North Washington Republic wrote:Joy Reed tears Tucker Carlson a new one.

it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Varkaria wrote:

North Washington Republic wrote:Joy Reed tears Tucker Carlson a new one.

it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

North Washington Republic wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Oh, I see a lot of far-right European parties touting anti-vaxxer bullshit also. AfD for example.

New haven america wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Fox News isn't an American thing.

Rupert Murdoch is Australian.

Varkaria wrote:

New haven america wrote:Fox News isn't an American thing.

Rupert Murdoch is Australian.

Fox News is a US phenomenon, you don't have anything like it in Europe or most of the world (and by that, I mean the countries that have free media). because there are regulations that prevent such a blatantly partisan channel to operate. Fox News was actually kicked off the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41887613

The closest thing are the British Tabloids (surprise surprise, that old bat is involved in that), but they don't run 24h nonsense directly into your living room.

Fears that kids are going hungry, and even fainting for that reason. A lack of mental-health and educational resources. Accounts of transfers in the dead of night without warning.

These are among the allegations leveled by a handful of volunteers fed up with what they see as jail-like conditions at a migrant youth facility operated out of the Dallas Convention Center. It’s just one of several federal shelters set up in recent months to house a significant jump in the number of unaccompanied young people apprehended at the southern border of the United States.

In other words, it’s not a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention center. But volunteers say it still seems an awful lot like these kids are behind bars.In mid-March, over 2,200 unaccompanied migrant youth were brought to the Dallas facility. Though it was at least originally slated to close in less than a month, over 1,400 remain. When the shelter first opened, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—the agency responsible for the migrant youth after they leave CBP custody—worked with the Red Cross to manage the facility with support of local nonprofits.

Then, near the end of March, a military contractor called Culmen International was granted a $2 million contract by HHS to take over day-to-day management. On April 19, the contract ballooned to $29.5 million.

That’s when volunteers say things took a turn.

Kirsten Chilstrom, a Dallas-based special education teacher, started volunteering at the convention center shortly after the youth arrived as a part of a program managed by the Catholic Charities of Dallas. She describes Culmen’s treatment of the youth in carceral terms.

“It’s disturbing.... They are being treated like prisoners, and it’s insane,” Chilstrom told The Daily Beast.

Sam Hodges, a Dallas-based MBA student who volunteers with the Catholic Charities, echoed Chilstrom’s assessment of Culmen International’s management of the facility. “They treat it like it’s a jail,” Hodges said.

For weeks, Chilstrom and Hodges said, they and other volunteers advocated for improvements without running afoul of what they described as a policy meant to protect the privacy of the youth at the facility: don’t talk to the press. Having seen little progress, both Chilstrom and Hodges decided to speak on the record for this story. Two other volunteers and one concerned Culmen employee also shared information about their experiences with The Daily Beast under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The Daily Beast also reviewed emails sent by a fifth volunteer expressing concerns to HHS.

“At this point, I think it’s for the wellbeing of the kids,” Chilstrom said.

As The New York Times and others have reported, the number of children in the custody of CBP has declined as they have been transferred from facilities designed for adults to HHS-managed shelters thought of as more suitable for children. But volunteers say the situation in Dallas suggests being transferred from one agency to another is no salve for the crisis facing young people detained at the border.

Culmen International does not typically oversee the welfare of children. Their website describes their mission as “enhancing national and international security, supporting military readiness, and providing technology solutions.” But job listings for “Humanitarian Support Staff” indicate Culmen has a role in managing at least two other migrant facilities, in San Antonio and San Diego.

Culmen declined to comment for this story and directed requests to HHS staff.

In a written statement, HHS said the site is intended as a temporary measure, where the children are provided clean sleeping quarters, meals, laundry, recreational activities, and access to medical services. They did not respond directly to the claims made by volunteers, but stated that they require care providers to report and document all significant incidents in accordance with mandatory reporting laws, state licensing requirements, federal laws, and regulations.

According to advocates like Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, it is an unfortunate truth that many of these large facilities are run by private, for-profit contractors with little to no child welfare experience. “Private security contractors should not be in the business of child welfare, and it’s outrageous to think companies are profiteering off vulnerable children as they cut corners,” Vignarajah said.

Perhaps the most disturbing complaint: volunteers say Culmen does not provide adequate quality and amounts of food, leaving some of the kids hungry. “Numerous children have told me they are hungry and have begged me for additional food even after they have had a meal,” Chilstrom told The Daily Beast. “The food quality is subpar at best.... Culmen pays for separate meal service for their employees and they throw out anything that they don’t use."

Hodges bolstered that contention, noting that many children have mentioned they go hungry. “The rationing is not proper,” he said. The Culmen employee echoed their concerns.

Emails reviewed by The Daily Beast sent by a different volunteer to representatives at HHS suggested the food situation amounted to “negligence” and “child abuse,” and specifically pointed to how Culmen ordered separate meals for their staff. The HHS representative responded by saying the concerns would be shared with Culmen, which is responsible for managing and distributing the budget for food. They also instructed volunteers to file incident reports for any maltreatment they witness.

Likewise, Hodges and Chilstrom both relayed stories they said they heard from migrants about how they would wake up to find that others had been transferred in the dead of night, with no explanation of whether they were sent to a sponsor or to another facility. “I would ask them what happened to so-and-so, and they would say, ‘I don’t know, they just came in the middle of the night and took them somewhere else,’” Hodges said. The Culmen employee corroborated these stories.

Volunteers also described how a paucity of mental-health services and education has taken a serious toll on the kids. For over a month, they have been confined inside the convention center, where their movements are highly regimented. They have to ask permission to use the restroom and are only allowed to leave the main room where they sleep to eat and shower, according to three volunteers and the Culmen employee.

In late April, Michelle Saenz-Rodriguez, an immigration attorney based in Dallas who’s volunteered at the convention center, expressed concerns about the situation in an interview with CNN. “[G]oing on a month in one room has to take its toll on the mental health of those boys,” she said.

On April 23, Chilstrom told The Daily Beast, two children fainted. “I arrived after the first one, and was present for the second. It was in the middle of the center,” she claimed.

The Daily Beast reviewed contemporaneous text messages Chilstrom sent about the alleged incident to another volunteer, as well as an email sent by a different volunteer to HHS referring to kids “possibly fainting due to a lack of nutrients.”

Volunteers and the Culmen employee repeatedly emphasized the traumatic nature of the experiences some of the youth described facing in their home countries and while traveling to the United States. And advocates emphasize that the conditions in Dallas are likely to further traumatize children who have already been traumatized.

“Child welfare means so much more than just a roof over their head,” Vignarajah said. “There, there is a lack of transparency around the standards of care these facilities and their operators are held to… it’s so important to have robust, state-licensed operations, ideally rooted in community-based, trauma-informed models of care.” Though effectively operating in a manner similar to temporary childcare facilities, ProPublica reporting suggests some of these operations may fall short of state license requirements.

Where in the World Is Kamala Harris? Spoiler: Not at the Border.

Hodges, Chilstrom, and other volunteers have participated in efforts to help connect migrant youth with their families, and described case management progress as slow and inadequate. With over 1,400 youth still at the center, and less than a month left until the center is slated to close, much work is left to be done to reunify children with their families or sponsors. According to Vignarajah and other sources familiar with the matter, approximately 80 percent of the youth have a family member in the United States. According to a statement from HHS, after the youth have been released to a sponsor or sent to a more appropriate long-term HHS shelter, they will be eligible to go through immigration proceedings and petition for asylum.

“It’s critically important that we provide the case management necessary to as quickly and safely as possible to get these kids out of these facilities and into the arms of their families,” Vignarajah said.

In Dallas, the management of the effort has been contracted to the Providencia Group, a for-profit federal contractor that only came into existence in June 2020. On March 17, they were awarded $14.6 million to provide end-to-end case management services, including sponsor assessments and timely reunification. The Providencia Group currently has open job listings for roles in Dallas and San Antonio, suggesting they are responsible for case management at more than one shelter.

As of this writing, volunteers say, there are no full-time case managers working on site, and all case management interaction with the migrant youth thus far has been done via forms and video conferences.

“Case management can be time intensive and requires experienced social workers, ideally who are bilingual,” Vignarajah said.

The Providencia Group did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

While Culmen International’s contract was anticipated to end on May 31, coinciding with the anticipated closing date of the facility at the Dallas Convention Center, the contract awarded to the Providencia Group was slated to end July 16. That suggests the center could remain open past May or that the remaining youth will be transferred to another facility.

New haven america wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
Fox News is a US phenomenon, you don't have anything like it in Europe or most of the world (and by that, I mean the countries that have free media). because there are regulations that prevent such a blatantly partisan channel to operate. Fox News was actually kicked off the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41887613

The closest thing are the British Tabloids (surprise surprise, that old bat is involved in that), but they don't run 24h nonsense directly into your living room.

Except, you know, Australia, where Rupert has even more of a stranglehold over politics and daily life in general.

So thanks for agreeing with me, I guess.

Varkaria wrote:

New haven america wrote:Except, you know, Australia, where Rupert has even more of a stranglehold over politics and daily life in general.

So thanks for agreeing with me, I guess.

1. No, I don't agree. I mean, he has influence, but Australia has public broadcasters and regulatory institutions that the US clearly lacks.

And stranglehold? Fox News influenced millions of people to believe an election was rigged, that George Floyd wasn't murdered, that Hillary Clinton had a children sex dungeon in a pizzaria. Thousands of Fox listeners invaded the US capitol based on BS spewed by Trump and magnified by Tucker Carlson and Hannity. 2. Warn me when the Aussies storm their parliament or when members of the liberal party believe that the labor leader has a secret sex dungeon.

Shrillland wrote:

North Washington Republic wrote:
I know a lot of lefties are rejoicing at the fact the GOP has gone batshit crazy, but this will not end well and we may be seeing the last years of our Democratic Republic and Constitutional government.

Trust me, nobody here at NSG is rejoicing over this. We're political and history nerds, so we've seen it all before.

Varkaria wrote:

North Washington Republic wrote:Joy Reed tears Tucker Carlson a new one.

it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Varkaria wrote:it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Blargoblarg wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Unfortunately the more liberal media outlets in this country, like CNN and MSNBC and such, are just as garbage as Fox News.

Blargoblarg wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Unfortunately the more liberal media outlets in this country, like CNN and MSNBC and such, are just as garbage as Fox News. Six big corporations own 90% of the media in the U.S., so it's hard to find news media that's not biased in favor of the rich and the big corporations, regardless of which of the two right-wing capitalist major parties they support.

Varkaria wrote:

North Washington Republic wrote:Joy Reed tears Tucker Carlson a new one.

it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

New haven america wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Fox News isn't an American thing.

Rupert Murdoch is Australian.

Punished UMN wrote:

Varkaria wrote:
it's so good that most of Europe has highly regulated television that prevented a Fox News. Sad that the US is exporting nutjob politics through social media, but the new proposed regulations by the EU will work very well to prevent a European Tucker Carlson. Even our far-right is not as insane as Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and that says a lot.

Actually no, your far right is crazier than ours.

Political Geography wrote:

Lady Victory wrote:
Friendly reminder that the European Far-Right started a world war.

The American Far-Right, although surely salivating at the idea, has yet to achieve such an ambition.

Hitler only invaded Poland. That wasn't a world war, except those dopey Soviets were just going to let Hitler advance to their own border. Britain and France weren't going to let them make that mistake, so they started the misnamed "World War". Actually, Second Great European War would probably be more accurate. Anyway.

The US far-right is crazier than the (Western) European far-right, at this time. It's not a matter of how far to the right, it's a matter of how incoherent and pointless their platform is. USA USD USA!

Political Geography wrote:

The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp wrote:

I know im late but doing some reading turns out the FBI did infact classify this as terrorism.

Firstly, thanks for not calling me a Right Winger or trying to associate me with the Mafia or with bombers. America hasn't always been like this, but I can't put my finger on whether it was 9/11 or the Trump era which made everyone so hypocritically partisan.

For decades the ACLU defended the civil and constitutional rights of anyone, black or white, left or right. But now I, who have never been called unreasonable except by the Right, push back against the fascist label "terrorism" and say quite plainly that government should not have any special powers against "terrorists" at least within the US. Black or white. Left or right.

OK, let's hear from the FBI then:

"That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism," Wray told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That's prevaricating. Wray states outright that the attack was criminal behavior. But he qualifies "domestic terrorism", particularly with the word "view" indicating that although he is under oath, he cannot be found to have lied if the FBI's "view" changes in the future.

But OK, he did say it. It can't have been "domestic terrorism" without at least one person being a terrorist. Wray did not say how many, let alone whom, of the participants were terrorists. If we parse his words, the "seige" was criminal behavior which the FBI would classify as terrorism. Are you comfortable with branding even the people who stayed outside the Capitol building, chanting and all the usual protest-y stuff, as also being terrorists?

But under questioning from lawmakers, Wray resisted pinning the Capitol breach on a single extremist ideology, saying the group of attackers “included a variety of backgrounds.”

“The attackers on Jan. 6 included a number — and the number keeps growing as we build out our investigations — of what we would call militia violent extremism. And we have had some already arrested who we would put in the category of racially motivated violent extremism, white as well. Those would be the categories so far that we're seeing as far as Jan. 6.”

And there you have a problem. You called 500 people "terrorists" for participating in a some part of the incursion/seige. Not even the FBI at that time knew how many different motives or causes the attackers had, so of course neither you nor I did.

Very clearly then, they do not ALL have a terrorist motive. UNLESS you're going to infer their motives from nothing but their actions. And that's what so shit about laws against "terrorism". They require a finding of what the motive was (unlike basically any other crime) but the prosecutor is allowed to make the motive up just from the facts of the case. Y'all got to repeal that shit.