March 6, 2019

TERRA INCOGNITA: GROWING ANTI-JEWSH RHETORIC IN THE U.S.

They say that Anti-semitism isn't systemic. Jews are white supremacists. Jews have dual loyalty and pledge allegiance to Israel. That is the new nexus of anti-Jewish rhetoric percolating up in the US among activists and even in Congress.

It began innocently enough with criticism of Israel and attempts to connect that criticism to other social justice priorities. But over time, the whispering campaign has grown to a crescendo that legitimizes a worldview that is rapidly becoming more toxic. We need to understand this growing discussion as part of a puzzle. Each piece forms its part, and together the parts become a milieu that fosters hatred against Jews in the US.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Growing-anti-Jewsh-retoric-in-the-US-582468

March 4, 2019

Purple Daisy

March 1, 2019

Warding off hunger, Venezuelans find meals in garbage bins

CARACAS (Reuters) - Tony, a 36-year old security guard, rummages through the garbage bins of a wealthy district in Caracas on his days off work, scavenging for food as Venezuela’s economic meltdown has left even the employed struggling to find enough to eat.

“I smell it and if it smells good, then I take it home,” said Tony, who declined to disclose his last name because he does not want his wife and four children to know how he has been putting food on their table for more than a year.

He said he typically finds scraps of meat, cheese and pieces of vegetables on his garbage runs. “I wash it with vinegar, a lot of water, and I add onion and sauce.

Scenes of Venezuelans picking through garbage in a search for something to eat has for years been a symbol of the nation’s economic meltdown, which has been marked by widespread shortages of food and medicine as well as hyperinflation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-trash/warding-off-hunger-venezuelans-find-meals-in-garbage-bins-idUSKCN1QI503

March 1, 2019

What makes her a "progressive prosecutor" exactly?

Kamala Harris takes hits on her criminal justice Record



As Kamala Harris positions for a likely presidential run that could be announced as early as this week, the California senator fielded an early hit on her criminal justice record Thursday in the form of a scathing opinion piece in The New York Times.

Digging into Harris' long and complex record as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California, University of San Francisco associate law professor Lara Bazelon took central aim at Harris' contention that she was a "progressive prosecutor," who sought to right injustice and change the criminal justice system from within.

"Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as district attorney and then the state's attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent," wrote Bazelon, the former director of Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent. "Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/kamala-harris-criminal-justice/index.html

She supported three strikes laws which disproportionately affected PoC, supported the death penalty, actively kept innocent people in prison, tried to put parents in jail because their kids skipped school, and just a few years ago, laughed at the idea of marijuana legalization.