Despite small victories, Indigenous communities around the world face an uphill battle

Indigenous communities across Canada were handed a rare victory on Friday, when the government agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation over forced separation and adoption practices.

Beginning in the 1960s, government social workers separated indigenous children from their families and put them up for adoption, part of a massive campaign lasting through the 1980s. Intended to hinder indigenous identity, language, and cultural practice, the “Sixties Scoop” (nicknamed because of the government’s practice of “scooping” children away from their homes) was ultimately ended after a government report in the province of Manitoba harshly criticized the program.

But it would be another 30 years before the government took action to make amends — Friday’s announcement is the result of a class-action lawsuit filed eight years ago. If approved, as many as 30,000 people will be paid CAD$750 million in compensation for the government’s actions as part of the settlements.

“I don’t know what people were thinking,” said Carolyn Bennett, who serves as minister of crown-indigenous relations. In announcing the settlement, Bennett apologized for the Scoop, during which thousands of children were placed in countries across the globe, some as far away as New Zealand.

https://thinkprogress.org/indigenous-peoples-day-struggle-ad496e9b83c5/

The 15th-century doctrine that let Columbus discover America is now the basis of Indian policy

On October 12, 1993, I sat in my first-grade classroom with a mountain of Popsicle sticks on my desk. I had just been taught that Columbus was a super great guy, and we would be building models of the Pinta and Santa Maria out of the sticks. Because he was very brave and knew he was right about the earth being flat, the lesson went, he sailed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and “discovered” America. I raised my hand. “If Columbus had never come here, my family would still have our land.”

The fight to change the elementary school version of Columbus’ story isn’t just a symbolic fight. For us as Native Americans, it is the fight to reject the incredibly racist legal framework under which we still live. The same 15th-century doctrine that allowed Columbus to “discover Hispanola” (and gave his army license to rape, murder, and enslave Taino people) is the basis of U.S. federal Indian policy today. The Doctrine of Discovery has been cited in Supreme Court Cases as recently as 2005 and by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014.

While the international Indigenous community has been calling for the denouncement of the Doctrine of Discovery for decades, most Americans don’t even know what it is. It first appeared in 1455 as a papal bull giving Portugal permission to invade and colonize West Africa. After Columbus’s infamous voyage to the Caribbean, a similar papal bull was extended to Spain in 1493.

The Doctrine of Christian Discovery asserted simply that Christian Nations became the rightful owner of any land they found occupied by non-Christian people. Europeans used this international law, grounded in the racist presumption of European superiority, to colonize most of the earth. What followed was the kidnapping and enslavement an estimated 12.5 million African people and the systematic genocide of an estimated 90 million indigenous people (90 percent of the pre-genocide population of the Americas). In 1982, when Spain proposed to the UN General Assembly that the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’s voyage should be marked by celebration, the entire African delegation walked out.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-15th-century-doctrine-that-let-columbus-discover-america-is-now-the-basis-of-indian-policy-e990e00768d4/

Organizers behind armed white supremacist protest in Houston revealed as Russian

Last May, nearly 100 demonstrators gathered around the Islamic Da’wah Center in downtown Houston, squaring off against one another in competing camps.

The “Stop Islamization of Texas” protest was, on its face, largely similar to any number of other tense, vitriolic demonstrations that percolated through 2016. On the one end: a crew carrying Confederate flags, #WhiteLivesMatter banners, and heavy weaponry. On the other: counter-protesters with signs decrying Islamophobia, calling for communal unity, and a bubble machine going at full blast.

Despite the presence of AR-15s, the demonstrations ended without violence. The white supremacists screaming “Fascist and proud!” dissipated, as did those supporting the Islamic center.

The organizers behind the anti-Islam protesters, however, never showed. And now, over 16 months later, we know why.

As CNN reported last week, the protest was put together by the “Heart of Texas” Facebook page – a page that was revealed last month as one of the fake accounts operated out of Russia. Unlike the November anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-secession rallies the page attempted to organize across Texas, the May protest not only brought armed protesters, but a raft of counter-protesters to face down those calling for “white power!”

https://thinkprogress.org/armed-white-supremacist-protest-organized-by-russians-d730f83ca275/


Me thinks that Charlotteville last weekend

So Jeff Sessions-------------------what are you going to do about this, this lands squarely in your department


I hate Russians, and I really hate TRAITORS (American ones at that)

Iron Maiden------Run to the Hills

Well in Wyoming: The Equality State

They will have this possibly and they just might have another asshole from XE running also:

GOP mega-donor mulls Wyoming Senate bid

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/354558-gop-megadonor-mulls-wyoming-senate-bid


So lets remind "all" of the republicans in this state that I use to live in what this asshole said and did and who he supported another fucking dingbat back in the day:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/foster-friess-rick-santorum-contraception_n_1282466.html

Jerry Jones , Whats more important to you

John Oliver ........................

TRUMP ELECTION FRAUD PANEL LEADER SOUGHT TO WEAKEN FEDERAL VOTING RIGHTS, DOCUMENTS SHOW

The de facto head of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission drafted a proposal for the administration to amend the National Voter Registration Act with a proof of citizenship requirement to join the rolls, documents unsealed by a federal judge show.

Though heavily redacted, the two single-page documents that Judge Julie Robinson opened late Thursday shed light on Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s efforts to expand the controversial requirement he implemented in his home state, and possibly even his motives on the commission.

One document—the same one Kobach was photographed carrying into a meeting with President-elect Trump in November—is his strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security in the first 365 days. The entire document is blacked out except for the final section, “Stop Aliens from Voting,” and one point beneath it, “Draft Amendments to National Voter Registration Act to promote proof-of-citizenship requirements.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanded the document and others pertaining to the act as part of its existing lawsuit against Kobach, claiming that his Kansas law effective in 2013 requiring voters to show proof of citizenship violates the act’s “minimum amount” of requirements to register.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-election-fraud-panel-leader-sought-weaken-federal-voting-rights-679962

And then this asshole says this:

"In a Friday morning email to The Kansas City Star, Kobach said that his proposal to Trump and the voter fraud commission’s work were not related."

Fuck You....... your a fascist Kobach, it's that simple, you do not believe in a democratic republic, you remind me a third world despot, like the one they have in Russia



Lets see what the ACLU got for "all" of to read.................


https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/fish-v-kobach-memorandum-and-order-0

Paul Krugman: Trump Is About to Take a Wrecking Ball to the Last Competent Government Institution Le

It's often lost in the miasma of White House backbiting and scandal, but after less than a year in office, the Trump administration has proven itself historically corrupt and incompetent. Tom Price resigned as secretary of Health and Human Services last week after bilking taxpayers to the tune of $400,000 in charter flights, while the Environmental Protection Agency's Scott Pruitt has reportedly been wining and dining corporate executives from the very industries he's meant to be regulating. Then there's Rick Perry's disastrous Department of Energy and Ben Carson's almost complete dismantling of HUD, to offer just a handful of examples.

Thus far, the Federal Reserve has avoided such ignominy. But that may soon be coming to an end, and the effect on the global economy could prove catastrophic.

In his Friday column, Paul Krugman warns of the coming Trumpification of the United States' central banking system. While Janet Yellen and past Fed chairs like Ben Bernanke have been technocrats divorced from partisan politics, this is merely a political norm. And if the last 10 months have taught us anything, there's no political norm Trump isn't willing to shatter. The president has no coherent fiscal policy to speak of, "so trying to guess his Fed choice... is a mug’s game."

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-krugman-trump-about-take-wrecking-ball-last-competent-government-institution


And it has only been 10 months-------------------we are going to be f*cked

The Hedge Funder Who Secretly Bought $1 Billion in Puerto Rican Debt Is Also a Secret Backer of Char

Billionaire hedge funder Seth Klarman is having a rough quarter. The media averse Klarman, often likened to Warren Buffet for his safe bets and low profile, has been dragged into the spotlight twice in less than a month.

First, when officials in Massachusetts forced a secretive political organization to reveal its donors, Klarman’s name topped the list. Of the more than $15 million Families for Excellent Schools spent pushing last November’s failed ballot initiative to increase the number of the state’s charter schools, $3.3 million came from Klarman, the most from any single individual. Partners at Klarman’s hedge fund the Baupost Group chipped in another $376,000, joining a who’s who of billionaires and private investors, including Alice Walton of Walmart fame and multiple partners from Mitt Romney’s former firm Bain Capital.

Then, earlier this week, The Intercept unmasked Klarman's Baupost Group as one of the largest holders of Puerto Rico’s skyrocketing public debt. The U.S. territory is reeling from a recent one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, but its residents—who are U.S. citizens—have long suffered as the island’s government has struggled to pay off over $70 billion in bonds. For over a decade, infrastructure has been neglected and privatized, government employees have been laid off, and public services have been drastically cut—in May, 184 public schools were put on the chopping block. Even democracy has been taken from the people: last year, Congress gave decision-making power over the territory to an unelected board. Why? To pay back bondholders like Klarman. Using a shell company to hide that they’re profiting from this suffering, the Baupost Group owns $911 million of the island's bonds.

https://www.alternet.org/hedge-funder-puerto-rico-charter-schools


I bet one dollar that Devos pals around with this jerk

Mick Mulvaney Is Now a Keynesian

The Republican tax push is off to a slightly rocky start, in part because the party can’t quite agree on whether—or how much—the bill should add to the federal deficit. On one end, you have Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who says there’s “no way in hell” he’ll vote for a bill that adds to the deficit and may be serious since he’s retiring anyway.1 On the other, well, you have all the Republicans in Washington who were happy to use fearmongering about the national debt as a talking point during the Obama administration, but who now want to shred the tax code into hamster bedding, at any cost, while they have the chance.

That group apparently includes White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, who during his time in Congress was known as squawking deficit hawk. Back during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, he famously said that it would be better for the government to default on its obligations than pass a clean hike and warned that “we desperately need is structural change that stops Congress from continuing to spend a bunch of money we don’t have.” He also co-authored a budget amendment known as “cut, cap, and balance”—the name says it all—and once introduced an amendment that would have made Congress offset Hurricane Sandy aid with cuts to other spending, just because.

https://slate.com/business/2017/10/mick-mulvaney-says-tax-cuts-will-only-create-growth-if-they-lead-to-deficits.html

I Think Jared Bernstein is more qualified then this jerk Mulvaney

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/24/dsa-dynamic-scoring-abuse/?utm_term=.db6b20ad0721

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/24/dsa-dynamic-scoring-abuse/?utm_term=.db6b20ad0721