Trump Regime planning to set up "tent cities' (aka concentration camps) for unaccompanied migrant children.

[The Romulan Republic]

The TV news has been featuring video taped tours of a converted Wal-Mart used to house 1500 boys age 10-17 - the "Casa Padre" facility already mentioned. These broadcasts have been offered with a bit of skepticism in most cases. Yes, it looks clean and orderly, with classrooms and a health center and a claimed staff to "resident" ratio of 1:8. But it's just one center and they knew the camera crews were coming. It's not unknown for governments to have a showcase facility and the rest in the system being far worse.

Yeah. You want to really know what's going on, get an undercover reporter/investigator in there or do a surprise inspection, and check more than one place. If it turns out that they're all above-board- good. I don't want children to suffer just so I can score a point against Trump. But I'll be very much surprised if that turns out to be the case.

The recent comments from Jeff Sessions and that female mouthpiece of the administration in the official white house press briefing about how it's Biblical to obey the government is just "sit down you peasants and shut the fuck up - we're in charge and it will be as we say".

He actually said that? That the Bible tells people to obey the government?

Sessions should be impeached on that basis alone. And then should go fuck himself in the ass with a rusty tire iron.

The deplorables love it, the rest of us, not so much. Frankly, it does make more and more of us uneasy, especially those of us who are descendants of recent refugees.

I'm not sure where the tipping point comes, where enough people are willing to man the barricades and try to force a change. Or just get up off their asses and vote. Better yet, do both.

I'm still holding out hope that we can derail this without mass demonstrations, or at least without violence. That hope rests mainly on the Mueller investigation, the integrity of the Federal judiciary, and above all on the hope that we will elect a Congress that will act as more of a check on (or maybe even impeach) Trump in November. Though I sadly expect some post-election violence from Trumpers (if they lose), or from progressives (if Republicans do well).

I am serious: this is probably the most important election since the Reconstruction era. The future is always difficult to predict, but I would suggest that if you do not want Americans to have to choose between protracted civil unrest (possibly even a civil war) and dictatorship, the single most important thing that you can do is vote and volunteer to flip the House and Senate in the November election (unless you're fortunate enough to be in a state/district with a viable third party/independent candidate, ie Vermont).

Edit: And if it does come to a violent conflict anyway, at least we'd be doing it from a position of greater political strength (and of greater moral standing, if we have exhausted the alternatives first). Especially if we flip various state/local governments as well.

[Broomstick]

The recent comments from Jeff Sessions and that female mouthpiece of the administration in the official white house press briefing about how it's Biblical to obey the government is just "sit down you peasants and shut the fuck up - we're in charge and it will be as we say".

He actually said that? That the Bible tells people to obey the government?

Yep. Quoted Romans 13:1-5. Favorite passage of slave owners, Nazis, and other such people:

13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

Funny how these guys like to stop before the next two, though:

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Sessions should be impeached on that basis alone. And then should go fuck himself in the ass with a rusty tire iron.

Yeah, so much for separation of church and state...

[Zixinus]

You know, when my generation of those born in the 90's and upwards will tell their grandchildren what they saw of the world from this time, I can't help but think "We saw big, strong men ruin and destroy the work of greater men for they could not conceive a greater good than themselves."

Maybe an exaggeration but seeing how Trump is a non-anomaly in today's world (I just have to look at my own country), perhaps not completely melodramatic.

[LaCroix]

While I am certainly on their side of the fence, I kind of love the outrage of people telling that Trump is doing something blatantly unamerican.

Selling off babies of slaves,
sending native children to boarding schools,
Seperating Japanese children from their parents in internment camps.

There isn't really a point in saying "this is unamerican" when it is something that has always been done one way or another.
He is kinda following the theme just fine.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

With American exceptionalism comes American Denialism. Also, blaming foreign patsies, because American moral cowardice comes bundled with American exceptionalism as well.

[NecronLord]

He actually said that? That the Bible tells people to obey the government?

Sessions should be impeached on that basis alone. And then should go fuck himself in the ass with a rusty tire iron.

That is pretty well known. It's why Christianity prospered in the competing melenge of mystery cults and alternate religions in Rome, when others (Cult of Isis, Mithraism etc.) vanished into history.

Christian scripture is SUPER GOOD for Kings and Emperors.

How do you think they got all that Imperial and later Royal endorsement? Ostensibly the context is Paul's letter to the Roman churches and it's easy to imagine he wanted them to avoid provoking Imperial Rome to atrocities against them by encouraging them to be model citizens, but it's lent itself to rule without limit for seventeen hundred years.

[SolarpunkFan]

If there's one good thing that can be said of this: we're lucky Trump and his henchmen are as fucking stupid and incompetent as they are. If they weren't, well things would have been a lot worse.

[Zixinus]

If there's one good thing that can be said of this: we're lucky Trump and his henchmen are as fucking stupid and incompetent as they are. If they weren't, well things would have been a lot worse.

Except they don't have to be smart and competent to ruin stuff. They just have to be unopposed.

[Batman]

Yeah, but if they were smart and competent they could ruin things a lot worse

[The Romulan Republic]

He actually said that? That the Bible tells people to obey the government?

Sessions should be impeached on that basis alone. And then should go fuck himself in the ass with a rusty tire iron.

That is pretty well known. It's why Christianity prospered in the competing melenge of mystery cults and alternate religions in Rome, when others (Cult of Isis, Mithraism etc.) vanished into history.

Christian scripture is SUPER GOOD for Kings and Emperors.

How do you think they got all that Imperial and later Royal endorsement? Ostensibly the context is Paul's letter to the Roman churches and it's easy to imagine he wanted them to avoid provoking Imperial Rome to atrocities against them by encouraging them to be model citizens, but it's lent itself to rule without limit for seventeen hundred years.

I'm not surprised that such a line exists in the Bible. I'm disgusted that the Attorney General of the United States would use that as a justification for fascistic policy.

In any case, the Bible is inconsistent. I'm sure I could find a conflicting passage if I so wished, and so could Sessions, if he wasn't an authoritarian, misogynistic, racist piece of shit. But all that's beside the point, which is that the Bible should not be used to justify government policy in a secular nation.

[Simon_Jester]

So the response to "you don't know the camp is going to suck!" is "Yes, we do. It's a facility for illegal immigrants. It is literally filled with children who've been pulled from their parents. And it is founded by an organization that is at best Dickensian, often Kafkaesque, and at worst actively malicious towards illegal immigrants.

And, most importantly, operated by the lowest bidder.

Honestly that's not even the worst part, it's when it's run by assholes. People who make a low bid because they have a low budget, but who hire from a more or less random sample of the population, are more of a problem than people who sign up because they have an ideological commitment to, say, punishing and/or re-educating illegal immigrant children.

While I am certainly on their side of the fence, I kind of love the outrage of people telling that Trump is doing something blatantly unamerican.

Selling off babies of slaves,
sending native children to boarding schools,
Seperating Japanese children from their parents in internment camps.

There isn't really a point in saying "this is unamerican" when it is something that has always been done one way or another.
He is kinda following the theme just fine.

The thing a lot of foreigners may not understand about the US:

The US isn't just a geographical construct in the minds of its core population demographics. It's an ideological construct. Most other countries were a clearly identifiable patch of territory in the distant past, at least in ethnic terms. The US, as it now exists, NOT DENYING CRIMES COMMITTED, is different. As founded, it is not really defined by its geography, but by the ideology that went into creating it as something other than a loose confederacy of coastal colonies that could agree on not being ruled from London.

Namely, that it started as a sincerely intended attempt by its founders to put into practice Enlightenment political philosophy.

Because that never quite went away, because it got repeated... there's the reality, but there's also a dream. There's an idea that this is how it's supposed to work, and post-WWII the notion spread that it was supposed to be for everyone, not just white males with proper haircuts.

So when things go wrong, yes some of us point and scream "it wasn't supposed to be like this!" And cackling and saying "you sweet summer child, it was ALWAYS like this" is completely missing the point, in the name of taking joy in deconstruction. It's not about whether it was ever really the way it was supposed to be. It's about whether things can be made better, can be improved, can become "a more perfect union."

Most countries just do that. For the US, being able to do that is on some level an existential thing. Because it's part of the reason the US even exists, and when we feel like we're failing to do that, it frustrates us on that existential level.

[The Romulan Republic]

While I am certainly on their side of the fence, I kind of love the outrage of people telling that Trump is doing something blatantly unamerican.

Selling off babies of slaves,
sending native children to boarding schools,
Seperating Japanese children from their parents in internment camps.

There isn't really a point in saying "this is unamerican" when it is something that has always been done one way or another.
He is kinda following the theme just fine.

Well, countries change and evolve over time. We were supposed to be past this shit, in the 21st. Century. Apparently not, however.

Personally, I don't really like the term "un-American", though, because its used to imply that a difference of political opinion equals disloyalty to the country, or makes one less of a legitimate citizen (this is certainly how the Right uses it). More precise might be "Not in keeping with the ideals expressed in the Declaration and Constitution". Which, yes, has happened before, but I think we should call attention to the contradiction.

[Civil War Man]

Personally, I don't really like the term "un-American", though, because its used to imply that a difference of political opinion equals disloyalty to the country, or makes one less of a legitimate citizen (this is certainly how the Right uses it). More precise might be "Not in keeping with the ideals expressed in the Declaration and Constitution". Which, yes, has happened before, but I think we should call attention to the contradiction.

I just cut to the chase and call them what they are. Crimes against humanity.

[FaxModem1]

KHOU News

TEXAS
Hundreds of children wait in Border Patrol facility in Texas
Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since the Trump administration announced its "zero tolerance" policy against people entering the U.S. without legal permission.
Author: Nomaan Merchant
Published: 7:39 PM CDT June 17, 2018
Updated: 10:37 AM CDT June 18, 2018
McALLEN, Texas – Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets.

One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn’t know because the child’s aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl’s diaper.

The U.S. Border Patrol on Sunday allowed reporters to briefly visit the facility where it holds families arrested at the southern U.S. border, responding to new criticism and protests over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and resulting separation of families.

More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that’s divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock.

The Border Patrol said close to 200 people inside the facility were minors unaccompanied by a parent. Another 500 were “family units,” parents and children. Many adults who crossed the border without legal permission could be charged with illegal entry and placed in jail, away from their children.

Reporters were not allowed by agents to interview any of the detainees or take photos.

Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy, which directs Homeland Security officials to refer all cases of illegal entry into the United States for prosecution. Church groups and human rights advocates have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.

Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents’ arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents.

“Those kids inside who have been separated from their parents are already being traumatized,” said Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who was denied entry earlier this month to children’s shelter. “It doesn’t matter whether the floor is swept and the bedsheets tucked in tight.”

In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for people trying to enter the U.S., Border Patrol officials argue that they have to crack down on migrants and separate adults from children as a deterrent to others.

“When you exempt a group of people from the law ... that creates a draw,” said Manuel Padilla, the Border Patrol’s chief agent here. “That creates the trends right here.”

Agents running the holding facility — generally known as “Ursula” for the name of the street it’s on — said everyone detained is given adequate food, access to showers and laundered clothes, and medical care. People are supposed to move through the facility quickly. Under U.S. law, children are required to be turned over within three days to shelters funded by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Padilla said agents in the Rio Grande Valley have allowed families with children under the age of 5 to stay together in most cases.

An advocate who spent several hours in the facility Friday said she was deeply troubled by what she found.

Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, met with a 16-year-old girl who had been taking care of a young girl for three days. The teen and others in their cage thought the girl was 2 years old.

“She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper,” Brane said.

Brane said that after an attorney started to ask questions, agents found the girl’s aunt and reunited the two. It turned out that the girl was actually 4 years old. Part of the problem was that she didn’t speak Spanish, but K’iche, a language indigenous to Guatemala.

“She was so traumatized that she wasn’t talking,” Brane said. “She was just curled up in a little ball.”

Brane said she also saw officials at the facility scold a group of 5-year-olds for playing around in their cage, telling them to settle down. There are no toys or books.

But one boy nearby wasn’t playing with the rest. According to Brane, he was quiet, clutching a piece of paper that was a photocopy of his mother’s ID card.

“The government is literally taking kids away from their parents and leaving them in inappropriate conditions,” Brane said. “If a parent left a child in a cage with no supervision with other 5-year-olds, they’d be held accountable.”

Dr. Colleen Kraft, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that she visited a small shelter in Texas recently, which she declined to identity. A toddler inside the 60-bed facility caught her eye — she was crying uncontrollably and pounding her little fists on mat.

Staff members tried to console the child, who looked to be about 2 years old, Kraft said. She had been taken from her mother the night before and brought to the shelter.

The staff gave her books and toys — but they weren’t allowed to pick her up, to hold her or hug her to try to calm her. As a rule, staff aren’t allowed to touch the children there, she said.

“The stress is overwhelming,” she said. “The focus needs to be on the welfare of these children, absent of politics.”

There's video at the link. This is the nation we have become.

[The Romulan Republic]

Personally, I don't really like the term "un-American", though, because its used to imply that a difference of political opinion equals disloyalty to the country, or makes one less of a legitimate citizen (this is certainly how the Right uses it). More precise might be "Not in keeping with the ideals expressed in the Declaration and Constitution". Which, yes, has happened before, but I think we should call attention to the contradiction.

I just cut to the chase and call them what they are. Crimes against humanity.

Quite. Once we finish trying Trump and Sessions for espionage, obstruction, and possibly treason, we ought to try them for crimes against humanity as well. I'm not exactly expecting it to work out that way, though, because that would mean the US admitting that its highest law enforcement/executive officials committed crimes against humanity, and even people who oppose the policies mostly won't want to go through that (like how top Bush administration officials got a pass on torture and lying to start a war, once Obama came in).

[Simon_Jester]

The staff not being allowed to pick up children may actually be a ghastly example of a zero-tolerance policy intended to prevent child abuse... going horribly wrong.

While I am certainly on their side of the fence, I kind of love the outrage of people telling that Trump is doing something blatantly unamerican.

Selling off babies of slaves,
sending native children to boarding schools,
Seperating Japanese children from their parents in internment camps.

There isn't really a point in saying "this is unamerican" when it is something that has always been done one way or another.
He is kinda following the theme just fine.

Well, countries change and evolve over time. We were supposed to be past this shit, in the 21st. Century. Apparently not, however.

Personally, I don't really like the term "un-American", though, because its used to imply that a difference of political opinion equals disloyalty to the country, or makes one less of a legitimate citizen (this is certainly how the Right uses it). More precise might be "Not in keeping with the ideals expressed in the Declaration and Constitution". Which, yes, has happened before, but I think we should call attention to the contradiction.

Honestly I'd like to try and reclaim the term "un-American." I'm tired of losing words like "patriotism" and "freedom" and so on to the far right wing of the spectrum.

[The Romulan Republic]

Fair point, although I still generally dislike labeling those who support political positions I disagree with "un-American" as a matter of principle, because ironically, one of the key principles of America is supposed to be the existence of a diversity of political opinions. So its a label that should be reserved for the most severe cases, particularly Treason (excluding hypothetical scenarios where revolt against a despotic government was justified) or secession, I suppose, since those are cases of literally acting against the United States.

Though for this reason, I have no problem labeling people who celebrate and defend the Confederacy "un-American".

[Elheru Aran]

To give the devil his due (heh) Romans 13 has had its share of interpretations over history. Suffice to say it's an energetically debated passage for obvious reasons. The arguments boil down to either: obey the government regardless, or, obey the government when it's just and moral, otherwise obey God's directives before you obey the government.

But frankly you can twist scripture into enough contortions to support whatever message or ideology one wants to espouse without too much trouble that attempting to argue the letter of the law is a futile exercise in my opinion. The spirit of it is obvious enough, and the fact is that even the Southern Baptists have introduced a resolution supporting compassionate immigration reform. When *they* start talking about that-- one of the biggest Trump supporters-- it's pretty blatantly obvious who's in the wrong, theologically and doctrinally as well as morally and legally.

Hell, even Franklin Graham spoke out against it, and he's normally one of the first to kneel when he hears Cheetolini's zipper drop...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-tru ... story.html

[Lonestar]

Is Patroklos serious or just trolling? It is a fucking tent slum.

Patroklos seriously thinks that a tent city that has to be reasonably livable otherwise the military will face severe retention problems is gonna be the same as whatever it is being cooked up for people being held against their will, unsupervised.

[Tribble]

Moral issues aside, would putting kids into concentration camps even do anything to curb illegal immigration, which is what it is allegedly for?

[Eulogy]

Moral issues aside, would putting kids into concentration camps even do anything to curb illegal immigration, which is what it is allegedly for?

Not immigration itself per se, but it'll sure discourage people from migrating to the US legal or not if THIS is the welcome they can expect. More likely they'll go somewhere else.

Of course scaring away the sort of people who may want to immigrate legally into the US isn't what Herr Orangeface would want, but some lessons are the sort that have to be learned the hard way if one doesn't get them the first time.

[Simon_Jester]

Not immigration itself per se, but it'll sure discourage people from migrating to the US legal or not if THIS is the welcome they can expect. More likely they'll go somewhere else.

Of course scaring away the sort of people who may want to immigrate legally into the US isn't what Herr Orangeface would want...

Making a loooot of assumptions there.

[TheFeniX]

This might make about the same dent in "crime" as does any supply side attack on a "problem." Maybe noticeable, a lot less noticeable than actually combating the Demand side. From what I've been reading, illegal immigration is already leveling off and decreasing due to the Mexican economy strengthening and (related) crime of all types continuing to decrease.

[Dominus Atheos]

Leaked audio from inside a processing facility.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chil ... ion-policy

[Gandalf]

The thing a lot of foreigners may not understand about the US:

snip text

Believe me, a lot of us get it. We get flooded with American cultural products. Many an Australian child can name many American founder. We also get to see the other side of the American dream.

Namely, that it started as a sincerely intended attempt by its founders to put into practice Enlightenment political philosophy.

How sincere would you say that their attempt was?