What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
Negotiators for the Vatican and Beijing reached a compromise on who selects Catholic bishops in China, said people familiar with the matter, potentially marking a major step toward ending six decades of estrangement.
Vatican, China Consider Deal on Selection of Bishops After Decades of Division – WSJ
hmmm
A slum camp built by migrants on France’s northern shore, harboring unfathomable hope and humanity mixed with filth and fear, is now a puddled moonscape of dirt and sand dunes.
Full of Filth and Hope, Calais Migrant Camp Is No More – The New York Times
hmmmm
White Wolf : Standing Rock: Unprecedented Unity of Indigenous Nations and People
It is amazing to consider how many groups are coming together.
Towns and villages in central Italy are rocked by the country’s most violent earthquake in decades.
…Giuseppe Pezzanesi, mayor of Tolentino in the neighbouring Marche region, said the small town had “suffered our blackest day yet”.
“The damage is irreparable. There are thousands of people in the streets, terrified, crying. Let’s hope that is an end to it, the people are on their knees psychologically.”
Italy quake: Norcia tremor destroys ancient buildings – BBC News
sigh…
The Australian government has been accused of attempting to break its international obligations after moving to bar any refugee or asylum-seeker who arrives in the country illegally by boat from ever being able to apply for a visa, even as tourists or for business.
Boatpeople face lifetime ban from Australia
sigh…
Theresa May and Amber Rudd appear to have changed their minds about whether to hold an inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave since they last met campaigners, it has been revealed. After the announcement by the Home Secretary on Monday that there would be no statutory inquiry into the 1984 battle between police and Yorkshire miners, representatives of the Truth and Justice for Orgreave Campaign said the PM and Ms Rudd had sounded “really positive” about holding a probe.
hmmmm
A Slavic workshop of stylists and photographers called Treti Pivni have decided to bring back one of the more amazing Ukranian traditions by giving it a new meaning. They’ve produced a portrait series of modern Ukranian women dressed in traditional Ukranian floral headdresses.
Ukrainian Women Bring Back Traditional Floral Crowns To Show National Pride
Gorgeous!
In February 2017, the Women’s World Chess Championship will be held in Iran. The U.S. champion, Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, will not be there.
Nazi Paikidze-Barnes has refused to participate in protest of the Islamic Republic’s compulsory dress code, which mandates that all women wear hijabs, or headscarves, in public. The law is strictly enforced regardless of a woman’s religion or nationality, and therefore would include all 64 competitors at the tournament. “I think it’s unacceptable to host a WOMEN’S World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” she posted on social media. She also wrote that she wouldn’t “wear a hijab and support women’s oppression even if it means missing one of the most important competitions of my career.” (Based on the formula of the tournament, she will not be eligible to compete again until 2019.)
Iranian activist and journalist Masih Alinejad says… “This is a discriminatory law, it’s not a cultural issue,” she told VICE Sports last week. “The government of Iran forces all women—non-Iranian, non-Muslim, and children—to wear hijab. All women should stand up and speak out. By accepting compulsory hijab, you are giving the Iranian government more power to oppress women.”
…”Nazi is not boycotting the games but it is the Islamic Republic which is boycotting Nazi,” Alinejad said. “She has earned the right to compete in an international tournament and it is the Islamic Republic which puts another hurdle in front of her and says, ‘You can only compete if you conform to our dress code.’ Where in the FIDE regulations does it say that countries can impose religious rules on players?”
Gary Walters, the president of the U.S. Chess Federation, agrees—and has expressed support of the U.S. champion. In Walters’s words, “We reminded FIDE that the forced wearing of a hijab or other dress is contrary to FIDE’s handbook.” (Statute 1.2 reads, in part, that FIDE “rejects discriminatory treatment for national, political, racial, social, or religious reasons, or on account of gender.”)
Why the U.S. Women’s Chess Champion Refuses to Play in Iran | VICE Sports
booo, FIDE!
The authorities have said that nothing will be left of the notorious Jungle, home to around 6,000 migrants until a week ago, by Monday evening.
Calais ‘Jungle’ camp to be cleared out by end of day – The Local
They came with nothing, to the promise of safety and welcome.
Instead they were greeted by fear, hostility, and indifference.
The little they built for themselves taken and destroyed and still they are offered no help, no relief, nowhere to go.
Humanity is a disgusting cesspool and politicians who refuse to help Satan’s playthings.
A FORMER soldier trying to urge the Government to allow a five-year-old Afghan girl and her father into the country says that he is worried for their welfare after losing contact with them as the notorious Jungle Camp was demolished in Calais this week.
Soldier tries to bring Afghan father and daughter to UK from Calais | World | News | Daily Express
So up-side-down!
So fucked up!
Police swoop on Paris migrant camp after Calais Jungle clearout | Reuters
So evil and inhumane, where are these people supposed to go?!
Outraged students in the northern city of Al-Hoceim stage new protests, as the government promises a swift probe.
Fishmonger’s gruesome death sparks protests in Morocco – News from Al Jazeera
hmmm
Lebanon’s parliament elects Michel Aoun as president, ending a 29-month political stand-off.
Lebanon: Michel Aoun elected president, ending two-year stalemate – BBC News
hmmm
People who wanted to find new lives. Instead they lie like cocooned caterpillars, desperately hoping to wake up to a different world. Others sit on the rubbish-strewn pavement, hunched in blankets. They too are rubbish, or so it would seem, according to widespread attitudes that have in recent weeks seen calls for children to undergo dental inspections to determine their age.
…Give me words to make this picture real. …But this is an age of unparalleled harshness. Pictures of suffering pass us by. We narrow our eyes and close our souls.
…There’s no bed to go to and no destination in sight. A camp that provided some kind of desperate community is being demolished. The people here are falling into a gap in the modern world. They look like they are bound for a homeless future. These are the people we have decided we have no space for, no interest in and no compassion towards. This is the result – people mingling with discarded plastic bottles in the streets of abandonment. For human beings don’t disappear, unless you actually kill them. They stand around, slump in blankets, lie wrapped up and trying to dream of somewhere better. Here they are – the unwanted.
…If history has taught us one thing it is that fear of the other is always irrational. There is no case in history when a wave of hatred was justified or grounded in fact. Yet such waves of fear and loathing can be so forceful and widespread that they appear completely sane to those affected, and are hard to resist.
There was no rational basis for the antisemitism that made Rothko’s family flee Russia. Labour MPs who think the left needs to accept the current anti-migrant mood are utterly wrong because such moods can and do thrive independently of fact. Here’s the question: should liberals and socialists in the 1930s have recognised there were legitimate reasons for popular antisemitism?
So look, and weep. Not for them. For us.
Jeezus…
Concern grows over the fate of unaccompanied minors left in the Calais “Jungle” camp overnight.
Calais ‘Jungle’ children with nowhere to sleep – BBC News
What the hell is wrong with people? Where are their souls? Their humanity?
[Episcopal News Service – New Brunswick, New Jersey] The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council asked Oct. 22 that law-enforcement officials “de-escalate military and police provocation in and near the campsites of peaceful protest and witness of the Dakota Access Pipeline project.”
…The Rev. John Floberg, council member and supervising priest of the Episcopal churches on the North Dakota side of Standing Rock, told the council’s Joint Standing Committee on Advocacy and Networking for Mission Oct. 21 that the way the protest has been conducted has been “the most powerful experience I have had in my 25 years on Standing Rock.” And, yet, he said, he has been shaken by the racist responses that the protest has generated elsewhere in the state.
… The resolution asks the Episcopal Church at all levels to prayerfully and financially support the planned winter encampment, which it says is the Sioux Nation’s “right for peaceful assembly and protest.”
On the closing day of the meeting, Floberg presented to the Archives of the Episcopal Church housed in Austin, Texas, the now-tattered Episcopal Church flag that flew over the Oceti Skowin Camp in North Dakota for months. The flag, he said, was the only Christian church flag among the 300 flags of tribal nations that flew over the peaceful-protest encampment.
…The Episcopal Church’s entry into the protest is rooted in its 2009 repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, Curry said. “Part of that action was to say we have got to find more just, equitable and fair ways of being in relationship with our brothers and sisters in the Native communities in our country,” the presiding bishop said.
Episcopal Church Executive Council stands with Standing Rock
hmmmm
I love being an Indian, truly I do. With the country’s powerful history, one of a kind culture, and to-die-for food, how could one simply not?
But behind India’s beautiful face, there is a growing disease that our society continually fails to recognize- colorism.
Colorism is a term coined by author Alice Walker, and is defined as a discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone among people of the same racial and/or ethnic group. Also know as, internalized racism.
I’m Indian, I’m dark, and I don’t care. – aswathithomas
hmmmm
Things had been getting worse for women in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, [emphasis: mine] the rise of sectarian strife and fundamentalist Islam. But in the summer of 2014 came the biggest blow when ISIS enforced its extreme ideology in northern Iraq.
…Tales of rape and other horrific abuses of women had spread across Nineveh; of the capture and enslavement of non-Muslim women from Yazidi and Christian communities, acts that ISIS claims are justified in the Quran.
…The prospect of a military victory over ISIS in Mosul offers glimmers of hope for a better future, but the women are unsure if life can ever be the same again.
Fleeing ISIS’ assault on girls and women – CNN.com
Arrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhh!
“From dog attacks, to local women being stripped naked and left that way in jail overnight, to arrests used as a tool for intimidation — these reports are very disturbing,” WDN President Donna P. Hall said. “The DOJ must act immediately to investigate local North Dakota police and hold them accountable for any abuses of power.”
Violence apparently escalating on both sides of Dakota Access protests – UPI.com
The fact that the Justice Department is not there already is a crime in itself.
Funerals have been held for those who died in the overnight assault of a police training college in Quetta that left at least 61 people dead and 170 others wounded.
Pakistan: LeJ behind police academy attack in Quetta – News from Al Jazeera
Sigh….
Special forces Maj. Gen. Haider Fadhil said the residents of Tob Zawa and other nearby villages were taken to a camp in the nearby Khazer region for their safety. The International Organization for Migration said at least 8,940 people had been displaced since the operation to retake Mosul began on Oct. 17.
Over 3,300 displaced Iraqis sought help from the government on the ninth day of its offensive to retake Mosul, the AFP news agency reported on Wednesday, which was the highest number of any day so far.
Iraqi forces evacuate 1000 civilians from Mosul front lines – CBS News
hmmm
There has been a spate of deadly attacks targeting Christians in the mainly Muslim region around Mandera.
Reports say that the 10-member theatre group was composed of university students who had travelled to the town to perform plays in local schools.
‘Al-Shabab attack’ on Kenyan town Mandera kills 12 – BBC News
Sigh…
Russia withdraws a request for warships to refuel in Spain, following concern among NATO allies.
Russian warships: Spain says refuelling request withdrawn – BBC News
hmmm
Spain was under pressure Wednesday from its allies to refuse permission for Russian warships headed for the Syrian coast to refuel at one of its ports.
Russia’s request to allow its ships to stop on Spanish territory “are under review” while Spain weighs input from its allies and Russian authorities, the foreign ministry said in an e-mail.
Spain under pressure to refuse refuel of Russian warships | News , World | THE DAILY STAR
hmmm
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