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ellenrr

ellenrr's Journal
ellenrr's Journal
June 28, 2016

Awesome Texas Abortion Testimony Poetry: ‘If My Vagina Was a Gun’

Hundreds of women and men have testified at the Texas Capitol both for and against SB 1, which would restrict most abortions after 20 weeks and close all but five abortion clinics in the state. But only one woman performed an epic poem, entitled "If My Vagina Was a Gun."

Here's the transcript of the work of art, performed by Katie Helm:
(excerpt)
If my vagina was a gun, you would stand for its rights,

You would ride on buses and fight all the fights.

If my vagina was a gun, you would treat it with care,

You wouldn’t spill all its secrets because, well, why go there.

...
http://jezebel.com/awesome-texas-abortion-testimony-poetry-if-my-vagina-717474146

June 27, 2016

(ex-) Working-class Rust Belt could put trump in White house

--- and if they do, they'll wake up the next day and be like 'oh my god, what did I do?
Can we have another election?'

They make a "protest vote" against government, and against the conditions of their lives, which is true they are getting the shaft--

but people gotta realize a vote is forever, an election is forever.

(until the next one, if we survive that long.)

article:
"Uprising in the Rust Belt
They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House."


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/coal-country-democrats-donald-trump-2016-213988#ixzz4CmkXiMW2

June 27, 2016

Sanders Delegate: Climate Change and the Israeli Occupation Must be Raised at the Convention

"We're at the People's Summit in Chicago, and we're continuing our interview with Carlos Ramirez-Rosa. He's the alderman for Chicago's 35th Ward. Prior to his election to Chicago City Council, he worked as a community organizer. And he's also a Bernie delegate at the coming convention."


http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16615

June 26, 2016

Looks like Brexit could impact the Spanish election (negatively imo)

Britain’s decision to exit the European Union offered Spain’s acting prime minister an opportunity to warn voters against opting for a radical overhaul under Podemos, an upstart leftist party competing in elections on Sunday.

Mariano Rajoy, the acting prime minister, said on Friday that his government was sad to see Britain leave the European Union, and told Spaniards that they should confront the future with “serenity,” as the British referendum result sent Spain’s financial markets tumbling.


http://www.nytimes.com/live/eu-referendum/brexit-looms-large-over/
June 23, 2016

Pls inform this ignorant American (me)

(I just posted this on GD - did not know there was a UK group)
this is my question:

Why was there this referendum--
did some group bring it up, did the government, how did it come to be?
And why now?

Is it the first time there has been a referendum since Britain has been in the EU?

thanks.

June 23, 2016

Someone who is informed about Brexit pls help me out--

By the time you read this, the result may be in -
but what I want to know is why was there this referendum--
ie - did some group bring it up, did the government, how did it come to be?

Is it the first time there has been a referendum since Britain has been in the EU?

thanks.

June 17, 2016

FBI Told Orlando Shooter's Wife Not to Tell US Media He Was Gay

In an interview with Brazilian TV, the ex-wife of Omar Mateen claimed the U.S. agency told her to keep quiet about his homosexuality.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation told the former wife of the Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, Sitora Yusufiy, not to speak of his homosexuality or the fact that she, his family and others believed he was gay, Yusufiy’s current fiance, Marco Dias, told a Brazilian TV channel in an interview.

Dias told the Brazilian television station SBT Brazil Tuesday that Yusufiy believed Mateen was gay and that his father called him gay several times in front of her. However, “the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media.”

Since the attack, Mateen has been dubbed an “Islamic terrorist” by politicians, senior officials and commentators in the U.S. following reports he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

However, the idea that he could have been a closet-homosexual indicates that the Orlando shooting might have been a deeply felt and personal act of hate.

The FBI and law enforcement in the United States have so far been pursuing the “Islamist terrorism” angle and their alleged demand from Mateen’s ex-wife to keep mum about his homosexuality suggests they want to downplay the personal and self-hating nature of the attack in favor of the Islamic terrorism-related one.



http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/FBI-Told-Orlando-Shooters-Wife-Not-to-Tell-US-Media-He-Was-Gay-20160616-0002.html

June 17, 2016

donald trump and the orlando shooter - mirror images

both are batshit crazy, irrational and frightening.
both are bullies, into control,
both are racist, homophobic, misogynist.
One killed or injured 100 people, traumatized a community, a city and a nation.
One would do even worse.

June 17, 2016

Richard Armitage Becomes Highest Ranking Republican To Break Party Rank

Source: politico

Armitage served as assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, and deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He’s the highest ranking national security official to openly express opposition to Donald Trump as the GOP’s nominee.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn't appear to be a Republican. He doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton”


Read more: http://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2016/06/16/richard-armitage-becomes-highest-ranking-republican-break-party-rank/



this could get interesting...

it's kinda fun to watch Paul Ryan look sheepish when asked about drump's banning of newspapers.
June 15, 2016

How the racist, homophobic, violent, Far-Right Christian evangelizing culture of G4S

may have led Mateen to act as he did.

excerpts from article:

Mateen’s ideological evolution takes us well beyond the banal idea that this was "just another" IS-inspired atrocity.

before his G4S stint, Mateen was not a homophobe.

Ten years ago, according to a former high school friend Samuel King, Mateen “didn’t have an issue with the LGBT community”.

According to Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, Mateen became increasingly abusive after they were married in April 2009 – two years after he joined G4S: “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

The problem is that G4S’s approach to domestic security in the US homeland amounts to a hotbed of routine abuse, sexual violence, extremism and homophobia, tolerated at the highest levels of G4S’s management.

Last October, four G4S security officers filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the Florida-based firm for firing them when they complained about the extremist, homophobic bigotry of their senior G4S supervisor.

The lawsuit, which demands $3.5 million in damages, says that a G4S kiosk where the guards worked at a shopping centre was managed by “a devoutly Christian supervisor who told employees their gay family members were going to hell, played videos about the Illuminati and warned that the security kiosk could be attacked by demons,” according to a local Portland publication.

The supervisor would post Bible verses on the walls and hold daily "prayer circles" with two other guards as part of a campaign of “fervent evangelising”, according to the court filings.

The FBI had already interviewed Mateen in 2013 and 2014, and even placed him temporarily on a terror watch list, after he had told co-workers about his sympathies with militant or terrorist groups that the agency has not identified publicly.

So around this period, Mateen had suddenly begun to display an increased interest in a belligerent Islamist extremist ideology. By the time he met Gilroy, he had begun praying regularly, bringing his prayer mat to work. But even Gilroy observed that Mateen’s ritualistic religiosity was completely at odds with his behaviour – he would frequently rail against black people, display sexual interest in random women, and openly talk about wanting to kill people.

G4S has not yet provided any clarity as to why it failed to act on these repeated complaints which, at the very least, should have entailed an internal investigation into Mateen’s professional conduct.

It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion, though, that G4S superiors simply did not see Mateen’s sociopathic tendencies as a problem. In much the same way that G4S management decided to protect an extremist Christian homophobic supervisor in Portland, they preferred not to reign in Mateen’s openly homicidal extremism.

G4S’s routine protection of violent, racist tendencies among its security officers appears to be an institutionalised global problem for the government contractor.

Over the last decade, the firm has been beset by scandal after scandal due to allegations and findings of systematic tolerance of astonishing abuse.


Indeed, according to a report by the American Friends Services Committee: “In Florida there have been consistent reports of sexual abuse, use of excessive force, recurring riots, and numerous resulting lawsuits against the company.”

In Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, among other countries where G4S has security contracts, official complaints under OECD guidelines documented disturbing “testimonies of racial segregation and poverty wages” discriminating against black workers under the company's management.

G4S employees in Britain have been found to routinely engage in racist, misogynist and homophobic banter, and the firm’s child services systematically subjected children to physical abuse often resulting in “life-threatening harm”.

Despite repeatedly voicing to his G4S colleagues his desire to kill people, his sympathy for terrorists, along with racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views, G4S superiors opted to keep Mateen armed, dangerous and on the payroll.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-g4s-incubated-homophobic-hatred-orlando-s-isis-terrorist-451507222

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