text:
"Best Interests: How Child Welfare Serves as a Tool of White Supremacy"
This article was first published on November 27, 2019 by the Public Eye.
In the year since the Trump administration was ordered to stop family separations, 1,090 children have been separated from their families and detained.1 The detentions send a clear message: the administration will continue to remove children from their families as a threat to migrant families as well as non-White and Latinx communities living here in the United States.
Following the zero-tolerance immigration policy it adopted in April 2018, the administration has detained at least 12,000 children, including thousands separated from their parents by border officials.2 The barely-operational system of care the administration cobbled together to house those children relies on huge contracts with private child welfare agencies, including those with histories of coercive adoption practices, and with private defense contractors plagued by scandals.3-6 Though there's little oversight of either category, they're now charged with keeping children safe.7-8
Since their detention, these thousands of South- and Central-American Latinx and Indigenous children have faced poor health care, sexual abuse and assault, injury and death, and trauma that will likely last a lifetime, even for those who are reunited with their families—a likelihood that seems farther and farther away, as lawsuits and investigations reveal poor tracking mechanisms for separated children.9-13
The horrifying spectacle of mass detention, family separation, and the forced transfer of non-White children into White homes all recall important parts of U.S. history, from colonialism to expansionism and beyond, wherein racism and White supremacy guided policy for how the country treats families, parents, and children in need. Through the early 1800s, U.S. welfare policy on low-income children and children of color took the form of problem-solving; that is, that these children were a problem that had to be "solved" through removal, assimilation, or conversion.14 As formal child welfare policy came into being through the late 1800s and early 1900s, the form shifted subtly: while literal assimilation and conversion efforts continued through Indian boarding schools and adoption, child welfare advocates argued that children of color would benefit from proximity to White, middle- or upper-income homes, parented by a mother and father.15
The Explicit Racism of the 1800s and Early 1900s
There can be no discussion of U.S. child welfare without an acknowledgment of the destruction of families that began with colonialism and the slave trade. For hundreds of years, colonialists and their descendants relied on the labor of enslaved people, most kidnapped from West Africa, to exploit land stolen from Native Americans. Children born to enslaved people were often given away or sold, both as a way to threaten parents and to prevent strong familial bonds. Indigenous families were similarly broken up or killed as part of the country's westward expansion. The impact of family destruction through slavery and genocide is still felt today, along with subtler destructive forces that arose in the development of modern child welfare policy.
The impact of family destruction through slavery and genocide is still felt today, along with subtler destructive forces that arose in the development of modern child welfare policy.
Indian Boarding Schools
In 1819, the United States Congress passed the Indian Civilization Act in order "to instruct [Indigenous people] in the mode of agriculture suited to their situation; and for teaching their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic."16 The Act provided the impetus and initial funding for the boarding school program, through which hundreds of thousands of Indigenous youth and children were taken from their homes, sometimes with parental consent but often without, and housed in group homes with the express purpose of assimilating them into White society and culture. Amid the Indian Wars of the early- and mid-1800s, which decimated Native American populations and forced survivors onto reservations far from their ancestral lands, White Christian missionaries founded schools to educate and convert Indigenous youth to Christianity.17
In 1868, as American expansionism continued into the Midwest, President Ulysses Grant passed a "Peace Policy," ostensibly to reform the corrupt BIA, but also to create a formal federal mandate to fund and expand these schools, working closely with churches on and near the new reservations.18 The reservations were parceled out to the various Protestant denominations participating in the program, leading overlooked Catholic missionaries to complain to the BIA that, "The Indians have a right, under the Constitution…to choose whatever Christian belief they wish, without interference from the Government."19-20 (Emphasis added.)
In 1892, Captain Richard Pratt, founder of the first off-reservation boarding school, gave an impassioned speech about the system, declaring "all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."21 Pratt, a veteran of the Indian Wars, was not speaking entirely metaphorically. Over its 39-year tenure, nearly 200 children were buried at his Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, where, according to the Carlisle Indian School Project, "Pratt instituted a system of forced 'Americanization,' abandonment of Native languages, required conversion to Christianity, and harsh military discipline."22-23 Pratt's assimilationist philosophy was widely adopted, and over the next 100 years, the federal government and religious missionaries operated hundreds of schools for Indigenous youth.
The boarding schools were a failure and a national disgrace, predicated upon wide-scale forced removal—effectively, the state-sponsored abduction of thousands of children from their homes.24 In 1928, an independent study published by the Institute for Government Research, the Meriam Report, declared, "The survey staff finds itself obliged to say frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate," and that "Nearly every boarding school visited furnished disquieting illustrations of failure to understand the underlying principles of human behavior."25
The boarding schools were a failure and a national disgrace, predicated upon wide-scale forced removal—effectively, the state-sponsored abduction of thousands of children from their homes.
Despite the findings of the report, the system continued in full operation for another 50 years after the Meriam Report, exposing students to extreme discipline; verbal, physical, and sexual abuse; and erasure of their names, heritage, and language.26 In 1969, a second study resulted in the "Kennedy Report," which declared the schools a "national tragedy."27 As Tsianina Lomawaima, head of the American Indian Studies program at the University of Arizona, told NPR in 2008, the intent of the schools was to completely transform people—"Language, religion, family structure, economics, the way you make a living, the way you express emotion, everything."28
In all, the federal government opened more than 90 schools, and there were far more missionary-operated schools, housing tens of thousands of children.29-30 Although the number is impossible to know with certainty, it's estimated that the majority of Indigenous youth in the first half of the 20th Century attended boarding schools.31 A handful continue to operate today, though federal support has plummeted since the 1970s when federal legislation was passed outlawing the separation of Indigenous children from their families.32
At the height of the off-reservation boarding school era, in the mid-20th Century, the Children's Bureau and the Bureau of Indian Affairs jointly funded a project administered by the Child Welfare League of America to place Indigenous children and youth into mainly White homes across the country, with the twin goals of saving state and federal dollars by farming out child care to private families, and, as author Margaret Jacobs writes, "assimilating them once and for all."33
At the same time that President Grant's Peace Policy authorized an increase in the development of off-reservation boarding schools in the late 1800s, reconstructionists and abolitionists were struggling with how to care for the thousands of parentless and homeless free Black children in the wake of the Civil War. There were very few orphanages for Black children in the post-Civil War era—only three per state, according to Dr. Laura Briggs, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts.34 Some Black philanthropists founded orphanages, and many Black families adopted children who needed a home.35 Many other children found a place with extended family.36 But the Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress in 1865 to provide aid to freed slaves, discouraged grandparents' adopting their grandchildren or mothers deciding whom to raise their children with, citing specious concerns about abuse and exploitation.37 (Of course, many families were deliberately separated from one another during slavery, making reunification impossible.) The children in families of these and other non-father-mother configurations were, therefore, unable to access aid from the Freedmen's Bureau, contributing to poverty among Black families that persists today. And children who were barred from orphanages or extended or adoptive families could be rounded up into chain gangs, effectively re-enslaved by the plantations from which they'd just been freed.38
Orphan Trains
In 1853, Charles Loring Brace founded the Children's Aid Society of New York to assist the children of poor immigrants, largely low-income Catholics—a demographic Loring Brace called the "dangerous classes" of the city.39 Such immigrants were not yet viewed as White, compared to English-descended Protestants, who comprised the majority of New York's rich philanthropists.40
The Children's Aid Society (CAS) is often considered the genesis of modern foster care. Begun by establishing the first lodging houses for boys experiencing homelessness in the 1850s, the CAS went on to develop industrial and vocational schools for low-income children, schools for children with disabilities, nutritional programs for New York City youth, and, from 1853 to 1929, the orphan train program, which transported poor, immigrant children from crowded cities, out to the expanding frontier, and into the homes of people who'd answered newspaper ads and flyers.41 Here is Brace, talking about the Emigration Program of the Children's Aid Society:
The United States have the enormous advantage over all other countries, in the treatment of difficult questions of pauperism and reform, that they possess a practically unlimited area of arable land. The demand for labor on this land is beyond any present supply. Moreover, the cultivators of the soil are in America our most solid and intelligent class. From the nature of their circumstances, their laborers, or "help," must be members of their families, and share in their social tone. It is, accordingly, of the utmost importance to them to train up children who shall aid in their work, and be associates of their own children. A servant who is nothing but a servant, would be, with them, disagreeable and inconvenient. They like to educate their own "help."42
Brace described orphan trains as a way to lessen the demand for resources in New York City, while simultaneously giving homeless and poor children a better life and their new parents a chance to build a family.43 Unfortunately for the children, many were not orphans, and the families to which they were sent were often looking not for a new child so much as free or cheap labor.44 As demand on the city's resources increased after the Civil War, the orphan train system also increased, sending an estimated 100,000 children throughout the country in a diffuse network.45 As Nina Bernstein writes in The Lost Children of Wilder, "By 1893, even as Ohio continued to accept orphan-riders from New York City, orphanages in Ohio's bigger cities were sending hundreds of children a year on trains to Indiana. And Indiana was dispatching its own indigent children to Nebraska… even though one thousand of Nebraska's children were living in that state's industrial school and 'Home for the Friendless.'"46
The Establishment of Federal Child Welfare
Aid to Dependent Children
In the midst of the Great Depression, Congress passed the Social Security Act (SSA) in 1935.47 The SSA formalized many of the entitlement programs that we've come to think of as the social safety net: old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, grants to states to provide medical care, and Aid to Dependent Children (ADC).48 The last was designed as a substitute for a father's income, authorizing grants to "suitable homes," which effectively limited the benefit to mothers with children whose husband had died or left, not those who had never married.49 The Act also developed the Children's Bureau, which oversaw maternal and child health, services for disabled children, and child welfare, including foster care.50
In practice, ADC was largely inaccessible to families of color, administered from its outset with racial bias. As Professor Joanne Goodwin found, in her 1995 paper "'Employable Mothers' and 'Suitable Work,'"51-52 African American women in the South were usually considered "more employable," and thus, paradoxically, less likely to be able to access benefits. Goodwin notes that an independent study into the underrepresentation of African American women on welfare in Southern states found that many local administrators "[saw] no reason why the employable Negro mother should not continue her usually sketchy seasonal labor or indefinite domestic service rather than receive a public assistance grant."53
In practice, Aid to Dependent Children was largely inaccessible to families of color, administered from its outset with racial bias.
In 1960, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Arthur Flemming ruled against a Louisiana state policy that blocked ADC benefits to children born out of wedlock, declaring that a state can't deny benefits based on the "suitability" of a child's home. Instead, he said, states must either provide appropriate care to make the home suitable or move the child to a suitable home. This marked a major change of policy, and the so-called Flemming Rule, along with the Children's Bureau's foster program, began the modern practice of family separation and foster care.54 Rather than focusing on providing resources to make the homes of lower-income people of color more "suitable" for raising their own children, states wielded the Flemming Rule as justification to remove children from the families under the guise of "child welfare."
As Professor Eileen Boris, a feminist studies professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, has written, White women played a major role in the creation of the "suitable homes" standard.55 Boris found that as the U.S. began to discuss and debate the creation of a more formalized welfare state during the early 1900s, White women were cast as experts on child-rearing and housekeeping.56 Although there was much political support for a "mother's pension" in the U.S., particularly among African Americans, pensions were tied to labor, rather than citizenship, excluding unpaid work at home or in parenting.57 This reliance on labor as the qualifier for public benefits was crucial to the growth (and eventual failure) of American welfare.
The Flemming Rule opened a new door in child welfare: the ability to remove children from parents deemed unfit. Newly sanctioned and regulated state foster systems allowed states and the federal government to save money by putting children in private homes and also to diffuse responsibility and accountability in a new way. While previous iterations of child welfare had relied on generous benefactors to facilitate placements (like the orphan trains) or housed children in large institutions (like boarding schools or orphanages), the modern foster-to-adopt system used social workers to assess individual homes, and place those children who were removed in more "suitable" foster homes. This transfer of responsibility allowed the individual racial and class biases of social workers and foster/adoptive families to infect the system, with predictable results that are still manifesting today.
Formalization of Foster Care
Throughout the second half of the 20th Century, federally-subsidized foster and adoption programs were formalized, largely through a series of amendments to the Social Security Act, including the Flemming Rule in the late 1960s. Under the new Foster Care component of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC-Foster Care), states received matching funds from the federal government for any children removed from "unsuitable" homes and placed into foster homes, incentivizing the removal of children over family preservation.58-59
In the late '60s, attorneys with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged Georgia's disproportionate distribution of benefits (by then renamed as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC), arguing that the state's "employable mother rule" intentionally cut Black families' benefits when agricultural work was available. The NAACP prevailed on several of their claims, helping overturn discriminatory AFDC practices, and enabling a 15 percent increase in Black enrollment in these programs by the end of the decade.60-61 But this belated availability of benefits to Black enrollees led directly to the racist narrative of "welfare mothers," feeding attacks on AFDC from the '70s onward, ultimately resulting in the closure of the program in 1996.62
Another amendment in 1967 made foster care mandatory in all states.63 In 1972, in Compos v. McKeithen, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Court of Louisiana struck down64 the last law in the United States banning interracial adoption.65 In reaction to the Compos case, and as foster care and family separation ramped up, it became obvious that Black and brown children were being removed at greater rates than White children, were able to access family reunification at lower rates than White children, and were often placed in White families more than in families that matched their own race or nationality. The National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) issued a statement calling for a ban on transracial adoption.66 Neoliberal child welfare advocates point to this declaration as exemplary of attitudes that keep Black children languishing in poverty and abuse.
The 1974 passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) required states to create and maintain child abuse reporting procedures and investigation systems, correlating to a further increase of child removals—increasingly of non-White children.67
Only six years later, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act because, while under CAPTA more children were being removed from homes due to alleged abuse and neglect, foster parents were reluctant to adopt children they were fostering because adoption would mean the end of federal (and state) subsidies they received for fostering.68-69 The 1980 legislation created Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, creating an adoption subsidy for states that yet again further incentivized removals over family preservation.
In 1994, Congress passed the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) to prohibit the delay or denial of adoption or foster care placements on the basis of race but affirmatively allowing the consideration of race when determining the appropriateness of a foster care or adoption placement. The passage of MEPA was framed as a way to protect Black children specifically, despite Black social workers' opposition to the bill.70-72 "If this act doesn't work," then-Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) said during debate over the bill, "I tell you as a private citizen, I will raise unshirted blank [sic]… Just because some social workers think that Black children should only be adopted by Black parents, I don't, and I'm a very happy man."73 "Denying adoption of Black children by White families," agreed then-Rep. Harris Fawell (R-IL) during the House debate, "effectively sentences these children to unnecessary years of going from one home to another without having a chance to emotionally bond with permanent adoptive parents. This is tragic and avoidable."74
In a 2007 report on how to reduce the disproportionate representation of African American children in foster care, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that MEPA had less effect than other policies, partially due to the erroneous belief of some child welfare workers that "the law prohibits or discourages same-race adoptions"—a misperception that had led some to avoid placing Black children with relatives or in Black adoptive homes.75-77 The GAO concluded that Congress should provide financial subsidies for legal guardianships, noting that African American children, in particular, would benefit from access to guardianships with known relatives.78
Adoption as Paternalism
As the system became more bureaucratic and diffuse, and as individual workers became overloaded with cases, racism continued to permeate.
In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed, giving states and agencies heavy financial incentives for placing children in adoptive homes. Professor Catherine Rymph, chair of the history department at the University of Missouri, wrote at the time that, "the pendulum had firmly swung away from family rehabilitation and reunification as paths to permanency."79 ASFA emphasized children's "safety" and "permanency," but did so at the expense of finding or creating that stability within a child's original family. Under ASFA, if a child spent a set number of months in foster care, a child welfare agency is required to shift their goal from reunification to adoption, beginning the process to terminate parental rights. Crucially, federal subsidies were offered for finalizing adoptions, but none for reunification.80-81 "Congress seemed to have given up on birth families," Rymph observed.82
Speaking on the House floor in 1997, former Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), summed up the arguments of ASFA proponents:
In the last decade child welfare has grown into an enormous bureaucratic system that is biased toward preserving the family at any cost. … This bill represents an important philosophical shift from the federal policy that makes every effort to reunite children with their biological families to one that defines when reasonable efforts shall not be made and determines when those children shall be placed in permanent loving adoptive homes. 83
Christine Gottlieb, co-director of the NYU Family Defense Clinic, points out that the United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows a parent's right to be terminated against that parent's wishes.84
The modern framework of serving the "best interest" of the child has even further distributed the governance of child welfare policy into the hands of individual states, agencies, and social workers, each of whom carry their own biases. That bias is evident in the data on children who interact with the child welfare system.
A modern example of the diffusion of child welfare leading to the proliferation of White supremacy can be found in the work of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). Nearly every state funds the CASA program, through which the state's family courts appoint an advocate for each child involved in the foster system. A CASA's goal is to represent the best interests of the child throughout the child welfare process. As Amy Mulzer and Tara Urs found in their analysis of CASAs across the country, that delegation of duty to the advocates often results in individual CASAs representing their own ideas of a child's best interest, instead of reflecting what a child may truly want, through the tumultuous process of deciding a permanency goal.85 The vast majority of CASAs are middle-class White women who volunteer for their positions.86 As Mulzer and Urs noted, "When that power—not just the power to determine a child's fate, but the power to even speak one's own opinion on the matter—is distributed away from poor families and children of color and given to a group of middle-class white volunteers, the racial bias in the system—the structural racism—is not just clearly visible, but is actually given a seat at the table in court for all to see."87
Mulzer and Urs found that CASAs spend, on average, less time on cases involving Black children than those involving White children.88 More importantly, simply having a CASA increases a child's chance that their parental rights will be terminated.89
State and local CASA associations across the country have responded to criticism with trainings on "cultural competence." According to a 2017 training manual and presentation, CASAs should "use the resources in your community," including "Community groups focusing on the cultural traditions and norms of specific cultural or language groups" and "Community groups providing health services to specific cultural or language groups."90
Social critic and author Dorothy Roberts, discussing the modern focus on cultural competence as a way to mitigate the impacts that racism and White supremacy have had on Black children in child welfare, reminds us that "cultural competence" is just another manifestation of the problems it is attempting to remedy.91 In her law review article, "The Community Dimension of State Child Protection," Roberts elaborates: "Social work scholars have noted that cultural sensitivity 'increases client receptiveness to intervention.'92 Whether this is a good thing depends on the nature of the intervention. This remedy might also convince caseworkers, administrators, and judges that they are acting fairly while the system they are administering continues to have negative consequences for the communities in which it is concentrated."93
Modern Child Welfare Trends
Evangelical Adoptions
In her book The Child Catchers, Kathryn Joyce closely tracks the boom in adoptions among evangelicals that occurred in the early 21st Century.94 Briefly, the coinciding of many political and social threads came together to provide U.S. evangelical Christians with the opportunity to step into the international adoption sphere: the interest of the Southern Baptist Convention to move beyond its explicitly racist past tied in nicely with evangelicals' desire to perform charitable acts and convert followers.95 Many evangelicals flocked around the Bible verse James 1.27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
International adoptions reached a height in 2004 when nearly 23,000 children were adopted to the U.S. from other countries.96 In 2010, multiple Baptist missionaries were arrested or charged with kidnapping upon being discovered taking children out of earthquake-torn Haiti without documentation, at a time when many evangelical (and non-evangelical) agencies were benefiting from expedited removal of Haitian children for adoption in the U.S.97-98 Some agencies' convictions were built on racist views of Haitian people and religion: one parachurch organization declared that Haiti was a country "dedicated to Satan in a contractual form."99 Another adoption agency leader said of the children he worked with, "We want our children to be adopted by Christian families because we want them to be God's servants."100
Neoliberal and Libertarian Advocacy
Regarding race and child welfare, neoliberals and libertarians have found themselves in the same ship, steaming towards "color-blind" placements with the goal of ensuring that children don't linger in foster homes while waiting for adoption.101-102 Elizabeth Bartholet, law professor and director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard University, is a leader in this field, writing frequently about the differential approach (current child-welfare speak for taking a multitude of factors into consideration when planning outcomes for children), the "Liberal Dilemma in Child Welfare Reform," and where "black children belong."103-105
In July 2018, Bartholet was the keynote speaker at a conference convened at the Cato Institute on "conflicts in adoption and child placement policy."106 During her address, Bartholet said that the central problem in child welfare policy is the philosophy that "children belong where they came from."107 Through her scholarship and her keynote at Cato, it is clear that Bartholet sees children in the child welfare program as parentless—as orphans who need homes as soon as possible, preferably homes where their outcomes would be better (by Bartholet's standards) than if they had remained in their country or family of origin.108
Re-Weaponization of Family Separation
The Trump Administration's acceptance of White nationalism and neoliberal support for strict immigration and drug policies have paved the way for a re-weaponization of family separation.109-110 The Muslim travel ban and the family separations at the U.S. Southern border are egregious examples of executive overreach, but the criminal justice system has long been used as a tool of White supremacy, emboldened by neoliberal support for mandatory minimums and prosecutorial discretion.
Twenty-first Century child welfare policy will be known for the weaponization of calls to Child Protective Services, for using foster care as a threat to low-income parents who lack access to safety nets and social services, and for state and federal policies that permit private child welfare organizations to discriminate against parents and children with impunity, while receiving state and federal funds.111-114 But these modern manifestations are merely the logical continuations of centuries of White Supremacist policymaking.
The policies of the last 300 years have led to this moment, in which asylum seekers are automatically deemed "unfit parents," and their children removed with the intention of placing them into more "suitable homes."
The policies of the last 300 years have led to this moment, in which asylum seekers are automatically deemed "unfit parents," and their children removed with the intention of placing them into more "suitable homes."115-116 Unsurprisingly, these children are being funneled into the foster system by evangelical-funded child-welfare agencies with ties to the greater anti-choice network and to the Trump Administration itself.117 These ties are not accidental. Just as child separations were used to terrorize enslaved African people, Indigenous people, low-income Catholic families, freed enslaved people, African Americans, and others, child welfare policy is now being weaponized to terrorize migrant families seeking safety in the United States. Once again, we see child welfare being used as a weapon of White supremacy.
[1] Miriam Jordan, "No More Family Separations, Except These 900," The New York Times, July 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/migrant-family-separations.html; "More than 5,400 children split at border, according to new count," NBC News, October 25, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791.
[2] Ginger Thompson, "Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After 'Zero Tolerance' Was Reversed," ProPublica, March 9, 2019, https://www.propublica.org/article/border-patrol-families-still-being-separated-at-border-after-zero-tolerance-immigration-policy-reversed; Grace Segers, "Feds Holding 12,800 Migrant Children in Detention Centers, Report Says," CBS News, September 13, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-holding-12800-migrant-children-in-detention-centers-report-says/; Aaron Hegarty, "Timeline: Immigrant Children Separated from Families at the Border," USA Today, July 25, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/27/immigrant-children-family-separation-border-timeline/734014002/.
[3] Jennifer Kang, "DHS Had No Database to Track Migrant Children Separated From Their Families," Slate, October 2, 2018, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/dhs-database-separated-children-zero-tolerance-policy-immigration.html.
[4] Zusha Elinson and Ian Lovett, "Ahead of Border Policy, Trump Administration Awarded Contracts to Help Run Facilities for Migrant Children," The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprofits-other-businesses-getting-millions-in-federal-contracts-to-care-for-migrant-children-1529596377.
[5] Regina Mahone, "Bethany Christian Services Is Fostering Migrant Kids. It Also Has a History of Coercive Adoptions," Rewire.News, July 18, 2018, https://rewire.news/article/2018/06/27/christian-group-fostering-migrant-kids-history-coercive-adoptions/; Amy Littlefield and Tina Vasquez, "Amid Chaos, Bethany Christian Services Raises Money Off Child Separations," Rewire.News, July 18, 2018, https://rewire.news/article/2018/07/06/amid-chaos-bethany-christian-services-raises-money-off-child-separations/.
[6] Spencer Ackerman and Betsy Woodruff, "Defense Contractors Cashing In On Immigrant Kids' Detention," The Daily Beast, June 14, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/defense-contractors-cashing-in-on-immigrant-kids-detention.
[7] Perla Trevizo, "Arizona Moves to Revoke Licenses from All Southwest Key Migrant-Children Shelters," Arizona Daily Star, September 20, 2018, https://tucson.com/news/local/arizona-moves-to-revoke-licenses-from-all-southwest-key-migrant/article_2fea6c10-bc77-11e8-83cb-17461825a3f8.html; Allie Morris, "Texas Has Found 150 Health Violations at Migrant Children Shelters," ExpressNews.com, June 8, 2018, https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/politics/article/Texas-has-found-150-health-violations-at-migrant-12979471.php.
[9] Infectious Diseases in Children, August 2018, "Migrant Children's Health Endangered by Family Separation at US Border," Healio, https://www.healio.com/pediatrics/practice-management/news/print/infectious-diseases-in-children/{049f2cc9-420e-4787-b3ff-97fe5af6dc6b}/migrant-childrens-health-endangered-by-family-separation-at-us-border; "Whistleblowers Warn Of Harmful Conditions For Children In Migrant Detention Centers," NPR, December 8, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/12/08/674327419/whistleblowers-warn-of-harmful-conditions-for-children-in-migrant-detention-cent.
[10] Matthew Haag, "Thousands of Immigrant Children Said They Were Sexually Abused in U.S. Detention Centers, Report Says," The New York Times, February 27, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sexual-abuse.html.
[11] Levin and Perconti, "Migrant Children Ignored and Abused While Detained" Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog, January 8, 2019, https://www.illinoisinjurylawyerblog.com/migrant-children-ignored-abused-while-detained/; John Burnett, "Lawsuits Allege 'Grave Harm' To Immigrant Children In Detention," NPR, January 24, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/24/688068932/lawsuits-allege-grave-harm-to-immigrant-children-in-detention; Elizabeth Cohen, "After Children Die in US Custody, Authorities Turn to Nation's Pediatricians for Guidance," CNN, December 29, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/health/migrant-child-deaths-pediatricians-call/index.html; Lindsay Schnell and Kevin McCoy, "DHS Chief Slams Immigration System in Wake of 2nd Migrant Child Death, Orders More Medical Exams of Kids in Custody," USA Today, December 27, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/26/guatemalan-boy-death-medical-checks-immigrant-children-custody/2413058002/.
[12] "Migrant Family Separations Could Mean Lasting Trauma for Kids," Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, July 2, 2018, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/migrant-family-separations-trauma-kids/; Maressa Brown, "Separated Migrant Children's Trauma Could Last a Lifetime," Parents, accessed September 27, 2019, https://www.parents.com/health/parents-news-now/separated-migrant-childrens-trauma-could-last-a-lifetime/; Kathi Valeii, "What Viral Reunification Videos Reveal About the Trauma of Separated Immigrant Children," Pacific Standard, August 28, 2018, https://psmag.com/social-justice/what-viral-reunification-videos-reveal-about-the-trauma-of-separated-immigrant-children.
[13] Jacob Soboroff and Dennis Romero, "Finding All Migrant Children Separated from Their Families May Be Impossible, Feds Say," NBCNews.com, February 4, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/finding-all-migrant-children-separated-their-families-may-be-impossible-n966266.
[14] Catherine E. Rymph, Raising Government Children: a History of Foster Care and the American Welfare State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
[15] Annette Ruth Appell, "Disposable Mothers, Deployable Children (Review Essay)," Michigan Journal of Race and the Law 9, no. 2 (2004): 421. https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol9/iss2/4/; Mary Annette Pember, "Death by Civilization," The Atlantic, March 8, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/.
[16] 2 U.S.C. 85, An Act making provision for the civilization of the Indian tribes adjoining the frontier settlements, (1819), https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/15th-congress/session-2/c15s2ch85.pdf.
[17] Carol L. Higham, "Christian Missions to American Indians," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, September 2016, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.323.
[18] U.S. National Library of Medicine, "1868: President Grant advances 'Peace Policy' with tribes," Native Voices: Timeline, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/342.html.
[19] Native American Rights Fund, "Legal Review," Volume 38, No. 2, 2013, https://www.narf.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nlr38-2.pdf.
[21] "Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892)," 46–59, Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, "The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites," Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian" 1880–1900, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, (1973), 260–271, accessed at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/.
[22] Kyle Swenson, "'Long Time Coming': Army Returns Remains of Arapaho Children Who Died at Assimilation School," The Washington Post, April 29, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/09/a-long-time-coming-army-returns-remains-of-arapaho-children-who-died-at-assimilation-school-in-1800s/.
[23] "The History," Carlisle Indian School Project, accessed September 27, 2019, http://www.carlisleindianschoolproject.com/history/.
[24] Colleen Zickler. "Profiting off Indigenous Children in South Dakota," Commodities, Conflict, and Cooperation, Fall '16 & Winter '17, https://sites.evergreen.edu/ccc/carebodies/profiting-on-indigenous-children-in-south-dakota/.
[25] Lewis Meriam, "The Problem of Indian Administration," Institute for Government Research, 1928, available through the National Indian Law Library at: https://narf.org/nill/resources/meriam.html.
[26] Charla Bear, "American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many," NPR, May 12, 2008, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865.
[29] "Navigating Record Group 75: BIA Schools," National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/bia-guide/schools.
[30] "US Indian Boarding School History," The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/.
[31] See, e.g., "US Indian Boarding School History," The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/; Andrea Smith, "Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools," Amnesty Magazine, 2003, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20060208092347/http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/soulwound.html; and The Brown School, "The Challenges and Limitations of Assimilation Indian Boarding Schools," The Brown Quarterly, 2001, http://brownvboard.org/sites/default/files/BQ_Vol4No3.pdf.
[32] Charla Bear, "American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many," NPR, May 12, 2008, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865; Alia Wong, "The Schools That Tried—But Failed—to Make Native Americans Obsolete," The Atlantic, March 5, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/failed-assimilati….
[33] Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World, University of Nebraska Press, 2014, 6.
[34] Laura Briggs, Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
[35] Troy Lee Kickler, "Black Children and Northern Missionaries, Freedmen's Bureau Agents, and Southern Whites in Reconstruction Tennessee, 1865-1869," doctoral dissertation, University of Tennessee–Knoxville, 2005, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=4098&context=utk_graddiss.
[38] Laura Briggs, Somebody's Children: the Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, 50.
[39] Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York And Twenty Years' Work Among Them, New York, Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1872, available online via the Gutenberg Project at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33431/pg33431-images.html.
[40] Nina Bernstein, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care, New York: Vintage Books, 2002, 198.
[41] "Guide to the Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children's Aid Society 1836-2006 (bulk 1853-1947): Historical Note," New-York Historical Society, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/childrensaidsociety/bioghist.html; "Guide to the Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children's Aid Society 1836-2006 (bulk 1853-1947): Container List
Series XI - Records of the Children's Emigration, Placing-Out, and Foster Home Programs, 1853-2006 1853-1939," New-York Historical Society, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/childrensaidsociety/dscaspace_ref11_8wt.html.
[43] Nina Bernstein, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care, New York: Vintage Books, 2002.
[45] "A Reunion Marks Memories of the Orphan Trains," The New York Times, September 3, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/03/us/a-reunion-marks-memories-of-the-orphan-trains.html,
[47] 49 Stat. 620, the Social Security Act of 1935 (1935), https://www.loc.gov/item/uscode1934-005042007/.
[51] Linda Gordon and Felice Batan, "The Legal History of the Aid to Dependent Children Program," Virginia Commonwealth Universities, 2011, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-to-dependent-children-the-legal-history/.
[52] J.L. Goodwin, "Employable Mothers and Suitable Work: A Re-Evaluation of Welfare and Wage-Earning for Women in the Twentieth-Century United States," Journal of Social History 29, no. 2 (January 1995): 253–74, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/29.2.253.
[54] C. Lawrence-Webb, C, "African American children in the modern child welfare system: A legacy of the Flemming Rule," Journal of Child Welfare, 1997 Jan-Feb; 76(1): 9-30, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8995778.
[55] Eileen Boris, "On the Importance of Naming: Gender, Race, and the Writing of Policy History," The Journal of Policy History, Vol. 17, November 1, 2005, 72, https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/919D1D6474DB71D29C94118542606135/S0898030600001251a.pdf/div-class-title-on-the-importance-of-naming-gender-race-and-the-writing-of-policy-history-div.pdf.
[58] Social Security Amendments of 1967, Public Law 90–248, Jan 2, 1968, available here: https://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/Downey%20PDFs/Social%20Security%20Amendments%20of%201967%20Vol%201.pdf. .
[60] Joanne L. Goodwin, "'Employable Mothers' and 'Suitable Work': A Re-Evaluation of Welfare and Wage-Earning for Women in the Twentieth-Century United States," Journal of Social History, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), 253, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3788540.
[61] Lucy Williams and Jean Hardisty, "The Right's Campaign Against Welfare," 1999, http://jeanhardisty.com/essay_therightscampaignagainstwelfare.html.
[63] Social Security Amendments of 1967, Public Law 90–248, Jan 2, 1968, available here: https://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/Downey%20PDFs/Social%20Security%20Amendments%20of%201967%20Vol%201.pdf.
[64] Compos v. McKeithen, 341 F. Supp. 264 (E.D. La. 1972), available at https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/341/264/1456882/.
[65] Louisiana Revised Statutes, Title 9, Section 422, https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title9/rs9-422/.
[66] National Association of Black Social Workers, "Position Statement on Trans-Racial Adoption," September 1972, available through the Adoption History Project at https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/archive/NabswTRA.htm.
[67] Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, Public Law 93-247, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-88/pdf/STATUTE-88-Pg4.pdf
[68] 94 Stat. 500, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/STATUTE-94/STATUTE-94-Pg500/content-detail.html.
[69] Catherine E. Rymph, Raising Government Children: a History of Foster Care and the American Welfare State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 182.
[70] Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, Public Law 103-382, https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1994/title42/chap67/subchapii/sec5115a/.
[71] Elizabeth Bartholet, "Adoption is About Family, Not Race," Chicago Tribune, November 5, 1993, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-11-05-9311050022-story.html.
[72] "Senate Session, October 5, 1995," C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?60684-1/senate-session&start=17175 at 04:46:27-04:52:14.
[73] "Senate Session, October 5, 1995," CSPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?60684-1/senate-session&start=17175 at 04:46:27-04:52:14
[74] Conference Report on H.R. 6, Improving America's Schools Act of 1994, H.R. 6, 103rd Congress, 2nd Sess., Congressional Record, September 30, 1994, 26913, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1994-pt19/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1994-pt19-3-1.pdf.
[75] "African American Children in Foster Care: Additional HHS Assistance Needed to Help States Reduce the Proportion in Care," United States Government Accountability Office, July 2007, https://www.gao.gov/assets/270/263615.pdf.
[80] Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Public Law 105-89, https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ89/PLAW-105publ89.pdf.
[83] "House Session, April 30, 1997," C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?80772-1/house-session#&start=7165 at 1:17:52.
[84] Interview with Christine Gottlieb, August 30, 2018.
[85] Amy Mulzer & Tara Urs, "However Kindly Intentioned: Structural Racism and Volunteer CASA Programs," CUNY Law Review, 23 (2016), https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol20/iss1/3.
[86] Amy Mulzer & Tara Urs, "However Kindly Intentioned: Structural Racism and Volunteer CASA Programs," CUNY Law Review, 23 (2016), https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol20/iss1/3., 43
[87] Amy Mulzer & Tara Urs, "However Kindly Intentioned: Structural Racism and Volunteer CASA Programs," CUNY Law Review, 23 (2016), https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol20/iss1/3., 25.
[89] Amy Mulzer & Tara Urs, "However Kindly Intentioned: Structural Racism and Volunteer CASA Programs," CUNY Law Review, 23 (2016), https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol20/iss1/3, 25.
[90] Training manual and power-point obtained by Political Research Associates.
[91] Dorothy Roberts, "The Community Dimension of State Child Protection," Hofstra Law Review, Vol. 34:23, 2005, https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/roberts1/workingpapers/34HofstraLRev23(2005).pdf.
[92] Roberts, Dorothy, "The Community Dimension of State Child Protection," Hofstra Law Review, Vol. 34:23, 2005, https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/roberts1/workingpapers/34HofstraLRev23(2005).pdf, citing Margaret S. Sherraden & Uma A. Segal, Multicultural Issues in Child Welfare, 18 CHILD &YOUTH SERVS. REV. 497, 502 (1996).
[93] Dorothy Roberts, "The Community Dimension of State Child Protection," Hofstra Law Review, Vol. 34:23, 2005, https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/roberts1/workingpapers/34HofstraLRev23(2005).pd, citing Margaret S. Sherraden & Uma A. Segal, Multicultural Issues in Child Welfare, 18 CHILD & YOUTH SERVS. REV. 497, 502 (1996).
[94] Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, New York, PublicAffairs, 2013.
[95] Interview with Kathryn Joyce, September 7, 2018.
[96] Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, New York, PublicAffairs, 2013, 215.
[97] Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, New York, PublicAffairs, 2013, 1-37.
[99] Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, New York, PublicAffairs, 2013, 9.
[100] Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, New York, PublicAffairs, 2013, 2013, 9.
[101] Samuel L. Perry. "Transracial Adoption, Neoliberalism, and Religion: A Test of Moderating Effects," Journal of Families Issues, I-26. 2014, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.913.5905&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
[102] Elizabeth Bartholet, "Where Do Black Children Belong? The Politics of Race Matching in Adoption," 139 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1163 (1991).
[103] Elizabeth Bartholet, "Differential Response: A Dangerous Experiment in Child Welfare," 42 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 573 (2015).
[104] Elizabeth Bartholet, "Thoughts on the Liberal Dilemma in Child Welfare Reform," 24 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 725 (2016).
[106] Cato Institute, "Solomon's Decree: Conflicts in Adoption and Child Placement Policy," Keynote Address: https://www.cato.org/events/solomons-decree-conflicts-adoption-child-pl….
[109] Adam Serwer, "The President's Pursuit of White Power," The Atlantic, January 13, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-embraces-white-supremacy/579745/; Naomi Braine, "Trumpism and the Unstable Ground of Whiteness," The Public Eye, May 15, 2017, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/05/15/trumpism-and-the-unstable-ground-of-whiteness/.
[110] Jeff Faux, "How US Foreign Policy Helped Create the Immigration Crisis," The Nation, October 18, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/how-us-foreign-policy-helped-create-the-immigration-crisis/; Gus Leinbach, "Neoliberal Economics and the War on Drugs," Witness for Peace, http://witnessforpeace.org/neoliberal-economics-and-the-war-on-drugs/.
[111] Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Weaponizing CPS: Shaun King says a troll called in a phony child services complaint on his family," Salon, August 3, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/08/03/weaponizing-cps-shaun-king-says-a-troll-called-in-a-phony-child-services-complaint-on-his-family/.
[112] Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, "Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of 'Jane Crow,'" The New York Times, July 21 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/nyregion/foster-care-nyc-jane-crow.html?_r=3&referer=.
[113] Selena Simmons-Duffin, "Trump Administration Plans to Roll Back Anti-Discrimination Rules Tied to HHS Funding," NPR, November 5, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776496146/trump-administration-plans-to-roll-back-anti-discrimination-rules-tied-to-hhs-fu; "Religious Exemptions Laws," Movement Advancement Project, http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/religious_exemption_laws/religious_exemption_services.
[114] Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Weaponizing CPS: Shaun King says a troll called in a phony child services complaint on his family," Salon, August 3, 2018, https://www.salon.com/2018/08/03/weaponizing-cps-shaun-king-says-a-troll-called-in-a-phony-child-services-complaint-on-his-family/; "Religious Exemptions Laws," Movement Advancement Project, http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/religious_exemption_laws/religious_exemption_services; Frank Bewkes, et al., "Welcoming All Families: Discrimination Against LGBTQ Foster and Adoptive Families Hurts Children," Center for American Progress, November 20, 2018, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/reports/2018/11/20/461199/welcoming-all-families/; Sarah Posner, "South Carolina Sought an Exemption to Allow a Foster-Care Agency to Discriminate Against Non-Christian," The Nation, June 15, 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/south-carolina-sought-exemption-allow….
[115] Julie Small, "Judge: Immigration Must Account For Thousands More Migrant Kids Split Up From Parents," NPR, March 9, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/03/09/701935587/judge-immigration-must-identify-thousands-more-migrant-kids-separated-from-paren.
[116] Laura Briggs, Somebody's Children: the Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, 121.
[117] Amy Littlefield and Tina Vasquez, "Bethany Christian Services Is Fostering Migrant Kids. It Also Has a History of Coercive Adoptions," ReWire.News, June 27, 2018, https://rewire.news/article/2018/06/27/christian-group-fostering-migrant-kids-history-coercive-adoptions/.


This year's East London edition of IAAE brought your businesswoman Judy Dlamini, the chairwoman of Mbekani Investment Holdings Limited and former Chairman of Aspen Pharmacare, a JSE-listed pharmaceutical manufacturer.
The medical doctor-turned-businesswoman shared her journey in business and encouraged emerging entrepreneurs to take charge of the business environment.
Judy Dlamini was also the recipient of the African Economy Builder Lifetime Achiever Award for 2016.


Bouquet: Aromatic white pepper, mulberry, vanilla and spicy notes.
Taste: Full-bodied, ripe plum and cherries, some savoury flavours complimented by spicy oak. The ripe red fruit and tannins provide sweet rich layers on the pallet.
about the harvest: Grapes were hand-picked at 24.2 to 24.7 Balling.
in the cellar : The older vineyard produces wine with loads of spice and white pepper and the younger contributes berry fruit and concentrated plum flavours. After destemming and crushing, it was fermented on the skins for 8 - 11 days. Juice was pumped over the skins every 6 hours to extract flavour, tannins and colour. The wine was left in contact with the skins for about 5 days after fermentation. The wine was transferred to barrels to complete malo-lactic fermentation, then racked and returned to French and American oak barrels for a period of 14 -16 months. The wine was then blended, filtered and bottled.


Full of fast, built to last Caution: X-Caliber will get you hooked. It packs all of Trek's XC race hardtail experience into a light, fast bike that pairs the right wheel size with each frame size. Nothing beats the efficiency, simplicity, and straight-up fun of an X-Cal hardtail in 29er or 27.5". Great for XC racing, or simply shredding singletrack.


And maybe the start of a new book, a kind of "autobiography" and "life-story" ???
Of course, reading the following mail is funny, cause it takes really long time that i "come to the point", but its worth reading on and i did not like to change the writing after it happened, did not like to cut anything, so just enjoy !!
and, another thing: the ONLY thing which i "wanted out of spirituality" was my wish: "whatever is AFTER death, i want THIS life to be my LAST life on this planet..."
SHE DID NOT COME !!!
i thought: "resignation, i go home sleep..."
and mostly: i did not FORCE anything !!!
and: we had some exercise with blind-folders (like a did often often before), with "hands touching", BUT: THIS TIME again this "electrical energy" came, this time not (only) in my hands, but TOTAL CONCENTRATED IN MY SPINE !!!
what happened with/in me next?
"their is no love in this world..."
imagine myselve, being "the one", an "enlightened being", giving "love & energy to everybody"
"HEY !!! i cannot think anymore !!!"
who is the "I" ???
first, i get "unidentified" with the body. the thinker has gone, now "I am", a body is their, i am not this body.
this all is ME !!!
this all is IN ME !!!
energy comes up again the spine. full electric.
i cannot do ANYTHING !!!
their is nobody their who enjoys it !!!
i am this bliss !!!
i am only bliss !!!
i am only energy !!!
i AM this energy !!!
"all my life i was running away from this energy, from my REAL SELVE !!!"
now: NO MAYA, NO LEELA, NO ILLUSION; EVEN NO NIRWANA !!!
btw: other experiences i had this time: "there was no life before my life and ALL what is told to me is not true and just stupid"
"there is nothing to know"
finally i felt, like their are "two I's" (this is the "real duality"...), and this "two I's" merged in me to ONE !!!
...to meet the "other half I" (now i like to say, the "one I" is just "split into two"...), and this other "half I" is "conciousness itselve", is "shiva", is "me what i thought i am before..."
out of this, i cannot go around and say people: "stop" !!!, to whom to say???
and he replied: "do YOU know something?"


text:
Wilbrecht, Alexander
Wilbrecht, Alexander Mikhailovich
(November 23, 1757 - December 2, 1823)
Wilbrecht, Alexander Mikhailovich - a mathematician, geographer, cartographer, astronomer, was born on November 23, 1757 in St. Petersburg. The family was well-off, and the young man received a good education - he graduated from the school at the Academy of Arts and the Land Arms Noble Corps. He began his career as a map compiler at the Geographical Department of the Academy of Sciences, then in the Geographical Department of the Cabinet, the Military Topographic Depot (VTD), and the Geographical Expedition of the Ministry of Education.
However, the prominence to Wilbrecht was brought by his outstanding activity in compiling general geographic maps and atlases of the Russian Empire, at that time being the most complete and comprehensive - the real achievement of the national cartography of the 18th century.
Since 1785, he headed the Higher School of Mathematics in the Mining School, and also became the chief geographer of the Geographical Department of the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty. Dozens of maps were made by Wilbrecht, and at the beginning of the 19th century he became the main co-author of the "Detailed map of the Russian Empire and nearby foreign possessions" (1: 840 thousand, the first 100 sheets were published in 1801-1804) - a truly fundamental work.
Most significant is his participation in the creation of the national atlas of Russia, of which 45 maps were signed: " composed by Wilbrecht " (1st edition in 1792, from 1793 to 1805 - reprinted 10 times, the number of maps gradually increased to 52). The edition of 1800 under the title "The Russian atlas consisting of forty-three maps and dividing the Empire in forty-one gubernia " is a masterpiece of Russian cartography.
Later, Wilbrecht, who received a degree of a professor, was a corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and in recent years served as director of the Military Topographic Depot.
He died on December 2, 1823 in St. Petersburg.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Review: After the King
December 4, 2013 December 4, 2013 / Clare
After the King edited by Martin H. Greenberg
No figure looms larger in fantasy than J. R. R. Tolkien. One hundred and twenty-one (or eleventy-eleven) years after his birth and fifty-nine years after the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings still functions as the baseline for the entire genre of high fantasy. (There's a very valid argument to be made that we need to move forward from that baseline, but that's another post for another time.) But a lot of Tolkien-inspired fantasy only mimics the most obvious trappings of the good Professor's legendarium. That's not necessarily a judgment on the quality of those works—Blizzard Entertainment used those trappings as a stepping stone to create their own interesting, engaging world for the Warcraft franchise, and Eragon… well, Eragon exists. It can go either way. But there's much more to Tolkien's world than dwarves and elves never getting along and an epic battle of good versus evil. There's the wistful, sorrowful tone that overtakes the novel as the Third Age ends; the influence of Tolkien's own life, especially his experiences in World War I; and an appreciation for the simple, good, and domestic life. (I've heard people grouse that my beloved Eowyn gives up being a warrior at the end of The Lord of the Rings, but they should remember that she decides what she needs is a garden. And who else gardens? Why, none other than the hero of the entire novel, Samwise Gamgee. From Tolkien, that's high praise.) Living in a post-Tolkien world, it's these elements that set his work apart from the genre it created. The best stories in After the King, a collection of short stories written in honor of Tolkien and published to celebrate his one-hundredth birthday, capture that quality. While I enjoyed Robert Silverberg's "A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple," where a faithless priest confronts the truth of his religion's creation myth, John Brunner's "In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells" was the first short story in the collection that did what it set out to do—to honor, not imitate, the grand master. It finds an aristocratic World War I veteran finding the strength to defy his aunt in order to reestablish a pagan custom in their village. It's not high fantasy by a long shot, as its lone speculative element is entirely implied. But there's something so utterly Shire-like about the village, there's shades of the recovering Frodo in its protagonist, and it boasts a spirited female lead. She's the kind of woman who drops philosophical bombs on her lover before determinedly going to sleep. But Brunner is the only one who reaches for World War I. Harry Turtledove goes straight to the source with "The Decoy Duck," a riff on religion inspired by Anglo-Saxon cultures, that, unfortunately, ends up clunky and awkward, while Peter S. Beagle specifically mimics Tolkien's conceit of translating historical documents with the lovely "The Naga," a supposed lost text of Pliny the Elder. Judith Tarr's "Death and the Lady" reimagines a much-desired and corrupting power as a pregnant fey woman who falls upon the mercy of a community ravaged by the Black Death. (She herself does not corrupt, just the idea of her being used as such; she decides to remove herself from the mortal realms once she realizes that "This is no world for the likes of me. It hates me, or fears me, or both together; it sees me as a thing, to use or to burn" [427].) While Yolen's introduction promises no imitations, Charles de Lint does reach for fanfiction. (Well, Bilbo makes an uncredited cameo in Dennis L. McKiernan's "The Halfling House," a wacky, disappointing, and very early nineties piece.) But, like all the best fanfiction, he goes hunting in the subtext rather than rehashing the beloved text, returning with a story about Tom Bombadil (unnamed, but you just don't see too many yellow shoes on anybody else). It's a lovely tribute to the power of stories—stories like The Lord of the Rings!—but de Lint does take a moment to grump about modern technology in it. He sees mass media as something that dulls the brain, rather than something that fans convert into meaning. I find that a bit funny, since Textual Poachers and After the King share a publication year. Of the rest, Emma Bull's "Silver or Gold," wherein a witch's apprentice sets out to save her mistress and her prince, is the best traditional fantasy story out of the lot, echoing Tolkien's style as well as some of his melancholy and cheek. The other witches, the apprentice notes marvelously, "haven't all gone tramping off like a pack of questing youngest sons" (272). But there are some stunning duds. According to the copyright page, all of these stories were expressly produced for this volume… and yet some authors turned in fairly generic fantasy stories or stories that have nothing to do with Tolkien at all. Mike Resnick's "Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies" is a helplessly dated piece of wacky business about a pack of Sugar Plum Fairies trying to fix their cutesy image who end up employed by Disney, and Gregory Benford's "Down the River Road," about a young man traveling down a river of time in order to extract vengeance on his father, reads so grimdark that I was just baffled by its inclusion. But such is ever the uneven nature of short story collections, so you have my permission (though you don't need it) to skip those two and focus on the good stuff.
Bottom line: All short story collections are uneven, and the duds in After the King are either generic fantasy or just bizarre. But the stories that manage to echo or capture Tolkien and the depths of his world are well worth reading, especially John Brunner's "In the Season of the Dressing of the Well." It's the highlight of the collection.
I rented this book from the public library.
3.5 Stars, Adults, Audience, Fantasy, Features, Fiction, Fiction, Genre, Historical Fiction, Medium, Reviews, Short Story Anthology, Speculative Fiction, Supernatural Fiction
andre norton, barry n. malzberg, charles de lint, dennis l. mckiernan, elizabeth ann scarborough, emma bull, gregory benford, harry turtledove, jane yolen, john brunner, judith tarr, karen anderson, karen haber, martin h. greenberg, mike resnick, patricia a. mckillip, peter s. beagle, poul and karen anderson, poul anderson, robert silverberg, stephen r. donaldson, terry pratchett, tor
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2 thoughts on "Review: After the King"
Harry Turtledove goes straight to the source with "The Decoy Duck," a riff on religion inspired by Anglo-Saxon cultures, that, unfortunately, ends up clunky and awkward
That last phrase encompasses all of Turtledove's books.
Ha! Nice one.


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Events, Game Music, Music Production
PAX South 2017 Performances & Music Panels
January 27, 2017 | Brenna Wilkes | Comment? Share this PAX South 2017 Performances & Music Panels
For those making the trek to San Antonio, Texas this weekend to attend PAX South 2017, and are interested in the video game music and audio side of things, here's a quick and handy list of both the musical performances playing at the event, as well as the VGM, music industry panels and any fun music-related panels to check out.
Concerts:
Friday Night (8pm – 11:30pm CST)
SuperMES
Urizen
Descendants of Erdrick
Saturday Night (8pm – 11:30pm CST)
The OneUps
Viking Guitar
Bit Brigade
The Gamer Feedback Presents: Name That Video Game Tune (8:30pm CST, Cactus Theater)
The Ocarina Panel with David Erick Ramos (10:00am CST – Bobcat Theater)
Nerdcore: The Future of Video Game Pop Music (12:30pm CST – Falcon Theater)
Game Panels & Tournaments
AudioShield (11:00am – 2:00pm CST, PC Tourny)
You can check out the entire PAX South schedule here. Hopefully you're able to check out one or all of these music and audio related events going on this year, and if you do let us know what you thought!
Chip Music, Featured
Original Sound Version Feature: WASD
October 19, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | 4 Comments Share this Original Sound Version Feature: WASD
Last month, Original Sound Version partnered up with the Dwelling of Duels game music competition and Impact Soundworks at MAGFest Labs to debut "Opposing Bloodlines"; a video game music competition specifically for established game music cover bands, be they instrumental, chiptune, acapella or otherwise. The competition was a success with one of the prizes for the winner being a feature on OSV!
The grand winner of the competition was a one-man band out of southern Maryland known as WASD. Who and what is WASD?
Doujin, Game Music
New Super Guitar Bros Album "Nice" Now Available
September 21, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | Comment? Share this New Super Guitar Bros Album "Nice" Now Available
The acoustic duo known around as the Super Guitar Bros. (aka. Sam Griffin & Steve Poissant) have at long last released their second full-length album as a follow up to their self-titled premier album in 2013. The new album, "Nice", features 17 tracks spanning several classic games such as Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, Castlevania III and of course several Super Mario titles. It also features some of the most interesting album art for a VGM release I've seen since entering the community, which can take as you may.
Nice. by Super Guitar Bros
The album is currently in digital format on Bandcamp at a "Pay What You Want" price, or as a physical CD for $10. The duo recently performed at San Francisco Comic-Con and PAX West 2016, and, you can also catch the Bros. streaming regularly on their Twitch channel for live practice, mini-performances and other shenanigans.
Events, Game Music
Miss MAGFest Labs? Catch the Concert Replays!
September 12, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this Miss MAGFest Labs? Catch the Concert Replays!
MAGFest Laboratories was this past weekend. (Full disclosure, I do know several of the bands that played and hosted the Opposing Bloodlines competition panel) Taking the place of MAGFest Classic from the two years prior, the event still retained the same amount of lower-key atmosphere and less of the grandiose of main MAGFest. The concerts, however, were still plentiful in both number and variety.
If you happened to be wary of the new branding of the mini-MAGFest event and missed out, you're in luck! The crew running MAG Labs were zippy as ever in making sure all of the concert performances were up on their Youtube channel in HD quality within hours of recording, so you can already watch the entire musical entertainment from the event.
Kudos to the MAG Labs music and media departments for their timeliness, and for making sure that those who missed the event can still get in on the awesome. (And that those who did and have any of the dreaded post-MAG depression can receive a nice emotional boost.)
Did you attend MAGFest Laboratories? What did you think of the performances? Let us know what you thought in the comments!
PAX West 2016 Concert Lineup & Music Panels
August 31, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | Comment? Share this PAX West 2016 Concert Lineup & Music Panels
PAX West 2016 is only a few days away, and you can expect a top-notch assortment of concerts and video game music panels this year! Here's a quick rundown of what you can expect to see if you're attending this year's event so you can be sure to "catch 'em all", so to speak.
Friday Night (8:30pm – 11:30pm PDT)
MC Frontalot
Video Game Pianist
Saturday Night (8:30 – 11:30pm PDT)
Super Guitar Bro.
Triforce Quartet
OC Remix: Video Game Music Community/Lovers of Greatness (11:00am PDT – Chicken Theater)
The Business of Geek Music (11:00am PDT – Hippogriff Theater)
Maestros of Video Game Music (10:00am PDT – Sphinx Theater)
Autograph Session – Maestros of Video Game Music (11:30am PDT – Autograph Area)
Amplitude Tournament (6:00pm PDT – Console Tourney)
Video Game Music Trivia (8:30pm PDT – Chipmunk Theater)
Majoring in VG Music: How to Put On a Game Music Concert (2:00pm PDT – Hippogriff Theater)
As you can see, there's a good amount of segments related to video game music, composers and the industry to check in on. You can check out more about the huge variety of panels at PAX West 2016 on their website, including the concerts and panel descriptions.
Attending PAX West 2016? Let us know what you're most excited for, and come back after to tell us what you thought!
Chip Music, Events
Know Your MAG 2016: I Fight Dragons
February 17, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | Comment? Share this Know Your MAG 2016: I Fight Dragons
For this edition of Know Your MAG, we're featuring the Chicago-based chip-pop-rock band known only as I Fight Dragons. The band, comprised currently of Brian Mazzaferri (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, Gameboy), Hari Rao (Bass), Packy Lundholm (lead guitar, harmony vocals) and Chad Van Dahm (Drums) combine chiptunes with their own rock/pop style to create their signature sound. (Also featuring past members Laura Green, Mike Mentzer, Dave Midell and Bill Prokopow throughout the band's tenure.)
Currently the band sports two full-length albums; 2011's KABOOM!, and 2014's The Near Future" which they self-released after raising over $100,000 on Kickstarter through their "Project Atma" project. They also boast two EPs; two EPs, 2009's Cool Is Just a Number and 2010's Welcome to the Breakdown.
I Fight Dragons also sports several pop culture notables, having their music featured in commercials for Big Brother and NCIS. As such, they have a following to match, and will be hitting the Potomac ballroom on Saturday the 20th at 10pm to blow the concert hall away at this year's MAGFest. (Perhaps as robots; we're not privy to that information)
Oh, and they are DEFINITELY NOT secret agent super-spies. DEFINITELY NOT. So don't ask.
Or at least, that's what they tell us.
I Fight Dragons – Website | Facebook | Twitter
Events, Featured, Game Music
V-Jams Christens MAGCabaret at MAGFest February 18th
January 9, 2016 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comment? Share this V-Jams Christens MAGCabaret at MAGFest February 18th
MAGProm, the one-night excuse to dress fancy and listen to classy video game music at MAGFest… is over. Ok, it's not really over but this year it's transformed into the MAGCabaret. Why a cabaret instead of a prom? Because the proceedings will star the super-jazz-fusion super-group, V-Jams, featuring members from The OneUps, Eight Bit Disaster, Rekcahdam and many more.
V-Jams by V-Jams
This is the same V-Jams I've been flipping out about since I found their stealth release last August. If you want an idea of the musical majesty they'll be performing, check out my previous post or just start playing any of the tracks embedded above, they're all great! Along with arrangements of these tracks V-Jams will debut brand new material and they've got some special surprise guests in store for those in attendance.
The cabaret will take place Thursday night, February 18th in the main concert hall at MAGFest. Formal attire isn't required but having fun with the dress code is encouraged. It's also encouraged that you grab your tickets as soon as possible because — Holy Toledo — MAGFest is just over a month away!
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Article Type All Features
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Feature: What can I do for you?
Have You Played… Final Fantasy X-2?
Katharine Castle • 6 months ago	• 71
I am not ashamed to admit that it was Final Fantasy X-2, not Final Fantasy X, that made me want to get a PlayStation 2. So fervent was my desire for this game that I even entered a text competition on the telly to try and win one. Needless to say, I was not successful. Still, it was just what I needed to push me…
Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Square Enix, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster.
Feature: Ranked in the correct order, finally
The Best of Final Fantasy
RPS • 3 years ago	• 107
A group of Final Fantasy fans divided against themselves cannot cast fire. Or so the saying goes. For too long we've been at war about which is "the best". Sliding roman numerals around on a table until one of us gets upset and starts using bad language. Let's end this, here, today. Let's look at each other, earnestly, with open minds and opener hearts, and…
Tagged with Bestest Bests, square, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, Square Enix.
Feature: Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Have You Played… Final Fantasy X?
Brendan Caldwell • 4 years ago	• 72
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.It only took 15 years for the PlayStation 2 game to come to PC, causing thousands of people to turn their heads and say, "oh right yeah okay". The Final Fantasies have always been a bit daft, haven't they?
Tagged with feature, Have You Played, square, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Square Enix.
Feature: Confessions of a PC Fan
The RPG Scrollbars: Final Fantasy And Me
Richard Cobbett • 5 years ago	• 100
Since we've got a little bit of a gap in big RPG releases at the moment, I've spent the last couple of weeks playing catch-up. A couple of games I missed when they came out recently. One... quite a bit older. Final Fantasy IX was one of those games that slipped past me at the time, not because I wasn't aware of it, but because…
Tagged with feature, RPG, The RPG Scrollbars, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2.


UberBike will bring a car with a bike rack to you when you just can't pedal any farther.
Broken bike? Too tired to bike? Uber says give it a call.
Bicycle riders in Amsterdam now have a new way to get around the cycling-mad city when they just can't power themselves through a long ride home.
Announced today, UberBike lets Uber customers order a car with a bike rack to get both their bike and their tired legs across town. Customers can select the new option using the ride service's mobile app for an additional 4 euro (about $4.50, £3.10 or AU$6.20). Uber will tote only one bike per ride.
The service is available in Amsterdam "for the summer period," Uber said, adding that it is considering extending UberBike to other cities in the Netherlands.


"I used the qTOWER 2.2 Real-time PCR successfully to quantify specific bacterial species. The reason why I like this device is due to its intuitive qPCRsoft software. You can set up the template before and after the run. It is great feature because it saved me repeating an experiment once. I once made a mistake in setting up my template and was upset when I realized that. I thought that I have to repeat the experiment all over again. However, after playing around with the qPCRsoft, I figured out that I can in fact reprocess the data after the run. This functionality allowed me to successfully interpret my data without the need to repeat the whole experiment. It really saved me a lot of time which have been wasted. I highly recommend it."
Redefining excellence: The qTOWER³ product family sets new standards of flexibility and precision – for all real-time PCR applications.
The key features of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) are outstanding high-performance optics as well as excellent temperature uniformity over 96 or up to 384 samples: The qTOWER³ product family guarantees well-founded real-time results as it benefits from peerless temperature control precision in the sample block regardless of the number of samples used – the number of samples can range from 96 up to 384.
The patented high-performance optics guarantee the outstanding homogeneous excitation and illumination of all individual samples. The qTOWER³ product family achieves unique flexibility with its proven filter module equipment, which can be freely configured and expanded at any time, and enables up to six-fold multiplexing.
The qTOWER³ is available either as stand-alone device with integrated 10" tablet or as PC-based system. The software comes with a broad spectrum of optimized analysis algorithms including absolute and relative quantification, melt point analysis, delta-delta Ct method, PCR efficiency, allelic discrimination, endpoint and protein determination.
Enhance your throughput with the new standard for speed and precision in high-throughput qPCR.
The qTOWER3 84 includes all of the strengths of the qTOWER3 product family and transfers its precise performance to the 384 well high-throughput format.
qTOWER3 84 is your high-performance system for high throughput!


Ambrose Bierce (24. června 1842, Meigs County, Ohio - po 26. prosinci 1913, Mexiko) americký publicista a prozaik.
Beauty — the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Barometr je důmyslný přístroj, který nám ukazuje, jaké máme právě počasí.
Barometer — an ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Marriage — the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Beggar — one who has relied on the assistance of his friends.
Love — a temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Diplomacie — vlastenecké úsilí lhát za vlast.
Diplomacy — the patriotic art of lying for one's country.


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Posts Tagged 'Fascists'
The Black Bloc and Free Speech
Posted: August 20, 2017 in Anarchism, Civil Liberties, Livin' in the USA, Politics
Tags: Alt-right, Antifa, Black Bloc, Fascists, Free Speech, Nazis, Neo-Nazis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Spencer, White separatists, White supremacists
Over the last week, we've seen several violent clashes between Nazis and counterprotesters. (Nazis might call themselves "alt-right," "white separatists," etc. Rather than give any credence to such rebranding, we're calling them what they are: Nazis.)
It's necessary to resist these losers, these tools of the powers that be. Violent defense of self and others is perfectly justified to repel physical attack.
But physically attacking people who are merely exercising free speech, no matter how loathsome, is never justified.
Last night, I saw a video of antifa protesters physically attacking Nazi organizer Richard Spencer, who was standing before microphones answering reporters' questions. I was horrified on several counts:
Either you believe in free speech or you don't. The principle of free speech applies to even the most loathsome speech — especially to the most loathsome speech. Once you start making exceptions for speech you really hate, it's a very slippery slope to banning speech that anyone really hates, in which case freedom of speech vanishes. ("Anyone" here applies to any individual, group, or organization with the physical power to intimidate or beat others into silence.)
Another antifa protestor provided exactly the justification you'd expect for the assault on free speech, labeling it "violent speech," saying that it was too "dangerous" to be allowed. (Speech is speech. Violence — physical attack on people or animals — is violence. These two wildly different things are not the same, and mere conflation of the two is not a convincing argument that they are.)
This is a broken record, the same rationale cited by every thug and bully since time immemorial who wants to deny others the right to free speech.
To bolster their position, one half expects antifas to begin citing the ancient half-witticism by authoritarian jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. concerning "yelling fire in a crowded theater." (Again, political speech is political speech; yelling fire isn't — short of transubstantiation, it's impossible to make the two identical.)
The antifa protestors physically attacking Spencer do not understand the most basic anarchist principle: The ends do not justify the means; rather, means determine ends. If you employ violent, authoritarian means, you'll achieve violent authoritarian ends. In this case, the attacking antifas abrogated to themselves the right to determine what others can say. This is straight up authoritarianism.
Beyond that, there's the simple matter of optics.
The video of the attack was shocking and repulsive. How in hell did those guilty of the assault expect people who witnessed the assault to react to it? "Good for you! A group of you beat up an unarmed man to prevent him from speaking! What a display of principles!"
As others have pointed out, such assaults give the moral high ground to the Nazis — the only moral high ground they can claim. Those who attacked Spencer achieved the near impossible: making a Nazi appear sympathetic.
In a related matter, I saw an interview with an antifa protestor blithely talking about deliberate property destruction during demonstrations. Yes, yes, yes, property is just property, vandalism and sabotage are not violence because they're directed against things, not people or animals. Agreed.
But again, don't they understand the optics?
When people see protesters smashing in the windows of, for instance, a Starbucks, it's a fair bet that a good majority of them won't say to themselves, "Another inspiring blow against global capitalism!" It seems more likely that they'll say, "Why the tantrum? Why don't they just grow up?"
An important matter here that no one seems to be talking about is that such property destruction is not a sign of strength; not a sign of good planning; not a sign of the organization necessary to the free, egalitarian reorganization of society.
Rather, wanton property destruction is a sign of weakness.
Real revolutionary change involves taking over existing structures (including physical structures) and transforming them, not wantonly trashing them — which is a sign that you're letting off steam because you have no idea of how to get from here to there, no idea of how to get from this authoritarian, racist, sexist, exploitative society to the the society that you say you want.
Again — and it shouldn't be necessary to say this — defending yourself and others from violent assault from fascists is completely justified.
But don't confuse that with suppressing free speech.
Please realize that the ends do not justify the means. Means determine ends.
Reasons for Political Optimism
Posted: November 22, 2016 in Livin' in the USA, Politics
Tags: Alt-right, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Fascists, George W. Bush, German-American Bund, Hillary Clinton, Ku Klux Klan, Mass surveillance, National Socialist Movement, Neo-Nazis, Occupy Wall Street, Republican Party, Whistle blowers
Amidst the weeping, wailing, and grinding of molars over Donald Trump's victory, there are some reasons for optimism. Yes, there's a lot to fear, and Trump and his extreme right cohorts will do a lot of damage–notably to the environment and reproductive rights–but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic:
Trump's election has energized the left more than anything since Occupy Wall Street in 2011. There are demonstrations and myriad organizing efforts all across the country, and they don't seem to be slowing down.
A Republican is inciting the left, and it's probable that this time the Democrats, locally and nationally, won't conspire with the FBI and corporate security firms to destroy a dissident movement — as they did in 2011/2012 when they were complicit in suppressing the Occupy movement. They'll try to co-opt the emerging movement, but they probably won't try to destroy it.
The corporate-lackey, identity-politics Democrats' quadrennial good cop / bad cop blackmailing of the public didn't work. They found the one candidate who could lose to Trump: a widely disliked corporatist synonymous with the status quo; they rigged the primary process to ensure her nomination, expecting that the Republican nominee would be so odious that they could cram their candidate down our throats. They were wrong. They're now trying to divert attention from their culpability by blaming voters, pointing to "racism" and "misogyny" as the reasons for the electoral disaster they engineered. But a lot of people are finally wising up to their extortion tactics and realizing that the corporate Democrats are not the friends of working people.
As a result of the corporatists' arrogance, bungling, and all-too-obvious ethical bankruptcy, there's a real chance that "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party" will seize control of that party. I don't think it's likely to happen, but for the first time in decades there's a real possibility that it will.
The Democrats might start opposing mass surveillance, erosion of civil liberties, and persecution of whistle blowers. Most of them abetted Obama in his assaults on whistle blowers and civil liberties, and his continuation of the mass surveillance begun under Bush. Now, they might show what passes for spine.
The alt-right is small and fractured. Current Klan membership is estimated at 5,000 to 8,ooo, and the largest neo-Nazi group in the country, the National Socialist Movement (NSM), has an estimated 400 members. In the 1920s, the Klan had at least 3,000,000 members and perhaps twice that. Taking population growth into account, that would equate to at least 9,000,000 members today. In the 1930s there was a plethora of openly fascist and pro-Nazi groups in the U.S. Just one of them, the German-American Bund, had at least 8,000 members, twenty times the membership of the NSM.
Alt-right members will continue to commit horrific hate crimes, but the alt-right is not a great national threat. Had the corporate Democrat won the presidential election, and predictably done next to nothing while public anger and hunger for change grew, it would have provided four more years for the alt-right to grow and metastasize.
We lived through eight years of Bush; we can live through four years of Trump.
The next stage: Will anti-Trump marches become a movement?
A massive anti-Trump protest broke out in New York City
FBI Trawls Two ISIS Patsies in Wisconsin
The ACLU Has Received a Record Number of Donations Since the Election


Children & teachers from St Peter's Church of England Primary School joined us as we hosted a sherry and mince pie afternoon for the residents of Hurst Green.
We were treated to a range of songs by the children.
Everyone really enjoyed listening to the children sing and we can't thank the headmaster, teachers and children enough for their support for both the church and the local community.
The teachers and children must have worked really hard teaching and learning all the songs and the organisation required in arranging for the children to attend such events is testimony to the schools commitment to the local community.
The singing was the highlight of the afternoon and brought both the message of Christmas and the teaching of Jesus that we should love each other as brothers and sisters regardless of who they are or where they live.
After the children returned to school everyone continued to enjoyed the festive spirit as they pulled the crackers and enjoyed the food and drink.
Though this is the first time we have organised such an event at Hurst Green Community Center we are hoping to arrange other events which encourage the community to come together to enjoy the companionship and to chat about what is going on in the village and their lives.


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Mom Wrongfully Accused of Abusing Her Son Who Suffers From Rare Skin Condition
His disorder makes the little boy look like he's been badly burned.
By Brie Schwartz
Little RJ Jackson is one of 70 people in the world who suffers from Netherton's Syndrome—an extreme case of the skin disease ichthyosis—which makes his body look like it's been badly scorched.
RJ's mom, Valerie has to keep him lathered in Vaseline so the four-year-old's fragile skin never gets too dry. Although to Valerie, RJ is a "bubbly" child with an infectious giggle, many outsiders make their own assumptions about her son.
Recently, she was applying moisturizer to RJ in a Wal-Mart in Las Vegas when she was swarmed by five armed police officers after someone reported her for child abuse.
Valerie, 35, said that she's frequently taunted by strangers.
"One woman came up to me and thought he was badly burned," she revealed. "She said sharply to me, 'Excuse me, your child has caught the sun."
"His skin is bright red and shiny because I put Vaseline all over him two to three times a day to keep his skin supple but he is still sore."
"It just shows the extent of people's ignorance," she told the Mirror.
Besides rude comments from adults, RJ is also sadly treated like an outcast by children.
"We were denied entry to an indoor playhouse because of his skin," she said.
RJ has had the condition since he was born.
"After an emergency caesarean, I knew something wasn't right," she said. "As RJ was lifted up and I saw him for the first time, I noticed an angry rash on his chest. He was rushed to intensive care where the rash seemed to spread before our eyes, his skin becoming even redder and cracking."
She initially thought the incubator light was to blame for his "burn."
"But it wasn't," she said. "No one had any idea what was wrong with him. When doctors told me I could take him home two weeks later, I burst into tears. I didn't think he was well enough to leave the hospital. His skin was crusty and starting to fall off."
"Back home, as he cried and screamed, I felt helpless, wished there was something I could do."
Valerie thinks her son is the most beautiful little boy in the world, no matter what cruel trolls say.
Posted by The Mirror on Monday, April 27, 2015
"He'd scratch at his skin until it bled, so I put socks on his hands to stop him. We bathed him just twice a week because the hard water dried out his skin too much. Each time I'd sit with him in the bath and painstakingly remove all the dead skin."
Despite her clear devotion to her son, and many sleepless nights spent reapplying cream on her little boy in the wee hours, people are still critical of her.
"I'm happy to explain what Netherton's is, but most people jump to conclusions before I get the chance," she said. "His brother and sisters are great with him, always helping out and standing up for him."
"Right now, RJ is too young to know that people make nasty comments, but I hope as he grows, his condition will be better known."
But here's the bottom line. She says: "It doesn't matter how red his skin is, I think he is the most beautiful boy in the world."
[H/T The Mirror
Brie Schwartz Deputy Editor, Oprahmag.com As deputy editor, Brie oversees OprahMag.com's lifestyle content including beauty, style, health, and relationships.
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