refugees

News & Comment
Remember The Bowling Green Massacre
February 3, 2017
charles i. letbetter - remember the bowling green massacre

 Don’t worry, it didn’t actually happen

 charles i. letbetter - remember the bowling green massacre

The Short Version

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway was defending the president’s travel ban to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Thursday evening when she referenced the Bowling Green Massacre as having been caused by two Iraqi refugees. The biggest problem with her statement?  There never has been a Bowling Green Massacre and the Internet was swift to respond.

Let’s Go To The Video

We wouldn’t want our ridicule to be taken out of context

https://youtu.be/aBC5Qv2HR7E

Run That By Me Again?

Bowling Green Massacre. As in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the sleepy little home of Fruit of the Loom underwear, the National Corvette Museum, and Bowling Green University. The year she cites is 2011.  She uses the word “massacre.”

If that’s leaving you scratching your head, it’s because no such thing ever happened. Even the folks in Bowling Green agree, nothing happened there in 2011. Nothing ever happens in Bowling Green. Conway, the mother of “alternative facts,” made the whole thing up.

Completely false.

No one is surprised, though. Apparently, this kind of misinformation is going to be a standard for this administration.

Where She Got Confused

What might have gotten mixed up in Ms. Conway’s addled brain is the fact that, in 2011, two Iraqi citizens who happened to be living in Bowling Green were arrested for attempting to send weapons and money to al-Qaeda for the purpose of killing US soldiers. That is confirmable and was widely reported at the time. The two were eventually sentenced.  MohanadShareef Hammadi was sentenced to life in federal prison and Waad Ramadan Alwan was sentenced to 31-40 years.

Ms. Conway’s information is still wrong, though. The Obama administration did not stop or ban Iraqi resettlement.  What actually happened, and this is confirmable in multiple federal records from the State Department and other agencies, is that thObama administration imposed more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees resulting in a slowdown in visa approvals. That was it. No ban.

There was a drop in refugee arrivals from Iraq in 2011. The numbers look like this:

  • 2010: 18,251
  • 2011: 6,339
  • 2012: 16,369

The rate of visa approval in 2011 was dramatically slowed under the new rules, creating a bottleneck of sorts in the system. However, there was NO BAN under the Obama administration during that time.

The Internet Responds

If there’s one thing the Internet is great at doing, it’s catching other people’s mistakes and holding them accountable. Twitter users were quick to step up to the plate and #BowlingGreenMassacre has been trending ever since. Here are some of our favorites:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, with all that nonsense behind us, let’s be clear that such an obvious attempt at gaslighting by a senior White House official is absolutely unforgivable. Ms. Conway didn’t just “misspeak.” The press didn’t “misinterpret her words.” No, she lied. She made up shit that never happened and tried to pass it off as fact.

And while we’re at it, can we call MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the carpet for letting get away with that ridiculous comment? C’mon, Chris, you knew damn good and well there was no Bowling Green Massacre, yet you just let it blow right past you as you went to the next question. Ya’ need to grow a pair if you’re going to interview anyone from this administration.

And that’s where we end this story. No one should be interviewing Ms. Conway and her “alternative facts” in the first place. She needs to be sidelined by the media and totally ignored. This story stands as a perfect example of why.

We don’t need four years of this nonsense.

Continue Reading

Current Issues  /  News & Comment
Resistance & Fallout
January 31, 2017
charles i. letbetter - resistance and fallout

The world begins to push back

 

charles i. letbetter - resistance and fallout

The Short Version

With the chaos and confusion caused by the ban on refugees, a number of people around the world are beginning to visibly and loudly push back against the ban and against the immigration policies of the 45th president’s administration. At the same time, the ban has also created a level of uncertainty caused global stock markets to decline.

A Little More Detail

By now, the chaos resulting from Friday’s presidential order banning the immigration of refugees as well as anyone traveling from seven predominantly Muslim countries is well known. We’ve all seen the pictures and the videos of protests that are ongoing at airports across the country. We’re angered by the firing of Sally Yates, the acting attorney general. But what is anyone doing about it?

A lot, actually. Let’s start with the Washington state attorney general, Bob Ferguson filing a lawsuit against the administration. “It’s my responsibility as attorney general to defend the rule of law, to uphold the Constitution on behalf of the people of this state. And that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

That lawsuit is likely to be enjoined by other state’s Attorneys General. This is a familiar move that was used frequently by Republican-dominated states during the Obama administration. It tends to be effective.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is providing cities in his state with the legislation templates they need in order to declare their cities as Sanctuary Cities in direct defiance of the President and the ban.

On Sunday, 17 Democratic attorneys general signed a letter vowing to “use all of the tools of our offices to fight this unconstitutional order.” One might think that all those would come from states where the president lost the electoral vote. That thinking would be wrong. The attorneys general from Iowa and Pennsylvania, which voted for the president, and Maine, where the vote was split, were among those signing the letter.

That level of resistance is important because states attorneys general tend to know the law at a rather detailed level that most of the rest of us don’t have. They can get down to the nitty-gritty of a matter and speak to legal documents in a legal way that actually has some impact.

They’re not the only ones pushing back hard, though. If the president thought he would have the support of the corporate community, he is wrong. CEOs who normally are quiet have been speaking up in defiance and condemning the ban. The following companies are among those who are actively taking steps to support their employees and speaking up in opposition:

  • Coca-Cola
  • Goldman Sachs
  • Apple
  • Microsoft
  • Google
  • Ford
  • GM
  • Lyft
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • Etsy
  • General Electric
  • Merk & Co.
  • Ikea
  • Starbucks

In some ways, the industrial sector’s push back may be stronger than that of the attorneys general because they can leverage their entire company’s workforce and capital should they decide to do so. While the means of resistance have, so far, been largely financial, such as Lyft donating to the American Civil Liberties Union or Starbucks hiring 10,000 refugees, should the ban continue to impact corporations in a negative manner, their response is likely to become stronger as well.

The ban isn’t doing good things for global markets, either. Not only did US markets close down yesterday in response to the ban, markets in India and Asia are both down this morning.

Oh, and did I mention that the ban received harsh condemnation from Britain’s members of Parliament yesterday, with several members taking to the floor to denounce the policy. Several are even going so far as proposing a state visit to the UK by the US president be canceled.

This is in addition to legal actions by the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center that were initiated yesterday.

Resistance against the ban is strong and the fallout looks to be severe. However, the administration is holding on to its out-of-touch views and illegal policies. This may well just be the beginning of a long battle.

Continue Reading

Fashion
Fashion’s Failure: Clothes Made By Slaves
February 2, 2016

The very flag of freedom that waves over our heads is formed from material cultivated by slaves, on soil moistened with their blood drawn from them by the whip of a republican taskmaster!—Elijah Parish Lovejoy

 

charles i. letbetter - fashion's falure: clothes made by slaves

Workers who are denied basic freedoms are responsible for as much as 97% of clothing sold in the US.

Update: H&M responded to our article this morning (3 February) by directing us toward a specific statement regarding the use of child labor in Turkey. The statement, in part, reads:  “In accordance with our policy on Syrian refugees in Turkey, we terminated this business relationship immediately.” The full statement from H&M, dated the same day we published this article, can be found here. While we applaud H&M’s rapid response to this issue, there remain multiple garment factories, especially in India and Asia, that exploit their workers and treat them very much as slaves. We are thankful that one company has acted positively, but the truth is that fast fashion chains fuel a problem so large that keeping track of violations is practically impossible.

 

You may want to hold on to your chair. This is going to be a bumpy and unpleasant ride that is far overdue. I’m going to be extremely blunt: if you purchase your clothes from H&M, Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Macy’s, or pretty much any other store in a mall, chances are your clothes were made by slaves. No, not slaves in the sense we think of coming from the American South in the 19th century, but rather immigrant workers around the world, some of whom are children, toiling for substandard wages in substandard conditions, without the most basic tenets of freedom such as the ability to come and go at will. These are the people who are making the clothes that make the nightmare of fast fashion possible. They are giving up their lives so that you can get a copy of a designer dress for $12. YOU are fueling the demand and they are the ones paying a most fatal price.

Pardon me if I seem a little over-dramatic here, but the rate of articles that have been published in the past three days regarding this subject have me sick to my stomach. We’ve known for some time there was a problem, and many of us believed that there were precautions in place to put an end to some of the worst conditions in places like Bangladesh, but that’s not happening. Any company that is claiming they regularly inspect their suppliers for human rights violations is either lying or, themselves, being lied to.

The Guardian has documented cases where Syrian refugees in Turkey, some as young as twelve years old, are working illegally in the garment industry there, with painfully low wages that cannot provide safe living conditions, and work conditions that are dangerous. There is little question that these people are essentially slaves. While the article focuses on clothes destined for European markets, be quite sure that some of those same suppliers are generating clothes for the American discount market as well.

Quartz magazine reported that some workers in Bangalore, India, working in shops that produce clothing for H&M, Tommy Hilfiger, The Gap, Zara, and many others, live in company-owned hostels where they are under strict guards that monitor their movement. Some women are only allowed out for two hours on Sunday to purchase food. The rest of the time their movement is limited to going between the factory and the hostel. Only slaves are treated so inhumanely.

The Guardian also found that, following the 2013 disaster at the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 garment workers, more than half of H&M’s suppliers there had yet to install basic fire safety measures. More than a third of top-rated suppliers have not removed sliding doors and collapsible gates. 13% had not even taken the steps to remove locks from doors so workers have a path of escape in the event of fires. These poor people are trapped. They are slaves making the clothes that we wear in the US and Europe.

What’s even more frightening is that the level of abuses may be worse than reported. Workers from human rights related NGOs often have difficulty getting a good look at working conditions and talking to factory employees. The Atlantic recently reported on a program called Laborlink that is specifically designed to help workers such as these report employer abuses, but many of the workers in Turkey and Bangladesh don’t have access to cell phones to use that system.

What can you do? Believe it or not, you have options. The strongest move you can make is with your wallet, by not shopping at stores that produce cheap, fast fashion. Stop and think for a moment. If you’re getting a new t-shirt for five dollars, common sense should tell you that garment was not made by someone who is being treated fairly and receiving a decent wage. Where you shop matters. Stop thinking that you need a new outfit for every tiny event that you attend. Pay more for properly-made clothes and buy less.

Another option is the growing makers movement happening across the US. Purchasing clothing crafted by local designers and artisans removes any doubt of who is making your clothes. Not only are you not putting your money into fashion’s slave trade, but you’re helping out the local economy as well. While I can’t speak directly for other cities, those local to Indianapolis can contact the very nice folks at Pattern Magazine for information on local makers.

There are political options as well, but time and space prohibit me from detailing those and, quite honestly, that’s a subject best reserved for some time after the election season. No one in politics is paying any attention at the moment.

It grinds at my gut to think that there’s any chance I might be wearing clothes made by slaves. We cannot allow this practice to continue. We have a voice. We have a choice. Use it.

Continue Reading

Music  /  PotD  /  Social Commentary
Primal Scream Friday
January 8, 2016
charles i. letbetter - primal scream friday

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.—George Orwell

charles i. letbetter - primal scream friday

Go ahead, just let it all out

Just to be very clear, we’re not talking this morning about Primal Scream the movie, nor Primal Scream the Scottish band. I will reference the album of the same name by the late trumpeter and bandleader Maynard Ferguson, but central to my premise this cold, wet, weary Friday morning is the psychotherapy method developed by Dr. Arthur Janov. Dr. Janov’s theory is that, from the very moment we are born, we begin repressing traumatic events in our lives, sealing them away from memory. Who remembers the actual birth experience, for example? None of us, of course. Neither do we experience the trauma of thinking that our parents have left us when actually they’ve only gone into the other room. Janov’s practice is to help us deal with those traumas, which he is sure is responsible for all our depression and anxiety, by bringing back those painful memories and then quite literally screaming at them.

I’m guessing Dr. Janov has trouble keeping neighbors.

While I’m not going to vouch for the efficacy of Dr. Janov’s methods, I do think it is valuable for us to occasionally list the things that are upsetting us, write them down perhaps, and then give them, collectively, a giant middle finger. With social media having become so prevalent in most our lives, we are now inundated with more information than ever, and a lot of that information is something less than positive. Our response tends to fall in the direction of two extremes: we either bitch and gripe about everything, constantly, trolling comments and insulting people we don’t know; or attempting to ignore everything in the hopes it will all go away. Neither of those approaches are exactly healthy.

So, what we’re going to do this morning is list the five things from this week that have pissed me off the most and then turn on the title track from Maynard Ferguson’s 1976 album and scream at them, letting the music provide a counter-weight to our bellowing. One big primal scream. Once we are done, we set those issues aside and try to not mess with them again. Feel free to join me. Create your own list. Let’s move into the weekend emotionally free of the frustrations that beset us. Ready? Here we go:

  • Gun reform. I fail to understand why anyone with a sound mind objects to background checks for deadly weapons and I certainly don’t see where anyone gets off claiming that such precautions somehow interfere with their right to keep and bear arms. Remember, the Constitution only gives that right in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia,” and part of being well-regulated almost certainly means taking steps to ensure that the wrong people aren’t getting their hands on guns. What’s even more infuriating is the degree to which the GOP has completely acquiesced to the National Rifle Association on the topic, despite the fact that the United States continues to have more handgun related deaths, by far, than any other industrialized nation in the world.  The argument is ridiculous to the point of insanity and really makes me want to scream.
  • Protests in Burns, Oregon. A week ago, a group of gun-toting cry babies led by the seriously delirious Ammon Bundy took over a federal wildlife refuge to protest something that didn’t deserve to be protested in the first place. This has to be one of the worst-planned sieges ever. While the group claims they are planning to occupy the little building just outside Burns for several years, they failed to bring enough food. By Monday, they were asking for people to send them snacks. That they’ve not been set upon by angry birders or scalped by native Paiute, who actually have a legitimate claim to their ancestral land, is actually disappointing.  Were these idiots not a bunch of white guys, they would have been on the receiving end of a massive military operation already. The government has cut off power and water to the facility and is waiting them out. Meanwhile, the world laughs.
  • The global economy. Uhm, hello? Haven’t we been here before? The fact that stock trading in China had to be halted twice  this week and is, once again today, taking another roller coaster ride sets off similar sell-offs in both the European and US markets that should have everyone worried. In fact, if you’re not at least a little bit scared you’re crazy. Super-investor George Soros says the situation resembles the 2008 crisis, and this time around we don’t have a Congress that’s willing to do anything about the situation. This could end up very, very bad for the entire world, and it could happen before Spring gets here.
  • Worsening immigration situation. There hasn’t been a worse time to be an immigrant since World War II. The influx of refugees across Europe continues to grow and as more arrive in the United States, where they should be welcome and where we have plenty of resources to help, our response continues to be about as wrong as possible. Compounding matters, there is yet another article in this morning’s New York Times regarding the plight of families fleeing escalating violence in Central America. I wonder if an uprising of native tribes would be sufficient to remind Americans that this entire country is founded upon immigration, taking in those who were not wanted nor welcome elsewhere. We need to get over our selfishness and put an end to this problem.
  • Earthquakes in Oklahoma. 70. That is how many earthquakes have hit the state of Oklahoma in the past week. Fortunately, none of them have been terribly large. The largest this week registered 4.8 on the Richter scale, which typically is enough to rattle windows and upset cattle in the area, but seldom causes any substantial damage. The problem is that these earthquakes appear to be the result of fracking across the state and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who is in line to be one of the worst governors in the country and certainly Oklahoma’s worst since David Hall in the 1970s, refuses to do anything to reign in the controversial activity pending further study. The unanswerable question is at what point these quakes stop being a nuisance and turn into something critical. We’ve seen the strength of the quakes grow from the 2.6 to 3.8 range to frequently over 4.0 in the past year. This week’s 4.8 quake comes frightening close to the point at which significant property damage begins to occur. Gov. Fallin needs to halt all fracking activity in the state immediately, but she’s far too stubborn and closed-minded to bother.

There’s my list. How’s yours? Once we get these out of our system, the deal is that we don’t keep revisiting them over and over. We let them go in one long, loud, guttural primal scream that comes up from out gut and frightens all animals into hiding. To prevent alarming the neighbors, I strongly suggest clicking the link below and turning up the volume on your computer or mobile device as loud as possible before you begin your primal scream. That way, people will just think you’re trying to sing along to a song that has no words and leave you alone the rest of the day.

Now, go and enjoy your weekend.

Continue Reading

PotD  /  Social Commentary
Getting By With A Little Help
November 17, 2015
charles i. letbetter - getting by with a little help

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.—Barack Obama

charles i. letbetter - getting by with a little help

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]The cane sits close to my desk, just in case I need the help. I hate the damn thing. I hate the sight of it, and even more the fact that I should probably use it more than I do. Rain will force me to use it today, I already know. Tomorrow may be another such day as well. With winter beginning to set in, the days when I need the help are going to begin outnumbering the days I don’t. I am somewhat pissed off by the knowledge there are 80-year-old men out running marathons while I can’t get down the hall to the bathroom without assistance.

I never have liked asking for help. Somewhere in my head, for some reason, me asking for help is a sign of weakness. I don’t mind others asking for help when they need it, though I am slightly annoyed when a certain five-year-old asks for help tying her shoes when she’s yet to try for herself. I don’t want to ask anyone for help and I don’t like so often being in a position of needing help that, at times, it feels as though I can’t do anything without some form of assistance. Losing any bit of my independence strikes deep at my soul, leads to depression and questioning my own value in the world. I have quite possibly thrown my cane across the floor in frustration.

Yet, here I am again this morning, needing to lean on something, or someone. I woke up this morning barely able to move. Independence is a myth. I’ve become reliant on Kat and some days when she has to be gone for prolonged periods I often limit my own activities for fear that, should something happen, there’s no one here to help (the cats are absolutely no help at all). When I go for a walk, I have to make sure my phone is well charged in case I should fall, become lost or confused, or need a ride home.

I never expected to have these limitations at this age and it angers me to no end that I can’t keep up with everyone else on the planet. Needing help, even from an inanimate object totally under my control, is emotionally deflating.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]I am one of the lucky ones. Despite my challenges, I have always known that someone has had my back; friends who have made sure I had something to eat, that drove me to doctors appointments, and kept a roof over my head. Not everyone is so fortunate. Nearly four million people in the United States will experience homelessness this year. Of those, almost 60 thousand of those are veterans; 1.3 million are children.  They’re just out there, on their own, struggling to exist.

The second stanza of the poem on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor reads:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

At this very moment, there are 10,000 Syrian refugees, and more from other war-torn countries, waiting at our shore, looking for help. Yet, because of the cowardly actions of a handful of Daesh morons, there are many of us wanting to hide behind a wall of fear and not let them in. We would rather let them starve or die of hypothermia than accept the risk that comes with being compassionate.

If America has become this country who is afraid too afraid of the shadow of terrorism to keep the refugees of that terrorism alive, then we have lost every last shred of our independence; our fear cripples us just as severely as arthritis in my back and legs. I have a cane on which I can lean, and friends ready to help. The millions homeless and those fleeing terror need help as well. The time has come to step up and be that help.[/one_half_last]

Continue Reading