I’m going to be away from this spot, “It Is What It Is“, for a few days. I won’t have full access to a PC or laptop.
I still have the capacity to keep an eye on what happens in the blogosphere while I’m away.
I’m not able to just disconnect, particularly with what is going on in our world at this time.
There are so many problems, issues, conflicts, injustices, bigotry, destruction, killing, wars ….. We need to stay informed and educated about “happenings“.
I will leave you today with a message.
As noted above, we won’t find peace until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, as Mr. Sweitzer noted.
‘Tis the season …
We are all in this together. Be kind to on another.
By Arianna Huffington
Earlier today, (December 7, 2015), the candidate currently leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” That was, of course, Donald Trump. As Jeffrey Goldberg just tweeted, “Donald Trump is now an actual threat to national security. He’s providing jihadists ammunition for their campaign to demonize the US.”
“IOTD” is image of the day, a concept I came up with. I teach visual meditative therapy – or in easy terms – a mini mental holiday. For some people it is very difficult for them to get their image right. I post an image a day for people to use in their mini mental vacay. Some are serious, some are silly, and some are just beautiful!”
We’ve been around the political block long enough to know that almost all presidential candidates exaggerate, dissemble, take statements out of context and, yes, lie.
But from the start of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (remember Mexican rapists?), he has taken this to a level we haven’t seen before in American politics.
Consider just these two examples from the weekend.
First, Trump said on Saturday in Alabama:
“I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering.”
In fact, as the New York Times writes, “No news reports exist of people cheering in the streets, and both police officials and the mayor of Jersey City have said that it did not happen. An Internet rumor about people cheering in the streets, which said it was in Paterson, not Jersey City, has been denied numerous times by city and police officials.” But when ABC pressed Trump on his statement, he stood his ground.
“It did happen. I saw it … It was on television. I saw it.”
Second, Trump retweeted a graphic claiming — falsely — that African Americans are responsible for the killing of most blacks and whites in America. “That is not true, the Washington Post notes. “According to data from the FBI, most whites are killed by whites, as most blacks are killed by blacks.
There’s an obvious reason for that: Most people are killed by someone they know.”
I do not get it. I simply don’t. It’s not even a matter of which political party anyone is affiliated with or which beliefs anyone holds. I grew up in Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States but never the less “US land”. I was brought up thinking how great the US was …. as a country, as a leader, as an example to the world.
I cannot believe what I’m seeing and hearing now.
Any human with decreased number of brain cells can get what this “person” is doing and saying. There are no limits to his “statements”, nothing is off limits. He’s raised the “idiocy bar” so high that the other presidential hopefuls have no other option but to go along or even come back with more asinine statements. If they don’t, they will be left in his dust.
It’s true … this man isn’t an embarassment of this country. He’s an indictment of it.
At least 81 transgender people were murdered worldwide this year — and those are just the victims whose deaths were reported.
BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM
NOVEMBER 20 2015
Today marks the 16th annual Transgender Day of Rememberance, after the first event was organized by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in Allston, Mass., to memorialize Rita Hester — a trans woman of color killed in 1998.
Every year since, growing numbers of trans people and advocates worldwide take a moment to pause and remember the countless lives lost around the globe to transphobic violence.
The somber occasion serves as a memorial event in which trans people and allies can mourn their dead, celebrate the lives they lived and as a popular hashtag in the wake of unabated anti-trans violence proclaims, #SayHerName.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Facebook Timeline
Google Images
Human Rights Campaign
The Advocate Magazine
~~GALLERY~~
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As the names listed in the graphics demonstrate, certain nations — the United States and Brazil — have particularly acute problems with fatal transphobic violence. The number of trans women killed this year in the U.S., for instance, is nearly double that of the total killed last year.
But it’s also worth noting that in many countries around the world, no formal system exists to report the deaths of trans people, and repressive societies combined with oppressive policing worldwide often give trans people good cause to be wary of law-enforcement officials.
So while we mourn those whose names are listed below, take a moment to memorialize those whose names we will never know — because they, too, had lives, and loves, and passions that were extinguished because of hate.
Antoine Leiris wrote although the terrorists had taken ‘an exceptional life’ they would ‘not have my hatred’ Rose Troup Buchanan
Thursday 19 November 2015
Paris terror attack
Husband pays touching tribute to ‘love of his life’ in defiant message to attackers
The husband of a woman killed in the Paris attacks has written a touching message to the “love of my life” and promised to raise their 17-month-old son “happy and free ”.
Antoine Leiris, whose wife Helene Muyal-Leiris was among the 89 killed in the Bataclan concert hall attack on Friday evening, posted an emotional message on Facebook.
Mr Leiris, who first met his 35-year-old wife 12 years ago, told the attackers he would “not grant you the gift of my hatred.”
In a post – shared more than 60,000 times by Tuesday morning – Mr. Leiris said in French he would raise their son Melvil “happy and free” and that responding to “hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are.”
Antoine Leiris lost his wife Helene in the Bataclan theatre in Paris.
His Facebook tribute to his wife and challenge to her killers has since been shared thousands of times. Mr Leiris read out the letter to BBC News in Paris.
Watch John Oliver Cast His Ballot for Voting Rights for U.S. Territories
ROCK THE VOTE … A TAD LATE BUT ALWAYS INFORMATIVE
To help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama, John Oliver focused his Last Week Tonight ire on a topic that does not tend to generate headlines: voting rights for the U.S. island territories — that is, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Marianas Islands.
According to Oliver, there are 4.1 million people living in Puerto Rico and the island territories. Of that population, 98.4% are racial or ethnic minorities, none of whom have the right to vote in U.S. elections. According to Oliver, the more you look into the reasons that the U.S. territories don’t have voting rights, the harder it is to understand why these dated laws have not been changed.
Way back in 1901, it was said that the island territories were inhabited by “alien races” that couldn’t “understand Anglo-Saxon principles” and thus were denied the vote. That hasn’t changed, despite the fact that even at the time, American legal thinkers thought that the territories’ lack of voting power should only last for a limited time.
Fast forward 114 years and the U.S. citizens living on these territories still can’t vote, which Oliver compares to failing to update your computer operating system for over a millennium.
~~GALLERY~~
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But Puerto Rico is lucky compared to some of the other U.S. territories.
American Samoans aren’t even automatically granted U.S. citizenship, which, according to Oliver, renders the “American” part as moot as the phrases “social media expert” or “People’s Choice Award nominee.” Instead, they’re considered U.S. nationals, but not citizens. Over on Guam, 27% of the island is occupied by U.S. Navy and Air Force bases, and a staggering high number of Guam citizens are veterans of the U.S. military, but they still have no voting rights. Despite that, Guam holds a straw poll every presidential election and has higher voter turn-out than any other U.S. state — you know, the ones whose votes actually count.
It’s a valuable civics lesson and an important reminder to ask — if you don’t mind cribbing a line from Oliver — how is this still a thing?
The US Supreme Court in the early 20th century ruled that these territories are inhabited by “alien races” that may not be able to understand Anglo-Saxon principles that guide American law. Although this decision wasn’t supposed to be permanent, governments as recent as the Obama administration have cited it to continue denying people in US territories equal rights.
“There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding what the precise status of all the US territories should be and what the people who live there would prefer,” Oliver said.
“But surely, when it comes to denying Americans the right to vote, we have to find a better reason than citing a 100-year-old legal decision written by a racist that was always supposed to be temporary.”
I am very much aware of this situation in Puerto Rico, my country. However, I must confess that I wasn’t aware that this was the case with the other territories. I didn’t even know which other countries in this world were “territories”.
This is something that I wasn’t taught about in school.
Since I read the best selling book “War Against All Puerto Ricans” by Nelson A. Denis, I’ve been looking at the past. I have learned facts that are making me question the “nature of the beast”.
AMERICAN BULLY
I’ve been wondering what the historical relationship between the United States, Guam, the Philippines and even Hawaii has been.
“America’s five unincorporated territories and commonwealths: Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands.”
From the “War Against All Puerto Ricans” book:
Don Pedro Albizu Campos expressed his amazement at how “owning a man makes you a scoundrel, yet owning a nation makes you a colonial benefactor.”
Dylann Roof, 21, has been identified as the suspect in the mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday, June 17. The FBI says Roof is from Lexington County, South Carolina.
The suspect reportedly told a survivor, “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.”
The Charleston Police Department describes Roof as a white male with a slender build. Roof was captured Thursday morning, June 18, in Shelby, North Carolina.
Has confessed to carrying out the shooting massacre that left nine people dead at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Native Americans are indigenous within the boundaries of the present-day United States (including the indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii) and are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, bands and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact, sovereign nations.
The terms Natives use to refer to themselves vary regionally and generationally, with many older Natives self-identifying as “Indians,” while younger Natives often identify as “Indigenous.” Which terms should be used by non-Natives has at times been controversial.
The term “Native American” has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but does not traditionally include Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup’ik, or Inuit peoples.
Native peoples from Canada are known as First Nations.
Black People Riot Over Injustice; White People Riot Over Pumpkins and Football
When ______ (fill in the name) was killed, there were riots. Those riots were no different from riots back in the day when black people got fed up with the injustice handed to them by the same people who were supposed to protect them.
When black people riot, it’s because of injustice—and that isn’t condoning the rioting that leaves black communities in shambles.
But let’s look at events in two white communities.
Yes, there were riots. No, they were not rioting about injustice. I’m quite sure that some of those who rioted don’t even care about the death of black men at the hands of police.
I read a post in my Facebook feed a few days ago. Something about a Powerball winner in Puerto Rico. This is something that I don’t really pay attention to. Lucky those who win. I don’t even play and don’t care too.
However, this graph came along yesterday and the Puerto Rican in me, once again, was bothered, quite bothered. However, it once again showed me that there is a sector in the American public who haS no clue about geography, social studies, politics or history. Those that dare spew foolish posts in the social media are only confirming the fact that some Americans haven’t left their neighborhood even past their street corner. I feel sorry for those Americans.
Well, if some don’t know anything about their own country, how can anyone expect them to know anything about a little island in the Caribbean which has been a possession of the USA since the Spanish-American war in 1898.
I know, that’s asking too much!!
~PUERTO RICO IS A US TERRITORY~
American currency
US postal system
American passport
Federal employees and military pay taxes to the US government
Call by dialing area code (787) and the phone number
1,150 miles from Florida … not the other side of the world
The US has “taken” plenty of “things” from Puerto Rico (google and research)
~~ANGRY WHITE PEOPLE SPEWING~~
Do we detect a tint of jealousy?
A Winning Powerball Ticket Came From Puerto Rico @PuertoRicoSerio @latinorebels @jayfonsecapr @pollomaldonado
Yes, we pay taxes, are Citizens since 1917, and we fight in the battle field and play the lotto too, so what?!
USA HISTORY 1:1 Oooops
Puerto Rico Powerball Win Draws Offensive Tweets
News that one of the three Powerball winning tickets was bought in Puerto Rico elicited offensive tweets questioning why island residents – who are born U.S. citizens since Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth – had the opportunity to buy tickets.
It’s completely outrageous someone from Puerto Rico won the powerball, thought this was America!
Colin Ryan (@CTJR7) February 12, 2015
As Latino Rebels first pointed out, the news brought out Twitter responses such as “I thought this was America!” and others with language too offensive to print, but including “How is the place that doesn’t even pay taxes eligible for powerball? “
So we all spent money to buy powerball tickets in America and someone in Puerto Rico won it …. what is wrong with that picture?
R Taff (@rtaffofficial) February 12, 2015
Puerto Ricans pay federal taxes including Social Security, payroll, import/export taxes and Medicare. While most Puerto Ricans who live year-round in the island do not have to pay federal personal income taxes, those with income sources from the U.S. as well as those working for the U.S. government or the military do pay them.
Puerto Rico in an American gold mine. The US controls Puerto Rican trade and commerce. The US government makes 74 billion dollars from Puerto Rican production and sends back 3 billion dollars a year. Really?!
Who’s the welfare state? But the mainstream media does not report the actual facts.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the United States had to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American. In his own words: “if any South American country misbehaves it should be spanked.” All US presidents that succeeded him have, in lesser or greater measure, continued to exercise their perceived right over a region often known as “America’s Backyard”.
After more than 400 years of Spanish colonial domination, in 1897 Puerto Rico was given the right to govern over its affairs. only five months later, Spain and the US went to war over the last Spanish colonies in the region. American Forces occupied Puerto Rico. The Treaty of Paris clearly established that all Puerto Rican affairs were to be decided by the United States Congress.
President Theodore Roosevelt recommended that Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens. Despite the overwhelming opposition from the Puerto Rican legislators, in March 1917 the US Congress decided that all Puerto Ricans were now US citizens; butonly to be ruled and not be given the rights.
Many Puerto Ricans were forced to fight in the America’s wars and many died.
Up to this day not much has changed, as that Treaty of Paris is still valid.
It Is What It Is 