Not What We Mean When We Say Foreign Service

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Annieli, at Daily Kos, writes:

Those who wonder why we should care about Khashoggi’s death should ask whether we want an autocratic thug to be directing US foreign policy? Why is America’s president covering up a brutal extra-territorial murder? All this whabboutery serves MBS. Is that what we want?

And this is an important question: All of President Trump’s equivocation and excuses serve foreign interests.Remember that Donald Trump still thinks he is doing business, and this is reflected in conservative language; among Republican excuses for the President’s behavior, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), often seen as a critic of the administration, mewled and rolled over:

A key consideration in the administration’s mind, according to Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), is the belief that the crown prince can salvage Kushner’s stalled peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians. “A lot of the Middle East peace plan is based upon their support. They feel like they have a lot of equity there,” Corker said.

(Dawsey, Hudson, and Gearan)

“Equity” is a curious word. Certes, the Trump family has invested tremendous “political capital”. There are a handful of Congressional Republicans willing to speak against President Trump, and the general criticism runs that tweeting disapproval is pretty much all they do compared to their voting records. And in this moment, Mr. Corker, the retiring U.S. Senator, is lending his voice in aid and comfort to presidential pandering on behalf of foreign interests. The Washington Post goes on to explain:

Trump allies acknowledged that the White House’s equivocations would probably result in growing calls from Congress for a more credible accounting of events from Saudi Arabia, but they doubted it would damage the president politically.

Equity. This is just an investment. And if Sen. Corker, a Republican, wishes to be seen in opposition to President Trump, “equity” is the wrong word. Consider an actual Trump ally, such as evangelical preacher Pat Robertson:

“We’ve got to cool the rhetoric,” Robertson said. “Calls for sanctions and calls for punitive actions against the Saudis is ill-advised … You’ve got a hundred billion dollars worth of arms sales—which is, you know, that’s one of those things—but more than that, we’ve got to have some Arab allies. We have to have it! We cannot alienate a biggest player in the Middle East who is a bulwark against Iran.”When Robertson’s co-host Wendy Griffith argued that we cannot have governments killing critical journalists with impunity, Robertson dismissed those concerns.”We’ve had so many people killed,” he responded. “We’ve had CIA people killed in Lebanon. People have been taken hostage over the years. I know it’s bad, but we’ve had all kinds of stuff, but you don’t blow up an international alliance over one person. I mean, I’m sorry.”

(Mantyla)

A Murder in New Hampshire

And then there is this, via Raw Story:

A white supremacist former gang leader was gunned down over the weekend outside a Chinese restaurant in New Hampshire.

Jesse Jarvis, who co-founded the Brotherhood of White Warriors around 2010 at the Northern New Hampshire Corrections Facility, was shot multiple times shortly after midnight Sunday in the parking lot of Imperial Buffet in Claremont, reported the Valley News.

The 36-year-old Jarvis, who was pronounced dead at the scene, and his family were regular customers at the restaurant and bar, but police have not identified any suspects in the fatal shooting.

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Image note: Jesse Jarvis (Detail of image via Facebook.)

Gettys, Travis. “White supremacist gang leader executed outside Chinese buffet in New Hampshire”. Raw Story. 14 May 2018.

A Note on Domestic Terrorism

#resist

So … yeah. Any questions on this one?

We might call these people “alt-right”, but they are the American hardline right wing, and they’ve been here the whole time. In recent decades, Republicans have pandered to them in hopes of cultivating a permanent conservative majority. What happened in Charlottesville is not an accident. Nor was the conservative effort to take it this far.

Many prominent Republicans have stepped forward to say what needs to be said in the vital minutes and hours following the terror attack, and then President Trump’s attempt to spread the blame. We need not ask where Republicans were before this happened: They were busy stirring supremacists against people of color, women, homosexuals, and non-Christians.

Heather Heyer died yesterday. May her family and friends find peace, and may she please find justice. We shall carry her name until then, and, you know how it goes, we probably won’t ever want to put it down.

And we need to recognize that she will not be the last.

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@MarkHerringVA. “The violence, chaos, and apparent loss of life in Charlottesville is not the fault of ‘many sides.’ It is racists and white supremacists.” Twitter. 12 August 2017.

Death and the Natural State

This is the setup: The state of Arkansas wishes to execute eight people over the course of ten days in four doubleheaders of death overseen by a prisons regime that has never executed anyone at all, using drugs the state has never used before and have shown grotesquely problematic in neighboring Oklahoma, are about to expire, and, according to the manufacturers, do not appear to have been acquired legitimately. Rachel Maddow offered a six and a half minute overview last week.

That would have been Thursday evening. Friday and Saturday saw the whole plan come apart, with one execution stayed at least temporarily, and then a temporary restraining order against one of the intended execution drugs, compelling a federal court to halt all eight executions. This is Arkansas, though; NBC News brings the latest:

Lawyers for the Arkansas attorney general’s office worked feverishly on Saturday in an attempt to dismantle road blocks in the way of a historic spate of executions temporarily halted by court rulings.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson had ordered the execution of eight men over 10 days because one of the state’s lethal injection drugs was set to expire at the end of the month, but a series of court rulings Friday and early Saturday put that schedule in jeopardy.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge made it clear the state was unwilling to concede.

The former Land of Opportunity, naturally, is very much distressed that the courts should meddle with its opportunity excuse for homicidal spectacle.

Murder Less Foul

“The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives.”

―Paul H. Jossey

Campaign finance attorney Paul H. Jossey confesses to a murder of sorts―

Greedy super PACs drained the movement with endless pleas for money to support “conservative” candidates—while instead using the money to enrich themselves. I should know. I worked for one of them.

―and while the Politico article from the lawyer who made a living fleecing tricornered tinfoils is a laborious but insightful read, the one thing nobody gets to do is pretend surprise.

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Image note: Infamy ― A Gadsden flag flies at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on Jan. 10, 2016. (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

Jossey, Paul H. “How We Killed the Tea Party”. Politico. 14 August 2016.

The Value of Prayer in the Twenty-First Century

It is a straightforward headline: “Politicians Can’t Pass Actual Laws to Stop Gun Violence, So They Tweet Prayerfully”. And HuffPo’s Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney deliver the goods.

All of which reminds the basic point: Prayer is something to do if you cannot or will not do anything more useful.

Our Sadness

It occurs to me that, while winter-season holiday shopping and promotions often start sometime during the summer, September has arrived and I haven’t done a thing for TDOR.

Neither, I am betting, have you. The list:

• Zella Ziona, 21, Montgomery County, Maryland, 15 October 2015.

• Kiesha Jenkins, 22, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 October 2015

• Tamara Dominiguez, 36, Kansas City, Missouri, 15 August 2015

• Elisha Walker, 20, Smithfield, North Carolina, 13 August 2015

• Kandis Capri, 35, Phoenix, Arizona, 11 August 2015

• Shade Schuler, 22, Dallas Texas, 29 July 2015

• Amber Monroe, 20, Detroit, Michigan, 8 August 2015

• K. C. Haggard, 66, Fresno, California, 23 July 2015

• India Clarke, 25, Tampa, Florida, 21 July 2015

• Ashton O’Hara, 25, Detroit, Michigan, 14 July 2015

• Jasmine Collins, 32, Kansas City, Missouri, 23 June 2015

• Keyshia Blige, 33, Aurora, Illinois, 7 March 2015

• Mercedes Williamson, 17, Rock Creek, Alabama, 30 May 2015

• London Chanel, 21, North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 18 May 2015

• Kristina Gomez Reinwald, 46, Miami, Florida, 16 February 2015

• Bri Golec, 22, Akron, Ohio, 13 February 2015

• Penny Proud, 21, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 February 2015

• Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, 36, San Francisco, California, 1 February 2015

• Yasmin Vash Payne, 33, Los Angeles, California, 31 January 2015

• Ty Underwood, 24, Tyler, Texas, 26 January 2015

• Lamia Beard, 30, Norfolk, Virginia, 17 January 2015

• Papi Edwards, 20, Louisville, Kentucky, 9 January 2015

These are the murders. We’re still counting the suicides.

Please say their names, every one of them.

And Heaven help us, let it stop here and now.

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Our thanks to Mitch Kellaway and Sunnivie Brydum at The Advocate; this is a harrowing list compiled from grim duty, and we really should be keeping our own tally. Meanwhile, at least someone has. Please … #SayHerName.

Kellaway, Mitch and Sunnivie Brydum. “These Are the U.S. Trans Women Killed in 2015”. The Advocate. 27 July 2015.

Something

It’s … something.

The St. Petersburg Police Department is launching a new transgender sensitivity training program.

The training comes two months after a Tampa transgender woman’s murder, and law enforcement’s handling of it, captured national attention.

After 25-year-old India Clarke’s body was found in a Tampa park July 21, law enforcement identified her by the name and gender she was born with even though she had identified as female for years. Backlash from across the country followed, surfacing a discussion about how law enforcement handle the identities of transgender people.

(Associated Press)

We can’t have our friends and neighbors back. But, at the very least, we can have this little shard of decency, that we might wish the true selves of those we leave behind some manner of dignity in rest.

And we’ll take it, because that’s all we have left.

Her name was India Clarke. Please say it. Please, say her name.

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Image note: India Clarke, murdered 21 July 2015, in Tampa, Florida. Ms. Clarke’s death is recorded as the tenth murder of a transgendered person in 2015. On 29 July 2015 the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff’s Office arrested a suspect, Keith Lamayne Gaillard, and charged him with First Degree Murder with a Firearm.

Associated Press. “St. Pete Officers to be Trained on Transgender Issues”. WTVJ. 7 September 2015.

Holden, Dominic. “Transgender Woman Of Color Killed In Tampa, Florida”. BuzzFeed. 22 July 2015.

A Reckoning, and Its Toll

Via Associated Press:

An ultra-Orthodox Israeli who fatally stabbed a teenage girl at a Jerusalem gay pride parade has been indicted on a murder charge.

Jerusalem’s District Court indicted Yishai Schlissel for murder on Monday for last month’s deadly attack, along with multiple attempted murder charges for those he wounded.

Mr. Schlissel stands accused of murdering Shira Banki, age 16. Celebrate justice, but remember the price.

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Image notes: Top ― Paramedics help a wounded woman after an ultra-Orthodox Jew attacked people with a knife during a Gay Pride parade Thursday, July 30, 2015 in central Jerusalem. Israeli police said several people were stabbed. (Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/AP) Right ― Ultra-Orthodox Jew Yishai Schlissel walks through a Gay Pride parade and is just about to pull a knife from under his coat and start stabbing people in Jerusalem, Thursday, July 30, 2015. Schlissel was recently released from prison after serving a term for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005, a police spokeswoman said. (Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/AP) Bottom ― Shira Banki died 2 August 2015 from wounds sustained in a 30 July terror attack against the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem. (Photo: Banki family)

Associated Press. “Yishai Schlissel Charged With Murder In Jerusalem Gay Pride Attack”. The Huffington Post. 24 August 2015.

Berger, Miriam. “Man attacks Jerusalem gay parade, just weeks after release from prison for similar attack”. The Star-Tribune. 30 July 2015.

A Lonely Passing

It is our regret to convey such news:

A 22-year-old woman found dead last month in Dallas is the 13th transgender person murdered in the US this year, eclipsing the total from all of 2014.

On Monday, police identified the body of Shade Schuler, which they found July 29 in a vacant field just west of 5600 Riverside Drive, near the Medical District. Schuler’s body was badly decomposed, according to police, and it took them nearly two weeks to identify her.

(Wright)

There is no promise we can make; not if we are honest with ourselves. There is no saying, “No more!” and making it stick.

Look … take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. We must all take care for our friends and neighbors. The point is to live through this. Please.

To wish, Be well … as well as the day affords. As well as life and death allow. It all sounds kind of stupid, rings somewhat hollow. But sometimes it’s all we have.

And, damn it, in the end it’s more than Shade Schuler had. And, come on, that’s just not fucking fair.

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Wright, John. “Black Trans Woman Found Dead in Dallas is 13th Trans Person Murdered in 2015”. 12 August 2015.