Links - 23rd August 2018 (1)

Kids in cages: The fake news that made child separation a big story - "If we pursue a zero tolerance policy at the border that means children, some of them very young, will be separated from their parents since children can’t be kept in holding cells with adults. It’s a real issue. But it’s noteworthy at this point how many times the activists on the left have crawled toward the real issue using what can only be called fake news... 'The photos, taken by The Associated Press, were from 2014, during the Obama administration, but were presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy'... the process by which this became the most emotional issue in the country has relied on a series of misleading photographs spread first by activists and finally by the major media. The media is still trying to get the story straight. As you can see above, after each dishonest photo, we eventually get a fact-check, but by that point the outrage whipped up by the fake image has already taken hold. This is the “hands up, don’t shoot” approach to journalism all over again."
Is it dangerous to say the press is lying when it is?

Father says little Honduran girl on Time cover was not taken from mother - "The Honduran toddler pictured sobbing in a pink jacket before U.S. President Donald Trump on an upcoming cover of Time magazine was not separated from her mother at the U.S. border, according to a man who says he is the girl's father... The photo was used on a Facebook fundraiser that drew more than $17 million dollars in donations... Sanchez and her daughter had left Puerto Cortes, a major Honduran port north of the capital city, Tegucigalpa, without telling Valera or the couple's three other children, he said. He said he imagined that Sanchez left with the little girl for the United States, where she has family, in search of better economic opportunities.
Presumably all economic migrants are considered asylum seekers

This photo isn’t what it seems - and that really matters - "Time magazine published a lie last week, and no one seems very bothered about it. In relation to the viral photo of a two-year-old girl from Honduras crying next to her mother at the Mexico/America border, Time said the girl had been dragged, screaming and weeping, from her parents. We now know this isn’t true. The girl was not separated from her mother. She was crying as her mother was searched by guards because, according to her father, she was tired, hungry and distressed. Time has now published a correction saying ‘the girl was not carried away screaming…. her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together’. More disturbing than the error – journalists often make errors, some honest, others less so – has been Time’s ongoing defence of its use of the photo and the article that accompanied it... a quasi-religious anti-Trump outlook is now so widespread in the mainstream media that some editors and reporters think even untruths can be justified as part of a broader mission to expose Trump’s wickedness... The anti-Trump and anti-Brexit cultural elites often talk about our ‘post-truth’ society... we become children, deserving only fairytales to offer us moral guidance."
If the media is nonchalent about publishing fake news...

Here’s All The Proof You Need That Democrats Never Cared About Separation Of Illegal Immigrant Children From Parents - "when Trump signed the executive order, you’d imagine that Democrats would have celebrated – after all, kids would now be able to stay with their parents, so far as the law allowed! Instead, Democrats immediately suggested that holding children together with parents was brutal and evil – the same argument civil rights groups made when President Obama pursued the same policy, an argument that ended in a Ninth Circuit ruling mandating the separation of children from parents... in other words, they didn’t care all that much about separation, because when the separation is rectified, that too is awful. All those on the Left really want is the full release of all illegal immigrants with children"

Delusion About Detentions: On Family Separation at the Border - "the administration has the discretion to allow for the release of illegal border crossers but has no obligation to exercise it. On the merits, that is a wise policy because of the high likelihood of aliens absconding and failing to appear before an immigration judge later. According to former immigration judge Mark Metcalf’s analysis, 37 percent of all aliens free pending adjudication did not bother to show up to court. But the recent trend is more concerning: according to the Justice Department, “From FY 2012 to FY 2015 the number of in absentia orders for aliens who are not currently detained increased by 98 percent.”... immigration judges are rejecting the asylum claims made by migrants—granting less than one in five of all asylum petitions in the last few years"

It's offensive and inaccurate to compare the US border tragedy to the Holocaust - "Many people have pointed to the glaring similarity: In the Nazi death camps and concentration camps, much like at the US-Mexico border, children were separated from parents. That’s true. But in Nazi-occupied Europe, those children were also gassed. Their bodies were carried by other prisoners, sometimes their own parents, into the crematoria, where they were burned. Their ashes are all that remain. Their parents, assuming they were in reasonable shape, were put into forced labor and starved. Many died from the conditions. There’s nothing similar about that situation to the one that’s happening at the border... comparisons to Auschwitz are ludicrous and offensive. Blitzer explained to Hayden why so many people were outraged by his tweet. “I speak with some authority on this,” Blitzer said. “My grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz. My dad survived, but two of his brothers and two of his sisters were killed at Auschwitz. They weren’t separated to go to some other facility. They were separated to die.”"
Of course, SJWs get upset when you compare LGBTs and black people to suggest some form of equivalence

Trump's Immigration Policies Are Actually Pretty Popular - "the vast majority of Americans polled support either President Trump’s executive order, the initial enforcement of the law that resulted in family separation, or something even stricter. A CNN contributor said Trump’s border enforcement policies were akin to the Holocaust. A Washington Post writer said they were more like slavery. An MSNBC contributor said border enforcement was racist. A CNBC contributor said the same. Outrage blanketed the airwaves. Few explained why they didn’t care much or at all about child detention centers during the Obama administration... only 8 percent of American voters think illegal immigration is not a serious problem."
Looks like Trump 2020 is assured, given liberal hysteria and the liberal echo chamber

First peek: Immigrant children flood detention center - "They are undocumented. They entered the country illegally. And when they were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, they were shipped to Nogales from overwhelmed processing facilities in Texas. But they are still children in cages, not gangsters, not delinquents. Just children, 900 of them, in a makeshift border-town processing center that is larger than a football field"
From 2014, when children in cages was not a problem

Here Are The Photos Of Obama’s Illegal Immigrant Detention Facilities The Media Won’t Show You

Flores agreement: the problem with Trump’s executive order to end family separation - "In 2014, however, the Obama administration attempted to tamp down the number of Central American families seeking asylum in the US by keeping families in detention and processing and deporting them as quickly as possible. Immigration advocates challenged the policy of family detention under Flores. And judges agreed with them — in large part because it said the Obama administration was out of bounds in detaining migrant families for the purpose of “deterrence.” (As NBC’s Benjy Sarlin has pointed out, that’s why certain Trump administration officials have been careful not to say that family separation is a deterrent, or even a policy, now.) Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Flores settlement covered not just unaccompanied alien children but “accompanied” ones as well. It set a general standard that the government couldn’t hold them in custody for more than 20 days. The Ninth Circuit stopped short of saying that parents could be released under Flores. But the federal government hasn’t responded to Flores by keeping families together for a few weeks and then splitting them apart. Instead, it’s made a practice, for the most part, of releasing the whole family after 20 days. Since the current family detention facilities — two in Texas created under Obama, and an older one on Pennsylvania — are mostly full, they don’t have a ton of space to detain families anyway. This is one example of what the Trump administration calls “catch and release.”"

Phil Murphy signs bill to let unauthorized immigrants get college financial aid - "A New Jersey college student's immigration status will no longer play a factor into whether that student is eligible for certain in-state financial aid. College students who are unauthorized immigrants in the state are already allowed to pay for their Garden State college classes at in-state rates... The bill sparked controversy when it made its way through the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Republican lawmakers blasted the legislation as a measure that gives a leg up over New Jerseyans who are here in the state legally... "Treating non-citizens better than citizens, I think, is fundamentally wrong""

Don Don Donki says Orchard Central landlord stopped it from selling sex toys - "Japanese discount retailer Don Don Donki says the landlord at its Orchard Road store did not allow it to sell sex toys, which is why such products are sold at its new Tanjong Pagar outlet but not at the Orchard outlet... Orchard Central is owned and managed by property giant Far East Organisation, which brands itself as a “Christian enterprise”."

Hot Dog Water sold for $38 a bottle at Canadian Festival - "dozens bought a bottle at the annual festival on June 17 -- about 60 bottles in all at $37.99 Canadian a pop, or about $28.57 in U.S. dollars, said the seller, Douglas Bevans. What started out as a joke appeared to be catching on... Hot Dog Water comes billed as Keto diet compatible, helping drinkers lose weight, increase brain function, look younger and increase vitality. Not to mention, the weeny-flavored elixir claimed to correct electrolyte imbalances, and help fight infection and diseases."

Firing at Refugees: EU Money Helped Fortify Turkey's Border - "Turkey has even built a wall along its border to Syria. It is several hundred kilometers long, 3 meters (10 feet) high and equipped with heat-detection cameras.
Walls are only bad when built by the US to deter economic migrants

Is Intersectionality a Religion? - "It is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a “smelly little orthodoxy,” and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion. It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required. Like the Puritanism once familiar in New England, intersectionality controls language and the very terms of discourse. It enforces manners. It has an idea of virtue — and is obsessed with upholding it. The saints are the most oppressed who nonetheless resist. The sinners are categorized in various ascending categories of demographic damnation, like something out of Dante. The only thing this religion lacks, of course, is salvation. Life is simply an interlocking drama of oppression and power and resistance, ending only in death. It’s Marx without the final total liberation. It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you’re a liberal or libertarian or even, gasp, a conservative, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral. If you think that arguments and ideas can have a life independent of “white supremacy,” you are complicit in evil. And you are not just complicit, your heresy is a direct threat to others, and therefore needs to be extinguished. You can’t reason with heresy. You have to ban it. It will contaminate others’ souls, and wound them irreparably."

Comic Book Shop Bans Customer for Supporting Popular Conservative Creators

The unlikely home of the world’s smallest desert - "the Carcross Desert in Canada’s Yukon). At first glance, it admittedly didn’t look like much. Hardly recognisable as a desert and only 600m wide, best measured end to end by bootprints, it was blanketed in snow, the sand only apparent between cracks in the melted crust"

Islamic school head forced out after weapons and £400,000 cash found at flat in grounds - "Officers were called to the Darul Uloom school in Chislehurst on May 30 after reports of a man brandishing a gun. Headteacher’s son Yusuf Musa, who was the school’s designated safeguarding staff member, was arrested in connection with the incident"

High court backs UK’s refusal to issue gender-neutral passports - "Mr Justice Jeremy Baker upheld Home Office policy after the court was told it would affect other legislation, cost too much to change computer records and increase the need for consular support abroad for gender-neutral British citizens... if the policy constituted an interference with article 8 – the right to respect for private life – it was justified by the need to “maintain an administratively coherent system for the recognition of gender”, to maintain security and to combat identity theft and fraud, and “to ensure security at national borders”."
Catering to mental illness has costs

Labour councillor who said ‘no proof’ Isis exists to help protect children from radicalisation | Coffee House - "Remember Safia Akhtar? Back in May, Mr Steerpike reported how the Birmingham Labour candidate had ‘waltz[ed] to victory’ in the local elections and been elected as a Labour councillor. Given that the Labour representative once said there was ‘no proof’ that Isis existed, not everyone was thrilled by her appointment... Akhtar was suspended. Only not as a Labour candidate, natch – as a governor of her local primary school. Now Akhtar’s back in the news. Birmingham Live reports that she’s just been appointed to a key council role on… the committee responsible for protecting children from radicalisation. Akhtar has reportedly been appointed to the Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee."

Young lefties reveal they can’t stand Corbyn any more and have abandoned Labour ahead of local elections - "Labour activists told her in public that she shouldn't be taking part at all - hinting that as a black woman and an immigrant, it's disloyal for her to challenge Labour. "That was the final straw," Nimco told The Sun this week. "The disdain they had for me, and the ownership of me because I’m black and a woman and a Muslim."... Even diehard Labour supporters say they've been pushed away, disgusted by the party's extreme foreign policy, runaway spending plans and anti-Semitism crisis... he was disturbed by Mr Corbyn's foreign policy stance, including supporting the Kremlin's line on the Salisbury poisoning and Syria chemical attack... Ms Ali, who moved to Cardiff as a child after fleeing Somalia with her family, said she fears Labour has a "passive-aggressive" attitude towards entrepreneurial ethnic minorities. She told The Sun: "It’s the passive-aggressive racism of ‘stay poor, stay black’ - someone like me really baffles them. Being on the centre ground really freaks them out."

SJW college kids demand fellow students pay feminists for their ’emotional labor’ - "SJWs first invaded the Facebook thread about the released snake after one student became frustrated that students were giving more attention to a snake than “systematic racism,” “sexual assaults,” and “anti-Muslim hate crimes.”... the conversation about campus racism gained steam despite Sarah Lawrence College being considered one of the most tolerant and “progressive” in the nation. The Princeton Review even ranked it one of the most LGBTQ-friendly colleges in the nation."

'Emotional labor' payments sought for female student activists - "they debated on Facebook a student’s release of her pet snake on campus. The student has claimed she was only given an hour by campus officials to get rid of the baby python, which she had purchased for therapeutic reasons. She told peers that, in a panic, she let it loose into the wilds of Sarah Lawrence near a student dorm by the North Lawn... some students expressed anger that their peers appeared more upset about a python on the loose, as well as another controversy regarding a popular tree on campus slated for removal, than racism and alleged hate crimes at the school... This tenuous suggestion steadily gained traction despite the fact that Sarah Lawrence is known as a progressive, tolerant institution. For instance, last year the Princeton Review ranked Sarah Lawrence as the number one most LGBTQ friendly school in the nation. This year, during election season, one film professor let his class out early to attend the hoisting of a Black Lives Matter banner on campus."
Not only do you need to put up with their 'activism', you need to pay for the privilege