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nonbinaryresource · 5 years

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”[...]

With all the corporate rainbow swag, politicians waving from floats, and sponsorship deals, it may be hard to remember that the first Pride was not a celebratory parade, but a defiant march against oppression. That’s exactly why incorporating police into the march, uniformed or not, is such a contentious issue in the queer community. The riot that broke out outside of the Stonewall Inn the night of June 28, 1969, after a police raid is often treated as the birthplace of the gay rights movement — and largely credited to black and transgender people. It was one year later that the first Pride marches were held. So, it was resistance against police that sparked the parades they’re marching in today. To understand the nuance, it’s important to know some of the history between LGBTQ people and the police.

One of the first examples of police clashing with an organized group of LGBTQ people happened 45 years before Stonewall, in Chicago. The Society for Human Rights, founded by German immigrant Henry Gerber in 1924, focused specifically on male gay rights and was inspired by a similar organization in Berlin. Berlin had a vibrant LGBTQ community, and Gerber felt inspired to try and gather gay men to fight for the same in the United States. After only a few months of working to compel gay men to organize, Gerber and several other members were arrested without a warrant on claims of potential obscenity, and the Society for Human Rights crumbled to dust.

It took until 1959 for another clash between the police and the LGBTQ community to make the news, though there were many incidents in between as police disbanded any gathering of queer people. But it was the attempted arrest of multiple patrons of Coopers Donuts that garnered widespread attention. The crime? Simply hanging out at the Los Angeles establishment; Coopers Donuts often served local law enforcement during the day, but in the evening, as patrols became less frequent, it became a popular spot for transgender women and hustlers to meet up. The officers asked for identification from multiple people in the donut shop, reportedly one of the common methods of harassing LGBTQ people at the time. Before any arrests could be made, something snapped, and the shop erupted with patrons throwing donuts, coffee, and paper plates at the cops. Law enforcement fled and returned with backup, blocking off Main Street for the whole night as a riot flared.

Other examples of police suppression of LGBTQ people are the two lunch counter sit-ins at Dewey’s on 17th Street in Philadelphia in 1965, organized and attended by black LGBTQ youth, inspired by the sit-ins staged by black Americans as part of the civil rights movement. The sit-ins at Dewey’s were in response to the staff, who, due to some “disruptive teens,” reportedly began to refuse service to a wider group of patrons, including those dressed in “nonconformist clothing” and anyone else assumed to be LGBTQ. On April 25, 150 youth wearing “non-conformist clothing” attempted to patronize Dewey’s and were turned away — three refused to leave after being denied service, leading them and a gay activist (who ensured the teens knew their rights and offered to help them get a lawyer) to be arrested. In support, one of the main LGBTQ advocacy organizations at the time, Janus Society, called for a five-day protest culminating in another Dewey’s sit-in. This time, though police were called, no arrests were made.

The Compton’s Cafeteria location in San Francisco’s Tenderloin area was also the location of a riot prior to Stonewall. As one of the only places transgender people could congregate (as gay bars also refused them service due to rampant transphobia), the Cafeteria was a popular late-night hangout. Compton’s staff would reportedly charge trans patrons a service fee, at best, and at worst, would call the cops on them as “cross-dressing” was illegal at the time. When an officer showed up to arrest transgender customers, a trans woman threw her cup of coffee in his face. A riot ensued in the aftermath, and the windows of the restaurant and a nearby cop car were smashed and furniture was thrown in resistance. "It was the only place we could meet people,” Felicia Flames, a trans woman who used to frequent Compton’s, told the Advocate. “Not organize, because we didn't give a sh*t about organizing. We were just trying to survive.”

These are just a few historic examples of police clashes with the LGBTQ community, and the issue isn't just one of the past. In 2018, there has been continued police violence toward LGBTQ bodies, even within the supposed safe space of Pride. ReeAnna Segin, an 18-year-old transgender woman, was arrested and reportedly thrown into a men’s prison earlier this month for attempting to burn a “Blue Lives Matter” flag in protest at Philadelphia Pride, despite flag-burning being a recognized form of protest. The organizer of Beirut Pride in Lebanon, Hadi Damien, was also arrested this year and told he would be released only if he pledged to cancel all upcoming Pride events. Last year, four black queer activists (the Black Pride 4) were arrested in Columbus, Ohio, for silently linking arms and blocking the Pride parade route; they were protesting the acquittal of the Minnesota police officer who killed Philando Castile, and the continued “violence against and erasure” of queer people of color and trans women of color. According to a National Coalition of Antiviolence Programs report, many LGBTQ people don't report violence they experience to police. But when they do, the coalition reports that 66% said police were indifferent or hostile toward them. The same report indicates that black LGBTQ people are three times as likely to experience excessive force by police than nonblack LGBTQ people.

To tell young LGBTQ activists that they are being divisive for not wanting an institution that regularly abuses them at an event that was forged to protest that institution's practices feels disrespectful to the history of Pride. Police cannot peacock as allies for one day a year and not expect to be held accountable for their actions the rest of the time. And when it's party time, law enforcement certainly can’t demand they be welcomed by the people they arrested for speaking up against police brutality.”

#police violence #pride #pride month #pride march #queer history #stonewall #stonewall riots #for those that need the 101 #not nonbinary specific #racism #transmisogyny #antiblackness

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hearteyes-for-killmonger · 5 years

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It's another smutty chapter.

Part 14: Desperation

“Quit touchin shit,” he mutters catching you as you try to masturbate. You thought he was sleep.

“Not when it’s mine to touch,” you counter, watching his back and waiting for him to show off. He doesn’t move as minutes pass. “Erik,” you whisper, “You’re not sleep. Why can’t you just let me borrow your tongue? You did it before.”

“Tongue machine broke. Dick machine up,” he mutters.

“NO. I want the tongue,” you reiterate.

“I know,” he says in a smiling voice that irks your soul. He knows his power.. But you're also sticking to yours.

"You can be so childish sometimes," you sigh getting up to take off the lingerie. It feels like such a waste.

“You the one with a puddle between your thighs still tryna control shit, it’s hilarious.”

You were fuming. You’d finally set your nerves aside to ask him for head, something you’d NEVER typically do just for the thickheaded negro to say NO.. Twice! It took you a while to come to an understanding as you stared at the polka-dotted lump beside you in disdain, only mildly embarrassed. You knew exactly what Erik wanted from you. He was playing a game that he expected to win by breaking you down until you relented to his sexual tyranny.

Your nostrils flare as you watch him sleep, his dreadhead smashed into the pillow. Thanks to his forced hydration, you’ve urinated enough times to fill an inflatable raft. Five times, your bladder has woken you and whispered up to your hand to slap fire out of him. The temptation has been great. The sixth time waking has you rushing to the toilet, groggy and irritated. You finally march out from the restroom slapping him on the shoulder and he doesn't stir. You shove him, his big body hardly moving, and he won’t open his eyes. He's that damn stubborn.

It's cool, I’ve got something for you, you nod. If he thinks your last move was bold, oh he'd see bold. Moving into the bathroom for a quick refresh of your nether-regions, you stick a careful finger up there to test it with a quick sniff and a quick taste. You're starting to think maybe you just don’t like the taste or mouth feel of bodily secretions in general. Looking in the mirror, you snatch your scarf off and adjust the PJ shorts and t-shirt you’d changed into after his threat. Although you wanted head, you weren’t ready for all of that extra that he wanted to do to you and you wouldn’t be intimidated into it. Erik's reign of tyranny would not commence.

Yours, however, would be effective immediately.

Watching your face in the bathroom mirror as you cackle soundlessly, mischief in your smile and intention, you turn to step from tile to carpet and pad silently back to the bed noting that Erik has not moved from that same spot that he's been buried in. That wicked smile stretches your face again. You've been a great pain in my ass, Stevens. It's my turn. You push down and kick off your shorts, not having underwear beneath and feeling the air. Suddenly this is all too real and you can feel your nerves kicking in, your heart racing. Whooshing out a calming breath, you blink and steel yourself. The A/C provides a low comforting hum in the background. No movement from Erik yet. Good. When you walk over to peek at his rugged yet youthful profile, still sleeping, you hesitate. The last time you woke him, he choked you on a reflex ingrained from his military days. You could still feel it when you thought about it. What would he do now, bite your clit off? Climbing gently back onto the bed, you throw your leg over his head and lower your pussy onto the side of his face that’s exposed, grinding. Spreading your lips, you make sure that your clit in particular wipes and grinds against his stubbly cheek. It feels good.. and bad at the same time but in the best way.

“Wake up,” you squirm. “Your country breakfast’s ready.” He still won’t move. “Eat it while it’s hot.” It's no later than 6 AM, but you've slept horribly and because of that it's time for him to pay.

He groans and breathes out deeply through his nose. “You got ya pussy on my face, ma?” His sleepy bass is so deep it makes you clench.

“I’ve got your breakfast on your face. Leftovers from last night that you’ve yet to finish. Aren’t you hungry?” Silence. You grind on his beard a bit more and wonder if he’s falling back asleep. Eventually you say ‘fuck it’ deciding to get yourself off using what you can access of his face.

“You nasty,” he mutters.

“And you’re allowing this to happen,” you contest, continuing your quest for an orgasm. His heavy hand collides against your bare ass cheek before gripping and rubbing it.

“Hella bold,” he sighs flipping over onto his back. “Go ‘head ride this tongue then.” His long pink tongue flops out and immediately the feeling amplifies. Now that he’s involved, he’s sucking and licking the right spots and making his tongue stiff for you to grind on and ride while you rock, grinding all over his lips, nose, mustache, and beard. When he snakes his arms around your thighs anchoring you down, you bite your lip containing a moan that threatens to spill. He knows what he's doing. He's got his soft lips clasped tightly on your clit and your mind goes blank, stalling like a frozen video on an old television with static. Suddenly he hums and oh my gosh... the vibrations go through you forcing your bottom lip free.

“Oh my God…”

“Mhm,” he hums, his tongue flicking for an added sensation that makes you leak. His lips suction off repeatedly with suction noises and every time, you feel yourself expand.

“Mmmmhh,” you moan breathing heavily, riding his face hard like it were a small mounted dildo or a stationary massager. “I’m gonna cum,” you gasp and he lifts you up off of his face right before you get there, flipping you onto your back. You can't stop your hips from moving as you stare up in anticipation.

---

Erik's dick was hard enough to cut diamonds having been celibate for days. He hadn't even masturbated. She looked down on Y/N's body naked from the waist down. Her pussy was engorged and ready, her sticky nectar wetting her juicy inner thighs. Her eyes showed perfect submission, her chest rising and falling fast like she was in heat. He licked his lips swallowing so not to drool, crawling over top of her body, his hands grabbing hers and pinning them over her head. Her hair still smelled like every good oil and he inhaled the scent deeply, his nose at her neck. She always smelled good, he could count on it. He kissed her right there on the side of her extended neck, biting and sucking her skin softly as she panted softly in his ear, mewling like a kitten, her hips still moving desperately. He had her. As much as she'd protested, he knew it'd end up this way. It always did when he touched her like this. He chuckled, the soft skin of her throat luring him in and calling him back. Sitting up to look her in the eye, he kept a hold on her hands.

"Relax," he whispered watching her dark pupils dilate. "I'm a let you go now. I want you to get up. Get dressed. I'm taking you to breakfast and we're gonna enjoy the day." Instantly she thrashed, like he knew she would. She was pissed. It made him laugh and his head dipped down beside her neck as she shook in her tantrum. She was so mad.

"GET THE FUCK OFF ME," she yelled, her lips balling like someone's mama telling them to put something back in the store. Erik was in hysterics.

"Nah, suffer, because you can't take it when someone does this shit to you. How long have you been telling me no? Hm?" She thrashed again trying to kick her legs, but it was a fruitless effort, she wasn't overpowering him. "Calm the hell down. I asked you a question, we can stay like this all morning. It's gonna suck when you gotta piss again."

"I don't know, a few times," she yelled.

"Tell the truth...," he cautioned, brows high.

"A LOT," she snapped.

"A while... See? You don’t like hearing no either! Being left to take care of your own needs when all your partner gotta do is give in? Annoying ain't it!? You see what the fuck you be putting me through?" She was seething, trying to intimidate him with a baby glare that only made him want to kiss her.. or break her. She didn't know what real malice was. She wasn't taking his words as seriously as she needed to and he was starting to lose his patience. The rougher dom was about to come through.

---

You glare at him, thinking of yanking your body again to try to knee him in the balls because he won't let go! Your pussy is still clenching uncontrollably and independant of you and you've finally had enough. All you can really think is, "Fuck you, Erik. Fuck this room. Fuck your motherfuckin house. Fuck your stupid gotdamn rules!"

"I like that dirty ass mouth. You tryna kiss my dick with that mouth?"

"You're such an asshole, I don't know why I bother with your stupid confused ass! You don't even deserve it!" You jump again and he releases you a bit before slamming you down harder, restraining your wrists and and legs with his weight. You think of yelling again but then you see his eyes and your voice leaves.

That deep.. menacing.. ice cold, unpredictable, penetrating stare. All the warmth leaves your body at once replaced with a chill and for a second you wonder who.. or what.. you're actually dealing with. It's that look from that day at your apartment when something strong in you warned you to run. You can't tell if he's angry or detached, but you also can't look away. His mouth approaches your ear and you hold your breath, frozen, your eyes on what you can see of him.

---

The sudden fear in her eyes made him check his expression. He had a bad habit of letting himself a little too loose with her. He was seeing her as prey. Hunt, chase, kill.

“I clearly remember telling yo ass these nuts ain’t free. I don’t give a damn how fine you are, you won’t get any nut off me until you beg me and I mean that shit. From the wells of yo mothafuckin soul, I wanna feel the conviction in your voice tingle in my balls.. until I say it’s enough. Then and only then will I give you what you need.. and trust me, sweetheart… You need this shit.”

Her back arched off the bed and he could feel her body tremble, her shoulders harlem shaking under him like she was cold. It came straight from her spine as he put his nose in the crook of her neck. Damn, she was sensitive.

“Don’t move,” he released her wrists to push down on her pubic bone. Her whole pussy was wet and it had spread to her thick and shining inner thighs. He slapped her pussy listening for her light gasp as she twitched before rubbing with his hand up and down the lips, massaging away the sting. “Wet ass pussy and you still playing.” His finger stroked up and down teasing her entrance feeling her clench before slipping inside to feel her. Her mouth opened and her eyelids went half-mast as he watched her dysfunctional pupils stare past him, seeing nothing. The wet, squishy flesh rubbing against his middle finger made his jealous dick twitch in his briefs. It was laying all up on her though his briefs, he knew she could feel it. He slipped in a second finger and it was instantly coated as his fingers pumped back and forth, curling to tap and stimulate her g-spot.

Her chest heaved and she exhaled a loud breath that tangled with a mangled moan, her lip wedged between her teeth. Her dumb ass was still holding back as her ass tried unsuccessfully to rise up from the bed.

---

“You don’t even have a clue,” he sighs, humored by something. You keep your attention on his eyes unsure of what he’ll do next. The seconds feel like minutes as he stares through you as if reading a passage that’s inked onto your very soul. “You a fuckin brat. You know what that is? Hm?” You can feel his fingers stretch you apart and pull out only to push back in, stroking and stimulating your entrance and walls. When his rough thumb rubs over your swollen clit, it’s the sensation you’ve been subconsciously waiting for. That sweet spot. Your brain stalls again, an image stuck on stutter as your eyes roll and your eyelids blink rapidly. He knows exactly what he's doing.

“Look at me,” he orders gripping your jaw when you can't. “I said look at me. Open them pretty eyes.” His grip tightens, his fingers digging into your cheeks smushing them into a fish face that you don't have the energy to focus on. He’s never ceased his motion in your pussy and you just wanna cum. It’s right there, you can feel it close. His grip on your jaw tightens again and you force your eyes open to look up at him fighting the urge to close them.

“There you go focus them eyes on daddy. You gonna be a good girl?”

“Don’t stop. Don't you d-”

“Shut the fuck up, I'm controlling this shit. I control the pace and what we do.” He pulls his fingers out and you pout as they go directly into his mouth, his eyes still on yours. You feel yourself throb, missing the feeling of him already. “BEG. Show me how bad you want that nut.” You bite your lip. “I'm not buying it,” he whispers in a sing-song voice.

“Dude,” you whine, “I've been horny out of my mind since last night, I'm dying! Do that thing you did before with your tongue... Please, please make me cum already,” you moan, with your eyes set on his. You still remember when he edged you in your own room and left you aching for release. “Please finish!”

“We in the same boat and I'm not used to dry spells... You on the right path though. Let that freak loose,” he whispers holding your face in his hands, his thumb lightly brushing your bottom lip.

“You’re turning me the fuck on right now and I’m already soaked.”

“Mm..” He licks his lips giving you flashbacks.

“Please..”

The more you talk, the closer her gets. He has that look again.. but it's contained his time. Not so scary. He's adapting.. to you. You can't help but feel a little proud.

“Grab my dick. Pull it out… What it feel like?”

---

“Lead..” she scoffs, “A velvet bookend.”

“...Why are you like this?” Erik shook his head, humored as her feminine fingers roamed up and down his shaft. He watched her as she bit the inside of her full bottom lip, looking up at him, her almond eyes falling all over his body in admiration as he stood shirtless with his locs free. He made his pecs dance and a fire brightened in her eyes. He could feel desire palpable and radiating from the brown goddess, her hips wide and rounding out into thick brown thighs.. the picture of perfection. She was still touching him in wonder and he caught the spark of an idea in her eyes. What you finna try, little girl?

“Let me suck it, please... Daddy?” That was the keyword. He knew she was smart. “Can I suck it? I wanna suck it so bad.”

Oh word?

“Put it in your mouth.” He was willing to bet money that she didn't know how to suck dick right. Usually, that would be a huge dealbreaker but somehow when it came to her, he always had the patience. He was confident in her ability to master anything she put her mind to. She put the tip in her mouth and sucked.

“Lick the shaft, up and down the sides,” he said watching her tongue flatten and glide up and down. “Spit on it. Make it sloppy. More of that,” he pointed out when she drooled spit onto him. She licked up and down the underside of his dick before returning the head to her mouth.

“If you bite me that's yo ass. Go ahead and suck that dick.” The longer she went, the more into she got, looking up at him through her lashes. “You tryna make daddy buss?” Her head bobbed in an affirmative, her tight lips and soft wet mouth enveloping him in warmth. Drool dripped down his shaft making him feel appreciated.

“Your life’s purpose as of right now is to please daddy as Daddy's lil angel. Convince me that you've given in completely to your role.” He rested his hands behind his back as she incorporated the use of her hands on his base. “You learn fast, baby.” The praise made her go harder. It made the head sloppier as she swirled her head around his head. He could tell she was loving it. “Twist your hands, like a pepper grinder,” he breathed, feeling like that nigga. “Keep sucking it. More, just like that.. yeaah, until I'm completely satisfied… Oh shit..” She was doing it a little too well now.

“You did this before?”

She shook her head no with a proud smile.

“My little genius.. lick them balls. Keep stroking my dick.”

---

You sucked, and licked, and stroked, and drooled as the more you did it, the more you wondered if you were doing it right. Would he ever cum? What was taking so long? He looked like he was enjoying it and you could hear his moans that had you dripping, but still no cum.

“If you think I’m that easily assuaged you must not know daddy like that,” he says suddenly reading your mind. “Surprise, my love,” he chuckles, “This shit stay hard like a jolly rancher. You gotta work harder.” You can feel it thumping in your mouth, his heartbeat. “Mm.. Do you want it down your throat baby? You want that big dick down your little throat?”

“Mhm.. mhm,” you mumble, mouth full.

“Say it. With the dick in your mouth, beg me.”

“Ah awhn ha hi hahee..,” he stares down and you add, “How hi hoat, hahee hees.”

“That’s my big girl.” You don't know how he understood you. “That’s how you ask for this dick. That’s how you get what you want. Tap my leg if you feel like you gonna throw up. We don't do that.” His dick slides back toward your throat. You can feel him pass your tonsils and you grab his thighs pulling him closer. You have no gag reflex. Surprise, nigga.

“SHIT BITCH,” he roars, cackling at the ceiling before he unleashes fire, throatfucking your face. Spit flies from your mouth and you can feel your nose run as his grip stays hard on the back of your head. You still need to breathe. “Look at me... Oooh shit. Eyes watering. I'm taking your fucking soul. Leave it on this dick, you don't need it.” When he pulls out, you pant with a thick line of drool down your chin and runny snot mixed with tears on your top lip. He goes to the bathroom to bring back tissue, wiping your nose and top lip clean. You still have drool galore.

“Spit that back on my dick... Now suck it,” he hisses, “Hands down don’t wipe it. Look at me and tell me what's rule three?”

If you own it it's yours and you'll do whatever the fuck you want with it. You mumble it around his dick as best as you can.

“I've been so damn patient, spoiling you. I ain't do half the shit I could've done to you. You were basically free. Now you don’t have a fuckin choice. I'm taking what's mine. If I hear a wait, stop, or no, I'm fucking you harder. Nod if you understand.” You nod and he pushes you off of his dick lifting you and tossing you back onto the bed before dropping over top of you. Your knees lift and you cover your face as they get pushed back out of the way, your ankles guided over his large shoulders. “Look down. I want you to watch as I fuck you.”

“I- w- LET ME SAY SOMETHING DAMMIT.”

“I don't wanna hear it, I already know! You look at the girls I fuck and you scared I’m a fuck you just like that, all rough and shit. Am I right? You scared I’m a slide this dick a lil too deep in that wet ass pussy.. hit it too good.. flip that switch and trigger something crazy. Newsflash, I already know you a freak.” His smirk is accusatory.

“Look! All I'm saying is.. slamming whatever amount of inches that is,” you point to the slimy monster that was just in your throat, “Into a 4 inch deep cavern is reckless and excessive. You’re a mathematician, Mr. Statistics, do the math on that. I’m not Cierra and my vagina has WALLS. You can’t just run through WALLS and what you won’t do is dog my pussy out. Save that energy for Ms. Bitch or whatever you named her. Ain’t no preparation in the world enough for all that.”

“You telling me how to give dick now? I give good dick on the regular. Yo ass never had it. How you gonna tell me,” he laughs. His dick pushes into you catching you off guard and sits at your pulsing entrance, heavy. “SHIT..,” you both gasp at once. He stalls allowing you to adjust. You can feel him throb as you squeeze, his eyes shut. Then he opens them, renewed anger on his face. “Oh I’m a fuck this pussy up.. Goddammit.. I'm a fuck you how you know deep down you need to be fucked and you gone take the shit like a champ.”

---

He went deeper as she slapped and shoved at his chest, arms, and stomach trying to keep him still. He'd already gotten a taste. It was too late. He slid deeper and she groaned, whimpering and whining between heavy breaths. “You finna cry,” he teased lowering his body down onto hers as his hips grinded into hers. “I got you. Go ‘head cry. Cry for daddy.” On cue her tears fell and he licked them as they slid past the outer corners of her eye, down the side of her face. Salt. He bit her quivering bottom lip as she moaned loudly, scratching his back with her nails. She couldn't control her volume, it was up and down, high pitched. "Way-way-wait," she gasped, pushing once she realized her mistake. "NO, WAIT!" His response was to slam his dick into her, over and over... stomach to stomach. She screamed and beat his back and arms with her fists while trying to squirm away. He kissed her neck, whispering in her ear. “Where you think you bout to go? You ain't going nowhere. You gone fuckin hate me. Then you gone love me.” Her nails dug roughly into his flesh and he knew he was bleeding, but it ain't phase him. He bottomed out listening as she whispered every profane word she knew.

"I feel you tryna nut. You think you deserve it?"

"Yess!" That was the only clear thing she said, the rest was unintelligible gibberish but he understood the spirit of it.

"Beg me for that nut," he grinned. He knew he was being aggravating. He planned to let her nut regardless. He was close himself. She begged and he could feel the urgency in her voice. She was so scared he'd pull out and leave her like that. Not this time though. She came hard, wailing, back to back her orgasms came... Her face and her eyes were stuck. He chuckled.

“Fuck.. you, mother..fucker, I hate you,” she cried breathlessly when she could finally talk.. an on and on.

“Your pussy ain't get that message. Listen to her.." The loud smacking in the air made his point. "She say FUCK you, she happy!” She was so wet, he could fill a cup. The loud smacking noise drove him crazy. “Make me wait all this fuckin time. You gone gimme my shit.” He lifted, flipping her over onto her stomach. “Toot that ass up. Spread your knees.”

She went straight to it and he sunk his dick into her pressing into her arch to deepen it.

“Oh you love this dick now,” he smirked, “Annoying ass brat. You know you irk the fuck outta me sometimes? You could've been had this dick, but you like to play. You like to tease a nigga till he grab you by your hair..” He gripped her kinky hair in his fist. “And fucks you till you can't think.. That's what you want?” Her moans were unceasing. He slapped her ass cheek watching it jiggle. "Words."

"Nnnmmmhh... Oh my God.."

"Come nut on this dick then." He fucked her roughly and she when she came yet again, the tears and whimpering returned full force. "Feel good?" Her body shook. He watched her spasm. Yeah, she was feeling good. Now it was his turn to chase a nut.

He fucked her like her name was Cierra and she'd broken ten rules, his hand gripping the back of her neck and her face in the comforter. He fucked her like he'd just lost a friend from a hit that went wrong and didn't have a chance to feel it. All of his anger and frustration and regret went into her pussy until he was sweating buckets and grunting.

She'd stopped moving. He looked down suddenly fearful, his heart skipping a beat.. slowing his stroke down a bit. "Y/N?.. Angel?"

She shuddered, blowing out a tired breath and her ass jumped in a twitch. He sighed in relief as he increased his pace again.

She panted desperately. Say no if you want, he laughed to himself. She couldn't talk.

"I'm a fuckin marry you," he gaped in awe. "I thought yo ass was dead. Hold up," he smirked, hand still dripping the back of her neck. "Daddy finna power up.. yeaah," he chuckled listening to her whimper. "Missed time, my angel... This yo fuckin fault..," he breathed staving off his nut with a grunt. "..Yo fuckin fault."

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

What Cities Are Run By Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-cities-are-run-by-republicans/

What Cities Are Run By Republicans

Democrats Outnumber Gop Voters About 6 To 1 But Republican Candidates Think People Will Cross Party Lines Over Recent Crime Wave

New York City GOP mayoral candidates Curtis Sliwa, left, and Fernando Mateo have sparred over their qualifications and past missteps.

Two longtime New York City fixtures are enmeshed in a hotly contested primary fight for the Republican nomination in the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

A poll released last week by WPIX-Channel 11, NewsNation and Emerson College showed Curtis Sliwa, founder of the crime-prevention group Guardian Angels, ahead of Fernando Mateo, a politically connected entrepreneur and longtime advocate for taxi drivers and bodega owners, by 33% to 27%, with 40% of those Republican registered voters who were polled still undecided.

Despite its closeness, the June 22 Republican primary between the former friends turned foes hasn’t garnered much public attention. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans citywide by more than 6 to 1.

The lack of competitiveness in political races over the past decade spurred a voter-outreach effort earlier this year to get Republican and independent voters to re-enroll as Democrats so they can have a say in the . During the outreach, Democrats saw a net gain of nearly 12,000 registered voters, according to the city’s Board of Elections.

Still, both Republicans insist they can win the general election. They said they think enough voters—especially moderate Democrats—will vote across party lines because of the crime surge that has plagued the city since the Covid-19 pandemic struck last year.

Trump Keeps Claiming That The Most Dangerous Cities In America Are All Run By Democrats They Arent

With the economy hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and protesters in the streets targeting America’s systemic racism, President Trump has been forced to revise his reelection strategy. What was once going to be a triumphal declaration of his effectiveness at keeping the economy afloat has been reworked as a reiteration of his 2016 run: a focus on making America great and, more specifically, on law and order.

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Over and over, Trump has shared that terse phrase with his tens of millions of Twitter followers, including on Wednesday and Thursday. And over and over, he has tried to imply that Democrats broadly and former vice president Joe Biden specifically are soft on crime. That his likely general election opponent and other leaders in the Democratic Party are happy to have social structures collapse into anarchy for some unclear reason.

To make that case, Trump has repeatedly lifted up a statistical factoid, as he did during an event at the White House on Wednesday.

“You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other — other cities, all Democrat run,” he said. “Every one of them is Democrat run. Twenty out of 20. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat run.”

It’s not clear how Trump is defining “most dangerous” in this context. So let’s look at two related sets of data compiled by the FBI: most violent crime and most violent crime per capita.

Well, reader, I have a surprise for you.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Won’t Like It

Facing mounting pressure from within the party, Senate Democrats finally hinted Tuesday that an emboldened Schumer may bring the For the People Act back for a second attempt at passage. But with no hope of GOP support for any voting or redistricting reforms and Republicans Senate numbers strong enough to require any vote to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Schumer’s effort will almost certainly fail.

Senate Democrats are running out of time to protect America’s blue cities, and the cost of inaction could be a permanent Democratic minority in the House. Without resorting to nuclear filibuster reform tactics, Biden, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be presiding over a devastating loss of Democrats’ most reliable electoral fortresses.

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Rand Pauls Claim That Cities And States Led By Democrats Have The Worst Income Inequality

“We ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, governors of states run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats. So the thing is, let’s look for root causes.”

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— Sen. Rand Paul , Republican debate on Fox Business News, Nov. 10, 2015

Several readers wanted to know whether this statement was true. We looked into a portion of the statement for our debate roundup and determined that the claim lacked context, although the data supported his claim about Democrat-led cities. There was more to explore here, so we decided to dig further. How accurate is Paul’s claim?

Essential Politics: Democrats Scramble To Combat Rising Homicide Rates In American Cities

David Lauter

This is the June 25, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? to get it in your inbox three times a week.

A rise in violent crime in the nation’s cities poses a threat to the Democratic Party that little else could rival; finding a way to address the problem has posed difficult challenges for the party’s leaders.

Over the last two decades, America’s politics has divided more and more along lines of city versus countryside. Democrats built an urban-based coalition that unites progressive whites — mostly young and college-educated — with a Black and Latino voter base that’s more often working class.

That happened only after years of sharp declines in crime opened the way for the transformation of urban neighborhoods from Crown Heights in Brooklyn to Silver Lake in Los Angeles.

Just as white flight from cities helped power the Republican rise from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, the urban resurgence of the last 20 years, despite all the attendant problems of gentrification, helped make possible the coalitions that elected Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Rising crime acts like kryptonite on such coalitions, sapping their strength and laying bare their flaws.

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Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

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President Biden hosts a White House meeting about reducing gun violence on July 12. Violent crime is on the rise in many U.S. urban areas, and Democratic political strategists believe the White House needs to take on the issue of crime directly.

Violent crime is on the rise in urban areas across the country.

Many small cities that typically have relatively few murders are seeing significant increases over last year. Killings in Albuquerque, N.M., Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh, for example, have about doubled so far in 2021, while Portland, Ore., has had five times as many murders compared to last year, according to data compiled by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

Most cities in the United States, including each of those named above, have a Democratic mayor. After protests last year over police violence against Black Americans — notably the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — there has been a push from the left to “defund” police departments.

As a result, several cities, including Austin and New York, have reduced or reallocated police budgets — though some cities have looked to restore funding in recent months.

That debate over funding, coupled with the rise in crime, has given Republicans what they believe is an opening in key swing districts that could decide control of the U.S. House next year. The GOP needs to pick up just a net of five seats to do so.

List Of Rioted Cities And Their Political Affiliation Wait Until You See These Stats

List of cities where riots, looting & violence were reported, their mayors, governors and their political affiliation.

Which cites are burning, and what political party runs them? Check out the list below.

I’m just here to state some facts. I am not getting into the whole debate about racism, George Floyd, or anything other than the cities the violent riots and looting are taking place in. We’ve all watched the videos of rioters looting, smashing windows, burning buildings, assaulting police, assaulting private individuals and a whole slew of other horrendous things. I do have some questions though; In many of these cities, the police are being told to ‘stand down’; WHY? .. In some cities, the mayors are even encouraging the riots. WHY? .. Why have some cities called in the nation Guard, but have NOT given them the GO signal? Why are locals in each rioted city telling us that most of the people doing the damage are out-of-towners? Where are they coming from? Who’s bringing them in? Are they being paid? … Lot’s of unanswered questions here folks. Feel free to comment below.

The list contains 29 cities; of which 26 have Democrat Mayors and 3 have Republican Mayors. The # of states may look skewed because some states are listed more than once , but there’s no doubt that even the Democratic run states out number Republican ones. Check out the list below, and don’t forget to Comment.

The Top 10 Cities For Mass Shootings: All Of Them Are Run By The Democratic Party

Tuesday, March 30, 2021 By Stillness in the Storm

The American news media reports every “mass shooting” that fits its political narrative. But a check of the statistics for mass shootings shows that overwhelming majority are committed in Democrat-run cities, including those with strict gun control laws and “gun-free zones.”

The number of mass shootings in the last three years is mind-boggling. There was a total of 424 in 2019; 612 in 2020; and 105 so far in 2021. A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more subjects are shot by a firearm.

The following are the top cities for mass shootings, according to a verifiable database called Mass Shootings Info.

Image Credit: Mass-shootings-info

The top cities for mass shootings: Chicago ; Philadelphia ; New York City ; Houston ; and Baltimore These cities are all run by the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party’s “solution” to the surging crime in America’s cities is to blame the police or to outright defund them. It is only fueling a crime surge that is reversing decades of overall decreasing violent crime.

The following Democrat-run cities are now seeing massive spikes in violence, including mass shootings.

Did Record Gun Sales Cause A Spike In Gun Crime Researchers Say It’s Complicated

“Democrats across the country spent the last year defunding police departments, so they shouldn’t be surprised when voters hold them responsible for the spike in violent crime,” said Mike Berg, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which recruits and advises GOP congressional candidates.

Republicans are already going after Democrats with a three-pronged strategy that includes attacks on crime; the economy, particularly rising inflation and labor shortages; and border security.

Meet The Republicans Representing Cities With A Higher Murder Rate Than Chicago

5 years old

As Democrats escalate calls for tougher gun laws, conservative House members offer pushback but few alternatives to gun control laws

Tue 12 Jul 2016 11.45 BST Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 18.01 GMT

In the wake of a sniper attack on Dallas law enforcement officers that left five officers dead and nine wounded, House Democrats have continued to push for a vote on gun control legislation before the congressional session ends on Friday.

“If this Congress does not have the guts to lead, then we are responsible for all of the bloodshed of the streets of America, whether it be at the hands of the people wearing a uniform or whether it’s at the hands of criminals,” Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, who represents parts of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, said on Friday.

House Republicans are refusing to allow an up or down vote on Democrats’ gun control bills, including a bill to expand background checks on gun sales, which some researchers believe could help reduce urban gun violence. At least 11 House Republicans represent large cities with murder rates even higher than Chicago’s. All of them have A ratings from the National Rifle Association, earned from a record of supporting gun rights and opposing gun control.

A few of these representatives offered alternatives to gun control that they believe will do more to reduce gun violence: better re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated Americans, job creation or improvements to the mental health system.

Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

In McConnell’s Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.

Make no mistake: McConnell’s caution isn’t rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnell’s approach doesn’t reject partisan gerrymandering — it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.

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For instance, in 2020, Yarmuth won his Louisville district with a comfortable 62.7 percent of the vote. By turning Yarmuth’s single district into portions of two or three new districts, Republicans could turn his safe blue seat into swing districts and safe Republican strongholds. But the naked politicking of that kind of move would invite dozens of court challenges from outraged Democrats and election integrity organizations, tying up GOP time and treasure in the middle of campaign season.

Yet relying on the Republican-aligned Supreme Court to find a remedy is a gamble that could just as easily backfire on Democrats. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Congress, not the federal courts, must address partisan gerrymandering. As a result, half a dozen Democrat-filed federal cases were tossed out and the gerrymandered district maps allowed to stand. More outcomes like that would be catastrophic both for Democrats and democracy.

For now, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee is fighting back against Republican efforts in a flurry of high-profile lawsuits. The organization, chaired by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., has said it is committed to countering the Republican plan to split up blue cities.

Hope For Normalcy Is Growing Here’s What Americans Are Still Worried About

He continuously reiterated a version of that response as he faced pressure from the left and criticism from conservatives. Biden won, despite accusations from the right that he was merely a Trojan Horse for progressives and a socialist, police-defunding agenda.

But crime continues to be a nagging issue for Biden. He gets high marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic — undoubtedly the top issue of concern when he took office six months ago. But crime is rising in importance for many Americans, and they’re split on his handling of it.

That has led the White House to make a show of doing something about the issue, despite the decentralization of police departments across the country, which are controlled at the municipal level.

“It seems like most of my career I’ve been dealing with this issue,” Biden said earlier this month while convening a meeting of law enforcement and local officials. “While there’s no ‘one-size-fit-all’ approach, we know there are some things that work, and the first of those that work is stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes.”

Biden and crime have gone back decades. During the 2020 presidential primary, he had to fend off criticism from the left for writing the 1990s-era crime bill. Violent crime then was at a high, but critics have said the bill helped lead to the mass incarceration of many Black men, and often not for violent crime.

Elleithee echoed that.

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When It Comes To Big City Elections Republicans Are In The Wilderness

The party’s growing irrelevance in urban and suburban areas comes at a considerable cost, sidelining conservatives in centers of innovation and economic might.

When Jerry Sanders finished his second term as mayor of San Diego in 2012, he was the most prominent Republican city executive in the country. A former police chief close to the business community, Mr. Sanders appeared to be a political role model for other would-be Republican mayors, a moderate who worked with the Obama administration on urban policy and endorsed gay marriage at a pivotal moment.

These days, Mr. Sanders said, Republicans are out of touch with diverse metropolitan areas. He said Republicans appeared to lack “real solutions” to issues like crime, and lamented the party’s exclusionary message that drives off young people, Hispanics and gay voters in cities like his.

“I don’t think the right has kept up with the times,’’ Mr. Sanders, 70, said in an interview. He said he renounced his party affiliation on Jan. 7, the day after the mob attack on the Capitol.

Across the political map this year, Mr. Sanders’s diagnosis of his former party appears indisputable: In off-year elections from Mr. Sanders’s California to New York City and New Jersey and the increasingly blue state of Virginia with its crucial suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Republican Party’s feeble appeal to the country’s big cities and dense suburbs is on vivid display.

“They go back to that stuff, I’m in trouble,” he said with a laugh.

Rogue City Leaders: How Republicans Are Taking Power Away From Mayors

State lawmakers are preempting the ability of city leaders to enforce their own regulations. The moves represent a sharp ideological shift for a party that has long championed local control.

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey arrives for a news conference to talk about the latest Arizona COVID-19 information in Phoenix on Dec. 2, 2020. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

06/23/2021 04:30 AM EDT

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Mayors and city councils across Arizona issued face mask mandates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of Covid-19, angering conservative state lawmakers who decried government overreach. So the legislators turned to the newest Republican playbook and passed a law allowing businesses to ignore those public health requirements.

The one-line “preemption” law signed in April by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to issue a statewide mask order, won’t make much of an immediate difference now. It doesn’t go into effect until later this year, and local officials have lifted mask mandates in compliance with CDC guidelines as the threat of the virus subsides.

But the bill’s main sponsor says it was needed to ensure “rogue city leaders” can’t impose mask mandates again, should another outbreak occur.

An usher holds a sign to remind fans to wear masks during a spring training baseball game between the Oakland Athletics and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Scottdale, Ariz. | Ashley Landis/AP Photo

Is There Currently Riots/looting *only* In Democrat Cities In The Usa

So pathetic to watch the Fake News Lamestream Media playing down the gravity and depravity of the Radical Left, looters and thugs, ripping up our Liberal Democrat run cities. It is almost like they are all working together?

Not being an American, I am unsure what “Liberal Democrat run cities” are. I will guess those having a Democrat mayor, but am willing to be corrected.

Irrespective of your politics and whether you call them protests or riots, are there currently “large street gatherings”only in Democrat run cities?

Mawg says reinstate Monica

No.

Cities are generally democrat-leaning – 35 with democratic mayors vs 13 republican in the 50 largest cities.

But cities with republican mayors also had protests which resulted in property damage. An incomplete list of examples:

List Of Current Mayors Of The Top 100 Cities In The United States

Municipal partisanship in 2021

This page lists the current mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities by population.

As of 2013, an estimated 62,186,079 citizens lived in these cities, accounting for 19.67 percent of the nation’s total population.

In most of the nation’s largest cities, mayoral elections are officially nonpartisan, though many officeholders and candidates are affiliated with political parties. Ballotpedia used one or more of the following sources to identify each officeholder’s partisan affiliation: direct communication from the officeholder, current or previous candidacy for partisan office, or identification of partisan affiliation by multiple media outlets. As of August 2021, the partisan breakdown of the mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities was 63 Democrats, 26 Republicans, four independents, and six nonpartisans. The affiliation of one mayor was unknown.

Of these cities, there are 47 strong mayor governments, 46 council-manager governments, six hybrid governments, and one city commission.

At the start of 2021…

HIGHLIGHTS

Based on 2013 population estimates, 76% of the population of the top 100 cities lived in cities with Democratic mayors, and 15% lived in cities with Republican mayors.

Allen Joines , mayor of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had been in office the longest; he first took office in 2001.

This page includes:

Select a topic from the dropdown below to learn more.Submit

100 Largest Cities By Population Rank Strong mayor No

The Ten Most Dangerous Cities In The Us Are All Run By Democrats

United States

Aug 28, 2020 3:16:00 PM

While the cities with the highest crimes have Democrat mayors, studies show little correlation between party affiliations and crime.

During the 2020 presidential election race, President Donald Trump has claimed on multiple occasions that Democrats run the most dangerous cities in the U.S.

Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report covering the first half of 2019 shows the ten cities with the highest overall violent crimes in decreasing order are: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Memphis, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix, and Baltimore. Based on the number of crimes per 10,000 residents, the top ten cities are Memphis , St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Springfield, Little Rock., Stockton , Cleveland, St. Bernardino, and Oakland . All the mayors of the cities with the highest overall violent crimes are Democrats. The cities with the most violent crime per capita have Democrat mayors except Springfield, which has an independent mayor.

Hence equating surging crime rates with certain party affiliations in cities does not count as a realistic picture of the reasons why certain cities have high crime rates, thus making this claim misleading.

Reference links

Map: Republicans To Have Full Control Of 23 States Democrats 15

In 2021, Republicans will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 23 states. Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states.

Population of the 24 fully R-controlled states: 134,035,267Population of the 15 fully D-controlled states: 120,326,393

Republicans have full control of the legislative branch in 30 states. Democrats have full control of the legislative branch in 18 states.

Population of the 30 fully R-controlled legislature states: 185,164,412Population of the 18 fully D-controlled legislature states: 133,888,565

This week, Andrew Cuomo’s star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, let’s take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governor’s long history with ethical and legal violations.

Cuomo’s controversies regarding sexual harassment and nursing homes deaths were far from his first abuses of power. In fact, his administration has a long history of it, ranging from interfering with ethics commissions, to financial corruption.

In July 2013, Cuomo formed the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in New York’s government. At first it was a success, giving Cuomo good PR. Yet as it went on there were rumors that, contrary to his claim that “Anything they want to look at they can look at,” Cuomo was interfering with the Commission’s investigations. There was friction within the Commission, itself with two factions forming: “’Team Independence’ and ‘Team We-Have-a-Boss’.”

Three Democrats Three Republicans Advance In City Council Race

Hannah Manley hands her ballot to election judge Joann Vioda during Tuesday’s primary election at Southview Baptist Church.

Margaret Reist

The three incumbents on the Lincoln City Council, two Republicans new to politics and a Democrat on the city-county planning commission advanced to the general election Tuesday night, narrowing a crowded race.

Twelve candidates vied for three at-large City Council seats — the largest field of candidates in 16 years, which included a host of newcomers to politics.

Tom Beckius

Mary Hilton

Three of those newcomers will advance: Tom Beckius, a Democrat who works in real estate and construction and serves on the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission; Mary Hilton, a Republican and issues advocate; and Eric Burling, a Republican and software engineer running a study-abroad company.

Lincoln City Councilman Roy Christensen

Sändra Washington

The three incumbents who advanced: Roy Christensen, a Republican and audiologist seeking his third term; Bennie Shobe, a Democrat and program analyst at the Nebraska Department of Labor seeking his second term; and Sändra Washington, a Democrat and retired National Parks Service employee who was appointed after Leirion Gaylor Baird became mayor in 2019.

The top three vote-getters were the incumbents, with Democrats Washington and Shobe taking the top spots.

Washington said she’s very pleased, especially since this is her first campaign.

Beckius said he was thrilled to have such a strong turnout.

List Of Mayors Of The 50 Largest Cities In The United States

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This is a list of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the United States, are ordered the estimated populations as of July 1, 2017. These 50 cities have a combined population of 49.6 million, or 15% of the national population. Louisville, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Nashville, and Honolulu have consolidated city-county governments where the mayor is elected by residents of the entire county not just that of the main city; in these cases the population and respective rank are for the county.

In some states, mayors are officially elected on a nonpartisan basis; however, their party affiliation or preference is generally known, and where it is known it is shown in the list below.

The breakdown of mayoral political parties is 36 Democrats, 11 Republicans, and 3 Independents .

Party Affiliation Of The Mayors Of The 100 Largest Cities

Municipal partisanship in 2021

In most of the nation’s largest cities, mayoral elections are officially nonpartisan. However, many officeholders are affiliated with political parties. Ballotpedia uses one or more of the following sources to identify each officeholder’s partisan affiliation: direct communication from the officeholder, current or previous candidacy for partisan office, or identification of partisan affiliation by multiple media outlets.

Democratic mayors oversaw 64 of the 100 largest cities at the beginning of 2021, 64 at the beginning of 2020, 61 at the start of 2019, 63 at the start of 2018, 64 at the beginning of 2017, and 67 at the start of 2016.

This page includes:

Who runs the cities?: A chart tracking mayors by party affiliation.

List of mayors: A list of mayors of the 100 largest cities.

Mayoral partisanship: 2016-2021: A chart showing the partisan breakdown of mayors from 2016 to 2021.

History of local nonpartisanship: A look at the history and debate surrounding local nonpartisan elections.

Mayoral partisanship and preemption conflicts: An overview of preemption conflicts between state and local governments.

The following pages track municipal partisanship by year:

See also: Partisanship in United States municipal elections

As of August 2021, the mayors of 63 of the country’s 100 largest cities are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Americas Top 20 Cities For Crime And What Party Runs Them

President Donald Trump cites Detroit as one of the high-crime cities run by Democrats. Pictured: A Detroit police officer uses tear gas during a May 29 protest over the death four days earlier of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Annoyed that Senate Democrats are blocking a police reform bill, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the 20 U.S. cities with the highest crime rates are all run by Democrats.

“The Senate Republicans want very much to pass a bill on police reform,” Trump said during a Rose Garden press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “I would like to see it happen. We won’t sacrifice. We won’t do that. We won’t do anything that is going to hurt our police.”

The president added:

We have a record positive rating on crime, a record positive rating on crime this year. The best. You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other cities, all Democrat-run. Every one of them is Democrat-run. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat-run.

A quick fact check shows that Trump is at least mostly correct. One ranking says the top 20 most dangerous cities are run by 18 Democrat mayors and two mayors who were elected in nonpartisan races.

According to the website Neighborhood Scout, which in January published a list of the 100 most dangerous cities in America, heavily Democrat Detroit tops the list. At No. 20 is Chester, Pennsylvania, also with a Democrat mayor.

Homicides Are Up But Gop Misleads With Claims About Blame

Some police organizations and Republican politicians are blaming Democrats and last year’s defund the police effort for a troubling rise in homicides in many cities across the country

Senate Republicans set to block Jan. 6 commission bill

WASHINGTON — “SKYROCKETING MURDER RATES,” claimed the National Fraternal Order of Police. “An explosion of violent crime,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Democrat-run cities across the country who cut funding for police have seen increases in crime,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.

On social media and in political speeches, some Republicans and pro-police groups say last year’s calls to slash spending on law enforcement have led to a dramatic rise in killings in cities overseen by Democrats.

The increases they cite are real, and several big cities did make cuts to police spending. But the reductions were mostly modest, and the same big increases in homicides are being seen nationwide — even in cities that increased police spending. At the same time, the rates for burglaries, drug offenses and many other types of crime are down in many cities across the country.

The effort to blame Democrats for crime may offer a preview of Republicans’ strategy for upcoming elections: a new twist on an old “law and order” argument from the party’s past, harkening back to President Richard Nixon.

Top Republicans have taken up the claim, too.

Yet homicide rates are also increasing in cities that didn’t cut spending.

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sukhmansandhu · 6 years

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The Plight Of A Farmer !

Hi friends !!

I am sorry for being back after a while but it took me really long to clarify some doubts about the status of indian agriculture at this stage . I am sorry that i am late by a month to respond to your desire ! I am extremely thankfull to your response for the Ocean of Thoughts - II on my wordpress site 🙏😊

The first thing that comes to my mind today is

“If I had a sound sleep , I must thank a soldier protecting me across the borders ;

But if i slept contended with my hunger ,

I should thank a farmer whose chest is burnt entire day working in the sunshine” But unfortunately both of them are suffering due to lack of good governance since years ! One of them cries for OROP n Another one for MSP !

Since childhood I was well acknowledged with the fact that the farmers of Punjab have much better life as compared to other agrarian states such as maharashtra , bihar etc . to name a few !

But you might be surprised to know that Punjab of 2018 is critically ill and passing through its worst phase ever .

There was a time when entire India was progressing at 2% whereas the growth rate of punjab was above 7%. The problem is not merely limited to agrarian crisis in the state but the variety of challenges that our state faces today .

We are basically the face of indian economy , contributing one of the highest taxpaying slab in the country. But the govt . seems to have forgotten its duty towards farmers .

Yes , I believe that this is an era of revoultion nd we are lagging behind the developed world but at the same time we can’t even contend us by claiming that atleast the farmers who have fed entire India and the world since green revolution are satisfied.

Recently , I had a chance to visit one of my distant relatives who are totally dependent upon agriculture to fullfill their head to toe demands !

Only that tears didn’t fall from my eyes, but my heart gave a loud cry deep inside me when i got to know that his entire harvest had been damaged by the unexpected rainfall !!

Just imagine Your sons passing away at the ripe age of 21 !

That was the condition of this person .

Another person whose video had been circulated over whatsapp was down in tears but we could only manage to give him sympathy but to no avail.

I am glad that I belong to a family with agricultural background . Being with such rich values I understand that the farmer of today finds it difficult to provide quality education to his children and thats a big shame to the political parties of our country claiming the developmental agenda of 70 years 🤦‍♂️

The number of suicides is increasing day by day. Most of you might not be aware that these days auctions are being held in which the farmers are being sold more prominently in the malwa region .

The govt. refuses to any such practices because no one ever reports this . But deep inside every political person in this world knows how big this problem is !

The price of a packet of lays manufactured from potatoes around 1000 times more than what the input is required to produce it !!

I fail to understand that why farmers are being paid only Rs. 6/Kg for their potato produce till date !

Why arent farmers allowed to sell their crop at their own desired price ?

The govt. seems to be blind while watching such things happening around but the truth is that why are we people being a witness to all this stuff ?

We need to stick to our roots , our cultures and our beliefs . Indian agriculture contributes roughly around 65% of total occupation provided to unorganised and informal sector of the society .

We need to rise above silly issues of reservation and stand by our farmers who work entire day and night so that we don’t sleep with empty stomachs !

We have burnt the govt. properties for reservation , religion etc. since our independence but does anyone of you remember the protest march organised by the farmers in Mumbai this year ?

I am sure many of you aren’t aware of this !

Yes this is a reality . The commerce , the schools, the colleges, the hospitals etc. functioned very well that day but it was only the farmers who were not heard again !

At last I would like to confess the only fear that I might carry along with me entire life is that what if the farmers refuse to sow crops for us ? What if the farmers turn violent ? What if the Indian economy suddenly drops to 35% of its current capacity ?

I have left many issues unfurled in this blog such as the rubbish claims of the governments to double the income of the farmers because I don’t consider these claims worthy enough anymore !!

But at this stage how can we help it ? Actually its the first time in my life that i am out of suggestions this time ! Its really unusual that my blogs had a blind ending like this one .I consider my pen the best sword in the world but the sharpness of this sword has to be detected by you guys 😄.

With a hope that I get more n more new suggestions from all my readers and friends , I bid you all a Gud bye with an oppurtunity to openly support the cause of the farmers because most of you belong to the organised sector of India and will hold key positions worldwide and support me throughout to work for this noble cause 😃

I would also like to nominate each one of you to Post one of your pics on instagram , Facebook and other social media platforms as a part of our campaign to work for the plight of our farmers 🙏

My post would follow soon 😀

Hasta la vista Friends ❤️

Love you all 😊

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aziz-studies · 4 years

Text

On Trump and the CDC

In America, the year 2020 brought new sicknesses, renewed protests, and an onslaught of both hope and despair. During times of unrest, America turns first to the commander-in-chief, currently President Donald Trump. Many things happening during the Trump presidency have been done on a learning curve, as Trump was a businessman before his campaign, not a politician or lawmaker, or in any position where he needs to consider the welfare of a whole state or country. But with a new pandemic causing hospital overflows and hundreds of deaths a day, there is no room for a learning curve. The most important current event affecting America today is the way the Trump Administration has held back the CDC by continuously cutting finances, inappropriately staffing international CDC aides and domestic plague response teams, and contradicting scientifically backed claims made by the CDC that results in confusion among American citizens.

The effect of the CDC being unable to afford to do its job puts Americans in danger of being ill-prepared in the face of a pandemic such as the one we are currently enduring. Without proper funding, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a much harder time predicting and managing new diseases. Though Congress has prevented the worst of President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to the CDC (Bravender, 2020), the Trump administration has consistently sought deep cuts to the CDC’s overall budget. In the first two years of office, the presidency proposed budget cuts to the CDC of between 17 and 18%. In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, the president has still proposed a budget cut of 10%. (CDC, 2020) Even more disturbingly, for the fiscal year of 2020, the Trump administration proposed a 20% cut to a program under the CDC called the ‘Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases” program. The mission of this program is to investigate and prevent diseases like the new strain of coronavirus. (EDGI, 2020) The lack of foresight needed to minimize a program designed to help manage the outbreak of a new disease illustrates why President Trump should not be making decisions for the CDC.

Americans are being directly impacted by the poor staffing decisions of the Trump administration concerning the CDC itself as well as pandemic response teams that seem to deprioritize the voice of the CDC or manipulate it to tell the country misinformation. As an example, China first ran into difficulties with SARS in 2003, when it created the China CDC with the aid of the American CDC. When the China CDC identified a potentially deadly strain of the avian flu, US CDC employees posted in China urged the program to improve surveillance and detection activities, which also helped China identify and track the 2020 strain of coronavirus. The two nations even collaborated with the African Union to establish the African CDC in 2016. However, the year Trump was elected into office the total number of both American and Chinese CDC employees in China fell from 47 to just 14. The last American CDC epidemiologist was brought back to the United States in July 2019. As a result, communication between the China CDC and the American CDC was incomplete and delayed, preventing either country from effectively slowing the curve of the 2020 pandemic (Kolker, 2020) In 2020, President Trump elected a Coronavirus Taskforce that included members of the CDC in name only (Greensfieldboyce, 2020). Former CDC director Tom Frieden told NPR “This has never happened before. In the nearly 75 years that the CDC has existed, in every single infectious disease outbreak the country has dealt with, the CDC has been central. … I feel less safe because it's not clear that the CDC's expertise is feeding into the decisions that are being made, and these are life and death decisions, we are less safe because the CDC doesn't have the voice and the role it needs to have.” Frieden’s fears were clearly illustrated when the coronavirus task force, using the CDC’s name, advised Americans that testing is not necessary for asymptomatic people; a fact Frieden told PBS is simply not true. He also expressed shock at the fact that an entity other than the CDC is getting things put on the CDC website, something that did not happen once in Frieden’s time as the director. (Brangham, 2020)

This era of misinformation doesn’t just stem from pushing the CDC to the background. Americans have also been the receivers of contradicting information between the CDC and the President of the United States. The most public instance of this was on April 22, 2020, when the director of the CDC warned there would be a second wave of the pandemic only to be contradicted by Trump several times before being shut out of future press briefings. (Milman, 2020) Several months later when the CDC was asked for a plan to safely reopen schools during the pandemic, Trump simultaneously said it was an impractical plan and threatened to cut school funding for any campus that did not reopen. Vice president Pence later attempted to smooth things out by advising a new plan would be created so as not to be so tough on schools or parents (Wilkie, 2020). As early as May 2020 the CDC had detailed guidelines to reopen restaurants and other public spaces to prevent any major disruptions to the economy due to the pandemic. According to a CDC official, the center was told the document, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” would never see the light of day. The document in question was later leaked to the public by a federal official who reportedly did not have authorization from either Trump’s office or the CDC to release it. (Dearen and Stobe, 2020)

There are supporters of the current POTUS that assert Trump’s administration is not the sole impacting cause of the pandemic getting out of hand. After all, an official from the World Health Organization was cited as saying international travel does not have a significant impact on the spread of the virus, and the Obama administration was the one that failed to restock the nation’s emergency medical supply with N95 masks after using them for the H1N1 outbreak. However, it could be argued that the WHO made the best possible decision based on the evidence available at the time and acknowledged the data had the potential to change. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged leaders to make decisions based on data. (Nebehay, 2020) The Obama administration also did not ignore their duty to restock the [national medical supply]. During his years in office, Obama was often affected by budget restrictions and, in a time of health, prioritized life-saving vaccines that were not widely available during his time as president. (Brown, 2020) Neither event had the same crippling effect on a major scientific agency as the budget cuts, staffing decisions, and public contests of the Trump administration against the CDC. When you weigh all three items against how impactful they will still be to Americans five years from now, Trump interfering with the effectiveness of the CDC is the most significant.

Few things are going on in America right now that are more significant or will have such a widespread and damaging effect on all of America as the politicization of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has historically been the primary authority trusted to lead America through any health crisis, but budget cuts, staffing disasters, and blatant contradictions made by the current White House administration are hurting America through the CDC. Historians will ask whether the 2020 pandemic needed to be so damaging and widespread. We will need to take an honest look and determine whether keeping epidemiologists in China might have made response time higher, or if listening to the CDC instead of POTUS regarding reopening might have controlled the second wave better. Trump can be admired for his embodiment of the American ideal: You can be anything you want to be in America! But he is also the perfect example of why you should probably study something or get some experience in it before completely taking it over.

REFERENCES

Bravender, R. (2020, March 17). Congress rebukes Trump's bid to slash CDC funding amid

outbreak. Nevada Current. https://www.nevadacurrent.com/blog/congress-rebukes-trumps-bid-to-slash-cdc-funding-amid-outbreak/.

Brangham, W. (2020, August 26). Are U.S. medical experts being influenced by the Trump

administration? PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/are-u-s-medical-experts-being-influenced-by-the-trump-administration.

Brown, M. (2020, April 4). Fact check: Did the Obama administration deplete the federal stockpile

of N95 masks? USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fact-check-did-obama-administration-deplete-n-95-mask-stockpile/5114319002/.

CDC, . (2020, February 10). Congressional Justifications. Accessed on 29 August 2020 from

https://www.cdc.gov/budget/congressional-justifications/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https://www.cdc.gov/budget/congressional-justification.html.

Comms, E. D. G. I. (2020, May 9). An Embattled Landscape Series, Part 2a: Coronavirus and the

Three-Year Trump Quest to Slash Science at the CDC. EDGI. https://envirodatagov.org/an-embattled-landscape-series-part-2a-coronavirus-and-the-three-year-trump-quest-to-slash-science-at-the-cdc/.

Dearen, J., & Stobbe, M. (2020, May 7). Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on

reopening. AP News. https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4.

Greenfieldboyce, N. (2020, March 25). As The Coronavirus Crisis Heats Up, Why Isn't America

Hearing From The CDC? NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/25/821009072/as-the-coronavirus-crisis-heats-up-why-arent-we-hearing-from-the-cdc.

Kolker, J. (2020, May). The U.S. Government Was Not Adequately Prepared for Coronavirus at

Home or Abroad. UNC. http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2020/05/the-u-s-government-was-not-adequately-prepared-for-coronavirus-at-home-or-abroad/.

Milman, O. (2020, May 14). Where is the CDC? How Trump sidelined the public health agency in

a pandemic. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/where-is-the-cdc-trump-covid-19-pandemic.

Nebehay, S. (2020, February 3). WHO chief says widespread travel bans not needed to beat China

virus. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3.

Wilkie, C. (2020, July 8). Trump threatens to cut funding for schools, slams CDC reopening

guidelines as too tough and expensive. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/coronavirus-trump-threatens-to-cut-school-funding-slams-cdc-reopening-guidelines.html.

#donald trump #covid 19 #cdc guidelines #us cdc

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fallingasleepforever · 6 years

Text

‘Disarm the police’

I want to write about this whole ‘they aren’t talking about disarming the police’ thing. First of all, the same people saying that these kids are being fed what to say and do by adults are also demonizing these kids for not platforming for police disarment. It’s like which one is it, are they bad because they aren’t radical enough for you or are they bad because they are being told what to say? These are two conflicting narratives being pushed as one.

Also, it blows my mind that people are so naive to think that these kids would be able to legitimately push this concept on a public, national level and be taken seriously. They are trying to get some sort of gun reforms passed, you can’t literally expect them to be saying shit like that in this society and be given any platform.

So, what about disarming the police? Well, not only is that a truly radical stance that would be very difficult for someone extremely well versed in anarchist/communist theory to argue, it is also not something that seems even remotely feasibly in our world much less this country. How can you expect high schoolers to take this stance and be open to the kind of public scrutiny they already have to deal with?

I understand and support people protesting police brutality. I am fully aware how horrible the police are and 100% recognize the way black and brown people are treated as inhuman by the police and prison industrial complex. That said, it is very difficult for me to back the idea of disarming the police. In order for this concept to be feasible there would need to be some other REALISTIC AND PLAUSIBLE plan proposed to deal with dangerous people.

If all the police had their guns take away tomorrow we would be throwing ourselves into a situation we’ve never been in before. What happens when you actually DO need the cops? Who are you going to call? Some anarchist militia? Would there be enough volunteers in this hypothetical society willing to take on the policing role? It doesn’t seem like anyone pushing this concept has truly thought about it in depth to give real answers and is just repeating what seems like the most radical answer to our problems. You cannot actually expect everyone to stop getting into altercations/being violent or abusive to one another because no more cops have guns. Humans arent just going to ‘join arms in solidarity’. Sure that would be great and all but...this is Real Life and not theory.

Not only is labeling the march for life kids Problematic & Cancelled because they aren’t pushing for police disarment utterly ridiculous given their situation, it’s also not even a feasible or realistic idea in the world we live in.

#march for lives #marchforourlives #march for life

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giancarlonicoli · 4 years

Link

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/june-4-tiananmen-square-massacre-five-truths-still-arent-widely-known

Via The Epoch Times,

Following the sudden death of a beloved political reformer, Hu Yaobang, 200,000 students gathered at Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, to await the hearse carrying Hu’s body - but it never arrived. The mass of students were angered, and their burning desire for freedom could be contained no more.

For the next few weeks, Tiananmen Square was occupied by these student protesters, who aimed at making reality their dream of ridding the country of communist tyranny and bringing democratic reform to China. Their non-violent demonstration perhaps brought a glimmer of hope … until the army moved in. Although martial law was declared on May 20 that year, what caused the army to suddenly go on a killing rampage on June 4?

L: Thousands of Chinese gather on June 2, 1989, in Tiananmen Square around “The Goodness of Democracy,” demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images). R: “The Goddess of Democracy,” a 10-meter replica of the Statue of Liberty created by students from an art institute to promote the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (TOSHIO SAKAI/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Mass-Murdered by the Chinese Regime

At least 10,454 people were mass-murdered by the Chinese communist regime on Tiananmen Square, according to an unnamed source from the Chinese State Council. The figure is far greater than the “official” fatality count of 200.

On June 4, 1989, students were gunned down in droves and “mown down” by tanks. “APCs (Armored personnel carriers) then ran over bodies time and time again to make ‘pie’ and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains,” reads part of a declassified statement, which was obtained by Alan Donald, Britain’s ambassador to China in 1989.

It’s still unconfirmed how many more were massacred during and after the students’ unarmed protest.

Waving banners, high school students march in Beijing streets near Tiananmen Square on May 25, 1989, during a rally to support the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese regime. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

2. The Ringleader Is Still Alive

In addition to rolling over the students with tanks, the army fired high-explosive shells that expand on impact, also known as dum-dum bullets, (forbidden by the Geneva Convention) to kill the students in the most harm-inflicting way possible.

The question remains—what kind of a human being would order such a brutal mass murder of freedom-seeking civilians?

Former leader of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin (Feng Li/Getty Images)

Former paramount leader of the party Deng Xiaoping was impressed with Jiang Zemin’s iron-fisted proposition to use the army to crack down on the students, and promoted him from Party Chief of Shanghai to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party days before the massacre, giving him free rein to do as he liked.

Jiang Zemin, the mastermind behind the massacre, ordered the army to carry out his bloody strategy on June 4. The “gate of heavenly peace” was suddenly turned into hell on Earth.

Taken care of by others, an unidentified foreign journalist (2nd-R) is carried out from the clash site between the army and students on June 4, 1989, near Tiananmen Square. (TOMMY CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)

3. Ruthless Abuse of Power

The Tiananmen Square Massacre was just the start of Jiang’s ruthless abuse of power. He went on to commit the most heinous crimes that couldn’t bear the light of day. In the bloody wake of the massacre, Jiang became Deng’s ideal heir for the next Party Chief, a position Jiang secured in 1993.

Jiang, a Marxist hardliner and ex-senior spy for the KGB’s Far-East Bureau, had only begun to show his true colors with how he dealt with the protesting students and went on to orchestrate even bloodier campaigns. In 1999, Jiang sought to “eradicate” Falun Gong—a popular spiritual practice—after the number of people practicing it rose some 100 million, outnumbering the then 70 million Party members, according to state-run reports at the time.

Falun Gong practitioners doing the group exercise in Guangzhou, China, in 1998. (Minghui)

Under Jiang’s rule, an adroit misinformation campaign inundated China, turning public opinion against Falun Gong by subjecting the spiritual practice to extreme vilification—including the infamous Tiananmen Square “self-immolation” hoax, which successfully deceived the nation—paving the way for Jiang’s next phase: to forcibly “transform” or “eliminate” the meditators who refused to give up the practice.

In response to Jiang’s genocidal policy, believed to have caused a widespread yet unascertainable amount of state-approved killings, including forced organ harvesting, over 209,000 lawsuits have since been filed against Jiang, making him the most sued dictator in history.

Falun Gong practitioners at a rally in front of the Chinese embassy in New York City on July 3, 2015, to support the global effort to sue Jiang Zemin. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

4. Horrifying Accounts Kept Secret

A Blacklock’s Reporter obtained secret telex messages concerning horrifying accounts of what really happened on Tiananmen Square that day via access-to-information laws.

“An old woman knelt in front of soldiers pleading for students; soldiers killed her,” the Canadian embassy in Beijing reported at the time.

Blacklock’s writes: “A boy was seen trying to escape holding a woman with a 2-year old child in a stroller, and was run over by a tank”; “The tank turned around and mashed them up”; “Soldiers fired machine guns until the ammo ran out.”

An unbelievable amount of bullets were fired on civilians at Tiananmen that “they ricocheted inside nearby houses, killing many residents.”

“The embassy described the killings as ‘savage,’” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“They are now entering a period of vicious repression during which denunciations and fear of persecution will terrorize the population,” reads another cable obtained.

Chinese onlookers run away as a soldier threatens them with a gun on June 5, 1989, as tanks took position at Beijing’s key intersections next to the diplomatic compound. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

Diplomats added that some 1,000 executions took place following the massacre, but an exact figure is unconfirmed. “It was probably thought that the massacre of a few hundreds or thousands would convince the population not to pursue their protests. It seems to be working,” reads a statement by the diplomats.

The secret British cable, obtained by news website HK01, reveals more detail about the crimes of the 27 Army of Shanxi Province on the day.

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“27 Army ordered to spare no one and shot wounded SMR soldiers. Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted. A 3-year-old girl was injured but her mother was shot as she went to her aid as were six others who tried.”

“A thousand survivors were told they could escape via Zhengyi Lu but were then mown down by specially prepared M/G (machine gun) positions.”

Ailing student hunger strikers from Beijing University receive first aid treatment under a makeshift tent set up on May 17, 1989, at Tiananmen Square as students enter the 5th day of a marathon hunger strike as part of a mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

5. “June 4”: A Highly Taboo Subject in China Today

Despite Hong Kong lighting up every evening on June 4 in an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims of the massacre, Chinese mainlanders across the border are without such freedom of speech. Talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or even mentioning “June 4,” or “6.4,” could have one disappear.

In 2007, Zhang Zhongshun, a lecturer from Yantai University, showed his class a video of the massacre he obtained from an overseas website. He was subsequently jailed for three years by Laishan City Court on Feb. 28, 2008.

Tens of thousands of people hold candles during a vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2018, to mark the 29th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing. (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)

“I imagined that the worst case would just be that the university president would criticize me in front of my colleagues in a meeting. I would not have thought that the communist regime would imprison me,” Zhang told The Epoch Times in an interview after his release from the detention.

“Is it illegal even if I include a historical event into my lecture?” he asked.

A student displays a banner with one of the slogans chanted by the crowd of some 200,000 pouring into Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, in Beijing in an attempt to participate in the funeral ceremony of former Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang. His death in April triggered an unprecedented wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. The April-June 1989 movement was crushed by Chinese troops in June when army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

Who’d dare raise this for discussion in China knowing the consequences? This year marks the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Will the current Chinese leaders redress the issue and bring Jiang Zemin to justice for his litany of crimes? Only time will tell.

#tiananmen square #china #june 4

0 notes

aridara · 7 years

Text

Part 2 of my reply to @literally--hitler. To recap: I’ve asked people who defend the Nazis’ right to “free speech” -

Can you name one single group (a workplace, a political party, a website, an entire culture…) where hate speech and harassment was permitted because “FREEZE PEACH”, that did NOT quickly became overrun by bigotry, with said bigotry getting more present and more aggressive?

- L--H wrote a bullshit answer, and I’m replying to it.

Part 1 is here.

...marxists who advocate for violence against huge portions of the population get a pass.

"Stalinists". L--H meant "Stalinists".

And since bigots - especially Nazi and alt-right-leaning bigots - love to label any opposition as “cultural marxism”: no, this isn’t enough to make me hate all left-wingers.

it doesnt even do much about actual neo-nazis...

Unbelievably, L--H got one thing correct.

& only occasionally focuses on anti-sjws & alt-righters who have gotten too popular instead.

Let me guess three names of such anti-sjws and/or alt-righters that got banned for being “too popular": cultureshift, takashi0, your-uncle-dave.

By the way: the alt-right is literally steeped in and/or colludes with white supremacists, anti-semites, Neo-Nazis, Islamophobies, homophobies, white nationalists, and anti-feminists.

& yet, for all the toxic aspects of tumblr & for all we joke about what a “hellsite” it is, those people are in the minority.

I seriously boggle at this part, because L--H has just spent painting multiple groups as raging bigots that go completely unstopped, and that therefore should be opposed... and then deny it to be a problem. Like, pick one - either it’s a problem, or it isn’t.

Here's the thing: Tumblr took a long time implementing a decent reporting and blocking system; in that time, guess what happened?! The bigotry steadily increased, with bigots continuing to spread lies about, threaten and attack their targets, and driving said targets to leave the website. Even though the "report" function is still mostly useless except in the most blatant cases, the block function helped a whole fucking lot in cutting the bigotry away from its targets. Hell, just by judging by how the bigots turned from "If you don't like what I'm telling you, just ignore me" to "If you block me, you're a coward" indicates that they do know that the blocking is a tool that actually helps the victims of bigotry.

& of course thats how it works. most people arent neo-nazis or “kill all men” types. or do you think they are?

That's not what I've said. I've said that bigots, if left unchecked, tend to drive away everyone else. This isn't rocket science.

I’ve cutted out the rest of L--H’s paragraph, since it was, in my own words, "someone having sex with a strawman of their own creation”. I hope at least it was consensual.

inb4 “muh third reich”. shut up & read some actual history on the subject. the nazis didnt come to power by civil debate. they came to power because violence had been normalized as a part of politics at that point in german history.

Question: how, pray, did the bigotry of Nazis became normalized?

Answer: Because Nazis were allowed a platform DESPITE their violence; the Nazis then used said platform to normalize their violence against minorities such as Jews and the disabled, and allow it to enter the institutions.

Here, have a couple of articles on the matter.

now, just to put what this assclown is asking for in perspective, lets take a look at some of the things that have been called “hate speech” recently, since hes already pulled the “muh slippery slope dont real” argument:

criticizing of the actions of a protest movement (womens march, blm, antifa)-

This tidbit was accompained by pictures of a couple of tweets from “Jon Jafari”, where said Jon literally referred to multiple pacific mass protests of an U.S. President as an "insurrection". Not "protest", "insurrection".

Note that L--H seems to believe that declaring the women’s march - which was absolutely pacific (mostly because the police has more problems justifying violence against a group mostly composed by white women, than justifying violence against a group mostly composed by black people) - to be an “insurrection” is absolutely A-OK. That confirms it: bigots don’t take offense to oppressed people protesting their oppression in the wrong way. They take offense to oppressed people protesting their oppression in any way, including “Could you please not do that?”.

Not to mention that it doesn't matter that, regardless of the fact that Trumaraparaparapompappah was democratically elected*, he still is a masssively racist and bigoted individual with zero self-control towards any attack to his ego. (*: Despite the fact that he lost the popolar vote by the biggest amount in history.)

criticizing a large, powerful political movement (feminism)-

This was accompained by a slice of an article that called out Sargon of Akkad for his relation with the Alt-Right. Feminism isn’t mentioned anywhere in said slice.

The "alt-right" is steeped in neo-Nazism. Hell, its founder Richard Spencer believes that White people need to take back America via "peaceful ethnic cleansing*" and once published uncritically an essay named "Is Black Genocide Right?"**, among other things. (*: There has never been a “peaceful” ethnic cleansing in history.) (**: According to said essay, the genocide of black people does have positive points.)

As for Sargon of Akkad, despite having some genuinely progressive and/or liberal positions, also pulled shit like claiming that racism and sexism do not exist in the West despite any evidence of the contrary, or supporting the harassment campaign GamerGate.

numerous political speeches on college campuses, including by a speaker who has specifically denounced white nationalism

This specifically refers to Milo Yiannopolous, who is a fucking transphobe who tried to appease to neo-Nazis multiple times. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, but claims to not be a duck, it's still a fucking duck.

a man wearing a medal his father was awarded for resisting soviet occupation of hungary

So, I've actually checked this one, and apparently people assumed that Gorka was a Nazi sympathizer on the basis of the following:

The medal is the Order of Vitéz, or Order of the Valiant. During the WW2 period, there had been a schism in the Order, with some members opposing the Nazis and others collaboring with them.

Gorka is a far-right-leaning Islamophobe.

He explicitly stated that he and the Trump staff will keep using the "fake news" accusation - regardless of whether those news are actually false or not - until the media stops attacking Trump.

offensive jokes, or more accurately, jokes that someone took offense to, since taking offense is a choice-

This coming from someone who takes offense at "down with cis". Nah, dipshit, if the audience doesn't laugh, it's because you made a shitty joke.

But anyway, this tidbit in particular is about Disney deciding to sever ties with PewDiePie after he made a video where he paid two unsuspecting guys to make a "Death to All Jews" "joke". Because apparently, private companies have no right to decide "Nah, we don't want to do this anymore" even if they have no legal obligation to actually "do this". </sarcasm> Newsflash: "right to free speech" is not "right to force a private person/company to give you their platform".

having a livestream with the wrong sort of person

I honestly have no idea what L--H is talking about, mostly because they do a fucking shitty job at gathering sources. But given the levels of honesty so far, I guess it was something along the lines of "X had a livestream with Y who is an asshole; people pointed Y's assholery to X; X doesn't care".

actually enforcing the current united states immigration laws

I'm counting this as a double lie. First lie: Trump didn't enforce the current US laws, he made new laws on top of the old ones (which, I remind you, are already one of the strictest immigration laws in the entire world). Second lie: L--H is assuming that those laws were reasonable. They weren’t - those laws were massively bullshit* and have been rightfully declared uncostitutional.

*: Some examples of said bullshit: If you were already in the system and asking for a visa or a green card, but didn't get it yet, you're fucked. If you got a visa/green card, but no US citizenship yet, you're fucked. If you had a double citizenship where at least one country is one of the banned ones, you're still fucked. It doesn't matter if you never ever saw that banned country.

supporting the current president of the united states

Here's the thing: Trump is racist, sexist, and overly bigoted. That was evident well before the election, and was made abundantly clear during the electoral race. Which means that anyone who willingly voted for Trump belongs to one of these categories:

Knew about Trump's bigotry, and thought it was a point in his favor. These voters were bigots.

Knew about Trump's bigotry, and thought it was a point against him, but still voted for him because of the other stuff he promised. These voters were willing to ignore blatant bigotry in order to get a President that they liked.

Knew about Trump's bigotry, but thought that he only did so because “he only does that to convince people to vote for him”. These voters were willing to vote for someone who thought being a blatant bigot was justified. Also, these voters had no idea whatsoever what Trump's "real" policies were. If you couldn't trust Trump when he said bigoted things because "he only said that so that people will vote him", then you couldn't trust Trump when he said "reasonable" things, because he might've done that solely so that people would've voted him.

Didn’t know about Trump’s bigotry, despite it being absolutely evident and documented. These voters were massively ignorant.

sharing pictures of a cartoon frog

This ones refers to Pepe le Frog. Specifically, it refers to when Wendy’s reblogged a Pepe meme without realizing it was connected to the Alt-Right. It almost certainly wasn’t done because Wendy’s is neo-Nazi, but sure as heck their staff didn’t bother to learn about the meme.

Fun fact: that the Pepe le Frog meme is now absolutely connected to alt-right movements is not up to debate.

drinking milk

How niceexpected of L--H to not give any context to whatever the fuck they're saying. Unfortunately for L--H, I am not nice to bigots, therefore I’ve decided to give said context:

Some white supremacists think white ethnic identity has a geographic, historical correlation with the body's tolerance for milk — specifically, the production of the lactase enzyme that allows humans to break down lactose. On 4chan, the internet's hate speech hit factory, one anonymous poster laid this thesis out using the following graphic from a study in Nature, showing hotspots of where certain populations have higher milk tolerances. The discussion thread also contained references to seemingly benign academic studies of "Lactose tolerance in a Slavic population," conversations about whether modern industry has tainted the purity of milk, and several milk-based poems about white pride.

There are numerous threads where white supremacy claims milk-drinking as a new staple of ethnic purity. Source: 4chan

When the brigade of trolls at the LaBeouf installation were accused on camera of racism by Paperboy Prince, a famous Washington Wizards fan and entertainer who has since become a top target of 4chan derision, they claimed it was actually a stance against the "vegan agenda." Judging from the eugenicist rhetoric across online hate speech communities like 4chan and 8chan, it appears that the "vegan agenda" is a potential proxy term for conspiracy theories about a globalist Jewish agenda. But given the sheer mass of alt-right accounts spewing out calls of "Down with the vegan agenda," it could refer to any number of right-wing targets. The whole milk-chugging, anti-vegan narrative is complicated by a number of factors, not least of which being that Adolf Hitler was possibly vegetarian for a short time, or that there are many places in Africa where milk is a dietary staple. Then again, white racial purity is a fragile pseudo-science, so trying to find a sound explanation is a tall order anyway.

...& if you think no journal out there will publish an article about how a famous person is sending secret white supremacist messages by drinking milk because that famous person said something they disagreed with, or because it was a slow news day, you clearly havent been paying attention. not being interested in a crappy looking remake made you a sexist last year.

Not liking a remake solely because there are now women in the main roles does make you a misogynist. Deal with it.

making a video sarcastically depicting yourself as a nazi to mock the fact that people keep calling you a nazi

No, people called out PewDiePie because he thought that making Holocaust jokes was funny. By the way: do you think the Holocaust to be funny?

...and then we have this gem:

[A snippet of an image that states "Apologies can camouflage messages that may still be received and celebrated by hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center says."]

that just says it all. apologies are hate. war is peace. freedom is slavery. ignorance is strength.

Fun fact: there is no trace of that quote from the original source (supposedly, the SPLC). Which means that is quite likely that quote was completely made up, and L--H believed it to be a real thing that the SPLC said. Congratulations.

I’ve cutted out the last paragraph, which can be summed up with "Insults, insults, insults, and a drawn picture of a vomiting girl for some reason".

#debunking a lot of bullshit #antifeminism #racism #tw neo-nazism

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theliberaltony · 4 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Gun sales were so slow earlier this year that in February, The New York Times ran a piece on how some gun manufacturers were looking to rebrand to make up for the “Trump slump.”

But then the pandemic hit. And on Friday, March 13, when President Trump declared a national emergency, the number of background checks went through the roof, according to the FBI system that vets gun buyers.

In March, the FBI received almost 1.5 million requests for background checks, according to data the bureau released to FiveThirtyEight in response to a public records request. On Friday, March 20 alone, 104,084 background check requests were sent to the bureau; according to a slightly different measure that includes checks run by state systems, that day saw the highest daily number of background checks on record.1 In fact, by that broader measure, five of the gun background check system’s 10 busiest days were in March 2020. While March is usually a busy month for background checks, it was off the charts this year.

But the number of background checks didn’t just go up. As you can see in the chart below, as the number of background checks sent to the FBI rose, so did the percentage that were delayed more than three business days — a critical deadline after which federal law allows dealers to legally sell a gun without a completed background check.

This is significant because it means that it may have been easier for guns to get into the hands of people who cannot legally own them.

The danger here isn’t theoretical. Dylann Roof was able to buy the gun he used to kill nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 because of this loophole. Roof had a record for drug possession that meant he couldn’t legally own a gun, but after the three-day period passed, the gun dealer sold him a gun anyway.

To be sure, these numbers aren’t a perfect portrait of gun sales: They don’t include data from 20 states that process some or all of their background checks themselves rather than through the FBI. And not every background check represents a gun sale — many checks are run when people apply for gun permits, when states check on the status of gun permit holders, or for other purposes. A single background check can also represent multiple gun sales.

[Related: Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We’re Headed — And Why They Disagree]

We also don’t know how many background checks from March the FBI never completed. When a background check drags on for 88 days, the bureau stops researching the potential buyer and purges the background check request from its systems to comply with federal regulations. The bureau hasn’t yet released data on purged requests made in March.

We do know that the bureau never completes the overwhelming majority of background checks that take longer than three business days. For instance, 79 percent of such checks were never completed in 2019. This year, it purged over 80 percent of such checks from January and 78 percent from February.

Still, Jurgen Brauer, chief economist at Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting, and other experts agree that the spike in background checks in March represented a real surge in retail gun sales. For instance, Brauer’s consulting firm analysed FBI data and found that retail gun sales drove the surge in March, along with a second surge in June that was likely tied to Black Lives Matter protests. In total, the firm estimated that gun sales rose year-over-year by 85 percent in March and 145 percent in June.

And a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program compared FBI data on gun background checks to gun violence data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, finding a nearly 8 percent increase in gun violence over expected levels from March through May 2020. This study hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, but if it’s accurate, that’s 776 additional fatal and nonfatal injuries, not including suicides and accidents.

[Related: How Americans View The Coronavirus Crisis And Trump’s Response]

This surge in gun sales during the pandemic has meant that an already brittle background check system is getting overloaded, causing massive delays, according to Brauer. He compared background checks to a drainage system that backs up during a big storm. “There’s a massive flow of rainwater, and the systems can’t handle it,” he said.

The FBI, however, disputed that characterization in a statement to FiveThirtyEight.

Holly Morris, a spokesperson for the bureau, said the agency hasn’t found a relationship between the rise in the share of delayed background checks and the increased volume of requests. “The influx in the percentage of delayed transactions and any extended processing times can be attributed to a number of variables,” Morris wrote via email, adding that staffing levels for the background check system have remained the same throughout the pandemic.

There are signs that the influx in gun sales might not be slowing anytime soon. The initial spikes in gun sales in March lined up closely with events related to the pandemic, including Feb. 26, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first confirmed that the virus was spreading within the U.S. and not just being brought back by travelers, and Trump’s national emergency declaration on March 13. But as the pandemic has worn on, the reasoning driving the spike in gun sales has changed, too. By the time gun sales soared even higher in June, research suggests it was no longer the coronavirus on buyers’ minds but the protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]

Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College compared the FBI’s state-by-state background check data with data on Google searches for the N-word to see if states with more searches for the racist slur saw a larger increase in gun sales. They found what Levine described as a “modest correlation” in June, suggesting that at least some of those sales were driven by concerns over Black Lives Matter protests.

“As the pandemic settled down, gun sales settled down too, until it got to June,” Levine said in an interview. “In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, there was another very dramatic spike.”

It’s hard to know how gun sales in the U.S. will continue to progress, as we don’t yet have data for July. The data released to FiveThirtyEight did not include June, but less-detailed data the FBI published online shows that last month the agency ran more background checks than any other month on record. And, of course, sales rose in 2016 in part over fears that Hillary Clinton would take the White House and impose new gun regulations, so with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in the polls, another surge in gun sales may not be far behind. Not to mention that another surge in coronavirus cases could again drive a spike in sales like the one we saw in March.

Whatever happens, more gun sales will likely mean more delays — potentially putting guns into the hands of people who can’t legally own one.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Joshua Eaton

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topsolarpanels · 7 years

Text

It’s Time To Call Out The Anti-Science Left

Its fair to say that plenty of politicians and organizations on the right or far-right are considered to be almost inherently anti-scientific. Facts dont mean as much as feelings to people like Trump or enormous corporations like ExxonMobil, who see issues like climate change and environmentalism as inconveniences at best and global conspiracies at worst. This is well-known, and their avoidance of scientific facts and evidence is often called out by the media.

However, groups and individuals who generally represent “the left” can be just as anti-science. Not only are their views sometimes just as erroneous as their counterparts on the other side of the fencing, but they can also be just as dangerous if enough people listen without pausing to topic them.

Vox Populi

Greenpeace is a perfect example of this. Revered by plenty of left-leaning people 2.8 million, according to their own website this organizations wide-reaching mission is certainly a noble one, in that it wishes to prevent environmental degradation and mitigate climate change, whatever it takes. Many agree, and to its supporters, this group represents the voice of the people.

Yet Greenpeace adherents despise nuclear power, which happens to be a powerful weapon in thefight against climate change. They( correctly) point to the fact that interred garbage is a problem, but their objectivity, and sense of view, seems to stop there.

While nuclear power is considerably more risky than the industry will actually admit, our opposition to new nuclear is predicated upon the opportunity costs involved , not upon anxiety, Dr Paul Johnston, the principal scientist of Greenpeace’s Science Unit at the University of Exeter, told IFLScience.

–

A quick look at Greenpeaces website on nuclear power brings up an ominous flag telling: “Its time to end this nuclear nightmare”, with a direct including references to Fukushima. This certainly seems quite fear-inducing, but does nuclear power deserve it?

First of all, we are now five years on from the Fukushima event, and there has not been a statistically significant increase in cancer rates in the region. Significantly, this to be the 3rd nuclear incident in human history, with only Chernobyl a result of poor oversight and lazy, unregulated construction being a disaster that truly shook the world.

In over 16, 000 cumulative years of commercial nuclear power, less than a hundred or so have died from related radiation sickness. Compare this to the tens of millions of people that succumb every year from fossil fuel-based pollution, and add that to the millions more that succumb as an indirect result of fossil fuel-driven climate change, and it is clear that the threat of nuclear power is massively overstated.

A Costly Endeavor

Johnston also pointed out that nuclear power is often expensive compared to fossil fuel plants. This is true, but nuclear power could be made more competitive with a nationwide carbon tax. Besides, simply because something is expensive that doesnt make it bad a sentiment any space agency would agree with.

Johnston added that every one of those billions is a dollar not spent on sources that will deliver energy within the very short time frame required to stop catastrophic climate change. The word sources in this case refers to renewables.

They may be expensive, but without them, the world would rely far more on fossil fuel power plant. hxdyl/ Shutterstock

Solar power and wind power are the only two major renewable power sources that every country can practically adopt, and these never offer a constant source of energy. Hydropower and geothermal heat is only available to certain nations. Even then, this energy cannot be stored in the long term unlike nuclear power, whose fuel can wait around ready to be used when needed.

Importantly, renewable power alone cannot sustain the entire planet. Theoretically, it could, of course a Sahara desert even partly contained within solar panel would technically be enough but this is idealism without pragmatism.

Nuclear power has a very low carbon footprint. A comprehensive study in 2008 found that modern nuclear power plants have a footprint 14.5 times lower than that of coal-fired plants and 6.7 times lower than natural gas-fired plants. A world operating on nuclear and renewable power would create magnitudes less carbon dioxide than the one “were living in” right now.

Johnston said he isnt aware of any studies suggesting that nuclear power should be combined with renewables, but there is plenty of evidence out there to be found. Many experts commenting on the groundbreaking Paris agreement have alsoconcluded that in order to meet the modest targets, nuclear power is essential.

Shades of Green

Green political parties are not much better in this regard.

The US, for example, has its own Green Party. Its headed by Dr Jill Stein, who is a candidate for the US presidency. Although her viewpoints can seem appealing to her base of left-wing supporters, a closer look reveals that she is actually exceedingly unscientific in her approach.

Her party wishes to turn the US into a 100 percentage renewable nation by 2030, something that practically speaking, is highly unfeasible. Steins party also has a distinctly anti-nuclear stance a position shared by the UK Green Party, the Australian Greens, and similar groups from many other countries. Without nuclear power, climate change will march on.

Incidentally, Stein also believes thatWi-Fi is harmful to peoples health, which all evidence concludes that it is not. On this issue, she actually disagrees with her own manifesto, which calls for universal access to the Internet. A recent Reddit AMA revealed that she is still, at the least, ambivalent about Wi-Fi.

–

Stein has also employed some concerning speech regarding vaccinations in the past, and her party only just this year removed its support of teaching and funding homeopathy from its manifesto. Worrying signs indeed.

More broadly, Stein wishes to influence scientific research policy by endlessly recognise the opinions of the public, which could very easily let anti-scientific positions seep into the discourse. Americans fear clowns more than climate change, so if Stein stages a revolution in 2016, expect anti-clown research to get a huge cash injection.

Comedian John Oliver lately picked apart, among other things, Steins scientifically dubious viewpoints on national television. Taking that fateful step from cynicism into outright conspiracy hypothesi madness, she declared Oliver a member of a conspiracy linked to none other than Hillary Clinton.

GMOs

And then, theres genetically modified organisms( GMOs ).

GMO harvests are mainly designed to become resistant to diseases, harsh surroundings, and to become unreliant on potentially toxic pesticides. As you are probably aware, they have been met with unyielding opposition from many green parties and groups, including Stein.

The Green Party’s official stance is to place a moratorium on GMOs. If this was to happen, the supply of life-saving insulin which happens to be mostly stimulated use GMO techniques would collapse.

Greenpeace is not opposed to biotechnology nor the use of GMOs in contained surroundings, Johnston told IFLScience. We remain opposed to releases of[ GMO] crops to the wider surrounding. This implies, quite oddly, that they should never leave the laboratory, which really is the end game of the research.

Lets are aware of: There is overwhelming scientific evidence that GMO harvests, which mostly consist of maize and soybean, are safe for human consumption. A major report by the US National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine released simply this year was cited by Johnston to conclude that there is no consensus on the safety and effectiveness of GMO harvests, but a reading of such studies shows that virtually the exact opposite is true.

It points out that, with some minor exceptions, GMO harvests have generally had favorable economic outcomes for producers , noting that harvests with insect-resistant genes decreased yield losses and the use of insecticides on small and big farms with respect to non-GMO varieties.

–

After analyse a plethora of experimental studies and long-term data on livestock and human health, the committee procured no substantiated evidence that foods from GE harvests were less safe than foods from non-GE crops.

When it comes to GMOs, many green politicians are worried about big, opaque conglomerates like Monsanto owning too much of the worlds food supply. Although this type of monopoly is a legitimate fear as is their overuse of potentially harmful pesticides it does not attain GMOs themselves dangerous.

Regardless, groups like Steins and Greenpeace strongly adhere to the idea that they are. They are not teaching people to be skeptical about GMOs, but rather advocating outright opposition against the technology regardless of the available evidence.

Life-Threatening Views

GMO harvests are sometimes specifically manufactured to save lives. Golden Rice a project money and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an excellent example of this. It isa variety of the common crop that has more vitamin A in it that usual.

Its designed to be grown in parts of the world where populations suffer from major inadequacies in it. At best, they go blind; at worst, they succumb and 2million a year do.

Although more testing is involved, Golden Rice has shown promise in fixing this problem effectively and quickly. Greenpeace nevertheless protest it without scientific reason to do so, potentially imperiling millions of lives every year. Over 100 Nobel laureates have asked them to stop spreading what they consider to be misinformation about the subject, but to no avail.

As part of an exclusive interview with IFLScience, Bill Gates noted that this type of protest will harm less developed countries the most.

The fact that some rich countries arent going to take advantage of more productive or more nutritious food, thats not any kind of problem at all, he said. What I would view as problematic is imposing that position on countries where the benefits are quite dramatic in terms of avoiding crop diseases that lead to starvation, or growing harvests that improve nutrition and offer vitamin A to people.

Remember: There is nothing wrong with being a skeptic, and environmentalism is a cause worth fighting for, but you need to arm yourself with the correct information before you head out to combat. Otherwise, you could be perpetuating a great damage. Do your research and check your sources.

You dont always have to be on the right of the political spectrum to be wrong on the science.

Golden Rice has the potential to be a life-saving game-changer of a crop. Aireo/ Shutterstock

The post It’s Time To Call Out The Anti-Science Left appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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I love Trump. Hes doing what he said. Presidents supporters keep the faith

Womens Marches and widespread criticism of the Muslim ban have not dented the loyalty of Trump voters

Cast-iron hooks, childrens vinyl records, classic food packages, tobacco baskets, vintage-style olive buckets and a rotary-dial telephone fill the shelves at James and Jess House of Goods. The antiques store opened two years ago, styling itself as rustic, hipster, chic with a twee strapline: Mostly old with a little new.

If the House of Goods was in Washington DC, it would be a decent demographic bet that its owners voted for Hillary Clinton. But it is 75 miles away in Washington County, which Donald Trump won handily. And while the capital city has been roiled by protests since Trump moved into the White House, from where James and Jess are sitting he is doing just fine.

I love Trump, James Zawatski said. I give him credit for doing what he said he was going to do; a lot of politicians dont. Im 47 and I never voted in my life but I did this year. We needed someone with a set of balls to do what needs to be done. Im tired of those liberals.

Trumps asteroid-like impact on Washington DC has caused bewilderment, consternation, disorientation, puzzlement and anger. Democratic politicians have been knocked off balance by a brash adversary while Republicans are struggling to adapt to an unpredictable ally. The media have rained criticism. Residents of DC where Clinton beat Trump by 90.9% of the vote to 4.1% express their mortification and fears. And last months Womens March on the capital was a dramatic statement of anti-Trump resistance.

But across the frontline of Americas increasingly tribal politics in Hagerstown, Washington County, Maryland, the perspective is turned on its head. Whereas critics see Trumps travel bans as un-American and sowing chaos at airports, supporters see him as keeping them safe; where critics see him blowing up foreign policy as he spars with Australia and slaps sanctions on Iran, supporters see him getting tough; where critics see him firing the acting attorney general and trampling on the constitution, supporters see him boldly smashing the old order. And where activists protest, columnists fulminate and millions recoil in fear of a world spinning towards catastrophe, supporters dismiss them as liberal cry babies and praise Trump as the first politician to keep his campaign promises. They see him not as a rampaging rhinoceros but a straight-talking strongman.

His plan to build a wall on the US-Mexico border is one example of this worldview complementarity. I love immigrants, I love Mexicans, but theres a way to do it, theres a procedure, said Zawatski, himself descended from Italian immigrants. These people come and theyre entitled to more than me whos busting his ass seven days a week. Were a great country but were being taken advantage of.

Personally I wouldnt spend money on the wall. Id just shoot them as they come over. Then they wouldnt come.

Zawatski had little sympathy with the hundreds of thousands who took part in the Womens Marches, many of whom wore pink pussy hats and carried placards condemning Trump over his past boast about feeling able to grab women by the pussy. He does not merely turn a blind eye to Trumps misogyny but condones it: What man never grabbed a womans pussy? What man doesnt talk in the locker room about what he did to a woman the night before? Women do that too. Were all human. His wife, Jess, 35, agreed: Its a guy thing. I know James talks like that among guys. So I dont hold it against Trump.

The Womens March, she added, was the stupidest thing ever because some were saying theyre being treated unequally. Women can stand up and go after what they want. Men arent standing in the way.

James Zawatski in his shop. Photograph: Chet Strange for the Observer

As Zawatski, wearing tattoos on his arms and a T-shirt with the legend Tattooed and employed, spoke to the Observer, a man stole a decorative sphere off its stand (total price $79) from the pavement outside the store. Zawatski spotted him and raced outside, prompting the man to surrender the object without acrimony.

Technically this is the hood, he remarked. There are a lot of barber shops here that are not barber shops, if you know what I mean. Comparing himself to Trump, he added: I tell the police chief, Do your job. Just do it.

Hagerstown has a drugs problem and several closed-down shops and cafes stand empty. But it challenges and scrambles perceptions of the map seen as crucial to Trumps victory. It is neither the Republican-voting deep south nor the pivotal rust belt portrayed in his dark and divisive inaugural address as containing rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones under the rubric American carnage.

On the contrary, it sits in Maryland, which Clinton won with more than 60% of the vote. It is an almost pretty city of church spires and historic buildings, boasting a fine art museum, biking and hiking trails, theatres and a tourism office, replete with leaflets about the areas civil war heritage and Hagerstowns origins involving an 18th-century German immigrant. On Thursday, students could be seen pouring out of an arts school after class.

Washington Countys median household income is $56,477 (45,000), above average for the nation but well below the state average of $74,149. The county voted 64% for Trump, 31.6% for Clinton. It is a red county in a blue state or, as Clinton supporter Al Steinbach, a 64-year-old sales rep, vividly put it: I call Maryland the vagina map: right down the centre is blue; left and right is red. Welcome to divided America.

Steinbach, who is literally afraid of what Trump might do, reads the Washington Post daily and listens to National Public Radio. When I turn to Fox News and see what the other side are saying, Im appalled by the extreme side they are on.

In the past, it has been argued, communities would be bound together by local newspapers and radio stations, establishing at least some common ground; now, in the age of fragmented digital media, everyone with a phone is an island. Last Thursday, Anthony Kline, 38, a labourer, sat in a no-frills bar watching a new Facebook video made by a bearded, muscular man who claimed to be in Iraq.

The man, called Steven Gern, said he had asked local Iraqis what would happen if he took a walk in town and they had replied he would be snatched, tortured and beheaded on video. This being so, he claimed, why should he let Iraqis into his country? Kline, gripping the phone in his tattooed hand, said: This is as real as it gets.

Trump recently told the CIA that he is in a running war with the media. Kline, who awards the president eight marks out of 10 so far, said: Mainstream media news is definitely partial. They put on what they want you to hear or think. Most people are not educated enough and they take things at face value.

The chorus of liberal outrage that greets Trump daily not only falls on deaf ears among his supporters but appears to harden their view that he is taking on a privileged, self-centred elite. Reflecting on the Womens March that followed inauguration day, Kline said: Youve got a lot of mommys-liberal-baby snowflakes that are used to having their way. Its like your spoiled kid not used to being told no. Once you tell them no, they dont know how to react.

Across town, Marlon Michael, 50, still has a Trump make America great again banner outside his home, part of a duplex with vinyl walls and flagpole with the stars and stripes. The country was going downhill and the rest of the world didnt respect us any more, he said. Trump vowed to bring all that back just like the old days. And the verdict so far? Michaels answer would be unthinkable in swaths of Manhattan: Hes doing wonderful. Hes doing everything he said hes going to do and you cant ask for more than that from a politician.

Democrats, activists and media commentators have denounced Trumps executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, both for its bungled execution and its sinister intent. Chuck Schumer, Democratic minority leader in the Senate, said: There are tears running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight. Even Republican loyalists quailed.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found about 31% of people said the ban made them feel more safe, while 26% felt less safe. Another 33% said it would not make any difference and the rest said they did not know. But Trump voters like Michael, a former US marine who works in home construction, give it a full-throated endorsement. It should have been done eight or 12 years ago, or after 9/11, he said. For the past eight years weve had a president that was a little lighthearted towards the Muslims. We lock our doors so people dont create havoc in our homes; its the same with America. Were shutting our borders so people dont create havoc.

Christianne Smith in a Hagerstown coffee shop. Photograph: Chet Strange for the Observer

Michael, too, watches Fox News CNN has too much false bullshit thats not true and Trump calls them out on it and has little but contempt for the Womens March. Fucking stupid. For what? What more privileges do you want? Women have equal rights. Theyll still be fighting for it till the end of time. Wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt with an image of fingers in an up yours sign, Michael gives Trump nine out of 10. My only complaint is that I wish he would stay off Twitter.

The election demonstrated that, despite Barack Obamas plea otherwise, there are blue states and red states in America. But there are also blue and red counties. One of the defining splits in the election was between voters with a college degree and those without: according to the FiveThirtyEight website, Clinton improved on Obamas 2012 performance in 48 of the countrys 50 most well educated counties, but lost ground relative to Obama in 47 of the 50 least educated counties critical to her defeat.

Trumps debut in the White House has done little to heal the rift, with each side viewing his policies, pronouncements and antics through a rival prism. Sitting in a coffee shop in Hagerstown, Christianne Smith, 20, an African American student, gave him a score of two out of 10. Hes unfit, inexperienced, he said. He doesnt have the best interests of the people in America. I dont understand how he became president. Maybe its because I didnt vote. So its my fault.