EMMYdiocracy

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:54:52 -0700

“

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!— An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

”

- William Owen, Dulce et Decorum est, a poem about seeing a fellow soldier die after exposure to mustard gas (via thatmogarguy)

anarcho-queer: Obama Deports More Immigrants Than Any Other...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:48:19 -0700

anarcho-queer:

Obama Deports More Immigrants Than Any Other President In History

The statistics don’t lie: Barack Obama has become the deportation president.

The number of people thrown out of the U.S. for lacking proper immigration documentation started growing from the late 1990s through the 2000s, but it hit a peak during the Obama years. As the New York Times reported:

In four years, Mr. Obama’s administration has deported as many illegal immigrants as the administration of George W. Bush did in his two terms, largely by embracing, expanding and refining Bush-era programs to find people and send them ~~home~~ back. By the end of this year, deportations under Mr. Obama are on track to reach two million, or nearly the same number of deportations in the United States from 1892 to 1997.

The Obama White House defends its record, claiming that rather than a general crackdown, the Department of Homeland Security under Obama has just been highly successful in making “[deportation] of criminal aliens the top priority,” according to the Times. The message is that the federal government is focused on getting rid of the “bad guys.”

In fact, immigrant rights activists point to studies showing that the government is still deporting huge numbers of people whose only “crime” was to enter the country without documentation. Even among deportees with a criminal record, the offense was minor in many cases. In a report last year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency admitted that over one-quarter of “criminal immigrants” deported from the U.S. in fiscal year 2011 had been convicted of traffic violations.

But the case of Santos Reyes shows why the Obama’s administration deportation injustices extend even to immigrants with felony convictions.

Santos was finally freed from prison this year after spending 15 years behind bars as a victim of California’s draconian “three strikes and you’re out” law. He was convicted of a minor and completely nonviolent offense—taking a California drivers’ license test in the name of his cousin to help him get a license—but because he already had two felony convictions, he got a 26-years-to-life sentence.

This year, Santos finally won his long struggle against the cruel three-strikes sentencing law and was ordered released. But he then suffered another injustice—on March 28, ICE agents were waiting for him at the prison when he was released, to deport him to Mexico immediately because he was undocumented.

This society owes Santos the many years he spent unjustly imprisoned. Instead, the federal government is kicking him out of the country.

"When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he “ought to..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:47:30 -0700

“When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.” As the resistance swelled, he announced: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. At other times, he said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.”

- Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill (via foucaultthehaters)