"'Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,' said a Honduran immigrant who was sent to the facility when he was 15 years old. 'Strapped me down all the way, from your feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move. . . . They have total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the bag on.'
In addition to the children’s first-hand, translated accounts in court filings, a former child-development specialist who worked inside the facility independently told The Associated Press this week that she saw kids there with bruises and broken bones they blamed on guards. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the children’s cases.
In court filings, lawyers for the detention facility have denied all allegations of physical abuse."
"So Kim leaves Singapore having gained much of the international legitimacy the dynastic dictatorship has sought for decades. But the gifts from Trump did not end there. He also announced an end to US military exercises in the Korean peninsula – the 'war games' which he said were costly and, deploying language Pyongyang itself might have used, “very provocative”. Trump also hinted at an eventual withdrawal of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the Korean peninsula.
And what did Kim give Trump in return for this bulging bag of goodies? The key concession, the one Trump repeatedly invoked, was a promise of 'complete denuclearisation'. Trump held this aloft as if it were a North Korean commitment to dismantle its arsenal, with work beginning right away. To be sure, such a commitment would be a major prize, one that would merit all the congratulation a beaming Trump was heaping on himself. But this is where you need to look at the small print.
First, the text itself says merely: 'The DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.' Kim has promised not 'complete denuclearisation' but simply 'to work toward' that end. Negotiators the world over know is the fudging language you use when you’ve extracted something less than a real commitment. Kim has offered only an aspiration, with no deadline or timetable, not a concrete plan."
It didn't take a genius to see this coming -- KJU got everything, Trump got a photo-op, and the long terms prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula are no different than they were last week. Given how Trump is effectively writing South Korea and Japan out of further negotiations (another huge win for Kim), they may be far worse.
"Finding a partner in Otari, a village in Nagano prefecture in Japan’s northern Alps known for its dramatic scenery and some of the best skiing in the country, is proving a thankless task for Kobayashi and his friends.
Its population is about a third of what it was in the 1950s; in the past decade, the number of residents has fallen from 3,734 to 2,795, including fewer than 180 children of primary and middle school age.
According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, its population will fall to just over 900 by 2060 if current demographic trends persist. As of last March, just 275 men and 218 women in their 20s and 30s lived in Otari.
Young women are more likely to leave in search of jobs, and perhaps a partner, while the men are expected to stay and inherit family farms and businesses, leaving them with little prospect of marrying and having children."
The article says very little about immigration, which is really the only serious solution for either country.
Anthony Braxton and the Fred Simmons Trio, 9 Standards (Quartet) 1993
It's make-up week, so we're reviewing for next week's final exam. It's a pretty easy week for me, since we're just going over old material, doing a very brief reflection activity, then I'll bribe my students to raise their hands on a few worksheets with choco-pies (make that banana-choco-pies because that's how I roll).
Next week my college classes will be finished but I'll have to grade tests, which is no fun. But it does mean the beginning of summer vacation, and buying a ticket to visit home in August.
Meanwhile I guess Trump declared war on Canada or some such. Really bodes well for him dealing with perhaps the knottiest foreign policy situation in the world today re: North Korea.
Because he is a great big whiny asshole, obviously.
RIP Tony Bourdain. I loved your books. You seemed like a mensch who was kind of a dick at times, but hey, that's life. I'm sorry you left so soon though.
I'm in the office on a Friday after teaching a bunch of make-up classes. This semester has had a ton of random mid-week holidays and has pretty much turned my schedule into a mess.
I'm finally done for the day, but my office air-conditioner is better than the one I have at home.
My college is having it's Spring Festival yesterday and today. I'll probably go by tonight to see some music and cop some free beers from my boss. I'll avoid getting shit-faced with / in front of my students, but this being Korea that would be perfectly acceptable.
Also, the graphic design work here is pretty nifty.
"The more complicated answer involves the media’s drive to 'humanize' and explain those who see Trump as their long-awaited salvation. Like the endless journalistic forays into the Rust Belt to profile Trumpers with shuttered steel mills as a photo backdrop, the Roseanne reboot intended to show what the media kept calling the 'white working class' sympathetically. The latest iteration of Roseanne Conner would demonstrate that the real-life people her character represents are not racist caricatures. This is, after all, what we would like to think about our fellow Americans—that we have differences, but we can still come together as one nation. Halfway through the first episode of the new season, Roseanne Conner and her Jill Stein–voting sister Jackie Harris, played by Laurie Metcalf, have already reconciled after an argument about Trump, hugging out their political differences.
But so often the actual Trump supporters ruin that narrative. Journalists and researchers are now finding that the veneer of 'economic anxiety' among Trump supporters is built on a foundation of hate. Fans of Trump say little about the president’s Gilded Age economic policies, but boy do they fume over kneeling NFL players. And because this racism, xenophobia, and paranoia is not what we want to find, we go looking again and again until we find an answer that is more comforting."
Which is to say, there's something peculiar about an American press corps that is unwilling to judge a president, a political party, and the supporters of both by what they actually say, think, and do.
