US News

Brian Gibbs lost his job as a national park ranger on Friday.

He was working as an environmental educator at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa. It was his "dream job," he wrote in a widely shared post on Facebook. The monument is the site of mounds made of earth, built by ancient Native Americans, that form shapes of animals.

The 41-year-old father learned of his termination on Valentine's Day. "I am absolutely heartbroken and completely devastated," he wrote.

Gibbs is one of about 1,000 National Park Service employees who were fired this past week. Parks advocates say the layoffs could leave national parks understaffed going into a busy spring break.

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The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a nonpartisan advocacy group for the country's national parks system, called the downsizing "reckless" and a decision that could have "serious public safety and health consequences" — for example, if the staff losses include wastewater treatment operators.

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But he said the public will ultimately be the ones who will lose the most from these layoffs — costing them "education and awareness and value of our public spaces that are so part of the democratic idea."

(Mirror.)

Representing millions of Americans, the religious groups argued that Donald Trump’s orders rescinding protections from raids in schools and religious institutions would force them “to violate their religious duty to serve and protect their immigrant neighbors.” This comes on the heels of another lawsuit last week by five Quaker congregations on similar grounds.

This latest suit has been brought by a coalition of Jewish and Christian congregations, who according to their lawyer “have come together to file this suit because their scripture, teaching, and traditions offer irrefutable unanimity on their religious obligation to embrace and serve the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status.”

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Middle East Eye reports on the current U.S. régime’s plan to create capacity to house 30,000 deportees at Guantanamo Bay, the infamous product of American empire-building and colonialism.

In spite of officials’ insistence that this would be “temporary” lodging for especially dangerous detainees, ProPublica’s research indicates that of the few detainees whose names we know, exactly none are guilty of anything that would qualify as especially violent or heinous crimes. Jose Daniel Simancras, a construction worker who came to the U.S. hoping for better opportunities, and Mayfreed Duran, a barber, are two of the detainees we know of, and the only note on their record is the accusation that they crossed into the U.S. illegally.

Whether the detainees are accused of a crime is beside the point for several reasons, one being that in line with Gitmo’s history, the detainees are effectively being cut off from legal representation. To quote Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney leading a lawsuit on behalf of Guantanamo detainees, “Never before have people been taken from U.S. soil and sent to Guantanamo, and then denied access to lawyers and the outside world... It is difficult to think of anything so flagrantly at odds with the fundamental principles on which our country was built.”

The MEE article points out that a lot of this is about narrative, about associating immigrants and refugees with terrorists and resurrecting Bush-era “war on terror” rhetoric only to remold it to make us fear our neighbors who have come to the U.S. seeking a better life. Just in case you doubt that this is true, at the time of writing the news broke of the DHS’ plan to spend $200 million on an ad campaign that will be “hyper-targeted” at undocumented immigrants, in which Kristi Noem tells the camera “we will find you and we will deport you.” Cartoon villain, much?

With vulnerable human lives hanging in the balance, this is all part of a narrative constructed to make you associate immigrants with terrorism. We’ve seen this many times before in the history of fascist régimes. Don’t fall for it.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

(Mirror.)

One of the worst things this writer has ever seen is the spectacle of a Salvadoran teacher saying goodbye to her twin 9-year-old daughters in the freezing cold outside of the Milwaukee ICE office last Friday. Standing with them, shivering, were over a hundred immigrant rights advocates, most of us citizens, as we had been advised that ICE might take anyone on the premises.

At 8 am, Yessenia Ruano disappeared into the building, flanked by her daughters, her lawyer and community faith leaders. Most of the crowd remained, marching and chanting outside, trying to feel our toes. Within 45 minutes, community leader Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera received a text: ICE would not take Yessinia today. She was given more time to work on her visa application.

In this case, the people united won the day, through the organizing of Voces de la Frontera members and allies. As a quote attributed to Margaret Mead reminds us: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." — Rachel Ida Buff, NAA member, TL;DR writer, and participant in the Milwaukee protest

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Shadowrun is becoming a reality

The reality is that US government has always been a private club for the billionaire class, they just used to have the decency to hide it behind closed doors. Musk’s real crime is skipping the velvet rope and letting us all see the sausage being made. Bravo, Elon, for finally making oligarchy transparent.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

https://archive.is/K0BZL

One of the victims proceeded to post “Death to Arabs” on social media because he assumed the shooter was an Arab gentile instead of a Jew like himself.

Compare: Israeli Contractor Working in Gaza Accidentally Shot Dead by IDF Troops.