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phroyd · 5 years

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From Esquire

Surely, the United States of America could not operate concentration camps. In the American consciousness, the term is synonymous with the Nazi death machines across the European continent that the Allies began the process of dismantling 75 years ago this month. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system-which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition. There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and-with Japanese internment-the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border.

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Historians use a broader definition of concentration camps, as well.

"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it," says Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed-at the most basic level-to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."

Not every concentration camp is a death camp-in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September. Systems like these have emerged across the world for well over 100 years, and they've been established by putative liberal democracies-as with Britain's camps in South Africa during the Boer War-as well as authoritarian states like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Camps set up with one aim can be repurposed by new regimes, often with devastating consequences.

History is banging down the door this week with the news the Trump administration will use Fort Sill, an Oklahoma military base that was used to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II, to house 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children captured at the border. Japanese internment certainly constituted a concentration-camp system, and the echoes of the past are growing louder. Of course, the Obama administration temporarily housed migrants at military bases, including Fort Sill, for four months in 2014, built many of the newer facilities to house migrants, and pioneered some of the tactics the Trump administration is now using to try to manage the situation at the border.

The government of the United States would never call the sprawling network of facilities now in use across many states "concentration camps," of course. They’re referred to as "federal migrant shelters" or "temporary shelters for unaccompanied minors" or "detainment facilities" or the like. (The initial processing facilities are run by Border Patrol, and the system is primarily administered to by the Department of Homeland Security. Many adults are transferred to ICE, which now detains more than 52,000 people across 200 facilities on any given day-a record high. Unaccompanied minors are transferred to Department of Health and Human Services custody.) But by Pitzer's measure, the system at the southern border first set up by the Bill Clinton administration, built on by Barack Obama's government, and brought into extreme and perilous new territory by Donald Trump and his allies does qualify. Two historians who specialize in the area largely agree.

Many of the people housed in these facilities are not "illegal" immigrants. If you present yourself at the border seeking asylum, you have a legal right to a hearing under domestic and international law. They are, in another formulation, refugees-civilian non-combatants who have not committed a crime, and who say they are fleeing violence and persecution. Yet these human beings, who mostly hail from Central America's Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador-a region ravaged by gang violence and poverty and corruption and what increasingly appears to be some of the first forced migrations due to climate change-are being detained on what increasingly seems to be an indefinite basis.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continually seeks new ways to stop people from applying for asylum, and to discourage others from attempting to. The current regime has sought to restrict the asylum criteria to exclude the exact issues, like gang or domestic violence, that these desperate people often cite for why they fled their homes. The administration has sought to introduce application fees and work-permit restraints. They have tried to prohibit migrants from seeking asylum "if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S.," which would essentially eliminate anyone who traveled to the border through Mexico. Much of this has been struck down in federal court.

But most prominently, Trump's Department of Homeland Security has used "metering" at the border, where migrants are forced to wait for days or weeks on the Mexican side-often sleeping in makeshift shelters or fully exposed to the elements-until they are allowed across border checkpoints to make their asylum claims and be processed. That processing system is overwhelmed, and the Obama administration also used metering at various points, but it remains unclear whether the wait times need to be as long as they are. (DHS did not respond to a request for comment.) There are no guarantees on how long migrants will have to wait, and so they've increasingly turned to crossing illegally between checkpoints-which constitutes "illegal entry," a misdemeanor-in order to present themselves for asylum. This criminalizes them, and the Trump administration tried to make illegal entry a disqualifier for asylum claims. The overall effort appears to be to make it as difficult as possible to get a hearing to adjudicate those claims, raising the specter that people can be detained longer or indefinitely.

All this has been achieved through two mechanisms: militarization and dehumanization. In her book, Pitzer describes camps as “a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself." These kinds of detention camps are a military endeavor: they are defensible in wartime, when enemy combatants must be detained, often for long periods without trial. They were a hallmark of World War I Europe. But inserting them into civil society, and using them to house civilians, is a materially different proposition. You are revoking the human and civil rights of non-combatants without legal justification.

"In the origins of the camps, it's tied to the idea of martial law," says Jonathan Hyslop, author of "The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907," and a professor of sociology and anthropology at Colgate University. "I mean, all four of the early instances-Americans in the Philippines, Spanish in Cuba, and British in South Africa, and Germans in Southwest Africa-they're all essentially overriding any sense of rights of the civilian population. And the idea is that you're able to suspend normal law because it's a war situation."

This pairs well with the rhetoric that Trump deploys to justify the system and his unconstitutional power grabs, like the phony "national emergency": he describes the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants as an "invasion," language his allies are mirroring with increasing extremism. If you're defending yourself from an invasion, anything is defensible.

That goes hand-in-hand with the strategy of dehumanization. For decades, the right has referred to undocumented immigrants as "illegals," stripping them of any identity beyond an immigration status. Trump kicked off his formal political career by characterizing Hispanic immigrants as "rapists" and "drug-dealers" and "criminals," never once sharing, say, the story of a woman who came here with her son fleeing a gang's threats. It is always MS-13 and strong, scary young men. There's talk of "animals" and monsters, and suddenly anything is justifiable. In fact, it must be done. Trump's supporters have noticed. At a recent rally, someone in the crowd screamed out that people arriving at the border should be shot. In response, the president cracked a "joke."

"It's important here to look at the language that people are using," Hyslop says. "As soon as you get people comparing other groups to animals or insects, or using language about advancing hordes, and we're being overrun and flooded and this sort of thing, it's creating the sense of this enormous threat. And that makes it much easier to sell to people on the idea we've got to do something drastic to control this population which going to destroy us."

In a grotesque formulation of the chicken-and-the-egg conundrum, housing people in these camps furthers their dehumanization.

"There's this crystallization that happens," Pitzer says. "The longer they're there, the worse conditions get. That's just a universal of camps. They're overcrowded. We already know from reports that they don't have enough beds for the numbers that they have. As you see mental health crises and contagious diseases begin to set in, they'll work to manage the worst of it. [But] then there will be the ability to tag these people as diseased, even if we created [those conditions]. Then we, by creating the camps, try to turn that population into the false image that we [used] to put them in the camps to start with. Over time, the camps will turn those people into what Trump was already saying they are."

Make no mistake: the conditions are in decline. When I went down to see the detention facility in McAllen, Texas, last summer at the height of the "zero-tolerance" policy that led inevitably to family separation, Border Patrol agents were by all appearances doing the very best they could with limited resources. That includes the facilities themselves, which at that point were mostly built-by the Clinton administration in the '90s-to house single adult males who were crossing the border illegally to find work. By that point, Border Patrol was already forced to use them to hold families and other asylum-seekers, and agents told me the situation was untenable. They lacked requisite staff with the training to care for young children, and overcrowding was already an issue.

But according to a report from Trump's own government-specifically, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security-the situation has deteriorated significantly even since then. The facilities are overcrowded, underfunded, and perhaps at a perilous inflection point. It found adult detainees are "being held in 'standing-room-only conditions' for days or weeks at a border patrol facility in Texas," Reuters reports. But it gets worse.

Single adults were held in cells designed for one-fifth as many detainees as were housed there and were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks with limited access to showers, the report said. Pictures published with the report show women packed tightly together in a holding cell.

“We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to toilets,” the watchdog wrote.

This was at Paso del Norte, a facility near El Paso, which has a stated capacity of 125 detainees. But when DHS inspectors visited, it was holding 900. For a period, Border Patrol tried housing migrants in cage under a nearby bridge. It was ultimately scrapped amid public outcry. When migrants and asylum-seekers are transferred to ICE, things can get worse. Queer and trans migrants face exceptionally harsh treatment, with reports of high levels of physical and sexual abuse, and the use of solitary confinement-considered torture by many psychologists-is widespread. As a reminder, by DHS's own assertion, these detainments are civil, not criminal, and are not meant to be punitive in the way of a prison. Many of these people have not even been accused of a crime.

Again: these are inhuman conditions, and crystalize the dehumanization. So, too, does the Trump administration's decision, reported by The Washington Post, to cancel classes, recreational programs, and even legal aid for the children held at facilities for unaccompanied minors. Why should these kids get to play soccer or learn English? Why should they get legal assistance? They're detainees.

The administration is citing "budget pressures" related to what is undoubtedly a dramatic spike in arrivals at the border last month: 144,000 people were detained in May. It remains unclear how much of this is tied to the Trump administration's border policies, like metering, which have severely slowed the process of declaring oneself for asylum and left people camped on the Mexican border for days or weeks after a thousand-mile trek through Mexico. Or Trump's recent all-out push to seize money for a border wall and declare "we're closed," which some speculate led to a surge of people trying to get over the line before that happened.

It's also in dispute how many of these people actually need to be detained. Vox's Dara Lind suggests releasing migrants from Guatemala or Honduras isn't straightforward as "many newly arrived asylum seekers aren’t familiar with the US, often speak neither English nor Spanish, and may not have appropriate clothing or funds for bus fare." But release with ankle bracelets has proven very effective as an alternative to detention: 99 percent of immigrants enrolled in one such program showed up for their court dates, though ICE claims it's less effective when someone is set to be deported. Those subjected to the bracelets say they are uncomfortable and demeaning, but it's better than stuffing a detention cell to five-times capacity. Unless, of course, that's exactly what you want to happen.

"At one point, [the administration] said that they were intentionally trying to split up families and make conditions unpleasant, so the people wouldn't come to the U.S.," Beorn, from UVA, says. "If you're doing that, then that's not a prison. That's not a holding area or a waiting area. That's a policy. I would argue, at least in the way that [the camps are] being used now, a significant portion of the mentality is [tied to] who the [detainees] are rather than what they did.

"If these were Canadians flooding across the border, would they be treated in the same manner as the people from Mexico and from Central and South America? If the answer is yes, theoretically, then I would consider these places to be perhaps better described as transit camps or prison camps. But I suspect that's not how they'd be treated, which then makes it much more about who the people are that you're detaining, rather than what they did. The Canadian would have crossed the border just as illegally as the Mexican, but my suspicion is, would be treated in a different way."

It was the revelation about school and soccer cuts that led Pitzer to fire off a tweet threadthis week outlining the similarities between the U.S. camp system and those of other countries. The first examples of a concentration camp, in the modern sense, come from Cuba in the 1890s and South Africa during the Second Boer War.

"What those camps had in common with what's going on today is they involved the wholesale detention of families, separate or together," Pitzer says. "There was very little in the way of targeted violence. Instead, people died from poor planning, overloaded facilities and unwillingness to reverse policy, even when it became apparent the policy wasn't working, inability to get medical care to detainees, poor food quality, contagious diseases, showing up in an environment where it became almost impossible to get control of them.

"The point is that you don't have to intend to kill everybody. When people hear the phrase 'Oh, there's concentration camps on the southern border,' they think, 'Oh, it's not Auschwitz.' Of course, it's not those things, each camp system is different. But you don't have to intend to kill everyone to have really bad outcomes. In Cuba, well over 100,000 civilians died in these camps in just a period of a couple years. In Southern Africa during the Boer War, fatalities went into the tens of thousands. And the overwhelming majority of them were children. Fatalities in the camps ended up being more than twice the combat fatalities from the war itself."

In-custody deaths have not reached their peak of a reported 32 people in 2004, but the current situation seems to be deteriorating. In just the last two weeks, three adults have died. And the Trump administration has not readily reported fatalities to the public. There could be more.

"There's usually this crisis period that a camp system either survives or doesn't survive in the first three or four years. If it goes past that length of time, they tend to continue for a really long time. And I think we have entered that crisis period. I don't yet know if we're out of it."

Camps often begin in wartime or a crisis point, and on a relatively small scale. There are then some in positions of power who want to escalate the program for political purposes, but who receive pushback from others in the regime. There's then a power struggle, and if the escalationists prevail over the other bureaucrats-as they appear to have here, with the supremacy of Stephen Miller over (the reliably pliant but less extreme) Kirstjen Nielsen-the camps will continue and grow. Almost by definition, the conditions will deteriorate, even despite the best intentions of those on the ground.

"It's a negative trajectory in at least two ways," Beorn says. "One, I feel like these policies can snowball. We've already seen unintended consequences. If we follow the thread of the children, for example, the government wanted to make things more annoying, more painful. So they decided, We're going to separate the children from the families. But there was no infrastructure in place for that. You already have a scenario where even if you have the best intentions, the infrastructure doesn't exist to support it. That's a consequence of policy that hasn't been thought through. As you see the population begin to massively increase over time, you do start to see conditions diminishing.

"The second piece is that the longer you establish this sort of extralegal, extrajudicial, somewhat-invisible no-man's land, the more you allow potentially a culture of abuse to develop within that place. Because the people who tend to become more violent, more prejudiced, whatever, have more and more free rein for that to become sort of the accepted behavior. Then, that also becomes a new norm that can spread throughout the system. There is sort of an escalation of individual initiative in violence. As it becomes clear that that is acceptable, then you have a self-fulfilling prophecy or a positive feedback loop that just keeps radicalizing the treatment as the policy itself becomes radicalizing."

And for a variety of reasons, these facilities are incredibly hard to close. "Unless there's some really decisive turn away, we're going to be looking at having these camps for a long time," Pitzer says. It's particularly hard to engineer a decisive turn because these facilities are often remote, and hard to protest. They are not top-of-mind for most citizens, with plenty of other issues on the table. When Trump first instituted the Muslim Ban-now considered, in its third iteration, to be Definitely Not a Muslim Ban by the Supreme Court-there were mass demonstrations at U.S. airports because they were readily accessible by concerned citizens. These camps are not so easily reached, and that's a problem.

"The more authoritarian the regime is, and the more people allow governments to get away with doing this sort of thing politically, the worse the conditions are likely to get," Hyslop says. "So, a lot of it depends on how much pushback there is. But when you get a totally authoritarian regime like Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, there's no control, or no countervailing force, the state can do what it likes, and certainly things will then tend to break down.

"It's more of a political question, really. Are people prepared to tolerate the deteriorating conditions? And if public opinion isn't effective in a liberal democratic situation, things can still get pretty bad."

Almost regardless, the camps will be difficult to dismantle by their very nature-that extrajudicial "no-man's land" Beorn mentioned. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is a perfect example. It began in the early 1990s as a refugee camp for people fleeing Haiti and Cuba. The conditions were bad and legally questionable, Pitzer found, and eventually the courts stepped in to grant detainees some rights. In the process, however, they granted the camps tacit legitimacy-they were allowed to continue with the approval of the judiciary.

Suddenly, they were enshrined in the law as a kind of gray area where detainees did not enjoy full human rights. That is actually why it was chosen by the Bush administration to house terror suspects: it was already rubber-stamped as a site for indefinite detention. By the time President Obama came into office with promises to close it, he found the task incredibly difficult, because it had been ingrained in the various institutions and branches of American constitutional government. He could not get rid of it. As courts continue to rule on the border camp system, the same issues are likely to take hold.

Another issue is that these camp systems, no matter where they are in the world, tend to fall victim to expanding criteria. The longer they stay open, the more reasons a government finds to put people in them. That's particularly true if a new regime takes control of an existing system, as the Trump administration did with ours. The mass detention of asylum-seekers-who, again, have legal rights-on this scale is an expansion of the criteria from "illegal" immigrants, who were the main class of detainee in the '90s and early 2000s. Asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minors, began arriving in huge numbers and were detained under the Obama administration. But there has been an escalation, both because of a deteriorating situation in the Northern Triangle and the Trump administration's attempts to deter any and all migration. There is reason to believe the criteria will continue to expand.

"We have border patrol agents that are sometimes arresting U.S. citizens," Pitzer says. "That's still very much a fringe activity. That doesn't seem to be a dedicated priority right now, but it's happening often enough. And they're held, sometimes, for three or four days. Even when there are clear reasons that people should be let go, that they have proof of their identity, you're seeing these detentions. You do start to worry about people who have legally immigrated and have finished paperwork, and maybe are naturalized. You worry about green-card holders."

In most cases, these camps are not closed by the executive or the judiciary or even the legislature. It usually requires external intervention. (See: D-Day) That obviously will not be an option when it comes to the most powerful country in the history of the world, a country which, while it would never call them that, and would be loathe to admit it, is now running a system at the southern border that is rapidly coming to resemble the concentration camps that have sprung up all over the world in the last century. Every system is different. They don't always end in death machines. But they never end well.

"Let's say there's 20 hurdles that we have to get over before we get to someplace really, really, really bad," Pitzer says. "I think we've knocked 10 of them down."

Phroyd

#immigration #concentration camps

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ollies-studyblr · 4 years

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German III: 4.12-4.16

Relative Pronoun Review:

What determines whether the relative pronoun is masculine, feminine, neuter, or plural?

It matches the antecedent (the word it refers/relates back to).

What determines the case of the relative pronoun?

Its use in its own clause.

Where does the relative pronoun go in the sentence?

At the beginning of its clause; if it goes with a preposition, the preposition is first in the clause.

Where does the conjugated verb go in a relative clause?

It goes at the end of the clause.

Which relative pronouns are not identical with the definite article?

Dative plural (denen), and all the genitives (dessen, deren, dessen, deren) are not identical.

Wo ist das Mädchen, das gestern hier war? --> (N/nom.)

Der Hund, mit dem ich gestern gespielt habe, ist sehr freundlich. --> (M/dat.)

Meine Verwandten, die in der Schweiz wohnen, heißen Trachsel. --> (Pl/nom.)

Der Junge, dessen Bruder krank ist, ist sehr traurig. --> (M/gen.)

Der Hosenanzug, den sie am Sonntag trägt, ist sehr elegant. --> (M/acc.)

Wir sitzen an einem Tisch, der 200 Jahre alt ist. --> (M/nom.)

Die Kinder, mit denen ich nach Hause ging, sind sehr nett. --> (Pl/dat.)

Interview Q&A:

Where was he Nov. 9, 1989?

at home preparing for school the next day

What did he do when he heard the news?

He decided to try to visit his parents.

How difficult was it to cross the border?

The line was long, but there was no passport check.

What were they greeted by in the West?

Huge crowds, with total strangers handing out welcoming flowers and bottles of wine.

What word did they hear over and over?

“Wahnsinn” meaning “crazy, unbelievable”

Did they find his parents?

Yes, they were home following everything on TV. They had even seen his car come through!

What happened in school the next morning?

There wasn´t any school. Teachers as well as students were in West Berlin.

Did he get to keep his teaching job?

Yes, the history and government teachers had a much harder time keeping their jobs than the math, science, and language teachers.

What does he think of the “Wall in the Head” idea?

It´s still there for many people—those who always see the “bad” instead of the “good” in a situation.

How did he get the piece of the Wall that now sits on his desk?

He joined the other Mauerspechte (wall peckers) and hammered off several pieces for his family.

Fun Fact Review:

What four countries occupied Germany after World War II?

England, France, the Soviet Union (Russia), and the United States

What is the name of the plan that helped West Germany rebuild so fast?

the Marshall Plan

In which zone was Berlin located?

the Soviet zone

When did the Soviets block all land and water routes to Berlin?

1948

What is the German word for "airlift"?

die Luftbrücke

Who was Gail Halvorsen?

He was a pilot who dropped little parachutes with candy and raisins for the children of Berlin.

What was the nickname of the planes that dropped little presents as they approached the Berlin airport?

Rosinenbomber (raisin bombers)

Why did the Soviets build a wall all the way around West Berlin?

They did this to keep their citizens from going to the West. They needed them to work in the East, but the standard of living was much better in the West.

On what date was the Berlin Wall begun?

August 13, 1961

What was it made of at first?

barbed wire

What kind of communication was there between East and West Berliners after the Wall went up.

none

How dangerous was it to try to cross the Wall?

It was extremely dangerous; the guards had orders to shoot immediately.

What were some of the other defenses used besides just a wall?

trenches, spikes, guard dogs, electrical fences, mines, false walls to mislead would-be escapees, trip wires that automatically shot the person tripping them, search lights, watch towers

Where were the major anti-government demonstrations right before the Wall opened?

Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin

When did the Wall open?

November 9, 1989

How did it happen?

There was an announcement on TV news that East Germans no longer required an exit visa to leave the country.

What does "Wahnsinn" mean?

insanity, craziness

What sorts of things did the East Berliners buy when they first went West?

electronics: microwaves, boom boxes, TVs, VCRs.

What does "Wiedervereinigung" mean?

reunification

When was Germany officially reunited?

October 3, 1990

What is the "Mauer im Kopf?"

"wall in the head"—a psychological barrier to accepting people from the other half of Germany

What are the slang words for former East Germans and West Germans?

Ossis and Wessis

What is a main prejudice of the Wessis against the Ossis?

They expect the government to do everything for them; they don’t know how to work.

What is a main prejudice of the Ossis against the Wessis?

They´re arrogant and selfish and treat us as second-class citizens; they´re acting like carpet baggers.

Who is the current Chancellor of the Federal Republic, and why is that special?

Angela Merkel: she´s the first woman Chancellor AND she’s from the former East Germany.

Fun Facts:

Escapes did occur by increasingly clever means, but the DDR became just as clever at preventing them. If you go to Berlin, be sure to go to the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, and give yourself plenty of time to see all the museum has on display. You´ll be amazed at the many ways people used to escape, mostly in the early years.

It’s also amazing the lengths to which a government will go to keep its people from leaving. All of the items pictured here were used, although not necessarily all at the same place. The devices to stop vehicles (anti-tank obstacles and anti-car trenches, as well as beds of spikes) served little purpose after the cement wall went up. Then most of the devices were aimed at individuals: patrol cars, search dogs, low tension fences, tripwire alarms, and various "walls" to give the person the deceptive feeling she had escaped before actually reaching the legal border. The most gruesome of all came late in the game, when fences were armed with shrapnel guns attached to trip wires. In essence, the would-be escapee shot herself!

A government that has to resort to such extreme measures is bound to collapse, and that´s just what happened. In October, 1989, the DDR celebrated its 40th anniversary amid great pomp and celebration. But all around the country, the protests were well underway, centering mainly in Leipzig and Dresden as well as Berlin. In a never-to-be-forgotten evening news broadcast on November 9, an unexpected statement was made that residents of the DDR no longer needed an exit-visa to leave the country. That was it!

In a very short time, all the checkpoints in Berlin were swamped with people wanting to "go West." They mostly wanted to visit relatives, sight-see, shop, and then come back. Thousands streamed across the border, and the department stores were wiped clean of things like microwaves, color TVs, boom boxes, and computers. At least one woman in labor came, so her baby could be born in the West. (Fortsetzung folgt)

Post Wall Facts

Things changed very rapidly in both East and West Germany. As the Mauerspechte ("Wall peckers"—a play on the word "Specht" woodpecker) chipped away souvenirs, and cranes took away large chucks of the Wall, the cement barrier almost disappeared. The DDR tried to maintain its independence through various changes in government, but it was almost inevitable that it would become part of the BRD, which already had unification built into its Basic Law. DDR money went out of existence quickly, and the official "Wiedervereinigung" (reunification) came on Oct. 3, 1990.

The euphoria, however, could not last forever, and reality sank in. You would have to read many books and watch many documentaries to come to your own opinion about what could/should have happened. Politicians made loud but unrealistic claims that misled thousands who took them literally. The East German economy all but collapsed since it had a highly deteriorated infrastructure and few quality goods to offer. The education system fell into disarray because many of the teachers had gotten their positions through political connections. It is fair to say, however, that many people were more "Opportunists" than "Communists." Life was tolerable and fighting the system had seemed hopeless, so they just went along and did the best they could. Wouldn´t most people in such situations?

Prejudices instilled by society (consciously or unconsciously) surfaced, "verified" by events of the day. "Westerners (Wessis) are selfish and think they know better about everything." "Easterners (Ossis) are lazy and greedy and just want hand-outs from the government." "Wessis are coming East and trying to take over our businesses and schools." "Ossis are coming West and taking our jobs and our hard-earned benefits." And, as always, a lot of the tension had to do with money. Who owned land or houses abandonded 30–40 years ago? The former owners who had made a good life for themselves in the West, or the current owners who had done all the upkeep? The government? Who was going to pay for all the rebuilding that was truly necessary in the East? Western tax money? Large private companies that were viewed with deep suspicion in the East?

These and other questions led more than one person to say, "The Wall in our midst has come down, but it will take a long time for the Wall in our heads to disappear." Maybe as the generation that never knew life with the Wall grows up, it will be able to overcome the prejudices of the past and feel itself as only a "German" once more, not "Ossi" or "Wessi."

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geneticpawn · 5 years

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TIPS, HINTS & DIRECTORY CHEATS FOR DARK ANGEL :

there’s a surgence of people interested in joining the da rpc but there’s really limited sources for dark angel and it can be hard to find episodes without forking 40$ to buy the box set so i figured i’d make a really quick and short post about how characters / muses could potentially fit into the da rpc without having to make an entirely new oc.

MANTICORE

first up is the underground genetics agency known as manticore that operates as a private and independent military organization that has created genetically engineered superhumans known as the X series. from 1′s all the way to 8′s. these superhumans are called transgenics, carefully created by scientists that have spliced various samples of human dna taken from athletes, genius intellectuals and other skilled and specialized human donors as well as various strains of animal dna in order to create a transhuman with superior physical and mental prowess.

TRANSGENICS

X1′s and X2′s were considered anomolies. often human’s whom have been heavily experimented upon, referred to as nomolies by junior X series transhumans and are like the monsters under the bed or in manticore’s case, monsters in the basement. X’3′s and X4′s are manticore’s first series of transhumans that were completely designed and crafted from scratch and often have visible signs of genetic mutations such as gills, fur, scales, feline or bird irises etcetc. while not considered failures they are considered imperfect experiments and are used sparingly for off - site missions.

X5′s and their junior genetic clones the X5R’s are considered the most advanced transhuman soldiers and act primarily as their commando soldiers. they are those most active in field due to their higher brain and mental functions that allow them to blend in with society and achieve their mission perimeters with a higher chance of success.

X6′s are a generation below and are very similar to their X5 and X5R counterparts however they are genetically weaker and are less independent. they rely primarily on others for leadership and understanding and very rarely show the ability or skill to improvise or make decisions and choices for themselves. X7′s are stronger and faster than the X5′s and X5R’s but they were designed with hive minds and are only capable of communicating through ultrasound waves but do so without opening their mouths and they never speak. a notable difference in appearance is that their eyes are pure black. they have less human psychology than other transgenics and are far more ruthless and obedient. even if their lives are threatened they will never disobey an order from a perceived superior or a manticore staff member.

X8′s are the junior generation and are believed to be replicas of X6′s in physical and mental prowess.

MANTICORE STAFF

as a genetic’s facility, they are staffed with an assortment of scientists and geneticists tasked with perfecting the X series transhuman soldiers. they are also outfitted with a psychological operations division that is tasked with monitoring the psyche of their soldiers as well as correcting, conditioning and training the transgenics to remain loyal and obedient to their agencies. any signs of psychological damage, weakness or emotional instability is “ corrected ” or the transgenic is removed from active duty to be reindoctrinated. if reindoctrination fails the transgenic is repurposed, organs, marrow, blood -- recycled to injured transgenics in need of transplants or transfusions. they are dissected in order to find the cause for anomolies and then terminated or sold to the highest bidders.

manticore is also staffed with military personnel. often recruited and hired outside of active enlistment to act as unit handlers, training instructors and base security. these individuals are often tasked with security, maintaining order and are trained specifically to be able to combat transgenics whom are genetically their superiors. military personnel are viewed as wardens and informants to higher members of manticore to monitor transgenics for any signs of deviance.

EYES ONLY INFORMANT NET

the eyes only informant net is a used to gather information that can uproot corruption in the city of seattle. eyes only acts as a means of protecting and informing the people of corruption, abuses of power and has taken a keen interest in exposing manticore to the public. as an informant net anyone can be an informant, eyes only sifts and investigates all information past up the branch and uses operatives, often civilians taking a stand against corruption on their own, whistle blowers, mercenaries, criminals and the average joe can all use the informant net.

S1W

is a resistance group based in seattle that seeks to fight military and police corruption and injustices against the general public. they’re led by asha barlow, who gives them missions and assists eyes only who then aids them surreptitiously. they are considered a terrorist association by the authorities who want to get rid of them. their organization is not widespread or well - provisioned but their members are committed enough to frighten the corrupt governments of seattle.

SECTOR POLICE

a division of the seattle police department tasked with patrolling sector borders. they operate primarily in districts of the city that were hit hard by the pulse and are almost entirely corrupt in nature. police brutality, corruption, extortion, solicitation etc the police force is essentially just another gang that the locals have to put up with. they have checkpoints set up all around the city and civilians must have identification as well as assigned sector passes to go through into other districts and even then, sometimes the sector police will still shake you down.

JAM PONY

is a postal service that relies entirely on bike messengers and is owned and managed by reagan ronald aka normal. the main establishment is run down and somewhat poor and there is very little job security however jam pony messengers are often allowed passage through sector police checkpoints without need of sector passes as their couriers can take them across sector lines on a regular basis.

THE BREEDING CULT

a centuries old cult that has practiced selective breeding for thousands of years with the intent and purpose being to create a superior human being. due to their practices, they oppose genetic manipulation and as such hate all transgenics due to their genetic engineering. the cult is headed my ames white, an agent of the government whom is tasked with hunting, capturing and exterminating all escaped manticore transgenics.

#meta tag.#feel free to rb if you want

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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Pupils are back in class on Tuesday following a ten-day strike by teachers who are seeking a general two-percent raise.

Helsingin Sanomat's headline (siirryt toiseen palveluun) claims that "the kids had to foot the bill again."

"In my heart I feel that this was not good for kids," Helsinki City's pupil welfare services manager, Vesa Nevalainen, told HS.

Two years ago, the pandemic closed schools for eight weeks.

Jyväskylä University professor Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen referred to studies indicating that learning gaps were still prevalent following the remote learning period.

A mediation proposal in the teachers' conflict is expected later on Tuesday.

Covid failure?

Finland's Covid strategy was a failure, Lasse Lehtonen, Director of Diagnostics at HUS, told Hufvudstadsbladet (siirryt toiseen palveluun).

Lehtonen, noted that Finland has registered more than 2,000 Covid-19 related deaths since the start of the year—surpassing the combined death tolls from both 2020 and 2021.

"Covid fatalities in March and April have been very high in Finland," he said, asking if Finland had done enough in terms of achieving the highest possible vaccination coverage.

The HUS top doc called on Finland to expand second booster shots to younger adults.

"While Covid infections will likely decrease during the summer, the vaccine's efficacy will also wane. There's no certainty that the number of deaths will drop. If 200 people per week are dying, there will be many who will die if nothing is done about the situation," he told HBL.

Wall talk

Discussions about building a fence on Finland's Russian border have resurfaced after emerging last fall during the migrant crisis on the Belarus-EU border.

SDP parliamentary group chair Antti Lindtman told Ilta-Sanomat (siirryt toiseen palveluun) that his party would "offer strong support to the border guard for building a fence."

Centre Party group chair Juha Pylväs noted that fences would be situated near border checkpoints to help control possible hybrid operations.

The Finnish Border Guard is currently preparing a proposal on how to fence critical areas on the border, IS reports. The paper said most of the current fencing has been built to prevent domestic animals from escaping across the border.

Patrol spots rare wolverine along Finland's border with Russia

#nunyas news #updates from up north

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phgq · 3 years

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SoCot still ASF-free, report ‘fake news’: DA

#PHnews: SoCot still ASF-free, report ‘fake news’: DA

GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The Department of Agriculture (DA) 12 (Soccsksargen) has called “false information or fake news” a report by a national television network that the dreaded African swine fever (ASF) has spread to South Cotabato province.

In a public advisory issued on Friday, DA-12 executive director Arlan Mangelen “vehemently” denied the presence of ASF in the province as reported in ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol on Thursday night.

Mangelen said the new report, which cited Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) chairman Rosendo So as the source, is “erroneous” and has no basis.

“(So) did not and never mentioned that South Cotabato has ASF or the dreaded disease has entered the said province during his interview,” he said.

Mangelen appealed to the ABS-CBN management, through its TV Patrol news program, to retract or correct the report.

Citing a report from DA’s Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) as of last December 21, he said South Cotabato remains ASF-free and measures are being undertaken to ensure that the disease would not enter the area.

Mangelen was referring to BAI’s update on the zoning status of the country’s 17 regions in line with the implementation of the national zoning and movement plan for ASF.

The entire South Cotabato, including this city, is under the “dark green” zone or among the areas that remain free from ASF.

Six municipalities in the region, five in North Cotabato and one in Sarangani, are under the “red” or infected zone.

He said DA-12, through its livestock program and regulatory division, has been providing disinfectants, vacutainers or blood collection tubes, personal protective equipment, and other supplies to local government units in the region to assist their ASF prevention and surveillance activities.

Dr. Flora Bigot, head of the South Cotabato Veterinary Office, said the province remains on high alert against ASF and the local government has been continuously monitoring its borders to prevent the entry of the disease.

Bigot said the entry of live hogs and pork products from areas affected by disease outbreaks remains prohibited.

“We have eight operational veterinary quarantine checkpoints and we’re also conducting periodic sampling and testing of hogs in our boundary areas,” she said in a radio interview.

Bigot said they have also intensified the enforcement of Ordinance 36, which institutionalized the province’s control measures against ASF.

The ordinance, which took effect last December 4, sets the “regulatory guidelines and preventive measures to prevent the entry of ASF” in the province.

South Cotabato and this city are among the top producers of live hogs and pork in the country, shipping out at least 15,000 heads every two weeks to Metro Manila and Luzon.

The South Cotabato Swine Producers Association, an association of commercial swine farms based in the area, has a combined sow population of 55,000 and produces more than 45,000 heads of hogs a month.

About 10 percent of the group’s production is consumed in Soccsksargen. It supplies the 90 percent surplus to markets in Luzon and the Visayas. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "SoCot still ASF-free, report ‘fake news’: DA." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1126766 (accessed January 08, 2021 at 09:59PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "SoCot still ASF-free, report ‘fake news’: DA." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1126766 (archived).

#Philippines #News #Filipino #Pinoy #Tourism #Politics #Culture #Editorial #Environment #Society #History

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megadoctornews · 4 years

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Rio Grande Valley Agents Stop Over $4M in Cocaine at Checkpoint

Mega Doctor News

EDINBURG, Texas – U.S. Border Patrol agents seize over 130 pounds of cocaine from a semi-trailer attempting to pass through the Falfurrias Immigration checkpoint.

Mega Doctor News a bilingual newspaper reaching your audience: Advertise with us!

Last night, agents assigned to the Falfurrias Border Patrol station who were working at the checkpoint referred a…

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#Rio Grande Valley #U.S. Border Patrol

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Greyhound to Stop Allowing Border Patrol Agents on Its Buses Without Warrants

Greyhound Lines will no longer allow Border Patrol agents to conduct immigration checks on its buses without warrants, the company announced on Friday — one week after a leaked government memo revealed that agents could not board buses without consent.The memo appeared to take Greyhound by surprise. For years, the company, the largest operator of intercity buses in America, had been allowing border agents to board its vehicles without warrants, citing a law that it said it didn’t agree with.“C.B.P. searches have negatively impacted both our customers and our operations,” the company said in 2018, referring to Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency. “Greyhound does not coordinate with C.B.P., nor do we support these actions.”But in the leaked memo, which was first reported by The Associated Press, the Border Patrol chief confirmed that agents were prohibited from boarding buses and questioning passengers without warrants or the company’s consent.“When transportation checks occur on a bus at non-checkpoint locations, the agent must demonstrate that he or she gained access to the bus with the consent of the company’s owner or one of the company’s employees,” Chief Carla Provost wrote in the memo, which was dated Jan. 28.As part of President Trump’s drive to crack down on illegal immigration, passengers aboard buses and trains on domestic routes have increasingly been subjected to immigration checks, and Border Patrol officers have been found working without permission on private property and setting up checkpoints up to 100 miles from the border.The company said that it would place stickers on its buses “clearly displaying our position,” and that it planned to send “a letter to the Department of Homeland Security formally stating we do not consent to warrantless searches on our buses and in terminal areas that are not open to the general public.”The changes were to take effect immediately. The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Greyhound’s announcement.“We are pleased to see Greyhound clearly communicate that it does not consent to racial profiling and harassment on its buses,” said Andrea Flores, deputy director for policy in the A.C.L.U.’s equality division.“Greyhound is sending a message that it prioritizes the communities it serves,” she added. “We will continue to push other transportation companies to follow its leadership.” Other bus carriers including Jefferson Lines and MTRWestern do not provide consent to warrantless immigration enforcement checks of their buses, according to their websites.In a statement on Saturday, a Customs and Border Protection official said that while the agency “does not comment on materials asserted to be leaked internal memos, management regularly disseminates information to reinforce existing protocols.”The official did not directly address Greyhound’s change but added that “enforcement operations away from the immediate border are performed consistent with law and in direct support of immediate border enforcement efforts, and such operations function as a means of preventing smuggling and other criminal organizations from exploitation of existing transportation hubs to travel further into the United States.”In its statement on Friday, Greyhound referred to a “policy change” at the border agency, although it wasn’t clear that the agency had in fact altered any of its policies.“We welcome the clarity that this change in protocol brings, as it aligns with our previously stated position, which is that we do not consent to warrantless searches,” the company said. “We are providing drivers and terminal employees with updated training regarding this policy change.”Last year, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general of Washington State, said that Greyhound’s practice of allowing searches of its vehicles at a train station and bus terminal in Spokane fell “harshly on passengers of color, who are reportedly singled out by C.B.P. for questioning and detention.”A 2018 “Transportation Not Deportation” petition that collected over 200,000 signatures demanded that Greyhound stop allowing Border Patrol agents on its buses without a warrant or probable cause.The aggressive immigration enforcement tactics taking place nationwide are not limited to buses. In a widely circulated video recorded in El Paso last week, Border Patrol agents can be seen using a Taser to subdue and apprehend a man in a Burger King restaurant.Michael Levenson contributed reporting. Read the full article

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