Benny Briolly beams as she strides through the concrete favela alleyway of Brazil’s city of Niteroi in a snow-white ball gown, onlookers proudly wave campaign flags emblazoned with her face. The city councilwoman and nearly 1,000 other transgender politicians are running Sunday in every one of Brazil’s 26 states, where the number of transgender politicians has tripled since the last elections four years ago.
Springfield city government announced Wednesday that only residents of Clark County will be permitted to speak during the public comment portion of City Commission meetings in the future.
“The city of Springfield is committed to prioritizing the voices of our local residents at all commission meetings,” a city statement released Wednesday said. “To enhance community engagement and ensure that our decisions reflect the needs and interests of Springfield residents, we are implementing a new policy effective immediately.”
For months, Springfield City Commission meetings have been packed with attendees, many of them addressing grievances toward the commission over Haitian immigration issues. Some recent meetings have met the capacity limit for the City Hall Forum, forcing some later arrivals to sit outside on City Hall plaza.
To participate in the public comment portion of future commission meetings, speakers will have to complete a comment card and present valid proof of residency. Accepted forms of identification will include a State of Ohio driver’s license or a State of Ohio ID card.
“This requirement for proof of residency is designed to uphold the integrity of our meetings by ensuring that Clark County residents have a proper platform to address issues that matter to them,” city officials said. “This policy also aims to minimize disruptions from individuals who may misrepresent their residency to seek notoriety or cause distractions during meetings.
City officials said they do encourage all residents to speak up and share their perspectives on community matters at the meetings.
The next City Commission meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the City Hall Forum at 76 E. High St. in downtown Springfield.
Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups are now routinely visiting Springfield, marching through city streets or distributing recruitment flyers and raising fears of intimidation and violence.
Over the weekend, the Blood Tribe — a violent Neo-Nazi hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — stood outside Springfield Mayor Rob Rue’s home waiving swastika flags. In a previous march through the city, some carried guns.
Also this weekend, an unidentified group stood outside Springfield city hall with a banner that said “Haitians Have No Home Here” in English and Haitian Creole.
These groups are responding to the growth of Springfield’s Haitian community, an issue that made the national spotlight following unsubstantiated rumors circulated on social media and parroted by politicians that Haitian immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ pets.
Since then, Springfield NAACP president Denise Williams says residents have also reported to her agency flyers being distributed in local neighborhoods from a group associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
“They’re trying to intimidate us. But we’re not a city that’s easily intimidated,” Williams said. “We need to stand together.”
The group, the Trinity White Knights, has a P.O. Box based in Kentucky. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in September that similar flyers from the same group were distributed in Covington, Ky.
Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott said the department is aware of the flyers.
Some residents have reported harassment from a group of people purporting to be members of the Proud Boys, which the SPLC designates as a hate group that believes in “Western chauvinism” and “an anti-white guilt agenda.”
Clark County Democratic Party chairman Austin Smith said a volunteer canvassing near the political party’s Springfield headquarters earlier this month was returning to the office to drop off campaign materials when a truck with large flags that appeared to say “Proud Boys” pulled up.
A group of men in the truck, the volunteer told Smith, made “vaguely threatening” statements.
“We’ve had threats and things pour into the office. No bomb threats, but ‘You better watch out.’ ‘We’re watching you.’ So that definitely created a lot of fear,” Smith said.
The party increased security measures for its recent meeting as a safety precaution, Smith said.
Members of the religious group Israel United in Christ (IUIC) were also in Springfield in September, gathering in multiple public places around the city.
The members, clad in purple shirts with the group’s name and logo, were seen marching and passing out literature to passersby.
At one point, group members gathered in the parking lot of Groceryland on South Limestone Street, near the corner of East John St. Members were preaching into a microphone about the organization’s teachings. Members also met with NAACP leaders from Dayton and Springfield.
According to its website, the IUIC is a Bible-based organization that believes people within the Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities represent “the true and historical descendants of the Biblical Israelites.”
SPLC categorizes IUIC as one of the handful of “Radical Hebrew Israelites” groups in the U.S. The SPLC designates these groups as hate groups. IUIC denies that it is a hate group, according to a post on the IUIC Classrooms Facebook page. The newspaper reached out to IUIC but did not hear back.
Williams said the Springfield NAACP chapter has plans to host a virtual community meeting to talk about recent activity in the city.
Springfield’s police chief asked residents to remain vigilant and “say something if you see something suspicious or out of the norm.”
“We know our city has looked a little different lately, and you also may notice an increased public safety presence. We assure you that our top priority has always been and will continue to be safety,” Elliott said. “Safety is a shared responsibility and our officers, along with our public safety partners, take all tips and information seriously.”
Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.
Kraskov is the mayor of the village of Slabyn, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The rustic settlement – population 520 – escaped the worst of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. But the war arrived last week in a new and horrible form. Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.
Serhiy Kraskov, the mayor of the village of Slabyn, near the banks of the Desna River in northern Ukraine. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym. It included ammonia, magnesium and other poisonous nitrates. At the time, fierce fighting was going on in the surrounding area. Ukraine’s armed forces had launched a surprise incursion into Russia and had seized territory in Kursk oblast.
The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs. Kraskov got a call from the authorities warning him a disaster was coming his way. He spotted the first dead fish on 11 September. “There were a few of them in the middle of the river,” he said.
He returned the following weekend to find the Desna’s banks clogged with rotting fish, stretching out from the shore for three metres into the water. Volunteers wearing rubber boots, masks and protective gloves shovelled the fish into sacks. They found a metre-long catfish. “The stench was terrible. You could scarcely breathe. The river was quiet. Nothing moved apart from a few frogs,” Kraskov said. A tractor took the sacks to an abattoir that used to belong to the village’s Soviet-era collective farm. They were buried in a pit.
Serhiy Zhuk, the head of Chernihiv’s ecology inspectorate, described what had happened as an act of Russian ecocide. “The Desna was one of our cleanest rivers. It’s a very big catastrophe,” he said. Zhuk traced the slick’s route on a map pinned to his office wall: a looping multi-week journey along the Seym and Desna. “More than 650km is polluted. Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It’s Europe’s first completely dead river,” he said. (snip-MORE)
This is what tRump and maga are, gang thugs enforcing their ideas of right and wrong with violence regardless of other people’s rights. This is what the party of tRump is, violence to any who they disagree with. This is brownshirt stuff from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is domestic terrorism, the use of violence and harming others to achieve a political goal / gain. This stuff was going away as unacceptable in the US, and now it is back thanks to tRump and his people. Hugs. Scottie
Blaze Pizza’s 96 California pizzerias are known for build-your-own pies rapidly fired in 800-degree ovens, along with Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James’ corporate investments. Last week, its Roseville location made headlines for an uglier reason.
A delivery driver walked into the Highland Reserve Marketplace restaurant about 10:15 p.m. Sept. 19, saw a Pride flag hung by employees inside and tore it down to the ground, according to the Roseville Police Department.
When a manager and employees confronted the man, he reportedly uttered a homophobic slur and left. He then returned with two other men, at least one of them wearing mixed martial arts gloves, and kicked off a brawl with two employees that multiple passersby caught on video.
Read the full article. Police are calling it a hate crime and the attackers remain at large. One of the employees was hospitalized due to his injuries.
Doesn’t any good people see what this is. This is government by the tRump cult thugs willing to threaten or even do violence. Horrible way for our country to be run. We need to stop this right now as forceable as we can. Hugs. Scottie.
For Jamie McGregor, a businessman in Springfield, Ohio, speaking favorably about the Haitian immigrants he employs has come to this: death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor for hiring immigrants.
They came by the hundreds — phone calls, emails and letters from white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other people they had never met. “The owner of McGregor Metal can take a bullet to the skull and that would be 100 percent justified,” said one message left on the company voice mail.
To defend himself and his family, Mr. McGregor has had to violate his own vow to never own a gun. “I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” said Mr. McGregor, who makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors.
A business owner in Springfield, Ohio had to buy a gun after his family and his 80-year-old grandmother received death threats because he hired Haitian immigrants. Even though the business owner voted for Trump twice. Donald Trump is dividing America. https://t.co/ZpmiPySU3i
September 30, 1962 Hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members, white students and others, tried to keep a black student, James Meredith, 29, from attending classes at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They were supported by the governor, Ross Barnett, who had explicitly resisted the order of the Federal Circuit Court.In spite of the efforts to block his court-ordered registration, a deal to allow Meredith to register was reached between U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Governor Barnett. Meredith was secretly escorted onto campus; deputy U.S. marshals, border patrolmen and federal prison guards were stationed on and around the campus to protect him. Those standing guard were assaulted throughout the night with guns, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and bottles.
James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S.marshals and the military. Tear gas was used to try and control the crowd. Federal troops arrived, bringing the total to 12,000 (President Kennedy had activated soldiers and national guardsmen totaling 30,000), and the mob finally retreated. In the end, two were dead, 160 U.S. Marshals were injured (28 shot), 200 others injured, and 300 arrested. Integrating Ole Miss JFK Library
September 30, 2003 The FBI began a criminal investigation into whether White House officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, IV. In early 2002 the CIA had sent Wilson to look into the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire yellow-cake uranium from the African country of Niger. Ambassador Wilson found nothing to support the claim, and some of the documents cited as evidence for the claim were clearly shown to be forgeries. President Bush, nonetheless, repeated the claim in his January, 2003, State of the Union address as part of his argument for war in Iraq. Wilson wrote a column in the New York Times in July, 2003, entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” Columnist Robert Novak a few days later published Plame’s identity following conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Plame, who previously had worked on counter-proliferation, was in charge of operations for the CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, formed the summer before 9/11.
September 30, 2004 The U.S. Navy announce the shutdown of Project ELF. read more
Braddock had fled to the Philippines where he was eventually deported last year as an illegal alien and arrested in Los Angeles.
During a call that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned an activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Florida congressional seat because he had access to assassins https://t.co/OQFEYln82dpic.twitter.com/08OLNgwWQy
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.
Trump, as always, is lying. Financial disclosure records show that Paul Pelosi sold 2000 shares of Visa nearly three months ago. The DOJ filed its antitrust suit against Visa on Wednesday.
Trump calls for a Republican AG in "a Republican territory" to investigate Nancy Pelosi pic.twitter.com/oqbQTkptD8
Yesterday the Hollywood Reporter interviewed luxury watch experts who declared that the “Swiss” watches are likely cheap crap made in China. A disclaimer on Trump’s website says that the watches sold may not look like the “representations” seen on the site. The disclaimer also pointedly make no promises about delivery.
“And yet she’s taken in the worst of those people. The killers, the jailbirds, all of the worst of the people. She’s taking them in. And then I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit last night.
Trump on Kamala Harris speech: I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit and who puts it on Fox News? And they shouldn't be allowed to put it on.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a Saturday email: “The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
As Dale goes on to note, Trump’s lies have been widely spread by right wing media and GOP lawmakers, such as the Hitler-quoting GOP rep seen below.
I love Ethel’s videos and I have learned a lot about trans people from her. She often does videos with herself in them but also sometimes does them with the drawn figures. She has been very open with her transitioning journey, and I have followed her since she was a teen before she transitioned. Her videos are remarkable for the detail and receipts she brings to them. She does a lot of research, especially on trans women in sports issues. She documents everything for the viewers to check in the about section and encourages fact checking her.
In this video she sets up the fact that the anti-trans activist that falsely made claims about the WPATH files has a history of lying to try to push their issues. I love watching her videos and if you are interested in trans issues and ways to debunk what the trans haters say, she is worth looking at her back work. Her take down of the entire WPATH Cass report was wonderful and showed how totally false and misleading the report was. The Cass report has now been totally debunked now in part to Ethel’s work. Hugs. Scottie
Today’s video returns to the #WPATHFiles which alleged malpractice by medical institutions who support the scientific legitimacy of gender affirming care, exposing the Files’ fatal flaws and its publisher’s sordid history of forging evidence. Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.
The republican’s know their policies and ideas are very, very unpopular. They can’t win on them, so they are forced to cheat and drum up fake fears to scare voters to vote for them. Hugs. Scottie
‘Congratulations’ the fake letter reads, ‘you have been selected as a Wayward Steward exchange home for homeless immigrants and victims of foreign wars.’
A Bala Cynwyd couple received a fraudulent letter from the Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs this week informing her that she’d been selected as a “wayward steward” to house five refugees. The office does not exist, nor does the program. Elizabeth Bennett holds the letter on Sept. 27, 2024.Read moreCharles Fox / Staff Photographer
A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees.
No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.
“I’m concerned to find out how many people might have actually gotten it and to make sure the record’s set straight so people aren’t getting fearful or angry and deciding to vote another way,” Elizabeth Bennett, 62, said.
The letter says Bennett was selected as a “wayward steward” as part of “US5Ca12-B … written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” No such law exists.
It advised Bennett she’d been selected based on property and income records and would receive an $80 weekly stipend for food costs. The letter suggested a “minimum of one bedroom be prepared with a minimum of 5 beds,” with a link to “government-approved” bunk beds.
The return address listed is for an intersection in front of the Capitol building in Harrisburg.
Neither the governor’s office nor the department of state immediately returned a request for comment.
Bennett is unsure why she was targeted. She has a large Harris/Walz sign in her front yard. Ironically, she’s also done volunteer resettlement work with immigrants for the last 30 years but she assumes that was just a coincidence.
“Of all the people they could send this to, I would be the one who is like, ‘OK let’s get the room set up, we gotta take care of these people,’” she said. But as she read on, she realized the program was fake and intended to scare people.
“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.
It’s unclear if other Pennsylvanians received the letter. Bennett posted about it in small Facebook groups but hasn’t heard from others who received it.
But whoever created the letter took time to make it look like an official document, including an imprint of a fake Pennsylvania seal on the letterhead and a stamped date informing Bennett when to expect the migrants.
A listed phone number for the fake office, with a Harrisburg area code, goes to a voicemail for the named office where a messaging service invites the caller to press one for housing vouchers, two for reimbursements, and three to “expand your footprint to help more people.”
The letter Bennett received went on to specify garages or sheds without electricity and running water could not be used.
“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” it concluded.
Misinformation about migrant resettlement and illegal immigration has been rampant in the campaign. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have made it a focus of their bid for the White House claiming that migrant resettlement has drained resources from small towns and that illegal immigration has driven crime and economic hardship, with little evidence.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement does invite people to be part of a government hosting program but participation is entirely optional.
State Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D., Philadelphia) is an immigration attorney who called the letter “a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country.”
“It’s definitely designed to make people think that there’s a broader government program to resettle refugees and my guess is that the intention is to stir up fear of immigrants and refugees,” he said. “That’s reprehensible It’s a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country of being a welcoming beacon to people who are seeking freedom.”
In the next week, Hohenstein is cosponsoring a bill to establish an Office of New Pennsylvanians, which would help provide support services for refugee businesses and migrants fleeing persecution in Pennsylvania.
“This would provide help to people who need it,” he said. “It would not be a mandate to anyone.”
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Scottie's Playtime 