Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028538
WORLD NEWS
TomDispatch.com ... May 20th 2025
A regular antidote to the mainstream media
TomDispatch.com ... May 20th 2025
A regular antidote to the mainstream media
A regular antidote to the mainstream media
Rebecca Gordon, Donald Trump’s War on Black People
Posted on May 20, 2025
Even in retrospect, it seems inconceivable. Yes, you may still not believe it but the Trump administration recently chartered yet another flight for immigrants, except this one wasn’t leaving the country, heading for a prison in El Salvador or a jungle camp in Panama or possibly even for Libya. It was actually arriving right here in the United States of America with genuine immigrants on board, people who truly wanted to leave their own country and settle in this one.
Forget the 100,000 or so refugees from war-torn countries like Afghanistan and the Congo who had indeed been approved for resettlement here before Donald Trump took office a second time. And yes, the man who, on entering the White House, suspended global refugee admissions to the United States, did everything but personally greet those 59 immigrants at the airport (as Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Troy Edgar indeed did do). And no, they weren’t flown to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be kept in that American offshore prison of injustice or even in tents on its grounds, but to Washington’s Dulles International Airport. And according to a government memo, the Trump administration plans to do far more than that. It plans to help them obtain nothing less than “groceries, weather-appropriate clothing, diapers, formula, hygiene products and prepaid phones that support the day-to-day well-being of households.”
Oh, and of course those 59 individuals happened to have two advantages over all the other possible migrants to this country. They didn’t come from Afghanistan or Venezuela or Mexico, and they weren’t dark-skinned. Specifically, as I’m sure you already know, given all the publicity about them, they were White South Africans who, the administration claims (inaccurately), were being mistreated in their home country, and so were distinctly acceptable to President Trump.
And by the way, I’m well aware that, if this were another moment and their arrival hadn’t already made such headlines, you would undoubtedly think I was making this up. Not a chance of that, though, not in the United States of America that’s now run by such a White nationalist crew. And with all of that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon introduce you to Donald Trump’s ongoing war — yes, that’s a perfectly reasonable word for it since, among so many other things, he’s literally trying to wipe out legal tools to enforce civil rights — on Blacks. Tom
No More Dog Whistles ... Under Trump, Racism Isn’t Just the Subtext, It’s the Text
By Rebecca Gordon
On May 5th, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute held its annual fundraising gala. The event showcases the extraordinary imaginations of people who design exorbitant clothes and the gutsiness of those who dare (and can afford) to wear them.
I’m dimly aware of this annual extravaganza because of my interest in knitting, spinning, and weaving -- the crafts involved in turning fluff into yarn and yarn into cloth. Mind you, I have no flair for fashion myself. I could never carry off wearing the simplest of ballgowns and I’m way too short to rock a tuxedo. My own personal style runs to 1970s White Dyke. (Think blue jeans and flannel shirts.) But I remain fascinated by what braver people will get themselves up in.
Tomgram ...Andrea Mazzarino, Why Do Trump 2.0’s Kidnappings Surprise Us?
Posted on May 18, 2025
I wonder if, in Donald Trump’s America, the very word “immigrant” should be changed to something like “ex-migrant.” The latest news, as I wrote this introduction, was that deporting immigrants to Venezuela, El Salvador, Panama, and other places in Central America wasn’t faintly enough for the Trump administration. It was instead planning to deport a group of Asian migrants to Libya (despite a judge’s order at least temporarily prohibiting it), itself a country in chaos with two governments. Will that happen? Who knows? Certainly, the Libyans seem less than eager to receive American ex-migrants.
But one thing is certain: when you combine the Trump administration’s hatred of migrants with its chaotic approach to more or less anything, you have the makings of a genuine hell on Earth for anyone on this planet (other than a White South African perhaps) who might feel driven by conditions in his or her country or perhaps the increasing weather discomfort of the less wealthy world, hit the hardest so far by climate change, to somehow find a better life.
A better life? Not in the United States of America, that’s for damn sure! Thank heavens, I can’t go back in time and tell my grandfather, who at age 16, in the early 1890s, arrived here alone from what’s now Ukraine looking for a better life and world, about the Trumpian anti-immigrant mess this country is becoming. And in the future, who knows just whom Donald Trump and crew might have the urge to throw out of this country? The thought should be scary, as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino suggests today, even for those of us who aren’t immigrants or even ex-migrants. Sigh… Tom
America the Unfree ... Detention Practices in a Trumpy Post-9/11 Age
By Andrea Mazzarino
I don’t know about you, but the news continues to stress me out. Trump administration officials are using any excuse they can think of to detain and deport people whose points of view -- or whose very existence on U.S. soil -- seem to threaten their agenda.
Deportations to El Salvador
Tomgram Engelhardt, Tariffic!
Posted on May 15, 2025
[Note to TomDispatch Readers: I know just how boringly repetitive it is for me to write a note like this above each of my pieces, but I truly have little choice. Only you, the readers of TomDispatch, now keep this site going with your donations. And given that reality, all I can do is plead with you as ever to consider visiting our donation page and doing your best to lend a hand — and believe me, my deepest thanks go out to each of you who choose to do so! Tom]
Going, Going, Gone! ... The World According to Donald Trump
By Tom Engelhardt
I remember the phrase from my boyhood, listening to baseball games on the old wooden radio by my bed. A major hitter would be up and -- bang! -- he'd connect with the ball in a big-time fashion. The announcer in a rising voice would then say dramatically: 'It's going, going, gone!' It was a phrase connected to success of the first order. It was Duke Snider or Mickey Mantle hitting a homer. It was a winner all the way around the bases.
Today, though no one may say it anymore, somewhere deep inside my mind I can still hear it. But now, at least for me, it's connected to another kind of hitter entirely and another kind of reality as well. I'm thinking, of course, about the president of these (increasingly dis-)United States of America, Donald J. Trump, and how, these days, his version of a going-going-gone homer is simply the going-going-gone part of it.