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Dispatches From the Culture Wars – Bloody Tide Edition

Portland heroes; Manchester: Islamophobia; Manchester: sexism; ‘Counterterror’ at Standing Rock; Federalist Society cracks down; Islamophobes plan June 10 rallies

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Portland Train Stabbing: Witness Recalls Victim's Last Words

By Crimesider Staff
May 29, 2017
CBS News/AP

A woman who tried to help one of the Portland train stabbing victims in his final moments is speaking out about his last words.
Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, is accused of stabbing three men who intervened when he allegedly yelled racial slurs at two young women, one of whom was wearing a hijab, on a Portland light-rail train Friday night.
Ricky John Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, were killed in the incident. Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, of Portland, was also stabbed in the attack and is in serious condition at a Portland hospital, police said. His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, police said.  

United Response to Bomb Attack: There is No Place for Islamophobia on Manchester’s Streets

By Gabrielle Pickard Whitehead
May 27, 2017
Nation of Change
Manchester is in mourning. Our spirited city is struggling to come to terms with the unfathomable atrocity that took the lives of 22 innocent victims and injured 59 more.
The condemnation of commentators for showing reactionary, anti-Muslim intolerance, and the shunning of a media outlet for inexcusably using an event of extreme heartbreak for its own political objectives, is representative of Manchester’s impassioned multicultural acceptance.

Manchester Bombing was a Hate Crime Against Women and Girls

By Anne Summers
May 26, 2017
Sydney Morning Herald

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It's grim to have to say this but the facts seem inexorably to lead to the conclusion that the Manchester bombing was a hate crime against women. Especially against women and girls who want to assert their independence and their freedom, who will submit to no one and who want to shape their own lives.
Such women are antithetical to everything ISIS represents and are too subversive of its insane medieval views of women's roles to be tolerated by this terrorist organisation.

Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”

By Alleen Brown, Will Parrish, Alice Speri
May 27, 2017
The Intercept

A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the project.

Trump’s Values are Abhorrent to the Federalist Society of Conservative Lawyers. That Doesn’t Stop Them From Helping Him.

By Henry Farrell
May 17, 2017
Washington Post

The Federalist Society is a conservative and libertarian legal network founded in 1982. It is part of an attempt to build an alternative legal elite; one capable of moving conservative and libertarian ideas into the mainstream. And it has worked. As evidenced by Trump’s repeated flaunting of his list of potential judges as “Federalist Society approved,” the society — now a vast network of tens of thousands of conservative and libertarian lawyers and judges — has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.

ACT for America's "March Against Sharia" Official Facebook Page Full of Racist Anti-Muslim Sentiment

By Stephen Piggott
May 23, 2017
Southern Poverty Law Center

ACT for America, the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the country, announced plans to hold nationwide rallies dubbed the “March Against Sharia” on June 10.
To date, events are scheduled in 23 cities covering 18 states. The march is primarily being organized by ACT for America staffer Scott Ryan Presler, a man who runs the closed Facebook group being used to plan the events. The group also indicates that ACT is recruiting the services of anti-government groups to act as security for the rallies.