Since filming her final scenes in July, Maisie Williams has officially moved on from Game of Thrones — look no further than her manicured hands for evidence of that. “I’ve had my fingernails painted for three weeks,” she told The Guardian in a new interview. “That’s how far out of the show I am. It really feels like a long time ago.”
She admits the HBO hit is “still very much a part of my life,” thanks to her strong bonds with her former co-stars. But after portraying Arya (officially pronounced Arr-ya, not Arr-ee-ya, as the actress said she prefers) Stark for a total of eight seasons, she was ready for the story to be over.
“I got to the end and I didn’t want more. I had exhausted every possible piece of Arya. And this season was quite big for me. I had a lot more to do,” she said. “Mainly because there’s just less characters now, so everyone’s got more to do.”
Wading just a touch deeper, but careful not to spoil anything, Williams told the outlet that her final scene was “beautiful. I ended on the perfect scene. I was alone – shocker! Arya’s always bloody alone. But I was alone and I had watched a lot of other people wrap. I knew the drill, I had seen the tears and heard the speeches.”
She, too, gave an unplanned speech as she wrapped — “in that moment I realized what the show meant to me” — then appropriately marked the occasion with a nice meal and “a lot of sake.”
The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones premieres on HBO sometime in 2019.
Up until approximately, mmm, yesterday, there’s been a enduring stereotype of “outdoorsy” people: They’re white, cis, straight, and love granola and/or semi-automatic rifles.
Of course, there have always been people who love nature and don’t fall into any of those categories. And over the past few years, opportunities for LGBTQ people who want to camp, hike, and otherwise spend time with *real plants in nature* — not aloe plants in apartments — have grown exponentially.
Between summer camps for adult trans folks and stripper-heels-wearing backpacking queens, there’s a growing outdoors community on Instagram and even in real life.
Perry Cohen is the founder and executive director of The Venture Out Project, which takes queer and trans people out into the wilderness for short day hikes and longer wilderness trips. Cohen, a trans man, grew up with friends who spent their summers with Outward Bound and other camps. His friends described camp as a “life-changing experience” where they could go and “be with people who didn’t know them … and have a new identity.”
Cohen was intrigued. He knew he was queer and was excited to be in a space where he could explore a new identity. But when he arrived at camp, “the group was already divided between boys and girls. I thought, ‘I don’t think this is going to be any different. I probably shouldn’t tell them I listen to the Indigo Girls.’”
Cohen learned plenty of outdoor skills at camp. He just didn’t get to do it while being his true self.
Fast forward 20 years, though, and throw in two of the most powerful social movements of the 21st century. Cohen, together with a diverse group of LGBTQ activists and performers, is helping to reduce the “nature gap” and ensure that queer and trans youth have better experiences than he did.
Here’s how the barriers are being broken.
LGBTQ activists are making rural America a safer, queerer place
Queer culture has always been concentrated in cities — on paper, at least. Even in 2018, most people who identify as queer continue to live in large metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York City. Big and typically progressive, these urban areas have become home to bustling queer communities and their culture, often defined just by nightlife.
That doesn’t mean queer culture is confined to cities, or that there aren’t members of the community who want to venture into the great outdoors.
Pattie Gonia, “the world’s first backpacking queen,” knows this well. Artist and photographer Wyn Wiley, who lives in Nebraska, plays Pattie. Wiley grew up in the cornfields near Colorado, an area not exactly known for its queer community. Nonetheless, he’s found a loving home in this part of the country and in nature. It’s a home he loves to share on his Instagram as Pattie.
In her first month on Instagram, Pattie has already gained over 18,000 followers.
“I’m pretty vastly loved and accepted for who I am back home,” Wiley says. “There’s a really big queer queer community in the Midwest in its own little fissures.”
Pattie in her element
Image: courtesy of wyn wiley
Not all queer and trans people feel quite as comfortable as Wiley does in rural spaces.
Elyse Rylander is the Executive Director of Out There Adventures, which takes queer and trans youth and adults on wilderness adventures. Some of her clients experience real anxiety about rural areas and the people they might encounter there.
“There’s a historical trauma of being out in rural spaces,” Rylander says. She mentions Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming, for being gay. “They want to know, “What am I going to experience out there in the back country?.. I’d much rather encounter a black or brown bear than somebody whose motives I don’t know.”
Rylander works hard to mitigate young people’s anxiety in rural areas. And people are more accepting of queer and trans people in 2018 than they were in 1998, even in rural areas and even as violence persists. Young queer and trans people who want to safely explore nature now can, thanks to programs like Rylander’s.
LGBTQ adults are making up for lost time at camp
For many queer and trans adults, summer camp remains a lost part of their childhood. Plenty of LGBTQ people went to camp, but they often weren’t out there. It was supposed to be a refuge from school and a place to explore new identities; instead, it became a confining experience.
Cohen initially set out to create an Outward Bound for queer youth. Venture Out’s earliest programming was dedicated exclusively to this population. Over time, Cohen began to field more and more requests from adults who wanted to make up for the experiences they never got in their youth.
“They’d tell me “I never got to do this as a kid. I never got to backpack in this identity. I want to do it as me.”
A few years ago, Cohen started leading trips for adults. The trips sold out their very first season.
Venture Out trips are for more than just the kids.
Image: courtesy of venture out
Nowadays, Venture Out offers multiple options for people in the queer community: youth trips, POC trips, adult trips, trans trips, and family trips, where at least one person in the family is queer or trans identified.
Some camps are a little more targeted. Rocco Kayiatos is a founder and camp director at Camp Lost Boys, which is exclusively for men who have had trans experiences. Rocco transitioned 20 years ago, during the “dark ages for trans representation.” Having grown up with almost no trans male role models, he believes in the power of creating a space for men of trans experience to be with each other as men.
“We have people who identify as men in all stages of their transition, including those who visibly don’t read as male. But no one is going to ask them what their PGP [personal gender pronoun] is here. They’re fortified that weekend as their true male self.”
The camp provides a unique opportunity, Kaviatos says. “As a trans people, the things offered to us are bars, nightclubs or academic causes and health conferences … There’s no real spaces to gather and have fun and … not have these academic conversations or engage in this politicized way.”
With Camp Lost Boys, Kaviatos hopes to provide an intergenerational camp where trans men “get to be men, and recapture and reclaim this piece of childhood they didn’t get.”
Camp Lost Boys exclusively serves men of trans experience but prioritizes men of color and older generations who are even less likely to have access to services like Lost Boys.
Both camps work hard to pull people away from their phones and toward nature and the people around them. In 2018, there are dozens of other operations just like them.
Even social media is breaking barriers
It’s an awkward relationship. If if weren’t for digital media, some of these camps that resist technology probably wouldn’t exist.
As much as I hate giving the platforms credit for anything, it’s hard to ignore the spike in representation of LGBTQ hikers on Instagram. A few years ago, Jenny Bruso started the Instagram account Unlikely Hikers, which features LGTBQ, POC, and people with disabilities out in nature. The account has since grown to 49 thousand followers. It’s a beautiful thing.
Cohen credits Instagram for a spike of interest in his camp and LGBTQ outdoor recreation in general.
“There’s been an explosion in social media of diverse representation of people in the outdoors, that’s inspired lots of people to think, ‘Oh, I can do this.’ As our participant group has become more diverse, it’s helped attract more and more people to our trips.”
Pattie’s account, which features her in heels downing Cheetos in the wilderness, has a quiet social mission as well.
“I am the worst at doing my own makeup and doing everything that a normal queen can do. So I decided to break the mold and do whatever I do … I put on this pair of heels and took it up to the mountains.”
Pattie knows that representation matters, and can even make a difference in the smallest of ways:
“I just think that comes from the lens of seeing a lot of my activist friends do incredible shit. [But] it’s not engaging online so it’s hard to get eyes on it. Pattie Gonia is my way of challenging people and creating a fun and open space online.”
LGBTQ people have a long way to go when it comes to equal representation in just about … anything. Still, they’re slowly making their way up the mountain, one summer camp, Instagram post, and one viral music video at a time.
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Normally, that alone would be enough to incite rampant speculation and obsessive hypothesizing about exactly what Apple has in store (FWIW, we’re expecting a new iPad Pro, MacBook, and Mac Mini).
But the latest event invitations have taken the normal amount of speculation and excitement to the next level. That’s because each one appears to have a completely different design for the Apple logo.
Some feature brightly-colored patterns while others are black and white.
It’s not clear if every invitee received a different design or not. One Twitter user claims to have tallied up 65 distinct logos so far.
With that many different looks, then, it’s not surprising that the invites have garnered even more attention than usual. Some seemed to think the changeup was a nod to the iPad Pro’s creative abilities. Perhaps the artwork was created on one of Apple’s new iPads?
Are all of the Apple logos on the October 30 event invites different? I haven’t seen this one out there yet nor any duplicates. Colleague @heatherkelly quips, “Guarantee they were all made on the iPad.” pic.twitter.com/EKxjwgmcFL
The good news is that we won’t have much longer to wait. With the event less than two weeks away, we’ll soon have the answers to all our burning questions.
In the meantime, here are a few more of the logos. You can view additional designs on Apple’s event website by refreshing the page.
Rihanna reportedly turned down an opportunity to perform at halftime of Super Bowl 53 because she “supports Colin Kaepernick,” according to US Weekly‘s Nicholas Hautman.
“The NFL and CBS really wanted Rihanna to be next year’s performer in Atlanta,” a source told Hautman. “They offered it to her, but she said no because of the kneeling controversy. She doesn’t agree with the NFL’s stance.”
Kaepernick, 30, started kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality. He has been a free agent since that campaign concluded, and he is currently in the midst of a legal battle with the NFL.
Kaepernick’s collusion grievance against the league will move to trial after he alleged “owners violated their collective bargaining agreement with players by conspiring to keep him off teams,” according toESPN News Services.
With Rihanna unavailable, the NFL reportedly chose Maroon 5 to headline Super Bowl 53 halftime at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, per Variety‘sJem Aswad and Shirley Halperin.
The Adam Levine-led outfit could be joined on stage by guest performers.
According toUS Weekly, Cardi B—who collaborated with the band on its hit single “Girls Like You”—”may” make a cameo during the intermission spectacle.
Prosecutors said Bourgeois, who lived in Mississippi when he was first charged, fired a shotgun at three black men, wounding one seriously [Police via local media]
A white man who fired a shotgun at three African-Americans amid the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans more than 13 years ago pleaded guilty on Wednesday to two federal criminal counts.
Roland Bourgeois, 55, was indicted in 2010 and originally pleaded not guilty. His case dragged on for years, with a series of delays and hearings related to his physical and mental health and his competency to stand trial. He was out on bond at times but was returned to custody last year after an unspecified bond violation.
Prosecutors said Bourgeois, who lived in Mississippi when he was first charged, fired a shotgun at three black men, wounding one seriously. Authorities said Bourgeois and others used racial epithets in discussing shooting black people and defending the Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans from “outsiders” after the storm.
According to local media, the guilty plea came just a little over a month before Bourgeois’s trial was expected to begin.
Bourgeois had waived a grand jury hearing and prosecutors filed amended charges in a bill of information: interfering with the victim’s rights because of their race and using a firearm in a crime of violence.
US District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon still must review the guilty plea. New Orleans news outlets say sentencing was tentatively set for January 17.
Final resolution of the case will mark the end of one of a handful of violent post-Katrina incidents that added to the slow and painful recovery from the storm that, when levees failed, flooded 80 percent of New Orleans.
Two others involved police, including the deadly shooting of unarmed civilians at the Danziger bridge in the days after the storm – a case that led to eventual guilty pleas from several officers during a long and complicated court case.
In an unrelated case post-Katrina case, five other officers were tried on charges related to the death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, who was fatally shot outside a strip mall before his body was burned. The officer who burned the body was the only one who stood convicted when the case was over. The officer who fatally shot Glover was convicted of manslaughter but was later acquitted by another jury after an appeals court awarded him a new trial.
A security member of the consulate waits in front of the gate door of the Saudi Arabian consulate on Oct. 17 in Istanbul. Turkish officials have said they have intelligence indicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is culpable in Jamal Khashoggi’s alleged killing. | Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images
For some intelligence veterans and foreign policy specialists, it’s a pattern that has become all too familiar — and troubling.
Since journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared earlier this month, President Donald Trump has acted like his own world-class spies and hackers don’t exist.
The U.S. intelligence community is reportedly increasingly convinced that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is culpable in Khashoggi’s killing. Publicly, though, Trump has evinced no knowledge of the state of any investigation into the incident.
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For some intelligence veterans and foreign policy specialists, it’s a pattern that has become all too familiar — and troubling. Trump started his presidency by publicly quibbling with an intelligence report that strongly concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered a massive hacking campaign on the 2016 presidential election. More recently, he dissembled when pressed about reports that his own intelligence agencies believe North Korea is still working on its nuclear program: “Well, nobody really knows,” he said Sunday on “60 Minutes.” “I mean, people are saying that. I’ve actually said that.”
Such proclamations of ignorance on major intelligence-related issues are not unusual for Trump, despite the fact that senior officials insist he is attentive and engaged during his daily intelligence briefing. For many who work in espionage and national security, it’s yet another signal that after nearly two years in office, the commander in chief is still unwilling or unable to trust his own intelligence apparatus.
“It has a chilling effect on the relationship between senior intelligence officials and the administration,” said Shawn Turner, a former spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence and White House deputy press secretary during the Obama administration.
In the case of Khashoggi, the resistance to gleaned details “sends a very clear message” to those within the clandestine community that their work “is not being valued and it’s not being considered as the authoritative account of what happened,” he told POLITICO.
Trump late Thursday finally vaguely addressed the intelligence about Khashoggi in a brief New York Times interview, saying that “unless the miracle of all miracles happens, I would acknowledge that he’s dead.”
He added: “That’s based on everything — intelligence coming from every side.”
But Trump’s extended omission of any reference to America’s attempt to investigate what occurred inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2, is at odds with others in his party.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker noted early on that his public comments about Khashoggi were based on intelligence reports he had reviewed. The Tennessee Republican, a frequent Trump critic, said last week that the Turkish government’s assessment that Khashoggi was assassinated was relatively reliable.
Conversely, Trump, days later, railed in an interview about how people were jumping to conclusions about the Saudis role in Khashoggi’s apparent death, saying the U.S. still didn’t know what happened.
“Here we go again with, you know, ‘you’re guilty until proven innocent,’” the president told the Associated Press.
“We have to find out what happened first,” Trump added, citing ongoing investigations by both the Saudis and the Turks.
Since then, Turkish intelligence officials have privately said they have video and audio recordings that help prove a group of Saudis close to the crown prince, commonly known as MBS, helped dismember and behead Khashoggi in retaliation for his public criticism of the royal family. Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post, was living in self-exile in Virginia and went to the consulate in Istanbul to obtain marriage-related documents.
Trump has said he does not know if such gruesome tapes exist.
“We have asked for it if it exists,” the president said this week. “Probably does, possibly does.”
On Wednesday, Corker blasted the White House for restricting the flow of intelligence information on Khashoggi to Capitol Hill. The senator said an intelligence briefing scheduled for Tuesday had been cancelled amid what he called “a clampdown on any further intelligence updates to senators.”
“It can’t go on that long, they need to come out and share their views of what happened and share with us,” added Corker, who led a bipartisan group of 22 senators requesting the Trump administration launch a bipartisan sanctions inquiry into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Democrats and several intelligence veterans said Trump’s actions reflect a disturbing long-standing habit: ignoring intelligence reports that are politically inconvenient. While all presidents have made concessions to stay in Saudi Arabia’s good favor, Trump has gone to great lengths to curry favor with the Saudis in order to win billions in arms sales, enlist the country’s help in fighting terrorists in the Middle East and stabilize the energy market as the U.S. tries to cut off Iran’s oil exports.
“While we don’t yet have all the facts, it certainly fits President Trump’s pattern of seizing on what he would like to be true, as opposed to the facts as assessed by our intelligence community,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO in a statement. “We can disagree on how to best respond to this atrocity, but no good policy can come from denying reality.”
What’s especially baffling to some is that leaders within the clandestine community insist this reality is not being kept from Trump.
“He’s deeply engaged,” then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in January when asked to describe the president’s daily intelligence briefings. “We’ll have a rambunctious back-and-forth.”
Sue Gordon, the intelligence community’s second-ranking leader, told POLITICO in August that the “best indication” Trump is listening to the intelligence community is that he meets with officials “regularly.”
“We are in the meetings, we are in the conversations,” she said. “Probably this president has more consistently met with the intelligence community in person than the previous one.”
But Turner, the ex-intelligence community spokesperson, said Trump officials are passively receiving the briefings, based on conversations he’s had with those who still work in the government.
“What they’re finding is that they’re presenting information, often times that information is taken and there are no questions asked, there’s no feedback,” he said. “It’s simply a one-way street with regard to the information going in but never seeing any result.”
The result is growing frustration that Trump’s public rhetoric suggests he is ignoring the behind-the-scenes information he receives, according to Turner, who declined to offer specific examples. Trump has also drew the intelligence community’s ire when he pulled the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.
Nate Jones, a counterterrorism chief on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, called it a “misalignment of missions.”
“On the one hand, you have an objective intelligence community following the facts where they lead and … providing the unvarnished truth to the policy makers,” including the president, said Jones, who co-founded Culpeper Partners consulting firm after leaving the government. “On the other hand, we have a fact-challenged administration that is finding these facts inconvenient when it comes to their political fortunes and their geopolitical goals.”
In the end, Jones predicted, the Khashoggi situation could drive a bigger wedge between the White House and the intelligence community, especially as other countries leak intelligence findings that belie Trump’s pleas of ignorance.
“The truth is coming out,” Jones warned, “whether they like it or not.”
How is Sonic 2 the only good Sonic game? What is Sonic’s last name? Why is Sonic 2 a game to play before you die? We tried to find some answers on this week’s episode of Games to Play Before You Die.
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Floyd Mayweather may be retired, but his trash talk remains in peak form after his latest throwback-Thursday post on Instagram.
Alongside a picture of him punching Canelo Alvarez, Mayweather mocked the Mexican boxer in the caption:
“It didn’t matter if Canelo ate his PED steak or not this night, this was by far the easiest fight of my career! Connor McQuitter was a way better fighter than Canelo’s cheating ass and I beat the breaks off him too! It takes me 36 mins or less to make $300 million plus. It literally takes me 1 night and 1 fight to make what you might make in 5 years and 11 fights! So really, who’s still winning? You do the math!”
The “PED steak” references Alvarez’s positive test for the performance-enhancing drug clenbuterol, which he later attributed to eating meat in Mexico.
This derisive comments come one day after Alvarez indicated there wouldn’t be a rematch against Mayweather because the veteran would be too scared.
“He doesn’t want to risk a second fight with me,” he said in Spanish, viaESPN.
The two first battled in 2013 in a highly anticipated bout considering both fighters were coming in with an undefeated record. Mayweather was 44-0 on his way to his current 50-0 mark, while Canelo was 42-0-1 at the time.
Mayweather came through with a relatively easy win, although it was ruled a majority decision.
Of course, Conor McGregor didn’t even last the full 12 rounds against the champion boxer, losing by TKO in the 10th.
Given Mayweather’s unparalleled success as a boxer, both in the ring and financially, he took the opportunity to taunt a younger fighter who hasn’t been able to live up to his predecessor’s lofty standards.
Esquipulas, Guatemala – US President Donald Trump‘s threats against a caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants headed to the United States will not deter people from fleeing the Central American country, activists say, adding they would welcome a cut in US military and security aid to Honduran security forces.
“With regard to the threats of the United States government, I don’t even think people listen to that,” human rights activist Yessica Trinidad told Al Jazeera over the phone.
“People leaving have no certainty as to whether or not they will arrive. It is like leaping into an abyss, but for them, it is better than living here,” said Trinidad, the coordinator of the Honduran Network of Women Human Rights Defenders.
The caravan set out Saturday from northwestern Honduras. More than 2,000 people reached Guatemala Monday after a standoff with Guatemalan police at the border. The caravan, now in waves at different points on the route, continues to grow, with some estimates putting it at more than 5,000.
Honduran migrants cross the Lempa river, on the border between Honduras and Guatemala, to cross into Guatemala to join a caravan trying to reach the US [Jorge Cabrera/Reuters]
On Thursday, Trump ramped up his threats against the caravan, tweeting that “in addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in strongest terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!”
Earlier in the week he had threatened to cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador if the caravan wasn’t stopped before it reached the US border.
The warnings came less than a week after the US, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala met in Washington for the second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America. As part of its Strategy for Central America, the US has committed about $2.6bn in aid to Central America for 2015 through 2018.
According to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), US aid to Honduras totalled more than $181m last year. The category of security, justice sector, and violence prevention received more funding than any other, without including funding for borders and drug control. Most of the aid is channelled through the State Department and US Agency for International Development, but there was also $47m via the Department of Defense last year, according to WOLA.
Adam Isacson, the director of WOLA’s defence oversight programme, said the number earmarked for this year is likely close to that of 2017. The organisation has not yet been able to obtain country breakdowns of regional security funding, but does not expect the final tally will be a big shift from last year.
Isacson said Trump’s comments show he does not understand how aid works.
“Trump’s tweets betray that our president actually thinks that US aid is a big cash transfer to those countries, like we’re just giving them money. And I think a lot of people think that,” he told Al Jazeera over the phone.
“The president’s tweets seem to [suggest] that you’re just turning off a cash spigot and there’s this river of cash flowing to Honduras,” Isacson said.
“But of course not a dime goes to Honduras because of the fear it will be stolen. It’s all in kind. It’s all training or technical services or contractors or equipment for specific things,” he said.
In addressing the caravan on Wednesday, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said “irregular migration has been going on for decades”.
“Since 2014, we decided to deal with structural issues that generate migration. Much has been achieved but we know that there is much for us to continue to do because these are historical problems,” Hernandez said.
Human rights violations
Many human rights activists in Honduras and in the US have expressed concern over the way the Hernandez government has addressed insecurity. They’ve advocated for years for initiatives that would cut, freeze, or condition US security aid to Honduras.
Honduran police and military forces have been involved in serious human rights violations over the years, according to national and international human rights organisations.
General elections last November that resulted in the contentious reelection of president Juan Orlando Hernandez took place amid widespread allegations of election fraud. Security forces killed more than two dozen people during state crackdowns on protests, according to human rights groups.
Trump would be doing Hondurans a favour if he cut off aid to their government, Trinidad said.
“The aid that the US government gives Honduras is invested precisely in the failed security policy,” she said.
Honduran migrants react after crossing the border between Honduras and Guatemala, in Agua Caliente, Guatemala [Jorge Cabrera/Reuters]
Honduran human rights and other civil society organisations have been meeting to sort out how they can best assist in the struggle to safeguard the rights of people on the move, as hundreds more Honduras continue to attempt to leave the country and join the caravan making its way through Guatemala.
Trinidad’s organisation and other Honduran human rights groups do not consider the exodus to be immigration, she said.
“For us, this is forced displacement. People are fleeing the country. They are fleeing the constant human rights violations but also different kinds of violence,” she said.
Human rights violations are also occurring in the context of the migrant caravan, said Trinidad, highlighting the Honduran police actions to block hundreds of Hondurans from leaving through border crossings with Guatemala and El Salvador in order to make their way up to first wave of the caravan.
“They cannot keep people in the country by force,” said Trinidad, highlighting the right to freedom of movement and particularly between Honduras and its neighbours.
‘Scapegoating immigrants, refugees’
Honduran human rights groups’ long-standing concerns about the actions of security forces are shared by many in the US, including congressional representatives.
Major points of concern have been a 2009 military coup, a 2012 massacre of four indigenous locals during a DEA-assisted drug raid in the Moskitia region, the 2016 murder of prominent Honduran indigenous and social movement activist Berta Caceres, and the violent crackdown on post-election protests in 2017 and this year.
A proposed bill in US Congress would, if passed, suspend all security aid to Honduras and veto any multilateral loans to the country’s military and police forces. The bill, called the Berta Caceres Human Rights Act, now has 70 House co-sponsors.
“We should have cut off military aid to Honduras a long time ago, but for very different reasons. Their complete disregard for worker rights, indigenous rights, and individual freedoms are unacceptable in an ally of the United States,” House Representative Jan Schakowsky, a co-sponsor of the Berta Caceres Human Rights Act, said Thursday in a statement.
Hondurans react after crossing the border between Honduras and Guatemala, in Agua Caliente, Guatemala [Jorge Cabrera/Reuters]
Hondurans are fleeing dire economic conditions and a repressive, anti-democratic president supported by Trump and the State Department, said Schakowsky.
“Instead of admitting some responsibility in creating the violent situation in Honduras, President Trump is yet again scapegoating immigrants and refugees,” she said. “He is painting a picture of this migrant caravan as a threat to our national security instead of the desperate group of refugees that they are.”
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![Prosecutors said Bourgeois, who lived in Mississippi when he was first charged, fired a shotgun at three black men, wounding one seriously [Police via local media]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/10/18/19fb36a92c9747beb1eb3ef84fece7e6_18.jpg "White man pleads guilty to shooting 3 black men during Katrina")
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