After closing last year’s blogs on a bit of a gloomy note, when I look at the toxicity currently revealing itself in the media and within our society, I was hoping to start the year on a much more positive note. However, as I start to write this blog, our news has been dominated by international events that until recently I would not have believed credible – even as a child of the sixties.
For the last few months, we have seen attacks carried out in international waters on high-speed boats, purportedly carrying drugs. In one instance, although the boat had been destroyed, two people survived and were clinging to wreckage, until they were killed in the cold blood of a second attack (the “double-tap” and probably likely to be a war crime) instead of following Maritime Law and rescuing them (there were US boats and helicopters nearby) so they could be put on trial. Although it is highly likely they were drug smugglers, there is no physical evidence available, to show that these boats were carrying drugs, so for each of these attacks we only have the word of the White House – except that this administration has not been shown to be trustworthy.
Additionally, as of today, six oil tankers, allegedly belonging to the Venezuelan “shadow fleet” have been boarded and redirected to other ports to hit the Venezuelan economy. Perhaps significantly, the oil being carried is not the type that America can easily process. Recently we had a man murdered by ICE agents, as he was going to the aid of a woman in Minnesota. This followed on the heels of a woman, shot and killed in her car by ICE agents in the same city. There was no good reason, in either case, for these murders. We had American forces entering a foreign country, to kidnap (or arrest!) its leader, ostensibly to bring him to trial in the US. On the 7th January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 international organizations, agencies, and commissions, following his administration’s review of participating in, and funding for all international organizations, including those affiliated with the United Nations, according to a White House release. Following the unrest in Iran, Trump encouraged the protesters to continue their protests “because help was coming” – then he did nothing, and huge numbers of protesters were subsequently killed. There’s talk he is planning an attack, but as of today that hasn’t happened. Then, since the Maduro arrest, the rhetoric surrounding the proposed annexation of Greenland has risen, sending Europe (and international financial markets) into paroxysms of anxiety, understandable in my thinking. Although there is no specific LGBTQ+ angle to this story, I must at least mention it in passing, because it is probably the most significant event since the Cold War, and of more note than Russia’s war against Ukraine. Recently, it seems, Trump has realised he doesn’t need to own the territory to get what he wants, but the sad thing is that he could have achieved that without alienating the whole of Europe.
Having said that, there is still a Christian/moral angle to the story, which I want to initially look at, before coming back to pick up on a different story not yet mentioned, with a clear LGBTQ+ angle.
Media Fact Checking
I have tried to get some sort of balance from these stories by using different media companies who are all reported to be fairly evenly balanced. If you want to review where your favourite news source features in terms of its balance, take a look at the Media Bias/Fact Check website. That page lists the worldwide list of “Least Biased” organisations, but if your news source isn’t listed, put it in the Search box on the top right and Click/Enter.
On the top bar of that link above, there is a Bias Cat. button, which you can click on to select other categories you might be interested in, which includes pro‑science, questionable sources and conspiracy – each page consisting of thousands of entries, so don’t forget to briefly stop, and get a drink – and a packed lunch!
There are two scales to keep an eye on, the “bias” and the level of “factual information” – since you can have a report that has “no bias” but doesn’t include many facts! Or you can also be highly fact based but be heavily biased left or right. Yes, you need you use your God-given intelligence! Tricky!😉 Most of the sources I have used are either “Least Biased” or slightly left or right of centre – though one is “Left of Centre”. Where I have quoted articles from a media company who is described as “Mostly factual” or further left or right of centre, the specific details of any story I use is verified in many other media outlets, so I feel my use of the link is justified and reliable.
Greenland
The earliest mention we have of Donald Trump officially wanting to acquire Greenland as a part of the USA was in August 2019, although I have heard some commentators say that privately Trump had thought it would be a good idea to have Greenland back in the 1980’s or ‘90’s, well before he had any political ambitions, but I can’t find any links to verify that.
As I said, it has been since the operation to capture President Maduro that Trump’s demands to hand over Greenland have escalated, and although that scenario now seems less likely, as I write, we are no clearer about what may have been agreed between the NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and Donald Trump.
As you know all too well, Greenland is a long-term ally and friend of the USA, already allowing them to build more or less what they wanted, but instead, the USA have reduced the size of their military in Greenland from 10k people during the Cold War, to under 1k in 2000, and down to around 150 in 2026. In the same period, they have gone from about 5 bases down to just one, Pituffik, which has been largely seconded to space operations because they perceived the military need had reduced! Ooops!
As Lyse Doucet wrote for the BBC, “In the past century, no American president has threatened to seize the land of a longtime ally and rule it against their people’s will”. During that highly stressful period before Davos, Trump had threatened to apply tariffs on at least 8 European countries including the United Kingdom, because they had all pushed back on his demands, although the threat of those tarriffs has now receded.
This whole situation is bizarre, because Greenland is only becoming more strategically important because global warming is melting the ice and snow around the Arctic. Meanwhile, Donald Trump denies there is any such thing as global warming! No global warming, no ice melt and no threat from China and Russia! You can’t have it both ways. If the US are really interested in the supposed minerals and metals, as they become easier to access in these changing conditions, it should be also recognised that reports are simply not clear that they will ever be truly economic to mine. If Greenland is a militaristic strategy, it’s not clear that the Russians and Chinese will be using the routes through that part of the Arctic for decades yet.
Then between the 18th and 20th January we had an astonishing series of messages fired off from President Trump in reaction to previous communications from Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. They had “conveyed our opposition to his announced tariff increases against Norway, Finland and select other countries. We pointed to the need to de-escalate and proposed a telephone conversation between Trump, Stubb and myself on the same day.”
In response, he said “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace… but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
The response resembling that of a petulant child was clearly absurd, because the Nobel Committee are independent of the government. Secondly, the response shows the committee were totally correct not to give it to him. The prize should only be awarded to those who have a mindset committed to peace, not simply one for a few days with the hope of getting some extra bling for the mantlepiece before resuming warfare later.
In his ongoing sulk that day and over the following days, Trump added, “I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
“No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!! President DJT” – his January 20th Truth Social post.
He may have got European Countries to increase their NATO spending, but his recent behaviour was much more likely to precipitate its demise, leaving president’s Putin and Xi Jinping toasting themselves in delight that he has done what they wanted, but could never dream of doing!
I see many Christian principles being trashed by Trump and his acolytes despite the claims to faith from several of them. As the Bible states in Matthew 7: “by their fruit you will recognise them”. The Bible teaches the principle of defending the powerless, in fact, not just defending them, but helping them, providing for their needs, building them up, putting them first (not America first), not rushing decisions, considering all perspectives, living at peace with others. Then we can look a couple of chapters earlier at the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where we are told “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, … Blessed are the merciful, … Blessed are the pure in heart, … Blessed are the peacemakers”. Then we can look back at the Old Testament (the Tanakh for any Jewish readers), where in the Torah, Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 16:13-14 that when you celebrate, you are to be joyful and invite all the neglected and deprived people in the community, including widows, orphans, the homeless and refugees living in your towns. Today this would also include your LGBTQ+, and particularly, trans friends.
Christmas service in the Pentagon
Sadly, if that wasn’t enough, we saw Evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy Grahams’ son) invited to preach at the Christmas service in the Pentagon where he praised God as being a God of War. For context and a fuller quote from the service click here. The Christian social justice community called the Sojourners, released an excellent article looking at this, and critiquing the underlying morality of the Trump Administration. I had a huge amount of respect for Billy Graham and took part in his mission events in London in 1989, but I’m afraid Franklin lacks his heavenly fathers grace and mercy, and his earthly father’s wisdom, theological understanding and insight.
ICE Killings
Which brings me to the two further unnecessary and tragic stories mentioned earlier, that of the killing of Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. The murder of Renee Good is where we have more of an LGBTQ+ angle though her death wasn’t caused by being LGBTQ+ but is more coincidental. I won’t go into too much detail about the actual killing, because most of you will be all over that already, and there is a detailed step-by-step walkthrough on Wikipedia. There are other reports available to read from other perspectives including one from Newsweek. From my own reading I would say that of course I recognise the ICE agents were being antagonised and mocked and perhaps for understandable reasons given their behaviour over the months – hiding their identities, picking up people (including a 5yr old child to be used as bait to arrest the father), usually due to what they look like, rather than acting on intelligence gathered in advance. Victims don’t seem to be given access to lawyers in some cases and are not told where they are being taken. Some are released later and others deported without due process.
In this instance the Trump administration repeatedly cast Good and her wife (who Trump referred to as her “friend”) “as agitators whose conduct, he suggested, made the deadly encounter foreseeable. “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Trump said, adding that Good and “her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.” He went on to describe them as “professional agitators” and questioned who might be “paying for it.” [Advocate.com] The administration went on to initially say that the ICE agent had been deliberately run over by Good and was fighting for his life, but that was untrue. We then saw social media pile in claiming that Renee Good had a criminal record including child abuse, but this was shown to be entirely fake, and this has been confirmed by the BBC – you’ll need top scroll down a little way on that piece.
From what is publicly available, Renee Good, after getting conflicting instructions from ICE (to “get out of the car” and to “drive off immediately”) reversed her vehicle, turning the wheel away from the ICE agent at which point he shoots her three times with one kill shot through the head. The car carries on and comes to a halt after hitting a telegraph pole. The video from the ICE agent’s bodycam makes it look like he might have had a glancing blow but pictures from other angles show he probably jumped out of the way, but he was definitely not knocked to the ground, and in some reports he was hurling abuse at her after he had shot her.
I must condemn the shooting as you can see from all of the videos that Renee Good was not looking for an excuse to attack the officer, and indeed she seemed to be trying to simply get away from the situation. She had committed no crime and was not being accused of any. Finally, real and properly trained law enforcement would have shot out a tyre, to stop the car, for obvious reasons – if a car is moving and you kill the driver, the vehicle is then out of control and could hit anything or anyone. If their foot was on the accelerator the car might leap forward, in the instant of being shot. Indeed, the ICE agents’ injury (if real), may have been caused by the driver being shot and no longer in control. If you shoot the tyre, the car almost immediately comes to a stop at the speed Renee Good was going.
As if that wasn’t enough, we had a second shooting a few days ago when Alex Pretti was shot 10 times in 5 seconds, after the ICU nurse working for a Veterans Affairs facility, intervened to try and help someone pushed violently by an ICE agent. I would be critical of Alex Pretti carrying a gun, both from a British and Christian perspective, but regardless of that, he was committing no crime by doing so, and Minnesota is a large gun-carrying state, and so it certainly isn’t unusual.
One of the most disgraceful statements made by the Trump Administration was that made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said: “An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9-millimetre semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots. … This individual, who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers, committed an act of domestic terrorism.” If you have watched the video you’ll see this was was a dreadful and cynically-calculated lie.
As Pretti was clearly going to help the woman who stumbled, what cause did ICE have to pepper-spray and attack him? He wasn’t doing anything illegal. There is a very good and clear BBC Verify video analysis (and other sites have similar breakdowns) showing that at no time did he have a gun in his hands and that when he was on the ground his hands were on the ground away from his body.
Although he was carrying a legally owned gun in a holster on his belt, he made no attempt at any stage to use it, having his hands in the air (one hand held a mobile phone and the other was empty), when he went to help the woman, and indeed he was only shot after his own gun had been removed from his belt, so at that point he had no weapon. The fact he was shot 10 times in five seconds makes it look like an execution. I’m glad the two officer’s who shot Pretti so many times have been taken off duty, but hope they go on to be charged. Sadly Renee Good’s killer currently looks like he might face no charges.
Where on earth is the LGBTQ+ angle?
You’ve got this far but must be wondering where on earth the LGBTQ+ angle is? So far, this blog has been a social justice issue, and you may be asking where the law-abiding presidency and government we grew up with, has gone? Why have they allowed a “might makes right” culture to develop? Where is the national compassion that wrote on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost (sic) to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Well, there was another policy that has come from the White House at the beginning of December, that didn’t get much oxygen of publicity, and that was that “The Department of Justice has instructed inspectors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using standards designed to protect transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming people from sexual violence, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.” This isn’t just federal prisons, but state prisons and jails, juvenile detention centers, and immigration detention centers (controlled by ICE – and yes, there’s our link!). That NPR article is well worth reading in full, as is the Guardian report.
Specifically, the memo from the DOJ indicates a shift in how audits are conducted concerning the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Although the changes are not yet formalized, the memo directs all PREA auditors to disregard the provisions that protect LGBTQ+ people during their audits until the updates are finalized.
So the safety of LGBTQ and intersex individuals will not be guaranteed in these institutions from now on, nor will they evaluate incidents of sexual assault motivated by gender-identity bias. This raises significant safety concerns for vulnerable populations within prison systems. This memo sadly aligns with President Trump’s executive order that asserted a binary view of gender and directs federal policy to treat only male and female individuals, effectively disregarding the existence of non-binary and transgender identities.
Experts and advocates warn that removing these protections increases the danger of sexual violence for both transgender individuals and others in detention. According to data, transgender individuals experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence in prisons, with nearly 40% reporting incidents in some studies.
We have been talking about how ICE behaves in public, but how do they behave in their own prisons and detention centres? Not well, as we’ll see.
Although this change of assessment directly affects trans, intersex and gender-nonconforming people, all LGBTQ+ individuals, including lesbians and gay individuals, already face heightened risks of violence and abuse in prison settings. The lack of gender-specific guidelines may exacerbate these risks, as facilities may not effectively address the vulnerabilities of any LGBTQ+ inmate.
It must be recognised that during the course of ICE’s operations, both US citizens and those legally seeking asylum in the US have been detained and deported, while those in custody have reported being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, from not just inmates, but staff.
This is a very worrying development for the whole of our community even if it isn’t entirely unexpected. If you are a person of faith, it is perhaps a situation worth remembering in your prayers.
Closing thoughts
As I finish, should you be interested, may I point you to GLAAD, who keep a running total of Trumps attacks on LGBTQ+ people. The last date on the tracker as I write, is the 19th December, so there will be more added shortly, taking into account these changes.
What relationship should we in the UK have with the US in the future? After all we seem to be treated as irrelevant, pathetic and weak, so maybe its time we thought about the need to break our traditional cultural ties, as well as the religious influence of the US, and create stronger links with other middle powers like Canada, Australia, Europe and South Korea, as some have suggested. Currently we are in what seems to be an abusive relationship with a bully, and just like when two people are involved, the weaker person in the relationship, needs to leave. But that, of course, will be very difficult.
These stories must be making God weep, weep for the people being treated so badly, weep to see such a mighty country fail in its responsibilities so spectacularly, and weep for the church that supports, and justifies, so many of these actions. I hope that my next blog has far fewer stories to draw on next month and can be more positive.
Changing Minds 