When a “teenager” from Iran joined students at Stoke High School in Ipswich (a county town of Suffolk, England), students and parents immediately noticed something was off.

The alleged 15-year-old boy, Siavash, was 6’1”, had stubble, a large Adam’s apple, and a hairline that some viewed as receding. Students and parents believed the “teen” was closer to 30 than 15.

When parents began complaining that an adult man was in school with their underage children, they say their concerns were “dismissed as racist,” according to the Daily Mail.

“I went in [to] complain but I was fobbed off. They are deluded and seem more worried about how the bloke might feel,” a father of two teenage students told the Mail. “I am not aware of this lad having done anything inappropriate, but it’s clearly wrong that he should be in a class with children.”

Another parent said she was told the man sat on a bench during lunch near teenage girls, “just looking.”

One student said Siavash started FaceTiming a female student, “sending her messages, asking how close she lived to the school.” The student took the messages to school officials but was told there was nothing wrong with them, according to the Mail.

Rod impales migrant woman who tries climbing over US border fence

Is Lord of the Rings Prejudiced Against Orcs?

The story, which appears in Duncan’s new collection An Agent of Utopia, was also inspired by Michael Moorcock, who has criticized Tolkien for depicting creatures such as orcs, trolls, and goblins as intrinsically evil.

“It’s hard to miss the repeated notion in Tolkien that some races are just worse than others, or that some peoples are just worse than others,” Duncan says. “And this seems to me—in the long term, if you embrace this too much—it has dire consequences for yourself and for society.”

“Senator Bilbo” first appeared in 2001, but its references to border walls and a “Shire First” policy make it seem more relevant than ever. Duncan says that’s because the story deals with themes that are, unfortunately, timeless. “In many ways President Trump is unique, but in many ways we have seen his like before,” he says. “We have seen the forces that he has tapped into on the ascendency before.”

Duncan believes that these reactionary waves come in constant cycles, so it’s important for the response to be cyclical as well.

The horrifying story of a prostitute orangutan who was chained to a bed, shaved daily and forced to perform sex acts on men

In order to be considered a refugee in the U.S., an individual must:

• be located outside of the U.S.
• be of specific humanitarian apprehension for the U.S.
• be able to validate previous persecution or feared approaching persecution based on the individual's race, religion, nationality, social class, or political outlook
• not be currently settled in another country
• be admissible to the U.S.

“Some people look at these images and they listen to the president who says it’s not women and children, it’s stone cold criminals,” said Ruhle. “So my first question is, you’re in that tent camp, besides that family give us the profile of who is there mostly and what are they looking for.”

“Because it seems as though, to your point, they don’t actually have the necessary information so they know how to cross the border, there could be people yesterday who are running because they thought it was their only chance,” she added.

“Right,” Schwartz responded. “It’s very difficult because this has become such a polarizing issue.”

“You’re gonna see a lot of families here,” he explained, “a lot of children, but the truth is the majority of the people that are a part of this caravan, especially outside, if we can make our way all the way over there, we’ll show you, the majority of them are men.”

“The majority are actually men”

“So when this becomes a polarized political issue in the United States,” he continued, “you have people on one side that point and say there are women and children here, and that is true. And there are others that point and say these are men that are trying to cross the border, and that’s true too.”

“From what we’ve seen,” he added, “the majority are actually men, and some of these men have not articulated that need for asylum instead they have talked about, you know, going to the United States for a better life and to find work.”

The Times added that pepper spray was used by border authorities 151 times; it has been used 43 times in fiscal year 2018.

MUDD: This is an — this is a leadership issue. Tens of millions of Americans will wake up today and eat hamburgers for lunch, that’s going to kill them. People don’t focus on the long term, they focus on the short term.”

BERMAN: “Mm-hmm.”

MUDD: “There’s a parallel here. The president comes into office and says we are withdrawing from climate change and we’re investing in coal. That’s going to kill us. Unless we get leadership that says we’ve got to take short term pain for the long term gain, which is something Americans don’t do when they eat hamburgers, we are not going to win this one. We need leadership on this issue.”

BACK IN JANUARY, THE NEW YORK TIMES AGREED WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP THAT CALIFORNIA NEEDED TO IMPROVE ITS FORESTRY MANAGEMENT
Editorial by Kevin Ryan

The deadliest and most destructive fire in California's history was finally brought under control by firefighters yesterday, more than two weeks after it erupted. So far 87 people are confirmed to have been killed in the blaze, and many are still missing.

But the media firestorm continues over President Trump’s assertion that poor forest management contributed to the disaster. After Trump tweeted that better forest management could have prevented, or at least mitigated, the damage caused by the devastating wildfires, the media and California politicians said his assertion was false.

A spokesman for California Governor Jerry Brown said that the president's assertion was “inane” and “uninformed.” The New York Times wrote a piece entitled “Trump’s Misleading Claims About California’s Fire ‘Mismanagement’”

Yet just a few months back, both Governor Brown and The New York Times said basically the same thing as Trump.

In a January article, the Times wrote that “A group of scientists warned in the journal BioScience that [100 million] dead trees could produce wildfires on a scale and of an intensity that California has never seen,” and that “scientists say they cannot even calculate the damage the dead-tree fires might cause; it exceeds what their current fire behavior modeling can simulate.”

“‘It’s something that is going to be much more severe,’ said Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at Berkeley and the lead author of the study. ‘You could have higher amounts of embers coming into home areas, starting more fires.’”

The Times article even pointed the finger at California’s forestry regulations, saying “California forests are much more vulnerable now because, paradoxically, they have been better protected. In their natural state, forests were regularly thinned by fire but the billions of dollars that the state spends aggressively fighting wildfires and restrictions on logging have allowed forests to accumulate an overload of vegetation… That’s a scenario that could nudge the state into rethinking its forest management.“

And yet, fast forward to today, and The New York Times is suddenly interviewing “experts” to contradict its previous assertions now that President Trump has also questioned California’s forest management.

“President Trump’s statements, which drew outrage from local leaders and firefighters, oversimplified the cause of California’s wildfires.” The Times says that the logging advocated by Trump, Republicans, and, apparently, The New York Times last January, would not have helped because “logging gets rid of trees, but it does not get rid of the kindling — brush, bushes and twigs. Logging does, however, enable the spread of cheatgrass, a highly combustible weed, which makes a forest more likely to burn.”

That’s basically the opposite of what the Times’ said earlier this year.

And it’s not just the media reversing itself to discredit Trump. Governor Brown’s office was calling for the same changes to logging regulations just a few months ago. In order to mitigate the fire danger from dead trees, Brown proposed that landowners be permitted to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter, a jump from the current 26 inches, on properties that are 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit and would also be able to build roads up to 600 feet long.

Of course the environmental lobby opposed it. And now huge swaths of land that environmentalists were “protecting” are now embers.

But Brown, and the media, would rather reverse their recent calls for safer forestry management than to agree with the president.

White liberals more likely to 'patronize' minorities than conservatives, study finds

Liberals present themselves as warmer, less competent to minority audiences

White liberals present themselves as less competent when addressing minorities, while conservatives use the same vocabulary no matter what the race of their audience, according to a newly released study.

Yale and Princeton researchers found that white Democratic presidential candidates and self-identified liberals played down their competence when speaking to minorities, using fewer words that conveyed accomplishment and more words that expressed warmth.

On the other hand, there were no significant differences in how white conservatives, including Republican presidential candidates, spoke to white versus minority audiences.