Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
Calumny. It is the only tactic they know.
The truth behind this photo of an ‘immigrant child’ crying inside a cage
(CNN)A photo of a little boy crying in a cage is being shared on social media as seemingly another heart-rending byproduct of the White House’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which separates undocumented parents and kids at the border.
There’s only one problem: The picture is being completely taken out of context — and does not show what it is purported to show.
Some of those sharing it claim the image depicts a boy detained by ICE under the new Trump administration policy of referring all people who cross the border illegally for criminal prosecution.
At least 2,000 children have been separated from parents at the border since the US started implementing the policy, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Friday.
Journalist and filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas posted the photo last week on Twitter, saying: “This is what happens when a government believes people are ‘illegal’. Kids in cages.”
This is what happens when a government believes people are “illegal.”
Kids in cages. pic.twitter.com/OAnvr9cl3P
— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) June 12, 2018
Many respondents vented anger at the administration’s hardline immigration policies and encouraged people to retweet the photo. “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill even tweeted — and later deleted — the picture along with the hashtag #UnAmerican.
Vargas also posted the image on Facebook, where it received almost 10,000 shares.
However, the picture was actually taken during a June 10 protest against White House immigration policies at Dallas City Hall, as first reported by fact-checking site Snopes.
Other Facebook photos from the protest, organized by the Texas chapter of the Brown Berets de Cemanahuac, a Latino advocacy group, show the same boy outside the cage as activists hold signs urging the White House to “stop separating families.”
Leroy Pena, head of the Brown Berets’ Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, took two pictures of the caged crying boy and posted them on Facebook with the caption: “This was part of our protest yesterday, but this is actually going on right now, at this very moment, in child detention centers throughout the country.” The post was later deleted, but a version is still on the Wayback Machine.
Pena told CNN the toddler was following his older sibling, who took part in the Dallas cage protest along with other teens.
“He got confused on how to get out (of the cage) and cried when he saw his mother,” Pena said. “He was only in there about 30 seconds.”
Pena expressed frustration at how the photo was taken out of context.
“I posted this on my personal profile and it was not set to public, but only friends. They shared it. Some of them shared it without my comment,” he said. But the image “did help bring attention to the plight of undocumented children,” he added.
“Trump’s supporters are mad at this simulation, but not mad at Trump for actually throwing children into dog kennels,” he said.
Vargas later said he realized the photo of the boy in the cage was misleading but defended his right to share it to make a point.
“Telling me that I shouldn’t post an image that, as it happened, was from a protest that staged what is actually happening at the border is like saying actors shouldn’t portray characters and situations based in real life,” he wrote on Twitter. “This is not a ’cause’ for me. This is real.”
More than 1,100 immigrants, including children, are being held at a processing detention center in the border city of McAllen, Texas. Democratic lawmakers who toured the facility have described children being held inside chain-linked cages.
“We did see the children who were held inside here,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told CNN’s Ana Cabrera on Sunday. “In wire mesh, chain-linked cages that are about 30 by 30 feet, a lot of young folks put into them. I must say though, far fewer than I was here two weeks ago.”
It is not the first time that alarming photos of caged children have been wrongly attributed to Trump administration policies.
A photograph showing two immigrant children sleeping in a fenced enclosure, which sparked outrage when it surfaced last month, turned out to have been taken in an Arizona detention facility in 2014.
As another said in a comment to a prior article.
Boo – Hoo.
I say, Boo-Fucking-Hoo
EDIT: my 1st enter swing with ‘Post Comment’ button returned a page with the notice: “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.”
Great programming
/sarc
Calumny: $64 word that means Democrats.
Notice the liberal media doesn’t post pics of Musloid victims of acid attacks; where are the pics of the raped, beaten girls/women in EU form the peaceful Musloids, or the thousands upon thousand of atrocities by Musloids in MENA.
Where, you fucking liberal rat scum.
I believe we are fucked. The American public was inattentive and stupid to begin with, now with the internet / social media / fake news / severely dumbed down education. They believe what they want, never read more than a headline.
We have rotted from within, and will go down as a nation that had too much ‘broadcasting’ (not communication).
I read that a staggering number of Americans now cannot distinguish between opinion and fact. We are so fucked….
https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between-factual-and-opinion-statements-in-the-news/
Hardscrabble – thanks for the new word. When I was but a young boy, my mother subscribed to the Readers Digest. One of the first things I would read (when she finally let me have it after she read it) was Word Power. Each issue would have about 10 words and their meanings and usage for learning. Great stuff.
Anu G’s a word a day is a great site.
https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html
I used to think, who the fuck would be dumb enough to be swayed by some Russian trolls posting shit on facebook? …..Pogo
We have met the enemy – and they are us.
The enemy is (((them))), using images and propaganda to influence sentimental women and soygoys.
So basically we don’t have any cages down there at the border. We better get some. The good news is that they don’t have to be real big.
Maybe they all will shut up about ‘the pooooor chilren’ after they pass the Ryan Amnesty Plan
Consider the Love of God for His Children but His great long suffering but worn down patience with the ZOG. Dear Brothers & Sisters, people are reporting the sounds of (Heavenly) Trumpets around the World. I can (almost) hear French Trumpets coming over the horizon to our aid. The Modern GSM will probably double the Natural Disasters (NDs) in 2019 and damage the Fall Harvest; then double NDs again in 2020-21 (my own son, an Army Major, scoffed at me Father’s Day!). The Useful Idiots (UIs) are deceived by TPTB and not preparing; they will be perish (probably by urban wildfires started by themselves) and wonderfully absent by about 2030. This is not proof of God but a Judgement on Sodom, and a blessing to us.
How hard is it to discredit these images cnn or social media is spreading to shit on Trump? Apparently not very hard at all.
My point is, if it’s so easy they why in the fuck isn’t Trump having a press conference to show the rapidly diminishing number of Americans willing to listen, the truth?
It’s almost to the point where I just don’t have any more fucks to give. Let the games begin….
Vargas said, “This issue is real for me. This isn’t about no racist White people dying, I love that. When I see my people, they are blood. They are my race. Fuck YT and all he stands for.”
IF PEOPLE TOLD THE TRUTH.
And Snopes got one right? Bravo
Zero Hedge loved the word Calumny and did a post about it.
Move the wall back 50 feet and plant landmines on the other side, the end.