So, I’m about to break Ares’ rules about profanity, a lot. But that’s not the worst part of what I’m about to write. I am not a fan of “trigger warnings,” but I’m about to describe some very nasty things. Sensitive sorts might want to skip this post.Ares wrote: ↑Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:15 pm I don't want to have to constantly updating folks as to the changes RPG.net makes, but I feel this is relevant to make:
As an update to the aforementioned rules, RPG.net has updated their policy again regarding ICE, the Border Patrol and Illegal Immigration.
It is as follows:
There's a new policy announcement in Trouble Tickets regarding GAs on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department (ICE); specifically, fuck ICE, fuck anybody who doesn't fuck ICE, fuck anybody who doesn't put lights in his window and stay up all night fucking ICE. Border Patrol too, while we're at it.
https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?83 ... st21953863
So if you post on RPG.net, regardless of your feelings on the matter, please be aware of this change.After consultation between the staff, we've realized a strong majority of us are no longer willing to mod group attacks against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is not an open license for revenge porn or personal attacks on specific posters or the like, but we aren't going to pretend any more that they're within the bounds of civility, or that they deserve to be treated as if they were. If you don't understand the basis for this policy, read the news. If you have read the news and still think we need to clarify why we've done this, please find a qualified professional to administer a Voight-Kampff examination at your earliest opportunity.
In conclusion: If you support ICE at this point, you would have called the Gestapo on the people surreptitiously moving into your neighbor's attic and huffed that you were only following the law.
- TheRPGnet Moderation Team
Are any of you familiar with what an intermodal container or “ISOtainer” is? You’ve all seen them in movies and tv shows, there’s probably a few thousand rolling around your town as we type this... They’re the standardized shipping crates used by pretty much everyone these days. Big steel boxes that come in a 6.1 m standard or 12.2 m double length, a 2.6 m standardized height, standardized attachment points for securement, lift trucks, and cranes. Hold damn near anything. Stack like LEGO. A true wonder of modern international commerce.
There also virtually waterproof, poorly ventilated, windowless, and dark.
Twice in my life I’ve been on scene when United States Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection cutting one of these twenty-foot by eight-foot portable tombs open to find several dozen women from Southeast Asian locked inside. The smell alone will be haunting me until the day I die. I cannot bring myself to describe the sight inside.
The Guardsmen and CBP officers rushed into action to provide much needed medical attention, give water, give food, whisper reassurances and calming words in a half-dozen dialects... and to respectfully and gently remove the deceased.
“Human trafficking” has become something of a buzzword these days, used by overzealous prosecutors and moral-crusader politicians interested in cracking down on prostitution and sex work. They want to try to conflate the two in the public mind... But actual human trafficking is real (albeit thankfully rare). There are international criminal cartels who shove men, women, and children about the globe as if they were commodities.
Shoved into metal boxes like so much canned tuna. Spending weeks to months in ocean crossings... Or stuffed into thinly walled boxcars rumbling through the Canadian Rockies... Stuffed inside unventilated semitrucks in the California or Arizona desert... Two hundred men clinging to a passenger ferry rated to hold fifty, crossing several thousand nautical miles of Mediterranean Sea when it was designed to putter across an urban river...
Malnutrition and starvation are common. Dehydration should just be treated as a given. Most of the men will have been physically abused by the smugglers, most of the women will have been raped, many of the children too. These people will be poor beyond belief and they (and the families left behind) will have gone into deeper debts to pay (or promise to pay) the smugglers. The smugglers will often use them as pack animals to bring other contraband across the boarder, I’ve seen everything from pirated DVDs and untaxed cigarettes to automatic weapons and military-grade explosives. Oh, and drugs, obviously.
United States Customs and Border Protection agents and officers save lives every single day. As do the agents and officers of similar organizations in other nations.
Fuck you and your virtue signaling RPG.net. Fuck you hard.