Browsed by
Month: August 2019

The poultry industry recruited them. Now ICE raids are devastating their communities

The poultry industry recruited them. Now ICE raids are devastating their communities

Angela Stuesse writes: On Wednesday people across the United States were shocked by the news that ICE raids at a handful of Mississippi chicken plants had resulted in the largest single-state immigration enforcement action in U.S. history, with nearly 700 people detained. As surprising as the news was, coming on the heels of a deadly mass shooting that targeted Latinos, perhaps just as surprising was the location of the raids in the deep, rural South. The prominence of Latinos in…

Read More Read More

Data on white supremacist terrorism the Trump administration has been ‘unable or unwilling’ to give to Congress

Data on white supremacist terrorism the Trump administration has been ‘unable or unwilling’ to give to Congress

Yahoo News reports: Alleged white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism incidents in 2018, according to a government document distributed earlier this year to state, local and federal law enforcement. The document, which has not been previously reported on, becomes public as the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been unable or unwilling to provide data to Congress on white supremacist domestic terrorism. The data in this document, titled “Domestic Terrorism in 2018,” appears to be what Congress has…

Read More Read More

Michigan man with diabetes dies in Iraq after ICE deported him

Michigan man with diabetes dies in Iraq after ICE deported him

This video is of Jimmy taken in Baghdad two weeks after his deportation. I’m sharing with permission from Jimmy’s lawyers. Jimmy has been in the US since he was 6mo old—he was born in a refugee camp in Greece to Iraqi Christian parents. RIP#JimmyAldaoud https://t.co/1182x6GRAY pic.twitter.com/KF8RUOtKiH — Mari Manoogian (@MariManoogian) August 8, 2019 Detroit Free Press reports: Forty years ago, Jimmy Al-Daoud, 41, came from Greece to the U.S. legally as a 6-month-old baby, along with his Iraqi Christian parents,…

Read More Read More

Scathing new Pentagon report blames Trump for the return of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Scathing new Pentagon report blames Trump for the return of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Business Insider reports: A report from the Pentagon inspector general found that President Donald Trump’s decision to rapidly pull troops out of Syria and divert attention from diplomacy in Iraq has inadvertently aided the Islamic State’s regrouping in Syria and Iraq. The Department of Defense’s quarterly report to Congress on the effectiveness of the US Operation Inherent Resolve mission said that “ISIS continued its transition from a territory-holding force to an insurgency in Syria, and it intensified its insurgency in…

Read More Read More

How a Trump construction crew relies on undocumented workers

How a Trump construction crew relies on undocumented workers

The Washington Post reports: For nearly two decades, the Trump Organization has relied on a roving crew of Latin American employees to build fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses from New York to Florida. Other employees at Trump clubs were so impressed by the laborers — who did strenuous work with heavy stone — that they nicknamed them “Los Picapiedras,” Spanish for “the Flintstones.” For years, their ranks have included workers…

Read More Read More

How Trump’s consolation and empathy tour turned sour

How Trump’s consolation and empathy tour turned sour

Dahlia Lithwick writes: It took a tiny baby to reveal how small Donald Trump really is. The president’s trip to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, this week, ostensibly undertaken to comfort the mourners and the injured in the wake of two horrifying mass murder sprees that left at least 31 people dead and many more injured, went terribly, terribly wrong. The Washington Post observed on Thursday that inside the White House, the trip was generally seen as “not ideal,”…

Read More Read More

To halt warming and ensure food supplies, land-use practices must change

To halt warming and ensure food supplies, land-use practices must change

E&E News reports: What’s good for the planet’s climate is also good for its food systems. Halting global warming and feeding the world’s rapidly growing population both require major overhauls to the way that humans manage the land they live on, according to a much-anticipated report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report, released this morning, tackles the broad connections between climate change and land. With contributions from more than 100 scientists who reviewed thousands of research papers,…

Read More Read More

Donald Trump: A charismatic leader for white nationalists

Donald Trump: A charismatic leader for white nationalists

Barbara McQuade writes: From my work as a former national-security prosecutor, I know that many individuals who engage in terrorism are alienated from society and are looking for something larger than themselves to find meaning in their lives. They have endured loss or unfulfilled expectations, and are looking for scapegoats. A powerful leader who speaks to their grievances can inspire them to act. For many radical Islamist terrorists, that leader was Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric who was born and lived…

Read More Read More

‘Blood on their hands’: The intelligence officer whose 2009 warning over white supremacy was ignored

‘Blood on their hands’: The intelligence officer whose 2009 warning over white supremacy was ignored

The Guardian reports: Ten years ago, the Department of Homeland Security sent American law enforcement agencies an intelligence briefing warning of a rising threat of domestic rightwing extremism, including white supremacist terrorism. The economic recession and the election of America’s first black president would create fertile ground for rightwing radicalization, the 2009 report concluded. Military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular, would be attractive targets for recruitment. Republican politicians and conservative pundits reacted with outrage and demanded a…

Read More Read More

White nationalists have become the face of terrorism in America

White nationalists have become the face of terrorism in America

Time reports: When you think of a terrorist, what do you see? For more than a generation, the image lurking in Americans’ nightmares has resembled the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks: an Islamic jihadist. Not a 21-year-old white supremacist from a prosperous Dallas suburb. But long before that young man drove to El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3 and allegedly murdered at least 22 people at a Walmart crammed with back-to-school shoppers, it was clear that white nationalists have become…

Read More Read More

India just put democracy at risk across South Asia

India just put democracy at risk across South Asia

Jonah Blank writes: If you didn’t notice that Prime Minister Narendra Modi just changed the status of the restive Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, I understand. On August 5, his government introduced legislation to abrogate Article 370, and even Article 35A, and—see, I’ve lost you already. But don’t let jargon and legalese distract you: This may be the most important event in an enormously volatile part of the world since the end of the last century, with repercussions that…

Read More Read More

The ‘warspeak’ permeating everyday language puts us all in the trenches

The ‘warspeak’ permeating everyday language puts us all in the trenches

It’s a linguistic battlefield out there. Complot/Shutterstock.com By Robert Myers, Alfred University In a manifesto posted online shortly before he went on to massacre 22 people at an El Paso Walmart, Patrick Crusius cited the “invasion” of Texas by Hispanics. In doing so, he echoed President Trump’s rhetoric of an illegal immigrant “invasion.” Think about what this word choice communicates: It signals an enemy that must be beaten back, repelled and vanquished. Yet this sort of language – what I…

Read More Read More

Giant, active galaxies from the early universe may have finally been found

Giant, active galaxies from the early universe may have finally been found

Science News reports: Astronomers may finally have laid eyes on a population of enormous but elusive galaxies in the early universe. These hefty, star-forming galaxies are shrouded in dust, which hid them from previous searches that used starlight. Now observations of radiation emitted by that interstellar dust have revealed dozens of massive, active galaxies from when the universe was younger than 2 billion years, researchers report online August 7 in Nature. These galaxies may be the long-sought precursors to heavyweight…

Read More Read More

Trump’s politicization of climate science poses a threat to the future of agriculture

Trump’s politicization of climate science poses a threat to the future of agriculture

Politico reports: One of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how rice is losing nutrients because of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who’s worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for more than two decades, told POLITICO he was alarmed when department officials not only questioned the findings of the study — which raised…

Read More Read More