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14 posts tagged United States
According to a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center, net migration from Mexico is now zero. In fact, the report suggests that more Mexican-born people may now be leaving the US than arriving. This means the end of the largest and most sustained immigration trend in American history.
The co-author of the report and senior demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, Jeff Passel, says the reasons include the economic downturn in the United States; the comparative prosperity of Mexico; tougher border controls; increased deportation of undocumented immigrants. More.
(via fylatinamericanhistory)
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Congress passed, and Bush signed into law, the FISA Amendments Act, which re-wrote the nation’s surveillance laws to give the NSA a much freer hand to wiretap American infrastructure wholesale. Court challenges to the program, brought by the EFF and the ACLU, attempted to argue that even allowing the NSA to harvest Americans’ communications alongside foreigners into giant databases violated American law and the US Constitution.
However, those challenges have never survived the Bush and Obama administration’s invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to have them thrown out of court. Which is another way of saying that Americans have no idea what’s going on. Given the choice between an administration official saying nothing is going on and a respected reporter with inside sources saying something wicked this way comes, I know where my trust would lie.
(via infoneer-pulse)
So, it’s not often you find me openly endorsing a candidate, however this is a special circumstance.
AmericansElect has gotten quite a bit of coverage. Basically most everyone of voting age in the United States is allowed to cast their support behind a candidate, and AE will choose the nominee with the most at their convention as their contender. Rocky Anderson, former Salt Lake City mayor, staunch progressive, and current candidate for the Justice Party is currently in 2nd place.
Right now I’m not sure who i’m voting for in November, depending on who has more momentum, Jill Stein from the Green Party, or Rocky here; but the nomination of him by AE could boost his campaign incredibly and actually give a solid progressive candidate in this election.
So yeah, I’ve already shown my support, so show yours if you so wish.
(via rockyanderson2012)
Homeland Security Wants to Spy on 4 Square Miles at Once
It’s not just for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars anymore. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of (constitutionally protected) American territory for long, long stretches of time.
Homeland Security doesn’t have a particular system in mind. Right now, it’s just soliciting “industry feedback” on what a formal call for such a “Wide Area Surveillance System” might look like. But it’s the latest indication of how powerful military surveillance technology, developed to find foreign insurgents and terrorists, is migrating to the home front.
» via Wired
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s interested in a system that can see between five to 10 square kilometers — that’s between two and four square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood — in its “persistent mode.” By “persistent,” it means the cameras should stare at the area in question for an unspecified number of hours to collect what the military likes to call “pattern of life” data — that is, what “normal” activity looks like for a given area. Persistence typically depends on how long the vehicle carrying the camera suite can stay aloft; DHS wants something that can fit into a manned P-3 Orion spy plane or a Predator drone — of which it has a couple. When not in “persistent mode,” the cameras ought to be able to see much, much further: “long linear areas, tens to hundreds of kilometers in extent, such as open, remote borders.”
If it’s starting to sound reminiscent of the spy tools the military has used in Iraq and Afghanistan, it should. Homeland Security wants the video collected by the system to beam down in “near real time” — 12 seconds or quicker — to a “control room (T) or to a control room and beyond line of sight (BLOS) ruggedized mobile receiver on the ground,” just as military spy gear does. The camera should shift to infrared mode for nighttime snooping, and contain “automated, real time, motion detection capability that cues a spotter imager for target identification.” Tests for the system will take place in Nogales, Arizona.
“Everywhere in Latin America one finds a tremendous resentment of the United States, and that resentment is always strongest among the poorer and darker peoples of the continent. The life and destiny of Latin America are in the hands of United States corporations. The decisions affecting the lives of South Americans are ostensibly made by their government, but there are almost no legitimate democracies alive in the whole continent. The other governments are dominated by huge and exploitative cartels that rob Latin America of her resources while turning a small rebate to a few members of the corrupt aristocracy, which in turn invests not in its own country for its own people’s welfare but in the banks of Switzerland and the playgrounds of the world.”
Fascism…you really think it’ll be this obvious?
(via fyeahderrickjensen)
These are old-growth forests. Try not to cry.
Fuck.
#things that are disturbing
Part of the American Holocaust.
:(
Civilization destroys land bases and living communities that live on them for resource extraction and subjugation.
Thats what it does.
(via kemetically-afrolatino)
Troy Davis Execution Delayed
(via lipsredasroses)
Portland, OR
WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says
This cell phone photo was shot by a resident of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006, of bodies Iraqi police said were of children executed by U.S. troops after a night raid there. A State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks quotes the U.N. investigator of extrajudicial killings as saying an autopsy showed the residents of the house had been handcuffed and shot in the head, including children under the age of 5. McClatchy obtained the photo from a resident when the incident occurred.
Alston initially posed his questions to the U.S. Embassy in Geneva, which passed them to Washington in the cable. According to Alston’s version of events, American troops approached a house in Ishaqi, which Alston refers to as “Al-Iss Haqi,” that belonged to Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, whom Alston identified as a farmer. The U.S. troops were met with gunfire, Alston said, that lasted about 25 minutes.
After the firefight ended, Alston wrote, the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that destroyed the house.” The initials refer to the official name of the military coalition, the Multi-National Force.
Alston said “Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries (sic) out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.”
U.S. economy has young Americans downsizing their dreams
Call it Generation Vexed — young Americans who are downsizing expectations in the face of an economic future that is anything but certain. Career plans are being altered, marriages put off and dreams shelved.
“You can’t reach for the stars at this point,” Thomas said.
Fewer than half of Americans believe that the current generation will have a better life than the last, according to a Gallup poll this spring. It was the most pessimistic showing for that barometer in nearly three decades.
» via The Los Angeles Times
