Mitt Romney: “I’m Running for Office! I Can’t Have Illegals!” (Video)
I think Mitt Romney is running for the office of fakest human being to ever live …
LulzSec Leaks Arizona Law Enforcement Papers
Rob Beschizza writes on BoingBoing:
LulzSec announced Thursday evening the publication at Pirate Bay of a trove of leaked material from Arizona law enforcement agencies. Arizona’s Department of Public Safety confirmed shortly thereafter that it was hacked.
In the press release included with the dump, a LulzSec affiliate outlines a more activist agenda than is usually associated with the group:
We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.
The documents classified as “law enforcement sensitive”, “not for public distribution”, and “for official use only” are primarily related to border patrol and counter-terrorism operations and describe the use of informants to infiltrate various gangs, cartels, motorcycle clubs, Nazi groups, and protest movements.
Immigrants For Sale
This powerful animated video exposes how our immigrant community is being sold to private prisons for obscene profits.
Top three facts to know about private prisons (via immigrantsforsale.org):
- The victims: Private prisons don’t care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night…
Army & Navy Add Citizenship Option To Boot Camp
140 US Sailors & Marines from 45 different countries take the Oath of Citizenship aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
Legal immigrants to the US have been allowed to gain citizenship after joining the military. By allowing citizenship to be approved while in boot camp, there’s less bureaucratic paperwork during deployment and a ‘well-deserved break’ before being shipped to war. From AP via The Bellingham Herald:
Military service has long been one route to U.S. citizenship. Now the Army and Navy, in need of specialists and language skills in wartime, are speeding things up by allowing recruits to wrap up the process while they’re still in basic training.
It means a change in a no-visitors policy during boot camp, to allow federal immigration officers access to the recruits. But military officials say it’s a well-deserved break for volunteers who otherwise would have to slog through the bureaucratic ordeal during deployments around the world, often…
CNN Attributes ‘Mainstreaming Of Conspiracy Theories’ To Rise In U.S. Hate Groups
While “hate groups” undoubtedly can be a problem for a civil society, I believe this article is awfully biased against those who are rationally weary of Big Gov.
CNN reports:
The number of radical right groups in America — including hate groups, “Patriot” groups and nativist groups — increased in 2010 for the second year in a row, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The organization’s quarterly publication, Intelligence Report, said the growth was “driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities.”
The SPLC documented 1,002 hate groups operating in the United States in 2010, a 7.5% increase from the year before. It was the first time that more than 1,000 hate groups were recorded since the organization started tracking them in the 1980s.
But the biggest…
Immigration Officer Put Wife On Terrorist List To Prevent Her Coming Home
Come on guys, the War on Terror is a serious matter! From Great Britain, hijinks ensue as immigration officials put their nagging wives on the terrorist watchlist to prevent their returning from overseas vacation. The Daily Mail reports:
An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects.
He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is ‘not conducive to the public good’. As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after traveling to the county to visit family.
The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects’ list during a vetting inquiry. The Home Office confirmed today that the officer has been sacked for…
The Possibility of Hope
A great extra from the fantastic movie Children of Men. Modern philosophers, political scientists, and climate scientists weigh-in on the state of the Earth, global politics, militarism, mass-migration, global warming, and the future of humanity.
(For the disinfo regular, I’d recommend the watching the movie The Constant Gardener and the documentary Darwin’s Nightmare, but perhaps you already have…)
Young Man Disguised As Elderly Man On International Flight Seeks Refugee Protection
Who would suspect an elderly white man? Nobody. At least, that’s what the young man from Hong Kong thought. While the facial disguise was quite impressive, he forgot to make his hands appear aged as well, which was what raised suspicion as he boarded the plane. CNN reports:
Canadian authorities are investigating an “unbelievable” incident in which a passenger boarded an Air Canada flight disguised as an elderly man, according to a confidential alert obtained by CNN.
The incident occurred on October 29 on Air Canada flight AC018 to Vancouver originating in Hong Kong. An intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency describes the incident as an “unbelievable case of concealment.”
“Information was received from Air Canada Corporate Security regarding a possible imposter on a flight originating from Hong Kong,” the alert says. “The passenger in question was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who…
Private Prison Industry Helped Draft Arizona Immigration Law
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pierce. Photo: Phoenician Patriot (CC)
Maybe this is what Tea Baggers mean by “leaner, more efficient government”? Privatising the process altogether? Alex Pareene at Salon explores Arizona’s sell out of its citizens to the highest corporate bidder:
When it comes to creating demand for a previously unnecessary service and making a profit by any means necessary, you can’t beat the private sector. So no one should be surprised that the private prison industry is in part responsible for the Arizona immigration law that requires state law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law (read: lock up anyone suspected of being Hispanic until and unless they can prove their citizenship). NPR investigated the prison industry’s role in drafting and passing SB 1070. It’s pretty depressing.
Corporations and interest groups like R.J. Reynolds, ExxonMobil, the NRA, and the Corrections Corporation of America host a regular conference for state legislators in DC. At last…
Woman Becomes American Citizen After Entering The Country 101 Years Earlier
Sometimes patience does pay off. A century of patience. BBC News reports:
More than a century after she crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US, Eulalia Garcia has become an American citizen at the age of 101.
“I feel really good about what I have accomplished – at my age and with my health,” she said.
Ms Garcia, who entered the US on 12 October 1909, became a citizen on the 101st anniversary of her arrival.
She said the first thing she wanted to do as an American was vote in the mid-term elections on 2 November.
“Sure, I do – for the best [candidate],” Ms Garcia said.
The naturalisation ceremony took place on Tuesday in a federal courthouse in Brownsville in the US state of Texas, where Ms Garcia has lived almost all her life.
Continues at BBC News …
Lou Dobbs Employed Illegal Immigrants
From the Nation:
Since he left CNN last November, after Latino groups mounted a protest campaign against his inflammatory rhetoric, Dobbs has continued to advocate an enforcement-first approach to immigration, emphasizing, as he did in a March 2010 interview on Univision, that “the illegal employer is the central issue in this entire mess!”
His scheduled October 9 address at the Virginia Tea Party Convention will mark his second major Tea Party address of the year…
Chris And Stephen Go To Washington
Stephen Colbert testified before Congress recently, and a good amount of the media have been trying to deflect from his message by accusing him of “wasting time.”
Isn’t it interesting though that they didn’t think it was such a waste of time when, a few years earlier, Chris Farley made an appearance there?
Stephen Colbert To Testify Before Congress
First Elmo, then Kevin Costner, and now Stephen Colbert gets to testify before Congress at an immigration hearing entitled “Protecting America’s Harvest.” With Colbert testifying in Congress and Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Return Sanity,” the lines between politics and political comedy are increasingly blurred. From New York Daily News:
It’s no joke — Stephen Colbert will testify before Congress.
The Comedy Central host will head to Capitol Hill and appear before a House Judiciary subcommittee for a hearing on immigration called “Protecting America’s Harvest.”
Colbert will speak alongside United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.
The comedian spent a day working at a farm in New York last month after Rodriguez came on the show to discuss UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign, which challenges the view that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans.
Continues at New York Daily News …
Catch 22 For Right Wing Conservatives: Support Climate Change Actions Or Suffer Mass Immigration From Mexico
You have to love the irony of this: right-wing conservatives in America tend towards the climate change denial camp and refuse to support measures to combat global warming, yet a new report suggests that if we don’t arrest the warming trend, there will be unprecedented mass migration from Mexico into the U.S. — another issue that drives this crowd crazy. Reported in the Los Angeles Times:
Climbing temperatures are expected to raise sea levels and increase droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires.
Now, scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change: mass migration to the United States.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number could amount to 10% of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to…
Obama vs Arizona
President Barack Obama, along with the Justice Department, filed a lawsuit against the state of 
Arizona for the passing of an immigration law that would allow the failure of carrying proper documentation subject to arrest. This lawsuit may be taken to court as early as today. Making this the sixth lawsuit against Arizona, many people have argued that the law allows local law enforcement to hassle citizens based on racial profiling.
Arizona has argued, and fine-tuned the law, to emphasize the fact that officers will not perform random spot checks, but will enforce the law once someone has brought attention to themselves because of another law-breaking action. This questions if “reasonable doubt” could easily be jaywalking, broken tail light, etc. Although this law has been widely contested throughout the country, according to Los Angeles Times, Arizona has already received $120,000 in private donations throughout the nation,to defend the law. In President…
FAA Under Pressure to Open U.S. Skies to Unmanned Spyplanes
Photo: Ross D. Franklin
Joan Lowy writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act.
Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.
The obvious risks have not deterred the…
U.S., Mexico Swap Accusations Over Border Shooting
From CBS World News:
A U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot a 15-year-old Mexican boy after a group trying to illegally enter Texas threw rocks at officers near downtown El Paso, U.S. authorities said Tuesday.
The shooting, which happened Monday evening beneath a railroad bridge linking the two nations, drew sharp criticism from Mexico, where the government said Tuesday that “the use of firearms to repel attacks with stones represents disproportionate use of force, particularly coming from authorities who have received specialized training.”
It was the second death of a Mexican at the hands of Border Patrol officers in less than two weeks, and the case threatened to swell into a full-blown international incident when U.S. and Mexican officials traded suggestions of misconduct.
Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua Attorney General’s office, said a spent 40-mm shell was found near the body – raising the question of whether the fatal shot was fired…
Puerto Rican Man Nearly Deported To Mexico
Your ethnicity, citizenship, and place of birth don’t matter — if you’re brown, you’re now in danger of being deported “back to Mexico”:
Arizona Uses Puppet Video To Sell Immigration Law
What is wrong with Arizona?!? By Jordan Fabian for The Hill:
Who knew that Kermit the Frog was this into politics. The campaign of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has put out a video that features a frog puppet — that looks much like the famous Sesame Street character — to help sell the state’s controversial immigration law.
The frog encourages opponents to read the immigration law before criticizing it.
Some may scoff, but the law has boosted Brewer in the polls over her Democratic opponent, Terry Goddard.
Watch it here:
