All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

‘Grassroots’ Facebook Brexit ads secretly run by staff of Lynton Crosby firm

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Exclusive: ‘grassroots’ groups that spent up to £1m on targeted Facebook ads share administrator who works for lobbying firm

A series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns that appear to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

The mysterious groups, which have names such as Mainstream Network and Britain’s Future, appear to be run independently by members of the public and give no hint that they are connected. But in reality they share an administrator who works for Crosby’s CTF Partners and have spent as much as £1m promoting sophisticated targeted adverts aimed at heaping pressure on individual MPs to vote for a hard Brexit.

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Muslims and Jews face a common threat from white supremacists. We must fight it together | Jonathan Freedland and Mehdi Hasan

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From Christchurch to Pittsburgh, the two communities are under attack. It is time to stand united

The two of us have been having the exact same conversation for the past decade. About antisemitism and Islamophobia. One of us a Muslim, the other a Jew, we have conducted it in public and in private, on Twitter and on TV. We’ve agreed; we’ve argued; we’ve even wandered off topic to trade tips on how to get through a fast. Now we’ve come together because of the urgent and common threat that we face. Both of our communities are under violent attack from far-right white supremacists.

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H.R. 2029: To direct the Comptroller General of the United States to submit a report on the response of law enforcement agencies to reports of missing or murdered Indians.

Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Ruben Gallego [D-AZ7]

This bill was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources and House Committee on the Judiciary which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.

Rep. Ruben Gallego [D-AZ7] is a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Organizations Show with Numbers There Is No Crisis at Border

By Manuel Ocaño

Organizations such as the Southern Border Communities Coalition reject the Trump administration’s version of the humanitarian and national security crisis which warrants a shutdown of the border.

Vicki Gaubeca, executive director of the organization representing over 15 million Americans along the border, said that “the Border Patrol’s apprehension rate remains at historic lows.”

In 2017, the Border Patrol’s apprehension rates reached levels similar to those in 1971, almost half a century later, when there was only a fraction of the agents now watching the border. In the last two years, the numbers have not changed noticeably.

“As a matter of fact, the majority of people that look to enter through our border are families and children that flee dangerous situations and put their lives at risk looking for asylum which they are legally entitled to,” Gaubeca said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) informed on its own that the that the numbers presented by the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border protection are incorrect.

The majority of people crossing the border irregularly are “vulnerable families and children with turn themselves into Border Patrol officers, as the first step to seek asylum,” according to the ACLU. “Frightened and vulnerable people find themselves forced to either wait for months in dangerous conditions or cross the border between customs checkpoints and look for agents of the Border Patrol to turn themselves into.”

The Border Patrol released a statistics chart showing that in the last months, after the arrival of the latest migrant caravan , apprehension rates per month floated around 51,000, but starting this January they shot up.

Although the chart points to apprehensions, in reality these are almost all immigrants looking to turn themselves into officers, they are not undocumented individuals running away from the Border Patrol.

According to these numbers, a day this past February recorded the most ever apprehensions (or voluntary turn ins) the last 10 years, with 3,700 people, mostly entire families and unaccompanied minors.

Other numbers show in 2000, when the number of Border Patrol agents were less than half than of today’s agents, an average day yielded a count of 4,383 migrants detained, who were undocumented and fled from agents rather than turn themselves in.

In March of 2000, for example, Border Patrol detained 220,000 persons, without the need to cram them into fenced spaces as can be seen in current photos.

The previous statistics come from the Border Patrol, but in other charts, such as one by FactCheck.org, one can observe a gradual diminishment until these last months without any upticks.