All posts by nedhamson

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

A new report finds the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally to be the lowest in more than a decade

The number of immigrants in the country illegally has dropped to the lowest in more than a decade, according to a new report.

Tuesday’s report from the Pew Research Center analyzed census and immigration data to estimate that in 2016 there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

The…

Get on with it? No, May’s Brexit plan was a disaster from day one | Polly Toynbee

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The prime minister sought to appease hardliners and ended up with the worst kind of deal. Her letter to the people is hogwash

Theresa May’s statement to the Commons and her letter to the people are profoundly dishonest. This dutiful vicar’s daughter is not telling the truth about all the country loses if her deal is passed, and she knows it. As the underdog assailed on every side, her personal polling has risen as people take pity on her, in her relentless obstinacy. But she is not presenting true options on Brexit and never did, from the day she entered Downing Street.

Dissembling, she presents this as a great national compromise – that’s her last-ditch pitch for her two-week persuasion tour. She poses as the moderate, reasonable voice in the great Westminster brouhaha. In her letter to the people she urges us, on 29 March 2019, to “put aside labels of leave and remain for good”. “I want that to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country.” The hypocrisy is breathtaking, since her deal offers neither. Hers is a hard Brexit, leaving our privileged place in the European Union for an unmapped destination largely beyond our control, terms and conditions unknown.

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Mississippi Senate runoff collapses into referendum on ‘old south’ racism

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As ‘blue wave’ talk dissipates, the racial subtext of the race between Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy has fallen inwards to the state

For weeks, a string of awkward remarks and investigative reports had placed race squarely in the center of Tuesday’s Mississippi Senate runoff election. There was talk of “public hangings” and Confederate symbology, and what that all meant in an election between a white woman and a black man in the US state that, rightly or wrongly, has long been held in public imagination as the nation’s most racist.

Related: Trump defends Cindy Hyde-Smith ahead of rallies for Mississippi senator

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Google employees sign letter against censored search engine for China

Do no evil… except for a profit?

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  • Project Dragonfly would allow Beijing to monitor users’ activity
  • Open letter is latest sign of worker unrest at tech company

A group of Google employees published an open letter on Tuesday calling on their employer to cancel its plans to build a censored search engine for China, the latest expression of worker unrest at a company that earlier this month saw thousands stage walkouts over its handling of sexual misconduct cases.

Related: Ex-staffer pressures Google over China project ahead of Senate hearing

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Pharma giant sold mesh implant despite pain warnings

Greed fouls all morals!

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Exclusive: staff at Johnson & Johnson had concerns it could harden in body, emails show

Revealed: how faulty implants harm patients worldwide
Why we’re examining the implants industry

A vaginal mesh implant made by one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms was launched despite the company being warned it could shrink and harden inside the body, company documents reveal.

Internal emails between executives, shared with the Guardian, show staff at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) were concerned that the plastic material the mesh was made from had the potential to turn “hard as a rock” and roll up like a “folded potato chip” inside patients.

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Fresh row looms as No 10 refuses to publish full Brexit legal advice

What could they possibly be hiding?

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Refusal – despite unanimous resolution by Commons – is unacceptable, says Labour

Downing Street has refused to commit to publishing the full legal advice given on the Brexit deal despite a unanimous resolution by the House of Commons, in a move likely to spark a major new process row with Labour and Tory Brexiters.

Related: Labour accuses government of defying will of Commons by not releasing full Brexit legal advice – Politics live

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White House prevents Gina Haspel from briefing Senate on Khashoggi murder

Afraid she might tell the truth?

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Mike Pompeo and James Mattis are due to give a briefing on US relations with Saudi Arabia to Senate on Wednesday

The White House is preventing the CIA director, Gina Haspel, or any other intelligence official from briefing the Senate on the murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.

The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the defence secretary, James Mattis, are due to give a briefing on US relations with Saudi Arabia to the entire Senate behind closed doors on Wednesday, ahead of a vote that could cut off US support for Riyadh’s military campaign in Yemen.

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Donald Trump warns China he won’t back down on trade tariffs

Talk big and carry an ever smaller stick?

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US president says he expects to move ahead on plans to raise tariffs to 25% from 1 January

Donald Trump has raised the stakes in the escalating global trade dispute between the US, China and some of America’s traditional allies ahead of a major gathering of world leaders this week.

Ahead of the G20 meeting in Argentina, which begins on Friday, the US president used a newspaper interview to warn China that he expects to move ahead on the imposition of higher import tariffs on Chinese goods.

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There is an impression that the Russians deliberately provoke us to “an occasion for war”

Oleksiy Haran, the Research Director at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, commented to Glavkom on why Petro Poroshenko initiated the introduction of the martial law right now. The Parliament has a very large number of politicians who demand more resolute actions against Russia, which has already committed a direct and open aggression and now the […]