Category Archives: Apartheid

An Afghan Family, With Visas in Hand, Is Detained in Los Angeles – The New York Times

The scene at the airport was “chaotic, panicked; it was a mess,” said Lali Madduri, a lawyer with the firm Gibson Dunn, which is representing the family pro bono. “The whole time the children are crying, the woman is crying. They can’t understand what’s going on.

”The father had arrived on Thursday with his wife and three children, ages 7, 6 and 8 months, on Special Immigrant Visas, according to the lawyers’ habeas corpus petition filed on Saturday in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. Those visas were created by Congress for citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan who have helped the United States military or government as drivers, interpreters or in other jobs — work that often makes them targets in their home countries.But instead of being allowed to enter the United States, the family has been detained, according to the court papers.

“I’ve never, ever heard of this happening,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, which filed the petition. “They go through so many layers of security clearance, including one right before they get on the plane. ”Calling the detention “egregious, inhumane and unconstitutional,” the group petitioned the court to release the family, whose names were not publicly revealed. The judge did not order the family be released, but set a hearing in the case for Monday.According to Ms. Heller, the father was being held Saturday night at a men’s immigration detention facility in Orange County, Calif. His wife and children were taken to a detention center in downtown Los Angeles.

Sikh man shot in the arm says gunman told him ‘go back to your own country’ | World news | The Guardian #LoserTrump

A Sikh man who was shot in the arm late Friday said the gunman approached him as he worked on his car in his suburban Seattle driveway and told him to “go back to your own country”.

Source: Sikh man shot in the arm says gunman told him ‘go back to your own country’ | World news | The Guardian

#LoserTrump Seeks Inquiry Into Unproved Allegations That Obama Tapped His Phones –  “Really desperate to deflect from treason with Russians!”

Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have said there were no such secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, “Not to my knowledge, no.”“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.

Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower – The Washington Post ;>/ Off to the moon-loon!

A wiretap cannot be directed at a U.S. facility, the official said, without finding probable cause that the phone lines or Internet addresses were being used by agents of a foreign power — or by someone spying for or acting on behalf of a foreign government. “You can’t just go around and tap buildings,” the official said.Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a statement chastising Trump for leveling a “spectacularly reckless allegation” against Obama without evidence.Referencing Trump’s description of Obama as a “bad (or sick) guy,” Schiff said, “If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the willingness of the nation’s chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them. “Trump sent the tweets from Palm Beach, Fla., where he is vacationing this weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago estate. It has long been his practice to stir up new controversies to deflect attention from a damaging news cycle, such as the one in recent days about Sessions and Russia.After visiting one of his golf courses on Saturday morning, Trump amended his public schedule to add a late-afternoon meeting with Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly at Mar-a-Lago. The president also is planning to have dinner there with both secretaries, as well as chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, White House Counsel Don McGahn and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller.Trump had departed Washington in a fury on Friday, fuming at a senior staff meeting in the Oval Office that morning about Sessions’ decision to recuse himself. Trump was angry and told his top aides that he disagreed with the attorney general’s decision and that he thought the White House and Justice Department should have done more to counter the suggestion that Sessions needed to step away. The president told staff he wanted to see them fight back against what he saw as a widespread effort to destabilize his presidency, according to senior White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Source: Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower – The Washington Post

Jewish Cemetery In Rochester Vandalized: Gothamist

As for President Trump, he and his advisors spent the last couple of days cautioning everyone not to jump to conclusions and to focus on what’s important. Trump told a meeting of state attorneys general that bomb threats against JCCs nationwide might have been done in order to “make others look bad,” a statement which baffled the Pennsylvania state attorney general. Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci tweeted a reminder that some Democratic activists engaged in “bird dogging” during the 2016 election, a tactic that’s generally understood to mean aggressive questioning of elected officials, as proof that…maybe liberals are behind this? Typical of a coward who’s “just raising questions,” Scaramucci later tweeted that he just didn’t want anyone to overreact and of course he Loves The Jews.

Source: Jewish Cemetery In Rochester Vandalized: Gothamist

Bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers | FlowingData And Mr. Trump thinks all this is to make him look bad, which would mean that it’s not haters of Jews but haters of Trump? Pretty delusional, I’d say

Ken Schwencke and Al Shaw from ProPublica with a set of straightforward maps that show bomb threats to Jewish community centers and organizations: Since Jan. 1, at least 89 locations of Jewish organizations in the United States — including schools, Jewish Community Centers, and offices of the Anti-Defamation League — have received a total of 114 bomb threats. The majority have come in five of what the JCC Association of North America calls “waves” — groups of robocalls coming on a single day. So far, none of the threats have been carried out.

Source: Bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers | FlowingData

Police ‘told me to leave’ Rinkeby: US journalist Tim Pool – The Local – Not a journalist but a fake news producer!

Describing himself as a “conflict and crisis journalist”, Pool has been reporting in Sweden since last week. His visit included a trip to Malmö partially funded by Paul Joseph Watson, editor of conspiracy theory website Infowars, who promised to pay for a trip to the city for any journalist who claimed it was safe.

Source: Police ‘told me to leave’ Rinkeby: US journalist Tim Pool – The Local

This Interview With Shirtless Alex Jones Will Ruin Your Day: Gothamist “Putin wannabe pose – next Trump on a horse and no shirt – my eyes, my eyes! My brain is melting!”

Alex Jones—a red-faced screaming sack of flesh who thinks the Obama administration faked the Sandy Hook massacre so they could take away Americans’ guns and now has the ear of the President of the United States—was the subject of a sprawling profile in German news magazine Der Spiegel today. At some point, the reporter had lunch with Jones, who was dressed like this:

Source: This Interview With Shirtless Alex Jones Will Ruin Your Day: Gothamist

AG Sessions: Justice Dept. to “pull back” on suing police depts. over violating civil rights of minorities | 3CHICSPOLITICO “Sick racist now in charge of Department of Justice!”

“We need, so far as we can, to help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness. And I’m afraid we’ve done some of that,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.“So we’re going to try to pull back on this,” he told a meeting of the nation’s state attorneys general in Washington.Sessions said such a move would not be “wrong or insensitive to civil rights or human rights.” Instead, he said people in poor and minority communities must feel free from the threat of violent crime, which will require more effective policing with help from the federal government.While crime rates are half of what they were a few decades ago, recent increases in violent crimes do not appear to be “an aberration, a one-time blip. I’m afraid it represents the beginning of a trend.”Sessions said he will encourage federal prosecutors to bring charges when crimes are committed using guns. Referring local drug violations that involve the use of a firearm, for example, to federal court can result is often a stiffer sentence than would be imposed by state courts.“We need to return to the ideas that got us here, the ideas that reduce crime and stay on it. Maybe we got a bit overconfident when we’ve seen the crime rate decline so steadily for so long,” he said.Under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department opened 25 investigations into police departments and sheriff’s offices and was enforcing 19 agreements at the end of 2016, resolving civil rights lawsuits filed against police departments in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, New Orleans, Cleveland and 15 other cities.

Source: AG Sessions: Justice Dept. to “pull back” on suing police depts. over violating civil rights of minorities | 3CHICSPOLITICO

ADL demands Trump advisor disavow ‘anti-Semitic hate groups’ | +972 Magazine

Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka has had a rough two weeks. It began with LobeLog’s report that he wore the medal of Vitezi Rend, an anti-Semitic Hungarian organization that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, at an inaugural ball.

Source: ADL demands Trump advisor disavow ‘anti-Semitic hate groups’ | +972 Magazine