More than two-thirds of special immigrant visas have gone to Afghans (48,601) since fiscal 2007. Iraqis have received 21,961 such visas.
Tag Archives: OddBox
For the first time, more Americans say 2010 health care law has had a positive than negative impact on U.S.
While the future of the Affordable Care Act is in question, the American public increasingly thinks the law has had a positive impact on the country.
Download comprehensive police shootings data
We are all alike so what explains more shootings in some cities over others? Local politics, history, management, un-management?
Data for police shootings is usually the subset that only includes fatalities. Vice News made requests nationwide to get data on people who were shot but not killed by police. To accompany their story, Vice News made the data and code available for download:
Ultimately, we obtained some data from 47 departments — with 4,099 incidents in all. Departments in New York’s Suffolk and Nassau Counties didn’t provide us with any data. Maryland’s Montgomery County Police Department gave us only partial incident-level information and no total number of police shootings, so we excluded them from the analysis.
We put all this information together to analyze trends across the departments and to compare them with one another — the first time this has ever been done for both fatal and nonfatal shootings.
Get the data and look for yourself.
Jerusalem live unlive
http://ift.tt/2BwfvLkit is very hard to take photos …they are not allowing us to stand in protest to the demonstration organized by settlers down lion’s gate .
Basel Jubran…An Arab that represents me
Amid all the disgusting reality around us as Palestinians specifically. Basel Jubran, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Lebanon, is a proud representative of what an Arab, a Palestinian should be.
Unlike the weak, disgraceful, shameful representatives of the PA …to start with the President and to follow with his foreign minister, who in their most represent an echo to Israel and the U.S.
Part of his speech :
” Jerusalem is not for a Jewish god that expels a Christian god. And it is not a place for the struggle of gods on the ground. Our God is one and for all. Jerusalem cannot be a state for one side. And there is no place for unilateral among us. Jerusalem is for the jews, Christians, and Muslims. And we, the sons of Ibrahim and Isa and Mohammad, will all pray in Jerusalem. We cannot imagine that we allow Israel to prohibit us from praying Jerusalem. Therefore, I am not here today , in the name of Lebanon to condemn an operation of theft , and not to remind of an Arab identity that we have created , and not to modify about a belonging that is intended to allude us into a struggle that is meant to divide us into religions and sects, into tribes and families, and transform us into a broken nation that can be easily humiliated and violated , instead of being participatory with its understandings and shared resources and sciences. I am not here to call for an announcement of a symbolic condemnation that will be mocked and erased … we are here because our Arab-hood does not give up on Jerusalem . and we in Lebanon we do not run away from our destiny in confrontation and resistance. … we carry Jerusalem identity; we don’t live except as free people. And we will revolt in front of every occupier and conqueror. Golda Meir wanted us to be a sleeping nation when the Aqsa was burnt in 1969, and we became a defeated nation, and some wanted us to be an absent nation and nonexistent, as a result of our lack of shared visions and the absence of an open ideology that unifies us. A nap that we do not accept, but we insist to awaken it within a unique Lebanese and connect it with an expanded orient. And we look forward a unified Arabism. We are from the Jerusalem identity. Our Arab-hood cannot be touched, and our status cannot be changed. …
We are here to regain our lost Arabism between Shiite and Sunni. And lost between west and east. and distracted inside an Arab Persian struggle, and pushed by illusion towards a common Muslim Christian fear while the Pope Shenouda and Mutran George Khider, father Wakeem Mubarak ( and other names) have carried the Arabism as their life plight …….the Arab patriarch realized that those wars.
All that is happening is a distraction from the Palestinian cause, from Arab spring to Shiites Sunni fights, and excommunicating and takfir, and exploiting minorities when we are all minorities in a way or another. Wars were created, and revenge was after that defeat in a transfer of an embassy and Judaizing of Jerusalem.
…………..
we did not come here to commiserate one another …. we are here to regain ourselves instead of losing it . and to restore our primary cause, the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cause with Jerusalem as its capital, we should not just accept the recognition of Palestine as a state, or the diplomatic moves to continue attention, and not only to work for a Palestine that is with full membership in the UN. We have to submit immediate complaints about the SC, and each country among us should do what is needed to devote Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. I will, in the name of Lebanon submit to the PMC in Lebanon to call f….. we need to have a unified Arab decision against the move of the embassy of this country and others that recognize this. Starting with strategic actions and ending with sanctions
if anyone is asking about the effectivity of such a move, it is enough to remind the world of the Saudi Iraqi declaration in 1981 to stop dealing with the US on oil which forced them to stop all the moves to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
To regain the Arab pride and the revolutionary breath against oppression, and have one uprising in all the Arab countries. I don’t imagine a single Arab nation that will not come along this call. Our governments have gone ahead of us, and we became Arab systems that are so degraded that our countries don’t respect us. This uprising should not stop except with the full application of the Arab initiative peace.
Brothers,
I am here today, as the Christian by faith, lebanese by identity, the oriental with my belonging, the Arab with my identity and belonging. I stand here and call for a reconciliation of Arab Arab to regain our dignity and strength….
I call for
without Jerusalem there is no Arab and no Arabism…., let’s avoid the curse of history and avoid questions of our grandchildren
“The Senate bill offers a tax break for parents whose children attend private school. But it cuts…”
scum has more honor “The Senate bill offers a tax break for parents whose children attend private school. But it cuts deductions for state and local taxes, which could make it harder to fund the public schools where the vast majority of millennials will send their kids.”
“My husband had a sudden heart attack a few months ago. It was…
“My husband had a sudden heart attack a few months ago. It was just a few blocks from here. They called me in to identify his body and then just let me walk right out onto 7th Avenue. I felt so lost. My friends were wonderful and supportive but eventually everyone moves on with their lives. I don’t have children. And I’m not a workaholic. So I was left with this intense loneliness and void. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Then one day I started researching dogs that are good for grief and depression. And ‘poodle’ kept popping up. But when I went to the rescue fair, all the poodles were gone. There was this one old dog in the back that nobody was looking at. She was skin and bones. She was trembling and scared and mucus was running out of her eyes. She seemed so fragile. She reminded me of myself. I named her Grace because I think my husband sent her to me. She’s my first dog. She’s been pure joy. We spend all our time together. She’s gained her weight back. She comes with me to therapy. We’re getting better together.”
GOP Tax Plan Is Igniting a Movement for a Moral Economy
By Sarah Anderson
Inequality.org
If you’re expecting a gift card from your boss as an end-of-year bonus, enjoy it this year because you probably won’t get one in 2018.
The Senate tax bill would ban such rewards. Why? Republican lawmakers are determined to prevent ordinary workers from pocketing a $25 or $50 gift card without reporting it as taxable income.
Meanwhile, these same politicians are planning to dole out billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very wealthiest Americans. For example, they’re planning to gut or entirely eliminate the estate tax, a curb on extreme wealth concentration that currently applies only to fortunes worth more than $11 million per couple.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley explained the reasoning: “Not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Republicans are using this prejudice against working people to justify a massive giveaway to wealthy political donors. While giving the rich and big corporations huge tax breaks, the Republican tax plan would raise taxes on 87 million middle-class families, throw 13 million people off health insurance, and cut Medicare by $400 billion.
This moral abomination is already igniting a firestorm across the country. Over the past two weeks, protests have erupted at 50 universities and in least 100 cities, while nearly 50 people have been arrested on Capitol Hill.
And whether or not President Trump achieves his goal of signing this tax deal into law by the end of the year, this fight is just beginning.
Rev. Liz Theoharis (left) and Rev. William Barber II (right) with activists and leaders at the U.S.-Mexico border, October 2017.
On December 4, prominent faith leaders announced plans for one of the largest waves of civil disobedience in U.S. history. Dubbed the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival,” this effort will mark the 50th anniversary of a similar initiative in 1968 that was undercut by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The campaign co-chairs, the Rev. Liz Theoharis and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, are determined to pick up the baton from King and other 1960s leaders. They’ve called the Republican tax plan “an act of gross violence against America’s poor.” But this is just one of the motivations.
“We are witnessing an emboldened attack on the poor and an exacerbation of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and the war economy that demands a response,” Rev. Barber said.
A new Institute for Policy Studies report I edited reveals that conditions in each of these areas have worsened since 1968 by many measures. The documents the increased number of Americans below the poverty line, the acceleration of economic inequality, and the emergence of new forms of voter suppression laws and mass incarceration that further entrench systemic racism. It highlights the growing imbalance in government spending on the military relative to social programs, and the intensification of racial and income disparities in access to clean air and water.
READ THE FULL IPS REPORT
Why we need to revive the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign
Starting next spring, the Poor People’s Campaign aims to bring tens of thousands of poor and disenfranchised people, clergy, and other moral leaders to rallies at statehouses in at least 25 states, leading up to a major demonstration at the U.S. Capitol on June 21.
While Republicans may succeed in scoring a short-term win for the political donor class, their tax plan is sparking a new moral movement that will lift up the millions of Americans living in poverty and build power for transformational change.
Poor People’s Campaign Hearing, November 2017.
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is a co-editor of Inequality.org. @Anderson_IPS. This op-ed originally published by OtherWords.org.
My UNsympathetic portrait of “the Nazi next store” (Pt. 1)
Serial-Killer detector
Alec Wilkinson, reporting for The New Yorker, profiled Thomas Hargrove, who is deep into finding serial killers algorithmically and through public data:
Thomas Hargrove is a homicide archivist. For the past seven years, he has been collecting municipal records of murders, and he now has the largest catalogue of killings in the country—751,785 murders carried out since 1976, which is roughly twenty-seven thousand more than appear in F.B.I. files. States are supposed to report murders to the Department of Justice, but some report inaccurately, or fail to report altogether, and Hargrove has sued some of these states to obtain their records. Using computer code he wrote, he searches his archive for statistical anomalies among the more ordinary murders resulting from lovers’ triangles, gang fights, robberies, or brawls. Each year, about five thousand people kill someone and don’t get caught, and a percentage of these men and women have undoubtedly killed more than once. Hargrove intends to find them with his code, which he sometimes calls a serial-killer detector.
Find out more and download data from Hargrove’s nonprofit the Murder Accountability Project.
Tags: algorithm, murder, New Yorker
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