Proto-Hypertext Memory Expander
Working with The Hamilton Project, the BBC has drawn six charts that serve as both a snapshot of the state of US immigration and provide historical context for migration today versus US immigration in both the recent and distant past.
Continue reading “Six charts that illuminate the state of US immigration”
The American right spent generations lauding the “free enterprise” spirit of “cutting red tape,” contrasting its private sector ethos with the stodgy, Stalinist ways of the USSR, where bureaucrats weaponize forms and other paperwork to oppress the citizenry.
Continue reading “The American right loves forms, paperwork and other bureaucracy”
One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it recommended that everyone should be detained.
Public records requests have shown that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement — who have continued and intensified Obama’s program of mass deportations and separation of families under Trump — uses Facebook’s logs, merged with logs from cellular carriers and analyzed by software from Palantir (Peter Thiel’s police-state arms-dealer) to track immigrants people they’re investigating.
Continue reading “ICE uses Facebook’s backend to hunt their prey, with help from Palantir”
The New York prisoners team is composed of people convicted of violent felonies who have gone on to take continuing education classes in prison through Bard College. They debated the proposition that public schools should be allowed to refuse education to undocumented students, arguing for the proposition.
Continue reading “Prisoners’ debate team trounces national champs from Harvard”
“We have a name for locking people up and forcing them to do real work without wages. It’s called slavery.”
Continue reading “Privatized, for-profit immigration detention centers force detainees to work for $1-3/day”
The UK Home Secretary Theresa May wasted £95,000- £110,000 in a failed attempt to deport a dying Nigerian asylum seeker named Ifa Muaza. Muaza sought asylum from Nigeria, and believes his family were murdered after his departure; the UK denied his application. He embarked on a 100-day hunger strike, prepared to die in a high-security detention centre rather than go back to Nigeria. Muaza was an embarrassment to Theresa May, whose Conservative party has declared war on migrants and asylum seekers in a bid to appeal to xenophobic voters who defected to the racist UK Independence Party.
May secretly chartered a private jet to deport the frail and failing Muaza, whom government doctors had declared to be too ill to travel and in danger of “imminent death.” The plane was refused entry to Nigerian airspace; it later landed in Malta (which objected to use of its airstrip). Finally, the plane returned to the UK, landing at Luton airport with Muaza still aboard, and the British taxpayer out £95,000- £110,000, in addition to the £180,000 already spent on legal bills, thanks to May’s vanity and determination to appear “tough on immigration.”
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is one of the key figures in the political wrangle over whether undocumented immigrants in the USA will be legalized or deported. He’s also the recipient of over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry, whose profits would skyrocket if his push for prison for all those people is successful.
Chuck Schumer is the lead Senate Democrat working on immigration reform–he gets to decide whether millions of undocumented immigrants will be imprisoned or legalized. Yet he’s also taken over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Is it any surprise he’s pushing for billions more dollars spent on increased enforcement and detention of immigrants?
We can’t trust Sen. Schumer to push for fair legislation when he’s accepting money from private prison companies that have a strong interest in jailing as many immigrants as possible. How much of an interest? The two corporations from which Sen. Schumer took money, GEO Group and CCA, made $296.9 million in profits from the jailing of immigrants last year.
Tell Sen. Schumer to return this money immediately.
If 15,000 people sign, we’ll personally deliver your petitions to Sen. Schumer and demand a response.
Sen. Schumer: Give back the money
(via Making Light)
Paul sez, “Man is illegally detained at an internal border patrol checkpoint in New Mexico for nearly a half hour, not being allowed to leave and at first told that he wasn’t being detained until the border patrol eventually told him he was being detained for unspecified reasons. He recorded the entire exchange on video, and spends most of the time asking when he is free to go. Eventually the patrol gives up and allows him to leave, but not before making threatening gestures, warning him that New Mexico police were on their way, and accusing him of criminally blocking traffic when he was asking to leave and wasn’t given permission.”
Abusive Border Patrol Agents NM Checkpoint
(Thanks, Paul!)
* Clockwork fairy. Steampunk! Steampunk! Set aside the impulse to tedious kvetching about nonfunctional gears and sit agog with me. (via)
* Stop Pretending Art Is Hard. From botched art restoration to manifesto in one t-shirt.
* The Science News Cycle [PhD Comics]. Don’t believe the hype. DING DING! (via)
* Talk on Beat SF, Turing and Burroughs. Rudy Rucker being as Ruckerian as is humanly possible, and we’re all better for it.
* The Real Romney. Biography of the man before he became a quadrillionaire sovereign nation in a vat. (via)
* Spanish microcurrency boom. When the going gets tough, the tough issue fiat scrip. (via)
* Anarchist scaremongering at RNC. Black bloc bogeymen for everyone! They’ve got acid-filled eggs, you know. Because that would totally work. (via)
* Deporting parents of children born in America. No human is illegal*. If your family values demand that the mothers of American children should be sent abroad forever, you’re doing it wrong. (via)
