Free Republic

Despite the success of socialist governments over the past two decades, conference attendees agreed that grave inequality continues to plague the region. Today's roundtable discussions focused on how to counter the oligarchs and imperialism who accompany the rise of far-right wing politicians. Cuban researchers emphasized how the academy can be used in a regional context to resist these anti-democratic forces. Despite the success of revolutionary and anti-neoliberal governments in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past two decades, conference attendees agreed that the region continues to be plagued by grave inequality. More than 175 million people remain in abject...

Federal authorities have canceled the temporary deferred status of an illegal immigrant who is the face of so-called “dreamers” in the Atlanta area, opening the door to her possible deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stripped Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections from Jessica Colotl, a 28-year-old Mexican national, because she admitted to making a false statement to law enforcement following an arrest in 2010. A government lawyer asked an immigration judge to issue a deportation order on May 3. ICE confirmed Wednesday that Colotl’s case falls within with government policy not to offer protected status to certain categories of...

AL RUKBAN REFUGEE CAMP — Some 80,000 people are trapped in a scrub land of hopelessness in a forgotten corner of the Middle East. NBC News was given unique access to the area where Rukban straddles a rocky, arid no man's land along the border linking Syria and Jordan — an important American ally, and a key member of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. The sea of tattered tents, the barefoot women and begging children, along with the burn victims being treated nearby at Rukban are all proof that the desperate crisis is beyond the reach of aid workers. Last...

Abdulkarim Younes still can't sleep. Despite escaping the war that ravaged his Syrian hometown and surviving years in limbo in Jordan before arriving in Chicago as a refugee in January, he stays awake at all hours, awaiting calls from his family. His mother and siblings, who hope to join him in the U.S., remain in Jordan. The separation and uncertainty weigh on him as he waits for a reunion that might never come. Refugees in Chicago are reporting more stress and fear following President Donald Trump's moves to restrict arrivals, including proposed bans on refugees and a reduction in the...

The Sacramento region is bucking President Donald Trump’s moves to cut back the flow of international refugees entering the United States. The region is experiencing a mini-boom of refugees resettling here, even as the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. overall plummets, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis of data kept by the national Refugee Processing Center. A total of 466 refugees from around the globe have resettled in the Sacramento metropolitan area so far this year, a 20 percent increase over the same period last year. The number to date is also bigger than in any year under...

The Utah Supreme Court has ruled police are allowed to ask for a passenger's identification and run a background check on them during a traffic stop — even without suspecting criminal activity.In a 5-0 decision this week, justices overturned a 2014 district court ruling that argued such police actions were "beyond the scope of a routine traffic stop." The ruling stems from a case involving Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Jeremy Horne, who stopped a car for an improper lane change. Horne collected IDs and ran a background check on the driver and the passenger, George Matthew Martinez Jr.

The Obama Administration sought and obtained intelligence on thousands of Americans during 2016. Though the NSA is legally forbidden from directly spying on Americans and has temporary authority to conduct warrant-less searches of foreigners, during 2016 government officials conducted 30,355 searches seeking information about Americans and distributed over 3,000 reports with unredacted names of US citizens. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the growth in queries about Americans, but declined to offer any justification on the grounds that being pressured to provide justification "would endanger national security. All the public needs to know is that the government has its own very strict...

During his final year in office, President Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. 2 of 26 The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseas about Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the...

Thousands of Flint, Mich., residents have been warned that they could lose their homes if they don’t pay outstanding water bills — even as the city has just begun replacing lead-tainted pipes after a contamination crisis linked to a dozen deaths. Warning letters were mailed to 8,002 residents in April, according to the city, a few weeks after state officials ended a program that was paying the majority of their water bills. But many Flint residents still don’t trust their taps — lining up for free bottled water or installing city-recommended filters after revelations in 2014 and 2015 that dangerous...

The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls last year via a new system that Congress created to end the agency’s once-secret program that collected domestic calling records in bulk, a report disclosed Tuesday. The National Security Agency took in the 151 million records despite obtaining court orders to use the system on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, along with a few left over from late 2015, the report said. According to the report, the National Security Agency distributed 3,914 reports last year containing information about Americans gathered via the warrantless surveillance...

The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer. The report said the names of 1,934 "U.S. persons" were "unmasked" last year in response to specific requests, compared with 2,232 in 2015, but it did not identify who requested the names or on what grounds. The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015...

During his final year in office, President Barack Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive...

The European Union (EU) has dramatically increased the size of the “divorce” bill it is demanding the UK pays before leaving the bloc, to 100 billion euros. The new figure, equivalent £84.5 billion, reflects stricter demands made by Germany and France, in particular in relation to post-Brexit farm payments and EU administration fees, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier have previously said the UK would be expected to pay around €60 billion (£50.75 billion). The British Government’s lawyers, however, and a House of Lords committee have said...

A 10-year tradition of beginning Portland's annual Rose Festival with a family-friendly parade came to an end when a so-called antifascist group threatened to attack any members of the Multnomah County Republican Party who tried to participate. Ironically, bullying political opponents by threatening violence emulates the practices of the Nazi Party during Germany's Weimar Republic when the Party's brown-shirted thugs ruled the streets. Jacob Bureros, an organizer with the Direct Action Alliance, was disappointed to hear that the parade was canceled. "This was definitely our least favored outcome," Bureros complained. "Our first choice would have been for the parade to...

Boulder - Remember that unsuccessful attempt in the legislature to toughen penalties for vandalizing oil and gas equipment? Child’s play. It turns out the author of a letter to the editor in Boulder’s Daily Camera that got a national media mention last week — for appearing to endorse outright violence against fracking operations — is the author of a pending statewide ballot issue to hike Colorado’s severance tax on oil and gas production. Reached by phone today, Andrew O’Connor, of Lafayette, unapologetically reiterated his hardline stance ... “I wouldn’t have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers”...

Last year, Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, California refused to remove the uterus of Evan Michael Minton. Minton is in the process of transitioning from female to a simulated male body. This Catholic hospital declined to remove a healthy uterus and referred Minton to a nearby nonreligious hospital within the same Dignity Health network. American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Bertram Petty claimed that “the hospital violated Mr. Minton’s right to have whatever surgery he wants at whatever facility he chooses. The hospital’s assertion that the surgery goes against its sincerely held religious beliefs is irrelevant. Under Obamacare, the...

A Beaverton man who has a bachelor of science degree in engineering and has repeatedly challenged Oregon's timing of yellow traffic lights as too short was investigated by a state board for "unlicensed practice of engineering'' and fined $500. Now, Mats Järlström has joined with the national Institute for Justice to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against members of the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying.

Hillary Clinton’s Department of State aides threatened a South Asian prime minister’s son with an IRS audit in an attempt to stop a Bangladesh government investigation of a close friend and donor of Clinton’s, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group learned. A Bangladesh government commission was investigating multiple charges of financial mismanagement at Grameen Bank, beginning in May 2012. Muhammad Yunus, a major Clinton Foundation donor, served as managing director of the bank. Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and permanent U.S. resident, recalled the account of the threatened IRS audit to TheDCNF. The allegations mark the first known instance...

She shares a lot of info on the back story of the reason the Hammonds were put in jail again, under the terrorist act, after serving their first sentence; and why the Hammond's land is wanted by the BLM and other agencies. The BLM and FBI abuses continue.

The media is downplaying, and in most cases ignoring, the extreme nature of the crisis currently going on in socialist Venezuela under the Maduro regime.  Most of the cries for help are from people begging the international media to cover their plight. Some of the video and photography are stunning as millions of people take to the streets to protest a collapsing economy and food shortages while being met with tanks, guns and rogue militias hired by the government. Some of the targeted citizens appear chosen at random.  Some of the citizens are also desperate and fighting back. Warning –...