Shrinking White Population [practices racism to survive] in Georgia Leads Racist GOP to Egregious Gerrymandering

From [HERE] Georgia is starting to look like a swing state, and Republicans aren’t happy about it. In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by just 5 points, and demographic trends may continue to erode Republicans’ grasp on the state. Yet because of the state Legislature’s egregious gerrymandering, Republicans hold a near-supermajority in the state House. They’d like to regain an actual supermajority in 2018. So last week, the House passed a bill that would kick black voters out of several GOP districts, trading them for Republican-friendly white voters. The bill will become law with the approval of the Republican-controlled Senate and the signature of Republican Gov. Nathan Deal—both of which seem likely given the enthusiasm that the Georgia GOP has already shown for the measure.

As Aaron Gould Sheinin notes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the gerrymandering bill was introduced with no prior notice and passed in just two days. Its Republican sponsors didn’t even bother to inform Rep. Sheila Jones, a Democrat, about it—despite the fact that it takes two (predominantly white) precincts from her district and gives her two (predominantly black) precincts in return. Republican Rep. Rich Golick will receive Jones’ white precincts. He, along with several other recipients of white-majority precincts, has seen his margins of victory narrow in recent years, hence the desire for more white voters. The AJC explains:

The biggest changes strengthen Republican districts that have become more competitive. Golick won re-election in November with 53 percent of the vote over Democrat Erick Allen, down from the 60 percent to 40 percent margin by which Golick won in 2014. Golick declined comment.

In south Metro Atlanta, Rep. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, has seen his margin of victory fall from 6 percentage points in 2012 to less than 2 percentage points in 2016. HB 515 takes several GOP-heavy precincts out of Griffin Republican Rep. Karen Mathiak’s neighboring District 73 and gives them to Strickland.

Is this legal? Almost certainly not! Under the Equal Protection Clause, Georgia is barred from using race as the “predominant factor” in redistricting. Indeed, last Wednesday, the very same day Georgia Republicans introduced the bill, the Supreme Court affirmed that a gerrymander violates equal protection when a state “subordinates traditional race-neutral districting principles to racial considerations” and views race as the key criterion in redistricting.

Georgia Republicans do not even pretend to have a legitimate reason for this gerrymander. Indeed, they haven’t really attempted to explain why the bill is necessary at all. The timing is very strange—redistricting typically occurs after each decade’s census—and the purpose is obvious: to bolster Republicans’ electoral advantage by removing black voters from their districts and replacing them with whites.

A generous interpretation of the bill might view it as a partisan gerrymander—an effort to dilute the power of Democratic voters who just happen to be black. Partisan gerrymandering presents legal problems of its own: It discriminates against voters on the basis of their viewpoint, burdening their First Amendment right to free expression and association. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not yet decided upon a way for the judiciary to remedy it. But the partisanship defense probably won’t cut it in this instance, where race is fundamentally tied up with political affiliation, and legislators appear to have used race as a proxy for political affiliation, a constitutionally dubious scheme. The new gerrymanders, moreover, cannot be explained by anything like the “traditional districting principles” outlined by the Supreme Court. Any reasonable observer of these new maps—and the legislative process that produced them—would conclude that race is clearly the predominant factor.

It is a fundamental tenet of democracy that voters choose their representatives, not the other way around. But Georgia Republicans have decided that sometimes democracy is a little too inconvenient and taken it upon themselves to shed some black voters and gain some white ones. That is impermissible under the Equal Protection Clause. And should their bill become law, Republicans will find themselves struggling to explain in court why they abruptly decided to reshuffle districts on the basis of race.

Eugenics Author who Believes in Black Genocide & an Imaginary Hierarchy of People [white supremacy] Silenced at College

From [HERE] A racist author of a book discussing racial differences in intelligence who was shouted down by protesters at Middlebury College when he gave a guest lecture and was confronted by some of them afterward says he wants the college to sanction those involved.

Charles Murray, who is a liar, describes himself as a libertarian and social scientist, warned that anything less could become an inspiration for other protests and has the potential “to be a disaster for American liberal education.”

He says when he left the building where his lecture was held last week he walked into “the middle of a mob.”

“If that’s the new normal then why would any college in its right mind allow a controversial speaker to arrive?” he said on Monday. “Because no college wants to go through what Middlebury’s gone through.” [MORE]

According to Dr. Blynd in FUNKTIONARY

eugenics - the science of African extermination and of the gene that produces a people (ethnicity) with the object being African and melanated peoples of the world. 2) the science of Racism White Supremacy. Eugenics is a bogus pseudo-science founded by English psycho-ologist Francis Galton, used for purposes of white supremacy tactics made popular by Hitler in Nazi Germany but practiced earlier in the U.S.S.A. 3) the maniacal (Yurugu-istic) philosophy of using genetic manipulation to create a better organism, better race or even a so-called master race by a lone totalitarian Dictator or a group of evil men under the veil of a Corporate State, i.e., Social Eugenics. 4) the racist belief held by many Caucasians that Africans and descendants of Africans are biologically moribund—and consequently were deficient in native or inborn intelligence and that the lack of intelligence would likely lead to a decline in the nation's collective intelligence. 5) the antidote of the Caucasian's unconscious fear of a Black Planet. 6) the artifice of attempting to make people appear to be other than they are. 7) the propaganda that African people should be done away with—exterminated. The name 'eugenics" was coined by the white psychologist Francis Galton. The triune objectives of Eugenics is selective ethnic genetic annihilation, population control (or depopulation), and selective breeding by a pathological strain of DNA. Eugenics essentially means, good white genetic stock; the selective breeding of white people and the mass extermination of African people. Mass incarceration, the homosexuality agenda (depopulation) grew out of the Eugenics movment. Read "War of the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race" by Edwin Black. (See: Genocide, Yurugu, Recombinant DNA, U.S. Sterilization Laws, Freemasony, Theosophy, Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, Planned Parenthood, Neuropean, Weiteko Disease, Racism White Supremacy, Similac, PLC, Caucasian & Inferiority Complex)

Indian Immigrant Murdered by a Psychopathic White Man. It’s part of a spike in hate crimes by Racists Against Non-Whites

The Psychopathic Racial Personality From [WashPost] The killing of 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla in a bar in Olathe, Kan., on Feb. 20 has shaken the Indian American community. And since then, still more Indian Americans have been shot.

On March 2, store owner Harnish Patel was killed in Lancaster, S.C., although ethnicity may not have been a motive. And on March 3, Deep Rai, a Sikh man, was shot and injured in front of his house in a Seattle suburb, reportedly after the attacker shouted “go back to your country.” That was unnervingly similar to what happened in Kansas, where alleged killer Adam Purinton walked up to two Indian engineers in a bar and asked whether they were in the U.S. legally. Before shooting, witnesses said, he yelled, “Get out of my country.” Later, talking with a bartender in another town, he bragged about shooting “two Iranians.”

Both the Kansas and Washington attacks are being investigated as hate crimes — which, in plain speak, means that the victims were targeted because of perceived ethnic and religious identity based on their physical appearance.

Indian Americans in particular — and South Asians in general — are a highly diverse community. Indians are Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and other religions; they come from very different regions and backgrounds and speak different languages. Their targeting reveals that American racism can lump together people who appear physically similar in particular ways as “suspicious,” “threatening” and “outsider” — interpreting their appearance to mean they are Muslim and Middle Eastern.

Segments of Indian Americans struggle with how to react to the targeting — whether to act in solidarity with the other targeted communities or find ways of distinguishing from them.

Hate violence against South Asians since 9/11

The first post-9/11 hate crime came on Sept. 17, 2001, when an Arizona gunman shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian Sikh immigrant; fired at a gas station clerk of Lebanese descent, and shot at the home of a family of Afghan descent, all apparently intended as retaliation for the 9/11 attacks.

Very soon after, on Oct. 4, 2001, a Texas gunman shot and killed Vasudev Patel, a Hindu Indian, and Waqar Hassan, a Muslim Pakistani. The Texas gunman said he wanted “to retaliate on local Arab Americans, or whatever you want to call them.”

According to a 2015 Department of Justice report, federal agencies have investigated more than 800 incidents since 9/11 involving physical violence, threat and vandalism against Arab Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian Americans and those perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin.

This has continued now for 15 years. Whenever there’s a major terrorist incident or when an election cycle includes inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims and immigrants, these communities suffer hate violence.

Hostility and hate violence have sharply increased in the past year

The current climate is especially hostile, including sharp rhetoric blaming immigrant professionals in the U.S. on H1B visas — overwhelmingly, these are East and South Asians — for taking American jobs.

Consider the complaint of President Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, who lamented that two-thirds or three-quarters of CEOs in Silicon Valley are South Asians or Asians, saying, “A country is more than an economy. We are a civic society.” In Bannon’s formulation, South Asians or Asians cannot build the right kind of U.S. civic society — and so should not have such significant economic roles.

Those verbal attacks trickle down into violence. In the past few months, South Asians have seen an unprecedented spike in the rate of hate violence and speech, much as has happened to other U.S. minority groups. South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), an advocacy group, documented 207 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric targeting South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern and Arab communities in the year leading up to the 2016 elections. That’s a 34 percent increase over the previous report’s three-year period (2011-14), when the group documented only 157 incidents.

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ICE Cops Raiding Latino Owned Businesses in WV: A raid is only legal if there is evidence that Known Undocumented people are inside

From [HERE] A local business owner verified Monday that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two local men last week during investigations of Hispanic-owned businesses in Raleigh County. ICE officials were not immediately available for comment Monday evening.

Two employees at El Mariachi in Beaver were detained by ICE last week, according to El Mariachi owner Jose Rizo. 

Rizo said one of the men has been in the United States for 20 years.

At least one of the workers is married to an American woman and is the sole provider for his wife and two children, according to workers' statements.

Rizo said he's hired immigration attorneys to advise the employees.

American Civil Liberties Union-West Virginia attorneys reported Monday that the number of ICE raids of Hispanic-owned businesses in the state have increased dramatically over the past three weeks.

"Until recently, I'd never heard of raids on any work place here in West Virginia," said Jaime Crofts, ACLU attorney. "Over the last three to four weeks, I have heard of several raids being conducted at Mexican restaurants in the state."

Crofts said the ACLU will become involved in the cases if Constitutional rights of the workers are an issue.

"Non-citizens have Constitutional rights," Crofts said. "People who are undocumented in the United States still have due process rights, so nobody can be deported without due process.

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Deport Non-White Migrants Policy: On Sunday ICE Sent 130 Senegalese Nationals Back to Africa - "ineligible to remain in US"

From [HERE] On Sunday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency deported 130 people to Senegal, following “months” of coordination with Senegalese authorities to ensure “orderly repatriation.”

An ICE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Senegalese nationals “were found to be ineligible to remain in the United States and ordered removed by an immigration official, in accordance with their final orders of removal.” A representative for the Senegalese embassy was unavailable to comment before publication.

The number of Senegalese deportations is a troubling sixfold increase from the 2016 fiscal year when 21 Senegalese people were deported, according to an official ICE report. Just the previous year, 17 of the 22 Senegalese people removed from the United States were deported for non-criminal offenses, according to a Department of Homeland Security report.

The recent increase may be a harbinger of more African and Caribbean immigrant deportations to come, given President Donald Trump’s promise to detain and deport some immigrants. He has also made it more difficult for people to gain humanitarian relief like asylum or refugee status when they arrive at U.S. ports of entries, which is one of the primary ways that African and Caribbean immigrants are able to successfully stay in the country.

Since Trump took office, a harsh spotlight has been cast on enforcement operations in Latino immigrant communities, with names like Daniel Ramirez Medina, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, and Daniela Vargas becoming household activist slogans. But African and Caribbean immigrants have not received nearly as much support, in part because they do not have a robust support system in the United States to help them win their immigration cases.

A 2016 Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and New York University Law School’s Immigrants Rights Clinic report pointed out that there are 3.4 million black immigrants, but that they made up 10.6 percent of all immigrants in removal proceedings between 2003 and 2015. In the 2015 fiscal year, the ICE agency deported 1,293 African immigrants.

Unqualified SNigger & Traitor Ben Carson Said African Slaves Had the Same Hopes & Dreams as White Immigrants

From [HERE] and [HERE] Ben Carson compared slaves to immigrants seeking a better life in his first official address Monday as Housing and Urban Development secretary, setting off an uproar on social media.

Pacing back and forth on stage, wearing a suit that was too big and sounding stroked out or slow, Carson gave a rambling speech to department staff on Monday that did not provide any insight into which policies he would pursue at HUD. Instead, Carson’s speech featured personal stories, an inaccurate description of slavery, and vague platitudes about the American entrepreneurial spirit.

In what appears to be an embarrassing pattern of missteps on race for the Trump administration, Carson told a room packed with hundreds of federal workers that the Africans captured, sold and transported to America against their will had the same hopes and dreams as early immigrants.

“That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” said Carson, speaking extemporaneously as he paced the room with a microphone. “But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

His comments were broadcast live to all of HUD’s regional field offices as well as to the public.

Implicit in the notion of "early" “immigrants” however, is white people from Europe with free will. An immigrant freely leaves one country to start a new life in another. A slave is taken from one country to another against their will and treated as property.

A senior HUD official who spoke on condition of anonymity said no one in the room interpreted Carson’s comments as anything but a “heartfelt introduction to the HUD family.”

Throughout his speech, Carson referred to ensuring “fairness” for all Americans; but on closer scrutiny, he seemed to be pushing against the notion that systemic barriers are keeping people poor and that civil rights protections are necessary. The personal anecdotes that Carson related tended to focus on how he achieved success through sheer hard work and creative thinking — a lesson that he applied to anyone struggling economically.

“We have a duty to enhance fairness for everyone, and one of things you will see under my leadership is that there will be very big emphasis on fairness for everybody,” he said. “We do no favors for anybody. There are no extras for anybody.”

After Carson’s speech, Avery Jackson, a HUD investigator who enforces the Civil Rights Act of 1968, said, “I was happy to hear you say we will be vigilant in enforcing the law… I’d like to hear more about your plans for the division of fair housing and equal opportunity overall, and generally how you plan to further civil rights at HUD.”

Carson said he would be watching “to see what people are doing, and more importantly listening to what people have to say.”

He continued: “When you have divergent perspectives, if you can get those people to sit down and talk to each other they will be able to come up with extremely good solutions.” He added that people should “give first pass to people actually involved as opposed to imposing from above.” Carson said Americans are independent and will “resist you out of general principle.”

Carson then gave the example of his mother letting him and his brother make rules for their house, and said the house ran smoothly as a result. It’s unclear if Carson is saying guidance on fair housing that protects people needs to be rescinded when he talks about “extras” and “imposing from above,” or if he simply wanted another opportunity to share a childhood tale. [MORE]

Carson is the lone token Black in Trump's lilly-white whitehouse cabinet. The only other non-white person in the Trump cabinet is Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, who is Asian. Although Latinos have served in Cabinet positions in every presidential administration since 1988, there are none in the Trump administration. [MORE]

Racists Often Promote Incompetent or Unqualified Blacks To Produce Confusion & Failure. 

According to Doc Blynd in FUNKTIONARY

SNigger ---a sold-out snitching-smiling Sambo-Negro. 2) a South-Bender offender. SNiggers smile for nothing except an empty mind while selling-out their own kind. They typically have an intellectual base yet are devoid of intelligence, thus promoting the on-going smiling face. They also often giggle and have a frivolous conception of society and scant knowledge of the vestiges of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that even brought their sorry-ass selves to shore. SNiggers are traitors and pawns of the downpressors. [MORE]

Sambo - a self-loathing Negro lacking self-knowledge. "A willing slave gets upset if you refuse to acknowledge his or her master. Usually when people say 'act responsibly,' what they mean is: 'cowtow to the conforming lies we call truths.'" -George Battailles. The old saying still holds true: "The value of a dollar, will never, ever drop as low as the standards of some miseducated self-hating Negroes to obtain it." (See: Sniggers, Mentacide, Self-Hate & Slavery)

Thousands of Non-White ICE detainees Claim Private Prison Forced Them into Labor ($1 day) - a violation of anti-slavery laws

From [HERE] and [HERE] Tens of thousands of non-white immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were forced to work for $1 day, or for nothing at all — a violation of federal anti-slavery laws — a lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014 against one of the largest private prison companies in the country, reached class-action status this week after a federal judge’s ruling. That means the case could involve as many as 60,000 immigrants who have been detained.

It’s the first time a class-action lawsuit accusing a private U.S. prison company of forced labor has been allowed to move forward.

“That’s obviously a big deal; it’s recognizing the possibility that a government contractor could be engaging in forced labor,” said Nina DiSalvo, executive director of Towards Justice, a Colorado-based nonprofit group that represents low-wage workers, including undocumented immigrants. “Certification of the class is perhaps the only mechanism by which these vulnerable individuals who were dispersed across the country and across the world would ever be able to vindicate their rights.”

At the heart of the dispute is the Denver Contract Detention Facility, a 1,500-bed center in Aurora, Colo., owned and operated by GEO Group under a contract with ICE. The Florida-based corporation runs facilities to house immigrants who are awaiting their turn in court.

The lawsuit, filed against GEO Group on behalf of nine immigrants, initially sought more than $5 million in damages. Attorneys expect the damages to grow substantially given the case’s new class-action status.

The class-action ruling by U.S. District Judge John Kane means that as many as 60,000 current and former detainees at the detention facility in Aurora are now part of the lawsuit without having to actively join as plaintiffs, said Andrew Free, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys

The lead plaintiff in the case is a permanent resident of the U.S., and attorneys expect “a significant portion of the class will fit that bill,” Free said.

The original nine plaintiffs claim that detainees at the ICE facility are forced to work without pay — and that those who refuse to do so are threatened with solitary confinement.

Specifically, the lawsuit claims, six detainees are selected at random every day and are forced to clean the facility’s housing units. The lawsuit claims that the practice violates the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which prohibits modern-day slavery.

“Forced labor is a particular violation of the statute that we’ve alleged,” Free said. “Whether you’re calling it forced labor or slavery, the practical reality for the plaintiffs is much the same. You’re being compelled to work against your will under the threat of force or use of force.”

GEO Group also is accused of violating Colorado’s minimum wage laws by paying detainees $1 day instead of the state’s minimum wage of about $9 an hour. The company “unjustly enriched” itself through the cheap labor of detainees, the lawsuit says.

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[policy of Kill, Deport & Hate Non-Whites] Dummy Trump Signs New Muslim Ban

From [HERE] US President Donald Trump signed a new immigration executive order Monday, which contains several departures from the original January executive order [text]. Notably, Iraqi citizens are no longer ineligible to receive new visas. The order also sets out classes of people eligible to apply for case-by-case waivers to the order, including those who were previously admitted to the US for "a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term activity," those with "significant business or professional obligations" and those seeking to visit or live with family. However, the six Muslim-majority countries listed on the original ban will continue to be blocked from obtaining new visas. Furthermore, the refugee program will be suspended for 120 days and will accept no more than 50,000 refugees a year, down from the 110,000 set by the Obama administration. The order will take effect on March 16.

The ACLU stated, "the new executive order is a major retreat by the administration, reflecting that, as courts around the country have recognized, the original order was deeply flawed and totally unjustified. But the fundamental truth of this new order, like the old one, remains unchanged: The president promised to ban Muslims from the United States, and the ban is his attempt to make good on that unconstitutional and indefensible goal."

"We believe the new order continues to be based on religious discrimination,"Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project said. "That was the core problem with the first executive order and remains a serious problem with this executive order." [MORE]

The ban was "narrowed in light of the court decisions, but it wasn't narrowed sufficiently to eliminate the constitutional problems," Gelernt says. The new changes don't go into effect until March 16th, but the ACLU will be in court before then to try to keep the current injunctions in place.

Candidate Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Again and again, he refused to disown this proposal, expressing his opinion that “Islam hates us” and that there are “problems with Muslims coming into the country.” [MORE]

Last week the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied [JURIST report] a request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to stay an appeal on Trump's previous controversial immigration executive order. The DOJ requested [JURIST reports] a hold on the court proceedings until Trump issued a new order. Last month the appeals court upheld [JURIST report] a lower court decision issuing a stay on the executive order pending further legal proceedings.

Court Docs Show Environmental Activist Berta Cáceres Murder Suspects' Had Links to US Trained Elite Troops

From [TheGuardian] and [HERE] Leaked court documents raise concerns that the murder of the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was an extrajudicial killing planned by military intelligence specialists linked to the country’s US–trained special forces, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Cáceres was shot dead a year ago while supposedly under state protection after receiving death threats over her opposition to a hydroelectric dam.

The murder of Cáceres, winner of the prestigious Goldman environmental prize in 2015, prompted international outcry and calls for the US to revoke military aid to Honduras, a key ally in its war on drugs.

Eight men have been arrested in connection with the murder, including one serving and two retired military officers.

Officials have denied state involvement in the activist’s murder, and downplayed the arrest of the serving officer Maj Mariano Díaz, who was hurriedly discharged from the army.

But the detainees’ military records and court documents seen by the Guardian reveal that:

• Díaz, a decorated special forces veteran, was appointed chief of army intelligence in 2015, and at the time of the murder was on track for promotion to lieutenant colonel.

• Another suspect, Lt Douglas Giovanny Bustillo joined the military on the same day as Díaz; they served together and prosecutors say they remained in contact after Bustillo retired in 2008.

• Díaz and Bustillo both received military training in the US.

• A third suspect, Sgt Henry Javier Hernández, was a former special forces sniper, who had worked under the direct command of Díaz. Prosecutors believe he may also have worked as an informant for military intelligence after leaving the army in 2013.

Court documents also include the records of mobile phone messages which prosecutors believe contain coded references to the murder.

Bustillo and Hernández visited the town of La Esperanza, where Cáceres lived, several times in the weeks before her death, according to phone records and Hernández’s testimony.

A legal source close to the investigation told the Guardian: “The murder of Berta Cáceres has all the characteristics of a well-planned operation designed by military intelligence, where it is absolutely normal to contract civilians as assassins.

“It’s inconceivable that someone with her high profile, whose campaign had made her a problem for the state, could be murdered without at least implicit authorisation of military high command.”

The Honduran defence ministry ignored repeated requests from the Guardian for comment, but the head of the armed forces recently denied that military deaths squads were operating in the country.

Five civilians with no known military record have also been arrested. They include Sergio Rodríguez, a manager for the internationally funded Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam which Cáceres had opposed.

The project is being led by Desarrollos Energéticos SA, (Desa), which has extensive military and government links. The company’s president, Roberto David Castillo Mejía, is a former military intelligence officer, and its secretary, Roberto Pacheco Reyes, is a former justice minister. Desa employed former lieutenant Bustillo as head of security between 2013 and 2015.

Cáceres had reported 33 death threats linked to her campaign against the dam, including several from Desa employees. Desa denies any involvement in the murder.

Cáceres was killed at about 11.30pm on 2 March, when at least four assassins entered the gated community to which she had recently moved on the outskirts of La Esperanza.

A checkpoint at the entrance to the town – normally manned by police officers or soldiers – was left unattended on the night she was killed, witnesses have told the Guardian.

Initially, investigators suggested the murderer was a former lover or disgruntled co-worker. But amid mounting international condemnation, Díaz, Bustillo and two others were arrested in May 2016.

Hernández, who was eventually arrested in Mexico, is the only suspect to have given detailed testimony in court. He has admitted his involvement, but says he acted under duress.

All eight have been charged with murder and attempted murder. The other seven suspects have either denied involvement or not given testimony in court.

Prosecutors say that phone records submitted to court show extensive communication between the three military men, including a text message which was a coded discussion of payment for a contract killing.

American experts have been involved in the investigation from the start, according to the US embassy in Tegucigalpa.

Senator Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, said US support should not be unconditional: “It is essential that we not only strengthen our commitment to improving the rule of law in Honduras, but we must also demand greater accountability for human rights violations and attacks against civil society.”

Last year, the Guardian reported that a former Honduran soldier said he had seen Cáceres’s name on a hitlist that was passed to US-trained units.

1Sgt Rodrigo Cruz said that two elite units were given lists featuring the names and photographs of activists – and ordered to eliminate each target.

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[no need for facts when you have racism] Jeff Sessions dismissed DOJ reports on Cop abuse in Ferguson & Chicago without reading them

From [WashingtonPost] In a briefing with reporters last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he’s still deciding whether or not to implement reforms for the Chicago Police Department. The reforms, suggested by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, were part of a blistering report on the city’s police agency that was published at the tail end of President Obama’s second term. This section from the Reuters write-up of the briefing jumped out at me:

Sessions said he had seen summaries of both the Chicago report and the report that the Obama Justice Department completed on police in Ferguson.

“Some of it was pretty anecdotal and not so scientifically based,” Sessions said.

Of course, the summary for any study will be anecdotal, and not particularly heavy on data. That’s the whole point of a summary. I’m not entirely sure what Sessions means by “scientifically-based.” But the DOJ’s Ferguson study is based on a wealth of data, much of supplied by the legal aid group ArchCity Defenders and the advocacy group Better Together. And much of the data from those organizations comes from the municipalities in St. Louis County themselves — data from police agencies, city budgets, and municipal courts. If Sessions couldn’t find data in the Ferguson study, it’s because he didn’t look for it.

And as it turns out, he really didn’t look for it.

Asked by The Huffington Post whether he had read the Civil Rights Division’s investigative reports on the police departments in Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri, Sessions conceded he had not. But, he said, he didn’t think they were necessarily reliable.

“I have not read those reports, frankly.”

Just to be clear, the U.S. attorney general is currently deciding whether to continue to enforce civil rights reforms suggested by the Civil Rights Division of DOJ in Chicago and Ferguson — but he’s apparently pondering that decision without having read the reports supporting those reforms. He only read the summaries. Not surprisingly, he found that the summaries lack data. As summaries tend to do.

To be fair, the DOJ’s report on Chicago, flabbergasting as it was, was largely anecdotal. There’s a good reason for that. As the report itself notes, the Chicago Police Department is notoriously bad at collecting data. They city couldn’t even tell investigators how many people its police officers had shot. The investigators couldn’t cite reliable data on police complaints, because they found ample evidence that people who try to file complaints are subject to threats and intimidation, and that the complaints themselves are poorly investigated and poorly documented. In other words, the report was largely anecdotal because anecdotes were all investigators had. But the very lack of reliable data is in itself troubling, and indicative of a problem. From the report:

The City and CPD must improve the ways in which they collect, organize, analyze, track, and report on available data and data trends. Currently, CPD’s data collection systems are siloed and do not allow for meaningful cross-system data collection, evaluation, and tracking. As a result, CPD is unable to easily use the data at its disposal to identify trends, including trends in misconduct complaints, training deficiencies, and more . . .

The data that is collected and publicly reported by the City is also incomplete, and at times, inaccurate. IPRA reports only on how investigations are resolved by that agency; but, as discussed in this Report, the findings of IPRA investigators can be set aside, and its discipline recommendations greatly reduced. IPRA’s reporting, therefore, does not give a full picture of how misconduct investigations are ultimately resolved. Independent evaluation of IPRA’s publicly reported data regarding use of force found that the data was, at least historically, inaccurate. And, even though IPRA’s public reporting is far more comprehensive now than it was before, CPD does not aggregate or publish the same information for investigations handled by BIA and the districts. Currently, very little information is published about those investigations, even though those entities handle roughly 70% of all misconduct complaints.publicly reported data regarding use of force found that the data was, at least historically, inaccurate. And, even though IPRA’s public reporting is far more comprehensive now than it was before, CPD does not aggregate or publish the same information for investigations handled by BIA and the districts. Currently, very little information is published about those investigations, even though those entities handle roughly 70% of all misconduct complaints.publicly reported data regarding use of force found that the data was, at least historically, inaccurate. And, even though IPRA’s public reporting is far more comprehensive now than it was before, CPD does not aggregate or publish the same information for investigations handled by BIA and the districts. Currently, very little information is published about those investigations, even though those entities handle roughly 70% of all misconduct complaints . . .

CPD policy requires officers to report most uses of force, but in practice, officers are not required to provide sufficient detail about the force they used, and most officer force is not reviewed or investigated, notwithstanding CPD policy requirements . . .

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After Spending $1600 at Apple Store 2 Black Men Tackled & Detained in Public for an Hour by White Staff: $12 Million Suit Filed

On June 17, 2016, at approximately 5:00 p.m. the Plaintiffs, two Apple account holders, entered the Apple Store located at 4860 Bethesda Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, to purchase two new cellphones. The Plaintiffs followed proper Apple Store protocol and placed their names on a "list" of customers in need of assistance. The Plaintiffs waited in the store until an employee arrived to assist them. While waiting for their names to be called pursuant to Apple's protocol and procedure, the Plaintiffs were subjected to constant stares and glares by Apple Store employees, though the Plaintiffs did not understand the need for such stares and glares, as the Plaintiffs had done nothing wrong and had committed no criminal act.

At approximately 5:19 pm, the Plaintiffs names were called and they were called to the purchasing counter. While at the counter, the Plaintiff provided their Apple and Verizon Store account information and requested to purchase two iPhone 6s, 64GB model cellphones. The Apple Store employees retrieved two cellphones from their stock. Both Plaintiffs then purchased the cellphones for $793.94 each. Upon information and belief, the Apple Store employees verified the validity of their accounts prior to the Plaintiffs being called to the purchasing counter.

After spending almost $1600 at the Apple Store, the Plaintiffs began walking toward the door of the Apple Store location. Upon opening the store door to exit, the Plaintiffs were accosted by two uniformed Montgomery County Sherriff s Department officers who detained them for almost an hour in front of the Apple Store location. The Plaintiffs were tackled and slammed to the ground by the officers who then required the Plaintiffs to sit on the ground with the heat of the sun pounding upon their bodies, as passers-by looked upon them. The Plaintiffs were humiliated and felt ridiculed and harassed. The Plaintiffs were informed by their detaining officers that the Apple Store employees called to report "suspicious" persons at the location and that the two Plaintiffs were the individuals reported by the Apple Store employees to have been engaged in or possibly engaged in fraudulent activity while at the Apple Store. However, the Plaintiffs had engaged in no such behavior and were not charged with any criminal offense against Apple after being unlawfully targeted and detained for almost an hour in front of the Apple Store location at Apple, Inc.'s direction.

Upon information and belief, the Defendant has previously been accused, both domestically and internationally, of racial discrimination at its Apple Store locations, and a string of similar complaints suggest a pattern of racially biased policies and practices that have systemically and systematically resulted in widespread discrimination against African Americans/Black customers and or shoppers.

Upon information and belief, the ongoing policies and practices of the Defendant corporation denied the Plaintiffs the full and equal benefit of all laws, as enjoyed by non-African Americans/Black customers and shoppers; that African Americans/Black customers are disproportionately suspected of wrongdoing with no or insufficient probable cause, and are more likely to be denigrated, humiliated, and accused of criminal activity even in the absence of such behavior or reasonable basis to make such claims.

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[keep the piece] Gun Club Officials Say African-American Gun Ownership Has Doubled Since Election Day

From [HERE] More African-Americans appear to be taking an active interest in their right to bear arms since the election of President Donald Trump, gun club leaders and firearm sellers say.

A national African-American gun club has doubled its membership since Election Day, and gun sellers say they’ve noticed more black customers buying firearms.

At Stoddard’s Range and Guns in Atlanta, one thunderous clap after another reverberates through the room, mixing with laughter and the smell of gunpowder. A group of men are bonding over a hobby they love. Moments later, with their clips empty and a stream of hot shell casings on the floor around them, each man holds up his target showing clusters of bullet holes.

They are members of the National African American Gun Association, a group that has added 9,000 members since Election Day, said Philip Smith, the group’s national president. The group launched on Feb. 28, 2015, and added 4,285 members over the same time period the year before, between Nov. 2015 and Feb. 2016.

“I’d be lying to you if I said Donald Trump hasn’t affected our numbers,” Smith said. “They have jumped off the roof.”

NAAGA now has more than 18,000 members in 24 chapters across the country.

‘You know what, let me get a gun just in case’

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"Justice" Dept. Says Racist Texas Voter ID Law is Not Racist [if non-white voters flip Texas, GOP Unlikely to Attain an Electoral Majority]

[Already, California, Illinois and New York are lost. The GOP has not carried any of the four in seven presidential elections. When Texas – where whites are a minority and a declining share of the population – tips, how does the GOP put together an electoral majority? MORE]

[GOP] White Party Must [practice racism] Rig Elections to Survive. From [HERE] The Justice Department on Monday dropped a crucial objection to Texas’ strict voter-identification law, signaling a significant change from the Obama administration on voting-rights issues.

The Republican-led Texas Legislature passed one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country in 2011, requiring voters to show a driver’s license, passport or other government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot.

The Obama administration’s Justice Department sued Texas to block the law in 2013 and scored a major victory last year after a federal appeals court ruled that the law needed to be softened because it discriminated against minority voters who lacked the required IDs.

Opponents of the law said Republican lawmakers selected IDs that were most advantageous for Republican-leaning white voters and discarded IDs that were beneficial to Democratic-leaning minority voters. For example, legislators included licenses to carry concealed handguns, which are predominantly carried by whites, and excluded government employee IDs and public university IDs, which are more likely to be used by blacks, Hispanics and Democratic-leaning younger voters.

But the Justice Department under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a judge on Monday that it was withdrawing its claim that Texas enacted the law with a discriminatory intent.

The Justice Department remains a party in the case. But it is pulling back at a crucial phase. If a judge finds the state acted with discriminatory intent, as the Justice Department and other plaintiffs have alleged, Texas could be forced to seek federal approval before it makes any changes to its voting laws or procedures. That would have major impacts on voting rules in Texas and be a potent symbol of the ability of the federal government to be a major brake on voting discrimination nationally.

“This is a complete 180-degree turn,” said Danielle Lang, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups that sued Texas and represents some of the Justice Department’s fellow plaintiffs in the voter ID case. Under the Obama administration, she added, the Justice Department was “fully committed to the case.”

“They were full partners,” Ms. Lang said. “This was their case as much as ours.”

The Texas Legislature is considering a new voter ID bill that will allow those who have difficulty obtaining the appropriate IDs to vote as long as they sign an affidavit and show more widely available types of identification, including a utility bill or a bank statement. In documents filed on Monday, the Justice Department said that in light of the recently filed bill, it was withdrawing its discriminatory-intent claim to allow “the Texas Legislature the opportunity to rectify any alleged infirmities with its voter identification law.”

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Who Cares About Low Turnout When You Can Steal An Election? A Small Number of Racist Suspects Show Up To Support Loser Trump

From [HERE] As many people were trying to wrap their heads around Donald Trump’s early morning tweetstorm accusing President Obama of wiretapping him, small pockets of supporters gathered to show the world their overwhelming response to the historic turnout for the Women’s March at rallies across the country. They fell just a bit short.

Nashville, Tennessee appeared to be one of the larger gatherings on Saturday morning. Trump supporters there tweeted images of what looked like a decent-sized crowd in front of the state capital.

Gervin is a local reporter covering state politics and estimated that the crowd was no more than 1,000 people. In a state that voted for Donald Trump by a 61–35 margin, January’s Trump protest in Nashville had at least 15 times more people in attendance.

Turnout in other cities was even more depressing. In Cleveland, a livestream of their March 4 Trump rally showed a sparse crowd of maybe a few hundred supporters, compared to the 15,000 that turned out to protest him on January 21.

In Connecticut, March 4 Trump attendees appeared to be taking a leisurely stroll down a back road. In Orlando, the Florida Republican party touted “great” turnout above a dimly lit photo of about 200 people (January’s protest had 5,000). Denver’s ABC affiliate counted “dozens” of people in front of the capital building (January: 145,000). And in Sterling Hill, Michigan, a small crowd was met with a group of counter-protesters carrying signs and flags of their own across the street.

In Washington, DC, where supporters hoped for a turnout rivaling the roughly 700,000 that turned out to protest the day after Trump’s inauguration, one attendee noticed the same flags that progressives used to troll Trump supporters at CPAC last month: the word Trump, rendered in gold and plastered onto a Russian flag.

Last month, Donald Trump himself called on his supporters to stage their own rally to counter the hundreds of protests in recent weeks, promising that it would be the “biggest of them all.” No word from Trump just yet about today’s turnout.

"White Degeneracy Wrongly Cast as Supremacy": Trump Unleashes Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Polluters & More

From [NY Times] Giants in telecommunications, like Verizon and AT&T, will not have to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that their customers’ Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released.

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will not be punished, at least for now, for not collecting extra money from customers to cover potential losses from certain kinds of high-risk trades that helped unleash the 2008 financial crisis.

And Social Security Administration data will no longer be used to try to block individuals with disabling mental health issues from buying handguns, nor will hunters be banned from using lead-based bullets, which can accidentally poison wildlife, on 150 million acres of federal lands.

These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times.

The emerging effort — dozens more rules could be eliminated in the coming weeks — is one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades. It is the leading edge of what Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, described late last month as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”

In many cases, records show that the changes came after appeals by corporate lobbyists and trade association executives, who see a potentially historic opportunity to lower compliance costs and drive up profits. Slashing regulations, they argue, will unleash economic growth.

On a near daily basis, regulated industries are now sending in specific requests to the Trump administration for more rollbacks, including recent appeals from 17 automakers to rescind an agreement to increase mileage standards for their fleets, and another from pharmaceutical industry figures to reverse a new rule that tightens scrutiny over the marketing of prescription drugs for unapproved uses. As of late Friday, word had leaked that the automakers’ request for a rollback was about to be granted, too.

“After a relentless, eight-year regulatory onslaught that loaded unprecedented burdens on businesses and the economy, relief is finally on the way,” Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a memo last week.

But dozens of public interest groups — environmentalists, labor unions, consumer watchdogs — have weighed in on the potential threat to Americans’ well-being. “Americans did not vote to be exposed to more health, safety, environmental and financial dangers,” said one letter, signed by leaders of 137 nonprofit groups to the White House last week.

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