America’s ICE Backwards Approach to Immigration

Truth Dig
This article is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting.
By Andrew Becker and Hugo Cabrera, CIR
While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog that has grown to more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents have been hired and the number of government attorneys who argue for deportation has increased [...]

Denial and dismissal

 New Internationalist 
Despite growing evidence, the Kenyan Government evades accountability for murder
On 5 March, Oscar Kingara and John Oulu were shot dead in suspicious circumstances. Both were staff members of the Oscar Foundation, an organization recently involved in documenting the extrajudicial executions of members of a militia organization known as Mungiki. They were heading to a [...]

The momentum is moving in the MDC’s favour yet its foreign friends remain cautious

Africa Confidential
 After a three-week tour through Western capitals and having raised some US$150 million for his fragile government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai now knows that diplomats and business people in the West are as ambivalent as their African counterparts about the prospects for Zimbabwe in the short term. The difference is that African governments have [...]

In preview of new encyclical, Benedict reprises ‘dictatorship of relativism’ speech

National Catholic Reporter
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
By the time Pope Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical appears in early July, it may well seem largely anti-climactic. Extracts have already appeared in the Italian press, and yesterday the pontiff actually scooped himself by devoting his remarks for the close of his “Pauline Year” to the theme of [...]

Kucinich Says Climate Bill Might Make Things Worse

Truth Dig
Rep. Dennis Kucinich explains why he voted against the climate bill that narrowly passed the House Friday: “It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods. It gives new life to one of the primary sources of the problem that should [...]

Fall-out from EPA negotiations: Africa on the brink of disintegration

Third World Network Africa
 African Charter Article# 20: All peoples shall have the right to existence and self determination and the right to free themselves from the bonds of domination.
 Summary & Comment:  Two more regional economic groupings are at risk as more individual African countries sign up economic partnership agreements. Blocs that are increasingly thrown into [...]

Friends of the Earth Goes it Alone: Urges ‘No’ on Climate Bill

Solve Climate.com
by Stacy Morford
The House climate bill took another hit this week as Rep. Henry Waxman made further concessions, this time to farm-state Democrats, to ensure the bill’s safe passage on Friday. Even weakened, though, the bill continued to draw support from most of the big environmental organizations.

A Way Forward on Immigration

New York Times
Published: June 26, 2009
President Obama and Congress members met privately at the White House on Thursday for their first major discussion of immigration reform. Immigration is just one unsolved national crisis among many, and it was hard not to suspect that the parties might use the meeting — which had already been twice [...]

Brazil’s Lula signs Amazon bill

BBC News, Sao Paulo
By Tim Hirsch
Brazil’s government says it wants to protect the rainforest
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has approved a controversial bill allowing Amazon farmers to acquire an area of public land larger than France.  But the president vetoed some of the most contentious clauses that would have enabled absentee landlords and [...]

CNN’s Iran Timeline Omits US-Backed ‘53 Coup

Media Bloodhound
 It might be more difficult for Republicans to bash President Obama for being “timid” in his comments about the Iranian government’s violence against protesters if the U.S. media didn’t consistently censor US-Iranian history.