US – praag.org

Vatican has most restrictive immigration policy

Pope Francis is more than head of the Catholic Church — he’s also the head of state of the Vatican, which as a government has possibly the most restrictive immigration and citizenship policies of any nation in the world.

The pope, traveling to the U.S. for the first time, has made a special appeal to Americans to welcome immigrants, using his address to a joint meeting of Congress Thursday to invoke the Golden Rule in demanding generosity toward the millions of Central and South Americans seeking to come to the country.

“Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children?” he said. “We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

Immigrant rights groups had eagerly anticipated the pope’s message, as had illegal immigrants themselves.

Sophie Cruz, a five-year-old U.S. citizen whose parents are illegal immigrants from Mexico, broke through the tight security around the pope during a parade on the National Mall on Wednesday to hand him a letter begging him to pressure Congress and the White House to take steps to grant her parents legal status.

The pontiff didn’t mention illegal immigration during his speech Thursday, but did refer to the large numbers of people coming from Latin America. Advocacy groups cheered his words.

The Vatican, for its part, welcomes millions of visitors a year — but allows only a very select few, who meet strict criteria, to be admitted as residents or citizens.

Only about 450 of its 800 or so residents actually hold citizenship, according to a 2012 study by the Library of Congress. That study said citizens are either church cardinals who reside in the Vatican, the Holy See’s diplomats around the world, and those who have to reside in the city because of their jobs, such as the Swiss Guard.

Spouses and children who live in the city because of their relationship with citizens — including the Swiss Guard and workers such as the gardener — have also been granted citizenship. But that means few of the Vatican’s citizens are women.

A Vatican spokesman did not return an email seeking comment on its policy.

Source: Washington Times

Government says no imminent danger to US interests

The South African government is monitoring a number of people linked to a reported threat to US interests, but was satisfied that no one faced any imminent danger, the security minister said.

The US Embassy warned its citizens on Tuesday of a possible attack by militants, a rare security alert in a stable democracy seldom associated with Islamist militancy.

State Security Minister David Mahlobo said the US Embassy had shared information linked to the warning with his officials.

“This is not a new information, the information has been shared over the past few days, the information has been acted upon,” he said.

“In terms of our own threat analysis, we had to do a threat analysis, who is the source and what is happening, and came to the conclusion that there is no immediate danger.”

In Washington, a State Department official said the security message was to inform US citizens that militants may be targeting US interests in South Africa, including US government facilities and businesses.

“There is no additional information as to timing or potential targeting,” the official said.

“US citizens should be vigilant and take appropriate steps to enhance their personal security.”

The embassy and consulates in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town closed for several days in 2009 after what US officials described as a specific threat to diplomatic missions in South Africa.

Source: Reuters

Black US cities see sharp rise in murders

Black cities across the US are seeing a startling rise in murders after years of declines. Milwaukee, has had more killings this year already than all of 2014.

As in places like Ferguson and Baltimore, tensions over race and police conduct have risen in Milwaukee, where the population is 40 percent black, compared with 6 percent statewide.

Demonstrators took to Milwaukee’s streets after the death of Dontre D. Hamilton, 31, a black man who was shot in a downtown park last year by a white police officer.

With the summer not yet over, 104 people have been killed this year — after 86 homicides in all of 2014.

More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier.

In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year.

Law enforcement experts say disparate factors are at play in different cities, though no one is claiming to know for sure why murder rates are climbing.

Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory.

Rivalries among organized street gangs, often over drug turf, and the availability of guns are cited as major factors in some cities, including Chicago.

But more commonly, many top police officials say they are seeing a growing willingness among disenchanted young men in poor neighborhoods to use violence to settle ordinary disputes.

A criminologist from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said homicides in St. Louis had already begun an arc upward in 2014 before a white police officer killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in nearby Ferguson.

Capt. Mike Sack, a homicide commander in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, cited killings there that had grown out of arguments over girlfriends, food and even characters on a TV show.

“Most remarkable is that individuals get so upset over things that I or others might consider petty but resort to such a level of violence,” he said.

In Milwaukee critics say low investment in the city’s African-American neighborhoods and mistreatment of black residents by the police, contribute to murders.

Most of the victims in Milwaukee and the suspects in their killings are black men under 30, police data shows, who come from neighborhoods where foreclosures, joblessness and poverty are high.

The most common motive in the slayings was not robbery or gang rivalry but an argument.

Source: NYT

Merkel booed at refugee centre

Angela Merkel has vowed “no tolerance” for violent anti-migrant protests that have gripped Germany in recent weeks.

The German chancellor called on her countrymen to make a stand against the “shameful and disgusting” protests on Wednesday, as she visited a migrant shelter that has been the scene of some of the worst violence.

“There is no tolerance for those people who question the dignity of others, there is no tolerance for those who are not willing to help where legal and human help is required,” Mrs Merkel said.

“The more people who make this clear, the stronger we shall be.”

But Mrs Merkel was booed and denounced as a “traitor” by rightwing protesters as she visited the government migrant shelter in the small town of Heidenau, outside Dresden.

More than 30 police officers were injured in three nights of running battles with protesters trying to stop asylum-seekers from entering the shelter over the weekend.

“Germany will help where help is needed. This will require still more strength,” Mrs Merkel said.

“We cannot operate as if we were in a normal situation. We shall succeed only if we break new ground together.”

Germany takes in by far the most asylum-seekers of any EU state, and expects to host 800,000 this year.

The country recently stopped deporting Syrian refugees under EU rules that require them to claim asylum in the first country they reach, and started accepting their claims itself.

But the record numbers have seen an outbreak of violent protests from the far-Right, and Mrs Merkel has been under increasing pressure to take a stand on the issue.

Meanwhile British premier David Cameron has called migrants “swarms of people” linked to organised crime in an interview with ITV.

Source: The Telegraph/ITV

South Korea talks tough after landmine incident

South Korean President Park Geun-hye talked tough on Monday, demanding that North Korea apologise over a recent landmine incident, even as the bitter rivals held marathon negotiations in a bid to defuse tensions that have brought the peninsula to the brink of armed conflict.

Park said anti-North propaganda broadcasts would continue unless Pyongyang took responsibility for landmine explosions early this month that wounded two South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating the two countries.

North Korea denies it laid the mines.

The incident has escalated into a crisis that saw both sides exchange artillery fire on Thursday and ramp up their military readiness. The United Nations, the United States and the North’s lone major ally, China, have all called for calm.

“We need a clear apology and measures to prevent a recurrence of these provocations and tense situations,” Park told a meeting with her top aides, according to a statement released by her office. “Otherwise, this government will take appropriate steps and continue loudspeaker broadcasts.”

Seoul and Washington were reviewing the possibility of bringing in “strategic” US military assets, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesperson Kim Min-seok said, without elaborating.

Source: Reuters

Black American rips into illegal immigrants

Chanell Temple, a black woman originally from Huntington Park, delivered a strident, politically incorrect speech against illegal immigration on Monday evening at the local city council meeting.

Temple, who now lives in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles, was protesting the council’s recent decision to appoint two illegal aliens to city commissions. She told Breitbart News she had not intended to speak at the meeting, but was offended when someone compared illegal aliens to slaves. She added that she supports Donald Trump “a hundred percent.”

The Huntington Park City Council is being paid with taxpayers’ money to do a job within rules and regulations. According to your board behind you, it says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I want to paraphrase that and say: Where there is no law, the people perish.

In the U.S. we have one rule of law. I also want to talk about the Fourteenth Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in regards to blacks being given birthright citizenship because blacks helped build this country, including the White House—twice.

(Interjection: Right on!)

Please do not tarnish the name of black slaves by comparing them to your plight. There’s no comparison. None.

Black slaves did not break into this country, okay. They were brought here against their will. Also, black slaves are not immigrants. Immigrants are people with a choice, they come here by choice. Black slaves didn’t have choice.

That’s offensive to me because I’m a descendant of a black slave. And trust me, Ancestry.com works and I can trace my people back from when they landed here on the boat. I know the village where my people came from in Africa, OK? So please, do not try to get away with using that. That’s very offensive.

This country has been good to illegal immigrants. You have been given jobs, houses, tax money, free tax money, welfare, Social Security, they open up business for you guys, et cetera.

None—I don’t know of any illegal aliens who have been hung from a tree. I don’t know of any of them illegal aliens who have dogs been sicced on. So that’s very offensive for you to sit up here and allow these people to say that and get away with it. Things that people are going to feel sorry for. That’s very offensive, OK? Do the right thing.

My people get three strikes. I have a nephew in jail now–22 years!–for something he didn’t do.

My people commit a crime, they go to jail. You people commit a crime, they get amnesty. It is wrong…

(Cheers, applause)

And we’re not going to have it. We’re not going to have a set of laws for you people and a set of laws for us.

And if you can’t follow the law, talking about “perish,” your job needs to perish.

You get paid with taxpayers’ money and you are misappropriating taxpayers’ money when you pick up your check.

(Cheers, applause)

In an interview Tuesday morning, Temple explained further:

I grew up in the Huntington Park area. I was raised in that area. I live in Hawthorne now. That area over there has been a Latino area for decades, for a long time. They witnessed racial tension in that area. My mother was a property owner over in that area.

What I said last night was not my intention. What kind of disturbed me is when someone got up and talked about slavery. There is no comparison. They need to stop pretending like they are being mistreated. They have pushed and disturbed the community. They have 95% of the jobs and they still act like they are mistreated.

Yes I am black, but I’m an American. They are getting away with murder. I was in Sacramento recently, and I protested about Kate Steinle. Then they get a get-out-of-jail-free card, and my nephew is in jail. They release them–30,000, if not more–every year. They put them right back on the street and it’s not right.

The black community–we’re tired of them citing civil rights because of people like Al Sharpton. They are being treated better than American citizens with our tax money.

I’m just tired. I lost my job. I was told I did not speak Spanish and I was terminated from my job. Even now it’s difficult to get a job. They told me I was fired for not being able to speak Spanish. I applied to McDonald’s and they told me that they don’t hire blacks–and it was a black owner. I filed with EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). I have my documentation. I was denied a job….But they didn’t do anything. They are putting illegal immigrants before blacks. I applied for three jobs with the County of L.A. and they didn’t give me a job, and when I filed a complaint they called me a racist. I ended up homeless.

We have a rule of law. Why can’t they obey the law? Little do they know they are making us [Americans] closer. We are standing as Americans, as all races and colors. They want to throw out the race card. We are tired of being abused, and it’s got to stop.

Our politicians are giving them the power in the fight against us–the people using our tax money, writing these laws and using them against us….

Yes, black lives matter, but if we had jobs we wouldn’t be put in these situations to be attacked. A lot of parental rights have been restricted and are being taken away. There’s a lot in the black neighborhood that needs to be worked on. We need to get our house in order first and we need to get jobs back to get back on track.

We have no recourse. We are not being represented. Now we’re in the shadows, we are being buried in the shadows.

Source: Breitbart

The Donald towers in crucial state of Iowa

When Republican Scott Walker arrives Monday at Iowa’s state fair, he’ll land in an unfamiliar position: he won’t be the front-runner in the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest.

Like most every other candidate in the historically crowded field, the Wisconsin governor’s standing in state and national polls has been hurt by the summer surge of billionaire Donald Trump, the party’s front-runner.

No state is more critical to Walker’s future than Iowa, where media expectations about his candidacy have grown to the point that anything short of a win in the Feb. 1 caucuses is likely to be viewed as a serious momentum killer.

The governor, who has enjoyed a consistent lead all year in Iowa, dropped to third in the most recent CNN poll.

He was backed by just 9 percent of likely caucus participants, below Trump at 22 percent and Carson at 14 percent.

It’s a dramatic fall for a guy who led in a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll with 17 percent as recently as late May. That was approaching the level of support—roughly 20 percent—that most party insiders agree could win the caucuses in a 17-candidate field.

Walker is the man with the most to lose from Trump’s Iowa rise because he’s counting on a win in the state to provide momentum in subsequent contests where Trump and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush are almost certain to be better financed.

Walker hasn’t just lost his standing in Iowa polls. After the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 6, he’s also lost traction in national polls.

Source: Bloomberg

US owes Cuba millions says Castro

Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, marked his 89th birthday with an essay in which he states the USA owes Cuba a huge debt for decades of embargo, and claims he “would not stop struggling for peace… and well-being” of every person on Earth.

In his brief essay, published in Granma, Cuba’s official government newspaper on Thursday, Castro repeats his claims that the United States owes his country “millions of dollars” for damages inflicted on the Cuban economy by the US embargo.

“Cuba is owed compensation equivalent to damages, which have reached many millions of dollars, as our country has denounced throughout our interventions in the United Nations, with irrefutable arguments and facts,” Castro wrote.

In his composition, entitled Reality and Dreams, Fidel Castro recalls the history of the twentieth century, pointing out that the United States profited more than any other nation from the cruelties of World War II. He also condemns the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The United States, whose territory and industries remained removed from the war, became the country with the greatest wealth and the best weaponry on Earth, in a world torn apart, full of death, the wounded and hungry,” wrote the former Cuban leader.

Source: RT

Heavily armed whites arrive in Ferguson

Armed to teeth with semi-automatic assault rifles and handguns, members of the Oath Keepers militia, formed of former and current law enforcement and military officers, have blended into the crowd of Ferguson protesters, saying “We’re on your side.”

At least four members of the ‘Oath Keepers’ arrived in Ferguson on early Tuesday and began patrolling the West Florissant Avenue, walking through the crowds of protesters gathered there for a ‘day of civil disobedience’ following the anniversary of the killing of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown, shot dead by white Police Officer Darren Wilson.

The appearance of heavily-armed white men stirred unease on the part of the civil rights activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, heavily represented at Ferguson protests.

“Why are there men with guns and the police are doing nothing?” prominent activist Kayla Reed demanded on Twitter.

The American nonprofit organization Oath Keepers consists mainly of former and serving US military and law enforcement personnel, as well as members of other paramilitary services, who declare their aim as protecting the US Constitution even at the cost of disobedience to official orders, in case these orders violate fundamental American law.

Expressing his disapproval at the government’s handling of the situation in Ferguson, Oath Keepers volunteer Sam Andrews told RT: “Why the National Guard was not here supporting the St. Louis County Police and supporting the highway patrol and protecting these businesses, to me, is either such a grotesque incompetence or downright criminal negligence.”

“We are family people. And you know what? Nothing is going to change unless we stop electing politician lawyers to officers,” Andrews said, as quoted by Ruptly.

“You elect Donald Trump, you put Donald Trump in office, he’ll change it all, he’ll get rid of these clowns he’ll get rid of these people that violate our rights and we’ll have somebody that actually cares about Americans again,” Andrews said, expressing his support for the Republican presidential candidate.

A year ago, during the first round of protests, they also patrolled Ferguson. The Oath Keepers were also present in November 2014, when more protests erupted in the St. Louis, Missouri, neighborhood.

“Private business people that cannot afford security have asked the volunteers to help protect their businesses. The people in Ferguson have learnt a sad and difficult lesson, that there are not enough police and National Guards to protect all the homes and all the businesses,” a man in military fatigues told Sky News.

But Andrews said it’s not just about defending businesses.

“We have people living in apartments above these businesses…so arson is a lethal threat,” he told RT.

Hiroshima: Killing on an industrial scale

It has been 70 years since the United States became the only nation in history that deployed two nuclear weapons against civilian populations.

On August 6, 1945, a B-29 known as the Enola Gay took off from Tinian island, north of Guam. After flying six hours to the main Japanese island of Honshu, pilot Paul Tibbets flew his aircraft over the city of Hiroshima released «Little Boy», an atomic bomb with the explosive power of 16 kilotons of TNT.

Together two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Little already remained of Tokyo long before the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima was one of the largest military centers provisioning the Japanese army and navy.

Originally the chosen targets for the attack were Niigata (a military base and industrial center), Yokohama (an industrial center), Kokura (which held the largest arsenal and warehouse), and Kyoto (also an industrial center).

Nagasaki was a haphazard target. The plane originally flew to Kokura, but because of cloud cover it was unable to release its payload and it turned toward Nagasaki instead.

Within a week of each nuclear attack, thousands who had escaped death began to experience inexplicable combinations of symptoms: high fever, dizziness, nausea, headaches, diarrhea, bloody stools, nosebleeds and whole-body weakness. Their hair fell out in large clumps, their wounds secreted extreme amounts of pus, and their gums swelled and bled.

Purple spots appeared on their bodies, signs of hemorrhaging beneath the skin. Infections ravaged their internal organs. Within a few days of the onset of symptoms, many people lost consciousness, mumbled deliriously and died in extreme pain; others languished for weeks before either dying or slowly recovering.

Even those who had suffered no external injuries fell sick and died. In the ruins of his small tuberculosis hospital in Nagasaki, Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki likened the situation to the Black Death pandemic that ravaged Europe in the 1300s.

A second wave of radiation illnesses and deaths swept through Nagasaki in late August through early October. From Akizuki’s perspective on top of Motohara Hill, the illness carved a clear geographical path: From the bottom of the hill upward, people died in order of their distance from the bomb’s hypocenter. Akizuki called this phenomenon the “concentric circles of death.”

By February 1945, Russia and Japan were on the same page and proposed a Far East peace conference that would include Russia, China, Great Britain, the United States, France, and Japan. Japan wrongly believed that Russia would not enter the Pacific war on the side of the Allies.

The USSR’s entry into the war against Japan on Aug. 9, 1945 had a decisive impact on Japan’s decision to capitulate. When the fate of the Kwantung command was almost a foregone conclusion, Emperor Hirohito decided to surrender after panicked reports from his military commanders in Manchuria.

Immediately after the bombings, high-level U.S. officials publicly — and adamantly — rebuffed news reports about the bombs’ horrific aftereffects. Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs, dismissed these reports as propaganda.

Later that year, Groves testified before the U.S. Senate that death from high-dose radiation exposure is “without undue suffering” and “a very pleasant way to die.”

Killing had become possible on an industrial scale by WWII with rifles and machine guns mass-produced in factories, as well as a wide range of products needed to support multimillion-man armies.

Destroying cities was thus the key to winning wars and an integral part of Allied strategy against Germany and in Japan. For Japan the aftermath of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was as calamitous as the fate of Dresden and Hamburg.

Saudi king blames Mossad for 9/11

The former ambassador to Saudi Arabia said in an interview this week that following 9/11, Saudi King Salman had insisted to him that the Mossad was responsible for the attacks.

“One of my first calls was with then-governor of Riyadh… Prince Salman, who is now the king. His response was very emphatic [that] this could not have been Saudis, we couldn’t possibly have done this,” former envoy Robert Jordan said on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS.

“This had to have been an Israeli plot. The Mossad must have done this,” he cited Salman as saying at the time.

“I got the same thing from the minister of interior, Prince [Mohammed bin] Nayef,” Jordan continued. “I finally had to bring a CIA briefer out and show some of these princes some compelling evidence that it, indeed, was Saudis who were the hijackers.”

Jordan went on to say that he saw the Saudis as being in denial about the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from their country.

The Saudis eventually altered their position, he said, after al-Qaida bombed three Western housing compounds in May 2003.

“At that point, Crown Prince Abdullah said to me that he understood that they had a problem, that they would take immediate action to capture or kill the attackers and to treat just as harshly anyone who gave them comfort or aid or even tried to justify what they did,” said the former ambassador.

In his new book, Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11, Jordan writes that the Palestinian issue was often a “source of Saudi anger directed at me.”

“America should be able to resolve this, they told me.

After all, the United States was omnipotent. All Washington had to do was snap its fingers and Israel would come to heel, do whatever we commanded it to do,” he says in the book.

Source: Jerusalem Post

No outrage after white teen’s killing

After an independent autopsy showed that Zachary Hammond was shot by police from behind, the family of the unarmed South Carolina teen is wondering at the lack of national outrage in this case. Hammond was white.

According to the police in Seneca, South Carolina, an officer shot Hammond “in self-defense” when the teen allegedly tried to run him over with a car during a drug arrest. An officer approached Hammond’s car in the parking lot of a Hardee’s restaurant on July 26, after an undercover officer arranged a marijuana buy with the teen’s date, 23-year-old Tori Morton. The initial police report mentions finding a bag of marijuana on Morton – who was charged with simple possession – but makes no note of the lethal shooting.

The official autopsy confirmed Hammond was shot twice, but did not say from what angle. Hammond’s family arranged for an independent autopsy, which showed the 19-year-old had been shot from above and behind, suggesting that the official police story was inaccurate.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, attorney for Hammond’s family Eric Bland said that Hammond had been shot in the left rear shoulder, and through the back of his chest, indicating the officer fired from the side of a stopped car, through the open window. Bland says Hammond was on a first date with Morton, who was eating ice cream at the time, and that the police should have never used deadly force.

Seneca is a city of 8,200 in the northwestern corner of South Carolina, near the university town of Clemson, and about 30 miles west of Greenville.

Hammond’s death came a week after Samuel Dubose was killed in Cincinnati, Ohio under very similar circumstances. University of Cincinnati police officer Raymond Tensing said Dubose was trying to run him over with his car, and that he fired in self-defense. Once Tensing’s body camera footage was released, showing otherwise, the officer was indicted for murder. Tensing is white; Dubose was black.

Dubose’s killing has attracted national attention, but Hammond’s was barely noticed. According to the Los Angeles Times, while Dubose’s name was mentioned in over 43,000 tweets between July 26 and August 4, Hammond’s appeared in 289 tweets in the same time period.

Bland, the attorney for Hammond’s family, finds the discrepancy “very disturbing.”

“An unarmed white teenager whose life is wrongfully taken at the hands of overzealous police is the same and equal to an unarmed black teenager whose life is wrongfully taken at the hands of overzealous police,” he told the LA Times.

Police in Seneca are standing by their officer, though. Speaking to the Greenville News last week, Chief John Covington said the officer “actually had his hand on or very close to the car, possibly pushed off from the car,” and the teen “was not shot from behind.”

“The attorney wasn’t there either,” Covington said. “He’s got to put his spin on things. His clients are the parents and they’re grieving. I understand that. My heart goes out to them.”

Seneca police’s refusal to publish the official autopsy results or name the officer involved in the fatal shooting has raised eyebrows. The Charleston Post and Courier filed an open records request for the officer’s name, and the copy of the official incident report, neither of which have been released by the police. – RT.COM

US Report warns of backlash against whites

A study of the growing Hispanic immigrant population declares that the country is on the verge of the “Latinization of the United States,” a “browning of America” that by 2050 will be 29 percent Latino — and politically influential.

Published in the authoritative journal “Ethnicities,” the immigration analysis by two California experts noted that while big states such as California and Florida are home to most Hispanics, there has been a recent growth surge exceeding 300 percent of mostly Mexicans to Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and Arkansas.

The analysis is focused on how to economically handle the surge so that Latinos do not get left behind — or out of the middle class. The numbers and characterization of the new immigrants spells out the influence of the Hispanics.

In “Latina/o Formations in the United States,” Loyola Marymount University’s Antonia Darder and University of California’s Rodolfo D. Torres write that already 20 percent of the 30 million youths aged 18-24 in America are Latino and are poised to influence American politics and policy.

“By the sheer force of numbers, the kinds of adults that Latino students become will dramatically shape the future history of this country, as the former white majority becomes a minority population, at least in terms of number,” said the study provided to Secrets. It sits behind a paywall.

“Latinos have become more than an electoral voting bloc, emerging as strategic actors in major processes of democratic social transformation,” they added.

And they warned that there could be a backlash as whites try to hang on to power.

“In fact, the current struggle that persists in Arizona may well be a bellwether for the potential backlash that is bound to ensue in others parts of the nation, as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant population no longer enjoys the political security associated with their past majority status,” said the authors.

“Over the past four decades, Latinos in the United States have emerged as strategic actors in this process of socio economic transformation. This so-called Latinization of the United States comes at a time of increasing social polarization and class inequalities. These forces assert themselves economically, demographically, culturally and politically in the workplaces and in Latino everyday life,” added their analysis.

Source: Washington Examiner

‘Crimea was annexed’ narrative falls apart

A group of Italian MPs announced plans to travel to Crimea less than a week after a delegation of French lawmakers visited the Black Sea peninsula late last week.

When will we see a delegation of US lawmakers take a trip to Crimea?

We guess never, as that would totally torpedo the entire US government, military, NATO and media narrative for Ukraine, and reveal yet another US failed regime change operation where Putin outplayed Obama to secure the prize that is Crimea.

Now America is stuck paying for a colony that is of no value to its military imperial needs.

Via Sputnik News Agency:

The eight- to ten-strong Italian delegation will be led by a member of the parliament’s Foreign Relations committee Alessandro di Battista, Kommersant newspaper reported, citing one of the visit’s organizers, Manlio Di Stefano who represents the Five Stars movement in the Italian legislature.

Senator Sergio Divina of the anti-EU Northern League party also plans to make the trip, scheduled for early October.

Márton Gyöngyösi, the deputy leader of the nationalist Jobbik party’s Parliamentary Group and Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian National Assembly also intends to visit Crimea. He expects the exact date of the visit to be confirmed “in the coming weeks.”

A delegation of ten French parliamentarians visited Crimea last week holding a series of meetings with local residents and officials in Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry slammed the visit as a “show of disrespect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and a blatant violation of Ukrainian law.”

The French Foreign Ministry described the MPs’ trip to the peninsula as a violation of international law.

Source: redpilltimes.com