And pretend nothing’s happening? Do you think these statements are anti-Semitic and a denial of the reality of the Holocaust?

Ocasio-Cortez presses case that U.S. is running ‘concentration camps’ at border amid Republican outcry
By John Wagner, WashingtonPost
June 18, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pressed her case Tuesday that the Trump administration is running “concentration camps” at the U.S.-Mexico border amid criticism from Republicans who said she was demeaning Jews exterminated in the Holocaust.

During a live stream Monday night, the freshman lawmaker decried the conditions of migrant detention facilities the administration is using to cope with a surge of border crossings and highlighted a decision to hold some children at an Oklahoma Army base that was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.

“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” Ocasio-Cortez told her viewers on Instagram. She later accused Trump of conducting “an authoritarian and fascist presidency.”

“I don’t use those words lightly,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”

Ocasio-Cortez continued making her argument Tuesday morning, sharing on Twitter an Esquire article that raised questions about the conditions at U.S. detention facilities.

The piece by Jack Holmes, the magazine’s politics editor, quoted historians who said the facilities meet the definition of a “concentration camp” and said that not every concentration camp is intended as a death camp, as in the Holocaust.

Evidently some do.

Ocasio-Cortez also drew heavy criticism Tuesday from several commentators on Fox News, including anchor Bill Hemmer.

Hemmer seized on the fact that Ocasio-Cortez used the phrase “never again” during her live stream on Instagram.

“‘Never Again’ is the phrase that Jews all over the world use to make sure that the extermination between 1939 and 1945 never happens again, and she’s using concentration camps to describe what’s happening on the southern border,” Hemmer said on air. “How in the world is that acceptable? Does she not owe every Jew on this planet an apology?”

I mean, it’s not like we’re announcing Pogroms,

Trump vows mass immigration arrests, removals of ‘millions of illegal aliens’ starting next week
By Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, Washington Post
June 17, 2019

President Trump said in a tweet Monday night that U.S. immigration agents are planning to make mass arrests starting “next week,” an apparent reference to a plan in preparation for months that aims to round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Large-scale ICE enforcement operations are typically kept secret to avoid tipping off targets. In 2018, Trump and other senior officials threatened the mayor of Oakland, Calif., with criminal prosecution for alerting city residents that immigration raids were in the works.

Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the “rocket docket.”
…
In his first two weeks on the job at ICE, Morgan has said publicly that he plans to beef up interior enforcement and go after families with deportation orders, insisting that the rulings must be carried out to uphold the integrity of the country’s legal system.

“Our next challenge is going to be interior enforcement,” Morgan told reporters June 4 in Washington. “We will be going after individuals who have gone through due process and who have received final orders of deportation.

“That will include families,” he said, adding that ICE agents will treat the parents and children they arrest “with compassion and humanity.”

We have over 13,000 unaccompanied minors in the system right now according to many independent estimates.

Executing a large-scale operation of the type under discussion requires hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of U.S. agents and supporting law enforcement personnel, as well as weeks of intelligence gathering and planning to verify addresses and locations of individuals targeted for arrest.

The president’s claim that ICE would be deporting “millions” also was at odds with the reality of the agency’s staffing and budgetary challenges. ICE arrests in the U.S. interior have been declining in recent months because so many agents are busy managing the record surge of migrant families across the southern border with Mexico.

The family arrest plan has been considered even more sensitive than a typical operation because children are involved, and Homeland Security officials retain significant concerns that families will be inadvertently separated by the operation, especially because parents in some households have deportation orders but their children — some of whom are U.S. citizens — might not. Should adults be arrested without their children because they are at school, day care, summer camp or a friend’s house, it is possible parents could be deported while their children are left behind.
…
According to Homeland Security officials, nearly all unauthorized migrants who came to the United States in 2017 in family groups remain present in the country. Some of those families are awaiting adjudication of asylum claims, but administration officials say a growing number are skipping out on court hearings while hoping to live and work in the United States as long as possible.

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian

Is America a Christian Nation?

Cooking with Christ

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Churchill rallies Britain in World War II; Napoleon beaten at Battle of Waterloo; Amelia Earhart crosses the Atlantic; Sally Ride becomes America’s first woman in space; Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney born.

If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.

Red Adair

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Inside China’s ‘thought transformation’ camps (video)

Photograph lays bare reality of melting Greenland sea ice

Research teams traversing partially melted fjord to retrieve weather equipment release startling picture

From ‘spare tyre’ to president: The rise and fall of Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi

Morsi was elected Egypt’s president in 2012, but was overthrown just one year later

Bel TrewMiddle East Correspondent @beltrew

Walter Lübcke murder raises specter of neo-Nazi terrorism

The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Monday that the 45-year-old man, named only as Stephan E., had a long criminal record, had already issued death threats via his YouTube channel, and that weapons were found during the search of his home.

Man who shared New Zealand mosque shooting video online jailed for 21 months

Gov’t unveils measures to prevent car crashes caused by elderly drivers

Especially U.S. Internet which, even by comparison with countries we might consider less developed, is as slow as a 56K Modem.

You know, political calculation is really immaterial. Every Officer who took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and ensure the Law of the United States is faithfully executed knows that the condition of a Felon (Unindicted to be sure) abusing the powers of Office to illegally Obstruct Justice can not long endure.

I can’t guarantee that impeachment will work out the way that you want it to because it probably won’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Because if nothing else, we’d be standing by the basic, fundamental principle that nobody is above the law.

What’s the point?

I don’t drink de-caffinated coffee either.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

The Watergate scandal begins to unfold; The Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution; O.J. Simpson arrested in the slayings of his ex-wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman; Singer Kate Smith dies.

If you have nothing to hide, there is no reason not to be transparent.

Mohamed ElBaradei

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Hong Kong extradition: How radical youth forced the government’s hand

By Helier CheungBBC News, Hong Kong

In just one week Hong Kong has witnessed two of its largest ever protests, as well its most violent protest in decades. At the forefront of these demonstrations are young people, many barely out of their teens. How did they get radicalised – and how did they manage to force the government’s hand?

“We screamed at people to run.”

“My parents kicked me out after the protests.”

“It was the first time I got tear gassed – tears were coming uncontrollably out of my eyes.”

“I’m afraid to give my real name.”

These are not words anybody would have expected to come out of the mouths of Hong Kongers – and certainly not ones aged between 17 and 21.

Hong Kong protests: pressure builds on Carrie Lam as public rejects apology

Calls for government leader to stand down after an estimated two million march over unpopular extradition bill

Emma Graham-Harrison in Hong Kong

Mon 17 Jun 2019 05.13 BST

Hong Kong’s political crisis has entered its second week, after protesters who had filled the city’s streets in record numbers on Sunday rejected an apology from leader Carrie Lam, and vowed to continue their fight against a controversial law she championed.

After the sweeping protest – which organisers say attracted 2 million people, the largest in the semi-autonomous city’s history – Lam apologised in a statement for the way the government had handled the draft extradition law.

But she did not meet any of demonstrators’ key demands. They are calling for her to withdraw the extradition bill, end a crackdown on activists and hold police accountable for brutal tactics at previous protests. They also want her to resign.

Nuclear powers upgrade arsenals as numbers fall: SIPRI

Nuclear-weapon powers continue to modernize their arsenals despite an overall reduction in warheads, a report has found. Reductions may slow if a US-Russia treaty is not renewed past 2021.

Nuclear powers are continuing to modernize their arsenals despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads, a Sweden-based peace research institute said Monday.

Nine nuclear-weapon powers — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — had an estimated 13,865 nuclear weapons at the start of 2019, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported. Deployed warheads and those held in reserve or awaiting dismantlement are included in the estimate.

Indian doctors strike over violence from patients and families

Tens of thousands of Indian doctors went on strike Monday calling for more protection against violence by patients and their families, as parliament met for the first time since national elections.

The nationwide strike, which will last until Tuesday morning, is in solidarity with doctors in the eastern state of West Bengal after three were viciously attacked by the relatives of a man who died.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), representing 350,000 of India’s 900,000 doctors, called for tougher punishments for those assaulting medical staff.

Desperation and exploitation in the food delivery gig economy

Aymen Arfaoui strapped on a plastic Uber Eats bag and checked his mobile phone for the fastest bicycle route before pedaling into the stream of cars circling the Place de la Republique. Time was money, and Arfaoui, a nervous 18-year-old migrant, needed cash.

“I’m doing this because I have to eat,” he said, locking in a course that could save him a few minutes on his first delivery of the day. “It’s better than stealing or begging on the street.”

Argentina does not believe a cyber attack caused massive blackout across South America

By Helen Regan and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

Updated 0730 GMT (1530 HKT) June 17, 2019