Debate Intensifies Over Federal Deportation Policy  



"Federal officials say that while they are pleased with their new ability to identify illegal immigrants, they do not have enough agents to deport all of those identified. Over all, only a third of those identified in the first seven months of the program as foreign nationals — which includes people with visas and temporary residence cards as well as illegal immigrants — have been deported."   

  Rise of CIA's deadly drones in war on Taliban Unmanned planes have become key to taking fight behind militant lines but are blamed for civilian deaths    Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 August 2009 Article history A Reaper drone, as used by the CIA and American military in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images  The missiles believed to have killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, were fired from the skies above the country's South Waziristan region. But their target and trajectory were almost certainly chosen thousands of miles away at a US military base.Mehsud is thought to have been targeted by an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, better known as a drone – an increasingly common and controversial feature of modern warfare.In Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular, missile-armed drones operated by the US air force and the CIA have hunted for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the vast tribal regions adjoining the two countries.They began flying shortly before the 9/11 attacks on secretive missions to hunt down Osama bin Laden and have been used with ever greater frequency since 2001.The Predator and Reaper drones built by General Atomics have 20-metre wingspans and distinctive V-shaped tails. They can stay in the air for more than 30 hours at a time. The planes are launched from local airfields but controlled via satellite by crews at US air bases, most commonly the Creech facility in Nevada.Some are used purely for surveillance but many are fitted with Hellfire missiles or bombs. Controllers use video images from the drones, and often intelligence from the ground, to select targets and fire.The US military and CIA regard the drones as invaluable because of their long range and the way they…

   The media's vast rightwing idiocy America's extreme right is as vocal and irrational as it was in the 1990s and the US media is too spineless to stop it Comments (105)     Dan Kennedy guardian.co.uk,
This past Sunday, Meet the Press host David Gregory asked former president Bill Clinton if "the vast rightwing conspiracy" – a felicitous catch phrase coined by Hillary Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal – was alive and well."Oh, you bet. Sure it is," Clinton responded. "It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was."Clinton was right, of course. From birthers to teabaggers, from talkshow host Glenn Beck's denouncing Barack Obama's alleged "deep-seated hatred for white people" to Confederacy-worshipping congressman Joe Wilson's yelling "You lie!" at the president, it's clear that the extreme right is as irrational and vocal as it was in the 1990s. And now, more than ever, the extremists are virtually indistinguishable from the mainstream of the Republican party.But another, equally toxic element has carried over from the 90s – an element that Gregory, not surprisingly, failed to bring up and that Clinton was too polite to mention. It is simply this: Major elements of the media, terrified of accusations that they're in the tank with Democrats and liberals, would rather deny reality than tell the simple truth. This abject spinelessness is a significant factor in how the lies of the right infect public discourse.Three recent examples tell the tale:• A Time magazine cover story by David Von Drehle on the aforementioned Beck, though critical (the headline: "Is Glenn Beck bad for America?"), soft-pedaled…

  Revenue at Craigslist Is Said to Top $100 Million By BRAD STONE SAN FRANCISCO — As the newspaper industry and its classified advertising business wither, one company appears to be doing extraordinarily well: Craigslist. The Internet classified ads company, which promotes its “relatively noncommercial nature” and “service mission” on its site, is projected to bring in more than $100 million in revenue this year, according to a new study from Classified Intelligence Report, a publication of AIM Group, a media and Web consultant firm in Orlando, Fla. That is a 23 percent jump over the revenue the firm estimated for 2008 and a huge increase since 2004, when the site was projected to bring in just $9 million. “This is a down-market for just about everyone else but Craigslist,” said Jim Townsend, editorial director of AIM Group. The firm counted the number of paid ads on the site for a month and extrapolated an annual figure. It said its projections were conservative. By contrast, classified advertising in newspapers in the United States declined by 29 percent last year, its worst drop in history, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Craigslist, based in San Francisco, would not comment on the study. “We are a privately held company and never comment on guesses of our revenue. Nor have we ever commented on any number bandied around in the past,” said Susan MacTavish Best, a Craigslist spokeswoman. The firm did not project profits, but Craigslist keeps its expenses low. It has just 30 employees. Craigslist allows people and companies to post free classified online ads in 570 cities around the world. But in 18 major American cities, the company charges recruiters $25 (or…

  Former Top CIA Spy on How US Intelligence Became Big Business Intelligence veteran Robert Grenier worked covertly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. He recently offered a rare glimpse into the world of radically privatized intelligence, Blackwater and the CIA assassination program. Read Article