REDEYE 1/27/16

Obama campaign hunts and deports women, kids
NYT, 1/8 — Round-Up of Refugees — …a new year has dawned upon an appalling campaign of home raids by the Department of Homeland Security to find and deport hundreds of would-be refugees back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador….who arrived…fleeing shockingly high levels of…drug violence, hunger and poverty….
…the administration has been sending agents into homes…on the job of sending mothers and children on one-way trips to the deadliest countries in our hemisphere….
…Home raids…spread fear and panic in immigrant neighborhoods across the country….
The administration…greets [refugees] with family prisons and prosecution….Migrants with no money or lawyers…confront complexities of immigration and asylum law, and lose.
Four women are Murdered Daily in Colombia
El País (Spain) Dec 25—From 2009 to 2014 in Colombia 8,020 autopsies have been performed on women who were the victims of violence.  The majority were between 20 and 24 years of age.  44.48% were single and the majority of murders occurred on weekends.  The figures reveal a tragic reality: the continuing increase in violence against women with death as the ultimate outcome…
…the document also shows that 73% of these killings occur in larger towns, in public areas, on streets and on highways…(this report also)…references a study by the UN office of Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) which considers Latin America as the second most dangerous region in the world for women…
Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, the Bahamas, and Honduras are the countries of the region with the highest rates; each with more than six crimes per 100,000 women…
Kkkops murder 12-year-old, get off scot-free
NYT, 12/30 — Tamir Rice of Cleveland would be alive today had he been a white 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in just about any middle-class neighborhood…on Nov. 22, 2014.
But Tamir, who was shot to death by a white police officer that day, had the misfortune of being Black in a poor area of Cleveland, where the police have historically behaved as an occupying force that shoots first and asks questions later. To grow up Black and male in such a place is to live…hemmed in by forces that deny your humanity and conspire to kill you.
…A grand jury declined to indict Officer Timothy Loehmann in the killing and…the County prosecutor explained why he had asked the grand jurors not to bring charges….describ[ing]…Tamir’s death as a tragic series of errors and “miscommunications”….
…It reflects an utter disregard for the lives of the city’s Black residents….
The Police Department’s disregard for life was fully evident in the way the officers behaved after shooting Tamir….standing by the child for four minutes without giving medical assistance….Loehmann’s partner nonetheless tackled the wounded boy’s 14-year-old sister as she tried to rush to his side. One can only imagine her suffering as she watched in handcuffs from the back seat of the squad car while her brother lay bleeding on the ground.
…Portraying the killing as a result of a tragic misunderstanding…[has] the reprehensible effect of shifting the responsibility for his death onto the shoulders of this very young victim.
U.S. is world’s biggest arms supplier
NYT, 12/26 — Foreign arms sales by the United States jumped by almost $10 billion in 2014,…even as the global weapons market remained flat….
American weapons receipts rose to $36.2 billion in 2014,…bolstered by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea….The United States remained the single largest provider of arms around the world…controlling just over 50 percent of the market.
Profits from disasters capitalism: ‘the gold rush is on’
GW, 1/8 — Book Review of “Disaster Capitalism: Making a killing out of Catastrophe….
…Western governments outsource imperialism…to a variety of organizations — Halliburton, G4S, Serco and Capita…— that make their money from incarceration, the “processing” of asylum seekers or the provision of private “security” in conflict zones….Capitalism…thrives on the management of nightmares. Even the provision of disaster relief is transformed into profit.
Disaster Capitalism takes us [to]…the victims of this system: Greece, Afghanistan, [and] Haiti….It then turns…to the centers of outsourcing such as the US, the UK and…Australia. It charts the consequences of a double crisis: turmoil in the economic system following the financial crash, and the migration…effect of the wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere….
…The “relief” that followed the Hatian earthquake of January 2010….the international response was quickly monetized, or, to quote the US ambassador to Haiti,…“the gold rush is on”….the intervention of celebrity-backed NGOs….efforts of rapper Wyclef Jean, actor Sean Penn, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, unaccountable and aloof….
Disaster capitalism [is] a thuggish operation, largely based on low-wage, low-condition work….
Why did Hitler Bomb Four Peaceful Villages in Castellon, Spain?
El Pais (Spain) Dec. 26—On April 26th, 1937 the bombardment of Guernica by German aircraft served as an experiment of new weaponry.  126 people died, and the moment is remembered as an icon in the struggle for liberty…however, few know that in May of 1938 another Guernica occurred in the Spanish village of El Maestrat of Castellon.  
A year before the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi Condor Legion bombed Benassal and other towns in the Castellon region, killing 38 and eliminating the small population of peaceful little Maestrat…At the time, no one could explain why the Germans dropped 500 Kg bombs on people living so far from any front or strategic enclave…until…Oscar Vives, visited the Freiburg military archives…
…he found a graphic 50 page document about the bombing of the town(s)…within was the evidence that the incursion was an experiment to test out the Junker 87 Stuka, the newest Nazi aircraft which would become the most dreaded of the second world war.
...The Stuka Experiment (documentary) project has revived this forgotten macabre historical event, this “Valencian Guernica”, for which justice has never been served.
Bosses exploit tax loopholes, make billions to control both parties
NYT, 12/30 — …The very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes…— “the income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, [and] lobbyists…who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.
…This apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including…the liberal billionaire George Soros, who has called for higher levies on the rich while at the same time using tax loopholes to bolster his own fortune.
All are among a small group providing much of the early cash for the 2016 presidential race….
…The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans….
The ultra-wealthy…save in the tens or hundreds of millions in taxes….
Some…are…the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include…hedge fund investor Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans and James Simon who gives to Democrats….
Mr. Simon…and Mr. Mercer…saved their fund [Renaissance Technologies] an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade….
Each of the top 400 earners took home, on average, about $336 million in 2012 [$134.4 BILLION!]….
The Soros family, which generally supports Democrats, has committed at last $1 million to the 2016 presidential campaign.
Brazil: Workers battle cops in protest over bus fare hikes
NYT, 1/9 —Protests flared in…Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte…over increases in bus fares, reflecting resentment over efforts by the municipal authorities to cover budge shortfalls….Anti-riot police units clashed with protestors in downtown Sao Paulo…[where] demonstrators…destroyed buses, ransacked banking offices and threw rocks and bottles at the police , who used tear gas. Clashed also erupted…in downtown Rio de Janeiro.