3RD MIGRANT WAVE HEADS TO U.S. FROM EL SALVADOR

Group of 300 Salvadorians bound for U.S. southern border despite warnings from government

Reuters – OCTOBER 28, 2018

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – A new group of migrants gathered and left from the capital of El Salvador on Sunday, headed for the United States after thousands of other Central Americans began similar journeys in recent weeks, angering U.S. President Donald Trump.

The group of more than 300 Salvadorans that left San Salvador on Sunday came together after thousands of Hondurans in mid-October left their country in a large group, becoming an international news story and a key issue in the U.S. congressional elections.

A second group of Hondurans was moving through Guatemala last week, and at one point numbered more than 1,000 people before beginning to fragment.

People walk in a caravan of migrants departing from El Salvador en route to the United States, in San Salvador, El Salvador, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make immigration a major issue before the Nov. 6 elections, in which the party is battling to keep control of Congress.

The Salvadoran migrants organized using social networks like Facebook and WhatsApp over the last couple of weeks, inspired by the group of mostly Hondurans currently crossing Mexico.

Salvadoran police traveled with the group on Sunday as they left San Salvador, the migrants carrying backpacks and water bottles and protecting themselves from the hot sun with hats. Some mothers pushed their children in strollers.

Several migrants, gathered by the capital’s ‘Savior of the World’ statue before leaving, said they were headed to the United States.

“We’re asking the all-powerful to look after us, to guide us, to free us from all that is bad,” shouted Hernan Quinteros, 49, a driver who urged his fellow travelers to tie up their shoes ahead of the long trip.

El Salvador’s left-wing government said it had solidarity with the migrants and respected their right to mobilize, but urged them not to risk their lives on the way.

October 28, 2018 0

Gab Booted By Hosting Company After Synagogue Shooting

“They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution”

By Tyler Durden

Update2: Gab’s Chief Technology Officer, Ekrem Büyükkaya, announced on Sunday that he was leaving the company because the “attacks from the American press have been relentless for two years now and have taken a toll on me personally.”

Gab, through Torba, has always pitched itself as an alternative to Silicon Valley social media sites, attracting a user base of people who believe companies like Twitter and Facebook are deliberately censoring their views. In 2016, when Twitter strengthened its policy against “hateful conduct” and banned a number of far-right and white supremacist accounts, Torba said Gab gained 60,000 users in eight days.

The platform itself is a combination of many of the sites that Gab would like to replace. The site works like a hybrid of Reddit and Twitter, where users can post character-limited messages, and respond, comment and vote other users’ posts up or down. Alex Jones, who has 55,000 followers on Gab, often promotes his live broadcasts there since he has been banned from YouTube and Twitter. –My San Antonio

Update: Gab has secured a new host:

Following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, social media network Gab was given notice by its hosting provider, Joyent, that they have until Monday to move the website elsewhere before they would disable it.

In a Sunday tweet, Gab said: “@joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions.”

Gab came under fire immediately after the shooting when it was revealed that suspected attacker Robert Bowers was an active user who frequently ranted against Jews and President Trump. His last post on Gab reads in part: “Screw your optics, I’m going in” shortly before killing 11 people at the Tree of Life congregation in Squirrel Hill.

Hours after the shooting, PayPal severed ties with Gab with no explanation:

In August, Microsoft threatened to cease hosting services for Gab over two anti-Semitic posts, according to founder Andrew Torba, who deleted the posts and subsequently moved hosts to Joyent.

Reactions to Gab’s “deplatforming” have ranged from shock to applause.

pic.twitter.com/Pe110vyxyx

— 💸Dollar $tore Prophet💸 (@ds_prophet) October 28, 2018

As Gab and others noted yesterday following PayPal’s decision, Robert Bowers posted to other social media networks, while plenty of bigoted, threatening and “hateful” content exists on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.

October 28, 2018 0

Second migrant caravan forming at Guatemala-Mexico border

Migrants disembark from a truck in which they had gotten a ride, as a thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants slowly makes its way toward the U.S. border, between Pijijiapan and Tonala, Mexico.

By Natalie Musumeci

A second caravan of migrants seeking asylum in the United States is forming at the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Migrants in the town of Tecun Uman, Guatemala, said Thursday they were waiting for between 1,500 and 4,000 people to mass for another caravan like the first that came through the town and is now in Mexico about 1,000 miles from the nearest US border crossing at McAllen, Texas.

The bridge connecting Tecun Uman to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico is closed – and migrants said they planned to cross the Suchiate River dividing the countries via rafts or by wading through the waist-deep water, USA Today reported.

Mexico shut that bridge under pressure from President Trump.

“We are in a horrible crisis in our country,” said Gabriela Patricia Aguilar Lainez, 37, one of those gathering in the town plaza with her 3-year-old daughter, according to USA Today. “We are in a political crisis, an economic crisis, and a crime crisis.”

According to the news outlet, there was no evidence that the new group of migrants from Honduras was funded by a particular organization.

The migrants said they simply banded together to flee violence that has torn apart their home countries and because there is strength in numbers.

“Our country is failed,” said Honduras native Kevin Escobar, 26, who had traveled six days walking and hitching rides to get to the Guatemala-Mexico border.

“I have to find a way to help my family and that means going to another country.”

UNICEF reported Friday that some of the estimated 2,300 children traveling with the first caravan are ill or suffering from dehydration.

The migrants were planning what would be their most ambitious single-day trek since they crossed into Mexico, setting their sights for Friday on reaching Arriaga, a march of about 62 miles.

Trump sent a message to the marchers in a tweet Thursday.

“To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally,” the commander-in-chief tweeted. “Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!”

October 26, 2018 0

Illegal migrants in Europe ‘need to go home’ – Czech PM

Illegal migrants in Europe âneed to go homeâ â Czech PM

The Czech prime minister has called for the return to their home countries of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants currently in Europe, suggesting funds could be spent on a Marshall Plan to help improve African economies.

‘Immigration is not a human right’: Hungary slams ‘pro-migrant’ UN officials for ‘spreading lies’

“There are 700,000 illegal migrants,” Andrej Babis said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. “They need to go home.”

Babis has long railed against the implementation of EU-imposed migrant quotas, along with the leaders of neighboring Slovakia, Hungary and Poland – collectively known as the Visegrad Group. He has previously labeled the quotas “absurd” and “not effective.”

At the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, approximately two million non-EU citizens were believed to be present in member states. While many of these were refugees fleeing Syria’s devastating civil war, thousands also made the journey as economic migrants from Africa.

While the number of these illegals has now fallen to 618,780, according to 2017 statistics from Eurostat, Babis believes both economic migrants and refugees should return home.

These people should stay home and we should help them in Africa. The people around Syria… they would like to return home.

Rather than an expanded budget for the EU’s border agency Frontex, Babis thinks national governments should instead protect their own borders and coastlines.

“Smugglers made €5.7 billion in 2016 and we have to stop it,” he said.

Babis, along with Hungary’s Victor Orban, has been skeptical of an expanded Frontex, believing it to be a power grab by Brussels to take border control away from states on the bloc’s frontier.

Instead, Babis suggests that the EU should make funds available to help develop African countries like the Marshall Plan, the US aid initiative that helped rebuild Western Europe after World War Two.

This, Babis believes, would help convince potential migrants to stay in their own countries.

“They have their culture, we have our culture,” he said. “They have their values, but we want to keep [our] values.”

October 26, 2018 0