Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

A major investigation reveals the extent of America's vast and heavily privatized military-corporate-intelligence establishment.

Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet

The brick warehouse is not just a warehouse. Drive through the gate and around back, and there, hidden away, is someone's personal security detail: a fleet of black SUVs that have been armored up to withstand explosions and gunfire.

In July, the Washington Post published the Top Secret America project -- a sweeping portrait of America’s heavily privatized military-corporate-intelligence establishment. Lead reporter Dana Priest calls it the “vast and hidden apparatus of the war on terror.”

Priest, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, described the project as the most challenging investigation of her career. She teamed up with national security journalist William Arkin and a team of about 20 Post staffers to create an “alternative geography” of a hidden world that has exploded since the attacks of 9/11. At last count, the official U.S. intelligence budget stood at $75 billion -- more than two and a half times what it was on September 10, 2001.

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• One Arizona politician has made a vow to make illegal immigrants powerless — literally.
• Guidelines for Fixing Our Broken Immigration System
• Obama: Immigration plan 'cannot pass without Republican votes'

Sean Alfano, NY Daily News | NY

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Thomas Sklarski

Immigrants say the pledge of allegiance at a rally for comprehensive immigration reform in Oklahoma City. Immigrants say the pledge of allegiance at a rally for comprehensive immigration reform in Oklahoma City. (AP)

3 New Items including:

• Migrants turn to the sea to enter US illegally,
• Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Seen From Baltimore to Arizona

David Culver, ed., Evergreene Digest

David Fitzsimmons

Working the Line, Luis Alberto Urrea, Orion Magazine
The hidden life of the U.S. Border Patrol

Migrants turn to the sea to enter US illegally, Elliot Spagat, Associated Press, in Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | FL
In growing numbers, migrants are gambling their lives at sea as land crossings become even more arduous and likely to end in arrest

Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Seen From Baltimore to Arizona, Larry Keller, SPLC's Hate Watch
In today's overheated immigration climate, it’s a good bet more Hispanics will be beaten, even killed, as the debate — if it can be called that — rages on.

In today's overheated immigration climate, it’s a good bet more Hispanics will be beaten, even killed, as the debate — if it can be called that — rages on.

Larry Keller, SPLC's Hate Watch

Record-breaking high temperatures have been the norm this summer in the United States and other countries. But for Latinos, it’s been even hotter than the thermometer suggests, with one after another targeted for hate crimes around the country. Here’s a sampling of recent incidents.

• Early last Saturday (August 21) in Baltimore, Martin Rayez, 51, was beaten to death with a piece of wood. The man arrested for the crime, Jermaine Holley, 19, allegedly confessed and told police that he “hated Hispanics.” He has been treated in the past for schizophrenia. The killing occurred in East Baltimore, the scene of other recent attacks on Latinos.

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In growing numbers, migrants are gambling their lives at sea as land crossings become even more arduous and likely to end in arrest

Elliot Spagat, Associated Press, in Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | FL

The speedboat is about three miles offshore when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent cuts the engine to drift on the current in quiet darkness, hoping for the telltale signs of immigrant smuggling — sulfur fumes or a motor's whirr.

"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and the haystack is the Pacific Ocean," agent Tim Feige nutes before sunrise marks the end to another uneventful shift.

This is a new frontier for illegal immigrants entering the United States — a roughly 400-square-mile ocean expanse that stretches from Tijuana, Mexico, to Los Angeles. In growing numbers, migrants are gambling their lives at sea as land crossings become even more arduous and likely to end in arrest

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