January, 27 2011, 12:27pm EDT
Amnesty International Calls on UK-Trained Security Forces to Stop Extrajudicial Executions in Bangladesh
Organization Urges the United Kingdom to Raise Concerns with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh while he Visits this Week
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International is calling on the United Kingdom government to raise concerns about reports of torture, extrajudicial executions, and excessive use of force by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.
Sheikh Hasina is in the United Kingdom this week amid a flurry of accusations about extrajudicial executions carried out by Bangladeshi security forces.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have documented repeated instances of human rights violations by the RAB in the past five years. More than 600 people are thought to have been killed by RAB personnel since 2004 when the battalion was created.
In most cases, victims have died in the custody of the RAB, but police authorities routinely reported that the victims were killed during "crossfire", police "shoot-outs" or "gun-battles".
"Suggestions that these deaths in custody are just unrelated random incidents, as opposed to targeted executions, are simply not credible," said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International's Bangladesh researcher. "The chances of this same fate befalling so many apprehended individuals defies belief and contradicts eye-witness testimony. These deaths amount to extrajudicial executions."
"The deaths must stop now, and the responsible personnel must be brought to justice without delay," Faiz said.
Comments and announcements from Bangladeshi government authorities over recent days have demonstrated a hostile defiance in response to national and international calls to address the claims.
The Bangladeshi Home Minister, Shara Khatun, yesterday denied that extra-judicial executions have ever taken place in Bangladesh during the time of the present government and today went on to accuse human rights organizations of "siding with the criminals"
Recently Wikileaks sources alleged that UK police have been training the RAB in Bangladesh.
"Any country that knowingly trains a force, which systematically violates human rights, might itself bear some responsibility for those violations," Faiz said.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Big Tech Ramps Up Propaganda Blitz As AI Data Centers Become Toxic With Voters
One Michigan state legislator said data centers are emblematic of the divide between "tech billionaires who are seizing power and… the working and middle classes."
Dec 18, 2025
As voters across the country begin to rally against the unchecked construction of data centers, artificial intelligence companies are panicking and investing millions into propaganda to paint the energy-sucking facilities in a more positive light.
By 2030, the amount of energy demanded by US data centers is expected to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency.
Energy costs have spiked considerably in the states with the most data centers. And as the industry continues its breakneck expansion, one watchdog report found that consumers on America's largest electric grid are expected to pay hundreds of dollars more to meet increased power demand from now until 2027.
These costs became an unexpected point of emphasis for Democrats in November, whose calls for greater transparency from tech companies seeking to build data centers propelled them to victory in elections from New Jersey to Virginia.
But tech companies want to keep building, and as AI threatens to become a central villain of the 2026 midterm elections, Politico reports that companies are putting the wheels in motion to portray themselves "as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs."
As Gabby Miller wrote on Wednesday:
A new AI trade group is distributing talking points to members of Congress and organizing local data center field trips to better pitch voters on their value. Another trade association, the Data Center Coalition, nearly tripled its lobbying spend in the third quarter of this year from the previous quarter, according to US lobbying disclosures.
The social media giant Meta, with billions invested in its own fleet of data centers from Stanton Springs, Georgia, to Richland Parish, Louisiana, has been running a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting data centers as a boon to agricultural towns in Iowa and New Mexico. It has spent at least $5 million nationally in the past month on TV ads plugging Meta’s $600 billion pledged investment in tech infrastructure and jobs.“
"There’s a very bad connotation around data centers. And this is something that, frankly, the data center industry needs to figure out,” said Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, a new trade group established in January to accelerate AI infrastructure development.
Tech giants are also putting focus on swaying policymakers. Max told Politico that his group has been making the rounds to talk with elected officials in critical battlegrounds for the AI future, like Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, to craft a "positive pro-data center campaign message for elected officials, for businesses, for current lawmakers who are going to be up for reelection in 2026."
Meanwhile, Meta reportedly aired its 30-second TV spots "featuring small-town imagery of farming equipment and mom-and-pop diners" in Washington, DC, and nine state capitals. Miller says this suggests "that policymakers might be Meta’s real target audience, rather than the rural Americans impacted by these energy-hungry server hubs."
AI and tech firms plan to ramp up the lobbying and ad blitzes as the next election draws nearer, and their attempt to reframe the narrative about data centers comes as no surprise, as communities across the US in recent months have increasingly come out in force to push their representatives to halt the construction of the facilities.
In Saline Township, a small community just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than 800 residents descended upon a public input session earlier this month to protest against the construction of a $7 billion center—predicted to consume as much energy as the entire city of Detroit—fearing it would raise energy costs, pollute groundwater, and force the state to abandon its nation-leading climate policies.
The town initially blocked the plans, but reversed course following a lawsuit from a real-estate billionaire closely aligned with President Donald Trump, whose administration has backed the $500 billion "Stargate" initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to expand data centers.
On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined Saline residents at a gathering outside the state Capitol, where they called for a statewide moratorium on data centers.
Data center projects have run into similar resistance nationwide. As of March, the group Data Center Watch found that more than $64 billion worth of projects had been blocked or delayed due to local opposition since May 2024. This opposition has reached a fever pitch in recent months.
Last week, after it received hundreds of angry comments from residents, the city council of Chandler, Arizona, unanimously rejected plans for a $2.5 billion data center that had been pushed by former US Sen.-turned lobbyist Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
Even in Trump country, backlash has been fierce. Last week, the planning commission of Starke County, Indiana, voted unanimously to recommend a one-year moratorium on the construction of centers bigger than 5,000 square feet after residents flooded a meeting to raise concerns about water pollution and energy costs.
"In Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk's AI company has built a data center whose energy demands have outgrown the region's energy capabilities," said one resident, Sophia Parker. "We've heard from everyone else saying that our infrastructure does not have the capacity to support a data center. And as a result, gas turbines are emitting nitrogen oxide to the point where residents cannot breathe. Their community is being used as a sacrifice for others to get rich. We cannot allow that to happen to us."
Last month in Montour County, Pennsylvania—a state where electric prices have surged by 15% this year, double the national average—environmentalists formed an uncommon alliance with conservative farmers and the Amish to stop the county planning commission from rezoning 1,300 acres of agricultural land for a massive new center.
“Stay out. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation without federal involvement,” said Craig High, a 39-year-old Trump supporter quoted by Reuters. “Both parties are pushing data centers and giving regulatory relief—water permits, permitting, all of it.”
“This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those who have much too much… and the working and middle classes,” Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader from Michigan and clean energy advocate who opposes the construction of data centers, told The Guardian. “That’s what these data centers are symbolic of, and they’re the vehicle for the furtherance of this divide."
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'Straight-Up Nazi Stuff': Trump Admin Plans to Strip More Naturalized Americans of Citizenship
"Requiring monthly quotas that are 10 times higher than the total annual number of denaturalizations in recent years," said one former immigration official, "turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty."
Dec 18, 2025
Policy experts were skeptical Wednesday that the Trump administration could legally or practically carry out its threat to strip more naturalized Americans of their citizenship. Still, they warned that new guidance issued by the White House to immigration officials would ramp up "fear and terror" in immigrant communities and could portend the targeting of naturalized citizens who President Donald Trump views as adversaries.
The guidance was issued Tuesday to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field offices, with officers directed to supply the Department of Justice (DOJ) with "100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year.
The denaturalization process is "deliberately hard" for the federal government, noted American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and stripping people of the citizenship is a rare step only taken in cases of fraud when they applied to be a citizen or in other narrow circumstances.
As such, between 2017-25, there have been just over 120 denaturalization cases filed with the Office of Immigration Litigation at the DOJ.
Under the first Trump administration, denaturalization cases peaked at 90 in one year in 2018, and the directive issued Tuesday signaled the White House is aiming for a far bigger escalation as it also continues its mass deportation operation and blocks people from seeking asylum as they are permitted to under international law.
Reichlin-Melnick called the directive for a denaturalization quota "vicious and cruel," and pointed out that the president is asking USCIS and the DOJ to take on an onerous task.
"These cases are hard to file and win, and require a lot of DOJ resources, and the DOJ is stretched thin already. So we’ll see; I have serious doubts about their ability to do this," said Reichlin-Melnick.
USCIS refers cases to the DOJ, which must prove in a federal court that it has "unequivocal evidence" that someone obtained their citizenship illegally or fraudulently.
"The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that citizenship and naturalization are too precious and fundamental to our democracy for the government to take it away on their whim. Instead of wasting resources digging through Americans’ files, USCIS should do its job of processing applications, as Congress mandated,” Amanda Baran, a former senior USCIS official who served during the Biden administration, told the New York Times.
Naturalized Americans account for 26 million people in the US, with 800,000 people sworn in last year. In most cases, a person who loses their citizenship status is classified as a legal permanent resident.
Trump has repeatedly called to denaturalize Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and to deport her over her criticism of his policies, and has made the same threat against New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist.
In those threatened cases, wrote Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, earlier this month, "it appears that crime isn’t so much a motivation as disloyalty."
"Stripping citizens of their citizenship in the name of making the electorate more 'American' is arguably one of the most un-American acts imaginable," wrote Waldman. "We are a nation of immigrants and also a nation of laws. The courts must continue to ensure that those laws protect naturalized citizens from being punished for speaking out."
Three other Brennan Center experts also recently wrote about the history of denaturalization efforts in the US, including during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s:
Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led witch hunts, with denaturalization often used as a tool against accused communists or sympathizers. Among those targets was Harry Bridges, an Australian-born, nationally known labor leader accused of being a communist, who faced an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to revoke his citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, not once, but twice.
"This is straight-up Nazi stuff and I’m calling on my fellow Jewish Americans who know where this can lead to be in the vanguard against it," said Dylan Willams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, also noting that the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee has endorsed Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who has called for the denaturalization and expulsion of Muslim Americans and immigrants.
Sarah Pierce, a former USCIS official, told the Times that Trump's quota for denaturalization cases "risks politicizing citizenship revocation" as it has been in the past.
“And requiring monthly quotas that are 10 times higher than the total annual number of denaturalizations in recent years," she said, "turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty for the millions of naturalized Americans.”
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House GOP to Skip Town Early for Holiday Recess as Healthcare Premiums Soar, Epstein Files Loom
"The same GOP that voted last summer to give the richest Americans and most profitable companies trillions of dollars in tax cuts somehow can't find the funds this winter to ensure 20 million Americans can afford their health insurance."
Dec 18, 2025
The US House was originally scheduled to be in session on Friday, but the Republican leadership gave members a green light to skip town on Thursday for the two-week holiday recess without voting to prevent massive health insurance premium hikes for tens of millions of Americans.
The decision to let members leave early came after House Democrats secured enough support from swing-district Republicans to force a vote on legislation that would extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that are set to expire on December 31, sending premiums soaring.
Democrats on Wednesday demanded an immediate vote on the proposed three-year extension of the ACA tax credits, but Republicans instead pushed to the floor and passed their own healthcare bill that would leave around 100,000 more Americans uninsured per year over the next decade—on top of the millions set to lose coverage due to the expiration of the enhanced subsidies.
The GOP bill is doomed to fail in the narrowly Republican-controlled Senate, which voted down a Democratic push for an extension of the subsidies earlier this month.
More than 20 million Americans relied on the tax credits to afford health insurance. With their expiration, ACA marketplace premiums are set to more than double on average, pricing many people out of coverage entirely.
"Congressional Republicans could have followed through on their promises to help families afford the basics by extending the premium tax credit enhancements to help them enroll in affordable, comprehensive coverage. Instead, they recycled old ideas, refused to address the current affordability crisis—and made plans to go home," Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in a statement Wednesday.
"On the brink of this deadline, some Republicans have recognized that the stakes for families are too high to do nothing," Parrott added, pointing to the four GOP lawmakers who signed the discharge petition. "A House bill to extend the premium tax credit enhancements now has the required signatures on its discharge petition to force a vote on the House floor. Republican policymakers should step up and put the needs of individuals and families first."
"If Speaker Johnson refuses to bring forth the vote, he’s telling the American people loud and clear that rising healthcare costs are acceptable to him."
It's unclear when the discharged House Democratic bill will get a vote, as the chamber is not scheduled to return until January 6, 2026—after the ACA tax credits expire.
"If Speaker Johnson refuses to bring forth the vote, he’s telling the American people loud and clear that rising healthcare costs are acceptable to him," said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is running to unseat Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in next year's midterm election.
David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in a statement Thursday that "instead of siding with millions of everyday Americans, they voted to increase healthcare costs which will now put affordable coverage out of reach for millions."
"Congressional Republicans once again revealed whose side they're on," said Kass. "The same GOP that voted last summer to give the richest Americans and most profitable companies trillions of dollars in tax cuts somehow can't find the funds this winter to ensure 20 million Americans can afford their health insurance."
The House Republican leadership's decision to start the holiday recess also came ahead of the Friday deadline for the Trump administration to release most of the Epstein files, as required by recently enacted legislation.
"View all political developments for the rest of the week in light of the fact that the Epstein files are supposed to be released on Friday," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). "House Republicans just suddenly cancelled congressional session Friday and are sending everyone home Thursday evening."
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