because – Radio Free

‘We’re going mad because of hunger!"- on the ground in starving Gaza

The Grayzone — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 15:48:10 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

Latinos in Baltimore are living in fear: ‘I can be stopped just because of my accent’

Marc Steiner — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 18:22:17 +0000

As the Trump administration ramps up its violent immigration raids around the country, increasingly targeting immigrants with no criminal record, and racially profiling Latinos to meet arrest quotas, immigrant communities in Baltimore and beyond are living in terror. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with two immigrant justice organizers in Baltimore—whose identities are being protected to ensure their safety—about the horrifying reality that immigrant families, particularly Latino families, are experiencing right now. “If you don’t look Latino, do you tell your child to carry around their passport or their birth certificate?… US citizens are being detained only because they look Latino, because they are Latino.”

Additional resources:

Maanvi Singh, Will Craft, & Andrew Witherspoon, The Guardian, “How Trump has supercharged the immigration crackdown – in data”
Jaisal Noor, Baltimore Beat, “Baltimore residents are mobilizing to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE”
Tara Lynch, CBS Baltimore, “Community demands release of Maryland pastor who was arrested by ICE”

Credits:

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

Transcript

‘They Were Able to Pass These Bills Because of Anti-Trans Media Bias’: Documentary filmmaker Sam Feder on the backlash to trans visibility

Julie Hollar — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 16:41:36 +0000

Sam Feder is the director of Heightened Scrutiny, a documentary that follows transgender ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio as he argues before the Supreme Court against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. The film explores the crucial role centrist media played in driving legislation like Tennessee’s, and the broader cultural backlash against trans rights. FAIR senior analyst Julie Hollar, who appears in the film, interviewed Feder for FAIR.

Civil rights Lawyer Chase Strangio in Heightened Scrutiny: “It’s a playbook that will effectively take a misunderstood, maligned, small minority of people and place a larger population’s anxiety of a changing world onto them.”

Julie Hollar: You previously made a documentary, Disclosure (2020), about trans representation in film and television. You’ve said Heightened Scrutiny is something like a sequel to Disclosure. What drove you to make this film?

Sam Feder: Disclosure ends with a warning about the risks of increased visibility. I first met Chase when I interviewed him for Disclosure. He explained that while representation was important, it was crucial for trans people to be pushing for actual material redistribution, and to disrupt the systems that exclude most trans people, impacting their ability to survive. Without the deep, structural change Chase suggested, I worried that we were about to face a significant backlash to the media visibility we were witnessing at the time.

The backlash was even more drastic than I could have imagined. A year after Disclosure came out, hundreds of anti trans bills were being introduced. In just three years, from 2021–2024, we went from zero states banning gender-affirming care to 24 states. Now it’s up to 27 states.

I realized very quickly that anti-trans talking points that had once been confined to right-wing news outlets were now front-page stories in the mainstream media. My colleagues, who had always been strong allies, were parroting the mainstream media, questioning the legitimacy of trans healthcare. And they felt empowered by the coverage they were reading to speak with authority when debating trans rights, because the Paper of Record was saying it, and the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic, and on and on and on.

So I wanted to understand this shift, and I wanted to understand why reporters did not uphold the standards of journalism in coverage of trans people. Heightened Scrutiny examines the relationship between the media’s coverage of trans rights and the anti-trans legislation we have seen balloon in the backlash since 2021.

JH: Tell me more about the role of the media that you uncovered, and your focus on the New York Times.

Atlantic (7-8/18): “”Your Child Says She’s Trans. She Wants Hormones and Surgery. She’s 13.” (He’s 22, actually.)

SF: In the film we show that there was a clear shift starting in 2018, with the cover story in the Atlantic by Jesse Singal headlined “Your Child Says She’s Trans. She Wants Hormones and Surgery. She’s 13.”

We interviewed the cover model—he was 22 years old at the time of that article! Likewise, the rest of the story is full of misinformation and fearmongering. Fast forward to 2021, and misinformation about trans people is all over the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Washington Post.

And people started to speak up and tell these outlets that they were publishing a lot of misinformation that was dangerous and harmful. And most outlets were willing to hear that criticism, and at least tried to do somewhat better—except the New York Times. They kind of dug in their heels and took it up a notch.

In a matter of six months or so, there were seven front-page stories questioning trans people’s right to healthcare in the New York Times. In early 2023, a group of Times contributors published an open letter about the anti-trans bias that had been steadily increasing. But the Times refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, calling it legitimate and important journalism, and still to this day they promote the voices and ideas of well-known anti-trans thinkers, and perpetuate this anti-trans narrative.

And as Chase explains in the film, in the legal realm, this unprecedented thing was happening, which is that legal briefs were citing these articles. And that is incredibly uncommon with legal briefs about medical care; you usually see citations from scientists and medical experts, you don’t see them quoting articles from newspapers. And they were doing it because that was the only place they could draw on to support their anti-trans legislation.

And it was working; they were able to pass these bills because of the anti-trans media bias that was popping up everywhere. And the New York Times was central in that. There is a scene in the film where Fox News says look, even the New York Times is questioning this medical care, so it must be really bad for adolescents.

Julie Hollar in Heightened Scrutiny: “The news media really set the political agenda in many ways…. They establish what the national discourse is.”

JH: In the film, I talk briefly about FAIR’s 2023 study of New York Times trans coverage, which showed that over the course of a year, the paper devoted more front-page articles to framing trans people as some sort of threat to others’ rights—such as cisgender women and parents—than to the coordinated assault on trans people’s rights. FAIR just published an update to that study, which shows that the Times has gotten even worse in some ways than they were before, including fewer trans sources in front-page stories about trans issues, for instance, and including just as many sources peddling unchallenged anti-trans misinformation as trans sources. How are you as a filmmaker trying to hold the Times accountable? What do you hope audiences might do in response?

SF: When people watch the film, so many are surprised to learn about the trajectory from coverage to law, and how culpable the Times has been in spreading misinformation. This link between the articles and anti-trans bills is devastating; the film shows the direct connection from article to harm.

Just like Disclosure was a field study in representation that could be applied to any marginalized community, Heightened Scrutiny is a field study that can be applied to the ways in which the media has skewed the public’s perception of all marginalized people. At the end of the day, when anyone’s right to bodily autonomy is chipped away at, everyone’s rights are.

I think this is a way to show people an example of the harm. I also hope this film is a tool for supporting those who are on the ground fighting back against the harm—medical providers, lawyers, legislators, etc.

JH: The Times is getting worse, the Supreme Court isn’t saving us. In making the film, did you come across anything that gave you hope or inspiration?

SF: I learned from people I spoke with, in particular Lewis Wallace, who talks about how hope is a practice. Hope is something we have to work for relentlessly and rigorously.

I’m inspired by Mila, the 13-year-old trans girl in the film. She’s this brilliant person, empowered and unflappable in the face of immense struggle. Watching her fight gives me hope. And watching her family showing up to support her every step of the way teaches all of us what love can look like.

There’s still so much to protect. The Skrmetti decision is devastating, but queer and trans people know that we cannot rely on the law. Our ability to survive and thrive does not begin or end with the law. We know how to take care of each other. That also gives me hope.

You know, when Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary, I also felt real hope, witnessing New Yorkers come together and do something that seemed so impossible. I hope people will rally around trans civil rights the same way.

JH: And media did their best to push misinformation in that case, too.

SF: Yes, the Times included. And seeing people be skeptical of the media, ignore the misinformation, take action together, and do what the media try to tell us is impossible or scary or “too woke”—we need to keep doing that, and giving each other hope.

Filmmaker Sam Feder: “So many people were misled into thinking there is a legitimate debate about…whether trans people’s basic rights should be upheld, and it’s because of what they read or see in mainstream media.”

JH: What do you want people to walk away from your film with?

SF: I want people to see that the SCOTUS case is grounded in popular culture, in mainstream media and social media discourse. So many people were misled into thinking there is a legitimate debate about whether the risks of gender-affirming care outweighed the need for it, and whether trans people’s basic rights should be upheld, and it’s because of what they read or see in mainstream media. The legislation directly responds to the media climate.

Our existence is not a debate. As Jude [Ellison S. Doyle] says in the film: “Trans people are presented as one side of a debate on our lives. I hold the opinion that I exist, and you hold the opinion that I don’t.”

The outcome of this case is going to impact the constitutional rights of all people living in America. That’s lost on many people, but this is going to affect everyone’s access to privacy with their doctors.

JH: And that’s something that just wasn’t highlighted in most of the media coverage of the case, so that most people are not aware of it, based on the news reports.

SF: I absolutely think you’re right about that. There is still a lot we can protect. The fight is not over.

Heightened Scrutiny is screening in New York City at DCTV, July 18–24; in Los Angeles at Laemmle Theatres, July 26–27 and 29; and in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater, July 31 and August 2.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

Texas food banks are rationing meals for flood survivors because of Trump’s cuts

Ayurella Horn-Muller — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 22:03:11 +0000

Early in the morning on July 4th, as torrential rains battered Central Texas, the dangers of flash floods became imminent. In Kerr County, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within 45 minutes, leading to the deaths of 106 people. As the catastrophic deluge swept throughout the region, the death toll climbed to at least 132.

Later that day, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. The law gutted public food and healthcare safety nets, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, while also codifying massive tax breaks for wealthier individuals and major corporations. The devastation in Texas, then, became the first major disaster to expose the grave effects of Trump’s extensive disinvestment from disaster resilience programs — and his administration’s newest food and hunger policies.

Charitable groups such as food banks and pantries typically serve as frontline distributors of food and water in a time of a crisis, working in tandem with other responding national and global relief organizations and government agencies. Now, though, because of the policy and funding decisions enacted by the Trump administration over the last six months, the primary food banks that are responding to the needs of residents throughout central Texas have less food to distribute.

Near the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Department of Agriculture stopped the flow of some of the money that pays for deliveries of products like meats, eggs, and vegetables known as “bonus commodities” through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, to charitable organizations like food banks. TEFAP is one of the primary ways that state and federal governments have ensured food reaches communities in need in the aftermath of climate-fueled disasters like a hurricane or heatwave.

In March, the USDA also moved to end future rounds of funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. These two programs, which are also designed to support emergency food providers such as food banks, were slated to distribute more than a billion dollars this fiscal year to states, tribes, and territories.

In April, the funding cuts drove the Central Texas Food Bank to cancel 39 loads of food — the equivalent of 716,000 meals — scheduled to be delivered through September, said Beth Corbett, the organization’s vice president of government affairs and advocacy. The state of Texas lost more than $107 million for programs that allowed food banks and schools to buy food locally because of the administration’s funding cuts, the Austin Monitor and KUT reported. The San Antonio Food Bank also endured similar losses to its inventory.

San Antonio Food Bank’s president and CEO Eric Cooper told Grist he is consumed by concern that they may not be able to meet the emergency food demand prompted by the flooding tragedy in central Texas.

“Prior to this disaster, we just don’t have the volume of food in our warehouse that we need to have,” said Cooper, noting that they are “struggling to keep up” with the demand intensified by the deluge. “We have had to try to pivot a little bit to ration some of what we do have across the population we serve so that we can stretch [our supply],” he added. “USDA cuts have made it harder to keep up. The flood will make it even more difficult. Pending SNAP cuts feel like it will be impossible.”

US media ignores yet another unhinged, racist attack from GOP because the target is Muslim

Adam Johnson — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:43:51 +0000

Another day, another unhinged racist screed from Republicans in Congress that results in virtually no mainstream media coverage because the target is a Muslim-American.

Fine’s latest rant—in concert with the killing of Minnesota progressives last month—appears to have been a bridge too far, even for the normally silent and cynical Democratic leadership.

Tuesday night, in response to a post on X/Twitter from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that echoed the International Criminal Court’s designation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) posted on X/Twitter. “I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists,” he wrote. “The only shame is that you serve in Congress.”

The statement follows a long pattern of targeted racist harassment and incitement from Reps. Fine and Nancy Mace (R-SC). And, just like all previous racist attacks, it did not merit coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, or CBS network news, or on-air coverage at CNN. The only coverage Fine’s bigoted rant solicited were short write-ups in Politico, Reuters, and CNN.com, and NBC News web only, and the only substantive coverage was from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who did an 8 minute, 41 second segment detailing Fine’s long history of incitement.

Adding urgency to the violent rhetoric is the fact that Omar was among the Minnesota officials who appeared on target lists compiled by accused murderer Vance Boelter, who allegedly assassinated Democrats in a shooting spree last month.

Unlike Fine’s previous racist screeds, this one at least resulted in condemnation from Democratic leadership in the House. Previous racist social media posts merited no such response. But Fine’s latest rant—in concert with the killing of Minnesota progressives last month—appears to have been a bridge too far, even for the normally silent and cynical Democratic leadership.

Our statement in connection with Randy Fine’s Islamophobic attack on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. pic.twitter.com/Wxnlzv1elh
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) July 9, 2025

In the past, Fine has called Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) “a terrorist” who “shouldn’t be American.” (Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan). He said Tlaib and Omar “might consider leaving before I get [to Congress]. #BombsAway.” He has advocated running over and killing pro-Palestine protesters, called Palestinians “animals,” referred to Muslims as “rapists,” and openly cheered starving civilians in Gaza. In May, Fine attacked Tlaib on X/Twitter, writing in response to her condemnation of Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza, “Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.” In June, Fine’s colleague Mace told the PBD Podcast she wanted to “send Ilhan Omar Back To Somalia,” in response to Omar’s criticisms of Trump’s immigration crackdowns. She later doubled down on X/Twitter: “Omar clearly has more loyalty to the corrupt hellhole she came from than to the country she was elected to serve.”

None of these attacks merited any mainstream media coverage—much less any sustained outrage or condemnation. The only reason the latest round of incitement got a handful of blurbs in Politico and CNN.com and (belatedly) a segment on MSNBC is likely because Democrats finally condemned them. And that’s all. Crickets from the New York Times, Washington Post network news, and CNN.

This raises the question: What would Fine or Mace have to say to justify actual media outrage? Actual sustained coverage? These attacks are not subtle or reliant on dog whistles. They’re out in the open, proudly hateful, and an invitation for their proudly bigoted social media followers to double down.

Contrast this media silence after months of sustained racist incitement against Reps. Omar and Tlaib with the week-long media meltdown last September when Tlaib suggested that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she was potentially biased against pro-Palestine protesters. “We’ve [protested for] climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs,” Tlaib told the Detroit Metro Times. “But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

“Antisemitism” scandals in our media are almost never about combating the very real dangers of antisemitism. They’re about disciplining critics of Israel.

This comment turned out to be entirely correct. The Nessel-led prosecution arrested seven pro-Palestine protesters in a pre-dawn raid in April and the charges were later dropped after Nessel was pressured to recuse herself for anti-Palestinian bias. But at the time, despite the interviewer himself defending Tlaib, the congresswoman’s remarks solicited a full-blown “antisemitism” scandal meriting coverage in USA Today, Newsweek, Fox News and The Free Press, and culminating in a smear campaign by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, which outright asserted Tlaib was an anti-Jewish bigot. This was is addition to the countless articles and segments in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Axios, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, and ABC News in late 2023 lamenting Tlaib’s alleged “antisemitism” because she defended the term “from the River to the Sea” as a call for equality and freedom in Palestine.

Tapper, who hosts two influential cable news shows—his daily weekday show The Lead, and the Sunday morning agenda-setting news program State of the Union—is the most nakedly hypocritical commentator in all of media. He effectively manufactured the “antisemitism” scandal targeting Tlaib last September out of whole cloth, outright lying about her in an interview with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting,” Tapper somberly said on air, “that [AG Nessel] shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish”—which is not at all what Tlaib said. A smear neither Bash nor Tapper ever apologized for or retracted, only opaquely saying they “misspoke” in a throwaway line days later.

Since this shameful, false smear of Tlaib, there’s been a half-dozen racist attacks on Tlaib and her Muslim colleague in Congress by Fine and others, and has Tapper done a single segment on it? He has not. He did, however, find time last night to platform the head of pro-Israel pressure group ADL Jonathan Greenblatt so he could (again) defend Musk’s neo-Nazi gesture from Trump’s inauguration and accuse the largest union in the country, the National Education Association, of “antisemitism” for cutting ties with the ADL over its promotion of anti-Palestinian racism and Israeli foreign policy. Tapper also conspicuously failed to ask Greenblatt about a recent high profile rebuke of Greenblatt by Yehuda Cohen, father of Israeli captive Nimrod Cohen, who accused Greenblatt of fabricating a story about his family to promote “cheap patriotism” and “endless war in Gaza.”

Defending the expression “from the River to the Sea” and noting allegations—entirely correct, it turns out—of anti-Palestinian bias from a state prosecutor results in weeks-long media scandal, meltdowns, cable news mentions, pundit commentary, and congressional censures. Yet out-in-the-open anti-Muslim bigtory and calls for violence against sitting members of Congress are barely mentioned at all. The double standard—which, as Zeteo’s Prem Thakker notes, isn’t really a double standard since only one side is actually being bigoted—could not be more obvious. The question is, why?

The reason is that “antisemitism” scandals in our media are almost never about combating the very real dangers of antisemitism. They’re about disciplining critics of Israel. They’re about using the language of liberalism against liberalism, protecting US and Israeli regional hegemony by attacking anyone undermining its ideological underpinnings. Meanwhile, actual racism, actual incitement, and actual defamation of Muslim-Americans solicits a yawn because it poses no challenge to US and Israeli national security interests and, in key ways, assists them by stoking the anti-Muslim racism essential for its maintenance. It’s an inconsistency that has always been present, but with the latest crop of cartoonishly racist MAGA trolls in Congress, the glaring double standard has grown wider and more obvious. The question is whether anyone in mainstream media, beyond a one-off segment on MSNBC, will note it, much less gin up a scandal over it.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Adam Johnson.

The Middle East is on Fire because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match

Black Alliance for Peace — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 15:36:58 +0000

Overnight, the Zionist entity of Israel escalated its war of aggression against Iran by launching unprovoked attacks on the Islamic Republic. The notion that a rogue ethnostate that is currently carrying out a genocide believes that it possesses the right to determine which countries can and cannot develop a nuclear weapon is both bizarre and egregious as well as brazenly hypocritical, and further demonstrates that the State of Israel operates firmly within the structures of white “supremacy” ideology, colonialism, and imperialism. Iran, like all sovereign nations, has the right to defend itself from aggression and uphold its security in the face of repeated threats and acts of war. This stands in stark contrast to Israel, which operates a settler colonial occupation of Palestine, as well as portions of Lebanon and Syria.

The idea of Israel, the Zionist occupation, claiming a moral position is absurd. And the fact that the international community continues to give Israel any credibility is a dereliction of duty and forms a vacuum of morality for all of those who do not stand resolutely against its genocide in Palestine and its attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Israel’s immunity granted by Western colonial nations is a further reflection of the moral gulf between these states and the vast majority of humankind that subscribes to values that uphold People(s)-Centered Human Rights, self-determination, and dignity.

Israel’s unprovoked attack is another example of the lawlessness that is fully supported by the U.S. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) rejects the notion that the U.S. was unaware of this attack. The U.S. had the ability to stop this attack if it was serious about containing Israel’s perpetual war crimes and disregard for international law, which is a major threat to any form of true peace. The combination of Israel’s continued genocidal assaults and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and its bombings and occupations of portions of the sovereign nations of Syria and Lebanon prove that Israel and the U.S. are the most dangerous nations in the world. Their power must be dismantled.

To conflate Israel’s actions with Jewish values is the height of antisemitism. Zionism, an ideology of white “supremacy,” must be wholly separated from Judaism’s teachings of justice, human rights, and inclusivity. Israel is no more a “Jewish state” than the U.S. is a “Christian state.” Both are violent constructs of ethnonationalism. BAP firmly rejects the conflation of Judaism with the barbarism of Zionism, just as we denounce the antisemitic trope that equates Zionism with Judaism itself.

Israel’s militarism further threatens global stability by spiking the price of oil by 8 percent in one night. This economic shockwave further demonstrates why we must continue linking the devastation of war with the devastation associated with the climate catastrophe that is fueled by capitalist war profiteering interests of fossil fuel cartels and the military industrial complex who both benefit from the Israeli war machine at the expense of human life and the ecosystems necessary to sustain it. Israel’s aggression is capitalism’s credit card with an unlimited spending limit.

History will remember this moment and Israel’s barbaric acts as an indelible and ignominious stain on international “law” and cooperation, people(s)-centered human rights and the basic tenets of human dignity.

In Response, BAP Demands that :

The UN Security Council and European Union impose immediate sanctions and consequences for Israel’s illegal acts, and institute an arms embargo.
The international community must expel Israel from the United Nations. It has no place among fraternal nations.
The international community categorically reject Israel’s fraudulent claims to jurisdiction over Iran’s lawful nuclear energy program.
The IAEA investigate Israel’s unregulated nuclear program with the same rigor applied to others.
U.S. lawmakers enforce laws prohibiting military aid to human rights violators by cutting off all arms transfers to Israel or face prosecution at the ICC and ICJ for complicity in war crimes.
The ICC indict and prosecute Israeli and U.S. officials for continued war crimes throughout West Asia and the lawlessness of genocide perpetuated against the Palestinian people.
All anti-imperialist, anti-war, pro-peace movements and organizations support Iran’s right to sovereignty, self-defense, and self-determination against Israel’s murderous aggression.

The post The Middle East is on Fire because Israeli and U.S. Imperialism Lit the Match first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

Trump Is Using El Salvador’s Jails Because They’re Outside the Rule of U.S. Law #politics #trump

The Intercept — Sat, 31 May 2025 15:58:00 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by The Intercept.

Myanmar residents too scared to sleep indoors because of aftershocks

Radio Free Asia — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 21:29:48 +0000

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

AFSCME’s Saunders: Leland Dudek is willing to see millions of senior citizens suffer all because he didn’t get his way in court

Newswire Editor — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 16:27:02 +0000

AFSCME President Lee Saunders released the following statement after acting Commissioner Leland Dudek threatened to shut down the Social Security Administration in response to a judge temporarily denying Elon Musk’s DOGE access:

“For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck — but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink. Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk’s lies.

“Now, like a child who didn’t get his way, he is threatening to shut down Social Security. Rather than comply with a lawful court order, he wants to see millions of families, retirees and disabled individuals go hungry, suffer and potentially lose their homes all to curry favor with anti-worker billionaires. It’s despicable.

“Even for this administration, this is a new low. Project 2025 didn’t dare mention Social Security, but we always knew they would put it on the table. We’ve fought back efforts by anti-union extremists and billionaires to privatize and gut Social Security before, and we’ll do it again. Workers paid into this program; it belongs to us.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Foreign firms avoid Lao workers because they ‘have no skills,’ labor official says

RFA Lao — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 18:24:14 +0000

A labor ministry official in Laos has dismissed calls for a “solution” to the problem of foreign companies bringing their own workers into the country, saying that the businesses won’t hire domestic workers because the government has failed to adequately train them.

The labor situation in Houaphan province highlights lax oversight of foreign investment in Laos, where companies — many of which are based in China and Vietnam — flock to exploit natural resources with little regard for the impact on the environment and communities.

Authorities typically give foreign companies free rein to operate in Laos because the country is starved for outside investment.

On March 6, Sounthone Xayachack, the vice president of the Lao National Assembly, or parliament, ordered Houanphan authorities to “solve worker shortages” and “prevent foreign companies from bringing in their own workers” while on an official visit to the province.

She noted that in 2024, the Lao government could only provide slightly more than 26,000 jobs for domestic workers. According to the World Bank, the Lao labor force totaled just over 3.5 million people in 2023 — approximately 42,000 of whom were unemployed.

A 2023 report from the Ministry of Planning and Investment claimed that there were 2,600 companies in Laos looking to fill at least 153,315 positions.

A man sits on a boat on the Mekong River at the border between China, Laos and Myanmar, March 1, 2016.

(Jorge Silva/Reuters)

Despite the shortage of workers, an official from the Department of Labor and Social Welfare recently told RFA Lao that foreign firms operating in the country aren’t interested in hiring locally because “the majority of Lao workers have no skills or experience.”

“They don’t meet the requirements of the companies' needs, so both Vietnamese- and Chinese-owned companies do not want to hire our workers,” said the official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

“The government lacks the budget necessary to train Lao workers with the skills that they need.”

Few willing to hire Lao workers

A Houanphan provincial official agreed that it would be “impossible” to prevent foreign firms from bringing their own workers “because our Lao workers don’t meet their requirements.”

“[The hiring situation] depends on each company’s needs,” said the official, who also declined to be named. “There are a few foreign companies that are willing to hire Lao workers.”

Another high-ranking labor ministry official told RFA that Houanphan province “has been facing a worker shortage,” but did not provide statistics to back up her claim.

It was not immediately clear if the shortage the official mentioned referred to a lack of workers or a lack of “skilled” workers, but she did note that “even Vientiane province also relies on Burmese workers.”

In Houanphan, she said, many Lao workers choose not to work for foreign companies “because of lower compensation” and because the province is located along the border with Vietnam, and they worry that they would lose their jobs to Vietnamese nationals who are looking for work.

The official said that many Chinese and Vietnamese investors run businesses in the province — including Chinese mining firms — “but I don’t think they ever hire local people.”

Bribes exacerbate problem

Other observers told RFA that a lack of skilled domestic workers is only part of a larger problem, which includes local officials receiving bribes to look the other way when foreign firms bring in their own employees without work permits.

“It may be because of officials receiving money under the table so that they keep quiet and never inspect the projects,” she said. “Additionally, Lao government officials are scared to confront Vietnam or China.”

A resident of Houaphan confirmed to RFA that many of the workers “are migrant workers” from countries that foreign investors are based in, while local Lao workers are choosing to relocate to other provinces to find jobs.

“I admit that our Lao workers' skills are not good,” he said, adding that even the Lao government is forced to hire foreign workers for certain projects.

“For example, a Vietnamese-owned company was granted a project to build a building for the Lao government, but in the end, most of the workers were from Vietnam,” he said.

Translated by RFA Lao. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Lao.

You Will Cry Out Because of Your King

Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 05:50:35 +0000

Image by Hassan Pasha.

As a clergy person who has served congregations in the Black and of-color communities in Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC for over 45 years I am acutely aware of the traumas and anxieties that are encountered because of changing political administrations nationally, regionally, and locally, and how they impact families and lives. Politicians and even the media often speak in broad generalities of what a change means statistically, according to the latest poll, and its implications for government and how it may set a precedent or not. But those of us serving pastorally in local communities are called upon to allay fears, to bind the wounds, make meaning out of the meaninglessness, find silver linings amidst the dark clouds, and to identify hope in the despair and confusion. We have done this many times, but at no time has the impact been as stark, devastating, or as frightening as it is now.

With Trump/Musk/DOGE, and their radical approach to government there are many lives traumatized by the fears and are suffering from the emotional abuse inflicted on those who have worked for the federal government and their families. There are also many contractors and vendors associated with government work experiencing the same high anxieties that comes with the uncertainty and worries associated with the political battering of uncertainty and threats inflicted on families and their sense of stability and security.

Living in Washington, DC, I along with my colleagues feel that we are in the epicenter of this upheaval and must deal with this psychological tsunami. But by no means does this affect only Washington, DC because 80% of government employees are outside of the Washington, DC area. But the perception is government equates Washington, DC and the message telegraphed by the Trump/Musk/DOGE fraternity is that they are dismantling The District of Columbia, its “deep state,” putting Blacks and people of-color in “their place” (as DC serves as a symbol of a Black and diverse town with a “Woke” population, and where DEI abounds). They are stridently trying to demonstrate that they are re-establishing the good ole days of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny by taking the country back and making it Great Again in terms of absolute control both at home and abroad.

The imperialistic whim is expressed in changing the name of the Native American associated Alaskan mountain peak, Denali to Mount McKinley. The name Denali is largely used by Alaskans and Native people and translated to mean “The High One,” referring to the more than 20,000-foot mountain peak that dominates the landscape. The royal decree is amplified in the assertion that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America and punishing the Associated Press by banning them from the White House press corps for not acquiescing to the imperialistic name change. The list of royal decrees has suggested that Canada be annexed along with Greenland, and insinuating that Panama come under the control of the US again. These are all imperialistic assertions and fantasy.

These assertions should be stridently questioned and analyzed by various medias. However in January 6 fashion the media forums historically entrusted to be defenders of democracy by maintaining a free and non-government controlled press have been bullied and overrun by a royally inspired overtaking that have usurped democratic order. Diverse and robust political discussion have been taken over by an imperialistic demand to assert the order of a feudalistic system of oligarchs, dukes, duchesses, billionaires, and courtiers’ seeking lands and fortunes by supporting the royal order. This is evident in Jeffery Bezos’ nullification of the Washington Post’s editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president in 2024. It has been reported that more than 250,000 Washington Post subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions in protest since owner, Jeff Bezos interfered in the endorsement and recently demanded that the paper’s opinion pages reflect libertarian priorities excluding opposing points of view. He wrote in a March 2025 memo to the paper’s staff: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets…” In other words, the opinion page will be slanted towards less or no criticism of the Trump dynasty, its policies, or its encroachment on democratic order. The Post’s former Executive Editor, Marty Baron, called the new direction “craven” and suggested that Bezos is “basically fearful” of Trump. Whether it is fear or greed as the motivator of these oligarchs only they know. But we cannot overlook the lucrative government contracts awarded Bezos, Musk and many others currently feeding at, or hoping to feed at the royal trough.

The contraction and absence of medias that are independent and distant from the Trump royalty poses an immediate and imminent danger to the freedom of political debate and moral discernment. Columbia University has been penalized $400 million by the Trump dynasty for not shutting down the protests and encampment on Columbia’s campus last Spring that educated the public of the genocide and war crimes in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil, who is on a legally acquired student visa, a graduate of Columbia, and married to a US citizen having led some of the demonstrations and protests at Columbia was arrested by ICE because his political expressions ran counter to the proclivities of the Trump dynasty. The Trump monarchy is weighted toward imperialistic initiatives that are expressed through Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, ethnic cleansing, the attempted annexation of Ukraine by Russia, or by its own fantasies of seizing Canada, Greenland, and Panama.

People are perplexed by how quickly and radically these changes could have occurred in the United States. The national narrative has been those fascist takeovers, and the emergence of tyrants and dictators happen other places but not in the US. But now we are confronted with what we believed was commonplace elsewhere having happened here. I find myself turning to tools of my trade trying to explain to people this current moment and why and how this could have happened. In the scriptures that I use, First Samuel chapter 8, offers a hauntingly accurate explanation for this historical moment. The words in this text describes people who felt let down by government, troubled by the state of the economy, fearful of an uncertain future, scared of changes, where one set of political leaders was perceived ill-equipped to serve the interest of some people, and where apparently a few had grown richer at the expense of the poor becoming poorer. Whether this was true or only perceived to be true we do not know. The 2024 elections appears to have similarities with the text where the framing of the issues were the ruinous effects of inflation, immigrants taking jobs and criminally violating communities, and where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies forced the hiring of incompetence and overlooked those who were more deserving and were white, male, and straight. A significant portion of the population wanted a leader who would address their fears and resolve their anxieties of an inclusive world. The political ideologies of the campaigns either cited an increasingly diverse population or the dangerous nature of democracy as it strived to include diversity and create equal opportunities. The ideologies were on a collision course. One ideology warned of the threat to democracy, and the other offered the protection of the American way of life through a strongman that would protect the country by reclaiming and protecting its past. The things that were seen or felt as wrong with the nation the strongman pledged, “I alone can fix it.” Some people clamored for this strongman – this king, the restoration of the past, and the good ole days. It was just like the people in First Samuel 8 who demanded “Give us a king”, so that they could go back to the familiar, the fears of the future could be tamed, and where people did not have to wrestle with or agonize over anything that was unfamiliar, frightening, or defined as “woke.” “Give us a king” that will solve all our problems, navigate us through a frightening world, and where we don’t have to deal with the messier things of democracy. And this is what we got. In 2024 we have unconsciously or consciously given up a president for a king.

But this scriptural text goes further by warning what a king will do, and it is not pretty but so relevant to today. It warns that by giving up discourse and participation we will become victims of the wants and desires of a king. The king will reward his patrons and supporters and harm his detractors. The billionaires who lust after more billions as well as those fearful of the loss of billions fall into line and tout the monarchs political framing of issues. He will take a portion of all that we have worked for and earned, and he will give it in tax breaks and lucrative contracts to his patrons and supporters. He will press us into his service, and likewise our children. We will parrot the fears of diversity and inclusion. We will turn in those who we suspect of being undocumented and accept as natural those stopped and arrested for driving while Hispanic or Black. And when we eventually become aware of what we have given up, what it really means to surrender participation, voice, and responsibility it will be too late. The damage will have been done and will be revealed in disasters because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that predicts atmospheric and weather changes, have been dismantled. There will be an increase in diseases such as measles that was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Unemployment will increase because of firings and layoffs in the governmental sector which will spread into the private sector because of protectionism, tariffs, and the interconnection of one economic sector to another. And there will be fewer places to challenge the royal decrees as the courts, informational platforms, and people are silenced out of fear of retribution and punishment. In all, democratic order will disappear, become extinct in practice, and eventually fade from memory. All of this will occur because we have chosen the dictates of a king over the messier and cumbersome discourse of the democratic process. The scriptural text warns, ^18...In that day you will cry out because of your king…” So many of us are crying out now because of this wannabe king.

So, what can be done? Now is the time to stir from our shock and catatonic state and begin to act, demonstrate, drown out town hall and community gatherings wherever they occur before we completely lose all memory of participatory debate, discourse, dialogue, or what the compromise and tensions of democracy looks and feels like. The Trump/Musk/DOGE fraternity has been rattling off dictates of firings, downsizing, policy and name changes so rapidly that it is hard to pivot fast enough in response, let alone being able to act instead of reacting. This is the tactic to keep us off balance. But our challenge is to engage, question, and resist and not be wearied by the avalanche of the various decrees, Executive Orders, or the whiplash of on and off again policies. In the 1960s and 70s many of us wore buttons that read “Question Authority.” It was a statement of independent thinking, not falling into line simply to fall into line, and to remind ourselves and governments that we are only governed by our consent. We sought to remind ourselves of the authority of average citizens and not the absolute power of government. This mentality needs to be reborn. We need to question, act, and challenge all things and everything that comes from this royal fiefdom. They may not be wrong in everything they do, but we know that unless we exercise the discipline of questioning authority, challenging policies, and making the administration prove every single assertion we will certainly lose all forms of democratic order. After all we really don’t want or need a king, but we truly want a government that is of, for, and by the people. This however will require that we exercise the muscles of messy democracy before they completely atrophy.

The post You Will Cry Out Because of Your King appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler.

The Trump-Musk Recession: Because They Can

Dean Baker — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 05:50:48 +0000

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Past recessions have been the result of policy errors or disasters. The most typical policy error is when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too much to counter inflation. That was clearly the story in the 1974-75 recession, as well as the 1980-82 double-dip recession.

Then we have recessions caused by collapsing financial bubbles, the 2001 recession following the collapse of the stock bubble, and the 2008-09 recession following the collapse of the housing bubble. And of course, we had the 2020 recession because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession — not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession.

While a recession may not be fully baked into the cards at this point, the risk is evident and it’s almost entirely coming from Donald Trump’s policies. First and foremost are the costs associated with his import taxes (tariffs), or at least the threat of tariffs.

The impact of Trump’s threats should not be underestimated. If you were an auto executive trying to decide whether and where to expand capacity right now, what would you be doing? Would you look to continue to take the lowest cost route and further integrate your operations with Canada and Mexico? That would be a pretty bad choice if we have high taxes on imports from these countries going until Trump and his offspring have all left the White House.

Alternatively, you could go the MAGA route and invest in the United States. This would mean you would have far higher costs and likely be wiped out if the tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports came down at some future date. Alternatively, it is possible President Xi, or some future Chinese leader, would make a visit to Mar-a-Lago and we would be able to buy high quality Chinese EVs for $17,000. Again, you would be wiped out.

Needless to say, the smart move here is to put off any major new investments until Donald Trump figures out what he wants to do with tariffs. And even then, it would probably be smart to limit investments, since we know Trump can change his mind at any time, depending on who shows up at Mar-a-Lago. Most industries are not as thoroughly integrated into the world economy as the auto industry, but almost all have some degree of integration, so we can expect many companies putting off investment plans to see where things go. This means that even without actually imposing new tariffs, Trump is already hurting the economy.

And if Trump does impose his taxes, it will undoubtedly be a big hit to the economy. It’s hard to gauge how big a hit since the threatened size of the tariffs and the items subject to the tax change daily or even hourly, but we could easily be looking at an increase in our annual taxes of $200 billion to $300 billion a year. That would be 0.7-1.0 percent of GDP or $1,600 to $2,400 per household.

To take some concrete examples: if Trump imposed a 25 percent tax on Canadian oil, which he has sometimes threatened, that would increase gas prices by more than 40 cents a gallon for large parts of the Midwest. He has recently talked about upping his tax on imports of Canadian lumber to 250 percent. This would effectively cut off a source of lumber that has accounted for close to 30 percent of the US supply in recent years. Lumber prices have already risen by more than 20 percent since Election Day due to Donald Trump’s clown show. This would be a huge hit to the housing industry.

These economic disruptions would be understandable if there were some rationale, but it is hard to see what it is. Trump’s stated reasons for his import taxes change constantly. He has complained about fentanyl and illegal immigration from both countries. The complaint about fentanyl from Canada is absurd on its face. A very small share of the fentanyl in the US comes from Canada and the Canadian government is engaged in cooperative efforts to reduce the amount further. It’s the same story with immigration, with only a small share of the flow of undocumented migrants coming from Canada.

Both of these are bigger issues with Mexico, but Mexico’s government has been cooperating with the United States for years in trying to limit the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border, as well as the flow of fentanyl. In fact, President Biden reached an agreement with Mexico in June that cut the flow of immigrants by close to two-thirds. There is no obvious reason that Trump has to make threats of taxes for further reductions in these areas.

Trump has also complained about both countries’ trade surpluses with the US. He regularly gets Canada’s surplus off by a factor of 150 percent — it’s $60 billion, not $150 billion. Furthermore, the reason for the deficit is imports of oil that Trump himself tried to foster in his first term.

The trade deficit is larger with Mexico, but this is largely the result of the USMCA trade deal that Trump himself negotiated. That deal led to further integration of the two economics, which is presumably what was expected.

In short, the trade imbalances story does not make much more sense than the fentanyl and immigration story. There is also the possibility that Trump just sees these taxes as a good way to raise revenue without taxing his billionaire campaign contributors.

This is plausible, since tariffs are an extremely regressive tax. Low and middle-income families spend a much higher share of their income than the rich, and a larger share of what they spend goes to goods as opposed to the luxury services purchased by the Elon Musks of the world. A big tax increase might not sound great to Trump’s MAGA base, but that could be what they are looking at.

There is also the possibility that Trump is actually serious about wanting to make Canada the 51st state. That story likely ends up in warfare and occupation, since Canada is not likely to capitulate based on Trump’s tariff threats. Trump often tried to portray himself as the peace candidate during the campaign. It’s not clear how a war against our closest ally and the subsequent occupation would sell with his base.

The Smashing Government Route to Recession

Donald Trump’s tariff games are just one possible route to recession; the other is Elon Musk’s DOGE team attack on the government. If there was ever any doubt, it is now clear that this outfit has nothing to do with increasing government efficiency.

They show up at government agencies without even knowing what the agency does. They then do large-scale layoffs without knowing what the fired workers do. When they find out what they do, they often have to hire them back, as happened with air traffic controllers and workers keeping our nuclear weapons safe. There is no evidence that Musk or his “super-high IQ” DOGE boys have ever spent five minutes reviewing the evidence of waste and fraud that has been assembled by Government Accountability Office or the various agency inspector generals, most of whom have been fired by Trump.

But the direct impact of Musk’s job cuts on both the budget and the economy is likely to be small. The bigger impact is the uncertainty they have created in large sectors of the economy. This is most evident with medical research and universities more generally. Their funding streams through fiscal year 2025 (which ends October 1) and later have been called into question by Musk and Trump’s actions. Many of them are cutting back hiring, and even retracting job offers now that funding streams are no longer secure.

The uncertainty is also hitting the larger healthcare sector, which has been the major source of job growth in the last two years, accounting for more than one-third of the February job growth. Hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers can no longer be sure of their funding streams going forward, therefore they are likely to be far more cautious in hiring.

This will also be true for state and local governments which now have no idea when Donald Trump will arbitrarily decide to cut off a flow of federal money. These cutoffs may be illegal, but no one knows what the courts will decide and when and if Trump will respect the Constitution. As a result, state and local governments also have to be careful in their hiring and spending more generally.

The End of the Rule of Law

The large sectors of the economy forced to be more cautious in their hiring and spending as a result of the DOGE routine give us a second possible route to a recession in addition to the Donald Trump tariff reality TV show. But the impact of replacing the rule of law with the rule of Mar-a-Lago goes much further.

Most immediately, we are likely to see many fewer foreigners coming to the United States, as it comes increasingly to be seen as a “shithole country.” Foreign tourists spent almost $170 billion in the United States last year (line 339). This is likely to fall sharply as foreigners can no longer count on any of the rights that they would have been accorded in prior years. This applies not only to darker-skinned people, but even to lighter skinned types who for whatever reason run afoul of immigration officers.

The United States is also likely to be a less attractive tourist destination more generally as our national parks get run down due to large-scale layoffs, air travel becomes less reliable, and even weather forecasts become more uncertain due to mass layoffs at the weather bureau. Most people probably didn’t think of park rangers as the “Deep State,” but apparently Donald Trump did.

Foreigners spent almost $60 billion on tuition at US colleges and universities (line 341) last year. We can expect this also to fall sharply as schools can no longer promise their foreign students protection against arbitrary actions by immigration officers.

Also, the rule of Mar-a-Lago will make the United States a much less attractive place to invest more generally. Businesses will look to invest in Europe, Japan, Latin America, India, and possibly even China, as countries that have greater respect for the rule of law. This should further dampen investment in the United States.

In short, Donald Trump has good reasons for telling us that his MAGA policies might give us a recession. It’s hard to know how bad this recession would be, but it will definitely be the “Donald J. Trump recession.”

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post The Trump-Musk Recession: Because They Can appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

Flights between Australia, NZ diverted because of Chinese drills

RFA Staff — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 08:30:23 +0000

Several commercial flights between Australia and New Zealand had to divert on Friday because of a live-fire exercise conducted by Chinese warships, according to media reports.

The Associated Press quoted Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong as saying that Canberra had warned international airlines flying between the two countries to beware of the Chinese live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea. Commercial pilots had been informed of potential hazards in the airspace.

Several international flights had been diverted as a result, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported without giving details.

It was not clear if the exercise had finished. The Chinese military has not commented on it.

The Tasman Sea between southeast Australia and New Zealand.

(Google Maps)

A Chinese navy task group, including the frigate Hengyang, cruiser Zunyi and replenishment vessel Weishanhu, is believed to have conducted the live-fire exercise.

The Australian airline Qantas and its budget affiliate Jetstar had adjusted some flights across the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, media reported.

Australia’s Civil Aviation Authority and the air traffic control agency Airservices Australia “are aware of reports of live firing in international waters,” the latter said in a statement quoted by Reuters news agency.

Although the live-fire exercise was observed in international waters, airlines with flights over the area were still advised to take precaution, it said.

China calls Australia’s DeepSeek ban ‘politicization of technological issues’

Six countries join naval drills amid tension with China

Short notice

China had only notified Australian authorities about the exercise off the coast of New South Wales state earlier on Friday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

“We will be discussing this with the Chinese, and we already have at officials’ level, in relation to the notice given and the transparency, that has been provided in relation to these exercises, particularly the live fire exercises,” Wong was quoted as saying.

The Chinese task group has been operating near Australia since last week.

On Thursday, the Australian defense department said the Chinese ships were spotted 150 nautical miles (276 kilometers) from Sydney, well inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone.

Some naval vessels were deployed to monitor the Chinese warships’ movements, given they were just exercising freedom of navigation under international law, the department said.

Some Australian analysts warned of the Chinese navy normalizing its presence and power projection overseas but Chinese media dismissed those concerts as “hype”, saying it was a normal part of the navy’s far seas drills.

Edited by Mike Firn

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

‘Because There Was Economic Insecurity, Immigrants Became an Easy Scapegoat’: CounterSpin interview with Silky Shah on the attack on immigrants

Janine Jackson — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 19:43:05 +0000

Janine Jackson interviewed Detention Watch Network’s Silky Shah about the attack on immigrants for the January 24, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250124Shah.mp3

Reuters (1/21/25)

Janine Jackson: The Trump administration surprised none but the gullible by coming out of the gate with a spate of hateful, discriminatory and anti-democratic measures. Immigrants—that’s to say, mainly brown and Black immigrants—have been in the sights of those who oppose the democratic project for years now. But with Day One orders and directives threatening roundups and mass deportations and curtailing sanctuary, the new White House looks to be defining “terrorizing people” as policy.

I wonder if major news media, day in and day out, reported immigration, not through politicians trying to outdo one another with hysterical claims, and perverse stunts like buses out of town, not through pundits whose ignorance of history and economics is matched only by their indifference to human rights, but instead through the voices of immigrants and their communities and advocates, would we be where we are today?

Silky Shah is executive director at Detention Watch Network. She joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Silky Shah.

Silky Shah: It’s great to be back with you. Thanks for having me.

CBS (1/21/25)

JJ: The Department of Homeland Security’s directives to rescind the Sensitive Locations Memo is so exemplary of the comic book cravenness: “There is no safe place. This chaotic routing out of human beings, this is really what we want to do.” If people don’t know, or if they somehow think this is about isolating criminal actors, what should we understand as some of the key and foreseeable impacts of this slew of orders on communities, whether or not they or a family member is ultimately actually deported?

SS: I think the whole intention here is to cause fear and instability in people’s lives, and the strategy of forced attrition, forced self-deportation. So it’s like a combination of all the different orders that have been put in place. Some of them are being blocked, like the birthright citizenship order, again, [it’s] just to cause panic in people, but it’s very much unconstitutional. And there’s other things that people are filing litigation against.

But we have a lot of the system in place already. There are thousands of ICE agents and thousands of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) agents, and they’ve already started doing roundups, and we’ve seen that across the country.

Washington Post (1/22/25)

But we also know they work really closely with law enforcement at every single level, at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level. And so much of what people have done for many years to protect communities is by doing that work to get ICE out of those particular locations, out of churches, out of schools, out of hospitals, and also do that work to make it so that ICE and police aren’t collaborating, because that’s actually how we saw a lot of people funneled into deportation proceedings, and into the detention system, especially during the Bush and Obama years.

For many years, we’ve been doing that, and everything this administration is trying to do is to undo a lot of that work, so that they can target people more easily. And so even now, we’ve seen that they’ve directed DoJ to start potentially looking into prosecution for states and counties and cities that aren’t complying, which is also going to be challenged.

But I think that is the intent. The intent is to undo so much of the work we’ve done to protect immigrant communities and stop the really severe deportations we’ve seen.

JJ: You’re sort of touching on it, but it seems worth pulling out: Elite media won’t do it, but we can, ourselves, shift this idea that Democrats are by definition anti-Republicans, and that we’re really in a Trump versus anti-Trump situation. And it’s not to ignore partisan dynamics, but just to recognize bad ideas, whoever is pushing them.

NBC (1/22/25)

SS: Yeah, I think one thing that was so challenging for us, coming into 2025, we were all bracing ourselves for what was going to happen a few days ago on January 20, but already, within the first days of the year, we saw the Democrats, both in the House and the Senate, capitulating and now officially passing the Laken Riley Act, which Trump is going to sign soon. And it’s really disturbing, because it’s a bill that was really created around a moral panic which exacerbates all these questions and scapegoats immigrants as the problem, around this really horrific tragedy, but saying, “Oh, we’re going to apply these really harsh policies to all immigrants because of this one incident,” which we saw in the ’80s with the story of Willie Horton. And then that was one of the things, of the many things, that led to the US being one of the world’s leading incarcerated and the growth of mass incarceration.

And now we’re seeing that again, where Democrats are capitulating because of the moral panic that was created around this one incident, and saying that immigrants are the problem, and equating them with criminality.

And I think that is something that was really hard to stomach, to see how much the Democrats accepted this really harsh bill that will require mandatory detention for people who are just charged with theft-related crimes. It would expand the number of people who would be forced to be in detention without any due process, without any ability to stand before a judge, “These are the reasons why I shouldn’t be in here.”

And so we are really, really concerned, especially, that so many Democrats capitulated on this. It’s the same old story. It’s the moral panic that they capitalize on to gain political legitimacy. And then we see these really harsh policies in place that just balloon incarceration, balloon policing.

AP (1/22/25)

JJ: Yeah, and it’s such a circle, because, for example, Associated Press, in reporting the House approving Laken Riley, notes matter of factly, well, yes, there was this crucial faction of 46 “politically vulnerable” Democrats who joined with Republicans. Why are they politically vulnerable? Because of this situation in which they feel themselves being pushed to align with Republicans in order to stay in office, which apparently is job one, and job only, for many folks.

SS: And one of the things around that that’s so frustrating is that part of the reason they are feeling the need to do that is because the Democratic Party has really failed to offer any countervision to the Republicans, failed any countervailing vision. In fact, Harris ran a campaign where she was positioning herself as more hardline than Trump on immigration, and that opened up space for us to be in this place.

And so I think that is really one of the most important lessons right now is that, no, we have to offer something else. We have to not just throw immigrants under the bus, as the Democrats did in this election cycle, that have led us to this point, and enabled Trump and all of these other Republicans to move these policies. And yeah, no, I think absolutely there’s no question that the Democrats also deserve equal blame for where we’re at.

JJ: Right. I’m going to bring you back in a second to what we can be for, but I did want to step out and just say: A key part of your concern and your work is that, for many people, because it’s how media frame it, the idea is, “Well, in one way or another, we’re going to catch lawbreakers, or even spread a net that catches up some folks who aren’t breaking the law, but then we’re going to…do something with them.” And the story sort of ends there. And I wonder, what does your understanding of the actual immigrant detention system as it exists tell you about that as a solution, that maybe most people don’t even know?

SS: The thing about detention is that it exists to warehouse immigrants. That’s what it exists to do. And whether they have had interaction with the criminal legal system or not—yes, many people have, some people haven’t, some people are there because they’re seeking asylum. But it tells you that’s the bigger picture of the US, again, being so committed to incarceration, still having some 2 million people in jails and prisons and detention centers. And what we saw for many, many years is the growth of these systems, because there was this incentive to have some economic viability for rural communities. There was a prison boom that happened, and there was also the destruction of the welfare state, and many people being caught up in the system. And so people became more and more eligible for prison time. There was longer sentences, truth in sentencing and mandatory minimums and all these things where we balloon the system. And all those things started applying to immigration, and that’s what we saw with the detention system.

And even to this day, when we try to make the case against immigrant detention and local officials can conveniently say, “Well, actually, we hear you. We don’t think people should be in detention because they’re just awaiting a hearing on their immigration case, or they’re awaiting deportation,” but then they’re still hesitant to end the contract, largely because they are still getting federal money to hold people in the detention system.

Even if they have a private prison in their community, they might be getting a dollar a day to hold a person in that facility. And so there are a lot of perverse incentives to the system, that include both the private prison industry, but also county jails, and just the way law enforcement works across the country. And so I think that’s a really important piece of it.

And the other thing I would say is that there’s just this constant lie that’s told to us, that immigration is a issue of public safety and national security. And of course now we’re hearing this a lot, in what the executive orders have put out.

But it’s not true, actually. Immigration is about labor, of course. And I think that’s going to become more of an issue as the crackdown happens, and people feel the impacts of losing that labor. But also, it’s about family relationships, and it’s about seeking refuge. And so we have to go back to that conversation of what is immigration about? What can we do instead of reinforcing these ideas that people are lawbreakers? Well, what does that mean in the context of the law right now, and how has the system changed to round up and warehouse more and more people, mostly people who are Black and brown?

JJ: Right? Well, we are seeing and we will see a lot of rightful and righteous “against” energy, and I wonder, what can we be for? What ideas can we shape conversations around that both resist the worldview of the MAGA set and their media enablers, but also maybe have nothing to do with them? What are some other ideas that can be coherent that we can work around, going forward?

Silky Shah: “Moving more away from the scarcity mindset, and making conditions for people in the US better, I think is going to be an important part of our strategy to make the case for immigration.”

SS: I think what was so evident about how the 2024 election worked out was, and largely part of the reason that the Democrats capitulated, was that, actually, Gov. Greg Abbott, of my home state of Texas, really, really played the game, and positioned immigrants as a problem. A lot of people focused on Trump, but I think Abbott, with the scheme where he was bussing migrants to cities like New York and Chicago, and “bringing the border” to those cities, it exacerbated and revealed all the fractures in the social safety nets that exist in those places, especially in light of the pandemic, and how there was more of a housing crisis. There’s obviously an opioid crisis. There’s so many other things that communities are negotiating. And because there was that anxiety in those places and that fear around economic insecurity, immigrants became a really easy scapegoat.

And so from my perspective, I think, again, this goes back to this question of the Democrats failing to offer any countervailing vision. It wasn’t just on immigration, but it was just generally [not] offering something about, what is the public good and what can we do for people and how can we help people? And how do we get to a place where people aren’t feeling nervous about paying rent, and anxious about all the other things, and the price of goods in the grocery store, and all the other things that were happening? And how can we make sure that Democrats are responding?

And so I think, from my perspective, we’ve had a lot of conversations with people on the ground, especially in light of the fact that people are worried about a detention center closing down and not having those jobs. It’s like, “Well, what is the economy you want in those communities? What is a just transition to that? What are more healthy economies than having incarceration or a military base or something like that?” And so moving more away from the scarcity mindset and making conditions for people in the US better, I think is going to be an important part of our strategy to make the case for immigration.

Also, of course, even I think sometimes this continues to get lost, as the root causes of migration aren’t always a part of the conversation. And so also, what is the role of the US, and the US across the world, and how have they exacerbated these conditions, and what can we do around that?

JJ: I wanted to just draw out one point of information, which is that just because the US outsources detention to Mexico, for example, doesn’t mean it’s not on our watch, right? That’s just as a point of information.

Detention Watch Network (3/30/23)

SS: Yeah. I think actually the last time I talked to you, it was after a really big fire that happened in one of the facilities on the other side of the border in Mexico. And I think that’s the reality, is that, in so many ways, Mexico absolutely has the second-highest rate of detention in the world. And it might look a little bit different, I think, in the US context, because it’s been such a society that’s obsessed with imprisonment. We have detention centers that actually are mostly jails or former prisons that are used, but I think there you might have different types of facilities.

But yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that externalization that we’ve seen is also on the US. So it’s not just that they’re doing it here, but they’re doing it abroad. I think the concern for us, we’ve done some research on this, is that when you have a detention center close to a location, so for instance in Southern California, in San Bernardino County where the Adelanto Detention Center is, when it was built and started holding people in 2010, 2011, I believe, San Bernardino County ended up having the second-highest ICE arrests in the country. And so just by having the capacity there, more people are going to get detained. And so that’s a lot of the reason why we do the work to shut down detention centers, to stop expansion here. But I do absolutely agree that a lot of our work also needs to be making sure that the US is not just outsourcing a lot of the same policies and tactics to other parts of the world.

JJ: Finally, even as the internet connects us in many ways, there’s still this atomism in modern US life, and we’re inundated with this notion that, to put it very crudely, success means starting your own thing, inventing something new and selling it. And that whole mindset works against the collective action that we need so much now, and that we know works.

Detention Watch Network, as the name suggests, is a coalition, and that formation shapes the work. And that seems very much like a way forward. It’s less media-friendly: “So many voices, so many groups, who do we quote?” But that kind of work, coalitional work, is really where we need to be, don’t you think?

SS: For so many years, it’s been organizers and lawyers, people who are detained, their family members, policy folks in DC, all of them coming together, and we’ve actually won a lot of our campaigns in the last many years. Some 20 detention centers are no longer in use, because of local and state and federal-level campaigns to stop their use. And a lot of that is because a lot of different people from different sectors came together, and ordinary people in their communities, who’ve said, “No, we don’t want this.”

And so I think that’s absolutely true. There is no single way, and I’m so grateful to all the people who are doing litigation to stop those executive orders right now.

Washington Post (1/22/25)

And I also know that ICE already has the tools it needs to target people. And so we have to do work at all the different levels, and make sure we’re doing everything we can to protect communities.

We also saw recently that ICE finally started putting out announcements about how they’re going to expand detention. They’re saying they’re going to build four new 10,000-bed facilities, which is just absolutely unheard of, but we’re doing the work to research that, figure that out, and do everything we can to block those. And we blocked it before, and I think we can do it again.

And so just holding onto that spirit of resistance, and knowing that this is going to be a tough time, but also there’s a lot of people who are ready to do the work, and to make sure we can protect our communities as much as possible.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Silky Shah, executive director at Detention Watch Network. Follow their work online at DetentionWatchNetwork.org. Silky Shah, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

SS: Thanks so much for having me.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Why is Israel bombing Syria? – ‘because it can get away with it’, says Bishara

APR editor — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:00:51 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has condemned Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Syrian installations — reportedly 500 times in 72 hours, comparing them to historic Israeli actions justified as “security measures”.

He criticised the hypocrisy of Israel’s security pretext endorsed by Western powers.

Asked why Israel was bombing Syria and encroaching on its territory just days after the ousting of the Bashar al-Assad regime after 54 years in power, he told Al Jazeera: “Because it can get away with it.”

Al Jazeera analyst Marwan Bishara . . . Israel aims to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security. Image: AJ screenshot APR

Bishara explained that Israel aimed to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security.

He noted that the new Syrian administration was overwhelmed and unable to respond effectively.

Bishara highlighted that regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia had condemned Israel’s actions, even though Western countries had been largely silent.

He said Israel was “taking advantage” of the chaos to “settle scores”.

“One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception,” he said.

“What has it been? In a state of war. Continuous, consistent state of war, bombing countries, destabilising countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

“All of it for the same reason — presumably it’s security.

A “Palestine will be free” placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR

“Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry [out] the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing, worst kind of genocide.

“And that’s what we have seen it do.

“Now, certainly in this very particular instance it’s taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, slash change, dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria.

“So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilising, undercutting, undermining Syria and Syria’s national security, will always be a main goal for Israel.”

“They tried to erase Palestine from the world. So the whole world became Palestine.” . . . a t-shirt at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR

In an Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau solidarity rally today, protesters condemned Israel’s bombing of Syria and also called on New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon-led coalition government to take a stronger stance against Israel and to pressure major countries to impose UN sanctions against Tel Aviv.

A prominent lawyer, Labour Party activist and law school senior academic at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Myra Williamson, spoke about the breakthrough in international law last month with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants being issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Lawyer and law school academic Dr Myra Williamson speaking at the Auckland rally today. Video: Asia Pacific Report

“What you have to be aware of is that the ICC is being threatened — the individuals are being threatened and the court itself is being threatened, mainly by the United States,” she told the solidarity crowd in Te Komititanga Square.

“Personal threats to the judges, to the prosecutor Karim Khan.

“So you need to be vocal and you need to talk to people over the summer about how important that work is. Just to get the warrants issued was a major achievement and the next thing is to get them on trial in The Hague.”

ICC Annual Meeting — court under threat. Video: Al Jazeera

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Palestinian chef killed in Gaza because of his humanitarian work, brother says

Democracy Now! — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 20:00:01 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Palestinians Seek Review of Case Charging Biden With Enabling Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Because of Its “Exceptional Importance”

Newswire Editor — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:34:53 +0000

Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, and Palestinians human rights groups are urging the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review their lawsuit charging President Biden and his aides with enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of a lower court, which dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds even as it said Israel’s assault “plausibly” constituted genocide. In an en banc petition filed late yesterday, the plaintiffs argue that courts have a constitutional duty to assess the legality of the Biden administration's actions.

“Just this week, my brother’s apartment building in Gaza was completely destroyed– the second time he lost his home, after our family house was obliterated in 2009,” said Ayman Nijim, a plaintiff in the case. “The U.S. is providing the bombs for this genocide. I have lost countless friends and neighbors, so many that I couldn’t know where to start to grieve. When will the courts uphold the law and stop the horror?”

If the Ninth Circuit grants the petition for en banc rehearing, the case would be heard by an eleven-judge en banc court. A case needs to meet at least one of two requirements for en banc review: it must involve a matter of “exceptional importance” or have resulted in inconsistency with other court rulings. The plaintiffs’ petition, filed on their behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Van Der Hout LLP, argues that their case fulfills both.

One indication of the case’s “exceptional importance,” the petition says, is the scale of the ongoing violence. With unconditional U.S. support, Israel has killed about 40,000 Palestinians – injured more than 90,000, forcibly displaced 2 million, and pushed large segments of Gaza into famine. Israel’s actions, which followed numerous expressions of eliminationist intent by its leaders, have led many legal experts and scholars to conclude that it is committing genocide, the most serious human rights crime. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s assault “plausibly” amounted to genocide and ordered it to take provisional measures to prevent further harm to civilians.

The following week, the federal judge in this case echoed the ICJ but ruled that the “political question” doctrine prevented courts from ruling on executive branch decisions that touch on foreign policy. Yet courts have repeatedly rejected the executive’s invocation of the political question doctrine when policy decisions cross over into violations of the law. From the founding-era to the post-9/11 “enemy combatant” cases, courts have determined whether foreign policy decisions violated domestic and international law. This failure to uphold Supreme Court precedent also qualifies the case for en banc review, the petition says.

“For almost eleven months we have witnessed the intentional destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza made possible by these officials,” said Pam Spees, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “With this ruling, the panel has said our courts are too small to do the job they were assigned at the founding – to be a co-equal branch in our government and a check and balance on presidential power. If the Ninth Circuit doesn’t course correct here, it will be giving this and future presidents license to violate the law at will in the realm of foreign relations.”

The lawsuit, filed in November, claims Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin violated international and federal law when they failed to prevent and were complicit in Israel’s genocide. It asked the court to enjoin the administration from supporting the assault on Gaza with weapons or other means. The case featured rare testimony from victims of the genocide, and plaintiff lawyers pointed to evidence of the massive current and historical U.S. support for Israel – including an affidavit from former State Department official Josh Paul – to make the case that Israel could not be committing genocide without its chief benefactor.

The three-judge panel consisted of Consuelo M. Callahan, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, and Daniel Aaron Bress. Judge Ryan Nelson was slated to be on the panel, but recused himself following the plaintiffs’ motion highlighting his participation in a World Jewish Congress delegation to Israel that was explicitly designed to influence U.S. judges’ opinions on the legality of Israeli military action against Palestinians. Alongside the en banc petition, plaintiffs are also filing an unopposed motion to disqualify Judge Patrick Bumatay and Judge Lawrence VanDyke from participating in any deliberation in the case because they participated in the same delegation to Israel.

The organizational plaintiffs in the case are Defense for Children International – Palestine and Al-Haq. The individual plaintiffs from Gaza are Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, Ahmed Abu Artema, and Mohammed Ahmed Abu Rokbeh; and Mohammad Monadel Herzallah, Laila Elhaddad, Waeil Elbhassi, Basim Elkarra, and Ayman Nijim, U.S. citizens with family in Gaza.

For more information, see the Center for Constitutional Rights’ case page.

The San Francisco law firm of Van Der Hout LLP is co-counsel in the case.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Sunrise on RNC Convention: “The GOP is silent on the environment because their agenda is politically toxic”

Newswire Editor — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:36:22 +0000

In response to the RNC Convention, Sunrise Movement Communications Director, Stevie O’Hanlon, released the following statement:

"It's the last day of the Republican National Convention, and national Republicans have made it clear that they have no plans to address climate change, and don’t even want to talk about it.

The RNC has released a party platform that promises to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL” and increase the production of oil, gas, and coal. Trump has promised to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and end decades-old protections for our air and water that save lives and protect our health.

However, during the RNC this week, even these plans were missing from prime-time speeches. The absence is glaring. Republicans are dodging talking about the climate because they side with oil and gas billionaires, not the vast majority of Americans who support the U.S. taking steps to reduce climate change.

With heat wave after heat wave this summer, climate change is increasingly on people’s minds. Heading into November, voters will be considering if they want to risk another year of climate disasters.

Make no mistake. Just because Republicans don't want to talk about their climate plans to voters, doesn’t mean that their radical, anti-climate agenda that empowers oil and gas billionaires to destroy our planet won’t be a top priority for a second Trump administration. Another Trump Presidency would cause catastrophic and irreversible damage to our climate."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Did South Dakota ban watermelon sales because it is antisemitic?

By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 04:27:16 +0000

A claim emerged in both English and Chinese-language social media posts that the U.S. state of South Dakota banned the sale of sliced watermelons because it is antisemitic.

But the claim is false. Keyword searches found no official or credible reports to back the claim, which has been debunked by several international news organizations.

The claim was shared on China’s Weibo social media platform on May 24, 2024.

“South Dakota bans the sale of cut watermelons. The reason? because it’s antisemitic. Watermelons are black, white, red and green, which happen to be the colors of the Palestinian flag,” the post reads in part.

“Therefore, selling sliced watermelons in public is tantamount to supporting Palestine, and supporting Palestine is antisemitism,” it reads.

Over the past few months, watermelon has become a symbol of solidarity for Palestinians for its colors that match their flag, according to PBS Newshour.

The colors of sliced watermelon — with red pulp, green-white rind and black seeds — are the same as those of the Palestinian flag.

Similar claims have been shared on Weibo and X, formerly known as Twitter.

Chinese netizens on Weibo and X posted claimed that South Dakota ordered a state ban on the sale of cut watermelons because of perceived anti-Semitic overtones. (Screenshots/Weibo and X)

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found no official or credible reports to back the claim.

The claim has been debunked by multiple international news organizations, including USA Today and Reuters.

Reuters cited Ian Fury, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s chief of communications, as saying that there was “no truth” to the posts.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Kangana Ranaut’s claim that she got ticket because of Women’s Reservation Bill is false

Oishani Bhattacharya — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 14:26:45 +0000

The BJP has named actress Kangana Ranaut as its Lok Sabha candidate from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh in the upcoming general elections. The news of her candidacy was announced on March 24. Addressing a public address at Balh valley in Mandi on April 2, Kangana stated that she had been given the BJP ticket because of the ‘Women’s Reservation Bill’ that ensured 30 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kangana Ranaut (@kanganaranaut)

Fact Check

Upon running a relevant keyword search, we came across several news reports regarding the Women’s Reservation Bill. We found a report by The Hindu from September 22, 2023, that the Women’s Reservation Bill or Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was passed in the Rajya Sabha unanimously after Lok Sabha passed the same on September 20. The report also mentioned that the Bill will only be implemented by 2029 after a census and delimitation exercise are conducted.

We accessed the actual Bill and found a section where the same has been mentioned. The Bill states that it “shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken for this purpose after the relevant figures for the first census taken after commencement of the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 have been published”.

While the Bill was being debated in the Lok Sabha, home minister Amit Shah had asserted that census and delimitation would begin soon after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Delimitation involves adjusting the boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies, leading to an expansion in the number of constituencies in line with the most recent population data. Hence, the delimitation exercise will be conducted after the Census. The last time the delimitation exercise was implemented in the country was in 2002. Since the 2021 Census could not be conducted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections here, the 128th Amendment Bill can only be effective before the 2029 general elections after the Census and delimitation exercise are completed.

Hence, it is clear that the Women’s Reservation Bill that shall provide 33 per cent reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies has not yet been implemented, and therefore, Kangana Ranaut’s assertion that she could be a candidate because of the Bill is baseless.

The post Kangana Ranaut’s claim that she got ticket because of Women’s Reservation Bill is false appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

McDonald’s Admits It Missed Sales Target Because of Gaza War Boycotts #shorts

VICE News — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:34:06 +0000

This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

Former Students of an All Boys School Are Protesting Because It’s Going Co-Ed #australia #shorts

VICE News — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 20:00:22 +0000

This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel – Friday, November 17, 2023

KPFA — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel. Israel announced Friday that it will allow a “very minimal” amount of fuel into the besieged territory daily. But the shipments appeared to be far less than what the U.N. has said is needed. Phone and internet services were partially restored Friday night after some fuel was delivered.
Top United Nations officials debriefed the United Nations General Assembly about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza today.
The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, has approved its biggest-ever federal budget, which will increase spending by around 25% in 2024, with record amounts going to defense.
The White House wants House Republicans to withdraw subpoenas targeting members of President Biden’s family as part of an impeachment inquiry.
The new GOP House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says he is publicly releasing thousands of hours of footage – some of it with sensitive material — from the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The chairman of the House Ethics Committee has filed a resolution to force a vote on expelling Republican Rep. George Santos from Congress.
Workers’ rights activists joined prisoner advocacy groups this week to call on the California prison system to give a meaningful raise in wages to prisoner workers in the state. Currently, incarcerated workers get paid less than ten cents an hour.

The post The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel – Friday, November 17, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

I had to skip meals after my husband died because of Home Office visa fees

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 13:22:22 +0000

I went hungry so me and my daughter could live in the UK. Now ministers are inflicting more trauma on the bereaved

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Anonymous.

Gaza’s Ahli: Large Numbers of People Took Refuge There because it is a Christian Hospital

Stuart Littlewood — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 17:24:58 +0000

The appalling loss of civilian life at the bombed Ahli Hospital has provoked worldwide outrage accompanied by Israel and Islamic Jihad trading accusations of blame.

Somebody who knows the hospital well is Ang Swee Chai, the orthopaedic surgeon and author. She became the first female consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and is co-founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).

Responding to an appeal for medical personnel from Christian Aid to treat war casualties in Lebanon, Ang Swee went to work at a hospital near the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Beirut where she witnessed the Sabra-Shatila massacre during the Israeli invasion in 1982. Yasser Arafat awarded her the Star of Palestine, the highest award for service to the Palestinian people.

According to this report, extensive damage from the bomb strike on the Ahli Hospital caused ambulances and private cars to rush some 350 casualties to Gaza City’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, which is already overwhelmed with wounded from other strikes. Its director, Mohammed Abu-Selmia, said doctors there were performing surgery on the floor and in the halls, mostly without anaesthetics. “We need equipment, we need medicine, we need beds, we need anaesthetics, we need everything.”

And he warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours, forcing a complete shutdown, unless supplies were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.

The crisis prompted Swee to email friends:

I am devastated. Ahli Hospital is the only Christian Hospital in the Gaza Strip and it is so well loved by everyone, both Muslims and Christians. It was built by the Church Mission Society around 1900. I first worked and lived in Ahli Hospital 1988-89 having answered a request from the Bishop of Jerusalem to look after the wounded of the First Intifada. I told the Bishop I would look after and protect them.

Large numbers of people were sheltering there as it is a Christian Hospital. There was no other place of safety – and there is also a water fountain to drink from given there was no water in Gaza. The bombs came without warning and targeted the centre of the courtyard where people were taking refuge.

Hundreds of bodies were lying in hospital courtyard – initially thought to be 500, then body count went up to 600, and now 810, many children dead. You can see the videos on Palestine TV and it is Ahli Hospital alright. Not fake news. We do not know whether the Hospital Director Dr Zulaiha Tarazi or the chief surgeon Dr Mahir and the faithful hospital staff who had been serving the hospital throughout their lives have survived or not.

I wish I can be with them at this terrible moment. Professor Ghassan Abu-Sitta is now working there to help the wounded but I know he must be completely exhausted. His wife managed to facetime him yesterday and he has lost a lot of weight in ten days.

Please pray for the dead. Console the mourners and stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Love you and God bless,

Swee

The argument over whose fault it was seems to revolve around Israel’s claim that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired, and that some 450 rockets launched from Gaza had fallen short and landed inside the Strip in the last 11 days. They say the blast was consistent with unspent rocket fuel catching fire and the damage was caused by the propellant as much as the warhead.

Islamic Jihad points to Israel’s warning to evacuate Al-Ahli and reports of a previous blast at the hospital, showing that the building was an Israeli target. The size of the explosion, the trajectory of the falling bomb and the extent of the destruction all suggest it was an Israeli strike.

I’m reminded of earlier days when most of Gaza’s garden-shed wizz-bangs failed to clear the border fence and the effort looked sadly amateurish. Surely they have progressed since then.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

A Detective Sabotaged His Own Cases Because He Didn’t Like the Prosecutor. The Police Department Did Nothing to Stop Him.

by Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, and Ryan Krull, Riverfront Times — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

by Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, and Ryan Krull, Riverfront Times

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The voicemail left on St. Louis police detective Roger Murphey’s cellphone carried a clear sense of urgency.

A prosecutor in the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office was pleading with Murphey to testify in a murder trial, the sort of thing the lead detective on a case would routinely do to see an arrest through to conviction. The prosecutor told Murphey that, without his testimony, the suspect could walk free.

“I wanted to reach out to you one more time,” Assistant Circuit Attorney Srikant Chigurupati said in a message one afternoon in June 2021. “I do think we need you on this case.”

Murphey didn’t respond.

Prosecutor Reaches Out

This is a portion of the first voicemail that prosecutor Srikant Chigurupati left for Roger Murphey asking the police detective to testify in a murder trial.

(Obtained by ProPublica)

That evening, Chigurupati left Murphey another voicemail. “If it makes any difference, this guy’s a really bad guy,” Chigurupati said, according to the message, which Murphey provided for this story. “What he did was pretty ridiculous. So, I mean, can you put your differences aside and focus on getting this guy?”

Again, Murphey didn’t respond.

Weeks later, a jury found Brian Vincent not guilty, and he went free. Murphey said he believes his refusal to testify helped scuttle the case — a claim corroborated by at least one juror from the trial.

A number of American cities have elected prosecutors who promised progressive law enforcement, focusing as much on police accountability as being tough on crime. In St. Louis, that prosecutor was Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who was elected in 2016 following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in the suburb of Ferguson. Gardner came into office pledging to reduce mass incarceration and promote rehabilitation over punishment.

But from San Francisco to Philadelphia, prosecutors like Gardner have faced pushback from the police and, in several cities, from their own courtroom assistants. Politicians and voters have tried to remove some of these prosecutors from office — and, in a number of cities, they have been successful.

Murphey’s resistance to Gardner — Chigurupati’s boss when Vincent’s case went to trial — was unusual and, perhaps, extreme. By his own account, he was willing to help murder suspects walk free to make a point, even if he arrested them and believed that they should be behind bars.

In 2019, Gardner added Murphey to a list of police officers who would not be allowed to apply for criminal charges because of questions about their credibility, and she said her office would evaluate whether those officers could testify in court. Although the identities of those officers were not made public, one of Murphey’s supervisors notified him that his name was on Gardner’s list.

Weeks later, a prosecutor in Gardner’s office notified Murphey that the office not only would actually let him testify in the cases he had led that were heading to trial — it expected him to.

Murphey, who retired in September 2021, said he felt stuck in a Catch-22. If Gardner was going to impugn his character and question his credibility, he decided, he wouldn’t cooperate with her prosecutors. He believed that if he went to court, defense lawyers would use his inclusion on Gardner’s list to attack him on cross-examination, making the trials more about him than the defendants.

Since that time, he has refused to testify in at least nine murder cases in which he served as lead detective. He said he told prosecutors that, if they subpoenaed him to testify, “I’m going to sit on the stand and I’m not going to answer any questions.”

His refusal, according to prosecutors, contributed to their decisions to offer defendants in at least four of the murder cases plea deals with reduced charges and lighter sentences. Prosecutors were still able to get murder convictions in three cases.

In one case, prosecutors dropped the charges altogether, saying the office “did not have witness participation.” Though it wasn’t clear if Murphey’s refusal contributed to the decision, he said the prosecution would have been hamstrung without him because he had collected evidence and conducted interviews in the case.

Vincent’s case was the only acquittal at trial.

Former Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner (Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Murphey never faced discipline from the police department for refusing to testify, a fact that criminal justice experts find astonishing. They said his refusal undermined not just the integrity of the cases but also the police department’s commitment to justice.

Gardner battled the police and their union over her platform throughout her nearly six and a half years in office. But she also struggled with a host of internal issues, from the departure of dissatisfied prosecutors to a growing backlog of cases that the office could not manage. Those issues contributed to stinging criticism of her leadership — initially from law enforcement but then from even her own prosecutors.

It wasn’t until this May that staff departures became so numerous and pressure on her to resign so fierce that she stepped down. In exchange for her resignation, Republican lawmakers agreed to drop a bill that would have allowed the state to take over the circuit attorney’s office. The Republican attorney general also dropped a lawsuit seeking to force her out.

Robert Tracy, the St. Louis police chief, did not respond to an interview request. Gardner did not respond to requests for comment, and she has retreated from public life. The office is now run by Gabriel Gore, a former federal prosecutor appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, to serve until an election next year. Gore has issued updates about his supervision of the office, including hiring dozens of prosecutors and reducing a backlog of pending cases.

Murphey, who sees himself as a righteous renegade in St. Louis’ beleaguered law enforcement system, wishes other officers had taken similar stands against prosecutors like Gardner. But he said he understands why they haven’t. “They have wives, they have kids, they have tuition, medical bills,” he said. “But me — it’s just me and my wife, and my wife is like, ‘Go for it.’”

At least 10 other officers refused to cooperate with Gardner’s team, according to interviews and court records. But Murphey stood apart because of his crucial role in some of the city’s most significant, and most violent, cases.

While expressing some sympathy for the family of the victim whose fatal beating Vincent was tried for, Murphey stood by his decision not to cooperate.

“Brian Vincent should be sitting in a penitentiary right now for the rest of his life,” he said. “But he’s not.”

The report of a suspicious death came across Murphey’s desk just after sunset on a cold November evening in 2018. A man named Larry Keck had been found in his bed, partly covered by a sheet, his face and body severely battered.

Murphey pulled up to a four-family flat in Shaw, a neighborhood of red brick homes on the city’s south side. As he stepped into Keck’s apartment, a painting in the living room caught his eye. It depicted an Italianate-style mansion in Lafayette Square, and it stirred a memory from his childhood. The mansion had once been owned by Keck, whom Murphey had known when he was young. Keck had spent his working life restoring some of St. Louis’ grandest homes, fixing windows and other architectural elements. Murphey had once helped him move furniture.

Murphey and other officers quickly zeroed in on Vincent, 40, as a suspect. Police reports and interviews show that Vincent and Keck, who was 68, had been in a romantic relationship, and that Vincent had been staying at Keck’s apartment on and off after getting out of prison earlier that year. A friend of Keck’s told police she had seen them together at his house late the night before.

Vincent had at least 31 felony convictions at the time and had served five stints in prison over the previous two decades; the longest was six years. His most recent conviction was for a 2014 home burglary, where he stole hundreds of dollars’ worth of electronics and jewelry, according to police and court records.

Six months before Keck’s death, neighbors called the police one night as Vincent loudly banged on Keck’s door for 45 minutes. An officer provided Keck with a form to request a restraining order against Vincent, but there’s no record of Keck filing it. Keck’s friends told police they had noticed bruises on him in the past, leading them to suspect that Vincent was abusing him. Keck had also told the friends that Vincent was stealing from him.

Murphey brought Vincent to police headquarters for questioning and placed him in a small, windowless room. According to a video of the interrogation, which Murphey provided, Vincent told Murphey and another detective that he and Keck had been out with friends the night before Keck was found dead and that some of them had gone back to Keck’s apartment at about 10 p.m. to smoke crack cocaine. Vincent said that afterward he slept in the alley behind the house and woke around 2 a.m. He said he then walked downtown — a distance of 4 miles — to see his probation officer.

Murphey questioned Vincent’s account, pointing out that his clothes, which Vincent said he was still wearing from the night before, were remarkably clean for someone who had slept in an alley. He noted, too, that the overnight temperature was 19 degrees, making it difficult to believe that Vincent had slept outside. Vincent seemed indignant, telling Murphey that he should be looking at Keck’s drug dealers as possible suspects.

“Some of them are probably dangerous,” he said in the video of the interrogation.

In an interview room at St. Louis police headquarters, Detective Roger Murphey questions Brian Vincent, a suspect in the 2018 killing of Larry Keck. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Murphey told Vincent that he believed Vincent had killed Keck. When Vincent asked for a lawyer, according to the video, Murphey ended the interrogation, arresting Vincent on a first-degree murder charge.

Murphey later tracked down two maintenance workers who had been at the building. One of them picked Vincent out of a photo lineup, according to police reports, and said he saw Vincent go in and out of Keck’s apartment a short time before Keck’s body was discovered.

Murphey said in a sworn deposition, taken by Vincent’s lawyer as part of pretrial proceedings, that the lack of a plausible alibi was “what sealed it for me,” according to the deposition.

Vincent, in a brief interview, said he was innocent and described Keck as a close friend: “We worked together and had our differences but he was a good man.” He called Murphey a “crooked cop” who tried to frame him.

He said Murphey “didn’t have the balls to show up” at his trial.

Murphey started his working life in 1982 at age 17 as an Army cook, and three years later he enlisted in the Air Force as a security specialist. During Operation Desert Storm, he spent close to two years at bases in Europe, but he returned to the U.S. and Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri when his wife became ill.

During his time at Whiteman, he got a part-time job as a police officer in La Monte, a small town near the base. It was light work, he said, watching over a general store and a handful of shops.

Murphey returned to St. Louis and entered the police academy, graduating in May 1995. Two years later, he was named officer of the year in the city’s 9th police district. The head of a neighborhood association had written a letter to Murphey’s captain commending Murphey for helping to oust drug dealers from a problem property.

Paris Bouchard, who wrote that letter, said he remembered Murphey as being uncommonly accessible and helping to “bring amazing change to our block.”

“He was so good at what he was doing,” Bouchard said.

Murphey became a detective in 2007 — work that he said satisfied his curiosity. “I like finding out what happened. I’m nosy,” he said. Four years later, he won a coveted transfer to the homicide unit.

“I'm not saying that I was the greatest,” Murphey said. “But you know, to get there, you’ve got to be able to prove yourself. You did your time on the street.”

In audio recordings of his interviews with witnesses and suspects, which Murphey provided, he seemed to balance sternness with empathy, establishing an initial rapport before launching into his questioning. His questions started out broad, then zeroed in on details.

In one recording, he began to question a suspect’s wife by asking, “What kind of dogs you got? I’ve got pit bulls myself.” Then he moved to the matter at hand. “You weren’t with him today when he shot at this lady?”

Scott Ecker, who supervised Murphey in the homicide unit, called him a great detective. “You’re just not going to find a more passionate individual that actually cares about not only the victim but the victim’s family,” he said.

Yet Murphey was prone to office disputes. He accused colleagues of tampering with his phone and desk. When residents protested against police brutality, he criticized Black leaders who put a spotlight on racial bias within the department, sometimes accusing them of twisting facts to ascribe racial motives to situations where he believed race was not a factor.

His comments didn’t go unnoticed. Sgt. Heather Taylor, then a supervisor in the homicide unit and the leader of an organization for Black officers, challenged Murphey’s comments as racially insensitive. Murphey, in turn, said that he complained to the command staff about what he viewed as Taylor’s false claims of racism in the department.

In a recent interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Murphey named three Black, female leaders — Gardner, Taylor and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones — as the reason many officers had left the department. He called the women “catalysts that broke the system.”

Taylor, who is now the city’s deputy public safety director, said that during their time in the homicide unit, she had dealt with complaints about Murphey being insubordinate and combative with colleagues. “If fighting racism is me breaking the police department,” she said, “I hope more people do exactly what I did.”

Gardner and the police force were at odds even before she was elected. Speaking to supporters days before her resignation, she recounted a meeting with officials from the St. Louis Police Officers Association before the election, where, she said, union officials told her, “We will let you be in this office if you make sure you never hold any police officer accountable.”

Representatives for the union did not respond to requests for comment.

During her first year in office, Gardner accused the police department of withholding evidence in about two dozen cases in which a police officer shot someone, and she asked the city to launch an independent team to lead all investigations into such incidents. A city bill to create the team did not advance to a vote.

The police union, meantime, routinely criticized Gardner, saying she refused to issue criminal charges in cases where officers had made arrests; they argued that she rejected far more cases than her predecessor, Jennifer Joyce. In response, Gardner said the cases often lacked sufficient evidence.

Gardner’s first high-profile prosecution was one she inherited from Joyce: a murder case against Jason Stockley, a white St. Louis police officer who was accused of shooting and killing a Black man during a chase and then planting a gun on him. Stockley was acquitted, which sparked street protests. Gardner said the acquittal showed the need for independent investigations of police shootings, which she said her office should lead.

In August 2018, Gardner created what became known as her “exclusion list,” which she said included 28 officers whose conduct had undermined their credibility. She said prosecutors would refuse to issue charges in any case involving an officer on the list that depended on their testimony.

Some officers, however, would still be allowed to testify on cases that had been launched before the list was created. Murphey wasn’t yet on the list.

Prosecutors are required to disclose to the defense any evidence that may favor the accused or undermine the credibility of a witness. A national police chiefs association recommends that police departments inform prosecutors when any issues arise that could affect officers’ credibility, such as making false reports or expressing racial bias. But St. Louis police have not had a procedure for this. Joyce said the extent to which the police department shared such information depended on who was the chief at the time. “Some were more forthcoming than others,” she said.

Nationally, the approach to these lists varies. While some prosecutors offices don’t maintain such lists, others do but choose to keep them private. Some offices, including that of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago, have made them public. Joyce said her office did create internal records on officers to be excluded from prosecutions but mainly operated with a “mental list.”

Gardner’s replacement, Gore, said he had no exclusion list and had no plans to try to keep tabs on officers with credibility problems. He said that was up to the police department to do.

“I don’t have the attorney manpower to send people over and have them scouring through police personnel files, looking for things that might potentially be relevant to a witness’s credibility and necessary to be produced at a trial,” Gore said.

The first batch of names on Gardner’s list included officers who had refused to cooperate with her office in cases where they had shot someone. The police union said after Stockley’s trial that other officers who had used force to arrest suspects feared becoming targets of prosecutors. Gardner said their refusal to testify prevented her from bringing cases to trial. Tensions continued to rise after the police union said it wanted the state legislature to change the law so Gardner could be impeached or recalled.

In this 2019 Facebook post, the St. Louis Police Officers Association encourages a commenter to advocate for the removal of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. (Via Facebook. Redactions by ProPublica.)

One afternoon in March 2019, St. Louis police officers entered Gardner's office with a search warrant and seized a computer server. The raid had been ordered by a special prosecutor investigating a perjury claim tied to an investigator in Gardner’s office. But an appeals court intervened and the police returned the equipment.

Gardner saw the raid as a direct affront to her authority. She sharply criticized the police, accusing them of deploying tactics “to intimidate, harass and embarrass this office.”

In June 2019, the Plain View Project, a national research project that identifies officers across the country making racist, violent or anti-Muslim social media posts, released a database that included posts from St. Louis officers. Using the information, Gardner added 22 more names to the exclusion list, telling the city’s public safety director and police chief in a letter that the posts were “shocking and beneath the dignity of someone who holds such a powerful position.”

Murphey was one of those officers whose social media posts were exposed and was added to the list. After the Stockley acquittal, he posted that the protestors were supporting “a violent thug,” and he referred to Gardner as “kimmy g.”

In this 2017 Facebook post, Murphey refers to a man fatally shot by a St. Louis police officer as a “thug” and to Gardner as “kimmy g.” (Via Facebook)

Over several interviews with reporters, Murphey said he was not a racist. He said he had a right to express his views, particularly about the Stockley case. He had been involved in the initial investigation of Stockley, he said, and said that Stockley “did not commit a crime.”

Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and currently the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a think tank focused on prosecution reform, said if an officer’s posts indicate troubling attitudes or biases, prosecutors are right to question “whether they still have integrity and still can be trusted to pursue their job in a fair and unbiased and professional way.”

Foxx, the state’s attorney in Cook County, said in an interview that “credibility matters.” A defense attorney, she added, would be able to use those posts “to demonstrate how this person described the victim of a crime, and his credibility before a jury or before a judge would be called into question.”

But R. Michael Cassidy, a law professor at Boston College and an expert in prosecutorial ethics, said that Gardner’s use of the list seemed fraught. He questioned why a prosecutor would expect any officer on an exclusion list to cooperate with them.

“You might take the position that ‘I’ve justifiably alienated the police officer and there’s a public interest in not having racist police officers,’” he said. “Now you have to deal with the consequences of that.”

Those consequences can be significant, including allowing some defendants to go free even though they may have committed serious crimes because a prosecutor can no longer call an officer to the witness stand. As a result, prosecutors who keep these lists need to be selective about who they include, said Alissa Marque Heydari, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney who is now a research professor at Vanderbilt University.

A more flexible approach, Heydari said, would be for prosecutors to keep another list of officers who have committed misconduct that would not be disqualifying — an officer who was arrested for drunken driving, for instance — but that must still be disclosed to the defense as part of a robust effort to fulfill legal requirements. It’s the difference between using a scalpel and a chainsaw.

“Once you put them on that list, there’s not much flexibility,” said Heydari. “You can’t then go back and say, ‘Well, I need this officer because it’s a homicide.’”

After Murphey was placed on the exclusion list, supervisors struggled to find a role for him since any case he became involved in would be compromised. At times, he did nothing more than stream movies at his desk.

Left Sitting Idle

Murphey describes how he spent his time at the police department after he was placed on a list that questioned his credibility and, as a result, was excluded from case work. This has been condensed for clarity.

(Sacha Pfeiffer/NPR)

At the same time, some former colleagues said, he openly criticized the police department's management and talked more and more about Gardner. Some detectives who shared his criticism of the circuit attorney came to understand that it could harm their cases if he played a role in them.

In August 2019, two months after Murphey was placed on the exclusion list, he was transferred to the patrol division. He would no longer wear a suit to work. The department issued him a standard blue uniform and assigned him to respond to radio calls. He was a beat cop again.

Then, in January 2020, Gardner filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the city, the local police union and others of a coordinated and racist conspiracy to force her out of office. Murphey’s Facebook posts were among the evidence she cited.

Gardner’s clash with the police only seemed to bolster her reputation among city voters. After a resounding victory in the August 2020 Democratic primary, her reelection was all but assured.

Weeks later, a federal judge dismissed her lawsuit, deeming it “nothing more than a compilation of personal slights.”

Although Murphey was downgraded to patrol, his murder cases continued moving forward in court. Lining up and preparing the testimony of the lead detective is a basic step for prosecutors as they get ready for trial. The lead detective often weaves together the details of a crime and the investigation that followed, providing a narrative for the jury.

But if the lead detective is absent, the prosecution can be undermined. Key information about the crime scene and witness interviews, which the detective usually provides from the witness stand, may be lost. Jurors may suspect something is amiss.

The cases against Terrence Robinson and Naesean Thompson, two men charged with first-degree murder in the 2017 shooting of Raymond Neal, were the first of Murphey’s investigations to head to trial after Gardner put him on the exclusion list.

Murphey’s investigation had found that the incident started when Neal got into an argument with Thompson, who was allegedly selling drugs outside a convenience store. Neal grabbed Thompson’s jacket and the men began to fight. Thompson pulled out a gun. Robinson — who was there with Thompson — then pulled out his own gun and shot Neal, according to police.

Murphey obtained surveillance video from the store, which showed the shooting. He interviewed witnesses, helped identify Thompson and Robinson as suspects, and wrote the police reports that concluded that the two men were responsible for Neal’s death.

The prosecutor handling the case, H. Morley Swingle, recognized how important Murphey was going to be and sought clarification about Murphey’s status from a top Gardner official. The official assured Swingle that Murphey could testify, according to an email from Swingle to Murphey’s attorney, which Murphey provided.

Although Gardner had indefinitely banned certain officers, Murphey wasn’t one of them. He fell into “some lesser category,” Swingle wrote in the email. Still, Murphey refused to testify for Swingle.

In October 2019, Swingle made a deal with Robinson: He dropped the murder case, and Robinson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. Robinson was sentenced to seven years in prison with eligibility for parole early in the third year of his incarceration, far less than he would have received if convicted of first-degree murder.

Robinson was released on parole last year. He could not be reached for comment and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

In February 2020, Thompson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to time served in the city jail. He did not respond to a request for comment through his lawyer, Neil Barron. Barron said that while proving the murder charge against his client to a jury would have been challenging, “Murphey refusing to testify absolutely makes this a harder case to prosecute.”

Marcia Miller, Neal’s mother, said that prosecutors told her that a plea bargain was their only option in the case “because of the evidence,” even though she reminded them that they had a videotape of Robinson killing her son. She said that the prosecutors never mentioned that Murphey had refused to testify.

Swingle said Murphey’s refusal to cooperate was not the only factor influencing his decision to accept a plea deal in the Robinson case. He said it would have been difficult to secure a murder conviction for a killing over a drug deal, even though it had been captured on video.

Murphey refused to testify even as prosecutors negotiated what he viewed as lenient deals with defendants he was convinced were guilty of particularly brutal crimes and deserved life sentences.

“Do What I Can Do”

Murphey describes his reasoning behind refusing to testify.

(Jacob Wiegand, special to ProPublica)

One of those defendants, he said, was Collin Aubuchon, who was charged with killing Richard Kladky in March 2019. The men had been staying in the same sober living facility, but after clashing over Aubuchon’s flirtatious text exchange with Kladky’s wife, Kladky moved to another facility.

On Kladky’s first day at his new home, Aubuchon used GPS to locate Kladky and shot him five times, killing him. He then surrendered to a security guard and claimed he had just shot someone who had threatened him.

During the interrogation, Aubuchon confessed, saying Kladky had been sending him threatening texts warning him to keep away from his wife, according to a video of the interrogation, which Murphey provided to the news organizations. While examining Aubuchon’s phone and tablet, Murphey found that Kladky had threatened to hurt Aubuchon if he didn’t stop flirting with his wife, the video showed. Aubuchon, in turn, taunted Kladky by saying he was going to have sex with her.

“I was just being an asshole,” Aubuchon told Murphey.

With the confession in hand, Murphey said that he viewed the case as a “slam dunk” that would have resulted in a life sentence — if he had cooperated. “I don’t know of anything that would mitigate what he did,” Murphey said.

In May 2021, Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Desilets agreed to a plea deal with Aubuchon that called for a 13-year prison term for voluntary manslaughter; Aubuchon is scheduled for release in early 2026.

In a brief telephone interview from prison, Aubuchon said he didn’t know Murphey had refused to testify against him and acknowledged that he might have benefited from that refusal. He said he took a plea deal rather than risk life in prison.

Desilets said that pushing the Aubuchon case, as well as others, to trial without Murphey’s cooperation would have been like “playing chicken.” He said he did the best he could to get justice for the victims.

“Roger caused a lot of problems,” he said.

Eric Lee Boehmer, Aubuchon’s lawyer, said that while he wasn’t sure how important Murphey’s testimony would have been to the prosecution, his refusal to testify wasn’t the sole factor influencing the plea bargain. He said there was strong evidence his client acted in self defense.

Kladky’s relatives said they were never told about Murphey’s refusal to cooperate in the case.

Mary Kladky, his sister, said it was “heartbreaking” that a police officer would abandon a case. As for Aubuchon, she said, “Just as we’re beginning to heal, he’s going to walk free.”

Murphey’s refusal did not always sink a case. At times, prosecutors still went to trial without him. Three cases proceeded to trial without Murphey’s cooperation — each resulting in first-degree murder convictions. In one of the cases handled by Desilets, he said the prosecution would have been “smoother” with Murphey’s testimony.

In some cases, prosecutors could not even salvage a plea deal. Chigurupati, the prosecutor in the Larry Keck murder, went to trial against Brian Vincent without his lead detective.

It’s hard to pinpoint the impact of Murphey’s absence on the outcome of the case. Missouri law considers records from criminal proceedings confidential after an acquittal, so reporters were unable to get a copy of the trial transcript, which could have illuminated the prosecution’s shortcomings.

In an interview, one juror said gaps in the evidence hurt the case, but that the absence of the lead detective was particularly noticeable. He said he wondered, “Why the heck weren’t there a couple of key players there?” said the juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. “Why wasn’t the lead detective there?”

A second juror noted that, although Murphey’s absence wasn’t a pivotal factor, the prosecution seemed to her “scattered.” Vincent’s lawyer adeptly cast doubt on his guilt, leaving her believing in his innocence.

Murphey said his absence likely prevented Chigurupati from presenting a coherent narrative of the crime and investigation. “I’m pretty much sure that me not being there didn’t help the case at all. If I’m sitting on a jury and the main detective’s not there, I’d be wondering why,” he said.

During his holdout, Murphey agreed to testify in one case: the trial of Eric Lawson, who was accused of murdering his 10-month-old son, his ex-girlfriend and her mother in 2012. Murphey agreed to cooperate because Gardner's office recused itself due to a conflict of interest, leaving the prosecution with then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a vocal critic of Gardner.

Murphey also said he felt a special duty to one of the victims, the sister of a police officer. “The bias,” he explained, “is it’s a policeman’s family. And, you know, we’re all supportive for each other.”

In pretrial motions, defense attorneys argued that Murphey’s credibility was a central issue in the case, and said that, during the trial, they should be allowed to ask him about his Facebook posts and his removal from the homicide unit. Since Lawson was Black, they contended that Murphey’s use of the word “thug” and his disrespectful nickname for Gardner “could be perceived by jurors as evidence of racial animus.”

The judge in the trial refused to allow the defense to cross-examine Murphey about his social media activity, saying it “may be unprofessional, but it’s not racist.” Murphey ultimately testified at trial and, in May 2021, a jury convicted Lawson and sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

Murphey never faced disciplinary action for his refusal to cooperate with prosecutors. In fact, the police department continued to send him to investigate cases after he was placed on the exclusion list. He continued to draw the same salary.

Murphey said that, in mid-2020, during staffing shortages in the worst months of the pandemic, his supervisors asked him to work again as a detective, though not in the homicide unit. Murphey said he warned supervisors that putting him back on investigations was ill-advised. “I said, ‘I’m not going to be good to you, because I’m just going to be sitting there,’” he recalled. He even cautioned supervisors about pairing him with a partner as a way to work around his restrictions.

Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in legal ethics, said Murphey’s stance was “absurd” and a “dereliction of duty.”

“If you’re hired to do something, you do it,” he said. “You don’t have to love your boss. If you hate your boss, you should leave. But don’t sabotage the work you’re doing.”

But he said the police department was wrong as well to let Murphey continue investigating cases while he was on Gardner’s exclusion list because the department knew his involvement could compromise those cases.

Joyce, Gardner’s predecessor, said it was hard to believe the department allowed Murphey to refuse to testify for so long. “The mindset that ‘I’m not going to testify in murder cases as a protest’ is, I believe, unprofessional,” she said.

Cassidy, the Boston College law professor, said “the police chief needs to order that person to testify, and on threat of discipline.” He said the prosecutor “needs to either convince the police chief to order him to testify or needs to go to court to get a subpoena, and when he refuses to come in, ask the court to issue an arrest warrant for his appearance.”

None of that was done. Desilets said forcing Murphey to court would have done no good. Murphey would have still refused to testify and become a hostile witness. And hostile witnesses, he said, are “mostly ineffective with jurors.”

Just before her resignation, Gardner had scored a major victory, one that epitomized what many say is the ideal role of progressive prosecutors. On Feb. 14 of this year, a local judge exonerated Lamar Johnson, who had spent almost three decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. Gardner had spearheaded the effort to free Johnson after her conviction integrity unit uncovered prosecutorial misconduct and shoddy police work in his case. The state attorney general’s office under Eric Schmitt, before his election to the U.S. Senate in November 2022, had opposed the effort.

But a series of events quickly sapped her political support. Four days after Johnson’s release, a 17-year-old visiting downtown St. Louis for a volleyball tournament was struck by a reckless driver and had to have both legs amputated. The driver had been free on bond even though he had violated the conditions of his release dozens of times.

The responsibility for the lapse was unclear, falling somewhere between Gardner’s office and the judge, but public outrage rained hard on Gardner. Republican lawmakers began to push for legislation that would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crime in St. Louis, effectively undermining Gardner’s authority.

Mayor Tishaura Jones, a former Gardner ally, added her voice to the criticism. She said Gardner had lost the “trust of the people.” Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who succeeded Schmitt, sued to remove Gardner from office.

Then Gardner’s office, which had been losing key lawyers, failed to appear on the first day of a high-profile murder trial of a man accused of killing someone on the grounds of the Gateway Arch. Gardner’s office blamed the snafu on a staff attorney not properly requesting time off; a text message from that lawyer, which became public, showed him writing of Gardner: “I half expect her to be in jail before my vacation ends.”

The following week, Gardner’s office failed to show up at a hearing in the case of a man accused of shooting an 11-year-old. The prosecutor’s office had already missed the first day of the scheduled trial, and this second no-show prompted the judge to appoint a special prosecutor to consider contempt charges against Gardner and the prosecutor assigned to the case.

The judge, during a court hearing, called Gardner’s office “a rudderless ship of chaos.”

Gardner dug in. But the following weeks saw her office embroiled in additional controversies, including the resignation of a prosecutor who criticized her leadership. As her office continued to lose staff, it was revealed that Gardner was enrolled in an advanced nursing program, a possible violation of a state law requiring the circuit attorney to give their “entire time and energy” to their official duties.

A few days before her resignation, Gardner spoke from the pulpit of a church to a few dozen supporters and said she “never had a fair shake.” All along, she said, she was surrounded by people “who have colluded and conspired inside this office and out to make sure we’re not successful.”

One unresolved murder case that involves Murphey — though he did not act as lead detective — is the 2015 death of Kristopher Schmeiderer, who died from a knife attack that had occurred in 2014.

Before Schmeiderer’s death, Andrew Lynn Barnett had been convicted of first-degree assault and armed criminal action for attacking Schmeiderer. But the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2019, ruling that the judge in the case had erred by not giving the jury an instruction that self-defense could have justified the attack, even though Barnett had claimed in his defense that he didn’t attack Schmeiderer at all.

In 2021, the circuit attorney’s office charged Barnett with second-degree murder. A trial is expected this fall.

Though Murphey didn’t testify at the assault trial, he did contribute to the evidence collection. He helped find clothes that Barnett allegedly discarded in a sewer after the attack and seized them as evidence.

Now, his testimony has become more valuable. One of the detectives who testified at Barnett’s first trial has since died, and the circuit attorney’s office is trying to line up its witnesses — including Murphey.

Kathy Schmeiderer, the victim’s mother, said she hopes Murphey will testify.

“We want justice for our son, to close the wound,” she said.

But Murphey said he won’t take the stand.

Sacha Pfeiffer of NPR contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, and Ryan Krull, Riverfront Times.

"Hell is coming down the Road because you didn’t Act in Time" | Roger Hallam | October 2023 #shorts

Just Stop Oil — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 16:07:14 +0000

This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

“Serial” Podcast’s Adnan Syed Might Go Back to Prison Because of Toxic Maryland Politics

Akela Lacy — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Even if you’ve never heard “Serial,” the true crime podcast that went viral in 2014, you’ve probably heard about the case it made famous. Adnan Syed was 17 years old when he was arrested in 1999 for killing 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore. A jury found Syed guilty the following year, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

After “Serial” premiered in 2014 and raised questions about the case, a Maryland court heard Syed’s appeal and he was awarded a new trial. Holes in the original prosecution were established, new suspects were identified, and DNA evidence was newly tested. After a long fight, his conviction was overturned last year, and the charges against him were officially dropped in October 2022.

In March of this year, though, Syed’s conviction was reinstated. Lee’s family had filed an appeal and argued that the state’s attorney — what the state of Maryland calls its local prosecutors — hadn’t given adequate notice for them to attend the September hearing to vacate Syed’s conviction, though Lee’s brother did attend the hearing on Zoom. Nonetheless, a panel of three appellate judges ruled 2-to-1 in the family’s favor and reinstated the conviction and ordered a new hearing.

It may be tempting to chalk up the back and forth of Syed’s case to the vicissitudes of the court system, but the rollercoaster story also speaks to clashes of political personalities exacerbated by Maryland’s shifting tides on criminal justice reforms. The airing of “Serial” and the revival of Syed’s case came in tandem with a push for criminal justice reforms in Maryland that boosted Syed’s appeal — a push that became bound up with animosity between elected officials amid the pressure cooker of state politics. Now, as the dust settles over the infighting, Syed could be sent back to prison.

The interpersonal disputes surrounding the Syed case could now lead Maryland to reshape how victims influence the legal system, said David Jaros, a law professor at University of Baltimore who runs the Center for Criminal Justice Reform.

“There are just a variety of unique strands of interpersonal issues as well as a highly publicized case that received unusual amounts of media attention,” he said. “One of the things that’s troubling is that those factors may be playing a role in creating the precedent and establishing policy on what the role of victims are within this process.”

“It is troubling that perhaps there will be the shadow, at least, hanging over this case that the result is not based on sound legal reasoning or policy, but rather these other political factors,” Jaros said. “This is not the case that we want shaping and deciding the very complex question of the role that the victim’s family should play in the court room.”

Amy Berg, Susan Simpson, Asia McClain, and Rabia Chaudry of the television show “The Case Against Adnan Syed” speak during an event in Pasadena, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2019.

Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Marilyn Mosby v. Brian Frosh

At the center of the wrangling over the Syed case was a long-standing feud between the former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and the former State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby. Mosby, who handled the review of the Syed case, had been pushing a slew of criminal justice reforms in the background as Syed pursued his high-profile appeal. Mosby, however, was in the limelight herself, facing federal trial for perjury and fraud related to mortgage applications to purchase a home and condo in Florida. In a September television interview, Frosh suggested that Mosby had timed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction to distract from her own legal woes.

For Mosby, comments like Frosh’s revealed that more than a push for justice was at work in Syed’s appeal. Evidence of guilt, she said, was not driving Frosh’s support for putting Syed back behind bars, but rather interpersonal and political disputes. She told The Intercept, “There was definitely a personal animus from Frosh when he went into court and said the case wasn’t sustainable based on victim’s rights.” Frosh, for his part, told The Intercept that political disagreements with Mosby were unrelated to how his office handled Syed’s appeal: “Politics played absolutely no part in our office’s work on the case.”

The pressure on Mosby’s office was not unique. A movement to address inequities in the criminal justice system and hold police misconduct to account helped sweep dozens of reform prosecutors into office since the mid-2010s. As the prosecutors moved to divert resources to violent crimes over low-level offenses, open wrongful conviction units, and prosecute police misconduct, the backlash was swift. Opponents of reform have been quick to blame these prosecutors for the rise in particular crimes that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic.

In states from California to Pennsylvania, reform prosecutors have faced increasing scrutiny and political attacks, with conservative officials and police unions leading the charge. At least17 states have introduced legislation to limit the authority of reform prosecutors since 2017, and reform prosecutors are facing increasingly aggressiverecall attempts. There are parallels between Mosby’s clashes with Frosh and reform prosecutors fighting with state-level officials in other places, but the interpersonal dimensions of the Syed case make it more complex than other disputes.

“What strikes me as very unusual about this is this kind of internecine battle between Mosby’s office and the AG’s office on it,” said Daniel Medwed, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law who studies wrongful convictions. “That’s what makes this more complicated.”

“What strikes me as very unusual about this is this kind of internecine battle between Mosby’s office and the AG’s office on it.”

In Maryland, Mosby didn’t fall neatly into the reform prosecutor mold, but she became the target of attacks by Frosh and other politicians who blamed her policies for rising crime in Baltimore. In 2019, Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan called on Frosh, a Democrat, to take violent crime cases away from Mosby, claiming that her office repeatedly released people without charges. Frosh said his office would do anything it could to cooperate with the governor. Last year, Hogan blamed Mosby’s office for a spike in homicides.

In late September, Frosh explicitly linked the Syed case to his soft-on-crime attacks on Mosby. After her office filed the motion to vacate Syed’s conviction, Frosh told reporters she should have worked harder to prosecute murder suspects. “If state’s attorney Mosby were concentrating as hard on trying murder cases and putting murderers behind bars as she has on this case,” Frosh said, referring to the Syed case, “I think our state would be quite a bit safer.”

A tribute to Hae Min Lee in a Woodlawn High School yearbook. Lee was abducted and killed in 1999.

Photo: Hayes Gardner/The Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Image

Attorney General’s Involvement

The fight between Mosby and Frosh over Syed’s case came to a head last March. Mosby’s office and Syed’s defense team had agreed to new DNA testing. Mosby filed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction in September, saying her office had found evidence of Brady violations — failures to hand over potentially exculpatory evidence — by the attorney general’s office. At the time, Mosby said Frosh made a “willful decision” to withhold the evidence. Mosby’s office officially dropped charges against Syed in October.

It was around the time that the motion to vacate was filed that a former associate of Frosh’s intervened. Kathleen Murphy had first prosecuted the Syed case in 1999 in her past role in the state’s attorney’s office. From there, she went on to direct the criminal division in Frosh’s office, where she again worked on Syed’s case, handling the attorney general’s involvement. Last September, Hogan appointed Murphy to be a judge at the Baltimore County District Court.

After the appointment, but before she joined the bench, Murphy became involved again in the Syed case, but not in her official capacity: She placed a call to Steve Silverman, a partner at the private law firm Silverman Thompson, to ask for an attorney to represent Lee’s family, according to Mosby, Silverman’s partner Brian Thompson, and another person with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a pending case.

Silverman had been involved with the case and was planning to represent the family, according to Thompson. Instead, Steve Kelly, an alum of Silverman Thompson who worked at a separate firm when Murphy placed her call, took on the case instead. Kelly changed firms in June and is no longer listed on the case. (Silverman declined to comment, and Kelly did not respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, declined to comment for this story while the case is pending.)

“It’s not unprecedented for prosecutors to try to assist victims,” said Medwed, the law professor. “I’m not aware of situations where they’ve called private lawyers.”

“It’s not unprecedented for prosecutors to try to assist victims. I’m not aware of situations where they’ve called private lawyers.”

Skirmishes between Frosh and Mosby continued to shape the legal fight between Syed and Lee’s family. In criminal appeals in Maryland, the attorney general is supposed to represent the state’s attorney. In the Syed case, however, Frosh frequently disparaged Mosby’s handling of the case in the press. Eventually, he supported the family’s appeal against Syed’s release, blasting Mosby in court for giving inadequate notice to Lee’s family to attend the hearing to vacate his conviction.

Frosh also criticized Mosby’s office for requesting new DNA testing in the case. He later told The Intercept in an interview that his attorney general’s office had already tested the DNA evidence, though Mosby said the evidence had not yet been tested.

One other wrinkle in the handling of the case by the attorney general’s office hangs over the Syed appeal. Thiru Vignarajah had worked the case from the attorney general’s office but was asked to leave his position in 2016 after an internal investigation into conduct toward his subordinates, several of whom claimed he harassed and abused them. When Vignarajah left for a private firm, though, he asked to take the Syed case with him.

It is common for the attorney general to hire outside counsel, which is what Vignarajah’s pro bono work on the Syed case was, Frosh said. “There was no compensation, it was just him finishing up work that he had been doing when he was in the office,” Frosh said. “It was not an unusual thing to do.” Jaros, the law professor, told The Intercept that attorneys typically do not transfer cases to private firms.

As a relatively new prosecutor with a heavy caseload, Mosby’s office welcomed the move. Frosh gave the green light and assigned Vignarajah to the case.

Marilyn Mosby, Maryland state attorney for Baltimore city, speaks during a news conference pertaining to a case against Adnan Syed on Oct. 11, 2022, in Baltimore.

Photo: Julio Cortez/AP

Maryland Supreme Court

Syed’s appeal remains in limbo while attorneys for Lee’s family fight to keep his conviction intact. The outcome of the case is now up to the Maryland Supreme Court. A decision by the court, which agreed to take the case in June, is expected by the end of this year. (Syed’s defense attorney declined to comment while the case is pending.)

Mosby said it was untrue that her move to vacate Syed’s conviction was motivated by politics. She said Syed had applied as early as 2021 to have his case evaluated by a unit created by her office after Maryland passed a law allowing review of juvenile sentencing. She would not, however, have a chance to see the case through. Embattled by her indictment for perjury and fraud, Mosby lost reelection last year.

The new state’s attorney, Ivan Bates, quickly reversed some of her criminal justice reforms. While Bates previously said he would drop charges against Syed, he has since expressed concern with the handling of the case.

Frosh’s office framed the decision to reinstate Syed’s conviction as a win for victim’s rights, and the Lee family’s attorneys applauded it. Mosby maintains that Lee’s family knew about the hearing and agreed to attend on Zoom.

“Crime victims have never had a weak voice in the process, so I think that’s a hard argument to make,” said Jaros, the University of Baltimore law professor, speaking of Frosh’s framing of the case. “We’re seeing an unusual willingness to involve the system in this case and reverse decisions and potentially create new precedent based on circumstances that are really somewhat unique to this case.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

"I’m here because I picked a side" | Zoe | Angel, London | 22 June 2023 | Just Stop Oil | #shorts

Just Stop Oil — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:53:04 +0000

This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

Children Are Dying Because Companies Are Too Scared to Sell Medicine to Iran

Murtaza Hussain — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:00:21 +0000

Amir Hossein Naroi, an Iranian boy, was only 10 years old when he died from thalassemia, an inherited blood disease. The condition is highly prevalent in the southern Iranian province of Sistan-Balochistan, where Naroi’s family lives; tens of thousands of people in the region are believed suffer from the disease. It is not an inevitably fatal condition: Thalassemia can be treated with regular blood transfusions and oral medications designed to remove the excess of iron built up in the bodies of patients. For much of his short life, Naroi was able to get treatment. His fate, however, was decided when access to the necessary medicines inside Iran began to dry up in recent years.

In the earliest years of his life, Naroi was taking a specialized drug known as Desferal, which is manufactured by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. Starting in 2018, however, around the time that President Donald Trump launched a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions against Iran, supplies of the iron-chelating drug in Iran — along with other medicines used to treat critical diseases — started to become difficult or impossible to access inside Iran, according to local NGOs supporting patients with the disease. By the summer of 2022, his organs failing due to complications from the disease, including damage to his organs from excess iron in his blood, Naroi passed away in a hospital, surrounded by his family.

According to documents obtained by The Intercept, multinational companies providing drugs for thalassemia and other conditions, as well as banks acting as intermediaries for attempted purchases, said U.S. foreign policy was ultimately causing the problems delivering drugs to Iranians. Namely, American sanctions against Iran have made the transactions so difficult that supplies of the medicines are dwindling.

The U.S. government is now facing a lawsuit from the Iran Thalassemia Society — an Iran-based NGO supporting victims of the disease — on behalf of Iranians with thalassemia and another inherited disease, epidermolysis bullosa, claiming that thousands of Iranian patients have been killed or injured after foreign companies producing specialized medicines and equipment for these diseases and others began cutting off or reducing their business with Iran as a result of sanctions. While the U.S. has given assurances that humanitarian trade with Iran will be exempted from sanctions, the lawsuit, which is currently pending appeal after being dismissed, alleges that the large-scale sanctioning of Iran’s banking sector has created a situation in which foreign companies are either unwilling or unable to do any trade with Iran at all.

“The American government has said that they will consider some exceptions for humanitarian aid, but in practice we have seen that there are no exceptions.”

“The American government has said that they will consider some exceptions for humanitarian aid, but in practice we have seen that there are no exceptions,” said Mohammed Faraji, staff attorney at the Iran Thalassemia Society. “We have had communications with countries that export medicines and medical equipment who have clearly told us that we cannot import medicaments to Iran because of sanctions. Banks won’t work with us, and health care companies won’t work with us. They are afraid of secondary sanctions and tell us that directly.”

Documents obtained by The Intercept bear out the picture of some companies balking at humanitarian trade with Iran because of the risk of being caught up in sanctions enforcement or because sanctions have closed off legal pathways for transacting with Iran. The communications reviewed, between European health care companies, foreign banks, and their Iranian counterparties, began in 2018. At times, the messages relayed are explicit: The companies won’t engage in trade with Iran — even to provide lifesaving medicines — due to the sanctions.

The intensity of foreign companies and banks aversion to dealing with Iranians reflects a victory of sorts for sanctions advocates, including hawkish pro-Israel advocacy groups and think tanks like United Against Nuclear Iran and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thanks to their efforts, Iran today is one of the most sanctioned and isolated countries on Earth. While its government has held on to power and continues to remain aggressive and defiant despite the international pressure, life for ordinary Iranians has become materially worse under the sanctions regime, especially patients suffering from rare diseases.

The letters between banks, drug companies, and their Iranian interlocutors show in detail how the “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iranian financial institutions have blocked even mundane transactions for medical equipment required to treat a range of conditions.

A letter in September 2018 from a Danish manufacturer of urology products, Coloplast, informed its Iranian distributor that “despite the fact that Coloplast products are not excluded by US and/or international export control sanctions, we now face a situation, where the international banks have stopped for financial transactions with Iran. Under current conditions it is not possible to receive money for products sold in Iran.” (Coloplast did not respond to a request for comment.)

Mölnlycke, a Swedish provider of specialized bandages needed to treat patients with epidermolysis bullosa, sent a letter that same year to the head of an Iranian NGO supporting patients with the disease, EBHome, commending the organization for its work helping patients with the condition. Despite the approbation, the company said it would not be sending any more bandages to treat Iranian epidermolysis bullosa sufferers: “Due to the U.S. economic sanctions in force Mölnlycke Healthcare have decided not to conduct any business in relation to Iran for the time being.” A complaint from an Iranian NGO was filed against the company in Sweden in 2021 over the humanitarian impact of its cessation of business in Iran, but the complaint was rejected. (Mölnlycke did not respond to a request for comment.)

The denial of these specialized bandages has been particularly dire for Iranian patients. Epidermolysis bullosa is a disease that causes painful blisters and sores to appear on patients’ bodies. Many people with the condition are children whose skin is particularly tender and who require specialized wound dressings to avoid tearing the skin off when bandages are changed. An Iranian specialist on the disease submitted a testimony as part of the pending lawsuit describing the cases of six young Iranian patients who suffered excessive bleeding, infection, and “excruciating, severe pain” as a result of losing access to the specialized bandages produced by Mölnlycke.

The sanctioning of these supplies has at times led to desperate workarounds by foreign governments. In 2020, the German government and UNICEF cooperated to purchase and deliver a shipment of specialized bandages to Iran. Iranian doctors have also been forced to rely on locally produced approximations of specialized foreign medicines, many of which are of poorer quality and have resulted in life-altering complications and even deaths of patients.

Thalassemia sufferers, in particular, have been forced to use a product known as “Desfonac,” a local equivalent which is less effective at treating the disease and carries debilitating side effects not found in the original product. The Intercept obtained communications made in 2018 by local country representatives for Novartis, the company that manufactures Desferal, telling their Iranian interlocutors the drug company experiencing difficulty conducting transactions as a result of banking sanctions. These transaction problems, local organizations working on the disease say, were the beginning of the end of their own steady access to thalassemia drugs, which must be regularly administered to patients with the disease to be effective.

“We have documented at least 650 people who have died since 2018 when we stopped being able to import medicine.”

“We have been fighting for years to control this disease inside Iran, and it is achievable, but the simple reality is that if patients do not get the iron-regulating drugs they need to treat it, they will die,” said Younus Arab, head of the Iran Thalassemia Society. “We have documented at least 650 people who have died since 2018 when we stopped being able to import medicine and over 10,000 who have had serious complications.”

Unlike other companies, and despite difficulties in receiving payments, Novartis did not cut off ties with Iran in response to U.S. sanctions. A spokesperson for Novartis told The Intercept that the company is willing to send medical supplies to Iran and has done so since the imposition of the “maximum pressure” sanctions, including through the use of a humanitarian trade channel created by the Swiss government in 2020.

The problem created by sanctions, according to the company, is less an unwillingness to do business with Iran over legal fears than an inability of Iranian officials to access their own foreign currency reserves to make payments. The sanctions, while not eliminating Iran’s foreign reserves, have frozen Iran’s access to them, sending the country’s accessible reserves from $122.5 billion down to a mere $4 billion between 2018 and 2020, according to International Monetary Fund figures. The collapse of accessible reserves has made it impossible for the Iranian government to carry out basic economic functions like stabilizing its currency or engaging in foreign trade, even with willing parties.

“Since the imposition of certain sanctions in 2018, the most significant challenge observed by many pharmaceutical companies has been a shortfall of foreign exchange made available by the Iranian government for the import of humanitarian goods, such as medicines,” said Michael Meo, the Novartis spokesperson. “With respect to thalassemia medicines specifically, Novartis has supplied these medicines continuously since 2019. We have been — and remain — ready to satisfy orders for these medicines.”

“However,” Meo’s statement continued, “for our medicines to reach thalassemia patients in Iran, Novartis relies on the action and collaboration of the Iran Ministry of Health and Food and Drug Authority in allocating sufficient foreign currency resources to import these medicines through regular commercial channels.” (The Iranian Ministry of Health and Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to requests for comment.)

For Arab, whether sanctions are creating difficulties importing medicines due to companies’ reticence or a lack of foreign currency reserves, the results are the same: Patients under the care of his organization are dying.

“We don’t want money,” he said, “what we need is medicine for these patients.”

Iranian citizens seem hopeful that incoming U.S. President Joe Biden will lift the sanctions as they read the news regarding the U.S. election on Nov. 9, 2020, in Tehran, Iran.

Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Trump-era economic sanctions were considered a crowning achievement of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Some of the economic sanctions against Iran targeted specific individuals and institutions involved in human rights abuses, but many others went after entire sectors of the Iranian economy, including its financial sector.

The blanket sanctions on Iranian banks essentially severed the country from trade with the rest of the world by cutting its financial arteries, including access to Iran’s own reserves held in foreign banks. The U.S. government has also imposed so-called secondary sanctions on Iran, meaning that any foreign entity that still dares to engage in trade with Iranian banks or companies puts itself at risk of being sanctioned and being cut off from doing business in the U.S. — a risk that few businesses are willing to take.

Though the U.S. government repeatedly insisted that humanitarian trade with Iran would not be affected by its “maximum pressure” campaign, economic sanctions experts said the claim is misleading. Assurances that ordinary Iranians will still be able to purchase food and medicine are meaningless, they say, when the sanctions in place are so broad that banks and foreign countries view any dealings at all with the country as a looming violation.

“The banking issue is the real crux of the problem. There is a general blocking authority on all of Iran’s financial institutions, some on which have been designated for terrorism-related reasons, some for WMD reasons, and some for human rights reasons,” said Tyler Cullis, an attorney at Ferrari & Associates, a D.C.-based law firm specializing in economic sanctions. “The Trump administration then came and imposed sanctions on Iran’s entire financial sector, and that has targeted any remaining Iranian institutions that were not covered by those measures.”

Although President Joe Biden campaigned in part on restoring the Obama-era nuclear deal, his administration effectively maintained the maximum pressure policy. The banking sanctions that made Iranian business anathema to foreign financial institutions remain in place, making the prospect of doing any trade with Iran too legally and financially risky to be worth it for any foreign company. Those risks are augmented by hawkish activist groups like United Against Nuclear Iran, which maintains public lists of companies accused of engaging in trade with Iran. The blacklists — on which UANI has in the past included companies engaged in legal trade, including for medicines, with Iran — create a potential for reputational risk that makes doing business with Iran an even more unsavory prospect.

“At the end of the Obama administration, we had ideas in front of the administration calling for a direct financial channel between the U.S. and Iran that would be able to facilitate licensed and exempt trade between the two countries. To be frank, the Obama administration rejected creating such a channel on multiple occasions,” said Cullis. “The U.S. has now hit a dead end where they have used up all their levers of pressure other than military force.”

He went on, “I sympathize with folks in Iran, as there are a lot of people there who are nonpolitical and simply trying to find solutions. But it’s really hard to find a solution when U.S. government itself is not interested in one.”

While U.S. sanctions succeeded at wrecking Iran’s middle class and preventing Iranians from accessing necessities like food and medicine, they failed to achieve the aims of Washington: forcing Iran to change its foreign policy or renegotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on less favorable terms. Instead, the Iranian government has survived waves of popular anger by doubling down on repression — including through executions and imprisonment of political dissenters — against an increasingly impoverished population.

Despite growing misery in the country, the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to be as firmly in charge as ever. The hardening narrative echoes the story of U.S. economic sanctions on countries like Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela that succeeded in harming civilians but never resulted in regime change.

“The original idea of such sanctions is that they will cause people to rise up and overthrow their government, but there is not much evidence of that while there is a lot of evidence that they harm ordinary people,” said Amir Handjani, a nonresident senior fellow at the Quincy Institute and a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project. “When you consider regular Iranians living under sanctions with rare diseases, who need specialized drugs that can only be imported from the West, they are facing a very dark future.”

“We’re talking about little children who need medical dressings and didn’t get them.”

The lawsuit currently filed in U.S. federal court in Oregon on behalf of Iranians with thalassemia calls on the U.S. government and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, which administers sanctions and trade licenses, to “permit the reintroduction of life-saving medicines and medical devices into Iran through normal business channels.”

The suit was recently dismissed by the court on grounds of proving standing by the plaintiffs; an appeal of the ruling was filed in May. Lawyers working on the case say that they will continue pressing the matter in U.S. courts to compel the government to create a solution that will allow critical medicines to reach patients inside Iran. Neither the Office of Foreign Assets Control nor the Biden White House responded to requests for comment.

“On a visceral level, people are suffering and dying. We’re talking about little children who need medical dressings and didn’t get them,” said Thomas Nelson, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the case. “No one is willing to stand up to the impunity and bullying of the U.S. government on this subject, and particularly OFAC. It ought to be brought to the public’s attention that these types of things are happening.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

Children Are Dying Because Companies Are Too Scared to Sell Medicine to Iran

Murtaza Hussain — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:00:21 +0000

“The American government has said that they will consider some exceptions for humanitarian aid, but in practice we have seen that there are no exceptions.”

“We have documented at least 650 people who have died since 2018 when we stopped being able to import medicine.”

“We don’t want money,” he said, “what we need is medicine for these patients.”

Iranian citizens seem hopeful that incoming U.S. President Joe Biden will lift the sanctions as they read the news regarding the U.S. election on Nov. 9, 2020, in Tehran, Iran.

Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“We’re talking about little children who need medical dressings and didn’t get them.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

“There’s so much poverty in America, not in spite of our wealth, but because of it."

Democracy Now! — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 16:57:59 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Elon Musk Wants to Cut Your Social Security Because He Doesn’t Understand Math

Jon Schwarz — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 10:00:49 +0000

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs court in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 24, 2023.

Photo: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If there’s one thing you can say for sure about Elon Musk, it’s that he has a huge number of opinions and loves to share them at high volume with the world. The problem here is that his opinions are often stunningly wrong.

Generally, these stunningly wrong opinions are the conventional wisdom among the ultra-right and ultra-rich.

In particular, like most of the ultra-right ultra-rich, Musk is desperately concerned that the U.S. is about to be overwhelmed by the costs of Social Security and Medicare.

He’s previously tweeted — in response to the Christian evangelical humor site Babylon Bee — that “True national debt, including unfunded entitlements, is at least $60 trillion.” On the one hand, this is arguably true. On the other hand, you will understand it’s not a problem if you are familiar with 1) this subject and 2) basic math.

More recently, Musk favored us with this perspective on Social Security:

Big reckoning coming due to low birth rate. Japan is a leading indicator.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to know where to start explaining, but let’s try.

First of all, Musk is saying that the U.S. will have difficulty paying Social Security benefits in the future due to a low U.S. birth rate. People who believe this generally point to the falling ratio of U.S. workers to Social Security beneficiaries. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, founded by another billionaire, is happy to give you the numbers: In 1960, there were 5.1 workers per beneficiary, and now there are only 2.8. Moreover, the ratio is projected to fall to 2.3 by 2035.

This does sound intuitively like it must be a big problem — until you think about it for five seconds. As in many other cases, this is the five seconds of thinking that Musk has failed to do.

You don’t need to know anything about the intricacies of how Social Security works to understand it. Just use your little noggin. The obvious reality is that if a falling ratio of workers to beneficiaries is an enormous problem, this problem would already have manifested itself.

Again, look at those numbers. In 1960, 5.1. Now, 2.8. The ratio has dropped by almost half. (In fact, it’s dropped by more than that in Social Security’s history. In 1950 the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was 16.5.) And yet despite a plunge in the worker-retiree ratio that has already happened, the Social Security checks today go out every month like clockwork. There is no mayhem in the streets. There’s no reason to expect disaster if the ratio goes down a little more, to 2.3.

The reason this is possible is the same reason the U.S. overall is a far richer country than it was in the past: an increase in worker productivity. Productivity is the measure of how much the U.S. economy produces per worker, and probably the most important statistic regarding economic well being. We invent bulldozers, and suddenly one person can do the work of 30 people with shovels. We invent computer printers, and suddenly one person can do the work of 100 typists. We invent E-ZPass, and suddenly zero people can do the work of thousands of tollbooth operators.

This matters because, when you strip away the complexity, retirement income of any kind is simply money generated by present-day workers being taken from them and given to people who aren’t working. This is true with Social Security, where the money is taken in the form of taxes. But it’s also true with any kind of private savings. The transfer there just uses different mechanisms — say, Dick Cheney, 82, getting dividends from all the stock he owns.

So it’s all about how much present day workers can produce. And if productivity goes up fast enough, it will swamp any fall in the worker-beneficiary ratio — and the income of both present day workers and retirees can rise indefinitely. This is exactly what happened in the past. And we can see that there’s no reason to believe it won’t continue, again using the concept of math.

The economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank, has done this math. U.S. productivity has grown at more than 1 percent per year — sometimes much more — over every 15-year period since World War II. If it grows at 1 percent for the next 15 years, it will be possible for both workers and retirees to see their income increase by almost 9 percent. If it grows at 2 percent — about the average since World War II — the income of both workers and retirees can grow by 20 percent during the next 15 years. This does not seem like the “reckoning” predicted by Musk.

What Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

What’s even funnier about Musk’s fretting is that it contradicts literally everything about his life. He’s promised for years that Tesla’s cars will soon achieve “full self-driving.” If indeed humans can invent vehicles that can drive without people, this will generate a huge increase in productivity — so much so that some people worry about what millions of truck drivers would do if their jobs are shortly eliminated. Meanwhile, if low birth rates mean there are fewer workers available, the cost of labor will rise, meaning that it will be worth it for Tesla to invest more in creating self-driving trucks. So what Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

Finally, there’s Musk’s characterization of Japan as a “leading indictor.” Here’s a picture of Tokyo, depicting what a poverty-stricken hellscape Japan has now become due to its low birthrate:

People walk under cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park in the Sumida district of Tokyo on March 22, 2023.

Photo: Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

That is a joke. Japan is an extremely rich country by world standards, and the aging of its population has not changed that. The statistic to pay attention here is a country’s per capita income. Aging might be a problem if so many people were old and out of the workforce that per capita income fell, but, as the World Bank will tell you, that hasn’t happened in Japan. In fact, thanks to the magic of productivity, per capita income has continued to rise, albeit more slowly than in Japan’s years of fastest growth.

So if you’re tempted by Musk’s words to be concerned about what a low birth rate means for Social Security, you don’t need to sweat it. A much bigger problem, for Social Security and the U.S. in general, are the low-functioning brains of our billionaires.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

Elon Musk Wants to Cut Your Social Security Because He Doesn’t Understand Math

Jon Schwarz — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 10:00:49 +0000

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs court in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 24, 2023.

Photo: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Generally, these stunningly wrong opinions are the conventional wisdom among the ultra-right and ultra-rich.

In particular, like most of the ultra-right ultra-rich, Musk is desperately concerned that the U.S. is about to be overwhelmed by the costs of Social Security and Medicare.

More recently, Musk favored us with this perspective on Social Security:

Big reckoning coming due to low birth rate. Japan is a leading indicator.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to know where to start explaining, but let’s try.

This does sound intuitively like it must be a big problem — until you think about it for five seconds. As in many other cases, this is the five seconds of thinking that Musk has failed to do.

What Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

People walk under cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park in the Sumida district of Tokyo on March 22, 2023.

Photo: Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

Elon Musk Wants to Cut Your Social Security Because He Doesn’t Understand Math

Jon Schwarz — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 10:00:49 +0000

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs court in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 24, 2023.

Photo: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Generally, these stunningly wrong opinions are the conventional wisdom among the ultra-right and ultra-rich.

In particular, like most of the ultra-right ultra-rich, Musk is desperately concerned that the U.S. is about to be overwhelmed by the costs of Social Security and Medicare.

More recently, Musk favored us with this perspective on Social Security:

Big reckoning coming due to low birth rate. Japan is a leading indicator.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to know where to start explaining, but let’s try.

This does sound intuitively like it must be a big problem — until you think about it for five seconds. As in many other cases, this is the five seconds of thinking that Musk has failed to do.

What Musk is essentially saying is that technology in general, and his car company in particular, are going to fail.

People walk under cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park in the Sumida district of Tokyo on March 22, 2023.

Photo: Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

Protesters in Paris Are Eating in Style Because of Course They Are #shorts

VICE News — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 12:00:12 +0000

This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

GOP Voters Keep Backing Trump Because He Hates the ‘Right’ People

Will Bunch — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 21:22:14 +0000

On a Saturday when dark clouds and even killer tornadoes were wending their way over huge swathes of the United States, the sun rose brightly over Waco. On a dusty patch of land in a central Texas town tagged by historic infamy, Donald Trump's army of supporters came early and in surprisingly large numbers on the first weekend of an uneasy American spring.

In the shadow of massive pro-Trump flags—"Trump Or Death 1776 2024" read one fastened to the front bumper of a blue Jeep—flew the undercurrent that the runaway front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination has sparked in a recent speech. Call it vengeance, or retribution, or old-fashioned smiting your enemies.

On this day, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—the Black, progressive-minded prosecutor who may win an indictment of Trump as early as this week—was the new Public Enemy No. 1. "Alvin Bragg is overstepping his boundaries," a man in a Trump hat, brandishing a T-shirt with a picture of the New York prosecutor reading "ARREST ALVIN BRAGG," told a conservative news network. "We the people are calling for the arrest of Alvin Bragg for crimes of treason and election interference—I don't even know if election interference is a crime—but election interference, obstruction of justice, even lying to a grand jury. Trump done nothing wrong. We're here to show support for the greatest president ever."

This random dude's words were echoed by the more powerful in attendance, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who increasingly sits at the right hand of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. "We have to stop allowing Democrats to abuse us," said Greene of Bragg, echoing the call for his arrest, while also calling him a puppet of Jewish billionaire George Soros in an antisemitic trope. She pled victimization: "It's like we are a beaten spouse."

None
— (@)

Moments later, the jet rebranded as "Trump Force One" flew in for its dramatic landing, now accompanied by a favorite from the 1980s' Top Gun soundtrack. Kenny Loggins blared from the loudspeakers: "Ride into the danger zone..."

Danger zone, indeed. Do not be fooled by the calming blue of a Texas big sky: the 747 of American democracy is flying on a collision course toward a steep mountainside. With the weight of four separate criminal probes dealing with Trump's outrageous behavior before, during and after his disastrous 45th presidency coming down on him, the hero of America's authoritarian right is gaining altitude in utter defiance of political gravity.

With every headline about porn star payoffs, or threatening phone calls demanding that Georgia politicians find him votes, or a more aggressive federal investigation of his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump seems to rise another point or two in the polls—building a huge early lead in the race to win the GOP's 2024 White House nod. The only candidate who's shown signs of mounting an intraparty challenge—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—looks increasingly like a frozen deer on the Trump runway, unable to respond to attacks, caught between his me-too, Trump-lite policies and his need to appease traditional Republican fat cats and inside backers like Jeb Bush.

No one knows how a scenario like this ends. But it clearly cannot end well. Will America really see a 2024 campaign where one party's leading candidate isn't jetting around to rallies on Trump Force One but instead is flown between courtrooms in New York, Atlanta, and Washington by armed marshals, wearing an ankle bracelet? And what if the Republican nominee is convicted? How serious to take Trump's prediction in a recent Truth Social post of "potential death & destruction" if he's charged? What to expect from fans vowing "Trump or Death"?

None
— (@)

"They're not coming after me, they're coming after you," Trump said Saturday after ambling to the Waco stage, unveiling what ought to be his 2024 campaign slogan. The candidate's occasional rambles into policy—a likely abandonment of Ukraine's defense of democracy, or a fascist level of state control over the classroom—are not what this campaign is about.

Trump's only real promise is a red wedding of revenge, against a "deep state" that ranges from the FBI to Covid bureaucrats, against the army of prosecutors who happen to be Black, against anybody really—school teachers and college professors, or white-coated doctors, or journalists—that people willing to stand for eight hours in Texas dust think are looking down on them.

Why is this working? Don't ask the pundits who get paid a handsome six figures to talk about politics, who seem just as clueless today about Trump and, more importantly, his appeal—maybe more so—than when he cruised down that Trump Tower escalator in 2015.

"You know what I don't get, and I'm going to look stupid on TV for saying this, but I haven't gotten this for the last five or six years," John McWhorter, the Columbia University linguist and New York Times op-ed contributor, a frequent critic of the left, said recently on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher." "Is it really true that there are really these people quote unquote sitting in diners with their hats on, et cetera, who are existentially upset that people like us in blue America look down on them? It seems to me most people aren't caring what the wider world thinks about them—they're buying their groceries... I don't believe they think about us."

John, you need to get out of the Upper West Side more often. They are absolutely thinking all the time about you, and your Columbia colleagues, and op-ed writers like me and you—even when you're intellectualizing their hatred of college campuses—and climate scientists and bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci (successful grandson of immigrants who once would have been lauded by conservatives) and of course lawyers like Alvin Bragg. Anyone who brandishes a diploma and tells them what they don't want to hear. Bonus points for anyone who tells them what they don't want to hear while Black, or while female.

Their movement isn't defined by what they want but by whom they hate, and Donald Trump is the first politician who could articulate that rage with crude bluntness.

I've spent a lot of time since the 2000s listening to people on the right—on my car radio, or at Tea Party gatherings and outside Trump rallies—and their message is pretty unambiguous. Their movement isn't defined by what they want but by whom they hate, and Donald Trump is the first politician who could articulate that rage with crude bluntness. McWhorter also said on HBO that Trump is "charismatic," but he's not—not in the sense of JFK or the Gipper. It's only that he hates the right people, that he is the enemy of their enemy.

For people fearful that whites or churchgoers are becoming a minority in America, or angry that cosmopolitan elites were redefining society as a rigged meritocracy where people without diplomas could be viewed as losers, Trump's hokey 2016 message that "I am your voice" resonated. But the perceived slights of the seven years since then—peaking in 2020 with the massive Black Lives Matter protests, the social controls needed to fight a pandemic, and Trump's Big Lie around his election defeat—have inspired 2023's much more dangerous message, that he is "your retribution."

No wonder that Trump's looming potential indictments—by two Black big-city prosecutors that Fox News regularly blames for urban crime, and by the "deep state" of the U.S. Justice Department—are making him stronger by the day. No wonder his Waco throng stood with Trump in a sick musical celebration of the jailed thugs who attacked police officers in their Capitol Hill insurrection, Beer Hall Putsch martyrs for a new millennium.

In an unreality zone called MSNBC, producers have reinvented the Trump saga as a political version of the O.J. Simpson trial—sometimes giving the whole hour to breathless coverage of the legal dramas for a shrinking audience in McWhorter's "blue America." Those viewers remain certain that Bragg or Jack Smith or Fani Willis will finally take down Trump despite seeing that the Access Hollywood tape and two impeachments and everything else did not.

Here's what's real: American democracy has been in a doom loop ever since 2015. That's because the establishment keeps reaching into the traditional toolbox for the things—hard-hitting investigative reporting, congressional hearings, special prosecutors, and even impeachment—that always took down the bad guys of yesteryear, like Richard Nixon. The tools don't work on a movement based around hatred of journalists and prosecutors and even the FBI.

Today, we stand on the banks of the Rubicon, and I would argue that the Alvin Braggs and Fani Willises and all of us treading water in a faith in democracy and the rule of law have no choice but to cross it. Prosecuting Donald Trump for both his high crimes and his misdemeanors is necessary to keep the republic—even if the consequence is some kind of "Trump or Death" civil war. We are on the highway to the danger zone, but there's no exit ramp.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Will Bunch.

My Dad died because the UK took Covid-19 vaccines from the Global South

Sakina Datoo — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 15:43:51 +0000

The UK government prioritised politicians’ careers and Big Pharma’s profits over global vaccine equity

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Sakina Datoo.

I Love Bernie Sanders Because He Has More Guts Than Any Politician Out There

Robert Reich — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 13:52:01 +0000

A few weeks ago, Bernie phoned.

“Bob?”

The Brooklyn patois was unmistakable.

“Bernie!”

“Listen, I want you to know that I recommended you to be the next secretary of labor.”

Bernie is not one for small talk.

“But I’ve been there. Done that. Don’t want to do it again.”

“Just wanted to give you a heads up. You’ll be getting some calls from the media.”

Did Bernie even hear what I said?

“Thanks, Bernie.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, and …” He was already off the phone.

Let me just come right out and say it: I love Bernie Sanders.

I love his authenticity. Some people like Donald Trump becausehe says whatever he wants and he’s an asshole. Bernie’s authenticity comes from saying what he wants and speaking the truth. And although he’s blunt, he’s anything but an asshole. When he growls “this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral,” he means it. And he’s right.

I love his chutzpah. On Tuesday, Bernie announced that Starbucks’s anti-labor CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which Bernie chairs. The National Labor Relations Board has filed more than 80 complaints against Starbucks for refusing to negotiate in good faith with its workers in more than 280 Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize. Schultz had refused the committee’s request to appear until Bernie threatened to subpoena him. "I look forward to hearing from Mr. Schultz as to when he intends to end his illegal anti-union activities and begin signing fair first contracts with the unions," Bernie said.

I love him because he sounds like a vintage record (even his voice has the crackle of worn vinyl).

I love him because he’s never been afraid to call himself a democratic socialist. Soon after he began running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign manager warned me he was about make a speech to “introduce” the public to democratic socialism. I was impressed that he had the guts to do this but worried about his timing. “Does he haveto do it now?” I asked. The campaign manager told me Bernie was committed to doing it and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. It was pure Bernie.

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed for Social Security, Republicans have used “socialism” to scare Americans away from doing anything big that we need done.

But America is changing. As early as 2011, the Pew Research Center found that almost half of all voters under the age of 30 held a positive view of socialism while only 46 percent held a positive view of capitalism. In the 2016 Democratic primaries and then again in 2020, young people all over America wore buttons reading “Feel the Bern.” They were like the young admirers of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another warrior who combined progressive conviction with elder crankiness.

I love Bernie because he has endless patience for important things and no patience for small talk. In 2010, he delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the extension of tax cuts instituted during George W. Bush’s presidency. I was in the Capitol at the time and dropped by his office to congratulate him on his marathon. He quickly thanked me, then waved me off to take a phone call.

Just before the California Democratic primary in 2020, he gave a stemwinder of a speech in Oakland. We had a late dinner at a small dive on Shattuck Avenue that was empty except for the two of us — until a supporter spied us through the window and came bounding in with a Bernie poster.

“Senator, would you sign my …?”

“Not now! We’re eating!” Bernie barked.

In all my years of politics, I’d never come across a candidate willing to do this.

I love Bernie because he’s a true populist — a word that has gotten a terrible rap since Trump but should be redeemed. It means for the people and against the powerful. Trump pretends to be a populist, but he’s always wanted to be one of the powerful and has forever been in their pockets. Bernie is a true populist.

I love Bernie because he has almost single-handedly changed the national conversation — turning proposals that had once been on the Democratic fringe into respectable, and in some cases mainstream, Democratic positions. Creating jobs by rebuilding infrastructure. Providing free tuition at public universities. Breaking up the big banks. Guaranteeing workers paid medical and family leave.

The policies no longer seem far-fetched. And now that he’s chair of a powerful Senate committee, Bernie might be able to usher some of them through, if Democrats regain control of the House next year.

I love Bernie because even at the age of 81, his indignation hasn’t faded. Nor has his energy.

When he entered Congress in 1991 as an independent, he wasn’t particularly well liked. That may have had something to do with his telling the press that Congress “is not working. It is failing. Change is not going to take place until many hundreds of these people are thrown out of their offices,” and charging that “Congress does not have the courage to stand up to the powerful interests. I have the freedom to speak my mind.”

At the time, Congressman Barney Frank shot back: “Bernie alienates his natural allies. His holier-than-thou attitude — saying, in a very loud voice, he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” Joe Moakley, another Massachusetts Democrat, then chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, complained that Bernie “screams and hollers, but he is all alone.”

Bernie’s lack of popularity on Capitol Hill didn’t hold him back. He was reelected to the House seven times and was one of the founding members and the first chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has grown steadily from six members in 1991 to 71 today.

His ascent to the Senate in 2006 was astonishing — beating the Republican candidate, Richard Tarrant, one of the wealthiest men in Vermont, by 33 percentage points.

I backed Bernie in 2016 when he ran for the Democratic nomination for president against Hillary Clinton and backed him again in 2020. I took some crap for doing this from Clinton people, but I’m glad I did it. The system needed shaking up. It needed Bernie’s candidacy even if he wasn’t going to get the nomination.

I love Bernie because he has more guts than any politician I know. Hell, he has more guts than just about anyone I know.

But I’m still not going to be labor secretary again.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Robert Reich.

‘Shell Is Richer Because We’re Poorer’: UK Oil Giant Sees Record $40 Billion Profit

Jake Johnson — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 15:08:25 +0000

The London-based oil giant Shell reported Thursday that its profits more than doubled in 2022 to a record $40 billion as households across Europe struggled to heat their homes, a crisis that campaigners blamed on the fossil fuel industry's price gouging.

Global Witness estimated that Shell's full-year profits for 2022 would be enough to cover the annual energy bills of nearly half of all U.K. households. The group also calculated that Shell's profits could fund "the £28 billion that the U.K. government estimates would be needed to give all public sector workers—including nurses, teachers, police and firefighters—raises in line with inflation."

"For those facing exorbitant energy bills, and for all of our nurses, firefighters, and teachers on the picket line this week, Shell's profits are an insult. Shell is richer because we're poorer," Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said Thursday. "If oil and gas companies were properly taxed, and if our government stopped handing them billions of pounds in the form of tax breaks and other subsidies—then that would free up the money that's desperately needed to give Brits long-term support with the cost of their energy bills, and to give our key workers the financial recognition they deserve. But so far that hasn't happened."

"So we have to ask ourselves—whose side is our government on?" Noronha-Gant continued. "Are they on the side of those of us living in cold, draughty homes, or are they on the side of an industry that is riding the wave of the energy crisis in Europe and the war in Ukraine, and is wrecking the planet in the process? All in the name of enriching its shareholders."

With its new earnings report, Shell joined ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other major oil companies in posting record-shattering profits for 2022, a year that saw massive energy market disruptions stemming from Russia's war on Ukraine.

"The announcement of yet another obscene profit for Shell shows the scale of the harm that these companies are inflicting on households and businesses."

Shell announced Thursday that it returned a total of $26 billion to shareholders last year through dividends and share buybacks. The company said last month that it expects to pay just $2.4 billion in windfall taxes in the U.K. and E.U. for 2022.

"Our results in Q4 and across the full year demonstrate the strength of Shell's differentiated portfolio, as well as our capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world," Shell CEO Wael Sawan said in a statement. "We believe that Shell is well positioned to be the trusted partner through the energy transition."

Climate advocates countered that far from helping alleviate Europe's energy crisis, Shell—which has been accused of overstating its renewable energy spending—is a big part of the problem.

"The announcement of yet another obscene profit for Shell shows the scale of the harm that these companies are inflicting on households and businesses," said Freya Aitchison, an oil and gas campaigner with Friends of the Earth Scotland. "Oil company bosses and shareholders are being allowed to get even richer by banking huge profits, while normal people are facing enormous energy bills and millions are being forced into fuel poverty."

"Shell is worsening climate breakdown and extreme weather by continuing to invest and lock us into new oil and gas projects for decades to come," Aitchison added, pointing to the company's Jackdaw gas project. "These profit figures are further evidence that our current fossil-fueled energy system is seriously harming people and the climate."

Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, four Greenpeace campaigners boarded and occupied a Shell-contracted platform in the Atlantic Ocean to call attention to the company's contributions to global climate chaos. The Shell platform is headed toward a major oil and gas field in the U.K. North Sea.

On Thursday, Greenpeace activists set up a mock gas station price board outside of Shell's London headquarters to spotlight the firm's record-shattering profits.

\u201cNo more excuses. Stop Drilling, Start Paying. #MakeShellPay\u201d
— Greenpeace UK (@Greenpeace UK) 1675346085

Elena Polisano, a senior climate justice campaigner for Greenpeace U.K., said in a statement Thursday that "Shell is profiteering from climate destruction and immense human suffering."

"While Shell counts their record-breaking billions, people across the globe count the damage from the record-breaking droughts, heatwaves, and floods this oil giant is fueling," said Polisano. "This is the stark reality of climate injustice, and we must end it."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

I’m voting to strike because I’m an NHS patient as well as a junior doctor

Georgina Budd — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:01:06 +0000

A medic who works in the NHS and relies on it for her own care explains why strikes are the only way to save the service

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Georgina Budd.

“I can’t cook every day because we can’t afford it.”

Radio Free Asia — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 22:24:50 +0000

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

The Crackdown on Cop City Protesters Is So Brutal Because of the Movement’s Success

Natasha Lennard — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:00:27 +0000

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after an Atlanta police vehicle was set on fire during a Stop Cop City protest in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 21, 2023.

Photo: Benjamin Hendren/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The movement to stop the construction of a $90 million police training center atop vast acres of Atlanta forest has been extraordinarily successful over the last year. With little national fanfare, Defend the Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City activists nimbly deployed a range of tactics: encampments, tree-sits, peaceful protest marches, carefully targeted property damage, local community events, investigative research, and, at times, direct confrontation with police forces attempting to evict protesters from the forest. The proposed militarized training compound known as Cop City has thus far been held at bay.

The Atlanta-based movement should be seen as an example of rare staying power, thoughtful strategizing, and the crucial articulation of environmentalist politics situated in anti-racist, Indigenous, and abolitionist struggle. Unsurprisingly, however, significant national attention has only been drawn to the forest defenders in the last week thanks to the extreme law enforcement repression they are now facing.

A forest defender was killed by police last Wednesday, and a total of 19 protesters now face capricious and ungrounded domestic terror charges for their involvement in the movement — a rare deployment of a state domestic terror statute, threatening to exhaust and crush a resilient and developing movement.

On Thursday, Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced a “state of emergency” in response to the protests in downtown Atlanta in the week following the killing of the protester. The executive order grants the governor’s office extensive and preemptive repressive powers, including the ability to call on as many as 1,000 National Guard troops to quell protests at any moment.

“At this point the police seem to be charging every protester they arrest with ‘domestic terrorism’ regardless of the circumstances.”

“This is an unprecedented level of repression,” said Marlon Kautz, 38, an Atlanta-based organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail funds and legal support to protesters who are targeted for involvement in social movements, including against Cop City.

“At this point the police seem to be charging every protester they arrest with ‘domestic terrorism’ regardless of the circumstances,” he said. “The other pattern we’ve noticed is they are charging everyone arrested on a given day with all crimes which happened that day.”

Kautz told me, by way of example, that during a protest in which a police car was burned, all arrestees from the day now face arson charges. “Needless to say, the law doesn’t work this way, so we interpret this as a strategy of blatant malicious prosecution.”

The Defend the Atlanta Forest movement endeavors to combine the tactics of, and to learn from, previous struggles — including the 2016 encampments at Standing Rock and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings — while experimenting with novel resistance compositions. The escalatory response from police and prosecutors, on the other hand, reveals a new and troubling combination of counterinsurgent strategies.

The forest defenders have already faced months of aggressive policing and intimidation, which escalated into deadly violence during a multiagency raid last Wednesday. Police shot and killed 26-year-old Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. The authorities claim that Tortuiguita shot at them first, wounding an officer — a narrative fiercely challenged by fellow activists and family members.

Protests and vigils sprung up nationwide demanding “justice for Tort,” while mainstream environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, alongside left-wing Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., condemned the police’s violence and called for an independent investigation into the activist’s killing. Up until this point, they had said little about the year-plus long struggle against Cop City.

As forest defenders mourn and seek justice for their fallen friend, the movement must also fight a barrage of excessive criminal charges, most notably state domestic terrorism charges carrying a possible 35 years in prison.

“Since December, the police have repeatedly stormed the forest with military-grade weapons, pointed assault rifles at protesters, fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, and used chainsaws in an attempt to dismantle treehouses with tree sitters still in them,” said Elias, a 24-year-old Atlanta-based student in the movement, who asked to withhold his full name for fear of police harassment. “Their decision to create a dangerous, volatile, chaotic situation now has led to the murder of our friend Tortuguita.”

Elias told me “the police are trying to justify their negligence by charging people with domestic terrorism. However, nothing these protesters have done even remotely resembles domestic terrorism. The police are trying to redefine terrorism to mean ‘sitting in a treehouse’ or ‘breaking windows.’”

The terror charges, all handed down within the last two months, were not from nowhere. Political and business interests behind Cop City have been pushing related rhetoric for well over a year. Communications records uncovered by activists between Cop City supporters — local self-identifying “stakeholders,” business owners, council members, and Atlanta law enforcement officials — show that these parties have been calling the protesters “eco-terrorists” since at least last April.

Though no one has yet been convicted on these bogus terror charges, Kemp, the governor, has readily used the term “domestic terrorists” to describe the arrestees. Kemp has also invoked the tired trope of “outside agitators” to delegitimize an Atlanta-based movement, which has made a point to invite activists to join from out of state. Notably, in recognition that the land on which Atlanta stands was stolen in the 1800s from the Muscogee (Creek) people, the forest protest encampment has been host to dozens of visitors from around the country who descended from the displaced Indigenous community.

The recent wave of arrests are part and parcel of a “green scare,” which began in the 1990s and has seen numerous environmental and animal rights activists labeled and charged as terrorists on a federal level consistently for no more than minor property destruction. Yet the Atlanta cases mark the first use of a state domestic terrorism statute against either an environmental or anti-racist movement.

The 19 protesters are being charged under a Georgia law passed in 2017, which, according to the Republican state senator who introduced the bill, was intended to combat cases like the Boston Marathon bombing, Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting.

“During legislative debate over this law, the concern was raised that as written, the law was so broad that it could be used to prosecute Black Lives Matter activists blocking the highway as terrorists. The response was simply that prosecutors wouldn’t do that,” Kautz told me. “There are similar laws passed in many other states, and we believe that the existence of these laws on the books is a threat to democracy and the right to protest.”

The Georgia law is exceedingly broad. Domestic terrorism under the statute includes the destruction or disabling of ill-defined “critical infrastructure,” which can be publicly or privately owned, or “a state or government facility” with the intention to “alter, change, or coerce the policy of the government” or “affect the conduct of the government” by use of “destructive devices.” What counts as critical infrastructure here? A bank branch window? A police vehicle? Bulldozers deployed to raze the forest? What is a destructive device? A rock? A firework? And is not a huge swathe of activism the attempt to coerce a government to change policies?

Police affidavits on the arrest warrants of forest defenders facing domestic terror charges include the following as alleged examples of terrorist activity: “criminally trespassing on posted land,” “sleeping in the forest,” “sleeping in a hammock with another defendant,” being “known members” of “a prison abolitionist movement,” and aligning themselves with Defend the Atlanta Forest by “occupying a tree house while wearing a gas mask and camouflage clothing.”

It is for good reason that leftists, myself included, have challenged the expansion of anti-terror laws in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots or other white supremacist attacks. Terrorism laws operate to name the state and capital’s ideological enemies; they will be reliably used against anti-capitalists, leftists, and Black liberationists more readily than white supremacist extremists with deep ties to law enforcement and the Republican right.

Since its passage in 2017, the Georgia domestic terrorism law has not resulted in a single conviction. As such, there has been no occasion to challenge the law’s questionable constitutionality. Chris Bruce, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “the statute establishes overly broad, far-reaching limitations that restrict public dissent of the government and criminalizes violators with severe and excessive penalties.” He said of the forest defender terror charges that they are “wholly inapposite at worst and flimsy at best.”

“The state is attempting to innovate new repressive prosecution, and I think ultimately that will fail for them,” Sara, a 32-year-old service worker who lives by the imperiled forest and has been part of Stop Cop City since the movement began, told me.

“What we are seeing bears some resemblance to the J20 case, where prosecutors attempted to put blanket charges on people in the vicinity of a protest,” said Sara, who also asked to withhold her surname for fear of police harassment. She described the strategy as “an expensive and dangerous prosecutorial endeavor.”

“It’s evident the Atlanta area law enforcement, including prosecutors, believe heavy charges will crush dissent.”

The J20 prosecutions didn’t involve terror charges but rested on infirm claims of collective culpability, which flew in the face of the legal standard requiring individual probable cause for arrest. Those prosecutions fell apart, but not before traumatizing and exhausting the resources of the 200-plus people charged and their communities.

“The authorities’ legal strategy seems to be to load protesters up with extreme charges with no intention of actually making them stick, simply to discourage continued protest,” Kautz, of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, told me.

At present, seven of the 19 forest defenders facing terror charges are being held either with bond denied or set unaffordably high. Supporters are working to raise funds to ensure their freedom and cover legal fees, while refusing to abandon the forest defense.

“It’s evident the Atlanta-area law enforcement, including prosecutors, believe heavy charges will crush dissent. Instead, the movement seems to have only grown with every attack from the police,” said Sara.

She noted that the violent raid and Tortuguita’s killing has been “especially devastating and heart-wrenching” but that “many people are newly moved to action.” In the last week, as many as 50 acts of solidarity — from vigils to banner drops to protests — have taken place across the country to honor Tortuguita and to express support for those in Atlanta defending the forest against Cop City and the violence it represents.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

Local Cops Harassed and Threatened U.S. Veteran Because of Terror Watchlist, Lawsuit Says

Murtaza Hussain — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 21:54:45 +0000

Saadiq Long was on his way to a night shift at the transportation company he works at when he saw flashing lights behind his car. Two police cruisers were signaling him to pull over. This would be the third time in just over a month that Long, a U.S. Air Force veteran with no criminal record, had been pulled over without explanation by Oklahoma City police officers. The stops frustrated Long. He suspected he was being targeted.

After wondering again why he’d been pulled over, this time would be different: He would get some answers, however unsettling, about why it was happening.

Long, 52, was initially told by an officer who stopped him that his car had been listed in a gang database. After waiting in his car for roughly 20 minutes, the officer, according to a video that Long made of the incident, came back with a different story. The police officer told Long that his car had come up as a “hit” in a national watchlist database, one that “automatically alerts us that this vehicle is under suspicion for a terrorist watchlist.” The cop said that Long’s presence on the watchlist, rather than any driving-related infraction or accusation of criminality, was why he had been pulled over.

Long is no stranger to harassment by federal authorities. In 2015, he sued the U.S. government over his placement on the Department of Homeland Security’s no-fly list, as well as the larger terrorist watchlist from which that database is built. Eventually, Long was told his name was removed from the no-fly list, but, as the traffic stops in Oklahoma indicate, he has remained on the broader terrorism watchlist. His lawsuit in federal court related to that watchlist is still ongoing.

More immediately, Long is trying to deal with the very local consequences of being on the federal watchlist.

The U.S. government’s terror lists are often thought of as a tool for protecting against foreign national security threats. Yet in Long’s case, his continued presence on the list, which is secret and has no clear avenues for an individual to be delisted, has now resulted in an unending cycle of harassment from local police in his hometown of Oklahoma City, where he lives with his family.

Since the December 30, 2022, stop where he was verbally informed that his car was on the terrorist watchlist, things have gotten much worse for Long. In subsequent stops, he has been pulled over, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a police cruiser. In one incident, Oklahoma City police officers leveled their guns at Long while blaring orders over a loudspeaker instructing Long to exit his vehicle.

Having failed thus far in his case against the federal government, Long is now suing the Oklahoma City Police Department over the traffic stops, as well as their use of the federal terrorist watchlist as a pretext to target his vehicle. (The Oklahoma City Police Department declined to comment on the case.)

“He is not under investigation for anything, but this secret list is still terrorizing him whether on land or air.”

“As Saadiq Long drives the roads of his city, the Oklahoma City Police Department has been watching, aiming its vast network of cameras and computers at him repeatedly,” the lawsuit says. “Using a secret, racist list of Muslims that the FBI illegally maintains, officers have repeatedly pulled Saadiq Long over, sometimes at gunpoint, unlawfully arresting him twice in the last two months.”

“Despite the fact that he has never been arrested or charged for any crime, due to his presence on this list, he has lost work licenses, been denied visas, and been prevented from flying on airplanes,” said Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing Long. “The officers who are pulling him over are just doing it because their computers are telling them to do so due to his watchlisting status. He is not under investigation for anything, but this secret list is still terrorizing him whether on land or air.”

In 2013, Long was prevented from boarding a flight to Oklahoma from Qatar, where he then resided. A U.S. citizen and Air Force veteran, the denied flight to Qatar was when Long first discovered that he was on the DHS’s no-fly list. Ever since, he has faced detention and other harassment while traveling.

Long sued in 2015 to clear his name from this secret database. In 2020, Homeland Security informed Long that he had been removed from the no-fly list and would not be placed back on absent further information. The government argued in court that the removal of Long’s name from the no-fly list had rendered his claims moot. Yet his removal from the no-fly list has not meant his removal from the broader terrorism watchlisting database, nor from the dire consequences of his status.

Civil liberties advocates, who routinely challenge the constitutionality of the terrorism watchlist in court, have grown increasingly alarmed by the expansion of its use by local law enforcement agencies. In some cases, these local agencies have been tasked with both monitoring individuals assigned to the list and expanding its scope. In 2014, The Intercept published the government’s secret guidance for selecting individuals to the watchlist. Disclosures in a lawsuit from 2017 revealed that the watchlist had grown to 1.2 million people, the majority of whom are believed to be noncitizens and nonresidents of the United States.

Presence on the watchlist can generate numerous problems for those targeted, from harassment and detention while traveling to the type of routine law enforcement threats and harassment Long now faces.

“His experience, unfortunately, is very common for people who are still on watchlists, even if they are not on the no-fly list. It is par for the course for anyone on a watchlist to experience more aggressive traffic stops,” said Naz Ahmed, a staff attorney with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law. “Officers are instructed not to do anything that gives away that a person they have pulled over is on a watchlist or to carry out warrantless searches. But you can imagine how an officer may react who doesn’t have much training on this subject, and does not see it commonly, when they come across someone in this situation.”

A 2016 report by Yale Law School and the American Civil Liberties Union found that the U.S. government had “drastically expanded a consolidated watchlisting system that includes hundreds of thousands of individuals based on secret evidence.” The report documented how the system was now being used and interpreted by local police forces who were frequently acting upon “potentially erroneous, inaccurate, or outdated information.” Unlike the no-fly list, which has some limited redress processes, the broader terrorism watchlist remains largely opaque and unchallengeable.

“The FBI accepts almost every single ‘nomination’ to its list submitted by anyone,” Long’s lawsuit says. “This is because the FBI uses a standard so low that, based on a string of speculative inferences, any person can be made to qualify.”

Long’s lawyers filed suit against the local police department in Oklahoma City on Thursday, to compel its officers to stop pulling him over based on his watchlisting status. Long is also asking for financial compensation for violations of his Fourth Amendment rights. (The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the suit.)

Despite his recent experiences, Long has continued driving to work, doing errands, and visiting family in Oklahoma City but with increasing trepidation about how his watchlisting status is being interpreted by local police. Some police officers have been apologetic while pulling him over; others have responded aggressively, treating him as a threat, pulling out weapons, and causing him to fear for his life.

“For the past year or two, I noticed that the Oklahoma City police often followed me while driving, though without pulling me over,” said Long. “I got kind of used to it, but just recently, within the last month and a half, that’s when this started turning into something much more serious.”

“I was wondering if they were going to make my wife a widow now for something so silly, just for me being on this list, when they themselves don’t even know why I’m on it.”

The most recent incident, when he was pulled over earlier this month by a group of police officers who drew guns on him and ordered him out of his vehicle — an incident that Long also caught on his own dashboard camera — was the most alarming in his recent series of run-ins. A video of the incident shows police officers yelling contradictory instructions at him for several minutes while standing with guns drawn behind his vehicle.

“I was wondering if they were going to make my wife a widow now for something so silly,” Long said, “just for me being on this list, when they themselves don’t even know why I’m on it.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

First Person Singular: Because Black Votes Matter

Linda Wiggins-Chavis — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 22:36:30 +0000

I was a nonvoter for twenty-five years because I believed the lie that my vote didn’t matter.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Linda Wiggins-Chavis.

Because Congress ‘Won’t Act,’ Lawmakers in Seven States Team Up to Introduce Wealth Tax Bills

Jake Johnson — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:33:13 +0000

Frustrated with federal inaction in the face of soaring inequality, Democratic lawmakers in seven states across the U.S. are teaming up this week to simultaneously introduce wealth tax bills targeting the fortunes of billionaires and other rich individuals who have seen their net worth explode in recent years.

Officially launching on Thursday, the first-of-its-kind effort is led by state lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and Washington—collectively home to around 60% of the country's wealth.

"If the federal government won't act, we the states will," said Alex Lee, a California assemblymember who will join several other state lawmakers at a press conference on Thursday.

According to TheWashington Post, which got an early look at the text of the coming legislation, "some of the state bills resemble the 'wealth tax' that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pitched during her 2020 presidential candidacy."

Emmanuel Saez, a prominent Berkeley economist who helped craft Warren's plan, had a hand in the wealth tax proposals that will be unveiled this week by lawmakers in California, New York, and Washington who are taking aim at the assets—not just the incomes—of the mega-rich.

"In four states—the three that drafted bills with Saez’s involvement, along with Illinois—lawmakers say they will float versions of a tax on wealthy people's holdings, or so-called 'mark-to-market' taxes on their unrealized capital gains," the Post reported Tuesday. "Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, and New York lawmakers, meanwhile, are proposing a change based on some Democrats' frustration with national tax policy. The federal government taxes capital gains—the income that a person makes from selling a stock or similar asset—at a separate rate from other income."

"The highest earners pay a 20% tax on capital gains while paying a 37% tax on wages—a disparity that some Democrats want to close," the Post continued. "If federal rates on capital gains are lower, state rates on capital gains should be higher, these lawmakers argue."

The slate of bills set to be introduced Thursday also includes proposed changes to state-level estate taxes, including a Maryland plan to lower the exemption cutoff from the current level of $5 million to $1 million.

An analysis released Tuesday by the Patriotic Millionaires and other progressive advocacy groups found that there are nearly 1.5 million individuals in the U.S. with a net worth of $5 million or more.

"Their total wealth is equal to $28.02 trillion," the analysis shows. "This also includes 64,500 individuals with $50 million or more with combined wealth of $12.5 trillion and 728 billionaires. For every $100 of wealth created in the United States over the past decade, $37.4 has gone to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% received only $2."

The groups estimated that a federal "wealth tax of 2% on millionaires with wealth over $5 million, 3% on those with wealth above $50 million, and 5% on American billionaires would raise $583.5 billion annually," enough revenue to "increase education spending by 47.3%."

In a tweet on Wednesday, Warren wrote that "the majority of Americans agree: it's time for a wealth tax on the ultra-rich in America."

"States are stepping up to make billionaires pay their fair share, and it's time for Congress to take action too," Warren added.

\u201cThe majority of Americans agree: it's time for a wealth tax on the ultra-rich in America. States are stepping up to make billionaires pay their fair share, and it\u2019s time for Congress to take action too.\nhttps://t.co/RtsoeGjkg8\u201d
— Elizabeth Warren (@Elizabeth Warren) 1674052921

The state lawmakers' wealth tax campaign was coordinated by SiX Action—an arm of the State Innovation Exchange—and the State Revenue Alliance. In a press release on Wednesday, the coalition said the new initiative "demonstrates that state legislatures are leading the charge in enacting transformational policies on key issues of the day, including tax justice—particularly in light of a split Congress."

But the Democratic lawmakers' approach stands in marked contrast to the tax policies that Republican legislators are currently pursuing—and have already enacted—at both the state and federal levels.

As researchers at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) wrote Tuesday, "one-third of the 41 states with income taxes have opted for a flat rate," a regressive tax structure that "guarantees that wealthy families' total state and local tax bill will be a lower share of their income than that paid by families of more modest means."

Republicans in the U.S. House, meanwhile, are pushing extreme legislation that would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace federal income taxes with a highly regressive national consumption tax.

"The bill is a tax cut for the wealthy and a tax hike on working people," the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness said Wednesday. "MAGA Republicans don't have the power to make this law now, but they’re playing the long game for a tax code that tilts even more in favor of the rich and corporations. Their far-right tactics show us their attacks on working people won't stop, they'll only get more aggressive."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Because Polygamists Are Queer People Too, Goddammit

Nicky Reid — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 05:33:50 +0000

Nicky, why can’t you just smile and join the pride parade? I must hear this refrain at least ten times a day from people both inside and out of my community. With all the progress, with all the popular approval, why can’t I just be one of those happy Queers you see on TV? Why More

The post Because Polygamists Are Queer People Too, Goddammit appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nicky Reid.

Child Welfare Experts Say New Mexico Can’t Put Kids in Homeless Shelters Just Because It Lacks Other Beds

by Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 20:10:00 +0000

by Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Searchlight New Mexico. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A team of experts monitoring child welfare reform in New Mexico has found that foster kids have been placed in homeless shelters and other inappropriate settings, corroborating an investigation by Searchlight New Mexico and ProPublica that showed struggling teens have languished for weeks or months in shelters without the mental health services they need.

These teens often have complex, trauma-related mental health problems that cannot be addressed in shelters, Searchlight and ProPublica found. In some cases, teens were moved from psychiatric hospitals directly to shelters.

Across the state from 2019 through 2021, someone at a shelter that accepts foster teens called 911 nearly once a day to report runaways, suicide attempts and other emergencies, according to dispatch records.

In years past, the state Department of Children, Youth and Families often sent foster children with serious mental health needs to residential treatment centers. But the majority of residential treatment beds in New Mexico have been eliminated amid state investigations and lawsuits alleging physical and sexual abuse.

Instead, New Mexico promised to build a “statewide, community-based mental health system that all children and families will be able to access.” That system has yet to be built. And the state doesn’t have enough foster homes to meet the need.

So caseworkers turn to youth homeless shelters, also known as children’s crisis shelters, which are licensed to temporarily house kids. Those facilities don’t provide psychiatric care, and the state has agreed to use them as foster placements only in “extraordinary circumstances” — essentially, when needed to protect the child.

Shelter staff, attorneys and child advocates say shelter stays are much too common, with kids sometimes staying for weeks or months and moving from one facility to another. There’s a name for the frequent turnover: “the shelter shuffle.”

The team of experts found evidence of that practice. In a single month, December 2021, CYFD placed foster kids in shelters 30 times, the team found. None of those placements met the state’s standards, they wrote. Forty percent occurred right after another shelter stay.

Not only did CYFD inappropriately place youth in shelters, the report found, it also housed foster kids in caseworkers’ offices, a practice the department had agreed to end by December 2020.

Prior to the report’s release, officials at CYFD had told legislators that the number of kids in congregate care, a category that includes shelters and residential treatment centers, had fallen 61% since 2018. Shelter managers attributed much of that drop to the pandemic, when shelters had to freeze admissions if a resident tested positive for COVID-19. Nearly 3,000 kids entered the foster system in 2021.

Still, the monitors found that the share of children placed in an office, hotel or out-of-state facility had doubled between 2019 and 2021, from 2% to 4% of the state’s foster youth.

One of those kids was Isaiah Stewart, a 14-year-old who had been placed in three shelters as of this summer. In a July interview, he said he spent his days at CYFD’s main Albuquerque office while he waited for a bed in a shelter.

“I see a lot of kids who have stayed there too long because they have nowhere else to go,” Isaiah said. “Eventually they just get fed up. Any kid would, to be honest.” Kids often run away from shelters after losing hope, he said.

“I’m just trying to get placed with a family that will care for me,” he said. In September, CYFD placed Isaiah with a foster family, according to his attorney.

The team of monitors was appointed as part of a settlement between CYFD, the state Human Services Department, and a group of 14 foster children who sued the state. That lawsuit, filed in 2018, claimed the state was “locking New Mexico’s foster children into a vicious cycle of declining physical, mental and behavioral health.”

The state settled the suit in 2020 and agreed to wide-ranging reforms, including putting an end to inappropriate placements in shelters and other congregate care settings.

As of December 2021, the report said, the state hadn’t met any of the 34 key goals laid out in the settlement.

In interviews, state officials have touted progress in reducing shelter placements and said they’ve opened more sites to support families and keep kids out of inpatient facilities. And they have created plans to recruit foster families, the report noted.

“We are continuing to push hard to make every change needed to ensure that every New Mexico child in the CYFD system receives the very best care possible,” CYFD Secretary Barbara Vigil said in an emailed statement. “While we have more work ahead, I am certain we are on the right path.”

Interviews this year with foster youth showed that many of the problems described in the report have not been resolved. Calls to 911 from shelters continued into this year. Data from one shelter showed CYFD placed kids there 30 times from January to June, with many staying two weeks or longer. (A senior staffer at the shelter shared the data, which didn’t include any identifying information about residents, on the condition that the shelter not be identified, out of fear of retaliation by CYFD.)

In June, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit entered into a formal dispute resolution process to get the state to comply with the settlement. The state agreed to take specific steps to move toward compliance.

“It’s still not fixed,” said Bette Fleishman, the attorney for the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. If the report were based on the situation as it stands today, she said, “we’d still have a lot of those same issues.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico.

“I’m doing this because I believe life is precious,” Yangon orphanage founder

Radio Free Asia — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 22:32:09 +0000

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

Because ‘Publishing Is Not a Crime,’ Major Newspapers Push US to Drop Assange Charges

Jake Johnson — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 12:48:45 +0000

The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents.

"Twelve years after the publication of 'Cablegate,' it is time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets," reads the letter signed by the editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País. "Publishing is not a crime."

The letter comes as Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is fighting the U.S. government's attempt to extradite him to face charges of violating the draconian Espionage Act of 1917. If found guilty on all counts, Assange would face a prison sentence of up to 175 years for publishing classified information—a common journalistic practice.

Press freedom organizations have vocally warned that Assange's prosecution would pose a threat to journalists the world over, a message that the five newspapers echoed in their letter Monday.

"This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America's First Amendment and the freedom of the press," the letter reads. "Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker."

The "Cablegate" leak consisted of more than 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that offered what the Times characterized as "an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world."

Among other revelations, the documents confirmed that the U.S. carried out a 2009 airstrike in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians. Cables released by WikiLeaks showed that then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh assured U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus that the Yemeni government would "continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."

The media outlets' letter notes that "the Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too."

"Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences," the letter continues. "Under Donald Trump, however, the position changed. The [Department of Justice] relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during World War One), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster."

Despite dire warnings from rights groups, the Biden administration has decided to continue pursuing Assange's extradition and prosecution.

In June, the United Kingdom formally approved the U.S. extradition request even after a judge warned extradition would threaten Assange's life.

Assange's legal team filed an appeal in August, alleging that the WikiLeaks founder is "being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

We’re Here Because the US Was There

Mark Ashwill — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 06:55:17 +0000

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

I shared my August 2022 essay They Hate US ‘Cause They Ain’t US! with a number of friends and colleagues in the US, including some recent Vietnamese immigrants, with a request that they react to my favorite reader comment:

I seldom write answers to the many great articles I read on these websites. But you inspired me to make an exception.

By sheer coincidence, you published your article on the 62^nd anniversary of the day I became a citizen of the USA. I’ve witnessed pretty much what you have described in your essay. I’ve seen the decline of the country from 1955 to 2022, a decline so severe I would not have imagined possible when I was a teenager about to enter high school.

My family immigrated from Switzerland because my father was an unhappy laborer there. He believed in the dream of America, the ‘land of 1000 opportunities.’ And dragged us here. I must tell you that I actually lived the so-called American dream and am grateful for my life. Thankfully, I figured out how this country functioned early on, and prepared for it by making reasonable decisions.

But by the eighties, I knew America was a fraud. In those 65 years, the US has sunk to where Switzerland used to be when we left in 1955. In the meantime, the Swiss have built the most prosperous nation in Europe. I could go back, but it’s a challenge at my age of 82. But I’m looking into it.

Thank you for writing your truthful essay.

I wanted to know if they agreed with the reader’s scathing assessment of the US as a “fraud.” (On a brighter, note, I also asked them what they like about the US, excluding its lofty ideals.) The comparison story of Switzerland’s rise and the USA’s simultaneous decline could apply to any number of countries. It is a nasty reality that most US Americans choose not to confront.

As if on cue, I received the same comment from several of my respondents, all of whom are well-educated and -traveled. The gist was that the US, a “nation of immigrants,” is still a magnet for people from around the world. Many risk life and limb to get there, thereby inadvertently proving one of my points.

For example:

It’s maybe a sad reality that the only potent counterpoint I could offer, as devil’s advocacy, is that if the US is so horrible a place, and so unfree, then how do we explain the still steady tide of immigrants to the country, to say nothing of those who are literally willing to risk their lives to get here? In other words, yes the US compares unfavorably to, say, Denmark, Finland and Canada. But it appears we’re pretty damn attractive to folks in countries where, were they to publish an article like yours, they might be killed.

It’s worth noting that I never said that the US was unfree, only that “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are only available to those who can afford them,” a reference to the cost of freedom to and freedom from and damning indictment of the myth of endless opportunity.

In a time of steady but sure domestic and global decline measured by a wide range of qualitative and statistical indicators, some US Americans, at least those who have rejected the commonly held view of their country as the “greatest nation on earth,” are looking for some measure of consolation, a salve, or a silver lining. Yes, the societal situation is dire, but one redeeming feature is that people still want to come here. That counts for something doesn’t it?, or so they think.

It’s a perfectly valid point. So why is the US so “damn attractive”? Hint: It’s probably not so they can publish articles like mine without fear of retribution. There are at least two possible explanations.

The Enduring Spell of the American Dream

First, reality has yet to catch up with and overwrite cultural mythology beyond the borders of the US, not to mention within them. This is the result of Hollywood’s now waning global influence and a steady stream of US government propaganda. While the US may no longer be viewed as a place where the streets are paved with gold, the dominant perception is still of a land of opportunity. Bad news travels slowly, in this case.

Consider the usual push and pull factors that predate the founding of the USA. Many of my ancestors arrived over 150 years before a nascent British Colonial America became the United States of America. Some escaped religious persecution only to persecute others whose beliefs diverged from theirs. In a cruel twist of fate, some became the victims of that intolerance. Both “saints.”

Others, referred to as strangers, left their homelands for decidedly secular reasons. (Mayflower passengers consisted of both.) This featured abundant economic opportunity that derived from plentiful and fertile lands appropriated, by hook and by crook, from Native Americans who had lived in the settler-colonizers’ New World for millennia.

For those white males who got in on the ground floor, who are my great-grandfathers, the world was their oyster. They had land, seemingly infinite room for (westward) expansion, wave after wave of immigration of those who would form the lower social classes of the fledgling society, cheap labor to be exploited. Perhaps best and most profitable of all, they had the legal right to own other human beings whose unpaid work would drive economic growth and generate untold wealth before that party officially ended in 1863.

The origins of the US political and economic elite, essentially a transplantation of key features of British social class structure, date back to the founding of the colonies of Virginia, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and others that quickly followed.

Immigrants and Refugees

Secondly, many immigrants are in the US because of the actions of the US government, not by choice. In a 2010 article aptly entitled House Slave Syndrome the poet and writer Linh Dinh wrote that many immigrants are in the US because of the effect of US policy in their home countries. As the writer Viet Thanh Nguyen put it, “we are here because you are (were) there.”

It’s no coincidence that both writers view themselves as refugees, not immigrants. The former is defined simply as “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” Without the US war in Vietnam there wouldn’t be over 2 million Vietnamese Americans in the US.

In his 2005 Nobel address British playwright Harold Pinter summed up US foreign policy thus:

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

In effect, victims of US-sponsored overseas violence end up living next door to their victimizers. Think of all of the immigrants from Latin America and what the US has done in and to many of those countries for the past century. A partial list includes Argentina (1976), Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1944, 1963, 1971), Chile (1973), Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras (1963) Guatemala (1953), and Nicaragua, Paraguay. That disgraceful trend continues in 2022 with no end in sight.

Since nearly 25% of all immigrants in the US are residing there illegally, can you guess which countries they’re from? It’s the social class difference between those who enter the country through a port of entry (even if it is on a non-immigrant visa, which is often the case) and their fellow citizens who ford rivers and crawl through tunnels to escape a personal and societal hell.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It was none other than McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who said long after the last shot was fired and bomb dropped in the US War in Vietnam, “We ought not to ever be in a position where we are deciding, or undertaking to decide, or even trying to influence the internal power structure” of another country. In the Fulbright hearings on the war in 1966, US diplomat and historian George Kennanasserted, “Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country.”

Imagine how different the world and the state of US immigration would be if US leaders followed this sage advice from people whose thinking evolved.

A Mixed Picture

This is not to say that many immigrants who end up in the US for this reason do not have a better life or are not successful, as they or their adopted homeland define success. The point is, for most, their lives would have been better on many levels if they hadn’t been forced to emigrate.

As Linh Dinh wrote, “A recent article declares, ‘Tired of war, thousands of Iraqis want to go to U.S.’ What it fails to mention is who triggered all the bloodshed. Who made conditions in Iraq so intolerable that these people must flee? You know who. Over and over again, the U.S. has instigated mayhem or carnage overseas, generating thousands if not millions of refugees, many of whom longing to escape, paradoxically, it seems, to the source of their suffering. You beat and humiliate me, so can I move in?” According to the Brown University Watson Institute’s Costs of War project, 9.2 million Iraqis were internally displaced or refugees abroad, as of 2021, all because of a war based on lies.

For many, the uprooting and relocation from their home country to the geopolitical source of their suffering is akin to going from the fire into the frying pan.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mark Ashwill.

Who Knew: We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here

Edward Curtin — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 07:38:19 +0000

My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm.

I think of this as we march to WW III.

The soldiers, who would be slaughtered by the millions as pawns in the great game, sardonically sung it to the tune of Old Lang Syne to express their bewilderment at why they were fighting in the so-called “War to End All Wars” or “the Great War.”

We children sang it because we had heard the words but had no idea where they came from, yet they seemed playful and weird and easy to remember and we were celebrating our good fortune in leaving the city and arriving at the farm for a week’s country idyll.

War and peace absurdly juxtaposed. Because? Because everyone needs to be somewhere even if they don’t know why.

Yet today so many people feel lost in a world gone mad, a nowhere land, far further from somewhere than when John Lennon penned the words to “Nowhere Man,” in 1965. It is no wonder he was assassinated in 1980, for he was a man growing into a profound anti-war consciousness.

Now we’re again celebrating Armistice/Remembrance/Veteran’s Day on November 11 in a world forever at war and with nuclear annihilation staring us in the face. Always the bitter Old Lie told by the depraved political and economic elites to suck the masses into death. Wilfred Owen, killed in action on November 4, 1918 one week before the Armistice, murmurs to us from his French grave:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

But what do dead poets know? Only everything important.

What child would want such gory glory as dulce et decorum est pro patria mori unless it was pounded into its head by men in love with death?

Do they think the dead can hear the cheers?

Can we hear the songs of the poets who link us back to contemplate the atrocities of the battles of The Somme, Passchendaele, Marne, Gallipoli, Verdun, etc. with all the official lies told by the political jackals responsible for these slaughters?

At the farm, my many sisters and I, despite not knowing what we had sung, did know why we were where we were; our “because” had a clear answer. We were there to choose life, not death, to enjoy living, which we knew was a precious gift from parents who could barely afford the expense. We walked barefoot down the sandy dirt road between the green pasture where the cows lolled dreamily and the quiet waters of the limpid creek to the swimming hole where we would float for hours with the fish as turtles eyed us from their log perches in the sun.

What child would want to wallow in blood and gore for a posthumous medal?

What parent would want their child to march to war to die, rather than swim in the waters of life and love?

We’re here because we’re here because nihilism is celebrated as patriotism and the love of death masquerades as love of life. The nations that celebrate these war days do not do so to foster peace but to remind people that it is indeed sweet to die for one’s country. And God too, of course. Because? The poet Dylan sings the truth. Just listen: “With God on Our Side or hear Phil Ochs’ Is There Anybody Here?”

But all of this was once upon a time in the 1960s when many people were realizing that war was a racket, as Marine General Smedley Butler told us long ago. Today sleep has descended on most people while the disease of war is injected into the public’s bloodstream in a manner learned well from the massive propaganda campaign of WW I. In the USA then, it was the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, et al. who “manufactured the consent” of the public to hate the “Huns,” keep their mouths shut, and spy on their neighbors, all in the service of a jolly-good war “over there.” Today the spying and propaganda apparatus dwarfs those efforts exponentially with its electronic, digital technology.

But poets don’t text the truth. They sing it and think it and tell it, even when nobody’s listening.

We’re all lucky to still be here. If we continue to celebrate past wars and the soldiers who fought them in a sly homage to the greatness of war, we are doomed. We won’t be here because….

Here’s Liam Clancy singing Eric Bogle’s 1976 song about one man’s story of war’s greatness.

The post Who Knew: We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

Democrats May Lose U.S. House Because New York Dem. Leaders Were Too Focused on Defeating the Left

Democracy Now! — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:51:54 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Democrats May Lose U.S. House Because New York Dem. Leaders Were Too Focused on Defeating the Left

Democracy Now! — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 13:15:24 +0000

The balance of power in Congress is still up in the air two days after Tuesday’s midterm elections, and control of the Senate now rests on three states: Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. Meanwhile, Republicans have not yet won enough House seats to regain the majority, though there are still over 30 House races not yet decided. Many analysts say if Democrats lose control of the House, it may largely be because of New York state, where Republicans have flipped four congressional seats. Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York Working Families Party, says the “low-participation, low-energy election” was the result of the Democrats’ “failed strategies at the state level.” And Zohran Mamdani, New York state assemblymember for District 36, explains how GOP-favored redistricting, which he pins on Democratic leadership, “may be part of the reason why we do not hold the House.” Both Nnaemeka and Mamdani are part of a growing coalition calling for the resignation of Jay Jacobs, chair of the state’s Democratic Committee, who they say laid the ground for major Democratic losses to the GOP in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The GOP Is Terrified of You, Because Democracy Scares the Hell Out of Them

Robert Reich — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 17:21:21 +0000

Obviously, I can’t tell you how today’s elections will turn out. But I do want to reassure you about one thing: Over the long term, we are winning.

Ask yourself: Why are the election deniers, the monied interests, and the bigots and the haters fighting so hard to defeat us? Why are they telling such blatant lies? Why are they so desperate to suppress our votes? Why are they so willing to violate the Constitution, the rule of law, and common decency in order to claw their way to victory?

For one simple reason: They are afraid of us.

They know deep in their hearts that we are the future of America.

We who call ourselves progressives. We who are people of color. We who are young. We who are women. We who are new immigrants to these shores. We who are LGBTQ people. We who are Muslim and Jewish and people of every faith, or no faith. We who are poor. We who are average working people who need and deserve better jobs and higher wages. We who believe in democracy and cherish the Constitution and the rule of law.

They are afraid of us because we are gaining in numbers, gaining in strength. Our voices are growing louder.

Regardless of what happens today — even if they regain control of the House or the Senate or both, even if they take over some governorships, even if they create veto-proof majorities in one state or another — they know that over the long term we are winning.

It is inevitable.

Not their filibusters, nor their gerrymanders, nor their suppression of votes, nor their attempts to rig electoral votes, nor their Trumpian Supreme Court majorities, nor their attempts to intimidate us — none of the obstacles and barriers they’re putting in our path will stop our inevitable rise.

Which is why they are so desperate.

I’ve been at this game for almost three-quarters of a century. America still has a long way to go. But it is far better and stronger now — more inclusive, more tolerant, more diverse, more accepting, more dynamic — than it has ever been. And it will be ever better and stronger years from now. Because we are rising.

Which scares the hell out of them.

Sure, we can and must do better organizing, mobilizing, and energizing. Yes, the Democratic Party must be bolder at countering the power of big corporations and big money. Of course we must do far more to get a Supreme Court that reflects our beliefs and values. And at recruiting a new generation of leaders into electoral politics.

We can and must do all of this. And we will. It is part of the long game.

I hope we win every contest today. But regardless of the outcomes of today’s elections, have no doubt: we are the future.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Robert Reich.

Electoral Denialism Cuts Across Party Lines: Despite What the Corporate Media Would Have Us Believe, Both Parties Engage in the ‘Big Lie,’ and the Rest of Lose Because of It

Project Censored — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 19:53:42 +0000

Speaking to the January 6^th Committee on September 29, 2022, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stood by her contention that the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was stolen. Thomas and others who doubt the legitimacy of the election results have been convinced to believe “the big lie.” The big lie refers to an incomprehensible distortion or misrepresentation of the truth as a form of propaganda. It is often attributed to the Nazis’ big lie about the Jews after World War I, which served to justify the holocaust for sympathizers. Germany’s Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels explained, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

U.S. news media have consistently made analogies to this historical big lie strategy with former President Donald Trump’s efforts to spread doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election in hopes of overturning its results. They contend that this threatens the viability of American democracy. It does at some level, but to focus on Trump is to miss the forest for the trees. An even greater threat to democracy has long been hyper-partisanship– when people choose party loyalty and wishful thinking over empirical data and election results. Cognitive biases, like confirmation bias, play a huge role in supporting such a fallacious thought process to detrimental ends. As we pointed out in our book, United States of Distraction, Trump is a symptom of this much larger problem.

Electoral denialism did not start with Trump. In the U.S., this chicanery dates back to the early days of the republic. With this in mind, a big picture analysis reveals that Trump is simply trying to achieve the equivalent of what George W. Bush did in 2000 when the Supreme Court simply declared him President of the U.S.

Worse, many of the very people who oppose Trump helped create the context in which his “big lie” can flourish and become legitimized. Indeed, the Lincoln Project Republicans and Liz Cheney’s of the world who defended Bush’s illegitimate presidency created a context where elections could be stolen in plain sight. More importantly for contextualizing Trump, U.S. citizens could live in a country where they knew their sitting President was placed in power by fellow elites.

This cynicism about the electoral process worsened with birtherism: the racist fake news story that claimed that President Barack Obama was not a real American and was in fact Kenyan. This type of racist accusation has been made about people of color for centuries in this country, and made Obama’s candidacy vulnerable to the racist whims of voters. During the 2008 Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the first to exploit this vulnerability. The Republican Party would perpetuate the lie during Barack Obama’s expectation shattering victories in 2008 and 2012. During his entire presidency, people repeatedly searched for, attained, and then refused to accept Obama’s birth certificate in the U.S. state of Hawaii as legitimate. Trump was pivotal in spreading birtherism lies throughout Obama’s presidency. He would amplify this nonsense as part of his political posturing to eventually become a leader in the Republican Party. There’s no doubt Lincoln is rolling in his grave.

Further, Obama’s milquetoast neoliberal governance turned people against the Democratic Party, which lost nearly a thousand seats between Congress (70) and state legislatures (910) nationwide during his presidency. That, along with Hillary Clinton’s mismanaged 2016 campaign that alienated and marginalized progressives by rigging the primary process against their popular candidate Bernie Sanders, saw Trump win the presidency. Like a petulant child, Clinton broke with tradition and refused to admit defeat until long after results were certain.

It is undeniable that in defeat, Clinton and the DNC machine borrowed from the Republican playbook, and rationalized with speculations and outright falsehoods to cover for her loss in order to delegitimize the Trump presidency. Unlike the Democrats who rightly rejected the results in 2000, Clinton and her DNC supporters spent four years spreading false and baseless reasons for their defeat, blaming progressive voices – such as Bernie Sanders (who campaigned more for Hillary than Hillary did for Obama), and Susan Sarandon, and the Russians, and social media fake news for “stealing” and tipping the election. However, studies showed that it was legacy media right here at home that actually had the most influence on voters in the 2016 election. This resulted in more electoral cynicism, expressed by four years of “not my president” sloganeering that did not contain the racism of birtherism, but did echo the notion that Americans only need to respect an election outcome if their preferred party and candidate wins.

Indeed, the nation’s pundits scratched their heads in collective awe and disbelief in 2016. How could this have happened? How could the establishment’s cadre of experts not have seen a Trump victory coming? Simple. Like Q Anon fanatics and the Trumpists of today, they did not want to see it. Their implicit biases wouldn’t permit it. In fact, YouTube recently attempted to censor and demonetize a video collection of the Democratic denialists of 2016 by Matt Orfelea. The double standards around the topic are as obvious as they are mind-boggling.

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, both parties primed voters to reject the results. Trump spread rumors of election fraud while the Democratic Party and allies in the intelligence community appeared ready to amplify election denial warnings in the months up to the 2020 election that Russia and Trump were working to steal the election. That proved irrelevant as Joe Biden won the presidency by 40k votes in three key states in 2020, which is a half the margin that Trump won by in 2016. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters rejected the election results as they promised to “stop the steal.”

If past is prologue, each party may well continue to escalate their electoral denial to a level where election results will simply not matter at all. In 2016, Clinton officially conceded, but publicly denied the election results. In 2020, Trump exploited the electoral cynicism that was decades in the making and refused to officially concede. This inspired his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and reject the election results. Granted, Democrats didn’t do the same in 2016, but who knows the degree to which continued hyper-partisanship will escalate electoral denialism in the future? Nonetheless, the point remains that denial and lack of acceptance of election outcomes was very much part of the Democrats’ narrative from 2016, parroted by MSNBC and CNN in particular. It’s not just Fox News and Trump that are the problem here. It’s civic decay.

Bottom line: it is simply unsustainable for a country to have half of the voters, not to mention the candidates or party leaders, refuse to accept election results. Such political theatre erodes election integrity because it distracts from legitimate threats to free and fair elections, such as voter suppression efforts and privatized election systems and voting machines, while simultaneously normalizing hyper-partisanship and electoral denialism. When people choose party loyalty over empirical results to determine electoral outcomes, the democratic republic ceases to exist.

The post Electoral Denialism Cuts Across Party Lines: Despite What the Corporate Media Would Have Us Believe, Both Parties Engage in the ‘Big Lie,’ and the Rest of Lose Because of It appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.

“Nobody Said Anything Because They Feared Being Benched:” How Abuse is Baked into American Sports

Rick Eckstein — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:04:37 +0000

As someone who has been researching, writing and teaching about women’s and girls sports for the past 15 years, I wasn’t surprised by the recent revelations of sexual and verbal abuse by National Women’s Soccer League coaches. There’s a tendency to explain such horrific behavior in strictly individualistic terms – as a sign of personality More

The post “Nobody Said Anything Because They Feared Being Benched:” How Abuse is Baked into American Sports appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rick Eckstein.

CEO Says He’s Been “Praying for Inflation” Because It’s an Excuse to Jack Up Prices

Jon Schwarz — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 17:06:55 +0000

The CEO of Iron Mountain Inc. told Wall Street analysts at a September 20 investor event that the high levels of inflation of the past several years had helped the company increase its margins — and that for that reason he had long been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation.”

The comment is an unusually candid admission of a dirty secret in the business world: corporations use inflation as a pretext to hike prices. “Corporations are using those increasing costs – of materials, components and labor – as excuses to increase their prices even higher, resulting in bigger profits,” Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, recently argued. Corporate profits are now at their highest level since 1950.

William Meaney, now CEO of Iron Mountain, photographed in Los Angeles in 2009.

Photo: Jamie Rector/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Iron Mountain is a data storage and management company based in Boston with a current market capitalization of $12 billion. According to its website, over 95 percent of the Fortune 1,000 are Iron Mountain customers. The company’s founder originally bought its first site, an exhausted iron mine, to grow mushrooms.

It wasn’t a one-off comment by the Iron Mountain CEO, William Meaney. On a 2018 earnings call, he invoked a Native American ritual, telling participants that “it’s kind of like a rain dance, I pray for inflation every day I come to work because … our top line is really driven by inflation. … Every point of inflation expands our margins.”

Iron Mountain’s CFO Barry A. Hytinen also said on an earnings call this past April that “we do have very strong pricing power” and for the company, inflation is “actually a net positive.”

At the September 20 investor event, Meaney explained that “where we’ve had inflation running at fairly rapid rates … we’re able to price ahead of inflation” — that is, increase its prices at a greater rate than the high recent rates of inflation. As Meaney put it, raising prices “obviously covers our increased costs, but … a lot of that flows down to the bottom line.” He also noted that this didn’t just apply to his company: “People are seeing what FedEx, UPS, and others are having to do to actually manage their business and pass on that inflation.”

Later in the event, in response to a question from a JPMorgan Chase analyst, Meaney explained that the company had “been getting north of 200 basis points of price increase” — i.e., 2 percent — in the low inflation environment of the mid-2010s. But, he added, he had then hoped for inflation because “pricing for us is actually slightly accretive on the margin” with higher inflation.

Interestingly, both Meaney and Hytinen expressed momentary regret that what was good for Iron Mountain might be bad for everyone in general. “I wish I didn’t do such a good dance,” Meaney said last week, “but that’s more on a personal basis than on a business model.”

Hytinen told earnings call participants that “we feel for folks” regarding inflation, but “we have a high gross margin business, so it naturally expands the margins of the business.”

The remarks of the Iron Mountain executives go straight to the question of who in the U.S. will pay to bring down the current high rates of inflation. Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said straightforwardly in May that his goal was “to get wages down and then get inflation down.” In other words, Powell wants regular workers to make less money, which would lower labor costs for businesses, which presumably then would not raise prices as much as they have over the past several years.

The degree to which corporate profits have contributed to prices going up, and what to do about it, has been discussed by some Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration. Last year, President Joe Biden accused oil and gas companies of “anti-consumer behavior,” citing the fact that the two largest companies “are on track to nearly double their net income over 2019.” In May, Democrats introduced legislation to prohibit price gouging by authorizing the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce a federal ban on excessive price increases. But the general subject has only gotten modest traction in the media.

Almost every news story on inflation has pointed out that inflation is now at its highest rate in 40 years. Far less emphasis has been placed on the fact that corporate profits are currently at their highest rate in 72 years. The after-tax profits of nonfinancial corporations averaged about 5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product from 1950 until 1980. They then dropped until shooting upward again during the 2000s. Currently they stand at above 8 percent of GDP. The 3 percentage point difference between 8 percent and the 5 percent average of the past constitutes over $600 billion a year that otherwise could go to workers or reduced prices.

After-tax corporate profits are currently at their highest rate in 72 years.

Lael Brainard, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, did make reference to the issue of corporate price increases in a speech earlier this month. “Reductions in markups,” she said, could “make an important contribution to reduced pricing pressures.” She continued:

Overall retail margins — the difference between the price retailers charge for a good and the price retailers paid for that good — have risen significantly more than the average hourly wage that retailers pay workers to stock shelves and serve customers over the past year, suggesting that there may also be scope for reductions in retail margins. With gross retail margins amounting to about 30 percent of sales, a reduction in currently elevated margins could make an important contribution to reduced inflation pressures in consumer goods.

Nonetheless, Brainard made no mention of any efforts by the Federal Reserve to restrain corporate profits. While it does not formally possess any tools to do so, it does have a public pulpit and the ear of Congress. What it does have, of course, are blunt tools to decrease wages and increase unemployment, and it is using them enthusiastically.

The Federal Reserve itself projects a nearly 1% increase in unemployment next year, representing over a million people being put out of work, following its aggressive interest rate hikes — the steepest in years. “While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses,” Fed Chair Powell said in a recent speech. “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation.”

Neither Iron Mountain nor Meaney responded to requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

US, UK sabotaged peace deal because they ‘don’t care about Ukraine’: fmr. NATO adviser

The Grayzone — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 14:28:04 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

Artist and designer Serge Mouangue on creating because you truly need to

Brandon Stosuy — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Your work involves sculpture, scent, performance, fabrics, design. When you have an idea, how do you decide which form the idea will take?

When I’m thinking about something new to create, the material, the medium, the shape, the light, the density, the message, the story, all that takes place at the same time. At the end of the day, if something has to be made with the feathers, it would be feathers because that’s where the process took me. Has to be lacquered, well, it’s going to be lacquered. If it has to be a performance, it will be a performance. I don’t really have the kind of thinking process where I separate the idea from the medium or the message—everything really comes together in my mind.

Have you ever started a piece and while it’s just starting to come together, lost interest in it or, if you start something, do you tend to complete the project?

It’s fairly rare I’ve changed direction while doing something. A slight diversion maybe. But change direction suddenly and stop, that doesn’t really happen. It takes me so long before I decide to get involved in something that it’s usually nearly finished. I have a clear mental image, or a sound image, or a visual image. When it takes shape in 3D dimension, I tend to finish what I start.

When you started out, you were doing car design. How did you decide you would work on that? Was art something you always did on the side? Or was it something you did in tandem with designing?

I did art school, then design school, then I joined an automotive maker in France to design cars. Then I was sent to Japan. While I was in Japan, I felt like doing a side project. And the side project was about trying to tell a story about where I come from and also where I lived in Tokyo. I couldn’t do that at work, so I took some more time outside my office work time to explore that new territory, that new vocabulary, that new field, that new aesthetic that I came to create.

When you started doing this as a side project, did you think of yourself as an artist? Or did you think, “I’m a car designer and I’m doing this as a side project?” Because I know for a lot of people I talk to, they always, there’s a moment where they’re like, “Oh, wait a second, I’m an artist.” Did you always think of yourself as an artist?

To be honest with you? I don’t see myself as anything else but just someone who likes creating things. Artists, non-artist, designer, non-designer. For me, the frontiers are very blurry. It’s a question of life or death. Either you really need to do it and you have to do it and you do anything it takes to do it, or you don’t really need to do it. I’ve done it because it was a question of putting together a story that would help me answer some questions I had at that time, at that moment.

It wasn’t really a question of knowing if I was either a designer or an artist. It was knowing that something had to be done. And I put all my energy into that side project, regardless of the time constraints, of the fatigue, of the difficulty to build something in Japan when you’re not Japanese, and to put it together, and have an impact on Japanese people. I don’t know if I’m an artist, I’m just someone who likes doing stuff.

I feel that way, too. I was talking to a class earlier today; my friend teaches at a school in Philadelphia and asked me to speak to his class about becoming a musician, making music. I said to them you can make things and not share it with the world and that’s still art. You can make something just because you need to make it. You don’t need to share it with anyone and that’s still very valid. If you made this work and nobody responded to it, would you still keep making it?

Absolutely. I don’t have an Instagram account, I don’t have Facebook, I don’t have Twitter. I just like to do what I do. If it has an impact, great, if it doesn’t have any impact, I would still do it because it responds to some fundamental question I have about being a human, about the question of identity. Since I believe that identity now seems to be a fantasy, really. Most of what we believe is our identity is probably 70% fantasy. That’s the conclusion I draw from my work. Artists or not artist, if you’re a cook and you need to try it, who’s going to stop you, if you really believe you have to try those ingredients and cook them under the sun, put them under the earth for four or five hours, let the sun hit them through the sand, pick them up, smoke them, slide honey on it, spray with some kind of, I don’t know what ingredient. If you feel like you have to try that, you just do. You don’t look and see if people are looking or staring at you and congratulating you.

You were saying, you think 70% of identity is often a fantasy. Can you explain that a little bit more, this idea of identity?

Some people came to me and said, “Oh, you design kimonos with, you said African fabrics, but those African fabrics are wax and wax is made in Holland and in Holland, they don’t know too much about Africans taste and things like that.” I said, yes, it’s true. They’re made in Holland, they’re made in Switzerland and they’re made in Africa as well. The fact is, African people wear them and when you see the fabric, you connect them with African people.

Coffee doesn’t come from Italy. Of course, they don’t have any coffee fields, it came from, I think, Ethiopia. The original name of coffee is Ethiopian. The same as kimonos. Kimonos didn’t come from Japan, they came from China originally more or less, as far as we know. And the wax techniques are from the Danish; the wax fabrics come from Indonesia.

It’s okay to defend identity, as long as you know that most of it is fantasy. You can defend your identity, but make sure it doesn’t take a scale of emotion that will not make sense if you look deep inside the facts of what happened to build that identity.

So much of your art involves identity and community and gathering…Now that we’re all separate, how do you stay focused on what you’re doing? How do you stay optimistic? How do you stay engaged with the work and feel good about it?

I’m a positive person in general. I’m not the kind of person who gets de-motivated quickly. Unfortunately for some of my family members, when I start something, it’s hard to stop, it’s very difficult to stop. I can’t stop, I don’t know how to stop. I would have to have, even… No, I don’t… I can’t stop, there’s no retirement for me. It doesn’t exist and I’m bringing people together. I have noticed also that when I work with people, it seems they understand fairly quickly where I’m trying to go and they easily get it, bond with the idea and work overtime to succeed, so that we can succeed all together. They like the message, they believe in that there’s something more to tell. There’s a deep story about who we are as a human species.

Have you ever had burnout? Have you ever reached a point where you just had to stop because you work too much or were juggling too many projects?

Never. I sleep a lot during the weekends. I like to stay in bed and do nothing at all, I love it. And just stare at the ceiling and just sit there. I think that’s when I’m the most productive. When I lie down in bed and I stare at the ceiling, there’s so much happening in my head. And when I stand up, it’s all done, things are set up and I just have to execute. I’m a big observer. I’m very contemplative as well, I contemplate things, sound; I love sound. So, no, I don’t burn out. I don’t know what may happen to me but for the moment I feel like I’m in a cloud and I’m not really here. I’m not really where I am.

Do you work from a separate studio or do you work from home? You were saying you like to lay it out and observe, do your ideas come from your everyday surroundings or do you like to remove yourself and work from a separate spot?

Most of my ideas come from a situation where I’m alone. Walking, listening to music, and having a movie take place in my head, in my ears. That’s how ideas get captured, then they go somewhere in the corner of my head, they come back hours, weeks after. They grow and they grow and they grow again and they get simplified and they have a trajectory in my head, until the moment where they can’t really go anywhere else. They have to be built, they have to take shape.

I’ve got my studio here in the basement of my house, it’s a good space. I have the garden right outside here, there’s a big window. We have a nice piece of land and that’s where the ideas come from. Or I have to go outside in Paris and walk; or again in Tokyo, walk; or when I’m in Africa and I see people, I hear stories and connect things.

As long as you have imagination, things can start coming together in your mind. Those are the most important tools to your practice, really. Just having that initial idea then giving it the space to grow, essentially.

Yes. And trusting where these ideas are going in your head. Just let the idea travel in your head. Trust in the idea until the idea itself says, “I need to get home. I need to get outside.” That’s when you have to execute it.

Have you always had such confidence in your ideas or did it take time to develop that sort of confidence and letting things grow on their own and giving them the space to grow?

Honestly speaking, I’m not bad at creating what doesn’t exist yet. That’s something that I know how to do. So I tend to trust my ideas, often. It may sound a bit arrogant but at my age, that’s one of the conclusions that I have. Not that the ideas are always good, but I trust them enough to give shape to them to the end and then see if it’s worth it or not.

I feel like it takes a while to reach that. When someone’s first starting out, maybe they’re a teenager, you don’t trust the ideas necessarily, but yeah, as I’ve gotten older, I’m like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to go with this thing, I trust it.” It saves so much more time; it makes you more efficient when you have trust in your work. You just kind of let it go.

Exactly. You’ve said it, it makes you more efficient because there’s a system; you throw away what’s not interesting and keep what’s the most constructive and worth doing. At the end, the path has taken place by itself and you just have to accomplish what you had in your head. The environment and improvisation is important as well. For me, in West Africa, to improvise is key. I often had that problem where at work in the corporate design space, you have to prepare [rather than improvise]. We rehearse so much before we present something. Whereas naturally, I just know what I have to say or what I have to show or what I have to do.

Something I read in the description of your work was how you realized that in African culture there’s spontaneity and improvisation and perhaps in Japanese culture, more scheduling and things like that. You have the idea and you trust the idea, sure, but once it comes out and faces reality, you have to allow for improvisation and shifting in the idea. You can’t just be like, “This is the only idea,” because maybe it changes once it’s outside of your head.

In Japan, one of the things I struggled with was the fact that everything is planned. That there’s no room for improvisation means you’re taking a risk of losing face or of not being organized and missing the point because everything is based on harmony with execution. In Japanese culture, you are very much attached to execution. It’s not about conceptual ideas, how crazy your ideas are. It’s how you execute things. That’s what’s important. It’s better to repeat something perfectly than to take the risk of trying something new that is not finished. Whereas, where I originally come from, you have to adapt to new things all the time because you simply may die.

The environment is dangerous. It’s different. You have to be extremely flexible with how you behave every day. Whereas in Japan, things are safer, let’s say, and you want to keep them safe. There’s no room for someone who’s either too messy, too creative, too challenging, too individual…Those concepts are not the safe concept. The group, the consensus. You have to be team spirited. It’s a different kind of position to how you socialize in Japan and in Africa, there’s a lot of difference on that aspect, while there’s lots of connections as well.

Do you ever wonder, if you had not gone to Japan for work, what kind of art you’d be making?

I think I would be more of a conceptual artist. Too conceptual, I think. It really made me reconnect with West Africa and also with the culture that I didn’t really know, the culture where you have to show things, you have to again, as I said, execute things. You have to do them. You don’t talk so much in Japan because it’s dangerous, it’s weak, it’s not well seen, someone who talks too much. So although those things were new for someone who was born in Africa and raised in Europe; in France, in Japan, it’s a very different perspective. You don’t speak so much. I would have become much more of a Western conceptual artist so to speak.

Serge Mouangue Recommends:

Draw. Make your autoportrait. Especially if you think you don’t know how. You will produce the most unpredictable inner photographs.

Walk.

Find your delightful soundscape location on the planet.

A country like Japan with low natural resources, regular earthquakes and typhoon, unfriendly neighbors, constant nuclear hurdles through history and very limited living space with high density. This culture made determination a survival and competitive mantra. From my African eyes it is literally stunning.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G-VYwC28KXI

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Brandon Stosuy.

New Bill Would Protect Workers Who Walk Off the Job Because of Climate Disasters

Ken Klippenstein — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 16:00:17 +0000

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is introducing legislation that would provide employees with paid time off during severe weather events certain to be intensified by climate change, as well as protections for those who walk off the job to seek safety during these events.

The proposal follows a devastating tornado that ripped through an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, in December 2021, killing six employees — two of whom were Bush’s constituents. Amazon warehouse workers were given virtually no workplace safety training for tornadoes or other severe weather events, as The Intercept reported at the time. “Amazon won’t let us leave,” one of the warehouse employees, a father of four, reportedly texted his girlfriend before a tornado caused the building to collapse, killing him.

Amazon employees at the time expressed consternation at the lack of concern from corporate. “I know it’s the weekend and Amazon was busy blasting Michael Strahan and other wealthy people into space but can we get any kind of statement about the ‘mass casualty incident’ in Illinois,” one employee wrote on an internal Amazon message board. “I feel something could be said or a plan of action to review tornado and [severe] weather safety could be announced,” adding that “we had tornado touch downs not far” from the Jacksonville, Indiana, fulfillment center.

“Every person deserves to be safe when climate disasters hit,” Bush told The Intercept. “Likewise, all workers deserve to know that they won’t be punished by their employers for prioritizing their safety during these events.”

The bill, titled the Worker Safety in Climate Disasters Act, mandates that employers offer employees two weeks paid time off in the event of a “climate disaster,” defined as a weather or climate event with the potential to cause great damage or loss of life. These include earthquakes, floods, heat events, hurricanes, severe blizzards, tornadoes, and wildfires. The bill text is available here.

High heat has endangered many workers this summer, especially delivery drivers. Many delivery vehicles, including Amazon’s, do not have air conditioning. Temperatures inside UPS trucks can reportedly reach over 150 degrees; several have died from heat stroke. A video captured one UPS worker collapsing during one delivery. In July amid the Prime Day rush, an Amazon employee in a New Jersey warehouse died; Amazon moved to fix the air conditioning but denies that the worker died because of the heat.

At one Amazon delivery hub in California, nearly half of the drivers vomited from heat-related illness in recent weeks.
I wrote about how drivers feel pressured by Amazon's strict metrics to push themselves beyond safe limits during a crazy heatwave https://t.co/Cb4UKGKwzb
— Avi Asher-Schapiro (@AASchapiro) September 13, 2022

The bill’s protections would also extend to employees who, because of a climate disaster, would need to care for family members affected by the closure of schools or other facilities, experienced an injury or illness affecting the employee or their family, or are affected by disruptions of public transportation or commuter routes.

The bill’s co-sponsors include Reps. Chuy García, D-Ill.; Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y.; Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.; Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.,; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

By way of enforcement, employers who violate the legislation would be considered to have not paid minimum wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“Currently there are no protections that support job security nor paid time off due to missed work because of a climate disaster, or even the requirement for employers to give guidance on what safety measures to take should an unpredictable climate disaster occur,” Bush said. “My bill changes that. It would ensure that as climate disasters become more and more frequent, workers’ safety is not impeded by their bosses.”

An investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into the Amazon warehouse collapse raised concerns about potential risks to Amazon employees during severe weather emergencies, citing interviews with employees who could not recall ever participating in severe weather drills. OSHA sent Amazon a “hazard alert letter,” ordering them to improve its safety procedures, but did not levy any fines or penalties.

In April, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the tragedy, demanding documents regarding Amazon’s labor practices regarding severe weather events, led by committee Chair Maloney, Bush, and Ocasio-Cortez. The results of the investigation are not yet known, and the same three committee members this summer accused Amazon of obstructing the investigation by failing to provide key documents. Amazon for its part insists that it has cooperated with the investigation.

“What happened in Edwardsville could’ve been prevented,” Bush said. “If Amazon had invested in a storm shelter or emergency protocols, or if they had allowed their workers to leave and seek shelter without punishment, then I believe six lives could have been saved. That’s why I introduced this bill: to prevent tragedy when the unpreventable strikes.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ken Klippenstein.

Hospital appointments cancelled because of Queen’s funeral

Martin Williams — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:47:16 +0000

Exclusive: Thousands of patients waiting for surgery, maternity checks and some cancer care will be affected

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Martin Williams.

Nonprofit Workers Shouldn’t Be Turned Away Because Unions Are at “Capacity”

Myriam Sabbaghi — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 16:09:00 +0000

It's time for parent unions to think creatively about new organizing.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Myriam Sabbaghi.

School’s out: As temperatures rise, some students sent home because of lack of AC

John McCracken — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 10:30:00 +0000

School is back in session and teachers have more than lesson plans on their mind: outdated classrooms with little or no air conditioning makes teaching during heat waves near to impossible.

Columbus, Ohio teachers went on strike this past week, citing cooling systems in need of repair. In Clayton County, Georgia, elementary and middle schools are without proper cooling and hundreds of HVAC repairs need to be made to prevent, in some cases, hot air blowing out of vents and making classrooms inhospitable to students. The Baltimore City Public School system dismissed students at two dozen schools without air conditioning early this week as the city braces for a heatwave.

Classrooms are becoming hotter and hotter as global temperatures rise to extreme levels. These rising temperatures have a detrimental effect on how students learn and fixing them will cost millions of dollars, becoming a point of contention for educators. More and more schools are operating without proper cooling systems or need repairs since roughly 30 percent of all the nation’s schools were built between 1950 and 1969.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends a temperature range between 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 76 F for indoor office workplaces, while some cooling companies say 72 degrees is the most comfortable and has even improved test scores in certain situations. Classroom temperatures have risen above 80 F during the beginning and end of a school year in recent years. Columbus schools saw 14 school days break 80 F indoors in September and October last year. This week, classroom temperatures at Baltimore schools are expected to hit 93 F and have been as high as 100 F in the past.

Hot classrooms aren’t just a disruptor to the school day schedule; they are detrimental to students’ learning. A 2020 study found that for every 1-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, student learning drops by 1 percent. This study also pointed to heat days disproportionately affecting students of color and how 73 percent of these heat-driven learning gaps could be prevented by the simple inclusion of air conditioning in schools.

Columbus teachers went on strike for four days after failed salary negotiations earlier in the summer, which included asking the school district to fix its outdated heating and cooling systems. Before the strike was initiated, salary negotiations inched closer to a conclusion, but the issue of fixing broken heating and cooling systems was still a sticking point.

Columbus City Schools is Ohio’s largest school district and has experienced the phenomenon of “heat days”—schools closing due to unsafe temperatures in outdated buildings—in recent years. At the start of last school year, the Columbus Education Association issued a statement urging the administration to fix the district’s busted air conditioning and ventilation system to ward off COVID-19 and impending heatwaves.

“We’re dealing with buildings that are way too hot in the warm months and way too cold in the cold months,” Regina Fuentes, Columbus teachers union spokesperson and district teacher, told NPR’s All Things Considered during last week’s strike.

The newly agreed upon contract commits to “planning for building improvements to ensure that spaces where children learn and teachers teach are climate controlled” by the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. This includes providing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in facilities that are currently without and shoring up classrooms and buildings that operate with limited HVAC. Air conditioning isn’t a new request for teachers striking for better conditions. Ten years ago, the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike and at least one striking teacher reported she wanted “working air conditioning” among other demands. The Baltimore Teachers Union also has an ongoing donation drive to collect fans in preparation for future heat days.

Many schools across the country don’t have operating air conditioning and it eats at their budgets. A Government Accountability Office study found that, out of 100,000 K-12 public schools nationwide, nearly half needed to fix HVAC systems. Schools visited by the study commission cited older systems leaking and contributing to mold and poor indoor air quality on top of poor cooling on hot days.

Environmental advocacy organization Center for Climate Integrity, or CCI, conducted a study last year that tracked how much money school districts across the country have spent on upgrading heating and cooling systems in the past few decades. This analysis found that decades ago, school systems didn’t need air conditioning as much as they do now and they now have to shell out upwards of $40 billion to keep children cool.

The state of Ohio ranks eighth in the nation for monies spent on heating and cooling systems, according to this report, and improvements are still needed. New York comes in first for total equipment costs at nearly $7 billion, with Arkansas and Oklahoma both spending less than a million on cooling systems in recent decades.

“We’ve seen school districts across the country having to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new infrastructure to keep classrooms at safe temperatures,” Mike Meno, CCI communications director, said. “This is becoming more and more of a problem and more and more of a common occurrence.”

Just this year, Detroit public schools invested $125 million in its HVAC system, despite its schools still needing to shorten their days to escape increased heat. In five years, 95% of its facilities will be updated with cooling systems. As teachers return to Columbus schools this week with a new union contract finalized, it will still take years to properly update their facilities.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline School’s out: As temperatures rise, some students sent home because of lack of AC on Sep 1, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by John McCracken.

The Time for Paid Family Leave Is Long Overdue—But Not Because of the Unjust Court Ruling

Josephine Kalipeni — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 17:37:03 +0000

During an appearance last month on CNN’s State of the Union to discuss the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem did not answer host Dana Bash’s question about how, as she frequently says, she will “walk alongside mothers and their children” on a policy level, including supporting paid parental leave and state-funded childcare.

Everybody wins when workplace policies support families and center equity and respect because these policies strengthen communities and the workforce.

Instead, Noem talked around the issue, saying “we need to do a better job of supporting” people with unplanned pregnancies. With the newfound clarity of a convert, Noem said “the time is right” for paid family leave in South Dakota—though she still supports the Court’s decision in June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

It is time for paid family leave—it is overdue, in fact—but not because of the unjust Court ruling. Policies such as paid family leave and universal childcare have had long-standing bipartisan support. Everybody wins when workplace policies support families and center equity and respect because these policies strengthen communities and the workforce. Employers and the government play critical roles in supporting and addressing the real-life needs of working families as we re-envision the future of work. Cherry-picking paid family leave while ignoring the larger socio-economic and reproductive justice implications of the Court ruling is naive at best. We will not accept this false choice.

More than half of Latina workers and 36 percent of Black women in the workforce do not have paid sick days. Seven out of ten low-wage workers do not have access to a single paid sick day. National surveys show that parents frequently do not take the unpaid leave provided by the Family and Medical Leave Act because they cannot afford to be out of work without pay.

The absence of such policies disproportionately impacts women of color, especially disabled women and trans women. Nearly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 out of 10 people who seek abortion already have children.

There can be no pursuit of freedom and equity without the ability to fully own and make decisions about our health, education, families, and future—all of which are tied to economic justice. Reproductive justice demands that we have the right to determine when and whether to have children and the resources to raise our families in safety and with dignity.

I experienced this firsthand as a pregnant college student. At the time, I knew something was wrong, but I could not afford time off from work. Tuition was due. If I took time off, I would not get paid. When I could no longer ignore my symptoms, I went to the ER to find that I had an ectopic pregnancy and was septic—and that I had almost waited too long, narrowly avoiding death. I was given drugs for the infection and an abortion. I felt weak and shaken afterward, but had to go to work. I left the hospital, slept a few hours and went to my job.

To think that in the third year of a pandemic that has taken such a harsh personal and economic toll on women—especially women of color—the Supreme Court would roll back a critical right and protection for us and others who can become pregnant is abhorrent. The six justices who engineered the overturning of Roe sent a clear message to every person capable of getting pregnant: Your bodily autonomy, physical well-being, and economic stability do not matter.

Now is the time for our federal, state, and local legislators to take action to fight for the rights of working people and communities of color by expanding access to abortion and critical reproductive health services and codifying paid family leave and universal childcare. We must join together now. If an attack happens on people who can become pregnant while others do nothing, it will be a matter of time before another group is targeted.

The unjust decision to undo the constitutional right to abortion is a harmful blow to our human and civil rights—especially for working communities, who will be disproportionately affected by the ruling.

The only way to reverse and prevent the deep, lasting harm and marginalization of the Supreme Court’s decision is for working families to get out and vote and ensure that elected representatives legitimately represent their needs and priorities.

There is no economic justice without reproductive justice. There is no pursuit of freedom and equity without the right to fully own and make decisions about our own bodies, lives, families, and futures. We must continue to build a society and economy in which all people have the rights and support they need to thrive.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Josephine Kalipeni.

Because Climate Science ‘Does Not Grade on a Curve,’ Experts Says IRA Not Enough

Brett Wilkins — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 21:57:19 +0000

While welcoming U.S. House lawmakers' passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, climate campaigners and some progressive lawmakers said the $740 billion bill does not do nearly enough to address the worsening climate emergency.

"This bill is not perfect. It contains some troubling provisions, including some that risk expanding fossil fuel extraction and use."

"Today, we celebrate the power of organizing," Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said after House lawmakers voted 220-207 along party lines to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The historic bill—which was passed in the Senate earlier this week and which President Joe Biden says he will sign into law next week—includes major investments in renewable energy development, a minimum tax on large corporations, and a landmark requirement for Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of some prescription drugs.

"But the science of the climate crisis does not grade on a curve—and it's clear that the IRA is not enough," she continued. "We need more from our government—and we need better leaders who will not let the fossil fuel industry stand in our way."

"As Americans across the country suffer right now from record flooding, crippling droughts, and deadly heatwaves, we need President Biden, Congress, and elected officials at every level of office to treat this crisis like the emergency that it is," Prakash added.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said in a statement that she was "proud to vote in support of the Inflation Reduction Act, which will take historic and much-needed actions to address the climate crisis and make healthcare more affordable."

Bush continued:

To be crystal clear, there are provisions in this bill that I do not support, such as the dangerous expansion of fossil fuels, insufficient protections of environmental review, and inadequate investments in environmental justice communities.
Despite these flaws, I believe that ultimately the good that this bill delivers, will have a profound effect on our ability to address the climate crisis with the urgency it demands. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the House, as well as with movement leaders and advocates, to mitigate harm from any provisions that expand fossil fuels, and to ensure that the good provisions are equitably distributed.

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called Friday "a very good day for America," lauding the IRA's prescription drug relief and climate provisions in particular.

However, Weissman said that "there is an urgent need for much more aggressive and far-reaching measures to prevent climate chaos and to build on the Inflation Reduction Act's down payment with far greater investments in and measures to advance environmental justice."

Weissman added that "there is a need to mitigate the harmful pro-fossil fuel measures" in the IRA, "including those which will concentrate pollution and ecological destruction on the Gulf South, Native American lands, and in communities of color."

Food & Water Watch noted that "the legislation does not include any policies that require emissions reductions, and does not address measures to restrict fossil fuel development."

"Despite these flaws, I believe that ultimately the good that this bill delivers, will have a profound effect on our ability to address the climate crisis."

While proponents tout the IRA's $369 billion in climate and energy security investments, critics point to measure's multibillion-dollar allocation for carbon capture—which Food & Water Watch's Mitch Jones says exists "solely to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry"—as a major cause for concern.

Moreover, the legislation forces a continuation of fossil fuel leases—and enables future drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico—in exchange for expanding wind and solar energy production on federal lands.

Union of Concerned Scientists president Johanna Chao Kreilick said that "this bill is not perfect. It contains some troubling provisions, including some that risk expanding fossil fuel extraction and use; and it doesn't go far enough to remedy the myriad ways in which oil and gas companies are polluting low-income communities and communities of color."

"The critical foundation the bill provides must be built upon to ameliorate those impacts, deepen U.S. emission reductions, and help communities become more resilient to climate change," she stressed.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Will Civilization Collapse Because It’s Running Out of Oil?

Richard Heinberg — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 09:48:51 +0000

We're going to have to start coming to terms with nature's limits.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Richard Heinberg.

Biden’s Presidency Isn’t Sinking Because of the Left—It’s Because of Right-Wing Democrats

Miles Kampf-Lassin — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 10:07:42 +0000

Joe Biden’s administration is in crisis.

The president’s approval rating has hit record lows, with some polls eclipsing the dismal support for his predecessors Barack Obama and Donald Trump. When it comes to the economy, which encompasses voters’ top-ranked concern, Biden’s approval stands at just 30 percent. As inflation continues to hit Americans in the pocketbook, especially high energy and food prices, a majority now say they believe the economy will get worse over the coming year — and expect a recession. Nearly 80 percent of respondents in a recent New York Times survey say the country is heading in the wrong direction, while 64 percent of Democrats want someone else to be the party’s nominee in 2024. In sum, the American public is handing down a harsh referendum on Biden’s leadership.

"Progressives have been working to make his agenda a reality and bring relief for the very working people now facing economic havoc."

What’s behind these dire numbers? First off, the president’s agenda that voters elected him to enact — from curbing climate change to expanding childcare, guaranteeing paid family leave, and taxing the rich — remains stalled in Congress, facing stiff opposition from conservative Democrats. Other campaign promises that Biden could fulfill through executive action, like canceling student debt, haven’t been acted upon.

Inflation numbers have reached record highs, leading to economic pain for millions of working people who face far higher prices for gas, rent, groceries, and transportation, while wage increases haven’t nearly kept pace. These spiking costs have disproportionately impacted voters of color and younger Americans, the very constituencies that helped hand Biden the presidency. And when it comes to other crises, such as the scourge of gun violence and the Supreme Court’s gutting of abortion rights, the Biden administration has appeared wholly unprepared to meet the moment.

Which leads to another question: Who’s to blame? Well, if you ask the punditry class, the answer is simple — progressives and the Left.

In a Tuesday column at the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg says of Biden that, “one of the primary reasons he’s failing is that his agenda, and his rhetoric, caters to a progressive base that speaks for a minority of voters.” At CNN, meanwhile, Democratic strategist Paul Begala writes that, by pushing Biden to take a stronger tack to implement his stated policy goals, “progressives are practically doing the GOP’s job for them.” Instead, Begala implores, those on the Left should stop complaining and simply “strengthen him, so he can lead the way forward.” And at Yahoo! Finance, columnist Rick Newman argues that ahead of the midterms, the party should move to the center, writing, “the majority of Democrats themselves may have now tired of progressive visions of a mythical Shangri-La.”

What all of these critiques miss is a simple fact: Ever since Biden took office, progressives have been working to make his agenda a reality and bring relief for the very working people now facing economic havoc, while Democrats on the right flank of the party have obstructed this program every step of the way. But rather than deal with the uncomfortable truth that so-called “moderates” are the ones imperiling both Biden’s presidency and Democrats’ electoral fortunes, establishment-friendly commentators are yet again lazily training their sights on their favorite scapegoats — the Left.

The slow death of Build Back Better

Last summer, as the then-$3.5 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) plan was still moving through Congress, Biden said of the legislation, “A vote against this plan is a vote against lowering the cost of healthcare, housing, childcare, eldercare, and prescription drugs for American families.” Democratic leadership had planned to couple votes for BBB alongside a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in order to codify Biden’s economic blueprint in one fell swoop. Progressives played a key role in selling BBB, both to the American people and to the Democratic caucus.

In November 2021, after the House had passed a version of the bill, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) urged his colleagues in the Senate to support the budget resolution, claiming that “what we are trying to do is address the needs that working people are facing in America that have been neglected for decades.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D‑Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, made a similar point, saying last fall: “We have been so united in standing up for the president’s agenda in really making sure that we don’t leave behind women who need childcare, families who need paid leave, communities that need us to address climate change, housing, immigration. These are the things we’re fighting for in the Build Back Better agenda. And it’s the president’s agenda.”

Far from catering “to a progressive base that speaks for a minority of voters,” as Jonah Goldberg claims, BBB is popular across the political spectrum. Polling has shown that a clear majority of Americans back the legislation itself, as well as the constituent elements of the bill: universal pre‑K, free community college, long-term care investments, modernizing the electricity grid, lowering the Medicare age, capping the costs of prescription drugs and creating a Civilian Climate Corps all command over 50 percent support.

In short, both the U.S. public and progressives in Congress want Biden’s agenda to become law. But instead, BBB is “dead,” according to Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑W.V.) — one of the right-wing Democrats responsible for killing the bill.

Rather than keeping the infrastructure and BBB bills coupled, last year Manchin and his fellow conservative Democrats demanded that they be separated, with the bipartisan bill to be voted on first. While a number of progressives ultimately voted against the infrastructure bill in protest, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) and other members of the Squad, the majority of Democrats conceded and agreed to support it after Biden reportedly assured them that he would bring along holdouts, including Manchin, to get behind BBB.

As Jayapal said in December 2021, “the version of Build Back Better we passed out of the House was agreed to by nearly every senator caucusing with the Democrats — and we sent it to the upper chamber based on the president’s promise that he could deliver the 50 senators needed to make it law.”

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Manchin and self-described moderates such as Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D‑N.J.) and Abigail Spanberger (D‑Va.) took a victory lap once the bipartisan bill passed, before Manchin declared at the end of last year that he would not support BBB, effectively thwarting key planks of Biden’s agenda. The bill has remained in a holding pattern ever since, with negotiations sputtering time after time as Manchin — a coal baron taking money from Republican billionaires — declares that he cannot get behind proposals like spending to address climate change and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, as he did earlier this month.

And it’s not just Manchin. Along with Gottheimer and Spanberger, other conservative Democrats including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D‑Ariz.) and Rep. Kurt Schrader (D‑Ore.) voiced their opposition to BBB at various stages of the process, though they generally received less attention than Manchin for blocking the legislation. There are likely other members of the Democratic caucus similarly opposed to more spending on social programs who’ve been happy to stay quiet as more high-profile Democrats attract attention for knifing the budget package.

Rudderless Democrats

The impact of BBB’s failure has been profound. Housing projects that would have been funded through the bill are being abandoned, as are investments in climate mitigation efforts. Parents are being forced back to work due to the lack of a national paid leave policy. Students continue to rack up more debt without any guarantees of tuition-free college. The list goes on. And Democrats are left without a clear message to voters about what they accomplished as they head into an extremely challenging midterm election season.

To take one striking example, as a result of BBB’s failure, Democrats were unable to extend the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) that helped fortify recipients’ bank accounts last year. One of the most transformational economic policies enacted in over a decade, the expanded CTC lifted millions out of poverty and cut the child poverty rate by roughly 30 percent. According to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 91 percent of low-income families used their monthly benefit payments on basic needs such as food, clothing, school supplies and rent. As inflation increases and the credit has dried up, those costs are now swelling for the working class.

The expiration of the CTC has plunged 3.7 million more children in the United States back into poverty, and nearly half of families with kids can no longer afford enough food. Along with the disastrous human toll of this policy decision, Democrats are also suffering politically. Before the expanded CTC expired, the party held a 12-point advantage among recipients of the program. But by April of this year, after payments stopped, that edge disappeared, with Republicans gaining the upper hand among this group of voters.

Progressives have long been the strongest champions of the expanded CTC, and it was the reluctance of conservative Democrats like Manchin to approve an extension that led to the program’s demise. Allowing parents to buy enough food for their kids was not some progressive vision of “a mythical Shangri-La,” as in Rick Newman’s words. Rather, it was a life-changing policy that voters are now blaming Democrats for ending.

Stoking a crisis

On issue after issue, from expanding abortion rights to enacting more forceful gun control laws, progressives in Congress have offered solutions more in line with the views of the U.S. public than those being pursued by either moderate Democrats or the Biden White House. That’s not to mention other more far-reaching, left-wing policies that are broadly popular, including Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, and a Green New Deal.

To respond to inflation, progressives have pushed for policies that would punish corporations that are jacking up prices on consumers while raking in record profits. One proposal would impose a windfall tax on the profits of Big Oil companies, which are rewarding wealthy shareholders with stock buyback programs. Others are proposing measures to crack down on corporate price gouging and dominance of supply chains, including by the meat industry, where just four beef companies control 85 percent of the market. Polls suggest that this response to inflation would be favored by the public. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, with Biden’s blessing, is taking the opposite route, raising interest rates — which will likely lead to higher unemployment and decreased worker bargaining power, i.e. more neoliberal austerity.

If the chattering classes were serious about assessing the reason for Biden and the Democrats’ shrinking poll numbers, they would place blame on the real culprit — an unwillingness among the party establishment to take bold action to address the issues facing the country, from a broken healthcare system to economic plunder of working people by the super-rich to bought-and-paid-for politicians acting on behalf of their corporate funders.

By instead chiding the Left, these commentators are repeating the tired ritual of treating progressives not as partners in Democratic governance, but rather as whiny children who should stay quiet while the adults among the party elite take charge. As Jamelle Bouie writes at the New York Times, “Somehow, the people in the passenger’s seat of the Democratic Party are always and forever responsible for the driver’s failure to reach their shared destination.”

This left-punching is also taking a page out of the handbook of former President Trump, who recently denounced “Radical Left Democrats” for high inflation and the country’s economic woes. As for the power brokers in the Democratic Party, they’re busy funding the campaigns of extremist pro-Trump election deniers in Republican primaries, part of a bid to stem Democratic losses in the midterms — a strategy that could easily backfire, and one that could easily be described as “practically doing the GOP’s job for them,” as Paul Begala put it.

In 2020, voters elected a president who promised an agenda of lifting up the working class by redistributing wealth downward, investing in social programs and tackling the climate crisis. Progressives have worked relentlessly to help Biden deliver on these pledges, while right-wing Democrats have stymied him again and again. The crisis facing the administration is on their hands, no matter what the mainstream pundits try to tell you.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Miles Kampf-Lassin.

Biden’s Presidency Isn’t Sinking Because of the Left—It’s Because of Right-Wing Democrats

Miles Kampf-Lassin — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 10:07:42 +0000

Joe Biden’s administration is in crisis.

"Progressives have been working to make his agenda a reality and bring relief for the very working people now facing economic havoc."

Which leads to another question: Who’s to blame? Well, if you ask the punditry class, the answer is simple — progressives and the Left.

The slow death of Build Back Better

Rudderless Democrats

Stoking a crisis

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Miles Kampf-Lassin.

Biden’s Presidency Isn’t Sinking Because of the Left—It’s Because of Right-Wing Democrats

Miles Kampf-Lassin — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 10:07:42 +0000

Joe Biden’s administration is in crisis.

"Progressives have been working to make his agenda a reality and bring relief for the very working people now facing economic havoc."

Which leads to another question: Who’s to blame? Well, if you ask the punditry class, the answer is simple — progressives and the Left.

The slow death of Build Back Better

Rudderless Democrats

Stoking a crisis

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Miles Kampf-Lassin.

Biden’s Presidency Is Sinking Because of Conservative Democrats—Not the Left

Miles Kampf-Lassin — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 21:39:00 +0000

Don’t blame progressives for Biden’s failures. It’s the party’s right flank that abandoned the working class.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Miles Kampf-Lassin.

It Is Dark, but I Sing Because the Morning Will Come

Vijay Prashad — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 14:55:26 +0000

Photograph by Wellington Lenon / MST-PR

In the chilly Brazilian winter of 2019, Renata Porto Bugni (deputy director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), André Cardoso (coordinator of our office in Brazil), and I went to the Lula Livre (‘Free Lula’) camp in Curitiba, set up just across the road from the penitentiary where former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sat in a 15-square metre cell. Lula had been in prison for 500 days. Hundreds of people gathered each day at the Lula Livre camp to wish him good morning, good day, and good night – a greeting that sought both to keep his spirits up and to offer a spirited protest of his incarceration. Eighty days later, Lula walked out of prison, free from charges that most observers rightly condemned as absurd. He is now the front-runner in the country’s presidential elections that will take place on 2 October 2022.

One of the features of the vigil outside the federal prison was the ubiquity of militants of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Their flags were everywhere, their cadre forming the spinal cord of the movement to free Lula that blossomed out from Curitiba to every corner of the country. Formed in 1984 during the military dictatorship (1964–85), the MST grew out of agricultural workers’ and peasants’ occupations of latifúndios, gigantic estates held by wealthy individuals and corporations. Over the past four decades, these farmers have taken control of millions of hectares of land across Brazil, forming the largest social movement in Latin America.

Photograph by Mídia Ninja

Approximately 500,000 households live in these MST-led occupations, meaning that the MST has organised about two million people into its ranks. Around 100,000 families live on encampments (acampamentos), which are occupations of fallow land to which they have not been given formal access; 400,000 families live on settlements (assentamentos), whose land they now hold by right through liberal provisions in Chapter III of the country’s 1988 Constitution, Article 184, which states that the government can ‘expropriate, on account of social interest, for purposes of agrarian reform, rural property that does not perform a social function’. However, it is important to note that, on a punctual basis, the Brazilian state nonetheless attempts to evict families from these legal encampments.

The settlements’ residents organise themselves through various democratic structures, create schools for their children and community kitchens for the indigent, and develop techniques for agroecological farming towards fulfilling their own needs and for sale in the marketplace. The MST is now rooted in the social landscape of Brazil; it is impossible to think of the country without the movement’s red flag fluttering across these encampments from the Amazon in the north to Arroio Chuí, Brazil’s southernmost point.

Photograph by Mídia Ninja

Beneath the considerable activity of the MST lies a theory, and that theory – rooted in concepts such as agrarian reform – is detailed in a variety of venues. Our institute’s deputy director, Renata Porto Bugni, interviewed one of the members of the MST’s national coordination, Neuri Rossetto, on his understanding of the movement’s theory and the relevance of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s writing. Published jointly with GramsciLab and Centro per la Riforma dello Stato, this interview is now available in our dossier no. 54 (July 2022), Gramsci Amidst Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Neuri, as he prefers to be called, shares his understanding of Gramsci and reflects on the three main challenges faced by the MST:

to precisely identify the adversaries who impede efforts to address the dilemmas of humanity (such as agrarian reform);
to establish an ongoing dialogue with the working class to build a political project for each country; and
to strengthen the political and organisational capacity of the main forces who advance our struggles.

Hegemony, as Gramsci pointed out, emerges from the practice of assembling a new political project out of the ‘common sense’ of the people and elaborating those ideas into a coherent philosophy. The central concept for the MST to elaborate this theory is agrarian reform. According to Neuri, this reform project fights ‘for an agricultural model centred on the production of healthy food for the Brazilian population alongside the struggle to democratise land ownership’. The MST organises peasants to improve not only their control over land, but also over agricultural production, including by avoiding toxic chemicals which destroy both the workers’ land and health. This project is now linked to an interest amongst consumers for food whose components do not harm them and whose production does not destroy the planet. The possibility of uniting the majority of the country’s 212 million people in pursuit of agrarian reform galvanises the MST.

Photograph by Igor de Nadai

Is the MST a social movement or a political party? This has been a question that has bedevilled the movement since its origin nearly forty years ago. In fact, from a Gramscian perspective, the distinction between these two – social movements and political parties – is not so significant. Neuri’s commentary on these themes in the interview is quite instructive:

We are aware of the responsibilities and the need to improve our political forces, both in their organisational and ideological senses, in order to have a greater influence in the class struggle. However, we do not claim to assume the role of a political party in its strict sense, as we believe that this political instrument is beyond our scope. This does not mean to say that we have a supra-partisan or non-partisan stance. We believe that the articulation of working-class movements, trade unions, and political parties is fundamental in the construction of another sociability which is alternative and contrary to the bourgeois order. … [W]e do not underestimate the importance and strength of political action and popular mobilisations as an educating element for the subaltern classes. The popular masses learn and educate themselves in popular mobilisations. There, in the mass movement, lies the political strength of the organisation; this is where the political-ideological level of the masses is raised.

In sum, the MST is part of a process to build the organisational and ideological strength of the peasantry, and it works alongside trade union movements and other organisations to create a political project for social emancipation. To that end, the MST has participated in building the Popular Project for Brazil (Projeto Brasil Popular), which, as Neuri says, ‘aims to consolidate a historic bloc that promotes anti-capitalist, emancipatory struggles and immediate economic gains that meet the needs and interests of the working class’. Advancing the confidence and power of the working class and peasantry is, therefore, central to the MST’s activity. Part of this work has been to fight back against Lula’s persecution.

Nara Leão (Brazil) sings Faz escuro mas eu canto (1966)

In 1962–63, while Brazil was governed by a centre-left formation led by President João Goulart, the mood in the country was drawn to change and possibility. During this period, the Amazonian poet Thiago de Mello (1926–2022) wrote ‘Madrugada camponesa’ (‘Peasant Dawn’), which reflected on the peasantry’s hard work to plant not only food but also hope. When the poem was published in 1965 in a book called Faz escuro mas eu canto (‘It Is Dark but I Sing’), the political situation in Brazil had changed after a US-led coup overthrew Goulart and brought the military to power in 1964. The poem’s line ‘It is dark, but I sing because the morning will come’ took on a new charge. The next year, Nara Leão sang these words and made them an anthem of the time. We leave our newsletter this week with de Mello’s poem, a tribute to the peasantry and to the fight against the dictatorship of power, privilege, and property.

The land is still dark
in the peasant dawn,
but it is necessary to plant.
Night was deeper,
now morning is coming.

There is no place for a song
made of fear and mimicry
to fool solitude.
Now it is time for the truth,
sung simply and always.
Now it is time for joy,
which is built day by day
with bread and song.

Soon it will be (I feel it in the air)
the time of ripe wheat.
It will be time to harvest.
Miracles are rising up like
blue rain on the cornfields,
beanstalks bursting into flower,
fresh sap flowing
from my distant rubber trees.

Dawn of hope,
the time of love is almost here.
I harvest a fiery sun that burns on the ground
and plough the light from within the sugarcane,
my soul on its pennant.

Peasant dawn.
The land is dark (but not quite as much),
it is time to work.
It is dark but I sing
because the morning will come
(It is dark, but I sing).

The post It Is Dark, but I Sing Because the Morning Will Come first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

‘Bite Marks,’ Homophobia, and Bias: How Two Women Were Wrongly Convicted Because They Loved Each Other

Dani Selby — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 21:59:56 +0000

Tami Vance will never forget the moment her trial judge told her and her co-defendant Leigh Stubbs that because they loved each other — because they were openly lesbians — they deserved to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

“He said he was gonna make sure that we did, and then he gave us 44 years to serve,” Ms. Vance recalled. What made it even worse was knowing that they hadn’t committed the crime they’d been convicted of.

A biased trial and invalid bite mark evidence

In 2001, Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs were convicted of assaulting their friend, Kimberly Williams, in Mississippi. The conviction was largely based on bite mark evidence — a debunked forensic method — and a biased trial in which witnesses and “experts” gave testimony replete with anti-LGBTQ statements. In fact, when Ms. Vance’s attorney asked the jury before the trial began if they would be able to vote Ms. Vance not guilty based on their own “personal morality” knowing that there would be testimony about “lesbian behavior,” two jurors admitted they would vote Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs guilty, knowing nothing else about the case.

“This case was a confluence of faulty forensic evidence — bogus bite mark evidence — homophobia, stereotypes about drug use, and bias against substance use disorders, which all converged together to lead to these wrongful convictions,” said Valena Beety, who represented Ms. Stubbs in her post-conviction litigation. Ms. Beety is the author of Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights, in which she details the injustices Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs overcame.

“This case really highlights how sexual orientation and queer identity can be weaponized,” Ms. Beety, who is also the founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project, said.

Tami Vance (second from left) and Leigh Stubbs (third from left). (Image: Mississippi Innocence Project)

In 2000, Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs called 911 after noticing Ms. Williams was having trouble breathing in an apparent drug overdose. Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs took turns performing CPR on Ms. Williams, whom they met while at a rehabilitation facility where all three were receiving treatment, until the paramedics arrived. After unsuccessfully attempting to revive Ms. Williams with CPR, the paramedics administered Narcan, and Ms. Williams began breathing again but remained unconscious as she was taken to the hospital.

Ms. Williams was diagnosed as having overdosed, but a doctor who noticed some bruising speculated that she had been sexually assaulted days before “from the coloring” of her injuries. That same day, Ms. Williams was transported to another hospital and suffered seizures during the hour-long drive.

The detective on the case, Nolan Jones, called in his friend Michael West, a dentist and a forensic odontologist, whose testimony on bite mark identifications contributed to the wrongful convictions of several now exonerated Innocence Project clients. To date, more than 30 people wrongly convicted based on bite mark evidence have been exonerated. Dr. West testified in at least half a dozen of those cases.

Although no medical staff reported seeing any alleged bite marks on Ms. Williams, Dr. West took close-up photos and video footage of Ms. Williams’ breasts and genitals, and claimed to have found bite marks and cigarette burns on her body. He then claimed he had “matched” the bite marks to Ms. Stubbs after having created additional bruises on Ms. Williams’ body by pressing a mold of Ms. Stubbs’ teeth into Ms. Williams’ hip.

LGBTQ discrimination on the stand and beyond

At trial, Dr. West testified that “it wouldn’t be unusual” to find bite marks in a “homosexual rape case” and said it would “almost” be expected in such a case when asked by the prosecutor. He also claimed that part of Ms. Williams’ genitals had been bitten off, which he called a “usually a combative or a sexual orientation phenomenon.”

Dr. West was far from the only person to make such unfounded, homophobic statements at trial. One doctor, a pathologist and expert for the defense, testified that bite marks were “consistent” with what he’d expect to find in a homosexual rape case, saying, “In homosexual crimes, all, they are very sadistic. Most violent times I’ve seen in my experience are homosexual to homosexual. They do what we call overkill. They do tremendous damage, tremendous damage.”

Ms. Vance said she often felt her sexuality was more accepted in prison than outside of it.

Both Ms. Stubbs and Ms. Vance were the subjects of discrimination during their trial. Ms. Vance, who is less femme-presenting, was the target of particularly hateful character assassination and derogatory language. In fact, “police were more reluctant to prosecute Leigh than Tami — even though under their own ‘evidence,’ Leigh’s teeth allegedly matched the bite mark,” Ms. Beety writes in her book.

The different treatment that Ms. Stubbs and Ms. Vance received based on their appearance and perceptions of them reflects the many ways members of the LGBTQ community experience discrimination at the hands of law enforcement and the criminal legal system. A recent survey found that LGB people are incarcerated at a rate more than three times higher than the overall adult incarceration rate, and that about one-third of incarcerated women identify as lesbian or bisexual. In fact, Ms. Vance said she often felt her sexuality was more accepted in prison than outside of it.

Trans people, in particular, tend to be arrested and harassed by police more often for lower-level or false charges than other members of the LGBTQ community, Ms. Beety said. She added that, in her work, she has also witnessed prosecutors attempt to assassinate the characters of trans people in order to exploit potential biases jurors might hold, consciously or unconsciously.

In Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs’ case, the prosecution painted the LGBTQ community as inherently violent and vicious, a sentiment the judge reiterated when giving the women the maximum sentence. The women spent nearly 11 years wrongly incarcerated before being freed and exonerated in 2012. They were represented by Ms. Beety and the Mississippi Innocence Project.

‘I’m fixing to watch my whole life rebuild’

Despite these grave injustices, Ms. Vance said she considers herself “so blessed.” She feels lucky to have had a supportive family since coming out at the age of 18, but she emphasized how her wrongful conviction weighed heavily on them.

“Families go to prison with their children — the day their child goes to prison, they go too, they do time on the outside while you’re doing time on the inside, my mother did 11 years just like I did,” she said.

“I’ve watched my whole life crumble, but I’m fixing to watch my whole life rebuild”“I’ve watched my whole life crumble, but I’m fixing to watch my whole life rebuild”Since being freed, Ms. Vance has spent much of her time with her family and helping those around her. Now, she plans to take some time to focus on herself, after being diagnosed with PTSD.

“I’ve watched my whole life crumble, but I’m fixing to watch my whole life rebuild,” she said. “I’m taking out the trash on the inside — all the negativity and feelings, and letting them go.”

Tami Vance (right) enjoying the beach with a friend. (Image: Courtesy of Tami Vance)

She has big plans to finish restoring and decorating her trailer, which she dubbed “Hippie Nation.” So far, she has decked the trailer with wood beams on the ceiling, posters of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Melissa Etheridge, and dream catchers. She said she has only used colors that remind her of the beach — her favorite place — in the trailer.

While Ms. Vancesaid she is pleased to see progress made in advancing LGBTQ rights and acceptance, there is still a long way to go.

“I think people should be way more understanding. We’re all the same — everybody bleeds red,” she said. Ms. Vance said she’s not sure if she would experience less discrimination at trial if her wrongful conviction case were tried today.

Ms. Beety additionally stressed that queer visibility matters in helping to combat discrimination and prevent its role in wrongful convictions.

“We have to show ourselves and be seen in our full identities,” she said. “Because otherwise, that leads to decision makers being able to single out an individual for their gender expression for their presentation, and again, falsely attribute criminality to marginalized identities.”

Ms. Vance said she ultimately hopes people will recognize the power that prosecutors hold and more importantly, the power that each individual has to hold those very prosecutors accountable in states where such officials are elected.

Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights by Valena Beety tells the story of Ms. Vance and Ms. Stubbs’ wrongful convictions, the stories of other wrongly convicted women and queer people, and explains what we can do to free them.

The post ‘Bite Marks,’ Homophobia, and Bias: How Two Women Were Wrongly Convicted Because They Loved Each Other appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by Dani Selby.

Will Black Elder Mutulu Shakur Die in Prison Because of Ideological Intransigence?

Natasha Lennard — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 15:16:06 +0000

Mutulu Shakur in 2012.

Photo: Courtesy of Friends and Family of Dr. Shakur

When Mutulu Shakur applied for compassionate release in 2020, the presiding judge told the Black liberation elder that he was not close enough to death. At the time, Shakur was 70 and had spent nearly half his life in federal prison, where a moribund parole system created interminable barriers for his release.

In 2020, he was sick with hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, glaucoma, and the aftereffects of a 2013 stroke while in solitary confinement. He also faced high risks of severe Covid-19 complications. The cancer in his bone marrow, though, was not yet killing him fast enough. It was understood to be terminal, but chemotherapy treatment had been successful in keeping it at bay.

As such, according to then-90-year-old Judge Charles Haight Jr. — the very same judge who had sentenced Shakur to prison over three decades before — the respected and beloved elder, who posed zero risk to society and held an impeccable institutional record, was not eligible for compassion.

“Should it develop that Shakur’s condition deteriorates further, to the point of approaching death, he may apply again to the Court, for a release that in those circumstances could be justified as ‘compassionate,’” the judge wrote in his decision.

The judge is still alive and, astoundingly, on the bench. Shakur, meanwhile, is on the very edge of death.

Two years later, Haight is still alive and, astoundingly, on the bench. Shakur, meanwhile, is on the very edge of death, cancer disabling his every bodily capacity.

Bureau of Prisons-contracted doctors have given him less than six months. The prison chaplain has advised his family members to come “very soon” to say their final goodbyes. Shakur may not even be able to recognize them.

According to reports from prison staff, he is “hallucinating,” “confused,” at times “unintelligible,” needs assistance with all so-called “Activities of Daily Living,” and is “frequently incontinent.” The details of his condition were revealed by medical professionals and Shakur’s family members in an emergency motion for compassionate release, which was filed by his lawyers on Sunday,

Shakur weighs 125 pounds and is unable to get out of bed. His support team told me that he currently resides in the federal prison hospital at FMC Lexington, where “he is too ill to have visitors as his white blood count is too low and he is completely immune-compromised.” (In response to my request for comment on Shakur’s condition, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson wrote, “For privacy, safety, and security reasons, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) does not discuss information on any individual inmate’s conditions of confinement including medical care.”)

The time for true compassion — or anything close to justice — has long passed for Shakur, well-known as rapper Tupac’s stepfather and celebrated for bringing holistic health care and self-determination to the Bronx’s Black community in the 1970s. Like most Black liberation elders, the circumstances of Shakur’s conviction were colored by the government’s decadeslong, all-out war on the movement. This should not be forgotten, but it is also not relevant to the current grounds for Shakur’s long overdue release.

The question now is simply whether the federal punishment system will, against its own purported standards, force a dying man to expire behind bars out of ideological intransigence.

Shakur was a member of the Black nationalist organization Republic of New Afrika, which worked closely with Black Panther Party members and New Left activists. He was convicted of racketeering conspiracy charges alongside several Black liberationists and leftist allies for his involvement in the 1981 robbery of an armored truck during which a guard and two police officers were killed. He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur. He has taken responsibility for his crimes and repeatedly expressed remorse for the lives lost and pain caused. All of his co-defendants have been released or have died.

Co-defendant Marilyn Buck, who was convicted on the same charges as Shakur, was granted compassionate release by the Bureau of Prisons on July 15, 2010. She died of uterine cancer on August 3 that year.

The harsh standard applied in Buck’s case was the same one that the judge used in denying Shakur’s release two years ago: Come back only when, like Buck, your only activity outside of prison walls will be dying. Shakur has now arrived at this tragic place. Anything but immediate release constitutes an abundance of cruelty.

Shakur’s release has been blocked by layer upon layer of institutional intransigence and procedural arcana. Even while a number former Black Panthers and other liberation elders — all incarcerated for all too many decades in state prison systems — have finally been released on parole in recent years, the strange vagaries of outdated federal rules, abuses of discretion, and administrative failures have foreclosed such relief for Shakur.

Shakur’s legal team has sought every avenue for his release, including the superannuated federal parole system, the Bureau of Prisons’ compassionate release process, the calculation of Shakur’s earned “good time” in prison, and even the unlikely route of presidential clemency — all to no avail.

As a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson wrote in response to my request for comment on its process for compassionate release motions, “At all times, the decision on whether to grant such a motion — whether brought on behalf of the Director of the BOP, or the inmate themselves — lies with the sentencing court.”

In the federal system, compassionate release rulings are determined by the very court —the very judge — that sentenced a defendant in the first place. Shakur’s fate is once again in his sentencing judge’s hands. Yet there is hope in the fact that Haight himself previously wrote that in circumstances of “imminent” death, compassionate release “could be justified.” As Shakur’s lawyers note in their motion, “It is now imminent.”

Both prior to and during his incarceration, Shakur has been respected as a mentor and a healer. In the emergency motion for his release, numerous men incarcerated alongside Shakur are cited, attesting to his profound positive influence on their lives.

“I recognize Dr. Mutulu Shakur not only as my father, but as the man who changed my way of thinking and saved my life,” wrote Ra’ Sekou P’tah, who was serving a double-life sentence plus 30 years for a nonviolent drug offense when he met Shakur. President Barack Obama commuted P’tah’s sentence after he had served 20 years. When reporting on Shakur’s case last year, I heard several similar stories of mentorship and care from men formerly incarcerated with the Black liberation elder.

The time has passed for Shakur to continue his healing community work as a free man. He will not live to see his mandatory release date in 2024. He is, as his lawyers note in their motion, “on the downward side of an end-of life trajectory.”

The least — and it is the very least — Haight, the judge, can do now in the name of decency would be to allow Shakur to die in the California home of his son and daughter-in-law, in the presence of loved ones, uncaged.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

The Right hate feminists because we want freedom. Here’s how to fight back

Pamela Shifman, Tynesha McHarris — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:44:40 +0000

Bolsonaro is attacking women’s rights. But Francia Márquez’s election in Colombia shows us victory is possible

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Pamela Shifman, Tynesha McHarris.

Pennsylvania GOP Election Official Says His Family Faced Death Threats Because of Trump

Democracy Now! — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 14:21:28 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Pennsylvania GOP Election Official Tells Jan. 6 Comm. His Family Faced Death Threats Because of Trump

Democracy Now! — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 12:47:32 +0000

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack heard live testimony Monday from Al Schmidt, the sole Republican on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the 2020 election. He described how he found no evidence of voter fraud in 2020, and said he and his family received death threats after Trump lashed out at him on Twitter for not halting the vote count due to false claims of fraud.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Many PNG voters to miss out because Common Roll update ‘ran out of steam’

APR editor — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 09:36:25 +0000

By Claudia Tally in Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea’s Common Roll, important for the voting population in the 2022 National General Elections next month, has a glaring loophole — it is incomplete.

It is inaccurate and not up to date.

Figures coming in from provinces paint a picture of incompetence, inconvenience and ineffectiveness, which will unfortunately result in a missed opportunity for millions of eligible voters whose names are not on the roll.

READ MORE: Other PNG general election reports

Many of those who voted in 2002, 2007, and possibly 2017, will find that their names are not on the Common Roll in 2022 because an update of the roll, registration of new voters, started this year, ran out of steam.

While PNG Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai maintains more than 6 million voters will be eligible, it is not known at this stage which common roll will be used in 2022.

Three weeks to go before the polls and the accuracy of the Electoral Roll for the 2022 National General Election is now an issue, following revelation by provinces that many eligible voters were not registered.

According to a random check with several provinces, more than a million people were not registered and this number is expected to go up when all the figures of eligible voters that have not enrolled for various reasons are counted.

Shortage of funding, time
Officials in East Sepik, Milne Bay, National Capital District (NCD), Madang and Northern (Oro) provinces say insufficient enrollment forms, shortage of funding and lack of time were among the main factors that contributed to the failure to update the Electoral Roll properly.

“The Common (Electoral) Roll is the biggest issue with us at the moment. A large number of our voter population of almost 300,000 voters is not on the Common Roll,” East Sepik election manager James Piapia said.

In NCD, Assistant Election Manager Roselyn Tabogani confirmed that only 400,000 voters of almost a million were captured in the electoral roll.

“NCD was the last province to go out for enrollment. We did enrollment in the whole of March which is not enough.”

She confirmed reports from other provinces that there was not enough time for the Common Roll update teams to complete the exercise, leaving out thousands.

These provinces were joined by Northern and Milne Bay, whose officials confirmed that both budget and timing constraints limited their ability to update the electoral roll properly.

Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai announced recently that the Electoral Roll was completed and 6.2 million people were registered to cast their votes throughout the country.

Integrity of report in question
The revelation by the provinces has now thrown the integrity of the report into question, and this is not the first time the Electoral Roll was not updated properly to ensure every eligible voter in the country is given the right to vote.

In previous elections — for example in 2002, 2007 and 2012 — issues surrounding the Electoral Roll were observed and international election observers like the Commonwealth Observer Group reported serious flaws in the Electoral Roll.

“Significant issues with the voter registration process were an unfortunate feature of the 2017 National Election, with a large number of names missing from the electoral roll, the Commonwealth Group reported.

“That sufficient funding and equipment by allocated for the periodic and regular enrolment, updating, and cleansing of the electoral roll, at least once every 18 months and that permanent enrollment teams be employed at provincial levels to be managed by provincial election officers to travel across the electorate to record voter information and do it electronically and are adequately paid to do that job,” another observer group, the Pacific Islands Forum Election Observer team, recommended.

More than 1000 international observers were deployed in the country to observe the 2017 election and they reported that the shortcomings in the conduct of the 2017 elections were attributed to two major causes.

These, they said, were the late and inadequate disbursement of funds by the government to the PNGEC to carry out its work and significant delays in implementing electoral plans and preparatory work.

Claudia Tally is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

U.S. Military Spending Is Undebatable Because Indefensible

David Swanson — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 08:35:56 +0000

Spain, Thailand, Germany, Japan, Netherlands — The word has gone out that every government can buy a lot more weapons with either no debate at all or with all debate shut down by a single word: Russia. Do a web search for “weapons buying” and you’ll find story after story about U.S. residents solving their More

The post U.S. Military Spending Is Undebatable Because Indefensible appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Swanson.

Uvalde Police Didn’t Move to Save Lives Because That’s Not What Police Do

Natasha Lennard — Fri, 27 May 2022 14:34:03 +0000

Law enforcement authorities and other officials attend a press conference on May 26, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.

Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

The more details that emerge about how police responded to the massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the clearer it is that the already well-funded, heavily armed and amply trained law enforcement officers on the scene failed to save the lives of 19 children and two of their teachers.

Here’s what we know so far, based on haunting videos from the scene outside Robb Elementary School and statements from police officials themselves. Salvador Ramos murdered 21 people. Despite earlier, misleading claims from law enforcement officials, it appears that no police officers engaged with the shooter before he entered the school. Instead of rushing in to protect the children and staff when reports of a gunman approaching the school were made at 11:30 a.m., police instead waited outside and aggressively confronted parents who were begging them to enter. The parents were threatened with arrest — one cop brandished a Taser — as they attempted to access the school to save their kids themselves.

Police at the scene acted as they usually do, in accordance with standard policing practice: Rather than risk a hail of gunfire to stop the killer, they kept themselves safe.

One mother who was urging the police to enter the building, Angeli Rose Gomez, was handcuffed. When she was released, she managed to run into the school, grab her kids, and bring them out to safety, which is the alleged job of the police. According to one Texas Department of Public Safety lieutenant interviewed by local news, some officers did run into the school — but only to grab their own children.

The Border Patrol SWAT team that eventually engaged with and killed the shooter — 40 minutes to an hour after first shots were reported — was not able to break down the door to the classroom where the killer was holed up with more children. A staff member had to unlock it with a key. According to the chilling firsthand account of a fourth grader in the room, cops told children to yell “if you need help”; when one little girl did, the gunman immediately shot her.

The police failed at protecting the schoolchildren, yes, but we should not be under the illusion that this is an example of the cops failing at their jobs. As far we can tell from reports, police at the scene acted as they usually do, in accordance with standard policing practice: Rather than risk a hail of gunfire to stop the killer, they kept themselves safe.

As Akela Lacy noted on Wednesday in The Intercept, the approach is not an outlier: “As the number of school resource officers has ballooned over the last two decades, so has the number of school shootings. There is no evidence that police have the ability to stop these shootings from happening.”

The behavior of the police at Robb Elementary is only shocking if you are committed to a mythic notion of what policing entails. The “thin blue line” does not, as reactionary narratives would have it, separate society from violent chaos. This has never been what police do, since the birth of municipal policing in slave patrols and colonial counterinsurgencies. The “thin blue line” instead separates those empowered by the state to uphold racial capitalism with violence, and to do so with impunity.

It is disgusting, not shocking, that police officers would sooner harass and handcuff parents — parents begging them to save their children from a massacre — than they would run in and put themselves in the line of fire. What is striking, though, is how inconceivable it is to so many people that policing is not, in fact, what they’ve been told it is by the police themselves, by those in power, and by the mainstream culture built around those mutually reinforcing myths.

Since police propaganda relies on the repetition of lies, certain corrective truths bear repeating too.

Being a police officer is not even among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the U.S. Roofers, loggers, and delivery drivers all face greater risks to their lives at work. For the last two years in a row, the leading cause of death among cops, purportedly in the line of duty, is the coronavirus pandemic.

And cops don’t solve most crimes. Only around 2 percent of major crimes are solved by police. Police also don’t prevent crime, they criminalize: Ninety percent of the almost all Black people stopped under the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy were not committing any crime at all. There’s scant evidence that police surveillance reduces or prevents crime. What policing does do, however, is criminalize poverty and the communities of color forced to live in it.

In just the last month, the vast and wealthy army that is the NYPD failed to apprehend two shooters on the subway system — a system that crawls with cops and surveillance. When the first of these shooters was eventually taken into custody, thanks to the intervention of a civilian who spotted him, he was just blocks away from the site of a homeless encampment, which the police were busy destroying.

So what are cops up to? Katie May, writing on the All Cops Are Posters Substack, gathered the social media posts of the Uvalde Police Department to show that, rather than saving lives and risking their own, the Texas cops spend a considerable amount of their time arresting and caging desperate men, women, and children attempting to enter the U.S. through the southern border.

Even the Supreme Court affirmed in 2005 that police departments are not in fact obligated to provide protection to the public. Our safety is quite simply not what our tax dollars, endlessly funneled into glutted police departments, pay for. Meanwhile, it was two teachers who put their bodies in the line of fire and died trying to protect children during Tuesday’s massacre.

As Patrick Blanchfield, author of the forthcoming “Gunpower: The Structure of American Violence,” noted on Twitter, “U.S. police are trained to maximize control over situations while minimizing their personal risk. That translates into beating parents while a rampage shooter executes their children just as easily as it does their rolling up on a kid with a toy guy and executing him seconds later.”

To be clear, this was not a question of funding or training: Police in the Uvalde school district had both.

Those of us who have been calling for the defunding of police departments — indeed for police abolition in favor of real, collective public safety practices — have been treated by Democratic and Republican leaders and commentators alike as fanatical. In the face of decades, if not centuries of evidence exposing what the work of policing actually entails — and does not entail — the true ideologues are those committed to policing as a social solution.

It should not take an event so devastating — with police behavior so counter to the task of saving lives — to break the spell of policing mythology.

It would be too generous to those in power to grant that they have simply been misled by copaganda. By insisting that we double down on policing, they make clear that they too uphold what the institution of policing defends: property, power, and racial hierarchy.

The police response to just this latest massacre of children is drawing rightful ire. Yet that alone is unlikely to turn the tides of political will when it comes to shattering the myth of policing. The lionization of the police is as deep seated as any American ideology — resistant to buckling under its own contradictions and obvious falsities. This is a country, after all, founded on genocide, slave labor, and universalist claims to equality for all. Violent contradictions should come as no surprise.

Those who have dismissed calls to defund the police as too radical ought to question their own convictions about policing. It should not take an event so devastating — with police behavior so counter to the task of saving lives — to break the spell of policing mythology.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

Sanders: Manchin and Sinema ‘Sabotaged’ Biden Agenda Because They Lack ‘Guts’

Jake Johnson — Mon, 16 May 2022 09:34:20 +0000

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday called Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema out by name for undercutting their own party's legislative agenda, including desperately needed action to rein in carbon emissions, reduce income and wealth inequality, and protect abortion rights.

"Why don't you stand up for ordinary Americans and not just your wealthy campaign contributors?"

"It should not be a head-scratcher," Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told MSNBC's Chuck Todd after the host expressed confusion as to why congressional Democrats ended up with nothing to show for months of negotiations on Build Back Better, a central component of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda that proposed billions in spending on climate action and poverty-reducing social programs.

The legislative package passed the House in November but died in the Senate due largely to Manchin and Sinema's obstruction.

"You’ve got two members of the Senate, Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, who have sabotaged what the president has been fighting for,” Sanders said Sunday.

When Todd interrupted to suggest "sabotaged" was a "strong word," Sanders replied: "Well, you help me out with a better word here. You got 48 members of the Senate who wanted to go forward with an agenda that helped working families, that was prepared to take on the wealthy and the powerful. You got a president who wanted to do that. You had two people who prevented us from doing that."

"You have a better word than 'sabotage'? That's fine," Sanders continued. "But I think that is the right word."

Sanders went on to urge the people of West Virginia and Arizona to bring pressure to bear on Manchin and Sinema, both of whom receive substantial campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry, Big Pharma, and other corporate sectors that had a financial interest in tanking the Build Back Better package.

"Why don't you stand up for ordinary Americans and not just your wealthy campaign contributors?" Sanders asked in a message directed at his Senate colleagues. "Why don't you have the guts to take on the drug companies and the insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry?"

Sanders' remarks came days after Manchin teamed up with Senate Republicans for a second time to filibuster legislation that would enshrine abortion rights into federal law as the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade—and as the GOP strategizes for a potential nationwide abortion ban.

Next Monday, a coalition of grassroots progressives in West Virginia and Arizona plan to engage in marches, protests, and other nonviolent direct actions at Manchin and Sinema's home-state offices to pressure them to drop their support for the 60-vote legislative filibuster, a key obstacle to the Democratic agenda in the Senate.

"Bernie says it's time for Arizonans and West Virginians to put pressure on Sinema and Manchin to stop sabotaging Biden's plans," Kai Newkirk, an Arizona-based activist and one of the organizers of next week's demonstrations, wrote on Twitter Sunday. "If you agree, join us to rally, march, and sit in on 5/23 in Tucson and Charleston."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Ukraine Needs a Negotiated Peace Because Everyone Will Lose This War of Attrition

Jeffrey D. Sachs — Wed, 11 May 2022 12:37:45 +0000

Wars often erupt and persist because of the two sides’ miscalculations regarding their relative power. In the case of Ukraine, Russia blundered badly by underestimating the resolve of Ukrainians to fight and the effectiveness of NATO-supplied weaponry. Yet Ukraine and NATO are also overestimating their capacity to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The result is a war of attrition that each side believes it will win, but that both sides will lose. Ukraine should intensify the search for a negotiated peace of the type that was on the table in late March, but which it then abandoned following evidence of Russian atrocities in Bucha—and perhaps owing to changing perceptions of its military prospects.

The peace terms under discussion in late March called for Ukraine’s neutrality, backed by security guarantees and a timeline to address contentious issues such as the status of Crimea and the Donbas. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators stated that there was progress in the negotiations, as did the Turkish mediators. The negotiations then collapsed after the reports from Bucha, with Ukraine’s negotiator stating that, “Ukrainian society is now much more negative about any negotiation concept that concerns the Russian Federation.”

As long as the war continues, the risk of nuclear escalation is real.

But the case for negotiations remains urgent and overwhelming. The alternative is not Ukraine’s victory but a devastating war of attrition. To reach an agreement, both sides need to recalibrate their expectations.

When Russia attacked Ukraine, it clearly expected a quick and easy victory. Russia vastly underestimated the upgrading of the Ukraine military following years of US, British, and other military support and training since 2014. Moreover, Russia underestimated the extent to which NATO military technology would counter Russia’s greater number of troops. No doubt, Russia’s greatest error was to assume that the Ukrainians would not fight—or perhaps even switch sides.

Yet now Ukraine and its Western supporters are overestimating the chances of defeating Russia on the battlefield. The idea that the Russian army is about to collapse is wishful thinking. Russia has the military capacity to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure (such as the rail lines now under attack) and to win and hold territory in the Donbas region and on the Black Sea coast. Ukrainians are fighting resolutely, but it is highly unlikely that they can force a Russian defeat.

Nor can Western financial sanctions, which are far less sweeping and effective than the governments that imposed them acknowledge. US sanctions against Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and others have not changed the politics of those regimes, and the sanctions against Russia are already falling far short of the hype with which they were introduced. Excluding Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system was not the “nuclear option” that many claimed. According to the International Monetary Fund, Russia’s economy will contract by around 8.5% in 2022—bad but hardly catastrophic.

Moreover, the sanctions are creating serious economic consequences for the United States and especially Europe. US inflation is at a 40-year high and is likely to persist because of the trillions of dollars of liquidity that had been created by the Federal Reserve in recent years. At the same time, the US and European economies are slowing, perhaps even contracting, as supply-chain disruptions proliferate.

US President Joe Biden’s domestic political position is weak and likely to weaken further as economic difficulties mount in the coming months. Public support for the war will also likely diminish as the economy sours. The Republican Party is split over the war, with the Trump faction not much interested in confronting Russia over Ukraine. The Democrats, too, will increasingly resent the stagflation that is likely to cost the party its majority in one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections.

It is still possible to establish peace in Ukraine based on the parameters that were on the table at the end of March.

The adverse economic fallout from the war and sanctions regime will also reach dire proportions in dozens of developing countries that depend on food and energy imports. Economic dislocations in these countries will lead to urgent calls worldwide to end the war and sanctions regime.

In the meantime, Ukraine continues to suffer grievously in terms of deaths, dislocation, and destruction. The IMF now forecasts a 35% contraction of Ukraine’s economy in 2022, reflecting the brutal destruction of housing, factories, rail stock, energy storage and transmission capacity, and other vital infrastructure.

Most dangerous of all, as long as the war continues, the risk of nuclear escalation is real. If Russia’s conventional forces were actually to be pushed toward defeat, as the US is now seeking, Russia might well counter with tactical nuclear weapons. A US or Russian aircraft could be shot down by the other side as they scramble over the Black Sea, which in turn could lead to direct military conflict. Media reports that the US has covert forces on the ground, and the US intelligence community’s disclosure that it helped Ukraine kill Russian generals and sink Russia’s Black Sea flagship, underscore the danger.

The reality of the nuclear threat means that both sides should never forgo the possibility of negotiations. That is the central lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place 60 years ago this coming October. President John F. Kennedy saved the world then by negotiating an end to the crisis—agreeing that the US would never again invade Cuba and that the US would remove its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. That was not giving in to Soviet nuclear blackmail. That was Kennedy wisely avoiding Armageddon.

It is still possible to establish peace in Ukraine based on the parameters that were on the table at the end of March: neutrality, security guarantees, a framework for addressing Crimea and the Donbas, and Russian withdrawal. This remains the only realistic and safe course for Ukraine, Russia, and the world. The world would rally to such an agreement, and, for its own survival and well-being, so should Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Racism ‘Hovers’ Over Events Like Jackson Hearings Because It Goes Unnamed

Janine Jackson — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 18:40:46 +0000

“We’re all racist, if we ask hard questions,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham. Not to the Washington Post (3/24/22), you’re not.

The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court occasions a look back at some of the media coverage of her hearings. While media reported GOP senators’ grandstanding harassment and aggressive repetition of baseless accusations, their need to always be signaling “balance” led to some mealy-mouthed avoidance tactics, like C-SPAN‘s tweet (3/23/22) describing a “heated exchange between Supreme Court Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC on child pornography sentencing”—when anyone watching would tell you only one side was heated.

Or a piece from the Washington Post (3/24/22) that began:

As Ketanji Brown Jackson this week sat through several days of hearings in her bid to join the Supreme Court, Democrats proudly took turns reflecting on the historic example she sets and the need for the judiciary—much like other institutions—to better reflect the diverse public it serves.

At the same time, some Republicans repeatedly suggested that the first Black female high court nominee was soft on crime and questioned whether critical race theory—an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic—influenced her thinking as a judge.

You might think this says: Democrats noted correctly that there are no Black women on the court, while some Republicans showed part of the reason why—by inappropriately linking Black people to crime and to their own weaponized rendering of an intellectual framework.

For the Post, though:

The disparate treatment underscored the extent to which race hovered over the four grueling days of Jackson’s confirmation hearings this week, serving as both a source of ebullience for the judge’s supporters and an avenue for contentious questions that sometimes carried racial undertones.

So it wasn’t a series of racist attacks on a Black woman in an attempt to deny her advancement. It was “race” itself, “hovering”—both over those who want to see an end to decades of discriminatory exclusion, and those who don’t.

When Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked, “Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?” and Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know if she thought babies were racist—those would be some of those “contentious questions” with “racial undertones,” leading one to wonder what a racial overtone would look like.

The word “racist” does appear in the piece—in senators’ own descriptions of the 1619 Project and critical race theory, and in reporters Seung Min Kim and Marianna Sotomayor own statement that “Republican senators who would go on to question Jackson most aggressively acknowledged they could be perceived as racist in doing so.”

This sort of coverage may not come off as mean-spirited, but its purposive timidity and awkward “even-handedness” ultimately provide cover for ideas and tactics that should be ruthlessly exposed for what they are. If there ever was a time to talk about “race” “hovering over” things, it’s long past.

The post Racism ‘Hovers’ Over Events Like Jackson Hearings Because It Goes Unnamed appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Why Should Progressives Embrace a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights? Because They Already Do

Alan Minsky, Harvey J. Kaye, Michael Brennan — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 10:27:43 +0000

The media has failed to recognize the significance of progressive elected officials' legislative proposals. Looking to redeem the nation's promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, progressives have advanced bills in Congress that would cultivate a new economic social contract for America. With the Democratic party facing potentially devastating losses in 2022 and 2024—and the majority of Americans yearning for progressive transformations—we need to make our political aspirations and projected initiatives powerfully clear.

Polls consistently show, the majority of Americans across the country want to see Congress turn the central features of the progressive economic agenda into laws, policies, and programs.

We recently issued a call for all progressive candidates and officeholders to embrace a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. We now make the case that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party essentially has already done so. Indeed, herein we show how legislation introduced by Democratic progressives in the current Congress clearly matches up with the roster of economic rights we have proposed.

This is a critically essential point to make at this very moment. Many excellent progressive candidates are challenging centrist/neoliberal/corporate Democrats across the country in a primary season that kicks into full gear over the next month. Like their allies in Congress, these progressive candidates support policies that add up to our envisioned 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights—and as polls consistently show, the majority of Americans across the country want to see Congress turn the central features of the progressive economic agenda into laws, policies, and programs.

Unfortunately, the public is largely unaware that progressives prioritize this economic program. The powerful right-wing media/propaganda machine persistently portrays progressives as primarily focused on "fighting the culture wars"—something that both Republicans and economically-conservative Democrats, such as Bill Maher, are all too happy to amplify.

However, when you look at the actual legislative record, it becomes crystal clear that improving the economic conditions for poor, working, and middle-class Americans is a top priority for progressives. This is evident not only from the wide range of bills introduced by progressives in this Congress (see the list below), but also from the protracted negotiations over Build Back Better, during which progressives fought tirelessly for the economic interests of average Americans.

It is no mystery why the GOP and neo-liberal Democrats work overtime to misrepresent progressives as "cancel-culture" extremists. It polls terribly; and, in the hands of the corporate media, serves to alienate working class communities from each other (the good old-fashioned divide and conquer strategy). Just as importantly, these misrepresentations hide the fact that only progressives have an economic agenda that articulates the interests and aspirations of the vast majority of the American people. It is incumbent upon progressives to set the record straight.

So, here is our 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights, followed by the legislation recently introduced by progressives in the 117th Congress that addresses each of the ten rights.

1. The right to a useful job that pays a living wage.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley's resolution for a federal job guarantee brought back into focus the historic demand for the right to employment with a clear statement of vision and principles. Pressley explicitly draws on "the legacy and work of generations of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement" such as Coretta Scott King to affirm the role of the federal job guarantee in achieving true full employment, no longer allowing businesses to rely on the "reserve army of labor" to discipline workers across the economy.

This legislation is of special importance to us. A universal job guarantee, backed up by the federal government serving as an employer of last resort, promising jobs at a living wage (and the same health care coverage as all Federal workers), is a perfect anchor for a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.

2. The right to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining.

Rep. Bobby Scott's Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would be the most important pro-worker labor law reform since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935. It would end so-called "right-to-work" laws, legalize secondary strikes, modernize union elections, provide independent contractors the right to collectively bargain, and create meaningful penalties for employers who violate their workers' rights.

3. The right to comprehensive quality health care.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All Act currently has 121 House co-sponsors, a majority of the House Democratic caucus. Medicare for All was the flagship policy of Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential runs and remains the gold standard policy approach for guaranteeing the right to health care, free at the point of service, for all citizens and residents of the USA.

Further, the Build Back Better Act's Universal Paid Family and Medical Leave provision, championed and defended by progressives, would have guaranteed "12 weeks of paid family and medical leave annually to all workers in the US." A pared down version of this provision was passed by the House, is supported by President Biden, but languishes in the Senate due to opposition from anti-progressive Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema to the entire Build Back Better reconciliation package.

4. The right to a complete cost-free public education and access to broadband internet.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal's College for All Act would eliminate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for families making up to $125,000 and make community college free for all. (The authors would propose going a step further, echoing Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, by guaranteeing a college education as a legal right for all, like public K-12 education, rather than means-testing it and unnecessarily creating a wealthy counter-constituency.)

Rep. Jamaal Bowman's Green New Deal for Public Schools Act would make unprecedented investments in U.S. public schools to decarbonize the facilities, expand staffing and social service programming, and transform public education toward a "whole child" approach. The visionary legislation makes clear how guaranteeing the economic right to a meaningful public education is part and parcel for also reaching the U.S.'s climate goals.

Rep. James Clyburn's Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act addresses the "digital divide" by making historic investments in deploying high-speed broadband infrastructure. (The authors believe we should go further: that this public infrastructure should deliver free internet access at the point of service rather than unnecessarily creating a cost barrier.)

5. The right to decent, safe, affordable housing.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal for Public Housing Act would contribute to the vision of a right to housing by modernizing the U.S.'s public housing stock and repealing the Faircloth amendment, which arbitrarily caps the amount of public housing allowed (this repeal is also a part of the currently proposed Build Back Better Act).

In the last Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced the Homes for All Act, which would fund the construction of 9.5 million public housing units and 2.5 million private market affordable housing units over 10 years.

6. The right to a clean environment and a healthy planet.

Now we come to one of the most important set of bills because much of the progressive economic program is being presented in Congress under the heading of a Green New Deal.

Why is this? American society—our modern, industrialized, technological society—has been designed around fossil fuel use, which is the root cause of the unfolding climate catastrophe. Therefore, we need to remake, reconfigure, or retrofit just about everything—and that means jobs, and it requires economic policy. The Green New Deal proposals address this historical necessity in a way that perfectly fits with our 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, the right-wing and the fossil fuel industry's propaganda machinery has been working overtime attacking the Green New Deal, such that much of the public only hears the "Green" environmental component of the programs and have become deaf to their "New Deal" economic focus. Once again, it is incumbent upon progressives to foreground how the Green New Deal programs also represent a new economic social contract for Americans, one that is very popular.

Currently, the Green New Deal Pledge asks candidates to endorse ten bills. The two mentioned above by Reps. Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez, respectively. There are also the following six bills, which directly address economic policies:

The final two bills included in the Green New Deal Pledge Rep. Ilhan Omar's End Polluter Welfare Act and Rep. Jared Huffman's Keep it in the Ground Act are also relevant as they would end the outrageous annual subsidies provided by the Federal government to fossil fuel companies, money that can help fund our environmental and economic agenda. Similarly, Rep. Earl Blumenauer's excellent Climate Emergency Bill frees up funding for disaster mitigation and response, and support for frontline communities.

Lastly, Rep. Jan Schakowsky's Manufacturing Reinvestment Corporation Act calls for the inclusion of climate and environmental justice advocates on regional boards tasked with expanding American manufacturing capacity as we transition off of fossil fuels and onto renewable energy.

7. The right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth, and a secure retirement.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley's American Opportunity Accounts Act, or the "baby bonds" proposal popularized by economists William Darity and Darrick Hamilton, which is widely considered one of the most effective policies toward addressing the racial wealth gap. This would provide every child with a $1,000 savings accounts upon birth and the federal government would thereafter deposit up to $2,000 annually, depending on the child's household income, until they gain access at 18.

Similarly, progressives strongly supported the $300 or $250 monthly "tax credits" paid directly to households with children, which was part of the 2021 Relief Act—and progressives strongly opposed the ending of these payments in early 2022.

Since the Social Security system is one of the few still existing realizations of President Franklin Roosevelt's initial Economic Bill of Rights, the concern today is to ensure that right remains meaningfully guaranteed and expanded. Rep. John Larson's legislation, Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust, would significantly improve the Social Security system for beneficiaries and help resolve the arbitrary insolvency crisis currently foisted onto the system.

8. The right to sound banking and financial services.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's Postal Banking Act would grant post offices the power to provide basic retail banking services to the public. As the only federal institution with local branches in every zip code across the country, the U. S. Postal Service is uniquely positioned to administer this economic right and end the "two-tiered" system of payday loans, check-cashing businesses, and pawnshops.

Rep. Lynch's recent Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware (ECASH) Act would develop an electronic version of the U.S. Dollar for use by the public. By creating a form of digital cash designed to preserve the anonymity and token-like qualities of physical cash, this legislation is a key component of ensuring the future of the financial system protects currency users from surveillance while furthering the goal of financial inclusion.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib's's Public Banking Act would provide the federal regulatory and capital support for proliferating the development of publicly-owned banks across the U.S. By having a meaningful public banking sector mandated for public purpose rather than profit, every American will be able to fairly utilize non-extractive commercial banking services.

9. The right to an equitable and economically fair justice system

Rep. Ayanna Pressley's resolution calling for a People's Justice Guarantee re-envisions the criminal legal system toward justice for all. It specifically calls for prioritizing decarceration and dramatically reducing jail and prison populations, eliminating wealth-based discrimination and corporate profiteering, transforming the experience of confinement, and investing in historically impacted communities. Pressley's vision is aligned with our own, and Congressmembers who believe in a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights should continue to advance legislation that turns this into reality, such as some of the following below:

Rep. David Cicilline's Equality Act would prohibit discrimination of LGBTQ+ people in areas of employment, education, credit, jury service, federal funding, housing, and public accommodations. Just as federal action was imperative in the 1960s to combat state-level segregation and racism, federal action is essential today for guaranteeing the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people to be able to fully participate in economic life.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman's Drug Policy Reform Act would decriminalize drug possession and expunge the records of people who had been wrongly incarcerated, including reversing the life-long consequences of drug arrests. This would be a meaningful step toward an end to the so-called War on Drugs, which since its inception has been a domestic occupation and surveillance program of low-income communities not aiming toward any modicum of public safety.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley's Ending Qualified Immunity Act would end qualified immunity for law enforcement and government employees that allow them to escape civil penalties for violating people's civil rights.

Rep. Ted Lieu's No Money Bail Act would prohibit the use of money bail in federal criminal cases and incentivize states to also no longer use a racist/classist money bail system.

Rep. Henry Johnson Jr.'s Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act would restrict the Department of Defense from transferring surplus military equipment to law enforcement agencies.

The core of progressives in Congress are unified around an economic program, one which is very popular with the American people.

This seems like the proper time to mention that we added two new rights to the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights since our previous article—so that we now match the original Bill of Rights with ten. We added one right by splitting the first right into numbers one and two, as we felt both parts deserved their own entry (see above). Then, we added this economic right (#9) because, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, everybody knows the rich are not accountable before the law in the same way as the poor—just as everyone knows we have a racist justice system. Those oppressive realities have to change.

10. The right to recreation and participation in civic and democratic life.

The United States is unique among rich industrialized countries in not guaranteeing paid vacation time. It's hard to imagine how a worker can find time to pursue their hobbies, let alone enjoy their life on earth without having vacation days. We therefore applaud Bernie Sanders' Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act, even though we support a greater number of vacation days than the legislation proposes.

Rep. Anna Eshoo's Election Day Holiday Act makes the Tuesday that follows the first Monday of November a Federal Holiday, making it easier for workers to vote.

Rep. John Sarbanes' For the People Act is Democrats' comprehensive legislation to improve the U.S.'s electoral system. The bill expands voter registration and voting access, requires independent redistricting commissions, secures election technology, addresses campaign finance and creates a public financing option, creates new ethics requirements for federal elected officials, and requires presidential candidates to disclose 10 years of tax returns. Because of Sen. Manchin and Sinema's refusal to allow this legislation to advance, it currently languishes in the Senate.

Rep. Terri Sewell's John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore key elements of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act after being stripped by the Supreme Court. With the 2020 election's electoral legitimacy crisis and subsequent efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country to limit the right to vote, the bill provides urgent legislative changes to protect minority voters' rights.

So, there you have it: an avalanche of recent legislation in support of the tenets of our 21st Century of Economic Bill of Rights.

Of course, a few of these bills do not reflect the ideal content of each of the proposed economic rights. Future work will be necessary to turn the current versions into genuine legal rights for all Americans.

It's also worth noting that not every Bill listed above was introduced by a progressive, though the large majority were. Still, every one of these Bills, and the policies they propose, are supported by progressives—and much of the legislation featured in this article is only supported by progressives.

This signifies two very important things:

1. The core of progressives in Congress are unified around an economic program, one which is very popular with the American people

2. Thus, whether they know it yet or not, progressives support a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Alan Minsky, Harvey J. Kaye, Michael Brennan.

Long After Leaving Iran, Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists — Because of Mandatory Military Service

Intercepted — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 10:01:33 +0000

Talks with Iran to revive the nuclear deal appear to be progressing, but in recent weeks, the United States’s designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a terror group has emerged as a major obstacle. The listing isn’t just about nuclear diplomacy: Countless Iranians who served in the IRGC are now labeled as terrorists — including hundreds of thousands who were conscripted without a choice. This week on Intercepted, senior news editor Ali Gharib and reporter Murtaza Hussain examine the effects the terrorist designation has had on former conscripts who have lived for decades in the West. These dual nationals have been banned from the U.S., lost jobs, and separated from family as a result of the policy.

Transcript coming soon.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Intercepted.

Long After Leaving Iran, Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists — Because of Mandatory Military Service

The Intercept — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:30:31 +0000

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This content originally appeared on Intercepted and was authored by The Intercept.

Fidesz won again because the opposition’s only policy was hating Orbán

Adam Ramsay — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:03:58 +0000

The far-Right party’s opponents needed to fight for people’s lives, not technocratic norms. But it’s Roma and LGBTQ people who will pay the price

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

Māori dying with covid-19 because of misinformation, says health leader

APR editor — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:01:44 +0000

By Hamish Cardwell, RNZ News senior journalist

A Māori health leader says a new international misinformation study confirms the alarm many were desperately trying to raise last year about the impact on Māori during the initial vaccine rollout.

The article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows misinformation makes it harder to stop illness spreading during a pandemic.

It states conspiracy theories spread through communities already distrustful of authority.

It modelled trusting individuals who seek better quality information and take precautionary measures; and distrusting people who reject quality information and have riskier behaviour.

It found major outbreaks cannot be suppressed once the density of distrusting individuals exceeds a certain threshold.

It says its findings highlight the importance of effective interventions to build trust and inform the public.

Māori ‘exposed to significant misinformation for longer’
National Māori Pandemic Group co-leader Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen said the Māori population was younger, so many had to wait to be eligible to get their vaccine dose.

“They [were] exposed to a significant amount of misinformation for longer.

“That’s created a problem for us in terms of getting the momentum for the vaccination programme into the right place.”

Dr McKree Jansen said the unvaccinated were being hit hardest by the omicron wave.

As of Friday, only 88 percent of Māori have had their second dose, and 58 percent their third compared with 95 percent and 73 (72.7) percent respectively of the general population.

As of yesterday, 378 people have died with covid-19 and the seven-day rolling average is now 18.

McKree Jansen said Māori were now dying with covid-19 because of that misinformation.

He said for Māori and Pacific communities it was particularly troubling because those who were dying with the virus were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, rather than older people in other populations.

He said Māori and Pacific populations should have been prioritised in the vaccine rollout.

The Waitangi Tribunal has released a scathing ruling of the government’s covid-19 response and vaccine rollout, saying Māori were put at risk.

The tribunal said cabinet’s decision to go against official and expert advice and not prioritise Māori breached the Treaty principles of active protection and equity.

Misinformation has disrupted families, but is resolvable
Dr McKree Jansen said misinformation had disrupted social and familial connection but he believed it was resolvable.

“We should actually spend the time and the effort to restore relationships with those people that have been affected by it.

“It is being very clear that health services are here to help people.

“I think it is conversations we’ll have within families to restore mana for people who feel that [they have] been belittled, to ensure that people know that they are loved and that they are cared for.”

He said the focus needed to be on learning the lessons and making sure it did not happen again.

“And making sure that when we say we are committed to equity that we do all the things necessary to achieve it.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

‘I was called a national security threat because I organised a protest’

Samuel Knights — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:43:04 +0000

Police banned Sam Knights from the Labour Party conference because of his climate campaign work. He argues we must protect the right to protest

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Samuel Knights.

Oligarchs stash dirty money in Britain because of its colonialist laws

Kojo Koram — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:18:57 +0000

Ministers patronise those who call for decolonisation. But UK financial loopholes are a product of the imperialist legacy we don’t want to face

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Kojo Koram.

Manchin Opposes Fueling US Electric Vehicle Revolution Because… the 1970s Oil Crisis

Jessica Corbett — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 14:36:21 +0000

"Tell us you don't know how electric vehicles work without telling us you don't know how electric vehicles work."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Interview: ‘They figured she was being beaten because she had been bought’

By Jane Tang — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:02:23 +0000

The U.S.-based son of a Chinese woman trafficked into marriage at a young age from the southwestern province of Yunnan during the 1980s spoke to RFA's Mandarin Service about growing up amidst daily domestic violence and abuse, and about -- eventually -- persuading his mother to get herself free. The man, who gave only the nickname Rocky, has asked for anonymity to protect his mother after she gave an in-depth interview with Jane Tang of RFA's Mandarin Service about her experiences:

RFA: What kind of upbringing did you have?

Rocky: Most accurately speaking, my mother was abducted, but in essence, her experience was in line with the definition of human trafficking. I divide it into three stages. The first is the use of persuasion and deception in the early stages, which is the kidnapping part. The second stage involves money, and the third involves controlling the person. Anything that meets those three criteria is trafficking.

RFA: When you were young, did your mother tell you that her situation was different? How did it affect you?

Rocky: I don't need my mother to tell me, the people in the village would tell me that my mother is a "Nanmanzi," a southern daughter-in-law, who was abducted. Nanmanzi is a discriminatory name for these women. Those adults would joke that it hurt the children most, because children can't bear being different from others, yet has never seen other people's homes. My father would beat my mother openly, frequently and severely. This difference made me wonder if it was right for my mother to be beaten. And about whether a child like me born to a kidnapped mother should suffer in this way, for that difference. I had a lot of psychological questions like that when I was a kid.

Because my mother was of Bai ethnicity, she didn't speak the local language when she was first brought there, and only spoke the dialect of her hometown. She spoke slowly, and with an accent. I used to hope she wouldn't come to school to bring me an umbrella [on rainy days], because when she did, she would come into the classroom to talk to the teacher, and the teacher would have her give me the umbrella. My classmates would laugh at me when they heard my mother's accent.

RFA: Did your mother ever talk about wanting to run away?

Rocky: On the contrary. She never mentioned it. But she used to tell me and my brother that she had suffered a great deal of pain and injustice for us both, and so we should work hard and treat her with respect when we grew up. That kind of powerful love, which had so many dark and twisted components to it, put a lot of pressure on us as kids. It bound us to her, and it affected our mental health.

RFA: Sometimes children in domestic violence cases will internalize the violence, thinking that their mother was beaten like that because of them, and that it should have been them who were beaten.

Rocky: Right! Right! You summed it up exactly.

RPA: Can you talk about the severity and frequency of the domestic violence you witnessed?

Rocky: I have one very clear memory. I was playing at a friend's house, and someone told me that my mother was back. [I went back home to] find that the house was crowded with people, all from our village. I could hear my mom's... oh my god, heart-piercing cries ... then a woman's handbag was thrown out, and something fell out of it. I remembered that it was rouge, and it was my mother. I just heard someone going crazy and accusing her of wanting to run off with another man.

RFA: Who beat up your mother?

Rocky: Mainly my grandfather and my father.

RFA: Didn't the villagers say anything when it was that bad?

Rocky: They would try to persuade them, to tell them not to 'fight' so much, but that kind of talk doesn't have much effect. After a while, people realized that it wasn't working, so they didn't bother trying any more. And some of them shared their ideas about [how to treat] bought daughters-in-law. They figured she was being beaten because she had been bought. The beatings happened to stop her running away and causing huge losses [to the family].

RFA: Did you see this kind of thing a lot?

Rocky: Of course. Too much, okay? They would beat her with shoes, the soles of their shoes. It can hurt a lot, but it won't cause serious injuries. They would also use belts, their fists, and slaps. Once my father and my grandfather were beating my mother, I saw my mother run into the room and lock the door. My grandfather and my father were suddenly very scared. They were afraid that my mother would kill herself. They climbed in, opened the door, and got my mom under control.

Rocky (a nickname), told RFA that the discovery of the chained woman in Feng county "brought back memories" and "shocked me a little bit" because he didn't realize such things still happened in China. Credit: Rocky

RFA: What kind of a state would your mother be in?

Rocky: Crying, of course, with her hair and clothes all messed up. I don't think maybe you've ever seen someone beaten up. Maybe you've seen it in movies, but you probably haven't seen it in real life.

RFA: How did your mom explain this violence to you and your brother?

Rocky: There was nothing to explain. We had already seen it. No matter how good things are, there are times when they come to an end. No matter how bad things are, eventually they stop. They would also tire of beating her.

RFA: So would the family just go back to normal after all that?

Rocky: No, no, it would take a few days. Maybe the beatings would end, but then things would take a depressing turn. My mother would likely be injured, bruises on her nose or face, and she wouldn't immediately be able to get on with the housework for a day or two. So my mother would be lying on the bed and my father would do the household chores and cook for us. My brother and I would be huddled near my mom on the bed, watching her weep. That's how it would end.

RFA: How did that make you feel about your father?

Rocky: I hated him when I was a kid. He was illiterate. He had three brothers and two sisters. There was a kind of filial piety in my father. Beating a daughter-in-law was a trivial matter in our village, but being unfilial was a big deal. He would definitely listen to my grandma. If she told him to slap my mother three times, he definitely wouldn't stop at two slaps. To us, he was taciturn and rarely spoke. I had a father, but there was no fatherly love there.

RFA: Do you think your parents loved each other?

Rocky: How would that even be possible?

RFA: When did the violence end?

Rocky: Probably after my grandma died, when I was in elementary school, and my aunt got married. Once the instigator of these evil deeds was gone, the fight went out of them. Also, my mother had a strong will to survive, and she turned much more abusive, although only verbally. She subdued my dad and my grandpa with verbal abuse. It was pretty intense and kind of hard to describe.

RFA: How did you help your mom get a divorce?

Rocky: When I was a freshman in high school, my dad got sick. He had a stroke, and lost the ability to work or to speak. He was basically paralyzed, and could only communicate in gestures. My mother was expected to support the whole family. She went to work in a coastal city and only came back for Chinese New Year, during which she would rain verbal abuse down on my father, feeling contempt for him, and believing that his physical illness was a form of retribution.

There are a lot of people who don't get divorced in China because they are afraid of affecting their children's studies [as divorced is politically stigmatized and counts against applicants to university]. As soon as I got my admission confirmation letter from my university, I took them down to the local police station to get them a divorce. My dad was reluctant at first, but there wasn't anything he could do ... I was able to take charge, because I had grown up.

RFA: Do you think it's possible to break that kind of cycle in your family of origin?

Rocky: The same life gets repeated over and over in rural China, from generation to generation. My father behaved the way my grandfather did. What's needed is more cultivation and some kind of will to better oneself, some kind of self-awareness. I work very hard in that area.

My mother always had high expectations for me. She wanted me to go to university, to be financially independent, and to be able to hold my head high in our village. That's exactly what I did. There were more than 40 kids of my age in our village, but in the end only three got into universities, and I got into the best school.

RFA: How did the chained woman of Feng county, Xuzhou affect you?

Rocky: Firstly, that incident in Xuzhou brought back memories, and secondly, it shocked me a little bit. I thought this kind of thing didn't happen any more, or if it did, it wouldn't be quite so extreme. I feel I should speak out about it. I used to feel a sense of family shame, but not any more. If I talk about it, more people will know about it, because a lot of people don't even believe this stuff happens.

RFA: You said that you see trafficking as a collective evil. Why is that?

Rocky: In the final analysis, the collective evil stems from the government and the Chinese Communist Party. They disregard human rights. Not just 20 or 30 years ago, but also today. When the regime ignores human rights to that extent, then ordinary Chinese citizens become indifferent to the misfortune of others.

Do you think my mother dared to call the police at that time? She didn't even think about it. Can you imagine feeling that kind of despair? In the mindset of that generation in China, it never occurs to them to call the police, even if they're being beaten to death. The government has bullied them their whole lives, and the law never finds them at fault. If it was just individuals doing it, there might be some hope of changing things, but when there are a dozen people involved, they have nothing to fear.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jane Tang.

because – Radio Free

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