All the power to Jagmeet Singh': Canadians defend NDP Leader who called Bloc MP 'racist'

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh booted from Commons for calling MP racist

QUEBEC NATIONALISM IS RACISM AND EXCLUSION
CATHOLIC NUNS HELD SLAVES, ONE SUCH A SLAVE HOLDER WAS MADE A SAINT

Bryan Meler·Associate Editor, Yahoo News Canada June 17, 2020

Canadians have taken to Twitter to defend NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, after he was asked to leave the House of Commons for choosing not to apologize to a Bloc Quebecois MP, who he called “a racist.”

Singh directed the words at Bloc member Alain Therrien on Wednesday, after the House of Commons failed to receive unanimous consent to pass a New Democrat motion on Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) discrimination.

The NDP leader had asked the House of Commons to recognize that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. Singh also asked all parties to join him in calling for a review of the force’s budget, while ensuring the federal police force is held accountable, since “several Indigenous people have died at the hands of the RCMP in recent months.”

It was unclear who in the Commons decided against the move, but Bloc MP Claude DeBellefeuille spoke out in Therrien's defence, saying Singh’s words were unacceptable. Singh then doubled-down on his comments, and also refused to apologize after being asked to by the Speaker, which resulted in his dismissal.

"It's true, I called him a racist, and I believe that's so," Singh said.

Parliament kicking out Jagmeet Singh is the perfect microcosm of a country where the most offensive thing you can do in polite company is tell a racist they are racist. #cdnpoli
— Derrick O'Keefe (@derrickokeefe) June 17, 2020

This is a good time to reflect on the fact that Jagmeet Singh is the first leader of a Canadian federal party who is racialized. The experience of racism is personal to him; he has lived and lives with it. I respect his perspective and applaud his courage. https://t.co/wvH4Uo3iXF
— Don Davies MP (@DonDavies) June 17, 2020

The way that Jagmeet Singh is demonized and dunked on by Canadians is a reflection of the white supremacy that runs rampant in this nation

Only in a racist country does a brown man get ejected from parliament for insisting that the denial of systemic racism is racist.#cdnpoli
— michael (@_queerio) June 17, 2020

HE SAID WHAT HE SAID FOR A REASON. Apparently, Jagmeet Singh is one of the only people in that chamber willing to speak up and call a racist exactly what they are... a racist. https://t.co/cHTNCkKLrS

— kelsey: ACAB for Cutie (@iKelseyL) June 17, 2020

The RCMP has come under increased scrutiny in the past few weeks, especially after the release of a dashcam video showing Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam being punched and choked by officers.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki initially didn’t want to admit that systemic racism existed in the police force, but she corrected herself late last week.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that systemic racism exists in Canada, including in the RCMP, but not all leaders nationwide have come to the same conclusio

'Why can't we do something to save people's lives?': Singh reacts to incident calling Bloc MP racist in House of Commons

Following his dismissal from the House of Commons, Singh spoke about what happened between himself and Therrien, which caused him to react in the manner that he did.

Singh said the Speaker was about to move forward with the motion, until hearing Therrien repeatedly say “no.” When the two MPs made contact, Singh said “that MP” proceeded to “brush his hand, dismiss it.”

“In that moment I got angry, but I am sad now, because why can’t we act?” said Singh at a press conference shortly after, while trying to hold back his emotions. “Why can’t we do something to save peoples’ lives? We can do something, and why would someone say no to that?”

You mean the BQ leader who told Quebec voters that they shouldn’t vote for Jagmeet Singh because he didn’t look like them?
How could anyone think that guy was racist? https://t.co/k6k7CSZOlS
— senwung (@fysl) June 17, 2020

I don’t always agree with Jagmeet Singh, but withholding unanimous consent to even debate a motion on systemic racism is an overtly racist act. The fact that it happened in the HoC makes it, in itself, systemically racist. Alain Therrien is a racist, House rules be damned.
— Kyle Sheppard (@Maqaiti) June 17, 2020

So this is where we’re at eh Canada? At the height of racist awareness taking place around us- the ‘r’ word is bad.
All the power to Jagmeet Singh for calling it is what it is. How are we going to change the systems if we can’t name them?! https://t.co/7DUjjRt2Vv
— Sharn! (NOT Sharon) Kaur (@SharnFTC) June 17, 2020

jagmeet said “did i stutter”😩👌🏽 https://t.co/pMcND2mzDW
— tiyana (@tiyana_m_) June 17, 2020

Amid Canadians standing up for Singh, others also took to Twitter to condemn his word choice and his recent actions.

Finally a little justice today in the House. The speaker just ruled that Jagmeet Singh calling a Bloc member a racist, violated the rules of the house. He then ejected Singh.
— terry l. (@dubsndoo) June 17, 2020

Why does Jagmeet Singh keep lamenting that Parliament can't do stuff?
Bro, you literally voted to keep Parliament shut over the summer.
— Spencer Fernando 🇨🇦 (@SpencerFernando) June 17, 2020

From Damascus to Berlin: A Reuters journalist's quest for family reunion

Ghada Zitouni, Isam Alkousaa pose for a picture at Alhambra Palace

Riham Alkousaa June 18, 2020



By Riham Alkousaa

BERLIN (Reuters) - It was still dark in Damascus as I walked down the stairs, my new life contained in a red suitcase. My mother stood next to the taxi door praying for my safety. My father was silent, certain that he would never see me again.

I lowered the taxi window and waved to my parents until they disappeared, grieving over the separation but at the same time grateful to my exhausted old city, which had finally let me go.

I had become one of the 700,000 refugees who have fled Syria and its war without end to Germany, which offered shelter under a grey but generous sky.

Since that morning in September 2014, I've told many stories of refugees' attempts to make Germany more like a home by reuniting with their families here. As a journalist covering the biggest refugee crisis of the 21st century, I've reported about the waiting, the loneliness, the maze of the paperwork that torments the family reunification process.

This time, I am telling my story.

A year after I left Syria for Germany at age 23, my parents and I tried in vain to meet in Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan, Iran and Malaysia – some of the countries that still offer visas to Syrians. But as descendants of Palestinian refugees in Syria with no formal Syrian or Palestinian citizenship or national passport, our chances to meet were very slim.

Since the moment I left Syria behind, my life has been a litany of moments meant to be shared: I missed my parents at my graduation from my postgraduate program at Columbia University in New York after President Trump imposed a travel ban on visitors from Syria. I missed them at my engagement party; when I moved to my first apartment in Berlin; and on every Ramadan, Eid, Christmas and New Year's Eve.

WhatsApp helped to create an illusion of contact and closeness. At the beginning, the first thing I saw on my phone in the morning were missed calls from my mother. Then she learned that she could send me voice messages through the app, and they became our morning routine. She would record them while she was having morning coffee with my father, and I would listen to them on my way to German-language school or to work.

We also cherished our video calls, even though the slow internet in Syria would cut them short. But when the ones you love are seen only on the screens of your laptop or phone, they slowly become unreal, like your favorite childhood TV character: very familiar, but imaginary.

In Arabic, we call it "ghurba," which has an unsatisfying translation of "being a stranger in a foreign land." It's trying to cook all your favorite dishes at once, just to reassure yourself that you can bring home back; it's the long Netflix evening where tea is made in a cup, not the big pot your mother used to keep ready for you; it's dreading weekends with their empty hours slowly sneaking in on quiet Friday evenings.

Then I heard about a special resettlement program offered by Berlin's local government that offers a chance – a minuscule one, but a chance nonetheless – for Syrian and Iraqi families to reunite.

Migration has been one of the most divisive topics in Germany and Europe since Chancellor Angela Merkel decided in 2015 to open borders to more than 1 million people escaping war and persecution in the Middle East and beyond. Concerns about migration have fueled far-right parties across the continent and pushed European governments to shut their borders and seal a controversial deal with Turkey to control illegal migration. The number of asylum- seekers in Germany fell 72.5% between 2016, the year the deal was signed, and 2017.

For Syrians, even obtaining a visitor visa to Germany today is difficult because immigration authorities are skeptical that the travelers will return to the war-torn country. There are no government statistics on how many Syrians have been granted a short-stay visa in recent years because the German Foreign Ministry doesn't record the citizenship of applicants. But in 2019, the German Embassy in Beirut granted only 7,913 short-term visas, which would include all Lebanese applicants in addition to Syrians.

Only minors with "recognized refugee" status have the right to bring their parents and minor siblings to Germany. I was an adult when I applied for asylum five years ago and didn't qualify for a regular family reunification process.

But if an adult Syrian refugee – or an employed European Union citizen – promises to take care of all financial expenses of a family member, they can reunite in Germany through a special program for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The resettlement scheme offers two years' residence, with a work permit and public health insurance for family members.

The program was introduced in 2013 by many German states to resettle families of Syrian refugees whose asylum applications have been approved and already have recognized refugee status in Germany. It's renewed on an annual basis, and the decision to extend it is made by states' governments; out of 15 states that offered the program in 2014, only five of them have extended it for 2020.

To be eligible for the program, I had to have a stable job in Germany with long-term employment prospects and a minimum salary to demonstrate that the family member wouldn't end up being a drain on the system.

With language and skills barriers, meeting those conditions is challenging. In the six years ending in October 2019, only 1,098 people had benefited from the program in the state of Berlin, government data showed. Out of 459 applications submitted in 2019, 173 were approved.

Having a wage of at least of 2,300 euros a month after taxes is among the most challenging conditions.

"It's is not that easy to earn this amount when one has immigrated here recently," said Engelhard Mazanke, the head of Berlin's migration office.

At the beginning of my time in Berlin as an Arabic speaker in a country facing a wave of Arab refugees, I worked with American and German freelance journalists to tell the stories of the newcomers. While translating and talking to people at Berlin's asylum reception center, I thought that I could tell these stories on my own. But moving from being a "fixer" to a real journalist in a new language and a new country needed much more than I had expected.

It took four years, countless German classes, a master's degree from an Ivy League school, a few internships and a year-and-half training program until I got a job contract at Reuters and met the program's conditions.



But one condition was the hardest for me: A choice had to be made.

The Berlin migration official responsible for my case was clear that I must choose between my parents or one of my four siblings for the application. My brothers are still in school in the Syrian city of Homs, so waiting few more years to bring them here made sense. That meant either denying my sisters an opportunity to build a future in Germany or pushing my five-year separation with my parents longer, with no end in sight.

Weeks passed because I couldn't decide. Then a German friend of mine astounded me with an offer to help.

Pascale Mueller and I had met few years earlier when she needed help translating for a Syrian refugee family for a story for Tagesspiegel newspaper during the 2015 wave of migration. We hadn't seen each other for more than a year when she said she would act as a guarantor for one of my sisters.

I asked her to take some time before deciding, because the guarantor is financially responsible for the new arrival. If my sister claimed welfare or unemployment benefits, the government would send a bill to Pascale.

"Everyone I spoke with said, 'I wouldn't do it,' but I have a good feeling about this," Pascale said. A few weeks later we were at Berlin's migration office signing the papers.

When life decides to give you a break, it makes you feel that the doors that seemed shut might have not been closed in the first place. When another friend of mine, a Briton, heard of Pascale's unexpected help, he stepped in to guarantee my other sister. We needed to rush through the paperwork before Brexit happened and he was no longer a European Union citizen, but we also had to wait on the pay raise he had been promised. Each delay in Britain's parliament that pushed its parting from the EU further away gave my sister and me a bigger chance to reunite.

Finally, he was able to sign the papers.

Within weeks, I received an email from the German Embassy in Beirut asking my family for an interview. Because Germany pulled its diplomatic representation in Syria shortly after the uprising there in 2011, Syrians who apply for a German visa must be interviewed in one of the German embassies or consulates in Syria's neighboring countries. Lebanon was the closest and, theoretically, at least, the easiest to get in.

But like the complicated German sentence structure I have come to know so well, nothing was easy in this process. A simple appointment became a metaphor for the struggles, both bureaucratic and emotional, that the displaced face the world over.

First, my family had to leave Damascus before midnight for an 8:30 a.m. appointment in Beirut, although the trip only takes 3½ hours by road, because of a complicated entry process for Palestinian-Syrians to Lebanon. Then, at the appointment, they tried to hand over a document they'd been told to bring, but the employee said it wasn't required.

A few weeks later, the embassy called, asking for that same document. We could either pay a driver a fee that was half my father's monthly salary as a professor to take it to Lebanon or find someone to take it. We got lucky – the parents of a friend of mine were traveling to the consulate in Lebanon the next day for a visa interview through the same program.

But then our luck ran out again. After waiting a month for word of our application, we were asked to send the passports so "an answer" of yes or no could be stamped on the applications. This time we happily paid for a courier to take them to Beirut.

Then came the next delay: We were told there was a problem with my father's travel document, but the authorities didn't say what the problem was, exactly.

We called the embassy more than 100 times, with either no answer or a busy line. I tried a different emergency number dedicated for German citizens and was finally forwarded to someone who could answer my question. It turned out that the problem was my father's passport photo: The glasses he wore made his face unrecognizable. I understood the argument. But why wasn't this issue flagged when I had applied for the program with copies of the travel documents, or when my father was interviewed and his documents were checked at the embassy six weeks earlier? Why didn't the embassy simply phone us, asking for a new travel document?

"Due to the very high number of applications in some cases, not all details relevant for any specific applications may stand out at first glance when first filing the application," the German Foreign Ministry told me in an email.

We hired a driver, Abu Hisham, to take the passports to the embassy again after my mother received a second call few weeks later. But even that trip was fraught with potential disaster. With an empty car on the way back, he stopped to pick a man on the road, thinking that he needed a ride to Damascus. The man asked to stop for two friends of his, and they robbed Abu Hisham of all his money. But they left a brown envelope in the glove compartment that held the stamped passports.

Finally, more than six months after I applied for their resettlement, my parents were ready to fly to Germany. On a winter evening, I was at Berlin Tegel airport waiting for them to arrive. During normal times, a flight from Beirut to Berlin lands there every other evening, and Syrians are easily recognized at the arrivals' gate: reunions with excessively arranged bouquets, cute boys dressed in black suits and old men openly crying. Even security guards tear up and smile, although they must have seen the reunion scenes many times.

I cried and cried at my father's shoulder as he walked off the first flight he had ever taken, at age 59. I cried for all my lonely nights in Berlin, for the years that made him an old man while I became stronger, for our family home that had been pounded to ruins, for the life moments we hadn't spent together. After five years, we were a family once more.




(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa, editing by Kari Howard)



TRENDING
1.
Five bombshells about Trump from Bolton's book
2.
Trump reportedly wants to find and prosecute whoever leaked that he was rushed into a bunker during protests
3.
Trump's lack of self-esteem results in 'dangerous' decisions, psychoanalyst says
4.
Lil Nas X finally admitted he's a 'Barb,' confirming long-time rumors that he ran a Nicki Minaj stan account
5.
What happened when Black Lives Matter came to a notorious KKK town in Texas

Syrian Kurdish region increases salaries amid currency crash
BASSEM MROUE Associated Press June 18, 2020

In this Jan. 7, 2020, file photo, Syrian President Bashar Assad listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Damascus, Syria. The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad and his inner circle with a raft of new economic and travel sanctions for human rights abuses. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

BEIRUT (AP) — As Syria's economy plummeted further, the local Kurdish-led authority controlled by U.S.-backed fighters in the country's north said Thursday it was more than doubling the salaries of its employees to make up for the loss of the value of the Syrian pound.

The announcement came a day after Washington imposed a new wave of sanctions, ramping up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad and his inner circle with a raft of new economic and travel sanctions for human rights abuses in the country's nine-year civil war.

The Syrian Kurdish administration — which calls itself the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria — said the 150% salary raise, starting June 1, would apply to every employee working for the local government. It gave no numbers but the local authority is believed to employee thousands of civil servants.

The authority gave no further details other than saying the move is in “the interest of the public.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said it had designated 39 Syrian individuals, including Assad, his wife and members of their extended family, military leaders and business executives. Many were already subject to U.S. sanctions, but the penalties also target non-Syrians who do business with them.

The sanctions only hit areas under Assad’s control but since the local currency is also used in the Kurdish-led autonomous region, the salary hikes appear aimed at preserving the local population's purchasing power as the Syrian pound crumbles.

Meanwhile, in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last remaining Syrian rebel stronghold, some people have started using the Turkish Lira instead of the Syrian pound.

At the start of Syria's conflict in March 2011, the dollar was worth 47 pounds. In recent weeks, the pound has dropped to more than 3,000 to the dollar.

The American sanctions are the result of legislation known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, named after the pseudonym of a Syrian policeman who turned over photographs of thousands of victims of torture by the Assad government.

Shortly before the announcements of the new U.S. sanctions on Wednesday, Syria devalued its currency by 44% and announced a new official exchange rate for the pound.

Syria’s troubled economy has sharply deteriorated, prices have soared and the pound had collapsed in recent weeks, partly because of fears that the sanctions would further isolate the country.

Trump spoke of executing U.S. journalists who didn’t reveal sources for stories

According to excerpts provided to the Washington Post, Bolton detailed a July 2019 meeting with the president during which Trump complained bitterly about the media coverage he had received. Specifically, Trump railed against journalists who refused to reveal the sources for their stories, Bolton said. “These people should be executed,” Trump said in the meeting, according to Bolton. “They are scumbags.”

https://news.yahoo.com/five-bombshells-about-trump-from-boltons-book-201739765.html

UK Government told to extend furlough scheme into 2021 to prevent 'tsunami of job losses'

Oscar Williams-Grut
Senior City Correspondent, Yahoo Finance UK 18 June 2020

A Job Centre Plus in London. (PA)
Union's bosses have warned that the UK faces a “tsunami of job losses” unless the government extends its job retention scheme and provides targeted support to the most vulnerable industries.

“I really, really am fearful about a tsunami of job losses as we start to introduce changes to the job retention scheme and employer contributions,” Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite, told parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committee on Thursday.

Turner said he was already seeing companies start consultations on thousands of redundancies in sectors like car manufacturing, ahead of changes to the job retention scheme in August. Bentley, Aston Martin, McLaren, and Jaguar Land Rover have all announced job cuts in recent weeks.

Read more: UK employers have slashed 600,000 staff since March

9.1m people are furloughed under the government’s job retention scheme, almost a third of the UK’s workforce. Under the scheme, which was announced in March, the state pays 80% of idled staffs’ pay to a maximum of £2,500 per month.

Unite's Steve Turner speaking during a rally at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, Belfast, Northern Ireland. (PA)

The programme has so far cost the Treasury over £20bn ($25bn) and employers using the scheme will be asked to start contributing to its cost from August.

Turner and other union bosses warned the gradual tapering of the scheme would likely provoke thousands of job losses, with many industries in no position to contribute to costs.

Read more: 9 million workers furloughed as cost of scheme hits £20bn

“When the changes in the JRS [job retention scheme] happen in August, even though they’re only moderate in August, that will stimulate job losses and they are already building up,” said Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect.

“This is not posturing. It is a genuine reaction from employers who do not have the cash to fund even moderate changes in the JRS.”

Clancy was specifically referencing the theatre and performing arts industry. His warning came hours after legendary West End theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh started redundancies on his productions, saying he could not hold out for a safe reopening of theatres.

Read more: Culture secretary hints at theatre bailouts as job cuts bite

“The creative industries are facing a huge and real crisis now,” Christine Payne, general secretary of actors union Equity, told MPs.

She estimated 400,000 jobs could be lost across the sector without more support from government. Payne said the job retention scheme should be extended “until at least March, April next year.” The programme is currently due to finish in October.

Christine Payne, general secretary, Equity. (PA)

Clancy added that any changes or extension must be announced urgently to avoid widespread job losses.

“This needs to be sorted within three or four weeks,” he said. “It’s an absolute crisis that needs to be addressed now.”

Read more: MPs warn over a million workers 'locked out' of job schemes

All the union bosses who gave evidence to the select committee called for more targeted intervention to help specific sectors that may struggle to bounce back quickly as the UK economy begins to reopen.

“We need an economic plan for key sectors of our economy,” said Gary Smith, secretary for GMB Scotland.

“Our recovery is not going to fall from the sky and it can’t happen when we’re continuing to export jobs that could and should be done here.”

Sectors singled out for targeted support included retail, hospitality, leisure, aviation, and manufacturing, as well as the creative arts.

Read more: Call for Treasury to take £15bn stake in British firms — then sell shares to public

“What we need is the government to take an equity stake in some of these foundation industries to give real long-term security,” Turner said.

“We’ve intervened in the past, and I think we’ll have to intervene in the future a bit like they’re doing in Germany, France, Spain, and even the US.

“I think this will be devastating without direct government intervention at this point. That does require this sectoral arrangement.”

Tory MP Bim Afolami MP earlier this week called for the Treasury to establish a £15bn ($19bn) “Recovery Fund” for British businesses that would see the government take direct stakes in businesses.

The government is reportedly considering such a project — codenamed Project Birch — although no formal announcements have been made.

US Jobless claims dip to 1.51 million in mid-June, but layoffs remain stubbornly high

Slow drop in continuing jobless claims signals fresh wave of layoffs

Published: June 18, 2020 By Jeffry Bartash

Unemployed workers line up in their cars to file applications for jobless benefits in the age of the coronavirus. GETTY IMAGES

The numbers: About 1.5 million people applied for traditional jobless benefits in mid-June, but the high number of people still seeking or receiving financial aid suggests a fresh wave of layoffs may be crashing over the economy and stunting an embryonic recovery.

Initial jobless claims filed the traditional way through state unemployment offices fell slightly in the seven days ended June 13 from 1.57 million in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the 10th decline in a row.

Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast a seasonally adjusted 1.35 million new claims

If people who applied for unemployment benefits through a temporary federal program are included, new claims totaled an unadjusted 2.19 million in mid-June.


Read:U.S. entered recession in February after end of longest expansion in history

Yet the number of people who are actually receiving traditional jobless benefits barely fell to 20.54 million in the week ended May 30. These so-called continuing claims, reported with a one-week lag, had peaked in the middle of May at nearly 23 million, but are declining at an agonizingly slow pace.

What happened: New jobless claims have fallen steadily from a peak of almost 7 million in late March, but the decline has been much slower than economists had expected. They worry a second wave of layoffs is keeping the numbers elevated, posing a potential threat to an economic recovery that’s now in the early stages.

The grudging decline in continuing jobless claims appears to offer proof. They give a better idea of how many people are still out of work, whereas new claims only reveal how many people may have lost their jobs at some point during the crisis. At least several million people have since returned to their jobs as the economy has reopened.

Digging into the details of the latest claims report, 760,526 applications were submitted in the week of June 13 under a temporary federal-relief program put in place after the pandemic began. Forty-six states reported figures for federal claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.

If all eight state and federal assistance programs are included, continuing claims totaled an unadjusted 29.1 million in the seven days ended May 30, the most recent data available. That marks a small drop from 29.5 million in the prior week.

MarketWatch is also reporting select jobless claims data using actual, or unadjusted, figures to give a clearer picture of unemployment. The seasonally adjusted estimates typically expected by Wall Street have inflated jobless claims during the pandemic and become less accurate.

Read: Consumer prices drop again as pandemic cuts rate of inflation to near zero

Big picture: Almost 50 million new jobless claims have been filed since the pandemic began, but shocking as those numbers are, they don’t reveal much about how quickly the labor market is recovering.

The more important figure to watch is continuing claims, and while they’ve begun to subside, they are not declining at a pace that points to a rapid recovery in lost jobs. Unless they fall more quickly, and soon, the nascent recovery could be stunted.

The latest claims report took place during the same week in which the government surveyed businesses and households for in preparation for the employment report for June. The small decline in new claims suggests that net employment gains in June might not be as strong as expected. The government said the economy regained 2.7 million jobs in May.

Read: Revisiting that funky drop in unemployment to 13.3%: Nobody really believes it

BP’s annual statistical review of energy has fascinating nuggets, even if the numbers represent the world before the pandemic ravaged the global economy. Energy consumption per person is still overwhelmingly larger in the U.S. than anywhere else, even though it has been falling for the last two decades. Last year, average global energy consumption inched up 0.2% on Middle Eastern and Asian-Pacific demand, BP said.

Powell urges Congressional help for unemployed, municipalities as economy recovers from coronavirus

POWELL SAYS STATE CAPITALISM IS THE CURE

Brian Cheung Reporter Yahoo Finance 

Powell calls for more fiscal support as recovery enters ‘critical ph

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday specifically recommended that Congress extend unemployment insurance benefits, support state and local governments, and funnel more help to cash-strapped small businesses.

Historically, the central banker has shied away from providing recommendations on what policies Congress should pursue. However, Powell expressed concern that an emerging recovery from the coronavirus pandemic could prompt lawmakers to curtail support prematurely.

“I would think that it would be a concern if Congress were to pull back from the support that it is providing too quickly,” Powell said in virtual testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. He repeated that both the Fed and Congress should be prepared to do more based on the trajectory of the recovery.

Through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed in late March, those laid off from their jobs during the crisis are entitled to receive up to $600 a week in additional unemployment insurance. However, the additional payment only lasts through July.

Powell added that while the May jobs report showed Americans going back to work fairly quickly, not all industries should expect to see rehiring right away. In high-contact services industries like food and accommodation, travel, and tourism, Powell warned that unemployment benefits may be needed past July, as unemployment could persist for a while.

“I think better to keep them in their apartments, better to keep them paying their bills,” Powell said, declining to offer recommendations on specific policies.

Over the last few weeks, the Fed has emphasized that more help may be needed from monetary policy in addition to fiscal policy. In a speech Tuesday night, Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida acknowledged the central bank’s unprecedented effort to ease financial conditions “may not prove to be durable, depending on the course that the coronavirus contagion takes.”




There are over 2 million coronavirus cases in the U.S. (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)


Municipal help

Fed chairs are usually reluctant to offer recommendations on fiscal policy, part of the central bank’s efforts to insulate its actions from the politics of Capitol Hill.

But amid the COVID-19 crisis, Powell has gradually offered more commentary on Congressional actions, in part because much of the Fed’s emergency actions are rooted in the CARES Act.

The Fed has launched eleven liquidity facilities as part of an unprecedented response to backstop a collapsing economy. Those include aid to corporate debt markets and loans to Main Street businesses, many of which are backed by over $200 billion of the $454 billion pot of money appropriated to the Fed and the U.S. Treasury via the CARES Act.

In May, Powell deflected a question about what to do about municipalities across the country facing funding gaps, due to income and business tax bases drying up from the COVID-19 crisis.

“We try to stick to our knitting over here,” Powell said in testimony to the Senate on May 19.

Powell’s tone was markedly different on Wednesday, as he expressed concern that budget shortfalls are already leading to widespread layoffs in state and local governments. In April, 981,000 state and local government jobs were lost, and even the overall positive May jobs report detailed another 571,000 job losses in the sector.

“It will hold back the economic recovery if they continue to lay people off and if they continue to cut essential services,” Powell warned.

Powell said direct support for municipalities would be “worth looking at.” For the Fed’s part, the central bank has stood up a Municipal Liquidity Facility to offer loans to states, local governments, and even some public authorities (like the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority).

Powell emphasized that small businesses would also need further support, warning that some businesses may not be “well served” by Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans that cannot be converted into a grant. Based on recent tweaks to the program, a PPP loan is only forgiven if at least 60% of the borrowed amount is used towards keeping employees on payroll.

“We don’t want to lose any more small businesses than we have to,” Powell said.

Brian Cheung is a reporter covering the Fed, economics, and banking for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter @bcheungz.

A Black pastor was arrested after pulling out a gun while under attack. The sheriff apologized, and now 5 alleged assailants face hate crimes charges.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT DOES NOT APPLY TO BLACK FOLKS

Rhea Mahbubani INSIDER•June 16, 2020

Black pastor arrested after pulling out a gun while under attack

A Virginia sheriff has apologized after deputies arrested a Black pastor who had pulled a gun on his attackers, and now five suspects have been charged with hate crimes.

The altercation began in Edinburg, Virginia, when the pastor stopped two white people from dumping an old refrigerator on his property on June 1.

Leon K. McCray Sr. told WHSV the people became angry, returned with 3 more people, and surrounded McCray, spouted racial slurs, head-butted him, and threatened to kill him.

But responding sheriff's deputies seized McCray's weapon and arrested him on allegations of brandishing a firearm. That charge has since been dropped.

Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter put two supervisors on unpaid leave while he investigates the incident.
  

This combination of undated booking photos from the Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office shows from left to right, Donny Salyers, Dennis Salyers, Farrah Salyers, Christopher Sharp and Amanda Salyers. Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office via AP 

WHITE TRASH HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN BLACK FOLKS, THAT'S PRIVILEGE 

Five people have been arrested on hate crimes charges and a Virginia sheriff has apologized, after a Black pastor was attacked earlier this month and arrested by the same deputies responding to his call for help.

Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter told Leon K. McCray Sr. that he was sorry for the way his deputies responded to the complaint and altercation in Edinburg on June 1, WVEC reported.

The issue began when McCray, 61, stopped two people from dumping a refrigerator in the dumpster at an apartment building that he owns, according to WHSV.

They "got irate" when he asked them to leave the premises, he said, and took off only to return with three others. They threatened McCray and called him "all types of racial slurs," WHSV said.

"Racial epithets, and the N word, and your Black life, your motherf---ing Black life don't make, it doesn't make a difference in this county, it doesn't make a difference to me, and we will kill you," McCray told WHSV.

McCray described being surrounded by them when one man started to headbutt him, adding, "One of the guys snatched his shirt off and circled behind me, that's when it got really bad."

McCray told WHSV that he felt unsafe and so felt he had no choice but to pull out his gun and call 911.

"It got to the point where this is really getting really, really bad," he said. "I couldn't leave, I couldn't do anything, and with the threats, I felt to save my life, I had to draw my gun."

When deputies arrived on scene, McCray said one of them spoke to him but no one sought his story. Instead, they spoke with the group of white people, confiscated McCray's weapon, and arrested him.

"How humiliating," McCray told NVDaily. "How dehumanizing … to look at this mob of individuals cheering on the sidelines waving as I was carted off to go to jail."
The sheriff said he 'would have probably done the same thing' as McCray

Carter and McCray met on June 3 to discuss the encounter and the charge filed against McCray for brandishing a firearm, the sheriff said in a video shared on Facebook.

"After talking with him about the incident, it was apparent to me that the charge of brandishing was certainly not appropriate," Carter said. "Actually, as I told Mr. McCray, if I were faced with similar circumstances, I would have probably done the same thing."

Carter also talked to the Shenandoah Commonwealth's Attorney, who agreed with his assessment of dropping the baseless charge against McCray, he said.

Instead, the five people accused of assaulting McCray have been arrested and face a slew of charges, including hate crimes charges, according to the sheriff's office.

Donny Salyers, 43, Dennis Salyers, 26, Farrah Salyers, 42, and Christopher Sharp, 57, have been charged with assault - hate crime, assault and battery by mob, and felony abduction. Amanda Salyers, 26, was charged with assault - hate crime, and assault and battery by mob.

They were all been taken into custody without incident and are being held without bond, Carter said, noting that an investigation is ongoing. He said he also placed two supervisors in the sheriff's office on unpaid administrative leave while he investigates the initial incident.

Carter thanked McCray for "his patience as I have worked through these matters" and promised residents that he takes their grievances "very seriously."

"I want the people of Shenandoah County to know I and the sheriff's office staff appreciate and care about the minority communities, and especially our Black community, in Shenandoah County," he said. "Also, I continue to support and recognize the importance of your Constitutional rights, especially your Second Amendment right to protect yourself and your family."

Read the original article on Insider

Microsoft Says It Won't Sell Facial Recognition To The Police. These Documents Show How It Pitched That Technology To The Federal Government.

Last week, Microsoft said it would not sell its facial recognition to police departments. But new documents reveal it was pitching that technology to at least one federal agency as recently as two years ago.

Ryan Mac BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on June 17, 2020

Microsoft / Via azure.microsoft.com

In early June, Microsoft joined a growing list of tech companies that pledged not to sell facial recognition technology to police departments until the controversial technology was federally regulated. But that announcement left a loophole: selling facial recognition to the federal government.

Newly released emails show the company has tried to sell the controversial technology to the government for years, including to the Drug Enforcement Administration in late 2017.

Those documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union via a public records lawsuit, provide a rare look into how the Redmond, Washington–based company tried to sell artificial intelligence services to federal agencies six months before its July 2018 call for "public regulation and corporate responsibility" around facial recognition. Last week, Microsoft said "we do not sell our facial recognition technology to US police departments today” and committed not to do so “until there is a strong national law grounded in human rights.”

But that pledge did not address any potential or ongoing relationships with federal agencies. When asked by BuzzFeed News, Microsoft did not immediately provide comment on whether it has provided or is currently providing its facial recognition technology to federal law enforcement agencies.

The emails obtained by the ACLU show that the company pitched facial recognition as a law enforcement tool to the DEA in late 2017 as the company pushed to expand its offerings on its government cloud platform, Microsoft Azure Government Cloud. In September of that year, an individual whose name has been redacted, but listed their title as the DEA’s chief technology officer, stated that he was hosting the Microsoft Cognitive Services Group “to discuss use-cases for their Media Services.”


Obtained by ACLU

This September 2017 email from the DEA's chief technology officer shows Microsoft pitched facial recognition and other artificial intelligence services to the agency. The document was obtained by the ACLU public records lawsuit against the DEA.

“As you may be aware, Microsoft Azure has many of these services (Translation, Transcription, Video Processing, Facial Recognition, etc.) running in the Public Azure,” the person wrote on Sept. 15, 2017. “Microsoft has only some of these services running in the Microsoft Azure Government (MAG) Cloud and they are looking at what else needs to be transitioned over to MAG.”

The person later noted that MAG was approved for “Law Enforcement Sensitive things” and that they wanted to create a pilot project to test a variety of video and audio recording technologies.

A DEA spokesperson declined to comment on its conversations with Microsoft or the agency’s tests or deployment of facial recognition.

Other emails show that DEA representatives visited Microsoft’s office in Reston, Virginia, in November 2017 to see a demonstration of a suite of products including translation services, document transcription, “optical character recognition in video,” and Azure facial recognition. In a follow-up message after the meeting, a Microsoft employee, whose name was redacted, gave a brief overview of all the demos his team showed the agency including “Face API: Identify similar faces, develop a face database.”

“Please let us know when and how we can take the next step on a prototype,” they wrote. Based on the emails, it’s unclear if any prototype was built.

Eight months after those meetings, Microsoft President Brad Smith penned a blog post calling for “thoughtful government regulation and for the development of norms around acceptable uses” surrounding facial recognition.

“If there are concerns about how a technology will be deployed more broadly across society, the only way to regulate this broad use is for the government to do so,” he wrote, before acknowledging the possibility of racial profiling and misidentification.

Despite those concerns, Microsoft’s representatives continued to pitch facial recognition as part of its Azure Government offering. In November 2018, a “Sr. Microsoft SME,” whose name was redacted in the email, sent another note to a DEA representative requesting a meeting. Azure has a number of relationships with federal agencies including the Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

While it’s not clear if the DEA moved forward with Microsoft’s Azure AI offerings, the fact that Microsoft pitched such services in the first place “is concerning,” Kade Crockford of the ACLU Massachusetts told BuzzFeed News. In October, the ACLU sued the Department of Justice, FBI, and DEA after those agencies failed to comply with a public records request regarding their use of facial recognition and other biometric tracking technology.

Microsoft's recent decision not to provide facial recognition to police departments is “a positive step,” said Crockford, noting that it’s what civil rights organizations have demanded for years after studies showed the technology has high rates of misidentification among racial minorities.

“The DEA has a long history of racially disparate or racist practices and has been engaged in wildly inappropriate mass surveillance,” they said.

BuzzFeed News previously reported that individuals associated with the DEA tested Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition software that’s been built using billions of photos scraped from social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. As of February, more than 20 users associated with the DEA have run about 2,000 searches according to data viewed by BuzzFeed News.

Following nationwide protests of racial injustices and police brutality faced by Black people, companies have pulled back on their facial recognition offerings. Earlier this month, Amazon said it would place a one-year moratorium on selling its biometric face identification service, Rekognition, to police, while IBM said it would stop developing or researching facial recognition.

When asked by BuzzFeed News, however, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft refused to disclose which police departments, if any, had previously used their facial recognition services.

Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News also reported that the Justice Department gave the DEA permission “to enforce any federal crime committed as a result of the protests over the death of George Floyd.”


MORE ON THIS
Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA

Ryan Mac · Feb. 27, 2020

Amazon, IBM, And Microsoft Won’t Say Which Police Departments Used Their Facial Recognition Technology

Caroline Haskins · June 12, 2020

Amazon Is Suspending Police Use Of Its Facial Recognition Tech For One Year

Caroline Haskins · June 10, 2020

The DEA Has Been Given Permission To Investigate People Protesting George Floyd’s Death

Jason Leopold · June 2, 2020


Ryan Mac is a senior tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.