Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder arrested over 18 new allegations as he appears in court to fight US extradition

The new US indictment, filed in June, contains 18 charges and was handed to Assange moments before he appeared at the Old Bailey

Monday 7 September 2020 15:21, UK

Image:Supporters of Assange gathered outside the Old Bailey


Julian Assange has failed to get new allegations against him thrown out as he battles extradition to the US.

The WikiLeaks founder, 49, appeared at the Old Bailey in London after being held for months on remand at high-security Belmarsh Prison.

He was re-arrested in the court's cells on Monday over new charges contained in a US indictment.

It details a further 18 charges, lodged in June, which accuse him of plotting to hack computers and obtain and disclose national defence information.

Image:An artist's impression of Assange in the dock at the Old Bailey on Monday

They allege that he conspired with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a scrambled password, known as "hash", to a classified US defence department computer.


The charges also offer further details of alleged hacking plotters that Assange and his WikiLeaks colleagues are said to have recruited.

The 49-year-old spoke only to state he "does not consent to extradition" and confirm his name.

Assange, who is wanted in the US for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, was clean-shaven with short hair and wore glasses, a dark suit, maroon tie and white shirt.

If convicted, he faces a maximum possible sentence of 175 years in jail.

\Image:Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood was outside court

His lawyer, Mark Summers QC, said the "fresh allegations at the 11th hour" were brought without warning or explanation, which meant they had no time to prepare a response.

He highlighted the difficulties Assange faced in speaking to his lawyers in the midst of ongoing restrictions.

"It would be an impossible task for the defence to deal with these fresh allegations in any meaningful way in the time that has been afforded to them, and that time is a matter of weeks in respect of which we are provided absolutely no explanation for the late arrival of these matters."

He added: "What is happening is abnormal, unfair and liable to create injustice if allowed to continue."

Image:Julian Assange's father was also at the central London court

But District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the defence's bid to "excise" the allegations, saying: "These are issues which must take place in the context of considering the extradition request and not before it."

Outside court, hundreds of protesters gathered in support of Assange, including his father John Shipton and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

She said: "I'm an activist, I am very frightened, I've lost days and years of sleep worrying about Julian Assange.

"Julian Assange is the trigger, he is shining the light on all the corruption in the world."

Image:Assange has spent months on remand at Belmarsh Prison in south London

His father described the proceedings as an "abuse trial", which his defence claims has been targeted by Donald Trump's re-election campaign for "political reasons".

His partner, Stella Moris, who he shares two children with, was in the public gallery after delivering an 80,000-signature petition against his extradition to Downing Street.

Dozens of witnesses are expected to be called to give evidence at the Old Bailey over the four-week hearing, with the judgment likely to be delivered at a later date.

Assange has been on remand in Belmarsh Prison since last September after serving a 50-week sentence for breaching bail conditions while he was in London's Ecuadorian embassy for nearly seven years.

Assange’s legal battle to avoid US espionage trial resumes in London

Issued on: 07/09/2020

Text by: NEWS WIRES


A London hearing resumes on Monday to decide if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States to face trial over the publication of secrets relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 49-year-old Australian, who is currently being held on remand at a high-security jail, faces 18 counts from US prosecutors that could see him jailed for up to 175 years.

The hearing at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, is due to last three to four weeks. It had been due to go ahead in April but was delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Any ruling is "almost certain" to be appealed by the losing side, according to John Rees, of the Don't Extradite Assange Campaign, raising the prospect of more time behind bars for the former hacker.

Rees told AFP that Assange -- who has become a figurehead for press freedom and investigative journalism -- had a "very strong defence" but was concerned the case was "highly politicised".


Assange's French lawyer talks to FRANCE 24 as London extradition hearings resume
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A previous hearing in February was told that US President Donald Trump had promised to pardon Assange if he denied Russia leaked emails from the campaign of Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent in the 2016 election.

Assange faces charges under the US Espionage Act for the 2010 release of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Washington claims he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal the documents before recklessly exposing confidential sources around the world.

At the February hearing, Assange's lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said his client would not get a fair trial in the United States and would be a suicide risk.

James Lewis, representing the US government, said WikiLeaks was responsible for "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States".

"Reporting or journalism is not an excuse for criminal activities or a licence to break ordinary criminal laws," he added.

'Extradition will be a death sentence'

Assange's partner and the mother of his two young sons, South African-born lawyer Stella Moris, attempted to secure his release in March, claiming he was in danger inside prison during the coronavirus lockdown.

"The life of my partner, Julian Assange, is at severe risk," she said, arguing that Covid-19 was "spreading within (the) walls" of Belmarsh prison in south London.

In an interview published in The Times newspaper on Saturday, Moris, 37, said: "For Julian, extradition will be a death sentence."

She said she feared he would take his own life, and that his sons, who were conceived during his asylum in Ecuador's London embassy, would grow up without a father.

Assange appeared weak and confused during his February court appearance, apparently forgetting his date of birth. He also told district judge Vanessa Baraitser he had not understood what had happened in the hearing.

His legal team has repeatedly warned about his health and an independent UN rights expert said in November that his continued detention was putting his life at risk.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europe rights group warned that Assange's extradition would have a "chilling effect" on press freedom.

Other high-profile supporters of Assange include the Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson, designer Vivienne Westwood, and Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

The saga began in 2010 when Assange faced allegations of sexual assault and rape in Sweden, which he denied.

He was in Britain at the time but dodged an attempt to extradite him to Sweden by claiming political asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London.

For seven years he lived in a small apartment in the embassy, but after a change of government in Quito, Ecuador lost patience with its guest and turned him over to British police in April 2019.

Swedish prosecutors confirmed last year they had dropped the rape investigation, saying that despite a "credible" account from the alleged victim there was insufficient evidence to proceed.

(AFP)

As British show-trial resumes: The working class must defend Julian Assange!

By Oscar Grenfell
7 September 2020

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/07/assa-s07.html

The latest stage in the decade-long persecution of Julian Assange begins today, with the final three weeks of British court hearings for the extradition of the WikiLeaks publisher to the US, where he faces 175 years in prison for exposing American war crimes, human rights violations, coups and meddling operations around the world.

Whatever the court decides will likely be subject to years of legal appeal, but the scenario that Assange has warned of for the past ten years—that he risks being hauled before a secret US court, prosecuted for lawful publishing activities and thrown into a hellhole run by his CIA persecutors—is all too real.

The innumerable pundits and media commentators who derided these warnings as a conspiracy theory and promoted the slanders used to undermine public support for Assange have fallen silent. The legal travesty underway in the land of the Magna Carta either goes unmentioned in the official press, or is discreetly buried in brief columns halfway through the papers.

The hearings are only proceeding because the attempt of the British state to kill Assange by exposing him to the danger of coronavirus infection has so far failed.

Throughout the pandemic, Assange has been held in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has been denied a mask or any other protection, even as dozens of inmates and staff have contracted COVID-19. A bail application has been contemptuously dismissed, despite the fact that Assange has been convicted of no crime, as have warnings that his health continues to deteriorate.

Assange, facing the most consequential legal proceedings of his life, has been unable to meet with his lawyers for the past six months. Weeks before the resumption of the trial, US prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, based on the lies and slanders of FBI informants, over a year after they were required to submit their final charge sheet. The transparent purpose was to inundate Assange’s legal team with tens of thousands of documents, after they had finished preparing their case, to prevent even the possibility of a defence.

As a matter of law, the US extradition request should have been thrown out as soon as it was submitted.

It violates innumerable treaties, laws and international conventions, including a ban on extraditions from Britain to the US for political offenses, prohibitions on the refoulement of those who have secured asylum to their persecutors and an absolute proscription on subjecting anyone to the likelihood of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, which Assange would unquestionably face in the US.

The WikiLeaks founder’s defence is expected to submit detailed evidence establishing that the CIA illegally surveilled Assange when he was a political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy. His legal meetings were intercepted, in a flagrant breach of attorney-client privilege, and his infant child was spied upon, in a violation of fundamental human rights.

Despite the lawlessness, the hearings proceed, with the backing of the entire British political, media and legal establishment. The case is overseen by a judge whose husband has the closest ties to the intelligence agencies and the military. The Conservative government and the Labour opposition explicitly support the show-trial. The unions and the pseudo-left are opposed to any defence of Assange.

The line-up is proof that the only viable political strategy to fight for Assange’s freedom is one based upon the independent mobilisation of the working class against all of the official parties and the profit system that they defend.

Assange’s dire plight cannot be understood in isolation. It is one of the sharpest expressions of a turn to authoritarianism and censorship by governments around the world, amid a breakdown of capitalism, an escalation of imperialist militarism and the emergence of major class struggles.

The very governments persecuting Assange are at war with the population. In Britain, the US and Australia they have pursued a homicidal response to the pandemic, based on exposing millions of workers to a deadly virus so that capitalist production and corporate profits can continue.

Ordinary people are being made to pay for the economic crisis accelerated by the pandemic. Mass unemployment, the gutting of welfare and jobless payments and a stepped-up assault on wages and conditions goes hand in hand with government handouts of trillions of dollars to the banks, financial speculators and oligarchs.

The class war at home is accompanied by escalating war abroad, exemplified by continuous US provocations and threats against China and Russia, which risk a global nuclear conflagration.

None of this is compatible with democratic norms. Well aware that their criminal policies are inflaming mass social and political opposition from below, the ruling elites are responding with the blunt instruments of repression.

The US authorities, who want to destroy Assange, have, for the past three months, overseen state violence against mass protests in opposition to police killings. The turn to dictatorial methods is epitomised by Trump’s threats to illegally deploy the military against domestic opposition and his attempts to cultivate a fascistic movement.

His nominal opponent, Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden, is rallying support from war criminals and the intelligence agencies. Biden’s program is internet censorship, military confrontation with Russia and China and trillions more for Wall Street.

The unanimity of the ruling elite in the assault on democratic rights is summed-up by the fact that the two official candidates in November’s US presidential election, Biden and Trump, both support the prosecution of Assange, which is a frontal assault on the press freedom enshrined in the US Constitution by the American Revolution. A similar bipartisanship is evident in every other country.

Desperate illusions that a section of the political establishment would come to Assange’s aid now take on the character of hopeless delusions.

Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who occasionally claimed to be a socialist, refused to defend Assange and has handed over control of the party to the Blairites. Bernie Sanders, who said that he was waging a “political revolution” through the big business Democratic Party, but would not even mention Assange’s name, is Biden’s most enthusiastic supporter.

The promotion of such bankrupt figures, including by organisations like the official Don’t Extradite Assange campaign group, has only served to demobilise and disorient the latent mass support for the WikiLeaks founder, and direct it behind the very forces responsible for Assange’s persecution.

Experience has shown that the social force that can and must take forward the fight for his freedom is the international working class. All over the world, teachers, auto workers, medical staff and many others are entering into struggle against the governments and corporate elites that have imperilled their lives during the pandemic, and attacked their social and democratic rights.

The persecution of Assange is not only aimed at silencing forever a courageous journalist and publisher who has exposed historic war crimes. It is an attempt to intimidate this emerging movement and establish a precedent for far broader victimisations and frame-ups.

But just as the working class will not accept the turn towards dictatorship, so it must defend Assange.

The World Socialist Web Site appeals to workers, students and young people to become active in the fight to block Assange’s extradition and secure his unconditional release. The fight for his freedom is your fight! It is inseparable from your struggles against inequality, the corporate onslaught on social conditions and the capitalist system that is responsible for the global crisis.

We encourage the broadest meetings and discussions in neighbourhoods, schools, universities and workplaces, along with public protests and rallies, where it is safe for them to be held. Resolutions should be adopted at workplaces, demanding an end to the persecution of Assange and calling on other sections of the working class to join this struggle.

UPDATED

Masked men reportedly seize senior Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova in Minsk

Issued on: 07/09/2020 

Maria Kolesnikova is one of the campaign partners of opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory against President Alexander Lukashenko in a disputed election on August 9. © TUT.BY/AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Unidentified men in black on Monday morning grabbed Maria Kolesnikova, a leading Belarusian opposition figure, and pushed her into a minibus, her campaign team reported, citing witnesses.

Kolesnikova was one of the campaign partners of opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory against long-ruling President Alexander Lukashenko in disputed polls on August 9.

She sits on the Coordination Council that is calling for a peaceful transfer of power amid weeks of post-election demonstrations.

Unidentified men seized Kolesnikova in central Minsk and drove her away in a minibus marked "Communications," witnesses told the headquarters of the campaign team she heads, which also reported that her phone was switched off.

There was no immediate comment from Minsk police.


A witness named as Anastasia told the Tut.by news website that she saw men in masks push Kolesnikova into a minibus and take her cell phone at around 10:00 am (0700 GMT) on Monday.

Мария Колесникова похищена в центре Минска неизвестными.https://t.co/iP93RO8JoP pic.twitter.com/w9kJgwoLHm— TUT.BY (@tutby) September 7, 2020

Belarusian authorities have already detained several members of the Coordination Council and questioned others including Kolesnikova in a probe into an alleged attempt to seize power.

Kolesnikova, 38, is the only one of the trio of women who fronted Tikhanovskaya's campaign to remain in Belarus, as the growing opposition movement holds huge demonstrations despite an intimidating show of force from Lukashenko, who insists on his legitimacy and has called on Russia for help.

Tikhanovskaya has taken shelter in neighbouring Lithuania and her other campaign partner, Veronika Tsepkalo, is now in Ukraine.

Kolesnikova, a trained flautist and music teacher, got into politics through running the campaign of another opposition politician, ex-banker Viktor Babaryko, who attempted to stand for president against Lukashenko but was jailed and barred from running.

When Tikhanovskaya, an English teacher and translator with no political experience was unexpectedly allowed to run for president, Kolesnikova and Tsepkalo backed her and spoke with her at rallies.

The women came up with signature gestures: for Tikhanovskaya a raised fist, for Kolesnikova a heart formed with her fingers and for Tsepkalo a victory sign.

Kolesnikova and other members of Babaryko's campaign team last month announced the creation of a new opposition party called Together.

(AFP)

Belarus opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova 'snatched from street' in Minsk

Kolesnikova on council calling for a peaceful transfer of power amid post-election protests

Maria Kolesnikova pictured last month. Unidentified men seized her in central Minsk and drove her away in a minibus, witnesses say. Photograph: Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA


Luke Harding and agencies
Mon 7 Sep 2020 

Unidentified masked men snatched the leading Belarusian opposition figure, Maria Kolesnikova, from the street in the centre of the capital, Minsk, on Monday and drove her away in a minivan, witnesses told local media.

Kolesnikova was one of the campaign partners of the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory against the long-ruling president, Alexander Lukashenko, in disputed elections on 9 August.

Kolesnikova was reportedly seized soon after 10am local time while walking close to Minsk’s national art museum. Three other members of the opposition coordination council have also vanished, in what appears to be a targeted attempt by the authorities to wipe out the protest movement.

Kolesnikova is the most prominent political figure still inside Belarus.

Lukashenko’s victory – in a poll widely seen as rigged – has sparked mass protests. On Sunday, more than 100,000 people marched on the president’s residence, calling on him to quit. Riot police wearing balaclavas arrested 633 people. Gangs of pro-government thugs beat up protesters on their way home.

It is unclear who abducted Koselnikova. Her coordination council colleagues who have disappeared include Anton Rodnenkov, Ivan Kravtsov and Maxim Bogretsov. Her press team is also missing.

Speaking to the local news website Tut.by, a woman identified as Anastasia said she spotted Kolesnikova in the street. She said she was about to go up to her and to thank her for her work when she changed her mind, thinking Kolesnikova looked exhausted.

She said: “Then I noticed a dark minivan with the slogan “Svyaz” on the side parked up not far from the museum. I carried on and then heard the sound of a telephone falling on the tarmac. I turned round and saw people in civilian clothes and masks dragging Maria into the van. The phone flew out of her hand. One of them picked it up, jumped into the van and they drove off.”

Her telephone did not answer, Tut.by reported.

Kolesnikova’s press aide, Rodnenkov, confirmed her abduction but vanished himself around 40 minutes later, it reported. Kolesnikova’s allies said they were checking the report of her detention. Police in Minsk were cited by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying they had not detained her.

Before the election, Kolesnikova had joined forces with the opposition presidential candidate Tikhanovskaya who later fled to Lithuania, and with Veronika Tsepkalo, who has also since left the country. Another leading activist, Olga Kovalkova, arrived in Poland on Saturday, saying she had been told she would face arrest if she stayed in Belarus.

Senior Belarus opposition figures have accused the EU of failing to respond to Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters. Andrei Sannikov, who stood against Lukashanko in the 2010 presidential election, and was subsequently jailed, said sanctions were urgently needed.

Earlier on Monday, central bank figures showed Belarus had burned through nearly a sixth of its gold and foreign exchange reserves, or $1.4bn (£1.06bn), in August, as it fought to prop up its rouble currency during the wave of unrest.
Veronika Tsepkalo (left), Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (centre), and Maria Kolesnikova display their signature gestures at a press-conference in Minsk in July. Photograph: Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA

Kolesnikova had announced on 31 August that she was forming a new political party, Together, with the team of jailed opposition figure Viktor Babariko with whom she had previously worked.

Kolesnikova, a trained flautist and music teacher, got into politics through running the campaign of another opposition politician, the former banker Viktor Babaryko, who attempted to stand for president against Lukashenko but was jailed and barred from running.

When Tikhanovskaya, an English teacher and translator with no political experience, was unexpectedly allowed to run for president, Kolesnikova and Tsepkalo backed her and spoke alongside her at rallies.

The women came up with signature gestures: for Tikhanovskaya a raised fist, for Kolesnikova a heart formed with her fingers, and for Tsepkalo a victory sign.

Kolesnikova and other members of Babaryko’s campaign team last month announced the creation of a new opposition party called Together.

MISOGYNIST Philippines president pardons HOMOPHOBIC US marine in transgender killing

Issued on: 07/09/2020 -

US Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton has been granted an absolute pardon by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for the killing of a trangender woman in 2014

TED ALJIBE POOL/AFP/File


Manila (AFP)

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has granted an absolute pardon to a US marine convicted of killing a transgender woman, officials said Monday, drawing condemnation from rights groups.

Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton has been in prison since the October 2014 killing of Jennifer Laude, whom he met at a bar while on a break from military exercises in the northern city of Olongapo.

A local court ruled last week that Pemberton qualified for early release due to good behaviour, but was still being held due to an appeal.

Duterte's pardon clears all legal obstacles to his release, despite him serving just half his 10-year sentence.

Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque, a lawyer who represented the Laude family during the trial, confirmed Duterte's decision.

"The president has erased the remaining punishment against Pemberton... He can now go home because of the pardon," Roque told reporters.

The Laude family lawyer condemned the decision, calling it a "mockery" of the country's justice system.

"This is another injustice -- not only to Jennifer Laude and family but a grave injustice to the Filipino people," Virginia Suarez said in a statement.

"This is a travesty of Philippine sovereignty and democracy."

The pardon has renewed anti-American sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation, where groups have long called for removal of US military presence.

Edre Olalia, of the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers, called the pardon "a brazen and shameless sell-out" of country's sovereignty.

The pardon came despite Duterte shifting away from the US to seek closer relations with China since assuming power in 2016.

He will address the nation on Monday night after meeting his Cabinet and he is expected to speak on the issue, Roque said.

© 2020 AFP

Philippines pardons US Marine for killing transgender woman

President’s move to free Joseph Scott Pemberton condemned as ‘shameless mockery of justice’

Cpl Joseph Scott Pemberton during his trial in 2015, at which he was convicted of homicide. Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AP

Associated Press in Manila
Mon 7 Sep 2020 

The Philippine president has pardoned a US Marine in a surprise move that will free him from imprisonment for the 2014 killing of a transgender Filipino woman that sparked anger in the former American colony.

Teodoro Locsin Jr, the Philippine foreign secretary, tweeted that Rodrigo Duterte had “granted an absolute pardon” to L/Cpl Joseph Scott Pemberton “to do justice”, but did not elaborate. Duterte was to deliver televised remarks on Monday night where he would discuss Pemberton’s case, a presidential spokesman, Harry Roque, said.

A leftwing human rights group, Karapatan, immediately condemned the pardon as a “despicable and shameless mockery of justice and servility to US imperialist interests”.

Pemberton was convicted of homicide and has been serving a prison sentence of six to 10 years for the killing of Jennifer Laude in a motel in Olongapo city, north-west of Manila. His lawyer, Rowena Garcia-Flores, told the Associated Press that Pemberton had already been aware of Duterte’s decision when she called him.

“I heard the news,” Garcia-Flores quoted the 25-year-old Pemberton as saying. “I’m very happy.”

Meeting Pemberton in detention a few days ago, she said he had expressed his willingness to apologise to the Laude family, even belatedly.

Roque, who once served as a lawyer for the Laude family, said the presidential pardon would mean the immediate release of Pemberton from detention.

“The president has erased the punishment that should be imposed on Pemberton. What the president did not erase was the conviction of Pemberton. He’s still a killer,” Roque said.

Last week, the regional trial court in Olongapo, which handled Pemberton’s case, ordered authorities to release him early from detention for good conduct, but Laude’s family appealed against the order, blocking the marine’s early release. Roque said the Department of Justice was planning to block Pemberton’s early release with a separate appeal.

The court order rekindled perceptions that US military personnel who fall foul of Philippine laws can get special treatment under the allies’ visiting forces agreement (VFA), which provides the legal framework for temporary visits by US forces to the country for large-scale combat exercises.

Pemberton, an anti-tank missile operator from New Bedford, Massachusetts, was one of thousands of US and Philippine military personnel who participated in joint exercises in the country in 2014.

He and a group of other marines were on leave after the exercises and met Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo, a city known for its nightlife, outside Subic Bay, a former US navy base.

Laude was later found dead in a motel room where witnesses said she and Pemberton had checked in. A witness told investigators that Pemberton said he had choked Laude after discovering she was transgender.

In December 2015, a judge convicted Pemberton of homicide, not the more serious charge of murder that prosecutors sought. The Olongapo court judge said at the time that she had downgraded the charge because factors such as cruelty and treachery had not been proven.

Pemberton has been serving his sentence in a compound jointly guarded by Philippine and US security personnel at the main military camp in metropolitan Manila. The place of detention was agreed to under the terms of the VFA, although Laude’s family had demanded that he be held in an ordinary jail.

Garcia-Flores said his detention had been shortened by authorities under a Philippine law that allows the reduction of prison terms for good conduct. A lawyer for the Laude family, Virginia Suarez, said the law could not apply to Pemberton, who has been detained alone in a military camp and given other special privileges under the VFA.

The case has led to calls from some in the Philippines to end the US military presence in the country, with which Washington has a mutual defence treaty.

REAL LIFE CARTOON 

Pensioner blows his house up while trying to kill a fly with electrified bug swatter

• The man, 80, blew up the kitchen and the roof of his home in the Dordogne
• He used an electric tennis racquet-like contraption to attempt to swat the fly
• But gas had been leaking into his house and the electricity caused an explosion
• The pensioner escaped with a burned hand and has been treated in hospital 
• THE FLY SURVIVED!
• NO INDICATION IF THE ZAPPER CAME FROM ACME CO. 

By PETER ALLEN IN PARIS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 7 September 2020 

A French pensioner blew up his kitchen while trying to kill a fly that was disturbing his dinner.

The incident took place in the Dordogne village of Parcoul-Chenaud, north east of Bordeaux, on Friday.

Irritated by the fly, the 80-year-old, who has not been named, took out an electronic bug zapper.

A French pensioner blew up his kitchen and the roof above it while trying to kill a fly with an electronic zapper (stock image)

The contraption – which looks like a tennis racquet – is designed to burn insects the moment there is contact.Share

'On this occasion, gas was leaking into the man's house,' said an investigating source. 'The very hot zapper ignited the gas, causing a sudden explosion.

'The man was lucky to get away with a burned hand after diving on the floor, but the kitchen was destroyed along with part of the roof.'

The fly had been disturbing the man while he was eating dinner but the gas had been left on, causing an explosion when he used the electronic swatter

The man was treated in hospital in Libourne following the disaster, which happened at around 7.45pm.

He has not been allowed to return to the house, and is instead staying in a local campsite until repairs are carried out.

It is not known whether the fly survived the blast, but it appeared that it had at least escaped being incinerated by the zapper.

In 2007, a two-year-old Thai boy ended up in hospital in Bangkok with severe burns caused by an electric zapper.

The child's father had been using the device to kill a mosquito in a workroom containing flammable adhesive glue that had ended up on the floor.

After the insect made contact with the metallic mesh screen, an electrical arc was generated, and the insect was incinerated.

The boy then placed the hot swatter on to the floor, which ignited the glue and then the boy's clothing.

Hungarian researcher wins prize for process that could restore sight
2020/9/7 
©Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

Presentation of the Koerber Prize in Hamburg - Botond Roska, a Hungarian physician, speaks during the presentation of the Koerber Prize, endowed with one million euros (1.18 million USD), at the Hamburg town hall. - Axel Heimken/dpa

Work on a procedure that might one day help restore sight to the blind earned a Hungarian researcher a 1-million-euro (1.18-million-dollar) prize in Germany on Monday.

Botond Roska, who works in the Swiss city of Basel, has found a gene therapy that reprogrammes cells in the human eye so that they can perform the work of the light-sensitive receptors needed for human vision, according to the Koerber Foundation, the prize-giver.

The procedure could reactivate the retinas of the blind.

Roska said that for now, the therapy creates a level of vision akin to watching an old black-and-white film. Clinical tests have begun on blind volunteers.

"Roska's research has woken up hope that new treatment methods might restore the ability to see in the blind," said Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher at the award ceremony.

The Koerber Foundation's prize has been awarded annually since 1985, honouring scientists whose work has applied futuristic techniques to the life and physical sciences.

Roska began his career in medicine "after a detour," said Tschentscher. The scientist first studied the cello, but had to give up the instrument following an injury, after which he began to pursue medicine and mathematics.

UPDATED

Hundreds arrested as Hong Kong police swoop on protests over postponed poll

Issued on: 06/09/2020  

   

Riot police carry away a man to detain him during a demonstration opposing postponed elections, in Hong Kong, China September 6, 2020. REUTERS - TYRONE SIU

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Nearly 300 people were arrested by Hong Kong police on Sunday as riot officers swooped on democracy protesters opposed to the postponement of local elections

Sunday was meant to be voting day for the city's partially elected legislature, one of the few instances where Hong Kongers get to cast ballots.

But the city's pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam suspended the polls for a year -- citing the coronavirus -- angering the pro-democracy opposition who had been hoping to capitalise on seething anti-government sentiment.

Hundreds of riot police flooded the district of Kowloon in a bid to thwart online calls for flash mob protests to mark the suspended vote.

Throughout the afternoon officers were heckled by people shouting slogans such as "Give me back my vote!" and "Corrupt cops!" as officers conducted multiple stop and searches and ordered crowds to disperse.


In a Facebook statement, police said at least 289 people were arrested, mostly for unlawful assembly.

One woman was detained under a new security law Beijing imposed on the city for chanting independence slogans, the force added.

Live images showed three prominent pro-democracy politicians -- Leung Kwok-hung, Figo Chan and Raphael Wong -- were among those held.

The protests came hours after the police's newly formed national security unit arrested Tam Tak-chi, another democracy activist and radio DJ, for "uttering seditious words" -- a colonial-era offence.

Tam is the latest in a long line of government critics to find themselves facing prosecution in recent months for their involvement in protests.

When they announced the arrest on Sunday morning, police did not explain what Tam may have said that was considered seditious.

Beijing's Liaison Office in Hong Kong called the protest organisers "heartless", with a spokesperson adding: "there is zero tolerance for any act that violates the national security law".

The office also vowed that "we will absolutely not allow Hong Kong to be chaotic again".

The territory's government condemned the protesters' "unlawful and selfish acts" in a statement issued on Sunday evening.

"The first priority for Hong Kong currently is to unite as one and fight the virus together with concentrated resources," a government spokesperson said.

Beijing has initiated a widespread crackdown against its critics in Hong Kong after the financial hub was rocked by seven straight months of huge and often violent pro-democracy protests last year.

Rallies have been all but outlawed this year with authorities citing both security concerns and wielding emergency anti-coronavirus laws to ban public gatherings.

In late June, Beijing also imposed its new security law, which bans anything authorities perceive to be secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

At least 22 people have been arrested under the new law since it came into effect, sending a chill through the city.

On Friday, UN rights experts warned the broadly worded provisions in the legislation posed a serious threat to political freedoms and the right to protest.

Under a deal agreed with Britain ahead of the 1997 handover, authoritarian China agreed to let Hong Kong keep certain liberties and autonomy for 50 years.

Critics say that deal has been demolished by the security law and the increasingly intense crackdown on the city's democracy supporters.

Beijing denies freedoms are being eroded and portrays the anti-government protests as a western-backed plot to destabalise the mainland.

(AFP)

Hong Kong police arrest 289 at protests over election delay


1 of 8
People, sitting on the ground, are arrested by police officers at a downtown street in Hong Kong Sunday, Sept. 6, 2020. About 30 people were arrested Sunday at protests against the government's decision to postpone elections for Hong Kong's legislature, police and a news report said. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

HONG KONG (AP) — About 290 people were arrested Sunday at protests against the government’s decision to postpone elections for Hong Kong’s legislature, police said.

The elections were to have taken place Sunday but Chief Executive Carrie Lam on July 31 postponed them for one year. Lam blamed an upsurge in coronavirus cases, but critics said her government worried the opposition would gain seats if voting went ahead on schedule.




Police said that 289 people had been arrested, mostly for unlawful assembly. One woman was arrested in the Kowloon district of Yau Ma Tei on charges of assault and spreading pro-independence slogans, the police department said on its Facebook page. It said such slogans are illegal under a newly enacted national security law.

Anti-government protests erupted last year over a proposed extradition law and spread to include demands for greater democracy and criticism of Beijing’s efforts to tighten control over the former British colony. The coronavirus and the tough new security law have diminished the demonstrations this year, but smaller groups still take to the streets from time to time.

The ruling Communist Party’s decision to impose the law in May prompted complaints it was violating the autonomy promised to the territory when it was returned to China in 1997. Washington withdrew trading privileges granted to Hong Kong and other governments suspended extradition and other agreements on the grounds that the territory of 7 million people is no longer autonomous.



Also Sunday, police fired pepper balls at protesters in Kowloon’s Mongkok neighborhood, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

In the nearby Jordan neighborhood, protesters raised a banner criticizing the election delay, the Post said.

“I want my right to vote!” activist Leung Kwok-hung, popularly known as Long Hair, was quoted as saying. The newspaper said Leung was later arrested.

Hundreds arrested at protests in Hong Kong to mark postponed election

2020/9/6
©Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
Anti-government protest in Hong Kong - A protester takes part in an anti government protest after the government delayed a Legislative Council election for one year citing the coronavirus (COVID-19). - Jayne Russell/ZUMA Wire/dpa

Hundreds of people were arrested in Hong Kong during a protest against the new national security law, as citizens demanded the right to vote on the day the 2020 Legislative Council elections were originally due to take place.

Police said they had made 289 arrests by 9 pm (1300 GMT), of which 270 were for illegal assembly.

At least two prominent activists, Figo Chan of the group Civil Human Rights Front and veteran legislator and democracy activist Leung Kwok-hung, known as "Long Hair," were among those arrested.

Videos posted on Twitter showed clusters of protesters being apprehended by police, with one group of young men being pepper sprayed.

Elsewhere, a riot police officer could be seen haphazardly firing pepper balls at the ground, while a colleague attempted to hold him back by the arm.

Protestors gathered, shouting, "Five demands, not one less," and called for Beijing to release 12 activists who were recently detained in China after they were caught trying to flee by boat to Taiwan.

According to local media group iCable, a bus driver was detained for "careless driving." Roads were blocked, congested and overrun with chaos from the sheer number of protesters and police on the street, which caused major traffic congestion.

Video footage posted by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Radio on Twitter showed a 12-year-old girl trying to run away from riot police, only to be tackled to the ground by five officers.

In response to the incident, police issued a statement which said the girl was apprehended as she fled and was being treated with suspicion. The police said they used minimal force but video footage appears to show an officer charging into her, bringing her crashing to the ground.

Police then expressed concern about the participation of "underage girls in prohibited groups" and urged minors to stay away, in a post on their Facebook page.

Police said protesters chanting slogans constituted breaches of the public order ordinance and a disease control regulation.

Over the course of the day, officials raised a blue warning flag and purple national security violation flag for those chanting banned slogans and refusing to move.

They also used pepper balls which are fired by guns and break open releasing an iritant into the air, and pepper spray, which causes temporary blindness, massive irritation and makes breathing difficult.

Earlier this year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam triggered emergency powers to postpone the 2020 Legislative Council elections vote until 2021, citing a surge in Covid-19 cases.

Hong Kong has recorded 4,879 cases of the novel virus, with 94 deaths.

Ahead of the protests, officials had warned that they would deploy large numbers of riot police around the city.

Tempers have been running high since the authorities added the national security law into an annex of the city's mini-constitution, the basic law, in June.

Protests like Sunday's have not been seen since the introduction of the new law, which critics say has severely impinged on the rights and freedoms of those living in the city.

Lam has ignored requests to scrap the new law and to let the elections go ahead.

Trump’s National Labor Relations Board Is Sabotaging Its Own Mission
The federal agency that’s supposed to protect union rights is instead championing the interests of bosses.

By Michelle ChenTwitter THE NATION SEPT 7,2020

SEPTEMBER 21/28, 2020, ISSUE

SCABBY THE RAT
Photo illustration by Cindy Lee.

On a June afternoon in 2019, in front of a statue of George Washington at Federal Hall in New York City’s financial district, more than 100 construction workers and activists gathered for a First Amendment rally. Amid chants of “Free speech, free speech!” an approximately 15-foot-tall gray inflatable rat with glaring red eyes bobbed in the sun. The workers, mostly members of Laborers Local 79, weren’t defending speech, exactly. Rather, they were demanding their right to display Scabby the Rat, the mascot deployed at job sites to shame anti-union bosses.


This article was reported in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Puffin Foundation.

The challenge to these workers came from a seemingly unlikely quarter: the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing labor law. The NLRB’s general counsel, Peter Robb, had launched a legal assault to ban Scabby from a nonunion construction site at a Staten Island supermarket. Arguing that its menacing presence amounted to illegal protest activity against a “neutral” business under the National Labor Relations Act, Robb, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, sought a federal court injunction that could effectively outlaw Scabby across the country.

On the steps outside the hall where the Bill of Rights was ratified, Chaz Rynkiewicz, Local 79’s director of organizing, took the microphone and denounced Robb as “an anti-union lawyer that, before he was head of the NLRB, worked for corporations to break unions…. If you know any Trumpsters out there, let them know, educate them. They need to know that they can’t love [their] union and love Trump.”

So far, Scabby has survived the legal attacks. In July 2019, a federal district court judge denied Robb’s request for a preliminary injunction in the Staten Island case. But the giant rat remains under threat: An earlier case against Scabby in Philadelphia is still pending before the NLRB.

The zeal with which Robb has pursued the cherished totem of union solidarity reflects how far the NLRB’s agenda has shifted under Trump. A report by The Nation and Type Investigations—based on interviews with more than 25 labor advocates, attorneys, and current and former NLRB staff members—reveals that the federal agency that’s supposed to protect union rights is instead championing the interests of management.

The NLRB is tasked with administering union elections and processing unfair-labor-practice cases under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects “concerted activity,” the collective action that workers take to try to improve conditions on the job. Over the years, the NLRB’s rulings have tended to oscillate between pro-worker and pro-management decisions, depending on which party holds the White House.


But with management-side lawyers dominating the agency, which is run by a five-seat board and a general counsel, labor advocates say the NLRB is more stridently anti-labor than ever before and is sabotaging its own mission. Not only has Trump’s board consistently sided with bosses, but career civil servants at the NLRB’s regional branches say they are being deprived of funding and staff.
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Even before Trump’s appointees began to undermine the agency, labor organizers were frustrated with the NLRB. Cases often require years of litigation, and remedies typically entail only back pay or reinstatement after a worker is unlawfully fired—not penalties stiff enough to deter employers from abuse.

After the rally in New York, Rynkiewicz told me, “As an organizer for 20-plus years, I’ve never viewed the NLRB as an ally of labor. It’s a shame to say.”

Just before Scabby was deflated, Rynkiewicz added, “The right-wing anti-union people want to portray the NLRB as a friend of labor. It’s not—even on a good day…. When you have the board’s majority put in place by the Democrats, you get nothing. When you have the board’s majority put in by the Republicans, you get an attack.”
RADICAL ROLLBACKS

The shortcomings of the NLRB are to some degree baked into its structure. During the labor uprisings of the 1930s, police and the National Guard members frequently killed striking workers. Established by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, the NLRB was designed to maintain labor peace by absorbing the often violent conflicts into the legal arena. The act, a compromise between labor and management, forced companies to bargain with unions, but it also excluded whole categories of workers, such as farm laborers, and effectively limited collective bargaining to individual companies, not whole industries or sectors.

After World War II, conservative majorities in Congress gutted the National Labor Relations Act with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which expanded employers’ power to suppress workplace organizing, allowed the government to break up strikes deemed “national health or safety” threats, and required anti–Communist Party pledges from union officers, which led organized labor to purge many of its most militant union members.
Dangerous web: A 1947 cartoon shows unions trapped in a web labeled “Taft-Hartley compliance.” A spider marked “NLRB” sits at the top. (Phil Drew / The Dispatcher)

Over the next several decades, organized labor withered in numbers and political clout. With private sector union membership now down to about 6 percent, workers and unions are often left seeking justice through this byzantine, Depression-era judicial apparatus.
Ready to blow: A 1948 cartoon from a union newspaper warns of the explosive effects of the Taft-Hartley Act. (Phil Drew / The Dispatcher)

The NLRB’s board is currently dominated by three conservative Trump appointees, two with ties to law firms that have represented some of the country’s largest employers. Board chairman John Ring and board member William Emanuel are lawyers who defended companies such as Marriott International and Uber, respectively. A third member, Marvin Kaplan, previously worked on labor policy as a counsel for House Republicans. The board’s lone Democrat, Lauren McFerran, left when her term expired in late 2019 but was reappointed in August. Neither the Trump administration nor the Senate has moved to fill the board’s fifth seat, which has been vacant since August 2018.

Robb, the NLRB’s general counsel, operates independently of the board and is a veteran management-side lawyer who worked with the Reagan administration to bust the air traffic controllers’ union. While the NLRB’s regional branches process most of the unfair-labor-practice charges—handling investigations, adjudications, and settlements—Robb shapes the agenda for the board, which rules on complaints appealed from the regional level, setting precedents for how the National Labor Relations Act is applied and enforced.

Shortly after being sworn into office in November 2017, Robb set about reversing the legacy of the previous board, which had incrementally expanded workers’ rights. In a series of sweeping decisions, the board scrapped rules instituted under Barack Obama barring workplace policies that impinge on the right to organize, axed a prohibition against employers making unilateral changes to collective bargaining agreements, and overturned a ruling allowing workers to form smaller bargaining units within a larger workforce.

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One of the board’s most influential decisions dealt a severe blow to efforts to extend collective bargaining rights for contracted workers. Under Obama, the NLRB loosened the joint employer standard, which determines whether a company can be considered an additional employer of workers hired through a contractor, such as a franchise operator or subcontracted cleaning agency. In 2015, the board ruled that a company could be considered a joint employer if it exercised “indirect control” over workers or had the ability to exercise control.

The Trump board restored a more restrictive joint employer standard—first through a 2017 decision, which the board vacated because of a conflict-of-interest issue, then in 2020 through the administrative rulemaking process. The move upended a multiyear legal challenge brought by McDonald’s workers, who claimed that the company had enough influence over its franchisees to be considered a joint employer and was therefore liable for retaliation against workers involved with the Fight for $15, the campaign for a $15 hourly minimum wage and a union.

The board’s initial moves to nullify Obama-era provisions have been followed by rulings that limit workers’ rights far beyond those under previous Republican administrations. In August 2019 it reduced workers’ rights to protest on private property, determining that management could block musicians with the San Antonio Symphony from leafleting at a performance venue because it was not owned by their employer. It also excluded faculty at religious colleges and universities from its jurisdiction and allowed bosses to bar workers from organizing on company technology and equipment, including the use of e-mail.

In recent months, the board has also used its rule­making process to roll back pro-worker regulations, especially in regard to union elections; make it easier for employers to interfere with voting; weaken rules that protect unionizing construction workers; and shorten the time that employers must wait before petitioning to oust a union.

“It’s breathtaking how many areas of the law, how many precedents they’ve managed to overturn,” said Wilma Lieb­man, a chair of the NLRB under Obama. “And they just kind of snap their fingers and do it, in my view, with little regard for the quality of the legal thinking or reasoning, reaching out to decide issues that aren’t before it.”

Some NLRB staffers fear that Robb is making it more difficult for them to scrutinize employers. In June he directed staffers to dramatically alter their investigative procedures. In some cases, bosses can now preview recordings that could be used as evidence and be present when former supervisors testify against them. NLRB spokesperson Edwin Egee told The Nation and Type Investigations that the “dissemination of information during the investigation” enables the agency to “more fairly enforce the [National Labor Relations Act]” and “aid settlement efforts.” But labor advocates say the measures discourage whistleblowers and compromise the integrity of cases.

The NLRB’s rightward shift under Trump has deterred some unions from taking cases to the agency. A current NLRB staff member, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, said she has observed unions opting to settle to avoid triggering an unfavorable ruling. Unions, she said, “are just less likely to turn to us because they…don’t want to create bad law.”

Several graduate student employee unions, including at Boston College, withdrew their cases in 2018 to prevent the board from overturning the Obama-era precedent that supported the collective bargaining rights of graduate workers at private institutions. “We pulled our petition to protect the rights of graduate student workers at private universities nation­wide,” said Sam Levinson, a Boston College graduate student worker, in an e-mail. “The current NLRB has consistently chipped away at the collective bargaining rights for which the labor movement has fought for decades. We decided to organize and build power, instead of allowing Boston College to put the fate of our rights into the hands of Trump and his appointees.”

Even though the petition was dropped, the board initiated a rulemaking process last September to strip collective bargaining rights from graduate student ­employees—another attempt to change policy through an administrative rule change rather than case law.

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INNER TURMOIL

For career staffers who joined the NLRB to help enforce the rights of workers, the Trump board has been demoralizing. “There’s a host of decisions that have come out that are destructive of workers’ rights, and it’s an extremely sad time to be at this agency and work here,” said a second NLRB staff member, who also requested anonymity. “The only hope is that [the administration] will turn before too much damage is done.”

In early 2018, according to Bloomberg Law, Robb floated a proposal to centralize case-­handling authority under officials who report directly to him. The NLRB’s 26 regional directors protested, calling the move a unilateral concentration of authority by a Trump appointee. And Senator Patty Murray (D-Wa.) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) sent a letter expressing concern. At the time, an NLRB spokesperson told Bloomberg Law that “no plan involving the restructuring of our Regional Offices system has been developed.” Facing congressional scrutiny and a backlash from staff, Robb seemingly shelved the idea.

But in August he appeared to have revived his consolidation efforts with a plan to combine case handling across several branches in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Denver, and Phoenix. Democrats in Congress criticized the proposal as a backdoor attempt to undercut the regional directors. Egee said the plan did not constitute a reorganization of the local offices and was merely a “resource sharing” initiative intended to “address chronic workload imbalances” between regions.

In 2018, Robb antagonized staffers with a memo recommending dozens of ways to speed up investigations. Although Egee said the guidance was drawn “directly from NLRB employees,” the NLRB Union, which represents workers in the regional offices, responded by arguing that it will “result in a reduction in quality, not an improvement.”

Staffers say they are under pressure to process cases quickly, prioritizing efficiency above all else. Meanwhile, the workforce has shrunk. While the number of field staffers has been decreasing since 2011, Robb exacerbated that trend by offering buyouts and early retirement incentives to eligible employees, according to the NLRB Union. The result, it said, has been a more than 20 percent reduction in staffing since fiscal year 2017—from more than 900 to about 717 full-time equivalents as of June 30. (Egee cited different statistics, stating that the total number of employees has declined less than 4 percent since fiscal year 2018.)

During fiscal year 2019, according to the NLRB’s annual performance report, the processing time from initial filing to judgment for unfair-labor-practice cases fell from 90 to 74 days. Yet the agency’s funding has shrunk by an inflation-adjusted 15 percent since fiscal year 2011, according to the NLRB Union.

A third NLRB field staffer said being asked to work faster with fewer resources feels like an attack on the agency. “If you are trying to [end] the administrative state and you want to get rid of the agencies you like the least—ours is probably one of them—then this is what you do. You really starve the staff, and you decrease morale.”

Some NLRB employees have left the agency on principle, according to another current staff member. “It is really tough when you believe in Section 7 rights and you have to write [a legal rationale] that you believe is eroding them,” the person said, noting that the NLRB was losing both experienced senior staffers and talented younger lawyers. “We’ve had some incredibly bright attorneys hired in the last five or so years who are jumping ship…. They’re still in labor law. They’re still in the fight. But they’re not going to fight from within the board.”

The agency’s two staff unions—the NLRB Union and the NLRB Professional Association, which represents employees at the headquarters—have been waging a modest resistance. They have accused the board of under­staff­ing the agency, refusing to bargain in good faith over the Professional Association’s contract, and letting millions of dollars in the agency’s budget go unspent. (The board has disputed the allegations and attributed the underspending to contracts that were not completed or came in under budget.)

Last November, the unions held a rally at the NLRB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and passed out leaflets reading, “NLRB Leadership is destroying the agency from within by refusing to spend funds to hire staff.” They even brought Scabby the Rat to stand guard.
Industrial unrest: Anti-union vigilantes attack striking workers in Ambridge, Pa. The NLRB was designed to reduce the number of labor actions. (Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

A RANK-AND-FILE STRUGGLE

As Trump’s board whittles away labor rights, unions and workers increasingly see the legal bureaucracy of the NLRB as irrelevant or even antithetical to their efforts.

“A lot of people—the layman, the regular worker [or] union worker…they think that the board is there to protect them,” said Rob Atkinson, a former UPS driver. But under the current administration, “it’s obvious with their decisions that they’re no longer a friend of the working man and woman. They’re now a watchdog for the national Chamber of Commerce and Trump’s buddies.”

UPS fired Atkinson, a longtime Teamsters shop steward in western Pennsylvania, in 2014 for allegedly violating package delivery procedures. He filed two grievances, saying he was fired for his activism in a rank-and-file Teamsters movement, but he got no relief from what he said was a biased internal grievance panel.

Atkinson sought justice with the NLRB, and shortly before Trump took office, a lower-level judge found that his dismissal had been retaliatory, invoking an Obama-era ruling that said the board can override a grievance panel when considering certain violations of the National Labor Relations Act. But last December, the Trump-appointed majority on the board reversed that precedent, deciding that the grievance panel should have had the last word.

“My panel was made up of political enemies and people who wanted me gone,” Atkinson said. But his struggle with his former employer “really opened my eyes and showed me how cold and callous big businesses are and how we really need huge, strong unions and a strong National Labor Relations Board…to hold these companies accountable.”

In a statement, UPS said the board “recognized that an internal dispute resolution process can be relied upon to make fair and regular decisions on claims that might take years to resolve in other forums.”

Atkinson is appealing his case in federal court. His experience turned him into something of an NLRB watchdog; he now runs a Facebook group that tracks cases and educates other workers about what Trump is doing to labor law. “Look what the NLRB is doing to our rights and how they’ve turned into an antagonistic organization to the average working man or woman instead of an organization that’s there to uphold us,” he told me.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has led to fresh labor clashes: Meatpacking workers have walked off the job, nurses have protested nationwide demanding more protective gear, and Whole Foods workers have filed suit after being disciplined and fired for wearing Black Lives Matter masks and apparel. Yet the NLRB continues to make it harder for workers to organize.

In July the NLRB Union and other labor groups denounced the board’s safety guidelines for resuming in-­person union elections as inadequate and advocated a move to online or mail-in voting instead. At the same time, the NLRB’s advice division, which provides legal guidance to regional offices, has issued memorandums that seem to give employers the green light to act uni­lateral­ly in response to the pandemic. One advisory suggests that an employer can refuse to bargain with a union over requests for pandemic-related “paid sick leave and hazard pay.” The NLRB also indicated that a person can be fired after speaking out against a company’s Covid-19 safety protocols.

Sharon Block, the director of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and an NLRB member under Obama, said that during the pandemic, it was “incumbent on worker protection agencies like the [NLRB]…to be exceptionally vigilant on behalf of workers and attuned to violations of their rights, because it is so hard to feel secure enough to speak out. [But] this is a board that we watched operate for three years in a way that would not give that kind of security to workers.”

Nonetheless, she added, the systemic problems with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act go beyond the Trump administration. “Even with board members…and a general counsel with the best of intentions who really believe in the spirit and the purpose of the act, it’s just a tool that doesn’t work anymore.”

The Labor and Worklife Program wants to overhaul labor law and extend protections to domestic and undocumented workers. It also advocates for sectoral bargaining, which would enable workers in an industry to negotiate en masse.

In the more immediate term, Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would expand the rights of workers to strike and organize at work, institute meaningful penalties for bosses who violate labor law, and allow workers to sue employers in civil courts rather than be forced to rely solely on lengthy litigation at the NLRB.

Despite its limitations, workers continue to use Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, often to ward off campaigns to suppress organizing. Since April, Amazon workers belonging to the grassroots group Amazonians United in Chicago filed several unfair-labor-practice charges with the NLRB, alleging that they were unfairly disciplined by the company after staging walkouts and slowdowns to demand better health protections. Amazonians United member Ted Miin said he and his coworkers were reprimanded for allegedly violating social distancing guidelines at work, which he sees as retaliatory selective enforcement. (Amazon did not return a request for comment.)

Concerned that it might not be worth the effort, Miin was wary of filing a charge. But when the official probe began, the atmosphere at work changed. “Management has basically loosened up on us a lot at our warehouse since we’ve had active NLRB cases open,” he said.

Miin knows his charges may lead to nothing. He acknowledged that “the Trump administration has been rewriting the NLRB rules to favor bosses over workers.” But whatever form their resistance takes, he added, “as workers, we have to protect ourselves. No one’s coming to save us…not the NLRB, not politicians, not reporters. As workers, we have to get organized ourselves.”




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Facebook blocks Frenchman's bid to livestream his own death
Issued on: 05/09/2020 - 18:11Modified: 05/09/2020 - 18:14

Text by:Catherine Bennett



Raising a plastic cup, Alain Cocq gestured towards the camera and said, “Well, my friends, I’ll drink to your health one last time.”

In a video livestreamed to Facebook just after midnight on September 5, the 57-year-old Frenchman announced to his followers his plan to die. Cocq has an extremely rare, painful and incurable medical condition that causes the walls of his arteries to stick together. He says that he’s been in the terminal stage of his illness for the last 34 years.

After unsuccessfully petitioning French President Emmanuel Macron to allow him to die in dignity through medical assistance, Cocq announced that he would stop eating and drinking, starting on Friday night, and that he would livestream the process on Facebook.

But the social media platform quickly moved to ban Cocq from posting videos. Cocq told his more than 22,000 followers and 4,000 Facebook friends that the site had blocked him until September 8. He has previously said that he expects to die within two to five days.

"Facebook has blocked me from broadcasting video until 8 September. Now it's up to you [to act]". © Alain Cocq on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/97aded7b-df4d-45fb-b519-5427ba950955

Undeterred, Cocq said that he would find another solution within the day. But he also called on his followers to protest against Facebook’s “unjust methods of discrimination and obstruction of freedom of expression”.

Facebook considers his death a suicide, depictions of which are banned on the social network. A spokesperson from Facebook France told French newspaper Le Monde that while the company “respects his decision to want to draw attention to this complex issue”, its regulations meant it was obliged to block his video “because our rules do not allow the showing of suicide attempts”.

Why livestream your death?

Alain Cocq has long campaigned for the right to a medically assisted death. He’s travelled in his wheelchair from his home in Dijon in eastern France to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, to the European institutions in Brussels and to the United Nations in Geneva to meet with lawmakers and advocate for the right to active euthanasia.

Cocq explained to French media that he wanted to show his final moments of agony to an online audience of thousands of people “so that people know what the end of life is like in France”.

He is clear, however, that he doesn’t want the video to be too upsetting for viewers. He plans to broadcast it without sound and the camera will stop filming as soon as he dies. “For me, it’s out of the question to show disturbing images,” he said. “The moment I pass away will be a deliverance. The fight will go on after me.”

Alain Cocq in his home in Dijon. © Philippe Desmazes, AFP

The law in France

Cocq’s deteriorating condition has confined him to his bed at home, where he says he is “crippled by unbearable pain”. He wrote a letter to the French president imploring him to let him “pass away peacefully”. In the response Cocq received on September 3, Emmanuel Macron wrote that he was “moved” by Cocq’s plea, but said that “because I am not above the law, I cannot grant you your request”.

Euthanasia is illegal in France. The Claeys-Leonetti law, which was modified in 2016, grants the right to terminally ill patients to be heavily sedated until death, but only under specific circumstances – for instance, if death is imminent. This is not the case for Cocq.

The delegate general of the Association pour le droit à mourir dans la dignité [Association for the Right to Die in Dignity] Philippe Lohéac told FRANCE 24 in exasperation that the ”sole loophole” in the Claeys-Leonetti law for those who are at the end of their life “is the possibility to die of hunger and thirst”.

“That’s the Leonetti law,” he added. “Today, it’s Alain Cocq. Tomorrow, it will be someone else.”

According to a survey carried out by the charitable organisation in 2019, 96 percent of French people are in favour of euthanasia when a patient is experiencing serious and incurable suffering.

France is a lot more rigid on the issue than other European countries. In Europe there are five countries – Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg – where physician-assisted euthanasia is legal.

France has had other high-profile cases similar to Cocq's. Vincent Lambert was left quadriplegic and in a vegetative state after a motorcycle accident in 2008. He remained like that for 11 years while his family tussled over whether he should live or die. After a long legal battle, doctors removed life support and he died in July last year.

In February this year, France’s then-health minister Agnès Buzyn said that the government would again look into the issue of end-of-life and palliative care – a plan that was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Facebook Says Trump’s Misleading Post About Mail-In Voting Is OK. Employees Say It’s Not.

“Facebook is broken. Another performative announcement by leadership not intended to address any issues.”
Craig SilvermanBuzzFeed News ReporterRyan MacBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on September 4, 2020

Twitter/realDonaldTrump / Via Twitter: @realDonaldTrump

Facebook employees are outraged over the company’s “shameful” and “unconscionable” decision not to remove a post from President Donald Trump spreading voting misinformation that could lead to people voting twice.

On Thursday morning, Trump, a frequent source of false and misleading information about mail-in voting and voter fraud, posted potentially unlawful advice to voters on Facebook and Twitter.

“On Election Day, or Early Voting, go to your Polling Place to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted),” Trump wrote. “If it has you will not be able to Vote & the Mail In System worked properly. If it has not been Counted, VOTE (which is a citizen’s right to do). If your Mail In Ballot arrives after you Vote, which it should not, that Ballot will not be used or counted in that your vote has already been cast & tabulated. YOU ARE NOW ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED, it hasn’t been ‘lost, thrown out, or in any way destroyed.’”

Voting twice is illegal and Trump’s comments were condemned for offering advice that could cause people to break the law and create confusion and delays at polling stations. "The president's idea is a great one for people looking to go to jail,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
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Hours before Trump’s post, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new policies intended to protect the upcoming US election from disruption. Zuckerberg said the company had expanded its voter suppression policy to forbid content containing explicit and “implicit misrepresentations about voting.”

Some Facebook employees felt Trump’s post contained, at the very least, implicit misrepresentations about the voting process. Roughly an hour after Trump’s post appeared, an employee flagged it on the company’s internal discussion forum, Workplace.

“Seems like this already violates our extended policies on voter suppression by misrepresenting how or when to vote. Intentionally voting twice is a felony, right?” they wrote in a Workplace group focused on policy and communications issues.

A person on Facebook’s policy team responded to say Trump’s post was being reviewed by the company’s “Voter Interference subject matter expert[s].”

Multiple employees expressed confusion that the post hadn’t already been deemed violative and removed.

“This is voting misinformation,” said an employee. “Your polling place will not be able to track if your vote had been received.”


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Other employees agreed.

“This post [is] essentially urging people to go to their voting place, ask for information that place will not have, and then commit voter fraud by voting twice.”

“This must come down. Following Trump’s advice here will lead people to commit felonies. If they vote in person just as their mail-in votes are being counted, they actually will be double-voting,” said an employee, noting that voters in Washington state can track their mail-in ballot’s status online and do not need to go to a polling station.

“This post is insane, even by the standards that [Trump] has set the past few years. How many people will try doing this and end up being charged with felonies?”

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Rather than remove Trump’s post, Facebook eventually decided to add a generic label with information about voting. It later changed that to a label emphasizing the security of mail-in voting. "Voting by mail has a long history of trustworthiness in the US and the same is predicted this year. (Source: Bipartisan Policy Center)," the second label reads.

Separately, Facebook said it had removed posts containing video footage of a Trump speech on Wednesday where he suggested people vote twice.

"In violation of our policies, earlier this week President Trump called for people to vote twice and we removed that video when it wasn't shared to correct the record," Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told BuzzFeed News.

She said that for Trump's Thursday post, "we applied the new label we launched yesterday, which clearly notes that voting by mail has a long history of being trustworthy and secure in the U.S."

A Facebook policy employee posted a more detailed explanation for the decision in the Workplace thread.

“While all states prohibit attempts to vote more than once, the post does not explicitly call for people to vote twice,” they wrote. “Rather, it encourages individuals to check the status of the mail-in ballot and, if necessary, to cast a ballot in person. This may be permitted in some jurisdictions under provisional ballot rules. As such, this post does not meet the criteria of our voting interference policies.”

That decision, and the fact that it took hours to make, inspired anger and disbelief among Facebook employees. Many pointed out that the policy team’s reasoning cited the lack of an “explicit” call to vote twice from Trump, even though the newly announced policy specifically said Facebook will remove “implicit” misrepresentations.

"We deserve everything we get now. Truly. I’m ashamed and appalled by this decision."

“Facebook is broken. Another performative announcement by leadership not intended to address any issues,” said one employee.

Several employees said they believed Trump’s post, published just a few hours after Zuckerberg’s announcement, was intended to test the company’s commitment to the new, stricter “implicit” policy.

“I believe the whole purpose of this post was to show how our policies and declarations are all bark and no bite and to prove FB will not have the courage to enforce them,” said an employee, adding that leaving Trump’s post unmoderated makes “a mockery of [Zuckerberg’s] post just a few hours earlier.”

Others criticized how long it took for Facebook to come to a decision. “If each obviously violating post from accounts with massive reach require multi-hour reviews, our new expanded policy is toothless.”

Internal dissent over the incident gathered momentum throughout the day, as employees began posting memes in the Trump post thread, including a famous clip of an NFL coach yelling, “They are who we thought they were!” and an image from a comedy sketch where a Nazi officer asks, “Are we the baddies?”

Apoplectic over Facebook’s handling of the incident, the employee who started the original thread called on the company to release an internal report detailing just how it determined Trump’s post to be non-violative.

“We deserve everything we get now. Truly. I’m ashamed and appalled by this decision,” they wrote.


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Craig Silverman is a media editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto.

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