Conspiracy theories have devastating impact on Canadian-founded Dominion Voting firm and its employees: CEO

When John Poulos and his co-founder launched a voting-machine company 18 years ago in Toronto, they named it after a long-forgotten piece of Canadian legislation – the Dominion Elections Act of 1920.

© Provided by National Post Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos:

The law expanded women’s right to vote and established a new, independent federal system for overseeing elections.

“We liked that, it resonated with our mission,” said Poulos in an interview with the National Post on Monday, noting that Dominion Voting Systems originally just strived to help blind people cast their ballots privately.

But nearly two decades later, even the company’s seemingly innocuous name is cause for suspicion among fans of President Donald Trump, as Dominion suffers the fallout from a barrage of baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the U.S. election.

It’s not over yet. With Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to be inaugurated as U.S. president Wednesday, Poulos says the firm risks a “devastating” loss of business while its employees still weather threats, stalking and other abuse.

“There are websites that have now been linked to Iran that call for the death of various election officials and our employees,” he said. “We have some employees that have still not returned home, because there are (threatening) people who drive in front of their home every day.”

“They’re in hiding,” said the Dominion CEO. “We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on security … to help us get through this, to provide safety for our employees.”

And the intimidation of his 300 or so employees has not stopped at the border, said Poulos.

Dominion sues ex-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion over vote-fraud claims

How a Canadian-founded firm became the focus of latest U.S. rigged-election conspiracy theory

Even those in the company’s Toronto office have been “harassed at their place of business, harassed at home … threatened over telephone, by text and by email.”

Dominion responded last week by filing a $1.3-billion libel lawsuit against Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer who has led the charge in spreading unsubstantiated claims about the firm.

And on Monday, Mike Lindell, My Pillow CEO and a confidante of the president, was added to the list of Trump loyalists and media allies put on notice of possible future legal action.

The charges against Dominion have been debunked by numerous media fact-checkers, dismissed by judges and elections administrators in both Republican and Democrat-run battleground states, and deemed unfounded even by the Trump administration’s own cyber-security czar, before Christopher Krebs was fired by the president. Attorney General William Barr, one of the president’s most loyal cabinet secretaries, also said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud. His resignation was accepted by Trump shortly after.

But the constant drumbeat about a stolen election has triggered a crisis of sorts in American democracy, with rioters storming the U.S. Capitol building and 75 per cent of Republicans, according to a recent CNN poll, saying they had little faith in the electoral system.

For Dominion, which years ago expanded into providing a range of voting and vote-tabulation machines, it’s been a more practical calamity.

© John Bazemore/AP, File 

An example of the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia.

The firm has contracts with 1,200 counties in 28 states. Poulos fears a “massive” impact on his business, with some states already talking about legislation barring the firm from their jurisdictions, Poulos said.

“Frankly, there is no amount of money that’s going to fix this problem for us, because our name will always have this against it.”

The compensation demanded by the company in the Powell suit is huge, but a key aim of the litigation is to get to the bottom of why Dominion was targeted for the disinformation campaign in the first place, says Poulos.

The allegations originated with followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which imagines a vast cabal of Democratic politicians and other liberals who kidnap, rape and cannibalize children, then was repeated and amplified by conservative news organizations. Finally the allegations, still lacking any real evidence, were embraced by the president, his legal team and other followers.

Central to the theory is that Dominion’s machines somehow flipped millions of votes from Trump to Biden. And among a stew of other theories was that the company was founded in or had close ties to the regime of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and that his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was anxious to tilt the election against Trump.

Dominion has no ties to Venezuela. By 2010, most of Dominion’s clients were in the U.S., and it moved its head office from Toronto to Denver; by 2017, 90 per cent of its customers were American and Poulos sold a majority stake to a New York private equity firm.

But ironically, it’s chief rival — Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software — does have a history of working in the South American country, and was embroiled in a controversy over Venezuela’s 2000 election. It was replaced as a voting-machine vendor there by another Dominon competitor, Smartmatic. ES&S is number one in the American voting-technology market, Dominion number two.

“They conflated a bunch of things about other companies and made it about us,” said Poulos. “I have no idea what the motivations were.”

Then there is that one about the company name. On social media, Trump supporters unfamiliar with Canadian history theorize that it refers to holding dominion over voters, said the CEO, who was asked about the name by a suspicious state senator at a recent hearing in Michigan .

Even one of the industry’s most steadfast critics sees nothing but fiction in the allegations leveled against the former Canadian company.

Aleks Essex, a Western University computer science professor and election integrity expert, believes all the main vendors of election technology should do more to secure their systems, but says he has seen zero evidence to support the Dominion charges.

Regardless, the back-up paper ballots used in the systems provide a fail-safe way of validating the machine tabulation — in case there was some issue with the computer software.

“All the risk-limiting audits, all of the recounts, have not shown any significant divergence,” said Essex. “If the election integrity community thought there was anything here, we would be right on board … What I am seeing is an intentional assault on the integrity of the democratic system.”

REPUPLICAN MINING SHILL

Tribes slam GOP lawmaker for trying to derail Haaland nomination

WASHINGTON — A group of Native American tribes is rushing to the defense of Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Interior secretary, and blasting a Republican lawmaker’s campaign to derail Haaland’s historic nomination as a slap in the face to his constituents.

© Provided by NBC News

Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who sits on the House’s subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples, has been asking fellow lawmakers to join him in urging Biden’s transition team to withdraw Haaland’s nomination. In a draft of a letter obtained by NBC News, Stauber cites Haaland’s support for the Green New Deal and opposition to oil and gas drilling on public lands.

“Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources,” Stauber wrote in his letter, a copy of which he circulated to fellow House members asking them to add their names.

Now all five tribes in Stauber’s congressional district are accusing him of blindsiding them and appeasing big industrial interests at their expense.

“This historic nomination is more important to us and all of Indian country than any other Cabinet nomination in recent history,” leaders of the five tribes wrote in a letter dated Jan. 14 and reviewed by NBC News. “Your opposition to the first and only American Indian ever nominated to a Cabinet position is likely to reverberate across Indian country.”

The letter was signed by the chairs of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

Stauber’s communications director, Kelsey Mix, said the focus of his efforts was limited to “the anti-jobs and anti-mining record of the nominee” and policies she’s embraced that would “severely and negatively impact every economic sector and family in Northeastern Minnesota.” She said Stauber hadn’t consulted with any industry groups in crafting the letter, still in draft form.

“The nominees’ support for extreme policies is not what hardworking families across northeast Minnesota need, which is why Congressman Stauber cannot get behind her nomination,’ Mix said, adding that he “remains committed to working with and building strong relationships with tribal communities and their leaders, and he will continue to hear them out on this issue.” HEARING IS NOT LISTENING

A spokeswoman for the Biden transition declined to comment.

Stauber, in his letter, argued that Haaland’s approach to natural resources would stifle a key economic engine, focusing on legislation Haaland co-sponsored banning mining in a 234,000-acre stretch of Superior National Forest. That includes an area in Stauber’s district where the Twin Metals mining company is seeking to mine for copper. Stauber has supported the mine while many Democrats oppose it. Several environmental groups allege Stauber interfered in the environmental review process for Twin Metals. Stauber has said he merely sought to ensure a “fair, rigorous regulatory process.”

In a separate letter to Stauber, the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes, which represents 35 tribal nations in the region, called the lawmaker’s campaign against Haaland “offensive, “hostile” and “irresponsible. The group’s chair, Aaron Payment, said Stauber had “subordinated the interests of Indian tribes to the interests of those you represent in your letter without any consultation with the tribes.”

“We are unaccustomed to any member of Congress serving in such a public role in leading an attack that diametrically opposes the wishes of nearly all of Indian country,” Payment wrote. “This is unprecedented."

Haaland, a Democratic lawmaker from New Mexico and member of the Laguna Pueblo people, serves alongside Stauber on the House Natural Resources Committee. If confirmed, she would lead a department with broad oversight over tribal lands in the U.S. and the complicated relationship between tribal nations and the federal government.

In the House, Haaland has been a vocal opponent of drilling and mining on public lands, although as a Cabinet secretary she would be be responsible for carrying out the broader Biden administration’s policies. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to ban new permitting for drilling on federal lands, a move expected to face swift legal challenges.

Parler website is back online thanks to support from Russian tech firm, report says

The app, which is more popular with users than the website, remains banned from the Google and Apple app stores.


Sareena Dayaram
Jan. 18, 2021 



Parler is back online.Screenshot by Sareena Dayaram/CNET

After Amazon, Google, and Apple booted Parler offline in the wake of the deadly insurrection of the US Capitol, the social networking company managed to make an online reappearance on Sunday.

Although the website, which is popular with Donald Trump supporters, has not regained full operability, Parler's CEO John Matze is reportedly "confident" the social media platform he runs will be back by the end of January.

"Our return is inevitable due to hard work, and persistence against all odds," reads a post by Matze on the Parler website.

"Despite the threats and harassment not one Parler employee has quit. We are becoming closer and stronger as a team."

The social networking site was forced offline when Amazon stopped providing it cloud hosting services after it was revealed the platform was used to help organize the Capitol Hill attack on Jan. 6, which left five people dead. Amazon's actions followed moves by Apple and Google to ban the Parler mobile app from their respective stores. The Parler app, which is more popular with its user base, remains unavailable.
The Parler social media app on Apple's App Store is no longer available.

Stephen Shankland/CNET

Questions have been raised over how Parler returned online following its ejection from the internet. The Parler domain is registered with Epik, according to domains name database WHOIS, however an Epik statement published Monday says the company had "no contact or discussions with Parler in any form regarding our becoming their registrar or hosting provider."

Citing an infrastructure expert, a Reuters report, indicated that the IP address Epic used is owned by DDos-Guard, which is "controlled by two Russian men and provides services including protection from distributed denial of service attacks." The company that owns DDos-Guard is called Cognitive Cloud LP, according to the report. 

A WHOIS search of Parler's website shows it was registered with Epik.Screenshot by Sareena Dayaram/CNET

Parler CEO John Matze didn't immediately respond to a CNET request for comment.

Trump's legacy will take years to purge from the American psyche

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Tue January 19, 2021




(CNN)After four exhausting years of raging tweets, lies, "fire and fury" rants and orders for far-right extremists to "stand back and stand by," it's almost over.
Donald Trump's presidency is ending in a riot of division, discord and disgrace that encapsulates the pandemonium of his single term that culminated in him inciting an insurrection against Congress and a legacy that will take years to purge from the American psyche.
Trump is expected to unfurl a new list of pardons, including for white-collar criminals and celebrity rappers, in his last full day in office Tuesday that is likely to reflect the self-dealing contempt for justice that was a dominant theme of his tumultuous term. And there are sure to be more political traps for Joe Biden's incoming administration on his way out the door.
The very experience of being alive in America will change at noon on Wednesday when the mandate expires of the loudest, most disruptive and erratic commander in chief in history -- who forced himself into every corner of life on his social media feed and constant craving for the spotlight.

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Millions of Americans who viewed the twice-impeached Trump's assaults on decency and the rule of law with shame and alarm will finally be able to breathe easily again, liberated from his strongman's shadow. Biden will be a President who seeks to unify an internally estranged nation in contrast to Trump's obsession with ripping at its social, racial and cultural fault lines to cement his power. Trump's cynical weaponizing of race reemerged on Monday when his White House chose the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. to issue a commission report that minimizes slavery and insults the modern civil rights movement.
But this is only one view of Trump. The 74 million Americans who voted to reward him with a second term saw him as a leader who voiced their anger at political, business and media elites. Trump channeled their belief that an increasingly diverse and socially liberal nation threatened their values, religion, gun rights and cultural heritage. His exit could trigger volatile political forces among a community that will mourn his White House. The continued devotion of Trump's loyal base voters means that while Biden can wipe out many of the outgoing President's policy wins, removing his influence from politics may well be impossible.
As he moves into retirement, Trump's presidency will personify the divides between two halves of a populace -- one largely conservative and rural and the other more liberal suburban and city dwelling. The two increasingly lack a common cultural language and definition of patriotism -- and thanks to Trump and the media propagandists who sustained his personality cult -- even a common version of truth.



Trump's historic 2nd impeachment trial hangs over Biden and Republicans

One long conspiracy theory

Trump's political career began with outrageous lies and a conspiracy theory over former President Barack Obama's birthplace. It is ending, at least for now, with another even more outrageous one: the false claim that he won an election he clearly lost. Trump's perpetuating of this alternative reality has caused catastrophic damage to faith in government that is the bedrock of any functioning nation. His shattering of the tradition of peaceful US transfers of power threatens to suffocate Biden's legitimacy and prolong the nation's agony at a time of dire crises.
After his final White House departure on Wednesday, Trump's Marine One will fly over miles of iron fencing and troops protecting the US Capitol from a repeat of the mob insurrection he enlisted and inspired. There could not be a better metaphor for his assault on American democracy.

Biden's inaugural celebrations will also be muted by the never worse pandemic that was fueled by presidential neglect. Nearly 400,000 Americans, many whose deaths could have been prevented, are dead on Trump's watch. Like his election sedition, Trump's denial over Covid-19 was rooted in an incessant focus on his own political needs rather his oath to faithfully execute the office of the presidency he swore in January 2017.

The President's premature push to reopen the country in the service of his reelection campaign last summer helped spark a murderous second wave of the virus. Future generations will understand his contempt for science through his barely believable public pondering about whether ingesting disinfectant could cure Covid-19.

A desire to promote his own interests was also reflected in the outgoing President's attempts to funnel cash and publicity toward his worldwide real estate and hotel empire. This was highlighted by his abortive effort to host the G7 summit at his struggling Doral golf resort in Florida. In many ways, Trump attitude to the presidency was the exact inverse of President John Kennedy's inaugural admonishment to his fellow citizens: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."


Trumps' snub of Bidens historic in its magnitude

A legacy that will outlast his term

In purely political terms, the President leaves office with some achievements that will long outlast his term. He fundamentally remodeled the Supreme Court and the judiciary on conservative lines. He presided over the first criminal justice reform in years. And he managed to avoid being drawn into foreign wars and beefed up US policy towards an increasingly hostile China while putting NATO nations on notice they must spend more in their own defense. At the same time, he trashed America's reputation among its friends abroad, treated another looming threat, climate change, with the same denial he brought to the coronavirus and fawned over autocratic US enemies such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
But perhaps his term will be mostly remembered for his adoption of "forgotten Americans" in midwestern and southern cities hollowed out by globalized free trade policies. Trump powerfully identified a populace badly neglected by Washington politicians of both parties -- as well as an audience for his populist, nationalist politics. But the facts suggest the President's tax cuts and economic policies in practice did more for corporations and rich cronies that the heartland Americans he championed.

His promise to furnish Americans with a "beautiful" health care plan never materialized. And his immigration policy and southern border wall that Mexico never paid for turned out to be more successful as a demagogic prop than in addressing the causes of undocumented immigration.

Trump's post-election propagandizing has added a dangerous layer of radicalization to the grievances of his supporters, millions of whom now reject the structures of US government they believe unjustly ejected their leader.

Partly because of this, he leaves behind a country that is now as divided as it has been since the Civil War, in which White nationalism is on the march and in which extreme groups like QAnon have infiltrated a shattered Republican Party. How Trump's voters react to his departure will not only shape the future of the GOP -- a party that has shown itself to live in fear of Trump's base -- but will have huge implications for American unity in time to come.


Biden crafts inaugural address to unify a country in crisis

A more quiet future

Biden's inheritance is the most challenging of any new President since Franklin Roosevelt, who took office in the teeth of the Great Depression in 1933, at a time when Nazism was building its totalitarian horror in Europe.

Despite Biden's ambitious goals on issues such as climate, health care and foreign policy, the success of his presidency will likely be judged on his ability to lead America out of the worst public health crisis in 100 years and the economic nightmare it created. And every President faces crises that they could never have anticipated.

But one thing is for sure -- his White House will be far more conventional, quiet and stable than Trump's. In fact, America may never see anything quite like the last four years again.

Texas Is What the End of Legal Abortion Looks Like

After Texas used the pandemic as a reason to block the procedure, the number of people who fled the state to undergo abortions skyrocketed, as did second-trimester abortions.

By Carter Sherman
6.1.21


With Amy Coney Barrett now on the Supreme Court, the ruling that legalized abortion nationwide decades ago may be on its last legs. But during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas already gave a sneak peek at what could happen if Roe v. Wade collapses.

In late March 2020, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order postponing all abortions that weren’t “immediately, medically necessary”—which his attorney general defined as including nearly all abortions. Supporters of abortion rights promptly sued, but the order—and the legal tussling over it—intermittently cut off access to abortion until the end of April, when it finally expired.

That delay had steep consequences for Texas, as well as its neighboring states. The number of people who fled the Lone Star State to undergo abortions skyrocketed, as did requests for the abortion pill, according to two separate studies. And after Abbott’s order expired, the number of second-trimester abortions performed in Texas also shot up, one of the studies found.

What happened in Texas may hint at what lies in store for the U.S. as a whole if Roe were overturned—a real possibility now that a 6-3 conservative majority dominates the Supreme Court. Without Roe, each state would once again be free to regulate abortion as it sees fit, and the nation would dissolve into a patchwork of states that ban the procedure and those that do not. People who live in conservative states would likely flee to more liberal states for abortions, just as they did in Texas.

In April 2020, the month after Abbott signed his order, abortions at 18 Texas clinics fell 38 percent compared to April 2019, according to a paper published Monday in the Journal American Medical Association. That same month, 947 Texans underwent abortions at clinics in six other states. In February 2020, just 157 Texans did the same.

But having to leave the state to get an abortion wasn’t the only likely consequence, according to researchers. In May, after Abbott’s executive order expired, second-trimester abortions in Texas spiked by 61 percent, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and University of California, San Francisco. (One of the study’s authors, Robin Wallace, was one of the abortion providers who sued the state of Texas over Abbott’s order.)

The increase in second-trimester abortions, researchers wrote, “likely reflects delays in care among those who waited for an appointment and facilities’ limited capacity to meet backlogged patient need.”

“Although abortions later in pregnancy are very safe, they are associated with a higher risk of complications and may require additional visits,” they added.

During the confusion and fighting over over Abbott’s executive order, patients’ abortions were sometimes rescheduled three or four times, Marva Sadler, director of clinical services for three Texas-based abortion clinics run by the national company Whole Woman’s Health, told VICE News last month.

“There were couple of days in our clinics when we were not able to see patients at all and then there were some days that we were only able to see medication abortion patients,” she said, referring to a type of abortion that can be induced with pills. “There was also a time that our three Whole Woman’s Health clinics, along with another independent provider, were the only clinics that were seeing patients at all.”

Another January brief, compiled by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project, interviewed 10 people who reached out to an abortion clinic while Abbott’s order was in effect. Of those, five people were able to get abortions and four continued their pregnancies. One was still unsure of their plan.

“The participants who ultimately resolved to carry their pregnancy to term cited economic barriers that further contributed to delays in care,” the researchers wrote. “Despite attempts to get care early in pregnancy, the executive order made it too difficult for these participants to obtain an abortion.”

One woman who was interviewed by researchers was unable to find work due to the pandemic. She said that she couldn’t pull together enough money to afford an abortion, thanks in part to abortion restrictions in Texas that predated the coronavirus.

Another woman did end up getting an abortion—after traveling more than 700 miles one way to New Mexico. Her fetus had what the researchers called “significant anomalies.”

In yet another study, researchers led by the University of Texas at Austin found in July that Aid Access, a international group that ships abortion-inducing pills to the U.S., saw the number of requests for pills from people in Texas increase by almost 94 percent between March 20 and April 11.

Texas is far from the only state that used the pandemic to hack away at abortion access. In the spring of 2020, 10 other states also tried to ban at least some types of abortions by labeling the procedure nonessential, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions. That triggered a cascade of lawsuits, although all of the efforts to block abortion eventually fell apart, thanks to court orders and executive orders expiring.

In the event Roe is overturned, 21 states already have laws on the books that could be used to restrict abortion’s legality, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C., have laws that protect the right to abortion.

“Access is already a problem,” said Mercedes Sanchez, the communications director of the Seattle area-based Cedar River Clinics. Between 2015 and 2020, her facilities saw patients from more than 30 states.

If Roe falls apart, she continued, “states where abortion would remain legal would be overwhelmed by the numbers of people needing to travel to get care.”

HIP CAPITALI$M
Dr Martens Aims For Stock Market Listing Next Month

By AUGUST GRAHAM - Jan 18, 2021

The business hopes to be included in one of London’s FTSE indexes

Dr Martens could be listed on the Stock Exchange in London by the start of next month and hopes to be included in a FTSE index, the business said on Monday.

The footwear firm confirmed its intention to launch an initial public offering (IPO), a process companies go through when their shares first start trading.

Dr Martens’ current private equity owner will be selling off some of its shares in the IPO.

Around a quarter of the company’s shares are expected to be traded publicly after the float, and Dr Martens “expects that it would be eligible for inclusion in the FTSE UK indices”.

There are several FTSE indices in London, with the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 incorporating some of the UK’s biggest publicly traded companies. However, other FTSE indices, such as the FTSE All Share or FTSE AIM 100 Index include much smaller firms.

Dr Martens said in a statement: “The company intends to apply for admission of the shares to the premium listing segment of the Official List of the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s main market for listed securities.

“The final offer price in respect of the offer will be determined following a book-building process, with admission currently expected to occur in early February 2021.”

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, HSBC, BofA Securities, RBC Capital Markets and Lazard have all been hired to help with the floatation.

Dr Martens sold its first boot in the UK nearly 61 years ago and was long associated with punk rock and other subcultures.

In its last financial year, the company’s revenue reached £672 million, while earnings hit £184 million.

Even during the pandemic the business has managed to grow.

Chief executive Kenny Wilson said last week that the float reflects what the Dr Martens team has achieved in recent years.

“Our iconic brand appeals to a diverse range of consumers around the world who wear our footwear to express their individual style,” he said.

“We have invested massively to ensure that we deliver the best digital and store experiences to connect with our wearers, and through this we are driving our long-term, sustainable growth.”

Dr Martens Set To Float On London Stock Exchange

By HENRY SAKER-CLARK - Jan 11, 2021

The company is currently owned by private equity firm Permira, which would sell down its stake as part of the stock market listing.



Dr Martens has revealed plans to float on the London Stock Exchange in a move it hopes will help expand the famous footwear brand.

The company, which is best known for its chunky boots, is currently owned by private equity firm Permira, which would sell down its stake as part of the stock market listing.

Dr Martens sells in excess of 11 million pairs of footwear annually in more than 60 countries.

Kenny Wilson, chief executive of the company, highlighted its “significant global growth potential” in the future as it hopes to expand further through increased investment.

A member of staff at the Dr Martens shop in Edinburgh’s Princes Street (Jane Barlow/PA)

The retail brand, which launched its first boot in 1960, posted £672 million in revenues in the financial year to March 31.

Over the same period, the company also delivered £184 million in earnings.

It also reported group revenues of £318.2 million for the six months to September, delivering 18% growth year-on-year despite the impact of the pandemic.

The brand sells a large proportion of its products through partner retailers, but said it wants to continue the expansion of its own retail operations.

Dr Martens runs 130 of its own stores across the globe, while sales from its own online business have grown to represent a fifth of all its revenues.

Mr Wilson said: “The announcement of our intention to float reflects the great achievements of the Dr Martens team and brand over the last seven years.

“Our iconic brand appeals to a diverse range of consumers around the world who wear our footwear to express their individual style.

“We have invested massively to ensure that we deliver the best digital and store experiences to connect with our wearers, and through this we are driving our long term, sustainable growth.”

Police command structure crumbled fast during Capitol riot


BY NOMAAN MERCHANT AND COLLEEN LONG ASSOCIATED PRESS
JANUARY 18, 2021 07:46 A

WASHINGTON

As the rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, many of the police officers had to decide on their own how to fight them off. There was no direction. No plan. And no top leadership.

One cop ran from one side of the building to another, fighting hand-to-hand against rioters. Another decided to respond to any calls of officers in distress and spent three hours helping cops who had been immobilized by bear spray or other chemicals.

Three officers were able to handcuff one rioter. But a crowd swarmed the group and took the arrested man away with the handcuffs still on.


Interviews with four members of the U.S. Capitol Police who were overrun by rioters on Jan. 6 show just how quickly the command structure collapsed as throngs of people, egged on by President Donald Trump, set upon the Capitol. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because the department has threatened to suspend anyone who speaks to the media.

“We were on our own,” one of the officers told The Associated Press. “Totally on our own.”

The officers who spoke to the AP said they were given next to no warning by leadership on the morning of Jan. 6 about what would become a growing force of thousands of rioters, many better armed than the officers themselves were. And once the riot began, they were given no instructions by the department’s leaders on how to stop the mob or rescue lawmakers who had barricaded themselves inside. There were only enough officers for a routine day.

Three officers told the AP they did not hear Chief Steven Sund on the radio the entire afternoon. It turned out he was sheltering with Vice President Mike Pence in a secure location for some of the siege. Sund resigned the next day.

His assistant chief, Yogananda Pittman, who is now interim chief, was heard over the radio telling the force to “lock the building down,” with no further instructions, two officers said.

One specific order came from Lt. Tarik Johnson, who told officers not to use deadly force outside the building as the rioters descended, the officers recounted. The order almost certainly prevented deaths and more chaos, but it meant officers didn’t pull their weapons and were fighting back with fists and batons.

Johnson has been suspended after being captured on video wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat while moving through crowds of rioters. Johnson told colleagues he wore the hat as a tactic to gain the crowd’s confidence as he tried to reach other officers who were pinned down by rioters, one of the officers said. A video of the incident obtained by the Wall Street Journal shows Johnson asking rioters for help in getting his colleagues.

Johnson, who could not be reached for comment, was heard by an officer on the radio repeatedly asking, “Does anybody have a plan?”

___

The Capitol Police has more than 2,300 staff and a budget that’s grown rapidly over the last two decades to roughly $500 million, making it larger than many major metro police departments. Minneapolis, for example, has 840 officers and a $176 million budget.

Despite plenty of online warnings of a possible insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, the Capitol Police planned only for a free speech demonstration on Jan. 6.

They rejected offers of support from the Pentagon three days before the siege, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter. And during the riot, they turned down an offer by the Justice Department to have FBI agents come in as reinforcements. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision-making process.

The riot left five people dead, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was hit in the head by a fire extinguisher. Another officer died in an apparent suicide after the attack.

The attack has forced a reckoning among law enforcement agencies. Federal watchdogs launched a sweeping review of how the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies responded to the riot, including whether there were failures in information sharing and other preparations that left the historic symbol of democracy vulnerable to assault.

Top decision-makers have offered differing explanations for why they didn't have enough personnel.

Sund told The Washington Post that he was worried about the possibility for violence and wanted to bring in the National Guard, but the House and Senate sergeants at arms refused his request. To bring in the Guard, the sergeants at arms would have had to ask congressional leaders.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, said congressional leaders had not been informed of any request for the National Guard before the day of the riot. The office of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, declined to comment.

It's not clear why the threat was not taken more seriously.

John Donohue, a 32-year veteran of the New York Police Department who advises the Capitol Police on intelligence matters, sent a memo on Jan. 3 warning of the potential for an attack on Congress from the pro-Trump crowd, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the memo first reported by The Washington Post. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal memo.

Donohue was well-versed in the extremist threat. At a congressional hearing in July, before he starting advising the Capitol Police, Donohue told lawmakers the federal government needed a system to better monitor social media for domestic extremists.

“America is at a crossroads," he said in his testimony. “The intersection of constitutional rights and legitimate law enforcement has never been more at risk by domestic actors as it is now as seditionists actively promote a revolution.”

Tens of thousands of National Guard members have now been called to secure the Capitol in advance of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday.


A spokeswoman for Capitol Police did not respond to questions Friday.

___

For major events, the Capitol Police normally holds meetings to brief officers on their responsibilities and plans in case of an emergency. Three of the officers interviewed by the AP said there were no meetings on or before Jan. 6. It’s also unclear whether the department held over its overnight shift or called in more officers early to help those who would be on duty that day.

“During the 4th of July concerts and the Memorial Day concerts, we don’t have people come up and say, ‘We’re going to seize the Capitol,‘” one officer said. “But yet, you bring everybody in, you meet before. That never happened for this event.”

Another officer said he was only told that morning to pick up a riot helmet. He said he had training on dealing with large crowds, but not on how to handle a riot.

“We were under the impression it was just going to be a lot of yelling, cursing,” he said.

As Trump called on his supporters to go to the Capitol, telling them to “fight like hell,” members of the House and Senate were inside the building to certify Biden’s victory over Trump in the Electoral College.

Crowds of Trump supporters, many of them linked to far-right or white supremacist groups, began gathering on both sides of the Capitol.

An officer working the western front of the building, which faces the White House and where risers were set up for the inauguration, quickly realized that the crowds were not peaceful. The rioters began breaking down short fences and systematically clipping off “Area Closed” signs, the officer said.

Videos from the event show the crowd climbing the walls on the western side and eventually breaching the building.

One officer listed the various weapons used to hit him and people near him: batons, flagpoles, sections of fencing, batteries, rubber bullets and canisters of bear spray that went further than the chemicals the officers themselves had. Some of the rioters showed their badges from other law enforcement agencies, claiming they were on the side of the Capitol Police, the officer said.

Most of the insurrectionists left without being arrested, which officers who spoke to the AP say was because it was next to impossible to arrest them given how badly the force was outnumbered. That was underscored by the rioters taking away a man who officers had tried to arrest inside the Capitol.

“The group came and snatched him and took him away in cuffs,” one officer said. “Outside of shooting people, what are you supposed to do?”






FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo a police officer has eyes flushed with water after a confrontation with rioters at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) JOHN MINCHILLO AP

A theater of propaganda: The Capitol, cameras and selfies
Jan 11, 2021

Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.
John Minchillo

Trump supporters use cell phones to make images of a man injured during a protest with police, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington.

FILE - Trump supporters use their cell phones to record events as they gather outside the Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington as Congress prepares to affirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Many in the mob that ransacked the Capitol did so while livestreaming, posting on Facebook and taking selfies, turning the Capitol into a theater of real-time far-right propaganda.


By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer


NEW YORK (AP) — One of the defining images of the Capitol siege was of a man dangling from the balcony of the Senate chamber. Clad in black and with a helmet over his head, he might have been hard to identify even after he paused to sit in a leather chair at the top of the Senate dais and hold up a fist.

But Josiah Colt made it easy. He posted a video to his Facebook page moments later, bragging about being the first to reach the chamber floor and sit in Nancy’s Pelosi’s chair (he was wrong). He used a slur to describe Pelosi and called her “a traitor.”

A little later, the 34-year-old from Boise, Idaho, posted again. This time, he sounded more anxious. “I don’t know what to do,” Colt said in a video he’d soon delete but not before it was cached online. “I’m in downtown D.C. I’m all over the news now.”

Colt was far from the only one documenting the insurrection from within last Wednesday in Washington. Many in the mob that ransacked the Capitol did so while livestreaming, posting on Facebook and taking selfies, turning the seat of American lawmaking into a theater of real-time — and often strikingly ugly and violent — far-right propaganda.

“This extremist loop feeds itself. The folks who are watching and commenting and encouraging and sometimes giving some cash are supporting the individual on the ground. And he’s supporting their fantasies,” says Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“Selfie culture," Segal says, "has become so much part of the norm that it’s almost second nature when you’re carrying out a terrorist insurrection.”

Taken together, the fragmented feeds from Wednesday's incursion form a tableau of an ill-conceived insurrection — as full of “I was here” posturing for social media as of ideological revolution — and one that was given far more latitude than most peaceful Black Lives Matters protests were in 2020. In hundreds of images, the fallacy of a far-right brand of “patriotism” was laid bare.

The modern Capitol had previously been besieged before only in Hollywood fiction. Marauding aliens in “Mars Attacks!” Ensnarling ivy in “Logan’s Run.” Blown to bits in “Independence Day.” But the imagery of last week’s siege offered something far more banal if no less chilling: a warped cinema verité of right-wing extremism with waving Confederate flags and white-power poses in Capitol halls.

Though many involved Wednesday in Washington were Trump supporters without designs on violence, the visuals illustrate that some were clearly there to summon mayhem if not outright bloodshed. The call to the Capitol drew many of the right's extremist factions — some of whom helped lead the charge.

The white nationalist Tim Gionet, known online as “Baked Alaska” and a participant in the “Unite the Right” rally at Charlottesville, streamed live from congressional offices, gleefully documenting the break-in for more than 15,000 viewers on the streaming platform Dlive. The service, ostensibly for gamers, has grown into an attractive tool for white nationalists. Nick Fuentes, a leader of the white supremacist “Groyper Army,” streamed on Dlive from outside the Capitol. He later tweeted that the siege was “awesome.”

Journalists documenting the chaos, and in some cases suffering attacks from violent protesters, captured the storming of the Capitol. But the pervasive self-documentation of the rioters told another story: the on-the-ground culmination of an online alternative reality fueled by QAnon conspiracies, false claims of fraud in the election and Trump’s own rhetoric.

“In their minds they had impunity. I’m having trouble understanding how these people could believe that. At the same time, I can see that it’s of a piece with the Trump family,” says Larry Rosenthal, chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies and author of the upcoming “Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism.”

“They’re going to be prosecuted," he says of those involved, and "they have provided the evidence.”

Federal law enforcement officials have pledged an exhaustive investigation into the rampage that left five people dead, including Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick. They are relying in part on the social media trail many left behind. “The goal here is to identify people and get them,” Ken Kohl, the top deputy federal prosecutor in Washington, told reporters Friday.

Among those arrested so far is Richard Barnett, who was photographed sitting in Pelosi’s office with his feet on her desk. Outside the Capitol, he proudly clutched mail he said belonged to Pelosi. The 60-year-old Barnett, from Gravette, Arkansas, faces up to a year in federal prison for three charges including theft of public property.

Also arrested was Derrick Evans, a newly elected Republican from West Virginia, who had posted video on social media of himself clamoring at the Capitol door. “We’re in! Keep it moving, baby!” Evans shouted in a packed doorway of Trump supporters. Inside the Capitol, he chanted: “Our house! Our house!”

Evans deleted the videos, but federal prosecutors said they found them on Reddit. If convicted, he faces up to 1 1/2 years in federal prison for two misdemeanors: entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct.

Others have been fired for participating in the mob. The Texas company Goosehead Insurance fired its associate general counsel, Paul Davis, after he posted an Instagram video complaining about being tear-gassed while trying to break into the Capitol. Maryland’s Navistar Direct Marketing said it fired an employee who was seen inside the Capitol. He hasn’t been identified, but photographs showed a man with an easily visible employee badge from the company around his neck.

Colt landed on the Senate floor; despite his remarks, photos suggested he had actually sat in a chair reserved for Vice President Mike Pence, who is president of the Senate. Colt issued an apology begging forgiveness for his prominent role. “In the moment I thought I was doing the right thing,” he said.

Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College whose books include “Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights," expects many of the images from the Capitol breach will reverberate online as far-right propaganda. The woman who died trying to break through a Capitol door, Ashli Babbitt, will be made a martyr.

“She’s going to be on all the posters, trying to get people radicalized," Daniels says.

For those who have been tracking and researching how the far right operates online, the live streams of well-known activists like Gionet were especially telling. Gionet streamed Wednesday from within the Capitol, interacting with his followers as he went. When the number of viewers ticked over 10,000, he cheered, “Shoutout to Germany!”

Inside congressional offices, Gionet, who has been banned from Twitter and YouTube, filmed himself making a mock phone call to the Senate. “Yeah, we need to get our boy, Donald J. Trump, into office,” he said. One user cautioned him about leaving fingerprints on the phone.

Gionet profited by his exploits. Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University who has studied Dlive, estimates Gionet made $2,000 in donations while inside the Capitol.

“He’s making an enormous amount of money saying incredibly racist and anti-Semitic and violent things,” Squire says. “They’re hugely brand-conscious."

Scrutiny has intensified on the role social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which both suspended Trump in the days following the riot. For those who have tracked far-right fringes, a reckoning for social media in its role in giving extremists platforms is long overdue. Before the Capitol siege, Squire had observed no mechanism for reporting questionable content on Dlive. “Their approach to content modulation is basically nonexistent, which is why these guys love to be there," she said.

On Saturday, after mounting pressure, Dlive suspended several accounts, including those of Gionet and Fuentes, saying they were “found to be inciting violent and illegal activities.”

Following neo-Fascists from one platform to another, some have said, is an inevitably helpless game of catch-up. Daniels disagrees.

“There’s a lot of evidence that deplatforming people who are harmful from these platforms is effective,” Daniels says. “The pushback from tech people is that it’s whack-a-mole, that if they’re not here, they’ll go somewhere else. Fine. Let’s play whack-a-mole. Let’s do this. Let’s chase them off of every platform until they go away.”

Shasta Ali: Why our shared histories matter in the fight to eradicate racism
By Shasta Ali


'There are many rungs to climb on the ladder to racial equality and learning Britain’s history is one'

IN 1964, a fresh-faced, sharply dressed 17-year-old bundled up his newly purchased western attire, layered between hopes, dreams and aspirations, and nervously set off from Pakistan to travel to England, eventually laying firm roots in Scotland with his family.

Under the 1948 British Nationality Act, like others from my late father and grandparents’ era, people from the Commonwealth, mainly from the Caribbean, West Indies, Africa, India and Pakistan, arrived in Britain on the promise of a better life and to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. The act was an open invitation to fill post-war labour shortages from 1948-1960s by the British Government to its colonial countries. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, as British citizens, worked long, laborious shifts in mills, factories and public services, contributing fully to the British economy and infrastructure including the NHS, both then and now.

Amidst a global pandemic, the unjust killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, an ongoing debate is gaining traction, largely in conservative circles, whether black history should be taught in schools. But black and brown history is British history. It’s not separate or distinct, but intricately woven into the tapestry of life, hitched on the back of the British Empire, colonisation and transatlantic slave trade.

Despite the divisionary rhetoric in Liz Truss’s recent speech railing against the teaching of race equality in our schools and the apparently “fashionable” focus on racism and sexism in policy-making, honest and challenging discussions of racism and history can bring about a better understanding and a more unified society.

My Scottish accent wasn’t evidence enough of my Scottish heritage when a local angrily asked me: “How would you like it if people like me [white] went to your country [she meant Pakistan] and took over?”

This was during a successful Celebrating Diversity event I had organised in 2019. As a young Scottish bagpiper piped and African drummers beat collectively to the tune of Flower of Scotland, she had chosen to be upset by “all the brown people in the room”. The irony of her questioning was not lost on me, but completely lost on her, and her remarks left me subdued and hurt. My father is just one of the hundreds of thousands who have helped make the UK what it is. He and I are proudly part of the fabric of Britain’s history

Anti-racism work is multifaceted. There are many rungs to climb on the ladder to racial equality and learning Britain’s history is one. If British history is continually taught through a white racial lens, it barely acknowledges the sacrifices and contributions made by minority ethnic people. Correcting this is not about attributing blame or pointing fingers. It’s acknowledgement and recognition of those like the Windrush Generation, who came to rebuild a broken nation, or the pioneering South Asians, who left loved ones and their homeland to start a life here with barely £3 in their pocket. Or the Ayah’s brought to Britain from India, as far back as the 18th century, to assist the with childcare, sometimes treasured members of the family, other times discarded and left destitute.

Another rung on our ladder, although, we’ve come far in terms of visibility in media, is not without contention. A Black Lives Matter themed dance performance on Britain’s Got Talent received 24,500 complaints to Ofcom, making it their most complained-about show of the year, and it wasn’t the only show drawing complaints.


TO every person complaining that the London New Year’s Eve firework and drone display was “too woke” due to the sky being illuminated by a Black Lives Matter fist, I’d urge you to consider what hope this gave to those experiencing hate crime, especially as racial crime has increased by 4% (3038 charges) in Scotland in 2019-20, and remains the most commonly reported hate crime. For those upset at a happy black family in the Sainsbury’s Christmas TV ad, think of the black child who just saw someone like them on TV, because representation is crucial.

The pandemic has highlighted and worsened deep-rooted inequalities for those living in poverty, for disabled people, unpaid carers and many others. It’s also shone the brightest light on the disproportionate impact on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, and how current systems, processes and policies are exacerbating racial inequalities and resulting in socio and economic disparities.

Yet, I’m hopeful that now’s the time for kinder conversations and strategic changes for the advancement of equalities, that the global recognition of the fight for racial justice is for all of us. So, hold tight to the new friendships in solidarity and allyship, for uncomfortable conversations will take us on fruitful journeys.

Shasta Ali works in the Third sector and is an anti-racism campaigner specialising in women’s rights


This column is the second in a series from the Pass The Mic project, a directory of women of colour experts who aim to diversify voices and expertise in the media

Israel-Pfizer vaccine deal points to 'data for doses' swap

Issued on: 18/01/2021 - 

Some two million Israelis have received the first of two required injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, a pace widely described as the world's fastest per capita 

AHMAD GHARABLI AFP/File

Jerusalem (AFP)

Israel has secured a significant stock of coronavirus vaccines partly by pledging to quickly share data on its impact with Pfizer, an agreement with the drug company seen by AFP Monday indicates.

The Jewish state has given the first of the two required Pfizer-BioNTech jabs to more than two million people, a pace widely described as the world's fastest, while some wealthy and many poor nations struggle with supply.

Some critics have voiced ethical concerns and raised the danger to medical privacy posed by a "data for doses" arrangement in what one expert termed "one of the most extensive studies of humans" in recent history.

Israel, which experts say has one of the world's most sophisticated medical databases, had not concealed the fact that it agreed to share data with US-German pharma alliance Pfizer-BioNTech during its vaccination campaign.

Israel's health ministry released a partially redacted copy of the so-called "Real-World Epidemiological Evidence Collaboration Agreement" with Pfizer.

It does not state specific terms of trading the vaccine for medical information, but it does make clear that Pfizer understands Israel must remain well stocked in order to quickly generate quality data about the vaccine.

The deal defines the joint project as an effort to "measure and analyse epidemiological data arising from the product (vaccine) rollout".

It further says Israel's health ministry is relying "on the product delivery rate by Pfizer to allow maintaining (a) vaccination rate sufficient to achieve herd immunity and enough data as soon as possible".

"Both parties acknowledge that the viability and success of the project is dependent on the rate and scope of vaccinations in Israel."

- Medical database -

Multiple media outlets have also reported that Israel paid Pfizer well above market price to ensure full supply.

The health ministry has declined to comment on those reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month said that Israel had agreed "to share with Pfizer and with the entire world the statistical data that will help develop strategies for defeating the coronavirus".

Israel's arrangement with Pfizer would help make it "the first country in the world to emerge from the coronavirus," he predicted.

Health data in Israel is collected in part through four health maintainance organisations (HMOs), non-profit groups that collectively cover the country's nine million people.

They maintain meticulous information about their patients and have been credited with rapidly generating vaccination lists by priority, a factor that experts say has enabled Israel to innoculate so quickly.

But Israel's government also maintains a centralised healthcare database -- known as "wagtail," after the migratory bird -- which augments HMO data with information from public hospitals and other sources.

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a data privacy specialist at the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank who spoke to AFP before the data sharing terms were published, described Israel's digitised medical data as "a very unique asset".

She said regulators had justifiably given emergency approval to Pfizer's vaccine because of the gravity of the pandemic -- but that the company was also eagerly seeking more comprehensive data about its product.

"Israel can offer Pfizer, within a month or six weeks, data on a couple of million people," she said.

In a statement issued after the deal was released, she described it as so far "one of the most extensive studies of humans in the 21st century".

"While the agreement might be viewed as an achievement towards expediting Israel's race to be the first country to resume 'normal life' post-Covid, nevertheless it was still necessary to obtain... permission from the residents of Israel to use their health data," she said.

Altshuler has also raised concern about data security and what she terms "sub-group analysis" -- meaning information sharing with Pfizer based on categories that are more detailed than simply age and gender.

© 2021 AFP