Iran, US lock horns over sanctions relief, nuclear curbs in Vienna talks

 

Share on TwitteShare on Facebook

• Share via emlShare on RedShare on Linked In

Iran and the United States are displaying little flexibility on core issues in indirect nuclear talks, raising questions about whether a compromise can be found soon to renew a 2015 deal, diplomats say.

EU delegation representatives attending a meeting of the joint commission

 on negotiations aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna, Austria 

on 27 December, 2021.

 Photo: Handout / various sources / AFP

After eight rounds of talks the thorniest points remain the speed and scope of lifting sanctions on Tehran, including Iran's demand for a US guarantee of no further punitive steps, and how and when to restore curbs on Iran's atomic work.

The nuclear deal limited Iran's uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for it to develop nuclear arms - an ambition Tehran denies - in return for lifting international sanctions.

But former US President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, saying it did not do enough to curb Iran's nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence, and reimposed sanctions that badly damaged Iran's economy.

After waiting for a year, Iran responded to Trump's pressure by gradually breaching the accord, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

Following months of stop-start talks that began after Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, Western officials now say time is running out to resurrect the pact. But Iranian officials deny they are under time pressure, arguing the economy can survive thanks to oil sales to China.

'We need guarantees' - Iran official

A former Iranian official said Iran's rulers "are certain that their uncompromising, maximalist approach will give results".

France said on Tuesday that despite some progress at the end of December, Iran and world powers were still far away from reviving the deal.

The United States on Wednesday cited "modest progress" in recent weeks, but not enough.

"Modest progress is also not sufficient if we are going to" revive the 2015 deal, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.

Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs inconsistent with the 2015 pact if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures.

"Americans should give assurances that no new sanctions under any label would be imposed on Iran in future. We need guarantees that America will not abandon the deal again," said a senior Iranian official.

Iran's Nournews, a media outlet affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council, reported on Wednesday that Iran's key conditions at the talks "are assurances and verifications."

US officials were not immediately available to comment on the question of guarantees. However, US officials have said Biden cannot promise the US government will not renege on the agreement because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty.

Asked to comment on that US constitutional reality, an Iranian official said: "It's their internal problem".

On the issue of obtaining verification that sanctions have been removed - at which point Iran would have to revive curbs on its nuclear programme - the senior Iranian official said Iran and Washington differed over the timetable.

"Iran needs a couple of weeks to verify sanctions removal (before it reverses its nuclear steps). But the other party says a few days would be enough to load oil on a ship, export it and transfer its money through banking system," the official said.

Threats

Shadowing the background of the talks have been threats by Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear weaponry but which sees Iran as a existential threat, to attack Iranian nuclear installations if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Tehran's atomic abilities and potential.

Iran says it would hit back hard if it were attacked.

A Western diplomat said "early-February is a realistic end-date for Vienna talks" as the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to.

"Still we are not sure whether Iran really wants a deal," said another Western diplomat.

Iran has ruled out adhering to any "artificial" deadline.

"Several times, they asked Iran to slow down its nuclear work during the talks, and even Americans conveyed messages about an interim deal through other parties," said a second Iranian official, close to Iran's negotiating team.

"It was rejected by Iran."

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be identified told Reuters: "Of course we - and the whole international community - want Iran to slow down their nuclear program and have communicated that very clearly."

"Beyond that, we don't negotiate the details in public, but these reports are far off."

Other points of contention include Iran's advanced nuclear centrifuges, the machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons.

"Discussions continue on Iran's demand to store and seal its advanced centrifuges ... They wanted those centrifuges to be dismantled and shipped abroad," the first official said.

Asked to comment on this question, a Western diplomat said: "We are looking for ways to overcome our differences with Iran about verification process".

Ottawa admits B.C. man robbed of justice after extradition to U.S. for Wounded Knee execution

"It’s a travesty of justice...When the FBI came to me in 1987 and 1988, they threatened me if I didn’t cooperate with them."

Author of the article: Ian Mulgrew
Publishing date :Jan 12, 2022 • 

Naneek Graham with a photo of her father John in Vancouver Jan. 11, 2022. B.C. resident John Graham is appealing his extradition to the United States. Graham, a former Yukoner who lived in Vancouver, is accused of killing Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash,a Mi'kmaq activist from Nova Scotia,in 1975 during protests in South Dakota. 

PHOTO BY ARLEN REDEKOP /PNG

Article content

John Graham sees himself as little different than the 19th century Ghost Dancers blamed for the original massacre at Wounded Knee — a scapegoat, only this time for the violent American Indian Movement and the 1973 standoff at the iconic Indigenous site.

Extradited more than a decade ago and later convicted in the blood-soaked South Dakota Badlands execution of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a 30-year-old Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq woman, Graham maintains his innocence.

Ottawa admitted in the B.C. Court of Appeal this week the now 67-year-old was robbed of procedural fairness by a previous Conservative justice minister in 2010 who amended the original extradition order via a waiver without telling him.

In a brief interview Wednesday from the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, Graham said he hadn’t been able to watch the two-day Zoom hearing.

He spoke of it giving him hope but exhaled with bitterness:

“I’ve been incarcerated since 2007. I’ve been fighting this case since my U.S. federal indictment in 2003. …They always knew they came to Canada with a defective indictment, without jurisdiction on this case, but they came anyway. … They duped my defence lawyer and the court into this extradition. … I don’t know what to think about it all. It makes me sick to think about it. … I’ve never had a voice, I’ve never been heard.

“It’s a travesty of justice. It’s a miscarriage of justice. …When the FBI came to me in 1987 and 1988, they threatened me if I didn’t cooperate with them. They offered me an immunity deal. I told them I didn’t need immunity, I’ve never done anything where I would need immunity. The theory they laid out, that people in the leadership of AIM ordered Anna Mae to be killed, that never happened. Never ever happened. Not with me, it didn’t.”

He searched for words: “I’ve lost family members, I’ve lost my parents. My youngest daughter is fighting for her life with cancer. I’ve lost nephews. I’ve lost relations. I should be at home with these things.”

Naneek Graham holds a photo of her father John in Vancouver Jan. 11, 2022. B.C. resident John Graham is appealing his extradition to the united states. Graham, a former Yukoner who lived in Vancouver, is accused of killing Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash,a Mi’kmaq activist from Nova Scotia,in 1975 during protests in South Dakota. 

PHOTO BY ARLEN REDEKOP /PNG

Born in Whitehorse, Graham is a member of the Southern Tutchone Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.

His daughter, Naneek, moved to Vancouver from Yukon in 2004 to support her father and act as a surety. His five children have been behind him throughout.

Naneek was afraid to hope, too, after sitting through the hearing.

“I went through this before,” she confided. “God, I feel like I hold my breath. Just anxious. It’s a waiting game of not knowing. It’s hard because I went through this before and we had such a bad outcome before. It’s hard for me to let myself get too ahead of myself. I just have to wait.

“It’s just so frustrating and aggravating to be honest. It took me a long time to be able to speak about it. I was just so hurt. I was so angry, so angry I could feel it coming out of my pores. Just being angry about the government on both sides. My dad’s rights were breached big time and he was taken away from us. … They just took him, we didn’t get to say goodbye to him, give him a hug or anything. It was really hard on my sister and I. Then when we got down there, the lawyers put on a big show while my dad was being railroaded the whole time.”

The case rips a scab off an old and deep Canadian legal wound — the decision in December 1976 to extradite AIM leader Leonard Peltier based on evidence fabricated or pressured out of witnesses.

Peltier was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of two FBI agents during the 1975 shootout following the notorious AIM occupation at the site of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry’s 1890 massacre of Oglala Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Aquash was shot in the back of the head in 1976 supposedly because she heard Peltier confess.

At the turn of the century, new information surfaced about her slaying and indictments were issued against Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud, an AIM comrade.

Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Graham was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2003, but released on strict conditions while he waged a high-profile battle against extradition. He was returned to the U.S. on Dec. 6, 2007.

After two years of trying to proceed in federal court, however, American prosecutors asked Ottawa to agree to allow Graham to be tried in state court because the justice department lacked jurisdiction.

Graham did not see the decision until August 2011, after he was convicted in the killing of Aquash, a mother of two young girls and a fellow AIM soldier reportedly suspected of being an FBI informant.

A jury acquitted Graham of premeditated murder but convicted him of felony murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. His conviction was confirmed on appeal.

Upon learning of the justice minister’s decision, Graham challenged the validity of his extradition and the lawfulness of his subsequent trial.

The U.S. Eighth Circuit Appeal Court said in 2018 it did not have jurisdiction to review the Canadian minister’s decision and Graham must first deal with that before an American court could act.

He remained skeptical he will see freedom:

“Because I won’t lie for the FBI they want me to die in prison, they are trying to make me die in prison. They’ve never produced a case. They have a theory of a case but they have never proven anything. They can’t even place me in the state when this happened. I wasn’t even in South Dakota when this crime happened. I keep telling them over and over. It’s a manufactured case. It’s a fraudulent case.”

He fumed.

“The only people right now really suffering from this case is me and my family. I ask the judges and the minister to put a stop to this. Put a stop to it.”

The panel appeared to agree the waiver should be quashed but the remedy for such breaches usually includes asking the minister to reconsider.

That gave the justices pause because federal lawyers characterized what happened as a kind of technical glitch while robustly dismissing the merits of any argument Graham might raise.

They insisted though that should not suggest the minister had a closed mind.

Graham would be happy to have the waiver simply quashed so he could use the ruling to ask a U.S. court for release.

The division reserved its decision.

From Paris to Chicago: The global fight to close schools and save lives

Evan Blake@evanblake17
WSWS.ORG

Amid a record surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, a growing movement of the working class is developing internationally to stop the pandemic and save lives. Today, an estimated 75 percent of all primary school teachers across France are taking part in a nationwide strike that is expected to shut down half of all French schools.

On Wednesday, a record 3,145,916 people were officially infected with COVID-19 worldwide, including 814,494 in the United States, 363,719 in France, and 241,976 in India, with five other countries reporting more than 100,000 official new cases. Hospitalizations are surging worldwide, with more than 140,000 people now hospitalized for COVID-19 in the US, over 23,000 in France and nearly 20,000 in the United Kingdom.

Teachers, parents and children march in the Brooklyn borough of New York to protest the reopening of city public schools amid the threat of a teachers strike, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Before the strike in France, last week 25,000 Chicago teachers took part in a powerful collective action to stop in-person learning, in defiance of the school reopening policies pursued by the Democratic Party at the local, state and national levels and supported by all the teachers unions.

On Monday, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) abruptly reached an agreement with Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reopen the city’s schools. Facing widespread disgust among rank-and-file teachers, the union rammed the deal through by giving teachers only one day to vote, with only 41 percent of all CTU members voting in favor of the deal and 20 percent of members abstaining.

Inspired by the struggle of Chicago teachers, educators in San Francisco and Oakland, California, organized wildcat sickout strikes last week to stop in-person learning. Rank-and-file committees, built independently of the unions by educators across the US—including in New York City, Michigan, Pennsylvania, throughout the South and along the West Coast—have organized widely-attended online meetings over the past two weeks and are expanding in each region of the country.

Throughout this week, high school students in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Oakland, Portland, and other US cities have circulated petitions calling for a remote learning option, garnering thousands of signatures. On Tuesday, nearly 1,000 students at over 30 K-12 schools in New York City walked out of class calling to demand a switch to remote learning, and similar demonstrations are planned in Chicago and Oakland in the coming days. According to a poll conducted last weekend, the majority of US adults support remote learning, including 63 percent of those with an income less than $50,000.

In the United Kingdom, where COVID-19 infections and hospitalization among children have reached record levels, educators and parents are deepening their struggle to stop unsafe school reopenings. The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) held a widely attended meeting Tuesday, which presented a plan of action to force the switch to fully remote learning.

In a video posted Wednesday, British parent Lisa Diaz, who has led a series of school strikes since October, voiced her support for Chicago teachers, declaring, “You’re making a stand, not just for yourselves, but for the children.” She concluded, “I just want to send all my solidarity from the UK and say thank you for taking a stand. And whilst I’m here, well done to all the teachers from France who are doing the same, and the kids in the US who are walking out.”

In Hidalgo and Baja, Mexico, strikes have begun involving tens of thousands of teachers. While the primary focus is on contract issues related to pay, these strikes coincide with the forced reopening of schools amid skyrocketing COVID-19 infections.

The growing international struggle of educators and youth against school reopenings comes in response to the global implementation of this deadly policy by world governments on behalf of the corporate and financial elite.

Throughout the world and, in particular, in the United States and across Europe, capitalist governments have responded to the emergence of the Omicron variant by dropping all pretense that they aim to stop the pandemic. All talk of “mitigations” and “ending the pandemic” has disappeared. Instead, they now openly support the “herd immunity” strategy formerly pursued by only the most right-wing governments. They are determined to allow the uncontrolled spread of the virus, based on the unscientific belief that it will quickly run out of hosts and become endemic.

In the US, the Biden administration and its representatives ever more explicitly state they intend to allow the entire population to become infected. On Tuesday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies—one of the leading think tanks of American imperialism—posted a “Fireside Chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” In the interview, Biden’s chief medical adviser declared with callous indifference that Omicron “will, ultimately, find just about everybody.”

Regarding vaccinated people, Fauci stated, “Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected” and will “do reasonably well.” Fauci added, “those who are still unvaccinated are going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this,” and some fraction “are going to get seriously ill and are going to die.” Fauci lamented only the fact that this “will challenge our health system.”

The reopening of schools is central to the “herd immunity” strategy for two reasons. First, returning students to class is necessary to force parents back to work. Second, overcrowded and poorly ventilated school buildings are hotbeds of viral transmission, enabling COVID-19 to spread as rapidly as possible and quickly infect students, educators, their families and their communities.

What sparked today’s strike by French teachers were efforts by the Macron government to quietly change reopening guidelines in such a manner as to keep schools open as COVID-19 cases explode. Within one week, these protocols were clearly disastrous, prompting rank-and-file teachers to demand strike action.

In Chicago, the CTU is now enforcing a policy whereby individual schools will only close if more than 30 percent of staff or 40 percent of children are either infected with COVID-19 or in quarantine due to exposure. In other words, their deal is predicated on accepting mass infections in schools and communities.

The fight against “herd immunity” is a common global struggle that is increasingly being taken up by the international working class, in direct opposition to the capitalist system. By its very nature, the pandemic cannot be fought on a national basis or through appeals to the powers that be. COVID-19 will be eliminated only through a globally coordinated mass movement to impose temporary lockdowns, shut down schools and nonessential production and deploy all available public health measures.

One of the great challenges confronting workers in every country is to not see their struggles as isolated incidents but rather as part of a global process. To generalize their experiences and coordinate their struggles globally, workers require new forms of organization, rank-and-file committees, that are democratically run and answerable to the workers themselves.

Numerous such committees have been established among educators, autoworkers, health care workers, logistics workers, and other sections of the working class, which are now united under the aegis of the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). This network of committees must forge ever closer links and actively fight to unify and lead the growing movement of the working class to stop the pandemic and save lives.

Those who wish to become seriously involved and to build a rank-and-file committee at your school, neighborhood or workplace, fill out the form below, and the World Socialist Web Site will contact you today.

French teachers go on strike over handling of pandemic

File - Students attend the first day of school for the 2021-2022 year at Gounod Lavoisier Primary school, Lille, northern France, Thursday, Sept. 2 2021. Less than two weeks after the winter term started, French teachers are already exhausted by the pressures of surging COVID-19 cases and they are walking out in nationwide strike organized by their unions to protest virus-linked class disruptions and ever-changing isolation rules. 

(AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File) | Photo: AP

Updated: January 13, 2022 


PARIS (AP) - Less than two weeks after the winter term started, French teachers are already exhausted by the pressures of surging COVID-19 cases.

On Thursday, French teachers are walking out in a nationwide strike organized by teacher's unions to protest virus-linked class disruptions and ever-changing isolation rules.

France is at the epicenter of Europe's current fight against COVID-19, with new infections topping 360,000 a day in recent days, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant. Teachers are upset and want clarifications on rules and more protections, such as extra masks and tests to help with the strain.

"The month of January is a tough one (for schools)," Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer acknowledged on France 2 television. His ministry counted 50,000 new COVID-19 cases among students in "recent days" and a huge number of classes shut down due to the virus: 10,553. The figures are expected to worsen in the coming weeks.

The SNUIPP teacher's union says discontentment is rising among French teachers. Since Jan. 6, authorities have already imposed two changes to the rules on testing schoolchildren, leaving many with whiplash. The union expects that some 75% of teachers will go out on strike, with half of the schools closed across the country.

"The situation since the start of the January school year has created an indescribable mess and a strong feeling of abandonment and anger among school staff," the union said.

Chicago Teachers Berate Union Chiefs Over Return-to-Work Deal Before Narrow Vote

BY DANIEL VILLARREAL ON 1/12/22 

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union berated their union's chiefs for accepting a return-to-work deal that left out many of the safety measures and reassurances that educators wanted amid rising COVID-19 case numbers.

The deal was accepted by only 55.5 percent of the union's 600 members. The agreement will end five days of canceled classes amid union negotiations.

On Wednesday evening, union chiefs presented the deal to union members during a virtual meeting. Chiefs called the deal "more than nothing, but less than what we wanted," according to the Chicago Sun-Times. During the meeting, teachers yelled at union officials for negotiating an agreement that fell short of their desired safety demands.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey blamed Chicago Lori Lightfoot for rejecting key union requests such as the ability to randomly test students for COVID-19 and move to virtual learning as the city experiences an unprecedented spike in new COVID-19 cases.

"This vote is a clear show of dissatisfaction with the boss," Sharkey said in a statement. "Put bluntly, we have a boss who does not know how to negotiate, does not know how to hear real concerns and is not willing to respect our rank and file enough to listen to us when we tell her we need more protection."

The agreement guaranteed more masks, test screenings and time-off related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agreement established metrics for shutting down individual schools, based on the number of students and staff members absent due to COVID-19. It also said that the district would purchase KN95 masks for students and teachers and provide daily COVID-19 screening questions for anyone entering schools.

Additionally, the agreement added incentives for hiring more substitute teachers in case of worker shortages. Teachers will be allowed to take unpaid leave related to COVID-19, to help care for their own illness or their increased risk of exposure, WGN-TV reported.

It also expands COVID-19 testing for teachers and students, but it didn't implement the union's desired program for randomly testing all students unless parents opted out.

Chicago teachers have agreed to go back into the classroom after union negotiations, with more masks, test screenings and time-off related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this photo, thousands of Chicago teachers' union members march through the streets near City Hall during the 11th day of an ongoing teachers strike on October 31, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.SCOTT HEINS/GETTY

UNDER THE COVER OF NIGHT

US acknowledges shipping Idaho radioactive waste to Nevada

KEN RITTER, 

Associated Press
Jan. 12, 2022

Nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho, on May 11, 2015. The federal government is acknowledging it has shipped mixed radioactive waste from a nuclear-era cleanup site in Idaho to Nevada for disposal. In a statement Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, that followed a protest letter from U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, the U.S. Department of Energy said 13,625 cubic meters of material had been sent from a former dump at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Nevada National Security Site.

Keith Ridler/AP


LAS VEGAS (AP) — The federal government acknowledged it has been shipping mixed radioactive waste from a nuclear cleanup site in Idaho to Nevada and New Mexico for disposal.

In a statement Tuesday that followed a protest letter from U.S. Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy said 13,625 cubic meters of material has been sent safely from a former dump at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Nevada National Security Site.

The material was characterized as “low level waste/mixed low level waste,” the department said. The amount would fill more than five Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Shipments began in 2009 and are ongoing, the department said, while noting that most of the Idaho waste was being sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Nevada and the federal government have clashed several times in the past over shipments of radioactive materials to the vast former government nuclear test site in the state.

In a Monday letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Titus said “the fact that dangerous materials could be sharing the roads with my constituents and visitors raise a number of questions for me about this shipment of nuclear materials.”

Titus, a Democrat from Las Vegas, is a retired University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and an expert on atomic testing and American politics. She has fought for years to prevent the federal government from building a permanent storage facility for the nation’s most radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, some 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Las Vegas.

In her letter, Titus called for the Energy Department to disclose the amount of waste to be shipped to Nevada and its classification.

“Nevada is not America’s dumping ground,” she said.

A Nevada-based spokesman for the Energy Department, Jesse Sleezer, said in a statement Wednesday that since 1999, the department has transported more than 32,000 waste shipments to the Nevada National Security Site, "with no release of contamination resulting from these shipments.”

The department said the Nevada state Division of Environmental Protection participates with other experts in pre-disposal documentation and review of an “extensive waste profile" of materials shipped to the site.

“All offsite wastes shipped to and disposed at the NNSS are handled safely and securely and must meet all applicable federal and state regulations as well as the rigorous NNSS Waste Acceptance Criteria,” the department said in its statement Tuesday.

Nevada state Division of Environmental Protection Chief David Fogerson referred an inquiry about the shipments to Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak's office. The governor's aide, Meghin Delaney, did not immediately respond to questions.

The Energy Department said last month it was completing the removal of targeted waste buried decades ago in storage drums and boxes in unlined pits at a sprawling site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the city of Idaho Falls.

The buried waste included plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds, sludges containing solvents and oxidized uranium generated during nuclear weapons production work at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado.

The Nevada National Security Site is a vast federal reservation nearly the size of the state of Rhode Island where the government conducted more than 1,000 above- and below-ground nuclear detonations from 1951 to 1992. It serves today as a research and training site and for U.S. studies of nuclear, chemical, biological and other weapons.

The Energy Department agreed last year to pay Nevada $65,000 to settle a dispute about five years of shipments of mischaracterized waste from the Energy Department’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the Nevada site. The state called the shipments “an unfortunate misstep.”

An earlier dispute involved the clandestine shipment of one-half metric ton (1,100 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium from a Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. Under that settlement, the government agreed to start removing the waste from the Nevada site last year.

THE STATE THAT OUTLAWED ABORTION
Outside Experts Give Texas Roadmap to Decrease Sky-high Rates of Foster Kids Sleeping in Offices, Hotels

BY SARA TIANO
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has faced criticism for housing foster youth in hotels or social workers’ offices when unable to find them safe housing. During a hearing Tuesday, a panel of independent child welfare experts made recommendations to the state that included lessening its reliance on congregate care.

More than a decade into a federal lawsuit aimed at repairing Texas’ beleaguered child welfare system, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack has laid into state leaders anew, using words like “incompetence” and “negligence” to describe their care of the state’s foster children.

Conditions on the ground discussed at a virtual hearing Tuesday focused on the vast number of foster children that the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has been unable to find safe homes for, instead housing them for weeks at a time in social workers’ offices, hotels and other unlicensed and ill-equipped settings. The problem, according to experts studying the issue, has been steadily growing for years and hit a crisis point in July, affecting 416 kids that month alone.

“The numbers of children in Texas that are cycling in and out of these unlicensed placements is just really unacceptable,” said Judith Meltzer, president of the national nonprofit Center for the Study of Social Policy. “There are roots of this problem that go back many years, and they reflect the need for fairly significant, systemic reforms.”


A set of recommendations generated by a panel of independent child welfare experts including Meltzer led Tuesday’s hearing. The expert panel is calling for a reduction in reliance on congregate care, increased access to mental health care and greater resources for community-based services to keep kids safe in family homes.

Absent such investments, foster children housed in office buildings, hotels and unlicensed rental units staffed by child protection workers have been subject to dangerous and chaotic conditions that recreate trauma rather than helping children heal, according to court-appointed monitors who conducted on-site visits and interviews.

“They were subjected to sex with hotel staff members,” Judge Jack said, emphasizing the tragic failures cited in the monitor’s report released Monday. “They were tased by security officers hired by DFPS to stay at these unlicensed placement areas. Two 13-year-olds were pepper sprayed, children were slapped. This is what happened.”

Many of the children interviewed were not enrolled in school, and staff often did not know where they were. Medications were inconsistently administered and sometimes not provided at all. After a new law passed in June that barred foster children from sleeping in offices, the child welfare department leased private homes, some of which were directly adjacent to abandoned, blighted buildings with broken windows and covered inside and out with graffiti.

These abandoned homes in Texas are directly adjacent to unlicensed rentals where the Department of Family and Protective Services has been housing kids they can’t find foster placements for. Photo via court document.

Key among the experts’ recommendations — immediate fixes as well as longer term reforms — is bolstering the state’s array of mental health resources for youth and families, improving coordination between child-serving agencies and increasing support for kinship caregivers, especially those caring for children with complex needs.

Recommendations by the expert panel, which also includes Ann Stanley, a managing director for Casey Family Programs, and Paul Vincent, an independent consultant who formerly led reforms in Alabama’s child welfare system, are not legally binding. But commissioners with the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Health and Human Services Commission indicated their intention to cooperate with the proposals.

After years of a contentious lawsuit and the deteriorating conditions for children, advocates and child welfare professionals told The Imprint they were encouraged by the concrete, evidence-based path forward provided by the expert panel.

“We now have clear next steps that DFPS, the Legislature, and the Governor can take to make sure that kids in foster care can live with a foster family or an aunt and uncle instead of sleeping in an institution or a CPS office or a dangerous, unlicensed foster home,” Kate Murphy, senior policy associate with Texans Care for Children, said in an email.

Expanding mental health services

According to the expert panel’s research over the past six weeks, the vast majority of children who lacked placements are older youth, most deemed to have higher needs due to behavioral or mental health concerns.

In November, nearly a quarter of the 236 children without placements had been released from psychiatric hospitals with no discharge plan in place. Eighteen percent had run away from their previous placement, and 17% were coming out of group homes or residential treatment facilities and their social workers had failed to find a new home for them.

Expanding mental health care options is “essential to solving the problem of children without placement,” the experts reported to the court. That could also address children coming into foster care because their parents can’t handle their mental and behavioral health needs: Since 2017, 4,661 Texas children have been relinquished to foster care because they were unable to access services and supports within their families, the report states.

The expert panel recommends tapping into a Medicaid funding stream to provide mobile crisis intervention services and applying for a Medicaid waiver to fund community-based mental health services to prevent the need for children to be hospitalized or placed in residential care.

They also recommend the state expand an existing program serving families at risk of relinquishing their children to foster care.

In response, on Tuesday, Judge Jack ordered the commissioners of the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Health and Human Services Commission to devise a plan to expand mental health services within 90 days.

Curbing congregate care and out-of-state placements

With news spreading that children are sleeping in hotels and offices, child welfare authorities and foster care providers say part of the problem is heightened scrutiny on residential group facilities, and the resulting closures of such facilities. Prior to the court hearing, the state submitted plans indicating their intent to build back group home capacity, in contrast with nationwide moves against such settings for foster youth.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Jack and the expert panelists soundly countered that plan.

“We think the solution to the problem is not more congregate care,” panelist Meltzer said. “There is an overemphasis on the use of congregate settings, and I have a real concern about that.”

Jack was more biting in her rebuttal: “There isn’t a single expert in the field of child protection that recommends congregate care except in exceptional circumstances. Yet here we are struggling in this situation, with a department that not only believes in congregate care for whatever reasons — for the private, for-profit congregate care people, for the not-for-profit congregate care people and the lobbyists they support — and it’s just a chain.”

Jack also hammered the agency for its failure to comply with the federal Family First Prevention Services Act, which strictly limits group care to instances of clinical necessity, and requires it be provided only on a limited basis, in vetted and licensed “quality residential treatment programs,” or QRTPs.

By failing to meet these new standards, which took effect in October, Texas is forfeiting $43 million in federal funding over the next two years, the visibly angry judge pointed out multiple times.

The experts and the court urged the department to move more quickly toward implementing Family First by bringing local treatment centers up to standards or attracting new providers already licensed to run QRTPs to develop programs in Texas.

In their report, the panel also raised concerns about the state’s increasing reliance on out-of-state placements to house children they struggle to find local foster homes for. They note that the Department of Family and Protective Services spent $2.9 million between January and October of last year placing these children in out-of-state facilities.

“When we talk about redirecting resources to services in the community to support families, that’s one of the ways you can get the funds you need,” Meltzer said, “by limiting these really expensive, not helpful and frequently very dangerous out-of-state placements.”

Jack ordered the department to develop a plan to bring children back from out-of-state placements within 90 days. Within 30 days, the department must determine if they can implement the experts’ recommendation to establish community liaisons tasked with finding a way to move children out of congregate care settings and into families.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services 

Commissioner Jaime Masters.

 Photo from the DFPS website.

The expert panel also laid out recommendations for avoiding foster care placements outside of family networks, life disruptions that can cause youth to flounder. Members said the state needs to raise the pay for relatives caring for foster youth: Right now they receive $11.55 per day, regardless of the child’s level of need, while non-relative foster families are paid anywhere from $47.37 to $92.43 per day.

The panel reported that relatives should be the first choice to care for foster youth, under an intensive “family finding” program. Utilizing Title IV-E federal funds to provide kinship navigators was noted as a short-term fix that could help strengthen those placements.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Jack issued a stern warning to DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, who suggested her resources to implement all of the recommendations may be limited.

“The constitutional rights that have to be protected of these children are not driven by monetary factors. Money is not an issue for these factors,” Jack said. “You must comply with safe placements, period. I’m going to have to start doing contempt — I’m going to do it in the next month if we don’t get some response here.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sara Tiano is a senior reporter for The Imprint.

 

Julian Assange: A Thousand Days In Belmarsh – OpEd

 January 13, 2022

By Binoy Kampmark

Julian Assange has now been in the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh prison for over 1,000 days.  On the occasion of his 1,000th day of imprisonment, campaigners, supporters and kindred spirits gathered to show their support, indignation and solidarity at this political detention most foul.  

Alison Mason of the Julian Assange Defence Committee reiterated those observations long made about the imprisonment at a gathering outside the Australian High Commission in London on that day.  The WikiLeaks founder was wrongfully confined “for publishing the war crimes of the US military leaked to him by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.”  She, along with supporters, had gathered before the High Commission “because Julian’s country could save him with a simple phone call.”   Mason’s admirably simple reasoning: that Australia had “a bargaining chip with AUKUS and trade deals.”  If only that were true.

The continued detention of Assange in Belmarsh remains a scandal of kaleidoscopic cruelty.  It continues to imperil his frail health, further impaired by a stroke suffered in October last year and the ongoing risks associated with COVID-19.  It maintains a state of indefinite incarceration without bail, deputising the United Kingdom as committed gaolers for US interests. “Julian,” stated his fiancée Stella Moris, “is simply held at the request of the US government while they continue to abuse the US-UK extradition treaty for political ends.”

A report drawn from unannounced visits to Belmarsh by the Chief Inspector of Prisons last July and August did not shine glorious light upon the institution.  “The prison has not paid sufficient attention to the growing levels of self-harm and there was not enough oversight or care taken of prisoners of risk of suicide.  Urgent action needed to be taken in this area to make sure that these prisoners were kept safe.”

The next gruelling stage of Assange’s confinement is being marked by an appeal against the High Court’s unfathomable, and even gullible overturning of the lower court decision against his extradition to the United States.  The US Department of Justice (DoJ) continues to seek the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to face 18 charges, 17 based on that relic of state paranoia and vengeance, the US Espionage Act of 1917.  A successful prosecution could see him face a 175-year sentence.  

The original decision, shoddy as it was for the cause of journalism, accepted that the extradition would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Act.  District Court Justice Vanessa Baraitser accepted the defence contention that such oppression arose from Assange’s “mental condition”.  Despite relentless prosecution attacks on the neuropsychiatric evidence adduced by the defence, the judge accepted that Assange was autistic and would be at serious risk of suiciding in the US prison system. The prosecutors also failed in convincing the court that Special Administrative Measures would not be applied that would restrict his access to legal counsel and family, and ensure solitary confinement. They also failed to show that he would not, on being convicted, serve his time in the vicious supermax prison, Colorado’s ADX Florence. 

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, were having none of that.  In their December ruling, the High Court accepted the prosecution appeal that the US could easily make assurances for keeping Assange in better conditions despite not doing so at the original trial.  The Lord Justices also proved crotchety at the fact that Baraitser had not gone out of her way to seek those assurances in the first place.  Besides, Britain could trust the good diplomatic undertakings of the United States.  

So it came to pass that muddle headed judicial reasoning prevailed on the bench.  There was no mention of the fabricated evidence being relied upon by the prosecution, or the discomforting fact that operatives in the US Central Intelligence Agency had contemplated kidnapping and poisoning Assange.  Nothing, either, about the US-sanctioned surveillance operation conducted by the Spanish security firm, UC Global, during his time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Work on the appeal began immediately.  Solicitors Birnberg Peirce, in a statement, outlined the importance of the application.  “We believe serious and important issues of law and wider public importance are being raised in this application.  They arise from the court’s judgment and its receipt and reliance on US assurances regarding the prison regimes and treatment of Mr Assange is likely to face if extradited.”

The wider public importance of the case is hard to measure.  Authoritarian governments and sham democracies the world over are gleefully taking notes.  Liberal democratic states with increasingly autocratic approaches to media outlets are also going to see promise in the way the United States is using extradition law to nab a publisher.  Black letter lawyers will err in assuming that this matter is narrow and specific to the wording of a treaty between two countries.  

Having already done untold damage to the cause of publishing national security information that exposes atrocities and violations of law domestic and international, the US is making the claim that the Extradition Act, in all its nastiness, has tentacled global reach.  A phone call from Australia’s insipid Prime Minister Scott Morrison will hardly matter to this.  He, and other members of Washington’s unofficial imperial court, will do as they are told.  

Binoy Kampmark

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Julian Assange. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

Canada and U.S. resist efforts to drop vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers

By Karen Graham
PublishedJanuary 10, 2022

Semi trucks drive along Interstate 70 near Booneville, Missouri on Nov. 1, 2011.
KOMUnews/Anna Burkart. CC SA 2.0.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing ahead with a vaccine mandate for international truckers despite increasing pressure from critics who say it will exacerbate driver shortages and drive up the price of goods imported from the United States.

According to CTV News Canada, truckers entering Canada from the United States must show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 beginning on Saturday, January 15.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates this move could force some 16,000 cross-border truck drivers or 10 percent off the roads. The government estimates 5 percent of drivers will be impacted, according to a government source.

This is a turn-around for the Canadian government, which allowed truckers to freely cross the border for 20 months when it was closed to all but essential travel. “We don’t anticipate significant disruptions or shortages for Canadians,” the CTV News source said.

The Trudeau government has championed a strict inoculation policy for civil servants and federally regulated workers, and this new mandate comes as the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus shows no sign of slowing down.

Rainbow Bridge Canadian Border Crossing Image – Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA CC SA 2.0

Conservative leader wants Trudeau to reconsider

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole wants the government to reconsider its Jan. 15 deadline for cross-border truck drivers to be fully vaccinated against COVID if they want to keep their jobs, reports iPolitics.

In order to enter Canada, truck drivers and other essential-service providers, including emergency workers, must show proof of being fully vaccinated, and also are required to upload their proof of vaccination in the ArriveCAN phone app.

Of course, Transport Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Canada Border Services Agency are still deciding how to enforce the rules.

“We will be short tens of thousands of truckers if the government doesn’t very quickly address this issue,” O’Toole said Thursday. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think people shouldn’t be vaccinated,” he qualified. “It means we have to deal with the reality (that prices will) skyrocket for groceries, for everything, (if) tens of thousands of truckers are unemployed.”

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) says it is preparing for the vaccine mandate, and expressed concern over the number of truckers quitting because of the requirement.

“There are substantial reports of higher-than-normal turnover, and others declaring their intention to leave the industry or seek employment in the provincially regulated sector,” CTA president Stephen Laskwoski wrote in a statement.

“The industry is expecting a loss of 12,000 to 16,000 (10 to 15 percent), cross-border commercial drivers if the mandate takes effect this month.”

Truck driver Desi Wade is in his element coaching junior drivers, bantering with warehouse administrators and hosting fellow truckers on virtual meetings from his smartphone headset – Copyright AFP Nhac NGUYEN

Calls for the United States to lift its vaccine requirement

At the same time in the United States, close to a dozen Republican senators are calling on President Joe Biden to lift the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the Canadian border, contending the policy will disrupt trade between the U.S. and Canada, according to The Hill.

The Biden administration announced in November that it would require all essential foreign travelers in the U.S. to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 22, and this rule applies to cross-border truckers.

However, Senate Republicans are asking the president to create a carveout in the administration’s impending policy.

“We write to share our concerns with the coming vaccine mandate for essential workers at the U.S.-Canada border, which will include truck drivers,” the senators wrote in a letter to Biden dated Dec. 10.

“Trucking is the largest mode of surface trade with Canada; every day, there are approximately 14,000 total truck entries along the U.S.-Canada border hauling more than $846 million of goods. Any disruptions to the continuity of U.S.-Canada trade would likely have far-reaching consequences that extend beyond our shared border,” they added.

The senators basically expressed the same concerns their Canadian counterparts expressed, fearing the policy will exacerbate existing problems involving foreign networks and the supply chain, and that it could worsen inflation and cause prices to rise higher than they currently are.

58% of Americans believe US democracy in danger of collapse: poll

By AFP
Published January 12, 2022

Trump supporters clash with police as they storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 - Copyright AFP SAID KHATIB

One year after the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, six out of 10 Americans believe the country’s democracy is in danger of collapse, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in the poll by Quinnipiac University said they think political instability in the United States is a bigger danger than foreign threats.

A majority of those polled — 58 percent — said they think the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse. Thirty-seven percent disagreed.

Fifty-three percent meanwhile said they expect political divisions in the country to worsen over their lifetime.

As for the likelihood of another attack in the United States like the one on Congress, 53 percent of those polled said it was very or somewhat likely.

A special committee of the House of Representatives is investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, with 61 percent of those surveyed saying they back the probe. A total of 83 percent of Democrats favor it and 60 percent of Republicans oppose it.

The poll also had bad news for President Joe Biden with just 33 percent of those surveyed saying they approved of the job he was doing.

Fifty-three percent said they disapproved while 13 percent had no opinion.

Biden had a 38 percent job approval rating in a Quinnipiac poll in November.

The nationwide poll of 1,313 US adults was conducted between January 7 and 10 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, Quinnipiac said.