Texas anti-BDS measure ruled unconstitutional — again


Nora Barrows-Friedman Activism and BDS Beat

11 February 2022

Injunctions against US anti-boycott measures are increasing, as more judges acknowledge the impact on free speech rights. 

 Pacific PressSIPA USA

For the second time, legislation designed to stigmatize and outlaw the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights has been ruled unconstitutional in Texas.

But in Georgia and Virginia, lawmakers are trying once again to crush free speech protections in order to shield Israel.

In Texas, Rasmy Hassouna, the Gaza-born owner of an engineering firm, sued the state after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to Israel in order to secure a contract with the city of Houston.

A federal judge granted an injunction in late January that blocks the state from enforcing its law against Hassouna.

Even though the injunction does not apply to the entire breadth of the state law, it is a significant defeat to the state’s efforts to shield Israel from boycotts.

Bismillah. Major news out of Texas! A federal court just blocked the state from enforcing its anti-#BDS law against our client. This is another huge victory for both the First Amendment AND Palestinian human rights. Details in this thread... 1/10 #FreeSpeech #FreePalestine— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) January 29, 2022“This is a major victory of the First Amendment against Texas’s repeated attempts to suppress speech in support of Palestine,” stated Gadeir Abbas, an attorney working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented Hassouna and his firm.

Texas’ anti-boycott law, signed in 2017, requires public employees and companies who contract with the state to certify that they will not engage in a boycott of Israel.

In 2019, a similar lawsuit was won against the Texas law.

The suit was filed on behalf of Bahia Amawi, a speech pathologist who refused to sign a contract to renew her job with the Austin public school district.

The contract included a clause that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that country.

In a 56-page order, the federal judge in the case wrote that the law, House Bill 89, “threatens to suppress unpopular ideas” and “manipulate the public debate through coercion rather than persuasion.”

In addition to Amawi’s lawsuit, a separate suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four Texans who were forced under the law to “choose between signing the certification or forgoing professional opportunities and losing income,” according to the ACLU.

After the 2019 lawsuits, Texas introduced an amended anti-BDS law – HB 793 – that only applies to companies with more than 10 employees, or contracts worth more than $100,000.

“These amendments, which are designed to remove the plaintiffs challenging the law from its reach, may reduce the number of individuals affected by the law, but fail to resolve the underlying constitutional issues,” warns civil rights group Palestine Legal.

And it leaves in place the requirement for state contractors to certify that they will not engage in the boycott of Israel, as well as the creation of a blacklist of companies “in which state retirement plans are prohibited from investing,” the group adds.

“The legislature has introduced several other anti-boycott bills and resolutions that condemn boycotts for Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal notes.

The injunction follows similar orders issued by federal judges against anti-BDS laws in Arkansas, Arizona and Kansas, citing First Amendment violations.

More than two dozen US states have passed anti-BDS measures.
“Foreign subversion”

Meanwhile, in Georgia, journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin is continuing to challenge the state’s anti-boycott measure as lawmakers scramble to amend it on Israel’s behalf.

Once again Georgia’s state legislature has capitulated to Israel’s demands to restrict the free speech rights of American citizens! https://t.co/2vl1bc2GCO— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) February 7, 2022Martin was invited to be the keynote speaker at a 2020 conference at Georgia Southern University, but refused to sign a contract complying with the state law certifying that she would not engage in a boycott of Israel.

Her speech, and the entire conference, was canceled.

She filed a lawsuit over the anti-BDS law in February 2020.

In May 2021, a federal judge ruled in Martin’s favor, finding that the law “burdens Martin’s right to free speech.”

But Israeli officials had already begun working in broad daylight to keep it on the books.

In a recent video statement, Martin says that Israeli officials “openly worked with Georgia’s politicians to request that the law be changed, not repealed.”

An Israeli government official, Harold Hershberg, has shown a keen interest in the Georgia measure.

Georgia state representative Deborah Silcox even admitted in March 2020, a month after Martin had filed her lawsuit, “that this Israeli official was the one that asked them to change the law, and they complied,” Martin says.

It was “a shocking act of foreign subversion,” she adds.

Just weeks ago, Georgia lawmakers approved an amended measure, HB 383, which would limit the rule to contracts worth more than $100,000 or to companies with more than five employees. It will be sent to Brian Kemp, the governor, to be signed into law.

“As promised, Israel and the Georgia state legislature came back with an amended law to try to moot my case,” Martin says.

“But here’s the thing: the law is still ruled unconstitutional. It is still unenforceable in the state of Georgia. No one will have to sign this pro-Israel pledge in order to work for the state for contracts under $100,000.”

But, she adds, if individuals or businesses with contracts over that amount refuse to sign the pledge, “it would still be deemed unconstitutional to try to punish them under this law.”

CAIR and Jewish Voice for Peace, along with other civil and human rights organizations, called the amended legislation “a doomed effort.”

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Martin’s attorney and the director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said that the measure “is an attempt to keep an illegal, anti-free speech and discriminatory law on life-support and panders to a shameful bigotry.”

The attempt by Georgia lawmakers “to put lipstick on an unconstitutional pig does not alter the fact that the underlying law is still unconstitutional and that they have been defeated in federal court,” she added.
Virginia measure

Finally, in Virginia, lawmakers introduced a measure in mid-January that would mandate that state entities with contracts worth more than $10,000 sign an anti-boycott pledge.

Activists in Virginia are organizing to defeat this legislation.

Denying business owners' contracts because of political opinions violates our First Amendment right to free speech. @vahousegop @VAHouseDems need to stand together on this infringement of our constitutional rights. #VoteNOHB1161 #VAleg
👉🏼 Take Action Here: https://t.co/uprOMJD2EG pic.twitter.com/S3EXcRPDyF— AJP Action (@AJPaction) February 1, 2022Jewish Voice for Peace has issued an action alert to contact Virginia politicians and demand they protect free speech rights.

Human rights advocates in Virginia have a history of successfully defeating anti-Palestinian rights measures in the past, including a 2016 measure that would have led to a McCarthyite blacklist of companies that refuse to do business with Israel.

US-allied Syria Kurdish commander warns of growing IS threat

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 07:04 EST, 11 February 2022 

HASSAKEH, Syria (AP) - The Islamic State group is a growing threat in northeastern Syria despite the killing of its leader in a U.S. commando operation last week, says the chief commander of the U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish-led force.

Mazloum Abdi, who heads the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, warned that IS fighters are still very much present in the wake of a deadly attack by the militants on a Syrian prison last month. That attack killed 121 fighters from the Syrian Kurdish-led force, he added.

"We are surrounded by the Islamic State," Abdi said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press on Thursday night. "We have said this many times. If we don´t strive to fight IS now, they will spread again."

A tenuous calm has prevailed in the region since IS's spectacular Jan. 20 attack on Gweiran Prison, or al-Sinaa - a Kurdish-run facility in Syria's northeast where over 3,000 IS militants and young boys, mainly sons of IS fighters, were held.

The attack on the prison led to 10 days of fighting between U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters and IS militants that left nearly 500 dead on both sides until the SDF brought the situation under control eventually.

Abdi said immediate security measures were taken to contain IS sleeper cells after the assault: faulty detention centers prone to similar attacks have been emptied, security sweeps are ongoing and curfews limit night-time movements.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Hassakeh, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Abdi said the Islamic State is a growing threat to northeast Syria in the aftermath of a deadly prison attack and unless immediate action is taken, the extremist group will again flourish. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)

But, the threat remains, he warned.

The SDF assisted in the U.S. operation that killed IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi in the northwestern Idlib region last week by facilitating passage and logistics for the U.S., but did not participate with fighters on the ground.

"We provided safety and security for personnel who went in, that´s all I can say," he said.

While IS morale may have taken a hit with al-Qurayshi´s death, Abdi said he did not believe it would lead to the group's decline.

He said he shared blame for the prison attack - the biggest and bloodiest since IS lost the last sliver of territory it held in Syria in 2019, marking the end of its self-declared "caliphate" over large parts of Syria and Iraq.

"We didn´t execute our responsibilities well," Abdi says.

His fighters last year twice got intelligence that IS sleeper cells were planning to attack the prison, located in Hassakeh province, to free their comrades inside. One attack was even thwarted.

"There was intelligence before that they wanted to attack, and we took procedures, but then we failed," he said.

But he also blamed the international community, which he says should assume responsibility for the thousands of foreign IS fighters held in prisons and camps overseen by the Syrian Kurdish-led forces.

Abdo said searches are now underway in 27 detention facilities housing IS detainees to identify security weaknesses. Three prisons have been emptied, their inmates scattered to different facilities.

Abdi declined to name the facilities, but said two were close to the Turkish frontier, where bombardment is frequent. Another was found to have similar shortcomings as in Gweiran, he added.

The prison attack also shone a light on the hundreds of minors - a mix of different nationalities and backgrounds - who had been holed up in the prison along with hardened IS adult detainees. The teens have since been moved to a new facility, separate from adults, but the conditions of their detention was criticized and described as "dire" in a recent visit by Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF´s Syria representative.

Some of the boys were children when their parents plucked them from their own countries after they decided to join IS, others were born in Syria. Many attended IS-run schools where they were trained for combat.

Abdi could not give a number of the boys killed in the attack. A day after al-Qurayshi was killed, Human Rights Watch said hundreds of boys were missing from the prison.

Abdi said local Syrian Kurdish authorities lacked resources to build new prisons capable of holding high-risk detainees. "This is one of the main reasons that the incident happened," he added. ""It is something we could see (happening), but we didn´t know when."

Responding to criticism by human rights groups surrounding the treatment of the teens, Abdi deflected blame, saying the United Nations and the international community should have been responsible for them.

He also could not provide an accurate figure for the number of teens killed in the prison attack, only saying they were "very few" among the total 700.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Hassakeh, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Abdi said the Islamic State is a growing threat to northeast Syria in the aftermath of a deadly prison attack and unless immediate action is taken, the extremist group will again flourish. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad

Christian Nationalists Are Rewriting Jan 6 History. Alarmingly, It’s Working.

Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

SAMUEL CORUM / GETTY IMAGES

BY Kathryn Joyce,

Salon

February 11, 2022

Earlier this week, a new Pew survey found that the share of Americans who believe Donald Trump was largely responsible for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, has declined by nearly 10 percent over the past year, while the percentage of people who think he bears no responsibility has increased by almost as much. On Wednesday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty released a new report that helps explain that shift: The same Christian nationalism that served as the unifying principle behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is also driving efforts among the faithful to rewrite the history of that day.

As two of the report’s contributors, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of Taking America Back for God, noted in a launch event on Wednesday, Christian nationalist support for Jan. 6 rioters has doubled in the past year, while support for prosecuting those rioters has declined by 20 percent. That suggests, said Perry, “that this ideology is powerfully connected to a reinterpretation of these events” in a way that could become “a powerful motivator for future potential violence.”

At more than 60 pages and drawing on the work of a number of academics, journalists and researchers, “Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection” is the most comprehensive account to date of the role of the movement in the attack. Within the political and cultural universe of Christian nationalism, America is a special place: It was created as a Christian nation and its founding documents were divinely inspired. Christianity should and must have a privileged position in public life, and “true Americans” are understood to be “white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens.”

That ideology, argues the report, served both as the unifying theme for the various factions that joined in the assault on the Capitol as well as the “permission structure” that allowed participants to justify their violence. To call those fringe ideas is misleading: Surveys repeatedly find that close to half of the country supports the idea of fusing Christianity and civic life.

Christian nationalism also lends itself to a number of other convictions, notes the report. Surveys in early 2021 found strong associations between Christian nationalist views, such as the proposition that the federal government should declare America a Christian nation, and a whole range of far-right beliefs not directly connected to faith. Those include the disproved claim that Antifa or Black Lives Matter caused the violence on Jan. 6, while Donald Trump was blameless; support for various white supremacist and antisemitic beliefs; and even a willingness to accept the outlandish premises of QAnon.

Two-thirds of white Americans who strongly support Christian nationalist ideology believe that the 2020 election was rigged; 40 percent of them think that violence from patriotic Americans might be necessary to save the country; and more than 40 percent are convinced that Democrats are engaged in “elite child trafficking,” said Whitehead.

The report includes some meditations on the movement’s origins as well. Penn religion scholar Anthea Butler, the author of White Evangelical Racism, writes that white Christian nationalism began moving more firmly into the mainstream after 9/11, as the “Holy War” coding of the “War on Terror” helped popularize its ideology, laying the groundwork for Trump’s rise. The seemingly contradictory beliefs of Christian nationalism — that America is the greatest nation on earth thanks to its foundation in Christianity, and also that America has been overtaken by alien and even demonic enemies — only serves to keep the movement in a state of tense mobilization, observed journalist Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers.

“It’s astonishing to so many of us that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack styled themselves as patriots,” Stewart added at Wednesday’s event. “But it makes a glimmer of sense once we start to understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Most of the report was written by Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney at the Freedom from Religion Foundation and author of The Founding Myth. It consists of a meticulous accounting, drawing on hundreds of hours of video footage, of Christian nationalism’s ubiquitous role in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and its execution. There are the flags, the signs, the cross and gallows that we’ve all seen.

There are also some less familiar pieces of evidence, such as the 50-person Christian choir singing about swords and taking possession of the land while the attack was underway. Multiple rioters recounted how God’s hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One avowed white supremacist had convinced his parole officer to let him travel to Washington that week to hand out Bibles. And then there’s the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi’s office door, believing that “the crowd would tear her ‘into little pieces,'” and later testified in court that God had been on Trump’s side: “And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it’s God’s will.”

Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader “permission structure that gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed,” through the promise that they were doing the Lord’s work.

There’s an exhaustive list of such examples. Paula White, “faith adviser” to the Trump White House, recorded nightly prayer videos calling on God to smite Trump’s enemies. The Proud Boys prayed in the street and were “hailed as God’s warriors.” Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told his massive following, “Fighting with Trump is fighting with God,” and said that angels were looking for some “risk takers” and “wild cards that are gonna go start something up.”

“They marched around government buildings in state capitals and in D.C., including the Capitol and the Supreme Court, blowing on shofars and claiming to know God’s will,” said Seidel. “Sometimes I wonder how could we possibly have been surprised by the violence that day.”

More than a year later, said the panelists, Christian nationalists continue to march under slightly new banners, leading efforts to suppress voting rights through gerrymandering and new legislation that would require everything from lifetime disenfranchisement of convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics tests for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby, president of the Black Christian organization The Witness and author of The Color of Compromise, said Christian nationalism is also animating numerous state and local fights, including culture-war battles like the manufactured debate over critical race theory, as well as efforts to silence dissenting Christians.

“Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used,” said Tisby.

Perry noted the mixed blessing found in recent polling that suggests Christian nationalist ideas as a whole have lost some support nationwide since Jan. 6. The other side of that, he added, is that groups that become more isolated also tend to become more militant. Indeed, added Seidel, researchers have seen an uptick in Christian nationalist pastors proudly and openly embracing the label.

Relegating Christian nationalism back to the margins, say the report’s authors, will not be easy. That would require a national recommitment to the separation of church and state, countering the historical myths propping up Christian nationalist ideology, and coalition work between secular and religious allies.

“I don’t really know if people understand how close we were to losing America that day,” said Seidel. “If they decide to get a little more serious next time, we are in big trouble.”

“America is really a shared ideal, and Christian nationalism refuses to share,” said Seidel. “That’s the choice we face: Christian nationalism or America. Because we can’t have both.”

What Do We Really Know About The National Sheriffs Association?

The Association’s funding sources and political affiliations are suspect. That hasn’t stopped them from lobbying Congress and tanking police reforms.

BY JESSICA PISHKO

FEB 11, 2022
JURISPRUDENCE

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb speaks at the Rally to Protect Our Elections sponsored by Turning Point Action at the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix, July 24, 2021. 

USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

This week, the National Sheriffs Association held their Winter Conference in Washington, D.C. The meeting is held in the nation’s capital every year, but this year a new event was added to the agenda: a “Hill Day,”in which the NSA arranged meetings between county sheriffs and their congressional representatives to discuss issues that are “meaningful to Sheriffs,” ranging from policing issues to medical care.

Since the summer of 2020, when the nation erupted into protest over police violence, police unions have been hard at work using their immense political power to thwart reform efforts. While police unions generally operate locally, there are state-wide and nation-wide organizations that purport to represent the interests of various law enforcement groups: police chiefs, police captains, and sheriffs. Sheriffs, in particular, have displayed immense resistance to efforts to change policing. Yet the national association that ostensibly represents their interests, and lobbies Congress on their behalf, remains under-examined and under-studied.

Last fall, for example, after every major national law enforcement lobbying group agreed to a set of modest, bipartisan policing reforms hashed out by Sens. Tim Scott and Corey Booker, the sheriffs refused to budge from their hardline position, especially when it came to reforming qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it near-impossible to hold rogue and criminal law enforcement officers liable in civil suits.

Since then, sheriffs, under the leadership of the National Sheriffs Association (NSA), have gone on the warpath, pushing false narratives about a “war on cops” and whipping up unsubstantiated panic about increasing crime. In one instance, Louisiana Sheriff Vernon Stanforth, the President of the NSA, went on a local news station to call for federal support in arresting alleged shoplifters because they were “terrorizing their communities.” His request was backed up by a general NSA call for an action by the Biden administration on retail theft (which isn’t a federal crime).

The next day, Executive Director and CEO of the NSA Jonathan Thompson – who is a paid employee of the organization and not an elected sheriff – went on Fox News to complain about the NFL’s discretionary donations to groups engaged in criminal system reform through the “Inspire Change” initiative. Thompson topped his complaints with a veiled threat that players should “spend one night in a cruiser or a jail to see the horrendous effects of runaway crime.”

The sheriffs even went so far as to slam a leaked draft executive order, purportedly from the Biden administration, that appeared to address a variety of federal law enforcement reforms and provide additional funding for certain programs. (Biden seems to be walking back this plan based on recent meetings with law enforcement.)

How did the sheriffs come to be such a unified front against policing reform? Through the work of the National Sheriffs Association, a big-tent organization that nominally represents the interests of county sheriffs. Part of that representation requires the creation and reiteration of a mythology about sheriffs that serves to secure their place in the American pantheon of law enforcement organizations. This objective is even written into their “constitutional charter.” They mean it. When the county commissioners of Loudoun County, Virginia, considered reducing the role of the county sheriff by creating a police force (that would be under the control of the mostly Democrat county government), the NSA was there to argue forcefully against it. They claimed that sheriffs were more cost-efficient and better at patrol and policing than county-run police forces, and called the county government “political hacks.”

While the NSA claims to be nonpartisan, its leadership has proven to be less so, with the most recent slate of leaders leaning further to the right than past leadership. At least one member of the Executive Committee – Sheriff Chris West of Oklahoma — was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. At least three others are members of Protect America Now, a far-right sheriff’s organization, or the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a group that believes sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of the constitution. The current chair of the Government Affairs Committee is Collin County, Texas, Sheriff Jim Skinner, who was responsible for the high-profile jail death of Marvin Scott III, whom deputies killed by restraining him, placing a hood over his head, and dousing him with pepper spray. As part of the committee, Skinner is tasked with developing the NSA’s policy positions on law enforcement and homeland security in addition to representing the Association before Congress and the White House. The NSA has also consistently lobbied in favor of civil asset forfeiture, which, despite bipartisan opposition, remains the law in Texas.

These political affiliations have only become more tangled with the rise of the constitutional sheriffs movement. The NSA has yet to disavow the growing number of sheriffs who have refused to enforce vaccination orders, expressed anti-government rhetoric, or spread disinformation about election fraud. In fact, spokesperson for the NSA praised Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who formed a far-right sheriffs group and has ties to Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, the ex-government official who we now know was pushing a plan for the military to seize voting machines to overturn the 2020 election. The spokesperson praised Lamb as a “unicorn” during an interview in October of 2021, adding that Lamb was simply standing up for the office of the sheriff.

While the NSA officially disavows connections between corporate sponsors and their policies, the degree of corporate funding is shadowy and belies their alleged neutrality. The Association is a 501(c)(4) organization, which is not required to disclose its donor and lobbying expenditures publicly. What we do know is that the NSA manages to raise in the neighborhood of $8 million in “dark money” every year. (A spokesperson from the NSA says the money is a mix of member dues, government grants, and corporate sponsorships). The available public information about funding indicates that the NSA is beholden to the corporations that have built the prison industrial complex and produce billions of dollars in profits off the backs of people in cages. Such for-profit industries, which include telecommunications companies like Verizon, GTL, PayTel and correctional health care companies as well as more anodyne corporations like Airbnb and The Home Depot can purchase access to sheriffs. For top donors their purchase includes a “reception” with NSA leadership as well as a “Private Dinner with Members of NSA’s Executive Committee and Headquarters’ Leadership.”

These sponsorships are really the tip of the iceberg of the many troubling alliances that betray the nominally nonpartisan spirit of the NSA.

For example, this year, ex-police officer named Matthew Griffin, who wrote a book about mental health for law enforcement, gave the keynote speech and was made an “honorary sheriff.” Griffin, who has never been a sheriff, served as a police officer in New Hampshire, but left after he was added not once, but twice, to a statewide list of officers who committed misconduct. According to one news source, Griffin at one point claimed to be a “reserve officer” for an unincorporated New Hampshire town and worked as a police trainer. His speech was sponsored by Axon,the company that makes body cameras and Tasers, and, according to a 2021 Washington Post article, was also a police trainer .

There is further evidence that the NSA courts corporate sponsorship in exchange for sheriff sponsorship. In 2016, the NSA took $350,000 from Purdue Pharma, which it used to distribute naloxone overdose kits and train deputies to reverse overdoses. The Association also took an undisclosed amount from Alkermes, Inc, the manufacturer of Vivitrol, an overdose prevention drug, to “raise awareness among law enforcement of the alarming opioid epidemic.” (ProPublica reported that Alkermes has heavily marketed Vivitrol to law enforcement and judges because, while less effective than methadone and Suboxone, the shot blocks the ability of people to feel the pleasurable high of opiates.) The NSA also spent over $500,000 to air televisions ads featuring sheriffs voicing their opposition to imported prescription drugs, which was the subject of a bipartisan proposal to bring down the costs of medicines in the U.S.

In the past few years, the NSA has pushed surveillance technology by channeling federal grants and promoting private industry, making them a major player in the public-private partnerships that have promoted surveillance cameras and AI-driven technologies. One such push is eye scanning technology from a corporation called B12 Technologies that has been implemented in some jails with federal funding. Another includes a partnership with Clearview AI, a corporation that markets facial recognition technology used by law enforcement, which has increased its contracts under the Biden administration.

A final plank of the NSA’s political strategy involves the filing of numerous amicus briefs in various cases across the country in which they take troubling positions that oppose the Constitutional rights of individuals. Many in the public are already familiar with the entanglement between the National Rifle Association and sheriffs; the NSA has joined other gun organizations in amici that argue in favor of invalidating gun restrictions. In 2015, the NSA filed a brief opposing DACA alongside FAIR and Center for Immigration Studies, another Tanton group. The NSA has also filed amici briefs supporting the seizure of hotel guests lists without a warrant, qualified immunity in a case where sheriffs’ deputies killed a suspect during arrest while city officers watched, warrantless searches even where there has been an error on the part of law enforcement, and application of a negligence standards for liability in jail deaths.

But the troubling fusion of private industry money, lobbying activities, and mass surveillance makes the public comments and inaction of the NSA more suspect when considering the overall landscape for police reform. It’s true that the structure of the NSA is legal and one used by groups on the left and the right. But, communities have a right to know about the corporate (and individual) funders who profit from additional policing, especially organizations that appear to tolerate wrong-doing. The NSA should be seen as part of the network of dark money groups who are influencing legislation and grants rather than a nonpartisan general interest group.

Another path is possible. In California, district attorneys have split away from the state prosecutor’s association because of its retrograde positions, which is a first step towards disentangling dark money, corporate interests, and an industry that has profited from caging people. It’s time for sheriffs to do the same.

UNDER THE ICE

GLACIER STUDY FINDS EARTH HAS LESS WATER THAN WE THOUGHT

The findings could affect water supply for millions of people.

TARA YARLAGADDA
2.10.2022 

THE WORLD’S GLACIERS are incredibly important, especially as climate change continues to affect the world we live in. Glacier melt from global warming causes sea levels to rise and reduces the amount of accessible freshwater. Now a new study found that glaciers may contain less water than previous estimates suggest. This could mean less fresh drinking water supply for millions of individuals across the globe.

WHAT’S NEW — Limited satellite data has limited scientists’ ability to estimate how much ice is contained inside glaciers. A new study, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, used higher resolution satellite imagery to find that glaciers in key regions may contain less water than we previously thought.

The researchers estimate the total ice volume in the world’s glaciers is around 140,000 cubic kilometers. This translates to a 257-millimeter rise in sea level — 20 percent less than previously thought.

The researchers found that glaciers with the largest amount of ice are in the Arctic, North America, and Antarctica. Glaciers with the smallest ice volume were in the mountains of Asia, accounting for only 7 percent of the world’s total amount of glacial ice.

The new report also provides crucial updates for ice volume in the Andes and the Himalayas. In parts of the Himalayas where glacial ice melt accounts for more than 50 percent of river flow during the dry season, the researchers estimate water reservoirs are actually 37 percent larger than previously thought. Unfortunately, people in the tropical Andes aren’t so lucky; researchers estimate 27 percent less ice volume compared to previous reports.

Knowing how much ice the world’s glaciers contain is crucial for understanding how glacial melt will contribute to sea-level rise under climate change. Reduced global ice volume, as found in this study, could theoretically mean glaciers contribute less sea level rise than scientists previously thought.


In a new study, researchers generated more than 60 regional maps to provide an updated estimate of global ice volume in the world’s glaciers. Millan et al


WHY IT MATTERS — Bethan Davies, a glacial geologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not involved with the study, tells Inverse the most important aspect of this study is that it provides key estimates for ice volume in regions where people rely on glaciers to feed into rivers and provide fresh drinking water for the millions of individuals that live nearby.

“The really important finding of the paper for human societies is that there is less ice in the low latitudes, mainly in South America, where glaciers provide a dependable and very important downstream water supply,” Davies says.

Glaciers high up in the Andres region of South America are mountainous “water towers” that provide drinking water to communities further downstream. For instance, there are more than two million residents in La Paz, Bolivia that rely on mountainous water.

These Andean glaciers are not as large as glaciers in Antarctica, so they may not contribute much to sea-level rise. Yet, shrinking glaciers could be devastating for the survival of communities that live nearby.

“As the glaciers shrink, the amount of water they can provide downstream declines, meaning that droughts are more likely,” Davies says.


Measuring the speed of ice flow, or surface velocity can provide a more accurate estimate of glacial ice volume, according to the new research. This is crucial, as glaciers shrink due to global warming.Getty


LOOKING AHEAD — Davies notes that the study may not be as important for projecting sea-level rise as the looming statistics in the report suggest.

“Critically, I doubt that this will make much difference to sea-level rise projections,” Davies says, stating there may only be a small decrease in projected sea-level rise from glaciers due to this paper’s findings.

The methodology the paper uses to calculate ice volume and the exclusion of certain glacial areas from the paper’s findings largely account for the smaller ice volume estimate, she says. “If these areas are included, the ice volume is similar to previous estimates.”

Further, the paper’s important updates on glacier volume in the Andes and Himalayas don’t change the fact that ice from Antarctica and Greenland “will come to dominate sea-level rise,” Davies says. “The places with the biggest ice volumes, and therefore the biggest contributions to sea level rise from glaciers, will still have lots of ice left even 200 years from now.”


Millions of people residing in La Paz, Bolivia who depend on glacial ice water will have to deal with reduced water resources, according to the new study. Getty

HOW THEY MADE THE DISCOVERY — In the past decade, NASA and the European Space Agency launched key satellites — such as Landsat 8 and Sentinel-1A and B — to obtain more accurate images of Earth’s surface.

Using updated satellite imaging between 2017 and 2018, the researchers created high-resolution regional maps of the surface velocity, or the speed of ice flow, of the world’s glaciers. Some glaciers in the Arctic may flow at slow rates of a few meters per year, while a glacier in Patagonia, dubbed Penguin Glacier, flows at a speed of 12,000 meters per year.

Measuring the surface flow of a glacier is an underutilized tool to estimate ice thickness and calculate glacier ice volume. The researchers used their models to generate an updated estimate of the total amount of glacier ice globally — in a way previous research could not.

“It’s very difficult to investigate ice thickness in many of the world’s glaciers — they’re high and steep and far away and very numerous, and so we rely on computer mathematical models to calculate ice thickness,” Davies says.

What this study did differently was to also calculate the total ice volume above flotation levels — as opposed to ice volume above sea level — which more accurately estimates the potential contribution of the world’s glaciers to rising sea levels.

WHAT’S NEXT — The most important finding of the study may come from what it does not reveal. The discrepancy between this study’s findings on global glacier ice volume and previous research hints at the “high level of uncertainty of glacier thickness models.”

Additional observations of glaciers in regions like the Andes, the Himalayas, and the Russian Arctic — home to 18 percent of the world’s total glacier ice volume — will be necessary to estimate how much water people living in these areas can rely on as glaciers shrink due to a changing climate.

Inside The Shocking Reality Of A Winter Olympics Using Fake Snow During A Climate Crisis

BY : JOE HARKER ON : 10 FEB 2022 


When picking a city to host the Winter Olympics, you might assume that it's a given you'd choose somewhere with enough snow to provide a platform for more than 100 events that require cold temperatures.

However, the shocking reality of the Winter Olympics currently being held in Beijing is that conditions are so unsuitable for snow, there's not a flake of the real thing to be found.

All of the snow you see at this Winter Olympics is fake, with the area athletes are competing in seeing on average only an inch of snow each February.

Meanwhile, creating enough artificial snow to host a Winter Olympics leaves behind a significant environmental footprint in terms of the huge amounts of water and power needed to make and maintain an entire Olympic resort's worth of fake snow.

According to Time, the absolute lack of natural snow is a new occurrence for the Winter Olympics, but it's not the first time artificial snow has made up most of what we see at the games.

As much as 98% of the snow used at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea was artificial and around 80% of the snow at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia was fake.

Using artificial snow may be necessary to ensure each event has enough snow to proceed, but it is a cause for concern that the Olympic Committee picked a host city that has 'little to no natural snowfall in the winter', given the environmental cost of creating artificial snow.

Critics of the decision to hand Beijing the 2022 Winter Olympics point out that the games are being held in a place where it barely snows and there's not a lot of water — hardly a suitable pick for a host city.

The problems with hosting the Winter Olympics are also making for worrying signs on climate change.

NBC reports that unless action is taken to halt man-made climate change then by the end of the current century there won't be many places with a suitable climate to host the Winter Olympics.

News
How Fake Snow At The Winter Olympics Is Made And What Risks It Presents

Research from the University of Waterloo, Canada, warns that on our current climate course, only one of the 21 cities that has hosted the Winter Olympics in the past — Sapporo, Japan — would be able to host the games by 2080.

The picture painted by the research if we actually manage to do something about climate change, was far more rosy, so if we can tackle climate change properly, things would look far better.

Don't attack affirmative action, applaud it

Don Kahle

President Biden promised during his campaign to choose a Black woman for the Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer’s announced retirement now makes this possible. Biden’s critics are upset. To understand the issue better, let’s consult with Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, Brian Flores and René Descartes.

Sen. Ted Cruz was first to opine that the president was effectively disqualifying 93% of Americans who are not both female and Black. Never mind that White men received 100% of the nominations until President Ronald Reagan also fulfilled a campaign pledge by choosing Sandra Day O’Connor.

When did the term “affirmative action” enter public policy? Like “Social Security,” the policy’s original intent is hidden in the plain meaning of the words.

President John Kennedy issued an executive order on March 6, 1961, requiring government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed … without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” (Sex and gender were added in subsequent orders in 1965 and 1968.)

“Affirmative action” can also be called “extra effort.” Finding a qualified candidate who doesn’t look like the usual hires requires extra effort. That (extra) action has been affirmed by our government for over 60 years.

Most Americans don’t care much about affirmative action or the Supreme Court, but they do care about football. Former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores is suing the NFL for racial discrimination. Flores may not win his lawsuit, but he has exposed how affirmative action’s extra effort can be reduced to a performative sham.

Quota mandates were not part of any original formulation. Those came later as enforcement mechanisms to root out evident bad faith.

Biden has pledged to consider three factors. Race and gender are easy to measure. Qualifications for a lifetime appointment to the highest court are more difficult to measure. So why are we confused about Biden’s pledge? Because we are trapped in a particular habit of thinking pioneered by René Descartes and his Enlightenment ilk 400 years ago.

Enlightenment thinking emerged after two inventions early in the 17th century changed scientific inquiry. The microscope and the telescope effectively erased the limits of human observation. Observation jumped forward faster than imagination could explain, and measurement followed quickly to extend it.

Descartes, who died 372 years ago today, built a system of thought that asserted primacy for measurements. Enlightenment thinkers believed life must be measured to be meaningful. Ever since, we’ve tended to overvalue whatever can be easily and precisely measured. It’s not the only way to think about things. It’s just the only way we know.

(I bring this up every year around this time to remind readers and myself that our system of thought and the habits that follow were made by men and won’t serve us forever. We cannot build a new awareness of the world until we admit our old ways have stopped working.)

Biden’s pledge to identify a qualified candidate who doesn’t look like her predecessors requires extra effort — affirmative action.

It should be applauded, not attacked.

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and archives past columns at www.dksez.com.

International community must act against Israeli apartheid, says ex-attorney general

February 11, 2022 

A woman holds a sign that reads "End Israeli Apartheid" during a vigil in solidarity with Palestinian calls for a general strike and day of action organized by Falastiniyat in Seattle, Washington on 18 May 2021. [JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images]

February 11, 2022 at 1:17 pm

Michael Benyair, a former Israeli Attorney General and a former acting judge in the Israeli Supreme Court, has called on the international community to take meaningful steps to end Israel's apartheid rule in Palestine.

Writing in the journal, Benyair said he has spent much of his career analysing the legal questions concerning Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

He said that during his tenure he approved the expropriation of private Palestinian land to build the infrastructure for the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories.


It is with great sadness that I must also conclude that my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime. It is time for the international community to recognise this reality as well.

READ: Amnesty labels Israel an apartheid state

He added: "Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it is Israel that is permanently depriving millions of Palestinians of their civil and political rights. This is Israeli apartheid."

In concluding his article Benyair described the situation on the ground in Palestine as "a moral abomination."

"The delay by the international community in taking meaningful steps to hold Israel accountable for the apartheid regime it is perpetuating is unacceptable."

Benyair's remarks come less than two weeks after Amnesty International released a report in which Israel is described as an apartheid state. Last year, B'Tselem and Human Rights Watch came to the same conclusion, while a legal opinion issued by Yesh Din in 2020 also said that "the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank."

READ: 'Israel is an apartheid state' say a quarter of US Jews

Boris Johnson defends £275-a-year ‘pay cut’ for nurses

National Insurance hike will make health and social care workers personally fund their own services to the tune of £390m

Adam Bychawski
9 February 2022

SNP's Westminster leader said that National Insurance rise is a regressive tax. |
UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor

Boris Johnson was today forced to defend cutting nurses' pay by hundreds of pounds in the name of a “health and social care levy”, after openDemocracy revealed the true cost to NHS staff.

Scottish National Party (SNP) Westminster leader Ian Blackford hauled the prime minister over the coals, saying the increased National Insurance contributions were a regressive tax that would worsen the cost of living crisis for low-paid health workers.

“Yesterday, openDemocracy found, as a direct result of the chancellor’s National Insurance hike, nurses will, on average, take a £275-a-year pay cut in April,” he said.

“That pay cut will hit at the very same moment that soaring energy bills land, bills that have shot up £1,000 in the space of a year. It is a bill that they and the rest of the public simply can’t afford,” he added.

Johnson responded by saying that the rise was necessary to clear the backlog in NHS waiting lists caused by the pandemic, but did not address calls for a more progressive tax to do so.

“We’ve increased the starting salary for nurses by 12.8% in addition to the bursaries and other help that we give them,” he said. “We value our nurses, we love our NHS and we are paying for it.”

Johnson was told last year by Donna Kinnair, the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RNC), that his claim about higher nursing salaries was “not a statement which nursing staff will recognise”.

While some nurses have received a pay rise of more than 12% since 2017/18, that is only in cash terms. Nurses’ starting salaries are approximately 10% worse in real terms than they were in 2011/12, Channel 4 FactCheck found in March 2021.

The RNC has separately found that experienced nurses are 15.3% worse off in real terms than they were a decade ago.

Kinnair wrote to Johnson in January 2021 to ask the prime minister “to be accurate when discussing their pay” after he previously made the claim during Prime Minister’s Questions that same month.

Blackford said in response to Johnson today: “Actions speak louder than words and if he wants to reward the nurses then he needs to pay them. They are the very backbone of the National Health Service.”

Last year, English NHS staff received a 3% pay rise following an independent pay review. However, the lowest-paid NHS and social care staff – those earning £24,000 or less – will lose £66m in total from their pay cheques after April’s National Insurance hike, openDemocracy revealed on Tuesday.

Johnson told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the tax rise, which will be replaced by a formal ‘health and social care levy’ of the same value from 2023, would fund the health service, and help recruit 50,000 new nurses.

Nursing staff shortages are the health service’s “most urgent challenge”, according to the NHS. Last month, 14 unions warned that the NHS is facing a “growing exodus of exhausted staff” and called on the government to raise pay to retain staff.

The end of a wild pandemic ride: What it was like for Peloton employees who lost their jobs this week

By Sara Ashley O'Brien, 

CNN Business
 February 11, 2022


(CNN)

Late Monday night, some Peloton (PTON) staffers noticed they were unable to access work productivity apps like Slack and Okta, which they used regularly on the job. Peloton's employees had been told about a scheduled maintenance window that might cause service outages, according to one employee, but that didn't stop others from bracing for the worst.

"I'm freaking out," another former Peloton employee who worked in the company's product department recalled to CNN Business. He said coworkers frantically texted each other as they speculated about what the morning might bring. Peloton was reporting its earnings Tuesday, and weeks earlier the CEO said the company was reviewing its costs and that layoffs were on the table.

Peloton is replacing its CEO and cutting 2,800 jobs

The answer was what he feared. The employee, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of career repercussions or of jeopardizing their severance packages, said he woke up to a calendar invite on Tuesday for a one-on-one video call with a department leader. He was read what sounded like a script and was informed he was among 2,800 people losing their jobs. The layoffs hit people in departments including engineering, sales and marketing as well as those who physically delivered Peloton products to consumers, according to public posts from those who've lost their jobs.

Workers were offered a severance package that included cash compensation, extended healthcare coverage and equity vesting, along with an unusual consolation: one additional free year of All Access membership to Peloton's subscription services, something workers received as an employee perk. One employee, who described the severance package as "generous," said the membership extension felt a little tone deaf, even if the company intended well. "I don't know when I'll be in a place where I'll enthusiastically get on a Peloton again," she said.

The employee who worked in the product department said his initial reaction was to think it was a joke, but added that he'd still take advantage of the offer.

The sweeping layoffs, and the news that Peloton's founder John Foley would be stepping down as CEO after a decade in charge, capped off months of turmoil at the popular fitness company. Alongside other pandemic bets like Zoom, Peloton had been a Wall Street darling for much of the prior two years. For many of those who lost their jobs this week, the circumstances surrounding the layouts represented a distinctly pandemic end to their time at the company: let go in virtual meetings after struggling to get access to the applications they relied on for remote work.

From boom to bust

As much of the world went through one lockdown after another, Peloton saw unprecedented demand for its connected bikes and treadmills, which pair with a monthly subscription to its virtual workout classes. Peloton's leadership sought ways to meet and capitalize on the heightened demand for its product.

In May 2021, the company said it would commit $400 million towards building the first Peloton factory in the United States as it looked to address lags in deliveries. It also invested in the launch of a private label apparel line announced in September 2021, founded by Foley's wife, Jill. (Foley, who remains involved in the company as executive chair of the board, announced that Jill, who was VP of Apparel, would be among "other senior-level departures across various areas of the business.")

But the company faced other public challenges during the same period. Also in May, the company recalled its treadmills over safety incidents -- after weeks of fighting with federal safety regulators -- and apologized for not complying sooner. In November, the company acknowledged that demand for its hardware had waned. This downturn came as more consumers returned to gyms. By the end of January, Peloton's stock had plummeted down to $25 at one point, its lowest level since the end of March 2020, or the earliest days of the pandemic. At its pandemic-fueled peak in December 2020, the company's stock reached $162 a share.

This week, Peloton's stock jumped on the news of the organizational changes, closing at $37 on Thursday.

In a call with investors Tuesday, Foley acknowledged "missteps," including scaling its operations "too rapidly." He continued: "We own this. I own this, and we are holding ourselves accountable. That starts today." On the same call, CFO Jill Woodworth said Peloton planned to sell "both the building and the land" of the planned factory by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.

In response to questions for this story, a Peloton spokesperson directed CNN Business to recent company blog posts. In the post about the organizational changes, Foley framed the restructuring as "getting back to basics."

Amazon and Nike are exploring bids for Peloton, report says

In interviews with CNN Business, workers expressed a mix of frustration with management for what they saw as a failure to anticipate and appropriately navigate an inevitable downturn in demand as the pandemic eased, as well as some relief that the hammer had finally fallen after months of uncertainty.

One employee who worked on the field operations team doing deliveries and product setup in peoples' homes told CNN Business that he personally saw the slowed demand. While he was initially putting in 40 to 60 hours per week in late 2020 and early 2021, he said his hours noticeably scaled back to 10 to 20 hours per week just a few months later.
"You've gotta think: There's only so many people. There's only so many Pelotons that Long Island will be able to get," he said, noting that was his delivery zone. "At one point, something is going to happen. I didn't know how quickly it was going to happen."

Perhaps more than anything, employees felt a sense of whiplash at the rapid rise and fall. The workers CNN Business spoke with had each joined the company during the pandemic, when the company was at its peak.

"They were cranking out development of new stuff, hiring like crazy, paying well ... all the things you look for in a company," said the employee who panicked the night before. He said his job offer at Peloton was more competitive than what some FAANG companies had dangled before him in interviews.

Finding a new community -- on LinkedIn

In the hours after layoffs, many impacted employees posted on LinkedIn about losing their jobs. Individual posts were quickly met with an outpouring of admiration and support from Peloton coworkers, among others. One post by former associate brand manager Colin Burke went seemingly viral with more than 14,000 Likes. Burke acknowledged the tremendous response in a followup.

"Me again," Burke wrote. "Not to be all "wow, this blew up" but... wow! ... By Tuesday evening, the shock of getting laid off evolved into the shock of seeing so much support. I had hundreds of messages from friends, family, and, in many cases, complete strangers mobilizing to offer whatever help they could."

A few grassroots spreadsheets also popped up to circulate the names of workers now looking for jobs. Peloton said it was partnering with outplacement services company RiseSmart on providing career help, including creating an official, opt-in talent directory for former staffers to help connect them to other employers. Meanwhile, recruiters and managers at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Coinbase and Meta all jumped at the chance to tout job opportunities on LinkedIn for affected Peloton staffers.

While many of those laid off quickly lost access to any remaining company apps and services, some reportedly found a way to tune into Peloton's town hall on Wednesday hosted where Foley and incoming CEO Barry McCarthy addressed staffers. According to CNBC, some current and former employees blasted angry comments through the meeting's chat feature. (A company spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting.)

Former employees told CNN Business that prior to the layoffs, the company had announced a shift in its all-hands meeting protocol to secure sign-ins through a work device so they were unsure how former employees would've had access.

Regardless, as the third former employee told CNN Business, "I'm very glad to not be there. I think trust is fractured."