Friday, April 01, 2022

US rights groups welcome Title 42’s likely end, want more details

Rights advocates welcome the reported plan to end the US border restriction in May, but demand an immediate end to expulsions.

Migrants at US-Mexico border — Rights groups, the United Nations, and progressive Democratic leaders have blasted the Title 42 policy as a violation of US and international laws [File: Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters]

By Jihan Abdalla

Washington, DC – Immigration rights advocates in the United States have called on the Biden administration to provide more information on reported plans to lift a contentious rule along the US-Mexico border that has blocked most people from seeking asylum in the country.

Rights groups on Thursday said they are still waiting for confirmation that the administration will revoke the policy, known as Title 42, by May 23, as several news outlets reported this week. While they welcomed the likely end to Title 42, the groups say they need clarity on whether expulsions would continue during the “phase-out” period.

KEEP READING

Biden administration unveils new asylum rule on US-Mexico border

Number of migrants crossing dangerous Darien Gap soars: UNHCR

US to end ‘Title 42’ border restriction in May: Reports

“One of our key questions is whether or not they will continue to expel people seeking refugee protection during that period … That would be very concerning,” said Eleanor Acer, refugee protection director at Human Rights First, a US-based group.

“We welcome the commitment to end Title 42 order, that’s an important step forward,” Acer told Al Jazeera, “but we also would like to see the restoration of asylum and the upholding of asylum law along the border.”

The policy

Former US President Donald Trump first invoked Title 42 in March 2020, citing the need to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Under the order, most asylum seekers apprehended at the US’s southern border are sent back to Mexico, or to their country of origin, within hours, without the chance to file an asylum claim.

Rights groups, the United Nations, and progressive Democratic leaders have blasted the policy as a violation of US and international laws, and an evasion of US responsibility towards people seeking protection in the country.

Despite the criticism, President Joe Biden, who took office in January of last year, has kept the order in place, and according to official data, more than 1.7 million Title 42 expulsions have been carried out since 2020.

But Biden’s administration faces increased pressure to end the border restriction as most vaccine and mask mandates have ended in much of the US, and as more Americans are vaccinated and infections rates are declining.

“It has become increasingly untenable in a world of widespread vaccinations and easy access to COVID tests to claim that we continue to need to expel asylum seekers to stop the spread of COVID-19,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

“Title 42 has been an utter failure by all measures,” Reichlin-Melnick told Al Jazeera. “It hasn’t protected the public’s health, it has actively harmed asylum seekers and it has failed to limit the number of people coming to the border.”

Source of confusion

Rights groups say Title 42 also has been a source of confusion at the border, with asylum seekers subjected to the policy being expelled without any official procedure or documentation, spurring repeat crossings.

They also say it has inflicted massive human rights abuses on people seeking refuge. Human Rights First has documented nearly 10,000 reports of kidnapping, torture, rape, and other violent attacks against people sent to Mexico under Title 42 from the start of last year through March 15.

The rule came into sharp focus in September last year, when more than 15,000 Haitians, among them many children, camped under a bridge in southern Texas hoping to claim asylum. Haiti has been reeling from rising gang violence and political instability, but the US quickly emptied the camp and expelled the vast majority of people under Title 42.

Guerline Josef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a US-based support and advocacy group, said approximately 21,000 Haitians were flown back to Haiti under Title 42 since the Biden administration took office.

But many other Haitian asylum seekers have been waiting for months or even years in shelters and migrant camps in Mexico, hoping for a chance to apply for asylum in the US. Josef told Al Jazeera that she worries about what will happen to them should the border reopen.

“There is a large number of Haitians who were forced back to Mexico. The majority of those people are still waiting at the US-Mexico border to have access to asylum,” Josef said. “We are extremely worried as to what that will look like for Haitians and other Black migrants.”

What is the plan?

On Wednesday, after news agencies and local news outlets reported that the US planned to lift Title 42 in May, Biden told reporters that his administration would make a decision on the rule “soon”.

Hours later, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a fact sheet detailing its preparations for a potential increase in asylum seekers arriving at the border, which included deploying more personnel and expediting asylum claims.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), upon whose advice Title 42 has been invoked, also is expected to issue a decision this week on whether or not to extend the order.

Acer at Human Rights First said more than two years of Title 42 has been “a humanitarian travesty” that has led to human rights abuses, spurred disorder at the US-Mexico border, and tarnished the standing of the Biden administration.

While she is waiting to get more information about Washington’s plan should the policy be rescinded, Acer told Al Jazeera it is critical for the Biden administration to make clear that it intends to put in place an asylum system that meets international norms and requirements.

“The most important thing for the administration to do is to be clear that the United States has the capacity to effectively manage its borders and welcome people who are seeking refugee protection.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Freedom Convoy Unmasked: The Attempted Overthrow of Canada

Opinion by Darren Clarke, February 17, 2022 (photo courtesy WikiCommons)

leftfieldlark February 17, 2022 opinion

“When the US radical right is going after Canada nobody is safe. When I say democracy is fragile I mean it. We shall survive this onslaught but only if we don’t remain silent bystanders. Stand up for our friend Canada and let your voice be heard.”

Bruce Heyman, former US Ambassador to Canada (February 16, 2022)

As of yesterday you had to be asking yourself- If Canadian Premiers have all largely announced the removal of mandates and Covid protections why is Ottawa still occupied? The answer is because protesting mandates was only a cover used to manufacture consent for something more insidious. The overthrow of the government and the will of the majority. To understand how it has come to pass that Canadian self-determination is being threatened we have to talk about some things.

We need to talk about the evidence that there are forces, foreign and domestic, that are looking to destabilize and undermine Canadian sovereignty. We need to talk about how yesterday provided more evidence of how determined and well financed those forces are. We need to talk about the fact the Ottawa occupation was organized to provoke violence in our streets as a means to bring about a change in government. We need to talk about Tyler Russell.

We need to talk about Tyler Russell for three reasons, first, because he’s a member of the protest and a wholly representative one at that, second, on his Canada First Youtube channel he tells us precisely why he wants violence to happen in Ottawa, third, because of a video of a phone call he posted on February 11th which he claims is a call from Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

We also need to note that when Conservative leader Candice Bergen advocated her party support these protests in order to hurt the Prime Minister politically, she was supporting the designs of a mindset Canadian Conservatives have long cultivated via their various social media sources. The mindset of people like Tyler Russell.

Who is Tyler Russell? antihate.ca devoted an article to Russell and his Canada First outfit in 2021, noting a speech he gave on Parliament Hill, Canada Day 2020, “In his speech that day, Russell laid out his vision for a right-wing nationalist Canada First movement, citing Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy and Nick Fuentes, the young leader of the “Groypers.” a movement and a further re-branding of the neo-Nazi alt-right, as sources of inspiration.” antihate.ca infiltrated Russell’s chatrooms to provide examples of violent rhetoric, racism, misogyny and general evidence of all the things that make up your every day, run of the mill, psychopath (and if you feel that’s excessive check out the antihate.ca article or any of Russell’s Youtube videos).

Russell’s Instagram page features a few pictures that strike at the heart of the moment Canada finds itself in. The first is a picture of Russell in Ottawa, at the protests, in front of a sign featuring an abundance of trolling, slogans like, “Trudeau is a Terrorist.” The second picture is more telling of the deeper threat to Canadian sovereignty.

This second picture is of the youthful Russell in a suit, a red tie and a red hat that reads, “Canada First.” Russell and a male counterpart stand side by side, arms around each other smiling for the camera. Russell’s partner in embrace sports a blue, “America First,” hat. Russell’s smile, like his counterparts, is the smile of a man who thinks he is being entirely original while dressed in someone else’s uniform. This picture of a Canadian unguardedly embracing an American persona seems entirely appropriate for the latest news in the ongoing uprisings across Canada against the Federal government. The undue influence foreign media is having on the larger narrative of the Ottawa occupation.

Canada First is of course a derivative of America First. America First is a Donald Trump campaign slogan maintained to propagate support for a ruling class Sarah Kendzior called, “A transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.” A government that looked to chop up the nation and sell it off for parts. In case you don’t know, Canada has lots of great parts to sell off, particularly in terms of its’ natural resources and public health care sector.

In this context, the picture of Canada First and America First, arm and arm, makes the copy-cat posing a caricature of a caricature. The vision of that embrace, of Russell’s hubris, channels the crescendoing of the long held American desire to realize their Manifest Destiny, the American capitalist class’s belief that they were ordained by God to devour, well, everything.

Of course the insatiable desires of unchecked capitalism devoured America first. So much so that as the Trump crime syndicate illustrated, America is more a concept than a place at this point. It’s the most effective swindle on the planet for those in pursuit of furthering wealth inequity. The torch for America’s current version of Manifest Destiny is carried by global carpetbaggers, or, as Kendzior put it, “an alliance of autocrats,” looking to further their disproportionate wealth at the expense of the quality of life of everybody else. That’s why the main outlets for portraying the Freedom Convoy at this point are Russian State media and Fox News. Oligarchs and Plutocrats. The modern day, self-ordained, royalty of Russia and the United States.

The larger goal for the American and Russian coverage is simple- To undermine Canadian sovereignty. When Tyler Russell spoke in a January 27th Youtube video about the possibility of violence at the occupation it was with glee. He wants that. He wants our government to have to physically engage with a protest that is wall to wall Canadian flags. It’s all optics baby. In his mind, in the occupation’s mind, it is the means to bring down the government.

I began writing about the convoy on February 2nd with a piece entitled- Freedom Convoy Unmasked: Who and What the Convoy Represents. Updating the blog as events continued to unfold, the concerns I expressed initially have all come to fruition. Namely, that a protest organized largely by white nationalists, fuelled by various Conservative propaganda sources, radicalized by global, radical, right wing groups, funded and provided public relations support by foreign actors, emboldened by police forces bending to their internal authoritarian leanings, was in fact a tool designed to undermine Canadian sovereignty and the will of the majority of Canadians.

Each point of what is essentially a flow chart for undermining the self-determination of Canada is supported by a preponderance of evidence–

That the protest was organized by the likes of Pat King, Tamara Lich and James Bauder who either embody or are linked to separatists, racists and white nationalists is demonstrable.

That Canada has been deeply infiltrated by right wing extremism (and at this point is significant point of origin for extremism) is well documented.

That the Conservative party of Canada, via the likes of Ontario Proud/Canada Proud founder Jeff Ballingall, has cultivated an angry mob of meme-fuelled hate over Justin Trudeau’s time in power.

That the current leadership of the Conservative party has actively looked to prolong the occupation, embolden occupiers and get as many photo ops with protestors as possible is well documented- up to and including, pictures.

That the RCMP and Ottawa Police have provided numerous examples of both passively and actively supporting the protest.

That the United States has invested heavily in funding the attempt to topple a democratically elected Canadian government. An example of that investment being that Americans provided 41.7% of 10.7 million dollars raised by an online funding site for the convoy.

That Fox News and Russian State TV are by far the leading providers of online content portraying the occupation.

How Tyler Russell caught my attention yesterday was via a February 11, 2022, (the day #snowmobilegate was trending on Twitter) video he shared on Twitter that Russell claims is from Doug Ford. Is it Doug Ford? I don’t know. The order of events the speaker on the phone promises has played out since and yeah, the voice sounds like him, “We’re pulling these passports, we’re going to get back to normal, and ah.. you know…I can’t give you an exact date but it will be very soon… okay… I’m going to be speaking over the next few days, Friday I’m going to be putting out a statement, Monday I will be giving dates…”

You can make what you want of the video but it’s compelling to consider given the news yesterday of Ford’s ex-Chief of Staff Dean French being the intermediary in talks between the City of Ottawa and the convoy organizers. The casual relationship between a Ford associate and protest organizers that are looking to overthrow a democratic government is disturbing. Particularly disturbing given that yesterday one of the convoy organizers, Pat King, who you may remember from his statement at an earlier juncture of the convoy, “The only way this is going to be solved is with bullets,” once again took to social media to post a video exposing his dangerous perspective, this time threatening the police, “In the end, just following orders is not going to be a good legal defence… just following orders is not going to be your saving grace when you’re standing on the other side of that witness box.”

This latest evidence of Conservative Premiers sympathetic, often cozy, relationship with protestors, highlights how intertwined the Conservative Party and the Convoy they created are. That some of that evidence of this relationship would come from someone who openly hates Justin Trudeau brings us to the Prime Minister. It brings us to why this kind of coordinated effort to undermine the will of the majority of Canadians would take place.

Justin Trudeau has proven himself as Prime Minister to be a social progressive and an economic centrist. The last part isn’t far enough right for Canadian and foreign financial elites who find the Conservative Party a more amenable partner for transnational looting, the first part, being a social progressive, is the tool used to inflame those with nationalistic/racist tendencies to protest against him. Few are under the illusion the Prime Minister is a perfect leader or person however the circumstances have conspired to create a context within which he is the the final line of defence for so much of which so many Canadians hold dear about our greater community. And he has handled a challenging situation, a flood of domestic and foreign opposition, really well.

I don’t know how we got to a place where Justin Trudeau is firmly placed as the last, best, chance for all that many hold dear about Canada, but here we are.

While Conservative parties have gamed a system that largely features two centrist/left wing parties versus one hard right wing party, Canadian sovereignty has been undermined in favour of transnational interests. All that remains left for them to conquer is the Federal government. Going into this third term as Prime Minister despite an uneven playing field swamped by American Hedge Fund media and rabid Conservative social media sources, patience has obviously worn thin to break down this final, most important, hurdle in gutting Canada.

Which brings us to this moment in Canadian history featuring a Conservative party that has brought Canada to a State of Emergency by design. Featuring a convoy that has brought Ottawa to the cusp of heightened violence by design.

This is a transnational coup designed to install Conservatives into the Federal government in order allow for the looting and selling off of Canada in pieces. This is an attack on Canadian sovereignty, especially every thread of the fabric of Canada that elevates the average person’s standard of living and provides vulnerable human beings, those within our borders, and those that seek to immigrate here, with basic protections and human rights.

That’s what is at stake right now. The heart of Canada. It appears the Prime Minister has recognized this, the only question is whether enough Canadians will realize that the person with their arm around us, smiling, doesn’t want to be our friend but rather our master.

HAWAII WATER POLLUTION
How shuttering Red Hill could make fueling the fleet more complex

By Geoff Ziezulewicz
Mar 29, 2022

In this Dec. 23, 2021, photo Rear Adm. John Korka, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, leads Navy and civilian water quality recovery experts through the tunnels of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. (MCS1 Luke McCall/Navy via AP)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement this month that the Defense Department would defuel and close down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was a step toward ending a months-long ordeal in which thousands of military families saw fuel leak into their tap water.

But while the Pentagon’s shuttering of Red Hill seeks to end the water crisis, it also raises questions about how a Navy increasingly focused on war in the West Pacific will fuel the fleet.

The 20 Red Hill tanks were built into a mountain ridge in 1943, and the 25-story-high containers can collectively hold a quarter-million gallons of fuel.

They also sit 100 feet above an aquifer that hundreds of thousands of Oahu residents rely upon for water.

Officials have blamed the fuel leak that has affected more than 9,000 Army, Navy and Air Force households on an “operator error” in November.

RELATED
Pentagon to shut down leaking fuel tank facility in Hawaii
The tanks at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility had leaked into a drinking water well and contaminated water at Pearl Harbor homes and offices.
By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press and Karen Jowers

Austin’s March 7 statement announcing the closure notes that the military is already moving toward more distributed refueling options, and that a centralized fuel hub like Red Hill “makes a lot less sense now” than it did 79 years ago.

“The distributed and dynamic nature of our force posture in the Indo-Pacific, the sophisticated threats we face, and the technology available to us demand an equally advanced and resilient fueling capability,” Austin said. “To a large degree, we already avail ourselves of dispersed fueling at sea and ashore, permanent and rotational. We will now expand and accelerate that strategic distribution.”

To be sure, there are plenty of Defense Logistics Agency fuel points and options for gassing up from Japan to Singapore and Australia, according to Bradley Martin, a retired Navy surface warfare officer and current director of the RAND Corporation’s National Security Supply Chain Institute.

But should a war break out, all those links in the refueling chain will be targeted, and Red Hill is a well-fortified and hard-to-replace position for storing massive amounts of fuel.

“It’s going to complicate how the joint force would deal with a contingency,” Martin said. “They’ll have to come up with some sort of alternative to keep the supply of fuel going in the event a war should start. That’s going to be difficult.”

Austin has given Navy and Defense Logistics Agency leadership until May 31 to come up with a plan for “safe and expeditious defueling” of Red Hill, to be completed in a year.

RELATED

Navy cites ‘operator error’ in fuel spill linked to families’ tainted water
The crisis has affected more than 9,000 Navy, Army and Air Force households at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and the Army’s Aliamanu Military Reservation and Red Hill communities, which are on the Navy water system.

By Karen Jowers

While the Pentagon will likely assess putting more fuel afloat via continuously underway tankers to resupply the West Pacific, Martin said he thinks the options for another mass fuel storage site in Hawaii will be “fairly limited.”

“There are aboveground tanks, those will be helpful for storage on a day-to-day basis, but when we start worrying about things being attacked, that’s going to probably be something we’d rather not deal with,” he said. “It’s all going to make the war in the Western Pacific, should it occur, more complicated.”

Building another Red Hill-type facility in Hawaii is likely out of the question because of costs and environmental studies that could take a generation to resolve, said Martin, who called the shuttering of Red Hill “inevitable.”

“You can’t dump fuel into the drinking water of a major city and expect there not to be consequences,” he said. “Now that is has happened, they’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with it.”

The United States dodged a bullet when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, because they did not strike the aboveground fuel storage there, and that’s why building Red Hill underground was of such importance back then, according to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“If the Japanese had gone after the fuel farm, it would have made operations in the Pacific much more difficult,” Cancian said.

RELATED

Military families ‘exhausted’ two months into water crisis in Hawaii
Residents of the affected communities are weighed down by the uncertainty of when they'll be able to return to their homes and how safe their homes will be, their long-term health concerns and just the daily grind.
By Karen Jowers

Cancian questioned the efficacy of having a bunch of afloat fuel tankers bobbing in the Pacific should war with China break out, but he added that there’s already “a broad recognition” that supply lines in general would be vulnerable in such a situation.

While the November fuel leak remains under investigation, Red Hill may also offer the Pentagon and Navy a tough lesson about the perils of putting off infrastructure maintenance.

“That type of maintenance is typically an easy thing to defer, because you don’t necessarily see the disaster until it happens,” Martin said. “A quick look at the Navy’s budget execution will tell you that base operating support, that type of stuff, has been underfunded and we’re seeing the consequences.”

The Sierra Club alleges that the Red Hill facility has suffered at least 73 leaks since it was built, though the Navy denies this, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported in December.

The Hawaii Department of Health recommended that the Navy implement groundwater monitoring wells and leak detection systems back in 2008, and 27,000 gallons of fuel escaped from one tank in 2014, Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

“If things aren’t correctly maintained, eventually they’re going to fail in a way that is unfortunate and is going to create a crisis,” Martin said. “And that’s sort of what happened here.”

RELATED

Toxic water consumes daily lives of many Hawaii military families, with no end in sight
Nothing can alleviate 'the complete mental load that we’re all bearing right now.'
By Karen Jowers

Defense officials are asking for a $1 billion fund for expenses related to the fuel-tainted water in Hawaii — from continuing needs of military families, to draining the fuel storage tanks and more cleanup as part of the Fiscal Year 2023 budget request released this week.

The new “Red Hill Recovery Fund” ask is in addition to the $1 billion that Congress has already provided to deal with the effects of the fuel leak DoD Comptroller Michael J. McCord, said during a Monday press briefing.

McCord said the $1 billion investment represents the commitment by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “to do the right thing by our military families and our neighbors in Hawaii.”

About Geoff Ziezulewicz
Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com

Thursday, March 31, 2022

APRIL FOOLS TOO

THE FOOL CARD ON THE LEFT IS FROM THE WITCHES TAROT USED IN THE 007 MOVIE: LIVE AND LET DIE

LIVE AND LET DIE 1973 - TAROT DECK James Bond - …

https://www.007museum.com/tarot007.htm

The very popular "Tarot of the Witches" Deck and set, made popular by Jane Seymore in the 007 Movie "Live and Let Die" back in the early 70?s. This deck has remained popular to this day. It has not been jaded by the connection with the …