Trump Invites All To Remove Masks, Interrupts Black Attendees At Kenosha Roundtable

FOR GEORGE FLOYD CHOKING WAS FATAL

FOR TRUMP IT MEANS YOU'RE A LOSER

Jeremy Blum, HuffPost•September 2, 2020

At a Tuesday roundtable with local officials in Kenosha, Wisconsin, President Donald Trump invited all present to remove their face masks and repeatedly answered questions that reporters asked of the only Black attendees.

“If you feel more comfortable, if you’ll say a couple of words, you might want to take the masks off, otherwise you can leave them on,” the president said at the start of the event. “Either way you want.”

Trump then pointed to one of the members in attendance, saying, “Look how fast you took that off.”

The indoor roundtable, where attendees sat at a distance from the president but within close proximity of each other, was focused on community safety in Kenosha. Trump used the meeting to condemn protests in the city that began after Jacob Blake, a now-paralyzed 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a white police officer on Aug. 23.-

The president also dismissed concerns about police brutality, arguing that “bad apples” on the police force would be “taken care of through the system” and that law enforcement needed to be supported.

“You know, the sad thing is you can do 10,000 great jobs as a policeman or a policewoman,” Trump said. “You can do an incredible job for years, and then you have one bad apple or something happens that’s bad. And that’s the nightly news for three weeks. That’s all they talk about.”

When a reporter directed questions about systemic racism in policing to James and Sharon Ward ― the only Black attendees and the pastors for Julia Jackson, Blake’s mother ― Trump repeatedly cut in to answer for them.“I think the police do an incredible job, and I think you do have some bad apples,” Trump said. “I think you’d agree every once in a while you’ll see something. And you do have the other situation, too, where they’re under this tremendous pressure, and they don’t handle it well. They call it ‘choking,’ and it happens.”

Trump previously referred to “bad apples” who “choke” under pressure in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday, when he bizarrely compared police officers to golfers who miss easy putts.

See the entirety of the roundtable below, courtesy of NBC:

75-year-old Buffalo man shoved by police speaks out on incident after month in hospital

Sarah Taddeo, New York State Team, USA TODAY•September 1, 2020


Police officers suspended after video shows them shoving 75-year-old

BUFFALO, N.Y. – It was his name that gave him away.

“Hey, are you the 75-year-old guy who was hit in Buffalo?” a post office worker asked.

Martin Gugino, 75, of Amherst, New York, wasn’t expecting to be recognized in public, especially wearing a face mask.

But the videos that captured the moment when Buffalo police officers shoved Gugino backward in front of Buffalo’s City Hall in June during a protest over the death of George Floyd, causing him to fall and crack his skull on the pavement, had been seen around the world.

Gugino, speaking to the USA TODAY Network's New York State Team last week in his first extended interview, was reluctant to go into detail about the incident, which sent him to the hospital for a month to recover from a brain injury and a fractured skull.

That's because he doesn’t remember the moment he was shoved, and he has flashes of memory in the minutes before or after. Video recordings helped him fill in the blank spots of what happened that evening.

He is seemingly uninterested in becoming a symbol of a trend or a movement, or drawing attention to himself.

When asked about the context surrounding his fall and injuries, he noted that “a lot of people are injured, and a lot of people are killed,” and often, nothing is done about those incidents, especially if there was no record of it on video.

Still, he called the incident a “turning point” for him.

He said he will continue to participate in grassroots activism around the First Amendment, as he has done for decades. He’ll continue to publish writings about climate change and injustices at Guantanamo Bay on the internet.

“My life is headed in a new direction,” Gugino said. “How is it different? I’m not really sure yet.”

Previously: Trump pushes unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester shoved to the ground by police

Martin Gugino, 75, was pushed by Buffalo Police officers in the aftermath of a rally in Buffalo on June 4. He went to the hospital with a fractured skull and brain injury. He has since recovered, and is hoping to move back to Buffalo in the fall.

‘Why are they carrying batons?’

Gugino showed up at a Black Lives Matter rally in downtown Buffalo on June 4 at around 7:45 p.m., 15 minutes before the city-imposed curfew took effect.

The night before, a number of Buffalo police officers took a knee with community members in solidarity with the protests after Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody May 25.

Just minutes before police began moving toward the crowd, Gugino noticed they were outfitted with helmets, vests and batons: “I thought, ‘Why are they carrying batons?'"

Earlier in the evening, he had approached several police officers to ask whether they thought Mayor Byron Brown’s curfew order could legitimately make an assembly illegal.

They didn’t respond, other than to offer to read the mayor’s statements to him.

Gugino also had a conversation with several bystanders, which was caught on video and appeared to show at least one person expressing anger toward him.

Gugino said one person thought he was an undercover cop, which Gugino denies.

At about 8:10 p.m., as seen in several videos of the incident, a group of officers began walking toward a few dozen rally attendees who were still in the downtown area after curfew.

Video footage shows a tall, white-haired Gugino approaching the officers head on.

Gugino said he remembers alarmed thoughts flashing through his head when he saw officers moving toward the demonstrators, but he “has no idea” what he said to police in that moment.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God…’ and that’s all I can remember,” he said.

Seconds later, two officers in the advancing group shoved Gugino away from them and he stumbled and fell backward, his head audibly cracking against the pavement.

Emergency personnel arrived soon after, and Gugino was taken to the Erie County Medical Center.

The two officers involved, Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski, were suspended without pay and later charged with second-degree assault.

They pleaded not guilty and are suspended with pay; officers cannot be suspended without pay for more than 30 days, according to a city spokesperson.

The City of Buffalo and the Buffalo Police Department declined to comment further on the incident.

Martin Gugino shown in June 2019 at at Buffalo Youth Climate Strike rally.

‘Take your best shot’

What followed for Gugino were an avalanche of tests, scans and physical therapy for the hospital.

After weeks in bed, standing or walking became a challenge, and he had vivid nightmares.

“Every time you’d sit up, you would get dizzy,” he said. “It was like you were on a boat all the time.”

His pain was manageable with Tylenol, which he said he rarely used for minor aches and pains, even at 75.

He was monitored by medical staff day and night, and he couldn’t get out of bed or go to the bathroom without their help.

On the positive side, he’d be offered cookies in the middle of the night. His flavor of choice? Coconut.

Meanwhile, cards, letters and other well wishes poured in. He slept for hours in the days after the incident, disconnected from the whirlwind of global internet commentary around his actions and the police response.

He has since seen and heard snippets of strangers’ accusations that he was a “leftist provocateur,” that his fall was a hoax or that he was wearing a pack of fake blood under his mask.

President Donald Trump publicly considered the validity of such theories about Gugino on Twitter the following week, saying Gugino “could be an antifa provocateur” and that he “was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment.”

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020

Gugino’s lawyers got angry emails questioning why they’d defend “a faker,” he said. But Gugino is unfazed by the accusations.

“I was like, ‘Go ahead, take your best shot,” he said.

The incident didn’t cloud his view of police. He still regards them as regular citizens who work within a system he believes is broken.

“I come from the suburbs, and there’s no problem with police in a white neighborhood,” he said. “I’m not scared of the policemen, but the system is screwed up.”

After about a month, Gugino was released from the hospital and was able to walk out using a cane.

He’s living with family outside New York and plans to close on a new home in Buffalo in September.

Martin Gugino, left, listens at a talk by West Cosgrove, of Rural & Migrant Ministry in Feb. 2019.

‘That’s what democracy does’

When it comes to justice, Gugino is interested in so many causes that he’ll start talking about a new one before he’s finished discussing the first.

He retired in 2003 after decades of working at FirstEnergy Corp. in Cleveland. After living in California for a time, he moved back to Buffalo to care for his ailing mother, who died six years ago. He has no spouse or children.

Even after a brain injury, he has split-second recall for specific details about years-old court cases, such as the Benny Warr case in Rochester, in which a Black man in a wheelchair alleged that he was unlawfully arrested and beaten by police.

Gugino’s values rest solidly on the rights enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment, which reads that “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

But he believes these values are often lost on modern government and law enforcement officials.

He used the example of a 2010 Veterans for Peace rally in front of the White House, which protested the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other conflicts. More than 130 attendees were arrested.

“You’re going to the White House and you’re saying, ‘Stop the war.’ That means the United States should come out and say, ‘Thank you so much, and we’re writing down all your complaints,’” Gugino said.

Given the country’s foundation, those involved in more recent protests and rallies should be treated with personal and ideological respect, and law enforcement officials should know whether the laws they protect are themselves legal, he said.

Still, he has hope, because of his country’s democratic roots.

He pointed to Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers campaign in Communist China in the 1950s, where Zedong’s solicitation of feedback on his government from the intellectual community quickly turned into a crackdown on ideological critics.

“In America, we decided to let a hundred flowers bloom,” Gugino said.

“And you know what that means? People are going to get together and start complaining, and realizing how they’re being treated. Are you going to invite them in? Are you going to understand what they’re up to? That’s what democracy does. That’s the difference between Mao Zedong and George Washington.”

Follow Sarah Taddeo on Twitter @Sjtaddeo

Kenosha: Witnesses describe the night Kyle Rittenhouse opened fire during protests

More: How QAnon and other dark forces are radicalizing Americans as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and election looms

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: Buffalo man Martin Gugino talks recovery after police shoved him

Police arrested food-truck workers at gunpoint and jailed them for 48 hours to try to keep them from Kenosha protests, attorneys say

insider@insider.com (Jack Crosbie),
Business Insider•September 1, 2020

Authorities disperse people from a park in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25. Morry Gash/AP


The police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and a federal officer last week arrested food-truck workers at gunpoint, alleging that their presence at a gas station was evidence that they were "preparing for criminal activity" amid protests prompted by the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

A Riot Kitchen leader rejected claims that the group was breaking the law, saying they were filling fuel jugs needed to power their generator on their bus. Riot Kitchen supports protesters with food and supplies and says these efforts can deescalate confrontations.

ix of the workers arrested were held for nearly 48 hours in what one attorney said was a blatant attempt to keep them away from protests.

The Riot Kitchen bus was never supposed to be in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The members of the Seattle-based food nonprofit were driving cross-country to the March on Washington, DC, when a police officer in Kenosha shot Jacob Blake on August 23. The group detoured to support the growing protests against police brutality there.

But they never got the chance to help.

The same police department whose officer shot Blake seven times in the back arrested eight activists with US marshals' assistance and impounded three vehicles on August 26, soon after Riot Kitchen arrived in the city.

Part of the arrests was caught on video, which appeared to show Kenosha police officers and at least one US marshal detaining members of Riot Kitchen near their converted school bus, then smashing in the windows of the group's minivan and dragging them into unmarked vehicles.

The group was at a Speedway gas station filling up fuel jugs to run the generators that power its kitchen and living areas on the bus when officers with weapons drawn arrested them, a leader with the nonprofit said, adding that its purpose is to deescalate protests by providing free food for demonstrators.

The presence of federal agents in Kenosha invited comparisons to Portland, Oregon, where federal agents driving unmarked cars snatched activists off the street earlier this summer. In a statement, the US Marshals Service confirmed to Insider that its agents were working with local law enforcement to address rioting, looting, and other federal crimes.

Booking information showed that the arrests of Riot Kitchen's activists originated with the Kenosha police.
—riotkitchen206 (@riotkitchen206) August 27, 2020

In a statement released Thursday, the Kenosha Police Department said a "citizen tip" alerted officers to "several suspicious vehicles" with out-of-state license plates. After surveilling the group, the department, assisted by the US Marshals, arrested the activists at the gas station. The statement said that the activists filling the fuel cans led officers to suspect that they were "preparing for criminal activity."

Jennifer Schurle, a member of Riot Kitchen's board of directors, said the group was preparing to help protesters and was not breaking the law.

"We reject all claims that our crew was there to incite violence or build explosives," Schurle said in a statement on Friday. "Our nonprofit organization has always been and will always be about feeding people."

The group said that the officers — who can be seen in the video with weapons drawn — did not identify themselves. The Kenosha Police Department's statement said the officers did identify themselves.

Schurle said that after their arrest, members of the collective "were thrown into holding cells and kept for hours without water or blankets and denied phone calls to their loved ones."

Two of the eight volunteers arrested were released on bond on Thursday, while the rest were held until Friday, close to 48 hours after their arrest. They were held in Kenosha's county jail in pretrial detention, all on misdemeanor disorderly-conduct charges, according to booking information available through the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department. After their release, activists struggled for several more hours to reclaim their personal belongings like phones and wallets from the police department.

Art Heitzer, a member of the Wisconsin National Lawyers Guild's steering committee, told Insider that the police used long hold times as a tactic to keep activists off the streets, citing similar patterns of arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Heitzer said the Riot Kitchen crew members were not alone in their experience.

"We know of activists from the southeast Wisconsin area who were picked up and held more than 24 hours, which is unusual," Heitzer said. "The numbers of people admitted to the Kenosha county jail do not appear to justify any such delays."

According to inmate records, 52 people were booked into the jail on August 26 and 27.

Heitzer said the department's statement described the arrests as "spurred by reports of suspicious-looking people or vehicles, without any definition of what 'suspicious' meant."

In a statement released Friday, the National Lawyers Guild alleged that law enforcement's targeting of mobile-kitchen workers and other supporting activists, like street medics, was part of a double standard:


"The Milwaukee NLG expresses its extreme concern over the actions of the Kenosha police and law-enforcement authorities in Kenosha, including the apparent double standard in seizing and arresting street medics and those attempting to supply food in a mobile kitchen, although failing to enforce the curfew against — and even encouraging — heavily armed militia, including the 17-year-old admitted killer of protesters.

"We are also concerned and investigating video documentation and eyewitness reports of civilians being seized off the street or from inside their cars, and forced into unmarked vehicles, often with no license plates, by unknown authorities, and then being held without processing for many, many hours."

Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with killing two protesters last week, was allowed free rein in the city while carrying a firearm and accepted bottled water from police officers before the shooting.

The Kenosha Police Department alleged that officers discovered gas masks, body armor, and "illegal fireworks" in vehicles associated with Riot Kitchen. The department did not return Insider's request for clarification on the items discovered in the vehicles.

As of Monday, Riot Kitchen's vehicles were still in the city's impound lot.

Read the original article on Business Insider

ORWELLIANISM
William Barr Says Police Being Racist Toward Black People Isn't Racism
Lydia O'Connor, HuffPost•September 2, 2020


Attorney General William Barr stunned viewers Wednesday when he said that it’s not necessarily racism when police repeatedly treat Black people differently than white people.

Barr made the remarks in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who pressed him to back up his stated belief that Black people aren’t disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.

“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said.

The attorney general also disputed the idea that the criminal justice system treats Black people more harshly, as research broadly shows it does.

“No, I don’t think there are two justice systems,” he said. “I think the narrative that the police are on some epidemic of shooting unarmed Black men is simply a false narrative, and also the narrative that that’s based on race.”

Wolf confronted Barr with a remark he’d made to ABC in July, quoting him as saying, “I do think it is a widespread phenomenon that African American males, in particular, are treated with extra suspicion and maybe not given the benefit of the doubt.”

“That’s what I just said,” Barr responded. Perplexed, Wolf asked, “But doesn’t that sound like systemic racism?” Barr began nitpicking the language: “No. To me, the word systemic means that it’s built into the institution.”

What the attorney general acknowledged to be true is, in fact, systemic racism. Racism against Black people has been built into the American system since white settlers colonized the land and then spent centuries enslaving Black people and legalizing discrimination against them. The lingering effects of those practices are what fuel the racism Black Americans face today, sometimes directly costing them their lives.

President Donald Trump, too, said this week that police violence against Black people isn’t a systemic issue. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “I think the police do an incredible job, and I think you do have some bad apples.”

Trump was speaking at a roundtable event in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where police recently shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in the back seven times, paralyzing him from the waist down.

Barr claimed during his CNN interview that Blake was “in the midst of committing a felony and he was armed.” Wolf corrected him, noting that Blake’s family and lawyers say that a knife might have been nearby but that Blake wasn’t armed with it. Barr stood by his claim about the case, which remains under investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the FBI.

Steve Bannon’s effort to export his fiery popularism to Europe is failing
Mark Hosenball,Reuters•September 2, 2020

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attempts by former White House adviser Steve Bannon to export President Donald Trump's brand of populism to Europe are on the rocks, according to several of his current and former political partners in Italy and Belgium.

After Bannon was charged with fraud for his role in an effort to raise money to help build Trump's wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, two people working with him said an effort to found an academy for right-wing Roman Catholic activists in Italy faces a criminal inquiry by the Rome criminal court and a project aimed at ending the European Union has closed up shop.

After helping guide Trump to his 2016 election victory, Bannon served for seven months as the White House chief strategist. He briefly returned to his former employer, the right-wing Breitbart News, but later stepped down.

Then he turned his sights on Europe, where he has both tried to establish what his Italian partner calls an "academy for the Judeo-Christian West" at an Italian monastery and to promote right-wing parties skeptical about the European Union.

Bannon and his spokeswoman did not respond to multiple requests for comments about his activities in Europe.

As adviser to Trump, Bannon helped articulate the "America First" right-wing populism and fierce opposition to immigration that have been hallmarks of the president's time in office.

He was arrested on a yacht last month and pleaded not guilty to charges of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to the $25 million "We Build the Wall" campaign. Bannon has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.


ITALIAN PROBE

One of the main post-Trump causes Bannon promoted has been the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which supports conservative Catholic causes and is based in an 800-year old monastery south of Rome.

Along with Bannon, the institute has been trying to set up a two-track program: an "academy for the Judeo-Christian West" with a Bannon-designed curriculum and the Cardinal Martino Academy, which will promote Catholic social teachings, said Benjamin Harnwell, a former British Conservative party activist who leads the institute and works with the former Trump aide.

Harnwell told Reuters he has recently had to delay his plans to further develop the institute after Italian authorities tried to evict him from the monastery.

In October, Italy's Culture Ministry revoked the institute's permission to use the monastery, saying Harnwell's organization did not meet the requirements to manage it and had lied when applying to use the building.

The Culture Ministry press office said Harnwell's organization had not managed a cultural site for at least five years, a condition for those applying to use the building.

In making its application, the institute said that it had operated an abbey in central Italy since 2015. However state television RAI said in a documentary that the abbey was an inaccessible ruin closed to the public. In announcing its intention to revoke the permission, the ministry also cited violations of various contractual obligations including a failure to pay concession fees and do maintenance work.

Harnwell's institute appealed to a local administrative court, which blocked the eviction order, effectively allowing the organization to keep managing the monastery. A ministry spokesman said it has now asked the State Council, Italy's top administrative court, to review the local court decision.

In a separate action, Italy's Court of Auditors said the institute did not pay rent of around 200,000 euros ($236,340) for 2018 and 2019. Harnwell did not directly address this accusation in responding to questions from Reuters but said Italian authorities were trying to undermine the institute because of politics.

In text message exchanges with Reuters, Harnwell said the institute "never participated fraudulently in the tender as alleged," and argued that "the Ministry for Culture annulled its lease out of political considerations."

He confirmed Italian media reports that prosecutors in Rome are also conducting an ongoing probe of the institute. Harnwell argued that the "criminal court is proceeding with its own case to discuss precisely the same material that we've just been cleared of by the administrative court."

Reuters was unable to confirm any specifics of the probe.

The prosecutor's office declined to comment in response to questions by Reuters about any probes into the group.

THE 'MOVEMENT' STOPS

Separately, a Brussels-based Bannon-backed project aimed at undermining the European Union shut up shop last year, said Mischael Modrikamen, the Belgian lawyer who teamed up with Bannon to promote the anti-EU "The Movement."

Bannon and his associates' principal objective was to marshal anti-EU sympathizers and parties to put forward candidates for 2019 European Parliament elections.

Populist candidates from France, Italy and Britain did well, but their counterparts in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Spain did not. And Bannon's "Movement" found little support from right-wing leaders.

Some key right-wing parties and leaders publicly distanced themselves from Bannon, with France's Marine LePen declaring last year he "was playing no role in our campaign."

Modrikamen told Reuters in a phone interview this week that he had withdrawn from politics in June 2019 and that there was "no Movement any more."

A European Commission spokesman declined to comment on the group.

Despite the European projects' problems, both Modrikamen and Harnwell expressed support to Reuters for Bannon and said they wished him well in facing the U.S. fraud charges.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball in Washington, additional reporting by Angelo Amante and Philip Pullella in Rome; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

Damaged Venezuelan oil tanker drawing international concern

JOSHUA GOODMAN and SCOTT SMITH,
Associated Press•September 2, 2020


Damaged Venezuelan oil tanker draws international concern

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The sight of a huge oil tanker that has taken on water and is leaning to one side off a remote stretch of Venezuela's coast has triggered international calls for action.

After years of neglect, the FSO Nabarima, a rusting hulk full of thick crude, is in a dangerous state of disrepair. While the full extent of the damage is unknown, if not repaired soon it could sink and spell environmental disaster, polluting turquoise seas along the vast coastline of Venezuela and several neighboring Caribbean nations, government critics and maritime experts say.

Adding to concerns, Venezuela's socialist government has said nothing publicly about its plans for the container.

However, anti-government oil workers like Eudis Girot, head of the Unitary Federation of Petroleum Workers of Venezuela, has launched a campaign seeking to get President Nicolás Maduro to pay attention. He is urging the embattled leader to look beyond years of bitter disputes between his government and the oil workers union to head off a potential environmental disaster.

“I invited you, Mr. President. Take a helicopter. Go out there. Do your own inspection,” Girot said in an online video in recent days. He has also posted three photos of what he said is the ship's flooded engine room. “By God, I hope I am wrong.”

The Venezuelan-flagged Nabarima is a 264-meter (866-foot) long ship believed to be almost filled to its capacity of 1.4 million barrels of crude — about five times the amount the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989.

It was used as a stationary platform anchored in the Gulf of Paria designed to help export the OPEC nation's oil. But it has fallen inactive with the recent plunge in global energy demand due to the coronavirus pandemic and to U.S. sanctions on Maduro’s government that have scared away potential buyers of the country's heavy crude.

Critics of Venezuela’s collapsing state-run oil firm PDVSA say the double-hulled tanker — built in 2005 for ConocoPhillips by South Korea's Samsung — is just one example of the socialist government’s corruption and mismanagement that has bankrupted the nation's petroleum industry that once made Venezuela wealthy.

“That ship should not be in this shape except for neglect and stupidity,” said Russ Dallen, head of Caracas Capital Markets, who closely tracks Venezuela’s maritime industry.

An industry executive, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the lack of maintenance appeared to have damaged valves in the ballast system used to stabilize the ship.

Today it dangerously leans more than 5 degrees on its right side, the executive said. Shipping tracking data shows that it has also sunk 14.5 meters (47.57 feet), right at the waterline, a sign of excess weight.

A potential spill in the shallow inland sea that Venezuela shares with Trinidad & Tobago could damage fragile mangroves, fisheries and bird sanctuaries. The situation has raised alarm in Trinidad and the nearby Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, said a second industry executive, who also insisted on speaking anonymously because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

To prevent an environmental disaster, PDVSA would have to transfer crude off the tanker’s cargo to another vessel in a risky ship-to-ship transfer. But U.S. sanctions that ban Americans from doing business with Venezuela could scare off many foreign companies from getting involved.

However, the Italian oil firm Eni, which operates the Petrosucre joint venture as a minority partner with PDVSA, said in a statement Wednesday that there is currently no risk of an oil spill. The tanker is “stable” and recent flooding of the ship was “addressed and solved," Eni said, adding that it is working with PDVSA next to unload the oil from the Nabarima.

PDVSA and Venezuela’s ministry of communications did not immediately respond to emailed requests by AP seeking comment on the Nabarima.

Ian Ralby, the founder of the maritime security firm I.R. Consilium, compared the Venezuelan tanker to the FSO Safer, which has been decaying for years off the coast of Yemen with more than 1 million barrels of oil.

“This may seem like little more than a leaking pipe, far away in Venezuela," Ralby said. "But the consequences could be catastrophic for the entire Caribbean.”

This is the second recent maritime emergency for Venezuela after a spill at the El Palito refinery last month coated in crude a 9-mile stretch of pristine Caribbean beaches a few hours from the capital of Caracas.

As a union leader, Girot talks frequently with workers for Petrosucre who risk their lives boarding the Nabarima and report back what they see. He said he is ready to retract his statements and let Maduro throw him into jail if he turns out to be wrong.

The problem is nothing new, but it is growing critical, he said.

“Nobody’s paying attention to this situation,” Girot said in a phone interview from his base in Barcelona, Venezuela. “If this oil remains in this ship we run the risk of a tragedy and ecological catastrophe at any moment.”

___

Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman reported this story from Miami and AP writer Scott Smith reported in Caracas, Venezuela.

Philippines court orders US marine who killed transgender woman to be freed

HE ONLY SERVED FIVE YEARS, HALF HIS SENTENCE

FREE NO PAROLE
TED ALJIBE AFP•September 2, 2020


Philippines court orders US marine who killed transgender woman to be freed
US Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton is escorted by Philippines police at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City in December 2015

A US Marine convicted of killing a transgender woman in the Philippines has been ordered freed on the grounds of good conduct after serving half his maximum 10-year sentence, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton has been in detention since the October 2014 motel killing of Jennifer Laude after he met her at a bar while on a break from joint military exercises in the northern city of Olongapo.

A court ruled Tuesday that Pemberton -- held in a special jail at the Philippine military headquarters in Manila -- qualified for early release, his Filipina lawyer Rowena Garcia Flores said.

Court officials in Olongapo and spokespeople for the Philippine military or US embassy could not be reached for comment.- 

A statement from Philippine military spokesman Major-General Edgard Arevalo said they had not received any court order, but they would abide by it.

The decision was deplored by Harry Roque, now the spokesman for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte but who briefly represented the Laude's family during the trial.

"Laude's death personifies the death of Philippine sovereignty and the light penalty imposed on Pemberton proves that despite the president's independent foreign policy... Americans continue to have the status of conquering colonials in our country," he said.

Virginia Suarez, a lawyer for the Laude family, asked the court to reconsider Pemberton's release.

She said his supposed good conduct had never been put to the test because he served his sentence in special facilities, rather than a regular prison.

Suarez told AFP she feared Pemberton would leave the country before the court could rule on her filing, although Flores said her client was still in the country.

Pemberton's conviction was the first under a so-called Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the two allies that covered the legal liability of US troops taking part in military operations in the Philippines.

Since being elected in 2016, President Duterte has tried to steer away from the US ambit to pursue greater economic cooperation with China.

In February he formally notified Washington he was axing the VFA effective August, after accusing the US of interference in his internationally condemned narcotics crackdown.

Manila later put the abrogation on hold "in light of political and other developments in the region", a decision seen as acknowledging China's increasing diplomatic muscularity.

cgm/fox

Why the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated

Stephen Whitfield, Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University,
The Conversation•September 2, 2020

Mary Ann Mendoza was pulled as a speaker at the RNC after tweeting a link to an anti-Semitic thread. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

An anti-Semitic hoax more than a century old reared its ugly head again as the Republican National Convention was underway last week.

Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of the advisory board of President Trump’s reelection campaign, was due to speak on Aug. 25. But she was suddenly pulled from the schedule after she had retweeted a link to a conspiracy theory about Jewish elites plotting to take over the world.

In her now-deleted tweet, Mendoza urged her roughly 40,000 followers to read a lengthy thread that warned of a plan to enslave the “goyim,” or non-Jews. It included fevered denunciations of the historically wealthy Jewish family, the Rothschilds, as well as the top target of right-wing extremism today, the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros.

The thread also made reference to one of the most notorious hoaxes in modern history: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” As a scholar of American Jewish history, I know how durable this document has been as a source of the belief in Jewish conspiracies. The fact that it is still making the rounds within the fringe precincts of the political right today is testament to the longevity of this fabrication.- ADVERTISEMENT -

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Surely no outright forgery in modern history has ever proved itself more durable. In the early 20th century, the Protocols were concocted by Tsarist police known as the Okhrana, drawing upon an obscure 1868 German novel, “Biarritz,” in which mysterious Jewish leaders meet in a Prague cemetery.

This fictional cabal aspires for power over entire nations through currency manipulation and seeks ideological domination by disseminating fake news. In the novel, the Devil listens sympathetically to the reports that representatives of the tribes of Israel present, describing the havoc and subversion that they have wrought, and the destruction that is yet to come.

The Okhrana – “protection” in Russian – worked for what was then the most powerful anti-Semitic regime in Europe and wanted to use the hoax to discredit revolutionary forces hostile to the reactionary policies and religious mysticism of Tsarist rule.

The document became a global phenomenon only about two decades after the Okhrana’s fabrication. Widespread publication and republication coincided with both the influenza pandemic of 1918-20 and the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 – both of which stirred fears of obscure forces that menaced social control.

Scapegoating Jews for disease and political unrest was nothing new. Medieval Jews had been massacred in the wake of accusations of having poisoned wells and spreading plagues.

But a century ago, the crisis in public health probably mattered less than the Communists’ seizure of power in Russia, which, if unchecked, might overwhelm the political order that the Great War had destabilized. That some of the revolutionary leaders were of Jewish birth seemed to reinforce the predictions of the Protocols.

Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs, was known to have read the Protocols before being executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. In the following year, Hitler delivered his first recorded speech, in which he depicted an international conspiracy of Jews – of all Jews – to weaken and poison the Aryan race and to extinguish German culture.

Hitler himself was unsure of the authenticity of the Protocols – a question of verification that may not have mattered all that much to the Nazis. The Führer told one of his early associates that the Protocols were “immensely instructive” in exposing what the Jews could accomplish in terms of “political intrigue,” and in demonstrating their skill at “deception [and] organization.”

‘Americanized’ conspiracy

In the U.S., the hoax was given a wide distribution by the most admired businessman of his time: Henry Ford. By 1920, Ford had “Americanized” the forged document as “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.” It ran as excerpts in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, for 91 straight weeks. “The International Jew” was translated into 16 languages.

Henry Ford published anti-Semitic conspiracies. Library of Congress

Though Jewish communal leadership mounted a lawsuit that forced the auto magnate to issue a retraction in 1927, the malignant hatred behind the Protocols continued to seep into the public conversation.

In the 1930s, the popular anti-New Deal “radio priest” Charles E. Coughlin excerpted the Protocols in his newspaper, Social Justice. But Father Coughlin was wary about endorsing its accuracy, and merely stated that it might be of “interest” to his readers.
History as conspiracy

Why is it that this demonstrably false document continues to hold sway today?

Perhaps the simplest explanation is human irrationality, which neither education nor enlightenment has ever managed to defeat.

The willingness to believe in the fantasy of a surreptitious Jewish stranglehold on the international economy and on mass media also validates the insight of the Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter. He traced in political extremism of both right and left an apocalyptic strain and a belief in an imminent confrontation between good and absolute evil.

Hofstadter was well aware that conspiracies punctuate the annals of the past. But especially for those Americans who hanker for the security of a settled way of life, political paranoia is tempting, such as the belief – as Hofstadter wrote – that “history is a conspiracy,” in which unseen forces are the shadowy driving mechanisms of human destiny.

Because anti-Semitism has survived nearly a couple of millennia, no form of prejudice has yet found a more vivid place in the imagination. And the fact that no international Jewish conspiracy was ever located has never depleted the power of the Protocols to tap into subterranean currents of demonization.
From the Rothschilds to Soros

What sustains the influence of the Protocols among cranks and extremists is not the language of the text itself – which few of them are likely to have fully read in its various versions – but what this forgery purports to underscore, which is the astonishingly cunning influence of Jews in modern history.

The Protocols thus have no importance in themselves; they are spurious. But they do bestow precision upon apocalyptic fears, which could not survive without some ingredient of plausibility – however wildly far-fetched.

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The Rothschild family was pivotal to the emergence of finance capitalism in 19th-century Europe. The family firm had branches in Germany, France, Austria, Italy and England, which lent credence to the charge of “cosmopolitanism” during an era of rising nationalism. The boom-and-bust oscillations of the economy generated not only misery but also grievances against financiers who seemed to benefit from such uncertainties.

Today, Soros, a Hungarian-born, British-educated American Jew, has become an especially hated figure for the far-right. Among the world’s canniest investors, he has spent billions of dollars promoting progressive causes. He seems to personify what Ford called “the international Jew.”

Venom against minorities other than Jews has not resulted in any equivalent to the Protocols. Judeophobia produced a specious documentation that bigotry against no other minority has ever elicited. Perhaps the very explicitness of the Protocols helps strengthen the suspicion that majority beliefs and interests are under attack, and keeps this dangerous form of anti-Semitism alive.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

Anti-Semitism in the US today is a variation on an old theme

America’s dark history of organized anti-Semitism re-emerges in today’s far-right groups


Stephen Whitfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

#PARDONSNOWDEN
U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

Raphael Satter, Reuters•September 2, 2020


(Reuters) - Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.

In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013 disclosures and still faces U.S. espionage charges, said on Twitter that the ruling was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping operation.-

"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA's activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them," Snowden said in a message posted to Twitter.

Evidence that the NSA was secretly building a vast database of U.S. telephone records - the who, the how, the when, and the where of millions of mobile calls - was the first and arguably the most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.

Up until that moment, top intelligence officials publicly insisted the NSA never knowingly collected information on Americans at all. After the program's exposure, U.S. officials fell back on the argument that the spying had played a crucial role in fighting domestic extremism, citing in particular the case of four San Diego residents who were accused of providing aid to religious fanatics in Somalia.
U.S. officials insisted that the four - Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud, and Issa Doreh - were convicted in 2013 thanks to the NSA's telephone record spying, but the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that those claims were "inconsistent with the contents of the classified record."

The ruling will not affect the convictions of Moalin and his fellow defendants; the court ruled the illegal surveillance did not taint the evidence introduced at their trial. Nevertheless, watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges' verdict on the NSA's spy program.

"Today's ruling is a victory for our privacy rights," the ACLU said in a statement, saying it "makes plain that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records violated the Constitution."

Protests erupt in Inner Mongolia over China's plans for teaching in Mandarin

IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALISM

Nicola Smith,The Telegraph•September 1, 2020

A protest in Mongolia about plans in neighbouring Inner Mongolia to introduce more Mandarin lessons in schools - Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP

Mass protests have erupted across northern China as tens of thousands of ethnic Mongolian students and their parents rally against government plans to phase out teaching in their language.

The rare display of dissent in the Inner Mongolian cities of Tongliao, Ordos and the regional capital, Hohhot, began last week in opposition to a move by Beijing to gradually shift the language of instruction in schools from Mongolian to Mandarin Chinese in three key subjects.

According to Radio Free Asia, pupils have boycotted classes and kneeling students at one school chanted: "Our language is Mongolian, and our homeland is Mongolia forever! Our mother tongue is Mongolian, and we will die for our mother tongue!"

Riot police have reportedly been dispatched to other schools across the region, with accounts of the authorities locking down campuses and pupils bursting through police cordons to join their demonstrating parents at the gates.


In one of the more disturbing RFA reports, a student is said to have died after jumping from the roof of his high school after seeing his mother detained.

For those doing terrific work on #Mongolia language protests: #UN #humanrights bodies have for 25 years pointed out #China govt failures to respect mother tongue education rights in multiple intl treaties the govt voluntarily joined. @hrw_chinese https://t.co/3lxDBTICXi
— Sophie Richardson (@SophieHRW) September 1, 2020

Social media posts show school pupils in blue and white tracksuits shouting slogans and their parents singing in the streets. Some ethnic Mongolians are believed to have been beaten by police, Mongolian-language social media groups shut down and books removed from shop shelves.

The autonomous region of Inner Mongolia was established in 1947, and the Mongol minority makes up about 17 percent of the 25 million strong population.

Public unrest is unusual in the region but the encroachment on the Mongolian language, which lies at the heart of the minority’s cultural identity, appears to have been a step too far.

The protests reflect turmoil elsewhere in China’s outer perimeter. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has been accused of trying to erase the unique cultural and ethnic identity of Tibetans, Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and to crack down on the autonomy of Hong Kong.

"The context of the [Mongolian] conflict are ethnic policies of the Chinese party-state which aim to overcome cultural and linguistic differences through forced assimilation,@ said Andreas Fulda, author of The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and Its Discontents.

“Instead of respecting the cultural autonomy of minority groups through bilingual education an increasingly totalitarian Chinese Communist Party seeks to socially engineer a mono-cultural race-state."

While China forces the Chinese language onto students in Inner Mongolia, Mongolian elders write back in protest. pic.twitter.com/u7032oyBSF
— Ungerni Khooloi (@Nicholastrad) August 31, 2020

A statement by the regional education bureau that the language changes will only apply to three subjects has done little to assuage fears.

According to the New York Times, the three subjects involved are language and literature, history, and politics.

Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, said that government policies billed as bringing economic development to areas like Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia had already eroded cultural ways and connections to their heritage.

“The byproducts of development policies – Han migration, intermarriage, environmental damage, economic marginalisation – have already weakened the sense of identity,” he said.

“The threat to language, even if the government insists in this case that bilingual education in some subjects will continue, targets one of the few remaining markers of identity and local culture - and a symbol of recognition and legitimation,” he added.

“The experiences of Tibet and Xinjiang demonstrate that autonomy in cultural matters cannot be taken for granted. Education is a pillar of nation building and key component of the authoritarian information order, which includes all media and cultural production.”