Inside the DarkSide Ransomware Attack on Colonial Pipeline

May 10, 2021 
WRITTEN BY
David Bisson

On May 8, the Colonial Pipeline Company announced that it had fallen victim to a ransomware attack a day earlier. The pipeline operations include transporting 100 million gallons of fuel daily to meet the needs of consumers across the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. from Texas to New York, according to the website of the refined products pipeline company.

“In response, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems,” Colonial Pipeline said in a web statement.

This attack has further blurred lines between nation-state sponsored APT attacks and cybercrime, as attacks of this magnitude are not like the “spray and pray” ransomware attacks of the past. These are RansomOps that are highly targeted and more akin to an APT-style operation.

Considering the potential impact of this shutdown, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued an emergency declaration in which it exempted 17 states and the District of Columbia from certain restrictions relating to the transportation of refined petroleum products by motor carriers and drivers.

Colonial Pipeline also used the web statement to share some details about its response thus far: “Upon learning of the issue, a leading, third-party cybersecurity firm was engaged, and they have launched an investigation into the nature and scope of this incident, which is ongoing. We have contacted law enforcement and other federal agencies.”

It went on to say that restoring its service was its primary focus. With that in mind, the company released an update on May 9 in which it disclosed its work to develop a service restart plan. Its strategy included getting smaller lines operational while some of its main lines remain offline.

All this in service of the goal of “substantially restoring operational service by the end of the week,” reported ZDNet.

Who Was Responsible?

The FBI confirmed on May 10 that the DarkSide ransomware gang was responsible for the attack. DarkSide is a relatively new ransomware strain associated with a new threat actor that Cybereason has been tracking since August 2020. In fact, the security firm has helped more than 10 of its customers to fight the group in the past few months.

Those responsible for DarkSide are very organized, and they have a mature Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) business model and affiliate program. The group has a phone number and even a help desk to facilitate negotiations with and collect information about its victims—not just technical information regarding their environment but also more general details relating to the company itself like the organization’s size and estimated revenue.

DarkSide appears to focus on targeting organizations in English-speaking countries while avoiding those in countries associated with former Soviet Bloc nations. This gang appears to have a code of conduct that prohibits attacks against hospitals, hospices, schools, universities, non-profit organizations and government agencies. No doubt that code of conduct is an effort to establish a level of trust and confidence in victims to enhance the likelihood that they’ll pay.

They are very organized and have a mature ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) business model and affiliate program. The group has a phone number and even a help desk to facilitate negotiations with victims, and they are making a great effort at collecting information about their victims - not just technical information about their environment, but more general information about the company itself, like the organization’s size and estimated revenue.

DarkSide follows the double extortion trend, where the threat actors first exfiltrates sensitive information stored on a victim’s systems before launching the encryption routine. After the ransomware encrypts the target’s data and issues the ransom demand for payment in exchange for the decryption key, the threat actors make the additional threat of publishing the exfiltrated data online should the target refuse to make the ransom payment.

This means the target is still faced with the prospect of having to pay the ransom regardless of whether or not they employed data backups as a precautionary measure. Ultimately, the DarkSide gang demands between $200,000 and $2 million from its victims based on data from previous attacks.

Key Aspects of DarkSide:
Emerging Threat: In a short amount of time, the DarkSide group has established a reputation for being a very “professional” and “organized” group that has potentially generated millions of dollars in profits from the ransomware.

High Severity: The Cybereason Nocturnus Team assesses the threat level as HIGH given the destructive potential of the attacks.

Human Operated Attack: Prior to the deployment of the ransomware, the attackers attempt to infiltrate and move laterally throughout the organization, carrying out a fully-developed attack operation.

Aiming Towards the DC: The DarkSide group is targeting domain controllers (DCs), which puts targets and the whole network environment at great risk. These types of techniques allow attackers to move laterally across the network, and they make it possible to encrypt more data/systems more quickly.

What makes this possible is the amount of work that generally goes into learning about a target beforehand. That’s what makes the Colonial Pipeline attack so peculiar. Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of Cybereason, elaborated on this point for Reuters:

They know who is the manager, they know who they're speaking with, they know where the money is, they know who is the decision maker…. It’s not good for business for them when the U.S. government becomes involved, when the FBI becomes involved. It's the last thing they need.

No surprise, therefore, that the DarkSide gang issued a press release on its “DarkSide Leaks” website on May 10 in which it seemed to suggest that one of its “partners” had been behind the attack against Colonial Pipeline. It said that it would screen its affiliates’ attacks going forward:



Screenshot of DarkSide’s press release. (Source: Cybereason)

What Organizations Should Do to Defend Themselves

Lengthy detection, investigation and response periods following a successful ransomware attack are simply too little, too late. They risk putting themselves in a situation where they must pay one (or more) ransoms. Prevention is key to defending against ransomware attacks.

In those situations, there is no guarantee that they will get their data/systems restored by the attackers, that there won’t be data corruption, that their stolen information will be deleted from the attackers’ servers or that those responsible won’t follow up with another attack and ransom demand in the future.

Organizations need to detect the attack at the earliest stages and block the threat outright. That’s why prevention is the key to defending against ransomware like DarkSide. This takes a future-ready, multi-layered operation-centric approach where Indicators of Behavior (IOBs) are leveraged to detect earlier and remediate faster than attackers can adapt their tactics.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Bisson  is an information security writer and security junkie. He's a contributing editor to IBM's Security Intelligence and Tripwire's The State of Security Blog, and he's a contributing writer for Bora. He also regularly produces written content for Zix and a number of other companies in the digital security space.

Rare yellow birds need wild roses to survive in British Columbia: researcher

© Provided by The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A little yellow bird's rescue from the brink of extinction in British Columbia hinges on an oft-overlooked wild flower in the province's Okanagan region, according to one Canadian government researcher.

The importance of local wild roses emerged over a nearly 20-year experiment concentrating on the yellow-breasted chat, a tiny bird whose characteristics and precarious status have preoccupied scientists for decades.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the population at one breeding site on the grounds of the Okanagan Valley's En'owkin Centre stood at just one pair.


Today it's grown to roughly 22 pairs, a phenomenon Environment and Climate Change Canada researcher Christine Bishop largely attributes to the rejuvenation of wild roses in the area.

Bishop said human appetite for shoreline development, combined with livestock grazing, led to the depletion of the prickly wild rose bushes she described as providing the birds' ideal nesting conditions.

"They nest in forests along shorelines. And that's one of the key reasons why population declined," she said. "Everybody wants to develop or live near waterfront. ... It's definitely a habitat that's under threat continually."

Bishop said yellow chat populations exist beyond the borders of the En'owkin centre, but have been all but eradicated in Ontario and go largely unmonitored in the Prairies. Bishop estimated B.C.'s total yellow chat population at about 250 pairs.

Environment Canada teamed up with the En'owkin Centre — an Indigenous post-secondary institution — and the Nature Trust of B.C. to try and revitalize chat populations in the southern Okanagan Valley.

They fenced off about 70 kilometres along a stream, resulting in 455 protected hectares.

The results allowed previously trampled wild rose plants to regrow, Bishop said, linking their regeneration to the spike in local yellow chat pairs.

"This is a success story," she said.

Bishop said the birds' preferred habitat in B.C. is wild rose bushes along shorelines with willow and cottonwood forests.

Sometimes they nest in habitats with poison ivy as long as it is intermingled in a thicket of wild rose, she added, noting humans don't often recognize such environments for the vital wildlife habitats they are.

"A lot of times people see these sites with a young willow, cottonwood, and a thicket of rose and other shrubs and they just don't think of it as a forest because they don't see it as big huge ponderosa pines and so on," she said. "And they don't understand that this type of thicket ... is not only used by chats, but many other birds as well as wildlife as cover and food sources."

Bishop said chats have provided no end of scientific puzzles over the years, a fact even reflected in the species name.

Chats produce about 40 distinctive sounds, including imitations of other bird calls and sounds Bishop likens to car horns, but can't be classified as songbirds because they don't sing.

She said their vibrant yellow hue prompted researchers to categorize them as warblers for decades, but that classification was undercut by their roughly 25-gram weight, more than twice the size of an average bird of that type.

"In 2017, they actually created its own family. And it's the only species in that family, because it cannot be classified," she said.

Chats also boast ultraviolet tints in their plumage, which are invisible to the human eye but can help male birds attract mates.

The males are also known to put on a distinctive display when allowed to enjoy their preferred shoreline forest habitats, she said.

"They dangle their feet and then they make this sort of honking sound," Bishop said with a laugh.

"And they're flapping slowly ... dangling their feet and the females down below are watching this and judging his performance."

Researchers are also concerned about the effects of climate change on the chat's habitat.

The watercourses will change into grasslands if it gets too dry in the Okanagan, making it unsuitable for these birds, Bishop said.

They might move to higher elevations if it gets too hot in the valley but that might not be the right habitat for them, she noted.

"So even though we see it as a great success story in terms of expansion of the population so far, the next 20 years will tell us whether or not the population will be able to survive."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2021.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press

New White House panel aims to separate science, politics

WASHINGTON — Eager to the turn the page on the Trump years, the Biden White House is launching an effort to unearth past problems with the politicization of science within government and to tighten scientific integrity rules for the future.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from more than two dozen government agencies will meet for the first time on Friday. Its mission is to look back through 2009 for areas where partisanship interfered with what were supposed to be decisions based on evidence and research and to come up with ways to keep politics out of government science in the future.

The effort was spurred by concerns that the Trump administration had politicized science in ways that put lives at risk, eroded public trust and worsened climate change.

“We want people to be able to trust what the federal government is telling you, whether it’s a weather forecast or information about vaccine safety or whatever,” said Jane Lubchenco, the deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

People need to know "it’s not by fiat, somebody’s sort of knee-jerk opinion about something,” added Alondra Nelson, the science office’s deputy director for science and society. Nelson and Lubchenco spoke to The Associated Press ahead of a Monday announcement about the task force’s first meeting and part of its composition. It stems from a Jan. 27 presidential memo requiring “evidence-based policy-making.”

Scientists and others have accused the Trump administration of setting aside scientific evidence and injecting politics into issues including the coronavirus, climate change and even whether Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama in 2019.

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University historian who has written about attacks on science in the book “Merchants of Doubt,” said politicization of science undermines the nation's ability to address serious problems that affect Americans' health, their well-being and the economy.

“There's little doubt that the American death toll from covid-19 was far higher than it needed to be and that the administration's early unwillingness to take the issue seriously to listen to and act on the advice of experts and to communicate clearly contributed substantively to that death toll,” Oreskes said in an email.

Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Obama administration, pointed to an incident during the Trump years that became known as “Sharpiegate” as a clear example of "political interference with scientific information that was potentially extraordinarily dangerous.”

During Sharpiegate, the NOAA reprimanded some meteorologists for tweeting that Alabama was not threatened by the hurricane, contradicting President Donald Trump, who said Alabama was in danger. The matter became known as Sharpiegate after someone in the White House used a black Sharpie — a favourite pen of Trump’s — to alter the official National Hurricane Center warning map to indicate Alabama could be in the path of the storm. A 2020 inspector general report found the administration had violated scientific integrity rules.

The Sharpiegate case revealed flaws in the scientific integrity system set up in 2009 by President Barack Obama, Lubchenco said. There were no consequences when the agency violated the rules, Lubchenco said. Nor were there consequences for NOAA’s parent Cabinet agency, the Commerce Department. That’s why President Joe Biden's administration is calling for scientific integrity rules throughout government and not just in science-oriented agencies, she said.

Lubchenco said a reluctance to fight climate change in the last four years has delayed progress in cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases. “That will inevitably result in the problem being worse than it needed to be,” she said.

“What we have seen in the last administration is that the suppression of science, the reassignment of scientists, the distortion of scientific information around climate change was not only destructive but counterproductive and really problematic,” Lubchenco said.

Kelvin Droegemeier, who served as Trump’s science adviser, in an email repeated what he told Congress in his confirmation hearing: “Integrity in science is everything,” and science should be allowed to be done “in an honest way, full of integrity without being incumbered by political influence.”

Droegemeier said the White House science office, where Nelson and Lubchenco now work and where he used to be, is more about policy and does not have the authority to investigate or enforce rules.

Last week, Republican legislators accused the Biden White House of playing politics with science when it removed climate scientist Betsy Weatherhead, who had been praised by atmospheric scientists, from heading the national climate assessment. Lubchenco said it was normal for a new administration to bring in new people.

Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said the Biden administration is trying hard but isn't approaching the task of restoring science quite right.

“It’s impossible to keep politics out of science,” Brinkley said. “But you can do your best to mitigate it.”

He said that only looking as far back as the Obama and Trump administrations will doom the task force’s efforts not to be politicized itself and looked at in a partisan way.

What’s really needed, Brinkley said, is to “get to the root of things” and look back as far as 1945. Both Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, and John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, elevated science efforts and tried to keep out the politics. But Brinkley said that with the onset of the environmental movement, the distraction of the Vietnam War and corporations seeing science as leading to too much regulation during the Reagan era, a unified public admiration for science fell apart.

Harvard's Oreskes said her research indicated Ronald Reagan was “the first president in the modern era to exhibit disregard and at times even contempt for scientific evidence.”

The new task force will focus more on the future than the past, Nelson said.

“Every agency is being asked to really demonstrate that they are making decisions that are informed by the best available research evidence,” Nelson said.

One of the four task force co-chairs is Francesca Grifo, scientific integrity officer for the Environmental Protection Agency since 2013. She clashed with the Trump EPA, which would not allow her to testify at a 2019 congressional hearing about scientific integrity.

The others are Anne Ricciuti, deputy director for science at the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences; Craig Robinson, director of the Office of Science Quality and Integrity at the U.S. Geological Survey; and Jerry Sheehan, deputy director of the National Library of Medicine.

___

This story has been corrected to show the climate scientist’s surname is Weatherhead, not Wetherhead.

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

How businesses can heed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to support Black banks

Opinion by Bernice A. King and Ashley Bell for CNN Business Perspectives 

Hours before an assassin's bullet ended his life in the spring of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a father to one of us, a role model to the other — delivered his final public address to a Memphis crowd that had gathered to fight what he called the inseparable twins of economic and racial injustice.

© Bettmann Archive/Getty Images (Original Caption) 4/3/1968-Memphis, TN: One of the last pictures to be taken of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- speaking to a mass rally April 3 in Memphis -- when he said he would not halt his plans for a massive demonstration scheduled for April 8 in spite of a federal injunction. The Nobel Peace Prize Winner was felled by a sniper's bullet, April 4.

Weaving between protest and prophecy, he famously spoke that night of reaching a mountaintop from which he could glimpse a promised land where Black people were finally free from racism and poverty. Beneath all the proverbs and anecdotes, he offered a practical roadmap to economic justice for Black America. It required uplifting community tentpoles like Black banks.


"[W]e've got to strengthen Black institutions," Dr. King said. "I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank [a Black-owned bank]—we want a bank-in movement in Memphis."

Like the sit-in protests of the 1960s that forced racial integration everywhere from lunch counters to libraries, to bank-in is to protest against the continued exclusion of Black people from mainstream financial services and against the predatory practices like check-cashing and payday loans that keep too many families trapped in redlined ghettos. To bank-in is to accelerate the long-overdue financial inclusion of Black people in America.

Despite all the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, Black entrepreneurs still struggle to keep their small businesses open and Black families fight to keep their homes at rates far higher than the national average. The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic compounded these challenges. As a result of the pandemic, the number of Black business owners declined by over 40%, compared to just 17% for white owners, and the share of Black homeowners in forbearance is higher than the overall rate.

By supporting community-focused Black-owned banks through investments and commercial transactions, we can begin the hard work of correcting these economic imbalances principally because Black banks are the lenders most willing to lend to Black families.

Because mainstream banks have shuttered branches in poor and historical redlined communities by the thousands since the financial crisis of 2008, Black banks are often Black borrowers' only retail source for non-predatory lending or wealth-building programs.

Recognizing the community impact of these banks, the FDIC reports quarterly to Congress on the state of minority depository institutions, or MDIs, to protect against insolvency. At the time of Dr. King's death, there were about 50 Black-owned banks, each of them extending mortgage and small business loans to customers that mainstream banks would not. Their numbers shrunk during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980's and again during the Great Recession, which squeezed Black households' wealth through unprecedented foreclosures and home equity losses. Today, there are just 18.

Despite their mission to extend credit to marginalized and underbanked Americans, Black-owned banks, like all lenders, are bound by regulations limiting them to offer loans on a relative scale of their capital assets, which is a measurement of the bank's financial strength based on interest on deposits, banking fees and the sale of stock. But unlike mainstream lenders, Black banks are chronically and acutely undercapitalized.

Dr. King was right when he said we've got to strengthen Black institutions. However, that requires more than just making deposits in Black banks, because deposits alone do not allow banks to create significant new lines of credit under existing banking regulations.

Capitalizing banks is more complex.

It starts with giving Black banks the opportunity to transact significant deals, as the NBA's Atlanta Hawks did last year in a $35 million construction loan with a syndicate of 11 pooled banks, or serve as a co-lead arranger of a banking syndicate with a major bank. Deals of this sort grow the bank's capital assets and diversify Black banks' loan portfolio, which usually consists primarily of smaller and higher-risk deals in service of their communities.

Transacting meaningful deals with Black banks is one of those rare opportunities where good business is perfectly aligned with social welfare, because a robustly capitalized Black banking sector will chip away at America's racial wealth and housing gaps by providing housing and small business loans to marginalized populations.

We'll know that corporate America is sincere about racial and economic equity in this country if we see others follow the Hawks' lead. At the National Black Bank Foundation, we're watching and we're willing to assist those interested in supporting the mission of Black banks.

'Extreme' drought in parts of Sask.: Ag Canada
Amanda Marcotte CBC

© Nyki Maisonneuve This is a slough bed near Estevan that usually covers a huge quarter section of land, according to Nyki Maisonneuve. 'Where I was standing is typically around five feet deep with water. The slough is just dust now.' Apr. 30/2021

Jacqueline Patron is used to seeing trains slide by her backyard at the north edge of Regina.

But last week, the train may have left more than a lonely prairie beat. Just minutes after it passed north of Winnipeg Street, a grass fire started.

Neighbours began fighting the fire. A fire truck came, too, and put out the fire.

"Having tracks that close to homes and with it being so dry, yes, a little too close," said Patron.

Fire officials are still looking into the exact cause, so they cannot confirm whether or not the train sparked the blaze. Two other grass fires are also under investigation.

No matter the cause, Patron would like to see dry, tall weeds mowed down near tracks and in industrial areas to protect homes like hers on the outskirts of the city.

Deputy Fire Chief Mike Ralston said the grass fire season near Saskatoon is starting early, too.

"The fuel is very dry and that contributes to the spread of fires when they start."

A grass fire a week ago on the outskirts of the city was tough to control, and firefighters needed help from the Warman Fire Department.

Ralston said it is so dry, that even a spark from welding or grinding has the potential to start an out-of-control fire. He said many R.M.s around the city have a fire ban in place.
Farmers hoping for rain

Todd Lewis, the president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, said it has not been this dry on his farm near Regina since the 1980s.

Lewis said farming practices have changed since those drought years to conserve moisture in the soil.

'We manage our water better but we still cannot replace rainfall.'

He said it is especially tough for cattle farmers, as dugout levels are low. Lewis and other farmers are hoping May and June bring rain.

John Pomeroy, a water expert with the University of Saskatchewan, said part of the problem is snowfall on the prairies came early in November. Much of the snow simply sublimated back into the atmosphere during snowstorms before it got a chance to melt into the ground.

"Ninety-three per cent of the agricultural part of the Prairies is in drought right now. This is quite severe," he said.

Those numbers are according to Agriculture Canada. Southeast Saskatchewan is described as having 'extreme' drought and much of the southern grain belt is classified as 'severe.'

Pomeroy said a drought like this in the 1930s would have been devastating, but 'we're much better prepared than we used to be.'

Still he would like to see more shelter belts and preservation of wetlands to keep moisture on the ground.

"The water resources we have are always on the edge so we have to manage them very carefully," Pomeroy said

 Families of Victims and 270+ Groups Call for UN Inquiry Into US Police Violence and Systemic Racism

"It's past time for our nation to tackle racial inequity, injustice, and discrimination that permeates American life and institutions."

by

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

Shannon Haynes talks to her son Ronald Haynes, 9, about George Floyd in front of a memorial following the verdict in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin on April 20, 2021 in Minneapolis. (Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

More than 170 families of people killed by U.S. police officers during the past three decades joined with over 270 civil society groups Monday to call for a United Nations inquiry into law enforcement violence and systemic racism in the United States, including responses to recent racial justice demonstrations.

"If the Biden administration is serious about addressing police violence and its pledge to lead by the power of example, it should welcome international scrutiny into the nation's domestic human rights record."
—Jamil Dakwar, ACLU

"Extrajudicial killings of Black Americans by policemen in the United States is one of the most egregious examples of human rights violations recorded in history," said Collette Flanagan, founder and CEO of Mothers Against Police Brutality, which is among the group signatories.

"I am in hopes that the U.N. will summon the courage from its previous extraordinary works to hold the U.S. accountable for its violations of human rights by establishing a commission of inquiry," said Flanagan, whose son, Clinton Allen, was shot to death by a Dallas police officer in March 2013.

The letter to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet comes ahead of her report on systemic racism and law enforcement abuses against people of African descent, which is expected to include the context of slavery and colonialism.

That report was ordered by a U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution passed less than a month after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, last year. His death prompted an earlier letter signed by victims' families and hundreds of groups. The new letter to Bachelet notes that "the council adopted a watered-down resolution due to enormous diplomatic pressure from the United States under the Trump administration and other allied countries."

The signatories—which include relatives of Floyd, Daunte Wright, and Michael Brown as well as the ACLU, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, U.S. Human Rights Network, and the International Service for Human Rights—urge the UNHRC to establish an independent commission of inquiry into the police killings and attacks on racial justice activists and journalists covering protests.

"Police violence is not a uniquely American problem, but the impunity and disproportionate killing of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people at the hands of law enforcement are, and it requires the entire international community to act," said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program, in a statement.

"If the Biden administration is serious about addressing police violence and its pledge to lead by the power of example, it should welcome international scrutiny into the nation's domestic human rights record," he added. "The administration must heed the pleas of George Floyd's family and hundreds of other family members of victims of police violence to establish a U.N. commission of inquiry to hold the U.S. accountable for the rampant systemic racism that perpetuates law enforcement violence.”

"While we commend the Biden administration for leading a cross-regional joint statement on countering racism and signaling other policy changes to address racial inequities," the letter says, "we believe that a robust international accountability mechanism would further support and complement, not undermine, efforts to dismantle systemic racism in the United States, especially in the context of police violence against people of African descent."

The families and groups highlight that U.S. police kill nearly 1,000 people per year—including over 300 so far in 2021—but national data show that "98.3% of killings by police from 2013-2020 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime. Between 2005 and 2015, only 54 officers were charged after police-involved killings, despite the thousands of such incidents that occurred over the same time period."

"Impunity for police killings in the United States, especially those of people of African descent, continues unabated despite the recent settlement in the George Floyd civil lawsuit and the guilty verdict against Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis City police officer who murdered him," the letter adds. "Furthermore, federalism in the United States, long-standing legal obstacles to achieving justice for police killings, and decentralized police institutions of over 18,000 law enforcement agencies (that are not directly accountable to the federal Executive Branch) make it extremely daunting to end impunity, even for well-intentioned federal administrations."

The signatories urge Bachelet to remind members of the UNHRC "that the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism were grave violations of international law that require states to make reparations proportionate to the harms committed and to ensure that structures in the society that are perpetuating the injustices of the past are transformed" as well as to call on them to "adopt a national plan of action to eliminate systemic racism and racial discrimination and to double their efforts and allocation of resources to achieve racial equality including through the adoption of reparations schemes to remedy historic racial injustices."

The families and groups also sent a second letter Monday to ministers of foreign affairs of African states, expressing appreciation for their governments' leadership on the topic and urging them to continue pressuring the UNHRC to establish an inquiry. They write, "We share the high commissioners assessment that we cannot let the urgency felt in the council in June 2020 subside."

"It's past time for our nation to tackle racial inequity, injustice, and discrimination that permeates American life and institutions," said Sakira Cook, senior director of the Justice Reform Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "While progress has come slowly, hopefully an international inquiry can help produce transformative change more rapidly."

Vickie Casanova-Willis, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network, applauded the "courageous and historic actions of family members and allies which generated an outcry that has reverberated around the world."

"Their heart-wrenching cries for justice demand full accountability and implementation of the recommendations in [the June 2020 resolution] to ensure that not one more person is murdered by state violence, as police continue to execute African American/African/African Descendant people at a genocidal rate," she declared. "Continued solidarity demanding human rights standards of accountability is vital to ensure they did not die in vain."

Families call for UN to launch inquiry into police killings of Black Americans

Ed Pilkington in New York 

THE GUARDIAN 

The families of 165 victims of police brutality in the US are calling on the United Nations to set up an independent inquiry into the ongoing scourge of police killings of Black men and women.

© Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images A person decorates a memorial for Daunte Wright with flowers and dandelions earlier this month in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

With the support of more than 250 civil society groups from around the world including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the families are hoping to engage the UN in efforts to rein in police violence against African American communities. The call comes in the wake of last year’s nationwide and international protests following the murder of George Floyd by the now ex-police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.

Related: ‘We’re terrorized’: LA sheriffs frequently harass families of people they kill, says report

In a letter sent on Monday to the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, the families call for an “independent inquiry into the killings and violent law enforcement responses to protests in the US”. They argue that such robust international accountability would complement the Biden administration’s efforts to “dismantle systemic racism in the US, especially in the context of police violence against people of African descent”.

Among the families who have joined the call are relatives of victims of some of the most notorious police killings in recent memory. They include the families of Floyd; Michael Brown, the 18-year-old whose 2014 killing by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, spurred the growing Black Lives Matter movement; and Daunte Wright who was shot in a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, last month.

The letter to the UN comes two weeks after an alliance of leading human rights lawyers from 11 countries accused the US of committing crimes against humanity by allowing law enforcement officers to kill and torture African Americans with impunity.

The lawyers’ 188-page report found the US in frequent violation of international laws, including police murders and “severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, persecution and other inhuman acts”.

The push to enlist the UN’s human rights council in a formal investigation is the latest effort by victims’ families and advocacy groups to hold the US to the same degree of international accountability that successive US presidents have demanded for other countries. So far the world body has resisted attempts to draw it into the controversy.

The first move to persuade the UN human rights council to stage an inquiry into US police brutality was made last June as Black Lives Matter protests erupted again across the nation in the biggest US civil rights uprising since the 1960s. Several families of victims of police killings, including those of Floyd, Brown, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Philando Castile in Minnesota, joined forces with rights groups to petition the council to intervene.

That effort was stymied after the Trump administration unleashed a diplomatic storm in the face of which the human rights council backed down. In place of a full international investigation focused specifically on US police brutality, the council authorized an inquiry into systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent in all relevant countries around the world.

In making a renewed attempt to bring the UN on board, the families of victims argue that the US represents a singularly serious case demanding its own international attention. The signatories to the letter point out that almost 1,000 people are killed by police in the US every year in what they call an “epidemic of police violence” that has been “directly and disproportionately targeted at people of color”.

In 2019, Black and Indigenous people were three times more likely than white people to be fatally shot by police in the US. “Stunningly, for young men of color, police use of force is now among the leading causes of death.”

Meanwhile, police officers who take the lives of Black people can assume a large degree of impunity. The letter says that between 2013 and 2020, more than 98% of killings by police resulted in no officers being charged with any crime.

“Police violence is not a uniquely American problem, but the impunity and disproportionate killing of Black, Brown and Indigenous people at the hands of law enforcement are,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program. “It requires the entire international community to act.”

Collette Flanagan, CEO of Mothers Against Police Brutality, said that after last year’s failed attempt she hoped the new push would have success.

“I hope that the UN will summon the courage to hold the US accountable for its violations of human rights, by establishing a commission of inquiry,” she said.

Colombia’s countercultures: the Beat Generation’s bad trip


William S. Burroughs in southern Colombia

by Adriaan Alsema March 15, 2021

Counterculture icon William S. Burroughs traveled to Colombia in 1953 to try ayahuasca, a drug that disappointed the writer almost as much as the capital Bogota.

Most of Burroughs’ experiences were published in his 1963 novel The Yage Letters, a collection of correspondence between the legendary late writer and his former boyfriend and late poet Allen Ginsberg.

Additional snippets of information were left by late botanist Paul Holliday, who joined Burroughs and biologist Richard Evan Shultes on their quest to the southern Putumayo province in early 1953.

Burroughs’ had traveled to Bogota in 1951 already, hoping he would find the “final fix” in Ecuador but failed to try ayahuasca as he fell out with his travel partner, Lewis Marker.

Burroughs, determined to try the relatively unknown drug, returned to Colombia in January 1953 and left the country less than two months later determined never to return.

I remember an army officer in Puerto Leguizamo telling me: “Ninety percent of the people who come to Colombia never leave.” Let’s assume he meant that they fell for the charms of the place. I belong to the ten percent who will never return.

William S. Burroughs

“Bogota, horrible as always”

In “The Yage Letters,” the beat generation icon was explicit about his dislike of Bogota during the most oppressive years of the Conservative Party, which was at war with the Liberal Party at the time.

When Burroughs arrived in the capital, the author found himself in a virtual dictatorship that was strongly influenced by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

In Bogota, more than in any other city I have visited in Latin America, you feel the dead weight of Spain, somber and oppressive. Everything official carried the “Made in Spain” seal.
William S. Burroughs

Burroughs had been deeply involved in creating one of the United States’ most influential countercultures of the 20th century, but Bogota’s youth wouldn’t be introduced to youth culture until after the author’s visit.

Colombia’s countercultures: Bogota’s rock and roll gangs

In his letters to Ginsberg, the author did little to hide his disdain for the culture in Bogota, whose culture Burroughs seemed to perceive as mediocre and pretentious.

Bogota is essentially a small town, everybody worried about what they are wearing and trying to look as if they hold a position of responsibility.
William S. Burroughs

The violent animosity between the two parties did not go unnoticed to the writer.

One night I was hiding in a liberal café when three conservative thugs in civilian clothes came in shouting “Long live the conservatives” hoping to provoke someone and kill him.
William S. Burroughs

Burroughs’ rejection of Bogota’s contemporary culture would be echoed in 1958 by a group of Medellin artists who began the “Nadaism” movement, Colombia’s first own counterculture.

Colombia’s countercultures: From nothing to nadaism

“Depressing” Putumayo

The writer traveled to Putumayo via Cali, Popayan and Pasto after Shultes had told Burroughs that ayahuasca was most easily found in the southern province where native Colombians used the drug in rituals.

On the road, Burroughs would have his first run-ins the National Police and their “annoying and pointless” searches.

Putumayo was by far the most depressing, according to the author as locals desperately seemed to hope that the Texas Oil Company would return “like the second coming of Christ,” according to Burroughs.

The author found the southern province in a depression caused by a collapsed rubber boom, a rot that was killing cocoa harvests and poor soil that make agriculture barely worthwhile.

Several times, when I was drunk, I told some people: “Look. There is no oil here. That’s why Texas quit. It’s never coming back. Do you understand?” But they couldn’t believe it.
William S. Burroughs

The American biologist who would later become a main character in the film “Embrace of the Serpant” of Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra introduced Burroughs to his two shaman.

Ayahuasca

Holliday would later remember that the author’s first ayahuasca trip was near Mocoa and prepared by a 70-year-old shaman.

According to Burroughs, the shaman was getting drunk off the aguardiente the writer had brought. Both accounts agreed the writer spent most the evening vomiting.

A shaman near Puerto Asis prepared ayahuasca following native Colombian traditions from the southeastern Vaupes province, which Burroughs describes as a considerably more pleasant experience.

Burroughs ended up traveling all the way to Puerto Leguizamo where he got stuck while tensions between the locals and the foreign visitors rose to the point they were close to sparking violence.

Puerto Leguizamo is named after a soldier who distinguished himself in the war with Peru in 1940. I asked one of the Colombians about it and he nodded: “Yes, Leguizamo was a soldier who did something in the war. “What did he do?” “Well, he did something.”
William S. Burroughs

To make matters worse, Burroughs was arrested and thrown in jail because of a visa irregularity and wasn’t released until he got malaria.

The author was ultimately able to get on a flight to Villavicencio and return to Bogota ill, he wrote Ginsberg.

Burroughs swore never to return to Colombia but did convince Ginsberg, who traveled to Putumayo to try ayahuasca in 1960.

By then, the Beat Generation was beginning to gain fame, mainly because of the poet’s epic poem “Howl,” and the now-classic novels “On the Road” by their friend Jack Kerouac and Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch.”

Colombian police accused of using high-tech weapons against anti-government protesters


Police face anti-government protesters who are blocking a highway in Gachancipa, Colombia, Friday, May 7, 2021

COLOMBIAN police are indiscriminately using horizontal high-speed multiple-projectile launchers against anti-government protesters, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, HRW executive director for the Americas, said that his organisation had never previously seen police using the tear-gas and stun-bomb launchers in that way.

Each launcher is mounted on an anti-riot armoured vehicle reported to cost about £84,000 each.

“This seems like a highly dangerous, high-risk procedure, and I believe that this type of practice is what causes the complaints about extreme police brutality,” Mr Vivanco said.

Colombian Defence Minister Diego Molano sought to justify the use of the weapons when disturbances “affect tranquillity and security” or there is a possibility of violence.

Mr Molano said that the weapons were being deployed to disperse protesters but that “in no way from those tanks can there be shots against any official or citizen.”

But Mr Vivanco told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the explanation was “very poor,” adding that the defence minister “is not aware of the details” and “does not have much experience in security matters.”

Mr Molano was appointed in February after his predecessor died of Covid-19. He has promised to investigate viral footage of officers firing multiple shots from a tank at protesters.

According to local human-rights organisations, there have been about 1,900 cases of police using brutal force to crack down on the recent spike of protests. In those cases, 963 people were illegally detained, 111 people were injured by police bullets, 39 protesters were killed and 12 women were sexually assaulted by officers.

Last week, the unit responsible for searching for missing persons raised the alarm on the disappearance of 379 protesters who had not returned to their homes.

Protest organisers from the National Strike Committee are expected to meet President Ivan Duque today.

The group of organisations agreed to the meeting despite the president’s refusal to negotiate.

In a statement, they said that they would initially “demand respect and the guarantees for the free exercise of social mobilisation and protest, reject the militarisation of the country and the excessive use of force by the police, the Esmad [riot squad] and the national army against those who protest peacefully.”

THE MORNING STAR

Colombia state terror campaign broadcast live on Twitter

by Adriaan Alsema May 10, 2021

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque and the Anti-Communist Brigade death squad tweeted their allegedly joint terror campaign live in the city of Cali.

What the purpose of the military operation allegedly carried out with the paramilitary group was other than terrorizing locals in the south of Colombia’s city is unclear.

How many people were injured and may have been killed was also not immediately clear.

Once Duque was done terrorizing the students of the Valle University, the president said that he would “listen to you and talk about the issues you complain about.”


We want to tell the young people of Valle del Cauca that we know about their needs, complaints and proposals, and there will be a space to listen to them and talk about the issues that affect them. We invite them to join us and together we will reach quick and concrete solutions.
President Ivan Duque
Announcing the terror


Early Sunday evening, the far-right group warned the residents in Cali that “the night will be long and tortuous because of [opposition] Senator Gustavo Petro and his narco-terrorist” indigenous protesters.

“Those narco-terrorists don’t know what’s coming” the group said hours after regional indigenous organization CRIC said eight people were injured after Cali residents opened fire on them.

The native Colombians knew something was coming as the president ordered Defense Minister Diego Molano to embark on a major military operation south of Cali.
Duque orders more troops to Colombia’s southwest amid fears of civil war

What the indigenous didn’t know was that Duque would be also be involved in the military operation. The president didn’t fly to Cali until early in the morning.

The Anti-Communist Brigade tweeted that “they’re not counting on armed civilians. There will be more deaths” and urged people in the south of the city to stay inside.

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Anti-Communist Brigade

While the paramilitaries were recruiting, Molano was coordinating the operation with the local military commanders.

(Image: Defense Ministry)

Live terror

The Anti-Communist Brigade invited anyone to follow their terrorism campaign in alleged collusion with the local police and the National Army on Twitter with the hashtag #CaliEnAlertaRoja.

Around 8PM, Uribe called on his supporters to support the security forces in the event they would be criticized by “reckless national and foreign media” for allegedly colluding with death squads.

We, Colombians who ask for protection of our Armed Forces, in accordance with the Constitution, must be prepared to defend them from reckless national and foreign accusation.
Former President Alvaro Uribe

“Reckless national and foreign accusations” got Uribe in court for his alleged involvement in two massacres, a fate his puppet may be awaiting too unless he asks the paramilitaries to delete the evidence of their involvement in the Cali terror campaign.

A little after 10:30PM, the Anti-Communist Brigade tweeted “on alert” after which they said they were “on the job.”

A local reported that an army unit and a unit of anti-riot police unit ESMAD were entering the Melendez neighborhood in the south of the city 10 minutes later.

Minutes later, another residents from the neighborhood claimed that “they are attacking us.”

Duque arrived in the city at 11:30, according to journalist Ricardo Ospina of Blu Radio, the radio station run by the president’s brother in law.                                    

 

Minutes after Duque’s arrival, a local decried on Twitter that “they are assassinating people in the Melendez neighborhood in Cali!”

Reporters from the Valle University reported on the operation live.

Another unconfirmed video showed alleged locals from the neighborhood gathering injured neighbors, but the veracity of this video was later disputed.

Representatives of the Peace Commission, and peace observers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany traveled to Cali this morning to talk to locals.

How many people were possibly injured or killed between Sunday and Monday remained unclear around 2PM on Monday, but the most recent events triggered a response from US Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg.

We regret the acts of violence that occurred in Cali and express our sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who died in the midst of them. The US reiterates our call for calm and our support for dialogue to address the current situation.
US Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg


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UK

RCN says ‘army’ of 25,000 members are training to become activists to fight ‘pitiful’ 

1 per cent pay rise for NHS staff



UP TO 25,000 nurses are training to become activists so they can force Boris Johnson  to improve on his “pitiful” 1 per cent NHS p rise offer

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) hopes the move will help it achieve a turnout of 50 per cent in the strike ballot it has pledged to call if the Prime Minister continues to resist calls for a real-terms increase in England.

As part of its “don’t get angry, get organised” campaign, the union has enlisted the help of Jane McAlevey, a senior policy fellow at the University of California, who has been training nurses in the United States to unionise and win better pay and conditions for 25 years.

Ms McAlevey’s six-week course, the first of which started last week, will help nurses channel the “anger and frustration” they feel at the 1 per cent offer into creating an “army of activists,” the RCN said.

RCN council chairman Dave Dawes says the initiative will help rouse its 475,000-strong membership to back a strike ballot alongside undertaking local campaigns to win public support.

The NHS pay review body is due to report its recommendations on any rise for England later this month; health unions decide this week whether to accept the Scottish government’s offer of a 4 per cent rise for all health workers north of the border.

The RCN wants a restorative 12.5 per cent pay rise for all nurses after a decade of Tory cuts, while Unite and GMB have backed calls from grassroots groups such as NHS Workers Say No for a 15 per cent increase.

Mr Dawes said: “If we are going to be balloting for industrial action later this year, which looks increasingly likely, this training will make a huge difference in what the turnout of the ballot will be.

“No nurse wants to take industrial action. But if you’re going to do it, and successfully, you need to have the majority of the workforce on your side and you need to have the majority of the public understanding what this is about.”

Ms McAlevey said her course will identify and nurture non-unionised nurses who are natural or organic leaders and demonstrate an ability to move their colleagues through persuasion and action.

THE MORNING STAR