HISTORIC DEFEAT FOR US IMPERIALISM

 Iran nuclear deal members resolved to preserve agreement

DAVID RISING,Associated Press•September 1, 2020

 In this Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020 file photo, Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi from Argentina, speaks to the media after returning from Iran at the Vienna International Airport. Representatives of Iran and the world powers working to save the nuclear deal with Tehran agreed Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, in Vienna to do everything possible to preserve the landmark 2015 agreement in their first meeting since the United States announced a bid to restore United Nations sanctions against the Islamic Republic. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak, File)


BERLIN (AP) — Representatives of Iran and the world powers working to save the nuclear deal with Tehran agreed Tuesday in Vienna to do everything possible to preserve the landmark 2015 agreement in their first meeting since the United States announced a bid to restore United Nations sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Helga Schmid, the European Union representative who chaired the meeting, said afterwards on Twitter that the “participants are united in resolve to preserve the #IranDeal and find a way to ensure full implementation of the agreement despite current challenges.”

Iranian representative Abbas Araghchi did not comment after the day of talks, but ahead of the meeting said the U.S. move would “definitely be an important discussion” topic with delegates from France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China.

President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action unilaterally in 2018, saying that it was a bad deal and needed to be renegotiated.


The deal promises Iran economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, but with the reinstatement of American sanctions, the other nations have been struggling to provide Iran the assistance it seeks.

Complicating the matter, the U.S. announced recently it was triggering a 30-day process to restore virtually all U.N. sanctions on Iran, invoking a “snapback” mechanism that is part of the JCPOA agreement. Washington's argument is that as an original participant it still has that right, even though it left the deal.

Other signatories to the JCPOA agreement have rejected that argument, setting the stage for a potential crisis in the Security Council later this month, with the U.S. claiming to have re-imposed sanctions and most of the rest of the world saying the Trump administration's action is illegal and ignoring it.

After U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the U.N. to invoke snapback on Aug. 20, Indonesia’s U.N. Ambassador Dian Triansyah Djani, whose country held the rotating council presidency, said there was overwhelming opposition in the 15-member body to the U.S. position. He said it was unlikely there would be any action on Washington’s demand.

Niger’s U.N. Ambassador Abdou Abarry, who took over the rotating council presidency on Tuesday, said: “Up until there would be maybe new facts, and I haven’t seen any yet, we are staying at the level of the Security Council aligned with this position as expressed by the president, ambasador Djani.”

Chinese representative Fu Cong told reporters after the Vienna meeting that the member countries all agreed that the U.S. no longer has "the legal ground or legal standing to trigger snapback" and that in China’s view Washington was using it to “try to sabotage or even kill the JCPOA.”

He suggested the other countries were also not prepared to “just wait and see” whether Trump is reelected in November.

“The U.S., even though it is a superpower, is just one country,” Fu said. “So other countries are moving on.”

The Russian delegate to the JCPOA, Mikhail Ulyanov, took a swipe at the U.S. ahead of the meeting, tweeting that Tuesday's talks involved “participation of all (not self-proclaimed) participants of the nuclear deal.”

Afterward, he tweeted that the meeting “demonstrated that its participants are fully committed to the nuclear deal and are determined to do their best to preserve it.”

The ultimate goal of the deal is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, something Iran insists it does not want to do.

However, since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran has been steadily violating its restrictions on the amount of uranium it can enrich, the amount of heavy water it can possess, and the purity to which it enriches its uranium. That's all to put pressure on the other nations involved to come ahead with more economic incentives.

It now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb, but nowhere near the amount — or the purity — it had before the nuclear deal was signed.

Those working to save the deal also note that despite the violations, Iran continues to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to access all sites in the country.

Last week, Iran held out an olive branch to end one issue of contention, agreeing to allow IAEA inspectors into two sites where the country is suspected of having stored or used undeclared nuclear material in the early 2000s.

Iran had insisted the agency had no right to inspect the sites, since they dated to well before the JCPOA came into effect.

_____

Iran nuclear deal parties stand by troubled accord amid US pressure

Julia ZAPPEI, AFP•September 1, 2020





Iran nuclear deal parties stand by troubled accord amid US pressure

Iran has agreed to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit two sites suspected of hosting undeclared activity in the early 2000sThe signatories to the Iran nuclear deal said Tuesday that they stood by the faltering accord and China slammed US efforts to restore international sanctions on the Islamic republic and extend an arms embargo.

Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia are struggling to save the landmark 2015 accord with Iran, which has been progressively stepping up its nuclear activities since the United States pulled out of the deal in 2018.

Tehran insists it is entitled to do so under the terms of the accord -- which swapped sanctions relief for Iran's agreement to scale back its nuclear programme -- following Washington's withdrawal and reimposition of sanctions.

EU senior official Helga Schmid, who chaired the talks in Vienna on Tuesday, wrote on Twitter that the meeting's participants were "united in resolve to preserve the #IranDeal and find a way to ensure full implementation of the agreement despite current challenges".- ADVERTISEMENT -


Representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and Russia all attended the talks -- part of a regular series of gatherings to discuss the accord, which have been increasingly tense since the US pullout began unravelling the agreement.


- 'Mockery' -


China's representative, senior Foreign Ministry official Fu Cong, told reporters after the meeting that Iran needed to come back to full compliance, but at the same time "the economic benefit that is due to Iran needs to be provided".

He slammed the US for "making a mockery of international law" in its "attempt to sabotage and to kill the JCPOA", referring to the abbreviation of the deal's formal name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

"The US is stopping at nothing in trying to sabotage other countries' efforts to provide economic benefits to Iran," he added.

The United Nations last week blocked the US bid to reimpose international sanctions on Iran, while Washington also failed to rally enough support to extend an arms embargo that was scheduled to start being rolled back from October.

In a boost to Tuesday's talks, the Iranian atomic energy agency last week also agreed to allow inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog to visit two sites suspected of having hosted undeclared activity in the early 2000s.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi had travelled to Iran on his first trip since taking up the top post last year and after months of calling for access.


- US 'isolated' -


Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said last week's agreement on access kept "Iran generally in line with the rest of the world, against an isolated United States".

But Fitzpatrick pointed out that "Iran's nuclear activities remain of deep concern to those states that are dedicated to non-proliferation".

Iran reportedly recently transferred advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium from a pilot facility into a new hall at its main Natanz nuclear fuel plant, which was hit by sabotage in July.

An IAEA assessment published in June said Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was almost eight times the limit fixed in the accord.

The level of enrichment is still far below what would be needed for a nuclear weapon, but parties to the deal have urged Iran's full compliance.

Iran has insisted it can reverse the steps it has taken since last year -- if it can again benefit economically again under the deal.

The IAEA, which regular updates its members on Iran's nuclear activities, is expected to issue a fresh report ahead of a meeting of member states to discuss the dossier later this month.

Trump-Nominated Postal Service Board Member Pushed Black Lives Matter Conspiracy Theories

Sam Brodey,The Daily Beast•September 2, 2020
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

A U.S. Postal Service board member, who reportedly played a key role in the selection of Louis DeJoy to lead the agency, called the Black Lives Matter movement violent and floated a conspiracy theory that it may be financially backed by foreign entities.

In June, John M. Barger, who serves on the Postal Service’s six-member Board of Governors, engaged in a back-and-forth on LinkedIn with a contact in Hong Kong. The exchange is publicly accessible on Barger’s profile on the platform. It began with that contact posting a photo of the strict public health measures in effect in Hong Kong due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When Barger’s contact offhandedly mentioned Black Lives Matter in the course of explaining the Chinese government’s aggressive posture toward Hong Kong, Barger teed off.

“Ummmm… BLM is a movement that is neither state sanctioned, nor about race these days,” responded Barger. “Further, its divisive violent core may be receiving ‘foreign funding.’”

Facebook’s Internal Black Lives Matter Debate Got So Bad Zuckerberg Had to Step In-

There is no evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement, which includes an official foundation of the same name but also many decentralized, unofficial groups nationwide, is benefiting from any kind of organized funding effort orchestrated from abroad. In his post, Barger cited nothing specific. The Black Lives Matter Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, bills itself as a “global movement,” but accepts donations through the online fundraising platform ActBlue, which prohibits non-Americans from making contributions.

Barger did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. But his comments could spark additional criticism that the USPS’ board of governors—already under scrutiny for DeJoy’s handling of postal reforms—is stacked with overtly partisan conservative figures.

Barger’s theory about Black Lives Matter echoes some writings from conservative media, which hold that the movement is the beneficiary of shady foreign interests. Pro-Trump corners of the Internet are rife with theories that BLM is a front for a left-wing coup or revolution. More established Republicans have raised broader questions about who is funding the movement. This week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called for a federal investigation into that very question.

A recently deleted Twitter account, accessed by The Daily Beast via web cache, that appears to have belonged to Barger contains endorsements of Black Lives Matter criticism. On June 30, the account shared a post from the right-wing personality Ian Miles Cheong, which purports to show a BLM supporter assaulting a Black man who was removing BLM signs. “Outrageous,” was Barger’s apparent comment in retweeting the post.

Rep. Katie Porter Grills Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Basic Facts About the Post Office

Barger, a Los Angeles-based financier, was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve on the USPS Board of Governors and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2019. He is an active GOP donor, having given over $70,000 to Republican candidates for office since 1989, according to federal campaign finance records. Barger has continued making campaign contributions since joining the USPS board, cutting a $10,000 check to the Republican National Committee in December.

An August 2020 investigation from House Democrats into the tenure of Postmaster General DeJoy, who took over the post in June, claimed Barger played a significant role in getting DeJoy in that post.

Barger was the USPS board member tasked with leading the search for a replacement for Megan Brennan, who held the Postmaster General position until October 2019. DeJoy, a fellow GOP mega-donor with no USPS experience, was not on an initial list of potential candidates provided to the board by an independent agency, Russell Reynolds Associates.

The Democratic probe found evidence that Barger got DeJoy’s resume in the mix. An Aug. 20 letter to Barger from Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Katie Porter (D-CA) cited “individuals familiar with the process” in saying “DeJoy was never recommended by this firm but was rather introduced by you to the selection committee. It would have been irregular for a member of the USPS Board of Governors, such as yourself, to recommend Mr. DeJoy without the consultation, research, or support of the contracted hiring firm Russell Reynolds Associates.”

A former member of the USPS Board of Governors who briefed House Democrats on the selection process, David C. Williams, said he raised concerns about DeJoy to Barger. When Williams resigned in April, he cited concerns over the process in his letter.

Barger claimed to the New York Times that Williams had never expressed concern over the Board’s consideration of DeJoy, and that if he had heard Williams’ concerns, he would have taken them seriously. He also told the Los Angeles Times that it was the Board’s chairman, Robert M. Duncan, who had brought DeJoy to the selection committee’s attention.

Duncan, who appeared alongside DeJoy on August 24 in heated testimony before the House Oversight Committee, has himself come under fire for partisan ties. On August 31, Duncan, a former chairman and general counsel for the Republican National Committee, was listed on official filings as the director of the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC that works to elect Republicans to the Senate. The native Kentuckian has a long history with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who reportedly recommended Duncan to Trump as a USPS board member before he was nominated in 2017.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

U.S. Attorney General Barr says antifa 'flying around' U.S. to incite violence

TRUMP SAID SOME MAN TOLD HIM ABOUT THIS
THIS IS THAT MAN
Jan Wolfe,Reuters•September 2, 2020

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday said the Justice Department was monitoring the protest movement antifa, saying that it is at the heart of violence in cities around the country.

"I've talked to every police chief in every city where there has been major violence and they all have identified antifa as the ramrod for the violence," Barr said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "They are flying around the country. We know people who are flying around the country."

"We see some of the purchases they are making before the riots of weapons to use in those riots," Barr added. "So, we are following them."

Antifa is a largely unstructured, far-left movement whose followers broadly aim to confront those they view as authoritarian or racist.

Republican President Donald Trump, who has been trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, has been appealing to his base of white supporters with a "law and order" message. In a visit Tuesday to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 17-year-old Trump supporter has been charged with killing two people during protests following the police shooting of a Black man in the back, Trump said the destruction that occurred was "really domestic terror."

Barr on Wednesday also said he thought there was no systemic racism in the U.S. justice system, and that there is a "false narrative" that the country is in an "epidemic" of unarmed Black people being killed by white police officers.

"I think our institutions have been reformed in the past 60 years and if anything has been built into it it's a bias toward non-discrimination," Barr said.

In a Fox News interview late on Monday, Trump said an investigation was under way into alleged “thugs” who boarded a plane seeking to cause damage last week during the Republican Party convention, without providing details or evidence.

Law enforcement, intelligence and Congressional officials familiar with official reporting on weeks of protests and related arrests said on Tuesday they were aware of no incidents or reports that would confirm Trump’s anecdote.

Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that threatens to cut federal funding to "lawless" cities, including Seattle, Portland, New York and Washington.

"My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones," said the memo, which was released by the White House.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Twitter that the memo was an "illegal stunt."

New video shows fatal police shooting of Black man in LA
STEFANIE DAZIO, Associated Press•September 2, 2020

Tensions rise after Black man fatally shot by LA deputies; victim’s family retains attorney Ben Crump

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A grainy video posted Wednesday shows the fatal shooting of a Black man by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies after he was stopped on a bicycle for a traffic violation, but the video does not confirm the police allegation that he “made a motion" for a gun.

Dijon Kizzee was shot and killed Monday afternoon in South Los Angeles. The video, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, shows the 29-year-old Kizzee scuffling with a deputy on a sidewalk. Kizzee broke free, stumbled and fell to the ground and two deputies opened fire.

Police have said a gun fell out when Kizzee dropped a jacket as he fell to the ground and he “made a motion” for the weapon — prompting deputies to open fire. But the video does not confirm whether that happened because a fence obstructs the view at that period in the sequence of events.
Kizzee's death came after another police shooting victim, Jacob Blake, was hit in the back and paralyzed last month in his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake's shooting prompted large and violent protests in Kenosha. There have been two much smaller, peaceful protests in Los Angeles for Kizzee.


The shootings of Kizzee and Blake show the need for a national standard on police use of force to prevent more killings of Black men and increase accountability and transparency, said Lynda Williams, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

“It just hurts to see this recurring over and over,” she said. “It's just incredulous to think that a bicycle stop has led to deadly force.”

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, the Blake family's lawyer, announced Wednesday that he also is representing Kizzee's relatives and denounced the fatal shooting.

“We stand with Dijon’s family in demanding justice and transparency into this despicable and tragic killing perpetrated by Los Angeles County officers," Crump said in a statement. "When officers shoot first and ask questions later, precious lives are lost and police lose credibility and trust from those they are sworn to protect.”

There was no immediate response Wednesday evening to a request for comment about the video sent to an email address listed as Crump’s media contact.

The sheriff's department provided no new information about the case on Wednesday but a department statement Tuesday said deputies tried to stop Kizzee for riding his bicycle in violation of vehicle codes, without specifying the alleged infraction.

Statistics nationwide show that “biking while Black” can result in disproportionate citations for people of color. A 2015 Tampa Bay Times investigation revealing that eight out of 10 bicyclists ticketed by Tampa police were Black prompted a federal probe.

A Chicago Tribune review in 2017 found that more than twice as many citations were written in African-American communities than in white or Latino areas.

The office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the district where Kizzee was shot, has not received complaints alleging police harassment of Black bicyclists. But Ridley-Thomas said he heard similar accounts anecdotally following Kizzee's death.

“It is not something with which those who are involved in criminal justice reform and representing clients are unfamiliar,” he said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department did not provide statistics regarding bicycle stops and citations on Wednesday and the Los Angeles Police Department's figures do not break down vehicle stops by category.

Donny Joubert, vice president of the Watts Gang Task Force group in Los Angeles that was created to reduce gang violence and improve community relations with police, said residents on bicycles in communities of color are regularly stopped for supposed vehicle violations.

But he said white cyclists in wealthy neighborhoods rarely face the same treatment.

“They’ll pull you over on a skateboard,” Joubert said. “It means our kids can’t even ride a bike in their community without being blamed for something or being accused of something.”

The sheriff's department has said Kizzee got off his bike and ran and the deputies briefly lost sight of him. The video shows a police SUV stop in a street. A deputy gets out, runs around a parked car and appears to try to grab Kizzee as he walks down the sidewalk. They tussle, standing, and move down the street together for several seconds. Kissee appears to throw a punch. Police have said he hit the deputy in the face but that's not clear from the video.

The video then shows Kissee breaking free, stumbling and falling to the ground. A second deputy arrives. Within about 2 seconds, they repeatedly open fire.

Police have not said how many shots the deputies fired. The video obtained by the Times does not have audio, but another video from a front door camera that does not show the shooting captured the sound of about 15 rounds fired.

Kizzee's relatives have described him as devoted to his late mother and 18-year-old brother. They said he was an energetic man who loved go-karts, cars and music and that he was working toward becoming a plumber.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the largest in the nation, does not have body cameras for deputies, though that soon will change. The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved funding and the first group of deputies will be equipped with cameras next month.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva offered his condolences to Kizzee's relatives on Tuesday, who he said includes a cousin who is a Sheriff's Department member.

Villanueva did not offer any updates on the investigation during a live social media event on Wednesday.

He did not respond to repeated questions about the fatal shooting posted by The Associated Press during the event.

Eli Akira Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, said his organization is trying to redefine street safety beyond the primary concern of many cyclists of good bicycle lanes for protection from cars.

“Bicycling, at the end of the day, is the freedom to move freely — without fear for your life,” he said.

Video in Black man’s suffocation shows cops put hood on him
by: MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Posted: Sep 2, 2020 

In this image taken from police body camera video provided by Roth and Roth LLP, a Rochester police officer puts a hood over the head of Daniel Prude, on March 23, 2020, in Rochester, N.Y. Video of Prude, a Black man who had run naked through the streets of the western New York city, died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020, by the man’s family. Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. (Rochester Police via Roth and Roth LLP via AP)

A Black man who had run naked through the streets of a western New York city died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday by the man’s family.

Daniel Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. His death received no public attention until Wednesday, when his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.

“How did you see him and not directly say, ‘The man is defenseless, buck naked on the ground. He’s cuffed up already. Come on.’ How many more brothers gotta die for society to understand that this needs to stop?” Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, asked at a news conference Wednesday.

The videos show Prude, who had taken off his clothes, complying when police ask him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. Prude is agitated and shouting as officers let him writhe as he sits on the pavement in handcuffs for a few moments as a light snow falls.

Then, they put a white “spit hood” over his head, a device intended to protect officers from a detainee’s saliva. At the time, New York was in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Prude demands they remove it.

Then the officer’s slam Prude’s head into the street. One officer holds his head down against the pavement with both hands, saying “stop spitting” as Prude’s shouts turn to whimpers and grunts. Another officer places a knee on his back. The officers appear to become concerned when they notice water coming out of Prude’s mouth.

“My man. You puking?” one says.

Prude stops moving and falls silent. One officer notes that he’s been out, naked, in the street for some time. Another remarks, “He feels pretty cold.”

His head had been held down by an officer for just over two minutes.

Medics can then be seen on the video performing CPR before he’s loaded into an ambulance.

Spit hoods have been scrutinized as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in the U.S. and other countries in recent years.

A medical examiner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.

Prude was from Chicago and had just arrived in Rochester for a visit with his family. Police responded after Joe Prude called 911 to report that his brother had left his house and was experiencing mental health issues.

The city halted its investigation into Prude’s death when state Attorney General Letitia James office began its own investigation in April. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general’s office, rather than handled by local officials.

James said Wednesday that investigation is continuing.

“I want everyone to understand that at no point in time did we feel that this was something that we wanted not to disclose,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at press briefing. “We are precluded from getting involved in it until that agency (the AG’s office) has completed their investigation.”

One officer wrote that they put the hood on Prude because he was spitting continuously in the direction of officers and they were concerned about coronavirus.

Still, activists demanded that officers involved with Prude’s death be prosecuted on murder charges and that they be removed from the department while the investigation proceeds.

“The police have shown us over and over again that they are not equipped to handle individuals with mental health concerns. These officers are trained to kill, and not to deescalate. These officers are trained to ridicule, instead of supporting Mr. Daniel Prude,” Ashley Gantt of Free the People ROC said at the news conference with Prude’s family.

Protesters gathered Wednesday outside Rochester’s Public Safety Building, which serves as police headquarters. Free the People ROC said several of its organizers were briefly taken into custody after they entered the building while Warren was speaking to the media.

They were released on appearance tickets, said Iman Abid, regional director of the NYCLU, who was among those taken into custody.

___

Hill reported from Albany. Associated Press writers Mary Esch, Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz and Dave Collins contributed to this repo

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 -

Fake news

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.

[Get our best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter.]

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."