Inuit documentary in production wins top award at Cannes Film Festival

"Twice Colonized" won the Best Docs-In-Progress award.

By

 Nunatsiaq News

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June 2, 2022

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A film following Inuk lawyer Aaju Peter as she tries to change European policy to make room for Indigenous voices has won an award at Cannes Film Festival. (Courtesy of David Murphy via Nunatsiaq News)

A documentary that tells the story of an Inuit lawyer’s search for justice in the wake of the death of her son has won an award for films in production at Cannes Film Festival.

Twice Colonized, directed by Lin Alluna, was showcased during the Cannes Docs — Marché du Film, where it won the Best Docs-In-Progress award on May 25.

It follows the journey of Aaju Peter, who is based in Greenland. After her son suddenly dies by suicide, she embarks on a quest to make sure Indigenous people play a role in forming policy in Europe.

Iqaluit filmmakers Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Stacey Aglok MacDonald co-produced the film alongside Emile Hertling Péronard, who is from Greenland. They worked with fellow producers Bob Moore and Daniel Cross, who are based in Montreal.

Twice Colonized is scheduled to be released next year.

America, Meet Your New Dictator-in-Chief

The President’s Secret, Unchecked Powers

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 2nd, 2022

America, meet your new dictator-in-chief.

As the New York Times reports, “Newly disclosed documents have shed a crack of light on secret executive branch plans for apocalyptic scenarios—like the aftermath of a nuclear attack—when the president may activate wartime powers for national security emergencies.”< The problem, of course, is that we have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security. The seeds of this present madness were sown almost two decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20) provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

Essentially, the president would become a dictator for life.

It has happened already.

As we have witnessed in recent years, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents recently obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

In such a climate, the American president becomes dictator with permanent powers: imperial, unaccountable and unconstitutional.

Then again, the police state with the president at its helm has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

As law professor William P. Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.”

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump and passed along to Joe Biden.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

Unfortunately, the process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, it must start with “we the people.”

For starters, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we must recalibrate the balance of power.

Start locally—in your own communities, in your schools, at your city council meetings, in newspaper editorials, at protests—by pushing back against laws that are unjust, police departments that overreach, politicians that don’t listen to their constituents, and a system of government that grows more tyrannical by the day.

What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

In other words, we’ve got to start making both the president and the police state play by the rules of the Constitution.cebook
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He wrote the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015). He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Read other articles by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

General Electric’s French Tax Scam

by Filippo Ortona / June 2nd, 2022

Since the purchase of Alstom Energy in 2015, the US multinational could have put in place a vast system of tax evasion involving France, Switzerland and Delaware. With the blessing of the French Finance Ministry.

It is an industrial fiasco which has no end. Seven years after the sale of Alstom Energy to General Electric,¹ the record of the American multinational has been disastrous – 5000 workers retrenched, including 1400 in the key Belfort factory complex; an advanced technology hub left to rot; a preliminary inquest for conflict of interest against Hugh Bailey, CEO of GE France.² And now, a scandal involving tax evasion.

According to our inquest, supported by independent audit reports and several internal accounting documents of the group, the American multinational has put in place an opaque financial setup between its French subsidiary, General Electric Energy Products France (GEEPF) and subsidiaries domiciled in Switzerland and in the American State of Delaware.

Objective: to bypass the French tax authorities in concealing the profits arising from the sale of gas turbines produced at Belfort, in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.region. We estimate that more than €800 million has disappeared from GEEPF’s accounts between 2015 and 2020. This translates into a deficit for the public exchequer of €150-300 million.

Mediapart has already analysed in 2019 the means by which the financial policies of the company has drained the Belfort site. The massive utilisation of intra-group financial transfers via transfer pricing has been outlined. The revelations of Disclose confirm and deepen this information.

For GE, the large-scale tax evasion begins in late 2015 by a trick both simple and discrete: the transfer of corporate liability to a company created for the occasion at Baden, in Switzerland. Its name: General Electric Switzerland GmbH (GES).

From then onwards, the Belfort factory, announced at the time of purchase from Alstom as the future global site of turbine production for the group, ceases to be a manufacturing site and becomes a ‘production unit’ placed under the direction of a Swiss company. This restructuring marks the last profitable year of the Belfort site. And for good reason: with this sleight of hand, GE comes to launch its process of the appropriation of the profits arising from the sale of turbines and component parts ‘made in France’.

An illustration from 2019. This particular year, a contract is passed between GEEPF and the Swiss company GES for the sale of gas turbines. The contract price – more than €350 million. Although these products have been produced in France, GES appropriates for itself the status of ‘manufacturer’, presenting the Belfort site merely as a banal ‘distributor’.

The point of this vanishing act: to allow the Swiss outlet to resell the turbines to the ultimate client in order to garner the profits of the sale. In the framework of the contracts, not less than 97 % of the profits fly off to Switzerland, where the company tax rate ranges between 17 – 22 % against 33 % in France. Contacted, General Electric has not responded to our questions.

Laissez-faire of the state

A similar setup concerns the sale of replacement parts for the turbines – the bulk of revenues generated at Belfort. From estimates based on the GE group’s annual reports, the scheme could have transferred around €1.5 billion to GES, the Swiss subsidiary, between 2016 and 2019. All with the blessing of the French Finance Ministry.

From our investigations, General Electric, following the acquisition of Alstom Energy, could have benefited from the protocol of a ‘trust relationship’ (relation de confiance) with the French Treasury. This mechanism allows that “the enterprise should furnish all the elements necessary to the understanding of its [fiscal] situation”, citing a document from the DGFiP (direction générale des finances publiques), dating from 2013. Clearly, the multinational has validated its tax scheme, involving the links with its subsidiaries, with the Finance Ministry. In return, it has ensured that the Ministry has arranged to not execute any control over the arrangement. Interrogated over its precise knowledge of this mechanism of fiscal optimisation established by General Electric, the Ministry of Economy and Finance has not responded to our questions.

At Baden, 8 Brown-Boveri Strasse, General Electric has domiciled three other subsidiaries as French ‘service providers’. The first two, General Electric Global Services GMbH and GE Global Parts and Products GmbH, are charged to sell replacement parts manufactured at Belfort. The third, baptised General Electric Technology GmbH, has as mission to hold the patent rights over gas turbines. For one simple reason, according to one of the audit reports consulted by Disclose: “The foreign revenues arising from patents are very little taxed in Switzerland”. Since 2017, €177 million of royalty payments have left France, direction Baden.

The millions sent to Delaware

To complete its strategy of fiscal optimisation, General Electric relies on another subsidiary of the group, based, this time, in the US. Monogram Licensing International LLC – this is its name – is domiciled in Delaware, a State known for imposing zero tax on companies. Between 2014 and 2019, it could have received around €80.9 million on the part of GE France for the utilisation of GE’s brand, logo and advertising slogans. According to the contract in place between GE France and Monogram, France must pay 1 % of its annual turnover to Delaware. However, this threshold has been cleared on several occasions. With no explanation, one of the audits of the group has underlined.

The massive appropriation of the wealth produced by the workers of Belfort is essentially illegal, as outlined in the international tax convention BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting). Taking effect in France in 2019, this text, intended to reinforce the struggle against tax evasion, stipulates that company profits must be “taxed where the real economic activity takes place … and where value is created”. Logically, in the case of turbines manufactured at Belfort, the associated tax must then be deducted in France, not in Switzerland.

The workforce the losers

In making disappear €800 million from the accounts of General Electric Energy Products France, the multinational has then escaped tax. But it has also deprived the French workforce of a part of their participation in the enterprise. A tax expert to whom we’ve submitted the details of the operations of General Electric at Belfort confirms it: in artificially reducing the profits, the industrial could have deprived its employees of several thousand euros each, between 2015 and 2019, by virtue of their formal participation in GEEPF profits. In December 2021, the SUD Industrie Union and the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) on the Belfort site have lodged a complaint against their employer for “fraud against the right to participation [in profits] of employees”.

The system implanted by the group has equally burdened the municipal budget. “Leaving from the moment when GE moved its profits offshore, inevitably it pays less [local] taxes”, explains Mathilde Regnaud, opposition Councillor at Belfort. By February 2022, given “the cumulative loss of tax takings”, estimated at €10 million, from the tax on enterprise value-added (cotisation sur la valeur ajoutée des entreprises, CVAE), members of the Municipal Council of Belfort have requested a detailed analysis of the tax losses suffered by the town. A demand which points above all to “the legality … of the manoeuvres of fiscal optimisation” carried out by General Electric on the territory. In 2021, the aforesaid manoeuvres could have in part provoked the augmentation of property taxes on the commune.

*****

31 May. Following publication, the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and the DGFiP (direction générale des finances publiques) have reacted through Agence France-Presse, claiming that they had never validated GE’s tax arrangements via any ‘trust relationship’. General Electric, through AFP, claims that the group “respects the fiscal regime of the countries in which it operates”.

The article has been translated by Evan Jones.

1. [Translator’s note] The complex saga of the corrupt takeover of Alstom Energy by General Electric is told in Jones, ‘Behind GE’s Takeover of Alstom Energy, Counterpunch, 2 December 2016; and Jones, ‘The Coalition of the US Justice Department and GE against Alstom’, Dissident Voice, 20 April 2019. Of great significance regarding the rise and rise of General Electric is a recent book by Stephen Maher, Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. []
2. [Translator’s note] In September 2019, the public prosecutor of Paris charged Bailey for possible conflict of interest. Bailey was advisor in the office of Emmanuel Macron, then Economy Minister, when €70 million was granted to the French export authority which directly benefited GE’s exports. In 2017, Macron becomes President, Bailey is hired by GE France and is appointed CEO in 2019. [FacebookTwitter

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Filippo Ortona is an Italian freelance journalist who has contributed this article (29 May) to Disclose, a French network of investigative journalism. Read other articles by Filippo.

This article was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2022 at 8:20pm and is filed under Capitalism, Corporations, France.

Ransomware attack affects production at a Foxconn factory in Mexico

Foxconn's Mexico facilities suffer a second ransomware attack in two years. (Source: Unsplash)

For the second time in two years, Foxconn's facilities operating in Mexico have been breached. A ransomware group known as LockBit has taken the responsibility. The group is demanding that Foxconn fulfill certain conditions by June 11 if the company wants to save its data from being leaked.

Fawad Murtaza, 06/03/2022

Security

Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturers, has been hit with a ransomware attack on one of its facilities in Mexico. Talking to Bleeping Computer, the company explained, “one of our factories in Mexico experienced a ransomware cyberattack in late May. The company's cybersecurity team has been carrying out the recovery plan accordingly.”

The affected factory, which is located in Tijuana, serves as a major supply center for California, United States. To ensure production isn’t hampered by the hack, Foxconn has decided to adjust the production capacity of the factory. The company has also shared details of the attack with the management, clients, and suppliers.

While Foxconn hasn’t officially identified the perpetrators, a ransomware group known as LockBit has claimed responsibility for the breach. The group posted an ultimatum on May 31, that if Foxconn doesn’t comply with the demands by June 11, it will publish the files.

Foxconn’s Mexico factories produce mobile phones, LCD TVs, computers, and set-top boxes. As such the manufacturer may have sensitive documents about unreleased products and production plans which can end up in the wrong hands if LockBit proceeds to leak the files.

This is not the first time that a ransomware group has targeted Foxconn’s Mexico-based facilities. The company’s CTBG MX facility in Ciudad Juárez suffered a similar attack in December 2020 by the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang.

LockBit's warning. (Source: Bleeping Computer)

Source(s)

Bleeping Computer

GoodWill Ransomware victims have to perform socially driven activities to decryption their data

May 30, 2022 By Pierluigi Paganini


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Researchers discovered a new ransomware family called GoodWill that asks victims to donate the ransom for social causes.

CloudSEK’s Threat Intelligence Research team has disclosed a new ransomware strain called GoodWill, that demands victims the payment of a ransom through donations for social causes and financially helping people in need.

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“The ransomware group propagates very unusual demands in exchange for the decryption key. The Robin Hood-like group claims to be interested in helping the less fortunate, rather than extorting victims for financial motivations.” reads the analysis published by CloudSEK. “The group’s multiple-paged ransom note suggests that victims perform three socially driven activities to be able to download the decryption key.”


The GoodWill ransomware is written in .NET, in order to evade detection it is packed with UPX packers and sleeps for 722.45 seconds before starting its activity.

The researchers attribute the attack to a threat actor based in India. Ransomware operators request the victims to perform three socially driven activities in exchange for the decryption key.

Researchers observed that the ransomware code is based on the HiddenTear open-source ransomware.

Victims have to donate new clothes to the homeless, record their action, and post it on social media. In addition, the victims can accompany less fortunate children to Dominos, Pizza Hut or KFC for a treat, take pictures and videos, and post them on social media.

The last action for the victims consists of providing financial assistance to anyone who needs urgent medical attention, but cannot afford it, at a nearby hospital, recording audio, and sharing it with the operators.

“Once all three activities are completed, the victims should also write a note on social media (Facebook or Instagram) on “How you transformed yourself into a kind human being by becoming a victim of a ransomware called GoodWill.” said the researchers. “Since there are no known victims/ targets for the ransomware group, their Tactics, Techniques and Procedures remain unknown.”

The researchers also shared indicators of compromise (IoCs) for this ransomware.

US Sanctions Force Evil Corp to Change Tactics

The threat actor behind the notorious Dridex campaign has switched from using its exclusive credential-harvesting malware to a ransomware-as-a-service model, to make attribution harder.

Jai Vijayan

Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

June 02, 2022

Source: Zwiebackesser via Shutterstock

Sanctions that the US government imposed on Russia-based crimeware gang Evil Corp in 2019 appear to have forced the threat actor to change tactics to remain in the cybercrime business.

New research into the group's activity by Mandiant shows that after the sanctions were put in place — after the group caused more than $100 million in losses to banks and other financial institutions by stealing sensitive information — Evil Corp switched to using ransomware in an apparent effort to obscure attribution. 

Moving on from using Dridex, its own exclusive (and easily fingerprinted) malware, Evil Corp actors have been observed deploying ransomware families used by multiple threat groups, such as Hades, WastedLocker, PhoenixLocker, and most recently LockBit, a ransomware-as-a-service option.

US regulations prohibit organizations — including ransomware victims and negotiators — from conducting any kind of financial transactions with organizations and entities on the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.

"[US] sanctions have had a direct impact on threat actor operations, particularly as at least some companies involved in ransomware remediation activities, such as negotiation, refuse to facilitate payments to known sanctioned entities," Mandiant says in its report. "This can ultimately reduce threat actors' ability to be paid by victims, which is the primary driver of ransomware operations."

That means US ransomware victims need to pay closer attention to whom they are dealing with, says Jeremy Kennelly, senior manager of financial crime analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence.

"When dealing with a ransomware intrusion, the particular malware being deployed, or the branding on ransom notes, or shaming websites may be insufficient to determine whether the beneficiary of payments has affiliations with Evil Corp, a sanctioned entity," he says.

Sanctions Crunch

OFAC sanctioned Evil Corp and two members associated with the group for stealing more than $100 million from financial institutions in 40 countries using credentials harvested with the Dridex malware tool.

Around the time the sanctions were imposed, Evil Corp had begun renting out Dridex for use by affiliate gangs. It also had begun making its own foray into the ransomware space, initially with BitPaymer ransomware and later with DopplePaymer and WastedLocker in 2019. 

In 2020 Evil Corp. targeted more than two-dozen US organizations with ransomware, including several Fortune 500 companies in a massive WastedLocker campaign. Months after the sanctions went into effect, the threat actor stopped using WastedLocker and soon after switched to a variety of other tools, such as Hades and most recently LockBit — a ransomware-as-a service tool that gives the threat actor an opportunity to blend in with other actors.

UNC2165: Another Evolution of Evil Corp.

Mandiant says since 2019 it has investigated multiple LockBit ransomware intrusions carried out by a group that the vendor is currently tracking as UNC2165. According to Mandiant, UNC2165 has a lot of overlap with Evil Corp and is most likely an actor closely affiliated with it. For instance, in all the intrusions that Mandiant investigated, UNC2165 obtained access to the victim network via UNC1543, a financially motivated threat group that distributes FakeUpdates, a multistage JavaScript dropper for distributing malware. FakeUpdates was also the infection chain for deploying Dridex that later resulted in BitPaymer and DopplePaymer ransomware infections.

Similarly, the Hades ransomware family that Mandiant observed UNC2165 deploying had multiple code similarities to other ransomware tools tied to Evil Corp. Several of the command-and-control servers that UNC2165 has been observed using have also been linked to Evil Corp infrastructure, Mandiant says.

"The operational relationship between UNC2165 and the broader Evil Corp group is not fully understood," Kennelly says. "Mandiant has observed UNC2165 deploying Hades ransomware and operating Hades-related infrastructure. Furthermore, multiple public reports related to the deployment of other ransomware families commonly attributed to Evil Corp have involved use of infrastructure Mandiant attributes to UNC2165."

Kennelly says it's unclear what impact Mandiant's report tying an Evil Corp-related actor to LockBit will have in the ransomware space. 

"The impact this disclosure will have on ransomware negotiators is difficult to predict," he says. "LockBit may quickly move to distance themselves from affiliates with ties to Evil Corp, or deny the allegations wholesale," he says.

Furthermore, UNC2165 has shifted their operations multiple times over the past years, and this may ultimately lead to them to again adopt an updated toolkit if ransomware negotiators halt work on LockBit cases, he notes.

JOHN BIRCH UN CONSPIRACY REDUX
GOP lawmakers push legislation to preempt WHO global pandemic treaty

Critics say the treaty and related measures vastly expand the authority and resources of the the U.N. health arm at the expense of national sovereignty.



By Aaron Kliegman
Updated: June 2, 2022

JUST THE NEWS


Critics of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations' health agency, breathed a sigh of relief last week when legally binding international health rules proposed by the Biden administration weren't adopted.

However, concerns remain about ongoing efforts to establish a sweeping global agreement to combat future pandemics, leading Republican Reps. Chris Stewart and Ronny Jackson, of Utah and Texas, respectively, to introduce legislation on Tuesday to preempt U.S. participation in such an arrangement.

Stewart's legislation would prohibit the use of funds to propose amendments to either the International Health Regulations (IHR) or a so-called "global pandemic treaty," or any other agreement among member states of the WHO.

The Biden administration has proposed controversial amendments to the IHR, an instrument of international law that is legally binding on WHO member countries, including the U.S.

The treaty — currently being drafted — is a separate but related initiative to create a globally binding accord on pandemic preparedness.

Supporters argue the treaty and IHR changes can address the holes exposed by the world's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"A pandemic treaty and IHR reform can only make the world safer from fast moving infectious diseases," Georgetown University law professor Lawrence Gostin told Just the News. "After all we have suffered during the pandemic, isn't that what we all should want?"

Critics say the measures vastly expand the authority and resources of the WHO, which they argue would be given greater control to dictate how nations respond to future pandemics and undermine national sovereignty.

"President Biden must be stopped from handing power to a corrupt body of international bureaucrats," Stewart said in a statement. "If he gets his way, the WHO will have the power to unilaterally declare a public health crisis in America. Yes, the same WHO that actively covered for China by denying their role in the origins of COVID-19. If an American citizen didn't vote someone into office, they have no business telling us how to live."

Stewart's bill would prohibit the use of funds to propose any amendments to the WHO that would supersede or modify authorities under the U.S. It would also halt U.S. WHO funding, unless the global body takes certain steps, including holding China accountable for its alleged role in the origin and spread of COVID-19.

"Congress must now pass my legislation to hold China accountable and keep American decision-making where it belongs: with the American people," said Stewart.

Jackson's legislation, meanwhile, would prohibit the use of funds to implement any obligations of the U.S. under a pandemic treaty.


"Since the onset of COVID-19, the WHO has proven to be as corrupt as its leaders are incompetent," said Jackson, former physician to the president under both Obama and Trump. "The WHO was complicit in helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up COVID-19's initial spread and origin, yet Joe Biden wants to give them control over public health matters in America. It's an insult to every American citizen who has been affected by the pandemic, and I will not stay silent as this farce of a treaty is negotiated behind the American peoples' backs."

Experts and lawmakers in recent weeks have shined a spotlight on the WHO's checkered record during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning the public health measures under discussion would centralize too much power in the hands of the WHO.

The House bills were introduced days after Republicans in the Senate unveiled similar measures last week.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) introduced legislation requiring any agreement resulting from the work of the WHO's intergovernmental negotiating body to be deemed a treaty per U.S. law, requiring the advice and consent of a supermajority of the Senate.

"The WHO, along with our federal health agencies, failed miserably in its response to COVID-19," Johnson said in a statement. "Its failure should not be rewarded with a new international treaty that would increase its power at the expense of American sovereignty. What the WHO does need is greater accountability and transparency. This bill makes clear to the Biden administration that any new WHO pandemic agreement must be deemed a treaty and submitted to the Senate for ratification. The sovereignty of the United States is not negotiable."

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced his own bill to prevent the WHO from unilaterally imposing public health restrictions on the U.S.

Proponents of the WHO's initiative dismissed such concerns about undermining American sovereignty.

"There is considerable disinformation and even conspiracy theories about the IHR reforms and the pandemic treaty," said Gostin, who works as director of the WHO's Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. "It does not allow WHO to make any decisions about U.S. health policy. WHO powers are currently weak. They need to be stronger, but it is crystal clear that WHO will not have any power to dictate U.S. domestic health policy."

Last week, the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body comprised of 194 member countries, convened in Geneva, Switzerland. Topping the agenda was the WHO's push to create a pandemic treaty.

The current working draft of the treaty would give the WHO more power to impose its recommendations to combat pandemics, potentially including lockdown measures and travel restrictions. It also calls for the WHO to establish a "new global system for surveillance" and "to deploy proactive countermeasures against misinformation and social media attacks."

Additionally, the accord includes provisions for the development of digital vaccine certificates and contact tracing "in the international context."

The WHO's intergovernmental negotiating body will meet multiple times this and next month to continue on the working draft of the pandemic treaty. The goal is to deliver a progress report to the World Health Assembly in 2023 and adopt the agreement by 2024.

Also topping the World Health Assembly's agenda was voting on America's proposed amendments to the IHR.

The Biden administration quietly submitted the proposed amendments in January, but they weren't made public until last month and only received major attention ahead of the World Health Assembly.

The administration's proposed amendments to the IHR would, among other changes, expand the power of the WHO to declare pandemics and other health emergencies. The U.S. proposal specifically deleted a key line from the old version of the IHR that required the WHO to consult with and attempt to obtain verification from countries in whose territory the public health issue in question is allegedly occurring before declaring an emergency and pushing certain recommendations.

The U.S. proposal would also establish "compliance committees" in each WHO member country to gather information and promote compliance with regulations.

Critics were concerned the measures would be adopted at the World Health Assembly and empower the WHO in significant ways.

However, the only IHR amendments actually adopted at the gathering "appear to be very minor in scope," according to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.

Most notably, the changes shrink the time period in which a country can oppose amendments to the IRH from 18 months to 10 months and shrink the time lag after which new amendments come into effect after adoption from 24 months to 12 months.

The Biden administration's original proposal — which met with opposition at the assembly from dozens of countries, especially from Africa — was effectively deferred. A committee was formed to review the U.S. amendments and recommend adoption of some or all the measures at a later date.

"There is no current consensus on IHR reform, and there is also considerable opposition to the Biden administration proposals within the U.S., especially among conservative Republicans," said Gostin. "Yet, I am optimistic that some reforms will probably be adopted next May," the date of the next World Health Assembly.

Still, U.S. critics of the WHO hailed the delay as a victory — but a temporary one.

The WHO didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.

'Disaster for Millions of Kids' Looms as GOP Obstruction Threatens School Meal Programs

"There is no reason that children should go hungry in the world's wealthiest nation," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman. "Congress needs to renew the federal school lunch waivers."


A child puts her mask back on after finishing lunch in the cafeteria of Medora Elementary School on March 17, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

June 2, 2022

In fewer than 30 days, a slew of federal waivers that have enabled schools across the United States to provide free breakfast and lunch to students during the coronavirus pandemic are set to expire, potentially leaving millions of children without easy access to critical meals.

And to the dismay of advocates, Congress—which is currently on recess—doesn't appear poised to act.

"Summer—already the hungriest time of year—will be particularly hard for kids when many summer sites will be unable to open."

"There is no urgency and political appetite to even have this conversation," Jillien Meier, director of the No Kid Hungry campaign, told Vox's Rachel Cohen on Wednesday. "Frankly this is not a priority for Congress and the White House. People are really focused on having a 'return to normal'... folks aren't talking about it and they have no clue that this crisis is looming."

In March, obstruction by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and much of his Republican caucus tanked an effort to include a temporary extension of the waivers in an omnibus spending package.

First approved in 2020, the waivers have given the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) authority to lift regulatory obstacles to universal school meals such as income-based eligibility requirements, which entailed paperwork and other onerous red tape.

Because of the flexibilities offered by the waivers, an estimated 10 million additional children nationwide were able to access school meals—progress that advocates fear will be lost if Congress allows the waivers to lapse. Some states are rushing to enact their own universal free school meal programs in anticipation of losing the waivers.

"The consequences of not extending waivers are severe," Lisa Davis, senior vice president of the advocacy organization Share Our Strength, warned in March after the Senate unveiled an omnibus spending package that omitted waiver extensions.

"Without them, schools will face financial penalties for not meeting federal nutrition requirements, even though they have no choice," said Davis. "They will have fewer financial resources to meet higher prices for food and other goods, staffing, and transportation. Summer—already the hungriest time of year—will be particularly hard for kids when many summer sites will be unable to open."

"Children in rural communities," Davis added, "will face more barriers to accessing summer meals when important flexibilities like multiple meal pickup and delivery options disappear."

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'This Is Evil': McConnell Blocking Extension of Free School Lunch Waivers

As Vox reported Wednesday, "hundreds of advocacy groups, school districts, and elected officials have urged Congress to reauthorize the waivers for the next school year, at a price tag of roughly $11 billion," but Republican lawmakers are still standing in the way.

"Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told Politico that the last-minute opposition to including school meal waivers in their March spending bill came from... McConnell," Vox noted. "A few weeks following this surprise, Stabenow introduced the Support Kids Not Red Tape Act to extend the waivers, but so far, it has formal backing only from Democrats, plus Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins."

"Even moderate Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema support the extension," the outlet added.



Last-minute pressure on Congress to preserve the school meal waivers comes amid growing evidence that child hunger is rising across the U.S. thanks to lawmakers' failure to extend the boosted Child Tax Credit (CTC), a program that Manchin opposed.

"Expiration of the advance CTC was associated with a 12% increase in food insufficiency in households with children relative to households without children by February—and rates of food insufficiency continued to climb since February," researchers Julia Raifman and Allison Bovell-Ammon wrote in a blog post for the Economic Policy Institute last month.

"Even brief disruptions in access to food can have lasting consequences," they noted. "Not having enough to eat often disrupts children's cognitive and emotional development and education. This was the case for a child who disclosed that the reason she was fidgeting and not paying attention in class was that she did not have enough food to eat."

Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) led the introduction of a bill that would enact a permanent, universal, and nationwide free school meals program, guaranteeing free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children no matter their family income.

The legislation, which would also eliminate school meal debt, has not received a vote in the House or the Senate.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a former educator and co-sponsor of the measure, tweeted Thursday that "there is no reason that children should go hungry in the world's wealthiest nation."

"Congress needs to renew the federal school lunch waivers," Bowman added, "and guarantee meals to children in need."

House Dems Say Amazon 'Obstructing' Probe of Warehouse Collapse That Killed Six

A congressional review of last year's tragedy "seeks to determine whether Amazon's corporate practices put employee safety first, or… is merely paying lip service to this principle."


Workers remove debris from an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Edwardsville, Illinois, on December 11, 2021, after it was hit by a tornado. (Photo: Tim Vizer/AFP via Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT

June 2, 2022

A trio of Democrats from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Thursday accused Amazon of "obstructing" its investigation into the December 2021 collapse of a warehouse in Illinois that killed six employees.

"The committee's investigation is of crucial importance to the American people."

The collapse resulting from tornado damage at the Amazon fulfillment center in Edwardsville has heightened scrutiny of the e-commerce giant's labor practices. In late March, the House committee requested documents from the company related to the event, internal reviews of it, and broader extreme weather policies.

The panel's chair, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), joined with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) for a Thursday letter to Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy highlighting that the company "has failed to meaningfully comply with the committee's requests."

"These documents were due on April 14, 2022," the letter states. "Amazon still has not produced any of the key categories of documents identified by committee staff, let alone the full set of materials the committee requested."

"On May 17, 2022, counsel to Amazon claimed that Amazon is withholding these documents based on work-product and attorney-client privileges," the document continues. "As committee staff previously informed your counsel, the committee, under chairs of both parties, does not recognize common-law privileges as valid reasons to withhold documents from Congress."

"Amazon's inability to produce even this limited set of materials in a timely manner is troubling," the letter adds, "given that the company represented to members of Congress more than four months ago that it was 'conducting a thorough internal investigation' into the Edwardsville events, and 'cooperating' with an inquiry by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)."

Since the March request for records, the letter points out, "OSHA revealed that an inspection of the Edwardsville facility 'raised concerns about the potential risk to employees during severe weather emergencies,' and recommended that Amazon 'voluntarily take the necessary steps to eliminate or materially reduce your employees' exposure' to the risk factors OSHA identified."

The document also cast doubt on Amazon's willingness to address issues internally, noting that last month, "shareholders—following the company's recommendation—defeated a proposal for an independent audit of working conditions at the company's warehouses," a vote that came the same day that they approved Jassy's compensation package worth over $212 million.

According to the Democratic lawmakers:


The committee's investigation is of crucial importance to the American people. Employers like Amazon must prioritize worker safety over the corporate bottom line. Our investigation into Amazon's response to the events in Edwardsville and other extreme weather events seeks to determine whether Amazon's corporate practices put employee safety first, or whether your company, which now employs nearly one million people in the United States, is merely paying lip service to this principle. As we noted back in March, "This investigation will inform legislative efforts to curb unfair labor practices, strengthen protections for workers, and address the effects of climate change on worker safety."

"The committee will grant an extension until June 8, 2022, for Amazon to complete its document production," the letter concludes. "If Amazon fails to do so, the committee will have no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain full compliance."

The warning came a day after Jassy received another letter from members of Congress related to other labor concerns—specifically, plans reported by The Intercept in April to ban certain terms like union, living wage, and slave labor from an internal messaging application.


Bush and Ocasio-Cortez partnered with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Cory Booker (D-N.Y.) for that letter, which says that the plan could be illegal and "Amazon's compliance with federal labor laws is an important matter of public concern especially given the company's status as one of the largest retailers in the country."

"This disturbing report is part of a pattern of worker exploitation, retaliation, and union-busting on the part of Amazon," the app-related letter adds, requesting documents and responses to a series of questions by June 16.