23 July 21
Can Anyone Donate a Thousand?
It’s very late in the month, and we are still far short of meeting our expenses for the month. Very small donations are all we have right now. We love that, but we do need to make up ground.
Is there someone who can match the smaller donations with a $1,000?
Thank you sincerely in advance.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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23 July 21
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WE ARE OUT OF TIME ON FUNDING. We have been losing money every month for eight straight months. We are out of cash and out of time on funding. If “1%” of the people who receive this message make a $30 donation, this drive will be over today. Stop. Donate. Please.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News
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ALSO SEE: Sarah Jones | Big, Ugly Hero to Workers Spared Execution
Robert Reich | Worker Power
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Imagine a world where workers have real power."
magine a world where workers have real power. In this world, workers are paid a living wage, are protected by a strong union, and wield enough political clout to ensure Congress passes pro-worker laws. Corporations can’t treat them like robots and abandon communities to find cheaper labor elsewhere. It is a world of low inequality, where workers have a bigger share of the fruits of their labor.
This world is America in the 1950s.
This world was far from perfect. Black people and women were still second-class citizens. Windows of opportunity were still small or shuttered. That’s why it’s not enough to just go back in time. We must build upon it and expand it.
For the past 40 years, this world has been dismantled. The voice of workers has been steadily drowned out in both the workplace and on the national political stage by the voice of big corporations.
This massive power shift wasn’t the result of “free market forces” but of political choices. Now, it’s time to make the political choice to strengthen the voice of all workers.
Start with one of the biggest sources of worker power: unions. Every worker in America has a legal right to join a union free from interference from their employer – a hard-fought victory that workers shed blood to secure. But corporate America has been busting unions to prevent workers from organizing.
In Bessemer, Alabama, for instance, Amazon used every trick in the anti-union playbook to prevent its predominantly Black workforce from forming the first Amazon union.
Most union-busting tactics are illegal, but the punishment is so laughably small that it’s simply the cost of doing business for a multi-billion dollar company like Amazon.
In addition, 28 states now have so-called “right-to-work” laws on the books, thanks to decades of big business lobbying. These laws ban unions from requiring dues from non-union workers, although non-union workers still benefit from these union contracts. This obviously makes it much harder for workers to unionize.
Corporations are also misclassifying employees as independent contractors and part-time workers, so workers don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or the minimum wage, and don’t have the right to form a union.
And corporations are waging political fights to keep employees off the books: Uber, Lyft, and other gig companies shelled out $200 million to get Proposition 22 passed in California, exempting them from a state labor law cracking down on misclassification.
It’s a vicious cycle: corporations crush their workers to protect corporate bottom lines, then use their enlarged profits to lobby for policies that allow them to keep crushing their workers – preventing workers from having a voice in the workplace and in our democracy.
This vicious cycle began in the 1980s, when corporate raiders ushered in the era of “shareholder capitalism” that prioritized shareholders above the interests of other stakeholders.
They bought up enough shares of stock to gain control of the corporation, and then cut costs by slashing payrolls, busting unions, and abandoning their home communities for cheaper locales – all to maximize share values. The CEO of General Electric at the time, Jack Welch, helped pioneer these moves: in just his first four years as CEO, a full quarter of GE’s workforce was fired.
The Reagan administration helped block legislation to rein in these hostile takeovers, and refused to lift a finger to enforce antitrust laws that could have prevented some of them.
I wish I could report that the Clinton and Obama administrations reformed labor laws to make it harder for corporations to bust unions. But either because Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lacked the political clout to get this done or didn’t want to expend the political capital, the fact is neither president led the way.
The result of these political choices? Corporate profits have soared and wages have stagnated.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn the tide by making new political choices that restore the voice and centrality of American workers.
The most important is now in front of us: It’s called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
Passed in the House in March with bipartisan support, the PRO Act is the toughest labor law reform in a generation.
It prevents misclassification of full-time workers, bans corporations from harassing or intimidating workers who want to form a union, prohibits employers from replacing striking workers with non-union workers, and beefs up penalties for breaking existing labor laws, among other provisions empowering workers.
Beyond the PRO Act, American businesses need to be restructured so workers have a say at every level. At the top, that means a voice on corporate boards. In many European countries, worker representation has been shown to boost wages, skills, and corporate investment in communities.
At the local level, we should make it easier to establish worker-owned cooperatives, which have been shown to increase profits, wages, and worker satisfaction.
And our trade and foreign policy can center on American workers without falling into the kind of xenophobia and nativism Donald Trump promoted.
Reversing 40 years of shareholder capitalism won’t be easy. But remember this: you, the working people of America, outnumber the corporate executives and big investors by a wide margin. Together, you can change the rules, and build a world where workers have real power.
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (photo: Jasper Colt/USA TODAY)
Democrats Blast FBI as New Details of Kavanaugh Inquiry Emerge
Dareh Gregorian, NBC News
Gregorian writes: "A group of Democratic senators is demanding more answers from the FBI after the agency revealed new details about the limited scope of its supplemental investigation into Brett Kavanaugh's background when he was a nominee for the Supreme Court."
The FBI said it received 4,500 tips about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and forwarded "relevant" ones to the White House counsel's office.
group of Democratic senators is demanding more answers from the FBI after the agency revealed new details about the limited scope of its supplemental investigation into Brett Kavanaugh's background when he was a nominee for the Supreme Court.
In a letter June 30 to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Chris Coons, D-Del., made public Thursday, Jill Tyson of the FBI's congressional affairs office acknowledged that the department conducted only 10 additional interviews in its supplemental investigation, even though it had received over 4,500 tips.
Tyson said "relevant tips" from phone calls and messages were forwarded to the White House counsel's office. It's unclear what became of the tips after that.
Whitehouse, who had written FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for details about the inquiry in July 2019, said, "This long-delayed answer confirms how badly we were spun by Director Wray and the FBI in the Kavanaugh background investigation and hearing."
While Wray has said the FBI followed tip line procedures, "he meant the 'procedure' of doing whatever Trump White House counsel told them to do," Whitehouse tweeted. "That's misleading as hell."
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment. Former White House counsel Don McGahn did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Then-President Donald Trump tasked the FBI with conducting a supplemental background investigation into Kavanaugh at the urging of some Republican senators after his nomination to the high court in 2018 was endangered by sexual misconduct allegations dating to his high school and college years. Kavanaugh repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
"As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week," Trump said at the time.
Republicans said the subsequent FBI report vindicated Kavanaugh, while Democrats maintained that it was incomplete. NBC News reported at the time that the FBI hadn't contacted over 40 people with potential information about the sexual misconduct allegations.
The Senate confirmed the nomination in a narrow 50-48 vote.
Attorneys for the accuser who testified at Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, Christine Blasey Ford, said in a statement that the FBI letter confirmed that the agency's investigation was "a sham and a major institutional failure."
"Because the FBI and Trump's White House Counsel hid the ball on this, we do not know how many of those 4,500 tips were consequential, how many of those tips supported Dr. Ford's testimony, or how many showed that Kavanaugh perjured himself during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee," said the lawyers, Debra S. Katz and Lisa J. Banks. "Our nation deserved better."
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The Dalai Lama is not thought to carry a personal phone, but numbers linked to his senior advisers appear in the data leak. (photo: Guardian/AP)
Dalai Lama's Inner Circle Listed in Pegasus Project Data
Michael Safi, Guardian UK
Safi writes: "China's nearest observation posts are hundreds of miles from Dharamsala, the city in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas that hosts Tibet's government-in-exile and its highest spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama."
Indian government, which hosts the Tibetan leader, suspected of being NSO client that selected numbers
hina’s nearest observation posts are hundreds of miles from Dharamsala, the city in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas that hosts Tibet’s government-in-exile and its highest spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Still, Tibetans there have often felt closely watched.
Suspected Chinese spies have regularly been detected in the hill station. A decade ago, a digital security specialist watched in disbelief as sensitive files on Tibetan government computers were extracted on the screen before his eyes – activity that led to the unearthing of a massive cyber-espionage network, known as GhostNet, which was largely traced to Chinese servers.
Surveillance technology has evolved, and leaked data points to another possible interest in Tibetan communications – this time from a less obvious source.
The phone numbers of a top ring of advisers around the Dalai Lama are believed to have been selected as those of people of interest by government clients of NSO Group. Analysis strongly indicates that the Indian government was selecting the potential targets.
Other phone numbers apparently selected by Delhi were those of the president of the government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, staff in the office of another Buddhist spiritual leader, the Gyalwang Karmapa, and several other activists and clerics who are part of the exiled community in India.
NSO’s Pegasus spyware allows clients to infiltrate phones and extract their calls, messages and location. The selected Tibetans did not make their phones available to confirm whether any hacking was attempted or successful, but technical analysis of 10 other phones on the suspected Indian client list found traces of Pegasus or signs of targeting related to the spyware.
Traces of Pegasus were found on 37 of the 67 phones in the data that were analysed by Amnesty International’s security lab. Of the 48 iPhones examined that had not been reset or replaced since they appeared in the records, 33 carried traces of Pegasus or signs of attempted infection. iPhones log the information that can reveal infection by the spyware.
The data may provide a glimpse at the delicate relationship between Tibet’s exiles and the Indian government, which has provided refuge for the movement since its leaders fled a Chinese crackdown in 1959, while also viewing it as leverage – and sometimes a liability – in its own relationship with Beijing.
The possible scrutiny of Tibetan spiritual and government leaders points to a growing awareness in Delhi, as well as in western capitals, of the strategic importance of Tibet as their relationships with China have grown more tense over the past five years.
It also highlights the growing urgency of the question of who will follow the current Dalai Lama, 86, a globally acclaimed figure whose death is likely to trigger a succession crisis that is already drawing in world powers. Last year the US made it a policy to impose sanctions against any government that interfered with the selection process.
The records suggest Tibetan leaders were first selected in late 2017, in the period before and after the former US president Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama privately on a foreign tour that also included earlier stops in China.
Senior advisers to the Dalai Lama whose numbers appear in the data include Tempa Tsering, the spiritual leader’s long-time envoy to Delhi, and the senior aides Tenzin Taklha and Chhimey Rigzen, as well as Samdhong Rinpoche, the head of the trust that has been tasked with overseeing the selection of the Buddhist leader’s successor.
The Dalai Lama, who has spent the past 18 months isolating in his compound in Dharamsala, is not known to carry a personal phone, according to two sources.
Following the launch of the Pegasus project, India’s IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said the project’s claims about Indian surveillance were an “attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions”. He told parliament: “The presence of a number on the list does not amount to snooping ... there is no factual basis to suggest that use of the data somehow amounts to surveillance.”
India could have several motives for possible spying on Tibetan leaders but some in Dharamsala have concluded the question of succession may be a driving force. Naming successors to the Dalai Lama has sometimes taken years after the death of the title holder, and is usually led by the monk’s senior disciples, who interpret signs that lead them to the child next in line.
But China views the next Dalai Lama as a potential separatist leader who could weaken its authoritarian grip on Tibet. It has claimed the sole right to control the selection process, and analysts say it is already pressuring neighbours such as Nepal and Mongolia to rule out recognising any successor but its own.
Beijing is also contacting influential Buddhist teachers and clerics around the world, including some based in India, inviting them to China to try to lay the groundwork for its choice and muddy support for any candidate chosen by the Dalai Lama’s followers.
These entreaties to Buddhist leaders and other interference in the succession process have been viewed warily by India’s security agencies, who may have sought to closely monitor an issue with huge implications for Delhi’s own relationship with China – but where its direct influence and control is limited.
“India wants to make sure that Tibetans don’t strike a deal with the Chinese that involves the Dalai Lama going back to Tibet,” said a former staffer with the Tibetan administration, who asked not to be named.
India may also be seeking to monitor continuing informal contact between Chinese officials and Tibetan leaders. The Dalai Lama revealed two years ago that India had vetoed his plans to try to meet Xi Jinping when the Chinese president visited India in 2014.
“The Dalai Lama himself has said several times that he maintains connections to the Chinese leadership through ‘old friends’,” the former Tibetan government staffer said. “India is very aware of this and they want to make sure that no deals are made without their knowing or involvement.”
Delhi officially backs negotiations on the status of Tibet, but a recent Indian thinktank report suggested the country’s intelligence agencies had not always been supportive of the Dalai Lama’s “middle way”, a blueprint to resolve the dispute by recognising Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but granting the province meaningful autonomy.
Other motives for possible monitoring of Tibetan leaders may be more straightforward, including that the Dalai Lama and the community around him are a magnet for sensitive information about Tibet and regularly meet dignitaries from around the world.
“I would assume that India would pay close attention to, for example, western officials coming to Dharamsala – I think they’d want to monitor that in detail,” said Prof Robert Barnett, the former director of the Tibet studies programme at Columbia University. “Perhaps, is the Dalai Lama asking them for asylum? I think that kind of concern would matter a lot to them.”
In multiple statements, NSO said the fact a number appeared on the leaked list was in no way indicative of whether it was selected for surveillance using Pegasus. “The list is not a list of Pegasus targets or potential targets,” the company said. “The numbers in the list are not related to NSO Group in any way.
The Tibetan movement, like other stateless groups, is vulnerable to cyber-attacks but not entirely defenceless. The US government has for more than a decade funded digital security consultants to fortify Tibetan computer networks. Leaders are briefed that any of their devices could be breached at any time and they should act accordingly.
Tibetan leaders closely study security strategies pioneered for other exile and dissident groups, including flooding their phones and emails with confusing and contradictory information, which can tie up intelligence agencies as they try to sift truth from fiction. Other strategies include setting up “minefields”, servers and devices that appear genuine but are actually decoys that feed attackers false information and allow their hacking attempts to be studied.
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Anti-abortion protesters outside the Supreme Court building last month. The court will hear an abortion rights case in the fall. (photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters)
Mississippi Argues Supreme Court Should Overturn Roe v. Wade
Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press
Excerpt: "The arguments are a direct challenge to the central finding of the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and its 1992 decision in a Pennsylvania abortion case."
he U.S. Supreme Court should overturn its landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide and let states decide whether to regulate abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb, the office of Mississippi’s Republican attorney general argued in papers filed Thursday with the high court.
“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and four of her attorneys wrote in the brief.
The arguments are a direct challenge to the central finding of the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and its 1992 decision in a Pennsylvania abortion case. Both rulings said states may not put an undue burden on abortion before viability. The Mississippi attorneys argue that the rulings are “egregiously wrong.”
The Mississippi case is the first big abortion-rights test in a Supreme Court reshaped with three conservative justices nominated by former President Donald Trump.
A 6-3 conservative majority, with the three Trump nominees, said in May that the court would consider arguments over a Mississippi law that would ban abortion at 15 weeks. Justices are likely to hear the case this fall and could rule on it in the spring.
Nancy Northup is president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is defending Mississippi’s only abortion clinic in its challenge of the 15-week ban. She said Thursday that half of the states are poised to ban abortion altogether if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
“Today’s brief reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country,” Northup said in a statement. “Their goal is for the Supreme Court to take away our right to control our own bodies and our own futures — not just in Mississippi, but everywhere.”
Republican lawmakers in several states have been pushing laws designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, including bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks.. A federal district judge on Tuesday blocked an Arkansas law that would ban most abortions, ruling that the law is “categorically unconstitutional” because it would ban the procedure before the fetus is considered viable.
The Mississippi 15-week law was enacted in 2018, but was blocked after a federal court challenge. The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, remains open and offers abortions up to 16 weeks of pregnancy. Clinic director Shannon Brewer has said about 10% of its abortions there are done after the 15th week.
More than 90% of abortions in the U.S. take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Mississippi clinic has presented evidence that viability is impossible at 15 weeks, and an appeals court said that the state “conceded that it had identified no medical evidence that a fetus would be viable at 15 weeks.” Viability occurs roughly at 24 weeks, the point at which babies are more likely to survive.
Mississippi argues that viability is an arbitrary standard that doesn’t take sufficient account of the state’s interest in regulating abortion.
The Mississippi law would allow exceptions to the 15-week ban in cases of medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. Doctors found in violation of the ban would face mandatory suspension or revocation of their medical license.
“That law rationally furthers valid interests in protecting unborn life, women’s health, and the medical profession’s integrity. It is therefore constitutional,” the Mississippi attorney general’s office wrote in its Thursday filing.
The attorney who will make Mississippi’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court is the state solicitor general, Scott G. Stewart, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.
Also in the filing Thursday, the Mississippi attorneys wrote that if the Supreme Court does not overturn the standard that abortion restrictions should face heightened-scrutiny, the court “should at minimum hold that there is no pre-viability barrier to state prohibitions on abortion and uphold Mississippi’s law.”
The Mississippi attorneys wrote that circumstances for women have changed since the 1973 and 1992 Supreme Court rulings.
“Today, adoption is accessible and on a wide scale women attain both professional success and a rich family life, contraceptives are more available and effective, and scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability,” the Mississippi attorneys wrote. “States should be able to act on those developments.”
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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) hosts a community meeting in January of last year. (photo: Allen J. Schaben/LA Times)
Rep. Maxine Waters Calls for Federal Probe Into Alleged 'Executioners' Gang in Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
Azmi Haroun, Business Insider
Haroun writes: "Rep. Maxine Waters on Tuesday called for Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kirsten Clarke to conduct a federal probe into the alleged 'Executioners' gang within the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department."
ep. Maxine Waters on Tuesday called for Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kirsten Clarke to conduct a federal probe into the alleged "Executioners" gang within the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
According to the Los Angeles Times and whistleblower Deputy Austreberto "Art" Gonzalez, the "Executioners" are a group within the Compton station accused of having matching, offensive tattoos and celebrating police shootings.
A spokesperson for the LASD claimed the letter was made up of "unproven allegations which she is portraying as facts."
The alleged groups were first reported on by the Los Angeles Times in 2018, after multiple deputies within the Compton station testified to having identifying tattoos, including one who had a tattoo of a skull with a rifle and military helmet, engulfed in flames.
"I ask that the DOJ take two immediate actions: launch an independent investigation into the existence of the 'Executioners,' both at the LASD Compton station and within the greater LASD community, and launch a pattern or practice investigation into the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for potential civil rights and constitutional violations," Waters wrote in the letter.
Members of the alleged "Executioners" were also involved in the police killing of 18-year-old Andres Guardado, according to the testimony of a whistleblower deputy at the Compton station. Guardado was shot in the back five times by LASD deputies in an alleyway following a foot chase. The shooting was ruled a homicide by a Los Angeles County inquest.
"The gang allegedly sets illegal arrest quotas, threatens and harasses fellow deputies, and holds parties after shootings, called '998 parties,' which are in part a celebration that a new deputy will be inked by the gang," said Rep. Waters, citing Gonzalez's whistleblower testimony.
"The killing of Andres Guardado is not the only example of the LASD's excessive and brutal tactics in the Los Angeles community. On August 31, 2020, LASD deputies fatally shot Dijon Kizzee in South Los Angeles," Rep. Waters added.
The LASD spokesperson pushed back on the assertion: "Additionally, the uses of deadly force Congresswoman Waters cites have been thoroughly investigated and turned over to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, Justice System Integrity Division for further investigation and review, along with monitoring by The California Office of the Attorney General and The Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Rep. Waters' letter also called for a broader focus on the "pattern of police associating with militant groups nationwide."
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A U.S. soldier walks next to the razor wire-topped fence at the abandoned 'Camp X-Ray' detention facility. (photo: Mladen ANTONOV/AFP)
Guantánamo Bay: Inside the World's Most Notorious Detention Centre as the War on Terror Fades Away
Richard Hall, The Independent
Hall writes: "The elderly prisoner shuffles into the courtroom, guided to his seat at the front by uniformed guards."
Richard Hall travels to the US base in Cuba to find out what comes next for the camp that symbolises the American response to 9/11 perhaps more than anything else
he elderly prisoner shuffles into the courtroom, guided to his seat at the front by uniformed guards. Nashwan al-Tamir, wearing a white robe and long beard, does not pause to study the rows of people who fill the room, and even if he did he might struggle to find much familiar.
In the nearly 15 years since his capture, and seven since he has faced formal charges of being a high-level al-Qaeda operative who oversaw plots to attack Americans in Afghanistan, the 60-year-old Iraqi has gone through four judges, 20 defence lawyers and several prosecution teams. The courtroom here at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba has moved, and the base in which it sits has grown larger. The only constant in these proceedings is Tamir himself, but he has grown older, and moves slower now, due to a degenerative disease.
The world outside has changed dramatically in that time, too. Four different presidents have occupied the White House since he was detained in 2006. US troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of August and, with them, the decades-long “war on terror”, in which Tamir is accused of being a combatant, will end.
In the twilight of this long war, The Independent was given access to Guantánamo Bay to attend Tamir’s latest hearing at this secretive and controversial facility.
Susan Hensler, Tamir’s lead defence counsel since 2017, says the military court system through which her client is being prosecuted here on Guantánamo has yet to catch up to the new reality. “Guantánamo is the only place in the world where the war in Afghanistan is still being fought,” she tells The Independent following the latest hearing.
“This process doesn’t work. The fact that the 9/11 trial is still going on 20 years later is good evidence that it doesn’t work. The fact that my client’s trial has been going on for seven years and yet today we’re discussing how to start over from the very beginning, again, is evidence that it doesn’t work.”
At the first public hearing in more than 500 days, a new judge is being sworn in. An entire team of prosecutors, defence and court staff – as well as a small number of journalists – have been flown to the island to take part in the largely procedural affair. There are delays when the defendant’s wheelchair is not brought to the court, and again when the guards forget his medication. The hearing lasts two days, at which point everyone flies home again.
These delays are by no means unusual. This case has seen some 40,000 pages of briefings and orders and 3,000 pages of transcripts, but Tamir’s trial is yet to begin. The same is true of the alleged masterminds of the 9/11 attacks, which set this entire affair in motion. Justice, if any is to be had, moves slowly in Guantánamo Bay.
The extraordinary quasi-legal structure in operation here in the aftermath of September 11, to prosecute those described by the Pentagon as “the worst of the worst”, was not built with efficiency in mind. The processes designed to skirt the US justice system and its protections have delayed and prolonged the trials of those held here for years now.
US president Joe Biden is said to be working quietly to close the detention facility, which became synonymous with the excesses of the war on terror throughout the George W Bush years. On Monday, it transferred the first prisoner of the administration – a Moroccan named Abdullatif Nasser who had been captured in Afghanistan in 2002.
Since the first batch of 20 prisoners arrived in 2002, some 780 detainees have passed through this island facility. Hundreds have been released without charge, some transferred to third countries, and 39 remain.
Those who conceived of using the naval base as a detention facility saw it as a place where detainees could be held outside the boundaries of US law. Large numbers of prisoners could be interrogated for intelligence in secrecy. Many imprisoned here were subjected to torture, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual harassment and physical abuse. Some were also tortured at CIA “black sites” prior to their arrival.
Images of the first detainees arriving at Camp X-Ray, a temporary holding facility surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, became synonymous with the US response to 9/11 – as much as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many, they were a potent symbol of how America compromised its values in the quest for justice.
Looking down from a hill above, you can still see the outlines of a complex that once drew the gaze of the world. The watchtowers, the corrugated roofs of holding cells and interrogation rooms and the spiralling barbed-wire perimeter all remain. Missing from this view nearly 20 years later are the blindfolded men in distinctive orange jumpsuits, kneeling on the floor.
It was used only for a few months before the prisoners were transferred to a more permanent facility. The weeds have taken over now; the wooden structures are rotten and everything has turned a dull, rusty brown.
Ever since Camp X-Ray opened, rights groups have called for its closure, and the closure of its successor detention facilities at Guantánamo. In a report released earlier this year, which alleged “ongoing human rights violations” at the base, Amnesty International again called on Mr Biden to shut the prison down.
“These are detentions that are inescapably bound up with multiple layers of unlawful government conduct over the years – secret transfers, incommunicado interrogations, forced feeding of hunger strikers, torture, enforced disappearance, and a complete lack of due process,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of security on Amnesty’s Human Rights programme.
“This is about more than just the 40 people still held at Guantánamo – it is also about the crimes under international law committed over the past 19 years and the continuing lack of accountability for them. It is about the future, too, as we move towards the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and strive for enduring justice.”
In pushing to close the detention facility at Guantanamo, Mr Biden is aiming to succeed where his Democratic predecessor failed. Barack Obama campaigned on closing the prison complex, seeing it as an affront to American values.
“In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values,” President Obama said on the campaign trail in 2007.
He issued an executive order to close it on his second day in the White House in 2009. But although the prison population was reduced from 245 to 41 detainees during his two terms in office, Guantanamo Bay remained open. Congress refused to allow detainees to be transferred to the US.
Complex cases like Tamir’s demonstrate the difficulties Mr Biden will face.
Tamir, who is charged under the name Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, was arrested in Turkey in October 2006. The US government charges allege he was trying to travel to Iraq to “advise and assist” al-Qaeda. He is also charged with commanding fighters who carried out attacks on US troops and civilians in Afghanistan.
In the military commission system, presiding judges rotate every few years, a process which ensures repetition and delays. To complicate matters further, one of the previous judges in Tamir’s case was found to have a conflict of interest, meaning that all of his rulings may have to be relitigated.
Holding the trials in Guantánamo, outside of the US justice system, means that prosecution and defence teams have to be flown in for each hearing at an enormous cost. An investigation by The New York Times estimated the total cost of detention and trials on the island at$13m (£9.5m) for each prisoner a year.
There is also a layer of secrecy to the proceedings which Hensler, Tamir’s lawyer, says prevents her client from having a fair trial. “Every military commission case involves at its centre someone who has been tortured and mistreated by the US government,” she says. “Under the military commission system, we just simply can’t get access to the documents and the witnesses we need to find out more about that mistreatment that we can present on the record.”
As for what should be done with the detention facility and the military commission, she says: “The war is over and that should be the end of this commission.”
Matthew C Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University and former Pentagon official who oversaw detainee affairs in the Bush administration, is also among those who believe the facility should be closed.
Mr Waxman served under Condoleezza Rice in the National Security Council from 2001 to 2003, and as the first deputy assistant secretary of defence for detainee affairs in 2004 and 2005.
He tells The Independent that the US government “bought into” the legal proposition that it may detain al-Qaeda fighters at the base for the duration of the war with that organisation, “but they have never fully grappled with what happens if that war goes on indefinitely, for decades”.
The actual process of closing the facility, he says, is fraught with difficulty.
“It’s easy to criticise Guantánamo but hard to implement alternatives. It has been politically impossible to move detainees into the United States, and getting foreign countries to take some of them has been difficult,” he says.
“Some of the detainees who remain include top al-Qaeda leaders and 9/11 plotters who the United States has been unable to prosecute but will not be willing to let go or transfer.”
When asked if there were lessons to be learned from the use of the base as a detention facility, he says: “There was an urgent need to deal with difficult detention issues after 9/11, but Gitmo policy was initially made with inadequate attention to long-term costs.”
The inhabitants of Guantánamo Bay Naval Base appear mostly immune to the debate raging outside. Spread out across 45 square miles of the natural harbour, it is home to some 6,000 military members, civilians, contractors, families and migrant workers.
The base looks more like an American town than it does a military installation. It has a McDonald’s, a bowling alley, several restaurants, beaches and paved roadways. Just a few minutes from the notorious Camp X-Ray are large family homes with manicured lawns. New buildings are going up on one of the main streets.
It is a common misconception that efforts to “close Guantánamo” would mean closing the entire base, which is in itself the subject of controversy. Those discussions refer only to the detention centre and accompanying courts.
The US has controlled the bay since 1898, when it captured it from the Spanish during the Spanish-American War. It signed an indefinite lease for the base with the Cuban government in 1903 that has no expiration date. The Cuban government today says the base is illegal and has repeatedly called for its removal. But the strategic importance of the base to US presence in the Caribbean makes it unlikely that it would give it up in a hurry.
The new commanding officer of the base, Captain Samuel White, is keen to impress on visitors that the prison is just a small part of what happens here. While he oversees the base operations, there is a separate command in charge of the prison and the military commission.
“The exposure that it received based on the detention facility is understandable, but it’s not the sole function of this installation,” he tells The Independent in his office overlooking the ocean.
“This installation has been here for over a hundred years, so the fact that its been here for a hundred years shows you that it’s more than a prison, it’s more than a detention facility.”
Captain White compares his role as the commander of the base as a landlord overseeing tenants – one of which happens to be a detention facility.
“I’m not making a judgement on good, bad, whatever, whether something needs to be put behind us. A tenant is here to do a specific mission and we have an obligation for the security and safety of all personnel on this installation.”
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A researcher off the Virgin Islands swims past a pillar coral showing signs of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Coral Disease Spreading in Caribbean Linked to Wastewater From Ships
Audrey Nakagawa, EcoWatch
Nakagawa writes: "A deadly coral disease took over Florida's reef tract in 2014 and now is rapidly spreading around the Caribbean; the infection may be a result of ballast water from ships, according to new research."
The infection, called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has the potential to be the most deadly coral disease because of how rapidly it spreads and its high death rate for more than 30 susceptible coral species, according to The Guardian.
Since the identification of the disease off Virginia Key in 2014, it has spread to the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Saint Maarten and Mexico, according to The Guardian and WLRN.
The disease reached the Bahamas in 2019 and has since been spreading rapidly in the area, according to The Guardian.
"The disease is spread along about 75km of reef tract, about 46 miles – so for Grand Bahama that is a large structure of reef," Krista Sherman, senior scientist for the Perry Institute and co-author of the new peer-reviewed study, said to The Guardian. "We're talking about mostly covering the entire southern coastline of the island."
There are concerns that the coral infection could affect spiny lobsters, the country's main fishery export, Adrian LaRoda, president of the Bahamas Commercial Fishers Alliance said to The Guardian. Spiny lobsters bring in $90 million a year, and the industry employs around 9,000 people.
"Any negative impact on our reefs would definitely drastically affect our spiny lobsters because the mature animals migrate [from the reefs] to the fish aggregating devices [a technique for catching fish]," LaRoda said to The Guardian.
In May, despite scientists' hope of the disease not reaching the area, it reached the Dry Tortugas, a remote, protected area that doesn't get much ship traffic. A new study supports the idea that the ballast water of ships moves the disease around, according to The Guardian.
Researchers at the Perry Institute for Marine Science found that SCTLD was more ramped near Bahamas' main commercial ports, linking the spread of the infection to ships, according to The Guardian.
Ballast water is used to stabilize ships while traveling and has a history of being blamed for spreading invasive species and toxic waters, according to WUSF News.
In the 1980s, the zebra mussel traveled on ships from eastern Europe and landed in the Great Lakes. The mussel is pesky and fast growing — clogging pipes, littering beaches and suffocating native shellfish, according to WUSF News. The event was blamed on the dumping of ballast waters, and brought about stricter regulations.
By 2024, ships will have to have treatment systems onboard to clean the ballast water in tandem with the 2004 treaty rendered by the International Maritime Organization, Rob Brumbaugh, a senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy said to WUSF News.
The International Maritime Organization also implemented the Ballast Water Management Convention in 2017 after deadly pathogens were spread from ships. The convention requires ships to discard their ballast water at least 200 nautical miles from the shore and 200 meters (around 656 feet) deep before docking to avoid bringing in toxic pathogens, according to The Guardian.
The most effective treatment for reducing the mortality of SCTLD is applying an antibiotic amoxicillin on to the corals, although it's not a permanent treatment, according to The Guardian.
Judith Lang, scientific director at the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment project said there is a need to deal with the possible human impact related to the event instead of simply administering a treatment, according to The Guardian.
"Given a chance, nature can heal naturally," Lang said.
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