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Category: Biden administration

  • Biden Promised to Decriminalize Marijuana. He Shouldn’t Wait for Congress.

    President Joe Biden leaves the White House in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 2021.

    The Biden administration does not have to wait on lawmakers to end the federal prohibition on marijuana and provide some relief to people whose lives have been damaged by felony convictions, according to a new report from congressional researchers.

    President Joe Biden can direct federal law enforcement to refrain from prosecuting marijuana charges and issue a blanket pardon to thousands of people already convicted, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

    Biden can’t wave a magic wand and legalize marijuana, but the report lays out pathways for the Biden administration to change the federal “scheduling” of cannabis as a prohibited substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law that governs federal drug regulation and undergirds many state laws.

    “Although the President may not unilaterally deschedule or reschedule a controlled substance, he does possess a large degree of indirect influence over scheduling decisions,” the report says. “The President could pursue the appointment of agency officials who favor descheduling, or use executive orders to direct DEA, HHS, and FDA to consider administrative descheduling of marijuana.”

    “Descheduling” would remove cannabis products from the list of drugs regulated by the CSA, where marijuana is listed under Schedule 1 and therefore banned even for medical use. Marijuana could also be “rescheduled” into a lower category that regulates certain prescription drugs, but advocates say only “descheduling” would end federal prohibition and prevent unnecessary arrests.

    “At this point, it is nonsensical and cruel for President Biden to stand by any position that is not in full of support of descheduling marijuana, particularly when the tide is now turning toward full drug decriminalization,” said Maritza Perez, the national affairs director at the Drug Policy Alliance, in an email to Truthout.

    Biden is under mounting pressure to fulfill a campaign promise to “decriminalize” marijuana and expunge past convictions. Dozens of celebrities — including famous rappers such as Drake and Meek Mill — have joined congressional Democrats in urging Biden to issue a blanket pardon to all people convicted of non-violent federal marijuana violations. Democrats say a blanket pardon or “executive clemency” for marijuana convictions would trigger a sentencing rehearing for those still in prison, and some could be released depending on related charges.

    On October 6, Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to kickstart an administrative process for descheduling marijuana, the first step toward “remedying the harmful racist impact” of enforcement, according to a letter to Garland’s office.

    Advocates and policymakers point to extreme racial disparities in drug enforcement and sentencing that have filled prisons with Black and Brown people. Even as states legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use, the American Civil Liberties Union found that Black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite comparable rates of cannabis use. In states such as Montana and Kentucky, Black people are up to 9.6 times more likely to be arrested than whites, the result of racist “selective enforcement,” according to lawmakers and advocates.

    “We know that descheduling marijuana would reduce drug arrest rates, particularly for Black people who continue to carry the weight of drug enforcement in this country,” Perez said in an email. “We also know that the ability to deschedule and provide conviction relief rests within the powers of the president.”

    “Decriminalizing” a drug means reducing or eliminating criminal penalties for possession, while “legalizing” typically involves ending prohibition and setting up regulations for distribution and use. For marijuana in the United States, descheduling would end federal prohibition, but regulation would continue to be left up to the states unless Congress passes its own laws.

    Many Democrats also see marijuana reform as a potent issue for rallying voters in upcoming elections as their legalization efforts continue to face an uphill battle in Congress. Today, a clear majority of Americans say the “war on drugs” has failed. Support for full legalization of recreational weed remains at an all-time high of 68 percent, including 50 percent of Republicans. In deep red states that have yet to legalize, even conservative voters are getting impatient.

    “Should President Biden wish to acknowledge the political, economic, and moral realities surrounding cannabis policy, and fulfill the promises he made on the campaign trail, this report lays out a clear roadmap for how to do so,” said Justin Strekal, political director of the cannabis reform group NORML, in a statement.

    Biden cannot unilaterally end federal marijuana prohibition or legalize and regulate cannabis at the federal level, a step that many states have already taken despite the federal ban. However, Biden can issue executive orders to urging federal agencies to start the administrative process for removing marijuana from Schedule 1, which would involve a rulemaking by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration.

    Garland can also initiate this process by asking HHS to conduct a medical and scientific review of marijuana scheduling and using those recommendations to make changes at the DEA. In their letter, Booker and Warren asked Garland to request a scheduling review and gave the attorney general until October 20 to respond. That deadline has passed, and it remains unclear if Garland has provided an answer. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from Truthout by the time this article was published.

    The DEA funneled an average of $17 million annually into local marijuana eradication efforts in recent years and rejected petitions to reschedule marijuana in 2016, citing the government’s obligations under international drug control treaties. Booker and Warren point out that the United Nations recently voted to reduce cannabis restrictions, and treaty signatories such as Uruguay and Canada have legalized recreational marijuana completely, not to mention 18 states across the U. S. and counting.

    The rulemaking process for descheduling marijuana could take time and be challenged in court, but along with a blanket pardon, it would send a strong message to voters and to Congress, which placed marijuana on Schedule 1 decades ago. Biden can also work with Congress to pass legislation, and a bill to decriminalize marijuana that includes racial justice provisions already cleared a key committee in the House. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) introduced historic legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs earlier this year.

    However, similar cannabis legislation has stalled year after year, and drug policy reform is not a top priority for a White House focused on climate change, infrastructure and recovering from the COVID pandemic. If Biden is serious about racial justice and reducing incarceration, advocates say it should be a priority.

    “Biden must act now and support congressional efforts to pass comprehensive marijuana reform and broad drug decriminalization,” Perez said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Military Interests Are Promoting a Culture of Fear With China

    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley listens to a question during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 28, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

    Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley recently called China’s testing of a hypersonic missile designed to evade U.S. nuclear defenses “very close” to a “Sputnik moment” for the United States. The comments underscore an ongoing pattern on the part of the U.S. government and corporate media structure that reinforces and instigates dangerous preexisting geopolitical tensions with China, a rhetorical theme unnecessarily produced by a Sinophobic bipartisan U.S. political elite.

    In this interview, international relations scholar Richard Falk provides the historical context of Sputnik and summarizes U.S. interests in promoting a culture of fear with China. Falk also outlines how prospects for a new Cold War could ultimately subside due to increased focuses about the climate emergency and COVID, thus rendering geopolitics less relevant, which is both fortunate and unfortunate for its own sets of reasons.

    Daniel Falcone: On Bloomberg Television, Gen. Mark Milley referred to China’s hypersonic weapons test as close to a “Sputnik moment” that has our attention. Can you comment on the meaning of this language and provide historical context?

    Richard Falk: I interpret General Milley’s remark as primarily intended to raise security concerns relating to the deepening geopolitical rivalry with China, or perhaps as a reflection of these. To call the hypersonic weapons test by China “close to a Sputnik moment” was suggesting that it was posing a systemic threat to American technological supremacy directly relevant to national security and the relative military capabilities of the two countries. The reference to a Sputnik moment was a way of recalling an instance when the geopolitical rival of the day, which in 1957 was of course the Soviet Union, suddenly caught the U.S. by surprise, becoming the first sovereign state with the capacity to send a satellite into space with an ability to orbit the Earth, and possibly in the future by this means dominate the political life of the entire planet.

    This capacity was not in of itself a threat but was taken to mean that the Soviet Union was more technologically sophisticated than was understood by the public, and apparently even by the U.S. intelligence. It was politically used as a spur to increased investment in space technology, and it led some years late to a triumphant moment for the United States when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, enabling the U.S. to reclaim the lead in the space dimension of the Cold War rivalry and to indirectly recover confidence in its military prowess. In retrospect, the actual relevance of the Sputnik moment was in the domain of symbolic geopolitics without real relevance to the course or outcome of the Cold War.

    Supposedly the aim of the Chinese test is to develop a supersonic missile capable of encircling the Earth with a spatial orbit and a flexible reentry capability, which is perceived as having the ability to evade radar and existing defense systems currently in use to intercept incoming missiles. In that sense, Milley’s pronouncement in the course of the Bloomberg interview can best be understood as an intensification of the slide toward geopolitical confrontation with China, a set of circumstances that already possesses many features of a second Cold War, although occurring under radically different historical circumstances than the rivalry with the Soviet Union.

    It will likely become the beginning of agitation and a campaign to increase the bloated defense budget still further, which is as always likely to find a receptive and gullible bipartisan audience in the U.S. Congress. No recent statement by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has enjoyed such success as Milley in setting off national security alarm bells, uncritically highlighted by mainstream media.

    What I found surprising, yet in keeping with the mobilization of anti-China public opinion, was the failure of both Milley and the commentary to suggest a different twist to this news. It could have been presented a dangerous and expensive technological threshold that calls for mutual restraint and possibly agreements limiting further developments. President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken could have used the occasion to declare that the world at this stage could not afford such costly and risky distractions, as an all-out arms race in space.

    It seems that this Sputnik moment by an imaginative military leader could have turned to an opportunity for peace rather than a threat of future war. It might have provided a dramatic moment to embark upon a path of reconciliation with China that would benefit not only the two countries but humanity in general. Of course, such a turn would be viciously attacked by the militarists in both parties as weakness instead of strength. Remember the derision heaped on President Barack Obama for daring “to lead from behind” in the 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Libya. Given the mess resulting from that military operation, there is reason to view Obama’s reluctance as a show of strategic wisdom as well as prudence.

    Is this a political statement in your estimation, or a sober comment by high-ranking official?

    I do consider Milley’s statement, made without qualifications and accompanying comments, as providing the basis for two possible lines of response: a geopolitical reflex of alarm and heightened tensions in keeping with the confrontational character of recent American foreign policy, or a measured reaction that urged mutual restraint and a search for a cooperative framework with respect to the militarization of space in the interests of world peace, but also with respect to the avoidance of an expensive and highly uncertain extensions of arms competition.

    The fact this “road not taken” was not even mentioned by Milley as an alternative is deeply disappointing, although in keeping with the prevailing mood in Washington. As well, the feverish media reportage of his provocative sounding of Sputnik alarm bells suggests that public policy debate is taking place in an atmosphere of ideological closure if the issue involves China. This should be deeply worrying.

    President Biden recently participated in a CNN “town hall” and again instigated China. China does not seem to be intimidated by the United States. Can you elaborate on how that reality impacts heads of state overall?

    We are witnessing once again a superpower interaction that threatens to dominate international politics — this time in a global setting still trying to recover from the COVID pandemic and faced with dire warnings in the form of a consensus from climate experts that if more is not done with a sense of urgency to address climate change, catastrophic harm will result. In this new configuration of global social, political and ecological forces, if rationality prevails, geopolitics will be moved to the sidelines so as to focus on challenges that cannot be ignored any longer. It is unfortunate that that political will in the U.S. remains mainly geared toward addressing real and imagined traditional security threats stemming from conflict and nothing else when it comes to foreign policy.

    Some advocates for peace are worried that a failed or stalled infrastructure legislative package will force liberal Democrats into more hawkish positions in order to show “resolve.” Can you comment on the validity of this concern?

    A persisting shadow hovering over American politics is the sobering realization that there seems to be no down side for hawkishness by a politician when it comes to embracing the warped logic of geopolitical rivalry or military spending. Whether this will have an impact upon the bargaining component of the search for sufficient support in Congress to fund a domestic infrastructure program is not knowable at this time, but it would come as no surprise. Many liberal Democrats do not depart from the bipartisan mainstream if the issues at stake are defense, Israel and now China, especially when a favored domestic program seems in jeopardy.

    NPR has reported on how “Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on countries to support Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations. The self-governed island has not been a member of the body since October 1971, when the U.N. gave Beijing a seat at the table and removed Taiwan.” What are the regional implications of the Taiwan factor regarding Biden’s and Milley’s remarks? How is this pertinent and what is happening here?

    It was a most unfortunate departure from the Shanghai Communique of 1972 establishing relations between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak in favor of giving Taiwan a more active role in the UN system. First, it seemed contrary to the spirit of what was agreed upon with respect to Taiwan in 1972, centering on an acceptance by Washington of a “One China” policy. As Henry Kissinger has argued, the language used deliberately avoided endorsing the PRC view of “One China,” leaving open the interpretation followed by Washington that Beijing could only extend its territorial sovereignty to Taiwan by way of a diplomatic agreement with Taiwan (formerly, the Republic of China, which had lost the right to represent China at the UN).

    Despite efforts by Taiwan to gain diplomatic recognition as a separate political entity, it has only managed to secure a favorable response from 15 countries, and not one “important” country among them, with even the United States refraining. At one point, Taiwan did attempt to become a member of the UN, but the effort was firmly rejected by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, relying on UN General Assembly Resolution 2756, which set the terms of Chinese representation in 1971, relegating Taiwan (what had been represented by China at the UN until that time as the Republic of China) as “the province of Taiwan” within the larger reality of China. A strenuous U.S. effort in 1971 to retain the Republic of China as a participant in UN activities was rejected, leaving the PRC as the sole representative of China.

    What makes the Blinken comment doubly inflammatory is that it occurred in the midst of increasing overall U.S.-China tensions with a growing focus on the security of Taiwan. With China apparently testing the nerves of Taiwan and the resolve of the United States by a naval buildup and air intrusions, for Blinken to choose this moment to support an increased independent status for Taiwan is either misguided or clearly meant to be provocative. Such irresponsible talk was further amplified by Biden’s implications that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if attacked rather than calling for a tension reducing diplomatic conference. Then comes General Milley’s “Sputnik moment” remark, as if the Chinese security challenge has crossed a threshold of strategic threat to the United States that it dares not ignore. Further signals of hostility were sent to China by activating the QUAD informal alliance (U.S., Japan, India and Australia) some months ago, and more recently establishing the AUKUS alliance, which included Australian development of nuclear-powered submarines.

    There are two lines of structural threat that seem to be creating an atmosphere of pre-crisis confrontation: firstly, the so-called Thucydides Trap by which a hitherto dominant power faces an ascending challenger and opts for war while it still commands superior military capabilities rather than waiting until its rival catches up or gains the upper hand; the Milley comment and reaction must be viewed in this light. And secondly, the insistent belligerent assertion that what is at stake with Taiwan is the larger ideological struggle going on in the region and world between those governments that are democracies and those that are authoritarian. The Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs stridently articulated this theme, and so imparted larger meaning to what was at stake by keeping Taiwan safe and independent.

    From a longer temporal perspective, the right-wing of the political class in Washington has never gotten over the trauma of “losing China” as if it were the U.S.’s to lose! It is the persistence of this geopolitical hubris that edges Taiwan tensions ever closer to an armed encounter, with true losers on both sides. A further reason to favor diplomatic de-escalation while there is still time is the apparent realization that the U.S. cannot match China in the South China Sea by relying on conventional weapons and can only avoid defeat by having recourse to nuclear weaponry. This is not alarmism. It has been openly declared by leading voices in the Pentagon.

    This geopolitical context should not lead the world or the region to overlook the well-being of the 23.5 million people of Taiwan. Given what is at stake, the best approach would be to restore the “constructive ambiguity” that was deliberately written into the Shanghai Communique, and work for an atmosphere where Taiwan and the PRC can negotiate their futures on the basis of common interests. Although the recent experience in Hong Kong suggests that this, too, is a treacherous path, but less so than flirting with a geopolitical flare-up that could easily get grotesquely out of hand.

    This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Grading Biden’s Build Back Better Deal

    How good is the budget deal framework put forward by the Biden White House last week? It depends on your standard for comparison. Relative to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I‑Vt.) opening bid of $6 trillion, or even the previous compromise of $3.5 trillion, it’s a drastic come-down, with a current price tag around $1.85 trillion.

    The post Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Grading Biden’s Build Back Better Deal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Condemned for Approving Fossil Fuel Lease Sales Amid COP26

    Native and other environmentalist groups gather outside the White House on the third day of "People vs. Fossil Fuels" protests in Washington, D.C., on October 13, 2021.

    As U.S. President Joe Biden professed Washington’s alleged commitment to decarbonization during the ongoing COP26 climate summit, the White House on Tuesday authorized more fossil fuel pollution — advancing its plan to sell oil and gas leases on public lands even after concluding that the resultant emissions could generate billions of dollars in social and ecological damage.

    Environmental advocates denounced the Biden administration’s decision, which came the same day the U.S. rejoined the so-called High Ambition Coalition, as “scientifically ignorant and legally indefensible.”

    “While President Biden is talking a good talk on climate action, the reality is his administration is actively working to fan the flames of the climate crisis by selling more public lands for fracking,” Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement. “This isn’t just hypocritical, it’s outright deceitful and it truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises.”

    “The truth is, we can’t frack our way to a safe climate,” said Nichols. “With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet.”

    Last Friday, the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees 245 million acres of public land spanning 12 western states, announced that “its state offices will issue for the first time environmental assessments that factor in the social cost” of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stemming from proposed oil and gas lease sales planned for early 2022, Reuters reported. The news outlet added that “these reports could lead to some leases being removed from consideration or deferred depending on the public comments received.”

    However, BLM officials said that “there’s little they can do to prevent the cumulative climate change impacts from burning the fuels,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. “That’s because they can’t discern the significance of emissions from government-owned fuel reserves versus other sources, officials wrote in newly released documents.”

    Although BLM “plans to defer almost 600 square miles of leases in Wyoming and five square miles in Montana… over concerns that drilling could harm wildlife,” AP noted, the agency’s refusal “to cite the costs of climate change as a reason to limit leases” means that it plans to move forward with sales scheduled for early next year in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and other states.

    The news outlet pointed out that “similar determinations that U.S. fossil fuel lease sales should not be restricted over global warming concerns were made under former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama.”

    “This seems to be business as usual,” Nichols told AP. “It flies in the face of scientists finding that any more fossil fuel production is unacceptable and countries need to find ways to limit production.”

    Last month, the International Energy Agency reiterated its message that expanding fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century and that the production of clean energy must be scaled up immediately.

    According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the worldwide transition to renewable energy is far behind schedule — with fossil fuel use projected to increase this decade even as annual reductions in coal, oil, and gas production are necessary to avert the worst consequences of the climate emergency.

    If countries — starting with the rich polluters most responsible for exacerbating extreme weather — fail to rapidly and drastically slash GHG emissions, UNEP warned, the planet is on pace for a “catastrophic” 2.7°C of heating this century.

    The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that roughly 25% of the nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to fossil fuel extraction on public lands, and according to the U.S. Interior Department, the social costs of burning oil and gas obtained by drilling and fracking on government-owned parcels — including rising sea levels, extreme weather disasters, and adverse public health effects — range from $357 million to over $4 billion.

    Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s proposal to open up 734,000 acres, or more than 1,000 square miles, of public lands to fossil fuel extraction could unleash up to 246 million tons of GHG pollution — equivalent to the annual emissions of 62 coal-fired power plants.

    That’s why, as Common Dreams has reported, critics have called the president’s plan “insane policy in light of the climate crisis,” and a coalition of nine environmental groups has filed formal objections with the BLM.

    WildEarth Guardians, a member of that coalition, noted Tuesday that BLM’s move — which violates Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to ban federal sales of new oil and gas leases — “comes even as millions of Americans have called for an end to fossil fuel production,” which culminated in a recent week of action, during which Indigenous rights and climate justice advocates engaged in civil disobedience outside the White House.

    BLM’s decision to proceed with its planned lease sales coincided with Tuesday’s unveiling of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules to reduce methane emissions. The EPA’s proposed strategy for curbing the potent GHG is inadequate, warned progressive critics, including Food & Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones, who said that “the best regulation against methane emissions is to ban fracking.”

    As WildEarth Guardians explained, “the Biden administration’s plans to sell more public lands for fracking also come on the heels of numerous court rulings holding Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leasing to be illegal, including a ruling last month out of Colorado.”

    In January, Biden issued an executive order suspending new oil and gas leasing in order to give administration officials time to conduct a comprehensive review of the “potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters.”

    However, the Interior Department began taking steps to resurrect its oil and gas leasing program in August. That move came in response to a June court ruling by a Trump-appointed federal judge who sided with a group of Republican attorneys general that sued the Biden administration in March over its temporary pause on new lease sales for public lands and waters.

    Progressive critics have argued that the federal judge’s injunction does not require the Interior Department to resume oil and gas leasing. Biden administration officials, experts say, still have the regulatory authority to limit new lease sales.

    “The Bureau of Land Management is lying to the American public, claiming they’ve been compelled by a court to sell public lands for fracking,” said Nichols. “The fact is they have absolutely no legal basis to move forward with more oil and gas leasing.”

    Earlier this year, WildEarth Guardians, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Western Environmental Law Center challenged federal oil and gas leasing by filing suit over the sale of more than one million acres of public lands for fracking in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

    “Frankly, we’re sick of going to court to defend the climate, but if President Biden continues to reject the law, the science, and the public, then we’ll have no choice,” Nichols added. “We hope the administration reconsiders these latest plans to sell public lands for fracking, but we will not hesitate to fight back to protect our planet and our future.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden’s ‘Global Tax’ And The 40-Year US Corporate Tax ‘Shell Game’

    The corporate media in recent days has been busy resurrecting and re-reporting the deal negotiated weeks ago by Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary, to get 100+ other nations to sign on to and introduce a 15% global corporate alternative tax in their countries.

    But why is the mainstream media bringing it up again now? Is it to soften the blow of Biden’s repeal of his proposal to hike corporate taxes in the US from Trump’s 21% to 26%? (It was 35% pre-Trump)? Or is there something else as well that explains why the media is running the global tax story that’s already weeks old?

    The global sign on to Biden’s 15% global minimum tax, announced weeks ago, is purportedly designed to prevent big multinational corporations’ manipulating governments by seeking out, and getting, special tax deals in certain countries at the expense of others.

    The post Biden’s ‘Global Tax’ And The 40-Year US Corporate Tax ‘Shell Game’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • There Is No “National Security” Solution To The Climate Crisis

    A close read of the reports shows exactly why we should never turn to “national security” institutions to address a crisis that is fundamentally global, requiring solidaristic action that transcends nationalism. Taken together, the analyses paint a grim picture of a future where, in the face of mass displacement, water shortages, hunger and death, the U.S. response amounts to hunkering down and protecting its military mission, its dominance and its alliances against geopolitical foes.

    The post There Is No “National Security” Solution To The Climate Crisis appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Coalition Demands Biden Condemn Israel’s Crackdown on Palestinian Rights Groups

    An Israeli soldier is seen aiming at Palestinian protesters, during a demonstration against Israeli settlements in the village of Beit Dajan near the West Bank city of Nablus on October 29, 2021.

    A broad coalition of nearly 300 U.S.-based social justice groups on Friday urged the Biden administration to “immediately and unequivocally” condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to classify a half-dozen Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations.”

    “These actions by the Israeli government are a clear attack on human rights,” says the coalition in its letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “As such, we urge you to issue a swift rejection of this unprecedented attack on Palestinian human rights organizations and the attempt by the Israeli government to shut down, delegitimize, isolate, and chill a growing human rights movement.”

    Last week, as Common Dreams reported, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s punitive designation targeted six groups — Addameer, AlHaq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

    Under the apartheid regime’s Counter-Terrorism Law of 2016, “these human rights organizations now face possible mass arrest and being shut down by the Israeli government, and anyone identifying with the groups can also be subject to imprisonment,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), one of the groups that spearheaded Friday’s letter, warned in a statement.

    Israel’s move was quickly rebuked by progressive lawmakers, including U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and advocates from CCR, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and 21 Israel-based groups.

    In their letter to Blinken, the coalition points out that “smearing the promotion and defense of human rights as ‘terrorist’ activity is a dangerous, well-worn tactic of authoritarian regimes and a shameful political maneuver to undermine the vital work of these organizations.”

    Describing the six recently criminalized groups as “trusted partners in our collective work to secure human rights for all,” the coalition notes that they “form part of the bedrock of Palestinian civil society that has been protecting and advancing Palestinian human rights for decades across the full spectrum of issues of global concern, including children’s rights, prisoners’ rights, women’s rights, socio-economic rights, the rights of farmworkers, and justice and accountability for international crimes.”

    Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), said in a statement that “Israel’s authoritarian attack on these six leading Palestinian human rights organizations is designed to stop their work exposing Israel’s government for what it is: a separate-and-unequal apartheid regime engaging in ongoing settler-colonial violence against the Palestinian people.”

    The letter cites last week’s joint statement from HRW and Amnesty, which said that “for decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians.”

    “Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression,” HRW and Amnesty noted, warning that Gantz’s “appalling and unjust” attempt to outlaw certain groups is “an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”

    HRW and Amnesty attributed Israel’s brazen authoritarianism to “the decadeslong failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them.”

    Stefanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, concurred. Fox argued Friday that “the Israeli government is openly attacking prominent Palestinian human rights organizations and threatening human rights defenders with mass arrest… because for decades, the Israeli apartheid government has faced little to no accountability for its repressive actions.”

    Calling Israel’s “outrageous” decision to ostracize Palestinian civil society organizations “an attack… on the international human rights movement,” HRW and Amnesty stressed last week that “how the international community responds will be a true test of its resolve to protect human rights defenders.”

    The coalition, for its part, has answered by arguing that international responses to Israel’s ongoing human rights violations have been “inadequate” and “should change.”

    “A threat against the Palestinian human rights movement is a threat against movements for social justice everywhere,” the letter states, “and in order to protect human rights and human rights defenders, all states must be held accountable for taking such manifestly unjust actions.”

    “As groups committed to social justice, civil rights, and universal human rights,” the letter continues, “we have seen first hand the ways that the charge of ‘terrorist’ and the so-called ‘war on terror’ threatens not only international human rights defenders, but also social movements and marginalized communities here in the U.S.: Indigenous, Black, brown, Muslim, and Arab activists and communities have similarly faced silencing, intimidation, criminalization, and surveillance under such baseless charges.”

    Although the U.S. government “has long offered unconditional support to the Israeli government,” the letter adds, “our movements and organizations will always stand first and foremost with the rights and safety of people.”

    To that end, signatories demanded that Blinken take the following steps:

    1. Affirm that the Biden administration’s commitment to human rights has universal applicability;
    2. Issue a public statement that rejects the Israeli government’s false accusations levied against Palestinian civil society organizations;
    3. Publicly condemn and rebuke Israel for this authoritarian action, and call on Israeli authorities to immediately reverse their decision and end all efforts aimed at delegitimizing and criminalizing Palestinian human rights defenders; and
    4. Support Palestinians seeking the protection and promotion of fundamental human rights, justice, and accountability, including at the International Criminal Court.

    In addition to CCR, the letter was initiated by USCPR, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, and Adalah Justice Project. It garnered support from a wide array of groups, including CodePink, Just Foreign Policy, and Oxfam America.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 288 Organizations Demand Biden Administration Condemn Israel’s Crackdown On Human Rights Groups

    A broad coalition of more than 288 U.S.-based social justice, civil rights, and human rights organizations is calling on the Biden administration to condemn the Israeli government’s decision last week to designate six Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations.” In a letter issued today, the organizations say the Biden administration has no choice but to condemn and push back against this move if it is to fulfill its avowed commitment to human rights.

    The post 288 Organizations Demand Biden Administration Condemn Israel’s Crackdown On Human Rights Groups appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden White House Holds Largest Meeting With Intersex Advocates

    White House on bright day

    White House officials met virtually with nearly 20 intersex advocates Tuesday in the Biden administration’s second formal talk with organizers on how to advance intersex rights domestically, and the largest meeting of its kind within the Biden administration.

    Intersex advocates who were at the meeting tell The 19th that they appreciate the historic moment, but they want action — especially since they have been calling attention to the discrimination and medically unecessary surgeries that they face for years.

    Advocates who spoke to The 19th say that the administration needs to condemn medically unnecessary surgeries and hold medical providers undertaking the controversial procedures accountable, as well as establish regular contact with the intersex community and hire intersex people into federal agencies and the administration staff.

    “I just hope that something will come of it,” Georgiann Davis, associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, who was at the meeting. “It’s definitely time to pass the listening stage.”

    The White House acknowledged discussing “the toll that non-consensual medical interventions and surgeries performed on intersex children often have on people’s mental and physical health” in a news release following the meeting.

    This basic message still serves as one of the first times an administration has openly discussed the issue domestically, said Kimberly Zieselman, the executive director at InterAct, a group that lobbies on behalf of children who are intersex — born with differences in reproductive anatomy or sex traits.

    Zieselman and Davis, who have been studying intersex issues and advocating in the space for roughly seven and 15 years, respectively, say they believe Tuesday’s White House meeting was the largest of its kind with any White House or administration.

    Time constraints at Tuesday’s meeting, after so many advocates shared what was important to them, meant that White House officials did not have time to actually respond to what was discussed or offer next steps, three advocates who were at the meeting told The 19th.

    “Listening sessions or statements or support are important and necessary, but we really need action. And you can’t really get action if you’re not responding to what you’re hearing,” said Davis.

    Zieselman said that while she expected the meeting to consist mostly of the White House listening to concerns, she hopes another meeting will take place soon for a conversation on next steps.

    “I feel good about the conversation that did happen,” she said. “I can’t say that there was any promise to necessarily do anything” from the White House, she added.

    A smaller group of intersex advocates first met with senior White House adviser Reggie Greer on July 8, per a Google calendar invite shared with The 19th. That event served as a precursor to Tuesday’s meeting, which ran over the allotted hour as advocates took turns highlighting the issues most important to them.

    Tuesday’s meeting also included Jennifer Klein, co-chair of the White House Gender Policy Council, and Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Rachel Levine, whom intersex advocates described as especially engaged as she listened.

    “Hopefully the next steps will be going beyond listening and moving to establishing a plan of action,” said Alicia Roth Weigel, a Human Rights Commissioner in Austin, Texas, who recently lobbied for the city to condemn unnecessary surgeries and require education on the issue for parents and doctors.

    White House spokesperson Matt Hill said in a statement that the administration looks forward to continuing its partnership with intersex advocates and to “ensure they remain a critical part of the Administration’s efforts to advance equality.”

    “I’m very excited and cautiously optimistic to see what’s next,” said Zieselman.

  • Progressives Say Reconciliation Framework Not Enough to Pass Infrastructure Bill

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal

    U.S. House progressives led by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Cori Bush dug in their heels Tuesday as right-wing Democrats attempted to salvage a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill while sidelining the more ambitious Build Back Better package championed by the party’s left wing and President Joe Biden until after the weaker bipartisan legislation is passed.

    Bloomberg reports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and congressional Democratic leadership insisted that a framework agreement on the budget reconciliation bill would be sufficient for lawmakers to proceed with a separate vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure legislation delayed by progressives earlier this month over concerns that their $3.5 trillion package would be sacrificed.

    CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju tweeted that after Pelosi “pushed back on progressives’ demands” that a “larger bill must pass [the] House first before they agree to vote for infrastructure,” Jayapal (D-Wash.) asserted that a framework was unacceptable.

    “Our members don’t want to do that,” Jayapal said of the Congressional Progressive Caucus she chairs.

    Pressed if she would vote against the infrastructure bill absent anything more than a framework on the larger bill, Jayapal told Raju that “at this point, there are dozens of our members who are in that place.”

    Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) agreed with Jayapal, telling Bloomberg that “a mere framework is not enough.”

    “We need to have a vote ready for the Build Back Better plan, not a framework,” she insisted. “We want to have both of these votes together.”

    A resolute Bush (D-Mo.) also dismissed talk of a framework agreement, tweeting simply, “It’s not enough for me. And there are more of us.”

    The impasse came as Bloomberg and others reported Democratic leadership is working to reduce the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill favored by the president and progressives to less than $2 trillion.

    Some progressives took aim at right-wing, corporate-backed Democrats — namely, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — who have relentlessly worked to shrink the size and scope of the reconciliation package.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Administration Is Undermining The Venezuela Dialogue

    The talks between the Venezuelan government and the extreme-right wing opposition had been going well. There are still outstanding issues to be resolved, like ending the economic war, but the discussions held in Mexico led to concrete electoral developments. The European Union agreed to send an electoral observation mission. The United Nations decided to send a panel of electoral experts. (Both institutions refused to observe the 2018 presidential and 2020 legislative elections, despite invitations from the government.) Thousands of opposition candidates registered to run in the mega-elections, which include voting for governors and mayors, as regional and local legislators.

    It’s a good thing that agreements on the elections were reached quickly, because the Biden administration, following in the Trump administration’s footsteps, has been actively undermining the dialogue.

    The post Biden Administration Is Undermining The Venezuela Dialogue appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • UK High Court Should Deny Extradition Because CIA Planned to Assassinate Assange

    Protesters hold placards and a banner during a march from the BBC to Royal Courts of Justice in support of Julian Assange on October 23, 2021, in London, UK.

    Why is Joe Biden’s Department of Justice continuing Donald Trump’s persecution of WikiLeaks founder, publisher and journalist Julian Assange?

    Barack Obama, concerned about threats to the First Amendment freedom of the press, decided against indicting Assange for exposing U.S. war crimes. Trump did indict Assange, under Espionage Act charges that could garner him 175 years in prison. A district judge denied Trump’s request for Assange’s extradition from the U.K. to the United States because of the extremely high likelihood that it would lead Assange to commit suicide. Trump appealed the denial of extradition.

    Instead of dropping Trump’s extradition request, Biden is vigorously pursuing his predecessor’s appeal against Assange, which the U.K. High Court will hear on October 27 and 28. At that hearing, the High Court should determine what effect the CIA’s recently revealed plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange will have on his fragile mental state in the event he is extradited to the United States.

    Judge Baraitser’s Denial of Extradition

    On January 6, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser issued a 132-page decision denying extradition. “Faced with conditions of near total isolation and without the protective factors which moderate his risk at HMP Belmarsh [where Assange is currently imprisoned],” she wrote, “I am satisfied that the procedures described by Dr. [Leukefeld] will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide.”

    Baraitser relied heavily, though not exclusively, on the testimony of Professor Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at Kings College London. Kopelman diagnosed Assange with post-traumatic stress disorder and recurrent depression and concluded, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.”

    “I am satisfied that the risk that Mr. Assange will commit suicide is a substantial one,” Baraitser determined. “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”

    The Biden administration is arguing that Baraitser should have disregarded Kopelman’s evidence or accorded it less weight because he didn’t write in his first report that Assange had a partner, Stella Moris, and they had two young children together. Although Kopelman knew about them, he was mindful of Moris’s anxiety about her children’s privacy. Both Kopelman’s subsequent report and his testimony at the extradition hearing referred to Moris and their children. By then, it was public knowledge.

    Baraitser, who considered both of Kopelman’s reports as well as his testimony before ruling, wrote:

    [Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange’s background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion.

    The United States will be allowed to present “assurances” that if Assange is extradited, tried, convicted and imprisoned, he will not be subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) — onerous conditions that would keep him in virtual isolation — or be held at the ADX maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. The U.S. intends to provide an additional assurance that it would not object to Assange serving any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia. These so-called assurances, however, are conditional. The U.S. reserves the right to impose SAMs or hold Assange at ADX if his future behavior warrants it. Moreover, the U.S. cannot guarantee that Australia would consent to hosting Assange’s incarceration.

    The High Court should give considerable weight to the way in which explosive new revelations of the Trump administration’s plot to kidnap and assassinate Assange will affect his mental health if he is extradited.

    High Court Should Consider U.S. Plans to Kidnap and Assassinate Assange

    The indictment against Assange stems from WikiLeaks’ 2010-2011 revelations of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. They included 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, and evidence of systematic torture, rape and murder after U.S. forces “handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad,” the documents reveal. They included the Afghan War Logs, 90,000 reports revealing more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And the Guantánamo Files contained 779 secret reports revealing that 150 innocent people had been imprisoned there for years and documenting the torture and abuse of 800 men and boys, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

    Perhaps the most notable release by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, in which a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship in Baghdad targets and fires on unarmed civilians. At least 18 civilians were killed, including two Reuters journalists and a man trying to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. A U.S. Army tank then drives over one of the bodies, cutting it in half. The video depicts three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.

    It was WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA hacking tools known as “Vault 7,” which the agency called “the largest data loss in CIA history,” that incurred the wrath of Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Vault 7 materials revealed electronic surveillance and cyber-warfare by the CIA.

    In 2017, Pompeo called WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” and CIA and government officials hatched “secret war plans” to abduct and kill Assange, according to a stunning Yahoo! News report. Some senior CIA and Trump administration officials requested “sketches” or “options” for ways to assassinate Assange. Trump “asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him ‘options’ for how to do so,” according to the report.

    Pompeo advocated “extraordinary rendition,” which the CIA used in the “war on terror” to illegally seize suspects and send them to its “black sites” where they were tortured. The scenario was that the CIA would break into the Ecuadorian Embassy in which Assange was staying under a grant of asylum and clandestinely fly him to the United States to stand trial. Others in the agency wanted to assassinate Assange outright by poisoning or shooting him to avoid the hassle of kidnapping him.

    The CIA spied on WikiLeaks, and it aimed to sow discord among the group’s members and steal their electronic devices, according to the Yahoo! News report. The CIA also conducted illegal surveillance inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and spied on privileged attorney-client communications between Assange and his lawyers.

    Concerned that the CIA might kidnap or kill Assange, which could jeopardize a potential criminal prosecution, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a secret indictment against him in 2018. To bolster the DOJ’s case for extradition, the FBI collaborated with informant Siggi Thordarson to paint Assange as a hacker instead of a journalist. Thordarson later admitted to the Icelandic newspaper Stundin that he lied about Assange being a hacker in return for immunity from prosecution by the FBI.

    In 2019, after a new pro-U.S. president came to power in Ecuador, in order to facilitate the U.S.’s attempted extradition, London police dragged Assange from the embassy and arrested him for violating bail conditions. Assange remains in custody in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison pending Biden’s appeal of the extradition denial.

    The High Court should give great weight to the U.S. plans to kidnap and assassinate Assange. The knowledge of those revelations will put even more mental stress on Assange, whom former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer described as having suffered “prolonged exposure to psychological torture” during his confinement. The High Court should affirm the district court’s denial of extradition.

    A Window Into U.S. War Crimes and Threats to Investigative Journalism

    “When Assange published hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the public was given an unprecedented window into the lack of justification and the futility of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Assange Defense co-chairs Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker and Noam Chomsky wrote at Newsweek. “The truth was hidden by a generation of governmental lies. Assange’s efforts helped show the American public what their government was doing in their name.”

    Recent revelations of Pompeo’s threats against Assange that appeared in Yahoo! News have shed light on the dangers the national security state poses to investigative journalism and the public’s right to know. In light of these new disclosures, a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organizations have intensified their call for dismissal of the DOJ’s charges against Assange.

    Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee has asked the CIA for information about plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange.

    The High Court will decide whether to affirm or overturn district judge Baraitser’s decision denying extradition. If they affirm Baraitser’s ruling, the Biden administration could ask the U.K. Supreme Court to review the case. If the High Court overturns Baraitser’s decision, Assange could appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights if the Supreme Court ruling goes against him.

    Biden’s appeal of the denial of extradition should be dismissed. Julian Assange should be released and celebrated for his courage.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden’s Forest Service Poised to Facilitate Quadrupling of Crude Oil Production

    In a massive blow to U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis, the Biden administration is poised to approve a right-of-way through the Ashley National Forest that would take the climate-damaging Uinta Basin Railway one step closer to being built.

    The post Biden’s Forest Service Poised to Facilitate Quadrupling of Crude Oil Production appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • White House Climate-Related Financial Risk Report Denounced as “Pitiful” Failure

    Climate activists participate in a pre-march rally at Freedom Plaza on October 15, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    After months of waiting, environmental groups responded with disappointment tinged with outrage late Thursday after the White House released a report on the financial risks associated with the climate crisis — a document critics say would have been promising at some earlier point in history but that falls “pitifully” short given the urgency of the crisis and just ahead of a major U.N.-backed summit kicking off at the end of the month.

    “It’s extremely disappointing to see this long-awaited report be so watered down by what can only be described as climate apathetic FSOC members,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, in response to the “Report on Climate-Related Financial Risk” issued by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was created via executive order by President Joe Biden in May and chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

    While the FSOC said in a Thursday statement that climate is “an emerging and increasing threat to U.S. financial stability,” critics say the determinations and recommendations put forth by the report are woefully inadequate give the scale of the crisis and the timeline that scientists and experts have made clear.

    The report, according to Hauser, “fails to mention fossil fuels as the key driver of climate risk. It offers no specific timelines for any of its recommendations. And it does not include specific policy recommendations beyond disclosing and assessing risk. A terse summary of the report would read ‘it’s good to notice that our planet is burning, but we won’t do anything to fix it.’”

    “After nearly 20% of Biden’s term in office and with only 98 months until 2030, by which time U.S. emissions must be cut in half to avoid climate catastrophe,” he said, “a report suggesting we learn more about climate risks without mitigating them is a failure.”

    Collin Rees, U.S. campaigns manager at Oil Change International, offered a similar assessment.

    “This report might have been welcomed if it had been included as a memo five months ago accompanying President Biden’s executive order — but as the result of several months’ work, it is deeply disappointing,” said Reese. “FSOC’s inability to move beyond basic recognition of climate-related financial risk and refusal to recommend tangible actions to effectively mitigate that risk is woefully insufficient to meet the moment.”

    Erika Thi Patterson, campaign director for climate and environmental justice at the Action Center on Race and the Economy, said the report “falls pitifully short” of the mandate which created the FSOC.

    The final document on financial risk and what the U.S. is willing to do about it, she said, “leaves Biden with very little to show going into international climate negotiations in Glasgow, as it barely includes any new contributions from the U.S. government.”

    What’s “even worse,” said Patterson, the report “is a slap in the face to Black, Brown, and Indigenous frontline communities that have been targeted by the fossil fuel industry and demanding that Wall Street stop funding projects like the Line 3 pipeline and Formosa Plastics.”

    While CNBC’s reporting said the blueprint put forth by Yellen and the FSOC “could potentially move forward new regulations and oversight related to climate-based financial risk on Wall Street,” the critics from the environmental movement said the report should be seen as the latest example of government foot-dragging, powered by the reluctance of anyone to adequately confront the power of the fossil fuel industry.

    For his part, Hauser rebuked Yellen for seeking consensus among the members of the FSOC when so many have such deep ties to Wall Street and the status quo operation of the financial industry. Hauser said:

    While the report will allow do-good members such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to continue their actions to mitigate climate-related risks, it is clear that Yellen’s insistence on a consensus vote spoiled the report’s potential. Finding consensus between those who see or don’t see our climate reality is not democracy in action: it’s homicidal.”

    Yellen should not have sought to appease Trump holdover members such as Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Jelena McWilliams (who voted to abstain anyways), and climate-denying Independent Insurance Expert Thomas Workman. These members are committed to upholding the myth that the financial status quo is sustainable rather than addressing the crisis before them. Yellen did not need their votes for the final report and she should not have given even an inch to get them. Yellen also may be acting to protect the renomination interests of Powell by making the report too inoffensive to oppose. For the Secretary to do so in the face of well warranted high expectations from climate finance experts shows no care for her own legacy or, more importantly, the financial and environmental health of the United States and the world.”

    The White House should not have allowed Yellen to release such a pathetic report. Yellen has let down the billions of people who are counting on the U.S. to lead in mitigating climate change. This is a matter of life and death.

    Brett Fleishman, head of finance campaigns with 350.org, also pointed that finger at Powell, arguing the Fed chair is a key reason for the report’s failure. His group and others have been campaigning for months for Biden to replace Powell — who was appointed by former President Donald Trump — with someone who will act more forcefully to align the U.S. economy with the imperative to rapidly transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy.

    “This report affirms recognition of the dangers of the fossil-fueled climate crisis on our communities, financial system, and economy,” Fleishman said.

    But because of Powell’s “historic foot-dragging,” he said, the Treasury Department “failed to live up to the bar of action” — an especially egregious missed opportunity with the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow set to begin on October 31.

    If Biden wants to lead on climate, said Fleishman, the president “must replace Powell with a Fed Chair who will take climate risk seriously. Ahead of COP26, it’s time for swift and responsible transformation that steers our economy off fossil fuels, and stops the risky practices of climate destroyers on Wall Street. That’s why we’re making the Peoples’ voices heard.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Biden Administration Is Building Back to the Brink of a New Cold War

    Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin walk past a military honor guard as they walk inside for a meeting at the Pentagon on September 22, 2021, in Arlington, Virginia.

    Before it’s too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China?

    Because that’s just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month’s announcement of an “AUKUS” (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) military alliance in Asia. Believe me, it’s far scarier (and more racist) than the nuclear-powered submarine deal and the French diplomatic kerfuffle that dominated the media coverage of it. By focusing on the dramatically angry French reaction to losing their own agreement to sell non-nuclear subs to Australia, most of the media missed a much bigger story: that the U.S. government and its allies have all but formally declared a new Cold War by launching a coordinated military buildup in East Asia unmistakably aimed at China.

    It’s still not too late to choose a more peaceful path. Unfortunately, this all-Anglo alliance comes perilously close to locking the world into just such a conflict that could all too easily become a hot, even potentially nuclear, war between the two wealthiest, most powerful countries on the planet.

    If you’re too young to have lived through the original Cold War as I did, imagine going to sleep fearing that you might not wake up in the morning, thanks to a nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers (in those days, the United States and the Soviet Union). Imagine walking past nuclear fallout shelters, doing “duck and cover” drills under your school desk, and experiencing other regular reminders that, at any moment, a great-power war could end life on Earth.

    Do we really want a future of fear? Do we want the United States and its supposed enemy to once again squander untold trillions of dollars on military expenditures while neglecting basic human needs, including universal health care, education, food, and housing, not to mention failing to deal adequately with that other looming existential threat, climate change?

    A U.S. Military Buildup in Asia

    When President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared their all-too-awkwardly named AUKUS alliance, most of the media focused on a relatively small (though hardly insignificant) part of the deal: the U.S. sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and that country’s simultaneous cancellation of a 2016 contract to buy diesel-powered subs from France. Facing the loss of tens of billions of euros and being shut out of the Anglo Alliance, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the deal a “stab in the back.” For the first time in history, France briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington. French officials even cancelled a gala meant to celebrate Franco-American partnership dating back to their defeat of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.

    Caught surprisingly off guard by the uproar over the alliance (and the secret negotiations that preceded it), the Biden administration promptly took steps to repair relations, and the French ambassador soon returned to Washington. In September at the United Nations, President Biden declared that the last thing he wants is “a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.” Sadly, the actions of his administration suggest otherwise.

    Imagine how Biden administration officials would feel about the announcement of a “VERUCH” (VEnezuela, RUssia, and CHina) alliance. Imagine how they’d react to a buildup of Chinese military bases and thousands of Chinese troops in Venezuela. Imagine their reaction to regular deployments of all types of Chinese military aircraft, submarines, and warships in Venezuela, to increased spying, heightened cyberwarfare capabilities, and relevant space “activities,” as well as military exercises involving thousands of Chinese and Russian troops not just in Venezuela but in the waters of the Atlantic within striking distance of the United States. How would Biden’s team feel about the promised delivery of a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to that country, involving the transfer of nuclear technology and nuclear-weapons-grade uranium?

    None of this has happened, but these would be the Western Hemisphere equivalents of the “major force posture initiatives” U.S., Australian, and British officials have just announced for East Asia. AUKUS officials unsurprisingly portray their alliance as making parts of Asia “safer and more secure,” while building “a future of peace [and] opportunity for all the people of the region.” It’s unlikely U.S. leaders would view a similar Chinese military buildup in Venezuela or anywhere else in the Americas as a similar recipe for safety and peace.

    In reaction to VERUCH, calls for a military response and a comparable alliance would be rapid. Shouldn’t we expect Chinese leaders to react to the AUKUS buildup with their own version of the same? For now, a Chinese government spokesperson suggested that the AUKUS allies “should shake off their Cold War mentality” and “not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.” The Chinese military’s recent escalation of provocative exercises near Taiwan may be, in part, an additional response.

    Chinese leaders have even more reason to doubt the declared peaceful intent of AUKUS given that the U.S. military already has seven military bases in Australia and nearly 300 more spread across East Asia. By contrast, China doesn’t have a single base in the Western Hemisphere or anywhere near the borders of the United States. Add in one more factor: in the last 20 years, the AUKUS allies have a track record of launching aggressive wars and participating in other conflicts from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya to Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines, among other places. China’s last war beyond its borders was with Vietnam for one month in 1979. (Brief, deadly clashes occurred with Vietnam in 1988 and India in 2020.)

    War Trumps Diplomacy

    By withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the Biden administration theoretically started moving the country away from its twenty-first-century policy of endless wars. The president, however, now appears determined to side with those in Congress, in the mainstream foreign policy “Blob,” and in the media who are dangerously inflating the Chinese military threat and calling for a military response to that country’s growing global power. The poor handling of relations with the French government is another sign that, despite prior promises, the Biden administration is paying little attention to diplomacy and reverting to a foreign policy defined by preparations for war, bloated military budgets, and macho military bluster.

    Given the 20 years of disastrous warfare that followed the George W. Bush administration’s announcement of a “Global War on Terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, what business does Washington have building a new military alliance in Asia? Shouldn’t the Biden administration instead be building alliances dedicated to combating global warming, pandemics, hunger, and other urgent human needs? What business do three white leaders of three white-majority countries have attempting to dominate that region through military force?

    While the leaders of some countries there have welcomed AUKUS, the three allies signaled the racist, retrograde, downright colonial nature of their Anglo Alliance by excluding other Asian countries from their all-white club. Naming China as its obvious target and escalating Cold War-style us-vs.-them tensions risk fueling already rampant anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in the United States and globally. Belligerent, often warlike rhetoric against China, associated with former President Donald Trump and other far-right Republicans, has increasingly been embraced by the Biden administration and some Democrats. It “has directly contributed to rising anti-Asian violence across the country,” write Asia experts Christine Ahn, Terry Park, and Kathleen Richards.

    The less formalized “Quad” grouping that Washington has also organized in Asia, again including Australia as well as India and Japan, is little better and is already becoming a more militarily focused anti-Chinese alliance. Other countries in the region have indicated that they are “deeply concerned over the continuing arms race and power projection” there, as the Indonesian government said of the nuclear-powered submarine deal. Nearly silent and so difficult to detect, such vessels are offensive weapons designed to strike another country without warning. Australia’s future acquisition of them risks escalating a regional arms race and raises troubling questions about the intentions of both Australian and U.S. leaders.

    Beyond Indonesia, people worldwide should be deeply concerned about the U.S. sale of nuclear-propelled submarines. The deal undermines efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons as it encourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, which the U.S. or British governments will need to provide to Australia to fuel the subs. The deal also offers a precedent allowing other non-nuclear countries like Japan to advance nuclear-weapons development under the guise of building their own nuclear-powered subs. What’s to stop China or Russia from now selling their nuclear-powered submarines and weapons-grade uranium to Iran, Venezuela, or any other country?

    Who’s Militarizing Asia?

    Some will claim that the United States must counter China’s growing military power, frequently trumpeted by U.S. media outlets. Increasingly, journalists, pundits, and politicians here have been irresponsibly parroting misleading depictions of Chinese military power. Such fearmongering is already ballooning military budgets in this country, while fueling arms races and increasing tensions, just as during the original Cold War. Disturbingly, according to a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, a majority in the U.S. now appear to believe — however incorrectly — that Chinese military power is equal to or greater than that of the United States. In fact, our military power vastly exceeds China’s, which simply doesn’t compare to the old Soviet Union.

    The Chinese government has indeed strengthened its military power in recent years by increasing spending, developing advanced weapons systems, and building an estimated 15 to 27 mostly small military bases and radar stations on human-made islands in the South China Sea. Nonetheless, the U.S. military budget remains at least three times the size of its Chinese counterpart (and higher than at the height of the original Cold War). Add in the military budgets of Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other NATO allies like Great Britain and the discrepancy leaps to six to one. Among the approximately 750 U.S. military bases abroad, almost 300 are scattered across East Asia and the Pacific and dozens more are in other parts of Asia. The Chinese military, on the other hand, has eight bases abroad (seven in the South China Sea’s Spratley Islands and one in Djibouti in Africa), plus bases in Tibet. The U.S. nuclear arsenal contains about 5,800 warheads compared to about 320 in the Chinese arsenal. The U.S. military has 68 nuclear-powered submarines, the Chinese military 10.

    Contrary to what many have been led to believe, China is not a military challenge to the United States. There is no evidence its government has even the remotest thought of threatening, let alone attacking, the U.S. itself. Remember, China last fought a war outside its borders in 1979. “The true challenges from China are political and economic, not military,” Pentagon expert William Hartung has rightly explained.

    Since President Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the U.S. military has engaged in years of new base construction, aggressive military exercises, and displays of military force in the region. This has encouraged the Chinese government to build up its own military capabilities. Especially in recent months, the Chinese military has engaged in increasingly provocative exercises near Taiwan, though fearmongers again are misrepresenting and exaggerating how threatening they truly are. Given Biden’s plans to escalate his predecessors’ military buildup in Asia, no one should be surprised if Beijing announces a military response and pursues an AUKUS-like alliance of its own. If so, the world will once more be locked in a two-sided Cold-War-like struggle that could prove increasingly difficult to unwind.

    Unless Washington and Beijing reduce tensions, future historians may see AUKUS as akin not just to various Cold-War-era alliances, but to the 1882 Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. That pact spurred France, Britain, and Russia to create their own Triple Entente, which, along with rising nationalism and geo-economic competition, helped lead Europe into World War I (which, in turn, begat World War II, which begat the Cold War).

    Avoiding a New Cold War?

    The Biden administration and the United States must do better than resuscitate the strategies of the nineteenth century and the Cold War era. Rather than further fueling a regional arms race with yet more bases and weapons development in Australia, U.S. officials could help lower tensions between Taiwan and mainland China, while working to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In the wake of the Afghan War, President Biden could commit the United States to a foreign policy of diplomacy, peace-building, and opposition to war rather than one of endless conflict and preparations for more of the same. AUKUS’s initial 18-month consultation period offers a chance to reverse course.

    Recent polling suggests such moves would be popular. More than three times as many in the U.S. would like to see an increase, rather than a decrease, in diplomatic engagement in the world, according to the nonprofit Eurasia Group Foundation. Most surveyed would also like to see fewer troop deployments overseas. Twice as many want to decrease the military budget as want to increase it.

    The world barely survived the original Cold War, which was anything but cold for the millions of people who lived through or died in the era’s proxy wars in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Can we really risk another version of the same, this time possibly with Russia as well as China? Do we want an arms race and competing military buildups that would divert trillions of dollars more from pressing human needs while filling the coffers of arms manufacturers? Do we really want to risk triggering a military clash between the United States and China, accidental or otherwise, that could easily spin out of control and become a hot, possibly nuclear, war in which the death and destruction of the last 20 years of “forever wars” would look small by comparison.

    That thought alone should be chilling. That thought alone should be enough to stop another Cold War before it’s too late.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Has Outpaced Trump’s Use of Title 42 to Expel Asylum Seekers

    People carry their children and belongs across the rio grande while us custom and border patrol agents wait on the shore to harass them upon arrival

    “We didn’t know we were being deported,” said Cinthia* as she walked toward a bus headed to Honduras. The 24-year-old fled violence and threats in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, earlier this year. She made it 1,500 miles north through Guatemala and Mexico and across the U.S. border into Texas, where she planned to request asylum. Instead, the U.S. summarily expelled her on a flight from McAllen, Texas, to southern Mexico, and Mexico then sent her overland to El Ceibo, a remote border crossing with Guatemala.

    “They never allowed me to say why I left,” Cinthia said of U.S. border and immigration officials. “They just told us to get on.” Cinthia and other Hondurans expelled by the U.S. with whom Truthout spoke as they walked over the border from Mexico into Guatemala said they were not told where they going until they landed in Villahermosa, Mexico, the Tabasco state capital. Some had heard rumors they were being flown to a shelter in another part of the U.S.

    In the past two months, more than 14,000 Central American migrants and asylum seekers have been expelled and deported over the El Ceibo border crossing, according to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute. More than 70 percent have been Honduran, as for the past month and a half, Guatemalans have been sent back over a different border crossing. Thousands were detained in different parts of Mexico and deported via El Ceibo. Thousands of others, including Cinthia, were subject to a sort of chain expulsion: summarily expelled by the U.S. on daily flights to southern Mexico and then bused by Mexico back to Central America.

    The expulsions through Mexico are the latest iteration of U.S. policies and practices blocking people from seeking asylum that started under former President Donald Trump and have continued under President Joe Biden. Over the past three years, migrants and asylum seekers from northern Central America have been subject to diverse restrictions on asylum: expedited removals, summary expulsions, the “Remain in Mexico” policy and a so-called “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala. The expulsions through El Ceibo are carried out under Title 42, a public health order the U.S. has been using during the COVID-19 pandemic to summarily expel migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border.

    Trump’s administration invoked Title 42 last year, shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Based on a seldom-used part of 1940s health legislation, Title 42 confers authority for emergency action to address health risks associated with entry into the country of people, regardless of citizenship. On March 20, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order “suspending the right to introduce certain persons where a quarantinable communicable disease exists.” The order applies to entry overland from Mexico or Canada to people “who would otherwise be introduced into a congregate setting,” and authorizes their expulsion either to the country they last transited — Mexico, in the vast majority of cases — or to their country of origin. U.S. citizens are exempt.

    In practice, the U.S. has been using the order to circumvent processing and screening, prevent asylum claims, and summarily expel migrants and would-be asylum seekers. There have been more than 1.1 million Title 42 expulsions, though some people have been expelled multiple times within that total. Migrant rights advocates had hoped the Biden administration would ditch the practice, but its use has only increased. In Biden’s first seven full months in office, from February through August 2021, the U.S. Border Patrol registered 690,209 Title 42 expulsions at the U.S. southern border — more than 1.8 times the number of expulsions in 10 months last year, from March through December 2020, under Trump.

    “It does seem like Biden’s inner circle or administration is sticking to their guns on this,” said Yael Schacher, senior U.S. advocate at Refugees International, a humanitarian and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “Personally, I think it’s because they don’t quite have a plan for how to process people.”

    Rights groups challenged the legality of Title 42 expulsions in court, and in late September, a federal court judge sided with them. The judge issued an injunction against the government regarding the expulsion of families with children but did not put it into effect immediately, giving the Biden administration a grace period to appeal, which it has. Then on October 2, Harold Koh, a senior State Department adviser who had already planned to leave government, used his resignation to publicly condemn the administration for its treatment of thousands of Haitian migrants and asylum seekers, calling their expulsions under Title 42 illegal. The Biden administration stood its ground in court and in public statements responding to Koh.

    “They’ve been consistently misportraying what Title 42 is,” Schacher told Truthout. “[White House Press Secretary Jen] Psaki responded to Koh’s legal rebuke of Title 42 by basically misrepresenting how many people pass through screening, saying these screenings were available, when in fact, they’re not really available to most people.”

    “So much of the focus has been on whether [the expulsions] are justified on health grounds, rather than, ‘Where are we sending people?’” she said. With Haiti, that issue has been at the forefront, given the recent Temporary Protected Status designation, massive earthquake and violent political turmoil. When the Trump administration implemented an asylum cooperation agreement with Guatemala, deporting Hondurans and Salvadorans to the country to seek asylum, there was significant U.S. attention and activism on the serious insecurity and dangers people were being sent back to, said Schacher. Thousands of Central Americans are being expelled to Guatemala now, though, and “that hasn’t gotten much attention” because of the overwhelming focus on the health grounds.

    Migrant advocacy and human rights groups throughout Guatemala and Mexico have been speaking out against Title 42 expulsions since they first began. International agencies have also condemned the phenomenon for violating international law. In May, Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), called on the U.S. “to swiftly lift the public health-related asylum restrictions that remain in effect at the border and to restore access to asylum for the people whose lives depend on it.” The UN agency reiterated its appeal in August, in response to the expulsions to southern Mexico and overland into Guatemala.

    “These expulsion flights of non-Mexicans to the deep interior of Mexico constitute a troubling new dimension in enforcement of the COVID-related public health order known as Title 42,” Matthew Reynolds, UNHCR representative to the U.S. and the Caribbean, said in a public statement. “Removal from the U.S. to southern Mexico, outside any official transfer agreement with appropriate legal standards, increases the risk of chain refoulement — pushbacks by successive countries — of vulnerable people in danger.”

    Truthout asked U.S. and Mexican officials whether or not there were any written agreements or memorandums of understanding between the two countries or with Guatemala concerning the chain expulsions but was unable to obtain a response. Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, though, confirmed Guatemala does not have any. “No document exists in this regard. Only verbal agreements,” a ministry spokesperson told Truthout.

    On the Mexican side of the El Ceibo border crossing, buses contracted by Mexico’s National Immigration Institute were already lined up waiting by midday on September 20. By mid-afternoon, immigration vans and buses began arriving from Villahermosa with the passengers of the U.S. Title 42 expulsion flight from Texas and people detained in different parts of Mexico. Once everyone had arrived to the Mexican side of the border, Guatemalan police and immigration and officials got into place. The first contracted bus in waiting was sent over, and Mexican police closed the vehicle gate across the road behind it to prevent anyone from returning to the Mexican side.

    Migrants and asylum seekers were sent back a few dozen at a time by Mexico through the passenger tunnel into Guatemala, where immigration officials ushered them in single file across the road. Another official was keeping count. A few Guatemalan border police stood spaced out off to the side, ensuring people stayed in line and did not try to climb a nearby embankment. The only assistance was provided by nuns and local migrant shelter workers and volunteers who handed people drinks, snacks, hygiene supplies and clothing donations as they boarded the bus. Once full, the bus pulled ahead to wait for the others, and the whole process was repeated. In roughly an hour, Truthout watched as hundreds of Central Americans were ushered onto eight buses that departed as a caravan, headed to Corinto, a border crossing with Honduras 280 miles away. According to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute, 278 Hondurans (including 80 minors) and 17 Salvadorans were sent back at El Ceibo that day.

    When the expulsions at El Ceibo began in August, people were sent across the border and abandoned. The Guatemalan government publicly stated it had received no prior warning from Mexico or the U.S. and pushed back. A small Guatemalan border village, El Ceibo has few services. It is in a remote area along drug trafficking routes and criminal groups on both sides of the border often prey on migrants. The local Catholic church-affiliated migrant shelter has a capacity to shelter 30 people, reduced to 15 during the pandemic. Shelter workers and volunteers scrambled to house, feed, and provide other assistance to as many of the hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers being sent back every day as they could.

    “We prioritized women and families,” said Juan Pablo Saquí, spokesperson for the local migrant shelter, Casa del Migrante del Belén. “We tried to follow biosecurity protocols but the situation was dire,” he told Truthout in the small shelter up on a steep hill. Sometimes the shelter provided aid to 200 people and no other institution, governmental or otherwise, was providing any. After the situation was covered by Guatemalan media, some institutions began showing up, said Saquí, and eventually the buses were coordinated to take people directly from El Ceibo to Honduras.

    It is unclear how many Central Americans have been subject to the U.S. Title 42 expulsions by way of the flights to southern Mexico and subsequent expulsion to Guatemala. The Guatemalan Immigration Institute has been keeping track of overall totals at El Ceibo since August 22 and frequently shares updates with journalists, but does not have disaggregated data distinguishing between people expelled by the U.S. and those detained in Mexico. Overall, 14,108 people, more than a quarter of whom have been minors, were expelled and deported over the El Ceibo crossing between August 22 and October 11, according to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute. More than 70 percent (10,276 people) were Honduran and just over 15 percent (2,210 people) were Salvadoran. Early on, 1,445 Guatemalans were sent back via El Ceibo, as were 159 Nicaraguans and 18 other people of different nationalities. Guatemala did not keep track of people expelled into the country over other border crossings from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

    Truthout asked Mexican and U.S. officials a series of questions with the express aim of determining how many of the people expelled and deported at the El Ceibo crossing — whether in total, in September, or even just on September 20 and 21, when Truthout was at the border — had first been flown down from the U.S. to Villahermosa. Mexico’s National Immigration Institute did not provide a response by time of publication, and neither did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite follow-up emails and deadline extensions. The department presumably internally forwarded the request to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who indicated to Truthout three days later that people were being sent back under Title 42 and the request should therefore be directed to DHS or Customs and Border Protection. (Truthout’s request was clearly and explicitly about the use of Title 42 and was directed to DHS in the first place.) Truthout then followed up October 12 directly with DHS to reiterate the request but did not receive a response by time of publication.

    Once-a-day flights from McAllen, Texas, to Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, are ongoing. The expulsion flights are contracted out to World Atlantic Airlines, a Florida-based charter airline company. World Atlantic Airlines’ fleet is comprised of seven McDonnell Douglas 80 Series planes with total passenger capacities between 146 and 155, according to the company’s website. Expulsion flights from McAllen to Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, are less frequent, on Boeing 737s, and are contracted to iAero Airways, formerly Swift Air. For the past three weeks, there have been Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday flights on Boeing 737s from McAllen to Tapachula.

    It is unlikely flights have been at full capacity, but if they were, more than 10,000 Central Americans would have been expelled under Title 42 via southern Mexico over a span of two months. Direct flights have also skyrocketed. In September, 3,354 Guatemalans were expelled under Title 42 and/or deported on 34 U.S. flights to Guatemala City. That is more than the total from January through August, and flights are only increasing. From October 4 to 15 alone, there were 24 such flights scheduled, according to the Guatemalan Immigration Institute.

    Back at the El Ceibo border crossing, Oscar* and his partner Amy* were exhausted as they walked into Guatemala with their 1-year-old daughter on September 21. The young family left Catacamas, their hometown in eastern Honduras, in mid-August. “We didn’t have any work, and the government never does anything for the people,” Oscar told Truthout.

    The couple knew about Title 42 expulsions but had heard they were no longer happening. “We made it to Texas quite confident,” said Oscar. Once they were boarded onto the plane to Villahermosa, though, it became clear to the family they had received false information. “It wasn’t true,” said Oscar, who is unsure what he will do now. He put his home up as collateral on a loan the family used to make the journey north, and the money is long gone.

    “Now I have nothing,” he said, advancing in line to get onto the bus to Honduras. “I think I will try again.”

    * Cinthia, Oscar and Amy’s last names have been omitted to protect their identities for security reasons.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • People Vs. Fossil Fuels: Nearly 400 People Arrested Outside The White House

    Under a giant banner that read “Biden: Our Communities Can’t Wait,” hundreds of people marched to the White House this morning to highlight the dangerous ongoing impacts of the climate crisis across the country and the world. As hundreds rallied in Lafayette Square Park, 90 people sat in at the White House fence, risking arrest for the third straight day of civil disobedience.

    The post People Vs. Fossil Fuels: Nearly 400 People Arrested Outside The White House appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Family Searches for Father Missing in Texas Desert as Border Deaths Peak

    Armando Alejo Hernández went missing in the desert after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in May of 2021, but not before sending several last audio messages to his eldest son describing the difficult terrain and asking for help. “He wasn’t feeling so good, and he was out of water and food,” says Hernández’s 17-year-old son Derek. “The group got ahead, and then he lost the group.” Hernández was an undocumented worker in the United States for more than a decade before being deported in 2016. His wife and two sons, who are U.S citizens by birth, have pleaded with Border Patrol and the Mexican Consulate for help, without any luck so far. “This year we are going to break the record of migrants dying at the border,” warns Fernando García of the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights, one of many organizations demanding that the Biden administration “fulfill their promise to change the inhumane policies at the border.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    AMY GOODMAN: The West Texas town of Van Horn is in the news today as the site of the scheduled private space flight launched by Blue Origin, the company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest men. Passengers will include the 90-year-old actor William Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek. Shatner and three others will be rocketed high above the unforgiving Chihuahuan Desert that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. For these giddy space tourists experiencing weightlessness, it may be the trip of a lifetime, but far below, countless others make a far weightier trip, attempting the perilous trek from Mexico across the desert furnace on foot, seeking refuge in the United States. Many of these migrants, exhausted and dehydrated, perish in the desolate terrain.

    We begin today looking at the tragic story of the father of two boys. He crossed the Texas-Mexico border with hopes of reuniting with his family in Utah. He was last heard from in early May as he tried to walk across the Texas desert on foot. For more than a decade, Armando Alejo Hernández was one of more than 12 million undocumented residents in the United States. He was deported in 2016, leaving behind a family in Park City, Utah, including his two sons, now 13 and 17. They’re both U.S. citizens by birth.

    After spending five formative years without his father, his elder son Derek asked his dad if he could visit them in the United States. Armando promised he would find a way. Little is known about Armando’s trek across the border and through the desert, but he did make calls to Derek and leave some voice messages. In one call, Armando told Derek he was out of water, that his cellphone was almost dead, that he didn’t think he could go on. In another message, Armando described the clothing that he was wearing.

    ARMANDO ALEJO HERNÁNDEZ: [translated] I’d arrive in about three hours. I’m wearing a black Jordan sweatshirt and blue pants.

    AMY GOODMAN: Armando also described the harsh terrain in the Texas desert.

    ARMANDO ALEJO HERNÁNDEZ: [translated] I don’t think I can make it all the way up there. It’s all the way up the peak, son, all the way up the hill.

    AMY GOODMAN: These messages were the last time Armando’s family heard his voice. Based on a photo Armando sent his family, it appears he was in Hudspeth County, southeast of El Paso near Eagle Peak, where the U.S. government has a radar installation. Armando was never heard from again.

    In a moment we’ll be joined by his son Derek, but first I want to turn to Armando’s brother, Marcos Alejo. He’s a restaurant worker in Park City, Utah. He and Armando first migrated to the United States together in 2000. Marcos last spoke to Armando in early May, just before he went missing in the desert.

    MARCOS ALEJO: [translated] We are searching for Armando. He’s been missing for five months now. He was coming to the United States to help his child, who asked for support with school. He came here to work. He’s a very honest and hard-working person.

    We were asking for the support of Border Patrol. Then we asked the Mexican Consulate for support. And they would say yes, but we never saw any action. I would call them every eight days, and they would tell me they were looking for him, but we didn’t have any luck.

    My brother is a very kind person, and it would mean the world to us if he returned. This entire family, we’re all so worried because it’s been five months. We want to see him. We want to hug him, but we, sadly, can’t. I don’t know what’s going on. My brother is a very calm person. He came here so excited to work and help out his two children. My family in Mexico is so worried. My mother is ill. We hope we have a miracle soon.

    I’ve been fighting, trying to find him through other agencies. I’ve called the Catholic churches in Texas, and I don’t have any answers. I’ve called the morgue. All they tell me is “You just have to wait. You just have to wait.” And that’s what we’ve done for the past five months, and we’ve heard nothing.

    AMY GOODMAN: That’s Marcos Alejo speaking to Democracy Now! about his brother Armando, who went missing in the Texas desert in early May.

    We’re joined now by two guests. Fernando García is with us. He’s founder and executive director of the El Paso, Texas-based Border Network for Human Rights. He’s in Los Angeles now. And with us from Park City, Utah, is Armando’s 17-year-old son, Derek Alejo Barrios. Derek was the last person to speak to Armando before he went missing.

    Hi, Derek. Thank you so much for joining us. We heard those painful last clips of your dad, the WhatsApp messages that he left you. Can you talk about what you understood about his journey?

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: What I understood was that he took a longer route. It was a longer route, but it was easier, instead of running into the immigration right away, so he took that route instead. And the day before he called me, he said that everything seemed like it was going as planned. But the very next day is when he called me that he got into some trouble and that he wasn’t feeling so good and that he was out of water and food. And then, that’s where the trouble started. And he asked me to find any help, even if it was Border Patrol and he would have to go back to jail for that. So, he wasn’t afraid to go back, but he was wanting help from someone to at least rescue him so he wouldn’t be stranded out in the desert.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Derek, at the time that he called you, was he traveling by himself, or had he started out with a group of people at first? Can you talk about that at all?

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: He started out with a group of people. And as they kept going, my dad wasn’t feeling good, and he was slowing down. So, he didn’t want to slow down the rest of the group, so they wouldn’t get endangered or just get in trouble by immigration. So, what he decided to do was just stay behind and let them go on, because he couldn’t keep on. So, that’s where he started slowing down and just taking breaks, and the group got ahead, and then he lost the group.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a person who was with him on that journey, and then we’re going to bring Fernando García into this conversation. Telemundo El Paso spoke to one of seven migrants who crossed with Armando and last saw him before he was left near Sierra Blanca, Texas. Alexis Corona told Telemundo the temperature on that day in May was likely above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

    ALEXIS CORONA: [translated] Armando said he couldn’t walk anymore, and he wanted to see if he could be rescued. … From where he stayed, maybe eight or nine miles ahead, the rest of us were caught by immigration agents. And we explained to them where Armando was, that he couldn’t walk anymore, that he didn’t have enough water or food. And the reaction was, “Oh, OK, well, if he stayed behind, he’ll just have to stay there.”

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Alexis Corona, who was arrested and deported, saying that he told the immigration authorities that a man, Armando Alejo Hernández, had been left behind. This is where I want to bring in Fernando García, head of the Border Network for Human Rights. Can you talk about this situation, that you’ve been following for some time now? At this point, again, we have not heard from Armando since the first week in May, when he left those messages for his son and talked to his brother. Yet you have this migrant saying he told the immigration authorities that a sick migrant was left behind, and told them where he was.

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: Amy, Juan, good morning. Again, thanks for having me.

    I mean, this is a very important issue, and it’s long overdue to talk about this human rights crisis at the border. Unfortunately, Armando’s case, it is not a single case, an isolated case. This is part of a very dramatic pattern, brutal strategy towards immigrants and refugees at the border. Just to give you an example, since 1995, more than 500 migrants have died every year while crossing the border. Many of them are never found. Many of them are still disappeared. The families are still waiting for them, looking for them, as in this case.

    It is a very intentional policy that was implemented back then in the ’90s, that was called “prevention through deterrence.” The idea was that immigrants will find very hard to cross the border if they are pushed into the deserts and into the mountains. So, it would be very dangerous for them to cross, that they actually would be injured or, in some cases, even die, so they would be deterred from crossing. That was the intention of the policy. Well, what happened is that migration didn’t stop. And this policy is and this strategy is still in place since then, so thousands and thousands of refugees, asylum seekers actually have died, and many of them have not been found. So, it is a failed strategy. It has caused a lot of damage and a lot of suffering.

    Like, in this case, we actually got specifically involved by calling Border Patrol and calling the Mexican Consulate. And again, even that protocol had failed. I mean, they had — it seems that they didn’t do anything, even though they had all of the information about Armando, Armando’s pictures, the recording that you have, the statement of the families. And up to date, neither the Mexican Consulate and the Border Patrol have done anything. They have not produced a single report on Armando’s case. So, this is very unfortunate, but I think the fact that we’re talking about it today, we hope that this is going to bring more attention to the issue.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Fernando, in terms of the role of the Border Patrol in this situation, are they generally — what have you seen in terms of their willingness to try to search for some of these lost people? I mean, we’ve had segments here on Democracy Now! of the Border Patrol actually going after organizations that try to provide water and other food supplies for migrants crossing the desert. What’s your sense of how the Border Patrol deals with these issues?

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: You know, we learned more about it, I mean, as we contacted Border Patrol in Armando’s case, is that it seems that they had in a strategy that they’re supposed to have a protocol for search-and-rescue operations, that they’re supposed to go, if they have enough information, to go and do search and do rescue people that is in the desert. Actually, Border Patrol publicized that. This is part of their PR, that actually they have these teams going into the deserts or in the river to actually rescue people.

    But in this case, that protocol failed. I mean, what I’m saying is that there’s something that is being said publicly by Border Patrol, but, in practice, as we actually reach out to Border Patrol directly, they continue to tell us not to go to Border Patrol directly, not to report to Border Patrol Armando’s case, that we needed to go through the Mexican Consulate. As we did that, we called the Mexican Consulate, because that’s supposed to be the formal entity that would do this request for search and rescue. As we did that, they passed, and no action was taken — none of them — not a single action by Border Patrol, much less by the Mexican Consulate, so — in El Paso, specifically. So, days passed, weeks passed, and no rescue operations.

    Later on, we knew also that Border Patrol do not search for remains. That means that if, after a period of time, they don’t do anything to rescue somebody, they would not do anything else. So, my impression and my feeling is that there’s a lot of people disappeared in the deserts and in the mountains, that they are not being looked for. And there’s no clear protocol by CBP and DHS.

    AMY GOODMAN: You know, we have been following this case for some time, and we got a note from the chief of Texas Rescue Patrol, a division of Texas Recreational Safety and Land Management. It was very hopeful. It was in July. And it said, “I just want to follow up with you. I spoke to Lieutenant Henshaw with Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office. Our volunteers and the Sheriff’s Office are going to conduct a joint search and recovery operation next week. We’re going to bring out our canine cadaver dogs to assist us. I can’t promise we’ll find him, but I can promise that we’ll try our best to help bring closure to this family. God bless.” But then we were told, Fernando, that that had been called off. So there was a whole plan to go out to find, perhaps, God forbid, the body of Armando, but then that was called off by the higher-ups. It was devastating to me, writing to Derek and his mother that there was this hope but then that they had said no.

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: You know, let me actually point out a couple of things. In the Telemundo reference you made about this person that was traveling along with Armando, in that interview, this survivor mentioned that Armando stayed behind, like a few miles back, and the response that he got from a Border Patrol agent is that, essentially, he didn’t care. I mean that the Border Patrol did not care. So I think you have a practice of disregarding the well-being and the lives of refugees and immigrants at the border.

    And this is not new. I mean, we know that there’s this sense of racism, this infusion of white supremacy and hate and xenophobia in our border policies. But I think this has transpired to the institutions at the border. I mean, there’s a point where even bodies being found at the river, they are despicably called “floaters.” They are not being recognized as human beings, people that are looking for a better life and trying to cross the border to be with their families, as in this case with Armando’s family. So I do believe there is an intentional dehumanization of immigrants and refugees. And why that is intentional? Because if we really are concerned, if America is concerned about lives and about human beings, we could not understand how many thousands of migrants have died at the border.

    This is a human rights crisis. It is imperative that something is done. And it’s imperative that this administration, that promised a new approach for immigration and for the border, they need to stop this madness at the border. They need to stop this aggression. So many people has been suffering. So many families are being impacted by migrants dying at the border, as in this case.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — you had mentioned this administration. It’s continuing President Trump’s policies in relationship to the Title 42 program. It’s exploiting — which exploits an obscure section of U.S. health law that allows deportation without any kind of due process during a public health crisis, as we have with the COVID pandemic. I’m wondering your sense of what the Biden administration is doing right now.

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: You know, you’re correct. You’re right. I mean, everybody knows, at the border, but in the nation, that Title 42 was an anti-immigrant strategy, an anti-immigrant policy implemented by Trump. So, we did not — we do not understand how President Biden, this new administration, has not repealed and stopped this.

    What it essentially does is it stops — Border Patrol stops people while crossing the border and immediately expels them, without due process, with no possibility, in many cases, to apply for asylum or refugee status. So people is being expelled rapidly. So, that situation, in the last few years, has created a very dangerous situation at the border.

    Actually, I believe that this year, maybe, maybe we’re going to break the records of migrants dying at the border and people disappeared at the border, because of Title 42, specifically Title 42. So, there is a push by organizations, by the immigrant rights community to ask this administration to fulfill the promise to change the inhumane policy at the border, starting by Title 42.

    AMY GOODMAN: And you met with Vice President Kamala Harris on the border, Fernando. What did she say about this? You have, for example, a top-level State Department official, under Obama and under Biden, Harold Koh, formerly a Yale professor, quitting over Title 42.

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: I think it is difficult to understand why things are not changed, but I think what has transpired is that the Biden administration and everybody in this administration, they have a good narrative about the border and about immigration generally. I mean, it seems that they had good intentions in humanizing immigrants, in passing immigration reforms, on rebuilding the asylum and refugee process at the border. But in practice, in the field, little things changed. I mean, I think one is the narrative, but also there’s strategies happening at the border. We still have children in detention. We still have refugees in military bases. And also we have a lot of people dying because of these policies. So, I think that change that was promised has not come to us as rapidly. So, I think there is still time for this. I mean, the administration still has time to correct, to correct these wrongs at the border, to actually fulfill the promise and repeal Title 42.

    AMY GOODMAN: We want to end with Derek, and, Fernando, if you have something you’d like to say to Derek. Derek, you’re in high school. It’s right before you’re going to school now. You’re 17. When are you turning 18?

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: I turn 18 on the 24th of this month.

    AMY GOODMAN: Oh. Well, the very, very best for your birthday. I’m only hoping the best for your family.

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: Thank you.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about why you wanted your dad back in Park City?

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: I wanted him back here because it’s just tough not being able to see my dad, and the only form of communication we had was just calling over the phone or sometimes FaceTiming. And it’s just tough, because I was just really close with my dad. And — sorry — and just not having him around was kind of tough on me, because I grew up, pretty much my whole childhood, like my younger age, when I was younger, all the time with my dad. And just not having him around was tough. And so, we were on the phone one day, and I asked him if he could come back, because I just wanted him around. And the last time I got to see him in person was in 2019. And before that, I didn’t get to see him for four years. So, it was just really hard on me, so that’s why I asked him to come back. And he said he would. And then, that — when he tried, all of that happened. So, it was really unfortunate, and it’s just a tough situation to go through.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to show that picture again that your dad, Armando, took, not of himself, but of what was ahead of him in Hudspeth County in the harsh desert. And he circled that white radio tower that was in front of him. For anyone in the Hudspeth County area, you could figure out — certainly CBP knows it like the back of their hand — where Armando was at that point. Fernando, any last words for Derek?

    FERNANDO GARCÍA: Yeah. Derek, I’m so sorry that this is happening. Please know that we are not going to stop looking for your dad. That’s the promise of the Border Network. And I believe that also Amy is committed to actually bring a little bit this case up and actually show it out to the nation, because what is happening to you and to your family shouldn’t be acceptable. So, we will not stop, and we’re going to continue looking for your dad.

    DEREK ALEJO BARRIOS: Thank you very much.

    AMY GOODMAN: Derek, thank you so much for being with us. It’s very brave just to come on this television and radio show. Derek Alejo, 17 years old, in high school, a senior, wanted his dad to be at his graduation. His dad is Armando Alejo Hernández. He is 40 years old. Fernando García, we want to thank you for being with us, head of the Border Network for Human Rights, which is based in El Paso, Texas.

    And we’re staying on this broader issue. When we come back from break, we’re going to speak to the director of the South Texas Human Rights Center and look at the new documentary, Missing in Brooks County. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Who Will Step Up In Biden’s DOJ To Save Julian Assange?

    After the revelations two weeks ago by Yahoo! News confirming and fleshing out previously reported news that the Central Intelligence Agency had seriously discussed assassinating or kidnapping Assange, the Biden Justice Department is faced with the dilemma of whether to proceed with an extradition proceeding against Assange that would send him to a country whose most powerful intelligence service planned to kill him.

    The post Who Will Step Up In Biden’s DOJ To Save Julian Assange? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Mandatory Reporting Can Trigger Investigation Without Survivors’ Consent

    President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the September jobs numbers in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on October 8, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

    Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination in higher education to enforce that no one be “excluded from participation in, or be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity” on the basis of sex. U.S. higher education institutions that receive federal funding must comply with Title IX guidelines, which includes responding to allegations of sexual violence (including harassment and assault) with a prompt grievance process that is fair to both parties. Up until Betsy DeVos’s modifications to the guidelines established in the Obama-era 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, Title IX required institutions to have a mandated reporting process as part of their mechanism of responding to sexual violence allegations. Mandated reporting requires that any disclosure of sexual violence made to a higher education employee (e.g., faculty, staff, coaches, graduate workers) who is designated as a responsible employee must be promptly reported to the Title IX office at that institution. Mandated reporting policies, while packaged as a supportive mechanism to prevent allegations of sexual violence from being “swept under the rug” by campus administrators, in practice have usually been an agent of controlling survivor narratives at the threat of disciplinary action for university employees who receive these disclosures and a mechanism for silencing survivors.

    As the Biden administration reevaluates the current Title IX policies, there has been ongoing debate regarding the value of mandated reporting. In addition to this debate, concerns surrounding free speech, privacy and academic freedom are continuously at the forefront of academic conversations. While rarely discussed as such, these are also Title IX issues. Mandated reporting prevents survivors at all levels in higher education from fully engaging in academic opportunities because they are unable to share their experiences as part of their learning process. Academic freedom in itself enables students and faculty to share their views, opinions and beliefs without sanction or retaliation. Yet, survivors cannot discuss their experiences of sexual violence in any academic setting without fear of being reported to Title IX. This not only prevents survivors from contributing to classroom discussions, assignments or professional development opportunities with perspectives that are informed by these experiences — bordering on censorship — but can constitute a violation of their privacy rights when an investigation into their sexual assault is triggered without their consent. Survivors are frequently deterred from filing formal reports like Title IX out of fear of retaliation, but mandated reporting exposes them to potential retaliation that academic freedom is supposed to protect them from.

    For undergraduate students, mandatory reporting policies prevent survivors from fully engaging in course material that may relate to their victimization experience. An undergraduate who is a survivor may be unable to share their unique insights and expertise as a survivor during class out of fear of a subsequent report and investigation by Title IX. For graduate workers, a similar dynamic may take place regarding their ability to fully engage with course material; however, the consequences of a Title IX report and investigation have the potential to impact their education and current/future employment in academia. Simultaneously, graduate workers are subject to mandated reporting from undergraduate and graduate students who disclose to them, as well as other graduate workers and faculty they disclose to, which in our experience has served as a barrier to fully engaging in mentor/mentee relationships and in our own research labs.

    For faculty who are also survivors, navigating course instruction with mandatory reporting obligations renders the separation of survivorship and educator an impossible and daunting task. Faculty members who seek to educate both graduate students and undergraduate students from a lens influenced by their own victimization experiences may be forced to censor their course content to avoid disclosures that would trigger a Title IX report. As contingent and untenured faculty, we are frequently under observation in the classroom and the looming threat of mandated reporting by other faculty is an obstacle to using our experiences in our pedagogy. Students who have experienced sexual violence themselves are often drawn to share their experiences with us inside and outside the classroom because of the nature of our scholarship to which we are then burdened by our mandated reporting obligation, which creates barriers to forming relationships with student-survivors and providing them the support they really need.

    As student-centered educators and graduate students, we are strictly at odds with our mandated reporting obligations. As experts on sexual assault, we argue that the Title IX training that most mandated reporters are required to complete at the start of each academic year is a clear contradiction of how to support sexual violence survivors. We are trained to interrupt and stop the student at the first sign of a disclosure to inform them of our reporting obligation, which then either: 1) prevents them from disclosing and receiving the support they need; and/or 2) takes away control of their own narrative by forcing disclosure to other sources. The lack of clarity in the Title IX guidelines often leads campus administrators to advise mandated reporters to report any cases that may fall under the umbrella of a mandated report to protect the institution and mandated reporters from liability from Title IX non-compliance, encouraging over-reporting out of fear of under-reporting. Some states/institutional systems are going above and beyond the mandated reporting policies that were introduced by the Obama administration: The State of Texas has law/policies that state any disclosure of sexual violence/abuse — not just campus-related — must be referred to the Title IX office, or the responsible employee can face disciplinary action, including termination. It is hard to imagine a scenario where a university’s Title IX office would need to know about the sexual abuse a student experienced as a child long before they ever attended that university. Yet again, maintaining control over survivors remains mandatory reporting’s key purpose, regardless of the violations of free speech, privacy and academic freedom.

    This is the logical conclusion when the backlash to how institutions have handled sexual violence (e.g., Baylor University) continues to primarily focus on policy that gives more power and control to the institution, rather than survivors. By abiding by our mandated reporting obligation, we are contradicting our work as sexual violence scholars, but in not following mandated reporting obligations, we are at risk for disciplinary action — which, as contingent employees, is of significant concern. With the looming threat of discipline or dismissal for not abiding by mandated reporting obligations, many instructors are opting to avoid topics of sexual violence altogether to minimize the possibility of receiving a disclosure, which disadvantages all students by not receiving this educational content and further marginalizes survivors by ignoring their experiences and denying them the opportunity for informal support and relevant class engagement.

    Mandatory reporting has clear negative impacts on education for folks at all levels of higher education, and ironically, bars survivors from fully participating in their education — something that Title IX is supposed to protect. For survivors in this position, there are few, if any, opportunities for recourse away from Title IX processes short of filing a complaint with the Department of Education, pursuing a lawsuit against the institution or suffering in silence. As such, mandatory reporting policies must be abandoned entirely; there is no evidence that they do anything but harm survivors. Without mandatory reporting, survivors could finally have the autonomy and choice to seek the support they want without sacrificing their education, their scholarship and their work. We are resistant to recommend simply reforming Title IX because we believe that reforms happening within the institution will only replicate harms and reify the legitimacy of these processes.

    Therefore, we urge the consideration of alternatives, such as transformative justice approaches to addressing sexual violence and opportunities for survivor-led organizing. Any model of support and reporting must be led by survivors for survivors, without the agenda of the university influencing the alternative model. One such alternative is a Responsible Reporting policy which empowers survivors through the ability to determine the type of support they receive, including the option of reporting to Title IX, but eliminates the requirement to report, which would provide survivors with the resources and knowledge they need to make an informed decision for themselves. The groundwork for this option has already been established through faculty receiving training on how to provide support to survivors, to assist them in reporting to Title IX if that is what they want, or refer them to resources if they do not wish to report.

    Additionally, we recognize that the harms experienced by survivors on campus are often at the intersection of identity-based oppressions, and therefore we recommend building models that address the structural factors in academia that enable sexual violence to occur including racism, ableism and transphobia, and approach reports of violence that prioritizes healing instead of processes that mimic the criminal legal system. These models must include the restoration of all autonomy for the survivor, accommodations and options for support that do not rely on punitive measures or a formal investigation, and resources for all parties.

    Finally, we must also consider the conditions that enable harm against students and particularly graduate students/workers to occur in the first place like academic hierarchies, low wages and policies against organizing. There are alternatives that can provide survivors with the support and accommodations they need while maintaining control over their narrative and healing, something that Title IX and mandatory reporting processes do not allow.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Tells Supreme Court Publicly Documented Torture Is A State Secret

    When Abu Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002, the George W. Bush administration falsely characterized him as chief of operations for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s number three man. For the next four years, the CIA sent Zubaydah to its “black sites” in Thailand and Poland where he was viciously tortured. In 2006, Zubaydah was taken to Guantánamo, where he remains to this day. He has never been charged with a crime.

    The torture of Abu Zubaydah is thoroughly documented in the 2014 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In fact, several of the justices at the October 6 Supreme Court oral argument in United States v. Zubaydah referred to his treatment as “torture.”

    Zubaydah’s lawyers detailed the torture he suffered in their brief (which referenced the Senate torture report) as follows…

    The post Biden Tells Supreme Court Publicly Documented Torture Is A State Secret appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Month After Federal Unemployment Program Ended Was Worst for Job Growth of 2021

    Above Photo: Damian Dovarganes / AP Phot ‘That’s Progress’ In the first month after the Biden administration allowed a pandemic-era unemployment benefit boost used by 8 million people to expire, the US economy recorded its slowest increase since US President Joe Biden took office in January. According to a new jobs report published by the US Department […]

    The post Month After Federal Unemployment Program Ended Was Worst for Job Growth of 2021 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Aims to Keep Trump Drug Policy That Widened Racial Disparities

    President Joe Biden puts his arm on Sen. Rob Portman outside the White House on June 24, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Sens. Portman and Joe Manchin have sponsored the FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which would classify fentanyl analogs as schedule I drugs indefinitely.

    Congress quietly used last week’s government funding bill to extend a Trump-era drug policy that is widely perceived as deepening racial disparities in criminal sentencing. Criminal justice groups say the policy will worsen mass incarceration and lead to increased numbers of overdoses — but for unclear reasons, the Biden administration is pushing to make the policy permanent.

    In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Agency under former President Trump used its emergency authority to preemptively criminalize an unknown number of substances it considered “fentanyl-related,” but without any health analysis by government agencies to determine each substance’s potential for abuse and lack of therapeutic potential. The DEA classified all these variants of fentanyl as Schedule I drugs — the same class as heroin and cocaine — even if they have no realistic potential for abuse.

    This was especially noteworthy given that fentanyl itself — a powerful synthetic opioid that is used as pain medication and is also widely available on the black market — is a Schedule II drug, meaning it has potential for abuse but also medical value. Congress has codified and extended the policy multiple times since, including a three-month extension that was quietly added to the bill to avert a government shutdown last week. The move applied decades-old mandatory minimum sentences for this newly invented class of fentanyl-related substances.

    “It’s a totally novel approach — to criminalize something before it’s even determined to be harmful,” Laura Pitter, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s US Program, said in an interview with Salon. “There’s concern that they’re going to try to apply this to other types of substances going forward as well,” she said.

    Human Rights Watch was one of more than 140 advocacy groups that called on Congress and the Biden administration to allow the policy to expire. Congress extended it anyway.

    “As we approach the 50-year milestone of President Nixon’s announcement of the War on Drugs, there is ample evidence that these unscientific policies destroy communities, entrench racial disparities, and do nothing to reduce drug supply or demand,” the coalition said in a letter to congressional leaders.

    The coalition sounded the alarm on the rise of overdoses from fentanyl analogs but says “drug interdiction does not address the root cause of these overdoses,” pointing instead to factors like economic instability, alcohol use, and mental health challenges.

    Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is described as 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, is available legally by prescription and is used in hospitals to treat severe pain. Most fentanyl and fentanyl analogs found in recreational drugs are manufactured in illegal laboratories. Some of these fentanyl analogs can be far more potent than the prescription drug, but most have not been extensively researched and in some cases are essentially “biologically inactive.” Fentanyl and its analogs are sometimes added to other street drugs, including heroin and cocaine, and users are often unaware their drugs are laced with a fentanyl-related substance. Nonetheless, prosecutors can seek mandatory 20-year sentences if a user is found with just a trace amount of a fentanyl analog in a mixture of fewer than 10 grams.

    “When there’s such a broad classification of anything that’s chemically similar, I think it really opens up this opportunity for substances that don’t have any impact on the body or brain to land as a drug that can be deeply criminalized,” said Ellen Glover, campaign director for drug policy, harm reduction and criminal justice at the grassroots network People’s Action, in an interview with Salon.

    As a result of the class-wide scheduling, fentanyl analogs now involve higher penalties than many other drugs. Pitter said there are “huge racial disparities in the way these prosecutions are carried out and the impact they have on Black and brown communities in particular.”

    Indeed, an analysis released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission earlier this year found that nearly 70% of those sentenced for fentanyl analogs in the year after the policy was enacted were Black or Latino.

    Proponents of the policy have argued that it helps law enforcement target illegal manufacturers and get ahead of black-market chemists who tweak the chemical structure of drugs to evade regulation. But data shows that only about 10% of prosecutions have targeted the most serious offenders like importers, distributors and leaders.

    “They’re not going after the factory. The largest percentage of these prosecutions are low-level, they’re not kingpins,” Pitter said. “The people who are really going to be harmed by this continued over-criminalization are going to be the people at the lowest level of the drug food chain, the ones who are the users.”

    In fact, existing laws already allowed prosecutors to charge people found in possession of fentanyl analogs and much of the fentanyl panic has been “fueled by misinformation,” according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health. This situation has made it more difficult to treat drug users while encouraging “hyper-punitive criminal laws,” the study concluded.

    “The more we criminalize substances, the more it pushes people who use drugs into the shadows, where they are less inclined to access support or care because they’re afraid of the criminalization impacts,” Glover said, pointing to the “skyrocketing overdose death rate.”

    The number of overdose deaths from synthetic opioids hit a record high in 2019 and continued to rise in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic.

    Since the class-wide scheduling of fentanyl analogs went into effect, “overdose rates have skyrocketed, so criminalization is not an effective approach to trying to curb overdose deaths,” Glover said. “We want to save lives, we want to stop them from overdosing. We know that science and evidence show us that we need to invest in public health solutions like treatment and harm reduction. There’s lots of evidence to support that.”

    Pitter said she worries that the crackdown on fentanyl and its analogs could mirror the infamous increase in mass incarceration caused by the nationwide crackdown on crack cocaine in the 1980s and ’90s.

    “It’s a continuation of the same policies and a failure to learn from the mistakes of the past,” she said.

    The DEA has lobbied Congress for years to make this policy permanent. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have sponsored the FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which would classify fentanyl analogs as schedule I drugs indefinitely while removing some mandatory minimums.

    A spokesperson for Portman told Salon that his bill addresses concerns about mandatory minimums while empowering law enforcement.

    “Sen. Portman addresses both concerns through his FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which he introduced this year — the only bipartisan proposal that would permanently schedule fentanyl analogs,” the spokesperson said, claiming that “we took into account feedback from the criminal justice reform community to ensure that mandatory minimum sentences are not automatically applied,” while also sending “a message to the makers of these deadly drugs that we are serious about addressing this problem by giving law enforcement the tools it needs to keep these substances from coming across our borders.”

    The Biden administration has similarly proposed making the class-wide scheduling permanent while removing all quantity-based mandatory minimums. This proposal would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to remove or reschedule individual fentanyl analogs that are found not to possess a high potential for abuse.

    “By acting on these recommendations, Congress can take decisive action against the fastest growing driver of overdoses in the country, while protecting civil rights and encouraging scientific research,” Regina LaBelle, the acting director of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement.

    Glover said the proposed changes have not addressed concerns raised by People’s Action “at all.”

    “The truth of the matter is that criminalization does nothing to save lives,” she said. “If the goal is to end overdose deaths, then this is not the solution.”

    Pitter said the proposal addresses “some” of the concerns raised by advocacy groups but “it’s not just mandatory minimums that are the problem, it’s prosecution. It’s still criminalizing possession and putting people through the system.”

    Pitter noted that the Biden administration’s proposal would create a complex mechanism for people who are wrongly prosecuted under the scheduling policy to have their prosecutions reversed retroactively if it is later found that the substance they possessed should not have been criminalized in the first place.

    That byzantine loophole amounts to an “acknowledgment that overcriminalization is going to happen and people are going to be prosecuted wrongly for this,” Pitter said. “Undertaking an initiative like that is incredibly time-consuming and you’ve already put somebody through the entire process of prosecution. And they’ve already lost everything. Their job, their lives.”

    Advocates have increasingly called for drug decriminalization, pointing to successes in countries like Portugal, which has seen drug overdose deaths drop by more than 80% since it decriminalized drugs like heroin in 2000.

    “Use and possession of drugs should not be criminalized to begin with,” Pitter said. “There should be a health-based approach to drug policy and it should be grounded in providing people with the treatment that they need, not arresting their way out of this crisis.

    “They should be focused on providing treatment and testing kits that allow people to test for the presence of these types of harmful substances in their drugs,” she said, adding that such “health-based approaches” were not even included in Biden’s proposed policy.

    Despite the absence of such public health strategies, were not included in the proposal but LaBelle of the National Drug Control Policy has urged Congress to fund Biden’s budget request, saying it “includes $10.7 billion to expand access to substance use prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery support services.”

    Other advocates say that’s not enough. People’s Action is instead backing the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, which would expand access to medication-assisted drug treatment, and the Support Treatment and Overdose Prevention (STOP) of Fentanyl Act, which would invest in harm reduction policies like overdose prevention and expanded access to treatment.

    “I hope and expect that Congress has learned its lesson from 50 years of failed drug policies,” Glover said, “and that we’ll follow a new path forward that supports public health solutions.”

  • Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to hold virtual meeting this year – White House

    Biden administration announces plan after meeting between US national security adviser and China’s top diplomat

    The US president, Joe Biden, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are planning to meet by video link before the end of the year, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

    There is an “agreement in principle” for the “virtual bilateral”, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Appeals Court Blocks Judge Order, Allows Deportation Of Families

    In a setback to migrant rights advocates in the United States, a federal appeal court has allowed the forcible expulsion of apprehended undocumented migrant families to continue. The ruling was passed by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Thursday, September 30. It was a last minute ruling which blocked a prior ruling by a federal judge against the expulsions before it went into effect.

    Thursday’s ruling was in response to the appeals filed by the administration of president Joe Biden against the order by district judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for DC (District of Columbia) on September 16. The district judge’s order was stayed as a case against the current immigration policy is ongoing.

    The post Appeals Court Blocks Judge Order, Allows Deportation Of Families appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Corporations Are Spending Millions to Stop Key Parts of Biden’s Spending Plan

    Demonstrators from the People's Action protest pharmaceutical companies' lobbying against allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, during a rally outside Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) headquarters in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2021.

    Right now, corporations and the ultra-rich are spending millions to derail President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Behind the scenes, they’re hard at work to keep our elected officials from helping our country recover from the pandemic.

    Poll after poll tells us that Biden’s plan is full of things people want: lower drug costs, greater access to health care, a green economy, and restorative investments in our communities. Three out of four voters support this infrastructure bill and budget, yet corporations are fighting tooth and nail to stop it. Why?

    It’s because the wealthy few, after trillions in tax cuts and giveaways during the last administration, want inequality to be a permanent part of American life. They want the gap between them and us to seem normal — along with dirty water and air, rising temperatures, and unaffordable homes, education, and health.

    People’s Action, my organization, refuses to accept this vision. We believe we can do better, together.

    As the nation’s largest grassroots member organization, with more than a million members in 32 states, we see a future with room for all, where every one of us can thrive. But none of this will happen unless we make the long-delayed investments our communities need. The Build Back Better plan is a down payment on our brighter future.

    In our new report, Behind The Curtain: The Corporate Plot to Upend Democracy, we zero in on who’s spending big to stop key parts of the Biden plan: including fairer taxes, drug pricing, health care, housing, and immigration, as well as big investments in green jobs and our environment.

    We name the bad actors and show how they undermine our democracy and our economy. All across the country, our members are taking this message to the doorsteps of corporations to tell them we’ve had enough.

    Twenty corporations and their associations — led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the National Association of Realtors — have spent over $201 million on lobbying so far this year.

    The pharmaceutical and health care industries alone — which oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to lower drug prices and expand health coverage — have spent $171 million in 2021 on lobbying, more than any other industry. They employ 1,500 lobbyists in Washington — three for every member of Congress.

    Meanwhile, people in the United States pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and health care. That ain’t right!

    A lot of attention has gone to the price tag of the Build Back Better plan: $3.5 trillion over 10 years. But that’s not deficit spending — it’s funded by reversing tax cuts for the very rich. And experts agree the package will pay for itself.

    It will spur economic activity, unlike Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which add $2.3 trillion to the national debt. As a direct result of Trump’s giveaways, 82 ultra-rich families have been able to avoid paying over $1 billion in taxes, and many large corporations pay no taxes at all.

    The Build Back Better plan will reverse Trump’s giveaways to raise money for expanded health benefits and a permanent Child Tax Credit. More savings come by allowing Medicare and the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices, which will save $450 billion and reduce prices for branded drugs by 55 percent.

    The United States is more unequal than ever. If we’re going to heal the wounds in our economy and our society, we need Congress and the president to deliver what the people want and need: assistance and investments so we can survive and thrive. That is exactly what the Biden Build Back Better plan does.

    Our economy, our democracy, and our lives all hang in the balance. Make no mistake: the time is now. It’s corporations versus the people in this Build Back Battle, and it’s time for the people to win.

    This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Legacy Of Corporate Democrats

    “The election of Donald Trump to the presidency can be directly tied to the policies implemented by Barack Obama and Joe Biden during their eight years in office. Rather than confront Wall Street and the bankers who were responsible for the global financial crash of 2007 and 2008, they bailed them out. Rather than halt the military adventurism that led to the debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, they backed and expanded the wars, including the use of military drones.”

    The post The Legacy Of Corporate Democrats appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Admin Official Held Meeting With the Leader of a Fascist Militia in India

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Ambassador to India Atul Keshap (back right), deliver remarks to civil society organization representatives in a meeting room at the Leela Palace Hotel in New Delhi, India, on July 28, 2021.

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the U.S. recently, attending the UN General Assembly session and meeting with President Biden. In spite of his government’s reign of terror against religious and ethnic minorities and dissidents in India, his U.S. hosts remained strangely silent.

    The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Modi has committed egregious human rights violations against wide swaths of the Indian population. In just the two years since getting reelected in 2019, the government has changed naturalization laws to discriminate against Muslims and charged critics of this new law with sedition.

    It has escalated the conflict in Kashmir, used pellet guns against peaceful protesters (which can cause serious eye injuries leading to blindness), and detained thousands (including children) without trial under cover of a complete news, landline phone, mobile phone, and internet shutdown that lasted seven months.

    It has ignored the epidemic of horrific sexual violence in which Dalit women and girls (belonging to the lowest Hindu castes) are often targeted by upper-caste perpetrators.

    Over the last year, the Indian farmers’ movement has made history as the largest protest movement ever. The government of India has responded by unleashing violence against the protesters, cracking down on journalists covering the protests, and targeting the Indian youth climate movement for its solidarity with the farmers.

    Far from expressing any disapproval of these horrors, Biden joined Modi in a commitment to “advance the partnership between the world’s largest democracies.” The fact that India is well on its way to full-fledged authoritarianism didn’t factor into Biden’s remarks in the least.

    The meaningless platitudes in the official statement could be mere diplomatic niceties between nation states. But there may be more sinister factors at play here.

    The Ambassador and the Brownshirt

    Until September 8, the U.S. Charge d’Affaires in India was Atul Keshap. Shortly before his return to the U.S., he met with the head of the oldest existing fascist militia in the world, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

    This meeting wasn’t remotely justifiable as a part of Keshap’s duties. The RSS is neither a part of the Indian government nor a formal political party. It’s an extremist organization with a sordid history of instigating sectarian violence, a fact acknowledged by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The violent acts attributable to members of the RSS include the assassination of Gandhi.

    Yet the ruling BJP openly admits its close ideological ties with the RSS.

    None of this could possibly be unknown to Keshap. Why then did he meet with the head of the RSS? Was it poor judgment, or evidence of his own Hindu fascist leanings? Or did it result from a cynical political calculation at high levels of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that the RSS was the de facto ruling faction in India, so the U.S. may as well start dealing with them?

    We’ll never know the answer unless there’s an investigation into Keshap’s motives. And if there’s no investigation, suspicion of approval of this ill-advised meeting by higher levels of the U.S. government will only deepen.

    Corporate Interests Over Human Rights

    India has the third highest GDP in the world (taking purchasing power into account). It’s also the world’s second most populous country, with about one-sixth of the world’s population.

    For multinational businesses, this makes India a lucrative export market and an attractive target for foreign direct investment (FDI). This isn’t hypothetical — India has the ninth highest level of FDI in the world. The U.S. is India’s second largest trading partner, and the second highest source of FDI.

    Here’s a question for Biden: By befriending the Modi government and ignoring its abuses, has your administration knowingly elevated the economic interests of U.S. corporations over the human rights of hundreds of millions of Indians?

    Islamophobia and Sinophobia

    The institutionalized Islamophobic policies of the Indian government are well-documented. Unfortunately, the U.S. is guilty of much the same.

    Domestic surveillance programs in the U.S. targeting Muslims using “terrorism” as a pretext haven’t vanished under Biden; they have remained in place under four successive administrations since the enactment of sweeping new government surveillance powers in 2001. No one should be fooled by the mere absence of the overt Islamophobic rhetoric of the Trump era.

    The convergence of security and counter-terrorism policies between the two countries is reflected in the commitment to a “shared fight against global terrorism.” This is a reaffirmation of pre-existing collaboration on “counterterrorism.”

    It should be disturbing to anyone who cares about human rights that the country that invented the “war on terror,” which has entailed bombing several Muslim majority countries and spying on Muslims at home, is cooperating on “counterterrorism” with a country under an openly Islamophobic government.

    Another arena of security cooperation between the two countries is the newly formed “Quad,” a grouping that also includes Japan and Australia. It’s evidently intended to counter China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region. This represents yet another example of the Biden administration’s ongoing saber-rattling on China.

    India has its own regional power rivalry with China, and clearly the U.S. sees value in enlisting India into its anti-China alliance.

    This isn’t to say that the common enemies identified by the U.S. and India are angels. China and the Taliban, to take another example, have their own well-documented histories of human rights violations. But rhetoric about “strengthening democratic values and institutions” from the U.S. and India ring hollow in the face of India’s slide into fascism. And the U.S. isn’t a paragon of democracy either.

    Another question for Biden : Do you seriously believe your own rhetoric from your joint statement with Modi, or are you merely making an expedient alliance with an authoritarian government for your geopolitical ends?

    The Petrostate and the Coal Republic

    There’s growing evidence that climate change can’t be tackled effectively without phasing out fossil fuel production. But the U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and India is the world’s second largest coal producer. Any joint India-U.S. statement about “galvanizing global efforts to scale up climate action” have to be seen in this light.

    While the Biden administration doesn’t engage in Trump’s crude denialism, it has continued offshore oil and gas leasing and refused to block harmful fossil fuel projects such as the Line 3 oil pipeline. The construction of Line 3 has faced determined resistance from Indigenous peoples defending their land, water, and culture. Governments from the local to the federal have responded with a violent crackdown.

    The Modi government in India has waged its own repression against Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples resisting extractivism.

    It has auctioned land for expanded coal mining, disproportionately in majority Adivasi areas. It has promoted increased coal production as “self-reliance,” which I have noted elsewhere is “a possible prelude to characterizing opposition from the Adivasis and other impacted communities as acts of sedition.” That’s because Modi’s government has already (repeatedly) labeled dissidents and critical journalists as seditious.

    Another question for Biden: Do the “shared values and principles” cited in your joint statement with Modi include digging up fossil fuels while paying lip service to climate action, and unleashing repression against Indigenous peoples who get in the way?

    A Fundamental Continuity

    In several areas, including relations with India, the difference between Trump and Biden is more stylistic than substantive. Unlike Trump, Biden doesn’t join Modi at Nuremberg-style rallies in Houston and Ahmedabad. But U.S. complicity in India’s human rights abuses continues, without Trump’s bluster.

    For those in the U.S., there’s not much we can do directly to confront the RSS and its political front in India. But the least we can do is hold the U.S. government’s feet to the fire for aligning with one of the most dangerous authoritarian regimes in the world.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • IEN On Bipartisan Infrastructure Package And Build Back Better Act

    Let us be frank. As communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and fossil fuel extraction, our situation is dire. While we experience unparalleled disaster in the form of floods, fires, droughts, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples and state-sanctioned violence against Indigenous and Black communities, the crisis at the so-called border, and other results of climate chaos, we know U.S. elected leadership is in the position to redirect course on behalf of Mother Earth and future generations. The truth is, Congress promised our communities they would work to solve the climate crisis and environmental justice once we elected them into office, but instead, we see them fighting to fund fossil fuels and false promises masquerading as climate solutions to the tune of billions of dollars.

    The post IEN On Bipartisan Infrastructure Package And Build Back Better Act appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Top Cuban Diplomat Speaks To The Grayzone About Renewed US Assault

    Anya Parampil: Director General Carlos de Cossio, thank you so much for speaking with me this afternoon. President Miguel Díaz-Canel just gave an address before the UN General Assembly, in which he denounced what he described as US attempts to reinstate a Monroe Doctrine policy. This was a policy explicitly articulated by Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, when he famously declared the Monroe Doctrine is back. Yet is Biden actually continuing this policy?

    Carlos De Cossio: The Biden administration has not said a word that we know about it. But in practical terms, what we see of the Biden government is a continuation of the Trump policy towards Cuba specifically, and to Latin America and the Caribbean in general, we don’t see a major change, even though the rhetoric is not the same.

    The post Top Cuban Diplomat Speaks To The Grayzone About Renewed US Assault appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.