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saberal

How the 'good war' went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning | Australian military | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...lia-uk-and-us-face-a-reckoning

US politics

shared by saberal on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • As the post-9/11 Afghanistan conflict dragged deep into its second decade, with persistent rumours alleging impropriety, brutality, and even possible war crimes swirling among Australia’s tight-knit defence community, Dr Samantha Crompvoets, a civilian sociologist, was commissioned to investigate alleged cultural failings within its special forces.
  • Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Canberra Times over a series of 2018 articles he claims defamed him because they portrayed him as committing war crimes while on deployment in Afghanistan. He strenuously denies all allegations and has previously rejected them as malicious and deeply troubling.
  • US soldiers were convicted over the deaths of two unarmed Afghan civilians on Bagram airbase in 2002. Two soldiers from a self-declared “kill team” pleaded guilty to murder while deployed, while Staff Sergeant Robert Bales pleaded guilty to the murder of 16 Afghan civilians during a shooting spree in Kandahar province in 2012. Members of the storied Seal Team 6 have been accused of war crimes, including beheading and mutilating slain enemies.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • These were soldiers from the militaries of liberal democracies, avowedly promoting the rule of law and seeking to bring peace and stability to a country that has known little but conflict for generations. Yet some have been accused of the most serious crimes imaginable, of targeting civilians, of torturing captives, of slaughtering children.
  • In her 45-page report sent to Australian defence force chiefs, Crompvoets wrote of the “well-crafted reports” of special forces operations that offered legal justification for the actions of soldiers.
  • During Major Chris Green’s deployment with the UK’s Grenadier Guards in Helmand province in 2012, he became increasingly concerned that special forces tactics were undermining the coalition’s broader counterinsurgency mission.
  • “People knew laws were being broken, people understood the modus operandi of the night raids. But every time an operator reported back from these raids and didn’t find themselves in front of a tribunal that just further convinced them they were doing the right thing, that the laws didn’t apply to them.”
  • “War is dynamic and imperfect and the freedom and autonomy in special forces is a double-edged sword,” one SAS member told Crompvoets.
  • Frank Ledwidge, a barrister and former military officer who served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that over the course of the Afghan war, a culture developed among coalition special forces that celebrated violence, prioritised kill statistics and dehumanised those they fought.
  • The JPEL was a list of “kill or capture” objectives – targets that were considered combatants and could be lawfully killed. It was a dynamic document, with names being added or subtracted as intelligence came in. Allegedly this dynamism was exploited.
  • Australia’s initial involvement, between 2001 and 2002, was focused on combating al-Qaida: “We weren’t trying to seize and hold ground. It was a mission entirely appropriate for our special forces.”
  • “The multiple rotations of people into Afghanistan particularly, some operators went there 12 times. That must affect their mental health ... or impact the way they went about their operations. Certainly it would impact upon the judgment questions about why they are there.
  • Saul argues there are drivers, too, of non-compliance with international humanitarian law. Moral disengagement emerges from combatants finding justifications for violations, and from a dehumanisation of the enemy.
  • When Sergeant Alexander Blackman of the Royal Marines shot a wounded, unarmed insurgent at point-blank range in the chest in Helmand in September 2011, he turned to his comrades and said: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere, fellas. I’ve just broke the Geneva convention.”
  • “If there’s no structural change that challenges those power dynamics within special forces, there won’t be enduring changes.”
anonymous

Cincinnati school district to settle lawsuit filed by parents of bullied boy who hanged himself - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Cincinnati Public Schools is on the verge of settling a wrongful death lawsuit with the parents of Gabriel Taye, attorneys for both parties said in a joint press release Friday.
  • Gabriel was 8 years old in 2017 when he hanged himself with a necktie in his Cincinnati home. His family subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the district, the school's principal and assistant principal, and a school nurse, alleging that the school did not adequately respond to the boy being bullied, and did not inform them of a bullying incident that took place two days before Taye's death.
  • The proposed settlement announced Friday includes paying $3 million to Gabriel's family and a commitment on behalf of the district to a slew of anti-bullying measures, though the district admits no guilt.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • CPS also agreed to two years of ongoing oversight of the anti-bullying program.
  • In January, a three-judge panel from the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected CPS' motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
  • The boy's parent's provided "multiple examples of specific instances" in which school officials "withheld information regarding Taye's safety and wellbeing" and failed to punish the students that attacked Taye,
  • "This Court finds their behavior, as alleged, to be egregious and clearly reckless, thus barring them from the shield of government immunity," Bouie Donald wrote.
  • At the center of the suit was security footage from two days before Taye's death, in which the boy is seen falling unconscious at school.
  • The lawsuit alleged that the school knowingly withheld the bathroom incident from the boy's parents.School officials maintained that a school nurse called his mother to pick Gabriel up from school and take him to the hospital.
  • If agreed to, the settlement will require the district to improve its efforts to track individuals involved in repeat incidents of bullying, as well as locations in the school where repeat instances of bullying take place.
  • The proposed settlement also calls for "placing an appropriate memorial" to Gabriel at Carson Elementary School.The Cincinnati Board of Education is expected to hold a vote Monday night that, if it passes, will finalize the proposed settlement.
anonymous

Cuomo Says He Will Not Resign Despite Calls From Schumer And Other Top N.Y. Democrats : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...m-prominent-new-york-democrats

shared by anonymous on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday afternoon that he would not resign, despite mounting pressure from prominent New York U.S. representatives calling for him to step down.
  • His announcement followed a cascade of statements Friday morning from Democratic members of the state's congressional delegation asking for his resignation in the face of multiple sexual misconduct allegations and an ongoing investigation into the state's reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
  • Just hours earlier, at least a dozen of the state's prominent House Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, said the challenges the governor faces make him unable to lead effectively.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Nadler, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Cuomo had "lost the confidence of the people of New York." "The repeated accusations against the Governor, and the manner in which he has responded to them, have made it impossible for him to govern at this point," he said.
  • Nadler's statement and others came after more accusers stepped forward, including an unidentified female aide who said Cuomo groped her at the governor's mansion last year.
  • Another woman, Jessica Bakeman, alleged in a New York Magazine essay published Friday that the governor touched her inappropriately while she was working as a statehouse reporter several years ago.
  • Bakeman, who now works at an NPR member station in Florida, recounted a time when Cuomo "humiliated" her at a holiday party he hosted for the Albany press corps in 2014
  • U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman also called for the governor to resign in a joint statement Friday.
  • U.S. Reps. Grace Meng, Yvette Clarke, Antonio Delgado, Nydia Velázquez, Brian Higgins, Mondaire Jones, Carolyn Maloney, Sean Patrick Maloney and Adriano Espaillat are also calling for Cuomo to step down.
  • In pointed remarks Friday afternoon, Cuomo seemed to respond to these calls by criticizing "politicians" for weighing in "without knowing any facts or substance."
  • The speaker of the New York Assembly on Thursday authorized the Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation into the misconduct allegations against the governor.Cuomo added that he would not give in to "cancel culture" and that he wants the ongoing inquiries into his behavior to proceed.
edencottone

Biden says Cuomo should resign if investigation confirms sexual harassment allegations - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics us

shared by edencottone on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Tuesday that Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should resign if an investigation confirms the allegations of sexual harassment against him.
  • he'll probably end up being prosecuted, too," Biden said.
  • "Takes a lot of courage to come forward," he said. "So, the presumption is they should be taken seriously. And it should be investigated. And that's what's underway now."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The White House's posture is a notable break from the calls for resignation from the majority of the New York congressional delegation, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
  • Democratic leaders in the state Legislature are content to wait for a pair of investigations, one tasked by state Attorney General Letitia James and the other about to be empaneled by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, to run their course before formally beginning the impeachment process.
  • The investigation into the sexual harassment allegations is being led by attorneys Joon Kim, a former prosecutor with the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Anne Clark, an employment discrimination attorney.
Javier E

Jan. 6 Was 9 Weeks - And 4 Years - in the Making - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...d-4-years-in-the-making-455797

gop far right insurrection 2020 radicalization

shared by Javier E on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • the evening of November 5, the president of the United States addressed the American people from the White House and disgorged a breathtaking litany of lies about the 2020 election. He concluded that the presidency was being stolen from him, warning his supporters, “They’re trying to rig an election and we can’t let that happen.” Feeling a pit in my stomach, I tweeted, “November 5, 2020. A dark day in American history.”
  • From scrolling my social media feed and listening to the cable news punditry buzzing in the background, it seemed my fear was a minority sentiment. If anything, much of the commentary that night was flippant, sardonic, sometimes lighthearted, with many smart people alternately making fun of Trump’s speech and brushing it aside
  • I tweeted again: “I mean, if you spend all your time around people who won't believe a word of what Trump just said, good for you. But that’s not the real world. 70 million people just voted for a man who insists that our elections are rigged. Many of those people will believe him. It’s harrowing.”
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  • Nobody knew exactly how that belief would manifest itself; I certainly never expected to see platoons of insurrectionists scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and sacking the place in broad daylight. Still, shocking as this was, it wasn’t a bit surprising. The attempted coup d'état had been unfolding in slow motion over the previous nine weeks. Anyone who couldn’t see this coming chose not to see it coming. And that goes for much of the Republican Party.
  • there’s one conclusion of which I’m certain: The “fringe” of our politics no longer exists. Between the democratization of information and the diminished confidence in establishment politicians and institutions ranging from the media to corporate America, particularly on the right, there is no longer any buffer between mainstream thought and the extreme elements of our politics.
  • The president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, urged him to invoke martial law. The Texas Republican Party suggested seceding from the union. The Arizona Republican Party endorsed martyrdom. Eric Metaxas, the pseudo-evangelical leader with a devoted following on the right, followed suit. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told the president during a radio interview. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”
  • All of that was before the president alleged the greatest conspiracy in American history.
  • More than a few told me I was being “hysterical,” at which point things got heated, as I would plead with them to consider the consequences if even a fractional number of the president’s most fervent supporters took his allegations, and his calls to action, at face value. When I submitted that violence was a real possibility, they would snicker. Riots? Looting? That’s what Democrats do!
  • So convinced were the president’s allies that his rhetoric was harmless that many not only rationalized it, but actually dialed it up. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who once skewered Trump’s dishonesty, promised “earth-shattering” evidence to support his former rival’s claims of a rigged election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that “President Trump won this election,” told of a plot to cheat him and alerted the viewers watching him on Fox News, “We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who famously called Trump “a pathological liar,” himself lied so frequently and so shamelessly it became difficult to keep up. Dozens of other congressional Republicans leveled sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of mass voter fraud, some of them promoting the #stopthesteal campaign online.
  • Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich floated the arrest of election workers. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host, urged Republican-controlled legislatures to ignore the results of their state elections and send pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College. Right-wing propaganda outlets like The Federalist and One America News churned out deceptive content framing the election as inherently and obviously corrupt. The RNC hosted disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell for a sanctioned news conference that bordered on clinically insane, parts of which were tweeted by the @GOP account. The president’s lawyers and surrogates screamed about hacked voting machines and international treachery and Biden-logoed vans full of ballots. One conservative group paid a former police captain a quarter-million dollars to investigate voter fraud; he performed an armed hijacking of an air-conditioning repair truck, only to discover there were no fake ballots inside.
  • As the Electoral College meeting drew closer, hundreds of Republican members of Congress signed on to a publicity-stunt lawsuit aimed at invalidating tens of millions of votes for Biden. When it failed, the legislatures in several states closed public proceedings in response to actionable threats
  • The first time I heard someone casually suggest an “imminent civil war,” on a reporting trip in January 2020, I shrugged it off. But then I heard it again. And again. Before long, it was perfectly routine. Everywhere I went, I heard people talk about stocking up on artillery. I heard people talk about hunting down cabals of politically connected pedophiles. I heard people talk about the irreconcilable differences that now divide this country. I heard people talk about the president, their president, being sabotaged by a “deep state” of evil Beltway bureaucrats who want to end their way of life. I heard people talk about a time approaching when they would need to take matters into their own hands.
  • Despite all of these arrows pointing toward disaster — and despite Trump encouraging his followers to descend on Washington come January 6, to agitate against certification of Biden’s victory — not a single Republican I’d spoken with in recent weeks sounded anxious
  • the point remains: They were conned into coming to D.C. in the first place, not just by Trump with his compulsive lying, but by the legions of Republicans who refused to counter those lies, believing it couldn’t hurt to humor the president and stoke the fires of his base.
  • it has long been canon on the right that leftists — and only leftists — cause mayhem and destruction. Democrats are the party of charred cities and Defund the Police; Republicans are the party of law and order and Back the Blue. As Republicans have reminded us a million times, the Tea Party never held a rally without picking up its trash and leaving the area cleaner than they found it.
  • And yet, the right has changed dramatically over the past decade. It has radicalized from the ground up, in substance and in style. It has grown noticeably militant.
  • Trump once told me, “The Tea Party still exists — except now it’s called Make America Great Again.” But that’s not quite accurate. The core of the Tea Party was senior citizens in lawn chairs waving miniature flags and handing out literature; the only people in costumes wore ruffled shirts and tri-corner hats. The core of the MAGA movement is edgier, more aggressive and less friendly; its adherents would rather cosplay the Sons of Anarchy than the Sons of Liberty.
  • There is one thing that connects these movements: Both were born out of deception
  • Republican leaders convinced the grassroots of 2009 and 2010 that they could freeze government spending and reform entitlement programs and repeal Obamacare
  • Trump convinced the grassroots of 2015 and 2016 that he, too, could repeal Obamacare, while also making Mexico pay for a border wall and overhauling the nation’s infrastructure
  • The key difference is that the Tea Party slowly faded into obscurity as voters realized these promises politicians made were a scam, whereas the MAGA movement has only grown more intensely committed with each new con dangled in front of them.
  • Make no mistake: Plenty of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol complex on Wednesday really, truly believed that Trump had been cheated out of four more years; that Vice President Mike Pence had unilateral power to revise the election results; that their takeover of the building could change the course of history
  • The notion of real troublemaking simply didn’t compute. Many of these Republicans have kept so blissfully ensconced in the MAGA embrace that they’ve chosen not to see its ugly side.
  • For the past nine weeks, I’ve had a lot of highly unusual conversations with administration officials, Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures.
  • Based on my reporting, it seemed obvious the president was leading the country down a dangerous and uncharted road. I hoped they could see that. I hoped they would do something — anything.
  • From party headquarters, the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman flung reckless insinuations left and right as her top staffers peddled a catalogue of factually inaccurate claims. The two Republican senators from Georgia, desperate to keep in Trump’s good graces ahead of their runoff elections, demanded the resignation of the Republican secretary of state for no reason other than the president’s broad assertions of corruption, none of which stood up to multiple recounts and investigations by GOP officials statewide
  • Local lawmakers in states like Michigan and Wisconsin told Republicans they’d been cheated, citing the suspicious late-night counting of mail ballots, when they were the ones who had refused to allow those ballots to be counted earlier,
leilamulveny

Election Voting Issues: What We're Watching - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-voting-challenges-11603030074

voting election issues politics us

shared by leilamulveny on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Voters face challenges including changing deadlines for mail-in ballots and concerns about long lines, demonstrations and potential intimidation at polling places.
  • Disabled voters will have limited access after the Supreme Court reinstated a ban on curbside voting, blocking a lower-court order that allowed county officials to use the accommodation.
  • A Superior Court judge ordered polls to remain open an additional two hours, until 9 p.m., in Spalding County after technical difficulties prevented people from voting in the county. Voters who vote in the extended time frame will cast provisional ballots.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • reports of robocalls spreading misinformation in the city of Flint that told voters that “due to long lines, they should vote tomorrow.” Attorney General Dana Nessel said that was false and called it an effort to suppress the vote.
  • An extension for receiving ballots in the mail by Nov. 10, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, faces legal uncertainty after a federal appeals court ruling last week that the extended deadline is likely unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to segregate late-arriving ballots for possible disqualification.
  • Civil-rights groups said they filed a lawsuit in federal court late Monday against the Alamance County sheriff and chief of police in Graham, N.C., alleging the police disrupted a Saturday march to an early-voting location and intimidated and discouraged march participants from voting. The Graham Police Department said the demonstration blocked traffic and was deemed unsafe and unlawful. The department said it arrested eight people.
  • A Republican-backed lawsuit asked a federal judge to throw out at least 1,200 ballots in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, alleging local officials handled mail-in ballots illegally. The suit alleged the county Board of Elections was illegally sorting through and identifying potential problems with mail-in ballots received before Nov. 3. A county spokesperson said: “We believe our process is sound and permissible under the Election Code.”
  • The Supreme Court earlier let stand a ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court that extended the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots by three days. The ruling also allows ballots with illegible postmarks to be counted if received by the deadline. The state’s top election official, a Democrat, extended the deadline to compensate for more voters turning to mail ballots. Republican plaintiffs asked the high court to reconsider the matter. In anticipation of possible postelection legal challenges, local election officials have been directed to separate ballots received after the original Election Day deadline.
  • The judge noted that state law requires voting on Election Day to take place inside buildings. To ensure compliance, the clerk for Harris said on Twitter that the county would operate one drive-through center on Election Day, at the Toyota Center, a large indoor arena.
  • The Supreme Court declined to allow pandemic-related changes to voting rules in Wisconsin, letting stand a federal appeals court’s ruling that mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day.
andrespardo

Republicans sense rich pickings in Biden archive - but will it be made public? | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-archive-democrats-republicans

biden 2020 election

shared by andrespardo on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • The Biden senatorial papers comprise 1,875 boxes of “photographs, documents, videotapes and files” and 415 gigabytes of electronic records at the University of Delaware in his home state. They recently came to public attention when Biden was accused by Tara Reade, a former staffer, of sexually assaulting her in a Capitol Hill basement in 1993.
  • “The fact is that there’s a lot of things, of speeches I’ve made, positions I’ve taken, interviews that I did overseas with people, all of those things relating to my job, and the idea that they would all be made public in the fact while I was running for public office, they could be really taken out of context,” he told interviewer Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.
  • “They’re papers or position papers, they are documents that existed and that – for example, when I met with [Vladimir] Putin or when I met with whomever, and all of that could be fodder in a campaign at this time.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Last week the Republican National Committee launched a digital advertising campaign, raising questions about whether the university is keeping documents under seal related to the Reade allegation. One of the ads alleges: “University of Delaware is complicit in sexual assault cover-up.”
  • Biden’s defenders argue he is merely following precedent: past senators who ran for president have not been required to disclose all their papers. But Fitton contended: “It’s not that they’re being required; the question is whether the records are available under law. If he had them at his house, maybe there’s an argument, but they’re not at his house. They’re at a university and subject to Foia [Freedom of Information Act].”
  • “curating the collection”, a process likely to continue well into 2021, and the papers will not be released until two years after Biden retires from public life.
  • Furthermore, critics on the progressive wing of the Democratic party would be eager to scrutinize Biden’s links to the financial services industry, a big player in Delaware. Conservatives might hunt for documents linking Biden’s son, Hunter, to overseas business interests. In a replay of the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, Donald Trump may welcome a chance to make mischief by demanding “transparency”.
  • There are practical objections, Sabato added, but Republicans will seek to turn those to their advantage. “First of all, you couldn’t publish it all or even open it all. He had an incredibly long career, a 50-year political career, and there are some personal items in there as well, from what I understand. How could you even manage to make it available to researchers, much less the general public, just a few months ahead of an election? It’s not going to happen.
  • “His papers from the Senate were at the University of Tennessee and his opponents kept quacking about the fact that we had locked them up, literally, because we didn’t want to go through every morning having some 12-year-old take five words out of a 300-word essay and have to defend it all day.
  • “So we just said to hell with you, if that’s what the fight is going to be about, then the fight will be about not getting access to the papers as opposed to what’s in the papers. And it’s a little hard to make the case that Biden won’t give up the papers at the University of Delaware while Trump has been in federal court for 27 years to protect his financial records.”
carolinehayter

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren Pleads Not Guilty To Campaign Finance Charges : Live Updates: Protests For Racial Justice : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-face-campaign-finance-charges

politics US protests charges campaign fraud blm

shared by carolinehayter on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • The mayor of Rochester, N.Y., Lovely Warren entered a not guilty plea Monday afternoon to campaign finance fraud charges. If convicted, she could be removed from office and be disbarred.
  • The court appearance comes three days after the second-term mayor and two political associates were indicted on charges they knowingly committed finance violations stemming from the 2017 reelection campaign.
  • Separately, Warren is facing mounting criticism for her administration's handling of the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died of asphyxiation in March following an encounter with Rochester police.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Albert Jones Jr., Warren's campaign treasurer, and Rosalind Brooks-Harris, who was the treasurer of a political action committee for Warren and now serves as Rochester's finance director, also entered not guilty pleas.
  • a grand jury handed up indictments, which include a first-degree charge of scheme to defraud and campaign finance violations "for the purpose of evading the contribution limits set by law."
  • "I don't believe this affects her ability to serve as the mayor,
  • While Warren has resisted calls thus far to resign, the charges will surely be damaging to her reelection prospects. She plans to seek another term when the current one expires at the end of next year
  • Prosecutors would not disclose the specific amount of the alleged violation, but they suggested it could be several hundred thousand dollars.
  • Mayoral business needs to continue. I don't want to disrupt that and I want us to continue in our community," she added.
  • The mayor has not commented publicly since the indictment was announced. However, an attorney for Warren told WXXI that she is innocent of the charges.
  • "She did not knowingly violate the law and she's anxious to get this process started and she's ready to go to trial."
  • Both charges are nonviolent Class E felonies, which if convicted, carry a range of sentences from no jail time to four years in prison, according to Rochester-based NPR member station WXXI. Warren could also lose her law license if found guilty. According to state law, a felony conviction would also be grounds for removal from office.
  • Warren's office has previously said she was not informed of the full details of Prude's death until August, roughly five months after he died following an encounter with police. Critics have called that timeline into question.
  • Prude had suffered from mental health issues, when was fatally restrained by police in Rochester. Prude's brother called 911 to report Prude was missing and suffering from a mental health crisis. When police encountered Prude, he was naked and there are reports that he said he had the coronavirus. Police handcuffed Prude and placed a mesh covering over his head, known as a "spit hood," to prevent him from spitting and biting.
  • Officers then held his head to the ground.
  • Last month, Warren fired then-police chief La'Ron Singletary, two weeks before he planned to step down from the post. Warren has also requested federal investigations and citywide reforms since Prude's death became widely known following the release of police footage last month. The footage sparked protests and accusations of a police cover-up.
peterconnelly

Salvadoran authorities are committing 'massive' human rights violations, with nearly 2% of the country detained, Amnesty alleges - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

human rights cnn authorities

shared by peterconnelly on 03 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Salvadoran authorities have committed "massive" human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, torture, and ill-treatment, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
  • The report, released Thursday, found that since late March, nearly 2% of the country has been detained, with at least 18 people having died in state custody.
  • More than 36,000 people have been detained since
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Hopefully, just as they care because we have captured criminals, they would care about our children, about our elderly, about our working people, about the innocent Salvadorans who have suffered at the hands of those same criminals," he said during a speech before the Legislative Assembly.
  • In one instance, a 16-year-old, who was arrested in April and held for 13 days for being an alleged member of an illegal group, was chained to a wall of the detention center, where he said he was beaten by police. Later, he was transferred to youth detention center, where he was beaten by gang members, who he said also threw a bag of urine at his head, it said.
  • Many of the detainees are being held without due process "purely because the authorities view them as having been identified as criminals in the stigmatizing speeches of President Bukele's government, because they have tattoos, are accused by a third party of having alleged links to a gang, are related to someone who belongs to a gang, have a previous criminal record of some kind, or simply because they live in an area under gang control, which are precisely the areas with high levels of marginalization and that have historically been abandoned by the state," according to Amnesty.
  • Bukele, the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator," took office in June 2019 with broad support, after promising to stand tough against gang violence
johnsonma23

Senate OKs bill to let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

senate saudi arabia US

shared by johnsonma23 on 18 May 16 - No Cached
  • Senate OKs bill to let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia
  • Senate approved a bill Tuesday to allow victims and families of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the terrorist strikes.
  • But in the end, the bill's authors -- John Cornyn of Texas, the second ranking Senate Republican, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Senate Democrat -- were able to pass the bill on a voice vote, a rare feat in the divided chamber, especially for a controversial issue.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Saudi Arabia has long denied any role in the 9/11 attacks, but victims' families have repeatedly sought to bring the matter to court, only to be rebuffed after the country has invoked legal immunity allowed under current law.
  • Formally known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, the bill would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries alleged to have terrorist ties from invoking their sovereign immunity in federal court.
  • The White House and State Department say the bill could have dramatic ramifications for the United States and citizens living abroad to retaliatory lawsuits.
  • "They're not going to suffer a huge financial loss just to make a point," said Cornyn who also predicted the legislation would not be "disruptive of the relationship we have with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
  • "We feel that the bill is in very good position to move through the House," she said. "We are very excited finally to get it to the House."
rachelramirez

Jeff Sessions Wanted to 'Drop the Case' Against KKK Lynching, Attorney Testified - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...nching-attorney-testified.html

sessions trump politics US history

shared by rachelramirez on 09 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Jeff Sessions Wanted to ‘Drop the Case’ Against KKK Lynching, Attorney Testified
  • they’re sure to include questions that were raised when he was nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986. His confirmation was derailed largely by the testimony of Thomas Figures, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alabama when Sessions was U.S. attorney.
  • Sessions and his supporters, then as now, defend his civil rights record based on several cases to which Figures was also assigned, including the conviction of Henry Hays for the 1981 murder by lynching of a Donald Figures.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Sessions had once told him that “he believed the NAACP, the SCLC, Operation PUSH, and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”
  • He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in Alabama’s infamous Yellow Mama electric chair in 1997, the first white man executed for killing a black man in Alabama since 1913, which Sessions noted in his attorney general questionnaire.
  • Judge Braxton Kittrell presided but did not comment on Sessions’s role in the prosecution when he testified before the Senate in 1986.
  • The FBI investigated at the request of the district attorney but turned up no suspects. Encouraged by his brother, the attorney for Donald’s mother, Figures pushed for a second FBI investigation, and eventually a grand jury which returned indictments against Knowles and Hays, who were arrested in June 1983.
  • During the Donald case, Sessions allegedly told Figures and others he liked the Klan until he found out they smoked marijuana.
  • Session replied “something to the effect of, ‘I didn’t know that Klansmen used marijuana now,” Kowalski said, and that “he used to have respect for that organization but now he no longer does, knowing they use drugs.”
  • Sessions was denied confirmation thanks to the allegations of racism and abuse of power, making him the first Reagan appointee not approved by the Senate, and only the second nominee to the district court bench rejected in 49 years.
  • In 1992 a federal grand jury charged Figures for allegedly bribing a drug dealer not to testify against his client, a prosecution many viewed as retaliatory.
  • Senators on the Judiciary Committee will have only Figures’s 1986 testimony to go on when hearings begin next week. He died in January 2015, then serving as a municipal judge in Mobile.
maxwellokolo

Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here? - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-38589427

shared by maxwellokolo on 12 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • maxwellokolo on 12 Jan 17
     
    Donald Trump has described as "fake news" allegations published in some media that his election team colluded with Russia - and that Russia held compromising material about his private life. The BBC's Paul Wood saw the allegations before the election, and reports on the fallout now they have come to light.
Javier E

Donald Trump: Kremlin Employee of the Month? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lin-employee-of-the-month.html

trump russia

shared by Javier E on 15 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • let’s put aside sexual blackmail and focus on what is undisputed: Trump praises Putin, criticizes NATO and downplays Russian war crimes and its attempts to steal our election.
  • In contrast, Trump compares the American intelligence community to Nazis, suggesting it was behind the leaking of the dossier. It’s astonishing to see a president-elect in effect hug the Russians while giving his own team the finger, creating a chasm between the White House and the intelligence community.
  • “It’s extraordinarily serious,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel to the C.I.A. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • It’s also indisputable that Trump has appointed people soft on Russia. Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the new national security adviser, took money in 2015 from RT, the Russian propaganda front, and sat next to Putin at an RT dinner. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state nominee, is one of the American executives friendliest to Putin.
  • For months, there have been indications of bizarre ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, including the Russian government’s assertion in November that it maintained contacts with Trump’s “immediate entourage.” The F.B.I. investigated Trump’s Russia ties over the summer and fall, and reportedly sought approval to monitor his aides suspected of improper contacts with Russian officials.
  • The Trump view is so far from the foreign policy mainstream that inevitably there will be darker theories offered for the softness toward Russia. These involve financial ties with Moscow, since Trump refuses to release his tax statements, or the kind of sordid blackmail alleged in the dossier.
  • Such rumors may well be wrong and unfair — but they persist. They damage Trump, the intelligence community and the United States itself, and the best disinfectant will be transparency. That means congressional inquiries, led by Republicans, and a continued F.B.I. investigation.
  • We can’t afford even the perception that our president is the Kremlin’s man in Washington.
bodycot

Obama on Trump: 'Don't underestimate the guy, because he's going to be 45th president of the United States' - 0 views

www.yahoo.com/...e-united-states-000228788.html

shared by bodycot on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      Obama on the end of his presidency.
  • Thousands of people showed up in freezing temperatures on Sunday in Michigan to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders denounce Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, one of dozens of rallies Democrats staged across the country to highlight opposition.
  • "I'm going to get really sick and my life will be at risk," said Bible, an online antique dealer.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • "This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. It is time we got our national priorities right," Sanders told the Michigan rally.
  • Britt Waligorski, 31, a health care administrator for a dental practice, said she didn't get health insurance through work but has been covered through the health law for three years. While the premiums have gone up, she said she is concerned that services for women will be taken away if it is repealed.
  • About 2,000 people cheered and held rainbow and American flags and signs that read "Don't Make America Sick Again" and "Health Care For All" at the rally.
  • Republicans want to end the fines that enforce the requirement that many individuals buy coverage and that larger companies provide it to workers.
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      Pro-ACA rally.
  • With eager anticipation, the Kremlin is counting the days to Donald Trump's inauguration and venting its anger at Barack Obama's outgoing administration, no holds barred.
  • At the same time, Russian officials are blasting the outgoing U.S. administration in distinctly undiplomatic language, dropping all decorum after Obama hit Moscow with more sanctions in his final weeks in office.
  • On Sunday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence insisted the Trump presidential campaign had no contacts with Russia and denied that the incoming national security adviser spoke with Russian officials in December about sanctions. He added that such questions were part of an effort to cast doubt on Trump's victory.
  • In an interview Friday with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said he might do away with Obama's sanctions if Russia works with the U.S. on battling terrorists and achieving other goals.
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      Kremlin
  • "We and many analysts believe that the (agreement) is consolidated. The new U.S. administration will not be able to abandon it," Araqchi told a news conference in Tehran, held a year after the deal took effect.
  • Trump, who will take office on Friday, has threatened to either scrap the agreement, which curbs Iran's nuclear programme and lifts sanctions against it, or seek a better deal.
  • "It's quite likely that the U.S. Congress or the next administration will act against Iran and imposes new sanctions."
  • But Iran is still subject to an U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions, which are not technically part of the nuclear agreement.
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      Iran Nuclear Deal.
  • The event was marked by tense exchanges as Trump repeated his refusal to release his tax returns and denounced media outlets that published stories based on unverified allegations about his ties to the Kremlin
  • Trump began his remarks on Tuesday by blaming “inaccurate news” for his decision not to take questions from the press more often.
  • Trump went on to address a pair of reports published Tuesday night that touched on unverified accusations about his relationship with Russia. The first report, which came from CNN, said intelligence officials had presented information to Trump alleging that the Russian government had an ongoing relationship with members of his campaign — and, more sensationally, possessed compromising information about him that could be used for blackmail.
  • “I want to thank a lot of the news organizations … some of whom have not treated me very well over the years. …
  • “It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen, and it was gotten by opponents of ours, as you know, because you reported it and so did many of the other people.
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      Trump press conference.
  • “No, no, no,” Jones said with a sly grin that barely disguised his evident hostility. Sitting back in his barber chair, he shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “That’s not why you are here. You’re here because of the billboards, because of the KKK. That’s why you are here.”
  • When the controversial billboards were ripped down and defaced, they were replaced almost immediately.
  • “While Trump wants to make America great again, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What made America great in the first place?
  • The Trump campaign quickly disavowed the endorsement
    • bodycot
      bodycot on 16 Jan 17
       
      KKK
abbykleman

Tensions Within GOP Rise Over How to Handle Russia - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ow-to-handle-russia-1483403833

shared by abbykleman on 03 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 03 Jan 17
     
    News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services. Lawmakers set to consider a Donald Trump cabinet pick and press ahead on review of alleged hacking WASHINGTON-Tensions within the Republican Party over how to handle Russia are becoming increasingly public as the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings on President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state and presses ahead with a review of alleged Russian cyberattacks during the 2016 election.
Javier E

Reporter who says she was manhandled by Trump campaign manager resigns from Breitbart - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...manager-resigns-from-breitbart

demagogue conservatism press

shared by Javier E on 14 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Fields filed a report with the Jupiter, Fla. police department Friday, according to the Associated Press. That same day, she did an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly explaining her decision. She said that she’d contacted her editor [Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle] and told him what happened, and that Boyle contacted Lewandowski, who allegedly admitted to grabbing Fields.
  • “He did not deny it,” Fields said. “He said that he didn’t realize that I was a Breitbart reporter.
  • Fields said she was told she would receive an apology, but one never came. Instead, on Thursday campaign released a statement denying her allegations. “They have basically done a character assassination on me,” she told Kelly.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In denying Fields’ allegations, Trump and Lewandowski have suggested that Fields was lying about the assault. “Perhaps she made the story up, I think that’s what happened,” Trump told reporters at the CNN debate Thursday.
  • “Are you saying they’re lying?” anchor Don Lemon interjected. “Yes. I am,” was Bardella’s response.
  • “They’ve been looking for a reason to disprove something when all the evidence from a Washington Post reporter’s firsthand account, to the bruises on Michelle’s arm, to all the photos and video clips that we’ve seen strongly suggest that Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, was the one who did this. And there’s no reason to never support your own reporter.”
  • “The central mission was fighting bullies,” he said. But current chairman Steve Bannon “has perverted the mission into one of personal ego-driven politics.”
  • “What hurts me the most is the lying and smearing that the Trump campaign is doing,” she said. “… If they can do it to me, if they can lie about a conservative reporter, who knows what they’ll be able to do when they have power of the executive branch?”
nataliedepaulo1

Paris protests: Students tear-gassed by police - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-39066918

shared by nataliedepaulo1 on 23 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Paris protests: Students tear-gassed by police
  • Police have fired tear gas at Paris students who blockaded 16 high schools in protest against the alleged police rape of a young black man. The demonstrations are the latest to be held in the capital over the alleged rape and other reported police abuses.
Brian Zittlau

Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy: civil rights' wary allies - CSMonitor.com - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...nnedy-civil-rights-wary-allies

shared by Brian Zittlau on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Candidate Kennedy’s purpose was simply to express sympathy to Coretta Scott King over her husband’s plight. Many of his aides opposed the call as likely to lose votes in the South. But King was released from jail shortly afterwards, and reports of Kennedy’s concern energized African-Americans. Many historians feel it shifted crucial votes in Northern states away from Richard Nixon to give JFK his razor-thin victory.
  • They admired each other’s best qualities but were suspicious of the other’s flaws. On civil rights, they marched to different cadences.Early in his administration, President Kennedy did not want to be seen as too eager to press for such moves as equal housing and voting protection for minorities, even though he saw such changes as inevitable. King was not invited to his inauguration or to an initial meeting of civil rights figures in the Oval Office
  • In June 1963, Kennedy unveiled sweeping civil rights legislation. Among other things, it promised the right to vote to all citizens with a grade-school education, and eliminated legal discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels and restaurants.Kennedy remained hesitant to embrace the nation’s most prominent civil rights figure, however. In part this was due to allegations that a key King aide had communist ties, as well as the FBI’s notorious surveillance of King, which produced evidence of womanizing.The FBI’s file on King’s sex life was dauntingly thick, Berl L. Bernhard, staff director of the US Commission on Civil Rights from 1958 to 1963, said in an oral history at the Kennedy Library.“I do think the president was aware of it, and I know [darn] well some people in the administration were aware of it,” Mr. Bernhard said.Kennedy himself had numerous affairs, of course. It’s unknown how he felt about the juxtaposition of his own recklessness with the King allegations.In the summer of 1963 the administration was worried about the upcoming March on Washington to highlight civil rights. Unable to stop the planning, the White House recruited white union and labor groups to participate, to counter criticism that whites were not interested in sweeping civil rights changes.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In the end the bill did pass. It is an enduring legacy of the Kennedy era. But it was muscled through those Southern-dominated committees by President Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.In part it was LBJ’s legislative craftsmanship that carried the day. In part it was enabled by emotional appeals to the spirit of JFK.“By this and other efforts of mourning, Kennedy acquired the Lincolnesque mantle of a unifying crusader who had bled against the thorn of race,” wrote historian Taylor Branch in “Parting the Waters,” his Pulitzer-winning chronicle of the civil rights movement. “Honest biographers later found it impossible to trace an engaged personality in proportion to the honor.”
Javier E

Republicans for Campaign-Finance Reform: Lindsey Graham, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...390912

campaign financing money politics reform influence

shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • “I’ve told my six-year-old daughter, ‘Running for office is real simple: you just surgically disconnect your shame sensor,’” he said. “Because you spend every day asking people for money.
  • Starting with the attack on the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law in 2003, opponents have won an accelerating series of victories against similar laws. The result has completely changed the world of campaign finance. Citizens United struck down limits on independent expenditures. SpeechNow made it possible for contributions to be largely hidden. Aggregate limits on personal contributions were swept away by McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014
  • For extremely wealthy donors who want to elect candidates and influence issues, their newfound power is a godsend. After spending $92 million on super PACs in 2012, Sheldon Adelson can summon any Republican candidate he wants and has their ears to discuss Israel, his pet issue.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The Koch brothers have put together a coalition that intends to spend almost $1 billion in 2016. Some donors complained after McCutcheon that they'd no longer be able to hide behind limits when they didn't want to give, but the overall landscape has clearly shifted toward those writing the checks.
  • Members of Congress get the shaft, too, spending up to 12 hours a day dialing for dollars. The simple drag of having to do all that seems like a potent reason for candidates to push back
  • even as it fails to rise to the top of most voters' agendas, majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents have voiced concern about the corrupting influence of money in polls, and the public generally supports spending caps.
  • The candidates who are doing best at fundraising, or for whom super PACs are likely to raise money effectively, are staying tactfully quiet on the issue.
  • she also called last week for a constitutional amendment to create limits or mandate transparency for campaign cash.
  • Peter Schweizer has excited the political world with allegations of quid pro quos, in which foreign governments gave to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton, then serving as secretary of state, did them favors—essentially alleging bribery in foreign affairs
  • Shadowy organizations funded by multimillionaires, many of which scrupulously cover up their sources of donations, are going to pour huge amounts of money into trying to sway the democratic process—all in an attempt to prove that huge, insufficiently transparent infusions of cash from wealthy donors can corrupt a public servant’s policy decisions. Is this irony lost on the donors and the candidates they back, or does it simply not bother them?
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