Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Afghan Militias, Report Says

“If cut loose by the CIA,” the report notes, militias “may be reborn as private armies or ‘security guards’ in the service of powerful individuals.”

The post Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Afghan Militias, Report Says appeared first on The Intercept.

Doomed to Repeat It

A news package looks back at the last 400 years of American history.

Suck It Up

How Republicans turn every single thing into a stupid scandal.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Are Leading the Democratic Candidates on Criminal Justice Reform

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled her plan to reform the criminal justice system, just two days after Sen. Bernie Sanders revealed his own. Both presidential candidates are proposing similar changes that would have been unimaginable several years ago—banning private prisons, and ending policies like mandatory minimum sentences, cash bail, solitary confinement, and the death […]

#Nasa mission to #Jupiter #moon #Europa moves step closer to launch | #Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/20/nasa-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa-moves-step-closer-to-launch

I’m Palestinian. Like Rashida Tlaib, I Am Barred From Seeing My Family.

Israel’s treatment of U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has made Israel’s complete control over Palestinian lives clear. Rep. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American with family in the occupied West Bank, was forced to make a choice between her right to visit her grandmother and her right to political speech against Israeli oppression. She ultimately chose the collective over the personal: She refused Israel’s demeaning conditions that would have granted her a “humanitarian” exception to enter Palestine, so long as she refrained from advocating for a boycott of Israel during her visit. Rep. Tlaib explained in a press conference in Minneapolis on August 19, “My grandmother said it beautifully when she said I am her dream manifested. I am her free bird, so why would I come back and be caged?”

Rep. Tlaib’s experience is familiar to many Palestinians, including myself. I, too, was barred from seeing my family in Palestine because of my advocacy for freedom and justice for Palestinians. In May 2012, I traveled to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv to participate in an interfaith delegation and to attend my cousin’s wedding in Ramallah. I presented my U.S. passport to Israeli authorities. At least five Israeli interrogators asked for the names of my father and grandfather; the names likely sounded too “Arab” for the interrogators, who asked me numerous questions about where my father was born. I was taken aside and questioned at least five times.

At one point, an interrogator from Shin Bet turned his computer around and told me to log in to my email account. He threatened that if I didn’t comply, my employer would be contacted and would subsequently fire me. I was told that Israel and the U.S. have a close relationship and that I might not be allowed to go back home. After searching for information about me online, my interrogator asked me threateningly why I was “active.”

When I contacted the U.S. embassy to report my detention and ask for assistance, the embassy employee, whose official title I do not know, told me, “If you are not Jewish, there is nothing we can do to help you.” After eight hours, an Israeli woman I had never seen before verbally informed me that I was a threat to the security of Israel. I was taken to a detention center near the airport and kept in a cell overnight. The next day I was sent back to the United States.

Palestinians like myself have no access to our homeland except at Israel’s whim. Because of the state’s exclusionary policies, I have not seen my family in Palestine in over 10 years. A whole generation of my young cousins has grown up, gotten married and had children of their own. I only know them through photographs.

My own father, born and raised in the West Bank city of Ramallah, can only return to Palestine  as a “tourist” on his U.S. passport. Israel can deny his entry at any time. Millions of other Palestinians—whose parents and grandparents fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1948 war—remain barred from returning home. They remain refugees. Meanwhile, any Jewish person anywhere, even those with no family connections in Israel, can travel to Ben Gurion airport and immediately acquire Israeli citizenship.

Israel’s exclusionary policies are not limited to keeping Palestinians out: They also deny return for thousands of Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship. Take the case of Salwa Copty, born in July 1948. Her family lived in the village of Ma’alul outside of Nazareth, but the village was occupied and destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948. Salwa and her family became refugees, internally displaced within the state of Israel.

Salwa’s father was killed by Israeli forces a few months before Salwa was born, and was buried near the village. That area is now the location of an Israeli military base. Since 2000, Salwa has repeatedly appealed to the Israeli authorities to allow her to visit her father’s grave inside the base. It was only after the intervention of the legal center Adalah that Salwa finally won her right to visit her father’s burial site just last week. (Full disclosure: I am the executive director of Adalah Justice Project. We are independent of Adalah the Legal Center, but we work closely to support its work.)

“Since 1948,” says Adalah’s general director Hassan Jabareen, “Israeli policy has been to prohibit Palestinian family unification, and to restrict Palestinians’ right to enter and leave their homeland freely. This policy has worked to fragment them, which has created a political disaster and a humanitarian crisis for the 12 million Palestinian people around the world.”

That policy applies as much to Rashida Tlaib and her living grandmother as it does to Salwa Copty and her deceased father. Indeed, Rep. Tlaib’s ordeal last week demonstrates that no Palestinian can escape Israel’s racism—not even an elected member of U.S. Congress.

This is what Israeli leaders mean when they call Israel a Jewish state. This racist ideology drives legislation like the Jewish Nation State Law, which declares that Jews alone have the right to self-determination in all land under Israeli control. Within this supremacist framework, Palestinians must be uprooted, disconnected and erased from the land and their identity as a people.

Despite the personal toll incurred, Israel’s latest blunder in banning Rep. Tlaib has elevated Palestinians' demands for their right of return into U.S. mainstream discourse and policy debates. Support is growing in the U.S. for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel to support Palestinian rights and self-determination. This growing support scares both Israeli and U.S. leaders who are committed to maintaining the status quo of Israel’s domination over Palestinians and further territorial expansion. In Israel, support for BDS is a civil offense, and international supporters of BDS can be barred from entry into the country under a law passed in 2017. Last month, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a resolution, H.R. 246, condemning BDS. Palestinians owe Rep. Tlaib gratitude for sticking to her political principles in order to bring the Palestinian collective struggle for return, freedom and equality into sharp focus.

On Trial in a Language You Don’t Speak

COOK COUNTY, ILL.—Morelia Orozco walks into the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building at 8:30 a.m. holding a clipboard with her schedule for the day. As a full-time Spanish court interpreter in her 40s, she is swamped with seven courtrooms to cover. Just before her first case, Orozco receives an unexpected text message urgently calling her to another courtroom. She rushes over to help, leaving her assigned case unattended.

The client is a middle-aged man who has trouble expressing himself in English in a stressful court setting. At lightning speed, Orozco translates the judge’s words for her client and the client’s words to the court. About 30 minutes later, she hurries off to her next assignment.

“We are always running from one [courtroom] to another,” says Veronica Rivas, a per-session Spanish court interpreter for Cook County.

Court interpreters are in high demand in Cook County, home to 743,200 people with limited English proficiency—around 15% of the population. But in recent years, the number of full-time interpreters has decreased. In 2014, the county had 34 full-time interpreters; now, there are 29.

At the Daley Center, one of the busiest courts in Cook County, an average of 66 cases call for an interpreter daily. Only six Spanish interpreters and one Polish interpreter, including per-session interpreters, are regularly stationed there.

Advocates say the decline in full-time court interpreters means vulnerable, non-English-speaking communities may not be getting adequate legal support. The Chicago News Guild, a local of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) that represents court interpreters, has collected a list of incidents when no interpretation services were available in courts. (Full disclosure: In These Times’ staff is represented by CWA’s Washington-Baltimore News Guild.) The list, though not comprehensive, records 26 such cases since April 2018. For instance, on June 11, 2018, two Spanish-speaking parents were unable to get unsupervised visits for their child at the Juvenile Courthouse, and on November 7, 2018, the court ignored an Arabic-speaking defendant’s request for an interpreter. According to the list, the judge conducted proceedings “off the record,” and a friend of the defendant who speaks a little English attempted to help but did not interpret the court proceedings unless the Judge asked the defendant a question. At the end, the defendant was found guilty.

The unavailability of court interpreters often leads to long wait times, continuances or a family member or friend interpreting for the case.

“We clearly do not have enough interpreters,” says Craig Rosenbaum, executive director of the Chicago News Guild. “The courts are not being served.”

In 2018, around 58,000 interpretation sessions were conducted in Cook County courts, a drop of 31% from the 85,000 sessions in 2015, according to the Chief Judge’s office. The office maintains, however, that “the number of court interpreters is sufficient to meet demand, and interpreters are provided upon request,” according to Pat Milhizer, communications director at the office.

Interpretation services are a low priority within most court budgets nationwide, says Mike Ferreira, president of the California Federation of Interpreters Local 39000 (also a local of CWA). “When it comes to language access in the courts,” he says, the courts tend to do “whatever is the least expensive, minimum level of service to avoid appellate issues.”

A lack of court interpreters has caused problems across the country. A shortage of Mayan interpreters, for languages such as Mam, K’iche’ and Q’anjob’al, has caused delays in immigration courts. And in one Huntsville, Ala., case, a woman who knew only a few words of English unwittingly relinquished parental rights to her youngest son in 2016.

“There’s a constitutional obligation to provide everyone with access to the courts,” says Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Cook County. “Providing an interpreter is a necessary part of that. It’s not optional.”

The Office of the Chief Judge is currently in the process of hiring more full-time interpreters. Meanwhile, 54 per-session interpreters have been enlisted, none of whom are eligible for employee benefits.

Claudia Perez, a single mother of four, has worked for Cook County as a per-session interpreter for over 12 years. She has no health plan, no sick pay and no paid vacation, despite working three to four full days per week. “I used to work almost every day when I first started,” Perez says. “Because the county doesn’t want to pay for health insurance, they limit my hours.”

In an ongoing contract negotiation with Cook County, the union is demanding 30 full-time Spanish interpreters, seven Polish, two Arabic, and sick pay for per-session interpreters.

The importance of interpreters should not be underestimated, says Elsa Prado, who worked as a per-session interpreter in Cook County from 1998 to 2013. “We are literally the voice, the eyes and the ears of people who cannot speak English.”

Don't Renew Section 215 Indefinitely

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration wants Section 215, the legal authority that allows the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ telephone records, renewed indefinitely. That’s despite earlier reports the NSA had shuttered its Call Details Record (CDR) Program because it ran afoul of the law, violated the privacy of scores of Americans, and reportedly failed to produce useful intelligence. In a letter to Congress, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats argued for permanently reauthorizing the legal authority, which also allows the government to collect a vast array of “tangible things” in national security investigations, as well as other provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire in December.

For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records documenting who a person called and for how long they called them—more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships.

In 2015, a federal appeals court held that NSA’s interpretation of Section 215 to conduct this surveillance dragnet was “unprecedented and unwarranted.” Despite the passage of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which gave the government more limited authority to conduct the CDR program, the government continued to collect hundreds of millions of records. And in 2018, the NSA was compelled to delete millions of records after it learned that some of the data had been collected from phone service providers without legal authority or authorization.

If the program does not help ensure the safety of Americans, cannot stay within the law, and violates our privacy, then why should Congress reauthorize it? After all, as of now, the NSA isn’t even using it.

This December, rather than permanently renew the authorization that allows the NSA to use an invasive program, it’s important that we push Congress to end the Call Details Record program once and for all and enact other important reforms.

Take Action

Tell Congress to End the CDR Program

Related Cases:  Jewel v. NSA

Court Rules That “Patent Troll” is Opinion, Not Defamation

Free speech in the patent world saw a big win on Friday, when the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that calling someone a “patent troll” doesn’t constitute defamation. The court’s opinion [PDF] is good news for critics of abusive patent litigation, and anyone who values robust public debate around patent policy. The opinion represents a loss for Automated Transactions, LLC (ATL), a patent assertion entity that sued [PDF] more than a dozen people and trade groups claiming it was defamed.

EFF worked together with the ACLU of New Hampshire to file an amicus brief [PDF] in this case, explaining that the lower court judge got this case right when he ruled against ATL. That decision gave wide latitude for public debate about important policy issues—even when the debate veers into harsh language. We’re glad the New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed.

Last week’s ruling court notes that “patent troll” is a phrase used to describe “a class of patent owners who do not provide end products or services themselves, but who do demand royalties as a price for authorizing the work of others.” However, the justices note that “patent troll” has no clear settled definition. For instance, some observers of the patent world would exclude particular entities, like individual inventors or universities, from the moniker “patent troll.”

Because of this, when ATL’s many critics call it a “patent troll,” they are expressing their subjective opinions. Differences of opinion about many things—including patent lawsuits—cannot and should not be settled with a defamation lawsuit.

“We conclude that the challenged statement, that ATL is a well-known patent troll, is one of opinion rather than fact,” write the New Hampshire justices. “As the slideshow demonstrates, the statement is an assertion that, among other things, ATL is a patent troll because its patent-enforcement activity is ‘aggressive.’ This statement cannot be proven true or false because whether given behavior is ‘aggressive’ cannot be objectively verified.”

The court ruling also upheld tough talk about ATL’s behavior beyond the phrase “patent troll.” For instance, the court looked at statements referring to ATL’s actions as “extortive,” and rejected defamation claims on that basis, finding that was rhetorical hyperbole. Another ATL critic had complained that ATL’s efforts “cost them only postage and the paper their demand letters are written on.” This, too, was hyperbole, part of the give-and-take of a public debate.

This case has its origins in the patents of inventor David Barcelou, who claims he came up with the idea of connecting ATMs to the Internet. As Barcelou describes in his defamation lawsuit, he saw “his business efforts fail,” before he went on to transfer patent rights to ATL and create a patent assertion business.

ATL began suing banks and credit unions that were allegedly using Barcelou’s patents in their ATMs. In all, about 200 different companies paid ATL a total of $3 million in licensing fees to avoid litigation—that’s an average of $15,000 per company.

But when they were finally examined by judges, ATL’s patents failed to hold up. The Federal Circuit invalidated several patent claims owned by ATL, and further found that the defendants’ ATMs did not infringe the Barcelou patents.

After that court loss, ATL had a steep drop in licensing revenue. That’s when ATL launched its defamation lawsuit, blaming its critics for its setbacks.

For software developers and small business owners who bear the brunt of patent troll demands and lawsuits, the New Hampshire decision sends a clear message. If you’re upset about the abuses inherent in our current patent system, it’s okay to speak out by using the term “patent troll.” Calling out bad actors in the system is part and parcel of the debate around our patent and innovation policies.

Related Cases:  Abstract Patent Litigation

Jill Biden Tells Voters to Settle for Her Husband

Jill Biden has a message for voters reluctant to get behind her husband: settle or face another four years of hell. That’s essentially what the former second lady, in surprisingly blunt terms, told a group of teachers in New Hampshire on Monday, as she attempted to make the case for why Joe Biden is the […]

The NYPD Finally Fired the Cop Who Killed Eric Garner — but the Police Reaction Shows How Little Will Change

The decision will not alter the entrenched police ideology that allows for deaths like Garner’s — showing why reform will be slow and tough.

The post The NYPD Finally Fired the Cop Who Killed Eric Garner — but the Police Reaction Shows How Little Will Change appeared first on The Intercept.

Mike Pompeo Has Extreme Views on Muslims — and Liberals Don’t Seem to Care

A lengthy profile in the New Yorker conspicuously neglected to mention the secretary of state’s ties to notorious Islamophobes.

The post Mike Pompeo Has Extreme Views on Muslims — and Liberals Don’t Seem to Care appeared first on The Intercept.

Greenland’s New Deal

The year is 2042. The country is overrun by mutants. Thank god we bought Greenland!

Detective Trump in: The Conflict of Interest

Jeffrey Epstein is dead of an apparent suicide...time to get an extremely neutral party on the case!

Why Eric Garner Couldn’t Breathe

Update: On Aug. 19, 2019, the NYPD announced it had fired Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold.

When New York City police arrested and subdued Eric Garner, he fit a profile: an uncooperative black man committing a petty crime. But the profile that police should have recognized—and the one that Garner fit perfectly—was of someone vulnerable to a dangerous combination of banned law enforcement practices used routinely across the country with impunity, and sometimes fatal results.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not the chokehold alone that killed Garner. And it was not solely Officer Daniel Pantaleo who was responsible for the homicide of the unarmed 43-year-old African-American man arrested for a “quality-of-life” offense under “broken windows policing” that encourages arrest for even the most trivial crimes—in Garner’s case, selling “loosies,” unpackaged cigarettes, on a Staten Island street.

The video of his death, which went viral and sparked protests, shows Pantaleo’s arm tightened around Garner’s neck. It also shows a cluster of officers, including Pantaleo, kneeling on Garner’s back and pressing his face, mouth and nose to the pavement as he lay facedown, hands cuffed behind him, pleading— at least 11 times—“I can’t breathe.”

The Office of the City Medical Examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide, citing both “compression of neck (chokehold) [and] compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”

First, about the chokehold: According to his lawyer, Pantaleo told the official inquiry he “never exerted any pressure on the windpipe.”

His denial, even if true, is largely irrelevant. There are two main types of chokeholds, and during a struggle, one may easily slide into the other. Pressure to the windpipe—an air choke—directly cuts off the ability to breathe and can kill quickly. Pressure to the veins and arteries of the neck—a blood or carotid choke—stops blood flowing to and from the brain and cuts off its oxygen.

Both holds can kill, and that is why, back in 1993, the NYPD banned them. Chief John F. Timoney, then commander of the department’s Office of Management Analysis and Planning, said: “Basically, stay the hell away from the neck. That’s what [the policy] says.”

And then, Garner’s second cause of death: positional asphyxia caused by “compression of chest and prone positioning.” Even when used alone, extended prone restraint—placing a suspect facedown, hogtied or with hands cuffed behind—has caused untold in-custody deaths by suffocation and is therefore prohibited by many police departments, including the NYPD. But when officers also kneel or push on the restrained person’s back or neck, as they did with Garner, the danger of positional asphyxia escalates. And when the suspect has been pepper sprayed, is intoxicated or has medical conditions such as Garner’s—obesity, asthma and a weak heart—the danger skyrockets.

Dr. Michael Baden, former NYC chief medical examiner and later State Police chief forensic pathologist, who was hired by the Garner family to review the autopsy report, told the New York Times: “Obese people especially, lying face down, prone, are unable to breathe when enough pressure is put on their back. The pressure prevents the diaphragm from going up and down, and he can’t inhale and exhale.’’

The cell phone video shows that even after Pantaleo released the chokehold, and Garner was cuffed, hundreds of pounds of cop flesh pushed down on him. His struggle against that weight was evidence not of vitality and aggression, but rather of desperation to change position so that he could breathe.

“The natural reaction to oxygen deficiency occurs—the person struggles more violently,” a 1995 National Law Enforcement Technology Center bulletin warned. The struggle aggravates the asphyxia by increasing the heart rate and causing carbon dioxide to build up in the lungs.

Ill-trained or angry police who double down on restraint when a handcuffed captive thrashes are clearly violating procedure. “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach,” the NYPD’s Guidelines to Preventing Deaths in Custody state. “Turn him on his side or place him in a seated position. If he continues to struggle, do not sit on his back.”

The fact that Garner had medical conditions increasing his vulnerability to positional asphyxia was not readily knowable. But that he was obese and struggling to breathe—even after the chokehold that compromised him was released—was obvious. That, once handcuffed and down, he was not immediately turned over or allowed to sit up was both a violation of long-standing policy and, ultimately, homicidal.

And by failing to act after Garner became comatose, police further violated policy—and possibly the law. The NYPD patrol guide warns that officers are required to “intervene if the use of force against a subject clearly becomes excessive. Failure to do so may result in both criminal and civil liability.”

The FBI issues similar injunctions. To avoid in-custody injury or death, officers should “monitor subjects carefully for breathing difficulties/loss of consciousness. Be prepared to administer CPR. Obtain medical assistance immediately.”

“He didn’t die because he stopped breathing on his own,” said his sister, Ellisha Flagg. “He died because someone took his breath away.”

And the EMTs who arrived on the scene made no effort to give it back. Faced with the limp, unconscious man, they were bizarrely passive, failing to apply an oxygen mask, to ensure  that Garner’s airway was clear or to assess his condition in any way beyond seeking a pulse.

Prone restraint and resulting positional asphyxia have been implicated in numerous in-custody deaths on the street and in prisons. And if police departments are unmoved by compassion, they might consider liability. Even though officers escape criminal charges, civil courts have levied millions of dollars in settlements.

In 2013, Ethan Saylor, who had Down syndrome, refused to leave a Maryland movie theater because he wanted to see the film again. Three off-duty sheriff’s deputies forcibly removed the 294-pound disabled man. “They placed him [facedown] on the ground,” his mother Patti testified before a Senate committee, “prone restraint, put handcuffs on, and my son died of asphyxiation on that floor of that movie theater for that $10 movie ticket.”

Police used prone restraint on: Jonny Gammage, a Pittsburgh man, at a traffic stop; Charles Dixon, an Altoona, Pennsylvania man, after a disturbance at a birthday party; Oral Brown, who was found wandering disoriented in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after his car crashed; and Tanisha Anderson, whom Cleveland police were taking for a mental-health evaluation after her parents reported she had disturbed the peace. All died from positional asphyxia in what amounts to institutionally protected homicide.

In 1999, Brian Drummond, who was unarmed and mentally ill, ended up inva permanent vegetative state after cops subdued him. “Although he had offered no resistance, Officer Brian McElhaney put his knees into Mr. Drummond’s back and placed the weight of his body on him. [Officer Christopher Ned] also put his knees and placed the weight of his body on him, except that he had one knee on Mr. Drummond’s neck,” the Drummond v. City of Anaheim trial transcript noted. Drummond “repeatedly told the officers that he could not breathe and that they were choking him.” One eyewitness testified, “The officers were laughing during the course of these events.”

The 9th Circuit Court concluded in 2003: “The compression asphyxia that resulted appears with unfortunate frequency in the reported decisions of the federal courts, and presumably occurs with even greater frequency on the street.”

More than a decade later, it seems little has changed. Acts of commission and omission by each of the many police who participated in or witnessed Garner’s arrest represent not only individual culpability, but a systemic failure of training or compliance.

It was “all the police [on the scene], not just one police officer, that would have caused the obstruction to breathing,” forensic expert Michael Baden told Fox News.

By blaming only the chokehold, Pantaleo’s fellow officers and much of the media threw one cop under a bus that carries a heavy cargo of ignorance, aggression, profiling, and needed reform. 

The NYPD officers who petulantly turned their backs on the mayor and held work slowdowns added to the impression that the force is out of control, and left the public justifiably wary of trusting police with their lives.

Materials that can revolutionize how light is harnessed for solar energy

Scientists have designed organic molecules capable of generating two excitons per photon of light, a process called singlet fission. The excitons can live for much longer than those generated from their inorganic counterparts, which leads to an amplification of electricity generated per photon that is absorbed by a solar cell.

Heat shield just 10 atoms thick to protect electronic devices

Atomically thin materials could create heat-shields for cell phones or laptops that would protect people and temperature-sensitive components and make future electronic gadgets even more compact.

Twitter Helped Chinese Government Promote Disinformation on Repression of Muslims

Promoted tweets from a state-run news outlet distort the position of Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang.

The post Twitter Helped Chinese Government Promote Disinformation on Repression of Muslims appeared first on The Intercept.