Month: October 2020

Home / Month: October 2020

Cast in a New York Times op-ed published late Tuesday evening, Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a stark warning to the Democratic Party leadership that if they don’t wake up to the profound dissatisfaction of the poor and working classes in the United States, they may very well wake up to a similar shock experienced by many in the United Kingdom last week when a majority—fueled largely by financial frustrations—chose to leave the European Union.

“Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States? You bet it could.” —Bernie Sanders”Surprise, surprise. Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children,” Sanders writes.

“Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States?” he later asks. “You bet it could.”

Citing troubling metrics of massive income and wealth inequality both in the U.S. and around the globe, Sanders said the xenophobia and regressiveness represented by the rise of Donald Trump within the Republican Party and Friday’s vote in favor of Brexit in the UK is the result of increasing numbers of people around the world who recognize that the economic system is designed to disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful, not them.

Progressives voices in the U.S. and Europe have been warning throughout the economic downturn which began with the financial meltdown of 2007 that if governments continued to ignore the root causes of inequality and the political demands of working class people, they would ultimately empower the xenophobic and fascist forces of the far-right.

Sanders’ public warning comes as many establishment figures within the Democratic Party and in the corporate media express increasing levels of frustration that Sanders has yet to formally suspend his campaign and endorse the presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.  However, many rank-and-file Democrats have said they support Sanders’ staying in the race through to the convention. Meanwhile—in addition to saying he will vote for Clinton in November—he has repeatedly explained that his primary goals now are to push the party in a more progressive direction while also ensuring that Donald Trump is not elected president in the fall. The warning contained in his op-ed, does not appear to contradict any of these aims.

“Let’s be clear,” Sanders writes. “The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.”

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What’s not needed and must be vigorously opposed, he added, is “the demagogy, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment that punctuated so much of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric—and is central to Donald J. Trump’s message.”

What’s needed instead to combat those forces, according to Sanders, is:

Amid an ongoing battle over the drafting of a new Democratic Party platform, Sanders argues that it is exactly the wrong time to put a lid on the populist demands that so many Democratic, progressive, and independent voters so clearly desire.

“The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States,” the Sanders op-ed warns. “Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.” 

But in what is a “pivotal” historical moment, he concludes, “the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.”

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The FBI is using a dubious facial recognition system and a database of hundreds of millions more photographs than previously thought to hunt for criminal suspects, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The massive database houses roughly 411 million photos amassed from sources such as driver’s licenses, visa applications, biometrics data, and passport applications, as well as surveillance camera footage, the GAO found in its report (pdf).

That number also includes 30 million civil and criminal mugshots—but, as Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Jennifer Lynch wrote in a blog post on Wednesday, the vast majority “are of Americans and foreigners who have committed no crimes.”

FBI officials did not report the potential civil liberties impact of the program until the audit, which breaks both agency policy and federal law, according to the GAO, which noted that 1974 Privacy Act limits the collection of personal data and requires agencies to disclose what kinds of information they are using.

The GAO began its audit to look into a program called the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System (NGI-IPS or NGI), but found instead that NGI was part of a much larger operation known as Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation (FACE) Services. While the FBI was known to be using facial recognition software, the new report reveals the scope of the program.

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The investigation gave some long-awaited answers to the EFF, which previously sought information about the NGI program through a FOIA request. Lynch wrote that, in addition to the revelations about just how many photos the FBI has access to, the agency “has been hiding this fact from the public—in flagrant violation of federal law and agency policy—for years.”

The FBI uses its photo database, as well as those of other agencies including the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), to cross-reference images of criminal suspects. But the wide scope of the program raises questions about its level of accuracy.

Lynch wrote:

The FBI “did not specify how often incorrect matches were returned,” the report states, adding that there was no information available about the rate of false positives.

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As Lynch explained to the Guardian, detailed facial recognition information collected from driver’s licenses is typically kept for cases of identity theft. “Data that’s being collected for one purpose is being used for a very different purpose and that’s not the way we operate in our democratic system,” she said.

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Former London Mayor Boris Johnson has been appointed as foreign secretary in the U.K.’s new post-Brexit government, headed by now-Prime Minister Theresa May.

Johnson—whom some have likened to Donald Trump—ultimately supported the Leave campaign ahead of the U.K.’s referendum last month and compared the EU to Adolph Hitler in its attempt to unify Europe.

His appointment, announced Wednesday, was met with fury throughout the continent.

As the foreign secretary, Johnson will represent Britain on the world stage and play a key role in the Brexit negotiations. French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marc Ayrault said the appointment was “a sign of the British political crisis that has come out of the referendum vote.”

Speaking in an interview with Europe 1 radio, Ayrault said, “During the campaign, he lied a lot to the British people and now it is he who has his back against the wall. [He has] his back against the wall to defend his country but also with his back against the wall the relationship with Europe should be clear.”

“I need a partner with whom I can negotiate and who is clear, credible and reliable,” Ayrault added.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier slammed Johnson’s conduct, saying that he had acted in a “monstrous” manner by deceiving voters before the referendum and ducking responsibility after the results came in.

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“People [in the UK] are experiencing a rude awakening after irresponsible politicians first lured the country into Brexit and then, once the decision was made, decided to bolt from responsibility, and instead go off and play cricket,” Steinmeier said. (Johnson played cricket the day after the Brexit decision.)

“To be honest, I find this outrageous,” Steinmeier said, “but it’s not just bitter for Great Britain. It’s also bitter for the European Union.”

 NBC News compiled a list of six times Johnson behaved in a “deeply offensive” manner, including:

In a Facebook post published Wednesday, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans denounced the “bigotry” of the Leave campaign and said, “What looks like daring hyperbole in public school debating clubs, good for a couple of laughs over beer, will be taken on face value by people who do not see all this as a game, but whose livelihood truly depends on it….hatred came into play and we have seen the effects.”

The Guardian also quoted one unnamed EU diplomat who said, “It is important to have someone in place who allows for calm and serene negotiations. These are not the qualities we have seen from Boris Johnson so far.”

Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, simply tweeted:

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#FreddieGray Tweets

Baltimore prosecutors have dropped all remaining charges against the police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, bringing an end to the case that has spurred mass protests throughout the country for seven months.

The sudden decision on Wednesday means there is unlikely to be any accountability in Gray’s death, as it follows several acquittals for three other officers charged in the case.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Wednesday that the decision to drop the charges against Officer Garrett Miller—who physically arrested Gray—Officer William Porter, and Sgt. Alicia White was “agonizing,” but that there was a “dismal likelihood” of securing a conviction.

“After much thought and prayer it has become clear that without being able to work with an independent investigatory agency from the very start, without having a say in the election of whether cases proceed in front of a judge or jury, without communal oversight of police in this community, without substantive reforms to the current criminal justice system, we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result,” she said.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Gray, 25, died after his spine was severed during an arrest in April 2015. Footage of officers dragging him into the back of a police van went viral, sparking widespread outrage.

The news devastated those who hoped Mosby, who has made passionate demands for justice in the case, would be able to convict.

“The system we allow has failed him,” tweeted director and activist Ava DuVernay. “Our shame.”

Journalist Shaun King also wrote: “To be honest, I’m beyond words with the #FreddieGray case right now. The brother arrived at the hospital in a coma with a severed spine.” In a separate tweet, he called the decision “infuriating.”

Tessa Hill-Aston, the president of Baltimore’s NAACP chapter, told the New York Times on Wednesday, “I personally wanted them to go through with it, even if it was a no-win situation.” She said justice had not been served “as far as people on the streets, and people seeing that the police officers got away with murder.”

“Because at the end of the day right now,” she said, “Freddie is dead and someone caused his death.”

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Newly declassified papers on the U.S. government’s role in Argentina’s 1976-83 “Dirty War” have been released, detailing—among other things—how former secretary of state Henry Kissinger stymied attempts to end mass killings of dissidents.

The files were published just after Politico reported that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is courting Kissinger’s support, among other Republican elites.

Kissinger lauded Argentina’s military dictatorship for its “campaign against terrorism,” which included the imprisonment, torture, and killings of tens of thousands of leftist activists and students, the files reveal.

“His praise for the Argentine government in its campaign against terrorism was the music the Argentine government was longing to hear,” one document states.

During a private meeting with the conservative diplomat group Argentinian Council of International Relations (CARI), Kissinger said that “in his opinion the government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces.”

U.S. ambassador to Buenos Aires, Raúl Castro warned that Kissinger’s praise for the military dictatorship “may have gone to some considerable extent to his hosts’ heads.”

“There is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger’s laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance,” Castro said.

Clinton herself has come under considerable scrutiny for her role in other U.S.-backed coups in Latin America, such as Honduras.

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Further, during a presidential debate with then-rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in February, Clinton cited Kissinger as someone she looks to for advice and approval on foreign policy; Sanders called that reference “rather amazing,” stating, “I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Kissinger.”

On Tuesday, following Politico‘s report, progressives called on Sanders and his surrogates to withdraw their support of Clinton if she allies with Kissinger.

As Greg Grandin writes at The Nation:

Elsewhere in the documents—released on President Barack Obama’s order in a gesture of goodwill toward Argentina—U.S. diplomats and officials can be seen wondering whether their foreign policies had gotten out of control.

The National Security Council’s Latin America director, Robert Pastor, wrote in a dispatch to then-President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Have we gone too far? Have we pushed our policy beyond its effectiveness? Are we pushing the Argentines over the edge and jeopardizing our future relationship? Does the terror justify the repression?”

“I, myself, believe that we may have…pushed too far,” Pastor wrote.

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In an unprecedented display of unity in the face of continued institutional racism, 2,000 teachers and employees across the Seattle school system on Wednesday donned t-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter/ We Stand Together,” while students and teachers across the district organized rallies with the declaration, “Black Lives Matter at Schools.”

The action, which was meant to draw attention to the school-to-prison pipeline and call for racial equity in education, was done with the support of the Seattle Education Association union, the Seattle PTA, as well as the Seattle Public Schools (SPS). Social justice luminaries, including Noam Chomsky, 1968 Olympic medal winner John Carlos, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, and professor and former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, also signed a letter of support.

Jesse Hagopian, advisor to the Black Student Union and teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School, explained that institutional racism extends beyond policing and mass incarceration, and has roots in the education system.

“It’s also important to understand that for black lives to matter, black education has to matter,” Hagopian told KUOW-FM. “This movement is also broader than police accountability. In a school system as dramatically unequal as ours, it’s incumbent upon educators and families to stand up and say something about this.”

Highlighting some of the so-called “opportunity gaps” in the Seattle district, The Stranger reports:

Many educators also took the opportunity to teach lessons and hold discussions “about the ways institutional racism impacts education, our nation, and our world,” organizers said.

In an email to Common Dreams, Hagopian said that this is “the first action in the country where teachers across the district will support the movement for Black Lives,” adding that he hopes “it could help spark similar action[s] around the country.”

The widespread day of action was prompted by teachers at Seattle’s John Muir Elementary School, who had initially planned on September 16th to wear Black Lives Matter shirts and hold an event to dispel stereotypes and celebrate black students before they were forced to cancel after threatening phone calls were made to the school.

The original celebration was called “Black Men Uniting to Change the Narrative,” and would have included more than 100 black men gathering outside the school and greeting students as they walked into the building. In what has been described as “a truly stunning show of courage,” dozens of black community members defied the violent threats and showed up anyway, high-fiving students as they entered the building.

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In response, members of the Seattle Education Association (SEA) voted unanimously to endorse the district-wide day of action, passing a resolution which boldly states:

“This response is not only an example of community, sports, teachers, and unions ‘laying siege’ to racism,” sports columnist Dave Zirin wrote at The Nation on Wednesday. “It is also a moment in this dreary fall political season of how hope can blossom when we organize beyond the ballot box.”

Throughout the day, images of teachers and others wearing the “Black Lives Matter” shirts were shared on social media with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool.

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Corker draws first primary challenger

October 2, 2020 | News | No Comments

Sen. Bob CorkerRobert (Bob) Phillips CorkerGOP lawmakers stick to Trump amid new criticism Trump asserts his power over Republicans Romney is only GOP senator not on new White House coronavirus task force MORE (R-Tenn.) has drawn his first Republican challenger, days after allies of President Trump threatened to back a primary challenge in retribution for Corker’s critical comments about Trump’s ability to govern. 

Andy Ogles, the head of the Tennessee chapter of the Charles and David Koch-funded conservative group Americans for Prosperity, kicked off his campaign Thursday. In a statement announcing his bid, Ogles blasted Republican senators for letting Trump down.

“Republicans who promised to govern as conservatives if we would just ‘give them a majority’ are letting us down the most, including our Senators from Tennessee,” he said in a statement. 

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Ogles pitched himself as a defender of Trump’s call to “drain the swamp,” criticizing Congress for being “more focused on providing amnesty to illegals to placate so-called Dreamers while refusing to build the wall and secure the American Dream for American citizens.”

“As long as [Trump] has to rely upon career politicians more focused on preserving their own power rather than empowering the American people we will find ourselves short of where we want to be,” Ogles said. 

“We will not change what we are seeing IN Washington until we send new, strong conservative representatives TO Washington. Our problem isn’t the shortage of Republicans in the Senate, it is the shortage of the RIGHT Republicans in the Senate.”

ADVERTISEMENTOgles is the first Republican to announce a challenge to Corker, the powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A longtime businessman, Corker served a term as Chattanooga’s mayor in the early 2000s before winning his Senate seat in 2006. 

But while Corker is expected to receive strong support from establishment Republicans, Trump allies on the party’s right flank have been fuming since he told reporters that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Those comments particularly frustrated former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and allies at Great America PAC, a group that’s floating challenges to incumbents who they believe aren’t loyal to Trump’s agenda. While the group is eying a challenge in Tennessee, they have not coalesced around a candidate yet.

Corker recently floated the possibility that he could retire instead of running for reelection.

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Right-wing media figures to launch super PAC

October 2, 2020 | News | No Comments

Two prominent pro-Trump figures in right-wing media say they are launching a super PAC to boost outsider and insurgent candidates running for office in 2018, The Atlantic reports.

The new #Rev18 super PAC is being created by two right-wing internet personalities, Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec.

Cernovich has broken news about the White House and been praised by members of the Trump administration and family, but he gained notoriety for pushing the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which claims that prominent Democrats are running a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. Posobiec has attracted his own controversy after pushing various conspiracy theories.

Cernovich and Posobiec are reporter-activists who occasionally attend press briefings at the White House.

A third founder, Jeff Giesea, said the group does not have any other advisers or money beyond his initial investment of $50,000.

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If the group follows through with the PAC, it will be entering an increasingly crowded space competing for donor money on the right. The pro-Trump outside group Great America Alliance, in partnership with Breitbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon, is already operating, looking to boost insurgent candidates and take down GOP incumbents or candidates they view as establishment Republicans.

The Great American Alliance and Bannon notched a big victory in the GOP primary in Alabama last week, when former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore triumphed over Sen. Luther StrangeLuther Johnson StrangeThe biggest political upsets of the decade State ‘certificate of need’ laws need to go GOP frets over nightmare scenario for Senate primaries MORE (R-Ala.), despite being vastly outspent.

The NSA Was Hacked, Snowden Documents Confirm

October 2, 2020 | News | No Comments

On Monday, a hacking group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency.

The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE.

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SECONDDATE plays a specialized role inside a complex global system built by the U.S. government to infect and monitor what one document estimated to be millions of computers around the world. Its release by ShadowBrokers, alongside dozens of other malicious tools, marks the first time any full copies of the NSA’s offensive software have been available to the public, providing a glimpse at how an elaborate system outlined in the Snowden documents looks when deployed in the real world, as well as concrete evidence that NSA hackers don’t always have the last word when it comes to computer exploitation.

But malicious software of this sophistication doesn’t just pose a threat to foreign governments, Johns Hopkins University cryptographer Matthew Green told The Intercept:

The NSA did not respond to questions concerning ShadowBrokers, the Snowden documents, or its malware.

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Apple’s $14.5 billion E.U. tax bill—plus its promises to “repatriate at least some of the billions of dollars of cash it holds offshore as early as next year,” as the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday—merely provide more evidence that the U.S. corporate tax code must be reformed, progressive observers and tax fairness groups said this week.

“The European Commission action is a chastening reminder to U.S. policymakers that our tax system has enabled much of the tax-dodging antics in which Apple and hundreds of other corporations have engaged,” Matt Gardner of Citizens for Tax Justice’s research arm said Tuesday in response to the news that the tech giant had been ordered to pay as much as €13 billion ($14.5 billion) in back taxes due to an illegal tax break granted by the Irish government.

“Congress needs to close the deferral tax loophole that creates the opportunities for this massive profit shifting by Apple and dozens of other U.S. multinationals,” Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) executive director Frank Clemente added.

“Over the next 10 years,” he said, “the deferral tax loophole will allow corporations to avoid paying about $1.3 trillion in U.S. taxes they owe on profits held offshore until those profits are repatriated to the U.S. If the loophole is closed, corporations would have no incentive to transfer profits offshore and stash them in tax havens.”

“Now it is time for the U.S. Treasury Department to follow suit and investigate Apple’s profit shifting and tax dodging,” ATF and SumOfUs declare in a petition that bore more than 18,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. 

However, not only are Apple and Ireland opposing the ruling, as Common Dreams reported, but U.S. lawmakers and Treasury Department officials are expressing outrage, too—and not at Apple for its tax avoidance, either.

In fact, Alan Rappeport wrote at the New York Times, most lawmakers and business groups “defended Apple by arguing that the European Union was overstepping its authority and reinterpreting international tax law to unfairly penalize the company.”

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Indeed, wrote Robert Reich on Wednesday, “rather than congratulate Europe for standing up to Apple, official Washington is outraged.”

The European Commission ruling, Reich said, appears to be “adding fuel to the demand Apple and other giant U.S. global corporations have been making, that the United States slash taxes on corporations that move their overseas earnings back to the United States.”

As the New York Times reported Thursday:

If so, Reich argued, it’ll be a rip-off.

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“A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 92 percent of the repatriated cash was used to pay for dividends, share buybacks, or executive bonuses,” he noted.

And Campaign for America’s Future blogger Isaiah Poole wrote last year:

Bottom line, said Clemente this week: “We do not need any sweetheart deals negotiated between Congress and corporate lobbyists to cut the amount of money these tax-dodging corporations owe the American people.”

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