Demonstrators with the Jewish activist group Never Again Action on Thursday shut down a Cambridge, Massachusetts Amazon office in protest of the tech giant’s coordination and cooperation with President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants.
“As a Jewish person, we’ve seen this before,” Ben Lorber, one of the protesters for the action, told The Boston Globe. “I had ancestors killed in the Holocaust. We feel this in our bones. We need to mobilize.”
Amazon’s work with the White House on immigration detention has been a controversial flashpoint for the world’s largest online retailer. As Common Dreams reported in July, the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has drawn protests from both the company’s opponents and workers.
Never Again marched from Boston’s New England Holocaust Memorial to Cambridge on Thursday, temporarily snarling traffic on a number of city streets.
The group occupied the Amazon office until 12 of the demonstrators were arrested.
In a dispatch from his column Hell World, Boston-based writer Luke O’Neil noted the current climate in the city’s courtrooms, including, as Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Judge Richard Sinnott’s refusal to allow Suffolk County DA Rachel Roillins’ office decline to prosecute demonstrators from last weekend’s so-called “Straight Pride Parade.”
“You would think they will be let off easy with a warning like others have in similar recent arrests,” wrote O’Neil, “but considering how bad the situation involving the people arrested at the protest last weekend has gone under the fascist watch of Judge Sinnott—who refused DA Rachael Rollins’ request to dismiss charges against many of the protestors leading to a whole fucking thing—who is to say what will happen.”
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A GoFundMe page has been set up for the arrested protesters.
Protesters at the Cambridge offices reminded Amazon that their cooperation with ICE was not unique; after all, “technology companies have been enabling racist state violence for centuries,” as the group’s Twitter account pointed out in a tweet featuring a video of a demonstrator laying out the connections between the Nazis and IBM.
Democracy Now! quoted one of the protesters making that connection during the Thursday action:
Amazon did not provide comment to reporters about the demonstration—but, as The Boston Globe reported, Amazon has been a target for anti-ICE protests for over a year:
Protest actions against the Trump administration’s war on immigrants can be dangerous. On August 14, Captain Thomas Woodworth of the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island used his truck as a battering ram, driving into a group of Never Again protesters.
Watch Thursday’s action, via Never Again’s Facebook page:
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A casual announcement made Wednesday by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that his company is writing facial recognition regulations for legislators to enact is exactly what “digital rights activists have been warning” would emerge from Silicon Valley unless lawmakers pass a full ban on facial recognition surveillance.
Bezos told reporters at a product launch event that the company’s “public policy team is actually working on facial recognition regulations.”
“It makes a lot of sense to regulate that,” Bezos said. “It’s a perfect example of something that has really positive uses so you don’t want to put the breaks on it. At the same time there’s lots of potential for abuses with that kind of technology and so you do want regulations.”
For a form of technology that digital rights advocates call “uniquely dangerous,” regulations—especially those that Amazon lobbyists have a hand in developing—are not sufficient to keep Americans safe from the privacy violations facial recognition can cause, said Fight for the Future.
“This is why we need to ban facial recognition,” the group tweeted.
“Amazon wants to write the laws governing facial recognition to make sure they’re friendly to their surveillance driven business model,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a statement. “But this type of technology…poses a profound threat to the future of human liberty that can’t be mitigated by industry-friendly regulations. We need to draw a line in the sand and ban governments from using this technology before it’s too late.”
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“Silicon Valley’s calls to ‘regulate’ facial recognition are a trap, designed to hasten the widespread adoption of this invasive and harmful technology by implementing weak regulations that assuage public concern without putting a dent in corporate profits.” —Fight for the Future
Fight for the Future launched a campaign in July aimed at pushing Congress to pass a full ban on facial recognition, following the lead of Somerville, Massachusetts; San Francisco; and Oakland, California, which have barred government use of the technology in recent months.
Fight for the Future and other civil liberties advocates warn that the use of facial recognition technology by federal, state, and local agencies increases the risk of discrimination, police harassment, and false arrests and deportations. Women and people of color are particularly likely to be misidentified by the programs, U.K. government data showed last year.
“Silicon Valley’s calls to ‘regulate’ facial recognition are a trap, designed to hasten the widespread adoption of this invasive and harmful technology by implementing weak regulations that assuage public concern without putting a dent in corporate profits,” Fight for the Future said Wednesday.
Matt Cagle, a civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, tweeted that the organization would be on alert for “weak corporate proposals seeking to undermine” the efforts of cities which have passed facial recognition bans and lawmakers in states including New York, Michigan, and California who are pushing for state-wide bans.
In the United Kingdom, Labour politician Darren Jones said statements like that of Bezos should push his members of Parliament to fight for a ban on facial recognition surveillance.
“We can’t outsource thought leadership and now even the drafting of our laws to private companies,” tweeted Jones.
“We know that members of Congress are currently drafting legislation related to facial recognition,” said Greer, “and we hope they know that the public will not accept trojan horse regulations that line Jeff Bezos’ pockets at the expense of all of our basic human rights.”
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In a move critics said exposes both the particular cruelty of General Motors executives and the systemic inhumanity of the American healthcare system, GM on Tuesday stopped covering health insurance premiums for the nearly 50,000 auto workers striking for fair wages and decent benefits.
The move shifts healthcare costs to the United Auto Workers (UAW), which will be forced to reach into its strike fund to pay the bills. As HuffPost reported, UAW negotiators on Monday sought to confirm with GM that workers’ benefits would be covered through the end of the month. Hours later, GM said the benefits have been terminated.
“A note to anyone who wants to use union members as a wedge to oppose Medicare for All: UAW has one of the best plans in the country, but management can still use it to hold workers hostage. M4A puts power back in our hands.” —Sara Nelson, Association of Flight Attendants
“GM’s decision to yank healthcare coverage away from their dedicated employees with no warning is heartless and unconscionable,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). “GM’s actions could put people’s lives at risk, from the factory worker who needs treatment for their asthma to the child who relies on their parents’ insurance for chemotherapy.”
“The UAW workers on the strike lines are showing immense bravery in the face of intimidation,” added Henry.
The auto workers’ nationwide strike, described as the largest in more than a decade, began just before midnight on Sunday after negotiations between UAW and GM broke down, with union leaders and members accusing management of proposing insulting wage increases and paltry benefits.
As the New York Times reported, GM is pushing for “employees to pay a greater portion of their healthcare costs” even as the company rakes in record-level profits and massive gains from the GOP tax bill.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement Tuesday night that GM’s decision to stop healthcare payments “is the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of.”
“At a time when the CEO of General Motors has received a $22 million compensation package and top of the line benefits, it is cruel and outrageous that GM has cut off the healthcare benefits from their employees in a blatant attempt to force the union into submission,” said Sanders. “I say to General Motors: Restore the healthcare benefits that your workers have earned and deserve.”
Speaking to CNN, Sanders said GM’s move spotlights the urgent need for a healthcare system under which workers’ insurance cannot be yanked away at the whim of corporate executives.
“Under Medicare for All,” said the Vermont senator, “every American—whether you’re working, whether you’re not working, when you are going from one job to another job—it’s there with you.”
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Others echoed Sanders’ condemnation of America’s privatized healthcare system and call for Medicare for All in the wake of GM’s decision:
GM’s move comes as the impasse between the union and management shows few signs of ending.
Steve Frisque, a full-time union steward and committee lead at the GM parts plant in Hudson, Wisconsin, told In These Times that by cutting off workers’ healthcare, the automobile giant is “using scare tactics, making people worried about how they’re going to make it” through the strike.
“We are also hearing that at big plants like in Flint and Arlington,” said Frisque, “GM is planning on busing in what we call scabs into the building to try and do the work. It does look like almost a union-busting type of plan at this point.”
“We sacrificed for GM, and now it’s time for GM to share the wealth,” Frisque added. “They paid essentially no taxes last year, and they act like they’re broke. They have made record profits for the last four or five years. When their CEO Mary Barra is making over $20 million and they say they don’t have enough money to pay their employees on the floor, then I have an issue with that and I think all of us do.”
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President Donald Trump on Monday added to a catalog of head-scratching tweets with a post declaring that he has “great and unmatched wisdom” and threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey.”
The late Monday morning tweet comes after Trump announced Sunday he is taking U.S. forces out of northern Syria and endorsed a Turkey military operation in the area, leaving in a precarious position the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—which includes Kurdish fighters whom the U.S. has heavily relied on to defeat ISIS and whom Turkey sees as a terrorist group.
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Critics pounced on the tweet as evidence Trump is “unhinged,” “delusional,” channeling the Great Wizard of Oz, and called it possibly the “dumbest moment of the Trump presidency.”
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Seven anti-nuclear activists face up to 20 years in prison after a jury in Georgia on Thursday found the activists guilty of four counts of destruction and depredation of government property in excess of $1,000, trespassing, and conspiracy, charges that could land each member of the group in prison for up to 20 years.
“I really think that the verdict was, frankly, reactionary,” defendant Carmen Trotta said in a statement.
Trotta and Steve Kelly, Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Elizabeth McAlister, and Martha Hennessy on the night of April 4, 2018 entered the U.S. Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia and took part in a symbolic closure of the facility in protest of its housing of the base’s Trident nuclear program and then “split into three groups and prayed, poured blood, spray-painted messages against nuclear weapons, hammered on parts of a shrine to nuclear missiles, hung banners, and waited to be arrested.”
The Kings Bay Plowshares Seven hoped to use a necessity defense, claiming the omnicidal potential of the Trident program—that the weapons could end all life on the planet—made their actions a moral imperative. On October 18, Judge Lisa Wood rejected the defense and in her ruling (pdf) barred the defendants from using it or calling on expert witnesses like Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to address the jury.
As Common Dreams reported, Ellsberg on October 19 said he supported the group’s actions and saw the activism in Georgia as essential to stopping the potential of nuclear war wiping out life as we know it.
“I believe that omnicide, the end of civilization and most of humanity, will not be averted without a moral transformation and political mobilization that requires actions of civil disobedience—including that of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7—to inspire,” said Ellsberg.
A jury fund the group guilty within hours of closing testimony on Thursday.
“The Pentagon has many installations—and we just walked out of one of them,” defendant Colville said after the verdict was read. “It’s a place where they weaponize the law.”
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After the verdict, the group’s lawyer Bill Quigley expressed his frustration that the necessity defense was ruled out for trial.
“As the jury was not allowed to hear, the submarines, nuclear weapons submarines, that are at Kings Bay have 3,800 times as much destructive power as the weapons that were used on Hiroshima, enough power to destroy life on Earth as we know it,” said Quigley. “After two years of prayer and action and practice, they came together and took action to go onto Kings Bay and preach the word—preach the word of love, preach the word of life, preach the word of peace, and they are paying a huge price for that as you all know.”
The trial also included edited video, as activist Marianne Grady-Flores, sister of defendant Clare Grady, told journalist Luke O’Neil Thursday:
The group have not yet decided whether they will appeal the verdict. In her comments, defendant Trotta said that the seven activists saw themselves as one part of an ongoing activist struggle.
“We all know which way the wind is blowing,” said Trotta. “There’s the Black Lives Matter movement. There’s the Extinction Rebellion. There’s the Me Too movement.”
“There’s an activist community waiting just behind us,” she said.
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A Trump administration requirement that all visa applicants turn their social media information over to federal agencies will chill free speech online and be especially dangerous for journalists traveling to the U.S. from countries with repressive governments, two rights groups argued in federal court on Thursday.
Representing documentary filmmakers from all over the world, the Knight First Amendment Institute and Brennan Center for Justice filed a complaint against the rule, which went into effect in May.
The rule “stifles speech on the largest platforms for public discourse—including this one,” wrote Carrie DeCell, an attorney for the Knight Institute, on Twitter.
The Knight Institute and Brennan Center are representing the Doc Society and the International Documentary Association (IDA), which count hundreds of filmmakers from all over the world as their members, many of whom make political films.
Filmmakers are among nearly 15 million visa applicants per year who are now required to turn over handles they’ve used for the preceding five years on 20 different social media platforms. The State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can retain the information indefinitely and in some cases share the applicants’ social media accounts with foreign governments, including those of their home countries.
The Doc Society and IDA surveyed more than 100 of their international members and found that many were “concerned that their political views will be used against them during the visa process.”
The requirement could be particularly dangerous for filmmakers coming to the U.S. from repressive regimes which do not observe free speech rights, the groups said. For journalists in such countries, maintaining anonymity online “can be a matter of life and death,” said Jess Search, director of Doc Society, in a statement.
“As an organization committed to filmmaker safety, we believe the registration requirement is a deeply troubling and oppressive development, forcing filmmakers to choose between free online expression and their own security,” said Search. “The U.S. government should be championing freedom of expression, not taking actions which will inhibit it.”
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The groups’ members reported that with the requirement in effect, they were likely to reconsider traveling to the U.S., try to scrub their social media accounts of posts, or avoid sharing their views online.
Ramya Krishnan, an attorney with the Knight Institute, shared on Twitter the anguish the rule had caused her when she applied to renew her visa earlier this year.
Oliver Rivers, managing director of Doc Society, called the rule “bureaucratic intervention in freedom of speech.”
“It’s not just a small requirement on a visa form,” Rivers told The Intercept. “It’s very, very clear encroaching bureaucratic oppression, and I think you have to make a stand when you see something like this.”
While the lawsuit focuses on the rule’s effects on journalists, the requirement has already led to the temporary deportation of a Palestinian Harvard student who was denied entry to the the U.S. because of his Facebook friends’ social media posts.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute, called the requirement a clear violation of the First Amendment.
“The government simply has no legitimate interest in collecting this kind of sensitive information on this immense scale, and the First Amendment doesn’t permit it to do so,” said Jaffer.
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Pierre Gasly was flooded with congratulatory messages after his shock win at Monza last weekend, but a call from one Sebastian Vettel carried a special meaning.
Gasly’s maiden win was a sweet revenge for the Frenchman who was demoted mid-season in 2019 to Red Bull’s ‘B’ team – Scuderia AlphaTauri.
However, the bulls’ top brass were the first to take their hats off to the young charger’s outstanding performance at Monza.
“Helmut congratulated me in Monza, he sent me a text, similar for Christian. They were both really happy with my success,” recounted Gasly.
But the 25-year-old was also welcomed to a very small club by Vettel.
“At Toro Rosso, as Seb mentioned to me on Monday when he called me, [we are] the only two to have won with this team.
“He won in 2008 and went to Red Bull to win four championships, as we know. I’m really happy to have joined him in this winner club for this team.
“It feels very special after winning that race,” he added.
“I guess [as] for every F1 driver it’s first of all a dream since I was a kid and probably when I look back from the moment I was six years old I started to watch Formula 1 and look at Michael [Schumacher] on the top step of the podium and telling my parents ‘ok, I want to be like this guy one day’.
“A lot of things have happened from six years old to now 24 years old and making this happen in Monza. A lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifices and a lot of people on board helping me to make this happen.
“Every driver wants to live these kind of emotions and to live this moment one day was really particular and special for me. With AlphaTauri as a midfield team it’s not something you expect, I think it just made that win even more powerful and even more special.”
Gasly ‘ready’ to move back to Red Bull Racing
Gasly’s win was a form of motorsport poetic justice for the first Frenchman to win a Grand Prix since Olivier Panis at Monaco in 1996, and that wasn’t lost on Monza’s winner.
“After everything that happened over the last 18 months, I felt there were things which were not so fair and I wanted to make my answers on track,” said.
“I never came in the media [to vent his frustrations] because I felt like it wasn’t professional and, even though I did agree with a few things that were said.
“I just keep it for me and said ‘ok, just focus on your performance, focus on yourself, day after day, race after race’ and just try to improve myself as an athlete, as a person as a driver and put strong performances on the track.
“Obviously, the podium last year in Brazil was already amazing, we didn’t expect that, and then just a couple of months later to get my first win with AlphaTauri was probably the best answer.
“But at the moment I think it’s important to enjoy it with the team, AlphaTauri, and we’ll see what opportunities it brings for the future.”
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
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Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach is a Belarusian journalist and program coordinator at Free Press Unlimited.
WARSAW — Poland is trying to reinstate its role as chief promoter of democracy in Belarus, but its own clash with Brussels over democratic values is undermining its message.
Warsaw was an early supporter of the democratic movement and victims of repression in Belarus. Back in the mid-2000s, it initiated a university admission program for expelled Belarusian students and founded the Belarusian-language TV channel Belsat TV. Then Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was one of the masterminds of the EU’s Eastern Partnership policy that included Belarus. He also visited Belarus back in 2010 to negotiate a deal on democratic reforms — though that ultimately failed.
But in more recent years — since the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015 — Poland has largely opted for a good-neighbor approach to Belarus.
While the regime in Minsk continued its policy of suppressing the opposition and the media, and did little to assuage international concerns about human rights, Poland appeared to have more pragmatic concerns. At a meeting in May, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz discussed a range of issues with his Belarusian counterpart Uladzimir Makei, from new oil deals to the future of the so-called Eastern Partnership. That list apparently did not include democratic reforms or human rights.
In its efforts to help Belarus achieve greater independence from Russian energy supplies, Warsaw has also ignored the fact that Belarusians protesting against Russian influence were being fined and jailed, or that journalists of Belsat TV were denied government accreditation and fined. In February, Belsat TV’s Agnieszka Romaszewska warned that the Polish government was not doing enough to build relations with Belarus’ civil society.
For Warsaw, the silent approach has clear advantages. By 2018, Belarus had become Poland’s third-biggest trade partner among former Soviet states — not least due to the re-export of Polish-sanctioned apples to Russia. And in July, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko was among the first to congratulate Andrzej Duda following his reelection as president, expressing “hope for further strengthening of trust- and respect-based good neighborly relations and constructive cooperation.”
That conviviality disappeared quickly after Belarus’ disputed presidential election in August.
Just over a month after his warm-hearted greetings, Lukashenko accused Poland of running a special ops center near Warsaw in order to overthrow the Belarusian regime. On August 28, Lukashenko warned Lithuania and Poland that due to their hostility “now they will be shipping them [goods] by air or trading with Russia via the Baltic and Black Sea.”
Poland has become a vocal proponent of the EU’s decisive measures against the Belarusian authorities. Polish society, whose values are still deeply rooted in the Solidarity movement that brought about the end of communism, immediately recognized the historical parallels with its own struggle against authoritarian rule. Rather than let the opposition take a lead in responding to this crisis, the government started a massive campaign aimed at becoming the voice of the EU on Belarus.
Just a day after the August election in Belarus, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appealed to European Council President Charles Michel to hold an extraordinary summit on Belarus. He later met with the Belarusian opposition in Warsaw. And before the EU could announce its own aid package, Poland pledged €11.3 million in support for civil society in Belarus. On Wednesday, Morawiecki met exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
But Poland now faces two big new challenges. First, because of its own tussle with Brussels over the rule of law, Warsaw is now seen as a less credible proponent of democratic change in Minsk.
In 2017, the European Commission triggered Article 7 proceedings against Poland over a legal overhaul that Brussels said undermined the independence of the country’s judiciary and hence violated core EU values. And its own recent presidential election was disfigured by attacks on international media outlets and scapegoating of LGBTQ people, which intensified after Duda’s reelection.
That all makes it hard for Poland’s criticism of Belarus to stick. Polish radio RMF FM, quoting sources in Brussels, suggested that the very fact the idea for an extraordinary summit came from Warsaw had given it less traction in Brussels. It went ahead only after repeated calls from the Baltic states.
Second is the growing role of another EU neighbor, Lithuania, which has hosted many Belarusian pro-democracy initiatives in its capital Vilnius and spearheaded an all-Baltics sanctions package. Unlike Poland, Lithuania enjoys a good reputation within the EU on democracy and the rule of law. Vilnius was also much quicker to give shelter to endangered Belarusian activists, including Tikhanovskaya herself.
In an op-ed for POLITICO, Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevičius, was blunt in his description of Lukashenko as a “former” president at the head of a “dictatorship.” Lithuania has also shown solidarity with the Belarusians in other ways, for example by mobilizing more than 50,000 citizens to join a solidarity chain from Vilnius to the Belarusian border.
After years of doing little, Poland now says it wants to help change Belarus for the better. But it is discovering that by pressing ahead with constitutional changes that deviate from EU core values, its influence beyond its borders is far less than it once was.
Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) will hold his first campaign rally of the 2020 cycle in his home town of Brooklyn, New York, the senator announced Wednesday.
In a tweet, Sanders confirmed that he would kick off his 2020 bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on Saturday at Brooklyn College, in the New York City neighborhood where Sanders says he was “born and raised.”
“Let’s show Trump and the powerful special interests what they’re up against,” the senator tweeted Wednesday evening.
On Saturday I’m going back to Brooklyn, where I was born and raised, for the first rally of our campaign. Let’s show Trump and the powerful special interests what they’re up against. RSVP here to join us: https://t.co/4qCnhTxTN5
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 28, 2019
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Sanders’ 2016 bid for the presidency, initially considered a long-shot by many analysts, was punctuated by massive campaign rallies across the country featuring tens of thousands of supporters, and the senator saw some of the largest crowds of any 2016 candidate for president before his second-place finish to Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE.
The Vermont senator announced a second bid for the presidency earlier this month on Vermont Public Radio, calling President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE a “racist, a sexist, [and] a homophobe” while vowing to build on the success of his 2016 run.
“[W]hat I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grass-roots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country,” Sanders said.
“We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it’s time to move that revolution forward,” he added at the time.
Several of Sanders’ 2016 advisers recently left his 2020 campaign, citing creative differences, while the senator enjoyed a massive $6 million small-donor fundraising haul in the 24 hours following his campaign announcement.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday sought to tamp down concerns that his age could be an issue if he officially launches a 2020 bid for the White House, stating that he has more experience in government than President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE.
“I have more years of government experience under my belt than the president,” Buttigieg, 37, said at a CNN presidential town hall in Austin, Texas.
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“That’s a low bar. I know that. I also have had more years of executive government experience than the vice president.”
Buttigieg was first elected mayor of South Bend in 2011, becoming the youngest-ever mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents.
Before winning the 2016 election, Trump had not held an elected position. Pence served as the governor of Indiana between 2013 and 2017.
Buttigieg also highlighted his experience in the military as a qualification for being president.
He said that he has “more military experience than anybody to walk into that office on day one since George H.W. Bush.”
“I get I’m the young guy in the conversation, but experience is what qualifies me to have a seat at this table.”