RSN: Bernie Backers Plot Convention Rebellion over 'Medicare for All'

28 July 20

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Bernie Backers Plot Convention Rebellion over 'Medicare for All'

Holly Otterbein, Politico
Otterbein writes: "A revolt is brewing among Bernie Sanders delegates three weeks from the Democratic National Convention."
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, wears a protective mask while walking to the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol. (photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News)

GOP, White House Aim to Temporarily Reduce Weekly Unemployment Benefit From $600 to $200
Erica Werner, Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Senate Republicans will propose cutting weekly emergency unemployment benefits from to until states can bring a more complicated program online, according to two people familiar with the plan granted anonymity to share details that had not yet been released."
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Soldiers train at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., in October 2017. (photo: John Bazemore/AP)

William J. Astore | Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex as a Cytokine Storm
William J. Astore, TomDispatch
Astore writes: "Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism, reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism."
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A boy wearing a mask waits inside a truck with a banner reading 'free them all' after a caravan protest around Immigration and Customs Enforcement El Paso Processing Center to demand the release of ICE detainees due to safety concerns amidst the COVID-19 outbreak on April 16, 2020 in El Paso, TX. (photo: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)

Letters From ICE Detainees Expose Desperate Prison Conditions Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
Cora Currier, The Intercept
Currier writes: "In June, women held at Eloy Detention Center, a private immigration prison in Arizona owned and operated by CoreCivic, began to write down what they were going through. The letter writers did so despite the threat of retaliation, because, they said, people had to know what was happening. 'You can't speak freely here,' one woman wrote."
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Members of an anti-fascist or Antifa march in Washington DC in 2019. (photo: Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)

Anti-Fascists Linked to Zero Murders in the US in 25 Years
Lois Beckett, Guardian UK
Beckett writes: "Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and 'far-left fascism' a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades." 

As Trump rails against ‘far-left’ fascism, new database shows leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists

onald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

More broadly, the database lists 21 victims killed in leftwing attacks since 2010 , and 117 victims of rightwing attacks in that same period – nearly six times as much. Attacks inspired by the Islamic State and similar jihadist groups, in contrast, killed 95 people since 2010, slightly fewer than rightwing extremists, according to the data set. More than half of these victims died in a a single attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.

‘Leftwing violence has not been a major terrorism threat’

The database was assembled by researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a centrist thinktank, and reviewed by the Guardian.

Its launch comes as Trump administration officials have echoed the president’s warnings of a violent “leftwing” revolution. “Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent and extremist agenda,” the attorney general, William Barr, said amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd. A new justice department taskforce on violent anti-government extremists listed “antifa” as a major threat, while making no mention of white supremacy.

Defining which violent incidents constitute politically motivated acts of terrorism, and trying to sort political violence into leftwing and rightwing categories, is inherently messy and debatable work. This is particularly true in the US, where highly publicized mass shootings are common, and some have no clear political motivation at all.

Stated political motives for violent attacks often overlap with other potential factors, including life crises, anger issues, a history of violent behavior and, in some cases, serious mental health conditions.

While researchers sometimes disagree on how to categorize the ideology of specific attacks, multiple databases that track extremist violence, including data maintained by the Anti-Defamation League, and from journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting, have found the same trend: It’s violent rightwing attacks, not “far-left” violence, that presents the greater deadly threat to Americans today.

“Leftwing violence has not been a major terrorism threat,” said Seth Jones, a counter-terrorism expert who led the creation of CSIS’s dataset. .

Categorizing ‘leftwing’ extremist attacks

Most of the deadly extremist attacks the CSIS researchers categorized as “leftwing” were killings of police officers by black men, many of them US military veterans, who described acting out of anger or retribution for police killings of black Americans.

These shooting attacks include the murder of two police officers in New York City in 2014, after Michael Brown and Eric Garner’s killings; and the murders of five officers in Dallas, Texas, and three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016.

Some of the gunmen who killed police had connections to black nationalist groups, which extremism researchers at CSIS and elsewhere said they typically categorize as leftwing, largely because in the 1960s, influential black nationalist groups like the Black Panther party were anti-capitalist and considered part of the New Left.

Making that categorization is less straightforward today, some researchers acknowledge, since some prominent black nationalist organizations express homophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic views, values that set them in opposition to the current American left.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior fellow at the ADL’s Center on Extremism, noted that Gavin Eugene Long, who staged an attack on police in Baton Rouge, had ties to black nationalism and was also part of an offshoot of the sovereign citizens movement, an anti-government ideology that is typically categorized as rightwing.

In several of the high-profile leftwing attacks included in the CSIS list the only fatality was the perpetrator. A mass shooting attack on a group of congressional Republicans during a baseball practice outside of Washington DC, in 2017 left the Republican congressman Steve Scalise seriously injured, and three other people shot.

The gunman, James Hodgkinson, 66, was the only one killed in the attack. Hodgkinson had deliberately targeted Republicans and had expressed disgust with Trump. 

Many of the other leftwing attacks or plots in the CSIS database, including by anarchists, environmental groups and others, resulted in no deaths at all. Often, leftwing plots, particularly by animal rights activists, have targeted businesses or buildings, “and their primary weapons have been incendiaries designed to create fires or destroy infrastructure – not kill people,” said Jones, the researcher who led the creation of the data set.

The one deadly anti-fascist attack listed in the database occurred in July 2019, when Willem von Spronsen, a 69-year-old white man, was shot dead by police outside an Ice detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Authorities said von Spronsen had been throwing molotov cocktails, setting flares, that he set a car on fire and that he had a rifle. Local activists told media outlets they believed he had been trying to destroy buses parked outside the facility that were used to transport people who were being deported.

Von Spronsen, who had previously been arrested at a protest outside the detention center, was involved in a contentious divorce, and both a friend and his ex-wife had described him as suicidal. In a letter he wrote to friends before his death, Von Spronsen called detention centers “concentration camps” and said he wanted to take action against evil, BuzzFeed News reported. “I am antifa,” he reportedly wrote.

No one was harmed in the attack except Von Spronsen, according to media reports.

Researchers who monitor extremist groups at the Anti-Defamation League and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said they, too, were not aware of a single murder linked to an American anti-fascist in the last 20 to 25 years.

Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said some leftwing groups were known for more radical and violent tactics in the 1960s, adding: “It’s just not the case today.”

Mark Pitcavage said he knew of only one killing, 27 years ago, that might potentially be classified as connected to anti-fascist activism: the shooting of a racist skinhead, Eric Banks, by an anti-racist skinhead, John Bair, in Portland, Oregon, in 1993.

‘A false equivalence’

Given the discrepancies between the deadly toll of leftwing and rightwing violence, American law enforcement agencies have long faced criticism for failing to take the threat of white supremacist violence seriously, while at the same time overstating the risks posed by leftwing protesters. After a violent rally in California in 2016, law enforcement officers worked with neo-Nazis to build criminal cases against anti-fascist protesters, while not recommending charges against neo-Nazis for stabbing the anti-fascists.

Antifa activists have been the targets of domestic terror attacks by white supremacists, including in a terror plot early this year, in which law enforcement officials alleged that members of the neo-Nazi group the Base had planned to murder a married couple in Georgia they believed were anti-fascist organizers.

“Antifa is not going around murdering people like rightwing extremists are. It’s a false equivalence,” said Beirich.

“I’ve at times been critical of antifa for getting into fights with Nazis at rallies and that kind of violence, but I can’t think of one case in which an antifa person was accused of murder,” she added.

The new CSIS database only includes attacks through early May 2020, and does not yet list incidents connected with the massive national protests against police violence after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, including the killings of two California law enforcement officers by a man authorities say was linked to the rightwing “boogaloo” movement.

Today, Jones said, “the most significant domestic terrorism threat comes from white supremacists, anti-government militias and a handful of individuals associated with the ‘boogaloo’ movement that are attempting to create a civil war in the United States.”

Daily interpersonal violence and state violence pose a much greater threat to Americans than any kind of extremist terror attack. More than 100,000 people have been killed in gun homicides in the United States in the past decade, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US police officers shoot nearly 1,000 Americans to death each year. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot by the police as white Americans, according to analysis by the Washington Post and the Guardian.

But the president’s rhetoric about “antifa” violence has dangerous consequences, not just for anti-fascists, but for any Americans who decide to protest, some activists said.

Yvette Felarca, a California-based organizer and anti-fascist activist, said she saw Trump’s claims about antifa violence, particularly during the George Floyd protests, as a message to his “hardcore” supporters that it was appropriate to attack people who came out to protest.

“It’s his way of saying to his supporters: ‘Yeah, go after them. Beat them or kill them to the point where they go back home and stay home afraid,’” Felarca said.

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Migrants at the Venezuela-Colombia border. July 16, 2020. (photo: EFE)

Colombia: Migrant Trafficking Increases Amid Pandemic
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Every day, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia start their trek back to their homeland illegally as they often get swindled by Colombian human trafficking networks."

The border city Maicao, Colombia, is the meeting point where most Venezuela citizens pass through illegally, evading sanitary controls by the Venezuelan government to prevent the COVID-19 spread in the countr.y  

According to Madelein Garcia, teleSUR's correspondent in Venezuela, some migrants have claimed they were charged US$200 return to their homeland, without having any guarantee that they will actually get to the Bolivarian nation.  

"Others have said they were robbed and defrauded when trying to get back," Garcia tweeted.

It was the case of Marlexis Somoza, a Venezuelan migrant who doesn’t recommend anyone return to the country illegally. “I was robbed and mistreated by a Colombian human trafficking network,” she assured.

"Listen carefully to this woman. In Colombia they sell them the idea that in Venezuela they will be mistreated. This is how they attract customers. This group was left on the road, swindled, robbed." 

The risk of contracting coronavirus in the journey is extremely high. The border city of Zulia, in Venezuela, is currently the pandemic's epicenter in the South Amercian country.

Venezuela government estimates that at least 4,000 people that entered the country illegally, were COVID-19 positive.  

The Bolivarian nations has wasted no efforts in trying to stop the corruption within the Colombia-Venezuela border.

A defense zone in Zulia was created temporarily to deal with the situation. The migrants are taken to this zone to comply with the mandatory 14-days-long quarantine. 

Venezuelan migrant Juan Carlos Martinez says he was misled into taking the illegal road and paying US$200 for the trail.

“They lied to me. They told me that if I return to the Venezuela trough the legal route I would get mistreated. But I'm not seeing that. I’ve actually been treated very nicely,” Martinez said. 

"Listen to this testimony, listen carefully, in Maicao they tell the Venezuelan migrants that here they will get the virus injected.  That is why they decide to take this journey." 

Other migrants, however, decide to go back home via the legal route, complying with the protocol established by the Venezuelan government. If they test negative for  COVID-19, they are free to go back home. 

“We are thankful because when we got here, we were treated very kindly,” a Venezuelan migrant said after coming back from Colombia legally.

Various migrants say they were evicted from their homes and humiliated in Colombia.  

Although Venezuelan migrants lived a nightmare when trying to cross illegally, some have been able to return home by buses provided by Venezuela government. They are now able to reunite with their families.

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Members of Shingai Matimba inspecting their crops. Women farmers in Zimbabwe took the lead in establishing a community garden to combat the illegal mining activities that were destroying the land. (photo: GAGGA/Mongabay)

Environmental Defenders Voice Concerns as COVID-19 Crisis Deepens
Lauren Crothers, Mongabay
Crothers writes: "As the COVID-19 crisis enters its fifth month since being declared a pandemic in March, environmental defenders who protect some of the world’s most threatened ecosystems have had to adapt to the pandemic’s ripple effects on their communities and women, in particular."

Activists have raised concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic is having an acute impact on women and their access to water at a time when it’s needed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Research has shown that women are disproportionately affected by environmental and climate change issues over men; they are more likely to live in poverty and rely heavily on natural resources to survive.

A network of mainly women-led community-based organizations, environmental justice and women’s rights funds and NGOs that focuses on the intersection of human rights and environmental issues that affect women around the world, the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), has been collecting oral testimonies from women around the world. Representatives from GAGGA say the organization is concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and their ability to access water. Access to water is critical to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The organization points to how the pandemic “impacts women in a differentiated way, as they are the ones responsible for managing food and water resources and caring for their families and communities, thus ensuring food security and the very survival of local populations.”

GAGGA’s series of recorded audio interviews with its members and partners for its new “GAGGA Voices” podcast series attempts to address some of that. Features include firsthand accounts from women on the front lines of the fight to protect the environment. According to the podcast on human rights, “many of the governments from the countries where we work are using the cover of coronavirus measures to clamp down on rights and push out policies that further marginalize and discriminate, as well as relax environmental regulations.”

Interviews with environmental activists across the globe have also laid bare various side effects of the pandemic on daily life, from a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) to displacement and food insecurity, but also show the steps they are taking to tackle these issues.

Bhanu Kalluri works with the Dhaatri Trust in India, focusing on the needs of Indigenous women and women affected by the mining industry. Nearly a million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed there; only the U.S. and Brazil have more cases. The Dhaatri Trust also runs a forestry rights and forest skills program for its members, and has found that the pandemic has affected members’ ability to sell forest produce as weekly markets have been scaled back.

In her interview with GAGGA, Kalluri said COVID-19 has had a “severe” impact on high-migration areas of the country, “especially landless poor who have been migrating to other states in India where they are working either as construction labor, mine labor or in factories, because they have lost their lands, and most of them have been displaced from their original lands.”

Because of the pandemic, Kalluri said, “a lot of migrant workers are stranded, and we are trying to help them stay where they are and find food and shelter.”

With many people surviving on rations, Kalluri said the Dhaatri Trust has been “tracking the government COVID welfare relief schemes, especially food distribution and medicines,” and has set up networks of youth volunteers who collect data on the numbers of families who have, or have not, returned to their homes.

Worryingly, a number of the women in these areas are affected by silicosis, a disease that can scar the lungs and affect one’s ability to breathe, and is common among people who work in mines.

“Mainly what we find is that in most of our areas there are a lot of widows, single women, and women who are having silicosis in their families, so these are the most vulnerable families as they completely depend on daily wage labor,” Kalluri said.

Riska Darmawanti works with Ecological Observation and Wetlands Conservation (ECOTON) in Indonesia, with a focus on the empowerment of women and palm oil-impacted watersheds in Sambas, in western Borneo. To date, Indonesia has more than 81,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to recent health ministry figures.

“The women that we work with are rubber-tree sappers, plantation laborers and farmers, rice farmers. These women — especially the laborers and farmers — have higher risks of pesticide exposure, which from our identification [are] mostly hazardous pesticides,” Darmawanti told GAGGA.

“During this COVID-19 outbreak, these women cannot afford to stay at home or

do social distancing, as their income resources come from it. In addition to that, this exposure to hazardous pesticides increases their risk to COVID-19 because of the health issues [that] come from it.”

Darmawanti also said that women are under increased pressure to access clean water, and that ECOTON is trying to “provide alternatives for drinking water resources, which come from the rainwater,” as well as increasing the women’s awareness of better sanitation and hygiene practices.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, where there have been shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, women’s groups have been coming together to find solutions.

According to Laili Khainur, the director of a women’s grassroots NGO called Gemawan, there are concerns about food shortages and lack of PPE.

In response, the group has been “mobilizing the power of women’s group members to make their own personal protective equipment, such as masks made of fabric, and to share with the members of communities,” Khainur said. Members are also being encouraged in “shifting sales strategy of both food and products from traditional to online” to mitigate the loss of funds that would usually be made in local markets.

In its annual report, released in May, GAGGA said the pandemic had “radically changed” life for many communities around the world, “particularly deepening existing conflicts and worsening scarcities for the most marginalised communities, including women.”

But it said the crisis was also an opportunity for the voices of women environmental defenders to be amplified and for them to use their “traditional knowledge and practices.”

This article was originally published by Mongabay.

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