30 July 20
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30 July 20
Politics at the Point of a Gun
Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post
Partlow writes: "He was 37 and had never voted. Now he has formed his own political party and is the leader of American Wolf, a roving band of civilians who have anointed themselves 'peacekeepers' amid months of tense protests over racism and policing."
efore his political awakening this spring, Peter Diaz lived a quiet life near this leafy liberal bastion at the base of the Puget Sound. He ran a tree-trimming service and a business that built office cubicles. He was 37 and had never voted.
Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post
Partlow writes: "He was 37 and had never voted. Now he has formed his own political party and is the leader of American Wolf, a roving band of civilians who have anointed themselves 'peacekeepers' amid months of tense protests over racism and policing."
Conservative armed groups move into politics as backlash builds against protests, stay-at-home orders
efore his political awakening this spring, Peter Diaz lived a quiet life near this leafy liberal bastion at the base of the Puget Sound. He ran a tree-trimming service and a business that built office cubicles. He was 37 and had never voted.
Now he has formed his own political party and is the leader of American Wolf, a roving band of civilians who have anointed themselves “peacekeepers” amid months of tense protests over racism and policing. In the name of law and order, members of his informal group have shot paintballs at demonstrators and carry zip ties and bear spray as they look for antifascists. Diaz has done “recon” in Minneapolis and Seattle’s “autonomous zone,” and drove his American Wolf mobile home to Mount Rushmore to celebrate Independence Day with President Trump.
America’s summer of anxiety and rage has swept up men like Diaz, energizing conservatives who are deploying to the front lines of the culture war. Across the country, conservative armed civilians have surged into public view — marching on statehouses, challenging Black Lives Matter protests, chasing Internet rumors — and bringing the threat of lethal force to local politics. Their emergence has prompted congressional hearings on the surge in anti-government militias and domestic extremism and has alarmed researchers who track hate groups.
Unlike the old image of militiamen as fringe elements motivated by a desire to overthrow the federal government, these groups often rally in defense of the president and see themselves as pro-government allies of local law enforcement.
“We’re the silent majority,” Diaz said, standing outside his house with a .45-caliber Remington handgun on his belt. “It’s time to act.”
Many members of these armed groups consider this pre-election period a defining moment. In the pandemic stay-at-home orders, they see government overreach that restricts their freedoms and harms their businesses. In the months of volatile street protests, they see local authorities who lost the nerve to confront violent agitators.
The federal agents clashing with protesters in Oregon are “our Portland heroes,” Diaz wrote on Facebook last week — not performing illegal arrests, as critics have alleged, but making “strategic detentions” of high-value targets. Diaz visited Portland, Ore., earlier this month to offer federal agents free beer and homemade medals of valor as a show of his appreciation.
Gun-toting civilians have stormed the Michigan Capitol demanding the state lift coronavirus restrictions, and rushed to the battlefield in Gettysburg following a flag-burning hoax. After a member of a civilian militia in New Mexico shot and critically injured a man, a prosecutor in Albuquerque earlier this month sued the militia in an attempt to stop it from showing up as a military unit at protests and assuming law enforcement duties.
With a hodgepodge of military garb and over-the-counter assault rifles, such self-styled “patriots” come from lots of backgrounds, but they are predominantly white and male. They are often veterans who say the mission now is to defend the Constitution and the freedoms they fought for in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I never thought that I’d be in the back of a pickup rolling through downtown Olympia with six guys heavily locked and loaded, armored out,” said Diaz, a former Army reservist. “I’m doing something now that’s for a greater cause than myself. And it feels really . . . good.”
In the Pacific Northwest, far-right and militia-style groups have a long history, but their past standoffs and dramas tended to play out in remote rural settings. During the pandemic and protests, right-wing groups such as the Washington Three Percenters, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have held rallies to declare their rights and appeared as counterprotesters at others’ events. Supporters of these groups are running in state and local elections this year in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and elsewhere across the region.
Their appearance at hundreds of events and protests this year across the country is “part of their effort to normalize the presence of armed paramilitaries on the streets, which is a remarkably disturbing turn of events,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based organization that tracks far-right groups.
“What we’re seeing right now is the outward manifestation of years of organizing by militia-type groups,” Burghart said. “They’ve moved from backwoods training to on-the-streets activism.”
Many pro-gun conservatives are rallying around Loren Culp, a small-town sheriff who is a Republican candidate for governor in Washington.
Culp’s profile rose two years ago when he refused to enforce a new state gun law that raised the age to buy semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21. He declared his small eastern Washington town of Republic a “sanctuary city” for the Second Amendment.
Even in a blue state where former Democratic presidential candidate and two-term Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to win handily, Culp’s rallies in rural Washington towns have attracted hundreds of people. In recent polls, Culp leads among Republicans and has raised more funds than his rivals in the primary apart from one candidate, who self-funded a large portion of his campaign.
“We have to quit enabling the criminals and bring law and order back to our cities and our entire state,” Culp said at a campaign stop in Elma, Wash., last month, speaking from a flatbed truck parked on a paintball grounds. “We have to bring people who have a spine and who understand and have gun leadership in their life.”
The appearance of guns in this tense political moment has not been confined to conservatives. A Black Lives Matter protester who was carrying an assault rifle was shot and killed in Austin by a motorist Saturday night.
During recent unrest in Portland, some protesters have been carrying “powerful slingshots, Tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles and explosive devices,” Attorney General William P. Barr told a hearing Tuesday, at which Democrats accused him of sending in federal agents to incite confrontation to benefit Trump’s reelection campaign.
In the Northwest, leftist groups such as the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club also carried weapons as they escorted speakers or guarded Seattle’s protest encampment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. There were at least six people shot — and two deaths — in the vicinity of the encampment before it was eventually cleared by police earlier this month.
“We’ve had a few events where Proud Boys have gotten up in our faces and yelled and threatened us,” said Nick, a member of the gun club who gave only his first name, referring to the self-proclaimed “western chauvinists” group that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a hate group. “They don’t throw punches at us because they know we’re armed.”
In the foothills of the Cascades, the leader of the Washington Three Percenters was building a lakeside bonfire for a Fourth of July campaign fundraiser for a Republican statehouse candidate. Craig Hanvey, 45, doused the logs in gasoline and took aim with a blowtorch.
The day’s special kindling? A copy of Jon Lee Anderson’s 800-page biography of Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary. It was no Marxist tract, but it pictured a Marxist on the cover. The book burst into flames.
“This socialist agenda needs to get reined in,” Hanvey said.
There is a performative, provocateur’s flavor to these groups. At the fundraiser, Hanvey was carrying a handgun and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, the sartorial symbol of the “boogaloo bois,” a fringe movement that anticipates a second American civil war. But Hanvey said he had considered only that it was a warm summer day and the shirt had short sleeves.
The Washington Three Percenters is an offshoot of the national organization named after the debunked notion that only 3 percent of colonists fought in the American Revolution. The state group, which has 437 members, Hanvey said, appears in public sometimes looking like a military unit, with long guns and body armor. But they bristle if anyone calls them a militia.
Such armed groups have been the target of criticism and, in some cases, ridicule. Last month, the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen turned up unannounced at a pro-gun rally in Olympia organized by far-right groups. Disguised in a long beard and overalls, he sang a song mocking the event. (“Sleepy Joe Biden, what we gonna do? Inject him with the Wuhan Flu” was one of the tamer lines).
“Obviously, they’re trying to prank us and make us look like a bunch of racists,” said Matt Marshall, the founder and former leader of the Washington Three Percenters, who helped organize the rally.
Video of the event was widely shared online and written up in entertainment publications. But the public embarrassment — some in the crowd sang along with Cohen, others booed — was a recruiting boon for the armed group. The following week, more than 200 people requested to join its private Facebook group, Hanvey said.
“We have never had the level of conservative activism that we have now,” Marshall said.
Marshall was the candidate benefiting from the Fourth of July event at a private lakefront home in Eatonville. He has tried to appeal to a broader audience and soften the image of the Washington Three Percenters.
Marshall, a former Army medic who served in Afghanistan, was elected to Eatonville’s school board last year. He said he finds the overt military attire counterproductive.
“We’re not winning anybody in the middle by showing up in body armor and military fatigues and AR-15s,” he said. “Nobody’s looking at this and going ‘Oh, these look like the normal people I want to go talk to.' ”
In speeches, Marshall has preached against racism and in favor of tolerance. He advocates civic duty and civil discourse. He bemoans how social media has helped people demonize their enemies, fostered “cancel culture,” and fomented division in the United States.
“I think the solution is learning to have effective dialogue with members across the aisle, with people who have different ideologies, to come to a mutual understanding, mutual respect,” Marshall said in an interview. “If nobody’s going to listen with honest intent to at least hear the other side, and listen with respect, we’re never going to get anywhere.”
Marshall’s critics see a darker reality beneath the rhetoric. Civil rights groups contend that the Washington Three Percenters is an anti-government militia that promotes conspiracy theories and seeks to undermine democratic institutions.
“We know that their paramilitary presence has served to heighten and escalate tense situations,” said Eric K. Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, which tracks far-right and white nationalist groups. “These are organizations that have created space and protected individuals who are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and ideologies. They certainly haven’t shown responsible leadership.”
In the small town of Black Diamond, 30 miles southeast of Seattle, two people on the city council are members of the Washington Three Percenters. In Idaho, two men charged in a 2014 armed standoff with federal agents are running for public office.
Recent appearances by armed groups, particularly in liberal-leaning communities, have prompted local scandals.
One night in early June, members of the Three Percenters showed up armed outside an Olympia gun store that had posted on Facebook a warning about riots planned for that night and invited “armed citizenry” to “help secure the business.” Members of the group later appeared in a photo from that night standing alongside an Olympia police officer. The incident sparked outrage in the city, a police investigation, and the officer was suspended.
“It was a complete overuse of force and intimidation," said Sam Rasmussen, the owner of a restaurant next to the gun shop. "It is not good for a sleepy town to have armed gunmen in it.”
The police chief of Snohomish, a city north of Seattle, was ousted last month, and the mayor is under pressure to resign after welcoming dozens of armed men — one waving a Confederate flag, others with hate group insignia — who congregated on a main street to defend a row of boutiques because of Internet rumors that “Antifa” looters were going to arrive. (They didn’t.)
Groups with openly white nationalist and neo-Nazi views also have appeared as counterprotesters, including at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Boise, Idaho, last month. Some shouted “heil Hitler” and “white power," the Idaho Statesman reported.
Joe Evans, a military veteran and Libertarian candidate for Congress, was beaten over the head outside city hall by three members of a motorcycle gang that descended on Boise that day alongside hundreds of other armed white men.
“They were there specifically to attack [Black Lives Matter],” Evans said. “It was obvious they supported white nationalism, white separatism or white supremacy in some form.”
Evans had come to the protest to hear a friend speak and ended up joining a line of people linking arms to separate the “defund the police” rally from the armed counterprotesters. Evans said he has attended several pro-Second Amendment events in the past and has no issues with weapons being present in public, but that the armed men who arrived that day were belligerent and dangerous.
“This is actually the first time we’ve had violence on this scale occur in Boise,” Evans said. “I’m good for spirited debate. I love it. That’s important. But what happened [June 30] was unprecedented and extremely inappropriate for the way we normally do business here.”
The six square blocks in Seattle that became known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) also provoked a response from conservative armed groups, who saw the protest site as a flagrant destruction of private property and a sign that authorities couldn’t be trusted to maintain order. Members of the Proud Boys, known for the group’s violent clashes in Portland, walked through the tent camp, provoking screaming matches, and other armed civilians surveilled the site, according to people present.
Trump has fanned the outrage, tweeting that the Seattle protesters were “domestic terrorists” and urging Washington authorities to “Take back your city NOW.”
In early July, a few days after police cleared the protest zone, a few dozen people calling themselves “patriots” showed up near the site, some openly carrying guns, waving Trump flags and American flags.
A larger crowd of protesters swarmed around them, shouting “Go home fascists,” and taunting them for several blocks as they walked away. The patriots fired pepper spray in their retreat.
Robert Nielsen, a 33-year-old disc jockey, coughed on the fumes as he watched the patriots disperse.
He had grown up in a conservative family in rural Idaho and said that the autonomous zone protests were necessary even though he didn’t approve of the vandalism and graffiti against local businesses. “My sister is dating a black guy right now and she can’t go home,” he said. “It’s sad.”
“I think we need to keep following through,” he said of liberal protesters like himself. “Our voices weren’t being heard peacefully protesting. So it’s like, what do you do?”
Before police moved in to clear out Seattle’s autonomous zone, Peter Diaz had been working on his own plan to solve it.
The Olympia businessman-turned-leader of American Wolf had sent members of his team to the protest on reconnaissance missions. He said he had planned to hire 50 construction workers and two helicopters, and build a wall around the protest to cut off supplies until protesters surrendered or starved. He had sketched out a $10,000 budget for the effort.
“The only live fire rifles would be in the helicopters, as a show of ... force,” he explained. “And then have the nonlethal on the ground and pull up in five different 10-man stations and build a wall around CHOP, one block back, and say: We’re going to allow everybody to come and go as they like, but we’re not going to let in any supplies.”
Diaz eventually called off his plan. But his brand of belligerent civilian freelancing has alarmed authorities in Olympia, a predominantly white and liberal city.
Dozens of local officials including Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby (D) signed an open letter last month condemning American Wolf and other militia-style groups as “armed vigilantes” that have “created a climate of fear” in the state capital. Diaz responded by calling the local officials “treasonous politicians” and filmed himself urinating on a copy of their letter.
One night in late June, Diaz heard Black Lives Matter protesters were attempting to set up an autonomous zone in Olympia. He jumped in his truck.
“I was just like, ‘Oh no they’re not,’ ” he recalled.
Diaz drove his truck through the caution tape that had been strung up, pulled out a knife, and began arguing with protesters, mostly teens and people in their 20s, he said. Amid the yelling, Diaz said he and other members of his group were prodded with umbrellas and then he was Maced in the face. The incident was captured on video.
“One of my guys stepped up and goes bap, bap, bap, bap — and shoots four paintballs directly into the group,” he said.
At least one young person was hit with a paintball in the upper thigh.
“It was at very close range,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. “It left a nasty bruise.”
“I think it’s pretty blatantly racist to oppose a Black Lives Matter protest and to wield guns against people who aren’t armed,” the person added. “It’s fair to say they’ve also terrorized the town and made a lot of people feel uncomfortable about going into town and made people feel like they can’t be safe while standing up for black lives.”
Diaz denies that he is racist, saying he is the son of a Mexican immigrant. There are also black members of American Wolf.
Diaz conceded that he was “a little bit more aggressive than I needed” to be, but said he was angry about being sprayed. His group also has been the victim of violence. During a subsequent tense protest, one of Diaz’s former employees with the tree service was beaten over the head with an extendible baton. Two people were arrested in the July 12 assault.
Diaz blames the recent riots in Portland and Seattle on people with a “deep hatred for American ideals.”
“Most of them haven’t been able to make their way, so they hate the system we’re in,” he said. “They want to have a government that gives them everything, they want socialism.”
Diaz says he plays a positive role in the community. He wants to be relatable and entertaining, particularly as he seeks to expand his following and establish the national headquarters of his political party, called the American Progressive Constitutionalist Party, in his backyard. Diaz has been campaigning for Culp, the Republican candidate for governor, including holding a fundraiser for him. He’s already spent $178,000 on his political activities and American Wolf this year, he said.
“I need to monetize this,” he said. “Positive change at the national level is our goal. Fame and fortune are the byproduct of the goal.”
Selby’s criticism of vigilante groups — and her decision to kneel with Black Lives Matter protesters early in the movement — has sparked an outpouring of hate mail.
“I’ve gotten serious threats from across the country from the alt-right,” the mayor said. “Vicious, vicious things, being called the worst names.”
The city also has suffered from a wave of vandalism by leftist “anarchists,” she said, who have made late-night vandalism runs into the city, breaking windows, setting dumpster fires and tagging buildings with graffiti, including Selby’s home.
“They’re both inciting each other,” Selby said. “It’s mostly in our situation the anarchist [groups] creating the havoc and chaos. But we still are very much wanting our community to know we don’t need any help from our militia-type groups. Our police got this. They’ve got this fine. Stay home.”
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Federal agents attempt to clear protesters gathering at the courthouse in Portland, Oregon. (photo: Amy Harris/Shutterstock)
Trump Administration to Send Federal Agents to Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee
Brett Samuels, The Hill
Samuels writes: "The Trump administration is sending additional federal agents and funding to Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit, expanding a program that has targeted Democratic-run cities facing increases in violent crime."
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Brett Samuels, The Hill
Samuels writes: "The Trump administration is sending additional federal agents and funding to Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit, expanding a program that has targeted Democratic-run cities facing increases in violent crime."
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The line at an employment office in Las Vegas. (photo: John Locher/AP)
The Washington Post Editorial Board
Excerpt: "The 31.8 million U.S. workers currently receiving unemployment insurance benefits need that help - and they need clarity about how much help they are going to get, and for how much longer."
Too bad neither the Republican majority in the Senate nor the White House can get its act together to meet those needs, especially with a July 31 expiration date for a covid-19-related $600-per-week supplement fast approaching.
The GOP has proposed renewing the supplement at a lower level, $200, through September, to be followed by a new system under which recipients get 70 percent of their previous wages, up to $500 per week. Democrats want the $600 per week to continue unchanged through the end of this year. It’s anyone’s guess how this might be resolved before Friday.
Perhaps it would help to recall that the $600 supplement, like the March 27 Cares Act, of which it was a part, was actually a bipartisan measure. Democrats and Republicans agreed that workers being thrown out of their jobs because of the nationwide pandemic response should get the same weekly income they had on the job. Calculating a 100 percent wage replacement for everyone proved technically infeasible, however, because of the insufficent investments states had made in their computer systems. So lawmakers approved the $600 flat rate as a rough-and-ready substitute.
It was understood at the time — some GOP senators even raised the issue — that many beneficiaries would get more in unemployment than at work, and that this could create a disincentive to work. Given the lack of jobs, and the need to shore up family budgets, as well as the proven role of unemployment insurance in boosting much-needed demand, this anomaly was deemed acceptable.
The GOP goal of 70 percent wage replacement retreats from this previous consensus, in the name of restoring work incentives, though it is better than the 45 percent that states typically provide. Democrats correctly respond that there is not yet much evidence of a negative impact on labor supply because of the $600 supplement, largely because there are still so few jobs open. The economic outlook is uncertain at best. It stands to reason, however, that perverse incentives will grow in significance as time goes on and the labor market heals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5 of every 6 unemployed Americans will be better off receiving benefits than working by the end of 2020, if the $600 supplement remains in place.
The best approach would be to shoot for a higher level of wage replacement than the GOP has proposed, while still reducing the percentage of workers receiving more in unemployment than they could by working. To that end, it may make sense to create a trigger mechanism to reduce supplemental benefits as unemployment shrinks. Major investments in technology are also urgent, so state agencies can at last do the calculations necessary to optimize benefit levels.
The worst outcome would be for the $600 supplement to lapse with nothing to replace it, sending workers, and the economy, over a cliff. As matters now stand, the country is dangerously close to the edge.
Dawn breaks after a second night of unrest in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody. (photo: David Joles/Getty)
Minneapolis Police: Hell's Angel Sparked Riots Over George Floyd's Death
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Police say a man captured on surveillance video breaking windows at a south Minneapolis auto parts store in the days after George Floyd's death is a Hell's Angels member who was bent on stirring up social unrest."
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Associated Press
Excerpt: "Police say a man captured on surveillance video breaking windows at a south Minneapolis auto parts store in the days after George Floyd's death is a Hell's Angels member who was bent on stirring up social unrest."
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Surges in coronavirus deaths across the country have sometimes strained the capacity of morgues and funeral homes. A worker prepared a casket in Brownsville, Texas. (photo: Tamir Kalifa/The New York Times)
US Surpasses 150,000 Coronavirus Deaths, Far Eclipsing Earlier Projections
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, The New York Times
Bogel-Burroughs writes: "The United States' leading authority on infectious disease expressed hope in April that no more than 60,000 people in the country would die from the coronavirus."
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Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, The New York Times
Bogel-Burroughs writes: "The United States' leading authority on infectious disease expressed hope in April that no more than 60,000 people in the country would die from the coronavirus."
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An injured Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Idlib province in November 2019. (photo: AFP)
Trump's Sanctions Are Crippling Syria's Beleaguered Health Sector
Kamal Alam, Middle East Eye
Alam writes: "It has been a month since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Caesar Act sanctions coming into play as policy on 17 June."
t has been a month since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Caesar Act sanctions coming into play as policy on 17 June.
Kamal Alam, Middle East Eye
Alam writes: "It has been a month since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Caesar Act sanctions coming into play as policy on 17 June."
Many hospitals need urgent reconstruction, but sanctions are preventing them from importing critical equipment
t has been a month since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Caesar Act sanctions coming into play as policy on 17 June.
There has been a clear mismatch in US priorities, as seen by the differences between Pompeo and US President Donald Trump referenced by former UN ambassador John Bolton in his new book; Trump was more interested in hostages than in what Pompeo or Bolton had to say about Syria. But whatever the politics behind the Caesar Act, it is hurting ordinary Syrians already suffering amid the collapse of Lebanon’s economy. Healthcare stands as the best example of this.
Political and financial crisis
Far before the enactment of the Caesar Act, Syria’s economy had collapsed from already austere sanctions, combined with a war economy that has dramatically worsened living conditions for ordinary Syrians. Syrians are suffering from ailments beyond the immediate scope of the war, including cancer, diabetes and the resurgence of once-eradicated diseases like polio which made a comeback in 2015 but now gone again.
The current situation is terrible, even worse than the expected aftermath of nine years of fighting. It has been exacerbated by the political and financial crisis in neighbouring Lebanon, alongside the global coronavirus pandemic.
While Emirati and Kuwaiti healthcare aid to Syria has helped hospitals in Damascus, it is not nearly enough. David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, has repeatedly said that the world must help Syrians in Syria as the best way to tackle the overall crisis.
Before the war, Syrian healthcare was the envy of the region, as noted by the World Health Organisation. Around 1.6 million Iraqi refugees had made Syria home and were able to access high-quality care. In this regard, a Brookings Institution analysis described a welcoming environment in Syria.
Syria had already dealt with wars in Iraq and Lebanon, and its health system looked after Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian refugees better than any other Arab state. Its healthcare system has long been linked to border economies.
Out of commission
In an earlier piece co-written with Peter Oborne, I argued that financial sanctions hinder payments for healthcare imports - which is a massive obstacle, despite western officials claiming that Caesar does not impact healthcare transactions. On the ground, it is a different story, far removed from the comfort of thinktanks in DC or London.
Doctors relayed that it was difficult to even speak to suppliers, because of their fear of sanctions and the inability to process payments. Many hospitals and healthcare centres are out of commission and need urgent reconstruction. While countries such as the UAE, Indonesia and Kuwait have helped, Caesar now threatens to halt international cooperation.
Diagnostic equipment, such as MRI and CT scanners, are failing or missing vital parts. Ventilators and laboratory equipment are lacking. Cardiologists told me that endoscopes, cardiac catheters and coronary stents, along with renal dialysis facilities, are all suffering due to sanctions. Even private hospitals that can afford repairs cannot get them, as companies do not want to sell them the required equipment for fear of repercussions.
Essential equipment and medicines are affected by sanctions in terms of supply, manufacturing and importing. Banks are refusing to open credit for importing urgently needed healthcare goods amid fears that sanctions may affect their business.
Insurance companies are refusing to provide cover and when they do, the costs are unbearable. Listing Syria as a high-risk area, shipping companies are refusing to import medical equipment to Syria. Large companies are refusing to send equipment, medicines, ambulances or even baby formula.
Breaking with the US
Healthcare is not just about the practical and applicable sciences, but it is also about vital research. Doctors cannot attend regional conferences because of visa restrictions, or subscribe to scientific journals as they cannot pay the required fees due to financial sanctions. Most surgeons told me they were going by prewar research and limited access to online health tool kits.
There are huge questions over the wisdom and long-term viability of sanctions, including from European allies. Syrian economist Amer al-Hussein has argued that it may be time for the EU to break with the US on Syria policy. Oxford professor Adeel Malik, an expert on Arab economies, notes that there is a plethora of evidence highlighting how sanctions fail to meet their objectives and instead strengthen regime interests. In an interview with Malik, he told me:
“The Iranian case is instructive. US sanctions have hurt the independent private sector and middle classes, the very constituencies that could push for economic and political reform,” Malik said. “In Saddam-era Iraq, sanctions proliferated smuggling opportunities. Sanctions are a collective punishment of society. They are a moral disgrace and should be viewed as such.”
Syrian healthcare is suffering. It has a regional role beyond the Syrian state, and as with all things related to the ongoing war, when Syria suffers, the region suffers.
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The Esselen Tribe of Monterey county now owns a small piece of their ancestral land along California's north central coast. (photo: Doug Steakley/AP)
Northern California Esselen Tribe Regains Ancestral Land After 250 Years
Mario Koran, Guardian UK
Koran writes: "Two-hundred and fifty years after they were stripped of their ancestral homeland, the Esselen tribe of northern California is landless no more."
Mario Koran, Guardian UK
Koran writes: "Two-hundred and fifty years after they were stripped of their ancestral homeland, the Esselen tribe of northern California is landless no more."
The tribe purchased the 1,200 acre ranch near Big Sur as part of a $4.5m deal and will use it for educational and cultural purposes
wo-hundred and fifty years after they were stripped of their ancestral homeland, the Esselen tribe of northern California is landless no more.
This week, the Esselen tribe finalized the purchase of a 1,200-acre ranch near Big Sur, along California’s north central coast, as part of a $4.5m acquisition that involved the state and an Oregon-based environmental group.
The deal will conserve old-growth redwoods and endangered wildlife such as the California condor and red-legged frog, as well as protect the Little Sur River, an important spawning stream for the imperiled steelhead trout.
Tribal leaders say they’ll use the land for educational and cultural purposes, building a sweat lodge and traditional village in view of Pico Blanco peak, the center of the tribe’s origin story.
“We’re the original stewards of the land. Now we’re returned,” Tom Little Bear Nason, chairman of the Esselen tribe of Monterey county, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
“We are going to conserve it and pass it on to our children and grandchildren and beyond.”
Nearly 250 years ago, Spanish soldiers built a military outpost in Monterey and Franciscan padres founded missions in nearby settlements – places where tribal members were brought to be baptized and converted to Catholicism. By the early 1800s, nearly all of the remaining tribe had been decimated by disease and death. Esselen tribal members were stripped of their land, language and culture.
But this week, after 250 years, their descendants reclaimed some of their land. The tribe has no plans on leaving.
“We are back after a 250-year absence – because in 1770 our people were taken to the missions,” Nason told Monterey County Weekly. “Now we are back home. We plan on keeping this land forever.”
Since the 1950s the property, known as Rancho Aguila, had been owned by Axel Adler, a Swedish immigrant. After his death in 2004, his family put it up for sale for $15m. After years-long negotiations, the Western Rivers Conservancy, a Portland-based environmental group, etched a deal to purchase the land and hand it over to the US Forest Service.
Working on behalf of the tribe, the conservancy secured a $4.5m grant from the California Natural Resources Agency to cover the land purchase and studies of the area.
“The property is spectacular, and on top of that it repatriates land to a tribe that has had a really hard go of it over the years. To be a part of helping a tribe regain its homeland is great,” said Sue Doroff, president of the Western Rivers Conservancy.
While the property was originally expected to be broken in five lots that developers could build on, this week’s deal will allow the tribe to preserve the land as undeveloped.
Nason said the 214-member Esselen tribe will share it with other groups also native to the area, including the Ohlone, the Amah Mutsun and the Rumsen people – all of whom were devastated by the arrival of white settlers.
“Getting this land back gives privacy to do our ceremonies,” Nason said. “It gives us space and the ability to continue our culture without further interruption. This is forever, and in perpetuity, that we can hold on to our culture and our values.”
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