RSN: Alexander Vindman | Coming Forward Ended My Career. I Still Believe Doing What's Right Matters.

03 August 20

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Alexander Vindman during his testimony in November last year. Trump on Twitter described Vindman as 'very insubordinate.' (photo: Rex/Shutterstock)

Alexander Vindman | Coming Forward Ended My Career. I Still Believe Doing What's Right Matters.

Alexander Vindman, The Washington Post
Vindman writes: "After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career."
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Donald Trump, seen in the cabinet room at the White House this month. (photo: Rex/Shutterstock)

Karen J. Greenberg | Missing in Action: Accountability Is Gone in America
Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch
Greenberg writes: "The country has to be given a chance to restore its long-faded commitment to accountable government. And perhaps we should acknowledge one more crucial thing: that this may prove to be our last chance."
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Border Patrol vehicles taking part in a July 31, 2020, raid on the migrant humanitarian aid group No More Deaths. (photo: Courtesy of No More Deaths)

Border Patrol Launches Militarized Raid of Borderlands Humanitarian Aid Camp
Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
Devereaux writes: "The humanitarian group No More Deaths believes the operation was likely part retaliation, part violent publicity stunt."
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Texas Republican convention attendees stood for the Pledge of Allegiance in Fort Worth in 2012. (photo: Bob Daemmrich/The Texas Tribune)

Media Ban at GOP Convention Still Unresolved
Frank E. Lockwood, Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Lockwood writes: "Republicans are still determining whether journalists will be barred from attending this month's presidential nominating convention, The Washington Post reported Sunday afternoon, citing unnamed Republican National Committee officials."

They disputed claims by a Republican National Convention spokesperson last week that, because of covid-19 concerns, the event in Charlotte, N.C., would be closed to the press.

No final decision has been made, the Post reported.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Saturday morning was the first news organization to write about the ban on reporters, after a convention spokesperson confirmed the policy in writing.

CNN and The Associated Press followed with similar stories Saturday evening after obtaining a copy of the same written statement that the newspaper had relied upon.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Convention declined Sunday to comment when reached by the Democrat-Gazette, referring further questions to Republican National Committee officials; RNC staffers did not respond to the newspaper's queries.

For now, the Arkansas delegation is scheduled to be led by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

In a written statement, he said his travel to North Carolina "depends upon the situation with the COVID-19 virus in Arkansas."

"At this point, I hope to attend but it is important that the convention both have adequate health safeguards and that the convention be open to the media. I would expect that to be the case," he said.

Last week, a convention spokesperson had told the Democrat-Gazette that reporters would have no access to the events, which include Republican National Committee meetings and a session of the convention's 112-member credentials committee on Aug. 23.

"[W]e are planning for all of the Charlotte activities to be closed press: Friday, August 21 – Monday, 24th given the health restrictions and limitations in place in the state," the convention spokesperson had said in an email. "We are happy to let you know if this changes, but we are working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events."

The spokesperson could not say whether convention business would be livestreamed or whether C-SPAN would be allowed to air it.

The announcement that the convention would be a private event drew sharp criticism from many journalists and some conservative activists.

"This is an ill-advised decision that the @GOP [and] @GOPconvention should reconsider," tweeted Zeke Miller, an AP White House reporter and president of the White House Correspondents' Association. "The nomination of a major party presidential candidate is very much the business of the American people."

"I don't believe @GOPChairwoman [Ronna McDaniel] will be able to sustain her decision to close the Republican convention in Charlotte to the media. But I hope she tries," tweeted Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Bulwark and a prominent Never Trumper. "Re-nominating the president in secret will be main story of the convention, not any message the Trump campaign wants to push."

Sunday, Republican National Committee communications director Michael Ahrens portrayed the policy as tentative, telling CNN that things remain fluid.

"No final decision has been made and we are still working through logistics and press coverage options," he said. "We are working with the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events."

Ahrens confirmed that "a livestream is part of the press coverage options we are working through," CNN reported.

Republican Party of Arkansas Chairman Doyle Webb, who has attended every national convention since 1980, said reporters have always been welcome at the party's proceedings.

"Normally everything's open. The problem we've got is the virus and the seating numbers that they're allowing in the rooms that we're meeting in," he said. "They're not allowing any guests, or any staff or any additional delegates to attend because we...have a problem with space."

The covid-19 pandemic has forced both parties to scrap traditional convention gatherings.

Democrats, who meet Aug. 17-20, have scaled back their programming to two hours per night. As few as 300 people are expected to gather in Milwaukee when Joe Biden is formally nominated, The New York Times reported.

That includes party officials, journalists, security personnel and health professionals.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of delegates at the Republican National Convention had already been lowered from 2,550 to 336.

Rather than meeting in the 20,200-capacity Spectrum Center, the delegates will gather at the Westin Charlotte, Webb said.

Delegates are expected to formally nominate Trump on Monday, Aug. 24 and then adjourn.

Subsequent Charlotte-based events have been scrubbed, though Trump is expected to give an acceptance speech from another location on Thursday, Aug. 27.

Originally, Arkansas was scheduled to send 40 delegates and 37 alternates to Charlotte -- all of them supporting the renomination of President Donald J. Trump.

With the number of covid-19 cases swelling, delegates and guests were disinvited and the number of delegates was cut from 40 to six.

In addition to Hutchinson, other Arkansas participants will be Webb, Republican National Committeeman Jonathan Barnett, Atty. Gen. Leslie Rutledge, Republican National Committeewoman Jonelle Fulmer and J.D. McGehee, a Hot Springs resident and district director for U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman.

If Hutchinson is unavailable to attend, he would be replaced by the delegation's vice-chairman, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin.

Webb, who also serves as Republican National Committee general counsel, said his party has a history of transparency and is doing its best under trying circumstances.

"I'm hopeful that we could find space...for media or for the press to observe our proceedings," he said.

Three weeks out, there's still a lot of uncertainty.

"We've never had a convention like this. This is new," said Barnett, who attended his first national convention in 1972.

A media-free convention would be a first for Barnett, he said.

"Personally, I think they ought to let the press in," he said. "If I were getting nominated to be president of the United States, I'd want it to... be an event where the press showed up."

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Inez Bordeaux, an organizer in the Close the Workhouse campaign, poses in front of the facility in 2018. (photo: Sid Hastings/Guardian UK)

'The Workhouse': Activists Celebrate Decision to Close 'Hellish' St. Louis Jail
Clark Randall, Guardian UK
Randall writes: "It has been called an 'unspeakably hellish' extension of a racist and classist criminal justice system where those locked up inside live with rats, roaches and black mold."

The debtors’ jail where those locked inside lived among rats and roaches is finally set to close after recent mass anti-racism protests

Known as the Workhouse, the medium security institution in St Louis, Missouri, has gained a reputation as a notorious debtors’ jail, where incarceration was used for decades as an answer to minor technical and fine-related violations, and where large bond fees were extracted from many people detained pre-trial.

Yet this month, galvanized by the Black Lives Matter movement and mass anti-racism protests that reignited after the police killing of George Floyd, Close the Workhouse campaigners are celebrating. On 17 July, the St Louis Board of Aldermen unanimously passed legislation to close the jail by year’s end.

“Today, there’s less than 90 people inside,” Inez Bordeaux, an organizer at ArchCity Defenders, said. “It’s clear that no one can say the Workhouse, this hellhole, is still needed.”

Bordeaux was formerly incarcerated in the Workhouse in 2016 after a technical probation violation – an error in the system left her with the task of reporting to a parole officer who had long since left the force. Bordeaux, a registered nurse and mother of four, was legally innocent but she was being detained pre-trial because she couldn’t afford her $25,000 bail. She was deemed lucky to get out after just a month.

When the Guardian visited two years ago, 575 people were being held inside – 98% of whom had been caged pre-trial and 90% of whom were Black, despite Black people making up fewer than 50% of the city’s population.

Once inside, people were held an average of 10 months. The time inside routinely dismantled any previously achieved stability.

The dramatic decrease in detainees over the last two years is due to the sustained effort of the Bail Project, which pays bail for people in need, “reuniting families and restoring the presumption of innocence” to combat mass incarceration.

“Since January of 2018, around 3,500 detainees in the city have been bailed out,” said Michelle Higgins, a Close the Workhouse organizer. “That’s it, they are literally emptying the jail cells of the city. It’s been an undeniable success.”

But a few years ago, when the campaign began, support among elected officials to close the facility was scarce. “At first three alderpersons [out of 28] supported it, and then when I came on board last year, we were at 11,” said Jae Shepherd, an organizer for the campaign.

The overwhelming support today is a testament to the strategy that organizers at ArchCity Defenders, Action St Louis and the Bail Project adopted, Shepherd added.

“I think it was really important to be working multiple angles at the same time. We needed the votes to shut it down, but we’ve been bailing people out and doing public education in the meantime.”

With the numbers inside decreasing, the campaign built support on the outside.

“In St Louis, we spend zero dollars on our unhoused family, there are no homeless shelters, no domestic violence shelters, no full-time treatment centers for people dealing with substance abuse,” Bordeaux said. “This is what we mean when we talk about re-envisioning public safety. How else could all this money to jails be allocated?”

The bill to close the Workhouse includes a planned reinvestment of the $16m the city was spending annually on the jail. Shepherd said that’s the next focus for the campaign. “Now it’s time to bring communities together from the places most damaged by the carceral system here and see how they want this money redistributed; it’s the participatory budgeting aspect.”

The recent wave of support behind calls to defund the police and reallocate resources to services such as mental health and social care projects only aided the momentum built over years in St Louis to close the Workhouse, Bordeaux said.

“Our organizing focus on the budget as a moral document hasn’t changed,” Bordeaux said, “it’s just been brought to the forefront in the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder.”

Bordeaux added: “The goal ultimately is to have reconstructed the entire city budget so that it actually takes care of people; takes care of vulnerable communities. If seeing your city’s budget doesn’t radicalize you, I don’t know what will.”

Higgins agreed: “The crime, the real crime in St Louis, is in the budget.”

Organizers in the coalition all abide to the politics of abolitionism.

“When people say defund the police, we need to make it clear that defunding and dismantling the prisons are a part of that – these systems are linked,” Shepherd said. 

“When we close the Workhouse, it’s not just about the Workhouse. It’s an attack on the entire system of incarceration and pre-trial detention in this country.”

Organizers in the coalition are celebrating the passage of the legislation, but note that there is more work to be done.

In a recent statement, Mayor Lyda Krewson questioned how realistic it was to have the jail closed by 31 December. But Shepherd said, “The statement didn’t faze us, it will never be the ‘right’ time for Lyda Krewson.”

The organizers also understand the mayor’s remaining political standing has been drained in recent months. For the better part of July, about 100 to 200 protesters have occupied the front lawn of St Louis city hall, demanding her immediate resignation. Krewson’s stance on the Workhouse was one of the initial galvanizing issues.

“I know this legislation passing is what we’ve been fighting for,” Bordeaux said.

“But I’m saving my full excitement to when the lights in that place are cut off, when the water is shut off, the electricity. Just so I know it closed. And that no one else would have to endure what I endured while I was there.”

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Iran has been the worst-affected country in the Middle East. (photo: Getty Images)

Coronavirus: Iran Cover-Up of Deaths Revealed by Data Leak
BBC News
Excerpt: "The government's own records appear to show almost 42,000 people died with Covid-19 symptoms up to 20 July, versus 14,405 reported by its health ministry."
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A volunteer receiving a possible coronavirus vaccine as part of a trial by the National Institutes of Health and the biotech company Moderna. (photo: Hans Pennink/AP)

The Right Way to Get a Vaccine at 'Warp Speed'
Natalie Dean, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Scientists need to show us the data. And that's exactly what they're working on."
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