03 September 20
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Ej Dickson | The Birth of QAmom
Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone
Dickson writes: "Both of these mantras are linked to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that President Donald Trump is lying in wait to bust a left-wing Deep State cabal that, among other things, runs an underground pedophile ring."
In this image taken from police body camera video, Rochester police officers hold down Daniel Prude on March 23, 2020, in Rochester, N.Y. (photo: AP)
ALSO SEE: Protests in Washington After
Police Fatally Shoot 18-Year-Old
Video in Black Man's Suffocation Shows Rochester Cops Put Hood on Him
Michael Hill, Associated Press
Hill writes: "Video of a Black man who died of asphyxiation after being handcuffed, hooded and pinned down by police was released Wednesday as activists demanded the officers be fired and charged in his death."
ADDITIONAL VIDEOS:
Black man who had run naked through the streets of a western New York city died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday by the man's family.
Daniel Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. His death received no public attention until Wednesday, when his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help. Not for my brother to get lynched,” Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, said at a news conference. “How did you see him and not directly say, ‘The man is defenseless, buck naked on the ground. He’s cuffed up already. Come on.’ How many more brothers gotta die for society to understand that this needs to stop?"
The videos show Prude, who had taken off his clothes, complying when police ask him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. Prude is agitated and shouting as he sits on the pavement in handcuffs for a few moments as a light snow falls. “Give me your gun, I need it,” he shouts.
Then, they put a white “spit hood” over his head, a device intended to protect officers from a detainee's saliva. At the time, New York was in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Prude demands they remove it.
Then the officers slam Prude's head into the street. One officer, who is white, holds his head down against the pavement with both hands, saying “calm down” and “stop spitting.” Another officer places a knee on his back.
“Trying to kill me!” Prude says, his voice becoming muffled and anguished under the hood.
“OK, stop. I need it. I need it,” the prone man begs before his shouts turn to whimpers and grunts.
The officers appear to become concerned after he stops moving, falls silent and they notice water coming out of Prude’s mouth.
“My man. You puking?” one says.
One officer notes that he’s been out, naked, in the street for some time. Another remarks, “He feels pretty cold.”
His head had been held down by an officer for just over two minutes, the video shows.
The officers then remove the hood and his handcuffs and medics can then be seen performing CPR before he's loaded into an ambulance.
Spit hoods have been scrutinized as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in the U.S. and other countries in recent years.
A medical examiner concluded that Prude's death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.
Prude was from Chicago and had just arrived in Rochester for a visit with his brother. He was kicked off the train before it got to Rochester, in Depew, “due to his unruly behavior,” according to an internal affairs investigator’s report.
Rochester police officers took Prude into custody for a mental health evaluation around 7 p.m. on March 22 for suicidal thoughts -- about eight hours before the encounter that led to his death. But his brother said he was only at the hospital for a few hours, according to the reports.
Police responded again after Joe Prude called 911 at about 3 a.m. to report that his brother had left his house.
The city halted its investigation into Prude's death when state Attorney General Letitia James' office began its own investigation in April. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general's office, rather than handled by local officials.
James said Wednesday that investigation is continuing.
“I want everyone to understand that at no point in time did we feel that this was something that we wanted not to disclose,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at a press briefing. “We are precluded from getting involved in it until that agency has completed their investigation.”
One officer wrote that they put the hood on Prude because he was spitting continuously in the direction of officers and they were concerned about coronavirus.
Activists demanded that officers involved be prosecuted on murder charges and that they be removed from the department while the investigation proceeds.
“The police have shown us over and over again that they are not equipped to handle individuals with mental health concerns. These officers are trained to kill, and not to deescalate. These officers are trained to ridicule, instead of supporting Mr. Daniel Prude,” Ashley Gantt of Free the People ROC said at the news conference with Prude's family.
Calls to the union representing Rochester police officers, and to the organization's attorney, rang unanswered Wednesday.
Protesters gathered Wednesday outside Rochester’s Public Safety Building, which serves as police headquarters. Free the People ROC said several of its organizers were briefly taken into custody after they entered the building while Warren was speaking to the media.
They were released on appearance tickets, said Iman Abid, regional director of the NYCLU, who was among those taken into custody.
Demonstrators later gathered at the spot where Prude died, chanting, dancing and praying. They stayed late into the night.
Prude, known to his big Chicago-based family by the nickname “Rell,” was a father of five adult children and had been working at a warehouse within the last year, said his aunt Letoria Moore.
“He was just a bright, loving person, just family-oriented, always there for us when we needed him,” she said, and “never hurt or harmed anybody.”
Prude had been traumatized by the deaths of his mother and a brother in recent years, having lost another brother before that, Moore said. In his last months, he’d been going back and forth between his Chicago home and his brother’s place in Rochester because he wanted to be close with him, she said.
She knew her nephew had some psychological issues. Still, when he called two days before his death, “he was the normal Rell that I knew,” Moore said.
“I didn’t know what was the situation, why he was going through what he was going through that night, but I know he didn’t deserve to be killed by the police,” she said.
The fatal encounter happened two months before the death of George Floyd in Minnesota prompted nationwide demonstrations. Floyd died when an officer put his knee on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.
Trump supporters. (photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)
Donald Trump Would Like to Momentarily Pause This Campaign to Tell You How Good His Brain Is
Asawin Suebsaeng and Scott Bixby, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Following a carefully manicured, four-day convention in which Donald Trump's chief lieutenants branded him as an avatar of stability and Joe Biden as the pied-piper of race riots, the president did what he always does: He casually disposed of his team's messaging in the service of nursing personal grudges."
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Facebook. (photo: iStock)
Facebook to Limit Last-Minute Political Ads in Final US Election Push
Katie Paul and Elizabeth Culliford, Reuters
Excerpt: "Facebook Inc. said on Thursday it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before the U.S. election day on Nov. 3, in a series of moves the company billed as its final plan for reducing risks of misinformation and election interference."
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Activists march past the White House to protest against the Trump administration's separation of children from immigrant parents, in June 2018. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Revealed: Trump Judicial Nominee Had Role in Removing Prosecutor Opposed to Family Separations
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Guardian UK
Kirchgaessner writes: "A senior justice department official who has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve in a lifetime appointment as a judge was involved in the removal of a prosecutor in Texas in 2017 after he repeatedly raised concerns about migrant children who could not be located after being separated from their parents."
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Navalny is one of Russian president Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics. (photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP)
'Grave Concern': Navalny Case Alarms Chemical Weapons Agency
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "In a statement regarding the case of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, the global chemical weapons agency has said the poisoning of any individual with a toxic nerve agent would be considered use of a banned chemical weapon."
n a statement regarding the case of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, the global chemical weapons agency has said the poisoning of any individual with a toxic nerve agent would be considered use of a banned chemical weapon.
"Any poisoning of an individual through the use of a nerve agent is considered a use of chemical weapons. Such an allegation is a matter of grave concern," the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday.
Novichok was banned this year by the OPCW.
Meanwhile, Russia rejected accusations that Moscow was to blame for the poisoning of opposition leader Navalny, saying it saw no grounds for sanctions to be imposed against it over the case.
The Kremlin's denial came on Thursday, a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Navalny had been poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow rejected any suggestion that Russia was responsible and warned other countries against jumping to hasty conclusions.
He said there was no reason to discuss measures against Moscow after Merkel said Germany would consult its NATO allies about how to respond to the poisoning.
The Charite hospital in Berlin, where Navalny is lying in intensive care, has reported "some improvement" in his condition, but he remains in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.
In a statement on Wednesday, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said testing by a special German military laboratory had shown "proof without doubt of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group", as he described Navalny as the "victim of an attack with a chemical nerve agent in Russia".
Merkel later told a news conference: "This is disturbing information about the attempted murder through poisoning against a leading Russian opposition figure."
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urged Moscow to investigate the poisoning, and said the Russian ambassador had been summoned to explain the evidence.
"This makes it all the more urgent that those responsible in Russia be identified and held accountable," Maas told reporters. "We condemn this attack in the strongest terms."
Novichok - a military-grade nerve agent - was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom.
'European response'
Navalny, 44, a politician and anti-corruption crusader who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on August 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.
He was later transferred to Charite hospital, where doctors last week said there were indications he had been poisoned.
The Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia have repeatedly contested the German hospital's conclusion, saying they ruled out poisoning as a diagnosis and their tests for poisonous substances came back negative.
Al Jazeera's Aleksandra Stoyanovich-Godfroid, reporting from Moscow, said Russia's response was so far "cautious and restrained".
"The Russian doctors released Navalny with a 'metabolic disorder' diagnosis. Two labs in Russia didn't find anything suspicious and a pre-investigation didn't find anything leading to foul play," she said.
"On the other hand, the opposition is saying, 'We knew [it was Novichok] - all the symptoms are there.'"
Novichok is a cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the class of substances that doctors at the Charite initially identified in Navalny.
Navalny's allies said the German government's identification of the poison used against him suggested the Russian state had been behind the attack.
"Only the state [FSB, GRU] can use Novichok. This is beyond any reasonable doubt," Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said on Twitter, referring to the FSB internal security and GRU military intelligence services.
Meanwhile, Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday that "there must be a European response" when asked whether work on the NordStream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany should stop in the wake of Navalny's poisoning.
"We must pursue hard politics, we must respond with the only language [Russian President Vladimir] Putin understands - that is gas sales," said Roettgen, a member of Merkel's ruling conservatives.
Portuguese students protest in front of the Portuguese Parliament on behalf of climate change on March 15, 2019, in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo: Horacio Villalobos/Getty)
Portuguese Youth Activists Sue 33 Countries Over Climate Crisis
Holly Young, Deutsche Welle
Young writes: "In what is being described as an unprecedented climate case, four children and two young adults from Portugal have filed a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against 33 industrialized countries."
The young people, supported by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), allege the countries — which include Germany, the UK, Russia and Portugal — have failed to enact the emission cuts needed to protect their futures.
The case focuses on countries whose policies lawyers argue are too weak to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius Paris Agreement goal. They cite the country ratings of the Climate Action Tracker.
The plaintiffs range from age 8 to 21 and come from Lisbon and Leiria in Portugal. The case states climate change poses a rising threat to the six young people's lives and physical and mental well-being. It invokes human rights arguments — including the right to life, a home and to family — as well as claiming discrimination.
"Our generation is living in an age of great danger and uncertainty, so our voice must be heard," said Andre Oliveira, 12, whose father is translating for him.
"It's clearly not the case that young people are the only people vulnerable to the effects of climate change," said Gerry Liston, legal officer at GLAN. "But because they stand to endure the worst impacts, we're saying the effects of failing to adequately address greenhouse gas emissions amounts to unlawful discrimination on the grounds of age."
"It's not about finger-pointing, but all about giving all these 33 governments a chance to act better and faster," said Andre. "It is a matter of human rights and that's why we're going all the way to Strasbourg."
A First at Strasbourg
While there are numerous recent and ongoing climate cases, many also involving young plaintiffs, it is the first of its kind to be brought to Strasbourg. The international court, set up in 1959, deals with alleged violations of civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The pressing need for significant and wide-scale action among many large emitters warranted going directly to Strasbourg, rather than through domestic courts which is more common, explains Liston. "A decision from the European Court of Human Rights is urgently required in order to provide the legally binding decision that would then filter down and prompt the change that's required at the domestic level."
According to GLAN, if successful, the 33 countries would be legally bound to tackle overseas contributions to climate change, including that of multinational companies, as well as ramping up emissions cuts. While the timescale ahead and whether the court will decide if the case is admissible is not yet clear, Liston said they have applied for the case to be given priority.
Portuguese Wildfires
The plaintiffs belong to three families and became involved in the case after hearing about GLAN's climate work through a local contact.
Many cited seeing climate change hit their doorsteps as encouraging them to act, particularly the deadly Portuguese wildfires in 2017.
"I directly experienced the terror of the fires," said Catarina Mota, 20, one of the four that live in Leiria, one of the areas hardest hit. Rising sea levels, the constant threat of forest fires and increasingly abnormal temperatures are now part of her everyday reality. "These changes make me feel apprehensive," she said, adding sometimes the heat makes it hard to breathe or sleep. In July this year the hottest temperatures in 90 years were registered in the country.
"What motivated me to be involved in this case was the desire for a world where one can at least survive," said Catarina. "Because if nothing is done by our governments this will not happen."
Climate action, such as this case, is necessary "in order to have a future and a healthy life without fear" said plaintiff Claudia Agostinho, 21. "Our generation and all future generations deserve this."
Wave of Climate Litigation
The Strasbourg case is one of a growing wave of climate litigation around the world. According to the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment, while the majority happen in the U.S., over the last year climate cases were filed across six continents, 80% of them against governments.
It also noted a recent increase in litigation by activists and advocacy groups, and the use of human rights arguments.
While there are ongoing cases in many countries — including South Korea, Peru, and Canada — regarding states' human rights obligations to mitigate climate change, the most recent high-profile example is the Dutch Urgenda case.
In 2019 the country's Supreme Court became the first highest level domestic court to establish a state's duty to significantly and immediately reduce emissions in line with human rights obligations. This summer activists were also successful in taking the Irish government to court over climate action failures. Greta Thunberg is among 16 youth activists who also have an ongoing legal complaint to the UN committee on the rights of the child.
Politics, Protest and the Courts
"I think one case inspires the other," said Caroline Schroeder, from Germanwatch, an NGO supporting 9 young people with a constitutional climate complaint in Germany. She sees the Strasbourg case and growing trend of climate litigation as born of the same mounting frustration driving the Fridays for Future movement - namely, that "politics is not doing enough."
"I wish we wouldn't have to bring the cases," said Roda Verheyen, a climate lawyer working on the People's Climate Case filed against the EU institutions. "But it is essentially still the case that the level of protection afforded to our children by the legislators is too low. And that's why the courts will keep seeing these cases."
Verheyen points out that in emphasizing a general duty to protect rather than challenging a specific law, the Strasbourg case is less concrete than others she has worked on. Yet a win there could have wide-reaching implications for member states, she adds, and even a loss could potentially "reinforce the strength of the litigation both in national cases and on the EU level."
Its ultimate strength, Liston argues, is in bringing home the time perspective and imminence of the threat.
"This case shows that there are people who stand to suffer horrendous effects of climate change within their lifetime," said Liston.
The youngest plaintiff, now 8, will be 28, in 2040, the year in which the UN panel of scientists expect many of the most severe consequences of climate change to unfold.
Andre, 12, said he hopes the case will bring "acknowledgement of the voice of a generation that lives with high anxiety and increasing fear of incoming catastrophes, but also a generation that has all the hope that things will change."
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