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Juan Cole | Is Trump Leaving 2500 Troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan as a Poison Pill for Biden?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Dustin Jones at NPR reports that Trump has instructed the Pentagon to bring most US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. Some 2,500 would remain in each country."
The announcement was made, WaPo reports, by acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller. Miller was apparently brought in to replace Mark Esper because Esper opposed this move.
There is, however, something passing strange about this announcement. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien is quoted as saying that the plan is for all of them to be out by May. Miller also referred to this prospect in his remarks.
Trump, however, won’t be in office after January 20, whatever he may think, and so that decision will be Biden’s. Why leave 2,500 in each country. Why not withdraw them all if that is the goal?
There are only 3,000 US troops left in Iraq, after Trump initiated a feud with the country’s Shiite national guard in January by killing the leader of the Party of God Brigades, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, with a strike on Baghdad International Airport that also killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani of Iran. Thereafter the Shiite militias in Iraq and the US military conducted a series of tit for tat attacks on one another. The Iraqi Parliament demanded that the prime minister initiate measures to expel US troops from the country. Prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has slow-rolled this demand but is said to stand by the parliament’s decree in private.
This summer, Iraq and the US military reached an agreement to reduce US troop strength from 5,000 to 3,000 by September. So Trump is in fact only bringing 500 US troops out of Iraq.
The powerful Shiite militias, who were recognized by Iraq’s parliament as a sort of national guard in 2018, want them all gone, and fired rockets at the US embassy in the Green Zone on Tuesday.
MP Karim Alaiwi, who serves on the Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi Parliament, denied that the US withdrawal would harm Iraqi security. A member of the Fatah Bloc, comprised of hardline Shiite party-militias of the sort Trump bombed last spring, Alaiwi said that the US covertly supports terrorism in Iraq. His views are not widely shared in Iraq, but are held by a minority of Shiites.
As for Afghanistan, President Obama had attempted to get out entirely in 2013 and 2014, and then in 2016 announced he would keep 8,400 troops there through the end of his term, saying that a final withdrawal would be up to his successor. The problem of Afghanistan for presidents is that if you bring all the troops out and then the Taliban take the capital of Kabul the next month, you have egg on your face. This would be bad for your party’s reelection chances.
Trump raised the number to 14,000. In 2020 he gradually reduced the number to 5,000 as part of his negotiations with the Taliban.
So now the 5,000 are being cut in half, to 2,500.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but we know that Trump and his aides are doing whatever they can to sabotage the incoming Biden administration and to prepare for a 2024 Trump run for the presidency.
Maybe Trump wants to be able to tell his 70 million acolytes in 2024 that he got the US out of Afghanistan and Iraq almost entirely, but then Biden came in and screwed things up.
If Biden is the one who withdraws completely from Afghanistan and then Kabul falls, it will be the Democrats who have egg on their faces. If Biden puts the number of troops back up to 5,000, then Trump can say that Biden dragged us back in to fruitless Middle East wars. He is convinced that those wars have become unpopular with the white working class. Some 43% of households with a union member voted for Trump in November, according to exit polls. Only about ten percent of the US work force is unionized, however. Most workers vote Democratic, and most of Trump’s support was from the better-off segments of the population. Still, he did win in 2016 by getting about 14 percent of the white working class that had voted Obama to shift to himself.
When Biden was vice president, he opposed Gen. David Petraeus’s big think plan for a huge “counter-insurgency” effort in Afghanistan, preferring a small special operations force that would concentrate on counter-terrorism. That is, when you had a small attack or bombing somewhere by 16 people, you’d go in after them. Biden lost that one, and in 2010 we had the Marja Farms and Qandahar campaigns, which had no long term impact and which no one now even remembers. My guess is that Biden will revive his small-scale counter-terrorism plan, with the Afghan National Army in the lead, and that 2,500 US troops would be enough back-up.
As with all things Trump, finding a firm policy rationale in his erratic pronouncements is almost impossible. But that he is trying somehow to shore up his own reputation and at the same time to sandbag Biden is always plausible.
Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
A New Lawsuit Alleges Trump's Effort to Overturn Michigan's Election Results Disenfranchises Black Voters
Matthew Choi, POLITICO
Choi writes: "A group of Michigan voters has sued Donald Trump and his reelection campaign, asserting the president's legal challenges to the 2020 election violated the rights of Black voters."
The plaintiffs say the campaign's legal challenges to the election violated their voting rights.
In a lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court Friday, the group alleged the Trump campaign is attempting mass voter suppression — particularly among Black voters — by pressuring election officials into not certifying the election results in their state.
"Repeating false claims of voter fraud, which have been thoroughly debunked, Defendants are pressuring state and local officials in Michigan not to count votes from Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is the county seat), and thereby disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters," the lawsuit stated. "Defendants’ tactics repeat the worst abuses in our nation’s history, as Black Americans were denied a voice in American democracy for most of the first two centuries of the Republic."
The lawsuit aimed to halt any efforts by the Trump campaign and the president to push state officials into canceling their ballots or appointing electors who do not represent the election results in their state. It cited numerous efforts to cast doubt on the election, from Trump's personal tweets to a White House meeting Friday between Republican state lawmakers and Trump.
The plaintiffs included three Black residents of Detroit — Teasha K. Jones, Nicole L. Hill and Maureen Taylor — who voted in this year's election, as well as the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. The plaintiffs are represented by lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden won Michigan by about 150,000 votes, as well as a handful of other critical swing states that clinched him a majority in the Electoral College. Biden's lead was particularly notable in Wayne County, where he was ahead of Trump by more than 332,000 votes.
Trump's legal team has launched a spate of legal challenges and publicly claimed mass fraud in an effort to delegitimize the election results. Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani said at a press conference Thursday that "it changes the result of the election in Michigan, if you take out Wayne County."
The Trump campaign's legal challenges in a number of key swing states have been dismissed by judges as meritless. The Trump campaign rescinded its own lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Michigan election results.
Their suit cited two Republican Wayne County officials who declined to certify the election tally Tuesday evening. But the officials did end up certifying the election only hours later.
Lawyers for Detroit asked a judge to strike the campaign’s claims in their withdrawn lawsuit from the record as a sanction for spreading disinformation, Reuters reported Friday.
Trump hosted Republican members of Michigan's legislature at the White House on Friday in an opaque meeting that appeared to be a last-ditch attempt at swinging the state in his favor.
Trump's allies have recently floated a legally questionable method to get state lawmakers to appoint friendly electors. But after their White House meeting, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield both asserted they had "not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan."
From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, Rep. llhan Omar, D-MN, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Expanded 'Squad' Demand Biden Deliver on Green New Deal
John Parkinson, ABC News
Parkinson writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became an undisputed congressional star after her 2018 primary upset win followed by her championing of the Green New Deal, an ambitious legislative package to address climate change quickly dismissed by Republicans and Democrats alike."
Progressives are facing off with the New Democrat Coalition.
AOC, the unofficial leader of the so-called Squad, has reinforcements in the coming next session of Congress, with Reps.-elect Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones and Cori Bush joining the push to address climate change – complicating Joe Biden’s presidency before it even begins.
In a preview, she and the rest of the Squad rallied outside the DNC headquarters on Thursday – firing the first shots of the intraparty civil war as they demanded the Biden deliver on his campaign pledge to enact climate justice – despite pressure from corporate lobbyists.
Ocasio-Cortez claims she’s secured a commitment from the president-elect on a $2 trillion climate plan – which may be more than Biden can deliver given the political divide on Capitol Hill.
A month ago, Biden said that he does not support the Green New Deal, though he has laid out his own plan for addressing climate change.
"My deal's a crucial framework but not the New Green Deal. The New Green Deal calls for elimination of all non-renewable energy by 2030. You can't get there," Biden told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos during a town hall meeting in Philadelphia on Oct. 15. "You're going to need to be able to transition, George, to be able to transition to get to the place where we invest in new technologies that allow us to do things that get us to a place where we get to net zero emission, including in agriculture."
Ocasio-Cortez insists she isn't letting Biden off the hook.
“We're not going to forget about that agreement, for the sake of an election, are we? What we're gonna do is that we're going to organize and demand that this administration -- which I believe is decent, and kind and honorable -- keep their promise,” she said. “We know that we don't just make that demand and walk away. We have to organize for it. We have to bring the heat for it. Because there's a whole lot of people that tried to just shove a bunch of money before this election to try to buy their seat at the table, but we organized for ours.”
“They've got money, but we've got people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “At the end of the day, dollar bills don't vote, although they try to. We vote. People vote. Young people vote.”
Over the past two years, Ocasio-Cortez, alongside Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, have garnered a level of attention that was unprecedented for a quartet of freshmen representatives, particularly women lawmakers given the historic dominance of power that men have enjoyed through the history of the U.S. Congress.
Tlaib, D-Mich., told supporters that she doesn’t have patience for Biden to deliver on his promises.
“When I met with President-elect Biden in Detroit he said, ‘You know I'm gonna need your help.’ I said, ‘Sir, I'm gonna help you get reelected don't worry about that,’” Tlaib recalled. “But I said you I may not be your favorite member of Congress, because my timeline is different.”
“The urgency we feel is very different than the people who turn a blind eye to the ticking time bomb of this climate crisis,” Omar, D-Minn., agreed.
As she reflected on her new colleagues like Bowman, Jones and Bush taking seats in Congress on Jan. 3, Ocasio-Cortez says their successful elections proves "they are not a flash in the pan."
"It shows that they are not a hot new thing," she said. "What is shows is a deep yearning for climate justice and environmental action the United States of America.”
But while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi previously could largely ignore the Squad’s fiery rhetoric because she could pass legislation without their support, now they could evolve into an outsize power among congressional progressives as Pelosi prepares to lead House Democrats through the thinnest majority of her two stretches holding the speaker’s gavel.
“They've got money, but we've got people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “At the end of the day, dollar bills don't vote, although they try to. We vote. People vote. Young people vote.”
Any legislation in the Senate will still be subject to a 60-vote threshold to go forward – regardless of whether Democrats are able to win two runoff elections in Georgia early next year.
Ocasio-Cortez now counts more than 100 cosponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, introduced in tandem with Sen. Ed Markey, who just won reelection – in thanks part to the support of the Sunrise Movement, an influential group of young activists working to stop the climate crisis.
“This isn't a matter of moving to the left. It's a matter of doing what's right,” Markey, D-Mass., said. “We want and we ask Joe Biden to be brave, to be big, to be bold, to ensure that we put in place the kinds of policies that are going to fundamentally transform the relationship, which exists between the people of our country and this climate.”
While these unabashed, self-described Democratic socialists have staked out the far-left mantle of progressivism, on the polar opposite of the Democratic party rests with the New Democrat Coalition – a caucus of roughly 100 Democrats, including many moderates who represent purple districts and helped defend Pelosi’s majority – even as their ranks dwindled amid modest Republican gains in the lower chamber.
Each faction has deflected blame for the party’s failures of the 2020 election, where Democratic candidates failed to defeat a single Republican incumbent and the GOP gained at least nine seats – with winners in several other close races not yet determined. Some moderates believe that progressives dragged them down, while the far-left criticized losing candidates for not embracing their ideology.
Minority voices in Congress who combine forces to form coalitions can have a disproportional impact on the legislative products receiving votes on the House floor, with the House Freedom Caucus serving as a prime example of the capabilities of troublemakers upsetting the designs of congressional leadership. While Pelosi may have been able to control the Squad’s ambitions over the past two years, their influence in the next session of Congress will be one she cannot ignore.
New Democrats see an opportunity to bend the arc of political divisions towards centrist collaboration and cooperation – even using the B-word – “bipartisanship” – to describe a realist effort to enact policies on behalf of voters who are fed up with congressional dysfunction.
“We have an opportunity to build coalitions across the board,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, who is running unopposed to chair the New Dems, told ABC News in an interview. She adds there’s a chance for “bipartisan legislation” given the likelihood of a divided Congress.
“The issue of gridlock and getting things done is critically important,” DelBene, D-Wash., said. “If there’s one consistent thing I hear from constituents, it’s consistently that folks want to see governments work again - moving forward and solving problems.”
New Democrats, according to DelBene, believe the top priority should be another package of relief to address the COVID-19 pandemic – not climate justice.
“Now we have opportunity to talk about how to work together under the Biden administration,” DelBene said. “Our top priority is addressing the pandemic and to make sure we have the public health response but also a strong economic response.”
While the Squad’s objective may be to leverage their unity to keep Pelosi from reaching 218 votes on measures of compromise, DelBene sees “many shared values” with the squad and doesn’t rule them out as potential collaborates on issues like creating economic opportunity, expanding affordable health care, and addressing issues of disparity, poverty and systemic racism.
The bottom line for DelBene is she sees her caucus’s role as a governing partner to Biden that finds consensus to appeal to voters who want Congress to solve problems.
“Building coalitions is very important,” DelBene stressed. “We need to hit the ground running…with the Biden administration and move forward and work with others, find those folks who want to make progress. It’s not always easy work but it’s critically important. That’ll be one of the things we’re judged on.”
A predator drone. (photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
Trump Justice Department Asserts Unreviewable Discretion to Kill US Citizens
Megan Mineiro, Courthouse News
Mineiro writes: "Drawing alarm at the D.C. Circuit, a lawyer for the United States argued Monday that the government has the power to kill its citizens without judicial oversight when state secrets are involved."
“Do you appreciate how extraordinary that proposition is?” U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett asked Justice Department attorney Bradley Hinshelwood, paraphrasing his claim as giving the government the ability to “unilaterally decide to kill U.S. citizens.”
The hearing before the federal appeals court came as the government fights to hold off allegations by two journalists who say it wrongly targeted them as terrorists in Syria.
One of the journalists, U.S. citizen Bilal Abdul Kareem, says his interviews with al-Qaida-linked militants landed him on the U.S. kill list. Just in June and August 2016, Kareem says, the U.S. government targeted him five times, including one drone strike involving a U.S.-made Hellfire missile.
Though the United States has not confirmed whether Kareem or his co-plaintiff, Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, pose any such threat, it has withheld information related to their case on the basis of national security.
Arguing only on the claims brought by Kareem, the Justice Department’s Hinshelwood conceded Monday that a strike against a U.S. citizen is a serious undertaking. Where the judiciary can step in, he said, is in ensuring that the state-secrets privilege was appropriately applied.
But Kareem’s attorney, Tara Jordan Plochocki, argued the government was radically expanding sovereignty, domestically and abroad, allowed under state-secrets privilege.
“Whether that’s in a parking lot in the United States or abroad in Syria, the government has claimed — for the first time ever in this case — that it has unfettered and unreviewable discretion to kill US citizens at will,” Plochocki said.
Shrugging off Kareem’s claims as baseless speculation, the government argued the alleged airstrikes occurred at a time when Syria was wracked by civil war.
“In all of these circumstances, he’s not even the only person present, much less is there anything to suggest that he’s actually the target of any of these specific attacks,” Hinshelwood said.
The three-judge panel took seriously the defense that bombs pummeled Syria in 2016 as the conflict between the Assad regime and rebel groups roared.
U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Henderson, a George H. W. Bush appointee, said she viewed it as a “spectacular delusion of grandeur” that Kareem claims a series of U.S. missiles were aimed at him.
Expressing looser skepticism, Millett followed up saying: “Like Judge Henderson, I remember the news.” The two judges heard the case together with Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, who like Millett is an Obama appointee.
While Plochocki did not dispute that cities like Aleppo and Idlib were subject to severe and routine bombings, she argued U.S. attacks on Syrian territory were not indiscriminate.
“These happened with eerie precisions,” the attorney argued, referring to the five alleged strikes against her client.
She later claimed the government was arguing Kareem needed to “provide the make and model of the missiles fired at him.”
“Of course, that’s not a reasonable expectation,” Plochocki said. Urging the D.C. Circuit to remand the case, she argued such evidence would come out in discovery if the state secrets privilege is lifted.
An immigrant detention center. (photo: ABC)
'He Hurt Me': Migrants Who Accused ICE Gynecologist of Abuse Speak Out
Adam Gabbatt, Guardian UK
Gabbatt writes: "A group of 30 US senators and 75 congressmen and women have demanded an immediate halt to deportations of women who claim they were abused by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) gynecologist, as the furore over alleged abused in Ice custody continues to grow."
At least 43 women have alleged misconduct by Dr Mahendra Amin – and six have been deported as 105 members of Congress signed a petition to halt these deportations
The development comes as some of the women recounted their experiences to the Guardian, two of them detailing the painful and invasive procedures they were subjected to by Dr Mahendra Amin in Georgia. Both women were then listed for deportation days after they spoke out against the doctor, in what their lawyers say is a “pattern of intimidation” designed to silence abuse claims.
The members of Congress, including Senators Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, signed a petition to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, seeking to prevent Amin’s accusers from being deported.
At least 43 women at Irwin county detention center (ICDC), in Georgia, have now alleged misconduct by Amin. He is accused of operating on migrant women without their consent or performing procedures that were medically unnecessary and potentially endangered their ability to have children.
Amin’s lawyer denies the doctor did anything wrong.
Six of the 43 women have been deported since they spoke out about abuse. Another seven women have been listed for deportation.
The 105 members of Congress said the deportation of alleged victims and witnesses in an ongoing investigation into Amin amounted to a “destruction of evidence”, and urged federal agencies to stop deportations.
“At least 18 women who were patients of Dr Mahendra Amin remain detained at ICDC,” the officials said. “Any deportation of these witnesses constitutes interference with the investigation.”
An spokesperson said: “Ice is fully cooperating with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation … Any implication that Ice is attempting to impede the investigation by conducting removals of those being interviewed is completely false.”
Allegations of abuse by Amin, who served as a gynecologist for the Irwin center for several years, have rocked Ice and shocked America since a whistleblower filed a complaint in mid-September.
Since then a number of women allegedly abused by Amin have come forward. But lawyers for the women say they have been subjected to a “pattern of intimidation” by Ice after speaking out.
In the last month seven women, all long-term detainees at the Irwin center, found they were threatened with deportation days after it emerged they had spoken out against Amin.
One of those women, Yanira Yesenia Oldaker, told the Guardian she was taken to Columbus airport, in west Georgia, and was waiting to be flown out of the US when her lawyers managed to appeal her deportation order, allowing her to remain and give evidence.
Oldaker, who has been held at the Irwin center since January, saw Amin twice, the first time for a transvaginal ultrasound and a finger examination in February, which she says was conducted without her consent.
“The examination was horrible,” Oldaker said. “He hurt me mentally and physically. He caused me a lot of pain.”
Oldaker said she told Amin what he was doing was painful, and asked him to stop, but he did not. After the procedure she discovered she was bleeding and had vaginal discharge.
In September, Oldaker saw Amin again for a refill of hormone medication. Instead, Oldaker said Amin performed a pap smear on Oldaker without using lubrication on certain equipment. After the procedure she said it took her a week before she could sit down because of the pain.
Her experience worsened after she submitted sworn testimony about Amin. On 5 November, lawyers say, Oldaker’s name and the names of 16 other women who had spoken out against Amin were shared with the Department of Justice, which oversees Ice, and other agencies.
Two days later, on 7 November, Oldaker’s commissary – the account detainees use to buy medicine, personal cleaning products, and make phone calls – was “zeroed out”, a telltale sign that a detainee is about to be deported.
On 9 November, a Monday, Oldaker was woken up at 5am by Ice officers, who told her she was being deported. She was handcuffed and loaded into a van, and driven straight to Columbus airport, 150 miles west of Irwin county.
After two hours waiting in the parking lot at Columbus airport, two Ice officers approached, and took her out of the van. Oldaker’s lawyers had scrambled to stop her being deported, and had narrowly succeeded. Oldaker was told she would remain in the US – albeit in the Irwin detention center – because she was “part of a major investigation”.
“It’s just been an emotional rollercoaster,” Oldaker said. She was brought to the US from Mexico when she was three and, now 36, has spent 33 years in America.
Oldaker has an 11-year-old daughter who she worries she will never see again if she is deported to Mexico – a country she has never been to since she left as a child.
“She’s already suffering depression and panic attacks since my incarceration started,” Oldaker said.
“She’s my heart, and I haven’t seen her in over a year. It’s the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do, to not see my little girl.”
Elora Mukhurjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, is representing Oldaker. Mukhurjee and a group of fellow immigration lawyers filed the testimonies of about 20 women, who allege they were subjected to or witnesses to non-consensual gynecological procedures, medical abuse and retaliation while held at Irwin county detention center, in a federal court on Thursday, as well as evidence from two doctors who say Amin carried out unnecessary procedures.
Mukhurjee said that by attempting to deport women involved in the investigation into Amin, Ice is “destroying the evidence”.
“Both the doctor and the entire system of people who work at the Irwin county detention center, Ice and its contractors are complicit in these medical atrocities,” Mukhurjee said.
“They thought that the women would be silenced and that this information would never come to light.
“And now there is uncontroverted medical evidence, confirming that women detained at the Irwin county detention center have been subjected to non-consensual, invasive, unnecessary gynecological procedures, Ice is trying to undermine a meaningful investigation.”
The lawyers are seeking U visa certification for the women – a status which states they have been the victim of a crime or been helpful in prosecuting a crime – which can help an individual on a path to lawful citizenship.
The experiences of women at the Irwin center bear a number of similarities.
A woman treated by Amin while at Irwin county detention center, who asked to be identified as JRR, was taken to see the doctor in July after she requested a birth control injection to regulate her menstruation.
Amin determined she needed further examination, JRR said. She said the doctor did not ask for consent when he inserted a device, with inadequate lubrication, into her vagina. She was told she would receive some results in two weeks.
When she returned to Irwin, JRR was in severe pain, and said there was a foul odor from her vagina. She never received any results, or heard from Amin again.
JRR, who is married to a US citizen and is the mother of five children, two of whom are US citizens, joined Oldaker and the other women in testifying about her treatment.
Her name, like Oldaker’s, was on the list handed to federal prosecutors on 5 November, and like Oldaker, JRR found out two days later that she was scheduled to be deported.
Sarah Sherman Stokes, a law professor at Boston University and associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program, and her team managed to prevent the deportation, but on 17 November, JRR was again listed for deportation, this time the next day, despite a pending order for her to remain in the US and be part of the investigation into Amin.
After a frantic, late-night effort, JRR’s lawyers again managed to halt the deportation.
“[Their attempt at] deporting me after I went to the doctor, deporting me with this mentality, I’m very, very worried, that’s the truth. I feel very bad,” JRR said.
“It hurts me a lot and my heart is destroyed for my children. For me what I most want is for my children to live in this country.”
JRR and Oldaker’s experience of a last minute deportation effort has been mirrored by at least five other women held at Irwin.
“Perhaps if you looked at each of these cases in isolation you might think that perhaps this is a co-incidence, that shortly their details were shared with the government, their deportations were rapidly scheduled,” Sherman Stokes said.
“But if you zoom out, even a little bit, it becomes very clear that this is a pattern.
“It feels like part of a larger pattern of intimidation and an effort to directly intervene in these women’s ability to speak about their experiences and the abuses they suffered.”
Amin has denied doing anything wrong and his lawyer, Scott Grubman, has called the allegations “false”.
In a statement to the Guardian Grubman said: “Multiple independent witnesses who were physically present in the examination and/or operating room while Dr Amin provided treatment to Ice detainees have expressly refuted, in writing and under oath, allegations of any rough or inappropriate treatment. Dr Amin has always provided the care he deems appropriate based on his medical training, and has always treated his patients with the utmost care and respect. Dr Amin is cooperating in multiple ongoing investigations and looks forward to those investigations clearing him of any such wrongdoing.”
A woman wearing an 'END SARS' face mask outside the Nigerian Consulate during a demonstration in London, England. (photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Nigeria: Protesters Aren't Just Opposing Police Brutality - They're Opposing Neoliberalism
Sa'eed Husani, Sean Jacobs and William Shoki, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The #EndSARS movement has convulsed Nigeria for weeks, demanding an end to police brutality. But the protesters have something else in their crosshairs: the unequal, austerity-ridden status quo and the political class that defends it."
n October, protests erupted in Nigeria calling for the government to #EndSARS, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The federal policing unit was established in 1992 to respond to a wave of crime in Nigeria’s large cities, like Lagos and Abuja. But as time went on, the plainclothes police were accused of harassment, torture, and extrajudicial killings, mirroring the gangs they were supposedly meant to be targeting and brutalizing Nigeria’s urban youth in particular.
On October 11, in a concession to the historic protests, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari announced he would disband SARS. But the youth-led demonstrations have persisted, and despite government repression, the movement has come to represent not simply a challenge to police violence, but a deeper frustration with the unequal, austerity-ridden, neoliberal status quo and the political class defending it.
Late last month, as part of the new video series “AIAC Talk,” Africa Is a Country’s Sean Jacobs and William Shoki spoke with Sa’eed Husaini, a Jacobin contributor and Lagos-based socialist activist, about the roots of SARS in neoliberal “structural adjustment programs” and how the historic protests are upending assumptions about what’s politically possible in Nigeria. Their conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
WS: Before we get to the protests, can you give us some background on the police in Nigeria?
SH: The critical point when we’re talking about SARS specifically is the late ’80s and the early ’90s. This is the period where structural adjustment programs were introduced in Nigeria, where Nigeria was undergoing quite a dramatic economic decline. And it’s a period where crime became quite widespread, particularly in urban areas.
There was quite a bit of public outcry demanding more forceful policing methods. It was not uncommon throughout the period of military dictatorship, but particularly in the 1990s, to see dramatic acts of “extra-judicial justice,” such as police harassing people in the street and public executions on Bar Beach (a formerly public beach park in Lagos). So it’s out of that context SARS emerges: an authoritarian government responding to this wider desire for some order in the midst of political and economic insecurity and turmoil.
Since then, there has been a lot of resistance to SARS — this isn’t the first time we’ve seen protests specifically calling for its disbandment. But we never had any concrete indication that this unit was over and that more fundamental police reforms were going to be enacted.
Rather, we continued to see SARS snatching up people, young people in particular, and putting them through all sorts of very violent, or at the very least extremely embarrassing, experiences. This led up to the particular case in Delta State in early October, which went viral and contributed to the most recent wave of protests.
WS: What you’re describing seems to mirror a global trend in 1980s and ’90s: a crime wave broke out and political leaders started talking tough on crime and emphasizing how social disorder was primarily the responsibility of individual communities, completely disconnected from questions around political economy. Was Nigeria caught in this global trend, or was it mostly a localized response?
SH: It’s a good question. Obviously, governments learn from each other, and there was a lot of circulation of ideas in that period around how you structure an economy, how you deal with issues of crime and policing.
But I think a lot of it was local. There was domestic demand for more forceful forms of policing, particularly in the midst of a military dictatorship that initially was very popular. I think that’s something we shouldn’t shy away from: the reality that there is a domestic constituency for a very forceful exercise of state power — conservative, some would even say fascist, forms of state power.
What makes the current protests particularly interesting is that it has unified people across the class divide, because a lot of the initial agitation for a much more forceful imposition of law and order tended to target people who were perceived to come from communities that were producing the criminals: the people on the urban margins, primarily ethnic minorities or religious minorities.
So to see unity across class lines, and certainly across religious or ethnic lines — this is what’s new and what makes me feel quite hopeful.
SJ: Your point reminds me of a piece you wrote a while back, where you noted the existence of right-wing movements and constituencies in Africa. It’s definitely a global phenomenon, but there was a localized manifestation of it and in some cases it predates what happened in the West.
But the question I wanted to ask you is, who is organizing End SARS? When we look at it from the outside, it seems to be lots of young people, sort of atomized. What kind of organization is there to it? How would you characterize what makes up the movement?
SH: We’re still trying to wrap our heads around what has happened and what’s happening. But despite End SARS being described as leaderless, there certainly are leaders of various sorts. At the protests I’ve gone to, there have always volunteers co-coordinating on the ground.
There have also been organizations coordinating a lot of the online activism. The feminist coalition seems to be one of the online organizing hubs, coordinating a lot of the fundraising for protests, the legal response, and helping direct ambulances and some of the security.
Aside from the new groups that emerged both online and offline, there are also movements that have been pushing to end SARS, or for various wider concerns, that stepped up. Before the protests kicked off, Omoyele Sowore, who ran for president on the African Action Congress’s ticket and has been the leader of the #RevolutionNow movement, tweeted the suggestion, that, hey, should we have a nationwide protest addressing this issue of police brutality? Who’s with me?
Aside from the new groups that emerged both online and offline, there are also movements that have been pushing to end SARS, or for various wider concerns, that stepped up. Before the protests kicked off, Omoyele Sowore, who ran for president on the African Action Congress’s ticket and has been the leader of the #RevolutionNow movement, tweeted the suggestion, that, hey, should we have a nationwide protest addressing this issue of police brutality? Who’s with me?
There were a bunch of other people with large platforms online and offline, including celebrities like Falz the Bahd Guy and Seun Kuti, who is a long-standing public opponent of police brutality and wider forms of oppression. So there were leaders of various sorts and even organizations of various sorts that have been involved throughout the protest.
I think what distinguishes #EndSARS is that the variety of movements and figures didn’t come together to form any umbrella organization or elect any leadership. There’s a very interesting debate to be had about the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. It’s an approach that we’ve seen in other contexts: the Occupy 2012 movements, to some extent Black Lives Matter, and perhaps FeesMustFall.
But it’s raised important questions about how you organize a successful resistance to specific forms of state violence and wider forms of class oppression or economic exploitation in the absence of organized or structured forms of organization.
Personally, I’m quite optimistic that this conversation is actually being had, that we’ve come to the point where strategic questions are on the table for those who want to see a better Nigeria. That itself is progress from where we were even a couple months ago, when conversations around a progressive Nigeria seemed to get stuck on points like, Can that sort of organizing actually ever occur here? Can Nigerians ever organize across ethnic and religious lines? Can young people actually ever express an opinion, or are they not just caught within gerontocratic or authoritarian forms of order?
So the fact that we’re at the point where we can have the conversation at the strategic level seems to me to be a hopeful one, and one we can certainly build on.
WS: One commenter asks the question, “What sorts of alternative visions and ideas about policing are emerging?”
One thing that has emerged out of the movement is a list of five demands, which seems to express at least for now the extent of what protestors want. One thing that I found surprising about that list is they’re saying, we should pay police officers better. That would seem like a jarring proposal if it came out of Black Lives Matter. So could you unpack some of these alternative visions that people are putting forward?
SH: This is one of the challenges of doing leaderless or structureless organizing: not all the various perspectives about alternatives to the status quo are necessarily given the same platform, or the process through which the demands of the movements are articulated is not necessarily a transparent one.
Nonetheless, it was quite amazing to see that in such a disparate and decentralized-seeming movement, any concrete agenda could emerge. The fact that a clear list of demands emerged and that it received support from a lot of the key figures leading it, and that even the government had to come out and say, yeah, we recognize these demands, they seem legitimate — that fact in itself, I think is worth saluting.
Aside from the five demands, there’ve been attempts by several left groups to articulate a wider vision of alternatives to the policing we’ve had here. Conversations around the abolition of police and the full spectrum of reforms are springing up in various protests.
There was an article that came out on Review of African Political Economy‘s blog that was raising these wider concerns, not only around what you do with policing specifically, but the economic questions that underlie security or insecurity: who exactly the state and police are protecting, and against whom.
So a lot of those conversations are at a very nascent state, and they weren’t fully reflected in those demands. But that is a direction I would anticipate the conversation going — something with more radical prospects.
A gray wolf. (photo: Sam Parks)
Gray Wolf Population in Peril Unless Biden Restores 'Endangered Species' Protections
Collette Adkins, Chicago Tribune
Adkins writes: "After decades of bitter legal feuds and culture-war skirmishes over the fate of wild wolves in the United States, the Trump administration has tried to put a point at the end of the sentence."
But this delisting rule won’t stand up to scrutiny. More wolves will die as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service squares off, once again, in court against conservationists with strong arguments that there’s no evidence on which to base the agency’s claim that wolves will be just fine.
The latest delisting of the gray wolf is the most egregious yet, both legally and scientifically. A peer-review panel found it riddled with errors and lacking the evidence to properly support delisting, but the agency ignored those concerns.
This issue presents President-elect Joe Biden an opportunity to break from the mold cast by his predecessors. Prior to this latest effort by the Trump administration, President Barack Obama allowed a previous delisting effort to move forward.
In his first weeks as president, Biden should take decisive action and direct federal wildlife agencies to embrace a science-backed, full recovery of the wolf in the lower 48 states — which would hinge on restoring federal protections under the Endangered Species Act and keeping them in place.
If Biden chooses instead to allow delisting to stand, well, we’ve seen that movie before.
In 2012, wolves were removed from the federal endangered species list in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. A federal judge restored protection in 2014, and an appeals court upheld this ruling in 2017.
In the two and half years that wolf hunting and trapping were allowed, more than a third of the region’s entire wolf population was killed. A repeat of the same fiasco would result in the same leap backward for wolf recovery on a nationwide scale.
There’s little to support claims of wolf recovery. Oregon has some 160 wolves inhabiting just 12% of the suitable habitat within the state. Washington’s 2019 minimum population was reported at just 108 wolves — the third straight year the growth rate for the state’s wolf population was well below the baseline recovery rate of 30%.
If allowed to proceed unchecked, federal delisting will trigger a cascade of state management decisions that will bring more state-sanctioned wolf slaughters and doom the species' recovery.
States such as Wisconsin mandate an immediate wolf hunting and trapping season upon federal delisting. Wolves that attempt to disperse from the western Great Lakes states to seek new territory in the Dakotas can be gunned down on sight without penalty.
In California, wolves are barely starting to return, with only 14 confirmed animals in the state. California’s wolf recovery depends on wolves migrating in from Oregon. But once federal protections are removed there, California’s source population will be at risk.
The fundamental purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend. Most of us are now familiar with the many ecological benefits wolves provide, as illustrated by wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park. Yet with delisting, we’ll never know how healthy wolf populations might transform their former habitats in the Adirondacks, Sierra Nevada or Black Hills of South Dakota.
Nearly every time the Fish and Wildlife Service has attempted to strip wolves of protection, these efforts have either been overturned in court or withdrawn. Again and again, the courts have told the agency that its attempts to remove protections from wolves were flat-out illegal.
It’s time for the Fish and Wildlife Service to unchain this magnificent, ecologically essential species from its absurd legal and political carousel. Delisting was a last-minute “gift” from the Trump administration to conservative voters and the livestock industry right before the November election. If Biden allows it to stand, it would send a signal that he doesn’t have the stomach for charting the course needed in the U.S. to undo the incredible damage done to environmental policy over the past four years.
The uncertainty surrounding the status of wolves erodes faith in good governance and wildlife management — and even the value that people place on wolves. Protection under the federal Endangered Species Act remains the most powerful and effective means of undoing nearly a century of eradication efforts throughout the nation. Without it, wolves will remain as they are now — pale shadows of their former selves, diminished symbols of a wild America now lost.
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