02 January 21
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Leaked Terrorism Guide Shows FBI Still Classifying Black 'Extremists' as Domestic Terrorism Threat
Jana Winter, Marquise Francis and Sean D. Naylor, Yahoo News
Excerpt: "More than three years after the FBI came under fire for claiming 'Black identity extremists' were a domestic terrorism threat, the bureau has issued a new terrorism guide that employs almost identical terminology, according to a copy of the document obtained by Yahoo News."
ore than three years after the FBI came under fire for claiming “Black identity extremists” were a domestic terrorism threat, the bureau has issued a new terrorism guide that employs almost identical terminology, according to a copy of the document obtained by Yahoo News.
The FBI’s 2020 domestic terrorism reference guide on “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism” identifies two distinct sets of groups: those motivated by white supremacy and those who use “political reasons — including racism or injustice in American society” to justify violence. The examples the FBI gives for the latter group are all Black individuals or groups.
The FBI document claims that “many” of those Black racially motivated extremists “have targeted law enforcement and the US Government,” while a “small number” of them “incorporate sovereign citizen Moorish beliefs into their ideology, which involves a rejection of their US citizenship based on a combination of sovereign citizen ideology, religious beliefs, and black separatist rhetoric.”
In 2017, a leaked copy of an FBI report on “Black identity extremists” sparked an outcry from activists, civil rights groups and Congress, who criticized the bureau for portraying disparate groups and individuals as a single movement, even though the only common factor was that those associated with the term were Black Americans. Those critics also faulted the FBI for equating isolated attacks against law enforcement with those perpetrated by white supremacists, which even the FBI said represent the majority of domestic terror attacks in recent years.The American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the government as part of a Freedom of Information Act request for records on the FBI’s use of the term “Black identity extremist” and its targeting of Black activists, said the new report continues to show underlying problems with the bureau’s approach to domestic terrorism.
“As evidenced by this reference guide, white supremacists are the ones actually carrying out violent attacks, yet the FBI continues to equate them with Black activists and Black-led organizations who exercise their First Amendment-protected right to speak out against racism and racial violence committed by police,” Mark Carter, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, told Yahoo News. “Putting Black activists in the same category as violent racists is absurd and illogical.”
In 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that the bureau had abandoned the term “Black identity extremist” and had instead moved toward the term “racially motivated violent extremist.” Yet the new terrorism reference guide outlines two types of such racially motivated extremists: those who are motivated by the belief in the superiority of the white race, and those who are Black and motivated by political causes, including racial injustice.
The current language used in the guide appears to be identical to how the FBI previously identified “Black identity extremists.”
Mike German, a former FBI agent and now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, says the latest guide shows the FBI has altered the language but is still mischaracterizing the issue. The guide “reprises the faulty analysis the FBI used to manufacture what it previously called the Black identity movement to describe this new subcategory of Black ‘racially motivated violent extremists,’” he told Yahoo News.
“Just as with the [‘Black identity extremist’] report, it cobbles together several disparate and even conflicting motivations and ideologies into this new subcategory where the sole distinctive feature is being Black,” German said. “Then it uses dubious language to suggest that Black people angry over ‘alleged’ police brutality and ‘perceived’ racial injustice in the legal system are part of this ‘violent extremist’ category, clearly painting Black Lives Matter activists and supporters as potential threats to law enforcement.”
The debate over the FBI’s designation of “racially motivated extremists” comes amid a larger shift in the debate about domestic terrorism, as violent acts committed by domestic extremists with no known foreign affiliation have far outstripped those carried out by individuals affiliated with groups like al-Qaida or the Islamic State. And those tracking domestic extremists say the data shows that white supremacists commit the vast majority of such attacks.
Russ Travers, who previously headed the federal government’s National Counterterrorism Center, said attacks committed by Black nationalist groups weren’t a focus when he was there. “There certainly have been instances over the past few years — Jersey City being the most recent I recall,” he said, referring to the attack last year targeting a police officer and a kosher deli.
One of the two assailants, who both died in the subsequent shootout with police, was reportedly tied to the Black Hebrew Israelites, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group.
But the number of such attacks is simply “not in the same league” as those committed by white supremacists, according to Travers. “I certainly haven’t seen any spate of black nationalist violence since I left,” he added.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, recently conducted its own study of attacks and found that, as of October, white supremacists and “like-minded extremists” were responsible for two-thirds of domestic attacks.
Seth Jones, director of the center’s Transnational Threats Project, told Yahoo News that while Black nationalist groups might have presented a threat in the 1960s or 1970s, he didn’t recall seeing any examples in the recent data. “It’s a threat, but how big of one, especially now?” he said. “I’d be skeptical.”
Even with white supremacists conducting the majority of recent attacks, the FBI terrorism guide lists six “notable” incidents from the past several years evenly split between those linked to white supremacists and those connected to Black individuals who law enforcement believed may have had political motivations for their attacks. Omitted from the list is the attack carried out by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine Black people in a 2015 shooting in a Charleston, S.C., church.
German, the former FBI agent, said that “by equally dividing the six incidents it describes, the report appears to equate white supremacist violence with violence by Black ‘racially motivated violent extremists,’ which mischaracterizes the data.”
Malkia Devich-Cyril, the founding director and a senior fellow at MediaJustice in Oakland, Calif., also took issue with the FBI’s classification of Black separatists as racial extremists alongside white supremacists. “The fact is, Black radicalism, including Black separatism, has long been about winning equity, peace and justice for Black people, not about denying it to anyone else — while white supremacist violence has been responsible for the vast majority of domestic terror attacks in 2020 and throughout the last several decades,” she said.
Another concern for Black activists has been the FBI’s seeming conflation of Black Lives Matter with extremism. The FBI reference guide asserts, for example, that “retaliation and retribution for alleged or actual police brutality and the perception of unjust legal proceedings surrounding the officers involved are organizing drivers” for racially motivated violent extremists.
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tenn., told Yahoo News in an interview that comparing people fighting for social justice to white supremacists is “not only disrespectful, it’s not true.”
Henderson, who has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement, said there is “a level of intentionality behind labeling ‘Black identity extremist’ movements and [law enforcement’s] targeting of the Black liberation movement.”
In a statement to Yahoo News, the FBI defended its classification of racially motivated extremists.
“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, the FBI routinely shares information with our law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve,” it said. “The FBI is focused on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
In its statement to Yahoo News, the FBI said attacks by those classified as racially motivated extremists “were the primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents and violence in 2018 and 2019 and have been considered the most lethal of all domestic extremists since 2001.”
It added, however, that its data, which is based on fiscal years, shows that in “2020 the three lethal domestic violent extremism attacks were perpetrated by anti-government violent extremists.”
Over the past four years, critics have taken aim at President Trump for failing to condemn white supremacist attacks, particularly after the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in which a counterprotester was killed in a vehicle attack. Under pressure, Trump condemned the violence but also said there were “very fine people, on both sides.”
Since then, the president’s critics have pointed to repeated cases where he immediately condemned as terrorism attacks involving Muslims, yet has often remained silent in cases where the perpetrator was white. Most recently, he has remained silent on the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville; the man named as responsible for the attack, Anthony Warner, who was white, died in the explosion.
Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, which had previously called out the FBI for its use of the term “Black identity extremist,” said the new terrorism guide appears to perpetuate the same flawed approach and shows that the FBI continues to be “tone deaf.”
Johnson criticized the new guide for “shifting the focus to a community that has not demonstrated any act of violence or domestic terrorism this entire year.”
“We’ll be calling on Congress to hold hearings,” he said.
A patient hospitalized with COVID-19. (photo: BioSpace)
US Surpasses 20 Million Confirmed Coronavirus Cases
Reese Oxner, NPR
Oxner writes: "The United States has reached a sobering milestone while marking the new year."
READ MORE
Police in Minneapolis shot and killed a man during a traffic stop on the city's south side Wednesday night. (photo: Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune/AP)
ALSO SEE: Minneapolis Police Release Body Camera
Video of Its First Killing Since George Floyd
Protesters Demand Answers in First Minneapolis Police Shooting Death Since George Floyd
Allie Yang, ABC News
Yang writes: "Protesters took to the streets on Thursday, following the police shooting death of 23-year-old Dolal Idd in the same neighborhood where George Floyd died in May."
ADDED:
23-year-old Dolal Idd was killed in a shootout with police.
"We are angry right now, we are frustrated right now, because we said 'No' after George Floyd was killed, but it didn't take long until another body fell," protester Jaylani Hussein told Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP Thursday night.
Idd's death is the first at the hands of Minneapolis police since Floyd died on May 25, igniting protests across the country for police reform and racial equality.
Idd was killed Wednesday evening in a shootout with Minneapolis Police Department officers during a traffic stop. Police say Idd was a suspect in a felony.
Body camera video released to the public within 24 hours showed police repeatedly ordering Idd to "stop your car." Police squad cars boxed in Idd's white car before the driver's window shattered and police fired into the car, the video shows.
"When I viewed the video that everyone else is viewing … it appears that the individual inside the vehicle fired his weapon at the vehicle first," MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo said Thursday. He also said witnesses confirmed that the suspect fired first.
Arradondo said the MPD officers had been conducting a "probable cause" weapons investigation, which resulted in the traffic stop at a gas station. Arradondo said he didn't know whether there was a warrant for Idd's arrest.
Idd was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman he was with in the car and the officers at the scene were uninjured.
A weapon was recovered at the scene, officials said.
Protesters are demanding more details and more video beyond the 28 seconds of footage that was released. Others are questioning if police could have done more to de-escalate the situation.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation into the incident. Arradondo said he expects more video from the shooting to be released during the course of the probe.
Arradondo said he met with Idd's family members and allowed them to view the body camera footage before it was made public.
The names of the officers involved in the incident have not yet been released.
When asked whether the officers were justified in firing into the vehicle, Arradondo said his officers are "trained to respond" when they are "experiencing gunfire."
Arradondo also said he wants to protect everyone's right to demonstrate peacefully, but says the city "cannot allow for destructive criminal behavior."
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Thursday acknowledged the "raw emotion" Minneapolis is experiencing and said that "the details of what transpired last night does not negate the tragedy of yesterday's death."
Mitch McConnell. (photo: CNN)
Republican-Led Senate Overrides Trump Defense Bill Veto in Rare New Year's Day Session
Edward Helmore, Guardian UK
Helmore writes: "Donald Trump's fellow Republicans in the US Senate on Friday took the atypical rebellious step of overriding his veto for the first time in his presidency."
READ MORE
A mother from Honduras holds her child as they surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents. (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)
Citing the Pandemic, CBP Has Expelled Newborn US Citizens With Their Migrant Mothers
Felipe De La Hoz, The Intercept
De La Hoz writes: "US Customs AND Border Protection has used a controversial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order authorizing the expulsion of asylum-seekers on supposed public health grounds to send multiple U.S.-born infants - who are by law U.S. citizens - and their migrant families across the southern border to Mexico."
EXCERPT:
In interviews with The Intercept, three asylum-seeking mothers who crossed the border while pregnant described giving birth in U.S. hospitals, only to be swiftly sent back under false pretenses and without an evaluation of their particular humanitarian circumstances or claims of danger. The Intercept has reviewed medical and immunization records for the women and their infants, which prove U.S. hospital births, and is referring to the mothers by pseudonyms due to their precarious status as asylum-seekers and the danger they believe they still face in Mexico, where all three remain. None immediately received citizenship paperwork for their infants, and they are unsure if and when they’ll be allowed to tender an asylum claim.
“The law does not allow for the rapid expulsion of U.S. citizens,” said Nicole Ramos, director of the Border Rights Project at Al Otro Lado, a legal and social services organization that is investigating the expulsions. Al Otro Lado, which has a presence in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Tijuana, Mexico, said it is aware of a total of eight mothers in this situation, two of whom it’s lost contact with and the rest of whom remain in Mexico.
One such mother, Lupe, was the subject of a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security this summer. At the time, CBP claimed that she had departed voluntarily with her toddler and chalked the situation up to a fluke. In an interview with The Intercept, Lupe said that not only had she not been asked about the expulsion or given affirmative consent for her citizen child to be expelled alongside her, but also she wasn’t even aware that she was being turned back to Mexico until she saw the Mexican border agents waiting for her.
Juana, an asylum-seeker fleeing gang threats in Honduras, said she arrived at the border nine months pregnant and with her 8-year-old son in July. She was already experiencing labor pains and decided to cross the border and seek help. Border Patrol officers called an ambulance and took her son to the processing center known as La Perrera, or the kennel. She was moved to Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista in Chula Vista, California, and gave birth to an infant son the next morning. According to Juana, CBP personnel assured both her and a social worker who had been assigned to her case that she and her sons would be able to stay in the United States to await an immigration proceeding. Instead, they were loaded into a vehicle and only realized that they were being taken to Mexico as they were brought to the port of entry. (The hospital declined to make the social worker available for comment and said it does not track how many new mothers in immigration custody it treats.)
Per an agreement with Mexico, the CDC order is meant to apply only to citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Yet The Intercept spoke with a mother from Haiti who was sent back to Tijuana two days after delivering a baby daughter under CBP custody after attempting to petition for asylum at a port of entry in mid-July. “When I crossed the border, that’s when I realized I was being taken to Mexico,” Angeline told The Intercept. “I started screaming, ‘What am I going to do with a baby, I don’t have any place to stay, anywhere to sleep.’”
The expulsion policy was first issued in March, ostensibly as a countermeasure to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s based on a statute that deals with public health, not immigration, and gives the CDC director “the power to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate” in order to prevent the introduction of such a disease. The Wall Street Journal reported in October that senior officials at the CDC thought the measure was unnecessary, but implemented it under political pressure from White House Adviser Stephen Miller. Its legal premise was questioned in a recent federal court decision that prevented the administration from continuing to expel unaccompanied minors.
Nonetheless, the order was reissued in mid-October for an indefinite period of time, at the CDC director’s discretion, and remains active. It generally calls for people who are not U.S. citizens or residents and do not otherwise have entry paperwork to be expelled from the country as quickly as possible, without even the opportunity to file a case for humanitarian protections. Between mid-March and mid-October, over 204,000 expulsions took place, with only a tiny fraction of people exempted under humanitarian categories. Migrants are either sent across the border to Mexico or on flights to their countries of origin, including minors with their families and unaccompanied minors, prior to the federal injunction.
The CDC order specifically exempts U.S. citizens, and no part of U.S. immigration law appears to authorize the expulsion of people who were born in the United States. CBP spokesperson Matthew Dyman declined to discuss particular cases and said the agency does not keep data on the total number of mothers and newborn U.S. citizen infants expelled under the order. He echoed a previous claim by immigration authorities that migrant mothers who are expelled from the U.S. voluntarily choose to take their children along rather than leave them behind — a choice that CBP has been known to pose to parents who are being removed. The U.S. government “does not expel (under title 42) nor deport American citizens,” Dyman wrote. “A U.S. citizen departing the country with an alien who has no legal presence and is being expelled or deported would be accompanying that expelled/deported individual.”
A protest for Mapuche rights in Chile. (photo: IMPAKTER)
Chile: Mapuche Political Prisoners Continue Struggle for Land and Freedom
Edgars MartÃnez Navarrete, NACLA
MartÃnez Navarrete writes: "On May 4, Mapuche spiritual leader Machi Celestino Córdova, imprisoned in Chile's Temuco prison, launched a hunger strike to demand respect for Indigenous rights as enshrined in international law. Several Mapuche in another prison joined him. Weeks later, the total number of Mapuche on hunger strike behind bars in the cities of Temuco, Angol, and Lebu rose to 27."
Sea Shepherd conducts patrols in the Gulf of California, the exclusive home range of the critically endangered vaquita. (photo: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)
Collision at Sea as Sea Shepherd Vessels Attacked in Mexico's Vaquita Refuge
Sea Shepherd
Excerpt: "At approximately 07:00 on the morning of December 31st, a group of assailants in 5-7 fishing boats (known locally as pangas) launched a violent attack on Sea Shepherd vessels Farley Mowat and Sharpie inside the Zero Tolerance Area of Mexico's federally-protected Vaquita Refuge."
The incident began as the crew of the Farley Mowat undertook efforts to retrieve a gillnet from the protected region, home to the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. Gillnet fishing is banned in the region, and Sea Shepherd is working with Mexican authorities to deter poaching and remove illegal fishing gear from the area. As the conservation vessel attempted to remove the net from the refuge, several pangas aggressively approached the ship, launching lead weights and Molotov cocktails at the crew and military officials on board.
Following routine anti-piracy procedures, the Farley Mowat undertook defensive maneuvering to avoid the attacks. As the vessel attempted to leave the scene, one of the pangas aggressively swerved in front of the Farley Mowat, crashing directly into the hull of the former U.S. Coast Guard Cutter. CCTV footage recorded on the bridge of the Farley Mowat captured images of the incident.
The panga split into two pieces, expelling its passengers into the sea. Crew and military personnel on board Sea Shepherd’s second vessel in the area, Sharpie, responded immediately, recovered the two men, who had been picked up by one of the other pangas involved in the attack, and brought them on board. Sea Shepherd’s Medical Officer, Corrine Perron, provided emergency first aid.
One assailant was not breathing when brought on board the conservation vessel. Sea Shepherd’s Medical Officer used the ship’s AED and administered immediate CPR and emergency oxygen. The second assailant has suspected broken ribs. Two medics from the Mexican Navy arrived at the scene and provided additional emergency care to the men. As the medics continued to tend to the injured parties, two assailants illegally boarded the Sharpie, threatened its crew and the Mexican officials on board, and smashed the camera being used to document the emergency first response. Assailants in nearby pangas threw projectiles and fuel at Sharpie, catching its bow on fire. Sharpie crew and military officials successfully put out the fire and removed the two men who had illegally boarded the ship. Sea Shepherd rushed the injured men to two nearby naval vessels, a defender and an interceptor, for follow-up medical treatment. They have since been airlifted to the hospital.
As Sharpie departed from the scene, the pangas continued to attack, launching additional Molotov cocktails at the vessel, setting the recovered fishing gear collected on the vessel’s aft-deck on fire. The crew and military personnel on board were able to extinguish the fire. On shore, assailants set fire to Sea Shepherd’s truck.
The Mexican Navy is investigating the incident.
This morning’s attack is the latest in a series of increasingly violent assaults launched against Sea Shepherd’s ships over the past month. Assailants have hurled Molotov cocktails, knives, hammers, flares, bottles of fuel, and other deadly projectiles at the vessels, crew, and military personnel on board. No serious injuries have occurred prior to today’s incident.
The conservation organization’s vessels have come under attack in the past while defending the habitat of the vaquita. In March 2020, a group of pangas swarmed Farley Mowat and Sharpie, launching rocks, lead weights, and other projectiles at the ships. One month prior, assailants opened fire at Sea Shepherd’s vessels. In 2019, Farley Mowat was illegally boarded and its hull set on fire.
The Vaquita Refuge is a UNESCO-recognized region in the Upper Gulf of California that is home to the world’s most endangered marine mammal – the vaquita. The endemic porpoise has experienced a rapid population decline over recent years due to entanglement in gillnets. There are fewer than 20 vaquitas left alive. Scientists believe the remaining vaquita population is concentrated in a high-priority zone of the Vaquita Refuge known as the Zero Tolerance Area.
Working closely with Mexican authorities, Sea Shepherd monitors the Vaquita Refuge to deter poaching and remove the illegal nets that threaten the survival of the species. This partnership has resulted in the retrieval of over 1,000 gillnets to-date.
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