04 February 21
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Ronan Farrow | A Mother's Path to Insurrection
Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker
Farrow writes: "Before the pandemic, Rachel Powell, a forty-year-old mother of eight from western Pennsylvania, sold cheese and yogurt at local farmers' markets and used Facebook mostly to discuss yoga, organic food, and her children's baseball games."
How claims by Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones spurred a parent of eight to become one of the Capitol riot’s biggest mysteries, and a fugitive from the F.B.I.
But, last year, Powell began to post more frequently, embracing more extreme political views. Her interests grew to include conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the results of the Presidential election, filtered through such figures as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Infowars founder Alex Jones. On May 3, 2020, Powell wrote on Facebook, “One good thing about this whole CV crisis is that I suddenly feel very patriotic.” Expressing outrage at the restrictions that accompanied the pandemic, she wrote, “It isn’t to late to wake up, say no, and restore freedoms.” Several days later, she posted a distraught seven-minute video, shot outside a local gym that had been closed. “Police need to see there’s people that are citizens that are not afraid of you guys showing up in your masks. We’re going to be here banded together, and we’re not afraid of you,” she said. “Maybe they should be a little bit afraid.”
On January 6th, during the storming of the United States Capitol, Powell made good on that threat. Videos show her, wearing a pink hat and sunglasses, using a battering ram to smash a window and a bullhorn to issue orders. “People should probably coördinate together if you’re going to take this building,” she called out, leaning through a shattered window and addressing a group of rioters already inside. “We got another window to break to make in-and-out easy.”
In recent weeks, as journalists and law-enforcement officials tried to identify participants in the assault, she came to be known as “Bullhorn Lady” and “Pink Hat Lady.” She appeared on an F.B.I. “Wanted” poster, was featured in cable-television news segments, and became an obsessive focus of crowdsourced investigative efforts by laypeople and experts. Forrest Rogers, a German-American business consultant who is part of a Twitter group called the Deep State Dogs, recently identified Powell and reported her name to the F.B.I. She is now being sought by law enforcement.
In her first public comments since the riot, Powell acknowledged her role in the events at the Capitol. During a two-hour telephone interview, she claimed that her conduct had been spontaneous, contrary to widespread speculation that she had acted in coördination with an organized group. “I was not part of a plot—organized, whatever,” Powell, who was speaking from an undisclosed location, told me. “I have no military background. . . . I’m a mom with eight kids. That’s it. I work. And I garden. And raise chickens. And sell cheese at a farmers’ market.” During the interview, she reviewed photographs and videos of the Bullhorn Lady, acknowledging that many of the images showed her, and offered detailed descriptions of the skirmishes they depicted. She declined to comment on some of her conduct—including smashing windows and shouting orders to fellow-rioters—that could carry criminal charges. “Listen, if somebody doesn’t help and direct people, then do more people die?” she said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that. I can’t say anymore. I need to talk to an attorney.”
Powell was born in Anaheim, California, and grew up on what she described as “the really bad side” of Fresno. She was raised by her mother, who worked at a local shop, and by her stepfather, a plumber. “It was rough, but she didn’t do without anything,” her mother, Deborah Lemons, who has had a strained relationship with Powell for the past several years, said. “She always had clothes. She always had food.” Lemons said that, when Powell was a child, she and her stepfather were the victims of a carjacking. Powell was held at gunpoint and her stepfather was kidnapped for several hours by their assailant. “Knowing what that feels like, I am just absolutely amazed that she would participate in something like this and not consider or have a lot of compassion for the people who were inside that building,” Lemons said, referring to the riot. “She well knows what it’s like to wonder if she’s gonna lose her life.”
When Powell was fifteen, her family moved to West Sunbury, in western Pennsylvania, to care for an ailing relative of her stepfather’s. The town was typical of declining Rust Belt communities. “There were a lot of steel mills that closed even since I lived there,” Powell told me. She told me that she had married young, and her mother said that Powell had her first child at sixteen. After graduating from high school, she remained in Pennsylvania. Three years ago, Powell separated from her husband. Since then, she has worked various part-time jobs to support her children, who range in age from four to their mid-twenties. She told me that she has a certification as a group fitness instructor, and has taken a course in alternative medicine. “She’s very granola, very crunchy,” a friend, who asked not to be identified, told me. “Does yoga, eats vegetarian, homeschools all their kids.”
Powell said that, before the election of Donald Trump, in 2016, she held a wide range of political opinions. “My views kind of fall all over the place,” she said. “I guess you could say that I’m more libertarian at heart.” Though her county supported Trump by wide margins in both 2016 and 2020, Powell told me that she didn’t vote for him in his first run, and her social-media posts during that time include sharp criticism of him. “Trump makes me uncomfortable as a presidential candidate,” she wrote in a Facebook post that linked to a piece about Trump’s lack of civility. “What disturbs me is that so many people support this type of person.” She also told me that she took issue with his environmental policies. During his tenure in the White House, however, she embraced Trump and, eventually, the misinformation that he nurtured about the coronavirus and election fraud.
Those political views began to have various impacts on her life after the pandemic hit. Paula Keswick, who co-owns a local creamery that sold Powell cheese and yogurt, said that Powell was barred from working at some events after she refused to obey pandemic restrictions. “She was just adamant she was not going to wear a mask,” Keswick said. (Powell said that she now works part time at a local bookstore.) Last summer and fall, Powell said, she attended various protests, including anti-mask rallies. “If there was a protest in Harrisburg, I was there for almost all of them,” she told me. On July 4th, she drove for four hours to join members of several far-right groups, some of them armed, who gathered at the Gettysburg National Military Park, purportedly to protect Civil War monuments from desecration. At the rally, a man wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt was surrounded and aggressively questioned by about fifty demonstrators. In a video posted online, Powell is among the group, holding an iPhone with the same Kate Spade Hollyhock Floral case that she was later photographed carrying at the Capitol. Powell also told me that she attended rallies in Washington, D.C., on dates she could not recall, including one attended by members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, where Alex Jones, who has falsely alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was faked, spoke. (Powell said that Jones is not her “favorite person,” but that she considers him to be “another journalist to listen to—he has interesting things to say.”) She told me that she did not share the racist views espoused by some on the far right. (In 2013, she tweeted, “what’s up, my niggas?” Powell defended the use of the N-word, saying, “My favorite book is ‘Gone with the Wind,’ and it uses that term freely.”)
Last November, Powell voted for Trump. “It was a little bit of a hard decision for me, and I didn’t make that decision to vote for him till two months before the election,” she said. “I appreciate his business mind. Economy-wise, he has it going on. He loves America.” Ultimately, she concluded, she “couldn’t vote for the other person. I really don’t think Biden or Harris will be good for the country.”
Concerns about mask requirements, which she called a “liberty issue,” were instrumental in her decision. She claimed that the risks of the coronavirus had been overstated by public-health officials, saying that she had not seen many deaths in her county. On November 5th, 2020, she wrote in a Facebook comment directed at a friend, “I won’t get a vaccine either. I hear what you’re saying about the whole world being in on the conspiracy as far as the corona virus goes.” On December 27th, she posted, “I’m unashamedly a ‘super spreader,’ ” attaching photographs of crowded, mask-free holiday and birthday parties. That day, she uploaded a video of a large maskless meal, during which several children said, “No masks,” and Powell could be heard saying, “The masks are total bullcrap. You guys just need to get out there and live. Get arrested—it’s fine.”
Powell connected her beliefs about the coronavirus to claims promoted by Trump and his allies that he had won the election. The day after the election, she shared a screenshot of a graphic claiming that several states had more votes recorded than they did registered voters, information that Facebook flagged as “partly false.” In the accompanying text, Powell wrote, “I’m sitting here thinking about how everyone has been so complacent during COVID.” She went on, “The government knows exactly how far you can be pushed because the population has been successfully tested.”
That post, like others reflecting Powell’s increasingly extreme views, was met with positive reinforcement online. “The dumbing down and fattening up of America has been very successful,” one person wrote in response to the election-fraud conspiracy theory. “It may be too late if ever they wake up.” Earlier posts protesting mask-wearing prompted comments such as “Truth!!!” and “Wake up people!!!!”
Powell said that she derived her beliefs “a little bit from everywhere,” and that she was not a follower of any mainstream news source. “You can go online, go on Facebook now, and dig up a thousand different links about it,” she said, of the election-fraud conspiracy theories. She said that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, had been a significant source of information, and that she had watched remarks he gave in Gettysburg, on November 25th, during a widely discredited state-senate committee hearing in which he and several witnesses made baseless claims of voter fraud. “That was pretty moving to me,” she said. “I learned a lot from Giuliani and people’s testimonies.”
Joan Donovan, a scholar of media manipulation and extremism, who serves as the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, told me that Powell’s process of radicalization was increasingly common. “You don’t have to go to the dark corners of the Web to find this anymore,” she said. “Through these influencers, through these political propagandists, it’s all brought in through your news feed, through your home page.” Donovan said that friends’ comments often provide an echo chamber for misinformation, and that every click on extremist content can prompt social-media algorithms to produce more of the same. Giuliani, in particular, has proved to be a popular entry point into the world of misinformation. “There were a lot of people like her in that crowd,” Donovan told me, referring to Powell’s participation in the Capitol riot. “They’re going to figure out ways to get back online and to keep communicating with each other. And, if Trump does figure out a way back on platforms where he can build power in the way he did before, this group of people is going to continue to be dangerous and menacing.”
At the July 4th demonstration in Gettysburg, Powell met Kevin Lynn, the founder of a group that advocates for the hiring of American workers in the U.S. technology industry. Last August, after Lynn’s group placed ads pressing Trump to restrict the outsourcing of jobs overseas, Lynn met with Trump at the White House. Lynn told me that he had attended the Gettysburg protest to document the event, and that he interviewed several participants, including Powell. Afterward, the two stayed in touch. “I would say we’re friends,” he said. Before Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., Powell told Lynn that she planned to attend, and they agreed to go together. On January 5th, Powell and Lynn met near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and drove to Washington in his car. At least two other friends, the owners of the bookstore where Powell works, drove in another car. (The bookstore owners did not respond to a request for comment.) At the rally, on the morning of January 6th, Powell helped Lynn operate his camera. Trump urged attendees to “fight like hell.” He added, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. . . . Let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Powell said that Trump’s words weighed “partially” in her decisions that day. “It’s good he did ask the American people to come and let their voices be heard for what they believe in,” she told me, “but it was definitely not the sole reason that I came.”
Both Powell and Lynn said that, as they marched to the Capitol, they were separated. Lynn told me that he did not enter the Capitol and that he was “shocked” by the footage of Powell in the thick of the violence.
At the Capitol, Powell said that she found herself in an increasingly violent confrontation between rioters and Capitol police. Powell appeared to be wearing a jacket designed specifically for the concealed carrying of a gun, but said she did not carry one, “unless you count a Lärabar and bottle of water as a weapon.” In one video, her pink hat is briefly visible in a crush of bodies during a skirmish near an entrance on the west front of the Capitol which is reserved for members of Congress and staffers. “That’s where the pileup was,” she told me, after reviewing the video. “The people were wedged so tight.” She said that she heard a woman’s cries growing gradually quieter beneath the crowd and claimed ultimately to have seen her dead body. (The New Yorker was unable to confirm whether a woman died there.) Powell added, “I was beaten with a baton, and sprayed and gassed.”
In another video, Powell and other rioters are seen using a makeshift battering ram to shatter one of the Capitol’s windows. She pulls the heavy, pipe-shaped object back and throws her weight forward against it repeatedly. (“That’s one of those things I can neither confirm nor deny,” she said. “I just need to talk to an attorney. If you look at that video, people are just going to make their own assumptions.”) In yet another video, she stands outside a broken window, shouting instructions through the bullhorn to rioters inside. Powell says, “I’ve been in the other room,” and appears to outline a plan involving breaking a pane of glass to get into another part of the Capitol. Powell said, regarding her knowledge of the building’s layout, “Anything that was said was figured out as time went on. It wasn’t like there was a map or anything.”
After the riot, Powell said, “I was by myself—I didn’t rendezvous with a bunch of people . . . I didn’t meet militias.” Lynn said that Powell did not join him for the drive home. Powell declined to answer questions about how she returned to Pennsylvania, or with whom.
Forrest Rogers, who reported Powell’s name to the F.B.I., at first thought he had identified a ringleader in a premeditated campaign to invade the Capitol. “The initial footage showed a woman, an apparent insider with an understanding of the Capitol layout, shouting commands to a bunch of unknowns through a bullhorn,” Rogers said. “This created a perception that she was one of the conspirators with an extensive network.” John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who has been involved in crowdsourced efforts to identify participants in the riot, said that he also independently confirmed Powell’s identity: “It became clearer over time that her actual role might be different, but still important to understanding what brought a person like that to the Capitol.”
Lemons, Powell’s mother, expressed astonishment at her daughter’s conduct and said that she condemned the violence during the riot. “The whole family is, in a way, just devastated,” she said. “It’s a thing you never expect, that your child is going to be on some F.B.I. ‘Wanted’ poster.” Powell said that her only regrets were the possible repercussions for her children. Asked whether she would have acted differently, given the chance, she said, “I try not to think about that. There are some things that are just worth blocking out.”
Pallbearers carry the casket of Andre Hill to a hearse following funeral services on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021 at First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio. (photo: Joshua A. Bickel/AP)
Ohio Police Officer Charged With Murder in Andre Hill Death
Farnoush Amiri and Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press
Excerpt: "A white Ohio police officer was charged with murder Wednesday in the latest fallout following the December shooting death of 47-year-old Andre Hill, a Black man, the state's attorney general said."
Former Columbus Police Officer Adam Coy was indicted on a murder charge by a Franklin County grand jury following an investigation by the Ohio Attorney General's office. The charges faced by Coy, a 19-year veteran of the force, also include failure to use his body camera and failure to tell the other officer he believed Hill presented a danger.
Coy will plead not guilty to the charges, his attorney, Mark Collins, said Wednesday night.
Coy and another officer had responded to a neighbor’s nonemergency call after 1 a.m. on Dec. 22 about a car in front of his house in the city’s northwest side that had been running, then shut off, then turned back on, according to a copy of the call released in December.
Police bodycam footage showed Hill emerging from a garage and holding up a cellphone in his left hand seconds before he was fatally shot by Coy. There is no audio because Coy hadn’t activated the body camera; an automatic “look back” feature captured the shooting without audio.
In the moments after Hill was fatally shot, additional bodycam footage shows two other Columbus officers rolled Hill over and put handcuffs on him before leaving him alone again. None of them, according to the footage released, offered any first aid even though Hill was barely moving, groaning and bleeding while laying on the garage floor.
“In this case, the citizens of Franklin County, represented by the individual grand jurors, found probable cause to believe that Mr. Coy committed a crime when he killed Andre Hill by gunfire,” Attorney General Dave Yost said at a news conference Wednesday night.
He added, “Truth is the best friend of justice, and the grand jury here found the truth.”
Coy had a long history of complaints from citizens. He was fired on Dec. 28 for failing to activate his body camera before the confrontation and for not providing medical aid to Hill.
Coy will fight the charges based on case law that examines such use of force incidents through the eyes of a “reasonable police officer," Collins said, adding that his client has fully cooperated with investigators and “honestly believed that he saw a silver revolver coming up in the right hand of the individual."
The union representing Columbus police officers issued a short statement saying it will wait to see how the case plays out.
Coy “will have the ability to present facts on his behalf at a trial just like any other citizen,” said Keith Ferrell, president of the local FOP. “At that time, we will see all the facts for the first time with the public as the process plays out.”
Coy's indictment comes just days after Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan was forced out after Mayor Andrew Ginther said he lost confidence in his ability to make the necessary department changes.
Ginther, a Democrat who has made changes at the police department one of his highest priorities, welcomed the news of Coy's indictment.
“The indictment does not lessen the pain of his tragic death for Mr. Hill’s loved ones, but it is a step towards justice,” he said.
Quinlan himself was highly critical of Coy and other officers’ actions and has said Hill would be alive today if officers had assisted him on the scene.
Hill’s family, while still grieving Hill’s death, is happy with the indictment which they see as a first step, said attorney Michael Wright.
"It’s important to start holding these officers accountable for their bad actions and their bad acts,” Wright said. “I think it will go a long way for one, the public to trust law enforcement, for two, to potentially change the behavior of officers and their interaction with individuals that shouldn’t be killed or should not endure excessive force.”
This is the second Columbus police officer recently charged with murder. Former vice squad officer Andrew Mitchell was charged in state court in 2019 with fatally shooting a woman during a 2018 undercover prostitution investigation.
Mitchell is also charged federally with forcing women to have sex with him under threat of an arrest, pressuring others to help cover up crimes and lying to federal investigators when he said he’d never had sex with prostitutes. He has pleaded not guilty.
Hill's case was prosecuted by the Republican Yost, the state’s top law enforcement officer, whose criminal investigation unit is leading the probe.
Hill’s death came a few weeks after a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Casey Goodson Jr. in the doorway of his grandmother’s house as relatives said he returned from a dentist's office with sandwiches for his family.
A U.S. marshal has said that deputy Jason Meade, a member of a fugitive task force, confronted Goodson outside his home after Goodson, who was not the subject of the fugitive search, drove by and waved a gun at Meade. Meade is white and Goodson was Black.
Proud Boys members outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6. (photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Canada Lists Proud Boys as a Terrorist Group,
Alongside ISIS and Al-Qaida
Proud Boys May Have Planned Capitol Breach to Retaliate Against Police for Member Stabbed at Earlier March, FBI Alleges
Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
Hsu writes: "Social media posts by a Washington state member of the Proud Boys arrested Wednesday indicate that he and others were planning in advance to organize a group that would attempt to overwhelm police barricades and breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, U.S. prosecutors alleged."
ocial media posts by a Washington state member of the Proud Boys arrested Wednesday indicate that he and others were planning in advance to organize a group that would attempt to overwhelm police barricades and breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, U.S. prosecutors alleged. Ethan Nordean, 30, and others appeared motivated in part by what they perceived to be an insufficient police response to the stabbing of one of their members who attended a December pro-Trump demonstration in D.C., the FBI said in charging papers.
Nordean, also known as Rufio Panman, was charged with attempting to obstruct Congress’s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, as well as additional counts, the Justice Department said.
In a 12-page affidavit, an FBI agent alleged a string of confrontational communications aimed in part at police and “this corrupt system” by Nordean and the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. President Donald Trump also famously told the group to “stand back and stand by” when asked during a presidential debate to condemn white supremacists and the Proud Boys in particular.
The group has since come under heavy law enforcement scrutiny, and one leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, was arrested on his way to attend the Jan. 6 Trump rally for allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn down from a historic D.C. church during a previous demonstration. Tarrio has pleaded not guilty.
The FBI and U.S. prosecutors have also charged nearly a dozen members of the Proud Boys in the Capitol riot, including several accused of leading some of the most destructive, aggressive and early efforts to stampede police and break in to the building.
Information about an attorney for Nordean was not immediately available.
Since Jan. 6, Tarrio has called for a halt on participating in marches. Tarrio has denied that the Proud Boys organized any violence at the Capitol.
In a Proud Boys live-stream video taken at the Capitol shortly before it was stormed, someone who authorities say appears to be Nordean can be seen shouting at police through a bullhorn, “You took our boy in, and you let our stabber go.” The statement appears to be a reference to Tarrio’s arrest and the dismissal of charges against another man initially accused of being involved in a melee in which four people, including Proud Boys members, were stabbed after a pro-Trump march on Dec. 12.
An FBI charging document details what it presented as growing resentment between the Proud Boys and law enforcement.
On Dec. 27, Nordean allegedly asked on social media for donations of “protective gear” and “communication equipment,” saying, “Things have gotten more dangerous for us this past year.”
He posted a video on the Parler social media platform that same day, captioned, “Let them remember the day they decided to make war with us,” the affidavit stated. The affidavit also said he was showing himself and other members in military-style tactical gear and the phrase “Back the YELLOW,” referring to the group’s black and yellow colors.
Eight days later, the FBI said, Nordean “echoed,” or shared, a post of a photograph of himself and another group leader that it identified only as Individual A, captioned, “And fight we will.”
Nordean included a link to his podcast “Rebel Talk with Rufio,” in which the two Proud Boys members discussed Individual A’s stabbing outside Harry’s Bar in downtown Washington, which had become a gathering spot for the Proud Boys.
Archived Parler records show Nordean conducted the podcast with Jeremy Bertino, of Seattle, who was injured in the stabbings and who like Nordean was recorded maneuvering outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the FBI said.
“We [the Proud Boys] are looked at almost like the soldiers of the right wing. People are looking to us to lead the way . . . we gladly will step up and take our place where they want us. This stuff is real. We are in a war,” Bertino said, the FBI alleged.
Nordean later continued, “The police are starting to become a problem,” adding in frustration, “we’ve had their back for years,” the affidavit charged. Nordean defended the Proud Boys’ efforts to “protect the community,” saying, “We’re never going to look good doing it, because violence doesn’t look good.”
He then discussed what he called “blatant, rampant voter fraud” in the presidential election, and said the Proud Boys would “bring back that original spirit of 1776 of what really established the character of what America is,” the FBI said.
“Democracy is dead? Well, then no peace for you. No democracy, no peace,” Nordean said, according to charging papers.
The day before the riots, according to charging papers, Nordean posted, “Funny thing is that they don’t realize is, is we are coming for them. You’ve chosen your side, black and yellow teamed with red, white and blue against everyone else.”
Photographs and digital videos taken that day also show Nordean near the front of crowds that stormed the building and entering it after rioters forced entry, the FBI said. Bertino has not been charged in the Capitol riots, and he could not be immediately reached for comment.
After the breach, Nordean continued, posting the caption“if you feel bad for the police, you are part of the problem . . .” with a photo of a U.S. Capitol Police officer dosing rioters with pepper spray.
Separately on Wednesday, U.S. authorities announced an indictment with new accusations against two previously charged men, self-described Hawaii Proud Boys founder Nicholas R. Ochs, 34, and Nicholas DeCarlo, 30, of Burleson, Tex. A seven-count indictment accuses the men of conspiring to plan, raise money and travel to Washington to disrupt Congress, posting images and video of the incursion in real-time, and defacing the U.S. Capitol’s Memorial Door with the words “MURDER THE MEDIA,” the name of their social media video collective.
An attorney for Ochs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. DeCarlo attorney Blake Burns cited potential problems with the government’s case with regard to the more serious charges against DeCarlo, adding, “We have the greatest justice system in the world, so I would like to ask everyone . . . to reserve judgment until the process has come to a resolution.”
Hooded and shackled detainees at the since-shuttered Camp X-Ray, located at the US Navy base at Guatanámo Bay, Cuba. (photo: Getty)
An Open Letter to President Biden About Guantánamo From Former Prisoners
Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, Lakhdar Boumediane, Sami Al Hajj, Ahmed Errachidi, et al., New York Review
Excerpt: "We write to you as former prisoners of the United States held without charge or trial at the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay who have written books about our experiences."
President Bush opened it. President Obama promised to close it, but failed to do so. President Trump promised to keep it open. Now, it is your turn to decide.
First, we welcome your presidential orders to reverse many unjust and problematic decisions made by your predecessor. We appreciate your repeal of the “Muslim ban,” which will now allow nationals from the Muslim-majority countries previously targeted into the United States, therefore bringing relief to families torn apart by this order.
Despite some positive developments, including the repeal of the Muslim ban, there is another deeply flawed and unjust process that has continued through five US presidential administrations spanning two decades: Guantánamo Bay prison. Guantánamo Bay has existed for over nineteen years and was built to house an exclusively Muslim male population.
We understand that your faith is important to you and helps to guide your vision of social justice. During our incarceration, we often reflected on the story of the Prophet Joseph (Yusuf) in the Quran and his years of wrongful imprisonment. It’s the same story in the Bible and one that reminds us that justice is not only divine, but timeless. That is why we are writing to you.
Although most of us were released under President Bush, everyone was hopeful that President Obama would follow through with his executive order to close Guantánamo in 2009. While some of us were released under Obama, however, it became clear during his tenure as president that ending imprisonment at Guantánamo was not a promise he could fulfill.
Many of us were abducted from our homes, in front of our families, and sold for bounties to the US by nations that cared little for the rule of law. We were rendered to countries where we were physically and psychologically tortured in addition to suffering racial and religious discrimination in US custody—even before we arrived at Guantánamo.
Some of us had children who were born in our absence and grew up without fathers. Others experienced the pain of learning that our close relatives died back home waiting in vain for news of our return. Waiting in vain for justice.
Most of the prisoners currently or presently detained at Guantánamo have never been to the United States. This means that our image of your country has been shaped by our experiences at Guantánamo—in other words, we have only been witnesses to its dark side.
Considering the violence that has happened at Guantánamo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guantánamo must end.
There are only forty prisoners left in Guantánamo. We are told that the cost of each prisoner is $13 million per annum. That means that the United States spends $520 million a year on imprisoning men who will never be charged or convicted in a US court. Aside from the moral, legal, and public relations disaster that is Guantánamo, some of this money could be easily spent on programs to resettle prisoners and help them to rebuild their lives.
President Bush opened it. President Obama promised to close it, but failed to do so. President Trump promised to keep it open. It is now your turn to shape your legacy with regards to Guantánamo.
At your inauguration, you told the world: “We will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era. We will rise to the occasion.” It is therefore our suggestion that the following steps are taken to close Guantánamo:
- All those cleared for release are immediately repatriated to their home countries, as long as they are safe from arbitrary imprisonment and persecution.
- The office for the special envoy is reopened and suitable countries are sought to restart the resettlement process for those unable to return to their homes.
- Appropriate measures are taken to ensure that former prisoners are granted the means to start a meaningful life in the new country and are afforded protections from violations of those measures by the receiving state.
- The concept of “forever prisoners” is rescinded, and those not facing charges under the military commissions are repatriated or resettled (as above) following appropriate security arrangements.
- Repatriation/resettlement should not take place by force, and prisoners are not resettled where they will face arbitrary imprisonment once again.
- Periodic Review Board reports should be superseded by the imperative to close Guantánamo and not obstruct the above measures.
- The military commissions should be scrapped, and those facing charges should have their cases tried in accordance with the law.
- Where appropriate and practicable, mechanisms are put in place whereby those convicted of crimes can serve their sentences closer to home.
Guantánamo causes deep distrust in what America says and stands for. Prisoners from forty-nine different countries once occupied Guantánamo’s cells. Those prisoners look to America as a nation of laws and freedoms and see little of either. For two decades, the world has observed Guantánamo and noted that it is a bipartisan project, carried out by both Republicans and Democrats. That is what you must contend with and change.
Despite the abuses, after detention, many of us befriended and welcomed into our homes former US soldiers who guarded us. We’ve always believed there was another way.
During your tenure as vice president, America freed senior Taliban leaders from Guantánamo. Today, they head negotiations with top US officials to bring about peace in Afghanistan. During your inauguration speech you said, “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.” We agree. In fact, as Obama once said, Guantánamo “should never have opened.” We believe you can close Guantánamo before its looming twentieth anniversary.
It is our sincere hope that you do.
Mansoor Adayfi (author, Yemen)
Moazzam Begg (author, UK)
Lakhdar Boumediane (author, France)
Sami Al Hajj (author, Qatar)
Ahmed Errachidi (author, Morocco)
Mohammed Ould Slahi (author, Mauritania)
Moussa Zemmouri (author, Belgium)
President Biden. (photo: Getty)
Biden Ousts All 10 of Trump's Union Busters From Powerful Labor Panel
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Stern writes: "On Tuesday, Joe Biden demanded the resignations of all 10 of Donald Trump's appointees to the Federal Service Impasses Panel, a powerful labor relations board, in a major victory for federal unions."
n Tuesday, Joe Biden demanded the resignations of all 10 of Donald Trump’s appointees to the Federal Service Impasses Panel, a powerful labor relations board, in a major victory for federal unions. Eight members resigned, and two were fired after refusing to step down. Trump’s appointees—a group of partisan anti-labor activists—had hobbled federal unions for years, sabotaging their ability to organize and bargain collectively. Biden’s clean sweep, which was first reported by Government Executive’s Erich Wagner, marks a crucial step toward ending his predecessor’s campaign of federal union busting.
The Federal Service Impasses Panel plays a major role in disputes between executive agencies and federal unions—disputes that often affect the government’s ability to administer programs fairly and lawfully. When unions and managers reach a stalemate at the bargaining table, the panel steps in to referee. It is supposed to find common ground between the parties to further the government’s official policy of promoting “collective bargaining in the civil service” and encouraging “the amicable settlements of disputes.” The panel has authority to write binding, unreviewable terms into unions’ contracts, and its members do not require Senate confirmation. Trump’s appointees consistently defied the panel’s legal obligations to remain a neutral arbiter. Instead, they displayed a clear pattern of siding with management and sometimes even imposed harsher terms than management requested. In an unprecedented and radical move, the panel even imposed terms that management did not request at all, like extending the length of an unfavorable contract. In other words, it functioned as intended: Trump stacked the panel with deeply ideological conservatives with extensive experience busting unions.
For example, Trump installed Karen M. Czarnecki, a leader of the avowedly anti-labor Mercatus Center who previously worked at the American Legislative Exchange Council (which ghostwrites anti-union legislation for Republican legislators) and the Heritage Foundation (which publicly promotes that legislation). Patrick Wright and F. Vincent Vernuccio, two more Trump appointees, work at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an anti-union pressure group funded by the DeVos family.
Most of Trump’s appointees were affiliated with similar anti-labor groups, including the Freedom Foundation, Americans for Fair Treatment, the Goldwater Institute, the Fund for American Studies, and the Illinois Policy Institute. Others were management-side lawyers who specialize in union busting. Some appointees had questionable credentials, and many lacked any experience in mediation or arbitration. Panel member Michael Lucci, for instance, holds a B.A. in philosophy, and his official profile cryptically stated that he “completed self-directed coursework in economics” after college. (The fired members’ profiles were removed from the agency’s website on Tuesday night, but you can read an archived version here.)
Predictably, Trump’s impasses panel sided against unions at almost every turn, empowering management to crush workers’ rights during bargaining. The existence of an anti-union impasses panel undermined collective bargaining across federal agencies by discouraging managers from compromising with employees. If managers reach a deadlock, after all, they can simply get the panel to rule in their favor. Indeed, union representatives have complained that managers have bargained in bad faith by manufacturing shortcuts to the panel, where they knew they’d get everything they want and even more. The Senate Democratic Caucus backed these complaints in a furious letter to the agency’s Trump-appointed commissioner, Andrew Saul. (Biden has not yet removed Saul, who remains in control over the Social Security Administration.)
Employees at agencies throughout the executive branch have been scorched by Trump’s impasses panel. Its treatment of employees at the Social Security Administration, which oversees the country’s largest government program and operates the largest judicial system in the nation, provides a case in point. Shortly before the pandemic, the impasses panel rewrote the SSA union’s contract to roll back the agency’s teleworking program, which had increased employee efficiency. (Managers partially restored telework in 2020 several weeks after many other agencies switched to remote work.) It slashed the amount of time that workers could spend on union activities far beyond what management requested. And it abolished the agency’s responsibility to inform union members of their right to representation. To lock in these anti-union changes, the panel also extended the agreement by four years—though Biden’s new appointees should be able to reopen negotiations after overturning their predecessors’ policies.
The panel’s assault on the SSA union has implications for millions of Americans. Administrative law judges at the SSA hear claims for disability benefits, and because they exercise judicial powers, they are meant to be independent. Their union contract safeguards this independence from political interference. At the bargaining table, however, the SSA’s leaders stripped these safeguards from the contract—and the impasses panel backed their decision. Melissa McIntosh, president of the agency’s administrative law judge union, told me that the panel “took away our ability to protect our independence through the contract,” thereby depriving disabled Americans of their due process right to a neutral arbiter.
Trump’s appointees to the impasses panel were set to serve five-year terms, most of which will not expire until 2024 or 2025. Biden decided not to wait, cleaning house less than two weeks after taking office. (Trump, too, fired the entire panel toward the start of his presidency.) Biden can now appoint 10 replacements, who are not subject to Senate approval. He is expected to select candidates who will fulfill their duty to reach “amicable settlements” that protect federal unions from management overreach.
Biden’s dismissal of the entire panel on Tuesday is the latest in a string of triumphs for organized labor. During his first days in office, the new president promptly ousted Donald Trump’s notorious union-busters at the National Labor Relations Board, appointed a labor-friendly replacement, and reversed executive orders that had severely limited federal unions’ ability to organize and bargain.
But Biden’s work is not yet finished: The Federal Labor Relations Authority, which houses the impasses panel, remains in Republican control.
The FLRA is governed by three members who issue binding decisions about federal unions’ rights. Trump appointed Republicans Colleen Duffy Kiko and James Abbott to the agency, giving it a 2–1 Republican majority. Kiko and Abbott issued a number of “policy statements” granting more power to managers and, by extension, eroding union rights. In an unusual move, these officials spontaneously released statements altering labor law because they were too impatient to wait for an actual dispute to come before them. Trump’s appointees also gave management new powers to restrict collective bargaining. For instance, they stripped unions of their right to bargain over workplace conditions before their current agreement expires. That move was especially devastating in light of the pandemic, blocking federal unions from negotiating new health and safety rules to limit infections. Kiko even tried to abolish the FLRA’s own union of nearly 40 years.
When Biden took office, he elevated Ernest DuBester, the agency’s lone Democrat, to the chairman position, shifting some power away from the Republican majority. Still, the FLRA’s anti-union bent will continue until Biden replaces Abbott with another Democrat—which he can do almost immediately: Abbott’s term has already expired, and he can only continue serving until Biden appoints his successor (with Senate approval). Yet the new president has not named a candidate to succeed Abbott. Nor has Biden named a general counsel, a position that Trump left vacant to prevent the agency from effectively enforcing union rights.
These remaining tasks do not diminish the importance of Biden’s restoration of the impasses panel. If anything, they reveal just how much work the president must do to rid the federal government of Trump holdovers who are burrowed in. These individuals are not civil servants, but partisan activists who were selected to destroy their agencies from the inside. Ousting them is necessary to prevent the dead hand of the Trump administration from strangling the executive branch.
Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in 2018. (photo: Thomas Peters/Reuters)
Uighur Women Subjected to Systematic Rape in China Internment Camps, Witnesses Claim
Roland Oliphant, The Telegraph
Oliphant writes: "Uighur women held at internment camps in China's Xinjiang province have been subject to systematic mass rape, former prisoners and staff have claimed."
Two former prisoners and two teachers who had worked at what the Chinese government calls “vocational and educational training centres” described a "culture" of gang rape and sexual torture in interviews with the BBC.
The UN estimates more than one million ethnic Uighur and Kazakh men and women have been detained in a network of camps China built in its far-western Xinjiang Province since 2014.
Chinese officials deny allegations of mistreatment and say camps are educational facilities designed to combat religious extremism and terrorism among the predominantly Muslim Uighur minority.
In March 2019, the Telegraph spoke to eight former detainees who described a regime of systematic torture and forced labour. There have also been reports of forced sterilisations.
The US, UK and other foreign governments have repeatedly called on China to close the camps.
The latest testimony contains the most detailed accounts to date of sexual torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, an ethnic Uighur woman who sought refuge in the United States after her release, said women were removed from cells “every night” to be raped by one or more men in masks. She herself was raped on three separate occasions.
She said: “They were three men, not one, three! They did whatever evil their mind could think of. And they didn’t spare any part of the body, biting it to the extent that it was disgusting to look at. They didn’t just rape, they were barbaric, they had bitten all over the body.”
Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who worked in one camp, said she witnessed prison guards gang rape a young woman in front of other prisoners after compelling her to make a forced confession
Another former prisoner said she was forced to prepare women for rape by stripping them and handcuffing them.
In response, the Chinese Embassy in London insisted its "vocational education and training centres in Xinjiang are not 'detention and reeducation camps'", but "useful and positive explorations of preventive and deradicalisation measures".
"The centres were established to address the root causes of extremism and to prevent further terrorist activities," the embassy said in statement. "They are consistent with the principles embodied in international documents on counter-terrorism, such as the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
"The Chinese side has shared information about Xinjiang through various channels on many occasions to clarify facts, debunk lies and state our position.
"In recent years, the Chinese side has invited more than 1,000 diplomats, journalists and representatives of faith groups from over 100 countries to visit Xinjiang and see with their own eyes the real situation there. From 19 to 22 October 2020, ambassadors and diplomats from 20 diplomatic missions of Arab countries and the Arab League in China visited Xinjiang. They spoke highly of the achievements in the economy, society and human rights situation in the region and pointed out that the accusations against human rights situation in Xinjiang and China were completely groundless.
The embassy also denied that Uighur women are being sterilised and insisted that the Chinese government protects women's rights.
"The so-called 'forced sterilisation' of Uighur women is completely unfounded. The Chinese government protects the rights and interests of all ethnic minorities equally, with preferential population policies toward minority groups including Uighurs."
Shown is a 2014 photo of wild burros in the Silurian Valley, which is part of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan that President Trump sought to revise in the last days of his term. President Biden can halt the changes. (photo: Los Angeles Times)
Trump Targeted California's Deserts on His Way Out. Biden Has to Avert the Damage.
Editorial Board | Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: "In the dying days of the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management tried to stick one more knife in California's back by unilaterally proposing sweeping changes to the 2016 Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a complicated and delicately-constructed compromise among an array of organizations with competing interests in developing or preserving 10.8 million acres of desert."
n the dying days of the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management tried to stick one more knife in California’s back by unilaterally proposing sweeping changes to the 2016 Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a complicated and delicately-constructed compromise among an array of organizations with competing interests in developing or preserving 10.8 million acres of desert. President Biden needs to withdraw the proposal and preserve the equilibrium his predecessor sought to disrupt.
The plan was crafted to balance the need to provide space for renewable energy projects, such as solar and wind farms, against the need to preserve delicate environments that are home to an array of flora and fauna, including endangered species such as the desert tortoise. In the tradition of compromise, after eight years of negotiations, proposals and counterproposals, at least a dozen public hearings and more than 16,000 public comments, all the affected parties got some of what they wanted, but not everything.
In the end, the plan — which aimed to steer energy projects to parts of the region where they would do the least environmental damage — set aside 3.9 million acres, including the Silurian Valley and the Chuckwalla Bench, for permanent protections. An additional 1.4 million acres were labeled “areas of critical environmental concern” with elevated protections for locales with cultural, historical or natural significance, and 388,000 acres were deemed suitable for renewable energy production.
It’s that last part that the Trump administration zeroed in on. Two years ago the Bureau of Land Management announced it would review the deal, a process that culminated Jan. 13 in its proposal to open more protected land to potential development and other uses. The bureau claimed the changes were necessary to enable California to generate the renewable energy that will be needed as the state moves away from fossil fuels. Never mind that the California Energy Commission was part of the previous negotiations, signed off on the 2016 deal, and maintains that sufficient land has already been set aside for development.
So the Trump proposal has less to do with renewable energy — which the administration routinely disfavored over fossil fuel — and more about the former president's drive to reduce protections for public lands to allow for more exploitation by the oil, gas and mining industries.
So what did the Trump administration offer? Other than leaving the current plan unchanged, two options that each take us deep into the weeds of federal bureaucracy and land management. Broadly, the first would shrink the areas of critical environmental concern by 1.8 million acres, reduce restrictions on energy production in the California Desert National Conservation Lands by nearly 2.2 million acres, and change or delete 68 separate elements of the original agreement on how specific parts of the covered land would be managed.
The second would essentially go after those same management rules, shrink the areas of critical environmental concern by 1.5 million acres and lift restrictions on energy production from a little more than 2.1 million acres. Activists argue that much of the land from which protections would be removed is near existing mining operations, further fueling the belief that the Trump administration used the renewable energy argument as a pretext to help other industries.
Fortunately, the Trump proposals are already on Biden’s chopping block. "On his first day in office, President Biden directed all agencies to review and begin addressing existing regulations and programs that conflict with this administration's priorities,” an Interior Department spokesperson said. “At the president's direction, Interior is conducting a comprehensive review of programs and policies, including proposed changes to the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, to ensure Interior is advancing the president’s vision for a clean-energy future.”
Californians can help that process along by providing feedback to Trump’s proposed revisions as part of the 90-day public comment process at https://go.usa.gov/ x7hdj.
It is, of course, vitally important that the nation — and the world — be weaned from fossil fuels as quickly as possible to stave off the worst effects of global warming. But we also must be mindful of the environmental damage from developing alternative energy sources and proceed quickly but thoughtfully to ensure that in trying to fix one existential problem we don’t prepare the ground for another.
This step, though, is an easy one. The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, while not perfect, was the product of well-intentioned negotiations and planning. It should not fall victim to the skewed priorities of our environmentally unfriendly former president.
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