07 February 21
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It's Live on the HomePage Now: RSN: Stephen Eric Bronner | The Spirit of the Laws: Constitutional Republics, Capitalism, and the Future of Socialism
An elemental fairness in applying the law and willingness to constrain the arbitrary exercise of institutional power, issues even more salient since “Black Lives Matter” and the insurrectionary protests of January 6th, 2021, ultimately determine just how “liberal” the liberal rule of law really is and whether social rights — not only economic interests but also political and ideological issues — come into play. Rosa Luxemburg correctly spoke about the quest for reforms born of class compromise as a “labor of Sisyphus,” since reactionary capitalist interests are always on the lookout to roll back progressive legislation and, even more important, the accountability of elites to the citizenry. By the same token, however, the ability of citizens to both resist and pursue further reforms is dramatically influenced by the degree to which the state and its institutions adhere to liberal republican values. Economic “austerity” is always connected with political reaction and the reassertion of cultural traditionalism. That is why defense of civil liberties and the quest for social rights are flip sides of the same coin. It is an old story: the power of authoritarian and business elites depends not only upon the degree of organizational unity among working people and their supporters, but also upon their ideological unity. Raising awareness of the practical conditions for solidarity and beginning the intellectual work of coordinating interests is perhaps the crucial political question facing progressive activists today. This marks a change. Enlightenment political thinkers identified liberty with political rights such as freedom of religion and assembly, speech, and arbitrary imprisonment. Only explicit legal prohibitions universally applied, they believed, should constrain individual freedom. Indeed, the logic of thinkers like John Locke or Adam Smith was transparent. The new liberal state should be kept weak so that “civil society” might be made strong. An “invisible hand” would regulate supply and demand and, ultimately, foster equality. Capitalism would enhance the public good as a “watchman state” set the rules in which private associations could compete and flourish. It is after all in civil society — the economy, the family, educational institutions, and the myriad associations of everyday life — that individuals become who and what they are. But it soon became apparent that the “invisible hand” wasn’t working, that inequality was thriving, that elites were mostly unconcerned with republican principles, and that exercising political liberty required freedom from oppressive economic conditions. Commitment to the liberal republic subsequently became intertwined with the conflict between workers seeking to maximize their wages and improve their daily lives as against capitalists wishing to maximize their profits and control over their employees. The burgeoning labor movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was strongest in monarchical states like Germany or Austria-Hungary where it could link calls for economic with political democracy for the class that was effectively denied both. Social democrats demanded a republican welfare state; communists later called for a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would prioritize “people over profits;” workers’ councils sought to fulfill the dream of participatory democracy with full economic equality; and, finally, postcolonial states attempted to follow their own economic course for communitarian social or religious purposes. These options all expressed the commitment to combining welfare rights with a maximum of political liberty — and that dual enterprise still defines the prospects for a rational radicalism. Especially for those in most need of political and economic reforms, however, the liberal republican ideal remains a source of hope. Little wonder that the attack on the welfare state in the United States should have brought with it an attack on the achievements of the 1960s while, in Greece and Spain, attempts by the European Union to introduce economic austerity resulted in xenophobic reactions, the rise of right-wing extremism, competition between members, and Brexit. Nevertheless, there is nothing new about this double-barreled assault on liberty and equality. Revolution and Counter-Revolution are terms that derive from an epoch of democratic revolution that extends from England in 1688 to the United States in 1776 to France in 1789 to the nineteenth-century uprisings in the Caribbean, Latin America, and elsewhere. Far more important than the differences between these events was the common spirit, sense of purpose, and interchange between thinkers and activists in an international revolution opposed by similar national forces that comprised an international counter-revolution. Everywhere those committed to the creation of a secular state under the liberal rule of law, and intent upon constraining the arbitrary power of religious and other private institutions, squared off against advocates of “throne and altar,” the military and the Church, frantically engaged in attempts to preserve their privileges and the pillars of a pre-modern community. Such was the origin of the Counter-Revolution. Everything associated with the Enlightenment came under suspicion in the years 1815-1848. Stendhal appropriately called this era a “swamp.” Integral nationalism and religious absolutism served as intoxicants for reactionaries. With the attack upon the republican ideal of the citizen came the attack on the rights of the Other, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance. Chauvinism, racism, and sexism took center stage. Tensions between these supporters of enlightenment and counter-revolutionary ideals simmered in Europe for the next three decades following the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. They reached a climax in revolutionary calls for republics in 1848 that, especially in France, would prove “democratic” and egalitarian; indeed, this transnational “springtime of the peoples” with its republican, secular, and egalitarian commitments would anticipate the Arab Spring of 2011. These revolts were clear about what they wanted and their enemies were clear as well. Karl Marx wrote what remains the finest theory of counter-revolution. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1851) would remain a staple for analyzing every form of counter-revolution that has emerged since the seizure of power by Napoleon III and Bismarck propagated their anti-democratic forms of “Caesarism” and integral nationalism in the aftermath of 1848. It is perhaps also why the most divergent socialists were so concerned with integrating the enlightenment heritage into their transformative vision for a republican welfare state. That took place in different ways and it impacted the democratic commitment of their politics. Rosa Luxemburg admired the Great English Revolution no less than Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky looked back to the American Revolution, while Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum as surely as Lenin and Trotsky sought inspiration from the Jacobins and the heritage of the French Revolution. Neglecting constitutional liberty in the name of economic equality or social rights has proven a recipe for disaster. Learning that lesson marks the progressive enterprise of our time. * * * Capitalism is ultimately predicated upon the transformation of objects into commodities that are bought and sold on the market. The commodity thus defines not merely production and consumption, but social action as well. The extent to which previously non-commercial activities like religion and art, or “free” goods like air and water, become subordinate to the commodity form determines the progress of capitalism or what, today, is called “globalization.” Capitalism is not merely the struggle between classes in an exploitative accumulation process, but an overarching form of commodification. Implicated in capitalist modernity is science, bureaucracy, standardization, the division of labor, and criteria of “efficiency” that speak to a world of scarcity, or what Marx and Engels liked to call “the realm of necessity.” Traditionalism is the oldest enemy of capitalism: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred becomes profane,” wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. What counts is “exchange value” and the mathematical determinations of profit and loss, the prices of commodities, and the costs of labor. Workers are thus subject to “reification” — or being treated as “things” — through the division of labor, and the adage “time is money.” Workers become mere costs of production in the pursuit of profit, and “alienation” is connected with this process. Old ideas of community are destroyed, nature becomes an object for domination, and trust between individuals is lost. Alienation strips individuals of any organic connection to the world and other people. According to the “young Marx,” workers become mere cogs in a machine whose stultifying assembly lines separate them from their co-workers, the products of their labor, and their potential as individuals. Capital turns into the subject, and workers the object of the “commodity form;” what Hegel (not Marx) first termed an “inverted world” results. Capitalists are obsessed with creating more capital, not community, nation, or religion. What Emile Durkheim termed “anomie” becomes ever more intense: urban life and technologized production leave the individual feeling ever more bereft and alone. Little wonder that traditional elites and those outside the cities in formerly colonized territories and the Middle East should prove so suspicious of capitalism and the onset of modernity. Previously colonized nations mostly lack an indigenous enlightenment tradition and an organic bourgeoisie. The recourse toward religion as an antidote to anomie is only logical. Islamic liberals and socialists like Jewish reformists and Catholic radicals attempt to accommodate and influence secular trends and the modern state. But extremists call for an opposition to modernity tout court. They rely on pre-capitalist values associated with traditional society such as religious absolutism, parochialism, bigotry, custom, and gender inequality. These are not epiphenomena, or mere reflexes of economic processes, but lived experiences that complicate oppression, divide the oppressed, and obscure the functioning of capitalism. Of course, these prejudices are not confined to the non-Western world. Whether with the Tea Party or right-wing extremist movements and parties in Europe, or with al Qaeda and ISIS, they crystallize into an ersatz identity that justifies rebellion against universal rights, separation of church and state, and the spirit of the laws. The republican welfare state trembles while witnessing new and pre-modern forms of solidarity predicated on unique (group) experiences of reality. Resistance is possible as shown by the international women’s movement, human rights groups, international organizations, and agencies attempting to uphold international law. But it is naïve to ignore the crucial point, namely, that modernity brings reaction, and progress sparks regression. The former is fueled by enlightenment and the latter by counter-enlightenment values. It is increasingly necessary for progressives and radicals to decide between them if only because the public sphere has become less consensual than a type of contested terrain. Those ideas should be kept in mind as left and right, each after its fashion, compete in transforming what were historically private issues into issues of public concern. * * * Social rights extend or diminish the democratic parameters of capitalist society. As for the state, whether in the Occident or the Orient, it is always implicated in the workings of the “free market.” At issue is the type of state, a modernizing dictatorship or a liberal republic, and its priorities with respect to the military budget as against welfare programs. Such choices should not be underestimated in judging the state, since they will have a pronounced influence on public life. The influence that citizens can have on determining them is the degree to which one can speak meaningfully about national self-determination. Economic competition driven by international and national capitalist elites in concert with greater enfranchisement and the strengthening of subaltern groups creates the space for compromise. And the extent to which working-class elements within such groups and lobbies achieve solidarity is the extent to which class power becomes manifest. Compromise can strengthen or weaken the dependency of workers and other classes on capital. Of course, there is a limit to such compromises: meeting capitalist interests is the precondition for accommodating other interests. That is why the system is called capitalism. Yet capitalist control over investment priorities and distribution of wealth (especially under turbulent circumstances) requires legitimation or, more specifically, the consent of the governed. The inability to deal with this question appropriately has severely hampered the socialist enterprise. In 1980, I contributed an article entitled “The Socialist Project” for an issue of Social Research (Volume 47, No.1). It was devoted to the state and (pessimistic) future of socialism. Edited by Henry Pachter, that issue included essays by prominent (now long deceased) socialists like Richard Lowenthal and Irving Fetscher. The status of socialism and its “end” have dominated countless academic conferences. Each assumes that something “new” has been added. But that is rarely the case. Not only an endless string of commentators but history itself has invalidated old teleological predictions concerning the “inevitable” defeat of capitalism. That is also the case when it comes to viewing socialism as the transition to a stateless and classless communist society. Each major brand of socialism has had to confront its mortality: socialist republicanism, authoritarian communism, and workers councils predicated on participatory democracy. Last rites were given in 1914 when European social democratic parties became culprits in the “great betrayal” of internationalism by supporting their respective nation-states in World War I — though, at the time, one disgruntled radical insisted that these reformists had never betrayed anything since they never had anything to betray. Cynicism grew during the 1920s and toward the end of the Weimar Republic, Fritz Tarnow, the socialist politician, quipped that while social democracy considered itself a doctor at the sickbed of capitalism, it seemed that the patient had lived while the doctor had died. Fascism seemingly buried the corpse and Stalinism destroyed its reputation. With the repression of workers’ councils following World War I, moreover, hope vanished for a decentralized democratic alternative to the liberal and authoritarian state. In rapid succession, social democracy identified with the capitalist West in the Cold War, countless revelations about the extent of Stalin’s crimes became public during the 1950s, and the “New” Left arose in the 1960s. Disillusionment followed the authoritarian anti-imperialist revolutions and the erosion of Maoism. Then in 1989 — most notably — Lenin’s statues were toppled and the rigidified and soulless Soviet Union collapsed. Under the circumstances, explanations concerning the “end of socialism” seem far less interesting than speculations about why it has proven so resilient. Reasons are not that difficult to find. If not before Marx, then surely after, socialist ideals were adapted to new conditions in both theory and practice. Socialism was the ideology of the first democratic mass parties in Europe that, everywhere, served as pillars for the inter-war republics, the modern welfare state, and anti-fascism. Communists introduced “front” politics, challenged imperialism, highlighted national self-determination, and offered hope to peasants in the colonial world; its authoritarian and totalitarian tenets don’t require elaboration here. What does call for recognition, however, is the need for class solidarity in challenging the economic exploitation, practical political disenfranchisement, and the alienation experienced by working people in class society. Utopian socialist ideals inspired workers’ struggles to abolish the abominable economic, political, and social conditions of free-market capitalism that are so well described in the works of Dickens, Gorky, and Zola. They still do. To suggest that this transformative enterprise is predicated on constricting individual freedom or leading society down “the road to serfdom,” as Friedrich von Hayek argued, is historically absurd: Socialism was the bulwark of republicanism, the ideology of economic equality, and a source of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Obstacles blocking the translation of socialist ideals into practice have been discussed often enough: how to secure investment, control markets, and assess consumer needs. Dealing with these issues might require revolution but, depending upon the policies chosen, their impact can be either mitigated or enhanced under capitalism. If nothing else, then socialism involves the attempt to temper the whip of the market. Every system has its exploitative elements and, if the socialist god failed, only faith insists upon the workings of the “invisible hand” to secure an equilibrium between supply and demand. It is mostly socialists who still ask what classes are paying the price for stabilizing supposedly free markets, furthering in imperialist policies, and engaging in exploitative economic development. Socialists recognize that workers are more than a mere cost of production, never fully empowered under capitalism, and always at the mercy of capitalist investment decisions. Socialism remains a protest against an inhumane world, the egalitarian hope of the wretched of the earth, and a regulative ideal by which to judge the mistakes of its partisans. Claiming that none of this is worth the effort, that these ideals are illusory, and that they cripple the fight for competitive advantage has always been argued by those who, as Brecht liked to say, “sit at the golden tables.” Amid the great recession of 2007-2008, indeed, Newsweek ran a headline saying “We are all socialists now!” The subsequent thunder from the right was deafening. Its supporters identified socialism with empowering the state against the market, support for immigration, protection of voting rights, cosmopolitan foreign policy, secularism and — especially in the United States — national health insurance, redistribution of wealth, control over capital, and what The New York Times (May 21, 2010) described as “the most sweeping regulatory overhaul since the aftermath of the great depression.” They were right. What came next was the mass-based socialist movement surrounding Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the presidency in 2020. Some might claim that none of this is “real” socialism, that it is not “enough.” But this renders the concept of socialism ahistorical, abstract, and politically irrelevant. The young Marx insisted that critical philosophy does not face the world with fixed categories and doctrinaire principles and that it should not look with disdain upon existing struggles. To be sure: socialism is not what it once was. The old parties, ideologies, and slogans have mostly fallen by the wayside. And perhaps what we have now is only an appetizer. But socialism still animates not simply left-wing factions of established labor parties but also elements of mass movements that surfaced during the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street as well as others with roots in the ghettos of Brazil, Greece, Southern Europe, and elsewhere. Socialism is today a bundle of regulative ideals, and it inherently remains an unfinished project. But it retains a base in the working class. So long as capitalism and class society exist, indeed, so will its antagonist, socialism, and the dream of a more humane future. This article originally appeared in Left Turn, Vol. 2, #4 (Winter, 2020-2021). Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue. His most recent work is The Sovereign (Routledge). |
he liberal republic is today the fulcrum of progressive politics. Protecting liberal principles, the democratic character of the republic, and existing social rights from political reaction in the United States and anti-immigrant and racist parties in Europe has been the overriding issue for Western radicals since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. Elsewhere, and especially in the Middle East, the liberal republic remains an unrealized goal and the primary aim of radical politics. But terms like republic, rights, and the rule of law are tossed about so regularly that they have virtually lost all meaning. Communist states used to call themselves people’s republics, and that is still the case with China, Iran and North Korea; rights are often relativized to the point where they insulate dictatorships from criticism; and social rights often justify economic equality without political liberty. The test for a republic is not simply what its constitution says but whether it is willing to enforce what Montesquieu termed “the spirit of the laws.”
Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
Biden Bars Trump From Receiving Intelligence Briefings, Citing 'Erratic Behavior'
Donald Judd and Kate Sullivan, CNN
Excerpt: "President Joe Biden doesn't believe former President Donald Trump should receive classified intelligence briefings, as is tradition for past presidents, citing Trump's 'erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection.'"
READ MORE
Trump supporters stand on the U.S. Capitol Police armored vehicle as others take over the steps of the Capitol. (photo: Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/ZUMA)
Seditionaries: FBI Net Closes on MAGA Mob That Stormed the Capitol
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "A huge investigation has so far arrested 235 people, including far-right militants, members of the military - and otherwise unremarkable Trump fans."
s prosecutors from the House of Representatives prepare to present their case against Donald Trump at his impeachment trial next week for incitement of insurrection, supporters who heeded his call on 6 January to “fight like hell” and went on to storm the Capitol Building are finding themselves in far greater legal peril.
The trial that kicks off in the US Senate on Tuesday could lead to a further vote that would permanently debar Trump from holding office in the future. By contrast, the mob of fervent Maga acolytes who broke into the US Capitol following an incendiary rally headlined by Trump could face prison for up to 20 years.
One month after the events which left five people dead including a US Capitol police officer, there is no sign of the Department of Justice and FBI letting up in their relentless pursuit of the insurrectionists. In the past week alone there have been arrests of alleged rioters in Seattle, Washington; Las Vegas, Nevada; Corinth, Texas; Garner, North Carolina; and Marion, Illinois.
All 56 FBI field offices are engaged in a huge investigation that ranks alongside the biggest the bureau has conducted. As Michael Sherwin, acting US attorney for Washington DC which is leading the hunt, has put it: “The scope and scale of this investigation are really unprecedented, not only in FBI history but probably DoJ history.”
David Gomez, a former FBI national security executive who spent years countering domestic terrorism, told the Guardian that the bureau would classify and handle the search as a “major case”.
“It is probably one of the largest investigations since 9/11,” he said.
Already the number of people who have been arrested, either by the FBI, Capitol police or local Washington DC officers has reached 235, spanning more than 40 states. As the investigation widens and deepens, the focus is tightening on anyone considered to have acted as a coordinator of the action in an attempt to take out the ringleaders.
The FBI has set up a special strike force of experienced federal prosecutors who have been given the express instruction to pursue aggressive sedition and conspiracy charges. So far at least 26 people have been charged with conspiracy or assault.
“Sedition is the most serious crime that anybody could be accused of from 6 January,” Gomez said. “It’s advocating the overthrow of the US government. It involves not just talking about overthrowing democracy but having the means and wherewithal to carry out those actions.”
As more has become known about those arrested, the strategy being pursued by the FBI has also revealed itself. In several cases, people who participated in the storming of the Capitol were picked up and charged with relatively minor offenses such as trespassing or theft of mail simply as a means to get them into prosecutorial clutches.
Once in the system, more serious charges could then be added as intelligence came in. That pattern of escalating charges can be seen in the cases of Nicholas DeCarlo from Texas and Nicholas Ochs from Hawaii.
Initially, the pair were accused of unlawful entry into federal property. But new conspiracy charges were added this week in which they are alleged to have planned out their travel across state lines, raised money to pay for it, and then made the trip to Washington DC in a premeditated attempt to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden as winner of the US presidential election.
If convicted, DeCarlo and Ochs each face maximum sentences of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Prosecutors have made clear that they are ramping up the charges against select individuals as a means of discouraging further violence from Trump supporters and their far-right and white supremacist allies. “We are going to focus on the most significant charges as a deterrent, because regardless of if it was just a trespass in the Capitol or someone planted a pipe bomb, you will be charged and you will be found,” Sherwin said.
The FBI’s work has been greatly assisted by the plethora of intelligence swirling around online – in many cases posted by the suspects themselves. Take the hapless duo, DeCarlo and Ochs.
A photo of the pair, posing thumbs up in front of the memorial door of the US Capitol on which they had scrawled the words “MURDER THE MEDIA”, was easily found online. It has been included in the indictment against them, and earned them the special attentions of the media assault strike force set up by federal prosecutors to investigate violent threats against members of the media.
That photo is one of at least 200,000 digital media tips that have poured into the FBI from across the country, some coming from friends and even family members who recognized individual rioters from the profusion of video and stills footage plastered across the internet and promptly informed on them.
As federal agents work their way through this mountain of digital information they are starting to get a feel for the kinds of people who were present that fateful day on the Hill. As feared, the leadership role played by far-right and white supremacist groups has veered into sight.
At least 10 members of the extremist group the Proud Boys are among the mounting number of those arrested, including Ochs, who according to the justice department claims to have founded a Honolulu chapter of the network. This week’s Washington state arrest was also of a self-declared Proud Boys leader – Ethan Nordean calls himself “sergeant of arms” of the Seattle chapter and is accused in court documents of having led a group of rioters into the Capitol.
On the back of mounting evidence of the Proud Boys’ leadership role in the attack, the Canadian government this week moved to designate the group as a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, several members of the Oath Keepers, one of the largest far-right militia groups in the US, have also been arrested.
Another chilling element emerging from the indictments is the number of current and former law enforcement officers and military personnel who are among them. An analysis of the first 150 people to be arrested by CNN found that at least 21 had military experience, some ongoing.
Of those, eight were former marines, underlining the danger of elite military training designed to defend the country from international threats being turned back on itself and used to attack the heart of US democracy at home.
At least four law enforcement officers who were actively serving in their positions at the time of the 6 January attack have been accused, and have left their jobs. They include a Houston, Texas, police officer and a corrections officer from New Jersey.
One of the emerging truths that FBI detectives and prosecutors will have to wrestle with is that, despite the substantial presence of white supremacists and military personnel, most of those who have been arrested are what might be described as unremarkable Americans with no previous criminal records or history of extremist behavior.
Political scientists at the University of Chicago who studied the profiles of arrestees and published their conclusions in the Atlantic found that many were middle-class and middle-aged – with an average age of 40. Almost 90% of them had no known links with militant groups. Some 40% were business owners or with white-collar jobs, and they came from relatively lucrative backgrounds as “CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants”.
The one common denominator uniting this large group is not any extremist group, website or media outlet, but an individual – Donald Trump. This is why the connection between the pending impeachment trial and the ongoing FBI roundup of suspects is so critical.
The link has been made overtly in the defense cases being compiled by lawyers on behalf of several of the arrested rioters. Take Jacob Chansley from Arizona, the self-styled “QAnon Shaman” who went shirtless and wore a furry headdress with horns as he battled as far as the Senate dais during the Capitol assault.
His lawyers have offered him up as a witness during Trump’s trial. They say Chansley, who faces six charges including civil disorder, used to be “horrendously smitten” by Trump but now feels betrayed by him. They are also likely to use the argument that Chansley was misled by the then US president as a central argument in his own defense.
But Gomez is doubtful that the ploy will prove effective.
“I don’t think that’s going to hold water in federal court,” Gomez said. “‘I only robbed that bank because somebody told me to do it’ – I’ve never heard that line working for any crime.”
Undocumented immigrants from El Salvador wait to be deported on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight bound for San Salvador. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
ICE Threatened to Expose Asylum-Seekers to Covid-19 if They Did Not Accept Deportation
John Washington, The Intercept
Washington writes: "Three Cameroonian asylum-seekers locked up at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana say that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement guard threatened to expose them to Covid-19 if they failed to obey his orders and submit to a transfer."
Amid a rush of deportations, four detainees at two different ICE detention centers said that guards threatened to put them in Covid-19 wards.
The guard made the threat clear, Clovis Fozao, one of the detained men, told The Intercept: If the detained migrants didn’t submit, they would be transferred to Bravo-Alpha, the detention unit where Covid-19-positive detainees are held in quarantine.
“They were forcing us out of the dorm, pushing and dragging us,” Fozao said, explaining the altercation when the guards tried to force them to submit to the deportation. “They threatened to call the SWAT team. They said they were going to put all of us into Bravo-Alpha, which is for quarantine, where they keep everyone with coronavirus.”
The Pine Prairie facility, which is operated by the private prison firm GEO Group, currently has 21 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to ICE’s own tracker.
After the threat of contagion, guards forcefully dragged and pushed the group of Cameroonian asylum-seekers — five in total — yelling at them and repeatedly threatening them in an attempt to begin the deportation process, three of the detainees involved told The Intercept.
In a statement, ICE said that it takes allegations of misconduct seriously and, when reported, will conduct investigations. “Allegations of misconduct by ICE employees or contractors are reported to ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and are reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG),” an ICE official said. “ICE is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody.”
All five of the men had spent over a year in detention, said the three asylum-seekers, after fleeing a brutal and homicidal regime in Cameroon that has been targeting protesters supporting, or even adjacent to, the Anglophone separatist movement. In recent years, there have been massacres and mass atrocities in Cameroon — what some observers are calling a genocide — sparking increasing numbers to flee in search of safety. Nonetheless, the U.S. grant rate of asylum applications for Cameroonians plummeted over the last year and, as recently as last November, Cameroonians were deported en masse. Some of the deported were detained and tortured upon arrival back in the country, according to returned asylum-seekers I’ve spoken with.
After the threats and the assault, Fozao and the others gave up and submitted to the transfer. “What could we do?” he said. “There were so many more of them than us.”
The men said that they were crammed into a van with other detainees and taken to a staging center in Alexandria, Louisiana, where migrants are often grouped together before a deportation flight. There, they were again forced into overcrowded conditions where it was impossible to socially distance. There were about 100 people in one room, estimated one of the detainees, who spoke with The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
After an affidavit submitted by a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups was delivered to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, the deportation flight was canceled, as first reported by The Guardian. The letter lists a host of violent tactics ICE officials used to pressure the detainees to submit to their deportation, alleging that they engaged in torture. The threats of exposing detainees to Covid-19 are being reported here for the first time.
“ICE has the utmost confidence in the professionalism of our workforce and their adherence to agency policy,” the ICE official said in the statement to The Intercept. “However, ICE has decided to cancel a Feb. 3 flight to allow any potential victims or witnesses an opportunity to be interviewed, and will conduct an agency review of recent use-of-force reports related to individuals on this flight, and issue any additional guidance or training as deemed necessary.”
Two days after taking office, President Joe Biden issued a 100-day deportation moratorium, one of his central campaign promises for immigration policy. The administration committed to “review and reset enforcement policies” as deportations were on temporary hold. Four days after it was signed, a judge in Texas granted an injunction on the moratorium, based on a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas. Though some expect the injunction to be lifted, ICE wasted no time in ramping back up its deportation machine.
As part of the same rush to continue deportations, Jusiel Mendez, a Cuban asylum-seeker being held in Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, said that this week he and a group of other Cuban asylum-seekers were also being threatened with exposure to Covid-19 if they didn’t sign their deportation orders. Mendez told The Intercept that a ranking official at Etowah, who he called a “captain,” threatened to expose the group to the virus.
“They were threatening to take us to the place where people go who have Covid,” said Mendez, referring to the quarantine unit. Mendez himself had previously caught Covid-19 in Etowah, reporting symptoms including lasting shortness of breath, but said it was a relatively light case. He and other detainees balked at the threat. “I can’t breathe, and they still don’t listen to me,” he said.
Mendez described the medical conditions and the facility’s response to the pandemic as abysmal. This week he had asked for a new mask after losing his, Mendez said, and was told that they had none: “The guard pointed to the empty box, and said, ‘No masks.’” Mendez said he still struggled to catch his breath sometimes and was shocked at the treatment he and others received.
Two of the men held in Pine Prairie who were threatened with Covid-19 exposure were especially vulnerable: Fozao has hypertension, and another of the detainees, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he had asthma. The asthmatic detainee told the guard he was at high risk for contracting Covid-19. “They don’t care,” he told The Intercept.
Fozao, who has been detained for 18 months, said that some of the guards had claimed that the “coronavirus is fake. It’s not real.” He added, “The way they manage Covid is very bad. I mean very, very bad.”
Both Pine Prairie and Etowah have come under fire for their dangerous mismanagement of Covid-19, with detainees in Etowah being punished for asking for a Covid-19 test.
“They’re going to put me in solitary for this, for talking,” Mendez told The Intercept. “But I want people to know. What are they going to do, kill me? Maybe.”
Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Republicans Advance More Than 100 Bills That Would Restrict Voting in Wake of Trump's Defeat
Jane C. Timm, NBC News
State lawmakers have zeroed in on mail-in voting for new restrictions and rollbacks.
tate Republicans have in recent weeks advanced a spate of proposals that would restrict access to the ballot box, a move voting rights experts warned was coming after President Joe Biden's win.
State lawmakers are considering more than 100 laws that would make it harder to vote, according to an analysis conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. This number represents almost triple the number of similarly restrictive bills under consideration this time last year, according to the analysis.
These bills, in the works in 28 states, primarily seek to limit mail-in voting access, add voter ID requirements and make it harder to get on or stay on the voter rolls, according to the Brennan Center. There are nearly 2,000 bills moving through state legislatures aimed at addressing election-related issues overall, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Mail-in voting proved key to Biden's victory, as more Democrats than Republicans embraced the method rather than congregating at the polls as an uncontrolled pandemic raged. Experts have attributed this split to then-President Donald Trump's unrelenting effort to sow doubt in the integrity of the 2020 race with false claims that vote-by-mail is inherently fraudulent, and appeals to his supporters to vote in person.
Now, Republicans have zeroed in on mail-in voting for new restrictions and rollbacks, in some cases targeting laws the GOP had championed years before the pandemic.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told Fox News recently that rolling back pandemic election changes like expanded mail-in voting was “absolutely an important effort” for the party. She added that the RNC would be “taking a very heavy role in” efforts to clean up voter rolls. Trump falsely claimed there were thousands of dead people who voted in Georgia and while roll maintenance is a normal part of elections, experts warn that the voter roll purges that some Republicans have advocated for in the past are too aggressive, removing eligible voters from the books.
Conservative advocates of these laws say they’ll make elections more secure. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections, while there is a large body of evidence that American elections are secure from both hacking and fraud. Still, Republicans have for years warned of voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence for it, something voting rights experts say primed a significant number of Republican voters in 2020 to believe Trump's lie about a stolen election.
“People are planting the seeds, laying the groundwork, and then saying, ‘Look, people are fearing exactly what I told them to fear’ even though there’s no evidence or basis for that,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney at the Brennan Center who worked on the analysis of the state legislative proposals.
There’s an even more prolific effort to expand voting access, with more than 400 bills in 35 states proposing the expansion of access to the vote.
But with Republicans controlling the majority of state legislatures in the U.S., voting rights advocates say they are on high alert for new laws that will make it harder for voters to cast their ballots in future elections.
Sweren-Becker said she’s particularly concerned about Georgia, Arizona and Texas, states that have been trending blue in part due to a quickly diversifying electorate. Georgia and Arizona flipped blue this past presidential election, backing Biden over Trump; those wins were fueled in part by major demographic shifts over the last few years, paired with significant organizing and voter education efforts by Democrats and grassroots groups.
Suppressive laws “always have a greater burden on voters of color,” she said. “It’s impossible to disentangle these efforts to restrict voting access with efforts to keep Black and brown voters from the ballot box.”
Laws aimed at curbing mail-in voting — and drop boxes
At least a half-dozen states want to limit or modify mail-in voting systems.
In Pennsylvania, there are three different proposals that would eliminate no-excuse voting, Brennan notes, less than two years after state lawmakers in both parties voted to approve the law.
In Georgia, GOP lawmakers have promised to repeal no-excuse mail voting more than 15 years after the party put the system in place. The proposed law would limit the practice to those who are 75 or older, disabled or absent from the precinct on Election Day.
In Arizona, a Republican lawmaker wants to stop infrequent voters from receiving their ballots in the mail automatically.
In Pennsylvania, a Republican state senator announced he’d seek to eliminate the permanent early mail voting list, a system that allows voters who opt in for regular mail voting.
Lawmakers in Virginia and Georgia have also proposed eliminating drop boxes, a popular way of returning mail-in ballots. There’s no evidence that using these mailbox-like receptacles invites voter fraud, but it was a key complaint from Trump and his campaign during the race.
Lawmakers in 10 states including Pennsylvania, Virginia and Minnesota have introduced 18 bills to add voter ID requirements or make them stricter, the Brennan Center said.
In New Hampshire, lawmakers want to require mail-in voters to send photocopies of their photo ID, while Georgia Republicans want driver’s license numbers and date of birth to be submitted alongside such ballots.
In Missouri, Republicans are hoping to reinstate components of a voter ID law the state’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional last year.
Laws pertaining to getting and staying on the voter rolls
Legislators in Connecticut, Montana, New Hampshire and Virginia have proposed ending same-day voter registration, while lawmakers in Alaska and Georgia have proposed ending automatic voter registration.
At least six states are considering more aggressive purge practices, too. Voter roll maintenance is an ordinary part of elections, but too-aggressive purges can disenfranchise eligible voters.
Laws to change how a state allocates presidential electors
Some states are also attempting to rethink how Electoral College votes are allocated in the presidential contest.
In Wisconsin and Mississippi, Republicans have proposed distributing electors proportionately, based on the results of individual congressional districts instead of a winner-takes-all statewide allocation. It’s a system only Maine and Nebraska use, but that too could change: Republicans in the Nebraska Legislature have proposed giving all their electors to the statewide winner, after Biden won one of the state’s electoral votes.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma and Arizona have proposed cutting voters out of the process, giving themselves power to allocate the state electors to a candidate. Arizona would give legislators the power to override the secretary of state's certification of the vote, appointing electors to a candidate of their own choosing. Oklahoma would give legislators the power to appoint electors unless there is a federal law requiring voter ID and auditable paper ballots, in which case the power would be returned to voters. That bill was sent to committee this week.
Meanwhile, 11 states have introduced proposals to join an interstate compact that would undermine the traditional Electoral College structure. If enough states join, participating states agree to allocate electors to whoever wins the popular vote nationwide.
The United Nations describes Yemen as the world's biggest humanitarian crisis. (photo: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
US to Revoke Terrorist Designation of Houthis Citing Famine
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The United States intends to revoke the terrorist designation for Yemen's Houthi movement in response to the country's humanitarian crisis, reversing one of the most criticized last-minute decisions of the Trump administration."
Action reverses the order issued by former President Donald Trump against Yemen rebel group just before leaving office on January 20.
The reversal, confirmed by a State Department official on Friday, comes a day after President Joe Biden declared a halt to US support for the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
“Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designation from the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizations have since made clear would accelerate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” the official said.
In a statement, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed the decision.
“The designation … stopped food and other critical aid from being delivered inside Yemen and would have prevented effective political negotiation,” he said.
The United Nations on Friday also welcomed Washington’s plan to revoke the US terrorist designation for Yemen’s Houthi group “as it will provide profound relief to millions of Yemenis who rely on humanitarian assistance and commercial imports to meet their basic survival needs”, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Just days before his term in office ended on January 20, then-US President Donald Trump designated the Houthis a “foreign terrorist organisation” – effectively barring US citizens and entities from interacting financially with the group.
The United Nations describes Yemen as the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with 80 percent of its 24 million people in need, and it warned the Trump administration that the designation would push millions in Yemen into a large-scale famine.
The State Department official has also stressed the latest action has “nothing to do” with the US view of the Houthis and their “reprehensible conduct”, and repeated Washington’s commitment to helping Saudi Arabia to defend its territory against further such attacks.
The Trump administration exempted aid groups, the United Nations, the Red Cross and the export of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices from its designation, but UN officials and aid groups said the carve-outs were not enough and called for the decision to be revoked.
Yemen’s civil war pits the internationally recognised government against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.
Iran’s ambassador to Yemen reacted with scepticism to the move by the US government.
Yemen’s conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including large numbers of civilians, and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
A Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015 on the side of the government and enjoyed the backing of the Trump administration, with the war increasingly seen as a proxy conflict between the US and Iran.
But the mounting civilian death toll and growing humanitarian calamity fuelled bipartisan demands for an end to US support for Riyadh.
Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2021 published in January that the parties to Yemen’s armed conflict continued to violate the laws of war in 2020, including committing new war crimes.
HRW reported that the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as Houthi forces, launched mortars, rockets, and missiles into heavily populated areas.
Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)
Ethanol, Biogas and Carbon Banking: Three False Solutions Vilsack Brings to Biden-Harris Climate Policy
Alexis Baden-Mayer, Organic Consumers Association
n January 27, 2021, President Joe Biden signed his “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” This historic action commited the U.S. to achieving “significant short-term global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and net-zero global emissions by mid-century or before.”
Biden’s climate EO was immediately likened to the Green New Deal resolution championed by the Sunrise Movement.
One big difference between the two is, while the Green New Deal sticks to direct government investment in proven climate solutions, Biden’s climate EO relies, in part, on “market-based mechanisms” and “robust standards for the market ... to catalyze private sector investment.”
Another difference is that the Green New Deal sets transformative goals for social justice that go beyond merely surviving the climate crisis, like “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” By contrast, Biden’s climate EO doesn’t mention “food” even as it recognizes that “America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners have an important role to play in combating the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, by sequestering carbon in soils, grasses, trees, and other vegetation and sourcing sustainable bioproducts and fuels.” Are “sustainable bioproducts” edible? They don’t sound very appetizing―or nourishing.
These two differences between the Green New Deal and Biden’s climate EO wouldn’t have us so concerned if it weren’t for the support for three dangerous false solutions that his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack brings to the Biden-Harris Cabinet.
1. Biofuels from Greenhouse-Gas-Polluting Industrial Agriculture
Vilsack is “a major supporter of ethanol from corn, despite increasing evidence that it isn’t as environmentally safe as once thought,” writes Emily Berch in her article for The Nation, “Biden’s Buddy Tom Vilsack Is No Friend to Farmers.” “[T]he pollution, chemical use, and soil degradation associated with growing more corn outweighs any benefits of replacing oil with ethanol,” says The Intercept’s Claire Kelloway in “Tom Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party.”
C. Ford Runge calls ethanol “a bad idea whose time has passed,” in his Yale Environment 360 report, “The Case Against More Ethanol: It’s Simply Bad for Environment.” The same could be said for Biden’s decision to ask Vilsack to reprise his Obama administration role as Agriculture Secretary. Thanks to Vilsack, 40 percent of American corn is now produced for ethanol refineries. Returning him to USDA means “doubling down” (in Biden’s words) on fuels from agriculture systems that are destroying our environment and climate.
2. Electricity from Greenhouse-Gas-Polluting Factory Farms
In 2009, Vilsack said he’d cut U.S. dairy emissions by 25 percent by spending $20 million on anaerobic digesters. But, only for farms with more than 700 dairy cows, the top 10 percent of the largest factory farms. “An alternative would be to put in place environmental regulations that compel agriculture producers with high greenhouse gas emissions to fund their own manure management solutions,” writes Jessica McKenzie in her report for The Counter, “The misbegotten promise of anaerobic digesters.” Instead, as Family Farm Defenders leader John Peck told her, Vilsack chose to “subsidize the worst actors to clean up their mess.”
And, of course, it didn’t work. U.S. dairy emissions weren’t cut. They increased, because Vilsack’s waste-to-energy subsidies created what McKenzie calls “perverse incentives for more and bigger factory farms.” She cites a Food & Water Watch issue brief, “Biogas From Factory Farm Waste Has No Place in a Clean Energy Future,” which found, “Biogas digesters are a false solution that do nothing to actually mitigate emissions from agriculture.” As a result of Vilsack’s perverse incentives, factory farms grew in number and size during the Obama Administration.
Vilsack was rewarded for his support of the factory farm dairy industry with a million-dollar job. As Republican strategists looking to win the next elections are quick to point out, Vilsack’s salary was paid by the dairy check-off. This means, as Fox News put it in a headline, “Biden agricultural secretary pick made $1M a year off struggling farmers.”
3. Markets in Hot Air Where Farmers & Ranchers “Offset” the Emissions of the Worst Greenhouse Gas Polluters:
Biden’s climate EO tasks Vilsack with figuring out the best way to “encourage the voluntary adoption of climate-smart agricultural and forestry practices that decrease wildfire risk fueled by climate change and result in additional, measurable, and verifiable carbon reductions and sequestration and that source sustainable bioproducts and fuels.”
Vilsack still supports the tired old cap-and-trade idea that the Democrats failed to push through Congress in 2009. He called it cap-and-trade when he spoke to Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times, but in his confirmation hearing and elsewhere he rebranded this effort as “carbon banking” and said he could create a carbon bank with the $30 billion fund available from the Commodity Credit Corporation.
Farmers should definitely be given the tools they need to transition to climate-beneficial regenerative organic agriculture, but not through a cap and trade scheme which would tie them to what the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the National Family Farm Coalition call “a volatile market that could make farming [even] more economically unstable.”
Just like with ethanol and digesters, we know what Vilsack would do with carbon trading, because he did it during the Obama Administration. In 2014, he helped Chevrolet buy credits from North Dakota ranchers promising not to plow prairie. The agreement put no additional requirements on the ranchers to use regenerative grazing, or sequester more (or even as much) carbon, or promise not to sell their beef to a feedlot. The climate benefit was speculative and hypothetical, based only on the climate benefit of conserving prairie.
We can help ranchers protect prairie without giving polluters rights to the same amount of emissions that would be released if that prairie were destroyed. I listed good alternatives to Vilsack’s schemes in my article about what climate activists are asking of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. The best opportunity is the Climate Stewardship Act, sponsored by Haaland when she was in the House, alongside Senator Cory Booker.
It’s easy to see, even from vapid industry puff pieces (especially those featuring agribusiness villains like Bayer), that Vilsack’s carbon credit schemes are about corporate profit, not climate, and not farmers. Agriculture land values soaring is an additional benefit for vulture capitalists.
Carbon banking is how Vilsack tricks farmers to cede even more power to corporations. You know it’s a false solution when it's championed by Bill Gates and the Great Reset wizards of the World Economic Forum.
Vilsack’s effort to make “carbon farming” synonymous with “carbon banking” is giving regenerative organic agriculture a bad name. It is sad to see headlines like “President Biden, Please Don't Get Into Carbon Farming: This is not the solution to our climate problems; it's a sweetheart deal for Big Ag,” and even worse to see ones like "We’re told that healthy soil sequesters huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Scientists are finding that’s not always the case." The second headline is hugely misleading. Scientists continue to refine our understanding of the carbon cycle, but no one disputes the fact that regenerative organic agriculture, including management intensive grazing, can maximize the soil’s natural capacity for sequestering carbon.
Vilsack’s Carbon Bank could quickly turn the promise of regenerative organic agriculture into a false solution.
The regenerative organic agriculture movement must come together now to 1) draw the line against any type of carbon market or banking that allows polluters to buy offsets, and 2) put our muscle behind the Climate Stewardship Act.
Vilsack's Carbon Bank puts a narrow focus on soil carbon sequestration, but with the Climate Stewardship Act we could address climate change while realizing the multiple benefits of regenerative organic agriculture, including realizing the Green New Deal’s goal of “a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.”
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