03 March 21
We Going To Do Better in March
RSN took a big hit on funding in February. We pulled in fewer than 500 total donations. With nearly half a million visitors that’s hard to imagine and harder to sustain.
So we’ll be focusing on not losing money in March. That’s a bad habit that won’t last long and it compromises everything RSN works on daily.
We love you, we need you, we have to do a little better.
Onward.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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03 March 21
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Human Rights Watch | World Leaders, Including President Biden, Need to Step Up on Yemen, Before Millions Die
Afrah Nasser, Human Rights Watch
Nasser writes:
magine what it is like to live in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis: You are in a daily struggle for survival and you don’t know where your next meal will come from. This is the reality for many in Yemen, where an unmitigated humanitarian emergency fueled by years of armed conflict has pushed millions of people into the “worst famine the world has seen in decades,” according to the United Nations.
The humanitarian crisis has been exacerbated by Yemen’s economic collapse. The sharp depreciation of the Yemeni rial, which makes imported food, oil and other necessities more expensive, has dramatically reduced households’ purchasing power and harmed the livelihoods of millions of Yemenis.
Yemen’s international donors need to grapple with these harsh realities when they meet on March 1 for a high-level humanitarian pledging event on Yemen organized by the UN, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Many Yemenis and humanitarian workers are concerned that donors will again fail to meet the challenge. Last year’s pledges were US$1.35 billion, $1 billion less than what the UN said it needed to continue operating its aid programs. A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait have not even fulfilled the amounts pledged.
But the level of support is not the only issue. Last September Human Rights Watch documented that the parties to the conflict, notably the Houthi armed group, which controls much of the country, as well as the Yemeni government and affiliated forces, and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, have at times severely restricted the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.
As much as it is critical to address the shortfalls in humanitarian aid pledged to Yemen, donors should pressure parties to the conflict to lift obstacles on humanitarian aid and allow aid agencies to have safe and unimpeded access to populations at risk. Mitigating Yemen’s economic collapse should also be at the heart of discussions by Yemen’s donors and supporters.
President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in February. (photo: Getty)
Danny Sjursen | Joe Biden Is Following a Blueprint for Forever War
Danny Sjursen, In These Times
Sjursen writes: "Bombing Syria and excusing the crimes of the Saudi crown prince won't bring us any closer to a withdrawal from the Middle East."
ast week, the U.S. military bombed a site near al-Hurri, along the Iraqi border inside Syria, where Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were allegedly stationed. Although the U.S. launched its missiles across an international border (and without the approval of Congress), White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki framed the strike as a “defensive” response to a series of rocket attacks that have killed one and wounded several Americans over the past two weeks. The American bombing left “up to a handful dead,” according to one U.S. official who spoke with CNN, and Tehran condemned the assault as “illegal and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty” — a perception gap certain to complicate President Joe Biden’s pronounced plans to reverse Donald Trump’s antagonistic Iran policies and rejoin the nuclear deal.
The campaign will do little to further the United States’ objectives in the Middle East (in as much as they can even be articulated at this point), but it heralds something more dispiriting still: That nearly two decades into a regional war, Washington (perhaps willfully) does not understand the Syria-Iraq-Iran nexus, and that the Biden administration is following a failed blueprint in the Middle East — a reality that was thrown into even sharper relief when the U.S. elected not to punish Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) after the release of a declassified intelligence report that found he was directly responsible for the murder of the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi.
Few mainstream outlets have even bothered to ask what these pesky paramilitaries are up to. The U.S. military first intervened in Syria in 2014 following the Islamic State’s takeover of the country’s Eastern territories, along with the Northern and Western areas of Iraq. So did Iraqi Shias, who did a good amount of fighting in the bloody recapture of ISIS-occupied territories after the U.S.-trained Iraqi army all but collapsed. These militias, following the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s call to defend Baghdad, formed under an umbrella organization known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) with the support of the U.S. military. Over the last seven years, American troops have seen their mission in Syria change and change again, from defeating ISIS, to preserving Kurdish autonomy, to “containing” Iran and Russia (both of which have fought the Islamic State, albeit in alliance with Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad), to “securing” the country’s sparse oil wells. But during this time, the mission of Iraq’s militias has evolved as well — from defending the country against ISIS onslaughts to resisting America’s ongoing occupation. And so long as U.S. troops remain in place, significant segments of Iraq’s population will see these paramilitaries — and their rocket attacks — as legitimate.
The United States’ intervention in Syria has looked a lot like its disastrous invasion of Baghdad in 2003, which shattered the Iraqi state, unleashed a brutal civil war and gave rise to a deadly phoenix that would become ISIS. Both have led to the deaths of more than 1,000 militia members, along with countless civilians. And neither is likely to see a full withdrawal of U.S. troops in the immediate future.
Joe Biden, who believes his own son’s fatal cancer was caused by exposure to toxic burn pits during his tour in Iraq, has repeatedly asked that God bless our troops. But keeping those same soldiers in a war zone like the Baghdad, Balad, and Erbil, Iraq, bases struck by rockets over the last two weeks, with no discernible aim, might be considered a sacrilege. Exacerbating matters, we are inundated with stories about Tehran and Moscow’s nefarious objectives in Syria, even as the story remains more complicated than that. (Tehran, for example, is much less powerful than Washington’s courtiers in the media would have you believe.)
The same can be said of the recent rocket attacks that provoked the Biden administration’s deadly response in Syria. Iraqi militias pose no danger to the people of Baltimore, Maryland or Little Rock, Arkansas, and Baghdad does not demand an American military presence. To the extent Americans face a security threat at all, it is one of their own making. What’s more, Saudi Arabia, which is supposed to be a key U.S. ally in the region, has tacitly and explicitly backed Sunni insurgents who have killed scores of U.S. troops in conflicts across the Middle East. These include Al Qaeda and other Islamist-elements in the Syrian civil war.
Which brings us to the Biden administration’s decision not to penalize MBS and Saudi royal family in any meaningful way for the dismemberment of an American journalist. Coupled with a dubious missile strike that could have been eschewed in favor of full military withdrawal and negotiations towards diplomatic normalization with Iran, Biden’s first major foreign policy decisions bring us no closer to an overdue exit than Trump’s buffoonish bluster over the past four years. Instead, he has provided seemingly the only thing American empire has left to offer: tough-guy theater for a rapidly dwindling audience, in this case Tehran.
When Trump ordered the extrajudicial assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Qasem Soleimani, in January 2020, the Iraqi parliament overwhelmingly voted to expel U.S. troops from the country. As is its wont, the U.S. effectively ignored the resolution, with Trump threatening to sanction Baghdad “like they’ve never seen before ever” if it decided to follow through. Then, as now, U.S. solders remain bait for attacks that Washington can cynically exploit in a war on terror that’s now entering its 18th year.
This is the tired playbook that Joe Biden has inherited and the one he seems intent on following, no matter how unsuccessful it’s been or how much chaos it has wrought. Ironically, if Biden truly wanted to be a transformative president, he might follow an even older strategy — one pursued by Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks. He’d withdraw the troops and cut the Gordian Knot that has become U.S. foreign policy, along with America’s losses in the Middle East. Anything less is a formula for forever war, ever more.
ICE agents. (photo: Getty)
ICE Reached a New Low: Using Utility Bills to Hunt Undocumented Immigrants
Moustafa Bayoumi, Guardian UK
Bayoumi writes: "Our government is effectively forcing people to choose between heat in their apartment and the risk of deportation."
f you had to choose between having running water at home or risking your home being raided by the authorities, which would you choose? The correct answer is: this shouldn’t even be a question.
But it’s become one. The startling truth is that signing up for even basic utilities in this country has turned into a gamble for many people, particularly undocumented immigrants. Last week, the Washington Post revealed that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has paid tens of millions of dollars since 2017 for access to a private database that contains more than “400m names, addresses and service records from more than 80 utility companies covering all the staples of modern life, including water, gas and electricity, and phone, internet and cable TV”. The information has been mined by Ice, the Post reported, for immigration surveillance and enforcement operations.
Neither Ice nor any other federal agency should have unfettered access to this data. In fact, there are strict protocols and regulations that determine how the federal government can gather your information and when it can infringe on your privacy, much of this is codified in the Privacy Act of 1974, as the Post notes. So how are federal agencies like Ice getting around these legal safeguards, which would otherwise prevent them from scooping up such data on their own and without a court order? Simple. They just buy it. With taxpayer money.
Ice paid almost $21m for access to a database called Clear, which is owned by the multinational media conglomerate Thomson Reuters. Clear is reported to contain billions of your records, including employment and housing information, credit reports, criminal histories, vehicle registrations and data from utility companies in all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands. It’s also updated daily.
This isn’t just surveillance capitalism. It’s worse. The main idea behind surveillance capitalism is that we, the world’s internet users and smartphone aficionados, have been persuaded to give up the wealth of our personal information in meager exchange for convenient access to big data’s apps and platforms. Think free email. Meanwhile, big data takes our information and gleefully monetizes every element of us. The result is micro-scale predictive algorithms that have grave consequences for our democracy, our freedoms and even our humanity.
But what Ice has been doing is different. The marriage of government and surveillance capitalism reveals yet another depth to our contemporary, pixelated nightmare. We already know that the Department of Defense, for example, was buying the location data of millions of Muslims culled from popular Muslim prayer apps and dating apps. We also know that Ice and the FBI have deployed flawed facial recognition software on millions of state driver’s licenses without the knowledge or consent of those license holders. Then there was the time that Amazon tried to sell use of its own facial recognition software, called Rekognition, to Ice. Or the ways that Ice subcontracted with a company called Vigilant Solutions in a massive, automated license plate-reading program. According to the ACLU, “Ice has access to over 5bn data points of location information collected by private businesses, like insurance companies and parking lots, and can gain access to an additional 1.5bn records collected by law enforcement agencies”. These examples are, of course, only the tip of the surveillance iceberg.
Because the power of the government is so immense, the union of government might with surveillance capitalism should worry every single one of us. Facebook may want to know everything about your shopping and surfing habits, but perhaps the worst it can do to you individually is put you in a metaphorical “Facebook jail”. Governments, needless to say, can send you to a real prison.
And, as it turns out, government agencies can also try to find you on the basis of a utility bill so as to deport you. Georgetown Law School’s Center on Privacy & Technology discovered the link between Clear and Ice, and as the Center’s Nina Wang told the Washington Post: “There needs to be a line drawn in defense of people’s basic dignity. And when the fear of deportation could endanger their ability to access these basic services, that line is being crossed.” The notion that Ice would force such a Faustian tradeoff – between having heat in your apartment and exposing yourself to deportation – is unconscionable.
Before anyone wants to argue that these immigrants brought the situation upon themselves, take a moment to consider that almost 70% of undocumented immigrant workers have frontline jobs considered essential to the US fight against Covid-19. About half of the farm workers in the US are undocumented, according to the US Department of Agriculture. It’s further estimated that one out of every 20 workers in agriculture, housing, food services and healthcare is undocumented. The fact is that undocumented workers are often the very people keeping all of us fed, warm and healthy during this terrible pandemic.
In recognition of this fact, Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, introduced his first bill last week, the Citizenship for Essential Workers Act. The bill offers “a fast, accessible, and secure path to citizenship, beginning with immediate adjustment of status to legal permanent resident”. While France has done something similar recently by fast-tracking citizenship for its frontline foreign workers, the US could do it better by recognizing the heroic labor that undocumented immigrants have contributed to the national effort to combat Covid.
More than 60 leading economists also recently wrote a group letter to the Biden administration arguing for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers, especially undocumented essential workers. Providing these workers with the chance to earn citizenship, they wrote, “will help to ensure that the economic recovery reaches all corners of society, including those that have disproportionately been on the frontlines of the pandemic and yet left out of prior relief bills, and establishes a more stable and equitable foundation on which future economic success can be built”.
The contract Ice had with Clear expired on 28 February 2021. It’s unclear if the Biden administration will seek to renew it, but they shouldn’t. Instead of further empowering Ice’s punitive and unaccountable surveillance state, Biden should work with Congress to pass the Citizenship for Essential Workers Act. After all, one set of workers is operating illegitimately in the shadows, while the other is working hard to preserve our way of life. In the full light of day, it shouldn’t be hard to see which is which.
Members of the DC National Guard stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on June 2, 2020, in Washington DC, as demonstrators protest against the police killing of George Floyd. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
Report: 2020 Was the Worst Year for Democracy in Recent History
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
Beauchamp writes: "New data suggests a worldwide 'democratic recession' deepened in 2020, with notable declines in the US and India."
he health of American democracy is in rapid decline, India is no longer a free country, and at most 20 percent of the world’s population lives in a liberal democracy.
These are a few of the sobering conclusions in the 2021 Freedom in the World report, an annual quantitative measurement of the state of democracy globally. The latest findings, released today, show a nearly unprecedented decline in the health of democracy in countries around the world — one of the biggest “we’ve ever recorded,” according to Freedom House President Michael Abramowtiz.
There are a number of reasons why the world became more undemocratic in 2020.
The declines in the world’s two largest democracies, the United States and India, can be traced to the influence of the far-right ethno-nationalist political movements that held power in those nations. The pandemic enabled authoritarian-inclined leaders in places such as Hungary and the Philippines to seize more power for themselves. China used its rising clout to undermine freedoms both inside its borders and out.
This global weakening of democracy isn’t new: According to Freedom House data, each of the past 15 years has seen some kind of decline. But 2020 is the single worst year in that entire “democratic recession,” as the organization terms it.
It’s a grim report that points to a series of grim realities. Democracy really is under attack around the world. Some really powerful countries, including China and Russia, are actively making things worse. And some of the historically free countries that should be helping save democracy — the United States foremost among them — are actually part of the problem.
What the Freedom House report found — and why it matters
The Freedom in the World ranking is one of the oldest and best-known quantitative measures of democracy. It wasn’t always entirely reliable: In the 1970s and 1980s, the rankings largely reflected the subjective judgements of one political scientist, Raymond Gastil.
But since two major rounds of methodological reform (one in 1990 and another in 2006), Freedom House’s numbers have become more trustworthy, reducing past problems such as a bias in favor of US-friendly states. To produce the 2021 report, Freedom House convened more than 150 in-house and external experts to assess a detailed questionnaire about the state of political freedoms and civil liberties in 195 countries and 15 nonstate territories with separate governments (e.g., Hong Kong).
Each question — examples include “Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections?” and “Are there free and independent media?” — is answered on a 0–4 scale. The highest possible total score is 100, a perfect democracy, and the lowest possible score is 0, a perfect dictatorship. The countries that score closest to 100 qualify as “free,” the ones closer to zero qualify as “not free,” and those around the midpoint fall into a mixed “partly free” category.
In 2005, the United States was one of the best-ranking countries in the world, with a score of 94. By 2020, the US had fallen to 83 — an 11-point drop that was, according to the Freedom House report, one of the 25 largest in the world. The US still qualifies for the “free” category, but it is no longer at the top of the class. Its peers used to be Germany and France; now they are Panama and Mongolia.
About a third of the US’s long-term decline — three out of the 11 points — came in 2020 alone. The past year’s “politically distorted health recommendations, partisan infighting, shockingly high and racially disparate coronavirus death rates, and police violence against protesters advocating for racial justice over the summer all underscored the United States’ systemic dysfunctions and made American democracy appear fundamentally unstable,” Freedom House’s Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz write in a report summarizing their findings.
Repucci and Slipowitz’s description of Trump’s election interference campaign, which clearly played a significant role in America’s democratic downgrade, is one of the more striking passages in the report:
President Trump’s attempt to overturn the will of the American voters was arguably the most destructive act of his time in office. His drumbeat of claims—without evidence—that the electoral system was ridden by fraud sowed doubt among a significant portion of the population, despite what election security officials eventually praised as the most secure vote in US history. Nationally elected officials from his party backed these claims, striking at the foundations of democracy and threatening the orderly transfer of power.
This assessment doesn’t even include the Capitol Hill attack, which happened January 6 and fell outside the scope of the 2021 report. Yet it uses language one would expect to hear in reference to a weak democracy that had just transitioned from authoritarian rule, not a country that styles itself “leader of the free world.”
Arguably, America’s downgrade isn’t even the most significant finding of the report. The decline in India, by far the world’s most populous democracy, was large enough that the country fell out of the “free” category altogether: Its status is now “partly free.” As in the United States, a far-right leader — Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in this case — seems to bear the lion’s share of the blame.
“Last year, the government intensified its crackdown on protesters opposed to a discriminatory citizenship law and arrested dozens of journalists who aired criticism of the official pandemic response. Judicial independence has also come under strain,” Repucci and Slipowitz write. “Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all.”
These notable declines, in the world’s oldest democracy and its largest, are hugely significant. They represent a serious democratic erosion for a combined 1.7 billion people, which translates into large-scale human suffering and restrictions on freedom.
It also means that both the world’s current hegemon and one of its most important rising powers are less willing to fight for democracy outside their borders, which is especially important given the report’s other findings. Many of the countries that experienced declines in freedom were smaller nations in the “partly free” category — governments potentially more amenable to diplomatic pressure from major powers. Undemocratic countries such as China have become increasingly willing to throw their weight around in support of friendly autocrats.
“Beijing’s export of antidemocratic tactics, financial coercion, and physical intimidation have led to an erosion of democratic institutions and human rights protections in numerous countries,” Repucci and Slipowitz write. “The mechanisms that democracies have long used to hold governments accountable for violations of human rights standards and international law are being weakened and subverted, and even the world’s most egregious violations, such as the large-scale forced sterilization of Uighur women [in China], are not met with a well-coordinated response or punishment.”
The link between a country’s domestic regime and its foreign policy isn’t always straightforward: Democracies, including the United States, have a long track record of supporting human rights abuses abroad as well as committing them. It’s important not to whitewash that.
But at the same time, it’s fairly clear that the decline of democratic protections inside a country’s borders makes it less likely to protect and promote democracy on an international scale.
In that sense, the struggle against anti-democratic forces in the United States — the Trumpist faction of the GOP foremost among them — isn’t just an American issue. It affects people around the world.
People gather for a news conference Thursday outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, where local activists and organizers announced plans to demonstrate when jury selection begins in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty)
'He Choked Me Out': Others Detail Allegations of Abuse by Officer Who Knelt on George Floyd
Janelle Griffith, NBC News
Griffith writes: "Multiple people who had run-ins with Chauvin before the deadly encounter have accused him of using excessive force."
n November 2013, Minneapolis police pulled over LaSean Braddock shortly after midnight as he drove home from a double shift as a mental health worker at Hennepin County Medical Center.
Braddock, 48, said he had grown somewhat accustomed to being stopped by police because his identity had been stolen and he was sometimes mistaken for the man who had been using his name. He carried paperwork with him from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as proof, he said, so the stops were usually brief: He would show the paperwork to officers; they'd review it and let him go. But the officer at his driver's side window that day stuffed the documents in his pocket without looking at them, Braddock said.
When he hesitated to get out of the car, the officer aggressively hit the driver's side window with a flashlight, Braddock said. Two officers then tried to pull him from the car before he got out on his own.
"Then they tried to slam me on the ground, but I was about 240 pounds," Braddock said, adding that although he still was unsure why he was stopped, he complied to avoid injury. "Then they jumped on my head and my neck and my back. I was lying flat on the ground."
More than six years later, Braddock saw one of those officers again as he watched a harrowing video of George Floyd's final moments. Derek Chauvin, Braddock said, was one of the officers who had treated him roughly. A police report from that night confirms that Chauvin was one of the arresting officers.
Floyd, who was Black, died May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against his neck for several minutes while he cried out for help in handcuffs and said he couldn't breathe. His death sparked months of racial justice protests in dozens of cities around the world.
Chauvin, who is charged with second-degree murder in Floyd's death, is set to stand trial Monday.
Braddock said he believes Floyd might still be alive if the complaint he filed alleging excessive force by Chauvin the day after their encounter had been taken seriously and not dismissed.
"It's unfortunate that they didn't do anything to Derek Chauvin," Braddock said in a recent interview. "If they had done something about it, it might not have went that far."
Multiple people who had run-ins with Chauvin before the deadly encounter have accused him in interviews with news outlets and official complaints of using excessive force.
Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the department before he was fired, was named in more than a dozen complaints that resulted in no disciplinary action and one that led to a "letter of reprimand."
The Minneapolis Police Department declined to comment about past complaints against Chauvin.
The Minnesota Attorney General's Office, which is prosecuting Chauvin's case, sought to introduce several arrests involving Chauvin dating as far back as 2014, alleging that they showed a history of excessive force.
Jurors may hear about one of those cases, the arrest of Zoya Code in 2017.
According to court documents, Chauvin went to Code's home on June 25, 2017, on a report of a domestic dispute. A relative had accused Code, 38, of trying to choke her with an extension cord, but Code denied having done so. Code, who declined a request for an interview, told The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the criminal justice system, that the relative was swinging the cord around and that she had grabbed hold of it. Code said she had left the house to cool off after the dispute and that when she returned, she encountered Chauvin and another officer.
As Code walked by, Chauvin grabbed one of her arms and told her she was under arrest, prosecutors said in court documents. When she pulled away, Chauvin pulled her to the ground in the prone position and knelt on her, they said. After she was handcuffed, she refused to stand, so Chauvin carried her out of the house in a prone position and set her face down on the sidewalk.
Code told The Marshall Project that she began pleading: "Don't kill me."
According to the prosecutors' account, based on the police report and body camera video, at that point, Chauvin told his partner to restrain Code's ankles, "even though she was not providing any physical resistance."
Code told The Marshall Project that as he tied her, she told the officer: "You're learning from an animal. That man — that's evilness right there."
Code was charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct. The charges were dismissed March 12, 2018.
Code is listed as a prospective witness for the state in Chauvin's trial. Prosecutors will juxtapose Code's treatment with Chauvin's actions in another case to demonstrate that Chauvin knew how to use reasonable force to restrain a person.
In that incident, Chauvin rendered aid to a suicidal, intoxicated and mentally disturbed man. "Defendant observed other officers fight with and tase the male," prosecutors wrote in a court filing. "Defendant then observed other officers place the male in a side-recovery position, consistent with training."
Chauvin rode to the hospital with the man, according to prosecutors. He and the other officers were commended by the police department for their efforts.
'He choked me out on the ground'
Other people who encountered Chauvin said his actions were much less measured.
Julian Hernandez, a carpenter, said he was on a road trip to Minneapolis in February 2015, with 20 or so of his co-workers to see a band at the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub, where Chauvin worked as an off-duty security officer for almost 17 years. Hernandez said that he had been drinking and went to the bar to try to buy cigarettes but that they were too expensive. Hernandez said that as he walked away from the bar, he heard someone say, "It's time to go." He turned around and encountered Chauvin, who he said forced him to an exit.
"The whole club was still going," said Hernandez, 38. "And he picked me out of everybody and told me that I had to go because they were going to close."
He said he tried to tell Chauvin that he needed to retrieve his jacket from the coat check and even showed him his ticket.
"I'm like, 'Dude, let me go get my jacket at least. It's wintertime,'" Hernandez said. "And he wouldn't let me."
Once they got outside, "things got physical," Hernandez said.
"He tried to grab me from my neck, and, of course, I reacted," Hernandez said. "And then, after that, he choked me out on the ground."
Chauvin restrained Hernandez "by applying pressure to" his lingual artery below his chin and "pressing him" against a wall, according to prosecutors. He then pulled Hernandez to the ground, placed him in a prone position, handcuffed him and waited for other officers to arrive, they said.
He said he distinctly recalled Chauvin's choking him. Hernandez said that at the time, he had been clean for about six years after having served time in prison in California in his early 20s for selling drugs.
Hernandez said he filed a formal complaint the day after the incident, which was later dismissed, and that he tried to sue the police department but that no lawyer would take his case. He wasn't trying to sue for financial reasons, he said. "I just wanted them to know what kind of cop they have on their squad," he said.
Hernandez was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty a couple of months later and, after he stayed out of trouble for a year, the court vacated the plea and dismissed the case, records show. Hernandez's case was among those prosecutors sought to submit as evidence, but a judge denied the request.
"What he did to me was nothing compared to what he did to that poor Black dude," Hernandez said, referring to Floyd. "You can't take the law in your own hands."
In a court filing, Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, said he acted appropriately. The filing says the encounter with Hernandez involved Chauvin "at bar close after Valentine's Day, in the dark, early morning hours dealing with a resistant, aggressive arrestee by himself."
"Chauvin ascertained and reported that the arrestee was actively resisting," the filing states. "Under the Minneapolis Police Department Use of Force policy in effect at the time, a neck restraint could 'be used against a subject who is actively resisting.'"
Nelson didn't return a request for comment about the allegations.
Hernandez said he believes that if Chauvin's superiors had "looked more into" complaints about "his aggressiveness" and reprimanded him, "he would still be a cop and George Floyd would be alive."
Braddock agreed.
Braddock, a former St. Paul resident who now lives in Chicago, said that the night he was arrested, he asked Chauvin and the other officer why they had stopped him but that they never gave him an answer.
He was booked in the Hennepin County Jail on charges of failure to comply with police orders and obstruction of the legal process, according to a public information report, which said "a routine license plate check" of his vehicle showed the owner as having a felony warrant.
The case was dismissed in January 2014. Braddock's attorney at the time, Jordan Deckenbach, said prosecutors tossed the case after the City Attorney's Office reviewed the video from the squad car. The City Attorney's Office said it no longer had a record of why the case was dismissed.
The formal complaint Braddock filed against Chauvin the day after his detainment was also dismissed, he and his attorney said.
"The fact that Mr. Braddock's complaint was dismissed without him being contacted and interviewed is evidence that the complaint was not taken seriously," Deckenbach said. "If Officer Chauvin had been disciplined for physically abusing Mr. Braddock, to include kneeling on Mr. Braddock's neck, perhaps Officer Chauvin would have taken a different approach with George Floyd, resulting in George Floyd still being alive today."
Protesters in Mandalay react to a crackdown on March 3. (photo: The Irrawaddy)
ALSO SEE: In Myanmar, a Digital Savy Nation
Poses a New Challenge for Its Military
Myanmar Sees Deadliest Day as 38 Protesters Killed
BBC News
At least 38 people were killed in Myanmar on Wednesday, the UN confirmed, marking the worst day of violence since protests against military rule began.
ecurity forces opened fire on large crowds in a number of cities and at least two of the victims are believed to be teenage children.
Mass demonstrations have been taking place across Myanmar since the military seized control on 1 February.
It comes a day after Myanmar's neighbours called for restraint.
Christine Schraner Burgener, the UN's envoy to Myanmar described Wednesday as the "bloodiest day" since the coup took place on 1 February. She said that more than 50 people have died since then.
The coup saw elected government leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, overthrown and detained. Protesters are calling for their release and an end to military rule.
The military says it seized power because of alleged fraud in November's general elections, which saw Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party win a landslide victory.
But the military has provided no proof of these allegations - instead, it replaced the Election Commission and promised fresh polls in a year.
What's the latest?
Despite growing international condemnation, the military has escalated its response to the street protests and Wednesday saw violent clashes in a number of areas.
The security forces opened fire in several towns and cities with little warning, witnesses told the Reuters news agency.
At least four people were shot dead during a protest in Monywa in central Myanmar. At least 30 others were wounded in the unrest, a local journalist told Reuters.
Further deaths were reported in Yangon, Mandalay and Myingyan. Some 19 people were injured following one protest on the outskirts of Yangon, AFP agency reported.
A volunteer medic told AFP news agency in Myingyan that at least 10 people had been injured there. "They fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and live rounds," they said,
"They didn't spray us with water cannon, [there was] no warning to disperse, they just fired their guns," one protester in the city told Reuters.
In Mandalay, a student protester told the BBC that demonstrators were killed near her house.
"I think around 10am or 10.30, police and soldiers came to that area and then they started to shoot at civilians. They didn't give any warning to the civilians.
"They just came out and they started to shoot. They used rubber bullets but they also used live bullets to kill civilians in a violent way."
The military has not commented on the reported deaths.
The latest round of violence follows a meeting between foreign ministers of neighbouring South East Asian nations. The group urged restraint, but only some of the ministers pressed the military junta to release Ms Suu Kyi.
Ms Suu Kyi, 75, was seen for the first time since her detention earlier this week when she appeared in court via video link. It followed the deadliest day of violence yet on Sunday when 18 people were killed.
What's the background to this?
Myanmar's military seized power after overthrowing the government and declared a state of emergency.
Just days later, the civil disobedience movement began to emerge - professionals who are refusing to return to work in protest.
The movement quickly started to gain momentum and it was not long before hundreds of thousands of people began taking part in street protests.
But there has been an escalation of violence between police officers and civilians in recent days.
Myanmar in profile
- Myanmar, also known as Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948. For much of its modern history it has been under military rule
- Restrictions began loosening from 2010 onwards, leading to free elections in 2015 and the installation of a government led by veteran opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi the following year
- In 2017, Myanmar's army responded to attacks on police by Rohingya militants with a deadly crackdown, driving more than half a million Rohingya Muslims across the border into Bangladesh in what the UN later called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing"
Gray wolves in the North American wilderness. (photo: GatorDawg/Getty)
Wisconsin Hunters Kill 216 Wolves in Less Than 60 Hours, Sparking Uproar
Victoria Bekiempis, Guardian UK
Bekiempis writes:
ills quickly exceeded statewide limit, forcing the state to end the hunting season early
Hunters and trappers in Wisconsin killed 216 gray wolves last week during the state’s 2021 wolf hunting season – more than 82% above the authorities’ stated quota, sparking uproar among animal-lovers and conservationists, according to reports.
The kills all took place in less than 60 hours, quickly exceeding Wisconsin’s statewide stated limit of 119 animals.
As a result, Wisconsin’s department of natural resources ended the season, which was scheduled to span one week, four days early.
While department officials were reportedly surprised by the number of gray wolves killed, they described the population as “robust, resilient” and expressed confidence in managing the numbers “properly going forward”.
Most of the animals were killed by hunters who used “trailing hounds”, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The state’s overkill was exacerbated by Wisconsin law that mandates 24-hour notice of season closure, rather than immediate notification.
Natural resources department officials also sold 1,547 permits this season, about 13 hunters or trappers per wolf under the quota’s target number. This equated to twice as many permits as normal – and marked the highest ratio of any season so far.
State authorities had a total culling goal of 200 wolves, in an attempt to stabilize their population. As Native American tribes claimed a quota of 81 wolves, this left 119 for the state-licensed trappers and hunters. Because the tribes consider wolves sacred, they typically use their allotment to protect, not kill, them.
“Should we, would we, could we have [closed the season] sooner? Yes.” Eric Lobner, DNR wildlife director, said, according to the Journal Sentinel.
“Did we go over? We did. Was that something we wanted to have happen? Absolutely not.”
The overshoot, which has never exceeded 10 wolves in prior seasons, spurred criticism.
Megan Nicholson, who directs Wisconsin’s chapter of the Humane Society of the United States, commented in a statement: “This is a deeply sad and shameful week for Wisconsin.”
She added: “This week’s hunt proves that now, more than ever, gray wolves need federal protections restored to protect them from short-sighted and lethal state management,” Nicholson also said.
This hunt comes in the wake of federal policy, and local litigation, that stripped gray wolves of protection.
In the 1950s gray wolves, which are native to Wisconsin, were extirpated from the state due to years of unregulated hunting. Heightened protections, such as the federal 1973 Endangered Species Act, helped the population rebound.
Following the implementation of these protections, gray wolves emerged and spread from a northern Minnesota “stronghold”, the Journal Sentinel said.
The implications of these protections were sweeping: while the gray wolf population had dropped to about 1,000 by the 1970s, the number now totals about 6,000 in the lower 48 states.
The gray wolf was delisted for protection in 2012, however. Wisconsin officials subsequently provided three hunting and trapping seasons. In 2012, 117 wolves were killed; in 2013, 257; and in 2014, 154.
A federal judge, in response to a lawsuit from wildlife advocates, decided in December 2014 that the gray wolf must be put back on the Endangered Species List. In October 2020, the Trump administration removed the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List.
A Kansas-based hunting advocacy group filed suit against Wisconsin’s department of natural resources in January over its decision not to provide a gray wolf hunting or trapping season this winter. This legal action reportedly “forced” the department to hold a season before February ended.
The season was also the first to take place in February, the gray wolf’s breeding season. Advocates have worried that killing pregnant wolves could have an even greater impact on their population, possibly disrupting packs.
Because officials rushed to open the season, there was dramatically limited opportunity for legally mandated consultation with Native American tribes, the newspaper also notes.
“This season trampled over the tribes’ treaty rights, the Wisconsin public and professional wildlife stewardship,” a representative for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission reportedly said.
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