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16 June 21
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Jesse Jackson | Sen. Joe Manchin Has a Chance to Make History and Benefit His State
Jesse Jackson, Chicago Sun-Times
Jackson writes: "West Virginia sen. Joe Manchin stands at the bridge. He has immense influence - virtually a veto - on whether and how this country makes progress in the Biden administration."
No more time need be wasted on negotiations that are designed only to fail.
Not surprisingly, he’s under immense pressure. The right-wing Koch network has launched a barrage of ads calling on Manchin to stand against Biden’s American Jobs Plan and the For the People Voting Rights Bill. Progressive groups are organizing on the ground and in the air to push Manchin to vote for reform. Across the country, citizen movements are building to call on Congress to act on challenges — from climate change, to entrenched racial inequity, to extreme inequality — that can no longer be ignored.
Manchin’s recent statement that he would demand bipartisan support for any election reforms, even as Republicans push partisan election reforms at the state level, triggered howls of outrage. His embrace of the filibuster — effectively giving Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell the power to obstruct Biden’s agenda — effectively condemns the country to political paralysis.
One can understand Manchin’s fervid embrace of bipartisanship in an age of hyper-partisan divides. Trump won 69% of the vote in West Virginia in 2020, the highest of any state. Manchin is the only Democrat elected statewide in West Virginia as it has turned more and more Republican over the last decade.
Even as the Democratic Party has become increasingly the party of the suburbs and the cities, of people of color and the professional middle class, 69% of West Virginia voters are whites without a college degree. These voters — who have every reason to feel abandoned by the new Democrats — are the heart of Trump’s base.
Yet Manchin is no coward. In contrast with Republican senators who cower for Trump’s approval, Manchin voted to impeach Trump and to set up a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. In these cases, he voted for the national interest — and for common sense — over any personal political interest.
Now he faces the same choice. Manchin represents one of the poorest states in the union. With the collapse of the coal industry and the closing of manufacturing plants, West Virginia is an epicenter of deaths of despair. It leads the nation in drug overdose deaths. By 2016, it suffered one death by overdose every 10 hours.
Poverty haunts West Virginians. The state suffers the highest rate of adult diabetes, the highest levels of obesity, the worst rate of smoking and lung disease. Extreme poverty means inadequate access to healthy food, decent housing and health care, with growing levels of financial stress and threats to personal safety.
Because of its poverty, West Virginia is already one of the states most dependent on federal assistance. If its people have any hope, it is that federal investment will do for West Virginia what it has done for regions across the country — provide the resources for modernizing infrastructure, seeding new industries, cleaning up toxic dumps and environmental hazards, funding education from pre-K through college and more.
In contrast with previous presidents, Joe Biden offers the vision and the promise for that rebuilding. His American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan provides the resources needed for America to begin to meet the challenges it faces. Given his importance, Manchin could ensure that West Virginia stands at the front of the line for the resources involved. He could make a historic contribution to the revival of his state — and to the revival of this country.
Conservatives like the Kochs cannot match that possibility. At best, they offer Manchin only a marginally better chance at re-election in a state that will continue to decline.
In 1964 and ’65, as the civil rights movement galvanized the country’s “better angels,” Lyndon Johnson cemented the support of the Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen by combining an appeal to history with an appeal to Dirksen’s specific interests.
That is the task before Joe Biden now. Republicans under McConnell have shown that their sole priority is to obstruct Biden in the hope of strengthening their hold on power. No more time need be wasted on negotiations that are designed only to fail. Biden now needs to do a Lyndon Johnson on Manchin: to offer him the chance to both make history and to benefit his own state, to serve his principles and his interests. The time has come to move.
Contractors with Cyber Ninjas in Phoenix examine and recount ballots cast in the 2020 general election in Maricopa County on May 6. (photo: Matt York/AP)
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs | I'm Leading the Fight for Voting Rights in Arizona. We Need the Senate to Step Up, Now.
Katie Hobbs, The Washington Post
Hobbs writes: "Democracy is under siege in Arizona. As part of the 'big lie' that Republicans have been pushing about electoral fraud, they're conducting an 'audit' in our largest county, Maricopa, to dig up nonexistent evidence. It's an absurd spectacle."
emocracy is under siege in Arizona. As part of the “big lie” that Republicans have been pushing about electoral fraud, they’re conducting an “audit” in our largest county, Maricopa, to dig up nonexistent evidence. It’s an absurd spectacle. The proliferation of conspiracy theories is staggering: ballots are being disqualified because of Sharpies; ballots were shipped in from China; ballots were burned in a chicken-farm fire.
My office won a court order to send impartial observers to the audit, and I try to keep the public informed about its dangers. For insisting on straightforward truths, I and my family have received death threats. Armed protesters have shown up at my home. Twice, I’ve been assigned a security detail to protect me.
Most Arizonans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — understand that the audit is a farce. They saw the 2020 election with their own eyes, and they don’t want their ballots scrutinized by a shadowy, partisan company.
But Republicans aren’t just protesting the results of our most recent presidential election; they are laying the groundwork to steal the next one. They are sowing doubt about our electoral process to justify a crackdown on voting rights: The 2020 election was insecure, they say, and so our next election must be airtight. This twisted logic has propelled voter-suppression laws across the country, in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana and other states.
Here, Republicans just got rid of one of Arizona’s most effective voting measures: the Permanent Early Voter List. Previously, anyone who signed up for the list would automatically receive a mail-in ballot at their home for each election they are eligible to vote in. This law, enacted by a Republican-controlled state legislature in 2007, is hugely popular: Some 75 percent of eligible voters relied on the list to receive their mail-in ballots in 2020, and nearly 80 percent decided to vote by mail.
Last month, though, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed legislation that removes people from the list if they do not vote by mail in two election cycles — even if they choose to vote by other methods. This subtle adjustment — changing the Permanent Early Voter List to the Active Early Voter List — could prevent more than 100,000 Arizonans from receiving their ballots. And Republicans will not stop there. Several other bills, each designed to further restrict access to voting, are under consideration in the Arizona legislature.
I am working with our legislators to defeat those bills, many of which are designed to depress turnout of minority and lower-income voters. But with Republicans in control of both chambers of our legislature, my options on a state level are limited. So I am sounding the alarm and appealing to my Democratic colleagues in Washington for help.
The U.S. Senate is currently considering two voting rights bills. One, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would prevent states from passing further measures to restrict ballot access that disproportionately target minority voters. But that legislation would do nothing to roll back anti-voting laws that are already on the books. Republicans have instituted 22 voter-suppression laws in 14 states so far this year. To simply let these regressive measures stand would be to abandon our duty as public officials.
Another federal bill, the For the People Act, would strike down the senseless restrictions that Republicans have rushed to impose. What’s more, the bill includes many long overdue, common-sense ideas that would expand voting rights such as automatic national voter registration. Passing these provisions would be a huge victory — not for Democrats specifically but for democracy.
Yet the For the People Act is in jeopardy because 50 Republican senators and several Democratic ones are not taking the steps needed to pass it. Democrats including Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona either do not support the bill or refuse to touch the filibuster — an arcane Senate rule that has often been used to block voting rights — in order to bring the bill to a vote.
Sinema and I serve the same state. We both know that if we do nothing now, Arizonans’ access to the ballot will be stripped away by Republican legislators. If Republicans want to make the right to vote a partisan issue, that’s their problem. I know — and I believe that U.S. senators know, too — that access to the ballot isn’t a red or blue policy but a basic American value.
Voter-suppression efforts in Arizona are part of a nationwide dismantling of voting rights — the most sustained and egregious assault on U.S. democracy since the Jim Crow era. I am taking what steps I can to fight back on a local level. But I cannot succeed without help from Congress. Please, act decisively and pass the For the People Act. We are running out of time.
U.S. president Joe Biden and Russia's president Vladimir Putin meet for the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021. (photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Putin Agrees at "Pragmatic" Summit With Biden to Resume Arms Talks, Return Ambassadors
Vladimir Soldatkin and Steve Holland, Reuters
Excerpt: "U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin decided at a 'pragmatic' first summit on Wednesday to hold arms control and cyber-security talks and return their respective ambassadors, while agreeing to differ on other issues."
The discussions at the lakeside Villa La Grange in Geneva lasted less than four hours - far less than Biden's advisers had said they expected.
Putin, 68, called Biden, 78, a constructive, experienced partner, and said they spoke "the same language", but added that there had been no friendship, rather a pragmatic dialogue about their two countries' interests.
Biden said he had "told President Putin we need some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by", adding: "I did what I came to do."
The scheduling of separate news conferences meant there was none of the joviality that accompanied a 2018 meeting in Helsinki between Putin and Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, where Putin presented Trump with a soccer ball. There was also no shared meal.
Putin, who was first to brief reporters, said the meeting had been constructive, without hostility, and had showed the leaders' desire to understand each other.
He said it was "hard to say" if relations with the United States would improve, but that there was a "glimpse of hope" regarding mutual trust. There were no invitations to Washington or Moscow.
Biden, speaking shortly afterwards, said there was "no substitute for face-to-face dialogue", and that he had told Putin his agenda was "not against Russia", but "for the American people".
He also said the discussions had spent a great deal of time on arms control and on cyber-attacks, where he had told Putin that "critical infrastructure should be off-limits".
In perhaps his strongest remark, he said the consequences would be "devastating for Russia" if jailed opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny died.
Both men said Russia and the United States shared a responsibility for nuclear stability, and would hold talks on possible changes to their recently extended New START arms limitation treaty.
Putin showed little appetite for compromise on a range of other issues, dismissing Washington's concerns about Navalny, about Russia's increased military presence near Ukraine's eastern border, and about U.S. suggestions that unidentified Russians were responsible for a series of cyber-attacks in the United States.
Putin said Navalny had ignored the law and had known what would happen if he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for an attempt inside Russia to kill him with poison. He also accused Kyiv of breaking the terms of a ceasefire agreement with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin leader said Russia had been the target of numerous cyber-attacks originating in from the United States.
Biden said he had raised human rights issues and also the fate of U.S. citizens jailed in Russia. Putin said he believed some compromises could be found, although he gave no indication of any prisoner exchange deal.
ARMS CONTROL PROGRESS
Arms control is, however, one domain where progress has historically been possible despite wider disagreements.
In February, Russia and the United States extended for five years the New START treaty, which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy and limits the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
Both sides had said in advance of the summit that they hoped for more stable and predictable relations, even though they were at odds over everything from arms control and cyber-hacking to election interference and Ukraine. read more
Putin and Biden shook hands on arrival before going inside, and Biden flashed a 'thumbs-up' to reporters as he left the villa where the talks were held and got into his limousine.
The first round of talks - which included Biden, Putin, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - lasted almost two hours, officials said.
Talks resumed after a break at around 4 p.m. (1400 GMT), with Moscow's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, who was recalled to Russia in March, among those present. That round ended at 5:05 p.m. (1505 GMT).
Relations between Moscow and Washington have been deteriorating for years, notably with Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, its 2015 intervention in Syria and U.S. charges - denied by Moscow - of meddling in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.
They sank further in March when Biden said he thought Putin was a "killer", prompting Russia to recall Antonov to Washington for consultations. The United States recalled its ambassador in April.
Putin said on Wednesday that he had been satisfied by Biden's explanation of the remark.
Trump's summit in 2018 with Putin in Helsinki had included a meeting accompanied only by interpreters, but Biden and Putin had no solo talks.
Standing beside Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Trump refused to blame him for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking a storm of domestic criticism.
L Lin Wood at a post-election press conference in Georgia in December. Wood is battling a Georgia state bar request for him to take a confidential mental competency exam. (photo: Ben Gray/AP)
Woes Mount for Legal Loyalists Who Pushed Trump's Election Conspiracies
Peter Stone, Guardian UK
Stone writes: "A crew of conservative lawyers still pushing disinformation that echoes Donald Trump's false claim that the election was rigged are now battling federal inquiries, defamation lawsuits and bar association scrutiny that threaten to cripple their legal careers."
Crew of lawyers including L Lin Wood and Sidney Powell battling investigations and lawsuits that threaten their careers
crew of conservative lawyers still pushing disinformation that echoes Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was rigged are now battling federal inquiries, defamation lawsuits and bar association scrutiny that threaten to cripple their legal careers.
Former justice department officials say Trump’s legal loyalists are weakening trust in the American electoral system via persistent repetition of his baseless claims. They note that some are actively backing Republican drives in key states to change election laws seen as undermining voting rights for communities of color.
Take Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump conspiracy promoter and ex-federal prosecutor.
After a short stint on Trump’s legal team last December, where she made wild claims about election fraud due to a voting machine company’s alleged ties to Venezuela, which sparked a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit against her, Powell in late May drew ridicule for telling a Dallas QAnon meeting that Trump could be “reinstated” this summer.
There is also election law veteran Cleta Mitchell, who was on Trump’s infamous January call with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” 11,000-plus votes to block Joe Biden’s win. Mitchell is now leading a $10m FreedomWorks drive in seven states to tighten election laws in ways that are seen as crimping voting rights.
Trump’s high-pressure call led the Fulton county district attorney to open a criminal inquiry.
Meanwhile, Atlanta lawyer L Lin Wood, who worked with Powell in Georgia in a failed drive to reverse Biden’s win by filing baseless lawsuits alleging fraud, told Talking Points Memo he donated $50,000 to help fund a bizarre vote “audit” in Arizona’s largest county – even though Biden’s victory there has been certified.
Known for his frenzied pro-Trump advocacy, including charging that Vice-President Mike Pence ought to be executed by a firing squad, Lin has other legal headaches in Georgia, where he is battling a state bar request for him to take a confidential mental competency exam after it conducted an extensive review into his alleged legal misconduct.
Further, Georgia election officials in February launched an investigation into allegations that Wood may have voted illegally in the state last year after he had bought a home in nearby South Carolina. Wood has denied voting illegally.
But among Trump’s fervent legal allies Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer during the campaign, faces the gravest threats in a widening federal investigation into whether he broke lobbying disclosure laws by representing foreign officials in Ukraine, while working to gather dirt there on Biden to boost Trump’s electoral chances.
The federal inquiry, led by US prosecutors in the same New York office that Giuliani once headed, gained potentially damaging evidence in late April when FBI agents raided Giuliani’s home and office in Manhattan and seized more than 10 cellphones and other electronic equipment.
Other pro-Trump lawyers are also feeling legal heat.
Former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who shared a $1m contract with a Ukrainian oligarch fighting extradition to the US on bribery charges and reportedly helped Giuliani’s Ukraine efforts, seem to have been ensnared in part of the Giuliani investigation. Using a search warrant, federal agents took a Toensing cellphone in late April on the same day as the Giuliani raids, but Toensing has said she was told she is not a “target”.
Former senior justice department officials voice dismay about the conduct of Trump’s legal allies.
Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, said he was astounded by the turn that Giuliani, Powell and diGenova have taken in “becoming cheerleaders for Trump and his assault on democracy”.
“I have known them all at times over the past several decades when they each held positions of respect and some distinction,” Ayer said. “It’s a real head-scratcher for me, given that background, that they have each become so utterly disconnected from reality in pursuit of a totally unworthy cause.”
Other departmental veterans say pro-Trump lawyers probably have mercenary motives.
“Lawyers who make preposterous and counterfactual statements to the public typically only do it when there’s something in it for them – and that usually means money,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of DoJ’s fraud section.
But there’s no doubt that Trump’s legal allies are feeling painful fallout from making suspect charges.
Both Powell and Giuliani have been hit with $1.3bn defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems for conspiratorial statements that tied the Denver-based election equipment firm to nefarious fraud schemes.
Powell and Giuliani have separately argued that the lawsuits ought to be dismissed. Powell has stressed that her dubious allegations were protected by the first amendment free speech rights.
Still, Powell’s defense was damaged in May when her lawyers incongruously claimed she was just being hyperbolic in charging Dominion had ties to left-leaning Venezuela, and that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process”.
However, the legal threats facing Giuliani are notably higher due to the widening two-year-old inquiry by prosecutors into whether he was an unregistered foreign agent for Ukrainian officials who were aiding the lawyer in his quest to find damaging information about Biden.
The criminal inquiry is reportedly focused on Giuliani’s part in Trump’s firing of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, in May 2019, a move that Giuliani and two close associates – indicted separately on charges of campaign finance violations – promoted, and a key issue in Trump’s first impeachment.
After the recent FBI raid that obtained his legal devices, Giuliani denounced the federal inquiry: he said he had not lobbied anyone in the US government on behalf of any foreign officials, and told Fox News the inquiry was “trying to frame him”.
But more damaging details of Giuliani’s pro-Trump Ukraine blitz were released this past week by CNN, after it obtained a secret recording from 2019 where Giuliani aggressively cajoled a high-level Ukraine official to help Trump by investigating baseless conspiracies involving Biden whose son was on a Ukrainian gas company’s board.
Further, after Giuliani’s lawyers cited attorney-client privilege to limit the use of potentially damaging materials from the raid, a New York judge acting on a request from federal prosecutors tapped a retired judge as a “special master” to review the materials seized, and decide what investigators can use as they pursue possible criminal charges.
A photo illustration of an arms room at Malmstrom Air Force Base. (photo: AP)
US Military Weapons Keep Vanishing, Some Have Been Used in Street Crimes
Kristin M. Hall, James LaPorta, Justin Pritchard and Justin Myers, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Pulling a pistol from his waistband, the young man spun his human shield toward police."
“Don’t do it!” a pursuing officer pleaded. The young man complied, releasing the bystander and tossing the gun, which skittered across the city street and then into the hands of police.
They soon learned that the 9mm Beretta had a rap sheet. Bullet casings linked it to four shootings, all of them in Albany, New York.
And there was something else. The pistol was U.S. Army property, a weapon intended for use against America’s enemies, not on its streets.
The Army couldn’t say how its Beretta M9 got to New York’s capital. Until the June 2018 police foot chase, the Army didn’t even realize someone had stolen the gun. Inventory records checked by investigators said the M9 was 600 miles away -- safe inside Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“It’s incredibly alarming,” said Albany County District Attorney David Soares. “It raises the other question as to what else is seeping into a community that could pose a clear and present danger.”
The armed services and the Pentagon are not eager for the public to know the answer.
In the first public accounting of its kind in decades, an Associated Press investigation has found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes. Because some armed services have suppressed the release of basic information, AP’s total is a certain undercount.
Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported. These weapons of war disappeared because of unlocked doors, sleeping troops, a surveillance system that didn’t record, break-ins and other security lapses that, until now, have not been publicly reported.
While AP’s focus was firearms, military explosives also were lost or stolen, including armor-piercing grenades that ended up in an Atlanta backyard.
Weapon theft or loss spanned the military’s global footprint, touching installations from coast to coast, as well as overseas. In Afghanistan, someone cut the padlock on an Army container and stole 65 Beretta M9s -- the same type of gun recovered in Albany. The theft went undetected for at least two weeks, when empty pistol boxes were discovered in the compound. The weapons were not recovered.
Even elite units are not immune. A former member of a Marines special operations unit was busted with two stolen guns. A Navy SEAL lost his pistol during a fight in a restaurant in Lebanon.
On Tuesday, in the wake of the AP investigation, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that she would be open to new oversight on weapons accountability. The Pentagon used to share annual updates about stolen weapons with Congress, but the requirement to do so ended years ago and public accountability has slipped.
“There must be full accountability in Congress with regular reporting of missing or stolen weapons,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in an interview. In a written statement, Pentagon spokeswoman Commander Candice Tresch told AP that the Defense Department “looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to ensure appropriate oversight.”
The Army and Air Force couldn’t readily tell AP how many weapons were lost or stolen from 2010 through 2019. So the AP built its own database, using extensive federal Freedom of Information Act requests to review hundreds of military criminal case files or property loss reports, as well as internal military analysis and data from registries of small arms.
Sometimes, weapons disappear without a paper trail. Military investigators regularly close cases without finding the firearms or person responsible because shoddy records lead to dead ends.
The military’s weapons are especially vulnerable to corrupt insiders responsible for securing them. They know how to exploit weak points within armories or the military’s enormous supply chains. Often from lower ranks, they may see a chance to make a buck from a military that can afford it.
“It’s about the money, right?” said Brig. Gen. Duane Miller, who as deputy provost marshal general is the Army’s No. 2 law enforcement official.
Theft or loss happens more than the Army has publicly acknowledged. During an initial interview, Miller significantly understated the extent to which weapons disappear, citing records that report only a few hundred missing rifles and handguns. But an internal analysis AP obtained, done by the Army’s Office of the Provost Marshal General, tallied 1,303 firearms.
In a second interview, Miller said he wasn’t aware of the memos, which had been distributed throughout the Army, until AP pointed them out following the first interview. “If I had the information in front of me,” Miller said, “I would share it with you.” Other Army officials said the internal analysis might overstate some losses.
The AP’s investigation began a decade ago. From the start, the Army has given conflicting information on a subject with the potential to embarrass -- and that’s when it has provided information at all. A former insider described how Army officials resisted releasing details of missing guns when AP first inquired, and indeed that information was never provided.
Top officials within the Army, Marines and Secretary of Defense’s office said that weapon accountability is a high priority, and when the military knows a weapon is missing it does trigger a concerted response to recover it. The officials also said missing weapons are not a widespread problem and noted that the number is a tiny fraction of the military’s stockpile.
“We have a very large inventory of several million of these weapons,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in an interview. “We take this very seriously and we think we do a very good job. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t losses. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t mistakes made.”
Kirby said those mistakes are few, though, and last year the military could account for 99.999% of its firearms. “Though the numbers are small, one is too many,” he said.
In the absence of a regular reporting requirement, the Pentagon is responsible for informing Congress of any “significant” incidents of missing weapons. That hasn’t happened since at least 2017. While a missing portable missile such as a Stinger would qualify for notifying lawmakers, a stolen machine gun would not, according to a senior Department of Defense official whom the Pentagon provided for an interview on condition the official not be named.
While AP’s analysis covered the 2010s, incidents persist.
In May, an Army trainee who fled Fort Jackson in South Carolina with an M4 rifle hijacked a school bus full of children, pointing his unloaded assault weapon at the driver before eventually letting everyone go.
Last October, police in San Diego were startled to find a military grenade launcher on the front seat of a car they pulled over for expired license plates. The driver and his passenger were middle-aged men with criminal records.
After publicizing the arrest, police got a call from a Marine Corps base up the Pacific coast. The Marines wanted to know if the grenade launcher was one they needed to find. They read off a serial number.
It wasn’t a match.
CRIME GUNS
Stolen military guns have been sold to street gang members, recovered on felons and used in violent crimes.
The AP identified eight instances in which five different stolen military firearms were used in a civilian shooting or other violent crime, and others in which felons were caught possessing weapons. To find these cases, AP combed investigative and court records, as well as published reports. Federal restrictions on sharing firearms information publicly mean the case total is certainly an undercount.
The military requires itself to inform civilian law enforcement when a gun is lost or stolen, and the services help in subsequent investigations. The Pentagon does not track crime guns, and spokesman Kirby said his office was unaware of any stolen firearms used in civilian crimes.
The closest AP could find to an independent tally was done by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services. It said 22 guns issued by the U.S. military were used in a felony during the 2010s. That total could include surplus weapons the military sells to the public or loans to civilian law enforcement.
Those FBI records also appear to be an undercount. They say that no military-issue gun was used in a felony in 2018, but at least one was.
Back in June 2018, Albany police were searching for 21-year-old Alvin Damon. They’d placed him at a shooting which involved the Beretta M9, a workhorse weapon for the military that is similar to a model Beretta produces for the civilian market.
Surveillance video obtained by AP shows another man firing the gun four times at a group of people off camera, taking cover behind a building between shots. Two men walking with him scattered, one dropping his hat in the street. No one was injured.
Two months later, Detective Daniel Seeber spotted Damon on a stoop near the Prince Deli corner store. Damon took off running and, not far into the chase, grabbed a bystander who had just emerged from the deli with juice and a bag of chips.
After Detective Seeber defused the standoff, officers collected the pistol. A check by New York State Police returned leads to four Albany shootings, including one just the day before in which a bullet lodged in a living room wall. In another, someone was shot in the ankle.
At the request of Albany police, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the gun’s story. The ATF contacted Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, and a review of Army inventory systems showed the M9 had been listed as “in-transit” between two Fort Bragg units for two years before police recovered it.
And the Army still doesn’t know who stole the gun, or when.
The case wasn’t the first in which police recovered a stolen service pistol before troops at Fort Bragg realized it was missing. AP found a second instance, involving a pistol that was among 21 M9s stolen from an arms room.
Military police learned of the theft in 2010. By then, one of the M9s was sitting in an evidence room in the Hoke County Sheriff’s Department, picked up in a North Carolina backyard not far from Bragg. Another M9 was later seized in Durham after it was used in a parking lot shooting.
Another steady North Carolina source of weapons has been Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, where authorities often have an open missing weapons investigation. Detectives in Baltimore found a Beretta M9 stolen from a Lejeune armory during a cocaine bust. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service found in the 2011 case that inventory and security procedures were rarely followed. Three guns were stolen; no one was charged.
Deputies in South Carolina were called in 2017 after a man started wildly shooting an M9 pistol into the air during an argument with his girlfriend. The boyfriend, a convicted felon, then started shooting toward a neighbor’s house. The pistol came from a National Guard armory that a thief entered through an unlocked door, hauling off six automatic weapons, a grenade launcher and five M9s.
Meanwhile, authorities in central California are still finding AK-74 assault rifles that were among 26 stolen from Fort Irwin a decade ago. Military police officers stole the guns from the Army base, selling some to the Fresno Bulldogs street gang.
At least nine of the AKs have not been recovered.
INSIDER THREAT
The people with easiest access to military firearms are those who handle and secure them.
In the Army, they are often junior soldiers assigned to armories or arms rooms, according to Col. Kenneth Williams, director of supply under the Army’s G-4 Logistics branch.
“This is a young guy or gal,” Williams said. “This is a person normally on their first tour of duty. So you can see that we put great responsibility on our soldiers immediately when they come in.”
Armorers have access both to firearms and the spare parts kept for repairs. These upper receivers, lower receivers and trigger assemblies can be used to make new guns or enhance existing ones.
“We’ve seen issues like that in the past where an armorer might build an M16” automatic assault rifle from military parts, said Mark Ridley, a former deputy director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. “You have to be really concerned with certain armorers and how they build small arms and small weapons.”
In 2014, NCIS began investigating the theft of weapons parts from Special Boat Team Twelve, a Navy unit based in Coronado, California. Four M4 trigger assemblies that could make a civilian AR-15 fully automatic were missing. Investigators found an armory inventory manager was manipulating electronic records by moving items or claiming they had been transferred. The parts were never recovered and the case was closed after federal prosecutors declined to file charges.
Weapons accountability is part of military routine. Armorers are supposed to check weapons when they open each day. Sight counts, a visual total of weapons on hand, are drilled into troops whether they are in the field, on patrol or in the arms room. But as long as there have been armories, people have been stealing from them.
Weapons enter the public three main ways: direct sales from thieves to buyers, through pawn shops and surplus stores, and online.
Investigators have found sensitive and restricted parts for military weapons on sites including eBay, which said in a statement it has “zero tolerance” for stolen military gear on its site.
At Fort Campbell, Kentucky, soldiers stole machine gun parts and other items that ended up with online buyers in Russia, China, Mexico and elsewhere. The civilian ringleader, who was found with a warehouse of items, was convicted. Authorities said he made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Often though, recovering a weapon can prove hard.
When an M203 grenade launcher couldn’t be found during a 2019 inventory at a Marine Corps supply base in Albany, Georgia, investigators sought surveillance camera footage. It didn’t exist. The warehouse manager said the system couldn’t be played back at the time.
An analysis of 45 firearms-only investigations in the Navy and Marines found that in 55% of cases, no suspect could be found and weapons remained missing. In those unresolved cases, investigators found records were destroyed or falsified, armories lacked basic security and inventories weren’t completed for weeks or months.
“Gun-decking” is Navy slang for faking work. In the case of the USS Comstock, gun-decking led to the disappearance of three pistols.
Investigators found numerous security lapses in the 2012 case, including one sailor asleep in the armory. The missing pistols weren’t properly logged in the ship’s inventory when they were received several days before. Investigators couldn’t pinpoint what day they disappeared because sailors gun-decked inventory reports by not doing actual counts.
ROOM FOR DISCREPANCY
Military officials shied from discussing how many guns they have, much less how many are missing.
AP learned that the Army, the largest of the armed services, is responsible for about 3.1 million small arms. Across all four branches, the U.S. military has an estimated 4.5 million firearms, according to the nonprofit organization Small Arms Survey.
In its accounting, whenever possible AP eliminated cases in which firearms were lost in combat, during accidents such as aircraft crashes and similar incidents where a weapon’s fate was known.
Unlike the Army and Air Force, which could not answer basic questions about missing weapons, the Marines and Navy were able to produce data covering the 2010s.
The Navy data showed that 211 firearms were reported lost or stolen. In addition, 63 firearms previously considered missing were recovered.
According to AP’s analysis of data from the Marines, 204 firearms were lost or stolen, with 14 later recovered.
To account for missing weapons, the Pentagon relies on incident reports from the services, which it keeps for only three years.
Pentagon officials said that approximately 100 firearms were unaccounted for in both 2019 and 2018. A majority of those were attributable to accidents or combat losses, they said. Even though AP’s total excluded accidents and combat losses whenever known, it was higher than what the services reported to the Pentagon.
The officials said they could only discuss how many weapons were missing dating to 2018. The reason: They aren’t required to keep earlier records. Without providing documentation, the Pentagon said the number of missing weapons was down significantly in 2020, when the pandemic curtailed many military operations.
The Air Force was the only service branch not to release data. It first responded to several Freedom of Information Act requests by saying no records existed. Air Force representatives then said they would not provide details until yet another FOIA request, filed 1.5 years ago, was fully processed.
The Army sought to suppress information on missing weapons and gave misleading numbers that contradict internal memos.
The AP began asking the Army for details on missing weapons in 2011 and filed a formal request a year later for records of guns listed as missing, lost, stolen or recovered in the Department of Defense Small Arms and Light Weapons Registry. Charles Royal, the former Army civilian employee who was in charge of the registry, said that he prepared records for release that higher ups eventually blocked in 2013.
“You’re dealing with millions of weapons,” Royal said in a recent interview. “But we’re supposed to have 100% recon, right. OK, we’re not allowed a discrepancy on that. But there’s so much room for discrepancy.”
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley said the service’s property inventory systems don’t readily track how many weapons have been lost or stolen. Army officials said the most accurate count could be found in criminal investigative summaries released under yet another federal records request.
AP’s reading of these investigative records showed 230 lost or stolen rifles or handguns between 2010 and 2019 -- a clear undercount. Internal documents show just how much Army officials were downplaying the problem.
The AP obtained two memos covering 2013 through 2019 in which the Army tallied 1,303 stolen or lost rifles and handguns, with theft the primary reason for losses. That number, which Army officials said is imperfect because it includes some combat losses and recoveries, and may include some duplications, was based on criminal investigations and incident reports.
The internal memos are not “an authoritative document,” Kelley said, and were not closely checked with public release in mind. As such, he said, the 1,303 total could be inaccurate.
The investigative records Kelley cited show 62 lost or stolen rifles or handguns from 2013 through 2019. Some of those, like the Beretta M9 used in four shootings in Albany, New York, were recovered.
“One gun creates a ton of devastation,” Albany County District Attorney Soares said. “And then it puts it on local officials, local law enforcement, to have to work extra hard to try to remove those guns from the community.”
U.S. Navy Guards escort a detainee at Camp 6 in the Guantanamo Bay detention center on march 30, 2010, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (photo: AP)
Guantánamo Detainees Say Conditions Have Gotten Worse Under Biden
Leah Feiger, VICE
Feiger writes: "In the months since Biden took office, detainees there say, conditions have deteriorated. New cruelties, like forbidding guards to talk to prisoners, denying medicine, and restricting services, have recently been imposed, detainees and their advocates tell VICE News."
“Life here is like a nightmare.”
resident Joe Biden has said he plans to close Guantánamo Bay, the infamous military prison in Cuba, by the end of his term. But in the months since Biden took office, detainees there say, conditions have deteriorated. New cruelties, like forbidding guards to talk to prisoners, denying medicine, and restricting services, have recently been imposed, detainees and their advocates tell VICE News.
Several people have protested their treatment and engaged in a hunger strike; at one point around Ramadan this year, every detainee in Camp 6, one of the prison blocks, participated in a unanimous hunger strike.
“How can it be that we are waiting for Biden to come, and it has become so much worse than when Trump was president?” Abdul Latif Nasser, a 19-year detainee at the prison without trial, told VICE News through his lawyers at Reprieve U.S., an international human rights organization that represents six detainees at Guantánamo.
Nasser, who is from Morocco, is what's known as a “forever prisoner”; though he was cleared for transfer in 2016, he has no idea when, or if, he will ever be free.
Besides Nasser, detainees Asadullah Haroon Gul and Ahmed Rabbani have told VICE News through their lawyers that conditions at the American military prison have rapidly worsened over the last few months. Men like them at Guantánamo count their years through passing American presidents; when Biden was elected, they hoped things might improve. But while conditions at the prison have never been exemplary, detainees say they have recently become even less tolerable.
Set up by President George W. Bush’s administration in 2002 following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Guantánamo held about 780 people at its peak, including terrorist suspects and combatants from Afghanistan. While hundreds have been released over the years and transferred to other countries and U.S. prisons, Guantánamo still remains open, and scores of critics have pointed to the torture and harsh interrogation methods once used there as indicative of the U.S.’ now almost 20-year “war on terror.”
Now, Biden has indicated he wants to close the prison by the end of his term, though that doesn’t currently seem likely. “When the election happened, there was kind of a sense of relief. Again, realistic, not expecting things to change overnight or anything, but OK, at least now we can start moving forward,” said Mark Maher, a lawyer with Reprieve U.S. who represents detainees at Guantánamo.
But over time, Maher said, his clients became alarmed as they said their situations worsened. “The past couple of conversations I’ve had have been some of the hardest I’ve had to have with my clients.”
Detainees described deteriorating facilities with broken toilets and locks and burned-out lightbulbs, what appears to be a slowdown in medical treatment with basics like aspirin and band-aids not available, and harsher treatment from guards.
In prior administrations, detainees said, there was at least some communication with guards, but now they face the silent treatment. “Usually, if a guard is around, you might just speak with them about movies, culture, food, etc.,” Nasser said. “There is now no communication between guards and detainees.”
The switch was so abrupt, he said, it appeared to be a directive from above. “I am suspicious there is some kind of order we don’t know about,” he said. “It is creating a tension between the guards and the detainees that we do not need.”
In addition, the physical condition of the facility appears to be decaying. “The lock on my cell has been broken for weeks,” said Gul, onetime commander of the now-former Hezb-i-Islami militia which once fought alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban. “There are brothers here, their toilets have been broken for months. It is awful. They do not care about us.”
Just last month, the Justice Department argued at a U.S. district court hearing that despite a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the U.S. will continue to detain Gul, who’s been detained for 14 years. “We remain at war with al Qaeda,” said Justice Department lawyer Stephen Elliot during the civil proceeding. The government of Afghanistan has recently requested Gul’s return as well.
Now, Gul is protesting his treatment. “I am still on hunger strike and I am refusing my food. This is my peaceful protest. It is a very clear and peaceful message without violence,” he said. “As far as my health condition, every single day of my life in [Guantánamo], my health is getting worse and I am suffering from many health issues.”
The unified hunger strike for the men of Camp 6, according to Maher, took place primarily over Ramadan. “It’s an important time of the year, and for them it’s already a difficult time because it’s a time they would be spending with their families.” It was to make a point to the administration, Maher said, about the seriousness of their current situation.
But detainees aren’t sure the administration is listening. “We used to pray for Biden to come and be the president for the United States,” Nasser added. “A lot of things are happening that haven’t happened in 19 years.”
Gul echoed that feeling: “It does not matter who the president is—Biden or Trump—we are the victims always. Me, I am feeling bad. I have a headache constantly, my eye is twitching. Even now my hands are shaking as I try to talk to you,” he said.
Gul also said he is not getting appropriate medical care. “It is not easy to get the appropriate medication in Gitmo. It is sad that I am not allowed to see my medical records, which are classified,” he said. “This is a big reason why I worry about my health. I do not know how long I will survive. Only God knows.”
“There’s a great deal of frustration and agitation and despair,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents Sharqawi Al Hajj, a current Guantánamo detainee. Kebriaei also corroborated these concerns of deteriorating conditions, and her communications with Al Hajj, she said, have given her the sense that “things have gone from bad to worse since the Biden administration came to office.” Her own client, she said, is still on hunger strike and has been on and off for years.
The Department of Defense disputes these accounts and not only denies that conditions have changed there but also says there have been no hunger strikes at Camp 6. “There are no changes in treatment of the detainees at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay detention facility under the current administration,” Michael L. Howard, spokesperson for the Department of Defense, told VICE News. “There are no current or ongoing individual or unified hunger strikes among the detainees. The mission at the detention facility is aligned with American values in that it provides safe, humane, and legal care of Law of Armed Conflict detainees who would otherwise be dedicated to harming the United States and its citizens.”
“Detainees receive a full complement of state of the art medical care to include a full primary care and critical care staff as well as access to any specialty care recommended by the primary care team,” Howard added.
Still, making life more bearable at the prison itself is a short-term goal; these men want to be transferred.
“It’s been over four years since there’s been a transfer from Guantánamo, with one exception. There are people that are approaching 19 years of detention,” said Kebriaei. “It has been years without movement, there’s been total stagnation. I think when Biden came into office, there was, of course, expectation … and now that we’ve got six months without any official policy, any transfer, even of the men who’ve been cleared for years.”
The slowdown of services has also been particularly troubling to these men. “To get absolutely anything, a band-aid, an aspirin, to get a lightbulb changed in your cell, if there’s a problem with the plumbing and things like that, the way it’s been described to me is that normally under past administrations, is that if they wave at the camera in their cell, they get some kind of response from the guards after a certain period of time,” said Maher. “Everything has just been taking longer.”
Rabbani has been detained for 19 years without trial, and his brother, also held at the prison, was recently marked for release by Biden. “Any medicine that is needed, it takes months. Problems with the electricity, etc., takes a long time to fix it,” said Rabbani, who was brutally tortured by the U.S. He has never been charged with a crime and his name appears as a victim in the U.S. Senate Report on Torture at Guantánamo.
“The overarching problem is that the changes they’re describing were just arbitrary and kind of cruel,” said Maher. “One of the things that was told to me is that, about three weeks ago, there were random searches of cells during their lockdown period in the afternoon—whereas before, you kind of knew whose cell would be searched.” These new procedures, added Maher, just increased the stress of the detainees. “Just being kept in the dark about why things are changing is a special type of cruelty.”
“We are all suffering. Feeling that at any time, the guard will come and search us,” said Nasser. “This makes no sense—there are cameras on us all the time. We are feeling that stress.”
Now, of the 40 detainees remaining at the prison, about half are held in “Law of War detention,” though they don’t face specific charges and aren’t recommended for release. Nine people have been recommended for secure transfers to other countries, seven face active charges, three face proposed charges, and two have been convicted by the U.S. military.
These men hail from all over the world, including Afghanistan, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Libya, Somalia, and Kenya. They arrived between 2002 and 2008, with some having now been detained for almost 20 years.
Though President Barack Obama announced plans to close the prison within his first year of office, he did not do it, as concerns about where the detainees would be transferred—from supermax prisons in the U.S. to other countries—stalled the process. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the prison open and approved the transfer of only one inmate.
While there is some movement from the Biden administration, critics like Maher say it doesn’t feel like enough. On June 7, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration was looking to instate a State Department envoy to actively work on closing Guantánamo’s prison. "I want to make sure that the department has what it needs both in terms of resources and personnel, and including someone who can focus on this full-time to do that,” Blinken told a hearing of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
A few days later, it was announced that the envoy position may now be on hold.
“We all certainly understand that the Biden administration has a lot on its plate, but we’re getting to the point where this has to start being a priority,” said Maher. “It’s no small thing for them to have been kept for close to 20 years with very limited access to their family and with no real explanation as to why it is that they continue to be detained.”
While politicians in Washington have argued about how, precisely, they plan to end Guantánamo, it’s the remaining detainees that suffer.
“It’s mounting this feeling that it is intolerable to continue being there without absolutely any movement after all this time,” said Kebriaei. “It’s another moment of tensions really simmering.”
The simmering has happened before: In 2013, more than 100 detainees at Guantánamo participated in a mass hunger strike over their treatment, including what they said were sacrilegious searches through their Korans. The protest lasted for [five] months and many were force-fed and hospitalized. Still, the detainees returned the prison to the U.S.’ national agenda.
“I think we’re seeing this in slow motion happen again,” said Kebriaei. “What’s different from 2013 is we’re eight years later, eight years of more age, ill health, depression, and desperation. I think what happens when tensions bubble over and simmer over is potentially going to be more tragic.”
Some of the detainees aren’t sure how much more they can take. “I think to die in Gitmo is better than to stay alive—it is a lonely life and prolonged detention is prolonged hopelessness,” said Gul. “Life here is like a nightmare.”
The European Parliament has voted in favor of ending caged animal farming. (photo: iStock)
EU Votes to End Caged Animal Farming After Overwhelming Demand
Vegan Food & Living
Excerpt: "The EP Committee Members are now calling on the European Commission to phase out caged farming, with 2027 being a possible date."
The European Parliament has voted in favour of phasing out caged animal farming by 2027 following overwhelming demand from EU citizens
he European Parliament has voted in favour of ending caged animal farming.
The landmark victory saw a staggering 558 votes in favour of the ban, with only 37 opposing the ban and 85 abstaining.
The vote came in response to a petition which demanded a phase-out of cages in animal agriculture. The petition, titled “End The Cage Age”, was signed by an overwhelming 1.4 million EU citizens.
The EP Committee Members are now calling on the European Commission to phase out caged farming, with 2027 being a possible date.
Furthermore, the Commission was also asked to propose a ban on barbaric force-feeding of ducks and geese, which is done to fatten the birds’ liver for foie gras.
“Our rules need to change”
The European Commissioner for Health and Food Saftey Stella Kyriakides explained: “Acting to improve the welfare of animals is an ethical, social, and economic imperative.
“Our rules need to change and that is a very clear call from our citizens.”
For the proposed ban to be passed, the European Commission would need to put forward the request, which would then need approval from EU member states and the Parliament.
Moreover, EU animal welfare has already passed some regulations on how animals are caged.
So-called ‘furnished’ cages that provide perches and more space for animals are currently standard practice following the banning of ‘barren’ battery cages.
Despite these regulations, more than 90% of the EU’s farmed rabbits are housed in cages, and in 2019 half of laying hens were kept in cages.
How intensive animal farming impacts humans
Undoubtedly, we are all aware of the unethical practices that intensive animal farming inflicts on the animals themselves. It is very easy to turn a blind eye to these situations, following the notion of ‘what we don’t know won’t hurt us’.
Unfortunately, this statement is no longer true.
Intensive farming has not only been proven to be a cause for the climate crisis, but there is also an overwhelming amount of evidence that intensive animal agriculture is linked to widespread diseases.
The inhumane conditions and close proximity the animals are kept in leads to cross-contamination, resulting in a breeding ground for new infections and diseases.
Although this information can leave us feeling hopeless, there is still so much we can do. Switching to a plant-based diet and reducing our intake of meat and dairy will only positively contribute to the change in animal agriculture.
With greater knowledge and support for this lifestyle change, we can ensure we are taking the right steps to combat the climate crisis and ending animal suffering.
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