13 June 20
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Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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12 June 20
After Barr Ordered FBI to "Identify Criminal Organizers," Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work
Chris Brooks, The Intercept
Brooks writes: "FBI agents have been questioning arrested protesters about their political beliefs, apparently at the behest of U.S. Attorney General William Barr."
Chris Brooks, The Intercept
Brooks writes: "FBI agents have been questioning arrested protesters about their political beliefs, apparently at the behest of U.S. Attorney General William Barr."
’ve never had any run-ins with the cops before. I’ve never been to jail and have no criminal record, so when the FBI showed up to my workplace, it scared the piss out of me,” says Katy, a 22-year-old who works for a custodial services company in Cookeville, a small college town in middle Tennessee. “I really thought I was going to lose my job. The whole experience was terrifying.”
Moved by the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Katy — who requested she only be identified by her first name — and a friend had created a Facebook event for a Black Lives Matter rally in Cookeville’s public square on Saturday, June 6. She soon connected with several other Cookeville locals who wanted to help with planning the event, and enthusiasm grew as word of the rally spread.
“I’ve never organized a rally before, I was just winging it,” Katy said. “I didn’t expect a lot of people to show up, but overnight 600 people had RSVP’d on Facebook.”
Counter-protesters organized their own Facebook group, Protect Cookeville Against Looters, which quickly swelled to over 1,000 members. Some of the members of this group determined that Katy was the main organizer of the upcoming rally and began posting her personal information and making violent threats.
“The event for the rally had been up for about four days when we started getting death threats,” Katy said. “It was too much. I was overwhelmed.”
Katy eventually backed out of the rally — and a group of local high school students took over planning — but she had already gotten the attention of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, a federally coordinated network of local law enforcement officers who work under the direction of the FBI to gather intelligence about terrorist threats.
On June 4, agents turned up unannounced at Katy’s work, pulling her off the job and into a large truck in the gravel parking lot to question her about her connections to the upcoming rally and to antifa — the loose anti-fascist movement recently labeled as a terrorist organization by President Donald Trump. Katy had never heard of them.
As The Intercept has previously reported, FBI agents have been questioning arrested protesters about their political beliefs, apparently at the behest of U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Barr, following Trump’s repeated false assertions that there is a sophisticated, national network of antifa operatives infiltrating local protests against police brutality to enflame violence, announced that antifa is a domestic terrorist organization on May 31.
Barr also directed the JTTF to “identify criminal organizers and instigators,” even though antifa has no organizational structure and the FBI’s own internal assessments don’t support the claim that antifa is somehow weaponizing protests
The following week, over the span of four days, Katy and at least three other activists in Cookeville, whose population is just 34,000, received unannounced visits by agents who questioned them about their political affiliations and whether they had information about outside agitators planning to hijack local protests.
“What the JTTF is doing is shocking, but we saw this happen before during the McCarthy era, when the FBI and other various agencies investigated activists with the purpose of discouraging or chilling free speech,” said Will York, an attorney who specializes in free speech cases and is a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild’s Nashville chapter. “If the movement for police reform and racial justice has legs in Cookeville, Tennessee, then it clearly has touched a deep nerve in this country. Federal and local police agencies trying to counter that momentum are likely to use these tactics to make activists think twice about organizing such an event again, especially in rural communities.”
Eli Anderson, a 19-year-old college student on summer break back home in Cookeville, decided to organize an impromptu Black Lives Matter rally in the Cookeville public square on Tuesday, June 2. A little after 3 p.m., Anderson and his friends announced on their Instagram stories that there would be a peaceful protest in the city square at 5 p.m. A friend picked Anderson up at 4:30 p.m. to head to the rally when he got a call from his mother saying, “The FBI is here and I don’t know what is happening.”
Anderson rushed home. By the time he got there, the two agents were gone and his mother was in a state of panic. She told Eli they had flashed FBI credentials.
“The agents told her they had been monitoring my social media and believed that I might have information about antifa coming to town,” Anderson said. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is antifa?’ I had never even heard of it before.”
The next night, on the evening of Wednesday, June 3, Mackenzie Randall, a 21-year-old electrical engineering major at Tennessee Tech University, was startled when two JTTF agents showed up to her apartment unannounced.
The agents told Randall they wanted to talk her about her social media posts offering to help provide transportation to the local Black Lives Matter protest set for that Saturday. Randall let the agents into her home, where they began questioning her about, in her words, “terrorist organizations trying to come into the peaceful protests in Cookeville.”
“He asked me if I knew anyone in antifa or had heard anything about antifa coming to Cookeville,” Randall said. The agents also mentioned private posts Randall had made on her own Facebook page, which could only be seen by her Facebook friends.
“They were very intimidating,” she said. The FBI did not respond to request for comment. One of the JTTF officers who interviewed Katy, Randall, and Smith is a deputy for the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office declined to comment for this story.
Katy recalled a similar experience. “They were trying to make me feel like dangerous people were going to come to Cookeville and just burn shit to the ground and give us a bad name,” Katy said. “I feel like it was pure intimidation. They didn’t want us to have that rally.’
The next day, agents also showed up unannounced to the home of Andrew Smith, a gregarious 52-year-old Presbyterian minister and instructor at Tennessee Tech. Smith’s wife recorded the short exchange. Smith did most of the talking, preaching to the agents about the social justice ministry of Jesus Christ.
“I think they realized they knocked on the wrong door and weren’t going to intimidate me,” Smith said. “They couldn’t get out of there any quicker.”
The JTTF had grown in Tennessee since September 11, 2001. “Lots of agencies love the JTTF because they can keep a deputy or an agent and not have to pay their salary because the FBI pays for it,” Mark Miller, a former Tennessee state trooper and Cookeville City Council member, told The Intercept.
“There is a whole team of JTTF cyber security agents in Nashville who just monitor people’s Facebooks,” Miller said. “I know this from being a law enforcement officer, we’ve had plenty of classes on it.”
Despite the fear stoked by JTTF officers, large crowds still turned out to the rally in Cookeville last Saturday. Protesters held signs that said “Love Thy Neighbor As Thy Self” and “End Police Brutality,” and listened as their neighbors shared stories over a megaphone. It was a sunny day. There were no arrests.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has issued an emergency rule that keeps aid for food and shelter from undocumented students. (photo: Getty)
Betsy DeVos Takes Official Action to Prevent Coronavirus Funding From Going to Student 'Dreamers'
Elura Nanos, Law & Crime
Nanos writes: "Betsy DeVos's Department of Education issued an official rule on Thursday that constitutes a near-final step in excluding certain groups of immigrants - notably, DACA recipients or 'Dreamers' - from the $12.6 billion in coronavirus funding appropriated by Congress to assist students."
READ MORE
Elura Nanos, Law & Crime
Nanos writes: "Betsy DeVos's Department of Education issued an official rule on Thursday that constitutes a near-final step in excluding certain groups of immigrants - notably, DACA recipients or 'Dreamers' - from the $12.6 billion in coronavirus funding appropriated by Congress to assist students."
READ MORE
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. (photo: CNN)
Derek Chauvin, Minneapolis Officer Charged With Killing George Floyd, Is Still Eligible for $1 Million Pension
Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN
Excerpt: "Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin could receive more than $1 million in pension benefits during his retirement years even if he is convicted of killing George Floyd."
Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN
Excerpt: "Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin could receive more than $1 million in pension benefits during his retirement years even if he is convicted of killing George Floyd."
Chauvin has been the subject of national fury since last month, when footage emerged of him kneeling on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd begged him to stop. He was quickly fired from the department where he had worked since 2001, and amid national protests, was eventually charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers involved with the incident were also fired and face felony charges.
But Chauvin still stands to benefit from a pension partially funded by taxpayers. While a number of state laws allow for the forfeiture of pensions for those employees convicted of felony crimes related to their work, this is not the case in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Public Employees Retirement Association confirmed to CNN that 44-year-old Chauvin would remain eligible to file for his pension as early as age 50, though it would not provide details on the specific amount he would receive. Chauvin's attorney declined to comment. Retirement plan officials said that employees terminated voluntarily or for cause are eligible for future benefits unless they choose to forfeit their future benefit and receive a refund of all their contributions made during their employment.
"Neither our Board nor our staff have the discretion to increase, decrease, deny or revoke benefits," a spokeswoman said. "Any changes to current law would need to be done through the legislative process."
A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone sits in a hanger at Creech Air Force Base, May 19, 2016. (photo: Josh Smith/Reuters)
Trump Aims to Sidestep Another Arms Pact to Sell More US Drones
Mike Stone, Reuters
Stone writes: "The Trump administration plans to reinterpret a Cold War-era arms agreement between 34 nations with the goal of allowing U.S. defense contractors to sell more American-made drones to a wide array of nations, three defense industry executives and a U.S. official told Reuters."
Mike Stone, Reuters
Stone writes: "The Trump administration plans to reinterpret a Cold War-era arms agreement between 34 nations with the goal of allowing U.S. defense contractors to sell more American-made drones to a wide array of nations, three defense industry executives and a U.S. official told Reuters."
EXCERPTS:
The policy change, which has not been previously reported, could open up sales of armed U.S. drones to less stable governments such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates that in the past have been forbidden from buying them under the 33-year-old Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), said the U.S. official, a former U.S. official and one of the executives. It could also undermine longstanding MTCR compliance from countries such as Russia, said the U.S. official, who has direct knowledge of the policy shift.
Reinterpreting the MTCR is part of a broader Trump administration effort to sell more weapons overseas. It has overhauled here a broad range of arms export regulations and removed the U.S. from international arms treaties including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty.
Sidestepping the accord would allow U.S. defense contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc and Northrop Grumman Corp to break into new markets currently dominated by less sophisticated offerings from China and Israel, which do not participate in the MTCR.
Heidi Grant, the Pentagon’s Director of Defense Technology Security Administration, declined to comment on the pending MTCR policy change but said the U.S. military is eager to see drone sales expanded to more countries. Such sales would bolster the militaries of allies and replace drones sales from other nations, she said. “If we are unable to meet this growing demand, we shoot ourselves in the foot,” Grant told Reuters.
She said the drones would help allies fight terrorism, establish border control and generally help stop threats before they reach the United States. Grant declined to name specific nations the Pentagon believes should get more U.S.-made weapons.
MISSILE PACT
The MTCR agreement - originally signed in 1987 by the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Britain - focused on stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The pact has been credited with slowing or stopping missile programs in countries such as Egypt, Argentina and Iraq.
The MTCR policy shift has been under consideration by the Trump administration since 2017, but has been delayed several times as the United States has grappled with objections within the government and from other nations in the agreement, two of the executives and the current and former officials said.
Some state department officials objected to the change for fear that advanced weaponry would be sold to governments that have abused human rights, the former official said.
The U.S. plan is to reinterpret its treatment of drones that fly slower than 800 kilometers per hour, including Reapers and Global Hawks. Global Hawks, made by Northrop Grumman, are not armed and are typically used for surveillance. Reapers, made by General Atomics, are used for both surveillance and air strikes - including the recent U.S. strike that killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January.
The MTCR currently classifies such drones as cruise missiles - and therefore subject to high export restrictions - because of the technical specifications for unpiloted aircraft in the 1987 pact. Under the reinterpretation, the United States will treat these drones as if they belong in a lower category that falls outside MTCR jurisdiction.
The Pentagon’s Grant said boosted sales of sophisticated weaponry can strengthen U.S. alliances and help allied militaries safeguard U.S. interests. It also enables cooperation with allies when they use the same equipment, and would speed efforts to replace or repair drones in combat.
Over time, she said, boosting sales of the drones could also lower their cost to the U.S. government by giving defense contractors economies of scale.
A bust of the Ku Klux Klan 'Grand Wizard' Nathan Bedford Forrest will stay in the Tennessee state Capitol. (photo: Getty)
Tennessee Just Voted to Keep a Racist Statue of a KKK 'Grand Wizard'
Tess Owen, VICE
Owen writes: "Protesters around the world have been decapitating racist statues, covering them with graffiti, and tossing them in the harbor. But the bust of the Ku Klux Klan 'Grand Wizard' will stay right in its place in the Tennessee state Capitol, after lawmakers thumbed their nose at the trend in an 11-5 committee vote this week."
Tess Owen, VICE
Owen writes: "Protesters around the world have been decapitating racist statues, covering them with graffiti, and tossing them in the harbor. But the bust of the Ku Klux Klan 'Grand Wizard' will stay right in its place in the Tennessee state Capitol, after lawmakers thumbed their nose at the trend in an 11-5 committee vote this week."
EXCERPT:
Like many Confederate statues that have come down, the bust of Forrest was installed in the Tennessee Capitol well after the Civil War ended. In fact, it was installed in 1973, thanks to a Democratic state Sen. Douglas Henry, who was a member of the organization Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The idea of removing Forrest’s bust from the Capitol had been raised a couple years ago, when the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, prompted the previous wave of Confederate statue removals across the country. It came up again late last year, when one GOP lawmaker who’d previously supported keeping Forrest’s bust in the Capitol had a change of heart. Rep. Jeremy Faison, whose grandfather was a Confederate colonel, said one of his Black colleagues in Memphis contacted him and showed him some of Forrest’s writings, which laid bare his white supremacist ideology.
“If we want to preserve history, then let's tell it the right way,” Faison said in December, according to the Nashville Tennessean. “Right now there are eight alcoves (in the Capitol). Seven are filled with white men."
Faison suggested that Forrest’s bust be removed and replaced with a statue of Dolly Parton.
Protesters gathered by the Capitol in Nashville on Wednesday after lawmakers voted against removing Forrest’s bust. "This is why black lives matter. This is why we can’t breathe," Venita Lewis, who organized the protest, told local news outlets. "It’s not just about a police officer with his foot on a man’s neck. It’s about every fiber of our lives. It needs to come down." Last weekend, some 2,000 protesters flooded Nashville to rally against police brutality.
But it’s not all bad. Tennessee lawmakers did pass a bill ending the century-long tradition of honoring Forrest once a year. Under current law, the governor of Tennessee is required to sign a proclamation declaring “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.” The bill that passed will change that law.
Interim president of Bolivia Jeanine Áñez talks during a conference at the presidential palace on November 13, 2019 in La Paz, Bolivia. (photo: Javier Mamani/Getty)
Democracy Remains Betrayed in Bolivia. "Pro-Democracy" Voices Don't Seem Too Bothered.
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Excerpt: "A new study is the latest to undermine widespread claims of electoral fraud by Bolivia's Evo Morales. It isn't the first such debunking - yet democracy remains betrayed in Bolivia, and 'pro-democracy' voices don't seem too bothered."
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Excerpt: "A new study is the latest to undermine widespread claims of electoral fraud by Bolivia's Evo Morales. It isn't the first such debunking - yet democracy remains betrayed in Bolivia, and 'pro-democracy' voices don't seem too bothered."
EXCERPT:
A “Democratic” Military Coup
The Times has at least done the responsible thing and covered this latest study. But outside of the Gray Lady and the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, it appears to have been completely ignored by English-speaking media. Strange, given that we now have multiple studies telling us it was the right-wing Bolivian government in power right now, not Morales, that overturned Bolivian democracy.
It’s even stranger when you consider that the not-so-“interim” government headed by the unelected, far-right Jeanine Añez has embarked on precisely the kind of “authoritarian” and “arbitrary rule” that supposed defenders of liberal democracy like Yascha Mounk baselessly accused Morales of pursuing when they wanted him out. Since taking power, the Añez government has massacred protesters, arrested political opponents, and cracked down on the press and activists. In March, her government postponed an election she was on track to lose, the holding of which, as soon as possible, was supposed to be her only job, and in which she had initially promised not to run.
Morales was accused of authoritarianism, even of staging a “coup,” simply for going through the process to change the law and dispense with term limits, which, for better or worse, don’t exist in countless democracies. Term limits weren’t even in place in the United States until 1947, and numerous US political figures have suggested in the past they should be overturned, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Yet when a far-right government starts violently clamping down on journalists and its political opposition and actually suspends an election, many of these pro-democracy voices don’t utter a peep. The silence of the OAS, headed by a right-wing chameleon, is hardly a surprise. But where is the European Union, the last bastion of liberal democracy, as we are always told?
One instructive case study came during last year’s UK general election, unfolding at the same time as Morales’s ouster. When then–Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn denounced what he accurately described as a coup, the diplomatic editor of the Guardian, not averse to being caught up in anti-populism panic itself, expressed alarm at his “startling” position, pointing to — what else? — the OAS. “Democracy is still working in Bolivia, just,” insisted its sister paper not long after. Just a day before those words were printed, Añez’s government mowed down pro-Morales protesters.
In the situation that continues to unfold in Bolivia, we see the fruits of the last few years of anti-populist rhetoric from the liberal-center, popularized by figures like Mounk. They claim to want to protect democracy and civil liberties from “populists” — the shapeless rubric under which they place everything from the far-right Trump and Viktor Orbán to the left-wing Podemos and Morales. And many of those repeating these claims no doubt genuinely believe this framework, duped by a clever messaging.
But for others, what they really oppose is a challenge to the prevailing arrangement of global wealth and power that seeks to move the world in the direction of justice and fairness. If democracy and civil liberties are casualties in that effort, as has been the case in Bolivia, so be it.
It’s why public opinion survey results show that it’s centrists, not right-or left-wing “extremists,” who are most hostile to democracy. If there’s a group that, to paraphrase Noriega, jumps on something only as long as it continues to serve its true objectives, it’s the anti-populist center and the liberal democracy it claims to stand for.
A passing rainstorm at the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. (photo: Pierre Leclerc/Getty)
'Plastic Rain' Is Pouring Down in National Parks
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "A new study has found that some of the most untouched areas of the U.S. are seeing 1,000 tons or more of microplastics rain down every year."
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "A new study has found that some of the most untouched areas of the U.S. are seeing 1,000 tons or more of microplastics rain down every year."
he plastic crisis has polluted the world's oceans and created mountains in landfills. Microplastics have been identified wafting on the sea breeze and raining down on top of the Pyrenees. They travel on the winds and slowly drop down from the skies. Now, a new study has found that some of the most untouched areas of the U.S. are seeing 1,000 tons or more of microplastics rain down every year, according to The New York Times.
The study examined airborne microplastics in national parks in the American West. That means those hikes through the untouched land in Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon or Joshua Tree National Park are not providing the pristine, fresh air we thought they do.
The researchers found that nearly one-fourth come from nearby cities, while the rest drift through the air from far-flung locations. The findings, the first to discern the plastics' geographic origins, add to mounting evidence that microplastic pollution is a worldwide scourge, as Science reported.
"We created something that won't go away," says Janice Brahney, a biogeochemist at Utah State University and lead author on the new paper, according to Science. "It's now circulating around the globe."
The new study was published on Thursday in Science magazine and titled "Plastic rain in protected areas of the United States." The researchers noted that microplastics are found in "nearly every ecosystem on the planet."
To conduct the study, the researchers collected rainwater and air samples for 14 months to calculate how many microplastic particles fall into 11 protected areas in the west each year. They found tiny plastic particles in 98 percent of the 339 samples they collected. Microplastics made up 4 percent of the dust particles that were tested, according to The New York Times.
The 1,000 metric tons, or over 2.2 million pounds, that drops over 11 protected areas every year is equal to of over 120 million plastic water bottles, according to Wired.
"We just did that for the area of protected areas in the West, which is only 6 percent of the total US area," said Brahney, as Wired reported. "The number was just so large, it's shocking."
The plastic is trapped in fundamental atmospheric processes and falling all over the world, making plastic rain the new acid rain, according to Wired.
Microplastics are tiny particles that measure less than 5 millimeters in length. Most microplastics are fragments from larger pieces of plastic. Since plastics aren't biodegradable, when they end up in landfills or garbage heaps, they break down into microparticles and make their way through the earth's atmosphere, soil and water systems, according to The Guardian.
Considering that they have such a long life after their usefulness has expired, many microplastics could be traveling through natural systems for a long time.
"Plastics could be deposited, readmitted to the atmosphere, transported for some time, deposited and maybe picked up again," said Brahney, as The Guardian reported. "And who knows how many times and who knows how far they've travelled?"
Scientists have yet to conclude how all the plastic in the atmosphere affects animal and plant species, but the authors of this new study argue that the global community needs to work together to find a solution.
"The consequences to ecosystems are not yet well understood but are inescapable in the immediate future," the researchers wrote in their study, as CNN reported. "If the potential dangers posed by environmental microplastics are to be mitigated, both the scale of the solution and the level of cooperation that will be required call on the engagement of the global community."
