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RSN: Juan Cole | Trump Pardons Blackwater 4 for Nisour Square Massacre in Iraq, Because Whites Must Never Suffer for Killing Innocent Brown People
24 December 20
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ALSO SEE: 'Our Blood Is Cheaper Than Water':
Iraqis' Anger Over Trump Pardons
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "On Tuesday, Trump the Mad pardoned 4 Blackwater mercenaries who killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, with indiscriminate fire at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad on September 14, 2007. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden's insistence, and were serving jail terms."
WaPo says, “Investigators for the military and the FBI later described the shootings, in which the contractors unleashed a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square, as unprovoked and unjustified. Federal prosecutors said that many of the victims, including women and children, some with their hands in the air, “were shot inside of civilian vehicles while attempting to flee.”
The 14 victims killed by the Blackwater guards on trial were listed as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim Abid Ayash, Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein.
Trump’s four years in office have been one big effort at running interference for white supremacy, and it is the real reason for these pardons.
Blackwater was owned by Trump crony Erik Prince, the brother of plutocrat/ secretary of education Betsy DeVos.
The US still has 50,000 civilian contractors (performing various tasks, including security) in the Middle East, with 30,000 in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
I thought it might be interesting on this day, which will live in infamy in Iraq, to go back to see how Informed Comment covered this crisis as it unfolded in fall of 2007. Here was my attempt to catch history on the run:
“The Blackwater Shooting (2007) | The New York Times”
McClatchy reports from Baghdad that Iraqi eyewitnesses maintain that Blackwater security guards fired at civilians without provocation on Sunday, in contrast to the company’s own story about the incident. Probably they were firing at a car that neglected to stop when told to, or neglected to stop fast enough. Since such vehicles might be driven by suicide bombers, American military and civilian security forces have often opened fire on innocent Iraqis who just did not hear or did not understand the command to halt their vehicles, or who panicked and sped up. The offending car in this instance had a family of three in it, including a toddler who ended up being melted to his mother’s body in the resulting conflagration.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Condi Rice personally apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for the killing of 10 Iraqis by Blackwater guards and promised that steps would be taken to ensure the tragedy was not repeated. The Iraqis are from all accounts absolutely furious about the Blackwater cowboys running around their country armed and dangerous and acting with impunity. The State Department, which employs Blackwater, is highly embarrassed and has ordered State Dept. personnel in Iraq not to circulate for the time being. Debate is raging over whether Iraq has the right to try the apparently trigger-happy civilian security men of Blackwater.
McClatchy reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has suspended the license of Blackwater to operate in Iraq while it is under investigation for recklessly killing civilians. Al-Maliki pointed to seven discrete incidents. An aide said that the Americans seemed shocked that the Iraqis were making a stand on the issue. Apparently sympathy with Iraqis about their innocent civilians being shot up by cowboys hired by a private American firm is not widespread in the Green Zone.
One experienced reader wrote me that the Iraqi government stance is reasonable, that foreign security guards should be accountable in some legal system. If Iraq cannot try them (by virtue of a fiat issued by American Viceroy Paul Bremer), and if they are not all Americans and so can’t all be tried in US domestic courts, then they are essentially operating beyond the reach of any court of law. That situation is unacceptable to anyone who cares about the rule of law.
By the way, complaints about the immunity of foreigners to prosecution in local courts (called ‘extra-territoriality’ by historians) were among the grievances that fueled the Khomeini movement in Iran from the 1960s (servicemen on bases in Iran had such immunity, and Khomeini used the unpopularity of this injury to national sovereignty to whip up anti-American sentiment). Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld appear not to have learned any lessons from all that.
The US Congress may attempt to intervene by passing legislation on accountability for private US firms operating in Iraq. There are some 180,000 private individual contractors in Iraq, mostly working for US firms or subcontracting from the US government.
Iraqi authorities said Saturday that they have a videotape of the shootings in Nisur Square last Sunday by Blackwater security guards, which shows that they fired without provocation. The company has maintained that its personnel were responding to incoming fire. There is now talk in Baghdad of trying the guards, though a decree by US viceroy Paul Bremer may hold the US nationals harmless.
Meanwhile, charges surfaced that Blackwater employees had shipped weapons to Iraq without proper paperwork, which could be interpreted as a form of arms smuggling. The company denies the charges.
The Iraqi government is backing off its demand that the Blackwater security firm be expelled from Iraq in the wake of apparently unprovoked shootings that left 11 Iraqis dead, according to the LAT. Apparently the argument has been made to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the 1,000 Blackwater guards who escort US embassy personnel would have to be replaced by troops, who would have to be pulled out of their current attempt to drive Sunni Arab militants out of Baghdad neighborhoods . . .
A big feature of the literature on decolonization is the delight leaders such as Gamal Abdul Nasser and Ruhollah Khomeini took in abrogating laws bestowing ‘extra-territoriality’ on colonial personnel and even just civilians from the metropole, while in the subject country. Now extra-territoriality is back with a vengeance; and, of course, no colonial enterprise can be run without it. One can’t have persons of the superior race hauled before a native judge; bad show, old boy, to let the wily oriental gentlemen get the upper hand that way.
Iraqi authorities are not only accusing Blackwater guards of an unprovoked shooting of 11 persons at Nisur Square on Sept. 16, but also of engaging in an hour-long firefight with Iraqi police later that day. The firm appears to have deployed attack helicopters in the firefights.
The NYT reports that a new congressional report on the Blackwater security firm in Iraq reveals many instances of guards killing Iraqis, and sometimes trying to cover it up. They are said to have been involved in nearly 200 shootings since 2005. Congress slammed the State Department in Iraq for exercising virtually no oversight over the private firm, which has a contract from State. In fact, State appears to have been part of the cover-ups.
The LA Times reports that Blackwater has fired 121 of its guards in Iraq, mostly for weapons-related issues, during the past 3 years. It has a little over 800 employees in Iraq.
P. W. Singer at Salon.com suggests that the use of private armies has harmed the US ability to win wars, including Iraq.
Although many commentators seem to find the use of private armies strange, they have been a feature of colonial wars all along. It is now often forgotten that the paramilitary of the British East India Company conquered North India in 1757-1764, not the regular armies of the British government. It has been argued that the Mughal Empire appointed the East India Company as its revenue minister (Divan), and that in essence this part of the government swallowed the rest. Once the company had much of India, the British government gave it a seat on the cabinet (so it went from being Divan of the Mughal Empire to cabinet minister in the British Empire). Don’t tell Bush and Cheney, or they’ll create a Secretary of Blackwater for the US government.
Postscript:
Juan Cole in The Nation, “The Age of American Shadow Power”, 4/20/2012:
Although the Iraqis managed to compel the withdrawal of US troops by the end of last year, Washington is nevertheless seeking to remain influential through shadow power. The US embassy in Baghdad has 16,000 employees, most of them civilian contractors. They include 2,000 diplomats and several hundred intelligence operatives. By contrast, the entire US Foreign Service corps comprises fewer than 14,000. The Obama administration has decided to slash the number of contractors, planning for an embassy force of “only” 8,000. This monument to shadow power clearly is not intended merely to represent US interests in Iraq but rather to shape that country and to serve as a command center for the eastern reaches of the greater Middle East. The US shadow warriors will, for instance, attempt to block “the influence of Iran,” according to the Washington Post. Since Iraq’s Shiite political parties, which dominate Parliament and the cabinet, are often close to Iran, that charge would inescapably involve meddling in internal Iraqi politics . . .
“The increasingly frequent use of civilian “security contractors”—essentially mercenaries—should be a sore point for Americans. The tens of thousands of mercenaries deployed in Iraq were crucial to the US occupation of that country, but they also demonstrate the severe drawbacks of using shadow warriors. Ignorance about local attitudes, arrogance and lack of coordination with the US military and with local police and military led to fiascoes such as the 2007 shootings at Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where Blackwater employees killed seventeen Iraqis. The Iraqi government ultimately expelled Blackwater, even before it did the same with the US military, which had brought the contractors into their country.”
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., receives a Vaccination Record Card after receiving a Covid-19 vaccination shot. (photo: Ken Cedeno/Getty)
Covid-19 Relief Bill Doubles Health Care Budget - for Congress
Lee Fang, The Intercept
Fang writes: "The exclusive clinic used by members of Congress got an extra $5 million in the latest spending bill."
n a flurry of last-minute legislating over coronavirus relief, congressional leaders abandoned hazard pay for essential workers and emergency funding for local governments that may be on the brink of municipal bankruptcy.But lawmakers did find funding to dramatically increase the budget for the exclusive government-run health clinic that serves Congress.
The Office of Attending Physician, which provides medical services to lawmakers, received a special boost of $5 million, more than doubling its annual budget, which is currently around $4.27 million.
The increase in funding to the OAP, if passed, is the third budget hike Congress has provided to its own health clinic over the last year. The 2019 omnibus provided an increase in funding to the OAP, along with the CARES Act, which passed this past March.
The OAP, described as “some of the country’s best and most efficient government-run health care,” employs several physicians and nurses to provide on-call treatment to legislators on Capitol Hill. The new funding is justified by new services required for confronting the pandemic, though the office also provides lawmakers with the services of a chiropractor, on-site physical therapy, radiology, routine examinations, and a pharmacist.
The office, led by Dr. Brian Monahan, has been in the news in recent days for administering the Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer to congressional leaders. The office has treated lawmakers who have been infected by the virus and provided guidance for reopening Congress after the initial surge of infections earlier this year.
The significant increase in funding for congressional health services comes as some provisions for working-class Americans were sharply curtailed or eliminated entirely. Earlier versions of the second round of stimulus legislation included $200 billion to pay front-line essential workers an additional $13 per hour. The special funding would have provided a special boost to nurses and other front-line medical workers.
That provision did not make it to the final bill released on Monday. The proposed $1,200 stimulus checks were also reduced to $600.
The coronavirus relief legislation also contains dozens of provisions that benefit business owners and investors, including tax benefits for owners of racehorses, the full expansion of the “three-martini lunch” tax deduction for business meals, and the so-called double dip tax deduction for recipients of Paycheck Protection Program stimulus money to use tax-free grants from the federal government to reduce taxable income.
The $900 billion bill, reached after last-minute negotiations over the weekend, includes supplemental funding for unemployment benefits and money to streamline vaccine distribution.
The legislation also provides $284 billion to replenish and expand the PPP forgivable loan program to businesses. The bill extends the federal eviction moratorium through January 31, along with $25 billion for rental assistance programs. The funding measure provides $84 billion for education, including money for personal protective equipment for teachers and K-12 schools.
Progressives Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders with now President-elect Joe Biden. (photo: Gabriella Demczuk/CNN)
Progressives Are Finalizing Their Strategies to Move Biden to the Left Once He's in the White House
Addy Baird, BuzzFeed
Baird writes: "Progressives hope two races in Georgia will give Democrats the Senate and increase their influence over the new administration. But if that doesn't happen, they have a backup plan."
rogressive leaders in Congress are currently strategizing about how they’ll pull President-elect Joe Biden to the left and make their demands — including policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal — unavoidable once he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
The plan, described to BuzzFeed News by progressive members of Congress, is being developed whether or not Republicans maintain control of the Senate after January’s two runoff races in Georgia. The tactics will involve high-profile and social media–ready grillings of members of Biden’s administration, the same way they have for Trump officials, partnering with activist groups to hold Biden to his campaign promises and push him to use executive orders enact progressive policies, and, less realistically, championing bipartisan legislation on issues Republicans might support, like transportation.
Rep. Katie Porter’s plan for pulling Biden to the left looks, in some ways, like her approach toward the Trump administration, one that has repeatedly made her go viral for, well, the last reason you’d expect someone to go viral: aggressive government oversight.
“When I think about what progressives need to accomplish going forward, yes, it's about passing legislation, yes, it's about working with the administration, but progressives also need to embrace oversight,” Porter, who was recently elected as the Congressional Progressive Caucus deputy chair, said.
Soon, many of the Cabinet secretaries and Trump allies whom Porter has eviscerated on camera will be out of their jobs as Biden takes office. But Porter — who has a T-shirt that proclaims “I <3 oversight,” and she’s gifted matching ones to some of her colleagues — isn’t going to back down on that work in the new administration.
“We need to be the sort of movement of transparency, of oversight, of stewards of taxpayer dollars, because we're saying this money would make a difference, and then we need to make sure that it really is. We should increase funding to this program [and] we need to make sure that increased funding is actually helping people on the ground,” she said. ”I continue to think that oversight is as important as ever, despite a Biden administration.”
On Twitter, it feels like every few weeks, a video of Porter dismantling various officials, such as pharmaceutical executives, the postmaster general, the secretary of housing and urban development — the list goes on and on — blows up. Her strategy of asking basic, clear questions during Oversight Committee hearings seems to consistently baffle people who should definitely know the answers. Porter sees this as a central part of the progressive mission, and one that will not cease just because a member of her own party is in the White House.
“Do you know what an REO is?” she asked Housing Secretary Ben Carson last year.
“An Oreo?” he responded before trying again with “real estate e-organization.” (Also incorrect. REO stands for “real estate–owned.”)
Porter stumped Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in August simply by asking him if he knew what it costs to send a postcard and how many people voted by mail in the last presidential election.
“There's a lot riding on those two Georgia Senate seats,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, who currently serves as CPC cochair, during an interview with BuzzFeed News. “It's huge,” he added, “but at the same time, you know, we really are relying on Georgians to be making the calls, right? We're not going to campaign there.” (Pocan's office clarified that they would not be campaigning in the state due to the coronavirus).
But activist groups have been using the Georgia runoffs to push Democrats at all levels of government to embrace progressive policies. In a Dec. 10 memo shared with reporters, Justice Democrats, a progressive group, outlined a plan it described as “a winning issue on a silver platter.”
Biden, the group argued, should promise to pass a stand-alone bill that would send all Americans $1,200 in relief in his first week in office if Congress does not do so before he’s inaugurated. (This week, Congress agreed to a deal that included $600 relief checks for people making less than $75,000 per year.) Additionally, in Georgia, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock should campaign on that and make it clear that Democrats will deliver relief if voters deliver them to the Senate.
This strategy, the group argued in the memo, would “give Democrats something they haven’t had in years: a clear message about something tangible that Democrats will do for you.”
Pocan said he believes working with outside organizations to pressure the Biden administration will be one of the most successful tactics available to progressives. He has experience serving on the Oversight Committee during a Democratic presidency; he sat on the panel after he was first elected in 2012, during the Obama administration. It’s a distinct experience with your own party in the White House, he said.
“You're not going to see the egregious actions that we've had for the last four years,” he said. “It was a different committee than it was in the last four years.”
Instead, Pocan said, he’s been focusing on working with activist groups on issues important to him, including labor rights and defense spending, and preparing for either outcome in the January elections in Georgia. And if Democrats don’t control the Senate, he said, working with outside organizations to pressure the Biden administration will be, “in some ways, the only vehicle we have to get some things done.”
“We can have the most beautifully crafted legislation, but if you don't have a Senate…” Pocan said, trailing off. “You know, you can put it out there if it's an organizing tool … But ultimately, if you want to get something done, we have to have an executive agency, executive branch strategy. And the good news is most groups are thinking in that way, so they've got parallel track plans going forward.”
That executive branch strategy is already in full swing, as activist groups and congressional progressives have been pushing the Biden transition team for progressive Cabinet picks, with mixed results, and plan to employ similar tactics to push the president-elect on issues like healthcare and climate change once he takes office.
Late last month, in an interview with NBC News, Biden was asked about nominating Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, his former primary rivals, to his administration. “We already have significant representation among progressives in our administration,” Biden said, adding, “but there is nothing really off the table.”
In a text message to BuzzFeed News, Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez two years ago, linked to a tweet with a clip from the interview and wrote, “Who is he talking about?” He added a laughing-crying face emoji.
In the weeks since, Biden has appointed many of his more moderate allies to his Cabinet. But some progressives have cheered the announcement that he will appoint Janet Yellen as treasury secretary, and activist groups launched a full-scale campaign for the appointment of New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as interior secretary. As Reuters reported earlier this month, many progressives sent letters to the Biden transition team pushing for Haaland’s nomination and publicly called for her appointment on social media, using the hashtag #DebForInterior.
The campaign was ultimately successful, and Haaland’s historic appointment as the first Native American Cabinet secretary last week thrilled progressives. As Julian NoiseCat, who works with Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling outlet, wrote on Twitter on Thursday, “We fought and prayed hard for this one.”
Ahead of the official announcement, Pocan said he was hoping for a Haaland pick too. He praised Biden’s choice of Alejandro Mayorkas for homeland security secretary and Xavier Becerra to head the Health and Human Services Department.
“What we're not seeing are some of the picks that we were afraid of, right? People coming from the old Democratic Leadership Council or, you know, some of these oldies but not so goodies,” Pocan said. “Really, I think he’s going to pick the people he feels closest to.”
Porter, however, said she hoped to see more generational diversity in the coming Cabinet picks.
“A lot of his appointments so far have been people that he worked with in the past,” she said. “Many of those people are going to be tremendous assets to the Biden administration and to the people of this country, but I hope in the next couple waves of appointments we see more new voices coming into government.”
Biden’s Cabinet appointments are particularly vital without a united Democratic control of Congress. With the two tight runoff races in Georgia set to determine the Senate majority, progressives know the legislative route could turn out to be the least fruitful. Democrats did have new success in Georgia on the presidential level this cycle as Biden became the first Democrat in 28 years to win the state. Both Senate races in the state — where Ossoff and Warnock are facing off against incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively — went to runoff elections that will take place on Jan. 5.
But the races appear to be extremely tight, at least according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling analysis, which shows Perdue leading Ossoff by an average of 0.6% and Loeffler leading Warnock by 0.1% at the time of publication.
If Republicans hold on, the same issues that have plagued progressives since Democrats took the House two years ago — nearly all legislation has been dead on arrival in the Senate — will continue.
“It's incredibly important that we remove Mitch McConnell as the Senate majority leader,” Porter said. “This is not a typical partisan disagreement; this is somebody who simply refuses to do the work of Congress. So it's one thing to bring up bills and have someone vote against them. That's not what's happening here. We simply have someone who isn't putting solutions before members and allowing them to vote them up or down.”
But even with McConnell at the helm, some lawmakers are hoping for bipartisan agreement on some legislative goals.
“A bold transportation package is again something that's bipartisan but would signal, I think, the hope and the opportunity for people to be able to get back into jobs, to rebuild our communities, our schools, our water infrastructure, to move towards a green energy future,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the CPC’s other cochair. “That would be a huge plus.”
The House can also pass bills that signal to the public that the administration is, as Jayapal said, “committed to addressing the deep hurt and pain and suffering that people across the country are facing, particularly Black, brown, and Indigenous communities with COVID” — and she wants to ensure those bills include relief for immigrants.
“We can't say that immigrants are essential workers, putting food in the food banks, and then say that they're expendable by making them deportable,” she said.
Jayapal also said she’s hopeful Biden will act quickly with executive orders addressing progressive priorities in the first days of his administration. “Everything he does by executive action will send a very important signal to people,” she said. “That's critically important.”
FBI officers. (photo: Shutterstock)
FBI: White Supremacists Discussed Shooting Up Power Grids, Forming 'Fascist Society'
Arya Hodjat and Allison Quinn, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Federal agents were tracking a group earlier this year that discussed a violent mission to "wreak havoc" if Trump lost the election, according to mistakenly unsealed court docs."
group of white supremacists raised alarm bells with the FBI by discussing ways to attack the country’s power grid in the event President Trump were to lose re-election, according to a mistakenly unsealed search warrant affidavit obtained by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.The three men—described as a 17-year-old from Ohio, a student at Purdue University, and a Wisconsin man—are said to have wound up on the FBI’s radar in late 2019 after a rifle-toting Canadian with “Nazi” and “white power” imagery on his phone was stopped from entering the U.S.
The Canadian man reportedly proceeded to tell U.S. border agents he was trying to visit the Ohio teenager, whom he’d met and been communicating with over an encrypted app. In light of some of the content on the Canadian’s phone—including a discussion about taking out student loans to facilitate some “off the grid” training—his plans raised red flags with federal investigators, who began looking into the group with whom he’d been chatting.
It was not immediately clear if federal investigators believed the men were likely to carry out any of the schemes they discussed. The details laid out in the affidavit paint a picture of a ragtag group of men from different backgrounds fantasizing about outlandish schemes to, as one of them allegedly put it, “wreak havoc” across the country.
An informant is said to have tipped investigators off to information about bomb-making and military operations shared by the Ohio teenager online. According to the informant, the teen had suggested a mission he dubbed “Lights Out,” wherein they would form a group of 18 people called “The Front” and shoot up electrical substations.
The teen’s mother is also said to have forced him to take down several Nazi flags he had in his room, and the affidavit described him as talking about creating Nazi cells across the country, similar to the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.
A couple months after the group allegedly began discussing their “Lights Out” plans, other people were reportedly recruited on online messaging boards, where the rhetoric veered off into the extreme: “Martyrdom is the path to Valhalla,” one of the men under FBI scrutiny allegedly wrote.
“If you truly want a fascist society I will put in the effort to work with you but recruitment is long and not going to be easy,” the man allegedly told an informant he believed was a potential recruit.
In February, the Ohio teen is said to have met up with the two other members of the group while federal agents surveilled their every move. The group was thought to be transporting parts to build untraceable assault rifles, and when police stopped their vehicle, they spotted parts for an AR-15, two magazines and ammunition, and a Nazi flag, according to the Journal Sentinel.
The teen reportedly got thrown out of his house later that same month and wound up in Tennessee. There, police reportedly confiscated an AR-15 part from him when he was arrested for trespassing at a Home Depot.
It remains unclear if the group met up again or continued to discuss what authorities dubbed “white supremacist extremist” plots.
The search warrant affidavit was filed in March, shortly after the teen’s trip to Tennessee.
The affidavit was mistakenly unsealed earlier this month, and has since been resealed, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, which included it in their filing for a search warrant in the case.
None of the three men named in the affidavit have been charged with a crime, and the investigation is said to be ongoing.
Jennifer Thornton, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, which is overseeing the case, told the Journal-Sentinel that there was “no imminent public safety threat related to this matter.”
The affidavit listed conspiracy, solicitation to commit a violent crime, distribution of information relating to explosives, destruction of an energy facility, and providing material support to terrorists as potential crimes being investigated, the Journal-Sentinel wrote.
Details about the FBI’s concerns over the group come shortly after a report from the Department of Homeland Security identified white nationalist violence as the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.”
“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf wrote in the foreword to that report in October.
Residents in Anchorage, Alaska, take part in early voting. (photo: Mark Thiessen/AP)
The Toll of Conspiracy Theories: A Voting Security Expert Lives in Hiding
Bente Birkeland and Miles Parks, NPR
Excerpt: "More than a month ago, Eric Coomer went into hiding. The voting conspiracy theories that have led millions of Republicans to feel as though the election was stolen from them, which are still spreading, have also led to calls for Coomer's head."
Coomer oversees product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, the Denver-based company that has suddenly found itself at the center of many of President Trump's false claims about November's election, spread by allies and pro-Trump media.
Some of Trump's supporters have focused on Coomer as the supposed evil mastermind.
"I actually am in fear for my safety," Coomer said recently, speaking by video call from an undisclosed location to Colorado Public Radio. "I'm in fear for my family's safety. These are real, tangible things coming out of these baseless accusations."
On Tuesday, Coomer sued the Trump campaign and a number of allies, alleging defamation.
It's just the latest example of how people's lives are being upended and potentially ruined by the unprecedented flurry of disinformation this year.
The problem grows
As people experience their own individual internet bubbles, it can be hard to recognize just how much misinformation exists and how the current information ecosystem compares to previous years.
But companies that specialize in the subject say it is getting exponentially worse.
Newsguard, which vets news sources based on transparency and reliability standards, found recently that among the top 100 sources of news in the U.S., sources it deemed unreliable had four times as many interactions this year compared to 2019.
The media intelligence platform Zignal Labs, in an analysis performed at the request of NPR, found that misinformation narratives related to vote-by-mail systems alone were mentioned across the media spectrum more than 40 million times since Election Day.
That flood reached Dominion the week after the election, according to Zignal, and misinformation related to the company's machines has been mentioned more than 10 million times since then.
Coomer said in addition to his own information, the personal addresses of everyone from his parents and siblings to his ex-girlfriends have been posted online. Some have also received threatening letters.
"I've been threatened more times than I could even count. Whether it's the standard online trolls, voicemails that are left almost on a daily basis, being called a traitor to this country. I can't even begin to describe what effect this has had on my life," he said.
Dominion provides election equipment and software to 28 states, including many of the swing states on which Trump has focused his post-election ire.
In preparing for this November's election, the company gamed out all sorts of worst case scenarios, but it wasn't on anyone's radar that Dominion and its employees could become the targets of threats.
Coomer says the first barb aimed at him came five days after the election.
The accusation started with a conservative activist in Colorado, Joe Oltmann. He claimed on his podcast that he'd infiltrated a call with Denver area "Antifa" members that included a man identified as "Eric from Dominion."
Oltmann claimed that Coomer said with a laugh on the call that he would make sure Trump didn't win the election.
Immediately, Coomer knew things would blow up.
"The minute I saw it, it left a big pit in my stomach," he said.
After that podcast went out, the threats quickly arrived. An online search turns up segments on the pro-Trump outlets Newsmax and One America News Network, discussing the allegations, as well as people accusing Coomer of treason and calling for him to be publicly executed. Those networks are among the defendants Coomer is suing.
"God is at the wheel, but we are the warriors that must do the work of men to repel evil," said one of numerous posts on the conservative social media site Parler.
A Dominion spokeswoman says other company employees have also gone to more secure locations, been threatened and been digitally stalked.
On Nov. 21, a group protested in front of Dominion's Denver headquarters, waving American flags and signs saying "fraud equals arrests." Social media posts from the event tagged the far right group the Proud Boys. No one is currently working out of the building.
Pushing back
Recently, however, there are signs that elections companies, like some election officials, are pushing back against the false accusations.
In addition to Coomer's lawsuit, Dominion is threatening legal action against Sidney Powell, who has been among the loudest voices pushing conspiracy theories on behalf of the Trump campaign. Powell is named in Coomer's suit, along with the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Smartmatic, a competitor of Dominion's that has also been the subject of wild rumors, has demanded that numerous news networks take back their allegations against it. This weekend, both Fox Business Network and Newsmax appeared to answer those demands with segments debunking some claims.
But election integrity advocates worry that the disinformation won't truly begin to recede until political leaders like Trump stop questioning the election's legitimacy.
Even in an election where almost all the voting was recorded on paper ballots and rigorous audits were done more than ever before, none of that helps if millions of people are working with an alternative set of facts, said Joe Kiniry, the chief scientist of the open source election technology company Free & Fair.
Even if an election is run perfectly, that doesn't matter to a sizable portion of the public who believes it was unfair. No amount of transparency at the county and state level can really combat the sort of megaphone that Trump wields, Kiniry worries.
"When we're in the realm of coupling disinformation from both foreign and domestic sources, and government and non-government sources, and none of it is really grounded in reality. ... Evidence doesn't help much," he said.
For Eric Coomer, that means his life may be forever changed.
His top goal right now is pretty simple — hoping one day it'll be safe to return home. But he has no idea if that will ever be possible.
"Some of the threats that I've gotten have made very clear that these actors are in it for the long haul. The wishes are that I forever have to look over my shoulder," Coomer said. "And I probably will."
More than 51 percent of nearly six million eligible voters across the region's 20 districts cast their ballots. (photo: Danish Ismail/Reuters)
Kashmiri Alliance Favoring Self Rule Wins Majority of seats in Elections
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "An alliance of political parties in Indian-administered Kashmir opposed to India's policies in the region has won a majority of seats in local elections, the first since New Delhi revoked the disputed region's semi-autonomous status last year."
Alliance that favours self-governance in Kashmir has won 112 of a total of 280 seats in council elections.
The Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), which is pro-India but favours self-governance in Kashmir, won 112 of a total of 280 seats in District Development Council elections, which were held in a staggered eight-phase process from November 28 through December 19.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 74 seats. Independent candidates won 49 seats while India’s main opposition Congress party won 26 seats.
The BJP has a very small base in the Kashmir Valley, where it got only three seats. Most of the other BJP seats come from four Hindu-majority districts in the Jammu area where it has significant support.
More than 51 percent of nearly six million eligible voters across the region’s 20 districts cast their ballots, the Election Commission said, calling the vote “the biggest festival of democracy”.
Results for a few remaining seats will be announced later.
Sajad Lone, president of People’s Conference, a pro-India political party, and PAGD spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that the result “is a verdict in favour of the PAGD”.
“Let’s hope it restarts a political process,” Lone said.
Political activities in the region came to a halt after the abrogation of Article-370 in August last year when most of the political leaders were detained in the region.
“We have come together for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. People have decided that’s what matters, no matter what other parties say.”
For the first time in the region, the two main regional political parties – the National Conference that has ruled most of the last seven decades in Kashmir and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) headed by former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti – had come together with other parties under PAGD to contest the elections.
The alliance, which aimed to keep BJP on the margins, works on the agenda of restoration of Kashmir’s statehood and special status.
The election is part of a process in which residents directly elect their village representatives, who then vote to form development councils for clusters of villages.
Members for the larger District Development Councils are also directly elected but they have no legislative powers and are only responsible for economic development and public welfare.
Indian authorities have kept a tight grip on Kashmir since revoking its autonomy in August 2019 and have arrested most separatist leaders, who in the past have called for a boycott of elections.
New Delhi has annulled Kashmir’s constitution, split the area into two federal territories – Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir – and removed inherited protections on land and jobs.
The Kashmir-based politicians said the election results made it clear that Kashmiri people have rejected last year’s decision.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan with both claiming the region in its entirety.
Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989.
New Delhi accuses Pakistan of sponsoring Kashmiri separatist fighters, a charge Pakistan denies. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
Smoky skies cast a reddish glow to San Francisco skies when the northern California wildfires were burning earlier this year. (photo: Ray Chavez/Getty)
We All Know Smoke Is Bad for Your Health. It Could Be Worse Than You Think
Joanne Lu, NPR
Lu writes: "It's no secret that inhaling smoke is bad for your lungs. But now, scientists are suggesting smoke may also carry and spread infectious diseases."
The theory, published in Science Magazine, is based on research that found wildfire smoke is teeming with thousands of species of microorganisms. Some of these microorganisms, including bacteria and fungal spores, are known to cause disease.
Until now, it's been widely accepted that the greatest risk to human health from smoke are the tiny particles from burning wood and other materials. Some of those particles are small enough to be inhaled into the lungs, triggering allergic reactions in some people or exacerbating lung diseases, like asthma in others.
The new research posits that when a wildfire burns plant or animal matter and disturbs soils, it exposes thousands of species of bacteria and fungi that otherwise might not easily become airborne. You might think the high heat from fire would kill these organisms, but one study cited in the articlevfound that some bacteria even multiply post fire. Scientists say the organisms latch onto smoke particulates, allowing them to travel thousands of miles across continents.
The possibility that smoke-transported microbes may be contributing to infections in human populations has yet to be studied. But it should be, the authors of the article argue. In some locations, growing rates of fungal diseases have coincided with increasing wildfire smoke — what the authors of the article call "compelling overlaps." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also warns that firefighters are at higher risk of contracting valley fever, an infection caused by inhaling a fungus found in soil.
"I think that the connections haven't been made in the past because it's a very new idea to think of smoke as having a living component," says Leda Kobziar, co-author of the article and associate professor of wildland fire science at the University of Idaho.
Kobziar hopes that doctors and scientists will devote more research to whether prolonged smoke exposure can cause infections and if the spread of disease can be predicted from smoke patterns.
Dr. Peter Chen, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is "intrigued" by the theory but somewhat skeptical that the microorganisms in smoke would actually cause infections. Many bacteria and fungi don't cause lung infections, says Chen, but it's certainly possible that a significant dose could exacerbate symptoms in someone with a pre-existing lung condition.
"I always thought it was the particulates in smoke that were causing these issues," says Chen, "but when I read this, I started thinking could it be the microorganisms that are also causing exacerbations?"
Whether the microbes in smoke actually cause infection or simply aggravate underlying respiratory issues, the article raises a new health threat that is "certainly alarming," says Kelsey Jack, an associate professor of environmental and development economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-chair of the climate group at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
This is especially true for lower-income populations, Jack says, because people with fewer means are often more exposed to the environment. If smoke is affecting the air quality in a certain area, the people who work outside, or who have to commute by foot or bike, will inhale more smoke than those who commute by car to their office jobs.
Additionally, air pollution tends to be worse in developing countries — meaning those populations have a lower baseline for respiratory health. Pneumonia is the number one cause of death in children under five years old, and respiratory disease and infections are a leading cause of death among aging adults in poorer nations.
Jack says it would also be helpful to study whether smoke from other common sources in developing countries — like indoor cooking fires or stubble burning, when farmers set their fields on fire after harvest season to clear them — contain as many infectious microbes as wildfires. And if so, whether it's contributing to disease in those populations.
"To the extent that this is a missing piece of understanding the relationship between an emission source and a health impact, it is very, very valuable," says Jack.
But until more research is done, Chen says the best thing people can do is just follow existing recommendations when air quality is poor — including staying indoors, keeping windows and doors closed, using HEPA filters and running air conditioning.
"Really, we just want people to scrub the air," says Chen.
According to the article, further study is especially relevant as climate change will likely make smoky skies a "seasonal norm rather than a rare event" in places around the world.
"Given the fact that we will be living with smoke, we would just encourage people to take precautions," says Kobziar.
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