Month: October 2020

Will James Risen be Forced to Testify? DOJ Given Deadline in Critical Press Freedom Case

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The Obama administration has less than one week to decide whether it intends to force New York Times reporter James Risen to testify at the trial of a CIA whistleblower, after a federal judge ordered on Tuesday that the U.S. “commit to a position” by 10 a.m. on December 16. 

“Since June 2, 2014, the United States has had over six months to decide whether it will subpoena James Risen to testify at this trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday, January 12, 2015,” the order reads (pdf). “Because Mr. Risen’s presence or absence at the trial will have a significant impact on how the parties present their case, a decision about Mr. Risen must be made sufficiently before trial to enable the parties to prepare adequately.”

“Just as they are trying to fight to keep secret their own investigation into CIA torture, they have shown no signs that they plan on stopping their pursuit of a reporter who’s been exposing CIA wrongdoing for over a decade.”
—Trevor Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation

The Times said U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema’s order, issued “with seeming impatience,” brings to a head “the most serious confrontation between the government and the news media in many years.”

The conflict has been ongoing since 2008, when Risen was first subpoenaed by the Bush administration and ordered by the Department of Justice to testify in the prosecution of former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of leaking information about a failed Clinton-era CIA mission to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Risen wrote about the failed operation in his 2006 book State of War.

The 2008 order expired as the reporter fought it through the courts, but it was renewed under President Obama in 2010. In 2011, Brinkema ruled that that Risen did not need to identify his source, but a federal appeals court overturned her decision. In June of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene on Risen’s behalf, despite his claim that his First Amendment rights were violated.

Politico reports:

Throughout the ordeal, journalists and free press advocates have stood by Risen, claiming that forcing the reporter to testify—or punishing him for refusing to appear in court—would set a dangerous precedent for the interpretation of press freedom under the First Amendment.

But public relations considerations may ultimately play more of a role than the administration’s view of journalism ethics.

As Trevor Timm writes for the Freedom of the Press Foundation blog: “On the heels of the CIA torture report, it’s hard to imagine the the Justice Department will want to bring more attention to another spectacular failure of the CIA. But just as they are trying to fight to keep secret their own investigation into CIA torture, they have shown no signs that they plan on stopping their pursuit of a reporter who’s been exposing CIA wrongdoing for over a decade. Risen has continued to report on the CIA torture regime this week, even while facing the Justice Department’s deadline.”

Still, some damage has already been done, Timm says. “Sadly, no matter what happens, the Justice Department has already done lasting damage to press freedom for eviscerating reporter’s privilege for all future cases in the Fourth Circuit,” he concludes. “We again call on them to do the right thing and drop their plans to subpoena Risen for doing his job.”

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Arrests Flare in Hong Kong as Pro-Democracy Actions Return

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Police used pepper spray and batons to break up a resurgent pro-democracy action in Hong Kong Wednesday night, as activists returned to central protest sites in Mong Kok.

According to a police statement, 12 arrests were made, allegedly on a range of charges including assault on officers and “failing to produce proof of identity.”

Protests demanding universal suffrage for Hong Kong voters began in September, after the Chinese government withdrew a promise to allow free elections in 2017. Throughout months of actions, Beijing maintained its position that candidates for the semi-autonomous city’s Chief Executive must be screened and approved by a pro-establishment panel.

The youth-led movement, which grew to take on tens of thousands of participants at its peak, saw protesters camping out in Mong Kok and other central areas of Hong Kong for months. Protesters marched through streets, blockaded main intersections and police headquarters, and disrupted political events to demand true democratic elections.

After images emerged in September that showed protesters using umbrellas to defend their camps from riot police, the movement came to be known colloquially as the Umbrella Revolution.

Activists promised to return when their final protest site was shut down in early December.

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“This is not the end,” one protester, Martin Lee, said at the time. “It is the continuation of the beginning.”

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One Year After West Virginia Chemical Spill, Residents Wonder: Is Another Disaster on the Horizon?

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Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the massive Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia, in which a leak at a coal industry facility led to the contamination of drinking water for nine counties and hundreds of thousands of people.

While evidence of Freedom Industries’ culpability in the crisis continues to mount, local residents and environmental advocates fear that not enough has been done to prevent a similar disaster in the future.

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The January 9, 2014 spill of 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM)—a chemical foam used to wash coal—from a Freedom Industries chemical storage tank occurred just 1.5 miles from a water treatment and distribution plant, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency. For 4 to 9 days, about 300,000 West Virginia residents were ordered not to use the public water supply. Noting that “one indicator of the contaminated water is the odor of the water,” Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin warned at the time: “Please don’t drink, don’t wash with, don’t do anything with the water.”

Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. recalls:

More than two dozen citizen action groups planned to host a series of events Friday to commemorate the spill, including education workshops, a candlelight vigil and the premiere of a documentary produced by a local filmmaker.

In a blog post for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia resident Rebecca Roth writes:

In the intervening year, evidence of Freedom Industries’ role in the spill has racked up.

  • In July, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board determined that an egregious lack of oversight by Freedom Industries, which used tanks damaged by corrosion to hold toxic materials, caused the disastrous spill.
  • Federal documents unsealed earlier this week suggest that Freedom knew about serious problems with the spill-containment dikes at the company’s Elk River facility years before the leak. As Ward Jr. reports for the Gazette: “Freedom was ‘long aware’ of ‘inadequacies’ with the containment dike around Tank 396—the one that leaked MCHM and other chemicals into the Elk on Jan. 9, 2014—and also knew the tank was old, had not been properly inspected and needed to be replaced, according to an FBI affidavit made public late Wednesday in U.S. District Court.”
  • On Thursday, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey released a report (pdf) that outlined similar findings regarding a long history of Freedom officials knowing about problems at the Elk River site, but not taking action to fix them. For example, the state investigation found that Freedom employees and outside consultants “warned of a potential catstrophic incident due to poor tank conditions and design problems for years, and in some cases offered solutions” that were never acted upon.

Prosecutors in December accused Freedom Industries Inc.—which has since filed for bankruptcy—along with its former president Gary Southern and other officers of negligence and fraud related to the spill.

On Thursday, one day before the anniversary of the incident, three former Freedom executives plead not guilty to criminal violations concerning the leak. Their trial has been set for March.

A separate ‘After Action Review’ (pdf) conducted by the Tomblin administration and released Friday says state officials struggled to communicate effectively with the public following the spill, and notes that certain types of above-ground storage tanks were “inadequately regulated.”

Later this month, the local organization People Concerned About Chemical Safety will host “Looking Forward: Summit on Chemical Safety in West Virginia,” at which participants will “learn about successful models implemented in other states and solutions that address disproportionate impacts of chemical releases on communities of color and low-income communities” and discuss ways to prevent water contamination in the future.

“Right now, politicians, industry, and activists all share the same question: Will people stay involved?” writes Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “Maintaining drinking water protections will depend on people showing up. The special interests who would dismantle our water protections know this. They know when the crisis has passed, and people go back to attending to their everyday lives—it’s easy to lose sight of what’s at stake. Out of sight, out of mind. We know from history, water protections will backslide when we’re not paying attention.”

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Experts Say Case of Purvi Patel Sets 'Cruel' Precedent for Reproductive Rights

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Though she has steadfastly claimed the loss of her pregnancy was a miscarriage, the 20-year prison sentence given to Purvi Patel by an Indiana court this week for the crime of ‘feticide’ is being slammed by legal experts and reproductive rights advocates who say the ruling is not only misguided and “cruel” given the facts of the case, but sets an “alarming” precedent for the rights of women both in Indiana and around the country.

Patel on Monday became the first woman in U.S. history to be sentenced to prison for losing her own fetus. She was found guilty of one charge of feticide and one charge of neglect of a dependent, after prosecutors claimed she delivered her fetus alive, rather than stillborn, as Patel told doctors.

“While no woman should face criminal charges for having an abortion or experiencing a pregnancy loss, the cruel length of this sentence confirms that feticide and other measures promoted by anti-abortion organizations are intended to punish not protect women,” said Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, in a statement on Monday.

Indiana passed its feticide law in 2009, a year after a pregnant woman lost her twin fetuses when she was shot in the stomach during a bank robbery. Supporters said the law would help prosecute in those cases where a third party harmed a pregnant woman’s fetus, but opponents warned that it could be misused to criminalize abortions.

“The prosecution and verdict in this case demonstrate that, despite their claims to the contrary, the real result of the anti-abortion movement—if not the intended goal—is to punish women for terminating pregnancies,” Paltrow wrote in an article for The Public Eye magazine. “Turning this law into one that can be used to punish a woman who herself has an abortion is an extraordinary expansion of the scope and intention of the state’s law.”

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Patel entered a hospital for blood loss in July 2013 and told doctors she had delivered a stillborn. But prosecutors accused her of taking drugs to induce an abortion based on a series of text messages on Patel’s phone in which she discussed buying the drugs online, although no drugs were found in her system or the fetus’s system. The state, having used a scientifically discredited “float test” to determine if there was air in the fetus’s lungs, then argued that Patel abandoned the fetus in a trash bin after it was born alive.

Katherine Jack, an Indiana attorney who defended another woman charged with homicide for losing a pregnancy, told the Guardian on Wednesday, “If [Patel’s case is] appealed and upheld, [the conviction] basically sets a precedent that anything a pregnant woman does that could be interpreted as an attempt to terminate her pregnancy could result in criminal liability.”

“This is quite traumatic and frightening,” Paltrow told the New York Times on Wednesday. “Many people would love to see an end to abortion, but a majority of even those people don’t want to see women locked up in prison.”

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Paltrow noted there are 38 states with feticide laws on the books. “Indiana’s law is somewhat different from other states, but it is not really about the language of the statute, it’s about the commitment of the prosecutors and the state to use it as a mechanism for depriving pregnant women of their human rights,” she said.

Kathleen Morrell, reproductive rights fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told the Guardian, “One of the most concerning [effects] is the chilling effect on women then becoming reluctant to seek care when they need it. Anything that restricts their desire to go and see a doctor because they think something bad could happen to them is just going to be bad for public health in general.”

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Kvyat blasts ‘unprofessional’ Albon after Eifel GP clash

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Dany Kvyat blasted Alex Albon after Sunday’s Eifel GP, calling the Red Bull driver “unprofessional” for causing a collision that undermined the AlphaTauri charger’s race.

Kvyat and Albon were fighting for a spot in the points in the early stages of the race when the Russian ran wide at the final chicane.

Kvyat rejoined the track ahead of his rival but Albon’s momentum allowed the British-Thai racer to get the measure of the AlphaTauri only to move over and clip the latter’s front wing, a contact that forced Kvyat into an unscheduled pit stop and a plunge down the order.

Addressing the incident after the race, Albon, who was handed a 5-second penalty for the mishap, admitted there had been “a bit of misjudgment on my side”.

But Kvyat was anything but forgiving towards the Red Bull driver.

“I didn’t understand his manoeuvre really,” Kvyat said. “What was he doing?

“I think it was quite unprofessional of him and poor judgement, so you wouldn’t expect that from a driver of his level, who’s been racing so long.

“But anyway, the race was pretty much ruined from then on. I had to do the whole lap very slow with the damaged front wing as a consequence.

“It went under my floor, damaged my whole floor, the brake cooling, and the race from there was really a struggle because the car was massively down on downforce, and I was just really hoping for rain or something really strange to happen.”

While Albon emerged unscathed from the tussle, the Red Bull driver ultimately retired from the race on lap 23 due to a pierced radiator.

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Taking Back the Streets and Their Stories, Thousands Reclaim MLK Day

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Thousands of people took to the streets on Monday rebuking what they say is the “sanitized” version of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and calling to restore the legacy of a man whose protests, like their own, were never “convenient.”

The nationwide actions marked the birthday of the civil rights leader in a year that saw renewed calls for racial justice in the face of persistent inequality, discrimination, and police targeting of communities of color.

Capping off almost a week of demonstrations, organizational meetings, and other pledges of resistance—all done with the intent to “Reclaim MLK”—grassroots coalition Ferguson Action issued a specific call for Monday: “Do as Martin Luther King would have done and resist the war on Black Lives with civil disobedience and direct action. Take the streets, shut it down, walk, march,  and whatever you do, take action.”

In Philadelphia, an estimated ten thousand people marched through the city center before holding a rally outside of Independence Hall. Organized by a broad-based coalition MLK D.A.R.E., the Philadelphia demonstrators are calling for an end to the racially-biased “Stop and Frisk” policing program, a $15 per hour minimum wage and the right to form unions, and a fully funded, democratically controlled local school system.

“Here in Philadelphia and from shore to shore, a black child is likely to be poorer, go to worse-funded schools, and more likely to go to jail than his white brother,” said Leslie MacFadyen, founder of the Ferguson National Response Network. “We are called to follow in King’s footsteps this year as we march in his legacy, and in the legacy of thousands of other men and women of his generation who stood up and said enough is enough.” 

In St. Louis, Missouri, which since the protests the followed the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown has become the new touchstone in the racial justice movement, remembrances of King were attended by hundreds of people, many of whom wore “Justice for Mike Brown” T-shirts and carried signs that read, “Black Lives Matter.”

Citing King’s work, which was built upon a “bold vision that was radical, principled, and uncompromising,” Ferguson Action explained in a statement ahead of the Day of Action why the true nature and genesis of the civil rights movement is so relevant today:

In Cleveland, activists gathered at the park where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by a police officer before taking part in a four-mile march. Demonstrators in numerous cities are holding either a four-mile march or a four minute die-in at the beginning of their demonstration to highlight the four minutes Rice “lay without first aid,” and the four hours Brown “lay on the ground” after being fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

“Some people think that we’re out here just causing problems,” said Cleveland organizer Courtney Drain. “MLK marched in the streets, he blocked traffic. He wasn’t convenient.”

In Chicago, protesters participating in another four-mile march through downtown stopped outside the local ABC affiliate where they chanted “shame on you!” for not covering the week’s actions. “Black Stories Matter!” one protester declared.

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Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf was awakened by roughly 50 protesters chanting outside her home. According to reports, the demonstrators illuminated tall letters that spelled “Dream,” in honor of King’s famous 1963 speech. The group also projected King quotes on the mayor’s garage door and drew chalk outlines of bodies on the street. Later in the day, activists held a die-in outside a movie theater playing the civil rights film “Selma.”

According to the Ferguson National Response Network, over 50 nationwide events with images and details shared online with live streams or under the hashtags #ReclaimMLK and #WWMLKDO.

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Other large demonstrations were held in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington D.C.

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Bloodshed and Humanitarian Crisis in Eastern Ukraine As Fighting Continues

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Numerous civilians are reported dead and wounded Friday from heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine, as aid workers warn that the situation is growing increasingly dire for non-combatants—especially children—following the disintegration of a ceasefire between Ukraine and opponents of Kiev earlier this month.

In one incident on Friday, a bomb hit a cultural center in Donetsk, killing five people waiting in line for humanitarian aid, The Independent reports. Another shelling struck a bus shelter in the same city, killing two more people.

According to The Independent, “The self-titled Donetsk People’s Republic, which has administered the city since April, blamed the government for killing civilians with indiscriminate shelling, while Kiev officials accused the separatists of firing on their own stronghold to ruin the chance of peace talks.”

However, the U.S.-backed Kiev government, and pro-government militias, were linked to previous indiscriminate bombings against heavily populated areas in and near Donetsk, killing civilians, as documented by Human Rights Watch.

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In an article published earlier this week, Emilie Rouvroy, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) coordinator for Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, described growing trauma and desperation as homes and medical institutions are destroyed in shelling and medical supplies run low.

“There are many terrible things about this conflict, but one of the hardest things is that people feel abandoned,” Rouvroy wrote. “They’re grateful that we’re here, but wherever we go they ask us: ‘Where is everybody? Where are the journalists? Where is the international community?’ People are dying here every day.”

Furthermore, UNICEF warns that “continuous fighting is having a devastating impact on the lives of children.” As of early December, 42 children have died in the conflict, and the number of displaced people has surpassed half a million, over 130,000 of them children.

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According to the global body, 5.2 million people are affected by ongoing violence, including 1.7 million children, and 1.4 people are in immediate need of aid.

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DOJ: No Federal Charges for George Zimmerman in Trayvon Martin Case

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The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday closed its investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin without filing hate crime charges against his killer, George Zimmerman.

“Though a comprehensive investigation found that the high standard for a federal hate crime prosecution cannot be met under the circumstances here, this young man’s premature death necessitates that we continue the dialogue and be unafraid of confronting the issues and tensions his passing brought to the surface,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The death of Trayvon Martin was a devastating tragedy.  It shook an entire community, drew the attention of millions across the nation, and sparked a painful but necessary dialogue throughout the country,” Holder stated.

Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in 2013. He claimed he had acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Martin on February 26, 2012, maintaining that the boy had attacked him, while others said he targeted the black teenager on purpose.

Federal investigators launched their probe into the shooting after widespread outcry over the lackluster effort by local police and prosecutors to arrest and charge Zimmerman.

To classify the shooting as a hate crime, the investigators would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman had intended to kill Martin because he was black. Acting out of negligence or recklessness would not have been enough to charge him.

Martin’s death nearly three years ago focused a national spotlight on the issues of racial profiling and gun control, particularly Florida’s controversial ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. The case drew heated, widespread debate over details of the incident, as well as civil rights protests which erupted around the country.

Many of the questions involved whether Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watchman with a history of violence, had reason to feel threatened by Martin, a black 17-year-old in a hoodie carrying nothing but Skittles and an iced tea. Martin had been in the area visiting his father and was returning home from a corner store when Zimmerman spotted him and called 911. Against the advice of the emergency operator, Zimmerman followed Martin with a gun, leading to the shooting.

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The image of Martin and his hoodie became a familiar symbol of the discrimination faced by men and women of color in the U.S.

The investigators reportedly met with Martin’s family on Tuesday to inform them of the decision before announcing it. The family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump, who also represented Michael Brown’s family, told the New York Times, “This is very painful for them; they are heartbroken. But they have renewed energy to say that we are going to fight harder to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anybody else’s child.”

In the years following Martin’s death, a spate of high-profile extrajudicial killings of unarmed men and women of color in the U.S. has continued to fuel the growing civil rights movement against racial profiling and police brutality.

During that same period of time, Zimmerman has been arrested on numerous occasions for aggravated assault and domestic violence.

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'Privacy Critical to Human Freedom': Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald Talk NSA

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During a unique conversation hosted by the New School and the New York Times on Thursday, the three people most responsible for bringing the story of mass global surveillance programs orchestrated by the U.S. National Security Agency were brought together for the first time since they first met in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald sat with the New York Times media columnist David Carr on stage while the whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden, appeared via videolink from Russia where he remains under asylum protection.

“Yes, governments possess extraordinary powers—but at the end of the day there are more of us than there are of them.” —Edward SnowdenCitizenFour, the documentary film by Poitras which tells the story of Snowden and the NSA revelations he first entrusted to her and then Greenwald has now won numerous awards and been nominated for the upcoming Acadamy Awards. Discussing both the making of the film and her investigation into the world of NSA surveillance, Poitras described how once you recognize how “pernicious and ominous” the world created by the NSA has become, “it does give you that sense of not being able to sleep” because you come to understand “how deep these powers go.”

Greenwald, who along with his colleagues at the Guardian, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Snowden documents, said during the talk, “The realm of privacy is critical to human freedom, to political activism and is something that we’ve always sought out.”

Rejecting the idea that “only people who have something to hide” should be worried about government surveillance, Greenwald continued by arguing that what those people are saying “is that ‘I’ve agreed to turn myself into such a submissive, pliant, uninteresting person that I actually don’t think the government is interested in me.’ That in itself is an extraordinary damage—that you accept that bargain or that that bargain even exists. But I think for all of us, just the knowledge that we might be watched at any given moment is very psychologically damaging,” for individual people and for society as a whole.

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On why the revelations have touched such a nerve around the world and why he tends to sleep well at night despite the situation he now finds himself in, Snowden said, “The reality is that people care about our ability to communicate and associate without being monitored and judged based on private activities. And as long as we have that, we will win regardless of the efforts against us.”

He continued, “When it comes down it—and, yes, governments possess extraordinary powers—but at the end of the day there are more of us than there are of them. And as long as we work together and as long as we value our rights, we will be able to protect them and assert them.”

In a sad twist, Mr. Carr, a book author and long-celebrated staff writer for the Times, died just hours after hosting the event, making his discussion with Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald his final public appearance and very last piece of journalistic work.

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Watch the conversation:

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US Declares Venezuela 'Extraordinary Threat to National Security'

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In the latest sign of rising tensions between the United States and Venezuela, President Barack Obama on Monday issued and signed an executive order declaring the Latin American country “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” and ordering sanctions on seven state officials.

Justifying its mandate, the executive order cites alleged “erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations and abuses in response to anti-government protests, and arbitrary arrest and detention of anti-government protestors, as well as the exacerbating presence of significant public corruption.”

Relations between the two countries “are currently in tatters,” as NPR puts it. 

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Congress passed legislation late last year authorizing penalties that would freeze the assets and ban visas for anyone accused of carrying out acts of violence or violating the human rights of those opposing Venezuela’s government. State officials said those sanctions were politically motivated.

In December, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro—who has accused the U.S. of helping plot a coup against him—denounced the sanctions and told a crowd of supporters in Caracas that recent police killings in New York and Ferguson were a sign that the U.S. was becoming an “imperialist police state.”

Just last week, the Venezuelan government gave the U.S. two weeks to cut 80 of the 100 diplomats it has in the country and imposed new travel bans. Former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney are just two of the names included on a list of U.S. citizens now ineligible for Venezuelan visas.

But these developments are part of a familiar narrative, writes Sonali Kolhatkar, host and executive producer of the daily radio show Uprising: “The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.

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Kolhatkar continues:

In fact, Kolhatkar asserts: “Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days.”

A full list of the sanctioned Venezuelan officials can be found at the Guardian.

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