Category Archives: Government Oppression

(TNS) George Floyd pleading for his life under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has become a defining moment of our time.

What began 10 months ago at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue has transformed into nothing less than an American reckoning on justice, racial equity, the proper role of law enforcement and the historical wrongs society has perpetrated on Black people.

Monday morning, that moment leads to the 18th-floor courtroom of the Hennepin County Government Center, where a jury will begin to hear a murder and manslaughter case against since-fired police officer Derek Chauvin.

The trial itself is about what happened that May evening, but it will also be a vessel into which a splintered society places its rage, anxieties and hopes. Like the trial after Rodney King's beating, like the trial after Emmett Till's murder, like the Scottsboro Boys' trial, this case will be viewed as another chapter perhaps a turning point in America's racial history.

"Everything is riding on the outcome of the trial," said Keith Mayes, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of African American and African Studies. "Yes, Chauvin is on trial, and it's about the Floyd murder. But an argument can be made it's about all the other folks that didn't receive justice, too. That's why a conviction is necessary for us to reimagine what a future can look like, because these cases continue to happen until the police are thoroughly reformed."

Still, while some look at Chauvin as emblematic of law enforcement as an institution that's misguided at best or racist at worst, others see what happened last Memorial Day as an anomaly: that Floyd's death was the rare exception instead of proof that police are the bad guys.

"I try in my head to better understand that broad-brush mentality, but I have a hard time," said Tim Leslie, the Dakota County sheriff. "If a plumber gets arrested for DUI, are all plumbers drunks? If a pilot crashes a plane, are all pilots incompetent? No. Yet Chauvin does that, he murders somebody, and all law enforcement needs to be reformed. Is that the same?"

When Mayes saw the Floyd video, the 53-year-old professor had a visceral reaction: What if that were me?

"You almost see yourself lying on the ground with the police officer's knee on your own neck," Mayes said. "You can't help but be engulfed in this kind of anger and rage and disappointment in the system that continues to allow this to happen."

Growing up in Harlem, Mayes had two distinct types of interactions with police: One with housing police, who were familiar and respectful, and the other with city police, who were feared. Decades later, even as an author with an Ivy League degree, those feelings linger.

After Floyd's death, Mayes joined protests and paid respects at 38th and Chicago. That's how he processed it: by sharing his grief with the grief of the community. He thought about George Floyd, but he also thought about Philando Castile, and Jamar Clark, and Amadou Diallo, the Guinean immigrant killed by New York police while Mayes lived in New York.

"I put this incident along this spectrum of other incidents," he said, "where police either assaulted or killed Black people. And they just get stacked up."

For police officers, the national debate about where the profession falls short has often felt jarring and unfair.

"We've disappointed some of our constituency that's the bottom line," said Leslie, the sheriff in Dakota County. "We have to take a look in the mirror and figure that out."

The past year has been an emotional whirlwind for police. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, they were painted as heroes; after Floyd died, they were painted as villains.

Leslie has tried to think deeply about the issues Floyd's death brought up. He's read books such as "How to Be an Antiracist" and "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man." He's hired a community outreach and equity coordinator, and he's focused more on deputies' mental health.

But Leslie has been in law enforcement for four decades. He knows innumerable police officers who went into the field for honorable reasons. He knows policing is an emotional profession to begin with: seeing dead bodies, dealing with people in crisis, always remaining on edge. The past year has made it more so.

"We're in a really tough spot right now," he said. "We're supposed to deal with people with mental illness, chemical addiction, all sorts of family drama, poverty, undereducated. These are not police problems. These are social problems. We're trying to be everything for everyone, and I'm not sure we're able to do that without disappointing some people sometimes."

Chauvin's knee became a symbol of Black oppression worldwide: in Australia and Japan, in France and Germany, in Kazakhstan and Indonesia.

The case "has really become a global indictment of police forces," said Brenda Stevenson, a professor of history and African American studies at UCLA. "This is now representative of what happens everywhere at least, that's what many people believe. People are really watching to see if the U.S. can get it right this time."

Thabi Myeni, a 23-year-old law student in Johannesburg, South Africa, had been to plenty of protests before last spring mostly over racial equity in tuition fees.

When Myeni saw the video of Floyd's death, she thought it would be another example of racial injustice going unnoticed. "I had no idea it would spark a global movement," she said.

What changed for her was when South Africa's ruling party decried Floyd's killing as a "heinous murder." It struck Myeni as hypocrisy. While Americans protested Floyd's death, South Africans were protesting the death of a man named Collins Khosa. Khosa lived in Johannesburg's poor Alexandria township, and he was beaten to death by soldiers who said Khosa had been drinking alcohol in public, a violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules.

After Floyd's death, Myeni organized a march to Parliament. Racial justice protests were sweeping more than 60 countries around the world, but in South Africa, they felt especially resonant. It has been nearly three decades since apartheid ended, and yet institutionalized segregation still has a long tail in South Africa. It was, she thought, no different from America's legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

"These things are transnational in nature, the global nature of Black oppression," she said. "I think of America as I think of South Africa, where the government the people of power, the people of privilege don't want to acknowledge racism still exists."

For some, Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck told a story of America's history of racism. Calls for an overhaul of policing to defund or even abolish police also functioned as calls to disrupt America's power structures.

The reason Floyd's death had more impact than other instances of police violence is simple, said James Mulvaney, a law enforcement professor who worked in New York's Division of Human Rights. Technology made Floyd's death immediate, graphic and personal.

"We're no longer viewing these things through a telescope we're witnessing them in our living rooms," Mulvaney said. "America watched George Floyd die at our house."

In the months since, police reform has become a heated topic in Minnesota and around the country.

Brendan Cox, the former Albany, N.Y., police chief who now works as Director of Policing Strategies at the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion National Support Bureau, believes the message needs to be the system cannot be fixed by police alone.

"If the community does not trust us not only as individuals but as a system, then we really can't do our job," he said.

Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City who has written extensively about police training, has been frustrated with the national conversation about policing after Floyd's death. Too much has been driven by loud voices instead of insightful ones, she said. The better discussion, she believes, should have been about centralizing America's police system. Each state having a single police force would help funding and streamline training.

Chauvin "is a classic example of someone who should not be on the job, who was poorly trained," Haberfeld said. "I didn't see all the unrest [Floyd's death] would trigger, but in a way to me I was waiting for something of that nature. I've been writing about this for 20 years. And nobody's been listening."

The cataclysmic national moment that began 10 months ago at the corner of 38th and Chicago will not come to a tidy end at the conclusion of Chauvin's trial. The three other officers at the scene are scheduled to be tried in August, and Floyd's death is certain to reverberate much longer than that.

But Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the civil rights icon, said he believes the impact of this trial cannot be overstated. An acquittal would mean our criminal justice system must be rethought, he said.

"It may set a tone for how people perceive whether justice can be achieved, specifically for Black people," King said. "Nothing brings this young man's life back. But his legacy can be that his tragic death mobilized people all over the nation and the world so that we don't go backward, but we as a world community go forward in terms of addressing racial issues."

(c)2021 the Star Tribune (Minneapolis)Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Derek Chauvin Trial and Americas Racial Justice Reckoning - Governing

Some books are actually two books. You can read them twice, or buy two copies, or take two sets of notes. The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade Americas Empire by historian Lawrence J. Haas is one of those. Both books are excellent, but one takes a LOT of patience.

Haas, a former senior White House official and award-winning journalist, is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. He is the author of six books, including the outstanding Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership that Created the Free World, a 2016 Wall Street Journal top ten non-fiction book, reviewed in the Summer 2016 issue of inFOCUS Quarterly.

The Kennedys is, first, the biography of Jack, Bobby, and Ted (Haass use of nicknames saves U.S. from multiple Senator Kennedys). Not a full biography Haas doesnt care about their love lives, personal peccadillos, or assassinations. Jack is dispatched at the end of one section and Bobby at the end of the next. Thats fine. Mary Jo Kopechne gets a single mention, which is less fine, but it is in keeping with the principle that what counts is how they were raised and how it impacted public policy. Thats public policy.

A demanding father and distant mother set the stage. Standards for academics, current events, and sports. Poor little rich boy stories about how Rose didnt visit Jack when he was in the hospital at Choate, and no suggestion that aviator and eldest brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr. might have been the preferred son.

And, suddenly, the Kennedy boys are men, where Haas has a strong preference for Ted.

Jack doesnt fare too well. War hero and Cold Warrior, Jack offloaded blame the generals were to blame for the Bay of Pigs, Bobby was sent to meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis so Jack could disavow knowledge, and he was, apparently, preparing to blame the generals again for the escalation of U.S. military activity in Vietnam. He had a close relationship with Bobby, but when Ted offered to be helpful to the President, Jack said, Go run for Congress. Bobby was the interim figure, changing his view of the Vietnam War and promoting social change in South America as the antidote to communist revolutionaries. Teds was a full-blown revolutionary mostly for others.

If at that point you thought you didnt need another Kennedy biography, even a well-written and interesting one, youd be right. However, this is where the second book starts.

The 1960s were for American foreign policy exactly what they were for social policy a test bed of new, interesting, and sometimes, ultimately unsupportable policies. They were Camelot, broadly speaking, where idealism was coin of the realm (well get to COIN later). Bob Dylan wrote the outline:

And how many years can some people existBefore theyre allowed to be free?Yes, and how many times can a man turn his headAnd pretend that he just doesnt see?

People should be free, but are not, and other people are turning away from the oppression. How can you look at oppression without doing anything about it? And what should you do about it? Especially when the song admonishes:

Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs flyBefore theyre forever banned?

And

Yes, and how many deaths will it take til he knowsThat too many people have died?

That last one is really ambiguous because he doesnt mention whether the too many deaths are the people of oppressed places or the soldiers who have stopped turning away from them and are trying to make the oppressed free. Were there too many deaths at Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima?

A conflicting mishmash of platitudes and hopes are fine for Dylan, but more is required of presidents and senators. This is why the reader needs patience there is head-banging between here and the end.

The Kennedys were not oblivious to the suffering of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain all three brothers made pilgrimages to Eastern Europe but their efforts (after Cuba) were directed more toward Soviet machinations in Asia, and later South America than toward undoing the oppression 70 million people under communist occupation.

Ted, in fact, argued that Soviet control over Eastern Europe had largely ended Today, with the exception of East Germany, Russia has no more satellites. Shortly before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.

Perhaps they thought their best strategy was to prevent communism from taking hold in new places, rather than rolling it back. The book is unclear. Cold Warrior Jack was firm on the importance of Vietnam. He was less firm about the need to couple the troops and arms which he was willing to authorize with aid and pressure for political change in Saigon. It didnt take long for him to become ambivalent and was considering withdrawal when he died.

It should be noted that when wars end for some people, they dont end for others. Haas writes, As the war (Vietnam) wound down, Ted geared up to address global challenges of a different nature The war did not wind down for the Vietnamese, which is a source of head-banging for the reader.

The 60s produced COIN counter-insurgency operations which haunts American military and foreign policy makers to this day. COIN says you dont have to conquer territory dont have to stand in a capital and accept surrender papers. You can defeat enemies by supporting a local faction to kill the communist factions while you offer money and food to those who might support the communists to induce them to support the U.S. as well. At Caltech, Bobby called for:

better training for foreign national to defend themselves against communist terrorism and guerrilla penetration, but more importantly, for progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which [communism] thrives.

The trick is knowing which foreign nationals only want American money and arms, and which share Americas goals something we havent gotten right yet. Who could have and should have been Americas partners in Iraq? In Syria, the Obama Administration armed and trained the Free Syrian Army, claiming it was secular Syrians who wanted to depose Assad. Not exactly. And American help for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was supposed to keep an alternative to Hezbollah in place to protect the interests of the Lebanese people as distinct from Hezbollah itself. But the LAF actually shares weapons and training with the terror group that bombed the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Major head-banging.

Returning to The Kennedys, Latin America was largely a test bed. Ted wrote:

Here, as in no other continent, the 1970s will determine whether we are right in asserting that fundamental and rapid change can take place without violent, bloody disruption if we assume that all radical movements are subversive; if we curtail aid to governments because they promise swift change; if we curtail aid to governments because they promise swift change if we deprive them of our markets and our resources, we ourselves may force them to look elsewhere.

Consider, for a moment, what were asking of them trading local loyalties for economic change; social change; modern education; and electoral politics that presume multiple, fair elections so that if you lose this time, you can win next time; a loyal opposition; and the understanding the coalition building helps. But what if governments are unable to do all of those things? What if they dont want to? There was enormous disillusionment with the government of South Vietnam for both Jack and Bobby rather like the disillusionment that came with Egypt after the so-called Arab Spring, or with Iraq after the toppling of Saddam, or the 2011 toppling of Moammar Qaddafi, or with a variety of Afghan governments after the ouster of the Taliban.

We seriously have to ask, What if they really cant do it, and what we push them into is NOT a version of ourselves, but a rift that allows communists, or jihadists, or anarchists or other despots to gain power?

More head-banging here. Because for all of the good intentions of the Kennedys, and all of the hard work including championing civil rights in the United States there are limits to what American idealism can do. There were limits to what the Kennedys could do.

Contrary to Teds hope, fundamental and rapid change leads to violent, bloody disruption more often than not. Interestingly, he opposed Reagans support of the Nicaraguan Contras and was thrilled when Congress cut off their funding, saying, This is a historic day, the day the tide was turned against the secret war in Nicaragua.

Actually, the Contras held on long enough to force a democratic election in 1990. It was monitored by former President Jimmy Carter and won by Violeta Chamorro, a conservative and democratically inclined newspaper publisher, over the communist Sandinistas. Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, ran and lost in democratic elections until he forced changes in electoral law that brought him to power in 2006 with less than 38 percent of the vote. Ortega never looked back.

Ted opposed Reagans hard line on the Soviet Union and opposed both the Nixon era ABM systems and Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative. But it was Reagans determination to build arms that the Soviets were compelled to acknowledge they could not match, in tandem with his support of the people of Central Europe that allowed for the peaceful uprising and political change the Kennedys hoped for but couldnt produce. Jacks Ich Bin Ein Berliner remark, aside from sometimes being translated as I am a jelly donut, didnt have the clout that Reagans, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall had decades later.

Left-wing pacifist head-banging here.

Countries that do not threaten U.S. directly but impose restrictions on the civil rights and human rights of its citizens should be treated the way we treated the Soviet Union as an abhorrent system of governance. There was no assumption that the U.S. could invade, occupy, or arm and train guerrillas, to make over the USSR in our image. And no likelihood that will do it to save the Uyghurs in China. Maybe because they are really big, with really big armies. The Kennedys generally mucked around in smaller Asian countries and in Latin America where there would be no physical backlash against us.

On the other hand, our Western heritage NOT of electoral politics necessarily but free speech, rule of law, free market economics, independent judiciaries, property rights and tolerance is precisely responsive to the conditions faced by millions of people around the globe today. It is appalling and more than a little bit condescending that where the Kennedy brothers were openly patriotic and admiring of the American political system and Western Civilization, todays political leaders are running the other way.

Final head-banging here.

Dont read this.

Do, however, buy the book it is engaging and, if read with the right mind-set and two aspirin, will force you to assess the relationship among American politics, money, and power from the 60s to the current day. The past has something to teach U.S. and Lawrence Haas is a really good teacher.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor, inFOCUS Quarterly.

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I Want to Improve the Human Condition Jewish Policy Center - Jewish Policy Center

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old NSA whistleblower who leaked a byzantine collection of classified documents, insists that the US government is building an architecture of oppression. While it has not yet become a reality, the capabilities of the security state are astounding, as Snowden notes.

Similar rhetoric has been recently used by Brian Jenkins, a man at the other end of the spectrum. A counter-terrorism expert and high-level consultant, Jenkins helped create the first database of international terrorists in 1971. In an interview with Slate, Jenkins remarked: "What we have put in place is the foundation for a very oppressive state."

Both of these characterizations of the sprawling national security apparatus acknowledge that the tools are in place, as Jenkins puts it, but the oppressive state is not yet fully formed. However, the two men indicate that a capricious turnkey response to a crisis, or the contrasting policies of a newly elected leader, for example, could easily undermine basic democratic freedoms and create a tyrannical regime.

Here are five ways that an "architecture of oppression" has already grown publicly and been normalized since September 11, 2001.

1. The Patriot Act

The big daddy of reactionary power grabs, the Patriot Act was put before Congress on a rare fast-track by Attorney General John Ashcroft just nine days after September 11. It was passed in a whirlwind of jingoistic fervor with only two hearings in the House and none by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the only senator who voted against it.

The Patriot Act made a variety of significant changes to law. It defined or redefined terrorism, domestic terrorism, cyberterrorism, and established or modified existing laws that indict those crimes. The powers of the US Attorney General and the Secret Service were expanded to eliminate barriers to investigating terrorism. Surveillance abilities were enhanced including weakening restrictions on wiretapping and other stored communications like voicemail. The power of the Treasury Department to regulate financial transactions and importantly foreign corporate or personal transactions was also broadened in an effort to crack down on financing terrorism.

It is the jewel in the crown of state repression, and has been used to criminalize an entire generation of political dissidents, whether they be environmental activists who were rebranded eco-terrorists, hacktivists who became cyberterrorists, or international solidarity activists who were accused of material support for terrorism.

2011 saw numerous reports that the government had used the Patriot Act in 1,618 drug cases, and only 15 terrorism cases. It has long been known as the Kitchen Sink approach to National Security but the governments abuse of the intentions of these provisions is astounding.

The Patriot Act is central to understanding how the NSA is conducting its dragnet surveillance. Critics have pointed out that PRISM, one of the secret programs exposed in Snowdens leaks, allows the US government to collect and store metadata directly from the servers of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. It is clear that communications with individuals outside of the US are subject to this collection process, along with more conventional data gathering, like the filtering and collecting of data running across fiber-optic cables. However, the extent to which this affects the Internet communication of all US citizens is unclear.

The program has been enabled by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA. A legal framework for surveillance, FISA was inspired by the findings of the Church Committee in order to give Congressional and Judicial oversight to domestic surveillance programs. It was a reform brought about after the nefarious disclosure that President Nixon had been spying on political organizations and activists in violation of the 4th Amendments requirement of probable cause. But in 2001 FISA was expanded by the Patriot Act under the Bush administration and renewed again by the Obama administration in December 2012 with bipartisan support.

A contentious clause and one at the heart of the NSA surveillance scandal, Section 215 of the Patriot Act modifies FISA to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies unfettered access to business records which the Patriot Act defines as any tangible thing. This generous wording leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It is the governments legal justification for collecting cell phone records from Verizon and, given the pliability of the phrase, may be applicable to the PRISM program as well.

The Patriot Act also lowers the threshold for the approval of surveillance requests by a secret court created by FISA. More than 20,000 applications for data have come before the court since 2001, and only 11 have been denied. It appear that this judicial oversight amounts to little more than a formality and does not serve as a serious check on the power of law enforcement.

2. Killing US Citizens and the Use of Drones

There is no legal framework for the targeted assassination of US citizens without due process. In an address last month, Obama acknowledged for the first time what the world has known to be true thanks to courageous reporting: that in the span of one month, three American citizens were killed by drone strikes in Yemen in 2011. One of those killed, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was just 16 years old.

In a court filing earlier this month, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Paul E. Werner, argued that despite not being approved by the judge, the killings were legal because the President and the Attorney General said they were legal. The Attorney Generals statement last month that the use of remotely piloted aircraft and the targeting of Anwar Al-Aulaqi were subject to 'exceptionally rigorous interagency legal review' and determined to be lawful -- along with the Presidents statement that those actions were legal -- only support the conclusion that those actions were lawful, and certainly were not clearly established to be unconstitutional in 2011.

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights recently issued a joint response to the governments admission to the killings. The government continues to insist that the courts have no role in evaluating the legality of its actions. But the executive branch cannot simply declare the killings lawful and attempt to close the book on that basis. A federal judge, not executive officials examining their own conduct, must determine the constitutionality of the government's actions.

It appears that President Obama and Attorney General Holder have no intention of backing down from the precedent set by the killing of US citizens. President Obama has said that drone strikes responsible for killing civilians will haunt us as long we live, but nevertheless indicated that the program would go on. According to the New America Foundation, since the drone program began in 2004, more than 550 civilians have been killed.

3. Cracking Down on Activists

Activism used to be the way people voiced their grievances to elected officials and the powerful, but recent government crackdowns on peaceful protest have demonstrated that in this country, now more than ever, dissent is being criminalized.

Take the case of an 82-year-old nun and two peace activists in Tennessee. In June 2012, early in the morning, the three Catholic protesters gained access to a nuclear power plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They cut through several layers of fencing, unopposed by security personnel. Once inside the fence, they unfurled banners, spray painted anti-nuclear slogans and prayed together. They were soon arrested, and their civil disobedience was complete. Fast-forward to a year later. The seemingly innocuous protest has been deemed by Federal Prosecutors an act of sabotage against the US government. The three were convicted of a number of weighty felonies and currently await their sentencing in September.

In Oregon, frustrated lawmakers have resorted to calling some peaceful environmental activists terrorists. Thanks to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2004, this is nothing new. But what is new is trying to slander a peaceful civil disobedience tactic -- tree-sitting -- with the language of terrorism. Will Potter explains: On April 29, two bills passed the Oregon House that would hit tree sitters and non-violent protesters with felonies and mandatory minimum sentences. A representative in the Oregon House, Wayne Krieger, has led the charge against environmental terrorists and says "there's been a 30-year reign of terror by these people having no respect for the rights of others."

Lets not forget about the widespread surveillance of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists that has recently come to light. Documents released by the FBI in December 2012 reveal that the the law enforcement agency investigated OWS as domestic terrorists. Furthermore, a report released in May 2012 by the Center for Media and Democracy sifted through thousands of pages of redacted government documents and made a number of startling findings. Fusion centers funded by the Department of Homeland Security, which pool intelligence information between federal and state law enforcement, dedicated vast resources, innumerable hours, and taxpayer funds to monitor OWS. The CMD report also details the FBIs use of a secret program called Operation Tripwire which was initially developed to catch domestic terrorists using informants from the private security sector.

Then there is Jeremy Hammond. The hacktivist pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the hack of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, in December 2011. Thousands of private emails were released through WikiLeaks, revealing the extent of the involvement of private security firms in matters of US national security and counterterrorism. Hammond took responsibility for this and some eight other hacks of defense contractors/law enforcement websites. He said he was also relieved, after being in jail for more than a year without being convicted of a crime, to say that he worked with Anonymous.

Hammond, like Snowden, was troubled by the undemocratic nature of the intelligence world, specifically the way the US government embraces outsourcing to private security firms, which as early as 2006 were said to do 70% of US intelligence work. These for-profit corporations have no public or government accountability for their actions, and are often involved in illegal behavior, which the Stratfor hack proved.

In a statement released after his plea, Hammond, like Snowden, invoked his moral imperative to act: I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.

4. Prosecuting Whistleblowers

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other previous administration combined. Since 2009, Obamas Department of Justice has used the Espionage Act, an archaic law drafted during World War I, to prosecute six whistleblowers: Thomas Drake, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, John Kiriakou, Shamai K. Leibowitz, Jeffrey Sterling and Pfc. Bradley Manning.

The Espionage Act itself is an enigma. It was written by Woodrow Wilsons administration for the purposes of combating a hostile climate both at home and abroad. By most accounts, it merely reiterated many of the laws against espionage that were already on the books. But a more explicit clue to its purpose comes from then Attorney General Thomas Gregory who called the act and the 1918 Sedition Act amendment warfare by propaganda.

"While we are fighting to establish the democracy of the world, we ought not to do the thing that will establish autocracy in America." These words could easily describe our present moment, but they were uttered by Illinois representative Martin Madden at the time of the Espionage Acts passing.

The most egregious prosecution of a whistleblower has been the trial of Bradley Manning. Manning, who leaked thousands of documents to WikiLeaks during the Iraq war, has pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, which could land him in prison for more than two decades. However, the government is pressing on, prosecuting him for, among other things, espionage and aiding the enemy, a charge which insists that the information Manning leaked had the expressed intent of aiding Al Qaeda operatives.

Aside from Mannings case, the other prosecutions under the Obama administration reflect a serious desire for the administration to maintain secrecy. In fact, four of the prosecutions are for leaking information--in the case of Thomas Drake declassified information--to journalists for stories on domestic, not international, affairs.

But none of this has deterred the most recent round of leaks by Edward Snowden. In fact, those prosecutions might have inspired the leaks.

In an interview with the Guardian, Snowden was asked if the treatment of other whistleblowers had influenced his decisions and actions to come forward. He responded: [NSA whistleblower William] Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers.

5. Prosecuting and Spying on Journalists

Therevelation that the US government obtained phone records of Associated Press (AP) reporters and editors in a probe that took place over a two-month period came as a shock to many. But in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal, it is now unclear whether this behavior is extraordinary. It fits in with what the NSA leak exposed; it was indicative of the nonchalance of the US government with regard to dragnet surveillance of US citizens, whether they are press or not.

Less than a month ago, the APs president sent a letter to Attorney General Holder expressing his outrage and rebuking the Department of Justice: We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with APs constitutional rights to gather and report the news. While we evaluate our options we urgently request that you immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records that the Department subpoenaed and destroy all copies. A variety of different organizations and periodicals decried the action, from the ACLU to the New York Times. The consensus seemed to be that it was an unacceptable form of intimidation, and everyone was quite shocked.

Revelations about Fox News journalist James Rosen followed the AP story. Rosen was accused of being an aider and abettor and/or a co-conspirator by an FBI agent in connection with a story that he published in 2009, allegedly based on information from a leak. The government obtained a search warrant to access Rosens emails in order to track down the source of the leak. Attorney General Holder later indicated that there would be no prosecution of Rosen. Instead, the Justice Department would focus on those responsible for leaking information, not those disseminating it.

Yet immediately after Glenn Greenwald broke the story of the NSA leaks, the drums in Washington began beating again, seeking his prosecution. Peter King (R.- N.Y.) led the charge, appearing on Fox News and claiming that Greenwald was holding CIA information that he would disclose publicly. Greenwald has denied this allegation, and pointed to Kings hypocritical involvement with the IRA, long considered a terrorist organization by the US government. On Twitter, Greenwald wrote: Only In America can a renowned and devoted terrorism supporter like Peter King be the arbiter of national security and treason.

The first periodical to cast light on his possible prosecution was the New York Times, which published a profile on Greenwald on June 6. The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers, the Times reported, referring to Greenwalds pieces. Later on, the authors write: He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that he should be worried, but he had decided that what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.

Despite Attorney General Holders comments, the matter of prosecuting journalists publishing leaked material seems anything but resolved. Independent journalist John Knefel, who is currently reporting from Guantanamo Bay, told AlterNet: The harder it is for journalists to do their job, the easier it is for the government to operate in secrecy.

***

There is a deeply disturbing pattern of escalating infringements on civil liberties that has been normalized, beginning with the Patriot Act and extending to drone warfare, activism, and the surveillance and prosecution of members of the press.

Many politicians would have you believe that this is a fair tradeoff for liberty. But Americans are beginning to see the architecture of oppression swelling around them.

This is the moment when it looks like the United States will finally have a conversation about what the post-9/11 world should look like and re-problematize some of the more troubling conclusions weve reached in the past decade. This line of questioning should extend far beyond the bounds of the national security apparatus, and tackle fundamental issues. For example, are we, as a society, prepared to condemn an 82-year-old nun as a serious national security threat and imprison her and her co-defendants for the rest of their lives?

This is a serious question which gets to the heart of some national security dilemmas: political culpability. The protest was harmless, yet some unnamed nuclear experts told the New York Times on August 10, 2012 that it represented the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex. So the conviction of the three protesters in Tennessee is more complicated. It created a huge national security embarrassment when the banner-wielding hymn-singing troupe waltzed into the nuclear facility and made it clear that terrorists could have done the same. The US government has chosen to criminalize the agency of dissidents in the decade following 9/11 and create, by way of simile, the parallel between dissent and acts of terror. The protesters are not to blame for the scandal; they were the ones who revealed it to the public.

When asked by Glenn Greenwald about the worst thing that could happen after the leaks came out, Snowden replied: The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They'll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society. But they won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests."

Fortunately, it appears that the conversation has gone viral, and both the US and the world are starting to catch on.

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5 Ways the U.S. Government Has Built 'An Architecture of ...

District 11 Classified InterviewCapitol's Control Over Districts Through The Hunger GamesWhat is The Hunger Games?

Throughout the book, the readers see the Capitol continuing its psychological warfare with the twelve districts to enforce its laws, regulations and maintain the elite status of the Capitol and its ruling class (i.e. President Snow). The most noticeable propaganda include the Hunger Games. The game was introduced after the Rebellion of the thirteen districts against the Capitol around what used to be North America. As a result, District Thirteen was annihilated, it "still smoulders from toxic bombs", and the twelve surviving districts have to choose one male and one female tribute annually to contend in the games and bring about food and honour to their district.

The Hunger Games serve to control the defeated districts largely in three ways.

It demonstrates the Capitol's schadenfreude characteristics, brutality and willingness to use force/violence to control a group. The Capitol forces tributes to kill each other in ancient gladiatorial manner. The tributes are to fight one another to survive in a large arena and bring glory to their districts. They must kill or be killed. There is no sympathy in the game, but only violence that the population of the Capitol demand. The thought of dieing a bloody death while the "crowd is urging on the killer" is sickening. This disturbing nature of the game is made worse by the fact that all children are eligible for the game "until they reach eighteen". Taking the children, only to lead them to their destruction, destroys the hopes and the futures of the families and the communities of those involved. This is "Capitol's way of reminding" people feel powerless and at their mercy. Simply put, it is Capitols way of saying 'We could have wipe you out and we still can, so you better keep in line'.

It provokes hatred and distrust between districts and its members. The Hunger Games is a highly effective tool to prevent harmony and constructive teamwork. The game itself targets the most vulnerable between and within the districts. Comparatively wealthier industrious districts such as 1, 2, and 4 which are the "Capitol's lapdogs" have "Career Tributes" who are well-fed and better trained solely for the games. These tributes end up winning the game in most of the occasions. The winning district receives rewards in food and look down on the poorer districts whose tributes die bloody deaths. This helps to keep the wealthier districts in line as their schadenfreude is satisfied. Wealthier districts are the subject of hatred among the poorer districts which hardly manage to keep its population fed and starvation is common. For example, District 12, the poorest of all, has only had two victors in the history of the seventy four years of the game.

Hierarchy exists between members of a district as well. People who are poor and cannot afford to put food on the table signs up their child for what is called "Tesserae" who receive a few months worth of gain. However, in return, the child is entered into the draw for the Hunger Games tributes once more. This is in contrast to Madge, the daughter of Mayor Undersee of District 12, who never have to sign up for a tesserae and therefore minimize the chance of being selected for the feared Hunger Games. The mayor has a "passion for strawberries," when the majority of the population of his district are either starving or being, "blown to bits in mining accidents," such as was the case with Katniss Everdeen, who makes living from selling strawberries to the mayor. This unequal distribution of wealth and social statues serves to scatter the individuals of many districts apart from each other. It is an effective measure for Capitol to prevent a future rebellion as the level of hatred that exists between the members of the community that prevents cooperation thus negating any coordinated attacks on the Capitol.

The distrust and division created by the games also takes place on individual levels. Take for instance the people who take "bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn". Not only does these individual members make a mockery and entertainment out of people's misery, they are further dividing the community between those who are affected by the games and those who are not.

What ultimately is created from the Hunger Games is a hierarchy where most of the people in Panem have someone to make fun of or look down on. Apart from District 12, the rest of the people of Panem have other districts to laugh at. Relatively wealthy "lapdog" districts 1,2 and 4 have District 12 which is the "least prestigious, poorest, most ridiculed district in the country". This is crucial when a smaller population has to control a significantly larger population as it prevents people from challenging the ruling class. Why create rebellions and problems when they are already happy with what they have? The Hunger Games, which seem just a violent and sadistic event, that is a crucial tool in aiding the Government, the Capitol, to maintain firm unchallenged control over a 12 districts.

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The Hunger Games - Government Control and Oppression ...

I want to spend some time talking about . . . a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class Americas basic bargain that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead. I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: making sure our economy works for every working American. Thats why I ran for president. It was the center of last years campaign. It drives everything I do in this office.

President Barack Obama, 12/04/13

Inour last essayin this series on contemporary applications of The Federalist Papers, we argued that the case for limited government is made more difficult in our age because many American leaders, in following William Jamess lead, have been successful in engaging in the moral equivalent of war against the Founders regime. President Obama has been consistently militant in pursuing a progressive domestic agenda during his presidency.

Yet too many within the beltway conservatariat have insisted that the best way to counter militant progressivism is by offering a governing agenda that combines the worst impulses of the Bush Administration: a less militant progressivism at home (prescription drug benefits and No Child Left Behind, not Obamacare and Common Core) with a more militant progressivism abroad (democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan, not rooting for democracy in Syria or Ukraine).

To these folks, such a governing agenda represents a workable conservative alternative because it holds out hope to the American people that progress is just one comparatively sober candidate, one less intrusive policy, one more serious intervention, or one utopian adjustment with teeth away. This so-fancied publicly-acceptable variant of American conservatism is considered astute because it promises a more realistic means to the publics assumed-to-be progressive ends.

And on a personal level, this brand of conservatism is attractive to Progressive alter-egos in that it allows them to remain on the Right side of history and the right side of the political spectrum at the same time. This dual membership has its privileges, since the growth of the post-WWII military-social-industrial-finance-academic complex promises that the surest way to pay off a thirty-year mortgage in a DC-area zip code is to work in a sector of the economy more crony than strictly public or private.

The problem more recently, for those who know better, is that its been difficult if not impossible to achieve a conservative-libertarian consensus in this political environment. But thats changing as the growth of an oppressive state, and the growth of collateral political inequality between insiders and outsiders and rulers and ruled, has made it easier to define whats wrong with American politics. Consider three excellent speeches from this past weeks CPAC convention that give us reason to hope that limited government advocates can reclaim the moral high ground of American politics.

Perhaps the fundamental disputes between todays progressives and their conservative/libertarian critics, then, is the locus of danger to the freedom and prosperity of the American people. In President Obamas analysis, the governments job is to intervene to correct the oppression and inequality imposed by market-based power players, who use their outsized share of economic means to artificially increase the ratio between their own wealth and that of lower and middle class Americans.

Conservatives and libertarians, as demonstrated above, offer two lines of rebuttal. First, they see the results of free exchange as presumptively just and therefore do not assume that differences in wealth (even great differences) are necessarily the consequence of private oppression. Second, they recognize that the power of even the most wealthy individual or corporation is as nothing compared to the power of the government equipped to redistribute that wealth.

When Alexander Hamilton addressed the federal governments power of taxation in Federalist 35, he did so with just such a concern in mind. Opponents of the Constitution were arguing that the national governments taxing power should be restricted to only a few specified objects, like tariffs on trade. Hamilton countered by arguing that such restrictions would, ironically, increase the governments power to bring about the twin evils of oppression and unmerited inequality.

A narrowly-defined taxing power would require the government to tax a few objects heavily, turning commerce out of its natural channel and creating artificial winners and losers: winnersall those whose goods were untaxable; losersall those whose werent.

But the trouble wouldnt end there. Within the class of losers, there would be a factious competition to raise the tax rate, say, on tea and lower it on tobacco. All might have to bear a burden, but not equally so, making politics a scramble to unload some of my burden onto you. In such a case, it would be obvious to all that the government had the power to make or break the fortunes of many, and the most conscientious businessman would have no choice but to make sure his lobbyist was as well-connected and persuasive as the next.

As is so often the case in The Federalist, Hamiltons solution to this problema general federal power to taxis not really a solution. That is to say, it provides no guarantee, in this case, that the government wont use the taxing power to oppress or create artificial inequalities. All it does (and all that can be done) is make it possible for the government to avoid these twin evils and tax in the least burdensome wayif it has the will.

Generating such a will, of course, is our challenge today. To the always-present problem of human selfishness, Progressivism adds an attractive moral justification for redistributive taxation, whether through unequal income tax rates or special tax benefits for those engaged in socially-correct enterprises (like building electric cars).

What we need is a set of leaders who dont want to beat Progressives at their own gameto promise better rewards to more powerful (numerous) friends and more satisfying punishments to more isolated enemies. Let them be satisfied with lifting burdens, not reassigning them.

Theyll also need to argue in the spirit of Hamilton, demonstrating that our moral duty and our personal interest are one. We would be glad if large numbers of Americans were to decide suddenly that they want no part in factious redistributive politics for the simple reason its wrong, but it would be wise for us to take, as Madison often put it, auxiliary precautions.

In President Obamas second term, Americans have begun to see, in very obvious, obnoxious, and personal ways, the true bigness of big government. The three horsemen of last years political apocalypse the IRS, the NSA, and the HHShave discredited government as the slayer of (bossy?) bullies and suggested it might be the biggest bully on the block.

These discrete experiences offer an opening for the type of argument leaders like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry made at CPAC. Their successand oursin rolling back government oppression will depend on our ability to show that these are no exceptions to the rule, but rather the natural consequence of pursuing artificial equality, putting the livelihood and independence of all Americans at risk.

David Corbin is a Professor of Politics and Matthew Parks an Assistant Professor of Politics at The Kings College, New York City. They are co-authors of Keeping Our Republic: Principles for a Political Reformation (2011). You can follow their work onTwitterorFacebook.

David Corbin is a Professor of Politics and the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Providence Christian College in Pasadena, California. Matthew Parks is an Associate Professor of Politics at The Kings College in New York City. Together, they host the podcast,"DIA-Today: Democracy in America Today."

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The Twin Evils Of Government Oppression And Inequality

This week the House Education and House College and Workforce Development Committees is moving to vote three mandatory training bills,SB 5044, SB 5227, SB 5228, out of committee, another step in the process of becoming adopted as state law. The bills are,

SB 5044 would require Critical Race Training for K-12 school staff;

SB 5227 would require Critical Race Training for staff in our public colleges anduniversities;

SB 5228 would require Critical Race Training for students in public medical schools, and establish quotas for admission to medical school based on race.

At a public hearing, lawmakers received the following analysis about these bills.

The purpose of Critical Race Training is to divide people into oppressors and victims, based on their race, gender, sexuality and religion. The curriculum lists the institutions in society allegedly responsible for creating oppression: families, religions, schools, the economy and government.

The bills provide a lesson plan that all white heterosexual men are oppressors and certain minority groups are oppressed. In particular Critical Race Training has attacked Jews as privileged, and part of this system of alleged oppression, and by belittling their experience as victims of the Holocaust.

People required to attend Race Critical Training are required to publicly profess their race identities, and then be labelled as either oppressors or oppressed. No account is taken of people of mixed ethnicity, or those who dont want to be labeled based on government policy.

Critical Race Training includes messages that are hostile to capitalism, claiming capitalism is part of this system of oppression. Families and religion are also condemned. Race trainers tell students they must undo and unlearn what they were taught by institutions of oppression.

Much of the curriculum required by Critical Race Training is untrue, false and destructive. Critical Race Training does not eliminate racism. It does, however, tend to divide society, create suspicion among students and co-workers, lower educator morale, create threats and hostility in the workplace, and make the problem of racism worse.

What is most problematic, though, is that Critical Race Training violates core civil rights protections and undermines friendship and trust that make a caring and tolerant society possible.

Analysis and the experience of other states shows that SB 5044, SB 5227 and SB 5228 would not reduce racial tensions or calm peoples fear of threats, bullying or being cancelled. Instead, the bills would impose a harmful ideology on students that would violate core civil rights protections against hate, inequality and workplace discrimination.

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Lawmakers seek to pass mandatory training bills to divide Washingtonians based on race and sexuality, and then label them as oppressors and victims -...

How can Israelis close their eyes to the violent abuses inflicted by Israels military against the Palestinians? They live in an artificial world of denial bolstered by a mastery of communications and the dysfunctionality of Palestinian activists in which abuses against Palestinians such as racism, land theft, physical violence and killings take place every day. These actions do not even provoke a whimper from the majority of Israels Jews.They have come to accept the fact that their country is one built on the oppression of others, while going to great lengths to separate its viciousness from that which fueled the Holocaust, which brought many of them into the initially welcoming arms of Palestines Christians and Muslims.They may argue that not all Jews in Israel have turned their backs on righteousness. But that was also the response of populations in Germany and in Poland during the Second World War. Not everyone hated Jews, but very few spoke out until it was too late.That is where Israelis are headed: Toward a fate in which one day they will have to answer for the atrocities that have taken place against Palestinians. The newly announced investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was itself founded on principles defined by the postwar trials of the Nazis, is just the beginning.Every day, Palestinian lands are being confiscated for the sole purpose of expanding the existing and building new Jewish-only settlements. The best farmlands are taken from Palestinians with impunity.Reports frequently make it through the Israeli government-throttled mainstream news media about Palestinians who are attacked, brutalized and killed by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. And yet Israeli Jews still manage to go about their business in places like West Jerusalem, where they openly refer to the big houses built using Jerusalem stone as Arab homes.There is absolutely no shame, especially as Israeli Jews lead the campaign to recover land and property stolen from them during the Holocaust. As they do so, land and property is being stolen from the Palestinians in their name. And their major institutions dont seem to care.For Palestinians, March is a special month, during which they commemorate Land Day. This commemoration reflects on when March 30, 1976 the Israeli government passed a law allowing the expropriation of lands from non-Jews. Protests by Palestinian citizens of Israel raged from Nazareth to the Negev. It was the first time that Israels non-Jewish population had stood up to the racism on which Israel is based.BTselem, an organization of Israelis of all backgrounds who embrace human rights, this month released a scathing report on how extensive the theft of land is. It argues: The fact that the West Bank has not been formally annexed does not stop Israel from treating it as if it were its own territory, particularly when it comes to the massive resources Israel invests in developing settlements and establishing infrastructure to serve their residents.

Tel Aviv may be able to change the face of the West Bank, but it cannot erase the truth.

Ray Hanania

The report adds: This policy has enabled the establishment of more than 280 settlements and outposts now populated by more than 440,000 Israeli citizens (excluding East Jerusalem). Thanks to this policy, more than 2 million dunams of Palestinian land have been stolen, by official and unofficial means. The West Bank is crisscrossed with roads linking the settlements to one another and to Israels sovereign territory, west of the Green Line; and the area is dotted with Israeli industrial zones. These industrial areas produce stolen products that are then disguised and sold to markets around the world a process that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement seeks to expose.Israel may be able to change the face of the West Bank, just as it has meticulously erased much of the Arab identity from areas throughout Israel, but it cannot erase the truth, which will always stand as a testament to its cruelty.Israelis are accountable for the horrors that their government inflicts on the Christians and Muslims in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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Oppression and land theft bring shame to Israel - Arab News

Zumrat Dawut, a former internment camp detainee who has witnessed first-hand the Chinese governments oppression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), has been a vital source of testimony and other evidence for international governments and media. She has repeatedly testified and reported on the tragedies of the internment camp system, where up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been detained since early 2017.

As more evidence has emerged about Chinas policies in the XUAR, Beijing has faced increasing international scrutiny, including from the U.S. government, which in January designated them part of an orchestrated genocide. The parliaments of Canada and The Netherlands last month passed resolutions using similar language. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been orchestrating a propaganda blitz in a bid to refute the claims.

Dawut, who now lives in Virginia with her family, spends much of her spare time searching for video and other evidence about the Uyghur situation on Chinese social mediaoften posted by state media outlets. She then uploads videos to other social media platforms that circulate more widely outside of China, particularly Facebook, where the videos are shared and viewed many times. RFAs Uyghur Service spoke with Dawut about the videos she has found and her motivation in sharing them with the world.

Dawut: I have been benefiting greatly from apps and programs developed by the Chinese government, who believes in what theyre doing. Using these apps, Im collecting videos day and night, looking for proof for the world. Ive been collecting these videos because I think we have to tell the world about whats going on, always with proof for all of our assertions.

People living outside the Uyghur Region cant fully understand whats going on, but we Uyghurs, all of us Uyghurs living abroad, we know. Hashar (corvee labor) has been around since we were all small. In the past, it was the cadres from village brigades and townships who would take people out into the fields to do hashar, to dig streams and till the fields. But if you watch the videos that are currently coming out, police are appearing in these settings. If you look at the videos, you can even see that the police are bringing them to and from the worksites by bus, systematically ... Looking at this, its not even possible to rule out the possibility that the laborers are people who have been brought from camps. If we tell non-Uyghurs about this, we cant fully explain it to them. Were Uyghurall Uyghurs know about this, about hashar. We cant fully explain it in words to non-Uyghurs, that they force Uyghurs to work, that they make us work for free. We cant fully express this, and so Im collecting these videos day and night in an attempt to show the world. Im sharing them on Facebook and other channels.

All of the videos have a value we can take advantage of. Like the one where a girl at school asked if her teachers were going to punish her if she spoke Uyghur. I made that the subject of my search and found it myself. I did the work and then I shared it. I knew I should put something out about it, and that I could not stop my work. I didnt sleep the next night. I stayed up and searched for more videos similar to that one, and I found a video of a child in Kashgar saying that their school doesnt allow them to speak Uyghur, that they have to speak Uyghur in secret since theyre not allowed otherwise. Each of my own children would be able to give interviews about the way children arent allowed to speak Uyghur in school right now, the way theyre punished if they do.

The shares have been very good. [Theyve] been shared a lot. The view count is really high. Many journalists have written news based on information they found on my Facebook wall. Theyve asked me questions about where and how I found the videos, and theyve written some good news articles based on them.

Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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Im Collecting These Videos Day And Night in an Attempt to Show The World: Former Camp Detainee - Radio Free Asia

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The message that small businesses can operate safely during the COVID-19 pandemic conflicted with the crowded scene at a rally to end government restrictions Saturday on Ouellette Avenue.

Many in a crowd of more than 100 were not wearing masks as they stood shoulder to shoulder with one another on the one-year anniversary of the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Windsor-Essex.

They waved signs of protest at the traffic that passed by the closed Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.

Music blared from two large speakers set up on the lawn of Windsor Regional Hospital. Kids raced around chasing each other while adults exchanged hugs and handshakes.

A man introduced only as Pastor Thomas gave a fire-and-brimstone sermon about government oppression and encouraged those in attendance to join Gods army, join the fight for truth. Rise up Canada, rise up Windsor.

Fitting for a rally staged in the shadow of a hospital, one maskless protester wore a lab coat and a stethoscope as he passed out a newspaper and later displayed a sign where the C in Canada was depicted much like a Russian hammer and sickle emblem.

Currie Soulliere, the leader of a group known as Questioning Covid Windsor-Essex, was also there with a sign reading Workers and customers have a right to decline testing, masking, injecting.

Kim Spirou, the owner of a hair salon on Ottawa Street, was one of the organizers of Saturdays rally as part of a collection of small business owners known as Open Ontario.

Spirou acknowledged the mingling of Soulliere and her group was not a good look.

Were not anti maskers, Spirou said. Were all about businesses, we dont want to be mixed up with that. We dont believe in what they espouse. We will continue to take every precaution possible to keep our customers safe.

Spirou said Soulliere reached out to her prior to the rally and Spirou asked her and her followers not to attend.

Spirou said government health data does not support the capacity limits placed on businesses like hers as well as gyms and restaurants.

She said not one case of COVID locally has been traced back to a hair salon. She said bars and restaurants account for less than 1.8 per cent of cases while gyms and fitness facilities account for 0.04 per cent of cases.

We want to call attention to the fact that the restrictions arent evidence based, she said. They tell us to trust the science, trust the data. Well, why arent they trusting it for our small businesses? We can open fully and safely.

Mezzo Ristorante owner Filip Rocca also took the microphone Saturday.

This is about our freedoms, he said. Lift the restrictions on small business so we can operate safely.

Spirou, who once worked in hospital administration, told the crowd our hospitals are not overwhelmed. They have 85 ICU beds and there are four people in them with COVID. We are OK. We are ready to move on.

mcaton@postmedia.com

twitter.com/winstarcaton

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Small business owners rally for an end to COVID-19 restrictions - Windsor Star

U.S. Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), both members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, have reintroduced theRepealing Existing Substandard Provisions Encouraging Conciliation with Tribes(RESPECT) Act.

TheRESPECTAct would repeal a number of outdated federal laws that are discriminatory against Native Americans. Examples include laws that allow for the forced removal of Native American children from their homes to be sent to boarding schools and laws subjecting Native Americans to forced labor.

Throughout history, Native Americans have been subjected to federal laws that are offensive, immoral and outright racist, said Rounds. In many cases, these laws are more than a century old and do nothing but continue the stigma of subjugation and paternalism from that time period. Clearly, there is no place in our legal code for such laws. The idea that these laws were ever considered is disturbing, but the fact that these laws remain on our books is at best an oversight. While we cannot rewrite the past, we can help write a better future for generations to come. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass theRESPECTAct this session of Congress.

This is about justice for Native communities in Minnesota and across the country, said Smith. The fact that these racist, shameful laws still exist is yet another sign of the federal governments failure to live up to its treaty and trust obligations. There is much more work we need to do to reckon with our countrys history of disparaging, disrespecting, and erasing Indigenous communities, and this bill is one of many steps we must take. I will continue to lift up the voices of Minnesotas Ojibwe and Dakota nations, its urban Indigenous population, and all the sovereign Tribal Nations across the country as Congress works to right these past wrongs and strengthen the government-to-government relationship going forward.

Joining Rounds and Smith in reintroducing this bill are cosponsors: James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

The RESPECT Act is supported by the Great Plains Tribal Chairmens Association (GPTCA) and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

We thank Senator Rounds and his co-sponsors for their leadership in bringing forward the RESPECT Act to eliminate the outdated, substandard, and anti-Indian measures from the era of Indian wars and cultural oppression, said Harold Frazier, Chairman of the GPTCA and Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Please move this bill forward to enactment.

The RESPECT Act is common sense legislation that is long overdue, said Oglala Sioux Tribe President Kevin Killer. Wopila to Senator Rounds for his leadership in reintroducing this legislation that seeks to bring reconciliation, understanding, and healing to Native communities nationwide. These revisions are much needed and appreciated.

Rounds first introduced theRESPECTAct during the 114th Congress, where it passed out of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. During the 115th and 116th Congresses, the legislation passed the Senate unanimously but failed to receive a vote in the House.

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Rounds, Smith lead bipartisan push to repeal outdated laws against Native Americans - Drgnews