Chris Hedges's Blog, page 208

Thousands of U.S. Citizens Have Been Mistakenly Detained or Deported

We are law professors who have studied civil litigation involving citizenship disputes and thousands of cases involving citizens caught up in immigration cases.

That includes the U.S. citizens who have been accidentally swept up in the government’s immigration enforcement efforts since the mid-19th century. In many cases, they have been detained and even deported.

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In fact, more than 1,500 U.S. citizens spent time in immigration detention between 2007 and 2015 before the government acknowledged the mistake, federal records indicate. Northwestern University political scientist Jacqueline Stevens estimated that approximately 1% of all immigration detainees from more than 8,000 cases between 2006 and 2008 that she studied were U.S. citizens.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Following its founding and for more than a century, the United States allowed foreigners to voluntarily settle here. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first of several measures designed to restrict immigration from China, limited immigration for the first time.

The Supreme Court made it clear in 1920 with a ruling related to those curbs on Chinese immigrants that it is illegal for immigration authorities to deliberately detain or deport U.S. citizens. The case resolved a dispute between Kwock Jan Fat, a man born in California who was denied permission to return to the United States after a trip to China, and the immigration authorities.

The unanimous ruling included a warning about the risks of accidentally deporting citizens. “It is better that many Chinese immigrants should be improperly admitted than that one natural born citizen of the United States should be permanently excluded from his country,” Justice John Hessin Clarke wrote in the court’s opinion.

More than 75 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act’s repeal in 1943, we believe that the court’s concerns about protecting the rights of U.S. citizens during immigration enforcement actions remain relevant.

Scholars like Francisco Balderrama of California State University in Los Angeles and Kelly Lytle-Hernandez at University of California, Los Angeles have researched what happened when hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent were rounded up and forced onto trains bound for Mexico during the mass deportations of the Great Depression and the 1950s. They have determined that many of the people expelled from this country were actually U.S.-born citizens.

Hard to count

More recent examples abound of the U.S. government detaining citizens after falsely accusing them of breaking immigration laws.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities reportedly detained for three days Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a veteran born in Grand Rapids, Michigan who served with the Marines in Afghanistan, in 2018 because the agency did not believe he was born here.

ICE also detained for more than three weeks a man named Peter Brown who was born in Philadelphia and lived in the Florida Keys in 2018 because the agency confused him with an undocumented Jamaican immigrant – who was also named Peter Brown.

Peter Sean Brown, a U.S. citizen who lives in the Florida Keys, was locked up by ICE authorities who got him confused with a Jamaican immigrant with the same name.

In 2007, the government settled a lawsuit arising from ICE’s detention of 6-year-old Kebin Reyes. ICE detained the California-born child for 10 hours when it picked up his undocumented father, even though his father immediately handed the authorities Reyes’ U.S. passport to prove the boy’s citizenship.

And Justice Department records obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that a 10-year-old boy from San Francisco was mistakenly held in immigration detention in Texas for two months, according to his lawyer.

Citizen misclassification

The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog has released a report detailing “dangerous overcrowding” and “prolonged detention” in immigration detention facilities.

The Inspector General’s report details several ways in which the detention facilities violate federal laws. For example, the law requires the government to move people out of border-control facilities within 72 hours. But 3,400 detainees were held for longer. Some adults stayed in standing-room-only conditions for up to a week.

There is no guarantee that U.S. citizens, including children, are not included among the detainees enduring those conditions. That’s because studies have shown that children are particularly vulnerable to being wrongly subjected to immigration enforcement actions for two main reasons.

First, many adults who are detained and deported have children who are U.S. citizens.

Second, families of children born outside the United States – especially those born out of wedlock – may not even realize that their child is a U.S. citizen because the rules are complex. They vary according to year of birth, the amount of time the parents spent in the United States and the marital status of the parents. Having a grandparent who became a naturalized citizen could mean that a child born outside the U.S. also acquired citizenship at birth.

Violating rights

Even when someone knows their own citizenship status, it can be difficult to prove. Federal regulations require government officials to “carefully and expeditiously investigate and analyze the potential U.S. citizenship of individuals encountered by ICE.”

Proving citizenship can require collecting a significant number of records, including birth certificates from multiple generations, records of parents’ prior residence in the United States and affidavits from people who can confirm that information.

Even so, detaining and deporting citizens violates the constitutional right all Americans have to not be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.

 

Cassandra Burke Robertson, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University and Irina D. Manta, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Hofstra University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

War, Memory and Gettysburg

GETTYSBURG, Pa.—Over 50,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or reported missing here in July 1863, many of them dying in terrible agony on the battlefield or carted off to improvised hospitals where arms and legs were swiftly amputated and tossed into large heaps on the floor. Abysmal hygiene—surgeons would nonchalantly wipe the blood from their bone saws on their pus-stained smocks and move on to the next victim—caused infection, blood poisoning and gangrene. To buy time, regiments such as the 1st Minnesota were ordered into battle against superior forces and as a result were decimated within minutes. Hundreds of African American men, women and children, many born free in the surrounding Pennsylvania towns, were abducted by invading Confederate forces led by Gen. Robert E. Lee and shipped south to be sold in the slave markets in Richmond, Va. Confederate and at times Union forces looted homes, farms and shops. For three days in the summer of 1863, there was an orgy of destruction, death and suffering on this ground.

An estimated 750,000 soldiers were killed by combat, accident, starvation and disease in the Civil War, more than in all other American wars combined, according to a 2012 study. Rifled muskets and rifled artillery vastly increased the range and accuracy of fire over the 18th century’s smoothbore muskets and cannons, but the advance in weaponry did nothing to perturb the generals who clung to outdated and now suicidal tactics. They sent their soldiers marching forward in parade-ground lines into murderous volleys as if they were on a Napoleonic battlefield. The inability of most generals to adapt, as Allen C. Guelzo writes in “Gettysburg: The Last Invasion,” “makes the Civil War look like an exercise in raw stupidity equivalent to the slaughters on the Western Front [of World War I].”

I am descended from one of three brothers who fought at Gettysburg. was a Union general. Albert M. Edwards was a colonel in the elite Iron Brigade. Congress voted in 2018 to award him a posthumous Medal of Honor. David A. Edwards is my great-great-grandfather. He was a sergeant in the 5th Maine, and his war diaries, letters, brass cartridge box plate and pocket watch are next to me as I write.

The brothers were from Bethel, Maine. David was wounded in his right arm in 1864, days after the Battle of the Wilderness in northeast Virginia. As he walked back from the front lines looking for a field hospital, he saw what had become a depressingly familiar sight, wounded men screaming and writhing in agony amid the dead. He would be haunted as much by the aftermath of Civil War battles as the fighting itself.

“Cold and rainy,” David wrote in his diary on May 12, 1864. “2nd Corps captured a rebel division of infantry, 3 major generals, took their works, 25 guns. Our division sent to support them. We made a charge on pits. I received a wound in the right arm. Went to the rear.”

Four days later, on May 16, he wrote: “Still in Fredericksburg, nothing to eat, no care, nothing that we need.”

As a boy I hiked to the top of Monument Hill in Leeds, Maine. On the summit is a 30-foot-high granite obelisk erected by the Union general and fierce abolitionist Oliver Otis Howard, who was from Leeds. He lost his right arm in the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines in a June 1862 action for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. After the war he was the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau and helped found historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., serving as the school’s president from 1869 to 1874. He called his obelisk a peace monument and inscribed on it: “Peace Was Sure 1865.” Howard railed against the glorification of war, writing, “We cannot well exaggerate … the horrors, the hateful ravages, and the countless expense of war.” Stories of war, he said, should serve only one purpose, to “show plainly to our children that war, with its embodied woes and furies, must be avoided.”

By focusing on battlefield exploits we too often blot out the suffering of the soldiers, the families that lost sons, brothers and husbands, and the hundreds of thousands of children left without fathers. We ignore the crippling physical and psychological wounds that plague veterans. Units in the Civil War were raised locally. Towns and villages could within one day of heavy fighting lose a third or more of their men, plunging entire populations into collective grief. Maine, per capita, sent more men to war than any other Northern state. There is hardly a town in Maine that does not have a Civil War memorial with a shockingly long list of names. The weight of the loss was still felt when I was a boy in the 1960s, especially, in my case, because my grandmother lived with her grandfather, David, the onetime sergeant, until he died when she was 8. He was wracked by pain from his wound until the end of his life.

“Burial Parties were sent out, and those who could get away from their commands went out to view the scene of carnage, and surely it was a scene never to be forgotten,” wrote a New Jersey soldier. “Upon the open fields, like sheaves bound by the reaper, in crevices of the rocks, behind fences, trees and buildings; in thickets, where they had crept for safety only to die in agony; by stream or wall or hedge, wherever the battle had raged or their waking steps could carry them, lay the dead. Some with faces bloated and blackened beyond recognition, lay with glassy eyes staring up at the blazing summer sun; others, with faces downward and clenched hands filled with grass or earth, which told of the agony of the last moments. Here a headless trunk, there a severed limb; in all the grotesque positions that unbearable pain and intense suffering contorts the human form, they lay. Upon the faces of some death had frozen a smile; some showed the trembling shadow of fear, while upon others was indelibly set the grim stamp of determination. All around was the wreck the battle-storm leaves in its wake—broken caissons, dismounted guns, small arms bent and twisted by the storm or dropped and scattered by disabled hands; dead and bloated horses, torn and ragged equipments, and all the sorrowful wreck that the waves of battle leave at their ebb; and over all, hugging the earth like a fog, poisoning every breath, the pestilential stench of decaying humanity.”

The miasma of rotting bodies after the Battle of Gettysburg, exacerbated by the carcasses of 5,000 horses and mules, lingered for weeks. Residents in the town of Gettysburg had to cover their mouths and noses when they went outside.

“A sickening, overpowering, awful stench announced the presence of the unburied dead upon which the July sun was mercilessly shining and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife … ,” wrote Cornelia Hancock, a Union nurse at Gettysburg.

Time has long since erased these gruesome sights and smells from the battlefield national park, along with the disorienting confusion, fear and deafening noise of combat. The groomed fields and undulating hills are dotted with stately monuments to Civil War units and leaders. The park memorializes the aspect of the battle and the war the state wants us to memorialize. It tells us that honor, glory and courage, true patriotism, come from serving the state, although, as Ulysses S. Grant said, the Confederate cause was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”

The Gettysburg park implicitly celebrates nationalism and elevates the warrior caste. The Confederates, fighting to preserve slavery, have, with the deified Lee, been admitted into our pantheon of national heroes because of their martial valor. The cruelty and folly of war, along with the holocaust of slavery and the widespread grief and suffering caused by the staggering numbers of dead and wounded, are treated as tangential aspects eclipsed by the great sacrifice.

I stood on Little Round Top, a hill within the park where the breastworks erected by the 5th Maine are still visible. David, who fought there, had little use for senior officers, including his brother the general, who like many other generals callously sent men to be slaughtered to burnish battlefield credentials. In a letter to his wife dated Aug. 16, 1864, from the hospital at Camp Fry in Illinois he calls his brother “a miserable, lying scoundrel” who is “devoid of any moral or manly principle or honor.” “His nature is composed of selfishness and egoism,” he added.

Clark Edwards, a friend of Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, like Chamberlain and the New York politician and general Dan Sickles, would spend the postwar years elevating himself as an icon of battlefield heroism and use that image to further his political ambitions, which included an unsuccessful run for governor of Maine as the Democratic nominee. (Guelzo writes of Sickles, whose military incompetence nearly led to a Union defeat, that he “oozed sleaze and dissimulation from every pore.”)

David Edwards, along with the other soldiers on Little Round Top, was acutely aware that Chamberlain’s 20th Maine played only a secondary role in repulsing the Confederates. The Confederates were denied Little Round Top, an important piece of raised topography on the battlefield, because of the foresight of Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren and the alacrity and courage of brigade commander Gen. Strong Vincent and Col. Patrick O’Rorke, who commanded the 140th New York Infantry. But because Vincent and O’Rorke were killed in the defense of the hill, there was little impediment to Chamberlain’s tireless revisionist accounts of the fight. Chamberlain, in addition to being awarded, like Sickles, the Medal of Honor, became the president of Bowdoin College and served four terms as the governor of Maine. He authored “seven accounts of Gettysburg,” Guelzo writes, “giving himself the starring role on Little Round Top, and Little Round Top the starring role in the battle.” Guelzo adds: “Mortality, and the ex-professor’s considerable flair for self-promotion, vaulted him ahead of others.”

It was the third brother, Albert, who would be at the center of some of the most savage fighting at Gettysburg, narrowly escaping death. He was at the time a captain in the 24th Michigan, one of five regiments in the Iron Brigade. He had attended the University of Michigan and been a newspaper reporter, an experience that helped make his official battlefield reports literate and at times moving.

The Iron Brigade was one of the most celebrated brigades in the Union Army, easily identifiable by the black “Hardee” hats its members wore instead of the blue caps typical of most Union troops. By the end of the war it would lead all federal brigades in percentage of deaths in battle. But the combat-forged hardness of its troops came with a cost.

My grandmother had the 1891 edition of “History of 24th Michigan of the Iron Brigade,” which I now possess. It has a dried rose between page 234 and 235. I was haunted when I first read it as a boy not only by the horrific losses endured by the 24th Michigan in the first day of the battle, which left Albert in command, but by the execution of a deserter, Pvt. John P. Woods of the 19th Indiana, on June 12 on the way north.

“At about 2 o’clock the Iron Brigade led the column into a field, preceded by the prisoner sitting on his coffin,” Sgt. Sullivan D. Green wrote in the history. “In silence, three sides of a hollow square were formed. The coffin was placed on the ground, the prisoner alighted from the ambulance with the chaplain who held a few moments’ converse with the doomed man. …”

Twelve soldiers were selected for the firing squad and issued muskets. One of the muskets had a blank.

“A handkerchief was placed over his eyes, and his arms and legs were bound,” Green noted. “At the command ‘attention,’ the usual word of caution or preparation, they were to fire,” Green wrote. “The hat [in the hand of an officer] was lifted—10,000 eyes were strained in one breathless gaze—it was lowered, and many eyes withdrew from the sight that was to follow. The report of arms was heard and a lifeless body fell backward to the dust!”

Wood’s wife was seriously ill. He had tried to go home to be with her.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Iron Brigade, heavily outnumbered by Confederates, attempted to hold the Union line at McPherson’s Ridge. By nightfall only 99 of the 496 members of the 24th Michigan had not been killed, wounded or captured, a loss of 80%. Albert and two lieutenants were the only officers remaining on the field. The entire brigade had been mauled, reduced to 600 soldiers from the original 1,885. The survivors were repositioned on Culp’s Hill.

I stood on McPherson’s Ridge, the scene of the bloodbath 156 years ago that took the life of Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds. The shade of the towering trees and slight rustle of the leaves gave this isolated part of the battlefield a gentle tranquility. But by the end of July 1, 1863, the ground surrounding me was covered with Union dead and wounded, many of whom had to be abandoned in the slow retreat back toward town.

“Coming up in the wake of the attack he heard ‘dreadful howls’ in the woods on the ridge, and when he went over to investigate he found that the source of the racket was the wounded of both sides,” Shelby Foote, writing in “Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863,” said of Confederate Gen. William Dorsey Pender, who would be mortally wounded the next day. “Several were foaming at the mouth, as though mad, and seemed not even to be aware they were screaming.”

My grandmother began her life in the shadow of one war—the Civil War—and her life ended in the shadow of another—World War II. Her only son, my uncle Maurice, had fought as an Army infantryman in the South Pacific in World War II, in which he was wounded by a mortar blast. He returned a physical and emotional wreck, speaking little and retreating into a haze of alcoholism. I remember him as a distant, bewildering man, struggling with demons I did not understand. Like his great-grandfather David, he felt betrayed by his country, its generals and its politicians. Maurice mailed his medals back to the Army. Seated at my grandmother’s kitchen table one morning, he told me about the time his platoon was drinking from a stream. When they turned the corner, they saw 25 Japanese corpses in the water. It was the only time he spoke to me about his experiences as a soldier.

His erratic behavior was mystifying to me. I asked my grandmother after he left what was wrong with him. “The war,” she said acidly.

Iran Steps Further From Nuke Deal, Adding Pressure on Europe

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran increased its uranium enrichment Sunday beyond the limit allowed by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, inching its program closer toward weapons-grade levels while calling for a diplomatic solution to a crisis heightening tensions with the U.S.

Iran’s move, coupled with its earlier abandonment of the deal’s limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile, intensifies pressure on Europe to find any effective way around U.S. sanctions that block Tehran’s oil sales abroad.

But the future of the accord that President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. from a year ago remains in question. While Iran’s recent measures could be easily reversed, Europe has struggled to respond, even after getting a 60-day warning that the increase was coming.

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Meanwhile, experts fear a miscalculation in the crisis could explode into open conflict, as Trump already has come close to bombing Iran over Tehran shooting down a U.S. military surveillance drone.

International reaction to Iran’s decision came swiftly, with Britain warning Iran to “immediately stop and reverse all activities” violating the deal, Germany saying it is “extremely concerned,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime critic of the accord, urging world powers to impose so-called “snapback sanctions” on Tehran.

The European Union said parties to the deal are discussing a possible emergency meeting after Iran’s announcement, with EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic saying the bloc is “extremely concerned” about the move.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted: “Iran’s latest expansion of its nuclear program will lead to further isolation and sanctions. Nations should restore the longstanding standard of no enrichment for Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s regime, armed with nuclear weapons, would pose an even greater danger to the world.”

At a news conference, Iranian officials said the new level of uranium enrichment would be reached later in the day, but did not provide the percentage they planned to hit. Under the nuclear deal, the cap for enrichment was set at 3.67%, a percentage closely monitored by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

“Within hours, the technical tasks will be done and enrichment above 3.67% will begin,” Iran nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. “We predict that the IAEA measurements early tomorrow morning will show that we have gone beyond 3.67%.”

The IAEA said it was aware of Iran’s comments and “inspectors in Iran will report to our headquarters as soon as they verify the announced development.”

Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made remarks in a video Saturday about Iran’s need for 5% enrichment. Bushehr, Iran’s only nuclear power plant, is now running on imported fuel from Russia that’s enriched to around 5%.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sent a letter to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini outlining the steps it had taken, said Abbas Araghchi, a deputy foreign minister. Discussions with European powers are continuing and ministerial-level talks are planned later this month, he said.

“We will give another 60-day period, and then we will resume the reduction of our commitments,” Araghchi said, without elaborating.

On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron told his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, in a phone call that he is trying to find a way by July 15 to resume the dialogue between Iran and Western partners. It wasn’t clear if July 15 carried any importance. The U.S. has called for a special IAEA meeting for Wednesday to discuss Iran.

Kamalvandi stressed that Iran will continue to use only slower, first-generation IR-1 centrifuges to increase enrichment, as well as keep the number of centrifuges in use under the 5,060-limit set by the nuclear deal. Iran has the technical ability to build and operate advanced centrifuges that work faster but is barred from doing so under the deal.

“For the enrichment we are using the same machines with some more pressure and some special technical work,” he said. “So we don’t have an increase in the number of centrifuges for this purpose.”

But Kamalvandi stressed that Iran is able to continue enrichment “at any speed, any amount and any level.”

Enriched uranium at the 3.67% level is enough for peaceful pursuits but is far below weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The decision to ramp up uranium enrichment came less than a week after Iran acknowledged breaking the deal’s 300-kilogram (661-pound) limit on its low-enriched uranium stockpile. Experts warn higher enrichment and a growing stockpile narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material for an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

The steps taken so far by Iran show it is more interested in applying political pressure than moving toward a nuclear weapon, said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. He said Iran would need at least 1,050 kilograms (2,315 pounds) of low-enriched uranium to make the core of a single nuclear bomb, then would have to enrich it to 90%.

“Iran is not racing toward the bomb as some allege but these are calibrated moves,” Kimball told The Associated Press. However, “if Iran and the United States remain on the current course, the agreement is indeed in jeopardy.”

Netanyahu urged the international community to punish Iran for its decision.

“It is a very, very dangerous step,” he said. “I’m asking you, not to provoke but out of joint knowledge of history and what happens when aggressive totalitarian regimes can cross the threshold toward things that are very dangerous to us all. Take the steps that you promised. Enact the sanctions.”

However, Kimball cautioned against that.

“Iran is clearly not going to enter negotiations for a new deal if these sanctions are in place,” he said. “This a self-made, Trump administration crisis because it has been taking drastic measures to dismantle the (deal) without a viable Plan B.”

Greece Turns Right: Prime Minister Tsipras Concedes Election Defeat

ATHENS, Greece—Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras conceded defeat Sunday after a partial vote count showed Greece’s opposition conservatives comfortably winning the first parliamentary election since the country emerged from its international bailouts.

The conservative New Democracy party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis had 39.7% of the vote compared to Tsipras’ Syriza party with 31.5% after nearly 60% of ballots were tallied.

The result was a stinging blow to Tsipras, who had insisted he could overturn a sizeable gap in opinion polls running up to the election, which he asked to hold several months before his term expires in the fall.

“The citizens have made their choice. We fully respect the popular vote,” Tsipras said in his concession speech from central Athens, adding that he had phoned Mitsotakis to congratulate him.

“I want to assure the Greek people that … we will protect the rights of working people with a responsible but dynamic opposition,” he said.

“I wish and hope that the return of New Democracy to government will not lead to vengeance … particularly toward the significant achievements to protect the social majority and the workers,” Tsipras continued.

Official projections based on early partial results also showed the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party teetering on the lower side of the 3% threshold needed to be in parliament. Golden Dan became the third-largest party in parliament during Greece’s financial crisis,

Greece is gradually emerging from the crippling financial crisis that saw unemployment and poverty levels skyrocket and the economy shrink by a quarter.

Greece was dependent for survival until last summer on three successive bailouts and had to take deep reforms such as massive spending cuts and tax hikes to qualify for the rescue loans.

Tsipras, 44, called the election three months ahead of schedule after his left-wing Syriza party suffered a severe defeat in European Union and local elections in May and early June.

To gain ground, he increasingly appealed to a middle class struggling under a heavy tax burden, much of it imposed by his government.

Tsipras led his small Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, party to power in 2015 on promises to repeal the austerity measures of Greece’s first two bailouts.

But after months of tumultuous negotiations with international creditors that saw Greece nearly crash out of the European Union’s joint currency, he was forced to change tack, signing up to a third bailout and imposing the accompanying spending cuts and tax hikes.

He also cemented a deal with neighboring North Macedonia under which that country changed its name from plain “Macedonia.” Although praised by Western allies, the deal angered many Greeks, who consider use of the term harbors expansionist aims on the Greek province of the same name.

Mitsotakis, 51, the son of a former prime minister, brother of a former foreign minister and uncle to a newly elected mayor of Athens, had been ahead in opinion polls for three years and managed to build a sizeable lead.

He fought to shed the image of family privilege and had pledged to make Greece more business-friendly, attract foreign investment, to modernize the country’s notorious bureaucracy and to cut taxes.

“Today, voters take the decision for their future in their hands,” Mitsotakis said after voting. “I am sure that tomorrow, a better day dawns for our nation.”

Official projections based on early partial results showed six parties entering parliament, with New Democracy holding 158 of the body’s 300 seats, a comfortable governing majority.

Golden Dawn was hovering at around 2.96%, said Yiannis Theodoropoulos of SingularLogic, the company compiling the official election results for the Interior Ministry. If it manages to push above the 3% threshold to enter parliament, that would reduce New Democracy’s number of seats from the 158 it was projected to have.

____

Demetris Nellas and Stefania Vourazeri in Athens contributed.

Congress Makes Bipartisan Push to Cut Health Care Costs

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are trying to set aside their irreconcilable differences over the Obama-era Affordable Care Act and work to reach bipartisan agreement on a more immediate health care issue: lowering costs for people who already have coverage.

Returning from their Fourth of July recess, the Senate and House are pushing to end surprise medical bills, curb high prices for medicines, and limit prescription copays for people with Medicare.

Partisan disagreements could derail the effort, but lawmakers fear the voters’ verdict in 2020 if politicians have nothing to show for all their hand-wringing about drug prices. President Donald Trump has political exposure himself because the big price cuts he promised haven’t materialized. On Friday, he promised an executive order that he said would be intended to enable the U.S. government to pay lower prices for prescription drugs. The U.S. would pay no more than the lowest amount paid by other nations or companies, he said.

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“Frankly, the issue is so urgent for Americans who are facing increasing drug costs that to us it’s really not about who gets the credit,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. “It’s about what kind of relief we can give to consumers.” She serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has a role in shaping the legislation.

In the Senate, Republican Lamar Alexander has shepherded bipartisan legislation on surprise medical bills through the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that he leads. That bill also would raise the legal age for buying tobacco products to 21.

“Obviously we will continue to have significant disagreements on … Obamacare,” said Alexander. “What we’ve done is shift our focus to the larger topic — or the different topic — of reducing health care costs.” He would like his bill to be on the Senate floor by the end of this month.

Different pieces of legislation are at various stages in a half-dozen committees in the Senate and the House. The Senate seems to hold the keys to what can pass because Republicans and Democrats have to work together to avoid gridlock on the Senate floor that could sidetrack legislation. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is keeping an open line to the Trump administration on drug costs.

“The public demand for action is high on both sides of the aisle and I’m sure these guys are feeling it,” said John Rother of the National Coalition on Health Care, an umbrella group that represents a cross section of business and consumer organizations. “They have to do something, and the question is, is that something is going to be meaningful, or is it going to be window-dressing?”

A look at some of the major pieces:

—Medicare Drug Negotiations

House Democrats are pushing for a floor vote on authorizing Medicare to directly negotiate prescription drug prices. Legislation from Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, would empower the government to license generic competition if the manufacturer of a brand-name drug refuses to deal.

Think of it as an opening bid.

Medicare negotiations are a nonstarter for Senate Republicans, and the administration has been opposed although candidate Trump once advocated the idea. Liberals in the House say they’re not backing off.

“The first step is we pass a progressive bill in the House and then we see what the Senate takes,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. “We’ve got to do that as a first step, and then we’ve got to negotiate for as much as we can get, but we have to pass the bill we ran on.”

—Medicare “Inflation Rebate”

Senators of both parties and key lawmakers in the House are looking at requiring drugmakers to pay rebates to the government if the prices of medications covered by Medicare escalate beyond a yet-to-be-determined measure of inflation.

That wouldn’t solve the problem of high initial “launch” prices for brand-name drugs, but it could restrain cost increases for long-available medications such as insulin. Democrats say it could be a fallback if they’re not able to get Medicare negotiation authority.

A signal of whether inflation rebates have political traction could come within a couple weeks when senators are expected to offer a bipartisan compromise. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and the committee’s top Democrat, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, are trying to get a deal to reduce drug costs for federal programs and the people they cover. A senior GOP aide said rebates are under consideration. The aide spoke condition of anonymity because there’s no final agreement.

Separately, Labor Department data show some signs that prescription drug inflation has eased in recent months.

—Limit on Medicare Drug Copays

Medicare’s “Part D” prescription drug benefit currently has no limit on out-of-pocket costs paid by patients, which means beneficiaries taking very expensive medications may wind up with copays rivaling a mortgage payment.

Senate and House lawmakers of both parties want to limit those copays, as does the administration. But lawmakers want to pair that with meaningful limits on prescription drug prices.

—Medicaid Gene Therapy

Senate Finance Committee members are considering a Republican idea that would allow the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income people to make installment payments for gene therapy treatments, which can cost $1 million or more.

—Surprise Medical Bills

Alexander’s committee has approved legislation that would hold patients harmless from “surprise” out-of-network bills that can run to tens of thousands of dollars. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is working on a similar bill.

Alexander said the legislation won’t solve every health care problem, but added, “You don’t have to preach the whole Bible in one sermon — you can do one important thing at a time.”

How the Sanctions Harm My Iranian-American Family

“What’s wrong?” I asked my mother, as I saw her broken expression. She was on the phone, speaking with my grandparents in Iran. “A terrible thing has happened,” she replied.

My grandparent’s home in Tehran had been broken into. The thieves took everything they could carry — my grandmother’s jewelry, my uncle’s prized watch collection, his wedding band, and some cash. Perhaps the only thing left untouched was the grand, ornate Persian rug in their living room.

My grandfather had left the house for 10 minutes for afternoon prayers at the mosque. Now, he swears to never leave his home unattended again. He takes turns leaving the house with my grandmother, both in constant dread of another break-in.

Across Iran, such burglaries seem to be increasing as ordinary Iranian people face increased hardship from U.S.-imposed sanctions.

As a dual citizen, I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, but I’ve been traveling to Iran regularly ever since I was four months old.

I grew up in a household that taught me to love who I am, to see the wisdom in maintaining cultural intricacies, and to relish in the socio-religious traditions that keep life going. Words cannot do justice to the feeling of affinity that envelops me every time I step into my second home in Tehran.

My mother, in efforts to ease her old parents’ anxious hearts, could only repeat tavakol be khoda, or as we like to translate it: “Your faith must be stronger than your fear.”

President Trump has sought confrontation with Iran at every opportunity. Since America’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, the U.S. has re-imposed sanctions targeting critical sectors of Iran’s economy.

Since then, oil exports have more than halved, choking the main source of funding for the country. Iranian currency has lost almost 60 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, reaching a record low.

Meanwhile, sanctions and problems in banking transfers have made it extremely hard to buy everything from food to medicine. In the past 12 months, the cost of red meat and poultry has increased by 57 percent. Physicians are forced to prescribe less effective drugs, while patients must wait longer for operations.

During my visit last December, I witnessed the desperation with my own eyes.

Children stood, begging on the streets, tapping on my car window, trying to sell flowers and CDs. Highly educated youth sat in their homes, unable to find employment. Families withstood long lines at government-subsidized grocery stores to receive rationed meat. Patients had to self-treat their illnesses because they couldn’t purchase proper medicine.

Day after day, I sit and watch my president come up with new ways to escalate tensions, like tweeting that we’re “cocked and loaded to retaliate,” and only barely calling off a strike that would have killed 150 people — potentially starting a war without congressional approval. Or imposing new sanctions on top Iranian officials, which could close off the road to diplomacy.

Yet the absence of armed conflict doesn’t mean that over 80 million innocent people aren’t tremendously hurting already — and for no good reason. Economic sanctions are a form of warfare on people who are just trying to make ends meet.

Trump has even configured a way to suppress the normal aspirational response to escape destitute living conditions — banning Iranians entry to the most promising nation on Earth with his Muslim travel ban.

Whether it’s Cuba or Venezuela or Iran, history shows that sanctions alone have never forced a change in policy by an adversary. Iranians and Americans alike deserve diplomacy, not war — and that includes war by economic means.

Can our faith be stronger than our fear?

Israel Is Disappearing the Proof That It Oppresses Palestinians

Hagar Shezaf at the Israeli newspaper of record, Haaretz [“The Land”], reveals that a secretive Israeli agency has been systematically going through the country’s archives, including local repositories, and removing and classifying documents having to do with repressive and embarrassing Israeli actions toward Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis.

One such disappeared document from 1948, a second copy of which nevertheless was located by Israeli researchers, estimates that 70 percent of the 720,000 Palestinians (out of 1.2 million) expelled from their homes in 1947-49 by were kicked out by Zionist militias acting on behalf of the 500,000 Jewish settlers brought in by the British colonialists. This document was summarized by historian Benny Morris in a 1986 journal article but the force of Morris’s argument was subsequently blunted because researchers could no longer see the same primary source on which he based himself.

Shezaf quotes from the document:

The 25-page document begins with an introduction that unabashedly approves of the evacuation of the Arab villages. According to the author, the month of April “excelled in an increase of emigration,” while May “was blessed with the evacuation of maximum places.” The report then addresses “the causes of the Arab emigration.” According to the Israeli narrative that was disseminated over the years, responsibility for the exodus from Israel rests with Arab politicians who encouraged the population to leave. However, according to the document, 70 percent of the Arabs left as a result of Jewish military operations . . .

“without a doubt, the hostile operations were the main cause of the movement of the population.” In addition, “Loudspeakers in the Arabic language proved their effectiveness on the occasions when they were utilized properly.” As for Irgun and Lehi operations, the report observes that “many in the villages of central Galilee started to flee following the abduction of the notables of Sheikh Muwannis [a village north of Tel Aviv]. The Arab learned that it is not enough to forge an agreement with the Haganah and that there are other Jews [i.e., the breakaway militias] to beware of.”

The author notes that ultimatums to leave were especially employed in central Galilee, less so in the Mount Gilboa region. “Naturally, the act of this ultimatum, like the effect of the ‘friendly advice,’ came after a certain preparing of the ground by means of hostile actions in the area.”

An appendix to the document describes the specific causes of the exodus from each of scores of Arab locales: Ein Zeitun – “our destruction of the village”; Qeitiya – “harassment, threat of action”; Almaniya – “our action, many killed”; Tira – “friendly Jewish advice”; Al’Amarir – “after robbery and murder carried out by the breakaways”; Sumsum – “our ultimatum”; Bir Salim – “attack on the orphanage”; and Zarnuga – “conquest and expulsion.”

The Israeli establishment (and its even more fanatical American supporters, whether right wing Jews or Evangelicals) is guilty of a sort of genocide denialism with regard to the Nakba or Catastrophe that the Zionists visited o the Palestinians at the founding of Israel. I use “genocide” here in its sense in international law, as recognized in the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. Killing very large numbers of people is only one sense of “genocide” in this definition. Other forms of genocide can aim at wiping out a people by wiping out their way of life.

There are now on the order of 12 million Palestinians. 5 Million live under the Israeli jackboot in Occupied Palestine. 1.6 million are second-class citizens in Israel itself. The rest form part of a vast diaspora, in Jordan (some 2 million), Lebanon (400,000?) Syria, Egypt, the Gulf, Europe, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, and the United States among other places.

The Israeli classification program is betting that the history of 1948 can be erased simply by withholding the Israeli documentation. Hierarchies of knowledge privilege state archives over the oral histories of the powerless and oppressed.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians themselves, and their family histories, are the best archive for knowing about their expulsion, and for knowing about the conditions of Apartheid under which some 5 million still live.

Jayapal Challenges Biden on Labor Unions and Health Insurance

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal—who favors creating a national single-payer system that ensures healthcare as a human right for all Americans—responded critically on Saturday to 2020 presidential primary front-runner Joe Biden’s recent comments about labor unions and employer-based health insurance.

The congresswoman from Washington state is the lead sponsor in the U.S. House of the Medicare for All Act of 2019. Jayapal’s response to the former vice president came in a series of tweets, and followed criticism of Biden from another 2020 contender—Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime single-payer advocate and lead sponsor of the Senate’s version of the bill.

During an interview with CNN that aired Friday, as Common Dreams reported, “Biden suggested he supports allowing Americans to buy in to Medicare instead of going all the way to Medicare for All, which he slammed as disruptive and costly despite studies showing it would save the U.S. trillions of dollars in overall healthcare spending.”

“If they like their employer-based insurance, which a lot of unions broke their neck to get, a lot of people like theirs, they shouldn’t have to give it up,” Biden said. “If you don’t go my way and you go their way you have to give up all that. What’s gonna happen when you have 300 million people landing on a healthcare plan. How long is that going to take? What’s it going to do?”

Sharing the relevant clip from Biden’s interview, Jayapal tweeted Saturday, “This argument that ‘unions broke their neck to get employer-based insurance’ is an OLD argument that isn’t relevant today.”

The congresswoman listed some of the labor unions supporting her Medicare for All bill—including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and National Nurses United (NNU)—and argued that these organizations “understand” the benefits of transforming the country’s for-profit healthcare system through proposals such as hers.

For example, Jayapal wrote, unions understand that “workers are paying more and more for their employer-insurance because for-profit insurance companies are raising premiums hugely for employer healthcare as well.”

“Unions understand that when they have to bargain for healthcare, they give up money that should be used for wages,” the congresswoman continued.

Labor unions also “understand solidarity and standing with [the] least amongst us,” she added. “They’re ready to fight for ALL OF US.”

Read Jayapal’s full Twitter thread:

…United Mineworkers, ILWU & so many more. These unions understand several things: 1) workers are paying more & more for their employer-insurance b/c for-profit insurance companies are raising premiums hugely for employer healthcare as well. Employers push much of that down.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2019

3) Unions understand that when they have to bargain for healthcare, they give up money that should be used for wages. That’s part of why we see enormous wage stagnation. They’ve foregone $$$ to pay for-profit insurance premiums instead of workers’ wages.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2019

4A. Imagine, for ex, the healthcare “tariff” on a US car! Automakers spending on healthcare for hourly workers & families in 2015 topped $2 BILLION. @WarrenBuffett has called current HC system the “tapeworm of American competitiveness.”

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2019

Major hosp CEO recently told me that for-profit insurance companies have 1000s of ppl who just challenge claims submitted to them. Therefore, his hospital & other businesses either have to have armies dedicated just to this admin waste or accept the denials at employees’ peril.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2019

5. #LaborUnions understand solidarity & standing w/least amongst us. Even unions who have may good HC understand that 70 mm Americans are uninsured or underinsured, & tens of millions more cannot afford insurance they have. They’re ready to fight for ALL OF US. #MedicareForAll

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 6, 2019

 

Jeffrey Epstein Jailed on New Charges of Sex-Trafficking Minors

NEW YORK — Wealthy financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested Saturday in New York on new sex-trafficking charges involving allegations that date to the early 2000s, according to law enforcement officials.

Epstein, a hedge fund manager who once counted as friends former President Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and President Donald Trump, was taken into federal custody and is expected to appear Monday in Manhattan federal court, three law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

One of the officials said Epstein is accused of paying underage girls for massages and molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the pending case.

A message was sent to Epstein’s defense attorney seeking comment. Epstein is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

Epstein’s arrest, first reported by The Daily Beast, comes amid renewed scrutiny of a once-secret plea deal that ended a federal investigation against him.

That deal, which is being challenged in Florida federal court, allowed Epstein, who is now 66, to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution.

Averting a possible life sentence, Epstein was instead was sentenced to 13 months in jail. The deal also required he reach financial settlements with dozens of his once-teenage victims and register as a sex offender.

Epstein’s deal was overseen by former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who is now Trump’s labor secretary. Acosta has defended the plea deal as appropriate under the circumstances, though the White House said in February that it was “looking into” his handling of the deal.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra of Florida ruled earlier this year that Epstein’s victims should have been consulted under federal law about the deal, and he is now weighing whether to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement, or NPA, that protected Epstein from federal charges.

It was not immediately clear whether the cases involved the same victims since nearly all have remained anonymous.

Federal prosecutors recently filed court papers in Florida case contending Epstein’s deal must stand.

“The past cannot be undone; the government committed itself to the NPA, and the parties have not disputed that Epstein complied with its provisions,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

They acknowledged, however, that the failure to consult victims “fell short of the government’s dedication to serve victims to the best of its ability” and that prosecutors “should have communicated with the victims in a straightforward and transparent way.”

The victims in the Florida case have until Monday to respond to the Justice Department’s filing.

According to court records in Florida, authorities say at least 40 underage girls were brought into Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion for what turned into sexual encounters after female fixers looked for suitable girls locally and in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

Some girls were also allegedly brought to Epstein’s homes in New York City, New Mexico and a private Caribbean island, according to court documents.

Saturday’s arrest also came just days after a federal appeals court in New York ordered the unsealing of nearly 2,000 pages of records in a since-settled defamation case involving Epstein.

U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse released a statement Saturday calling for Epstein to be held without bail pending trial.

“This monster received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice,” Sasse, R-Nebraska, said in the statement. “Justice doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account.”

___

Sisak reported from Port St. Lucie, Florida. Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Curt Anderson and Tom Hays contributed to this report.

Buttigieg Has Money, but Can He Turn It Into 2020 Win?

CARROLL, Iowa—Pete Buttigieg stunned the Democratic presidential field with a nearly $25 million second-quarter fundraising haul. Now he needs to figure out how to use that money to build a campaign that can go the distance against nearly two dozen rivals — many of them better known — and ensure that enthusiasm from donors is matched by support from voters.

That poses big challenges for the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who lags several of his top opponents in the number of staff on the ground in early states. He also has significant work to do to earn support of African American voters, a crucial constituency in the Democratic presidential primary.

Buttigieg said much of his emphasis will be on retail politics — more days like Thursday, when he blitzed across Iowa for a parade and picnics and one-on-one interactions with voters. The campaign also says it plans in coming months to add 100 people to a staff that started with six employees and now has about 200, as well as enlist a larger number of volunteers.

“The whole point of all that fundraising was to make sure that we have the organization we need to win,” Buttigieg told reporters after a town hall meeting in a sweltering Sioux City, Iowa high school gymnasium. “Obviously we got great news on that front, now we’ve got to put it to work.”

Buttigieg has been a source of both fascination and skepticism in the opening months of the Democratic primary. He was virtually unknown when he launched his campaign, but garnered attention with high-profile media appearances and a call for generational change in politics.

His fundraising prowess suggests he will be more than Democrats’ flavor-of-the-month candidate — he topped former Vice President Joe Biden’s haul and more than doubled the money raised in the second quarter by Sen. Kamala Harris, whose home state of California is the center of the Democratic fundraising universe. He’s attracted high-dollar donors, including “West Wing” actor Bradley Whitford and “Glee” producer Ryan Murphy, and his grassroots events, with tickets as low as $25, have drawn as many as 1,500 people.

Yet Buttigieg still faces questions about his experience and whether his appeal extends beyond wealthier donors and white voters.

“Ultimately you can raise all the money in the world but you need to figure out your pathway to win that nomination,” said Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist.

Buttigieg’s biggest investment has so far been in Iowa, the overwhelmingly white state that kicks off the Democratic primary with a caucus on Feb. 3. The campaign has about 40 staffers on the ground there, more than it has in any other state, though Buttigieg’s team acknowledges that the caucus structure — in which voters are asked to attend local meetings to support their candidate — requires more boots on the ground to organize.

Buttigieg spent the July 4 holiday barnstorming the state and plans three more visits there this month, according to his campaign.

At a parade in Storm Lake, Iowa, Buttigieg’s reception was mixed. Dana Evans, who runs the local Vietnam Veterans of America chapter, greeted Buttigieg — who served in the Navy Reserve in Afghanistan — with an offer to ride in his group’s truck if he got tired of walking the parade route. He said he was glad to see Buttigieg out meeting with the “little people” and hoped he’d return to the area to talk more about veterans’ issues and national security.

But as Buttigieg walked the route with a group of mostly young volunteers, he remained unfamiliar to some in the crowd. One woman took a sticker from a volunteer then used it to type his name into her phone to find out who he was.

Carroll County Democratic Party Chairman Peter Leo said that’s why it’s important for Buttigieg to use his money to spend as much time in the state as he can. Leo introduced Buttigieg to the crowd gathered at a local park, where the candidate also took a turn at the grill and joined in a yard game tossing beanbags, often referred to as “bags.”

“Iowans love their retail politics. They want to have a chance to ask a question directly, meet you in person, shake your hand and really get a chance to, you know, just size you up one-on-one,” Leo said. “You know what I know about this area? They reward people who show their face.”

Buttigieg’s challengers get tougher as the primary calendar swings into the South, where black voters make up a significant share of the Democratic electorate. Buttigieg’s support from black voters has been marginal, according to early polls, and may have been further damaged by the fatal shooting of a black man by a white South Bend police officer last month.

Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina-based strategist, said Buttigieg must invest more in research and getting to know communities of color, whether it’s face-to-face meetings or focus groups or polling, if he has any chance of winning the nomination or a general election.

“People don’t know him. He doesn’t have any connection to the African-American community here,” Seawright said. “He’s got to find out what’s on their minds. The worst thing he can do, particularly in the African-American community, is assume he knows.”

Buttigieg said he believes he can compete and beat expectations in South Carolina, and that his team there — which has been made up of just a handful of staffers — will grow, just as it will in other early states like New Hampshire, Nevada and California, which holds its primary in March but begins early voting weeks before that.