Chris Hedges's Blog, page 326

Cargo Jetliner With 3 Aboard Crashes Into Bay Near Houston

HOUSTON—A Boeing 767 cargo jetliner heading to Houston with three people aboard disintegrated after crashing Saturday into a bay east of the city, according to a Texas sheriff.

Witnesses told emergency personnel that the twin-engine plane “went in nose first,” leaving a debris field three-quarters of a mile long in Trinity Bay, Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said.

“It’s probably a crash that nobody would survive,” he said, referring to the scene as “total devastation.”

Witnesses said they heard the plane’s engines surging and that the craft turned sharply before falling into a nosedive, Hawthorne said.

Aerial footage shows emergency personnel walking along a spit of marshland flecked by debris that extends into the water.

The sheriff said recovering pieces of the plane, its black box containing flight data records and any remains of the people on board will be difficult in muddy marshland that extends to about 5 feet deep in the area. Air boats are needed to access the area.

The plane had departed from Miami and was likely only minutes away from landing at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert after officials lost radar and radio contact with Atlas Air Flight 3591 when it was about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of the airport, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said.

The Coast Guard dispatched boats and at least one helicopter to assist in the search for survivors. A dive team with the Texas Department of Public Safety will be tasked with finding the black box, Hawthorne said.

Trinity Bay is just north of Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

FAA investigators are traveling to the scene as are authorities with the National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the investigation.

Manafort ‘Brazenly Violated the Law’ for Years, Mueller Memo Says

WASHINGTON—Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort committed crimes that cut to “the heart of the criminal justice system” and over the years deceived everyone from bookkeepers and banks to federal prosecutors and his own lawyers, according to a sentencing memo filed Saturday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

In the memo, submitted in one of two criminal cases Manafort faces, prosecutors do not yet take a position on how much prison time he should serve or whether to stack the punishment on top of a separate sentence he will soon receive in a Virginia prosecution. But they do depict Manafort as a longtime and unrepentant criminal who committed “bold” crimes, including under the spotlight of his role as campaign chairman and later while on bail, and who does not deserve any leniency.

“For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law,” prosecutors wrote. “His crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in October 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment.”

Citing Manafort’s lies to the FBI, several government agencies and his own lawyer, prosecutors said that “upon release from jail, Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism.”

The 25-page memo, filed in federal court in Washington, is likely the last major filing by prosecutors as Manafort heads into his sentencing hearings next month and as Mueller’s investigation approaches a conclusion. Manafort, who has been jailed for months and turns 70 in April, will have a chance to file his own sentencing recommendation next week. He and his longtime business partner, Rick Gates, were the first two people indicted in the special counsel’s investigation. Overall, Mueller has produced charges against 34 individuals, including six former Trump aides, and three companies.

Manafort’s case has played out in stark contrast to those of other defendants in the Russia investigation, such as former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who prosecutors praised for his cooperation and left open the possibility of no jail time.

Manafort pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy arising from his Ukrainian political consulting work and his efforts to tamper with witnesses. As part of that plea, he agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team, a move that could have helped him avoid a longer prison sentence. But within weeks, prosecutors say he repeatedly lied to investigators, including about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate who the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence. That deception voided the plea deal.

The sentencing memo comes as Manafort, who led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for several critical months, is already facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison in a separate tax and bank fraud case in Virginia. Mueller’s team endorsed a sentence of between 19.5 and 24.5 years in prison in that case.

Prosecutors note that the federal guidelines recommend a sentence of more than 17 years, but Manafort pleaded guilty last year to two felony counts that carry maximum sentences of five years each.

Prosecutors originally filed a sealed sentencing memo on Friday, but the document was made public on Saturday with certain information still redacted, or blacked out.

In recent weeks, court papers have revealed that Manafort shared polling data related to the Trump campaign with Kilimnik. A Mueller prosecutor also said earlier this month that an August 2016 meeting between Manafort and Kilimnik goes to the “heart” of the Russia probe. The meeting involved a discussion of a Ukrainian peace plan, but prosecutors haven’t said exactly what has captured their attention and whether it factors into the Kremlin’s attempts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Like other Americans close to the president charged in the Mueller probe, Manafort hasn’t been accused of involvement in Russian election interference.

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Read the sentencing memo: http://apne.ws/8MYWHdV

Dianne Feinstein Lectures Youth Climate Activists: ‘You Did Not Vote for Me’

As young people from around the world are marching in the streets and calling on adults and elected leaders to act urgently to address runaway global warming and the climate crisis, this video of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) explaining to youth activists in her office on Friday why she won’t back the joint congressional resolution on the Green New Deal has to be seen in order to be believed.

Posted to Twitter by the Sunrise Movement, which had organized the office visit as part of its campaign to garner support for the resolution, the video shows Feinstein responding with “smugness and disrespect” when the group explains that while their futures are the ones that will be impacted the most the scientific community has said there is just 12 years for radical transformation to take place.

According to Sunrise:

Children as young as 7 reminded Senator Feinstein that their generation will be most impacted by the effects of climate change and that she must stand with her constituents.

The Senator responded by asking for their ages, stating: “Well, you did not vote for me.”

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Feinstein says in the video. “You come in here and say it has to be my way or the highway. I don’t respond to that…I know what I’m doing. Maybe people should listen a little bit.”

Watch it:

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution — with smugness + disrespect.

This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI

— Sunrise Movement

Recent Venezuela Coverage Tells Familiar Lies

I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”

I walked out of the apartment to the nearest pharmacy, four blocks away, where I found plenty of aspirin, as well as acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) and ibuprofen (generic Advil), in a well-stocked pharmacy with a knowledgeable professional staff that would be the envy of any US drugstore.

A few days after the Time story, CNBC (6/22/16) carried a claim that there was no acetaminophen to be found anywhere, either: “Basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.” That must have taken the Pfizer Corporation by surprise, since it was their Venezuelan subsidiary, Pfizer Venezuela SA, which produced the acetaminophen I purchased. (Neither Time writer Ian Bremer nor CNBC commentator Richard Washington was in Venezuela, and there was no evidence offered that either of them had ever been there.)

I purchased all three products, plus cough syrup and other over-the-counter medications, because I doubted that anyone in the United States would believe me if I couldn’t produce the medications in their packages.

Unrelenting Drumbeat of Lies

In fact, I myself wouldn’t have believed anyone who made such claims without being able to produce the proof, so intense and unrelenting has been the drumbeat of lies. When the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela gave a concert in New York in early 2016, before I moved to Caracas, I went there thinking, “Gee, I hope that the members of the orchestra are all well-dressed and well-fed.” Yes, of course they were all well-dressed and well-fed!

When I mentioned this in a talk at the University of Vermont, a student told me that he’d had the same feeling when he was following the Pan American soccer championship. He wondered if the Venezuelan players would be able to play, because they’d be so weakened from lack of food. In fact, he said, the Venezuelan team played superbly, and went much further in the competition than expected, since Venezuela has historically been a baseball country, unlike its soccer-obsessed neighbors Brazil and Colombia.

Hard as it may be for followers of the US media to believe, Venezuela is a country where people play sports, go to work, go to classes, go to the beach, go to restaurants and attend concerts. They publish and read newspapers of all political stripes, from right to center-right, to center, to center-left, to left. They produce and watch programs on television, on TV channels that are also of all political stripes.

CNN was ridiculed recently (Redacted Tonight, 2/1/19) when it carried a report on Venezuela, “in the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty,” followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.

But surely that’s because most of the anti-government demonstrators were upper-middle class, a viewer might think. The proletarians at pro-government demonstrations must be suffering severe hunger.

Not if one consults photos of the massive pro-government demonstration on February 2, where people seemed to be doing pretty well. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze on the country, reminiscent of the “make the economy scream” strategy used by the Nixon administration and the CIA against the democratic government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as many other democratically elected governments.

Rival Demonstrations

That demonstration showed considerable support for the government of President Nicolás Maduro and widespread rejection of Donald Trump’s choice for president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Guaidó, who proclaimed himself to be president of the country and was recognized minutes later by Trump, even though a public opinion poll showed that 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him, comes from the ultra-right faction in Venezuelan politics.

The pro-Maduro demonstration suggested, not surprisingly, that Guaidó had failed to win much popular support outside the wealthy and upper-middle class. But Guaidó couldn’t even win support from many of them. The day before rival rallies February 2, Henrique Capriles, the leader of a less extreme right-wing faction, gave an interview to the AFP that appeared in Últimas Noticias (2/1/19), the most widely read newspaper in Venezuela. In it, Capriles said that most of the opposition had not supported Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president. That may explain the surprisingly weak turnout at Guaidó’s demonstration, held in the wealthiest district of Caracas, and obviously outshone by the pro-government demonstration on the city’s main boulevard.

The New York Times did not show pictures of that pro-government demonstration, limiting itself to a claim by unnamed “experts” (2/2/19) that the pro-government demonstration was smaller than the anti-government one.

Readers can look at the photos of the rival demonstrations and judge for themselves. Both groups did their best to pull out their faithful, knowing how much is riding on a show of popular support. The stridently right-wing opposition paper El Nacional (2/3/19) carried a photo of the right-wing opposition demonstration:

If that was the best photo it could find, it was remarkably unimpressive compared to the photos in the left-wing papers CCS (2/2/19)….

…and Correo del Orinoco  (2/3/19), which were only too happy to publish pictures of the pro-government event:

Unlikely Humanitarian

A huge anti-government demonstration was supposed to make possible a coup d’état, a maneuver the CIA has used repeatedly—in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964 and many more, straight through to Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2015. The turnout at the Trump administration’s demonstration was disappointing, and the coup d’état never occurred. The result is that Trump has expressed a sudden interest in getting food and medicine to Venezuelans (FAIR.org, 2/9/19).

Trump, who let thousands die in Puerto Rico and put small children in cages on the Mexican border, seems to be an unlikely champion of humanitarian aid to Latin Americans, but the corporate media have straight-facedly pretended to believe it.

Most have suppressed reports that the Red Cross and the UN are providing aid to Venezuela in cooperation with the Venezuelan government, and have protested against US “aid” that is obviously a political and military ploy.

The corporate media have continued to peddle the Trump-as-humanitarian-champion line, even after it was revealed that a US plane was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela, and even after Trump named Iran/Contra criminal Elliott Abrams to head up Venezuelan operations. Abrams was in charge of the State Department Human Rights Office during the 1980s, when weapons to US-backed terrorists in Nicaragua were shipped in US planes disguised as “humanitarian” relief.

Canada’s CBC (2/15/19) at least had the honesty to acknowledge that it had been had in swallowing a lie from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Venezuelan government had blockaded a bridge between Colombia and Venezuela to prevent aid shipments. The newly built bridge has not yet been opened: it has never been open, apparently because of hostile relations between the two countries, but the non-opening long predates the US government’s alleged food and medicine shipments.

The absurdity of $20 million of US food and medicine aid to a country of 30 million, when US authorities have stolen $30 billion from Venezuela in oil revenue, and take $30 million every day, needs no comment.

‘Failed State’

The campaign of disinformation and outright lies about Venezuela was kicked off in 2016 by the Financial Times. Ironically, it chose the 14th anniversary of the 2002 failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez—April 11, 2016—to claim that Venezuela was in “chaos” and “civil war,” and that Venezuela was a “failed state.” As with the Time and CNBC reports, the Financial Times reporter was not in Venezuela, and there was no evidence in the report that he had ever been there.

I asked right-wing friends in Venezuela whether they agreed with the Financial Times claims. “Well, no, of course not,” said one, stating the obvious, “there is no chaos and no civil war. But Venezuela is a failed state, since it has not been able to provide for all the medical needs of the population.” By that standard, every country in Latin America is a failed state, and obviously the United States too.

The New York Times has run stories (5/15/16, 10/1/16) claiming that conditions in Venezuelan hospitals are horrendous. The reports enraged Colombians in New York, who have noted that a patient can die on the doorstep of a Colombian public hospital if the patient has no insurance. In Venezuela, in contrast, patients are treated for free.

One Colombian resident in New York said that his mother had recently returned to Bogotá after several years in the United States, and had not had time to obtain medical insurance. She fell ill, and went to a public hospital. The hospital left her in the waiting room for four hours, then sent her to a second hospital. The second hospital did the same, leaving her for four hours and then sending her to a third hospital. The third hospital was preparing to send her to a fourth when she protested that she was bleeding internally and was feeling weak.

“I’m sorry, Señora, if you don’t have medical insurance, no public hospital in this country will look at you,” said the woman at the desk. “Your only hope is to go to a private hospital, but be prepared to pay a great deal of money up front.” Luckily, she had a wealthy friend, who took her to a private hospital, and paid a great deal of money up front.

Such conditions in Colombia and other neoliberal states go unmentioned in the US corporate media, which have treated the Colombian government, long a right-wing murder-squad regime, as a US ally (Extra!, 2/09).

Well, OK, but are the reports of conditions in Venezuelan hospitals true or grossly exaggerated? “They are much better than they were ten years ago,” said a friend who works in a Caracas hospital. In fact, he said, ten years before, the hospital where he worked did not exist, and new hospitals are now being opened. One was dedicated recently in the town of El Furrial, and another was opened in El Vigia, as reported by the centrist newspaper Últimas Noticias (3/3/17, 4/27/18).  The government has also greatly expanded others, like a burn center in Caracas and three new operating rooms at the hospital in Villa Cura.

Meanwhile, the government is inaugurating a new high-speed train line, The Dream of Hugo Chávez, in March (Correo del Orinoco, 2/6/19). Since the US media have never allowed reporting on any accomplishments in the years since  Chávez took office in 1999, but only any alleged, exaggerated or, as noted, completely invented shortcomings, readers have to consult an alternative history. Here is one offered by a Venezuelan on YouTube (3/31/11): “Por Culpa de Chávez” (“It’s Chávez’s Fault”). Depicting new hospitals, transit lines, housing, factories and so on built under Chavismo, it might help many understand why the Maduro government continues to enjoy such strong backing from so many people.

Economic Warfare

This is not to minimize Venezuela’s problems. The country was hit, like other oil-producing countries, and as it was in the 1980s and ’90s, by the collapse of oil prices. That failed to bring down the government, so now the Trump administration has created an artificial crisis by using extreme economic warfare to deprive the country of foreign exchange needed to import basic necessities.  The Trump measures seem designed to prevent any economic recovery.

Like any country at war (and the Trump administration has placed Venezuela under wartime conditions, and is threatening immediate invasion), there have been shortages, and products that can mostly be found on the black market. This should surprise no one: During World War II in the US, a cornucopia of a country not seriously threatened with invasion, there was strict rationing of products like sugar, coffee and rubber.

The Venezuelan government has made food, medicine and pharmaceuticals available at extremely low prices, but much of the merchandise has made its way to the black market, or over the border to Colombia, depriving Venezuelans of supplies and ruining Colombian producers. The government recently abandoned some of the heavy price subsidies, which resulted initially in higher prices. Over the past few weeks, prices have been coming down as supplies stayed in Venezuela, especially as the government gained greater control over the Colombian border to prevent smuggling.

There has never been a serious discussion of any of this in the US corporate media, much less any discussion of the campaign of lies or the Trump administration warfare. There has been no comparison with conditions in the 1980s and ’90s, when Venezuela’s neoliberal government imposed IMF economic recipes, resulting in a popular rebellion, the bloody 1989 Caracazo, when wholesale government repression took the lives of hundreds (according to the government at the time) or thousands (according to government critics), and martial law took the lives of many more.

Efforts by the right-wing opposition to provoke a similar uprising, and another Caracazo that could justify a foreign “humanitarian intervention,” have failed repeatedly. So the US administration and corporate media simply resort to the most extreme lying about Latin America that has been seen since the Reagan administration wars of the 1980s.

FBI Scientist Linked Defendants to Crimes When His Lab Results Didn’t

A man stepped into a rural South Carolina bank a few days before Christmas in 2001, aimed a gun at tellers and stole $7,800 from the drawers. Witnesses couldn’t identify the robber. The surveillance video was too grainy to help investigators.

More than three years later, FBI agents narrowed the investigation to a suspect. They believed John Henry Stroman robbed the bank. But during questioning, Stroman told them the security footage instead showed his brother, Roger. How could investigators prove one brother was the robber and not the other? Agents shipped the video and pictures of both Stromans to the FBI Laboratory in July 2005.

The package went to Richard Vorder Bruegge, one of the bureau’s image examiners.

In his report, Vorder Bruegge wrote that John Henry Stroman and the robber had similar “overall shape of the face, nose, mouth, chin, and ears.” But Vorder Bruegge stopped short of declaring a match, saying the video and pictures were too low resolution for that.

Nevertheless, prosecutors said in court filings that if Vorder Bruegge took the stand, he would testify that “the photograph is of sufficient resolution to definitively state that the robber is John Henry Stroman.” The judge said the testimony would be admitted if the case went to trial. A week later, Stroman accepted a plea deal.

It wasn’t the first time, nor the last, Vorder Bruegge’s lab results said one thing and the courts were told something different. Court records and FBI Lab files show statements by prosecutors or Vorder Bruegge veered from his original conclusions in at least three cases.

Vorder Bruegge, who earned a doctorate in geology 28 years ago, came to the FBI after abandoning his hopes of becoming an astronaut. He had no crime laboratory experience, but he quickly became a force in the forensic sciences.

Now 55, he is the most prominent member of the Forensic Audio, Video and Image Analysis Unit at the FBI Lab in Quantico, Virginia. The unit’s comparisons can advance investigations by sharpening pictures and narrowing the list of suspects. But most of the image examiners’ lab work has no scientific basis proving their methods are reliable and findings are correct.

A ProPublica investigation, published in January, found that image examiners’ methods have never had a strong scientific foundation. The bureau’s use of the unit’s findings as trial evidence troubles many experts and raises anew questions about the role of the FBI Lab as a standard-setter in forensic science.

Such shortcomings could have led judges to block image analysis from criminal trials. But Vorder Bruegge single-handedly built a body of case law that has kept the FBI unit’s testimony admissible in the courts. His 22-year-old comparison of blue jeans is the legal foundation for most photo comparison methods.

The FBI Lab’s image unit had routinely used unproven techniques since the 1960s, but Vorder Bruegge embraced and expanded them, according to court records and his published articles. At times, he has given jurors baseless statistics to say the risk of error was almost zero. Studies on several methods in the past decade have found them unreliable.

Today, Vorder Bruegge is one of the nation’s most influential crime lab scientists. He serves on the Forensic Science Standards Board, which sets rules for every field, from DNA to fingerprints. He’s a co-chair organizing the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting this week in Baltimore, a gathering of thousands of crime lab professionals, researchers, lawyers and judges.

Vorder Bruegge has testified for the federal government so often, and so successfully, that a 2013 law review article referred to him as “perhaps the most ubiquitous of the United States expert witnesses.”

ProPublica requested an interview with Vorder Bruegge and sent him written questions. The FBI declined the requests and did not respond to the questions.

Vorder Bruegge has produced an extensive public record detailing and defending his practices during his 24-year career at the FBI. Image analysis typically involves scrutinizing pictures from crime scenes to determine if suspects’ faces, hands, clothes or cars match, according to court documents and published articles. Examiners base their identifications on the pattern they see along a shirt seam, the shape of an ear or a cluster of freckles.

At a conference in Seattle last year, Vorder Bruegge recounted the most common criticism he hears from defense attorneys: he’s just looking at pictures, no different than anyone else with eyesight.

Vorder Bruegge has a ready response.

“Yes, I’m just looking at this pair of images,” Vorder Bruegge said, “the same way a radiologist looks at an X-ray. Anyone in this room can look at an X-ray, just look at it. But who do you want deciding what type of treatment you are going to get as a result of examination of that radiograph? Do you want anyone in this room to determine if you have cancer, or if you just have an artifact in your image?”

Radiologists and FBI image examiners both work with pictures. The similarities end there. Radiology is exhaustively researched and its methods continually tested to make certain they are reliable. Radiologists must graduate from medical school and complete four-year residency programs before they diagnose patients.

Image examiners rarely have advanced degrees. New examiners learn how to analyze pictures by doing casework with lab veterans. Their methods remain unproven, at best.

Vorder Bruegge, however, has not only a doctorate in geology but an ease with the language and standards of science. At public events, he sounds like a progressive voice urging crime labs to improve, said Hal Stern, a University of California, Irvine, statistics professor who researches forensic science methods.

Despite that public image, Vorder Bruegge has used unproven science throughout his career.

“It’s a little disturbing, to be sure,” Stern said.

From the Cosmos to Forensics

Vorder Bruegge moved to Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1981 for his freshman year at Brown University, a couple of hours from his family’s home in Connecticut. He majored in electrical engineering and spent summers working for a data processing company.

His focus turned sharply during a planetary science course on the solar system, taught by geology professor James Head III. Over the years, Head’s lectures have inspired many Brown undergraduates to study space, “including Rich,” said Scott Murchie, who met Vorder Bruegge while both were graduate students.

Vorder Bruegge completed his bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1985, then secured a place on Head’s research team. He would study Venus’ mountain belts while earning a master’s degree and doctorate in planetary geology. He met his future wife, a fellow Venus researcher, and aspired to join the NASA space program.

Duane Bindschadler worked alongside Vorder Bruegge examining Soviet radar images of Venus’ surface. Vorder Bruegge was innovative from the start, Bindschadler said, “trying to come up with new interpretations or extract new information from them.”

The research required complex image analysis, said Murchie, now a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Vorder Bruegge was one of several impressive students working with Head in the late 1980s. (Ellen Stofan, director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, was another.)

“I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Rich,” Murchie said. “He was a young researcher with a great deal of integrity.”

Vorder Bruegge finished writing his doctoral thesis in October 1990 and went to work that same month for a NASA contractor in Washington. He was providing technical support for space missions, but he intended to make it a stepping stone. “The person whose job I took left to become an astronaut and that was actually something I was trying to do, so I thought it would be a good career move,” Vorder Bruegge said during a 2008 court hearing in which he was asked about his credentials and training.

NASA chose new astronaut classes in 1992 and 1994; Vorder Bruegge didn’t make it to the interview stage of the intensely competitive process either time.

In January 1995, he again veered onto an entirely different course, taking a position at the FBI Lab on what was then called the Special Photographic Unit. He’d examine security video rather than spacecraft images.

Vorder Bruegge’s move to the FBI surprised some of his colleagues, said Bindschadler, now a systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Scientists with kind of an academic bent, that isn’t the first place you think that people are going,” he said. “Especially if they’re in the physical sciences. I doubt the FBI employs more than one geologist.”

Vorder Bruegge’s resume shows that, even with his Ivy League degrees and image analysis experience, he started with a two-year apprenticeship under the unit’s veterans, same as any other photo examiner. But he proved his value shortly thereafter.

The U.S. Supreme Court had recently raised the standard for scientific evidence to require proof that methods are reliable. No one had tested any of the FBI Lab’s long-standing photo comparison techniques, let alone proven them trustworthy. Defense lawyers might be able to block image examiners’ testimony from trials outright.

The high court’s opinion lists several ways a method can meet the new requirement, including “peer review” — scrutiny by outside experts — and publication in a scientific journal.

In a 1996 bombing and bank robbery case in Washington state, Vorder Bruegge identified bluejeans in surveillance footage as the pair seized from a suspect. He used one of the unit’s established techniques: matching the series of light and dark spots along the seams.

Vorder Bruegge’s testimony helped convict defendants in the bombings. Then he used the case to secure something vital for his team: publication in a scientific journal. The new image examiner wrote an article describing the unit’s method of comparing bluejeans’ seams in pictures and submitted it to the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

In the article, Vorder Bruegge used technical terms — “ridge-and-valley pattern” and “planar surface” — that echoed his doctoral thesis about mountains on Venus. He included pictures showing his results, zoomed-in images of bluejeans with arrows pointing where the seams and hemlines allegedly matched.

The journal accepted Vorder Bruegge’s article and published it in spring 1999. The article repeatedly acknowledged that the technique had not been validated. Nonetheless, court records show Vorder Bruegge referenced the article in at least a dozen trials and hearings as proof that the image unit’s methods were reliable evidence.

At ProPublica’s request, several forensic scientists, statisticians and clothes manufacturing experts reviewed Vorder Bruegge’s article. They said the FBI examiner’s central claims were misleading or wrong.

Building a Legal Foundation

But in the years after the article on bluejeans identification was published, Vorder Bruegge won acclaim for his work. Newspapers ran short articles characterizing the method as a forensic science breakthrough. In interviews, Vorder Bruegge gave credit to his predecessors at the FBI. “I’m really standing on their shoulders,” he told the Chicago Tribune in June 1999, adding, “It’s exciting to find ways to show that everything around us is unique.”

The television documentary series “Forensic Files” aired an episode about the Washington state case a couple of years later. It featured Vorder Bruegge extensively, even showing him outfitted in a full-length lab coat to take pictures of bluejeans.

Over the following decade, Vorder Bruegge went on a legal winning streak. He convinced judges across the country that unproven methods were sound science.

ProPublica searched court databases and found more than a dozen criminal cases involving Vorder Bruegge’s lab work since 2000. In those cases, judges overruled each request from defense lawyers to block his testimony. The FBI did not respond to questions about Vorder Bruegge’s casework.

Courts have historically permitted evidence from the FBI Lab, sometimes without considering its accuracy. “Jurors think that if you’re a big FBI examiner you know it all,” said Alicia Carriquiry, an Iowa State University statistics professor and director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence.

Vorder Bruegge’s statements contradicted his written lab results in at least three cases, court and FBI Lab records show. His testimony in several other trials indicates he improvised techniques.

In a 2002 trial highlighted in ProPublica’s investigation of image analysis, Vorder Bruegge testified that he had identified a defendant’s plaid shirt as the shirt a robber wore to seven banks during a spree in South Florida. He told jurors only 1 in 650 billion plaid shirts would randomly match as precisely as the defendant’s shirt.

None of Vorder Bruegge’s lab reports included calculations to support the statistics he gave in court. In fact, the reports said nothing about how he reached his conclusions. And for one of the robberies, Vorder Bruegge wrote he could not conclusively match the defendant’s shirt to the robber’s. He said the opposite on the stand, according to trial transcripts.

At the time, Vorder Bruegge led a group that wrote most of the guidelines for law enforcement image analysis. It compiled a list of criminal cases in which judges ruled that examiners’ testimony was scientific evidence. Those provided the field with a kind of legal foundation, giving judges a clearer path to admitting photo comparison evidence.

The plaid shirt case, U.S. v. McKreith, was the first to win clearance for image analysis. Vorder Bruegge’s facial comparisons in the South Carolina bank robbery case, U.S. v. Stroman, is another.

In child pornography cases, prosecutors must often provide evidence that video and pictures show actual children. Such “authentication” has become part of the FBI image unit’s regular caseload. During a 2008 federal court hearing in Boston, the transcript shows Vorder Bruegge estimated a victim’s age in a picture based solely on the size of her breasts and pubic hair.

The image analysis group lists that case, U.S. v. Frabizio, as another piece of the field’s legal foundation.

In his presentations and articles, Vorder Bruegge hasn’t mentioned perhaps the most remarkable legal victory of his career. To bolster a conviction that was being challenged, Vorder Bruegge took the stand in 2010 to assail his field’s most common method and dispute his own lab results.

A jury had convicted 19-year-old Brian Avery in 1995 of participating in two armed robberies at Milwaukee convenience stores. Prosecutors built their case on witness identification and Avery’s confession during police interrogation, court records show. (Avery recanted his confession and declared his innocence thereafter.) The trial judge sentenced him to more than 20 years in prison.

Lawyers at the Wisconsin Innocence Project took up Avery’s case in 2007. They hired a video analyst to measure the robber’s height in surveillance footage. The images had been too fuzzy to use at trial. But in intervening years, software engineers had developed programs to filter and sharpen pictures and others to measure the distance between pixels.

FBI examiners have calculated criminals’ heights in pictures for decades using a collection of techniques called “photogrammetry.” Computers increasingly allowed the bureau and others to analyze low-quality images.

Avery stood 6 feet, 3 inches tall when police booked him into jail.

The innocence project’s video expert, unaware of Avery’s actual height, determined the robber was under 6 feet tall, according to court records. The defense lawyers filed a motion for a new trial.

Local prosecutors asked the FBI Lab to see if its own analysis could include Avery. Vorder Bruegge determined the robber could not have been taller than 6 feet, 2 inches, court records show. Therefore, the Lab’s own results also found Avery was at least an inch taller than the robber, which the defense team argued exonerated him.

However, Vorder Bruegge’s testimony at an appellate hearing did otherwise. He said the photogrammetry method is too imprecise to reliably rule out a suspect. “I am saying you can’t determine absolutely that it can’t be this person,” he said of Avery. “That is the bottom line of my examination.”

The bureau’s examiners have presented height measurements in court in scores of criminal cases.

Under cross-examination, Vorder Bruegge acknowledged he knew Avery’s height before starting his analysis. That height — 6 feet, 3 inches — was what prosecutors hoped Vorder Bruegge would calculate for the robber. Such information can influence how an examiner performs lab work and reaches conclusions.

More than a dozen scientists and law professors filed a brief with the Wisconsin Supreme Court urging the judges to disregard the FBI examiner’s testimony as severely biased by trial records, especially details on Avery’s height.

The state Supreme Court did not disregard Vorder Bruegge’s testimony. Rather, the judges accepted his argument that height measurements aren’t scientifically reliable enough and denied Avery a new trial.

Whitewashing Dr. King

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“King and the Other America: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality”
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“King and the Other America: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality”

A book by Sylvie Laurent

“I Have A Dream!” Those majestic words, spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, have entered the history books as the single most remarkable rhetorical flourish of modern civil rights history. Along with the other 250,000 people in attendance, I was mesmerized by King’s magnificent sermon. My presence at the march and listening to King have remained a highlight of my life. When I play the entire speech to my university classes, I still feel an enormous wave of emotion.

But King was much more than his dream. Indeed, his dream has been co-opted to the point that he and the dream have been made almost synonymous in popular culture. Every February, during Black History Month, those glorious words are repeated on television almost ad nauseam, inducing a state of reverential patriotism that obscures and distorts the genuine legacy of King.

Every major city in the United States has streets and schools named for King. Throughout the world, his image appears on stamps, picture books, and objects like cups and saucers. Prints, paintings and murals with his face adorn public buildings and private businesses. The popular King memorial in Washington, D.C., along with others throughout the nation and the world, makes no mention of past and continuing racism. They merely encourage audiences to venerate a great patriot—which indeed he was, but for reasons that millions of Americans and others can hardly imagine.

French cultural historian Sylvie Laurent, author of an intellectual and political biography of King, warns of the political manipulation of memory. This is especially tragic in the case of King, whose legacy has been so distorted that he even appears, as she notes, in a commercial for trucks. It is dismaying that one of America’s giant radical figures has become part of a semiofficial mythology that inhibits people from any understanding of his structural critique of American capitalism.

That critique is the focus of Laurent’s new book,”King and the Other America: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality.” This powerful work invites a major reconsideration of American civil rights history, the significance of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, and especially of King’s deeply egalitarian socialist vision of society. The book transcends and negates traditional notions that King was a civil rights leader committed exclusively to the liberation of his African-American people. Without ever abandoning that objective, he expanded his range of activism in pursuing a vision of a fair and just society for all oppressed people.

Laurent’s book above all restores King to his rightful and still profoundly under-recognized place in the history of militant African-American liberation figures. Contrary to the misleading image of King as a benign apostle of peace and love, the author shows him to be a militant in the tradition of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and others who combined the struggle against American racism with a deeper commitment to political, economic and social change.

A key feature of this book attempts to locate exactly where King falls within the spectrum of American and international radicalism. He was not an orthodox Marxist, but as the text makes clear, he was influenced by a Marxist worldview—a vision dramatically contrary to the American political manipulation of memory that has falsely made him into a patriotic and commercial icon.

Click hereto read long excerpts from “King and the Other America” at Google Books.

Locating King’s political ideology precisely is actually a complex task. He developed his political and social vision over the years from multiple sources. A committed leftist radical, especially near the end of his tragically short life, he was nevertheless always a committed Christian and a devoted, irrevocable adherent to Gandhi’s vision of nonviolence. He drew much of his profound commitment to racial and social justice from the teachings of Reinhold Niebuhr and from the broader tradition of the Christian social gospel. “King and the Other America” addresses the intricate features of his political and moral vision at great length. Laurent’s treatment of various figures and institutions that influenced King is highly detailed and often fascinating, but most general readers may find themselves anxious to move on to the Poor People’s Campaign and to King’s prescient vision of a multicultural, multiracial coalition to seek a radical redistribution of wealth and power in America.

The definitive repudiation of King as the “nice, peaceful civil rights leader,” venerated while used to underpin and actually advance American repressive political, racial and commercial interests, is the most valuable and enduring contribution of the book. Laurent draws on King’s own writings to illuminate his radical critique of America’s systemic flaws and its fundamental economic inequalities that affected blacks, other communities of color and millions of poor whites.

Laurent’s selections are especially useful. She repeatedly cites King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and his book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” to illustrate his deeper radicalism. These sources have been accessible to the public for many decades, and I have regularly recommended them to my students for many years. Tellingly, Laurent also reprints a paragraph from King’s historic speech at Riverside Church in New York, publicly condemning the Vietnam War. King was the first major civil rights leader to oppose that grotesque war, another sign of his far more radical political vision. In November, I assigned the entire speech to my UCLA class of 150 students; not one had heard it, although one or two students had heard ofit.

To underscore his radicalism, King deliberately eschewed electoral politics and collaboration with (and inevitable co-optation into) the Democratic Party. Quoting from “Where Do We Go From Here,” Laurent shows King’s uncompromising view of protest and street agitation over elections and party politics:

Everything Negroes need… will not magically materialize from the use of the ballot. . . . In the future we must become intensive political activists. . . . Most of us are too poor to have adequate economic power, and many of us are too rejected by the culture to be part of any tradition of power. Necessity will draw us toward the power inherent in the creative use of politics.

That vision resonates in the early 21st century. King’s view reveals the classic demarcation between those who choose (primarily) to work within the established capitalist system and those who oppose it (primarily) on the streets. That, as much as anything else, revealed his most fundamental values as a political dissenter.

Much of this powerful volume is devoted to the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Laurent brings this movement centrally back into the history of 20th century American social protest. As she notes, it was to be the culmination of King’s social thought and his unyielding commitment to a truly egalitarian society.

King’s support in 1968 for the Memphis sanitation workers, in their struggle for better pay and working conditions, reflected his clear understanding of the intersection of race, class and labor. Memphis garbage collectors were exclusively black. They worked in conditions of extreme neglect and abuse. He saw the Memphis struggle as a necessary steppingstone to the campaign in Washington.

His horrific assassination on April 4, 1968, in the midst of his efforts in Memphis ended his leadership in the Poor People’s Campaign. Laurent perceptively reports that his death both crippled and reinvigorated the movement for social change. The convergence of race, class and labor activism led to the Poor People’s Campaign gathering in D.C., featuring a class-based Economic Bill of Rights calling for a national right to an adequate income, and, above all, the right not to be poor as a humanright. It was, in short, a plan comparable to the 1948 postwar Marshall Plan, a response to the glaringly unequal distribution of wealth and power in the United States.

It is impossible to know what the Poor People’s Campaign would have been had King lived to lead it. When people converged on Washington, the main leadership came from King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Ralph Abernathy, King’s longtime close associate, succeeded to the SCLC presidency and led the campaign. Other notable SCLC figures included James Bevel, Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, Walter Fauntroy, and Jesse Jackson, who was “elected” mayor of the Resurrection City, the name and site of the campaign’s encampment on the Washington Mall.

These men are well known in civil rights and contemporary American political history. The campaign also included representatives from the American Indian community, from the Puerto Rican community, from white coal miners in Kentucky and West Virginia as well as Myles Horton from the legendary Highlander Folk School, and from the Chicano community. Among the latter were Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and Reies Tijerina. These two men played huge roles in the Chicano movement, but have been largely ignored in standard U.S. history texts.

The Poor People’s Campaign also attracted major endorsements from religious, labor, and various civil rights and social justice organizations. As this volume reveals, Resurrection City had substantial personality conflicts among leaders and residents, intercoalition squabbling, racial tension, tactical disagreements, and general demoralization resulting from problematic living conditions, including incessant rain and mud. There were also far too many unsuccessful attempts to meet with members of Congress to present the Resurrection City residents’ demands. Eventually, on June 24, 1968, the police arrived, cleared the camp, and arrested the remaining demonstrators, including Reverend Abernathy.

These difficulties are chronicled in sometimes excruciating detail; only highly specialized social protest historians and others with compelling interests in that specific movement will care to recall the painful details of its demise. The most enduring takeaway is the legacy of King’s vision of a multiracial coalition to attack poverty and inequality at their structural foundations. That vision, above all, is why he must be seen now, more than a half century after his death, as a genuine revolutionary, not a smiling black face to adorn banners and posters for “feel good” parades and marches while millions of Americans merely have another vacation day each January.

Laurent ends her book on a hopeful note, calling attention to contemporary groups and individuals in the United States who are working for King’s vision of a redistributive state that works against racism, militarism, sexism, and economic injustice. She identifies Black Lives Matter, supporters of Bernie Sanders, Moral Mondays’ participants under the leadership of Rev. William Barber, and others.  She is absolutely correct in demanding that we resume the unfinished work of the Poor People’s Campaign. These are perilous times. Donald Trump did not create American oligarchy and fascism, but he has abetted both. Women, LGBTQ activists, people from racial and ethnic minorities, environmentalists, progressive politicians, and all people concerned about a society in which all people can live decent and dignified lives must mobilize rapidly to secure the genuine legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. This important book encourages us in that direction. American democracy and the entire planet are at stake.

 

After Decades of Described Abuse, Time Is Up for R. Kelly

Pop singer R. Kelly has been accused of calculated sexual abuse against African-American women and girls for decades while also living the life of a celebrity. A bombshell report in 2017 included details from former members of his inner circle who described his “cult,” in which he keeps women isolated from loved ones and forces them to ask permission to use the bathroom or eat.

A Cook County, Ill., grand jury on Friday indicted Kelly, charging him with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse. The charges involve incidents that took place from 1998 to 2010 with four people, three of whom were underage at the time, said Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx, who had previously called on accusers to come forward. Kelly, who denies the allegations, turned himself in to Chicago police Friday night. Meanwhile, federal and local officials are investigating a range of other alleged crimes.

In multiple accounts, including the six-part Lifetime docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly,” witnesses describe a complex network of friends and employees who have enabled Kelly to carry out his abuse without consequences. Some accusers believe that police complicity and Kelly’s tampering with the legal system allowed him to continue his abuse for so long.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s maya finoh and jasmine Sankofa write that the Kelly case is an example of the way the legal system has failed black women, girls and nonbinary people: “Because black women and girls have historically been dehumanized, considered unrapeable, and left without legal recourse, they become easier targets for abuse and are more reluctant to come forward.”

R. Kelly's arrest is the culmination of DECADES of work by black women activists, and the brave victims, who have been demanding justice.

Sending love and light to Kelly's victims. No matter what happens, we stand with you.

— Britni Danielle (@BritniDWrites) February 22, 2019

“Surviving R. Kelly” executive producer dream hampton said she had seen victims criticized for not seeking help from the police:

“I really didn’t know until I started reading these tweets directed at me and some of the survivors that we had some fantasy about there being some vice squad dedicated to kind of busting down doors for black girls and to save black girls.

We also have testimony … about the Chicago Police Department giving R. Kelly a heads up when one of the parents, for instance, had convinced the police to do a wellness check on their daughter. At this point, she was over 18. They couldn’t really make a claim, but they begged the police to at least check on their daughter and make sure that she was OK.

Someone in the Chicago Police Department—likely someone who worked security on their off-duty hours—called him, and told him it was happening. And they got the studio ready and got the girls out of the studio before the police arrived.”

In 2002, Kelly was indicted on 21 child pornography charges related to a video that allegedly shows him abusing a minor. He was acquitted in 2008. Attorney Michael Avenatti, who represents six clients who accused Kelly, said he has evidence that Kelly’s team threatened and paid off witnesses to “rig” the child pornography trial. Avenatti also said he has video shot in approximately 1999 that shows Kelly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

“He should never walk free another day in his life as a result of the over two decades of abuse that he dished out and participated in time and time again,” Avenatti said Friday.

Tim Savage, who believes Kelly is holding his 23-year-old daughter, Joycelyn, against her will, said that he has been waiting for the arrest. “I’d like them to be ringing that bell every hour on the hour, so I know my daughter is safe, until they finally arrest him,” he said. “It’s long past time to get this done already, and I can’t understand, for the life of me, what the hell they’re waiting for.”

Lifetime’s hampton said that many people interviewed in her documentary wanted Kelly to get help and stop hurting people. “I think that social death is a real thing and a possible, just thing,” she said. “So my hope is that we truly turn away from him. My wish was that it would’ve been 15 years ago.”

As for Kelly, “he is extraordinarily disappointed and depressed,” his attorney, Steve Greenberg, told The Associated Press. “He is shell-shocked by this.”

Trump Sets Up Abortion Obstacles, Blocking Funds Over Referrals

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on Friday set up new obstacles for women seeking abortions, barring taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from making abortion referrals. The new policy is certain to be challenged in court.

The final rule released Friday by the Health and Human Services Department also would prohibit federally funded family planning clinics from being housed in the same locations as abortion providers, and require stricter financial separation.

Clinic staff would still be permitted to discuss abortion with clients, along with other options. However, that would no longer be required.

The move, decried by women’s groups and praised by religious conservatives, is the latest in a series of Trump administration efforts to remake government policy on reproductive health. But it could be some time before women served by the federal family program feel the full impact.

Women’s groups, organizations representing the clinics, and Democratic-led states are expected to sue to block the policy from going into effect. Administration officials told abortion opponents on a call Friday that they expect legal action, according to a participant.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, but federal laws prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman.

Planned Parenthood, whose affiliates are major providers of family planning services as well as abortions, said the administration is trying to impose a “gag rule,” and launched a full campaign to block it. Congressional supporters of the organization said it receives about $60 million a year from the federal program.

“I want our patients to know this — we will fight through every avenue so this illegal, unethical rule never goes into effect,” said Planned Parenthood’s president, Dr. Leana Wen.

She said the new policy would prevent doctors from referring women for abortions “even if your life depended on it.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared: “Republicans must end their relentless assault on women’s health care and rights.”

It’s a gag rule “for all intents and purposes,” said the American Medical Association.

“The patient-physician relationship relies on trust, open conversation and informed decision making and the government should not be telling physicians what they can and cannot say to their patients,” the AMA said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood and other groups representing the clinics say the new requirements for physical separation of facilities would be costly and all but impossible to fulfill. Planned Parenthood said the administration is making another attempt to drive it out of business, after efforts to deny funding failed in Congress.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway scoffed at that argument. “They’ve been saying for years they don’t co-mingle their funds, so this should be easy for them,” she told reporters at the White House. “Physically separate and financially separate.”

Religious conservatives see the administration’s action as a way to break down what they call an indirect taxpayer subsidy of abortion providers.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called it “a major step toward the ultimate goal of ending taxpayers’ forced partnership with the abortion industry.”

The regulation was published Friday on an HHS website. It’s not official until it appears in the Federal Register and the department said there could be “minor editorial changes.” A department official confirmed it was the final version.

Known as Title X, the family-planning program serves about 4 million women annually through independent clinics, many operated by Planned Parenthood affiliates, which serve about 40 percent of all clients. The grant program costs taxpayers about $260 million a year.

Leaders of health associations representing black and Latino health care providers and patients joined Wen at a news briefing to decry the new rule They said women from their communities make up more than half the beneficiaries of Title X grants and would be disproportionately harmed by the changes.

But abortion opponent Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said the administration rule “does not cut family planning funding by a single dime, and instead directs tax dollars to entities that provide health care to women but do not perform abortions.” Her organization is a political advocacy group that backs anti-abortion candidates.

An umbrella group that represents family planning clinics broadly, not only those affiliated with Planned Parenthood, said the administration was acting based on ideology and not in the best interests of patients.

“This rule intentionally strikes at the heart of the patient-provider relationship, inserting political ideology into a family planning visit, which will frustrate and ultimately discourage patients from seeking the health care they need,” Clare Coleman, head of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, said in a statement.

Although abortion remains politically divisive, the U.S. abortion rate has dropped significantly, from about 29 per 1,000 women of reproductive age in 1980 to about 15 in 2014. Better contraception, fewer unintended pregnancies and state restrictions may have played a role, according to a recent scientific report. Polls show most Americans do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.

The Trump administration’s policy echoes a Reagan-era regulation that barred clinics from even discussing abortion with women. It never went into effect as written, although the Supreme Court ruled it was an appropriate use of executive power.

The policy was rescinded under President Bill Clinton, and a new rule took effect requiring “nondirective” counseling to include a full range of options for women.

The Trump administration is now rolling back the Clinton requirement that abortion be discussed as an option along with prenatal care and adoption.

___

Crary reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

A Call to Halt an Illegal Invasion of Venezuela

It seems like every time I pick up a newspaper or go online, our country is starting another war. As a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I am consumed by the situation in Venezuela, which is becoming more and more concerning.

I’m not a war correspondent, and I don’t have a Ph.D. in political science. But I have seen these conflicts firsthand, and I have felt the effects. Like many in this country, I have lost family members and friends in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t want anyone else to have to experience that. Unfortunately, the inertia over regime change in Venezuela bears a striking resemblance to what happened in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As one of the soldiers who illegally invaded Iraq, this scares me. I know an illegal coup/invasion when I see one. I knew it before being deployed to Iraq, but it became even more clear as we wandered around Baghdad looking for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

As was the case in Iraq, there are no legal or moral grounds to intervene in the affairs of Venezuela and no international laws to support such an intervention. There is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions meddling in the elections of a foreign country, and nothing in the Venezuelan constitution that legitimizes self-appointed presidents. Venezuela is not a threat. Venezuela is not firing missiles at the United States, attacking our allies or invading the U.S. with troops.

Sadly, the propaganda spewing from the mouths of American politicians and pundits is as predictable as it is hollow: “Venezuela is socialist.” “Their economy is in shambles.” “Their government is corrupt.” “There is food instability.” “There is a humanitarian crisis.”

What’s missing in the attempt to justify the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro is recognition of the fact that many nations around the world are, to some degree, socialist, have economic challenges and battle corruption. There are humanitarian crises all over the globe. Are all those governments somehow illegitimate and therefore candidates for a U.S.-orchestrated coup?

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by Kevin Tillman

To be clear, this is not an endorsement of Maduro, any more than I endorsed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (nor am I comparing the two). This is about our leaders thinking they have the right to interfere in the affairs of any country they choose. Not only is regime change illegal and morally wrong, it has proved to be disastrous.

Yes, Venezuela has problems. Many appear to be self-induced; others are circumstantial, like the massive drop in oil prices, which, combined with harsh, U.S.-led economic sanctions, is particularly devastating, considering that more than 90 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings come from oil revenue. Venezuelans also are dealing with a politically divided country, a situation to which I believe everyone in the U.S. can relate. However, it’s the external problems that I find most concerning. It is pretty clear from where I sit that the U.S. is waging illegal economic warfare against the people of Venezuela. From the sanctions to the freezing of assets to the blocking of Venezuela from the international financial system, this is what appears to be driving that country over the edge. So as our leaders publicly lament this “humanitarian crisis,” behind the scenes, that is exactly what they want.

Why this coup is taking place is transparent. Some of our government officials are actually telling us. Our leaders, yet again, feel entitled to another country’s resources. As was the case in Iraq, Venezuela’s oil reserves are not controlled by U.S. corporations or a pliant government. They are owned by the people of Venezuela. It is theirs and nobody else’s. This means the oil cannot be looted by Western corporations or controlled for political purposes by outside forces.

Unless, of course, a coup takes place and the oil is taken by force. That is what it appears our leaders are going to do. In all fairness to members of the Trump administration, this belligerence toward Venezuela did not start with them. It is merely an extension of previous administrations’ policies. If Venezuelans believe Maduro has mismanaged their nation’s most valuable asset, it is their right to seek change, but this is not a right enjoyed by Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi or Elliott Abrams.

Like Iraq, our interference is not about liberating the Venezuelan people from some tyrannical regime. Nor is it about saving them from starvation. So please don’t allow our leaders to use the goodness inside of you as a weapon for your own manipulation. The goal is to pillage and plunder a vulnerable nation. It is evident that our representative leaders don’t care about the health and welfare of the Venezuelan people any more than they cared about the Iraqi people.

If they cared, they would consult with the Venezuelan government and ask how the U.S. might provide unconditional assistance. If they cared, they would let Venezuelans sort out their own problems democratically. If they cared about democracy, sovereignty, individual rights, human rights and the rule of law, then they would keep their hands off of Venezuela.

Tomorrow is a critical day for Venezuela. The U.S. and the coup leaders plan to illegally bring $30 million worth of “aid” into Venezuela, which has been explicitly rejected by the Venezuelan government. The aid is being refused because the Venezuelan government understands that its humanitarian crisis is in part being caused by the same nation offering aid in bad faith. What makes the offer a sick joke is that Venezuela is estimated to be losing $30 million a day in oil revenue. This fraudulent olive branch is so transparently a political weapon that even the Red Cross and the United Nations are crying foul.

No matter how ridiculous the coordinated event sounds, history has shown that these gambits for power can and do work. The Trump administration and Venezuelan coup leaders are hoping for a spark, a catalyst, a skirmish to justify a U.S. invasion—anything that will create just enough chaos to open up this window of opportunity. It is reminiscent of the U.S. propaganda surrounding Saddam and weapons inspectors. It is meant to be an inciting event.

The heartbreaking reality is that if this is successful, Venezuelans could be killed, wounded, psychologically damaged or displaced at a level commensurate to what happened to the Iraqis. The fabric of Venezuelan society could be destroyed for generations. And yet again, U.S. soldiers and Marines will be shipped out for an illegal war to kill or be killed, wound or be wounded, and suffer or cause all kinds of trauma—a war the Venezuelans and our men and women in uniform could be fighting for years. I don’t want this to happen.

No country should have to suffer this fate. No soldier should have to participate in such an operation. No nation should ever do such a thing. And no democracy should allow its leaders to commit such crimes in our name.

I beg our elected representatives and anyone with authority inside our government to halt this strategy of aggression and put an end to what threatens to become a new cycle of violence.

 

 

California Parents of 13 Plead Guilty to Torture and Abuse

RIVERSIDE, Calif.—A California couple pleaded guilty Friday to torture and years of abuse that included shackling some of their 13 children to beds and starving them to the point they stopped growing.

David and Louise Turpin will spend at least 25 years in prison after entering the pleas in Riverside County Superior Court to 14 counts that included cruelty toward all but their toddler daughter, and imprisoning the children in a house that appeared neatly kept outside, but festered with filth and reeked of human waste.

The couple was arrested in January 2018 after their 17-year-old daughter escaped from the home and called 911 in the city of Perris, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.

The children, ages 2 to 29 at the time, were severely underweight and hadn’t bathed for months. They described being beaten, starved and put in cages.

Louise Turpin’s face turned red and she began crying and dabbed her eyes with a tissue during the hearing while her husband appeared stoic.

The two will be sentenced to up to life in prison April 19, Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin said.

“The defendants ruined lives so I think it’s just and fair that the sentence be equivalent to first-degree murder,” Hestrin said.

The Turpins had led a mostly solitary, but seemingly unremarkable life until the teenager jumped from a window and called for help.

David Turpin, 57, had worked as an engineer for both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Louise Turpin, 50, was listed as a housewife in a 2011 bankruptcy filing.

The family led a nocturnal existence, which kept them largely out of sight from neighbors in a middle-class subdivision.

In a recording of the 911 call, the girl who escaped said two younger sisters and a brother were chained to beds and she couldn’t take it.

“They will wake up at night and they will start crying and they wanted me to call somebody,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “I wanted to call y’all so y’all can help my sisters.”

Police who responded discovered a house of horrors.

Two girls had been hastily released from their chains but a 22-year-old son remained shackled. The brother told police he and his siblings had been suspected of stealing food and being disrespectful.

The intervention marked a new start for the children who lived in such isolation that the teen who called for help didn’t know her address.

Although the parents filed reports with the state that they home-schooled their children, the oldest child only completed the third grade. Some children suffered from severe malnutrition, stunted growth and muscle wasting, including an 11-year-old girl who had arms the size of an infant.

Children were deprived of food and things other kids take for granted, such as toys and games, and allowed to do little except write in journals, authorities said.

The kids were rarely allowed outside but went out on Halloween and traveled as a family to Disneyland and Las Vegas. They spent most of their time locked in their rooms except for limited meals or using the bathroom.

All the children were hospitalized immediately after they were discovered and have not spoken publicly. Riverside County authorities then obtained temporary conservatorship over the adults.

The social services agency tasked with overseeing the younger children declined to comment on their cases.

The adult children are all living together, attending school and getting healthy while leading lives similar to their peers, said Jack Osborn, an attorney who represents the seven adult children. He said they value their privacy.

“They are relieved they can now move forward with their lives and not have the specter of a trial hanging over their heads and all the stress that would have caused,” Osborn said.

The guilty pleas could help with the challenges the children face, especially since many abuse survivors struggle with feelings of self-doubt, said Jessica Borelli, a clinical psychologist and professor at University of California, Irvine.

“It is a pretty clear affirmation of how they were mistreated,” Borelli said. “If there is any part of them that needs validation that how they were treated was wrong and was abuse, this is it.”

The guilty pleas were important to spare the children from testifying, though they will be allowed to speak at the sentencing if they choose, said Hestrin, who was impressed with their resiliency.

“I was very taken by their optimism, by their hope for the future,” Hestrin said. “They have a zest for life and huge smiles and I am optimistic for them and I think that’s how they feel about their future.”

___

Associated Press reporters John Antczak and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.