Chris Hedges's Blog, page 489

Schools Need Resources, Not ‘School Resource Officers’

After a school year marred by shootings, districts across the country have responded this year with calls for more “school resource officers” in classrooms. As a result, many students are returning to schools that feel more like prisons — and in fact form a quick pipeline to real prisons.

School resource officers, or SROs, are armed law enforcement officers who police hallways and classrooms. They often arrest students for minor disciplinary issues, as a new Institute for Policy Studies report called Students Under Siege explains. These officers are part of the larger school-to-prison pipeline that pushes students out of school and behind bars.

The very students SROs are supposed to protect are often the ones most harmed by them. In addition to referring kids to the juvenile justice system, SROs have been repeatedly filmed violently mistreating black and brown girls in particular.

That’s why many students say SROs aren’t the answer to school shootings.

At the March for Our Lives, Edna Chavez, a student from Los Angeles, spoke out against adding more SROs: “Instead of making black and brown students feel safe,” she complained, “they continue to profile and criminalize us.”

Chavez called for a different approach. “We should have a department specializing in restorative justice,” she said. “We need to tackle the root causes of the issues we face, and come to an understanding on how to resolve them.”

Restorative justice (or RJ) treats incidents in which people are harmed (like, say, school fights) as requiring healing rather than punishment. It focuses on the actual harm that occurred and the need for healing, rather than on the breaking of a rule.

When an incident arises, the parties come together for a restorative circle that includes students, staff, community members, and a restorative justice practitioner. They address the harms together and try to arrive at a solution.

A growing number of school districts nationwide, from Oakland, California to Washington, D.C., are implementing these practices.

When there’s a conflict, participants meet to discuss the circumstances, identify the support they need, and consent to a healing process. They talk until they arrive at a mutual understanding of why the harm occurred and agree on steps toward addressing it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Ta-Biti Gibson, a restorative justice coordinator in Oakland, told NPR how restorative justice changes the way students approach conflict in his school: “Instead of throwing a punch, they’re asking for a circle, they’re backing off and asking to mediate it peacefully with words.”

When two students got into a fight at Gibson’s school, the students “circled up” and agreed to write and put up anti-bullying posters, participate in after-school service, and do joint morning announcements with tips on how students can get along better.

At the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., this restorative process is led by the students themselves.

By using a restorative approach, the students aren’t only held accountable for their actions — they get an opportunity to contribute to a safer and more inclusive school community. This opportunity is missed when SROs get involved.

Resource officers are a resource only by name. What would it look like if our schools were actually resourced?

In a well-resourced school, students are safe because staff can invest in their well-being. “Accountability” isn’t separated from a student’s ability to heal, thrive, and uplift the whole community. And students don’t wind up in jail or with a record for routine school incidents.

One SRO can cost up to $97,000. Instead of hiring officers that see students as criminals, schools can use that money for real school resources — mental health workers and restorative justice practitioners, to name a few — who build students up rather than push them out.

Neo-Nazis, Counterdemonstrators Rally in Swedish Capital

STOCKHOLM—More than 200 supporters of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement staged a rally in the Swedish capital Saturday, chanting slogans and waving the group’s green-and-white flags.

A six-hour rally was approved by Swedish police, who deployed a strong security presence around Stockholm’s Kungsholmstorg Square. But after just a few hours, the crowds wilted and a march was canceled.

Police had warned of potential disturbances across the city but no violence was seen. Local media reported that a counter-rally drew about 200 people.

The neo-Nazi group is anti-European Union, anti-gay and anti-immigration. The rally took place ahead of Sweden’s Sept. 9 general election, in which immigration is a key issue.

The neo-Nazi march was among dozens of events held across Stockholm on Saturday, including an animal rights’ march that drew 500 people.

Sen. John McCain Dies at 81

Truthdig update: President Trump, who once criticized John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War, on Friday expressed his “deepest sympathies and respect” to the family of the Arizona senator, who died earlier in the day. According to The Associated Press, a Twitter statement by the president said “hearts and prayers” are with the survivors of the onetime presidential candidate, and first lady Melania Trump voiced thanks for the service to the nation performed by McCain, a former member of the U.S. House and Navy lieutenant commander.

Tributes were made late Friday also by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.

McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.

An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.

After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.

The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.

Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.

Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”

By the time McCain cast his vote against the GOP health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds. Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”

By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment. His vote to kill the GOP’s years-long Obamacare repeal drive — an issue McCain himself had campaigned on — came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.

In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona. He opposed the president’s nominee for CIA director because of her past role in overseeing torture, scolded Trump for alienating U.S. allies at an international summit, labeled the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “an affront to the decency of the American people” and denounced the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki as a “tragic mistake” in which the president put on “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

On Aug. 13, Trump signed into law a $716 billion defense policy bill named in honor of the senator. Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act in a ceremony at a military base in New York — without one mention of McCain.

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panana Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military.

He followed his father and grandfather, the Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. A predilection for what McCain described as “quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country’s uniform” was encoded in his family DNA.

On October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.

Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide. But he also later wrote that his captors had spared him the worst of the abuse inflicted on POWs because his father was a famous admiral. “I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival,” he wrote in one of his books.

When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.

In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”

Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress. And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance.

Throughout, McCain played to the bleachers, shouting obscenities at guards to bolster the spirits of fellow captives. Appointed by the POWs to act as camp entertainment officer, chaplain and communications chief, McCain imparted comic relief, literary tutorials, news of the day, even religious sustenance.

Bud Day, a former cellmate and Medal of Honor winner, said McCain’s POW experience “took some great iron and turned him into steel.”

McCain returned home from his years as a POW on crutches and never regained full mobility in his arms and leg.

He once said he’d “never known a prisoner of war who felt he could fully explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.” Still he described the time as formative and “a bit of a turning point in me appreciating the value of serving a cause greater than your self-interest.”

But it did not tame his wild side, and his first marriage, to Carol Shepp, was a casualty of what he called “my greatest moral failing.” The marriage to Shepp, who had been in a crippling car accident while McCain was imprisoned, ended amiably. McCain admitted the breakup was caused by “my own selfishness and immaturity.”

One month after his divorce, McCain in 1981 married Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

In one day, McCain signed his Navy discharge papers and flew west with his new wife to a new life. By 1982, he’d been elected to the House and four years later to an open Senate seat. He and Cindy had four children, to add to three from his first marriage. Their youngest was adopted from Bangladesh.

McCain cultivated a conservative voting record and a reputation as a tightwad with taxpayer dollars. But just months into his Senate career, he made what he called “the worst mistake” of his life. He participated in two meetings with bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud.

As the industry collapsed, McCain was tagged as one of the Keating Five — senators who, to varying degrees, were accused of trying to get regulators to ease up on Keating. McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee for “poor judgment.”

To have his honor questioned, he said, was in some ways worse than the torture he endured in Vietnam.

In the 1990s, McCain shouldered another wrenching issue, the long effort to account for American soldiers still missing from the war and to normalize relations with Vietnam.

“People don’t remember how ugly the POW-MIA issue was,” former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam veteran, later recalled in crediting McCain for standing up to significant opposition. “I heard people scream in his face, holding him responsible for the deaths of POWs.”

Over three decades in the Senate, McCain became a standard-bearer for reforming campaign donations. He denounced pork-barrel spending for legislators’ pet projects and cultivated a reputation as a deficit hawk and an independent voice. His experience as a POW made him a leading voice against the use of torture. He achieved his biggest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats.

But faced with a tough GOP challenge for his Senate seat in 2010, McCain disowned chapters in his past and turned to the right on a number of hot-button issues, including gays in the military and climate change. And when the Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the campaign finance restrictions that he’d work so hard to enact, McCain seemed resigned.

“It is what it is,” he said.

After surviving that election, though, McCain took on conservatives in his party over the federal debt and Democrats over foreign policy. McCain never softened on his opposition to the U.S. use of torture, even in the recalibrations of the post-9/11 world. When the Senate in 2014 released a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 attacks, McCain said the issue wasn’t “about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

During his final years in the Senate, McCain was perhaps the loudest advocate for U.S. military involvement overseas – in Iraq, Syria, Libya and more. That often made him a critic of first Obama and then Trump, and placed him further out of step with the growing isolationism within the GOP.

In October 2017, McCain unleashed some his most blistering criticism of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach — without mentioning the president by name — in describing a “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

Few politicians matched McCain’s success as an author. His 1999 release “Faith Of My Fathers” was a million seller that was highly praised and helped launch his run for president in 2000. His most recent bestseller and planned farewell, “The Restless Wave,” came out in May 2018.

Judge Slaps Down Trump Effort to Revise Bureaucracy

WASHINGTON—A federal judge dealt a blow Saturday to President Donald Trump’s efforts to “promote more efficient” government, ruling that key provisions of three recent executive orders “undermine federal employees’ right to bargain collectively” under federal law.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump had “exceeded his authority” in issuing the orders.

The White House had no comment and referred questions to the Justice Department, which said it was reviewing the judge’s ruling and considering options. Federal worker unions that had sued to block Trump’s use of his executive authority in this area applauded the outcome.

“President Trump’s illegal action was a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress specifically guaranteed to the public-sector employees across this country who keep our federal government running every single day,” said J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest of the federal worker unions.

Cox’s organization, which represents about 700,000 of the approximately 2 million-member federal workforce, was first to challenge the executive orders, filing two lawsuits.

The executive orders, issued by the White House in May, covered collective bargaining rights, grievance procedures and use of “official time.”

Andrew Bremberg, the president’s domestic policy adviser, said at the time that the orders would “promote more efficient government” by overhauling civil service rules to make it easier to remove poor-performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are used more efficiently.

Departments and agencies were directed to engage in tougher negotiations over collective bargaining agreements and to conclude talks in under a year to limit the expense of “drawn-out bargaining.” Contracts were to be renegotiated to limit the amount of time authorized employees could spend on union business during official work hours, known as “official time.”

Lobbying and pursuing grievances on taxpayer-funded union time were to be curtailed, and the orders also aimed to streamline the amount of time needed to terminate a federal worker for poor performance or misconduct. The process currently takes between six months and a year, and can last longer if the employee appeals the dismissal.

The unions argued that the executive orders were illegal because federal law requires the government and federal employee unions to negotiate over such changes.

Jackson agreed, ruling that Trump had overstepped his authority. “This Court finds that these provisions conflict with congressional intent in a manner that cannot be sustained,” she wrote in a 122-page opinion. It was unclear Saturday whether the administration planned to appeal.

“In this Court’s view, these directives undermine federal employees’ right to bargain collectively as protected by” federal law, “and as a result, the President must be deemed to have exceeded his authority in issuing them,” the judge wrote.

Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal government employees, said Congress meant for unions and agencies to bargain over the use of official time and grievance procedures.

“The judge rightly found that the president is not above the law and cannot, through these blatantly anti-union and anti-worker executive orders, eviscerate employee rights and undermine the collective bargaining process established by Congress,” Reardon said.

Democrats Limit Superdelegate Role in Choosing Nominees

CHICAGO—After two years of sometimes ugly public fighting, Democratic Party leaders on Saturday voted to limit their own high-profile roles in choosing presidential nominees, giving even more weight to the outcome of state primaries and caucuses.

The debate over the influence of party insiders known as superdelegates was evidence of the fallout from the 2016 fight between eventual nominee Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. His supporters accused the national party of tipping the scales in Clinton’s favor.

The change, which affects the hundreds of Democratic National Committee members, elected officials and party elders who attend presidential conventions as automatic delegates, was seen as a victory for the party chairman, Tom Perez. It comes with the November election nearing, when GOP control of Congress is at stake, and a potentially bruising nominating battle shaping up for 2020, when President Donald Trump is up for re-election.

“We should never ever confuse unity and unanimity,” Perez said after the vote. “Today, demonstrated the values of the Democratic Party.”

Under the new rules for 2020, superdelegates still will be automatic delegates to the party’s convention. But they will not have a vote on the first presidential ballot if the convention remains contested, which is a distinct possibility given the number of Democrats considering running.

Superdelegates would get to vote on any subsequent rounds of voting, though the Democratic nomination has been settled on the first ballot of every convention since the 1970s, when the modern system of primaries and caucuses was established.

The change was approved by acclamation. The key procedural vote before that showed the overhaul had 329.5 “yes” votes to 106.5 votes in opposition.

The approval drew a standing ovation from progressive activists, many of them among the Sanders supporters who had cited superdelegates as the personification of establishment favoritism toward Clinton.

“This is a great day for America and for the party,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager. “When you have a system subject to gaming, there is incentive to game it. To the extent the system can’t be gamed, you have more credibility with voters.”

In a written statement, Sanders called the move “an important step forward in making the Democratic Party more open, democratic and responsive to the input of ordinary Americans.”

Perez said settling the issue means the party can focus exclusively on the November election, when Democrats are aiming to reclaim majorities on Capitol Hill and regain power in statehouses around the country.

“We’re here to win elections. We’re here to restore our democracy as we know it,” Perez said, and “we’re going to kick butt in 73 days.”

Beyond changing the rules for superdelegates, the overhaul is intended to make vote-counting at presidential preference caucuses more transparent and make it easier for voters other than longtime registered Democrats to participate in caucuses and primaries.

That could affect states such as Iowa, which might have to develop paper ballots for caucus sites instead of its usual method of sorting into groups and counting heads. New York, meanwhile, would be pressured to relax its party registration deadline, which in 2016 fell six months before the primary, leaving many independents who wanted to back Sanders no option to vote.

But it was the superdelegate matter that met fierce opposition from some party leaders, including two former national heads, Donna Brazile and Don Fowler, both longtime allies of Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.

Fowler, Brazile and other opponents cast the efforts as punishing rank-and-file party leaders incorrectly perceived as party bosses trying to override the will of voters. Even Perez noted that superdelegates have never overturned the cumulative results of primaries and caucuses.

In 2016, for example, Clinton got almost 4 million more primary and caucus votes than Sanders, giving her a clear lead in pledged delegates heading into the Philadelphia convention. Still, many superdelegates had declared their loyalty early in the process — even before primary season began — allowing Clinton to claim the mantle of a prohibitive favorite.

Christine Pelosi, a DNC member from California who backed Clinton but supports scrapping superdelegates, recalled media coverage of Sanders’ big victory in the New Hampshire primary being colored by Clinton having unpledged delegate support in the state.

“Sanders went to bed ahead, and he woke up effectively tied” in the delegate count, Pelosi said. “That’s not a ‘perception.’ That’s a reality.”

U.S. Seeks to Change Rules Affecting Migrant Families

The federal government is seeking to end court oversight of how it treats immigrant children, more than 20 years after a landmark lawsuit over mistreatment of children in the nation’s immigration system.

The proposal to end a judge’s oversight of the Flores agreement, as it’s known, comes as federal officials report that more than 500 immigrant children remain separated from their parents in the wake of President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

In a news conference on Friday, child detention experts and a lawyer from the Flores legal team raised concerns that the administration’s new regulations could overturn fundamental standards of care required in the federal agreement.

“The administration is planning its next step, which we believe will result in even more suffering and trauma for children,” said Ai-jen Poo, a leader of the Families Belong Together Coalition. “By dismantling long-standing child protection under the Flores settlement agreement and implementing regulations in its place, the Trump administration is seeking to expand its power to jail families for longer in worse conditions and lock children indefinitely.”

The settlement, agreed to in 1997, requires the government to provide certain housing and nutritional requirements to immigrant children. It also mandates the release of those children to relatives or other known family friends within a timely manner.

Last week, the Office of Management and Budget concluded its review of two regulations filed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The DHS proposal seeks to “enable the U.S. Government to seek termination of the (Flores agreement) and litigation concerning its enforcement. Through this rule, ICE will create a pathway to ensure the humane detention of family units while satisfying the goals of the FSA,” an abstract of the rule reads. The second proposal aims at codifying parts of the Flores agreement into law.

The Washington Post recently obtained a draft detailing the administration’s plans to replace Flores. Based on that story, the new provisions may include removing restrictions on family detention and eliminating licensing requirements, said Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

DHS officials declined to comment on Friday. In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said the agency’s proposal would “implement the substance of its current policies to provide care for unaccompanied alien children, consistent with court orders and the laws passed by Congress.”

It’s unclear when the regulations would become official. The two rules will be published in the Federal Register for a comment period before they are finalized by the agencies.

Holly Cooper, a lawyer on the Flores team, said the regulations raise concerns, particularly because the government “has historically not complied with the minimal protections” in the agreement.

If the rules diminish the care of immigrant children, there could be legal recourse, added Cooper, who is also the co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis. “Any legal challenges could be brought if they don’t comply with the Constitution or the spirit of the Flores settlement agreement,” she said.

The government’s proposed regulations were filed on the heels of the Trump administration’s policy used to separate about 2,600 migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border this summer. The government has since ended this policy and is now in the process of reuniting the families.

On Thursday, Department of Justice attorneys released new reunification numbers: 528 children remain separated from their parents. Of those, 23 are under the age of 5. Nearly 140 parents also waived their rights to reunification, but ACLU lawyers argue that many were coerced to sign forms they didn’t understand.

The Flores settlement was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed in 1985 by immigrant advocacy groups over the treatment of unaccompanied minors. The settlement states that the government “shall continue to treat, all minors in its custody with dignity, respect and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors.”

About 18 months ago, lawyers made filings in the case alleging that the government was violating the agreement. Among the claims: Unaccompanied minors at the Shiloh Treatment Center were being injected with psychiatric drugs without proper consent.

On July 30, U.S. district Judge Dolly Gee ordered the government to stop drugging the children without the consent of a parent, a court order, or without following Texas law on administering such drugs on an emergency basis.

Gee also ruled that children should be moved to less restrictive housing unless a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist has determined that a child “poses a risk of harm to self or others.”

A recent Reveal investigation detailed a long pattern of problems at Shiloh and companion facilities operated by the same person, Clay Dean Hill. Three children died at the facilities after being restrained by workers and others alleged sexual and physical abuse. Several state reports also singled out the facilities for improper use of drugs.

Sanders Wants Big Corporations to Fund 100% of Their Workers’ Public Assistance

Amazon CEO and world’s richest man Jeff Bezos makes more money in 10 seconds than his company’s median employee makes in an entire year, and thousands of Amazon workers are paid such low wages that they are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of government assistance to survive.

Declaring that this ever-growing gulf between the obscene wealth of top executives and the poverty wages of workers—which is hardly unique to Amazon—is morally unacceptable, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that he will introduce legislation next month that would impose “a 100 percent tax on large employers equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers” in an effort to pressure corporate giants into paying a living wage.

Under the new legislation, “if an Amazon worker receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300,” the Vermont senator’s office noted in a press release. The tax would apply to all companies with 500 or more employees.

“While Mr. Bezos is worth $155 billion and while his wealth has increased $260 million every single day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on taxpayer-funded programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing just to get by,” Sanders said in a statement on Friday.

“While Mr. Bezos is the most egregious example, the Walton family of Walmart and many other billionaire-owned large and profitable companies also enrich themselves off taxpayer assistance while paying their workers poverty-level wages,” Sanders added. “That is why I am introducing legislation in September to demand that Mr. Bezos and other billionaires get off welfare and start paying their workers a living wage.”

There is something fundamentally wrong when thousands of Amazon workers are on food stamps while their boss, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world. pic.twitter.com/MmET8n4nGG

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 24, 2018

According to public data obtained by the nonprofit New Food Economy (NFE) and The Intercept, as many as one in three Amazon workers in Arizona—one of the few states that responded to NFE’s public records requests—rely on food stamps to survive.

The situation is similar at massive companies like Walmart and McDonald’s, where many employees aren’t paid enough to survive without government assistance. All the while, the Walton family and McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook continue to get exponentially richer.

By proposing legislation that would impose a tax penalty on companies like Amazon—which paid nothing in federal taxes last year—Sanders is adding substance on top of his recent efforts to publicly shame ultra-wealthy CEOs like Bezos at rallies and town halls across the nation.

In June, Sanders invited the CEOs of Amazon, Disney, McDonald’s, and Walmart to participate in a public event with some of their low-wage workers and attempt to justify paying their employees poverty wages. None of the CEOs accepted Sanders’ invitation.

Sanders continued pressuring Bezos this week with a petition declaring that it is “long past time you start to pay your workers a living wage and improve working conditions at Amazon warehouses all across the country.”

According to Sanders’ office, more than 100,000 people have signed the petition.

“It is beyond absurd that you would make more money in ten seconds than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year,” Sanders concluded. “I don’t believe that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest person in the world because you pay your employees inadequate wages.”

Combined Koreas Crew Wins Historic Medal at Asian Games

JAKARTA, Indonesia—Two countries. One significant medal.

A combined Koreas crew earned a historic bronze medal at the Asian Games on Saturday by finishing third in the women’s 200-meter dragon boat final behind China and games host Indonesia.

It was the first time a combined team from North Korea and South Korea has won a medal at a major multi-sport international event.

And it was awarded to Korea — the name given to the combined teams the war-divided countries entered in rowing, canoeing and women’s basketball.

“In the first place, we weren’t sure if this unified team would be formed, but I’m so happy that we won the bronze medal in the end,” the crew’s captain, South Korean Kim Hyeon-hee, was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

“I did get emotional. I tried not to cry but in my heart, I think there’s something about being a Korean.”

The Koreas, still technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, have fielded 60 athletes in combined teams in the three sports along with larger contingents for their respective national squads.

A group of athletes from North Korea and South Korea paraded into the opening ceremony last weekend behind the “unification” flag, which features the outline of the peninsula in blue on a white background.

It took another seven days for any of the combined teams to get on the medals podium.

The joint crew featured seven South Koreans and five North Koreans and finished in 56.851 seconds at the Jakabaring Rowing and Canoeing Regatta Course in Palembang.

Rather than sing their anthems, the crew joined to sing a popular folk song “Arirang,” Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, reported.

To Myong Suk, a North Korean who is the drummer on the traditional boat, said the combined crew had just three weeks to practice together while other teams had years.

“This is a result that showed the bravery and wisdom of Korean people by combining our hearts and goals,” Yonhap quoted To as saying.

The combined Koreas basketball team has progressed to the quarterfinals of the women’s tournament.

Iran’s Sohrab Moradi was expected to win the gold medal in the 94-kilogram weightlifting class, and he iced it by breaking a 19-year-old world record in the snatch. He completed his set of world marks in the division when he lifted 189 kilograms in the snatch to break Akakios Kakiasvilis’ record of 188.

He went on to set a games record with a total of 410.

The track and field program opened with the first four titles going to Hiroto Inoue of Japan in a steamy early morning marathon, to India’s Tajinderpal Toor in a games record 20.75 meters for the shot put, to Daria Maslova of Kyrgyzstan in the women’s 10,000 and to China’s Luo Na, who beat world championship silver medalist Wang Zheng to win the women’s hammer throw at 71.42 meters.

Much of the focus in Indonesia was on world junior champion Lalu Zohri, from the earthquake-ravaged island of Lombok, who won his 100-meter heat in 10.27 seconds. Su Bingtian, who set the Asian record of 9.91 in June, won the next heat also in 10.27.

Defending women’s champion Wei Yongli had the fastest qualifying time in 11.32, and India’s Dutee Chand won her heat in 11.38.

The marathon started at 6 a.m. and it finished in a sprint, with Inoue hanging on for gold after a late tangle with Bahrain’s Elhassan Elabbassi. Both were credited with the same time of 2 hours, 18 minutes, 22 seconds.

They entered the main stadium together and were shoulder-to-shoulder coming around the last curve of the track. Elabbassi attempted to surge inside Inoue in the inside lane but collided with his Japanese rival and lost his balance.

“I knew I’d win in the home stretch so I went all out,” Inoue said. “This is a big confidence boost for me.”

It was Japan’s first gold in the Asian Games men’s marathon in 32 years and comes as the country prepares to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Veteran tour professional Denis Istomin, who has reached the last 16 at the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon, won the tennis singles gold medal with a 2-6, 6-2, 7-6 (2) victory over Wu Yibing.

After 216 events, China led the standings with 72 gold and 153 overall. Japan was next with 34 gold and 109 in total, and South Korea had 25 gold medals and 84 overall.

Storm Veers Away From Sodden Hawaii

HONOLULU—Hawaii emerged Saturday from the threat of a potentially devastating hurricane after flooding forced evacuations on some islands but damage appeared less than feared despite historic amounts of rain.

Tropical Storm Lane, once known as Hurricane Lane, began to break apart as it veered west into the open Pacific, leaving behind sighs of relief and plenty of clean-up, especially on the Big Island where rainfall totals approached 4 feet (1.2 meters).

No storm-related deaths have been reported, though Big Island authorities said they plucked families from flood waters and landslides had closed roads.

The National Weather Service canceled all storm warnings for the state, several hours after shopkeepers in Honolulu’s tourist-heavy areas started taking down plywood meant to protect windows if the storm had made it that far.

Preliminary figures from the weather service show that Lane dropped the fourth-highest amount of rain for a hurricane to hit the United States since 1950. Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Texas a year ago, topped the list.

The storm’s outer bands dumped as much as 45 inches (114 centimeters) on the mostly rural Big Island, measurements showed. The main town of Hilo, with 43,000 people, was flooded Friday with waist-high water and authorities rescued people from more than 20 homes overnight, Hawaii County Managing Director Wil Okabe said.

Landslides and pooling water forced the temporary closure of several highways, but the flooding was not as bad as it might have been because porous volcanic rock on parts of the Big Island absorbed it, said Brooke Bingaman, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Honolulu.

One of the island’s volcanoes is still erupting, and the rain could still cause whiteout conditions on some active lava fields due to steam.

About 200 miles and several islands to the northwest, tourists wandered Waikiki Beach and took leisurely swims as shopkeepers prepared to reopen.

Hotels began putting deck chairs back alongside pools. Dozens of surfers were in the Pacific, riding small waves. The breeze was light.

Winds were also calmer on Maui, which had seen about 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain and wind gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph). On Saturday, winds were about 11 mph. Like the Big Island, Maui experienced flooding and landslides.

Lane first approached the islands earlier this week as a Category 5 hurricane, meaning it was likely to cause catastrophic damage with winds of 157 mph (252 kph) or above. But upper-level winds known as shear swiftly tore the storm apart.

As flooding hit the Big Island, winds fanned brush fires that had broken out in dry areas of Maui and Oahu. Some residents in a shelter on Maui had to flee flames, and another fire forced people from their homes.

Flames burned nine homes in the historic coastal town of Lahaina and forced 600 people to evacuate, Maui County spokeswoman Lynn Araki-Regan said. Some have returned, but many have not because much of the area lacks power, Araki-Regan said.

Those outages meant the water provider on Maui’s west side was unable to pump, so officials at the Maui Electric utility urged conservation — particularly important because firefighters need supplies to put out the remaining flames.

The central Pacific gets fewer hurricanes than other regions, with only about four or five named storms a year. Hawaii rarely gets hit. The last major storm to hit was Iniki in 1992. Others have come close in recent years.

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Brian Skoloff and John Locher in Honolulu; Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska; Darlene Superville in Washington; and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

U.S. Leaders Aid and Abet War Crimes in Yemen

US leaders who provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition that bombed civilians in Yemen this August could be charged with aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes under customary international law, which is part of US law.

The 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, which the coalition dropped on August 9, killed 51 people, including 40 children. The bombing constituted a war crime.

“They came to the hospital in cars and ambulances. Dozens of children with an array of grisly wounds,” Marta Rivas Blanco, a nurse from the International Committee of the Red Cross who works at the Al Talh hospital, wrote in the Guardian. “Some were screaming, some were scared, many went straight to the morgue.”

Lockheed Martin, one of the leading US defense contractors, manufactured the bomb, which was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.

Aiding and Abetting a War Crime

According to customary international law, aiding and abetting a war crime requires three elements: 1) a person or entity committed a war crime; 2) another actor committed an act that had a substantial effect on the commission of the war crime; and 3) the other actor knew that the act would assist, or have a substantial likelihood of assisting, the commission of the war crime. All three of those elements were present in the August 9 bombing.

First, the coalition committed a war crime. Willful killing and the targeting of civilians constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The US War Crimes Act defines grave breaches of Geneva as war crimes.

Targeting a busload of children in a busy marketplace is a war crime. The Saudi government called it “a legitimate military action,” claiming to have targeted “Houthi leaders who were responsible for recruiting and training young children, and then sending them to battlefields.”

Second, US leaders provided the means to commit the war crime. The purchase of the bomb was part of an arms deal with Saudi Arabia that the US State Department sanctioned. In May 2017, on his first stop abroad after taking office, Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudi king in Riyadh.

Third, the US military knew that supplying the bomb to the coalition was likely to result in the commission of a war crime. A similar bomb killed 155 people in a funeral hall in Yemen in October 2016.

After the 2016 bombing, the Obama administration, citing “human rights concerns,” banned the sale to Saudi Arabia of precision-guided military technology. That ban was reversed the same month Trump made his deal in Riyadh, and the US government reauthorized the provision of Paveway laser-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia.

U.S. Assistance Facilitates More War Crimes

The August 9 school bus bombing was one of over 50 airstrikes on civilian vehicles by the coalition so far in 2018. Amnesty International has documented 36 coalition airstrikes, many of which may constitute war crimes.

On April 23, 2018, Saudi aircraft dropped cluster bombs made by Raytheon on a wedding in Yemen, killing 22 people, including children. When they explode, cluster bombs scatter tiny bomblets. Some remain unexploded and detonate when people accidentally step on them or children pick them up off the ground. These weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits all use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions.

The Saudi war on Yemen could not continue without support from the United States and the United Kingdom, according to Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution.

US military assistance to the coalition includes in-air refueling of Saudi and United Arab Emirates aircraft, logistical support and intelligence sharing. But US involvement in the war escalated late last year when a team of Green Berets secretly arrived at the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

At least 6,385 civilians have been killed and 10,000 injured since the war began. Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition account for over 60 percent of the civilian casualties.

Yemen has one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. At least 22.2 million people — and nearly all Yemeni children — need humanitarian aid, and it is suspected that more than 1 million people have cholera. Nevertheless, the coalition restricts aid and imports of food, medicine and fuel.

On March 15, 2018, the UN Security Council issued a Presidential Statement calling for full humanitarian and commercial access and all parties to comply with their international humanitarian law obligations.

Congress Condemns U.S. Role in Yemen

The US House of Representatives unanimously passed a non-binding resolution in November 2017, calling on the US military forces to withdraw from “unauthorized hostilities” in Yemen. It stated that US military aid to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen was not sanctioned by prior congressional authorizations. The resolution condemned the targeting of civilians and urged all parties to “increase efforts to adopt all necessary and appropriate measures to prevent civilian casualties and increase humanitarian access.”

On August 13, 2018, Trump signed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains an allocation of $717 billion for the US military. In that legislation, Congress included several provisions to achieve accountability for US support of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Section 1274 directs the Defense Department to conduct a review of whether US or Saudi coalition forces in Yemen are violating US or international law.

But when Trump signed the bill, he attached a signing statement saying his administration would treat the provisions of section 1274 “consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to withhold information, the disclosure of which could impair national security, foreign relations, law enforcement, or the performance of the President’s constitutional duties.”

Section 1290 requires the secretary of state to certify that Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are making good faith efforts to end the civil war in Yemen; taking appropriate measures to alleviate the humanitarian crisis; undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians; complying with laws regarding military purchases from the US; and taking appropriate steps to avoid disproportionate harm to civilians.

Trump also attached a signing statement to that provision, saying any certification which section 1290 purported to require would have to be “consistent with the President’s constitutional authorities as Commander in Chief and as the sole representative of the Nation in foreign affairs.”

Calls for an Independent Investigation

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the August 9 bombing and called for an independent investigation. Saudi Arabia says it will mount its own investigation. And US Secretary of Defense James Mattis vowed to send a three-star general to Riyadh to help the Saudis in their investigation.

“What Yemenis need is really an independent investigation, which has been put forward in the UN twice already and has been rejected by the Saudi-led coalition and the US unfortunately has provided cover for the Saudi-led coalition at the UN,” Shireen al-Adeimi, Yemeni activist-scholar and assistant professor at Michigan State University, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Following the August 9 bombing, three letters written by Congress members from the House and Senate requested investigations, explanations and briefings about US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Thirty House Democrats signed a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, expressing “deepening concern regarding the humanitarian crisis in Yemen” and requesting a briefing for all House members during the first week of September “on the policy objectives of the United States with respect to Yemen.” In the letter, the Congress members cited sections 1274 and 1290 of the NDAA.

In addition, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California) wrote a letter asking the Defense Department’s inspector general to initiate an investigation to determine whether coalition operations in Yemen are violating US and/or international law. Lieu said he was “deeply concerned that continued U.S. refueling, operational support functions, and weapons transfers could qualify as aiding and abetting these potential war crimes.”

Lieu made reference to the conclusion of the UN panel of experts on Yemen that all parties to the conflict, “including the U.S.-supported Coalition, were implicated in ‘widespread violations’ of international law and that measures to minimize civilian casualties remained ‘largely ineffective.’”

And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) wrote to Gen. Joseph Votel, head of US Central Command (Centcom), asking him to clarify his assertion that Centcom cannot determine whether the United States provided assistance for coalition strikes resulting in civilian deaths.

In her letter, Warren cited an article by The Intercept, quoting an intelligence report with “what appear to be comments from an American intelligence analyst” who oversaw a May 2018 strike from a coalition command center in Riyadh, which suggested that US military observers possess detailed information about how strikes are carried out.

The bottom line is that Congress must immediately end all US involvement in the war in Yemen and refuse to appropriate funding for arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE while they continue bombing and blockading Yemen.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.