Chris Hedges's Blog, page 574

Egyptian Activist Detained in New Wave of Arrests

CAIRO—Egyptian security officials say a prominent activist has been detained, the latest in a new wave of arrests since presidential elections earlier this year.

The officials say Hazem Abdel-Azim was taken from his home in a Cairo suburb late Saturday on accusations that include disseminating false news and belonging to an outlawed group.

Abdel-Azim has been known for his harsh criticism of the government since he left President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s campaign in the 2014 elections.

The officials spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to media.

Egypt has arrested a number of secular activists since el-Sissi was re-elected in March in a vote in which he faced no serious challengers.

The latest arrests come amid a wider crackdown on dissent in which thousands of people have been jailed.

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U.S., North Korea Officials Meet at DMZ

The U.S. State Department says American officials are meeting with North Korean officials at the border village of Panmunjom as talks continue over a potential summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says a ‘U.S. delegation is in ongoing talks with North Korean officials” inside the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea that was created at the end of the Korean War.

She says preparations are moving ahead for “a meeting” between the two leaders.

Trump said Saturday that conversations about a potential summit were “going along very well.”

He announced on Thursday that he was withdrawing from the scheduled June 12 meeting in Singapore, only to say on Friday that the summit might be back on.

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Sen. Heitkamp Faces Backlash for ‘Oil Over Indians’ Posture

STANDING ROCK SIOUX RESERVATION, N.D.—Standing Rock Sioux tribal member Marlo Hunte-Beaubrun went door to door on North Dakota’s largest American Indian reservations in 2012 turning out the tribal vote to help put Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in the U.S. Senate. Six years later, with Heitkamp fighting hard to win a second term, Hunte-Beaubrun is staying on the sidelines.

She is among Indian voters who say they’ve lost their zeal for Heitkamp over her perceived non-stance on the Dakota Access pipeline, which brought thousands of American Indians and others to the state in 2016 and 2017 to protest its construction under the Missouri River, just outside Standing Rock.

“It was really a kick in the stomach,” Hunte-Beaubrun said. “We rallied so hard for her, but when her hand was forced she basically sold out to big oil.”

Democrats’ hopes to capture the Senate depend heavily on Heitkamp, who has trod a careful path on energy and other issues to win office and remain popular in a deeply conservative state. But she faces a stern test from the state’s lone U.S. House member, Republican Kevin Cramer, in a race seen as a top pickup chance for Republicans.

Heitkamp’s first victory came by fewer than 3,000 votes, and American Indians, who tend to vote Democratic, were a source of strength. Three counties with majority Indian populations — Sioux, Rolette and Benson — backed Heitkamp by a more than 4,000-vote margin over then-U.S. Rep. Rick Berg. In Sioux County, home to the Standing Rock reservation, Heitkamp took 83 percent of the vote.

Once in the Senate, Heitkamp earned respect from American Indians for her knowledge of issues important to them, such as domestic violence in Indian Country and the relationship between tribal governments and the federal government. The first bill she introduced established a commission to study the challenges facing Native American children, an issue she had pursued since the 1990s when she was North Dakota’s attorney general.

Then came the Dakota Access pipeline, a $3.8 billion project by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners to move oil from North Dakota’s rich Bakken fields to a shipping point in Illinois. The pipeline offered oil companies a cheaper way to get their product to market, was seen as safer than rail shipping and had the support of most state leaders.

The Standing Rock tribe opposed it as a threat to water. Their protest grew into a national event for environmental advocates, and pipeline opponents frequently clashed with police. In the ensuing months, Heitkamp’s public statements didn’t take a position on the pipeline, instead typically urging courts and federal officials to resolve uncertainty around the project while supporting protesters’ right to demonstrate.

On Standing Rock, a 3,600-square-mile reservation that straddles the Dakotas border, there are few industries besides a casino. The reservation is home to about 10,000 people, and unemployment runs as high as 20 percent. In several interviews, some residents remained loyal to Heitkamp and said they would support her. Others said they were disappointed and would not.

“The majority of the people here feel the same way I do — she chose oil over Indians,” said Joe Torras, a 57-year-old rancher and horse trainer at Standing Rock. “Once you damage that trust, we will never let it go. You only get one shot.” Torras said he isn’t planning to vote in November.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Heitkamp highlighted her work on Indian issues, saying no one in the delegation has been a “stronger advocate.” Of the pipeline, she said: “My interest was keeping everybody safe.”

“When you look at the choices you make in this job, not everybody always is going to agree with you,” Heitkamp said. “I will continue to work on things we can all agree on.”

Char White Mountain, a 67-year-old retired office administrator and great-grandmother, said she voted for Heitkamp previously but won’t again. She would never vote for Cramer, who strongly supported the pipeline, and said she will probably just stay home on Election Day.

“We all thought a lot about Heidi, but I believe she betrayed our people,” White Mountain said. “We really needed someone we could trust.”

Mary Louise Defender Wilson, 87, a writer and retired educator, said Heitkamp was in a no-win situation on a pipeline protest that she said was hijacked by outsiders.

“I think she was right not saying anything about that pipeline — there were some really bad things that happened there and it distracted from our real issues,” Defender Wilson said. She campaigned for Heitkamp six years ago and will again, planning to hand out brochures and post yard signs at her home in Porcupine, a tiny community of fewer than 150 people on Standing Rock.

Former Standing Rock Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault, who was the face and voice of the fight against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, said he met with Heitkamp when the pipeline was first proposed and long before the protests “to let her know this was going to be an issue for us.”

“I think she was caught in the middle. But when her hand was forced, she chose the pipeline,” Archambault said. “She always said she supported Indian Country, but when all of Indian Country from across the nation was at Standing Rock — she didn’t show up.”

“She didn’t truly listen to what Indian Country was saying,” Archambault said. “Now she’s in a bind.”

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More LGBT Issues Loom as Ruling in Wedding Cake Case Nears

WASHINGTON — A flood of lawsuits over LGBT rights is making its way through courts and will continue, no matter the outcome in the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in the case of a Colorado baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Courts are engaged in two broad types of cases on this issue, weighing whether sex discrimination laws apply to LGBT people and also whether businesses can assert religious objections to avoid complying with anti-discrimination measures in serving customers, hiring and firing employees, providing health care and placing children with foster or adoptive parents.

The outcome of baker Jack Phillips’ fight at the Supreme Court could indicate how willing the justices are to carve out exceptions to anti-discrimination laws; that’s something the court has refused to do in the areas of race and sex.

The result was hard to predict based on arguments in December. But however the justices rule, it won’t be their last word on the topic.

Religious conservatives have gotten a big boost from the Trump administration, which has taken a more restrictive view of LGBT rights and intervened on their side in several cases, including Phillips’.

“There is a constellation of hugely significant cases that are likely to be heard by the court in the near future and those are going to significantly shape the legal landscape going forward,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Several legal disputes are pending over wedding services, similar to the Phillips case. Video producers, graphic artists and florists are among business owners who say they oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds and don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. They live in the 21 states that have anti-discrimination laws that specifically include gay and lesbian people.

In California and Texas, courts are dealing with lawsuits over the refusal of hospitals, citing religious beliefs, to perform hysterectomies on people transitioning from female to male. In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the state’s practice of allowing faith-based child placement agencies to reject same-sex couples.

Advocates of both sides see the essence of these cases in starkly different terms.

“What the religious right is asking for is a new rule specific to same-sex couples that would not only affect same-sex couples but also carve a hole in nondiscrimination laws that could affect all communities,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, which supports civil rights for LGBT people.

Jim Campbell of the Christian public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom said the cases will determine whether “people like Jack Phillips who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman, that they too have a legitimate place in public life. Or does he have to hide or ignore those beliefs when he’s participating in the public square?” ADF represents Phillips at the Supreme Court.

The other category of cases concerns protections for LGBT people under civil rights law. One case expected to reach the court this summer involves a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee who disclosed that she was transitioning from male to female and dressed as a woman.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal civil rights law. That court is one of several that have applied anti-sex discrimination provisions to transgender people, but the Supreme Court has yet to take up a case.

The funeral home argues in part that Congress was not thinking about transgender people when it included sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A trial judge had ruled for the funeral home, saying it was entitled to a religious exemption from the civil rights law.

“Congress has not weighed in to say sex includes gender identity. We should certainly make sure that’s a conscious choice of Congress and not just the overexpansion of the law by courts,” Campbell said. ADF also represents the funeral home.

In just the past week, two federal courts ruled in favor of transgender students who want to use school facilities that correspond to their sexual identity. Those cases turn on whether the prohibition on sex discrimination in education applies to transgender people. Appeals in both cases are possible.

In the past 13 months, federal appeals courts in Chicago and New York also have ruled that gay and lesbian employees are entitled to protection from discrimination under Title VII. Those courts overruled earlier decisions. Title VII does not specifically mention sexual orientation, but the courts said it was covered under the ban on sex bias.

The Obama administration had supported treating LGBT discrimination claims as sex discrimination, but the Trump administration has changed course. In the New York case, for instance, the Trump administration filed a legal brief arguing that Title VII was not intended to provide protections to gay workers. It also withdrew Obama-era guidance to educators to treat claims of transgender students as sex discrimination.

There is no appeal pending or expected on the sexual orientation issue, and there is no guarantee that the court will take up the funeral home’s appeal over transgender discrimination.

The trend in the lower courts has been in favor of extending civil rights protections to LGBT employees and students. Their prospects at the Supreme Court may be harder to discern, not least because it’s unclear whether the court’s composition will change soon.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, has been the subject of retirement speculation, though he has not indicated he is planning to retire. When Justice Stephen Breyer turns 80 in August, he will join Kennedy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, as octogenarians on the bench.

If President Donald Trump were to replace any of those justices, the court probably would be much less receptive to LGBT rights. Even the landmark gay marriage ruling in 2015 that Kennedy wrote was a 5-4 decision.

“We’re very concerned about the composition of the federal bench. Under the Trump administration, we’ve seen a number of federal nominees who have been ideologues, who have taken positions about the very right to exist of LGBT people that is simply inconsistent with fitness to serve as a federal judge,” Taylor of Lambda Legal said.

The ADF’s Campbell said even with the current justices, he holds out some hope that the court would not extend anti-discrimination protections. “Justice Kennedy has undoubtedly been the person who has decided the major LGBT cases, but to my knowledge he hasn’t weighed in some of these other issues,” he said.

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Lakes Emitting More Methane as They Evaporate

The amounts of a powerful greenhouse gas leaking into the atmosphere are set to rise as lakes emit more methane in reaction to climate change.

The vegetation decomposing in the lakes will change – and the northern lakes of Canada could send 73% more methane – a potent greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere to accelerate global warming at an ever greater rate

And a further cause for concern as the world warms is the most abundant greenhouse gas of them all. As the world warms, its 250,000 lakes will evaporate faster. By the century’s end, they will be sending 16% more water into the atmosphere as vapour – to fall again as rain.

Both studies represent climate research at its most detailed: each is an attempt to understand the intricacies of environmental change on a small scale and then predict global impact. And both deliver the unexpected.

US and Chinese researchers who built computer models of the responses of freshwater reservoirs to changing climate report in Nature Geoscience on what may befall the vapour.

They found that, as global temperatures rose, lakes in the high latitudes – and that represents about 80% of the world’s lakes – would freeze later each winter and thaw earlier each spring.

That would mean more open water, which absorbs radiation more efficiently than ice. At the same time warmer temperatures would deliver more energy to support evaporation: the two processes could account for half of all future changes in evaporation. So much energy is trafficked in the process of lake evaporation that researchers have even suggested it as a potential source of renewable electricity.

“Typically we focus on the ‘top-down’ ways that the upper part of the atmosphere triggers feedbacks that enhance warming,” said Xuhui Lee, a meteorologist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Understanding Hydrology

“But if we want to make accurate predictions of the hydrological changes we’ll need to understand what’s happening at the bottom of the atmosphere, including what’s happening at the surface of lakes – because those changes are driving the hydrological response to climate change.”

But evaporation is not the only factor that will change. British, Canadian and German scientists report in the journal Nature Communications that they asked a simple question: how will warmer temperatures change the release of greenhouse gases from lakes?

They took samples from the decaying vegetation – deciduous leaves, pine needles and reeds and rushes – in lake beds and incubated them for 150 days to see what gases emerged.

Those lakes rich in cattails – sometimes called bulrushes – produced 400 times more methane than lakes layered with conifer needles, and 2,800 times the methane from deciduous leaves submerged in temperate forest lakes.

Rapid Spread

Methane is reckoned to be at least 30 times more powerful than CO2 at warming the Earth, with some estimates putting its potency over the short term much higher still, and climate scientists need to calculate the volumes likely to be added to the atmosphere as climates change.

The researchers found that the boreal shield of Canada – with more lakes and forests than anywhere else in the world – would change with rising global temperatures, and the numbers of lakes colonised by the cattail Typha latifoliacould double in the next 50 years, to produce 73% more methane.

“We believe we have discovered a new mechanism that has the potential to cause increasingly more greenhouse gases to be produced by freshwater lakes,” said Andrew Tanentzap, of the University of Cambridge.

“The warming climates that promote the growth of aquatic plants have the potential to trigger a damaging feedback loop in natural ecosystems.”

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China’s Green Shift Positions It to Overtake U.S. in Energy, Security

The Guardian reports that air pollution in 62 Chinese cities fell by 30 percent between 2013 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization. Beijing, the capital, fell from a global fourth-place ranking on polluted air to 187th.

I was in Beijing in March 2015 for a conference, and did a jaunt out to the Great Wall, bringing my camera. I needn’t have bothered. That day, at least, you couldn’t see more than 50 feet away from your face, and my dreams of photographs of the wall stretching out into the distance were dashed. I was there for a week and my throat got sore from just breathing the air. Things are quickly improving, though. The smog in those 62 cities was largely being caused by burning coal, for household heating and industrial purposes. Coal is the worst emitter of carbon dioxide among the hydrocarbon fuels, but it also puts out, when you burn it, lots of particulate matter that causes lung problems, heart attacks, mercury poisoning and cancer.

Last year, the concentration of PM2.5, or tiny motes of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which can lodge in the lungs, was down about 40 percent in greater Beijing, compared with 2012.

China’s coal use has fallen enormously as a proportion of its electricity generation. It used to provide 80 percent of China’s electricity, but that is down to 65 percent and falling rapidly as a proportion. Even in absolute terms, despite a minor uptick in 2017, coal use has been declining since 2013.

A recent Brookings study by Wenjuan Dong and Ye Qi says,

“In 2017, renewable energy encompassed 36.6% of China’s total installed electric power capacity, and 26.4% of total power generation. According to Energy Production and Consumption Revolution Strategy 2016-2030, by 2030, 50% of total electric power generation will be from non-fossil energy sources, including nuclear and renewable energy.”

These are astonishing statistics for one of the world’s two largest economies.

Although nuclear energy remains important, most new electricity generation in China in the past six years has come from renewables, according to a just-published paper by John A. Matthews with Xin Huang in the Asia-Pacific Journal that a friend sent me this morning.

This is its key chart:

Matthews argues that massive Chinese adoption of solar panels is the major cause for the rapid decline in their price since 2012, and that this price drop will continue. Likewise, he argues that for all the hype about China building new nuclear plants, it has in fact put most of its eggs with regard to new energy generation in the wind power basket.

New solar power bids are now being occasionally let for less than 3 cents a kilowatt hour. Coal is at least 5 cents a kilowatt hour, if you don’t count its environmental damage. If you take that into account, it is likely closer to 80 cents a kilowatt hour. With regard to China, the Brookings study notes, “In the most recently concluded Third Photovoltaic venture base bidding in China, the bid price for electricity continuously came in new lows. For example, the last two bids for cities Golmud and Delingha, both in Qinghai, came in at 0.31 RMB per kWh, which is even lower than the 0.3247 RMB per kWh price for on-grid desulfurized coal-fired electricity.” Even today, Chinese solar is cheaper than coal, and the competitive advantage of solar will only increase over the next decade.

Matthews further makes an important set of arguments about China’s green shift and global power. By generating its own electricity through renewables and by switching in a big way to electric cars, China is preparing for a vast reduction in its imports of hydrocarbons. In turn, that move makes China less vulnerable to hydrocarbon blackmail or blockade and increases its energy security.

The United States uses about 20 million barrels of petroleum a day. Despite the new production enabled by hydraulic fracturing, its own oil production is about half that. Some oil produced in the U.S., especially in Alaska and the West, can be more cheaply exported abroad than sent to the East Coast where the demand is. You see pundits and Big Oil propagandists hype U.S. production and U.S. exports, but the fact is that the U.S. still imports nearly half of the oil it needs to run its economy, and some of those imports come from unstable places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. On transportation (the major use of petroleum), the U.S. is highly vulnerable.

China put 680,000 electric vehicles on the road last year, and plans to be doing 2 million a year by 2020. These EVs will increasingly be fueled by renewable energy, reducing Chinese dependence on Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The turn to wind and solar is thus not only about the environment (though the Chinese government was increasingly facing urban protests if it did not clean up the air and switch from coal). It is also about energy security and the forging of new industries in which China can show its technological innovation chops. It can leverage its huge size and huge economy to become an invulnerable leader on energy and transportation, permanently replacing Detroit and Exxon Mobil.

Trump’s America, in contrast, is wallowing in a 20th-century hydrocarbon past, fast becoming a polluted, economic and technological dinosaur whose Department of Environmental Protection has been highjacked by a corrupt Oklahoma oilman for the purpose of running the country into the ground while Big Oil wrings every last penny from its pitiful stranded asset.

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Talks on Korea Summit ‘Going Along Very Well,’ Trump Says

SEOUL, South Korea — The Latest on diplomatic efforts involving the Koreas (all times local):

10:25 a.m.

President Donald Trump says negotiations over a potential summit with the leader of North Korea are “going along very well.”

Trump told reporters Saturday that: “We’re doing very well in terms of the summit with North Korea,” adding that “there are meetings going on as we speak.”

Trump said they are still considering June 12 in Singapore for the summit with Kim Jong Un. He said there is a “lot of good will” and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula would be “a great thing.”

Trump also said that talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have “gone very well.”

___

10:20 a.m.

South Korea’s president says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un remains committed to holding a summit with President Donald Trump and to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in met Kim at the border on Saturday for the second time in a month to discuss how to keep Kim’s summit with Trump on a track. The Kim-Moon meeting followed a whirlwind 24 hours that saw Trump cancel the highly anticipated June 12 meeting before saying it’s potentially back on.

Moon told reporters Sunday that Kim reaffirmed his denuclearization commitment and told Moon he’s willing to cooperate to end confrontation for the sake of the successful North Korea-U.S. summit.

Moon says his meeting with Kim was arranged at Kim’s request.

 

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White House Says Venezuela Policy Won’t Change

WASHINGTON — The Latest on the release of a Utah man, Joshua Holt, who has been held in Venezuela (all times local):

11:10 p.m.

The White House is thanking the government of Venezuela for releasing an American held in jail for two years but adding that U.S. policy toward the Maduro regime isn’t changing.

Venezuelan officials released 26-year-old Joshua Holt of Utah and his Venezuelan wife on Saturday after talks between President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. lawmakers. President Donald Trump welcomed the Holts to the Oval Office to celebrate their release.

In a statement Saturday night, the White House says the Holts were unjustly held. The statement calls for free, fair and transparent elections consistent with the constitution of Venezuela, dismissing its May 20 elections as illegitimate.

The White House is also calling on Venezuela to release all political prisoners and accept international humanitarian aid for its dying citizens.

___

9 p.m.

President Donald Trump has welcomed to the White House an American held for two years in a Venezuelan jail, saying the Utah man has undergone a “very tough ordeal.”

Twenty-six-year-old Joshua Holt and his wife arrived Saturday evening at Washington Dulles International Airport. Venezuelan officials released the Holts after high-level talks between President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. lawmakers.

Sitting with Trump and other U.S. officials, Holt said he was “overwhelmed with gratitude” for those who worked for his release.

Trump says 17 prisoners have been freed from overseas captivity since he’s been president and that others would be coming.

___

8:10 p.m.

The wife of the American man held for two years in jail in Venezuela says they worried until their plane was in the air that their release and flight to the U.S. would somehow fall apart.

Joshua Holt and his wife arrived Saturday evening at Washington Dulles International Airport. Venezuelan officials released the Holts after high-level talks between President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. lawmakers.

Holt’s wife, Thamara Caleno, exchanged text messages with The Associated Press as she and Holt were traveling. She says that a fellow inmate at their Caracas jail relayed information Friday night that prison officials were discussing their release.

At 10 that night, a warden asked to see them, then every two hours afterward they were awakened to have their pictures taken as part of a heightened security protocol.

The next morning, they were told to pack their things and prepare to go.

___

7:15 p.m.

A Utah man who had been jailed in Venezuela for nearly two years has returned to the United States.

A White House official says Joshua Holt arrived Saturday evening at Washington Dulles International Airport. The official isn’t authorized to speak about the matter by name.

Venezuelan officials released Holt after high-level talks between President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. lawmakers. Holt and his wife were jailed for nearly two years on weapons charges that U.S. officials consider bogus.

The release of Holt and his wife and their departure for Washington came one day after Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee held a surprise meeting in Caracas with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

___

3:25 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker says he played a small role in bringing home a Utah man jailed in Venezuela for nearly two years.

Corker on Saturday boarded a jet outside of Caracas with Joshua Holt and his wife destined for Washington. Venezuelan police arrested the couple on weapons charges and held them without trial.

U.S. officials all along considered the charged bogus.

The Republican senator from Tennessee says much of the credit for Holt’s release goes to his staffer Caleb McCarry for his dogged determination.

He says fellow Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah worked tirelessly for Holt’s family.

Corker on Friday met personally with President Nicola Maduro. State TV showed the two men at the presidential palace warmly shaking hands.

It follows a meeting that Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois had in April with Maduro to urge Holt’s release.

___

2:45 p.m.

A Utah man newly freed from a Venezuelan jail has been seen boarding a private jet that’s expected to take him to Washington. Joshua Holt was wearing a bright orange backpack and was surrounded by supporters.

Venezuelan officials released Holt on Saturday after high-level talks between President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. lawmakers. Holt and his wife were jailed nearly two years on weapons charges that U.S. officials considered bogus.

Photos show Sen. Bob Corker at Holt’s side, helping carry a large black duffel bag. Corker negotiated the release with Maduro.

___

1:40 p.m.

Venezuela’s chief spokesman says a Utah man and his wife jailed in Caracas for two years have been freed and are on their way to the United States.

Communications Minister Jorge Rodrigues said Saturday that the release of Joshua Holt follows months of dialogue between President Nicolas Maduro and representatives of the United States.

Holt was arrested on weapons charged during a trip to Venezuela to marry a woman he’d met on a website to practice Spanish. U.S. officials say the charges were trumped up.

___

10 a.m.

The family of a Utah man jailed in a Venezuelan jail for two years calls his release a miracle.

A statement that relatives provided Saturday confirms that Joshua Holt and his wife will be freed from detention in the capital of Caracas. The couple was arrested on weapons charges that U.S. officials dismiss as trumped up.

President Donald Trump says in a tweet that he expects to greet Holt at the White House later Saturday.

Holt’s family expresses its gratitude for all who worked for his release.

They also ask to be allowed to meet Holt and his wife before making any public statements.

 

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Border Patrol Changes Report After Killing of Undocumented Woman

Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, a 20-year-old undocumented woman, was fatally shot Wednesday by a Border Patrol agent in Rio Bravo, Texas, according to CNN. Her death, the aftermath of which was recorded by a witness and posted to Facebook, has brought additional tension to the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to a statement released by Customs and Border Protection, a lone agent was responding “to a report of illegal activity by Centeno Lane … where he discovered a group of illegal aliens” just after noon.

The statement adds:

“Initial reports indicate that as the agent attempted to apprehend the group, he came under attack by multiple subjects using blunt objects. The agent fired at least one round from his service issued firearm, fatally wounding one of the assailants. The rest of the group fled the scene. Border Patrol Agents called for EMS and administered first aid until the Rio Bravo Fire Department arrived.”

In the video recorded after the shooting, the witness, Marta Martinez, follows an agent from a distance as he guides two detained men toward a Border Patrol vehicle. Martinez shouts at the man in Spanish, “Why do you mistreat them? Why did you shoot the girl? You killed her! They killed the girl! She’s dead!”

An unidentified Texas Highway Patrol officer approaches and tells Martinez, “You interfere, you’re going to be arrested. I’m just telling you.”

Border Patrol has since changed its account of the incident. After initially reporting that the agent who shot Gomez had been attacked by a group with “blunt objects,” the agency said Friday that the group “rushed” the officer, ignoring orders to get on the ground. The new statement also refers to the shooting victim as a “member of the group,” not “one of the assailants.”

Martinez told The New York Times that she did not see any weapons that the group of undocumented immigrants might have used and that she did not hear any agent yelling “Stop” or “Don’t run” at them.

The Times continues:

The F.B.I. is investigating the shooting, the authorities said, and agents on Wednesday spoke with Ms. Martinez and reviewed her videos.

On another part of the lot, which is empty except for a few trees, grass and overgrown weeds, an officer caught three men who were believed to be with the woman. As the officer escorted them away, Ms. Martinez said she heard him say: “See what happens? This is what happens with you people.”

Centeno Lane comes to a dead end at a part of the Rio Grande without a fence, making the area and the street a popular route for people who cross the border. Federal agents often zoom down the street, Ms. Martinez said, chasing after suspected undocumented immigrants.

Local immigration advocates have pushed back against militarization of the border.

“We don’t need any more protection. We’re safe,” said the founder of Laredo Immigrant Alliance, Karina Alvarez. “Our community really is in fear, we really think there should be accountability over Border Patrol agents.”

NPR continues:

In 2016, the Homeland Security Advisory Council looked into reports that border agents were not being held accountable for a rash of deadly shootings. The panel concluded that the “disciplinary process takes far too long to be an effective deterrent.”

Since then, Customs and Border Protection—the parent agency—has stressed training agents in use of nonlethal force and de-escalation techniques. Figures on the agency website show that “use of force involving firearms” dropped nearly 70 percent from 2012 to 2017. But it’s coming back. Agents used their guns nine times from October to March of this year, more than twice as many as the previous year.

Administration officials say that’s because assaults on border agents have spiked. But critics say the agency is playing with the numbers. In one incident in the Rio Grande Valley last year, first reported by the Intercept, six people threw rocks, bottles and branches at seven Border Patrol agents. By the Border Patrol’s tally, that added up to 126 separate assaults.

After Wednesday’s incident, the victim’s family held a news conference in Guatemala, asking for justice. “It’s not fair that they treat them like animals, just because they come from countries less developed,” Gomez’s aunt said.

Customs and Border Protection canceled a news conference on the shooting that had been scheduled for Friday.

Painting a Path Out of Prison

On President Barack Obama’s last day in office he granted clemency to 330 nonviolent drug offenders as part of his clemency initiative. He additionally granted commutations to 1,715 prisoners—more than the previous 12 presidents combined. One case was the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, who stole secret diplomatic and military documents that the Army private shared with WikiLeaks.

Initiated in 2014, Obama’s clemency initiative focused on drug dealers who received mandatory-minimum sentences during the war on drugs from the 1980s to the 2000s.

Fulton Leroy Washington (aka Mr. Wash) was one of the 58 whose sentences were commuted in May 2016. Wrongfully convicted in 1997 of conspiracy to attempt to manufacture PCP, he spent years in federal prison for a drug crime he did not commit, according to the now 63-year-old grandfather from Compton, Calif.

A recent documentary short tells the story of Washington’s homecoming. One of the filmmakers, journalist Marisa Aveling, first learned about Wash while researching articles on Obama’s clemency initiative, which was one tactic the president used to address the issue of mass incarceration in America. In Aveling’s article in The Outline, she noted that both Obama and former White House counsel Neil Eggleston believed “It’s a tool of last resort in fighting a system that puts people away for extended lengths that far outweigh their crimes.”

Because the charge Washington was convicted of in 1997 was part of a conspiracy case, he was tried as part of a group even though he wasn’t directly involved with the crime of conspiracy to attempt and manufacture PCP. “When tried under a conspiracy you can be sentenced with severity of the entire group no matter what you did or didn’t do,” explained Aveling.

The former welding teacher had been previously convicted of three nonviolent drug offenses. “Due to a mandatory minimum, the judge [in the conspiracy case] was required to give Washington a life sentence even though he was able to prove his innocence,” noted Aveling. Wash was the only defendant who didn’t agree to take a plea bargain.

Faced with a life sentence with no possibility of parole, Washington began painting as a way to bring some serenity to his life. “Painting allowed me to express myself,” the self-taught artist said. He observed the work of other artistic prisoners and studied art books and videotapes to learn technique. Through trial and error he found his own style, which he describes as a touch of surrealism pieced together with emotional stories.

S-Loc

Washington initially began painting with oils at the Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas. His first commission was from his attorney. She asked him to sketch an alibi witness who could confirm that Wash was miles from the scene of the crime he was charged with. Despite finding the witness, who corroborated Wash’s story in court, he was still convicted.

Deteriorating

Washington’s art served as a form of communication and a way to win respect within a hierarchical prison society. He began teaching art classes to other inmates, some of whom also commissioned him to create paintings of them and their relatives. Other inmates or their family members donated funds to his lawyer for his legal defense. At one point he was paid in postage stamps.

Breast Milk

Three of his mural-size paintings, including “American Flag Raising, Iwo Jima” and “Honda Point Disaster, 1923,” hang in the Lompoc Veterans Memorial Building. Wash hopes to make a living now painting murals and portraits or as an art teacher.

Washington believes it was his updated version of Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s 1864 painting of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation that drew his lawyer’s attention to his predicament and helped procure his release. Though emulating Carpenter’s form and layout, Wash used bright colors instead of the dark, solemn palette of the original. He depicted President Obama seated in Lincoln’s chair, surrounded by Attorney General Eric Holder, Vice President Joe Biden and other key members of his staff. Wash himself is shown seated across the table in prison clothes, shackled in chains and with his clemency lawyer seated nearby.

Emancipation Proclamation

“We’re still dealing with slavery in the form of mass incarceration,” Washington said. “We’re not on a plantation but in a prison.

“People looked at the painting and asked, ‘Who is this guy? How many people did he kill to get a life sentence?’ ” Washington said. When they learned there had been no violence or deaths, they questioned his sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

This week, President Trump said he would sign a prison reform bill that is working its way through Congress. Washington’s story can serve as a lesson about the kind of change that is needed.

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