Chris Hedges's Blog, page 162

U.S. Made Separated Migrant Kids’ Intense Trauma Worse: Report

WASHINGTON—Migrant children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border last year suffered post-traumatic stress and other serious mental health problems, according to a government watchdog report Wednesday. The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report in advance of the official release.

The children, many already distressed in their home countries or by their journey, showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated, according to a report from the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Some cried inconsolably. Others believed their parents had abandoned them and were angry and confused. “Other children expressed feelings of fear or guilt and became concerned for their parents’ welfare,” according to the report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE on the treatment of migrant children, which includes an upcoming film.

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The report is the first substantial accounting by a government agency on how family separation under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy has affected the mental health of children. It was based on interviews with about 100 mental health clinicians who had regular interactions with children but did not directly address the quality of the care the children did receive.

“Facilities reported that addressing the needs of separated children was particularly challenging, because these children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress than children who were not separated,” said Deputy Inspector General Ann Maxwell. “Separated children are also younger than the teenagers facilities were used to caring for.”

The separations have been widely criticized, and children’s health advocates have said the kids likely suffered trauma. A second report by the watchdog, also released Wednesday, found that thousands of childcare workers were given direct access to migrant children before completing required background and fingerprint checks.

One little boy, about 7 or 8, was separated from his father and did not know why, according to the inspector general. He believed that his dad was killed and he would also be killed.

“This child ultimately required emergency psychiatric care to address his mental health distress,” a program director told investigators.

Some of the separated children suffered physical symptoms because of their mental trauma, clinicians reported.

“You get a lot of ‘my chest hurts,’ even though everything is fine (medically). Children describe symptoms — ‘Every heartbeat hurts,’ ‘I can’t feel my heart’ — of emotional pain,” a clinician told investigators.

The report covers a period last year when facilities were overwhelmed under the “zero tolerance” policy, under which at least 2,500 children were separated from their parents. Children stayed behind in border custody while their parents were taken to federal court for criminal proceedings. Children held longer than 72 hours were transferred into HHS custody and placed in shelters that have traditionally cared for children who crossed the border alone.

Migrant children stay in the shelters, run by government-funded organizations, until released to a sponsor, usually a parent or close relative.

Previous reports have highlighted the disorganized reunification effort, and a lack of government planning on how to bring families together after they have been separated. Others have said thousands more children than initially reported may have been separated.

The watchdog said the longer children were in custody, the more their mental health deteriorated, and it recommended minimizing that time. It also suggested the creation of better mental health care options and the hiring of more trained staff.

The Administration for Children and Families, the HHS division that manages children, concurred with the recommendations and said it had already begun implementing them, including hiring a board-certified child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist to serve as a mental health team leader.

Department Assistant Secretary Lynn Johnson said in a letter to the watchdog that the average length of stay is much shorter now than it was last year, and noted the report was not a clinical review of treatment.

She wrote that “significant factors” beyond the agency’s control contributed to “the issues identified in the report.” Those included a surge in children at the border, the children’s unique mental health needs and a shortage of qualified bilingual clinicians, especially in rural areas.

She said that efforts were made to bring in more medical health professionals, but “adverse media coverage and negative public perception … have hampered efforts to expand.”

After a federal judge ordered the children reunified with their parents, guidance on how to do it kept changing and that led to further anxiety and distress, according to the report.

Some facilities said reunifications were scheduled with little notice or suddenly canceled.

In one case, a child was moved from a Florida facility to Texas to be reunited with her father. After the child made several trips to the detention center, she was returned to the Florida facility “in shambles,” without ever seeing him.

Investigators visited 45 facilities in 10 states during August and September of 2018, interviewing about 100 mental health clinicians who had regular interactions with children and staff.

During the interviews, there were almost 9,000 children in shelters; nearly 85% were 13-17 in age, 13% were 6-12 and 2% were infants to age 5.

At a minimum, each child in government custody is to receive one counseling session per week, plus two group sessions to discuss issues.

But the report found that mental health staff were overwhelmed. Usually there is one mental health clinician for 12 children, but during the period investigators studied, there were more than 25 children for one clinician.

A separate Office of Inspector General report also released Wednesday found 31 of the 45 facilities reviewed had hired case managers who did not meet Office of Refugee Resettlement requirements, including many without the required education. In addition, the review found 28 of the 45 facilities didn’t have enough mental health workers.

That meant some children didn’t receive proper treatment, the report found. And some children who suffered more severe illnesses — self-harming, suicidal behavior or actual suicide attempts — were not transferred quickly enough to residential treatment centers.

During a time when sponsors had to be fingerprinted, children were held in facilities for as long as 93 days. The fingerprints were sent to U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and some people in the United States illegally were arrested. Advocates said many potential sponsors feared coming to get the children while the policy was in effect.

After it was ditched in March, the average length of stay dropped to 58 days and was 48 days in April.

The report also addressed the question of whether children were being given psychotropic medications after media reports described the practice. The report found the instances were very minimal; about 300 children overall between May and July of 2018 were prescribed antidepressants. Staff described reluctant children who didn’t want to take medication, and some concerns that dosage or type of medication may not have been right.

In the second report, only four of the 45 shelters reviewed by the U.S. Health and Human Services inspector general met all staff screening requirements. Caregivers at more than half of those shelters worked with migrant toddlers, children and teens who were separated from their parents or who were traveling alone before their background check results were complete.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said children deserve compassionate care.

“Grantees and contractors that fail to ensure their employees are checked appropriately should not be allowed to care for these children,” said Portman.

Federal investigators also found some shelters relying on employees to report their own criminal histories. A background check found one employee — who “self-certified” that she had no history for crimes involving child abuse — had a third-degree child neglect felony on her record.

The inspector general found the federal government granted waivers from conducting child protective service reviews at four behavioral health residential facilities last year, in violation of the agency’s rules which give authority to grant waivers only at emergency influx detention camps.

Those waivers, for caregivers at two facilities holding thousands of children at Homestead, Florida, and Tornillo, Texas, were previously disclosed. Tornillo has closed and Homestead is empty but on “warm status” and could be reactivated.

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Burke and Mendoza reported from San Francisco.

Elizabeth Warren Details Bold Plans for Green New Deal

Declaring the climate emergency an “existential crisis” that requires bold and urgent action, Sen. Elizabeth Warren Tuesday night unveiled a proposal that calls for repealing President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations to help fund a transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.

Warren’s plan adopts and builds upon the clean energy blueprint introduced by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race last month after running a campaign that centered the climate crisis as the most dire issue facing the U.S. and the world.

“Jay didn’t merely sound the alarm or make vague promises. He provided bold, thoughtful, and detailed ideas for how to get us where we need to go,” Warren wrote in a Medium post. “One of the most important of these ideas is the urgent need to decarbonize key sectors of our economy. Today, I’m embracing that goal.”

Warren said she will “commit an additional $1 trillion over 10 years—fully paid for by reversing Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and giant corporations—to match Governor Inslee’s commitment, and to subsidize the economic transition to clean and renewable electricity, zero emission vehicles, and green products for commercial and residential buildings.”

The senator outlined the broad goals of her clean energy plan, which calls for $3 trillion in federal investment:

By 2028, 100 percent zero-carbon pollution for all new commercial and residential buildings;
By 2030, 100 percent zero emissions for all new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and all buses;
By 2035, 100 percent renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation, with an interim target of 100 percent carbon-neutral power by 2030.

“Nothing less than a national mobilization will be required to defeat climate change,” said Warren. “It will require every single one of us, and it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work—there is no time to waste.”

Warren’s clean energy plan was unveiled Tuesday as part of the Massachusetts senator’s overall climate platform, which is detailed on her website.

Warren, an original co-sponsor of the Senate Green New Deal resolution, said her platform would aim to ensure a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers, bolster protections for frontline communities, and create millions of well-paying union jobs while confronting the climate crisis.

“If we work together to make smart investments in our clean energy future, we will grow our economy, improve our health, and reduce structural inequalities embedded in our existing fossil fuel system,” Warren wrote. “The task before us is monumental, and it is urgent.”

The youth-led Sunrise Movement praised Warren’s platform, which was compiled ahead of a CNN climate crisis town hall on Wednesday that will be attended by 10 Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Ahead of tomorrow’s @cnn #ClimateTownHall, @ewarren has compiled all her plans so far for a #GreenNewDeal. They are as detailed as they are bold.

Thank you for your continued leadership. We hope this list keeps growing!

Happy reading

‘We Need Help’: Rescuers in Bahamas Face a Blasted Landscape

FREEPORT, Bahamas—Rescue crews in the Bahamas fanned out across a blasted landscape of smashed and flooded homes Wednesday, trying to reach drenched and stunned victims of Hurricane Dorian and take the full measure of the disaster. The official death toll stood at seven but was certain to rise.

A day after the most powerful hurricane on record ever to hit the country finished mauling the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, emergency workers had yet to reach some stricken areas.

“Right now there are just a lot of unknowns,” Parliament member Iram Lewis said. “We need help.”

Dorian, meanwhile, pushed its way northward off the Florida shoreline with reduced but still-dangerous 105 mph (165 kph) winds on a projected course that could sideswipe Georgia and the Carolinas. An estimated 3 million people in the four states were warned to clear out, and highways leading inland were turned into one-way evacuation routes.

The storm parked over the Bahamas and pounded it for over a day and a half with winds up to 185 mph (295 kph) and torrential rains, swamping neighborhoods in muddy brown floodwaters and destroying or severely damaging thousands of homes.

“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” said Prime Minister Hubert Minnis. He said he expects the number of dead to rise.

National Security Minister Marvin Dames said rescue teams were fanning out as the winds and rain subsided, with more than 600 police officers and marines in Grand Bahama and 100 in Abaco.

“The devastation is unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “We’re beginning to get on the ground, get our people in the right places. We have a lot of work in the days and weeks and months ahead.”

Rescuers used jet skis, boats and even a bulldozer to reach children and adults trapped by the swirling waters, while the U.S. Coast Guard, Britain’s Royal Navy and disaster relief organizations tried to get food and medicine to survivors and take the most desperate people to safety.

Five Coast Guard helicopters ran near-hourly flights to stricken Abaco, flying people to the main hospital in the capital, Nassau.

Health Minister Duane Sands said the government was airlifting 25 doctors, nurses and other health workers to Abaco and hoped to bring in mental health workers soon.

“The situation is under control in Abaco,” he said. “In Grand Bahama, today will tell the magnitude of the problem.”

Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, with a combined population of about 70,000, are known for their marinas, golf courses and all-inclusive resorts.

Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said Tuesday that more than 13,000 houses, or about 45% of the homes on Grand Bahama and Abaco, were believed to be severely damaged or destroyed. U.N. and Red Cross officials said tens of thousands of people will need food and clean drinking water.

“It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic,” said Lia Head-Rigby, who helps run a hurricane relief group and flew over Abaco. “It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.”

She said her representative on Abaco told her there were “a lot more dead.”

At 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Dorian was centered about 90 miles (140 kilometers) northeast of Daytona Beach, Florida, moving northwest at 9 mph (15 kph). Hurricane-force winds extended up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) from its center.

Dorian was expected to pass dangerously close to Georgia and perhaps strike South Carolina or North Carolina on Thursday and Friday with the potential for over a foot of rain in some spots. Forecasters warned that Dorian is likely to cause storm surge and flooding even if its core does not blow ashore.

“Don’t tough it out. Get out,” said U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency official Carlos Castillo.

With the threat to Florida easing and the danger shifting northward, Orlando’s airport moved to reopen, along with Walt Disney World and Universal. To the north, the Navy ordered ships at its huge base in Norfolk, Virginia, to head out to sea for safety, and warplanes at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, were being moved inland to Ohio.

Having seen storms swamp his home on the Georgia coast in 2016 and 2017, Joey Spalding of Tybee Island decided to empty his house and stay at a friend’s apartment nearby rather than take any chances with Dorian.

He packed a U-Haul truck with tables, chairs, a chest of drawers, tools — virtually all of his furnishings except for his mattress and a large TV — and planned to park it on higher ground. He also planned to shroud his house in plastic wrap up to shoulder height and pile sandbags in front of the doors.

“In this case, I don’t have to come into a house full of junk,” he said. “I’m learning a little as I go.”

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Associated Press journalist Ramon Espinosa reported this story in Freeport, AP writer Danica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and AP writer Michael Weissenstein reported from Nassau, Bahamas. AP writers Tim Aylen in Freeport, Russ Bynum in Georgia and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

Hong Kong Withdraws Extradition Bill That Sparked Protests

HONG KONG—Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced Wednesday the government will formally withdraw an extradition bill that sparked months of demonstrations, bowing to one of the protesters’ demands in the hope of ending the increasingly violent unrest.

But lawmakers warned that the bill’s withdrawal was not enough to end the turmoil, which has increasingly focused on alleged police brutality against protesters and democratic reforms. A youth activist also rejected the move as insincere and warned it could be a precursor to a clampdown.

The bill would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China for trials. It has prompted massive protests since June that disrupted transport links and caused the airport to shut down earlier this month.

Lam said the government would not accept other demands including an independent inquiry into alleged police misconduct and the unconditional release of those detained. Instead, she named two new members to a police watchdog agency investigating the matter.

“The government will formally withdraw the bill in order to fully allay public concerns,” she said in a recorded television message.

She said the persistent violence is damaging the rule of law and that challenges to the “one country, two systems” policy had put Hong Kong in a “highly vulnerable and dangerous situation.”

“Our foremost priority now is to end violence, to safeguard the rule of law and to restore order and safety in society,” she added, vowing to “strictly enforce the law against all violent and illegal acts.”

Lam said it was clear that public frustration has gone far beyond the bill and that her government will seek a dialogue with aggrieved groups to “address the discontent in society and to look for solutions.”

She said she will also invite community leaders, professionals and academics to examine deep-seated problems in the society and advise the government on solutions.

“Let’s replace conflicts with conversations, and let’s look for solutions,” she said.

Lam made the announcement after meeting with pro-government lawmakers and members of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Lawmaker Michael Tien, who was at the meeting, said the move would not change public sentiment if it isn’t accompanied by other concessions.

“It is too little, too late. The focus now has completely shifted. Most people do not remember what the bill is about but are more concerned about the escalating violence and alleged police heavy-handedness against protesters,” he said.

He said Lam rejected his call during the meeting for an independent inquiry which would have the power to summon witnesses, on the ground that it would overlap with the police watchdog probe.

Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said the protesters are adamant that all their demands, including calls for direct elections, are fulfilled. She mocked Lam’s bid to seek dialogue to address public grievances.

“She has been fast asleep these three months, this is just absurd,” Mo said. “The scars and wounds are still bleeding, and she thinks she can just use some garden hose to put out the hill fire. That is not acceptable.”

Prominent pro-democracy youth activist Joshua Wong warned that apparent concessions by the government “always come with a far tighter grip on exercising civil rights.”

“They have conceded nothing in fact, and a full-scale clampdown is on the way,” he tweeted.

Pro-establishment lawmaker Starry Lee, however, urged protesters to accept the government’s olive branch so the city can move forward.

The Hong Kong stock market soared 4%, boosted by reports of the bill’s withdrawal.

Lam has come under withering criticism for pushing the extradition bill, which many in Hong Kong see as an example of the city’s eroding autonomy since the former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997.

She was elected as Hong Kong’s chief executive by a pro-Beijing committee of Hong Kong elites, and the mainland government has spoken in support of her government and the city’s police force throughout the protests.

Clashes between police and protesters have become increasingly violent, with demonstrators throwing gasoline bombs and rods at officers in protests last weekend. Authorities in turn have employed water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. More than 1,100 people have been detained.

The mostly young protesters say that a degree of violence is necessary to get the government’s attention after peaceful rallies were futile. In Beijing, the mainland office responsible for Hong Kong has warned that China will “not sit idly by” if the situation worsens.

The prolonged protests have hurt Hong Kong’s economy amid a slowdown in the Chinese economy and its trade war with the United States.

Hong Kong and foreign companies have also been under intense pressure to support China’s ruling Communist Party against the protesters.

The chairman of Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways resigned Wednesday, becoming the second top figure to leave the airline since the protests erupted.

Cathay said John Slosar was retiring from the airline, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent businesses. It comes less than one month after Cathay’s CEO, Rupert Hogg, resigned following pressure by Beijing over participation by some of the carrier’s employees in protests.

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Associated Press writers Joe McDonald in Beijing and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

Private Sale Allowed Texas Gunman to Evade Background Check

ODESSA, Texas–The gunman in a West Texas rampage that left seven dead obtained his AR-style rifle through a private sale, allowing him to evade a federal background check that blocked him from getting a gun in 2014 due to a “mental health issue,” a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The official spoke to The Associated Press Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The person did not say when and where the private sale took place.

Officers killed 36-year-old Seth Aaron Ator on Saturday outside a busy Odessa movie theater after a spate of violence that spanned 10 miles (16 kilometers) and lasted more than an hour, injuring around two dozen people in addition to the dead. He spread terror across the two biggest cities in the Permian Basin while firing indiscriminately from his car into passing vehicles and shopping plazas. He also hijacked a U.S. Postal Service mail truck, killing the driver.

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Ator had tried purchasing a firearm in January 2014 but was denied, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement Tuesday. The agency said it was precluded by law from disclosing why, but the law enforcement official told the AP it was due to a “mental health issue.”

Private sales, which some estimates suggest account for 25 to 40 percent of all gun sales, are not subject to a federal background check in the United States. If the person selling the firearm knows the buyer cannot legally purchase or possess a firearm, they would be violating the law. But they are not required to find out if the person can possess a firearm and are not required to conduct a background check.

The so-called “gun show” loophole means that Americans can buy a gun from an individual, get one bequeathed from a relative, obtain one through an online marketplace as well as from some dealers at gun shows — all without needing to go through a federal background check.

FBI special agent Christopher Combs said Ator “was on a long spiral of going down” and had been fired from his oil services job the morning of the shooting, and that he called 911 both before and after the rampage began. Online court records show Ator was arrested in 2001 for a misdemeanor offense that would not have prevented him from legally purchasing firearms in Texas.

Combs said Monday that Ator called the agency’s tip line as well as local police dispatch on Saturday after being fired from Journey Oilfield Services, making “rambling statements about some of the atrocities that he felt that he had gone through.” Fifteen minutes after the call to the FBI, Combs said, a Texas state trooper unaware of the calls to authorities tried pulling over Ator for failing to signal a lane change.

Ator fired on the trooper and fled, setting in motion a rampage that didn’t end until the gunman was killed at 4:17 p.m., according to Odessa police spokesman Steve LeSueur. That was one hour and four minutes after DPS said the trooper pulled over Ator.

In 2018, more than 26 million background checks were conducted. Of those, fewer than 100,000 were denied with the vast majority of those rejected because the person was found to have a criminal past that made them ineligible. Far fewer just over 6,000 were because the person had been involuntarily committed.

Gun-rights advocates have pushed back against efforts to include private sales, contending it would risk unwittingly turning someone into a felon for a private transaction with a friend or relative. They also argue that criminals will still get their hands on a firearm, regardless of what laws are on the books.

“In the guise of basically regulating private sales it creates a mechanism that is so labyrinthian that basically gun owners won’t be able to comply with it,” Michael Hammond, the legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, told The Associated Press.

Gun-control advocates argue that the lack of a background check is making it too easy for the wrong people to skirt the background check system and get a gun. For example, on one well-known internet site for firearms sales, there were classified listings in recent days for about 1,700 long guns in Texas alone.

Combs said Ator “showed up to work enraged” but did not point to any specific source of his anger. Ator’s home on the outskirts of Odessa was a corrugated metal shack along a dirt road surrounded by trailers, mobile homes and oil pump jacks. Combs described it as a “strange residence” that reflected “what his mental state was going into this.”

Ator fired at random as he drove in the area of Odessa and Midland, cities more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) west of Dallas. Police used a marked SUV to ram the mail truck outside the Cinergy Movie Theater in Odessa, disabling the vehicle. The gunman then fired at police, wounding two officers before he was killed.

The number of mass killings so far this year has already eclipsed the total for all of last year. A teenager suspected of killing five family members in Alabama brought the total to 26 mass killings in 2019, claiming the lives of 147 people, compared with 25 mass killings and 142 deaths in 2018, according to a database by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The database tracks homicides where four or more people are killed, not including the offender.

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Weber reported from Austin and Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Meghan Hoyer and Michael Biesecker in Washington, Tim Talley in Oklahoma City and Lisa Marie Pane in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

U.N. Report Finds U.S. Likely Guilty of War Crimes in Yemen

A new report by a group of investigators commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council says the United States, Britain and France may be culpable for war crimes in Yemen. The three countries back a Saudi Arabia- and United Arab Emirates-led coalition fighting on the side of the government in the current Yemeni civil war, which has been ongoing for five years.

“Five years into the conflict, violations against Yemeni civilians continue unabated, with total disregard for the plight of the people and a lack of international action to hold parties to the conflict accountable,” Kamel Jendoubi, chair of the Group of Experts on Yemen, said in a press statement.

Investigators write that they “found reasonable grounds to believe that the parties to the conflict in Yemen are responsible for an array of human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law.”

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Though much of this information has been uncovered by journalists and such advocacy groups as Human Rights Watch, and in a 2018 United Nations report, the latest U.N. report “is striking for its broad demand for accountability,” reporter Sudarsan Raghavan explains in The Washington Post.

“The United States, in particular, provides logistical support and intelligence to the coalition, in addition to selling billions of dollars in weaponry to the group,” Raghavan writes.

The 2018 report determined that the Saudi and UAE coalition was responsible for killing thousands of civilians in airstrikes and shelling, and through the use of snipers and land mines; torturing detainees; and raping and intentionally starving citizens.

Anti-government Houthi rebels also are accused of war crimes, including using child soldiers. “None have clean hands,” Charles Garraway, one of the 2018 report’s investigators and a retired British military officer, told The New York Times in 2018.

Because the U.S., France and Britain supported and armed the Saudis, the U.N. investigators consider those countries complicit.

After the release of the 2018 report, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that the Trump administration had reviewed its support for the UAE-Saudi coalition. “We determined it was the right thing to do in defense of their own countries, but also to restore the rightful government there,” he told the Times, adding, “[o]ur conduct there is to try to keep the human cost of innocents being killed accidentally to an absolute minimum.’’

The latest U.N. report suggests that the Saudi coalition and its Western allies cannot police themselves or take responsibility for actions that kill civilians, which, as the Post points out, “is often cited by Trump administration and British officials to justify the continued military support and arms sales to the coalition.”

“The assessment of the targeting process is particularly worrying, as it implies that an attack hitting a military target is legal, notwithstanding civilian casualties, hence ignoring the principle of proportionality,” the report says.

The U.S., Britain and France are all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The report’s authors submitted a list of people “who may be responsible for international crimes” to U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, but they do not specify names or say whether those individuals are from Britain, France or the U.S. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France and the U.S. did not respond to the Post’s requests for comments.

Read the 2019 U.N. report here.

Walmart to Stop Selling Certain Types of Gun Ammunition

NEW YORK—Walmart says it will discontinue the sale of handgun and short-barrel rifle ammunition and also publicly request that customers refrain from openly carrying firearms in stores even where state laws allow it.

The announcement comes just days after a mass shooting claimed seven lives in Odessa, Texas and follows two other back-to-back shootings last month, one of them at a Walmart store.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based discounter said Tuesday it will stop handgun ammunition as well as short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber used in military style weapons, after it runs out of its current inventory.

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It will also discontinue handgun sales in Alaska. Walmart stopped selling handguns in the mid-1990s, with the exception of Alaska. The latest move marks its complete exit from that business and allows it to focus on hunting rifles and related ammunition only.

“We have a long heritage as a company of serving responsible hunters and sportsmen and women, and we’re going to continue doing so,” according to a memo by Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon to be circulated to employees Tuesday afternoon.

The retailer is further requesting that customers refrain from openly carrying firearms at its Walmart and Sam’s Club stores unless they are law enforcement officers. However, it said that it won’t be changing its policy for customers who have permits for concealed carry. Walmart says it will be adding signage in stores to inform customers of those changes.

Last month, a gunman entered a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people with an AK-style firearm that Walmart already bans the sale of and marking the deadliest shooting in the company’s history. Texas became an open carry state in 2016, allowing people to openly carry firearms in public.

Walmart’s moves will reduce its market share of ammunition from around 20% to a range of about 6% to 9%, according to Tuesday’s memo. About half of its more than 4,750 U.S. stores sell firearms.

The nation’s largest retailer has been facing increasing pressure to change its gun policies by gun control activists, employees and politicians after the El Paso shooting and a second unrelated shooting in Dayton, Ohio that killed nine people. A few days before that, two Walmart workers were killed by another worker at a store in Southaven, Mississippi.

In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting, Walmart ordered workers to remove video game signs and displays that depict violence from stores nationwide. But that fell well short of demands for the retailer to stop selling firearms entirely. Critics have also wanted Walmart to stop supporting politicians backed by the National Rifle Association.

At least one gun control activist group applauded Walmart’s moves.

“Walmart deserves enormous credit for joining the strong and growing majority of Americans who know that we have too many guns in our country and they are too easy to get,” said Igor Volsky, Executive Director and Founder of Guns Down America in a statement. “That work doesn’t end with Walmart’s decision today. As Congress comes back to consider gun violence, Walmart should make it clear that it stands with Americans who are demanding real change.”

The retailer has long found itself in an awkward spot with its customers and gun enthusiasts. Many of its stores are located in rural areas where hunters are depend on Walmart to get their equipment. Walmart is trying to walk a fine line by trying to embrace its hunting heritage while being a more responsible retailer.

With its new policy on “open carry,” McMillon noted in his memo that individuals have tried to make a statement by carrying weapons into its stores just to frighten workers and customers. But there are well-intentioned customers acting lawfully who have also inadvertently caused a store to be evacuated and local law enforcement to be called to respond.

He says Walmart will continue to treat “law-abiding customers with respect” and it will have a “non-confrontational approach.”

Walmart says it hopes to help other retailers by sharing its best practices like software that it uses for background checks. And the company, which in 2015 stopped selling assault rifles like the AR-rifles used in several mass shootings, urged more debate on the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban while also calling for the government to strengthen background checks. McMillon says Walmart will send letters to the White House and the Congressional leadership that calls for action on these “common sense” measures.

“In a complex situation lacking a simple solution, we are trying to take constructive steps to reduce the risk that events like these will happen again,” McMillon wrote in his memo. “The status quo is unacceptable.”

Over the last 15 years, Walmart had expanded beyond its hunting and fishing roots, carrying items like assault rifles in response to increasing demand. But particularly since 2015, often coinciding with major public mass shootings, the company has made moves to curb the sale of ammunition and guns.

Walmart announced in February 2018 that it would no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21 and also removed items resembling assault-style rifles from its website. Those moves were prompted by the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.

In 2015, Walmart stopped selling semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 style rifle, the type used in the Dayton shooting. The retailer also doesn’t sell large-capacity magazines, handguns (except in Alaska) or bump stocks, nor the AK-style firearm that was used by the El Paso shooter.

California City Experiments With Universal Income

STOCKTON, Calif.—Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wants to give cash to every American each month.

Susie Garza has never heard of Yang. But since February, she’s been getting $500 a month from a nonprofit in Stockton, California, as part of an experiment that offers something unusual in presidential politics: a trial run of a campaign promise, highlighting the benefits and challenges in real time.

Garza can spend the money however she wants. She uses $150 of it to pay for her cellphone and another $100 or so to pay off her dog’s veterinarian bills. She spends the rest on her two grandsons now that she can afford to buy them birthday presents online and let them get the big bag of chips at the 7-Eleven.

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“I’ve never been able to do that. I thought it was just the coolest thing,” said Garza, who is unemployed and previously was addicted to drugs, though she said she has been sober for 18 years following a stint in prison. “I like it because I feel more independent, like I’m in charge. I really have something that’s my own.”

Garza is part of an experiment testing the impact of “universal basic income,” an old idea getting new life thanks to the 2020 presidential race, although Stockton’s project is an independent one and has no connection to any presidential race.

Yang, a tech entrepreneur, has anchored his longshot bid with a proposal to give $1,000 in cash to every American, saying the payments will shield workers from the pain of certain job losses caused by automation. The idea has helped him win unexpected support and even muscle out some better-known candidates from the debate stages. His proposal isn’t too far off from one by U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination, who has a proposal to give up to $500 a month to working families.

Stockton, once known as the foreclosure capital of the country and for one of the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcies, is a step ahead of both candidates. In February, the city launched the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, a pilot program spearheaded by a new mayor and financed in part by the nonprofit led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. The city chose 125 people who live in census tracts at or below the city’s median household income of $46,033. They get the money on a debit card on the 15th of each month.

“I think poverty is immoral, I think it is antiquated and I think it shouldn’t exist,” said Michael Tubbs, the city’s 29-year-old Democratic mayor.

Tubbs’ personal story includes a cousin who was killed, a father who is in prison and a mother who, as a teenager, raised him with the help of multiple jobs. He found his way to Stanford and public service, where he persuaded his beleaguered city to sign on to a provocative new idea: guaranteed cash.

Stockton residents, who have elected Republican mayors for 16 out of the last 22 years, were skeptical, worried about encouraging people not to work. Tubbs said he calmed their fears by noting the money came from private donations, not taxpayer dollars.

“I would tell people all that time that would be upset or would call angry, I would say, well, I’m just as angry as you are, but I’m angry about the problem. I’m not angry about possible solutions,” Tubbs said.

A team of researchers is monitoring the participants. Their chief interest is not finances but happiness. They are using what they call a “mattering scale” to measure how much people feel like they matter to society.

“Do people notice you are there? Those things are correlated to health and well-being,” said Stacia Martin-West, a researcher at the University of Tennessee who is working on the program along with Amy Castro-Baker at the University of Pennsylvania.

The money has made Jovan Bravo happier. The 31-year-old Stockton native and construction worker is married and has three children, ages 13, 8 and 4. He said he didn’t see enough of his children when he worked six days a week to pay the bills.

That changed when he started getting $500 a month. Now he only works one Saturday a month. He uses the other Saturdays to take his kids to the amusement park and ride bikes with them in the park.

“It’s made a huge difference,” he said. “Just being able to spend more time with the wife and kids, it brings us closer together.”

Stockton officials do not release the names of the program participants. They arrange interviews with journalists only for those who volunteer to discuss their experiences.

The idea of a guaranteed income dates back to at least the 18th century and has crossed ideological and cultural lines.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Republicans Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney oversaw four guaranteed-income experiments scattered across the country when Rumsfeld, later a defense secretary, was director of President Richard Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity and Cheney, the future vice president, was his deputy.

The program had some hiccups, including a woman who spent all the money on alcohol and a man who went into debt buying expensive furniture for his government-subsidized apartment, according to a 1970 New York Times story. But the experiment concluded that the money did not stop people from working and led Nixon to propose expanding the program, which ultimately did not pass Congress.

Since then, other studies have reached similar results. A 2018 study in Alaska, where residents have gotten a share of the state’s oil revenue every year since 1982, found the money has not shrunk the state’s labor force. The same was found in a 2010 UCLA study in North Carolina, where the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has shared casino revenue with its members since the mid-1990s.

The latest momentum comes with the help of the technology industry, which is grappling with how to prepare for the job losses likely to come with automation and artificial intelligence.

The tech connection has drawn criticism from left-leaning labor unions skeptical of the industry’s motives.

“We think the future of work should be defined by working people, not tech billionaires,” said Steve Smith, spokesman for the California Labor Federation, a group of 1,200 unions and a reliable ally for some of the state’s most liberal policies. “If there are no jobs available, you are pretty much stuck with your $1,000 a month check while the CEO of the tech company that automated you out of a job is being paid a billion dollars a year.”

Other critics note that the programs can chip away at the social safety net. Yang’s plan requires recipients to decline food stamps and some other government assistance.

There’s also the question of how to pay for it.

Stockton’s program, giving 125 people $500 per month for 18 months, will cost just over $1.1 million. Harris’ plan, which covers working families making up to $100,000 annually, would cost about $275 billion per year, according to the Tax Policy Center. To pay for it, she says she would repeal some of the 2017 GOP tax cuts and impose new taxes on corporations.

Yang’s plan, which covers every adult in the United States, would cost $2.8 trillion per year. He would impose a new tax on businesses’ goods and services while shrinking some other government assistance programs. Representatives for Yang and Harris did not respond to interview requests.

The Stockton experiment runs through July 2020. Researchers expect to release their first round of data this fall, when the presidential campaigns are preparing for the Iowa caucuses and state primaries.

Tubbs says he already sees success in making the city a focal point in the discussion about the future of capitalism and the U.S. economy. But once the experiment is over, he’s not sure what’s next. He says guaranteed income would need to be much bigger — at least statewide — to really have an impact.

Garza does not know what’s next for her, either. She relies on her husband for most things, and he recently lost his job. The extra $500 a month was so helpful, it left her wondering how she was lucky enough to get it — a question she posed to the program’s director.

“She goes, ‘Because you’re blessed,'” Garza said. “And I just left it at that.”

Bernie Sanders Is Coming to American Journalism’s Rescue

Criticizing the media has become a sensitive issue for many on the left in the age of Trump. With an authoritarian president in office who seeks to discredit the media at every turn and regularly calls the press the “enemy of the people,” being too critical of the journalism business in 2019 can feel a bit like kicking someone when they’re down. Journalists in and beyond the U.S. not only must deal with a hostile president who attacks reporters and publications that don’t offer a steady stream of fawning coverage, but they are also grappling with the fact that their industry is in rapid decline.

At a time when journalism has never been a more essential public good, the journalism business is dying. Monthly layoffs plague the industry and newsroom employment has dropped by a quarter since 2008. More than 2,000 American newspapers have closed since 2004, and now half the counties in the country can claim only one local newspaper (while 171 counties have none at all). Meanwhile, full-time journalism jobs are increasingly difficult to come by, and for many reporters and writers today, the only certainty is the precarity of the gig economy.

With this gloomy prognosis, coupled with growing hostility toward the press, it might seem like the last thing the country needs right now is leftists railing against the media. This is apparently the attitude among many prominent beltway journalists, who have been quick to equate progressive critiques of the corporate media with Trumpian attacks on the “fake news” media. When the country’s most famous democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, made a critical comment about coverage from The Washington Post a few weeks ago, for example, pointing out that Jeff Bezos owned the paper (which does seem to have a pretty clear agenda against the Vermont senator), he was labeled a conspiracy theorist and slammed on CNN for his “Trump-like attack” of the press.

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This beltway backlash continued last week in an article published in the Guardian’s U.S. edition, in which author Joan Greve, formerly of The Washington Post, pondered whether Sanders’ criticism of the Post was “Trumpian” in nature. Sanders’ comments, wrote Greve, “come amid an increasing willingness among the broader Democratic presidential field to harshly criticize the press—even as violence against US journalists has escalated and the president’s hostile rhetoric of ‘fake news’ continues unabated.” To some observers, Greve reported, “it now seems the anti-media accusations of the right are being mirrored on the left, albeit not at the dangerous levels of the president.”

While it is perfectly reasonable to question whether rhetoric goes too far in certain instances, the idea that leftist critiques of the corporate media bear even the slightest resemblance to right-wing attacks on the press is laughable. Indeed, to liken media criticisms from the left to Trump’s incoherent ravings against the press betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the left’s critique, which is grounded in a structural and institutional analysis, not paranoid conspiracy theories and authoritarian politics.

The subtitle of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s classic study of the media, “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” is pretty self-explanatory. The authors lay out how the progressive critique of the media is part of a larger critique of free market capitalism and of the corporate structure of our economy. According to this analysis, the fact that around 90% of the media in America is controlled by six corporations (down from 50 companies in the early 1980s) tells us a lot more about media bias than whether a majority of journalists personally vote Democrat or Republican.

From the left-wing perspective, it is impossible to completely separate media companies from the economic forces that drive their business. Then there’s the question of ownership; of course, there’s a big difference between activist owners like Rupert Murdoch and someone like Bezos, who avoids direct editorial interference. Sanders made just this point during the Democratic debate on CNN in late July. In response to moderator Jake Tapper’s misleading question about tax increases under Sanders’ health care plan (Tapper ignored that health care savings would offset any tax increases for the vast majority), the Vermont senator accurately predicted that “the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program.”

It is also worth noting that this could happen only in America or New Zealand, the two countries where direct-to-consumer drug advertising is legal. Market forces and the profit motive drive most media companies today, and to say this has absolutely no impact on programming or coverage is either naive or disingenuous.

Not long after making his comment about The Washington Post and Jeff Bezos, Sanders qualified his remarks: “Do I think Jeff Bezos is on the phone, telling the editor of The Washington Post what to do? Absolutely not. It doesn’t work that way.”

With an “authoritarian-type” president “trying to intimidate the media,” Sanders explained, progressives have to be careful with their critiques, and must defend the free press at all costs.

But defending a free and independent press from authoritarian demagogues and right-wing terrorists isn’t good enough today, and sadly, the free market has proven to be an even greater long-term threat to the press than the Tweeter in Chief. The market hasn’t just put countless newspapers out of business and myriad journalists out of work; it has led to a precipitous decline in the quality of journalism, as the daily struggle for survival has forced outlets to chase ratings and clicks, sacrificing quality for quantity.

Twenty years ago, Nieman Reports published a report on how network television news had changed over the previous two decades. Up until the last decades of the 20th century, there had been no profitable news business on broadcast television. “The Big Three broadcast television networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—all covered news, but none generally made money doing so,” explained the report’s authors. “Nor did they expect to turn a profit from news programming.” “I have Jack Benny to make money,” the owner of CBS, William Paley, told news reporters in the early 1960s, who were instructed not to worry about costs.

The demand for profit from news programming arose as profits from entertainment programming began to dwindle. Suddenly, news was expected to make money, and the results were entirely predictable. One way to make the news profitable was to “make the product more entertaining,” according to Neiman Reports. This would generate higher ratings and thus higher revenues. Another part of the formula was to control spending: “The networks have, among other things, closed foreign and domestic bureaus, laid off staff, eliminated some money-losing documentary units, and curbed convention and election coverage.”

In the two decades since then, the news business has continued to transform. A kind of creative destruction has forced many traditional media companies out of business while the market has cultivated clickbait journalism. It has become harder and harder for small and independent outlets to survive, while media conglomerates have grown even more massive since the 1996 Telecommunications Act deregulated the media industry a quarter-century ago.

Last month, CBS and Viacom announced that they would be reuniting in a merger (after splitting in 2005) to form ViacomCBS. Meanwhile, AT&T acquired Time Warner last year after overcoming an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department, making AT&T the largest media company in the world based on revenue.

None of these trends bode well for the future of journalism, and in an editorial published last week in The Guardian, Sanders further addressed the current state of media. “One reason we do not have enough real journalism in America right now is because many outlets are being gutted by the same forces of greed that are pillaging our economy,” wrote the senator, denouncing the “corporate conglomerates and hedge fund vultures” who buy struggling companies only to slash their newsrooms, along with the television pundits who earn “tens of millions of dollars to pontificate about frivolous political gossip” as thousands of journalists are laid off.

“Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read and download,” continued Sanders. “Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and ‘benevolent’ billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny.”

This take, it should be clear, is not tantamount to an authoritarian or “Trumpian” critique of the media directed at journalists. Rather, it’s a democratic critique aimed at corporate executives and billionaire tycoons. Part of Sanders’ plan to fix journalism is to “boost media workers’ laudable efforts to form unions and collectively bargain with their employers.”

If elected, he wrote, he would also “reinstate and strengthen media ownership rules,” limiting the number of stations that broadcasting companies can own, and direct federal agencies to “study the impact of consolidation in print, television and digital media to determine whether further antitrust action is necessary.” The senator also called out big tech companies like Google and Facebook, which have played an outsize role in disrupting the traditional revenue model for publications.

Ultimately, Sanders and other progressives understand that capitalism is a greater long-term threat to American journalism than Donald Trump. There is no simple solution to the multitude of problems facing the journalism business today, but the fact that journalism is treated as a “business” rather than a public good seems to be at the root of all its problems.

As dangerous as Trump’s rhetoric is, journalists aren’t going to be unemployed (or underemployed) because of his threatening tweets—although this is not to say Trump hasn’t pushed for policies that would damage journalism even further.

Yet some possible solutions remain. One of the many ways to address the market’s steady erosion of journalism would be to support public funding of the media. Predictably, the Trump administration has tried to eliminate all funding for public broadcasting, even though the entire annual budget is less than what it costs the military to purchase a few aircraft.

The U.S. already has a dismal record when it comes to public funding of journalism: The average per capita spending on public broadcasting in countries from Europe to Australia was $86 in 2014, compared to $3 per capita in the United States. In Norway it is a whopping $180, and the second lowest on the list, New Zealand, still spent five times more per capita than America.

If Trump had his way and was unencumbered by constitutional restraints, he wouldn’t just eliminate the public broadcasting budget. He would crush the free press and perhaps even take control of the major news companies, just as Vladimir Putin did in Russia. Not surprisingly, Trump appears to admire Putin’s handling of pesky journalists. If Bernie Sanders had his way, he would safeguard journalism from the whims of the free market and empower actual journalists over “benevolent billionaires” and corporate executives.

If anyone still cannot tell the night-and-day difference between these two critiques, it’s quite possible he or she might be one of the lucky few pundits who earn six- or seven-figure checks as their fellow journalists fall victim to the market’s invisible hand.

The 5 Biggest Corporate Lies About Unions

Wealthy corporations and their enablers have spread 5 big lies about unions in order to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines. Know the truth and spread the truth.

Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.

Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the the 1970s,  the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.

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Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. Now way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.

Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were  in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.

Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.