Tuesday, 30 June 2020

ACLU: Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund Religious Education: How Today’s Supreme Court Decision Further Erodes the Separation of Church and State

Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund Religious Education: How Today’s Supreme Court Decision Further Erodes the Separation of Church and State

Today, in an unprecedented decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Montana must provide funding for religious education as part of its school voucher tax credit program — despite the fact that the Montana Constitution forbids government aid for religious education and activities. The court’s opinion in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue marks an alarming sea change in the law and calls into question the continued validity of similar provisions in dozens of other state constitutions, which aim to prohibit government funding for religious institutions.
 
The Supreme Court has held that school vouchers for religious education are permissible under the First Amendment because, according to the court, the aid is indirect, meaning it is not provided directly to schools but instead funneled to individual students and families who then decide which schools to attend. However, the court has also recognized that state constitutions can, and often do, provide stronger protections than the federal Constitution against government funding of religion.
 
Today’s decision disregards that longstanding precedent and will be detrimental to both religious freedom and public education: The court’s ruling could effectively mean that, when states offer school vouchers or similar funding involving indirect aid — such as Montana’s tax credit scholarship program — they now must extend the aid to religious schools, too. This is despite the fact that millions more in government funds will be diverted from public schools as a result, and taxpayer dollars will be used to support religious indoctrination and training for future religious leaders and adherents. This also means that the government will fund discrimination against minority-faith and LGBTQ students and job applicants, as well as students and prospective employees with disabilities, whom many religious schools refuse to admit or hire. Indeed, earlier this year, the court heard arguments in two cases that could expand the ability of religious schools — the very same ones that often receive voucher funding — to discriminate in hiring and firing based on any ground the schools want, including race and ethnicity.
 
With today’s ruling and its 2017 decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer allowing — for the first time ever — direct funding of a church as part of a playground resurfacing program, the Supreme Court appears to be marching toward a legal paradigm that would virtually destroy a fundamental principle on which the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was built. As James Madison, the architect of the First Amendment, explained, even “three pence” in compelled aid to religion was too much of a threat to religious liberty. Madison believed that forcing individuals to financially support religion was a direct assault on the fundamental human right of freedom of conscience. He and the other framers also worried that taxpayer funding of religion would weaken religious institutions by making them dependent on the government aid and engender religious divisiveness.
 
Dozens of states, including Montana, took Madison’s concerns seriously. They enacted constitutional provisions like Montana’s to protect their taxpayers’ consciences when it comes to matter of faith, preserve the vitality of their public school systems, respect religious institutions’ autonomy, and facilitate peaceful religious pluralism in their communities. But increasingly, the Supreme Court appears not to care about these values. Instead, religious freedom these days runs only one way — in favor of religious institutions and against the separation of church and state.



Published July 1, 2020 at 04:11AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eZuVHS

ACLU: Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund Religious Education: How Today’s Supreme Court Decision Further Erodes the Separation of Church and State

Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund Religious Education: How Today’s Supreme Court Decision Further Erodes the Separation of Church and State

Today, in an unprecedented decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Montana must provide funding for religious education as part of its school voucher tax credit program — despite the fact that the Montana Constitution forbids government aid for religious education and activities. The court’s opinion in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue marks an alarming sea change in the law and calls into question the continued validity of similar provisions in dozens of other state constitutions, which aim to prohibit government funding for religious institutions.
 
The Supreme Court has held that school vouchers for religious education are permissible under the First Amendment because, according to the court, the aid is indirect, meaning it is not provided directly to schools but instead funneled to individual students and families who then decide which schools to attend. However, the court has also recognized that state constitutions can, and often do, provide stronger protections than the federal Constitution against government funding of religion.
 
Today’s decision disregards that longstanding precedent and will be detrimental to both religious freedom and public education: The court’s ruling could effectively mean that, when states offer school vouchers or similar funding involving indirect aid — such as Montana’s tax credit scholarship program — they now must extend the aid to religious schools, too. This is despite the fact that millions more in government funds will be diverted from public schools as a result, and taxpayer dollars will be used to support religious indoctrination and training for future religious leaders and adherents. This also means that the government will fund discrimination against minority-faith and LGBTQ students and job applicants, as well as students and prospective employees with disabilities, whom many religious schools refuse to admit or hire. Indeed, earlier this year, the court heard arguments in two cases that could expand the ability of religious schools — the very same ones that often receive voucher funding — to discriminate in hiring and firing based on any ground the schools want, including race and ethnicity.
 
With today’s ruling and its 2017 decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer allowing — for the first time ever — direct funding of a church as part of a playground resurfacing program, the Supreme Court appears to be marching toward a legal paradigm that would virtually destroy a fundamental principle on which the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was built. As James Madison, the architect of the First Amendment, explained, even “three pence” in compelled aid to religion was too much of a threat to religious liberty. Madison believed that forcing individuals to financially support religion was a direct assault on the fundamental human right of freedom of conscience. He and the other framers also worried that taxpayer funding of religion would weaken religious institutions by making them dependent on the government aid and engender religious divisiveness.
 
Dozens of states, including Montana, took Madison’s concerns seriously. They enacted constitutional provisions like Montana’s to protect their taxpayers’ consciences when it comes to matter of faith, preserve the vitality of their public school systems, respect religious institutions’ autonomy, and facilitate peaceful religious pluralism in their communities. But increasingly, the Supreme Court appears not to care about these values. Instead, religious freedom these days runs only one way — in favor of religious institutions and against the separation of church and state.



Published June 30, 2020 at 11:41PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eZuVHS

Guinea- Bissau : Technical Assistance Report-Enhancing Governance and the Anti-Corruption Framework: Next Steps

Guinea- Bissau : Technical Assistance Report-Enhancing Governance and the Anti-Corruption Framework: Next Steps
Published June 30, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Tonga : Technical Assistance Report-Climate Change Policy Assessment

Tonga : Technical Assistance Report-Climate Change Policy Assessment
Published June 30, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: The EARN IT Act is a Disaster for Online Speech and Privacy, Especially for the LGBTQ and Sex Worker Communities

The EARN IT Act is a Disaster for Online Speech and Privacy, Especially for the LGBTQ and Sex Worker Communities

After a month of unprecedented protests against police brutality across the country, in which encrypted communications have been essential for organizers and protesters to communicate safely, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to take up a bill that will strike at the heart of encrypted communications and undermine free expression on the internet. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020 (EARN IT Act) amends an existing federal law to force online platforms into changing how they moderate content online by scanning and censoring more of their users’ communications.

In addition to the harms against protesters, the EARN IT Act — like SESTA/FOSTA, which amended the same provision a few years ago — threatens our online speech and privacy rights in ways that will disproportionately harm LGBTQ people, sex workers and others who use the internet to privately communicate and share information and resources. The Senate Judiciary Committee is getting ready to vote on it on Thursday, July 2. We sent a letter yesterday urging committee members to vote against this dangerous bill.

The EARN IT Act purports to require online platforms to “earn” certain protections from liability. Current federal law, through a provision known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), generally shields platforms from legal liability for content provided by users, something that is foundational to modern online communications. The EARN IT Act conditions this shield on “voluntary” compliance with best practices to combat online child sexual exploitation and to limit children’s access to certain content through age gating and age rating practices, which are policies designed to keep youth from exposure to certain content.
Most troubling, the bill tasks an unelected commission with writing the best practices. The commission will not include representation from the LGBTQ, sex worker, or other marginalized communities. And to make matters worse, the bill provides the commission too much discretion to recommend policies that undermine strong encryption and free speech. For good measure, the bill stacks the deck to coerce platforms into certifying compliance with best practices and backs any false certifications with criminal penalties. In other words, the “voluntary” best practices are mandatory.

To be clear, child sexual exploitation is a serious problem that Congress should address. But this bill is not a solution. For one thing, the existing law does not protect platforms from liability for federal crimes like child sexual exploitation. Also, the bill does not at all tackle known deficiencies in our response to this problem. For instance, it provides no assistance for prevention programs and makes no attempt to address the root causes of the problem. Rather than provide measured solutions that would protect children, the EARN IT Act instead needlessly threatens our privacy and online speech rights.

Attorney General William Barr, who will head the commission that writes the best practices and have near veto power over them, has identified strong encryption as one of the primary bars to effective law enforcement. Thus, it is particularly concerning that the EARN IT Act provides broad latitude for “best practices” that involve building vulnerabilities into encrypted communications — vulnerabilities like “back doors” for law enforcement that are really open doors for bad actors or mass scanning of private communications.

Any threat to encryption is a threat to the privacy and safety of every American, but particularly to the LGBTQ community, sex workers, and to other vulnerable and marginalized groups. Strong encryption can be vital to many in the LGBTQ community who rely on the internet to access a support network, seek resources to combat discrimination and abuse, and find doctors and treatment to assist with transition, HIV prevention, and other health concerns. Now, as many in our country take to the streets to demand racial justice, encryption is critical for organizing protests and ensuring the safety of protesters. Even more, when companies weaken encryption for U.S. consumers, they are poorly positioned to resist requests by foreign governments to apply the same standards to products abroad.  This can pose a particular threat to individuals abroad that live in countries that actively persecute and criminalize LBGTQ people. Encryption also safeguards domestic violence victims, allows journalists to communicate with confidential sources, and protects our military and national security in conflict zones.

The EARN IT Act, with its broad mandate and the authority it grants to an anti-encryption Attorney General, endangers the protection encryption offers.

That’s not the EARN It Act’s only problem. In addition to undermining encryption, the bill poses serious dangers to online free speech by requiring platforms to engage in broad content moderation practices or lose the protections from liability afforded to them by CDA 230. Congress has abrogated CDA 230’s liability shield only one other time. SESTA/FOSTA, introduced in 2018,eliminated 230’s protections for sex trafficking advertisements. That experience taught us two things. First, to avoid liability, online speech platforms will engage in broad content moderation and censorship. Entire web sites that provided forums for sex workers to connect, share critical health and safety information, and build community disappeared after SESTA/FOSTA. Google and other remote storage sites began to scan for sex-related content and remove it from their systems. Second, the censorship of sex-related speech will disproportionately harm the LGBTQ community.

Under the EARN IT Act, much like SESTA/FOSTA, best practices will not only apply to illegal child sexual exploitation. By requiring platforms to broadly monitor and censor speech to which children might be exposed online, the EARN IT Act’s commission may recommend best practices that disproportionately censor, among other things: sex education materials, online support systems and communities for youth who are transgender or non-binary, and all other youth who are in any way questioning their gender or sexual identity to communicate with each other and with community members, any sex-related speech, particularly the speech of sex workers and of those in the sex industry, and any communication or speech involving youth. Paradoxically, the best practices could harm children’s ability to engage fully and experience the tremendous benefits to education and enrichment the internet offers.

The bill’s sponsors want us and their fellow lawmakers to ignore all of that, though. They’re saying that their bill will hold powerful companies accountable for their failure to protect children from dangers on their services. The idea that big online platforms will risk liability rather than silencing our speech and undermining our privacy simply to avoid that liability risk is laughable, and we already know from experience with SESTA/FOSTA that they won’t. They will sacrifice our privacy and our ability to communicate freely to ensure their bottom line.

Child sexual exploitation online and anywhere else is a serious problem that deserves serious solutions. Congress should spend its time devising methods to properly safeguard children from child sexual exploitation, not undermining the privacy and speech rights of the LGBTQ community, protesters, and all of us.



Published June 30, 2020 at 09:02PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/31uvGVC

ACLU: The EARN IT Act is a Disaster for Online Speech and Privacy, Especially for the LGBTQ and Sex Worker Communities

The EARN IT Act is a Disaster for Online Speech and Privacy, Especially for the LGBTQ and Sex Worker Communities

After a month of unprecedented protests against police brutality across the country, in which encrypted communications have been essential for organizers and protesters to communicate safely, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to take up a bill that will strike at the heart of encrypted communications and undermine free expression on the internet. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020 (EARN IT Act) amends an existing federal law to force online platforms into changing how they moderate content online by scanning and censoring more of their users’ communications.

In addition to the harms against protesters, the EARN IT Act — like SESTA/FOSTA, which amended the same provision a few years ago — threatens our online speech and privacy rights in ways that will disproportionately harm LGBTQ people, sex workers and others who use the internet to privately communicate and share information and resources. The Senate Judiciary Committee is getting ready to vote on it on Thursday, July 2. We sent a letter yesterday urging committee members to vote against this dangerous bill.

The EARN IT Act purports to require online platforms to “earn” certain protections from liability. Current federal law, through a provision known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), generally shields platforms from legal liability for content provided by users, something that is foundational to modern online communications. The EARN IT Act conditions this shield on “voluntary” compliance with best practices to combat online child sexual exploitation and to limit children’s access to certain content through age gating and age rating practices, which are policies designed to keep youth from exposure to certain content.
Most troubling, the bill tasks an unelected commission with writing the best practices. The commission will not include representation from the LGBTQ, sex worker, or other marginalized communities. And to make matters worse, the bill provides the commission too much discretion to recommend policies that undermine strong encryption and free speech. For good measure, the bill stacks the deck to coerce platforms into certifying compliance with best practices and backs any false certifications with criminal penalties. In other words, the “voluntary” best practices are mandatory.

To be clear, child sexual exploitation is a serious problem that Congress should address. But this bill is not a solution. For one thing, the existing law does not protect platforms from liability for federal crimes like child sexual exploitation. Also, the bill does not at all tackle known deficiencies in our response to this problem. For instance, it provides no assistance for prevention programs and makes no attempt to address the root causes of the problem. Rather than provide measured solutions that would protect children, the EARN IT Act instead needlessly threatens our privacy and online speech rights.

Attorney General William Barr, who will head the commission that writes the best practices and have near veto power over them, has identified strong encryption as one of the primary bars to effective law enforcement. Thus, it is particularly concerning that the EARN IT Act provides broad latitude for “best practices” that involve building vulnerabilities into encrypted communications — vulnerabilities like “back doors” for law enforcement that are really open doors for bad actors or mass scanning of private communications.

Any threat to encryption is a threat to the privacy and safety of every American, but particularly to the LGBTQ community, sex workers, and to other vulnerable and marginalized groups. Strong encryption can be vital to many in the LGBTQ community who rely on the internet to access a support network, seek resources to combat discrimination and abuse, and find doctors and treatment to assist with transition, HIV prevention, and other health concerns. Now, as many in our country take to the streets to demand racial justice, encryption is critical for organizing protests and ensuring the safety of protesters. Even more, when companies weaken encryption for U.S. consumers, they are poorly positioned to resist requests by foreign governments to apply the same standards to products abroad.  This can pose a particular threat to individuals abroad that live in countries that actively persecute and criminalize LBGTQ people. Encryption also safeguards domestic violence victims, allows journalists to communicate with confidential sources, and protects our military and national security in conflict zones.

The EARN IT Act, with its broad mandate and the authority it grants to an anti-encryption Attorney General, endangers the protection encryption offers.

That’s not the EARN It Act’s only problem. In addition to undermining encryption, the bill poses serious dangers to online free speech by requiring platforms to engage in broad content moderation practices or lose the protections from liability afforded to them by CDA 230. Congress has abrogated CDA 230’s liability shield only one other time. SESTA/FOSTA, introduced in 2018,eliminated 230’s protections for sex trafficking advertisements. That experience taught us two things. First, to avoid liability, online speech platforms will engage in broad content moderation and censorship. Entire web sites that provided forums for sex workers to connect, share critical health and safety information, and build community disappeared after SESTA/FOSTA. Google and other remote storage sites began to scan for sex-related content and remove it from their systems. Second, the censorship of sex-related speech will disproportionately harm the LGBTQ community.

Under the EARN IT Act, much like SESTA/FOSTA, best practices will not only apply to illegal child sexual exploitation. By requiring platforms to broadly monitor and censor speech to which children might be exposed online, the EARN IT Act’s commission may recommend best practices that disproportionately censor, among other things: sex education materials, online support systems and communities for youth who are transgender or non-binary, and all other youth who are in any way questioning their gender or sexual identity to communicate with each other and with community members, any sex-related speech, particularly the speech of sex workers and of those in the sex industry, and any communication or speech involving youth. Paradoxically, the best practices could harm children’s ability to engage fully and experience the tremendous benefits to education and enrichment the internet offers.

The bill’s sponsors want us and their fellow lawmakers to ignore all of that, though. They’re saying that their bill will hold powerful companies accountable for their failure to protect children from dangers on their services. The idea that big online platforms will risk liability rather than silencing our speech and undermining our privacy simply to avoid that liability risk is laughable, and we already know from experience with SESTA/FOSTA that they won’t. They will sacrifice our privacy and our ability to communicate freely to ensure their bottom line.

Child sexual exploitation online and anywhere else is a serious problem that deserves serious solutions. Congress should spend its time devising methods to properly safeguard children from child sexual exploitation, not undermining the privacy and speech rights of the LGBTQ community, protesters, and all of us.



Published June 30, 2020 at 04:32PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/31uvGVC

The Grieving Landscape

Heidi Hutner | Fulcrum Publishing | June 2020 | 16 minutes (4,305 words)

We’re delighted to bring you an excerpt by Heidi Hutner from the anthology Doom With A View: Historical and Cultural Contexts of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Edited by Kristen Iverson, with E. Warren Perry and Shannon Perry, the anthology arrives from Fulcrum Publishing in August, 2020.

* * *

At thirty-five, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. One year before my diagnosis, my mother died from complications after heart surgery. At the time of her death, my mother had cancer — lymphoma. Five years prior to Mom’s death, my father passed away from a brain tumor, a metastasis from the cancer melanoma.

Two years after I had completed my chemotherapy treatment for cancer, I gave birth to Olivia. My miracle baby.

At first, I was ecstatic about the pregnancy. I had always wanted children, and with my cancer, I feared this would never happen. My doctors said I was lucky to give birth to a biological child after chemotherapy (my treatment left me with a 50 percent chance of remaining fertile afterward). But now, a mother-to-be, I was also afraid. How could I protect my child from our family cancer blight?

My desire to protect my daughter from a future cancer diagnosis drove me into a rabbit hole of reading and learning about the reasons for my family’s affliction. I began with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and moved forward to more recent literature by Sandra Steingraber, Theo Colburn, and numerous others, including the President’s Cancer Panel Report. I learned that the cancer rates today are off the charts: one in two men and one in three women will get cancer in their lifetimes. Carson predicted this plague in 1963. She warned us of humankind’s “hubris” in carelessly polluting our earth with toxic chemicals and ionizing radiation. The epidemiologist Alice Stewart’s study on the grave danger of X-rays on babies in the womb in the 1950s, sounded the alarm about ionizing radiation as well. Today, our world swirls with pollutants — these carcinogens penetrate mothers’ wombs and breasts. Mother’s milk is a toxic cocktail. Newborns today are born with hundreds of synthetic chemicals in their umbilical cord blood. Synthetic chemicals and ionizing radiation change our makeup, harm our genes, and cause mutagenetic damage. More than 80,000 unregulated pollutants fill our environment.

We are guinea pigs.

* * *

Fast forward about eleven years: one summer day, in 2009, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at lunch with a close friend (and cousin) of my deceased mother, Phyllis Resnick, I stumbled upon a story about my mom that I had never heard before. The tale Phyllis told would radically change my life. My then-preteen daughter, Olivia, was by my side. She listened rapt with me as we learned of our maternal nuclear legacy.

Phyllis described how in the early 1960s, my mother and she, along with their good friend Thalia Stern Broudy, had been a members of Women Strike for Peace (WSP), an antinuclear group led by Dagmar Wilson and the future congresswoman, Bella Abzug. During the Cold War 1950s and early 60s, the U.S. had detonated one hundred above-ground nuclear test bombs in the Nevada desert and one hundred and six atmospheric test bombs in the South Pacific. The government claimed these test bombs posed no harm and the fallout had not spread, but scientists and medical professionals were concerned. A team of experts in St. Louis, MO, directed by Dr. Louise Reiss, initiated a survey to determine the extent of the impact of the bomb testing. With a chemical makeup similar to calcium, strontium-90, a radioisotope found in fallout, is easily absorbed in teeth and bones. Thousands of baby teeth from across the U.S. were collected between 1958 and 1971 for the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey. In 1961, preliminary results showed high levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth of children born after 1945 and these levels increased over the time period, as the test-bombing continued. When the mothers of Women Strike for Peace learned the results of the survey, they banded together to stop atmospheric bomb testing. 50,000 WSP members from across the U.S. wrote letters, gathered petitions, lobbied congressional representatives, initiated lawsuits, and protested through marches and street demonstrations. My mother and her cohort of 15,000 WSP members traveled to D.C. to protest, lobby, and meet with their legislators November, 1961. In 1963, the United States, the U.K., and the Soviet Union signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, an agreement to halt atmospheric, under water, and outer space bomb testing. The signing of this treaty has been attributed to the efforts of WSP.

The government claimed these test bombs posed no harm and the fallout had not spread, but scientists and medical professionals were concerned.

After discovering this remarkable story about WSP, I became obsessed with feminist nuclear history. I wondered: Why had I never been told this tale when my mother was alive? What other vital nuclear histories involving women had been buried? So began my journey of exploring women’s antinuclear tales, traveling to nuclear disaster sites, and meeting with members of impacted communities. On this path, I met Kristen Iversen, the author of Full Body Burden, an investigative memoir about growing up next door to Rocky Flats, the former nuclear weapons facility in Arvada, Colorado. Kristen invited me to visit her in Colorado. She would introduce me to experts, scientists, and community members there. I brought my then eighteen-year-old daughter, Olivia, with me. She was about to leave for college. I wanted to share our maternal antinuclear and activist legacy with her before she left home.

* * *

I drove the Prius rental from the Denver airport to Boulder and arrived at the Colorado Chautauqua National Historic Landmark in the afternoon, where we were to stay during this visit. The sight of the tall, flat, conglomeratic sandstone unsettled me as we entered the park property. The immense rocks looked unreal, like something biblical or darkly fantastical — a mountain in a science fiction film that contains, within it, a dangerous and secret realm. The sharp upward angle of the earth leading to the tall rocks threw me off balance. Beyond those foreboding crags sits the closed Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility, now a Superfund site and wildlife refuge, a grieving land at the base of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. The terrain is laced with plutonium, uranium, beryllium, cesium 137, many other forms of ionizing radiation, and a long list of toxicants.

Olivia asked me to stop the car for a moment so she could get out and take pictures of the mountain-scape. She walked toward the trailhead, filled with pretty young families with dogs and small children heading upward on the wide sloped path, leading toward the crags. She snapped photos of the sky and rocks and wildflowers and returned to the car. After, we headed to the big lodge to register and collect keys for a periwinkle-blue, wood-shingled cottage.

The sign over its door said, “Morning Glory.” Our temporary home.

Early the next morning, while Olivia still slept, I hiked in the hills just beneath the crags, through fields of wild grasses and flowers — asters, blazing stars, western wallflowers, stonecrops — and into the cool of the evergreen trees. It was hard to make sense of these two very different but overlapping realities: a stunning Colorado landscape and nuclear horror. As I hiked, I tried to quiet my mind and push away the frightening scientific facts and stories that I had read about Rocky Flats. Mothers, children, and former workers all sick with cancers. Dead-too-soon loved ones. Infertility. Deformed animals. A contaminated land.

After my hike and an early breakfast, Olivia and I met Kristen Iversen in the Chautauqua parking lot. She would be our tour guide for the day, showing us the area surrounding Rocky Flats. Tall and blonde, Kristen wore a long, flowing, colorful skirt and blouse with a wide leather belt and silver buckle cinched at the waist. In her arms, she held her small dog, Emma, a papillon. Kristen looked the part of a Colorado gal who had grown up riding horses. This was her territory. She had seen much cancer in her friends and neighbors. She had also worked at the nuclear plant as a young adult and raised her two sons in Arvada, the town adjacent to the Flats.

Kristen sat in the passenger seat as I drove, and my daughter crouched down in the back with the windows firmly sealed shut. Olivia wore an oversized sweatshirt and red baseball hat with the embroidered words, “Make America Kind Again.” I glanced back and wondered, Should I have brought my daughter here? Is it safe? All it would take is the smallest bit of plutonium to enter her lungs and her health could be compromised, or the health of her children, and their children’s children.

We traveled down Indiana Street, past fields of brown grass, dry scrub bushes, gently rolling hills, and the unmarked property of the former plant. Bicyclists flew by. I wondered if they knew about Rocky Flats and the dangerous air they were breathing.


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Olivia asked Kristen questions: “Those cows, are they contaminated? What are those people doing playing miniature golf? Aren’t they concerned?”

“Studies show that local cows have plutonium in their bodies,” Kristen replied. “And, yes, it’s amazing that people just go on as if everything is fine.”

Kristen pointed to a group of houses. “Over there, that’s where Bini Abbott had a horse farm. Many of her horses had birth defects, organs outside their bodies, and some were sterile. Some of the women in the neighborhood were sterile, too. I told you about the rancher, Lloyd Mixon, who had a deformed pig, Scooter? He would take Scooter with him to city council meetings and try to get the government to tell him what was going on.” We drove on, past more construction. “Oh, look, this was where the Jackson Turkey Farm used to be,” Kristen sighed. “The family who owned it said DOE officials would come by unexpectedly to test the turkeys, and sometimes take them away. No one ever found out what they did with the turkeys or what they discovered.”

We headed to Kristen’s childhood home, which looked like a 1960s Disney movie set: barn, bridge, creek. “That barn and field over there held my horses,” she said. “But the water in the creek, the whole area, has been affected by off-site plutonium contamination. New people live here now. I guess they don’t know…” We gazed at the bubbling water that ran under a small wooden bridge — a tempting area for children to play in — potentially polluted with plutonium. There were no “stay out” signs or warnings.

“I don’t get it,” Olivia said.

“Yes,” Kristen sighed. “It’s very sad.”

Further on, we approached Standley Lake. The water was wide and still, bounded by land covered with the dry grasses and scrub bushes, and a few thin, sickly looking trees. Kristen told us the lake was a drinking water source for the cities of Westminster, Northglenn, and Thornton, even though plutonium is in the sediment. There were signs for boat rentals — paddleboard, canoes, and kayaks.

“People aren’t supposed to swim here,” Kristen noted. “It’s dangerous to kick up the sediment. But they waterski and fish.”

Olivia asked, “Do they eat the fish?”

“Yes, many do.” Kristen replied.

We angled up a bit further and parked on the side of the road, with a view of the lake, near a white clapboard home. An older man exited the front door and carried a box to the rear of the house. Kristen said he was the father of her childhood friend, Tamara. Tamara grew up in this lakeside house, Kristen explained. Tamara had been diagnosed with brain cancer, but her parents didn’t believe the plutonium had anything do with it. I watched, with disbelief, as Tamara’s father walked back into his house, not wiping off his feet or removing his shoes.

The final stop on our tour was the new housing development, Candelas. Candelas looked like new suburbia in Anywhere, USA, with wide roads, and large houses in muted colors. Kristen pointed out that many of her scientist colleagues believe the community isn’t safe for residence. Plutonium has been detected in the soil, although real estate brokers were not required to inform prospective buyers about this contamination or about the history of Rocky Flats. Plutonium had also been detected in a nearby drinking water source.

As I parked the car in front of the sales office, I realized just how close we were to the Refuge. Too close.

“I wouldn’t live here in a million years,” Olivia blurted out incredulously.

I turned my head around and saw fear in my daughter’s sky-blue eyes. I debated getting out of the car but decided to go for it — I would not be giving birth to more children, so I convinced myself it would be okay. Olivia would stay in the car.

Kristen and I stepped out of the vehicle and walked toward the office. The entry door was only a few feet away, but with each step, the invisible plutonium in the air or on the sidewalk made my heart beat faster. Might I bring it back into the car and endanger Olivia? No turning back now. But then I thought with shame about all the children born and raised here. Surrounding us were homes filled with families and playgrounds and recreation areas. These families live with plutonium contamination from birth to death. Innocent new people move in every day. They come to new developments like Candelas, where it is less expensive to buy a house than in Boulder. They have no idea of the history of Rocky Flats. Or if they do, they know only of the official (incorrect) announcements declaring the contamination has been cleaned up. The location appears pristine — ideal, a playland for the rich and outdoorsy. There are no signs, no indications of the past anywhere. The only marker of the dark history is artist Jeff Gipes’ ‘Cold War Horse.’ But many drive by that eerie symbol, not knowing what it means. How ironic that this snowcapped land of hikers, climbers, skiers, bikers, the culture of Patagonia, Black Diamond, Marmot, should be laced with invisible plutonium and other contaminants.

The cheery real estate agent greeted us with brochures as we entered the model ‘homes-for-sale’ office. She cheerily played up the benefits of raising kids here in Candelas: the excellent new schools, a new swimming pool and rec center, the hiking trails running from the development through the “natural habitat” of the refuge of Rocky Flats with its “elk, deer, owl.” Standley Lake, she said, was a great place to boat and fish, right nearby. We could “rent boats or bring our own.” Kristen and I exchanged glances.

Fear rose up in me as the agent spoke, and my hand flew automatically to my neck — checking my lymph nodes — where a mark remains from having tissue removed when I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. My cancer ties me to Rocky Flats, even though I am not from there, but so many local residents have the same blemish on their neck from having tumors or biopsy tissue removed. The proverbial downwinders’ scar.

How the hell do they allow people to live here? My mind raced, as the agent continued her monologue. Not one word was mentioned about plutonium from the former plant site. Or the risks of raising kids here. Or the rare cancers in the community. I trembled quietly with rage as she smiled her Teflon smile, handed us paperwork with price points, and pointed us toward the entrance of one model house. It had the standard stainless-steel kitchen, large walk-in closets, large picture windows, and high ceilings. Through the window glass, I could see the snowcapped Rocky Mountains in the distance. If the mountains could speak, I was sure they would be screaming.

This is the American Dream.

* * *

Suburban enclaves, and the freeways that take us to them, were built in large part in response to Cold War atomic anxiety. The government feared nuclear attack could wipe out American cities and our primary population. So, freeways were built and suburban communities were erected “safely” away from major population centers. Strangely, some of these dream communities were developed to support bomb-making factories, as Kate Brown writes in Plutopia. These shiny new houses and shiny new communities, it was thought, would make workers’ wives happy and happy wives would make happy and productive workers for the weapons’ plants. We saw this in Hanford, WA, Oakridge TN, St. Louis MO, and in the towns surrounding Rocky Flats in Colorado. Families living in these shiny locations were kept in the dark about the dangers that lurked. Cold War domestic secrets.

My cancer ties me to Rocky Flats, even though I am not from there, but so many local residents have the same blemish on their neck from having tumors or biopsy tissue removed. The proverbial downwinders’ scar.

Operating from 1952 to 1992, the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility was located approximately 15 miles northwest of Denver, a city built by an influx of miners during the gold rush in the nineteenth century. During the years of its operation, the plant constructed more than 70,000 triggers for nuclear bombs. Rocky Flats would be the site of two major secret plutonium fires, blowing radioactive poison into sections of Arvada and Denver in 1957 and 1969. Hundreds of smaller fires also took place, as well as regular leaks, spills, and atmospheric plutonium releases. Plutonium clouds blew over houses, swimming pools, schools, churches, farms, fields, and streams. Rocky Flats is known for powerful Chinook winds — winds that would blow plutonium dust into local neighborhoods. Locals did not know that Rocky Flats was a weapons factory for most of its years of operation. Workers employed there were forbidden to speak of their work and often didn’t comprehend the full extent of the factory’s activities.

By 1989, The FBI and EPA suspected criminal negligence at Rocky Flats, which led to a raid, led by FBI agent Jon Lipsky. A federal grand jury began an investigation, a settlement was negotiated, the court documents were sealed, and the plant closed. The story of this federal grand jury is fraught and complex, and cover-ups are suspected in the sealing of the documents and lack of full prosecution. The Rocky Flats cleanup was officially completed in 2004; however, numerous scientists, nuclear experts, local citizens, and antinuclear activists argue the cleanup is far from finished. Unknown but large amounts of plutonium and other contaminants remain on the land in what has been turned into a Superfund site, a designation made under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. The primary industrial site (the Superfund area — 485 acres) was never completely remediated. There is a buffer zone, also heavily contaminated, although the EPA claims this area is fully remediated. The surrounding area, now called a National Wildlife Refuge, was not remediated. Significant contamination has been detected there in the soil and groundwater. Many other toxic and radioactive contaminants have also been found at Rocky Flats in addition to plutonium: americium, uranium, cadmium, PCBs, beryllium, and more. A 2019 study found plutonium “hot particles” in the soil frighteningly close to the homes abutting the Flats.

Like a mother’s womb, we like to think of the home as a safe space. Radiation pollution undoes all that. Ingested and internalized radiation travels through the mother’s bloodstream and crosses the placenta. External radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays, penetrates the womb. Wombs and homes, as permeable spaces, put the unborn and children at grave risk. Science shows us that women and children are most vulnerable to ionizing radiation exposures. Women are twice as likely to develop cancer from exposure to radiation and almost twice as likely to die from these cancers as adult males. Boys are five times more likely to develop and die cancer from radiation exposures as adult males, and girls are seven or more times likely to develop and die from cancers as adult males. Baby girls are most at risk. Yet safety standards are all based on an adult male body — “reference man” — a white, twenty-something adult male.

Rocky Flats is “a national sacrifice zone,” says Robert Alvarez, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy advisor to the secretary at the US Department of Energy. “That’s what it is, although no one will say so officially. How much remains buried there? A tremendous amount — plutonium doesn’t go away. No one has done this yet — it’s costly and complex — but someone needs to go into those houses nearby in Arvada and take samples. We don’t know how much plutonium is in them.”

Houses and families do not belong next to radioactive sacrifice zones.

Home sweet home. Home is where the heart is. Home, home on the range. Home is where it starts. Dream home. Don’t sit home. Love starts at home. Home, home is where I want to be / pick me up and bring me down. My home is my castle. This space in which we live and raise our families occupies so many cliché, trite, and nostalgic phrases and song lyrics, yet we know home may be a place of horror, where domestic violence remains hidden. We long for the perfect dream home, but we know secret dangers lurk there. Post-World War II, those dangers include toxic and radioactive contamination.

* * *

Denial is rampant in the community around Rocky Flats. History erased. No signage. Too little public information. Misinformation. It’s all about dollars and cents and real estate. But there is community team of active folks working to protect the families. They recently halted the construction of a parkway that was to run through Rocky Flats, and they have worked with schools to halt children’s field trips. There’s more to go. The Refuge is now open to the public for recreation, despite tremendous evidence indicating that people should stay out. New housing continues to go up on contaminated land next door. Scientists like W. Gale Biggs, Harvey Nichols, and Anne Forgarty, who have been studying the soil, water, and air on the flats for years, are deeply concerned. But they are aging. Nichols, now retired from university teaching and research asks, “Who will do this work when we are gone?”

Houses and families do not belong next to radioactive sacrifice zones.

Mothers like the women of Women Strike for Peace from back in the early 1960s, carry on the work today, in Colorado. They are at the forefront of precautionary actions to protect the children and the families living near Rocky Flats. Over cups of coffee and tea, at kitchen tables, in cafes, the mothers told me their stories.

Elizabeth Panzer’s son Nathan has a very rare heart cancer, only seen in .05 percent of the population. There is no cure for his disease, he had surgery, and spent years on chemo, and his family lives with no certainty of his future. Shaunessy McNeely’s father died of the same very rare heart cancer as Nathan and lived only a few blocks from Nathan and was diagnosed in the same year. Elizabeth Panzer explains: “When we moved here, nobody warned us that this housing and land might be polluted with plutonium. So many people in Arvada don’t want to think about the dangers here. The government says it safe and they want to believe it. I wanted to believe it, too. But my son could die any day and I think there may be a cancer cluster here. We need studies. People need to know.” Panzer and her family chose to stay in their house so Nathan could continue to live a normal life during his illness. Sometimes she questions that decision. “What about the health of my other children? And if I sell my house and move away, what about the next family? What about those kids?” For a long time, to protect Nathan, Elizabeth remained silent. Over time, she became more outspoken, more involved in local actions to protect the community. Nathan, miraculously, continues to live. It’s several years since his diagnosis.

“I grew up under four miles from Rocky Flats. I had a pillow seat in my bedroom window growing up,” Tiffany Hansen explained. “I spent many nights looking out at the plant’s lights, but I had no idea what was really going on.” It wasn’t until a few years ago, after developing an ovarian tumor and experiencing other “debilitating health” symptoms (including Graves’ disease), that she Googled and discovered the Rocky Flats’ contamination story. Hansen then read Kristen Iversen’s memoir and became deeply upset with the news that she had grown up next to a bomb factory: “We played outside all day in that stuff, exposed, unaware. I was hysterical when I found out. I called many of my old friends and discovered too many stories of cancer.”

“We thought we were living the dream,” Hansen continued. Her father owned an electrical contracting company that did work at the Rocky Flats site. He was well compensated. They had a nice house with a pool, she had fancy toys like “four wheelers,” and her mother drove a Corvette. In addition to her ovarian tumor, Hansen has had one miscarriage (common to women who live nearby), and she had a benign lymph tumor on her neck as a child. In her youth, Hansen was often hospitalized for mysterious debilitating symptoms. She bears the downwinder’s scar on her neck: “Just like Kristen describes in her book about her own scar.” Her brother, who worked at the plant, has heart and thyroid problems. Hansen’s childhood best friend had a brain tumor in the third grade. Another friend had ovarian cancer and passed away at forty-three. Hansen’s high school boyfriend had stage four thyroid cancer and he survived, as did his mom; his dad passed away from thyroid cancer.

Tiffany knew had to “do something to help.” She set up the Rocky Flats Downwinders group, initiated two health surveys and a hemp soil remediation project. Tiffany is joined in these efforts by Elizabeth, Shaunessy, Shaunessy’s mother, Elaine, and others like physician Dr. Sasha Stiles.

“I cannot stay silent anymore and let such suffering happen to more children,” Elizabeth told me. “The denial must end.”

Again and again, I hear my daughter’s words, “I wouldn’t live here in a million years.”

* * *

Heidi Hutner, PhD, teaches, speaks, and writes about ecofeminism and environmental justice. Hutner’s writing has been featured in the New York TimesMs. Magazine, DAME, Tikkun, Spirituality and Health, Yes!, Common Dreams, Garnet News, and Proximity Magazine. She has written for academic journals and books published by Oxford University Press, University of Virginia Press, Palgrave, Rowman and Littlefield, and others. 

 

Excerpted from the anthology Doom with a View, edited by Kristen Iversen. Copyright © 2020. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Fulcrum Publishing. All rights reserved.

Editor: Sari Botton

Monday, 29 June 2020

ACLU: After 17 Months of Unlawful Detention, Court Orders Release of U.S. Resident Wrongfully Detained Under Patriot Act

After 17 Months of Unlawful Detention, Court Orders Release of U.S. Resident Wrongfully Detained Under Patriot Act

For well over a year, the U.S. government has held Adham Hassoun in a detention facility without trial, without criminal charge, and without end in sight. Today, a court ordered the government to release him and expressed contempt for the government’s frivolous and alarming legal position: “Distilled to its core, [the government’s] position is that [it] should be able to detain Mr. Hassoun indefinitely based on the executive branch’s say-so, and that decision is insulated from any meaningful review by the judiciary. The record in this case demonstrates firsthand the danger of adopting [the government’s] position. [The government’s] position cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.”

The Court gave the government until July 2 at noon to seek an emergency appeal to block Mr. Hassoun’s long-awaited release, even as the Court told the government it didn’t have “a serious chance” of persuading a higher Court of its baseless arguments. Failing what would be an unwarranted intervention by an appellate court, Mr. Hassoun will finally be free from his illegal imprisonment.

“These government officials have gamed the courts to drag out my detention,” Adham said to the court. “Now they apparently want to drag it out for many more months in appeals while I stay in detention. All I want is for someone to recognize the truth and to set me free.”

Though the ruling is a victory for due process, Adham will never get back the nearly 17 months he’s already spent locked up on false pretenses. That Adham has been deprived of his liberty for this long is an alarming example of the government’s abuse of overbroad national security powers. 

The government claims it can indefinitely detain Adham based on a never-before-used provision in the 2001 Patriot Act that — it argues — lets the executive branch indefinitely detain someone it deems a “threat to national security.” The government also relied on an obscure immigration regulation which it said gave it sweeping powers of detention, and which the judge declared a “legal nullity” in December. In rejecting the government’s arguments, the Court warned that adopting the government’s position would give it a chillingly powerful weapon for imprisoning people without charge and without credible evidence.

Like many Muslim men in America, Adham became a subject of unfounded government suspicion in the years after 9/11. In 2007, he was convicted of violating a deeply problematic federal statute that allows prosecutors to charge people with “material support” for terrorism. In Adham’s case, that “material support” consisted of charitable aid to organizations supporting Muslims suffering in military conflicts abroad in the 1990s. After Adham served his criminal sentence, he was placed in immigration detention, where the government held him for several months. Once it couldn’t hold him under immigration law any longer, the government turned to the Patriot Act, dredging up a litany of false accusations to make it seem as though releasing Adham would endanger national security.

Adham filed a habeas petition to challenge his indefinite detention and vigorously denied the government’s allegations. In response, the government tried to block the court from even reviewing its contested evidence, arguing that the judicial branch had no authority to look into whether the government’s case against Adham was valid. The court rejected this argument and ordered an evidentiary hearing at which the government had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Adham’s detention was justified.

Adham was eager to defend himself at his long-awaited day in court, which was originally scheduled for late April but delayed to June 24 due to COVID-19. And then — just days before the hearing — the government asked the court to cancel the hearing, conceding that it would not be able to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence to prove Adham is a threat to national security. The government reasserted its objection to an evidentiary hearing in the first place and declined to put on a case, in a transparent attempt to avoid defending baseless allegations in court. Adham, knowing that the government has no case against him, agreed to the cancellation of the evidentiary hearing and asked the court to order his immediate release.

The government’s decision to back out of the evidentiary hearing followed a series of embarrassing revelations about its slipshod investigation — and the falsehoods at the heart of its case. For instance, after the court authorized discovery and Adham’s team began an independent investigation, it became clear that the government’s central allegations came from a single jailhouse informant named Shane Ramsundar. Ramsundar has a startling history of deception that includes defrauding fellow immigrants out of huge sums of money while posing as a federal agent. His allegations against Adham turned out to be recycled from previous allegations he’d made against other people in an effort to curry favor with immigration authorities and avoid deportation.

The government had this information all along, but never provided it to Adham’s lawyers, despite a legal obligation to do so. The government also concealed evidence that would have helped Adham and would have shown that its central allegations were false. When Adham’s team brought this malfeasance before the court, the government dropped Ramsundar as a witness, citing concerns about his credibility. The court is still considering Adham’s motion for sanctions against the government for failing to preserve and disclose critical evidence.

Amazingly, the government is still fighting to keep Adham locked up, even though its case has now been reduced to calling him a “radicalizing” influence for criticizing U.S. policies. The government says this precludes his release under any conditions of supervision. But criticizing this country, or any country, is not a legitimate justification for detention under any circumstances — let alone indefinite detention.

Adham’s case shows that habeas corpus remains a vital check on the executive’s detention power. It also shows how harmful and unwise it is for Congress to give the government the power to detain people based on claims of “dangerousness.” Such expansive power, long a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, leads to abuse, as this case powerfully demonstrates.

The government shouldn’t be able to imprison anyone indefinitely based on a pack of lies. Yet that’s exactly what it did — and is still trying to do — to Adham. The fight’s not over, and Adham’s life has been severely damaged by the government’s shameful conduct. But today’s court order is a welcome and important step toward his freedom and a victory for the rule of law.



Published June 30, 2020 at 02:43AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eLASbo

ACLU: After 17 Months of Unlawful Detention, Court Orders Release of U.S. Resident Wrongfully Detained Under Patriot Act

After 17 Months of Unlawful Detention, Court Orders Release of U.S. Resident Wrongfully Detained Under Patriot Act

For well over a year, the U.S. government has held Adham Hassoun in a detention facility without trial, without criminal charge, and without end in sight. Today, a court ordered the government to release him and expressed contempt for the government’s frivolous and alarming legal position: “Distilled to its core, [the government’s] position is that [it] should be able to detain Mr. Hassoun indefinitely based on the executive branch’s say-so, and that decision is insulated from any meaningful review by the judiciary. The record in this case demonstrates firsthand the danger of adopting [the government’s] position. [The government’s] position cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.”

The Court gave the government until July 2 at noon to seek an emergency appeal to block Mr. Hassoun’s long-awaited release, even as the Court told the government it didn’t have “a serious chance” of persuading a higher Court of its baseless arguments. Failing what would be an unwarranted intervention by an appellate court, Mr. Hassoun will finally be free from his illegal imprisonment.

“These government officials have gamed the courts to drag out my detention,” Adham said to the court. “Now they apparently want to drag it out for many more months in appeals while I stay in detention. All I want is for someone to recognize the truth and to set me free.”

Though the ruling is a victory for due process, Adham will never get back the nearly 17 months he’s already spent locked up on false pretenses. That Adham has been deprived of his liberty for this long is an alarming example of the government’s abuse of overbroad national security powers. 

The government claims it can indefinitely detain Adham based on a never-before-used provision in the 2001 Patriot Act that — it argues — lets the executive branch indefinitely detain someone it deems a “threat to national security.” The government also relied on an obscure immigration regulation which it said gave it sweeping powers of detention, and which the judge declared a “legal nullity” in December. In rejecting the government’s arguments, the Court warned that adopting the government’s position would give it a chillingly powerful weapon for imprisoning people without charge and without credible evidence.

Like many Muslim men in America, Adham became a subject of unfounded government suspicion in the years after 9/11. In 2007, he was convicted of violating a deeply problematic federal statute that allows prosecutors to charge people with “material support” for terrorism. In Adham’s case, that “material support” consisted of charitable aid to organizations supporting Muslims suffering in military conflicts abroad in the 1990s. After Adham served his criminal sentence, he was placed in immigration detention, where the government held him for several months. Once it couldn’t hold him under immigration law any longer, the government turned to the Patriot Act, dredging up a litany of false accusations to make it seem as though releasing Adham would endanger national security.

Adham filed a habeas petition to challenge his indefinite detention and vigorously denied the government’s allegations. In response, the government tried to block the court from even reviewing its contested evidence, arguing that the judicial branch had no authority to look into whether the government’s case against Adham was valid. The court rejected this argument and ordered an evidentiary hearing at which the government had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Adham’s detention was justified.

Adham was eager to defend himself at his long-awaited day in court, which was originally scheduled for late April but delayed to June 24 due to COVID-19. And then — just days before the hearing — the government asked the court to cancel the hearing, conceding that it would not be able to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence to prove Adham is a threat to national security. The government reasserted its objection to an evidentiary hearing in the first place and declined to put on a case, in a transparent attempt to avoid defending baseless allegations in court. Adham, knowing that the government has no case against him, agreed to the cancellation of the evidentiary hearing and asked the court to order his immediate release.

The government’s decision to back out of the evidentiary hearing followed a series of embarrassing revelations about its slipshod investigation — and the falsehoods at the heart of its case. For instance, after the court authorized discovery and Adham’s team began an independent investigation, it became clear that the government’s central allegations came from a single jailhouse informant named Shane Ramsundar. Ramsundar has a startling history of deception that includes defrauding fellow immigrants out of huge sums of money while posing as a federal agent. His allegations against Adham turned out to be recycled from previous allegations he’d made against other people in an effort to curry favor with immigration authorities and avoid deportation.

The government had this information all along, but never provided it to Adham’s lawyers, despite a legal obligation to do so. The government also concealed evidence that would have helped Adham and would have shown that its central allegations were false. When Adham’s team brought this malfeasance before the court, the government dropped Ramsundar as a witness, citing concerns about his credibility. The court is still considering Adham’s motion for sanctions against the government for failing to preserve and disclose critical evidence.

Amazingly, the government is still fighting to keep Adham locked up, even though its case has now been reduced to calling him a “radicalizing” influence for criticizing U.S. policies. The government says this precludes his release under any conditions of supervision. But criticizing this country, or any country, is not a legitimate justification for detention under any circumstances — let alone indefinite detention.

Adham’s case shows that habeas corpus remains a vital check on the executive’s detention power. It also shows how harmful and unwise it is for Congress to give the government the power to detain people based on claims of “dangerousness.” Such expansive power, long a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, leads to abuse, as this case powerfully demonstrates.

The government shouldn’t be able to imprison anyone indefinitely based on a pack of lies. Yet that’s exactly what it did — and is still trying to do — to Adham. The fight’s not over, and Adham’s life has been severely damaged by the government’s shameful conduct. But today’s court order is a welcome and important step toward his freedom and a victory for the rule of law.



Published June 29, 2020 at 10:13PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eLASbo

ACLU: DHS Watchdog Confirms: ICE is Failing to Protect Detained People From COVID

DHS Watchdog Confirms: ICE is Failing to Protect Detained People From COVID

As cases of COVID-19 in immigration detention facilities have exploded in recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has continued to argue that it has done all that it possibly can to manage this crisis. A new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) — the department’s oversight body — however, sheds new light on ICE’s failure to do so, and the continued danger faced by detainees and detention staff alike.
 
Notably, the OIG’s report is based purely on surveys of ICE personnel themselves, without actual inspections of facilities or any interviews with detainees, as is typically expected for such investigations. But even with this limited set of self-reported data, the OIG’s report provides startling insight into ICE’s failure to control the spread of COVID-19 in detention — and the fears of ICE’s own personnel regarding their inability to address outbreaks in individual facilities.
 
Since the start of the pandemic, ICE has claimed in court filings that the low number or lack of confirmed COVID-19 cases in specific facilities suggests that the problem is under control in detention. But contrary to the logic of the Trump administration, less testing does not mean fewer cases, and the OIG’s report reveals for the first time the scope of ICE’s failure to provide adequate testing. Even with demonstrated under-testing of people in detention, almost 2,500 people in ICE detention have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
 
According to the OIG, 70 percent of all ICE detention centers nationwide reported that they had not tested any detained people for COVID-19. As of late May 2020, ICE had just over 2,000 testing kits available on-site at detention facilities, although ICE detained over 25,000 people. The report also notes that there is no consistent national standard or clear guidance for detention staff to decide whether to test a detainee for COVID-19. Even absent a consistent national standard, ICE also admitted that at least 20 detained people who met local protocols for testing failed to receive COVID-19 tests.
     
The OIG’s report also reveals ICE personnel’s own admission of the impossibility of controlling a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility, and the dire consequences that an outbreak would have. Detention facilities admitted that they lack adequate expertise, personnel, and equipment in case of a COVID-19 outbreak. As one ICE facility reported, “We do not have any medical staff. If any detainee tests positive for COVID-19 we will have to shut down the detention facility . . . we do not have the medical capacity to house anyone with COVID-19.”
 
Other ICE facilities noted the impossibility of having enough personal protective equipment needed in case of an outbreak: “If an outbreak were to occur the stock of [protective equipment, including masks] would be depleted. We have been attempting to acquire additional equipment for weeks, however as most are aware this is difficult given the high demand.”
 
ICE facilities also admitted their inability to practice social distancing in detention, or to adequately quarantine people suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19. “The nature of detention facilities makes social distancing impractical, as detainees are housed together in dorm-like pods, some with as many as 50 to 75 detainees in each pod. Additionally, most detention centers have few means to isolate large numbers of detainees.”
 
More than one-third of detention facilities reported not having enough hand sanitizer for detained people to use. More than half of facilities stated that they do not have the space to quarantine or isolate detained people who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19, and almost two-thirds of facilities had none, or less than two “negative pressure rooms” — medical rooms with closed ventilation systems to isolate airborne infections.
 
The danger of an outbreak is imminent: Since the start of the pandemic, three detained people and five guards have lost their lives to COVID-19, and an unknown number have become seriously ill and have been hospitalized due to the virus. Despite this threat, the OIG found that less than 20 percent of ICE’s detention facilities had released people to mitigate the danger of COVID-19. According to ICE data, facilities released only 1,137 detainees of the approximately 25,000 people in ICE custody from March 17 to May 5, 2020, due to reasons related to COVID-19.
 
The OIG reports that this is only the first stage of its investigation of ICE’s efforts to prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in its facilities, which is a positive step. The OIG should also investigate ICE’s continued transfer of detainees between facilities, a widespread practice that flies in the face of CDC guidance.
 
Further, the OIG should investigate the number of detained people hospitalized as a result of COVID-19, and the number of people who, upon deportation, have tested positive for COVID-19, so that the public can understand the full scope of the crisis. Deporting people who have been exposed to and contracted a deadly virus in the U.S. is not only unethical, but potentially disastrous for global public health, and we have good reason to believe that has become regular protocol.
 
In the meantime, ICE must quickly act to release people from detention, including those who are medically vulnerable to COVID-19. This is the only way to prevent certain death — of detained people, ICE staff, and people in the communities they return home to.
 



Published June 29, 2020 at 10:18PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3ge8L5b

ACLU: DHS Watchdog Confirms: ICE is Failing to Protect Detained People From COVID

DHS Watchdog Confirms: ICE is Failing to Protect Detained People From COVID

As cases of COVID-19 in immigration detention facilities have exploded in recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has continued to argue that it has done all that it possibly can to manage this crisis. A new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) — the department’s oversight body — however, sheds new light on ICE’s failure to do so, and the continued danger faced by detainees and detention staff alike.
 
Notably, the OIG’s report is based purely on surveys of ICE personnel themselves, without actual inspections of facilities or any interviews with detainees, as is typically expected for such investigations. But even with this limited set of self-reported data, the OIG’s report provides startling insight into ICE’s failure to control the spread of COVID-19 in detention — and the fears of ICE’s own personnel regarding their inability to address outbreaks in individual facilities.
 
Since the start of the pandemic, ICE has claimed in court filings that the low number or lack of confirmed COVID-19 cases in specific facilities suggests that the problem is under control in detention. But contrary to the logic of the Trump administration, less testing does not mean fewer cases, and the OIG’s report reveals for the first time the scope of ICE’s failure to provide adequate testing. Even with demonstrated under-testing of people in detention, almost 2,500 people in ICE detention have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
 
According to the OIG, 70 percent of all ICE detention centers nationwide reported that they had not tested any detained people for COVID-19. As of late May 2020, ICE had just over 2,000 testing kits available on-site at detention facilities, although ICE detained over 25,000 people. The report also notes that there is no consistent national standard or clear guidance for detention staff to decide whether to test a detainee for COVID-19. Even absent a consistent national standard, ICE also admitted that at least 20 detained people who met local protocols for testing failed to receive COVID-19 tests.
     
The OIG’s report also reveals ICE personnel’s own admission of the impossibility of controlling a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility, and the dire consequences that an outbreak would have. Detention facilities admitted that they lack adequate expertise, personnel, and equipment in case of a COVID-19 outbreak. As one ICE facility reported, “We do not have any medical staff. If any detainee tests positive for COVID-19 we will have to shut down the detention facility . . . we do not have the medical capacity to house anyone with COVID-19.”
 
Other ICE facilities noted the impossibility of having enough personal protective equipment needed in case of an outbreak: “If an outbreak were to occur the stock of [protective equipment, including masks] would be depleted. We have been attempting to acquire additional equipment for weeks, however as most are aware this is difficult given the high demand.”
 
ICE facilities also admitted their inability to practice social distancing in detention, or to adequately quarantine people suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19. “The nature of detention facilities makes social distancing impractical, as detainees are housed together in dorm-like pods, some with as many as 50 to 75 detainees in each pod. Additionally, most detention centers have few means to isolate large numbers of detainees.”
 
More than one-third of detention facilities reported not having enough hand sanitizer for detained people to use. More than half of facilities stated that they do not have the space to quarantine or isolate detained people who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19, and almost two-thirds of facilities had none, or less than two “negative pressure rooms” — medical rooms with closed ventilation systems to isolate airborne infections.
 
The danger of an outbreak is imminent: Since the start of the pandemic, three detained people and five guards have lost their lives to COVID-19, and an unknown number have become seriously ill and have been hospitalized due to the virus. Despite this threat, the OIG found that less than 20 percent of ICE’s detention facilities had released people to mitigate the danger of COVID-19. According to ICE data, facilities released only 1,137 detainees of the approximately 25,000 people in ICE custody from March 17 to May 5, 2020, due to reasons related to COVID-19.
 
The OIG reports that this is only the first stage of its investigation of ICE’s efforts to prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in its facilities, which is a positive step. The OIG should also investigate ICE’s continued transfer of detainees between facilities, a widespread practice that flies in the face of CDC guidance.
 
Further, the OIG should investigate the number of detained people hospitalized as a result of COVID-19, and the number of people who, upon deportation, have tested positive for COVID-19, so that the public can understand the full scope of the crisis. Deporting people who have been exposed to and contracted a deadly virus in the U.S. is not only unethical, but potentially disastrous for global public health, and we have good reason to believe that has become regular protocol.
 
In the meantime, ICE must quickly act to release people from detention, including those who are medically vulnerable to COVID-19. This is the only way to prevent certain death — of detained people, ICE staff, and people in the communities they return home to.
 



Published June 29, 2020 at 05:48PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3ge8L5b

Republic of Belarus : Technical Assistance Report-Enhancing Monetary Policy Modeling Capacity, Monetary Policy Implementation, and the Forecasting and Policy Analysis System

Republic of Belarus : Technical Assistance Report-Enhancing Monetary Policy Modeling Capacity, Monetary Policy Implementation, and the Forecasting and Policy Analysis System
Published June 29, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Friday, 26 June 2020

Papua New Guinea : Request for Disbursement under the Rapid Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea : Request for Disbursement under the Rapid Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Papua New Guinea
Published June 26, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: Why Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder

Why Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder

This piece was originally published in Slate.

Just one month ago, the world saw a video of Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin kneel on George Floyd’s windpipe with an eerily calm demeanor, while officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane acted as the lookout men. Despite what we all saw, however, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman at first refused to arrest or indict any of the four men, insisting, “I will not rush to justice.” This was keeping with his prosecutorial instinct: In his first 16 years in office, Freeman did not charge a single officer for a civilian killing.

After days of relentless local and national protests, Freeman finally brought a third-degree murder charge against Chauvin. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison soon stepped in, announcing on Wednesday that he would enhance the original charge against Chauvin and also bring charges against the three officers who watched and held the crowd back. However, it took a nauseating video, the herculean efforts of protesters, and global outrage simply to trigger criminal proceedings. That is because the local prosecutor’s instinct was to protect the officers he works with rather than the citizens he serves.

Freeman’s initial reaction is a normalized pathology that extends beyond Minneapolis. Many prosecutors around the nation have a toxic, co-dependent relationship with police. Prosecutors and police are more than just institutional allies in law enforcement; they are often partners in the police’s crimes. The seemingly unending list of young Black people killed by police without local repercussions—Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, and more—speaks to this phenomenon’s persistence and national scope. So, while many will focus on the short-term victory of criminal charges, prosecution alone will not prevent the next atrocity. We need a complete overhaul of the prosecutor-police relationship.

As we argued recently in the Boston University Law Review, police exert significant control over prosecutors in both formal and informal ways. For example, in sociological research examining police and prosecutorial practice in Chicago, prosecutors relied on police testimony to win trials, and those trial wins were essential to earning promotions within the office. Prosecutors described an overt pressure to comply with a police culture of “silence and violence” that all but dictated that prosecutors operate with “blinders” on. This meant that questioning an officer’s version of events, whether there was a dead suspect or just a missing bag of drugs, was seen as a sign of “disrespect” to the officer. Conscientious prosecutors who questioned the legitimacy of a police report or the word of an officer could end up with tarnished reputations amongst law enforcement, resistance from officers, and marginalization in the office.

This perverse incentive structure normalized police perjury and created the conditions upon which police misconduct could thrive in small and big ways. These practices stacked the deck in favor of the state in run-of-the-mill prosecutions and often violated the law—both state and constitutional. But, in the most extreme cases, where a suspect was shot or killed, they helped ensure that there was no justice for the victim or community, no accountability for the police, and the officer involved was allowed to continue walking their beat.

Despite the power that police exert over prosecutors, however, prosecutors are not exactly potted plants either. The law gives prosecutors vast discretion to criminally charge and otherwise decide the course of criminal cases. But when police are the ones committing crimes, prosecutors often deploy that power to cover for and effectively encourage the criminality, rather than to combat it and seek justice. After all, prosecutors know where their bread is buttered

This occurs in overt ways, like charging (though later dropping, under pressure) Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend in order to whitewash a murderous no-knock warrant. But it also takes more mundane forms. Failing to disclose a witness statement that contradicts a favorite officer; dropping charges that involve police misconduct, before a judge can hold the officer accountable in open court; even quietly but effectively lobbying against police reform. These subtle manipulations of the criminal justice system allow the gravy train to keep running and, eventually, make the failure to charge an officer like Chauvin not a momentary lapse, but the natural culmination of a career-long partnership. This is why, even if officers like those in Minneapolis—or nationwide—are eventually charged for their crimes, those one-off instances are unlikely to stop police and prosecutors writ large from continuing their mutually beneficial dance.

There are straightforward fixes to this state of affairs, including increased oversight, ending police-protective doctrines like qualified immunity, and electing truly independent prosecutors. When it comes to officers like Chauvin who have a history of complaints, prosecutors can refuse to call them to testify in criminal cases.

However, we need to properly diagnose the problem before discussing solutions. Much like Americans tend to ignore voting rights until election years, or pandemic prevention until after one hits, we tend to scrutinize the prosecutor’s role in police violence only in the wake of high-profile killings. And rarely do we consider police-prosecutor co-dependence as a systemic, national phenomenon, rather than a static, local one. But we need to start.

Only then will we understand how Chauvin could remain so calm and at ease, with his hands in his pockets, as he killed George Floyd—even with numerous cameras and his own bodycam running. Perhaps it was the near assurance that Floyd’s death would be of little importance to his prosecuting counterparts, at least compared with the hundreds of cases they would need Chauvin for in the future. Perhaps he believed that prosecutors would, as so many had before, step in and clean up the scene of his crime.



Published June 26, 2020 at 09:43PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eC15Jx

ACLU: Why Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder

Why Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder

This piece was originally published in Slate.

Just one month ago, the world saw a video of Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin kneel on George Floyd’s windpipe with an eerily calm demeanor, while officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane acted as the lookout men. Despite what we all saw, however, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman at first refused to arrest or indict any of the four men, insisting, “I will not rush to justice.” This was keeping with his prosecutorial instinct: In his first 16 years in office, Freeman did not charge a single officer for a civilian killing.

After days of relentless local and national protests, Freeman finally brought a third-degree murder charge against Chauvin. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison soon stepped in, announcing on Wednesday that he would enhance the original charge against Chauvin and also bring charges against the three officers who watched and held the crowd back. However, it took a nauseating video, the herculean efforts of protesters, and global outrage simply to trigger criminal proceedings. That is because the local prosecutor’s instinct was to protect the officers he works with rather than the citizens he serves.

Freeman’s initial reaction is a normalized pathology that extends beyond Minneapolis. Many prosecutors around the nation have a toxic, co-dependent relationship with police. Prosecutors and police are more than just institutional allies in law enforcement; they are often partners in the police’s crimes. The seemingly unending list of young Black people killed by police without local repercussions—Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, and more—speaks to this phenomenon’s persistence and national scope. So, while many will focus on the short-term victory of criminal charges, prosecution alone will not prevent the next atrocity. We need a complete overhaul of the prosecutor-police relationship.

As we argued recently in the Boston University Law Review, police exert significant control over prosecutors in both formal and informal ways. For example, in sociological research examining police and prosecutorial practice in Chicago, prosecutors relied on police testimony to win trials, and those trial wins were essential to earning promotions within the office. Prosecutors described an overt pressure to comply with a police culture of “silence and violence” that all but dictated that prosecutors operate with “blinders” on. This meant that questioning an officer’s version of events, whether there was a dead suspect or just a missing bag of drugs, was seen as a sign of “disrespect” to the officer. Conscientious prosecutors who questioned the legitimacy of a police report or the word of an officer could end up with tarnished reputations amongst law enforcement, resistance from officers, and marginalization in the office.

This perverse incentive structure normalized police perjury and created the conditions upon which police misconduct could thrive in small and big ways. These practices stacked the deck in favor of the state in run-of-the-mill prosecutions and often violated the law—both state and constitutional. But, in the most extreme cases, where a suspect was shot or killed, they helped ensure that there was no justice for the victim or community, no accountability for the police, and the officer involved was allowed to continue walking their beat.

Despite the power that police exert over prosecutors, however, prosecutors are not exactly potted plants either. The law gives prosecutors vast discretion to criminally charge and otherwise decide the course of criminal cases. But when police are the ones committing crimes, prosecutors often deploy that power to cover for and effectively encourage the criminality, rather than to combat it and seek justice. After all, prosecutors know where their bread is buttered

This occurs in overt ways, like charging (though later dropping, under pressure) Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend in order to whitewash a murderous no-knock warrant. But it also takes more mundane forms. Failing to disclose a witness statement that contradicts a favorite officer; dropping charges that involve police misconduct, before a judge can hold the officer accountable in open court; even quietly but effectively lobbying against police reform. These subtle manipulations of the criminal justice system allow the gravy train to keep running and, eventually, make the failure to charge an officer like Chauvin not a momentary lapse, but the natural culmination of a career-long partnership. This is why, even if officers like those in Minneapolis—or nationwide—are eventually charged for their crimes, those one-off instances are unlikely to stop police and prosecutors writ large from continuing their mutually beneficial dance.

There are straightforward fixes to this state of affairs, including increased oversight, ending police-protective doctrines like qualified immunity, and electing truly independent prosecutors. When it comes to officers like Chauvin who have a history of complaints, prosecutors can refuse to call them to testify in criminal cases.

However, we need to properly diagnose the problem before discussing solutions. Much like Americans tend to ignore voting rights until election years, or pandemic prevention until after one hits, we tend to scrutinize the prosecutor’s role in police violence only in the wake of high-profile killings. And rarely do we consider police-prosecutor co-dependence as a systemic, national phenomenon, rather than a static, local one. But we need to start.

Only then will we understand how Chauvin could remain so calm and at ease, with his hands in his pockets, as he killed George Floyd—even with numerous cameras and his own bodycam running. Perhaps it was the near assurance that Floyd’s death would be of little importance to his prosecuting counterparts, at least compared with the hundreds of cases they would need Chauvin for in the future. Perhaps he believed that prosecutors would, as so many had before, step in and clean up the scene of his crime.



Published June 26, 2020 at 05:13PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3eC15Jx