Poor Stallman

I'm so sad right now.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#10_December_2020_(HSBC_freezing_bank_accounts) -- HSBC is freezing the bank accounts of Hong Kong people and institutions that gave support to the democracy movement. Freezing people's accounts under the tyrannical laws of China is serving tyranny. HSBC should reimburse those depositors with funds in some other country. HSBC can afford that cost, and should understand it as its punishment for obeying China. -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/hong-kong-church-pastor-says-hsbc-froze-personal-and-charity-bank-accounts -- Hong Kong police raid church hours after pastor said HSBC froze accounts -- Tue 8 Dec 2020 -- Authorities accused of ‘political retaliation’ over church group’s support of pro-democracy protesters as eight more arrested

Hong Kong police have raided a church, just hours after its pastor said HSBC had frozen bank accounts belonging to him, his wife and the church’s charity. On Tuesday the Good Neighbour North District church said officers from the financial investigations and narcotics bureau had executed a search warrant on its Kwun Tong branch, and would also search its Fanling church. Police are yet to comment, but the raid took place after the church’s pastor, Ray Chan, said the accounts had been frozen, which he described as an act of “political retaliation” by authorities for assistance provided by his church to young protesters.

Hong Kong police arrested eight more opposition figures on Tuesday as their crackdown on dissent in the city continued. In an open letter to HSBC and its executives, the Good Neighbour North District church urged the bank to unfreeze the accounts of pastor Chan, his wife and the church’s charity. The church said the HSBC accounts were their only accounts, and their freezing would lead to the termination of its hostel services for homeless people in Hong Kong. On Tuesday afternoon, Chan revealed he and his family had left Hong Kong and were in the UK on what he termed a “sabbatical”. In a Facebook video he said the family now had no financial support and returning to Hong Kong seemed impossible.

Chan said the public donations to the church were legal, but did not say if there was any investigation ongoing. He said HSBC had become “a tool for the regime’s attempt to take political revenge via economic oppression”. “All dissenting voices, despite their peaceful and rational expressions, are disallowed,” he said, and called on people “protect the core values of Hong Kong and voice your concerns over the regime’s attempt to manoeuvre private properties”. The church also demanded an explanation from HSBC and accused the bank of “exploiting the well-established independent financial system and sabotaging the benefits of individuals and groups of Hong Kong, as well as foreign investors within the territory”.

It said acts by the authorities like the asset freezing of veteran activist Ted Hui and his family had eroded dissent in Hong Kong and suppressed the freedom of religions and community service workers. “This is no doubt an act of political retaliation,” the church said. “In the past year, our group, Safeguard Our Generation [also know as Protect Our Children], mainly comprised of middle-aged and elderly volunteers, was determined to offer humanitarian aid to protesters at the frontline.” Chan and other members of grassroots church groups were frequent attendees at Hong Kong’s mass protests, acting as peacekeepers to protect the young protesters from police violence, as well as intervening in any protester violence. They have also assisted young people going through the court system on protest-related charges.

Hong Kong police have been contacted for comment about any ongoing investigations into the church which would prompt an asset freeze. A spokeswoman for HSBC said it could not comment on specific accounts and directed inquiries to police. HSBC has been accused of aiding Hong Kong authorities’ [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/how-hsbc-got-caught-in-a-geopolitical-storm-over-hong-kong-security-law ] crackdown, but on Monday the bank said circumstances around Hui’s case had been “misrepresented”, and that it had to work within the laws of where it operated.

Hui reportedly had accounts with several banks, which were all frozen on request from police, the head of the force’s national security department, superintendent Steve Li, told media. In a statement late on Monday the financial regulator, Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority, said financial institutions were expected to cooperate with law enforcement authorities on investigations. In her regular press conference on Tuesday, Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong chief executive, accused Hui of lying to the courts to jump bail, and rejected his claims that banks’ freezing the accounts of opposition figures was harming Hong Kong’s reputation as an international finance hub.

“Is this individual a trustworthy individual that you should take his words on face value, and accuse Hong Kong financial institutions of doing things which are not in accordance with the law?” Lam said. “If there’s any damage to Hong Kong’s financial institutions, the culprit is this individual.” Hui was approached for comment but had not responded at the time of publication. Hong Kong and Beijing authorities have shown no sign of slowing their crackdown on people linked with the pro-democracy movement . On Monday eight people were arrested, including three under the national security [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/controversial-hong-kong-national-security-law-comes-into-effect ] laws (NSL) over a non-violent protest at a university. And on Tuesday police arrested another eight accused of “inciting, organising and joining unauthorised assembly” on 1 July this year, when crowds took to Hong Kong’s streets on the first full day under the NSL.

Those arrested included opposition politicians and activists “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Wu Chi-wai, Figo Chan and Chu Hoi-dick. Chan posted video of his arrest to Facebook. Chu later said he had been charged with organising an unauthorised assembly and released on bail. Lam rejected suggestions the government was targeting pro-democracy figures, appearing to suggest there were calls for such activists to be given impunity. “As long as these people are called pro-democracy activists, it’s as if they have a shield and law-enforcement agencies cannot touch them,” she said.

In recent months numerous pro-democracy legislators have been arrested over accusations including organising protests or disrupting parliament, or been disqualified from parliament [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/china-pro-democracy-hong-kong-lawmakers-opposition-oust ] or elections. Chu and Hui were previously arrested [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/hong-kong-national-security-law-pits-judges-against-justice-officials-in-activists-trial ] in November. Last week pro-democracy figure Jimmy Lai was denied bail, and Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/02/hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-jailed-over-protest-police-hq ] were jailed.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#18_November_2020_(1985_Move_bombing) -- Philadelphia city council apologizes for deadly 1985 Move bombing. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/philadelphia-1985-move-bombing-apology -- Philadelphia city council apologises for deadly 1985 Move bombing -- Fri 13 Nov 2020 -- Resolution apologises for ‘enduring harm’ caused by bombing of house occupied by members of black liberation group

Philadelphia’s governing council has formally apologised for one of the worst atrocities in the long history of racial strife in the city – the aerial bombing on 13 May 1985 of a house occupied by members of the black liberation group Move that left 11 people dead, including five children. The council overwhelmingly approved a resolution that apologises for the “immeasurable and enduring harm” caused by the decision to drop C4 plastic explosives from a police helicopter onto the roof of 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. The bomb sparked an inferno that was left by authorities to rage until it had razed 61 houses in the largely black neighborhood.

The council acknowledged “recklessness in communication, negotiation and conflict resolution” in the days leading up to the bombing, as well as its failure to prevent “unnecessary pain and suffering to the Move family, their neighbors, friends and first responders”. A day of “observation, reflection and recommitment” will be established on the anniversary of the bombing each year, as a step towards reconciliation. The Move bombing [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia ] was one of the most brutal and grotesque events during conflicts that erupted in the 1970s and 1980s between police and city authorities and black radicals demanding justice and liberation. The Move house was the focus of aggressive police surveillance for years, culminating in the decision to drop the incendiary device.

Mike Africa Jr, a member of Move whose uncle and cousin both died in the bombing, welcomed the council’s apology and said it demonstrated that “with enough pressure you can move mountains. With these small victories we have to add them up so that we can achieve a bigger victory and continue the work of restorative justice.” The resolution was sponsored by council member Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area devastated by the bombing. Presenting it to the council, she made a direct connection between the brutality of the 1985 incident and the recent fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace, a 27-year-old black man who was undergoing a mental health crisis. Gauthier said the council’s declaration “serves as recognition of the pain and trauma that these events have brought upon the community, and Black people in our city as a whole”.

It has taken years of delicate discussions to nudge the Philadelphia council to the point where it was prepared to make a formal apology, despite the gruesome nature of the 1985 attack. The five children who died in the inferno – Tree, Netta, Deleisha, Little Phil and Tomasa – were aged seven to 13. At the time of the bombing Philadelphia was led by its first black mayor, Wilson Goode. He approved the attack though he claims to have been unaware of key decisions. On the 35th anniversary of the bombing in May, he wrote an article in the Guardian [ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/10/when-i-was-mayor-philadelphia-bombed-civilians-its-time-for-the-city-to-apologise ] in which he called on the city council to break its silence and formally express its regrets. “After 35 years,” he wrote, “it would be helpful for the healing of all involved, especially the victims of this terrible event, if there was a formal apology by the city of Philadelphia. Many in the city still feel the pain of that day – I know I will always feel the pain.”

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#13_December_2020_(Oil_majors_shift_billions_to_tax_havens) -- How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens. -- https://www.reuters.com/article/global-oil-tax-havens-specialreport-int/special-report-how-oil-majors-shift-billions-in-profits-to-island-tax-havens-idUSKBN28J1IE -- How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens -- "dateCreated":"2020-12-09T12:12:38Z" -- Bermuda and the Bahamas aren’t exactly big players in the oil-and-gas world. They don’t produce any of the fuels at all. Yet the islands are deep wells of profit for European oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

In 2018 and 2019, Shell earned more than $2.7 billion - about 7% of its total income in those years - tax-free by reporting profits in companies located in Bermuda and the Bahamas that employed just 39 people and generated the bulk of their revenue from other Shell entities, company filings show. If the oil-and-gas major had booked the profits through its headquarters in the Netherlands, it could have faced a tax bill of about $700 million based on the Dutch corporate tax rate of 25%. The bill would have been much steeper if the income were reported in oil-producing countries - some of which levy rates exceeding 80%. Shell and other oil majors are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes in countries where they drill by shifting profits to thinly staffed insurance and finance affiliates based in tax havens, according to a Reuters review of corporate filings and rating agency reports. Shell, BP Plc, Chevron and Total use subsidiaries in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Bermuda, the UK Channel Islands and Ireland to provide their global operations with banking, insurance and oil-trading services, the documents show. These subsidiaries, in turn, book profits that go lightly taxed or entirely tax-free.

Such arrangements are not illegal. But they highlight the ability of international oil corporations to game global tax systems and avoid handing over revenue to nations where they conduct their core business, according to academics who study corporate taxation. The profits generated by those offshore units are enormous, despite their tiny operations. BP’s so-called captive insurer - meaning it serves only other BP entities - had $6.5 billion in cash on hand at the end of 2018 after years of robust annual profits, according to insurance rating agency AM Best Co. The insurer, Jupiter Insurance Ltd, has accounted for as much as 14% of BP’s global annual profits in recent years, according to AM Best figures and BP’s financial statements. Jupiter has six directors but no employees; BP outsources insurance administration to a brokerage located in Guernsey, a tax haven in the UK Channel Islands. Located about 75 miles south of the British coastline, Guernsey is not part of the UK but is a British crown dependency and sets its own tax rates. It charges no tax on corporate profits derived from revenues generated outside the island.

BP spokesman David Nicholas said Jupiter “is a UK tax resident and therefore is subject to UK tax.” But BP’s insurer paid no UK taxes at all in 2019, according to the oil company’s 2019 Tax Report, which was released Wednesday, the same day this story was published. BP offset Jupiter’s taxable income with losses from other UK-based affiliates, which the BP report called a typical arrangment. BP said it released the tax report - for the first time - out of a desire to be more transparent about taxation. The report said the company does not “engage in artificial tax arrangements.”

The big oil firms’ captive insurers are far more profitable than a typical insurance company. That’s because the amount they pay in claims accounts for a far lower proportion of the money collected in premiums - all from other affiliates of the oil giants - than is the case at other insurers, Industry data shows. That means the captive insurance units absorb part of the revenue made by the oil majors’ subsidiaries elsewhere - often in high-tax countries where they extract oil and gas - and shift it to operations located in low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions. The oil companies have also transferred capital to tax havens to establish banking units that lend money to sister companies. Shell established an oil trader in the Bahamas that generates revenue primarily by buying and selling oil among other Shell affiliates. The companies named in this story all said they followed tax rules of the nations where they do business. Their subsidiaries in tax havens, the companies said, were located there for commercial or operational reasons rather than to avoid taxation.

Shell denied that its arrangements constituted tax avoidance and said the location of its subsidiaries were driven by business rather than tax reasons. Profit-shifting among affiliated companies has long been a concern among the Group of 20 nations, which have asked the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which helps coordinate international taxation rule-making, to find ways to rein in corporate tax avoidance. The organization in February issued new guidance on the treatment of intra-group financial transactions, advising nations to limit deductions on such payments. Critics of corporate tax planning say oil firms’ profit-shifting undermines their claims to responsible corporate governance and exacerbates the deep budgetary problems that many oil-producing countries face amid the coronavirus pandemic and a related drop in oil prices.

“These companies are deliberately exploiting gaps in tax law and weak enforcement, and they are doing so in order to make enormous profits,” said Raymond Baker, president of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington D.C.-based not-for-profit organization that has lobbied for stricter international action against corporate tax avoidance. “The victims are the countries and their budgets and their people.” Nations such as Angola, Brazil and Trinidad, who rely heavily on oil tax revenues, have had to moderate spending and increase borrowing to respond to the health crisis. Nigeria is another country that relies heavily on oil tax revenues. Waziri Adio - executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which advocates for stronger governance of oil revenues - said the practices of oil companies may be legal but aren’t fair.

“This is something that robs Nigeria of legitimate revenues and will affect the ability of the government to deliver badly needed services to its citizens,” Adio said. The governments of Nigeria, Angola, Brazil and Trinidad did not respond to requests for comment. Tax advisors said companies owe it to their shareholders to pay the lowest-possible tax bill.

“Tax planning is a legitimate part of business,” said Bryan Kelly, a partner with law firm Withers in Los Angeles. “The board of directors has a fiduciary duty to maximize profits.” Shell booked $1.3 billion in 2018 and 2019 profits through Bermuda-based banking and insurance subsidiaries that together employed three people, according to the company’s ‘Tax Contribution Reports’ published in November this year and December 2019 which detail tax payments. The tiny firms provide insurance and loans to Shell oil-producing facilities worldwide, although Shell said in its most recent tax report, published last month, that it ceased the intra-group lending from Bermuda in 2020 for reasons the company did not disclose. In 2018, the companies derived 96% of their revenues from other Shell companies.

The operations appear to exist primarily for tax purposes, said Richard Murphy, professor of political economy at City University of London. The high profitability of the Bermudan units – along with their heavy reliance on revenue from affiliates – suggests that they are designed to shift profits to low tax jurisdictions, he said. “The numbers don’t make sense. If Shell is so good at making money in insurance and lending, why doesn’t it sell its services to outside companies and make even more money?” Murphy said. Shell denied that its Bermuda operations are designed for tax avoidance. “Where Shell entities operate in low-tax jurisdictions, they are there for commercial and substantive reasons,” the company said in a statement.

Over $1.8 billion of Shell’s 2018 and 2019 tax-haven profits were booked by Shell Western Supply and Trading Ltd, a Bahamas-based oil trading operation employing 36 people, Shell said in its tax reports. The company buys oil from Shell fields and other producers in West Africa, Brazil and Guyana and sells two-thirds of the crude to other Shell affiliates. The in-house oil trader outperforms other big oil merchants. Its annual profits were almost equal to the total $992 million that was earned through the end of September 2019 by independent oil trader Trafigura Group PTE Ltd - which employed 5,106 staff that year, Trafigura’s financial statements show. Shell Western enjoyed a profit margin of 4.1% across 2018 and 2019, according to its tax report. That’s more than four times the level independent oil traders typically report, according to financial statements of the three of the biggest industry players - The Vitol Group, Trafigura and Mercuria Energy Trading BV. Margaret Cooper, a researcher at Henley Business School near London who studies multinational firms’ tax planning strategies, said that in-house oil trader’s location, its relative high profits and its dependence on trading with affiliated firms suggests that its dealings are designed to avoid taxes.

“I can’t think of any other reason than tax reasons why the company is located where it is,” Cooper said. Shell declined to comment on whether Shell Western pays any taxes or to answer questions about whether its oil-trading operation is designed for tax avoidance. The company said in a statement that Shell Western’s profits are commensurate with its commercial activities.

BIG INSURANCE PROFITS, LOW TAXES FOR BP -- BP’s unusually profitable insurer is housed in the picturesque St Peters Port, the largest town on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. A 2019 report from insurance rating agency AM Best noted strong underwriting profits and operating results over the past five years, resulting in a “very strong” balance sheet, with $6.5 billion in cash at the end of 2018. AM Best reports from previous years include more details on the operation - including immense profits that would be the envy of any insurer.

In 2014, Jupiter had an operating ratio - which includes pay-outs and other costs as a share of premiums - of just 1.3%. That compares to more than 90% for most U.S. insurers, according to data from the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. Jupiter booked profits totaling $5.8 billion from 2010 to 2013, the last year for which AM Best published profit figures. In 2013, Jupiter’s earnings amounted to 14% of the operating profit reported by BP in financial disclosures. Jupiter’s profit margins remained exceptional through those years despite the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, one of the worst industrial accidents in history. The incident caused $70 billion in damages, but Jupiter’s payouts to affiliated companies were capped at $1.5 billion for any one event. So, the insurer kept a loss ratio under 15% of premium income for the years 2009 to 2013, according to a 2014 AM Best report. BP group retained access to Jupiter’s hefty cash pile because the captive insurer lends 98% of its reserves back to Jupiter’s parent, London-based BP International Ltd, for terms of a year or less, according to AM Best. BP pays interest on the money back to Jupiter, adding to the insurer’s low-tax or no-tax profits.

Murphy, the University of London professor, estimates Jupiter could save BP hundreds of millions of dollars annually given its high profitability and the high tax rates that many countries place on oil production. Jupiter’s registered office is on the first floor of Albert House on the Esplanade, overlooking the harbor in St Peter Port. The offices are not BP’s but belong to a multinational insurance brokerage and advisory company, Willis Towers. Richard Parris Smith, head of office at Willis Towers Management Guernsey, said his firm manages Jupiter on behalf of BP and has 30 employees that serve all of its clients. Willis Towers lists 35 other captive insurers as clients on a sign outside its office door.

CHEVRON’S BERMUDA INSURER -- California-based Chevron >>349 Corp operates a captive insurer in Bermuda. Until 2015, AM Best issued reports on Heddington Insurance Ltd and rated it highly due to its “good loss history” and “very strong investment income” made through high-interest loans to other Chevron companies. The rating agency did not report specific profit figures or operating ratios for Chevron’s insurer. Chevron said it formed Heddington to reduce insurance costs and provide broader coverage than what is available in the commercial insurance market. The company said the insurer paid U.S. taxes but declined to detail how much or the effective rate. Other oil firms have tax-haven subsidiaries through which they self-insure their facilities. France’s Total SA operates Swiss-based Omnium Reinsurance Company S.A., its financial filings show. Total did not respond to requests for comment about Omnium. Switzerland offers captive insurers special tax treatment and rates of less than 10%.

Italy’s Eni SpA operates an Irish-based insurer which covers the company’s facilities in places including Algeria and Nigeria. Like Shell and BP’s insurers, Dublin-based Eni Insurance DAC enjoys lower pay-out costs as a percentage of revenue than insurance industry averages. It reported a profit of 56 million euros in 2018, on which it paid tax at a rate of just 12.5% – half the Italian rate, and a fraction of the amount it would face in oil producing countries. Eni Insurance DAC says in its financial statements that it aims to reduce insurance costs for the Eni group. Eni said its insurer generates strong profits because it does not have marketing costs to recruit clients like most insurers. The company said in a statement that the insurer’s premiums are in line with market rates and denied the business is designed for tax avoidance. “The decision to establish the Eni Captive headquarters in Ireland was solely driven by business reasons,” the company said.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#2_December_2020_(Crime_against_an_inanimate_object) -- Australian soldiers' crime against an inanimate object arouses incredible outrage — more so, it seems, than their crimes that hurt human victims, including torture and murder. That bespeaks a taboo-based morality, according to which taboos are more important than people, so violating taboos is worse than killing people. I hereby affirm that, when I am dead, I will not mind at all if someone takes some valueless part of my property and uses it as a cup. Or even my bones. After all, I won't need them any more. However, I have willed my body to science, so do let the lab have first dibs. -- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/01/photo-reveals-australian-soldier-drinking-dead-taliban-prosthetic-leg -- Photo reveals Australian soldier drinking beer out of dead Taliban fighter's prosthetic leg -- Tue 1 Dec 2020 -- Exclusive Image obtained by Guardian Australia shows limb being used to down drinks in a special forces bar in Afghanistan

Senior Australian special forces soldiers drank beer out of the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban soldier at an unauthorised bar in Afghanistan – with a photograph of the act being revealed for the first time by Guardian Australia. A number of photographs obtained by the Guardian show one senior soldier – who is still serving – sculling from the leg in an unofficial bar known as the Fat Lady’s Arms, which was set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan province, in 2009. Another appears to show two soldiers performing a dance with the leg.

The sculling picture is the first to be published that confirms previous reports of the practice of using the leg as a drinking vessel. Some soldiers say the practice was widely tolerated by officers at high levels and even involved some of them. This was despite the limb potentially being a war trophy – an item Australian soldiers were forbidden to remove from the battlefield, let alone keep. The situation has angered rank-and-file soldiers who say they have been unfairly criticised in the Brereton report [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/19/australian-special-forces-involved-in-of-39-afghan-civilians-war-crimes-report-alleges ] for embracing such a culture and practices despite officers being aware of them for years. The Brereton report [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/19/key-findings-of-the-brereton-report-into-allegations-of-australian-war-crimes-in-afghanistan ] found a “warrior culture” had contributed to an environment in which war crimes were allegedly committed.

The leg is believed to have belonged to a suspected Taliban fighter killed during an SASR 2 squadron assault on two compounds and a tunnel complex at Kakarak in Uruzgan in April 2009. It was then allegedly taken from the battlefield and kept in the Fat Lady’s Arms, where visitors would sometimes use it to drink from. Later it was mounted on a wooden plaque under the heading Das Boot, alongside an Iron Cross – a military decoration used in Nazi Germany. The leg travelled with the squadron at all times, one former trooper told the Guardian.

“Wherever the Fat Lady’s Arms was set up, then that’s where the leg was kept and used occasionally for drinking out of,” he said. The soldier said senior commanders would occasionally visit the bar, especially on Anzac Day, and would have seen the leg and potentially the practice of drinking from it. Rumours that pictures exist of high-ranking officers drinking from the leg have long been circulating in the Australian special forces community. The ABC and other media have reported of the leg’s existence and the act of sculling beers from it, although a picture of the act has, until now, not been published.

The unredacted sections of the Brereton report [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/19/we-knew-the-war-crimes-inquiry-would-be-bad-but-this-is-gut-wrenching-and-nauseating ] do not mention the leg or whether any soldiers were under investigation for taking war trophies, but the report does make reference to the Fat Lady’s Arms as being an example of how ethical leadership was compromised. The report said of the unauthorised bar that this involved “the toleration, acceptance and participation in a widespread disregard for behavioural norms: such as drinking on operations, the Fat Lady’s Arms, and lax standards of dress, personal hygiene and behaviour – and not only on operations – which would not have been tolerated elsewhere in Army”. Under section 268.81 of the commonwealth criminal code, the taking of property without the consent of the owner may be classified as the war crime of pillaging, which carries a penalty of 20 years’ jail time, former military lawyer Glenn Kolomeitz said.

Justice Brereton’s report [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/19/the-alleged-afghanistan-war-crimes-that-shocked-australia ] recommended that 19 soldiers be investigated by police in connection with the alleged murder of 39 prisoners and civilians and the alleged cruel treatment of two others. It also found “credible information” that 25 serving or former ADF personnel were involved in serious crimes or at least had been accessories to them. The report states that it was less likely that Special Operations Task Group Headquarters and SOTG commanding officers would have been aware of war crimes due to the fact they were not out in the field.

After the report’s publication, the chief of defence, General Angus Campbell, announced that he would be accepting its recommendations which included stripping the “meritorious group citation” for the soldiers who served in the Special Operations Task Group between 2007 and 2013. That recommendation has caused anger in some ranks, with relatives of Task Group members who died on the battlefield complaining that it was a blanket punishment and affected many who were innocent of wrongdoing. On Monday, reportedly after intervention by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the defence minister, Senator Linda Reynolds, the stripping of the citation appeared to be reversed.

Campbell issued a statement saying he had not made any final decisions on the report’s recommendations. The Department of Defence was asked by the Guardian whether it was aware of the existence of the prosthesis photos and what action had been taken if it was. A spokesperson referred to the Brereton report [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/20/the-inquiry-into-alleged-war-crimes-by-australian-special-forces-in-afghanistan-is-done-what-now ] in its response.

“The report has been redacted to remove names and details that could identify individuals against whom the Inquiry has found credible information to support allegations of criminal wrongdoing or other misconduct,” the spokesperson said. “Where there is information provided to Defence not addressed as part of the Afghanistan Inquiry, these matters will be investigated thoroughly and acted on. The spokesperson added: “It is critical that all matters are considered carefully, and any actions are undertaken according to the ADF’s longstanding and well-established processes, ensuring the rights of individuals to due process and fair hearing are protected.

“Due to the Privacy Act, Defence is unable to provide information about current or former serving members without their written consent.” The emergence of the picture of Australian armed forces drinking beer from a dead man’s prosthetic leg comes at a particularly tense time for the Australian government. On Monday the Chinese government’s foreign affairs spokesman tweeted a doctored image of an Australian soldier with a knife held to the throat of an Afghan child with the words: “Don’t be afraid, we are coming to bring you peace” underneath. Morrison said the tweet was “utterly outrageous” and “repugnant” and called on China to apologise.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#3_December_2020_(Special_forces) -- Why Canada responded to atrocities by its "special forces" by disbanding the unit. Maybe they called that unit "special" as a euphemism for "bad behavioral problems." -- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/03/war-crimes-former-minister-reveals-why-canada-disbanded-its-special-forces-after-scandal -- War crimes: former minister reveals why Canada disbanded its special airborne force after scandal -- Wed 2 Dec 2020 -- The drastic step was judged the best way to fix systemic problems after an affair similar to allegations against Australian >>524 forces in Afghanistan

A former Canadian defence minister who disbanded his nation’s special forces regiment in the wake of a war crimes scandal similar to that now facing Australia says the drastic step was the only way to fix systemic cultural problems and repair reputational damage. The parallels between Canada’s so-called Somalia affair [ https://torontosun.com/news/national/look-back-25-years-since-scandal-led-to-airborne-regiment-being-disbanded ] and the allegations against Australian [ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/18/australian-war-crimes-prosecutors-will-face-a-raft-of-legal-hurdles-experts-say ] troops in Afghanistan are striking. The Somalia affair involved soldiers from Canada’s elite Airborne Regiment, who were revealed to have tortured and killed a 16-year-old Somali boy, Shidane Arone, in 1993, during the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the war-torn nation.

The Canadian soldiers took horrific “trophy” photos posing with Arone, which sparked national outrage and shocked Canadians, and helped prompt a wide-ranging inquiry and the subsequent revelation of separate videos showing soldiers making racist comments and taking part in brutal hazing rituals. Like the Brereton inquiry, Canada’s own war crimes probe found systemic cultural and organisational problems afflicted the Airborne Regiment. David Collenette became Canada’s defence minister in 1993, replacing his conservative counterpart, as the nation continued to grapple with its response.

In 1995, after the emergence of the videos, Collenette decided to disband the Airborne Regiment, transferring its three parachute battalions into other regiments. Such a move is not being contemplated by the Australian Defence Force or the Morrison government. In an interview with the Guardian, Collenette explained that he had come to the conclusion that disbanding the regiment and starting from scratch was the only way to address the deep-seated problems that had led to the affair.

Collenette – who was at pains not to tell Australia what course it should take – said that in Canada’s case, the cultural problems were so great that repair or reform of the special forces regiment was not an option. “I’m not saying that just because Canada did it, other countries have to follow our lead,” he said. “But if you’re looking at the experience that we had, where there were … war crimes that ended up in convictions, and that it revealed a systemic problem with the institution from which the individuals came, then it seemed reasonable that, if you didn’t think you could really change the culture, then you needed to take a fresh start, which is what we did and it’s actually worked out.” The disbandment of the Airborne Regiment was complemented by a suite of organisational and cultural reforms, recommended by the inquiry, which helped modernise the Canadian military.

“In a way the military still had a mentality that had been shaped in two world wars and Korea, and the Cold War, and we didn’t seem to have adapted to the changing global focus of conflict,” Collenette said. He said Canada’s approach – disbandment coupled with major organisational reform – has been “very successful”. No Canadian government – conservative or liberal – has attempted to re-establish the Airborne in the 25 years since. Instead, in 2006, today’s Canadian Special Operations Regiment was established, and Canadian soldiers have been deployed to high-intensity theatres, including Afghanistan, without any further allegation of war crimes.

Collenette said the disbandment decision was simply the only option that he was left with. “It was very shocking to, obviously, the senior members of the military, defence staff, and the chief of the army and others,” he said. “But frankly, I think there was a feeling within the armed forces that something drastic had to be done, because there was a taint on the entire institution, which was unfortunate because like Australia, we had a great record in peacekeeping, we’d fought in world wars, and we’d never had anything like this.” But Collenette offered a note of optimism. The Somalia affair is widely considered one of the darkest chapters in Canadian military history and seriously damaged its reputation as a peacekeeping force. “Even when things seem to be broken, if you will, or a real challenge, you can make changes and you can turn the ship around,” Collenette said. “We did that, and in our case we made a certain decision on the Airborne Regiment, and that seems to have been accepted and it’s 25 years after the fact.”

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#24_December_2020_(Pardoning_murderers) -- The murderer in chief pardoned Blackwater mercenaries for the massacre they committed in Iraq in 2007. -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/23/trump-pardons-blackwater-contractors-jailed-for-massacre-of-iraq-civilians -- Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians -- Wed 23 Dec 2020 -- Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones

Donald Trump has pardoned four security guards from the private military firm Blackwater who were serving jail sentences for killing 14 civilians including two children in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that sparked an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war. The four guards – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people in a square in the Iraqi capital. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in 2014, while Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was convicted of first-degree murder. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. An initial prosecution was thrown out by a federal judge – sparking outrage in Iraq – but the then vice-president, Joe Biden, promised to pursue a fresh prosecution, which succeeded in 2015. At the sentencing, the US attorney’s office said [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/13/former-blackwater-guards-sentencing-baghdad-massacre ] in a statement: “The sheer amount of unnecessary human loss and suffering attributable to the defendants’ criminal conduct on 16 September 2007 is staggering.”

After news of the pardon emerged on Tuesday night, Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for one of the four pardoned Blackwater defendants, said: “Paul Slough and his colleagues didn’t deserve to spend one minute in prison. I am overwhelmed with emotion at this fantastic news.” The pardons are one of several the US president has granted to American service personnel and contractors accused or convicted of crimes against non-combatants and civilians in war zones. In November last year, he pardoned a former US army commando who was set to stand trial over the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire at three Afghans. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished.

Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed Raven 23 Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine-guns and grenade launchers. Defence lawyers argued their clients returned fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. The US government said in a memorandum filed after the sentencing: “None of the victims was an insurgent, or posed any threat to the Raven 23 convoy.” The memorandum also contained quotations from relatives of the dead, including Mohammad Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed. “That day changed my life forever. That day destroyed me completely,” Kinani said. Also quoted in the memorandum was David Boslego, a retired US army colonel, who said the massacre was “a grossly excessive use of force” and “grossly inappropriate for an entity whose only job was to provide personal protection to somebody in an armoured vehicle”.

Boslego also said the attack had “a negative effect on our mission, [an] adverse effect … It made our relationship with the Iraqis in general more strained.” FBI investigators who visited the scene in the following days described it as the “My Lai massacre of Iraq” – a reference to the infamous slaughter of civilian villagers by US troops during the Vietnam war in which only one soldier was convicted. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, whose sister, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Trump’s education secretary.

After the convictions, Blackwater – which changed its name to Xe and then Academi after being sold – said it was “relieved that the justice system has completed its investigation into a tragedy that occurred at Nisour Square in 2007 and that any wrongdoing that was carried out has been addressed by our courts. “The security industry has evolved drastically since those events, and under the direction of new ownership and leadership, Academi has invested heavily in compliance and ethics programmes, training for our employees, and preventative measures to strictly comply with all US and local government laws.” The 14 victims killed by the Blackwater guards on trial were listed as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim Abid Ayash, Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#3_December_2020_(Bribery_for_pardon_scheme) -- US justice department investigates alleged 'bribery for pardon' scheme. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/01/bribery-president-pardon-scheme-allegation-court-filing -- US justice department investigates alleged 'bribery for pardon' scheme at White House -- Wed 2 Dec 2020 -- Heavily redacted court filing, which does not name Trump, comes as president reportedly is considering sweeping pardons

An alleged “bribery for pardon” scheme at the White House is under investigation by the justice department, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday. The heavily redacted document does not name Donald Trump or other individuals and leaves many unanswered questions, but comes amid media reports that the US president is considering sweeping pardons before he leaves office next month. It shows that the justice department investigation alleges that an individual offered “a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence”.

Two individuals acted improperly as lobbyists to secure the pardon in the “bribery-for-pardon schemes”, as the document puts it. The names are blacked out. On Tuesday night, a justice department official told Reuters that no US government official is the “subject or target” of investigation into whether money was funnelled to the White House in exchange for a presidential pardon. Trump issued a brief response on Tuesday night, resorting to one of his favourite phrases to criticise the media even though the details were contained in official court papers. “Pardon investigation is Fake News!” he tweeted.

The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) tweeted in response: “It’s hard to overstate how big a deal the phrase ‘bribery-for-pardon schemes’ is.” The document was unsealed by the district court for the District of Columbia, in Washington. Some of its 20 pages are entirely redacted, implying that revealing the details now might jeopardise an ongoing investigation. They discuss a review by chief judge Beryl Howell in late August of a request from prosecutors for documents gathered for the bribery investigation. More than 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives were seized after investigators raided unidentified offices. It was not clear why Howell decided to release the filing now.

Former Obama administration figure and Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro tweeted: “In 2016, the FBI reopened an investigation into Hillary Clinton just 11 days before Election Day – but stayed quiet about an investigation into Trump. Now, we learn weeks after the 2020 election that the DoJ has been investigating Trump for a bribery-for-pardon scheme. In 2016 the FBI were investigating Clinton’s use of a private server for professional emailing while secretary of state, but the public was not told at the time that the bureau had also begun the Russia investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump election campaign and Moscow. Trump last week pardoned Michael [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/25/donald-trump-pardons-michael-flynn ] Flynn, his former national security adviser, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, discussed [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/01/giuliani-trump-pardon-report ] as recently as last week the possibility of a “pre-emptive pardon”. Giuliani tweeted a denial.

The court disclosure unleashed a whirlwind of speculation in Washington. The Democrat Adam Schiff, the chair of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, told the MSNBC network: “People shouldn’t presume – and there may be a tendency to leap to the conclusion that this may involve some of the personalities that have been very much in the news and are worried about their criminal liability. “It may be someone that we’ve never heard of that wants a pardon and is well-heeled and therefore in a position to make a sizable contribution. So it doesn’t have to be any of the parties that we think that may want a pardon: the [Paul] Manaforts, the Giulianis and others. It could be someone completely different but, at the end of the day, someone in that chain has to be close enough to the White House where they could conceivably deliver on the official act of pardon if the bribe were paid.”

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_November_2020_(The_corrupter_pardoned_Michael_Flynn) -- The corrupter has pardoned his former agent, Michael Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about what he did for the corrupter. This is a corrupt practice. I think we need to limit the president's power to pardon so that presidents cannot do this in the future. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/25/donald-trump-pardons-michael-flynn -- Trump pardons former national security adviser Michael Flynn -- Wed 25 Nov 2020 -- Flynn pleaded guilty >>272 to lying to FBI over Russian contacts

Donald Trump has pardoned Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser who pleaded guilty [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/01/trumps-ex-national-security-adviser-michael-flynn-charged-with-lying-to-fbi ] to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official. The president announced the long-expected pardon in a tweet on Wednesday. “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Trump wrote. “Congratulations to General Flynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving.” Trump is expected to offer pardons to a number of key aides before he leaves office on 20 January.

He has already commuted [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/10/roger-stone-trump-commutes-prison-sentence ] the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime ally who like Flynn, campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser George Papadopoulos was convicted under special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow. Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison, after being found guilty of obstruction, lying to Congress and witness intimidation. His conviction stands. Flynn had not been sentenced. Neither have Trump’s former campaign CEO and White House strategist Steve Bannon, charged with fraud, or his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, reportedly under federal investigation for potential violations of lobbying law. While the pardon for Flynn was widely expected, its announcement prompted widespread criticism.

Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, wrote on Twitter: “Donald Trump has repeatedly abused the pardon power to reward friends and protect those who covered up for him. This time he pardons Michael Flynn, who lied to hide his dealings with the Russians. It’s no surprise that Trump would go out as he came in – Crooked to the end.” Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, called it “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power”. Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the nonprofit government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or Crew, said the Flynn pardon “once again shows that to Donald Trump, ‘law and order’ does not apply to his wealthy white allies, it was merely a racist dog whistle meant to win him political support.” Flynn, a retired general, was a trusted Trump surrogate on the campaign trail in 2016. But he served just 24 days in the White House before Trump fired him [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/13/michael-flynn-resigns-quits-trump-national-security-adviser-russia ] for lying to Vice-President Mike Pence about a conversation in which he told Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak Moscow should not respond to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration.

As part of a deal with Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. He became a cause célèbre among Trump supporters, who claimed he was victimised by the Obama administration and entrapped by the bureau. Flynn’s fate became entangled with that of James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired in May 2017, triggering the appointment of Mueller. On Wednesday another former prosecutor, Mimi Rocah, now district attorney-elect for Westchester county, New York, tweeted that the road to Flynn’s pardon “started with Trump telling Comey, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go’ and Comey resisted that pressure”. In January this year Flynn sought to withdraw [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/14/michael-flynn-seeks-to-withdraw-guilty-plea-trump ] his guilty plea, prompting a drawn-out legal battle between the presiding judge and a Department of Justice led by William Barr, a close Trump ally.

Trump repeatedly voiced his support, notwithstanding a frequently cited tweet from December 2017 in which he wrote: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice-President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Flynn was represented by Sidney Powell, a lawyer recently ejected from Trump’s lawsuits challenging results in his election defeat by Joe Biden after she voiced wild conspiracy theories. In court in September, Powell said she had asked Trump not to pardon Flynn. On Wednesday, Rocah wrote: “Henchman Barr tried to do it and was stopped by judicial oversight. So, here we are. Corruption from beginning to end.” Trump has pardoned [ https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/feb/18/trump-pardons-edward-debartolo-jr-ex-san-francisco-49ers-owner ] allies including the former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik and former Arizona sheriff [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/25/donald-trump-joe-arpaio-pardon-arizona-sheriff ] Joe Arpaio. Debate now swirls about whether the president will try to pardon himself – a move that would be historically unusual, and which if successful could only apply to federal issues and not cases at state level.

In a statement on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said Flynn “should never have been prosecuted [and] should not require a pardon” because “he is an innocent man”. In a statement, Flynn’s family said they were “grateful” to Trump for “answering our prayers, and the prayers of a nation, by removing the heavy burden of injustice off the shoulders of our brother Michael, with a full pardon of innocence”. In fact, as the Department of Justice points out [ https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions ], a presidential pardon still implies guilt. A pardon is “granted in recognition of the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime”, the DoJ says, “and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence.

“It does not signify innocence.”

RMS has gone full SJW. GNU is over.

Array.from (document.getElementsByClassName ("trip")).forEach (e => { e.parentNode.parentNode.children [1].innerHTML = "I am a child seeking attention."; })

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#4_December_2020_(Senator_David_Perdue_Stock_Trading) -- Goldman Sachs Log Exposes [Senator] David Perdue Stock Trading Claim as a Lie. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/12/03/david-perdue-senate-cardlytics-stock-lie/ -- Goldman Sachs Log Exposes David Perdue’s Stock Trading Claim as a Lie -- December 3 2020 -- Despite previous claims, the Georgia senator did not use an outside adviser to sell Cardlytics stock, according to the New York Times.

Georgia Sen. David Perdue initiated the well-timed sale of more than $1 million worth of stock in the tech-banking firm Cardlytics, according to a report [ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/politics/david-perdue-cardlytics.html ] from the New York Times, despite previous claims made by Perdue that an outside adviser makes his trades. Perdue, who sat on the board of Cardlytics before entering office, came under scrutiny this year for trades that occurred in the weeks before the coronavirus shutdown — and also just prior to the CEO of Cardlytics stepping down. This past spring, when Perdue was questioned about the curiously timed trades, he said through a spokesperson that his trades were made by an independent financial adviser, and therefore couldn’t be the result of any inside information he had obtained. “Since coming to the U.S. Senate, Senator Perdue has always had an outside advisor managing his personal finances, and he is not involved in day-to-day decisions,” Perdue spokesperson Casey Black told The Intercept in March in response to questions about his trading stocks in the run-up to the pandemic-fueled market crash. Asked specifically about the Cardlytics transactions, Black reiterated that “outside, independent financial advisors manage [Perdue’s] retirement savings.”

Yet that Perdue claim is a lie: According to the recent report in the Times, Perdue ordered the trades himself. On January 21, Cardlytics CEO Scott Grimes emailed Perdue. “David, I know you are about to do a call with David Evans,” Grimes wrote. “As an FYI, I have not told him about the upcoming changes. Thanks, Scott.” Evans was the company’s chief operating officer. Any “changes” significant enough to be kept from the COO would be likely to move the stock.

Perdue replied: “I don’t know about a call with David or the changes you mentioned.” The next morning, Grimes wrote back: “David, Sorry. That email was not meant for you. Wrong David!” Either Perdue knew about the changes and was creating a record that could enable him to deny such knowledge, or he did not know about the changes and wanted to be clear he had no such knowledge.

Whether the message had truly been sent in error or not, Perdue acted shortly thereafter. “Mr. Perdue then contacted his wealth manager at Goldman Sachs, Robert Hutchinson, and instructed him to sell a little more than $1 million worth of Cardlytics shares, or about 20 percent of his position,” the Times reported, citing three sources. “One person familiar with the inquiry into Mr. Perdue’s trades said that the conversation was memorialized in an internal Goldman Sachs record later obtained by the F.B.I.” Five weeks later, the company announced [ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cardlytics-stock-plunges-more-than-25-after-ceo-departure-earnings-2020-03-03 ] Grimes was stepping down amid a shake-up of the leadership team, which also included COO Evans, and the stock tanked — falling by nearly two-thirds in two weeks. The records, including Perdue’s email exchanges, were obtained through grand jury subpoenas as part of an investigation that started earlier this year when a handful of Republican senators came under scrutiny [ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/1/21202900/kelly-loeffler-stock-sales-coronavirus-pandemic ] for stock trading at the beginning of the pandemic. The Intercept’s first investigation into Perdue’s trading was published in May, and Perdue was questioned by the FBI in June; the grand jury declined to indict the senator.

Perdue’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for comment. Perdue’s spokesperson had previously told The Intercept that Perdue was acting on advice from October 2019 to sell Cardlytics shares, a claim repeated to the Times. Perdue, who is facing a runoff against Jon Ossoff in January, has since been running an ad [ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/528211-perdue-releases-new-ad-arguing-hes-exonerated-after-stock-trade-questions ] boasting of having been “totally exonerated.” Perdue bested Ossoff by about 88,000 votes in November but fell just shy of the 50 percent margin needed to avoid a runoff. As The Intercept previously reported [ https://theintercept.com/2020/05/12/david-purdue-senate-cardlytics-stock/ ], on March 18, when Cardlytics stock was bottoming out under $30, Perdue bought back the bulk of the shares he had sold — but this time getting them at a steep discount, investing between $200,000 and $500,000 back into the company, according to Senate disclosures. The stock has seen explosive growth since, currently selling at around $115 per share.

Grimes, who is now executive chair of the board, gave $5,600, the maximum allowable contribution by individuals, to Perdue’s campaign in 2019; it was his only contribution to any candidate in the 2020 cycle. Most of the executives involved in that corporate restructuring had helped Perdue win his race in 2014, contributing $24,500, according to campaign finance reports. That Perdue owned so much Cardlytics stock at all was itself thanks to the generosity of the company’s board. Perdue received stock options in the company for serving on its board, but those options were worthless when he was elected to the Senate in 2014, because the company had yet to go public. The Cardlytics board bailed Perdue out by extending the deadline for exercising his options by years. As The Intercept reported in May:

According to filings with the SEC, Cardlytics “accelerated Mr. Perdue’s options” — which means he was fully granted the ones that had yet to vest — “and extended the post-termination exercise periods applicable to Mr. Perdue’s option grants to October 12, 2020 and January 25, 2022.” Having extra time to exercise the options gives the stock more opportunity to rise, and gives Perdue more time to decide whether to exercise them, thus dramatically reducing his risk. According to his Senate financial disclosure reports, Perdue had the option to purchase the stock at two separate prices, known as strike prices: 59 cents and $1.11. When the value of the company rises above the strike price, the options are said to be “in the money.”
Brian Foley, an executive compensation consultant and managing director of the firm Brian Foley & Company, said that allowing Perdue to leave with all of his options in 2014 was generous of the board, but an understandable decision. Allowing him to stretch the time he had to exercise the options out to 2020 and 2022, he added, was extraordinary, as Cardlytics was not yet a public company, and that window allowed him many years to wait for the company to go public and its stock to rise before deciding whether to exercise his options.

Cardlytics, part of the nascent financial technology industry, collects and analyzes personal consumer and banking data, using financial transaction history to help companies tailor their personalized marketing efforts. That practice puts it up against a host of privacy regulations, and the company proudly markets its ability to stay within the law as a prime selling point. Perdue serves on the Senate Banking Committee and has worked to roll back regulations that govern firms like Cardlytics. Such conflicts of Perdue’s have recently been investigated by the New York [ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/us/politics/david-perdue-stock-trades.html ] Times and the Daily [ https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-david-perdue-helped-defense-contractor-and-sold-off-its-stock ] Beast.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_December_2020_(Georgia_shutting_early_voting_sites) -- Georgia is shutting early voting sites in some places where many blacks and hispanics live. It looks like voter suppression. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/24/civil-rights-groups-denounce-georgia-officials-closing-early-voting-sites-ahead -- Civil Rights Groups Denounce Georgia Officials For Closing Early Voting Sites Ahead of Senate Runoffs -- Thursday, December 24, 2020 -- "Restoring all early voting sites isn't a concession—it's restoring a baseline for voting access."

Voting rights groups on Wednesday accused officials in at least two Georgia counties of voter suppression, pointing to the closures of several early voting locations in majority-Black and Latino communities ahead of two Senate runoff elections on January 5 which will decide whether Democrats or Republicans control the upper chamber. State and national organizations including MiJente Support Committee and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund participated in a conference call in which they said officials in Hall County, with a population that's 8% Black and nearly 30% Latino, have cut the number [ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/georgia-black-latino-voters-senate-runoff-elections_n_5fe374b0c5b6acb534564a22 ] of voting locations from eight during the November 3 election to just four ahead of the runoffs. The effect of the closures is already clear, the advocates said, as turnout across the state has been high, with more than 1.4 million ballots cast since December 14, the first day of early voting. In Hall County, turnout in the runoffs so far has reached just 13%—far lower than the county's early voting numbers ahead of last month's election.

Civil rights groups' fears of voter suppression "isn't theoretical or hypothetical," Michael Pernick, the Georgia state lead for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s voting rights project, told HuffPost on Wednesday. "The reason Hall County's turnout is lower in the runoff is because Hall County cut early voting locations," he added. "We know this because turnout is up in almost every other county in the state, but not in Hall." Hall County was carried by President Donald Trump in last month's election, with Trump winning 71% of the vote. But advocates say even the closure of four polling places in majority-Black and Latino communities could have a dramatic impact on the runoff elections between Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who are challenging Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.

In a poll released Wednesday by InsiderAdvantage and FOX 5 Atlanta, Warnock had a 2% lead over Loeffler, while Perdue had a 1% lead over Ossoff. Four percent of respondents said they were still undecided, and the polls were within the 4.4% margin of error. If Loeffler and Perdue retain their seats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will hold control of the Senate, likely hamstringing the Democrats' hopes of passing far-reaching voting rights reforms and economic relief in the new year. The closure of polling locations "is what voter suppression looks like," Tania Unzueta of the MiJente Support Committee told HuffPost. "This is one example of what we don’t want to happen, particularly in an important runoff."

After facing criticism over its closure of seven out of 11 voting locations for the runoff elections, Cobb County, which includes suburbs of Atlantia, reopened two polling places. But advocates are still warning of voter suppression in the county, which President-elect Joe Biden won by 14 points in November and where the population of more than 750,000 people is nearly 30% Black and 13% Latino. The two reopened sites will only be available to voters in the last four days of early voting, offering little relief to voters in a county where people have been facing two-hour waits to cast their ballots, according to the group All Voting Is Local. The failure of Cobb County elections director Janine Eveler to fully restore access to polling locations will have consequences for voters' health as well as their civil rights, All Voting Is Local Georgia state director Aklima Khondoker wrote this week in the Cobb County Courier:

Over the general, when voters could access all 11 early vote sites, 14,586 ballots were cast during the first two days of early voting, compared to just 13,910 during early voting for the runoff—a 4.6% reduction in turnout. By contrast, other metro-Atlanta counties that kept all of their early vote sites open saw an increase in turnout during the first two days of early voting (Fulton, 25.1%, Gwinnett, 40.1%, and DeKalb, 12.3%).
High voter turnout aside, there are also serious health-related consequences with the reduction in early voting locations. Since Thanksgiving, the U.S. has set grim records for Covid-19 related deaths. Just this week, we surpassed 3,000 deaths in a single day. All signs indicate that the situation will get worse through the winter. And yet, even as the CDC recommends avoiding crowds whenever possible, Director Eveler refuses to restore early voting locations, forcing voters to choose between their ballot and their health.

Some counties in Georgia are increasing the number of polling places available to voters during the runoffs, All Voting Is Local noted on Twitter this week. "Restoring all 11 early voting sites isn't a concession" to voting rights groups, Khondoker wrote. "It's restoring a baseline for voting access."

Nobody reads this thread

fuck stallman

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#9_December_2020_(Not_showing_up_at_debate) -- Senator Purdue failed to show up at his debate, perhaps afraid of incriminating himself for insider stock trading. For some years we had a law, the STOCK Act, that members of Congress could not trade stocks based on information they got as part of their duties. Then they voted to repeal it. Each one who voted to repeal it manifested an intention to be corrupt. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/07/perdue-pleaded-fifth-ossoff-debates-empty-podium-gop-senator-no-shows-amid-scrutiny -- 'Perdue Pleaded the Fifth': Ossoff Debates Empty Podium as GOP Senator No-Shows Amid Scrutiny Over Stock Trades -- Monday, December 07, 2020 -- "It shows an astonishing arrogance and sense of entitlement for Georgia's senior U.S. senator to believe he shouldn't have to debate at a moment like this in our history."

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff on Sunday was forced to debate an empty podium after incumbent Georgia Sen. David Perdue, facing growing scrutiny over his potentially unlawful [ https://theintercept.com/2020/12/03/david-perdue-senate-cardlytics-stock-lie/ >>531 ] trades, refused to show up at the televised event, which came less than a month ahead of the state's pivotal January 5 runoff races. Ossoff, who narrowly lost a Senate runoff to Republican Karen Handel in 2017, suggested Sunday that Perdue declined to participate because he "doesn't feel that he can handle himself in debate, or perhaps is concerned that he may incriminate himself in debate." "It shows an astonishing arrogance and sense of entitlement for Georgia's senior U.S. senator to believe he shouldn't have to debate at a moment like this in our history," Ossoff said. "His blatant abuse of his power and privilege to enrich himself is disgraceful."

The Georgia Democrat was referring to recent suspiciously-timed stock trades by Perdue that led the Justice Department to launch a probe into possible insider trading. As the New York Times [ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/politics/david-perdue-cardlytics.html ] reported, Perdue earlier this year "sold more than $1 million worth of stock in the financial company Cardlytics, where he once served on the board." "Six weeks later, its share price tumbled when the company's founder announced he would step down as chief executive and the firm said its future sales would be worse than expected," the Times noted. "After the company's stock price bottomed out in March at $29, Mr. Perdue bought back a substantial portion of the shares that he had sold. They are now trading at around $120 per share." Ossoff used his opportunity as the lone candidate on the debate stage to slam Perdue and the Republican-controlled Senate for refusing to pass additional relief as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis continue to get worse nationwide, leaving millions unable to afford basic necessities and at risk of total destitution.

"It's absolutely astonishing that the United States Senate, since midsummer, has not passed any additional direct economic relief for the American people," said Ossoff. "They should be in emergency session right now... Where is Congress? Where is David Perdue?" The contest between Ossoff and Perdue is one of two Senate runoffs set for January 5; Democrats must prevail in both races to create a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which could be broken by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Both candidates for Georgia's other runoff, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock, showed up to debate Sunday and sparred over coronavirus relief, criminal justice reform, and the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Loeffler, who has also faced scrutiny over shady [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/16/after-selling-stocks-coronavirus-pandemic-reached-us-gop-senators-loeffler-and ] stock trades, refused to say that President Donald Trump lost the November election and ducked several questions about his false claims of voter fraud. Warnock, for his part, repeatedly attacked what he characterized as Loeffler's unethical profiteering and slammed the Republican incumbent over her support for repealing the Affordable Care Act, a move that would strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans amid a deadly pandemic. "Healthcare is on the ballot, workers are on the ballot, voting rights is on the ballot, criminal justice reform is on the ballot," Warnock said [ https://archive.is/GD4HI ] in his closing remarks. "And if you give me the honor of representing you in the U.S. Senate, I'll be thinking about Georgia every day."

stop bumping this thread

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#30_December_2020_(Voter_purge) -- *Judge orders Georgia counties to halt voter purge ahead of Senate runoff.* Republicans grasp for every excuse to stop poor people from voting. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/29/georgia-senate-runoff-counties-judge-halts-voter-purge -- Judge orders Georgia counties to halt voter purge ahead of Senate runoff -- Tue 29 Dec 2020 -- Counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations

Two Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s 5 January runoff elections that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate. Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that these two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations, Reuters [ https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-georgia-senate/us-judge-orders-two-georgia-counties-to-halt-voter-purge-ahead-of-senate-runoff-idUKKBN2930JO ] reported. “Defendants are enjoined from removing any challenged voters in Ben Hill and Muscogee Counties from the registration lists on the basis of National Change of Address data,” she said in the court order. This judge is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018.

Of the more than 4,000 registrations that officials tried to rescind, the vast majority were in Muscogee County. President-elect Joe Biden won this county during the November election. Another 150 were in Ben Hill county, which Donald Trump won with a sizable margin. Almost 2.1 million people – more than 25% of Georgia’s registered voters – have voted in the Senate runoff election that started on 14 December. This race will decide whether Democrats control both houses of Congress. In turn, the result will also influence the fate of Biden’s policy initiatives as a Republican-controlled Senate – even if held by a slim majority – would probably block his agenda. This also includes Biden’s ability to secure his desired cabinet appointees.

Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are facing off against GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David >>531 >>535 Perdue, respectively. Recent data from FiveThirtyEight places Warnock and Perdue slightly ahead of their opponents. Warnock and Ossoff victories would mean that the Senate is divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. In situations where votes on legislation are evenly split, the tie-breaking vote would be cast by Kamala Harris, as vice-president.

The deeply significant runoff has prompted record-breaking [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/27/georgia-runoff-elections-democrats-fundraising ] fundraising. Ossoff and Warnock each raised more than $100m in a mere two months–surpassing their conservative opponents. Ossoff, who runs a media production business, raised more than $106m from 15 October to 16 December, per his campaign’s most recent financial report. Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, took in slightly more than $103m. Leaders of both parties have made campaign stops. Biden – the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992 – and Harris have campaigned in the state. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, have also campaigned.

bump

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#13_December_2020_(Republicans_want_to_cease_sick_leave) -- Republicans are determined to cease paying for sick leave for Americans, as the pandemic races on. Compelling workers that deal with the public to work even when sick tends to spread the disease. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/09/beyond-incomprehensible-bipartisan-covid-relief-package-would-let-paid-sick-and -- 'Beyond Incomprehensible': Bipartisan Covid Relief Package Would Let Paid Sick and Family Leave Expire -- Wednesday, December 09, 2020 -- "Extending emergency paid leave at the height of a pandemic is not only something we can afford, it's something we can't afford not to do."

An updated version of the $908 billion bipartisan coronavirus relief proposal currently under negotiation on Capitol Hill does not include an extension of federal paid sick and family leave programs set to expire at the end of the year, an omission that could deprive nearly 90 million workers of key benefits as the pandemic intensifies. Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow at the think tank New America, told [ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/paid-leave-congress-coronavirus-relief_n_5fd0fba3c5b652dce5853220 ] HuffPost Wednesday that the proposal's exclusion of paid leave benefits is "an affront to all reason," particularly given how successful the programs have been in preventing coronavirus infections. According to research published in the journal Health Affairs in October, paid leave benefits mandated under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) prevented an estimated 400 coronavirus cases each day per state in the U.S.

"It's beyond incomprehensible, short-sighted, and ridiculous given the public health benefits that are proven and the growing number of parents home with kids," said Shabo. Approved by Congress and signed into law in March, the FFCRA requires many employers to provide workers infected by or exposed to the coronavirus with up to two weeks of sick leave at full pay. The law also provides up to 12 weeks of emergency family leave, only 10 of which are paid. Despite the programs' inadequacies [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/19/here-are-51-republican-senators-who-just-voted-against-expanding-paid-sick-leave-all ], paid leave advocates warned that letting the benefits expire would be a huge mistake.

"Extending emergency paid leave at the height of a pandemic is not only something we can afford, it's something we can't afford not to do," tweeted Paid Leave for All, a campaign fighting for universal family and medical leave. "It is one of the most cost-effective tools to save lives and jobs." The exclusion of paid leave is just one of several major issues progressives have raised in response to the bipartisan relief proposal, which was first unveiled last week by a group of lawmakers including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah.). Another major omission progressives have spotlighted is direct stimulus payments, a form of relief that is overwhelmingly popular—and needed—among Americans across the political spectrum. Speaking to reporters last week, Collins acknowledged the popularity of direct payments before brushing aside calls for their inclusion in the bipartisan package.

"I know there's considerable public support for it," said Collins, but right now we're targeting struggling families, failing businesses, healthcare workers, and we don't have a stimulus check to every single person, regardless of need." While recent movement—and seeming progress—in relief negotiations sparked some hope that lawmakers could be close to a deal after months of fruitless back-and-forth, Politico reported [ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/stimulus-talks-gop-aid-coronavirus-443927 ] Wednesday that "the stimulus talks are back to where they've been for months: nowhere." "Congressional leaders have retreated to their corners, blaming each other for inaction as the economy teeters on the brink of shambles and the U.S. nears 300,000 dead from the virus," Politico noted. "Time is running short in the lame duck, with as few as nine days for Congress to deliver much-needed relief."

In addition to the bipartisan relief framework that is still being fleshed out, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Trump White House have put forth their own stimulus proposals—both of which were immediately rejected over their exclusion of a weekly boost to unemployment benefits. "Millions are unemployed, facing eviction, have no health insurance, and [are] going hungry," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Wednesday. "This is an emergency, and the U.S. government must respond. Any Covid agreement must include at least $1,200 in direct payments for adults, $500 for kids, and supplemental unemployment benefits."

No one cares. Please, stop posting

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#11_December_2020_(Voter_suppression_again) -- Georgia Republicans are trying to suppress minority voters by reducing the number of early voting sites in a county where many of them live. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/08/civil-rights-groups-sound-alarm-over-planned-closure-more-half-early-runoff-voting -- Civil Rights Groups Sound Alarm Over Planned Closure of More Than Half of Early Runoff Voting Sites in Key Georgia County -- Tuesday, December 08, 2020 -- The coronavirus pandemic "has had extremely harsh effects in Black and Latinx communities and makes in-person voting on Election Day an untenable option for many voters," the groups' letter states.

Officials in Georgia's third most populous county came under fire from civil rights advocates Monday after announcing they would slash the number of early voting sites for the state's two critical U.S. Senate runoff elections by more than half. Half a dozen groups including the Georgia NAACP, the ACLU of Georgia, and the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter (pdf) to the Cobb County Board of Commissioners and Board of Elections and Registration urging them not to cut back on early voting sites. The officials plan on closing six of the county's 11 advance polling locations, claiming they do not have the resources to keep all of them open. "While these closures are likely to adversely affect many Cobb County voters, we are especially concerned that these closures will be harmful to Cobb County's Black and Latinx voters because many of the locations are in Black and Latinx communities," the letter states.

According to (pdf) the Center for New Data, of the 10 Georgia polling locations with the highest estimated portion of voters spending longer than 30 minutes on-site, five are slated for closure. Some 760,000 people live in the county, which lies just northwest of Atlanta. Its population is nearly 29% Black and over 13% Latinx and, although long a Republican stronghold, has become more liberal in recent years. While Republican nominee Mitt Romney trounced former President Barack Obama by over 12 percentage points in the 2012 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton edged out President Donald Trump by two points in 2016 and President-elect Joe Biden easily defeated Trump by 14 points in 2020, largely on the strength of the very Black and Latinx voters who rights advocates warn would likely be adversely affected by the closure of polling sites during the coronavirus pandemic.

Covid-19, "which is ravaging the nation, has had extremely harsh effects in Black and Latinx communities and makes in-person voting on Election Day an untenable option for many voters," the groups' letter asserts. "Moreover, due to widespread concerns with the reliability of the United States Postal Service, many voters are not comfortable requesting or casting absentee ballots by mail," the letter states. "As demonstrated by the record turnout during the advance voting period for the 2020 general election, advance voting is the only acceptable option for safe and secure voting for many voters." Under Georgia law, if a Senate candidate does not receive at least 50% of the vote in a general election, the two top-finishing candidates must face each other in a runoff. On January 5, there will be two such elections, with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff facing Sen. David Perdue in one and Rev. Raphael Warnock taking on Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the other.

On November 3, Perdue won 49.7% to Ossoff's 47.9%, while Warnock led Loeffler by a wider margin of 32.9% to 29.5%, with the GOP vote being split between Loeffler and Doug Collins, who received 20.0% of the vote. If both Ossoff and Warnock emerge victorious, Democrats will gain control of the Senate, as incoming Vice President Kamala Harris will cast the tie-breaking vote. If either GOP incumbent wins, Republicans will remain in control of the Senate, posing what is likely to be a constant thorn in the side of President Joe Biden and his agenda. Early voting for the Georgia Senate runoffs begins December 14.

stop it, die.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_December_2020_(A_billion_dollars_from_Medicare_fraud) -- The conman pardoned someone who had taken in a billion dollars from Medicare fraud. Perhaps seeing another conman punished tugs at his heartstrings. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/23/medicare-fraudster-who-exploited-elderly-13-billion-scheme-embodies-grotesque -- Medicare Fraudster Who Exploited the Elderly in $1.3 Billion Scheme Embodies 'Grotesque' Corruption of Trump Clemency Orders -- Wednesday, December 23, 2020 -- "The corrupt, the criminal, murderers of children—that's who Donald lets off the hook. We can never forget and never forgive the unspeakable cruelty."

The very last name on President Donald Trump's newly released [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-executive-grants-clemency-122220/ ] list of 20 pardons and commutations is Philip Esformes, a man the White House describes as a victim of "prosecutorial misconduct" who has been "devoted to prayer and repentance" during his time behind bars. What the White House doesn't mention is that Esformes, now 52, was sentenced just last year to two decades in prison for his central role in an elaborate, billion-dollar Medicare fraud scheme [ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-individuals-charged-1-billion-medicare-fraud-and-money-laundering-scheme ] in which he and others exploited elderly and poor patients for profit—in some cases with deadly consequences. Esformes, who the White House said is in declining health, was convicted [ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/07/businessman-found-guilty-1-3-billion-medicare-and-medicaid-scheme/3393975002/ ] last April of bribery, money laundering, and other charges. Trump announced late Tuesday that he has commuted Esformes' sentence.

The Chicago Tribune reported [ https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-philip-esformes-sentenced-nursing-home-fraud-20190912-cumxa7wwb5do7iekg32h2o5thy-story.html ] last September that "Esformes, who once controlled a network of more than two dozen healthcare facilities that stretched from Chicago to Miami, garnered $1.3 billion Medicaid revenues by bribing medical professionals who referred patients to his Florida facilities then paid off government regulators as vulnerable residents were injured by their peers, prosecutors said." "In Esformes' Oceanside Extended Care Center in Miami Beach," the Tribune noted, "'an elderly patient was attacked and beaten to death by a younger mental health patient who never should have been at [a nursing facility] in the first place,' prosecutors wrote in a pre-sentencing memo." After U.S. District Judge Robert Scola of the Southern District of Florida sentenced Esformes to 20 years in prison last September, a member of Trump's own Justice Department described [ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/south-florida-health-care-facility-owner-sentenced-20-years-prison-role-largest-health-care ] the nursing home mogul as "a man driven by almost unbounded greed."

"The illicit road Esformes took to satisfy his greediness led to millions in fraudulent healthcare claims, the largest amount ever charged by the Department of Justice," Deputy Special Agent in Charge Denise Stemen of the FBI's Miami Field Office said at the time. "Along that road, Esformes cycled patients through his facilities in poor condition where they received inadequate or unnecessary treatment, then improperly billed Medicare and Medicaid." "Taking his despicable conduct further," Stemen continued, "he bribed doctors and regulators to advance his criminal conduct and even bribed a college official in exchange for gaining admission for his son to that university." On Tuesday night, Trump commuted Esformes' prison term as part of a fresh wave of pre-Christmas clemency orders that included full pardons for four former Blackwater [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/23/leaving-out-assange-who-exposed-us-war-crimes-trump-pardons-blackwater-guards-jailed ] guards jailed for massacring >>526 Iraqi civilians, a pair of disgraced former Republican lawmakers, and a former campaign aide who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials.

"These pardons are grotesque," tweeted Mary Trump, a psychologist and the president's niece. "The corrupt, the criminal, murderers of children—that's who Donald lets off the hook. We can never forget and never forgive the unspeakable cruelty." Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) called Trump's decision to fully pardon former Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) "appalling." As John Gramlich and Kristen Bialik of the Pew Research Center noted last month, Trump has used his clemency power "less often than any president in modern history," typically deploying it not to help ordinary victims of mass incarceration but rather to assist those with whom he is connected personally or politically.

"While rare so far, Trump's use of presidential clemency has caused controversy because of the nature of his pardons and commutations," wrote Gramlich and Bialik. "Many of Trump's clemency recipients have had a 'personal or political connection to the president,' according to a July analysis by the Lawfare blog, and he has often circumvented the formal process through which clemency requests are typically considered." It is unclear whether Esformes has any political or personal ties to the president. According to the Miami [ https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article248044835.html ] Herald, "Esformes has never written a check to support Trump, according to Federal Election Commission records. If anything, Esformes, his former wife, Sherri, and his father, Morris, have been donors to the Democratic Party candidates." "Esformes and his wife gave $100,000 combined in 2012 to support President Barack Obama's reelection," the Herald noted. "Sherri also gave $17,600 in 2010 to support the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That same year Philip Esformes, Inc. gave $10,000 to the Florida Democratic Party."

The president's commutation did not overturn an order requiring Esformes to pay $44 million in restitution to Medicare. Esformes is not the first Medicare fraudster who has had their prison sentence commuted by Trump. In February, the president commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Judith Negron, who was jailed for "aiding in a $200 million fraud case in what was then the country's biggest mental health billing racket," as the Tampa Bay Times [ https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/02/18/miami-woman-doing-35-years-in-prison-for-bilking-medicare-gets-sentence-commuted-by-trump/ ] reported. On Tuesday, Trump commuted the remainder of Negron's term of supervised release.

In response to Trump's decision to commute Esformes' sentence, former federal prosecutor Ben Curtis told the Herald that "in a perfect world, a commutation would be the result of a thoughtful, apolitical process intended to offset a grave injustice." "Did that happen here? Seeing this decision today and knowing the history of healthcare fraud in South Florida," said Curtis, "it's tough not to become cynical about the justice system."

forgive and forget
FORGIVE AND FORGET

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#1_November_2020_(Republican_expansions_of_supreme_courts) -- Republicans have expanded the supreme courts of Arizona and Georgia in recent years. In Iowa they politicized the selection of judges. -- https://apnews.com/article/legislature-arizona-iowa-separation-of-powers-us-supreme-court-31f4996a200be4622361603aabf92302 -- Despite rhetoric, GOP has supported packing state courts -- October 24, 2020

Republican claims that Democrats would expand the U.S. Supreme Court to undercut the conservative majority if they win the presidency and control of Congress has a familiar ring. It’s a tactic the GOP already has employed in recent years with state supreme courts when they have controlled all levers of state political power. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia have signed bills passed by GOP-dominated legislatures to expand the number of seats on their states’ respective high courts. In Iowa, the Republican governor gained greater leverage over the commission that names judicial nominees. “The arguments being advanced now by Republican leaders — that this is an affront to separation of powers, that this is a way of delegitimizing courts — those don’t seem to be holding at the state level,” said Marin Levy, a law professor at Duke University who has written about efforts to expand state high courts.

President Donald Trump and the GOP have seized on the issue in the final weeks of the presidential race, arguing that Democratic nominee Joe Biden would push a Democratic Congress to increase the number of seats on the Supreme Court and fill those with liberal justices. Some on the left have floated the idea in the wake of Republicans’ rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month. Biden, for his part, has said he’s not a fan of so-called “court packing,” and it’s far from certain that Democrats can win back the majority in the U.S. Senate. Arizona’s governor, Republican Doug Ducey, said he opposes adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We shouldn’t be changing our institutions,” he told reporters recently. Yet Ducey signed a bill that did just that at the state level in 2016, expanding the Arizona Supreme Court from five seats to seven. As a result, Ducey has appointed more judges than any other governor in the state’s history. Ducey said the situations are not the same because Arizona’s system for selecting judges allows him to appoint them only from a list sent to him by a commission that interviews and vets candidates. Arizona judges also face “retention” elections, a process that is essentially a formality. No state supreme court justice has ever lost a retention election.

“It’s apples and oranges,” Ducey said, comparing the state and federal high courts. “We have a merit selection process in Arizona, and I’m not the one who selects the judges that are put in front of me.” That same year in Georgia, then-Gov. Nathan Deal signed similar legislation expanding that state’s supreme court from seven to nine seats. Supporters said the move was needed because of the state’s growing population and economy. But the expansion allowed Deal to leave his conservative mark on the court by appointing a majority of its justices by the time he left office. Democrats, including then-House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, opposed the expansion. She questioned the need for adding seats without seeing the effects of other changes the Legislature made to the court’s responsibilities.

“To simultaneously increase the size of the court without really understanding the necessity, I find problematic,” Abrams, who two years later narrowly lost a bid for governor, said at the time. “There are political concerns, always, about appointments to the court and the positions that those new justices would take.” Some of the court-packing efforts at the state level have come in response to controversial court rulings. In 2007, a Republican state senator in the majority-Republican Florida Legislature proposed and later withdrew a proposal to more than double the number of seats on the state Supreme Court after the court struck down a school voucher bill. The legislation said the court’s decision “betrays a lack of respect on the part of the majority for the separation of state powers.” A Republican lawmaker in Iowa’s Legislature, then controlled by Democrats, proposed expanding the state’s high court in 2009 following a ruling legalizing gay marriage in the state. That effort was unsuccessful, but conservatives in the now majority GOP Iowa Legislature last year upended the way justices are chosen for the court. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law legislation that effectively gave her a majority on the commission that names potential judges and justices.

The change had the backing of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group in Washington that has spent millions on ads urging Barrett’s confirmation. “The people of Iowa want fair justice, so why do trial lawyers carry more weight than you?” the group said in a video backing the changes in Iowa. The state-level moves are part of a broader, longer-term effort by conservatives to reshape the judiciary. Outside groups have been playing an increasing role in state judicial races in recent years. They accounted for a quarter of all spending in the 2018 state supreme court elections, and in some states outspent the candidates, according to figures compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. “There are just so many stories to point to from so many different states of legislators using every tool they have to give themselves and their allies an upper hand in the state’s most important courts,” said Douglas Keith, counsel at the Brennan Center.

kill yourself

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#31_December_2020_(Voter_suppression) -- Georgia Republicans have closed some polling places (for early voting) in black neighborhoods but kept them all open in white neighborhoods. It is impossible to convince a nonbiased person that this is not discriminatory. Republicans must be planning to argue that they can lawfully practice racist voter-suppression and no one can stop them. -- https://www.gregpalast.com/georgias-cobb-county-slashes-early-voting-in-black-neighborhoods/ -- Georgia Closes Black Polling Stations, White Polls Open for Early Voting -- December 28, 2020

“They didn’t cut one White polling site!” Barbara Arnwine was livid about this fluorescent violation of both Georgia and Federal voting rights law, a subject she teaches at Columbia University. “All the polling sites they cut were in Black and Brown neighborhoods,” said Arnwine, Founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, who relocated to Atlanta for the US Senate run-offs. She expressed concern that Georgia leads the nation in new, sophisticated Jim Crow vote manipulation tactics. And some less sophisticated tactics as well, like this shut-down of polling stations in Black neighborhoods in Cobb County. It’s a trick the ACLU of Georgia busted in the 2018 race between now-Governor Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams.

They’re at it again, says Arnwine. “They cut from eleven voting places during the General Election, down to five for the runoff, knowing — knowing — that during the General Election they had three hour lines with eleven places.” These five early voting stations are supposed to serve over half a million voters in a county that includes the suburbs of Atlanta. Georgia law, the ACLU wrote to the Georgia state officials, does not allow for closing polling stations after November 5. Local officials, unavailable to speak to us, have told media that they did not have enough poll workers to follow the law, though voting rights groups have offered to fill the gap. The hidden reason may be the composition of the county’s board — overwhelmingly Republican — contrasting to the shift in their voters’ will. In Cobb, President-Elect Joe Biden crushed President Donald Trump, 56% to 42%.

With Georgia voters to decide control of the United States Senate in a special run-off on January 5, GOP officials appear to be doing all they can to make voting for African-Americans a hellacious experience, Arnwine concludes. While pressure on the County forced the opening of two new early poll sites, that still left some voters of color driving 12 miles from their neighborhood station to the new one. And it caused massive confusion, as voters assumed their neighborhood poll would be open for early voting as it was in November. We encountered Bradley Grayson at the same polling location he voted at in the General which is now, to his surprise, shuttered. “I came here to early vote. This is where I came to early vote for the Presidential Election. Then I found out this place was closed.” Grayson, an African-American, was a bit flustered, but undiscouraged. “Looks like I’ll be trying to go to another location at some point.”

If he does, he’ll have quite a wait. We spoke with Cassandra Oliver, another Cobb County early voter, who was at the end of a very long line at a new early voting location that combined two other locations. Some reported waiting three hours. But Oliver was committed to stick it out. “I think it is affecting a lot of people getting out here, but I think they’ll still make the sacrifice because they see the importance of it.” Arnwine said, “They knew it was going to cause long lines.” She noted that African-American and Hispanic communities are known to vote early. She explained that the targeting of Black neighborhoods for the poll culling was deliberate, and therefore, a violation of the US Voting Rights Act.

More than 120 of Georgia’s counties simply closed polling stations on the weekends, Arnwine noted, in violation of Georgia law. She said officials know full well that they are blocking Black and Hispanic voters from their traditional turn-out for early voting “Souls-to-the-Polls” Sundays. Arnwine was in Cobb County as part of a flying squad of voter protection experts. On Friday, she joined Black Voters Matter, Operation Rainbow/PUSH and others in a new federal lawsuit [ https://www.gregpalast.com/palast-black-voters-matter-and-voting-rights-lawyers-file-new-suit-in-georgia/ ] demanding the State of Georgia return wrongly “purged” voters to the rolls, 198,000 voters in all. The suit is based on a report by The Palast Investigative Fund and released by the ACLU of Georgia identifying by name each of these wronged voters. Their registrations were cancelled based on false information.

Cobb County’s action, like the State of Georgia’s, says Prof. Arnwine, is “targeted voter suppression.” At the polling site, Palast encountered two voters, about to use absentee ballot drop boxes but, the reporter noted, failed to write in their return addresses — making their ballots subject to disqualification. The final number of disqualified absentee ballots is expected to exceed well over one hundred thousand, estimates Arnwine. As of Monday morning, over 2.1 million Georgians had voted early, either by waiting in record-length lines at the polls or by using ballot drop-boxes.

Dont post

[1/2] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_December_2020_(Calling_protests_a_conspiracy) -- Detroit is suing BLM protesters saying that protest is a "conspiracy". -- https://theintercept.com/2020/12/21/detroit-black-lives-matter-lawsuit/ -- Detroit is Suing Black Lives Matter Protesters for “Civil Conspiracy” -- December 21 2020 -- The city’s lawsuit came after protesters won a restraining order against Detroit cops for their violent response to the George Floyd protests.

At the end of August, activists in Detroit, like those in dozens of U.S. cities, sued their local government for its police department’s reaction to this year’s Black Lives Matter mobilization. Their complaint alleges that Detroit cops “repeatedly responded with violence” when they took to the streets and includes photos and descriptions of some of the gruesome resulting injuries: bruised and broken ribs, concussions, a collapsed lung, a fractured pelvis. In light of this brutality, the protesters asked a federal judge to bar the police from using “tools of excessive force,” like chemical weapons, sound cannons, and rubber bullets, against them. Less than a month later, after the court issued temporary orders restricting the cops’ use of force, the city filed its official response. It includes a line-by-line denial of every brutality accusation — and a countersuit. Detroit’s demonstrators are part of a “civil conspiracy,” the city’s countersuit alleges, “to disturb the peace, engage in disorderly conduct, incite riots, destroy public property,” and resist police orders, among other “illegal acts.” The countercomplaint asks the court to issue judgments declaring that the protesters engaged in this conspiracy and “defamed” the mayor and police, and to award the city damages.

The countersuit against Black Lives Matter protesters is a novel move in the post-George Floyd moment, and it has lit a fire under already boiling local tensions. The city has tried to portray it as a routine legal tactic, but many see the counterattack as an effort to suppress the right to protest and to shift the public narrative away from the police department’s violence. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., whose congressional district includes much of Detroit, has lambasted it as “an unthinkable assault on constitutional rights.” The protesters are fighting back on two separate tracks: one in court, with the backing of national legal groups, and another in the city council, which has the power to cut off funding for the city’s litigation. One council member has already vocalized her opposition to the countersuit, and the activists are working to lobby others ahead of a vote early next year. The situation highlights how officials across the country have weaponized the legal system [ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/30/federal-prosecutors-protests-pretrial-detention/ ] to suppress the Black Lives Matter movement — like with the overuse of felony charges [ https://theintercept.com/2020/08/27/black-lives-matter-protesters-terrorism-felony-charges/ ] against protesters, something the Detroit activists have also experienced. When activists gathered in a suburb in October to march in defiance of racist policing, local cops in riot gear attacked them minutes after they took the street and eventually charged five with felonies. The prosecutor has not dropped the charges, despite pressure from community members, activists, and members of Congress.

“These attacks against us are a way of attempting to minimize our ability to go on the offensive and call for transparency and accountability,” said Tristan Taylor, a protest leader and plaintiff in the demonstrators’ original lawsuit. “This is just a way of saying to people, ‘This is not a place where you can raise your voice.’” In Detroit, the reckoning over policing that swept the nation after the cop killing of George Floyd in May has been a struggle between two deeply entrenched sides. On one is the city’s protest movement and its umbrella collective, Detroit Will Breathe, the lead plaintiff in the original suit. On the other is the Detroit Police Department and its head, Chief James Craig. Craig has been clear about his strategy in dealing with Detroit Will Breathe: “We don’t retreat,” he told host Tucker Carlson on Fox News, where he has appeared several times since this year’s movement began. While rarely offering specifics about the group’s wrongdoing, Craig has labeled Detroit Will Breathe a group of “criminals” and “misguided radicals” who “incite violence.” “I absolutely am not going to allow them to take over our city streets,” he told another Fox News host. He has also lobbed conspiratorial accusations at the Black Lives Matter movement at large, telling “Fox and Friends” that it is “coordinated,” “planned,” and “financed” by “a Marxist ideology” trying to “undermine our government as we know it.”

As Craig has bragged on Fox News, he has the support of Detroit’s Democratic mayor, Mike Duggan, who has called Craig’s protest policing “beautiful” [ https://www.wxyz.com/news/live-at-2-detroit-mayor-mike-duggan-to-address-weekend-protests ] and “outstanding.” According to protesters, the city’s countersuit is an extension of Craig’s pugnacious response to their activism. “It’s just another blatant attempt to silence and intimidate us,” said Lauren Rosen, an organizer with Detroit Will Breathe and a plaintiff. “Except now … they want to do it through the courts instead of in the streets.” The city’s countersuit claims that Detroit Will Breathe activists made false statements about cops — evidence, the city says, of a “civil conspiracy” and that protesters “defamed” Detroit police (though the city clarified in a recent filing that it isn’t suing outright for defamation). But many of the assertions to which the city points seem to be political statements rather than factual inaccuracies. In one instance, the city claims that Nakia Wallace, a Detroit Will Breathe leader, “falsely characterized [Detroit police] officers” by posting on Twitter about the “murderous and brutal nature of the Detroit Police Department.” In another, it claims that a Detroit Will Breathe member “falsely” described the “‘mentality’” of Detroit police as one of “‘the wild, wild West.’”

The countercomplaint also accuses Detroit Will Breathe of peddling a “false narrative to rile the public” about the fatal police shooting of 20-year-old Hakim Littleton in July, noting that body and dashcam footage released the day of the killing “shows the man fire a gun at an officer before police shot him.” Missing from the city’s account is the key reason people are still protesting the incident: Video suggests that police landed most of their shots on Littleton, including one apparently to the head, after tackling him to the ground and kicking his gun away. The city’s lawsuit also nitpicks Detroit Will Breathe members’ characterization of the police violence they’ve endured, like when an officer placed Wallace in a chokehold during a protest on the day of Littleton’s killing. Despite a photo showing a helmeted officer with her flexed arm wrapped tightly around Wallace’s throat, the countercomplaint and an earlier filing take issue with the use of the word “chokehold.” The city claims that, while arresting Wallace, the officer “lost her hold, which caused her arms to momentarily touch Wallace’s neck.” The amount of time the officer’s arm was around Wallace’s neck “was far too brief” to fit the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of a chokehold, the city asserts, and Detroit Will Breathe’s “improper use of this incendiary term demonstrates their desire to falsely alarm the public and the Court.” “She took me down with very clear intentions — I couldn’t breathe,” Wallace told The Intercept. The chokehold denial is just one of many “ridiculous arguments you would not expect somebody who works for city government to make.”

An organization called the National Police Association has filed the only friend-of-the-court brief in support of the city’s arguments. Despite its official-sounding name, the National Police Association is a small “Blue Lives Matter” ideological group with no apparent law enforcement [ https://filtermag.org/national-police-association-headlines/ ] connections. (Association President Ed Hutchison told The Intercept he was unaware that “law enforcement backgrounds are required to operate” a nonprofit.) According to the association’s website, it aims to “fight back against cop-haters,” implement “‘Broken Windows’ policing policy for all state and local agencies,” and authorize “local law enforcement officers to perform federal immigration law enforcement functions.” The Bopp Law Firm, a Terre Haute, Indiana-based practice “dedicated to the advancement of conservative Republican principles,” assisted with the brief. “I think [the countersuit] is much more political than legal,” said Julie Hurwitz, an attorney representing Detroit Will Breathe on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild. “The city is seeking to do whatever it can to discredit the extremely effective organizing that’s been going on in the city of Detroit.” In response to a list of questions about the countersuit, the city of Detroit’s principal attorney, Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia, told The Intercept, “We prefer not to comment on active litigation.”

[2/2] >>549 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_December_2020_(Calling_protests_a_conspiracy) -- Detroit is suing BLM protesters saying that protest is a "conspiracy". -- https://theintercept.com/2020/12/21/detroit-black-lives-matter-lawsuit/ -- Detroit is Suing Black Lives Matter Protesters for “Civil Conspiracy” -- December 21 2020 -- The city’s lawsuit came after protesters won a restraining order against Detroit cops for their violent response to the George Floyd protests.

In asserting a “civil conspiracy,” the city’s countersuit also alleges that “the protests in Detroit have repeatedly turned violent, endangering the lives of police and the public” — and because of this, Detroit Will Breathe’s demonstrations shouldn’t be considered First Amendment-protected activities. The city claims that, during four protests, activists injured Detroit police officers by throwing objects at them and resisting arrest; an earlier court filing claims that the injuries include “cracked vertebrae, lacerations, and concussions.” But the documents provide no details on how each injury occurred, and whom among the protesters caused the injuries. The filings also repeatedly claim that protesters were “destroying and defacing public property,” but give only two examples: a police car window shattered on an unspecified date and a statue of a slave owner spray-painted in September. The countersuit’s most detailed accusations of Detroit Will Breathe’s “unlawful” behavior center on activists repeatedly ignoring police orders to disperse. Detroit Will Breathe’s complaint, by contrast, includes extensive details on the violent actions of Detroit police officers. One protester named in the suit claims that she was shot in the chest with a rubber bullet, which pierced her skin and tissue, after being tear-gassed and beaten with a riot shield without provocation; she experienced panic attacks for months after. Another protester claims that she suffered a head injury after being pushed to the pavement and trampled; she experienced migraines for weeks. Another had her pelvis fractured when a cop hit her with a baton; a doctor advised her not to walk for several months. Another suffered a broken rib and collapsed lung when an officer beat him over the back. Two got concussions when an officer hit them over the head with their baton. Others describe being tackled, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and tear-gassed on multiple occasions.

Rosen, the Detroit Will Breathe organizer, suffered ear damage after police blasted her with a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, also known as a sound cannon. “I experienced vertigo, dizziness, nausea, tinnitus,” she told The Intercept. For days she had difficulty sleeping and eating, “and because of not being able to really eat and the stress, I lost a significant amount of weight.” Based on the disparity between the city’s open-ended allegations of unlawfulness and the protesters’ detailed complaints of police brutality, Detroit Will Breathe filed a motion to dismiss the city’s countersuit at the end of October. That motion is still being litigated. “The law is very well settled that when you’re going to bring a claim, you need to be able to back it up, and you need to be able to back it up on its face,” said Amanda Ghannam, another lawyer representing Detroit Will Breathe on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild. “They’re just going with these really broad brush strokes trying to paint the entire movement as lawless and violent.”

A fight over the countersuit is currently brewing in the Detroit City Council’s internal operations committee, which oversees and issues recommendations on city funding decisions. In order to continue work on the Detroit Will Breathe lawsuit, Garcia, the city’s attorney, has asked the council and the committee to approve an extension and expansion of a contract with the private law firm, Clark Hill, assisting his office with the litigation. The proposal would add the Detroit Will Breathe case, an additional year, and an added $200,000 to a preexisting five-case, $150,000 contract, according to a memo from the city council’s legislative policy division obtained by The Intercept. During a November 18 internal operations committee meeting, nearly 20 people, many organized by Detroit Will Breathe, called in to denounce the city’s countersuit and oppose the contract.

“This is an attack on racial justice movements, and it’s a really egregious thing to spend public money on,” said one of the callers. Garcia responded to the concerns by portraying the counterclaim as a routine move. “The city files these types of countersuits when it’s legally advisable to do so,” he said. Council Member Raquel Castañeda-López then asked Garcia whether the city had ever countersued activists protesting against police brutality, prompting him to admit that he believed this was a first. But he maintained that the protest movement is also an unprecedented situation. “I’m not aware of another occasion where there’s been a concerted effort to block city streets and assault police officers,” he said. To this, Castañeda-López called his bluff, pointing out that Detroit is famously known for its history of insurrections, riots, and civil rights demonstrations. “The claims in the countersuit are ludicrous,” Castañeda-López told The Intercept. “If we as a city begin countersuing residents for protesting, it’s setting the first stone on the path of making it even more legally permissible to violate people’s First Amendment rights.”

Several of the callers during the committee meeting brought up the civil rights movement and painted the countersuit as a “segregationist” tactic, echoing an argument made by Detroit Will Breathe leaders. “That’s what King went to jail for, right?” said Taylor. “Because [Birmingham] wouldn’t give him permits for doing civil rights demonstrations.” Legal advocates agree with the analysis. Detroit’s “counterclaim is dangerous and it is chilling,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a brief. “The theory behind it could have been used to justify imposing ruinous liability on generations of civil rights protesters.”

The internal operations committee adjourned the November meeting, against Garcia’s objections, with a decision to revisit the contract proposal at a closed session in late January, an idea suggested by Council Member James Tate, before it’s reconsidered by the committee and sent to the full council. A spokesperson for Tate, a former second deputy chief at the Detroit Police Department, said that he will “reserve his opinion on the contract” until after the closed session and that he is “troubled by the allegations levied” by both sides of the lawsuit. The seven remaining members of the Detroit City Council did not respond to The Intercept’s inquiry about their position on the contract proposal and the city’s countersuit. “They’re trying to send a message to the Black Lives Matter movement, to anybody standing up against state power and trying to hold them accountable,” said Wallace. But the movement has an “opportunity,” she said, “to bring forth meaningful change, and the responsibility to not allow ourselves to be co-opted or silenced or bullied off the streets.”

Please ban OP

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#5_January_2021_(Lies_for_disenfranchisement) -- Georgia's lawyers lied to a Federal court to justify their arbitrary and unjustified disenfranchisement of almost 200,000 black voters. Palast's team may win in the end, but it will be too late for them to vote in the crucial Jan 5 senate runoff. In charge of this is same Brad Raffensperger who continues to resist the conman's pressure to declare the Georgia presidential election (which he was in charge of) to be fraudulent and overturn it. Doing the right thing once when it is difficult does not make up for doing wrong on several other occasions. However, it makes me wonder why Raffensperger stubbornly defends democracy on one occasion while trashing it eagerly on others. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/04/trumps-phone-call-to-brad-raffensperger-five-key-points -- Trump's phone call to Brad Raffensperger: six key points -- Mon 4 Jan 2021 -- Conversation between president and Georgia’s secretary of state laid bare Trump’s determination to cling on to power

Donald Trump has been recorded [ https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ufj28xr3Ft4 -- https://invidious.kavin.rocks/watch?v=ufj28xr3Ft4 ] pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn US president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, in a tape obtained by the Washington [ https://archive.is/AmvMQ ] Post. The conversation is mainly between Trump and Brad [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/19/brad-raffensperger-donald-trump-georgia-voter-fraud-claims ] Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, but Trump allies including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and attorney Cleta Mitchell were also present, as was Ryan Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel. Here are the main points:

1. Trump sought to change the election result -- On the call Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”. “The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” He later pleaded: “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” Joe Biden won Georgia. The result has been certified [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/07/georgia-recertifies-election-results-confirming-bidens-victory ] and Biden’s electoral college victory will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday.

2. Trump tried to intimidate Raffensperger -- Trump insisted: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.” He went on to suggest that Raffensperger could face a criminal investigation. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

3. Trump applied pressure over Georgia runoffs -- Trump told Raffensperger that if he did not act by Tuesday he would be harming the chances of Georgia Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in this week’s runoff elections, which will determine whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the Senate. Referring to the runoffs in the call, Trump said, “You would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

4. Raffensperger continued to stand up to Trump -- Raffensperger is a Republican who has pushed back against Trump and insisted Biden’s win in Georgia was fair. Responding to Trump, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” When Trump claimed that over 5,000 ballots were cast in the state by dead people, Raffensperger responded: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

5. Trump may have committed a crime -- The University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Trump might be “in legal jeopardy after Biden is inaugurated”. In an email to the Guardian, he wrote: “For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that Trump violated federal law, or if local prosecutors in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state prosecutors could file suit against Trump.” Richard H Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University, told the Washington Post: “The president is either knowingly attempting to coerce state officials into corrupting the integrity of the election or is so deluded that he believes what he’s saying.” Trump’s actions may have violated federal statutes, he said. Michael R Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, wrote: “Unless there are portions of the tape that somehow negate criminal intent, ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’ and his threats against Raffensperger and his counsel violate 52 U.S. Code 20511.”

6. Trump refused to back down -- On Sunday Trump tweeted: “I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton county and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” Twitter labelled the tweet with the disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed” and Raffensperger responded to Trump’s claims with a tweet saying: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

>>534
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2008-mar-jun.html#30%20April%202008%20(Possession%20of%20extreme%20pornography)

The parrot that made love to me in the Jurong Bird Park did so of his own free will. (I would never have dared to ask.) Is this photo going to be a crime? Will I be saved only because it is not obvious just what the parrot is doing to me?

https://www.stallman.org/parrot-love.jpg

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#28_November_2012_(Germany_to_prohibit_sex_between_humans_and_animals)

A parrot once made love to me, and I hope I get another chance.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#5_January_2021_(Proud_Boys_leader_arrested) -- The head of the right-wing intimidation group, the Proud Boys, has been arrested for threatening actions in a rally. -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/04/enrique-tarrio-rightwing-proud-boys-arrested -- Enrique Tarrio, leader of rightwing Proud Boys, arrested ahead of rallies -- Tue 5 Jan 2021 -- He was charged with destruction of property – related to his role in burning a Black Lives Matter banner – and a firearms offense

The leader of the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group, was arrested in Washington DC and charged with destruction of property and a firearms offense, according to local police. The arrest of Enrique Tarrio on Monday comes ahead of pro-Donald Trump protests in Washington planned for Tuesday and Wednesday to coincide with the US Congress’ vote on Wednesday affirming Joe Biden’s election victory. The demonstrations are organized by the Proud Boys and other rightwing activists, who falsely allege election fraud and want to see the results of the presidential election overturned in Trump’s favor.

The property destruction charges are related to Tarrio’s admitted role [ https://archive.is/zqBqL ] in burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a historic Black church during a previous pro-Trump protest in Washington on 12 December, which DC police and the FBI said they had been investigating as a potential hate crime. Police said Tarrio, who lives in Miami, Florida, was arrested after his arrival in the District of Columbia on Monday. DC police said Tarrio had also been charged with possessing two high-capacity ammunition magazines, which were with him when he was arrested. The District of Columbia, which has some of the strictest firearms laws in the nation, bans the possession of firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Less than three weeks before Biden will be sworn in as president, Trump has been encouraging supporters to continue to protest over the results of an election he refuses to admit he lost.

The National Park Service said it had received three separate applications for pro-Trump protests on Tuesday or Wednesday, with estimated maximum attendance at 15,000 people. Experts who monitor extremist groups fear the demonstrations could bring more chaos and violence to the US capital, the Washington [ https://archive.is/YFWb1 ] Post reported, including renewed violent attacks by the Proud Boys on leftwing counterprotesters. The US capital has mobilized the national guard ahead of the planned protests. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested a limited national guard deployment to help bolster the metropolitan police department, and has asked local area residents to stay away from downtown DC. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” said Robert Contee, the acting police chief, on Monday.

During a presidential debate in September, Trump was asked to condemn the Proud Boys and other violent rightwing groups linked to white supremacy, and instead told the group to “stand back [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/29/trump-proud-boys-debate-president-refuses-condemn-white-supremacists ] and stand by”, adding that “somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left”. Over the weekend, Trump retweeted a promotion for the rally with the message: “I will be there. Historic Day!” At a November rally, which drew about 15,000 people, Trump staged a limousine drive-by past cheering crowds in Freedom Plaza, on Pennsylvania Avenue. And at the December rally, which drew smaller numbers but a larger contingent of Proud Boys, Trump’s helicopter flew low over cheering crowds on the National Mall. Tarrio’s arrest was first confirmed by the New York Times.

>>551 -> >>499
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https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#9_December_2020_(Millionaire_tax) -- Argentina Passes "Millionaire's Tax" to Fund Covid-19 Recovery. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/06/argentina-passes-millionaires-tax-fund-covid-19-recovery -- Argentina Passes "Millionaire's Tax" to Fund Covid-19 Recovery -- Sunday, December 06, 2020 -- "We're coming out of this pandemic like countries come out of world wars, with thousands of dead and devastated economies," said one senator. -- >>519

"Watch child porn every day, it makes life less annoying" -- Richard "RussiaToday" Stallman

A former Kentucky substitute teacher has been charged with raping an eighth-grade student — including an illicit romp at a hotel, according to a report.

Alexandria Allen, a 25-year-old onetime sub at Royal Spring Middle School, was arrested Monday by Georgetown police on three counts of third-degree rape, WLEX reported.

An arrest warrant obtained by the station alleges Allen came in contact with the 15-year-old boy at the school while in a position of authority or public trust. He no longer attends the school, police said.

The alleged rapes occurred at three locations between March and October, including at the Hilton Garden Inn in Georgetown, according to the warrant.

The teen’s mother reached out to cops in October after finding nude photos and videos of Allen and her son on his cellphone. The mother told police at the time that Allen was her son’s tutor, WLEX reported.

“I was disgusted because you’re supposed to be helping him and she wasn’t helping him at all,” the woman told the station in October.

An attorney for Allen entered a not guilty plea on her behalf Tuesday while waiving her formal arraignment, WLEX reported.

A judge also reduced Allen’s bond to $2,500 and ordered her not to contact the victim. She’s due back in court for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 2, according to the report.

Georgetown Assistant Police Chief Darin Allgood confirmed Allen’s arrest on Monday, adding that she may face additional charges.

NOBODY FUCKING CARES

>>558
557 people care at least.

>>555
nice trips