December, 18 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Despite Progress Around Gun Violence Research, Final 2020 Congressional Funding Bills Fall Far Short of Making Human Rights a Priority
WASHINGTON
Responding to the final funding bills for Fiscal Year 2020, Amnesty International USA urges that the U.S. government must step up its contribution to global efforts to protect human rights.
Earlier this week, Amnesty International USA welcomed efforts to secure $25,000,000 to aid in research around gun violence after recommendations from 160 medical, public health, and research organizations. Although Amnesty International USA acknowledges that these funds are a long overdue step in the right direction, the overall 2020 spending bill does little to restrict the human rights abuses to which the administration has subjected asylum seekers.
"We are deeply concerned that Congress has failed to place even basic limits on the administration's ability to raid other accounts to fuel ever-growing levels of detention, and fund a wasteful, xenophobic border wall," said Joanne Lin, Amnesty International USA's National Advocacy Director.
"Congress is allowing the administration to erect a monument to Trump's hatred towards asylum-seekers and migrants in the form of a costly wall that will hurt the environment and displace border communities, including the Indigenous communities to whom this land belongs."
Amnesty International USA is alarmed by the ever-growing budget for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies which have engaged in serious human rights abuses and have nevertheless consistently received increasing amounts of money over successive fiscal years. While Amnesty welcomes the important oversight and accountability mechanisms Congress has included in this bill, without a firm restriction on the administration's ability to transfer funds, the administration can easily siphon funds for detention beds and for a harmful wall.
This release is available at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/despite-progress-around-gun-violence-research-final-2020-congressional-funding-bills-fall-far-short-of-making-human-rights-a-priority/
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Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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'Noah's Wounds Were Not Survivable': Parents Allow Detailed View of AR-15 Carnage
The Washington Post exposé has been described as "the most powerful article you will read this week" and "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
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On Monday morning, The Washington Postpublished a series of 3D animations to show "how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart."
A few hours later, a 28-year-old shooter armed with two assault rifles and a handgun killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville.
In the wake of that massacre—the 129th mass shooting in the United States in 2023—the Post's exposé has received sustained attention, with one person calling it "the most powerful article you will read this week" and another characterizing it as "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
Noting that the lethal wounds caused by AR-15s "are rarely seen" by the public, the newspaper demonstrated "the trajectory of two different hypothetical gunshots to the chest—one from an AR-15 and another from a typical handgun—to explain the greater severity of the damage caused by the AR-15."
Then, after obtaining permission from the parents of two school shooting victims, a team of visual reporters created 3D models to depict how bullets fired from "many mass killers' weapon of choice" obliterated their children's bodies.
Noah Ponzer was one of the 26 people who were killed by an AR-15-wielding gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. The 6-year-old was shot three times.
"Noah's wounds were not survivable," the Post reported, citing 2019 court testimony from Wayne Carver, who was the state's chief medical examiner at the time.
Peter Wang was one of 17 people murdered when an attacker armed with an AR-15 opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. The 15-year-old was shot 13 times.
As the Post reported: "The combined energy of those bullets created exit wounds so 'gaping' that the autopsy described his head as 'deformed.' Blood and brain splatter were found on his upper body and the walls. That degree of destruction, according to medical experts, is possible only with a high-velocity weapon."
"This is the trauma witnessed by first responders—but rarely, if ever, seen by the public or the policymakers who write gun laws," the newspaper noted.
Instead, many GOP lawmakers glorify assault rifles, including U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), whose congressional district is home to the Nashville school where Monday's deadly shooting took place.
Another right-wing member of Tennessee's congressional delegation—Republican Rep. Tim Burchett—baldly stated that "we're not gonna fix it" just hours after the shooting.
There are more guns than people in the United States. Due to National Rifle Association-bankrolled Republicans' opposition to meaningful gun safety laws—bolstered by a 2022 ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court's reactionary majority—it is relatively easy for people to purchase firearms in many states.
Two years ago, Tennessee became one of several states that allow most adults to carry handguns without a permit.
There have been thousands of mass shootings since Noah and more than two dozen other individuals suffered gruesome deaths at Sandy Hook, including last year's slaughter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, among hundreds of others. Research shows that U.S. states with weaker gun control laws and higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings.
Research also shows that gun regulations with high levels of public support, including bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, help reduce the number and severity of fatal mass shootings.
Guns recently became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States. A study published last year found that roughly 26,000 kids could still be alive today if the U.S. had the same gun mortality rate as Canada.
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"The three liberal Supreme Court justices decided to let Donziger's absurd contempt conviction stand," said one observer.
Mar 28, 2023
Environmental attorney Steven Donziger was joined by a number of U.S. Supreme Court observers on Monday in denouncing a decision by seven of the nine justices, who refused to consider Donziger's case regarding the appointment of three special prosecutors after he was charged with criminal contempt of court.
A number of observers noted that a dissent was signed by two conservative judges, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—suggesting that the three liberal justices on the high court refused to give Donziger a hearing of his appeal, essentially siding with oil giant Chevron.
Donziger sued Chevron in the 1990s on behalf of a group of Ecaudorian people who argued Chevron had polluted their community, and helped them win $9.5 billion in the class action lawsuit.
"The three liberal Supreme Court justices decided to let Donziger's absurd contempt conviction stand," said journalist Alex Shultz of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Donziger was jailed for six months—including 136 days under house arrest at the end of his sentence in addition to 800 days under house arrest while he awaited trial—after being charged with contempt of court in 2021 for refusing to turn over his electronic devices to Chevron lawyers in a case filed by the company. The fossil fuel company argued Donziger had won the lawsuit for the Ecuadorians through "coercion, fraud, and bribery."
The judge appointed three special prosecutors after the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute Donziger for contempt of court.
Donziger argued the judge had no right to appoint private attorneys as special prosecutors, saying the move violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and that the judge wrongly overrode the U.S. attorney's discretion.
The Supreme Court's refusal to hear his case, said Donziger, represents "a huge blow to the rule of law."
The attorney was among those who pointed to Gorsuch's argument in favor of hearing the case, in which the Trump-appointed right-wing justice said his prosecution by three private lawyers "broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our liberty."
"He's got a point," wrote journalist Ian Millhiser at Vox. "Especially in an era where litigants with an axe to grind can choose which judge will hear their case, permitting the judiciary to decide who to prosecute—and then to hear the very same cases brought by its own court-appointed prosecutors—vests far too much power in unelected judges. If courts have this authority, it is likely to be abused by some of the most partisan judges in the country."
Convicting someone of a federal crime generally requires two branches of government—prosecutors representing the executive branch and judges representing the judiciary—to agree on the accused person's guilt.
In Donziger's case, the judiciary branch acted on its own to prosecute the lawyer.
"The Constitution gives courts the power to 'serve as a neutral adjudicator in a criminal case,' not 'the power to prosecute crimes," wrote Gorsuch in the dissenting opinion. "Our Constitution does not tolerate what happened here."
By refusing to hear Donziger's appeal, the majority of justices—including liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—"endorsed the persecution of Donziger" by Chevron, said author and Yale University history professor Greg Grandin.
"A corporatist Supreme Court is there to serve corporations more than to serve the Constitution," noted author Marianne Williamson.
While the details of Donziger's case are "absolutely shocking," said former U.S. Rep. Tom Winter (D-Mont.), "what's not shocking [is] our Supreme Court, as an institution, being just fine with corporate capture of the legal system."
Millhiser pointed out that the Supreme Court's refusal to hear Donziger's case could have implications for the pending ruling regarding the legality of the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a common abortion drug. Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas is expected to rule in the case in the coming days:
Armed with the additional power to initiate prosecutions, even if this power is limited to contempt of court cases, a partisan judge like Kacsmaryk could potentially issue a nationwide injunction prohibiting anyone from performing an abortion, even in states where it is legal. Then, because anyone who violates a court order can potentially be held in contempt, Kacsmaryk could appoint his own hand-picked prosecutors to target anyone who violates his self-imposed abortion ban.
If Kacsmaryk, or a similarly partisan judge, attempted this move today, Attorney General Merrick Garland would almost certainly fire any prosecutor that Kacsmaryk appointed. But, in a Republican administration, the attorney general would likely be much more reluctant to exercise such authority.
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With US Opposed, UN Security Council Rejects Russia-Led Push for Nord Stream Probe
Brazil and China supported Russia's request while the U.S. and other members of the United Nations Security Council abstained.
Mar 28, 2023
The United Nations Security Council on Monday rejected a Russia-led effort to launch a fresh international probe into last year's sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the wake of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's reports accusing the U.S. of carrying out the attack.
Brazil and China supported Russia's resolution while the U.S., France, the United Kingdom, and other Security Council members abstained, leaving the proposal short of the nine votes needed for passage.
The Security Council said in a press release that, if adopted, the resolution would have requested that the secretary-general establish "an international, independent investigation commission to conduct a comprehensive, transparent, and impartial international investigation of all aspects of the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines—including identification of its perpetrators, sponsors, organizers, and accomplices."
Ahead of Monday's vote, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that "without an objective and transparent international investigation, the truth will not be uncovered as to what happened."
Robert Wood, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., countered that the Biden administration "was not involved in any way" in the Nord Stream explosions and accused Russia of attempting to "discredit the work of ongoing national investigations and prejudice any conclusions they reach that do not comport to Russia's predetermined and political narrative."
Denmark, Sweden, and Germany told the U.N. Security Council last month that their investigations into the Nord Stream blasts—which nations agree was an act of deliberate sabotage rather than an accident—are still ongoing.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told reporters that the Biden administration is "not a party" to those investigations "because there are countries on whose sovereign territory this attack occurred, and we're deferring it to them."
The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill reported over the weekend that Russian officials have complained in letters to the U.S. and European governments that "they have been barred from examining evidence gathered from the sites where the blasts occurred."
Scahill noted that "despite Russia's majority ownership of the pipelines, Russian officials said, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have rejected Russia's repeated requests for a joint investigation—confirming their 'suspicions that these countries are trying to conceal evidence, or to cover up the sponsors and perpetrators of these acts of sabotage.'"
"Denmark and Sweden have cited procedural matters and national regulations as to why they aren't collaborating with Russia," Scahill added. "But it's pretty obvious that they have also adopted the position that Russia should be viewed as a suspect in the sabotage and wouldn't want to invite it into the probe, particularly given Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
Citing an anonymous source, Hersh reported last month that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system, believing it posed a threat to "western dominance." According to Hersh, the Biden White House was particularly concerned about Nord Stream 2, which would have carried gas from Russia to Germany.
Germany put the pipeline on hold a day before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Weeks after Hersh published his initial report, The New York Timesran a story alleging that "intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials" implicates a shadowy "pro-Ukrainian group" in the Nord Stream attack.
Last week, Hersh alleged that U.S. intelligence agencies have been "feeding" the Times and other outlets false information in an attempt to cover up the Biden administration's involvement in the Nord Stream operation. Hersh also blasted the U.S. press corps for failing to ask why the Biden administration has thus far been unwilling to launch its own investigation.
At a congressional hearing a day after Hersh published his follow-up story, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken whether he can "assure the world that no agency of the U.S. government blew up those pipelines or facilitated that action."
"Yes," Blinken responded, "yes I can."
Scahill noted Saturday that he asked the Biden White House Hersh's question about why American intelligence agencies have not formally announced a probe of the Nord Stream attack.
"In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson did not directly address any of my questions," Scahill wrote.
Instead, she repeated the White House's dismissal of Hersh's reporting as "totally false concoctions."
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