Ninth Circuit Denies Lawsuit Over Damage to Home in Police Raid
By Nathan Solis | Courthouse News | April 9, 2020
The Jessen’s rural farm home in central California sat on a dead-end street, surrounded by almond orchards.
On June 11, 2016, David Jessen said while he was out, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department called to tell him someone had broken into his home. Several hours later he would return to find his home destroyed after a SWAT team, two helicopters, a K-9 unit and a fire truck barreled toward his front lawn to arrest the burglar.
On Thursday, the Ninth Circuit upheld a ruling that Fresno County and the city of Clovis are not liable for negligence claimed by David and his wife Gretchen Jessen’s lawsuit, because the damage to their home was caused by the officer’s “discretionary acts.”
The Jessens claimed in their 2017 lawsuit that the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department and Clovis Police Department happened upon the ideal setting for a training exercise at their home when they received a call from a construction crew about a man who was found sleeping in a nearby vacant house.
The man left without any protest, but the construction workers say they heard the sound of glass breaking and say the man broke into the Jessen’s home, according to the civil complaint.
The lawsuit claimed the dead-end home was the perfect setting for a training exercise because there would be no nearby neighbors or civilians who would congregate to watch the SWAT team and helicopters converge.
David Jessen said after he arrived at his home and told an officer that two unloaded shotguns and a loaded .357 magnum were hidden in the house, the officer told him the man inside threatened to shoot anyone who entered. Jessen and his family were asked to wait elsewhere.
After taking his family to a friend’s house 10 minutes away, Jessen drove back to unload some farm equipment and found law enforcement cars lining the road to his house for a quarter of a mile, plus two ambulances, a fire truck and two helicopters circling above.
This use of police force would eventually destroy the home, according to the complaint. Jessen said just before police cleared out, an officer handed him a card and said, “We have insurance for this.”
Police ripped out several wrought iron doors, according to the complaint, and pulled out a wall off the foundation, teargased six rooms, shattered a glass sliding door, broke several windows and 90 feet of fencing and flash-bombed two more rooms.
The Jessens say the man, identified later as Chanley Un, stole an ice cream bar, some milk and half a tomato.
The sheriff’s department claimed in a 2017 statement that officers found Un in a room within reach of the guns.
The couple sought $150,000 due to the damage to their home, which they said could no longer be lived in due to the excessive teargas use and other damage.
The appellate panel made up of U.S. Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Eugene Siler Jr., a George H.W. Bush appointee, sitting by designation from the Sixth Circuit, upheld the ruling in an unpublished and unsigned memorandum.
The panel agreed that the Jessens did not establish a triable issue on the municipal actions taken by the officers and that the departments “do not have a custom of turning simple operations into full-scale training operations,” which the district court ruled out due to a lack of evidence.
“The record evidence shows that defendants have a general policy of obtaining warrants prior to entry, of using reasonable force, and for the reasonable use of tear gas. The Jessens failed to establish a triable issue that any of these policies caused any constitutional injuries, or that there was a ‘persistent and widespread’ violation of these policies amounting to an unconstitutional custom or practice,” the panel wrote.
The panel said the Jessens also could not prove that the two police departments who arrived at their home to retrieve the barricaded man did not have the proper training.
“Even assuming, without deciding, that defendants’ training policies are inadequate, there is no evidence that ‘the need for more or different training [was] so obvious’ that defendants were deliberately indifferent to the Jessens’ rights,” the panel wrote.
The fact that an officer sought to explain and justify each piece of property damage after the incident shows the officer exercised some discretion in his role as the operation team leader and there was no evidence that one officer had final policymaking authority delegated to him, according to the 6-page memo.
Under the case Conway v. County of Tuolumne, the California Court of Appeal found “discretionary act immunity applies to the selection of the means to effectuate an arrest, including the decision to deploy a SWAT team in effectuating an arrest, and the subsequent decision to deploy tear gas.”
“Under Conway, Defendants are immune from liability, and the district court properly granted summary judgment for Defendants on the Jessens’ negligence claim,” the panel wrote.
In a statement for Fresno County, a spokesperson said they are “very pleased with the decision by the Ninth Circuit again confirming that the Sheriff’s Office acted reasonably and in the interest of public safety under all the circumstances.”
Emails sent to the Jessen’s attorney were not immediately answered for comment.
How to Get Rid of a POTUS
By John Quincy Adams | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 13, 2020
In the Soviet Union there was an expression “The Organs of State Security” or “Organs” for short. Their supposed power in the USSR was one of the things that separated them from what we used to call “the free world”. Not so much any more – the American Organs came very close to getting rid of the so-called Most Powerful Man in The World. They made only one mistake; they probably won’t next time.
The impeachment of US President Donald Trump is over, or at least this iteration is. This was not a normal impeachment, it was an attempt by the Deep State, the Organs of State Security, the Blob, the Borg – later we will learn what its members call it – to remove a president of the United States. After some false starts, it succeeded at every step except the very last one. But, as they say, practice makes perfect and the Organs have learned from their mistake.
Note that such a removal only becomes necessary when the Organs have failed to block a challenger, a Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard for example, who might question the status quo. But, in 2016 they failed and, to the amazement of the wise ones, Trump won the election. His remarks about getting along with Russia showed that he might wander off the path The Organs had laid out. The Organs got to work. They first stirred up opinion that he was so unfit for office that getting rid of him would be laudable, no matter how it was done. Not so difficult given the small number of “news” media owners in the USA well trained to take their lead from “anonymous sources in the intelligence community” and not so difficult because the losers were so bitter. He was -phobic – islamo-, trans-, homo-. He was -ist – rac-, sex-, class-. Limited mental abilities, psychological instability, personal deficiencies, incapable, dangerous. An entire theory of incapacity was built on a typo. Each attempt faded and was forgotten – faithless Electors, 25th Amendment, Logan Act – nobody remembers the details, but the stink remains.
But these produced no effective actions. There are only two ways to get rid of an American president if you are unwilling to wait until the next election – murder or impeachment. Media hysteria creates an atmosphere but it doesn’t get anything done.
It’s an experiment – this fails, that fails, try something else. So the Organs moved to another idea – treason as grounds for impeachment. The seeds had been planted – “All 17 intelligence agencies” agreed that he was the nominee of a hostile foreign power. Three years on an inquiry intended to provoke him, but he resisted the provocations and, eventually the inquiry had to admit it found nothing. But the accusation is always there – enemies of the Organs, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein are accused of being puppets of the foreign power.
Trump talks a lot and, sooner or later, will say something the Organs can seize on and twist. And he did. A phone call to a subservient foreign leader provided the opportunity and The Organs of State Security took it. One operative became a “whistleblower” – he didn’t overhear the phone call, didn’t know what it said but did know that a fellow operative was “visibly shaken“. Another operative actually said it out loud:
In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.
Read that again because it’s an important stage in the History of the Decline and Fall of America. “Inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency”. That’s what they think should make foreign policy, not transient presidents (never mind Art 2 Sec 2). This is the moment when even the dullest should have understood that yes there is a Deep State, the Organs do exist and its operatives call it The Interagency.
The president is already unpopular, many think he must be removed and now The Interagency says he is a traitor. The opposing party stages a show in which “witnesses” from The Interagency testify that he is a traitor because he says or will say, does or will do something that violates “the consensus views of The Interagency”. Like trade Alaska to Russia for support. The House brings bills of impeachment charging that he has weakened national security (The Interagency told us so) and obstruction of justice (many members are ex-prosecutors and built their careers on plea bargains and obstruction of justice charges; that charge is an automatic reflex.)
But the plot failed in the Senate. The Interagency must be wondering what would have happened had it produced, at the right time, compromising information on 20 or 30 senators.
We recapitulate. Should someone who threatens The Interagency manage the improbable feat of climbing over the obstacles and becoming president, The Interagency will
- Start a campaign at which obedient media scribes, quoting “people familiar with the matter“, throw all the accusations they can find or imagine. Details will be forgotten but surely, with such clouds of smoke, there must be some fire somewhere. Easier still if members of The Interagency become TV pundits themselves.
- Gather all the compromising information The Interagency has – the NSA keeps everything – on Congressmen and be prepared to deploy it. Easier still if members of The Interagency become members themselves.
- Wait for some event in which the POTUS goes against The Interagency Consensus.
- Use the compromising information in the House to start an inquiry which listens to testimony from Interagency operatives that the POTUS has violated The Interagency consensus and threatened national security.
- The House charges him with 1) endangering national security and 2) obstruction of justice.
- Use the compromising information to get enough Senators to vote to remove.
- Repeat as necessary until every candidate understands who really runs things.
And that’s how how do it.
And The Interagency nearly pulled it off – 20 or 30 Senators, confronted with evidence of sexual or financial peccadilloes (or, these days, -isms or -phobias), could have been “persuaded” to do the right thing.
And so, as Adams foresaw two centuries ago, step by step, America, having bound “an imperial diadem” to her forehead, has ceased to be “the ruler of her own spirit”. The Interagency – built up for the pursuit of monsters – very nearly ate the government. It failed only at the very last step.
Just Close The Airports And Allow Us Some Sun: Vitamin D Fights COVID-19 Better Than UK Government
By Neil Clark – Sputnik – April 9, 2020
Irish academic research has shown that Vitamin D, which we get from sunlight, can boost resistance to respiratory infection, including coronavirus, yet the UK government isn’t listening and instead warns us all to stay indoors.
Summer seems to have arrived early in Britain. It’s forecast to be 24 degrees Celsius on Saturday in some parts, with lovely sunny weather and warm temperatures returning in the second half of next week.
Not that most Brits will be able to enjoy it. We’re in ‘lockdown’ and only supposed to go outdoors for a very small number of reasons. Sunbathing, as the police and government have both made very clear, is not one of them. A video was doing the rounds on Sunday showing cops in a patrol van telling people not to sunbathe in Peckham Rye Park in London.
Of course, gatherings of more than two people need to be dispersed. But even someone sunbathing on their own, properly socially distanced from the next person, could end up getting into trouble. This is nonsensical. So long as social distancing rules are observed, sunbathing can actually do us a lot of good in our current situation.
The stronger our immune systems, the better our protection against the coronavirus. Vitamin D is crucial as the Irish research, from Trinity College Dublin, shows. At the end of a long winter our Vitamin D levels are usually very depleted- meaning of course we are more likely to be susceptible to infections.
Dr Eamon Laird, co-author of the report, says: ‘‘These findings show our older adults have high levels of vitamin D deficiency which could have a significant negative impact on their immune response to infection. There is an even larger risk now of deficiency with those cocooning or confined indoors.’
There hasn’t to my knowledge been a study this year in the UK on the same subject, but it’s reasonable to assume that with similar weather to Ireland, British citizens, at the end of a gloomy, mild and very wet winter will have the same deficiencies.
Sunlight can remedy that. As the report’s summary says: ‘Vitamin D is produced in the skin by exposing the body to just 10-15 minutes per day of sun.’ Not only that, sunlight increases the brain’s release of the hormone serotonin, making it a natural anti-depressant. Vast amounts are spent on anti-depressant drugs, but the best medicine for this condition is out there, available for free, in front of our eyes.
No one is talking here about denying the need for social distancing to mitigate Covid19’s spread, but surely, given the clear benefits of sunshine in improving physical and mental health, the UK government ought to be taking be a more nuanced approach?
Instead of introducing staggered time slots for different ages to go to them, parks and open spaces are being closed. A lot of Brits who don’t have a garden, are going to be spending the next seven days cooped up inside, when- provided they keep their distance- it would be better for their health if they spent some time soaking up some sun-rays. Rather than take on board the Irish research, the UK government seems to be going in the other direction. On Sunday Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that exercise out of the home ‘could be banned’- meaning we wouldn’t even be able to go out for a bike ride up and down the road. Yes, the Chopper could be in for the chop.
How extraordinary would that be when one considers that flights from Covid-19 hotspots have been coming in to the country unchecked! Professor Neil Ferguson of ICL has said that Covid-19 has been ‘seeded’ around the UK by people arriving into the country by plane. You could say that was ‘stating the bleedin’ obvious’, but according to reports the Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty thought there was no evidence banning flights would stop the spread of a global pandemic … that has been spread by people travelling from one country to another!
The failure to close our airports- and introduce proper quarantine measures at all ports of entry- is likely to cost thousands of lives. Yet it’s sunbathing on your own that is deemed a bigger problem.
The UK government’s policy can be likened to a householder who faced with a flood, turns the kitchen tap off but leaves the one in the bathroom running. The sensible thing to do of course is to turn off the stopcock so no more water can come in. But throughout the crisis Johnson’s crew have been anything but sensible. The flip-flopping has been extraordinary.
On 5th March, Boris Johnson said on television: ‘People can see the country is going to get through this in good shape’. The Daily Express reported that ‘He (Johnson) repeated his insistence that he will not give up shaking hands because of the outbreak. He shook hands with presenters on arriving on the set and later did the same thing with Maltese President George Vella’. The PM, the Express said, emphasised that the risks from the virus were small- and that measures such as closing schools and cancelling sports events and other big public gatherings were unlikely.
Yet just a week later, on 12th March, Johnson was warning that Coronavirus was the ‘worst public health crisis for a generation’ and declared: ‘I must level with you- many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time’.
We went from Bouncing Boris to Grim Reaper Boris in just seven days.
But there were still no restrictions on movement announced until Monday 23rd March, which was much too late. Even then, as mentioned earlier, the flights from hotspots still were allowed to come in unchecked. On 27th March, the man who wouldn’t stop shaking hands announced that he had tested positive for the virus. Quelle surprise, you might say. (Boris Johnson is currently spending his fifth day in hospital and of course one wishes him well).
While there have been plenty of warnings to ‘stay at home’ to protect the NHS, what we haven’t received yet is any practical information from government on how to build up our immune systems to make us less susceptible to infection. For all the six figure salaried officials at Public Health England today, it seems we got better advice back in the 1940s. Anyone remember Lord Woolton and the Ministry of Food?
Cod liver oil- a rich source of Vitamins A and D, was given free to children, pregnant mums and nurses in the 1940s and 50s, but to my knowledge not one UK government minister or public health official has talked of its benefits in recent weeks, or even mentioned the words ‘Immune Boosting Vitamins’ or ‘Immune Boosting Food’.
The official line has gone from a glib ‘you’ve nothing to worry about, carrying on going out and about and to large events and shaking hands’ to ‘this is the worst public health crisis for a generation, many families will lose loved ones before their time’, with nothing much in between. By not stopping people ‘seeding’ the virus from incoming flights, it’s clear that the government, for all its draconian talk about enforcing a ‘lockdown’ hasn’t abandoned ‘herd immunity’. The most plausible explanation I’ve seen of the seemingly contradictory policy, came from Julian Symes on Twitter who described it as ‘Herd Immunity accelerate/break’.
The government wants the virus to spread as quickly as possible, but subject to the NHS’s ability to cope. So flights can still come in unchecked, but we have distancing measures too. That can also explain why they haven’t been extolling the benefits of Vitamin D- or working out a scheme which combines the maintenance of distancing measures with an acknowledgement of the health-boosting effect of sunshine.
When one factors in the failure to plan or prepare in any meaningful way for the pandemic, which means that some NHS staff are going into front-line battle with just bin bags for protection, then we can say that the government’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis has been ‘Fail’ an epic way. So it’s no surprise that they’d rather blame us- the public -for simply wanting to do what comes naturally at the end of a long winter.
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About 300 inmates at Chicago jail test positive for coronavirus
Press TV – April 10, 2020
Almost 300 inmates at a Chicago prison have tested positive for the novel coronavirus that has killed at least 18,000 people across the United States and infected more than 475,000 individuals.
The Cook County Jail on Friday reported that 276 prisoners tested positive for the COVID-19 this week, ring to according to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D). In addition, 115 prison staff have also tested positive for the virus.
The development has fueled fears about coronavirus outbreaks among the prison populations across the US, which has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world.
The 4,500-person Chicago has the largest reported coronavirus outbreak within an American prison so far.
“First and foremost, no one should be locked up if they’re not a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Lightfoot told CNN. “And certainly not because they can’t afford to pay bail.”
The family of a prisoner who died in custody filed suit against Cook County and Sheriff Tom Dart on Thursday, claiming he was shackled while died of the virus, according to the New York Times.
Human rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have urged US prison authorities to release nonviolent prisoners during the pandemic to mitigate the spread of the virus, but most of the US states have refused to do so. Only a few states, such as California, announced last month that it planned to release 3,500 nonviolent offenders.
The attorney for Washington, DC, Timothy Shea, last week opposed release of prisoners amid the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that “violent criminals” should not be set free.
She expressed the opposition in response to an emergency motion filed by the Public Defender Service general counsel.
According to the motion, outbreaks of COVID-19 “are far from speculative — they are imminent, with confirmed positive cases [at the jail] now approaching double digits.”
The Public Defender Service general counsel introduced the motion after several inmates in Washington jails tested positive for the coronavirus.
There are concerns about the conditions of prisoners in American jails as the pandemic is growing fast across the US states amid a shortage of medical supplies.
‘They Didn’t Get a Death Sentence’: US Inmates Set for Release Put Near COVID-19 Patients – Report
Sputnik – April 10, 2020
As of Thursday, 283 federal inmates in the US have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus and eight have died, as federal and state prisons are expanding early release to try and slow the spread of the coronavirus in otherwise congested conditions.
The US government’s handling of the coronavirus spread in federal prisons puts the health of inmates at risk, POLITICO reports citing the accounts of convicts’ spouses.
“They’re quarantining these healthy inmates with sick inmates that are already down there,” said a woman whose husband was placed in a special housing unit at a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland.
The unit is used to quarantine prisoners before early release for 14 days – the estimated incubation period – and it is not clear why it also housed inmates suspected of having the virus.
“It’s crazy how they’re doing this,” she reportedly said. “It’s like they’re just waiting to get this…. They’re at risk of being forgotten about. They didn’t get a death sentence.”
Another woman whose spouse was sent to the same special housing unit pending early release confirmed that account. “I’m pretty sure that is not the correct protocol for quarantine,” she was quoted as saying.
Justin Long, the Bureau of Prisons spokesman, did not explain whether the agency is taking steps to separate prisoners who display COVID-19 symptoms or are presumably infected, from those set for release.
“All of the BOP’s institutions have been directed to designate available space for isolation and quarantine for inmates who have been exposed to or have symptoms of COVID-19,” he stated. “The BOP follows all CDC guidelines with regard to isolation and quarantining.”
There are around 2.3 million people being held in jails, prisons and detention centres in the United States. There are over 173,000 federal inmates in the US; the rest account for state-run and private prisons.
The coronavirus pandemic has raised concerns over the health of prisoners, who are living in congregate settings where it is nearly impossible to heed the 6-feet social distancing instruction.
As of Thursday, 283 federal inmates and 125 staff have tested positive for the coronavirus nationwide and another eight inmates have died, according to figures from the Bureau of Prisons which manages federal facilities.
Last month, in response to calls from lawmakers and campaigners, Attorney General William Barr encouraged federal prisons to double down on early release programmes and move low-risk inmates to home confinement in a bid to curb the spread of the pandemic. Meanwhile, all federal inmates have been held in their cells since 1 April as part of a 14-day lockdown.
Some state and private prisons have also started to release certain prisoners home as inmates file petitions for “compassionate release”, an option typically reserved for extreme circumstances such as terminal illness.
California plans to fast-track the release of 3,500 non-violent prisoners in the next two months, and New Jersey will temporarily free up to 1,000 jail inmates.
Twitter jams open a back door to track your phone – which may already be in use by the government
By Helen Buyniski | RT | April 9, 2020
Twitter is no longer allowing users to hide private data like their phone’s unique tracking identifier from advertisers, at the same time the US government is apparently targeting advertiser data to track Covid-19. Coincidence?
The social media giant announced the changes in a popup when users logged in on Wednesday, glibly informing those outside Europe that they would no longer be able to disable sharing “mobile app advertising measurements” and that there was nothing they could do about it.
The latest invasion of user privacy is just the most recent incursion on user rights coming out of the social media monopolies. Last month, users were informed that content not violating the rules might be removed anyway, because coronavirus had somehow forced the platforms’ human content moderators (some of whom already worked from home) to take time off for safety reasons.
But while Twitter claims that the new always-on “share data” setting is merely intended to reassure advertisers that people are watching their ads, it coincides with a dramatic uptick in government interest in advertisers’ location data, supposedly to track the spread of the coronavirus pandemic that has torpedoed the world economy and effectively imprisoned a good chunk of humanity in their homes.
The US government was reportedly already slurping up location data on millions of Americans through mobile advertisers – the same companies that are benefiting from Twitter’s new “always-on” mobile data sharing policy – even while it was meeting with Twitter and other social media platforms to gain access to their own treasure troves of user information, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited several individuals involved in the surveillance project.
Given the public outrage in the past when social media users discovered the government spying on them through their beloved platforms, it’s no surprise Twitter would rather just leave the back door open through its advertisers and let the government take what it wants without getting directly involved. Certainly, Facebook is taking a bigger gamble by bragging about pressing users’ private data into service in the fight against the virus. The company of course claims to be protecting user privacy, but they’ve made that claim many times – usually right before a big privacy scandal.
Even those who believe enhanced government surveillance during a pandemic is justified need only look to history to observe how ’wartime powers’ are seldom relinquished during peacetime. While it would be naive to claim Twitter isn’t already funneling users’ private data to governments as well as its corporate clients – that has been public knowledge since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released documents on the PRISM project in 2013 – the growing romance between Big Brother and Big Tech should be cause for concern for anyone interested in ensuring privacy doesn’t become the biggest casualty of the coronavirus epidemic.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Iran releases ‘political prisoners’ amid Covid-19 outbreak, while virus-stricken UK keeps Assange behind bars
RT | April 9, 2020
Tehran has released an Iranian national seen as a political prisoner in the UK as it fights the coronavirus. British activists and media rushed to say Iran’s move was not enough – while being blind to a bigger problem at home.
Aras Amiri, an Iranian national and UK resident who worked with the British Council, has been temporarily released from jail, where she has been held since 2018 after being found guilty of spying. The move is likely to be a part of efforts taken by Tehran to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus in prisons in particular.
The UK board director of Amnesty International, Daren Nair, used the occasion to remind his Twitter followers that Amiri was “unjustly imprisoned” and to demand that Iranian authorities not just set her free but “let her come home to London to be with her fiancé.” The news was then eagerly picked up by various Western media outlets, including Radio Free Europe.
Amiri was arrested back in 2018 while on a family visit to Iran. Her work with the British Council reportedly involved organizing film festivals and other cultural exchanges between the two countries. The organization, describing itself as the UK’s “international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities,” has been banned in Iran since 2009 in response to the launch of the BBC’s Persian service and the British embassy’s supposedly “significant role” in protests that rocked the country earlier the same year.
It seems that Iran – which various British officials and activists like to scold over alleged human rights violations – is showing concern for the fate of its inmates in the face of an epidemic that has seen more than 64,000 people infected nationwide.
Earlier, Tehran also temporarily released another person who has long been seen in the UK as a victim of unjust political persecution. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian journalist and aid worker, was sentenced to five years on charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government back in 2016.
In mid-March, she was among some 85,000 other inmates released from Tehran’s Evin prison as part of the state response to the spread of Covid-19. On March 29, her temporary leave was extended by an additional fortnight.
Such measures were just what UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet had called for in an address to governments around the world amid the pandemic.
However, Julian Assange, whom Amnesty International also called “a prisoner of conscience,” has so far been denied the same treatment from UK authorities. The British justice system has refused to release him from maximum security prison HMP Belmarsh on bail, even though the facility has already reported not just several confirmed coronavirus cases, but the first death within its walls from the dreaded disease.
Activists, medics and even the UN rapporteur on torture have repeatedly pointed to the WikiLeaks founder’s poor state of health while calling for his release. However, their pleas apparently do not provide enough ground for London to release Assange, who has not been found guilty of any serious offenses and is awaiting a court decision on his extradition to the US.
International Solidarity Movement statement on reported FBI probe
International Solidarity Movement | April 7, 2020
Recently, the Intercept published a report of a surveillance investigation conducted by the FBI on the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The highly invasive investigation targeted ISM activists, their associates, and other organizations ISM worked with, from 2004 – 2006, using informants as well as physical and telecommunications surveillance.
We, at the International Solidarity Movement, denounce this shameless abuse of power and misuse of public funds in an attempt to criminalize Palestinian solidarity and anti-occupation activism, as well as the current ongoing campaign in some American states to criminalize the BDS movement. ISM activists have been secretly spied on and targeted by various intelligence services, including British, Israeli, and U.S., for over 19 years, merely for standing up for the rights of Palestinians.
We call on those who believe that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity to take action and raise awareness about local, state, and national attempts to criminalize nonviolent resistance such as BDS and Palestinian advocacy, and boycott those profiting off the Occupation of Palestine.
According to the Intercept report, an FBI investigation was launched after an American volunteer with ISM was shot and wounded by Israeli forces at a protest in Occupied Palestine. Instead of investigating the foreign army that injured an American citizen exercising his First Amendment-protected right to peaceful protest, the FBI’s response was to probe the survivor. While the 2 primary investigations were launched by the Los Angeles and St. Louis FBI Field Offices, agents from at least 11 cities were involved in spying on various ISM activists and related organizations. Using far right and extremist news sources, the investigation attempted to link ISM to international terrorism.
After two years of investigation, multiple rights and privacy violations, hundreds of pages of reports and tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars wasted, the investigation only proved what we have always maintained: ISM is a non-violent movement committed to ending the Occupation of Palestine through non-violent means.
Notably, the investigation began in March 2004, shortly after the murder of American Rachel Corrie and Briton Tom Hurndall (2003) by the Israeli army. The probe coincided with an Israeli government campaign to de-legitimize ISM and discredit Palestinian rights activists. It also reflects the increase in recent years of FBI investigations into non-violent activist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antiwar.com. Today, lobby groups, politicians, and leaders in the United States continue to violate First Amendment-protected rights to free speech through criminalizing non-violent Palestinian activism, such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
“The fact that ISM was under this kind of extensive investigation is ridiculous and a complete waste of taxpayer money. ISM has always been open and transparent about who we are, what we do, and what we stand for, which is purportedly what this country stands for — freedom and human rights.” — ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf
“In Dr. King’s time, surveillance was justified in terms of alleged Communist influence; in recent years, surveillance has been justified by alleged association with terrorists. In both cases, U.S. citizens were employing nonviolent action to confront injustice and oppression.” — ISM activist spied on by the FBI, Mark Chmiel
“Business as Usual” Isn’t Even a Choice
By Anatoly Karlin • Unz Review • April 1, 2020
A few days ago, I joked on Twitter:
The choice isn’t between boomer genocide and an economic collapse.
The choice is between boomer genocide and economic collapse, or producing millions of 5 cent masks and making people wear them.
Reality is, it is only boomer genocide that isn’t a choice.
74% of Americans support a national quarantine, and that even includes 72% of Republicans. In France, there is a near consensus on lockdown at 96%. In Italy it is 94%.
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro – the only President of a major democratic polity who continues to insist on treating coronavirus as a nothingburger – has been made into a lame duck, his commands ignored by 24 out of Brazil’s 27 governors and even by his own Health Minister.
Meanwhile, as predicted by Ron Unz, Trump has performed a volte face, extending federal social distancing guidelines past Easter up to April 30 and now touts 100,000 deaths as a “good scenario.”
Which is just as well, because as we know see, modern democracies are simply incapable of “powering through” even through what is a fairly low-mortality pandemic in historical terms.
Consequently, the only choices are:
- Nip it in the bud early on through mass testing-tracing-treatment, border controls, and limited lockdowns, resulting in limited economic damage. [for example]
- Wait until later, necessitating progressively more massive, longer, and economically ruinous lockdowns. [for example]
So the only correct move is to clamp down close to the start, and to clamp down hard. This is what was done in all the East Asian polities, be they chaotic democracies, city-state technocracies, or Communist single-party states.
Because in the latter scenario, there will eventually come a time when you are simply sidelined by your own underlings and by regional authorities, adding a political crisis on top of a healthcare and economic one.
In my post on Trump’s initial decision, I speculated:
Far out scenario: Blue states may outright defy Trump on abandoning containment measures, in which case they too would be doing starkly better than Red states (unless it also sparks a Constitutional crisis into the bargain).
Well, on that note, here’s a Tweet from California governor Gavin Newsom today. That’s some interesting wording there:
California is an enterprising, modernizing, nation-state. 40 million strong. Together, we will get through this. pic.twitter.com/PBTc7ukmak
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 1, 2020
So again, good on Donald Trump to have come to terms with Corona reality and averting what could have become a very dangerous experiment.
This brings us to another interesting question: Will we get a “clean” experiment anywhere?
As per above, I don’t think it’s going to happen in any democracy. Britain backed away from its “herd immunity” idea two weeks ago, on realizing that their models didn’t include a term for ventilator shortages. The Dutch followed soon afterwards. With Sweden’s coronavirus mortality trajectory beginning to radically diverge from those of its Nordic cousins, I believe it is only a matter of time before they go into lockdown as well.
My guess is that our best “hope” – inappropriate as that expression may be – lies in Belarus, which is run by a decidedly non-coronapilled dictator.
India introduces new Kashmir domicile law, raising fears of demographic manipulation
Press TV – April 2, 2020
India has introduced a new law that would make its citizens eligible to become permanent residents of the Indian-administered Kashmir, raising fears of demographic change in the Muslim-majority, Himalayan region.
The new law, which was announced by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday and which reportedly is not subject to parliamentary review, will deem any person who has resided in the Indian-controlled Kashmir for a period of 15 years or studied at certain school grades there as “domicile” of the territory.
The new law will also provide domicile status to the children of central government officials who have served in the Indian-controlled Kashmir for a total period of 10 years.
It will also open local jobs to non-residents.
The introduction of the law comes almost eight months after the Indian government stripped the disputed region of its limited autonomy. On August 5 last year, New Delhi revoked Article 370, a constitutional provision that had come into effect in 1949 and had granted special status to Kashmir, allowing it to have its own flag and constitution, among other rights.
In the lead-up to the revocation, India sent thousands of additional troops to the disputed region, imposed a curfew, arrested political leaders, and shut down telecommunication lines.
The new law also comes as the country of 1.3 billion people is under a 21-day lockdown in an attempt to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, raising speculation that the timing is intentional.
Legalizing settlements?
Residents in the Indian-controlled Kashmir fear that the new law would alter the demographic status of the region, with experts saying it will lead to “demographic flooding.”
“It is a lot to circumvent the law. I think it illustrates clearly that some will not stop from politicking during coronavirus [epidemic],” Siddiq Wahid, a political analyst based in the Indian-controlled Kashmir, said.
“Obviously it is an attempt to change the demographics, not only change but flood it. It will lead to demographic flooding,” Wahid said, according to Al Jazeera.
Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a professor of legal studies based in the region, said the move had already been in the offing.
“The whole purpose of revoking Article 370 was to settle outsiders here and change the demography of the [Jammu and Kashmir] state. Now this provides the modalities and entitles so many categories of Indians whose settlement will be legalized over here.”
India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has denied that the new law is an attempt to change the demography of the region.
Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since partition in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the territory.
Meanwhile, Muslims elsewhere in India have also been facing abuse and violence.
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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