truthout--2020-05-26--Brazil’s Reckless COVID Response Threatens Indigenous Survival

As Brazil sees more than 800 deaths in 24 hours and nearly 400,000 confirmed cases , we look at COVID-19 ’ s devastating impact on Brazil ’ s Indigenous peoples , who are dying at double the rate of the rest of the country .
We speak with world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado , who wrote an open letter to right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro , who called the virus a “ little flu , ” to warn him the pandemic is “ an extreme threat to their very survival.
” This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman in New York City , one of the epicenters of the pandemic , joined by my co-host Juan González from his home in New Brunswick , New Jersey .
New Jersey is the state with the second-highest number of infections .
Hi , Juan .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Good morning , Amy .
And good day to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world .
AMY GOODMAN : Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Brazil , where the coronavirus is rapidly spreading , with nearly 400,000 confirmed cases and almost 23,500 deaths , making Brazil ’ s outbreak the second worst in the world , after the United States .
On Monday , Brazil ’ s daily death toll surpassed the U.S. for the first time , with 807 deaths in 24 hours .
President Trump has suspended travel from Brazil to the United States , effective today just before midnight .
Despite this , right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has continued to dismiss the severity of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it a “ little flu ” and spoke out against lockdowns imposed by governors and mayors .
Two health ministers have left his Cabinet in recent weeks over disagreements over the handling of the pandemic .
On Sunday , just as Brazil became the number two hot spot for COVID-19 in the world , Bolsonaro greeted anti-lockdown protesters outside the presidential palace .
He wore and then removed a face mask as he mixed with his supporters .
AMY GOODMAN : This comes as the spread of coronavirus is devastating Brazil ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ double the rate of the rest of the population of Brazil , according to advocates .
The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil says there have been at least 980 confirmed cases and 125 deaths of Indigenous people , indicating a mortality rate of 12.6 % , compared to 6.4 % nationally .
The city of Manaus in Brazil ’ s Amazon region has been hard hit by the virus , with nearly 1,200 deaths .
Last week , the mayor of Manaus accused the government of Jair Bolsonaro of intentionally allowing Indigenous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOODMAN : Well , for more , we go to Paris , France , where we ’ re joined by the world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado .
He has also warned that the Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face genocide if the Brazilian government does not take steps to protect them from the coronavirus outbreak .
Earlier this month , Sebastião Salgado wrote an open letter to President Bolsonaro warning that the pandemic represents an extreme threat to their very survival .
The petition has gathered nearly 300,000 signatures .
Sebastião Salgado has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its people .
And it is an honor to welcome you to Democracy Now !
, Sebastião .
Thank you so much for joining us .
Can you talk about what you see happening in your home country , in Brazil , right now ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , Brazil now is living a very difficult moment .
We have a central power , held by President Bolsonaro , that is not acting in the normal way that every country act around the world toward the coronavirus .
And we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayors of the big cities , that are taking care , putting people in quarantine .
And Mr. Bolsonaro is working in the opposite way .
And that ’ s creating an amazing destabilization of the country .
I am very concerned with the Indigenous community , mostly in the Amazonia .
I just finished a bond of work where I spent seven years in Amazon .
And these Indians have no immunological protection against the diseases that come out of the forest .
The government knows this .
Everyone knows this .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ We must take care to protect these Indians .
The contrary will be real genocide .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you have said in the past that you believe that the virus is a product of the destruction of the planet ’ s environment .
Could you elaborate on that ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : No , ask me again .
What ’ s the question , exactly ?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : That in the past you have said that the coronavirus pandemic is , in part , a product @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the planet .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , you see , we are destroying every portion of the ecosystem protectors of this planet .
And we are putting the diseases , that will be possible to stay inside the protected environment , out of the environment .
And that ’ s a very difficult moment that we are living .
Probably , what is happening now in all the planet , around the world , will bring us to mind more about the environment , to come back to our planet , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and to see how we can rebuild the ecosystem in order that we can live in peace with our planet , is what happens everywhere around the world .
AMY GOODMAN : Let me ask you — I wanted to turn to the chief of Tres Unidos .
It ’ s an Indigenous village in Brazil ’ s Amazon rainforest , that I ’ m sure you know well , where the coronavirus infected people despite a lockdown to all outside visitors .
At least 16 out of the village ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The virus likely came up the Rio Negro river from Manaus , which is five hours away .
This is the village chief , Waldemir da Silva .
AMY GOODMAN : If you could talk , Sebastião Salgado , about how the Indigenous people are now dealing , and how the government is dealing with them ?
I mean , you have this battle going on in Manaus with the mayor calling the president stupid .
If you can talk about the history of the way Indigenous people are dealt with in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see , when Brazil was discovered , today the scientists can calculate that the population of Amazonian — Brazilian Amazonian ecosystem , we had about 5 million people living there .
With the diseases come from outside , a lot of Indians disappeared .
Today we have just a little bit more than 300,000 Indians living in Amazonia .
A lot of them are close to the cities , as Manaus , as Barcelos , São Gabriel , as you said .
These Indians are contacted a long time , and they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the world , human world .
But one very big portion of the Brazilian tribes are quite isolated tribes .
You see only Brazilian Amazonians who have a little bit more that 100 groups that were never contacted .
They are completely isolated Indians .
And the diseases coming inside of Amazonia can hit them .
You see , what is happening now , the danger is that Mr. Bolsonaro took all the filters to protect the ecosystem , eliminating all the institutions , weakening the institutions that protected the Amazon ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of the budget of the National Foundation of the Indians .
And what happens ?
After a while , the Amazonian protected land of the Indian territories started to be invaded by loggers , by gold diggers , by religious groups .
Only in Yanomami territory in Amazonia , we have today , in this moment that we ’ re speaking , more than 22,000 gold diggers that are invading the territory .
And these people are carrying the disease inside .
What we apply with this letter to the president of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out these invaders , to create a kind of barrier , sanitary barrier .
People come inside the Indian territory in order to protect these tribes — to the contrary , we ’ ll lose them .
They will disappear .
They have no anticorps , antibody , to protect themselves against this disease .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , what does it mean to have a president like Jair Bolsonaro , who basically ridicules science , doesn ’ t pay attention to his own health , public health , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the stuff that ’ s happening here in the United States with President Trump , but even worse .
What does it mean , not only for the Amazon and the Indigenous population , but for all Brazilians ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , the big problem with President Bolsonaro , that he is destroying the Brazilian institutions .
Brazil had very good institutions , cultural , health institutions , the protection of Indian territory .
He ’ s extremist , rightist president .
He is destroying these institutions .
He has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live in their territory , that are hunters , that are gatherers — they want to transform them in peasants .
It ’ s incredible .
It ’ s incompatible .
And he is not respecting all these territories , protected by law .
And that is happening every level of the Brazilian society .
We are living a very difficult moment in Brazil .
AMY GOODMAN : I ’ m wondering if you could talk , Sebastião Salgado , on the attacks on the truth , both from the president of Brazil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very close ally of the president of the United States , President Trump .
Both of them diminish , to the end , this coronavirus , the president of Brazil , of course , calling it a “ little flu , ” President Trump saying it would come to nothing , 15 cases and then zero , as opposed to what so many of the scientific advisers around him were telling him .
Now , you are famous in your work for photographing , documenting the truth of people on the ground all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Indigenous people — your famous book , Migrations : Humanity in Transition , Workers : An Archaeology of the Industrial Age , Gold and Terra : Struggle of the Landless .
Can you talk about this phenomenon that we see , if you can call lies that , the thousands of lies told by these men , that clearly take lives , and particularly of the most vulnerable ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , we have countries .
We have very poor population , countries with — more populated than Brazil , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take India , if you take Indonesia .
These countries , they take care of the population .
They had one quarantine , and they are coming out now from the quarantine with a lot of deaths , but not enormous amount as the United States , as the Brazil .
It ’ s exactly these two presidents that don ’ t care about the people .
They care about money , about rentability .
I put myself the question : if you are a government ?
We are a government for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
You are not a president just for the profit .
And that is the big problem happens in this moment .
The United States has the biggest number of death before in the world by coronavirus .
You are just today cross 100,000 deaths in the United States .
In Brazil , because the figures are not good , we are told that you have more than 20,000 — just more than 20,000 people , because the ones that die inside the hospitals that we can identify that died by coronavirus .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the slums , the people that are in the very poor areas , we don ’ t know of about what they are dying .
The scientists in Brazil calculated that we must still have a minimum nine times more case and deaths in a Brazil than just the official figures that is presented .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you mentioned the thousands of gold diggers that are invading the Amazon , but there are also major multinational companies , major Brazilian companies , that are also benefiting from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you talk about who some of these companies are , so that people know ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , the companies , yes , but , you see , Bolsonaro was elected by the agrobusiness in Brazil and by the sectarian religions — religious groups .
And he has opened the Amazonian territory mostly for farmers , for loggers , for gold diggers .
You see , we spoke a lot last year about the fires in Amazonia in last July , August .
This year will be worse .
We are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speed .
And while destroying everywhere around Amazonia , these farmers , they are growing the space by the incentive of the president .
The companies , of course that they are there .
They are trying to get what they can have in this government .
But the big problem is the populism of Mr. Bolsonaro , that he wanted to have voters that have his mind in the new elections .
And he ’ s giving Amazonia for the people that want to invade it .
And you have hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said a few minutes ago , only gold diggers inside Yanomami territory , we have more than 22,000 .
But you have loggers going inside everywhere , farmers destroying the forest everywhere .
It ’ s a general problem , and it ’ s not just specific of big companies .
They are also inside of the problem .
But the biggest problem is the populism of the president .
AMY GOODMAN : If you can talk about this Reuters report that says that the Brazilian environment minister , Ricardo Salles , called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus , in a video the Supreme Court ordered released ?
The video of the ministers ’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether President Bolsonaro interfered in appointing leaders of the Federal Police for personal gain .
During the meeting , other ministers spoke , including Salles , with environmental groups saying his remarks prove Bolsonaro government is systematically seeking to dismantle environmental protections .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , we have enough happened in Brazil to have an impeachment of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are doing , they are doing in the way to take the power .
They are doing every weekend , in the meetings that they do in Brazil , a proposition to have the power in their hands , out of the democratic way .
They are applying for a coup d ’ état .
And , you see , we are living a difficult moment , because how you can do an impeachment during this big problem of coronavirus ?
Who will you be putting in place ?
How will you be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this ?
And they are profiting .
They are taking profit for themselves in order to made more large their power .
The example you just gave a few minutes ago , the minister of environment , Mr. Salles , doing the proposition that just in this moment that you are completely toward the coronavirus was the moment to push all the destruction of the law system that protects the Indian community , that protect the environment , that protect the destruction of the rainforest .
He tried to destroy all this now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the order in Brazil .
Brazil has a fantastic system of law .
The National Foundation of Indians is one amazing institution .
Who directs the National Foundation of Indians now ?
It ’ s no more an anthropologist like always was , a scientist like always was .
Now it ’ s a cop .
It ’ s a policeman that is directing the National Foundation of Indians .
National Foundation of Indians now is not acting more for the Indians ; they are acting for the farmers .
The order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you ’ ve said , clearly , that the key role that farmers are playing , Brazil is a big exporter of agricultural products .
What kind of pressure could governments around the world exercise on Brazil ?
Do you support sanctions against the Bolsonaro government to make them take the necessary steps to protect Indigenous communities ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : I believe that the political sanctions , the political pressure .
Brazil is very sensitive for outside of the country .
Brazil is a big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believe that we can do pressure .
I don ’ t apply to do interdiction of importation of Brazilian goods , because the Brazilians need to live .
I ’ m not applying from this .
But I am applying for the political pressure in companies that invest in Brazil , that they put umbrellas in their investment , that they take care of the environment , that they accept to finance in Brazil if the Brazilian — the Brazilian government respect the minimum of the environment that is not happening in Brazil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must be [ inaudible ] the political and economical pressure .
AMY GOODMAN : Sebastião , can you talk about Messias Martins Kokama , an Indigenous leader in Parque das Tribos , a region of Manaus state made up of 3,000 people from at least 37 different ethnic tribes ?
He died of COVID-19 earlier this month .
This is local Indigenous resident Vanderlecia Ortega dos Santos wearing a mask that says “ Indigenous lives matter.
” AMY GOODMAN : If you can talk about this area , Manaus ?
And talk about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well , and what you ’ re calling for in this letter , signed by 300,000 people , that has gotten a tremendous amount of attention .
Among the people who have signed it are Oprah Winfrey and Madonna , Naomi Campbell , the author Mario Vargas Llosa , the artist Ai Weiwei , actress Meryl Streep , Brad Pitt and others .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , our hope — this letter was not directed exclusive to the president of Brazil .
We directed this letter to the legislative — to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the legislative power and to the judiciary power .
We are applying these three powers to aid us — it ’ s a humanitarian letter .
We are not made any political attack toward the government of Mr. Bolsonaro .
We are applying for a humanitarian actor to protect these tribes .
You see , Amy , in Amazonia in Brazil , we have these Indians , as I said a few minutes ago , that were never contacted .
These Indians are the prehistory of the humanity .
We are a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of — we are living with our past inside Amazonia , and we are in total danger to lose all this population now .
And the coronavirus multiply very fast if they go inside this community .
These communities are linked one to each other , and will be very complicated .
We are applying to protect these more isolated groups , to create a barrier , to not — to take out the invaders and create a barrier , not allow the people come inside this territory for a while , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brazil of this petition , of this letter , was very , very good .
We have all Brazilian press .
We have all the newspapers that gave the notice .
And we are having — we continue to have meetings with the judges , with all the group of the judicial system in Brazil , to see if we can create this humanitarian protection for the Indians .
AMY GOODMAN : Finally , Sebastião , if you could comment more broadly on the future of Brazil ?
You fled Brazil in 1969 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
You went to Paris .
If you can talk about the future of Brazil and also your own time now ?
Just like we here are sheltering in place in the United States , you have , too .
I last saw you years ago when we had this amazing conversation in New Mexico , a public conversation with Eduardo Galeano , as well , you may remember .
And you were talking about your son then , but you ’ re living with your son with Down syndrome .
You ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s a lot of questions there : the future of Brazil to what you ’ re doing now .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , Amy , Brazil , when I was a child in Brazil , we had more than 90 % of Brazilian population that were rural population .
Now we must be more than 90 % urban population .
In very few — in a few decades , four , five , six decades maximum , we made what you in the United States and the Europeans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And we have a lot of problems that were linked to this massive movement of population toward the urban sector in Brazil .
Brazil , we had a dictatorship in Brazil .
Today we have a democratic system .
And we are in evolution .
It ’ s not easy , the things happening in Brazil .
We are one of the biggest countries in the world .
It ’ s one of the fifth population in the world , one of the fifth biggest countries in the world .
Brazil is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a big hope that the disaster that we are living now with Mr. Bolsonaro is just temporary , that this is just a step in our evolution , that we can become a real collaborate socially in the economic country .
AMY GOODMAN : And finally , you ’ re living in Paris right now , sheltering in place like we are , and you spending more time with your son .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Yes , I live here .
We came to Paris , as you said , in 1969 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ were an economist .
I came here to prepare a Ph.D. in economics .
And we stayed here during the dictatorship .
And we have a Down syndrome child that ’ s born here , that grows here .
And I became a photographer here .
I travel all over the world .
We work a lot in Brazil .
The farm of my parents , we transform in a national park .
This farm , the rainforest was completely destroyed .
With Lelia , my wife , we replanted this forest .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We created one of the biggest environmental institutions in Brazil .
And we keep working , we keep going in Brazil , and live in part in France because my profession of photographer .
I developed here , but I keep working environment in Brazil .
We are in Brazil all time .
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you so much for being with us , Sebastião Salgado , world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist , who has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and the people who live there .
Salgado @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2001 , has traveled to more than a hundred countries for his photojournalism , some of which has been compiled in his books , including Migrations : Humanity in Transition and Workers : An Archaeology of the Industrial Age , Gold and Terra : Struggle of the Landless .
We will also link to that conversation that we had together back in 2000 in New Mexico , a conversation I had with Sebastião Salgado and Eduardo Galeano , the great Uruguayan writer , who has since passed .
This is Democracy Now !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to New Zealand .
As the U.S. deals with the greatest catastrophe in history , we look back at one of the earliest lockdowns , that has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus .
It happened in New Zealand under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern .
Stay with us .

As Brazil sees more than 800 deaths in 24 hours and nearly 400,000 confirmed cases, we look at COVID-19’s devastating impact on Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, who are dying at double the rate of the rest of the country. We speak with world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who wrote an open letter to right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who called the virus a “little flu,” to warn him the pandemic is “an extreme threat to their very survival.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York City, one of the epicenters of the pandemic, joined by my co-host Juan González from his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey. New Jersey is the state with the second-highest number of infections. Hi, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Good morning, Amy. And good day to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we begin today’s show with Brazil, where the coronavirus is rapidly spreading, with nearly 400,000 confirmed cases and almost 23,500 deaths, making Brazil’s outbreak the second worst in the world, after the United States. On Monday, Brazil’s daily death toll surpassed the U.S. for the first time, with 807 deaths in 24 hours. President Trump has suspended travel from Brazil to the United States, effective today just before midnight.
Despite this, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has continued to dismiss the severity of the virus. He’s called it a “little flu” and spoke out against lockdowns imposed by governors and mayors. Two health ministers have left his Cabinet in recent weeks over disagreements over the handling of the pandemic.
On Sunday, just as Brazil became the number two hot spot for COVID-19 in the world, Bolsonaro greeted anti-lockdown protesters outside the presidential palace. He wore and then removed a face mask as he mixed with his supporters.
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: [translated] Are you ready? We are in Brasília now to join a spontaneous demonstration of the people for democracy, for freedom, the people who really want Brazil to move forward, freedom above all else.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the spread of coronavirus is devastating Brazil’s Indigenous population, who are dying at double the rate of the rest of the population of Brazil, according to advocates. The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil says there have been at least 980 confirmed cases and 125 deaths of Indigenous people, indicating a mortality rate of 12.6%, compared to 6.4% nationally.
The city of Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon region has been hard hit by the virus, with nearly 1,200 deaths. Last week, the mayor of Manaus accused the government of Jair Bolsonaro of intentionally allowing Indigenous communities to die of COVID-19.
MAYOR ARTHUR VIRGÍLIO NETO: [translated] I fear genocide, and I want to denounce this to the whole world. We have here a government that does not care about the lives of Indigenous people. … It is a crime against humanity that is being practiced here in my state, here in my region.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Paris, France, where we’re joined by the world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado. He has also warned that the Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face genocide if the Brazilian government does not take steps to protect them from the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this month, Sebastião Salgado wrote an open letter to President Bolsonaro warning that the pandemic represents an extreme threat to their very survival. The petition has gathered nearly 300,000 signatures. Sebastião Salgado has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and its people.
And it is an honor to welcome you to Democracy Now!, Sebastião. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you talk about what you see happening in your home country, in Brazil, right now?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, Brazil now is living a very difficult moment. We have a central power, held by President Bolsonaro, that is not acting in the normal way that every country act around the world toward the coronavirus. And we have the governors of the states, the mayors of the big cities, that are taking care, putting people in quarantine. And Mr. Bolsonaro is working in the opposite way. And that’s creating an amazing destabilization of the country.
I am very concerned with the Indigenous community, mostly in the Amazonia. I just finished a bond of work where I spent seven years in Amazon. And these Indians have no immunological protection against the diseases that come out of the forest. The government knows this. Everyone knows this. And we are not taking care. We must take care to protect these Indians. The contrary will be real genocide.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you have said in the past that you believe that the virus is a product of the destruction of the planet’s environment. Could you elaborate on that?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: No, ask me again. What’s the question, exactly?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That in the past you have said that the coronavirus pandemic is, in part, a product of the destruction of the environment around the planet.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, you see, we are destroying every portion of the ecosystem protectors of this planet. And we are putting the diseases, that will be possible to stay inside the protected environment, out of the environment. And that’s a very difficult moment that we are living. Probably, what is happening now in all the planet, around the world, will bring us to mind more about the environment, to come back to our planet, to protect what we have, the pristine, and to see how we can rebuild the ecosystem in order that we can live in peace with our planet, is what happens everywhere around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you — I wanted to turn to the chief of Tres Unidos. It’s an Indigenous village in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, that I’m sure you know well, where the coronavirus infected people despite a lockdown to all outside visitors. At least 16 out of the village’s 106 people have tested positive for COVID-19. The virus likely came up the Rio Negro river from Manaus, which is five hours away. This is the village chief, Waldemir da Silva.
CHIEF WALDEMIR DA SILVA: [translated] This virus is treacherous. It came quietly, as if carried on the wind. We started getting ill and thought it was a bad cold, but people got worse, even after taking medicine made at home and taking antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medicine. We managed to treat the illness in a careful way.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk, Sebastião Salgado, about how the Indigenous people are now dealing, and how the government is dealing with them? I mean, you have this battle going on in Manaus with the mayor calling the president stupid. If you can talk about the history of the way Indigenous people are dealt with in the Amazon?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, when Brazil was discovered, today the scientists can calculate that the population of Amazonian — Brazilian Amazonian ecosystem, we had about 5 million people living there. With the diseases come from outside, a lot of Indians disappeared. Today we have just a little bit more than 300,000 Indians living in Amazonia.
A lot of them are close to the cities, as Manaus, as Barcelos, São Gabriel, as you said. These Indians are contacted a long time, and they have more anticorps. They are more adapted for the world, human world. But one very big portion of the Brazilian tribes are quite isolated tribes. You see only Brazilian Amazonians who have a little bit more that 100 groups that were never contacted. They are completely isolated Indians. And the diseases coming inside of Amazonia can hit them.
You see, what is happening now, the danger is that Mr. Bolsonaro took all the filters to protect the ecosystem, eliminating all the institutions, weakening the institutions that protected the Amazon’s ecosystem. And he took out most of the budget of the National Foundation of the Indians. And what happens? After a while, the Amazonian protected land of the Indian territories started to be invaded by loggers, by gold diggers, by religious groups. Only in Yanomami territory in Amazonia, we have today, in this moment that we’re speaking, more than 22,000 gold diggers that are invading the territory. And these people are carrying the disease inside.
What we apply with this letter to the president of Brazil is to stop, to push out these invaders, to create a kind of barrier, sanitary barrier. People come inside the Indian territory in order to protect these tribes — to the contrary, we’ll lose them. They will disappear. They have no anticorps, antibody, to protect themselves against this disease.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, what does it mean to have a president like Jair Bolsonaro, who basically ridicules science, doesn’t pay attention to his own health, public health, officials? Very similar to some of the stuff that’s happening here in the United States with President Trump, but even worse. What does it mean, not only for the Amazon and the Indigenous population, but for all Brazilians?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, the big problem with President Bolsonaro, that he is destroying the Brazilian institutions. Brazil had very good institutions, cultural, health institutions, the protection of Indian territory. He’s extremist, rightist president. He is destroying these institutions. He has tried to make the Indians, that live in their territory, that are hunters, that are gatherers — they want to transform them in peasants. It’s incredible. It’s incompatible. And he is not respecting all these territories, protected by law. And that is happening every level of the Brazilian society. We are living a very difficult moment in Brazil.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you could talk, Sebastião Salgado, on the attacks on the truth, both from the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who is a very close ally of the president of the United States, President Trump. Both of them diminish, to the end, this coronavirus, the president of Brazil, of course, calling it a “little flu,” President Trump saying it would come to nothing, 15 cases and then zero, as opposed to what so many of the scientific advisers around him were telling him.
Now, you are famous in your work for photographing, documenting the truth of people on the ground all over the world, particularly workers, Indigenous people — your famous book, Migrations: Humanity in Transition, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, Gold and Terra: Struggle of the Landless. Can you talk about this phenomenon that we see, if you can call lies that, the thousands of lies told by these men, that clearly take lives, and particularly of the most vulnerable?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, we have countries. We have very poor population, countries with — more populated than Brazil, than the United States, if you take India, if you take Indonesia. These countries, they take care of the population. They had one quarantine, and they are coming out now from the quarantine with a lot of deaths, but not enormous amount as the United States, as the Brazil.
It’s exactly these two presidents that don’t care about the people. They care about money, about rentability. I put myself the question: if you are a government? We are a government for the people, your nation, your country. You are not a president just for the profit. And that is the big problem happens in this moment.
The United States has the biggest number of death before in the world by coronavirus. You are just today cross 100,000 deaths in the United States. In Brazil, because the figures are not good, we are told that you have more than 20,000 — just more than 20,000 people, because the ones that die inside the hospitals that we can identify that died by coronavirus. But the people that are dying in the slums, the people that are in the very poor areas, we don’t know of about what they are dying. The scientists in Brazil calculated that we must still have a minimum nine times more case and deaths in a Brazil than just the official figures that is presented.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you mentioned the thousands of gold diggers that are invading the Amazon, but there are also major multinational companies, major Brazilian companies, that are also benefiting from these policies of Jair Bolsonaro. Could you talk about who some of these companies are, so that people know?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, the companies, yes, but, you see, Bolsonaro was elected by the agrobusiness in Brazil and by the sectarian religions — religious groups. And he has opened the Amazonian territory mostly for farmers, for loggers, for gold diggers. You see, we spoke a lot last year about the fires in Amazonia in last July, August. This year will be worse. We are destroying the forest in a very high speed. And while destroying everywhere around Amazonia, these farmers, they are growing the space by the incentive of the president.
The companies, of course that they are there. They are trying to get what they can have in this government. But the big problem is the populism of Mr. Bolsonaro, that he wanted to have voters that have his mind in the new elections. And he’s giving Amazonia for the people that want to invade it. And you have hundreds of thousands invading in Amazonia. As I said a few minutes ago, only gold diggers inside Yanomami territory, we have more than 22,000. But you have loggers going inside everywhere, farmers destroying the forest everywhere. It’s a general problem, and it’s not just specific of big companies. They are also inside of the problem. But the biggest problem is the populism of the president.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this Reuters report that says that the Brazilian environment minister, Ricardo Salles, called on the government to push through further deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus, in a video the Supreme Court ordered released? The video of the ministers’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether President Bolsonaro interfered in appointing leaders of the Federal Police for personal gain. During the meeting, other ministers spoke, including Salles, with environmental groups saying his remarks prove Bolsonaro government is systematically seeking to dismantle environmental protections.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, we have enough happened in Brazil to have an impeachment of this president. Everything that the ministers are doing, they are doing in the way to take the power. They are doing every weekend, in the meetings that they do in Brazil, a proposition to have the power in their hands, out of the democratic way. They are applying for a coup d’état. And, you see, we are living a difficult moment, because how you can do an impeachment during this big problem of coronavirus? Who will you be putting in place? How will you be having new elections in a moment like this? And they are profiting. They are taking profit for themselves in order to made more large their power.
The example you just gave a few minutes ago, the minister of environment, Mr. Salles, doing the proposition that just in this moment that you are completely toward the coronavirus was the moment to push all the destruction of the law system that protects the Indian community, that protect the environment, that protect the destruction of the rainforest. He tried to destroy all this now in order to create a total destabilization in the order in Brazil.
Brazil has a fantastic system of law. The National Foundation of Indians is one amazing institution. Who directs the National Foundation of Indians now? It’s no more an anthropologist like always was, a scientist like always was. Now it’s a cop. It’s a policeman that is directing the National Foundation of Indians. National Foundation of Indians now is not acting more for the Indians; they are acting for the farmers. The order is completely reversed in Brazil.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you’ve said, clearly, that the key role that farmers are playing, Brazil is a big exporter of agricultural products. What kind of pressure could governments around the world exercise on Brazil? Do you support sanctions against the Bolsonaro government to make them take the necessary steps to protect Indigenous communities?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: I believe that the political sanctions, the political pressure. Brazil is very sensitive for outside of the country. Brazil is a big exporter of raw material. And I believe that we can do pressure. I don’t apply to do interdiction of importation of Brazilian goods, because the Brazilians need to live. I’m not applying from this. But I am applying for the political pressure in companies that invest in Brazil, that they put umbrellas in their investment, that they take care of the environment, that they accept to finance in Brazil if the Brazilian — the Brazilian government respect the minimum of the environment that is not happening in Brazil now. I believe that the pressure must be [inaudible] the political and economical pressure.
AMY GOODMAN: Sebastião, can you talk about Messias Martins Kokama, an Indigenous leader in Parque das Tribos, a region of Manaus state made up of 3,000 people from at least 37 different ethnic tribes? He died of COVID-19 earlier this month. This is local Indigenous resident Vanderlecia Ortega dos Santos wearing a mask that says “Indigenous lives matter.”
VANDERLECIA ORTEGA DOS SANTOS: [translated] Here, we still have this dream of quality education and health, because we have not yet been provided with assistance. His death is also representative of what’s lacking, a lack of healthcare, of what’s missing for those Indigenous who live in the city.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this area, Manaus? And talk about what has happened to the people, as well, and what you’re calling for in this letter, signed by 300,000 people, that has gotten a tremendous amount of attention. Among the people who have signed it are Oprah Winfrey and Madonna, Naomi Campbell, the author Mario Vargas Llosa, the artist Ai Weiwei, actress Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and others.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, our hope — this letter was not directed exclusive to the president of Brazil. We directed this letter to the legislative — to the executive power, the president, to the legislative power and to the judiciary power. We are applying these three powers to aid us — it’s a humanitarian letter. We are not made any political attack toward the government of Mr. Bolsonaro. We are applying for a humanitarian actor to protect these tribes.
You see, Amy, in Amazonia in Brazil, we have these Indians, as I said a few minutes ago, that were never contacted. These Indians are the prehistory of the humanity. We are a species that are living with the prehistory of — we are living with our past inside Amazonia, and we are in total danger to lose all this population now. And the coronavirus multiply very fast if they go inside this community. These communities are linked one to each other, and will be very complicated. We are applying to protect these more isolated groups, to create a barrier, to not — to take out the invaders and create a barrier, not allow the people come inside this territory for a while, to protect this population.
The reply in Brazil of this petition, of this letter, was very, very good. We have all Brazilian press. We have all the newspapers that gave the notice. And we are having — we continue to have meetings with the judges, with all the group of the judicial system in Brazil, to see if we can create this humanitarian protection for the Indians.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Sebastião, if you could comment more broadly on the future of Brazil? You fled Brazil in 1969. You fled the military dictatorship there. You went to Paris. If you can talk about the future of Brazil and also your own time now? Just like we here are sheltering in place in the United States, you have, too. I last saw you years ago when we had this amazing conversation in New Mexico, a public conversation with Eduardo Galeano, as well, you may remember. And you were talking about your son then, but you’re living with your son with Down syndrome. You’ve written about that, as well. It’s a lot of questions there: the future of Brazil to what you’re doing now.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, Amy, Brazil, when I was a child in Brazil, we had more than 90% of Brazilian population that were rural population. Now we must be more than 90% urban population. In very few — in a few decades, four, five, six decades maximum, we made what you in the United States and the Europeans made 300, 400 years to urbanize. And we have a lot of problems that were linked to this massive movement of population toward the urban sector in Brazil.
Brazil, we had a dictatorship in Brazil. Today we have a democratic system. And we are in evolution. It’s not easy, the things happening in Brazil. We are one of the biggest countries in the world. It’s one of the fifth population in the world, one of the fifth biggest countries in the world. Brazil is an important country. And I have a big hope that the disaster that we are living now with Mr. Bolsonaro is just temporary, that this is just a step in our evolution, that we can become a real collaborate socially in the economic country.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you’re living in Paris right now, sheltering in place like we are, and you spending more time with your son.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Yes, I live here. We came to Paris, as you said, in 1969. I came here in this time I were an economist. I came here to prepare a Ph.D. in economics. And we stayed here during the dictatorship. And we have a Down syndrome child that’s born here, that grows here. And I became a photographer here. I travel all over the world. We work a lot in Brazil. The farm of my parents, we transform in a national park. This farm, the rainforest was completely destroyed. With Lelia, my wife, we replanted this forest. We planted now more than 2,700,000 trees. We created one of the biggest environmental institutions in Brazil. And we keep working, we keep going in Brazil, and live in part in France because my profession of photographer. I developed here, but I keep working environment in Brazil. We are in Brazil all time.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Sebastião Salgado, world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist, who has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and the people who live there. Salgado has been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador since 2001, has traveled to more than a hundred countries for his photojournalism, some of which has been compiled in his books, including Migrations: Humanity in Transition and Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, Gold and Terra: Struggle of the Landless.
We will also link to that conversation that we had together back in 2000 in New Mexico, a conversation I had with Sebastião Salgado and Eduardo Galeano, the great Uruguayan writer, who has since passed.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to New Zealand. As the U.S. deals with the greatest catastrophe in history, we look back at one of the earliest lockdowns, that has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus. It happened in New Zealand under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Stay with us.


truthout--2020-05-26--COVID Isn’t a “Peacemaker.” Expect the Pentagon to Modify Warfare — Not End It.

Covid-19 , an ongoing global human tragedy , may have at least one silver lining .
It has led millions of people to question America ’ s most malignant policies at home and abroad .
Regarding Washington ’ s war policies abroad , there ’ s been speculation that the coronavirus might , in the end , put a dent in such conflicts , if not prove an unintended peacemaker — and with good reason , since a cash-flush Pentagon has proven impotent as a virus challenger .
Meanwhile , it ’ s become ever more obvious that , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been invested in chronically underfunded disease control agencies , this country ’ s response to the coronavirus crisis might have been so much better .
Curiously enough , though , despite President Trump ’ s periodic complaints about America ’ s “ ridiculous endless wars , ” his administration has proven remarkably unwilling to agree to even a modest rollback in U.S. imperial ambitions .
In some theaters of operation — Iraq , Iran , Venezuela , and Somalia above all — Washington has even escalated its militarism in a fit of macabre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all that , this is an obvious moment to reflect on whether America ’ s nearly two-decade-old “ war on terror ” ( perhaps better thought of as a set of wars of terror ) might actually end .
Predictions are tricky matters .
Nonetheless , the spread of Covid-19 has offered a rare opportunity to raise questions , challenge frameworks , and critically consider what “ ending ” war might even mean for this country .
In some sense , our post-9/11 wars have been gradually subsiding for some time now .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ troops deployed to the Middle East has actually risen in the Trump years , those numbers pale when compared to the U.S. commitment at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars .
The number of American soldiers taking fire overseas has , in recent years , dropped to levels unthinkably low for those of us who entered the military around the time of the 9/11 attacks .
That said , in these years , even unwinnable , unnecessary wars have proven remarkably unendable .
For evidence of this , look no further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graham of South Carolina .
Given the lack of success of the various campaigns run by U.S. Africa Command , or AFRICOM , across that continent and the Pentagon ’ s stated desire to once again pivot to great-power competition with China and Russia , just before the pandemic arrived on our shores Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced plans for a modest troop drawdown in parts of Africa .
Appalled by even such minor retrenchments , Graham , leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers , reportedly confronted Esper and threatened to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the secretary downsize U.S. forces there .
Less than two months later , AFRICOM declared a public-health emergency at the largest of this country ’ s African bases in Djibouti amid concerns that even far smaller , more spartan American facilities on that continent lacked the requisite medical equipment to fight the spreading virus .
Whether the pandemic facilitates Esper ’ s contemplated reductions remains to be seen .
( A mid-April AFRICOM press release offering reassurance that the “ command ’ s partnership endures during Covid-19 ” doesn ’ t bode well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the disease will surely have some effect .
Just as quarantine and social-distancing measures have transformed people ’ s lives and work in the U.S. , Washington ’ s war fighting will undoubtedly have to adapt , too .
Minimally , expect the Pentagon to wage wars ( largely hidden from public view ) that require ever fewer of its troops to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with allies and fewer still to die doing so .
Expect Washington to mandate and the Pentagon to practice what might increasingly be thought of as social-distancing-style warfare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teams .
Just as senior leaders constantly counseled us junior officers in the bad old days to “ put an Iraqi face between you and the problem , ” so today ’ s and tomorrow ’ s troopers will do their best to place drones or ( less precious ) proxy lives between themselves and enemies of any sort .
Meanwhile , the already immense chasm between the American public and the wars being fought in its name is only likely to widen .
What may emerge from these years is a version @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still unending , it may no longer pass for war in the classic sense .
To grasp how we ’ ve made it to a social-distancing version of war , it ’ s necessary to go back to the earlier part of this century , years before a pandemic like Covid-19 was on anyone ’ s radar screen .
When , as a young Army lieutenant and later captain , I joined what were then called “ surges ” in Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2011 , conventional foot soldiers like me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The doctrine of counterinsurgency , or COIN , then ruled the Pentagon ’ s intellectual roost .
The trick , so key commanders believed , was to flood the war zone with infantry brigades , securing the conflict ’ s “ center of gravity “ : the locals .
Behind the scenes , Special Operations units were already taking on ever-larger roles .
Nevertheless , there were ample “ boots-on-the-ground ” and relatively high casualties in conventional units like mine .
Times have changed .
Full-scale invasions and long-term occupations , along with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago fell out of favor .
By Barack Obama ’ s second term , such unpopular and costly campaigns were passé .
Even so , rather than rethink the efficacy of imperial interventionism , Washington simply substituted new methods masquerading as the latest strategy of success .
By the time Donald Trump delivered his “ American carnage ” inaugural address , the burdens of Washington war-making had flipped .
When I served in Iraq and Afghanistan , about half of the Army ’ s 40-odd combat brigades were deployed in those two regional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remainder were training for their next rotations and already on the “ patch chart ” where each unit ’ s logo indicated its future scheduled deployment .
This was the life on the conveyor belt of American war that a generation of soldiers like me lived .
By January 2017 , however , the number of conventional brigades deployed in the war on terror could be counted on one hand .
For instance , the Army ’ s most recent round of deployments , announced this April , included just six brigades .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , among the ground forces , one was headed for Europe , another for Kuwait .
Only two ground combat brigades , in other words , were slated for Iraq , Syria , or Afghanistan and one of them was a reconstituted Security Force Assistance Brigade — essentially a skeleton crew of officers and noncommissioned officers meant to train and advise local troops .
Meanwhile , the Pentagon ’ s Special Operations forces , which had by then crested above 70,000 , a figure so large as to raise questions about how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ onto that conveyor belt .
America ’ s commandos now bear most of the burden of forever-war deployments and ( modest ) casualties .
When the virus struck , the Pentagon had long been developing a bifurcated military machine with two separate and largely discrete roles .
The commandos — with key assists from drones , CIA paramilitaries , local proxies , and private security contractors — continued to fight the lingering war on terror .
They were generally handling the lethal end of American war , calling in airstrikes , while training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often abusive indigenous forces .
Conventional active-duty brigades — reduced to 32 — were largely given quite a different task : to prepare for a future revamped Cold War with Russia and , increasingly , China .
That crew — infantry , armored brigades , and Navy carrier squadrons — had the “ new , ” purportedly vital mission of checking , containing , or challenging Moscow in Eastern Europe and Beijing in the South China Sea .
Senior generals and admirals were comfortable with such Cold War-style tasks ( most having been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , viewed from Russia or China , such missions looked increasingly provocative as ever more American riflemen , tanks , and warships regularly deployed to former Soviet republics or , in the case of the Navy , to Western Pacific waters that abut China , making the risk of accidental escalation seem ever more conceivable .
Meanwhile , those shadowy special operators were directing the ongoing shooting wars and other conflicts , which , though given precious little attention in this country , seemed patently counterproductive , not to say unwinnable .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such unending brushfire conflicts , along with a new great power build-up , were the gift that just kept giving , a two-tiered modus operandi for endless war-funding .
Thought of a certain way , American war will , in the future , increasingly be waged in cold blood .
While Covid-19 spreads virally through respiratory droplets , the disease of endless war continues to be blood-borne ( even if ever less of it is American blood ) , ensuring that the social-distancing-style combat of the future could become even more of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the preferred post-pandemic warriors of that future may not be uniformed soldiers , special or otherwise , or necessarily American — or in some cases ( think drones and future robotic weaponry ) human .
U.S. war fighting has already been increasingly privatized .
Only recently , Erik Prince , the former CEO of the private military company Blackwater , an influential Trump ally as well as the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos , pitched the president on a far-fetched plan to privatize the whole Afghan War .
The Donald passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was even considered at such a high level suggests the role of private contractors and soldiers of fortune in future American war-making may be here to stay .
In that sense , the recent fiasco of an armed raid led by former Green Berets-turned-mercenaries and aimed at the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro may prove as much a foreboding glimpse of the future as it was a farce .
When uniformed U.S. service members are deemed necessary , the trend toward using just handfuls of them to run an increasingly proxy-war machine is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fit well with public-health guidelines limiting gatherings to 10 people .
For instance , drone ground control stations , essentially mobile trailers , require only a pair of operators .
Similarly , the military ’ s newest cyberwar branch ( formed in 2015 ) may not be made up of the hackers of Donald Trump ’ s imagination ( “ somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds ” ) , but they , too , will work in tiny teams abroad , and at a great distance .
Pushing those guidelines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forces A-Teams of 12 Green Berets each , which may prove to be core building blocks for a new American version of post-pandemic warfare .
Most disturbingly , American social-distancing ways of war will likely operate smoothly enough without suppressing terrorist groups any more successfully than the previous versions of forever war did , or solving local ethno-religious conflicts , or improving the lives of Africans or Arabs .
Like their predecessors , future American wars in cold blood will fail , but with efficiency and , from the point of view of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , is the deep and tragic paradox of it all .
As the coronavirus should have reminded us , the true existential threats to the United States ( and humanity ) — disease pandemics , a potential nuclear Armageddon , and climate change — will be impervious to Washington ’ s usual military tools .
No matter the number of warships , infantry and armored brigades , or commando teams , none of them will stand a chance against lethal viruses , rising tides , or nuclear fallout .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of tanks , aircraft carriers ( themselves petri-dishes for any virus around ) , and towers of cash ( sorely needed elsewhere ) will , in the future , be monuments to an era of American delusion .
A rational ( or moral ) system with any semblance of genuine legislative oversight or citizen input might respond to such conspicuous realities by rethinking the national security paradigm itself and bringing the war state to a screeching halt .
Unfortunately , if America ’ s imperial past is any precedent , what lies ahead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war to the end of time .
Still , Covid-19 may prove the death knell of American war as classically imagined .
Future combat , even if broadly directed from Washington , may be only vaguely “ American.
” Few uniformed citizens may take part in it and even fewer die from it .
During the prolonged endgame of wars that don ’ t really end , U.S. military fatalities will certainly continue to occur in occasional ones and twos — often in far-flung places where few Americans even realize their country is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ troops killed in an ambush in Niger in 2018 and the Army soldier and two private contractors killed in Kenya earlier this year ) .
Such minuscule American losses will actually offer Washington more leeway to quietly ramp-up its drone attacks , air power , raiding , and killing , as has already happened in Somalia , with assumedly ever less oversight or attention at home .
As in the Horn of Africa of late , the Pentagon won ’ t even have to bother to justify escalations in its war-making .
Which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tree falls in the forest and no one is there… ” conundrum : if the U.S. is killing brown folks around the world , but hardly anyone notices , is the country still at war ?
Moving forward , policymakers and the public alike may treat war with the same degree of entitlement and abstraction as ordering items from Amazon ( especially during a pandemic ) : Click a button , expect a package at the door posthaste , and pay scant thought to what that click-request set in motion or the sacrifice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in war , one thing at least stays constant : lots of someones get killed .
The American people may leave their wars to unrepresentative professional “ volunteers ” led by an unchecked imperial presidency that increasingly outsources them to machines , mercenaries , and local militias .
One thing is , however , guaranteed : some poor souls will be at the other end of those bombsights and rifle barrels .
In contemporary battles , it ’ s already exceptionally rare that a uniformed American is on that receiving end .
Almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service members have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan combined .
Yet many thousands of locals continue to die there .
No one wants U.S. troops to die , but there ’ s something obscene — and morally troubling — about the staggering casualty disparity implicit in the developing twenty-first-century American way of war , the one that , in a Covid-19 world , is increasingly being fought in a socially-distanced way .
Taken to its not-unimaginable extreme , Americans should prepare themselves for a future in which their government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without a single service member dying in combat .
After the pandemic , in other words , talk of “ ending ” this country ’ s forever wars may prove little more than an exercise in semantics .

Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad.
Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not prove an unintended peacemaker — and with good reason, since a cash-flush Pentagon has proven impotent as a virus challenger. Meanwhile, it’s become ever more obvious that, had a fraction of “defense” spending been invested in chronically underfunded disease control agencies, this country’s response to the coronavirus crisis might have been so much better.
Curiously enough, though, despite President Trump’s periodic complaints about America’s “ridiculous endless wars,” his administration has proven remarkably unwilling to agree to even a modest rollback in U.S. imperial ambitions. In some theaters of operation — Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Somalia above all — Washington has even escalated its militarism in a fit of macabre, largely under-the-radar pandemic opportunism.
For all that, this is an obvious moment to reflect on whether America’s nearly two-decade-old “war on terror” (perhaps better thought of as a set of wars of terror) might actually end. Predictions are tricky matters. Nonetheless, the spread of Covid-19 has offered a rare opportunity to raise questions, challenge frameworks, and critically consider what “ending” war might even mean for this country.
In some sense, our post-9/11 wars have been gradually subsiding for some time now. Even though the total number of U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East has actually risen in the Trump years, those numbers pale when compared to the U.S. commitment at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The number of American soldiers taking fire overseas has, in recent years, dropped to levels unthinkably low for those of us who entered the military around the time of the 9/11 attacks.
That said, in these years, even unwinnable, unnecessary wars have proven remarkably unendable. For evidence of this, look no further than that perennial war hawk Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Given the lack of success of the various campaigns run by U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, across that continent and the Pentagon’s stated desire to once again pivot to great-power competition with China and Russia, just before the pandemic arrived on our shores Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced plans for a modest troop drawdown in parts of Africa. Appalled by even such minor retrenchments, Graham, leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers, reportedly confronted Esper and threatened to make his “life hell,” should the secretary downsize U.S. forces there.
Less than two months later, AFRICOM declared a public-health emergency at the largest of this country’s African bases in Djibouti amid concerns that even far smaller, more spartan American facilities on that continent lacked the requisite medical equipment to fight the spreading virus. Whether the pandemic facilitates Esper’s contemplated reductions remains to be seen. (A mid-April AFRICOM press release offering reassurance that the “command’s partnership endures during Covid-19” doesn’t bode well for such a transformation.)
Still, the disease will surely have some effect. Just as quarantine and social-distancing measures have transformed people’s lives and work in the U.S., Washington’s war fighting will undoubtedly have to adapt, too. Minimally, expect the Pentagon to wage wars (largely hidden from public view) that require ever fewer of its troops to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with allies and fewer still to die doing so. Expect Washington to mandate and the Pentagon to practice what might increasingly be thought of as social-distancing-style warfare.
Soldiers will operate in ever smaller teams. Just as senior leaders constantly counseled us junior officers in the bad old days to “put an Iraqi face between you and the problem,” so today’s and tomorrow’s troopers will do their best to place drones or (less precious) proxy lives between themselves and enemies of any sort. Meanwhile, the already immense chasm between the American public and the wars being fought in its name is only likely to widen. What may emerge from these years is a version of war so unrecognizable that, while still unending, it may no longer pass for war in the classic sense.
To grasp how we’ve made it to a social-distancing version of war, it’s necessary to go back to the earlier part of this century, years before a pandemic like Covid-19 was on anyone’s radar screen.
American Wars Don’t End, They Evolve
When, as a young Army lieutenant and later captain, I joined what were then called “surges” in Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2011, conventional foot soldiers like me were the main game in town. The doctrine of counterinsurgency, or COIN, then ruled the Pentagon’s intellectual roost. The trick, so key commanders believed, was to flood the war zone with infantry brigades, securing the conflict’s “center of gravity“: the locals. Behind the scenes, Special Operations units were already taking on ever-larger roles. Nevertheless, there were ample “boots-on-the-ground” and relatively high casualties in conventional units like mine.
Times have changed. Full-scale invasions and long-term occupations, along with COIN as a war-on-terror cure-all, long ago fell out of favor. By Barack Obama’s second term, such unpopular and costly campaigns were passé. Even so, rather than rethink the efficacy of imperial interventionism, Washington simply substituted new methods masquerading as the latest strategy of success.
By the time Donald Trump delivered his “American carnage” inaugural address, the burdens of Washington war-making had flipped. When I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, about half of the Army’s 40-odd combat brigades were deployed in those two regional theaters at any given time. The remainder were training for their next rotations and already on the “patch chart” where each unit’s logo indicated its future scheduled deployment. This was the life on the conveyor belt of American war that a generation of soldiers like me lived. By January 2017, however, the number of conventional brigades deployed in the war on terror could be counted on one hand.
For instance, the Army’s most recent round of deployments, announced this April, included just six brigades. Of these, two were aviation units and, among the ground forces, one was headed for Europe, another for Kuwait. Only two ground combat brigades, in other words, were slated for Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan and one of them was a reconstituted Security Force Assistance Brigade — essentially a skeleton crew of officers and noncommissioned officers meant to train and advise local troops. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces, which had by then crested above 70,000, a figure so large as to raise questions about how “special” they remained, stepped onto that conveyor belt. America’s commandos now bear most of the burden of forever-war deployments and (modest) casualties.
A Two-Tier War-Making System
When the virus struck, the Pentagon had long been developing a bifurcated military machine with two separate and largely discrete roles. The commandos — with key assists from drones, CIA paramilitaries, local proxies, and private security contractors — continued to fight the lingering war on terror. They were generally handling the lethal end of American war, calling in airstrikes, while training, advising, and sometimes even leading often abusive indigenous forces.
Conventional active-duty brigades — reduced to 32 — were largely given quite a different task: to prepare for a future revamped Cold War with Russia and, increasingly, China. That crew — infantry, armored brigades, and Navy carrier squadrons — had the “new,” purportedly vital mission of checking, containing, or challenging Moscow in Eastern Europe and Beijing in the South China Sea. Senior generals and admirals were comfortable with such Cold War-style tasks (most having been commissioned in the mid-1980s). However, viewed from Russia or China, such missions looked increasingly provocative as ever more American riflemen, tanks, and warships regularly deployed to former Soviet republics or, in the case of the Navy, to Western Pacific waters that abut China, making the risk of accidental escalation seem ever more conceivable.
Meanwhile, those shadowy special operators were directing the ongoing shooting wars and other conflicts, which, though given precious little attention in this country, seemed patently counterproductive, not to say unwinnable. For the Pentagon and military-industrial-complex profiteers, however, such unending brushfire conflicts, along with a new great power build-up, were the gift that just kept giving, a two-tiered modus operandi for endless war-funding.
Enter the coronavirus.
In Cold Blood
Thought of a certain way, American war will, in the future, increasingly be waged in cold blood. While Covid-19 spreads virally through respiratory droplets, the disease of endless war continues to be blood-borne (even if ever less of it is American blood), ensuring that the social-distancing-style combat of the future could become even more of an abstraction here.
In addition, the preferred post-pandemic warriors of that future may not be uniformed soldiers, special or otherwise, or necessarily American — or in some cases (think drones and future robotic weaponry) human. U.S. war fighting has already been increasingly privatized. Only recently, Erik Prince, the former CEO of the private military company Blackwater, an influential Trump ally as well as the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, pitched the president on a far-fetched plan to privatize the whole Afghan War.
The Donald passed on the offer, but that it was even considered at such a high level suggests the role of private contractors and soldiers of fortune in future American war-making may be here to stay. In that sense, the recent fiasco of an armed raid led by former Green Berets-turned-mercenaries and aimed at the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro may prove as much a foreboding glimpse of the future as it was a farce.
When uniformed U.S. service members are deemed necessary, the trend toward using just handfuls of them to run an increasingly proxy-war machine is likely to accelerate. Such teams will fit well with public-health guidelines limiting gatherings to 10 people. For instance, drone ground control stations, essentially mobile trailers, require only a pair of operators. Similarly, the military’s newest cyberwar branch (formed in 2015) may not be made up of the hackers of Donald Trump’s imagination (“somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”), but they, too, will work in tiny teams abroad, and at a great distance. Pushing those guidelines just a tad will be Army Special Forces A-Teams of 12 Green Berets each, which may prove to be core building blocks for a new American version of post-pandemic warfare.
Most disturbingly, American social-distancing ways of war will likely operate smoothly enough without suppressing terrorist groups any more successfully than the previous versions of forever war did, or solving local ethno-religious conflicts, or improving the lives of Africans or Arabs. Like their predecessors, future American wars in cold blood will fail, but with efficiency and, from the point of view of the military-industrial complex, lucratively.
Here, of course, is the deep and tragic paradox of it all. As the coronavirus should have reminded us, the true existential threats to the United States (and humanity) — disease pandemics, a potential nuclear Armageddon, and climate change — will be impervious to Washington’s usual military tools. No matter the number of warships, infantry and armored brigades, or commando teams, none of them will stand a chance against lethal viruses, rising tides, or nuclear fallout. As such, the Pentagon’s plethora of tanks, aircraft carriers (themselves petri-dishes for any virus around), and towers of cash (sorely needed elsewhere) will, in the future, be monuments to an era of American delusion.
A rational (or moral) system with any semblance of genuine legislative oversight or citizen input might respond to such conspicuous realities by rethinking the national security paradigm itself and bringing the war state to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, if America’s imperial past is any precedent, what lies ahead is the further evolution of twenty-first-century imperial war to the end of time.
Post-Pandemic War
Still, Covid-19 may prove the death knell of American war as classically imagined. Future combat, even if broadly directed from Washington, may be only vaguely “American.” Few uniformed citizens may take part in it and even fewer die from it.
During the prolonged endgame of wars that don’t really end, U.S. military fatalities will certainly continue to occur in occasional ones and twos — often in far-flung places where few Americans even realize their country is fighting (as with those four U.S. troops killed in an ambush in Niger in 2018 and the Army soldier and two private contractors killed in Kenya earlier this year). Such minuscule American losses will actually offer Washington more leeway to quietly ramp-up its drone attacks, air power, raiding, and killing, as has already happened in Somalia, with assumedly ever less oversight or attention at home. As in the Horn of Africa of late, the Pentagon won’t even have to bother to justify escalations in its war-making. Which raises a sort of “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…” conundrum: if the U.S. is killing brown folks around the world, but hardly anyone notices, is the country still at war?
Moving forward, policymakers and the public alike may treat war with the same degree of entitlement and abstraction as ordering items from Amazon (especially during a pandemic): Click a button, expect a package at the door posthaste, and pay scant thought to what that click-request set in motion or the sacrifice required to do the deed.
Only in war, one thing at least stays constant: lots of someones get killed. The American people may leave their wars to unrepresentative professional “volunteers” led by an unchecked imperial presidency that increasingly outsources them to machines, mercenaries, and local militias. One thing is, however, guaranteed: some poor souls will be at the other end of those bombsights and rifle barrels.
In contemporary battles, it’s already exceptionally rare that a uniformed American is on that receiving end. Almost midway through 2020, only eight U.S. service members have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yet many thousands of locals continue to die there. No one wants U.S. troops to die, but there’s something obscene — and morally troubling — about the staggering casualty disparity implicit in the developing twenty-first-century American way of war, the one that, in a Covid-19 world, is increasingly being fought in a socially-distanced way.
Taken to its not-unimaginable extreme, Americans should prepare themselves for a future in which their government kills and destroys on a global scale without a single service member dying in combat. After the pandemic, in other words, talk of “ending” this country’s forever wars may prove little more than an exercise in semantics.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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truthout--2020-05-26--Trump Surprises GOP With Threat to Pull RNC Convention Out of North Carolina

One of President Donald Trump ’ s many targets on Memorial Day Weekend has been North Carolina Gov .
Roy Cooper , who he says is moving too slowly on the state ’ s reopening .
Railing against Cooper on Twitter , Trump threatened to pull the 2020 Republican National Conventional out of Charlotte — and CNN is reporting that Republicans involved in the planning of the convention were “ completely blindsided ” by Trump ’ s threat .
Trump tweeted , “ Unfortunately , Democrat Governor , @ RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attendance in the Arena .
In other words , we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space.
” The president also asserted that Republicans planning to attend the Republican National Convention “ must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied.
” “ If not , we will be reluctantly forced to find , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it brings , another Republican National Convention site , ” Trump tweeted .
“ This is not something I want to do .
Thank you , and I LOVE the people of North Carolina !
” According to CNN , Ronna McDaniel , chair of the Republican National Committee , said that the RNC is moving “ full steam ahead ” with the convention — although she stressed that it must be an in-person event .
McDaniel asserted , “ We do not think at this time we have to switch to an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we will monitor circumstances and adjust accordingly .
We will not be holding a virtual convention .
”

One of President Donald Trump’s many targets on Memorial Day Weekend has been North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who he says is moving too slowly on the state’s reopening. Railing against Cooper on Twitter, Trump threatened to pull the 2020 Republican National Conventional out of Charlotte — and CNN is reporting that Republicans involved in the planning of the convention were “completely blindsided” by Trump’s threat.
Trump tweeted, “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space.”
The president also asserted that Republicans planning to attend the Republican National Convention “must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied.”
“If not, we will be reluctantly forced to find, with all of the jobs and economic development it brings, another Republican National Convention site,” Trump tweeted. “This is not something I want to do. Thank you, and I LOVE the people of North Carolina!”
…made by many thousands of enthusiastic Republicans, and others, to head to beautiful North Carolina in August. They must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied. If not, we will be reluctantly forced… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2020
…made by many thousands of enthusiastic Republicans, and others, to head to beautiful North Carolina in August. They must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied. If not, we will be reluctantly forced… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2020
According to CNN, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said that the RNC is moving “full steam ahead” with the convention — although she stressed that it must be an in-person event.
McDaniel asserted, “We do not think at this time we have to switch to an alternative plan, but of course, we will monitor circumstances and adjust accordingly. We will not be holding a virtual convention.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-05-26--Feds Made It Harder to Free Prisoners Amid COVID, Even as Barr Promised Releases

Even as the Justice Department announced that federal prisons would release vulnerable , nonviolent inmates to home confinement to avoid the spread of COVID-19 , the agency was quietly adopting a policy that makes it harder for inmates to qualify for release , not easier .
The result has been that more than 98 % of inmates remain in federal custody , while a handful of celebrity inmates , like former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort , have been released to home detention .
In two memos , one in late March and a second in early April , Attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Prisons , which is part of the Justice Department , to begin identifying inmates who could safely be released to home confinement — essentially house arrest .
They instructed prison officials to grant “ priority treatment ” to inmates deemed to present minimal risk to the public .
Separately , however , the Bureau of Prisons had drafted a 20-page policy document this year that altered a standard adopted only a year ago and made it harder for an inmate to qualify as minimum risk .
ProPublica obtained a copy of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been finalized , and its existence surprised and baffled lawyers , prison reform advocates and inmates interviewed for this article .
“ It really tanks the whole enterprise if , once an instrument is selected , it can be strategically altered to make sure low-risk people don ’ t get released , ” said Brandon Garrett , a law professor at Duke University who studies risk-assessment tools .
“ If you change the cut points , you ’ ve effectively changed the instrument.
” The original assessment tool emerged from the First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overhaul passed in 2018 .
Known as PATTERN , for Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs , it assigns a pair of numbers — based on factors like age , prison courses completed and history of violence — that purport to predict the likelihood an inmate will commit a violent crime , or any crime , upon release .
Inmates are assigned to one of four categories for risk of recidivism : minimum , low , medium or high .
In a July 2019 report , the Justice Department published a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall into each category .
The law requires that the methodology be released “ publicly on the Department of Justice website.
” Justin Long , a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons , confirmed that the bureau had revised the risk categories without informing the public .
The 2019 report was an “ interim report , ” Long wrote in an email .
“ The interim report mentioned that DOJ would seek feedback and update the tool accordingly , which was done.
” That was news to people , like Garrett , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rules .
The Justice Department , Long wrote , posted an update to its 2019 report in January “ to reflect changes to the PATTERN tool.
” But that update says nothing about categorizing inmates more restrictively .
To the contrary , the changes it describes largely respond to the comments of experts who raised concerns about racial bias and who sought greater transparency .
As for the draft policy document , Long wrote , it “ was not authorized for release.
” The Bureau of Prisons ’ reliance on the unpublished @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how the agency is implementing Barr ’ s home-confinement order .
“ There ’ s been nothing but confusion , ” David Patton , the chief federal public defender for the New York City area , said .
“ We ’ ve received a steady stream of questions from clients about their scores , and we have no answers , because BOP doesn ’ t give us any.
” Fewer prisoners have been released than was expected when the attorney general made his announcement , lawyers say .
About 3,050 inmates have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 21 , Bureau of Prisons records show .
That ’ s around 1.8 % of the people under the bureau ’ s supervision .
That figure is significantly smaller than the roughly 20 % of inmates who fall into the minimum risk category ( though it ’ s not automatic that all of them would qualify for release ) under the 2019 rules .
The slow pace of prisoner releases has begun to attract attention .
On May 19 , a federal judge accused officials at the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Ohio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outbreak cited by Barr in his order — of moving too slowly to release inmates and “ thumbing their noses ” at Barr ’ s directive .
He instructed them to expand the class of inmates eligible for home confinement by including inmates not only with minimum-risk scores , but also those said to have a low risk .
The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to halt the order .
At the urging of Sens .
Dick Durbin , D-Illinois , and Chuck Grassley , R-Iowa , who co-authored the First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s inspector general has agreed to examine the scope of Barr ’ s directive as well as the Bureau of Prisons ’ compliance with it and the agency ’ s overall response to the pandemic .
The process has been shrouded in mystery , as one inmate ’ s experience shows .
Blayne Davis , 38 , who pleaded guilty to fraud for an investment scam , is an inmate at the Pollock Federal Correctional Complex ’ s minimum-security prison camp , in central Louisiana .
When he received his PATTERN scores in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minimum risk under the old scoring system .
Davis expected to be eligible for home detention .
Like many , he worried about exposure to the virus .
At another federal prison just an hour to the south , several inmates had already died of COVID-19 .
The prison sometimes borrowed staff from Pollock .
Davis waited , in the beige-hued prison dorm where he lives , as officials called the names of inmates who had qualified for home confinement .
The names kept coming , and Davis kept waiting , expecting to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopped .
Perplexed , Davis asked prison staff why they hadn ’ t called his name .
His score , they told him , put him in the low category , not the minimum .
Davis persisted , pointing to the chart in the 2019 Justice Department report .
Ultimately , a prison staffer handed him a piece of paper .
It contained a chart that , like the one in the 2019 report , assigned a range of PATTERN scores to each category .
But this one was far more restrictive .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ male inmate with a violent-recidivism score of 21 or lower fell into the minimum-risk category .
Davis ’ score — a seven — put him firmly in that category .
He wasn ’ t violent or a troublemaker .
He ’ d completed over 30 classes while incarcerated .
Now , he was informed , the standard had gotten tougher .
For a male inmate to be deemed at minimum risk of committing a violent crime upon release from prison , he needed a score of not 21 or less , but six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mark by a single point .
The new chart looked suspect to Davis , as if somebody had typed it up hastily .
It wasn ’ t on official letterhead , and there were a couple of glaring typos .
The prison staff bristled when Davis pointed this out , according to his representatives , who later relayed his story and shared relevant documents .
It was authentic , the staffers assured him .
They had printed it off SallyPort , the Bureau of Prisons ’ intranet .
Davis didn ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new chart was drawn from the bureau ’ s unpublished draft policy document .
An official at the Pollock prison camp declined to respond to ProPublica ’ s questions , citing staff and inmate privacy .
In an email , the official did , however , extend an invitation to visit the prison to interview inmates .
Never mind the blaring red banner at the top of Pollock ’ s website : “ All visiting at this facility has been suspended until further notice.
” A formal request to interview Davis over the @ @ @ @ @ @

A secret Bureau of Prisons policy has kept all but 1.8 percent of federal prisoners behind bars, where the virus rages.
Even as the Justice Department announced that federal prisons would release vulnerable, nonviolent inmates to home confinement to avoid the spread of COVID-19, the agency was quietly adopting a policy that makes it harder for inmates to qualify for release, not easier. The result has been that more than 98% of inmates remain in federal custody, while a handful of celebrity inmates, like former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, have been released to home detention.
In two memos, one in late March and a second in early April, Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department, to begin identifying inmates who could safely be released to home confinement — essentially house arrest. They instructed prison officials to grant “priority treatment” to inmates deemed to present minimal risk to the public.
Separately, however, the Bureau of Prisons had drafted a 20-page policy document this year that altered a standard adopted only a year ago and made it harder for an inmate to qualify as minimum risk.
ProPublica obtained a copy of the document, which does not appear to have been finalized, and its existence surprised and baffled lawyers, prison reform advocates and inmates interviewed for this article. “It really tanks the whole enterprise if, once an instrument is selected, it can be strategically altered to make sure low-risk people don’t get released,” said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at Duke University who studies risk-assessment tools. “If you change the cut points, you’ve effectively changed the instrument.”
The original assessment tool emerged from the First Step Act, a major criminal justice overhaul passed in 2018. Known as PATTERN, for Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs, it assigns a pair of numbers — based on factors like age, prison courses completed and history of violence — that purport to predict the likelihood an inmate will commit a violent crime, or any crime, upon release. Inmates are assigned to one of four categories for risk of recidivism: minimum, low, medium or high. In a July 2019 report, the Justice Department published a chart delineating the range of scores that fall into each category. The law requires that the methodology be released “publicly on the Department of Justice website.”
Justin Long, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, confirmed that the bureau had revised the risk categories without informing the public. The 2019 report was an “interim report,” Long wrote in an email. “The interim report mentioned that DOJ would seek feedback and update the tool accordingly, which was done.” That was news to people, like Garrett, who had provided feedback to the government on the rules.
The Justice Department, Long wrote, posted an update to its 2019 report in January “to reflect changes to the PATTERN tool.” But that update says nothing about categorizing inmates more restrictively. To the contrary, the changes it describes largely respond to the comments of experts who raised concerns about racial bias and who sought greater transparency. As for the draft policy document, Long wrote, it “was not authorized for release.”
The Bureau of Prisons’ reliance on the unpublished policy document has exacerbated widespread puzzlement about how the agency is implementing Barr’s home-confinement order. “There’s been nothing but confusion,” David Patton, the chief federal public defender for the New York City area, said. “We’ve received a steady stream of questions from clients about their scores, and we have no answers, because BOP doesn’t give us any.”
Fewer prisoners have been released than was expected when the attorney general made his announcement, lawyers say. About 3,050 inmates have been moved to home confinement as of May 21, Bureau of Prisons records show. That’s around 1.8% of the people under the bureau’s supervision. That figure is significantly smaller than the roughly 20% of inmates who fall into the minimum risk category (though it’s not automatic that all of them would qualify for release) under the 2019 rules.
The slow pace of prisoner releases has begun to attract attention. On May 19, a federal judge accused officials at the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Ohio — the site of a deadly coronavirus outbreak cited by Barr in his order — of moving too slowly to release inmates and “thumbing their noses” at Barr’s directive. He instructed them to expand the class of inmates eligible for home confinement by including inmates not only with minimum-risk scores, but also those said to have a low risk. The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to halt the order.
At the urging of Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who co-authored the First Step Act, the Justice Department’s inspector general has agreed to examine the scope of Barr’s directive as well as the Bureau of Prisons’ compliance with it and the agency’s overall response to the pandemic.
The process has been shrouded in mystery, as one inmate’s experience shows. Blayne Davis, 38, who pleaded guilty to fraud for an investment scam, is an inmate at the Pollock Federal Correctional Complex’s minimum-security prison camp, in central Louisiana. When he received his PATTERN scores in late April, they qualified him as minimum risk under the old scoring system. Davis expected to be eligible for home detention. Like many, he worried about exposure to the virus. At another federal prison just an hour to the south, several inmates had already died of COVID-19. The prison sometimes borrowed staff from Pollock.
Davis waited, in the beige-hued prison dorm where he lives, as officials called the names of inmates who had qualified for home confinement. The names kept coming, and Davis kept waiting, expecting to hear his name.
Then the names stopped. Perplexed, Davis asked prison staff why they hadn’t called his name. His score, they told him, put him in the low category, not the minimum.
Davis persisted, pointing to the chart in the 2019 Justice Department report. Ultimately, a prison staffer handed him a piece of paper. It contained a chart that, like the one in the 2019 report, assigned a range of PATTERN scores to each category. But this one was far more restrictive. According to the 2019 report, a male inmate with a violent-recidivism score of 21 or lower fell into the minimum-risk category. Davis’ score — a seven — put him firmly in that category. He wasn’t violent or a troublemaker. He’d completed over 30 classes while incarcerated.
Now, he was informed, the standard had gotten tougher. For a male inmate to be deemed at minimum risk of committing a violent crime upon release from prison, he needed a score of not 21 or less, but six or less. Davis had missed the mark by a single point.
The new chart looked suspect to Davis, as if somebody had typed it up hastily. It wasn’t on official letterhead, and there were a couple of glaring typos. The prison staff bristled when Davis pointed this out, according to his representatives, who later relayed his story and shared relevant documents. It was authentic, the staffers assured him. They had printed it off SallyPort, the Bureau of Prisons’ intranet. Davis didn’t know it at the time, but this new chart was drawn from the bureau’s unpublished draft policy document.
An official at the Pollock prison camp declined to respond to ProPublica’s questions, citing staff and inmate privacy. In an email, the official did, however, extend an invitation to visit the prison to interview inmates. Never mind the blaring red banner at the top of Pollock’s website: “All visiting at this facility has been suspended until further notice.” A formal request to interview Davis over the phone was met with silence.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.