NEW from THE TRACE: What can the ATF do about converted machine guns? On April 11, more than 40 members of Congress signed a letter urging the ATF to take action on the proliferation of the auto sear, a small device that allows a semiautomatic gun to fire on full auto and that has become increasingly popular among criminals.
In their letter, members of Congress asked the ATF to be more explicit in calling conversion devices illegal and to crack down on them. They’re also asking the agency to put a stop to the companies “pushing the legal limits on these devices.” But finding an effective solution may be difficult. Industry insiders and law enforcement officials interviewed for this story questioned whether the ATF has the power to do much more that what it’s already doing. Read our latest on why that is.
ATF nominee Steve Dettelbach picks up critical Senate endorsements. “I feel confident he’ll be able to lead this” agency, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced Thursday, saying he would vote yes on President Biden’s pick to lead the agency. A spokesperson for Senator Jon Tester of Montana later said Tester would also support the nominee. Their assent, along with that of Senator Angus King of Maine — whose opposition was instrumental in sinking David Chipman, Biden’s first pick — means the ATF will likely soon have its first Senate-confirmed leader since 2015.
The House passed a federal red flag law. The measure would allow family members, law enforcement, and others to ask federal courts to grant temporary gun removals for people deemed to be at risk of harming themselves or others. The bill, which passed mostly on a party-line vote, would also create a federal program to incentivize the 31 states that haven’t adopted red flag laws to enact them and support those that have. Only a version of the latter provision is being considered by Senate negotiators, who have largely ruled out the rest of what the House passed this week.
Grand Rapids-area DA charges police officer over fatal shooting of Patrick Lyoya. On April 4, white officer Christopher Schurr shot the 26-year-old Congolese immigrant in the back of the head after pulling him over. Shortly thereafter, the Grand Rapids Police Department released several videos that recorded the confrontation with the officer. Two showed the officer fatally shooting Lyoya, which included a struggle over the officer’s stun gun. The shooting sparked citywide protests demanding justice for Lyoya, whose family said he was “killed like an animal.” On Thursday, following an investigation by the Michigan State Police, the Kent County prosecutor announced he would charge Schurr with second-degree murder.
Facebook bans gun sales on its platform. It also gives violators 10 strikes before they’re removed. That’s according to an internal company policy that was obtained by The Washington Post. Meanwhile, the company has a five-strikes policy for people who actively flout the ban on gun buying and selling or who actively call for violence or praise certain extremist organizations. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal and The Trace’s Champe Barton found that sellers on Facebook Marketplace have regularly hosted coded gun listings to evade the company’s ban, and that the practice continued to be widespread even after the company vowed to remove violators.
Michigan gubernatorial candidate arrested over role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection. Ryan Kelley, a Republican, was charged with four misdemeanors — including committing violence against a person or property on restricted grounds — for participating in the events of January 6, 2021. Kelley, a real estate broker, was also the primary organizer of an armed protest against pandemic lockdown measures at the Michigan State Capitol in April 2020, and showed up with members of a local militia group outside a ballot-counting facility after the 2020 election. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in 2021.
The Trace is hiring a local reporter to cover Philadelphia starting in the summer or fall of 2022. The reporter will be able to work remotely, or, if there’s interest, potentially from a shared workspace in Philadelphia. This is a full-time position. The deadline to apply is July 10. See details here.
Data Points59 percent — the share of Americans who prioritize controlling gun violence over protecting gun rights, according to a new PBS NewHour/NPR/Marist poll, up 10 percentage points from 2013. Another 92 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents prioritized controlling gun violence. Overall support for prioritizing gun rights dropped to 35 percent — but remained at 70 percent for Republicans and 56 percent for gun owners.
72 percent — the share of Americans who said recent mass shootings would make them more likely to vote in the November midterms, including 84 percent for Democrats and 65 percent for Republicans. [PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist].
READ MORE:
https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/steve-dettelbach-biden-atf-confirmation-manchin/
CARTOON AT TOP:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/let-s-hasten-renewables
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...................
sign a peace deal, zelenskovitchyyy…..
The “collective West” and many NATO countries have finally begun to receive objective information on the goals and results of Russia’s special military operation to denazify Ukraine. Instead of openly Russophobic coverage of these events by representatives of the current military-political elite of the EU and NATO and, above all, the United States, the true policy of the Nazi authorities in Kiev has begun to be more and more actively criticized by the population of Western states.
Despite the widespread anti-Russian sanctions regime imposed by Washington, which affected, among other things, the press and the blatant blocking of Russian media in the West, the change towards a positive perception of the justification and legitimacy of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine has occurred for a number of reasons. An undoubted role in this was played by the official statements of Russian politicians, their objective and regular coverage of the true results of the special operation being carried out by Moscow. As well as the enthusiastic reaction of the inhabitants of those Ukrainian regions liberated by Russia from the criminal actions of the Nazis and their repressions, who suffered for eight years from the excesses of the authorities in Kiev, systemic destruction by bombing, hunger, and non-payment of pensions and social benefits. Without any reaction by Western politicians condemning Kiev.
An important role in understanding the true processes in Ukraine and the aggressiveness of Kiev’s policy has also been played by the publications of even a few foreign journalists who, despite prohibitions by the Ukrainian authorities and the Western political elite, managed to see with their own eyes the crimes perpetrated by Kiev. And among them is the testimony of an independent journalist from the United States, Patrick Lancaster, about how the Ukrainian military systematically fires missiles with cluster warhead prohibited by international law at civilian settlements in the Kherson Region.
Or the reports of Press TV correspondent Johnny Miller, who visited the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, which Ukraine has been shelling since 2014, and who is personally convinced that the Kiev regime has been killing its own civilians with impunity for the past eight years.
Undoubtedly, the stories on the French radio station Sud Radio from the young doctor Adrien Boke, who just returned to France from Ukraine, are horrifying. Especially about how he was an eyewitness to the inhumane treatment of captured soldiers from Russia, their bloody torture and execution, as well as about many other crimes by the Kiev extremists. Therefore, his words become clear: “All these people from the right and left of the political spectrum are talking about Ukraine without knowing it. And all this is superimposed on the terrible coverage of the Ukrainian conflict by television. Between what really happens there and what we say on TV isn’t just an abyss.”
Despite the desire of the current Ukrainian authorities and their Western curators to hide the truth about the crimes of Ukrainian Nazis from the world, even the United Nations has received reliable information about the ill-treatment of Russian prisoners by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This was announced in mid-May by the head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission, Matilda Bogner, based on a recent report.
All this is taking place against the backdrop of documentary confirmation provided by Moscow to the international community of the United States developing and testing bioweapons prohibited by international law in its secret biological laboratories in Ukraine. Something that the American TV channel CBS even dedicated a report to.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the sobering up process everywhere will begin after the disinformation campaign launched by Washington, London, and a number of Western politicians on Ukraine, the fake information they used and the Russophobic speeches ordered by Washington, in particular by Josep Borrell, head of EU diplomacy, and Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission.
“Ukraine costs Europe billions every month, but the EU again and again finds money for it” – said one report by the German television channel N-TV criticizing the position of the European authorities.
Today, a change in the assessment of events in Ukraine can be clearly seen in the speeches of many Western politicians. For instance, Bundestag deputy Petr Bystron wrote in a column for iDNES.cz that the statements by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on May 24 at the World Economic Forum in Davos about Ukraine, that Western countries should stop trying to achieve a military defeat of Russia, and Kiev should make territorial concessions, speaks to a change in Washington’s position on Ukraine. This is also evidenced by recent publications in the American press. Petr Bystron drew attention to the change of position on Ukraine in the United States beginning with an article in The New York Times, saying that an armed conflict with Russia was not in the interests of Washington.
Holding referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk could end the Ukrainian crisis, Edward Luttwak, a political consultant for the State Department and the Pentagon, said in an interview with the German publication Die Welt in early June.
“Now is the time to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that US military interests are different from Ukraine’s military interests,” wrote on June 4 the founding editor of The American Conservative Patrick J. Buchanan, former assistant to three Republican presidents of the United States and a highly influential politician in America. In his opinion, keeping Kiev in the US orbit isn’t worth the risk of an escalation of the conflict with Russia.
The West should come to terms with the “bitter truth” about Russia’s victory in the conflict with Ukraine now, writes The Hill and reasonably explains why a fragmented and dismembered Ukraine will not be part of the West.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the US, Britain, and the EU are discussing ways to resolve the situation in Ukraine without the participation of representatives from Kiev, as reported by CNN.
The change in mood and position towards Ukraine, previously actively supported by Ankara, is clearly seen in the statements of Turkish politicians. Ismail Safi, a member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy under the President of Turkey, in an interview with “Izvestia,” said “no one sees that the West has made sincere efforts to resolve” the situation in Ukraine.
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emphasized on June 5, Europe is praying that “the world will emerge from the critical period it is experiencing as soon as possible.” In an earlier telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Erdoğan said that the military conflict in Ukraine is not beneficial to anyone and offered his mediation peacekeeping efforts. The security system created by the West has begun to collapse, the president of Turkey stressed the other day.
Under these conditions, Turkey is moving away from its former unequivocal support for Ukraine to a peacekeeping position, despite its involvement in the openly anti-Russian bloc known as NATO. It is once again demonstrating its flexibility, dynamism, and pragmatism in foreign policy.
According to even Western analysts, there is only one possible outcome: a fragmented and dismembered Ukraine that will not become part of the West. Fragmented in the sense that all of the Donbass (and possibly other territories), in the wake of Kiev’s unpunished violence for years, will no longer be under its jurisdiction. As Crimea did earlier, remaining part of Russia. For a long time Kiev has been unable to dictate any of its conditions for a truce to Moscow. The only thing left for the criminal authorities in Kiev is to quickly agree to the conditions proposed by Moscow to resolve the conflict, if only in the name of saving the lives of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
READ MORE:
https://journal-neo.org/2022/06/11/turkey-is-changing-its-opinion-on-events-in-ukraine/
MEANWHILE:
Ukraine is losing from 100 to 200 troops daily in the battle for the Donbass against Russia, and its allies in the Lugansk (LPR) and Donetsk People's Republics (DPR), Mikhail Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the BBC on Thursday.
The numbers are higher than earlier figures acknowledged by Kiev.
Just over a week ago, President Zelensky said that from 60-100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in the Donbass on a daily basis, with another 500 injured.
Such high numbers of military casualties are the result of a “complete lack of parity” between forces in the Donbass, Podolyak explained.
Kiev needs the West to supply as many as 300 multiple rocket launch systems to level the playing field, he said.
So, far the US has only approved the delivery of four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine, while the UK promised to add an unspecified number of US-made M270 launchers.
Ukrainian Defense Minister, Alexey Reznikov also spoke about the country’s military losses on Thursday, but his figures were half those claimed by Podolyak.
“Every day we have up to 100 of our soldiers killed and up to 500 wounded,” Reznikov wrote on Facebook.
“The situation on the front lines is difficult” as the Russian military “continues to press by sheer mass,” he added.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
READ MORE:
https://www.rt.com/russia/556932-ukraine-losses-podolyak-donbass/
BY THE END OF JUNE, Ukraine will have lost an extra 4,000 troop plus about 30,000 injured, unable to fight, plus another 11,000 prisoners on top of the many already "gone"....
sign a peace deal, zelenskovitchyyy…..
READ FROM TOP.
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE.............................