12 June 21
Surprise, the Small Donors Are Responding
Who would have guessed that when RSN was struggling the small donors would come through?
They can’t do it alone. Some donors in the hundred-dollar range have stepped up as well. When that happens, it really helps. We need a few more larger donations to match the effort the small donors are making.
In gratitude.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
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11 June 21
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Deb Haaland | My Grandparents Were Stolen From Their Families as Children. We Must Learn About This History.
Deb Haaland, The Washington Post
Haaland writes: "As I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach. But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border."
s I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach. But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border. Many Americans may be alarmed to learn that the United States also has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.
I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13. Many children like them never made it back home.
Over nearly 100 years, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into scores of boarding schools run by religious institutions and the U.S. government. Some studies suggest that by 1926, nearly 83 percent of Native American school-age children were in the system. Many children were doused with DDT upon arrival, and as their coerced re-education got underway, they endured physical abuse for speaking their tribal languages or practicing traditions that didn’t fit into what the government believed was the American ideal.
My great-grandfather was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Its founder coined the phrase “kill the Indian, and save the man,” which genuinely reflects the influences that framed these policies at the time.
My family’s story is not unlike that of many other Native American families in this country. We have a generation of lost or injured children who are now the lost or injured aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents of those who live today. I once spent time with my grandmother recording our history for a writing assignment in college. It was the first time I heard her speak candidly about how hard it was — about how a priest gathered the children from the village and put them on a train, and how she missed her family. She spoke of the loneliness she endured. We wept together. It was an exercise in healing for her and a profound lesson for me about the resilience of our people, and even more about how important it is to reclaim what those schools tried to take from our people.
The lasting and profound impacts of the federal government’s boarding school system have never been appropriately addressed. This attempt to wipe out Native identity, language and culture continues to manifest itself in the disparities our communities face, including long-standing intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance, premature deaths, and additional undocumented physiological and psychological impacts.
Many of the boarding schools were maintained by the Interior Department, which I now lead. I believe that I — and the Biden-Harris administration — have an important responsibility to bring this trauma to light.
Our children, parents and grandparents deserve a federal government that works to promote our tribal languages, culture and mental health. Many Native children want to learn their tribe’s language, songs and ceremonies. Many Native families want the children who were lost to come home, regardless of how long ago they were stolen.
The obligation to correct and heal those unspeakable wrongs extends to today and starts with investments such as those President Biden has made to strengthen tribal sovereignty through the American Rescue Plan, the American Jobs Plan and the budget for fiscal 2022.
Our administration has set out to forge a new path to engage with tribal communities and to live up to its trust and treaty responsibilities. But that obligation also requires that all Americans listen and learn, that we allow federal boarding school survivors and their families an opportunity to be heard, and that we engage in meaningful tribal consultation to seek justice. Though it is uncomfortable to learn that the country you love is capable of committing such acts, the first step to justice is acknowledging these painful truths and gaining a full understanding of their impacts so that we can unravel the threads of trauma and injustice that linger. We have a long road of healing ahead of us, but together with tribal nations, I am sure that we can work together for a future that we will all be proud to embrace.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Senate Democrats Threaten to Subpoena Barr, Sessions for Testimony Over Justice Department's Secret Pursuit of Two House Democrats' Data
Alex Woodward, The Independent
Woodward writes: "Senate Democrats have called on former Justice Department officials under Donald Trump to testify to Congress following reports that the top prosecutors seized records from Apple to probe data from House Democrats, their aides and family members."
Schumer calls Barr’s alleged seizure of Apple data ‘gross abuse of power’ and ‘assault on the separation of powers’
enate Democrats have called on former Justice Department officials under Donald Trump to testify to Congress following reports that the top prosecutors seized records from Apple to probe data from House Democrats, their aides and family members.
The US Department of Justice reportedly subpoenaed the company for information from accounts belonging to at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, including prominent Trump impeachment figures Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Records from at least a dozen people were reportedly seized in 2017 and 2018 – including at least one person who was a minor.
“A gross abuse of power. An assault on the separation of powers,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday.
He called on former Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions to testify under oath.
“Barr, Sessions, and other officials involved must testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath,” he said. “If they refuse – they are subject to being subpoenaed and compelled to testify.”
In a joint statement with Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, the senators condemned the “appalling politicization” of the Justice Department under Trump and called on his “loyalists” to face congressional and inspector general probes.
Congressman Schiff, who served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee and lead impeachment manager during the former president’s first impeachment trial, said in a statement on Thursday that “Trump repeatedly demanded the DOJ go after his political enemies. It’s clear his demands didn’t fall on deaf ears.”
“This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice,” he said. And how much he imperiled our democracy.”
The Justice Department’s secretive effort to obtain lawmakers’ data reportedly followed Sessions’s efforts to find sources behind leaks to news media about contacts between Trump and his allies with Russia.
After replacing Sessions, Barr reportedly revived those attempts, promoting a New Jersey prosecutor to the Justice Department to target Schiff and others, according to The New York Times.
The agency secured a gag order on Apple that expired this year, preventing lawmakers from knowing they were subjects of an investigation until last month, the newspaper reported.
Justice Department officials under Joe Biden disclosed the subpoena to news organisations in recent weeks, fuelling reporting into the depths of Trump-era probe and his war on the press and political opponents.
Missouri governor Mike Parson signed one of the nation's most restrictive abortion bills in May 2019. (photo: Summer Balentine/AP)
Federal Appeals Court Blocks Sweeping Missouri Abortion Law
Jim Salter, Associated Press
Salter writes: "A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday blocked Missouri from enforcing a sweeping state abortion law that bans the procedures at or after eight weeks of pregnancy."
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments in September in the legal battle over the 2019 law. The measure also would prohibit a woman from having an abortion because the fetus has Down syndrome.
Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, called the ruling “a critical victory for Missourians.”
“For now, we celebrate our continued ability to provide safe, legal abortion at the last remaining clinic in Missouri,” Rodriguez said in a statement.
Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement that his son, Stephen, who has a rare genetic condition, autism and epilepsy, “has shown me the inherent beauty and dignity in all life, especially those with special needs. While we’re disappointed in the 8th Circuit’s decision, their decision does provide an avenue for this case to be heard by the Supreme Court, and we plan to seek review in the Supreme Court.”
The lawsuit was filed by Reproductive Health Services, which operates the St. Louis abortion clinic, and the American Civil Liberties Union. A federal judge had blocked the law while the legal challenge plays out, prompting the state’s appeal to the 8th Circuit.
U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs said at the time of his ruling last year that Planned Parenthood and the ACLU would likely succeed in their lawsuit alleging that the law is unconstitutional. Similar laws have been struck down in North Dakota and Iowa.
Most of the discussion at the hearing in September centered around the provision banning abortions because the fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome. Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer cited an “epidemic of abortions targeting children with Down syndrome for elimination solely because of their disability.”
Planned Parenthood attorney Claudia Hammerman argued at the time that four decades of Supreme Court precedent “make it clear that this is unconstitutional.” She said doctors won’t take the risk of losing their medical license for aborting a fetus with Down syndrome, regardless of whether the condition was the reason the woman sought the procedure.
Several states in 2021 have approved legislation seeking to prohibit abortions based solely on a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. Governors in Arizona and South Dakota recently signed such bills into law, and similar measures are pending in North Carolina and Texas. Meanwhile, a federal appellate court said Ohio could begin to implement a 2017 law that has been on hold.
Missouri also is among several conservative states in recent years that have passed abortion restrictions in hopes that the increasingly conservative Supreme Court will eventually overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a nationwide right to abortion.
Last month, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to take on a case about whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb. Experts say the case could dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights. Three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump were part of a conservative majority in agreeing to hear the case.
A right-wing group was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party in the 2018 midterms. (photo: Getty)
Revealed: Rightwing Firm Posed as Leftist Group on Facebook to Divide Democrats
Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "A digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal."
FEC investigation failed to uncover link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA
In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.
Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.
Rally Forge would go on to set up a pro-Trump domestic “troll farm” for Turning Point Action, a “sister” organization of Turning Point USA, in 2020, earning a permanent ban from Facebook.
“There were no policies at Facebook against pretending to be a group that did not exist, an abuse vector that has also been used by the governments of Honduras and Azerbaijan,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower who played a small role in the investigation of the Green party ads.
She added: “The fact that Rally Forge later went on to conduct coordinated inauthentic behavior with troll farms reminiscent of Russia should be taken as an indication that Facebook’s leniency led to more risk-taking behavior.”
Devon Kearns, a spokesperson for Facebook, said: “We removed Rally Forge from our platforms for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Since the 2018 midterms, we have strengthened our policies related to election interference and political ad transparency. We continue working to make political advertising more transparent on our platform and we welcome updated regulations and help from policymakers as we evolve our policies in this space.”
The revelation that the ads were linked to a rightwing organization raises questions about the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement of campaign finance laws. APN and its ads appeared to violate federal laws that require independent expenditures to be filed with the FEC and include proper disclosures on advertisements, as ProPublica and Vice News first reported in 2018.
The non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint against APN and subsequently sued the agency in an attempt to force it to investigate the group. But in July 2020, the FEC voted to dismiss allegations that America Progress Now had violated federal law, after an individual, Evan Muhlstein, took responsibility for the ads and attributed the lack of proper disclosures and filings to his “inexperience”.
It is illegal to knowingly make false or fraudulent statements to federal agencies, and the FEC appears to have taken Muhlstein at his word that the ads were a sincere but novice attempt to support Green party candidates.
The former FEC commissioner Ann Ravel, who reviewed the case at the request of the Guardian, said that were she still on the FEC, she would now refer this “stunning” case to the justice department for investigation.
“It seems as if it’s a clear fraud,” Ravel said, noting that the FEC general counsel’s office appeared to have been “misled” by Muhlstein. “The requirement for the justice department to take on an electoral matter is that it be serious and willful, and clearly in this case it was willful, in my opinion.”
Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at CLC, said: “This is an example of why disclosure is so important in elections: swing state voters who saw ‘America Progress Now’ ads promoting Green party candidates would’ve had no idea that they were the handiwork of Republican political operatives. The FEC’s job is to enforce the transparency laws and protect voters’ right to know who is trying to influence them, but the agency here failed to conduct even a minimal investigation.”
‘A crystal clear example of astroturfing’
On 27 October 2018 – just days before the 6 November election – America Progress Now began running a series of ads that used leftist motifs, such as the red rose emoji and images of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to rail against the “corporate, two-party oligarchy” and the “corporate, capitalist wage system”. Some of the ads urged voters to choose a third party, but others endorsed Green party candidates by name – triggering FEC rules for independent expenditures.
Following the 5 November publication of a ProPublica/Vice News report on the “mysterious” group behind the ads, Facebook launched a “hi-pri[ority]” escalation to investigate whether they constituted “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB) – the name Facebook gives to the kind of deceptive tactics that a Russian influence operation used during the 2016 election.
The investigation was straightforward since Facebook has access to information that regular users do not: the names of the people who control Facebook Pages. Investigators quickly realized that America Progress Now was administered by three individuals – Jake Hoffman, Connor Clegg and Colton Duncan – who also served as Facebook Page administrators for Turning Point USA, the rightwing college group founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012. Hoffman and Clegg were also administrators for Kirk’s Facebook Page.
“These admins are connected to Turning Point USA,” one staffer from the civic integrity team said, according to internal task management documents seen by the Guardian. “This is very inauthentic. I don’t know what the policy here is but this seems very sketchy.” Another staffer named Rally Forge as being responsible for the ads. APN had spent nearly $5,000 to have the ads shown to users nearly 300,000 times, a third staffer noted.
A rightwing political marketing firm that ran a $350,000 pro-Trump Super Pac in the 2016 election, Rally Forge was founded and run by Hoffman, an Arizona Republican who was at the time a member of the town council in Queen Creek, Arizona. In November 2020 Hoffman was elected to serve in the Arizona state legislature.
Clegg and Duncan were alumni of Texas State University, where they had been elected student body president and vice-president respectively in 2017. Clegg was impeached and removed from office shortly before his term would have ended in 2018. Duncan resigned from his post in 2017; he appears to have been hired directly by Turning Point USA in 2019.
Since 2017, Rally Forge has been Turning Point USA’s highest-compensated independent contractor, paid more than $1.1m over two years, according to the non-profit’s public filings. Turning Point Action, an affiliated organization also founded by Kirk, paid Rally Forge $700,000 for work supporting Trump and opposing Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign, and an additional $400,000 for work on the US Senate runoff races in Georgia.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, said that neither Turning Point USA nor Turning Point Action had “any involvement” with America Progress Now or its Facebook ads.
In addition to America Progress Now and Turning Point USA, Hoffman, Clegg and Duncan all also served as administrators for a number of other rightwing Facebook Pages. The trio each maintained two accounts to administer their Facebook Pages, one using their full names and one using their first and middle initials – a violation of the company’s policy that each user can only have one Facebook account. One of each of the three men’s accounts had been authorized by Facebook to run political ads, a process that required submitting a government ID to Facebook for verification.
One of Hoffman’s accounts had spent approximately $650,000 to run Facebook ads on behalf of 40 Pages, including the official Page of Donald Trump Jr.
Hoffman declined to answer detailed questions from the Guardian, including about the nature of Rally Forge’s relationship with Muhlstein. “The premise of your questions is either ill-informed or intentionally misleading,” he said in a statement. “Rally Forge is a marketing agency, not a compliance company. Furthermore, it is my understanding that the small handful of ads, totaling less than 2,500 dollars, which qualified as independent expenditures, have been fully disclosed by the responsible organization in coordination with the FEC.”
Duncan said that he had never heard of America Progress Now before the Guardian’s inquiries and had “zero knowledge or insight into the group”. When asked about the CG Duncan account, which had passed Facebook’s verification process and was an administrator of the APN page, he responded: “I urge you to reach out to JM [Hoffman]. Let me know what you find out, I’m as curious as you are.”
Clegg did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him.
Despite possessing clear evidence of inauthenticity, Facebook staffers determined the Green party ads did not violate existing company policies related to political ads or CIB. They decided to deactivate the three men’s extra accounts, but after the election and only after providing them with advance notice.
The episode inspired some disquiet among Facebook staff.
“What I find very problematic is that the intention here is clearly to mislead users,” said the civic integrity staffer. “The users in question clearly created a new FB page to hide their identity, which would be grounds for removal on most surfaces,” she added, referring to Facebook’s rules requiring people to use their real names on their accounts.
One product manager produced an internal postmortem of the incident in which she described it as “a crystal clear example of astroturfing” – deceptive campaign tactics designed to appear as grassroots actions – “… as well as playing both sides … and political ad opacity, since users cannot see who they are. Furthermore, I could see making a case for voter suppression.”
“Unfortunately, it turned out there was nothing we could do against these ads,” she added. “We ended up only aiming to remove a few [duplicate] accounts under the fake account policy, but only after proper notice – and I believe we have not removed them yet.”
“Can we strengthen our ads transparency policies so that political ads are indeed transparent to the user?” she asked.
A Facebook spokesperson said that the company had indeed removed the duplicate accounts following the midterms, and that Rally Forge’s network of Pages and accounts had gone dormant after November 2018. The company made a number of updates to its policies on political ads before the 2020 elections, including requiring advertisers to provide more information about their organizations before being authorized to run ads. It also introduced a new policy to encourage more transparency regarding who runs networks of Facebook Pages.
Rally Forge reactivated its network of Pages and accounts in June 2020, according to Facebook. It established what the Washington Post described as a domestic “troll farm” in Phoenix, Arizona, that employed teenagers to churn out pro-Trump social media posts, some of which cast doubt on the integrity of the US election system or falsely charged Democrats with attempting to steal the election.
Facebook said that it had detected the operation when Rally Forge began making fake accounts, which were detected by the company’s automated systems, and “thinly veiled personas” to carry out deceptive campaigning. In October 2020, the platform permanently banned Rally Forge and Hoffman for violating its policy against CIB, work that Facebook said the firm had undertaken “on behalf of Turning Point USA” and another client.
A spokesman for Turning Point USA disputed the characterization of the operation as a “troll farm” and noted that it was a project of Turning Point Action, which is a separate entity.
Facebook did not take any enforcement action against Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action or Kirk with regard to the Phoenix operation. Facebook also did not disclose Rally Forge’s connection to America Progress Now and the deceptive Green Party ads.
A forestalled investigation
In September 2019, CLC filed a complaint alleging that APN’s failure to register with the FEC violated federal law. The FEC responded by sending a letter to an inaccurate address that America Progress Now had listed on its Facebook Page, but it does not appear to have taken further action, prompting CLC to sue it in February 2020.
“If nothing is done, the FEC will instead be sending a message that anonymous or fake entities like America Progress Now can pop into existence just prior to an election, exploit lax registration and reporting requirements by digital platforms, spend unlimited sums of money, and then disappear into thin air once an election is over,” the group said at the time.
In April 2020, the FEC wrote again, this time to the address listed on an Arizona state business filing for America Progress Now.
On 15 April 2020, Evan Muhlstein responded to the FEC by email. Muhlstein described the lack of filing as an “error”, writing, “I believe that it is important for the commission to understand that any potential failure on either of those items is based entirely on my inexperience to the process.” He wrote that he had “assumed that Facebook’s ‘political disclaimer/disclosure’ was all that was necessary”, said his expenditures totaled “only $2,467.54”, and expressed surprised that “a spend as small as this would require any type of reporting”.
“I again offer my sincerest apology for any potential errors in failing to disclose,” Muhlstein wrote. “Given the apparent obstacles and unknowns of participating in the election process in this manner (of which I am learning some of now), it is highly unlikely I will ever participate in it again. I feel terrible for having been so ignorant to the process.”
Muhlstein also expressed his desire to come into compliance “correctly and quickly”. At no point in the communication did Muhlstein disclose that the advertisements had been handled by a major political marketing firm.
“Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC is extremely misleading and might warrant a criminal investigation,” said Fischer, of the CLC.
Muhlstein did not respond to multiple attempts to make contact with him. His connection to Rally Forge is not known. He is a resident of Queen Creek, Arizona, the town where Hoffman also lives.
The FEC has the power to issue subpoenas and carry out serious investigations, but only after a vote of four of its five commissioners.
In a report dated 4 May, the FEC’s general counsel argued that, while it appeared that Muhlstein had violated federal law, the small amount of money involved and Muhlstein’s statement that he was unlikely to engage in further political spending led it to recommend that the FEC exercise prosecutorial discretion and dismiss the allegations with a warning.
In July, the FEC voted to follow the general counsel’s recommendation and dismiss the case, forestalling any actual investigation.
Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor went further, lambasting the CLC in a statement of reasons. “Contrary to CLC’s wild speculation, this case wasn’t about a ‘fake political group … exploit[ing] Facebook rules … and hid[ing] spending from the FEC,’” he wrote. “In fact, APN was established by an unsophisticated individual trying to show his support for several third-party candidates, but he got tripped by the myriad regulations governing online political speech.”
Trainor asserted that “there was no evidence to contradict” Muhlstein’s statement to the FEC “and no evidence to support CLC’s salacious theories about the ‘unknown person or persons’ behind APN”.
It would not be until 23 December 2020 – six months after the FEC had voted not to pursue the allegations of law violations and more than two years after the election – that Muhlstein would provide the FEC with that evidence, when he finally registered APN with the FEC and disclosed that the independent expenditure had been made through Rally Forge.
The FEC did not respond to questions from the Guardian, citing a policy not to comment on enforcement matters. Trainor did not respond to a request for comment. Fischer said: “It looks like we were right.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar on March 11, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Ilhan Omar Has Absolutely Nothing to Apologize For
Hadas Thier, Jacobin
Thier writes: "Yet again, both Republican and Democratic party leaders are attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar for telling the truth about American and Israeli war crimes. And yet again, Omar has nothing to apologize for."
s sure as the sun rises in the morning, the American political elite will periodically come together across warring party lines to disparage, slander, and otherwise malign Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
On Monday, Omar posted on Twitter her exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. There she raised what should be a fairly tame question: What mechanisms exist to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine and Afghanistan?
The United States government opposes the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction to hear alleged cases of human rights abuses by both Israel and Hamas, the United States and the Taliban. If domestic courts won’t investigate war crimes, and if the United States opposes the ICC’s ability to do so, where can victims of war crimes go for justice?
Secretary Blinken offered a few vague assertions about the value of human life, followed by an reiteration of the State Department’s line: that it opposes the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate claims unless they are referred by a state or by the United Nations (UN) Security Council. There are just two problems with this defense. One: what if it’s the state itself that is charged with war crimes? What possible reason would such a state have to call on the ICC to investigate itself? Two: what if that very state (in the case of the US) or its strongest ally (in the case of Israel), has veto power in the UN Security Council? How on earth could we ever expect that same body to fairly make a referral?
“We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity,” Omar wrote. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
Like clockwork, Republicans exploded in condemnations of antisemitism. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA) attacked Omar as “anti-Semitic,” “anti-American,” and “abhorrent.” Other Democratic leaders followed suit. A group of twelve Jewish Democrats issued a statement bemoaning the “false equivalencies” between “democracies” such as the United States and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban. The entire weight of the Democratic Party leadership chimed in with a similar statement demanding that Omar “clarify” (read: apologize for) her previous comments.
“Drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the US and Israel, and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban,” they argued, “foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all.”
You could be forgiven for doing a double-take. Aren’t these the very same people that only a couple of weeks ago responded to carnage in Gaza, Israeli air strikes flattening residential buildings and killing hundreds of civilians, the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, unrestrained Israeli lynch mobs shouting “death to Arabs,” with detached denunciations of “both sides”? Drawing equivalencies is apparently only “false” if doing so threatens to hold Israel or the US accountable.
During Israel’s two-week assault on Gaza, mainstream politicians and the media insisted that “both sides” were responsible, despite the completely disproportionate death toll of Palestinians, and despite the fact that one side, Israel, is a powerful state which colonizes and occupies the other side, Palestine, a stateless population. The media sought to hone in on and vilify Hamas in order to dehumanize Palestinians, as though every one of the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli rule is launching rockets, and deserves to be bombed in response.
But, apart from the wildly unequal scale of destruction wrought by Israeli forces, to insist that there is something uniquely reprehensible about Hamas’s methods begs a serious question. If launching low-grade rockets, which lack precise targeting technologies and therefore risk hitting civilians, is an abomination, is it not a greater abomination that Israel uses state-of-the-art weaponry, which purposefully and precisely attacks civilian buildings, schools, the media, and infrastructure like desalination plants, power and sewage plants?
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party leadership claim that the United States’ and Israel’s mantles of self-defined “democracies” means that they can be responsible for policing themselves, and that they are in a category distinct from an organization like Hamas. But that argument falls apart when we realize, as Martin Luther King Jr once said, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own government,” the United States.
Lest we forget, the US’s ongoing “war on terror” is responsible for at least 800,000 deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, and over 37 million people displaced from their homes. An estimated eight hundred US military bases in more than seventy countries patrol the world over in the service of US global domination. Israel, for its part, has killed almost 6,000 Palestinians since the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs started keeping tally in 2008, as compared to 262 Israelis killed during that time. In that sense, it’s true, there is no equivalency with the damage caused by a group like Hamas — what the US and Israel have done and continue to do around the world is far worse.
Let’s be clear about what this attack on Ilhan Omar is really about. First, every time the Republicans let loose on Omar, and the Democrats line up behind them, they encourage death threats and put Omar in danger. Second, such actions distract from the ongoing devastation of Palestinian lives, the blockade of Gaza, the ramifications of the most recent bombing campaign, and apartheid within Israel. Imagine, as Rep. Ayana Pressley put it, if instead of wasting time targeting Ilhan Omar, “Congress was as outraged by what Palestinians endure daily.”
Finally, in the context of a deepening rift within the Democratic Party on the question of Israel and Palestine, and growing public sympathy with Palestinians, the actions of the party leadership to call out Omar are an attempt to discipline the Left of the party. Last month, Omar and members of the “Squad,” along with other progressive Democrats, called out Israel’s ethnic cleansing and apartheid by name on the House floor. It is no surprise that now the party leadership has seized the first opportunity to try to shove that genie back in the bottle.
The Democratic Party establishment is as committed to unequivocal support for Israel as their Republican counterparts. Israel’s utility to the geopolitical interests of the US government means that they will fight tooth and nail to get their ducks back into their traditional pro-Israel row.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, other members of the Squad, and grassroots organizations were right to come to Omar’s defense. It’s good to finally have a leftist on the House Foreign Affairs Committee calling out US hypocrisy and exposing war crimes, as Omar has consistently done. Neither she, nor the movement for Palestine, has anything to apologize for.
ESMAD riot police unit. (photo: National Police)
Colombia's Mobile Anti-Riot Squad Unleashes Another Night of Terror in Cali
teleSUR
Excerpt: "One man dead and dozens of citizens injured is the consequence of the violent actions that the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) unleashed against Colombians on Thursday night."
In Bogota, the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad assaulted seven people, five of whom were injured in the head in the Chicala neighborhood.
ne man dead and dozens of citizens injured is the consequence of the violent actions that the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) unleashed against Colombians on Thursday night.
In Cali, citizen Jhon Arenas was shot and killed while driving his car in the Siloe neighborhood. Channel 2 also broadcast testimonies of a health mission member who said that the ESMAD set a young man on fire and then threw him into a pipe.
Outlet El Espectador reported that a nine-year-old girl, who had disappeared several days ago, was found dead with signs of torture in Brisas de Comuneros neighborhood, where she had arrived with her family after fleeing violence in the Nariño department.
In Bogota, the ESMAD assaulted seven people, five of whom were injured in the head in the Chicala neighborhood. In this area of the city, the indiscriminate firing of tear gas wreaked havoc on families who were trapped inside their homes, as reported by Colombia Informa.
Colombian victims of police brutality are waiting for international human rights missions to make a statement on the outrages they investigated.
Since April 28, social organizations have reported over 70 murders and 3,700 cases of police brutality throughout this South American country.
This Friday, students will march from the National University to the Prosecutor's Office in Bogota to demand actions in defense of the citizenry. This will happen when the National Strike reaches 45 consecutive days of protests against President Ivan Duque.
Scientists found high levels of PFAS in raindrops across several states. (photo: Eric Hansen/Getty)
It's Raining 'Forever Chemicals' Around the Great Lakes, Scientists Find
Audrey Nakagawa, EcoWatch
Nakagawa writes: "In the Great Lakes region, it is quite literally raining toxic chemicals."
"You can actually say it's raining PFAS at this point," said Marta Venier, an environmental chemist at Indiana University, according to Grist.
A team of American and Canadian scientists found high levels of PFAS chemicals, also known as "forever chemicals," after studying the rainfall in six different sites across the Great Lakes region.
The scientists collected samples of ambient air and rainwater from Cleveland, OH, Chicago, IL, Sturgeon Point, NY, Ontario, Canada, Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI, and Eagle Harbor in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, according to Cleveland.com.
PFAS are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They were first used in the U.S. in the 1940s. The chemicals don't break down and can accumulate as time goes on — making exposure to them harmful to humans, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
At each testing site, there were more PFAS in the samples than other pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This finding shows that PFAS are a major contaminant in the region and they're in snow and rain.
The samples of rainwater contained PFAS levels of 100 to 400 parts per trillion (ppt). To put these statistics into perspective, the EPA's safe limit for drinking water is 70 ppt. In Cleveland, Ohio, two weeks of rainwater collected contained around 1,000 ppt of PFAS compounds, according to MLive.
According to a peer review study conducted by scientists from the Environmental Working Group, PFAS contamination may be in drinking water that supplies 200 million Americans. The study also found that there are 2,337 locations in 49 states that have PFAS contamination.
This new research in the Great Lakes area was conducted by the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network, a program funded by the EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office, and is managed by Indiana University, according to Cleveland.com.
PFAS are synonymous with certain man-made substances like fast food containers, microwave popcorn bags, non-stick cookware, cleaning products, and other grease-resistant products. Firefighting foam is another large source of PFAS.
"All of these products that we use in our everyday life are treated with PFAS," Venier said in a report to Grist. "So every time we use them, there is either dust or air where these chemicals are released."
The researchers will continue to analyze PFAS in rainwater in hopes of tracing them back to specific polluters, and they plan to also study the seasonal trends of PFAS concentration.
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