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Thursday, June 10, 2021
POLITICO NIGHTLY: Inside the new Democratic divide on Israel
RSN: RootsAction | Relatives of Chicago Police Victims Release Statement and Video Opposing Ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel for US Ambassador to Japan
10 June 21
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10 June 21
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RSN: RootsAction | Relatives of Chicago Police Victims Release Statement and Video Opposing Ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel for US Ambassador to Japan
RootsAction, Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "Victims and relatives of victims of police brutality in Chicago while Rahm Emanuel was mayor released a joint statement Thursday decrying President Biden's reported plan to nominate Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan."
“During his eight years in office, Emanuel displayed contempt for communities of color,” the statement said. “He showed callous disregard for terrible losses suffered by the families of those who were killed or brutalized by officers of the Chicago Police Department.”
The 28 signers of the statement declared: “The possibility that Rahm Emanuel will become the U.S. ambassador to Japan is abhorrent to those of us who continue to mourn the loss of our loved ones due to police violence that he aided and abetted as mayor of Chicago…. No president who is truly serious about stopping brutality and murders by police would nominate Rahm Emanuel for an important government post…. Rahm Emanuel became a symbol of lethal disrespect for Black lives. Making him a U.S. ambassador would make the U.S. government a similar symbol.”
The statement’s signers include many who encountered tragedy due to abuses by the Chicago Police Department during Emanuel’s mayoral administration, including:
- Arewa Karen Winters, aunt of Pierre Loury, a 16-year-old who was killed by Chicago police in April 2016. Pierre was shot in the back as he was climbing a fence fleeing from the police. Video featuring Ms. Winters is being released today.
- Dorothy Holmes, mother of Ronald "Ronnie Man" Johnson, a father of five who was shot in the back by Chicago police eight days before 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot and killed in 2014. Video featuring Ms. Holmes is being released today.
- Emmett Farmer, father of Flint Farmer, who was shot in the back three times as he lay on the ground by a police officer in June 2011.
Below is the full text of the joint statement and list of signers.
The possibility that Rahm Emanuel will become the U.S. ambassador to Japan is abhorrent to those of us who continue to mourn the loss of our loved ones due to police violence that he aided and abetted as mayor of Chicago. During his eight years in office, Emanuel displayed contempt for communities of color. He showed callous disregard for terrible losses suffered by the families of those who were killed or brutalized by officers of the Chicago Police Department. What happened to Laquan McDonald is the best-known instance, but there were all too many others.
Remember that Chicago is the only city in the country where the state had to create a torture commission because of the crimes of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). CPD’s legacy of violence against the majority Black and Latino communities is why Chicago is now uniting to demand community control of the police.
When President Biden hosted the family of George Floyd at the White House recently, he issued a statement about the need to “collectively say enough of the senseless killings.” But the record is clear: Mayor Emanuel helped to deny and hide the realities of senseless killings by police in our city. No president who is truly serious about stopping brutality and murders by police would nominate Rahm Emanuel for an important government post.
We agree with Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who wrote: “Black Lives Matter can’t just be a slogan. It has to be reflected in our actions as a government, and as a people. Rewarding Rahm Emanuel’s cover-up of Laquan McDonald’s murder with an ambassadorship is not an act that reflects a value of or respect for Black lives.”
Rahm Emanuel became a symbol of lethal disrespect for Black lives. Making him a U.S. ambassador would make the U.S. government a similar symbol.
Arewa Karen Winters
Dorothy Holmes
Martinez Sutton
Kenyatta Brand
Emmett Farmer
Crista Noël
Armanda Shackelford
Frank Chapman
Mark Clements
Bertha Escamilla
Esther Hernandez
Carolyn J Ruff
Shasta Jones
Shasta Jackson
Yvonne Jones
Shapearl Wells
Christine Taylor
David Lincoln
Trina Townsend
Gloria Pinex
Cynthia Lane
Chantell Brooks
Tiffaney Boxley
Ruby Cavin-Adolfo
Sara Ortiz
Jonathan Projansky
Yolanda Arce
Anthanette Marshbanks
All eyes on June 22
We did it again!! Last night, Stephanie Morales AND Ramin Fatehi won their elections for Commonwealth Attorney in Virginia.
This is a huge win toward transforming the justice system in Virginia. And marks our second and third straight District Attorney victory in the last month alone. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.
Now all eyes are on our final election this month. We only have until June 22 to RAPIDLY build up our organizing arm.
Will you donate whatever you can afford right now to help us keep up this string of victories? We’re going all in this month and really need your support.
Your support these last few weeks provided critical resources to help make ALL these wins possible.
Every time you make a donation to Real Justice, you’re supporting the election of transformative candidates like Stephanie and Ramin, or Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón or Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner (twice!).
Your contribution today will help us provide even more resources to our endorsed candidates running throughout 2021, including funding our digital organizing programs which provide texting and research support.
We’ve proven that victories like Stephanie’s, Ramin’s, and Larry’s are possible when they have grassroots, people-powered support behind them. We’re working every day to help our endorsed candidates win and build fairer justice systems for their communities.
Will you donate $5 — or whatever you can afford — right now to help us keep up this string of victories? We’re going all in this month and really need your support.
Appreciate you all so much,
Chris Lazare
Organizing Director
Real Justice
Pol. Adv. Paid for by Real Justice PAC, realjusticepac.org
Not authorized by any federal, state, or local candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate.
Email us: info@realjusticepac.org
These four Senate seats are critical to keeping Mitch McConnell in the minority
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CC News Letter 09 June - Four members of a Muslim family killed in London, Ontario terrorist atrocity
Four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario were brutally slain Sunday night in a hit-and-run attack that police have described as “premeditated” and motivated by “hate” towards Islam and Muslims.
Police have revealed next to nothing about what they know about the far-right political views and connections of the 20-year-old assailant, Nathaniel Veltman. But they have characterized his murderous attack as a “hate crime” and have said they are considering adding “terrorism charges” to the four counts of murder and one of attempted murder laid against him on Monday.
The victims, whom Veltman struck at high speed with his black pickup truck at 8:40 p.m. Sunday while they were out for a stroll, are 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, his unnamed 74-year-old mother, his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna Afzaal. Fayez Afzaal, aged nine, survived the attack and remains in hospital with serious injuries.
Salman reportedly came from Pakistan and was a well-known member of the Muslim community in London, which is one of Canada’s oldest. Danveer Chaudry, a family friend, said Salman was involved in community work at the local mosque. “He was a very humble guy, always there for the community. I feel sorry that we were not in touch in the last year because of COVID. When I heard this tragedy, my heart is in so much pain and sorrow,” he told CBC.
The authorities have said the assailant was wearing a body armour-style vest when he was detained by police 10 minutes after the attack. But as of yesterday afternoon, almost 48 hours after his arrest, they have said nothing about his background, including whether he was employed, unemployed or a student, had ties to a far-right group, or made any statement on his arrest.
A Reuters report released Monday night noted that relatives of the deceased had released a statement saying that Veltman’s attack was supported by a group with which he was associated. However, neither their statement nor any other publicly available report has identified the group.
Although details about Veltman’s past and political views are being kept strictly under wraps, the fact that the police are even considering terrorism charges indicates that substantial evidence of his association with the far right must be in their possession.
Adopted on the pretext of the 9/11 attacks, Canada’s draconian anti-terrorism laws have been invoked multiple times against Islamist extremists, including those entrapped by state agents. But Crown prosecutors and the police-security agencies have generally declined to bring terrorism charges against fascist and other far-right assailants.
For example, Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six Muslims in an armed assault on the Quebec City mosque in January 2017, was convicted on six charges of first-degree murder. However, he faced no terrorism charges, even though his far-right convictions, including support for Trump and the French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen and hatred of Muslims, were well established.
Canadian political leaders acknowledged the political character of Veltman’s bloody crime. “This killing was no accident,” declared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a Tuesday House of Commons speech. “This was a terrorist attack.” He placed Veltman’s murderous rampage in the context of the Quebec City mosque shooting, the murder of a man at an Ontario mosque last September, and the harassment of black Muslim women in Edmonton, Alberta. He vowed to “dismantle far-right groups” and pointed to the government’s placing of the Proud Boys on Canada’s terrorism watch list as proof of its readiness to act.
New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh declared that the attack had its source in “pervasive racism” in Canada. “The reality is this is our Canada,” Singh said. “How many more families will be killed before we do something? Another family can’t be mauled down in the streets and nothing happens. Muslims are not safe in this country.”
Behind these crocodile tears, the representatives of the political establishment are unwilling and incapable of acknowledging that the rise of Islamophobia and far-right forces is a direct product of the foreign and domestic policies pursued and supported by all parties in parliament. Contrary to Singh’s fatuous attempt to blame the entire population for anti-Muslim hysteria and discrimination with references to “our Canada,” the reality is that these reactionary sentiments have been systematically stoked and deployed to deadly effect by the Canadian ruling class.
Taking the neocolonial invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a starting point, Canadian imperialism has been engaged in almost perpetual war for the past 20 years. Canada’s involvement in the US-led onslaughts against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have not only brutalized Canadian society, conveying the impression that all problems can be overcome by resorting to military force and high-powered firearms, but facilitated the eruption of virulent Islamophobia at home. This has proceeded in tandem with a savage assault on social spending and the gutting of democratic rights, including workers’ right to strike, which has ratcheted up social tensions to the breaking point, accelerated the growth of social inequality and created urban landscapes dominated by mass poverty and precarious employment.
To enforce this class war agenda against widespread social opposition, sections of the ruling elite have cultivated direct ties with far-right groups. This includes the use of fascistic thugs by company management at the Federated Cooperatives Ltd. oil refinery in Saskatchewan to intimidate locked out workers.
The Canadian ruling class’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic epitomizes the brutality of contemporary capitalist society. It has systemically prioritized profits over lives. While more than 25,000 Canadians have lost their lives to COVID-19, the country’s 48 billionaires have gained $78 billion in wealth during the 16-month-long pandemic.
Far-right forces, like Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party and the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), which currently forms Quebec’s provincial government, have undoubtedly spearheaded the demonization of the Muslim population. In 2015, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, in which Bernier served, proposed setting up a “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line targeting Muslims. In 2019, the CAQ, to wide applause from Quebec’s ruling elite, adopted legislation, Bill 21, that attacks religious minorities, and especially Muslim women, by prohibiting the wearing of “religious signs” by public sector workers, including teachers, in “positions of authority;” and by denying public services, including health care and education, to observant women who wear the burka or niqab.
If these chauvinist and far-right forces have been able to act with such aggressiveness, it is because the discriminatory measures they propose have been given credibility and even endorsed by forces on the so-called “left.” For more than a decade Québec Solidaire, a pseudo-left party that supports Quebec independence, described the reactionary debate over “excessive accommodation” to immigrants and minorities out of which Bill 21 emerged as “necessary.” And while Singh took pot shots Tuesday at “politicians” who “have used Islamophobia for political gain,” the reality is that his own NDP is the lynchpin propping up the Trudeau minority government. A government that has continued and expanded Canada’s participation in US aggression and war in the Middle East and intensified its collaboration, under both Trump and Biden, with the fascistic Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States to stop refugees fleeing poverty and American imperialist violence from seeking asylum in Canada.
Trudeau and Singh’s bluster about fighting the far right is a fraud. The Trudeau government has played a central role in ignoring and downplaying the extensive evidence of far-right activities in the Canadian Armed Forces. When a far-right military reservist sought to assassinate Trudeau last July, the incident was trivialized and the assailant faced only minor weapons charges.
These processes are not unique to Canada. Far-right terrorists, nourished by the imperialist-led wars of aggression targeting predominantly Muslim countries and the discrimination and abuse against immigrants and refugees perpetrated by the major powers, have targeted Muslims around the world. The deadliest of these far-right rampages include the brutal shooting spree by fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 51 people in two mosques in March 2019, and the July 2011 massacre by Anders Behring Breivik of 77 people, most of whom were members of the Labour Party’s youth movement.
Originally published in WSWS.org
At some point before the summer of 2018, an arms deal from the US to Saudi Arabia was sealed and delivered. A 227kg laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin, one of many thousands, was part of that sale. On August 9th, 2018 one of those Lockheed Martin bombs was dropped on a school bus full of Yemeni children. They were on their way to a field trip when their lives came to a sudden end. Amidst shock and grief, their loved ones would learn that Lockheed Martin was responsible for creating the bomb that murdered their children.
What they might not know is that the United States government (the President and the State Department) approved the sale of the bomb that killed their children, in the process enriching Lockheed Martin, which makes millions in profits from arms sales every year.
While Lockheed Martin profited from the death of forty Yemeni children that day, top United States weapons companies continue to sell weapons to repressive regimes around the world, killing countless more people in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and more. And in many cases, the United States public has no idea this is being done in our name to benefit the largest private companies in the world.
Now, the newest $735 million in precision-guided weapons that are being sold to Israel- are destined to have a similar fate. The news about this sale broke in the midst of Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza that killed over 200 Palestinians. When Israel attacks Gaza, it does so with US-made bombs and warplanes.
If we condemn the abhorrent destruction of life that occurs when Saudi Arabia or Israel kills people with US-manufactured weapons, what can we do about it?
Arms sales are confusing. Every once in a while a news story will break about a certain weapons sale from the United States to some other country across the globe that is worth millions, or even billions of dollars. And as Americans, we virtually have no say in where the bombs that say “MADE IN THE USA” go. By the time we hear about a sale, the export licenses are already approved and Boeing factories are churning out weapons we’ve never even heard of.
Even for people who consider themselves well informed about the military-industrial complex find themselves getting lost in the web of procedure and timing of weapons sales. There is a gross lack of transparency and information made available to the American peoples. Generally, here’s how arms sales work:
There is a period of negotiation that takes place between a country that wants to buy weapons and either the US government or a private company like Boeing or Lockheed Martin. After a deal is reached, the State Department is required by the Arms Export Control Act to notify Congress. After the notification is received by Congress, they have 15 or 30 days to introduce and pass a Resolution of Joint Disapproval to block the issuance of the export license. The amount of days depends on how close the United States is with the country buying the weapons.
For Israel, NATO countries, and a few others, Congress has 15 days to block the sale from going through. Anyone familiar with Congress’s arduous way of doing things may realize that 15 days is not really enough time to carefully consider whether selling millions/billions of dollars in weapons is in the political interest of the United States.
What does this time frame mean for advocates against arms sales? It means that they have a tiny window of opportunity to reach out to members of Congress. Take the most recent and controversial $735 million Boeing sale to Israel as an example. The story broke only a few days before those 15 days were up. Here’s how it happened:
On May 5, 2021 Congress was notified about the sale. However, since the sale was commercial (from Boeing to Israel) instead of government-to-government (from the United States to Israel), there is a greater lack of transparency because there are different procedures for commercial sales. Then on May 17, with only a few days left in the 15-day period Congress has to block a sale, the story of the sale broke. Responding to the sale on the last day of the 15 days, a joint resolution of disapproval was introduced in the House on May 20. The next day, Senator Sanders introduced his legislation to block the sale in the Senate, when the 15 days were up. The export license was already approved by the State Department that same day.
The legislation introduced by Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez to block the sale was virtually useless as time had run out.
However, all is not lost, as there are several ways a sale can still be stopped after the export license is granted. The State Department can revoke the license, the President can stop the sale, and Congress can introduce specific legislation to block the sale at any point up until the weapons are actually delivered. The last option has never been done before, but there is recent precedent to suggest that it might not be totally pointless to try.
Congress passed a bipartisan joint resolution of disapproval in 2019 to block an arms sale to the United Arab Emirates. Then President Donald Trump vetoed this resolution and Congress didn’t have the votes to override it. However, this situation showed that both sides of the aisle can work together to block an arms sale.
The convoluted and tedious ways arms sales go through raise two important questions. Should we even be selling weapons to these countries in the first place? And does there need to be a fundamental change in the procedure of selling weapons so that Americans can have more of a say?
According to our own law, the United States should not be sending weapons to countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia (among others). Technically, doing so goes against the Foreign Assistance Act, which is one of the main laws governing weapons sales.
Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act says that weapons sold by the United States cannot be used for human rights violations. When Saudi Arabia dropped that Lockheed Martin bomb on those Yemeni kids, no argument could be made for “legitimate self defense.” When the primary target of Saudi airstrikes in Yemen are weddings, funerals, schools, and residential neighborhoods in Sanaa, the United States has no legitimate justification for their use of US manufactured weapons. When Israel uses Boeing joint direct attack munitions to level residential buildings and international media sites, they are not doing so out of “legitimate self defense”.
In this day and age where videos of US allies committing war crimes are readily available on Twitter or Instagram, no one can claim that they don’t know what US-made weapons are used for around the world.
As Americans, there are important steps to be taken. Are we willing to put our efforts into changing the procedure of arms sales to include more transparency and accountability? Are we willing to invoke our own laws? More importantly: are we willing to put our efforts into drastically changing our economy so that Yemeni and Palestinian parents who put every ounce of love into raising their children do not have to live in fear that their whole world could be taken in an instant? As it stands, our economy benefits from selling tools of destruction to other countries. That is something Americans must realize and ask if there is a better way to be a part of the world. The next steps for people who are concerned about this newest arms sale to Israel should be petitioning the State Department and asking their members of Congress to introduce legislation to block the sale.
Danaka Katovich is a campaign coordinator at CODEPINK as well as the coordinator of CODEPINK’s youth cohort the Peace Collective. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in November 2020 with a focus in international politics. Since 2018 she has been working towards ending US participation in the war in Yemen, focusing on Congressional war making powers. At CODEPINK she works on youth outreach as a facilitator of the Peace Collective which focuses on anti-imperialist education and divestment.
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