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Michael McFaul | Progressive, Anti-Imperialist Democrats of the World, Unite!
Michael McFaul, Michael McFaul's Substack
McFaul writes: "The war in Ukraine is not just another conventional conflict in Europe, but a fight for universal values of sovereignty, decolonization, and democracy."
The war in Ukraine is not just another conventional conflict in Europe, but a fight for universal values of sovereignty, decolonization, and democracy.
Progressive, Anti-Imperialist Democrats of the World, Unite!
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had the unusual experience of toggling back and forth between two of the greatest democratic revolutions of that era: in South Africa and in the USSR. I was finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Oxford on national liberation movements in southern Africa and focused on how external actors – the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, Portugal, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, etc. – influenced domestic political change in southern Africa.
I narrowed the thesis down to two counties – Angola and Zimbabwe – in part because the outcome of South Africa was still uncertain. I was based at the University of Zimbabwe for a few summers and traveled to Angola and South Africa for my fieldwork.
I also took trips to the Soviet Union to assess what the Soviets sought to accomplish by supporting African national liberation movements —the MPLA in Angola, ZAPU in Zimbabwe, and the ANC in South Africa. On a trip to Moscow in 1988, I had a meeting at the African Institute. After giving a talk at the institute in bad Russian – I was learning Portuguese at the time, so my Russian had atrophied -- one of the researchers, Tanya Krasnopevtseva, approached me to talk privately. Tanya was the Soviet Union’s leading specialist in Zimbabwe’s revolution. But she had friends in Moscow who were “specialists” – that is, activists -- on the emerging revolution in the Soviet Union. She said if I was interested in revolutions, I should stop with southern Africa and start studying the Soviet revolution.
This all sounded kooky to me initially. But then I met some of Tanya’s friends. Two of them – Viktor Kuzin and Yuri Skupko – worked at Moscow’s African Institute as junior researchers, but their real work was in a non-governmental organization called Democratic Union (DU). Viktor, Yuri, and their DU comrades were revolutionaries. They were pushing for a multi-party political system and the end of the cult of Leninism. Over the next two years, Russia’s democratic movement became bigger and more radical, pushing for free and fair elections, and for the decolonization of the Soviet Union. (You can read my interviews with them in my 1993 book The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy.)
They also joined forces with nationalist liberation movements in the other 14 republics of the USSR.
As I got to know the leaders of Russia’s democratic movement, they reminded me of the revolutionaries I interviewed for my dissertation on national liberation movements in southern Africa. Both wanted free and fair elections. Both wanted the redistribution of property. Both were against imperialism and for independence and sovereignty. Yes, the Russian revolutionaries wanted independence for Russia from the Soviet empire. Their methods were also similar: mass demonstrations, strikes, and other acts of non-violent civic resistance.
However, they differed in an important way: how they defined friends and enemies as shaped by Cold War divisions structuring world politics at the time. The ANC and South African trade union leaders embraced socialism as their ideology of opposition. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, therefore, was an inspiration for them –and a source of financial assistance. As such, the ANC leaders considered the democratic movements in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic republics, etc. seeking to end the USSR’s one-party rule to be their enemies. Conversely, small d democrats in Moscow considered the ANC to be a communist organization allied with their enemy, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In conversations in Johannesburg, Harare (where many ANC leaders lived in exile), and Moscow, I tried to explain to these two groups of revolutionaries their commonalities and common cause. For example, the similar agendas for creating independent trade unions. South Africa’s current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was the leader of the Congress of the South African Trade Union (COSATU) at that time and we met. COSATU’s agenda and methods looked a lot like those of the Independent Miners Union (NPG) in Russia and Ukraine, whose leader Anatoly Malykhin, I also met back then. I even published an article in a leftist journal in South Africa to try to explain the commonalities.
(Michael McFaul “Workers of the World Unite! Again? Socialist Politics in Post-Communist Russia,” Work in Progress, (Johannesburg, South Africa), No. 76, July/August 1991.)
The aspirations of South African civil society organizations seemed exactly the same as NGOs in Russia.
But I never made much progress. The Cold War dichotomy put these two groups on different sides of the barricade.
Thirty years later, the lingering legacies of the Cold War live on. With his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin launched a new war of imperial conquest. Even before the USSR’s creation, the Russian Empire – yes, this was the official name of the country at the time -- had colonized parts of Ukraine. The global post-World War II decolonization process had finally reached Eurasia and in 1991, Ukraine finally gained its independence. Three decades later, Putin is seeking to reverse it. Imagine the British, French, or Portuguese empires trying to subjugate again India, Algeria, or Angola, thirty years after these former colonies achieved independence. That’s what is happening in Ukraine today. Two days before Putin launched his invasion, Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, captured the moment most eloquently:
We believe that all states formed from empires that have collapsed or retreated have many peoples in their yearning for integration with peoples in neighboring states. This is normal and understandable. After all, who does not want to be joined to their brethren and to make common purpose with them?
However, Kenya rejects such a yearning from being pursued by force. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.
We rejected irredentism and expansionism on any basis, including racial, ethnic, religious or cultural factors. We reject it again today.
Kenya registers its strong concern and opposition to the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. We further strongly condemn the trend in the last few decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.
Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight. It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.
And yet, the Indian government – once a champion of anti-imperialism and decolonization – has remained neutral in this war. Actually, that’s too generous. Since the war began, India has dramatically increased imports of Russian oil, providing finance for Putin’s imperial war. Anti-imperial, democratic South Africa just announced plans to conduct naval exercises with imperial, autocratic Russia. Not all governments and societies in the Global South frame Putin’s war as imperial conquest. That is tragic and wrong.
When I’ve challenged friends and colleagues from India, South Africa, and other countries from the Global South about this hypocrisy, I get two kinds of responses. One is ‘we have our own problems; we don’t have the bandwidth to worry about Ukraine.’ A second is whataboutism. ‘What about U.S. military interventions?’ ‘What about American indifference to annexations elsewhere?’ ‘What about American violations of human rights or support for regimes that violate human rights?’
The first question is a fair one. Not all countries have the resources to aid Ukraine now. My answer is simply to take a moral stance, as a government or as an individual. The United Nations was established in part to try to prevent wars of annexation like World War II. Decolonization and respect for sovereignty were also two core norms at the UN’s founding. Neutrality, therefore, is not a legitimate position when watching a new war of imperial conquest. The way Putin is fighting this war – using deliberate acts of terrorism against non-combatants – is also immoral. As South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Regarding whataboutism, my response is two-fold. The first is to acknowledge American unjust wars, foreign policy mistakes, and immoral actions from time to time. Just because I’m an American citizen, does not mean I defend everything my government did and does. I criticize U.S. actions all the time. I’ll devote another essay to comparing and contrasting the U.S. versus Russia’s use of military force because it is a big and important topic that deserves its own essay. That said, I reject the moral equivalency between Putin’s war in Ukraine and American military interventions. The U.S. has not for many decades engaged in annexation or colonization, does not attack democracies, and does not use terrorism deliberately as a method of war.
But let’s say you disagree; you see more parallels between American and Russian uses of military force than I do. How does that excuse Putin’s barbaric war? How do American wrongs justify Russian wrongs today? Two wrongs don’t make a right. If a thief breaks into your house, that does not give you a license to break into your neighbor’s house? If you opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, how can not oppose Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? If you oppose Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, Turkish occupation of parts of Cyprus, or Morocco seizing Western Sahara, how can you not oppose Russian annexation of Ukrainian land? If you are outraged by Saudi methods of warfare in Yemen, how can you not be opposed to Russian methods of warfare in Ukraine
It’s time we finally retire Cold War frameworks and see the universality of the struggle against imperialism and colonization and for democracy, sovereignty, and human rights.
Anti-imperialists of the world, unite!
Progressive of the world, unite!
Small d democrats of the world, unite!
Let’s all do what we can together to stop Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
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TSA agents at O'Hare airport. (photo: Getty)
Hacktivist Stumbles Upon FBI's 'No-Fly' List. Reveals a 'Perverse Outgrowth of the Surveillance State.'
Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, Business Insider
Tangalakis-Lippert writes: "The FBI Terrorism Screening Center's secret 'no-fly' list just got a lot less mysterious thanks to a bored Swiss hacker exploring unsecured servers in her free time."
he FBI Terrorism Screening Center's secret "no-fly" list just got a lot less mysterious thanks to a bored Swiss hacker exploring unsecured servers in her free time.
Maia arson crimew, described by the Department of Justice as a "prolific" hacker in an unrelated indictment, said she was clicking around on an online search engine full of unprotected servers on January 12 when she accessed one maintained by a little-known airline and found the highly sensitive documents, along with what she called a "jackpot" of other information.
The Daily Dot first reported on Thursday that the server, hosted by CommuteAir, a regional airline that partners with United Airlines to form United Express routes, contained among its files a redacted 2019 version of the anti-terrorism "no-fly" list.
The file "NoFly.csv," found by crimew, contains over 1.5 million entries including names and dates of birth of people the FBI identifies as "known or suspected terrorists," who are prevented from boarding aircraft "when flying within, to, from and over the United States." A second file, titled "selectee.csv" contains 251,169 entries of names of people who are subject to additional screening while flying. The lists contained alternate spellings and aliases for included individuals, making the total number of unique entries lower than the total number of included names.
A spokesperson for the airline confirmed the authenticity of the files to Insider and said personally identifiable information belonging to employees was also found in the hack, but declined to answer detailed questions about the hack itself.
"Based on our initial investigation, no customer data was exposed," Erik Kane, a spokesperson for CommuteAir, said in a statement to Insider. "CommuteAir immediately took the affected server offline and started an investigation to determine the extent of data access. CommuteAir has reported the data exposure to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and also notified its employees."
The Transportation Security Administration confirmed to Insider that it had been made aware of the incident.
"We are investigating in coordination with our federal partners," Lorie Dankers, a spokesperson for the TSA, said in a statement to Insider. The TSA, which enforces the "no-fly" list, declined to answer detailed questions about the list and its leak, referring Insider to the FBI — the federal agency that maintains the list.
In a statement emailed to Insider, a representative for the FBI would neither confirm nor deny any individual names on the list, but said individuals are included "in a manner consistent with protecting privacy and civil liberties."
Easily accessible secrets
Crimew told Insider it took just minutes for her to access the server and find credentials that allowed her to see the database. She said she was exploring the servers as a way to combat boredom while sitting alone and didn't intend to discover something with US national security implications.
While browsing files in the company's server, "it dawned on me just how heavily I had already owned them within just half an hour or so," crimew wrote in a blog post detailing the hack. The credentials she found, which gave her access to the files, would also allow her access to internal interfaces that controlled refueling, canceling and updating flights, and swapping out crew members — if she were so inclined, she wrote.
"It's disturbing to see such information revealed to people that are not with the need-to-know for that," Kenneth Gray, a retired FBI agent who served for 24 years, told Insider. "There's a number of reasons why a person on that list may not actually be a terrorist. But the thing is, there are also people on there that are suspected of being a terrorist or are known to be a terrorist. And so, if that information is released, then the public becomes aware of ongoing investigations. And those international terrorism cases, those ongoing investigations are normally classified. And so revealing this kind of information could lead to those individuals becoming aware that they are under investigation."
The massive files, reviewed by Insider, contain over a dozen aliases for Viktor Bout, the Russian "Merchant of Death" who was traded in a prisoner swap for basketball player Brittney Griner, as well as a large number of names of people suspected of organized crime in Ireland. However, crimew said there was a notable trend among the names.
"Looking at the files, it just confirmed a lot of the things me, and probably everyone else, kind of suspected in terms of what biases are in that list," crimew told Insider. "Just scrolling through it, you will see almost every name is Middle Eastern."
Edward Hasbrouck, an author and human rights advocate, wrote in his analysis of the documents that the lists "confirm the TSA's (1) Islamophobia, (2) overconfidence in the certainty of its pre-crime predictions, and (3) mission creep."
"The most obvious pattern in the data is the overwhelming preponderance of Arabic or Muslim-seeming names," Hasbrouck wrote in an essay published Friday by Papers, Please, an advocacy group dedicated to addressing creeping identity-based national travel rules.
However, the FBI maintains its procedures for including people on the list are not indicative of bias.
"Individuals are included on the watchlist when there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is a known or suspected terrorist," an FBI spokesperson said in a statement to Insider. "Individuals are not watchlisted based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, or any First Amendment-protected activities such as free speech, the exercise of religion, freedom of press, freedom of peaceful assembly, and petitioning the government for redress of grievances."
Though the recent news about the list has prompted a resurgence of accusations of Islamophobia levied against the FBI, the "no-fly" list has long faced criticism and legal challenges from civil rights groups over its targeting of Muslim and Middle Eastern people.
The targeting of people from Arab nations was not limited to federal restrictions on travel, as the entire nation faced a spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes across the country following the 9/11 attacks, according to the DOJ.
"It's no secret to anyone that the years following 9/11, measures that the government claimed were in the name of our national security wrongly, unfairly and discriminatorily impacted Muslims and people who appear to be Muslim," Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told Insider. "That's the very definition of bias and it appears to be the case, the list that you have continues to reflect that bias and it just shows the need for reform and change is as urgent as it ever was."
'No-Fly' mission creep
The federal "no-fly" list was created under the George W. Bush administration, originally beginning as a small list of people prevented from flying on commercial flights due to specific threats. The list was formalized and vastly expanded in scope after the 9/11 terror attacks, when Al Qaeda-affiliated hijackers crashed commercial flights into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing 2,977 people.
"What you've got to remember is that the purpose of this list is part of the entire movement that tried to stop another 9/11 from happening," Gray told Insider. "In the case of 9/11, terrorists came into the country, some of the terrorists took flight lessons here in the country. Others came into the country to be the muscle on board the aircraft so that they can hijack the aircraft to turn them into weapons. And so the purpose of this is to stop another 9/11 from happening."
Inclusion on the list prevents people the FBI identifies who "may present a threat to civil aviation or national security" from boarding planes flying within, to, from, or over the United States. They do not need to have been charged or convicted of a crime to be included, just "reasonably suspected" of aiding or planning acts of terrorism.
"This was part of the US government's response to the tragedy of 9/11," Shamsi told Insider. "And from the beginning, we were gravely concerned about the civil liberties and rights impacts given how watchlists have been used in this country's history in the past. And, unfortunately, virtually all the things that we warned against have happened and are becoming entrenched."
She added: "What that means is that we've got a massive and ever-growing watchlisting system that can stigmatize people — including Americans — as known or suspected terrorists, based on secret standards, secret evidence, without a meaningful process to challenge government error and clear their names."
In the years since the original "no-fly" list was formed, it has gained official federal recognition and grown from just 16 individual names, according to the ACLU, to the 1,807,230 entries of names and aliases contained in the documents found by crimew.
"The ever-expanding scope of these lists are due to the revelations of people in the course of investigations," Gray told Insider. "And it couldn't help but expand because of the fact that more and more people become suspected, just through the course of their activities — which could be misinterpreted, for instance. There are many reasons why the list continues to expand."
Gray added that, with limited procedures for challenging a wrongful inclusion on the list, it's exceptionally difficult to get your name off if it has been incorrectly added.
"People who are on the no-fly list are denied the ability to be with family members at funerals, sickbeds, weddings, graduations, all of life's big and small events, because the ability to fly is necessary to the modern era," Shamsi told Insider. "The negative and harmful impact of wrongful placement on the no-fly lists is hard to overstate."
When looking at the list, crimew told Insider, "you start to notice just how young some of the people are." Among the hundreds of thousands of names on the list are the children of suspected terrorists including a child whose birth date indicates they would have been four years old or five years at the time they were included.
In the early 2000s, there were many reports of people being wrongly placed on the "no-fly" list, including then-Senator Ted Kennedy and peace activists Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams. In 2006, the ACLU settled a federal suit over the list, prompting a release of its then 30,000 names and the TSA's creation of an ombudsman to oversee complaints.
Despite the existing ombudsman process, Shamsi and Gray said it is difficult to navigate and remains challenging to remove your name from the list, causing substantial trouble for people who have not committed an act of terrorism.
"What problem is this even trying to solve in the first place?" crimew told Insider. "I feel like this is just a very perverse outgrowth of the surveillance state. And not just in the US, this is a global trend."
Not the first hack
Crimew, a staunch self-described leftist and anti-capitalist, was indicted for conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft related to a previous hack in 2021. The DOJ alleges she and several co-conspirators "hacked dozens of companies and government entities and posted the private victim data of more than 100 entities on the web."
The outcome of the 2021 case is still pending, crimew told Insider. Though she hasn't been contacted by law enforcement in relation to the latest hack, she said she wouldn't be surprised that she had once again caught the attention of federal agencies.
"This will become the subject of a cybersecurity investigation looking into who is responsible," Gray told Insider. "The person who committed this hack, who got this information, may have done this for bragging rights, may have done this not with the intent of using this information for bad purposes. However, that information, since it's out in the public now, in the public domain, it may eventually cause problems. This could be of potential use for a terrorist group, even if that was not the original intent for the hack."
For that reason, crime told Insider said she chose to release the list through journalists and academic sources instead of freely publishing it on her blog.
"It's just a whole lot of personally identifiable information that could be used against people, especially in the hands of non-US intelligence agencies," crimew wrote in a statement to Insider. For that reason, she said she chose to release the list through journalists and academic sources instead of freely publishing it on her blog. "I just feel iffy about publicly releasing a list full of people some government entity considers 'bad.' (Not that the US doesn't use it against people, it just doesn't need to get in the hands of even more people doing harm)."
CommuteAir faced a similar data breach in November, CNN reported, after an "unauthorized party" accessed information that included names, birthdates, and partial social security numbers held by the airline.
"I just hope they maybe learned their lesson the second time," crimew told Insider.
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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Capitol Hill last August. (photo: Michael Reynolds/Shutterstock)
Why Kyrsten Sinema Is in Deep Trouble
Andrew Romano and Christopher Wilson, Yahoo! News
Excerpt: "Broadly unpopular with Arizonans, the independent lawmaker faces the biggest challenge of her political career."
Broadly unpopular with Arizonans, the independent lawmaker faces the biggest challenge of her political career.
There’s no shortage of Democratic senators in danger of losing their seats in 2024. Joe Manchin in ruby-red West Virginia. Jon Tester in solidly Republican Montana. Sherrod Brown in ever-more-conservative Ohio. And their colleagues in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — four of the purplest places on the map.
But if the latest polls are to be believed, no Senate incumbent is in as much trouble as Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.
On Monday, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Phoenix launched his own bid for Sinema’s seat, setting up what could become the most fascinating and dramatic Senate brawl of 2024.
“I have been deeply humbled by the encouragement I have received from the people of Arizona, and today I am answering the call to serve,” he said in a statement.
The following day, his team announced that it had already raised over $1 million from more than 27,000 donations, surpassing in eight hours the Arizona record for the most individual donations in a campaign’s first day.
On paper, someone like Sinema, a trailblazing centrist in a closely divided state, might seem relatively safe. Yet after years spent alienating progressives and blocking major parts of President Biden’s agenda, Sinema quit the Democratic Party in December and reregistered as an independent.
By doing so, she has now put herself at dire risk of losing reelection next year. That’s because while someone like Manchin could very well lose in West Virginia, he’ll still get 40% of the vote at the very least. Sinema, meanwhile, has a much lower floor and could theoretically limp across the finish line with less than half that.
It was clear to Arizona political observers when Sinema announced her switch that she was doing it (at least in part) to avoid a nomination challenge from the far more liberal Gallego, a longtime critic who led her by a staggering 58 percentage points (74% to 16%) among Democratic primary voters in a Data for Progress survey conducted last year.
By campaigning as an independent instead of a Democrat, Sinema would avoid a head-to-head primary contest with Gallego or another progressive, proceeding automatically to the general election.
The bet Sinema was making, analysts said, was that state and national Democrats would treat her like Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — the other independent senators who caucus with the party on Capitol Hill — and discourage any of their own from running to her left so as not to risk dividing the Democratic vote and “throwing” the race to a Republican.
Gallego’s entrance into the contest, however, makes it all but impossible for Democrats to rally around Sinema as they have with Sanders and King. And the likely result — a three-way contest with a Republican in the mix — is going to test Sinema like never before.
In December, Public Policy Polling released a survey conducted on Gallego’s behalf showing the Democratic congressman (40%) statistically tied with former GOP gubernatorial nominee (and possible future Senate candidate) Kari Lake (41%) — while Sinema (13%) trailed both Gallego and Lake by nearly 30 points.
An even more recent survey by Blueprint Polling again found Lake (36%) and Gallego (32%) locked in a close battle, with Sinema (14%) far behind.
Such paltry numbers suggest that rather than uniting moderates behind her, Sinema’s prized independence may have left her without a natural constituency heading into 2024.
“Right now, the polls reflect our natural tendency towards party identification,” Robert Robb, a longtime columnist for the Arizona Republic and a former GOP political consultant, told Yahoo News. “And that’s a barrier that Sinema will have to overcome.”
A September AARP survey found that not only do Arizona Democrats now see their senator more unfavorably (57%) than favorably (37%), but so do clear majorities of every other imaginable demographic group — including Arizona Republicans, women, Latinos and independents.
Sinema’s best hope to stay in office, then, might be to use her seat in the Senate as a platform to rebrand herself not as a centrist Democrat but rather as a “truly independent voice for Arizona” and the real heir to “maverick” Arizona Sen. John McCain. Her latest gambit — a compromise package of both Republican and Democratic immigration reforms negotiated with GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — could help burnish that brand (in the unlikely event it survives Congress).
“Two years is a long time, and Sinema might be the most important senator in the country right now,” Arizona pollster and political consultant Paul Bentz told Yahoo News. “She’s getting a lot of attention because of that, and that gives her a lot of opportunity — opportunity to focus on getting things done in Washington, D.C., building a coalition and coming back to the state with excellent talking points to run on.”
If the far-right Arizona GOP continues its self-defeating strategy of nominating divisive, radical figures (such as losing 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters) and Gallego veers too far left on issues like immigration, Sinema would — in theory — have a chance to win over the bulk of voters who live somewhere in the middle.
“The conventional wisdom is that Sinema has no chance, and the only question is whether she takes more votes away from the Democrat or the Republican,” Robb said. “But if you look at her approval numbers, they’re in the 35% to 38% range, which is a pretty good base in a three-way race where 40% will probably win the seat. The challenge is keeping those people from defaulting back to partisan identification on Election Day.”
Meanwhile, the goal for Gallego — a Harvard-educated Marine combat veteran who was first elected in 2014 — is to splinter whatever centrist coalition Sinema tries to assemble.
“You already see Ruben in his announcement video using his humble beginnings and his military background to try to appeal to independent, unaffiliated voters,” explained Bentz. “The more he cuts into that vote while defending the Democratic base, the better his chances. He doesn’t even mention that he’s a Democrat.”
A member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Gallego had been attacking Sinema for months in advance of formally announcing his campaign. And his preferred line of attack — that Sinema isn’t insufficiently progressive but rather insufficiently populist — is designed to resonate even with Arizonans who don’t feel loyal to Democrats.
“The problem isn’t that Sen. Sinema abandoned the Democratic Party, it’s that she’s abandoned Arizona,” Gallego said in Monday’s statement. “She’s repeatedly broken her promises and fought for the interests of Big Pharma and Wall Street at our expense.”
Going forward, Gallego will have no shortage of fodder for such attacks. Last year, for instance, Sinema single-handedly forced Democrats to alter the Inflation Reduction Act and strip out taxes on hedge funds and private equity firms in order to earn her critical vote, saving those companies an estimated $14 billion.
From 2017 to 2022, Sinema’s campaign received more than $6 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industries, according to the nonprofit research group OpenSecrets. She also raked in more money from payday lenders during the 2022 cycle than any other senator.
None of which is to say that Gallego, who represents the single bluest congressional district in Arizona, is the new frontrunner. “Except on some military and foreign policy issues, he’s a standard-issue strong liberal candidate,” said Robb. “And they do not fare well in Arizona in statewide elections. He fits his district. He does not fit the state.”
But the problem for Sinema is that she doesn’t just have to beat Gallego; she has to beat a Republican too. And it isn’t hard to imagine a MAGA candidate such as Lake joining with Gallego to slam Sinema for, say, hobnobbing with global elites at Davos in a white fur vest (which Sinema did last week).
The irony of Sinema’s plight is that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, her fellow Arizonan, has seemingly found a way to appeal to swing voters without offending the base at every turn — and last November he comfortably won reelection as a result.
Although Kelly has been a more reliable vote for Biden’s agenda than Sinema, several of his 2022 campaign ads described him as “working with Republicans” and “stand[ing] up to the left”; at one debate, he went so far as to describe some of Biden’s immigration decisions as “dumb.” Kelly also “helped sink one of Joe Biden’s labor nominees, pushed the president to open new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and hammered the administration over lifting pandemic-era restrictions on the southern border,” according to Politico.
To be sure, Kelly’s Republican rival, Blake Masters, did himself no favors by touting the Unabomber’s political writings and blaming “Black people, frankly” for gun violence. But typically, the president’s party loses independents by double digits in midterm years. In contrast, the 2022 exit polls showed Kelly trouncing Masters among independents — who, at 40%, made up a larger share of Arizona’s electorate than Democrats (27%) or Republicans (33%) — by a remarkable 55% to 39% margin.
In 2024, Sinema will somehow have to perform even better than Kelly among independents, because Gallego’s bid will leave her with far less support on the left.
“Republicans are more likely to be solidified behind the Republican nominee, whereas we’ll see both Gallego and Sinema competing for Democrats and a lot of the independent audience,” Bentz told Yahoo News. “In fact, we did the math, and Sinema would need to win about 25% of Republicans, about 25% of Democrats and at least 60% of independents and unaffiliated voters to have a chance.”
In truth, Sinema would probably struggle to turn out progressives even if Gallego had passed on the race. The more she has refused to support ending — or even reforming — the 60-vote threshold created by the Senate’s legislative filibuster, the more Democrats have raged against her.
In January 2022, the Arizona Democratic Party voted to formally censure Sinema over her refusal to adjust the filibuster to pass new voting rights legislation. Polling that month showed her with a 19% approval rating among Arizona Democratic primary voters, versus 83% for Kelly and 80% for Biden.
“We appreciate Senator Sinema’s leadership in passing the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” state party chair Raquel Terán said in a written statement at the time. “However, we are also here to advocate for our constituents and the ramifications of failing to pass federal legislation that protects their right to vote are too large and far-reaching.”
Emily’s List, an organization that supports female candidates who favor reproductive rights, released a statement the same month criticizing the senator for her pro-filibuster position. Previously the group had been Sinema’s biggest supporter, donating more than $400,000 to her successful 2018 Senate bid.
“Right now, Senator Sinema’s decision to reject the voices of allies, partners and constituents who believe the importance of voting rights outweighs that of an arcane process means she will find herself standing alone in the next election,” Laphonza Butler, the group’s president, said in a statement.
But regardless of whether Democrats officially abandon Sinema for Gallego — so far, national party leaders seem intent on neutrality — the risk of mutually assured destruction remains very real.
“Having a three-way race benefits Republicans in the state of Arizona,” Bentz said. “So while we saw Republicans struggle in the last statewide election — particularly those who were prone to denying the 2020 results, pledging fealty to Trump and on the extreme end of the abortion discussion — those problems will be less impactful in a contest against both Sinema and Gallego.
“We don’t know who the GOP will nominate, but I expect a spirited and very crowded primary,” he added. “This is going to be one of the best chances for Republicans to start winning again — if they can get their act together.”
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A candlelight vigil on Wednesday for victims of the Monterey Park shooting. (photo: Mario Gama/Getty)
Eight Days, 25 Dead: California Shaken by String of Mass Shootings
Lois Beckett and Sam Levin, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "All the names of the dead from one California mass shooting had not yet been released when the news alerts started again on Monday afternoon: there had been another shooting. There was another gunman at large. Seven more people were dead."
A series of four attacks have upended communities across the state, from a city to farming towns
All the names of the dead from one California mass shooting had not yet been released when the news alerts started again on Monday afternoon: there had been another shooting. There was another gunman at large. Seven more people were dead.
Gun violence takes a daily toll in California, but the brutality, scale and pace of the past week has felt different. In the course of just eight days, at least 25 people were killed in four separate mass shootings, defined as any shooting in which at least four people are injured.
The killings – which cut across a big city, a placid Los Angeles suburb, and two small farming towns – have left residents shaken, exhausted and afraid, and renewed calls for some kind of fundamental change.
“This proliferation of violence just seems like it’s perpetual,” said Tinisch Hollins, the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy group for survivors of violence. “It’s so common now to hear of mass shootings that they don’t even stay in the headlines. Not even a day later, we’re talking about an entirely different incident. It’s horrifying.”
An average of five California residents die from gun homicides each day, but mass-casualty shootings highlight how violence can upend any community in the state, from rural enclaves to quiet suburbs.
“At some point, you get tired of ‘thoughts and prayers’. You get tired of writing statements,” said Fernando Rejón, executive director of Urban Peace Institute, a community safety organization founded in California. “And you keep asking yourself, what is going to be the tipping point? After Uvalde and all these recent mass shootings, you think they’ll be the tipping point, and then it’s not.”
A Saturday night shooting in Monterey Park, California, America’s first “suburban Chinatown”, targeted a ballroom dance studio popular with elderly Asian American patrons on the eve of the Lunar New Year. Police said they were still trying to understand why the shooter, a 72-year-old Asian American man, had murdered 11 people, and injured nine more, at a studio he had apparently frequented for years.
On Monday afternoon, a 66-year-old Asian American man opened fire on current and former co-workers at two mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay, in northern California, officials said. Some of the killings reportedly took place in front of children who lived nearby, one official said: “For children to witness this is unspeakable,” she said. One person was wounded, and seven people died.
Less than four hours after the Half Moon Bay shootings, early on Monday evening, a group of people in Oakland were reportedly filming a music video when shooting broke out near a gas station. An 18-year-old was killed, and four other people were shot, ranging in age from 19 to 56, the East Bay Times reported. The perpetrators remained at large.
There appeared to be no limit to the age or vulnerability of the people at risk of being gunned down. Not even a week before the Monterey Park shooting, a 10-month old infant had been shot to death at home in Goshen, a small town in central California, in a shooting that left six people, across five generations of one family, dead.
A 72-year-old woman had been shot in her sleep. Sixteen-year-old Alissa Parraz and her son Nycholas had been found together in a ditch outside their home, where it appeared they had been trying to flee the attack. All were shot in the head.
Samuel Pina, Elyssa’s grandfather, said the family was in shock: “It comes in big waves.”
The gunmen in Oakland and Goshen were still unidentified and at large.
Officials said the Half Moon Bay shooter drove himself to a local sheriff’s station following the slaying, where he was arrested in the parking lot. The 72-year-old who had opened fire at the California dance hall shooting had died by suicide after being pulled over by police the morning after the shooting.
But even in communities where the killers had been identified, and no longer posed a danger, there were still more questions than answers about the sudden violence, and what might have prevented it.
“In the end, there are simply too many guns in this country. And there has to be a change,” Dave Pine, a local lawmaker in San Mateo county, said on Monday, in the wake of the mushroom farm shootings.
Gun laws
California, the most populous US state and one of the world’s biggest economies, also has the country’s strictest gun laws. In 1989, it became the first state in the nation to ban military-style assault weapons.
The state’s per-capita gun homicide rate is lower than the US average, and sharply lower than many Republican-majority states, like Louisiana and Mississippi, which have much more permissive gun ownership laws.
But even California’s Democratic supermajority, which has continued to pass a wide range of new gun regulations, can only do so much in a country where gun rights are fiercely protected. Gunmakers have produced new, military-style weapons that comply with the letter of the law on California’s assault-weapon bans, while functioning in very similar ways to the original weapons. More conservative states with more permissive gun and ammunition purchasing laws, like Arizona and Nevada, are only a short drive away. Police departments in the state have been confiscating an increasing number of “ghost guns”, home-built weapons without serial numbers.
At the federal level, gun rights absolutists continue to gain political power in the courts.
A single George W Bush-appointed federal judge in California, Roger Benitez, has become famous for striking down California gun control laws.
The US supreme court’s new pro-gun majority, fought for by the National Rifle Association and secured by Donald Trump, has already expanded the legal scope of the second amendment, which they defined last year as protecting the right of citizens to carry guns in public for self-protection. California is now being forced to rework its gun control statutes to comply with the new constitutional standards.
While some Californians continue to call for even tighter gun laws, moments of crisis, including high-profile shootings, also fuel gun sales. Firearm purchases surged in California during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, with an estimated 5 million Americans nationwide becoming first-time gun owners in 2020 and 2021.
Amid an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, there has been a striking increase in the number of Asian Americans buying guns to protect themselves.
Community anti-violence programs exist across the state, many of them focused on identifying and working with potential perpetrators of gun violence. But these local programs are often understaffed and overstretched.
“We have solutions that we know work. But they’re not funded,” said Dr Joseph Griffin, executive director of Youth Alive! in Oakland, which assists survivors of violence.
‘We need to come together’
The onslaught of back-to-back tragedies has a cumulative impact on California residents, creating a sense of fear and despair, especially for people who see themselves in the victims that were targeted, advocates said.
Hollins, a San Francisco native who lost two brothers to violence, said the news cycles can be particularly traumatizing for people who previously survived violence or have relatives who were killed in shootings, and noted that the recent killings by police in the state also compounded the stress. “Some of us develop a level of compassion fatigue doing this work. It’s not a lack of compassion for the individuals who have been harmed, but there’s only so much you can process and hold from all these experiences. And so folks sometimes dissociate, and it can lead to this feeling of hopelessness.”
Still, Hollins said she hoped to see unity across communities and racial lines, and resources are provided for those affected to recover: “I don’t want these conversations to further fuel a political debate about which communities are more deserving or more responsible for the violence that we see happening. We obviously have a systemic and societal issue that crosses all communities and is affecting all of us.”
Some survivors faced more barriers in getting help than others, local lawmakers said.
The Half Moon Bay shooting victims were Chinese and Latino, officials there said. Half Moon Bay’s vice-mayor, Joaquin Jimenez, said that some of the farm workers who had been targeted were undocumented, which might make them more hesitant to seek mental health counseling or other services.
“There’s a lot of fear,” Jimenez said. “For them to come forward to ask for help is going to be very difficult.”
Nicole Lee, executive director of Urban Peace Movement, a racial justice group in Oakland, said that after mass violence, the priority is often to expand police’s presence: “When people are scared, they want a quick fix … But law enforcement can’t be at every block at all times, and in many instances they can’t stop these situations. So how do we make interventions that really keep us safe?”
Lee, who is Chinese American, said it was also stunning to learn that the suspects in two separate mass shootings were older Asian men. While it was too soon to draw conclusions about what led to the violence, she noted that many Asian Americans in older generations may be grappling with unaddressed trauma, including from surviving war.
“I don’t think we are attending to the mental health needs of immigrant communities and Asian communities, especially when there are language differences and cultural differences,” she said. “Not all cultures feel comfortable talking about trauma and mental health. And particularly … with elders, there are often pressures to not talk about these things.”
Lee hopes that will shift: “People need to be listened to, and really need space to come together and support one another.”
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Civil Rights attorney Ben Crump stands with Elijah Edwards, 14, a student at Sail High School during a "Stop The Black Attack" rally against ongoing state legislation at the Florida State Capitol. (photo: Octavio Jones/Reuters)
High Schoolers Threaten to Sue Desantis Over Ban of African American Studies Course
Giulia Heyward, NPR
Heyward writes: "Three Florida high school students are poised to sue Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after the state Education Department rejected a new Advanced Placement course covering African American studies. The news comes one day after the College Board announced it would revise the course."
Three Florida high school students are poised to sue Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after the state Education Department rejected a new Advanced Placement course covering African American studies. The news comes one day after the College Board announced it would revise the course.
"By rejecting the African American history pilot program, Ron DeSantis has clearly demonstrated that he wants to dictate whose history does — and doesn't — belong," Democratic state Rep. Fentrice Driskell said at a news conference in Tallahassee, announcing the lawsuit, on Wednesday.
Ben Crump, a high-profile civil rights attorney, said he will file the lawsuit on behalf of the three students if DeSantis does not allow the course to be taught in the state. The course is the latest addition to the AP program, which helps high school students earn college credit.
"This is what it's about, it's about them, this is what the fight is for," Crump said. "Never ever forget that."
While dozens of states are introducing legislation that limits how various topics, including race and American history, can be discussed in public schools, these bills are particularly successful in Florida. Under DeSantis, the state passed his "Stop Woke" act — which lets parents sue teachers, and school districts, over violating limitations the state sets for how race is taught in classrooms — and the Parental Rights in Education Act, also known as "Don't Say Gay," bill — which forbids discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for certain elementary school students.
Following the news of the new African American studies AP course, the state's Education Department swiftly rejected the class. Last week, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. called the course "woke indoctrination masquerading as education."
"As we've said all along, if College Board decides to revise its course to comply with Florida law, we will come back to the table," Diaz added.
The College Board will release a revised course framework on the first day of Black History Month
The College Board announced on Tuesday that it would be revising the course. The organization said it will release "the official framework" for the course on Feb. 1, which it noted is the first day of Black History Month.
"We are glad the College Board has recognized that the originally submitted course curriculum is problematic, and we are encouraged to see the College Board express a willingness to amend," said Alex Lanfranconi, the Florida Department of Education's communications director.
"AP courses are standardized nationwide, and as a result of Florida's strong stance against identity politics and indoctrination, students across the country will consequentially have access to an historically accurate, unbiased course," Lanfranconi added.
When contacted for comment, the College Board did not confirm whether the state's ban of the course is playing a role in its revisions.
"Before a new AP course is made broadly available, it is piloted in a small number of high schools to gather feedback from high schools and colleges," the College Board said in an announcement. "The official course framework incorporates this feedback and defines what students will encounter on the AP Exam for college credit and placement."
In the rally announcing the lawsuit, Driskell commented on the slew of legislation passed in the state, under the leadership of the governor, that limits how race and other topics are discussed in the classroom.
"He wants to say that I do not belong," said Driskell, who is Black. "He wants to say that you don't belong and whose story does — and doesn't — get to count. But we are here to tell him: We are America."
Three AP honors high school students, who were present at the conference, will serve as the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
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Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visiting a Yanomami health venue in a rural area of Boa Vista, Roraima, on 21 January this year. (photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Getty)
Lula Accuses Bolsonaro of Genocide Against Yanomami in Amazon
Tom Phillips, Guardian UK
Phillips writes: "Brazil's new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro's far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory."
Brazilian president says predecessor emboldened wildcat miners which led to wrecked forests and disease and death among Indigenous people
Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.
Lula visited the Amazon state of Roraima on Saturday to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.
“More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was a genocide. A premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government impervious to the suffering of the Brazilian people,” Lula tweeted on Sunday, one day after visiting an overcrowded clinic for Yanomami patients in Roraima’s capital, Boa Vista.
Lula’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said he would order a federal police investigation into “strong indications” the Yanomami had suffered crimes including genocide – meaning the deliberate attempt to partially or completely destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.
Horrifying photographs of emaciated Yanomami children and adults emerged on the eve of Lula’s trip, laying bare the scale of the health crisis facing the territory’s estimated 30,000 Indigenous inhabitants.
“The photos really shook me because it’s impossible to understand how a country like Brazil neglects our Indigenous citizens to such an extent,” the leftist president told reporters in Boa Vista.
Lula, who became president on 1 January, blamed his far-right predecessor for forsaking Indigenous communities and emboldening the thousands of wildcat miners who flooded the Portugal-sized Yanomami enclave during Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 government.
Those miners contaminated rivers and wrecked forests, depriving remote Yanomami communities of key food sources – fish and other animals such as monkeys and wild boars – while simultaneously spreading malaria and hampering the efforts of government health workers.
“As well as the disregard and neglect of the last government the main cause of this genocide is the invasion of 20,000 illegal miners, whose presence was encouraged by the ex-president. These miners poison rivers with mercury, causing destruction and death,” Lula wrote, pledging: “There will be no more genocides.”
Speaking before flying to Roraima with Lula, the minister of Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, said that protecting Yanomami children from outrageous levels of malaria, verminosis, malnutrition and diarrhoea was her absolute priority. “Every 72 hours a child is dying from one of these illnesses, according to the information we’ve received,” Guajajara said, calling for the expulsion of the miners in the next three months.
On Sunday another key Lula ally, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, said the 570 Yanomami children who had reportedly died of hunger or mercury poisoning since 2019 were proof of the “Yanomami genocide”.
“There is a motive: the greed of the miners who invaded their lands. And there is a perpetrator: Jair Bolsonaro, who championed this invasion and denied medical assistance to the Indigenous,” Rousseff wrote on Twitter.
“All of those who are responsible, Bolsonaro included, must be prosecuted, judged and punished for genocide,” Rousseff added.
Bolsonaro denied responsibility, calling such accusations a “left-wing farce”. The former president – who is notorious for his prejudiced comments about black and Indigenous citizens - claimed Indigenous healthcare had been one of his government’s priorities.
But activists scoff at such claims, noting how Amazon deforestation rose nearly 60% thanks to Bolsonaro’s dismantling of environmental and Indigenous protection.
“It was a government of blood,” the Yanomami leader Júnior Hekurari told the Guardian last month in Boa Vista.
During a campaign visit to Roraima, before his 2018 election, Bolsonaro warned supporters that foreign rivals might invade Indigenous territories, whose creation he opposed. “Sooner or later, other powers might turn these areas into other countries,” Bolsonaro said of reserves he believed should be opened up to commercial development.
But it was illegal miners, including at least one multi-millionaire businessman with ties to Bolsonaro, who laid siege to Yanomami lands, with the estimated number of garimpeiros [small-scale miners] operating there jumping from 5,000 to 20,000 during Bolsonaro’s government.
Critics accuse Bolsonaro’s administration of doing nothing to stop the growing Yanomami disaster.
Hekurari said he had sent about 50 written pleas for help to Bolsonaro’s government as a result of the gold mining invasion and soaring levels of malnutrition, malaria and deaths. “He ignored our cry for help,” the activist tweeted on Saturday.
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Brown bear with cubs in the Tongass National Forest. (photo: Ron Niebrugge/Alamy)
The US Reinstates Road and Logging Restrictions on the Largest National Forest
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A federal agency said Wednesday it is reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging on the country's largest national forest in southeast Alaska, the latest move in a long-running fight over the Tongass National Forest."
Afederal agency said Wednesday it is reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging on the country's largest national forest in southeast Alaska, the latest move in a long-running fight over the Tongass National Forest.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in late 2021 announced that it was beginning the process of repealing a Trump administration-era decision that exempted the Tongass — a rainforest that is also home to rugged coastal islands and glaciers — from the so-called roadless rule. The agency on Wednesday said it had finalized that plan.
The new rule will take effect once it is published in the Federal Register, which is expected to happen Friday, said agency spokesperson Larry Moore.
The Tongass is roughly the size of West Virginia and provides habitat for wildlife, including bears, wolves, bald eagles and salmon.
Roadless areas account for about one-third of all U.S. national forest system lands. But Alaska political leaders have long sought an exemption to the roadless rule for the Tongass, seeing the restrictions as burdensome and limiting economic opportunities. They supported efforts under former President Donald Trump to remove the roadless designation for about 9.4 million acres on the Tongass.
Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy on social media Wednesday said people in Alaska "deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides — jobs, renewable energy resources and tourism, not a government plan that treats human beings within a working forest like an invasive species."
The dispute goes back more than two decades.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in revisiting the issue, cited a directive from President Joe Biden at the start of his term to review and address rules enacted under Trump that might conflict with environmental and climate aims laid out by Biden.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement called the Tongass "key to conserving biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis. Restoring roadless protections listens to the voices of Tribal Nations and the people of Southeast Alaska while recognizing the importance of fishing and tourism to the region's economy."
Conservation groups cheered the decision.
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Tyre Nichols's stepfather, Rodney Wells, right, holds a photo of Nichols in the hospital after his arrest, during a protest in Memphis, Jan. 14. (photo: Jordan James/AP)
