KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola reports: “Citing harsh federal prison conditions in the United States, a British district court judge rejected the United States government’s extradition request against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Judge Vanessa Baraitser found Assange suffers from a ‘recurrent depressive disorder.’ Although he functions at a high level, he suffers from autism as well.”

In a detailed Twitter thread, Gosztola wrote this morning: “Judge Baraitser accepted virtually all of [the] allegations against Assange that made this a dangerous case for press freedom. Despite the fact that the request was rejected, there is plenty in this ruling to cause alarm.” See Gosztola’s extensive reporting on Assange’s trial, which he covered in London.

JAMES GOODALE, jcgoodal@debevoise.com
Goodale is a former vice chairman and general counsel of the New York Times and is the author of Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. His piece on the verdict is expected to be published in The Hill shortly. His prior articles include: “Pentagon Papers lawyer: The indictment of Assange is a snare and a delusion.”

PATRICK ROSENSTIEL, pat@ainsleyshea.com, @NatlPopularVote
Rosenstiel is with NationalPopularVote.com, which advocates for “The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” which would “guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Compact ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election. The Compact is a state-based approach that preserves the Electoral College, state control of elections, and the power of the states to control how the President is elected.”

The group states: “Because of these state winner-take-all laws, presidential candidates only pay attention to the concerns of voters in closely divided battleground states. In 2020, 2016, and 2012, a dozen battleground states received 96 percent, 94 percent, and 100 percent of all of the general-election campaign events, respectively. In these three elections, 25 states did not receive even one campaign event, and six additional states received only one. The politically irrelevant spectator states included almost all of the small states, rural states, agricultural states, Southern states, Western states, and Northeastern states.”

JABARI ZAKIYA, jzakiya@gmail.com, @jzakiya
Zakiya wrote the piece “The Case for Proportional Allocation of Presidential Electors,” which states: “Currently there are 538 electors distributed among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). To become President, the U.S. Constitution requires a candidate must receive the Electoral College vote of a majority of electors (270), but it doesn’t specify, or mandate, the manner in which electors shall be allocated by the states to candidates. The practice has become to allocate electors on a winner-take-all basis to whichever candidate merely wins a plurality (not even a majority) of the popular vote in each state.” Zakiya presents a proposal for all states to proportionally allocate electors from each state. Currently Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that don’t use winner-take-all to allocate their electors.

Various media outlets are reporting that Joe Biden will nominate Victoria Nuland for the influential role of under secretary of state for political affairs.

JAMES CARDEN, jamescarden09@gmail.com
Carden is the executive editor of the American Committee for East-West Accord and founding editor thescrum.substack.com. He is also a former adviser to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Commission.

He said today: “Victoria Nuland has had a long and storied career in the foreign service and for a long time was viewed with something like reverence by career officers. Nuland served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO and later was national security adviser to vice president Dick Cheney. After that, Nuland found herself on the ‘outs’ at the State Department during the early Obama years. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had other plans for Nuland, the well-connected wife of the neoconservative publicist Robert Kagan. Clinton, to the astonishment of many of the political appointees in Clinton’s orbit, plucked Nuland from the obscurity of her position at the Naval War College to become Clinton’s spokeswoman.

“This was the road back to influence and Nuland used it, quickly ascending to the position of assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. It is from that post that she oversaw U.S. efforts to encourage a street coup in Kiev — going so far as to hand out cookies to anti-government protesters alongside the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The February 2014 coup, undertaken by an alliance of pro-Western liberalizers and hardline anti-Semitic militants, resulted not in a more peaceful order, but in a civil war (in which both Russia and NATO funded and armed their proxies) that resulted in the loss of over 10,000 lives and the displacement of well over a million people from the Russophone east. After the coup, Nuland became an unwitting symbol of American heavy-handedness in the region when a call between her and Pyatt leaked in which they were seen to be hand-picking personnel for the new government in Ukraine. What would the EU think? ‘Fuck the EU,’ exclaimed Nuland, a diplomat.

“After the coup — violent and unnecessary, given that the deposed Ukrainian leader had agreed to an early peaceful transition at the ballot box, Nuland bragged at a conference sponsored by Chevron that: ‘Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance. … We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.’

“In the years following, we have ‘invested’ a great deal more money into Ukraine — for questionable returns. But the affair has not seemed to have clouded Nuland’s career prospects. Smart, well-connected, and well-liked, she, like many of her fellow neocons, seems to move from strength to strength in this town, never held to account for the damage they’ve caused. After her stint in the State Department ended (she was replaced in the early Trump years by the woefully unqualified neocon operative A. Wess Mitchell), Nuland took up what one can only assume were lucrative positions on the other side of the revolving door at the Center for a New American Security (where she served as CEO), the Boston Consulting Group and the Albright Stonebridge Group (from which, perhaps not coincidentally, her future boss, Biden’s nominee for deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, hails).

“Her views on Russia and European affairs are well known. Less known, however, are her views on America’s role in the Middle East. Let’s hope that changes because in an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, Nuland lamented that the U.S., under Trump, ‘made both Putin’s and Assad’s lives easier by neutralizing a shared threat, the Islamic State, or, ISIS.’

“As Biden’s undersecretary of political affairs, Nuland would have immense influence over policy and personnel. Progressives in Congress and their partners in the media, think tank world and among grassroots activists should join forces with the growing caucus of anti-interventionist Republicans on the Hill and vigorously oppose this nomination.”

Following the Capitol Hill riot which delayed Congress certifying the Electoral College results, Donald Trump was banned by Twitter, Facebook and other big tech corporations. Google removed the far-right user-friendly platform Parler from its mobile app store and Apple threatened the same.
 
THOMAS HANNA, tmhanna@democracycollaborative.org, @ThomasMHanna  
    Hanna is director of research at The Democracy Collaborative. He is the author of the book Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States.

MICHAEL BRENNAN, mb@democracypolicy.network, @mrbrnn
    Brennan is a research fellow at The Democracy Collaborative and a policy organizer at the Democracy Policy Network.

    Hanna and Brennan recently published an article in Jacobin: “There’s No Solution to Big Tech Without Public Ownership.” They contributed to the report from Common Wealth UK and The Democracy Collaborative as part of the think tanks’ Ownership Futures project: “A Common Platform: Reimagining Data and Platforms.”

    Following the suspension of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, Brennan said: “While people may laugh at the absurdity of the Twitter President being put in permanent time-out, it raises a serious question about decision-making. There is an ongoing constitutional crisis occurring within and between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. Citizens depend on media to communicate events and narratives as they unfold in real-time, but the means of communication have long been unaccountable to users, workers, or governments. What are the implications of platform monopolies’ direct intervention in political conflict?

    “In October, the House Judiciary Committee completed its historic investigation into Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, which included evidence for Google and Apple’s duopoly in mobile app stores. The duos move to bar platforms who do not conform to their standard of free speech, such as Parler, effectively limits the entire social media ecosystem to that decided by the dominant platforms. …

    “The companies face Congressional investigation, antitrust lawsuits, tense political maneuvers, as well as recent major union activity with the formation of the Alphabet Workers Union. But the terms of this debate are still narrowly focused on ‘increasing competition’ rather than a full-scale re-imagination of the platform economy away from surveillance capitalism and toward democratic control.”

Slava Zilber posited that monopolies are now targeting rightwingers because Democrats are now in charge of Congress.

See past Institute for Public Accuracy news releases:

From 2020: “Zoom Censors University Event”

2019: “Israel Bombs Palestinians as Twitter Censors Them”

2018: “Following Assassination Attempt, Facebook Pulled Venezuela Content”

Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is introducing a bill Monday to abolish the Electoral College.

STEVEN MULROY, smulroy@memphis.edu
Mulroy is Bredesen professor of law at the University of Memphis and author of Rethinking U.S. Election Law.

He said today: “Fair elections should have all votes count the same, avoid encouraging officials to play favorites, and never let someone with fewer votes beat someone with more votes. The Electoral College fails all three of these basic tests. It is an outmoded relic. While abolishing outright would be great and valuable to debate in Congress, a constitutional amendment will be challenging to win. That’s why the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is so crucial. We are 70 percent of the way toward making the Compact effective.”

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would “guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

Journalist Dan Cohen tweets that today’s Facebook “ban on PressTV comes hours before [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s speech to lie the U.S. into war with Iran and shortly after Pompeo’s dinner with Israel’s top spy. This isn’t a coincidence.” (See 2018 accuracy.org news release: “Following Assassination Attempt, Facebook Pulled Venezuela Content.” and 2019 “Israel Bombs Palestinians as Twitter Censors Them.”)

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s piece “Donald Trump’s parting gift to the world? It may be war with Iran” was just published in The Guardian.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is a professor of law at the University of Illinois. Since the storming of the Capitol, he has been calling for the immediate impeachment and conviction of Trump. See his interview with Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints the day after the Capitol riot: “Professor Francis Boyle on Why Trump Must Be Removed NOW.”

Boyle argues for impeachment as an immediate remedy to address “the seditious storming of the Capitol” as well as to prevent Trump from “further illegal activities, like attacking Iran.” The Trump administration just designated the Cuban government as a state sponsor of terrorism and Yemen’s Ansar Allah as terrorists, prompting the International Rescue Committee to warn the latter puts “24 million Yemenis at catastrophic humanitarian risk.” Said Boyle: “These designations are horrible as it is, but we cannot put anything past Trump, including the possibility of a wag the dog scenario by attacking Iran.”

Boyle stresses that the Democratic leadership should have immediately moved to impeach Trump last week, but instead, “they have been engaging in Kabuki theater.” He adds that any new “terrorism” law would simply be a pretext to have further reductions in civil liberties — “like George W. Bush did with the Patriot Act after 9/11.”
Thirty years ago, as George H. W. Bush began the 1991 attack on Iraq, Boyle drafted the impeachment resolution that Rep. Henry B. González introduced at the time against Bush. George H. W. Bush would later state in his memoirs that impeachment was a concern, writing that if the war “drags out, not only will I take the blame, but I will probably have impeachment proceedings filed against me,” indicating that the threat of impeachment may have averted a ground war at the time. The Obama administration was also concerned about impeachment over attacking Syria.

NPR reports: “President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former UN Ambassador Samantha Power to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development. Biden also said he was elevating that role — USAID administrator — to be a member of the White House National Security Council.”

The International Rescue Committee has released a statement: “24 million Yemenis at catastrophic humanitarian risk following new U.S. terrorist designations of Ansar Allah, warns IRC.”

DANIEL KOVALIK, dkovalik@outlook.com, @danielmkovalik
Kovalik is the author of No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention To Advance its Economic and Strategic Interests (see on Simon and Schuster’s website.)

He was featured on an accuracy.org news release last month: “Samantha Power’s Role in Yemen Disaster.”

Said Kovalik: “While making her name by penning a Pulitzer-prize award-winning book inveighing against the evils of genocide — A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide — Power went on as Obama’s ambassador to the UN to actually help facilitate quite possibly the greatest slaughter of innocents in modern history.”

Kovalik cites the work of Shireen Al-Adeimi who wrote the piece “How Dare Samantha Power Scrub the Yemen War From Her Memoir,” which states that Power, in her 2019 autobiography, The Edu­ca­tion of an Ide­al­ist, “down­plays her role in the blood­shed that fol­lowed in Libya. … The most strik­ing thing about Power’s mem­oir is her com­plete omis­sion of her role in what became the world’s worst human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis: the ongo­ing U.S. inter­ven­tion in Yemen.”

See past accuracy.org news releases on USAID.

See “Democracy Now” segment from 2014: “Is USAID the New CIA? Agency Secretly Built Cuban Twitter Program to Fuel Anti-Castro Protests.”

EVAN GREER, evan@fightforthefuture.org, @fightfortheftr

Greer is deputy director of Fight for the Future and recently wrote the piece “You can’t fight fascism by expanding the police state” for Fast Company, which states: “In the coming days and weeks we are likely to see pundits and lawmakers call for things like passing a new domestic terrorism law, expanding mass surveillance programs, increasing funding for the FBI and law enforcement, installing backdoors in encrypted messaging apps, and arming police with more technology like facial recognition and social media monitoring software. …

“This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. Expanding the U.S. government’s already bloated surveillance state will only bring more terror and harm to the same communities that Trump targeted with his racist policies and rhetoric. …

“President-elect Joe Biden has already expressed that he supports the creation of a new domestic terrorism statute. Experts warn that a new law isn’t needed — acts of terrorism are already illegal. Creating a new designation would fail to prevent right-wing attacks while threatening marginalized communities with increased surveillance, prosecution, and harassment for engaging in First Amendment protected activities. In the last few years, top Democrats and Republicans have called for billions of dollars in additional funding for the FBI, and have scuttled attempts to rein in the phone and internet spying programs enabled by the USA Patriot Act, which was rushed through Congress faster than lawmakers could read it in the immediate wake of 9/11.”

CHIP GIBBONS, chip@defendingdissent.org, @ChipGibbons89
Policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, Gibbons recently wrote the piece “The Capitol Riot Was Bad Enough. New Domestic Terrorism Legislation Would Make It Even Worse” for Jacobin, which states that since 9/11, the U.S. government has erected a vast “apparatus in the name of ‘national security.’ Yet this security apparatus completely failed to thwart a plot carried out in plain sight.

“On top of that, just last summer, demonstrations against police violence and racism were repeatedly met with militarized police and wanton repression. In a country where you can’t even take expired suntan lotion past airport security, where Quakers organizing against the death penalty are surveilled in the name of ‘counterterrorism,’ and where police that resemble an occupying army — because they are literally equipped with gear from an occupying army — greet peaceful protests, it’s rational to wonder just how all of this could have happened.

“One thing is certain: the failure to prevent the Capitol attack is not because of a lack of police powers or anti-terrorism measures. Still, some people have wasted no time hijacking the moment to advocate new domestic terrorism legislation. A lawmaker in the solidly Democratic state of Maryland has proposed a state domestic terrorism statute, and others are sure to follow.

“This is not the first time in recent memory that far-right violence has sparked calls for new domestic terrorism legislation. The general uptick in violence that has plagued the Trump years, including the horrific white supremacist shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, has produced a steady drumbeat of demands for a new domestic terrorism law. Joe Biden’s campaign website put him on record as backing a new domestic terrorism law, though it’s unclear where he currently stands.”

Last year, The Intercept published Gibbon’s in-depth investigation: “FBI Opened Terrorism Investigations Into Nonviolent Palestinian Solidarity Group, Documents Reveal.”

See National Security Archives documents on FBI and NSA spying on Martin Luther King Jr.

President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, is scheduled to have his confirmation hearing today at 2:00 p.m. ET.

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org, which just sent out an email to their membership urging Senators to ask Binken serious questions: “Blinken should be asked about his role in helping start wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Which of those wars does he now regret? What would he do to prevent similar catastrophes going forward?

“The trend of the past dozen years is away from ground wars in favor of air wars. This often means more killing, more injuring, and more making people homeless, but with an even higher percentage of all that suffering concentrated on the non-U.S. side. We need to know whether Blinken favors continuing this trend and how he claims to defend it morally and legally.

“Much of the U.S. public has been wanting an end to endless wars, and President-elect Biden has promised it. Blinken has suggested that endless wars shouldn’t really be ended. We need to know which of these wars, if any, he supports actually ending every U.S. role in: Yemen? Afghanistan? Syria? Iraq? Somalia?

   “Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors, a company that helps war profiteers get contracts, and serves as a revolving door for unscrupulous individuals who get rich from private money for what they do and whom they get to know in their public jobs. WestExec has paid Blinken nearly $1.2 million for advising corporations, including seven that have recently lobbied the State Department, including Facebook, Boeing, and Blackstone.” See the full backgrounder.

See past accuracy.org news releases regarding Blinken.

The Intercept and The American Prospect are reporting “Renata Hesse, who has worked for Google and Amazon, is the leading candidate to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division.”

MAX MORAN, moran@cepr.net, @revolvingdoorDC

Moran is a researcher at the Revolving Door Project and said today: “In 2010, Renata Hesse worked alongside Ted Cruz to persuade the Texas Attorney General not to sue to break up Google’s monopoly over the online search market. As recently as 2018, Hesse publicly stated that she thinks people mostly use Google Search ‘because they like it better’ (not because of its fiercely-defended priority status in most internet browsers) and that it would be wrong to punish Google ‘because they did a great job.’

   “And yet if appointed assistant attorney general for antitrust, Hesse would inherit a DOJ case joined by almost every attorney general nationwide to break up her former client. Moreover, Hesse’s deputies might find themselves arguing against their boss’ spouse: her husband, Joshua Soven, is a fellow antitrust lawyer representing Google and employed by its go-to law firm Wilson Sonsini.

   “Just as concerning is that in 2017, Hesse assisted Amazon in its acquisition of Whole Foods. While the federal government has not yet announced plans to sue to break up Amazon, activist coalitions have called for antitrust action against the firm. Under Amazon, moreover, Whole Foods has engaged in unprecedented mass surveillance of employees to deter unionization.

“Notably, when Hesse served at the DOJ in 2005, she protected TurboTax-creator Intuit from the threat of a competitor offering free tax filing to all taxpayers, by deploying a tortured reading of antitrust law. If not for Hesse, Americans might not need to pay to file their taxes this year.

   “Hesse’s past work defending Google and enabling Amazon’s acquisitions create irresolvable conflicts of interest that must disqualify her from serving in a Biden administration’s DOJ antitrust division or Federal Trade Commission.”

See past accuracy.org news releases on Biden’s cabinet.

As thousands of troops were deployed to Washington, D.C. during Joe Biden’s inauguration, Rev. Silvester Beaman gave the benediction, saying: “We will make friends of our enemies. We will make friends of our enemies. People, your people, should no longer raise up weapons against each other. We will rather use our resources for the national good and become a beacon of life and goodwill to the world. And neither shall we learn hatred anymore. We will lie down in peace and not make our neighbors afraid.”

As of a few days ago, the U.S. government has now been bombing Iraq for 30 years.

Chris Wood of airwars.org just tweeted: “Amid discussions about what Biden’s foreign policy might look like, it’s worth noting that he’ll be inheriting U.S. military actions at a post-9/11 low. The U.S. declared around 1,000 strikes last year across four theatres — down from 13,000 under Obama in 2016. … Given this low level of U.S. military engagement there’s clearly an opportunity for the incoming Biden administration radically to rethink overseas actions.”

See Sen. Rand Paul’s questioning of Biden Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken about the U.S. government’s wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Mali and numerous other countries.

KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, @voiceinwild
Kelly is a peace activist and author working to end U.S. military and economic wars. She just wrote the piece “About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen” which states: ” Yemeni children are not ‘starving children;’ they are being starved by warring parties whose blockades and bomb attacks have decimated the country. The United States is supplying devastating weaponry and diplomatic support to the Saudi-led coalition, while additionally launching its own ‘selective’ aerial attacks against suspected terrorists and all the civilians in those suspects’ vicinity.” AFP reports that Blinken stated yesterday, regarding support for Saudi Arabia’s attacks: “our support should end.”

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was just on an accuracy.org news release on Blinken.

Reuters reports: “Biden will recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader, top diplomat says.”

AP reports: “Carlos Vecchio, [Trump-backed opposition leader Juan] Guaidó’s envoy in Washington who the U.S. recognizes as Venezuela’s ambassador, tweeted photos of himself at Biden’s inauguration. The invitation to attend was touted by Venezuela’s opposition as evidence the Biden administration will continue its strong support and resist entreaties by Maduro for dialogue that the U.S. has strenuously rejected until now.”

STEVE ELLNER, sellner74@gmail.com
Ellner is an associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is the editor of the recently published book Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspectives. 

He said today: “In spite of claims to the contrary, the Biden foreign policy team is not breaking with the Trump administration in its policy toward Venezuela. … The Biden people claim that their plans to enlist the support of allies is an innovation in that it corrects Trump’s go-it-alone approach toward Venezuela. In fact, Trump did seek and attain the support of over 50 nations (hardly a majority in the UN’s General Assembly) by taking advantage of the fact that much of Europe and Latin America was in the hands of conservative and right-wing leaders.

“In addition,” said Ellner, Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken has indicated that “the Biden administration will provide Venezuela with much-needed humanitarian assistance. The Trump administration, however, also extended Venezuela humanitarian aid. But it was channeled through the parallel government of Juan Guaidó resulting in multiple denunciations of misuse of funds — not to say blatant acts of corruption — by members of his team who resigned in protest.

“Blinken also claims Biden will embark on a new course in that it will ‘more effectively target’ sanctions. Exactly what this means is unclear, but decades of the use of sanctions throughout the world demonstrate that, regardless of intent, the real victims of sanctions are the entire population. Even the Trump administration announced that the supply of medicine and food would not be affected but in fact it was. Everyone in the global commercial chain feared reprisals if they had any interaction at all with Venezuelan companies, both private and state-owned.

“Far from regime change, the starting point of U.S. policy toward Venezuela has to be recognizing Nicolás Maduro as the nation’s legitimate president. There may have been some irregularities in the Venezuelan presidential elections of 2018, as there have been in U.S. electoral contests, but there was no credible evidence of the votes not getting counted correctly, that is, electoral fraud. The commercial media’s uncritical employment of the term ‘authoritarian’ and ‘dictator’ to refer to Maduro is nothing short of deceptive and it ignores context, namely the multiple violent attempts to remove him, even physically.

“Maduro has clearly indicated his interest in negotiations with the U.S. and of late has expressed willingness to make concessions specifically regarding the release of several jailed U.S. citizens. He has also recently indicated his openness to concessions on the economic front.”

The Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons went into force today with over 50 nations having ratified it. It was backed by more than 120 countries in October 2016 at the UN despite the efforts — especially from the U.S. government — to stop it.

U.S. President Joe Biden has stated in the past that: “As a nation, I believe we must keep pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

But the U.S. government — through both the Trump-Pence and Obama-Biden administrations — has strongly opposed the Treaty, ensuring that virtually all NATO members voted against it, see below for analysis of NATO. Some other non-NATO nuclear weapons states, like Russia and Israel, have also opposed it. China, India and Pakistan abstained on the 2016 UN vote.

FELICE and JACK COHEN-JOPPA, nukeresister@igc.org
Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa edit the Nuclear Resister. They write: “January 22, 2021 will be a historic day for nuclear weapons. … Neither the United States nor the other nuclear armed nations have joined the Treaty. ‘But just because they aren’t signed on to the Treaty doesn’t mean it won’t affect them,’ said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.” See listing of events in over 70 U.S. cities and towns.

GREG MELLO, gmello@lasg.org
Mello is executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. He said today: “Disarmament is an inherently political process, with milestones codified in law. Milestones, such as the birth of the Treaty we welcome today, are not the journey. Political processes, rooted in civil society, remain paramount. Without political will nothing will happen, with or without this or any treaty. Even this wonderful treaty is only a piece of paper, worth as much as the active political will behind it.

“It is not enough to sign and ratify this infant Treaty. States Parties must actively protect and feed it, so it can grow in stature and strength. States have to challenge nuclear deterrence, and the conventional threats that lead to it, to fulfill this parental role.

“Ways in which the political will to nuclear disarmament, as well as the Treaty itself, can be strengthened are prime topics for discussion in the important Article 8 meetings required by the new Treaty.

“This Treaty can affect the practice of states immediately, if rigorously applied. For example, as long as NATO remains a nuclear alliance, its posture of nuclear threat, its basing of U.S. nuclear weapons on member states’ territories, its war plans that involve transferring control over these weapons to member states’ pilots, are forbidden under this Treaty. NATO states and the Western Pacific states under the U.S. nuclear ‘umbrella,’ are all engaged in practices this Treaty outlaws. These nuclear-allied states now lie outside an actively-growing norm of international law.

“Will States Parties sanction these states, or deny them overflight privileges, or otherwise use this Treaty to further the disarmament agenda to which these parties — indeed all NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] member states — are committed? Time will tell.

“Meanwhile everyone can now see that more than ever, nuclear disarmament is a ‘thing.’ Young people can again confidently invest themselves in furthering this noble goal. Political leaders everywhere are now on notice that the moral force which produced this Treaty is far from asleep. The world’s peoples are crying for security, not the nuclear sword of Damocles — for real peace and not the silence of ashes, where cities and civilizations once stood.”

JEHAN HAKIM, yemenialliancecommittee@gmail.com, @jehan_hakim
Hakim is chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, one of hundreds of organizations which are backing a push Monday against the war in Yemen. They state: “Since 2015, the Saudi-led bombing and blockade of Yemen have killed tens of thousands of people and devastated the country. The UN. calls this the largest humanitarian crisis on Earth. Half the country’s people are on the brink of famine, the country has the world’s worst cholera outbreak in modern history, and now Yemen has one of the very worst COVID death rates in the world. …

“And yet Saudi Arabia is escalating its war and tightening its blockade.

“The war is only possible because Western countries — and the United States and Britain in particular — continue to arm Saudi Arabia and provide military, political and logistical support for the war. The Western powers are active participants and have the power to stop the world’s most acute human crisis.

“The disaster in Yemen is man-made. It is caused by the war and blockade. It can be ended.”

Danny Glover (actor), Rep. Ro Khanna, Daniele Obono (French National Assembly member), Yanis Varoufakis (MeRA25 secretary general), Cornel West, and many others will participate in a global online rally: “World Says No to War on Yemen.”

Hakim also stated that Biden should end support for the war in Yemen and urged him to contemplate Trump’s signing of weapons deals with Gulf states. See resource page on Yemen, which included articles such as “Joe Biden Said He’s Against the Yemen War. He Needs To End It on Day One.”

ISACC EVANS-FRANTZ, isaacef@yahoo.com, @actioncorpsnyc
Isaac Evans-Frantz is with Action Corps, which has focused on Yemen and has helped lead protests in New York City.

WENONAH HAUTER, SETH GLADSTONE, sgladstone@fwwatch.org, @foodandwater
Hauter and Gladstone are with the group Food & Water Watch, which recently put out the statement “Tom Vilsack, a Friend of Big Ag, is the Wrong Choice for USDA.” They have joined with RootsAction and other groups to advocate against his nomination as secretary of agriculture.
See from the Guardian: “Tom Vilsack’s Cozy Relationship With Big Ag Makes Him a Non-Starter at USDA.”

“Tom Vilsack has made a career of catering to the whims of corporate agriculture giants — some of whom he has gone to work for — while failing to fight for struggling family farmers at every turn,” said Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “America needs an Agriculture Secretary that will finally prioritize sustainable family farming and national food security over corporate profits. Tom Vilsack has proven not to be the leader we need.”

See from The Counter: “How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination against Black Farmers.”

      In These Times reports that while Vil­sack was secretary of agriculture during the Obama administration, he “resist­ed Repub­li­can attacks on food stamps and upped fed­er­al sup­port for organ­ic food – he angered pro­gres­sive groups by let­ting poul­try fac­to­ries self-reg­u­late, speed­ing up the approval process for GMO crops, shelv­ing new reg­u­la­tions on big agri­cul­ture at the industry’s behest, and step­ping in to craft an indus­try-friend­ly nation­al GMO-labelling bill intend­ed to replace a pio­neer­ing stricter stan­dard in Ver­mont. The move helped earn him the deri­sive moniker ‘Mr. Mon­san­to.'”

GARETH PORTER, porter.gareth50@gmail.com, @GarethPorter

Investigative reporter Porter just wrote the piece “Biden Admin’s Coercive Iran Policy Threatens Serious New Regional Crisis” for the Grayzone.

Porter writes:  “A close analysis of recent statements by members of President Joseph Biden’s foreign policy team indicates his administration has already signaled its intention to treat negotiations with Iran as an exercise in diplomatic coercion aimed at forcing major new concessions extending well beyond the 2015 nuclear agreement. The policy could trigger a renewed U.S.-Iran crisis as serious as any provocation engineered by the Trump administration.

“Although the Biden team is claiming that it is ready to bring the United States back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran comes into full compliance first, it is actually planning to demand that Iran give up its main source of political leverage. Thus, it will require Iran to cease its uranium enrichment to 20 percent and give up its accumulated stockpile of uranium already enriched to that level before the United States has withdrawn the economic sanctions that are now illegal under the JCPOA deal.

“Meanwhile, the Biden team is planning to hold on to what it apparently sees as its ‘Trump card’ — the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran oil exports that have gutted the Iranian economy. …

“By piling up onerous demands while offering few concessions of its own, the new administration conveys the clear message that it is in no hurry to return to the JCPOA. Secretary of State of Tony Blinken stated in his confirmation testimony that the Biden administration was ‘a long way’ from returning to the deal and said nothing about reversing any of the sanctions that were introduced or reintroduced by the Trump administration after it quit the agreement.”

Porter’s books include: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Wednesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the Soviet army liberating Auschwitz.

LEV GOLINKIN, golinkin@gmail.com
Golinkin just wrote the piece “How many monuments honor fascists, Nazis and murderers of Jews? You’ll be shocked,” in the Forward, launching the The Nazi Monument Project.

He writes: “The most curious thing about last year’s protests that toppled statues of slavers and colonizers is that the monuments of Holocaust perpetrators didn’t even make headlines.”

Golinkin documents — with a map — “320 monuments and street names in 16 countries on three continents which represent men and organizations who’ve enabled — and often quite literally implemented — the Final Solution. …
“The Nazi collaborators honored with monuments on U.S. soil represent governments, death squads and paramilitaries that murdered a half million Jews, Poles and Bosnians. …

“Even more worrying than the sheer number is the overall trend. The vast majority of these statues were erected in the past 20 years. Wherever you see statues of Nazi collaborators, you’ll also find thousands of torch-carrying men, rallying, organizing, drawing inspiration for action by celebrating collaborators of the past.”

Golinkin provides a country-by-country breakdown. These include:

In the Ukraine, which is where a quarter of the Jews killed in the Holocaust came from: “In 2016, a major Kyiv boulevard was renamed after [Nazi collaborator Stepan] Bandera. The renaming is particularly obscene since the street leads to Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis, aided by Ukrainian collaborators, exterminated 33,771 Jews in two days, in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.”

In Belgium, in 2018, a monument titled “Latvian Beehive for Freedom” was erected. The Latvian prisoners of war commemorated “were none other than the Latvian Legion, a unit in the Waffen-SS, which was the military wing of the Nazi party.”

Golinkin adds that “a disturbing number of Nazi collaborators documented in this database resettled in the West after the war.”

He is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, a memoir of Soviet Ukraine, which he left as a child refugee.

The Chicago Tribune reports: “GameStop’s stock is back to the races Friday, and the overall U.S. market is down again, as the saga that’s captivated and confused Wall Street ramps up the drama.”

JAMES HENRY, jamesshelburnehenry@mac.com
Henry is Global Justice Fellow at Yale University and managing director at the Sag Harbor Group, an IT consulting firm.

He said that the GameStop story highlights the need for a Financial Transaction Tax, small tax on each financial transaction that traders make. He states that it would “dampen casino trading” as well as raise substantial revenue in a progressive manner.

He adds the “Senate filibuster and Chuck Schumer’s Wall Street ties make such a development a long shot” in Washington, D.C., but New York State, as a hub of financial activity, could impose such a tax and that unions in New York are making a fresh push for exactly this.

He said: “We don’t have to take sides in this week’s particular stock mania to observe that it is the perfect illustration of much more fundamental, disturbing institutional reality. We have allowed Wall Street’s leading securities exchanges — a crucial part of the global capitalist order — to become by far the world’s largest casino. Indeed, 2020 was an all-time high for trading on New York’s two largest exchanges, with more than $49 trillion of stock trades on the NASDQ and the NYSE — more than half of the world’s trading total. Indeed, 2020 alone saw 19 of the 20 heaviest trading days since the year 2000, with the trend continuing into 2021. And up to 85 percent of these trades consist of speculative plays by hedge funds and high-frequency traders like the ones involved here.

“Fortunately, we have the perfect remedy — one that can also yield an extraordinary amount of tax revenue and help to reduce inequality, at a time when ‘the rest of us’ badly need it to help pay the soaring costs of the pandemic and prevent state and local governments from going bankrupt.

“Eighty-five years ago, in the depths of the Great Depression (1936), the economist John Maynard Keynes had already taken note of the fact that, especially during times of economic crisis, stock markets had become casinos. He commented: ‘Casinos should always be remote and expensive to use,’ and went on to propose that we put a simple ‘progressive sales tax’ on stock trades.

“Just so happens that we already have a .05 percent stock transfer tax in New York which has been rebated to the financial institutions since 1982. $344 billion ($2020) rebated thru 2020, We’re on the verge of getting the legislature to restore it. Governor Cuomo will have to decide whether he’s going to go along with Wall Street or join the herd.

“Yesterday we had a two-hour Zoom conference in which the tax was endorsed by the TWU [Transport Workers Union of America], CWA [Communications Workers of America]” and other unions, with more expected shortly.

The Biden administration is pressuring concessions from Iran regarding a renewed nuclear deal. Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, is under sanction by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the administration is expected to sign secret letters that it will not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear arsenal, facilitating the continuation of billions of U.S. dollars to Israel.

On New Year’s Eve, The Guardian published a piece by Archbishop Desmond Tutu titled “Joe Biden Should End the U.S. Pretence over Israel’s ‘Secret’ Nuclear Weapons: The cover-up has to stop — and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.”
Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, is a former archbishop of Cape Town and, from 1996 to 2003, was chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The piece states: “Every recent U.S. administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine U.S. law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal. …

“Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator.” In addition to its own acquisition of nuclear weapons, “there is overwhelming evidence that it offered to sell the apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons in the 1970s and even conducted a joint nuclear test. The U.S. government tried to cover up these facts. …

“Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban U.S. economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. … Another U.S. statute, the Leahy law, prohibits US military aid to governments that systematically violate human rights.”

Instead of applying the rule of law, Tutu wrote, “there has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s ‘nuclear ambiguity’ — effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters. …

“The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement U.S. law. …

“South Africa learned that it could only have real peace and justice by having truth that would lead to reconciliation. But none of those will come unless truth is faced squarely — and there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

Available for interviews:

RONNIE KASRILS, rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He wrote the piece “I Fought South African Apartheid. I See the Same Brutal Policies in Israel” for The Guardian.

GRANT F. SMITH,, gsmith@irmep.org, @IRmep
Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. He recently wrote the piece “Biden Could Reverse Six Harmful Israel Policies… With the Only Power That Stops Israel’s Lobby.” He notes: “Publicly known cumulative U.S. foreign assistance (excluding intelligence support and other covert funding) to Israel is on track to reach $295 billion.”

President Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, is scheduled to have his hearing Tuesday.

CommonDreams reports: “Amid Broader Concerns Over Biden USDA Nominee, Watchdog Flags ‘Disturbing Suppression’ of Science by Vilsack.”

WENONAH HAUTER, SETH GLADSTONE, sgladstone@fwwatch.org, @foodandwater
Hauter and Gladstone are with the group Food & Water Watch, which recently put out the statement: “Tom Vilsack’s Cozy Relationship With Big Ag Makes Him A Non-Starter at USDA.” They have joined with RootsAction and other groups to advocate against his nomination as secretary of agriculture.

Food & Water Watch states: “The Biden administration will fail rural America right out of the gate with a choice like Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. ..

“As [Obama’s] Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack failed to hold up his promise of addressing antitrust issues in the agricultural industry. A series of public meetings on the issue held jointly with the Department of Justice never resulted in regulatory action, and USDA policy continued to favor large-scale, corporate farming at the expense of family farms. Vilsack went on to become a lobbyist for the Dairy Export Industry, raking in more than $1 million in his first year, at a time when prospects for dairy farmers were so bleak that some received a suicide prevention hotline number along with their dairy checks. The prospect of Vilsack returning to head the USDA is an egregious example of a revolving door between industry and government.”

Also, see from the Guardian: “Tom Vilsack’s Cozy Relationship With Big Ag Makes Him a Non-Starter at USDA.”

See from The Counter: “How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination against Black Farmers.”

In These Times reports that while Vil­sack was secretary of agriculture during the Obama administration, “he angered pro­gres­sive groups by let­ting poul­try fac­to­ries self-reg­u­late, speed­ing up the approval process for GMO crops, shelv­ing new reg­u­la­tions on big agri­cul­ture at the industry’s behest, and step­ping in to craft an indus­try-friend­ly nation­al GMO-labelling bill intend­ed to replace a pio­neer­ing stricter stan­dard in Ver­mont. The move helped earn him the deri­sive moniker ‘Mr. Mon­san­to.'”

MICHAEL BEER, michael@nonviolenceinternational.net, @NVIntl
Executive director of Nonviolence International, Beer has been to Myanmar many times and has worked for 30 years supporting the nonviolent campaigns for peace, justice, and democracy in the country. He is in contact with activists there, many of whom are afraid to speak publicly.

He said today: “The people of Myanmar are resisting the military coup d’etat. Government doctors are going on strike. Myanmar citizens responded last night by engaging in a mass nonviolent tactic of caceleroza which involves the banging of pots and pans. Many governments, including South East Asian nations, are protesting. Ethnic minorities in the country are united in opposition. World-wide, citizens are planning to re-launch global boycotts. This coup will not succeed if enough pressure can be brought upon the coup plotters.

“Despite the overwhelming electoral defeat of the military’s political party, the military has copied U.S. former president Trump’s strategy of criticizing the validity of the election and are now trying to overturn the election. This may have been prompted by the military leader’s fear of losing power as a civilian where his vast wealth might be at risk.

“People around the world are sickened by the coup d’etat in Myanmar by the rapacious Burmese military. Despite having enormous power in the country, they were not satisfied with sharing power with a civilian government but decided to return to their long-standing practice of ruling the country for the benefit of themselves.”

More than a hundred human rights and civil liberties groups are calling on President Joe Biden to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and end indefinite military detention.

See the letter they have signed, noting that Guantánamo was “designed specifically to evade legal constraints, and where Bush administration officials incubated torture. … United States government has viewed communities of color — citizens and non-citizens alike — through a security threat lens, to devastating consequences. … It is long past time for both a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused. Closing Guantánamo and ending indefinite detention of those held there is a necessary step towards those ends. We urge you to act without delay, and in a just manner that considers the harm done to the men who have been imprisoned without charge or fair trials for nearly 20 years.”

Among the groups signing the letter are the Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Victims of Torture, American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Advocacy Project, Physicians for Human Rights, Muslim Solidarity Committee and Witness Against Torture.
Available for interviews:

ALIYA HUSSAIN, via Jen Nessel, jnessel@ccrjustice.org, @theCCR
Hussain, a Center for Constitutional Rights advocacy program manager said: “That so many groups are calling for an end to the indefinite detention of Muslim men without charge or fair trial at Guantánamo, and see it as part of a broader movement to uphold human rights, demand accountability for U.S.-sanctioned torture and violence, and fundamentally change the flawed criminal legal system, is significant. There is wide-ranging public support for President Biden to close Guantánamo. He must take bold and decisive action, and we will hold him accountable until he does.”

More than a hundred human rights and civil liberties groups are calling on President Joe Biden to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and end indefinite military detention.

See the letter they have signed, noting that Guantánamo was “designed specifically to evade legal constraints, and where Bush administration officials incubated torture. … United States government has viewed communities of color — citizens and non-citizens alike — through a security threat lens, to devastating consequences. … It is long past time for both a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security, and a meaningful reckoning with the full scope of damage that the post-9/11 approach has caused. Closing Guantánamo and ending indefinite detention of those held there is a necessary step towards those ends. We urge you to act without delay, and in a just manner that considers the harm done to the men who have been imprisoned without charge or fair trials for nearly 20 years.”

Among the groups signing the letter are the Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Victims of Torture, American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Advocacy Project, Physicians for Human Rights, Muslim Solidarity Committee and Witness Against Torture.

Available for interviews:

ALIYA HUSSAIN, via Jen Nessel, jnessel@ccrjustice.org, @theCCR
Hussain, a Center for Constitutional Rights advocacy program manager said: “That so many groups are calling for an end to the indefinite detention of Muslim men without charge or fair trial at Guantánamo, and see it as part of a broader movement to uphold human rights, demand accountability for U.S.-sanctioned torture and violence, and fundamentally change the flawed criminal legal system, is significant. There is wide-ranging public support for President Biden to close Guantánamo. He must take bold and decisive action, and we will hold him accountable until he does.”

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI, @shireen818
Al-Adeimi an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University. Since 2015, she has played an active role in raising awareness about the Saudi-led war on her country of birth, Yemen, and works to encourage political action to end U.S. support.

She just wrote the piece “Biden Says He’s Ending the Yemen War — But It’s Too Soon to Celebrate” for In These Times. She gives Biden credit for positive moves, but scrutinizes his speech at the State Department yesterday in which he said: “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen including relevant arms sales. … At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks and UAV strikes and other threats from Iranian supplied forces in multiple countries. We are going to continue to help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.”
But Al-Adeimi notes: “Unfortunately, qualifiers like ‘offensive’ and ‘relevant’ do not signal a clear commitment to ending all forms of support for the U.S. war in Yemen, which includes targeting assistance, weapons sales (the U.S. is the largest supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia), logistics, training, and intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led coalition. Labeling Yemen’s Houthis as ‘Iranian supplied forces,’ and making a commitment to defending Saudi Arabia’s ‘sovereignty,’ echoes President Obama’s initial pretense for entering the war on Yemen in 2015. …

“Importantly, [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan noted that ending the war in Yemen ‘does not extend to actions against AQAP,’ or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While sanctioned by the [2001] AUMF [which is continuing to be used to justify attacks in many countries], it’s important to oppose this parallel U.S.-led war in Yemen that has also led to the killing of civilians.

“Now, more than ever, it is vital to hold a firm line about what a real end to U.S. participation in the Yemen war means: an end to all U.S. assistance, including intelligence sharing, logistical help, training, providing spare parts transfers for warplanes, bomb targeting, weapons sales and support for the naval blockade (we still don’t know the full extent of U.S. support for the latter). It also requires that the United States immediately reverse the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a determination that is cutting off critical aid to northern Yemen and significantly escalating the crisis of mass starvation.

“Because these things have not yet come to pass, it is critical to keep up the pressure until the war is really ended. As much as we might welcome positive messaging – no doubt a result of the pressure exerted by dogged organizers – we must not rest until we have won actual material relief. …

“The Obama-Biden administration made numerous announcements in 2012 and 2013 that it would end the U.S. war in Afghanistan by 2014. But we saw that declarations do not, in themselves, end U.S. aggression. This principle especially applies when declarations are loaded with red-flag-raising qualifiers like ‘offensive operations’ and ‘relevant weapons systems.'”

Friday evening, the U.S. State Department released a statement: “Opposing International Criminal Court Attempts to Affirm Territorial Jurisdiction Over the Palestinian Situation.”

JOHN QUIGLEY, quigley.2@osu.edu
Professor emeritus of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley’s books include The Statehood of Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict and The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: Deception at the United Nations in the Quest for Palestine (both Cambridge University Press).

He said today: “The United States bucks the international consensus by claiming that Palestine is not a state. The U.S. opposition to an investigation into war crimes committed in Palestine hinders the International Criminal Court in preventing such crimes. The decision by the pre-trial chamber to allow an investigation to proceed will allow the Prosecutor to investigate crimes committed by both sides. One of the war crimes the Prosecutor seeks to investigate is the transfer of civilians to Israeli settlements in the Palestine territory that Israel occupies. That activity is defined as a crime in international law, because a belligerent occupant does not gain a right to move its own people into the territory it occupies. The actions of Israeli officials in regard to the settlements is almost universally regarded as a war crime. The International Criminal Court is the only international institution that has jurisdiction to investigate this crime. It has that jurisdiction because Palestine, as a state, is party to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The fact that the United States does not consider Palestine to be a state does not keep the International Criminal Court from taking jurisdiction. An investigation will now be able to proceed.”

Also see recent accuracy.org news release: “Desmond Tutu: Biden Should End Israeli Nuclear Cover-up and Save Billions.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola just wrote the piece “Assange Prosecution, Launched By Trump Justice Department, Will Continue Under Biden.”

He writes: “The Justice Department under President Joe Biden plans to continue the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that was launched under President Donald Trump.

“‘We continue to seek his extradition,’ Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi told Reuters, days before February 12, the deadline for the United States government to submit its ‘grounds for appeal.’

“The statement represents a departure from President Barack Obama’s administration, which declined to prosecute Assange. Justice Department officials were reportedly concerned about the threat it would pose to press freedom.

“On January 4, British district judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. government’s extradition request and concluded Assange’s mental condition was ‘such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.'”

Gosztola notes that earlier this week “a coalition of civil liberties, press freedom, and human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Committee to Protect Journalists, Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Human Rights Watch, PEN America, Project on Government Oversight, and Reporters Without Borders, signed on to a letter demanding that the Biden Justice Department drop the charges against Assange. …

“During Biden’s first foreign policy speech on February 4, he proclaimed, ‘We believe a free press isn’t an adversary; rather, it’s essential. A free press is essential to the health of a democracy.’ …

“However … U.S. security agencies believe they should monitor, neutralize, and even target dissident media organizations that may employ practices pioneered by WikiLeaks.”

See Gosztola’s extensive reporting on Assange’s trial, which he covered in London.

While vice president, Biden likened Assange to a “hi-tech terrorist.”

JARIBU HILL, jaribu.hill@gmail.com, @truthteller711, @blacks4peace
NETFA FREEMAN, netfa@ips-dc.org, @Netfafree

Hill and Freeman are both on the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. Freeman is writing a forthcoming book: Community Control Over Police.    The group recently released a statement calling for an executive order to end the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which siphons military equipment to police in the U.S.

The group states: “The gratuitous militarization of police forces across the United States through this program has helped to turn these agencies into brutal weapons of repression. Therefore, nothing short of complete abolition of this program is acceptable.

“BAP has demanded abolition of the 1033 program since BAP’s 2017 founding. It now asks the public to sign a petition (available in English and Spanish) demanding the Biden administration and Democrats commit to abolishing this racist and brutal program.”

Hill is also executive director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights. She added: “Here in the belly of the Deep South beast, we understand the harsh and irreversible effects measures like 1033 have had and continue to have on those who languish in poverty, forced to live in shanty shacks and tenements.” She formerly served as municipal judge for the city of Hollandale and is a human rights attorney and a veteran community organizer.

The group noted: “The National Defense Authorization Act of 1997 that then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) supported and President Bill Clinton (D) signed into law created the 1033 program by expanding on a previous program.”Responding to outrage about the heavily militarized police response to protests after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, President Barack Obama enacted a policy in 2015 that appeared to limit the program, but made little difference in any department’s ability to acquire and use military weapons.

“Even with the scale-back, the Obama administration managed to transfer a $459 million arsenal to police agencies. …

“President Donald Trump came into office and reversed Obama’s cosmetic changes. What the Biden administration is now proposing by reversing Trump’s reversal to the Obama policy is not enough, as reverting the policy to Obama’s altered version is not justice.”

STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes@usfca.edu
Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who has written extensively on the Mideast. He said today: “Eighteen years ago today, tens of millions of people around the world, in the largest single protest event in history, came out against the incipient U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. I spoke before half a million people gathered in San Francisco. Every mainline Christian denomination, 90 percent of Mideast scholars, and the vast majority of the world’s governments were saying no to war. The following current U.S. office-holders, however, insisted we were all wrong and that Bush and Cheney were right:
Joe Biden (President)
Anthony Blinken (Secretary of State)
Chuck Schumer (Senate Majority Leader)
Mitch McConnell (Senate Minority Leader)
Steny Hoyer (House Majority Leader)
Kevin McCarthy (House Minority Leader)

“In other words, current leaders of both the executive and legislative branches have demonstrated their belief that the United States somehow has the right to illegally invade a country on the far side of the world that is no threat to us despite being warned of the disastrous humanitarian, strategic, fiscal, and environmental consequences. People like that should not be in positions of power. Don’t think for a moment they won’t try to get us into another war. (And they all insist we should still have combat troops in Iraq 18 years later.)”

ELI CLIFTON, [in NYC] , eliclifton@gmail.com, @EliClifton, @RStatecraft
Clifton is senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and investigative-journalist-at-large at Responsible Statecraft. He just wrote the piece “Weapons Biz Bankrolls Experts Pushing to Extend Afghan War,” which states: “Earlier this month, a study group established by Congress recommended that President Joe Biden extend the May 1 deadline for withdrawing troops from America’s longest war. It’s a strategy that many experts say runs the risk of abrogating the U.S.-Taliban agreement and potentially setting back the potential peace process in Afghanistan — or even dooming it to failure.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a striking similarity in the backgrounds of the individuals involved in these critical recommendations, which are likely to influence whether Biden maintains a ‘conditions based’ U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. Two of the group’s three co-chairs and nine of the group’s 12 plenary members, comprised of what the group refers to as ‘members,’ have current or recent financial ties to major defense contractors, an industry that soaks up more than half of the $740 billion defense budget, and stands to gain from protracted U.S. military involvement overseas. …

“For example, Ret. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford was a co-chair of the Afghanistan Study Group. Dunford served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015 to 2019, commandant of the Marine Corps, and Commander of all United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2013.

“He led the group alongside Kelly Ayotte, who represented New Hampshire in the Senate from 2011 to 2016, and Nancy Lindborg, the President and CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

“Dunford and Ayotte have also used their expertise not just to advise the Biden administration on the Afghanistan War but to cash in with major defense contractors.

“Since 2017, Ayotte has served on the board of BAE Systems Inc., a subsidiary of the U.K. defense giant BAE Systems plc. Dunford, for his part, joined the board of Lockheed Martin last year. SEC filings show Dunford holds approximately $290,000 worth of stock as part of the ‘Lockheed Martin Directors Equity Plan,’ a scheme to award stock to directors in order to ‘further align their economic interests with the interests of stockholders generally.’

“Nine plenary group members also maintained deep ties to the weapons industry.

“Susan M. Gordon, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from 2017 to 2019, collected $26,250 in cash from defense contractor CACI for her partial year’s work on its board in 2020 and reported holding approximately $160,000 in CACI stock.

“Stephen J. Hadley served as deputy national security adviser during George W. Bush’s first term, a role in which he offered his resignation due to his part in allowing faulty intelligence about Iraq’s pursuit of alleged nuclear weapons material from Niger to be included in the president’s 2003 State of the Union Address. Bush denied Hadley’s resignation request and Hadley went on to become national security adviser in 2005, leading a 2007 campaign to promote the troop surge in Iraq.

“After the Bush administration, Hadley cashed in, joining Raytheon’s board in 2010 and receiving nearly $2.6 million in cash and stock awards over the following nine years.”

TIM SCHWAB, timschwab2020@gmail.com, @TimothyWSchwab
Available for a limited number of interviews, Schwab is an independent journalist who just wrote the piece “Bill Gates, Climate Warrior. And Super Emitter” for The Nation. His prior pieces on Gates include “Are Bill Gates’s Billions Distorting Public Health Data?” and “While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer” and “Journalism’s Gates Keepers” for Columbia Journalism Review.

Schwab writes: “During the pandemic, Bill Gates’s personal fortune has increased by an impressive $20 billion, but even these gains pale in comparison to his soaring political influence — as the news media has widely trumpeted his leadership on Covid-19, praising his charitable donations or extolling him as a ‘visionary’ who predicted the outbreak.

“It’s a highly questionable narrative, one that ignores widespread controversy over the way Gates made his fortune and how he chooses to spend it. …

“’I expect to spend much of my time in 2021 talking with leaders around the world about both climate change and Covid-19,’ Gates notes in his new book, How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, which seems destined to be a best seller.

“Even before the release of his book this week, Gates’s move into climate change has made waves — an interview on ’60 Minutes,’ op-eds in Time magazine and The Guardian, and a podcast with actor Rashida Jones. Given Gates’s track record of success inserting himself into other policy debates — everything from U.S. education to global health — it seems likely he will continue to take up oxygen in the climate discourse going forward.

“If so, he proceeds from a precarious position, not just because of his thin credentials, untested solutions, and stunning financial conflicts of interest, but because his undemocratic assertion of power — no one appointed or elected him as the world’s new climate czar — comes at precisely the time when democratic institutions have become essential to solving climate change.

“Gates’s main credential related to climate change is as an investor. In 2015, he started a multibillion-dollar venture capital fund called Breakthrough Energy — recruiting a who’s who of the global super rich to join the fund: Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Michael Bloomberg, Jack Ma, Mukesh Ambani, and others.

“This billionaire club boasts that its investments in new technologies can ‘lead the world to zero emissions,’ but the fund’s portfolio includes companies whose impact on fighting climate change is largely hypothetical and in some cases highly dubious — like lab-cultured breast milk substitute and a hydrogen-powered airplane.

“In some ways, Gates’s book could be read as a long-winded advertisement for his investments, because he devotes many pages to promoting the need for new technologies to fight climate change. At one point, Gates even calls on the U.S. government to become a co-investor in advanced nuclear energy companies, like the one he founded, TerraPower (which has yet to put any energy into the power grid). …

“In many respects, that’s the entire modus operandi — or sleight of hand — of the Gates Foundation. Incorporated as a charity, the foundation is probably better understood as a political organization, one that uses its outsize resources to push public policy in line with Bill and Melinda Gates’s view of how the world should work (which is also sometimes in line with the Gates Foundation’s financial investments). …

“According to a 2019 academic study looking at extreme carbon emissions from the jet-setting elite, Bill Gates’s extensive travel by private jet likely makes him one of the world’s top carbon contributors — a veritable super emitter. In the list of 10 celebrities investigated — including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, and Oprah Winfrey — Gates was the source of the most emissions.

“The study only looked at Gates’s jet travel, but might have also considered Gates’s emissions from his farmland, which includes large tracts of corn and soybeans, which typically goes to feed animals (often on factory farms) — a particularly carbon-intensive model of agriculture.”

TODD MILLER, toddmemomiller@gmail.com, @memomiller
Miller is co-author of the just-released report “Biden’s Border — The border industry, the Democrats and the 2020 elections” co-published by the Transnational Institute, Mijente, and AFSC.

He said today: “President Joe Biden and Democratic candidates received more money than Donald Trump and Republicans from leading border security corporations despite their markedly different campaign promises and rhetoric. Biden himself received three times more in contributions ($5,364,994) than Trump ($1,730,435) from 13 leading border security and immigration detention firms. Overall, these companies donated over $40 million to both political parties but favored Democrats (55 percent) over Republicans (45 percent). These numbers suggest that the industry, which has traditionally favored Republicans, sought to ensure influence regardless of the election outcome and protect a lucrative industry worth $55.1 billion between 2008 and 2020.

“In the report ‘Biden’s Border — The border industry, the Democrats and the 2020 elections,’ we welcome key initiatives by the Biden administration to change course on border and immigration from Trump’s aggressive anti-immigrant policies. However, Biden’s support for a ‘virtual wall’ and ‘smart borders’ that depend more on surveillance technologies than physical wall construction is more profitable for this industry and would continue a long-standing bipartisan approach to border militarization. As a result of these policies in place since the mid 1990s, approximately 8,000 bodies have been recovered in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and many more people have disappeared or have been separated from their families.

“If Democrats truly want to oppose the cruelty and deadliness of this border and immigration enforcement apparatus, they will have to do much more than reverse Trump’s inhumane policies. They will have to challenge this entrenched and lucrative system, including the infrastructure and technology that facilitates it and the industry that thrives off it. They will have to challenge a complex of companies that finances their campaigns and lobbies their offices.”\

Miller is author of the books Empire of Borders:The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (2019), Storming the Wall (2017), Border Patrol Nation (2014), and the forthcoming Build Bridges Not Walls (2021).

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson@umb.edu
PAUL JORGENSEN, pdj78@me.com
Ferguson is professor emeritus, University of Massachusetts Boston and director of research, Institute for New Economic Thinking. His books include Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems.

Jorgensen is associate professor and director of environmental studies at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

With Jie Chen, they just co-wrote the piece “Big Money Drove the Congressional Elections — Again” which is a comprehensive analysis of campaign spending in the 2020 congressional elections.

They commented that “We were very skeptical about the strong pre-election claims of a huge Democratic fundraising advantage in Congressional races. Those doubts turned out to be well founded. Two thousand twenty looks very much like the last 40 years of Congressional election results: the outcome shows strong straight line relationships between money and votes. In American politics you get mostly what affluent people pay for — which goes a long way toward explaining why stimulus programs for ordinary people, but not Wall Street, are so controversial.”

MITCH JONES, mjones@fwwatch.org, @foodandwater
Jones is policy director of Food & Water Watch, which just released a statement: “The climate change-supercharged deep freeze covering Texas has left millions without power and water. The failure of the energy system is the direct result of corporate deregulation and an overreliance on fracked gas. While right-wing media outlets and politicians make wildly false claims about the failure of wind power, the whole disaster is yet another clear sign that we need bold government action to transform our energy system.

“The Texas energy system relies primarily on fracked gas — a source that greatly contributes to climate change, in addition to the litany of public health and environmental impacts linked to the fracking process. The failure of Texas’ gas-powered system due to freezing temperatures shows fracked gas to be an unreliable energy source.

“The other culprit is the structure of the Texas power system itself. The grid, primarily operated by ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), is mostly cut off from the rest of the country. In the late 1990s, companies like Enron were pushing energy deregulation across the country, most notably in states like California and Texas. The ‘free market’ disaster in California led to wild price swings, market manipulation and widespread blackouts in 2000 and 2001. In Texas, critics of deregulation point out that the promised cost savings have never arrived, and there is little incentive for companies to invest in the kind of weatherization and maintenance that would have prevented some of the problems that have left millions without power. And in a deregulated market faced with a supply shortage, prices have skyrocketed.”

Jones added: “The power and water crisis in Texas is the result of climate change, fracking, deregulation, and poorly maintained water and power infrastructure. It’s exhibit A on why we need a Green New Deal that invests in building renewable energy with battery storage, modernizes our power systems, rebuilds our water infrastructure, and regulates these systems in the public interest. This should be a massive wakeup call that oil and gas barons shouldn’t be driving decisions around our energy needs. We need publicly-owned utilities that are operated for the benefit of the people and the planet, not corporate profits.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced on Friday that he would vote against Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget, increasing the possibility that she cannot be confirmed for the influential position. 

JEFF COHEN, jeff@rootsaction.org, @Roots_Action
    Co-founder of RootsAction.org and its policy adviser, Cohen said today: “For decades, Democratic Party leaders and top advisers have wallowed in donations from the super-rich while moving the party toward policies that have shifted wealth and income from working-class people to elites. Consummate fundraiser Neera Tanden is a prime symbol of corporatism within a party that once fought for working-class interests, and that’s why RootsAction has opposed her OMB nomination since it was announced in December. We call on the Biden administration to nominate someone who will put the public interest ahead of corporate interests when it comes to overseeing federal budgetary and regulatory policies.”

The group’s action alert reads in part: “In recent years, Tanden has become known as one of the loudest voices of the neoliberal establishment. … Her coziness with corporate elites raises questions about her potential role in the regulatory process. As the Washington Post recently reported, she has ‘mingled with deep-pocketed donors who made their fortunes on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and in other powerful sectors of corporate America.’ And, ‘at formal pitches and swanky fundraisers, Tanden personally cultivated the bevy of benefactors fueling the $45 million to $50 million annual budget’ of her think tank, the Center for American Progress.”

See Washington Post piece from Dec. 5: “Neera Tanden, Biden’s Pick for Budget Chief, Runs a Think Tank Backed by Corporate and Foreign Interests.”

KEITH McHENRY, keith@foodnotbombs.net, @keith_mchenry    McHenry is co-founder of the Food Not Bombs movement. He can connect media with other activists. He points to a series of efforts in various cities targeting homeless people.

He tweeted Tuesday of the most recent example: “The City of Santa Cruz is threatening to evict Food Not Bombs again claiming they will arrest us if we don’t stop.” The group was evicted from another location just last week, see Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Food Not Bombs displaced from Santa Cruz lot.”

McHenry said today: “City governments across the United States are waging a war against the homeless and their supporters as millions of Americans are facing eviction. As the Santa Cruz City Council was meeting to introduce an ordinance against ‘Temporary Outdoor Living’ it was sending an email to Food Not Bombs threatening to arrest our volunteers if we continue to share meals in an empty parking lot at a main intersection in Santa Cruz.

“Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs will be celebrating its 365th day in a row of providing food, drinking water, and the city’s only reliable hand-washing station while the city and its corporate sponsors failed to provide for the needs of most of our community’s unhoused. The city is also pressuring the state to evict over 100 people from the roadway outside Housing Matters homeless center and is seeking to vacate an injunction ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Susan van Keulen against their holiday evictions of over 100 people living in San Lorenzo Park.

“The Denver Police Department cleared camps of unhoused on February 21, 2021. Police used an armored vehicle to support a sweep of unhoused in Bellingham, Washington on January 28, 2021. The cities of Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, New Orleans, San Jose and Sacramento are among the many other municipalities clearing camps of unhoused into the doorways and roadways of their communities.”
Food Not Bombs is a global movement. See from the London-based Freedom News: “Belarus: Food Not Bombs activists receive prison sentences for giving away food.”

DAVID BACON, dbacon@igc.org, @photos4justice
ANURADHA MITTAL, amittal@oaklandinstitute.org, @oak_institute
Bacon is author of the new report “Dignity or Exploitation – What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?” for the Oakland Institute. Mittal is founder and executive director of the group.

Bacon said today: “The H-2A program has created a captive labor force, made to work in brutal and often illegal conditions. In practice, it is not far from slavery. The majority of these migrant workers arrive in the U.S. already in debt. Department of Labor regulations permit companies to subject them to quotas that require them to work at an exhausting speed. Efforts to organize against exploitative conditions have been met with terminations, deportations and blacklisting.”

The report states that: “H-2A workers also face disproportionate exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The report describes some of the most acute situations, and analyzes the basic reason for the high infection rate — congregate housing, or barracks, where workers sleep in bunk beds.

Growth of the H-2A program has also exacerbated an existing housing crisis for rural workers, as recruitment has skyrocketed from 10,000 visas in 1992 to over 250,000 in 2020. The exploitative conditions and vulnerability of migrants who came under the H-2A program are very close to those of the bracero program that was in place from 1942 to 1964. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which put an end to the bracero program, established an immigration system based on family reunification and community stability, protecting the wages, rights, health, and housing of farmworkers. This system is under increasing threat today.

Mittal said: “Restoring the family preference system and halting the H-2A program are two of the most important decisions that will face the Biden administration in regards to the direction of U.S. immigration policy. The new administration needs to choose whose interests they are going to serve. Will it support the H-2A program and protect the profits of growers, or will it stand with the farmworkers who labor in the fields to feed this country?”

KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman@hamptons.com
Grossman just wrote the piece “Applause for Perseverance Ignores Plutonium Bullet We Dodged” for the media watch group FAIR.

He writes: “With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, frequently unreported was that its energy source is plutonium — considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances — and nowhere in media was the NASA projection that there were 1-in-960 odds of an accidental release of the plutonium on the mission.

“’A “1-in-960 chance” of a deadly plutonium release is a real concern,’ says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
“Further, NASA’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission acknowledges that solar energy could have been an ‘alternative’ power source for Perseverance. Photovoltaic panels have been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers.

“One in 100 rockets undergo major malfunctions on launch, mostly by blowing up.”

See NASA document: “Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars 2020 Mission” [PDF] which gives the 1 in 960 probability.

Earlier this month, Grossman wrote the piece “Nuclear Rockets to Mars?” for Counterpunch.

Grossman is professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, “The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space.” [PDF]

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of law at the University of Illinois. His most recent book is World Politics, Human Rights, and International Law.

He said today: “Biden’s bombing of Syria on Thursday is illegal — a violation of international law. It’s especially egregious since the attacks in Syria came out of Iraq, as the Iraqi government has been telling the U.S. government to leave.

“There have been reports that the U.S. government has been bombing Afghanistan. Presumably this is pretextually justified by the 2001 AUMF. It’s ridiculous to cite that at this point, but there’s some legal pretense to the effort. Attacking forces in Syria — which are allegedly backed by the Iranian government — have no plausible legal justification.

Jen Psaki, now the White House press secretary, tweeted after Trump bombed Syria in 2017: “Also what is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.” At the time, IPA put out a news release: “Attacking Syria ‘Impeachable.’” Boyle stated today: “There’s been a lot of clamor about the ‘rule of law’ by many Democratic Party officials over Trump’s second impeachment, but Biden’s bombing is also a violation of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution, Congress’s own War Powers Resolution and the UN Charter — so of course it is an impeachable offense. So, there’s no real fidelity to the rule of law, just partisan preference here. Biden, who was a critical backer of the illegal Iraq invasion, has predictably carried on with the wholesale military interventionism by the Obama/Biden administration.”

Boyle was legal adviser to Rep. Henry B. González and wrote the first draft of the González Impeachment Resolution in 1991. George H. W. Bush would later write in his memoirs that if the Gulf War “drags out, not only will I take the blame, but I will probably have impeachment proceedings filed against me.”

In 2017, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, and foreign policy speechwriter, told Politico that President Obama feared impeachment if he targeted the Syrian government.

CHUCK COLLINS, chuck@ips-dc.org; also via Bob Keener, bobk@ips-dc.org, @inequalityorg

Collins just wrote the piece “We should tax billionaires’ wealth to help pay for pandemic recovery” for MarketWatch. He writes: “This week, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts introduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, an annual wealth tax on households with more than $50 million. Lead sponsors in the House are Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania.

“’The ultrarich and powerful have rigged the rules in their favor so much that the top 0.1 percent pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 99 percent, and billionaire wealth is 40 percent higher than before the COVID crisis began,’ Warren explained.

“Around two-thirds of Americans, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, said they supported a wealth tax in a January survey. ‘A wealth tax is popular among voters on both sides for good reason: because they understand the system is rigged to benefit the wealthy and large corporations,’ Warren said.

“Under the Warren-Jayapal-Boyle bill, the richest 100,000 Americans would be subject to an annual tax of a few pennies on the dollar on their great fortunes.

“The tax rate would be just 2 cents on the dollar, or 2 percent, for people with wealth between $50 million and $1 billion. It would rise to just 3 cents on the dollar, or 3 percent, for wealth above the $1 billion threshold.

“Only the country’s 650 or so billionaires would pay the 3 percent rate.

“It makes sense to tax billionaires to pay for the immediate-term pandemic recovery, as well as for longer-term investments in infrastructure, health care, and education. As hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives, and millions lost their livelihoods, U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase $1.3 trillion over the last 11 months, an increase of 45 percent.

“U.S. billionaires now have a combined wealth of $4.2 trillion. That’s nearly double the wealth owned by the bottom half of all U.S. households — 165 million people combined — who collectively own just $2.4 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.”

Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org. His new book is The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.

JEFF COHEN, jeff@rootsaction.org
NORMAN SOLOMON, norman@rootsaction.org
Cohen and Solomon co-founded the group RootsAction.org, which led the progressive opposition to Neera Tanden’s nomination as head of the Office of Management and Budget.

They issued a statement Tuesday just after her nomination was withdrawn, saying they are “heartened that she will not be OMB director. The opposition of Republican senators over nasty tweets was of course hypocritical and absurd, given their muted response to years of Trump’s tweeting. But it was inexcusable for Democratic senators to be silent about the legitimate reasons to oppose her nomination — the potential conflicts of interest raised by her years of coziness with powerful corporate elites. That silence may be explained by the fact that Democrats in the Senate are beholden to some of the same corporate donors that lavishly bankroll Tanden’s think tank. Tanden was the wrong choice to head a federal agency that is vital in the regulatory process. It strains credulity to contend that she would have been a true advocate for the public interest after many years of dutifully serving corporate interests.”

RootsAction began its nationwide campaign to defeat the Tanden nomination on Jan. 3.

Cohen was on The Young Turks minutes before Tanden’s nomination was withdrawn.

AP reports this morning: “U.S. forces: Rockets hit airbase in Iraq hosting U.S. troops.” This follows a U.S. government strike from Iraq into Syria last week. Last year NBC reported:”Iraq asks U.S. to make plans to withdraw forces.”

KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, @voiceinwild
A long-time peace activist, who has frequently been in war zones and prison, Kelly just wrote the piece “Blood for Oil: Amid the ongoing horror, it’s important to find ways to atone for war crimes — including reparations,” originally published by The Progressive.

Pope Francis is scheduled to make the first papal visit to Iraq from March 5 to 8.

Kelly writes: “Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. We were 73 people from fifteen different countries, aged 22 to 76, living in a tent camp close to Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia, along the road to Mecca. …

“Iraqi authorities told us we must pack up, readying for a morning departure to Baghdad. Not all of us could agree on how to respond. Adhering to basic principles, twelve peace team members resolved to sit in a circle, holding signs saying ‘We choose to stay.’ …

“Another evacuation was happening as Iraqi forces, many of them young conscripts, hungry, disheveled and unarmed, poured out of Kuwait along a major highway, later called ‘the Highway of Death.’ …

“Shortly after viewing photos of gruesome carnage caused by the ground and air attacks, President George H.W. Bush called for a cessation of hostilities on February 27th, 1991. An official cease fire was signed on March 4. …

“Noam Chomsky notes that there were diplomatic alternatives to the bloodletting and destruction visited upon Iraq by Operation Desert Storm. Iraqi diplomats had submitted an alternative plan which was suppressed in the mainstream media and flatly rejected by the U.S. …

“After the ‘success’ of Operation Desert Storm, the bombing war turned into an economic war, which lasted through 2003. As early as 1995, United Nations documents clarified that the economic war, waged through continued imposition of U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, was far more brutal than even the worst of the 1991 aerial and ground war attacks. …”

LYNN PARRAMORE, lynn@lynnparramore.com, @INETeconomics
Parramore is senior research analyst for the Institute for New Economic Thinking and just wrote the piece “Meet the ‘New Koch Brothers’ — the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal.”

The piece gives a series of case studies. Parramore summarized the problem: “Players on Wall Street have been torpedoing our chances of averting environmental catastrophe for years. A group of billionaire financiers has made sure the companies the government must partner with to fight climate change are focused on one thing only – making these men (they all seem to be men) even richer. Instead of leading the world in climate change technology, firms like Apple, GE, and Intel have been pressured to become the personal piggy banks of powerful moneymen — known as hedge fund activists — who can’t see beyond the next quarterly report.

“These guys are blocking their fellow Americans from the chance to leave their kids a safe, sustainable world. That world will never materialize unless we understand what they are doing and stop them. …

“People who did this used to be called ‘corporate raiders.’ They took over companies, fired people, played stock market games to swell the stock price, made a quick buck, and then split. …

“The playbook of today’s hedge fund” manipulators, Parramore notes, “looks like this: Buy a wad of shares of a company on the stock market. Then, line up the proxy votes of the managers of funds who let have hedgies manage pieces of their portfolio. Next, send a letter to the CEO of a target company demanding that he or she get busy pumping up the stock price. Hedge funds with deep pockets will spend millions making this happen — remember, their money comes from rich people or institutional investors like pensions and mutual funds who are seeking high yields. Occasionally hedgies will use their own money — those whose ‘war chests’ have come from previous raids.”

MIKE ELK, mike.elk@gmail.com, @MikeElk
Elk is the senior labor reporter at Payday Report. On Thursday, he wrote the piece “Twitter Worked With Amazon to Block Payday, Labeling Payday & Other Labor Reporters as ‘Suspicious Content.'” Elk wrote: “Earlier today, several readers of Payday Report’s Twitter feed informed us that Twitter was blocking labor reporting content shared by us from being viewed.

“I direct messaged my friends a tweet of a screenshot showing a link to an American Prospect story by retired New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse that described psychological warfare being performed by Amazon on its workers.

“After I sent the tweet, several of my friends told me they were given a warning when they tried to access the content: ‘Message hidden due to suspicious content.’

“Twitter’s feeds are powered through Amazon Web Services who also help run Twitter’s program that identifies ‘fake news.’ They often work closely with the company to block ‘flagged’ news links from going viral.

“Now, multiple reporters from various left outlets including Payday Report, franknews, The American Prospect, and More Perfect Union, have reported that they have all had their content blocked and pegged as ‘suspicious.’

“More Perfect Union, a new labor reporting organization founded by former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, made a viral video supporting the Amazon union workers. The video went viral and garnered over a million views before Amazon suddenly removed it for nearly a day.

“’We never got any explanation for why they removed it,’ said RWDSU [Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union] organizer Josh Brewer, who has been helping lead the battle against the e-commerce giant.

“In response to the negative publicity, Amazon has hired teams of rapid response PR agents who are scouring the web searching for viral tweets that make Amazon look bad. Thus, many on the left believe that Amazon is working closely with Twitter to prevent negative Amazon content from going viral.”

Forbes just published a piece by pollster John Zogby: “Majority Of New Yorkers Want To Collect A Century-Old Phantom Tax That Will Generate Billions In New Revenue,” which states: “For over 100 years, New York State law has provided for a stock transfer tax that essentially collects a tax on all stock transactions. For many years, after heavy lobbying by stock traders, tax money was actually collected — then immediately rebated to the firms that sold the stocks. In other words, it has been for most of its existence a phantom tax.

“Since 1982, the charade of collecting first then rebating the revenue was halted, but the stock transfer tax is still on the books as state law. So, what are we talking about in real dollars and cents? The tax translates into a 5-cent tax per share every time a stock is sold, thus in 2020, with the average trade on the NASDAQ at about eight thousand four hundred dollars, the total tax would have been around $8.80 a trade, or .1 percent — a minuscule sum anyway you look at it. Since 1982, however, New York has kept the tax on the books, but it has rebated more than $350 billion to Wall Street investors.

“Most New Yorkers are not even aware of this issue. John Zogby Strategies was commissioned by a coalition of public interest groups, unions, and Albany legislative leaders to test support or opposition of breathing new life into this phantom tax. Our poll of 704 likely voters statewide found that overall, 53 percent agreed it should be collected while only 34 percent disagreed. After arguments both in support and opposition were read to voters, agreement rose to 59 percent while opposition declined to 30 percent — a 29-point differential.”

JAMES HENRY, jsh11963@gmail.com, @submergingmkt
Henry is Global Justice Fellow at Yale University and managing director at the Sag Harbor Group. He said today: “The New York State legislature is meeting Tuesday to decide what its revenue options are and Wall Street is really digging in especially because Gov. Andrew Cuomo is imperiled. They have systematically understated the Wall Street revenues that this tax would produce. … If the feds adopt a national financial transaction tax before New York State does then all the money would flow into the federal treasury. So there’s really no good argument for not doing this except that Wall Street is very nervous about this escalating into the first successful progressive tax reform in 50 years.”

Henry is co-author of the paper “Submission to New York State Assembly: the case for Financial Transactions Taxes,” which states: “In New York state, Assemblyman Rep. Phil Steck has sponsored a disarmingly simple three-page bill that would raise some $10-20 billion a year from Wall Street and plough the money into the pandemic response and the local economy, creating jobs with a fair, efficient and progressive tax.”

On Monday, the Biden administration gave temporary legal status to thousands of Venezuelans in the U.S.

STEVE ELLNER, sellner74@gmail.com, @sellner74
Ellner, a retired professor from Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente, is currently an associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives and editor of the recently published Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective.

He said today: “The Biden administration’s posture toward Venezuela is continuity disguised as change. Its statement that it is dropping Trump’s approach to Venezuela is based on the claim that it will be consulting governments in the region and Europe. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Biden is calling for regime change, just as Trump did, and he continues to recognize Juan Guaidó as president. In contrast, the European Union has terminated its recognition of Guaidó. And the winds of change in Latin America are upending the strategy of isolating the Maduro government in the region that Trump did so much to promote.

“The Biden administration has learned nothing from the disaster of Trump’s Venezuelan policy. It has been a disaster for the Venezuelan people because the sanctions have caused them untold suffering. Ninety five percent of the deterioration in living standards in Venezuela occurred during Trump’s four years. That, in itself, puts the lie to Secretary of State spokesman Ned Price’s assertion on Monday that Maduro is ‘at the root of much of the misery and the suffering of the people of Venezuela.'” See Ellner’s piece “Explanations for the Current Crisis in Venezuela: A Clash of Paradigms and Narratives.”
He added: “The U.S. has always wanted to teach Venezuela a lesson (just like Cuba), specifically because Chavez, more than any other progressive Latin American president, served as a spokesman for the entire region, if not the world. And second, Washington policy makers are now using the term ‘leverage’ which means the sanctions are not designed to bring about immediate regime change but rather improve the U.S. bargaining position.”

EMMANUELA DOUYON, emmanuela.douyon@gmail.com, @emmadouyon
In Haiti, Douyon is an activist with Nou Pap Dòmi (We Will Not Sleep) and executive director of the group Policité. She will be testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Friday.

BRIAN CONCANNON, beconcannon@gmail.com, @HaitiJustice
Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon is executive director of Project Blueprint, which promotes a “progressive, human rights-based U.S. foreign policy by bringing the perspectives of people impacted by U.S. actions abroad into policy discussions.” He founded the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), and was its Executive Director from 2004-2019. He lived in Haiti from 1995 to 2004, where he served as a Human Rights Officer with the United Nations.

He just wrote the piece “Is the White House Greenlighting Haiti’s Descent into Dictatorship?” for Responsible Statecraft, which states: “As thousands of Haitians protest each Sunday against Jovenel Moïse, their embattled and increasingly authoritarian president, their protest signs and songs exhort the U.S. ambassador and the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, who is also a career U.S. diplomat, ‘to stop supporting a dictatorship.’ The protests reflect a broad consensus among politicians, intellectuals, lawyers and others in Haiti, supported by human rights experts and members of the U.S. Congress, that the Biden administration is propping up Moïse and preventing the emergence of a Haitian-led solution to the political crisis.

“The Trump administration had backed Moïse despite revelations of spectacular corruption, government-linked massacres, and the expiration of Haiti’s parliament. In just one incident, the 2018 La Saline massacre, government-allied gangs killed at least seventy people to retaliate against anti-government organizing in the neighborhood. I interviewed survivors, and their stories were eerily similar to the stories I had heard 30 years before from the survivors of the 1988 St. Jean Bosco Church massacre — also in La Saline — by the vestiges of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s Tonton Macoute death squad.

“Haitians were hopeful that the Biden administration would change course before February 7, the day that Moïse’s term in office ended, according to Haiti’s judicial oversight body, the bar federation, and religious leaders, as well as the leadership of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. But on February 5, the State Department, citing the position of Luis Almagro, Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, pronounced that Moïse’s term extended until 2022. This interpretation is based on a constitutional ambiguity generated by election delays in 2015 and 2016. But, as most commentators note, it is inconsistent with electoral law and with precedent set by Moïse himself.

“Taking Moïse’s side might have been an attempt to manage Haiti’s political crisis at a time when the administration’s attention is focused elsewhere. But Moïse proceeded as if this support provided a green light for continued repression. Before sunrise on February 7, his police arrested Supreme Court Justice Yvickel Dabrésil and at least 19 other suspected dissidents, illegally, alleging they were planning a coup d’état. The next day, Moïse, fired Dabrésil and two of his Supreme Court colleagues, who, under the country’s constitution, can only be removed by parliament. Haitians who protested the arrests and other autocratic measures were met with police beatings, tear gas and bullets, as were journalists covering the protests.

“The State Department added gaslighting to its green light on February 12, claiming there had been a ‘remarkable lack of popular response to calls for mass protest in recent weeks.’ The State Department knew very well that Haitian demonstrators had been subjected to violent attacks by government forces and allied militias once they marshaled in the streets. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security reported in February that the government was using gangs ‘to repress the opposition,’ and noted ‘President Jovenel Moïse’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies.'”

DIANE ARCHER, via Linda Benesch, lbenesch@socialsecurityworks.org
Archer is president of Just Care USA, an independent digital hub “covering health and financial issues facing boomers and their families and promoting policy solutions.” She is the past board chair of Consumer Reports and serves on the Brown University School of Public Health Advisory Board. Benesch is communications director of Social Security Works.

Archer just wrote the piece “The Ghost of the Trump Administration Is Haunting Medicare,” which states: “In the last quarter of 2020, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services launched an experiment, euphemistically called, ‘direct contracting,’ that could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers. The Biden administration needs to halt this experiment before millions of older and disabled Americans lose their right to choose traditional Medicare.

“Traditional Medicare — public insurance administered by the federal government — has been a hallmark of Medicare since the program was first enacted in 1965. Under traditional Medicare, the government sets rates for doctors and hospitals, sets the conditions for coverage, and pays providers directly. Public insurance is cost-effective, reliable, transparent and publicly accountable.

“Most important, traditional Medicare guarantees people access to care from the doctors and hospitals they choose anywhere in the country. It is designed to meet the needs of healthy older adults and people with disabilities as well as those with complex medical conditions. No corporate health insurer profits from denying care or second-guessing treating physicians.

“Nonetheless, the Trump administration has outsourced Medicare to insurance companies and other for-profit middlemen, placing them between Americans and their doctors. The experiment could assign millions of people who elected traditional Medicare to a corporate health plan that works like Medicare Advantage, the Medicare private health insurance choice, with fewer consumer protections. …

“Allowing for-profit insurers to restrict access to care in traditional Medicare is a dangerous social experiment with the health and lives of the most vulnerable older and disabled Americans. It’s bad policy, a government giveaway to Wall Street, and a betrayal of the most basic principles of Medicare. Congress has given every older and disabled American the right to choose traditional Medicare. The Biden administration should immediately kill this toxic legacy of the former president.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights has put out a detailed news release: “Gitmo Torture Survivor Asks Court to Reject Eleventh-Hour Trump Bid to Deny Medical Evaluation,” which states: “Lawyers representing Guantánamo prisoner Mohammed al Qahtani are urging a federal judge to deny an effort by the Trump administration in its final days to reverse a court order to convene a panel of medical experts to evaluate him. A former Defense Department official appointed by Trump attempted to avoid convening the panel by purporting to make an exception excluding men imprisoned at Guantánamo from the military regulation requiring such an evaluation.

“Mr. al Qahtani is the only person imprisoned at Guantánamo whose torture has been formally admitted to by a U.S. government official, and he suffers from schizophrenia, diagnosed years before his detention, and major depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from his torture. He has attempted suicide multiple times, including twice within the last four months, when, in a haze of hallucinations, he swallowed broken glass and cut veins in his arms. He is legally entitled to a neutral medical evaluation to determine whether the United States may continue to detain him.

“In an unclassified phone call with his lawyer, Mr. al Qahtani said, ‘I feel so much worse. I tried to kill myself again. I was in a state of madness. I don’t know what I did. … Even the psychiatrists here told me I’ve reached a stage where I might kill myself without even realizing it. These are dangerous behaviors. They put me in the clinic at first and now I’m back in the cellblock. They’re watching me but it’s as if they’re just waiting for me to kill myself. …’

“Al Qahtani experiences a host of symptoms, including hallucinations, screaming, insomnia, crying for hours, banging his head against walls, impaired concentration and memory, hypervigilance, hopelessness, and physical pain throughout his body, among others.”

Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights said: “Our government knowingly tortured a man who was already suffering from schizophrenia from his teenage years, long before he was brought to Guantanamo. Eighteen years later, it serves no purpose to hold him alone in a largely-empty prison, where he is losing what little touch with reality he still has.”

“The Biden administration can and should reverse course on Trump’s effort to resist the independent medical examination of a mentally ill prisoner that the U.S. government has admitted torturing,” said Ramzi Kassem, a professor at CUNY School of Law and the director of the CLEAR Clinic, which also represents Mr. al Qahtani.

Contact: Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, jnessel@ccrjustice.org

BREE CARLSON, via Johanna Kichton,  j.kichton@peoplesaction.org, @PplsAction
Carlson is deputy director of People’s Action, one of more than two dozen organizations that announced Tuesday that they strongly oppose any nomination of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be a U.S. ambassador. Noting that President Biden is reportedly considering Emanuel to be ambassador to Japan or China, a joint statement declared: “Such top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications.”

Said Carlson: “He covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald, defunded public schools, and attacked benefits for poor people. It would be a slap in the face for many to see President Biden ignore the loud calls of opposition towards him.” See on Common Dreams: “Progressives to Biden: No Ambassadorship for ‘Ladder-Climbing Hack’ Rahm Emanuel.”

The coalition statement said that Emanuel “has routinely served elite corporate interests and rarely the interests of the broad public or the causes of racial justice, economic equity or the peaceful resolution of conflicts at home or abroad. And whether in federal or municipal office, he has been known for his abrasive, arrogant style of wielding power. Emanuel’s disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored.”
National organizations signing the statement include Black Youth Project 100, Demand Progress Education Fund, Justice Democrats, People’s Action, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction.org, Veterans For Peace, and Working Families Party. Several Chicago groups also signed the statement, including the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, and Indivisible Chicago Alliance.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will be in Japan and South Korea, and then meet with Chinese officials in Alaska in the coming days.

JAMES BRADLEY, james@jamesbradley.com, Skype: JamesOnSound
Bradley is author of several bestsellers focused on U.S. policy in the Pacific and Asia, including Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.

He is currently in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand producing his “Untold Pacific” podcast about “the American experience in Asia.” Recent episodes include “China Rising,” “The #1 Focus of the U.S. National Security State is War with China” and “U.S. Military: ‘War with China Inevitable.'”

He said today: “Emperor Mao made dismembered China one. Emperor Deng made a poor China rich. Now Emperor Xi is determined to make a powerful China whole.

“The big issue between Beijing and Washington is Taiwan. Both sides have strong arguments, but start their observations at different points, sometimes different centuries.

“The business of China is business. The business of America is war. Will the U.S. make a business-like deal with China over Taiwan in Alaska? Or will the U.S. insist upon the Taiwan question being settled as a matter of war?”

Bloomberg reports: “Medicare for All Gets Renewed Push After Pandemic Devastation.”
EAGAN KEMP, via Derrick Robinson, drobinson@citizen.org
Kemp serves as health care policy advocate for Public Citizen. He just wrote the white paper: “Unprepared for COVID-19: How the Pandemic Makes the Case for Medicare for All.”
Said Kemp: “The pandemic has shown how wide the gaps in our health care system remain and how easy it is for families to fall through them. Too many Americans were already suffering unnecessarily prior to the pandemic and COVID-19 just exacerbated the challenges people face. We already spend far more than any comparably wealthy country on health care while achieving far less and were left wholly unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Among the group’s findings:
• “Before the pandemic, approximately 87 million Americans were uninsured or underinsured. About one-third of COVID-19 deaths and 40 percent of infections were tied to a lack of insurance.”

• “About half of Americans receive their health care through their employer. With more than 22 million Americans losing their job during the pandemic, millions have lost their health insurance.”

• “Racial health disparities, including access to care, have led to disproportionate deaths in communities of color.”

• “Historical under funding of long-term care — the majority of long-term care are funded by Medicaid at minimal rates — left many nursing homes unprepared for a pandemic and already struggling to contain infectious diseases.”

CHRISTINE AHN, christineahn@icloud.com, @christineahn
Ahn is executive director of Women Cross DMZ and coordinator of Korea Peace Now!
Following the shootings in Atlanta, killing eight workers in massage parlors, six of Asian decent, she pointed to statements made by Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian sex workers and their allies. She also urged people to “draw the links between U.S. militarism in Asia with its hundreds of U.S. bases, violence against women, and human/sex trafficking.”

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in South Korea and said he condemns the Atlanta shootings: “We are horrified by this violence which has no place in America or anywhere.” Ahn tweeted in response: “Yet the U.S. has no problem waging violence against Asians through its forever wars and military occupation. Biden should do the right thing and end [the] U.S. oldest war with North Korea. That would help mitigate the jingoism and orientalism against Asian-Americans which fuels violence.” Ahn signed a just-released letter: “71 Korean American Leaders Call on President Biden to Formally End the Korean War.”

She added: “The roots of anti-Asian violence stems from the long history of U.S. wars and militarism in Asia and Pacific. When you can drop thousands of bombs and splatter napalm and agent orange on millions of Asian lives, that dehumanization will come home to roost.”

She spoke of a “clear linkage between the anti-Asian violence in the U.S. with its violence dominating Asians with its imperial wars” and will be on a panel Thursday at 8 p.m. ET: “The Feminist Case for a Peace Agreement to End the Korean War.”
Journalist Tim Shorrock tweeted that he has written about an example of what Ahn is talking about. “Between the end of the Korean War and the 1990s, more than a million Korean women were caught up in a state-controlled prostitution industry that was blessed at the highest levels by the U.S. military.” See his article: “Welcome to the Monkey House: Confronting the ugly legacy of military prostitution in South Korea.” Shorrock added: “One of the shocking things I learned while researching this article was how the U.S. military prostitution system in South Korea was modeled on the Japanese military’s ‘comfort stations’ in World War II.”
Also see: Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations by Katharine H. S. Moon, reviewed in the Journal of World History. 

MATT GARDNER, matt@itep.org, @iteptweets
Gardner is a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. He just wrote the piece “Zoom Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes on Pandemic Profits,” which states: “Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits.

“The company reports that it made $660 million of pre-tax profits for 2020, an exponential increase from its $16 million in pre-tax profits in 2019. The immediate shift to online activity explains the company’s unprecedented income growth. For many, Zoom has become a ubiquitous daily meeting space, both for work, class instruction, family gatherings and evening happy hours.

“But why was the company’s income bonanza not matched by at least a token federal tax bill? The main answer appears to be the company’s lavish use of executive stock options. Zoom’s income tax reconciliation says it reduced its worldwide income taxes by $300 million in 2020 using stock-based compensation.

“As an ITEP report explains, companies that compensate their leadership with stock options can write off, for tax purposes, huge expenses that far exceed their actual cost. This is a strategy that has been leveraged effectively by virtually every tech giant in the last decade, from Apple to Facebook to Microsoft. Zoom’s success in using stock options to avoid taxes is neither surprising nor (currently) illegal.

“Stock options aren’t the entire story behind Zoom’s success in avoiding federal income taxes in 2020. The company appears to have enjoyed tax benefits from accelerated depreciation and research and development tax credits. Notably, the combination of three tax breaks appears to be the recipe that Amazon and Netflix have used with such success to reduce their federal tax bills during the Trump corporate tax era so far.”

JACK MATLOCK, matlock@ias.edu
Former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Matlock is available for a limited number of interviews. He wrote last month: “The United States will not be able to deal successfully with the most important challenges facing it unless it can work in tandem with other large countries to manage threats that are global in nature: nuclear weapons, pandemics, global warming and ever more destructive technologies if used in warfare. The same, of course, can be said of Russia.”

Matlock, who served as the top American envoy in Moscow from 1987 to 1991, added: “Both the United States and Russia are wrestling with serious problems at home. Only Americans can solve theirs and only Russian citizens can solve theirs. It does not help either country for outsiders to take sides in the other’s disputes. Nevertheless, the life-threatening dangers, the truly existential dangers, face both countries equally — as they do the rest of the world. Presidents Biden and Putin now have the opportunity to find ways to cooperate in dealing with global threats, and encouraging others to do so as well.”

Matlock is quoted in a new piece published by Salon by Norman Solomon, Institute for Public Accuracy’s executive director: “Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin urgently need to hold a summit meeting — and soon.”

He writes: “Last week’s outbreak of rhetorical hostilities between the White House and the Kremlin has heightened the urgent need for a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. The spate of mutual denunciations is catnip for mass media and fuel for hardliners in both countries. But for the world at large, under the doomsday shadow of nuclear arsenals brandished by the United States and Russia, the latest developments are terribly ominous.

“Whatever you think of Biden’s assertion during an ABC News interview that Russia’s President Putin is ‘a killer’ — and whether or not you think the label might apply to Biden, given his pro-war record — the existential imperative of U.S.-Russian relations is to avert a nuclear war. Biden’s claim during the same interview that Putin does not have ‘a soul’ indicates that much of the new president’s foreign-policy thinking is stuck in a Cold War rut. …

“Let’s face it: Biden is playing to the domestic anti-Russia gallery in the U.S. media and ‘defense’ establishment, while making a dangerous mockery of his own claims to be a champion of diplomatic approaches to foreign affairs. …

“If the leaders of the two countries with more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads can’t have a summit meeting and talk with each other, we’re in trouble. Real trouble.”

TODD MILLER, toddmemomiller@gmail.com, @memomiller
Miller just wrote the piece: “The Greater the Disaster, the Greater the Profits The Border-Industrial Complex in the Post-Trump Era” for TomDispatch.com, which states: “In early January 2021, Biden’s nominee to run DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas disclosed that, over the previous three years, he had earned $3.3 million from corporate clients with the WilmerHale law firm. Two of those clients were Northrop Grumman and Leidos, companies that Nick Buxton and I identified as top border contractors in ‘Biden’s Border: The Industry, the Democrats and the 2020 Election,’ a report we co-authored for the Transnational Institute.
“When we started to look at the 2020 campaign contributions of 13 top border contractors for CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], we had no idea what to expect. It was, after all, a corporate group that included producers of surveillance infrastructure for the high-tech ‘virtual wall’ along the border like L3Harris, General Dynamics, and the Israeli company Elbit Systems; others like Palantir and IBM produced border data-processing software; and there were also detention companies like CoreCivic and GeoGroup.

“To our surprise, these companies had given significantly more to the Biden campaign ($5,364,994) than to Trump ($1,730,435). In general, they had shifted to the Democrats who garnered 55 percent of their $40 million in campaign contributions, including donations to key members of the House and Senate Appropriations and Homeland Security committees.

“It’s still too early to assess just what will happen to this country’s vast border-and-immigration apparatus under the Biden administration, which has made promises about reversing Trumpian border policies. Still, it will be no less caught in the web of the border-industrial complex than the preceding administration.

“Perhaps a glimpse of the future border under Biden was offered when, on January 19th, Homeland Security secretary nominee Mayorkas appeared for his Senate confirmation hearings and was asked about the 8,000 people from Honduras heading for the U.S. in a ‘caravan’ at that very moment. The day before, U.S.-trained troops and police in Guatemala had thwarted and then deported vast numbers of them as they tried to cross into that country. Many in the caravan reported that they were heading north thanks to back-to-back catastrophic category 4 hurricanes that had devastated the Honduran and Nicaraguan coasts in November 2020.

“Mayorkas responded rather generically that if people were found to qualify ‘under the law to remain in the United States, then we will apply the law accordingly, if they do not qualify to remain in the United States, then they won’t.’ Given that there is no climate-refugee status available to anyone crossing the border that meant most of those who finally made it (if they ever did) wouldn’t qualify to stay.”

Miller is author of the books Empire of Borders:The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (2019), Storming the Wall (2017), and Border Patrol Nation (2014).

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Initiative. He is a 100 percent disabled Marine combat veteran, and, in 2009, he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the Afghan War by the Obama administration.
He said today: “Signals from D.C. that the Biden administration will not honor the agreed upon withdrawal date of U.S. forces from Afghanistan on May 1 may be the most disappointing of the many disappointments proffered by the still-young Biden administration. The Afghan War has been a living nightmare for the Afghan people for more than 40 years now, and the current peace process, while flawed, is the first formal opportunity for peace in Afghanistan in three decades. Biden’s refusal to follow the agreement made by his predecessor will mean the Taliban will resume killing Americans in Afghanistan on May 2 (the Taliban have not attacked any Americans or foreign forces since the agreement was signed more than a year ago). This will provide the necessary accelerant of violence that hardliners, on all sides, will utilize to ensure the killings, devastation and profiteering continue, without hope of ending, in Afghanistan.

“Arguments about the need for a U.S. military presence to protect against the spread of terrorism are undercut by the reality that terrorism has only spread as U.S. warfare has spread. Men and women join these terrorist and insurgent groups to fight against Western powers that they understand as occupying their lands and keeping in place corrupt, predatory and non-representative governments. Continuing with the failed and counter-productive war policies of Bush, Obama and Trump will only mean more war which will only benefit the recruitment of the terrorist and insurgent organizations, the profits of weapons companies and the promotion of generals.”

With the U.S. having the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for March, NPR is highlighting that Secretary of State Tony Blinken is chairing a meeting of the Council on Monday dealing with Syria.

A group of former top UN and OPCW officials, whistleblowers, noted analysts and journalists recently signed a “Statement of Concern: The OPCW investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria,” below, pointing to manipulation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Syria:

“We wish to express our deep concern over the protracted controversy and political fall-out surrounding the OPCW and its investigation of the alleged chemical weapon attacks in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018.

“Since the publication by the OPCW of its final report in March 2019, a series of worrying developments has raised serious and substantial concerns with respect to the conduct of that investigation. These developments include instances in which OPCW inspectors involved with the investigation have identified major procedural and scientific irregularities, the leaking of a significant quantity of corroborating documents, and damning statements provided to UN Security Council meetings. It is now well established that some senior inspectors involved with the investigation, one of whom played a central role, reject how the investigation derived its conclusions, and OPCW management now stands accused of accepting unsubstantiated or possibly manipulated findings with the most serious geo-political and security implications. Calls by some members of the Executive Council of the OPCW to allow all inspectors to be heard were blocked.

“The inspectors’ concerns are shared by the first Director General of the OPCW, José Bustani, and a significant number of eminent individuals have called for transparency and accountability at the OPCW. Bustani himself was recently prevented by key members of the Security Council from participating in a hearing on the Syrian dossier. As Ambassador Bustani stated in a personal appeal to the Director General, if the Organization is confident in the conduct of its Douma investigation then it should have no difficulty addressing the inspectors’ concerns.

“To date, unfortunately, the OPCW senior management has failed to adequately respond to the allegations against it and, despite making statements to the contrary, we understand has never properly allowed the views or concerns of the members of the investigation team to be heard or even met with most of them. It has, instead, side-stepped the issue by launching an investigation into a leaked document related to the Douma case and by publicly condemning its most experienced inspectors for speaking out.

“In a worrying recent development, a draft letter falsely alleged to have been sent by the Director General to one of the dissenting inspectors was leaked to an ‘open source’ investigation website in an apparent attempt to smear the former senior OPCW scientist. The ‘open source’ website then published the draft letter together with the identity of the inspector in question. Even more alarmingly, in a BBC4 radio series aired recently, an anonymous source, reportedly connected with the OPCW Douma investigation, gave an interview with the BBC in which he contributes to an attempt to discredit not only the two dissenting inspectors, but even Ambassador Bustani himself. Importantly, recent leaks in December 2020 have evidenced that a number of senior OPCW officials were supportive of one OPCW inspector who had spoken out with respect to malpractice.

“The issue at hand threatens to severely damage the reputation and credibility of the OPCW and undermine its vital role in the pursuit of international peace and security. It is simply not tenable for a scientific organization such as the OPCW to refuse to respond openly to the criticisms and concerns of its own scientists whilst being associated with attempts to discredit and smear those scientists. Moreover, the on-going controversy regarding the Douma report also raises concerns with respect to the reliability of previous FFM reports, including the investigation of the alleged attack at Khan Shaykhun in 2017.

“We believe that the interests of the OPCW are best served by the Director General providing a transparent and neutral forum in which the concerns of all the investigators can be heard as well as ensuring that a fully objective and scientific investigation is completed.

“To that end, we call on the Director General of the OPCW to find the courage to address the problems within his organization relating to this investigation and ensure States Parties and the United Nations are informed accordingly. In this way we hope and believe that the credibility and integrity of the OPCW can be restored.”

HANS VON SPONECK, via contact@berlingroup21.org
THEODORE A. POSTOL, postol@mit.edu
Von Sponeck is former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. Postol is Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at MIT. They are among the signers of the statement.

Other signers of the statement include: Denis J. Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General; Dirk van Niekerk, former OPCW Inspection Team Leader, Head of OPCW Special Mission to Iraq; Noam Chomsky; Katharine Gun, GCHQ, whistleblower; Daniel Ellsberg; Antonius Roof, former OPCW Inspection Team Leader and Head Industry Inspections; Professor John Avery Scales, Professor, Pugwash Council and Danish Pugwash Chair; Alan Steadman, Chemical Weapons Munitions Specialist, former OPCW Inspection Team Leader and UNSCOM Inspector;  Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council; member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

Shortly after the April 7, 2018 alleged attack in Douma, the U.S., Britain and France bombed Syria. See IPA news releases at the time: “Syria Attack: Seeing Through the Propaganda” and “Claims about Syria Attack ‘Unraveling’.” Also see IPA news releases in 2019 including: ”Postol: Newly Revealed Documents Show Syrian Chemical ‘Attacks Were Staged'” and “New Assessments from Leading Scientist Accuse OPCW Leadership of Rigging on Alleged Syrian Chemical Weapons Attacks Used to Justify U.S. Bombings.”

Also see reporting in The Grayzone, including: “OPCW investigator testifies at UN that no chemical attack took place in Douma, Syria,” “OPCW executives praised whistleblower and criticized Syria cover-up, leaks reveal,” “Chomsky: OPCW cover-up of Syria probe is ‘shocking’” and “Ex-OPCW chief defends Syria whistleblowers and reveals he was spied on before Iraq War.”

Twenty-seven national organizations issued a joint statement Tuesday decrying the recent negative salvoes between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin and urging the Biden administration to “stop participating in such reckless rhetorical exchanges.”

Groups signing the statement included Demand Progress, Just Foreign Policy, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Veterans for Peace, Win Without War, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and World Beyond War.

Pia Gallegos, chair of the RootsAction board, said: “With vast nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert, Washington and Moscow have unimaginable power to destroy human life. President Biden has a profound duty to decrease the chances of a global nuclear holocaust. We must insist on a consistently diplomatic approach. Instead of engaging in holier-than-thou rhetoric, Biden should be constructively engaging with Russia as a partner to safeguard human survival.”

The joint statement:
“As national organizations that advocate for diplomacy, arms control, disarmament and peace, we are deeply alarmed by the recent negative exchanges between leaders of the two countries with more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads in their arsenals. As Americans, we urge the Biden administration to stop participating in such reckless rhetorical exchanges and to instead vigorously pursue nuclear-arms negotiations with the Russian government. The need for constructive bilateral talks to address the clear and present dangers of the nuclear arms race has never been more apparent. With great urgency, we call upon President Biden to make good on his stated commitment that ‘diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.'”

JOE GERSON, jgerson80@gmail.com

Gerson is executive director of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, one of the groups issuing the joint statement. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.

The other signers are: Action Corps, American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, Backbone Campaign, Blue America, Center for Citizen Initiatives, Environmentalists Against War, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Historians for Peace and Democracy, Justice Democrats, Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, NuclearBan.US, Other98, People for Bernie, U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.

The Guardian recently published the piece “The U.S. military is poisoning communities across the U.S. with toxic chemicals” by David Bond, a professor at Bennington College in Vermont, which states: “From Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Colorado Springs, Colorado, the last decade has witnessed communities near military bases waking up to a nightmare of PFAS contamination in their water, their soil and their blood.” Professor Bond highlighted the military origins of toxic PFAS chemicals that were incinerated in Cohoes, New York. Bond writes there is no evidence that incineration actually destroys these synthetic chemicals.
PAT ELDER, pelder@militarypoisons.org
Elder is the founder of MilitaryPoisons.org and has written extensively on the issue of the military’s reckless use of PFAS. Elder initially broke the story on the military’s shipment of PFAS materials to be incinerated at Norlite’s facility in Cohoes, New York.
Elder said today: “The military is poisoning people and the environment in the U.S. and worldwide through its careless use of PFAS in firefighting foams and in other military applications. Recent events in Vermont provide insight into the military’s intransigence.

“Vermont’s Senate recently passed a bill that would ban the use of PFAS in firefighting foams and other consumer products. PFAS are per-and-poly fluoroalkyl substances that are linked to a host of cancers, fetal abnormalities, and childhood diseases. The substances leach into surface water and drinking water from military installations — even those that were closed 30 years ago. The legislature reached out to the Vermont Air National Guard regarding the measure and were told the Guard no longer uses firefighting foam containing toxic PFAS. The Senate moved ahead with the measure with the knowledge that the bill would not affect the Guard.

“PFAS foams are used and stored at Guard bases across the country. Historically, the foams have contained PFOS and PFOA, two particularly deadly varieties of PFAS. The DOD has replaced these foams with other toxic variants of PFAS.

“In published reports the Air Force claims the legacy PFAS used at the burn pit on the Burlington Air National Guard base has been ‘removed and properly disposed of’ but the deadly chemicals continue to slowly leach off the Burlington base and into the Winooski River where PFAS levels have been found above 700 parts per trillion. The Air National Guard has not removed the chemicals and there is no known method for properly disposing of these toxins known as ‘forever chemicals.'”

Last year, Elder tested seawater, rockfish, crabs, and oysters at his home in Southern Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay and found the levels to be a threat to human health. See piece on his work in the Baltimore Sun: “Maryland to begin testing drinking water, Chesapeake Bay oysters for harmful ‘forever chemicals’ known as PFAS.”

Elder’s articles include a three-part series on contamination at the Burlington base, as well as a report on the contamination of rivers and fish near U.S. bases in Germany and an article on contamination in Okinawa, Japan.

He added: “PFAS is used on U.S. military installations worldwide, with widespread contamination reported in Belgium, South Korea, Guam and other locations. Drinking water, rivers and aquatic life have been poisoned.”

The Washington Post reports “Former intelligence analyst Daniel Hale pleads guilty to leaking classified information.”

JESSELYN RADACK, jess@exposefacts.org, @JesselynRadack
Radack serves as Hale’s whistleblower attorney. She heads the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts and is quoted in the Post article.
She said today: “Hale is not a spy. He was accused of giving an investigative journalist truthful information in the public interest about the U.S. drone warfare program. That information revealed gross human rights violations, and that drones were more deadly and less accurate than the U.S. presented publicly. Ninety percent of people killed were not the intended target — including an American father and teenage son. Articles, books, and documentaries featuring his disclosures have won numerous awards.”

Radack’s work focuses on the issues of secrecy, surveillance, torture, and drones, where she has been at the forefront of challenging the government’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers. Among her clients are national security and intelligence community employees who have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information, including Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou. (IPA is the fiscal sponsor of WHISPeR.) For more on the case, see: StandWithDanielHale.org.
CHIP GIBBONS, chip@rightsanddissent.org, @RightsDissent
Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, which has done extensive work on Hale’s case. He said today: “On Wednesday, Daniel Hale pled guilty to one count of ‘retention and transmission of national defense information’ in violation of the Espionage Act. Hale’s crime is exposing the human rights abuses of U.S. drone strikes, including that during a given time period nearly 90 percent of those killed by drone strikes were not the intended target.

“It is a disgrace to this country that time and time again when brave truth tellers, many of them relatively young, expose the crimes of our government it is they who go to jail.

“Shame on both [political] parties for their role in this and Congress for failing to act.

“Whistleblowers charged under the Espionage Act have an almost impossible chance of mounting a fair defense, which is why Defending Rights & Dissent has repeatedly urged Congress to amend this draconian and antiquated law. Had Hale gone to trial he would have been barred from even uttering the word whistleblower, fairly explaining his actions, or how they were in the public interest.

“It is outrageous that a law ostensibly designed to target spies and saboteurs is used to jail journalists’ sources and even journalists who act in the public interest to reveal official abuses of power.

“Hale’s case spans three administrations, including presidents from both major parties. Espionage Act abuse to prosecute whistleblowers is a bi-partisan disgrace.”

Correction: This IPA news release was initially titled “Military Analyst Daniel Hale Jailed for Exposing Drone Killings to Public.” That is inaccurate. Hale is not in jail, but is currently out on his own recognizance awaiting sentencing, which is widely expected to include jail time.  

A top USA Today headline reads: “Joe Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure and jobs.”

LYNN PARRAMORE, lynn@lynnparramore.com, @INETeconomics
Parramore is senior research analyst for the Institute for New Economic Thinking and recently wrote a piece key to understanding how President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan could be thwarted by hedge fund predators: “Meet the ‘New Koch Brothers’ — the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal.”

She explains how “billionaire financiers have made sure the companies the government must partner with to achieve critical goals like clean energy are focused on further enriching predatory hedge fund executives.” According to Parramore, these predators “force companies to play Wall Street casino games with their resources instead of investing in R&D and attracting and retaining the best talent.”

“Putting infrastructure plans in place requires the government to partner with companies that have the deep know-how and the substantial resources to develop these complicated and cutting-edge technologies,” writes Parramore. “The problem is,” these hedge fund “activists” usually “aren’t interested in companies being the best at what they do, or doing anything, really, except handing over money to shareholders. A favorite tactic is to force companies to use their cash, or even borrow it, to buy back outstanding shares of their own stock.

“The playbook of today’s hedge fund” manipulators, Parramore notes, “looks like this: Buy a wad of shares of a company on the stock market. Then, line up the proxy votes of the managers of funds who have hedgies manage pieces of their portfolio. Next, send a letter to the CEO of a target company demanding that he or she get busy pumping up the stock price. Hedge funds with deep pockets will spend millions making this happen — remember, their money comes from rich people or institutional investors like pensions and mutual funds who are seeking high yields. Occasionally hedgies will use their own money — those whose ‘war chests’ have come from previous raids.”

Parramore notes that “companies partnering with the government for infrastructure projects should be protected from hedge fund predators, prevented from doing stock buybacks, and incentivized for building up capabilities and new technologies and training employees rather than playing stock market games.”

IMAN SALEH and MONICA ISACC, yemeniliberationmovement@gmail.com, @liberateyemen
Saleh and Isacc are with the Yemeni Liberation Movement which is having a news conference Saturday, April 3rd at 1 p.m. ET at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

    Members of the group began a hunger strike on Monday, March 29 to protest U.S. government support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen. The group is also leading a nationwide fast for Yemen on Monday.

    The hunger strikers and their supporters, largely from Detroit, are “demanding an end to any U.S. support for the blockade — including military, intelligence, diplomatic, or other support — and call for President Biden to use all diplomatic tools to pressure Saudi Arabian dictator Mohammed bin Salman to end it.”

The group notes that despite Biden’s pledge to the contrary, Al-Jazeera reported in March that “the U.S. military is reported to be increasing its assistance to the Saudis, claiming such help is defensive and not offensive.”

The group adds: “Calls for an immediate end to the blockade have become widespread after CNN aired a groundbreaking report on March 10.”
According to a joint statement by four leading United Nations agencies in February: “Nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, four United Nations agencies warned today. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.”

Friends Committee on National Legislation, Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, Demand Progress, and Just Foreign Policy have teamed up with actor and humanitarian Mark Ruffalo and the creators of the 2021 Oscar-nominated film “HUNGER WARD,” to urge President Biden to convince Saudi Arabia to immediately lift its “inhumane blockade of Yemen.” Their letter to the administration is excerpted below.

Meanwhile, a group of activists are continuing their hunger strike to stop U.S. backing of Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

IMAN SALEH and MONICA ISACC, yemeniliberationmovement@gmail.com, @liberateyemen
Saleh and Isacc are with the Yemeni Liberation Movement. Members of the group began a hunger strike on Monday, March 29 to protest U.S. government support for the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen.

HASSAN EL-TAYYAB, hassan@fcnl.org, @HassanElTayyab
El-Tayyab is the FCNL’s legislative manager for Middle East policy. He said today: “The U.S.-backed Saudi blockade on Yemen is a key driver of the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.”
See the letter the coalition of groups just sent to the Biden administration and news release. The letter states: “We are deeply concerned that prior to the CNN report, no U.S. official in the new administration had explicitly publicly acknowledged the six-year-old, Saudi-imposed blockade — much less criticized it. U.S. special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, declined to adequately respond to [CNN reporter Nima] Elbagir’s on-the-ground reporting and direct questions, referring to Yemen’s hunger crisis simply as ‘complex,’ while denying evidence of the blockade shown in CNN’s report, and, per Elbagir’s account, falsely claiming that ‘food continues to flow through Hodeidah unimpeded.’
“Elbagir concluded: ‘How is [peace] possible when you are not acknowledging the full impact of that U.S.-backed Saudi embargo on the people of Yemen?’ According to the UN, 400,000 children under the age of five could perish from hunger this year without urgent action. For years, the Saudi blockade has been a leading driver of Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe. The recent fuel shortages triggered by the blockade are quickly accelerating major reductions in access to affordable food, clean water, electricity, and basic movement across Yemen. The blockade also threatens to shut down, within weeks, the hospitals reliant on power generators to tend to victims of famine, while making even emergency travel to hospitals prohibitively expensive for Yemeni families, condemning untold numbers of children to certain death at home.”

MARJORIE COHN, marjorielegal@gmail.com
Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, just wrote the piece “Calling Chauvin a ‘Bad Apple’ Denies Systemic Nature of Racist Police Violence, which states: “As the murder trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd proceeds, the prosecution will try to portray the defendant as a ‘bad apple.’ In his opening statement, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell alerted the jurors that they would hear police officials testify Chauvin used excessive force in violation of departmental policy to apply restraints only as necessary to bring a person under control. However, this argument obfuscates the racist violence inherent in the U.S. system of policing. …

“Black people who are unarmed or not attacking police are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people, the Brookings Institution found. … More than 75 percent of the time, chokeholds are applied on men of color. …

“Prosecutors were compelled to bring charges against Chauvin because the whole world had seen him kill Floyd. After massive protests erupted following the horrifying video of Chauvin’s torture of Floyd — now known to have lasted nine minutes and 29 seconds — the MPD [Minnesota Police Department] fired Chauvin and prosecutors charged him with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. They later added a charge of second-degree murder.

“But what would have happened if eyewitnesses had not recorded Floyd’s death? Would Chauvin have been fired and charged with murder? …

“For nine minutes and 29 seconds, Chauvin continued to choke Floyd as several bystanders watched, many visibly recording the killing. Chauvin didn’t try to hide what he was doing. As eyewitness Genevieve Hansen testified, Chauvin looked ‘comfortable’ with his weight on Floyd’s neck.”

MARK COLVILLE, markcolville9761@gmail.com, @amistadobrero @kingsbayplow7
also via Mary Anne Grady Flores, gradyflores08@gmail.com

As the Biden administration assesses U.S. nuclear weapons policy, Colville is facing sentencing on Friday morning for entering the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia to protest such policy. Colville’s sentencing — the last one of the activists to be sentenced — will be conducted by phone on Friday, so the public will have access. The codes are below. The activists are known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. They sought to “nonviolently and symbolically disarm the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia” on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

He said today: “Deep gratitude to everyone who wrote letters to the judge. I’m asking her to consider them as expressions of the conscience of the community regarding the criminal enterprise of nuclearism, as it continues to scourge humanity and creation beyond reason or accountability. My family, my neighborhood and I have a right to live without a nuclear gun on hair-trigger alert held perpetually to our heads, and this court’s failure to recognize that right has made it an accessory to crimes against humanity. This is the reality that I plan to confront as clearly and simply as possible on Friday — and the rest, as an old friend used to remind me, is God’s problem.”

Colville is co-founder of the Amistad Catholic Worker House in New Haven with his wife Luz Catarineau. In 2019 the New Haven Register wrote: “For their sustained, compassionate approach to building and supporting their community and for their lived opposition to war and violence, the Colvilles are the New Haven Register’s Persons of the Year.”

Colville has been profiled in the Yale Daily News: “The Church at the End of the World: In 2018, a group of Catholic anti-nuclear activists made national news when they broke into a naval base in Georgia. One of their members — a New Haven resident — now awaits his sentencing.” Though Catarineau stresses that the facility in Georgia is “not a ‘navy base,’ it’s a military facility that threatens all humanity.”

See interview with Colville in the New Haven Independent: “Jailed Activist Targets ‘Culture Of Death.'” He quotes Rev. Richard McSorely, S.J.: “The taproot of violence in our society today is our intention to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that, all other evil is minor in comparison. Until we squarely face the question of our consent to use nuclear weapons, any hope of large scale improvement of public morality is doomed to failure.”

Colville said nuclear weapons “contribute to the cheapening of life and inform the other forms of violence. … When we talk about school shootings, we don’t talk about the cheapening of life that permits this.” Colville used a hammer made from melted-down guns to smash parts of a shrine to nuclear weapons at the facility. See online “Festival of Hope” featuring Colville and other activists from Monday.

To listen to Colville’s sentencing on Friday at 10 a.m. ET: Dial 1-888-684-8852, enter the call access code 2296092 and enter the security code 1234 or dial 1-888-684-8852, enter the call access code 8878734 and enter the security code 1234. If one isn’t working or overloaded try the other access code. And remember to mute.

AVIVA CHOMSKY, achomsky@salemstate.edu
Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts and a contributor to TomDispatch. Her book, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration, is being published this month. Her latest piece, “Will Biden’s Central America Plan Slow Immigration — Or Speed it up?” was just published by Salon.

She writes: “Read closely, a significant portion of Biden’s immigration proposal focuses on the premise that addressing the root causes of Central America’s problems will reduce the flow of immigrants to the U.S. border. In its own words, the Biden plan promises to promote ‘the rule of law, security, and economic development in Central America’ in order to ‘address the key factors’ contributing to emigration. Buried in its fuzzy language, however, are long-standing bipartisan Washington goals that should sound familiar to those who have been paying attention in these years.

“Their essence: that millions of dollars in ‘aid’ money should be poured into upgrading local military and police forces in order to protect an economic model based on private investment and the export of profits. Above all, the privileges of foreign investors must not be threatened. As it happens, this is the very model that Washington has imposed on the countries of Central America over the past century, one that’s left its lands corrupt, violent, and impoverished, and so continued to uproot Central Americans and send them fleeing toward the United States. …

“For almost two decades the United States has been bullying (and funding) military and police forces to its south to enforce its immigration priorities, effectively turning other countries’ borders into extensions of the U.S. one. In the process, Mexico’s forces have regularly been deployed on that country’s southern border, and Guatemala’s on its border with Honduras, all to violently enforce Washington’s immigration policies.

“Such outsourcing was, in part, a response to the successes of the immigrant rights movement in this country. U.S. leaders hoped to evade legal scrutiny and protest at home by making Mexico and Central America implement the uglier aspects of their policies. …

“The model Washington continues to promote is based on the idea that, if Central American governments can woo foreign investors with improved infrastructure, tax breaks, and weak environmental and labor laws, the ‘free market’ will deliver the investment, jobs, and economic growth that (in theory) will keep people from wanting to migrate in the first place. Over and over again in Central America’s tormented history, however, exactly the opposite has happened. Foreign investment flowed in, eager to take advantage of the region’s fertile lands, natural resources, and cheap labor. This form of development — whether in support of banana and coffee plantations in the 19th century or sugar, cotton, and cattle operations after World War II — brought Central America to its revolutions of the 1980s and its northbound mass migration of today. …

“In mid-March, President Biden appeared to link a positive response to Mexico’s request for some of Washington’s surplus Covid-19 vaccine to further commitments to cracking down on migrants. One demand: that Mexico suspend its own laws guaranteeing humane detention conditions for families with young children. Neither country had the capacity to provide such conditions for the large number of families detained at the border in early 2021, but the Biden administration preferred to press Mexico to ignore its own laws, so that it could deport more of those families and keep the problem out of sight of the U.S. public.”

Veterans for Peace and other groups this week have held protests outside Creech Air Force Base in Nevada against killer drones coordinated from the facility. The demonstrators also held a vigil in support of military analyst Daniel Hale who will soon be sentenced for exposing drone killings to the public.

 As the Biden administration assesses the U.S. government’s use of drones to kill people, a grassroots global campaign — BanKillerDrones.org — was launched on Friday, declaring its “commitment to achieving an international treaty that will ban weaponized drones and military and police surveillance.” The campaign is being launched on the 12th anniversary of the first protest of U.S. drone attacks, when 14 activists were arrested at Creech Air Force Base. Since 2009, activists have sustained international protests at numerous military bases while also decrying military and police drone surveillance.

The campaign is endorsed by 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Irish peace activist Mairead Maguire; international peace activist Kathy Kelly; CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin; Christine Schweitzer, Coordinator of the German peace organization Federation for Social Defence; Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army colonel and State Department diplomat and many other peace and justice organizations.

Mairead Maguire, who visited Afghanistan in 2012, said, in support of the ban: “One Afghan youth told us how, when they went up into the mountains with their donkeys to collect wood for their fires, many of their friends were killed by armed drones. These drones are controlled by men in U.S. military bases far away, and with the switch of a computer they blow to pieces kids in Afghanistan trying to warm their families.”Nick Mottern, coordinator of KnowDrones.com said: “After 20 years of experience with drone killing and drone surveillance, we are at the point of awareness that the technologies that enable drone atrocities, endless war and wholesale violation of human rights, particularly against people of color, must be put back in the box.”

David Swanson of World Beyond War said: “According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone murder-strikes in Afghanistan climbed from at least 235 in 2015 to at least 7,167 in 2019. In Somalia the same pair of years saw an increase from at least 11 to at least 63. Yemen saw at least 21 drone murder-strikes in 2015, but at least 127 in 2017. The numbers are uncertain, because the U.S. public relies on reports from the receiving end, not being entitled apparently to any reports from the U.S. government. The numbers of people killed, injured, made homeless, driven to starvation, forced into a wider war, or traumatized are even less certain. But we do know enough to be certain that the people launching the missiles never identify most of the people they kill.”

BRIAN TERRELL, brian1956terrell@gmail.com
    Terrell, who has served seven months in federal prison and local jails for his drone war protests, is one of the lead organizers of the campaign. He said: “Along with governmental and diplomatic efforts, an international agreement to ban killer drones will be made possible through sustained protest and petition at the grassroots level. Not an end in itself, a ban will have effect only when the private and state actors that profit from drone proliferation are held accountable by the world’s people.”

The Ban Killer Drones campaign will be working with other anti-war and human rights groups to organize protests, letter-writing, promotion of supportive legislation and other outreach in the U.S. and globally, engaging especially those who have experienced or are experiencing drone attacks, especially by the U.S., Israel, the U.K., France and Turkey, the foremost perpetrators of drone war.

MIKE ELK, mike.elk@gmail.com, @MikeElk
Elk is senior labor reporter for PaydayReport.com. His latest piece is “Anti-Union Amazon Workers Explain How Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings Turned Them Against RWDSU [Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union].”

He said today: “As the union is trailing nearly 2-to-1 with almost half of the vote in, it appears likely that the union drive at Amazon in Alabama will be defeated.

“In our interviews with workers, we discovered that most workers weren’t so heavily anti-union as much as they just didn’t know anything about unions.

“This union failed to form a strong organizing committee that had a real plan to show how the union worked prior to the election. To win union elections, the election feels like more formality since the organizing committee has already been acting as a union, winning campaigns in the workplace to change things and standing up for co-workers facing unfair discipline.

“When the union election comes, workers already feel like they know the union and are a part of it. Instead, what happened at Amazon was that workers knew little; this allowed the company through anti-union meetings to create a fear of the change that unions could bring — from warning workers that their wages may actually decrease under a contract, or worse, the facility closes.

“Within 24 hours of the defeat of the union at Amazon appearing likely, non-union workers at Amazon went on a wildcat strike in Chicago. So while it may appear that workers at Amazon were defeated, they are still on the march as the strike in Chicago shows.

“Winning union elections is tough, but the key to winning them is to invest heavily in training workers in how to organize and mobilize workers before they even have a union. Otherwise, unions will never win these union votes because workers won’t feel already like they’re part of the union.”

RONNIE KASRILS, rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era.

    He said today: “Israel is once again acting criminally as the hand behind the recent attack on an Iranian vessel in the Gulf and now as The New York Times reports: ‘Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage.’ …

    “There can be little doubt that this attack on Iran is calculated to damage the prospects for a wider peace, seeming to sabotage the talks in Vienna about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran which have started on a positive note in Vienna. [The New York Times reported Friday: “Iran Nuclear Talks Start on Positive Note in Vienna.”]

    “Israel is granted an effective green light for its illegal actions and dangerous war mongering whilst the U.S. government has time and again backed it. Just a few months ago South Africa’s emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, urging incoming President Biden, to end the USA’s ‘pretence over Israel’s secret nuclear weapons’ and that ‘the refusal of [the] U.S. administration to even acknowledge Israel’s massive nuclear weapons arsenal threatens the region and indeed the planet’.” See piece by Tutu in The Guardian: “Joe Biden Should End the U.S. Pretence over Israel’s ‘Secret’ Nuclear Weapons: The cover-up has to stop — and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.”

    Kasrils added: “All this reminds us in South Africa that Israel worked with the apparethid government to enable it to develop its nuclear weapons. Such proliferation violates U.S. and international law, and should result in a cutoff of billions in U.S. taxpayer funding, which enables Israel to destabilise the Middle East and threaten even nuclear war, whilst it continues to brutally oppress the Palestinian people. The USA, and Western powers, allows Israel to act with chilling impunity and are therefore complicit in its crimes.” He wrote the piece “I Fought South African Apartheid. I See the Same Brutal Policies in Israel” for The Guardian.

GRANT F. SMITH, gsmith@irmep.org, @IRmep, Skype: grant.f.smith
Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and recently wrote the piece “Biden Could Reverse Six Harmful Israel Policies… With the Only Power That Stops Israel’s Lobby.”

    He said today: “During the Obama administration, Israel and its U.S. lobby did everything they could to sabotage the JCPOA, including spying on secret negotiations and coordinating opposition in the U.S. where the majority of Americans supported the deal.

“Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the Biden administration to be forthright about the Middle East’s leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation — Israel. Only by reentering the JCPOA and negotiating for a Middle East nuclear free zone — by dismantling Israel’s nuclear arsenal — will the U.S. be truly serving as an honest broker in the region.”

IMAD KHADDURI, khadduri.imad@gmail.com
Now retired in Toronto, Khadduri is an Iraqi nuclear scientist. He is author of Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions and Unrevealed Milestones in the Iraqi National Nuclear Program 1981-1991. He now blogs at Free Iraq and has written about the Iranian nuclear program.

The New York Times is reporting: “Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage” and “Blaming Israel, Iran Vows Revenge for Blackout at Nuclear Site.”
In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak and many in the U.S. cheered it on as a way of allegedly stopping Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Khadduri was working at the time on the Iraqi nuclear program and says the effect was exactly the opposite. The Iraqi scientists didn’t trust Saddam Hussein with a nuclear weapon, so they refused to work on weapons for him — until the Israelis attacked.

Khadduri states: “I worked on the pre-1981 nuclear program and I was certain it would not be used for military purposes. But after the 1981 bombing, we were so angry that we were ready to work on a military program. The Israeli attack didn’t end the nuclear weapons program, it began it.” See past IPA news release with Khadduri for more background: “Iraqi Nuclear Scientist Debunks Nuclear Myths.”

Khadduri’s account is corroborated by the late Richard Wilson, who was Mallinckrodt research professor of physics at Harvard University. Wilson visited the Osirak Iraqi reactor in 1982 after it was bombed by Israel. He told IPA in 2006: “Many claim that the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor delayed Iraq’s nuclear bomb program. But the Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful, and the Osirak reactor was not only unsuited to making bombs but was under intensive safeguards. Certainly, Saddam Hussein would clearly have liked a nuclear bomb if he could have had one, but the issue is whether there were enough procedures for that reactor in place to prevent him from doing so and all the indications are that there were enough procedures.

“The Osirak reactor was destroyed in June 1981. It was not until early in July 1981 that Saddam Hussein personally released Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar from house arrest and asked him to start and head the clandestine nuclear bomb program. The destruction of Osirak did not stop an Iraqi nuclear bomb program but probably started it.”

The New York Times reports in “Not Your Usual Police Chief: Biden Picks Trump Critic to Run Border Agency” that “Chris Magnus, the Tucson police chief who carried a Black Lives Matter sign at a protest, was chosen to lead Customs and Border Protection.”

But journalist Dennis Bernstein examined Magnus’s record as police chief in both Tucson and Richmond, Calif. Bernstein’s three-part expose, “Fatal Errors” examines Magnus’ record in the two cities where he held sway and scrutinizes his actions in two deadly cases where young Latino men died in custody when there was no justification for their deaths.

DENNIS J. BERNSTEIN, dennisjbernstein@gmail.com, @flashpointsnews
Bernstein is an award-winning journalist and executive producer of “Flashpoints,” broadcast from KPFA and syndicated on Pacifica Radio.

Last year he wrote an in-depth three-part series for Who.What.Why. titled “Fatal Errors.” The pieces included: “Police Brutality in Tucson,” “Shot by Police in Richmond, CA” and “Police Reformer — or Cover-Up Artist?”

    Bernstein said: “Magnus of the Tucson PD really wants you to think of him as a reformer. But while he was tweeting about how he would never allow this kind of in-custody police killing that he had witnessed in the 8:46 second killing of George Floyd, the chief’s men had done the Kenosha cops one better. Their in-custody suffocation of a brown man went on for over 12 minutes and the chief covered it up for over two months, even as he commented as a reformer about George Flyod.

“Carlos Adrian Ingram-Lopez desperately pleads as he drops to all fours, naked, disoriented, and terrified in a darkened corner of his grandmother’s Tucson garage. He wails and screams as three officers swoop down on him, forcing his face into the floor as they double handcuff his arms behind his back. He offers no resistance, apologizing, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I love everybody.’ He cries out for his grandmother to help, ‘Nana, ayúdame! … Please give me some water. … I can’t breathe!” See video.

“‘Tranquilo! Chill the f– out, man,’ shouts Officer Ryan Starbuck, bearing down on the man’s back.”

    Following the killing of Ingram-Lopez last year, his family settled for $2.9 million in December.

CINDY FOLKERS, cindy@beyondnuclear.org
KEVIN KAMPS, kevin@beyondnuclear.org
Folkers is radiation and health hazard specialist with Beyond Nuclear. Kamps is the radioactive waste specialist for the group.

Folkers stated: “On Tuesday, the government of Japan announced its decision to intentionally discharge, directly into the Pacific Ocean, 1.25 million metric tons (330 million U.S. gallons) of radioactively contaminated wastewater, enough volume to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The contaminated wastewater has accumulated over the past decade at the triple-reactor meltdown site of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. It is currently contained in more than a thousand giant storage tanks onsite. The dumping will begin in a couple of years, and continue for decades.

“Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) data show that even twice-through filtration leaves the water 13.7 times more concentrated with hazardous tritium — radioactive hydrogen — than Japan’s allowable standard for ocean dumping, and about one million times higher than the concentration of natural tritium in Earth’s surface waters.

“TEPCO wants us to believe that the radioactive contamination in this water will be diluted in the ocean waters. But some of the radioactive isotopes will concentrate up the food chain in ocean life. And some of the contamination may not travel out to sea and can double back on itself. Dilution doesn’t work for radioactive isotopes, particularly tritium, which research shows can travel upstream.

“Tritium has a persistent hazardous life of about 123 to 246 years. Organically-bound tritium, can bio-accumulate in food, including seafood, and reside in our bodies for a decade, causing cancer, genetic damage, birth defects, and reproductive harm. Radioactive carbon-14, also present in the wastewater to be dumped, remains hazardous for 55,000 to 110,000 years. Women, children, and fetuses are significantly more susceptible to the hazards of radioactivity than are men.” See Folkers’ factsheet: “Tritium: a universal health threat released by every nuclear reactor.” See Folkers’ full press statement, as well as a list of relevant Beyond Nuclear and other backgrounders.

Kamps said today: “Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO), the Japanese government, and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are trying to justify the oceanic releases as being of ‘allowable’ or ‘permissible’ radioactive concentrations, that will then further dilute in the Pacific. But ‘allowable’ or ‘permissible’ does not mean ‘safe.’ The U.S. National Academy of Sciences have long held that any exposure to ionizing radioactivity carries a health risk, no matter how small the dose, and that such harm accumulates over a lifetime of exposure. Thus, ‘dilution is not the solution to radioactive pollution,’ as Dr. Rosalie Bertell of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health warned decades ago. Dilution is a delusion, when bio-accumulation, concentration, and magnification in the seafood supply is taken into consideration. Humans are at the top of that food chain, at risk of the most concentrated, hazardous internal exposures to ingested ionizing radiation.

“American spokesmen — such as former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Dale Klein, and former U.S. Department of Energy official Lake Barrett — tapped by TEPCO to advocate for this tritiated wastewater ocean dumping, should be ashamed of themselves. So too should the Biden administration State Department, which has expressed support for this ocean dumping scheme in order to advance its own irresponsible pro-nuclear power agenda, which it shares in common with the Japanese government and the IAEA.

“The claim is made that there is no more room for storing ever accumulating quantities of radioactive wastewater. So arbitrary property lines are taking precedence over what is an ongoing radioactive emergency? The nuclear power plant host towns of Futaba and Okuma are already largely uninhabitable due to extensive radioactive contamination, and in fact are being used to store very large quantities of bagged radioactively contaminated soil, leaves, and other materials gathered from across a broad region. The radioactive wastewater should be stored in robust containers on solid ground for as long as it remains hazardous, even if this means beyond the arbitrary confines of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant property line.” See Kamps’s full press statement, as well as additional factual background information.

A New York Times headline claims: “Biden to Withdraw All Combat Troops From Afghanistan by Sept. 11” but deep in the piece acknowledges: “Instead of declared troops in Afghanistan, the United States will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats, current and former American officials said.”

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Initiative. He is a 100 percent disabled Marine combat veteran, and, in 2009, he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the Afghan War by the Obama administration. He was featured on an accuracy.org news release last month: “Biden Rejection of Afghan Agreement Means the ‘Taliban Will Resume Killing Americans.’

“Comparisons of Afghanistan to Iraq in 2014, play on the specious fear that a U.S. exit from Afghanistan will result in a comeback of Islamic militant forces, are disingenuous, and ignore the reality of what actually happened in Iraq after 2011.

“The success of the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014 was not due to the absence of U.S. forces in Iraq, but rather was due to the brutal sectarianism of the Iraqi government against the Sunni minority, and, critically, the the direct and indirect support of the Islamic State in Syria by the United States and its allies. The U.S. believed it could control the Islamic State, and other jihadist groups in Syria, in order to overthrow the Assad government. The U.S. also believed the Islamic State would not cross the literal line in the sand that divides Syria and Iraq, the country that most of the Islamic State leadership came from. The Obama administration decided it could control the Islamic State for its purposes, which resulted in another example of catastrophic blowback in U.S. military and foreign policy.

“Further, the idea Kabul will resemble Saigon in 1975 is again specious fear mongering. The Taliban, of course, want power, but they are not suicidal. They understand a violent takeover of Kabul, akin to the Islamic State takeover of Mosul or al Qaeda’s takeover of Aleppo, will result in Kabul being completely devastated by foreign air forces, just as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001, and in multiple cities in Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017, including Mosul and Aleppo. That is an outcome the Taliban are aware of and cannot want.

“Additionally, the Taliban cannot win in Afghanistan without the support of the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis want a client state in Afghanistan, but they also do not want the instability and chaos of Afghanistan to continue, particularly if a Taliban takeover of Kabul results in renewed resumption of a U.S.-led escalation of the war similar to 2001.

“The Pakistanis have an incentive to see stability and a power sharing agreement occur in Afghanistan, especially if their ally is given a prominent role. This outcome necessitates the need for negotiations and a peace process, and cannot occur if the Taliban are only given the option of victory or defeat.

“This is the first formal peace process in Afghanistan in over 30 years in a war whose violence goes back to 1978, prior to the Soviet invasion. This peace process is dependent upon foreign forces leaving Afghanistan. Regardless of whether the 3500 acknowledged U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the U.S. military will still be present in the form of thousands of special operations and CIA personnel in and around Afghanistan, through dozens of squadrons of manned attack aircraft and drones stationed on land bases and on aircraft carriers in the region, and by hundreds of cruise missiles on ships and submarines.

“A peace process is what the Afghan people need and deserve after so many decades of cruel and unimaginable suffering, much of which has been perpetrated and sustained by foreign forces and intentions. Violence has proven to be counterproductive and horrifically destructive, a peace process is the only chance for Afghanistan, its neighbors and the world.”

LISA DONNER, Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Donner is executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, which just released the report “Wall Street Money in Washington.” She said today: “The enormous sums that Wall Street has at its disposal, combined with a broken campaign finance system, means there is little practical limit to the amount of money the financial services industry can inject into American debate on politics and policy. Year in and year out, this torrent of money gives Wall Street an outsized role in how we are governed, while driving and protecting policies that help this industry’s super wealthy amass even greater fortunes at the expense of the rest of us.”

The group found: “During the 2019-20 election cycle, Wall Street spent at least $2.9 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying to influence policy in Washington. … That total, which amounts to $4 million a day, shatters the previous record of $2 billion set in the 2015-16 presidential cycle.

“The highest-ever level of spending by Wall Street banks and financial services reflects the industry’s relentless push to influence decision-making, regardless of the party that controls Congress or the executive branch.”

The group states that “the financial sector spent an extraordinary amount of money in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to preserve Republican control of the Senate and maintain a divided government that would lock in deregulation and tax cuts enacted under President Trump and prevent financial reform legislation. …

“In this election cycle, individuals and entities associated with the financial sector reported making $4,971,464 in contributions to the eight Republican Senators and $38,512,126 to the 139 House members who voted to overturn the election (as reported by February 17, 2021), for a total of $43,483,590.” But the group also notes that “of the $982,775,706 in party-coded contributions by individuals and PACs associated with finance, 47 percent went to Republicans and 53 percent went to Democrats.” The group also stresses that because of dark money, these numbers are a bare minimum — they are simply unable to track all the cash involved.

Among the biggest spenders were: Bloomberg LP, National Association of Realtors, Blackstone Group, Charles Schwab & Co., American Bankers Association, Paloma Partners, Bain Capital, Renaissance Technologies and Wells Fargo.

Among the largest recipients: Senate Leadership Fund, Senate Majority, Independence USA PAC, House Majority PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund and America First Action, NextGen Climate Action and American Bridge 21st Century.

JAMIE LOVE, james.love@keionline.org
Love is director Knowledge Ecology International, and has been arguing that the Gates Foundation, with its sprawling financial ties, allowed it to assert influence early in the pandemic.

He is quoted in a just-published piece in The New Republic: “Few have observed Bill Gates’s devotion to monopoly medicine more closely than James Love, founder and director of Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington, D.C.–based group that studies the broad nexus of federal policy, the pharmaceutical industry, and intellectual property. Love entered the world of global public health policy around the same time Gates did, and for two decades has watched him scale its heights while reinforcing the system responsible for the very problems he claims to be trying to solve. The through-line for Gates has been his unwavering commitment to drug companies’ right to exclusive control over medical science and the markets for its products.

“‘Things could have gone either way,’ says Love, ‘but Gates wanted exclusive rights maintained. He acted fast to stop the push for sharing the knowledge needed to make the products — the know-how, the data, the cell lines, the tech transfer, the transparency that is critically important in a dozen ways. The pooling approach represented by C-TAP [WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool] included all of that. Instead of backing those early discussions, he raced ahead and signaled support for business-as-usual on intellectual property by announcing the ACT-Accelerator [Access to COVID-19 Tools] in March.’ …

“Technically housed within the WHO, the ACT-Accelerator is a Gates operation, top to bottom. It is designed, managed, and staffed largely by Gates organization employees. It embodies Gates’s philanthropic approach to widely anticipated problems posed by intellectual property–hoarding companies able to constrain global production by prioritizing rich countries and inhibiting licensing. Companies partnering with COVAX are allowed to set their own tiered prices. They are subject to almost no transparency requirements and to toothless contractual nods to ‘equitable access’ that have never been enforced. Crucially, the companies retain exclusive rights to their intellectual property. If they stray from the Gates Foundation line on exclusive rights, they are quickly brought to heel. When the director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute had funny ideas about placing the rights to its COVAX-supported vaccine candidate in the public domain, Gates intervened. As reported by Kaiser Health News, ‘A few weeks later, Oxford — urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — reversed course [and] signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices.’ …

“Gates can hardly disguise his contempt for the growing interest in intellectual property barriers. In recent months, as the debate has shifted from the WHO to the WTO, reporters have drawn testy responses from Gates that harken back to his prickly performances before congressional antitrust hearings a quarter-century ago. When a Fast Company reporter raised the issue in February, she described Gates ‘raising his voice slightly and laughing in frustration,’ before snapping, ‘It’s irritating that this issue comes up here. This isn’t about IP.’

“In interview after interview, Gates has dismissed his critics on the issue — who represent the poor majority of the global population — as spoiled children demanding ice cream before dinner. ‘It’s the classic situation in global health, where the advocates all of a sudden want [the vaccine] for zero dollars and right away,’ he told Reuters in late January. Gates has larded the insults with comments that equate state-protected and publicly funded monopolies with the ‘free market.’ ‘North Korea doesn’t have that many vaccines, as far as we can tell,’ he told The New York Times in November. (It is curious that he chose North Korea as an example and not Cuba, a socialist country with an innovative and world-class vaccine development program with multiple Covid-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of testing.)”

PAUL GOTTINGER, paul.gottinger@gmail.com, @PaulGottinger
Gottinger is a staff reporter at Reader Supported News which just published his piece: “How Much Did Amazon Spend to Crush the Union Drive in Alabama?” He writes: “Last week, Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against forming a union after an almost two-month-long election that received significant national attention. The vote was 738 in favor of a union to 1,798 against it.

“But this isn’t over yet.

“The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is challenging the election with the National Labor Relations Board over what the union describes as Amazon’s illegal interference in the election. The union alleges that Amazon put a ballot dropbox on warehouse property after the NLRB told Amazon that wasn’t allowed because it could be seen as an attempt to intimidate workers. The union will ask for a second election, claiming the last one was spoiled by Amazon’s illegal practices. …

“Amazon faces dozens of federal allegations from its facilities across the country for firing workers who organized protests and walk-outs demanding the company improve its COVID-19 safety best practices. Amazon employees at multiple facilities report fear of being open about their support for a union at work because they might be fired or harassed.

“Since February of 2020, there have been at least 37 charges filed with the NLRB against Amazon in 20 cities across the country.

“One tactic Amazon used to its advantage against the union campaigners was engineering extremely high turnover in Amazon facilities (averaging about 100 new employees a week). This meant union organizers constantly had to convince new employees of the merits of the union, while losing union-supporting employees. …

“In one particularly disturbing account, an Amazon employee named Jonathon Bailey, who organized a walkout over Covid-19 safety concerns, alleges he was ‘detained’ on his lunch break by an individual wearing a black camouflage vest who identified himself as former FBI. …

“Corporations spend $340 million per year on ‘union avoidance’ consultants in an attempt to deny workers their right to organize.

“Until the laws in the U.S. change to force corporations to be more transparent about their anti-union funding and tactics, and put strict limits on what they can do, organized labor will continue to face a tough road ahead.”

MAX RAMEAU, afrimax@niainteractive.com
NETFA FREEMAN, netfa@ips-dc.org, @Netfafree
Rameau and Freeman are writing a forthcoming book, Community Control Over Police, and wrote the piece “Community Control Vs. Defunding the Police: A Critical Analysis.”

Freeman said today: “There is a struggle to control the narrative of what the Chauvin conviction actually means. This struggle is between, on the one hand, the people whose actions in the streets nearly a year ago sent then president Trump fleeing to a bunker and forcing the prosecution of Chauvin. And on the other hand you have the ruling class establishment trying to uphold the illusion of shared interests and obscure notions of systemic change. The same President Biden claiming the country must ‘confront head-on systemic racism and the racial disparities in policing and the criminal justice system’ is the same Biden who has sped up the flow of military gear to police departments, exceeding in this first quarter of 2021 such transfers under his predecessor.

“Real justice for the Black and Brown working class against the repression of police requires a power shift. It requires putting such forces and all the resources allocated to it under the collective democratic control of those most directly impacted by this repression.”

Also, see recent Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Did Biden’s Pick for Border Agency Cover-up Police Killings?“

DAVID CLENNON, djjc123@earthlink.net, @daveclennon
Clennon is an actor and activist who recently wrote three pieces about how Hollywood spins the 60s. The first is “Hollywood’s New Blackface,” which states: “I don’t believe Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Fred Hampton would have been satisfied with the presence of more Black faces on our movie screens. The display of diversity has very little to do with a radical transformation of a political economy that screws so many to reward so few. …

In “How Hollywood Neuters the 60s: Sorkin’s ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ Sentences American Radicalism to Oblivion,” Clennon writes: “If you need a dramatic hook, exaggerate the minor tactical differences of opinion among the good guys. And put your money on a far-out casting choice: Sacha Baron Cohen as ‘Abbie.’

“Instead of telling the story of eight political activists vs a corrupt, unjust legal system serving the Empire, the ‘Trial’ filmmakers exaggerate and fabricate tactical disagreements among the defendants themselves. As the two principal antagonists, they select the sober grassroots activist, Tom Hayden, and the madcap agitator, Abbie Hoffman, for conflict and contrast.”

And in “A Radical’s Complaint and Fan’s Appreciation of an Exceptional Actor,” Clennon writes: “It seems 2020 was the year for Hollywood to trivialize and marginalize the 1960s. To American citizens who participated in those struggles, ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ and ‘One Night in Miami…’ and ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ are an insult and an injury. … And, as one who lived through the period, my greatest grievance over ‘Chicago 7’ is this: The shabby writing, and the miscasting of Dave Dellinger marginalizes and diminishes one of the most admirable political organizers and moral leaders of the anti-war struggle. …

“Each of the four men [Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X] gets an epilogue, after the ‘One Night in Miami’ is over. In his epilogue, we see Ali receiving his new, Muslim name from the leader of the Nation of Islam.

“Why did the filmmakers choose that event to put their period on the story of Muhammad Ali? Would it have been too controversial for movie-goers to see, instead, a far more courageous act in Ali’s life? Would it have been too dangerous to show Ali publicly refusing to be conscripted into the U.S. military machine, when hundreds of thousands of American troops were slaughtering three million human beings in Vietnam? The young boxing champ we see in ‘Miami’ in 1964 made a heroic moral stand in 1967, and was banned from boxing for three of the most important years of a boxer’s career. (He also had a five-year prison term hanging over him, until the Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 1971.) If the filmmakers were serious about capturing something special in those four men, why did they omit the single most significant decision of Ali’s life? …

“I believe that ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ is inauthentic history. It features a false rendering of the real, historical, Fred Hampton. It makes me wonder, ‘What would Boots Riley have done with this tale?’

“Outsourcing. Off-shoring. Importing worker talent.

“In the last six years, Hollywood has put four historical African-American figures on screen:

Martin Luther King in ‘Selma’ (2015)
Harriet Tubman in ‘Harriet’ (2017)
Malcolm X in 2020’s ‘One Night in Miami…’
Fred Hampton in ‘Judas and the Black Messiah.’

“Every single one of these African-American characters has been portrayed by an Afro-British actor.

“Now, just as African-American characters — fictional and historical — are beginning to appear in movie and TV scripts, African-Americans have to compete with imported talent from the UK and other parts of the British Commonwealth to play those parts.

“Blackface on Black faces.

“It’s not just a trade imbalance, it’s a glaring moral deficit.”

Clennon asks, “What is Hollywood’s message to African-American actors? Black Livelihoods Don’t Matter?”

ALI ABUNIMAH, aliabunimah@me.com, @AliAbunimah
Abunimah is founder of the Electronic Intifada and can address the events escalating in Jerusalem and Gaza. He can also address the scheduled Palestinian elections, which may be delayed yet again by Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president, Abunimah notes, expired in 2009.

Abunimah recently wrote the piece “Israel Lobby’s ‘Death to the Arabs’ Damage Control” and tweeted: “Zionist settlers carrying out a pogrom against a Palestinian family in occupied Jerusalem. As the reporter says, you can hear the children screaming. This is everyday Zionism.”

He wrote on Friday: “Over the last few days, disturbing videos have shown mobs of Israeli Jewish youths rampaging through occupied East Jerusalem and attacking Palestinians.”

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday: “Every evening this week, dozens of young Jews walked around Jerusalem’s city center, chanting ‘Death to Arabs’ and attacking passersby with stones and tear gas.”

Abunimah noted that pro-Israeli groups including Democratic Majority for Israel, “a U.S. lobby group aligned with the ruling Democratic Party” condemned the marches.

But he notes that “DMFI has yet to condemn or repudiate its own board member Archie Gottesman, an advocate of genocide who in 2018 tweeted: ‘Gaza is full of monsters. Time to burn the whole place.'”

Abunimah also recently wrote the piece “J Street Brings Together Progressives, Israeli War Criminals.” His past books include One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

AISHA JUMAAN, aisha@yemenfoundation.org, @AishaJumaan
Jumaan is president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. She said today: “On Monday, I learned that the Biden administration continues to support Saudi aggression on the people of Yemen.”

Jumaan cited a little-reported recent quote from Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby: “The United States continues to provide maintenance support to Saudi Arabia’s Air Force given the critical role it plays in Saudi air defense and our longstanding security partnership.”

She added: “This is extremely disturbing because the U.S. acts like it regards its envoy Tim Lenderking as a mediator in the Saudi-led war on Yemen. But the U.S. government is not an impartial mediator.

“The Biden administration needs to delink the blockade from the political negotiations. We should NOT use the Yemeni population, who are being starved, as hostages to gain concessions from warring parties. Blockade on all points of entry to Yemen MUST be lifted. Aid alone can not support a population of 30 million.

“UN Security Council Resolution 2216 is one sided, written by the Saudis with the support of the U.S., UK and France. It calls for Houthi surrender. The U.S. should support efforts to revise it, if we are to realize fair and just peace negotiations.

“The Saudis and the UAE and all Western powers that support them need to pay reparation to the Yemeni people.

“The U.S. government is more concerned about saving face for [Saudi monarch] MBS than they are about the 400,000+ starving Yemeni children.

“Yemeni have a rich history of conflict resolution and negotiations, we need all foreign interference out.”

CHUCK COLLINS, chuck@ips-dc.org or via Bob Keener, bobk@ips-dc.org
On the news of President Biden’s plan to increase the IRS’s enforcement efforts, reportedly targeting the wealthy, Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, and author of the new book, The Wealth Hoarders; How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Billions, released the following statement:

“Taxes have become almost optional for the super-rich. President Biden’s plan is a welcome first step in reversing wealth hidding and tax avoidance by billionaires and multi-millionaires. You are four-times more likely to get audited if you use the Earned Income Credit – a tax break for working families – than if you’re a billionaire using a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust.

“This is not an accident. The super-rich — those with over $30 million and up — hire a veritable army of what social scientists call the ‘wealth defense industry’ to dodge taxes, stash wealth, and lobby for weak taxes. These are highly paid tax attorneys, wealth managers, and accountants, who specialize in creating complex shell games using offshore tax havens, dynasty trusts, anonymous shell companies, and bogus transactions. Billionaires pay them millions to hide trillions.

“Strengthening the IRS is a vital first step to economic recovery and reducing extreme wealth inequality. The future of the IRS may determine whether we become a society dominated by billionaires or a functioning democracy.”

Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept just released his latest project: “EMPIRE POLITICIAN: A Half-Century of Joe Biden’s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA.”

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and recently wrote the piece “Biden’s Announcement That Trump Got Military Spending Just Right Is Dead Wrong.” Today, he tweeted about New York Times columnist Tom Friedman now claiming: “China is now a true peer competitor in the military.” As Swanson recently wrote: “U.S. military spending is $1.25 trillion per year across numerous departments. Even just taking the $700 billion and change that goes to the Pentagon and stands in for the full amount in media coverage, U.S. military spending has been climbing for years, including during the Trump years, and is the equivalent of many of the world’s top military spenders combined, most of which are U.S. allies, NATO members, and U.S. weapons customers.

“Still using that artificially reduced figure, China is at 37 percent of it, Russia at 8.9 percent, and Iran is spending 1.3 percent. These are, of course, comparisons of absolute amounts. Per capita comparisons are extreme as well. The United States, every year, takes $2,170 from every man, woman, and child for wars and war preparations, while Russia takes $439, China $189, and Iran $114.”

LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, lkoshgarian@nationalpriorities.org, @natpriorities
Koshgarian is program director of the National Priorities Project, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. She notes that while Biden is heralding the delayed withdrawal of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, “instead of redirecting any savings to our dire domestic situation, they are plowing those savings right back into the Pentagon.

“The majority of Americans support shifting at least ten percent of the Pentagon budget to pay for other urgent needs. Americans deserve to know that the administration isn’t representing their priorities on Pentagon spending. It’s past time we had a national conversation about the resources being wasted on the Pentagon.”

Earlier this month, the group put out a statement on Biden’s proposed budget: “There is no shortage of options for how to rein in the Pentagon’s excesses. Profitable weapons systems and costly service contracts account for more than half of the Pentagon budget, and the nation’s longest war continues to drain national coffers. Experts from across the political spectrum have put forth detailed proposals for Pentagon cuts that would put real security needs above contractor profits and endless war. … The cumulative cost of these wars has topped $6.4 trillion, and every one of those dollars could have been put to better use. Even a moderate ten percent cut in Pentagon spending could be used to create more than one million jobs in infrastructure, or end homelessness.”

KERRY McLEAN, kerrymclean@gmail.com
McLean is an international human rights lawyer and the spokesperson for the Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence, which just released their extensive report [PDF].

The commission was set up by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, National Conference of Black Lawyers, and National Lawyers Guild “to examine whether widespread and systematic racist violence in policing against people of African descent” in the U.S. constitutes violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The report finds “a pattern and practice of racist police violence in the U.S. in the context of a history of oppression dating back to the extermination of First Nations peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the militarization of U.S. society, and the continued perpetuation of structural racism.”

These conclusions were drawn by twelve Commissioners — judges, lawyers, professors and experts from Pakistan, South Africa, Barbados, Japan, India, Nigeria, France, Costa Rica, Antigua and Barbuda, the United Kingdom, and Jamaica — who held public hearings from January 18 to February 6, 2021.

The Commissioners “find violations of the rights to: life, security, freedom from torture, freedom from discrimination, mental health, access to remedies for violations, fair trial and presumption of innocence, and to be treated with humanity and respect. … The Commissioners find that U.S. laws and police practices do not comply with the international standards on the use of force, which require legal basis, legitimate objective, necessity, precautions, proportionality, protection of life, non-discrimination, and accountability. …

“Many Black people are killed in broad daylight to intimidate communities and because officers don’t fear accountability.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
    Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola just wrote the piece “U.S. Marks World Press Freedom Day By Ignoring Their Government’s Attacks On Press Freedom,” writing: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked World Press Freedom Day [Monday] by calling attention to governments that are ‘becoming less transparent’ and ‘more repressive.’

“In the U.S., ‘In 2020, 416 journalists were assaulted. One hundred and thirty-nine journalists were arrested or detained. One hundred and nine journalists had their equipment damaged. Thirty-one journalists or news organizations were subpoenaed, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker curated by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and several other leading press freedom organizations. …

“Journalist Linda Tirado lost an eye in 2020 while covering the uprising after George Floyd was murdered. …

“Attorney General Merrick Garland has allowed the extradition case to proceed against former WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.

“Assange has been detained at the Belmarsh high-security prison in London for more than two years, and every reputable press freedom organization recognizes the case poses a distinct threat to journalism.

“For example, Reporters Without Borders international campaigns director Rebecca Vincent pointed out, ‘If the U.S. government is successful in securing Assange’s extradition and prosecuting him for his contributions to public interest reporting, the same precedent could be applied to any journalist anywhere. The possible implications of this case simply cannot be understated. It is the very future of journalism and press freedom that is at stake.’ …

“Furthermore, instead of abandoning the prosecution launched under Trump, the Biden Justice Department secured a guilty plea from Daniel Hale, a former military contractor and drone whistleblower.

“Hale helped expose the targeted assassination program, including drone warfare. He pled guilty on March 31 to one charge of violating the Espionage Act, when he provided documents to Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill and anonymously wrote a chapter in Scahill’s book, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.

“Astonishingly, prosecutors refused to dismiss additional charges and cancel the trial altogether. Hale is set to be sentenced in July, and if prosecutors are not pleased with the severity of the sentence, they can continue to target an unemployed military veteran already coping with mental health problems.

“The Biden administration has done nothing to rein in policies that allow Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to engage in suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices in violation of both the First and Fourth Amendments.”

Members of Congress, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, are proposing a postal banking program to address inequalities. She recently said: “This pilot program will not only help us begin to address systematic inequality in the financial system, but it will also create much needed source of revenue for the U.S. Postal Service.”

CHRISTOPHER W. SHAW, christophershaw.ca@gmail.com, @chris_w_shaw
Shaw is author of the book Preserving the People’s Post Office and recently wrote the piece “The U.S. Postal Service Was Designed to Serve Democracy” for Foreign Affairs.

He said today: “Eight million households in the United States lack bank accounts because the existing system of privately owned banks doesn’t offer accessible and affordable financial services. But the U.S. Postal Service can serve as a solution. A growing political movement highlights how the Postal Service could offer a public option for banking, making essential financial services more available to low- and middle-income households at over 30,000 post offices nationwide. Significantly, there is an important historical precedent: postal banking operated for more than fifty years during the twentieth century, when millions of Americans deposited billions of dollars in the postal bank. A new congressional push for programs in selected rural and urban areas to provide surcharge-free ATMs, wire transfers, check cashing, and bill payment at post offices would perform a pilot study for extending banking services to millions of underserved Americans. Expanding financial services at post offices also would bring new revenues to the Postal Service helping to revitalize the agency.”

See his op-ed in the Washington Post last year: “Postal banking is making a comeback. Here’s how to ensure it becomes a reality.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is traveling to Ukraine with Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, kat@thenation.com, or via Ricky D’Ambrose, rdambrose@thenation.com, @KatrinaNation
Editorial Director and Publisher of The Nation magazine, Katrina vanden Heuvel recently wrote for the Washington Post: “The successful campaign to block Matthew Rojansky’s appointment is ominous for Biden’s Russia policy”: “When a new administration comes to Washington, the flowery rhetoric and springtime promises are often less revealing than who is put where to run the place. That’s why many of Washington’s most scurrilous campaigns are backstage fights over potential appointments. And that’s why the successful campaign to block the appointment of Matthew Rojansky as Russia director on the National Security Council is not only a sad reflection of the poisonous state of the debate on Russian policy today, but also an ominous sign for Biden’s foreign policy going forward. …

“Rojansky’s tempered realism is at odds with the strident consensus of the foreign policy establishment. The foreign policy ‘blob’ sees Russia as weak and paints Putin as the devil. They call Russia’s SolarWinds hack an ‘act of war,’ when intelligence experts describe it as ‘reconnaissance and espionage of the sort the U.S. itself excels at.’ They seem intent on extending the U.S. commitment to Ukraine, writing a check that the American people have no intention of backing. New sanctions on Russia are shortsighted and are likely to drive Moscow still further toward Beijing. The result is a self-reinforcing spiral of tensions and hostile postures strengthening hawks on both sides. For the Biden administration, Rojansky’s sensible perspectives would provide a necessary balance to voices such as Victoria Nuland, the hawkish new undersecretary of state for political affairs.

“Upon taking office, Biden promised a ‘foreign policy for the middle class,’ tacitly acknowledging that the debacles of the past decades have badly served all but the few. Keeping that promise requires profound rethinking. By reversing some of Donald Trump’s most egregious follies — returning to the Paris climate accord and the WHO, ending the Muslim ban, beginning negotiations to return to the Iran nuclear deal, extending the START nuclear accord with Russia — Biden has taken the first steps. Recalibrating our relations to Russia — and reducing the tensions around Ukraine and the Russian border — surely must be part of that effort. Getting that right will be much harder if sensible experts such as Rojansky have no place in the administration.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is vice-president of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, a group interested in an informed dialogue about improving U.S.-Russia relations. The group recently participated in a talk organized by the Committee for the Republic (see background on the group) on the critical issues confronting U.S.-Russian relations, see video.

The Hindu reports: “U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he had not made a decision on whether the U.S. would support an Indian and South African initiative at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to waive Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to facilitate the production of COVID-19 related vaccines and therapeutics around the world.”

JAMES LOVE, james.love@keionline.org, @jamie_love
Love is director Knowledge Ecology International, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization that “searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources.” KEI is focused on “social justice, particularly for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income persons and marginalized groups.”

He said today: “Critics of the TRIPS waiver have used a barrage of misleading and inaccurate arguments. The notion that the WTO TRIPS agreement already has sufficient flexibility is true up to a point, but ignores the toxic impacts of Articles 31.f and 31bis on exports, and Article 39 on access to manufacturing know-how and trial data. The claim that weaker patent rights will have no impact on vaccine production does not explain why removing legal barriers to making vaccines isn’t helpful, and why drug companies have hired more than 100 registered lobbyists to protect those patents. It is true that patents are not the only barrier to scaling generic or biosimilar vaccine production. Access to cell lines and manufacturing know-how, as well as vaccine inputs, are a challenge for some vaccine platforms, and the regulatory barriers to approval are important too. IP [intellectual property] is not the only issue, but the argument that IP is not an issue is wrong. Indeed, over time, IP becomes the most important barrier to entry. The benefits of weaker IP rules will depend in part on how long the COVID-19 pandemic persists, and no one really knows the answer to that. Governments need to do more than lift the most toxic WTO TRIPS rules, they should play a more constructive role in opening up access to know-how, and making vaccine technologies global public goods. The transfer of manufacturing know-how can be required, or even purchased. The WHO [World Health Organization] COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) and the proposed mRNA technology hubs should be supported, and the proposed WHO pandemic treaty should include provisions to internationalize public rights in publicly funded know-how, inventions and data.” 

See related statements and documents from KEI including: “KEI submission to Canada Standing Committee on International Trade and Investment Policy: Concerning COVID-19,” “COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Capacity,” “Buying Know-How to Scale Vaccine Manufacturing” and “KEI Statement at WTO COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Event.”

Love was recently on the accuracy.org news release: “How Bill Gates Makes Intellectual Property More Important than Public Health.”

ALEXIS STOUMBELIS, alexis@cispes.org, @CISPES
Stoumbelis is with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. They recently released a statement condemning the decision of a group of political parties which “upon taking office on May 1, and with the backing of President Nayib Bukele, voted to unconstitutionally remove the five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, in what is being denounced in El Salvador as a coup d’etat.” The group is holding a demonstration and press conference on Friday at 3:30 p.m. in front of the Salvadoran Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The group continued: “While it is true that Supreme Court magistrates have historically represented oligarchic interests and that the new Legislative Assembly was democratically elected — though the process was plagued by violations to the electoral code on part of the president and his New Ideas party — this does not justify an assault on democratic institutions. The legislators’ actions set a dangerous precedent that deteriorates the democratic advances made in El Salvador since the signing of the Peace Accords.

“The decision to remove and replace the five magistrates did not adhere to the constitutionally-established justifications for doing so, nor were the magistrates granted a hearing and defense, as is their right under the law. Clearly, the basis for this decision is to eliminate any institutional opposition and guarantee the president’s authority over other branches of government. This explains why legislators also removed the Attorney General, Raúl Melara and next may remove the Human Rights Ombudsman, José Apolonio Tobar Serrano, who, during the pandemic, denounced widespread violations of human rights and corruption among many members of the Bukele administration. …

“Condescending lectures from the Biden administration will not impede the continuation of these assaults on democracy; President Bukele and his party are very clear on the type of dictatorship they wish to establish in El Salvador. If the United States government does not immediately act to restrict police, military, and other funds that strengthen the regime, there is no doubt that the United States, too, will be responsible for what follows.”

Maram Humaid of Al Jazeera reports: “This is an open war against unarmed people. Israeli forces are showering Palestinian worshipers inside Al-Aqsa mosque with gas bombs and stun grenades.”

MAZIN QUMSIYEH, mazin@qumsiyeh.org, Skype: mbqumsiyeh
Qumsiyeh has been on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He is now a professor at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. His books include Popular Resistance in Palestine and Sharing the Land of Canaan. He is founding director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability.

He said Sunday night of what he termed the “Jerusalem uprising” — it “started with Israeli racists chanting ‘death to Arabs‘ in Jerusalem and progressed as Israeli authorities insisted on going ahead with more ethnic cleansing in the Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood (considered a crime against humanity by international law) and progressed as the same racist authorities denied rights of native Christians and Muslims to have access to their holy sites in Jerusalem over Easter and Ramadan. As usual the mainstream Western media were silent or if they covered events, tried to equate oppressor with oppressed (colonial settlers with native people). The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas continued to organize with Israel against resistance. … Other governments were spineless (giving pointless verbal declarations while supporting the oppressor in practical ways) so the local people acted and resisted the encroachment. … [Some] 205 were injured (several shot in the eyes, two losing both eyes).”

He notes that Monday “will be pivotal” as Zionist forces “‘celebrate’ their occupation of Jerusalem. … Next week we commemorate the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which is still ongoing).”

In a statement on Sunday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “encouraged the Israeli government to pursue appropriate measures to ensure calm during Jerusalem Day commemorations” on Monday, effectively greenlighting the commemorations to go on.

See: “Israeli Man Trying to Take Over Palestinian Home Says ‘If I Don’t Steal It, Someone Else’ Will’” from CommonDreams.

LEV GOLINKIN, golinkin@gmail.com
Ahead of last week’s visit to Ukraine by the U.S. Secretary of State, Golinkin wrote the piece “Secretary Blinken Faces a Big Test in Ukraine, Where Nazis and Their Sympathizers Are Glorified.”

After Blinken’s visit, Golinkin noted that Blinken “said nothing about the recent pro-Nazi SS march, or anything substantial about the Holocaust. When I asked the State Department for comment, they immediately pivoted to Russia. When I asked about Ukraine having an SS march — one that even Germany condemned — they immediately started attacking by invoking Russian disinformation. …”

Golkin noted in his recent article: “From the moment he was nominated for secretary of state, the media has made much over the Holocaust’s impact on Antony Blinken. Blinken’s stepfather was a famous survivor; his upbringing made the Holocaust an indelible part of Blinken’s identity. Indeed, last month Blinken lambasted America’s callousness during the genocide, going so far as denouncing a World War II-era State Department official for refusing to aid Jews fleeing Europe. …

“The reality is that glorification of Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators isn’t a glitch but a feature of today’s Ukraine.

“Shortly after the Maidan uprising of 2013 to ’14 brought in a new government, Ukraine began whitewashing Nazi collaborators on a statewide level. In 2015, Kyiv passed legislation declaring two WWII-era paramilitaries — the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) — heroes and freedom fighters and threatening legal action against anyone denying their status. The OUN was allied with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust; the UPA murdered thousands of Jews and 70,000–100,000 Poles on their own accord.”

Earlier this year, Golinkin wrote the piece piece “How many monuments honor fascists, Nazis and murderers of Jews? You’ll be shocked,” in the Forward, launching the The Nazi Monument Project. He is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, a memoir of Soviet Ukraine, which he left as a child refugee.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
    Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. He notes media reports that Biden’s Secretary of State Tony “Blinken didn’t press the Israelis to stop the operation in Gaza for now.” Said Boyle: “So in other words Blinken gave them the green light to escalate.”

NOURA ERAKAT, nourae@me.com, @4noura
    Erakat is a human rights attorney and associate professor at Rutgers University. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine from Stanford University Press.

    She just co-wrote the piece “Sheikh Jarrah highlights the violent brazenness of Israel’s colonialist project,” which was published in the Washington Post. Her co-author, Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and researcher based in Ramallah, had her Twitter account suspended for a time yesterday, because she allegedly violated the “Twitter Media Policy.” (See accuracy.org 2019 news release “Israel Bombs Palestinians as Twitter Censors Them.”)

State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Monday asserted “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself” in justifying its bombings. When questioned about the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves, Price wouldn’t engage in the substance of the issue, stating: “I’m not in a position to debate the legalities from up here.” See video clip.

    Some have criticized aspects of Israel’s bombings of Gaza, with 53 Palestinians killed, including 14 children and the destruction of towers, including one with media offices. In 2014, during a major Israeli bombing of Palestinians in Gaza, Erakat wrote the piece “No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which argued: “A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is ‘foreign’ and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law.”

See @accuracy Twitter list for continuously updated information on Israel-Palestine. And see accuracy.org for past news releases.

NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN,  nora@electronicintifada.net, @norabf
Barrows-Friedman is author of In Our Power: U.S. Students Organize for Justice in Palestine. She is an associate editor at The Electronic Intifada who has covered the grassroots boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement. This effort is modeled on the struggle against apartheid South Africa.

On Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Biden’s statement of support for Israel’s attack on Palestinians: “Blanket statements like these w/ little context or acknowledgement of what precipitated this cycle of violence – namely, the expulsions of Palestinians and attacks on Al Aqsa – dehumanize Palestinians & imply the US will look the other way at human rights violations. It’s wrong.”

Barrows-Friedman in turn criticized Ocasio-Cortez: “So… are you going to support the Palestinian call for BDS? Or demand that Biden immediately cut all aid to Israel? Because if that’s not going to happen, this itself is an unhelpful blanket statement.”
Last New Year’s Eve, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, calling Israel an apartheid state, called for implementation of existing U.S. law to cut off all U.S. taxpayer funds: “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons.”

But the Biden administration has pledged to fight BDS activist efforts. These governmental moves have been criticized as restricting freedom of speech.
Barrows-Friedman’s pieces on the BDS activist and legal battles include: “U.S. Palestinian activist defeats Israeli ‘defamation’ lawsuit” and “Israel lobby loses legal effort to harass Palestinian rights activists.”

In her piece “What were the top BDS victories of 2020?” she gives examples including: “the United Nations published its long-awaited list of corporations that profit from Israel’s war crimes. …

“United Nations representatives warned the German government in October that its tightening crackdown on supporters of Palestinian rights violates freedom of expression. …

“In April, the UK Supreme Court struck down an anti-divestment rule imposed by the government in 2016. …

“In the U.S., journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin sued the state of Georgia over its draconian anti-BDS law.

“Martin was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at a media literacy conference held at Georgia Southern University. When officials demanded that she sign a contract stating she would not engage in a boycott of Israel, Martin refused to do so and her keynote was canceled, as was the entire conference.

“Martin’s lawsuit against Georgia is one of several filed by activists, attorneys, educators and reporters in states across the U.S.

“In 2020, the governors of Missouri and Oklahoma signed anti-BDS measures into law, but civil rights defenders are fighting them in courts.”

REFAAT ALAREER, refatr17@gmail.com, @itranslate123
The New York Times just published Alareer’s piece “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’.” Alareer is the editor of Gaza Writes Back and is a university professor of comparative literature, translation and creative writing.

See @accuracy Twitter list for continuously updated information.

HAIDAR EID, haidareid@gmail.com, @haidareid
Author of the book Worlding, Eid highlighted “Nakba Day” protests scheduled for Saturday against the “Ongoing Nakba and the Massacre in Besieged Gaza” organized in large part by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe” — commemorated on May 15 — refers to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948. Eid and many other Palestinians view this as an ongoing process — as Israel expels Palestinians from their homes and makes life for Palestinians more unbearable in Gaza and elsewhere — a continuing ethnic cleansing. See The Gaza Voice on Facebook. For information on protests around the world, see at Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and on Twitter.

RAJI SOURANI, pchr@pchrgaza.org, @pchrgaza
Sourani is executive director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which “calls on the international community to intervene immediately to:
* End instantly and unconditionally the offensive on the Gaza Strip
* Stop the Israeli crimes in al-Sheikh Jarrah and al-Aqsa Mosque and respect its sanctity
* Hold Israel accountable for its crimes before the International Criminal Court
* Stop Israel’s clear war crimes and crimes against humanity, emphasizing that each state believing in the rule of law should impose sanctions on Israel, such as those imposed on the apartheid regime in South Africa”

JEFF COHEN, jeff@rootsaction.org, @Roots_Action
Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, one of 20 organizations that announced Friday they “will launch a nationwide grassroots campaign urging senators to vote against President Biden’s expected nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan.” The announcement followed reports earlier this week that Biden has decided to nominate Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who has been denounced by activists challenging police brutality.

“Emanuel’s abysmal record as mayor of Chicago disqualifies him to represent the United States in a foreign capital,” a joint statement said today. “Our organizations will make sure that every senator hears, loud and clear, from constituents who will insist that this unwise nomination be rejected.”

National organizations signing the statement include Demand Progress, Justice Democrats, People’s Action, and Progressive Democrats of America. Chicago-based groups that signed the statement include The People’s Lobby and American Friends Service Committee, Chicago Office.

“We are appalled at the reported plans to nominate Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan,” the statement said. Noting that “back in March, we publicly warned against such a nomination of Emanuel,” the organizations said: “The deep concerns that we expressed at that time will now be greatly amplified. Top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications.”

The joint statement added: “As he faced a re-election campaign, for 13 months Emanuel’s administration suppressed a horrific dashcam video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who had been shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer as he walked away from the officer.”

Also see by Max Moran of the Revolving Door Project: “The Tattered Insider Histories Of Our Possible Future Ambassadors.”

Saturday is “Nakba Day” commemorating the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of Israel. This takes on increasing meaning this year with more overt attempts by Israel to drive Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem, use of tear gas and stun grenades at the Al-Aqsa mosque, numerous attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel, mobs chanting “Death to Arabs” and ongoing bombings of Palestinians in Gaza, killing at least 137 Palestinians, including 36 children and wounding over 900 with 10,000 forced from their homes. Hamas is firing rockets at Israel and eight Israelis have reportedly been killed.

There are protests around the world Saturday and the days following — see listing organized by Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

Unless otherwise noted, the Palestinians below are currently in Gaza. Electricity, phone and internet availability can be difficult in Gaza, which has been under siege and suffered bombing campaigns by Israel, so connections may be intermittent. Medical personnel of course may be especially difficult to reach. WhatsApp is often the best method of communication. If calling from the U.S., prefix numbers with 011.

See @accuracy Twitter list.

RAJI SOURANI, rajisourani@gmail.com, @pchrgaza
Sourani is executive director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which just released the statement: “On Fifth Day of Israeli Offensive on Gaza: State Terror and Displacement Recalling Nakba Scenes.” Sourani is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

MEDHAT ABBAS
Dr. Medhat Abbas is the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

LAILA EL-HADDAD, laila.elhaddad@gmail.com, @gazamom
Now in Maryland, El-Haddad’s books include Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between.

BASEM NAIM, basemn63@gmail.com
Dr. Naim is the Director of the Council on International Relations in Gaza. He served as the former Minister of Health in Gaza from 2007 until 2012. See his page on Facebook.

REFAAT ALAREER, refatr17@gmail.com, @itranslate123
The New York Times just published Alareer’s piece “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’.” Alareer is the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced.

HAIDAR EID, haidareid@gmail.com, @haidareid
Eid is author of the book Worlding and associate professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University. See his writings at Middle East Eye.

MOSHEER AMER, mamer@iugaza.edu.ps, @mosheeramer
Amer is the Director of the Center for Political and Development Studies and an associate professor of linguistics at the Islamic University of Gaza.

MALAK MATAR, Malakmattar47@gmail.com
Matar is a Palestinian artist in Gaza. See her Facebook page.

YOUSEF AL-HELOU, al-helou.y@hotmail.com, @YousefAlhelou
Al-Helou is a Palestinian journalist from in Gaza and is now in London. See his writing in Middle East Monitor.

MOHAMMED ALQATTAWI, Alqattawi24@gmail.com, @m_alqattawi
Alqattawi is an activist, originally from Gaza, and is now in Istanbul.

ISSAM A. ADWAN, issam@wearenotnumbers.org, @WeAreNotNumbers
Adwan is with the group We Are Not Numbers and was recently on the show “Democracy Now!“

SAREE MAKDISI, makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi’s books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. He is professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. His pieces include “Apartheid” for Critical Inquiry. He just wrote the piece “The Nakba Is Now” for The Nation, which states: “The events in Sheikh Jarrah are so important because they represent a microcosm of the entire conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, going all the way back to that primal scene of 1948. The removal of Palestinians and their replacement by Jewish settlers has been going on, sometimes on a large scale, sometimes on a small scale — family by family, household by household — for over 70 years.”

The Washington Post reports today that the Biden administration recently approved more missile sales to Israel.

JOE CATRON, joecatron@gmail.com, @jncatron
Currently in New York City, Catron lived in Gaza for years. He is with Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which organized the listing of world-wide protests that took place this weekend and are continuing. They are now calling for a “Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising and General Strike: Tuesday, May 18.” He highlights reports that Israel has informed the Gaza ministry of education that it will target two schools.

Over the weekend, Israel continued destroying buildings in Gaza, including a tower housing the AP office, hindering information getting out. See @accuracy Twitter list.

Unless otherwise noted, the Palestinians below are currently in Gaza. Electricity, phone and internet availability can be difficult in Gaza, which has been under siege and suffered bombing campaigns by Israel, so connections may be intermittent. Medical personnel of course may be especially difficult to reach. Recent Israeli bombings killed at least three prominent doctors. WhatsApp is often the best method of communication. If calling from the U.S., prefix numbers with 011.

MALAK MATAR, Malakmattar47@gmail.com
Matar is a Palestinian artist in Gaza. See her Facebook page.

REFAAT ALAREER, refatr17@gmail.com, @itranslate123
The New York Times just published Alareer’s piece “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’.” Alareer is the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced. He was recently on BBC. He was just on “Democracy Now!”

LAILA EL-HADDAD, laila.elhaddad@gmail.com, @gazamom
Now in Maryland, El-Haddad’s books include Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between.

RAJI SOURANI, rajisourani@gmail.com, @pchrgaza
Sourani is executive director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which just released the statement: “On Seventh Day of Israeli Offensive on Gaza, Residential Area Destroyed over People’s Heads; Airstrikes Cause Earthquake-like Destruction.” Sourani is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

MEDHAT ABBAS
Dr. Abbas is the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

BASEM NAIM, basemn63@gmail.com
Dr. Naim is the Director of the Council on International Relations in Gaza. He served as the former Minister of Health in Gaza from 2007 until 2012. See his page on Facebook.

HAIDAR EID, haidareid@gmail.com, @haidareid
Eid is author of the book Worlding and associate professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University. See his writings at Middle East Eye.

MOSHEER AMER, mamer@iugaza.edu.ps, @mosheeramer
Amer is the Director of the Center for Political and Development Studies and an associate professor of linguistics at the Islamic University of Gaza.

YOUSEF AL-HELOU, al-helou.y@hotmail.com, @YousefAlhelou
Al-Helou is a Palestinian journalist from in Gaza and is now in London. See his writing in Middle East Monitor.

MOHAMMED ALQATTAWI, Alqattawi24@gmail.com, @m_alqattawi
Alqattawi is an activist, originally from Gaza, and is now in Istanbul.

ISSAM A. ADWAN, issam@wearenotnumbers.org, @WeAreNotNumbers
Adwan is with the group We Are Not Numbers and was recently on the show “Democracy Now!“

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law.

He said today: “Under Article 24 of the United Nations Charter, the United Nations Security Council has ‘primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.’ Despite its obligation thereunder as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the Biden administration has now three times in a row prevented the Security Council from fulfilling its duty and obligation under the terms of the United Nations Charter. The Biden administration has now aided and abetted war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by Israel against the Palestinians.

“Biden has also knowingly let U.S. weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the U.S. Arms Control Export Act and the Arms Supply Agreement between the U.S. and Israel.”

Regarding the use of the term “genocide” — see commentary by the late noted legal expert Michael Ratner from 2014, during the last major Israeli bombing of Gaza: “UN’s Investigation of Israel Should Go Beyond War Crimes to Genocide.” Also see research paper from the Center for Constitutional Rights (where Ratner was president) from 2016: “The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective.”

TeleSUR reports: “Iran’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to declare Israel’s aggressions against Palestinians as genocide and crimes against humanity.” See video.

While the U.S. of course excercises a veto at the UN Security Council, Boyle notes that almost any member state of the UN can invoke the Genocide Convention at the General Assembly, but none have done so; see “A Global Legal Intifada: If It’s a Genocide in Gaza, then Invoke the Convention to Stop it” from 2014 by Sam Husseini.

See the article “Will the U.S. Media Cover Nadine and Kinda?” about the marginalization of the impact of Israeli bombings on Palestinian children.

See @accuracy Twitter list which highlights people in Gaza. See from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza: “Day 8 of Israeli Offensive on Gaza: Non-Stop Bombing and Systematic Infrastructure Destruction.”

JENNIFER BING, jbing@afsc.org, @JBing215
Bing is with the Palestine Activism Program of the American Friends Service Committee, working on the Gaza Unlocked and No Way to Treat a Child campaigns.

She said today: “We are in a moment where more people around the globe are speaking up against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people — including members of the U.S. Congress. The disastrous impact of not holding the Israeli and U.S. governments accountable for violating Palestinian rights is seen as each apartment building in Gaza is leveled by U.S.-supplied weapons and dead children are pulled from the rubble. This must end. One vehicle for accountability that is making its way in Congress (today with 20 co-sponsors), is HR 2590 the ‘Palestinian Children and Families Act‘ led by Rep. Betty McCollum. Thousands of activists are using this bill to educate their members of Congress about the rights denied to Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation and to demand change.”

Background: see from The Intercept: “Rank-and-file Democrats Slow to Call for Restricting Aid to Israel.”

FAIR just published the piece: “Israel/Palestine Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier.” See from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza: “Day 9 of Israeli Offensive on Gaza: Houses Bombarded and More Civilians Displaced.” The Hill reports: “Biden approves $735M weapons sale to Israel” though some in Congress are attempting to object.

Many are framing the charge that Israel is practicing a form of apartheid as an extreme or new charge. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the subject is titled “A Threshold Crossed.”

In fact, the charge is decades old, frequently coming from South Africans themselves, see below for more. One such South African is:

RONNIE KASRILS, rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He just wrote the piece “How to Stop Apartheid Israel” which states: “It is imperative that we of the international community redouble our efforts to aid the Palestinian people in solidarity actions. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign remains the most formidable weapon in our arsenal. It worked to bring about the demise of South African Apartheid behind the internal people’s resistance struggle, and is growing in scope and efficacy, to the extent that Israel has identified the non-violent global movement as a strategic threat. Israel, like apartheid South Africa must pay for its crimes — above all by sanctions.”

BILL FLETCHER, Jr., billfletcherjr@gmail.com, @BillFletcherJr
Past president of TransAfrica Forum, Fletcher just wrote the forthcoming piece “You knew that this would happen, right?”: “You knew that the Palestinians would have to respond after years of being expelled from their land, kicked to the curb, subjected to what is now being publicly described as ‘apartheid’ conditions.” In 2014, Fletcher wrote the piece “Why Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions Should Be Used to Target Israeli Apartheid.”

Background: At least as early as 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu publicly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa. He repeated it recently in “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons,” in The Guardian, where Tutu, who chaired the South African Truth and Reconcilation Commission, wrote: “there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

In 2008, South African member of parliament Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge said “What I see here is worse than what we experienced — the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw…”

In 2014, Tutu backed divestment moves targeting companies that work with Israel and spoke up against attempts to limit free speech around Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, which are now being backed by the Biden administration. In a 2013 interview, David Frost asked Tutu if he was ever tempted to back violence, as Nelson Mandela had done, in the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

Tutu stated that it was only the application of sanctions which prevented him from embracing the use of violence.

Tutu replied that “we urged the world to apply sanctions and said to them this is really the last nonviolent way of seeking to change the system” crediting “students at universities and colleges who helped to change the moral climate.” All the while, Tutu said he “recognized that there might come a time when you would have to say that nonviolent means were no longer viable.”

While Congress placed sanctions on South Africa in 1986 over then-President Ronald Reagan’s veto, now many in Congress concur with Biden’s stance to hinder the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Jewish Currents reports: “AOC to Introduce Resolution Blocking Bomb Sale to Israel.” Groups are urging Sen. Bernie Sanders and other senators to introduce similar resolutions in the Senate, which, unlike the House, would likely force a vote. According to Jewish Insider, Sen. Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen will “introduce a resolution today urging an immediate cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law.

He said today: “The Biden administration has repeatedly prevented the United Nations Security Council — which under Article 24 of the United Nations Charter — has ‘primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security’ from addressing the Israeli assault on Gaza.” During the 2014 war, the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire, which the Biden administration has been preventing.

“Biden has repeatedly stated that Israel has the ‘right to defend itself’ — effectively a green light for bombing — rather than demanding an immediate ceasefire and allowing the Security Council to do its job. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has correctly understood Biden’s statements and dismissed Biden’s rhetorical call for ‘de-escallation.’

“The Biden administration is thus now aiding and abetting war crimes.

“There is now rocket fire between Israel and Lebanon. The actions of the Biden administration — a green light to Israel — are now threatening global security.

“Biden has knowingly let U.S. weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the U.S. Arms Control Export Act and the Arms Supply Agreement between the U.S. and Israel.

“Moreover, Biden is moving to ship more weapons to Israel as we speak. These efforts by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others may be worthwhile, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and company will likely push them aside. The efforts by Sanders and other senators, while a welcome departure from the usual rhetoric from Capitol Hill … are unlikely to jar the Biden administration.

“During the impeachment of Trump earlier this year — which I supported — Democrat after Democrat stated that the issue was not disliking Trump, it was his pernicious violation of the law that was the issue. Well, President Biden is now violating laws. He is aiding and abetting a foreign power in conducting war crimes in violation of both international law and domestic law.

“The remedy for this situation is for one sitting member of Congress to live up to their responsibilities under our Constitution which they have pledged to uphold and introduce articles of impeachment. We are supposed to be a nation of laws and not men. Impeachment is effectively a check given to each and every member of Congress against a president who is violating the law.”

Boyle was legal adviser to Rep. Henry B. González and wrote the first draft of the González Impeachment Resolution in 1991. George H. W. Bush would later write in his memoirs about his fear of impeachment — that if the Gulf War “drags out, not only will I take the blame, but I will probably have impeachment proceedings filed against me.”

In 2017, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, and foreign policy speechwriter, told Politico that President Obama feared impeachment if he targeted the Syrian government.

While many regard Rep. Rashida Tlaib and other members of “The Squad” as unique in their stance on Israel, that is not accurate. For example, Rep. Paul Findley — the author of the War Powers Resolution and a longtime associate of Boyle’s — addressed the issue in a manner that resulted in his political defeat at the hands of political operatives including Rahm Emanuel.

Also see: “War in Palestine: a timeline.”

Many media outlets are reporting that members of “the Squad” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, as well as other members of Congress including Pramila Jayapal, are trying to “block a $735 million arms sale to Israel.”

But Grant Smith, author of Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, states that members of Congress who have been critical of Israel “won’t use the tools available to them.”

Specifically, he states “there are legal avenues to challenge the entire $3.8 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds that Israel gets every year.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu cited Smith’s work recently in a piece published by The Guardian: “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons.” Tutu challenged Biden to break with past U.S. administrations and acknowledge Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal. Wrote Tutu, who chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “There are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

Grant notes: “there are laws already on the books that call for a cutoff of aid to nuclear proliferators.”

GRANT F. SMITH, gsmith@irmep.org, @IRmep
Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Last year he wrote letters to several members of Congress who have voiced criticism of Israel, noting: “I believe your coalition has far more influence on the matter of foreign aid than it may realize. In 2016 and 2017 we sued the administration(s) over violations of the Arms Export Control Act, but did not prevail for lack of standing. Your coalition does not have such issues.”

Grant explained: “The Symington & Glenn provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC §2799aa-1: Nuclear reprocessing transfers, illegal exports for nuclear explosive devices, transfers of nuclear explosive devices, and nuclear detonations) forbid U.S. foreign aid to countries with nuclear weapons programs that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, absent required special procedures.”

Smith said today: “But no member of Congress has taken up this issue — or even mentioned Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.”

Grant also wrote the piece “Challenging the secret ‘Israel Nuclear Weapons Gag Order’ WNP-136” about a government order that “forbids all U.S. government agency employees and contractors from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons program.”

Grant said today: “It seems as though even these members of Congress, as well as the rest of the U.S. government, are abiding by this secret gag order when they could take action which would challenge the administration’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons and possibly stop $3.8 billion in taxpayer money from going to Israel.

“Eleanor Holmes Norton confirmed that there have never been proper waivers filed by POTUS either. (See page 39 of this legal filing PDF.)”

Grant wrote to the members of Congress last year: “If you really want to leverage U.S. foreign aid to Israel, you may easily do so by raising the issue of proper waivers and whether Congress is in compliance with the Arms Export Control Act when delivering aid to Israel.”

MICHAEL LYNK, mslynk@uwo.ca
Lynk is the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories. See recent statements from May 18: “Gaza-Israel escalation: End violence now, then work to end occupation, say UN experts” and from May 11: “East Jerusalem: UN experts deplore brutal police response to protests, urge eviction threats to be lifted.”

For updates, see @accuracy Twitter list.

BETH MILLER, via Sonya Meyerson-Knox, sonya@jewishvoiceforpeace.org, @jvplive
HASSAN EL-TAYYAB, hassan@fcnl.org, @HassanElTayyab
Miller and El-Tayyab are able to discuss what the Washington Post is now reporting: “Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce resolution of disapproval on $735 million U.S. arms sale to Israel.” Miller is government affairs manager with Jewish Voice for Peace. El-Tayyab is legislative manager for Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. He has also worked extensively on stopping U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia as it has attacked Yemen, see CNN report today.

Unless otherwise noted, the people below are currently in Gaza. Electricity, phone and internet availability can be difficult there, which has been under siege and suffering bombing campaigns by Israel, so connections may be intermittent. Medical personnel of course may be especially difficult to reach. WhatsApp is often the best method of communication. If calling from the U.S., prefix numbers with 011.

MALAK MATAR, Malakmattar47@gmail.com
SIMONA SHARONI, simona.sharoni@gmail.com
Matar is a Palestinian artist in Gaza. See her Facebook page and her recent interview on the BBC. Educated at Haifa University in Israel, Sharoni has facilitated showing Matar’s art in the U.S. She is now professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, is co-founder of Faculty Against Rape and author of Gender and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance.

REFAAT ALAREER, refatr17@gmail.com, @itranslate123
The New York Times recently published Alareer’s piece “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’.” Alareer is the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced. He was among the first to report Israel’s bombing critical infrastructure, including hospitals.

LAILA EL-HADDAD, laila.elhaddad@gmail.com, @gazamom
Now in Maryland, El-Haddad’s books include Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between.

RAJI SOURANI, rajisourani@gmail.com, @pchrgaza
Sourani is executive director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which just released the statement: “Day 9 of Israeli Offensive on Gaza: Houses Bombarded and More Civilians Displaced.” Sourani is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

MEDHAT ABBAS
Dr. Abbas is the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

BASEM NAIM, basemn63@gmail.com
Dr. Naim is the Director of the Council on International Relations in Gaza. He served as the Minister of Health in Gaza from 2007 until 2012. See his page on Facebook.

HAIDAR EID, haidareid@gmail.com, @haidareid
Eid is author of the book Worlding and associate professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University. See his writings at Middle East Eye.

MOSHEER AMER, mamer@iugaza.edu.ps, @mosheeramer
Amer is the Director of the Center for Political and Development Studies and an associate professor of linguistics at the Islamic University of Gaza.

YOUSEF AL-HELOU, al-helou.y@hotmail.com, @YousefAlhelou
Al-Helou is a Palestinian journalist from in Gaza and is now in London. See his writing in Middle East Monitor.

MOHAMMED ALQATTAWI, Alqattawi24@gmail.com, @m_alqattawi
Alqattawi is an activist, originally from Gaza, and is now in Istanbul.

ISSAM A. ADWAN, issam@wearenotnumbers.org, @WeAreNotNumbers
Adwan is with the group We Are Not Numbers and was recently on the show “Democracy Now!“

Israel and Hamas declared a ceasefire on Thursday. While some praised the Biden administration, many are arguing that the violence escalated largely because it gave Israel a greenlight to to attack in Jerusalem and then in Gaza, including approving more weapons; see this timeline by Asa Winstanley. 

As many have noted, ceasefires can be tenuous.

While the U.S.-brokered Oslo process has dominated the dynamics in the violence-laden Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, activists have initiated the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement modeled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Many South Africans, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have long embraced the comparison, see below.

See interview from Thursday with Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS Movement for Palestinian rights by Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC.

But the Biden administration, like the Trump administration, has pledged to fight grassroots BDS efforts. These governmental moves have been criticized as restricting freedom of speech.

RONNIE KASRILS, rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He just wrote the piece “Bloodshed in Palestine: Fundamental Cause and Solution.” He recently wrote the piece “How to Stop Apartheid Israel” which states: “It is imperative that we of the international community redouble our efforts to aid the Palestinian people in solidarity actions. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign remains the most formidable weapon in our arsenal. It worked to bring about the demise of South African Apartheid behind the internal people’s resistance struggle, and is growing in scope and efficacy, to the extent that Israel has identified the non-violent global movement as a strategic threat. Israel, like apartheid South Africa must pay for its crimes — above all by sanctions.”

BILL FLETCHER, Jr., billfletcherjr@gmail.com, @BillFletcherJr
Past president of TransAfrica Forum, Fletcher just wrote the piece “You knew that this would happen, right?”: “You knew that the Palestinians would have to respond after years of being expelled from their land, kicked to the curb, subjected to what is now being publicly described as ‘apartheid’ conditions.” In 2014, Fletcher wrote the piece “Why Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions Should Be Used to Target Israeli Apartheid.”

NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN, nora@electronicintifada.net, @norabf
Barrows-Friedman is author of In Our Power: U.S. Students Organize for Justice in Palestine. She is an associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, see her pieces on the BDS activist and legal battles include: “U.S. Palestinian activist defeats Israeli ‘defamation’ lawsuit” and “Israel lobby loses legal effort to harass Palestinian rights activists.”

Background: At least as early as 2002, Desmond Tutu publicly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa. He repeated it recently in “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons,” in The Guardian, where Tutu, who chaired the South African Truth and Reconcilation Commission, wrote: “there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

In 2008, South African member of parliament Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge said “What I see here is worse than what we experienced — the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw…”

In 2014, Tutu backed divestment moves targeting companies that work with Israel and spoke up against attempts to limit free speech around BDS.

In a 2013 interview, David Frost asked Tutu if he was ever tempted to back violence, as Nelson Mandela had done, in the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

Tutu stated that it was only the application of sanctions which prevented him from embracing the use of violence.

Tutu explained that “we urged the world to apply sanctions and said to them this is really the last nonviolent way of seeking to change the system” crediting “students at universities and colleges who helped to change the moral climate.” All the while, Tutu said he “recognized that there might come a time when you would have to say that nonviolent means were no longer viable.”

While Congress placed sanctions on South Africa in 1986 over then-President Ronald Reagan’s veto, now many in Congress concur with Biden’s stance to hinder the BDS movement.

CNN reports: “Did Belarus ‘hijack’ a civilian airliner to detain an activist?” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki claimed Sunday: “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.” Such charges have been echoed by other officials and media, but the statement is inaccurate — Israel originated the practice in 1954 and suffered no legal consequence, see below.

BEAU GROSSCUP, bgrosscup@csuchico.edu
Grosscup is professor emeritus at the department of political science at California State University, Chico. He is author of several books on terrorism, including Terrorism and Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment. His latest book is Tell Them What You Want, co-authored with Laverne Merritt-Gordon.

He said today: “The U.S. government is demanding an international investigation here while refusing one for the horrific bombing of Gaza by Israel. It is another instance that the oft quoted ‘one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter’ is a vacuous statement. The U.S. government (and its allies) ‘owns’ the concept terrorism, meaning it tells the global community who the terrorists are and who the freedom fighters are, and has the power to make that distinction meaningful in policy, law, practice, and public opinion.”

Jeremy Scahill tweeted: “If the reports are accurate, Lukashenko’s government forcing this plane to land in an effort to arrest a dissident is a terrible crime. Interesting to contrast this with the Obama admin. forcing Evo Morales’s plane to land in 2013 in an effort to arrest a US dissident, [NSA whistleblower Edward] @Snowden.” See by John Pilger: “Forcing down Evo Morales’s plane was an act of air piracy.”

Israel originated the practice of a state hijacking an airplane in 1954. On Dec. 8 of that year, five Israeli soldiers were captured in Syria, apparently retrieving eavesdropping equipment. On Dec. 12, Israeli jet fighters intercepted a Syrian civilian aircraft flying from Damascus to Egypt, claiming that the plane had violated Israeli airspace.

The following day, the New York Times reported that this “development appears to have given Israel an unexpected position of strength for negotiating the release of Syria’s prisoners.”

Gen. Moshe Dayan was then Israeli Chief of Staff. The Israeli Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, wrote in his diary, “It is clear that Dayan’s intention…is to get hostages in order to obtain the release of our prisoners in Damascus.”

Contrary to General Dayan’s hopes, no exchange took place. Prime Minister Sharett added that the United States State Department complained that “our action was without precedent in the history of international practice.” See Israel’s Sacred Terrorism by the late Livia Rokach, which has a forward by Noam Chomsky and prefix by Naseer Aruri.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting: “Blinken trip to Israel aimed at preventing aid to Gaza from reaching Hamas.” Poorly understood is that Hamas won the last Palestinian parlimentary elections, in 2006, that have been allowed to take place. In 2014, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson wrote a piece in Foreign Policy titled: “Ending this war in Gaza begins with recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor.”

TAREQ BACONI, tbaconi@crisisgroup.org, @TareqBaconi
Baconi is the Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Israel/Palestine and economics of conflict. He is author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, Stanford University Press, 2018.

See his recent interview with +972 Magazine, “Hamas breaks out of its Gaza cage,” in which he states: “The pro forma language around Israel’s ‘right to self-defense’ and ‘de-escalation on both sides’ is a symptom of that inability to grapple with Hamas, showing that the international community is very much frozen when it comes to the movement. They are unable to understand Hamas as a political faction committed to Palestinian liberation and are still focused on a very particular narrative.

“It’s not just about Hamas, though. What’s mind-boggling to me is that by the time the international community started saying ‘self-defense,’ there were 500 Palestinians injured by Israeli forces in Jerusalem. The rhetoric of a ‘right to self-defense’ only came out when the first rocket landed in Israel; it is triggered only for Israel and is triggered only by Hamas. Outside of that, there’s no way for the diplomatic community to understand the violence of the occupation or the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.

“Until we fix that premise, no form of engagement with Hamas is going to be productive, because it is only going to be seen as a party that is irrationally attacking Israel for some decontextualized, unknown reason. …

“For a long time, even under [former political chief] Khaled Meshaal, Hamas has flirted with the idea of popular protest. The movement was not always exclusively committed to armed struggle; it had thought about the power of popular demonstrations and of international law. However, there’s a streak of cynicism within the movement that popular protests are never going to garner the level of international pressure or support like that of the U.S. Civil Rights struggle or the South African anti-Apartheid struggle.

“This cynicism was tested in the Great March of Return. Over weeks and weeks of a sustained popular mobilization, there was no adequate response from the international community, even when Israel was sniping off Palestinians. It was only when Hamas came into the fray and started upping the ante of ‘disturbances’ against Israel that the situation started shifting, and negotiations began around concessions such as easing the blockade on Gaza. The lesson for Hamas was very clear: unless Israel feels pressure — usually militarily or other forms of ‘disturbances’ — nothing would give.”

SAREE MAKDISI, makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi’s books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. He is professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. His pieces include “Apartheid” for Critical Inquiry. He recently wrote the piece “The Nakba Is Now” for The Nation.

He said: “Israel is not dropping bombs. But it is still besieging Gaza; still smothering Palestinian life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; still repressing its second-class Palestinian citizens; still violently barring the refugees’ right of return. This racial violence must also end.

“Israeli police on both sides of the 1947-67 line are raiding Palestinian homes and dragging people off to dungeons. The line distinguishing ‘Israel’ from ‘the occupied territories’ is meaningless: the same racial violence grips both sides of the line.

“A ceasefire in Palestine means we’re back to the slow suffocation of apartheid and brutal military occupation. As Dickens said in a different context, it’s like being drowned by drops, stung to death by single bees. Slow violence, everyday occupation, is still violence.”

NADIM NASHIF, nadim@7amleh.org, @7amleh
DANI NOBLE, via Sonya Meyerson-Knox, sonya@jewishvoiceforpeace.org, @jvplive
Nashif, a Palestinian living in Haifa, is co-founder of 7amleh (pronounced Hamleh), the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, a non-profit organization that advocates for Palestinian digital rights. Nobel is campaign organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace.

The two groups are signers of a letter generated by the new initiative FacebookWeNeedToTalk.org along with a host of other groups including Access Now, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Fight for the Future and BDS France:

“As Palestinian residents defend their homes in Jerusalem from forced dispossession by the Israeli government and state-sanctioned Zionist settler groups, their calls for support have received widespread international attention — inspiring social media campaigns and mass protests around the world. This international outcry only grew after the Israeli military attacked Ramadan worshippers at al-Aqsa mosque and started brutally bombing Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip …

“Facebook executives’ decision at this moment to directly collaborate with Israeli Defense and Justice Minister Gantz on content moderation, without appropriate parity of government engagement until prompted by civil society, is beyond outrageous. …

“In addition, the numerous reports of removal or chilling of political speech that several of our organizations have received over the past two weeks, combined with the report released by 7amleh last week [‘The Attacks on Palestinian Digital Rights,’ PDF] that includes 429 reported incidents from Instagram and Facebook, raise concerns about Facebook’s relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Justice’s extra-legal Cyber Unit. The fact that since May 6 there has been widespread removal of Palestinians’ content or supportive content (including removal of content and deactivation of accounts or pages based on Community Standards violations, as well as the mass removal of Instagram stories) that after review have been restored for lack of any violation, indicates that Facebook is perhaps voluntarily agreeing to takedowns recommended by the Israeli Cyber Unit. This unclear relationship between Facebook and the Israeli Cyber Unit is concerning, as it is not subject to any formal governmental or legal process.”

FORREST HYLTON, [currently in Brazil] forresthylton@gmail.com
Hylton teaches history and politics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Medellín. He just wrote the piece “La Resistencia” for the London Review of Books.

He writes: “Long one of Latin America’s most conservative countries, Colombia is undergoing a sea change. The second general strike in as many years evolved rapidly into a nationwide urban insurrection. ‘La Resistencia’ has endured for a month in the teeth of ferocious repression. …

“Soon after the protests started on 28 April, the proposed tax reform package that had triggered the strike was withdrawn, proposed healthcare reforms died in committee, and the finance minister and the foreign minister were forced to step down. There were (toothless) calls for dialogue and de-escalation from the international community. Yet the overwhelmingly non-violent protests have continued, as has the government’s response using deadly force.

“Ninis (young people without education or job prospects) from urban peripheries have been the leading force on the barricades and they have faced the brunt of police terror — some of it captured on cell phone videos, including sexual assault, torture and murder — in Bogotá, Medellín, Pereira, Cartago, Buga, Tuluá, Cali, Popayán, Pasto, Bucaramanga and Barranquilla. They and their families account for perhaps half the population, and on the rare occasions they are interviewed, they say things like: ‘We have no future because they have taken everything from us, even fear. We have nothing left to lose.’ This was already true before Covid-19 hit, but lack of basic income support during the pandemic has made daily life impossible.”

DAVE LINDORFF, dlindorff@gmail.com
Lindorff is an investigative journalist who just wrote the piece “Peace-washing: Is a network of major donors neutralizing activism in the peace movement?” for Salon.

He writes: “Consider the liberal response to the Biden transition team floating Michèle Flournoy’s name as a potential secretary of defense. Instead of outrage at the idea of someone who had spent the previous four years helping arms contractors win business with the Trump Pentagon and who is an advocate for tough, even aggressive stances towards Russia, China and Iran, we saw an open letter of support signed by 29 key people active in the peace and arms-control arena. Signatories included Joe Cirincione, former president for 12 years of the Ploughshares Fund, along with Tom Collina, Michelle Dover and Emma Belcher of that same well-endowed grant-offering organization. They were joined by the likes of Tom Countryman and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, Rachel Bronson of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for New American Security, Joan Rohlfing of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and others. …

“Interestingly though, while serious opposition coalesced among anti-militarism, anti-revolving-door people and groups in the Flournoy case, her WestExec Advisors co-founder Antony Blinken, nominated as secretary of state, sailed through his nomination and hearing process. This despite Blinken’s record as an enthusiastic interventionist while serving in the Obama administration as deputy national security advisor and later as deputy secretary of state, and despite his profiting off his connections as a WestExec adviser to arms makers after leaving office.”

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Until his resignation five years ago, he was a board member of Council for a Livable World, one of the larger national security/arms control organizations in the Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG). Hoh tells Lindorff that while he has no inside information about the funding policies of the funding consortium or its members, “The assumption that the big peace and national security funding groups are taming the peace movement is a correct one.”

He explains: “When you have a bunch of organizations in a group like that, and some of them are really mainstream vanilla like Open Society, you’re going to see the whole organization and its member groups moderate their positions and their funding policies to the lowest denominator. These big groups, especially the ones that also act as holding pens for people in the foreign policy area who have to leave government employment when a Republican administration comes in, and use them as references when looking for government jobs under a new Democratic administration like this one, don’t want to be funding groups that mount protests in House or Senate committee hearings or try to arrest [former Nixon Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger for war crimes.”

Hoh says he recalls comments being made while he was at CLW about organizations receiving grants needing to “ease up” on their rhetoric or protest actions, but doesn’t recall that kind of conversation moving beyond CLW to the collective PSFG membership. But he also says, “I think the issue of putting pressure on activist groups has deepened over the last 10 years.” He adds, “The best evidence that there is pressure on activists to tone down is the way you’re finding so few leaders of groups that get funding from PSFG member organizations willing to speak for this article on the record.”

Research for Lindorff’s article was funded by a grant from the ExposeFacts program of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

The Biden administration, in a “Friday news dump,” released its Pentagon budget late last week.

WILLIAM HARTUNG, whartung@internationalpolicy.org
Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy.

Following the release of the budget, he said: “At over $750 billion, the Biden administration’s proposal for spending on the Pentagon and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy is both excessive and misguided. At a time when the greatest challenges to human lives and livelihoods stem from threats like pandemics and climate change, sustaining Pentagon spending at over three quarters of a trillion dollars a year is both bad budgeting and bad security policy.”

Hartung’s recent pieces include “Memorial Day Can’t Obscure Biden’s Excessive Pentagon Budget” for The National Interest and “Two Weapons That Shouldn’t Be In The Pentagon’s New Budget” for Forbes.

He added: “Continued spending on unnecessary weapons systems like a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile ($2.6 billion) and the troubled F-35 combat aircraft ($12 billion) represent budgetary and policy malpractice, diverting billions of dollars from other urgent national priorities. …

“The identification of China as a ‘pacing challenge is not an adequate justification for current, exorbitant levels of spending. The challenge posed by China is primarily political and economic, not military. And the United States already spends nearly three times on its military what China does, and has 13 times as many nuclear warheads in its stockpile.”

JAISAL NOOR, jaisal@therealnews.com, @JaisalNoor
Noor, a senior reporter at Real News Network, just released a 26-minute documentary that explores how worker-owners at eight cooperative run businesses weathered the pandemic, “Worker cooperatives prove your job doesn’t have to be hell.” Noor recently appeared on Means TV and Hill TV’s “Rising” to discuss his findings.

“Pandemic profiteers increased their wealth by over $1.6 trillion dollars during the pandemic, while frontline workers risked their lives for low pay and dangerous working conditions,” Noor said. “Retail online giant Amazon even unveiled a ‘therapy box‘ for workers experiencing stress from high workloads and unreasonable expectations. Meanwhile, the small but growing sector of worker-run cooperatives is demonstrating another way is possible: workplaces that operate democratically and share profits. Because the workers are the owners, they aren’t going to sacrifice themselves for profit,” Noor said. As the Biden administration talks of wanting to “Build Back Better,” Noor explores the lessons learned from eight cooperative businesses in four states.

Noor added: “Worker cooperatives distribute decision-making power, profits and risk. Data indicates that during the pandemic, worker cooperatives were less likely to lay off staff and often pivoted their business models so they could continue to operate while protecting their workers and the public. The country’s largest co-op, Cooperative Home Care Associates, partnered with textile cooperatives to provide their workers with PPE while other home care agencies frequently failed to do so. Baltimore’s majority Black-owned Taharka Brothers Ice Cream lost 70 percent of their revenue during the lockdown, but quickly recovered by shifting to a home-delivery model. And a growing number of businesses that closed during the pandemic are reopening as worker-cooperatives, which have proved to be a more sustainable model.”

The documentary, which Noor produced with support from Solutions Journalism Network, also explores the limitations of employing the cooperative model in the U.S.’s corporate capitalist system. “While cities like Baltimore offered Amazon billions in incentives in exchange for building a headquarters, it has invested a fraction of that in local worker co-ops. Banks also typically don’t lend to co-ops, so a network of revolving loan funds across the country has been created to fund worker co-ops, and provide workers with technical assistance to help create sustainable business models. None of the 60 worker co-ops that work with Seed Commons’ revolving loan fund closed permanently during the pandemic.”

The documentary is licensed through Creative Commons and can be republished and excerpted with attribution to The Real News Network; additional segments are available here.

Reuters reports: “Peruvian socialist Pedro Castillo widened his lead against right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori in the country’s presidential vote on Monday, but she said she will not concede yet and alleged ‘irregularities,’ although without showing much proof.” Reuters also reports: “Peru’s presidential election vote count ticked closer to the end on Tuesday, but a slender margin between the two polarized candidates, contested ballots and accusations of fraud mean the winner may take a lot longer to confirm.”

FRANCESCA EMANUELE, [currently in Peru] emanuelefrancesca@gmail.com
Emanuele is a Peruvian sociologist, born and raised in the province of Ica, four hours from Lima. She is currently a research assistant at American University in Washington, D.C., where she is pursuing doctoral studies in Anthropology. For the past 15 years, her articles have been published in numerous Peruvian newspapers. She is currently a regular columnist for the progressive Peruvian publication, Wayka. Prior to academia, Francesca was the correspondent for Telesur in Washington D.C., and a communications director for the Peru-based non-profit Promsex, which advocates for LGTBI rights and women’s reproductive rights. Her most recent piece in English, on the coup in Bolivia, was published by the magazine Red Pepper.

Democratic Socialists of America and Progressive International have been publishing statements about the elections. Both are in Peru as electoral observers.

DAVID GIBBS, dgibbs@email.arizona.edu
Gibbs is a professor of history at the University of Arizona who has written extensively on NATO.

He said today: “As we approach the 2021 NATO Summit meeting, it is worth recalling how much the alliance has weakened world security since the end of the Cold War, by inflaming relations with Russia. It is often forgotten that the cause of the current conflict arose from a 1990 U.S. promise that NATO would never be expanded into the former communist states of Eastern Europe. Not ‘one inch to the East,’ Russian leaders were promised by the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, James Baker. Despite this promise, NATO soon expanded into Eastern Europe, eventually placing the alliance up against Russia’s borders. The present-day U.S.-Russian conflict is the direct result of this expansion.”

Victims and relatives of victims of police brutality in Chicago while Rahm Emanuel was mayor released a joint statement Thursday against the reported plan by President Biden to nominate Emanuel as the U.S. ambassador to Japan.

“During his eight years in office, Emanuel displayed contempt for communities of color,” says the statement. “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.”

Emanuel was mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019.

Five of the signers are willing to talk to journalists:

They are reachable via DELMARIE COBB, dlcobb@thepublicityworks.net

DOROTHY HOLMES
Holmes is the mother of Ronald “Ronnie Man” Johnson, who was shot in the back by CPD the same week that Laquan McDonald was killed in 2014. Video featuring Ms. Holmes is being released today. She says: “Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of my son.”

AREWA KAREN WINTERS
Winters is the aunt of Pierre Loury, killed by CPD 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.

EMMETT FARMER
Farmer is the father of Flint Farmer, killed in June 2011. Police officer Gildardo Sierra shot him in the back three times as he lay on the ground. He didn’t have a weapon. Sierra was involved in multiple shootings as an officer.

KENYATTA BRAND
Brand is the sister of Rekia Boyd, who was killed by off-duty officer Dante Servin in 2012. Servin was drinking, then driving when he saw young people in the park. He shot at one of the young men, killing Rekia. State’s attorney Anita Alvarez undercharged him — manslaughter instead of first or second degree murder — and then the judge pronounced a mistrial instead of requiring the state to charge him correctly.

MARTINEZ SUTTON
Sutton is the brother of Rekia Boyd.

A group of economists and others have just released a letter to the G7 urging the adoption of a Financial Transaction Tax, see PDF.

The letter states: “We believe that a global FTT would eventually raise substantial revenue for many countries, including for the G7. But given the emergency situation in poor countries right now, our focus here is on them. Given the dominance of G7 financial markets, a G7-wide FTT could quickly start to provide at least $50 billion a year of emergency finance to fund vital public works and longer-term investments in developing countries, especially struggling young democracies.”

The signers include James S. Henry, global justice fellow at Yale and senior advisor, Tax Justice Network, who organized the letter; James K. Galbraith professor of economics at the  Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin; Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project director at Inequality.org co-editor, Institute for Policy Studies; Pedro Biscay, former director, Central Bank of Argentina Buenos Aires; Ralph Nader, consumer advocate; William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law, University of Missouri-KC; Patrick Bond, professor of government, University of the Western Cape Cape Town, South Africa.

The signers write that while they “applaud the G7’s support for a minimum global corporate income tax (CIT) rate for multinational corporations,” the G7’s “current proposals would do little for poorer countries. Indeed, they would actually reinforce the unfair bias of international tax rules in favor of the richest countries, which host most of these corporations. If this were the only collective tax reform that the G7 undertakes right now, therefore, a huge opportunity will be missed — the chance to help developing countries recover from this historic tax injustice as well from as the pandemic, and to help finance public investments and advance the cause of international tax justice.”

The group suggests a very small tax: “a 0.1 percent transactions tax on all stock trades, paid for by investors located anywhere in the world who transact through G7 public exchanges.”

Still, substantial funds could be raised: “In 2020, for example, NewYork’s top two exchanges, the NYSE and the NASDQ, registered nearly $60 trillion in trades, nearly half the total volume of the world’s 85 stock exchanges.”

They add that to the “extent that the FTT does ‘pinch’ certain high-frequency traders, this may actually be a good thing. It enables G7 countries themselves to tackle ‘the finance curse,’ the bloated, unproductive and extractive part of high finance. It promotes longer-term investing and discourages casino-like stock speculation. …

“This nearly-perfect tax could channel $billions from a few hundred thousand wealthy folks at the top to tens of millions of people at the very bottom, whose very lives may depend on it. The FTT is so minimal and frictionless that it is not even noticed by most of those who pay it. It is hardly perceptible at all, especially compared with, say, New York City’s 8.875 percent retail sales tax or Europe’s double-digit VAT taxes. But in the right hands and if well spent, the positive impacts of all this tax revenue on the reduction of human suffering will be very perceptible. …

“FTTs also dramatically boost financial transparency and help to combat money laundering and corruption — as Kenya recently discovered when its new FTT surfaced a huge amount of ‘funny money’ washing through Nairobi’s stock exchange.”

Available for interviews:

JAMES HENRY, jsh11963@gmail.com, @submergingmkt
Henry is Global Justice Fellow at Yale University, senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network and managing director at the Sag Harbor Group.

President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet in Geneva on Wednesday.

The American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord has released a letter signed by a group of scholars and former diplomats including Jack F. Matlock, former U.S. ambassador to the USSR.

The letter states: “The dangerous and in many ways unprecedented deterioration in relations between the United States and the Russian Federation must come to an end if we are to leave a safer world for future generations.

“For many years now, relations between the U.S. and Russia have been marked by sanctions and counter-sanctions; the passage of ‘foreign agents’ designations on media outlets and NGO’s; the curtailing of people-to-people exchange programs; and the end of cooperation in areas of mutual interest such as counter-terrorism, drug interdiction, and the environment.”

The following signers and ACURA board members are available for a limited number of interviews:

NICOLAI N. PETRO, [currently in Ukraine] npetro@uri.edu
Professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, kat@thenation.com, @KatrinaNation
Publisher and editorial director of The Nation.

The letter also states: “The Trump era and Russiagate brought about an unprecedented credulity among the media and the Washington punditry — or perhaps more, a willingness to assign blame to Russia for the outcome of the 2016 election [this has now been discredited]. It has now in turn given birth to two much more dangerous phenomena: an escalating militarism reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War; and a dangerous erosion of the decades-long bilateral arms control regime negotiated even during that Great Power standoff.”

The letter offers concrete suggestions:

i. “We urge the Biden administration to reopen the Consulates and reverse its recent decision to halt visa services for most Russians.

ii. “President Biden should invite President Putin to join him in reaffirming the declaration first made by President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev at their 1985 summit in Geneva that ‘A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’ This went a long way during the Cold War to reassure the peoples of the two countries and the world that even though we had deep differences we were committed to never fighting a nuclear war. It would go a long way to do the same today.

iii. “Reengage with Russia. Restore wide contacts, scientific, medical, educational, cultural and environmental exchanges. Expand people-to-people citizen diplomacy, Track II, Track 1.5 and governmental diplomatic initiatives.”

JOHN QUIGLEY, quigley.2@osu.edu
Professor emeritus of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley’s books include The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently told the Atlantic Council (which is funded by various NATO governments): “We have decided that a cyber attack can trigger Article 5. … It doesn’t matter if an attack is kinetic or cyber, we will assess as allies when it meets the threshold. … and it sends a message that we are cyber allies.”

Quigley said today: “There are obviously concerns about cyber attacks, they can be very damaging, for example the cyber attacks against Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

“But Article 5 of the NATO Treaty references Article 51 of the UN Charter which provides for collective self defence in the event of ‘armed attack.’

“And the notion of ‘self defense’ is a very slippery slope and has been misused as an illegal threat or for outright war.

“So the notion of the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the Biden administration seeking to expand NATO’s capacity is very dangerous and could be used to try to undermine the democratic processes within each country regarding war-making decision making.

“NATO was set up to counter the Soviet Union from supposedly invading Western Europe. So, there’s really no legitimate reason for NATO to exist as an organization. Instead, it has expanded. The last time Article 5 was used was for the invasion of Afghanistan and look where that has gotten us. And that presumably didn’t have to do with Russia.

“The notion of expanding NATO further to Ukraine is seen as a threat by Russia and such movement exacerbates tension and in turn makes Russia do things that NATO members don’t seem to like.” AP recently reported: “As Russia tensions simmer, NATO conducts massive war games.”

Quigley recently wrote the pieces “UN Gaza Commission Will Collect Evidence of Crimes” and “The Palestinian Right of Return Could Go to the ICC.” His past books also include The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: Deception at the United Nations in the Quest for Palestine, Cambridge University Press, 2016.

A New York Times headline reads: “Shifting Focus, NATO Views China as a Global Security Challenge.” A Politico headline reads: “Biden fears what ‘best friends’ Xi and Putin could do together.”

JAMES BRADLEY, james@jamesbradley.com
Bradley is author of several best-sellers focused on U.S. policy in the Pacific and Asia, including Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.

He is currently in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, producing his “Untold Pacific” podcast about “the American experience in Asia.” Recent episodes include “China Rising,” “The #1 Focus of the U.S. National Security State is War with China,” “U.S. Military: ‘War with China Inevitable'” and “America’s Pacific Problem is America.”

Bradley said today: “We’ve seen Biden ratchet up the anti-Chinese rhetoric and it is incredibly dangerous. Now, we’re seeing NATO being used toward those ends. There’s a great deal of propaganda that depicts China as this great threat and that taps into a long history of anti-Chinese sentiment and misinformation.”

In a recent interview with CovertAction Magazine, Bradley states: “The U.S. military could withdraw from Asia in a second and what’s going to fall apart? What is the danger? The American media promotes so much anti-Chinese propaganda: It creates the illusion that China is aggressive and going to invade. No. China doesn’t want to rule the world. China is too smart for that.

“The [last time] China went out was in the 13th century. They had those fleets of ‘treasure ships’ larger than any flotilla until World War II. They sailed worldwide. It cost a lot of money and they came back and they reported to the Emperor: ‘The only thing outside of China are Barbarians and bad food.’ Then they burned the ships. The idea of conquering the world is not Chinese. America goes all the way around the world to Iraq or Vietnam.”

“You know all those lines in the South China Sea and China is doing that and this island belongs here and Japan has this island claim … that was all written by the U.S. Navy after Japan surrendered and the U.S. Navy was predominant in the Pacific in 1945.”

Biden is widely quoted in U.S. media regarding his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “How could I be the president of the United States of America,” Biden said, “and not speak out against the violation of human rights?” A USA Today piece is headlined: “Biden warns Putin on human rights and cybersecurity in Geneva. U.S. moral clarity is back.”

The New York Times reports: “Israeli Aircraft Bomb Gaza Just Days Into New Government.”

Commondreams reports: “Just hours after far-right marchers chanted ‘Death to Arabs!’ during a demonstration in the streets of Jerusalem, Israeli war planes bombarded the occupied Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning in the first series of airstrikes launched by the new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former IDF officer who once boasted that he has ‘killed a lot of Arabs.’ … The Israeli military characterized the latest airstrikes as retaliation for ‘incendiary balloons’ released into Israel from the Gaza Strip.”

Axios is reporting: “Israel to ask U.S. for $1 billion in emergency military aid.”

HASSAN EL-TAYYAB, hassan@fcnl.org, @HassanElTayyab
El-Tayyab is legislative manager for Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which recently put out the statement: “FCNL Joins 100 National Organizations Calling on Biden to Halt Weapons Sales to Israel.”

He said: “Moving ahead with these transfers will be seen as an endorsement of Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza and encourage more acts of violence against Palestinian civilians. The administration’s efforts should instead be focused on delivering humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, helping with reconstruction efforts in Gaza, using U.S. leverage with Israel to end its occupation and blockade, and supporting human rights and justice for Israelis and Palestinians.”

The Guardian reports in “Peru: Fujimori cries electoral fraud — and unleashes torrent of racism“: “The prospect of the son of illiterate Andean peasants becoming president as his rival cries fraud has shaken Peru’s entrenched class system and its fragile democracy, letting loose a torrent of racism in the bicentennial year of the country’s independence.

“With 100 percent of the official vote counted, leftist Pedro Castillo had 50.12 percent and [an] advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival Keiko Fujimori. But Fujimori has claimed fraud, challenging about 500,000 votes, calling for half to be annulled, and obliging officials at Peru’s electoral board to reexamine ballots — despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.”

The following two analysts are recently back from observing the election in Peru:

FRANCESCA EMANUELE, emanuelefrancesca@gmail.com
Emanuele is a Peruvian sociologist, born and raised in the province of Ica, four hours from Lima. She is currently a research assistant at American University in Washington, D.C., where she is pursuing doctoral studies in Anthropology.

She said today: “Keiko Fujimori still has not presented evidence supporting her allegations of fraud but continues to use legal tricks to delay the announcement of Pedro Castillo’s victory. This is despite the fact that all the votes have been counted and Castillo is clearly the winner with an advantage of more than 44,000 votes.

“Each day that passes without the official announcement of Castillo’s victory increases further destabilization of the country. Meanwhile, Peruvian elites are becoming increasingly belligerent, supported by a monopolized Peruvian mainstream media that amplifies their unfounded claims. Hundreds of retired members of Peru’s Armed Forces published a letter threatening a coup against Pedro Castillo’s future government. Other violent threats could follow if Keiko’s desperate and irresponsible attempts to reverse the results are not curbed.”

For the past 15 years, Emanuele’s articles have been published in numerous Peruvian newspapers. She is currently a regular columnist for the progressive Peruvian publication, Wayka. Prior to academia, Francesca was the correspondent for Telesur in Washington D.C., and a communications director for the Peru-based non-profit Promsex, which advocates for LGTBI rights and women’s reproductive rights. Her most recent piece in English, on the coup in Bolivia, was published by the magazine Red Pepper.

ALEXANDER MAIN, main@cepr.net, @ceprdc
Director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main said today: “By any objective measure, Pedro Castillo has won Peru’s presidential election. The vote count has been completed and the complaints filed by Fujimori’s team within the legal time frame have been duly addressed by the electoral authorities. Yet, facing enormous pressure from Fujimori and her powerful backers, Peru’s National Jury of Elections has delayed the announcement of Castillo’s victory, generating increasing instability and tension in the country.

“The Organization of American States is the primary international observer of these elections but has failed to denounce the extraordinary pressure and threats targeting Peru’s electoral authorities. Nor has the OAS sought to dispel the unfounded claims of fraud being propagated by Fujimori and her supporters. The OAS’ deafening silence at this critical juncture is shameful and suggests that they may be bowing to political pressure coming from the organization’s Secretary General Luis Almagro, who has frequently supported far right, undemocratic actors in the region. It’s worth remembering that, following Bolivia’s 2019 elections, an OAS observation team promoted false fraud claims and Almagro welcomed the military coup that took place a few weeks later.” See from CEPR from last year: “Data from Bolivia’s Election Add More Evidence That OAS Fabricated Last Year’s Fraud Claims.”

Al Jazeera reports in “U.S. seizes three dozen websites used for ‘Iranian disinformation’” that: “Seized sites include Press TV and Houthi and Palestinian outlets. Move comes amid tense efforts to revive nuclear deal.”

At NATO headquarters recently, Biden spoke of his commitment to the “important shared missions” of “renewing and strengthening the resilience of our democracies” as well as “protecting the free press and independent judiciaries.” Later, he spoke of his insistence to Russian President Vladimir Putin of the “importance of a free press and freedom of speech.”

See Institute for Public Accuracy news release from last year: “Code Red: Barr Seizes Internet Domains of Media Outlets.”

ANDREW STEWART, hasc.warrior.stew@gmail.com, @DCBabylon1
On Tuesday, Stewart wrote the piece “FBI & Dept of Commerce Seize Iranian Press TV Web Domain” for Washington Babylon.

He states: “This step by Commerce and the FBI proves … rhetorical flourishes are a smokescreen for a widening censorship mandate within Washington. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the federal policing agencies have sharpened a carceral lens upon the information superhighway, invoking moral panics like ‘internet radicalization,’ aberrant sexual behavior, multimedia piracy, or illicit drug trafficking to justify the crackdown. While there’s certainly no denying that serious malfeasance like white nationalist indoctrination, child pornography, copyright infringement, or sales of narcotics take place online, laws passed in the name of combatting such practices are wildly overreaching and create judicial precedents for later use in cases like that of Press TV. These legislative efforts also conveniently ignore that there were already plenty of laws with harsh, sometimes overly-sadistic penalties for sexual assault, kidnapping, murder, or narco vending. However, none of those laws provided censorship opportunities, something that Washington and Silicon Valley have been desperate to implement after the early Wild West days of the web opened floodgates for free information that could not be used for profits and taxes.

“I have always been wary of state-sponsored broadcasters like RT or Press TV. Both have editorial lines driven by the geopolitical concerns of their sponsors, which is anathema to what journalists are mandated to serve. … None of these qualms, however, justify censorship.”

Can We Really Build Infrastructure When Wall Street Games the System?

WILLIAM LAZONICK, william.lazonick@gmail.com
Lazonick is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network and has written several papers for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

He is co-author of Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored (Oxford University Press, 2020).

He argues that Wall Street machinations like stock buybacks are effectively “distributions to shareholders that manifest the legalized looting of the U.S. business corporations, rendering employment unstable and incomes inequitable.”

He adds that without regulations on stock buybacks the Biden infrastructure plan will simply send large sums of money to companies that will go right out the door into stock buybacks, just as happened with the Trump taxcuts. To ‘build back better’ the companies need to invest the money in their products and workers, not send it to Wall Street.

He said today: “The Biden administration’s plans to ‘build back better’ must address the transformation in corporate resource allocation that has underpinned the increase in income equality in the United States since the 1980s. The key characteristic of the rise in income inequality has been the concentration of income among the richest households, driven in large part by distributions of corporate cash to shareholders. Over the decade 2010-2019, companies included in the S&P 500 Index spent a total of $5.3 trillion on buybacks, equal to 54 percent of net income, and another $3.8 trillion on dividends, equal to 39 percent of net income.”

See also from the Institute for New Economic Thinking: “Stock Buybacks Stand in the Way of Biden’s Infrastructure Plan” by Lynn Parramore.

Sen. Mike Gravel, best known for having risked censure and expulsion from the Senate by reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record exactly 50 years ago on Tuesday, died on Saturday at the age of 91.

Gravel twice sought the presidency. In 2008, he challenged the other candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, from the debate stage: “They frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there’s ‘nothing off the table’ with respect to Iran — that’s code for using nukes.” He then told then-candidate Biden: “You have a certain arrogance. You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country.” President Biden bombed Iraq and Syria on Sunday.

The DNC kept Gravel off the debate stage in 2020 to his protests, but his campaign gave rise to the Gravel Institute, which is powered by a group of young people, has become a force on Twitter and produces short educational videos.

On Sunday, Daniel Ellsberg, who disclosed the Pentagon Papers, a massive top-secret government study that documented its own deceit of the public during the Vietnam War, appeared with Gravel’s daughter, Lynne Mosier, on the Katie Halper Show.

Ellsberg lauded Gravel’s courage for entering the top-secret documents into the Congressional Record — saying he helped assert a “precedent that no one else has taken advantage of in 50 years” — meaning virtually no other Senator has used the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution to expose classified information that should be made public.

In 1971, the New York Times and other papers were enjoined by the courts against publishing further material from the Pentagon Papers. Gravel obtained a copy from Ellsberg who was then underground, and read from them in Congress. He said on the night of June 29, 1971: “People are dying, arms and legs are severed and metal crashes through human bodies because of policy decisions conceived in secret and kept from the American people. Free and informed public debate is the source of our strength. Remove it and our democratic institutions become a sham.” And then he wept.

The following day, June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court ruled against the Nixon administration.

Gravel sought to get a book publisher to publish the Pentagon Papers, but no commercial or university press would do so. Finally, Beacon Press, an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, published the “Gravel Edition” of the Pentagon Papers and was targeted for years afterwards by the Nixon administration and the FBI. See talk by Ellsberg, Gravel and Robert West, who was the president of the UUA.

Consortium News — see their obituary of Gravel — is currently publishing excerpts from his memoir, A Political Odyssey The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It, for the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers, co-authored with Joe Lauria.

In 2010, Gravel told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Whenever something comes up that [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell is opposed to … he just threatens a filibuster.” Then, the Democrats “back down and pundit after pundit says you need 60 votes to pass it. Baloney. You need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but a filibuster is a really costly thing to do.

“I used the filibuster for five months to end the [military] draft in 1971. I succeeded. I’m proud of what I did. I helped end the war in Vietnam. But I paid a price politically and among my colleagues for using the filibuster.”

Much of Gravel’s final years were focused on constitutional solutions to the public effectively being left out of the governing process. He founded the group The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy and wrote the book The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution: A Legislature of the People, arguing for the creation of a fourth branch of government which manifests a form of direct democracy.

LYNNE MOSIER, lynne@mosier.name
Mosier, (pronounced Moe Z A) is Gravel’s daughter. She just wrote an obituary of her father which encompasses these issues and others, including his opposition of nuclear power, his embrace of renewables, his early backing of drug legalization, and his backing in the 1970s of the Trans Alaska Pipeline: “Gravel was instrumental in lifting Alaska from one of the poorest and most unequal states in the U.S. in the 1970 Census to one of the richest and most equal by the 2000 Census. The state’s Native population moved from poverty to the middle class and from a subsistence economy to a mixed subsistence/cash economy with educated young Native leaders managing multi-billion dollar corporations in one generation. He was a leading proponent and one of the key congressional players in settling the indigenous land claims of Alaskan Natives. The settlement created 12 Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 village corporations that have helped transform Alaska’s economy.”

Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright and former Marine Captain Matthew Hoh, both of whom resigned from the State Department because of their opposition to U.S. war policies in Afghanistan, are among peace and justice leaders and policy analysts who have signed an online petition calling on President Joe Biden “to pledge that there will be no further U.S. air attacks on the Afghan people and that the U.S. will discontinue drone surveillance there as well.”

The petition is being circulated in response to press reports and officials statements that the U.S. is planning “over the horizon” air missions against Al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan while not foreclosing the possibility of U.S. air attacks against the Taliban, should it be on the verge of taking over Afghanistan’s central government. These missions would be flown from the system of U.S. bases in Qatar, the United Arab Republic, and Kuwait; the U.S. Air Force is seeking $10 billion to support this system, according to a June 8, 2021 report in Defense One, referencing the “over the horizon” planning.

The 10-point petition notes that the “over the horizon” operation will reportedly depend heavily on the use of attack and surveillance drones, which, the petition says “amounts to an effort to further occupy Afghanistan from the sky, and represents a bid for U.S. influence in events on the ground through the veto power of assassination and ability to target attacks by manned aircraft.”

The petition, drafted by BanKillerDrones.org, expresses concern that U.S. air operations will hasten the introduction into Afghanistan of drones and other high-tech weaponry by China, Turkey, Russia, and other nations, prolonging the civil war, as has happened in Libya.

Early signers of the petition include:

Ann Wright – Col. U.S. Army (Retired), resigned U.S. State Department official in Afghanistan and member of the CODEPINK anti-drone war delegation to Pakistan in 2012

Matthew Hoh – Former U.S. Marine officer and resigned U.S. State Department official in Afghanistan

Kathy Kelly – Peace activist who has made 30 trips to Afghanistan and co-coordinator of BanKillerDrones.org

Brian Terrell – Peace activist who has made multiple trips to Afghanistan and board member of BanKilerDrones.org

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola

Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola has extensively covered the legal proceedings regarding Assange. He highlights the reporting of the Icelandic outlet Stundin, which reports: “A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.”

Added Gosztola: “What [the witness, Sigurdur Ingi] Thordarson recanted, contradicted, or clarified about Assange for Stundin shows why cross-appeal is priority for Assange and his legal team. Though extradition was denied, they never had [a] fair opportunity to impeach witness testimony after [a] third indictment was sprung on them.”

Since the charges against Assange have to do with helping expose U.S. war crimes and not with Russiagate, Gosztola noted: “More than two years later and Respectable Elite Pundits still have no clue what the U.S. case is against Assange. They just know why they hate him and damn the consequences to freedom and democracy if he’s ever actually brought before a U.S. court.”

Gosztola also just wrote the piece: “Pentagon whistleblower under investigation after warning about risks of war with China over Taiwan,” which states: “Pentagon whistleblower Franz Gayl has been part of the United States Marine Corps for over four decades. He spent the last months trying to warn U.S. government officials and the public of the threat of becoming entangled in a war with China over Taiwan.

“Yet instead of seriously considering his perspective, Gayl faces a counterintelligence investigation into articles he wrote and early retirement.

“He published an open letter to President Joe Biden on LinkedIn on June 22 in a last-ditch effort to reach the White House and communicate his concerns over the increased potential for an ‘ill-advised foreign war.’

“Gayl warned, ‘Taiwan’s own watershed “Gulf of Tonkin” event is only a matter of time, probably through an accident or miscalculation. Sensing the urgency, I submitted numerous op-eds to U.S. newspaper and electronic media outlets, but each was rejected.’

“’As a last resort, I contacted the [People’s Republic of China’s] own Global Times, which published my op-eds in April and May.’

“The publications spurred an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). His security clearances were revoked on June 1. …”

ALPHECCA MUTTARDY, via Angela Vullo, avullo@nibcoalition.com
Muttardy is with the Coalition for the National Infrastructure Bank and recently released a statement: “In the final weeks of June, 2021, the Biden administration has negotiated with a bipartisan group of Senators on the terms of a package to provide $973 billion for infrastructure projects over five years ($579 billion in new spending, plus $394 in re-authorization of existing spending). Finalizing the Bi-Partisan Plan (BPP) will still depend on reaching agreement on how to pay for it, as well as on the terms of a second, companion package — The American Family Plan — moving through Congress under reconciliation rules.

“Even if approved, the BPP will not be enough to cover the full infrastructure financing gap identified by the American Society of Civil Engineers. ASCE estimates that $2.6 trillion is needed over 10 years, far greater than the $579 billion of new money over five years suggested under the BPP.” The group states that currently, “nothing is allocated under the BPP to cover high speed rail, schools, dams and levees, public parks, affordable housing, or new water delivery projects for drought stricken areas in the U.S. And the amount assigned to water infrastructure is a fraction of what is needed, according to ASCE.

“A fully funded, public, National Infrastructure Bank (NIB), as set out in HR 3339, would finance up to $5 trillion to cover all of the infrastructure projects listed above, in every single jurisdiction in the country. Passage of the Bill would guarantee complete funding over a ten-year period, without the need to re-negotiate again in five years or beyond. Moreover, the NIB would pay its own way, offer low-cost loans, mobilize for economic growth and development, all without adding to federal taxes or deficits.”

Muttardy is a macroeconomist and was with the International Monetary Fund for 25 years, now retired. She has also been involved with Our Revolution, as chair of economic policy for the group in northern Virginia.

MARGARET KIMBERLEY, margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com, @freedomrideblog
Kimberley is author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents which was published last year.

She just wrote the piece “The Terrible Origins of July 4th,” which notes that among the grievances toward the British monarch outlined in the Declaration of Independence were: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Kimberley explains the context: “The men who every school child is taught to think of as ‘patriots’ had two concerns which pushed them to declare independence. First, in 1763 the British emerged victorious after the end of a conflict against France. It was known in Europe as the Seven Years War and in America as the French and Indian War. The American moniker existed precisely because the French allied themselves with indigenous nations against the British. British victory brought them French held territory west of the Appalachians in the region now comprising midwestern states, but they knew they could not easily end indigenous wars if settlers along the eastern seaboard were allowed to go further west.

“Because of continued resistance from leaders such as Pontiac of the Ottawa nation, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. One of the speculators poised to become a wealthier man if settlements were permitted to move westward was George Washington.

“He was not alone in his wish to conquer the entire continent and to get rich doing it. Property claims had already been made in these regions, and neither he nor the rest of his cohort were going to let British treaties with indigenous people stand in their way. They largely ignored the edict and went wherever they wanted to go.

“Their second concern was whether the British were committed to continuing the previously unfettered right to slave holding. In 1769 an enslaved man named James Somerset was purchased in Virginia and brought to England. He eventually escaped but was recaptured and was in the process of being sold to Jamaica. But Somerset had friends who went to court on his behalf. In 1772 a judge ruled that enslaved people could not be forcibly removed from England.

“The ruling didn’t end slavery in British territories and in fact it lasted in those regions for 50 more years. But even this narrow decision was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding.”

Kimberley blogs at Freedom Rider and is editor and senior columnist at Black Agenda Report.

MARJORIE COHN, marjorielegal@gmail.com, @marjoriecohn
Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, recently wrote the piece “Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through the Heart of the Voting Rights Act.”

She writes: “Divided strictly along ideological lines, the Supreme Court construed what was left of the historic Voting Rights Act (VRA) to uphold two Arizona voter suppression laws that civil rights organizations had challenged for disproportionately burdening voters of color. This decision sends a dangerous signal to states that the courts are likely to uphold their voter suppression laws that make it harder for people of color to vote.

“In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court’s six right-wingers ruled, over the dissent of the three liberals, that Arizona’s ‘out of precinct policy’ and ‘ballot harvesting’ provision did not violate Section 2 of the VRA. Section 2 forbids any voting procedure that ‘results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.’ …

“’In recent months, State after State has taken up or enacted legislation erecting new barriers to voting,’ [Elena] Kagan wrote. ‘Those laws shorten the time polls are open, both on Election Day and before. They impose new prerequisites to voting by mail, and shorten the windows to apply for and return mail ballots. They make it harder to register to vote, and easier to purge voters from the rolls. Two laws even ban handing out food or water to voters standing in line.’

“The ball is in Congress’s court. Two federal voter protection bills are pending, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. In addition, the Judiciary Act of 2021 would increase the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. That could provide an opportunity to dilute the right-wing agenda of the current six members of the Court who voted to open the floodgates of voter suppression legislation.”

Al Jazeera reports: “Haiti’s President [Jovenel] Moïse was assassinated by unidentified gunmen at his home, says the PM. Moïse had been ruling Haiti by decree after delaying elections, sparking protests that he illegally stayed past his term. The country is also facing growing poverty and gang violence.”

BRIAN CONCANNON, beconcannon@gmail.com, @HaitiJustice

A longtime Haiti specialist, Concannon wrote the piece “Is the White House greenlighting Haiti’s descent into dictatorship?” for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He said today that much of Haitian civil society had concluded that Moïse’s presidency was not legitimate.

CHRIS BERNADEL, cbernadel@protonmail.com

Bernadel is on the Haiti Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace; both of his parents are Haitian immigrants. See the group’s statement, issued Tuesday, which quotes Bernadel: “Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Increasing Human Rights Violence in Haiti and the Continued U.S./OAS/UN Support for Unconstitutional Actions by Haiti’s Illegitimate Government.”

JAKE JOHNSTON, johnston@cepr.net, @jakobjohnston
Just back in the U.S. from Haiti, Johnston is senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He had just written the piece “Biden Continues Trump’s Policy in Haiti Despite Bipartisan Congressional Pushback” published on Tuesday.

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola

Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola has extensively covered the legal proceedings regarding Assange.

He just wrote the piece “Assange Extradition: British High Court Grants U.S. a Limited Appeal” for The Dissenter which reports: “The High Court of Justice rejected U.S. efforts to ‘second guess’ factual findings made about medical and expert evidence.”

Gosztola notes that he has “reviewed the appeal submissions, which are not publicly available” and gives a breakdown of the arguments in his just-published article.

He reports: “’It comes as no surprise that the U.K. High Court will consider the U.S. government’s appeal, but Julian Assange should not be in this position in the first place,’ stated Reporters Without Borders director of international campaigns Rebecca Vincent. ‘He has been targeted for his contributions to public interest reporting, and his prosecution in the U.S. would have severe and long-lasting implications for journalism and press freedom around the world.’

‘”We call again for [President Joe Biden’s] administration to drop the appeal and close the case, and for the U.K. to immediately release Assange from prison, where his mental and physical health remain at high risk,’ Vincent added.

“‘[Stella] Moris [Assange’s partner] asserted, [Attorney General] Merrick Garland has egg on his face because of the decision to use a witness that perjured himself in order to try to imprison Julian and keep him imprisoned.'” See IPA news release from a week ago: “Key Witness Against Assange Admits Fabrication.”

Gosztola wrote in January: “British Judge Keeps Assange In Prison, Despite Ruling Against Extradition.”

The Miami Herald reports in “Haiti President Jovenel Moïse assassinated in middle-of-the-night attack at his home“: “The assailants apparently claimed to be agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to videos taken by people in the area of the president’s home. Moïse, 53, lived in Pelerin 5, a neighborhood just above the hills in the capital.

“On the videos, someone with an American accent is heard yelling in English over a megaphone, ‘DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.'”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: “These reports are absolutely false.”

See Wednesday Institute for Public Accuracy news release on Haiti. Also see Twitter list on Haiti.

AMY WILENTZ, awilentz@uci.edu, @amywilentz
Wilentz is author of numerous books on Haiti including The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier and Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti. She can talk about the history of Haiti and how U.S. interventions have “inspired enmity and disgust” among the Haitian people.

See Twitter thread on U.S. interventions in Haiti.

CHRIS BERNADEL, cbernadel@protonmail.com, @Blacks4Peace
Bernadel is on the Haiti Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace; both of his parents are Haitian immigrants. See the group’s statement from Wednesday: “Will the Biden administration and other political players use this moment as the pretext for military intervention, as was done in 1915? Will interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph attempt to consolidate power under the pretext of the current state of siege? Will the Core Group find a new willing puppet, more pliable than Moïse, to bring ‘stability?'”

EMMANUELA DOUYON, [in Haiti] emmanuela.douyon@gmail.com, @emmadouyon
Douyon testified in March before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs on what Biden administration policy on Haiti should be. She said today: “Since last June, with the collective of activists, NOU PAP DOMI (We Will Not Sleep), I have been actively denouncing the increase in violence in Haiti and urging the authorities to act accordingly. A friend and fellow activist, Netty Duclaire, was killed less than a week ago along with 18 other Haitian citizens. I am mourning and now comes this terrible news.

“Never would I have imagined that the head of the country would be assassinated. If he can be assassinated in his home, who is safe in this country? Whose life matters in this country? How are we supposed to keep going and keep burying our loved ones?

“We, young activists, Petrochallengers, tried to warn the international community with the hashtag #freeHaiti but it was to no avail. We are not receiving the kind of support we need whether it’s from the UN or other countries and organizations. This partly explains why the situation keeps getting worse and we can’t see the impact of all the aid received, not to mention that because of corruption there is at least one notable case of mismanagement of aid money: the Petrocaribe scandal.

“I am shocked by the news of the assassination of former president Jovenel Moïse. This shows the extent to which violence reigns in Haiti. Justice must be served. We, the Haitian people, must stop the current political crisis and end the vicious cycle of violence.”

An NBC headline claims: “Biden defends decision to end war in Afghanistan.” Similarly, a recent New York Times headline claims: “Unlikely Coalition of Veterans Backs Biden on Ending Afghan War.”

Nick Mottern in “Biden Betrays Another Campaign Pledge — Admits that U.S. Will Continue to Bomb Afghanistan” scrutinizes comments Biden made on July 4: “When the President refers to ‘over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added,’ he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.”

Similarly, David Swanson in “Biden Defends Ending a War He’s Not Fully Ending” notes that Biden’s remarks on Thursday referred to “counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region, and act quickly and decisively if needed.”

On July 6, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby was asked for examples of continued military operations. He responded: “the way you’ve seen it being conducted in the past, through — through airstrikes.”

Late last month a petition was launched: “To: President Joe Biden — No More U.S. Air Attacks in Afghanistan” to forestall such continued war-making. See June 29 IPA news release: “Former State Dept. Officials Call on Biden to Bar ‘Over the Horizon’ Drone Attacks in Afghanistan.”

Signers of the petition include:

Matthew Hoh – Former U.S. Marine officer and resigned U.S. State Department official in Afghanistan

Kathy Kelly – Peace activist who has made 30 trips to Afghanistan and co-coordinator BanKillerDrones.org

Media contact: Nick Mottern — nickmottern@gmail.com

KIM IVES, kives15@gmail.com, @kimives13
    Ives is the English language editor for Haiti Liberté and has recently been interviewed on “Anti-Empire Project” and “Democracy Now!” and other programs following the assassination of Jovenel Moïse.

    The New York Times states: “Haitian Officials Say U.S.-Based Suspect in President’s Killing Was Seeking Power.”

    Ives states that many in Haiti assess that the assassination is linked to wealthy families in Haiti. Ives notes: “Moïse’s government had issued an arrest warrant for Reginald Boulos, perhaps the most prominent member of this sector, and was on the verge of seizing his facilities in Haiti. On top of that, the entire bourgeoisie was panicked” because of the “growing organization of armed groups in Haiti’s impoverished shantytowns. Their leader, former police officer Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier last week declared a ‘revolution’ against the bourgeoisie, saying that the people were preparing to raid their grocery stores, banks, and car dealerships.” See “Suspected Assassins of Haitian President Moïse Trained by US, Linked to Pro-Coup Oligarchy” by Dan Cohen, which quotes Ives. Ives also notes that Boulos hired a D.C. lobbyist two days before the assasination of Moïse.

    Ives also notes: “There had been dozens of protests against Jovenel Moïse over the past months, but they hardly made a blip on the mainstream media’s radar. Contrast that coverage to the hullabaloo being made about one protest in Cuba and you get an idea of how dismissive and downplaying the U.S. scribe press is toward protest against a Washington ally.”

The BBC states: “Cuba protests: Thousands rally against government as economy struggles.”

JAMES EARLY, earlytempos@gmail.com
    Early has visited Cuba many times over 45 years. He is the former Smithsonian Institution assistant secretary for education and public service and was director of its Cultural Heritage Policy Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

    He said today: “First we have to face the material reality inside Cuba — a decades-long U.S. bipartisan economic sanctions war which was intensified by Trump and continued by Biden-Harris. Cuba is especially vulnerable to this because of its dependence on limited natural resources and its own self-critical attempts to rectify its economic policy. The U.S. government economic war, despite U.S. corporate projects desirous of normal economic relations with Cuba, was designed to undermine the economy and compel the people to rise up against their elected officials. And they are elected, though their system is different from others.

    “And prior president Raúl Castro had called for more self-reflection and self-criticism to consolidate the county’s achievements over the past 60 years, and to rectify its errors and failures independent of the U.S. blockade. So, we’re seeing these protests in the U.S. media significantly orchestrated via Cuban dissidents inside and outside Cuba openly funded by the U.S. State Department. What we’re not seeing is that the current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has said that the Communist Party and the Cuban government are obligated to improve their performance in collaboration with a proactive critical citizenry. Despite the economic woes suffered by all Cubans, there is a refreshing, open critical debate mostly to improve the existing inefficiencies of the economic and political system in Cuba. ….

    “This even includes people calling for a return to corporate capitalism. What’s needed is that the Cuban people have that open debate about their own internal development. They can’t have that with the U.S. government waging an economic war or talking about some sort of interventionist humanitarian salvation. Such claims from the Biden administration are ridiculous given their backing of the brutal Colombian government or the apartheid Israeli government’s constant attacks on the Palestinians.”

    People in the U.S. should “demand that the U.S. government abandon the economic blockade and allow Cuban citizens and their government to address and resolve their own internal disputes within the frameworks and protocols established by the community of nations that overwhelmingly vote against the U. S. blockade.”

    See from UN on June 23: “UN General Assembly calls for U.S. to end Cuba embargo for 29th consecutive year.”

    See in-depth pieces and interviews with Early from The Real News with Early, including on Cuba.

Image source: Wikipedia

STAT News in “Biden’s executive order would pause a Trump rule forbidding march-in rights to lower drug costs” reports: “In a little-noticed move, the Biden administration has hit the pause button on a rule that would prevent the federal government from using a controversial legal provision for combating the high prices of products developed with taxpayer dollars.”

(Last week, STAT News reported: “Major pharmaceutical companies and trade groups helped fund the campaigns of more than 2,400 state legislators nationwide in the 2020 election.” STAT News focuses on health issues and is produced by Boston Globe Media.)

JAMES LOVE, james.love@keionline.org, @jamie_love
    Love is director Knowledge Ecology International, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization that “searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources.” KEI is focused on “social justice, particularly for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income persons and marginalized groups.”

    He said today: “The Bayh-Dole Act, passed in 1980, created a uniform policy for the management of patents on federally funded R&D. Among the provisions are some that can be used to increase competition and address abuses, such as excessive pricing. In the early 1990s, Congress pressed the federal government to curb high prices on federally funded drugs for HIV, cancer and rare diseases. In 1995, President Clinton announced he would no longer enforce reasonable pricing conditions in contracts. Since then, the NIH has rejected a number of petitions to use its rights to ‘march-in’ on patent rights, and grant licenses to generic manufacturers, when prices are excessive.

    “Universities and drug companies have lobbied aggressively and successfully for more than 20 years to prevent this from happening. There is a petition outstanding today by three prostate cancer patients for the government to grant a march-in request on Xtandi, a drug that costs $150k+ per year in the United States, and far less everywhere else. On Jan 5, 2021, NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] proposed a regulation to eliminate pricing as a grounds for a march-in request. The executive order put a hold on that provision, and now the Biden administration will have to rule on the Xtandi petition, which is before DoD. The precedent will be important for many other products.”

JAMES EARLY, early1947@aol.com
Early has visited Cuba many times over 45 years. He is the former Smithsonian Institution assistant secretary for education and public service and was director of its Cultural Heritage Policy Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

He said today: “The widely propagated U.S. media reports and images in support of public demonstrations in Cuba and criticism of the Cuban government have invited proposals to punish the Cuban government by continuing and expanding draconian Trump administration policies. This would lead to further deterioration of the already suffering national economy, heighten frustrations of Cubans across the ideological and political spectrum, and plummet the material quality of life for all Cubans caused mainly by the global pandemic and U.S. economic warfare called the ‘Cuban Embargo’ by the U.S. government, and ‘Blockade’ by Cubans. …

Early called for scrutiny of “blame pronounced in U.S. mainstream media and the threadbare standard propaganda of Democratic and Republican Party administrations” against Cuba.

He stressed that there has been more open, internal criticism within Cuba: “Contrary to President Biden’s uninformed or intentional mischaracterization of recent protests in Cuba that the Cuban government is denying the needs of its citizens to ‘enrich themselves,’ Cuban President Diaz Canal Bermudez has proactively convened government officials and Cuban citizens to assert national sovereignty and assume responsibility for informing the nation of the causes of their economic predicament, including inefficiencies in government economic plans, and explained proposals for resolving the crisis and public conflicts without external intervention. …

“We urgently call upon all U.S. citizens to demand that the Biden-Harris administration implement its campaign promise to drop Trump Cuba policy, which he said has ‘inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights,’ to restart normal diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States crafted by former presidents Barak Obama and Raul Castro, and take immediate steps to dismantle the inhumane and illegal embargo economic warfare against the Cuban people and the Cuban government.”

See in-depth pieces and interviews with Early on The Real News, including on Cuba.

Last month, UN News reported: “A total of 184 countries … voted in favour of a resolution to demand the end of the U.S. economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel voting against.”

MICHAEL BRENNAN, mryanbrennan@gmail.com, @mrbrnn
Brennan is a research fellow for The Democracy Collaborative and just published the report “Constructing the Democratic Public Bank: A Governance Proposal for the Los Angeles Public Bank.” They also published a Public Banks policy kit for the Democracy Policy Network. Last year, Brennan had an op-ed in the Washington Post on the need for public banks in response to the pandemic.

Brennan explains: “In 2019, California passed AB-857, allowing the state to charter ten local public banks. The grassroots group Public Bank Los Angeles has been organizing since 2017 to advance public banking, and legislation to create a business plan for the public bank in Los Angeles is currently pending before the City Council. In June, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance mandating a task force create the business and governance plans for a public bank, and the California State Assembly passed AB-1177, which would create a free retailing banking public option. Ten cities and counties in central California have recently passed resolutions to begin the process of creating a joint regional public bank.

“The emerging California public banks have the potential to address a host of economic, social, and ecological crises, and public banking efforts across the country are looking to California’s cities and regions to lead the way. State and local governments need public financial infrastructure to recapture the public’s money being extracted by private banks and bond investors. The economic recovery from COVID-19 must be equitable. The ongoing housing crisis demands better tools to keep tenants and the public in control of housing and real estate development. To address the climate crisis, the financial sector must embed social values beyond profit. Economic development needs a paradigm shift toward community wealth building, especially as part of strategies for reparations for Black and Indigenous peoples.

“But with public banks moving now to a question of ‘how,’ rather than ‘if,’ movements have to begin critically considering the governance design of these banks. Because banking, finance, and policymaking are intentionally obscure and technocratic terrains, ensuring the new public banks are designed to address these crises requires ongoing popular education and engagement.”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052@gmail.com, @richards1052
Silverstein is an independent journalist and researcher writing about Israeli foreign policy and covert operations. He writes the Tikun Olam blog and contributes to Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye, and Jacobin magazine.

He just wrote the piece “NSO Group Targets 50,000 Cell Phone Numbers in 50 Countries: Heads of State, Cabinet Ministers, Diplomats, Security Officials.” He also recently wrote the piece “Israeli Cyber-Mercenary Company, Candiru, Exposed as New Global Rights Threat.”

He said today: “Two major media exposes in the New York Times and Washington Post have shone a light on the damage done by Israeli cyber-hacking companies to human rights around the world. The Post story, published in collaboration with Amnesty International’s Pegasus Project, details a massive corporate spying campaign by the world’s largest such company, NSO Group, targeting 50,000 cell phones located in 50 countries. At its heart is the most sophisticated cyber-malware product on the world market, Pegasus.

“Among those targeted were heads of state, cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military-security officials. The articles indicate that the NSO client state Saudi Arabia had infected the phones of a close associate of murdered journalist, Jamal Khasoggi, his ex-wife, and his fiance. The electronic device of a Mexican journalist was hacked less than two weeks before his murder.

“As it faces a major lawsuit from Whatsapp, which was compromised by an exploit created by NSO, the company is mounting an aggressive defense including creating an ethics panel meant to whitewash the moral and ethical lapses for which the technology is responsible. Members of the panel included former Obama administration officials including Julie Kayyem and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro. It has also hired a major D.C. lobbying firm and one of Washington’s leading libel lawyers in an effort to cajole or intimidate its critics into silence.

“These reports prove that this industry must be regulated by U.S. legislation and/or international treaty. Cyber-hacking on this scale is an incredibly lucrative business in which the more dangerous the technology, the more money is to be made. If restraints aren’t imposed, the damage could spread exponentially in coming years.”

CommonDreams reports: “Outrage as Biden Says Fate of Immigration Reform Is ‘For the Parliamentarian to Decide.’”

AVIVA CHOMSKY, achomsky@salemstate.edu
    Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her new book is Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration.

    She just wrote the piece “Migration Is Not the Crisis: What Washington Could Really Do in Central America” for TomDispatch: “Earlier this month, a Honduran court found David Castillo, a U.S.-trained former Army intelligence officer and the head of an internationally financed hydroelectric company, guilty of the 2016 murder of celebrated Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. His company was building a dam that threatened the traditional lands and water sources of the Indigenous Lenca people. For years, Cáceres and her organization, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH, had led the struggle to halt that project. It turned out, however, that Cáceres’s international recognition — she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 — couldn’t protect her from becoming one of the dozens of Latin American Indigenous and environmental activists killed annually.

    “Yet when President Joe Biden came into office with an ambitious ‘Plan for Security and Prosperity in Central America,’ he wasn’t talking about changing policies that promoted big development projects against the will of local inhabitants. Rather, he was focused on a very different goal: stopping migration. His plan, he claimed, would address its ‘root causes.’ Vice President Kamala Harris was even blunter when she visited Guatemala, instructing potential migrants: ‘Do not come.'”As it happens, more military and private development aid of the sort Biden’s plan calls for (and Harris boasted about) won’t either stop migration or help Central America. It’s destined, however, to spark yet more crimes like Cáceres’s murder. There are other things the United States could do that would aid Central America. The first might simply be to stop talking about trying to end migration. …

    “It’s true that Central America is indeed plagued by poverty, violence, and corruption, but if Biden were willing to look at the root causes of his root causes, he might notice that his aren’t the solutions to such problems, but their source. …

    “We could undo the harmful provisions of the 2005 Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Yes, Central American governments beholden to Washington did sign on to it, but that doesn’t mean that the agreement benefited the majority of the inhabitants in the region. In reality, what CAFTA did was throw open Central American markets to U.S. agricultural exports, in the process undermining the livelihoods of small farmers there. …”

Pedro Castillo of the Free Peru party, which is both socialist and Marxist, has been declared Peru’s president-elect. He is a former teacher and son of peasant farmers.

In “Chile Stocks Surge as Communist Knocked Out of Presidential Race” Bloomberg reports: “Chilean assets bucked a global sell-off after a communist presidential hopeful unexpectedly lost a primary vote before the country’s November election, making room for a more moderate candidate to move forward. One-time student protest leader Gabriel Boric won the far-left vote with 60.4 percent of support, beating Communist Party candidate Daniel Jadue, a front-runner who had spooked financial markets with calls for radical economic reform.”

CARLOS GARRIDO, carlos.garrido@siu.edu, @MarxMidwest
    A Cuban American currently in Miami, Garrido is an editorial board member and co-founder of the Journal of American Socialist Studies and Midwestern Marx, which, among other things, produces podcasts. A graduate student at Southern Illinois University, he was just on a podcast titled “Hands Off Cuba,” which highlighted continuous attacks on Cuba by the U.S. governemnt. See “USAID shells out $2.6 million for Cuba projects” and other reports from the Cuba Money Project. Also see AP story from 2014: “U.S. co-opted Cuba’s hip-hop scene to spark change.”

Last month Garrido co-hosted a podcast “The Struggle for Socialism in Peru: An Interview with Peruvian Intellectual Sebastian León.”

Garrido recently wrote the piece “A Marxist Analysis of the New Socialist Tide in Latin America” for The International. Garrido notes that about 20 years ago, there was a “Pink Tide” of left-wing victories in Latin America, but was followed by right-wing governments: “Brazil saw the emergence of Michel Termer after the illegitimate, U.S. backed impeachment of Dilma Rousseff — this, along with the imprisonment of Lula [da Silva], was a precondition for the 2018 electoral victory of Jair Bolsonaro and neofascism in Brazil. Along with this we have Peronist Cristina Fernández’s loss in Argentina (2015); the loss of socialist president Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2018); the turn towards neoliberalism of Lenín Moreno (2018); the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia (2019); and more. In all of these cases,” Garrido argues, the U.S. government helped play a critical role in turning back the leftist victories.

Garrido argues that left-wing governments therefore are “working on borrowed time” if they do nothing “to change the fundamental bourgeois nature of the existing state apparatuses.” This includes meaningful changes to the “liberal-democratic electoral processes, the legal institutions, the military, the police.”

CommonDreams reports: “Sanders, Lee, and Murphy Slam Biden Administration’s First Drone Strike in Somalia.” It also reports: “‘A Huge Outrage’: Senate Panel Approves $25 Billion Pentagon Budget Increase.”

Politico reports in “Welcome to Joe Biden’s Somalia war“: “On Tuesday, U.S. Africa Command [AFRICOM] chief Gen. Stephen Townsend authorized a single drone strike against al-Shabaab militants attacking an American-trained elite Somali force known as the Danab. While no U.S. troops accompanied the Somalis during the operation near Galkayo, Pentagon spokesperson Cindi King told NatSec Daily that Townsend has the authority under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter ‘to conduct collective self-defense of partner forces.'”

In February, Biden bombed Syria, see Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Biden Bombing Syria: ‘Illegal.’”

ABDI SAMATAR, [currently in Mogadishu] samat001@umn.edu
    Available for a limited number of interviews, Samatar is professor and chair of the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota.

    Samatar recently wrote the piece “Somalia’s toxic political and security order: the death knell of democracy” for The Conversation: “In 2006, after a decade-and-a-half of cruel civil war, the Union of Islamic Courts, a homegrown alliance of religious leaders, terminated 15 years of warlords’ terror and tyranny. They pacified Mogadishu and surrounding areas and were about to set up local administration for the city and the surrounding settlements.
“But the initiative was short-lived. The international community, led by the U.S., reversed this local initiative, and empowered a government dominated by warlords.

    “U.S. (and foreign) influence was further consolidated after 2008 — the year Washington listed Al-Shabaab as a terrorist organisation. Since then, the U.S. and its allies have spent billions of dollars on illusive security and superficial development that has failed to improve the capacity of Somalis to take charge of their future.”

    Vice just published the piece: “U.S. Airstrikes Have Torn Somali Families Apart. They’re Still Seeking Justice.” See their reporting on AFRICOM.

    See Institute for Public Accuracy news release from last year on AFRICOM: “U.S. Bombings in Africa: Why Are People Unaware?“

During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden said he would “go back” to the Barack Obama policy of engagement with Cuba, but late last week, rather than easing the additional sanctions Donald Trump put on Cuba, he added even more of his own.

Said Biden: “This is just the beginning — the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people.”

JAMES EARLY, early1947@aol.com
Early has visited Cuba many times over 45 years. He is the former Smithsonian Institution assistant secretary for education and public service and was director of its Cultural Heritage Policy Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He is currently a board member at the Institute for Policy Studies — see his articles on Cuba and socialism on their website.

Early positively noted the recent statement from Black Lives Matter on Cuba.

He said today: “More sanctions is another step into deepening draconian Trump Cuba policy, another step into betrayal of Biden-Harris Cuba campaign policy, which attracted many progressive and democratic socialist votes in line with large public support to renew the progress of Barack Obama-Raul Castro full diplomatic relations. It’s a blatant unilateral dismissal of the overwhelming global UN vote to dismantle the embargo, further highlighting the U.S. as a ‘rogue state.’ Expansion of sanctions on individual governance figures does not give relief to the Cuban people and encourages the U.S. Cuban interventionist rightwing in South Florida who are pushing Biden-Harris further into 60 years of failed Cuba diplomacy.” Early argued that Biden’s actions indicated “that progressive voters should seek alternative candidates in 2022 and 2024 that will keep promises” to voters and supporters and back “policies to dismantle sanctions and the embargo and join the rest of the world in working out differences with Cuba through legal UN accords.”

Last month, 184 countries called for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, with only the U.S. and Israel voting in the negative.

Monday morning, the U.S. State Department released a statement with several other countries including Israel, Kosovo, Brazil, Colombia and Ukraine joining in condemning the Cuban government’s treatment of protesters. “They exercised universal freedoms of expression and assembly, rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” the statement read. In fact, the U.S. government is in constant transgression against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

CHIP GIBBONS, chip@rightsanddissent.org, @RightsDissent
    Gibbons is policy director with the group Defending Rights & Dissent which has done extensive work in the case of Daniel Hale, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He participated in the U.S. drone program, working with both the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

    Gibbons has said: “Hale’s crime is exposing the human rights abuses of U.S. drone strikes, including that during a given time period nearly 90 percent of those killed by drone strikes were not the intended target.”

    Gibbons said today: “Daniel Hale’s prosecution, like all prosecutions of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, was a political prosecution. Hale was prosecuted not because he leaked classified information — such leaks are routine in Washington — but by exposing civilian casualties he contradicted official U.S. policy pronouncements about its global assassination program. …

    “The prosecution made it clear that by seeking an unprecedentedly harsh sentence they were seeking to chill other whistleblowers from coming forward to the press. Hale’s disclosures did not damage U.S. national security, but his prosecution damaged U.S. democracy.

    “Hale’s disclosure also included information about the U.S. watch list, which since released, has been used by CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] to challenge the No Fly List. While Hale’s attorneys are requesting a sentence of 12 to 18 months, the prosecution are asking for a sentence of seven to nine years. Such a sentence would be the longest sentence ever given to a whistleblower who gave information to the media in a civilian court. As part of his sentencing, Hale penned a letter to the judge explaining how witnessing the gruesome human cost of drone strikes, as well as Obama’s pronouncements that precautions were taken to protect civilians, led him to seek to expose the true nature of U.S. drone warfare. Prosecutions under the Espionage Act were once rare, but became the norm under the Obama and Trump administrations. The use of the Espionage Act against journalists’ sources has been roundly condemned by press freedom advocates.”

    A copy of Hale’s letter to the judge and other material is available at StandWithDanielHale.org.

MALIKA CONNER, malika@righttocounselnyc.org, @RTCNYC
Director of organizing for Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, Conner said today: “The CDC eviction moratorium set to expire July 31 doesn’t go far enough to protect tenants: It stops landlords from evicting only some tenants and doesn’t prevent landlords from suing. It also prioritizes landlords’ profits over tenants’ needs by requiring tenants to pay what little money they have towards rent.

“The current eviction protections in New York State, enacted through the COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act (CEEFPA), protects most tenants from eviction, but only if they submit a hardship declaration form. These state protections are set to expire on August 31 and must absolutely be extended to prevent a health and homelessness crisis.

“Neither of these so-called moratoriums stop landlords from suing tenants wholesale, which is a serious cause of anxiety and stress for tenants and puts hundreds of thousands of families in immediate risk of eviction when they expire.

“Right now, despite these protections, there are more than 236,000 households across New York State with eviction cases in Housing Court. During the pandemic alone, landlords sued more than 65,000 tenants for eviction. That’s a nearly 40 percent increase in eviction cases since March 2020 and tens of thousands of families at risk of losing their homes.

“We cannot let these protections expire while New Yorkers are still reeling from the pandemic. Many tenants are without work, are struggling to pay for necessities like food and healthcare, and continue to endure poor living conditions in apartments neglected by landlords throughout, and even before, the pandemic. A recent study by UCLA also found that the number of coronavirus cases and deaths ‘increased dramatically’ in states where eviction moratoriums had been lifted.

“Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature must act now to stop mass evictions. The CEEFPA must be strengthened and extended beyond August 31st so all tenants are protected. Along with its many horrors, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us some important lessons. One of those lessons is that we can never again accept the routine inhumanity of the housing court eviction machine. Allowing the eviction protections to expire is simply not an option and will quickly reel us back to overcrowded, superspreader housing courts and families facing homelessness.”

BASAV SEN, basav@ips-dc.org, @BasavIPS
Sen is director of the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. He just wrote the piece “Biden should reject the infrastructure plan written by Exxon and invest in saving the climate instead” for MarketWatch, which states: “Recently, Exxon Mobil [XOM, -1.18%] lobbyists were caught on video bragging about stripping renewable energy from the infrastructure proposal and turning the package into a ‘highway bill’ — with $109 billion for the highway infrastructure that perpetuates the captive market for Exxon’s products.

    “The lobbyists revealed that they specifically targeted 11 senators for lobbying — including several Democrats who signed on to the bipartisan deal.

“They backed that lobbying with plenty of campaign cash — a total of $333,000 from Exxon and its hired guns over the last decade to just the six Democrats that Exxon targeted. So it was for a very good reason that the bipartisan deal has been ridiculed on social media as the #ExxonPlan.”

In 2019, the Hollywood Reporter wrote: “David Clennon, an Emmy-winning U.S. actor with more than four decades of work across film and TV, has revealed that he turned down an audition for a new Netflix series from the makers of hit Israeli show ‘Fauda’ because of his support for Palestinian rights.”

Now, Clennon has escalated the issue, providing spoilers to undermine the Netflix series, risking lawsuits.

He is working with Jewish Voice for Peace/Los Angeles in calling on viewers to boycott “Apartheid TV,” especially in its most recent incarnation, Netflix’s “Hit and Run,” a U.S./Israeli co-production.

“Hit and Run’s” Israeli partners were behind the series “Fauda,” a Netflix commercial success, which was based on the premise that Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land is necessary and justified. “Fauda” was, Clennon notes, “widely criticized for its racist portrayal of Palestinians, and for its message that Palestinian resistance to occupation is illegitimate.”

The call by Clennon and Jewish Voice for Peace marks the opening of a new front in the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel: Hollywood.

Clennon just wrote a piece revealing narrative plot points in the “Hit and Run” series, in order “to encourage viewers to focus on the racism and violence inherent in Israeli domination of Palestine.”

He hopes that the revelation of plot twists will “undermine the suspense which the creators of this U.S./Israeli series are trying to build, in order to keep viewers engaged.” Clennon’s new piece is entitled, “For Justice in Palestine, Boycott Netflix’s Apartheid TV: ‘Hit and Run.’”

Clennon is aware that his revelations, also known as “spoilers,” could leave him “vulnerable to lawsuits by Netflix, as well as by the U.S. and Israeli producers of the series.”

He also states that any film or television company that might hire him in the future “could be punished under California’s anti-BDS law, AB2844.”

Working with Clennon is the Jewish Voice for Peace/LA Education and Visibility Committee which has organized online boycott-awareness programs, and, before the pandemic, multiple street demonstrations and vigils.

Available for a limited number of interviews:

DAVID CLENNON, djjc123@earthlink.net

  The actor David Clennon has also written about how various media images are manipulated. Earlier this year, he wrote the pieces “Hollywood’s New Blackface” and “How Hollywood Neuters the 60s: Sorkin’s ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ Sentences American Radicalism to Oblivion.”

Craig Murray — a former British ambassador who has become a journalist — has been imprisoned on the charge of “jigsaw identification.” Murray and others charge that he was targeted for his anti-establishment political stances including his exposing British and U.S. complicity with torture in Uzbekistan, where he was ambassador, and for his outspoken defense of Wikileaks founder Jullian Assange.

Scottish PEN noted the prosecution was without recent precedent, expressing “grave concern over the imprisonment of Craig Murray and calls for his release. The writer is the first person to be imprisoned in Scotland for media contempt for over 70 years. We fear this ruling will have a chilling effect on reporting and free expression.”

JOHN PILGER, jpilger2003@yahoo.co.uk, @johnpilger
    Pilger is a longtime, award-winning journalist who has written several books and produced dozens of documentaries. He noted that the ruling against Murray drew a distinction between the actions of establishment outlets and those of independent journalists or bloggers: “The truly shocking jailing of Craig Murray means that journalists approved by the state are protected and those who challenge power — real journalism — are in grave danger.” See recent piece by Jonathan Cook: “Craig Murray’s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism.”

    Mohamed Elmaazi broke down several aspects of the case in May, following the original ruling and before Murray’s appeal was recently denied, in the article: “Whistleblower Craig Murray Sentenced To 8 Months In Prison Over His Reporting on Former Scottish First Minister’s Trial“: “A three-judge panel determined on March 25, 2021 — following a two-hour trial in January — that information published by Murray in a number of his blog posts was likely to lead indirectly to people being able to identify witnesses in [former Scottish First Minister Alex] Salmond’s sexual assault trial. This process, known as ‘jigsaw identification,’ refers to the possibility that a person may piece together information from various sources to arrive at the identification of a protected witness. … Salmond was acquitted by a jury on all 14 counts of sexual harassment and assault brought against him. However, that fact was considered irrelevant by the court when deciding the contempt of court case against Murray. Before Salmond was tried in March 2020, evidence had already emerged of a potential conspiracy against the former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP).”

    Hugh Kerr, a former vice chair of Scottish Executive Council of the National Union of Journalists, was a Labour Party Member of the European Parliament before he joined the SNP. He told Elmaazi that he considered both the verdict and the sentence in Murray’s case to be “disgraceful.”

    “Craig Murray has compiled a remarkable record of courage and integrity in exposing crimes of state and working to bring them to an end,” Professor Noam Chomsky stated, contending Murray “fully merits our deep respect and support for his achievements.”

    Murray put out a statement which was noted by the support group Craig Murray Justice before being imprisoned on Sunday: “I believe this is actually the state’s long-sought revenge for my whistleblowing on security service collusion with torture and my long term collaboration with Wikileaks and other whistleblowers. Unfortunately, important free speech issues are collateral damage.”

MICHAEL BROWN, michael@electronicintifada.net, @intifada
Brown just wrote the piece “Israel lobby helps Shontel Brown defeat Nina Turner” for the Electronic Intifada.

Kirk A. Bado notes that Democratic Majority for Israel “has spent more opposing Nina Turner than nearly all other outside spending combined.”

Brown notes that in March Shontel Brown “tweeted her thanks to the pro-Israel organization for its endorsement, noting that ‘the US and Israel have a solid and unbreakable bond with shared democratic values and common interests.’ …

“Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have stated this year that Israel commits the crime of apartheid in all the territories it controls.

“Mark Mellman, the CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, said just before the primary that Turner is an ‘implacable foe of Israel and a potential leader of the anti-Israel movement.’

“His PAC — political action committee — raised well over $1 million for Brown.

“DMFI board member Archie Gottesman received considerable criticism earlier this year when a genocide-promoting tweet of hers calling to ‘burn’ all of Gaza came to light. She retained her board seat with an unconvincing apology.”

See from The Intercept in July by Matthew Cunningham-Cook: “Oil and Gas Heir Funding Super PAC Attacking Nina Turner” which reported that “Samson Energy’s chair has donated $1.25 million to the Democratic Majority for Israel super PAC, which endorsed Turner’s opponent Shontel Brown.”

RICARDO VALADEZ, CARTER DOUGHERTY, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org,  @RealBankReform
    Valadez is private equity campaign manager at Americans for Financial Reform and Dougherty is communications director for the organization.

    The group just put out a statement: “Wall Street private equity is sometimes called the ‘billionaire factory,’ but that doesn’t stop these already-rich folks from trying to get their hands on taxpayer money. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, private equity lined up to get money from CARES Act — and succeeded. Then, only strong public pressure kept it out of the Biden rescue legislation. More recently, only fighting by Democrats and progressives kept them out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

    “Now private equity is going to try to feed at the public trough again in the coming infrastructure legislation that Democrats want to pass via reconciliation. That will be yet another fight with Wall Street in the fall, even as progressive lawmakers prepare for a broad reform of private equity known as the Stop Wall Street Looting Act.

    “Private equity (they used to be called leveraged buyouts) is a nasty Wall Street invention whose influence has exploded in the last decade. They buy profitable companies, mostly with debt that the company has to pay back. They sell off valuable assets, lay off workers, create business disasters, and too often, bankruptcies. Payless Shoes and Toys ‘R’ Us both went belly up at the hands of private equity. Solarwinds, the firm behind the massive hack of U.S. government agencies, was also private equity’s work. Take a look at this two-minute video from AFR to learn more.”

The Des Moines Register recently published the piece: “Jessica Reznicek is no terrorist. But the longtime activist is going to serve time as one.”

Reznicek is scheduled to start her prison sentence on Wednesday.

Common Dreams reported recently in “As Big Oil Execs Roam Free, Climate Activist Gets 8 Years in Prison,” that “Environmentalists in recent days expressed outrage over the eight-year prison sentence handed to Jessica Reznicek — a nonviolent water protector who pleaded guilty to damaging equipment at the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa — while calling the fossil fuel companies who knowingly caused the climate emergency the real criminals who should be held to account.

“United States District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger last week sentenced Jessica Reznicek to eight years behind bars, $3,198,512.70 in restitution, and three years’ post-prison supervised release after the 39-year-old activist pleaded guilty to a single count of damaging an energy facility. In September 2019 Reznicek and 31-year-old Ruby Montoya were each indicted on nine federal charges including damaging an energy facility, use of fire in the commission of a felony, and malicious use of fire. Each of the women faced up to 110 years in prison. Montoya has yet to be sentenced.”

“How many years do you think ANY fossil fuel CEO will serve for knowingly destroying our planet’s climate?” tweeted 350 Tacoma in response to Reznicek’s sentencing.

ALEX COHEN, freejessicareznicek@gmail.com, @freejessrez
    Cohen is part of the SupportJessicaReznicek.com coalition, which just released a petition signed by dozens of groups, including Extinction Rebellion New Orleans, Des Moines Catholic Worker, Sunflower Alliance and Veterans For Peace.

    The petition criticizes the “dangerous legal precedent” of applying “domestic terrorism enhancement” to Reznicek case. “The terrorism enhancement doubled Jessica’s sentence and unless changed could have frightening consequences for anyone seeking to protect the environment from corporate destruction.”

DAPHNE WYSHAM, Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, @methaneaction
Wysham is CEO of Methane Action which just released a statement: “New IPCC report includes methane removal as part of the path to containing climate change.”

The group says: “Scientists whose work on methane is cited in the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change welcome the report’s recognition of methane as a key driver of climate change, and its acknowledgement that emerging methods of removing methane from the atmosphere may be necessary to limit global warming.”

“Methane has emerged as the critical greenhouse gas to be tackled this decade, and [Monday’s] IPCC report affirms that,” said Wysham, CEO of the NGO Methane Action, which is working to identify solutions that can rapidly reduce atmospheric methane concentrations.

This year dozens of leading climate scientists and atmospheric chemists signed a letter spearheaded by Methane Action “recogniz[ing] the need to reduce concentrations of climate forcing agents already in the atmosphere, including methane.” See the group’s latest statement, which includes analysis by associated scientists, available for interviews.

A one-off 99 percent levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic “could pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide a $20,000 cash grant to all unemployed workers,” according to new analysis released today by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires. The organizations are calling on governments to tax the ultra wealthy who profited from the pandemic crisis to help offset its costs.

CHUCK COLLINS, NJOKI NJEHU, MORRIS PEARL, via Olivia Alperstein, olivia@ips-dc.org
Pearl, a former managing director at Blackrock and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, said: “The surge in global billionaire wealth as millions of people have lost their lives and livelihoods is a sickness that countries can no longer bear.”

Njehu, Pan Africa Coordinator of the Fight Inequality Alliance, said: “We need to tax the rich for us to stand any chance of reversing the inequality crisis we’re in.”

Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org.

He just wrote the piece “Global Billionaires See $5.5 Trillion Pandemic Wealth Surge,” which states: “The world’s billionaires have seen their wealth surge by over $5.5 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, a gain of over 68 percent. The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 18, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes. …

“The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed over 200 million people into poverty, according to estimates by World Bank researchers.

“United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments to ‘consider a solidarity or wealth tax on those who have profited during the pandemic, to reduce extreme inequalities.’ The IMF and the World Bank have also called for wealth taxes to help cover the costs of COVID-19.

“Argentina has collected 223 billion pesos (around $2.4 billion) from its one-off pandemic wealth tax.”

“America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel’s Nukes” by Peter Beinart in Wednesday’s New York Times states: “American politicians sometimes say an Iranian bomb would pose an ‘existential’ threat to Israel. That’s a dubious claim, given that Israel possesses a nuclear deterrent it can deploy on air, land and sea. But many Americans find the claim plausible because, according to recent polling conducted by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, barely 50 percent know Israel has nuclear weapons. A higher percentage thinks Tehran has the bomb.”

SAM HUSSEINI, samhusseini@gmail.com, @samhusseini
An independent journalist now writing at Substack, Husseini has questioned numerous U.S. officials who have refused to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. See “The Absurd U.S. Stance on Israel’s Nukes: A Video Sampling of Denial.” He notes that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had a piece shortly before Biden became president: “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons: The cover-up has to stop — and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.” Husseini is also senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Grant Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and has written extensively on U.S. policy on Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal including the piece “Challenging the secret ‘Israel Nuclear Weapons Gag Order’ WNP-136.”

Smith notes of the Beinart piece: “The key point is missed: If the U.S. acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons, it also acknowledges it has been supplying unlawful foreign aid to Israel since the mid-1970’s.” Grant estimates this totals nearly $300 billion.

Last year he wrote letters to several members of Congress who have voiced criticism of Israel, noting: “I believe your coalition has far more influence on the matter of foreign aid than it may realize. In 2016 and 2017 we sued the administration(s) over violations of the Arms Export Control Act, but did not prevail for lack of standing. Your coalition does not have such issues.”

See IPA news release: “Could Congress Cut off Funding to Israel by Acknowledging its Nuclear Weapons?“

ANDREW COCKBURN, amcockburn@gmail.com, @andrewmcockburn
Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, Cockburn recently wrote the piece “How the U.S. military got rich from Afghanistan” for The Spectator. He is author of the soon to be released book The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine. He also wrote the piece “The Long Shadow of a Neocon” about Zalmay Khalilzad, architect of the Doha agreement with the Taliban “who originally set up the Afghan ‘government’ to fail.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle said today: “The entire U.S. foreign policy and military establishment have proven themselves to be completely bankrupt. Not that they will learn any lessons from this. They learned nothing after the Vietnam War. Indeed, they learned the wrong lessons: ‘Shock and Awe’ as well as how to control the media.”

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net, @MatthewPHoh
Hoh resigned in protest from his State Department position in Afghanistan in 2009 over the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama administration. He recently wrote the pieces “What critics of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan get wrong” for CNN and “A Cruel and Unjust Peace for Afghanistan” for Newsweek.

He said today: “With the Taliban taking power, primarily through deals with warlords in the government, we may now witness a significant reduction in the cycle of violence. Perhaps with violence coming to an end, or even just declining, Afghanistan can have a chance to rebuild and reconcile.

“For example, 70 percent of Afghans live on less than one dollar a day. … Now with the chance for a break in the cycle of violence, there may be an opportunity for reconstruction and reconciliation.

“This outcome was not inevitable. The only thing that made it so was the United States’ insistence on military victory through three presidents. Up until September 2018, the United States never once considered any negotiations with the Taliban that were not otherwise a call for the Taliban surrender. Donald Trump’s negotiations were, of course, conducted for his own political purposes and the aggrandizement of his ego. Through all of this the Afghan people have suffered, which is why ‘concern’ from politicians, pundits and media in the U.S. over the fate of the Afghans is hollow and hypocritical.” Hoh also raises issues regarding the nature of deal making between the Taliban and the U.S. government, issues surrounding the drug trade and how surveillance using Pegasus is being used in Afghanistan.

NICK MOTTERN, nickmottern@gmail.com
Mottern is with the group Ban Killer Drones, which just released a statement calling on the U.S. government to “immediately cease bombing Afghanistan to ensure the most peaceful transition in Afghanistan possible.

“The U.S. bombing campaign over the last several weeks has been enabled by the use of killer drones for direct attack and for guiding bombing by manned aircraft in what has been termed by the Biden Administration ‘over the horizon’ air assault to shore up the now evaporated Afghan government. …

“This latest use of drones comes after years of U.S. drone slaughter and terrorization in Afghanistan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as many as 10,000 Afghans may have been killed by U.S. drones since 2004, more people by far than killed by U.S. drones in any other country. …

“Ban Killer Drones is organizing, and encouraging others to organize, protests against further U.S. air attacks against Afghanistan at U.S. drone control centers and other military facilities on, or about, Friday, August 20, 2021.” Also, see the recent piece “Biden Must Call Off the B-52s Bombing Afghan Cities.”

NATO has called an “Extraordinary Meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs” in Brussels for Friday.

DAVID GIBBS, dgibbs@email.arizona.edu
Available for interviews beginning Friday morning, Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona and has published extensively on foreign intervention in Afghanistan since the 1980s. Most recently, see his “Afghanistan and the Politics of Quagmire: A Retrospective Analysis of U.S. Policy,” [PDF], a chapter in the book Rebuilding Afghanistan from 2019. Gibbs documents much of the history of outside intervention in Afghanistan, including little-known U.S., Pakistani and Iranian (under the Shah) operations in the early 1970s, which began Afghanistan’s instability.

He notes that former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski under Jimmy Carter (in a 1998 interview) boasted that the U.S. government’s backing of the Mujahideen fighters allegedly brought down the Soviet Union even though it led to the Taliban taking over the country.

Gibbs, author of the book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, published by Vanderbilt University Press, has also scrutinized the pattern of NATO’s conduct beyond Afghanistan.

He has said that NATO’s “record on global security has been disastrous, especially with regard to its efforts at interventionism and regime change. Its 1999 bombing of Serbia and Kosovo greatly augmented the scale of atrocities and ethnic cleansing. The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya was even more disastrous, triggering a generalized destabilization of the whole North African region. And more recently, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe has contributed to rising tensions between the West and Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s principal legacy has been to generate global insecurity and destabilization — all at great expense to taxpayers.”

See IPA news release from earlier this week: “Afghanistan: * War Profits * Vietnam II * Crocodile Tears * U.S. Bombing.”

GRAEME MACQUEEN, dgmacqueen@gmail.com
Author of The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, MacQueen just wrote an in-depth piece updating his findings for the forthcoming issue of CovertAction Magazine.

The first anthrax letters were mailed about a week after the 9/11 attacks and continued for weeks. MacQueen notes that it was during this period that the war in Afghanistan was launched.

“First, al-Qaeda was the chief suspect. Then Iraq was added to the suspect list.”

MacQueen notes that Brian Ross of “ABC News went so far as to claim repeatedly that the spores in the attack letters had been coated in bentonite — the Iraqi method of weaponization.” Ross’s anonymous government sources who claimed Iraq was the culprit were shown to be lying, but ABC still protects their identity.

During this same period the Patriot Act was passed. Senators Daschle and Leahy, who had been raising concerns about the Patriot Act, became targets of anthrax letters.

“By the end of 2001, however, all stories of foreign terrorists had collapsed. The nature of the spore preparations revealed the operation as an inside job — the spores came from one of three possible labs, all inside the U.S. and serving the military and the CIA.

“The events were also a false flag attack, since great care had been taken to deceptively pin the attacks on foreign Muslims.” The letters had “Death to America” “Death to Israel” and “Praise to Allah” written on them.

“Once the foreign Muslim story collapsed, the FBI got busy looking for a lone wolf perpetrator on whom to put the blame. The Bureau eventually settled on Dr. Bruce Ivins, an anthrax researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Ivins died, allegedly by suicide, shortly before the attempt was to be made to indict him.”

In 2008, Leahy, one of the targets of the attacks, told then-FBI head Robert Mueller who claimed that deceased government scientist Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator: “I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people.” In 2010, President Obama threatened to veto a move to investigate the anthrax attacks.

MacQueen notes that in 2015 Richard Lambert, who was for some years the Inspector in Charge of the FBI’s anthrax investigation charged that “while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people.”

MacQueen has appeared on past IPA news releases: “Disinformation and Anthrax Mailings” and “Anthrax: Lawsuit Alleges FBI Hiding Evidence.” See documentary “Anthrax War” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “The Passionate Eye.” Also see the minidoc “American Anthrax.”

Now retired, MacQueen was director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
After a U.S. government drone strike in Afghanistan, many cheered. On Sunday, Charlie Savage of the New York Times wrote: “The U.S. clearly has remarkable intelligence line of sight into ISIS-K right now.”

Today, the Washington Post reports: “10 civilians, including children, reported killed in U.S. drone strike; rockets fired at Kabul airport.”

Biden had vowed to “hunt down” those responsible for the Kabul airport attack, with his press secretary Jennifer Psaki explaining: “I think he made clear yesterday that he does not want them to live on the Earth anymore.”

Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle said today the entire enterprise was illegal: “Retaliation is not self-defense under international law, but only more aggression.”

On Aug. 16, Boyle was warning: “U.S. forces at the Kabul Airport remind me of the Marines at the Beirut Airport who were blown up — sitting ducks.” Boyle had worked with members of Congress to prevent the disaster in Beirut, urging them to force then-President Reagan to withdraw the Marines using the War Powers Resolution. Boyle has noted: “Unfortunately, a ‘compromise’ was struck and predictably led to disaster with the Marine barracks bombing.” See New York Times report from Sept. 21, 1983: “Congress And Reagan Back Compromise On War Powers Keeping Marines In Lebanon.”

Also, see: “Did the U.S. Support the Growth of ISIS-K?” by Alex Rubinstein.

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan@earthlink.net, @ColeenRowley
A former FBI special agent and division counsel, Rowley famously wrote a May 2002 memo to then FBI Director Robert Mueller exposing some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 conduct. She was then named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year.”

She said today: “Already on the day of September 11, 2001, some of us insiders knew some agonizing truth, that the horrible terrorist attacks of that day could have been easily prevented if FBIHQ had just read, shared and acted on the memos addressed to officials there. But I didn’t know the half of it that day, that other agencies like the CIA actually knew much more as their agents had been monitoring the meetings and developments of key Al Qaeda figures for a couple of years prior but were keeping that intelligence secret even from other counter-terrorism agencies. Most importantly the CIA hid the fact from the FBI until it was too late that they knew Al Qaeda terrorists (who would become 9-11 aircraft hijackers and suicide pilots) were already in the country. Along with all the prior info they kept secret, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet had been briefed with a ‘Fundamentalist Learns to Fly’ PowerPoint weeks before the attacks. (He later could not explain why as head of all U.S. national security intelligence, he still took no action.)

“Even worse, instead of coming to grips with this truth that would have enabled speedy solutions to these relatively easy-to-fix administrative problems/flubs that mostly involved lack of information sharing (what the 9-11 Commission termed ‘failure to connect the dots’), massive cover-ups ensued after 9-11. Nearly all U.S. political figures and other officials in Washington would bury the truth, fight accountability and even lie in order to institute their pre-determined agendas, long planned to commence after a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ pretext. So without dissent and no truth, the misbegotten, counter-productive ‘global war on terrorism’ was immediately launched that served as fig leaf for actual, successive wars on Mideastern countries beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq, bloody wars that would take the lives of millions but had no chance of reducing terrorism or spreading democracy, wars that would destabilize the entire region, vastly increase extremist massacres and sprout new terrorist groups like hydras but would fill the coffers of the military industrial complex’s war profiteers.”

Philip Shenon, who was a New York Times reporter for many years and wrote the bestseller The Commission recently stated of Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 commission: “I’d argue he was more influential than several of the 10 commissioners when it came to writing the final report. At the end of the investigation, many staffers felt their most important and controversial conclusions were not reflected in the report’s findings, especially when it came to demanding accountability in the Bush administration for the intelligence failures that led to 9/11. That was also true about the evidence of possible Saudi government ties to the conspiracy. The choice of an executive director — to run the day-to-day investigation — is vital. … Zelikow was close to Condi Rice and had been on the Bush administration’s White House transition team in 2000, with responsibility for national-security issues. That still astonishes me.”

AP reported in June on calls for “a full-blown investigation” of the pandemic crisis “by a national commission like the one that looked into 9/11.” The article notes that a “privately sponsored team” is “already laying the groundwork for one.” Zelikow, now at the University of Virginia, is “leading the planning group.”

LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, lkoshgarian@nationalpriorities.org, @lindsaykosh
    Program director of the National Priorities Project, Koshgarian is co-author of the just released report: “State of Insecurity: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11,” which states: “Over the 20 years since 9/11, the U.S. has spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarization.

    “Of that total, $16 trillion went to the military — including at least $7.2 trillion for military contracts.

    “Another $3 trillion went to veterans’ programs, $949 billion went to Homeland Security, and $732 billion went to federal law enforcement. …

    “Spending on the DoD totaled $14 trillion over the last 20 years, including $1.9 trillion in funds appropriated specifically for wars through the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. Even though in recent years the fund was increasingly used for routine military expenses (or ‘base requirements’), this total falls short of estimating the true costs of the War on Terror. More than 70 percent of the Pentagon’s $14 trillion in spending over the last 20 years was for operations, purchasing and research and development. Operations and maintenance ($5.7 trillion) includes costs for operating, deploying, and maintaining weapons systems, including the military’s nearly 300 ships and more than 13,000 aircraft, and facilities, as well as training and other costs. Procurement ($2.8 trillion) includes the purchases and upgrades of major weapons systems such as ships and aircraft, as well as land vehicles, missiles, and ammunition.”

CBS News reports: “The Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy includes an unusual measure designed to ensure the law is enforced: Residents of the state can sue clinics, doctors, nurses and even people who drive a woman to get the procedure, for at least $10,000.

“That financial incentive was singled out by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent late Wednesday after the Supreme Court declined to block the controversial law. In effect, Texas lawmakers have ‘deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures,’ she wrote.”

MARJORIE COHN, marjorielegal@gmail.com, @marjoriecohn
Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, Cohn said today: “Texas Senate Bill 8 bans nearly all abortions in Texas and flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s holding in Roe v. Wade. Nevertheless, in a 5-4 decision, the right-wingers on the Court refused to stop the Texas law from going into effect. John Roberts joined the three liberals in dissent. Although the majority claimed that it was not expressing any opinion on the constitutionality of SB 8, the split indicates that when the high court considers Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law next term, it may well overturn Roe v. Wade.”

In an accuracy.org news release in September 2020, “Packing the Court and Filling the Streets,” Cohn stated: “The Supreme Court now has eight members — three liberals and five conservatives. Until Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Chief Justice John Roberts had been the swing vote. Roberts, concerned with the legacy of the Roberts Court, voted with the liberals to strike down an abortion restriction and uphold the Affordable Care Act. A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing member for Ginsburg, resulting in a 6-3 conservative majority. They would most likely overrule Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act.

“As it increasingly appears Mitch McConnell has the votes to proceed with filling  Ginsburg’s seat before the election or inauguration, the Democrats must play hard ball. They should pledge that if Joe Biden wins the election and the Democrats assume control of the Senate, they will raise the number of members on the Supreme Court from 9 to 13. The Constitution does not prescribe how many members will sit on the high court so Congress can raise the number.”

Following Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, Cohn wrote the piece “From a Justice for Gender Equality to a ‘Justice’ for Gender Oppression.”

With the Senate expected to soon take up the nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan, opponents are intensifying grassroots efforts to prevent confirmation. Last week — adding to a range of media denunciations since the White House announced the selection of the former Chicago mayor — a columnist for Emanuel’s biggest hometown newspaper lambasted the nomination as a “cynical, ludicrous idea.” Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a statement denouncing the Emanuel pick while two other members of Congress, Cori Bush and Mondaire Jones, released a similar joint statement.

While noting that a national NoToRahm campaign is underway with constituents calling for senators to reject the nomination, the Chicago Tribune column by Rex Huppke quoted the campaign’s coalition: “Emanuel has a long record of being extremely undiplomatic, abrasive and contemptuous of humane values. His record as mayor of Chicago, where his administration oversaw the coverup of the horrific police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, is especially troubling.”

Earlier this summer, victims and relatives of victims of police brutality in Chicago while Rahm Emanuel was mayor released a joint statement that said: “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.” They added: “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.”

A longtime Chicago journalist and political consultant, Delmarie Cobb, told Huppke that “Rahm Emanuel was a disaster for the Black community in Chicago. The remnants of his administration are still very much evident and we’re still living through them. So the idea that someone like him, who was a complete failure as a mayor, would be rewarded with a high-profile ambassadorship or anything in the presidential administration is just unbelievable.”

And Cobb said: “It was Black voters who took Biden over the top. He would not be president if it weren’t for Black voters. So this is an insult to Black voters everywhere, not just in Chicago, to put someone in such a high-profile position whose actions with Laquan McDonald alone should be disqualifying to ever hold a position in anyone’s administration.”

Meanwhile, a Sept. 1 Chicago Tribune news story reported that 28 relatives of Chicago victims of police violence “voiced opposition to an Emanuel appointment to ambassador. Arewa Karen Winters, who said her nephew was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer in 2014, noted Biden’s support for George Floyd’s family and police reform. ‘Rahm Emanuel does not deserve to be the ambassador of anything,’ Winters said in a video voicing opposition. ‘As families who have been traumatized by police violence and terror, we are very hurt and we feel betrayed at even the thought of President Biden wanting to appoint Rahm to such a prestigious position.’”

Cobb wrote in an article that Emanuel “closed 50 public schools in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods. He closed six of 12 mental health clinics in these communities. Now, who needs access to mental health care more than Chicago’s Black and brown residents who are underserved, underemployed and under constant threat of violence?”

Cobb is available for interviews and can put journalists in communication with relatives of victims of Chicago police violence during Emanuel’s time as mayor.

DELMARIE COBB, dlcobb@thepublicityworks.net

DAVID POTORTI, via Katharina Feil, katharina@peacefultomorrows.org, @PeacefulTomorro
Potorti’s brother Jim was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He helped found September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows in the aftermath of the attacks. The group has recently filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in U.S. v Abu Zubaydah charging that the judiciary is “serving as a gatekeeper to prevent unjustified invocations of the state secrets privilege, which may otherwise suppress information that is not privileged or is merely embarrassing to the government.” Members of the group have traveled to Afghanistan and to Guantanamo to observe pre-trial hearings of the 9/11 accused. The group is also holding a film festival. Potorti is co-editor of the recent 9/11 poetry anthology Crossing the Rift and is working with the Forgiveness Project. Feil is project coordinator for the group and can connect media to various members of the group.

KRISTEN BREITWEISER, kdianbreit@aol.com
One of the “Jersey Girls,” Breitweiser is a lawyer and co-founder of September 11 Advocates. She just wrote the piece “My Husband Died on 9/11. I Am Still Waiting for a Trial of His Killers” for The Intercept which states: “For a country that invokes 9/11 so freely to start wars … such use of the 9/11 tagline abruptly halts at the courthouse steps. …
“When a person looks at the facts and circumstances of the 9/11 attacks, taken as a whole, it would seem implausible that not one individual, entity, bank, or business has been fully prosecuted and found criminally responsible as a co-conspirator for the crime that took place. I say a crime, because my husband’s death certificate, like every other 9/11 victim’s, lists the manner of his death as ‘homicide,’ not ‘war.’ And yet our nation, a democracy based upon the rule of law, that supposedly protects and entitles all of its citizens with a Constitution and clear Bill of Rights (and certainly the most basic universal human right to live and not be blown up in a building) has not found, and will not ever find, it necessary to hold any co-conspirator of the 9/11 hijackers accountable in a court of criminal law. The typically exceedingly easy-to-meet thresholds for who and what qualifies as a criminal ‘co-conspirator’ and ‘conspiracy’ have never quite been met by the screaming facts and circumstances of 9/11 — and I’d argue that’s by systemic prosecutorial choice to look the other way for matters of political expediency, cover-up, or in the best-case scenario, sheer embarrassment. …

“Horrifically, some U.S. prosecutors literally sit on the side of the defendants (in this case, Saudi Arabia) and help the key evidence we need stay secret.”

DEEPA KUMAR, dekumar at rutgers.edu, @ProfessorKumar
Kumar is professor of media studies at Rutgers University and author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty Years after 9/11. See book launch event.

She just wrote the piece “Afghan Women Betrayed: The Legacy of Imperial Feminism.” She also wrote the article “Bias Against Muslims Must End,” which states: “In the 2016 election, Donald Trump ran on a racist, anti-immigrant platform that was central to his victory. Then he passed the Muslim ban as sop to his supporters. But even before Trump, anti-Muslim racism had already become institutionalized in U.S. society.

“Take, for instance, the FBI’s longstanding program of sending agents provocateurs into Muslim communities to entrap vulnerable populations — typically poor, Black and brown men often with mental disabilities — to plan attacks. The logic is that all Muslims are “potential” terrorists and that the FBI should nab them before they commit a crime.

“This bizarre logic is reminiscent of Stephen Spielberg’s dystopian film ‘Minority Report,’ based on Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella, about a police ‘pre-crime’ unit that arrests people who are believed to be predisposed to criminal activity. …

“The Movement for Black Lives shed light on how anti-Black racism is not simply about hate speech and individual prejudice, but is rooted in the structures of U.S. society. Similarly, anti-Muslim racism is not simply religious intolerance or misunderstanding, but a structural form of racism.

“It is not enough to end the Muslim ban. We must also halt all racist practices used by the security establishment, from entrapment and surveillance to preemptive prosecution. It is not enough to withdraw from Afghanistan. We must also end the global drone program and instead invest in infrastructure in all of the war-torn countries impacted by the United States.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan@earthlink.net, @ColeenRowley
A former FBI special agent and division counsel, Rowley famously wrote a May 2002 memo to then FBI Director Robert Mueller exposing some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 conduct. She was then named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year.” She recently appeared on an accuracy.org news release: “9/11 Cover-up: Whistleblower Coleen Rowley.”

KRISTEN BREITWEISER, kdianbreit@aol.com 
One of the “Jersey Girls,” Breitweiser is a lawyer and co-founder of September 11 Advocates. She just wrote the piece “My Husband Died on 9/11. I Am Still Waiting for a Trial of His Killers” for The Intercept. She said today: “For a country that invokes 9/11 so freely to start wars, such use of the 9/11 tagline abruptly halts at the courthouse steps. Not one individual, entity, bank, or business has been fully prosecuted and found criminally responsible as a co-conspirator. That is by systemic prosecutorial choice, for matters of political expediency, cover-up, or in the best-case scenario, sheer embarrassment. Horrifically, some U.S. prosecutors literally sit on the side of the defendants (in this case, Saudi Arabia) and help the key evidence we need stay secret.”

TERRY GREEN, via Katharina Feil, katharina@peacefultomorrows.org, @PeacefulTomorro   
Green’s brother Donald was killed at the on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. She is a member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. The group has recently filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in U.S. v Abu Zubaydah charging that the judiciary is “serving as a gatekeeper to prevent unjustified invocations of the state secrets privilege, which may otherwise suppress information that is not privileged or is merely embarrassing to the government.” Members of the organization have traveled to Afghanistan and to Guantanamo to observe pre-trial hearings of the 9/11 accused. The group is also holding a film festival. Feil is project coordinator for the group and can connect media to various members of the organization.

Evan Hill of the New York Times wrote over the weekend: “The final act of the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people. Our latest investigation shows how a man the military saw as an ‘imminent threat’ and ‘ISIS facilitator’ was actually an aid worker returning to his family.” See the investigation.

But activists warn that it may not be the final act at all.

BRIAN TERRELL, brian1956terrell@gmail.com
KATHY KELLY, kathy@vcnv.org
    Terrell and Kelly are with the Ban Killer Drones campaign. Kelly just wrote the piece “To Counter Terror, Abolish War.”

    The campaign has launched a “No More Attacks on Afghanistan” petition which scrutinizes President Biden’s recent remarks that he will “rely on ‘force and precision’ and ‘over the horizon’ attacks targeting ISIS-K, a clear threat of drone strikes and bombing raids. Even if air raids put fewer U.S. military personnel in immediate danger, they will surely kill more Afghan civilians than militants. While extrajudicial targeted assassinations are illegal, documents exposed by whistleblower Daniel Hale prove that the U.S. government is aware that 90 percent of its drone strike victims are not the intended targets….

    “Twenty years of war has only benefited the weapons industries while making the world less secure. We oppose any threat of further attacks on Afghanistan, ‘over the horizon’ or by troops on the ground. Official counts indicate that more than 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones and the actual number is likely many times more.”

ADRIENNE PINE, adrienne@quotha.net, @adriennepine
Currently in Honduras, anthropologist Pine is available for interviews and can also connect media to bilingual Hondurans closely involved with the Espinal and Álvarez trial.

She said today: “This Monday and Tuesday, former political prisoners Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez will go on trial in Honduras on trumped-up charges related to their participation in protests during the 2017 Honduran electoral crisis.

“Protests had erupted nationwide after the blatant theft of the November 2017 presidential elections by Juan Orlando Hernández, who had previously orchestrated an illegal takeover of the country’s Supreme Court in order to obtain permission to run for a consecutive second term, in violation of the Honduran constitution. State security forces shot into crowds. Espinal and Álvarez were among over 180 Hondurans who were arrested for exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed right to protest, and 22 who were illegally imprisoned without trial in dangerous maximum security prisons. If found guilty, they face sentences of 15-30 years.

Pine, who is in Tegucigalpa to accompany Espinal and Alvarez and document their trial, added: “The illegitimate and unelected Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández is able to persecute and torture his opponents thanks primarily to unfailing U.S. support for his regime and complicity in its systemic human rights abuses. Hernández’s major involvement in drug trafficking has been thoroughly demonstrated by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the majority of Hondurans would like to see him tried in court. Instead, Edwin and Raúl are being persecuted for standing up for Honduran democracy and sovereignty.”

Meanwhile in neighboring El Salvador, the right-wing populist, president Nayib Bukele, has increasingly consolidated power.

ALEXIS STOUMBELIS, alexis@cispes.org, @CISPES

Co-director of Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Stoumbelis recently wrote the recent article “Ruling by loyalist court upends Constitution to allow Bukele to run for reelection.”

She said today: “In El Salvador, the recent ruling by the court that President Bukele’s party illegally installed to allow him to run for reelection — despite multiple prohibitions in the Constitution on consecutive terms — is a page straight out of Hernández’ playbook. And it’s no surprise that Bukele is persecuting his political opponents, either.

“Many Salvadorans have been saying all along that Bukele’s goal was to take complete control over the Salvadoran state — that should be abundantly clear by now.”

© OpenStreetMap contributors

The New York Times reports: “American Special Forces flew to Guinea to train an elite military unit. But before the course was over, the Guineans stormed the presidential palace and violently seized power.”

The Special Operations Forces Report just published the piece: “U.S. Green Berets Were Training Guinea’s Special Operations Troops at the Time of the Coup.”

NETFA FREEMAN, netfa@ips-dc.org, @Netfafree
    Freeman recently wrote the piece “Guinea and the Military Coup Incubator, AFRICOM,” which notes: “West Africa has just experienced its fourth attempted coup in just over a year, and seven coups over the last 13 years were carried out by African troops trained by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). One was directly carried out by AFRICOM forces — Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya in 2011, its first major military operation.

    “On Sunday, September 5, 2021 soldiers detained Guinean President Alpha Condé and claimed control of the government. They suspended the constitution and closed all of the country’s borders. In a video recorded in the capital Conakry, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya of the Guinean Armed Forces (GAF) announced that the National Assembly had been dissolved.”Doumbouya, deemed the primary leader of the coup, was trained by the French military in France and, before turning against him, was called in 2018 by Condé to head a new Special Force Unit. Doumbouya and many others in the Guinean military also had AFRICOM training in Operation Flintlock 19. Operation Flintlock 19 occurred in early 2019 and, with participation from 34 African and other partner nations, was the largest annual exercise hosted by AFRICOM.”

    Freeman notes that while “the coup in Guinea has been widely condemned by the U.S., the UN, the AU [African Union], ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], and others,” it is “reminiscent of the coup in Mali that took place in May of this year” and that “Guinea seems to validate AFRICOM as an incubator of military coups in Africa.”

    Freeman is an organizer in Pan-African Community Action and is on the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. Netfa is also co-host/producer of the WPFW radio show and podcast “Voices With Vision.”

DAVE LINDORFF, dlindorff@gmail.com
    In September 2011, the nonviolent Occupy Wall Street movement swept the nation, deploring policies that benefit the richest “one percent” and framed a public dialogue about priorities along the lines of “Wall Street vs. Main Street.”

    Lindorff has examined the reasons for the movement’s collapse. In 2012 in “Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?” he reported on a trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security which “reveal ‘intense involvement’ by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as ‘the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management.’

    “The DHS says that the NOC is ‘the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room’ and that it also ‘facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.'”

    Charged Lindorff: “A better description for a fascist police state network could not be written. …”

    “The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which … have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the ‘We are the 99%’-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself.”

    In 2020, Lindorff reported in “Tear Gas and Clubs in Lafayette Square Were Just the Beginning,” that Trump and Barr turned to the “Occupy model” to crush the protests against police brutality.

    Lindorff quoted Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), who recalled of Occupy Wall Street: “The government wanted to suppress it, to shut it down. … That’s why you saw encampments wiped out by police with over 7,000 arrests.”

    Lindorff reported on a leaked transcript of a conversation with both Trump and Attorney General William Barr talking to governors referring in glowing terms to the way the Obama administration had crushed the Occupy movement.

    Reported Lindorff: “Trump told the governors, many of whose states were experiencing massive protests against police brutality in the wake of the brutal videotaped police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, ‘This is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster until one day somebody said, “That’s enough.” And they just went in and wiped them out. And it’s the last time I heard the name Occupy Wall Street. …’

    “Trump was followed at that point in the call by Attorney General Barr, who told the assembled governors that the Trump administration planned to use the same Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) the Obama administration had relied on to spy on and then crush the Occupy Movement to shut down the current wave of urban uprisings and protests over police brutality.

    “As Barr put it, ‘The structure we’re going to use is the Joint Terrorist Task Force, which I know most of you are familiar with. Tried and true system. It’s worked for domestic and homegrown terrorists, and we’re going to employ that model.’”

ERIC NADLER, nadleric@gmail.com
BOB COEN, bob@ahkkuvision.com
    Journalists Coen and Nader produced the documentary “Anthrax War” which was aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

    Beginning Sept 18, 2001, letters bearing the date “9-11-01” and the words “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great” were mailed to members of Congress and others. They spread fear across the country. Congress was closed down for a period. Then, amid this state of panic, the Patriot Act was passed. See accuracy.org news release from last month: “How the 2001 Anthrax False Flag Attacks Paved Way for Afghanistan and Iraq Invasions.”

    The attacks killed five people. The high grade anthrax, the Ames strain, was developed by the U.S. military.

    The FBI would claim that Fort Detrick Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins was the sole person responsible for the attacks. He would die of an alleged suicide, so there was never a trial. “Anthrax War” features Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of the targets of the attacks, telling then-FBI head Robert Mueller: “I do not believe in any way, shape or manner, that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people. I do not believe that at all. I believe there are others involved either as accessories before or accessories after the fact. I believe there are others that can be charged with murder.”

    The documentary also features Leahy asking Mueller: “These weapons that were used against the American people — and they’re weapons; they’re weapons — the weapons that were used against the American people and Congress — are you aware of any facility in the United States that is capable of making the weapons that were used on Congress and the American people besides Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and the Battelle facility in West Jefferson, Ohio?” Mueller would not respond in public.

    “Anthrax War” quotes noted scientists, like Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at MIT: “The response to the anthrax attacks and the bioterrorism initiative has been to launch a nationwide billion-dollar campaign to, quote ‘defend us from unknown terrorists.’ But the character of this program is roughly as follows. You say well, what would the terrorists come up with? What’s the nastiest, most dangerous, most difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat, microorganisms that we can think of? Well, let’s go bring that organism into existence, so that we can figure out how to defend against that. The fact of the matter is, it’s indistinguishable from an offensive program in which you would do the same thing.”

    “Anthrax War” features Putin charging that, as a result of U.S. government actions: “It’s now obvious that a fresh round of a new arms race has started.”

    Additional material is at AnthraxWar.com. Coen and Nadler wrote the book Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail. They run Transformer Films and their work has been featured on ARTE Europe, NHK Japan, Al Jazeera, National Geographic and PBS.

In a “Friday news dump” the Pentagon finally admitted that a Aug. 29 drone strike in Afghanistan killed 10 civilians.

NICK MOTTERN, nickmottern@gmail.com
KATHY KELLY, kathy@vcnv.org
    Mottern and Kelly are with the Ban Killer Drones campaign; many members of the group have gone to Afghanistan multiple times. Kelly just wrote the piece “To Counter Terror, Abolish War.”

    The campaign just issued a statement: “The Pentagon’s and Biden administration’s efforts to cover-up the truth about the slaughter of 10 civilians in Kabul on Aug. 29, seven of them children, is simply an example of the on-going cover-up of killer drone atrocities that have been perpetrated by every U.S. administration since the first U.S. drone attack, in Afghanistan, on October 7, 2001, the day the U.S. invaded that tortured nation.

    “The difference here is that the drone slaughter happened right under the noses of the international press rather than in remote areas in which reporters have not had the ability to immediately interview witnesses and to gather evidence at the scenes of the attacks.

    “Chairman of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, called the Aug. 29 drone attack ‘righteous’, but, in fact, no drone attack is ‘righteous.’ All drone attacks violate international law and morality by, among other things, bringing indiscriminate, unacceptable harm to civilians.

    “Documents exposed by whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was recently sentenced to 45 months in jail for his truth telling, prove that the U.S. government is aware that 90 percent of its drone strike victims are not the intended targets.

    “We, as world citizens, must understand that drone killing violates international law and leads to more war. The only path forward is to establish a global treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance, all which lead inevitably to what we have just witnessed in Kabul.”

David Shankbone

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

ARUN GUPTA, arun.indypendent@gmail.com, @arunindy
    Gupta’s work has appeared in dozens of outlets including The Intercept, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Nation and The Washington Post. He co-founded The Occupied Wall Street Journal in 2011, which the New York Times called “a professionally produced … document of the demonstration.” He just wrote the piece “Occupy Wall Street Trained a Generation in Class War” for In These Times.

    He said today: “In 2011, Occupy Wall Street captured the public imagination. Thousands of demonstrators camped on the doorstep of Wall Street, chanting, ‘Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.’ They crystallized public anger against powerful corporations and a political system they said was rigged toward the 1% and against the 99%. Occupy spread rapidly around the country and world with hundreds of protest camps. But as quickly as it appeared it was swept away by paramilitary-style police action in city after city. Critics declared it an ‘abject failure.’

    “With the tenth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, it is clear that the movement was far from a failure.” Gupta was the only journalist to cover Occupy across the country, reporting from 41 occupations in 26 states over the course of a year. He says Occupy Wall Street influenced the last decade of dramatic protests and shifted the political conversation.

    “Occupy Wall Street flipped the script from the Tea Party’s economic austerity to economic inequality. It introduced the ideas of the 99% and 1% that paved the way for the history-making presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s ascendancy to a political superstar,” says Gupta.

    “More than that, Occupy Wall Street has affected every progressive movement of the last ten years. There is the low-wage workers movement and ‘Fight for $15’ that put the idea of reducing economic inequality into action. Occupy ICE was a key part of immigrant-rights organizing in 2018. The Standing Rock pipeline blockade in 2016 was centered around an occupation in the Dakotas that swelled to more than 10,000 people. The movement for racial justice and Black Lives Matter have been influenced by OWS with physical camps in New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland protesting police violence in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd. ‘The Squad’ in Congress and the explosive growth in the Democratic Socialists of America are also outgrowths of Occupy Wall Street.”

The annual United Nations General Assembly opens Tuesday; Biden is scheduled to address it in the morning. See Institute for Public Accuracy news release from Saturday: “Ban Killer Drones: Kabul Drone Atrocity Latest in Ongoing U.S. Drone Killing Cover-up.”

SpaceNews, a mainstream specialty publication, reports: “U.S. generals planning for a space war they see as all but inevitable.”

KARL GROSSMAN, karlgrossman42@gmail.com
    Professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, Grossman’s books include Weapons in Space. His recent pieces include “Automation of Space Warfare” and “The Russia/China Space Weaponization Treaty” published by CounterPunch.

    He said today: “The world is at a crossroads as to war in space. President Biden has not pulled back on the Trump-initiated U.S. Space Force which Trump demanded to ‘have American dominance in space.’ Russia and China (and U.S. neighbor Canada) have long pressed for the PAROS (Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space) treaty. It would ban all weapons in space. The PAROS treaty would expand the landmark Outer Space Treaty of 1967 put together by the U.S., Great Britain and Soviet Union and which has wide support of nations around the world. The Outer Space Treaty sets aside space ‘for peaceful purposes’ and bans weapons of mass destruction in space. Russia and China have recently reiterated their call for no weapons in space. But the U.S. has blocked the PAROS treaty at the UN.

    “Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Space Force unveiled its admittedly ‘first offensive weapon’ — and more are in development. Russia and China — despite their decades of pressing for the PAROS treaty — can be expected to respond in kind. Other nations will move up into space with weaponry. The heavens will be turned into a war zone, and there will be no going back.

    “Is war in space indeed ‘inevitable?’ It is not inevitable if the scheme of a U.S. Space Force and its aim of seeking American ‘dominance’ of space is pulled back. Through diplomacy — and a strong system of verification — space should be kept for peace.”

DAVID VINE, vine@american.edu
    Vine is co-author of the just-released report “Drawdown: Improving U.S. and Global Security Through Military Base Closures Abroad.”

    He said today: “While President Biden’s UN speech promised some additional humanitarian assistance globally and had some nice words about diplomacy, global unity, and not wanting a new Cold War, many of his actions internationally — other than withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan — have been downright awful.” Vine noted Biden is “perpetuating the United States’ endless wars” in countries including “Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen” and escalating “war-like tensions with China with a military buildup with Australia and the UK.” Vine also just wrote the piece “Not just about subs, AUKUS expands U.S. military footprint in Australia, too.”

    Among the findings of the just-released report:

• The United States has nearly three times as many military bases abroad (750) as U.S. embassies, consulates, and missions worldwide (276).

• While there are approximately half as many installations as at the Cold War’s end, U.S. bases have spread to twice as many countries and colonies (from 40 to 80) in the same time, with large concentrations of facilities in the Middle East, East Asia, parts of Europe, and Africa.

• The United States has at least three times as many overseas bases as all other countries combined.

• U.S. military bases abroad cost taxpayers an estimated $55 billion annually.

• Construction of military infrastructure abroad has cost taxpayers at least $70 billion since 2000, and could total well over $100 billion.

• Bases abroad have helped the United States launch wars and other combat operations in at least 25 countries since 2001.

• U.S. installations are found in at least 38 non-democratic countries and colonies.

The report was published by the Quincy Institute and World BEYOND War. Vine is a professor at American University. His books include The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press, 2020).

The report notes: “The Pentagon, since Fiscal Year 2018, has failed to publish its previously annual list of U.S. bases abroad. As far as we know, this brief presents the fullest public accounting of U.S. bases and military outposts worldwide.”

© Rémi Kaupp, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons

AJAMU BARAKA, ajamubaraka2@gmail.com, @ajamubaraka
JEMIMA PIERRE communications@blackallianceforpeace.com, @Blacks4Peace
    Haitian-born Jemima Pierre is coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Haiti and the Americas Committee. She just wrote the piece “Borders, Blackness, and Empire” for Black Agenda Report.

    National organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, Baraka said today: “Seeking asylum by individuals who may be facing prosecution, imprisonment and even death because of political affiliation or membership in racial, national, sexual or religious groups is a recognized requirement under international law.

    “That the Biden administration has ordered federal authorities to mass deport thousands of Haitians, which will probably have the effect of driving many of them who will resist deportation back into Mexico and Central and South America, is both massive in its scope and fundamentally racist.”

    The group added: “If successive U.S. administrations had not undermined Haitian democracy and national self-determination, there would be no humanitarian crisis in Haiti or on the U.S. border. George W. Bush greenlit the 2004 coup against elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide. The UN sanctioned the coup with a full-scale military occupation. The Obama administration installed Michel Martelly and the Duvalierist PHTK party. And the Biden administration upended democracy in Haiti by supporting Jovenel Moïse despite the end of his term. All of these imperialist interventions have ensured that thousands would have to seek safety and refuge outside of Haiti. The U.S. policy response? Imprisonment and deportation. The United States has created an endless loop of dispossession, depravity and despair.”

    Baraka tweeted today: “You have questions as to why border police would assault Haitians, the story from the absence of the major white colonial powers from the day-long UN event on race is a good indicator of where the U.S. & its allies stand on white supremacy.” See CNN report: “The United Nations held a major meeting on race. Why the U.S. and UK skipped it.”
Also, see: “Center for Constitutional Rights to President Biden: If You Attempt to Warehouse Haitian Refugees at Guantánamo We Will Sue.”

David G. Silvers

Yahoo! News just published an in-depth report: “Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
    Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola has extensively covered legal proceedings Against WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. He said today: “What the Yahoo! News report confirms is that the CIA’s plot to destroy WikiLeaks went up to the highest levels. After the ‘Vault 7’ materials were published, CIA director Mike Pompeo was obsessed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He had the CIA label WikiLeaks as a ‘hostile entity.’ He proposed kidnapping Assange. He considered putting Assange on a rendition flight to the United States. And CIA officials even sketched out plans for assassinating a publisher.

    “According to the report from Yahoo! News, the Justice Department was fearful of the CIA’s plans to kidnap or even kill WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But rather than go to Congress or leak certain details to the press, the Justice Department decided it was best to indict Assange so the CIA would no longer be able to mount aggressive operations in the shadows. They ignored the conclusions of lawyers under Attorney General Eric Holder that there was a ‘New York Times problem’ and Assange could not be prosecuted without exposing editors of newspapers that published WikiLeaks documents to potential charges. It is as perverse as anything CIA director Mike Pompeo wanted agents to do to Assange.

    “There were no criminal prosecutions for anyone in the CIA when they operated a torture program. The White House under President Barack Obama fully embraced a drone program that involved targeted assassinations. And now we learn the CIA has appointed itself the authority to redefine journalists as ‘information brokers’ and media organizations as ‘hostile entities’ to help them justify offensive operations intended to disrupt journalism. This is exactly why so many advocates did not think it was acceptable to move forward and not look backward.”

CHIP GIBBONS, chip@RightsAndDissent.org, @rightsdissent
    Gibbons is policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent which recently wrote an open letter to Biden: “President Biden: End The War on Terror At Home!” which calls for:

“Repeal the AUMF: The 2001 AUMF [Authorization for Use of Military Force] was a blank check for war. In addition to being used to circumvent Congress’s Constitutional war powers, it has also been used to justify curtailing civil liberties at home. With the ground war in Afghanistan ended, there is no justification for the AUMF. It must be repealed without a replacement to prevent further abuses.

“The U.S. is Not A Battlefield: You must repudiate any legal theories that seek to treat the domestic U.S. as a battlefield and allow the president to conduct surveillance or detention based on wartime authorities.

“Close Guantanamo Bay: Military detention at Guantanamo Bay was justified based on the AUMF and pursuant to the law of war. However, just as we cannot tolerate a ‘forever war’ we cannot tolerate ‘forever prisoners.’ The prison must be closed and individuals held there must either be tried in a court of law or released.

“Rollback The Surveillance State: Since 9/11, the government’s powers to conduct surveillance have been dramatically expanded. At times the executive branch has operationalized mass surveillance within the United States without any authorization from Congress or the courts, like the President’s Surveillance Program or the creation of terror watchlists. …

“Dismantle DHS: The Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11. Far from keeping Americans safe, it has facilitated abuses of civil liberties and should be dismantled.

“End the Countering Violent Extremism Program: The discredited Countering Violent Extremism program has been repackaged and renamed as the CP3 program (Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships). Like CVE, CP3 continues to arrogate trusted community members and organizations to identify potential terrorists based on protected First Amendment activity. …

“Rein in the FBI: In the years after 9/11, multiple Attorneys General rolled back guidelines that checked the FBI’s ability to abuse its investigatory powers. The FBI escalated its practice of using its counterterrorism authorities to investigate political speech, and subjected the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian American communities to suspicionless surveillance. The FBI began the practice of deploying agent provocateurs to find people, entice them to agree to participate in fictitious terrorist plots, and then arrest them in controversial ‘stings.’ …

“Dissent is Not Disloyalty, Whistleblowers Are Not Spies: … The Espionage Act must no longer be used against whistleblowers and journalists, and those charged under it for exposing U.S. war crimes must receive full pardons.

“Transparency and Accountability: … Your recent executive order needs to be the first step of many to promote meaningful transparency, including declassification, into the War on Terror.”

CHRISTOPHER W. SHAW, christophershaw.ca@gmail.com, @chris_w_shaw
    Shaw is author of the forthcoming book First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat (City Lights Books), which will be published in early November. His past pieces include “The U.S. Postal Service Was Designed to Serve Democracy” for Foreign Affairs and “Postal Banking is Making a Comeback. Here’s how to Ensure it Becomes a Reality” for the Washington Post.

    He said today: “Even as the FBI continues to investigate Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for a pattern of suspicious donations made by employees of his former business, a new policy will slow down billions of pieces of first-class mail starting October 1. Service standards for first-class mail will be lowered from the existing one- to three-days to one- to five-days, a permanent change that will impact approximately 40 percent of all mail. Residents of the Pacific coast will be most affected by the imposition of these new delivery delays. Ironically, after widespread delays under DeJoy’s tenure, degrading service guidelines will allow the U.S. Postal Service to claim improved performance due to the extended window for on-time delivery. With the Postal Service facing a number of financial challenges — notably the unique burden of massively pre-funding its retirees’ health benefits — reducing service will only discourage use of the U.S. Mail, which is not a formula for long-term financial health and stability.”

NANCY MacLEAN, nancy.maclean@duke.edu

MacLean is William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

Her new study for the Institute for New Economic Thinking is: “How Milton Friedman Aided and Abetted Segregationists in His Quest to Privatize Public Education.”

The essay reveals how the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman allied himself with southern white efforts to defy the 1954 Supreme Court decision barring racial segregation in U.S. public schools. The iconic American academic hoped that the segregationists would advance his crusade to end public schools in the U.S. with vouchers for private schools.

“Friedman and his allies saw in the backlash to the desegregation decree an opportunity they could leverage to advance their goal of privatizing government services and resources. Whatever their personal beliefs about race and racism, they helped Jim Crow survive in America by providing ostensibly race-neutral arguments for tax subsidies to the private schools sought by white supremacists. Indeed, to achieve court-proof vouchers, leading defenders of segregation learned from the libertarians that the best strategy was to abandon overtly racist rationales and embrace both an anti-government stance and a positive rubric of liberty, competition, and market choice.”

MacLean concludes by bringing the story up to the present. “The sad fact of the matter is that improving education was never the true reason for free-market fundamentalists’ embrace of vouchers. As Friedman signaled in his first 1955 manifesto and argued for over a half century, school ‘choice’ was a tactic. The strategy it served was to ultimately stick parents with the full cost of their children’s schooling and the labor of finding and arranging it.

“He was as frank in addressing a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) four months before his death in 2006. Said Friedman: ‘the ideal way [to give parents control of their children’s education] would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it.’
“That,” writes MacLean, “is what today’s billionaire libertarian backers of vouchers, with Charles G. Koch in the lead, are keeping from the unsuspecting parents on whom the cause relies for electoral success, now Black and Latino as well as white.”

“Pandora Papers” experts, Chuck Collins, author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions (Polity Books), and tax attorney Bob Lord, are available for comment on the Pandora Papers revelations.

Over the last three months, Collins has briefed members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), on the “wealth hiding” systems in the USA. Articles interviewing Collins are now appearing in the British Guardian, El Pais (Spain) Infobae in Argentina, El Pais (Brasil), Univision (Mexico), and dozens of others.

On Sunday, the ICIJ released “The Pandora Papers,” based on 11.9 million leaked files. It exposes billionaires involved in aggressive wealth hiding and tax avoidance. It reveals, for instance, that “South Dakota now rivals opaque jurisdictions in Europe and the Caribbean in financial secrecy,” notes Collins.

“It is time for U.S. lawmakers to shut down the hidden wealth system that allows for such aggressive tax avoidance and the sequestering of wealth,” said Collins, who just wrote the piece “Why billionaires love to park their wealth in places like South Dakota” for Salon and is co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. He added: “The U.S. has become the weak link in stopping global crime and wealth hiding. States like South Dakota and Delaware have morphed their laws to attract billions, sometimes illicitly obtained, from around the world. We in the U.S. should be embarrassed that we’ve become a magnet for kleptocratic funds.”

Collins’ book, The Wealth Hoarders, points to the role of enablers, what scholars call “the wealth defense industry,” in facilitating the use of dynasty trusts, off-shore tax havens, and anonymous shell companies. These wealth defenders include accountants, tax attorneys, wealth managers, and family office staff, that aid the super-rich in putting vast amounts of wealth beyond the reach of tax authorities. Collins also puts forward a comprehensive plan for shutting down the hidden wealth system.

Bob Lord is a Phoenix tax attorney, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and legal expert on trusts, estate tax law, and explaining the complicated tax dodges deployed by the superwealthy.

Collins and Lord are available to comment on the latest revelations from the ICIJ Pandora Papers. Email: Contact Olivia Alperstein Olivia@ips-dc.org or Chuck Collins: chuck@ips-dc.org

Additional background resources:

Interview with Chuck Collins by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists:

“How the world’s richest defend their wealth with help from a dedicated industry.”

By Bob Lord: “Beyond Lucrative: Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Tax Avoidance Business” and “Taxing 7 Billionaires Could Pay For Third of Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Package.”

IPS Policy Brief: “Dynasty Trusts: How the Wealthy Shield Trillions from Taxation Onshore,” by Kalena Thomhave and Chuck Collins.

In “Can a post office be a bank? New services test a progressive priority,” NBC News reports: “The U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun offering a handful of new or expanded financial services in four cities, a potential first step toward a return to postal banking, which advocates say could help rescue the agency’s finances and assist millions of people who have limited or no access to the banking system.”

The piece quotes Christopher Shaw: “It’s a case of market failure where the banking industry is not interested in serving these people because they’re not profitable enough and where the Postal Service, because it is a government service, can step in and help with that market failure and ensure those services are available.” Shaw is a historian who wrote the books Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic (University of Chicago Press) and Preserving the People’s Post Office.

CHRISTOPHER W. SHAW, christophershaw.ca@gmail.com, @chris_w_shaw
Shaw is also author of the forthcoming book First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat (City Lights Books), which will be published in early November. His past pieces include “The U.S. Postal Service Was Designed to Serve Democracy” for Foreign Affairs and “Postal Banking is Making a Comeback. Here’s How to Ensure it Becomes a Reality” for the Washington Post.

He said today: “Many other nations use postal banking, and in the twentieth century the United States did too. Grassroots activism had demanded this service in the face of arguments by banking lobbyists who claimed postal banking was impractical and improper. My research reveals that in the 1960s the banking lobby killed postal banking, opening the door for the millions of unbanked who currently pay high fees for basic financial services. That we’re hearing similar arguments now against postal banking is an indication that special interests again feel threatened by it. In fact, we need this service to help millions of people now more than ever.”

CHUCK COLLINS, BOB LORD, KALENA THOMHAVE, via Olivia Alperstein, Olivia@ips-dc.org
    Following the release of the “Pandora Papers,” experts cited in the papers are highlighting the structures that allow billionaires to get away with avoiding paying taxes.

    Drawn by low taxes and some of the nation’s most generous trust laws, “shady billionaires from around the world are going to South Dakota,” says Collins, author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, and co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. See: “How ‘Insanely Corrupt’ South Dakota Became a Magnet for the Wealth-Hoarding Megarich.”

    The Mount Rushmore State “now rivals Switzerland, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and other famous tax havens as a premier venue for the international rich seeking to protect their assets from local taxes or the authorities,” The Guardian, one of the members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which published the “Pandora Papers” reports.

    Collins writes: “Findings suggest that South Dakota has sheltered billions in wealth linked to wealthy individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes and labor violations. Two examples: Brazilian orange juice baron Horst Happel was fined $88 million in 2016 for underpaying his workers. In 2017, he moved substantial wealth to a trust in South Dakota. Carlos Morales Troncoso was the former vice president of the Dominican Republic. He ran a sugar company called Central Romana … that was accused of human rights violations. He set up trusts for his daughters in the Bahamas that were moved, after his death, to South Dakota.

    “Lawmakers should convene hearings on trust law and act at the federal level to shut down or discourage the formation of dynasty trusts and GRATs [Grantor Retained Annuity Trust] for the purposes of tax avoidance and dynastic succession,” he said. “Actions could include the passage of a federal ‘rule against perpetuities,’ banning certain trust arrangements, and taxing income and wealth in trusts.”

    Other U.S. states noted as problematic in the “Pandora Papers” include Delaware, Florida, Nevada, and Texas.

    “The world is going to be looking at us differently after the Pandora Papers,” said Collins. “They’re going to see that the United States is the weak link now in the system of global financial transparency.”

    Lord is a veteran tax attorney and associate fellow with the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. Thomhave is a researcher at the program.

    They just wrote the piece “Why Do South Dakota Politicians Help Billionaires?” which states: “South Dakota prides itself on being ‘the premier trust jurisdiction in the United States,’ according to its Division of Banking. After all, South Dakota is home to a task force of estate and trust professionals appointed by the governor to ensure that it remains the most ‘competitive’ place in the nation to establish a dynasty trust, with low taxes and fees and few regulations. … There are more than $500 billion in trust assets in South Dakota, managed by 105 state trust companies. … When politicians from South Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska are doing the bidding of billionaires in New York and California, we should be deeply suspicious.”

JACK GILROY, jgilroy1955@gmail.com
NICK MOTTERN, nickmottern@gmail.com
    On Oct. 7, the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the start of the so-called U.S. “War on Terror,” a group of justice and peace organizations and activists are urging leaders of all U.S. religious denominations to end their “shocking” 20-year “near silence” on U.S. government wars.

    Gilroy and Mottern are among the signers of a letter being delivered to clergy around the U.S. Thursday. Gilroy recently wrote the piece “Blessed be the Warmakers? Why Post-9/11 American Religious Leaders Must Atone.”

    The letter states: “approximately a million people have died in the Middle East in wars generated by the United States starting on 10/7.”

    “We ask you, we implore you, to vocally object to existing plans for more drone warfare. We urge you to call for an end of the ‘Over the Horizon‘ drone attack plan of our United States government. We ask as well that you speak out in opposition to the political, military, and corporate fear-making depicting China as our new enemy — a fear that is already generating great financial benefit to the Pentagon war contractors. …

    “Praying for the troops was a mantra of all religious groups and music to the ears of the Pentagon and its war contractors,” the peace advocates say. Simply praying for U.S. troops, the letter continues, “enables the war-makers to do their business.”

    Mottern, who is co-coordinator of Ban Killer Drones also notes that U.S. drone attacks are also believed to be striking “Somalia, Niger, Syria, Yemen and Iraq as well as Afghanistan and possibly parts of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan” with minimal attention while “Iran appears to be under intensive U.S. military drone surveillance.”

    A copy of the letter, full list of signers and other material is available on the website of Pax Christi USA.

The Nobel Peace Prize this year is being awarded to Maria Ressa from the Philippines who founded Rappler and Dmitry Muratov, a founder of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Fredrik Heffermehl of Nobel Peace Prize Watch tweeted this morning: “Again, the Nobel Committee has its loyalty to the United States and NATO and is pointing its finger at Russia rather than criticizing U.S. imperial power for eradicating global press power in its revenge on [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange. The same forces support military bases for the United States in Norway.”

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
    Executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org, Swanson just wrote the piece “Nobel Committee Gets Peace Prize Wrong Yet Again,” which states: “The Nobel Committee has yet again awarded a peace prize that violates the will of Alfred Nobel and the purpose for which the prize was created, selecting recipients who blatantly are not ‘the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.

    “That there are numerous candidates who plausibly meet the criteria and could have been appropriately awarded a Nobel Peace Prize is established by the list of nominees published by Nobel Peace Prize Watch.”

    World Beyond War is associated with the War Abolisher Awards which were given out two days ago. Three awards were presented. The Lifetime Organizational War Abolisher of 2021: Peace Boat. The David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher of 2021: Mel Duncan. The War Abolisher of 2021: Civic Initiative Save Sinjajevina.

    Swanson added: “The trouble with the Nobel Peace Prize has long been and remains that it often goes to warmongers, that it often goes to good causes that have little direct connection to abolishing war, and that it often favors the powerful rather than those in need of funding and prestige to support good work. This year it has been awarded to another good cause that has little direct connection to abolishing war. Although virtually every topic can be tangentially connected to war and peace, the avoidance of actual peace activism intentionally misses the point of the prize’s creation by Alfred Nobel and the influence of Bertha von Suttner.”

    Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa and Rappler are funded by the Omidyar Network and the U.S. government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Rappler also has a partnership with Facebook.

    “The prize has also been used to advance the propaganda of some of the world’s major war makers. Awards like this year’s have been used to denounce violations of human rights in non-Western nations targeted in the weapons-funding propaganda of Western nations. This record allows Western media outlets each year to speculate before the prize announcement on whether it will go to favorite propaganda topics, such as Alexei Navalny. The actual recipients this year are from Russia and the Philippines, Russia being the primary target of U.S. and NATO war preparations, including the primary excuse for the construction of new military bases in Norway.”

JAMES BRADLEY, james@jamesbradley.com
    Bradley is author of several bestsellers focused on U.S. policy in the Pacific and Asia, including Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.

    He lives in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, producing the “Untold Pacific” podcast about “the American experience in Asia.” Recent episodes include “China Rising,” “The #1 Focus of the U.S. National Security State is War with China” and “U.S. Military: ‘War with China Inevitable.'”

    See his recent interview with Covert Action Magazine on the U.S. military encirclement of China.

    “The business of China is business. The business of America is war. Will the U.S. make a business-like deal with China over Taiwan? Or will the U.S. insist upon the Taiwan question being settled as a matter of war? It’s not China that’s aggressive — it’s the U.S. government that invades Iraq and Afghanistan and puts a fleet on China’s doorstep.

    “Now we have the U.S. government prodding Australia into a more militaristic posture toward China when China has been largely responsible for economic prosperity in Australia.

    “My daughter is in Taipei. She’s not worried about any sort of impending war.

    “The U.S.’s history in China is disastrous. One of the first war lobbies in the U.S. was to get the U.S. to pour millions into supporting Chiang Kai-shek against Mao when Chiang Kai-shek had much, much less popular support. FDR ended up spending more on Chiang Kai-shek than he did on the atomic bomb.”

As the World Bank holds its annual meeting, women’s rights advocates will hold a press conference calling on the Bank to release frozen Afghan funds to pay the salaries of women teachers and healthcare workers in Afghanistan. They have formed a new group called Unfreeze Afghanization. The news conference is at 10 a.m. ET this morning at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

They “are responding to an urgent appeal from the 45,000-member Teachers Association of Afghanistan on October 6, 2021 warning that the situation for teachers is dire,” as most have not been paid since June.

“The Ministry of Education has very few resources, and it is hard to ask our teachers to keep working without salaries. Many of them are the sole breadwinners in their families, and they are really struggling. It will be difficult to keep the schools open if we have no funds,” the Afghan teachers statement said.

Prominent women involved in the call to release frozen World Bank funds include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker; Jamila Safi, President of the Afghan Female Teachers Association; Toorpakai Momand, former Director of Female Education in Afghanistan; Sunita Mehta, co-founder of Women for Afghan Women and Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission. In addition, over 3,000 people have added their names to a petition hosted on the CODEPINK website.

The group notes that needed healthcare funding has been cut off as well.

After the Taliban took hold of Kabul, the new group notes the U.S. government “froze nearly $10 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank and stopped shipments of cash to the country. The International Monetary Fund has frozen the distribution of more than $400 million destined for COVID relief and the World Bank is holding back hundreds of millions in the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Foreign aid to Afghanistan had previously been about $8.5 billion a year — nearly half of the country’s gross domestic product, and the freezing of funds has been disastrous for the Afghan people.”

The group calls on the Taliban “to re-open all schools for boys and girls throughout the country and calls on the international community to enable the re-opening and operation of these schools by releasing the frozen funds.”

See full statement here.
Contact: Ariel Gold, ariel@codepink.org
Medea Benjamin, medea@codepink.org, @codepink

Picture taken by Justin McIntosh, August 2004., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, The Guardian published an anonymous statement which began: “We are writing as Google and Amazon employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds. We believe that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users. As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values. For this reason, we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military. … We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.

GABRIEL SCHUBINER, via notech4apartheid@protonmail.com

Schubiner is a software engineer for Google and one of the signers of the statement to come forward. He said today: “It’s important for engineers and other workers to uphold our ethical values and ensure the company reflects that. Android and Google search users are told that privacy is a priority, but at the same time, Google is selling powerful cloud technology to those who intend to surveil those same users. This project is a bellwether.”

He wrote a just-published piece for NBC News with Bathool Syed, a content strategist at Amazon: “We’ve joined together as workers across corporate lines for the first time to send a joint letter Tuesday calling on Google and Amazon to respect Palestinian human rights and cancel Project Nimbus, the $1.2 billion venture that will provide cloud services to the Israeli government, specifically including the military. The services encompass both storage and computational resources, as well as features that enable users to easily train powerful artificial intelligence.

“Under these contracts, our cloud services would help facilitate the Israeli military’s control and persecution of Palestinians, demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied Palestinian territories and attacks on Gaza that have hit civilian targets such as hospitals. In addition to the military, Project Nimbus will also provide our cloud services to the Israel Land Authority, an agency that enables Israel’s continued expansion of segregated settlements in violation of international law and U.S. policy. …

“Nearly 1,000 anonymous signatories at Amazon and more than 600 at Google have joined this call. …

“Large tech corporations have responded to human rights concerns before, and they can do it again. In 2019, Google terminated Project Dragonfly, a censored search engine in China, and pulled out of the Pentagon’s Project Maven in 2018. The same principles should apply to the Project Nimbus contracts and all future contracts based on their real-world consequences. Since we have no ability to guarantee that the technology we build won’t be used to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians, cutting the contracts entirely is the only ethical option left for our companies.”

Also see: NoTechForApartheid.com.

DANIEL ELLSBERG, ellsbergd1@gmail.com
WILLIAM HARTUNG, whartung@internationalpolicy.org
    Ellsberg is available for a limited number of interviews. He just co-authored the piece “To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles — Eliminate Them” in The Nation with IPA executive director Norman Solomon.

    Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers. He is the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

    Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and author of “Inside the ICBM Lobby.”

    Ellsberg and Solomon write: “For many years, experts have been calling for this act of sanity that could save humanity: Shutting down all of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.

    “Four hundred ICBMs dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, these missiles are uniquely — and dangerously — on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice. ‘If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled,’ former Defense Secretary William Perry warns. ‘The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.’

    “The danger that a false alarm on either side — of the sort that has occurred repeatedly on both sides — would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other; each, therefore, is kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning. …

    “Senators from several of the states with major ICBM bases or development activities — Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah — continue to maintain an ‘ICBM Coalition’ dedicated to thwarting any serious scrutiny of the land-based weaponry. Members of the coalition have systematically blocked efforts to reduce the number of ICBMs or study alternatives to building new ones. They’re just a few of the lawmakers captivated by ICBM mega-profiteers. In a report issued this year by the Center for International Policy, nuclear weapons expert William Hartung gives readers a detailed look ‘Inside the ICBM Lobby,’ showing how ICBM contractors get their way while throwing millions of dollars at politicians and deploying battalions of lobbyists on Capitol Hill. As the recipient of the sole-source contract to build the proposed new ICBMs, Northrop Grumman has joined with other top contractors to block efforts to reduce spending on these dangerous and unnecessary systems — or even simply to pause their development. …

    “Members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won’t do that unless peace, arms-control, and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse — and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.”

Source: Daniel X. O’Neil

A coalition of organizations has scheduled a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday opposing the nomination of former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing for Emanuel on Oct. 20 — the anniversary of the notorious killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago police. A dash camera video of that murder was suppressed for 13 months by Emanuel’s mayoral administration.

The press conference comes after dozens of Chicago-based and national groups have vehemently voiced opposition to President Biden’s pick of Emanuel.

When President Biden hosted the family of George Floyd at the White House in April, he issued a statement about the need to “collectively say enough of the senseless killings.” But Mayor Emanuel helped to deny and hide the realities of senseless killings by police in Chicago. The coalition contends that “no president who is truly serious about stopping brutality and murders by police would nominate Rahm Emanuel for an important government post.”

Congressman Jamaal Bowman 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 African-American lives. The coalition says that making him a U.S. ambassador would make the U.S. government a similar symbol.

RootsAction.org, the organization that has been coordinating national opposition to the Emanuel nomination, says that more than 40,000 individual constituent emails have been sent to senators urging that he be rejected for the diplomatic post.

“Reject Rahm” News Conference Chicago
11 a.m. CT – Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Chicago Police Department HQ
3510 S. Michigan Ave., ChicagoFor further information:
Delmarie Cobb, dlcobb@thepublicityworks.net

Speakers:

Aislinn Pulley, Aislinn@chicagotorturejustice.org (Black Lives Matter, Chicago)
Dorothy Homes (Justice For Families)
Crista Noël, cnoel@thewapb.org (Women’s All Points Bulletin)
Camiella Williams, atruewarrior17@yahoo.com (Adult Advisor to GoodKidsMadCity)
Hatem Abudayyeh, hatem@aaan.org (Arab American Action Network)
Dr. La’Shawn Littrice, lalittrice@gmail.com (Make Noize For Change)
Kina Collins, Kina@kinacollins.com (Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, Illinois 7th District)
Abeni Trotter, atrotter.smith@gmail.com (Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression)

Statement from the Chicago Westside Branch of the NAACP:
“In accordance with the NAACP President, the Illinois State Conference and the Chicago Westside Branch of the NAACP do not support the appointment of Rahm Emmanuel to any federal office. His past actions and approach to governing are detrimental to the American people.”
— NAACP Chicago Westside Branch contact is Rebecca Cook, Rebecca@cwbnaacp.org, Criminal Justice Chair.

Dorothy Homes, Justice For Families:
“Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of my son… Rahm Emanuel does not deserve to be the ambassador of anything. Rahm Emanuel belongs behind bars.”

Crista Noël, Women’s All Points Bulletin:
“Clearly the U.S. and Biden’s administration is tone deaf to Chicago’s Black Community’s trauma in regards to the Laquan McDonald murder or they would not have scheduled the [committee] vote on the day of his death. Unless the U.S. plans to deny Rahm the Ambassadorship as poetic justice, Chicago would consider it a slap in the face and would not turn the other cheek in further supporting Biden or his administration.”

Camiella Williams, Adult Advisor to GoodKidsMadCity:
“If Rahm Emmanuel’s appointment as Ambassador for Japan is confirmed, all the organizing efforts put in to remove him as Mayor of Chicago will go in vain! Rahm showed the entire world, he cannot be trusted as a public servant when he concealed the murder tape of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald for his political gain.”

Dr. La’Shawn Littrice, Community Psychologist, Founder “Make Noize for Change”:
“Rahm Emmanuel cannot be trusted as an ambassador due to the fact that he is the source of the cover-up for Laquan McDonald and he did it for selfish, political gain. Any member of the delegation who supports this confirmation is an embarrassment to all those who fought to get justice for Laquan McDonald’s murder; we are therefore calling on each of them to say no, especially those who are rooted in Chicago.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, Executive Director of the Arab American Action Network in Chicago:
 “What’s most disappointing about this decision is that there’s no reason for us to be surprised that the mainstream leadership of the Democratic Party represented by Biden, Harris, Schumer, and Pelosi, not to mention our own Sen. Dick Durbin, would push for such a horrible choice… Party progressives, Latinx and other immigrants, Black people, Arabs, and other oppressed communities were the forces that defeated Trump, but we still get taken for granted by a party and its leaders who seem to have no idea which way the wind is blowing; their own days are numbered as well.”

Kina Collins, Candidate for US House of Representatives, Illinois 7th District:
“For 400 days, Rahm Emanuel tried to cover up the truth of what happened to Laquan McDonald. For 400 days we marched, organized, and protested for the release of the police dashcam footage, because we know that too often, police lie when their own careers are at stake. And for 400 days, that officer escaped justice, because Emanuel was more concerned with his own re-election than he was with justice for a child murdered on his watch. This is a complete slap in the face to Black America.”

Whitney Webb of Unlimited Hangout reports in “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class,” that: “Last month, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had developed a new asset class and accompanying listing vehicle meant ‘to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth.’ Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations ‘that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.’ These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end of goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable. …

“Framed with the lofty talk of ‘sustainability’ and ‘conservation,’ media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn’t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to ‘a new form of sustainable investment’ which ‘has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.’ …

“The creation and launch of NACs has been two years in the making and saw the NYSE team up with the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), in which the NYSE itself holds a minority stake. …

“NACs will not only allow ecosystems to become financial assets, but the rights to ‘ecosystem services,’ or the benefits people receive from nature as well. These include food production, tourism, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, carbon sequestration and much more.  …

“Both the NYSE and IEG have marketed this new investment vehicle as being aimed at generating funds that will go back to conservation or sustainability efforts. However, on the IEG’s website, it notes that the goal is really endless profit from natural processes and ecosystems that were previously deemed to be part of ‘the commons,’ i.e. the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. …

“While the asset classes of the current economy are valued at approximately $512 trillion, the asset classes unlocked by NACs are significantly larger at $4,000 trillion (i.e. $4 quadrillion) [by IEG]. Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world.”

RANDALL WRAY, wray@levy.org
    Wray is senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and professor of economics at Bard College. Wray’s books include A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox Economic Policy for the 21st Century, Macroeconomics, Why Minsky Matters (from Princeton University Press) and Modern Money Theory.

    He said today: “From the get-go, capitalism has been all about exploitation. Marx’s followers will point to exploitation of workers, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Capitalism originated in the large plantations of the New World, exploiting the slaves, and Africa itself — which bore the burden of producing the humans that would be kidnapped and shipped across the seas to create the Old World’s wealth. It exploited the environment of America’s seemingly infinite natural resources, abandoning the land it exhausted, moving ever westward in its genocidal conquest of the continent. It spewed its waste into the water, the air, and the bodies of creatures great and small. It put a money price on the formerly free communal resources so that it could exploit them to extinction.

    “It financialized bodies — indeed, African slaves were the collateral behind the first mortgages that made Wall Street. In more recent times, it financialized everything — homes, education, food and other commodities, healthcare, education, and even death (through so-called peasant insurance). But that was not enough. It created derivatives to double, triple, quadruple the bets against mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit card debts, national government debts, and currencies. It is unsurprising, inevitable, and even appropriate that Wall Street would now financialize the ‘rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land.’ Next up, financialization of access to sunlight, the source of all life.

    “Capitalism has always been celebrated for its presumed efficiency. In fact it is supremely inefficient. It survives only because it is the greatest system ever developed for exploitation of man and nature. It pushes costs off to the environment, ‘other’ people, families, governments, and our ‘future.’ It is ever on the lookout for new frontiers of exploitation. And in that quest, human survival is at risk.”

Kevin Gosztola writes: “Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Imprisoned In Communications Management Unit Designed For Terrorists.”

Ban Killer Drones, a national network opposed to drone attacks, is calling for reparation payments of at least $3 million for each of the 10 members of the Afghan Ahmadi family killed on August 29, 2021, by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone. The group says thousands of others killed by U.S. drones deserve similar payments, which should be made under the oversight of Congress’ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

“The $3 million U.S. payment to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto when he was killed by a U.S. drone in Pakistan in 2015 sets the minimum standard that the U.S. must meet in compensating families of civilians who are killed by U.S. drones,” said Nick Mottern, of the Ban Killer Drones network. The U.S. agreed to pay nearly $3 million to the family of an Italian killed in a CIA strike.

“Our concern goes beyond the tragic deaths within the Ahmadi family to the thousands of victims of U.S. drone attacks,” said Brian Terrell, also a member of the Ban Killer Drones network, “most who were not those targeted and none of whom were found guilty in any court. Justice demands that compensation be paid to all their families.”

“These reparations payments obviously cannot bring back these precious lives,” Mottern said, “but they can communicate a respectful recognition by the US military of the widespread, devastating, unacceptable harm that is being inflicted by U.S. drone attacks, on individuals, families, and entire communities -communities that also must receive compensation.”

Here is a complete list of Ban Killer Drone’s demands:

1. An official apology by President Biden, as commander in chief of the U.S. military, to the Ahmadi family for the deaths of their family members.

2. $3 million minimum for each of the 10 Ahmadi family members.

3. An immediate report from the Department of Defense on who in the chain of command was responsible for the drone attack on the Ahmadis. This includes the release of all communications and logs related to the attack from the White House down to the operator who pressed the button to launch the attack, and a report on whether and what charges are to be brought against those responsible for the killings.

4. That the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress:

investigate all U.S. drone attacks since 2001 pursuant to identifying all civilian and non-combatant victims; oversee the disbursement of reparations to their families; receive petitions and claims of victims of U.S. drone attacks and take actions as required to satisfy these petitions and claims; seek the appropriation of sufficient funds to compensate families of non-combatant drone attack victims at the level of $3 million for each victim; and provide compensation to communities that have suffered U.S. drone attacks.

5. An immediate halt to all U.S. drone attacks and an end to U.S. plans and taxpayer support for weaponizing drones of all types.

The Ban Killer Drones network is comprised of concerned citizens, in local and national peace and justice organizations, many of them in communities in which there are killer drone control bases. Together they are organizing to achieve a United Nations conference to adopt and ratify an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance.

Contact: Nick Mottern, co-coordinator, BanKillerDrones.org, nickmottern@gmail.com

Biden on Thursday was asked “can you vow to protect Taiwan?” Biden said “yes.” He was then asked, “Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense?” Biden falsely claimed: “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

ANN WRIGHT, annw1946@gmail.com

Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She recently wrote the piece “Dangers of Military Confrontation Between the United States and China Around Taiwan and in the South China Sea.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu

Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle said today: “Biden has no constitutional authority to threaten war against China over Taiwan. That would require an act of Congress under the War Powers Resolution and there is no such act. Indeed, some of the Democrats are pointing this out and foolishly want to give Biden that authority under WPR. We did have a mutual self-defense treaty with Taiwan, but Carter pulled us out of it in order to normalize diplomatic relations with Beijing. This so-called commitment by Biden is only going to encourage the independence movement in Taiwan to declare independence and precipitate a conflict with Beijing. Taiwan is already a de facto independent state. They should leave it at that.”

Reuters reports: “A White House spokesperson said Biden at his town hall was not announcing any change in U.S. policy and ‘there is no change in our policy,’ but declined further comment when asked if Biden had misspoken.”

Boyle added: “Under International Law it is the Statement by the President, the Head of State, that is binding — not some press spokesperson trying to walk it back. This is completely reckless by Biden and existentially dangerous and unconstitutional and he knows better. He is a lawyer, a former Senator, and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He knows all about the War Power Clause of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

“He should not have said anything like this. We should be working to tell the Taiwanese government and independence movement to tone things down; that they are already a de facto independent state; that they should leave it at that; and not to do anything to antagonize China; and certainly not insinuate that they might declare independence and secede from China; and that if they do something so reckless they are on their own. Instead Biden’s comment has just emboldened Taiwan to do precisely that.”

Boyle also notes that this is part of a pattern of threatening actions to China from the Biden administration, for example the Air Force Times is reporting: “B-1B bombers return to Diego Garcia island base after 15 years.”

JEFFERSON MORLEY, morleyj@gmail.com, @jeffersonmorley
    Morley is editor of the blog JFK Facts. He is also editor of The Deep States website. His books include The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton and the forthcoming Scorpions Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate. 

    Files relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were supposed to be released on Tuesday, but late on Friday, in a Friday news dump, President Biden stopped the release and issued a statement: “Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”

    Morley said today: “People are wondering if there’s a smoking gun in the files. The failure to abide by the law is the smoking gun. Biden has delayed it, as Trump did. There’s no reason they won’t delay it more. You have to hand it to the CIA. Since the day the president was assassinated, they have engaged in decades and decades of deception and delay.”

    In a recent piece co-written for The Intercept, Morley wrote: “When President Donald Trump faced the same decision four years ago, he delayed in the name of national security. While releasing thousands of files about the 1963 Kennedy assassination, Trump acquiesced to the demand of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to keep portions of thousands more secret until October 2021, 58 years after Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the gunman. For all his ‘deep state’ rhetoric, Trump issued a memo giving the executive branch agencies four more years of secrecy. …

    “The most sensitive JFK secrets involve U.S. operations against Cuba in 1963. Oswald was a public supporter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or FPCC, a popular campus group which defended Fidel Castro’s government from aggressive U.S. policies. Records declassified in the 1990s revealed that the CIA targeted the FPCC for disruption in September 1963. Within the records that have been partially released, propaganda sources, deception methods, and surveillance techniques are often redacted.

    “One passage in a file on Operation Northwoods, a top-secret Pentagon operation that aimed to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba, is still off-limits to the public. Approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May 1963, the Northwoods plans envisioned an ‘engineered provocation’ to replace Cuba’s socialist government with a pro-American regime. Northwoods called for the ‘the most trusted covert personnel’ to stage a spectacular crime on a U.S. target and arrange for the blame to fall on Castro, so as to create a ‘justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba.’ The Northwood plans were discovered by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. Two paragraphs of the 200-page document remain classified in 2021.”

MUBARAK ELAMIN, elamin_me@msn.com
    Elamin, an activist from Sudan now working in the tech sector in Washington State, said today: “The head of the sovereign council rounded up the prime minister and cabinet members. He dissolved the civilian government and declared a state of emergency. This is disheartening and Sudan’s dictators are vicious and violent. It is expected that people will resist, and military will respond violently.” Elamine co-wrote the piece “Removing Sudan From the Terror List Is Welcome; Yes to Assistance No to Extortion” last year with Michael Beer of Nonviolence International.

    As’ad AbuKhalil writes: “The coup happened just after [U.S. special envoy] Jeffrey Feltman met with members of the military junta. The notion that the U.S. urged a commitment to civilian transition is absurd especially given the junta’s pursuit of normalization with Israel — in return for U.S. support.”

    The Electronic Intifada reports: “Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups to be ‘terrorist organizations’ on Friday.

    “The defense ministry order accuses the groups of serving ‘as an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,’ a leftist political party banned by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union due to its opposition to normalization with Israel.

    “Some of the six targeted groups — Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International Palestine, the Union of Palestinian Women Committees, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Bisan Center for Research and Development — have cooperated closely with the International Criminal Court in its war crimes probe in the West Bank and Gaza.”

JONATHAN KUTTAB, jonathankuttab@gmail.com, @jkuttab
    Kuttab was a founder of Al-Haq and is now executive director of Friends of Sabeel-North America, which just released a statement: “FOSNA Statement on Israel’s Labeling of Top Palestinian Human Rights Agencies as ‘Terrorist Organizations.’”

    Kuttab states: “Al-Haq is now one of several world-renowned and respected human rights organizations. I am proud to say that over the years Al-Haq has meticulously maintained its high standards and, after the Oslo process, was courageous enough to apply the same standards of objectivity, independence, and defense of human rights not just to the Israeli occupation, but also to the behaviour of the Palestinian Authority, and also of Hamas.

    “I was therefore shocked, though not surprised, when Israel [on Friday] declared Al-Haq, together with Addamir, Defence of Children International-Palestine, and three other human rights organizations to be ‘terrorist organizations.'”

    Kuttab assessed the possible reasons for Gantz’s actions, including: “Israel no longer cares about its reputation and no longer fears international public opinion, or any sanctions by the international community. The fact that it has been successful so far in avoiding accountability, and that just a few months ago it ransacked the offices of Defense for Children International in Ramallah with little or no push back emboldened it to do whatever it wants without fear of repercussions. Its assault on civil society can go on unchallenged.”

The Institute for Policy Studies has several experts available to speak about the negotiations on the Hill. The group states: “Democratic lawmakers are scrambling to forge an agreement on President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to address our country’s pressing human and climate change needs. The social investments in the deal, including universal pre-K, expanded child tax credits, paid leave, and Medicare expansion, have the potential to be the most consequential for workers, children, and seniors since the 1930s. The agreement could also be historic on the revenue side, with a path-breaking tax on billionaires gaining momentum as one of the key options to pay for these vital public investments.

“But a handful of conservative Democrats are pushing to water down the president’s proposals, and they hold enormous power in a Congress where their party holds only a razor-thin majority.”

Among the analysts available are :

Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. The author of the new book, The Wealth Hoarders, Collins is a veteran fair tax advocate who has made headlines this year for his work tracking the explosion of billionaire pandemic wealth.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. She testified earlier this year before the Senate Budget Committee on inequality in the U.S. and has written extensively on the tax and investment proposals on the budget negotiating table.

Anderson and Collins have just published an analysis of the billionaire tax in play on Capitol Hill.

Karen Dolan directs the IPS Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project. She can speak about the child tax credit and other anti-poverty measures in the bill, the political dynamics on Capitol Hill, and the relationship between safety net funding and social movements.

Contact:
Olivia Alperstein, olivia@ips-dc.org
Robert Alvarez, robert@ips-dc.org

The UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) begins on Oct 31 in Glasgow, Scotland.

Hundreds of peace and environmental organizations have announced an event on November 4 in Glasgow.

They are demanding that militaries be included in climate agreements.

Over 400 organizations and 20,000 people have signed a petition at COP26.info addressed to COP26 participants: “Stop Excluding Military Pollution from Climate Agreements.”

The group World BEYOND War states: “The U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters on earth. Since 2001, the U.S. military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million cars on the road.” The group adds that the Pentagon is “the largest institutional consumer of oil ($17B/year) in the world, and the largest global landholder with 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries. By one estimate, the U.S. military used 1.2 million barrels of oil in Iraq in just one month of 2008. One military estimate in 2003 was that two-thirds of the U.S. Army’s fuel consumption occurred in vehicles that were delivering fuel to the battlefield.”

Speakers at the event on 4 November will include: Stuart Parkinson of Scientists for Global Responsibility UK, Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition, Alison Lochhead of Greenham Women Everywhere, Jodie Evans of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Tim Pluta of World BEYOND War, David Collins of Veterans For Peace, Lynn Jamieson of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and others to be announced. There will also be music by David Rovics.

“Our purpose here begins with making people aware of the problem,” said David Swanson, executive director of World BEYOND War. “Imagine a limit on dangerous items you can carry on airplanes that makes an exception for nuclear weapons. Imagine a diet that limits your calories but makes an exception for 36 gallons of ice cream an hour. Here the world is all gathering to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions that make an exception for militaries. Why? What possible excuse is there for that, unless killing people in the short term is so important to us that we’re willing to kill everyone in the long term. We need to speak up for life, and soon.”

“War and militarism are amongst the unnamed enemies of our ecosphere,” said Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition. “The U.S. military is the biggest single consumer of oil on the planet, and the last two decades of war have polluted on an almost unimaginable scale. It is a scandal that military emissions are being excluded from the discussion. If we want to end warming we need to end war.”

“War is obsolete. There is no doubt, the quicker we get rid of it, the quicker we improve the climate,” added Tim Pluta, World BEYOND War Chapter Organizer in Asturias, Spain.

Contacts:
David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, david@worldbeyondwar.org
The following will be going to Glasgow:
Nancy Mancias, CODE PINK, nancymancias@codepink.org
Tim Pluta, inhatim17@gmail.com

The New York Times reports: “China’s Weapon Tests Close to a ‘Sputnik Moment,’ U.S. General Says.”

THEODORE A. POSTOL, postol@mit.edu
    Available for a limited number of interviews, Postol is professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He said today:

    1. “The potential of hypersonic vehicles increasing the threat to the United States is essentially zero.

    “The United States is already threatened by ballistic missiles and nuclear armed cruise missiles. Neither of these systems can be defended against. In particular, there is no capability of defending against ballistic missile warheads as the ability to deploy decoys is so simple and the inability of current systems to determine the difference between decoys and warheads is so complete that for all practical purposes it is not possible to intercept ballistic warheads.

    “Cruise missiles can occasionally be intercepted with quick reaction low-altitude defenses surrounding target locations, but the technology for this kind of defense is so limited, that such defenses cannot be used to provide a practical national defense.

    “Thus, the threat of a hypersonic vehicle that is also not subject to meaningful defense does not change offensive nuclear strike capabilities in any meaningful way.

    2. “In the case of the United States, we are blessed with extraordinarily capable space-based early warning systems which have the ability to detect hypersonic vehicles as they descend into the atmosphere and become heated to very high temperatures.

    “We also have the capability to detect the launch and powered flight of ballistic missiles that would accelerate and deploy hypersonic vehicles towards the North American continent. This detection capability does not translate into any significant defensive capability, but it does mean that the United States would have warning that such an attack was underway.

    “It is very difficult to think of a scenario where such an attack was not accompanied by the launch of ballistic missiles, but that is a different matter than what I am currently addressing.

    3. “The early warning situation for countries other than the United States is problematic, and could introduce problematic instabilities with regard to accidental nuclear war.

    “Hypersonic delivery vehicles are launched onto trajectories that do not rise to extremely high altitudes like those associated with ballistic missile warheads.

    “Because the earth is round, the detection of hypersonic delivery vehicles by conventional ballistic missile early warning radars is almost nonexistent because of limitations imposed by the curvature of the earth. There is likely some capability to detect hypersonic vehicles using Over-the-Horizon Backscatter (OTH) radars, which reflect their radar beams off the ionosphere. However, these radars are limited to low frequencies (between 5 and 30 MHz) and depend on being able to reliably reflect radar beams off the ionosphere. The ionosphere is unstable and cannot be used with certainty and therefore potentially limits the utility of these over the horizon radars.

    “This means that countries like Russia (and China), which do not have highly capable space-based infrared detection systems, will have extremely limited or no warning of attack by hypersonic vehicles.

    “These threats to ground-based early warning radars and command posts will not materially add to the already serious threat to ground-based early-warning systems posed by stealthy cruise missiles (which are no longer limited due to the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty). The introduction of hypersonic vehicles will not change this currently dangerous situation as long as the numbers of such vehicles are relatively small and their accuracy does not begin to approach that of what is already achievable with ballistic and cruise missiles at this time. Nonetheless, there would certainly be some additional concern in countries that depend only on vulnerable ground-based warning systems that hypersonic vehicles could be used to attack ballistic missile early warning radars and key command-and-control installations as precursors to larger attacks.

    “In summary, the introduction of hypersonic vehicles into the arsenals of the major countries may not introduce significant threats to nuclear stability that do not already exist unless they become numerous enough and sufficiently accurate to pose a credible zero or short-warning attack threat to the command-and-control and early warning systems of countries like Russia and China. Since ballistic missiles are far more accurate and versatile for purposes of large-scale attacks, it is probable that the countries demonstrating hypersonic vehicle capabilities will not deploy them in any significant numbers.

    “As such, hypersonic vehicles are almost certainly an activity aimed at getting the attention of other countries by demonstrating technological prowess, as they will have little or no meaning in terms of adding significant nuclear-strike capabilities.”

TODD MILLER, toddmemomiller@gmail.com, @memomiller
    In preparation for the United Nations climate change summit in Glasgow that started on October 31, the White House wrote, “The current migration situation extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into Central America presents an opportunity for the United States to model good practice and discuss openly managing migration humanely, [and] highlight the role of climate change in migration.”

    Author of the book Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders, Miller responded: “These sorts of statements have become normal for the Joe Biden administration, rhetoric that sounds nice for those concerned with immigrant rights, but divorced from reality and the policies of his administration, as well as strategies in place on the border for decades.”

    Miller co-wrote the new report “Global Climate Wall: How the World’s Wealthiest Nations Prioritize Borders Over Climate Action” for the Transnational Institute. He said: “We showed the United States — the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter — has the world’s largest border and immigration enforcement budget. In this sense, the United States, along with other rich and historically high-emitting countries, have made a heavy investment in border regimes composed of walls, surveillance technology including drones, and armies of border guards, while neglecting commitments to climate financing for poorer and more ecologically vulnerable countries that would be dedicated to adaptation and creating resilience so people don’t have to migrate. The U.S. is spending eleven times more on border and immigration enforcement than on climate finance. In other words, there is no humane ‘managing’ of migration happening.

    “There were 1.3 million people displaced in Guatemala and Honduras due to drought, hurricanes, and floods in 2020—and if they come to the U.S. border they are facing the guns, gates, guards, and prisons. Like greenhouse gas emissions, global border fortification needs to be mitigated. As negotiations begin in Glasgow this week, this needs to be central to climate negotiations going forward.”

    Miller also just wrote the piece “Defund the Global Climate Wall” for The Border Chronicle.

MITCH JONES, Seth Gladstone, sgladstone@fwwatch.org
    The Biden administration is pressing Congress to pass the Build Back Better Act, touted as the most substantial investment in climate action in the nation’s history. Passing the spending bill is intended to demonstrate to world leaders at the COP26 conference in Glasgow that the United States is finally serious about addressing the climate crisis.

    Jones is policy director at the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch.

    He said today: “As it currently stands, the Build Back Better reconciliation package does relatively little to confront climate pollution from fossil fuels. Talking about it as the most comprehensive climate legislation of all time is misleading, in that Congress has done next to nothing to compare it to. The bill primarily delivers an array of tax credits for purchases of renewable energy and electric cars, while expanding financial incentives for so-called ‘carbon capture’ schemes and protecting the billions of dollars that are wasted on domestic fossil fuel subsidies. These are the government giveaways that literally make oil and gas drilling look profitable to Wall Street and fossil fuel corporations.

    “The intense focus on the success of this spending bill takes some of the spotlight away from the actions that the Biden administration could be taking on its own to rein in fossil fuel production. The White House has extraordinary powers to limit the supply of fossil fuels that do not require the blessing of Senator Joe Manchin or the entirety of the Republican Party. Biden campaigned on a promise to stop oil and gas drilling on federal land — but since the election has not taken aggressive action to rein in this drilling. In fact, the Biden administration is approving new drilling permits at an astonishing pace.

    “The White House could immediately direct all relevant agencies to stop approvals of new fossil fuel infrastructure, including major new oil and gas pipelines. It could put a halt to fossil fuel exports, including crude oil. These are all common sense executive actions that would demonstrate seriousness in confronting a crisis that President Biden has called an existential threat. Failure to take such actions cannot be blamed on Joe Manchin.”

    Jones recently wrote the piece “‘Compromising’ on Climate Is Horrible Politics, Deadly Policy, and Stupid Economics.”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research recently released an assessment: “Building Back Better Could Be Better.”

Executive Action Tracker:
Out of 77 actions Biden could take without Congressional mandate identified by The American Prospect, there are 15 yes, 11 partial, 6 no, and 1 no longer applicable. For example, the magazine notes that Biden could: “Implement free public college by using existing statutory authority to forgive loans equal to average public-college tuition on a rolling basis for two- and four-year public colleges.” Another example: “Write rules to crack down on IRA stuffing, ending the possibility that someone like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) can have $100 million in an IRA.”

Paid Leave:
CEPR co-founder Dean Baker notes in “NYT Spreads Fox News Style Misinformation on Family Leave and Childcare” that: “An article discussing the future prospects for paid family leave dismissed the claim by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand that almost every country in the world has paid family leave, by saying that most of these countries actually do not expect women to work after they have had children. …

“While it is true that many women in developing countries with paid family leave do not work outside the home, most wealthy countries with paid leave actually have higher rates of women’s labor force participation than the United States. According to data from the OECD, 83.8 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 64 were in the labor force in Finland. In Germany, the figure was 84.4 percent; in France, it was 79.3 percent. By comparison, in the United States, it was just 77.2 percent, a figure that puts it well behind most other wealthy countries.”In short, the story is the exact opposite of what the New York Times told readers. The U.S. workforce relies less on women than most of the wealthy countries that provide paid family leave.”

Taxing the Rich:
The Washington Post reported recently: “Billionaire tax out, corporate minimum tax in: Where the White House landed on tax plans.” The Post notes that one thing that did make it is a 5 percent surcharge on annual income greater than $10 million and a 3 percent surcharge on income greater than $25 million. Baker, responding to dropping many tax measures aggressively targeting the rich, said: “With the surtax, there’s no question of its constitutionality. It seems much safer. … But it will do less about inequality, because this is not a hit to the richest people whereas the other one would have been.”

Overview:
Max B. Sawicky, senior research fellow at CEPR, just gave this overview in In These Times magazine: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the Build Back Better Deal.”

For interviews with CEPR economists, contact: Karen Conner, conner@cepr.net

On Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to advance former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s nomination as the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Two Democrats voted ‘No,’ but were offset by the Biden administration securing the backing of Republicans on the Committee. The nomination now moves to the full Senate.

The Chicago Tribune reports: “Progressive Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts asked to be recorded as ‘No’ votes on Emanuel as the committee took a single vote to approve 14 ambassador nominations at once.” Emanuel’s backers include “former President Bill Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress.”

DELMARIE COBB, dlcobb@thepublicityworks.net
    Cobb is a political activist from Chicago who helped organize a broad effort to oppose Emanuel’s nomination; see below. She said today: “The recent elections results show the most loyal voting bloc in the Democratic Party are Black voters. As always, it’s about turnout. Yet, we continue to be taken for granted by elected officials at every level of the party. How President Joe Biden could forget so quickly who helped to put him in office is incredible. He shows his appreciation by trying to resurrect Rahm Emanuel from the heap of failed mayors. What a slap in the face to Black voters to nominate a man who is synonymous with a police murder, police coverup and public policies that failed Chicago’s most underserved communities.”

The AP notes: “Emanuel would head to Japan at a moment when Biden wants to increase focus on the Indo-Pacific.”

Sen. Merkley released the following statement: “Black Lives Matter. Here in the halls of Congress, it is important that we not just speak and believe these words, but put them into action in the decisions we make. I have carefully considered Mayor Emanuel’s record — and the input of civil rights leaders, criminal justice experts, and local elected officials who have reached out to the Senate to weigh in — and I have reached the decision that I cannot support his nomination to serve as a U.S. Ambassador.” See video posted by RootsAction: “Rahm Emanuel Evades Senator Jeff Merkley’s Questions On Laquan McDonald.”

Over the last month, numerous activists from Chicago have spoken up against the nomination including:

Dorothy Homes, Justice For Families:
“Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of my son… Rahm Emanuel does not deserve to be the ambassador of anything. Rahm Emanuel belongs behind bars.”

Camiella Williams, Adult Advisor to GoodKidsMadCity:
“If Rahm Emmanuel’s appointment as Ambassador for Japan is confirmed, all the organizing efforts put in to remove him as Mayor of Chicago will go in vain! Rahm showed the entire world, he cannot be trusted as a public servant when he concealed the murder tape of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald for his political gain.”

In a piece headlined “Watchdog finds no misconduct in mistaken Afghan airstrike,” the AP describes “an independent Pentagon review” which has “concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesn’t recommend any disciplinary action.”

NBC News reports: “Pentagon review found that footage showed child present minutes before U.S. drone attack in Kabul.”

Representatives of BanKillerDrones.org say the Pentagon “must be called upon by people around the world and by the U.S. Congress to make public all of the communications and logs, including communications with the White House, pertaining to the August 29, 2021 drone attack that killed 10 members of the Ahmadi family in Kabul, including seven children.”

“The Pentagon’s assertion that no one did anything illegal to cause the drone deaths of the Ahmadi family members is a shameful side-stepping and a further cover-up of who made what decisions and why in this horrible slaughter,” said Nick Mottern, a co-coordinator of BanKillerDrones.org. “We need to see all the records surrounding this incident, including those that may help us to know the role of President Biden, if any.”

Kathy Kelly, a peace advocate who has visited Afghanistan 28 times since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and also a co-coordinator of BanKillerDrones.org, said: “By recommending against any disciplinary action following the slaughter of 10 civilians, seven of whom were children, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is endorsing reckless cruelty waged through ghastly drone attacks.”

Mottern noted that a wide array of international human rights law experts have asserted that U.S. drone attacks violate international law and principles of war, so the use of an armed drone on August 29th was illegal. Further, he said, Air Force veteran Daniel Hale was sent to federal prison in July at the hands of the Biden Administration for releasing government documents that addressed precisely the faulty intelligence and other problems with the U.S. drone program that led to the August 29th drone attack. “The use of weaponized drones should have been shelved years ago,” Mottern said.

They added: “It is beyond outrageous that the Pentagon has yet to provide full reparations for the killing of Ahmadi family members and has failed to meet their need for speedy passage to the United States.” BanKillerDrones.org has called for reparations of $3 million for each of the 10 Ahmadi family members killed. The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration paid “nearly $3 million” to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto, who was mistakenly killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan in 2015.

Contact:
Kathy Kelly, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com
Nick Mottern, nickmottern@gmail.com

MIKE ELK, mike.elk@gmail.com, @MikeElk
    Elk is a labor reporter and founder of PayDayReport.com.

    His work was just featured in the in-depth piece “‘It’s a walkout!’ — Inside the fast-food workers’ season of rebellion” in the Washington Post: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics only tracks major stoppages that involve more than 1,000 workers. But Mike Elk, a labor reporter and founder of PayDayReport.com, has compiled a database of 1,600 walkouts since March 2020 that included as many as 100,000 workers.”

    Elk highlighted the scope of labor actions in just one town: “One thousand hospital workers are striking at Cabell Huntington Hospital in West Virginia. Nearly 500 steelworkers in Huntington have been on strike at Special Metals already for four weeks.

    “With only 50,000 people living in Huntington, West Virginia, having nearly 1,500 workers out on strike is sure to have a huge impact.

    “This could be a landmark strike movement in this small West Virginia town that could mobilize more support nationwide for the growing strike movement.

    “More than a year and a half ago, Payday was the first outlet to identify a massive strike wave, beginning when we launched our Payday Report Strike Tracker in March of 2020.

    “Since then, we have recorded more than 1,600 strikes and walkouts.