Justice

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Wednesday vowed not to be deterred from fighting for Palestinian rights after the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC began running ads this week linking the Minnesota Democrat with Hamas, spots that Omar’s office condemned as both inaccurate and dangerous.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the Pentagon to pass audits beginning in fiscal year 2022 — or face fines. The Pentagon has never passed an audit. The bill would impose a 1 percent fine on any military and Department of Defense agencies that fail to pass their audits. Sanders introduced the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2021 with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah on Wednesday.

Human Rights My Grandparents Lived Through the Nakba. Now It’s Happening Again. Economy & Labor COVID Has Catalyzed a Wave of Tenant Organizing That Was Long Overdue Human Rights Israeli Bombs Destroy Gaza Media Center, Take Out AP, Al Jazeera and Others Immigration Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at Border Politics & Elections Pharma-Backed Dark Money Group Attacks House Democrats’ Lower Drug Pricing Plan Politics & Elections The Death of Democracy Looks Nearer Than Ever Israeli bombs destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by Israel to silence reporting from Gaza amid its military bombardment. The Israeli air raid totally demolished the structure. The 11-storey residential building called Al-Jalaa has now collapsed. pic.twitter.com/VUFxxJCuW3 — Arwa Ibrahim (@arwaib) May 15, 2021 Live Al Jazeera video showed the 11-story al-Jalaa building, which also houses a number of residences and other offices, crashing to the ground after being bombed as dust and debris flew into the air. The strike came just hours after another Israeli bombing of a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza City killed at least eight Palestinian children and two women from an extended family, in the deadliest single strike of Israel’s current assault. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has released the following statement: We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit. We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more. This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time. The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today. Al Jazeera’s Safwat al-Kahlout, reporting from Gaza City, said he had worked at the building for 11 years, and often did live reports from its roof. “I have been covering lots of events from this building,” he said. “We have lots of good memories with our colleagues.” It was not immediately made clear why the building was targeted by Israel. “Now, no one can understand the feeling of the people whose homes have been destroyed by such kind of air attacks,” al-Kahlout said. “It’s really difficult to wake up one day and then you realize that your office is not there with all the career experiences, memories that you’ve had.” If journalistic solidarity means anything whatsoever, it should mean, at the bare minimum, unreservedly speaking out about Israel wiping out the building housing media organisations such as Associated Press and Al-Jazeera pic.twitter.com/0rBdIt7dhU — Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) May 15, 2021 BREAKING: Israel airstrike flattens building housing Associated Press, Al Jazeera offices. Latest: https://t.co/6uVfDHJhk0 📷 Ashraf Abu Amrah / Reuters 📷 Mohammed Salem / Reuters pic.twitter.com/O0S1GcSP6e — MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 15, 2021 This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Human Rights My Grandparents Lived Through the Nakba. Now It’s Happening Again. Economy & Labor COVID Has Catalyzed a Wave of Tenant Organizing That Was Long Overdue Human Rights Israeli Bombs Destroy Gaza Media Center, Take Out AP, Al Jazeera and Others Immigration Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at Border Politics & Elections Pharma-Backed Dark Money Group Attacks House Democrats’ Lower Drug Pricing Plan Politics & Elections The Death of Democracy Looks Nearer Than Ever Liz Cheney is not on my short list of politicians I admire or wish to see in Congress. But she has done the right thing in calling out the “big lie” and promising to do all she can to keep Donald Trump away from the White House, literally or in terms of his influence over a terribly broken party. She is a canary in the coal mine. Would that others had the courage to follow suit. Most sentient beings on the planet breathed a huge sigh of relief last November when Joe Biden won the presidential election. We were even happier when he and his administration immediately began acting robustly on myriad issues. First came the well-chosen appointments, the flurry of executive orders reversing Trump’s perversities, then the big bills aimed at health care, infrastructure, economic recovery, climate change, income inequality, childcare and more — all of which made Republicans in Congress and their QAnon conspiracists cringe — and jump into action. A majority of states immediately flew into action to bring back Jim Crow with hideous voting rights restrictions. Protesters began to be arrested. Gun violence and hate crimes grew by startling percentages while cops kept killing Black people. Arizona Republicans decided to hold yet another recount of the election results there, barring journalists from the hangar where counters reportedly tried to spot bamboo in the ballots. (Proof, if we needed it, that the party has gone crazy.) Republicans in Congress began their urgent campaign, articulated by Mitch McConnell, to stop any legislation proposed by the White House or Democrats in the House of Representatives. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley and other deranged GOP members went on various rants grounded in lies and nonsense. Rand Paul accosted public health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, accusing him of funding dangerous research in China (more proof of crazy). Vaccine conspiracies and anti-masking activists got really crazy. All of this occurred after Jan. 6, when the unimaginable happened and an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol sent America a clear message: This country is not out of danger. The fact is, the real and growing possibility of living through the destruction of American democracy is not going away. It is growing. Donald Trump is now viewed as the head of the Republican Party as he holds the feet of elected officials to the fire with his fierce, alarming grip on their futures. A significant number of regular Republicans continue to embrace the lies, mantras and inconceivable theories spewed out daily by Fox News. Insurrectionists crawl out from under their rocks in droves. The Supreme Court is now a quasi-political body with a 6-3 conservative majority. All this is terrifying in its implications. Like many others, I grow more and more anxious by the day — so much so that I actually inquired about getting a British passport, which my husband and children hold. I know that what happened in countries like Turkey, Egypt, Poland, Hungary and others can happen here. We are not immune from autocrats and dictatorship and we are not protected by our Constitution if it no longer holds meaning for those in power. Our future is riding on the midterm elections next year, and the 2024 presidential election. If you think I am needlessly hyperventilating, consider this: In 1923 Hitler mounted a failed coup. When he failed, his effort was treated leniently. A decade later he was Germany’s dictator. In 2021 Donald Trump inspired a failed coup. It too has been treated leniently by those who say we “need to move on.” Will he, or his appointed alter ego, be our dictator in less than a decade? Ece Temelkuran, a noted Turkish journalist, wrote a book in 2019 in which she explains how President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to rule that country. The book is called How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship. In the first chapter she writes, “Watching a disaster occur has a sedating effect. As our sense of helplessness grows along with the calamity, [we begin to feel that] there is no longer anything you can do.… global news channels jump in [for] the denouement. It has been a long and exhausting [time], unbearably painful. It began with a populist coming to town.… A bleak dawn breaks.” She goes on to draw chilling comparisons between the fate of Turkey and what’s happening in the U.S. and elsewhere: “It doesn’t matter if Trump or Erdogan or [the U.K.’s] Nigel Farage is brought down. Millions of people are fired up by their message and will be ready to act upon the orders of a similar figure.… These minions will find you, even in your own personal space, armed with their own set of values and ready to hunt down anyone who doesn’t resemble themselves.” Temelkuran points out that this is not something imposed top down or imported from the Kremlin. It also arises from the grassroots. She says wisely, “It is time to recognize that what is occurring affects us all.” It is time, indeed, for America to realize what is occurring — and that it will affect us all. This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Successive Israeli governments have been trying for years to push Palestinians out of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the latest round of Israeli attacks fall in line with that goal. But to understand the roots of the current escalation — and the possible threat of all-out war — one must examine the U.S.-backed, foundational Israeli government policy of using strategies of “terror and expulsion” in an effort to expand its territory by killing and displacing Palestinians, says Noam Chomsky, in this exclusive interview for Truthout.

Senate Budget chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) sharply criticized the country’s abnormally large defense budget and the “fraud” and “misconduct” of defense contractors in a hearing on Pentagon spending on Wednesday. The Pentagon has a budget of a whopping $740 billion this year. That makes up more than half of the discretionary spending authorized by Congress. This figure would be a lot on its own, but, as Sanders pointed out in the hearing, the Department of Defense is often wasteful in its spending and often racks up cost overruns despite a staggeringly large budget.

Remember the song about the cat? Well, the cat came back the very next day / Oh, the cat came back, they thought he was a goner but the cat came back / He just couldn’t stay away… Well, it won’t be official for a few weeks, but the word landed yesterday: Rahm Emanuel, among the most despised individuals within and without Democratic Party politics, will be named U.S. ambassador to Japan. The cat came back, and has apparently landed a key assignment in the foreign service.

A federal bankruptcy judge has dismissed the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) bankruptcy claims, filed in Texas despite the organization being based in New York, for being a blatant attempt to avoid litigation over its mishandling of donor funds for the past several decades. The ruling is considered a huge blow to the gun rights organization, as it allows a lawsuit filed against the group in its home state to move forward unimpeded.

House Republicans voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) from her leadership position on Wednesday, in a move that cemented the right’s unending fealty to former President Donald Trump. Cheney had refused to continue perpetuating Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen, which many Republicans viewed as a sort of betrayal of their values — though Cheney herself has been a loyal rank-and-file GOP member over the years, often pushing the worst elements of conservative ideology.

Biolyse Pharma Corp., which makes injectable cancer drugs, was gearing up to start making generic biologic drugs, made from living organisms. Then the pandemic hit. Watching the covid death toll climb, the company decided its new production lines and equipment could be converted to making vaccines for poorer countries without the means to do so.