Politics
Albanese advised to come clean on AUKUS and China – Asian Media Report
In Asian media this week: Government must persuade public on nuclear subs. Plus: Violence against women an Asian tragedy, too; Beijing, Manila clash over shoal agreement; West hastening loss of supremacy; Modi’s attacks show worry about poll; Hong Kong should promote its common law system. Readers of Asian media stand a good chance of understanding Continue reading »
USA materiel supply to Israel’s genocide paused
President Biden has, at long last, halted the immediate supply of large bombs and other heavy munitions to Israel and acknowledged that these same munitions have been used in the Israeli attack on Palestine previously. At least one shipment of these munitions was paused last week: 1,800 2,000lb bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs ‘that might Continue reading »
Students in rapturous joy over HECS changes – Weekly Roundup
A peek into the Reserve Bank’s fantasy world, a Labor-lite budget on its way, how the Liberal Party has moved to the left of Labor, students in rapturous joy over HECS changes. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. Economics How Continue reading »
Budget to be used as a smoke screen for Migration Bill passage through Senate?
While the Senate Subcommittee came out in favour of a much amended Migration Amendment Bill 2024 … it is not too late to reject the premise of the legislation or to create a more coherent Bill, whose wider implications are intentional and more integrated, say advocates. Refugee advocates invite Senators to reject the Bill a Continue reading »
Instigators of violence
Does David Crowe, a journalist at the Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald and the Age want to be regarded as the instigator of violence against students protesting the Gazan genocide? I read a series of David Crowe’s vituperative articles regarding student protests against the Palestinian genocide occurring right now in Gaza, including the latest Continue reading »
How Hong Kong can counter misconceptions and boost trust
Hong Kong appears to hang on every word from Beijing and eagerly awaits instructions on how to move forward, and therein lies the city’s biggest danger. When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 under the formula of “one country, two systems”, naivety and over-optimism pervaded the city, the mainland and beyond with the Continue reading »
AIPAC and Republican Donors Raising Big Money for Maxine Dexter Against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon
Pro-Israel donors threw nearly $220,000 behind a Portland, Oregon, congressional candidate in a single day this week — the latest indication that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is working to block her opponent who has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for conditions to be placed on U.S. aid to Israel.
The fundraiser adds to a $580,000 haul Maxine Dexter reported raising in just the month of April, after her entire campaign previously had raised only $340,000 since December. Beyond her own money, Dexter is on track to be boosted by upward of $3 million in dark-money spending, which similarly has ties to pro-Israel donors.
The last-minute deluge from Republican and AIPAC donors — the newest filing posted on Friday, 11 days before the Democratic primary and long after mail ballots have gone out — has upended the open primary race, as Dexter’s previous poor fundraising and low name identification in the district had her out of contention, with Susheela Jayapal, the former Multnomah County commissioner, the frontrunner.
Pro-Israel advocates identified Jayapal — the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — as a target early in the race, and had floated Dexter as the alternative to consolidate around. But openly backing Dexter with money from pro-Israel and GOP donors would come at an extreme political cost in Portland. Squad member Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., fended off a primary challenge recently in part by hammering her opponent for taking Republican cash. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., is pillorying his opponent George Latimer for the same.
Latimer and Lee’s opponent, however, openly took the money. While Dexter is similarly benefiting from Republican and AIPAC donors, the largesse has been obscured by loopholes in campaign finance law that are only bursting open in the campaign’s final weeks.
Dexter has claimed she has no idea where the influx of money backing her and attacking Jayapal is coming from, but that pretense is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Jone Dalezman, who is listed in federal records as having given a maximum contribution of $3,300 to Dexter on May 7, told The Intercept she did not attend a fundraiser and had no recollection of giving directly to her. “I wasn’t there and I did not give money to her,” she said. But, she added, if AIPAC asks her to give to a candidate, she does. “I give all my contributions through AIPAC. Whenever I am asked to give to their endorsed candidates I give.”
A week ago, The Intercept reported that AIPAC had put together a secret operation to funnel money to the Portland race by diverting AIPAC donor funds through a super PAC called 314 Action Fund, which ostensibly works to elect candidates with science backgrounds, according to two sources. The timing of the operation, which launched after the March 31 filing deadline, meant the super PAC would not need to disclose its donors until May 20, the day before the primary election.
Subsequently, a staffer at 314 Action confirmed that the PAC was being used as a pass-through to stop Jayapal, and would also soon be expanding to other races, including that of Rep. Cori Bush, a Squad member and top AIPAC target who represents St. Louis. “314 has turned its back on science in order to be used as a weapon against progressives by Zionists,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to avoid reprisal. The Bush money, the staffer said, would not come through 314 but through a newly created PAC, both because The Intercept had exposed 314’s role as a front for the money and because Bush’s opponent, Wesley Bell, doesn’t have a plausible science background to justify an endorsement.
AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did 314 Action, but a few minutes before this article was published, the PAC posted a tweet accusing The Intercept of “making up stories out of thin air.” 314 denied that it would be spending against Bush but said nothing about another PAC doing so.
Dexter, during a recent debate, denied knowing the source of the dark money backing her campaign. But when pressed by her opponent Eddy Morales, she emphatically — and in contradiction to her claim of ignorance — said that the money certainly did not come from Big Pharma. Her campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
“AIPAC hasn’t endorsed any candidates in this race,” campaign manager Nathan Clark told The Oregonian in a statement. “Maxine’s position has been clear for months — we need a cease-fire that brings the hostages home and rush humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
The May 7 fundraiser netted Dexter’s campaign roughly $220,000 from just under 80 donors. Nearly 90 percent of the people who gave to Dexter through the fundraiser have also been direct donors to AIPAC or its super PAC, according to The Intercept’s analysis of campaign finance reports.
The fundraising closed a lead Jayapal had built over the field, having raised more than any other candidate as of March 31. She has raised a total of $772,00 dollars, now placing her second to Dexter.
Related
AIPAC Is Secretly Intervening in Portland’s Congressional Race to Take Down Susheela Jayapal, Sources Say
Dexter is a doctor and Oregon state representative who entered the race at the urging of the local pro-Israel community, which worried that Susheela Jayapal would advance the same politics as her sister when it comes to Israel–Palestine. Jayapal has since embraced policy positions critical of Israel and said she would reject money from AIPAC.
AIPAC’s resistance to disclosing its involvement in the anti-Jayapal campaign reflects a concern that its support for Israel’s ongoing war — now being waged in the face of even President Joe Biden’s criticism — is too toxic for a Democratic primary in Oregon.
314 Action began spending on the race in April, and another super PAC jumped in with attack ads against Jayapal last week. While the super PACs won’t have to report their donors until the day before the primary election, candidates themselves are required to file more timely reports as election day nears.
On Thursday, Dexter’s campaign reported to the Federal Election Commission that it collected more than $218,000 on May 7.
Dalezman, the donor who said she has no recollection of a fundraiser, gave more than $50,000 to AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, last year. She previously gave $25,000 to Americans for Tomorrow’s Future, a pro-Israel super PAC that targeted Bowman and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. Dalezman has also given to Democratic Majority for Israel, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, as well as former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, among a slew of politicians from both parties.
Bundling donations to approved candidates is a common practice in politics and one that was described by AIPAC donor David Ochs, who didn’t know he was being recorded for an undercover documentary: “What happens is [a donor] meets with the congressman in the back room, tells them exactly what his goals are … basically they hand him an envelope with 20 credit cards, and say, ‘You can swipe each of these credit cards for a thousand dollars each.’”
Another one of Dexter’s recent donors is Daniel Kraft — the son of Robert Kraft, a major funder of the United Democracy Project — who maxed out a $3,300 contribution to Dexter on May 7. David Cohen, who works for Palantir, Peter Thiel’s cybersecurity company, gave to Dexter and also AIPAC this year, as did several dozen others.
Kraft and Cohen did not respond to requests for comment.
Several of the donors also earmarked AIPAC contributions to be directed to Joanna Weiss, the candidate AIPAC inscrutably backed against Dave Min, who has not been critical of Israel, in California. (Min won.)
Prior to April, the open Democratic primary was considered Jayapal’s to lose. In 2022, AIPAC showed that its super PAC had the capacity to knock 20 to 30 percentage points off the lead of a progressive Democratic candidate, when several million dollars in spending took Summer Lee from a commanding lead in her Pittsburgh congressional race to a neck-and-neck tie. (Lee nonetheless won the election.) DMFI accomplished the same against Nina Turner in a 2021 Ohio special election, managing to narrowly defeat her after she led by 20-30 points before the spending.
The ads against Jayapal funded by “Voters for Responsive Government” are brutal, and pin Portland’s homelessness crisis on her as a former member of the Multnomah County Commission. They even accuse her of “starving and abusing cats and dogs.” There is no reference in any of the ads to Israel or Gaza, where Israel is currently starving 2 million people.
Update: May 11, 2024
This article was updated to mention a tweet 314 Action posted about The Intercept’s reporting.
The post AIPAC and Republican Donors Raising Big Money for Maxine Dexter Against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon appeared first on The Intercept.
Even Biden’s Lawyers Are Urging the White House to Change Course on Gaza
In a message to Attorney General Merrick Garland and other senior officials this week, federal government attorneys invoked British abolitionist William Wilberforce: “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
The letter, drafted by unnamed legal and policy staff at more than two dozen federal agencies, argues that the U.S. is violating domestic and international law by providing a steady stream of weapons to Israel despite evidence of war crimes in Gaza. Drawing comparisons to the infamous “torture memos,” which were drafted by government lawyers to provide cover to CIA waterboarding and other tactics, the letter reminded fellow attorneys of their binding duty to follow the law over political priorities.
Multiple provisions in U.S. law restrict the sale or provision of weapons to other countries, including the federal Arms Export Control Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Leahy Law. The open letter draws on evidence from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other watchdogs to argue that continuing to provide weapons to Israel blatantly violates these laws, in addition to international treaties.
“There is strong evidence that American weapons are being used to commit a genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” reads the letter sent to the Biden administration on Monday. It was addressed to all attorneys at the White House, Justice Department, State Department, Defense Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“To the extent that you have been involved in these decisions or asked to provide legal analyses on the potential violations, we ask that you render candid advice.”
Attorneys and legal staff from departments including Justice, Homeland Security and Labor, among other agencies, drafted the letter. They did not include their names. In interviews, four of the letter’s organizers — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — told The Intercept that they feared reprisal.
“There’s a fear of retaliation and marginalization at speaking out over Gaza,” said a DOJ attorney who helped draft the letter and spread the word among his colleagues.
“There is an underbelly of the U.S. government who have been advocating in professional and personal roles to change the policy on Gaza,” said a DHS attorney, who has worked in the federal government for more than a decade. “The dissent is not just within the State Department,” the attorney said, referring to a string of recent State Department officials who have publicly resigned over Gaza.
Those who signed the letter — which was first reported by Politico — see it as a way to leverage their familiarity with the federal government machinery to bring about change.
“It’s not kids fresh out of college drafting this,” the DHS attorney said.
Their letter was timed to the Biden administration’s deadline to report to Congress on whether Israel is, in fact, violating international law in Gaza using U.S.-supplied weapons. On Wednesday, the administration missed that deadline but said the report would be finalized in the coming days.
In tone, the 24-page, heavily footnoted letter is no screed. A Justice Department policy staffer said they chose a dispassionate style to force a response from Garland and other senior administration lawyers.
“The goal of this is to put people on the record: Do they agree with this analysis? Do they believe the U.S. is not following its own laws and policies?” the DOJ staffer said.
Israel’s War on Gaza
“I’m hoping this adds to the groundswell of actions and demands for reevaluation of the administration’s positions,” said the DOJ attorney, adding that the nationwide campus protests, in particular, spurred some of the federal employees to join the letter.
A State Department staffer with more than two decades of policy experience, including in foreign assistance in the Middle East, hopes the letter might embolden the rank-and-file attorneys who are tasked with drafting the overdue report and similar analysis about the U.S. government’s legal obligations when it comes to Israel and Gaza.
“We know the job you have in front of you, so here’s the analysis we think lawyers should be doing,” the State Department staffer said. “What is happening here is so off-the-charts egregious that there is no other reading of the law: We have to cease weapons transfers to Israel.”
The letter also calls on Garland to investigate the thousands of U.S. citizens currently serving in the Israel Defense Forces for potential war crimes. A spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed that the letter was received but declined to comment further. A Defense Department spokesperson referred questions to the White House.
The post Even Biden’s Lawyers Are Urging the White House to Change Course on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
When Opposing Genocide Is Seen As Radical, Radicalism Becomes A Moral Imperative
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/013bf32e36d63632ec162eedc884f663/href
❖
The dumbest thing we’re asked to believe about Biden is that a politician who’s been an enthusiastic Zionist and virulent warmonger throughout his entire way-too-long political career privately has deep moral qualms about the genocide he’s been unconditionally supporting in Gaza.
❖
Every time I listen to the song Hind’s Hall I get more disdainful of all the worthless, vapid celebrity artists who are refusing to step up and do something real for once in their pathetic lives.
❖
Israel supporters are such psychopathic war sluts that they’re currently shrieking their lungs out at Biden for making a purely symbolic face-saving statement that he won’t give Israel the weapons to annihilate Rafah, despite the fact that he has already given Israel all the weapons it would need to annihilate Rafah.
The Washington Post reported the other day that “the Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections,” citing an anonymous senior official from the Biden administration. This has since been confirmed by the Israeli military, who says it has enough weapons to proceed with its planned Rafah invasion and that those plans will move forward.
❖
A new poll from Data for Progress and Zeteo has found that a majority of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that the police crackdown against anti-genocide protesters is wrong, which kind of makes you wonder why they’re still identifying as Democrats. If Biden supporters believe Biden is guilty of genocide, what does that say about Biden supporters?
❖
The New York Times has been given a Pulitzer for its scandalously discredited, notoriously biased and widely-mocked Gaza coverage. The Pulitzer Prize Awards Ceremony is literally just a bunch of propagandists giving each other trophies for being good at propaganda. Receiving one should be taken as an insult by anyone with a conscience.
❖
House Democrats rescued Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday from Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene’s initiative to oust him over his support for the massive World War 3 spending bill. This was the first time in US history that a minority from either party has ever intervened to stop the majority party from removing their own speaker, because Democrats just love war that much.
❖
And Republicans are even crazier, with GOP lawmakers promoting a bill to send college protesters to Gaza in the House and another separate bill in the Senate to have them put on a no-fly list as “terrorists”.
This new protest movement is driving empire managers out of their goddamn minds, which means it’s working and must continue. When opposing genocide is seen as radical, radicalism becomes a moral imperative.
❖
To top it all off we’re still not out of the nuclear brinkmanship woods with Ukraine, and in fact it’s getting more dangerous.
Because of reckless comments from London approving the use of British weapons to attack Russian territory, Moscow has formally warned that if this happens it could directly attack British military installations in Ukraine.
Russia has also announced that it will be holding drills to simulate the use of tactical nukes in response to repeated assertions from French president Emmanuel Macron that sending NATO troops into Ukraine to fight Russia directly is an option that’s still on the table. Belarus, where nuclear weapons were recently deployed by Moscow, has announced that it will also be conducting drills to test its readiness for nuclear warfare.
Obviously direct hot warfare between NATO and Russia is an absolute nightmare scenario that must be avoided at all cost for the sake of every organism on this planet, and we are already way too close to it.
We’ve got to turn things around and stop this maniacal empire before it gets us all killed.
_____________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.