Nancy Pelosi & 39 House Dems urge Biden to stop arming Israel until conditions are met

 The NYT writes:

Forty House Democrats including Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, sent a letter on Friday to Mr. Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken expressing displeasure with their approach to Israel. The group called on the Biden administration to deny Israel weapons pending an independent investigation into how Israel's airstrikes killing 7 humanitarian aid workers last week happened, and tie any new aid to conditions “to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”

The letter reads, in part:

"Given the horrifying facts on the ground, we are also greatly concerned by your recent decision to authorize an arms transfer to Israel, which reportedly includes 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs, and 25 F-35A fighter jets.6 The MK-84 2000-pound bombs have been linked to multiple mass casualty events in Gaza and are capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away. We are also concerned by recent reports that the administration is considering authorizing another $18 billion arms transfer to include dozens of F-15 aircraft.7 

In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers. We again strongly urge you to withhold any offensive weapons transfers until the investigation into the airstrike is concluded and, if it is found this strike violated U.S. or international law, those responsible are held accountable. And we again urge you to ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law." 

It is important that the letter specifies that suspending and conditioning military assistance must include "already authorized transfers." As discussed below, and in a long NYT article published today, the funding of this war has been anything but transparent. Much of the military assistance has not been approved by the current Congress, but rather has been sent under a $38 billion aid agreement from the Obama-era. The reps in the letter are referring to that and other "pre-approved" spending, such as that discussed in this WaPo article on Biden's "quiet transfers" of money and weapons to Israel approved long ago in 2008. He "quietly transferred" those weapons and money 2 weeks ago without notifying lawmakers in Congress, even as tensions about funding the war were already beginning to mount.

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The humanitarian workers killed by Israel were Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish and a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  The leaders and citizens of those countries have expressed outrage, causing what appears to be a reappraisal of Biden's policy of unconditional aid in the US. 

Several top Senators-- including staunch Biden ally and friend, Chris Coons, are no calling on Biden to condition aid to Israel. Sarah Sidner on CNN asked Coons if it was time to stop relying only on "carrots" and start using "sticks" to leverage any further aid to Israel. Coons replied:

"I think we're at that point...If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to were to order the IDF into Rafa at scale, if they were to drop thousand pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas make no provision for civilians and humanitarian aid, then I would vote to condition aid to Israel. I've never been here before. I've been a strong supporter of Israel the whole time I've served in congress...[B]ut the tactics by which the current PM is making decisions don't reflect the best interests of Israel or the United States." (CNN News Central with Sarah Sidner, April 4, 2024)

Biden called Netanyahu on Thursday.  He stopped short of conditioning military aid. However, he issued a stark warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that future U.S. support for Israel's Gaza war depends on the swift implementation of new steps to protect civilians and aid workers. Though this is still only talk and not a policy change, Netanyahu-- after the call-- announced that Israel would open Gaza aid routes, including the Erez crossing. Israel depends on the US desperately right now, not vice versa. If tougher talk from Biden led to a promise like that, imagine what real diplomacy (using leverage as we do with other countries) might achieve. We've seen the carrots AND sticks approach work to achieve US ends in Israel under Reagan (the bombing of Lebanon in 1982 was stopped) and Bush I (who was able to pressure Israel using leverage in 90s). At the time, a younger Biden raised his voice objecting vehemently to Bush's approach at an AIPAC dinner. But Bush 1 laid the groundwork for what would become Oslo Accords, while Biden's approach of "never disagreeing with Israel publicly" has only led to the current impasse. He should revise his playbook if he wants the results he now says he wants, namely, an end to what he calls the "over the top" and "indiscriminate" killing of civilians, and immediate help for thousands and thousands of starving Gazans. 

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Meanwhile, as the tone of many Democrats in office has changed after Israel killed American and European aid workers, so has that of mainstream media here. So, I'll end this update by linking to a NY Times piece which describes in some detail just how non-transparent the funding of this war has been to date. The NYT explains processes by which  President Biden sends arms to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement that runs until 2026. Israel’s purchases include the types of bombs dropped in Gaza. The following is an excerpt.

The NYT writes:

"The process of arms delivery to Israel is opaque, and the pipeline for weapons to the country is long. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to the country since the Oct. 7 killings by Hamas attackers, but many were approved by Congress and the State Department long ago and funded with money mandated by the Obama-era agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding.

“At any given time, delivery on these sales is constantly taking place,” said Dana Stroul, who recently departed as the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East affairs.

"Mr. Biden has the power to limit any foreign arms deliveries, even ones previously approved by Congress. Far from cutting off Israel, however, he is pushing a request he made shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks for $14 billion in additional arms aid to the country and U.S. military operations in the Middle East. The money has been stalled in Congress amid disputes over Ukraine aid and U.S. border security and faces growing Democratic concern. "

News bits: Self-interest politics; Corrupted, partisan Republican judges; Lying to judges

By now we all know that some politicians are purely self-interested and could not care less about most anything else. The Hill reports about a nice example of this exceptionally disgusting form of moral rot: 

Former President Trump’s growing criticism of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza signals a glaring break from GOP talking points backing Israel’s right to self-defense. Trump allies played down the importance of his interview with Israeli reporters last week, saying his staunch support of Israel would continue in a potential second term.

John Bolton, who served for 17 months as Trump’s White House national security adviser, told The Hill the former president’s stance on Israel will largely depend on the environment he inherits and on what would best serve his own interests.

“At bottom, Trump doesn’t have a national security policy,” Bolton said, calling the former president’s approach “ad hoc.” “He sees things primarily through the prism of, ‘Does this benefit Donald Trump?’”

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The Texas Tribune reports: 

Texas Supreme Court justice implies Democrats will cheat in 2024 election

Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine is facing new questions about his impartiality after a clip went viral this week in which he implied that Democrats plan to cheat against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“Do you really think the Democrats are going to roll over and let Trump be president again?” Devine asked in a keynote speech at the Texas Tea Party Republican Women’s 2023 Christmas event. “You think they’re just going to go away, all of a sudden find Jesus and [there will] be an honest election? I don’t think so.”  

But election disputes weren’t the only hot-button issues on which Devine opined that night. Throughout his 40-minute speech, he blasted legal challenges to Texas’ abortion laws as a “mockery of God,” and invoked apocalyptic language when discussing Democrats — saying his judgeship gave him a “front-row seat to the end of the world.”  

“Our culture is dying before our very eyes,” he said. “The church seems to be weakened and not know what to do. We have a corrupted government. On a federal level, we’re run by a criminal enterprise. … None of you are going to escape this. And so I would implore you to get closer to the Lord. I would implore you to prepare. I would implore you to bring other people on board.”

This exemplifies the extremist theocratic Christian Sharia thinking that motivates guides beliefs of elite radical Christian nationalist authoritarians.

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America's radical right authoritarian wealth & power movement has no limits on its shocking public contempt for the rule of law when the law is inconvenient. ProPublica reports about a recent incident of lawyers lying to judges by withholding important relevant information:

Trump’s Lawyers Told the Court That No One Would Give Him a Bond. Then He Got a Lifeline, but They Didn’t Tell the Judges.

An appeals court reduced Trump’s bond by more than 60% after his attorneys claimed it was a “practical impossibility” to pay the full amount. Their failure to disclose a proposal from a billionaire financier may have violated ethics rules.

But before the judges ruled, the impossible became possible: A billionaire lender approached Trump about providing a bond for the full amount.

The lawyers never filed paperwork alerting the appeals court. That failure may have violated ethics rules, legal experts say.

It is discouraging that by withholding important financial information that DJT merely “may have violated” ethics rules. The rule of law is often or usually feeble to non-existent for elites.* It is always a matter of may have, might, could be, a possibility, etc. Situations are rare where something is concrete in the eyes of the law dealing with elites like DJT.

* For example, DJT obstructed justice at least four times during the Mueller investigation. That became public knowledge on April 18, 2019. But so far, there has been no prosecution of those felonies. That is an undeniable example of the rule of law being literally non-existent for an elite. Ethics rules always seem to have ways for elites to weasel out and get away with whatever they want.

Merrick Garland ‘the Worthless’

I've been calling for his firing since May 2021

Obstruction of justice analysis based on evidence

in the Mueller report

About plastics

I recall from month or two ago a comment by a plastics company executive saying that getting rid of plastics in grocery store packaging would “create a mess.” That was the reason he cited for not trying to deal with plastics pollution. My take-away message was that it was a darned good reason to get going right now to try to deal with the problem. The plastics pollution issue seems to be picking up traction with the public. The NYT writes (whole article not behind paywall for 30 days):

What began with cellophane in the 1930s picked up speed with the rise of plastic clamshells in the 1980s and bagged salads in the 1990s. Online grocery shopping turbocharged it. But now the race is on for what people who grow and sell fruits and vegetables are calling a moon shot: breaking plastic’s stranglehold on produce.

In a March survey among produce professionals on LinkedIn, the shift to biodegradable material was voted the top trend. “It’s big,” said Soren Bjorn, chief executive officer of Driscoll’s, the world’s biggest grower of berries, which has switched to paper containers in many European markets. 

Spain has a plastic tax. France has severely limited plastic-wrapped produce and the European Union is about to add its own restrictions. Canada is trying to hammer out a plan that could eliminate plastic packaging of produce by 95 percent by 2028. In the United States, 11 states have already restricted plastic packaging. As part of a sweeping anti-waste plan, the Biden administration is calling for new ways to package food that uses climate-friendly, antimicrobial material designed to reduce reliance on plastic.

Yet plastic has so far been the most effective tool to fight another environmental threat: food waste.

Selling produce is like holding a melting ice cube and asking how much someone will pay for it. Time is of the essence, and plastic works well to slow the decay of vegetables and fruit. That means less produce is tossed into the garbage, where it creates almost 60 percent of landfill methane emissions, according to a 2023 report by the Environmental Protection Agency.  

Consumers increasingly report that using less plastic and packaging matters to them, but their shopping habits tell a different story. American shoppers bought $4.3 billion worth of bagged salad last year, according to the International Fresh Produce Association. Marketing experiments and independent research both show that price, quality and convenience drive food choices more than environmental concerns.  

Battle lines seem to be drawn between the never-plastic crowd and shoppers who prefer the ease of fresh salad greens delivered to their door. (emphasis added)

On top of those conflicting considerations is the mirage called recycling. At least since the 1970s we were confidently told that plastics would be recyclable. It was a lie in the 1970s and it still is a lie in 2024. About 91% of plastics cannot be or are not recycled. That has not changed much or at all in at least 2-3 decades.

But with more consumers now getting antsy about microplastics and nanoplastics being found in fun and exciting places like both sides of the human placenta in pregnant women, bottled water and much or all of our food, some behemoth companies are now blowing fresh smoke about recycling yet again. They are recycling and repackaging the old 1970s recycling propaganda in a new and improved veneer of bullshit!! The NYT writes (whole article here not paywalled for 30 days):

By 2025, Nestle promises not to use any plastic in its products that isn’t recyclable. By that same year, L’Oreal says all of its packaging will be “refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable.”

And by 2030, Procter & Gamble pledges that it will halve its use of virgin plastic resin made from petroleum.

To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today.

So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem.

PureCycle Technologies, a company that features prominently in Nestlé, L’Oréal, and Procter & Gamble’s plastics commitments, runs one such facility, a $500 million plant in Ironton, Ohio. The plant was originally to start operating in 2020, with the capacity to process as much as 182 tons of discarded polypropylene, a hard-to-recycle plastic used widely in single-use cups [some of which are 0% recycled], yogurt tubs, coffee pods [so far 0% recycled] and clothing fibers [so far >90% not recycled], every day.

Piles of it at the phantasmagoric 

PureCycle plant

But PureCycle’s recent months have instead been filled with setbacks: technical issues at the plant, shareholder lawsuits, questions over the technology and a startling report from contrarian investors who make money when a stock price falls. They said that they had flown a drone over the facility that showed that the plant was far from being able to make much new plastic.

PureCycle, based in Orlando, Fla., said it remained on track. “We’re ramping up production,” its chief executive, Dustin Olson, said during a recent tour of the plant, a constellation of pipes, storage tanks and cooling towers in Ironton, near the Ohio River. “We believe in this technology. We’ve seen it work,” he said. “We’re making leaps and bounds.”  

PureCycle’s woes are emblematic of broad trouble faced by a new generation of recycling plants that have struggled to keep up with the growing tide of global plastic production, which scientists say could almost quadruple by midcentury.

A chemical-recycling facility in Tigard, Ore., a joint venture between Agilyx and Americas Styrenics, is in the process of shutting down after millions of dollars in losses. A plant in Ashley, Ind., that had aimed to recycle 100,000 tons of plastic a year by 2021 had processed only 2,000 tons in total as of late 2023, after fires, oil spills and worker safety complaints.

Well ladies and germs, there we have it. They are “ramping up production” and “making leaps and bounds.” I translate that into “We’re blowing dense clouds of toxic, plastics-laden smoke in your general direction. And please, pay no attention to those technical issues, shareholder lawsuits, drone videos, fires, oil spills and worker safety complaints. Everything is going to be just fine.” . . . . . . . . Huh?

Q: Is Germy simply being too cynical here, or does the plastics industry rock solid track record of deceit and failure to deliver on promises negate such horrible thoughts?

Plastics industry lobbyists converging on

congress with briefcases full 

of free speech cash!

Voter reaction to lobbyists with

briefcases full of free speech

Congressional reaction to lobbyists with

briefcases full of free speech

How radical right authoritarians corrupt the law, persecute voters and hate on elections

A complicated opinion in the NYT relates the story of a Texas woman, Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional vote in 2016 when she was not an eligible voter. She was unaware of her ineligible to vote status. Accusing her of vote fraud, Texas prosecutors and a trial judge tried to put her in jail for 5 years after she was convicted in a trial in 2018. Last week A Texas state appeals court acquitted her. It took 8 freaking years to just get to what appears to be a final, correct decision. Presumably this unjustifiable legal nightmare is finally over.

Ms. Mason endured years of terror, uncertainty and pain just for submitting an provisional ballot by accident. That is authoritarianism, plain, simple and undeniable.

The NYT opinion (full opinion not paywalled off for 30 days) comments on the morally rotted outrageousness and absolute legal baselessness of this radical authoritarian prosecution:

A Reversal Cannot Undo the Damage 

Caused by This Voting Fraud Case

While the prosecution of Ms. Mason may have failed, it still could have broader consequences in chilling people’s willingness to exercise their right to vote. Few would want to vote if it means going through what Ms. Mason did. As such, the reversal in her case cannot undo much of the damage that irresponsible Texas prosecutors wrought.

As the federal circuit court of appeals that oversees Texas recognized decades ago, “short of physical violence,” nothing has “a more chilling effect” on voting than “baseless arrests and prosecutions.” Unfortunately, that may be the point of bringing cases like Ms. Mason’s, as they suggest apparent racial disparities at work in voting-fraud prosecutions.

When Ms. Mason voted, she was on federal supervised release, which is like a term of probation that federal criminal defendants serve after leaving prison. Those on release must obey certain court-ordered conditions but are otherwise free to live their life as they see fit. Under Texas law, such individuals are ineligible to vote, which Ms. Mason did not know. Prosecutors charged her anyway, convicting her on a theory that they did not have to prove that she knew she was ineligible; they just had to prove that she was ineligible.

An appellate court agreed with prosecutors’ theory and upheld her conviction, while noting: “The evidence does not show that she voted for any fraudulent purpose.”

Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that the state’s voter fraud statute requires proof that a defendant knew she was ineligible and sent the case back to the lower appellate court, where Ms. Mason’s conviction was overturned.

Here two different Texas courts both agreed with a decision that clearly and directly violated the law. Those judges and the prosecutors who brought the case should be fired and prosecuted for malicious prosecution of an innocent person. But this is morally rotted authoritarian Texas government at work. The thug operatives involved here will likely be rewarded for their fine job in abusing their power to persecute and piss all over voters, elections and democracy itself.

I post this as just more solid evidence of the (1) authoritarian intent, and (2) cynical moral depravity of America’s radical right Christian nationalist and plutocratic wealth and power movements. For a variety of reasons, too many Americans simply cannot see the threat right in front of their noses. Our democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law are all in grave danger.

In view of the mountain of damning evidence, how so many Americans still cannot see the grave threat to democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law in American authoritarianism and red state outrages like this is way beyond me. 

A major authoritarian explicitly speaking in   

defense of an American tyranny of the minority

It never ends.........

 BUT it's still a good thing, that even after 3 years, they are still sentencing these clowns. 

‘What the British did to DC will be nothing’: Megaphone-toting Jan. 6 rioter who led attack on Capitol police gets years in federal prison

A megaphone-toting Jan. 6 rioter who boasted on social media, ‘What the British did to DC will be nothing,” a day before leading an attack on U.S. Capitol police on Jan. 6 was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

Taylor James Johnatakis, 40, of Kingston, Washington, was ordered to spend 87 months in prison and pay $2,000 in restitution. He was convicted in November of misdemeanor offenses, including trespassing, disorderly conduct offenses and engaging in an act of physical violence. He was also convicted of felonies, including obstruction, civil disorder, and assaulting and resisting officers. NBC News reported he had represented himself during trial and the judge didn’t buy his “bulls—” and “gobbledygook.”

In his sentencing notes, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, highlighted the more than 20 letters from Johnatakis’ friends and family praising his “good works, good nature, and good character.” But, in explaining his sentence, the judge said what Johnatakis did that day was neither First Amendment-protected activity nor civil disobedience.

“A society in which everyone does what is right by his own lights, where adherence to the law is optional, would be a society of vigilantism, lawlessness, and anarchy,” he wrote. “A person dissatisfied with the government or the law has various non-violent ways to express his or her views.”

“As the Court has said before, ‘the First Amendment does not give anyone the right to enter a restricted area or to engage in riotous activity in the Capitol,” he said. “It obviously does not give anyone the right to assault the police. Nor was the January 6 riot an act of civil disobedience, because it was violent, not peaceful; opportunistic, not principled; coercive, not persuasive; and selfish, not patriotic.”

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/what-the-british-did-to-dc-will-be-nothing-megaphone-toting-jan-6-rioter-who-led-attack-on-capitol-police-gets-years-in-federal-prison/

Did this judge really use the word “gobbledygook”  ?

Must be a new legal term. 

Bannon plays the God card; The stealth foreign agent in the house

The dark free speech campaign of DJT and his TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) has gone all in on citing God as moral authority to vote for DJT and corrupt, bigoted Christian theocracy. Media Matters for America writes:

Steve Bannon: “There's empirical evidence” that Trump is 

an “instrument of divine providence”

Bannon: “He's doing God's will”

STEVE BANNON (HOST): They hate him because they understand your commitment to him and part of your commitment is you understand, wait for it MSNBC, wait for it, wait for it, no, don't, wait for it, he is an instrument of divine providence. Yep. He is. Of that there's no doubt. There's empirical evidence of that. This is one of the reasons people support him because they understand he’s doing God’s will to save this republic when all rationality said no, let me not do that, they win. Trump wouldn’t do that. Trump would never quit. Trump would never back down and that’s why they hate him and that’s why they must destroy him.

Hm, one can wonder what the empirical evidence is. It is probably a combination of the lie that there is empirical evidence that God wants DJT back in the White House coupled with the sad, frightening reality that some American adults actually believe that blithering nonsense lie is actual truth. ☹️

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PD linked to this 2018 article in a recent comment here. It is something I was unaware of about the powerful and rabidly pro-Israel AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference) political organization:  

It’s Time For AIPAC To Register As A Foreign Agent

AIPAC is one of the leading forces behind the Israel lobby, joined in recent years by the ascending Christians United for Israel. Other Jewish “pro-Israel” organizations are niche affairs, representing particular constituencies on the left or right. But it’s AIPAC that is the registered lobby on Capitol Hill, and it is AIPAC whose clout on matters relating to Israel exceeds the clout of the National Rifle Association on matters related to guns; while the NRA’s sway is almost entirely over Republicans, AIPAC has historically drawn its support from both parties. Is there any place but AIPAC that not only gets Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi in the same room, but also gets to hear them in near total agreement?

But there’s something strange, too, about AIPAC. Consider Vice President Mike Pence’s remarks at last year’s conference: “Every freedom-loving American stands with Israel — because her cause is our cause, her values are our values and her fight is our fight.”

How can America’s representatives declare that any other country’s fight — even one as close to us as Israel is — is our fight, its cause our cause, its values our values?

It’s precisely this kind of overidentification that George Washington warned against in his 1796 farewell address. “A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils,” Washington said. “Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists… betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”

To protect against this kind of passionate attachment, the United States has laws in place that forbid foreign governments from wielding certain kinds of influence or lobbying. Every foreign country represented in Washington by foreign agents must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Under its terms, the country in question is absolutely banned from participating in or influencing American elections. Every contact the agents have with Congress must be reported to the Department of Justice, along with how and where they spend their resources.

But it does not apply to the Israel lobby as represented by AIPAC, which is heavily involved in our political system, funding candidates who are perceived to be “good on Israel,” and defunding incumbents who fail to subscribe to the favored foreign state’s agenda.

How does AIPAC get away with it?

It gets away with it because AIPAC’s founder, I.L. Kenen, came up with a legal loophole by which AIPAC is defined not as a lobby for a foreign state but for Americans who support that state. It’s a critical distinction that makes AIPAC’s dominance over U.S. Middle East policy possible.

After Kenen retired, Israel and AIPAC took a rightward turn, and he saw the mistake he made. Toward the end of his life, Kenen was outraged by the AIPAC leadership with its unquestioning support of the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade against Gaza, and other right-wing Israeli policies. He hated what he saw as AIPAC using its political power to keep the United States government and other influential Americans and, perhaps most important, the media from straying from the Israeli line.

Not only was AIPAC making it hard for the United States to restrain the Israeli government, but it was also weakening forces inside Israel that were trying to do so. The Israeli peace camp needed the United States on its side, but thanks to AIPAC, the United States could not help our natural Israeli allies. Of course, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was actively seeking peace and an end to the occupation, that was the moment AIPAC chose to separate itself from Israel, resulting in Rabin’s blistering exhortation that it get the hell out of his way. By the time of his death, Kenen was thoroughly alienated from the organization.  

Now is the time to undo Kenen’s mistake. It is time to require AIPAC to register as what it is: a foreign agent.

Today, Netanyahu and AIPAC (which has kept the United States government firmly behind Netanyahu’s policies) have turned Israel into a source of dissension even among American Jews.

No, AIPAC is not a “pro-Israel” lobby. It’s the Netanyahu lobby and our laws should treat it as such, for Israel’s sake even more than our own. (emphases added)