April, 13 2012, 03:09pm EDT
Mars Inc. Quits ALEC Orbit
Maker of Skittles joins exodus of major corporations: Coca-Cola, Kraft, Pepsi, McDonalds, Wendy's and more
WASHINGTON
As more major companies reconsider their ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Common Cause today praised Mars Inc, the maker of Skittles, for its decision to join the ALEC exodus:
"Mars has done the right thing," said Bob Edgar, Common Cause's president. "Its leaders understand that continued support for ALEC's advocacy of vigilante justice and assaults on voting and employee rights, public schools, and reasonable environmental regulations is neither good business nor good corporate citizenship."
Many Americans have learned about ALEC in recent weeks through news stories detailing its role in the proliferation of "Stand Your Ground" laws similar to the Florida statute at issue in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Martin was shot unarmed, carrying only an iced tea and a bag of Skittles -- made by Mars.
To date the following major companies and foundations have severed ties with ALEC:
Coca-Cola
Kraft Foods
PepsiCo
Intuit Software
Wendy's
McDonald's
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Arizona Public Service
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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Israel's Use of Human Shields in Gaza Sparks Calls for US Probe
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses," the head of one Muslim American advocacy group said.
Oct 21, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces' use of Palestinians—who are often handcuffed and forced to wear IDF uniforms—as human shields prompted the leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Monday to call on the Biden administration to investigate what experts say is a war crime by the No. 1 recipient of American military aid.
International law prohibits the use of combatants or civilians as human shields. However, numerous reports have emerged during Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza—which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case led by South Africa—of IDF troops forcing captured Palestinians, including children, to protect Israeli forces in life-threatening situations.
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses by military forces that receive weapons paid for by American taxpayers and used against a civilian population," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
"These abuses, and the obvious and open ethnic cleansing of Gaza, violate our nation's laws," Awad added. "The Biden administration's complicity with this genocide stains our national reputation and will haunt our diplomats for generations to come when they are told to 'remember Gaza' whenever they bring up the subject of human rights."
International media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Britain's The Guardian, and The New York Times have reported how Israel uses abducted Palestinian militants and civilians to proceed ahead of IDF troops in underground tunnels and buildings in order to protect their captors during life-threatening missions.
In May, a report published by Defense for Children International-Palestine revealed that Palestinian minors are forced to walk ahead of IDF soldiers during dangerous raids. Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"It's hard to recognize them. They're usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they're always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks," Haaretzreported in August. But upon closer examination, "you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear."
According to an Al Jazeeraarticle published Sunday:
By dressing Palestinian civilians in Israeli military uniforms and casting them as combatants the Israeli military purposefully conceals their vulnerability. It deploys them as shields not to deter Palestinian fighters from striking Israeli soldiers, but rather to draw their fire and thus reveal their location, allowing the Israeli troops to launch a counterattack and kill the fighters. The moment these human shields, masked as soldiers, are sent into the tunnels, they are transformed from vulnerable civilians into fodder.
One 35-year-old Palestinian man, who declined to be identified by his real name for fear of his life, told The Guardian that "the Israeli soldiers put a GPS tracker on my hand and told me: 'If you try to run away, we will shoot you. We will know where you are.'"
"I was asked to go to knock on the doors of four houses and two schools and ask people to leave—women and children first and then the men," he added. "At one of the schools, the situation was very dangerous. I shouted to everyone in the school to leave quietly, but at that moment there was heavy shooting by the Israeli army and I thought I was going to die."
Former IDF soldiers told The New York Times that IDF commanders instructed them that "the lives of terrorists were worth less than those of Israelis—even though officers often concluded their detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charge."
Israel denies it uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, despite video evidence of IDF troops doing so in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.
"The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them," the IDF said in August. "The protocols and orders have been clarified to the troops on the ground."
However, IDF troops have confirmed the practice.
"From what we understand it was a very widely used protocol, meaning there are hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been used as human shields," former IDF sniper Nadav Weiman, who is now a director at Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans' group that exposes war crimes, toldThe Guardian.
"Palestinians are being grabbed from humanitarian corridors inside Gaza... and then they're being brought to different units inside Gaza—regular infantry units, not special forces," Weiman said. "And then those Palestinians are being used as human shields to sweep tunnels and also houses. In some cases, they have a GoPro camera on their chest or on their head and in almost all of the cases, they are cuffed before they are taken into a tunnel or house to sweep and they are dressed in IDF uniform."
The Biden administration provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and shields its ally from international accountability by wielding its United Nations Security Council veto power to block cease-fire resolutions. Administration spokespeople have deflected questions about the IDF's use of human shields by deferring to Israeli investigations in which perpetrators are rarely punished.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Michael Schmitt, a professor of international humanitarian law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, toldThe New York Times last week that "in most cases," what Israel is accused of "constitutes a war crime."
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House Dems Push Biden to Fight for Global Media Access to Gaza
"It is imperative that the United States urge Israel to allow independent access for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability, and the fundamental principle of press freedom."
Oct 21, 2024
Over five dozen Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday urged the Biden administration to "take immediate action to advocate for unrestricted, independent media access" to the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have killed at least 42,603 people and injured another 99,795 since last October.
"It is imperative that the United States urge Israel to allow independent access for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability, and the fundamental principle of press freedom," the lawmakers—led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)— wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Since the right-wing Israeli government launched its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, the Biden administration and Congress have continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, despite allegations of war crimes and genocide, including in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice.
The lawmakers' letter says that "foreign media remains largely prohibited from entering the region, except for a few controlled trips arranged by the Israeli military. This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an overwhelming burden on local journalists who are documenting the war they are living through. Tragically, at least 130 journalists have lost their lives since the start of the war, and those who remain face conditions of extreme hardship and danger."
Noting that the mortality rate for Gaza's media workers is over 10%, 75% of all reporters killed globally last year died after October 7, and just two months into the conflict the Committee to Protect Journalists called Gaza the "most dangerous ever" war zone for the press, McGovern and his colleagues wrote that "these staggering statistics underscore the critical importance of allowing independent journalists to document and report from the ground."
Israel has been accused of targeting journalists in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank, along with Lebanon, where it has ramped up attacks against the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Hamas-governed strip.
"At a time when reliable information is more critical than ever, the restrictions on foreign reporting undermine the very foundation of press freedom and democratic accountability," the House Democrats argued. "A free press is essential to ensuring that the world can bear witness to the realities on the ground and hold all parties accountable."
The letter is signed by 65 House members, including the group that has been demanding a cease-fire since last October as well as Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
Throughout the Israeli assault on Gaza, human rights and press freedom groups have blasted both the ban on foreign reporting and Israel's killing of the enclave's local journalists. Corporate outlets—particularly in the United States—have also
faced criticism over their war coverage, with some charging that Western media are "enabling" genocide.
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Underscoring Election Stakes, Biden Admin Moves to Require Coverage of OTC Birth Control
"As Trump and his radical Republican allies restrict women's reproductive healthcare, today's action by the Biden-Harris administration shows there is a different path," said Sen. Ron Wyden.
Oct 21, 2024
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, suggested Monday that the Biden administration's newly proposed rule to expand access to over-the-counter birth control is the latest policy that underscores the stakes for reproductive justice in the 2024 election.
"While we fight to protect and expand healthcare, extremist so-called leaders are attacking reproductive freedom at every turn," said Harris.
The vice president was referring to a new rule under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) proposed by the administration to require insurers to cover all over-the-counter birth control, including the nonprescription birth control pill approved last year, emergency contraception, condoms, and spermicides.
The ACA requires health plans to cover contraception without copayments for patients, but the rule only applies to prescription birth control.
After the Food and Drug Administration approved Opill, a nonprescription birth control pill, last year, reproductive rights advocates and Democrats in Congress called on the Biden administration to make sure the pill would "meet its potential and be truly accessible."
"Federal departments must ensure that it is covered without cost-sharing and without the need for a prescription as a condition of coverage," said 48 Senate Democrats in a letter.
The Biden administration said that if the rule is finalized, it would expand access to 52 million women of reproductive age who have private health insurance.
"We should not forget that Republicans have consistently sought to undermine access to contraception and far-right extremists have even sought to limit access or even ban basic forms of contraception—this threat to our healthcare is real and serious."
"Birth control—and any kind of contraception—is just basic healthcare, and it should be covered and easy to get," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who authored the Affordability Is Access Act to require insurers to fully cover over-the-counter birth control. "Women in America should not have to jump through hoops to make sure insurance is covering their basic reproductive healthcare needs."
"We should not forget that Republicans have consistently sought to undermine access to contraception and far-right extremists have even sought to limit access or even ban basic forms of contraception—this threat to our healthcare is real and serious," added Murray. "While Republicans continue to attack standard and necessary forms of healthcare, Democrats will continue to fight to expand access to contraception and lower healthcare costs for everyone."
When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 by the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court—stacked with justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee—Justice Clarence Thomas said the court's finding that the "right to privacy" did not extend to abortion care could also be used to overturn a 1965 case that affirmed married couples had a right to use contraception.
Senate Republicans earlier this year blocked consideration of the Right to Contraception Act, and Trump has suggested he supports restrictions on birth control.
"As Trump and his radical Republican allies restrict women's reproductive healthcare, today's action by the Biden-Harris administration shows there is a different path: expanded access and lower costs for women's healthcare," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Monday. "I'm all in on the effort to ensure Americans across the country can get the reproductive healthcare they need without worrying about cost or prosecution by ideological crusaders."
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