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150 Mennonites Arrested at Capitol for Peacefully Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire
Mennonite Action's fight against Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza is "rooted in values that our cultural or spiritual ancestors passed down: peace, justice, community, mutual aid, and service."
Jan 16, 2024
The faith-based pro-Palestinian rights group Mennonite Action on Tuesday reported that 150 members and supporters were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police for holding a peaceful occupation of the Cannon House Office Building, demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.
The group displayed signs reading, "Mennonites for a Cease-fire" and, "Let Gaza Live" as they sang hymns and other songs from a "cease-fire songbook" organizers had distributed.
On its Facebook page about two hours after the peace action began, Mennonite Action reported that "all Mennonites in the Cannon building have been placed in police custody, singing hymns through their arrest."
Mennonite Action describes itself as "a movement of Mennonites bonded by a common belief that we have a responsibility to use our voices as powerfully as possible for the cause of peace and justice."
Aleja Hertzler-McCain of the National Catholic Reporter noted that with 62,000 members of the Mennonite Church in the U.S., "if all those arrested are MCUSA members, roughly 1 in 500 Mennonite Church members were arrested today on Capitol Hill."
In addition to the action in the Cannon building, about 200 Mennonite Action members and members of the church held "a hymn sing and worship service" outside on Capitol Hill, urging members of Congress to back a cease-fire.
Last week, members of the group joined thousands of people in a march in Washington, D.C., demanding a cease-fire, and last month Mennonite Action held a national day of action, with members assembling at the offices of lawmakers including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).
At least 24,285 people have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza so far. The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that Israel is taking steps to protect civilian lives even as Israeli officials have explicitly said they plan to "flatten" the enclave.
Mennonite Action's fight against Israel's U.S.-backed occupation and bombardment of Gaza is "rooted in values that our cultural or spiritual ancestors passed down: peace, justice, community, mutual aid, and service," its website reads. "We know that these shared values fly higher than any nation's flag. We refuse to turn a blind eye to violence and oppression no matter who is perpetrating it—even, and especially, our own governments."
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Payday Loan Sharks Have Good Friend in Government: Democratic Party Chair
In backing bill to delay or block payday lender regulations, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz is aligning herself with the Republican Party
Mar 01, 2016
Sketchy payday loan sharks, whose short-term, high-interest loans trap millions of Americans in a cycle of debt, have a new ally on Capitol Hill--Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is reportedly pushing a bill that would "gut" forthcoming industry regulations.
According to a memo seen by the Huffington Post, Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) is co-sponsoring legislation (pdf) to delay new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), meant to crack down on abusive payday lending that profits off deceptive terms, automatic "rollovers," staggering fees, and interest rates averaging over 300 percent annual percentage rate (APR).
The so-called "Consumer Protection and Choice Act" would delay those rules for two years and "permanently block them in any state that enacts the sort of ineffectual, industry-crafted regulatory sham Florida adopted in 2001," ThinkProgress reports.
In December, 265 civil rights, labor, and consumer advocacy groups signed a letter opposing the legislation, which they decried as "an attempt to codify industry-backed practices that do little to protect consumers."
In backing the bill, the HuffPo notes, Wasserman Shultz is aligning herself with the Republican Party, which has "assailed the agency from every conceivable angle--going after its budget, attempting to tie its hands with new layers of red tape, fomenting conspiracy theories about rogue regulators illegally shutting down businesses and launching direct attacks on payday loan rules themselves."
She is also going against public opinion. Last year, a poll by Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending showed that nearly two in three voters have a negative view of payday lenders. The same survey showed respondents viewed payday lenders as predators rather than resources by a margin of more than 3:1.
The move also puts Wasserman Schultz--who has come under fire for the DNC's perceived pro-Hillary Clinton bias--at odds with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who conceived of and established the CFPB and who has denounced payday lending schemes for targeting the poor.
As Eric Levitz of New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer said Tuesday--his tongue firmly in his cheek: "With such brave legislators leading the Democratic Party, it's difficult to understand how Bernie Sanders can get so mad at the 'Establishment'."
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Not Backing Down on Backdoors, Apple Takes Privacy Fight to Capitol Hill
Congressional hearing comes one day after Apple wins 'major legal victory' that could impact outcome of California case
Mar 01, 2016
Apple and the FBI will take their high-profile encryption battle to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with both sides calling on Congress to weigh in on the "watershed" privacy case and the significant precedents it could set.
FBI Director James Comey, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, Bruce Sewell, will testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy."
Sewell is expected to reiterate Apple's argument that building a backdoor to the iPhone linked to the San Bernardino attacks "would not affect just one iPhone."
"The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products," Sewell wrote in prepared testimony (pdf). "Hackers and cyber criminals could use this to wreak havoc on our privacy and personal safety. It would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens."
On the other hand, Vance will urge Congress to pass a law requiring companies like Apple to retain user keys for decrypting user data, according to testimony on the committee's website. A November proposal from Vance's office argued that Congress requires any phone manufactured or sold in the U.S. "must be able to be unlocked, or its data accessed, by the operating system designer" pursuant to a court order.
Not doing so, Vance will argue, "cripples even the most basic steps of a criminal investigation."
But in a statement on Tuesday, digital rights group Fight for the Future warned that "what the FBI is asking Apple to do will make us less safe, not more safe."
"If we allow the government to set a precedent that they can force private companies to punch holes in the technological defenses that keep us safe, it's not a question of if someone to will exploit that to cause harm to the public, it's a question of when," Fight for the Future co-founder Holmes Wilson said. "Congress needs to listen to security experts by unequivocally supporting strong encryption and opposing backdoors."
The hearing will occur at 1 p.m. EST, and can be watched on C-SPAN 3. The House Judiciary Committee hosts its own livestream as well.
The proceedings come one day after Apple "scored a major legal victory" when a judge in New York ruled that the U.S. government could not compel the tech company to unlock an iPhone so investigators could analyze its data as part of a drug case.
In a 50-page ruling, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein found that the All Writs Act--the same law the government is citing in the San Bernadino case--did not justify the government's request. According to Reuters, "Orenstein also found that Apple was largely exempt from complying with such requests by a 1994 law that updated wiretapping laws."
Ars Technica writes that "[t]he ruling, the first of its kind on the topic, has no legal bearing on the outcome of the California case as they are proceeding in different federal judicial districts. Apple hopes, however, that that Riverside judge will be 'persuaded' by the decision, according to a company executive who was granted anonymity on a call with reporters."
Meanwhile, security and law enforcement experts told Politico this week, it's unlikely that investigators will find "much useful new information" even if they are granted access to the iPhone in question.
So why do all the hubbubs happen over one single smartphone?
Politico reports: "Critics say the FBI is picking a fight with Apple over long-standing tensions about the increasing impenetrability of the iPhone's encryption, rather than acting from an immediate, pressing need to extract evidence."
As one ex-Department of Homeland Security official said, echoing arguments made by Apple and its supporters: The FBI is "hoping to set a precedent."
Indeed, said former FBI special agent and whistleblower Colleen Rowley in a recent op-ed, Comey's assertion to the contrary is "disingenuous."
"Does he not know that the government's 'Plan B' secret agenda to create 'workarounds' to defeat encryption recently came to light?" Rowley wrote. "Does he expect us to believe that he was not part of the secret White House meeting last fall where senior national security officials ordered agencies to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple Inc.'s?"
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'No Hearing, No Vote': GOP Vows Obstruction on Supreme Court Pick
Critics call move 'a shameful new low for a majority that has time and time again put party before country'
Feb 23, 2016
Drawing outrage from many sides, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday afternoon to deny hearings or a vote on a Supreme Court nominee in 2016.
"This committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next president is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017," committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and the other 10 Republican members said in a letter (pdf) Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"That's the consensus view...No hearing, no vote," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters as he left the meeting that took place in McConnell's office.
Graham told CNN separately "he would not even meet with any nominee, should he or she make courtesy calls" on Capitol Hill.
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia, which left the nation's highest court evenly split, has spurred a heated debate over whether President Barack Obama should appoint a replacement or wait for the next administration to make a decision.
"Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent. In this case, the Senate will withhold it," McConnell said Tuesday morning on the Senate floor. "The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter after the American people finish making in November the decision they've already started making today."
Justifying their position, several members of the committee cited then-Sen. Joe Biden's 1992 remarks, in which he said the panel ought to "seriously consider" not holding hearings on a nominee for an election-year vacancy. Biden has argued that the GOP is taking his statement out of context.
The committee's decision drew withering criticism from inside and outside Congress.
"Republicans flat out saying they will deny any nominee a hearing or a vote before the nominee is even named is an unprecedented move and a complete dereliction of their constitutional duty," said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org. "It is a shameful new low for a majority that has repeatedly put party before country. Republicans need to stop their obstruction and do their job."
"The party of Lincoln is becoming the party of Donald Trump," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) added, predicting that Grassley would "go down in history as the most obstructionist Judiciary chair" for blocking a hearing.
Other groups and individuals tweeted along similar lines under the hashtag #DoYourJob.
Meanwhile, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller tweeted that the administration is "not taking Judiciary Committee Republicans as a final word against hearing on Pres Obama's SCOTUS nominee," pointing to at least four Senate Republicans who support a hearing: Mark Kirk (Ill.), Susan Collins (Maine), Roy Blunt (Mo.), and Dan Coats (Ind.).
Bloomberg reports:
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that such actions would subject the Supreme Court to a kind of politics it hasn't encountered in two centuries.
"This would be a historic and unprecedented acceleration of politicizing a branch of government that's supposed to be separated from politics," Earnest told reporters. Obama has been telephoning senators to discuss the matter, including some Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, and he will continue making calls, the spokesman said.
A poll released Monday showed that the majority of Americans say the Senate should hold hearings and vote on Obama's choice to fill the vacancy.
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After Years of Backroom Secrecy, Public Will Finally Get to See Full TPP Text
Legislative clock starts ticking as Obama administration prepares to release text of pro-corporate trade deal
Oct 08, 2015
After years of secrecy, the full contents of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will soon be revealed.
According to Kevin Collier at Daily Dot, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said the text will be made available to the public in approximately 30 days--on or around November 7.
"[We] look forward to having it released as soon as possible," Froman said in a press call Wednesday that was embargoed until Thursday morning. "We're shooting to do it within the 30 days following the completion of the negotiations."
Under the terms of the Fast Track legislation passed earlier this year, lawmakers cannot amend or filibuster the pro-corporate "trade" deal completed this week.
President Barack Obama must wait at least 90 days after formally notifying Congress of the deal before he can sign it and send it to Capitol Hill, and the full text of the agreement must be made public for at least 60 of those days. Congress gets to spend the first 30 days privately reviewing the documents and consulting with the administration.
As Kelsey Snell wrote for the Washington Post, that 60-day public comment window "will provide critical insight into how much popular support the deal may receive. A poor reception during the public phase could make it difficult for Obama to rally support when it comes time for Congress to vote."
Snell continued:
The next step will be for the U.S. International Trade Commission to conduct a full economic review of the deal. The agency has up to 105 days to complete that work but the process could take much less time.
Once the implementing bill is introduced in the House and the Senate, Congress has a maximum of 90 days to approve or disapprove the trade deal but can move much more quickly.
However, Public Citizen's Lori Wallach has pointed out (pdf) that 2016 election politics may imperil the deal. The intense national battle over trade authority was just a preview of the massive opposition the TPP will face, given that Democratic and Republican members of Congress and the public soon will be able to see the specific TPP terms that threaten their interests," she said (pdf) on Monday.
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US Raises Flag in Cuba After 54 Years, but 'Signs of Mistrust Linger'
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has called for the U.S. to repay millions of dollars owed to his country for damage done by its decades-long embargo
Aug 14, 2015
After over five decades, the U.S. embassy in Cuba formally re-opened with a flag-raising ceremony on Friday, marking another historic step in normalizing relations between the two countries.
"For more than half a century, U.S.-Cuba relations have been suspended in the amber of Cold War politics," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech at the seaside facility. "It's time to unfurl our flags and let the world know we wish each other well."
Kerry spoke, occasionally in Spanish, on a podium outside the embassy moments before U.S. Marines raised the American flag there for the first time in 54 years. The Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C., reopened in July.
But however landmark the event, tensions remain. The U.S. economic embargo against Cuba is still in place, and the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay remains open.
As global affairs correspondent Elise Labott wrote for CNN on Friday, "Signs of mistrust linger, and beyond the pomp and circumstance lies a long road back from more than half a century of diplomatic animosity."
On Thursday, which also happened to be his 89th birthday, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro called for the U.S. to repay millions of dollars owed to his country for damage done by its decades-long embargo--an embargo many on Capitol Hill are saying should end.
"The rhetoric from the leader of the Cuban revolution, and the face of anti-U.S. resistance, is not unexpected," Labott wrote. "But it underscores the long-standing tensions at play as Washington and Havana work to thaw the decades-long chill in relations."
And while Kerry stated that the U.S. remains "convinced that a genuine democracy would best serve the people of Cuba," that view is not necessarily shared by the Cuban people.
"Perhaps some dreamers and others who are superficial think this will be the end of socialism," former Cuban diplomat Eladio Aguiar told TeleSUR. "No, sir."
Earlier on Friday, Democracy Now! hosted scholar and writer Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat, and author Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, to further discuss the historical development, its potential ramifications, and the issues that still need to be addressed.
"I think that how we are looking at it is trying to get an answer to--the question is what kind of change this represents," Treto said. "Is this only a change of tactics to continue trying to overthrow the Cuban government by different means? I call it the Roberta Flack strategy--' killing me softly with your song'."
"On the other hand," he continued, "maybe we are seeing an important change of strategy by which the U.S. now is saying, 'OK, there is a legitimate government in Cuba. Everybody in the world has normal relations with Cuba. We should go for that because that's how we best serve American interests in Cuba in terms of trade, exchanges, and even the interest of the Cuban-American community."
Watch the segment below:
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Don't Expect Much Change in Post-Vienna US Middle East Policy
The well-worn mindset of senior officials and institutional interests will continue to impose severe limits on Obama’s diplomatic flexibility
Aug 14, 2015
If and when the Iran nuclear agreement gets through Congress, many people in Washington hope that Obama will articulate a more realistic strategy for the Middle East than what we have heard from his administration in the past.
However, Obama has decided that now is not the time to articulate anything about the region's future that he does not see as helping to sell the agreement on Capitol Hill. The real question is whether a clear idea is waiting to be made public when the timing is right.
If there was ever an appropriate moment for Obama to articulate an overarching post-agreement policy vision that integrated the Iran nuclear agreement into a broader strategy for dealing with the Middle East at war, it was his speech at American University on 5 August. The time and place for the speech were chosen in explicit acknowledgment of John F. Kennedy's speech at that same university 52 years earlier. In his speech, JFK offered a vision of transforming US policy toward the Soviet Union and the Cold War from confrontation to negotiations. But instead of using that occasion to explain how US diplomacy might play a transformational role in the Middle East, Obama limited the speech to defending the Vienna agreement in the narrowest terms.
Narrow defence
Three days later, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN, Obama did deal with broader regional problems, but his only firm argument was a response to the attacks on the Vienna agreement for allegedly enabling Iran to increase its assistance to regional allies.
He conceded that Iran would be able to continue those activities and even "fund some additional activities" as the nuclear agreement went into operation. But he argued that if Iran were able to get a nuclear weapon, it would be "emboldened to engage in more of the activities that have been discussed...".
Thus, Obama chose not to point out that Iran's role in the region since 2013 has not been to support terrorism but to support the primary forces fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Nor did he correct the falsehood that it was Iran rather that had destabilized Yemen rather than Saudi Arabia's reckless air war and support for sectarian forces there. Instead, Obama relied on the argument that the situation of alleged Iranian destabilization would be worse if the agreement were defeated.
Zakaria invited him to correct the false picture being portrayed by critics of the Vienna agreement, asking whether Iran's and the United States "overlapping interests" on ISIS and Afghanistan "might allow for a more productive and constructive relation between the United States and Iran."
However, Obama was reluctant to acknowledge that any real change was in store regarding future relations with Iran. "I think it is conceivable," he replied, "but the premise of this deal is not that Iran warms toward the United States or that we are engaging in any kind of strategic reassessment of the relationship."
Then, as if expressing an afterthought, he added a statement that was so indirect that it is difficult to penetrate:
"Is there the possibility that having begun conversations around this narrow issue you start getting some broader discussions about Syria, for example, and the ability of all the parties involved to try to arrive at a political transition that keeps the country intact and does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations - I think that's possible.
In an interview with National Public Radio two days later, Obama suggested that things could improve if Iran changed its ways:
[I]t is possible that as a consequence of this engagement, that as a consequence of Iran being able to recognize that what's happening in Syria, for example, is leading to extremism that threatens their own state and not just the United States; that some convergence of interests begins to lead to conversations between, for example, Saudi Arabia and Iran; that Iran starts making different decisions that are less offensive to its neighbors; that it tones down the rhetoric in terms of its virulent opposition to Israel. And, you know, that's something that we should welcome.
Then Obama addressed the rest of the region:
"There is the possibility that if you look at what's going on in the Middle East right now, more and more states begin to recognize that their enemy is chaos and ISIL and disaffected young people, Shia and Sunni, who are attracted to, you know, ideologies that are in opposition to every regime here. And I think we should be willing to promote if they can get there."
Both interviews were marked by a deliberate avoidance of any explicit admission that the United States might want to make any political-diplomatic moves toward cooperation with Iran. As Obama presented it, the most his administration would do was lecture Iran on what it needed to do to correct its misbehavior. Possible positive developments regarding actions others might take and subsequent US support for such actions were cast.
Resisting AIPAC pressure
Of course, that characterization of US policy cannot be taken entirely at face value. His answers represent what he and his advisers regard as the most likely to fend off the assault on the Vienna agreement by an unprecedented lobbying campaign run by AIPAC and its allies.
An optimistic reading of his remarks might interpret them as veiled allusions to diplomatic aims that Obama intends to pursue: cooperation with Iran as well as Russia on a Syrian settlement, efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia together and to get them to reach an accommodation. But such an interpretation would exaggerate the readiness of the Obama administration to break with the political consensus in Washington about Iran and the region.
There are some differences between the administration and its pro-Israel and Saudi critics regarding Iran's regional role. Otherwise, Obama would not even acknowledge the possibility of discussions with Iran in the future. But it would be a mistake to ignore the degree to which Obama's weakness in the face of the lobby's arguments about the regional dimension of the agreement reflects its acceptance of the basic premises of those arguments - just as it has accepted the lobby's premise that Iran has been trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
Obama and senior administration officials have repeated many times in the past two years the mantra that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and that its regional role is destabilizing. Key US national security institutions also continue to reinforce that hoary political line on Iran as well. The well-worn habits of mind of senior officials and institutional interests will certainly continue to impose severe limits on the administration's diplomatic flexibility regarding both Iran and Saudi Arabia through the end of the Obama administration.
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