Rally for Citizens of Gaza 27Sep2024

 

The Fridays at Fettermans crowd assembles again, as they have for about the past year.

Next rally at Senator Fetterman's office (200 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia 12:15 PM to 1:30 PM) will feature speeches by Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Aly Halpert, Singer-Songwriter; George Lakey, Quaker Activist & Author; Shane Claiborne, Red Letter Christians; Lisa Sharon Harper, Freedom Road; Lewis Webb, Jr., American Friends Service Committee; Rachel Betesh, Poet. This will mark the one-year anniversay of the war in Gaza. 

 

Terry Rumsey, organizer of the rallies that have continued non-stop for the past year.

It's been a bit tough to keep writing about Gaza as it's just been more and more bad news for its residents. It's been clear for quite a while that Israeli Prome Minister Netanyahu simply doesn't have a "day-after" plan to administer Gaza after Hamas is defeated.

In the absence of a post-war plan, [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken added, “Hamas will be left in charge, which is unacceptable. Or if not, we’ll have chaos, lawlessness and a vacuum that eventually will be filled again by Hamas or maybe something — if it’s possible to imagine — even worse.”

"Total defeat" of Hamas is a great idea in theory, but unworkable in practice. Hamas must be replaced with an effective government that can govern to provide what people there need. The piece here was written in May and is still true.

Not that Hezbollah's any better. During Israel's invasion of Lebanon both sides are violating the laws of war. 

 

 

Ukraine/Russia? There have been a few changes, but Russia continues to utilize its greater resources, both in military goods produced by Russia and its allies North Korea, Iran and to some extent from China and in manpower, mostly from the provinces as opposed to the Moscow-St. Petersburg region. Ukraine's invasion of Russia in the Kursk area should count as one of Putin's "red lines" that requires a nuclear response from Russia. As President Biden has provided Ukraine with more long-range missiles, along with a continued hesitancy to allow Ukraine to actually use those weapons, we have an interesting situation there.

Early on, when not many people had arrived yet.

As I pointed out to a person in an online conversation, an innocent person would seek a speedy trial so that he could go to thhe public as a cleared person. As Trump is clearly not innocent, he and his allies in the Judicial Branch have sought to delay his trials. The Supreme Court tossed a monkey wrench into these trials by declaring that Trump can't be prosecuted for official acts or for official communications. Naturally, they didn't go into detail as to what these were, but they went much further in defining official acts than was previously understood. Judge Chutkan and Special Counsel Smith appear to be ready to to define just what Trump can be charged with. They're trying to still not cross any boundaries that the Supreme Court has appeared to suggest. Of course, as Trump and his allies desire, any conclusion to his trial must take place after November's election.

 

Robin Rumsey

In their weekend round-up of political news for the week, TPM covers a Russian online version of the Washington Post (Russia has generally ramped up election interference efforts), how routine maintenance of voter rolls gives rise to comspiracy theories and how Melania Trump's description of Donald as a "family man" provoked a number of rebuttals from online progressives.

Haitian migrants in Springfield OH have been the target of toxic rhetoric by Senator Vance, Donald Trump and assorted wannabe Nazis.

As I've said, Trump is a wannabe fascist dictator.

“One rough hour. And I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately. You know, it will end immediately,” — Donald Trump on the phony epidemic of crime by immigrants in 2024

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and commentator on authoritarianism and propaganda.  She comments here on how authoritarians like Trump really, really hate it when people make fun of them! Authoritarians "don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter."

Facing towards the speaker.

Unfortunately, living in a "pro-life" state means living in a maternity care desert. "in 1,104 US counties, there is not a single birthing facility or obstetric clinician." That's out of 3,143 counties total.

RLGardner.net

The MAL case - records seized from Mar-a-Lago

Judge Cannon, who is overseeing the MAL case, wrote the following as part of a guide on how lawyers for both sides can instruct juries:

 

I’m not a lawyer, but I was a History major in college and have done quite a bit of independent reading in it. President Reagan’s records were the first to be stored under the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA). This Act held that the records that were to be stored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) were:

any records generated during a Presidential administration documenting the constitutional, statutory or ceremonial duties of the Presidency are the property of the United States.

Note that this description includes absolutely nothing about the President having any discretion to designate any records as “personal.” The Clinton Sock Drawer case did not help matters because it held that NARA had no authority to seize records that it deemed to be official. This is why Special Counsel Smith has not pursued charges using the PRA. Nevertheless, the former National Archives litigation director Jason Baron, who is now a professor at the University of Maryland and Bradley Moss of the Mark S. Zaid law firm hold that the audiotapes that Clinton produced with historian Taylor Branch were clearly personal records as they “were in the nature of a diary or journal in recorded form.” The records seized at Mar-a-Lago, OTOH, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton (Not a lawyer, BTW) testified to a grand jury that “shows Trump had unfettered power to designate documents as personal records outside of the reach of the National Archives.”

The piece above explains that this theory has never been tested, but the obvious problem is, if this interpretation were accurate, then in theory, if Trump were to get back into office for a second term, he could order Seal Team Six to kill the former President Biden and then designate the official communications whereby he transmitted that order as private, personal records.

Also, please note the sloppy and insecure manner in which the ex-President Trump stored records at his jazzed-up country club, Mar-a-Lago. Many empty folders were found among the records that were retrieved. Trump himself may have removed the contents. My own theory is that persons unknown rifled through the unsecured boxes, pulled out classified documents and stashed them in a shopping bag, backpack, briefcase, whatever. Classified documents are written on standard office paper where folders are made of card stock. It was simply inconvenient and unnecessary for our document thieves to carry folders with them. Of course, how many classified documents stored in folders, were simply taken wholesale, we would only know by looking a what documents are still not recovered. If records are collected by NARA, they are carefully sorted, packed up and then organized under secure conditions.

And again, giving the President the authority to arbitrarily decide whether a record was private and personal or official, that is, whether the President could store it on his own or needed to turn it over to NARA means he can simply hide records of misdeeds.