#Lawfare group

[immaculatasknight]

They Live, Zionist edition

[zvaigzdelasas]

New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.[...]

Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”[...]

“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”[...]

The entire premise of the guidance — that “Zionist” must be functioning as a “code word — is a flaw egregious enough to reject the entire document outright.

The language here is of utmost importance. The text does not say that “Zionist” can and has been used by antisemites as a code word, which is no doubt true. Instead, it takes it as a given that, when used critically, “Zionist” simply is a code word.[...]

According to NYU’s guidance, then, Zionist and Zionism are either antisemitic dog whistles when invoked critically or a protected category akin to a race, ethnicity, or religious identity. Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism — including the beliefs of many anti-Zionist Jews like myself who reject the conflation of our identity and heritage with an ethnostate project — is foreclosed, and the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which has existed as long as Zionism itself, is all but erased.[...]

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the NYU guidance says. And this is of course true. That does not, however, make Zionism an essential part of Jewish identity.

There are conservative Christians for whom the damnation of homosexuality is a key part of their Christian faith too, but Republican lawfare to see homophobic positions enshrined as protected religious expression have been rightly and consistently condemned by the liberal mainstream.

“The new guidance sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people,” NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine said in a statement in response to the updated conduct guide.[...]

“Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group’s understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections.”

27 Aug 24

[scottishcommune]

Anti-trans campaigners who threatened to bankrupt Dundee Women’s Festival with lawfare tactics were drowned out at their own event yesterday afternoon by a much larger crowd of queer people and allies, who danced, sang and chanted slogans in the City Square until the rather sad-looking gathering dissipated...

This is a really good reportback of the counter-demonstration against transphobic hate group "Women Won't Wheesht" that took place in Dundee yesterday

[trumpamerica]

It is unfortunate that Joe Biden turned out as bad as he did. He's rotten to the core.

A true statesman, someone that loves this country more than himself, would have conducted himself on a much higher level over the past 4 years. An open border never would have happened, woke special interest groups would have not been placed first, and a path to return America to its traditions and principles would have been taken.

Biden is a miserable human being. He is unhappy, vengeful and lashes out at everyone. He is a coddled, overindulgent little boy.

If Biden was any kind of leader, he would insert himself into the lawfare that is going on against President Elect Trump and exert the power of the executive office to have them all go away.

[ngdrb]

Former Trump official warns ex-president is gearing up to claim 'rigged' election again

Donald Trump and his allies are preparing to make claims of election and voter fraud if he loses in November - according to election experts and a number of old-school Republicans.

Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles, a Republican who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, said that if Trump loses, he and his associates “will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks,” according to The Guardian. 

“They’ll claim everything went wrong if they lose. I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t try to incite insurrection if he loses the election,” the mayor said.

Both Trump and his allies are pushing the same lies as they did in 2020 about voting machines and drop boxes, but they’re now also attacking prosecutors on the state and federal levels who have charged the former president for trying to overturn the election. They have claimed that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” and “lawfare” in attempts to paint the former president’s legal woes as political prosecution.

David Becker at the Center for Election Innovation and Research told The Guardian that  “A lot of false claims are masquerading as efforts to change policy to improve election integrity when in actuality they’re just designed to sow distrust in our system if Trump loses.”

“This is all designed to manufacture claims that if Trump loses, the election was stolen and to sow discord, chaos, and potential violence,” he added.

The right-wing organization Turning Point USA claims to be spending tens of millions on getting out the vote for Trump in important battleground states, also hosting several large rallies where false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged are still being shared.

Both in 2016 and 2020, Trump was unclear if he would accept the election results. Similarly, at the presidential debate with President Joe Biden on June 27, he said that he would accept the results if the election is “fair and legal.” That response came after he was asked three times about accepting the results and shortly afterward he yet again claimed that American elections are fraudulent.

In April, Trump hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago for an event prompting the lower chamber to pass legislation making it illegal for noncitizens to vote – something that was already outlawed and in the past has happened on a very small scale. 

The group True the Vote sent out a fundraising request in March pointing to their attempts to put together “arguments for litigation” as well as other measures to take aim at what they claim will be “chaos” around the election because of “illegal voter registrations.”

Both election experts and Republican stalwarts have told The Guardian that Trump and his allies are preparing to claim that November’s election has been rigged if the former president loses the election.

Former Republican Michigan Representative Dave Trott told the paper that “Trump continues to encourage his supporters like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA to question the integrity of our elections.”

“He has no evidence or basis for claiming fraud and is only perpetuating these lies so he has a plan B to disrupt democracy in the event he loses,” he added.

Former Republican Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent told The Guardian that he believes Trump will claim fraud again if he loses in November.

“I expect he will do the same thing in 2024,” he said. “If he loses he will raise Cain in state capitals and he will descend on state capitals with his allies to make the case for fraud.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary, and analysis for the independently minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently-minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

[simply-ivanka]

Democrats, Blame Yourselves

Voters on Tuesday repudiated the results of progressive policies.

By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal

If Democrats want some sage counsel on how to recover from their electoral drubbing on Tuesday, we suggest they recall that classic relationship breakup line from Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not you; it’s me.”

The temptation after a defeat this humiliating is to hunt for scapegoats—fading Joe Biden, untutored Kamala Harris, Russian disinformation, benighted and racist voters. They’d be wiser to look in the mirror.

The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. Democrats lost ground from 2020 across many demographic groups, according to the exit polls. Even women moved percentage points closer to Mr. Trump. How could Democrats possibly lose like this to a man they think is Hitler? Allow us to offer a list for liberal reflection:

• The failure of Bidenomics. Democrats once understood that private business drives growth and higher incomes. Sometime in the 21st century, they came to believe that government spending creates wealth—via the “Keynesian multiplier” and other nostrums.

Thus they passed, on a party-line vote, a $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief bill that wasn’t really needed, fueling the highest inflation in decades. This robbed millions of workers of real wage gains, which haunted Democrats on Tuesday as two-thirds of voters said they were unhappy with the state of the economy.

• Cultural imperialism. Democrats took their 2020 victory as an invitation to turn identity politics into woke policy. They stood with transgender activists instead of parents who don’t want boys to play girls sports or elementary teachers to pass out pronoun pins. Republicans hammered Democrats with ads that attacked Democratic votes against tying federal funds to transgender school policies.

Democrats also began using the term “Latinx,” which sounds to many Spanish-speakers like illiterate cultural imperialism from elites. Could that and other woke policies have played a role in Mr. Trump winning 46% of the Hispanic vote and 55% of Latino men, according to the exit polls?

• Regulatory coercion. In pursuit of their climate obsessions, Democrats pushed coercive mandates, including an EPA rule effectively saying that by 2032 only 30% of new car sales can be gas-powered models. The EV mandate caused layoffs among auto workers in Michigan that Mr. Trump attacked in TV ads and on the stump.

• Lawfare. Democrats used Mr. Trump’s divisiveness to escalate against him at every turn. After calling him a Russian stooge and impeaching him twice, Mr. Biden labeled him a “fascist” and Democrats tried to bar him from the ballot.

They criminally indicted Mr. Trump—four times—and targeted his family business with a civil suit. They convicted him in New York, under an elected Democratic prosecutor who stretched the law to turn misdemeanors into felonies, in a case that wouldn’t have been brought against another businessman.

The strategy turned Mr. Trump into a martyr to GOP voters and cemented his support in the Republican primaries.

• Breaking democratic norms. Democrats decided to use taxes from plumbers and welders to forgive college loans for lawyers and grad students in grievance studies. When the Supreme Court struck Mr. Biden’s effort down as an abuse of power, he tried again and taunted the Court to stop him.

Democrats tried to override the Senate filibuster to seize control of the nation’s voting laws and impose practices such as ballot harvesting, as Mr. Biden raged that his opponents were creating “Jim Crow 2.0.”

They tried to override the filibuster to pass a national abortion law that would go beyond Roe v. Wade. They promised to override the filibuster in 2025 to bulldoze the High Court. They ran Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema out of the party for disagreeing.

All of this and other progressive preoccupations caused Democrats to lose sight of the larger public interest. They came to believe, backed by the mainstream press, that voters would tolerate it all because Mr. Trump was simply unacceptable.

This opened the door for Mr. Trump to remind voters that they were better off under his policies four years earlier. Mr. Trump won more than 72 million ballots. He improved his standing with minority voters. He gained votes even in Democratic states.

Voters were telling Democrats on Tuesday that the party has wandered into ideological fever swamps where most Americans don’t want to go. Winning those voters again will require more than firing back up the anti-Trump “resistance.”

[anexperimentallife]

JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman

As I keep pointing out, anyone who has studied 1930s-40s German history will tell you that today's GOP is cribbing directly from the Nazi playbook. Even their "support" of Israel's genocidal colonialist settler state (and lip service "support" of non-Israeli Jews) is primarily rooted in a combination of antisemitism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia. (Gift link at the bottom of the article excerpt.)

Michelle Goldberg writes:

---

In a normal political environment, there would be little need to pay attention to a new book by the far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec, who is probably best known for promoting the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria. But “Unhumans,” an anti-democratic screed that Posobiec co-wrote with the professional ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, comes with endorsements from some of the most influential people in Republican politics, including, most significantly, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

As they tell it, modern progressivism is just the latest incarnation of an ancient evil dating back to the late Roman Republic and continuing through the French Revolution and Communism to today. Often, they write, “great men of means” are required to crush this scourge. The contempt for democracy in “Unhumans” is not subtle. “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

One of their book’s heroes is the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who overthrew the democratic Second Spanish Republic in the country’s 1930s civil war. The authors call him a “great man of history” and compare him to George Washington. They quote him on what doesn’t work against the unhuman threat: “We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.”

Nakedly authoritarian ideas like this one are not uncommon in the dank corners of the reactionary internet, or among the sort of groups that led the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Unhumans” lauds Augusto Pinochet, leader of the Chilean military junta who led a coup against Salvador Allende’s elected government in 1973, ushering in a reign of torture and repression that involved tossing political enemies from helicopters.

Pinochet-inspired helicopter memes have been common in the MAGA movement for years. And as the historian David Austin Walsh wrote last year, there’s long been a cult of Franco on the right. Nevertheless, it’s extremely unusual for a candidate for vice president of the United States to openly align himself with autocratic terror.

Vance provided the first blurb on the “Unhumans” book jacket. “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people,” he wrote. “Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

Other endorsements come from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr., a key figure in his father’s presidential campaign. The foreword is by Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist.

Now, it is always possible that Vance recommended “Unhumans” without actually reading it, a practice that’s not unheard-of in book publishing. But unless and until he credibly distances himself from it, we should take him at his word that he shares the book’s analysis. After all, some of the language in “Unhumans” resembles his own rhetoric.

“The great American counterrevolution to depose the Cultural Marxists must occur on all terrains of society they currently possess and on those they aim to seize,” write Posobiec and Lisec, adding, “It is achievable but only with the resolve of Franco and the thoroughness of McCarthy.” (They mean Joseph McCarthy, another of the book’s icons.) Compare that to what Vance said on the alt-right podcast “Jack Murphy Live” in 2021, when he argued that Republicans, upon taking power, should purge their opponents the way Iraq’s government once purged members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

“I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left,” said Vance. “We need like a de-Baathification program, but like a de-wokification program in the United States.” He argued that “we don’t have a real constitutional republic anymore,” suggesting that Donald Trump need not be limited by the norms of republican governance. Trump, said Vance, should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” And if the courts try to stand in his way, Trump should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

You can and should laugh at Vance’s melodramatic self-importance and creepy subcultural fixations. (On “Jack Murphy Live,” Vance respectfully references Curtis Yarvin, a right-wing blogger popular in reactionary Silicon Valley circles who calls for replacing democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy.) It’s good that Democrats have found, in the epithet “weird,” simple language to describe the 4Chan side of the Republican Party. But in the Venn diagram between “weird” and “dangerous,” there’s a lot of overlap.

“Much like the United States founding fathers, Franco and his fellows saw themselves as rebels intended to overthrow a corrupt, tyrannical government that aided and abetted murder and rape as well as other repugnant sins,” write Posobiec and Lisec. We should take seriously the possibility that Vance and his fellows see themselves the same way.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/opinion/jd-vance-fascism-unhumans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A04.-t6I.Jie2a3Abas5a&smid=url-share

[reality-detective]

The Lawfare Group Crew that filed quite a few lawsuits against Donald Trump since 2017.

Which includes removing him off the Ballot in Colorado not only did so illegally but you are telling me they are Tax Exempt in a Nonpartisan 501-(c)(3) contract?

This also blatantly says they are not supposed to even be participating in any political arena.

Did you know? This opened Pandora's Box because it gives grounds for Clarence Thomas to challenge the 2020 election correct? 🤔

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Mike Davis, an adviser to Donald Trump who is said to be in the running to serve as his U.S. attorney general, has issued a violent threat against New York Attorney General Letitia James. In an appearance on conservative pundit Benny Johnson’s podcast, Davis said, “Let me just say this to big Tish James: I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term.” He added, “Listen here, sweetheart: We’re not messing around this time, and we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights, and I promise you that.”

James is best known for successfully filing a civil lawsuit against Trump for financial fraud. Trump lost the case and received a judgment of $355 million after it was determined that he lied for years about his financial status to secure loans.

On Tuesday, James was reelected to her position and in a press conference yesterday she said her office was “prepared to fight back” against any abuse of the law from the incoming Trump administration. Davis is the founder of the Article III Project, an advocacy group that wants to make the judiciary more conservative, or rather “a hell of a lot more conservative,” Davis told Politico. He also has a history of incendiary, threatening remarks. Speaking last month about legal proceedings that have occurred involving Trump, Davis said “retribution is a key component of justice.”

MAGA fascist c-sucker Mike Davis threatened New York AG Letitia James (D) with prison time for her prosecutions of Criminal-Elect Donald Trump.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump AG Prospect Warns Letitia James: 'We Will Put Your Fat Ass In Prison'

From the 11.07.2024 edition of The Benny Show:

[darkmaga-returns]

It feels like there's been a notable shift amongst Democrats in the last month. A recent sense of fatalism - or perhaps just simple resignation to what appears to be an inevitable Trump win. But as it turns out, there are some Democrats who have been preparing for this potential outcome for at least the last year.

(Article by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke republished from TruthOverNews.org)

One of those people is Norman Eisen, and it looks like he’s up to his old Lawfare & Color Revolution tricks again. The man responsible for virtually all of the legal attacks on President Trump now has a new activist group - although it has many of the same players - and they’re preparing for an assault on a second Trump Presidency.

Eisen, a Brookings senior fellow, Obama’s former White House Ethics Czar and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the “Velvet Revolution,” has been behind the ongoing Lawfare that has targeted Trump for years. Eisen was one of the primary forces behind the first impeachment of Trump and is also the co-founder of Leftist non-profit CREW or Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Eisen played a lead role in Democrats pre-2020 election war games which predicted a remarkably accurate contested election scenario that ended unfavorably for Trump. Of particular note in regards to his current efforts, Eisen is also the author of the highly influential color revolution manual, The Democracy Playbook.

Eisen’s latest venture, State Democracy Defenders Action (SDDA), bills itself as bringing “together a bipartisan all-star team of experts in safeguarding democracy” and ominously claims they help "shape the long term strategy to defeat Election denial and its logical outgrowth: American Autocracy, starting with preparing for a vigorous response to whatever 2025 - and beyond - may bring.”

Their site claims that SDDA will “fill three key gaps in the fight against election sabotage and autocracy” by going “on offense against democracy deniers who break the law, including through our innovative program of outside public support for criminal prosecutions.”

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

These organizations have maintained both influential and radical friends, NGO Monitor explained in its new report released on Thursday, noting that JVP — a fringe anti-Israel group that has often joined forces to coordinate events with SJP — has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Other donors to JVP include the Open Society Policy Center and the Kaphan Foundation, among others.

As for SJP, one of its founders, Hatem Bazian, is also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an advocacy group that, according to a landmark report last year by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian Territories.” AMP is a growing power player in the US Democratic Party and has led several legislative initiatives aimed at eroding Democratic support for Israel.

NGO Monitor also named in its report Within Our Lifetime, a New York City-based group headed by a former City University of New York (CUNY) student who once threatened to set a Jewish student’s Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sweater on fire while he wore it. Since Oct. 7, WOL has openly cheered Hamas’ atrocities as the “right to resist zionist [sic] settle violence” and “Resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary” — an apparent endorsement of Hamas’ abductions and sexual violence against Israeli women. The group’s funding is a source of mystery; the public cannot freely donate to it because a link to its donation platform, “Donorbox,” is broken, but it is widely believed that the Westchester Peace Action Committee (WESPAC), a nonprofit based in New York, is WOL’s principal funder.

Another group named in the new report, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), supports a network of allied groups, including AMP, JVP, and WESPAC. USCPR has received immense financial support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which has awarded it at least $355,000 since 2018.

Many of the same groups backing the ongoing protests have also been integral in the growth of the BDS movement. Indeed, a growing alignment of large philanthropic organizations with BDS has been fueling the movement’s growth on American college campuses, as was revealed in the NAS report from last year.

According to NAS’s findings, JVP as of last year had received $480,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, whose endowment was valued at $1.27 billion, since 2017, and the Tides Research Fund, a sponsor of Black Lives Matter, has given the group at least $75,000 since 2019. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, JVP brought in over half a million dollars in grants. Additionally, Palestine Legal, a lawfare group founded in 2012 to support campus BDS groups like SJP, is the beneficiary of generous funding from Tides Foundation, a pioneer of activist investment that has given over $1.5 million to anti-Israel initiatives, according to figures included in the report.

“Saturation of anti-Israel, pro-BDS sentiment on college campuses is a long term danger to US support for Israel by its simple normalization of demonizing the Jewish state,” NAS said at the time. “Beyond the problem of antsemitism, the importance of academia to the BDS movement’s growth and viability demonstrates the steady erosion of its political neutrality that has taken place over the past two decades.”

[eretzyisrael]

BY ARSEN OSTROVSKY AND STANISLAV PAVLOVSCHI,

If anyone is guilty of genocide here, it is the internationally recognized terrorist group Hamas. Not only does Hamas openly state that the destruction of Israel is its ultimate goal, as evidenced in its Charter, it acted out on those intentions on Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred over 1,200 Israelis, including raping, burning, mutilating and executing women and children.  

That there have been civilian casualties in Gaza is tragic, but it is also the inevitable consequence of Hamas using its own people as human shieldsand embedding its military operations in schools, hospitals, kindergartens and homes. Notwithstanding this challenge, the IDF have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid casualties and abide by principles of international humanitarian law.  

For example, the IDF has been warning civilians in Gaza to evacuate before a pending attack and providing safe passage for them to do so, while at all times adhering to the principles of distinction and proportionality in aiming only at Hamas military targets. The proportionality of operations are also examined by the IDF’s Military Advocate General’s Office, Israel’s attorney general and the relevant commanders on the ground before being carried out.  

In baselessly leveling the charge of genocide against Israel, all that South Africa is doing is engaging in a form of lawfare as a proxy of the Iranian regime and Hamas. Furthermore, South Africa is only diminishing real acts of genocide, such as those that occurred in the Holocaust, as well as against Armenians, Yazidis, in Rwanda, Darfur and Syria more recently. 

In a Oct. 24 interview, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad gleefully stated that the terror group would repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again” until Israel was “annihilated,” openly admitting the group’s genocidal intentions. 

In response, then British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly commented,“How can there be peace when Hamas are committed to the eradication of Israel?” 

[mariacallous]

Last month, US president Joe Biden signed a surveillance bill enhancing the National Security Agency’s power to compel US businesses to wiretap communications going in and out of the country. The changes to the law have left legal experts largely in the dark as to the true limits of this new authority, chiefly when it comes to the types of companies that could be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union and organizations like it say the bill has rendered the statutory language governing the limits of a powerful wiretap tool overly vague, potentially subjecting large swaths of corporate America to warrantless and secretive surveillance practices.

In April, Congress rushed to extend the US intelligence system’s “crown jewel,” Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The spy program allows the NSA to wiretap calls and messages between Americans and foreigners abroad—so long as the foreigner is the individual being “targeted” and the intercept serves a significant “foreign intelligence” purpose. Since 2008, the program has been limited to a subset of businesses that the law calls “electronic communications service providers,” or ECSPs—corporations such as Microsoft and Google, which provide email services, and phone companies like Sprint and AT&T.

In recent years, the government has worked quietly to redefine what it means to be an ECSP in an attempt to extend the NSA’s reach, first unilaterally and now with Congress’ backing. The issue remains that the bill Biden signed last month contains murky language that attempts to redefine the scope of a critical surveillance program. In response, a coalition of digital rights organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is pressing the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, and the nation’s top spy, Avril Haines, to declassify details about a relevant court case that could, they say, shed much-needed light on the situation.

In a letter to the top officials, more than 20 such organizations say they believe the new definition of an ECSP adopted by Congress might “permit the NSA to compel almost any US business to assist” the agency, noting that all companies today provide some sort of “service” and have access to equipment on which “communications” are stored.

“Deliberately writing overbroad surveillance authorities and trusting that future administrations will decide not to exploit them is a recipe for abuse,” the letter says. “And it is entirely unnecessary, as the administration can—and should—declassify the fact that the provision is intended to reach data centers.”

The Justice Department confirmed receipt of the letter on Tuesday but referred WIRED to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has primary purview over declassification decisions. The ODNI has not responded to a request for comment.

It is widely believed—and has been reported—that data centers are the intended target of this textual change. Matt Olsen, the assistant US attorney general for national security, appeared on an April 17 episode of the Lawfare podcast to say that, while unable to confirm or deny any specifics, data centers today store a significant amount of communications data and are an “example” of why the government viewed the change as necessary.

A DOJ spokesperson pointed WIRED to an April 18 letter by Garland that claims the new ECSP definition is “narrowly tailored.” The letter includes written reflections on the provision by the assistant attorney general, Carlos Uriarte, who writes that the “fix” is meant to address a “critical intelligence gap” resulting from changes in technology over the past 15 years. According to Uriarte, the DOJ has committed to applying the new definition internally “to cover the type of service provider at issue” before the court.

Ostensibly this means the government is promising to limit future surveillance directives to data centers (in addition to the companies traditionally defined as ECSPs).

The surveillance court that oversees FISA and the appeals court that reviews its decisions sided two years ago with an unidentified company that fought back after being served an NSA order. Both courts ruled that it did not, in fact, appear to meet the criteria for being considered an ECSP, as only part of its function was storing communications data. Finding the government’s interpretation of the statute overly broad, the court reminded the government that only Congress has the “competence and constitutional authority” to rewrite the law.

Digital rights groups argue that declassifying additional information about this FISA case may help the public understand which types of businesses are actually subject to NSA directives. Practically speaking, they say, that information is no longer a secret anyway. “Declassifying this information would cause little if any national security harm,” the letter says. “The New York Times has already revealed that the relevant FISC case addressed data centers for cloud computing.”

In the aftermath of the FISA court’s ruling, the NSA and other spy agencies began lobbying the House and Senate intelligence committees to aid the administration in redefining what it means to be an ECSP. Members of both committees have subsequently portrayed the court’s ruling as a “directive” that Congress needs to expand the NSA’s reach. In a floor speech last month, Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “So what happened was, the FISA Court said to Congress: You guys need to close this loophole; you need to close this and change this definition.”

But in fact what the court asserted was that the government had exceeded its authority and that it was Congress’ job, not the Justice Department’s, to revise the law. “Any unintended gap in coverage revealed by our interpretation is, of course, open to reconsideration by the branches of government whose competence and constitutional authority extend to statutory revision,” the court said.

This would culminate in new language being proposed that quickly alarmed legal experts, including top civil liberties attorneys who’ve appeared before the secret court in the past. The surveillance fears quickly spread to Silicon Valley. The Information Technology Industry Council, one of the tech industry's top lobbying arms, warned that companies like Facebook and IBM were interpreting the bill as having “vastly expanded the US government’s warrantless surveillance capabilities.”

This expansion, the firm added, would also hinder the “competitiveness of US technology companies” and arguably imperil the “continued global free flow of data between the US and its allies.” Customers internationally, it argued, would likely begin taking their business elsewhere should the US government turn data centers into surveillance watering holes.

Concerns about the new ECSP definition have been circulating since December. While largely dismissing them, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees made a few adjustments in February, exempting a handful of business types. This came in response to popular concerns that Starbucks employees and hotel IT staff might be secretly conscripted by the NSA. FISA experts such as Marc Zwillinger—a private attorney who has appeared twice before the FISA Court of Review—noted in response to those adjustments that Congress’ rush to exempt a handful of businesses only served to demonstrate that the text was inherently too broad.

Intelligence committee members kept the pressure on lawmakers to reauthorize the Section 702 program with the sought-after language, going as far as to suggest that another 9/11-style attack might occur if they failed. The power of the committees was on full display, as while neither actually have primary jurisdiction over FISA, a majority of the Section 702 bill that passed was authored by intelligence committee staff.

Even while supporting the new framework and dismissing the intensity of civil society’s concerns, Warner did eventually step forward to acknowledge the new ECSF definition needed additional tweaking. First, on the Senate floor in April, he said that Garland shared his “view” that the language “could have been drafted better.” Later, in response to questions from reporters, he added: “I’m absolutely committed to getting that fixed.”

That appears unlikely to happen soon. According to The Record, Warner indicated that the best time to update the language again would be in the “next intelligence bill,” presumably referring to legislation this fall broadly reauthorizing the intelligence community’s work.

In the meantime, however, more than half of Congress is running for election, and the next US president will have greater surveillance powers than any other before. No one can say for sure who that president will be or how they’ll make use of that authority.

[moontyger]

“One of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky...and he said 'look,' he said, 'you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.'" – Marie Howe

In the latest example of his dangerous extremism, J.D. Vance has enthusiastically promoted a book that uses genocidal language to stoke hatred toward both liberals and progressives.

Unhumans, by right-wing conspiracy theorists Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, offers a sinister thesis: Progressive-minded Americans are not humans. Instead, they are "communists." In turn, the authors define communists as bloodthirsty "unhumans" hellbent on the destruction of civilization.

Right-wingers, they write, must stop these unhumans with a policy of “exact reciprocity.” This means doing exactly to these so-called unhumans what the authors claim the unhumans are planning to do to them.

The 283-page screed reads like an effort to incite a civil war. It strains to create a sense of urgent terror in its readers. On nearly every page, it demonizes and dehumanizes “the left”– a vaguely defined group that apparently includes journalists (“the unhuman-occupied media”) and people who believe in things like diversity, equity, social justice and the rule of law. The definition is so broad that it seems most Democrats would qualify as unhumans.

“You’ll notice throughout this book the persistent, perennial unhuman obsession with clichéd sociopolitical objectives like ‘fairness’ and ‘equality,'" the authors write. "I am equal to you, the have-nots always say to the haves.”

Apparently, any American concerned with equality and fairness also qualifies as unhuman. After all, the authors say, unhumans are everywhere:

You may already be a subject of unhumans. You are employed by unhumans. You are married to . . . you get it. You know. There’s nowhere for you to run or to hide.

Unhumans is a deranged and sloppy hate sermon. But J.D. Vance considers it an essential guide.

“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags,” he wrote in a promotional blurb. “Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

With these words, Vance endorses a dangerous new flavor of extremist hate.

[straynoahide]

Oct 7, 2024

I don't usually post in these tags and I didn't intend to make this blog about I/P politics, but today is different.

Today is the first anniversary of the Simchat Torah Massacre, Oct 7, one of the darkest days in Jewish and Israeli history.

It is not a day for silence. Not for Western silence, especially not when Iran boasts of the pain it has caused and wants yet to cause, and weak leaders cave in to pressures and opportunism.

People who devised the spilling of blood, from the river to the sea, succeeded. And this shiva will take more than a year to sit - it has no clear good ending. Peace and a full victory are still not in sight.

This day of Jewish and Israeli grief should extend to all humanity, a day to remember immeasurable loss and pain. More than lives were lost when so many hopes shattered in front of our eyes, in hours.

A year ago, innocent people in the kibbutzim of Kfar Aza, Be'eri, Nir Oz, among other communities, and in the Nova Music Festival, became victims of opportunity to Gazan militiamen harangued by jihadist groups dressed as a liberation movement.

Men welcomed in the safer offices of Doha and Teheran, running a regime with no free elections, sat out the ugly parts while they ordered 2M people to hallow death in the name of the destruction of Israel.

At the same time, they planned one of the greatest campaigns of disinformation and lawfare. All, so the aligned interests of Iran, dressed in progressive language, stoked the ageless antisemitism, left-wing and right-wing, and made western societies more unstable, divided and devoid of their liberal democratic principles - in all fronts and to all consequences, which transcend I/P.

And in the end, this is not just about ideals. Performative activism means nothing. This is about warfare- the economic dimension is critical, in whose ability to attack and defend is funded by supposed allies of democracy, progressive values and peace.

We can't have good societies if we don't believe in our own capacity for goodness and abandon the very principles that made us universal-hearted and freedom-loving in the first place.

Neither thoughts nor prayers in any Abrahamic religion could have stopped Hezbollah from killing Druze, Iran from killing Bedouin and Palestinian Arabs. No, that takes the infrastructure of a society built to protect lives and not end them, but it costs to maintain, and an international community brave enough to stand up to Iran.

Due to personal reasons, involving some folk I hold dear, it was on Oct 7 I began the spiritual journey that made me who I am today and although I am not part of Am Yisrael, I'm involved with the Israeli community.

As a transcultural person with universal values and as a Hebrew-speaking Christian, I will always defend my Jewish cousins worldwide; no matter their religion, country or life choices. I always say that Ukraine's struggle made me feel Western, and ironically, Israeli Jews made me connect more with Christianity than my own national heritage ever could.

You are right to feel the West has failed you, and I believe the same. There is an undeniable darkness. I want you to hear this from me as a Jewish ally, especially if you are from Israel - your pain is seen and your grievances are heard. Western nations, governments, even societies. Entire political parties and political families. You are right to feel like you don't have anyone.

But, you do. You have allies and you always will. And, this is not final. Despair is their weapon, too. So it must be an inflexion point instead. As it is always darkest before dawn - it is always worse before it gets better. We must organize, build bridges and coalitions, empathize and understand each other. We must together change the world, in our similarities and differences, and I have a deep faith that in the future, antisemitism has no place.

We will be there when it matters. There is no future for humanity without Jewish self-determination, sovereignty and security in the ancestral homeland.

Believe it, because I do, and our will is stronger than the will of our enemies, whoever takes up that path to nowhere.

If you need to hear it, hear it: your allies understand the assignment, never again is now; and that it means never again is now. We will never go on without you again.

For every single life lost in Oct 7, for those who can't fulfill the dream, we owe them to try and dig the world out of this hole, and we will, united. This is the best homage. Bear witness.

Sincerely, a random soul from Sefarad who loves you very much

May their memories be a blessing.

Am Yisrael Chai

[tieflingkisser]

UNRWA staff ‘not going anywhere’ despite forced closure of East Jerusalem compound

Two arson attacks and growing protests forced UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA to temporarily close its office in East Jerusalem this week, but its vital work will continue as war rages in Gaza and violence rises in the West Bank, Senior Communications Manager Jonathan Fowler told UN News on Friday.

For roughly two months, demonstrations have been held outside the East Jerusalem compound, which is in an area where many Israeli settlements are located. The situation came to a head on Thursday evening when Israeli residents lit fires at two locations on the perimeter of the grounds. Mr. Fowler was among the small number of staff in the office at the time.

Smoke and stones 

“The fire alarm was ringing, and we looked out of the window, and I saw smoke kind of billowing over the top of the building,” he said, speaking from Amman, Jordan after leaving Jerusalem on Thursday night.  Colleagues who went to douse the fire, to prevent it from spreading, were “treated to stone throwing by groups of youths who had gathered on the street opposite.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the compound, another fire had been lit at a fence next to a petrol station for UNRWA vehicles.  “If that fire had reached the gas station, I dread to think what would have happened to the houses, the apartment blocks that live right nearby.  We would have been in a situation of an absolute disaster.” 

From fiery rhetoric to ‘real flames’ 

Both UN Secretary-General António Guterres and UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini condemned the attack, which followed a protest just days before that turned violent.  “People were gathering, and they were starting to get wooden sticks and stones, and there was some sort of bash against the gate,” Mr. Fowler said, recalling the demonstration on Tuesday.  “And the police were just kind of there in the background.”  Although an investigation into the fires is underway, he pointed to the wider issue of increased tension around UNRWA’s work following the war in Gaza.  “There's a sense that this kind of behaviour has been encouraged, and encouraged, and encouraged by inflammatory rhetoric,” he said. “So, we go from inflammatory rhetoric to real flames in the space of a few days.” 

‘A territory of intimidation’ 

Mr. Fowler said the protests against UNRWA have been “called by different organizations and individuals,” including one of Jerusalem’s deputy mayors, and there has been no noticeable increased police presence despite the repeated demonstrations.  While upholding the right to freedom of expression, “even if we don't agree with the contents of what is shouted at us”, he said things have “sort of moved into a territory of intimidation.”  Demonstrators have blocked the gates to the UN compound, and in one instance surrounded the car of a staff member while brandishing toy weapons. Shuttle buses transporting UN staff have been slapped on the sides and spat at, and the people onboard filmed. 

Undermined and unprotected 

So far, staff have not faced any incidents of intimidation after working hours. “We have to hope sincerely that we don't get to that kind of level,” he said.  Mr. Fowler underscored that it is incumbent on Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure the proper protection of UN facilities.  “We feel this is not happening,” he said. “It's clear from the evidence, and it's part of the context of a much wider campaign against UNRWA, basically to undermine the agency; things like use of lawfare to try to argue that legally we have no right to be in our compounds.”

‘Not going anywhere’ 

Although the East Jerusalem premises are closed for the time being, he insisted that staff will not be deterred in carrying out their work. They have made a “COVID-like” pivot, where people work from home or other locations.  “It complicates our functioning at a time when of course, we should be fully focussed on the unprecedented levels of violence in the West Bank and, it goes without saying, the enormous, unprecedented level of humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.”  Mr. Fowler underlined UNRWA’s mandate, established nearly 75 years ago by the UN General Assembly, to provide services to Palestine refugees, which includes healthcare, education and social support. “We're proud of our work. Many of us are deeply passionate about our work,” he said.  “We do it because we have a mandate from the United Nations system to do something. Until such time as that mandate no longer exists, we're not going anywhere, whatever anybody might like to say.”  He added that in response to the hostilities against UNRWA there have been a number of “robust public statements” from donors to the agency, saying “enough is enough.”