#Public Accounts Committee (PAC)

[jasminewilson143]

Parliamentary Panel Summons SEBI Chief and Officials Amid Allegations of Conflict of Interest

Parliamentary Panel Summons SEBI Chief and Officials Amid Allegations of Conflict of Interest The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Indian Parliament has issued a summons to the chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Madhabi Puri Buch, and top officials from other key government departments. The officials, including representatives from the Department of Economic…

[nepalenergyforum]

Lawmakers Call for Investigation into PAC Chair Pokharel's Alleged Meeting with NEA Tariff Defaulter

KATHMANDU, July 30: Lawmakers have demanded an investigation into an alleged meeting between the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) under the federal parliament, Rishikesh Pokharel, and an industrialist with unpaid electricity bills on trunk lines and dedicated feeders. In Tuesday’s session of the House of Representatives, lawmaker Madhav Sapkota of the CPN (Maoist Center) called for…

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the political fundraising arm of Jewish Voice for Peace of misrepresenting its spending and receiving unlawful donations from corporate entities, citing “discrepancies” in the organization’s income and expense reports.

The complaint lodges a slew of charges against Jewish Voice for Peace’s political action committee (JVP PAC), including spending almost no money on candidates running for office — a political action committee’s main purpose.

From 2020-2023, JVP PAC reported spending $82,956, but just a small fraction of that sum — $1,775, just over 2 percent — was spent on candidates, according to the complaint. The money went elsewhere, being paid out in one case for “legal services” provided by a company which “doesn’t appear to practice law” and other expenses.

The ADL described such spending as “unusual” and said that full disclosure of JVP PAC’s spending is necessary for assurance of its compliance with the Federal Election Campaign Act.

“Simply put, JVP PAC’s numbers do not add up, and despite repeated warnings from the FEC, the PAC has failed to correct the record,” ADL chief legal officer Steven Sheinberg said in a statement. “Moreover, while JVP PAC holds itself out to the public as a mechanism for supporting candidates for federal elected office, a significant majority of the PAC’s spending did not go to candidates or have any apparent direct connection to a federal campaign. The public deserves to know where this money is going, and the FEC must hold JVP accountable for violations of the law.”

The ADL also accused JVP PAC of amassing enormous in-kind contributions from its affiliate, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a social welfare organization. While the group has reported compensating JVP for services it provided, there is evidence that the cash value of those services far exceed any amount JVP PAC has actually paid.

[fiercynn]

otw july 2 board meeting: what the hell was that

so the otw (@transformativeworks) board had their Q2 meeting yesterday, which was highly anticipated given everything that's gone down in the past months:

the @end-otw-racism campaign demanding action from otw on their own commitments made three years ago to better address racist harassment in otw and on ao3 (btw, support end otw racism's current campaign #Vote To End OTW Racism!)

recent revelations about how otw has mistreated its volunteers, regarding azarias and how the org reacted after the CSEM attacks on volunteers last year, as well as how the policy & abuse committee (PAC) is overworked and treated by the legal commitee overall (documented here)...

...and ongoing mistreatment of chinese, chinese diaspora, and chinese-speaking volunteers, particularly regarding an incident last year that put volunteers in mainland china at risk, and the board's recent unilateral decision to close the otw weibo account without input from the weibo account leads or any chinese-speaking volunteers

the AI shit

and probably more that i've missed, honestly. so! this is my summary of the meeting, focusing mostly on the issues related to racism; i have screenshots of the whole meeting but will at this point only share those i find most relevant/interesting! alt text will be included for every screenshot in the image, not below it.

and hold on, because this is going to be LONG!

pre-meeting ableism in #help channel so shit actually started going down the previous day in the otw board discord's help channel where there was a pretty ableist resposne to a person who asked if the board could consider adding the pluralkit bot to the server. i wasn't there, but hojarasca on dreamwidth posted about it, and i believe some other folks who were there will post screenshots soon too.

all of that conversation was deleted from the help channel by today, which is not unusual but did mean that a majority of people at today's meeting might not know what went down.

board meeting starts; immediate chaos the board meeting started at 8pm UTC, and it was clear almost immediately that the board was unprepared. what you have to understand about otw board meetings is that they are not really meetings where the board members discuss anything with each other. basically otw board members show up, share an agenda , give written updates on the items on the agenda, take votes on board decisions (but without any discussion publicly), and take questions. none of the materials like the agenda or relevant documents were shared ahead of time, and the board did not offer a way to submit questions ahead of time specific to the board meeting. (otw does have a contact us form to email their board or committee chairs, but i've never gotten a response lol.)

another weird thing that happened before the meeting started was that board member alex tischer was active answering questions in the help channel up to five minutes before the meeting, but didn't stay for the meeting. i don't think a reason was shared for this. this is relevant because alex has been criticized for racist responses to chinese volunteers, particularly those that ran & interacted with otw's weibo account, both in the past & last month when they closed their weibo account without any notice to the volunteers. this will also come up again later in the q&a section...

anyway. the meeting starts. all of the discussion directly about the meeting is supposed to happen in one discord channel called #public-board-meetings; the #help channel is supposed to be for tech issues etc. there is no separate channel for asking questions to the board - those are supposed to be posted in the main board meeting channel. and as far as we can tell, there are no mods of either of these channels apart from board members.

at the start of the meeting there are at least 209 attendees. for context, the last board meeting in march had 31. i've heard from people who have attended board meetings for the past couple years that there are usually 10-40 attendees per meeting. but again, given what's been going down, it's not surprising that so many people showed up!

and because there are a lot of people who haven't attended these meetings before, attendees immediately start asking questions, both process questions about the meeting and actual questions they want to ask the board. which again is understandable because there haven't been many answers given in the #help channel, and the board immediately muddies things further by giving confusing instructions about when to ask questions. they first say this - that they are going to proceed through their agenda, so people should hold questions that are NOT about any agenda items until the end. they imply that questions that are about agenda items are okay as they go through the agenda, but there will be conflicting instructions about this later...

agenda is posted & actual meeting content begins...kind of here's the meeting agenda that was shared. not...terribly descriptive lol

- Decisions taken since the previous meeting - Strategic Plan vote - Update on OTW's Diversity Work - AOB (Any Other Business) - Time for questions

people immediately start asking questions about various agenda items & also procedure questions. very few of these are answered. the first agenda item is posted - decisions taken since the previous meeting.

the board gives us "a couple minutes to read the above". everything's getting a little muddled already because people keep asking questions (reasonably!) about agenda items. there are several questions about the specific agenda item of "decisions taken since the previous meeting". some of the questions are getting answered by otw volunteers but none by board members at this point.

the board moves on to the next agenda item without answering questions about the "decisions" item. people are asking for a separate channel for questions but none is created. board members tell us they will try to get to all the answers at the end, but that we should send any additional answers to the board through the otw contact us form. many people point out that they've rarely gotten responses that way.

board gives a brief update (that was NOT on the agenda) from the finance committee chair, who was not at the meeting, to say that the 2023 budget was posted earlier this year, and that people can send questions via the contact us form. i'll note here that i sent a message to the finance committee with a question about the 2023 budget two months ago and have not gotten a response.

strategic plan update + question procedure still unclear the board then starts to give an update on the strategic plan, which board members are to vote on today. attendees ask if the full strategic plan draft was shared publicly before this meeting and we are told it was only shared with volunteers, not with members or the public.

they do share an infographic summarizing the strategic plan. hilariously, the first version they upload is so blurry that it's unreadable. they then share a gdoc with alt text. if you are new-ish to otw stuff, this infographic and the jargon in it are probably pretty confusing.

the board keeps giving us "a few minutes to check things out". people ask them to not do that and proceed because we can read while they are typing. questions to the board keep going unanswered and various other people say that we're supposed to hold questions until the end. we again get told conflicting things about how to ask questions. a board member asks us to hold ALL questions until the end, but an otw volunteer points to an earlier statement from a different board member & says that questions on the current agenda item are allowed.

at 45 minutes into the meeting, when most questions are going unanswered (and a lot of only being answered by otw volunteers, not board members), the board disables messages in the main channel so that they can proceed with the agenda. this is not usual board meeting procedure and was unannounced until they did it. people start getting really creative with emoji reactions because they can't ask questions. the board admits that they were unprepared for the number of attendees at this meeting.

attendees then start asking questions in the help channel, which has been put on "slow mode", which means each user can only post every thirty minutes. multiple otw volunteers share in the help channel that they warned the board about preparing for the meeting, and the only change the board made in response was to make it 30 minutes longer than usual.

in the main channel, the board does not have any public discussion on the strategic plan (which has not been shared, only the infographic has), and votes unanimously to approve it.

diversity work update, aka a glorified otw news post the board moves on to the "diversity work update", which is now a standard section of every board meeting. they share two updates - firstly, that caste has been added as a protected class in the code of conduct, and secondly that they've heard the concerns coming from @end-otw-racism supporters and others. both of which were already shared a month ago in this OTW news post from a month ago, which they link to.

seriously, nothing new is shared in this part of the meeting that wasn't in that post. some update!

q&a part one the board asks for emoji reactions again to see how many people are in attendance. unclear why they do this unless they were hoping people might have left? but alas for them, there are still 182 people that emoji react saying they are in the meeting!

the board FINALLY starts answering questions, but they do not yet re-enable messages so that users can ask more questions. they start by addressing the pluralkit issue from yesterday, but they don't give any response about the ableism that was allowed to go unchecked in the channel.

then, BAFFLINGLY, they start with answering questions from someone who wasn't able to make the meeting. how did this person submit those questions beforehand? NO ONE KNOWS. fortunately this person had (imo) good questions, but again, why were their questions given preference? unclear.

okay there were a LOT of questions and responses, so i'm going to stick to sharing the ones that were most important to me, which were about addressing racism within the otw and on ao3. hopefully someone else will summarize other issues!

we finally get our FIRST REAL NEW RESPONSE on a diversity/racism issue! the board says they plan to hire a diversity consultant by the end of the year.

we also hear that changes to otw's terms of service are being proposed to give the policy & abuse committee more tools to address harassment, including "racially-motivated" harassment.

board says the best way for people other than otw volunteers to get involved with anti-racism issues is...to stay up to date on what otw is doing, attend public meetings, and send questions through the comment form. what.

the board does not answer how they have reached out to fans of color in their work to address racism, which i assume means they haven't; they instead say that fans of color are free to provide input/feedback via the contact us form. emoji reactions explode

the board says that the strategic plan has initiatives to combat racism including improving diversity in recruitment (of...who? volunteers, board members? potential future paid staff?), hiring a diversity consultant, & forming "volunteer coalitions"

slight digression from my focus on racism issues because of how many times the board has told us to submit questions via their contact us form: very little clarity on how long it will take for answers to be questions, or how long people spend on responses

the goals for the future diversity consultant are to do an audit of the organization and offer recommendations on how to proceed. couldn't be vaguer lol

otw does not currently have plans to have an internal committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion work, since they're relying on the external consultant, but if the consultant recommends it they'll consider

by the time they've gotten through these responses, there are only five minutes left in the meeting! remember, messaging by attendees has been disabled for the past 40 minutes, so everything the board has answered so far is from people who got their questions in during the first 45 minutes (or, apparently, one person who managed to get in questions before the meeting).

q&a part two at this point, the board FINALLY re-enables messaging for new questions, but clarifies that they will only take them until 9:30pm UTC. which means anyone who did actually wait to ask their questions now only has five minutes to ask them! questions start rolling in immediately. again, going to focus on the ones about racism.

i'm listing questions in chronological order that they are asked, but please note that the corresponding answers from the board are coming WAY later than the questions. the board took until 10:20pm UTC (almost an hour after the meeting was supposed to end) to answer all the questions. mostly i'm telling you this because the emoji reactions on the answers by the board get more limited as people understandably have to leave the meeting lol

the first question of round two is about how chinese & chinese diaspora volunteers have been treated re: the weibo account closure, & board member alex tischer's role in this.

board response is horrifyingly empty, only promising the creation of a new "anonymous form" to receive feedback from chinese and chinese diaspora volunteers on the situation.

an attendee asks for better prioritization of racism & equity issues in the meetings, and better preparation from the board. (note that the addition of "diversity work update" to the agenda is not new, i believe it was instituted late last year)

in response, board admits they were unprepared despite volunteers warning them, says they will take advice from this meeting forward. emoji reactions are out in full force

an attendee asks more details about how the diversity consultant research officer (who is NOT a hired diversity consultant, but an otw volunteer in charge of the hiring process for a consultant) engages with the board & what goals they have for the future consultant

response from board is that they meet weekly, and that the research officer is herself in charge of identifying goals for the future consultant

an attendee points out that "curate your space" tools are not enough to protect users from targeted abuse, including racist abuse, and that asking fans of color to reach out to the board instead of the other way around is bullshit (my words haha)

the board's response to this is to offload that onto the future diversity consultant. SERIOUSLY.

an otw member asks if the diversity consultant will also look at accessibility for disabled users across the otw

board essentially says "yeah, sure" lol

an otw member asks how otw will remove barriers to becoming a voting member and diversifying membership & committee leadership

board's response is that they don't know the demographics of their members or volunteers, which...somehow means they can't remove barriers that would help fans of color or non-western fans from becoming members and volunteers? lmaoooooooo

an attendee asks for accountability in ensuring that the incoming board keeps the current board's promises re: DEI, pointing to improvements made by the 2015 board that were later reversed by a new board make-up

board does not seem to understand this question so answers an entirely different one! (seriously, i double-checked which question they were responding to.)

an otw volunteer asks what the plans are to deal with the "ongoing exclusion and alienation of chinese-speaking volunteers"?

the board repeats that they have opened a feedback form for chinese-speaking volunteers. that's it.

so those are all the questions i saw on racism; as i mentioned, there were TONS more good questions on board transparency and communications, protection of volunteers, moderating board meetings better, lack of feedback collection on the strategic plan, etc.

at PRECISELY 9:30pm UTC, messages are disabled again so that no more questions can be asked. all of the otw board responses that i shared above are from after messages were disabled again.

takeaways this meeting was a complete mess. the process was extremely unclear and made things inaccessible; while the board did (from what i can tell) answer all the questions posted, people were not able to ask all the questions that they'd planned because of the unannounced disabling of messaging.

and then, of course, there's the fact that the majority of the answers are bullshit, which is probably the least surprising thing about this meeting.

it's just ridiculous that they weren't prepared for this. given everything that's gone down in the past months, why on earth wouldn't they assume that people would show up with hard questions? the mismanagement and incompetence is frankly astounding. which i guess is the story of the last few months re: OTW anyway!

so...see you at the next one in a few months, i guess? 🤷🏾‍♀️

[rjzimmerman]

Oil Interests Gave More Than $75 Million to Trump PACs, New Analysis Shows. (New York Times)

Oil and gas interests have given an estimated $75 million to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee and affiliated committees, far more than has been previously known, according to a new analysis of federal campaign data.

The billionaires Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, Kelcy Warren of Energy Transfer Partners and Jeffery Hildebrand of Hilcorp Energy Co. are among the highest-profile oil and gas contributors to Mr. Trump, giving along with their spouses and companies more than $15 million this cycle.

But the total amount of money flowing to Mr. Trump and his allies from donors with links to fossil fuels is more than five times greater, according to an analysis by the environmental group Climate Power. It comes from mine operators, shipbuilders, engineering firms, hedge funds and little-known oil producers.

That is just the campaign cash that can be found in public records; donations made to nonprofits such as 501(c)(4) organizations, also known as dark money, are usually not publicly disclosed.

“It’s important to start by looking at this systematically and structurally,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who is investigating oil industry campaign donations.

Mr. Whitehouse referred to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund that found American fossil fuel companies receive $700 billion of subsidies each year, when accounting for federal tax breaks and undercharging of environmental costs. He was not surprised by the contributions from oil interests to Mr. Trump.

“To protect a $700 billion subsidy, what is the amount that would be economically reasonable to spend in its defense?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.

Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

He has promised the oil and gas industry unfettered access to drilling on public lands and in federal waters, reducing his energy platform to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

At an April 11 dinner with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, he asked them to donate $1 billion to his campaign, saying they would save far more than that in avoided taxes and legal fees after he repealed environmental regulations, according to several attendees who requested anonymity to discuss a private event.

[mariacallous]

X appears to be working with a well-known Republican consulting group, seemingly to handle the messaging around the social media platform’s suspension in Brazil.

When WIRED emailed X for comment about the rapidly evolving situation in Brazil, a reply came from Michael Abboud, the managing director of the conservative consulting and public relations firm Targeted Victory. According to his LinkedIn, Abboud worked for the State Department in the last year of the Trump administration and as press secretary for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s campaign.

Targeted Victory has had contracts with several Republican campaigns and political action committees (PACs) this election season to the tune of more than $75 million, according to OpenSecrets. The group’s largest client is the Republican National Committee, which spent $11,128,739 on the firm between January 2023 and May 2024.

In his emailed reply, Abboud referred WIRED to a company statement from X about the suspension of the platform in Brazil, and said to reach out with further questions.

Elon Musk, X’s owner, has become more overt about his personal political views in recent months. In July, shortly following the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, Musk said he would be backing his candidacy for president. He then said he’d establish a PAC to support Trump to the tune of $45 million per month (he later backpedaled on the exact amount).

WIRED reached out to Targeted Victory and Abboud directly, and neither immediately responded to a request for comment.

X would not be the first tech company to work with the group. In 2022, reporting from The Washington Post found that Meta had hired Targeted Victory to run a campaign to sour public opinion on TikTok. The messaging campaign focused on framing TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, as a threat to Americans’ privacy and to the mental health of teens and children.

An emailed response from Targeted Victory on behalf of X is particularly notable; when journalists contact the press team at X, they rarely receive a reply. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, one of his first moves as CEO was to lay off a substantial number of the company’s 6,000 employees. That move included not only the vast majority of the platform’s trust and safety team—the people who keep hate speech and disinformation off the platform—but also the company’s communications team.

For nearly a year, the auto-response to the press email returned the poop emoji. More recently, the auto-response says “Busy now, please check back later.”

But X and Musk have been having an unusually rough time in the public eye over the past few weeks. After X violated an April court order from the Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, which had required the company to remove certain accounts and content that the court said spread disinformation about the integrity of the country’s elections, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered access to the platform blocked in Brazil. The country is X’s third largest market, and for months Musk has railed against Moraes online, calling him a dictator, accusing the court of censorship, and even comparing him to the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort.

Meanwhile, Nick Pickles, the company’s head of global affairs, announced on Thursday that he was resigning, and investors are saying their investments in the company are performing substantially worse than any had predicted.

[end-otw-racism]

The OTW Board Meeting - Notes & Analysis

July 2, 2023 was the quarterly OTW Board Meeting on discord and it was… kind of a mess. Check out others' write ups for more analysis on the disorganization of the event - [ wistfuljane ] [ runpunkrun part 1 ] [ runpunkrun part 2 ] [ fiercynn ] [ satsuma ].

What we'd like to focus on here is what the Board did say that applies to our campaign's goals:

1. TOS policy changes and content policy to address racially-bigoted harassment and abusive content.

Per kcdayton (president of the OTW Board):

Please note: the Board did not give specifics about the TOS changes (including a timeline), did not solicit feedback on the process, and did not discuss what policies and procedures (if any) they will create to empower their Policy and Abuse Committee (PAC) to enforce these changes, nor what guardrails (if any) they will establish in their TOS, their public communications, or in their PAC policies and procedures to prevent abuse of these additions to the TOS. These are all details that we here at EOR are very interested in, and are what will "make or break" any changes. Still, we're encouraged that they actually seem like they're going to make changes, which is progress!

2. Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months.

Per kcdayton:

It’s unclear from this q&a whether it’s just the Diversity Consultant that’s being “actively worked on,” or whether a DEI committee is included in their answer. However, in a separate q&a (o/ indicates a question being asked, and the remainder of the text is the response) kcdayton stated:

Also of note, the DRCO hasn’t seemed to solicit feedback from OTW membership and/or AO3 users about their priorities and concerns that a Diversity Consultant could address. That being said, hiring a Diversity Consultant "by the end of the year" was one of our demands, so we’re glad to see them following through.

3. Greater transparency about their efforts and progress towards racial equity per their commitment [ https://www.transformativeworks.org/statement-from-the-otw-Board-of-directors-chairs-leads/ ] three years ago.

Per kcdayton:

While not new, the inclusion of regular updates on the OTW's antiracist work during Board meetings somewhat counts towards the transparency we have been asking for, and we're glad to see it continuing. However, given the almost nonexistent moderation/organization of this latest meeting on Discord (which included an eventual total lockdown of the ability to comment or ask questions in the main meeting channel and a slowdown of thirty minutes in the one channel where we could post) and the poor moderation of comments on news posts and lack of responses to questions on same, we here at EOR hope that they're taking a long, hard look at how they utilize these avenues of communication. Because as it stands, the Board remains far from "transparent and accessible" on not just issues of diversity and equity but on other topics, as well.

Moreover, we're especially concerned at their repeated insistence (not shown in the screenshots but repeated throughout the meeting) that the best way to communicate with the Board is through a form on their website. As many of us have experienced, submitting feedback or questions through that form usually receives only a cursory/boilerplate reply on the rare occasion someone gets a response at all. This is not the kind of accountability, transparency, or accessibility that we should expect from an organization like the OTW. Being run by volunteers is no excuse for making members/users feel stonewalled.

Additional notes:

Since our  campaign started, additional concerns about racism and xenophobia within the organization have been raised. While our campaign remains focused on ensuring the organization follows through on their promises, this does tie into our demands for greater transparency about the  organization’s anti-racist efforts. The Board addressed some of the concerns raised at the meeting, but not all.

One attendee asked:

kcdayton replied:

We don’t know how internal communications work in the OTW, but if they’re as limited and disorganized as the methods people outside the  organization are told to use to contact the organization (see prev), we’re not encouraged by this response. Couple this with the closure of the Weibo account – effectively removing an important and accessible communication tool for Chinese and Chinese-diaspora fans and volunteers –  and the lack of a real response to the actual question being asked, we wonder if the Board truly understands the scope of the problems (both public and internal) they need to fix.

Also, from kcdayton:

While  “diversity in recruitment” is a laudable goal, especially since people must have previously volunteered for the organization before being able  to run for the Board, it does little to address the issues the organization has in mistreating its volunteers and its history of, as one volunteer stated, “fostering a culture of structural racism and discrimination that   negatively impacts the well-being of its volunteers, and has driven many  more away.” Recruiting at entry level does little to change the foundations of an established institution, and if those foundations are resistant or even hostile to change, those volunteers will just burn out and leave. This means that the people who are most likely to stay within the organization are often those less affected by (or aware of)   the institutional problems, meaning they are less likely to fix those   problems.

Secondly, “volunteer coalitions” was a phrase that wasn’t clarified, and so we don’t know what form these will take, nor if these coalitions will be given institutional power to impact the working conditions for volunteers of color. And last, the diversity consultant was a commitment they already made, so it doesn’t pertain to the question.

Finally, even if these changes – which will take  time to implement – are successful in making the organization less  hostile for volunteers of color, this does not address the user-end of  the experience. In short, it does not address making AO3 and the other  projects the OTW helms (Fanlore, the Transformative Works and Cultures  journal, etc) safer and more accessible for fans of color. Perhaps they  are relying on a trickle-down effect, but in our experience, any  platform that is hostile to users of color is less likely to get them  invested enough to participate in volunteering for their organization.  Nobody wants to work for free for a space that’s allowed them to be  abused and harassed, after all.

We encourage all of you to read the write ups linked at the top of this post, as they go more in-depth on the state of the meeting (chaotic) and more of the questions that were asked and which actually got responses. The meeting is still archived on the OTW Board Meeting discord server (please note: we cannot generate permanent invite links, so that link will expire soon) for the time being, so you can go and see everything yourself, too.

Conclusions:

Ultimately, we believe the OTW is making an effort towards fulfilling our campaign's requests, but that the organization as it stands now is too dysfunctional and disorganized for us to wholly trust their commitments. Since this is an election year in which a majority (four of the seven) of the seats on the Board are up for grabs, we aren't even sure yet that the new Board will prioritize fulfilling the commitments of the old Board.

This is why our second campaign is focused on the election, but that won't be the end of the actions we're organizing. Enacting change requires more than just electing candidates committed to the goals of anti-racism, and we don't expect change to happen overnight. Voting is just what we can do right now, and future campaigns (and other actions and projects we're in the process of organizing, including an Anti-Racist Fanlore Project to better document the history of race and fandom, and a project developing strategies to combat racist harassment in fandom) will focus on other ways to enact change and continue to hold the organization accountable, both within the OTW and elsewhere in fandom.

We on the EOR team have been saying "this is a marathon, not a sprint," and we hope that we can help the community we've built keep that in mind. If you’re interested in assisting with additional/future actions, our sign-up form is still open.

In the meantime, our askbox and our email (endotwracism[at]gmail[dot]com) are always open!  

[tieflingkisser]

This AIPAC Donor Funnels Millions to an IDF Unit Accused of Violating Human Rights

The battalion has a dedicated U.S. nonprofit to support its operations — whose president is supporting AIPAC’s political agenda.

The Netzah Yehuda battalion is an all-male unit of the Israel Defense Forces that was formed to allow ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the military while still complying with their religious beliefs, through accommodations like providing time for prayer and limiting interactions with women.  The battalion is also notorious for its alleged abuses of Palestinians and human rights violations in the West Bank, including an incident that led to the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American man in 2022. These allegations landed the group, formally known as the Nahal Haredi, on a short list of IDF units that Secretary of State Antony Blinken intended to sanction last month. That move would have cut off the battalion’s supply of U.S. weapons and other military aid — until the Biden administration backed away from those plans under pressure from Israeli officials. But the battalion has another reliable source of international support: a charitable nonprofit in the U.S. The man leading that organization, which has funneled millions to the IDF group in recent years, is also a donor to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, which is running a multimillion-dollar campaign to oust critics of Israel’s human rights abuses from Congress and install stalwart pro-Israel allies in their place. “It’s absolutely incomprehensible that we provide tax write-offs to American citizens who use their funds to support groups and activities that are clear violators of human rights and violators of what is essentially American policy,” said Jim Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute. “And now, some of the very groups that we are holding up as sanctionable for their human rights behavior similarly are getting tax write-offs. It’s simply something that ought to end.”

[...]

Friends of Nahal Haredi, the U.S. nonprofit that supports the battalion, is led by a man named Stephen Rosedale, the founder and chairman of a company that operates more than 100 long-term care, medical rehab, and other healthcare facilities across seven states. Rosedale, a registered Republican, has given a total of $33,500 to AIPAC and its affiliated political action committees this cycle, including $25,000 to AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, and $10,500 to AIPAC’s regular PAC. Rosedale is also backing the challengers picked by AIPAC to oust Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., in its plan to unseat the Squad. Rosedale has also given at least half a million dollars to various U.S. political campaigns since 2009.  Rosedale, Friends of Nahal Haredi, and the United Democracy Project did not respond to requests for comment. “We know that AIPAC’s primary role is to prevent any accountability for the Israeli government and military,” said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, a Jewish advocacy group. “So it’s not surprising that their donors are also backing IDF battalions with scores of documented human rights violations.”  Netzah Yehuda’s alleged human rights violations include leaving a 78-year-old Palestinian American man detained during a raid in the West Bank outside overnight before he died of cardiac arrest. The man, Omar As’ad, was a U.S. citizen and had previously lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Israeli officials dismissed two battalion officers after As’ad died but said it was not possible to determine whether their conduct caused his death. The State Department said it was “deeply concerned” by the circumstances of As’ad’s death and called for a thorough criminal investigation. No one was ultimately prosecuted for As’ad’s death. “The question here is really for the Democratic Party,” Borgwardt said. “Are they going to side with the majority of Americans who want a ceasefire and conditions on weapons to Israel? Or are they going to side with AIPAC and its unconditional backing of Netanyahu’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza?” AIPAC’s efforts to silence critics of Israel in Congress should make the group as repulsive to Democrats as the National Rifle Association, Borgwardt said. “Why are we not treating AIPAC like the NRA when we know it’s funded by people who also support weapons sales with zero accountability for civilian deaths including those of thousands of children?” 

[plethoraworldatlas]

As the leading U.S. pro-Israel lobby's political action committee unleashes a nearly $2 million ad blitz targeting Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Jewish allies of the New York Democrat—who is an outspoken critic of what he and many experts call Israel's genocide in Gaza—on Thursday joined progressive lawmakers in condemning right-wing efforts to defeat pro-Palestine incumbents.

United Democracy Project (UDP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) super PAC, has booked $1.9 million in television ads to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary in New York's 16th Congressional District, according to Wednesday reporting by Sludge's David Moore.

"This new ad spending in New York shows once and for all that my opponent, George Latimer, is bankrolled by a right-wing super PAC that has received over $40 million from Republican megadonors who want to defend Republican insurrectionists, overturn voting rights, and ban abortion nationwide," Bowman said in a statement.

"Democrats across New York deserve better, and will reject these attempts to buy our elections and undermine our democracy," he added.

Jews for Jamaal, a pro-Bowman coalition spearheaded by the group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice Action, said in a statement that "we recognize this media blitz for what it is: a desperate move by powerful interests to silence the district's first Black representative in history."

"UDP is overwhelmingly spending its millions in Democratic primaries, mostly against Black and brown Democratic incumbents who speak out against war and for the human rights of Palestinians," the coalition continued. "This massive amount of spending distorts the political landscape, drowning out the needs and voices of everyday constituents with the interests of a few wealthy donors."

"It undermines the very foundation of our democracy, which must be built on the principles of transparency, accountability, and genuine representation," Jews for Jamaal added.

[helputrust]

बरेली की एक ही लोक सभा क्षेत्र से 6 बार से सांसद परम आदरणीय श्री संतोष गंगावर जी से हेल्प यू एजुकेशनल एंड चैरिटेबल ट्रस्ट के प्रबंध न्यासी श्री हर्ष वर्धन अग्रवाल ने स्नेहिल शिष्टाचार भेट की | यह सब जानते हैं कि श्री संतोष कुमार गंगवार जी (जन्म 1 नवंबर 1948) एक भारतीय राजनेता और भारत सरकार के पूर्व राज्य मंत्री (स्वतंत्र प्रभार) श्रम और रोजगार मंत्रालय हैं । वह संसद सदस्य (16वीं लोकसभा), भारत सरकार में पूर्व राज्य मंत्री और भारतीय जनता पार्टी (भाजपा) के नेता हैं । वह 1989 से आज तक (2009-2014 को छोड़कर) बरेली शहर के लिए संसद सदस्य रहे हैं । वह 14वीं लोकसभा में पार्टी के मुख्य सचेतक भी थे । 15वीं लोकसभा चुनाव, 2009 में उन्हें बहुत कम अंतर से हार का सामना करना पड़ा । श्री गंगवार जी 2009 में पीएसी की लोक लेखा समिति (भारत) के अध्यक्ष थे । उन्हें 16वीं लोकसभा में संसद सदस्य के रूप में चुना गया है । उन्होंने 2014 के आम चुनाव में अपने प्रतिद्वंद्वी उम्मीदवार पर 2.4 लाख से अधिक मतों के अंतर से जीत हासिल की । उन्होंने जुलाई 2021 में कैबिनेट फेरबदल से पहले कैबिनेट मंत्री के पद से इस्तीफा दे दिया । वह वर्तमान में सार्वजनिक उपक्रमों की समिति के अध्यक्ष हैं । परम आदरणीय श्री संतोष गंगावर जी की राजनीतिक यात्रा, राजनीति के विश्व पटल पर ख्याति प्राप्त है। Shri Harsh Vardhan Agarwal, Managing Trustee of Help U Educational and Charitable Trust, met Respected Shri Santosh Gangavar Ji, Member of Parliament for 6 times from the same Lok Sabha constituency of Bareilly, with affectionate courtesy. It is known to all that Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar Ji (born 1 November 1948) is an Indian politician and former Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Labor and Employment, Government of India. He is a Member of Parliament (16th Lok Sabha), former Minister of State in the Government of India and a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has been the Member of Parliament for Bareilly City from 1989 till date (except 2009-2014). He was also the Chief Whip of the party in the 14th Lok Sabha. In the 15th Lok Sabha elections, 2009, he had to face defeat by a very small margin. Shri Gangwar ji was the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (India) of PAC in 2009. He has been elected as a Member of Parliament in the 16th Lok Sabha. He won the 2014 general election by a margin of over 2.4 lakh votes over his rival candidate. He resigned as cabinet minister before the cabinet reshuffle in July 2021. He is currently the Chairman of the Committee on Public Undertakings. The political journey of the most respected Shri Santosh Gangavar ji has received fame on the world stage of Politics. #santoshgangwar #santoshkumargangwar https://twitter.com/santoshgangwar https://www.facebook.com/santosh.gangwar https://www.instagram.com/santosh.gangwar.bly/ #HelpUTrust #HelpUEduationalandCharitableTrust #KiranAgarwal #HarshVardhanAgarwal #DrRupalAgarwal

[nepalenergyforum]

Public Accounts Committee Requests Lal Commission's Report on Power Tariffs

Kathmandu, July 25: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives on Thursday asked the government to provide the report on the power tariffs for ‘dedicated and trunk lines’ prepared by the probe commission formed under the leadership of former Supreme Court Justice Girish Chandra Lal. The Committee has written to the Ministry of Energy, Water Resource and Irrigation asking…

[tfgadgets]

BJP protecting SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch from answering to PAC: Congress

This picture made from the video posted by the Congress shows SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and the market regulator’s logo. Photo: X/@INCIndia The Congress on Saturday (October 26, 2024) accused the BJP of insulating Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch from answering to the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the performance of the…

[odnewsin]

SEBI Chief Madhabi Buch skips PAC meeting, BJP moves speaker over chair Venugopal’s conduct

New Delhi: SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch skipped a Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee meeting Thursday, prompting panel head KC Venugopal to postpone the sitting, with NDA members accusing him of making unilateral decisions and lodging a protest with the Lok Sabha speaker. Venugopal told reporters that the committee received a communication from Buch at 9.30 am that she and her team…

[vedantbhoomidigital]

PAC meeting postponed due to SEBI chief Madhavi Puri Buch's inability to attend

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chief KC Venugopal on Thursday said the committee's scheduled meeting today has been postponed due to Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chief Madhavi Puri Buch's inability to attend. He told that on Thursday at 9:30 in the morning Butch (…)

[news365timesindia]

[ad_1] Musk, who is worth $241 billion, has only made modest donations to federal candidates until this election season | (Photo: Reuters)3 min read Last Updated : Oct 16 2024 | 9:10 AM IST By Bill Allison and Dana Hull   Elon Musk poured $75 million into the super political action committee he created earlier this year, launching the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX chief executive officer into the top tier of political donors as he pays for much of the ground game for Donald Trump’s campaign.   Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp Musk’s super PAC is paying for Trump’s get-out-the-vote operations in battleground states in an effort to bolster turnout for the former president and Republicans in swing districts that could help the GOP win a House majority. The group, America PAC, is also spending on digital ad campaigns, some of which target young men, trying to get them to the polls to offset Harris’ advantage among women voters.   Musk was America PAC’s only donor, making seven separate contributions between July 3 and Sept. 5, according to its latest filing with the Federal Election Commission. The group spent $72 million and started October with $4 million cash on hand. The bulk of its spending, $68.5 million, supported Trump. The PAC, which advertises on X — the social media platform that Musk owns — for canvassers offering to pay up to $30 an hour, says it was created to support candidates who favor a range of issues including securing borders, public safety and free speech.  The moves are the latest demonstration of how Musk, whose companies boast billions of dollars worth of federal contracts and who has personally bristled at government regulations, is expanding his political influence network to include a potential future president and members of Congress.  Musk, who is worth $241 billion, has only made modest donations to federal candidates until this election season. Musk has become an increasingly vocal backer of Trump, using his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to promote the former president as well as amplify claims he’s made blaming immigrants for increased violence. Musk’s account on X includes a link to America PAC while his X profile says platform users should read his posts “to understand by I’m supporting Trump for President.” Trump invited Musk to share the stage with him at a rally on Oct. 5, calling him “a truly incredible guy.” The event was held at the same venue in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was wounded in a failed assassination attempt in July. Musk publicly endorsed Trump on X that evening. The former president has said he would ask Musk to join his administration should he win a second term, heading up an effort to cut government waste nicknamed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a reference to a cryptocurrency Musk has embraced. Deep-pocketed donors are playing a critical role in supporting Trump, who lags far behind Vice President Kamala Harris in fundraising. She’s been outspending his campaign in all seven of the battleground states that will decide the election in the final stretch since Labour Day according to data from AdImpact. Her media buys total $314 million compared to $173 million for Trump.  Harris’ financial advantage has also allowed her to open more then 330 field offices staffed with more than 2,000 paid employees to help conduct its voter mobilisation operations. With polling margins razor thin — Trump’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average of battleground state polls is 0.7 per cent — how much campaigns have to spend can be decisive.First Published: Oct 16 2024 | 9:10 AM IST [ad_2] Source link