Uncategorized Archives - Page 260 of 708 - Daniel Imperato

The EU Can’t Keep Its Story Straight About U.S Sanctions against the Import of Russian Fuel

Posted on May 22, 2023 by admin

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Woman fatally struck boyfriend with car after argument

Posted on May 22, 2023 by admin

Police in Case Grande, Arizona, report that a fatal incident occurred between a woman and her boyfriend after they got into an altercation.

Shelly Shears, 51, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and was taken to the Pinal County Adult Detention Center.

Officers responded to a car-on-person collision on Saturday at 8:38 a.m. in the 600 block of West Saguaro Street and found Billy Stephens, 59, badly injured. First responders noted that Stephens had “significant trauma.” He was then transported to a hospital in the Phoenix area, but he died from his wounds. The Casa Grande Police Department Detectives and the Critical Accident Investigation Team then took over the investigation.

According to detectives, there is evidence that Shears and Stephens had an argument that led to Shears striking him with her vehicle. The reason for the argument and the possible motive remain unknown.

Shears is being held without bond and has a court hearing scheduled for May 30. The case has been forwarded to the Pinal County Attorney’s Office for review.

The US Government Launches A.I. Tool to Detect “Russian Disinformation”

Posted on May 22, 2023 by admin

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Socialists Want to Crack Down on Israeli War Crimes

Posted on May 22, 2023 by admin

A law proposed by New York socialist legislators would prohibit charitable organizations in New York from funding Israel’s illegal settlements — and pick a fight with the powerful pro-Israel organizations that regularly try to destroy progressive candidates.

Israeli soldiers sweep an area during an army operation near the settlement of Elon Moreh in the occupied West Bank near Nablus on April 11, 2023. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP via Getty Images)

A group of New York legislators recently put forth a bill that would ensure the state government can’t use public money to fund human rights abuses that have been found illegal under international law. The idea seems straightforward — why would government dollars be used to fund illegal activities?

In a sensible world, the principles set out in “Not on Our Dime,” a New York State Assembly bill, introduced by socialist assembly member Zohran Kwame Mamdani and cosponsored by fellow socialist assemblymembers Sarahana Shrestha, Phara Souffrant Forrest, and Marcela Mitaynes, would be anodyne and barely need saying. The legislation prohibits nonprofit organizations from supporting illegal activities of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, including violence by Israelis against Palestinians, forced eviction of Palestinians from the area, and destruction or expropriation of Palestinian homes or lands.

“We don’t want our hard-earned money to kill anyone or wreck their homes” should be a statement of the obvious, particularly in a state as progressive as New York. But the bill’s introduction was met with immediate denunciation by establishment Democrats in the assembly, who called it “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel . . . only introduced to antagonize pro-Israel New Yorkers and further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.” Senate and Assembly leadership said firmly that they would never allow the bill to pass.

Some went further. Stacey Pheffer Amato, a Queens assemblymember like Mamdani, said the bill was “purely antisemitic . . . propaganda that fuels a campaign of hate against Jewish people.”

The bill originated when a coalition of groups, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Center for Constitutional Rights, brought to Mamdani’s attention some $60 million a year given to nonprofit organizations registered in New York state but extensively engaged in settlement activity that violates the Geneva Convention.

The New York nonprofits targeted by the bill includes the Central Fund of Israel, the largest US-based nonprofit engaged in funneling money to help settlers violently displace Palestinians. Mamdani’s bill, he says, aims to make sure that “New York State does not keep subsidizing war crimes.”

The Israeli settlement activities supported by these New York “charities” not only violate the Geneva Convention but also US policy, which has been to condemn Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. (The State Department determined their illegality in 1978, though many in the US government have been more circumspect.) Condemnation of a crime, however, rings hollow if we’re allowing our own money to subsidize that crime. If we don’t pass “Not on Our Dime,” Mamdani says, “we are complicit” in Israeli violations of international law.

Nonprofit organizations, even when they don’t get money directly from the government — and many do — are important for the state to regulate, because donations to them are tax-deductible, which means they are heavily subsidized by the government (and therefore by all of us), despite the misleading term “nongovernmental organization.”

Contrary to the Assembly Democrats’ statement, this bill is not about “Israel,” but about that country’s war crimes and New York’s role in them. The critics, Mamdani said, are attempting to distract from war crimes by making this about “Israel.” But it is specifically about New York organizations funding human rights violations, as Mamdani said in an interview and elsewhere.

“This is a bill about what New Yorkers are doing,” agrees Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who calls the legislation “exciting.”

Legally, Shamas says, it’s “uncontroversial,” explaining, “It’s already illegal to aid and abet war crimes, but it’s important to name when New York money is complicit, that this issue matters and that these lives matter.” The bill also provides a remedy and a process for victims to collect damages from these charities.

The idea animating the Democrats’ backlash is that Israel must never be criticized. That’s a hard-line stance that has been losing popularity in the United States. The Israeli government and its supporters are increasingly alarmed about that and are spending heavily to fight the American left.

That means that even progressives who shy away from Israel as a “divisive” issue or feel it’s not a top priority compared to domestic problems need to be involved in these fights.

Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have shown that it’s possible to electorally prevail even after criticizing Israel and drawing the ire of zealous defenders of Israel, a sign of the changing times. The socialist New York assemblymembers will likely do the same.

So far, more than fifteen hundred New Yorkers have contacted their representatives through a website to ask that they support the “Not on Our Dime” bill. Mamdani said on Friday that “it’s been a rough week in Albany” but believes his constituents are backing him. “If you were to ask an ordinary New Yorker,” Mamdani says, whether our state should allow charities responsible for “expelling Palestinians from their homes, I’m quite sure they would say no.”