US congressional aides launch site to allow free criticism of Gaza war
Congressional Dissent Channel designed so individuals can speak freely, anonymously without fear of reprisal
Organizers also behind mass walkout of staff in protest at Netanyahu speech to Congress
Updated 30 July 2024
Arab News
LONDON: A group of Washington staffers have launched a website to raise objections and criticisms of the US government’s stance on Gaza.
The site, known as the Congressional Dissent Channel, is designed so that individuals can speak freely and anonymously — including about colleagues, superiors and employers — without fear of retaliation, in a manner similar to a channel created by the US State Department to allow employees to voice dissent at their government, which was set up during the Vietnam War.
It has been established by aides who organized a walkout on Capitol Hill last week to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he addressed Congress. The same group also set up a flower vigil outside the Capitol in November last year to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, the New York Times reported.
The group said it is comprised of “congressional aides dedicated to changing the paradigm of US support for the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza being carried out by the state of Israel.”
Congressional aides tend to keep low professional profiles and have little recourse to airing opinions that differ from those of their bosses, and can face dismissal for doing so.
Michael Suchecki, spokesman for the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, told the NYT that aides have a duty to raise alternative opinions, especially when they differ from representatives and are being put forward by voters.
“While we may work for and be employed by the United States Congress, our ultimate sworn oath is to the Constitution — to the people of the United States,” he said.
In the wake of the attack on the US Capitol by rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, attitudes began to change toward the culture in Washington, with several groups of aides joining together to form the Congressional Progressive Staff Association demanding safer working conditions. Less than a year later, aides from eight congressional offices began to put in place the framework to establish an official workers union.
In the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, many aides have turned their attention to using the organizations and networks they have established to try to work for a ceasefire from Washington itself, including raising awareness of US arms shipments to Israel used in the campaign.
In a statement on the Congressional Dissent Channel’s webpage, staffers wrote: “We are living through a fraught moment in U.S. foreign policy, one in which American-made bombs — paid for by American tax dollars — are dropped on homes, schools and hospitals.
“Despite the evidence before our eyes, the voices advocating in Congress for the pragmatic and moral solutions that would uphold our treaty obligations and could broker peace are repeatedly sidelined, ignored and maligned.”
The site was launched on Sunday. By Monday morning, six memos from anonymous congressional aides had been published, with those wishing to contribute told to email memos to the channel’s inbox for content evaluation, author identification and publication by a member of the team. Anonymous videos can also be submitted.
’Panic buttons,’ SWAT teams: US braces for election unrest
Updated 9 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: Panic buttons for poll workers, special weapons teams deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel on standby. The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day on Tuesday is being ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery, or violence against election workers. The states of Oregon, Washington and Nevada have activated the National Guard — and the Pentagon says at least 17 states have placed a total of 600 National Guard troops on standby if needed. The FBI has set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations. Nineteen states have enacted election security enhancement laws since 2020, the National Conference of State Legislatures says. With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they are also bolstering physical security for election operations nationwide. Runbeck Election Services, which provides security technology for poll operations, confirmed to AFP Monday it has ordered some 1,000 panic buttons for clients that include election facilities and their workers. These small devices, worn as a lanyard or held in a pocket, are paired with a user’s cell phone and contact law enforcement or other authorities in case of emergency. Officials in the seven key swing states are eager to convey confidence in a secure and fair election. “Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. Our systems are secure and our people are ready,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters on Monday. Fringe activists might bring some “extra drama” to the proceedings, he said. But Raffensperger added he expects the election to be safe in Georgia, where Trump faces criminal charges over his interference in the 2020 election. In Arizona, a southwestern swing state that became a fulcrum of election night unrest and conspiracy theories that year, officials have turned the state’s main election and ballot counting facility, in Maricopa County, into a veritable fortress. It now has wrought-iron fencing, barbed wire, armed guards and a SWAT presence on the roof, according to officials. “Since January of 2021, our office has increased badge security access, installed permanent barriers, and added additional cybersecurity measures based on the recommendations of law enforcement and other experts,” Taylor Kinnerup, communications director for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, told AFP on Monday.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State, which oversees elections in the nation’s largest swing state, said its preparation includes defenses of infrastructure and partnerships with security and law enforcement agencies, although it did not provide details. The new layers of security follow the election chaos from 2020, particularly after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 aiming to halt certification of the election results that confirmed Joe Biden as the winner. Officials are also warning of major cyber and hacking threats, particularly from abroad. Russia, Iran and China are conducting influence operations to undermine American confidence in election legitimacy and “stoke partisan discord,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly recently told NBC News. This “firehose of disinformation,” she added, is “creating very real physical threats to election workers.” Meanwhile in Washington, high metal fencing has been erected around the vice president’s residence and the White House, and some shopfronts have been boarded up. “There will be no tolerance for violence in our city,” DC Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters Monday. “Should it require additional time to know the results of this election, we want everyone to know that we are ready to handle many different scenarios, and we have the right people in place to keep our city safe,” she said.
Thousands protest alleged election fraud in Georgia
Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union
Updated 12 min 49 sec ago
AFP
TBILISI: Several thousand Georgians protested in Tbilisi on Monday over alleged election rigging by the governing party and Russian interference in last month’s parliament election, which the opposition denounced as “stolen.”
The pro-Western opposition has refused to recognize the ruling Georgian Dream party’s win in the October 26 election or to enter the newly elected parliament, which it calls “illegitimate.”
The European Union and the United States blasted “irregularities” in the vote, while Georgian Dream’s opponents have accused it of putting the Caucasus country on a pro-Kremlin track.
Protesters gathered outside Georgia’s parliament on Monday evening, blocking traffic on Tbilisi’s main road, after opposition groups called on supporters to take to the streets.
“The Georgian people will never accept falsified election results, an invincible protest movement is rising up and it will sweep away the regime, which has stolen our votes,” the leader of the Akhali party, Nika Melia, told the crowd.
He vowed daily protests, with the next rally set for Tuesday.
Mamuka Khazaradze, leader of the Coalition for Change, said: “We demand a fresh vote, an international investigation into election falsification, and we will not surrender until our objectives are met.”
President Salome Zurabishvili — who is at loggerheads with the governing party — also called the vote “illegitimate” and accused Russia of interference.
Moscow has denied meddling.
“We have no choice but to take to the streets every day to show our government and the world that Georgians will never put up with rigged elections,” one of the demonstrators, 25-year-old shop assistant Lidia Kirtadze, told AFP.
Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the European Union.
“Russia and its stooges in our government want to steal not only the choice of the Georgian people but also our European future,” said Leo Grigalashvili, a 49-year-old winemaker.
“We will never accept this.”
Ahead of the election, Brussels had warned it would determine Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc.
“The situation following the elections remains concerning,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told Zurabishvili during a phone call on Monday.
“If Georgia wants to keep a strategic orientation toward the EU, we need concrete actions from the leadership,” she said on X.
On Monday, a court in Georgia’s southern town of Tetritskaro ordered the annulment of election results from several precincts over violations of ballot secrecy.
Georgian rights groups said the ruling sets an important judicial precedent as the same violation had been observed at around 70 percent of polling stations.
A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors said earlier that they had uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud that swayed results in favor of Georgian Dream.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the alleged fraud.
Monday’s protest came after tens of thousands gathered in a demonstration in the capital city last week.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said the elections were “entirely fair.”
But critics have blamed his increasingly conservative Georgian Dream for bringing Tbilisi back into Moscow’s orbit.
Greek police arrest third suspect over bombing as minister warns of new generation of extremists
The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals
Updated 12 min 35 sec ago
AP
ATHENS, Greece: Greek police arrested a third suspect Monday in connection with an explosion in central Athens last week that authorities have blamed on an alleged aspiring domestic extremist group.
The 30-year-old woman surrendered to Greek authorities Monday at Athens International Airport after being located in Switzerland, authorities said.
The Oct. 31 blast gutted a third-floor apartment in the central Ambelokipi neighborhood, killing a 36-year-old man believed to have been assembling an explosive device. A 33-year-old woman was severely injured and remains hospitalized under police guard. A 31-year-old male suspect surrendered to authorities.
“It was a monstrous bomb with concentrated explosive material,” Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis told private Skai television. “It would have caused great destruction, because it was very powerful.” The apartment block has been declared uninhabitable due to blast damage.
Chrisochoidis said those allegedly involved were young people who appeared to aspire to become a new generation of domestic terrorists in Greece.
Anti-terrorism units searching the blast site, three additional locations and a vehicle seized two handguns with magazines, digital devices, disguise materials including wigs and rubber masks, and handwritten diagrams.
Greece has a history of far-left extremism dating to the 1970s, with militants carrying out multiple bombings and assassinations, though major groups have been dismantled.
Recent years have seen reduced activity, with the last significant incident occurring in December 2023 when police defused a bomb at riot police headquarters following an anonymous warning.
“I think we are dealing with an attempt of some young people who are aiming to become a third generation of terrorism in Greece,” Chrisochoidis said.
The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals.
Some Republican-led states refuse to let Justice Department monitors into polling places
Officials in Florida and Texas have said they won’t allow federal election monitors into polling sites on Tuesday
Updated 05 November 2024
AP
WASHINGTON: Some Republican-led states say they will block the Justice Department’s election monitors from going inside polling places on Election Day, pushing back on federal authorities’ decades-long practice of watching for violations of federal voting laws.
Officials in Florida and Texas have said they won’t allow federal election monitors into polling sites on Tuesday. And on Monday, Missouri filed a federal lawsuit seeking a court order to block federal officials from observing inside polling places.
The Justice Department announced last week that it’s deploying election monitors in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states on Election Day. The Justice Department declined to comment on Monday on the Missouri lawsuit and the moves by other Republican-led states.
The race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is a dead heat, and both sides are bracing for potential legal challenges to vote tallies. The Justice Department’s election monitoring effort, a long practice under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is meant to ensure that federal voting rights are being followed.
Here’s a look at election monitors and the states’ actions:
Who are the election monitors?
Election monitors are lawyers who work for the Justice Department, including in the civil rights division and US attorney’s offices across the country. They are not law enforcement officers or federal agents.
For decades, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has sent attorneys and staff members to monitor polling places across the country in both federal and non-federal elections. The monitors are tasked with ensuring the compliance of federal voting rights laws.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces a number of statutes protecting the right to vote. That includes Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation and threats against those who are casting ballots or counting votes. And it includes the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that election officials ensure people with disabilities have the full and equal opportunity to vote. Where are election monitors being sent?
The 86 jurisdictions that the Justice Department will send monitors to on Tuesday include Maricopa County, Arizona and Fulton County, Georgia, which in 2020 became the center of election conspiracy theories spread by Trump and other Republicans. Another place on the list is Portage County, Ohio, where a sheriff came under fire for a social media post in which he said people with Harris yard signs should have their addresses recorded so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democrat wins the presidency
Other areas where federal monitors will be sent include Detroit, Michigan; Queens, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Jackson County, South Dakota; Salem, Massachusetts; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Manassas, Virginia; Cuyahoga County, Ohio and Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska. The Justice Department’s monitors will be in St. Louis, Missouri; four jurisdictions in Florida and eight jurisdictions in Texas. What’s happening in Missouri?
In filing the lawsuit on Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said state law “clearly and specifically limits who may be in polling places.” He also accused the federal government of “attempting to illegally interfere in Missouri’s elections.”
The lawsuit states that Missouri law “permits only certain categories of persons to be present in voting locations, including voters, minor children accompanying voters, poll workers, election judges, etc.,” and not federal officials.
The Justice Department also sought to monitor polling places in Missouri in 2022. The agency planned to have officials at Cole County, which includes Jefferson City, the state capital. County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer had said he wouldn’t let them in if they show up.
The federal agency backed down after Ashcroft showed Justice Department officials the state law, Ashcroft said. He says the Justice Department is now “trying to go through the back door” by contacting local election officials for access.
Messages were left Monday with the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners.
The St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners reached a settlement in 2021 with the Justice Department aimed at ensuring people with mobility and vision impairments can access to polling places after federal officials found problems, such as ramps that were too steep and inaccessible parking, according to the court papers. The settlement, which expires next year, says the board must “cooperate fully” with Justice Department’s efforts to monitor compliance, “including but not limited to providing the United States with timely access to polling places (including on Election Day).” What are the other states saying?
In a letter to the Justice Department on Friday, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said wrote that “Texas law is clear: Justice Department monitors are not permitted inside polling places where ballots are being cast or a central counting station where ballots are being counted.”
“Texas has a robust processes and procedures in place to ensure that eligible voters may participate in a free and fair election,” Nelson wrote.
In a similar letter Friday, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd told the Justice Department that Florida law lists who is allowed inside the state’s polling places and that Justice Department officials are not included. Byrd said that Florida is sending its own monitors to the four jurisdictions the Justice Department plans to send staff to and they will “ensure there is no interference with the voting process.”
Arab America decides as Trump and Harris remain tied in final stretch of election race
Recent Arab News/YouGov survey revealed Arab American frustration with US policy in the Middle East
In swing states with large concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become as valuable as gold dust
Updated 04 November 2024
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: They are in a minority of about 1 percent.
In the US census carried out in 2020 — the first that specifically sought information about MENA origins — just 3.5 million of America’s 334 million citizens reported being of Middle East and North African descent.
But as Americans go to the polls today to select their next president, that 1 percent is poised to have a 100 percent impact on one of the most important US elections for a generation.
No one would suggest that this is a homogeneous group. Culturally, historically and linguistically, being “Arab” is an umbrella term for peoples as diverse as the 22 nations that comprise the League of Arab States.
But as an exclusive Arab News/YouGov survey revealed last month, in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election all Arab Americans have been united — in grief and outrage and in disappointment at the performance of the current US administration over the shocking events that have taken place in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year.
The survey also found that Arab Americans were preparing to vote in unprecedented numbers — underscoring just how important their swing-state vote will have been today for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
What the survey also revealed, however, is that Arab Americans have been divided over which of the two main candidates to vote for.
This explains the last-minute efforts to woo the Arab American vote by both Harris and former President Donald Trump.
The Arab News/YouGov survey revealed the extent to which traditional Arab American support for the Democratic Party has ebbed away over the Palestine issue. (AFP)
Right up to the wire, the election race has been too close to call, which is why in the crucial swing states that happen to be home to the largest concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become like gold dust.
On Sunday Harris was in Detroit, announcing: “I am honored to have the support of many Arab American leaders who represent the interests and the concerns of the Arab American community.”
She also made sure to repeat a line she has delivered frequently during the campaign as she sought to distance herself from association with the perception that the Biden administration had failed to hold Israel in check over the past year.
“The level of deaths of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” she said.
The Arab News/YouGov survey revealed the extent to which traditional Arab American support for the Democratic Party has ebbed away over the Palestine issue.
In October, Harris met community leaders in Flint, Michigan, in a clear attempt to make the point that, although she served as his vice president, she is not Biden.
But some community leaders declined the invitation to meet Harris, and not everyone who took part in a virtual meeting with Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon, was reassured by the overture.
Ali Dagher, a Lebanese-American community leader who did not attend the meeting, described Harris’ outreach to the Arab community as “too little, too late.”
Both campaigns have been very aware that of all seven battleground states, the result in Michigan appears to have been the most finely balanced, and on Friday it was Trump’s turn to assure the 200,000 Arab American voters in the state there that he was on their side.
In messages found on billboards along Michigan’s highways, Trump portrayed himself as pro-peace in the Middle East, while casting Harris as pro-Israel. Skeptics saw it as a curious flight of fancy for a man whose record as president was entirely pro-Israel, and not all of them were falling for it.
“We’re not naive about what he means for our community,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of Michigan advocacy group the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network, told the BBC.
Opinion
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Nazarko and doubtless many other Arab Americans have not forgotten Trump’s 2017 “Muslim ban,” his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his Abraham Accords, widely perceived in the Arab world as favoring Israel and patronizing Palestinians.
Regardless, several influential Arab Americans have declared for Trump, including Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, near Detroit. He has said his decision to endorse the former president was “a combination of both disappointment and hope” — disappointment with Biden’s handling of the Middle East situation and “hope that some change will bring peace to the Middle East, and we found President Trump is so determined about that.”
Demonstrators protest in support of the Palestinians who have died in Gaza outside of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. (AFP)
However, one of the latest polls of American voters suggests that Harris is beginning to pull ahead of Trump in five of the crucial seven swing states.
But it is in the three remaining swing states where the election is likely to be won and lost — including in Michigan, where the two candidates are neck-and-neck with exactly 47 percent of the vote each.
This echoes almost precisely the result of the Arab News/YouGov poll, which was published last week, and which also found that the Arab American vote is virtually polarized. Asked which candidate they were most likely to vote for, 45 percent said Trump, while 43 percent opted for Harris.
This was a big surprise, especially as 40 percent of those polled described themselves as natural Democrats, only 28 percent as Republicans and 23 percent as independents.
The poll made clear just how many Arab Americans appear to have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in response to the disappointment engendered by the Biden administration’s handling of Israel and the catastrophe in Gaza.
It will soon be clear whether Harris has been able to shake off that association among Arab American voters.
Whether she has or not, and whoever will be heading for the White House in January following today’s vote, the 2024 presidential election is already a historic one for Arab Americans. Their wholehearted embrace of the US democratic process — on a scale far outweighing that of the American electorate overall — has been on an unprecedented scale, reflecting not only their concern for their familial homelands but also their engagement with the politics of America.
Because make no mistake: Although the world categorizes them as Arab Americans, they see themselves as American Arabs — and their stake in the country that can lay claim to being the world’s greatest melting pot of immigrants is as deeply embedded as any.
In 2023 Dearborn, Michigan, became the first Arab-majority city in America. The fact that it did, and that Michigan’s Arabs have been in a position to play such a vital role in the selection of America’s next president, is down to something as all-American as the Model T Ford — literally.
At the start of the 20th century there was nothing much other than farmland in and around Dearborn. In 1908 Henry Ford began producing his revolutionary Model T cars in Detroit, and among the first workers he hired on the production line were Arabs who had recently emigrated from Syria.
Joe Biden stepped aside in July to allow his VP, Kamala Harris, to contest the election. (AFP)
They were followed by others, chiefly from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, who all settled in and around Dearborn, working for the gigantic Ford factory that grew up there, and where the company still has its headquarters today.
There have been 21 presidents since the first Arab immigrants began working on Ford’s Model T production lines in Michigan 116 years ago. When the last polls close in Michigan today at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, their descendants will have the satisfaction of knowing that in the race to become the 47th president of the United States they have been firmly in the driver’s seat.
