October, 06 2022, 03:37pm EDT
Statement on Biden Pardoning All Federal Marijuana Possession Charges & Initiating Review of Marijuana Scheduling
WASHINGTON
In response to President Biden today announcing that he will pardon all federal marijuana charges and urge Governors to take similar actions at the state level, Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, released the following statement:
"We are thrilled to see President Biden holding true to his commitment to pardon every person with simple marijuana charges at the federal level, including people in D.C. And we are further encouraged by his efforts to get Governors to take similar actions at the state level. This is incredibly long overdue. There is no reason that people should be saddled with a criminal record--preventing them from obtaining employment, housing, and countless other opportunities--for something that is already legal in 19 states and D.C. and decriminalized in 31 states.
We, however, hope that the Biden Administration will go further and fully deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), rather than initiate a process that could lead to rescheduling. Keeping marijuana on the federal drug schedule will mean people will continue to face criminal charges for marijuana. It also means that research will continue to be inhibited and state-level markets will be at odds with federal law. We urge the President to support the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, introduced in the Senate earlier this year, which would fully remove marijuana from the CSA, provide expungement and resentencing for past marijuana convictions beyond simple possession, and comprehensively repair the harms of marijuana criminalization."
The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation's leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
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'The Big Lie Is Back' as Trump's GOP Reboots Felony-Facing Fake Electors
"The election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again," warned one swing-state campaigner.
Nov 04, 2024
At least 1 in 5 potential battleground state electors for former U.S. President Donald Trump are linked to the Republican nominee's attempt to subvert the 2020 election, according to an analysis published Monday.
Politico reported that "of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states, eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020."
Five additional possible electors signed similar documents in 2020 but were not criminally charged, according to the reporting, while at least half a dozen others "played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories."
"These people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
With numerous Trump aides and GOP officials facing criminal charges for their alleged roles in the former president's bogus "Stop the Steal" scheme, experts say it is somewhat less likely that the Republican nominee or his allies would attempt another such plot. However, Trump and his boosters have recycled similar claims of election fraud in what critics say is a bid to spread misinformation and sow doubt about the outcome of Tuesday's contest if the 2020 loser is defeated by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It does show a lack of regard for the criminal and ethical problems with doing this," Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Politico.
As Politico notes:
Six of the returning fake electors hail from Michigan. John Haggard, Hank Choate, Timothy King, Meshawn Maddock, Amy Facchinello, and Marian Sheridan were among the group of Michiganders who signed a document in 2020 purporting to be official electoral certificates claiming the state’s electoral votes went to Donald Trump, despite Biden winning Michigan by more than 150,000 votes. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against them, including forgery-related crimes punishable by up to 14 years. Those cases are ongoing and all have pleaded not guilty.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin—where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by less than 21,000 votes, or 0.63%, in 2020—"election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again through actions designed to attack the electoral process, sow seeds of chaos set to bloom post-election, and further undermine confidence in our democracy," warned Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director Nick Ramos in a Sunday opinion piece in the Cap Times.
"That is exactly what their antics wrought after the 2020 election—chaos resulting in the January 6 insurrection and years of baseless conspiracy theories that did not, and will not, succeed in changing a single election result but did succeed in undermining the confidence of millions of Americans in our democracy," he continued.
"The bullies are back again, continuing their strategy to interfere in Wisconsin's elections," Ramos added.
While some observers claim that would-be election subversives are likely to tread gingerly in light of the potential criminal consequences for alleged Big Lie conspirators, McCord said that "it would appear that the party leadership in the states where there are fraudulent electors serving as electors again are not taking seriously things like the criminal charges that have been brought against these fraudulent electors."
Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party, told Politico that "these people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
"It's definitely disappointing," she lamented.
In Arizona—where former state GOP chief Kelli Ward and 11 other Republican officials have been criminally charged in connection with the alleged fake electors scheme—current Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda has been pushing spurious election fraud claims. This, even as Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of a right-wing women's group who falsely attested that Trump won Arizona in 2020, earlier this year became the first person convicted in the state's fake electors case.
Democracy defenders have sounded the alarm on the potential for violence fueled by baseless claims of election fraud.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said last week that it is "seeing the same warning signs of political violence based on election denialism combined with violent language across fringe platforms that we saw in the weeks before the 2020 election and before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol."
According to a YouGov poll published Saturday, just over two-thirds of respondents—including more than 80% of surveyed Democrats and 55% of Republicans— believe it is either "somewhat" or "very likely" that Trump will refuse to concede if he loses to Harris.
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New Reporting Details 'Large Scale' Use of Human Shields by Israel in Gaza
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," one human rights expert said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
Nov 04, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces routinely use detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, according to testimony from four Palestinians and one IDF soldier shared withThe Washington Post.
Their stories, published on Sunday, build on other accounts from Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the international press, and Defense for Children International to reveal a pattern of Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinians—including children—to enter buildings or tunnels ahead of them to check for militants or explosives, in clear violation of international law.
"This wasn't something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places," Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, told The Washington Post.
"My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The incidents recounted to the Post occurred between January and August. One man, 20-year-old Mohammed Saad, said he was detained by the IDF in June and interrogated for several days. Then, a new pattern began. Every day, he and two other Palestinian men were blindfolded and taken to a different location. They were made to wear IDF uniforms, given cameras, and told to enter buildings ahead of the Israeli soldiers to film and check for explosives. On the second day, an explosion went off after Saad had made his forced investigation.
"They tied my hands and threw me on the sand," he recalled. "They took turns beating me. I still don't know where the explosion came from."
Another time, the captain of the unit he was detained by showed him an image of his family home destroyed by bombing.
"If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this," the captain said.
On the 15th day of Saab's ordeal, he was given civilian clothes and told to walk. As he did so, he felt a pain and realized he had been shot in the back.
The other three Palestinians interviewed by the Post were detained during the IDF's raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in March. One was a surgeon at the hospital, while the other two were taken from their homes nearby. They were made to enter the hospital building ahead of IDF troops, remove any barriers, and take pictures of each room they entered.
"I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here," the surgeon, Omar al-Jadba recalled to the Post. "My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The IDF soldier, who spoke anonymously, said that two Palestinian detainees were placed with his unit to make sure that buildings were safe to enter. One of them was only a teenager. His commander said the two men were terrorists, but then later said they could be released after the mission was over.
"At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists," the soldier, a reservist, told the Post. "The officer just lied to us."
"Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Another group of soldiers questioned the use of human shields, telling a higher-level commander that it was against international law.
"He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF," the soldier told the Post.
However, the IDF said in a statement that its orders prohibit the use of human shields.
Breaking the Silence, a group that records testimonies from Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the reservist's account was in line with others they had received.
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," Carmel said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
The
Post reporting came the same day as a major Associated Press investigation into Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza at the end of 2023. Israel has often justified its hospital raids with the claim that Hamas operates from the inside, turning all the patients and doctors into human shields. However, the AP concluded that
"Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence at the three" hospitals it considered: the al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals.
"What do [former U.S. President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have in common?" asked journalist Mehdi Hasan in response to the Post's reporting. "Many things but especially... projection. Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Other commenters responded to the clear violations of international law and questioned why the U.S. continues to provide weapons and funding to the IDF while it engages in war crimes.
The Austin for Palestine coalition shared a quote from the article, noting that what it described was "paid for by our tax dollars."
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As Millions Starve in Gaza, Israel Terminates Agreement With UNRWA
"Restricting humanitarian access and at the same time dismantling UNRWA will add an additional layer of suffering to already unspeakable suffering," said the U.N. agency's commissioner-general.
Nov 04, 2024
Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry on Sunday formally notified the United Nations that it has terminated a decades-old legal agreement governing the country's relations with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a move that aid workers and advocacy groups say will spell further disaster for Gaza's besieged and famine-stricken population as winter approaches.
The director-general of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry announced the decision to scrap the 1967 agreement in a letter to the president of the U.N. General Assembly, a message sent roughly a week after Israeli lawmakers approved legislation banning the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from operating or providing services "in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel."
The new letter states that the legislation "will enter into effect following a three-month period."
The Washington Postreported Monday that Juliette Touma, UNRWA's communications director, said that "the agency expected to continue its work coordinating the distribution of aid in Gaza and the West Bank at the operational level."
But aid groups have warned that Israel's UNRWA ban could inflict fatal damage to humanitarian operations in Gaza and the West Bank, given Israeli control over access to the illegally occupied territories. The legislation Israeli lawmakers passed last week bars the government from issuing work permits to foreign UNRWA staff and prevents the military from coordinating with the aid agency.
"The human cost of this ban is immeasurable," Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA, said in a statement last week. "This Israeli Knesset vote banning UNRWA is not merely an attack on the U.N. agency; it's an attack on the fundamental rights and dignity due to all human beings. The consequences of this ban could result in the loss of tens of thousands, if not more, precious Palestinian lives. Where is the humanity?"
"You can hear children crying, people screaming, people running for their lives, and it has been nonstop for 24 hours. There's nowhere to go. People are trapped."
The U.S., Israel's main ally and arms supplier, urged the Israeli government last week not to implement the newly passed legislation, even though the U.S. has yet to restore its own funding to UNRWA. The Biden administration suspended U.S. funding for UNRWA in January after Israel accused a small number of agency employees of taking part in the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
The U.N. fired nine UNRWA workers after an investigation determined that they "may have been involved" in the attack. UNRWA has roughly 13,000 staffers in the Gaza Strip, and the agency is the most important aid group operating in the enclave.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, argued that by terminating its agreement with UNRWA, "Israel is also further breaking U.S. law prohibiting the restriction of aid delivery."
"It's a definitive rejection of an explicit demand in the Biden administration's October 13 letter and by law must result in halting U.S. arms and military aid to Israel," Williams added.
The Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry's announcement came as Israel's military continued its bombing campaign and ground attacks across Gaza. Reutersreported that at least a dozen Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Monday, including seven people in an attack on houses in northern Gaza.
"It is absolutely terrifying," Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA spokesperson, told Al Jazeera on Saturday, referring to conditions on the ground in Gaza. "You can hear children crying, people screaming, people running for their lives, and it has been nonstop for 24 hours. There's nowhere to go. People are trapped."
“It is absolutely terrifying.
You can hear children crying, people screaming, people running for their lives, and it has been nonstop for 24 hours. People are trapped." @UNWateridge tells @AJEnglish that people in #Gaza are facing relentless and continuous bombardments with… pic.twitter.com/sUo0YKbhOt
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 2, 2024
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA's commissioner-general, said Monday that Israeli authorities allowed an average of just 30 aid trucks to enter Gaza per day last month.
Prior to October 7, 2023, around 500 aid trucks were entering the enclave daily.
"This cannot meet the needs of over 2 million people, many of whom are starving, sick, and in desperate conditions," Lazzarini said Monday. "Restricting humanitarian access and at the same time dismantling UNRWA will add an additional layer of suffering to already unspeakable suffering."
"Only political will," he added, "can put an end to a politically made situation."
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