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No Lethal AI Weapons, 14 Groups Tell the Pentagon
The U.S. military should clarify that it will not develop or deploy lethal weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI), 14 groups said in a letter sent today to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. The letter was co-signed by Public Citizen, the Future of Life Institute, Demand Progress, and Win Without War, among others.
The groups’ letter focuses on the Pentagon’s Replicator program, which proposes to rely heavily on drones to combat Chinese missile strength in a theoretical conflict over Taiwan or at China’s eastern coast. The just-passed appropriations bill includes $200 million in funding for Replicator, with an additional $300 million expected to be devoted to the program.
According to the groups, the Pentagon has not been sufficiently clear about whether the program involves the development and deployment of autonomous weapons. “This is no place for strategic ambiguity. Autonomous weapons are inherently dehumanizing and unethical, no matter whether a human is ‘ultimately’ responsible for the use of force or not,” the letter reads.
“The United States should state plainly that it will not create or deploy killer robots and should work to advance global treaty negotiations to ban such weapons,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “At minimum, the United States should commit that the Replicator Initiative will not involve the use of autonomous weapons. Ambiguity about the Replicator program essentially ensures a catastrophic arms race over autonomous weapons. That’s a race in which all of humanity is the loser.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Jack Smith Drops Trump Case
The president-elect's "ability to escape prosecution does not retroactively validate his illegal, unconstitutional and democracy-destroying activities," said one critic.
Nov 25, 2024
Special Counsel Jack Smith's announcement on Monday that he was dropping his case regarding President-elect Donald Trump's alleged handling of classified documents and election subversion was not unexpected, as U.S. Justice Department policy dictates that a sitting president can't be prosecuted while in office.
But government watchdogs said the developing was no less "troubling," and vowed that Trump must ultimately face accountability.
"At least for now, Trump may escape justice for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, fomenting the January 6 insurrection, and improperly handling classified documents," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. "But his ability to escape prosecution does not retroactively validate his illegal, unconstitutional and democracy-destroying activities. They were heinous and unconscionable acts that literally cost lives and threatened the peaceful transfer of power."
"If not the courts, history will judge them appropriately," said Gilbert.
In his motion to dismiss the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith wrote that "the government's position on the merits of the defendant's prosecution has not changed. But the circumstances have."
" Donald Trump aims not just to excuse but to normalize all this behavior. Permitting him to succeed would enable a slide into authoritarianism. The American people must not let that happen."
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in his Substack newsletter that regardless of DOJ policy, the filing was "a grave mistake," because Smith did not specify that the prosecution of Trump would be restarted after the president-elect leaves office.
"Smith says he had no choice," wrote Reich. "But he did have a choice. He could have asked the courts to put the cases on hold until Trump is no longer president... To be sure, Smith's requests were for dismissals 'without prejudice,' which technically leaves open the possibility that charges could be refiled after Trump leaves office. But refiling charges is vastly more cumbersome than simply ending a stay."
While Smith left the door open to once again bring charges against Trump in 2029, he "should have put the responsibility for avoiding the rule of law squarely on Trump," wrote Reich.
Legal analyst Barb McQuade added that Smith's tactic leaves the possibility that "there may be no appetite" to refile charges regarding eight-year-old allegations after Trump leaves office.
At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland's "institutionalist instincts paralyzed the Justice Department for nearly two years, giving Trump a chance to run out the clock by the time Smith finally indicted him."
The attorney general is "partly at fault for waiting so long to commence the investigation into Jan. 6," they wrote, while right-wing federal Judge Aileen Cannon "is guilty of sabotaging" the case regarding Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office in 2021, which Cannon dismissed in July, claiming Smith's appointment as special counsel violated the Constitution.
"In a simplistic sense, the voting public also bears culpability for putting Trump back in the Oval Office despite his egregious attempts to steal the previous election. But that victory could not have happened without the Supreme Court, which essentially nullified the constitutional bar against insurrectionists returning to office, then awarded Trump sweeping immunity in Smith's Jan. 6 case. The court's immunity decision guaranteed that the former president would not face trial before the election, which in turn prevented the public from hearing the full range of evidence against him."
Gilbert emphasized that "at Public Citizen we believe that no one should be above the law, that criminality by the powerful must be punished, and that attempting to overturn the nation's election and fomenting political violence should be harshly sanctioned."
"Donald Trump aims not just to excuse but to normalize all this behavior," said Gilbert. "Permitting him to succeed would enable a slide into authoritarianism. The American people must not let that happen."
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Israeli Siege Leaves 130,000 Kids Trapped and at Risk of Starvation in Northern Gaza
"With no food, no clean water, and constant fear, both my children have developed rashes, and my daughter is passing blood, but there is no medicine, no help, and absolutely nothing I can do," said one mother trapped in the area.
Nov 25, 2024
An estimated 130,000 children under the age of 10 have been trapped in areas of northern Gaza almost entirely cut off from aid assistance, food and medical supplies for 50 days, a major humanitarian group said Monday.
According to Save the Children, life-sustaining aid has largely failed to make it through to any of the people besieged by Israeli forces in northern Gaza since early October, when the IDF declared the territory a "dangerous combat zone" and ordered civilians to evacuate.
Earlier this month, Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for the United Nations, warned that the Israeli offensive in the area that began in early October was "an intensified, extreme, and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year." Local health officials in Gaza say that the death toll for the entire enclave has surpassed 44,000 since October 7 of 2023.
"Save the Children has been unable to access northern Gaza to deliver food parcels for 5,000 families, along with 725 hygiene kits and other aid supplies, for over seven weeks," said the group in its Monday statement. "Before the area was closed off, Save the Children worked through local partners to reach thousands of children in need, distributing over 1,000 food parcels and 600 hygiene kits, and reaching around 15,000 children and families in northern Gaza with psychosocial support, recreational activities, and case management."
Save the Children's warning comes not long after the Famine Review Committee released an alert stating that "there is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip."
"The situation in northern Gaza is not fit for human survival and yet we know there are about 130,000 children under 10 trapped in those conditions, not to mention the thousands of older children and their families," said regional director Jeremy Stoner.
A mother of two trapped in northern Gaza, identified by Save the Children as Ruba, testified through the group that she was trapped with her children "under relentless bombs, rockets, and bullets, with nowhere to run. My mother is paralyzed, and I cannot leave her behind. My brother has been killed, my husband was taken, and I don't know if he's alive."
"With no food, no clean water, and constant fear, both my children have developed rashes, and my daughter is passing blood, but there is no medicine, no help, and absolutely nothing I can do. They cry and ask me why we can’t just leave, why their father isn’t with us, why we can’t go back to a normal life," she said.
Save the Children is not the only entity reporting that aid is being blocked. According to an update from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued last week regarding northern Gaza, "between 1 and 18 November, 27 out of 31 coordination requests by the U.N. to access the besieged areas were denied and the remaining four were initially approved but then impeded on the ground. No fuel was let in for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities."
Following Save the Children's statement, Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called for bolder action by nations besides the U.S.: "Because the Biden administration steadfastly refuses to apply any real pressure on the genocidal Israeli government to allow food to be delivered to those being intentionally starved in northern Gaza, including some 130,000 children under age 10, it is up to the international community to take concrete action."
“While our nation's government has abdicated any role in alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people under a systematic campaign of mass destruction, slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation, other nations can take actions such as economic sanctions, arms embargoes and arrests of Israeli war criminals," he said.
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Former Sen. Fred Harris, Champion of Economic Populism, Dies at 94
"The fundamental problem is that too few people have all the money and power, and everybody else has too little of either," said Harris in 1975.
Nov 25, 2024
Former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, a moderate Democratic lawmaker who fully embraced economic populism in his later political career and ran what one journalist called a "proto-Bernie" presidential campaign in 1976, died on Saturday at the age of 94.
Harris' death inspired tributes from an array of Democratic politicians and progressives, who remembered the former senator's outspoken support for working people and his championing of Indigenous rights.
Harris was voted into the Senate to replace Sen. Robert Kerr (D-Okla.) in 1964 after Kerr died of a heart attack. He began as a close ally of President Lyndon Johnson, supporting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson's Great Society programs aimed at reducing poverty.
But he "underwent a dramatic passage from moderate-conservative to liberal ideas," as The New York Times reported, embracing a "new populism" that was centered on promoting racial equality and a redistribution of economic and political power and fighting against the exploitation of workers. He also gradually changed his stance on Vietnam, calling for troop reductions and eventually a full withdrawal of the U.S. military in the region.
In 1967 he was a member of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders, convened to determine the root cause of riots in Black communities across the country. He concluded that "entrenched racism" was to blame.
He was also credited with sponsoring a bill that pushed President Richard Nixon to return Blue Lake, a site that was sacred to the people of the Taos Pueblo tribe, to them.
"In Senator Harris, Oklahoma sent a public servant to Washington, D.C. who gave voice to those in need, lifted up those the economy left behind, was a champion of civil rights, and was a friend to Indian Country," said Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. of the Cherokee Nation.
"His story is one that too few people know—the story of an Oklahoman who championed working families and fought for justice and equity at every turn."
Running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, Harris called for higher taxes on the richest Americans and lower taxes for the rest of the country, stricter regulations on large corporations, a "moral" foreign policy, abortion rights, and "community control" of police forces.
Columnist John Nichols of The Nation said Harris adopted the slogan "No More Bullshit" during his presidential campaign.
Harris' presidential bid, said journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, "was a road-not-taken that would have led to a much better world than we have now."
Harris told the Times in 1975 that the issue he was most concerned with was "privilege."
"The fundamental problem is that too few people have all the money and power, and everybody else has too little of either," he said. "The widespread diffusion of economic and political power ought to be the express goal—the stated goal—of government."
Harris' campaign garnered enthusiastic support from many voters, with the former senator taking aim at "the superrich, giant corporations" and leading efforts to gain the confidence of blue-collar workers, farmers, poor Black and white voters, and unemployed people.
"Those in the coalition don't have to love one another," Harris said. "All they have to do is recognize that they are commonly exploited, and that if they get themselves together they are a popular majority and can take back the government."
After his presidential run, Harris became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and left politics to raise chickens on a farm in Corrales, New Mexico.
In conversations with Axios reporter Russell Contreras in his later years, Harris expressed frustration with the Democratic Party, saying leaders didn't discuss poverty as much as they should.
"It's harder to get out of poverty today than it was back then," he told Contreras.
He added that showing a commitment to fight for working-class and low-income people would motivate people in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and on Native American reservations across the country.
"We are grateful to see national media highlighting the life and legacy of former Senator Fred Harris," said the Oklahoma Democratic Party. "His story is one that too few people know—the story of an Oklahoman who championed working families and fought for justice and equity at every turn."
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