Secret Service agent called protestors tear-gassed during Trump Bible photo op 'anarchists': report

David Badash,

 The New Civil Rights Movement
June 30, 2022

New report debunks narrative that says police used tear gas on protesters to clear way for Trump 'photo op'

A U.S. Secret Service agent referred to the tear-gassed peaceful protestors gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in June of 2020 as "rioters," "anarchist[s]," and, apparently, "Anti American Thugs" as he or she wrote fondly of then-President Donald Trump.

The revelation comes via veteran journalist Andrew Beaujon, a senior editor at Washingtonian, who obtained a redacted email in response to his Freedom of Information Act request. Beaujon posted a screenshot of the email Wednesday, apparently in an effort to show Secret Service agents are not non-partisan. Two allegedly are pushing back against Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony from Tuesday, before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Through a source the agents who were close to Trump are reportedly claiming he did not grab the steering wheel or lunge at one of his Secret Service drivers.

Hutchinson testified she was told by an agent Trump "grabbed at the steering wheel" and lunged at the agent's "clavicle."

Beaujon tweeted: "About that Secret Service pushback: Here's a redacted message from someone in the Uniformed Division, White House Branch, in response to my FOIA for Secret Service emails during the 2020 protests by the White House."

"I have been out their [sic] on the front lines face to face with the rioters/anarchist[s]," the email reads. "Yesterday President Trump proudly walked across Lafayette Park going to the recently damaged St. John's Church. Together with high ranking administration officials the President was photographed with Bible in hand in front of the Church. After the photo he marched backed to the White House symbolizing Anti American Thugs."

While the wording is strange it seems clear the agent is a supporter of Donald Trump and opposed U.S. citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, just as they were being gassed.

One year after the incident, during which Trump was highly-criticized, an Inspector General's report raised additional questions, as Vox reported in June of 2021.

One senior White House official at the time said the Trump White House was "celebrating" the tear-gassing of the protestors.

Former marketing executives launch campaign to keep Fox News from 'fueling next insurrection'

Kelly McClure Salon
June 26, 2022

Fox News personality Sean Hannity speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Photo by Gage Skidmore
An organization called Check My Ads has launched a campaign in an effort to restrict Fox News ad revenue to prevent them from "working overtime to fuel the next insurrection."

The organization, which is run by two former marketing executives, has already collected over 40,000 signatures from people backing their efforts in just five days, according to The Guardian, and the goal is to get ad exchanges to drop the news site.

"Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable," says Claire Atkin, a team member of Check My Ads.

The messaging included in the campaign reads:

HERE'S THE PROBLEM

Advertisers don't place ads on the internet themselves. They use ad exchanges — technology companies that run ads for them.

Ad exchanges don't work with just anyone. They choose which websites to work with and which ones to drop. They have standards to protect advertisers from funding violence. This is so important to advertisers that they have it written into their contracts.

When Fox News promoted the January 6th insurrection, it was violent. We all saw it — but ad exchange executives pretended it didn't happen.

Since then, Fox News has just gotten worse.

So here's the plan: we need to tell ad exchanges to block their ads from FoxNews.com now.

"Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It's not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence," Atkin said. "We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough."

IT BEGINS WITH REAGAN

Justice Alito detailed long-term plan to overturn Roe v Wade in 1985 memo: report

Tom Boggioni
June 26, 2022

Official 2007 portrait of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

According to a report from the New York Times’ Charlie Savage, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has been making plans to overturn the 50-year-old Roe v Wade ruling based upon a memo that he wrote in 1985 where he counseled patience during the Ronald Reagan administration.

Alito, who wrote Friday’s decision that overturned Row — and subsequently set off mass demonstrations across the country by effectively turning women into second-class citizens — reportedly “cautioned the Reagan administration against mounting a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade.”

In his 1985 memo Alito, “advocated focusing on a more incremental argument: The court should uphold the regulations as reasonable. That strategy would ‘advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects,” reports the Times Savage.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences, he wrote. “And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

RELATED: 'Ana Navarro is a eugenicist!' Fox News anchor claims View co-host wants babies 'exterminated'

According to the Times report, “In a memo on the cases, Mr. Alito displayed not only tactical acumen but personal passion, taking umbrage with a judge’s objection that forcing women to listen to details about fetal development before their abortions would cause ‘emotional distress, anxiety, guilt and in some cases increased physical pain,” with Alito dismissing their concerns by writing the such concerns “are part of the responsibility of moral choice.”

The Times reports that during Senate hearings on his appointment to the highest court in the land, when the 1985 memo was brought up, he responded, “When someone becomes a judge, you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career and think about legal issues the way a judge thinks about legal issues.”

You can read more here.

'Stop the Steal' didn't start in 2020 - it was 20 years in the making

Thom Hartmann
June 25, 2022

Roger Stone (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds for AFP)

As the January 6th Committee continues to unpeel layers of criminality and conspiracy, it’s important to note that the Stone/Bannon/Trump “Stop The Steal” scheme did not originate in 2020. It was, in fact, 20 years in the making.

Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty trickster who was sentenced to 40 months in prison before Trump pardoned him, rolled out version 1.0 in Florida in 2000, helping the George W. Bush campaign stop a Florida Supreme Court-mandated statewide recount that would have handed the election to Al Gore.

After Stone’s successful efforts to shut down the Miami-Dade County recount with the infamous “Brooks Brothers Riot,” five Republicans on the US Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court (so much for “state’s rights” and the 10th Amendment) and blocked the recount because it would “cause irreparable harm” to “plaintiff George W. Bush.”

Stone coordinated the program to shut down the vote count and throw the election to Bush, who had lost the election by 500,000 votes nationwide, a role Stone reprised in both 2016 and 2020.

In 2000, “I set up my command center there [in Miami]” Stone told Jeffrey Toobin. “I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications…”

Joe Geller was the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party Chairman, and was threatened and roughed up by Stone’s goons, many staffers from Republican members of Congress flown down for the event.

“Anybody who says it was unrelated to the intimidation and violence floating around there is not telling the truth. I saw it with my own eyes,” Geller told The Washington Post. “Violence, fear and physical intimidation affected the outcome of a lawful elections process. I think that’s pretty bad.”

Stone’s next Stop The Steal, this one Version 2.0, was to be on behalf of Donald Trump in 2016, an election they fully expected to lose but were willing to unleash chaos on the country over anyway.

The day before the 2016 election — six years ago — ABC News reported that Roger Stone’s second “Stop The Steal” program had been forced to back off their efforts to put armed white “election monitors” into minority neighborhoods after a court threatened him.

“For weeks,” John Kruzel reported for ABC, “the group has used incendiary rhetoric to motivate members to turn up at contested areas tomorrow to participate in a survey of voters leaving polling places.”

Two weeks earlier The Guardian reported that the Trump campaign was targeting “Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, Richmond and Fayetteville,” all cities with large Black populations.

Trump and Stone were expecting to lose the election to Hillary Clinton, so finding or manufacturing any evidence of hanky panky in Black neighborhoods would be pure gold for the “Stop The Steal” operation they were planning for the days after the election was called for Clinton.

If if there was anything that might throw a monkey wrench into the 2016 election, armed white men going door-to-door in Black neighborhoods to ask about voting plans, and standing outside polling places doing “exit interviews” was at the top of the list.
“In court filings,” ABC reported, “Democrats argue Stop the Steal’s exit polling operation serves no legitimate purpose, but is merely a pretext for harassing and intimidating likely Democratic voters of color. They say the ruse goes hand-in-hand with Donald Trump's heated, racially-tinged accusations of vote-rigging and his calls for supporters to monitor voting in ‘certain areas,’ which Democrats argue is code for minority communities.”

That year, 2016, was a dress rehearsal for 2020. Stone and Trump’s 2016 StopTheSteal.org website (here’s the link to the archive) laid out the lies they were going to deploy and their strategy for profiting from them:

“[Democrats] intend to flood the polls with illegals. Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the Presidential election.

“What can we do to stop this outrageous steal? We must step up to the plate and do this vital job? That€™s why I am working with a statistician attorneys and computer experts to find and make public any result which has been rigged.

“We at THE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE TO STOP THE STEAL WILL:

“– Demand inspection of the software used to program the voting machines in every jurisdiction...

“– Conduct targeted EXIT-POLLING in targeted states and targeted localities that we believe the Democrats could manipulate based on their local control...

“– Retain the countries foremost experts on voting machine fraud to help us both prevent and detect voting machine manipulation….”

And, of course, there was the ever-present Trump-trademarked fundraising grift:
“Under the law, you €”or your corporation €”can contribute in any amount. Won’t you send $10,000 for this vital program today? Of course $5,000 or even $2,500 would be a great help. If you can send $5,000 or $10,000 or more it would be a Godsend.”

Thus, by the time the 2020 election rolled around, Trump and Stone were running a well-oiled machine, at least when it came to preparing the ground to convince the public the election had been stolen from Trump.

The BBC compiled a series of Trump tweets throughout 2020, all designed to prepare his followers to believe his lies about a stolen election that fall.

The first came in April, as the pandemic was biting and then-President Trump’s approval numbers were collapsing:

GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD. THE USA MUST HAVE VOTER I.D., THE ONLY WAY TO GET AN HONEST COUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020

Then, in June as the Democratic candidacy of Joe Biden was gaining traction:

RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020

In August, he tweeted again to his millions of followers:

The Democrats are demanding Mail-In Ballots because the enthusiasm meter for Slow Joe Biden is the lowest in recorded history, and they are concerned that very few people will turn out to vote. Instead, they will search & find people, then “harvest” & return Ballots. Not fair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2020

Around that time, in August — three months before the election — the BBC documented how Trump and Stone rolled out dozens of Facebook groups all using the same banner; millions joined them or got their “news” from these groups between August and the election:

Finally, the night of the election Trump again tweeted, laying the ground for both January 6th and a massive half-billion-dollar theft of money from his mostly older small-dollar donors:

We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

That’s how Trump has made over $390 million dollars just since he lost the election. And he’s still fundraising, fleecing the rubes: I get a dozen emails a week from him begging for money and telling me I can win a prize.

The big difference between 2000 and 2020 is that back in 2000 Stone’s plan worked, but it failed the second time around.

Stone’s “Brooks Brothers” goons succeeded in stopping the Florida vote count and cemented Bush’s ascent to the White House, even though he’d lost the election.

In 2020, on the other hand, the January 6th protests failed to intimidate members of Congress the way they had the Miami-Dade County vote-counters twenty years earlier.

Having succeeded in stealing an election with a mob once, it’s not surprising that Stone and Trump thought it might work again. They just couldn’t pull it off because Trump was so incompetent. The next Republican may not be.

Given that Republicans have used these “big lie” and intimidation tactics in three presidential elections in this century, Republican criminality should cease to surprise us. And, indeed, there’s a long tradition of criminal GOP presidential tactics.

Nixon blew up LBJ’s Vietnam negotiations (causing another 20,000 American deaths) to win the 1968 election, something LBJ and Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen agreed at the time was treason. Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians in 1980 to sabotage Jimmy Carter, elevating him to the White House.

Bush’s dirty work was done by his brother in Florida and his dad’s friends on the Supreme Court, and in 2016 Trump had a big boost from Vladimir Putin, a boost that Trump tried his best to repay during his presidency by shutting down two of our cybersecurity agencies, withholding military support to Ukraine, and trying to pull the US out of NATO.

And here come the new outrages, just in time for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

At this moment multiple Republican-controlled states are considering laws giving their legislatures the power to override the vote of the people of the state and send the presidential electors of their choice to Washington, DC.

The trend started in Arizona last year, when, as NBC News noted:
“The Republican chair of Arizona's state House Ways and Means Committee introduced a bill Wednesday that would give the Legislature authority to override the secretary of state’s certification of its electoral votes.”

Meanwhile, 27 states with Republican Secretaries of State are most likely following the examples of Ohio, Texas and Georgia and purging people in “certain” zip codes from their voter rolls.

Five Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalized that in 2018; it was a decision that NBC News reported “discourages minority turnout”:
“At least a dozen other politically conservative states said they would adopt a similar practice if Ohio prevailed,” NBC reported.

Ever since ALEC got to work and the first mandatory voter ID law was put into place in both Georgia and Indiana in 2005, Republican-controlled states have been hard at work.

They’ve figured out dozens of ways to make it harder for working class people to vote at a convenient time, impossible in some cases for low income people to vote at all, and to throw up expensive and/or time-consuming barriers to voting for young and elderly people.

One of their favorites is criminalizing making mistakes while voting, like making it a crime to misspell your name or city, or to offer to carry your neighbor’s ballot to the post office, or to register to vote or sign a petition.

The laws are so all-over-the-place and almost always only enforced against Black and Brown people that entire communities have become reluctant to vote.

Stories of voting-related prison sentences spread fast, like Pamela Moses’, who got 6-years-and-a day in prison for registering to vote, not knowing she couldn’t in that state because she had once been a felon.

And that drop in voting is what Republicans have been calling for ever since Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, working for Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980, laid out the new GOP strategy to a group of Republicans in the basement of a Dallas church (check it out: it’s only 40 seconds and was a moment that changed history):

Fully 393 pieces of voting-related legislation intended to suppress the vote have been proposed in 39 state legislatures as of May of this year. One-hundred-forty-eight of them have passed in 27 states.

These Republicans haven’t fought fair in over 50 years.

Don’t expect them to this fall; and we must be on particular alert for the presidential election in 2024.

They’re gaming that one out as you read these words. We need to be, too.

Young women were the 'foot soldiers' of the anti-abortion movement and 'morally bankrupt' Trump

Mary Elizabeth Williams,

 Salon
June 24, 2022

Anti-abortion activists look to Supreme Court at annual march

In order to understand how we got here with the stripping of reproductive health care, we need to understand the people who made it happen. It's a journey through a pivotal year in the anti-abortion movement, seen through the eyes of three of its youthful female leaders. There's never been a documentary quite like "Battleground," which premiered recently at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Its Emmy-nominated director and producer, Cynthia Lowen, spoke to me on "Salon Talks" shortly before the overturning of Roe v. Wade about the women at the forefront of the anti-choice crusade, and where we go from here. Watch our episode here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

There is a moment early in the film that defines it. A bunch of young women from Students For Life are in a room. One of them says, "People think that it's all just old white men telling us what we can do with our bodies. It's not. This is about young people in the movement. This is about women." This is about even Democrats. What are we getting wrong when we think about the face of the anti-choice movement, Cynthia?


Going into making this film, I had a lot of those notions that the anti-abortion movement was – as the girls in the hotel room say – old white men. I was really surprised to learn in making this film that the anti-abortion movement, they're young women by and large. The movement has its eye very much on the next generation of anti-abortion activists. They're really cultivating young people to be at the vanguard of the next stage of the movement. You hear these young people saying a lot, "We are the post-Roe generation," and they're taking on this identity of coming of age in a post-Roe America.

"The anti-abortion movement, they're young women by and large"

Kristen Hawkins, one of the women in the film who's the president of Students for Life, says, "People used to say I was crazy when I was trying to tell people that I'm building a post-Roe organization." Here we are. We're on the absolute precipice of Roe being overturned. What we have is that the movement is building.

It's building its foot soldiers. It's building that next generation of people, because I think the movement tends to be forward-looking. They're very much trying to build up single issue voters. Something else that they say is, "Look, you don't have to be a conservative. You don't have to be a Republican. You just have to be a single issue voter for this."

One of the chilling shots of the film is where there's a sign from a Students for Life of America advocate who's saying, "I'm so pro-life that I'm going to vote for a candidate I don't like." Because I'm putting that anti-choice position ahead of actually what I think of a candidate.

That's what they're doing. They're really trying to build up this single issue voter block, as well as positioning themselves and appropriating a lot of the language from left-leaning social justice movements to appeal to young people.

Let's start with that single issue voter idea, because I think those of us on the more progressive side have really been bitten by that idea of, "If a candidate is not my perfect unicorn, if I don't like Hillary, then I'm not going to vote."

We see where that leads. Some of us on the progressive side have this idea the movement is old white men or guys in red caps who are storming the Capitol. It's not people who say, "You know what? I don't like Donald Trump. I didn't like him." And a lot of these people are saying that. How did that relationship evolve? Trump and the anti-choice movement made some kind of relationship happen that surprises everyone.

The film brings you behind the scenes into that actual transaction happening. The film opens with this meeting of leaders of the Christian right. Many of the people in that room have been featured in recent articles about how there's a real white evangelical nationalist movement that is under a lot of the dynamics that we're having come out now.

"I was honestly surprised at the candor and the willingness of these anti-choice leaders to say, 'We don't like [Trump]. We know he's morally bankrupt. We know that, but this is our issue. This is our single issue.'"

You see in this meeting that was secretly recorded between Trump and leaders of the Christian right in the lead-up to the 2016 election. They are fully aware that he is not a conservative. He's not a Christian, he's not an anti-choice person. They say, "Look, if you come down hard on this, if you do what we want you to do, which is advance anti-choice policy and nominate anti-choice judges, we will get our people to the polls."

On the flip side, you have Steve Bannon saying, "Get your people to the polls and we will do your bidding." At the end of the film, it comes full circle where you have Marjorie Dannenfelser, the leader of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the most powerful anti-choice lobbying organizations in the country saying, "Pence and I joke that Donald Trump fulfilled even more promises than he made."

He went so above and beyond what the anti-abortion movement expected of him. It was a very transactional relationship. As Marjorie says, "We didn't like him." I was honestly surprised at the candor and the willingness of these anti-choice leaders to say, "We don't like him. We know he's morally bankrupt. We know that, but this is our issue. This is our single issue. He's going to do what we want him to do. And it's a purely transactional kind of relationship."

It's important for those of us on any side of a conversation to understand what our opponents look like, what they think like, how they are strategizing. It is easy to turn on the news and think that it's just a guy in a Viking hat, storming the Capitol. That it's a cult. It's subtler and requires more thought to show a group of young women who look like they could be your neighbors, your friends, who are soft-spoken, who are polite, who are articulate, who are educated.

Do you think in that kind of space of understanding each other, is there room for us to have productive conversations? Is there a possibility of any kind of compromise in this, around this issue? When we look at the post-Roe generation and the progressive side, is there a space for us to come together?


What's interesting about the film is that it's kind of one of the only spaces that I think I've seen those two divergent perspectives kind of coexisting. In the majority of the pro-choice advocates that we filmed within the film, most of them come from communities and backgrounds that they were raised anti-abortion. They were raised by "pro-life communities."

They were in pro-life churches. Their families are very much anti-choice. I think they have a lot of understanding for how one would come to that position if you are a young person and your family's very involved in your church community. Your whole church community is anti-abortion. That's your social outlet. That's where you go after school. It's where you go on weekends.

It's how they organize. It's such a big part of so many Americans lives. [Rape survivor and advocate] Samantha Blakely, who was in the film, really came out of a community that was very conservative; the cost of speaking up was huge. The alienation you are likely to experience if you are the one person to raise your hand and say, "Hey, isn't that wrong to make women who don't want to be pregnant carry a child to term? Isn't that wrong?" can't be underestimated. That's why sharing stories and sharing life experience is so important. For many of the young women that you hear in that hotel room, they have come to their beliefs for a whole series of reasons, but not because I think they want to harm others.


It's part of just the worldview in which they were raised. They haven't had that life experience yet to understand why abortion access is so fundamental. Having people who come from those communities who say, "I get it. I get the world and the context you were raised in. But when life and pregnancy and unanticipated pregnancy and pregnancy complications come your way, it changes how you feel about this issue."

The opportunity with this film is to respect that people may come to an anti-abortion perspective for many reasons, but to be able to say, "Look, there are so, so, so many reasons why this just needs to be the choice of the pregnant person. Period. Let's talk about that."

I want to talk about something else also though. What is going on is that there are young people like you see in that hotel room who have come to their anti-choice perspectives for whatever reason. Then you have the politicians.


"Passing anti-abortion legislation ... in America is not leadership. It is betrayal of your constituents."

What you have here is politicians who are just using those people and using those perspectives and using those beliefs for their own political power and for their own political gain. I really separate out the people who have come to that personal perspective and those politicians who are just using those single issue voters to advance the will of the minority to consolidate minority rule and to deny their responsibility for governing on all the other elements that their citizens need good leadership on.

Passing anti-abortion legislation, being in the race to pass the most extreme anti-abortion legislation, in America is not leadership. It is betrayal of your constituents.


A vast majority of Americans support choice. How did we get to this place where such a tiny group on one issue is wielding so much power over the bodily autonomy of half of the citizens right now?

That was the question that really drove me to make this film. I was genuinely really curious to understand, how are they doing this? The vast majority of Americans support access to abortion. How is this minority of people imposing their will over the entire country at the Supreme Court?

What you see is this combination between using gerrymandering to undermine our democracy, then using these voters to tip the balance in certain places where it's very narrow to begin with, and then having so much stigma in these places that are passing these anti-abortion bills. The lawmakers in Texas, in Alabama, they're not paying the price politically locally because the stigma locally to come out and march against that and speak against is so high.

I think that's changing. Samantha Blakely, a pro-choice advocate who lives in Alabama, has been saying that since the Alito leak and the ramping up of the anti-abortion, she's been seeing more actions, more marches, more people speaking out.

That's what it's going to take, because the policy makers are taking advantage of the enormous stigma to escape any kind of accountability for passing laws that are just horrifyingly harmful to their constituents.

"There's a scene in the film where Students for Life does a 'Black Pre-Born Lives Matter' rally ... It's grotesque because the anti-abortion movement targets and harms women of color so disproportionately."

This movement has also been able to co-opt the rhetoric of progressive movements — Black Lives Matter, feminism. What does that strategy look like? How are you seeing that then play out in these populations, and particularly in these young people's groups?

It's really part of this attempt to mainstream what is a minority rule movement. To mainstream this anti-choice perspective, which is certainly not what the majority of people believe, and to co-opt the language of left-leaning progressive social justice movements. There's a scene in the film where Students for Life does a "Black Pre-Born Lives Matter" rally. It's grotesque. It's grotesque because the anti-abortion movement targets and harms women of color so disproportionately.

It's this shameless co-opting of other progressive social justice movements. The theme at the 2020 March for Life that we filmed was "Pro-Life is Pro-Woman," trying to parse being pro-life as being feminist.

What's happening is normalizing and mainstreaming what is and has been an extremist position and appealing to young people who see themselves as fighting for the right thing. There's a scene with a young man canvassing in Arizona with a young woman for the Susan B. Anthony List. They're going door to door and they're trying to get people to vote anti-choice.

He says, "There was World War I, World War II, and this is the fight of my generation." When you get people who have a mindset like that, who have absorbed this false narrative that they're fighting for justice and they're fighting for the right thing and the equality of all life — equality meaning fetal equality — they see themselves as doing the right thing.

The hope for this film is to educate people that think they're doing the right thing and to expose them to the ramifications of these actions and that this is not justice. This is not equality. It's the opposite.

These are hard things for me as a viewer to witness, to hear. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you as a filmmaker to be in those spaces, and yet have them clearly feel that they were safe with you and that you were going to be fair to them. I want to know how you were able to create that trust and to create a film that really is honorable in its execution in that way.

My impetus to make this film was just really, I'm genuinely curious. How is this happening and who are you? And what do you believe? What's going on here? What I said to the anti-choice subjects was that I felt like the influence of the anti-abortion movement on American policy, legislation, and culture was a fact. It is what it is.

Putting aside one's personal perspectives on abortion, the influence of the anti-abortion movement on American politics is something that's worth understanding and I would depict their perspectives and their work and their goals accurately, and as completely as I could. That was the pledge that I made in filming with these subjects. That's the film that has emerged from that approach.

Since the completion of the film, a lot has changed in our country. It's hard to feel hopeful. It's hard to continue to feel motivated. You end the film with an invitation for us to get involved. It feels like a juggernaut at this point that everything is going to get taken away. What would you recommend we do next?

"It impacts every single American if Roe is overturned. All of us need to understand that no one is safe."

We had our world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and were joined by Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was saying that they were up against the believability gap, that so many people just didn't believe that it was possible that Roe would be overturned. I still hear that. I still hear from people all the time and this decision's coming down any day.

Really? You really think that's going to happen? Really? It's happening. The other thing that I hear after that often is, "Oh, well we live in New York. It's not going to affect us here."

We live in the United States of America. It impacts every single American if Roe is overturned. All of us need to understand that no one is safe. No one is safe from Roe being overturned. It's not only about Roe being overturned, but it's about anti-abortion, extremist and dangerous anti-abortion policy being used and leveraged to consolidate minority rule.

We need to get out and vote on issues of abortion, issues of women's rights. We need to get involved. What you see here is a level of involvement. There's many levels of involvement. There's involvement in protests. There's involvement in legislation. There's involvement in school boards, sex education, who is advertising.

I get emails from Students for Life saying, "This college campus lists Planned Parenthood as one of their resources. We need to go out there and shame them and get them to remove it." We need to be out there saying that we support abortion, and particularly supporting those voices who are seeing it in places where the stigma is so high.

We need to acknowledge that you know or love or are somebody who has had an abortion, and many people who had life-threatening complications during pregnancy wouldn't be here had they not been able to access abortion care. Those stories are being shared and the stigma is being broken in places where politicians have used the fear and silence of populations around this issue to pass these extremist policies. We need to talk about it.

Bloc politics

Editorial 

Published June 27, 2022

USING the platform of the 14th BRICS Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping has made some interesting observations about the state of global politics, particularly the danger military alliances and blocs pose to world peace. In a clear swipe at the US and its allies, Mr Xi, addressing the virtual conclave, said that bloc-based confrontation would result in “more turbulence and insecurity” while also observing that sanctions were a “double-edged sword” that “politicise the global economy”. The Chinese leader, instead, urged BRICS member states to support “true multilateralism”. In light of the Ukraine crisis, as well as US-China tensions, specifically over the Taiwan issue, the call to reassess military alliances and bloc politics needs to be heeded seriously, if any semblance of an international rules-based order is to survive.

After the Cold War, there were expectations that the end of confrontation between the two rival blocs might bring global stability. But while the communist Warsaw Pact went quietly into the night, Nato — the West’s sword arm — is very much alive and kicking. And as the Ukraine crisis has shown, the hatreds and mistrust that marked relations between the Eastern and Western blocs are very much alive. Undoubtedly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is totally indefensible. But, from a historical perspective, Moscow undertook its military adventure after its desire to join the Western military alliance two decades ago was reportedly rebuffed, and Nato started absorbing more and more former Soviet satellites, eventually ending up at the doorstep of an insecure Russia. Elsewhere, the Western bloc has firmed up military alliances against China, such as AUKUS and the Quad. Ironically, while India sits with Russia and China in BRICS, it is also a member of the anti-China Quad. While Russia and China are hardly role models of democratic governance, their opposition to Western militarism appears justified, especially in the eyes of the Global South: Vladimir Putin undertook the Ukraine offensive after witnessing the US-led West lay waste to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The fact is that if the West forges ahead in its attempt to isolate Russia and China, both powers will push back, and the resultant confrontation will have a debilitating effect on the global economy, particularly affecting the developing world. Therefore, both de facto blocs need to back off from their maximalist positions and disengage from conflict. Expansion of the conflict in Europe, or a military dimension to US-China rivalry, bodes ill for global stability.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2022

FREE PALESTINE

Celebrations surrounded by rubble: The story of a Palestinian wedding

Reuters Published June 30, 2022 - 

JERUSALEM: Palestinian bride Rabeha Al-Rajabi stands among the debris of her house — demolished by Israeli authorities — ahead of her wedding ceremony. Raj­abi said that ‘before any blow hit the house, it hit our hearts’.—Reuters

JERUSALEM: Palestinian Rabeha Rajabi did not think she would be holding her wedding celebrations in the rubble of her own home in occupied East Jerusalem, until Israeli authorities destroyed it.

“Before any blow hit the house, it hit our hearts,” said Raj­abi, speaking among the debris and donning a traditional Palestinian thobe and henna-inked hands. “This was our home, our dream, our memories.”

The 22-year-old bride said she moved to the Ein al-Lawza neighbourhood from another part of Jerusalem as a young child and that over the years her family were served several demolition orders on the house they had built, putting them on edge.

In Arab tradition, on wedding day the groom’s family arrives to greet the bride in the home she grew up in, an emotional ceremony symbolising the new life she is about to embark on.

“We had other plans but because of the demolitions and our challenging living situation, everything changed,” she said.

More than 3,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem have been displaced since 2009

Since 2009, when the United Nations began documenting the practice, more than 3,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem have been displaced because Israeli authorities have demolished, or forced owners to demolish, structures. Thousands more live at risk of displacement due to outstanding demolition orders.

The issue is one of the most sensitive areas of contention in the decades-long dispute over East Jerusalem, which was seized by Israeli forces in 1967 and later formally annexed by Israel in a move not recognised internationally.

“Their goal is to drain the Palestinian residents, financially and morally,” said Fares Rajabi, the bride’s brother. “It is a policy of displacement.”

Israel says the demolition ord­ers in Jerusalem are issued for illegal constructions, although Palestinians object that it is nearly impossible to get building permits and see the policy as part of an effort to force them out of the city.

Deputy Jerusalem Mayor Arieh King denied the demolitions were aimed at driving Palestinians away. “Just as illegal construction is demolished across the country, it is the same in East Jerusalem,” King said, adding that authorities have been approving building permits.

“You can’t say we demolish (buildings) to force them out and not mention that we are authorising so many construction plans,” he said.

Hundreds of units were appr­oved in one Palestinian neighbourhood only last week, King said. The municipality did not provide data for the past five years on building plans for Palestinians.

Confiscated

The United Nations and rights groups have said Israel systematically restricts Palestinian development in Jerusalem by illegally expropriating large swathes of land for Israeli settlements, demolishing Palestinian-owned structures and introducing a complicated and costly permit application process.

According to a 2021 report by Ir Amim, an Israeli rights group advocating for an equitable Jerusalem, the municipality is only approving spot plans that do not correspond to the needs of the city’s Palestinian population.

Since 1967, Israel, which regards Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, has confiscated more than 38 per cent of East Jerusalem’s territory to build tens of thousands of housing units for Israeli residents, said Oshrat Maimon of Ir Amim. Only 8.5pc of the entire city was zoned for housing for Palestinians.

About 370,000 Palestinians live in Jerusalem, making up 38pc of the city’s population, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. They hold residency status, which can be revoked if they leave for several years. Many rejected offers of Israeli citizenship after 1967, fearing it would undermine Palestinian claims to the area.

“We will remain, even if (Israel) razes the entire building,” Fares, the bride’s brother, said, wearing a suit and bow tie as he stood in front of his family’s home, wires protruding from the destroyed walls, a Palestinian flag flying at the top.

“We want to prove to the occupation that despite our misfortunes, we are capable of rejoicing and we will remain rooted in our land.”

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2022

Supreme patriarchy

Mahir Ali 

Published June 29, 2022 - 

THE dissenting opinion by three judges in last week’s landmark US Supreme Court decision on abortion spelt it out rather succinctly: “After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had.”

This is neither the first time the court has stripped US citizens of their rights, nor will it be the last. Justice Clarence Thomas — whose wife, coincidentally or otherwise, has been implicated in the conspiracy to overturn the popular verdict in the 2020 presidential election — made it fairly explicit in his concurring judgement that related rights such as contraception and same-sex marriage could now also be rescinded.

That sense of mission wasn’t echoed in the majority opinion — but then, the three Trump appointees on the bench also dissembled during their confirmation hearings when asked about Roe vs Wade, the 1973 judgement that established the right to terminate unwanted or risky pregnancies.

Notwithstanding the outrage it has sparked, last week’s verdict did not come as a shock, given that it conforms pretty closely with the draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito leaked last month. But perhaps the entire trend should hardly be a surprise.

Who’ll stop America’s relapse into the Dark Ages?

After all, at international “women’s health” conferences over the decades, the US has fairly consistently voted alongside some of the worst transgressors against the equality of the sexes, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. Furthermore, under some administrations it has withdrawn aid from organisations facilitating contraception in parts of the world where the rate of population growth poses a serious problem.

And besides, the Equal Rights Amendment passed by the US Senate 50 years ago wasn’t approved by enough states before the deadline for its ratification passed.

It remains in limbo, much like the United States itself. A majority of Americans of every significant faith agree that abortion on demand should be available in all or almost all circumstances. Evangelicals are the only segment of society where it’s the other way around. The American Taliban, as they are sometimes described, believe in a God-given right to prescribe what women can do with their bodies.

There is a monumental irony in the fact that women’s rights were paraded as one of the excuses for invading Afghanistan. One would like to know where were the ‘pro-life’ activists when children were being killed by American artillery in Afghanistan, Iraq or Yemen — or, for that matter, being bayonetted in Vietnam half a century ago by ‘our boys”?

At a Trump rally in Illinois on the weekend, congresswoman Mary Miller applauded the supreme court verdict as a “historic victory for white life”. Her campaign claimed she meant to say “right to life”. But it wasn’t necessarily a Freudian slip. Just last year she declared, “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future’.” Yes, many people remember the Hitler Youth. Donald Trump himself, appropriately taking credit for the supreme court verdict — after all, he appointed the three judges who made it a slam dunk — hailed Miller at the rally as a “warrior for our movement and our values”.

Read: Unsafe abortions

A lot more of her ilk could end up in the House of Representatives in November. There is no clear evidence so far that the national pro-abortion majority can pre-empt a Republican majority in the House, or prevent the Democrats from losing their fairly pointless parity in the Senate.

That, in turn, suggests Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pretty much whistling in the wind when they bring up the worthy ideas of enhancing the supreme court bench or impeaching the unworthy errant justices.

It may not be impossible to halt America’s regressive trajectory towards the kind of misogynist dystopia envisaged in Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but there is little evidence so far of the kind of popular mobilisation and the federal and state legal and legislative efforts that would be required to stave off the extremist onslaught.

More alarmingly accurate, perhaps, is the scenario sketched out by former PEN America president Francine Prose, who worries about how great the shock would be “to wake up one morning and find that while we were driving the kids to soccer practice and enjoying that welcoming after-work cocktail, more and more of our rights had been stripped away … The overturning of Roe v Wade should shock us … into looking beyond the dance floor of the Titanic and spotting that iceberg, looming in our path, not so very far away.”

The analogy isn’t all that far-fetched. President Joe Biden seems keen to “save Ukraine” by gifting it the firepower to prolong the war, but on the home front he is frequently missing in action as the retrograde Putinesque elements gather force, presaging unpleasant consequences on a global scale.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2022

Attack on polio team

Editorial 

Published June 30, 2022 

THE threat of deadly violence never seems to diminish for health workers and police officials involved in door-to-door polio vaccination campaigns in the country. On Tuesday, two policemen and a health worker were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on them in North Waziristan’s Datakhel tehsil. The attack took place in the Tang Kali locality near the Pak-Afghan border. This is the second such attack since January this year when a policeman escorting a vaccination team was shot dead in Kohat. 

The attack in North Waziristan has come on the heels of an aggressive resurgence of the wild poliovirus in the area. Since only April this year, at least 11 cases of the wild poliovirus have been reported from a cluster of high-risk union councils. These cases had surfaced after a hiatus of 15 months that had given hope that Pakistan might be on the brink of eliminating the crippling disease from its territory. However, as the attack demonstrates, Pakistan still has a long way to go before achieving polio-free status. Moreover, refusals still remain high in North Waziristan. According to reports, silent refusals by parents and fake markings on children’s fingers were one of the key reasons for the abnormally high number of cases.

Though the investigation is still ongoing, the latest attack on the polio team reflects the high mistrust of official authorities in this area. The issue of refusals is a long-standing one, and WHO and Unicef on many occasions have asked the Pakistani authorities to address the problem of missing and invisible children who remain outside the umbrella of immunisation campaigns. On the other hand, as the wild poliovirus remains endemic only in the Pak-Afghan region, cross-border coordination for its elimination is the need of the hour. Recent events have made it clear that aggressive campaigning for the administration of the polio vaccine is no longer enough, and that a wide-ranging, sensitive and strategic effort is required to address the public’s suspicions regarding the government’s anti-polio efforts.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2022

PAKISTAN

Glacial outburst sweeps away two bridges in Chitral's Garam Chashma area

Sirajuddin Published June 30, 2022 

A still of the glacial lake outburst flood crashing through a wooden suspension bridge on Thursday.—DawnNewsTV


Two suspension bridges near the Arkari village in the Garam Chashma area of Chitral were swept away by a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) on Thursday.

GLOFs are sudden events, which can release millions of cubic metres of water and debris, leading to loss of lives, property and livelihoods among remote and impoverished mountain communities.

The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa confirmed the development, adding that teams have been dispatched to the area to help locals who used the bridges to cross a storm drain flowing underneath.

Footage aired on Dawn News TV showed fast-flowing flood waters tearing through one of the bridges.

Chitral PDMA focal person Rasheed Khan told Dawn.com that so far no loss of life or damage to any other infrastructure has been reported. The floods, however, damaged wheat and other fruit crops in the area, he added.

The PDMA, Khan went on, has been in constant contact with the district administration and was monitoring the situation in the area.

Separately, in a statement, PDMA DG Sharif Hussain said that the control room in the area is fully operational. "Residents can call on our helpline 1700 in case of any emergency or untoward incident," he added.

Last month, a similar incident took place when Hassanabad bridge on the Karakoram Highway in Hunza was destroyed and swept away in a GLOF event. Authorities had said that the glacier melted because of intense heat.

In April, Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman had cautioned that due to an increase in regional temperatures, there was a possibility of glacial lake outburst flood events and flash floods in Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In an advisory note, the ministry had issued an official warning to the organisations concerned, drawing their attention to the possible occurrence of GLOF and flash floods in the GB and KP regions, with the direction to take precautionary actions in an effective and timely manner to prevent any losses.
Heavy rains predicted in KP

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Meteorological Department forecast heavy monsoon rains in the province from yesterday. The showers are expected to last till the first week of July.

The Met Office said moist currents from Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal were likely to enter the upper parts of Pakistan which may intensify and expand to southern parts of the country by the end of this week.

Under the influence of this system, rain-windstorm/thundershower is expected in Mansehra, Kohistan, Abbottabad, Haripur, Peshawar, Mardan, Swabi, Nowshera, Battagram, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Orakzai, Kurram, Mohmand, and Bajaur.

The authorities have been instructed to take all precautionary measures and remain vigilant as heavy rains could trigger flash floods and landslides. The department has also advised tourists to stay "extra-cautious" during their journey and avoid unnecessary travel.

In GB, hope evaporates as glaciers melt faster and faster

Jamil Nagri Published May 2, 2022

CRACKS have appeared in the Hoper glacier in Nagar district this summer.—Dawn

GILGIT: With glaciers melting faster than before, Gilgit-Baltistan residents in some areas live under the constant threat of a natural disaster.

Those living in downstream areas and near lakes and rivers are most vulnerable, particularly those near Shisper and Hoper glaciers.

Glaciers in the Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges have melted rapidly, creating thousands of glacial lakes in the country’s northern areas.

Around 30 of these lakes are at risk of sudden hazardous flooding, known as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), the climate change ministry said earlier this week, adding that around seven million people were vulnerable.

In the Hassanabad village of Hunza Valley, the vast Shisper glacier dominates the landscape, heading towards villagers at an estimated speed of around four metres per day.

Climate change is causing most glaciers worldwide to shrink, but due to a meteorological anomaly, this is one of a few in the Karakoram mountain range that are surging.

This means hundreds of tonnes of ice and debris are pushing down the valley at ten times the normal rate or more, threatening the safety of the people and homes below.

According to an assessment report of the Gilgit-Baltistan Disaster Management Authority (GBDMA), the Shisper glacier started to surge in May 2018.

The unusual surge blocked water flow from a stream originating in the nearby Muchuhur glacier, which normally falls into Hunza River at Hassanabad, thus forming an artificial lake.

According to the GBDMA assessment, the possible lake burst could submerge a portion of Karakoram Highway, a bridge, over 37 houses in Hassanabad, two powerhouses, a Frontier Works Organisation camp office and vast fertile lands. It may also block the flow of Hunza River, triggering an Attabad-like disaster.

The water discharge from the dammed lake increases in summer when glacier melting starts.

‘Govt indifferent’

Tariq Jamil, a resident of Hassanabad valley, told Dawn that hundreds of kanals of fertile land, trees, homes, a powerhouse and water channels along with Hassanabad nullah were damaged by high water flow last summer.

“Three families were displaced when their homes located near the nullah were damaged last year when water eroded land,” he said. “The government has failed to provide alternative arrangements to people living in the red zone.”

In summer, residents live in constant fear as water discharge increases, he said, adding that this time around, water discharge had increased even before the season started.

Another resident, Amjad Ali, said the people of Hassanabad were at risk of dammed glacier lake outbursts.

He agreed that water discharge from the dammed lake was high this season. “If heatwaves continue in the next months, an outburst of the dammed lake or high water flows are feared, resulting in floods,” he said, adding that he was unsatisfied with the arrangements to protect the lives and property of local people.

According to the local administration, a contingency plan had been prepared to cope with an emergency.

Officials said work was under way to channelise the nullah and construct protective walls to control the excessive flow of water.

Besides, the administration was monitoring the daily movement of the glacier and has set up an automatic weather station and rebuilt irrigation channels.

Hoper glacier

Likewise, the unusual surge of an 18km-long Hoper glacier in Nagar district also gives residents nightmares.

Ahmed Hussain, a resident, told Dawn that the speed of Hoper melting had increased this season.

The height of the glacier has decreased, crevasses have appeared and the sound of falling ice can be heard. Several lakes have also formed in the glacier.

Residents of Hoper valley have to cross the glacier to access the other side. However, the recent glacial movement has blocked trekking paths, making the exercise extremely dangerous. A local resident recently got injured while crossing the glacier.

Mr Hussain said the surging Hoper glacier had also destroyed many tourist destinations and adversely impacted the ecology, reducing the snow leopard and Markhor population in the recent past.

Another resident, Dr Sajjad Hussain, told Dawn that Hoper was one of the rare glaciers in the world situated downside of human settlement and cultivated land.

He said it was alarming that the glacier started moving at an unusual speed this summer.

He regretted that the possible threats from the glacial surge to local people had never been discussed and the government had yet to take steps to mitigate the potential threats and or even make locals aware of them.

Shahzad Shigri of the GB Environmental Protection Agency told Dawn that possible heatwaves could affect the speed of melting glaciers across the region.

He said snow received in winter at peaks — particularly in Astore, Diamer and Ghizer — started melting rapidly, creating flash floods and thus endangering people living in downstream areas.

Mr Shigri said heatwaves could cause GLOFs or make active glaciers slip, leading to major disasters.

Glacier central

Pakistan has more glaciers than any other country outside the polar region – nearly 5,300 in the Karakoram, Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

They feed the Indus River system, the country’s water lifeline. But data gathered over the last 50 years shows that almost all glaciers exhibit signs of melting due to rising temperatures.

As the glaciers retreat, they leave behind lakes supported by ice dams or accumulations of rock and soil. Inherently unstable, these dams often burst, sending huge volumes of water rushing into the villages below them.

Environmental experts say GB residents are particularly at risk from glacial melting.

In July 2018, a small glacier melt had swollen Barsuwat Nullah in the Ishkoman valley of Ghizer district, creating an artificial lake and blocking the flow of the Immit River.

The water submerged more than 30 houses, cultivated land, a link road and cattle farms and washed away over a dozen vehicles in upstream areas.

On Jan 4, 2010, a massive landslide buried the village of Attabad, destroying 26 houses and killing 20 people. The landslide dammed Hunza River and formed Attabad lake.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2022