RSN: A New Day for Rasmea Odeh: Throwing the Spotlight on Israeli Torture, Family of Wolves Shot Dead in Oregon, McCain-Linked Nonprofit Received $1 Million From Saudi Arabia

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Dennis J. Bernstein | A New Day for Rasmea Odeh: Throwing the Spotlight on Israeli Torture

Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
Bernstein writes: "The details behind Odeh's arrest go to the heart of the matter of an ongoing relationship between the US and Israel - a national security collaboration that allows the Israelis to push forward with a policy that can only be described as ethnic cleansing."
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Supreme Court Split Threatens Obama's Immigration Actions
Lydia Wheeler, The Hill
Wheeler writes: "President Obama is facing the very real possibility of a deadlock at the Supreme Court that guarantees his immigration actions won't take effect before he leaves office."
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FBI Offers Crypto Assistance to Local Cops: "We Are in This Together"
Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica
Farivar writes: "In a new two-paragraph letter to state and local law enforcement partners, the FBI reiterated its commitment to helping those agencies unlock seized encrypted devices."
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How the Trump Campaign Spread a Dirty Meme About Protesters Paid by Clinton, Sanders, Soros
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes: "Three weeks ago, when Donald Trump called off a rally in Chicago because hundreds of protesters managed to crash the party, a more introspective candidate might have asked himself what he had done to inspire such loathing. Instead, Trump seized on a more comforting explanation: the young people who refused to let him speak must have been dispatched by his rival insurgent, Bernie Sanders."
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Man Faces Life in Prison for Stealing $31 Worth of Candy
Judd Legum, ThinkProgress
Legum writes: "A New Orleans man could spend the rest of his life in jail after allegedly shoving '$31 worth of candy bars into his pockets at a Dollar General store.' The man, 34-year-old Jacobia Grimes, is being charged by prosecutors under the state's 'habitual-offender law.'"
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McCain-Linked Nonprofit Received $1 Million From Saudi Arabia
Bill Allison, Bloomberg
Allison writes: "A nonprofit with ties to Senator John McCain received a $1 million donation from the government of Saudi Arabia in 2014, according to documents filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service."
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Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, speaks during a hearing on the U.S. military 

strategy in the Middle East on Oct. 27, 2015, in Washington. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

 nonprofit with ties to Senator John McCain received a $1 million donation from the government of Saudi Arabia in 2014, according to documents filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

The Arizona Republican has strictly honorary roles with the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a program at Arizona State University, and its fundraising arm, the McCain Institute Foundation, according to his office. But McCain has appeared at fundraising events for the institute and his Senate campaign’s fundraiser is listed in its tax returns as the contact person for the foundation.

Though federal law strictly bans foreign contributions to electoral campaigns, the restriction doesn’t apply to nonprofits engaged in policy, even those connected to a sitting lawmaker.

Groups critical of the current ethics laws say that McCain’s nonprofit effectively gives Saudi Arabia -- or any other well-heeled interests -- a means of making large donations to politicians it hopes to influence.

“Foreign governments are prohibited from financing candidate campaigns and political parties,” Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for ethics watchdog Public Citizen, said. “Funding the lawmakers’ nonprofit organizations is the next best thing.”

Clinton Foundation

Holman said that the Clinton Foundation, whose top donors include Australia, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Sweden, may have started the trend of foreign governments donating to nonprofits connected to political figures.

Founded in 1998 to raise money for then-President Bill Clinton’s presidential library, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from foreign governments over the years, including while Hillary Clinton, now running for president, served as secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s first term. The foundation says that Clinton was not involved in its work when she worked for the Obama administration.

The Saudi donation to the McCain Institute Foundation may be the first congressional instance of that trend coming to light.

“The extent of this practice is difficult to gauge, of course,” Holman said, “because we only know about it when a nonprofit or foreign government voluntarily reveals that information.”

Donor Disclosures

The McCain Institute for International Leadership began voluntarily disclosing its donors on its website after an inquiry from USA Today in 2014. Donations are solicited by the institute’s own foundation, as well as the fundraising arm of Arizona State University, the ASU Foundation.

The website listed dozens of donors, including Chevron Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., FedEx Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the nonprofit arms of General Electric Co. and Freeport-McMoRan Inc. It also listed a small donation, of less than $25,000, from the Danish embassy.

The institute didn’t originally disclose the 2014 donation from the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. After an inquiry from Bloomberg News, the website was updated to note that the institute received more than $100,000 from the Saudi embassy. Documents filed with the IRS state that the donation totaled $1 million.

“The McCain Institute for International Leadership has decided to list as an individual donor on its website the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia,” Debbie Williams, vice president of communications for the ASU Foundation, wrote in an e-mail on behalf of the institute, “since those funds have been transferred to the ASU Foundation for the benefit of the McCain Institute.”

The Saudi embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Global Leadership’

Since its launch in 2012, the institute has been “guided by the values that have animated the career” of McCain and his family, its mission statement says. It focuses on advancing “character-driven global leadership,” and runs an internship program, a debate series and hosts events on national security, human trafficking and other issues.

The institute’s executive director is Kurt Volker, a former ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization who also serves as a senior international adviser to lobbying firm BGR Group. BGR Group’s clients include Chevron, Raytheon Co. and the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court. Its nonprofit arm, the BGR Foundation, also donated at least $100,000 to the institute, according to its website.

The Saudi donation came at a time when the oil kingdom’s relationship with Washington was facing growing uncertainty. The Obama administration negotiated with Iran over its nuclear program while seeking to avoid or minimize any U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, both of which led to concerns in Riyadh. McCain was critical of the administration on both counts.

‘Only Natural’

“It’s only natural that a longtime and vocal supporter of the Saudi-U.S. alliance might be embraced by them this way,” said David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow with the conservative think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Weinberg estimates that Persian Gulf countries alone have contributed more than $100 million to presidential libraries and charities promoted by former presidents.

But such contributions usually don’t have to be disclosed, so it’s unclear how much money from the Saudi embassy or other foreign sources has gone to groups with ties to current and former U.S. officials or lawmakers.

The McCain Institute Foundation, the entity which reported receiving the donation, doesn’t list McCain as a trustee or officer. Nor does McCain list the organization on his personal financial disclosure forms, where members of Congress are required to disclose positions held outside government, even if uncompensated.

Initial Funding

But the foundation did receive its initial funding -- about $8.6 million -- from money left over from McCain’s 2008 presidential run, in a transaction permitted under campaign finance laws.

“In compliance with Senate ethics rules, Senator McCain’s role in the McCain Institute is honorary,” his spokeswoman, Julie Tarallo, said in an e-mail. She referred all other questions to the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

McCain has appeared at events for the institute, including its fundraising efforts and its annual, invitation-only conference held in Sedona, Arizona. The annual conference has also featured Vice President Joe Biden and a 2014 appearance by Clinton before she was officially a presidential candidate. CEOs from GE, Chevron, Wal-Mart, Freeport and FedEx -- all of whose companies or charitable arms have contributed more than $100,000 to support the institute -- have also spoken.

Some of the institute’s larger donors, including hedge fund manager Paul Singer and investor Ron Perelman, also contributed $100,000 to Arizona Grassroots Action PAC, a super-PAC that’s supporting McCain as he seeks his sixth term in the Senate. McCain co-authored the 2002 law aimed at limiting the influence of big money in politics, a provision of which was overturned in the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.

That decision ultimately opened the door to the kind of unlimited donations to super-PACs that McCain once tried to limit.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36114-mccain-linked-nonprofit-received-1-million-from-saudi-arabia

Family of Wolves Shot Dead in Oregon
Joe Donnelly, TakePart
Donnelly writes: "The bullet he'd been dodging for many years finally caught up with the great Oregon wolf, OR4, Thursday."
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OR-4, the alpha male of the Inmaha pack of wolves that lived in Eastern Oregon, before he 

was shot to death Thursday. (photo: Center for Biological Diversity)

he bullet he’d been dodging for many years finally caught up with the great Oregon wolf, OR4, Thursday. In the early afternoon, officials from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) shot to death the patriarch of the Imnaha Pack from a helicopter over Wallowa County, an area where gray wolves dispersing from Idaho first began returning to Oregon, where they’d been killed off in the mid-20th century. Shot along with OR4 was his likely pregnant partner, OR 39, known as Limpy for an injured and badly healed leg, and their two pups.

The animals were killed for being presumed guilty of the deaths of four calves and a sheep on private pastureland on the fringes of the pack’s territory in northeast Oregon.

Rob Klavins, who has been a wolf advocate on the front lines of the cultural and political battles that have accompanied the reemergence of wolves in the West as field coordinator for the conservation groupOregon Wild, heard the helicopters take off and knew the sound spelled doom for OR4.

“It was hard for a lot of people,” said Klavins, reached on Friday at his home near the town of Joseph in Wallowa County. “Even some of his detractors had a begrudging respect” for OR4, the fourth wolf to be fitted with a location-tracking radio collar in Oregon. He weighed at least 115 pounds, the largest known wolf in Oregon at the time of his death, and survived for 10 years, three years longer than most wolves in the wild.

OR4 and his progeny have been largely responsible for the gray wolf’s intrepid return to lands where the species was long ago hunted, poisoned, trapped, burned and otherwise chased nearly to extinction.

Cattle farmers, who receive a subsidy from taxpayers to graze their animals on vast ranges of publicly-owned land where the wolves also dwell, worry about wolves killing their property. Hunters want first shot at the game, such as deer and elk, that wolves favor. But livestock depredations in Oregon are extremely rare, and have become scarcer even as the wolf population has increased. Meanwhile, ODFW’s data shows that Oregon’s wolves are having no effect on elk, deer and wild sheep populations. Of course, those statistics are small consolation to the rancher who suffered the loss of property in March.

In early 2008, OR4 and his mate at the time, OR2, were among the first wolves to swim the Snake River, scale enormous mountains, and establish a foothold for wolves in game-rich Wallowa County. Since then, more than 110 Oregon wolves have spread from the remote northeast corner of the state, over the Cascades, and to near the California border. Many of these pioneering wolves were spawned by OR4.

Beginning with his first pack in 2009, OR4 fathered, provided for, and protected dozens of wolf pups that survived in the Oregon wild—and made their way all the way south to California, where OR7, known as the “lone wolf,” trekked in 2012. Today, OR7 has his own pack in the California-Oregon border region. The alpha female of the Shasta pack—the first gray wolf pack to make California home since 1924—is the offspring of OR4.

That OR4 lasted this long is source of wonder to those who have followed his starring role in Oregon’s gray-wolf comeback story. In 2011, a brief cattle-killing spree by the Imnaha pack had him slated for execution. A suit by Oregon Wild and other conservation groups stayed the execution order and OR4 settled into a mostly incident-free life as Oregon’s biggest and baddest-ass wolf.

There is good reason to believe OR4 was cast out of his pack early this year, and his decision to move into livestock calving ground was borne of the need of an old, slowing and dull-toothed male—no longer able to bring down elk—to fend for his hobbled mate, to whom he was endearingly loyal, and his yearling pups.

“He was an outlaw wolf with a heart of gold,” said Amaroq Weiss, the West Coast Wolf Coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity. Weiss recalled a 2009 video of OR4 leading his Imnaha pack up a snowy mountainside as a defining image from the early days of Oregon’s wolf recovery. “He was definitely a father figure.”

The Shasta Pack that is part of OR4’s legacy will soon be coming into its second litter. It is protected by the California Endangered Species Act. In Oregon, though, wolves were removed from the endangered species list in November, which allowed OR4’s pack to be shot to death Thursday. Activists have sued to re-list the animals.

The wolf management plan that provided the legal justification for the killing of OR4, Limpy and their pups is up for review in Oregon this year. The state has determined that the wolf population met benchmarks that allow livestock producers more lethal options when dealing with depredating wolves. Klavins and others would like to make sure the updated plan calls for every non-lethal option to be exhausted before wolves are killed.

“What was done [Thursday] was sufficient for an agency that views wildlife as agents of damage and whose primary job is to protect private interests at taxpayer expense,” Klavins said. “But it’s not good enough for a public agency whose mission is to ‘protect and enhance Oregon’s fish and wildlife and their habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations,’ ” he continued, quoting from the agency’s official documents. “They need to do better. Oregonians deserve better.”

Wolf advocate Wally Sykes is one of the few to have encountered OR4 in the wild.

“I was kind of initially prepared for something to happen, but the visual image of an old wolf being hunted down by a helicopter, with his hobbling mate by his side and his two freaked out pups along with him, is an ugly picture to carry in your head,” Sykes said. He said officials he spoke with were “not at all happy to have killed these wolves.”

Sykes’ recording of OR4’s howl can be heard here:

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36113-family-of-wolves-shot-dead-in-oregon