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News reports from the state party convention in Sacramento over the weekend were dominated by the likely (pending a painstaking review) close victory of machine guy Eric Bauman over insurgent Kimberly Ellis for state party chair. Overshadowed by those fireworks, though, Palestinian rights supporters steered to passage a groundbreaking resolution that puts California Democrats far ahead of the national and other state parties. The resolution starts by decrying the fact that despite occasional criticism of Israel’s ongoing occupation, successive U.S. administrations have failed to take “actual steps to change the status quo and bring about a real peace process.” It warns about inflammatory moves by the Trump administration and notes that they are encouraging even more illegal settlement building and anti-democratic measures by Israel’s government. Notably, the resolution does not pay lip service to the “two-state solution” mantra. Nor does it set a tone of symmetry in the existing relationship between Israel and Palestine, or prescribe better behavior by both sides equally.

nstead, it puts California Democrats on record as favoring “a U.S. policy that would work through the United Nations and other international bodies as well as with Israel and the representatives of the Palestinian people for a just peace based on full equality and security for Israeli Jews and Palestinians alike, human rights and international law.” And it quotes from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 message to AIPAC: “Peace also means security for every Palestinian. It means achieving self-determination, civil rights and economic well-being for the Palestinian people.” Finally, the resolution tackles the spate of campus crackdowns on Palestine rights advocates and federal and state legislative measures aimed at stigmatizing and suppressing criticism of Israel, especially through demonization of boycott and divestment campaigns: The party now “rejects any effort to restrict or discourage open public discourse on issues surrounding Israel and Palestine; disavows conflation of criticism of a country’s policies with hatred of its people; but also opposes anti-Semitic or Islamophobic language brought into the debate and opposes any attempt to restrict or penalize those who exercise their right to express their views through nonviolent action to effect change.”

The House of Representatives on Monday voted 366-30 to declare what has long been known — that it has not authorized U.S. action in support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, but other than urging the parties to come to a negotiated solution, the resolution did not actually do anything to end American participation in the conflict. Since the Saudi bombing of Yemen started in the spring of 2015 — when Saudi forces intervened on the side of ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi — the U.S. has played a close support role. It has aided Saudi bombers with targeting and assisted with refueling. It has also sold tens of billions of dollars in munitions to the Saudis since the war began, while the kingdom has used U.S.-produced aircraft, laser-guided bombs, and internationally banned cluster bombs to target and destroy schools, markets, power plants, and a hospital, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths. Following a deadly strike on a Yemeni funeral in 2016, the U.S. actually doubled fuel support for Saudi airplanes. The war has led to an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions.

arlier this month, tech giant Microsoft announced its solution to “protect” American elections from interference, which it has named “ElectionGuard.” The election technology is already set to be adopted by half of voting machine manufacturers and some state governments for the 2020 general election. Though it has been heavily promoted by the mainstream media in recent weeks, none of those reports have disclosed that ElectionGuard has several glaring conflicts of interest that greatly undermine its claim aimed at protecting U.S. democracy. In this investigation, MintPress will reveal how ElectionGuard was developed by companies with deep ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities and Israeli military intelligence, as well as the fact that it is far from clear that the technology would prevent foreign or domestic interference with, or the manipulation of, vote totals or other aspects of American election systems.