WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
“YOU’RE FIRED, PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD!”
Trump’s announcement of the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement -- as usual before an audience that included an applause claque of administration supporters – was full of lies and distortions. Partial fact checks here and here.
BILL MCKIBBEN:
Trump's Stupid and Reckless Climate Decision
The Paris accord was a high achievement of the diplomatic art, a process much messier than science, and inevitably involving compromise and unseemly concession… Those changes, and similar ones agreed to by other nations, would not have ended global warming. They were too small. But the hope of Paris was that the treaty would send such a strong signal to the world’s governments, and its capital markets, that the targets would become a floor and not a ceiling; that shaken into action by the accord, we would start moving much faster toward renewable energy, maybe even fast enough to begin catching up with the physics of global warming. There are signs that this has been happening: The plummeting price of solar energy just this spring persuaded India to forgo a huge planned expansion of coal plants in favor of more solar panel arrays to catch the sun. China is shutting coal mines as fast as it can build wind turbines. And that’s precisely the moment President Trump chose to make his move. More
Could Trump and his Climate Deniers Kill the Planet?
Not only has Trump previously dismissed climate change as a “hoax,” but he has already taken a series of steps that will ensure the ongoing warming of the planet. Trump has filled his administration with men who deny that human activity is causing global warming… Trump’s actions have already had serious consequences. Perhaps most significant is the weakening of the Paris Agreement, one of the last, best hopes to slow global warming. “Mr. Trump has not yet decided whether to formally withdraw from the Paris agreement,” The New York Times reported in March. “But by rolling back the policies needed to meet American commitments, the United States essentially announced that it would not comply.” As the crisis worsens, the fate of the world grows increasingly precarious. Global warming is continuing at record levels, but the leaders of the United States are ignoring this existential threat to the planet… The denialist attitude does not bode well for the future of the planet. With temperatures rising and greenhouse gases still being pumped endlessly into the atmosphere, the planet appears to be heading for a major catastrophe. More
NAOMI KLEIN: Will Trump Finally Provoke Consequences for Planetary Arson?
The power of the Paris Agreement was always in what social movements resolved to do with it. Having a clear commitment to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C,” means there is no room left in the global carbon budget to develop new fossil fuel reserves… And this was always the task for the global climate justice movement when it came to Paris: to try to hold governments to the strong spirit, rather than the weak letter, of the agreement. The trouble is that as soon as Trump moved into the White House, it was perfectly clear that Washington was no longer susceptible to that kind of pressure… And there is another call that is increasingly being heard from social movements around the world — for economic sanctions in the face of Trump’s climate vandalism. Because here’s a crazy idea: Whether or not it’s written into the Paris Agreement, when you unilaterally decide to burn the world, there should be a price to pay. And that should be true whether you are the United States government, or Exxon Mobil — or some Frankenstein merger of the two. More
Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord
Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the United Nations pledging to meet the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement. The unnamed group — which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations. More
TRUMP'S BUDGET PLAN LANDS WITH A THUD IN MIDDLE AMERICA
When Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs, voters there lined up behind him. But last week when Trump released his budget, the message they got from the president was that they were on their own… “The federal budget is not just a national story, it really is a state-by-state story,” said Anne Stauffer, director of Pew’s Fiscal Federalism program. “When people think about the federal budget they don’t connect it to their lives or the services they get from their state or their city.” … Rural America in particular — where Trump got more than 60 percent of the vote — is struggling with high unemployment, slow economic growth and tepid home price appreciation. Three in four rural counties still haven’t fully recovered from the recession, according to the National Association of Counties. More
Class, race and politics in the rust belt
It is arguable that the campaign had—and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has—little to offer voters in the rust belt… a small but significant slice of working class rust belt voters voted against business as usual. Again, as Davis points out, “several hundred thousand white, blue-collar Obama voters, at most, voted for Trump’s vision of fair trade and reindustrialization, not the millions usually invoked.” In a narrow race, that provided the margin of defeat… Beltway insiders in the Democratic Party are ready to throw over the traditional Democratic base in the rust belt. They can dismiss working class Trump supporters as inveterate racists, as “deplorables.” … If you believe Trump’s working class base voted for him because of his racist appeals, and all you are interested in is electoral victory, then looking away from this fraction of the working class makes sense. This is certainly true of a portion of them but it is our contention that a significant element of that base voted against Clinton, against Washington, against business as usual. They were, in fact, so disaffected with Washington that they were willing to overlook Trump’s racism and misogyny: They voted Trump in spite of his crass scapegoating and hubris, not because of them. More
The Numbers Don’t Lie: White Far-Right Terrorists Pose a Clear Danger to Us All
Compare and contrast: Islamist terrorists are depicted as wild-eyed fanatics driven to kill by their religious faith or ideology, while far-right terrorists — be it the shooter of two Hindus in a bar in Kansas in February, or the killer of nine black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, or the murderer of six Sikh worshippers in a temple in Duffy’s own state of Wisconsin in 2012 — are almost always “mentally ill.” After the recent double murder in Oregon, it didn’t take long for Portland police spokesperson Pete Simpson to announce: “We don’t know if [the suspect] has mental health issues.” …Today, the terror threat from far-right white supremacists is the terror threat that dare not speak its name… Yet the numbers don’t lie — even if the Islamophobes do. “Since September 12, 2001,” noted a recent report prepared for Congress by the Government Accountability Office, “the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. … Fatalities resulting from attacks by far-right wing violent extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001.” More
Cut Corporate Taxes? This Is How the Biggest Companies Cheated on Taxes in 2016
Donald Trump wants to cut what some call the "highest corporate tax rate in the world." The tax cut will, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, "pay for itself with economic growth." "Corporations make billions from U.S. research and education, but then they turn around and cheat us on taxes."Two delusions in one. The realities are far different for anyone who actually considers the facts. And some of the facts about 2016 tax avoidance are shocking and depressing. For example, two of the big banks (JP Morgan and Bank of America) together underpaid their taxes by more than Trump's proposed $10.6 billion education cuts, which would eliminate or reduce after-school programs, work-study programs, state grants, teacher training, arts programs, and physical education. The two banks combined to DEFER nearly $10 billion… Ten companies mentioned in this report collectively withheld nearly $15 billion in tax money in 2016. That's as much as Trump's proposed cut for Health and Human Services, which carries out essential research on cancer and deadly threats like the Ebola and Zika viruses. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong
Europe May Finally Rethink NATO Costs
Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigial organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date – and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix. At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ. That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trump’s badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, “Defense against what?” Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda – and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates. More
In Praise of a Transatlantic Divorce
The foreign-policy establishment is in a dither this week over Donald Trump’s recent truculent, bumbling, and boorish conduct in Europe. Their concerns hit a new high when German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech back homedeclaring “the times in which we could rely fully on others” are “somewhat over” and suggesting Europe “really take our fate into our own hands.” The reaction back in the United States was swift and bordered on hysterical… Donald Trump is a symptom of the larger crisis that has been brewing for NATO ever since the Cold War ended. Alliances are first and foremost a collective response to threats, and NATO’s primary rationale disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. Attempts to give NATO important new missions “out of area” did not go well, whether one looks at Libya or Kosovo or Afghanistan, and some of America’s other initiatives — most notably the invasion of Iraq — did considerable damage to transatlantic solidarity as well. More
Libya’s Link to Manchester’s Tragedy
The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years. The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organization, which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida.” The “smoking gun” is that when Prime Minister Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria… The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer. More
After two years of war, Yemenis face cholera, famine and state collapse
Yemen and its people are engulfed by utter devastation. In the two-plus years of the conflict between the Houthi movement and its allies, including ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and an interim government supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, more than 10,000 people have died – and not just because of violence. Two thirds of Yemen’s 26m people live with the reality of famine, with around 7m already suffering from acute malnutrition. Of this number, more than 3m face acute malnourishment. In these conditions, a child under five dies every 10 minutes. What’s more, the World Health Organisation is sounding the alarm over a new cholera outbreak in the country, which has killed hundreds of people and put some 150,000 at risk… The situation could deteriorate further yet. The Saudis and their allies have long been preparing an attack on the Houthi-controlled port city of Hodeida, so far a crucial supply route and lifeline for Yemenis, and have requested direct US military aid. In response to that request, a bipartisan group of members of Congress wrote to Donald Trump and his defence secretary, James Mattis, demanding that they end the US’s support for the Saudi campaign. More
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy ruled by Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Sunni Islam, and the Saudi state has supported movements such as Al Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. The Saudi government fiercely discriminates against Muslims of other sects, bans public worship by Christians, and supports gender inequality. The Saudis opposed the 2015 U.S.-Iran nuclear deal even though it guarantees a world with fewer nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain to support that country's rulers during the 2011 Arab Spring, and it is presently making war in Yemen, where its airstrikes have led to many thousands of civilian deaths and risks a serious famine. Our country is providing indispensable military aid and support for the Saudi war in Yemen; in the last two years our government has sold over $20 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia. We refuel Saudi warplanes that have bombed schools, hospitals, marketplaces, weddings, and funerals.
Additionally, Saudi military actions have disrupted the food supply in Yemen. Yemen imports nearly 90% of its food; according to the UN, 17 million Yemenis suffer from severe food insecurity.
Will America Once Again Undermine Iran’s Pro-Democracy Movement?
Washington’s approach is motivated by an irrational fear of losing Iran as an enemy. Instead of welcoming the country’s courageous democratic steps—which Washington for decades has claimed it desires—President Trump clenched his fist and doubled down on enmity by calling for regime change and Iran’s isolation. Only Saudi Arabia and hard-line elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in Israel welcomed this belligerent move—the same two countries that also opposed the nuclear deal.
But it isn’t just the path to US-Iran reconciliation that Trump is blocking by outsourcing Middle East policy to Saudi Arabia and Israel. He also risks jeopardizing Iran’s path toward reform and democratization. And it wouldn’t be the first time the United States stood in the way of the Iranian people’s yearning for democracy… Just as the Iranian people sent an unmistakable invitation for further engagement and dialogue, Trump took the United States back to the Bush-era policy of confrontation. It’s a policy with only one clear winner: Iran’s hard-line elements, who oppose both Iranian society’s desire for more democracy and closer relations with the United States. More
US boosts 'combat power' in south Syria
The US military says it has bolstered its "combat power" in southern Syria, warning that it viewed Iran-backed fighters in the area as a threat to nearby coalition troops fighting Islamic State. The remarks by a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition battling Islamic State was the latest sign of tension in the region, where the United States has forces at the base around the Syrian town of Tanf supporting local fighters. "We have increased our presence and our footprint and prepared for any threat that is presented by the pro-regime forces," said the US army spokesman Ryan Dillon on Thursday, referring to Iran-backed forces supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. More
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