A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

America’s Plague of Deadly, Unaccountable and Racist Police Violence

A year ago on July 5, Alton Sterling was wrestled to the ground by two police officers. Moments later, he was shot and killed. The next day, Philando Castile was fatally shot by Officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop. His death was witnessed by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her young daughter, and its aftermath livestreamed to Facebook by Reynolds.  In the year since Sterling and Castile’s deaths sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the country and a national conversation on police violence and racism, 1,006more civilians have met similar fates at the hands of police officers. A national election ended with Donald Trump, whose campaign largely centered around fear-mongering and promises to restore law and order, being elected the country’s 45th president. Jeff Sessions, who was once denied a federal judgeship because he was deemed too racist, became the head of the Department of Justice.  While the death of these two black men prompted many people across the country to demand greater accountability for the actions of police officers, their power to use excessive force against civilians remains largely unchecked without any added oversight.   More

BILL MCKIBBEN: How to Tell If Your Reps Are Serious About Climate Change

Politicians across the nation, noting that majorities of voters in every single state (even West Virginia!) opposed withdrawing from the pact, pledged to keep up the fight. More than 300 mayors and counting have announced a compact to fight for the goals of the Paris accord, and 12 states (including New York and California and representing more than a third of the nation's economy) formed the U.S. Climate Alliance to reach the targets set in the French capital in 2015…  Republican opposition is easy to understand: The party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil-fuel industry (every time there's a major vote in Congress, Oil Change International- helpfully publishes a list of how much each of the "ayes" has taken from the hydrocarbon lobby). But too often, Democrats go along as well, even if they're not getting big Texas money. The week before the November election, and the month after security- guards sicced German shepherds on native protesters, Hillary Clinton released this statement about the Dakota pipeline: All of the parties involved – including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes – need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest…  So now it's up to the rest of us to make sure this dark moment produces real gain. If we let politicians simply "stand up for science" or promise to someday reincarnate the Paris accord, then we will never catch up with climate change. If instead the rage that Trump has provoked catapults us into truly serious action – well, that will be the best revenge.    More

VIJAY PRASHAD: End of the social contract

Evidence of a major assault by the Trump administration on the social safety net in the U.S. was already there in Trump’s budget proposal…  He proposes to cut $2.5 trillion in programmes for the working class and the indigent. Food stamps, the essential means for the poorest Americans to access food, would go. It is important to underline that one in six Americans struggles with hunger—49 million Americans have a hard time putting food on their tables. One in five children is at risk of hunger, with the ratio higher—one in three—for African-American and Latino families. There will be no easy way for Americans who struggle with food insecurity to feed themselves. They will be left to starve, like “subordinate members of the species”.  In a radio interview, Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said: “I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind.”… There is cruelty in Trump’s vision. It throws the poor to the lions of desperation. The remnants of liberalism are being withdrawn. This is the end of the social contract.   More

House Armed Services unveils $696.5B defense policy bill

The committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would authorize $28.5 billion more than what was requested by President Trump, but is $8.5 billion less than what the committee’s chairman said he was moving ahead with last week.  The bill would be broken down into $621.5 billion for the base budget and $75 billion for a war fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.  Of the OCO, $10 billion would be used for base budget requirements.  On Thursday, committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said he was moving forward with a $640 billion base budget, a number he’s been pushing for months. Coupled with $65 billion for the OCO account, the total would have been $705 billion.   More