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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
CLASS AND CLIMATE
Upton Sinclair famously said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Certainly, the Trump administration is filled with oil and gas executives who profit from the marketing of fossil fuels. But Trump himself and the rich elites in Washington also believe probably correctly that their money can shield themselves and their families from any climate deterioration short of global eco-catastrophe. So why worry as they head out for another round of golf?
TRUMP IS AMERICA'S CARBON-PUSHER IN CHIEF
Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy? Pundits and critics across the political spectrum have chided him for failing to articulate and implement a clear international agenda. Look closely at his overseas endeavors, though, and one all-too-consistent pattern emerges: Donald Trump will do whatever it takes to prolong the reign of fossil fuels by sabotaging efforts to curb carbon emissions and promoting the global consumption of U.S. oil, coal, and natural gas. Whenever he meets with foreign leaders, it seems, his first impulse is to ply them with American fossil fuels… At home, he’s already reversed numerous Obama-era restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, including curbs on mountaintop removal -- an environmentally hazardous form of coal mining -- and on oil and gas drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska. More
Climate Change:
The Catastrophic Impact on Developing Countries
A World Bank report (Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty) states that climate change “threatens the objective of sustainably eradicating poverty”, and unless substantial worldwide efforts are made, more than 100 million people could be pushed back into poverty by 2030. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, home to the poorest of the poor, are the regions that will be hit the hardest. Studies by the Bank show that climate change in these regions will result in increased agricultural prices and could threaten food security: it’s the same old story, the poor always suffer most, no matter what the threat is. More
Kochs and Trump Team Up to Cut Billionaires’ Taxes
The Kochs’ much-publicized hostility toward Donald Trump has been replaced by a strategic alliance between the ideologically extreme billionaire brothers and the ideologically fluid but equally self-serving businessman/president. They have reached “new-found unity” around an issue that is guaranteed to excite all Republican politicians; tax cuts that would benefit Trump, most members of his cabinet – and, of course, the Koch brothers themselves. They don’t call them “cuts,” of course. That would sound crass. Instead, in time-worn Republican fashion, they hide their selfishness behind a more refined word: “reform.” … Virtually all of the cuts – 99.6 percent of them – would go to the top 1 percent, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, cutting approximately $1.5 trillion from Medicaid while giving roughly $2 trillion in tax cuts to corporations. The House’s “reform” plan would also cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare. More
As Trump takes aim at affirmative action, let’s remember how Jared Kushner got into Harvard
The civil rights division of President Trump’s Justice Department is preparing to shift its resources toward “investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants,” the New York Times’s Charlie Savage reported Tuesday. Any shift in priorities hasn’t been finalized or announced yet, so it’s unclear where this policy will end up or how specifically it will be implemented. Still, in conversations and debates over just who gets the biggest leg up in university admissions, the tale of how senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner got into Harvard is an instructive one. Of course few will be surprised that Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, a wealthy and connected developer and political donor, helped him get in… Jared’s father handed Harvard (a school he did not attend) a big pile of money just as Jared was starting to apply to colleges. Around the same time, Jared’s dad got his US senator to contact another US senator to arrange a chat with Harvard’s dean of admissions. More
Russia, Iran, North Korea
Talks and Reconciliation, Not Sanctions!
Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill that applies sanctions to Russia, Iran, and North Korea. President Trump is expected to sign it. Yet, this dangerous bill will needlessly provoke all three countries and move us away from productive solutions to the issues the sanctions supposedly address. We are extremely disappointed to report that all eleven Massachusetts members of Congress, and every Democrat in all states, voted in favor of these counterproductive and destabilizing sanctions. Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, and three House Republicans were the only no votes.
TRUMP IS SEEKING WAR WITH IRAN
Something extraordinary has happened in Washington. President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation… Prior to the revelation of Trump’s Iran certification meltdown, most analysts and diplomats believed that Trump’s rhetoric on Iran was just that—empty talk… Recognizing that refusing to certify Iran would isolate the United States, Trump’s advisors gave him another plan. Use the spot-inspections mechanism of the nuclear deal, they suggested, to demand access to a whole set of military sites in Iran. Once Iran balks—which it will since the mechanism is only supposed to be used if tangible evidence exists that those sites are being used for illicit nuclear activities—Trump can claim that Iran is in violation, blowing up the nuclear deal while shifting the blame to Tehran. More
Appetite for War: the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia v. Iran
The U.S. already has military bases on the doorstep of Iran—in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere. There are at least 125,000 U.S. troops on the edge of Iran and thousands of warships and aircraft at the ready. Iran has long seen its ballistic missile programme as being a deterrent, however feeble, against this massive military encirclement. That the U.S. has decided to place new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile tests has sent a clear message to Iran: the U.S. will put as much pressure on Iran as possible to prevent it from developing anything like a deterrent capability… There is an appetite for war in the Trump White House and amongst its Israeli and Saudi partners. The war this time will be against Iran. If West Asia is in chaos now, there is no adequate word to describe its fate if that full-scale war actually begins. More
STATE DEPARTMENT: Post-9/11 AUMF Covers Shooting Down Syrian Jets
The State Department said Wednesday that the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) provides sufficient legal grounds to shoot down Syrian government jets if they interfere with the fight against the Islamic State group. Following a U.S. fighter jet shooting down a Syrian government warplane on June 18, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the State Department to provide legal justification for that action and others… The ongressional debate over the 2001 AUMF — which has since been used to justify military action worldwide, and against foes unrelated to those who carried out the 9/11 attacks — has bubbled to the surface this year, though so far congressional leadership has stymied efforts to vote on a new AUMF to address the Islamic State specifically. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) reacted with surprise when the House Appropriations Committee voted overwhelmingly in June to support her amendment sunsetting the 2001 AUMF and leaving eight months for Congress to write a new one. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) subsequently stripped the amendment before it reached the House floor for a vote as part of a much larger bill. More
US intervention in Syria is not over.
US support for “anti-ISIS” armed groups, together with US bombing in Syria (illegal under international and US law) and Iraq (technically “legal” but unwise and immoral) is on-going -- with horrific civilian casualties.
The U.S. is also risking a catastrophic military clash with Russia or Iran in Syria. There is no legal or moral basis for the United States to be waging war in Syria, risking conflict with Russia and nuclear apocalypse for us all. ISIS is retreating in Syria and Iraq, but the US is not. The Trump administration has not made secret its hostility to Iran -- and the drumbeats for war are building.
Urgent Warning: Time to Hit the Reset Button on U.S.-Korean Policy
The North Korean nuclear program is certainly alarming, as are the myriad human rights violations of that repressive regime. But the question is how best to de-escalate the conflict so it doesn’t explode into all-out nuclear war. Adding another weapon system into the mix is not the answer. The North Korean regime feels encircled. It knows that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, wants to overthrow it. There’s Trump’s belligerent rhetoric: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." There’s the ever-tightening screws of sanctions. Just a few hours before the latest North Korean missile test, Congress approved yet another round of sanctions to squeeze the North. More
New Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases
U.S. foreign military bases are NOT in defense of U.S. national, or global security. They are the military expression of U.S. intrusion in the lives of sovereign countries on behalf of the dominant financial, political, and military interests of the ruling elite. Whether invited in or not by domestic interests that have agreed to be junior partners, no country, no peoples, no government, can claim to be able to make decisions totally in the interest of their people, with foreign troops on their soil representing interests antagonistic to the national purpose. We must all unite to actively oppose the existence of U.S. foreign military bases and call for their immediate closure. We invite all forces of peace, social and environmental justice to join us in our renewed effort to achieve this shared goal. . We urge you to endorse this campaign. More
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