WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
On November 8 the rise of a right-wing nationalist regime in the United States became a realistic possibility, if not now then in the coming years. Such regimes stress nationalist and patriotic themes, play upon and intensify fear of minority ethnicities and/or religions and/or other long-oppressed groups, promise to resolve festering economic problems of ordinary people, and direct the blame for such problems at a convenient scapegoat such as foreigners or immigrants rather than the real causes… Such coalitions have underpinned right-wing nationalist regimes in the past. It is made up of traditional right-wing constituencies suddenly combined with significant parts of the working class. Such a political base, held together by the above themes and promises, can enable a right-wing nationalist regime to emerge in a democratic capitalist system even without the upstart demagogic leader winning an absolute majority. More
Trump’s Muslim Immigration Executive Order: If We Bombed You, We Ban You
What all seven countries also have in common is that the United States government has violently intervened in them. The U.S. is currently bombing — or has bombed in the recent past — six of them. The U.S. has not bombed Iran, but has a long history of intervention including a recent cyberattack. It’s like a twisted version of the you-break-it-you-buy-it Pottery Barn rule: If we bomb a country or help destabilize its society, we will then ban its citizens from being able to seek refuge in the United States… And consider that Iran, where al Qaeda, ISIS, and other anti-American terrorist organizations have no significant foothold, is included — but Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 9/11 hijackers came from and which has been a funding source for extremist groups, is not included. More
Trump's Visa Ban is about anti-Muslim Bigotry, not Security
Trump will represent this step as being about security, but it is not. Of the 750,000 refugees admitted since 2001, hundreds of thousands of them from the Middle East, virtually no refugees have committed an act of terrorism on US soil (typically they are running away from the violent people). He will say that refugees and immigrants from these countries need to be better vetted, but refugees are already subjected to a rigorous 18-month vetting process. This measure, if it is taken, is just more racial and religious exclusion, policies we have seen before in the long and rich history of American racism. The 3 million Muslim-Americans are in Trump’s sites. By far the majority of terrorist acts and political violence in the United States is committed by white supremacists. More
MAKE AMERICA TORTURE AGAIN:
Trump’s administration is working on an executive order that could revive the George W. Bush-era program of detention and interrogation at CIA “black site” prisons overseas. The order also would also set up a review of interrogation policies by senior national security officials... This order, if issued, would be the first step toward Trump’s realizing his sadistic campaign promise to reinstate waterboarding and even more brutal torture tactics for no other reason than that suspected terrorists “deserve” to be tortured. Reinstating actual torture, thankfully, is not as easy as all that. As the draft order noted, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2016 contained language restricting approved interrogation techniques to those currently outlined in the Army Field Manual. That law “provides a significant statutory barrier to the resumption of the CIA interrogation program,” the draft order noted, somewhat ruefully. More
Gag Me: Trump's Anti-Abortion Executive Order
President Donald Trump signed an executive order reinstating the global gag rule on overseas discussion of abortion by individuals and organizations receiving federal funding… Since 1973, under the Helms Amendment, it has been illegal to use US government money to directly fund abortions overseas. The global gag rule, introduced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 as part of his Mexico City Policy, made discussion of abortion by a group receiving federal support for any purpose illegal… Implementation of the global gag rule went well beyond abortion to effectively limit all discussions of family planning, including condom use to prevent HIV infection and multiyear spacing of pregnancies to avoid maternal deaths. Organizations as diverse as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and Family Health International lost millions of dollars in support from the US government during the years the gag rule was enforced… Women's health and HIV/AIDS organizations felt, justifiably, that the global gag rule made it impossible to engage in family planning and HIV prevention efforts, and many American groups that accepted US government funds after acceding to the rules were denied access to international meetings, shunned by counterpart non-American groups. More
A Bad Day for the Environment, with Many More to Come
Tuesday began with news that the Trump Administration had imposed a comprehensive gag order on employees of the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a leaked memo, “no press releases,” “no blog messages,” and “no social media will be going out,” and “no new content can be placed on any website” until further notice—perhaps an attempt to camouflage the other big E.P.A. announcement, which was that the agency’s grants and contracts had been temporarily frozen, effectively halting its work. Then, at nine o’clock, the President had breakfast with a group of beaming auto executives… Another leaked memo, released on Monday and attributed to Myron Ebell, the veteran climate-change denier overseeing Trump’s E.P.A. transition team, made clear some of the Administration’s first priorities: stopping Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which uses the Clean Air Act to regulate power plants; revising the rules on development in crucial wetlands; and even such granular tasks as reining in efforts to halt the rampant pollution of Chesapeake Bay. More
Trump Greenlights Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines
President Donald Trump signed executive orders Tuesday morning paving the way for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipeline projects to move forward. Both projects have been fiercely opposed by indigenous and environmental activists, who have so far been successful in stalling them -- Keystone XL was cancelled by Obama in January 2015, and the Dakota Access pipeline has been on hold since December 4, 2016, when the Army Corps of Engineers denied it a permit to drill under the Missouri River in Cannonball, North Dakota. The DAPL order will have immediate implications in North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with native and non-native allies, has been protesting the completion of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project, has been waiting to complete the final 1,100-foot piece of the pipeline, which threatens both clean water resources and Native American sacred sites in the region. More
HELP US Defy Trump’s Executive Memo on DAPL
Yesterday we received devastating news of Trump’s intention to resume construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, issued via executive memo. His decision violates tribal treaties, poses grave environmental risks, and blatantly disrespects all those who fought so hard in the #noDAPL battle. We will be taking legal action, and we need your help. The Environmental Impact Statement is still on-going. By leaving your comment, it will help us compound our claim that the pipeline poses grave environmental risks. Do not allow the Department of the Army to withdraw the Notice of Intent to prepare an EIS as President Trump suggests in his memo.
Please click here and show that you #StandWithStandingRock
If Progressives Want to Defeat Trump, They Must Win Back Workers
In particular, we should be extremely worried about how Trump is approaching the loss of manufacturing jobs. The neoliberal fog should not cause us to miss the obvious: Presidents Obama and Clinton did absolutely nothing to stop the hemorrhaging of middle class manufacturing jobs to low wage countries. (U.S. manufacturing fell from 20.1 percent of all jobs in 1980 to only 8.8 percent by 2013.) Not only did Obama and Clinton fail to stop even one factory from moving away, but they truly believed that capital mobility and free trade were good for America and the world. In other words they had sipped plenty of the neoliberal Kool-Aid… In opposing Trump, we must not slip into defending neoliberalism. It’s not ok for corporations to pack up and leave. We should have some control over our economic lives and not leave all the crucial decisions to Wall Street and their corporate puppets. Trade deals are bad deals unless they enforce the highest health, safety, environmental and labor standards. And those measures must be enforceable by all the parties. The race to the bottom is real and must stop. More
THE INJUSTICES OF MANNING’S ORDEAL
After overseeing the aggressive prosecution and near-seven-year incarceration of Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, President Obama – in one of his last acts in office – commuted all but four months of her remaining sentence but ignored the fact that he had taken no action on the war crimes that Manning revealed… But there has been no justice for the Iraqis and Afghans whose unjustified deaths and mistreatment were exposed by the then-22-year-old Army private, known at the time as Bradley Manning. An Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning sent hundreds of thousands of classified files, documents and videos, including the “Collateral Murder” video, the “Iraq War Logs,” the “Afghan War Logs” and State Department cables, to WikiLeaks. Many of the items that she transmitted contained evidence of war crimes… The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of a service member to obey lawful orders. But that duty includes the concomitant duty to disobey unlawful orders. An order not to reveal evidence of war crimes would be an unlawful order. Manning had a legal duty to expose the commission of war crimes. More
A GAME OF RUSSIAN ROULETTE:
Couching opposition to Trump in anti-Russia language will only end up benefiting the Right.
Denouncing opponents as fellow travelers of Putin allows political and media elites to delegitimize critics of the neoliberal order, scrubbing public debate of any mention of the root causes plaguing the advanced capitalist world. It is not austerity that drives opposition to the European Union, but a Russian plot to weaken Western European institutions. It is not the legacy of colonialism that is re-emerging in the program of the European far right, but bad thoughts the Kremlin has put into people’s minds… Worse yet, in some cases it appears the Russia fixation is not merely a distraction, but a deliberate cudgel to use against those who oppose attacks on the welfare state or civil liberties… Thus, not only are wide sectors of the media and political class focusing on Russia to the exclusion of actual issues, those who do focus on actual issues are chastised for not forming a popular front with people like Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham — two men who have yet to locate a country on a map they didn’t wish to bomb. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Weapons, Warriors, and Fear as the New Order in America
After the USSR imploded in 1991, dominating the world’s arms trade somehow came to seem so much less evil. In fact, faced with large trade deficits, a powerful military-industrial complex looking for markets, and ever more global military commitments, Washington actively sought to promote and sell American-made weaponry on a remarkable scale. And in that it succeeded admirably. Today, when it comes to building and
exporting murderous weaponry, no other country, not even that evil-empire-substitute, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, comes faintly close. The U.S. doth bestride the world of arms production and dealing like a colossus. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, U.S. arms contractors sold $209.7 billion in weaponry in 2015, representing 56% of the world’s production. Of that, $40 billionwas exported to an array of countries, representing “half of all agreements in the worldwide arms bazaar,” as the New York Times put it. France ($15 billion) was a distant second, with Putin’s Russia ($11 billion) earning a weak third... Not only has the U.S. come to dominate the arms trade in an almost monopolistic fashion over the last two decades, but it has also become the top exporter of troops globally. Leaving aside the ongoing, seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. continues to garrison the globe with approximately 800 military bases, while deploying its Special Operations forces to a significant majority of the planet’s countries annually. More
exporting murderous weaponry, no other country, not even that evil-empire-substitute, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, comes faintly close. The U.S. doth bestride the world of arms production and dealing like a colossus. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, U.S. arms contractors sold $209.7 billion in weaponry in 2015, representing 56% of the world’s production. Of that, $40 billionwas exported to an array of countries, representing “half of all agreements in the worldwide arms bazaar,” as the New York Times put it. France ($15 billion) was a distant second, with Putin’s Russia ($11 billion) earning a weak third... Not only has the U.S. come to dominate the arms trade in an almost monopolistic fashion over the last two decades, but it has also become the top exporter of troops globally. Leaving aside the ongoing, seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. continues to garrison the globe with approximately 800 military bases, while deploying its Special Operations forces to a significant majority of the planet’s countries annually. More
Dems seek to limit Trump's options for using nuclear weapons
Two Democrats are pushing Congress to restrict President Trump’s ability to launch nuclear weapons, reintroducing a bicameral bill Tuesday that would prohibit the president from launching a nuclear first strike without a declaration of war by Congress. “Nuclear war poses the gravest risk to human survival,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “Yet, President Trump has suggested that he would consider launching nuclear attacks against terrorists. Unfortunately, by maintaining the option of using nuclear weapons first in a conflict, U.S. policy provides him with that power.” Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) have long opposed America's first-strike policy, which says the country reserves the right to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Former President Obama reportedly weighed changing the policy before leaving office, but ultimately did not after advisers argued against it. More
REP. TULSI GABBARD:
The Syrian People Desperately Want Peace
It is clear now more than ever: this regime change war does not serve America’s interest, and it certainly isn’t in the interest of the Syrian people… Their message to the American people was powerful and consistent: There is no difference between “moderate” rebels and al-Qaeda (al-Nusra) or ISIS – they are all the same. This is a war between terrorists under the command of groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Syrian government. They cry out for the U.S. and other countries to stop supporting those who are destroying Syria and her people. I heard this message over and over again from those who have suffered and survived unspeakable horrors. They asked that I share their voice with the world; frustrated voices which have not been heard due to the false, one-sided biased reports pushing a narrative that supports this regime change war at the expense of Syrian lives… I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. From Iraq to Libya and now in Syria, the U.S. has waged wars of regime change, each resulting in unimaginable suffering, devastating loss of life, and the strengthening of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. I call upon Congress and the new Administration to answer the pleas of the Syrian people immediately and support the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. More
The Stop Arming Terrorists Act (H.R.6504) has only 5 co-sponsors, none from Massachusetts
Death of the Syrian ‘Moderate’ Fantasy
Washington think-tank warriors and editorial writers have long looked to the FSA as America’s natural allies in the Syrian conflict — so-called “moderates” unblemished by the Assad regime’s cruel record of repression, or the Islamists’ preference for cutting the throats of apostates… On Tuesday, the Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate that rebranded itself last year as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), attacked the FSA in Idlib and Aleppo provinces with heavy artillery, suicide bombs, and even cyber attacks. Within a day, they largely succeeded in wiping out local FSA forces… Similar debacles, complete with weapons transfers to extremists, have taken place many times over the past few years. In September 2013, FSA forces in the northern city of Raqqa surrendered abjectly to Islamists, despite outnumbering them. One top rebel commander said, “There is no such thing as the FSA [here]. We are all Al Qaeda now. Half of the FSA has been devoured by ISIS, and the other half joined Jabhat al-Nusra.” … In 2015, former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who has long advocated a more muscular policy of arming moderate rebels against the Assad regime, confessed that the strategy had backfired.. “For a long time,” Ford said, “we have looked the other way while the Nusra Front and armed groups on the ground, some of whom are getting help from us, have coordinated in military operations against the regime. I think the days of us looking the other way are finished.” More
PATRICK COCKBURN: Misreporting in Syria and Iraq
The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has been the reporting of the siege of East Aleppo, which began in earnest in July and ended in December, when Syrian government forces took control of the last rebel-held areas and more than 100,000 civilians were evacuated. During the bombardment, TV networks and many newspapers appeared to lose interest in whether any given report was true or false and instead competed with one another to publicise the most eye-catching atrocity story even when there was little evidence that it had taken place… All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the First World War… The real reason that reporting of the Syrian conflict has been so inadequate is that Western news organisations have almost entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side. More
Donald Trump eyes establishment of safe zones in Syria
The safe-zone mandate was tucked into the text of a draft executive order by Mr. Trump obtained by several news outlets* that establishes curbs on the flow of refugees from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other conflict zones from migrating to the United States. The order also institutes a revamped screening process for all U.S. immigrants… As president, Barack Obama resisted calls for the safe zones along the borders of Syria, designed to be a protective shield for Syrian refugees fleeing the violence, for fear that the U.S. would be forced to defend the zones in a war in which Syrian rebels, Islamic State militants, Kurdish militias and soldiers from Iran, Lebanon, Russia, Turkey and Iraq are all involved… On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump backed safe zones, as did his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. More
Democrats urged Obama to cease Yemen war role before Trump took over
Twenty-five House Democrats unsuccessfully wrote to President Barack Obama earlier this month to urge him to end US support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen before Donald Trump took over. The Jan. 13 letter, led by habitual Yemen war critics Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and John Conyers, D-Mich., raises concerns that the United States is abetting “war crimes” by supporting Riyadh’s imprecise bombing campaign. It goes on to argue that the fight against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels is doing little more than fueling terrorism. “These airstrikes — which have killed children, women, doctors, newlyweds and funeral mourners — are likely war crimes,” the letter states. “We respectfully ask you to do the right thing before you leave office and stop the US refueling of Coalition aircraft that strike civilian targets in Yemen.” More
Signers included McGovern and Capuano
