 05 January 20 December Was Not Great, January Donations Will Matter
We did a bit better in December than pervious months, but we were down significantly from previous years. We do not need a windfall in January but we need a good solid performance.
That alone will require quite a bit of resolve.
We’re up to the task.
Marc Ash
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05 January 20
Stanley McChrystal | Iran's Deadly Puppet Master
Stanley McChrystal, Foreign Policy
McChrystal writes: "The decision not to act is often the hardest one to make-and it isn't always right."
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Stanley McChrystal, Foreign Policy
McChrystal writes: "The decision not to act is often the hardest one to make-and it isn't always right."
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Iranians in Tehran on Saturday protesting the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. (photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)
Trump's Decision to Kill Suleimani Stunned Defense Officials
Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Rukmini Callimachi, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him - which they viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq - on the menu they presented to President Trump."
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Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Rukmini Callimachi, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him - which they viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq - on the menu they presented to President Trump."
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The classified document drew criticism from Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Reuters)
The White House Has Formally Notified Congress of the Soleimani Strike
Seung Min Kim, The Washington Post
Kim writes: "The White House delivered a formal notification of the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani to Capitol Hill on Saturday, as required under the War Powers Act, according to a senior Democratic aide and another official familiar with the matter."
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Seung Min Kim, The Washington Post
Kim writes: "The White House delivered a formal notification of the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani to Capitol Hill on Saturday, as required under the War Powers Act, according to a senior Democratic aide and another official familiar with the matter."
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The Institute of Supply Management's purchasing managers showed a contraction in 15 of 18 manufacturing industries in December. (photo: Bloomberg)
Trade Tensions Send US Factory Performance to 10-Year Low
Reade Pickert, Bloomberg
Pickert writes: "U.S. manufacturing closed out a tumultuous year with the weakest monthly performance since the end of the recession, with orders shrinking and factories continuing to dial back production."
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Reade Pickert, Bloomberg
Pickert writes: "U.S. manufacturing closed out a tumultuous year with the weakest monthly performance since the end of the recession, with orders shrinking and factories continuing to dial back production."
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Occupy Wall Street. (photo: Vanity Fair)
The Decade That Put Capitalism on Trial
Astra Taylor, In These Times
Taylor writes: "I can't say I'm convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn't start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street's historic financial crisis."
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Astra Taylor, In These Times
Taylor writes: "I can't say I'm convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn't start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street's historic financial crisis."
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People walk through the Orthodox Jewish section of a Brooklyn neighborhood last month. Tensions remain high in Jewish communities following a series of attacks and incidents in recent weeks. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
'It's Getting Very Scary': Hasidic Jews Change Routines Amid Anti-Semitic Attacks
Brian Mann, NPR
Mann writes: "The streets of Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are usually busy with Hasidic families coming and going. The men and boys wear distinctive hats and beards and side curls known as peyots. Esther and Yehuda Weiss have lived here all their lives. They've been shaken by recent anti-Semitic harassment and violence."
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Brian Mann, NPR
Mann writes: "The streets of Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are usually busy with Hasidic families coming and going. The men and boys wear distinctive hats and beards and side curls known as peyots. Esther and Yehuda Weiss have lived here all their lives. They've been shaken by recent anti-Semitic harassment and violence."
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(photo: Monique Jaques/National Geographic)
Logging Is Corrupting These Islands. One Village Fights Back-and Wins.
John Beck, National Geographic
Beck writes: "The Marasans knew what would happen next. The forests they relied on for food, water, and timber would be destroyed."
John Beck, National Geographic
Beck writes: "The Marasans knew what would happen next. The forests they relied on for food, water, and timber would be destroyed."
EXCERPT:
t was mid-February 2018 when villagers in the Solomon Islands community of Marasa noticed the rivers had begun to turn red. The wet season was almost over and heavy rain fell over the forested mountain ridge, which rises up from the coast to split Marasa from the rest of the island of Guadalcanal. Soon, the waters were a thick rust color that everyone recognized as the soil that started 650 feet up the slopes, but had never dissolved and flowed out to sea before.
The rivers burst their banks not long after, flooding the flatland where the coconuts, mangoes, and yams grew, and laying down impermeable clay that made the earth unusable.
So the villagers walked to the little patches of cell phone reception and called Philip Manakako, a son of Marasa who lived 30 miles across the mountains in Honiara, the capital. His father, Philip Senior, told him that there were no more fish in the rivers. The water was making children sick, an uncle said. A woman who lived nearby explained how her plants all died three days after the floods first came, and the ground around them smelled of petrol.
Up on the ridge, a Malaysian logging company named Gallego Resources had begun carving great scores through the forest— its men felling the tall, grey-barked kwila and the akwa strung with fruit, then dragging them off the slopes for export, leaving nothing to stop the rains from taking the topsoil.
Manakako felt stung when he found out. The mountains had been untouched and abundant, covered in trees that as a child, he thought of as having grown there since creation. Back then, he and his cousins would follow the cascading streams uphill for a few afternoon hours and come back with pounds of shrimp for dinner.
The Marasans knew what would happen next. The forests they relied on for food, water, and timber would be destroyed. And without the trees, they would have to eat imported rice and build their houses with lumber-yard wood bought with the tiny sums the logging firms paid communities for every exported shipment. Teenagers might take dangerous jobs and young women would be coerced into exploitative temporary marriages with foreign workers. There would probably be a spike in alcoholism too, and with it, violence. “The life,” as many of Manakako’s relatives described it, would be over.
They knew this because it had already happened most of the way along the Guadalcanal coast—and across nearly every other part of the archipelago since logging began soon after independence from the UK in 1978. Foreign companies, mostly Chinese and Malaysian, are now stripping trees at more than 19 times the sustainable rate, according to Global Witness, making Solomon Islands the second largest supplier of tropical logs to China.
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