Week of January 13, 2020

We cannot keep publishing without your help. We have no paywalls or ads. Nor do we receive corporate or foundation funding. All we have is you to keep us publishing. We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate  Monday 10 ways Trump’s actions against Iran hurt Americans and the region By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies The U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has not yet plunged us into a full-scale war with Iran thanks to the Iranian government’s measured response, which demonstrated its capabilities without actually harming U.S. troops or escalating the conflict. But the danger of a full-blown war still exists, and Donald Trump’s actions are already wreaking havoc. The Fed protects gamblers at the expense of the economy By Ellen Brown Although the repo market is little known to most people, it is a $1-trillion-a-day credit machine, in which not just banks but hedge funds and other “shadow banks” borrow to finance their trades. Under the Federal Reserve Act, the central bank’s lending window is open only to licensed depository banks; but the Fed is now pouring billions of dollars into the repo (repurchase agreements) market, in effect making risk-free loans to speculators at less than 2%. General Soleimani’s network of revenge By Wayne Madsen Throughout his military command of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force, the late Major General Qassem Soleimani ensured that Iran had as its disposal an intricate network of military proxy forces, sympathetic Shi’a Islamic faithful, and armed wings of foreign political and religious allies prepared to respond to an American and/or Israeli military attack. With the Donald Trump administration’s assassination of Soleimani and Iraqi Shi’a militia leaders, all of whom were popular in Iran and Iraq for helping to defeat the Saudi/Israeli-supported Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, the Iranian retaliatory network established by Soleimani stands at a hair-trigger response to the U.S. premeditated murders. The network of Iranian proxies and allies crafted under Soleimani’s guidance—mostly non-state actors but with a few state players—will be Soleimani’s everlasting legacy in future history books on the Middle East and strategic warfare. New report details how EPA is promoting ‘worst of the worst pesticides’ By Andrea Germanos From 2017-2018, the agency approved 69 new pesticide products containing an ingredient the EPA recognizes as a “known” or “likely” carcinogen. Embracing Palestine: How to combat Israel’s misuse of ‘anti-Semitism’ By Ramzy Baroud At a talk I delivered in Northern England in March 2018, I proposed that the best response to falsified accusations of anti-Semitism, which are often lobbed against pro-Palestinian communities and intellectuals everywhere, is to draw even closer to the Palestinian narrative. Tuesday The USA’s system of checks, balances and reality crumbles as it seeks war with Iran Send in Pope Francis, not the Marines By John Stanton Yes, boys and girls, he did say that and if you visit Khamenei’s Twitter site you’ll find him sitting next an an elderly woman and to the right of her a Christmas tree adorned with ornaments, including one of Santa Claus. And did you know, kiddies, that Iran’s Majles, the equivalent of the UK’s House of Commons or the US House of Representatives (one hates to make that comparison to denigrate the Majles) has reserved, by constitutional decree/law—dating to 1906, five seats for the following minorities: two Christian Armenians, one Assyrian-Chaldean Christian, one Jew and one Zoroastrian. The Ayatollah Kohmenei preserved condition after the Iranian revolution of 1979. This according to the United States Institute for Peace (USIP—link above). Post-Brexit Britain will be under Trump’s thumb US president likely to deliver on his pledge to place UK at the front of the deal queue By Linda S. Heard In just two weeks, Britain will officially be out of the European Union although during the 11-month transition period the country remains obliged to comply with EU rules and regulations. For roughly half the population January 1, 2021 will be a day to celebrate freedom from EU diktats and to welcome an era of unlimited possibilities. The Iranian protests are a Washington orchestration By Paul Craig Roberts It is difficult to know who is the most stupid, the protesting Iranian students or the Iranian government. ‘Iran must begin acting like a normal nation,’ says totally normal nation By Caitlin Johnstone The government which runs a globe-spanning empire led by a reality TV host keeps talking about the lack of normality in the nation of Iran. Four reasons why millennials don’t have any money By Robert Reich The same forces that are driving massive inequality between the top 1 percent and the rest of us are creating a vast generational wealth gap between baby boomers—my generation—and millennials. Wednesday A brutal Trump makes culture war on Iran—and everyone else Civilization gets sucker punched. By Michael Winship There’s an old joke about how Richard Nixon was the kind of politician who’d cut down an endangered giant redwood, then climb on the stump and make a speech about conservation. Biden, Buttigieg, and corporate media are eager for Sanders and Warren ‘trash talk’ narrative to take hold It would be a serious error for progressives to buy into corporate media portrayals of the Sanders and Warren campaigns as destined to play a traditional zero-sum political game. By Norman Solomon Corporate Democrats got a jolt at the end of last week when the highly regarded Iowa Poll showed Bernie Sanders surging into first place among Iowans likely to vote in the state’s Feb. 3 caucuses. The other big change was a steep drop for the previous Iowa frontrunner, Pete Buttigieg, who—along with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden—came in a few percent behind Sanders. The latest poll was bad news for corporate interests, but their prospects brightened a bit over the weekend when Politico reported: “The nonaggression pact between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is seriously fraying.” And we allow this madness to continue By Cathy Breen Try as I did, I found it impossible to send New Year’s greetings to friends in Iraq given the unthinkable and shameless actions of Trump and his regime the last weeks. His decision to assassinate Iranian Major General Qasim Soleimani at the Baghdad airport led to the Iraqi Parliament voting to expel all foreign troops from Iraq. Trump’s quick response to that was “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.” The endless war with Iran The current crisis might be averted, but the longer U.S. war with Iran continues By John Feffer The United States has been in a 40-year cold war with Iran. Trump’s escalation imperils innocents By Sheldon Richman While an eerie, surreal calm has fallen over US-Iranian relations, I wouldn’t assume we’re out of the woods yet. Trump had no reason to be confident that Iran’s response to his most recent escalation of violence would be little more than symbolic. Although he’s accepted that response more or less passively for now, with Trump, things can turn on a dime. Who can tell what determines his mood at any given time? Thursday #CNNisTrash trends as pushback grows against oligarchic election meddling By Caitlin Johnstone The hashtag #CNNisTrash is the number one trend on Twitter as of this writing due to the network’s appalling treatment of Bernie Sanders in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa. It is remarkable—and dangerous—how little scrutiny Biden has received for supporting Iraq war Maybe there's a reason nobody who voted in favor of that war—excluding George W. Bush—has won a presidential election. By Sam Husseini While Biden and his surrogates like John Kerry continue to falsely claim that the former vice president and U.S. senator was not for the Iraq invasion, the Bernie Sanders campaign has rightly highlighted more documentation—such as this video—of Biden’s support for the Iraq invasion both before and after it happened. Freedom Rider: Solidarity with Moms 4 Housing By Margaret Kimberley Black women in Oakland confronted the austerity regime head-on by seizing the housing their families need. US deterrence: Code language for endless wars on humanity By Stephen Lendman Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. They like to get the landmarks By Wayne Madsen In the 2016 science fiction sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, actor Jeff Goldblum, describing the targeting priorities of aliens invading the Earth, says, “They like to get the landmarks.” In both Independence Day and its sequel, movie viewers were treated to scenes of macabre-looking extraterrestrials destroying the Empire State Building, the White House, Los Angeles’s Tower Records building, and London’s Tower Bridge and “the Eye” wheel. Friday Analysis of 30 years of single-payer research shows Medicare for All would absolutely save us money ‘Across the political spectrum, there is near consensus among these economists that a single-payer system would save money.’ By Eoin Higgins A comprehensive new study that reviewed nearly three decades of existing analyses shows implementation of a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All could dramatically reduce costs in the United States, with savings likely experienced in the first year and definitely over the longer term. Trump: Make space great again The U.S. military is creating an imaginary 'space gap' to pour money into closing, wasting funds while increasing the risk of conflict. By John Feffer With a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump created an entirely new branch of the armed forces last year. It’s the first new branch of the U.S. military since 1947. Red flag nation: Anti-gun laws, sanctuary cities and the Second Amendment By John W. Whitehead We never learn. Sealed off and forgotten: What you should know about Israel’s ‘firing zones’ in the West Bank By Ramzy Baroud A seemingly ordinary news story, published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, on January 7, shed light on a long-forgotten, yet crucial, subject: Israel’s so-called “firing zones” in the West Bank. How do billionaires make money? By having money already The world’s billionaires don’t grow their bank accounts with hard work. Their money does the work for them. By Jim Hightower As Ray Charles wailed in a song of true-life blues: “Them that’s got is them that gets/And I ain’t got nothin’ yet.”