09 January 20
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08 January 20
Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III | Why Is Mitch McConnell So Afraid of John Bolton?
Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III, The New York Times
Excerpt: "The importance of John Bolton's offer to testify if subpoenaed in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump cannot be overstated. In a single stroke, Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser, elevated truth and transparency over political gamesmanship."
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Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III, The New York Times
Excerpt: "The importance of John Bolton's offer to testify if subpoenaed in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump cannot be overstated. In a single stroke, Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser, elevated truth and transparency over political gamesmanship."
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US military troops. (photo: Cpl. D. Morgan/USMC)
Greg Shupak, Jacobin
Shupak writes: "The United States has no right to bomb countries, to overthrow governments, or to assassinate other states' officials, though it has been doing so for so long that these practices have come to be widely accepted as natural."
o stop a war, it’s necessary to be clear about its causes.
In a criminal act, the United States assassinated Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military official and one of the country’s most powerful people, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which are allied with Iran, along with as many as eight other people.
Subsequently, a US air raid, ostensibly aimed at a PMF commander, killed six people, some of whom were medics, and left three others critically wounded.
This all came less than a week after the United States bombed Iraq and Syria, reportedly killing twenty-five and wounding fifty-five, four of them commanders in Kata’ib Hezbollah, a key player in the PMF. The justification offered for this was that a US contractor and several members of the US military were killed in an apparent rocket attack for which Washington blamed Kata’ib Hezbollah.
Iraqis responded to these bombings by storming the US embassy in Baghdad and demanding that American officials leave the country. The United States attempted to justify its ongoing murder spree by claiming that the PMF and Soleimani masterminded the protests — as though after thirty years of US terror Iraqis needed an external conspiracy to prompt them to be mad at America. That it only took until the second day of the 2020s for Washington to extend its streak of bombing Iraq into a fourth consecutive decade lays bare the unadulterated barbarism of US imperialism.
Meanwhile, America’s ruling class has effectively been waging war against the Iranian people since the United States carried out a coup against the country’s democratically elected reformist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. The United States propped up the merciless shah’s dictatorship, a crucial ally in the Cold War, from 1953 until it was ousted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran became independent of Washington’s death grip, and the United States sought to turn it back into a vassal state by funding Iranian exiles and by helping Saddam Hussein’s invasion of, and use of sarin and mustard gas against, Iran.
The United States has strangled the Iranian economy for years, including the period when the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran was in effect. Though Iran abided by the accord, Trump tore it up and intensified the sanctions, weakening Iran’s economy, preventing aid from getting to victims of mass flooding, and depriving Iranians of food and medicine to the point of killing cancer patients. For years, the United States has worked to build a belligerent anti-Iran collation that includes Israel — which has a track record of murdering Iranian scientists — and reactionary Arab monarchies, Saudi Arabia chief among them.
Let there be no doubt: if the US-Iranian antagonism explodes, it will be because of this lengthy record of US aggression. Iran hasn’t overthrown what passes for American democracy, forced a dictatorship on it, aided an invasion of the country, participated in chemical warfare against the United States, or destroyed the US economy. The American military has fifty-three military bases and, as of September, between sixty thousand to seventy thousand troops on Iran’s doorstep; at last check, Iran has no bases or soldiers in Canada or Mexico.
It is clear, therefore, who needs to be fought to stop the fighting.
The signs that the United States’ long-running war on Iran will become a larger-scale military conflict are ominous: the Trump administration is sending three thousand more soldiers to the Middle East, on top of the 650 it announced it was deploying on New Year’s Day. It has urged all of its citizens to leave Iraq. Oil prices have surged, and the stocks of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and other war profiteers have rallied.
What’s at stake in the present moment is full-scale regional conflagration. Innumerable lives are at stake not just in Iraq and Iran, but also in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, as both Iran and the United States have partners in all of these places. After all, Iran’s function as an obstacle to US-Saudi-Israeli designs across the region is a central reason for the US ruling class’ violence against Iran. It is all but impossible for the people of these or any other nations to build better political and economic lives for themselves when they are facing the threat of imperialist annihilation.
The United States has no right to bomb other countries, to try to overthrow governments, or to assassinate other states’ officials, though it has been doing so for so long that these practices have come to be widely accepted as natural.
Reverse this process. Organize at work. Organize in your neighborhood and at your school. Don’t be sectarian. Be in solidarity with those who live under the gun of the empire, particularly those who resist. Stop the war.
A rescue worker searches the scene where an Ukrainian plane crashed in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. A Ukrainian airplane carrying 176 people crashed on Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Tehran's main airport, killing all onboard. (photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)
At Least 63 Canadians Dead in Iran Plane Crash
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed his government will get answers after a Ukrainian passenger jet crashed, killing at least 63 Canadians, just minutes after taking off from Iran's capital."
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Rob Gillies, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed his government will get answers after a Ukrainian passenger jet crashed, killing at least 63 Canadians, just minutes after taking off from Iran's capital."
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Gun safety and suicide prevention brochures are on display next to guns for sale at a local retail gun store in Montrose, Colo., in 2016. (photo: Brennan Linksley/AP)
Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post
Hawkins writes: "One day after Colorado's new firearm seizure law took effect, authorities in the state appear to have used it for the first time."
EXCERPTS:
The petition filed under Colorado’s law stemmed from a domestic violence call on the night of Dec. 29.
Denver police were dispatched to an apartment complex in the city’s southwest, where a 26-year-old man told them he wanted to “off” himself after getting into a fight with his wife and her sister, according to the petition. The man’s wife told investigators he had attempted to strangle her and had brandished a gun during the altercation.
Officers searched the man and found a Glock 9mm handgun in his waistband, according to the petition. Later, the man let police take a second firearm, a .45-caliber Springfield handgun, from his home.
But even after as more states and localities have approved their own versions, some have been slow to put it to use. In California, “red flag” legislation went virtually unused for two years after its passage in 2016. In the District of Columbia, authorities waited more than nine months before they filed their first request to seize guns under the city’s “red flag” law. Maryland, by contrast, handled nearly 800 petitions for removal of guns in the first 10 months after its law took effect.
Some Americans could lose Social Security Disability Insurance benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal. (photo: AP)
Arthur Delaney, Yahoo! News
Delaney writes: "Some Americans could lose Social Security Disability Insurance benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal - a change that could affect thousands of people but that has received little attention since it was first floated in November."
EXCERPT:
“We are concerned that under the proposed rule, some individuals subject to review will be simply unable to navigate the process and, as a result, lose their benefits even though there is no medical improvement,” a group of House and Senate Democrats led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a December letter.
The administration, for its part, is making only a halfhearted argument that ramping up medical reviews to kick people off disability benefits is actually going to help them. “We believe that there may be positive employment effects as a result of these proposed rules, although we cannot currently quantify them,” the Social Security Administration said in its notice of proposed rule-making.
“If they haven’t improved enough to go back to self-supporting work then they probably should still be eligible for benefits,” Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.
The regulation could affect hundreds of thousands of SSDI and Supplemental Security Income recipients, Romig said, potentially ending benefits for tens of thousands. The administration didn’t estimate how many would lose benefits, but said the proposal would save $2 billion over a decade.
The rule would not take effect until sometime after the administration releases a final version, for which no date has been set ― and as with other regulations the administration has issued without input from Congress, a lawsuit could stop it.
Social Security disability benefits are not easy to get, and most applications are denied. Once an application is approved, the government conducts “continuing disability reviews” every so often to make sure the beneficiary still can’t work. How often the reviews occur depends on whether the applicant’s chance of medical improvement gets classified as expected, possible, or not expected.
A man carries a statue from ruins of the Inmaculada Concepción church in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday. The church, built in 1841, collapsed in the earthquake. (photo: Ricardo Arduengo/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Much of Puerto Rico Still Without Power
After Worst Earthquake in a Century
'Water Is Running Out': Puerto Rico on Emergency After Quakes
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez declared a state of emergency Tuesday after a series of earthquakes killed at least one person, toppled buildings and knocked out power to nearly the whole island of more than three million people."
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teleSUR
Excerpt: "Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez declared a state of emergency Tuesday after a series of earthquakes killed at least one person, toppled buildings and knocked out power to nearly the whole island of more than three million people."
READ MORE
Save the Redwoods League's Sam Hodder walks through the Alder Creek Grove. (photo: Brian van der Brug/LA Times)
Group Raises Nearly Million to Buy Alder Creek Giant Sequoia Grove
Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
Boxall writes: "The donations ranged from $1 to several million. The money came from across the country and around the world."
Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
Boxall writes: "The donations ranged from $1 to several million. The money came from across the country and around the world."
EXCERPTS:
Save the Redwoods League raised nearly $16 million — more than half of it in four months — to close a deal for 530 acres of the Alder Creek Grove of giant sequoias.
The century-old conservation group took title to the Sierra Nevada property on Dec. 30, realizing a long-held dream of acquiring the world’s largest private holding of the world’s largest trees.
League officials said the $15.65 million from individuals and foundations is the most the organization has ever raised in purely private donations for a single conservation project.
The Alder Creek property boasts 483 giant sequoias with diameters of at least 6 feet, including the 3,000-year old Stagg tree.
As tall as a 25-story building and wider than a two-lane road, the Stagg is the fifth-largest giant sequoia, as measured by trunk volume. That makes it the world’s fifth-biggest tree on record.
Along with 1,000 to 2,000-year–old trees, the grove contains a good number of young sequoias, 50 to 200 years old, adding to its conservation value.
The league plans to keep the property for five to 10 years, thin non-sequoias that it says have grown too dense in the absence of wildfire, and then sell it, presumably at a discount, to the U.S. Forest Service for inclusion in the neighboring Giant Sequoia National Monument.
The Alder Creek purchase means that only about 739 acres of giant sequoias remain in private hands, primarily in small scattered holdings.
Most of the 73 groves of giant sequoias growing on the western slopes of the central Sierra Nevada — their sole native habitat — are on state land, national parks or national forests.
