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.”

More than 5 million contributions

Today, I am very proud to share with you some extraordinary news: our campaign has received more than 5 million individual contributions — that is more contributions than any campaign has received at this point in a presidential election in the history of our country.

Now I want to say a few words about why this accomplishment is so extraordinary.

For far too long, the economic and political systems have been stacked against ordinary Americans. The rich get richer because they use their wealth to buy our candidates and our elections. Meanwhile, more and more working people become demoralized and choose not to participate in the political process.

What we are proving on this campaign is that one does not need to beg the wealthy and the powerful for campaign contributions in order to win elections.

We are proving that when you run a campaign that speaks directly to the needs of working people and young people, they are ready to fight with you.

We are proving that we — US — are far more powerful than the 1 percent have ever imagined.

And that is important.

Because change never happens from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up. And now is the time, more than ever before, for millions of working families — black and white, Latino, Asian and Native American, gay and straight — to come together to end the collapse of the American middle class and to make certain that our children and grandchildren are able to enjoy a quality of life and a habitable planet that brings them health, prosperity, security and joy.

That kind of campaign is also the only kind of campaign that will win in November.

Now I am proud to say that ours is the only campaign in this Democratic primary with more donations than Donald Trump.

And that is important for two reasons:

First, practically, our campaign has raised more money than any other campaign in this race and will raise more money than any campaign would against Donald Trump.

We have 5 million individual donations in a Democratic primary that hasn’t even cast its first vote yet.

Against Trump, I believe we will have 50 million individual contributions, at least. And at $27 a piece, that would be more than $1 billion. It’s absolutely obscene and outrageous that an election would cost that much money, but our campaign has proven we will be able to raise more than enough money to win.

And our donation number is important for another reason: because in order to beat Trump, we’re going to need the largest voter turnout in the history of America.

And you don’t have the largest voter turnout unless you create energy and excitement.

And you don’t create energy and excitement unless you are prepared to take on the people who own America — not just beg them for money.

We need a progressive agenda that mobilizes millions and millions of Americans behind ideas like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, leading the world in combating climate change and more.

Now, you know that poll after poll shows we beat Trump by wide margins.

And when you combine that with the kind of grassroots enthusiasm our campaign has demonstrated the ability to generate, we will not only win this election, but we will have the organization ready to fight to transform this country.

You may remember that when I said I was going to run for president, I said that it would take a political revolution to win.

A lot of people thought that was an acknowledgment of impossibility. It wasn’t.

It was a statement of what would be necessary to undo the damage that has been done to our country and reclaim our country from the oligarchs.

Now, speaking this way about the need to take on the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel companies, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and virtually the entire damn one percent tends to make wealthy folks nervous.

That is fine.

They will see our numbers and will no doubt ratchet up their attacks.

But I have no doubt we will be ready.

And that we will win.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

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Thank you for helping OUR campaign reach our historic milestone of more than 5 million individual donations. But with voting about to begin, we have an important question for you today:

Can Bernie Sanders count on your vote in your state’s primary or caucus?

ADD YOUR NAME

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Progressive 'Purity Tests'...Buttigieg Boom...Wealth Tax...'Clash' as Euphemism....

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Weekly Alert: December 13, 2019 FAIR's year-end fundraising drive is underway--please donate today if you can! Here are the stories FAIR has been working on this week. Please help us spread the word by forwarding this email to friends and by sharing our stories on social media like Facebook and Twitter. For WaPo’s Centrist Sources, Progressive Politics Are ‘Purity Tests’ Getting Away With Murder: ‘Clash’ as Media Euphemism for ‘Massacre’ For Corporate Media, Voters Are Obstacle to Buttigieg's Centrist Rise ABC’s Epstein Story Didn’t Kill Itself Papers Owned by Oligarchs Unsurprisingly Oppose a Wealth Tax How the Global North’s Left Media Helped Pave the Way for Bolivia's Right-Wing Coup This week's episode of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: Sharon Lerner on Plastic Recycling Newly posted CounterSpin transcripts: 'It's Not Just About Sanders and Warren, It's About the Issues They Represent' 'This Is Not a Troll. This Is Real Life.' FAIR Cites: How US Media Manufacture Consent on Hong Kong FAIR’s ad-free, content-rich site is supported by contributions from our loyal band of media activists. Please donate today! FAIR's Website

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Robert Reich | It May Feel Like the World's Ending - but America Has Reason to Hope

09 September 19

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PROBLEM! We Are Not Getting Any Donations for September

The progress bar is not moving. Does anyone believe that will work?

This is our third straight month of readership growth. How is it possible donations could decline sharply?

Not fair folks, not fair.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

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09 September 19

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

HELP OUT FOLKS, IT WON’T KILL YOU. - All of this fund raising is for roughly 700 donations. We get 20,000 readers a day. Standing up against that now. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

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Robert Reich | It May Feel Like the World's Ending - but America Has Reason to Hope

Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "Inequality, the climate crisis, and Trump in the White House may cause despair. But the country is poised to bounce back."
READ MORE

A man searches for belongings among the debris of a destroyed neighborhood off Great Abaco in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian. (photo: Loren Elliott/Reuters)

Dozens of Bahamas Evacuees Were Told to Get Off a Ferry Headed to the US
Christina Maxouris, CNN
Maxouris writes: "Hurricane Dorian may have long since left the Bahamas, but the islands have only begun to grapple with the grim aftermath."

EXCERPT: 

In a social media video taken aboard a ferry boat leaving the Bahamas, posted on Twitter by CNN affiliate WSVN reporter Brian Entin, an unidentified person announces via a loudspeaker that anyone traveling to the United States without a visa must disembark. 

Entin told CNN he was on a Balearia ferry from Freeport to Fort Lauderdale when the announcement was made Sunday. His video shows families with children disembarking the vessel. One woman told Entin that as many as 130 people left the ferry after the announcement. 

Brian Entin

✔@BrianEntin

Another announcement just made ordering any Bahamian without a US visa to disembark ferry — not allowed to evacuate. They were told before boarding it was ok with Bahamian passport and clean polce record. Something has now changed.

4,072

8:02 PM - Sep 8, 2019

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"CBP was notified of a vessel preparing to embark an unknown number of passengers in Freeport and requested that the operator of the vessel coordinate with U.S. and Bahamian government officials in Nassau before departing The Bahamas," CBP said in a statement Sunday. 

"Everyone who arrives to the United States from another country must present themselves to a CBP officer for inspection at an official CBP Port of Entry. All persons must possess valid identity and travel documents," the agency said. "CBP has a Preclearance operation in Nassau. CBP is committed to carrying out our duties with professionalism and efficiency -- facilitating lawful international travel and trade."

On its website, CBP says visas are not required for Bahamian residents flying into the US from the Bahamas if they also meet other criteria, including possessing a valid passport or travel documents, having no criminal record and carrying a police certificate issued within the past six months. 

READ MORE

Boris Johnson. (photo: Phil Noble/Reuters)

Boris Johnson to Suspend Parliament Monday at Height of Brexit Crisis
Jamie Ross, The Daily Beast
Ross writes: "Boris Johnson's government will suspend the British parliament Monday night just weeks before the U.K. is due to leave the European Union with or without a deal."
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Walsh told CNN after the South Carolina vote that his campaign would 'Fight South Carolina and any other state that considers doing this.' (photo: The Joe Walsh Campaign)

South Carolina and Kansas GOP Scrap 2020 Presidential Primary, Caucus
Meg Kinnard, Associated Press
Kinnard writes: "Republican leaders in South Carolina and Kansas have voted to scrap their presidential nominating contests in 2020, while party officials Nevada were deciding whether to follow suit as the GOP erects more hurdles for the long shots challenging President Donald Trump."
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Maggy Hurchalla kayaking near her home in Stuart, Fla., this summer. (photo: Eve Edelheit/NYT)

The Florida Activist Is 78. The Legal Judgment Against Her Is Million.
Patricia Mazzei, The New York Times
Mazzei writes: "Maggy Hurchalla's piece of Florida heaven is a patch of pristine Atlantic shore accessible only by boat in St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park."

EXCERPT:

Behind Lake Point was George Lindemann Jr., a billionaire real estate investor and heir to a cellphone and cable TV fortune. He served prison time after being convicted in 1995 of paying a man $25,000 to electrocute his horse so Mr. Lindemann could collect a $250,000 insurance payout.

Mr. Lindemann’s consortium wanted to mine for limestone and use the leftover pits to store lake water and clean its pollution, which would otherwise be flushed down the fragile St. Lucie Estuary, contributing to toxic algae blooms. The South Florida Water Management District and Martin County signed off on the project.

But a few years later, Lake Point partnered with another company to try to sell the water to the city of West Palm Beach, troubling Ms. Hurchalla and Martin County officials, who questioned whether the revised plan would really result in environmental benefits. (West Palm Beach ultimately did not buy Lake Point’s water.)

Ms. Hurchalla fired off emails to county commissioners encouraging them to get out of the agreement with Lake Point, arguing that it would destroy wetlands and noting that no peer-reviewed study had examined the effects on restoration plans for the downstream Florida Everglades, which are supposed to get water from Lake Okeechobee, near the mine site.

She sent some of the emails to commissioners’ private email addresses. She signed one of them “Deep Rock Pit” — a joke, she said later, alluding to Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source during the Watergate scandal.

County staff members issued notices of violation against Lake Point.

In 2013, Lake Point sued the county, the water management district and Ms. Hurchalla, claiming she waged an unlawful campaign against the company that cost it its plans to make money off its cleaned lake water.

The court agreed: The litigation found that commissioners conducted public business using their private email and delayed production of those emails — or destroyed them altogether — in violation of public records laws. Three commissioners were charged in criminal court. A jury acquitted one of them in April, and the state attorney dropped the charges against the other two last month.

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One section of Antonine's Wall today. It was built across central Scotland by the Romans as the northern boundary of their empire. (photo: iStock)

Britain Is No Stranger to Barriers. Today, Almost All of Them Lie in Ruins.
Erica X. Eisen, The Washington Post
Eisen writes: "Britain is no stranger to boundaries. From Roman fortifications to medieval civic defenses, it is crisscrossed by layer upon layer of borders that have been erased, abandoned, forgotten as years and empires have moved on."
READ MORE

Many of the sickened - but not all - were people who had been vaping THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its high. (photo: Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)

US Health Officials Urge People to Stop Vaping as Third Death Reported
Associated Press
Excerpt: "US health officials warned people not to vape until they determine the cause of a severe respiratory illness, which has killed at least three people and hospitalized many more."
READ MORE

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