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U.S. Allowing Turkish Assault on Kurds in Syria: Escalating Chaos and Helping ISIS?
“One word describes President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria. Perhaps he loves and thrives on chaos, which will be its upshot.[Turkish leader Recep] Erdogan, alas, watched Islamic State grow into a threat to the Middle East and the world. Kurds and their Arab allies waged an existential war to rid the world of this menace. Instead of thanking the Kurds and their allies, we are now going to witness their slaughter in the hands of the Turkish army. It is a disaster in the making with ramifications for the world.”
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Behind Ecuador’s State of Emergency
“In March, Ecuador signed an agreement to borrow $4.2 billion from the IMF over three years, provided that the government would adhere to a certain economic program spelled out in the arrangement. In the words of Christine Lagarde — then the IMF chief — this was ‘a comprehensive reform program aimed at modernizing the economy and paving the way for strong, sustained, and equitable growth.’ But is it? The program calls for an enormous tightening of the country’s national budget — about 6 percent of GDP over the next three years. (For comparison, imagine tightening the U.S. federal budget by…
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Why Are Some Real Whistleblowers Derided? The Case of MoveOn and “Whistleblower Aid”
“After many years of carefully refusing to launch a single campaign in support of brave whistleblowers who faced vicious prosecution during the Obama administration — including Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden, and CIA whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Jeffrey Sterling — MoveOn.org has just cherrypicked a whistleblowing hero it can support…The organization that MoveOn just teamed up with — Whistleblower Aid — explicitly does not support people like Snowden, Drake, Kiriakou, Sterling, and Manning, or the more recent whistleblower Reality Winner. The founding legal partner at Whistleblower Aid, Mark Zaid, has maintained a vehement position…
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Ukraine: A Short History of U.S. Meddling
“The truth is that America has been meddling and messing with Ukraine so persistently for so many years that no one thinks there’s anything wrong with it. It’s been the normal way of doing things…This latest scandal is just another iteration of this grim history, as both the anti-Trump and Trump sides gleefully try to weaponize Ukrainian meddling and use Ukraine as a proxy war in their domestic fight for the presidency.”
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* Ukraine Election Interference * Biden Corruption
“Shokin should be taken with a pound of salt. The man was infamously corrupt; his attempt to frame himself as an honest prosecutor punished for tackling shady dealings doesn’t hold water. Additionally, as Bloomberg reported, the Burisma case was utterly dormant. Biden didn’t need to protect Burisma because the company wasn’t under active investigation…In sum, Biden had no incentive to defend Burisma.”
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Why Aren’t Presidents Impeached for War Crimes?
“It’s certainly possible that Trump engaged in wrongdoing in his statements to the Ukrainian leader, but this is insignificant compared to totally criminal wrongdoing like bombings, assassinations, murders and war crimes conducted by Trump as well as prior presidents. A fidelity to the rule of law would act on the ample evidence to impeach Trump for such criminality. So, we’re seeing political power and calculation here by both Trump and Pelosi more than anything else.”
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White House Refusing Comment on O’Brien’s Ties to Apartheid South Africa
“This appointment is obscene. It is not just a matter of the school that O’Brien attended but his assessment of apartheid South Africa condemns him to be a person not from the 21st century, but from the 19th century. Coupled with the offensive and reactionary stand of the Trump administration when it comes to the Palestinian quest — against another apartheid system — for human rights, this appointment is not simply objectionable but displays the flag of the global right-wing populist movement with which Trump is aligned.”
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Climate: * Political Will * Candidates
“As of now we are confronted by two forms of denial: the open rejection of science by the Republicans vs. the ‘yes but’ approach of the establishment Democrats. These approaches reinforce each other in practice…The action of the Democrats in quashing the effort to have in-depth discussion of environmental policy is symptomatic of the corporate-inspired resistance that has to be overcome. They fear debate precisely because any thorough discussion would point toward the need for more radical steps than they are willing to have us even think about — let alone put into practice.”
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Trump and Modi
“The theatrical display of camaraderie between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi in the ‘Howdy Mody’ event in Houston is representative of the shared bonds between two of the leading icons of ultra-right wing, xenophobic, quasi-fascist, nationalist tendencies emerging in the world today. The Hindu supremacist political party of Modi, the BJP, is a mirror image of the white supremacy that Trump’s ideology epitomizes. Modi and the BJP’s genealogy is of course based on a century of fascist mobilization and thought, inspired by European fascism.”
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Climate Protests: * Amazon * War
“The U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters on earth. Since 2001, the U.S. military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million cars on the road. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of oil ($17B/year) in the world, and the largest global landholder with 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries…As the environmental crisis worsens, thinking of war as a tool with which to address it threatens us with the ultimate vicious cycle. Declaring that climate change causes war misses the reality that human beings…
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn