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Mosul and the “Shadow Wars”
“With significant advance warning, the ISIS leadership in Mosul will likely now be long gone, having moved across into northern Syria to strengthen forces in and around Raqqa and thus help accelerate the fragmentation of what remains of the nation state of Syria.
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Did the U.S. Assist the Disastrous Bombing of a Funeral in Yemen?
“When AlterNet asked U.S. Air Force spokesman Shane Huff, he conceded that the U.S. refueled coalition fighters the weekend of the bombing — including the day after the bombing — but denied that USAF fueled any aircraft on the day of the bombing. When asked why the U.S., which typically refuels coalition aircraft, would provide fuel that weekend but not the day of the bombing, Huff replied, ‘I do not know the answer to that question.’
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The “Second-Most Important Vote” On Election Day
Studies show that campaigns are less negative in cities that use ranked choice voting. Rewarding candidates who seek to earn every voter’s support is a win for the people of Maine and American democracy as a whole. Ranked choice voting is a nonpartisan reform supported by Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We all recognize the need to make our country a better place for future generations. It begins with how we elect and hold our leaders accountable.
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Gorbachev’s Warning about U.S.-Russia Relations
“It is not pro-Putin or pro-Trump but rather sober realism to argue that the U.S. needs to partner with Russia to resolve the Syrian crisis, combat terrorism, tackle nuclear proliferation and global warming. Alarmist and still unsubstantiated allegations about cyberattacks are designed to squelch an urgently needed debate about U.S.-Russian relations — before this dangerous new Cold War deepens.”
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Climate Disinformation: Ken Bone, Clinton, Trump
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Haiti’s Man-made Disasters
“New revelations from leaked emails have revealed the faint line between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department in Haiti. In 2010, the United States intervened in Haiti’s elections, pressuring the government to change the results and eventually leading to the election of Michel Martelly.
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U.S. Strikes on Yemen: Ensuring Proxy Wars and Stalemate?
“In this context, the longer the current Yemen conflict lasts, the longer the arms race will keep going, and the more dependent both Saudi and Iranian clients will be on support from their patrons. Quietly furious over the lack of significant U.S. support, beyond aircraft refueling and some limited logistical assistance, Riyadh feels betrayed by the U.S. after beginning its Yemen intervention.
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Climate: Beyond Trump — and Gore
“There is a stark divide between the politicians who seem incapable of thinking about the climate crisis outside of the boundaries of old assumptions about political feasibility and the activists who are making real sacrifices to treat climate change like the unprecedented crisis it is. Al Gore is campaigning for Hilary Clinton without questioning her extreme support for fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure expansion, while Al Gore’s own daughter, Karenna, is currently facing a potential two and half year jail sentence for protesting fracked gas pipeline construction in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
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Clinton, Saudi Arabia and “Shadow Wars”
He notes that Hillary Clinton wrote to John Podesta, the chairman of her presidential campaign, in emails just released by WikiLeaks, that “Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”
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A Second Snowden?
“The arrest raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, a contractor for the consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton managed to steal highly damaging secret information while working for the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a Booz Allen contractor, took a vast trove of documents from the agency that were later passed to journalists, exposing surveillance programs in the United States and abroad.
Blog
“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