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War Powers Resolution ‘Riddled With Holes’

January 12, 2020 the Institute for Public Accuracy. , ,
Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He said today regarding moves in Congress on Iran: “The Kaine resolution and the Slotkin resolution are riddled with so many holes that Trump/Pompeo et al. will drive a truck through them. The legislation proposed by Ro Khanna and Sanders has some problematic rhetoric, which should be dropped, but it is not in the operative provisions and it is consistent with the War Powers Resolution and the War Powers Clause of the Constitution and the United Nations Charter and would make a real difference.” Boyle noted: “Slotkin’s — who notably came out of the CIA — resolution talks of the president being free to act in case of ‘an imminent armed attack.’ This is not consistent with the War Powers Resolution and will likely assist Trump committing aggression.

Iran Warned US Of Missile Attack, Troops Had Three Hours To Evacuate

January 12, 2020 Emily Crane, Daily Mail. , , ,
The United States had three hours warning of the missile strikes after Iran tipped them off via a European embassy and ensured their plans of an attack were easily detectable, U.S. officials claim.  The Iranians prepared for the missile strikes on two Iraqi airbases housing American troops by intentionally making sure U.S. intelligence could detect the plans via satellites and eavesdropping, the officials told TIME magazine. Intelligence managed to pick up the threat of strikes about three hours before they actually took place, according to the U.S. officials. One official said the hours-long warning enabled a U.S. military officer to visit one of the bases in Iraq and warn them of when and where the missiles were expected to strike. The revelations are in stark contrast to remarks made by the top U.S. military officer on Wednesday just hours after President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested Iran was 'standing down'. 

The Endless War With Iran

January 12, 2020 John Feffer, Foreign Policy In Focus. , , ,
The United States has been in a 40-year cold war with Iran. Just like the cold war with the Soviet Union, the conflict between Washington and Tehran has been fought largely through proxies: in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. Iranian-aligned organizations like Hezbollah have attacked U.S. targets, such as the 1984 embassy bombing in Beirut. U.S. allies, like Israel, have assassinated Iranian scientists. There have been also been non-kinetic attacks, like when the United States and Israel teamed up to destroy Iran’s nuclear centrifuges with the Stuxnet malware. Occasional détentes have interrupted the hostilities, most recently the nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration, but they have been brief.

A New Middle East ‘Made In Iran’ Is About To Be Born

January 12, 2020 Elijah J. Magnier. , , , ,
It would be inaccurate to say the US will leave the Middle East. However, it is certain that the assassination of one single man – the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – is diminishing US influence significantly. This could not have happened without the (in) direct help of US President Donald Trump. Trump is doing everything possible to undermine and degrade US hegemony in the world. He doesn’t need any help in this endeavour, but his advisors and cabinet members share his talent for mismanaging foreign policy and national security affairs. With this bad advice US relations around the world, and particularly in the Middle East, have been run as if by a businessman, used to negotiating and intimidating with little subtlety and altogether lacking diplomatic skills.

Trump Moves To Undermine A Bedrock Environmental Law

January 12, 2020 Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News. , , ,
President Donald Trump on Thursday proposed sharply limiting environmental reviews of pipelines and other major federally permitted infrastructure projects, a move that would sweep away a hurdle slowing his agenda for unfettered fossil fuel development. The new guidance would curb federal agencies from considering climate impacts by specifying that agencies are only required to analyze impacts that are immediate, local and direct. The administration's proposed rule, which will be open for public comment before being finalized, also would relieve agencies of any duty to consider cumulative environmental impacts. "Many of America's most critical infrastructure projects have been tied up and bogged down by an outrageously burdensome federal approval process," Trump said in an address from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Ajamu Baraka: Countering The Amateurism Of US Foreign Policy

January 10, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The morning after Trump's assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes in Iraq, Clearing the FOG co-hosts spoke with Ajamu Baraka, the national coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace about how people should understand what happened in the larger context of US imperialism and what the action means for the broader peace movement. Baraka also talks about the almost three-year-old Black Alliance for Peace and its current focus on the law enforcement surge domestically in seven US cities, four of which are predominantly black, known as Operation Relentless Pursuit. For the full program, which includes a discussion of the most recent antics by Juan Guaido in Venezuela and what has been learned about the situation in Iran and Iraq, click here to listen to or read the transcript of the show.

Tell Congress: No War On Iran

January 5, 2020 Popular Resistance. , , ,
The Trump Administration crossed a dangerous line when it assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy chief of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Unit, in Iraq on Friday. This action violates international law, the principles of engagement and the sovereignty of Iraq. There was no justification for the murders, although the Trump administration and its media mouthpieces are misleading the public into believing there were. In response to these actions, the Iraqi Parliament voted to expel the United States from Iraq and Iran withdrew from the nuclear agreement and vowed to retaliate. This situation could escalate quickly into a devastating regional and even global conflict. 

The People Of The United States Say No War On Iran

January 4, 2020 Popular Resistance. , , ,
On Saturday, January 4, protests against a US war on Iran took place in more than 80 cities in 38 states across the country. Organized by the ANSWER Coalition, CODEPINK and Popular Resistance, the number of protests rose quickly after President Trump's murder of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force along with Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, a leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units on Thursday. The two were killed by US forces in Iraq by a drone close to a civilian airport in Baghdad. The United States has been conducting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran but these assassinations are a new level of recklessness and lawlessness by the United States. They have raised concerns by world leaders.

How Trump Got Himself Into A World Of Trouble In Iraq

January 3, 2020 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Independent Media Institute. , , ,
It’s a new year, and the U.S. has found a new enemy—an Iraqi militia called Kata’ib Hezbollah. How tragically predictable was that? So who or what is Kata’ib Hezbollah? Why are U.S. forces attacking it? And where will this lead? Kata’ib Hezbollah is one of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that were recruited to fight the Islamic State after the Iraqi armed forces collapsed and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to IS in June 2014. The first six PMUs were formed by five Shiite militias that all received support from Iran, plus Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi nationalist Peace Company, the reincarnation of his anti-occupation Mahdi Army militia, which he had previously disarmed in 2008 under an agreement with the Iraqi government. Kata’ib Hezbollah was one of those five original Shiite militias, and it existed long before the fight against IS. It was a small Shiite group founded before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and was part of the Iraqi Resistance throughout the U.S. occupation.

We’re Headed For An Uprising, But Are We Ready For It?

December 30, 2019 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
As 2019 comes to a close and we enter a new decade, we look back at the major events and issues that shaped the year with Chris Hedges. We discuss the rise of the Right, in part due to the weaknesses of the Left, what the Sanders campaign means for activism and achieving meaningful social change and whether or not the United States is ready for a massive uprising against neo-liberalism, as is happening around the world. The next decade will be a time when major crises such as the climate, wealth inequality and militarism are devastating. At some point, a spark will be lit in the US, but in the current environment, that is likely to result in greater movement to the right unless we prepare now to build power on the left.

The Northwest Turns Up The Heat On ICE

December 30, 2019 Richard Read, LA Times. , , ,
Yakima, Wash. — A man in handcuffs locked to a belt chain trudged up metal stairs, eyes fixed on the door of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter plane bound for El Paso. He turned and brightened when gusts carried the shrill tone of a whistle blown by one of a dozen activists 50 yards away. “No estas solo!” — You are not alone! — the activists yelled across the tarmac from behind chain-link and barbed-wire fencing. Awkwardly, the man with a goatee and glasses — one of 51 unidentified detainees dispatched on a recent Tuesday by ICE — twisted his right wrist to wave. Much of the focus on President Trump’s immigration crackdown has been at the U.S.-Mexico border, which has seen a surge of Central American asylum seekers hoping to cross into the United States.

Impeachment Theater While The Planet Burns

December 29, 2019 Rob Urie, Counterpunch. , , ,
With the gravitas of a wardrobe malfunction at a Super Bowl halftime show, Donald Trump was impeached. This, by the same Democratic Party functionaries who went on to pass his $734 billion military budget and his reworked not-NAFTA trade agreement. To the perpetual ‘if,’ if Mr. Trump isn’t to be trusted with the affairs of state, the alleged reason he was impeached, why enhance his power over the affairs of state through increasing the military budget? The same is true with re-upping the Patriot Act. And backing his coup in Bolivia. And his attempted coup in Venezuela. Clearer evidence of the political theater character of impeachment would be hard to find. Left apparently unconsidered in the halls of power is how socially divisive this theater is becoming.

Xi Warns Trump Against US Meddling In China’s Affairs

December 22, 2019 RT. , , ,
Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned his US counterpart Donald Trump against meddling into Beijing’s internal affairs, saying that Washington’s actions were harming “mutual trust” and cooperation, such as they are. The two leaders held phone talks on Friday, and provided markedly different accounts of them. Trump used Twitter, his medium of choice for the affairs of state, to brag about having a “very good talk” with Xi about their “giant Trade Deal” in the making. Xi was more traditional about it, releasing a statement through the state news agency Xinhua. His readout, however, focused on a less pleasant part of the discussion, in which he told Trump about his concerns with US behavior and repeated interference into the internal affairs of China which Beijing found harmful.

Shifting The Balance Of Forces Through Sanctions Against Trump And US Carbon Capital

November 5, 2019 Patrick Bond, Climate Futures: Reimagining Global Climate Justice. , , ,
Future climate scenarios are not only in the hands of state and corporate leaders; they depend upon the extent to which climate movement activists’ current political philosophies, analyses, strategies, tactics, and alliances either weaken or strengthen the prevailing balance of forces. The most important barrier to reducing climate change remains Washington’s philosophy, crudely expressed in 1992 when President George H. W. Bush told the Rio Earth Summit, “The American way of life is not up for negotiations” (Deen 2012). In the same spirit, the Donald Trump administration removed the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 on the grounds that compliance will be too expensive for the world’s largest economy (Trump 2017).

Understanding Trump’s ‘Withdrawal’ From Syria And Advocating For Peace In The Middle East

October 21, 2019 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
President Trump recently announced he was withdrawing US troops from northeastern Syria where they had fought and imprisoned ISIS members with the Kurds. This move gave the green light for Turkey to invade and try to push the Kurds out ostensibly to replace them with the three million Syrian refugees from the western region currently living in Turkey. Democrats and Republicans are criticizing Trump for withdrawing and abandoning the Kurds. This has created a dilemma for peace activists - should the troops stay or go? We speak with Ajamu Baraka of Black Alliance for Peace who has spent time in the Middle East, most recently in Syria, to clarify what is going on and how best to advocate for peace in the region.
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