Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features early blues artist Bo Carter. Enjoy!

"If there's anything funnier than watching Lindsey Graham pretending to be heterosexual, it's watching neocons pretending to care about Muslims. These plutocratic hobgoblins have violently ended more Muslim lives than there are stars in the night sky, they're salivating over the prospect of murdering millions more, and we're supposed to believe they care about a few Libyans and Somalis being able to enter the United States?"

-- Caitlyn Johnstone

News and Opinion

Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister.

Two weeks after the 2011 drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” Abdulrahman’s grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post “to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman,” which explained: “Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies His Facebook page shows a typical kid.” ... And a firestorm erupted when former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs offered a sociopathic justification for killing the Colorado-born teenager, apparently blaming him for his own killing by saying he should have “had a more responsible father.”

In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S. barbarism, Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A statement issued by President Trump lamented the death of an American service member and several others who were wounded, but made no mention of any civilian deaths. U.S. military officials initially denied any civilian deaths, and (therefore) the CNN report on the raid said nothing about any civilians being killed.

But reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki.

This is the 8-year-old girl killed in US raid in Yemen, Arabic media reports https://t.co/nPlWh6LqE3
US killed her teen American brother too pic.twitter.com/QP0TsgdIfq

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 29, 2017

As noted by my colleague Jeremy Scahill – who extensively interviewed the grandparents in Yemen for his book and film on Obama’s “Dirty Wars” –  the girl was “was shot in the neck and killed,” bleeding to death over the course of two hours. “Why kill children?,” the grandfather asked. “This is the new (U.S.) administration – it’s very sad, a big crime.”

This is how the New York Times reported the above event:

U.S. Commando Killed in Yemen in Trump’s First Counterterrorism Operation

One American commando was killed and three others were wounded in a fierce firefight early Sunday with Qaeda militants in central Yemen, the military said on Sunday. It was the first counterterrorism operation authorized by President Trump since he took office, and the commando was the first United States service member to die in the yearslong shadow war against Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.

Members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 carried out the surprise dawn attack, and the military said that about 14 Qaeda fighters were killed during a nearly hourlong battle. A Qaeda leader — a brother-in-law of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and top Qaeda leader in Yemen, who died in a drone strike in 2011 — was believed to have been killed.

After initially denying that there were any civilian casualties, American officials said they were assessing reports that women and children had died in the attack.

The military’s Joint Special Operations Command had been planning the mission for months, according to three senior American officials. Obama administration aides had deliberated extensively over the proposed operation, weighing the value of any information that might be recovered against the risk to the Special Operations forces plunging into hostile territory. But administration officials ultimately opted to hand the decision on the mission to their successors. ...

In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump called the raid “successful” and said that it had captured “important intelligence that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world.” He also lamented the loss of the American service member “in our fight against the evil of radical Islamic terrorism.” ...

A Yemeni government official in Bayda Province said the targeted buildings belonged to the Dhahab family, which is known for its ties to Al Qaeda. Two male members of the family have been killed in drone strikes over the past two years.

The Yemeni official said that at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13, had been killed in the raid. Qaeda supporters said that Mr. Awlaki’s young daughter was among the dead and denied that any senior Qaeda leaders had been killed, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist communications.

US - The Trump ban & the first operation in Yemen under his rule

Rachel Maddow Plays Glenn Beck

When Rachel Maddow finished a 26-minute monologue that spanned two segments on her MSNBC program last Thursday night, her grave tones indicated that she thought she’d just delivered a whale of a story. But actually it was more like a minnow — and a specious one at that.

Convoluted and labored, Maddow’s narrative tried to make major hay out of a report from Moscow that a high-ranking Russian intelligence official had been dragged out of a meeting, arrested and charged with treason. Weirdly, Maddow kept presenting that barebones story as verification that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had directly ordered the hacking and release of Democratic campaign emails in order to get Donald Trump elected president.

It was a free-associating performance worthy of Glenn Beck at a whiteboard. Maddow swirled together an array of facts, possible facts, dubious assertions and pure speculation to arrive at conclusions that were based on little more than her zeal to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Even when sober, Joe McCarthy never did it better.

We might dismiss her performance as just another bit of stagecraft on “MSDNC,” but Maddow was in sync with widespread fear-mongering by pundits and Democratic Party loyalists who think they’re picking some low-hanging fruit to throw at Trump. But what they’re doing is poisonous — and extremely dangerous.

The standard memes demanding hostility toward Putin virtually never address some crucial questions. Such as: What are the plausible results of escalating a new Cold War? Is it wise to push the U.S. government into evermore assertive brinkmanship with Russia? Wouldn’t the degree of success in that endeavor increase the degree of danger that the antagonisms will spiral into a military confrontation and, from there, into a nuclear holocaust?

Micah Zenko, who has done considerable excellent reporting on Obama's flying death robots and his Middle East wars, safe-zones, etc., has some pretty good questions about what Trump is up to with his developing policy of "safe zones" in Syria.

Fifteen Questions Trump Should Answer About His “Safe Zones”

Yesterday, the White House released the readout of a call between President Donald Trump and the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. The statement featured this remarkable statement: “The President requested and the King agreed to support safe zones in Syria and Yemen, as well as supporting other ideas to help the many refugees who are displaced by the ongoing conflicts.” ...

If President Trump is now serious about authorizing the U.S. armed forces to implement safe zones (as indicated by his request to the Saudi monarch), he and his senior aides must clarify exactly what he means by this new, expansive, and poorly conceived military mission.

[See article at link for questions. - js]

Trump gives generals 30 days to formulate new anti-ISIS strategy

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Saturday giving the US military 30 days to devise a plan to "defeat" the Islamic State group.

The plan makes good on a key campaign pledge of Trump, who mocked and criticized the slow pace of his predecessor Barack Obama's progress in the fight against the extremist fighters.

The text, which calls for a "comprehensive strategy and plans for the defeat of ISIS," is seen as meaning more US forces and military hardware moving into Iraq and Syria.

Pentagon chief James Mattis is also tasked with recommending changes to US rules of engagement and policy restrictions to eliminate those that "exceed the requirements of international law regarding the use of force against ISIS" under the order, which also seeks to cut the group's financial support.

Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone call to establish "real coordination" against the Islamic State group in Syria, according to the Kremlin.

Greek and Turkish warships in standoff in Aegean sea

Greek and Turkish warships were involved Sunday in a brief faceoff near a group of disputed Greek islets in the Aegean, coinciding with renewed tensions between Athens and Ankara.

The Greek defence ministry said a Turkish navy missile boat, “along with two special forces rafts”, entered Greek territorial waters near the Imia islets.

Located just off the Turkish coast and claimed by Ankara, the uninhabited rocky islets are a historic flashpoint in a long-running demarcation dispute.

Greek coastguard vessels and a navy gunboat shadowed the Turkish group, notifying them of the violation, and the Turks left the area after about seven minutes, the defence ministry said. ...

Sunday’s incident comes amid fresh tension between the two countries, after the Greek supreme court on Thursday blocked the extradition of eight former army officers who had fled to Greece after the failed 15 July coup. Turkey criticised the ruling as “political” and threatened to scrap a “readmission agreement” under which Turkey has been taking in migrants landing illegally in Greece.

Edward Snowden: 'National Security' Really Means Protecting the Status Quo

Trump downgrades the role of military advisers on his National Security Council in favor of Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon will assume a seat on the National Security Council after an executive order signed by Donald Trump on Saturday. The order came as part of an effort to reshuffle and restructure the council, which usually is made up of members of the president’s Cabinet and the military, among others.

The order weakened the roles played by the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, removing them as permanent members of the council’s principals committee. An administration official clarified on Sunday that the Joint Chiefs were still invited to attend all council meetings.

Bannon is the former executive chairman of the right-wing Breitbart News and the president’s chief strategist. He has played a major role in the week-old Trump administration, helping the president to draft a flurry of executive orders including major changes in immigration policy. Now he will be part of the core group, led by retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, tasked with advising Trump on national security and foreign affairs.

The Muslim ban has brought the US close to constitutional crisis

Donald Trump’s White House is plunging the United States into a full-blown constitutional crisis a little more than a week into his administration. One of the prime culprits seems to be his controversial chief strategist: Steve Bannon.

Massive protests sprouted up around the country on Saturday following Trump’s unconstitutional executive order banning all refugees and all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries – including those with valid visas. But somewhat lost in that news was Bannon’s central role in the controversy and move to consolidate even more power within the government.

On Saturday, Trump installed him on the influential National Security Council (NSC) as part of a radical re-shuffling of the influential White House board of advisers that usually is composed of intelligence and military officials who provide the White House with guidance.

Nat Sec is such an emergency you have to ban Muslims. But also let's replace chairman of joint chiefs with some guy with a garbage website

— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) January 29, 2017

Meanwhile, chaos reigned on Saturday as dozens of immigrants were detained after the executive order was put into force immediately. As CNN reported Saturday night, the mayhem seems to be Bannon’s doing.

DHS lawyers reportedly determined that [the order] did not apply to green card holders and permanent residents, but the White House – led by Steve Bannon – overruled that objection and kept the restrictions on green card holders in place, allowing exemptions on a case by case basis.

Thankfully, several judges put an immediate stay on deporting legitimate green card holders stuck in airports on Saturday night and ordered those still detained get access to lawyers. But the situation got even more bizarre and Orwellian on Sunday: CBP officials at some airports – in direct violation of the court orders – were reportedly still refusing lawyer access and apparently not responding to congressional representatives who were trying to figure out what was going on.

"Let Them In": Thousands Descend on Nation's Airports to Protest Trump's Refugee & Muslim Ban

Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Culmination of War on Terror Mentality but Still Uniquely Shameful

It is not difficult for any decent human being to immediately apprehend why and how Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim countries is inhumane, bigoted, and shameful. ...

The sole ostensible rationale for this ban — it is necessary to keep out Muslim extremists — collapses upon the most minimal scrutiny. The countries that have produced and supported the greatest number of anti-U.S. terrorists — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, UAE — are excluded from the ban list because the tyrannical regimes that run those countries are close U.S. allies. Conversely, the countries that are included — Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen — have produced virtually no such terrorists; as the Cato Institute documented on Friday night: “Foreigners from those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015.” Indeed, as of a 2015 study by the New America research center, deaths caused by terrorism from right-wing nationalists since 9/11 have significantly exceeded those from Muslim extremists. ...

Making this worse still is the central role the U.S. government played in the horrors from which many of these now-banned people are fleeing. The suggestion that Trump protected the countries with which he does business is preposterous. The reality is that his highly selective list reflects longstanding U.S. policy: Indeed, Obama restricted visa rights for these same seven countries, and the regimes in Riyadh and Cairo have received special U.S. protection for decades, long before Trump. ...

It is critical to recognize and fight against the unique elements of Trump’s extremism, but also to acknowledge that a substantial portion of it has roots in political and cultural developments that long precede him. Immigration horror stories — including families being torn apart — are nothing new. As ABC News noted last August, “The Obama administration has deported more people than any other president’s administration in history. In fact, they have deported more than the sum of all the presidents of the 20th century.” ...

There are factions on both the center-left and right that are primarily devoted to demonizing Muslims and Islam. A government can get away with bombing, invading, and droning the same group of people for more than 15 years only by constantly demonizing and dehumanizing that group and maintaining high fear levels, which is exactly what the U.S. has done under two successive administrations.

Thus did we witness the spectacle last week of many acting as though Trump’s plans for CIA black sites, torture, and rendition were shocking Trumpian aberrations even though many of those denouncing the plans were the ones who advocated or implemented those policies in the first place or protected those who did from criminal prosecution. Denouncing and opposing Trump should not serve to obscure sins of the recent past or whitewash the seeds planted before him that have allowed him to sprout. Opposing Trump’s assault on basic liberties requires a clear understanding of the framework that gave rise to it.

Trump Lets Saudis Off His ‘Muslim Ban’

President Trump’s ban against letting people from seven mostly Muslim countries enter the United States looks to many like a thinly concealed bias against a religion, but it also is a troubling sign that Trump doesn’t have the nerve to challenge the false terrorism narrative demanded by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Israeli-Saudi narrative, which is repeated endlessly inside Official Washington, is that Iran is the principal sponsor of terrorism when that dubious honor clearly falls to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Sunni-led Muslim states, including Pakistan, nations that did not make Trump’s list.

The evidence of who is funding and supporting most of the world’s terrorism is overwhelming. All major terrorist groups that have bedeviled the United States and the West over the past couple of decades – from Al Qaeda to the Taliban to Islamic State – can trace their roots back to Sunni-led countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar. ...

Privately, this reality has been recognized by senior U.S. officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. But that knowledge has failed to change U.S. policy, which caters to the oil-rich Saudis and the politically powerful Israelis.

So, what Trump’s initial foray into the complex issue of terrorism has revealed is that he is unwilling to take on the real nexus of terrorism, just as Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama shied away from a clash with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms.

In the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency, the regional interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia have continued to dictate how Official Washington addresses terrorism.

Trump’s seven-nation list includes Iran, Syria and Sudan as state sponsors of terrorism and Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya as countries where there has been terrorist activity. But the governments of Iran and Syria arguably have become two of the leading fighters against the terrorist groups of most concern to the U.S. and European populations.

Iran is aiding both Syria and Iraq in their conflicts with Al Qaeda and Islamic State. Inside Syria, the Syrian army has borne the brunt of that fighting against terror groups funded and armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and – yes – at least indirectly, the United States. Yet while none of the Al Qaeda/Islamic State benefactors made Trump’s list, Iran and Syria did. ...

Trump’s ban is really a twisted case of “political correctness” purporting to reject “political correctness.” While Trump claims to recognize that it is dangerously naïve to let in Muslims when Islamic terrorism has remained a threat to Americans, Trump has left off his list the most likely sources of terrorists because – to do otherwise – would have negative political consequences in Official Washington.

ACLU: We Have Won the First Victory to Overturn Unconstitutional Muslim Ban, But Fight Continues

Judge Halts Deportations After Protesters Swarm Airports Over Trump’s Order Barring Muslims

A federal judge in New York issued a nationwide temporary injunction, halting the implementation of part of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration on Saturday night, blocking the deportation of travelers with valid visas detained at airports in the past 24 hours.

Judge Ann Donnelly, a United States District Court Judge in Brooklyn, issued the ruling at an emergency hearing on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups on Saturday, as Trump’s executive order temporarily banning citizens of seven nations with Muslim majorities from entering the U.S. took immediate effect.

The judge ruled that the government must immediately stop deporting travelers from those nations, including refugees who already went through a rigorous vetting process, and provide a complete list of all those detained, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project Lee Gelernt told reporters in Brooklyn. ...

Robert Howse, professor at New York University Law School, called the ruling “a pretty sweeping order,” but, he noted, it does not say that people in the U.S. have to be released from airport detention. “I think that’s a problem,” he said.

Federal judge in LA has issued order allowing Iranian man deported from LAX yesterday to be admitted to US pic.twitter.com/yPth0xEQpv

— Matt Hamilton (@MattHjourno) January 29, 2017

Trump’s refugee ban is causing chaos, protests, and detentions at airports

Asylum-seekers and ordinary travelers from around the world — including dual citizens and U.S. green card holders — faced detention and were denied entry to the United States on Saturday, as security officials began to implement President Trump’s executive order temporarily barring all refugees and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

In response, protests broke out at airports in several U.S. cities, continuing days of pro-immigrant and pro-refugee actions under the banner #nobannowall, and the ACLU sued the government in an effort to block the order. At J.F.K. airport in New York City, a crowd of protesters continued to grow and reached more than a thousand people by the early evening. Security corralled the group outside Terminal 4 and locked down the building.

It was unclear how many people had been stopped and denied entry or detained around the country. A White House official said the administration was still working to resolve questions about refugees who had already been approved for asylum and were in transit to the U.S. when the order was signed. ...

In an interview with Christian Broadcast Network Friday, Trump confirmed that Christians will be given priority over other refugees. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, who came out in support of the order on Friday, maintained the ban did not amount to a religious test. ... Trump was asked again on Saturday whether the order amounted to a Muslim ban. He denied it was and said the measure was “working out very nicely. You can see it at the airports.”

Iran and Iraq Take Steps to Bar Americans in Response to Trump's Muslim Ban

Amid international outcry over U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order barring citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, at least two of those nations are taking steps to ban U.S. citizens from their borders.

Members of the Iraqi parliament voted Monday in favor of a resolution calling on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to "respond in kind to the American decision in the event that the American side does not to withdraw its decision," a parliamentary official told Agence France Presse.

While questions remain about whether that ban will extend to the U.S. military or aid organizations, Iraqi lawmakers Kamil al-Ghrairi and Mohammed Saadoun told the Associated Press that "the decision is binding for the government," the news outlet explained.

"Both say the decision was passed by a majority votes in favor but couldn't offer specific numbers," AP reported Monday. "No further details were available on the wording of the parliament decision. It was also not immediately clear who the ban will apply to—American military personnel, non-government and aid workers, oil companies and other Americans doing business in Iraq." ...

Iran has also responded in kind. On Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement blasting the temporary ban as an "imprudent decision" that will only "further promote the campaign of hatred, violence, and extremism." ...

Meanwhile, the Iranian English language newspaper Financial Tribune reported Monday that the republic is "going to stop using the U.S. dollar as its currency of choice in its financial and foreign exchange reports from the new fiscal year that begins in March," per an order from the governor of the Central Bank of Iran.

Sudanese Stanford Ph.D. Student Speaks Out After Being Detained at JFK Under Trump Muslim Ban

Border agents defy courts on Trump travel ban, congressmen and lawyers say

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents defied the orders of federal judges regarding Donald Trump’s travel bans on Sunday, according to members of Congress and attorneys who rallied protests around the country in support of detained refugees and travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

On Sunday afternoon, four Democratic members of the House of Representatives arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia on word that people had been detained and denied access to lawyers.

“We have a constitutional crisis today,” representative Don Beyer wrote on Twitter. “Four members of Congress asked CBP officials to enforce a federal court order and were turned away.”

Representative Jamie Raskin, also at the airport, tweeted that the federal agency had given “no answers yet” about whether agents were ignoring the courts. Raskin joined several other attorneys there, including Damon Silvers, special counsel at AFL-CIO, one of the groups trying to help visa holders.

“As far as I know no attorney has been allowed to see any arriving passenger subject to Trumps exec order at Dulles today,” Silvers tweeted on Sunday evening. “CBP appears to be saying people in their custody not ‘detained’ technically & Dulles international arrivals areas not in the United States.”

“Rogue customs and Border Patrol agents continue to try to get people on to planes,” Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told reporters on Sunday morning at JFK airport in New York. “A lot of people have been handcuffed, a lot of people who don’t speak English are being coerced into taking involuntary departures.”

Trump defends travel ban and lashes out at GOP critics McCain and Graham

Donald Trump and his advisers have stood firm after a weekend of outrage over his vague and chaotically enforced ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

On Sunday afternoon, while attorneys argued with customs and border officials over the fate of people still detained at airports around the country, the US president released a statement that insisted on the legality – and non-religious premise – of his orders to temporarily halt the admission of refugees and ban some travel.

“To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” Trump said. ...
In his statement on Sunday, the president compared his order to a 2011 decision by Barack Obama to delay visas for Iraqis, and said Obama’s White House had chosen the seven countries singled out in his order. ...

Earlier on Sunday, two prominent Republican senators broke with the president over his order, warning that it betrayed American values by turning away refugees and green-card holders.

“Such a hasty process risks harmful results,” John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement. “We fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.”

In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, McCain said that the order “in some areas will give Isis some more propaganda”.

The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

...Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

World leaders urge Trump to rethink his “unfair” ban on refugees

World leaders, activists and rights groups were quick to condemn President Trump’s executive order prohibiting citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia — from entering the U.S.

On Saturday, Germany’s Angela Merkel used part of her first phone call with President Trump to discuss the Geneva refugee convention rules. Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German chancellor regretted Trump’s decision and was convinced that the “battle against terrorism does not justify a general suspicion against people of a certain origin or a certain religion.”

French President François Hollande was less reserved and warned Trump that “In an unstable and uncertain world, turning inward would be a dead-end.”

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the ban by reiterating his country’s policy of welcoming all refugees regardless of their faith.

Forget protest. Trump's actions warrant a general national strike

On the morning after Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban went into effect – preventing all Syrians from entering the US, halting refugee admissions for 120 days and banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days – I received an affecting email featuring the photographs and names of Jewish men, women and children who died in Nazi concentration camps because “the US turned me away at the border in 1939”.

Now, America is repeating its mistakes of the past. But our fellow citizens did not stand by idly as this happened. On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters had gathered outside Terminal Four at John F Kennedy international airport, and similar demonstrations were in progress at airports across the country.

These protests succeeded in several significant ways. Two Iraqi men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh (a former interpreter for the US military) and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi were released, through the valiant efforts of ACLU lawyers. Ann Donnelly, a federal judge in Brooklyn, as well as federal judges in Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington, ruled that those still being held in detention could not be sent back to their home countries. ...

One reason that Saturday’s protests were so effective was that, while peaceful, they were disruptive. Terminal Four was closed, incoming flights were delayed. ... And economic boycotts – another sort of trouble and inconvenience – have proved remarkably successful in persuading companies to cease supporting repressive governments. ... So what can we do to protest our current government’s callousness about our environment and our health, its rampant greed, its disrespect for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I believe that what we need is a nonviolent national general strike of the kind that has been more common in Europe than here. Let’s designate a day on which no one (that is, anyone who can do so without being fired) goes to work, a day when no one shops or spends money, a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt, a day when we make it clear: how many of us there are, how strong and committed we are, how much we can accomplish.

Meanwhile, in Obamacare: Republican disarray follows Trump’s first order

Donald Trump has been in office for just a week, but Republican attempts to rip up and reassemble the American healthcare system have subsided into disagreement, backtracking and public outrage.

At a GOP retreat in Philadelphia this week, audio of a closed-door policy session captured disagreement among rank-and-file members over how to reform the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known to many as Obamacare. Some worried that the party was about to “pull the rug out” from people, potentially leaving millions without any insurance at all. ...

On his arrival in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order to begin the unraveling of the ACA, instructing federal agencies to take any measures available to “ease the burdens of Obamacare”. Developments since highlight the political minefield Republicans have created for themselves, particularly after Trump, consistently inconsistent, promised both “insurance for everyone” and ACA repeal.

The leaked recording from Philadelphia revealed how some party members worried about political fallout, according to the Washington Post.

“We’re telling those people that we’re not going to pull the rug out from under them,” said Tom MacArthur of New Jersey. “And if we do this too fast, we are in fact going to pull the rug out from under them.”

Federal Reserve Bankers Mocked Unemployed Americans Behind Closed Doors

IN 2011, unemployment was at a near crisis level. The jobless rate was stuck around 9 percent nationally, an unusually high number due to the continuing effects of the financial crash. ...

The Federal Reserve’s mandate is to promote “maximum employment,” which essentially means: print enough money so that everyone who wants one has a job. Yet according to transcripts released this month after the traditional five-year waiting period, Federal Reserve officials in November 2011 were debating whether unemployment was caused by bad work ethics and drug use – rather than by the greatest financial crisis in 80 years. This debate then factored into the argument over setting monetary policy.

“I frequently hear of jobs going unfilled because a large number of applicants have difficulty passing basic requirements like drug tests or simply demonstrating the requisite work ethic,” said Dennis Lockhart, a former Citibank executive who ran the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. “One contact in the staffing industry told us that during their pretesting process, a majority—actually, 60 percent of applicants—failed to answer ‘0’ to the question of how many days a week it’s acceptable to miss work.”

The room of central bankers then broke into laughter.

Trump Shut Down White House Comment Line, So This Tool Lets You Call One of His Businesses to Complain

The digital team behind Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential primary run, Revolution Messaging, has launched a creative way for people to lodge complaints against the right-wing Trump administration while calling attention to the president's continued refusal to fully divest from his business empire.

Visitors to WhiteHouseInc.org are asked for their phone number and then connected with a Trump property. "You may be asked to make a reservation or a tee-time, but tell management that until Trump steps away from his businesses for real, their property is no different from the Oval Office and you want to talk about the issues that matter most," the website reads. 

It continues:

By not divesting himself from his businesses, he's actually creating satellite White Houses all over the world. That means we have dozens of phone numbers we can use to reach the president and discuss the issues that matter most.

Foreign leaders and Wall Street executives know that if they want to reach out to our President, they can just connect with his business associates. Now the American people have a direct line to Trump too.

The group says it has thus far connected more than 10,000 calls.

Donald Trump Puts Coal Lobbyist in Charge of Prosecuting Environmental Crimes

A lobbyist for a utility company that heavily relies on coal-fueled power plants and has clashed with regulators is the new acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice division that oversees environmental crimes.

The appointment of Jeffery H. Wood, who up until last week was a lobbyist for Southern Company, was announced only with a modest notice posted on January 23 on the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s website.

It’s the latest personnel move that signals the coal industry’s return to power in the Beltway.

President Trump has yet to nominate anyone to hold the assistant attorney general job on a permanent basis, but for the time being Wood will be overseeing the division that enforces civil and criminal environmental laws to reduce pollutants discharged into the air, water and land, and brings cases to enable the clean-up of contaminated waste sites.

Anti-pipeline activists and film-makers face prison, raising fears for free press

Climate change activists and film-makers who documented their anti-pipeline demonstrations are facing criminal charges and hefty prison sentences, with cases across the US that have raised concerns about press intimidation and the targeting of peaceful protesters.

The slew of upcoming trials, beginning on Monday in Washington state, stem from a series of coordinated actions on 11 October 2016 aimed at shutting down oil sands pipelines. Nine criminal cases include several filed against film-makers and live-streamers who recorded protesters closing the emergency valves on pipelines but did not directly participate in the disruptions.

“These activists are responding to a climate emergency,” said Steve Liptay, a film-maker facing trespassing and aiding and abetting charges in Minnesota, where he documented protesters shutting down two Enbridge pipelines. “As media, we have to tell their stories.” ...

The October #ShutItDown protests were organized in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s fight against the Dakota Access pipeline. Those demonstrations have also led to serious criminal charges, including a case against radio host Amy Goodman, which a judge eventually rejected.

Two well-known documentary film-makers, who had faced decades in prison for filming the 11 October actions, have since had charges suspended or dismissed. But several activists who live-streamed and filmed the actions, including Liptay, are now preparing for trials alongside five demonstrators who were directly responsible for shutting down pipeline valves. Charges include mischief, criminal damage, trespassing and conspiracy.

Facing Decades in Prison, Climate Activist Says We Have 'No Choice But Direct Action'

Amid a growing state-level crackdown on civil disobedience, climate activist Ken Ward appeared at the Skagit County Superior Courthouse in Washington state on Monday resolute in the face of a potential 30-year sentence because, he says, Americans now have no option but to take radical action to defend our planet.

Ward is one of five activists facing trial for taking part in a coordinated direct action last October, which shut down all the Canada-U.S. tar sands pipelines in solidarity with the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance. Ward was arrested for closing a safety valve on Kinder-Morgan's TransMountain Pipeline in Anacortes, Washington, along with documentarians Lindsay Grizzel and Carl David.

As the first "valve turner," as they call themselves, to appear in court, Ward's trial has "far-reaching implications for the widening pipeline protest movement and the intensifying crackdown against it," according to the Climate Disobedience Center, which is among the organizations that is arguing on the activists' behalf.

The groups, which also include the Climate Defense Project and the Civil Liberties Defense Center, had prepared a necessity defense for the trial, which argues that an action was done in the public interest, on behalf of the planet.

Ward had claimed a similar defense after he and another activist in 2013 were charged with conspiracy and disturbing the peace for blocking a coal freighter with a lobster boat. In that landmark case, the Massachusetts district attorney dropped the charges after agreeing with the activists.

But, in this case, the judge "has barred Ward's lawyers from formally mounting a 'necessity' defense or arguing that his actions were justified in light of a looming environmental crisis," according to Reuters. "Ward, however, said he would try to make that case from the witness stand."

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