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"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."
-- George Orwell

News and Opinion

'War Hawks Must be Celebrating': Trump's Defense Secretary Claims US Ready to Strike Iranian-Backed Militias in Iraq

Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in Thursday announced that "the game has changed" for how President Donald Trump's administration deals with Iran, indicating a willingness to use pre-emptive strikes against militias tied to the Persian Gulf state—comments that provoked immediate pushback from progressives and anti-war advocatres.

"We're back to preemptive wars now!" tweeted Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft vice president Trita Parsi. "Dick Cheney might as well be president."

Ha! We're back to preemptive wars now! Dick Cheney might as well be president.
And Politico has gone from calling them pro-Iranian group to Iranian group??
The war hawks must be celebrating

Defense secretary warns of preemptive strikes on Iranian group https://t.co/BWk7l26nCV

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) January 2, 2020

According to Politico, Esper made the comments as a warning against the militant group Kataib Hezbollah, which he accused of attacking the 104-acre U.S. embassy in Iraq on Tuesday.

"There are some indications out there that they may be planning additional attacks," Esper told Politico. "If we get word of attacks, we will take preemptive action as well to protect American forces, protect American lives. The game has changed."

Journalist Walker Bragman posited a different theory on the motivation for the attack, one based on the past two decades of U.S. involvement in the region.

"Protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, demanding a withdraw of forces after 17 YEARS of occupation during which time, the U.S.-backed government has failed to provide for the basic needs of its people," said Bragman. "But yeah, Iran's totally to blame for it..."

Could a “New Civil War” Erupt in Iraq as U.S. and Iran Fight for Influence in the Country?

US troops deployed to Middle East after Baghdad embassy siege

Iranian-backed militants have ended a day-long siege of the American embassy in Baghdad following an order from their militia organisation, but the struggle between the US and Iran for influence in Iraq looked set to intensify further in 2020. The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, announced that 750 airborne troops would be deployed to the region immediately, with more to follow in the next few days. Up to 3,000 soldiers are reportedly being prepared to move out to the Middle East, adding to the 14,000 sent there since May in an effort to counter Iran.

“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against US personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today,” Esper said in a written statement. “The United States will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world.” ... Esper was vague on where they would be going, but a US official familiar with the decision said their initial destination was Kuwait.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group for disparate Shia militias operating in Iraq, issued a statement on Wednesday calling for the withdrawal of the several hundred militiamen and supporters who had mobbed the embassy on Tuesday. Many of them camped around the heavily fortified building overnight. ... The militants left Baghdad’s diplomatic enclave waving militia banners and shouting victory slogans. Some vowed to return with weapons to remove the US presence from Iraq entirely. ...

Ranj Alaaldin, the director of the proxy wars initiative at the Brookings Institution in Doha and author of a forthcoming book on Shia militias, said: “Iran knows what it wants in Iraq and how to get it. It has a strategic and long-term and consistent policy in Iraq that is underpinned by a complex web of formidable interpersonal and inter-organisational links that permeate multiple sectors and theatres – the armed forces, ministries, religious networks and the economy.

“The US has the military superiority but hasn’t leveraged this with a political strategy ever since Obama withdrew US forces in 2011 and has alienated its allies in recent years. The US was never in a position to shape the politics in the aftermath of its strike and it probably never wanted to anyway given its limitations. The Iranians and their proxies will milk this as much as they can.”

Death Toll Rises in India as Protests Against Modi Government’s Citizenship Law Intensify

European Gas Prices Fall as Ukraine, Russia Deal Averts Crisis

European gas and power prices extended declines after a last-gasp accord between Russia and Ukraine on natural gas flows averted a winter supply crisis.

The two former Soviet allies late on Monday signed all agreements needed for flows to Gazprom PJSC’s main markets in the west to continue for the next five years. Steady shipments from Europe’s dominant supplier, coupled with record amounts of liquefied natural gas this year, mean that a glut of the fuel won’t end anytime soon. ...

Despite tense political relations, Ukraine remains the main export route for Russia’s gas to Europe. The nation will earn at least $7 billion from the transit deal in the next five years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a statement.

The deal is a “good and important signal” for European supply security, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday. ... Russia has been the EU’s biggest, and often cheapest, energy supplier with Gazprom providing about 37% of region’s fuel last year.

Gazprom is seeking to reduce its reliance on Ukraine’s Soviet-era pipeline network to ship its gas and is building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany. Work on that link, which had been planned to be completed this year, halted this month because of U.S. sanctions on the company laying it.

Eastern European nations have been strongly opposed to Nord Stream 2 as it could allow Gazprom to cut off their supply while continuing to supply its main markets in western Europe.

Turkish parliament approves sending troops to Libya

Mexico's Amlo says El Chapo 'had the same power' as past presidents

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, closed out 2019 with a parting shot at his predecessors, saying the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera had once wielded the same power as the country’s president.

In a video message from the southern city of Palenque on Wednesday, López Obrador recounted his administration’s successes in its first year and highlighted its challenges foremost surging violence.

He claimed without offering any evidence that he had already done away with the high-level corruption that was rampant in previous governments, but said it was crucial to draw a bright line between criminal elements and authorities so that the two sides do not mingle as they had in the past.

“There was a time when Guzmán had the same power or had the influence that the then president had ... because there had been a conspiracy and that made it difficult to punish those who committed crimes. That has already become history, gone to the garbage dump of history,” López Obrador said.

It appeared to be a reference to the indictment and arrest last month of Mexico’s former public safety secretary Genaro García Luna. García Luna was public safety secretary in Felipe Calderon’s Cabinet from 2006 to 2012. Before joining Calderon’s government, García Luna led Mexicos equivalent of the FBI, the Federal Investigative Agency, under Vicente Fox.

OPCW leaks expose 'criminal' Syria cover-up -- and US media is silent

Benjamin Netanyahu to seek immunity from corruption charges

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he will ask parliament to grant him immunity from corruption charges, a step that is expected to delay his trial until after elections in March, when he hopes to win a majority coalition that would shield him from prosecution.

Netanyahu was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. After failing to assemble a governing majority following back-to-back elections last year, he will have a third shot at remaining in office in March.

Wednesday’s announcement essentially turns the upcoming election into a referendum on whether Netanyahu should be granted immunity and remain in office or step down and stand trial. A recent poll indicated that a majority of Israelis oppose giving him immunity.

Poll of Labour members suggests Keir Starmer is first choice to succeed Jeremy Corbyn

Keir Starmer has emerged as an early frontrunner in the Labour leadership race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn after a poll of members suggested he was the first choice in all regions of the UK, age groups and social classes.

The shadow Brexit secretary is yet to formally launch his campaign but is expected to do so in the first few weeks of the new year. The new leader will be elected in March after Corbyn said he would step down following the party’s catastrophic general election defeat.

Polling by YouGov for the Party Members Project put Starmer as winning with a 61% vote share to 39% for the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long Bailey, in the last round. Jess Phillips, the chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, who has yet to declare if she is running, was the third most popular choice among members, who were surveyed between 20 and 30 December.

The results at this preliminary stage suggest that the winner is unlikely to come from the left of the party, according to Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, who jointly ran the poll with the University of Sussex.

UK economy in stagnation at end of 2019, survey shows

The UK economy ended 2019 in stagnation, under pressure from long-term uncertainty, mounting business costs and a global economic slowdown, according to a business survey.

The British Chambers of Commerce’s (BCC) latest quarterly economic snapshot, based on a poll of 6,500 firms across the country in November, painted a gloomy picture of the economy at the end of the last decade.

The service sector, which accounts for almost 80% of economic output, worsened in the final quarter of the year. Indicators for factories’ export and domestic orders were negative for two consecutive quarters for the first time in a decade, and manufacturers’ investment plans hit an eight-year low.

Cash flow, a key indicator of the health of businesses, improved slightly from its lowest level in eight years but remained very weak across the manufacturing and service industries. ...

The BCC estimates the UK economy grew by 1.3% in 2019. It predicts growth will slow to 1% in 2020, which would be the weakest performance since 2009.

French union leader calls for strikes against pension reform to continue

Google says it will no longer use 'Double Irish, Dutch sandwich' tax loophole

International tax authorities were welcoming in the New Year after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced it will no longer use a notorious tax loophole known as the “Double Irish, Dutch sandwich”.

The technique allowed the tech giant to delay paying US taxes on international earnings for years, and pay a lower tax rate overseas. It is thought to have allowed American companies to cut their tax bills by hundreds of billions of dollars, but is finally being closed by authorities.

A Google spokesman confirmed the company would scrap the intellectual property licensing structure, by which international profits are channelled through Ireland and on to Caribbean tax havens, putting them outside the reach of US tax authorities.

This will simplify Google’s tax arrangements in line with efforts by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to limit international tax avoidance, following changes to US and Irish tax law.

It is estimated that by the end of 2017, some of America’s most profitable companies, including Apple, the largest by market capitalisation, had sequestered more than $1tn offshore, using the “double Irish” to park billions in “ghost companies”. Companies including Google, Cisco, Pfizer, Merck, Coca-Cola and Facebook all avoided a 35% US corporate tax rate, which has now been cut by Donald Trump. Like other multinationals that make use of tax minimization schemes, Google has always said it pays all its taxes.

Keiser Report: The Beginning of the End of Super Imperialism in 2020? with Michael Hudson

'Fundamentally Inequitable': Democratic Lawmakers Decry Trump's Proposal to Hike Immigration Fees

A group of Democratic lawmakers on Monday outlined their opposition to a Trump administration proposal which would increase application and petition fees for immigrants and asylum seekers, calling the plan "fundamentally inequitable and contrary to our nation's values."

Under the proposed rule, published Nov. 14 in the Federal Register, the U.S. would be one of just four countries in the world that charge asylum-seekers for entry. An 83 percent increase in the naturalization fee, a 55 percent increase in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewal fee, a 20 percent increase in employment authorization application fees, and an elimination of some fee waivers were also included in the proposal, which was panned by immigrant rights advocates as "outrageous" and "simply barbaric." ...

"The administration has literally every month enacted new fundamental restrictions on the rights of immigrants and in particular, the rights of asylum-seekers at the border," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told CBS News this week.

"What we saw during the family separation crisis is that public outcry was just as critical as the court actions," added Gelernt, "and that ultimately what we need, and what every civil rights movement needs, is the public to come out and forcefully say that they don't want this thing done in their name."

Americans 'take democracy for granted', supreme court chief warns

Supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts has urged federal judges to promote public confidence in the judicial system, while warning that Americans have come to “take democracy for granted”. In his annual report on the state of the judiciary, the George W Bush-appointee, who will preside over Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, said civic education had “fallen by the wayside”.

“In our age,” he wrote, “when social media can instantly spread rumour and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

Roberts did not mention Trump but his statement was widely interpreted as part of an ongoing effort to shield the judicial branch from executive harassment.

The president and the chief justice have clashed before. In November 2018, Roberts issued a striking rebuke over the president’s criticism of a judge who blocked an asylum order.

Krystal Ball: What 2020 will teach us about the depths of Neo-liberal rot

Another one bites the dust:

'It simply isn’t our time': Julián Castro ends presidential bid

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro announced Thursday he is ending his campaign for president.

“I’ve determined that it simply isn’t our time,” Castro said in a video, citing "the circumstances of this campaign season." ...

Castro ending his bid leaves the Democratic primary field without a Latino candidate, and his exit comes one month before the Iowa caucuses. ...

Castro often distinguished himself as the “first” candidate and sought to move the field left on a host of issues — including by visiting Flint, Mich., and Puerto Rico on the trail; releasing policies on immigration, indigenous communities and lead exposure; and supporting the impeachment of President Donald Trump. He also made waves by calling for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings, a position he was later followed on by some others in the field. But Castro rarely received attention for jumping out in front.

He grew his small operation — for a time, his communications shop was run solely by a senior aide — into a campaign that qualified for four nationally televised debates, and he outlasted senators, congressmen and current and former governors. But he was unable to seriously compete with the top tier of candidates, some of whom began the race with higher name identification, built-out email lists and well-stocked campaign treasuries from past elections.

Hill Reporter Julia Manchester: What Bernie's massive Q4 haul says about his movement

Pete Buttigieg fundraising surges amid attacks from Warren and Sanders

Pete Buttigieg is no longer the mayor of South Bend, Indiana but his presidential campaign is going from strength to strength in terms of raising cash. The 37-year-old raised $24.7m in the fourth quarter, his campaign announced on Wednesday, up on the $19.1m he collected in the previous fundraising period.

Buttigieg has come under fire over his successful fundraising efforts. On the debate stage in December the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren attacked the mayor regarding fundraisers including a now infamous occasion in a Napa Valley wine cave.

Buttigieg’s time as mayor of a small city in northern Indiana ended on New Years’ Day, leaving him free to concentrate on a Democratic primary in which he has surged from unknown to top-tier contender.

Yang's South Carolina Campaign Chair reacts to Q4 fundraising and M4A backlash

Michael Bloomberg swarms March and April primary states with 200 staffers

Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has hired more than 200 staffers to work in 21 states, aides told McClatchy, providing the New York billionaire with the largest organization after the early voting states of any 2020 Democratic candidate.

Bloomberg, a late entrant into the White House race, finalized a fleet of state leadership hires this week, signing on a cadre of former campaign hands to Barack Obama, past presidential and gubernatorial races and national and state party committees.

It means Bloomberg, who is skipping the first four nominating contests in February, now has teams in nine of the 14 Super Tuesday states that vote on March 3, as well as aides in four states that vote in April. The campaign’s beefed up ground game supplement the north of $80 million the former New York City mayor has already spent on TV ads through this week.

“We can have a large and concurrent conversation with the American people in 29 or 30 contests all at once while our opponents are stuck talking to a narrow portion of the electorate in the early states,” said Dan Kanninen, a veteran Democratic operative directing Bloomberg’s effort in the states. “It means we’re out of the sandbox. … While we’re late to the contest overall, we’re going to be early to the March states.”

Middle Eastern mess reveals Biden's weaknesses

Federal judge blocks North Carolina's voter ID law, citing its discriminatory intent

A federal judge formally blocked North Carolina’s new voter identification law on Tuesday, ruling that discriminatory intent was likely a motivating factor in how the measure was crafted.

The decision from US district judge Loretta Biggs could have big consequences in North Carolina, a key state in the 2020 presidential election that is scheduled to hold its presidential primary on 3 March. Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, but Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won in 2016, by just over 10,000 votes.

This week’s ruling was a blow to state Republicans, who overrode a veto from Cooper to enact the law last year. The measure came two years after North Carolina’s previous voter ID law was struck down as part of a host of voting restrictions a federal appeals court said targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision”. African Americans make up about one-fifth of registered voters in North Carolina. Turnout among African Americans dropped six percentage points from 2012 to 2016.

Voters approved a constitutional amendment to require voter photo ID in 2018. But the new voter ID law, Biggs wrote Tuesday, didn’t fix the discrimination present in the old one. She noted many of the same lawmakers pushed the new law and had openly said it was designed not to fix discriminatory issues, but to survive further legal challenge. “The legislature sought ways to circumvent state and federal courts and further entrench itself,” she wrote.

Australia bushfires: PM's climate stance criticised as thousands flee blazes

Navy ships and army aircraft have been dispatched to help fight devastating bushfires on Australia’s south-east coast that are feared to have killed at least 17 people, amid a spiralling debate over the government’s stance on the climate emergency.

Thousands of people have fled apocalyptic scenes, abandoning their homes and huddling on beaches to escape raging columns of flame and smoke that have plunged whole towns into darkness and destroyed more than 4m hectares of land. Thousands of firefighters were still battling more than 100 blazes in New South Wales (NSW) state and nearly 40 in Victoria on Wednesday, with new fires being sparked daily by hot and windy conditions and, more recently, dry lightning strikes created by the fires themselves. ...

With three months of the summer still to go, the early and devastating start to the country’s fire season has led authorities to rate it the worst on record and prompted urgent questions about whether the conservative government of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has taken enough action on global heating. Polls show a large majority of Australians see the climate emergency as an urgent threat and want tougher government action, but Morrison has focused instead on the nation’s response to the bushfire crisis and defending Australian business, while other government officials have publicly disparaged climate activists.

In his New Year’s Eve address to the nation, Morrison did not make any connection between the bushfires and global heating, suggesting that while they were a terrible ordeal, Australians had faced similar trials throughout history. ...

Criticism of the Morrison government’s climate stance has intensified as the fires have raged. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, but the prime minister, who won a surprise election victory in May, last month rejected calls to downsize Australia’s lucrative coal industry. His government has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2030, a modest figure compared with the centre-left opposition Labor party’s pledge of 45%. The leader of the minor Australian Greens party, Richard Di Natale, demanded a royal commission, the nation’s highest form of inquiry, on the crisis. “If he (Morrison) refuses to do so, we will be moving for a parliamentary commission of inquiry with royal commission-like powers as soon as parliament returns,” Di Natale said in a statement.

Fleeing Australian bushfires: Traffic jams and rush for supplies hinder evacuations

'Ideology Trumping Science': Independent Advisory Board Says Trump EPA Is Ignoring Scientific Evidence as It Shreds Regulations

A federal panel of independent scientific experts says the EPA has flouted the panel's guidance in its efforts to roll back a number of Obama-era regulations, resulting in an agency push that will affect public health for millions of Americans without the consideration of environmental science.

The EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) wrote in four draft reports published online Tuesday that the agency's published revisions to at least four regulations "conflict with established science," according to the Washington Post.

Although two-thirds of the SAB's current members are Trump appointees, Juliet Eilperin wrote in the Post, the panel "found serious flaws" in the proposed changes to rules governing pollution, gas mileage, and how regulations are written.

The revisions and regulatory rollbacks in question include:

• a reversal of a rule that limits the use of pesticides and other chemicals near waterways, which the SAB says "neglects established science" that has shown how contamination from such toxins can pollute drinking water
• a reduction in mileage targets for vehicles, which was decided based on "implausible" economic analyses
• the rollback of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which the EPA pushed after performing a flawed cost-benefit analysis, failing to consider the public health benefits and savings that would result from controlling mercury pollution
• the EPA's push to exclude certain scientific studies from policy-making, saying the change "could easily undercut the integrity of environmental laws, as it will allow systematic bias to be introduced."

H. Christopher Frey, an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University who served on the board for six years, told the Post that EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is "sidelining the Scientific Advisory Board."

"He obviously has an ideological agenda of pursuing regulatory rollbacks, and the science is not always going to be consistent with that ideological agenda," Frey said.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

AMLO’s Attempt to Transform Mexico

Palestinians Decry ICC Prosecutor’s Delay of Israeli War Crimes Investigation

RT: 2019 for Assange: Arrest, deteriorating health at UK prison, possible extradition to US

Resurgent Austrian Greens in coalition deal with centre-right party

Brazilians on Bolsonaro's first year: 'If you disagree, you're seen as a traitor'

What Upstanding Citizens Believe Vs. What Crazy Conspiracy Theorists Believe

The Banality of Apocalypse: Escaping, with Paw Patrol and Daniel Tiger, from the Australian Fires

Australia, your country is burning – dangerous climate change is here with you now

New year's disaster: full horror of Australia's bushfires begins to emerge – in pictures

Rising: What impeachment means for 2020

Rising: Only 30% of voters even considering Mayor Pete

Rising: Elizabeth Warren hides from M4A, after botched roll-out

A Little Night Music

Aron Burton & Lester Davenport - Ah'w Baby + Evenin' Sun Goin' Down

Lester Davenport - Walkin' the Streets at Midnight

Lester Davenport - So Wurrid

Lester 'Mad Dog' Davenport - Mad Dog On The Loose

Lester Davenport - Slow Down Baby

Mad Dog Lester Davenport - West Side Blues Harp

Lester Davenport - I Smell a Rat

Lester Davenport - Lester's Comet

Lester Davenport - When the Blues Hit You