Chris Hedges's Blog, page 242

1 Dead, 130 Injured as Tornadoes Rip Through Ohio and Indiana

BROOKVILLE, Ohio — A swarm of tornadoes so tightly packed that one may have crossed the path carved by another tore across Indiana and Ohio overnight, smashing homes, blowing out windows and ending the school year early for some students because of damage to buildings. One person was killed and at least 130 were injured.

The storms were among 55 twisters that forecasters said may have touched down Monday across eight states stretching eastward from Idaho and Colorado. The past couple of weeks have seen unusually high tornado activity in the U.S., with no immediate end to the pattern in sight.

The winds peeled away roofs — leaving homes looking like giant dollhouses — knocked houses off their foundations, toppled trees, brought down power lines and churned up so much debris that it could be seen on radar. Highway crews had to use snowplows to clear an Ohio interstate.

Some of the heaviest damage was reported just outside Dayton, Ohio.

“I just got down on all fours and covered my head with my hands,” said Francis Dutmers, who with his wife headed for the basement of their home in Vandalia, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) outside Dayton, when the storm hit with a “very loud roar” Monday night. The winds blew out windows around his house, filled rooms with debris and took down most of his trees.

In Celina, Ohio, 81-year-old Melvin Dale Hannah was killed when a parked car was blown into his house, authorities said.

“There’s areas that truly look like a war zone,” Mayor Jeffrey Hazel said Tuesday.

Storm reports posted online by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center showed that 14 suspected tornadoes touched down in Indiana, 11 in Colorado and nine in Ohio. Six were reported in Iowa, five in Nebraska, four in Illinois and three in Minnesota, with one in Idaho.

Monday marked the record-tying 11th straight day with at least eight tornadoes in the U.S., said Patrick Marsh, the Storm Prediction Center’s warning coordination meteorologist. The last such stretch was in 1980.

“We’re getting big counts on a lot of these days, and that is certainly unusual,” Marsh said.

Thunderstorms that spun off the Colorado twisters dropped hail as large as tennis balls, with pea-size hail reported in the Denver area. Nebraska was hit with hail more than 2 inches in diameter, and dozens of drivers pulled off Interstate 80 with broken windshields.

Forecasters warned of the possibility of powerful thunderstorms during the Tuesday afternoon rush hour in the Kansas City area, as well as more bad weather in Ohio.

A tornado with winds up to 140 mph (225 kph) struck near Trotwood, Ohio, eight miles (12 kilometers) from Dayton, and Mayor Mary McDonald reported “catastrophic damage” in the community of 24,500. Several apartment buildings were damaged or destroyed, including one complex where the entire roof was torn away, and at least three dozen people were treated at emergency rooms for cuts, bumps and bruises.

“If I didn’t move quick enough, what could have happened?” said Erica Bohannon of Trotwood, who hid in a closet with her son and their dog. She emerged to find itself looking at the sky. The roof had blown away.

Five busloads of displaced residents were taken to a church that served as a shelter, Trotwood’s mayor said.

Just before midnight, about 40 minutes after that tornado cut through, the weather service tweeted that another one was crossing its path, kicking up enough debris to be visible on radar.

In Brookville, west of Dayton, the storm peeled roofs off schools, destroyed a barn and heavily damaged houses.

Only a few minor injuries were reported in Dayton. Fire Chief Jeffrey Payne called that “pretty miraculous,” attributing it to people heeding early warnings. Sirens went off ahead of the storm.

A boil-water advisory was issued after the storms knocked out power to the city’s pumping stations, and Dayton Power & Light said 64,000 customers were left without electricity. A high school gym in Dayton was designated an emergency shelter until authorities realized it was unusable.

Vandalia’s school system tweeted that it is ending the year two days early because of building damage. In Brookville, where the storm tore off the school’s roof, classes were canceled.

In Indiana, a twister touched down Monday evening in Pendleton, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Indianapolis. At least 75 homes were damaged there and in nearby Huntsville, said Madison County Emergency Management spokesman Todd Harmeson. No serious injuries were reported.

Pendleton residents were urged to stay in their homes Tuesday morning because of downed trees, power lines and utility poles.

“People are getting antsy. I know they want to get outdoors, and I know they want to see what’s going on in the neighborhood,” Harmeson said. But he added: “We still have hazards out there.”

Outbreaks of 50 or more tornadoes have happened 63 times in U.S. history, with three instances on record of more than 100 twisters, Marsh said. That includes a deadly April 27, 2011, “super outbreak” of 173 tornadoes. But Monday’s outbreak was unusual because it happened over a particularly wide geographic area and came amid an especially active stretch of tornadoes, he said.

___

Associated Press writers Dan Sewell and Amanda Seitz in Cincinnati; David Runk in Detroit; Kantele Franko and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and Marjory Beck in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed.

New York Times Stoops to New Low in Venezuela Coverage

Judith Miller and Michael Gordon published their now infamous New York Times article on September 8, 2002, falsely claiming on the basis of unnamed “American officials” that Iraq had acquired “aluminum tubes” with the aim of producing “an atomic bomb.”

Disgraced by her regurgitation of bogus claims, Miller left the Times in 2005, but her spirit is “alive and well” at the “paper of record.” Nicholas Casey follows faithfully in Miller’s footsteps, authoring dubious, anonymously sourced stories that coincidentally happen to further US regime-change objectives.

In a recent piece headlined “Secret Venezuela Files Warn About Maduro Confidant” (5/2/19), the Times’ Andes bureau chief claimed, on the basis of a leaked Venezuelan intelligence “dossier” that only his paper has seen, that Venezuela’s Industry minister and former Vice President Tareck El Aissami has active links to Hezbollah and drug trafficking. Casey wrote:

The dossier, provided to the New York Times by a former top Venezuelan intelligence official and confirmed independently by a second one, recounts testimony from informants accusing Mr. El Aissami and his father of recruiting Hezbollah members to help expand spying and drug trafficking networks in the region.

Unsurprisingly, the article has been endorsed by Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, widely considered the point man for Trump’s Latin America policy, and whose zeal for regime change in Caracas appears unperturbed by elementary facts or international law. In a May 16 tweet, Rubio openly celebrated the fact that Venezuelan President Maduro “can’t access funds to rebuild electric grid,” thereby dispensing with any pretence that US sanctions are not directly aimed at the Venezuelan population.

The claims of an alleged relationship between Caracas and Hezbollah are, however, entirely unoriginal, having been repeated by corporate journalists and national security pundits without evidence for years.

“Hezbollah has a long and sordid history in Venezuela,” wrote Foreign Policy (2/2/19) earlier this year. Newsweek claimed in a 2017 article (12/8/17) that the Lebanese political party “was involved in cocaine shipments from Latin America to West Africa, as well as through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States,” while The Hill (1/13/17) labeled El Aissami a “fan of Iran and Hezbollah,” rehashing US allegations going back to 2008.

Likewise, corporate media claims about Hezbollah presence in Latin America have not been exclusive to Venezuela, with similar baseless rumors circulating about the Lebanese political party operating in the so-called Tri-Border Area of Paraguay (Extra!, 9–10/07).

Such stories just happen to buttress similar unsupported claims by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Hezbollah has “active cells” in Venezuela. Pompeo and other senior administration officials have repeatedly warned that a military option to remove the Maduro government is “on the table,” while self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó has requested “cooperation” from the Pentagon’s US Southern Command.

Casey himself has a long-established track record in dodgy Venezuela reporting, ranging from ludicrous stories about Cuban doctors (FAIR.org, 3/26/19) to false claims that private media like Globovision and El Universal “toe a government line.” (See FAIR.org, 5/20/19.)

Suspect Sources

According to Casey’s “dossier,” Tareck El Aissami conspired with his father, Carlos Zaidan El Aissami,

in a plan to train Hezbollah members in Venezuela, “with the aim of expanding intelligence networks throughout Latin America and at the same time working in drug trafficking.”

We should begin by recognizing that Casey provides no proof of the authenticity of the alleged documents, and there is no reason why readers should take the assurances of unnamed “former top Venezuelan intelligence official[s]” at face value, especially those currently outside Venezuela collaborating with Washington. Similar sources were used to craft the fraudulent case for war in Iraq.

For instance, former Venezuelan intelligence czar Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, who broke with the Maduro government in 2017, is facing extradition to the US from Spain on cocaine-smuggling charges. In February, the ex-general gave an interview to Casey and the Times (2/21/19) in which he accused El Aissami of similar drug trafficking and Hezbollah links. Nowhere in the article did Casey think it relevant to mention that Carvajal plans to cooperate with US authorities, and thus has reasonable motive to fabricate information that improves the conditions of his plea bargain.

Taking refuge in anonymity, which the Times’ own handbook describes as a “last resort,” Casey leaves open the question of whether his source is Carvajal or another ex-official collaborating with the US who authored the dossier after leaving Venezuela, since no date is provided. From “Curveball” to North Korean defectors, corporate media have been consistently guilty of not examining sources’ motives so long as their “information” bolsters US foreign policy interests, even at the cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.

Urea-gate?

Beyond the issue of sourcing, the alleged “dossier” has a troubling number of logical and factual inconsistencies. A case in point is the alleged testimony from an unnamed National Guard officer about a 2004 raid near the border with Brazil, which reportedly found more than 150 tons of urea in a warehouse. Casey disingenuously refers to urea as a “precursor substance used to make cocaine,” when in fact over 90 percent of industrially produced urea is used for fertilizer. Casey does concede later on that urea has non-cocaine purposes, but cannot conceive of the possibility of the substance being stored in a given location only to be used elsewhere.

The narrative function of the urea bust, which for some reason was not reported until a mysterious dossier was handed to the New York Times 15 years later, is to provide a link to Walid Makled, allegedly the owner of the urea warehouses, and a drug trafficking kingpin of sorts. Even assuming that the urea was meant for cocaine production, and not for more mundane agricultural purposes, a key fact is that Makled is currently serving a jail sentence in Venezuela for drug trafficking. This inconvenient reality, noted but not explained by the Times, on its face seriously undermines the idea that the current Industry minister, supposedly a close associate of Makled, is a powerful figure running a drug ring at the heart of the Venezuelan state.

That aside, it’s worth reviewing the “links” that Casey presents between Makled and El Aissami:

According to the “dossier,” El Aissami’s brother, Feraz, went into business with Makled.
The government gave “contracts” to a company “tied to Mr. Makled.” (Casey doesn’t think it relevant to explain the nature of these “ties” or “contracts”)
The US government offered a similarly vague level detail regarding El Aissami’s alleged “ties” to drug-running when it sanctioned the then-vice president in 2017, and even Casey admits that Washington “never revealed the evidence.”
“Two people familiar with [El Aissami’s] family” identified Haisam Alaisami as being El Aissami’s cousin, with Alaisami supposedly telling prosecutors he was a legal representative of Makled’s company. Beyond the anonymous genealogy, no concrete evidence is presented linking El Aissami to Alaisami, and hence to drugs.

In the absence of any externally verifiable evidence, what Casey presents as bombshell revelations of solid links to drug trafficking come out looking like 15-year-old gossip from unnamed sources.

Hezbollah hysteria

While Casey’s story provides very questionable allegations on links to drug trafficking and to Hezbollah, the connection between both is even more dubious.

The dossier concludes with informant testimony on the family’s ties to Hezbollah…. One of the sources of the information was the drug lord, Mr. Makled, who described Mr. El Aissami’s involvement in the scheme, according to the intelligence memo.

After establishing highly questionable ties between Tareck El Aissami and Walid Makled, largely based on their shared Syrian ancestry, Casey’s “dossier” then claims it is none other than Makled who “reveals” El Aissami’s supposed Hezbollah plot.

According to the alleged “documents,” El Aissami and his father were “involved in a plan to train Hezbollah members in Venezuela, ‘with the aim of expanding intelligence networks throughout Latin America and at the same time working in drug trafficking.’”

 

The unspoken assumption is that Hezbollah, which is a resistance movement and political party that forms part of the the elected Lebanese government, would be interested in conducting such illicit activities halfway around the world. Here Casey displays a geopolitical illiteracy on par with top Trump administration officials since, according to Middle East expert As’ad AbuKhalil, “there is no agenda or reason for Hezbollah to have an international presence.”

“For what purpose? Doesn’t the party have enough on its plate in Lebanon itself?” he asked, while acknowledging that the party does have sympathizers and supporters worldwide.

On the assertion that Hezbollah is engaged in drug trafficking, the University of California at Stanislaus professor is equally skeptical. “There has been no credible story in Arabic or in Western languages about Hezbollah’s involvement in drugs,” he stressed:

Hezbollah publicly and organizationally took a stance against drugs and issues fatwas against drugs not only among members but even in Shiite areas of Lebanon.  Hezbollah has even allowed Lebanese government agencies to penetrate deep into its strongholds [this year] to search for drug traffickers.

Casey and his editors cleverly shield themselves from any reputational damage over the ludicrous nature of these allegations with a rather significant proviso buried in the 14th paragraph of the article:

Whether Hezbollah ever set up its intelligence network or drug routes in Venezuela is not addressed in the dossier. But it does assert that Hezbollah militants established themselves in the country with Mr. El Aissami’s help.

In other words, what was originally presented as anonymously sourced claims about Hezbollah spying and drug trafficking in Venezuela turn out to be little more than speculation about intent to carry out such activities.

In giving credence to these allegations, the Times repeats the propaganda of top Trump administration officials and the Israeli government about the “global terrorist ambitions” of Iran/Hezbollah, which is in league with Venezuela’s socialist “narco-dictatorship.”

Having played a key propaganda role in recent US regime change operations in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, corporate media outlets like the New York Times are all too eager to beat the drums of war once again. With Washington actively threatening military force in both Iran and Venezuela, Nicholas Casey lends a hand in manufacturing public consent for not one but two illegal wars.

The Trump Administration Has Already Declared War on Iran

What follows is a conversation between Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Mark Weisbrot and Sharmini Peries of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

SHARMINI PERIES The current unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Iran is collective punishment on the Iranian people. It violates not only the Iran nuclear agreement that the US had signed and then unilaterally withdrew from, but it also violates international law, human rights, and, of course, US law as well. We will examine the impact of the US economic sanctions on Iran next on The Real News Network.

Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Here is Idriss Jazairy, Special Rapporteur, on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures at the United Nations, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.

IDRISS JAZAIRY These unilateral sanctions have spread like wildfire. The idea was basically, in the context of the charter, that such sanctions should be determined by the Security Council. Because it was sometimes difficult to achieve consensus on sanctions in the Security Council, there was this practice of unilateral coercive measures, was resorted to by a large number of mainly industrialized countries. So it became, you could say today, about a quarter of the world’s population lives in countries that are the target of sanctions, unilateral sanctions.

SHARMINI PERIES To dig into this further with me, I’m joined by Mark Weisbrot. Mark is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the book Failed: What “Experts” Got Wrong about the Global Economy. Good to have you here, Mark.

MARK WEISBROT Thanks, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES All right, Mark. Let’s start off with the impact the US sanctions on Iran is directly having, economically, in Iran.

MARK WEISBROT Well, the major, the first impact that they have, and you can see it very obviously, is the impact on oil production. In 2012, you can see from the time in January of 2016, and actually, there was a fall even before that in anticipation. But from January 2016, when the sanctions were— I’m sorry, 2012. From January 2012, when the sanctions were imposed, you saw a drop of 832,000 barrels a day, which is a huge amount of oil production, just from January to October. In that year, GDP fell by 7.7 percent, which is a huge drop, a deep recession. So that’s what happened there and then, you can also see the impact when the sanctions were lifted— or most of the sanctions were lifted, not all of them— and you see a rebound of 12 percent growth in GDP in 2016, which is enormous, and 972,000 barrels a day in oil production.

Then, what happens when Trump in May of 2018 announced that he’s going to reinstitute sanctions, economic sanctions, and, of course, you can see in the graph when it actually happens in November, but again, there was a lot of drop in anticipation. But, once again, you get a big drop in oil production and you had inflation of 51 percent in 2018. Since the sanctions have been implemented, the currency is down about more than 50 percent on the parallel market and that contributes a lot to the inflation. For 2019, the IMF has lowered their projection for economic growth for Iran from negative 3, to negative 6 percent as a result of the sanctions and can get a lot worse. And so, people are punished by this. This is an attack on the civilian population and there are loss of income, and also, there are loss of access to medicines. So, for example, and there’s more studies of this than there are on the sanctions against Venezuela, but there was a 2016 study done by faculty at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, and they found 73 drugs that were related to these specific disease burden of Iran, and there were shortages, and 44 percent of these were essential medicines according to the World Health Organization. So, this is a very serious impact. Sanctions really are, these economic sanctions are really a form of warfare and they kill people, just like bombing does and other forms of conventional warfare.

SHARMINI PERIES Mark, it is obviously a form of economic warfare, as you say. What course of action can Iran take in order to overcome these kinds of internationally illegal, unilateral economic warfare intended to have collective punishment?

MARK WEISBROT Well, as I mentioned, the shortages of medicines that’s been documented. It also had in the entire economy. As I mentioned, the relation between the GDP and the oil production is very direct for a number of reasons— inflation and the exchange rate. It really wrecks the economy and that’s its intention. That’s why I say it really is targeted against civilians in so many ways because all of these social indicators are related to the economy and the availability of essential medicines. But the other thing it does is it polarizes the country and makes everything more difficult. And so, it makes politics much more difficult. It increases the chance of repression as well because, you know, it’s just like the polarization, only magnified a thousand-fold that you see in the US as a result of the Russian interference, whatever it amounted to. Even though it probably didn’t affect the election, it had a polarizing effect. Well, here you have a foreign power that’s actively trying to destroy your economy and so, that has a big impact.

You know, the other impact I think is also extremely important is it’s very often these sanctions are a prelude to war, to other kinds of war like conventional warfare, bombing, and shooting. That you can see in the run up to the Iraq War of 2002. The sanctions from 1991 to 1998, which did tremendous damage to human life, but they also were a prelude to the war. Here, you see the same thing happening with Iran right now because what is Iran doing? They’re saying well, they’re telling Europe, you know, if you go along with these sanctions, we’re going to pull out of our, we’re going to abandon our commitments that we made with regard to any kind of nuclear-related activities in the prior agreement that Trump has withdrawn from. And so, that sets up a situation for military confrontation, which, of course, people like Bolton are trying to exploit. It’s very similar with North Korea, as well. This becomes the only bargaining chip that the country has in a situation where the United States has the ability to destroy their economy. They say well, if you do this, we’re going to do more nuclear testing, or we’re going to develop nuclear weapons, or improve our capacity to produce nuclear weapons in the future. It becomes their only way that they can see not just for the survival of a particular government, but for the survival of a sovereign country. This is the other really, terribly destructive impact of these kinds of illegal sanctions.

SHARMINI PERIES Mark, the UN Special Rapporteur really calls out the United States on this and says that the only way forward, according to international law and the United Nations Charter, is diplomacy. Your thoughts on that.

MARK WEISBROT Yes. That’s absolutely right and this is the other really ugly part of these economic sanctions. It’s a form of warfare and it’s, of course, a substitute for diplomacy and respect for international law and norms. It’s violence and it’s violence being used instead of negotiation. That’s what makes it even more of a threat because this is what wars are made of as well, conventional wars.

SHARMINI PERIES All right, Mark. I thank you, as always, for joining us here on The Real News Network.

MARK WEISBROT Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Trump Dramatically Ramps Up War on Climate Science

In what environmental experts warned could be President Donald Trump’s most dangerous assault on science yet, the White House is reportedly moving to end long-term assessments of the impacts of the climate crisis while pushing a polluter-friendly agenda that is making the planetary emergency worse.

As the New York Times reported late Monday, “the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.”

“As a result,” according to the Times, “parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations’ leading climate body—warned in a landmark report last October that if carbon emissions are not dramatically and rapidly reduced, catastrophic effects of the climate crisis could be felt across the world as early as 2040.

But, as the Times reported, scientists say that Trump administration’s attempt to cut off government climate projections at that year “would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040.”

“Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050,” according to the Times. “From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.”

Philip Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told the Times that the White House’s move to restrict government climate predictions “is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science—to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics.”

Critics also expressed alarm on social media.

“The Trump gang is attacking the scientific process itself,” tweeted environmentalist Alex Steffen, “in an attempt to prop up fossil fuel industries, delay inevitable action, and run the carbon bubble as long as it will last.”

Donald Trump poses a mortal threat to all of humanity. https://t.co/SPXm0N9Ykz

— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) May 27, 2019

Out of pure spite, Trump is hastening climate apocalypse. https://t.co/3dzb2q7h2X via ⁦@nytimes⁩

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) May 27, 2019

In addition to attempting to severely limit the government’s climate science methodology, the Times reported, the Trump administration is also working “to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel” led by physicist William Happer, who once said the “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”

Happer was brought on to the National Security Council by John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser.

“Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science,” the Times reported. “The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.”

Absolutely insane: “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” said William Happer.

Happer is a member of Trump’s National Security Council, advising on climate change and emerging technologies. pic.twitter.com/CBHjcyDjmt

— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) May 28, 2019

The Trump administration’s efforts to distort government climate findings in a way that aligns with its fossil fuel agenda began after the release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment last November, according to the Times.

As Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration attempted to bury the report—which warned that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization”—by releasing it on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

The assessment’s findings directly contradicted the Trump administration’s denialism, as environmentalists and climate scientists pointed out at the time.

“This report makes it clear that climate change is not some problem in the distant future,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “It’s happening right now in every part of the country.”

Tornado Outbreaks Alarm Climate Scientists

As the death toll in Oklahoma rose to six Monday amid an outbreak of nearly 200 tornadoes across the Midwest in recent days—as well as in areas far less accustomed to them—climate scientists said such patterns may carry warnings about the climate crisis and its many implications for extreme weather events.

In Oklahoma, tornadoes touched down in at least two cities, including El Reno and Sapulpa, over the weekend, injuring dozens and leveling a number of homes. The tornado that hit El Reno, a suburb of Oklahoma City, was given an EF3 rating, with wind speeds up to 165 miles per hour. Only about five percent of tornadoes are given an EF3 rating or higher.

The tornadoes hit after much of the state endured severe flooding last week, following powerful storms that overflowed the Arkansas River and damaged about 1,000 homes.

Outside the Midwest, at least one twister touched down near Washington, D.C., with reports of tornadoes in Texas and Colorado, and Chicago facing a tornado watch on Monday.

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U.S. Has the Most Climate-Change Deniers of Any Rich Country: Survey



by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

While tornadoes have long been a fixture in the Midwest, meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted last week that there is “reason to believe major outbreak days … are getting worse,” while climate scientists are examining links between the storms and the climate crisis.

The science of how climate change is affecting tornadoes is still evolving, but there's reason to believe major outbreak days (like today could be) are getting worse.

It's certain that extreme rainfall events are becoming more intense as the world warms.https://t.co/w35cWMzq2P

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) May 20, 2019

The so-called “Tornado Alley,” which covers parts of Texas and Kansas as well as Oklahoma, appears to be growing, according to a study published in Nature last year—making tornadoes more frequent in states that rarely saw them previously including Arkansas, Mississippi, and eastern Missouri.

“What all the studies have shown is that this particular part of the U.S. has been having more tornado activity and more tornado outbreaks than it has had in decades before,” Mike Tippett, a mathematician who studies the climate at Columbia University toldPBS Newshour earlier this year.

As the Kansas City Star reported on Sunday, scientists believe the warming of the globe—fueled by human activities like fossil fuel extraction—is contributing to higher amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere, causing heavier rainfalls which can spawn tornadoes.

The increase in destructive tornadoes across wider swaths of the country than in previous decades “may be suggestive of climate change effects,” Purdue University researcher Ernest Agee told the Star.

And the unusual occurrence of tornadoes in far more densely-populated areas than those that frequently see such weather events has led to concerns that tornadoes will become more deadly and destructive than they’ve been in the past.

“We get caught up on the climate aspect, but the real issue going forward with tornadoes—and hail storms and hurricanes and insert your favorite natural disaster—is the fact that we have more human exposure,” Victor Gensini, lead author of the stufy that appeared in Nature, told Pacific Standard in March.

Yes, My Fellow Soldiers Died in Vain

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in The American Conservative.

Sergeant Alex Fuller hailed from the depressed coastal town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. His brothers and sister did stints in prison; he sold drugs himself as a teen, and barely earned a GED.

Then he found a home in the army. He excelled, he loved it, and even made sergeant in record time. Most of all he was my friend. His story didn’t end well, of course. On January 25, 2007 his body was shattered by a massive improvised explosive device (IED) in East Baghdad, Iraq. He was 21. His 19-year-old wife was pregnant. His family buried him on Cape Cod. Such is life.

We’re expected to honor such sacrifice each Memorial Day. At least that’s what tradition holds. But how best to do that? These days, most Americans, and especially their political leaders choose the vapid, simplistic path: “thanking” soldiers, flying flags, sticking yellow ribbons on car bumpers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with all this, of course, but let’s not pretend it helps anything. Stacy Fuller named Al’s daughter after him. My oldest son’s name is Alex. Many of us honor him with our memories, recollections, thoughts, and symbols such as memorial bracelets. But it’s not enough. It’s far from sufficient.

This Memorial Day, spare us the flyover jets, flag-wielding honor guards, and other patriotic mush of 21st-century popular culture. Instead, I’d submit that now—after 18 years of endless, ineffective war—it’s a time for nuance, for a collective national self-assessment. What was it all for, Alex’s death and those of more than 7,000 others in uniform? Very little, it seems.

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The Terrifying Techno-Future of Our Forever Wars



by

Al died fighting Shia militiamen, who had nothing to do with 9/11, in a Baghdad ghetto. These largely impoverished and unemployed fighters only attacked my platoon because it was there, occupying their cities and inflaming nationalistic resentments. He died in a country that the United States only invaded as a result of lies, deceit, and intelligence mistakes. Al and the rest of us generally tried hard and mostly meant well, but in retrospect we brought not democracy and stability to Iraq, but chaos and civil war.

Hundreds of thousands died, millions were displaced, and a once secular society became a theater for macabre sectarian murder. He died in a country that his commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, didn’t even understand. Most importantly, he and we did not, ultimately leave the place better than we found it. The Shia chauvinists the United States empowered only alienated the Sunnis, heightened Kurdish desires for autonomy, and led to the rise (in our prisons) of the Islamic State. Through it all our military is still there.

Specialist James Smith was Texan to the core. He grew up just outside of Dallas, an all-American boy who played sports and raised hell throughout high school. Soon after, he enthusiastically joined the army, seeking the adventure of combat and the camaraderie of military life. Soon enough he became my Humvee driver.

A legitimate adrenaline junkie with an almost absurd level of personal courage, James constantly forced me to reign him in. “Get back in the fucking truck!” I’d yell in the midst of a firefight. “You’re job is to drive, Smith!” He’d dutifully comply, only to pull the same stunt the very next day. He, too, was my friend. His story didn’t end well either. In June 2007, while home on leave from the war, James took his own life. He was newly married. We’ll never know exactly why he did it, but odds are it had something to do with the friends who he’d witnessed die those last months.

I remember the captains and colonels who passive aggressively questioned why I, his lieutenant, hadn’t seen Smith’s suicide coming. God, I hated them for that! The whole obtuse display of shock at the suicide—there would be a few more within the squadron over the years—demonstrated just how disjointed senior leaders and politicians can be on the ramifications of sustained military trauma. At present, 22 veterans commit suicide each day. Nothing seems capable of improving this national disgrace, but I bet ending useless forever warfare might help.

Through it all, the sacrifice, the waste, America remains at war. In fact, President Donald Trump even threatens an ill-advised, irrational, and immoral war with Iran. In a frightening case of national deja vu, I’m certain I’ve seen this film before. It doesn’t end well. It never does.

Count me sick of the prevailing platitude: “He died for his brothers-in-arms!” In a sense, it’s true enough, but the trope is mainly obtuse and paltry. Inherent in the sentiment is the implication that soldiers never die in vain, no matter the war. I, for one, don’t think that’s true. Sure when the bombs blow and the bullets crack, king and country matter very little. Still it was politics, and nation, that landed the soldier in whatever distant locale he finds himself. And there better be a damn good reason to be there, for troopers like mine and so many others, to lose their lives. Forgive me, but I think we owe them that much!

Do me a favor this year: question the foundation and purpose of America’s wars for the Greater Middle East. Weigh the tangible costs in blood and treasure against any benefits to the nation or the world—if there are any! Ask how this country’s political system morphed in such a way that Congress no longer declares, and presidents turned emperors unilaterally wage endless wars in distant locales. Ask yourself how much of this combat and death is connected—if at all—to the 9/11 attacks; why the over-adulated U.S. military mainly fights groups that didn’t even exist in 2001.

For God’s sake, think! Be a citizen. Honor your soldiers. Don’t waste their lives any longer.

Green Wave: Europe Wakes Up to Climate Concerns After Vote

ERLIN — Green parties in Germany, France, Britain and elsewhere were celebrating big gains in elections for the bloc’s 751-seat European Parliament amid growing voter concerns over climate change, expressed in large-scale student protests over recent months.

Provisional results Monday showed the left-leaning Greens’ bloc coming fourth in the election with 69 seats, an increase of 17 compared with 2014. If confirmed, the results could put the Greens in a position to tip the scales when it comes to choosing the next head of the European Commission.

“Whoever wants legitimacy from us and the legitimacy of the many who went onto the streets will need to deliver now,” said Sven Giegold, a leading candidate for the German Green party that scooped up more than 20% of the vote nationwide, an increase of almost 10% compared with 2014.

Armin Laschet, the governor of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Union bloc, called the outcome “a wake-up call for politics.”

The drift from the traditional heavyweight parties to the Greens in Germany was particularly pronounced in large cities such as Berlin, Munich and Hamburg, and among young voters, where the party beat its bigger rivals among all voters under 60.

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by Chris Hedges

In neighboring France, 25% of voters aged 18-25 voted for the Greens, compared with 15% for the far-right National Rally and 12% for President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move, according to the Ifop polling organization. Overall, the French green party EELV received almost 13.5% of the vote, coming third.

Yannick Jadot, lead candidate of EELV, welcomed the “great green wave” in Europe.

“The French sent us a very clear message: they want environment to be at the heart of our lives, at the heart of the political game and that message has been spread across Europe,” he said.

Green parties also polled strongly in Austria, Sweden, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. In Britain, the Greens — a largely insignificant force nationally — took 11 seats in the European Parliament vote.

Giegold said some of the Greens’ young supporters were drawn by their distinctly pro-European Union stance, which put them strongly at odds with the far-right, anti-migrant parties that have also seen a rise in Europe in recent years.

The enmity was echoed by Alexander Gauland, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, who declared the Greens “our main enemy.”

“The Greens will destroy this country and our job must and will be to fight the Greens,” he said.

Giegold said Green lawmakers in the European Parliament plan to scrutinize the bloc’s 200 billion euro ($223.7 billion) agriculture budget, which environmentalists say places too much emphasis on large-scale farming and not enough on eco-friendly agriculture.

The Greens also want every law passed at the European Union-level to undergo a climate check. The party has strongly backed scientists’ calls for the European Union to end all greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.

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Sylvie Corbet in Paris, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, contributed to this report.

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For more news from The Associated Press on the European Parliament elections go to https://www.apnews.com/EuropeanParliament

Trump, Japan’s Abe at Odds Over North Korean Missile Tests

TOKYO — President Donald Trump said Monday he is not “personally” bothered by recent short-range North Korean missile tests and doesn’t believe they violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, breaking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is hosting the president on a four-day state visit full of pageantry and pomp.

Trump also continued his attacks against former Vice President and 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, siding with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who recently criticized Biden as having a low IQ.

The visit was designed to highlight the U.S.-Japan alliance and showcase the warm relations between the leaders. Trump said he and Abe deliberated over economic issues, including trade and Iran, during hours of talks at the Akasaka Palace. But North Korea’s recent firing of short-range missiles emerged as an area of disagreement at a press conference Monday.

Asked if he was bothered by the missile tests, Trump said: “No, I’m not. I am personally not.”

Japan has long voiced concern about short-range missiles because of the threat they pose to the Island nation’s security.

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by

Trump also said he disagrees with the assessment of many experts — as well as his own national security adviser — that the tests violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“My people think it could have been a violation,” Trump said. “I view it differently. I view it as a man — perhaps he wants to get attention and perhaps not. Who knows?”

Standing beside Trump at a news conference held after hours of talks, Abe, who has forged a strong friendship with Trump and showered him with praise throughout the day, disagreed with the U.S. president, saying the missile tests were “of great regret.”

The Republican president has sought to downplay the significance of the missile tests, even though his own national security adviser, John Bolton, said over the weekend that they violated the U.N. resolutions.

Trump was invited to Japan to be the first world leader to meet with the country’s new emperor. And despite being far from Washington, he didn’t miss the chance to lob another broadside against Biden. Trump didn’t hold back at the news conference, telling the world he agreed with the authoritarian North Korean leader’s assessment of Biden and declaring himself “not a fan.”

“Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual,” Trump said. “He probably is based on his record. I think I agree with him on that.”

U.S. officeholders have in the past generally avoided engaging in politics while on foreign soil, hewing to the adage that politics stops at the water’s edge. But Trump’s sharp attack on Biden, through his declaration of agreement with Kim, set aside that long-standing norm.

Biden, during a recent campaign event, accused Trump of cozying up to “dictators and tyrants” like Kim.

Trump continues to hold out hope of getting Kim to agree to give up his nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, even though the two summits he’s had with the North Korean leader have produced no concrete pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

Trump praised Kim, calling him a “smart man” who might have launched the missiles earlier this month to “get attention.”

“All I know is there have been no nuclear tests, no ballistic missiles going out, no long-range missiles going out, and I think that someday we’ll have a deal,” Trump said, adding that he is in “no rush.”

Trump is correct that North Korea has not recently tested a long-range missile that could reach the U.S. But earlier this month, North Korea fired off a series of short-range missiles that alarmed U.S. allies in closer proximity to North Korea, including Japan. The tests broke a pause in North Korea’s ballistic missile launches that began in late 2017.

Abe reiterated his previous statement that the tests were conducted in defiance of the U.N.

“This is violating the Security Council resolution,” Abe said, adding that, as North Korea’s neighbor, Japan feels threatened. “It is of great regret. But at the same time between Kim Jong Un and President Trump a certain new approach was taken and that is something that I pay tribute to.”

Earlier Monday, Trump said he backed Abe’s interest in leveraging his country’s good relations with Iran to help broker a possible dialogue between the U.S. and its nemesis in the Middle East. Abe said he is willing to do whatever he can to help to reduce escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

“Peace and stability of (the) Middle East is very important for Japan and the United States and also for the international community as a whole,” Abe said.

Abe could visit Iran next month.

Trump also said his only aim is to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“We’re not looking for regime change,” he said. “I just want to make that clear. We’re looking for no nuclear weapons.”

Trump and Abe held hours of talks Monday after the U.S. president, at Abe’s invitation, became the first world leader to meet Japan’s new emperor, Naruhito, who ascended to the throne May 1.

The meeting with Naruhito and his wife, Empress Masako, was preceded by a grand outdoor welcome ceremony at Japan’s Imperial Palace, where Trump walked solo across red carpets, reviewing Japanese troops as the guest of honor.

Trump’s official visit also included golf with Abe, presenting a trophy he created to a sumo wrestling champion and a black-tie banquet at the palace — as well as hours of one-on-one time for Trump and Abe, who has been trying to remain on Trump’s good side despite disagreements, including over trade.

Trump and Abe largely glossed over those differences, despite the potentially crippling tariffs on foreign autos that Trump is threatening to impose on Japan and the European Union. Trump declined to say what Japan would have to do to avoid those tariffs but complained of an “unbelievably large” trade imbalance with the nation.

Still, he said he expects to reach trade deals with Japan and China, but wouldn’t rush it.

“I think we will have a deal with Japan. Likewise, I think we will have a deal with China sometime into the future,” he said.

Trump has tried to pressure China by slapping tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods.

“I don’t believe that China can continue to pay these really hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs,” Trump said.

In fact, tariffs are paid primarily by U.S. businesses and consumers.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet during a world leaders’ summit next month in Osaka.

 

Military Families’ Rights Are at Risk, Thanks to This Law

When our loved ones join the military, we know that wearing the uniform could cost them their lives.

Military family members do all kinds of calculations about the potential price of serving this nation. We run the numbers and wargame the risks; we bargain with God and make deals with the devil hoping our service member never becomes a casualty.

But what most of us don’t know is that when our family members sign up, they sign away some of their rights — and ours.

Under what’s called the Feres Doctrine, members of the Armed Forces and their families are prohibited from filing claims against the government for death or injury arising from military service.

But it doesn’t just apply to military settings or deaths in the field. The Feres Doctrine also shields military medical providers from malpractice suits by troops — and their dependents.

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Feres has been around since a 1950 Supreme Court ruling, but military recruiters never tell the families that it applies to them, too.

Tricia Radenz found out in the worst way possible. On June 9, 2009, her 11-year-old son, Daniel, hanged himself at home.

Like a lot of military kids, his father’s repeat tours were taking a toll. After his dad deployed to Iraq for the second time, military psychiatrists at Fort Hood’s Darnall Army Medical Center prescribed Daniel the drug Celexa.

Celexa has never been approved for pediatric use. It carries a “black box” label, referring to the FDA warning required for prescription drugs that can cause serious injury or death.

In 2003, the U.S. government itself sued Forest Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Celexa, citing that Forest had withheld the negative results of a Celexa study on adolescents, and illegally marketed the drug for use by children when the FDA had only approved it for use in adults. The company paid $313 million in settlements and pled guilty to several crimes, including paying kickbacks to doctors who prescribed the drugs.

Daniel’s mom Tricia, an ER nurse, obtained Daniel’s medical records shortly after his death. She emailed Ft. Hood personnel asking why federal employees were prescribing Celexa to children when the federal government was suing the drug’s manufacturer, but never got an answer.

The records manager at Darnall said they “use FDA guidance” when prescribing black box medications. But the antidepressants they prescribe have explicit warnings about the increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults.

Apart from criminal negligence, what would explain a scenario where doctors prescribe Celexa to an 11-year-old child, combine it with more black-box meds, including Wellbutrin, Restoril, and Strattera, and then ignore the clear clinical worsening of Daniel’s symptoms, suicidality, and changes in behavior?

Tricia showed Daniel’s records to several lawyers, who all stated that his treatment was “clearly a case of malpractice, a failure to diagnose, and a failure to inform.”

“His providers killed him as sure as if they held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,” Tricia said.

Issues of criminal liability and malpractice would have been addressed in court had Daniel’s father been a civilian. But since Daniel’s health care was provided by the United States Army, that wasn’t an option under Feres. That needs to change.

Recent efforts to overturn Feres include a congressional hearing and a federal suit being filed by the Whistleblower Law Firm. As we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice, let’s ensure servicemembers and their families are no longer required to relinquish their rights in the name of freedom.

U.K. Brexit Party Scores Big as Conservatives, Labour Falter

LONDON — Veteran politician Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party scored big gains in European elections, with his party and several anti-Brexit parties dooming the governing Conservative Party and opposition Labour to humiliating defeats.

With results announced early Monday for all of England and Wales, the Brexit Party had won 28 of the 73 British EU seats up for grabs and almost a third of the votes. The Liberal Democrats took about 20% of the vote and 15 seats — up from only one at the last EU election in 2014.

Labour came third with 10 seats, followed by the Greens with seven. The ruling Conservatives — apparently blamed by voters for failing to deliver Brexit in March as planned — were in fifth place with just three EU seats and under 10% of the vote.

The vote was more or less split between Farage’s pro-Brexit forces and the pro-EU Liberal Democrats and Greens — at the expense of the more established parties.

Scotland and Northern Ireland are due to announce their results later.

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by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Farage’s Brexit Party was one of several nationalist and populist parties making gains across the continent in an election that saw erosion of support for the traditionally dominant political parties.

A triumphant Farage said his party will “stun everbody” in the next British general election if the country still hasn’t left the European Union.

“We’re not just here to leave the European Union but to try and fundamentally change the shape of British politics, bring it into the 21st century and get a Parliament that better reflects the country,” he said.

Farage’s gains helped consign the Conservative Party to a dismal showing. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is contending to become party leader and prime minister, said it was a “painful result” and warned there was an “existential risk to our party unless we now come together and get Brexit done.”

The results reflect an electorate deeply divided over Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the EU, but united in anger at the two long-dominant parties, the Conservatives and Labour, who have brought the Brexit process to deadlock.

Some senior Labour figures said after the party’s weak performance that it must now take a strong stance in favor of a second referendum on Brexit, but party leader Jeremy Corbyn declined to make his positon clear. He still says the country needs either a general election or a referendum on Brexit.

“With the Conservatives disintegrating and unable to govern, and parliament deadlocked, this issue will have to go back to the people, whether through a general election or a public vote,” he said, promising more “conversations” in the coming days.

Britain is participating in the EU election because it is still a member of the bloc, but the lawmakers it elects will only sit in the European Parliament until the country leaves the EU, which is currently scheduled for Oct. 31.

Farage’s Brexit Party was officially launched in April and has only one policy: for Britain to leave the EU as soon as possible, even without a divorce agreement in place.

But the election leaves Britain’s EU exit ever more uncertain, with both Brexiteers and pro-EU “remainers” able to claim strong support. Labour and the Conservatives, who in different ways each sought a compromise Brexit, were hammered.

The result raises the likelihood of a chaotic “no deal” exit from the EU — but also of a new referendum that could reverse the decision to leave.

The Conservatives were punished for failing to take the country out of the EU on March 29 as promised, a failure that led Prime Minister Theresa May to announce Friday that she is stepping down from leading the party on June 7. Britain’s new prime minister will be whoever wins the Conservative party leadership race to replace her.

The favorites, including ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have vowed to leave the EU on Oct. 31 even if there is no deal in place.

Most businesses and economists think that would cause economic turmoil and plunge Britain into recession. But many Conservatives think embracing a no-deal Brexit may be the only way to win back voters from Farage’s party.

Labour paid for a fence-sitting Brexit policy that saw the party dither over whether to support a new referendum that could halt Brexit. Labour foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry said the party needed to adopt a clearer pro-EU stance.

“There should be a (new Brexit) referendum and we should campaign to remain,” she said.

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For more news from The Associated Press on the European Parliament elections go to https://www.apnews.com/EuropeanParliament

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Follow AP’s full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit