Chris Hedges's Blog, page 252

Author of Flattering Trump Biography Gets Pardon From President

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, a former newspaper publisher who has written a flattering political biography of Trump.

Black’s media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times and The Daily Telegraph of London. He was convicted of fraud in 2007 and spent three and a half years in prison. An appeals court reversed two convictions, but left two others in place.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Black “has made tremendous contributions to business, and to political and historical thought.”

In 2018, Black published “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.” He wrote a column Wednesday in Canada’s National Post describing how Trump called him and revealed the pardon.

“He could not have been more gracious and quickly got to his point: he was granting me a full pardon,” wrote Black, who used much of the rest of the column to explain the case. He called it a long ordeal that was “never anything but a confluence of unlucky events, the belligerence of several corporate governance charlatans, and grandstanding local and American judges, all fanned by an unusually frenzied international media showing exceptional interest in the case because I was a media owner.”

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A Message to Mueller? Trump Pardons Cheney Ex-Aide 'Scooter' Libby



by

In 2015, Black wrote a National Review essay titled “Trump Is the Good Guy.” Trump tweeted it was an “honor” to read the piece, adding, “As one of the truly great intellects & my friend, I won’t forget!”

The former media mogul was convicted of defrauding investors. A former member of the British House of Lords, he was sentenced to more than six years in prison after his 2007 conviction in Chicago, but was released on bail two years later to pursue an appeal that was partially successful. A judge reduced his sentence to three years.

Sanders said Black is the author of several notable biographies, including volumes on Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, but she did not mention his book about Trump.

She said Black’s case attracted broad support from many high-profile individuals — including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Elton John and Rush Limbaugh — who have “vigorously vouched for his exceptional character.”

Trump on Wednesday also pardoned Patrick Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. Nolan has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform since he spent more than two years in federal prison during the 1990s.

Sanders said Nolan wrote a guide for churches and community groups to help prisoners return to their communities. While incarcerated, he also helped organize religious-study groups and he is “uniformly described as a man of principle and integrity,” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.

Where Is the Democratic Alternative to Forever War?

There sure are lots to choose from. By now, more than 20 candidates have announced a run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. And with national security adviser John “Regime Change” Bolton, along with the others in the four Bs cabal—Benjamin  Netanyahu of Israel, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates—seem poised to pull President Trump into war with Iran, now would seem the time for Democratic leaders to unveil their alternative, antiwar, foreign policy plans. It’s more likely you’ll hear crickets … or a sound bite or two.

The truth is the Democratic Party, especially of late, has abandoned serious foreign policy analysis and ceded national security—and supposedly macho “toughness”—to hawkish Republicans. See, at least since Harry Truman “lost” China in 1949, one Democratic president after another has bent over backward to either prove his masculine mettle, or, better yet, to ignore global affairs altogether.

Admittedly, the Democratic base is, for the most part, unconcerned with minor matters like forever war. Part of this can be explained by America’s lack of a military draft, and thus the citizenry’s lack of “skin in the game.”  But it’s also the case that “kitchen table” and cultural issues—think health care, taxes, immigration, abortion, minority rights, etc.—are far more concerning for all Americans, Democrat or Republican. While this is understandable, it’s also part of the reason the U.S. has now been at war for 18 years, with no end in sight.

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A Devil’s Bargain: Ditching the Draft and Enabling Forever War



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

So what are the 2020 Dems offering in the way of fresh foreign policy?  I got to thinking about that this week while penning a frantic piece about America’s impending war with Iran. Sure, Trump’s instincts favoring withdrawal from the Middle East are often accidentally correct, but have ensured the U.S. stay put in its minimum of seven ongoing wars and threatened future aggressive conflicts with Venezuela and Iran. It’s madness, absurd even, and hardly anyone is talking about it—including, it turns out, the vast majority of Democratic hopefuls.

*****

Let me demonstrate this foreign affairs vacuousness with a brief survey of the political pasts and campaign websites of the 10 main frontrunners. First, the good news: all the serving candidates in the Senate and House voted against continued U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s terror war in Yemen. Furthermore, most at least pay lip service to winding down American wars in the Middle East. Then there’s the bad news: with precious few exceptions, most 2020 Democratic candidates have scarcely anything to say about foreign policy or disturbing past records on matters of war and peace.

Elizabeth Warren

Warren of Massachusetts cut her teeth and made her name fighting banks and corporations during the last financial crisis. That’s her wheelhouse; foreign affairs, not so much. Her campaign website at least lists foreign policy, but only just. The issue is listed last among her core ideas, and takes up a whopping 230 words. She does mention the inflated defense budgets and uses the phrase “endless wars,” but absent are the very terms Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, war powers or militarism. Furthermore, while to her credit, Warren published a foreign policy “vision” in the journal Foreign Affairs, the essay was far more focused on (admittedly important) climate change and trade policy. As a former history professor, I’d give her a C+.

Kamala Harris

The California senator is also more interested in domestic policy and progressive social issues. On foreign policy, there’s reason for concern. Her campaign site lacks an “issues” section altogether and devotes not a single word to foreign affairs. Additionally, while Harris—along with most other Dem candidates—was conspicuously absent from the last AIPAC Policy Conference, she did quietly meet with constituents representing the Israeli lobbying group just before the conference. For her utter lack of a global vision, she earns a solid D+.

Kirsten Gillibrand

The senator from New York does have a  policy priorities section on her website, but “keeping America safe”—her vacuous subheading—is last on the list. While she dedicates over 500 words to these issues and admirably discusses out-of-control war powers, military sexual assault and veterans’ benefits, she spends most of the section conflating immigration and gun violence with standard foreign affairs. She also met with AIPAC representatives this past year. On the other hand, the senator did run her initial 2006 campaign in opposition to the ongoing Iraq war and has vocally called for the end of the Afghan war. Taken as a whole, I’d assign her a B-.

Cory Booker

The New Jersey senator and former Newark mayor is yet another domestic policy specialist with little foreign policy experience. Like Harris, he has not a single word dedicated to global affairs on his campaign site. Booker is also inconsistent on these issues, speaking critically of intervention in Syria while simultaneously labeling Trump’s proposed withdrawal from that country “reckless and dangerous.” As for the Palestinians, they’re essentially on their own, with Booker repeating the worn-out trope that “where Israel’s security is at stake, America’s security is at stake.” Oh, spare me. Booker rates a C, at best.

Joe Biden

The former vice president and long-time senator has the longest record on foreign affairs, serving on key related committees and having been present for nearly every important vote on the topic.  Still, there’s reason to worry. Biden’s website must still be in the works, because a simple search unearths only a parody website with embarrassing photos of Biden groping women, and highlighting his less-than-progressive past positions. Remember, importantly, that then-Sen. Biden voted for the 2002 Iraq War Resolution authorizing that immoral, unwinnable war.  What’s more, in general, Biden espouses a standard center-left world view infused with worn-out American exceptionalism rhetoric.

Then again, Biden appears to have evolved on foreign policy. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—a hawk’s hawk—recently claimed that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Coming from Gates, a reflexive mainstreamer, that might be read as a compliment. The vice president was one of the first Democrats to turn against the Iraq war, and while in the Obama administration, he opposed a new “surge” in Afghanistan and also argued against catastrophic regime change in Libya.  Biden is the most experienced statesman in the group—a potential strength and also a liability. I’d give him a B.

Pete Buttigieg

Though he’s just a mayor of a small Midwestern city, Buttigieg is one of only two veterans among the 10 candidates surveyed here. He knows the sacrifice and dangers of war—always a plus. Still, his site completely lacks a foreign policy section and he dedicates a mere eight words to ending the ongoing wars. And, in his precious few statements on global affairs—after all, he’s mayor of South Bend, Ind.—Buttigieg has opposed the intervention in Yemen but been wishy-washy on ending the Afghan war (which he served in) and rebuked Rep. Ilhan Omar over her statements critical of Israel. The mayor gets a C+.

Amy Klobuchar

The Minnesota senator is far from a foreign policy expert; her campaign website has no section on the forever wars and zero words dedicated to global affairs. That’s a poor start.  Furthermore, while Klobuchar has made limited calls to de-escalate wars in the Mideast, this has been far from her main campaign thrust. Then there’s the ugly stuff: she wants “more consequences” for North Korea’s “bad behavior,” sponsored “funding and supplying” the Syrian rebels and demonstrated “vigorous support” for Israel against Hamas in Gaza. She too met with AIPAC representatives before the conference and has “pressured” Arab states to end their boycott of Israel. Inconsistent Klobuchar deserves the C- I’d assign her.

Beto O’Rourke

The former Texas representative came to prominence thanks to an inspiring (to some) losing performance in the Lone Star State’s U.S. Senate race. Nonetheless, he lacks foreign policy experience. That said, his website has sections on foreign policy, national security and veterans.  Still, that’s deceptive. He dedicates seven lines to national security, all of which is actually about opposing Trump on immigration; furthermore, his foreign policy section—though he briefly mentions ending wars—seems focused mainly on “strengthening” the NATO alliance. Yawn!  In recent interviews, he has shown surprising confidence in global affairs and opposes forever war in the Mideast. However, in the standard, reflexively anti-Trump spirit, he’d like to get “tougher” on Russia. This mixed bag earns a C+.

Tulsi Gabbard

The Hawaii representative and U.S. Army veteran has the most vocal record (along with Bernie Sanders) of opposing America’s forever wars. Furthermore, she’s the only Dem in the race who has placed foreign policy centerstage in her campaign. Gabbard doesn’t have much in the way of an issues section on her campaign page, but she leads off with the phrase, “It’s time for an end to America’s disastrous policy of regime-change wars.” Amen! On the surface, she seems a dream candidate. Until one digs deeper.  Gabbard’s past demonstrates an affinity for Hindu chauvinists in India, her initial opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, and a penchant for palling around with Islamophobes. Gabbard—thanks to her early and vocal antiwar focus—still gets a B.

Bernie Sanders

Call me biased—I voted for him in the 2016 primary—but there’s ample evidence that the senator has the most comprehensive, consistent and anti-war foreign policy platform. No doubt, Sanders made a name for himself, and birthed a movement, based on progressive social and economically populist issues. And on his website, foreign policy and vets’ issues constitute just two of 24 subtopics. Nevertheless, he uses the term “militarism” to describe U.S. policy and specifically mentions opposition to wars in Syria and Iraq, while demanding that the U.S. not fight Iran or support Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

This doesn’t mean Bernie has a perfect track record in global affairs. At one time he did call for the U.S. to “beef up” NATO and increase American troops levels to combat Russian “aggression.” Without a doubt, that’s troubling. Still, he has—and this is important—voted on an antiwar slant at nearly every opportunity in a long career of public service.  All told, Sanders earns the only A, albeit an A-, among this pack.

*****

Taken as a whole, what passes as foreign policy ideas among the 2020 Dems is paltry at best.  This is disconcerting and genuinely dangerous for what’s left of the American Republic. Folks, the empire threatens to swallow democracy whole, and few Dems even mention it!  Make no mistake, commanders-in-chief at war tend to be reelected—which Trump undoubtedly knows—and if the president’s 2020 opponent offers either a standard Clintonian hawkish neoliberal alternative, or, more probably, no alternative at all, well, it might mean four more years for the Donald. Americans respond only to fear in foreign policy, it seems, and Trump is not above stoking these flames and running as a “war” president.

So, unless our future 2020 Democratic nominee can effectively articulate an alternative to war and Trump’s bellicosity, while tying the treasure saved from de-escalation to desired spending on such policies as the Green New Deal or just basic social spending, then Trump will win. If he does, I fear the wars may never end. Odds are that forever war is America’s destiny either way, but an inspiring 2020 Democratic foreign policy vision is our only hope.

————

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army Major and regular contributor to Truthdig. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The L.A. Times, The Nation, Tom Dispatch, The Huffington Post and The Hill. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, “Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He co-hosts the progressive veterans’ podcast “Fortress on a Hill.”  Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

 

Alabama Governor Signs Near-Total Abortion Ban Into Law

MONTGOMERY, Ala.—Alabama’s Republican governor signed the most stringent abortion legislation in the nation Wednesday, making performing an abortion a felony in nearly all cases.

“To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,” Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.

The bill’s sponsors want to give conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court a chance to gut abortion rights nationwide, but Democrats and abortion rights advocates criticized the bill as a slap in the face to female voters.

“It just completely disregards women and the value of women and their voice. We have once again silenced women on a very personal issue,” said Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, a Birmingham Democrat.

The abortion ban is set to go into effect in six months, but is expected to face a lawsuit to block it from halting abortion access.

Coleman-Madison said she hopes the measure awakens a “sleeping giant” of female voters in the state.

But Republican pollster Chris Kratzer noted that there is no congressional district and likely no legislative district with enough swing voters to put Republicans at serious risk in the state.

“The people who are outraged about this are not the people who are electing these guys, generally speaking, especially when we’re talking about the primary,” he said.

Further, Kratzer argued, there aren’t enough potential swing voters and disenchanted Republicans to make the issue any kind of advantage for the lone Democrat elected to statewide office, U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, who scored a surprise win in a 2017 special election.

Jones upset Republican Roy Moore in part on the strength of GOP-leaning college graduates abandoning the controversial Moore. But Kratzer said that was more about Moore’s long history of flouting federal courts as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and accusations that Moore sexually harassed teens when he was in his 30s — not Moore’s hardline stance on abortion.

The legislation Alabama senators passed Tuesday would make performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony punishable by 10 to 99 years or life in prison for the provider. The only exception would be when the woman’s health is at serious risk. Women seeking or undergoing abortions wouldn’t be punished.

Rep. Terri Collins, the bill’s sponsor, said she believes the measure reflects the beliefs of the majority of the state electorate. The vote came after 59% of state voters in November agreed to write anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, saying the state recognizes the rights of the “unborn.”

Ivey acknowledged Wednesday that the measure may be unenforceable in the short term. Even supporters have said they expect it to be blocked by lower courts as they fight toward the Supreme Court.

“It’s to address the issue that Roe. v. Wade was decided on. Is that baby in the womb a person?” Collins said.

Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia recently have approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy. The Alabama bill goes further by seeking to ban abortion outright.

Abortion rights advocates vowed swift legal action.

“We haven’t lost a case in Alabama yet and we don’t plan to start now. We will see Governor Ivey in court,” said Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast.

Evangelist Pat Robertson on his television show Wednesday said the Alabama law is “extreme” and opined it may not be the best one to bring to the U.S. Supreme Court in the hopes of overturning Roe “because I think this one will lose.”

“God bless them they are trying to do something,” Robertson said.

One mile (1.6 kilometers) from the Alabama Statehouse — down the street from the Governor’s Mansion — sits Montgomery’s only abortion clinic, one of three performing abortions in the state.

Clinic staff on Wednesday fielded calls from patients, and potential patients, wrongly worried that abortion was now illegal in the state. They were assured abortion remained legal in the state.

Dr. Yashica Robinson, who provides abortions in Huntsville, said her clinic similarly fielded calls from frightened patients.

“This is a really sad day for women in Alabama and all across the nation,” she said. “It’s like we have just taken three steps backwards as far as women’s rights and being able to make decisions that are best for them and best for their families.”

But Robinson said the bill is also having a galvanizing effect. With phone lines jammed, she said messages came streaming across their fax machine.

“We had letters coming across the fax just asking what they can do to help and telling us they are sending us their love and support our way,” Robinson said.

___

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Neocons Won’t Stop Until They Get Their War With Iran

Several recent indicators strongly suggest President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be angling for a war with Iran. On Monday, The New York Times reported that the White House has been reviewing military plans against Iran. According to sources, “Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.”

To no one’s surprise, it was Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton who ordered the updated plan. Bolton has made it his mission to spark a war against Iran, and he was part of the apparatus of building the false case for the disastrous 2003 U.S. war against Iraq. So hawkish is Bolton that in an interview with Foreign Policy in 2007 he said, “Once upon a time, we knew how to do clandestine regime change. We need to reacquire that capability.” As the Times pointed out, Bolton’s new review of military plans to attack Iran is reminiscent of preparations made ahead of the 2003 Iraq war. Clearly Bolton is chomping at the bit a little over a year since he accepted his position at the White House.

Bolton’s war plan for Iran began with the Trump administration abandoning the hard-won Obama-era nuclear deal a year ago and imposing harsh new sanctions on Iran. In mid-April, Trump designated Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard forces a terrorist group. It was the first time a military arm of a foreign nation was placed on the list of terrorist groups. In a statement, Trump said the designation “underscores the fact that Iran’s actions are fundamentally different from those of other governments.” Then in early May, the U.S. military sent an aircraft carrier and bomber task force on course to Iran, which Bolton announced was “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” He also made clear the military threat was intended “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Now, Saudi Arabia, whose hatred of Iran mirrors that of Bolton, is claiming that one of its oil pipelines had been attacked by a drone, causing “limited damage.” The claim Tuesday came just a day after the Gulf Arab kingdom and U.S. ally said two of its oil tankers had been “sabotaged” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, sharing photos of damage to the hull of its vessels. Reports claim the attacks were the work of drones flown by Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen and were in retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s brutal U.S.-backed war in Yemen. So far it is not clear if Iran had any connection to the drone attacks, but with Bolton in charge of the U.S.’ Iran policy, no direct connection may be required. Even a whiff of Iranian links to aggression could be reason enough to be met with “unrelenting force.”

We’ve been here before. Seventeen years ago President George W. Bush used the infamous term “Axis of Evil,” to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea. He claimed that Iran wanted to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon and trigger World War III. Reports emerged of the CIA funding a terrorist group in Iran, and media analysts repeatedly warned against the “impending war with Iran.”

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War With Iran Is America's Endgame



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Bolton’s last official government position before joining Trump’s White House was as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush years. Bolton, Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney were all part of a cohort of war hawks known as the “neo-conservatives.” A 2003 Christian Science Monitor article accurately described their agenda: “‘Neocons believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary — to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a U.S. empire.” Even more ominously, the article stated, “Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the U.S. can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.”

Although Bolton has been angling for regime change in Iran for decades,  there is little appetite elsewhere for war. A poll conducted last July found strong public opposition within the U.S. for a war on Iran. America’s once-trusty allies in Europe are no longer pledging blind allegiance to the United States. Negotiators working tirelessly for years to craft the Iran nuclear deal alongside U.S. representatives are now desperately trying to salvage what’s left of it after Trump withdrew. Ahead of an Iran-centered meeting this week in Brussels, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned, “We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided at the last minute to attend the meeting uninvited but failed to convince Europe that Iran was deserving of war.

Pompeo had just as little luck in Iraq when, during an impromptu visit to Baghdad last week, he attempted to convince Iraqi leaders that Iran was a threat. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi retorted, “Iraq is building its relationships with all on the basis of putting Iraq’s interests first,” and that his goal was to maintain balanced relationships with “friends and neighbors, including neighboring Iran.”

The recent deployment of the military carrier toward Iran was purportedly in response to “specific and credible” intelligence that Iran was targeting U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Yet a British officer stationed in Iraq, who is part of the coalition forces there, told reporters Tuesday during a video news conference at the Pentagon: “No, there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.”

Still, none of this seems to deter Bolton or Trump. When asked about potential war with Iran, Trump told reporters, “We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.” His threats are part of a pattern of aggressive language toward Iran since he took office. Joining in the collective sense of imperial hubris are Republicans like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who said in an interview that the U.S. could defeat Iran militarily in just “two strikes, the first strike and the last strike.”

Americans vehemently opposed the 2003 Iraq war, and hundreds of thousands protested in cities around the country in conjunction with millions of others worldwide. But Bush and his neocon allies did not care about public opposition, evidence of a real threat, or much else. They simply wanted war with Iraq, and they waged it willfully, destructively and chaotically, leaving a bloody trail of hundreds of thousands of deaths and political and regional instability.

Logic will not deter the Trump bullies. Neither will a history lesson. With Bolton back in a seat of power and pushing our unhinged president toward war with Iran, we may be on the precipice of yet another deadly military disaster.

PG&E Lines Sparked Camp Fire That Killed 85, California Says

SAN FRANCISCO—Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. power lines sparked a Northern California blaze that killed 85 people last year, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, state fire officials said Wednesday.

Cal Fire said transmission lines owned and operated by the San Francisco-based utility started the Nov. 8 fire that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The fire wiped out nearly 15,000 homes. Many of those killed were elderly or disabled. The oldest was 99.

The investigation also identified a second nearby ignition site involving PG&E’s electrical distribution lines that had come into contact with vegetation. The second fire was quickly consumed by the initial fire.

The disclosure came on the same day the utility’s new chief executive was testifying before a legislative committee in Sacramento. Bill Johnson told the state Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee he had expected the utility would be blamed for the fire.

“I have made the assumption when I got here that PG&E equipment caused the fire,” he said, noting the utility had said that was probable in recent filings. “It’s a disappointment that this happened. Let’s not do it again.”

Cal Fire did not release its full investigative report, saying it had been forwarded to the Butte County district attorney’s office, which is considering criminal charges against the utility.

An attorney representing 2,000 victims of the fire said the handling of the findings indicates the utility may have broken the law.

Lawyer Mike Danko said Cal Fire will normally release its reports publicly if it finds no laws were broken. However, he said, referring the report to prosecutors suggests Cal Fire likely has evidence that the utility was negligent on safety issues.

“We know from our work that PG&E knew its towers in the area were corroded and were at risk of failing,” Danko said.

A call seeking comment from Butte County prosecutors was not immediately returned. A PG&E representative did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The utility, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January, said in February it was “probable” that one of its transmission lines sparked the blaze. PG&E has estimated its total liability from the Paradise fire and 2017 wildfires could top $30 billion.

The fire spread rapidly, burning into the communities of Concow and Magalia and the outskirts of Chico. Authorities said it was like no fire they had seen before. Strong wind gusts blew hot embers a mile or more, creating multiple fires.

“The tinder dry vegetation and red flag conditions consisting of strong winds, low humidity and warm temperatures promoted this fire and caused extreme rates of spread,” Cal fire said in its release.

The utility previously acknowledged that the Caribou-Palermo transmission line lost power right before the fire and was later found to be damaged.

Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said Wednesday she was not surprised to hear Pacific Gas & Electric power lines sparked the blaze that decimated her town and she hopes the findings help the city’s legal case against the utility.

“It’s nice to have a definite answer,” Jones said.

Paradise sued PG&E in January seeking damages for the loss of infrastructure, land, property, trees, public and natural resources, and lost taxpayer resources.

The suit alleges the blaze started when electrical infrastructure owned, operated and maintained by PG&E failed, causing a spark that ignited the blaze.

The suit also alleges that PG&E had planned to de-energize power lines as a precaution against starting a fire but canceled those plans despite windy conditions.

PG&E’s bankruptcy reorganization plan is due by the end of May, but it has requested an extension until November.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Wednesday filing that PG&E shouldn’t get an extra six months to reorganize. He said the utility’s request continues to show it lacks an urgent focus on improving safety.

Newsom and lawmakers are working on proposals related to utility liability for wildfires that could affect the bankruptcy.

___

Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne and Adam Beam in Sacramento and Olga R. Rodriquez in San Francisco contributed to this story.

U.S. Pulls Nonessential Staff From Iraq Amid Mideast Tensions

BAGHDAD—The U.S. on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions sweeping the Persian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump administration says are linked to Iran.

Recent days have seen allegations of sabotage targeting oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a drone attack by Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels, and the dispatch of U.S. warships and bombers to the region.

At the root of this appears to be President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to pull the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, embarking on a maximalist sanctions campaign against Tehran. In response, Iran’s supreme leader issued a veiled threat Tuesday, saying it wouldn’t be difficult for the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels.

The movement of diplomatic personnel is often done in times of conflict, but what is driving the decisions from the White House remains unclear. A high-ranking British general said there was no new threat from Iran or its regional proxies, something immediately rebutted by the U.S. military’s Central Command, which said its troops were on high alert, without elaborating.

Last week, U.S. officials said they had detected signs of Iranian preparations for potential attacks on U.S. forces and interests in the Middle East, but Washington has not spelled out that threat, and an alert on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said that all nonessential, nonemergency U.S. government staff were ordered to leave Iraq right away under State Department orders.

The U.S. in recent days has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Gulf region, plus four B-52 bombers.

Germany’s military said it was suspending training of Iraqi soldiers due to the tensions, although there was no specific threat to its own troops in Iraq. Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff said Germany was “orienting itself toward our partner countries” though there are “no concrete warnings of attacks against German targets.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer expressed concern over the tensions and said it welcomes “any measure that is aimed at a peaceful solution.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said the German government has not reduced its embassy staff in Iraq or Iran.

In the Netherlands, state broadcaster NOS said its 50-person military mission in Iraq was halted “until further orders,” quoting a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying he couldn’t elaborate on the threats. It said the Dutch forces primarily train Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State militants.

The remarks about Iran’s nuclear program by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came Tuesday night in Tehran at an iftar, the traditional dinner Muslims have when breaking their daily fast during Ramadan. His comments first focused on playing down the risk of a wider conflict with America.

He told senior officials that his country won’t negotiate with the U.S., calling such talks “poison,” but he also said, “Neither we, nor them is seeking war. They know that it is not to their benefit,” according to the state-run IRAN newspaper.

Tehran is threatening to resume higher enrichment on July 7 if no new nuclear deal is in place, beyond the 3.67% permitted by the current deal between Tehran and world powers.

Iranian officials have said that they could reach 20% enrichment within four days. Though Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, scientists say the time needed to reach the 90% threshold for weapons-grade uranium is halved once uranium is enriched to around 20%.

“Achieving 20% enrichment is the most difficult part,” Khamenei said, according to the newspaper. “The next steps are easier than this step.”

It was a telling remark from the supreme leader — Iran is not known to have enriched beyond 20% previously and it’s unclear how far Tehran is willing to go in this process. Khamenei has final say on all matters of state in Iran.

On Tuesday, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels launched a coordinated drone attack on a critical oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s biggest rival in the region. It was the latest incident to shake global energy markets, as authorities allege oil tankers anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates were targeted by sabotage. Benchmark Brent crude prices remained around $71 a barrel in early trading Wednesday.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are at war with Saudi Arabia and are believed by the West to receive weapons from Iran, said they launched seven drones targeting vital Saudi installations. That included two pumping stations along its critical East-West Pipeline, which can carry nearly 5 million barrels of crude a day to the Red Sea.

Saudi Aramco, the government-controlled oil company, said it temporarily shut down the pipeline and contained a fire, which caused minor damage to one pumping station. It added that Saudi Aramco’s oil and gas supplies were unaffected.

An image from San Francisco-based Planet Labs Inc. that The Associated Press examined Wednesday shows Saudi Aramco’s Pumping Station No. 8 outside of the town of al-Duadmi, 330 kilometers (205 miles) west of the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh.

The photo, taken after the attack, shows two black marks near where the East-West Pipeline passes by the facility — marks that weren’t in images from Monday. The facility otherwise appeared intact, corroborating in part Saudi Arabia’s earlier comments. The website TankerTrackers.com, whose analysts monitor oil sales on the seas, first reported about the black marks.

Details remain unclear around alleged acts of sabotage to four oil tankers, including two belonging to Saudi Arabia, off the coast of the UAE’s port of Fujairah. Satellite images seen by the AP from Colorado-based Maxar Technologies showed no visible damage to the vessels, and Gulf officials have refused to say who might be responsible.

The MT Andrea Victory, one of the alleged targets, sustained a hole in its hull just above its waterline from “an unknown object,” its owner Thome Ship Management said in a statement. Images of the Norwegian ship, which the company said was “not in any danger of sinking,” showed damage similar to what the firm described.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, has said the other three showed damage as well.

The unspecified threats reported by U.S. last week from Iran and its proxy forces in the region targeting Americans and American interests contradicted remarks by British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, a senior officer in the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the Islamic State group. He said Tuesday that “there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.”

Later, in a rare public rebuttal of an allied military officer, U.S. Central Command said Ghika’s remarks “run counter to the identified credible threats” from Iranian-backed forces. In a statement, Central Command said the coalition in Baghdad has increased the alert level for all service members in Iraq and Syria.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Angela Charlton in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed.

War With Iran Is America’s Endgame

This piece originally appeared on AntiWar. 

Who do we think we are? Truly. The latest reports that the Trump administration is considering plans for deploying 120,000 troops to the Middle East – presumably to strike Iran – demonstrates how Washington’s foreign policy has finally gone off the rails. Crazier still, the impending war with Iran isn’t even the today’s biggest news story – what with all the nonsense, soap opera hullabaloo about the Mueller Report – on mainstream media outlets. What the proposed plan constitutes is nothing less than the most important, and disturbing, global issue of the day. This is how it should be reported by a truly adversarial media: The United States is preparing for an aggressive, illegal, and unwarranted war against another sovereign power thousands of miles from its shores. Again! All true citizens should be beyond appalled and screaming dissent from the rooftops.

The proposed plan comes on the heels of Iran’s decision – prompted by U.S. hostility – to withdraw from certain, though not all, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) requirements. This shouldn’t come as any surprise. In fact, it’s incredible that Iran stayed in compliance with the treaty as long as it did. After all, it was the United Statesthat unilaterally scuttled the deal – with which its own intelligence services admitted Iran had complied with – against the advice of its European allies and even Secretary of State Tillerson. By reimposing sanctions on a compliant Iran, the US acted aggressively and actually vindicated any Iranian counteraction. Indeed, President Rouhani had some justification for his claim that Tehran’s move didn’t violate the agreement, per say, but that actually the JCPOA permitted it since reimposition of sanctions was “grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part.”

This staggering military plan is only the latest escalation in a dangerous tit-for-tat game of chicken between Iran and the US Furthermore, it is Washington which has most often been the aggressor. The US, not Iran, recently deployed an aircraft carrier strike force and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf. The US, not Iran, needlessly began a provocative semantic battle when it designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terror organization. So aggressive and unnecessary was this move that Iran’s subsequent retort that the real terror outfit in the region is USCENTCOM seemed disconcertingly accurate. Moreover, Washington has long exaggerated the level, and significance, of Iranian support for various regional proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza. Bottom line: Iran currently presents no existential, strategic threat to the US

The whole sordid saga bears a striking, and disturbing, similarity to the worst foreign policy decision of the 21st century – America’s last war of choice waged in Iraq. Both were justified by inflated, vague, and alarmingly secretive intelligence reports. How’d that work out in 2003? Now, with the New York Times reporting that the magic number is again 120,000 troops – close to the number that invaded Iraq – we can deduce that even if war were warranted, the US military wouldn’t have the troops necessary to win.

The specter of war with Iran bears both hallmarks of terrible military adventures: Washington is again overestimating Iran’s bellicose intent and underestimating its capacity to defend itself. Make no mistake: war in the Persian Gulf will bloody, indecisive, and nearly impossible to disengage from. It’d be Iraq War 2.0, only worse – since Iran is bigger, more mountainous, and has a more nationalistic population than even Iraq.

The absurdity of even considering a major war with Iran demonstrates how truly Orwellian US foreign policy has become. Mr. Trump (correctly) chooses to reduce tensions with Russia and North Korea, but he still needs an enemy, a useful villain. Since loading up his administration with recycled neocons like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo – both obsessive Iranophones – it should’ve been obvious that Iran would play the scapegoat for, and justification of, America’s massive defense budget and apparent intention to maintain a military vice grip on the Mideast.

The American people hardly care about, and are excluded from, US foreign policy. A cabal of neocon Washington insiders, Trumpian buffoons, an all-powerful corporate arms dealing clique, and a compliant media seem to run America’s global affairs. Congress is hardly even consulted, as evidenced on Tuesday morning when Senator Bob Melendez – a highly placed member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee – admitted on CNN that he hadn’t been fully briefed, and didn’t fully understand, the oh-so-secretive intelligence that allegedly justifies this new military escalation in the Persian Gulf. That’s scary!

It is war that the unelected hyper-hawks like Bolton and Pompeo want, and, with an apathetic citizenry, uniformed Congress, and pliable president, it is war they may just get. Such a fight would be bloody, difficult, costly, and hard to end. It would shatter any remnants of regional stability and only serve to empower the two hidden hands behind this bellicosity – Saudi Arabia and Israel. To invade and/or attack Iran would, once and for all, spell the end of any fiction of the US remaining a representative republic governed by the popular will and international norms. Instead it’d be exposed for what it has long been becoming – a rogue, hegemonic empire bent on power and destruction.

If I were still in uniform, and I thank my lucky stars that I am not, I’d likely file as a conscientious objector. Indeed, I can hardly understand why most servicemen will not take such a drastic step. Though, admittedly, I too failed to do so during the horrific Iraq War.

Still, if loyal foot soldiers, a vacuous media, and an indifferent Congress march along to war in Iran, Roman history would repeat itself – as the empire finally swallows the republic whole.

Redactions Aren’t Just Hurting Democracy—They’re Destroying It

The Nobel Prize-winning Czech author Milan Kundera began his 1979 novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by describing two photographs. In the first, two men are standing side by side, a Czech nationalist later executed for his views and the country’s Communist ruler. In the second, the dissenter is gone, airbrushed out. Just the dictator remains. Today, if Kundera hadn’t written that opening to his book, only someone with a long memory or a penchant for research would know that the two men had ever shared a podium or that, on that long-gone day, the dissident had placed his fur hat on the dictator’s cold head. Today, in the world of Donald Trump and Robert Mueller, we might say that the dissident was redacted from the photo. For Kundera, embarking on a novel about memory and forgetting, that erasure in the historical record was tantamount to a crime against both the country and time itself.

In the Soviet Union, such photographic airbrushing became a political art form. Today, however, when it comes to repeated acts meant to erase reality’s record and memory, it wouldn’t be Eastern Europe or Russia that came to mind but the United States. With the release of the Mueller report, the word “redaction” is once again in the news, though for those of us who follow such things, it seems but an echo of so many other redactions, airbrushings, and disappearances from history that have become a way of life in Washington since the onset of the Global War on Terror.

In the 448 pages of the Mueller report, there are nearly 1,000 redactions. They appear on 40% of its pages, some adding up to only a few words (or possibly names), others blacking out whole pages. Attorney General William Barr warned House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler about the need to classify parts of the report and when Barr released it, the Wall Street Journal suggested that the thousand unreadable passages included “few major redactions.” On the other hand, House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey was typical of congressional Democrats in suggesting that the speed — less than 48 hours — of Barr’s initial review of the document was “more suspicious than impressive.” Still, on the whole, while there was some fierce criticism of the redacted nature of the report, it proved less than might have been anticipated, perhaps because in this century Americans have grown used to living in an age of redactions.

Such complacency should be cause for concern. For while redactions can be necessary and classification is undoubtedly a part of modern government life, the aura of secrecy that invariably accompanies such acts inevitably redacts democracy as well.

Airbrushing Washington

Redaction, like its sibling deletion, is anything but an unprecedented phenomenon when it comes to making U.S. government documents public. My generation, after all, received the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with significant redactions in the very records on which it was based. And who among us could forget that infamous 18-and-a-half minute gap in the tapes President Richard Nixon secretly used to record Oval Office conversations? That particular deletion would prove crucial when later testimony revealed that it had undoubtedly been done to hide evidence connecting the White House to the Watergate burglars.

Still, even given such examples, the post-9/11 period stands out in American history for its relentless reliance on redacting material in government reports. Consider, for instance, the 28 pages about Saudi Arabia that were totally blacked out of the December 2002 report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the failure to prevent al-Qaeda’s attacks that fateful day. Similarly, the 2005 Robb-Silberman Report on Weapons of Mass Destruction, classified — and therefore redacted –entire chapters, as well as parts of its chief takeaway, its 74 recommendations, six of which were completely excised.

Infamously enough, the numerous military reports on the well-photographed abuses that American military personnel committed at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison, came out with substantial redactions. So, too, have the reports and books on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on war on terror detainees held at its “black sites.” In FBI agent Ali Soufan’s book, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, for example, large portions of a chapter on Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda figure who was brutally waterboarded 83 times, were redacted by the CIA. It mattered not at all that Soufan had already testified in a public hearing before Congress about his success in eliciting information from Zubaydah by building rapport with him and registered his protest over the CIA’s use of brutal techniques as well. And the nearly 400-page executive summary of the extensive Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s Torture Report was partially redacted, too, even though it was already a carefully chosen version of a more than 6,700-page report that was not given a public airing.

It’s worth noting that such acts of redaction have taken place in an era in which information has been removed from the public domain and classified at unprecedented levels — and unacceptable ones for a democracy. In the first 19 years of this century, the number of government documents being classified has expanded exponentially, initially accelerating in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Between 2001 and 2005, for instance, the number of government documents classified per year doubled. Even former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, chairmanof the 9/11 Commission, pushed back against the growing urge of the national security state to excessively classify — that is, after a fashion, redact — almost any kind of information. “You’d just be amazed at the kind of information that’s classified — everyday information, things we all know from the newspaper,” he said. “We’re better off with openness. The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public.”

Along the same lines, well-known judges in national security cases have repeatedly commented on the way in which information that, to their minds, did not constitute sensitive material was classified. For example, Judge T.S. Ellis III, who has overseen numerous high-profile national security cases, admitted his “firm suspicion that the executive branch over-classifies a great deal of material that does not warrant classification.” Ellis’s colleague, Judge Leonie Brinkema, underscored the obstacles classification imposed in the trial of now-convicted terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui, expressing her frustration at the “shroud of secrecy that had hampered the prosecution of the defendant.” Other judges have echoed their sentiments.

In the first days of his presidency, Barack Obama declared his intention to reverse the trend towards over-classification. His administration then issued a memo, “Transparency and Open Government,” that promised “an unprecedented level of openness in government.” In April 2009, he also ordered the release of the 2002-2005 memos from the Office of Legal Counsel that had been written to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that President George W. Bush’s top officials had put in place for use in the Global War on Terror. In 2010, Obama also signed into law the Reducing Over-Classification Act aimed at decreasing “over-classification and promot[ing] information sharing across the federal government and with state, local, tribal, and private sector entities.” And for a time, the rate of classification of new documents did indeed drop.

In the end, though, it proved impossible to stanch, no less reverse the urge to keep information from the public. As Obama explained, “While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security.”

Disappearing Democracy

Another government tactic that, as with former FBI agent Soufan’s book, has given redaction a place of pride in Washington is the ongoing strict pre-publication review process now in place. Former public servants who worked in intelligence and other positions requiring security clearances (including former contractors) and then wrote books about their time in office must undergo it. In April, the Knight First Amendment Institute and the ACLU focused on this very issue, jointly filing suit over the pre-publication review of such books, citing, among other things, the First Amendment issue of suppressing speech. In the words of Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and Yale law professor Oona Hathaway:

“Clearly, the government has a legitimate interest in preventing disclosure of classified information. But the current prepublication review process is too expansive, slow, and susceptible to abuse… In an era characterized by endless war and a bloated secrecy bureaucracy, the restrictions on commentary and criticism about government policies and practices pose an intolerable cost to our democracy.”

And bad as the urge to redact has been, in recent times the Trump administration and the national security state have taken its spirit one step further by trying to prevent the actual reporting of information. In March, for instance, President Trump issued an executive order revoking the need for the Pentagon to make public its drone strikes in the war on terror or the civilian casualties they cause. In a similar fashion, the American military command in Afghanistan announced its decision to no longer report on the amount of territory under Taliban control, a metric that the previous U.S. commander there had called the “most telling in a counterinsurgency.” Similarly, President Trump has repeatedly displayed his aversion to any kind of basic note taking or record-keeping during White House meetings with aides and lawyers (as the Mueller report pointed out).

In this century, the American public has learned to live in an increasingly redacted world. Whether protest over the level of redactions in the Mueller report will in any way change that remains doubtful, at best.

Certainly, Congressman Nadler has been insistent that the Judiciary Committee should see the entire unredacted report. At the recent Judiciary Committee hearing that Attorney General Barr refused to attend, Nadler acknowledged the dangers to democracy that lay in an increasing lack of transparency and accountability. “I am certain,” he said, “there is no way forward for this country that does not include a reckoning of this clear and present danger to our constitutional order… History will judge us for how we face this challenge. We will all be held accountable in one way or another.”

As he suggested, democracy itself can, in the end, be redacted if the culture of blacking-out key information becomes Washington’s accepted paradigm. And with such redactions goes, of course, the redaction of the very idea of an informed citizenry, which lies at the heart of the democratic way of life. Under the circumstances, perhaps it’s not surprising that polls show trust in government in steady decline for decades (with a brief reversal right after 9/11).

In the end, blacking out the record of the grimmest aspects of our own recent history will leave American citizens unable to understand the country in which they live. Informed or not, we all share responsibility for the American future. As with that photograph in the Kundera novel, our children may one day see the consequences of our past acts without truly recognizing them, just as many Czechs who saw that photo Kundera described undoubtedly thought it represented reality.

The record of how democracy is being redacted — sentence by sentence, passage by passage, fact by fact, event by event — would surely have rung a bell with Milan Kundera. He summed his own time’s version of the process this way: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Today, Americans are forgetting.

The Precise Ways Climate Change Is Putting Food at Risk

Climate change is leaving crops at risk. Driven by global warming – and with it ever greater extremes of heat, drought and rainfall – the rising mercury can explain up to half of all variations in harvest yields worldwide.

Unusually cold nights, ever greater numbers of extremely hot summer days, weeks with no rainfall, or torrents of storm-driven precipitation, account for somewhere between a fifth to 49% of yield losses for maize, rice, spring wheat and soy beans.

And once international scientists had eliminated the effect of temperature averages across the whole growing season, they still found that heatwaves, drought and torrential downfall accounted for 18% to 43% of losses.

In a second study, US researchers have a warning for the Midwest’s maize farmers: too much rain is just as bad for the harvest as too much heat and a long dry spell.

In a third study, British researchers have identified a new climate hazard for one of the tropical world’s staples: climate change has heightened the risk of a devastating fungal infection that is already ravaging banana plantations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“While Africa’s share of global maize production may be small, the largest part of that production goes to human consumption … making it critical for food security”

The impact of climate change driven by global warming fuelled by profligate fossil fuel use had been worrying ministries and agricultural researchers for years: more carbon dioxide should and sometimes could mean a greener world.

More warmth and earlier springs mean a longer growing season with lower risks of late frost. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which means ultimately more rainfall.

But the average rise in temperature worldwide of just 1°C in the last century is exactly that: an average. What cities and countryside have observed is an increase both in the number and intensity of potentially lethal heatwaves, of longer and more frequent parching in those landscapes that are normally dry, with heavier downpours in places that can depend on reliable rainfall.

Knowledge allows preparation

In Europe, the US and Africa, researchers have started to measure the cost to the grains, pulses and tubers that feed 7.7 billion people now, and will have to feed 9bn later this century.

Scientists in Australia, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the US report in the journal Environmental Research Letters that they developed a machine-learning algorithm to make sense of climate data and harvest data collected worldwide from 1961 to 2008.

The aim was to isolate the factors within climate change that might affect harvests, on the principle that if farmers know the hazards, they can prepare.

“Interestingly, we found that the most important climate factors for yield anomalies were related to temperature, not precipitation, as one could expect, with average growing season temperature and temperature extremes playing a dominant role in predicting crop yields,” said Elisabeth Vogel of the University of Melbourne, who led the study.

Big picture reached

Nowhere was this more visible than in the figures for maize yield in Africa. “While Africa’s share of global maize production may be small, the largest part of that production goes to human consumption – compared to just 3% in North America – making it critical for food security in the region.”

Dr Vogel and her colleagues looked at crop yields, mean seasonal temperatures, extremes and regions to arrive at their big picture. But impacts of extremes vary according to region, soil, latitude and other factors too.

US scientists report in the journal Global Change Biology that yield statistics and crop insurance data from 1981 to 2016 on the Midwest maize harvest told them a slightly different story. In some years excessive rain reduced the corn yield by as much as 34%; drought and heat in turn could be linked to losses of 37%. It depended on where the crop was grown.

“As rainfall becomes more extreme, crop insurance needs to evolve to better meet planting challenges faced by farmers,” said Gary Schnitkey of the University of Urbana-Champaign, one of the authors.

Bananas in danger

And British scientists report in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B that changes in temperature and moisture linked to global warming could be bad for the banana crop.

These have increased the risk of infection by the fungus Pseudocercospora fijiensis, or Black Sigatoka disease, by more than 44% in Latin America and the Caribbean. The disease can reduce yield in infected plants by up to 80%.

“Climate change has made temperatures better for spore germination and growth, and made crop canopies wetter, raising the risk of Black Sigatoka infection in many banana-growing areas of Latin America,” said Daniel Bebber, of the University of Exeter.

“While fungus is likely to have been introduced to Honduras on plants imported from Asia for breeding research, our models indicate that climate change over the past 60 years has exacerbated its impact.”

Alabama Ban on Nearly All Abortions in GOP Governor’s Hands

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama legislators have given final approval to a ban on nearly all abortions, and if the Republican governor signs the measure, the state will have the strictest abortion law in the country.

The legislation would make performing an abortion a felony at any stage of pregnancy with almost no exceptions. The passage Tuesday by a wide margin in the GOP-led Senate shifts the spotlight to Gov. Kay Ivey, a fixture in Alabama politics who’s long identified as anti-abortion.

Ivey has not said whether she’ll sign the bill. Sponsor Rep. Terri Collins says she expects the governor to support the ban. And the lopsided vote suggests a veto could be easily overcome. But an Ivey spokeswoman said before Tuesday’s vote that “the governor intends to withhold comment until she has had a chance to thoroughly review the final version of the bill that passed.”

In Alabama and other conservative states, anti-abortion politicians and activists emboldened by the addition of conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court hope to ignite legal fights and eventually overturn the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, putting an end to the constitutional right to abortion.

“Roe v. Wade has ended the lives of millions of children,” Alabama Republican Sen. Clyde Chambliss said in a statement. “While we cannot undo the damage that decades of legal precedence under Roe have caused, this bill has the opportunity to save the lives of millions of unborn children.”

Democrats didn’t shy away from blasting their GOP counterparts.

“The state of Alabama ought to be ashamed of herself. You ought to be ashamed. Go look in the mirror,” Sen. Bobby Singleton said “Women in this state didn’t deserve this. This is all about political grandstanding.”

The bill would make performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 99 years or life in prison for the abortion provider. The only exception would be when the woman’s health is at serious risk. Under the bill, women seeking or undergoing abortions wouldn’t be punished.

Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia have approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy. The Alabama bill goes further by seeking to outlaw abortion outright.

Alabama senators rejected an attempt to add an exception for rape and incest. The amendment was voted down 21-11, with four Republicans joining Democrats in the seeking the amendment.

Supporters had argued that exceptions would weaken their hope of creating a vehicle to challenge Roe. Collins said that the law isn’t meant to be a long-term measure and that lawmakers could add a rape exception if states regain control of abortion access.

“It’s to address the issue that Roe. v. Wade was decided on. Is that baby in the womb a person?” Collins said.

Democrats criticized the ban as a mixture of political grandstanding, an attempt to control women and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

During debate, Singleton pointed out and named rape victims watching from the Senate viewing gallery. He said that under the ban, doctors who perform abortions could serve more prison time than the women’s rapists.

In a statement, Staci Fox of Planned Parenthood Southeast said, “Today is a dark day for women in Alabama and across this country. … Alabama politicians will forever live in infamy for this vote and we will make sure that every woman knows who to hold accountable.”

Outside the Statehouse, about 50 people rallied and chanted, “Whose choice? Our choice.” Several women dressed as characters from the “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which depicts a dystopian future where fertile women are forced to breed.

If the bill becomes law, it would take effect in six months. Critics have promised a swift lawsuit. Randall Marshall, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said a complaint is being drafted.

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Associated Press writers Blake Paterson in Montgomery, Alabama contributed to this report.