Jagmeet Singh Uses AOC, Bernie Sanders To Explain The NDP To Americans

Singh also called Trump the "exact opposite of a leader"

Jagmeet Singh Uses AOC, Bernie Sanders To Explain The NDP To Americans

Premila D'Sa,HuffPost Canada Sat, Jan 4, 2020

Jagmeet Singh highlighted NDP policies such as universal drug coverage and dental care in introducing himself to an American audience, and name-dropped high-profile Democrats in the process.

The NDP leader was a guest on the New Year’s Eve episode of New York-based “The Breakfast Club,” which regularly draws eight million monthly listeners. In a wide-ranging conversation with hosts of the popular radio show, Charlamagne tha God, Angela Yee and DJ Envy, Singh explained the NDP to Americans and repeated criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump.

When asked to explain his role in Canada to the show’s mostly American audience, Singh likened himself to U.S. congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

“It would be the AOC, Bernie Sanders kind of Democrat,” Singh explained. “We’re the progressive, left party of Canada.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s first piece of legislation was the Green New Deal, social and economic reforms to address climate change and economic inequality, issues that are also core to the NDP platform. Sanders, a U.S. senator, has made public health care a core part of his campaigning.


Singh made his alignment clear during the half-hour interview, by clearing up misconceptions of Canadian liberalism and calling out Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. things,” said Singh. “It’s very different what he says publicly and what he does privately, in terms of his policies versus what he says.”

Singh brought up Trudeau’s environmental record as an example, highlighting the Liberal government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“He held himself out to be this big environmentalist, but I don’t know of too many countries that have used public dollars to nationalize a pipeline,” said Singh.

Naturally, Singh was asked about what he thought of the U.S. president. The NDP leader sighed.

“Oh man. I got in trouble before because I was a little too blunt about it,” he said, referring to

comments he made during an comments he made during an NDP town hall in September 2019 when he expressed his desire to see Trump impeached.

“If you look at what a leader should do, what you would expect from a leader — he is the exact opposite,” Singh told “The Breakfast Club.”

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“A leader should be bringing people together, he continually tries to divide people.”

Singh brought up the Trump administration’s record of detaining migrants seeking asylum, and their immigration policy of “ripping babies out of their mom’s arms.”

He also criticized Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy. During the 2019 federal election, Singh campaigned on tax hikes targeting Canada’s richest people, and promised funding to low-income groups.

“Every single decision he makes is making life harder for people, is disrespecting human beings and is just wrong,” he said of the U.S. president.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated Jagmeet Singh campaigned on tax cuts for the wealthy in the last election. In fact, he called for the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

GO GREEN FACE 

LifestyleAllure

Baby Yoda Beauty Products May Be Coming Soon, Thank God

Lucasfilm dropped a big hint in the form of a trademark application.

Steve Kerr did not hesitate to make his thoughts known on President Donald Trump’s killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

The Golden State Warriors head coach tweeted Friday that Vice President Mike Pence lied about claims of Soleimani’s involvement with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and retweeted several posts condemning the airstrike.

One thing I've learned in my lifetime is to not believe our government when it comes to matters of war. Johnson and Nixon lied about Viet Nam. Bush and Cheney lied about WMD's in Iraq. Now Pence is lying about Iran/Soleimani's supposed involvement in 9/11. https://t.co/jm3oex867A
— Steve Kerr (@SteveKerr) January 3, 2020

Among Kerr’s retweets are posts calling the attack a “potentially catastrophic” blunder, denouncing a possible war with Iran and criticizing pundits who supported the Iraq war.

On Saturday, Kerr detailed his perspective on the attack with reporters, warning against an “unwinnable, unnecessary” war.

A transcript of Kerr’s comments:

I just follow what’s going on in the world because it’s always of great interest to me. I’m worried we’re going to end up in another war. I try to use my Twitter platform to remind people to do their homework before we all blindly wave the flag and get ourselves into another mess like we did in Iraq.
[Before the Iraq war] I remember the patriotic fever that swept the NBA. Since that time, we do a great job in our league and the other leagues supporting our veterans, bringing them to games and giving them ovations, which I wholeheartedly support. But what I think would be even more supportive is to not get involved, not send soldiers overseas to unwinnable, unnecessary wars in the first place. That’s how we can best support our men and women who are representing us.
We have a history in this country all you have to do is read Vietnam, Iraq, people are misled by our government. It happened in Vietnam, we know that. The facts were not facts. We have to be very careful right now with what we’re being told. If we’re led into another war, the implications for so many families, so many people are so drastic that we all need to understand what’s happening and support out troops by making sure we press our government to do the right thing.

One of the most politically outspoken figures in the sports world, Kerr grew up in the Middle East and lost his father to an assassination by Islamic terrorists. Kerr has recalled his father’s death to denounce the potential blowback of Trump’s policies in the past.

Steve Kerr is quite familiar with the Middle East, and is more than willing to share his thoughts on the matter. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

FACT CHECK
Pence Links Suleimani to 9/11. The Public Record Doesn’t Back Him.

In a series of tweets on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence said that Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.” Credit...Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

By Zach Montague
Published Jan. 3, 2020

In a series of tweets on Friday defending President Trump’s decision to authorize the drone strike that killed Iran’s top intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Vice President Mike Pence reeled off a list of some of General Suleimani’s most notorious attacks and machinations. Mr. Pence described “an evil man” who had threatened American national security interests for decades.

In one of his tweets, Mr. Pence claimed that General Suleimani helped 10 of the men who would go on to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks cross through Iran and enter Afghanistan. That does not match established historical accounts of General Suleimani or public United States intelligence about the hijackers.

WHAT WAS SAID

Mr. Pence said on Twitter that General Soleimani “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”

This lacks evidence. How Mr. Pence arrived at this number and this account is unclear. From what is commonly known about General Suleimani and the group of men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, their paths did not cross.

To start, many observers were quick to point out that 19 terrorists, not 12, were involved in the attacks. Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pence, clarified that he was referring to a subset of 12 of the attackers who are known to have traveled through Iran to Afghanistan.

Ms. Waldman said that Mr. Pence’s statement was based on a finding by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2016 that Iran permitted “several of the 9/11 hijackers” to transit through the country. The finding did not directly link the hijackers to any forces overseen by General Suleimani, or specify how many may have been granted passage.

The notion that General Suleimani abetted the attackers at all also appears dubious.

By 2001, General Suleimani had already been named the head of the Quds Force, the powerful security branch that often coordinates with other terrorist groups worldwide. Yet General Suleimani was not named at any point in the “9/11 Commission Report.”

In fact, the report states in no uncertain terms that neither the Iranian government nor Hezbollah, a group that General Suleimani worked closely with, ever knew anything about the attacks or helped facilitate them:

We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation.

Why General Suleimani, the leader of a hard-line Shiite Muslim military apparatus, would have come to the aid of members of Al Qaeda, a Sunni extremist group with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is also unclear.

General Suleimani spent much of his career undermining Saudi Arabia, and once even plotted to have the Saudi ambassador to the United States assassinated. At various points, he was also said to have helped facilitate the capture of Qaeda militants on behalf of the United States.

Zach Montague is based in Washington, D.C. He covers breaking news and developments around the district. @zjmontague

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAQ

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAN

Tweet

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC
This is a war crime. Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children - which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites - does not make you a “tough guy.” It does not make you “strategic.” It makes you a monster.

Quote Tweet

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
· Jan 4
....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAQ

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAN

America has always sanctioned and besieged Black and Brown bodies both at home and abroad. America militarism is the weapon wielded by American imperialism, to enforce its policing and plundering of the non white world.

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) January 4, 2020

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAQ

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAN

Defiant Trump doubles down on threat to Iran cultural sites

AFP•January 5, 2020

Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on a threat to attack Iranian cultural sites despite accusations that any such strike would amount to a war crime.

After his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, had insisted that any military action would conform to international law, Trump said he would regard cultural sites as fair game if Iran resorted to deadly force against US targets.

"They’re allowed to kill our people, they're allowed to torture and maim our people, they’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way," Trump told reporters.

"If they do anything there will be major retaliation."

His comments on his return from a break in Florida followed a welter of criticism over a Tweet on Saturday night in which he said sites which were "important to... Iranian culture" were on a list of 52 potential US targets.

Tehran's foreign minister had reacted to those initial comments by drawing parallels with the Islamic State group's destruction of the Middle East's cultural heritage.

And as Twitter was flooded with photos of revered Iranian landmarks in ancient cities such as Isfahan under the hashtag #IranianCulturalSites, leading US Democrats said the president would be in breach of international protocols if he made good on his threat.

"You are threatening to commit war crimes," Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the top Democrats hoping to challenge Trump in November's election, wrote on Twitter.

"We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran."

"Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," added fellow Senator Chris Murphy.

In a flurry of interviews on the Sunday talkshows, Secretary of State Pompeo said the US would not hesitate to hit back hard against Iran's "kleptocratic regime" if it came under attack, but pledged that any action would be consistent with the rule of law.

Both sides have traded threats since a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday killed Qasem Soleimani -- one of the most important figures in the Iranian government.

"We'll behave lawfully. We'll behave inside the system. We always have and we always will," Pompeo told the ABC network.

"The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America."

His comments came after his opposite number in Tehran Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that "targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME".

"A reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries," said Foreign Minister Zarif.

"Where are they now? We're still here, & standing tall."

- Threat 'Un-American' -

Nicholas Burns, who served as US ambassador to NATO under president George W. Bush, said the Trump administration would be guilty of hypocrisy given it was part of international efforts to deter IS from destroying countless pre-Islamic artefacts, including in the Syrian UNESCO-listed site of Palmyra.

"Donald Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites would be a war crime under UN Security Council resolution 2347 – supported by the Trump Administration itself in 2017 to warn ISIS+Al Qaeda of similar actions.

"His threat is immoral and Un-American," said Burns, now a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Others drew comparisons with the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan

Pompeo refused to give details on the 52 potential targets which Trump said had been drawn up to represent each and every hostage held in the standoff at the US embassy in Tehran four decades ago.

But one former official expressed skepticism that military planners would agree to target cultural sites.

"I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," said Colin Kahl who was National Security Adviser to former vice president Joe Biden.

"Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD (Department of Defense) planners and lawyers do... and targeting cultural sites is war crime."

---30---

Trump warns cultural sites could be targeted if Iran retaliates for Soleimani strike

ABC News•January 5, 2020

Trump warns cultural sites could be targeted if Iran retaliates for Soleimani strike originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday night that if Iran retaliates for the U.S. airstrike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad, the U.S. is prepared to "hit very fast and very hard" at 52 sites inside Iran, including some important to "the Iranian Culture."

Targeting cultural sites could be considered a war crime under international agreements to which the U.S. belongs, according to both Trump's political foes and former national security officials.

The number 52 used by Trump in his tweets also matched the number of Americans seized in the November 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They were held hostage for 444 days.

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on ABC's "This Week" Sunday and said, "The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America."

MORE: World is safer because of Iranian commander's death: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

In the days since Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed by U.S. drones, Iranian leaders have vowed revenge.

Anticipating possible Iranian retaliation in the region, the Pentagon dispatched 3,500 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait and augmented security at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
PHOTO: In this photo taken on Jan. 3, 2020, President Donald Trump makes a statement on Iran at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida. On Jan. 4 he warned that the U.S. is targeting 52 sites in Iran. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)More

Destroying cultural sites could be considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention for the preservation of cultural sites and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347, which was passed unanimously in March 2017 in response to the Islamic State's destruction of historic sites in Iraq and Syria.

That resolution "deplores and condemns the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, inter alia destruction of religious sites and artifacts, as well as the looting and smuggling of cultural property from archaeological sites, museums, libraries, archives, and other sites, in the context of armed conflicts" and states that such acts could constitute war crimes.

MORE: US cities ramp up security in wake of killing of Iran's top general

"These are not legitimate military targets, and saying they are potentially opens up our cultural sites to be targets of Iran," said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor and formerly the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East Policy. "The statement that we are targeting culturally significant targets in Iran undermines the message to the Iranian people that we are not against them."

Trump's tweets drew criticism on social media from other former national security officials and political critics.

"The more the walls close in on this guy, the more irrational he becomes," Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted in response to Trump.

"For what it's worth, I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," tweeted Colin Kahl, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration. "Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD planners and lawyers do ... and targeting cultural sites is war crime."

PHOTO: Protesters demonstrate over the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 4, 2020. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

When reached by ABC News for comment late Saturday, a Pentagon spokesperson referred questions about Trump’s tweets to the White House.

Typically, U.S. military planners consider a "proportional" response to a provocative military act, as happened in June when Trump initially approved airstrikes on Iranian air defense systems that shot down an American drone.

Trump called off the airstrikes shortly before they were set to take place when he learned that as many as 150 Iranian casualties were possible.

The president later tweeted that the death of that number of Iranians would not be "proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone."

ABC News' Shannon Crawford and Adia Robinson contributed to this report.

Mysterious swarms of giant drones have started to appear in the Colorado and Nebraska night sky, and nobody knows where they're coming from
Irene Jiang
Dec 30, 2019, 8:30 AM
US Air Forc

Mysterious swarms of giant drones have dotted the Colorado and Nebraska night sky since last week, The Denver Post first reported.
The drones appear and disappear at roughly the same time each night in swarms of at least 17 and up to 30. The drones appear to measure about 6 feet across.
Local and federal government authorities say they have no idea where the drones are coming from. They do not appear to be malicious, however, and a drone expert says they appear to be searching or mapping out the area.

Something strange has been happening in Eastern Colorado at night.

Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30. The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December 23. Since then, sightings have spanned six counties across Colorado and Nebraska.

Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott had no answer for where the drones came from or whom they belonged to but did have a rough grasp on their flying habits. "They've been doing a grid search, a grid pattern," he told The Denver Post. "They fly one square and then they fly another square."

The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, have been flying over Phillips and Yuma counties every night for about the past week, Elliott said Monday. Each night, at least 17 drones appear at about 7 o'clock and disappear at about 10 o'clock, staying 200 to 300 feet in the air.

The Air Force, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Army
 all say the drones do not belong to them. 
Óscar J.Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images

The Federal Aviation Administration told The Post it had no idea where the drones came from. Representatives for the Air Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the US Army Forces Command all said the drones did not belong to their organizations.


As the airspace where the drones are flying is relatively ungoverned, there are no regulations requiring the drone operators to identify themselves. Elliott, however, said the drones did not appear to be malicious.

The Post spoke with the commercial photographer and drone pilot Vic Moss, who said the drones appeared to be searching or mapping out the area. Moss said drones often flew at night for crop-examination purposes. The drones might also belong to a local Colorado drone company, which could be testing new technologies.

In the meantime, Moss urges residents not to shoot down the drones, as they are highly flammable.

"It becomes a self-generating fire that burns until it burns itself out," he told The Post. "If you shoot a drone down over your house and it lands on your house, you might not have a house in 45 minutes."

---30---

So Trump Employs Undocumented Immigrants at His Properties and Nobody Really Cares?

Jack Holmes,
Esquire•January 2, 2020

Photo credit: JIM WATSON - Getty Images

From Esquire

When ICE raided some chicken plants in Mississippi last year, they rounded up nearly 700 undocumented immigrant workers. They did not arrest the managers or corporate executives who systematically employed them. This fits a pattern, according to The New York Times: between March 2018 and 2019, the feds prosecuted 112,000 people for illegal entry or re-entry, but charged just 11 employers for hiring some of these same people.

Before anti-immigrant rhetoric descended into full-on propaganda about crime and MS-13, there was a lot of talk about undocumented immigrants taking jobs from American citizens. In Mississippi, citizens did take some of the vacated jobs. (There's also the related charge that undocumented workers drag down wages, which is unproven but at least does not boil down solely to uncut racial grievance.) But the persistent refusal to enact penalties on people who choose to employ undocumented immigrants suggests these are not the most pressing concerns for decision-makers. The people who travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to the U.S. are desperate for decent work, and feel it's worth the risk of deportation. It's employers who are primed for a change in incentive structure, yet they are rarely, if ever, punished. It's enough to make you think this is not, nor has it never been, about the plight of the American worker. It's a regime where workers can be simultaneously exploited by employers and demonized by political elites, ground up by the great American machine.

As usual, the President of the United States is a flag-bearer for all these most base instincts. It's tempting to see hypocrisy as a quaint relic of the Before Times, a dead concept in the era of post-truth politicking. (We are, after all, in a moment in which the president's allies are casting him as an International Corruption Crusader while he's orchestrating the Great American Heist.) But pointing this out can still serve as a reminder that none of these folks ever cared about this stuff. Donald Trump, you see, has always employed undocumented immigrants—at many of his properties, on many of his construction projects. He has no issue with these people except when it's convenient fodder for a rage spasm to get The Base going. The latest example arrived on the last day of 2019 via the Washington Post.


Nearly a year after the Trump Organization pledged to root out undocumented workers at its properties, supervisors at the Trump Winery on Monday summoned at least seven employees and fired them because of their lack of legal immigration status, according to two of the dismissed workers...


Two of the fired workers ... said they thought the company had held off on firing them until after the year’s work was complete, taking advantage of their labor for as long as possible. Both had worked at the winery for more than a decade.

That seems like the whole arrangement in a nutshell. Extract cheap labor from people—in this case, allow them to finish the grape harvest—then discard them as soon as it's convenient to do so. In general, the property relies on immigrant labor from Mexico in the form of seasonal workers who arrive on legal visas, according to the Post, but there are also year-round undocumented workers. They are among some 49 undocumented people the Post alone has spoken with, who worked at 11 different Trump properties across four states. For years now, the president has traveled the country railing against immigrants as violent criminals and imploring people to "Buy American, Hire American," while he profited from undocumented labor in systematic fashion. In July 2018, his Mar-a-Lago property announced it was seeking 61 foreign workers on a legal basis. Hire American for thee, but not for me.

This goes all the way back to the '80s, of course, when Trump had hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants building Trump Tower. He paid them as little as $4 an hour—and always well below union wage—because that's why people like Donald Trump employ people without papers. He ultimately settled a lawsuit around the workers' treatment. It's fitting that the people who made his flagship project possible would fit the theoretical description of the people he has built a political career smearing as criminals. (In practice, he is referring to brown immigrants.) But it also fits because Trump is merely a particularly garish emblem of the post-Reagan plutocrat class, where greed is good and other people—whether they're undocumented workers or they own a small contracting business—are just marks waiting to get fleeced.

That hustle now extends to the angry and isolated people who show up to his rallies in search of community and solidarity against The Other. They will not mind that he's profited so handsomely off undocumented labor, because it's about the performance of demonstrating who's a Real American with a say in how this country is run. Also, anything he does is excusable on the basis that Democrats do it, too, or anybody who's smart would do it, or everybody does it. Now there's some truth to that: the president is indeed one of a huge number of employers who uses undocumented labor with zero consequences.

---30---

Australia wildfires: Entire species may have been wiped out by inferno, conservationists say


‘We are seeing kangaroos and koalas with their hands burned off ... It’s been quite emotional,’ says wildlife park owner
Kate Ng
Sunday 5 January 2020 14:34

Conservationists and wildlife experts are anxious that raging bushfires sweeping through Australia have resulted in “catastrophic losses”, amid fears an entire species may have been wiped out.

Populations of small marsupials called dunnarts and glossy black cockatoos may have been destroyed in the fires that burned a third of Kangaroo Island, experts say.


The island, located off the country’s southern coast, is known as Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands – but what remains has been described as a “scorched wasteland”.

Ecologists are hoping to find survivors of the dunnart population and rescue them “before they are completely gone”.

Heidi Groffen, an ecologist and coordinator for the nonprofit Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife, said the mouse-like marsupials are too small to outrun wildfires and the population of around 300 may have been wiped out.

Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures
Show all 40

But she remained hopeful some may have found refuge in the crevices of rocks.

“Even if there are survivors, there is no food for them now,” she said. “We’re hoping to bring some into captivity before they are completely gone.”


Pat Hodgens, a fauna ecologist for the same nonprofit, told the The Independent: “It’s early days, fires are still burning but we have lost a lot of critical refugia for endangered species which will affect long term viability of these species.

“The Kangaroo Island dunnart is our main species of concern and it looks like its entire known [habitat] range has been fried. We are locating unburnt remnant patches of its habitat to see if we can locate it through camera trapping.”


Mr Hodgens said a team has already set cameras to try and detect any survivors, and hope to locate all potential areas the species may persist in through drone mapping.

The 50,000-strong koala population on the island has also suffered devastating losses, with as much as half the population believed to have been killed by the fires.​



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And it is unclear how many from a unique flock of the rare glossy black cockatoos escaped the blazes and whether they have a future on an island where much of their habitat has turned to ash.

Daniella Teixera, a conservation biologist working on a doctoral degree about the birds at the University of Queensland, said: “We don’t know the extent of the damage on the KI glossy habitat but we do know that critical areas of feeding and breeding areas have been burnt. Currently a waiting game.”

She believes the birds were in “the best position to escape” the fires because they were able to fly away, but like the dunnarts, the cockatoos may find they don’t have enough food left on the island.


The birds only feed from a single type of tree known as the dropping she-oak, and many hot spots on the island continue to burn.

Ms Teixera said careful conservation work over the past 25 years has seen the glossy black cockatoo population increase from 150, but those gains have been wiped out in the space of a week.

Sam Mitchell, co-owner of the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, said: “We are seeing kangaroos and koalas with their hands burned off – they stand no chance. It’s been quite emotional.


“We will do whatever we can to rehabilitate the native wildlife but it’s going to take years to recover,” he told Adelaide Now.
Watch more
Australia wildfire crisis escalates to ‘entirely new level’
Bright red haze shrouds sky at 2.30am as deadly blaze rages
Australian Navy evacuates hundreds trapped on beaches due to fires
Firefighter who lost home refuses to shake Australian PM’s hand
Australia’s ex-PM says world ‘in grip of climate cult’ – as fires burn

A fundraiser set up for the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park has raised A$183,464 (£97,400), far more than its original A$15,000 goal.

The park said funds will go towards “veterinary costs, koala milk and supplements, extra holding/rehabilitation enclosures, as well as setting up a building to hold supplies to treat these animals”.


Throughout the country, officials estimate that half a billion animals have been affected since the fires began raging.

Professor Chris Dickman from the University of Sydney told 7News the challenge of rebuilding wildlife populations is a long-term one.

“There are a lot of people out there helping by going into areas that have been burned to look for koalas and any other native wildlife [that have] been affected.


“In the longer term, the rebuilding of populations of many native species is going to be the issue,” he said. “A lot will have been undoubtedly very badly affected by these fires.”​

A spokesperson for the Australia’s Department of the Environment and Energy said: “Planning is already underway through the Australian government Department of the Environment and Energy to work with scientists, state organisations, national parks authorities, natural resource managers and indigenous land managers to identify recovery priorities and future protection strategies.

“Funding is already in place for koala hospitals and additional funding will be directed towards koala habitats. Mapping is already commencing in some areas of northern NSW to understand fire impacts on koala habitats and determine the most effective options going forward.”

The spokesperson added there was a waiting period for fire-affected areas to be declared safe before authorities can begin to fully assess the impact of the blazes.

Israel’s crime of stealing Palestinian organs continues

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian woman at a military checkpoint in Hebron after she posted a comment on Facebook on Al-Aqsa Mosque [Shehab News]

Sari Al-Qudwa
December 31, 2019

The Israeli occupation government practices the worst forms of organised terrorism against the Palestinian people, including theft, destruction, forgery, looting and seizing Palestinian rights. These practices are evidence of the atrocity of the organised terrorism led by the Israeli intelligence services known as the Shin Bet, Aman and Mossad, as this audacity has reached the level of stealing organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs that have been seized.

A number of Israeli doctors supervise the implementation of the most accurate and dangerous organised organ theft from the bodies of Palestinians without the consent or knowledge of their families. After it stole the Palestinian land and history, the occupation is stealing human organs in complex operations carried out by its gangs, thus violating all laws. This is considered a heinous crime and bitter reality by all standards.

After Arab and international journalists and institutions published reports on this and several human rights organisations called for the prosecution of the occupation for carrying out the most heinous thefts in modern history, seizing the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and stealing their organs to save the lives of Israelis. This is considered one of the ugliest crimes and organised terrorism brutally led by the Israeli security agencies’ gangs.

Israel Mossad chief: Iran at the top of priorities

Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published a report in August 2009 in Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper in which he revealed that the occupation government stole the organs of the martyr, Bilal Ghanem, 19, who died in 1992. According to the report, his body was handed over and it was clear that Bilal had been cut open from his neck to his abdomen and his organs had been stolen. The matter was very clear when he was being prepared for burial, which proves that the doctors from the forensic medicine institute took part of the body. Organs have been taken from bodies still held in the cemetery of numbers, where the occupation government keeps the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and still refuses to hand them over to their relatives.

In a past investigation, Director of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, Yehuda Hiss, admitted stealing the organs of Palestinian martyrs while performing autopsies. The recorded confessions of Dr Hiss in 2000 addressed the way the forensic medicine institute was managed and how skin and corneas were stolen from the bodies that were sent to the institution illegally. Dr Hiss and the doctors working under him would steal corneas from the eyes of Palestinian martyrs. Palestinian families mentioned they would notice large incisions in the abdominal and chest of their relatives who were killed in Israeli attacks during the First Intifada that took place in 1987. The occupation army had seized their bodies before handing them over.

What we need is to open this file and consider it seriously in order to demand supervision over the occupation’s crimes and ending it by opening a major investigation. A team of international lawyers informed of these crimes must be formed and they must work to expose them on an international level in order to prosecute the occupation leaders. No matter how far the occupation government’s arrogance, practices and crimes against the Palestinian people go, we cannot allow them to avoid international prosecution. We must work to activate Arab and Palestinian efforts, as well as official and popular European efforts to hold the occupation leaders accountable for the war crimes they continue to commit against the Palestinian people.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ORGAN+HARVESTING

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BODY+SNATCHER

WASN'T THIS A TV COP SHOW BACK IN THE EIGHTIES?

Barnie Sanders announces intention to 

block funds for war on Iran

US Congresswomen condemn Trump threats to bomb Iran cultural sites

US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned US President Donald Trump for threatening ‘war crimes’.

US congresswoman Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, US on 4 October 2016 [Lorie Shaull/Flickr]

January 5, 2020

US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned US President Donald Trump for threatening ‘war crimes’.

In a tweet, New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez responded to Trump’s threats to hit Iran ‘fast and hard’, after claiming the US had 52 Iranian sites, some of cultural heritage, in its crosshairs if Iran responded to the assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.


This is a war crime.

Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children – which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites – does not make you a “tough guy.”

It does not make you “strategic.”
It makes you a monster. https://t.co/IjkNO8BD07

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 5, 2020



She said: “This is a war crime. Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children – which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites – does not make you a “tough guy.”

She continued: “It does not make you strategic, it makes you a monster.”

Minnesota representative Omar also condemned Trump’s threats as war crimes.

She tweeted: The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter. God help us all!”


The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter.

God help us all! #25thAmendment https://t.co/nYZSvpo8rG

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 5, 2020



Iran FM: Trump’s attack threat ‘war crime’

Targeting sites of heritage and cultural significance is a tactic terror group Daesh use.

In response to Trump’s threats, Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib shared a video of the late British politician and veteran of the anti-war movement Tony Benn. She said: “This is how we need to talk about war.”


This is how we need to talk about war. https://t.co/IVqxVPAj7x

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 5, 2020



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has slammed Europe for not being ‘supportive enough’ of the assassination, and claimed the US ‘friends in the Middle East region’ had been very supportive of his actions.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has so far remained silent and decided not to cut his holiday in the Carribean short in response to US actions.

However, UK foreign minister Dominic Raab has said that the UK are ‘on the same page’ as the US following the assassination, and claimed the act of aggression was self defence.

Iran: ‘Like ISIS, Like Hitler…Trump is a terrorist in a suit’

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if there were further Iranian attacks on US targets, Washington would respond with lawful strikes against decision-makers orchestrating such attacks. Democratic critics of the Republican president have said the strike that Trump authorised was reckless and risked more bloodshed in a dangerous region.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave Soleimani the country’s highest honor last year, vowed “severe retaliation” in response to his killing. Thousands mourned his death in Iraq, Iran and Gaza.

Qassem Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its regional security strategy. He was killed early Friday near the Baghdad international airport along with senior Iraqi militants in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump. The attack has caused regional tensions to soar and tested the US alliance with Iraq. Fearing escalation, NATO has suspended it’s training activities in Iraq, while the British Navy has committed to escort every UK-flagged ship across the Straits of Hormuz.

Showing no signs of seeking to reduce tensions, the US president has since issued a stern threat to Iran on Twitter, saying that the US has targeted 52 Iranian sites that it would strike if Iran attacks Americans or US assets in response to the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. He later added that the US will use ‘new’ equipment to strike Iran.

US Democratic White House contenders condemn Trump’s strike against Iranian commander, warn of war

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders delivers a speech during his first presidential campaign rally at Brooklyn College in New York, United States, March 2, 2019. 
 [Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency]

January 3, 2020 at 9:00 pm




Democratic presidential contenders on Friday condemned the air strike that killed prominent Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, saying President Donald Trump’s decision was reckless and could lead the United States to another war in the Middle East, Reuters reports.

The candidates, vying for the right to challenge Trump in the November 2020 election, questioned whether the president had a broader strategy in dealing with Iran, and used the action to highlight their approach to dealing with foreign adversaries.

“President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” former US Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement.

At a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, he added that no American would mourn Soleimani’s death but “the prospect of direct conflict with Iran is greater than it has ever been.”

Liberal US Senator Bernie Sanders, who has consistently opposed US military intervention overseas, said the move “brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars.”


I was right about Vietnam.

I was right about Iraq.

I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran.

I apologize to no one. pic.twitter.com/Lna3oBZMKB

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 3, 2020



The overnight attack against the general, regarded as the second most powerful figure in Iran, was a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and its allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strike aimed to disrupt an “imminent attack” that would have endangered Americans in the Middle East. But it was a risky gamble for Trump, who has criticized longstanding US entanglements in the region and promised to end “endless wars.”

Republicans said the move was a sign Trump – who was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives last month and faces a Senate trial on charges he abused his office and obstructed Congress – was restoring American strength and leadership.

“At a time when the president is under impeachment by the Democrats, there’s nothing wrong with him showing strength and resolve in the face of a foreign threat,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who is close to the White House.

Democrats said it was another troubling indication of Trump’s erratic approach to foreign policy.

READ: Soleimani’s assassination -America’s declaration of war on Iran

“We’re on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East,” said liberal US Senator Elizabeth Warren. “We’re not here by accident. We’re here because a reckless president, his allies and his administration have spent years pushing us here.”

Many of the Democratic White House candidates, who will face voters for the first time in a month when Iowa kicks off the state-by-state nominating battle on Feb. 3, pounced on the strike to emphasize their own foreign policy philosophies and credentials.

Biden, a former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee who emphasizes his foreign policy experience, released a 30-second online ad on Friday calling Trump “an erratic, unstable president” and portraying himself as “someone tested and trusted around the world.”

Sanders mentioned in his statement his 2002 vote against authorizing war in Iraq, which he frequently uses as a contrast to Biden, who backed the war.

Biden, Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and other Democrats made clear in their statements that they viewed Soleimani as a threat, but Warren, Sanders and entrepreneur Andrew Yang did not mention the Iranian commander.

Trump’s reckless gamble with world peace


Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani attends Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's meeting with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran, Iran on September 18, 2016


Yvonne Ridley
@yvonneridley
January 3, 2020

Iran is not given to knee-jerk reactions, but those who run the country are extremely unpredictable nonetheless. That is why it is so difficult to anticipate what will result from the assassination of the nation’s well-loved and respected Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Just a few days ago, the equally unpredictable US President publicly threatened Iran for an attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad. When the heavily-defended embassy compound was targeted by demonstrators following US air strikes in the Iraqi capital, Donald Trump responded: “Tehran will pay a very big price. This is not a warning. It’s a threat.” His words did indeed translate into a killing which could unleash yet another war in the Middle East with implications for world peace.

Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani has been called both reckless and disproportionate, involving air strikes against five targets on either side of the Iraq and Syria border followed by the drone strike killing the Iranian general. Others were also killed alongside Soleimani, including Mohammed Reza Al-Jaberi, a senior Iraqi commander and head of public affairs of the Popular Mobilisation Forces militia, and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the deputy chairman of the group.

Parallels are already being drawn between General Soleimani’s death and the killing in June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. He was shot dead by a hot-headed 18 year-old Bosnian who was outraged his country had been taken over by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination triggered a chain reaction which escalated very quickly into World War One.

READ: Trump hawkish in first tweet after Soleimani’s death

We know that Trump is also hot-headed and prone to outlandish statements, usually on Twitter, but by ordering the US drone strike against Soleimani — without Congressional approval — some observers believe that he has turned an aggressive war of words into deadly action which can only lead to open conflict between Iran and America. While America’s neocons will be salivating at the prospect of war with Iran — as will, no doubt, Israeli hawks and the Saudi regime — we have to wonder just how much thought went into the assassination.

Did Trump see the strike as a welcome distraction from his impeachment and a further excuse to rally public opinion behind him to ensure a second term as US President? Back in October 2012 he accused the then US President Barack Obama of planning to launch a war against Iran “because he can’t negotiate” and thus “ensure” a second term in the White House. Whatever the truth behind Trump’s claim — and we know that no war ensued — it reveals much about the mindset of Obama’s successor.

It also exposes Trump as a political gambler, something which the 62-year-old Iranian general recognised. Soleimani ridiculed the US President very publicly on a number of occasions. It is quite possible, therefore, that the thin-skinned Trump ordered the drone attack on a personal whim. Whatever the reason, America is now faced with the prospect of a full-scale war with Iran which could suck the whole of the Middle East and Asia into a war of unimaginable proportions.

Trump’s reaction to Soleimani’s killing was to tweet the image of the US flag. While he continues to indulge his juvenile fantasies, most eyes are now focussed on Tehran, where a more mature leadership tends not to be prone to petulance.

I remember speaking to an Iranian Embassy official in London in September 1998, the day after nine of his fellow diplomats were murdered in Afghanistan where the Taliban government was in control. If ever there was a reason for going to war this was it, surely? In response to my question, though, I was told that Iran wasn’t a natural aggressor and the response, whatever it was, would be measured and would certainly not lead to war.

READ: Hamas condemns US assassination of Qassem Soleimani

Since then, of course, it could be argued that Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has been anything but measured. The military mastermind behind the regime in Damascus has previously been cited as none other than Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Love him or loath him, though, Soleimani was universally respected by friends and foes alike for his military skills. Such was his reputation that he was considered to be one of the most powerful figures in Tehran who reported directly to the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah Khamenei awarded him the Order of Zolfiqar medal, Iran’s highest military honour, last year in recognition of his services to the country and for masterminding Iran’s growing military influence across the Middle East-North Africa region. Some said that he was as influential as Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

Will Iran lash out at America, forcing a reluctant, war-weary Iraq to become the battleground between Tehran and Washington? Or will the already serious escalation between the two countries spread far beyond Iran’s neighbours?

Such questions would have been unimaginable just a few days ago, when a series of rocket attacks hit an Iraqi military base in the northern city of Kirkuk. The attack killed a US civilian contractor and wounded several American and Iraqi soldiers. Washington claimed to have proof that the Iranian-supported Kataib Hezbollah militia was responsible and warned outgoing Iraq Prime Minister Adil Abdel-Mahdi that the US would respond accordingly; it ignored Abdel-Mahdi’s pleas for restraint.

In these uncertain times only one certainty remains: the Middle East does not need another war and neither does the rest of the world. Trump’s reckless gamble with world peace has to be one that he loses.

READ: Iran names new Quds Force commander after US kills Soleimani

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Iran Parliament Speaker: Soleimani’s killing is violation of UN Charter



An Iranian woman carries an image of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a US airstrike in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, during an anti-US rally to protest the killing at Palestine Square in the capital Tehran, Iran on January 4, 2020 [Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu Agency]

January 5, 2020 at 1:40 pm


Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Sunday the killing of senior military commander Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike was an “outright violation” of the United Nations Charter.

“US President [Donald Trump]’s brutal act is a war crime,” he said in an address to parliament cited by the official IRNA news agency.

Larijani said Soleimani’s killing has changed the political balance of both the region and the international community.

His death marked a dramatic escalation in tensions between the US and Iran, which have often been at a fever pitch since Trump chose in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw Washington from a 2015 nuclear pact world powers struck with Tehran.

Under the 2015 Vienna agreement, most international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in 2016, in exchange for limitations on Iran’s nuclear work. US President Donald Trump’s administration however pulled out of the deal.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave Soleimani the country’s highest honor last year, vowed “severe retaliation” in response to his killing. Thousands mourned his death in Iraq, Iran and Gaza.

The Pentagon accused Soleimani of plotting the embassy attack and planning to carry out additional attacks on US diplomats and service members in Iraq and the region.

Read: Pope calls for dialogue and restraint amid growing US-Iran tensions

Qassem Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its regional security strategy. He was killed early Friday near the Baghdad international airport along with senior Iraqi militants in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump. The attack has caused regional tensions to soar and tested the US alliance with Iraq. Fearing escalation, NATO has suspended it’s training activities in Iraq, while the British Navy has committed to escort every UK-flagged ship across the Straits of Hormuz.

Showing no signs of seeking to reduce tensions, the US president has since issued a stern threat to Iran on Twitter, saying that the US has targeted 52 Iranian sites that it would strike if Iran attacks Americans or US assets in response to the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. He later added that the US will use ‘new’ equipment to strike Iran.

The US strike on Soleimani’s convoy at Baghdad airport also killed Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and it raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East.

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