Sunday, January 05, 2020

AUSTRALIA BUSHFIRE UPDATES

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P!nk
Pink
I am totally devastated watching what is happening in Australia right now with the horrific bushfires. I am pledging a donation of $500,000 directly to the local fire services that are battling so hard on the frontlines. My heart goes out to our friends and family in Oz ❤️ https://t.co/kyjDbhoXpp
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Scott Morrison
ScottMorrisonMP
We’re putting more Defence Force boots on the ground, more planes in the sky, more ships to sea, and more trucks to roll in to support the bushfire fighting effort and recovery as part of our co-ordinated response to these terrible #bushfires https://t.co/UiOeYB2jnv
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Kevin Rudd
MrKRudd
For God’s sake! On a day we have catastrophic fire conditions, in the midst of a genuine national crisis, Morrison, the marketing guy, does what? He releases a Liberal Party ad! He is no longer fit to hold the high office of prime minister.
Twitter

Australia Defence Association
austdef
1) Party-political advertising milking ADF support to civil agencies fighting bushfires is a clear breach of the (reciprocal) non-partisanship convention applying to both the ADF & Ministers/MPs. 2) Also cliche-ridden. 3) Its "defence force", not "Defence Force". #auspol #ausdef
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Trump Told Mar-a-Lago Pals to Expect ‘Big’ Iran Action ‘Soon
 Image result for TRUMP GUESTS AT MAR A LAGO
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN A BLACK OP WITH PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY FAILED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE PUBLICITY SEEKING NARCISSIST WHO IS POTUS
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TRUMP'S INTELLIGENCE SOURCES, AND DEFENSE COMMITTEE ARE HIS WEALTHY GUESTS AT MAR A LAGO



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Image result for TRUMP TWEETS US FLAG BEFORE SULIMANI HIT
Image result for TRUMP TWEETS US FLAG BEFORE SULIMANI HIT




1/3/20

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Image result for TRUMP TWEETS US FLAG BEFORE SULIMANI HIT

How Trump made the decision to kill Suleiman


Trump

President Trump at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla.

(AFP/Getty Images)


When President Trump’s national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, they weren’t expecting him to approve an operation to kill Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach to brief Trump on airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia groups.
One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.
Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors.
That meant the Pentagon suddenly faced the daunting task of carrying out Trump’s orders.
The first hint that further U.S. action was possible came only minutes after the end of the meeting with Trump.
“In our discussion today with the president, we discussed with him other options that are available,” Esper told reporters. “And I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary.”
Suleimani wasn’t mentioned publicly as a possible target. But behind the scenes, Trump’s decision set off a furious effort by the Pentagon, CIA and others to locate the Iranian general and put in place military assets to kill him.
U.S. intelligence agencies, which had been tracking Suleimani for years, knew he was on an extended Middle East trip that had taken him to Lebanon and Syria. He would be flying from Damascus to Baghdad within days, they learned.
He seemed unusually unconcerned about covering his tracks, officials noted. He was traveling from Syria to Baghdad on a flight that was not secret, Iranian officials said Friday, ostensibly for meetings with Iraqi officials.
But U.S. officials claimed Friday that Suleimani’s trip had a more nefarious purpose: He was in the final stages of planning major attacks against U.S. facilities in several Middle East countries, they said.
“He was personally going to a few locations for final planning authority for what we assessed to be something big,” said the officials, who briefed reporters under ground rules that didn’t allow them to be identified. The specific targets were unclear and officials declined to describe the evidence that backed up their assessment.
He had already been linked to a Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an America military contractor near Kirkuk, Iraq. In the days before Suleimani arrived in Baghdad, U.S. officials blamed him for orchestrating violent protests at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.
A senior State Department official said new intelligence indicated Suleimani was plotting attacks on American diplomats, military personnel and facilities that house Americans in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
“There was consensus in the president’s national security cabinet that the risk of doing nothing was unacceptable given the intelligence and given the effectiveness that Suleimani presents,” the official said.
When Suleimani arrived in Baghdad on Thursday, a U.S drone and other military aircraft were circling near Baghdad International Airport. Sulaimani and several members of a pro-Iranian military got into two vehicles and were riding on the airport road toward downtown Baghdad when missiles fired from the drone struck.
Both vehicles were engulfed in flames.
According to Iraqi officials, rescuers identified Suleimani’s body among the casualties by the blood-red ring he always wore that was still attached to his ash-covered left hand.

Trump vows to hit 52 Iranian targets if Iran retaliates after drone strike

By Ahmed Aboulenein, Maha El Dahan and David Shepardson



Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces hold a funeral for the Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, top commander of the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, and the Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Baghdad, Iraq, January 4, 2020. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani



BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites "very hard" if Iran attacks Americans or U.S. assets after a drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, while tens of thousands of people marched in Iraq to mourn their deaths.



Showing no signs of seeking to ease tensions raised by the strike he ordered that killed Soleimani and Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad airport, Trump issued a stern threat to Iran on Twitter. The U.S. strike has raised the spectre of wider conflict in the Middle East.



Iran, Trump wrote, "is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets" in response to Soleimani's death. Trump said the United States has "targeted 52 Iranian sites" and that some were "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!" Trump said, adding that the 52 targets represented the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days after being seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979.



Trump did not identify the sites. The Pentagon referred questions about the matter to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Among the mourners in Iraq included many militiamen in uniform for whom Muhandis and Soleimani were heroes. They carried portraits of both men and plastered them on walls and armoured personnel carriers in the procession. Chants of "Death to America" and "No No Israel" rang out.



On Saturday evening, a rocket fell inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone near the U.S. Embassy, another hit the nearby Jadriya neighbourhood and two more rockets were fired at the Balad air base north of the city, but no one was killed, the Iraqi military said in a statement. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.



Gholamali Abuhamzeh, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said Tehran would punish Americans "wherever they are in reach", and raised the prospect of possible attacks on ships in the Gulf.



Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah militia warned Iraqi security forces to stay away from U.S. bases in Iraq, "by a distance not less than a thousand metres starting Sunday evening," reported Lebanese al-Mayadeen TV, which is close to Lebanon's Hezbollah.



Trump said on Friday that Soleimani had been plotting "imminent and sinister" attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. Democratic critics said the Republican president's action was reckless and risked more bloodshed in a dangerous region.



With security worries rising after Friday's strike, the NATO alliance and a separate U.S.-led mission suspended their programmes to train Iraqi security and armed forces, officials said.



"The safety of our personnel in Iraq is paramount. We continue to take all precautions necessary," acting NATO spokesman Dylan White said in a statement.



Soleimani was the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' foreign legions. The attack took Washington and its allies, mainly Saudi Arabia and Israel, into uncharted territory in their confrontation with Iran and its proxy militias across the region.



France stepped up diplomatic initiatives on Saturday to ease tensions. French President Emmanuel Macron talked with Iraq President Barham Salih, Macron's office said. Macron also spoke with the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.



VOTE ON U.S. TROOP PRESENCE



The United States has been an ally of the Iraqi government since the 2003 U.S. invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein, but Iraq has become more closely allied with Iran.



The top candidate to succeed Muhandis, Hadi al-Amiri, spoke over the dead militia commander's coffin: "The price for your noble blood is American forces leaving Iraq forever and achieving total national sovereignty."



The Iraqi parliament is convening an extraordinary session during which a vote to expel U.S. troops could be taken as soon as Sunday. Many Iraqis, including opponents of Soleimani, have expressed anger at Washington for killing the two men on Iraqi soil and possibly dragging their country into another conflict.



Soleimani, 62, was Iran's pre-eminent military leader - head of the Revolutionary Guards' overseas Quds Force and the architect of Iran's spreading influence in the Middle East.



Muhandis was de facto leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) umbrella body of paramilitary groups.



A PMF-organised procession carried the bodies of Soleimani and Muhandis, and those of others killed in the U.S. strike, through Baghdad's Green Zone.



Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi also attended. Mahdi's office later said he received a phone call from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and they "discussed the difficult conditions facing Iraq and the region."



BODIES TAKEN TO HOLY CITIES



Mourners brought the bodies of the two slain men by car to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, then to Najaf, another sacred Shi'ite city, where they were met by the son of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and where Muhandis and the other Iraqis killed will be laid to rest.



Soleimani's body will be transferred to the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan that borders Iraq. On Sunday it will be taken to the Shi'ite holy city of Mashhad in Iran's northeast and from there to Tehran and his hometown Kerman in the southeast for burial on Tuesday, state media said.



The U.S. strike followed a sharp increase in U.S.-Iranian hostilities in Iraq since last week when pro-Iranian militias attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad after a deadly U.S. air raid on Kataib Hezbollah, founded by Muhandis.



Washington accused the group of an attack on an Iraqi military base that killed an American contractor.



Abuhamzeh, the Revolutionary Guards commander in Kerman province, mentioned a series of possible targets for reprisals including the Gulf waterway through which about a third of the world's shipborne oil is exported to global markets.



"The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there," Abuhamzeh was quoted as saying on Friday evening by the semi-official news agency Tasnim.



(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Maha El Dahan in Baghdad and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Ghazwan Jabouri in Tikrit, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Nadine Awadallah in Beirut, John Chalmers in Brussels, and Kate Holton in London; Writing by Will Dunham, Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool; Editing by Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis)




-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-01-05

RIP BABA RAM DAS DR. RICHARD ALBERT 2019


German government may offer 'silence money' for living near windmills

IT'S NOT NOISE ITS PROPERTY VALUES THAT UNDERLIE ANTI WIND TURBINE PROTESTS

German government may offer 'silence money' for living near windmills

Legal resistance to wind farms has become more common in Germany as the country switches to renewable energy. The Social Democrats have suggested direct financial compensation for those who live near a wind turbine.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has proposed a new answer to people complaining about wind farms in Germany: offering money to those willing to live near them.

"Those people who accept windmills in their neighborhood, and so make the expansion of renewable energy possible, should be rewarded," SPD environment spokesman Matthias Miersch told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper.

The cash could be handed to local community authorities, with the stipulation that it be spent on direct benefits to citizens, though Miersch is also prepared to offer "direct financial incentives for people who live in those regions."

Wind farms are vital to the German government's energy plans, with both a transition away from coal and nuclear power currently being undertaken, though too slowly for the demands of environmentalists in the face of the ongoing climate crisis.

Read more: Wind farms: climate protection vs. nature protection

Delayed wind

Despite this, local newspaper reports in Germany are filled with reports of people unhappy with having wind farms on their doorsteps, with complaints about noise "like a helicopter" (as one family told the Waldeckische Landeszeitung), and subsequent legal battles slowing down construction.

On the other hand, the Baden-Württemberg newspaper Leonberger Kreiszeitung reported on Wedndesday that the village of Weissach is seeking to turn a profit from its local wind farm by investing €435,000 ($487,000).

The center-left SPD, as junior coalition partner to Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is concerned that further delays to the construction of new windmills will make its country's targets impossible to reach. Germany's official target is to draw 65% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

But the rate of wind farm construction has slowed down, with only 160 new windmills planned until November this year: the lowest number for 20 years. "We cannot allow ourselves the long-winded planning processes we have now if we want to manage this enormous transformation," said Miersch.

Read more: Europe's climate woes - can this tech help?

Money for silence

Local governments aren't necessarily impressed with the idea. Uwe Brandl, president of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, practically dismissed the payments as hush money during a press conference in Berlin on Friday.

"What we're noticing now is more in the direction of paying people to keep quiet," he said. "I don't think that's the right direction. If we start paying for people to keep quiet, then it'll start with windmills and will go on with roads and other infrastructure measures."

"I think the government would be well-advised to sensitize people to the fact that they're part of this game, part of this society, and change is only possible if everyone is ready to participate in it," he added.

The idea of paying people living near wind farms has been implemented elsewhere. As the taz newspaper reported, two German states have also offered compensation to communities living near windmills, either in the form of shares in the company, or in the case of Brandenburg, €10,000 per windmill to all communities within three kilometers (1.86 miles).

Meanwhile, the debate is threatening to open up a new flashpoint in Merkel's coalition government. In response to the ongoing court cases, the government recently introduced a measure stipulating that wind farms had to be built at least 1,000 meters from residential estates. These were defined as five or more homes — a stipulation that Miersch and the SPD would like to lift. The Green party, meanwhile, considers the restriction as unacceptable. 


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‘A more dangerous world’: US killing of Iran's Soleimani stokes fears of regional conflict
 

General Qassem Soleimani (centre) was widely regarded as the second 
most powerful figure in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 
AFP file photo
The killing on Friday of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, signals a radical escalation in Washington’s stand-off with Iran, one some analysts warn could endanger US troops and their allies in Iraq, Syria and beyond.

Iran has vowed to avenge the death of the 62-year-old general, who was assassinated as he left Baghdad airport alongside key members of local Iran-backed militias early on Friday in a drone strike ordered by US President Donald Trump.

General Soleimani was widely regarded as the second-most-powerful figure in Iran behind Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, who warned that "severe revenge awaits the criminals" behind the attack.

Soleimani had assembled a network of powerful and heavily armed allies stretching all the way to southern Lebanon, on Israel's doorstep. His targeted killing has caused alarm around the world, amid fears that Iranian retaliation against American interests in the region could spiral into a far larger conflict.

"We have woken up to a more dangerous world," said France's deputy foreign minister, Amélie de Montchalin. Russia, a key ally of Iran in the Middle East, blasted “an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region".


The assassination marks a major escalation in the stand-off between Washington and Iran, a relationship that has lurched from one crisis to another ever since Trump pulled the US out of a landmark Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor.

“What the Trump administration has done is rewrite the rules of engagement with Iran,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Up until now, the military action on both sides had been mostly covert, without taking responsibility. But now the US has gone ahead and publically announced it assassinated one of the top figures in Iran’s political and military establishment,” Geranmayeh told FRANCE 24.

“Therefore this opens up a whole new space for Iran to take retaliatory actions against senior American personnel in the Middle East or elsewhere,” she added.

As Ian Bond, the director of foreign policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform, argued in a Twitter post, targeting non-state terrorists such as al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden or the Islamic State (IS) group’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is “v[ery] different from killing [a] senior official of [an] internationally-recognised state”.

The brazen strike marked a “[b]ig escalation by Trump, & a lawless step that increases risk to US & allies,” Bond added.

No doubt #Soleimani was v bad actor, w much blood on his hands. But killing non-state terrorists eg bin Laden or Baghdadi v different from killing senior official of internationally-recognised state. Big escalation by Trump, & a lawless step that increases risk to US & allies.— Ian Bond (@CER_IanBond) January 3, 2020

“It’s very difficult to overstate just how important this killing is,” stressed FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Lebanon, Leila Molana-Allen, describing the strike as “the equivalent of assassinating the head of the CIA on foreign soil”.

She added: “This is a hugely humiliating blow for Iran, given that Soleimani was such an important and such a popular figure – they will be forced to retaliate.”

Iran's Supreme National Security Council said it in a statement Friday that it had held a special session and made “appropriate decisions” on how to respond. But just what those decisions involve in practice is anyone's guess.

Proxy forces

Analysts say the slain commander's Quds Force, along with its stable of paramilitary proxies, has ample means to launch a multi-pronged response.

While Iran’s conventional military has suffered under 40 years of American sanctions, its elite forces have built up a ballistic missile programme and can strike asymmetrically in the region through proxy militias like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels – a network Soleimani spent the past two decades building, training and arming.

As the head of the Quds, Soleimani led all of its expeditionary forces and frequently shuttled between Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, where he played a key role in turning the tide of the country’s civil war in favour of Bashar al-Assad.

Soleimani then rose to even greater prominence by coordinating the Shia militias that bore the brunt of the fighting against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq.

US officials say the Quds Force under Soleimani also taught Iraqi militants how to manufacture and use deadly roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices, or IEDs ) against US troops after the invasion of Iraq – allegations Iran has denied.

The slain general, who also cultivated ties with Hamas and other hardline Palestinian factions, was regarded as a particular threat by Israel, Washington’s main ally in the region.

“Among the pro-Iranian factions across the region – in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and even Afghanistan – he was viewed as a hero, and there is going to be a lot of pressure in those factions to avenge his death,” said Borzou Daragahi, international correspondent for UK daily The Independent, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah was among the first to call for Soleimani to be avenged.

"Meting out the appropriate punishment to these criminal assassins... will be the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a statement.

Gaza-based Hamas official Bassem Naim wrote on Twitter that the assassination "opens the doors of the region to all possibilities, except calm & stability. USA bears the responsibility for that".

In Baghdad, the commander of a major Iran-backed militia urged all Iraqi factions to join forces and expel foreign troops from the country.

"We call on all national forces to unify their stance in order to expel foreign troops whose presence has become pointless in Iraq," said TV Hadi al-Amiri, who heads the Badr Organisation militia and also leads the second-largest bloc in Iraq’s parliament.

US troops in harm’s way

Daragahi said it was unlikely Iran would respond in a way that risks sparking a full-blown war the Iranian military would be ill-equipped to fight.

“If they do respond in a military way it will be in a clandestine and asymmetric way that is deniable – unless this assassination is such a game-changer that it even changes those rules,” said Daragahi.

In interviews with US media, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration had taken steps to fortify its assets in the region and was prepared for any possible retaliation, including a cyberattack.

But Daragahi warned that US troops in the region remained dangerously exposed.

“The problem is that US troops are in harm’s way across the Middle East, and it’s not clear yet whether the US administration has gamed out what it was going to do in response [to Iranian retaliation],” said Daragahi.

“US troops in Syria are looking increasingly vulnerable – there’s a few hundred of them in isolated bases; US troops in Afghanistan already are coming under near-regular assault by the Taliban and Iran could help in those attacks; and US forces in Iraq already under pressure from Shia militia and ISIS [IS group] remnants could also come under sustained attack.”

Military personnel are not the only US citizens at risk. US nationals working for foreign oil companies in the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra were rushing to the airport on Friday, the country’s oil ministry said, hours after Washington urged its citizens to leave Iraq “immediately”.

The State Department said the US embassy in Baghdad, which was attacked by Iran-backed militiamen and other protesters earlier this week, remained closed and all consular services had been suspended.

Precipitating a US exit from Iraq could be part of a more long-term Iranian strategy in response to Friday’s strike, said Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Such a strategy would involve “changing the tide against the United States in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where local actors may now more forcefully demand that US military personnel withdraw from these countries”, she explained, noting that “this is already a hot topic of debate” in Iraq.

The killings of Soleimani and his Iraqi ally Mahdi al-Muhandis, a prominent Iraqi militia leader involved in the attacks on the US embassy, have further strained US relations with Iraq's government, which is regularly torn between its alliances with Washington and Tehran.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the country’s caretaker prime minister, condemned the strike as an “aggression against Iraq” and a “blatant attack on the nation's dignity”.

Lamenting "a dangerous escalation" that threatened to ignite a destructive war in Iraq and the region, Abdul-Mahdi said the airstrike was an "obvious violation of the conditions of US troop presence in Iraq, which is limited to training Iraqi forces" battling the Islamic State group.

‘The game has changed’

Far from limiting their role to training, US defence officials have suggested they are prepared to engage in more assertive military action in Iraq over the coming months.

“The game has changed,” Defence Secretary Mark Esper warned on Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq would be met with US military force.

In justifying the decision to take out Soleimani, Pompeo told US media on Friday that the slain commander had been planning an “imminent” attack on US interests in the region, without elaborating.

The rationale and timing of this change of strategy, coming at the start of a year in which Trump faces both a Senate trial following his impeachment by the Congress and a re-election campaign, has drawn a lot of scrutiny.

“It seems that President Donald Trump, desperate for some kind of diplomatic victory ahead of the 2020 election, made a political decision to do an assassination that, frankly, the US and Israel could have carried out many times in the past but refrained from doing for fear of unintended consequences,” said Daragahi.

Trump’s would-be challengers from the Democratic Party have criticised the president’s order to assassinate Soleimani, with Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, saying Trump had “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox” and left the US “on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East".

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, warned against putting “the lives of American service members, diplomats and others further at risk by engaging in provocative and disproportionate actions”.

Critics have also noted that Soleimani’s assassination could be the final nail in the coffin of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with Tehran now widely expected to announce a significant expansion of its nuclear activities in retaliation.

The White House’s strategy of securing a better nuclear deal through coercive sanctions “is now formally dead”, tweeted Vali Nasr, a former senior adviser at the State Department, adding that the strategy had instead “led [the] US into hot conflict with Iran”.

Maximum pressure strategy of sanctions changing. #Iran and producing a new nuclear deal is now formally dead. It has led US into hot conflict with Iran— Vali Nasr (@vali_nasr) January 3, 2020

Trump’s allies, on the other hand, have responded enthusiastically, praising the White House’s decision to fight violence with violence.

"Wow – the price of killing and injuring Americans has just gone up drastically," Senator Lindsey Graham, a close confidant of Trump, wrote on Twitter, adding: “To the Iranian government: if you want more, you will get more.”

Reflecting on the changing US strategy, CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh said the Trump administration “may have decided the strength of this signal of US resolve, and removing the hardliner Soleimani from the equation, was worth the risk of the next weeks of chaos and retaliation”.

This “emphatic and game-changing signal from the US [was] made with the belief that the consequences will be unknowable, but probably manageable”, he added, though warning: “One certainty will be that Tehran will seek to exact a price in a way that shatters that belief.”

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AFTER HE HAD BEEN TOLD TO F**K OFF ENOUGH TIMES 

Australian PM defends government response to wildfires as cooler weather brings relief

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended his leadership and his government’s record on climate change Sunday as milder temperatures brought hope of a respite from wildfires that have ravaged three states, claiming 24 lives and destroying almost 2,000 homes.

Morrison has faced widespread criticism for taking a family vacation in Hawaii at the start of the wildfire crisis, his sometimes distracted approach as it has escalated and his slowness in deploying resources.

He was heckled last week when he visited a township in New South Wales in which houses had been destroyed and which was home to one of three volunteer firefighters who have died in the crisis so far.


READ MORE: ‘My hero’: Horse guides Australian fleeing bushfires to safety at pub

On Saturday Morrison announced that, for the first time in Australian history, 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists will be thrown into the battle against the fires. He also committed $14 million to leasing fire-fighting aircraft from overseas.

But those decisions attracted complaints that he had taken too long to act as fires have burned through millions of hectares (acres) in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, an area twice the size of Maryland.

Morrison told a news conference Sunday it was not the time for blame.

Death toll rises in Australia as bushfires burn at emergency levels Death toll rises in Australia as bushfires burn at emergency levels

“There has been a lot of blame being thrown around,” Morrison said. “And now is the time to focus on the response that is being made. … Blame doesn’t help anybody at this time and over-analysis of these things is not a productive exercise.”

Morrison has been chided for past remarks that appear to minimize the link between climate change and Australia’s escalating threats of drought and wildfires.

“There is no dispute in this country about the issue of climate change globally and its effect on global weather patterns and that includes how it impacts in Australia,” he said.


READ MORE: Australia is on fire, but what’s igniting the blaze?

“I have to correct the record here. I have seen a number of people suggest that somehow the government does not make this connection. The government has always made this connection and that has never been in dispute.”

Cooler temperatures and lighter winds on Sunday brought some relief to threatened communities, a day after thousands were forced to flee as flames reached the suburban fringes of Sydney.

Thousands of firefighters fought to contain the blazes but many continued to burn out of control, threatening to wipe out rural townships and causing almost incalculable damage to property and wildlife.
Australia fires: Strong winds hamper efforts to control flames Australia fires: Strong winds hamper efforts to control flames

As dawn broke over a blackened landscape Sunday, a picture emerged of disaster of unprecedented scale. The Rural Fire Service said 150 fires were active in the state, 64 of them uncontrolled.

“It’s not something we have experienced before,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

The latest fatality occurred at Batlow in New South Wales, where a 47-year-old man died Saturday night while defending the home of a friend from encroaching fires. New South Wales police said the man was found unconscious in a vehicle and could not be revived.

Earlier Saturday, a father and son who were battling flames for two days died on a highway on Kangaroo Island, off South Australia state. Authorities identified them as Dick Lang, a 78-year-old acclaimed bush pilot and outback safari operator, and his 43-year-old son, Clayton. Their family said their losses left them “heartbroken and reeling from this double tragedy.”

READ MORE: Australia calls on reservists as country faces strong winds fanning raging fires
Lang, known as “Desert Dick,” led tours for travelers throughout Australia and other countries.

The deadly wildfires, which have been raging since September, have already burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land. That’s more than any one year in the U.S. since Harry Truman was president.

The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has also been catastrophic for the country’s wildlife, likely killing nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals in New South Wales alone, Sydney University ecologist Chris Dickman told the Sydney Morning Herald. Frogs, bats and insects are excluded from his estimate, making the toll on animals much greater.
 

Australian prime minister received angrily by those impacted by fires Australian prime minister received angrily by those impacted by fires

Morrison’s handling of the deployment of reservists also came in for criticism Sunday. Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, who is leading the fight in New South Wales, said he learned of the deployment through media reports.

“It is fair to say it was disappointing and some surprise to hear about these things through public announcements in the middle of what was one of our worst days this season with the second-highest number of concurrent emergency warning fires ever in the history of New South Wales,” he said.

Morrison was also forced to defend a video posted on social media Saturday, which promoted the deployment of reservists and the government’s response to the wildfires.

READ MORE: MAP: Here’s where Australia’s wildfires are currently burning

The non-partisan Australia Defence Association said the video breached rules around political advertising.

“Party-political advertising milking ADF (Australian Defence Force) support to civil agencies fighting bushfires is a clear breach of the non-partisanship convention applying to both the ADF and ministers/MPs,” the association said.

In a tweet, Morrison said “the video message simply communicates the government’s policy decisions and the actions the government is undertaking to the public.”

Calgarians protest U.S. decision to kill top Iranian general

THE AMERICAN CONSULATE IS IN CALGARY
THE LARGEST AMERICAN CITY NORTH OF THE 
49TH PARALLEL 

Calgarians turned out to city hall on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020, to protest a fatal U.S. airstrike on Baghdad earlier in the week. Global News

More than 100 Calgarians turned out to an anti-war protest on Saturday, speaking against the Trump administration’s decision to kill a prominent Iranian general.

READ MORE: Who is Qassem Soleimani? The top Iranian general killed in a U.S. airstrike

Iranian and Iraqi communities rallied outside city hall to protest the U.S. airstrike on Baghdad, which killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani and several senior Iraqi militants, on Friday.

The group called Voice of the Oppressed organized the rally, with members saying they are standing up against injustice and condemning the attack.
“We want to raise awareness among Canadians [and] we are here in solidarity with the people who got killed in the airstrikes,” said organizer Riyaz Khawaja.


READ MORE: Killing of Qassem Soleimani could endanger Canadian troops in Middle East, experts say

The group called on the prime minister to speak out against the airstrike and pull troops from the area.

“We ask our government, Justin Trudeau, to [remove] our army from NATO because our brothers and sisters in [the] army, in Canadian forces — we don’t want them to lose their lives for nothing,” Khawaja said.

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