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Monsanto lobbyists were officially barred by the European Parliament on Thursday after refusing requests to participate in hearings about the U.S. corporation’s efforts to influence regulations of its controversial glyphosate within the 28-nation bloc.
The ban was announced by the parliament’s presidential council under rules designed to combat misbehavior by those lobbying the EU’s lawmaking body. It is the first time, the Guardian notes, that “MEPs have used new rules to withdraw parliamentary access for firms that ignore a summons to attend parliamentary inquiries or hearings.”
The Greens/EFA Group in the parliament, which had requested Monsanto’s removal after the biotech giant’s refusal, welcomed the decision.
“This is strong democracy. Those who escape democratic accountability must be excluded from access to lobbying,” said MEP Sven Giegold, financial and economic policy spokesperson for the Greens/EFA and parliament’s rapporteur for Transparency, Accountability and Integrity. “If Monsanto does business in Europe, it must also face up to its responsibilities before the European Parliament.”
The Guardian reports:
Philippe Lamberts, president of the Greens/EFA, added, “Those who ignore the rules of democracy also lose their rights as a lobbyist in the European Parliament. US corporations must also accept the democratic control function of the parliament. Monsanto cannot escape this. There remain many uncertainties in the assessment of the pesticide glyphosate. Monsanto has to face the questions of parliamentarians and should not hinder the clarification process.”
In response to the decision in Brussels, critics of the powerful company wondered if the U.S. would ever take such measures:
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In a pair of tweets from his Virginia golf club on Saturday, President Donald Trump once again derided attempts to pursue a diplomatic course with North Korea and argued cryptically that “only one thing” will prevent North Korea from continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal and threaten its neighbors.
The tweets sparked immediate alarm, with many assuming that the “one thing” to which Trump referred is some form of military force, which analysts have warned could result in a catastrophic “nuclear nightmare.”
Some compared Saturday’s tweets to Trump’s offhand “calm before the storm” remark during a dinner with top military officials Thursday night, arguing that such casual provocations are extraordinarily dangerous.
Trump has repeatedly disparaged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for engaging in talks with Pyongyang, saying that he is “wasting his time.”
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Amid the latest signs of escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, President Donald Trump was blasted on Wednesday for ordering B-1 bombers to fly over the Korean peninsula—a move critics characterized as a dangerous but intentional provocation.
According to John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon, Trump “thinks he’ll be admired for killing millions… so he’s trying to provoke war to not be the aggressor.”
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Others on social media similarly saw it as a move “to provoke war”:
A statement from the U.S. military said the display, which included missile drills over the waters east and west of the peninsula, was the first nighttime exercise conducted between the U.S. Air Force, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, and Republic of Korea air force units.
It came hours after President Donald Trump met with his top military advisors to discuss “a range of options to respond to any form of North Korean aggression or, if necessary, to prevent North Korea from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons,” and weeks after Kim Jong Un’s regime—following ominous threats by Trump—warned of its “right to shoot down the U.S. bombers even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country.”
U.S. Air Force Maj. Patrick Applegate said of Tuesday drill: “This is a clear demonstration of our ability to conduct seamless operations with all of our allies anytime anywhere.”
The development comes as a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows that two-thirds of Americans believe Trump’s comments about the situation with North Korea have made it worse.
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With more than 800,000 young immigrants facing the possibility of deportation following President Donald Trump’s widely denounced decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last month, immigrant rights groups took to social media and the streets Thursday to demand that their representatives work to pass a “clean” DREAM Act and reject the Trump administration’s “xenophobic” policy wish list.
“As each day passes more and more immigrant youth lose their protection from deportation. We need Congress to act now.”
Click Here: brisbane lions guernsey 2019—United We DreamUnited We Dream, MoveOn.org, the National Immigrant Law Center, and other advocacy groups circulated sample call scripts and other tools, urging citizens throughout the United States to contact their representatives and demand that they protect Dreamers.
“We all have a role to play now to fight back against Trump and this white supremacist agenda to take safety and jobs away from young people of color,” said United We Dream.
“By cancelling DACA, Trump has put 800,000 young people at risk of losing their jobs and being deported from the only country they know as home,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) added. “This is beyond heartbreaking—it’s cruel. Passing the bipartisan Dream Act would protect them.”
Activists also hit the road to demonstrate, gather petitions, and march in support of the DREAM Act, which polls have shown is supported by 75 percent of the American public. Led by the group Make the Road New York, dozens of activists on Thursday embarked on a 12-mile walk to demand that Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) support the DREAM Act.
“We are asking him to co-sponsor and commit to passing a clean DREAM Act, free of more draconian enforcement provisions and we are asking him to play more of a leadership role,” Walter Barrientos, an organizer with Make the Road New York, told Newsday.
“As each day passes more and more immigrant youth lose their protection from deportation,” United We Dream concluded. “We need Congress to act now.”
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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the Senate’s most outspoken military hawks and member of the powerful Arms Services Committee, confessed over the recent weekend he “didn’t know” the United States currently has nearly a thousand soldiers in Niger—something he only learned after the recent deaths of four U.S. soldiers in the African country broke into the national news cycle last week.
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To the extent this admission is true, Sen. Graham would do himself a big favor if he put aside some time and started reading the body of work written by investigative journalist Nick Turse, managing editor of the indispensable TomDispatch website and frequent contributor to The Intercept who has reported extensively on the expanding U.S. military footprint across Africa since 9/11.
In 2015, Turse wrote the book, , in which he details the Pentagon’s “shadow war in Africa,” mostly consisting of clandestine Special Forces operations, drone warfare, and the training of foreign troops that he argues is mainly “helping to destabilize whole countries” while setting the stage for future military escalation in any number of countries across the continent, with Niger just one among them.
And it is not as though Sen. Graham was alone this week in his stated surprise about the size and scope of the U.S. military presence in Africa. In addition to several other lawmakers who said so on the record, Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York also said he “did not [know]” about the troop levels in Niger or what the soldiers’ mission might have been. Schumer said he expected to receive a full briefing from the Pentagon this week.
In the meantime, however, Graham, Schumer—and anyone else for that matter—can start with these free and very accessible articles, all of which where first published by TomDispatch, edited by Tom Engelhardt, and subsequently re-posted here at Common Dreams over recent years.
Call it a primer for the U.S. “war on terror” in Africa. Or, to riff on one of Turse’s own headlines, What U.S. Senators Don’t Know (and Neither Do You) About What the Pentagon Is Doing in Africa:
And it’s not just reporting past developments and events that might be needed at this point. As Turse himself pointed out to Sen. Graham in a tweet on Monday, there’s plenty in Africa’s future that U.S. military planners are considering as well.
Perhaps it is best if members of Congress—as well as the U.S. public at large—started asking many more questions, and demanding much better answers, about what they do and do not know about America’s role on the continent.
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Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) blasted the U.S. government on Tuesday for enabling the humanitarian crisis that’s underway in Yemen—just before the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed the airport in the nation’s capitol of Sanaa, further blocking aid from getting to Yemeni civilians.
Showing pictures of children who are starving amid what U.N. officials have called the worst famine the world has seen in decades, Murphy told his Senate colleagues, “This humanitarian catastrophe—this famine…is caused in part by the actions of the United States of America.”
“We have a responsibility to make sure that the coalition, of which we are a part, is not using starvation as a weapon of war,” said Murphy. “This is a stain on the conscience of our nation if we continue to remain silent.”
The bombing of Sanaa’s airport is expected to worsen the impact of the Saudi blockade. The Saudis said this week that they plan to loosen the blockade but have yet to follow through. The coalition has closed many of Yemen’s ports to ostensibly prevent weapons-smuggling from Iran to the Houthi rebels who are fighting the Yemeni government forces—and civilians have suffered the consequences.
In addition the famine, Yemenis are also suffering from what Oxfam has called the worst cholera outbreak in history, with at least one million expected to be affected by the end of the year, including 600,000 children. The blockade has prevented desperately-needed sanitation supplies from getting to aid agencies, making it impossible to prevent new cases as the medical community—in which many doctors and nurses have been working without pay since much of the healthcare system has been shut down—tries to treat those who are already sick.
In his speech on the Senate floor, Murphy added that the United States’ contributions to the Saudi coalition have made actions like the bombing of Sanaa’s airport possible.
“It is U.S. refueling planes flying in the sky around Yemen that restock the Saudi fighter jets with fuel, allowing them to drop more ordnance,” said Murphy. “It is U.S.-made ordnance that is carried on these planes and dropped on civilian and infrastructure targets inside Yemen. The United States is part of this coalition. The bombing campaign that has caused the cholera outbreak could not happen without us.”
The senator also spoke out on social media.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) described President Donald Trump’s claim that Democrats are obstructing progress on tax overhaul efforts in Congress as “total nonsense” on Sunday.
“This is a terrible, terrible piece of legislation and it must be defeated.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders”Democrats,” Sanders told Jake Tapper on CNN’s Face The Nation, “have been shut out of this process just as they were shut out of the healthcare legislation process.”
Going further, Sanders said that Trump “should understand” exactly what’s going on and why Democrats, as well as a large majority of the U.S. public, do not like or trust what the Republicans in Congress are attempting to do with what they call “tax reform” but which progressive critics have identified—and numerous analyses have shown—as nothing more than a “tax scam” that gives to the rich at the expense of the lower- and middle-classes.
Watch:
“What this is about,” said Sanders, “is fulfilling Republican promises made to wealthy campaign contributors. There is a reason why the billionaire class provides hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans. And now is payback time. What this legislation is about, Jake, is giving 50% of the tax benefits to the top 1% — and at the end of ten years in the House bill, forcing almost 50% of the middle class to actually pay more in taxes.”
“What this tax reform bill is about—absolutly and insanely,” he continued, “is repealing the estate tax; a $265 billion tax break, not for the top 1% but for the top 0.2%—a handful of the wealthiest families in this country, like the Walton family and the Koch brothers.” All of this, Sanders concluded, as the Republicans willingly explode the annual deficit by $1.5 trillion in order to later argue that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid must be cut. “This is what [Speaker of the House] Paul Ryan is saying. They’re gonna come back with massive cuts [to those programs], because they say, ‘Oh my goodness, the deficit and the national debt are too high.’ This is a terrible, terrible piece of legislation and it must be defeated.”
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Appearing on CNN Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) argued that the $1,182 that Republicans spent the day touting as the money average American families will save under their tax plan, is far from what the government could afford to give them—if they weren’t spending that money on massive tax cuts for the rich.
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As House Leader Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his colleagues said in a press conference unveiling some of the proposal’s details, “the typical family of four will save $1,182 a year on their taxes.”
Most American families would happily accept an extra $1200 per year to help with bills, college funds, and savings—but the estimated sum of $1,182 will only apply to families of four earning $59,000 per year, not lower income households.
Critics were also concerned about the GOP’s plans for the Child Tax Credit. As the CBPP explained in September after the Republicans unveiled the framework for their plan, the Party “proposed to make their Child Tax Credit increase non-refundable, meaning that working families with incomes too low to have federal income tax liability would not benefit.” A single parent raising two children making minimum wage would be left out of receiving the credit.
Sister Simone Campbell of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice also noted that immigrant families would lose out under the plan. The so-called Tax Cuts & Jobs Act “rips the credits away from 5.1 million children whose parents are immigrant taxpayers with an average annual income of $21,000, which is a loss of 8.5% of their annual income. This will directly jeopardize the economic, educational, and developmental outcomes of children living in the U.S.”
On social media, Americans expressed doubts that the GOP’s tax plan would benefit them in a meaningful way—even if they’re in the segment of the population that could receive $1,182 more per year in tax savings—especially compared to the huge tax cut given to corporations under the plan.
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Gun control advocates pushed back on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s claim that stricter gun regulations would have led to “hundreds more dead” in Sunday’s shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
On Sunday, Devin Patrick Kelley massacred 26 people—half of them children—using an AR-15 assault rifle while they worshiped at the local First Baptist Church. After Kelley went outside he exchanged gunfire with a neighbor, who then chased him from the scene.
In a press conference in Seoul, South Korea, the president chastised a reporter for daring to bring up the shooting before reluctantly answering her question about whether he would consider any legislation to make it harder for people to buy guns, in light of two of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings taking place in a span of five weeks.
“If [the neighbor] didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead,” Trump claimed, “you would have had hundreds more dead.”
But as journalist John Ladarola said in response, “There is absolutely no evidence for that statement.”
The notion that “good guys with guns” are a necessary feature of society in order to keep citizens safe has been aggressively pushed by the National Rifle Association and parroted by Trump and other Republicans for years, despite a mountain of evidence that countries with less gun ownership experience far fewer shootings.
As has become customary after a mass killing, news outlets including the New York Times have published reports this week showing the clear correlation between the prevalence of firearms in the U.S. and that of shootings in churches, schools, and other public places. With six times as many guns as any other nation, the U.S. has experienced more than 90 mass shootings in the past five decades, while no other country has had more than 18.
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On social media, a number of critics expressed a lack of patience with Trump’s perfunctory use of the NRA’s talking point—one that has become as predictable as mass shootings themselves.
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As promised on social media last Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) announced the winners of their Press Oppressor awards on Monday evening—planned just after President Donald Trump shared his decision to give out awards for the “Most Dishonest and Corrupt Media Awards,” capping off a year during which he waged frequent attacks on media outlets and individual journalists.
The president had the dubious honor of being recognized for his “Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom,” both for his own vitriolic anti-press rhetoric and the impact his attitude toward journalism has had in other countries.
“The awards are our response to Trump’s announcement,” Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for CPJ, told Common Dreams. “This idea of denigrating and pillorying the press has real consequences around the world, and we’ve seen that as we’ve just had the worst year on record in terms of journalists being imprisoned for doing their work.”
As CPJ reported last month, 262 reporters were imprisoned in 2017, up from the previous year’s historical high of 259. The worst jailers of journalists were Turkey, China, and Egypt.
Nine journalists were arrested in connection with the Disrupt J20 protests on Trump’s Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C., stoking fears of a potential crackdown on the U.S. media under the new president. But CPJ’s main concern with the president’s anti-press stance is his rhetoric in speeches, TV appearances, and on social media:
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Trump wasn’t the only leader noted for his anti-media views. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who Trump has called “a friend,” was recognized as the “Most Thin-Skinned” politician, with CPJ noting that Turkish courts handled more than 46,000 cases of people “insulting the president” or his government. Trump was named as the runner-up in this category.
Erdogan also took home the title of “Most Outrageous Use of Terror Laws Against the Press,” for his country’s imprisonment of 73 journalists for “anti-state crimes,” most of whom were accused of “belonging to, aiding, or making propaganda for an alleged terrorist organization.”
President Xi Jinping of China was recognized for having the overall “Tightest Grip on the Media,” while Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, was named “Biggest Backslider in Press Freedom,” a year and a half after her party took power and pardoned five journalists who had been jailed for reporting on the military. The CPJ’s hopes for Suu Kyi’s approach to the press were dashed this year as journalists continued to be imprisoned and obstructed while attempting to report on what the U.N. has called the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya minority group.
Radsch stressed that while the U.S. continues to hold itself up as a model of free speech and press freedoms, the CPJ sees Trump’s anti-media diatribes as deeply damaging.
“It’s getting more difficult for the U.S. to advocate for free speech on the world stage,” she said. “When Trump denigrates the news media and threatens libel suits against journalists, it sends the message to other leaders that it’s acceptable to attack the press. We’re seeing that in Turkey, the Philippines, Cambodia, Venezuela, and Myanmar, that leaders in those countries are starting to use Trump’s rhetoric of “fake news”—this is not a situation where the U.S. is in a strong position to be lecturing anyone about free speech rights.”
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