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Bernie Sanders Calls for a Carbon Tax

by trasze2aja Posted on December 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Bernie Sanders will unveil a sweeping new plan to fight climate change on Monday, calling for a carbon tax and an ambitious 40 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030 to speed the transition to a greener economy.

The Democratic presidential candidate will use the crunch week of the climate change meeting in Paris to try to upstage rivals Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley, releasing a 16-page plan aimed at showcasing his green credentials.

The plan goes beyond Barack Obama’s climate pledges, which aim to match the European Union in ambition by calling for a 40 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030 on 1990 levels, according to a copy of the plan seen by the Guardian. The 1990 starting point is a more demanding target than the current US baseline of 2005.

Sanders will also call for a carbon tax, big investments in energy-saving technologies and renewable power sources, and promise to create 10 million clean energy jobs.

The climate meeting in Paris has attracted an unusual level of attention compared with earlier meetings, as Democrats and Republicans gear up for the first votes in the presidential primaries just over a month away.

A group of 10 Democratic senators flew to Paris to reassure the international community they would defend Obama’s climate plan. In Washington, meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have tried to block a global climate deal by trying to repeal Obama’s plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants.

Sanders’ plan – which will be released as talks aimed at reaching a global agreement to fight climate change kick into a higher gear – will feature the Vermont senator’s “take-no-prisoners” approach to the fossil fuel industry and climate deniers in Congress.

He will call for banning fossil fuel lobbyists from the White House, and ending subsidies to fossil fuel companies.

“Bernie will tax polluters causing the climate crisis, and return billions of dollars to working families to ensure the fossil fuel companies don’t subject us to unfair rate hikes. Bernie knows that climate change will not affect everyone equally,” the plan will say. “The carbon tax will also protect those most impacted by the transformation of our energy system and protect the most vulnerable communities in the country suffering the ravages of climate change.”

Sanders will also promise to keep the pressure on industry for spreading misinformation about climate change, saying he will bring climate deniers to justice.

“It is an embarrassment that Republican politicians, with few exceptions, refuse to even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone are prepared to do anything about it. The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is to blame for much of the climate change skepticism in America,” the plan will say.

And Sanders will not back away from his assertions about climate change as a security threat—despite ridicule from Republican presidential contenders.

“Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet,” the plan will say.

Sanders’s call for a ban on new offshore oil drilling and fossil fuel projects on public lands won praise from groups such as Greenpeace and 350.org which have campaigned to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground to prevent dangerous climate change.

“He has broken free of the corporate and 1 percent money that has held back climate policy for far too long,” Annie Leonard, director of Greenpeace US, said in an emailed statement.

The plan appeared to be an attempt to regain ground lost to Clinton, as she took more ambitious positions on climate change.

Sanders was stung in November when the League of Conservation Voters delivered an early endorsement of Clinton – even though he scored far higher than the secretary of state in the campaign group’s green ranking score card.

Since the start of the campaign, the three Democratic presidential contenders have tried to outdo one another on their commitment to fighting climate change —making a striking contrast with Republican presidential candidates who deny climate change is occurring.

All three Democratic candidates have promised more ambitious climate actions than Obama.

O’Malley was the first off the blocks, unveiling his climate agenda in June in an opinion piece in USA Today, and continues to claim the strongest position by calling for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050.

Clinton meanwhile has slowly edged towards a stronger position on climate change as the campaign progressed, belatedly coming out against the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and hunting for oil in Arctic waters. She moved to outflank Obama on his renewable energy plan by calling for the US to get 33 percent of its electricity from clean energy by 2027.

Climate change occupies a far higher profile in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries than earlier contests—in part because of Obama’s focus on the environment in his second term in the White House.

Democratic operatives see climate change as a potential wedge issue—a chance to paint Republicans as anti-science and out-of-touch for rejecting the science behind climate change.

Originally posted here – 

Bernie Sanders Calls for a Carbon Tax

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When Will Republicans at Last Get Serious About National Security?

by JohnettBloodswo Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page sings the praises of French President François Hollande:

French security forces Wednesday conducted hundreds of antiterror raids and placed more than 100 suspects under house arrest….Security forces found a weapons cache in the city of Lyon that included Kalashnikov rifles and a rocket launcher….France has some 11,500 names on government watch lists. Many are likely to be detained under the three-month state of emergency that Mr. Hollande declared after Friday’s attacks.

….Mr. Hollande has been right to declare war on Islamic State and order French bombing raids on its capital in eastern Syria. France is still a militarily capable nation, as it proved when it turned back an al Qaeda offensive in Mali in 2013. It can do significant damage to ISIS if it increases the tempo of its current bombing or deploys its Foreign Legion to liberate the city of Raqqa.

….Until America gets a new Commander in Chief, Mr. Hollande is the best antiterror leader the West has.

Hmmm. It’s certainly true that Hollande has been among the most hawkish of European leaders. It’s also true that France was one of the first to join the US air campaign against ISIS—though their military efforts so far have been little more than pinpricks. But let’s roll the tape back to June 2014, when President Obama was first trying to put together a coalition. He and Hollande issued a joint communique with all the right promises, but as France 24 reported, “Behind that facade of unity, there are significant disagreements between the two countries about how best to respond to the recent bloody territorial surge by ISIS.”

Why France is reluctant to act against ISIS in Iraq

On June 18, a meeting was held in the Elysee with the French Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs….For the moment, however, no military measures are planned….Moreover, “No one has asked for it”, added the same source. Requests for military assistance from Baghdad have so far been addressed to the international community or Washington, but “not specifically to France”, as a foreign affairs spokesman pointed out on June 17.

….The lack of French enthusiasm for an armed intervention in Iraq, whether it be air strikes or sending military advisers to Baghdad, is due partly to fear that any intervention would be ineffective if it were not accompanied by a real commitment by the Iraqi government to act on sectarian tensions.

That’s the best anti-terror leader the West has, according to the Journal. Nobody had “specifically” asked France, so Hollande decided to hang tight and see which way the wind was blowing.

This is the kind of thing that makes it so hard to talk about ISIS and terrorism. It’s not as if this has been Obama’s finest hour, after all, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise. But the opposition has generally been much worse. Obama waffled over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, but then Congress bungled things further by refusing to approve Obama’s call for retaliatory strikes—with both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio joining in. Obama may have been late to recognize the threat from ISIS, but he’s still the guy who put together the coalition. France has been a good partner in the fight against ISIS, but that happened only after Obama spent some time cajoling them into action.

And Republicans simply can’t be bothered to take any of this seriously. They blather about Obama being weak, but when you ask them for their plans you just get nonsense. They demand “leadership”; they bask in cheap applause lines about a bigger military; they all chime in like puppets to agree on a no-fly zone; they suggest we stop worrying about civilian casualties; they propose more arms for the Kurds; they want to team up with Sunni tribal leaders without saying how they’d accomplish it; and they vaguely imply that we should bomb ISIS differently….or more….or with greater determination….or something.

None of this is remotely serious. A bigger military wouldn’t affect ISIS. A no-fly zone wouldn’t affect ISIS. Killing civilians would actively help ISIS. The Kurds aren’t going to fight ISIS in Sunni territory. Sunni leaders aren’t going to be reliable allies until they trust Baghdad to treat them equitably. And sure, we could bomb more, but there’s not much point until we have the ground troops to back it up. But Republicans have been unanimously opposed to American troops all along, and Iraqi ground troops flatly aren’t yet willing or able to do the job.

I hardly want to be in the position of pretending that Obama’s ISIS strategy has been golden. But Republicans make him look like Alexander the Great. They treat the whole subject like a plaything, a useful cudgel during a presidential campaign. Refugees! Kurds! Radical Islam! We need to be tougher!

That isn’t leadership. It barely even counts as coherent thought. It’s just playground jeering. But right now, that’s all we’re getting from them.

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When Will Republicans at Last Get Serious About National Security?

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The Latest on Paris Attacks and the Campaign Against ISIS

by FAKBrentlzll Posted on November 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Russian officials confirmed for the first time that a homemade explosive was found on the downed Metrojet airliner that crashed in Egypt last month, killing all 224 people on board.

Shortly after the confirmation, Russia announced the country was stepping up air strikes in Syria, hoping to work directly with France in the fight against ISIS.

“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them,” President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with Russian security authorities.

Russia’s FSB security service also announced a $50 million reward for anyone who could provide intelligence leading to the arrests of the terrorists responsible for the attack.

The announcement comes amid the ongoing international manhunt for suspects connected to the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday. Authorities are said to be specifically targeting Belgian-born, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, the suspected eighth terrorist behind Friday’s siege.

On Monday, authorities conducted 128 overnight raids throughout France, searching for people involved with the attacks. Several arrests in Germany have already been made, but officials say they were not “closely”connected” to Friday’s attacks.

On Tuesday, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made an official request to the European Union for assistance in the fight against ISIS. The Associated Press reports French President Francois Hollande will meet with President Obama in Washington and President Putin in Moscow next week to discuss the international effort.

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The Latest on Paris Attacks and the Campaign Against ISIS

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

by DewittRhein Posted on October 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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World leaders have a pretty comprehensive plan to fight climate change, according to a United Nations report released Friday—even if it doesn’t go as far as many of them had hoped.

In just over a month, representatives from most of the countries on Earth will gather in Paris in an attempt to finalize an international agreement to limit global warming and adapt to its impacts. The video above is a snappy explainer of what’s at stake at this meeting, but suffice it to say the proposed deal is split into two keys parts. First is the core agreement, parts of which may be legally binding, that comprises broad, non-specific guidelines for all countries. It calls on countries to take steps such as transparently reporting greenhouse gas emissions and committing to ramp up climate action over the next few decades.

But the real meat-and-potatoes is in the second part, the “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs). The INDCs are what sets the Paris talks apart from past attempts at a global climate agreement in Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Those summits either left out major polluters (the US dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol; China and India were exempted) or fell apart completely (Copenhagen), in large part because they were built around universal greenhouse gas reduction targets that not everyone could agree to.

This time around, the UN process is more like a potluck, where each country brings its own unique contribution based on its needs and abilities; those are the INDCs. The US, for example, has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. So far, according to the World Resources Institute, 126 plans have been submitted, covering about 86 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. (The European Union submitted one joint plan for all its members.) Those contributions are likely to limit global warming to around 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100. That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would would happen if the world continued on its present course.

Now, we have a bit more insight into how countries are planning to make this happen. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the group that is overseeing the Paris talks, combed through all the INDCs to look for trends. Its report is a bit convoluted and repetitive; I don’t recommend it to any but the nerdiest climate nerds. But I pulled out a few of the charts as an overview of what global action on climate change really looks like.

Types of targets: Most of the INDCs contain specific emission reduction targets. (Not all do; some countries, such as the small island nations, have such small or nonexistent emissions that it wouldn’t make sense to promise to reduce them.) The most common way to state these targets is to promise that emissions at X future date will be lower than they would be with no action. Indonesia, for example, has pledged to increase its emissions over the next 25 years by 29 percent less than it would have under a “business as usual” scenario. The US commitment fits in the second category, an “absolute” target where emissions actually begin to go down. Others specify a date at which emissions will “peak,” or set a goal for emissions per unit of GDP or energy production (“intensity”).

UNFCCC

Greenhouse gases: The commitments cover a broad range of greenhouse gases (most cover more than one), but carbon dioxide is the most common enemy. That’s no surprise, as it’s by far the most common.

UNFCCC

Economic sectors: In different countries, different economic sectors are more or less responsible for climate pollution. In the US, the number-one source of emissions is coal-fired power plants; thus, President Barack Obama’s plans focus on the power sector. In Indonesia, by contrast, deforestation is the biggest problem. Most plans cover more than one sector, but the most common is energy.

UNFCCC

How to fix it: This section finds that implementing renewable energy is the most common way countries are planning to meet their targets. More interesting is the tiny role played by carbon capture, use, and storage, down at the bottom of the chart. This refers to technology that “captures” greenhouse gas emissions on their way out of power plants, or directly from the atmosphere, and buries or re-purposes them. Support for carbon capture—also known as “clean coal”—is popular with policymakers who don’t want to curb coal use (including GOP presidential contender John Kasich), even though it remains costly and unproven at scale.

UNFCCC

How to adapt: Many countries’ INDCs also contain information about how they plan to adapt to climate change. Water use, agriculture, and public health appear to be the biggest areas of focus.

UNFCCC

A terrible, no-good, very bad summary: The most important question is clearly how all this adds up to reducing the world’s greenhouse gas footprint and averting the worst threats posed by climate change. But the chart that addresses this question (below) is…not great. I’m including it so you have some sense of one big drawback of the Paris approach—without universal emissions targets, it’s a lot harder to specify what the cumulative effect of these plans will really be. In short, here’s what this chart shows: The gray line is global greenhouse gas emissions up to today. The orange line is how emissions will grow over the next couple decades if we do nothing. The three blue lines show how quickly we would need to reduce emissions to keep global warming to 2 degrees C; the longer we wait to take action, the steeper the cuts have to be. The yellow rectangles show a snapshot of where the INDCs leave us.

UNFCCC

So, we’re better off than before, but we’re not out of danger. That’s why it’s essential for the core agreement to include requirements that countries adopt even more aggressive goals in the future; that’s one of the key things that will be debated in Paris. In other words, the Paris meeting is just one key battle in a war that’s far from over, Jennifer Morgan, director of the WRI’s global climate program, said in a statement.

“Despite the unprecedented level of effort, this report finds that current commitments are not yet sufficient to meet what the world needs. Countries must accelerate their efforts after the Paris summit in order to stave off climate change. The global climate agreement should include a clear mandate for countries to ramp up their commitments and set a long-term signal to phase out emissions as soon as possible.”

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

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The Pope Wants America to Learn From Its Horrific Treatment of Native Americans

by NateSqynziclpt Posted on September 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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As expected, Pope Francis implored Congress to protect refugees and other migrants in an address at the Capitol on Thursday. But before he did, he took a step to acknowledge the nation’s (and the church’s) often horrific treatment of American Indians. America, he argued, should demonstrate a sense of compassion it so rarely showed during the colonization of the continent:

In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants. Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. For those peoples and their nations, from the heart of American democracy, I wish to reaffirm my highest esteem and appreciation. Those first contacts were often turbulent and violent, but it is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present. Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our “neighbors” and everything around us. Building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal subsidiarity, in a constant effort to do our best. I am confident that we can do this.

This language is particularly significant because of what the Pope was up to yesterday—at a service at Catholic University, he formally canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Spanish missionary who played an important role in the conversion of American Indians to Catholicism in California. Serra wasn’t by any stretch the worst European to visit the New World (the bar is very high), but the missions of California were deadly places for American Indians, cursed with high mortality rates (from disease and abuse) and forced labor. The core purpose of Serra’s work was to purge the region of its native culture and install the church in its place. For this reason, some American Indian activists were fiercely opposed to the canonization; Francis didn’t meet with any of them until yesterday afternoon—after he’d made it official. Consider Thursday’s allusion to past transgressions something of an olive branch.

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The Pope Wants America to Learn From Its Horrific Treatment of Native Americans

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America Once Accepted 800,000 War Refugees. Is it Time to Do That Again?

by DebLangton Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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With the refugee crisis in Europe worsening dramatically, the Obama administration announced on Thursday that it would accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. That’s a significant step: Over the past four years, as millions of Syrians have been displaced by a brutal civil war, the United States has admitted only about 1,500 Syrian refugees. But humanitarian advocates say President Barack Obama’s move doesn’t go nearly far enough.

The US offer “is cold comfort to the victims of the Syrian conflict,” said International Rescue Committee president David Miliband in a press release Friday. “With 4 million living in limbo and tens of thousands making desperate choices to reach safety, the US has a moral responsibility to lead and is fully equipped to respond in a far more robust way.” Part of the solution, experts argue, is for the United States to help organize a program to send refugees to developed countries around the world. After all, they point out, we’ve done it before.

“This is not science fiction,” said Francois Crepeau, the United Nations’s special rapporteur for the human rights of migrants. “We resettled almost 2 million Indochinese 40 years ago. We can do it again.”

After the end of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee Southeast Asia, mostly from Vietnam, by riding rickety, overloaded boats to nearby countries. Those countries, like many European countries during the current crisis, felt overwhelmed by the unyielding and disorganized flow of people arriving on their shores. They eventually announced that they would refuse to take in any more “boat people,” prompting the international community to create a global resettlement program with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR ultimately resettled 1.3 million Southeast Asians in countries around the world, including more than 800,000 in the United States.

Vietnamese refugees watch as a Thai Marine police boat casts them adrift in the Gulf of Siam after being turned away on November 30, 1977. They had escaped earlier in November from Vietnam to what they thought would be freedom, but Thai police refused to allow them to come ashore. Eddie Adams/AP

Tugboats load water onto the refugee ship Tung An at its anchorage in Manila Bay on December 28, 1978. The Philippines had declared that the more than 2,300 Vietnamese “boat people” aboard could not go ashore. The United States eventually accepted some of the ship’s refugees. AH/AP

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Two million is now about the number that Crepeau thinks should be resettled today across the “global north”—essentially the European Union, plus the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. “Two million refugees resettled over five years means 400,000 per year,” he said. “Four hundred thousand per year divided by 32 countries representing 850 million inhabitants is not much.”

That’s still a small fraction of the nearly 12 million people exiled or internally displaced by the war in Syria, not to mention the significant number of people fleeing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq or repression in Eritrea and other countries. “It’s going to be a small percentage. I don’t see any way it’s not going to be that,” acknowledged Larry Yungk, a senior resettlement officer with the UNHCR. “That being said, we have always said that we need more resettlement places, whether it’s for Syrians or globally. And the Syrian conflict, I think, has shown why we need more places.”

Finding those places has been particularly difficult in Europe. Yungk praised the “very generous response” of Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year, but several other EU countries are openly hostile to accepting refugees. The government of Denmark ran newspaper ads in Lebanon telling Syrian refugees they’re not welcome in the Scandinavian country. Hungary has subjected migrants to humiliating treatment, even as it builds a border fence to stop the influx. Such countries helped block a mandatory refugee quota system for EU members in May, and Germany’s efforts to try again are meeting with little success.

A Syrian man swims in front of a dinghy full of refugees that suffered engine failure as they approached Lesbos island, Greece, on September 11, 2015.

Yungk, who spoke with Mother Jones prior to the administration’s announcement on Thursday, isn’t optimistic that the United States will ultimately admit a dramatically higher number of people for resettlement. Not only is the United States far from the Middle East, where the bulk of the refugees are, but its system for investigating and approving refugees is already heavily taxed. The United States takes in about 70,000 refugees from across the world every year. But the 1,500 Syrians granted refugee status so far are just a small fraction of the 18,000 or so Syrian cases that the UNHCR has submitted to the US government.

“Our goal is to try to work with the United States to reduce that gap,” Yungk said. “If we do, then the ability is there to talk, I think, about more referrals. And the United States will be probably more willing to look at it.” The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

But even if the United States doesn’t accept a large number of refugees—the 10,000 that will now be allowed into the United States is about half the number of refugees who arrived in Munich from Hungary last weekend—merely taking action could help convince other nations to pitch in. “Yes, it would be nice to resettle some more refugees today,” said James Hathaway, the director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan. “But the important thing that they should be doing is leading—not a new refugee convention, but a new mechanism to share the responsibilities of protection around the world. The US needs to show leadership on that.”

Pressure is growing on the United States to do more. In May, a group of 14 Senate Democrats wrote a letter urging the Obama administration to accept up 65,000 Syrians. A coalition of American groups including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and the International Rescue Committee is now calling for the United States to take in up to 100,000 Syrians. Even GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has come out in support of expanded resettlement in the United States. But even if the magnitude of the refugee crisis has prompted some change, large-scale progress will be much harder.

“If you do go back to some of the big situations like Bosnia and Southeast Asia, what you did see is, frankly, a coalition of countries all coming together to say, ‘We’ll do this,'” Yungk said. “So that’s what it would take.”

Max J. Rosenthal is reporting from Berlin as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, a two-month reporting program in Germany run by the International Center for Journalists. Gabrielle Canon contributed reporting to this article from San Francisco.

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America Once Accepted 800,000 War Refugees. Is it Time to Do That Again?

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Here’s the Most Offensive GOP Response to Obama’s New Syrian Refugee Plan

by IgnacioZavala Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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As my colleague Tim McDonnell reported earlier today, the Obama administration has announced that the United States will take in 10,000 Syrian refugees starting October 1, in what the White House described as a “significant scaling up” of the US commitment to the ongoing migrant crisis.

Cue the terrorism-conflating saber-rattling of one Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.), who issued the following statement this afternoon:

There’s evidently much wrong with King’s statement, not least of all the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed Boston spent time growing up in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, and were part of a family originally from war-torn Chechnya. Not Syria.

It also takes a long time for a Syrian refugee to apply for a coveted spot in the United States—precisely due to the fact that the United States is going to extraordinary lengths to prevent terrorists from slipping in, according to the Washington Post:

The United States has so far lagged far behind several European countries in this regard, largely due to the time-consuming screening procedure to block Islamist militants and criminals from entering the United States under the guise of being legitimate refugees.

As a result, it takes 18 to 24 months for the average Syrian asylum seeker to be investigated and granted refugee status. The process takes so long that the UNHCR takes biometric images of some applicants’ irises to ensure that when refugee status is eventually granted, it goes to the same person who applied.

King hasn’t been the only politician warning of an increased terror threat if the United States allows more Syrians into the country. But fellow Republican Marco Rubio struck a less incendiary tone this week. “We would be potentially open to the relocation of some of these individuals at some point in time to the United States,” he said, according to CNN, but added that, “We’d always be concerned that within the overwhelming number of the people seeking refugee status, someone with a terrorist background could also sneak in.”

According to an investigation by Mother Jones in 2011, Rep. King might possess one of the most hawkish voices in Washington, but his record on terror has raised some eyebrows. King was one of the nation’s most outspoken supporters of the Irish Republican Army and a prolific fundraiser for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NorAid), allegedly the IRA’s American fundraising arm. (King’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on that article.) You can read Tim Murphy’s fascinating report here.

King had previously told the Daily News, “Obviously, we have to take refugees… But we have to be extremely diligent, very careful.”

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Here’s the Most Offensive GOP Response to Obama’s New Syrian Refugee Plan

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Vladimir Putin Says He Wants to Join the Fight Against ISIS

by TorstenTipper Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Russia is a longtime supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, but lately the flow of military aid from Russia to Syria has been on the rise. Apparently this has given rise to scuttlebutt that Vladimir Putin may be hoping to lure the US into a joint effort to fight ISIS:

Observers in Moscow say the Russian maneuvering could be part of a plan to send troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State group in the hope of fixing fractured ties with the West….By playing with the possibility of joining the anti-IS coalition, Putin may hope to win a few key concessions. His main goal: the lifting of Western sanctions and the normalization of relations with the United States and the European Union, which have sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War amid the Ukrainian crisis.

….Sergei Karaganov, the founder of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a leading association of Russian political experts, said that Russia was considering the possibility of joining the anti-IS coalition, but the West so far has been unwelcoming. “They are reluctant to accept proposals from Putin, whom they want to contain,” he said.

Karaganov, who has good connections among the Russian officials, said he doesn’t expect Russia to opt for unilateral military action in Syria if it gets the cold shoulder from the U.S. and its allies. “It would involve enormous risks,” he said.

This sounds mighty weird. Even Putin can’t seriously imagine that the US and Iraq would join a Putin-Assad alliance, no matter what its goal is. I wonder what’s really going on here?

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Vladimir Putin Says He Wants to Join the Fight Against ISIS

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The pork industry is full of this drug you’ve never heard of

by HannahLombardo Posted on August 14, 2015

Pork Roids

The pork industry is full of this drug you’ve never heard of

By on 14 Aug 2015commentsShare

Like little kids trying to show you their karate moves, food labels will do anything to get your attention. They’ll scream “organic,” “all-natural,” “grass-fed,” “hormone-free,” “antibiotic-free,” “free-range,” “farm-raised,” “fresh,” “pasture-raised,” or whatever else marketers think will elicit happy thoughts of animals frolicking on sunlit farms. And now, thanks to one Virginia farmer, there’s “no ractopamine.”

What’s ractopamine, you ask? According to NPR, it’s basically FDA-approved pork roids, and conventional pig farmers use it all the time to pork up their chops. It’s not a hormone (those are illegal in pig farming), but it does help ole’ Wilber and Babe pack on the pounds. Here’s more from NPR:

Most pigs in America get this drug, because it’s extremely effective. It’s a “beta agonist” and has effects that are similar to adrenaline. It gets a pig to put on more muscle, instead of fat, and also put on weight more quickly. That’s money in the farmer’s pocket: According to some experts, it adds two or three dollars of income per pig.

But David Meren of Tendergrass Farms just got approval from the USDA to stick this label on his pasture-raised pork: “no ractopamine — a beta-agonist growth promotant.”

The FDA approved ractopamine back in 1999, but there have been some reports of animals suffering under the drug, according to NPR. And other countries, including Russia, China, and those in the European Union, have yet to deem the drug safe for consumption. China has even demanded that all pork imported from the U.S. be ractopamine-free — a problem for conventional pig farmers like David Hardin, who spoke with NPR about the issue:

Hardin says that farmers are divided about how to respond to China’s demands. Some farmers don’t want to abandon ractopamine as a matter of principle. Using it, they point out, means cheaper pork for consumers and less stress on the environment (because pigs on ractopamine don’t need as much feed, and don’t produce as much manure.)

Other farmers, he says, are ready to follow the signals of the market. If consumers are willing to pay more for pork labeled “ractopamine-free,” that’s how they’ll raise their pigs.

Grist just spent a whole month talking about the ethics and sustainability of meat-eating. Needless to say, we didn’t solve the myriad problems of today’s meat industry, but one thing’s for sure: Food labels shouldn’t have to try so hard to show us their karate moves. And they wouldn’t have to if we just acted like responsible adults who… damn — I don’t know how to tie off this metaphor.

Source:
A Muscle Drug For Pigs Comes Out Of The Shadows

, NPR.

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Here’s How the Iran Nuclear Deal Is Supposed to Work

by MackenzLuq Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apparently this is Let’s Make a Deal week. First the Greeks, now the Iranians. The deal with Iran restricts their supply of uranium, cuts down the number of centrifuges they can run, forces them to account for past activity, and puts in place strict verification measures. So when does it take effect: Here’s the Washington Post:

The agreement will not take effect until Iran is certified to have met its terms — something Iran says will happen in a matter of weeks but that Western diplomats have said could take at least until the end of the year.

Hmmm. That’s not necessarily a good start. So when will sanctions be lifted?

From the Post: A senior Obama administration official said that, until Iranian compliance is verified, an 18-month old interim agreement restricting Iran’s activities, and sanctions, will remain in place.

From the New York Times: Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to “snap back” the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions.

The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action. The investigation and referral process calls for a time schedule of 65 days, tight compared to the years the atomic energy agency has taken to pursue suspicious activity.

And here’s the Guardian with a bullet list of the main points of the agreement:

Iran will reduce its enrichment capacity by two-thirds. It will stop using its underground facility at Fordow for enriching uranium.
Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced to 300kg, a 96% reduction. It will achieve this reduction either by diluting it or shipping it out of the country.
The core of the heavy water reactor in Arak will be removed, and it will be redesigned in such a way that it will not produce significant amounts of plutonium.
Iran will allow UN inspectors to enter sites, including military sites, when the inspectors have grounds to believe undeclared nuclear activity is being carried out there. It can object but a multinational commission can override any objections by majority vote. After that Iran will have three days to comply. Inspectors will only come from countries with diplomatic relations with Iran, so no Americans.
Once the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified that Iran has taken steps to shrink its programme, UN, US and EU sanctions will be lifted.
Restrictions on trade in conventional weapons will last another five years, and eight years in the case of ballistic missile technology.
If there are allegations that Iran has not met its obligations, a joint commission will seek to resolve the dispute for 30 days. If that effort fails it would be referred to the UN security council, which would have to vote to continue sanctions relief. A veto by a permanent member would mean that sanctions are reimposed. The whole process would take 65 days.

Overall, the deal seems to address most of the issues brought up by skeptics. Sanctions won’t be lifted right away. There’s an expedited process to reimpose them if Iran cheats. Military sites will be open to inspectors. Conventional weapons bans will continue for five years.

Benjamin Netanyahu is nevertheless apoplectic, of course, but who cares? He would be no matter what the deal looked like. At first glance, though, it looks reasonable. And since President Obama can—and will—veto any congressional attempt to disapprove the agreement, it will take a two-thirds vote to torpedo it. Presumably Obama can manage to scrape up at least a third of Congress to support it, so it should be pretty safe. That vote will take place in about two months.

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