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Off the Top of My Head

The Good Things the Biden Administration is Doing That You Never Hear About

by John Lawrence

Even CNN goes on and on trying to create excitement over the differences withing the Democratic Party between the Moderates and the Progressives without talking about 3 great things the Biden Administration has done recently. They are

(1) EPA will slash the use and production of hydrofluorocarbons which one of the most toxic of greenhouse gasses — often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers — by 85 percent over the next 15 years; (2) the US will end its involvement in the war in Yemen and (3) the US has recently exchanged prisoners with China involving Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. Instead of touting these very significant accomplishments, CNN goes on and on trying to create excitement over the divisions within the Democratic party and Biden's lowering approval ratings. So I say to CNN: so what, who cares? Approval ratings mean Nada. Any President is presented with situations not of his own making and the government agencies tasked with responding to said situations don't always do it in the best possible fashion. Case in point: the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The significant point is that he ended it. Let's move on.

The New York Times reported:

A top executive and daughter of the founder of the Chinese tech giant Huawei was arrested on Saturday in Canada at the request of the United States, in a move likely to escalate tensions between the two countries at a delicate moment.

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer, unfolded on the same night that President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China dined together in Buenos Aires and agreed to a 90-day trade truce. The two countries are set to begin tense negotiations in hopes of ending a trade war that has been pummeling both economies.

So Biden is still unwinding some of Trump's self-inflicted messes. At a time when cooperation with China is imperative in order to prevent the worst exigencies of global warming, arresting a top Chinese executive was not likely to help. Releasing her is.

The Washington Post reported:

The Biden administration finalized its first new climate rule Thursday, slashing the use of powerful greenhouse gases widely used in home refrigerators and air conditioners and often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers.

The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency establishes a program to cut the use and production of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons by 85 percent over the next 15 years.

Curbing these super-pollutants is a rare climate issue with broad bipartisan support. When emitted, the chemicals can warm the planet at a rate hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide. The new rule implements a law passed by Congress last year.

White House officials said the new rule tackles global warming while supporting jobs to manufacture new alternatives.

The Biden administration is committed to doing good work on precventing and mitigating cimate cange. This is just another example the likes of which frequently go unbreported in the mass media because it doesn't creat the necessary excitement to support all their advertisers of which CNN has tons who come on the tube for 4 and a half minutes after every few minutes of "news." CNN must be making a forune and it show since they have money to support the making of CNN "films" on a weekly basis.

Common Dreams reported:

Anti-war groups on Thursday welcomed the U.S. House's passage of an amendment to the annual defense bill that would cut off the flow to Saudi Arabia of U.S. logistical support and weapons "that are bombing civilians" in Yemen. "This is BIG," tweeted the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) following the afternoon 219-207 vote, which fell largely along party lines, with just 11 Democrats voting "no." At issue was Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment to H.R. 4350, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It's one of dozens of amendments to the NDAA under consideration by the House this week. According to Khanna, the vote "sent a clear message to the Saudis: end the bombing in Yemen and lift the blockade." Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, he made a succinct case for why the measure is so needed.  Khanna said his amendment "would end all U.S. logistical support and transfer of spare parts for Saudi warplanes that are bombing Yemen, that are bombing schools, that are killing children, that are bombing civilians in the largest humanitarian crisis around the world."

Back in February Biden had ended at least some of the support for that war as reported by the New York Times:

It didn’t happen in 2016, after a Saudi jet had dropped American-made bombs on a funeral in the Yemeni capital, Sana, killing more than 140 people. It didn’t happen in 2018, after a Saudi jet hit a Yemeni school bus with an American-made bomb, killing 44 boys on a field trip. But on Thursday, nearly six years after Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a punishing military intervention in the Arab world’s poorest country, President Biden announced that he was ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including some arms sales. “This war has to end,” Mr. Biden said, calling it a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.”

Now the Democrat controlled Congress has finalized this. Trump, of course, was excited about the prospect of sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia. He welcomed the influx of dollars into the US Treasury without caring a hoot about innocent Yemeni victims of the bombing with US made bombs. As an Uber driver I picked up once a Saudi pilot who was being trained over here. Now the Biden administration along with Democrats in Congress has put the kibosh on aiding and abeting Saudi Arabia in their nasty war. Bien has shown his dedication to peace and has made efforts to bring peace to the world in the recent prisoner exchange with China and with doing what he can to end war in Yemen.

Off the Top of My Head

In the Age of Pandemic Has War Become a Luxury?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2020

Saudi Arabia and Yemen have declared a cease fire. Sailors are becoming infected on aircraft carriers. War planning requires groupings of military people. So has war become a luxury we can no longer afford? Are we really "all in this together"? Does the pandemic require cooperation among all nations since the pandemic doesn't respect national borders? Will the pandemic, when it's over, have changed the way human beings conduct their affairs in the world or will we get back to business as usual. If the pandemic engenders cooperation instead of rivalry among the nations of the world, does this mean that we will all be socialists or communists? Does it even matter?

If the pandemic makes us realize that war is a useless exercise with few benefits, will the US military-industrial complex be defunded. Will the money then go to health care workers, to Peace Corps and AmeriCorps workers who will attempt to bring clean water and modern sanitary systems to developing countries? Will there be a push to create more sanitary conditions in the world so that pandemics don't get started? Plagues and pandemics before have motivated people to build modern sanitary systems in places like London and New York in the 19th century where urban populations in close proximity created the conditions of cholera and bubonic plague. Is homelessness a social situation we can no longer afford?

Will the meaning of 'essential services' become normalized in the economy post corinavirus? What then will be considered essential and what could we live without? As long as there is no vaccine for coronavirus, new cases will continue to crop up even after the economy has "reopened." The flu epidemic of 1918 lasted 10 months and had several spikes. We can expect more spikes in the current pandemic until there are widespread vaccinations available. So what is essential? Sports events? Cruises? Rock concerts? Movie theaters? Now with Netflix and Amazon prime we can watch movies at home. Any movie we want to see. I'm catching up on all the great movies I've missed over the years. Last night I watched "To Catch a Thief" with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Free on Amazon Prime. The fidelity  both video and audio was excellent on my smart TV. I have no need to go to a movie theater where I can't control the volume. Hint: they are too loud.

Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that cooperation among peoples and nations is more important than manufactured rivalries over some nation's form of government. Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that diplomacy is more important, getting along is more important and winning isn't everything. Maybe now public health and human rights can be seen as more important than having everyone pull themselves up only by their own bootstraps. Maybe we can get on with the business of cooperating to combat the real enemy - climate change and even future pandemics. Maybe we will bring the US infrastructure into the modern world with a Green New Deal. Maybe we can finally grow up and have a consensus about what is really important, what really matters. Maybe doctors, nurses, caregivers, and social workers will come to be seen as more important that Wall Street brokers, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps as more important than the War Corps. As Governor Cuomo says, "Love will conquer all." Happy Easter.

Off the Top of My Head

Why is George W Bush Being Honored?

by John Lawrence, November 20, 2018

Bush started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have killed over a million people and now Joe Biden of all people presented him with the Liberty Medal on the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I? Bush should have paid for his criminal acts, and instead he's being rewarded. He blatantly lied to the American people because he wanted to be a "war time President." Even the war in Afghanistan was ill conceived because Osama bin Laden was a Saudi living in Pakistan. What did Afghanistan have to do with it? Obama was duped too, by the way, into thinking that Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11. He continued that fruitless war.

If anyone other than bin Laden himself was responsible, it was our ally, Saudi Arabia, who contributed 15 of the 19 hijackers. But Trump wants to be friends with the Saudis even now after their leader has committed one of the most egregious human rights violations in human history by offing Jamal Khashoggi. Trump's rationale: they buy our weapons to kill Yemeni women and children and thereby create American jobs producing those weapons. Trump is all about creating American jobs even if they kill people.

Common Dreams put it this way:

We do know this: To make their splendid little war happen, Bush and his minions lied again and again — about "ticking time bombs" that had been unplugged years earlier, about weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, and about ties between Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda that never were. The Iraq war has destabilized the Middle East to this day and paved the way for the rise of a new anti-American group called ISIS that remains a murderous scourge. And it made the world safe for oil, right at the moment when the planet's survival depends on moving away from fossil fuels.

Has this guy no shame? Has this country no shame? Bush represented a new low in American politics until Trump came along who is even lower. Trump wants to stay friends with a murderer because he buys lots of weapons from the US, and Trump thinks he's protecting the jobs of the weapons makers. The US has sunk to a new moral low point when its economy depends on selling weapons to murderers.

So now even the Democrats want to rehabilitate George W Bush. He's one of us former Presidents - welcome to the club, by the way - so we can't let his reputation fall too low. He spends his time helping veterans and painting pictures. What's not to like? It turns out a lot. The destabilization of the Middle East. The destruction of billions of dollars worth of real estate. The killing of a million people. And that's just for starters. A fit tribute to George W Bush would be to send him to Guantanamo and let him linger there for the rest of his life being waterboarded from time to time.

Off the Top of My Head

The US Should Sanction Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

by John Lawrence, October 17, 2018

Trump says that Saudi Prince Salman is innocent till proven guilty of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. but Russian President Vladimir Putin is guilty till proven innocent of the attempted killing of the Skripals. A double standard, you think? The US will never sanction Saudi Arabia because the Saudis are propping up the US dollar by selling oil only for dollars and not any other currency. That gives the Saudis the dominant hand in US-Saudi relations. Of course, the Saudis should be sanctioned for killing and starving thousands of Yemeni children. But the US is totally complicit in that operation not only from selling Saudis the weapons but also by providing backup support.

The world the US wants to maintain is one in which the Saudis are our friends no matter what they do and the enemies of Saudi (like Iran) are our enemies. This at least is a stable world in which there is no current threat to the US dollar and the US can continue to run up enormous deficits and debts. Were that situation to change, all hell would break loose. In the final analysis maybe even peace would have to break out in order to preserve some semblance of the world as we know it.

The world alignment is the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the EU on one side and Russia, China, Iran and Syria on the other. This alignment is designed to preserve the integrity and the profits of the US military-industrial complex. Trump mentioned that sanctioning Saudi would affect the profits of Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, three of the largest denizens of the US military-industrial complex. Their profits would also be threatened if peace broke out between Russia, Iran and the US. China is a case of split personalities. On the one hand they're our enemy . On the other, they're a large trading partner and the world's second largest economy. The US must tread lightly there.

Well, Trump has shown himself to be the world's leading hypocrite by giving Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia a pass for killing Jamal Khashoggi and holding Putin accountable for attempting to kill the Skirpals. Our friends can kill anyone they want, and that is not a human rights violation. But what about the human rights of Yemeni children? It seems they haven't any.

As Khashoggi Case Highlights Saudi Crimes, UN Warns Famine Driven by US-Backed War in Yemen Could Kill 13 Million People

Published on Monday, October 15, 2018 by Common Dreams

While the U.S. faces pressure to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, the United Nations estimates that if current conditions continue, Yemen could face "the worst famine in the world in 100 years."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

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The United Nations is warning that Yemen could soon face "the worst famine in the world in 100 years." (Photo: UNICEF)

With heightened attention on Saudi Arabia's crimes in the wake of the alleged murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the country's consulate in Turkey, the United Nations is warning that if current conditions continue, the U.S.-backed war in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could cause "the worst famine in the world in 100 years."

"There's no question we should be ashamed, and we should, every day that we wake up, renew our commitment to do everything possible to help the people that are suffering and end the conflict."
—Lise Grande, United Nations

 

"I think many of us felt as we went into the 21st century that it was unthinkable that we could see a famine like we saw in Ethiopia, that we saw in Bengal, that we saw in parts of the Soviet Union—that was just unacceptable," Lise Grande, chief of the U.N.'s diplomatic mission in Yemen, said in an interview with BBC News.

"Many of us had the confidence that would never happen again and yet the reality is that in Yemen that is precisely what we are looking at," she continued. "We predict that we could be looking at 12 to 13 million innocent civilians who are at risk of dying from the lack of food."

Asked by BBC correspondent Orla Guerin if the global community should be ashamed about what already has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, Grande responded: "Yes. There's no question we should be ashamed, and we should, every day that we wake up, renew our commitment to do everything possible to help the people that are suffering and end the conflict."

Yemeni civilians who don't starve to death or die from rampant disease are still at risk of being killed by the Saudi and UAE-led coalition's airstrikes. Since June, when the coalition launched an offensive to take control of Hodeidah, civilian deaths in and around the port city have "surged dramatically." Over the weekend, Saudi bombings killed at least 15 civilians and injured 20 others who were traveling on passenger buses.

Denouncing the weekend incident as "horrific," Grande declared in a statement that "the United Nations agencies working in Yemen unequivocally condemn the attack on civilians and extends our deepest condolences to the families of the victims." She also issued a reminder that targeting civilians, or even declining to protect them, violates international humanitarian law.

The weekend attack followed similar deadly strikes earlier this year, including when coalition forces dropped a U.S.-made bomb on a school bus in August, killing 40 boys aged six to 11.

Following Khashoggi's suspected murder, President Donald Trump has been hit with a new wave of pressure to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia and end support for the coalition. While Trump, in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday, threatened "severe punishment" if the United States finds evidence that Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the president has also repeatedly said in recent days that he doesn't want to cut off arms sales to the country because it would cost U.S. weapons manufacturers jobs and profit.

Last month—even before Khashoggi's suspicious disappearance—Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation that aims to revoke all U.S. support for the war. It was welcomed by peace advocates as a long overdue move that "offers a glimmer of hope to the suffering people of Yemen."

"Regardless of what ultimately happened to Khashoggi, continuing U.S. arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia under current circumstances is immoral." —William D. Hartung, Center for International Policy

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a supporter of Khanna's measure, argued Monday that "regardless of what ultimately happened to Khashoggi, continuing U.S. arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia under current circumstances is immoral."

"Jobs should not be an excuse to arm a murderous regime," Hartung asserted, "that not only may be behind the assassination of a U.S. resident and respected commentator but is responsible for thousands of civilian casualties in its three-and-one-half-year military intervention in Yemen—the majority killed with U.S.-supplied bombs and combat aircraft and U.S. refueling and targeting assistance."

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Off the Top of My Head

If the US Retaliates Against Saudi Arabia, Will They Stop Pricing Oil Just in Dollars?

by John Lawrence, October 16, 2018

When President Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1971, he made a deal with Saudi Arabia (some say with the devil) to only accept US dollars as payment for oil in return for military protection. This is what made the dollar the world's reserve currency and the Saudis allies of the US. Now with the evident killing of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Embassy, some US Congressmen are calling for reprisals against Saudi Arabia, and Saudi dictator Salman has threatened harsh actions towards the US in return.

The Guardian reported:

Riyadh vowed to hit back against any action. “The kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether through economic sanctions, political pressure or repeating false accusations,” it said.

“The kingdom also affirms that if it is [targeted by] any action, it will respond with greater action.” The statement also pointed out that the oil-rich kingdom “plays an effective and vital role in the world economy”.

The country’s foreign ministry issued a series of tweets rejecting the accusations as “attempts to undermine” Saudi Arabia, writing in one post “demise is the outcome of these weak endeavors”.

The deal between the US and Saudi Arabia has allowed the US to run huge budget deficits because there is a ready market for US Treasury bonds mainly because of the need for other countries to purchase oil with dollars. If that's no longer the case, the US will have a harder time selling off all its debt the amount of which recently increased as Treasury Secretary Mnuchin frantically tries to sell more and more US debt. The government is trying to handle a budget deficit expected to eclipse $1 trillion in the next two years. The national debt is at $21.3 trillion, having risen about $800 billion in 2018. That means more and more US debt needs to be sold at a time when other countries are scaling back their purchases.

Russia recently dumped 84% of its American debt, and China, the US' largest debt holder sold off $3 billion in US Treasury bonds. Is it any wonder? Russia has been targeted with US sanctions, and China and the US are in a trade war started by Trump. If the US does not go along with the Saudis' murdering of a journalist, thereby becoming complicit in Khashoggi's murder, the Saudis might retaliate by pricing oil in other currencies. Then where does that leave the US with its frantic need to sell off more and more of its debt which has ballooned thanks to Trump's recent tax cuts for the wealthy.

Trump has said that he doesn't want to cancel the arms deal with the Saudis because it would mean US jobs for Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. In other words the US military-industrial complex would suffer if we do not sell the Saudis the weapons they are using to slaughter innocent Yemenis. This is so much bullshit. If he sanctioned the Saudis, no other country supposedly would be able to sell them weapons either and this might be the best outcome if that meant the Saudis could not keep on slaughtering Yemenis.

The larger picture, however, has to do with the fact that Trump's alienating other countries including the US' largest debt holder, China, will mean a sell off of US debt and rising interest rates for US Treasury bonds to attract investors. This does not bode well for the continuation of the situation that currently holds sway in which the US lives off its penchant for funding its military and social programs with other people's money.

Less Than 24 Hours After Senate Rejected Effort to Curb Slaughter, 26 More Children Killed by US-Backed Bombing in Yemen

Published on Saturday, August 25, 2018 by Common Dreams

"These deaths are on our hands, and many more children will die in Yemen as long as the U.S. supports the Saudi-led war."

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

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A photograph distributed by Houthi fighters shows Yemenis carrying the bodies of children killed in a Saudi-led airstrike near Al Hudaydah on Thursday. (Credit: EPA, via Shutterstock)

Less than a day after Republicans in the United States Senate rejected a chance this week "to slam on the brakes and stop [America's] role in enabling the suffering in Yemen," at least 26 more children were slaughtered by a U.S.-backed Saudi-led bombing in the western part of the country.

"Shame on those Senators who let our involvement in this war continue. History will not be kind to you." —Win Without War

Condemning the bombing near the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah that occurred Thursday, but was not widely reported until Friday, the United Nation's humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, and head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said the attack—in which four women, in addition to the children, were killed—took place as the victims tried to flee the area.

"This is the second time in two weeks that an airstrike by the Saudi-led Coalition has resulted in dozens of civilian casualties," said Lowcock, who noted that "an additional air strike in Al Durayhimi on Thursday resulted in the death of four children."

Yesterday, 26 children were reportedly killed in attacks in ad-Durayhimi, Yemen. Children and families continue to be victims of intense and senseless violence. UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict to stop the war on children in Yemen once and for all. #ChildrenUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/1JkxkjGVAO

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 24, 2018

As the New York Times reports:

Criticism of Saudi Arabia and its partners has been growing over thousands of civilian casualties, many of them caused by munitions fired from the coalition’s warplanes.

Humanitarian groups and antiwar activists have also aimed criticism at the United States, a main provider of the Saudi coalition’s weapons, intelligence, warplane refueling and guidance technology for missiles and bombs.

Just two weeks ago, as Common Dreams reported, another Saudi airstrike in the city of Saada—which investigators later showed was carried out using U.S.-manufactured bombs—killed at least 40 children riding in a school bus as they enjoyed a rare field trip. In reaction to that massacre, an outraged Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) declared, in all capital letters, "We just bombed a SCHOOL BUS."

"I had hoped that the outrage that followed the Saada attack in Yemen two weeks ago would be a turning point in the conflict. Yesterday's reported attacks in Al-Durayhimi, killing 26 children, indicate that it was not," said Fore of UNICEF on Friday.

"These deaths are on our hands, and many more children will die in Yemen as long as the U.S. supports the Saudi-led war," declared the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the anti-war Quaker advocacy group, in a tweet.

The U.S. must end its complicity in the Saudi-led onslaught in #Yemen. We're helping intensify the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The worst #Cholera outbreak in human history. It has to stop. #YemenCantWait. https://t.co/CRdOiALgkp

— FCNL (Quakers) (@FCNL) August 25, 2018

It was the August 9th slaughter of the school children on the bus in Saada that drove Sen. Murphy on Wednesday of this week to push for a vote on his amendment that would have "cut off United States' support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition's war in Yemen until the Secretary of Defense certified that the coalition's air campaign is not violating international law and U.S. policy related to the protection of civilians." But Republicans, led by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, objected to the measure and would not allow a vote.

The Republicans objected.

It’s just unthinkable to me that we continue to willingly participate in the slaughter of Yemeni kids when there is zero benefit to U.S. security. Mind blowing really. https://t.co/p6qbrfRGoe

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 22, 2018

Less than twenty-four hours later, more than two dozen innocent children were dead.

As the peace advocacy group Win Without War put it: "Shame on those Senators who let our involvement in this war continue. History will not be kind to you."

Shame on those Senators who let our involvement in this war continue. History will not be kind to you. 'Despite Effort by Sen. Chris Murphy, GOP Rejects Call to Curb US Funding for 'Slaughter of Yemeni Kids' #YemenCantWait https://t.co/oahjtWnTVp pic.twitter.com/YKtED1tkfy

— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) August 24, 2018

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