BonnieCorrineLotesto

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Here is what I actually cannot explain:

The year is 2003.

The United States invades Iraq on the basis of "weapons of mass destruction" that do not exist.

This is not a matter of interpretation. It is documented.

The intelligence was manipulated.

The case was fabricated.

The people who fabricated it knew it was fabricated.

Some of them have said so, on record, in memoirs that were reviewed positively in the same newspapers that helped sell the war.

One million people died.

The country was destroyed. The infrastructure, the institutions, the social fabric.

ISIS emerged from the power vacuum.

The region destabilized in ways still producing casualties today.

Not one person went to prison.

The architects of the decision became senior fellows at think tanks.

They wrote books.

They appeared on television as "serious foreign policy voices."

Some of them are now presented as "voices of reason" in the anti-Trump discourse.

And the next time the same government, with many of the same institutional actors, said there was a foreign threat that required military response, a significant portion of the population believed them.

That is what I cannot explain.

Not the lie.

Governments lie.

The bottomless, renewable, apparently inexhaustible willingness to be lied to again.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

WE NEED A NEW FOREIGN POLICY.

Amidst the fiasco of the war in Iran, Americans need to rethink the very foundations of our foreign policy and how we go forward in a very different direction — a direction which focuses on peace, democracy and economic and social justice.

Let us not forget:

The war in Vietnam was based on a lie. In that war over 58,000 Americans died, hundreds of thousands were wounded and millions of Vietnamese civilians lost their lives.

The war in Iraq was based on a lie. In that war 4,492 Americans died, tens of thousands were wounded and hundreds of thousands Iraqi civilians lost their lives.

The current war in Iran was based on a lie. In this war 14 Americans have been killed, hundreds have been wounded and up to ten thousand civilians in the region have lost their lives.

Meanwhile, with 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck, we have a military budget of over one trillion dollars — much of it going to the extremely profitable military-industrial complex.

In terms of the Middle East, here are our major allies:

Israel: a nation, now controlled by right-wing extremists, which has committed genocide in Gaza, plotted with Trump to start the illegal and unconstitutional war in Iran, and is now actively obstructing a meaningful pathway towards peace as it continues to attack Lebanon’s civilian population.

Saudi Arabia: a nation controlled by the wealthiest family in the world who run a dictatorship that treats women as third-class citizens and tolerates no opposition or dissent. According to U.S. intelligence, the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had American journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered in its Istanbul consulate because of his criticism of the regime.

UAE: a nation which is an authoritarian monarchy with no free press, no free elections and no independent civil society — built on the labor of migrant workers who make up 80% of its population. Beyond its borders, the UAE has armed the Rapid Support Forces — a paramilitary group the United States government has formally determined is committing genocide in Sudan.

Qatar: a nation which is also an authoritarian monarchy controlled by the Al Thani family, one of the most powerful and wealthy royal families in the world. Unbelievably, 91% of Qatar’s population is migrant labor who are ruthlessly oppressed. While building World Cup stadiums in Qatar, thousands of workers died as a result of horrendous working conditions.

The politics of the Middle East are complicated, and no one believes that we can bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the region tomorrow. But clearly, we need a very different approach than what we have right now.

We need a foreign policy that actually reflects our values and which must start with a simple premise: the United States will not provide weapons and diplomatic cover to governments — whether in Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi or Doha — that engage in systematic human rights violations.

And it means, at long last, building a foreign policy centered around human rights, respect for international law and multilateralism — and one that holds war criminals accountable no matter whom they may be.

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

A planned luxury resort in Albania linked to Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is under an anti-corruption investigation over changes to protected coastal land, amid growing protests.

Al Jazeera's Cara Legg reports.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC.

May God bless America.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

The U.S. and Israel have been threatening to attack Iran, with the U.S. openly surrounding the country with an armada. Yet, if Iran had attacked first, the media would never call it a “preemptive strike.”

That’s not journalism, it’s manufacturing consent for an illegal war.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

There are many Israel supporters who treat the claim that Israel committed genocide in Gaza as if it's some sort of fringe, laughable delusion that only crazies assert.

In fact, this conclusion has been endorsed by most major human rights groups (including Israeli ones), leading scholars of genocide (including leading Israeli scholars and countless Jewish ones), duly constituted international tribunals, many countries around the world, UN inquiries, and all kinds of associations of scholars.

You can dismiss them all as bigoted and anti-Semitic if you want (groups or scholars criticizing Israel are reflexively dismissed as such). But the conclusion that Israel committed classic genocide in Gaza is not some assertion that only gets made by random internet accounts. It's approaching a consensus in the world of groups, tribunals and scholars most qualified to adjudicate the question.

(The term "genocide" includes far more than "successfully slaughtering everyone in a population as quickly as possible," and the belief that it only covers that act is part of the confusion and/or misinformation on this question).

Also: the US, UK and much of Europe paid for, armed and otherwise enabled most of it.

[Elmo @elmo]

That Bunny was AMAZING. Elmo thinks he should be called Good Bunny! Elmo loves you, Mr. Good Bunny! ❤️🎶🐰

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.

[Secular Talk ([email protected]) @KyleKulinski]

This is what happens when you let billionaires and corporate criminals run wild

[Kerry Burgess @KerryBurgess]

Total respect for Hannah. A woman on the right side of history.

[Artur Alves @lebigh_official]

Este homem apanha um pedaço de plástico no oceano e tem uma experiência única na vida.

[Ounka @OunkaOnX]

Harvard law students walked out on an Israeli, Dani Dayan talk titled "The legal strategy for Israeli settlements."

You cannot rationalize colonization, and you cannot demand the attention while committing worst crimes possible

[kim petras @kimpetras]

Zohran Mamdani I am willing to privately send you my new album if we can get the horse carriages banned from Central Park

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

Watch a pygmy marmoset completely fascinated by an insect in this clip from "Tiny World".

[Ronald Lebow @RonLebow]

From BBC 1:
A herd of elephants marched 12 hours to the house of Lawrence Anthony after he died – the man who saved them. They stayed there silent for 2 days.

Exactly 1 year after his death, to the day, the herd marched to his house again. Scientists cannot explain this act.

[Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi]

I get that they hate Assange, but I’m still amazed by how few mainstream journalists understand that this case also impacts them personally.

[BonnieCorrineLotesto @aaaaaandSEND]

Happy New Year! 💖

[Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks]

Woody Guthrie’s New Years Resolutions from 1943.