New Narrative

[New Narrative @NewNarrative]

@mccaffreyr3 No. We’d still lose. If social media existed during Vietnam, do you think that war would’ve lasted so long? Remember: we LOST in Vietnam. We LOST the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Those wars were just extensions of the first Gulf War. We LOST. Seems you’re living in a dream world.

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

"The Israeli strategy of deploying the U.S. to destroy Iran has backfired, and ultimately there will be a reckoning in the U.S." https://t.co/ZWjMBHSHaM

[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.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

ABC: “Trump says the Reflecting Pool will have to be partially drained, blaming vandals without any evidence🙃… arresting people for touching peeled-off paint… companies were awarded millions in no-bid contracts despite having no experience…”

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

APPLEBAUM: What Russians do is they put out not one lie, but million lies, or not one explanation, but one after another.

It's a propaganda technique. They just flood people with massive, contradictory stories, and sooner or later, people won't pay attention to anything at all.

And there's so much information all the time that people eventually just tune out, and they say, "I don't know what's true, I don't know what's not true, I don't believe anything, I'm not going to engage in this issue, I'm not going to get angry about it, I just don't want to know anything at all."

[New Narrative @NewNarrative]

@DanielLDavis1 For me, this theological tangent undermines your common-sense approach to geopolitics. It’d be better if personal doctrine could be left out of the discussion. Huckabee’s a nut. He shouldn’t be ambassador. But this hurts your credibility as an analyst, in my view.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

It's a decade later and most liberals still can't bring themselves to acknowledge or talk about these indisputable facts recounted by @matthewstoller.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

The maximum amount a person can donate to a candidate is $3500.

Miriam Adelson just donated another $25 million.

Citizens United didn’t give corporations “free speech.”

It let billionaires buy elections and legally bribe politicians.

End Citizens United.

[Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK]

The world is being encouraged to build its entire economy, public services. security and defence on US AI foundation models - which a US President can switch off - or deny access to - at will.

• The idea that we have the leverage to prevent this happening is fantasy.

• Tackling this dependency will be ruinously expensive.

• But denying it and doing nothing is fatal.

• The rest of the world has no alternative other than to try to develop far more A.I. autonomy - whatever it costs.

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

Trump wants to create a national database of every registered voter in the country.

Then, he and the GOP want to decide who gets to stay on it.

“It’s a way of essentially taking over the voter registration process,” Marc Elias says, “or, more precisely, taking over the results.”

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Alan Greenspan bade us farewell today. A man who was celebrated as the central bankers' central banker based on the conviction that markets are divine and volatility is a virtue.

His epitaph? A singular, glorious confession: “I found a flaw in my model of the world.” A flaw, he said, as though it were a leaky pipe, not a total collapse of the intellectual architecture that anointed him Oracle. For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good.

Then, in 2008, the beast devoured the table, and to his credit he blinked, admitting that his entire worldview—the one that central bankers canonized and the world swallowed—was a fairy tale for rentiers.

He did not, of course, admit to culpability. That would require a moral compass, a device notably absent from his Ayn Randian toolbelt. No, he merely noted the flaw, as a meteorologist might note a gust of wind, and returned to his well-earned silence.

So farewell, Maestro. You helped erect a broken global casino economy, but at least you had the decency to read the autopsy report aloud. Alas, countless millions are still paying for your asterisk. https://t.co/ftWXeIeAQr

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“I carry with me a photo of a Muslim child who, during my visit to Lebanon, was standing there holding a sign that said ‘Welcome, Pope Leo,’ and in this latest phase of the war, he was killed.

“There are many human situations like this, and I believe we must have the ability to think in this way.

“And as a Church, I say again: as a pastor, I cannot be in favor of war.

“I would like to encourage everyone to make efforts to seek answers that come from a culture of peace, not of hatred or division.” — Pope Leo XIV

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

The U.S. government just handed sacred Apache land to a copper mine.

When they're done, the ancient oaks where generations have prayed and come of age will be gone - replaced by a crater two miles wide.

Chi'chil Biłdagoteel, known as Oak Flat, sits in Arizona's Tonto National Forest outside Superior. Its 2,422 acres of old-growth oaks, springs, and sacred sites have held San Carlos Apache prayers and coming-of-age ceremonies since time immemorial.

The endangered Arizona hedgehog cactus grows here. An endangered ocelot was struck and killed on a nearby highway - a reminder of what else calls this place home.

President Eisenhower protected this land from mining in 1955. That lasted 60 years, until the late Sen. John McCain slipped a last-minute provision into a must-pass defense bill in 2014, authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper.

Below Oak Flat, the Sonoran Desert rises to meet you in thousands of saguaro cacti lining the drive up from Phoenix. Environmentalists warn that block-cave mining at this scale threatens the fragile water systems that sustain this entire ecosystem.

Apache Stronghold fought it in court for over a decade.

They took it all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court declined to hear it - no explanation, no ruling on the merits, just a closed door. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the Court's most conservative voices, wrote a dissent calling it a grievous mistake. This past March, the transfer was finalized anyway.

The crater the mine leaves behind will be two miles wide and 1,100 feet deep. Permanent.

The American people will receive zero in royalties.

That's not an oversight - it's the 1872 Mining Law, a statute signed by Ulysses S. Grant that lets mining companies extract minerals from public land and pay nothing. It hasn't been updated in over 150 years. 150 years — can you believe it?

Twenty-one of Arizona's 22 federally recognized tribes oppose this. Seventy-one percent of Americans support protecting Oak Flat.

"We will never stop fighting," said Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold. "This is a struggle for the soul of our people."

What kind of country lets a 150-year-old law give away sacred land and call it legal?

#DemsUnited

[Barb McQuade @BarbMcQuade]

Like most things Trump touches, the Reflecting Pool is now in worse shape than before. Adding cosmetic paint did not solve the underlying problem. And now he baselessly blames vandals for his failure.
https://t.co/MlW3Eeof4Y

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

for a charge like this, would you really need to hire a lawyer? since there is no statute in the US making the touching of public waters a crime, the arrest is bogus & any judge would vacate it.
also, if no signs are posted forbidding "touching the water," the charge is bogus.
presumably there are signs saying "no wading, swimming, boating"--etc.
why does T***p think this will help his polls? harassing innocent people, mostly tourists, just deepens the loathing many feel for him beyond mere dislike for his policies.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Lisbon Valley, Utah. North of Bears Ears is to be opened for uranium mining.

Still scarred from the last uranium boom, the one the EPA hasn't even finished cleaning up.

This week, the federal government decided to do it again.

The whole approval took 11 days. Tribes got a 7-day window to respond, take it or leave it.

One leader called it outrageous and indefensible. A Canadian company gets to mine it, royalty free, under a law from 1872.

That law lets companies pull minerals off federal land without paying the public a dime in royalties, a rule written for pickaxes and mules, still running the uranium industry today.

Here's the part most people will miss: the general public didn't get a say at all this time, the emergency order waived that requirement completely.

Tribal nations are legally different. The government owes them direct, government to government consultation because of treaty and trust obligations going back generations. That legal requirement still applied here. It just got squeezed into 7 days.

Who decided 7 days was enough to weigh in on land that's been theirs for generations?

#DemsUnited

[Daniel Davis Deep Dive @DanielLDavis1]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but yet again evidence provided by the president himself: he is either in *serious* cognitive decline now, or he is going full-on authoritarian.

Here he is, yet again, using the full weight of his office to suppress the media, so that they do not report anything besides what he wants to hear. And if any has the audacity to report events country to his personal preference, he threatens to destroy the institution or to bury them under lawsuits.

That is, black-and-white, destruction of free speech, which he claimed was going to be a “hallmark“ of his administration on his inaugural address. Obviously, that was also a lie.

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

For the next 135 days, our first and most important goal is to end Republican control of Congress, thereby limiting Trump’s reign of criminality, corruption, cruelty, and treachery.

This is a moral imperative for every one of us who believes in a decent society. https://t.co/Nj5gGbwD36

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

Trump is trying to shift the decision about who gets to vote from the states to his administration, using benign sounding administrative procedures, and an executive order that few people are paying attention to. There’s nothing more important to be aware of right now than this. Details here: https://t.co/8dvrOO8Zy6

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

Federal prosecutors have charged 15 Minnesotans in connection with anti-ICE protests in the Twin Cities. They are accused of “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers” during Trump’s so-called Operation Metro Surge.

“All 15 of the defendants are members of the community, active in mutual aid, union members, workers, neighbors,” says defense attorney Bruce Nestor, who represents one of the 15. “The point of this is to spread fear to try to divide us.”

https://t.co/P0YTE6yva9