DO NOT CONFIRM GINA HASPELL AS CIA DIRECTOR

GINA HASPELL SHOULD NOT BECOME CIA DIRECTOR

President Trump and his staff who are the victims of secret, unelected, establishment, powerful forces which wish to undermine his presidency and the choice of the people in a valid election—should be more circumspect concerning the types of candidates they nominate for politically powerful, positions shrouded in secrecy and with little or no oversight.  These are the very dangerous forces which we have learned in the last 15 months are capable of undermining a president and attempting to overturn a legitimate election.  The President and his advisors  should be more careful—but they are not.  Mr Trump has nominated Ms Gina Haspel as Director of the CIA.

Mr. Trump and the entire nation is now experiencing what happens when powerful establishment forces within its structure, move toward taking on evil practices that attempt to deny the Congress oversight into their activiies and  begin to think that they are the “government” and deny that function to our openly elected officials.  These “deep staters”and  establishment types believe that they “know better’  than the millions of voters who cast ballots in a supposedly democratic, constituriona  republic.

To my mind it is ironic that Ms Haspel a typical denizen of the deep state establishment  has been nominated by Mr. Trump—a presidential victim of run away establishment power—to head one of the most powerful and most secret (and most dangerous) agencies we maintain in our government.  Ayone who is nominated to head such an agency should be beyond any question of doubt of their support for our Constitution, our moral code and ethical standards.  They must be beyond even a hint of reproach.  He or she should be a person who does not carry the stench of torture into the directorship of the CIA.  

Ms Haspel is a long time insider at the CIA.  Her supporters claim she is “patriotic” “obeyed orders” and was always eager to take on “difficult” assignments.  That is a weakness not a strength in a leadership position which may require an invidual to stand up for a moral and legal code.  Adolph Eichman and the Nuremberg defendants were also patriotic and willing to take on difficult assignments.  Their excuses that they  “did what they were ordered” got them all a hangman’s noose.

Ms. Haspel ran the infamous secret Detention Site “Green” in Thailand where the CIA detained and tortured its victims.  She was involved in the decision to transport and torture Abu Zubaydah at that site. This man, though he freely gave up any information he had to FBI interrogators, he was waterboarded 83 times, as well as suffering extreme physical and mental abuse (more forms of torture) at the hands of the CIA.  In the end, he provided no useful information as a result of this treatment by Ms Haspel and her underlings.   He remains in our custody...nearly two decades after his arrest.  Besides her connection to these actions which are actionable in the World Court and may hinder her travel beyond our borders she was also involved in an illegal coverup of torture and abuse at these infamous detention centers.  Ms Haspel is reported to have complied with orders from the CIA leadership to destroy 92 video tapes which were evidence of the tortures conducted at these dark sites.  That act compounds her involvement, sanctioning and complicity with torture with the act to destroy evidence and coverup an illegal act.  How can such a person assume the leadership of the CIA?

NO IT IS CLEAR WE CAN NOT TRUST MS HASPELL WITH SUCH A POWERFUL POSITON.

SENATORS SHOULD VOTE NO

NETANYAHU: DANGEROUS ALLY.

MR NETANYAHU: MORE OF A THREAT THAN THE AYATOLLAH

Mr. Netanyahu of Israel has launched a campaign to encourage Mr. Trump to pull out of the Iran Nulear Deal.  His attempts fit in with the rest of his policies.  He would have Mr. Trump abandon one of the only positive and useful consequences of the Obama years—the ‘nuclear deal” between Iran—the USA, Germany, France, Russia and China, which reduced tensions in the Middle East and permitted the belligernants to step back from the brink of war.

Netanyahu is an advocate for Israels policies of expansionism and resistance to finding any peaceful solution or common ground with the Palestinians.  (Regardless of his continuous claims to the contrary).  We can not control his ambitions for conflict—but we can ignore his attempts at misinformation and incitement to war. .

Mr. Netanyau’s governemnt has  recently killed and wounded hundreds of peaceful demonstrators INSiDE the Gaza border fence. He has repeatedly bombed targets in  Syria.  His most recent raid in war-torn Syria has killed dozens of non combatants on the ground with “bunker busting “ bombs supplied to him by the USA.

Now he is on a campaign of misinformation regarding the Obama nuclear deal with Iran.  Our military leaders and our intelligence services have debunked Mr. netanyau’s claims as  untrue or “old news”.

Mr. Trump should be very wary of this supposed ally..who would like to hold the USA’s coat, while we engage in conflict with the Iranians.

Mr. Netanyahu is a dangerous ally who should be kept at arms length.

Mr. Trump must be reminded of his promises and his policy of AMERICA FIRST!  

That is exactly what Mr. Netanyahu’s policy are—-Israel First!   These two goals (American and Israaeli) are not congruent or coincident as some of our war hawks and neocons would like us to believe.  We must realize that Mr. Netanyahu does not have the best interests of the US or the rest of the peace loving world in mind as he foments and engages in aggression and as he formulates his foreign policies.

Mr. Trump claims to be an advocate for America...Now is the time tp prove it.

Keep Mr. Netanyahu at arms length.  He is our most dangerous ally.

THE MESS IN SYRIA—DONT MAKE IT WORSE—GET OUT!

I read today—sadly with no surprise—that the Pentagon is resisting the President’s wishes regarding Syria.  He had wisely noted his intention to “get out of Syria, very soon”.  The deep state, the neocons, the military industrial complex (John McCain and his ilk)  and all the other forces that simply love war, killing innocents, and selling armaments are opposed to that very logical intention of Mr. Trump.  
The fact is that the US presence in eastern Syria was and remains a mistake.  We have already done so much damage to Syria—in our idiotic Obama policy of helping to generate and sustain the Civil War—that it is now apparent to everyone that it is time that we bring our troops home, and focus on rebuilding America and American infrastructure.  Let’s leave the rebuilding of Syria to the Syrians.

The phony propaganda  games that the Pentagon, CIA, the neocons, war hawks in DC play is all too apparent for anyone who reads the news from that part of the world.  These war mongers are opposed to a US troop pull out since they are opposed to ending any military conflicts.   They oppose the sensible, humane, reunification and pacification of Syria.  In the face of the blatant failure of pro-insurgency policies by Obama and others they continue to encourage chaos and instability.   US policy is stuck on preventing the Russians and the Iranians from the sustainig the influence they won by defeating ISIS and other terrorist groups as they supported the Assad regime in that war torn nation.

 Those are the facts.  We supported the losing side.  The Russians and the Iranians supported the legitimate government of Syria (whether we like Assad  policies or not).  Let us face the facts.   No amount of USA money spent, troops deployed,  or “involvement” will change the facts that “our side” lost.  We have no viable “allies” in eastern Syria.  The rag tag group of “moderate” terrorists we supported are all dead or have joined up with ISIS and are breathing their last.  The Kurds are soon to be defeated by the Turkish forces which rightly see them as an existential threat to Turkey.

Making the phony claim that we are attempting to “contain” ISIS after it is apparent that they are fully defeated does not stand up to facts on the ground.  And preventing the Assad forces from reclaiming the eastern part of the ancient territory of Syria is simply counter productive. It only exacerbates the mistakes we made in encouraging and supporting the  insurgency.  It retards the stabilization of that part of the Middle East and continues an economiccay damaging low grade insurgency that will only keep the region in chaos and cost more lives.  From the beginning it was plain that there was no reasonable alternative to Assad.

Now is the time to pack up and go home.  (Where we have many of our own problems to solve.). Mr. Trump has a refreshing way of pushing aside the BS, tossing out the window dressing, and stating the unvarnished truth.  He is right: “We should get our troops out “very soon”.

EU PROTECTS BEES FROM NEO-NIC PESTICIDES—NOW THE USA!

BEES FINALLY GET SOME PROTECTION FROM THE EU

Over the last decade or longer I have observed a sharp decline in honey bees visiting my garden and flower beds.  There were times late in summer when my flowering sedum and other fragrant garden flowers were swarming with honeybees.  The hum of their wings was so loud I could hear them from my back porch.   Then, scrambling among the busy honeybees  I would find  only a few of the slower,  bigger, black and yellow bumble bees.  But over the last two decades or so honey bees have literally disappeared.  The only bees now seen in my garden are our native clumsy, slow, bumble bees,  

My local observations were mirrored and coincident with a world-wide documented massive decline in honeybees and other pollinators.  Commercial bee keepers all across the USA and in Europe complained of  die offs of their bee colonies.  They reported that their hives collapsed when worker bees flew off from the hive but did not return.  The result was the death of the queen the collapse of the hive.   They termed this phenomena: “Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  Bee keepers and some USA investigators at first attributed the “alarming” die off to a variety of causes: the parasitic mite (Veroa mite) which attaches it self to worker bees, a virus which sickens and kills bees, and a gut parasite.  Few in the USA made the obvious connection between the widespread introduction of a new and widely-used neurologically active pesticide applied to crops that bees visited—-and the contemporaneous “alarming” die off of bee colonies.     

Honey bees are useful not only for producing honey—that is simply a sweet byproduct of their actual importance to man.  Bees are responsible for  pollinating  90% of our commercial food crops which require insect pollinators....such as apples, peaches, pears, avocados, plums, lemons, and grapes.  And “vegetables’ like squash, broccoli, carrots, okra, lima beans, peas, green-beans, are all pollinated by bees, as well as  essential vegetable cooking oil crops like  rapeseed (canola), and don’t forget coffee, and many many others. 

The repeated poor harvest and failure of my little garden crop of summer squash, zucchini and grapes was no doubt in part the result of fewer insect pollinators and that effect was probably happening all over the world.

Recently, the European Commission’s (Standing Committee on Plants and Animals, Food and Feed)  an influential  arm of the EU, has drafted new regulations that if passed* would ban from outdoor use a whole class of pesticides that affect domestic and wild honeybees.  The commission has made this decision based on a series of intensive studies on the impact of certain very popular and widely used chemical pesticides  called “neonicotinoids” (“neonics”) on wild bees and butterflies in EU crop fields. The studies confirmed that the pesticides have a detrimental effect on bee and butterfly survival. 

These chemicals mimic the effects of the biologically active chemical in tobacco—nicotine.  Nicotine as every smoker and former nicotine addict knows affects the nervous system.  Nicotine and nicotine-like chemicals used as plant pesticides are effective against a wide array of insect pests which attack crops. 

Neonicotinoids (literally: “new nicotine-like pesticides “) affect the way animal neurons (nerve cells)  transmit electrical impulses by blocking what might be termed the neuron’s “cut off” switch (a chemical known as acetylcholinesterase functions in this manner).  The pesticide neonic mimics the “cut off switch” of neurons and its presence at the juncture between neurons permits these affected neurons  to continue firing off impulses.  Such an effect can cause an insect to go into a form of convulsion or at lower doses interfere with many of its bodily functions controlled by the nervous system .  

Unlike higher organism (such as mammals and humans) insects have nervous systems which are essentially “hardwired”. In higher organism nicotine can alter the way nervous impulses are generated or transmitted.  They might change the heart rate or increase nerve transmission but do not pose an existential threat   In more primitive neurologically simpler organisms like insects  altering the way the nervous systems works can cause the effected organism to go into convulsions, or perhaps in lesser doses stop its chewing actions of its mandibles, stop it form burrowing into a plant tissue, or as in honey bees, alter its nervous  system so that it does not fly back to its hive. 

These neonicotinoid are not sprayed on to crop plants.  They are “systemic poisons”  incorporated as a coating on the seed and as the seed germinates and the plant grows the chemical spreads throughout the entirety of the growing plant’s tissues.  The roots, tubers, stems, leaves, flowers and fruit of these plants are all laced with the pesticide. Thus the plant is effectively protected from insect “grubs” which attack the roots, others which feed on the leaves and others which burrow into and attack the fruit.  The nectar and pollen of neo-nic treated plants upon which bees feed are also contaminated with this pesticide and this is the route by which bees are affected.  

These chemicals are highly popular with farmers who for certain crops can simply plant the seeds and wait for harvest,  assured that the young plant will not fall prey to some very common bugs.  They need not spray the crop intensively with other costly surface-active insecticides.  Over the last 20 years this group of pesticides —the neonics” have become very widely used and for the above reasons understandably  popular with farmers.  Naturally the well-connected and politically powerful pesticide industry producers like Bayer and Syngenta and Nippon who created these chemicals are also in favor of their continued sale and continued profits from these sales.  

But the last 20 years of more and more widespread use of these chemicals has resulted in the shocking decline of many species of pollinators—honeybees and butterflies—which are clearly effected by ingesting the neonic laced flower nectar and the neonic laced pollen.  

Finally after two decades—something is being done to save our honey bees and all the crops that they so effectively pollinate.  And who knows what effects the long term ingestion of these chemicals incorporated into the plant tissues and oils of crop have on humans?  Are they biologically concentrated in plant oils?  The producers and farmers are not concerned about these questions.  We must thank the EU Commission on agriculture for their persistence and interest.  

Now it is time for the US Department of Agriculture and the EPA to act in concert with the EU Commission and BAN THE USE OF THIS  PESTICIDE

SAVE THE BEES AND BUTTERFLIES. 

 *The proposal passed on April 27, 2018.

ON REFUGEES, MEXICO AND ECONOMIC MIGRANTS

OUR SOUTHERN BORDER IS BEING PENETRATED BY CARAVANS OF  “REFUGEES”

THESE FOLKS WANT TO CLAIM POLITICAL ASYLUM AND SOME SAY WE CAN NOT RETURN THEM TO MEXICO BASED ON EXISTING REFUGEE PROTOCOLS

BUT THEY HAVE MIGRATED THROUGH MEXICO WITH THE AID AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT.  THEIR LIVES  ARE NOT THREATENED IN MEXICO. THEY CAN BE RETURNED TO MEXICO

THEY WOULD SIMPLY PREFER TO RESIDE IN THE USA.

ACTUAL REFUGEES FROM ECUADOR ARE MEXICO’S RESPONSIBILITY

World nations have been granting asylum to refugees for hundreds of years.  Wars, natural disaster, political persecution have all caused people to seek asylum elsewhere.  Providing asylum is a humane and just policy.  Since the Bush-Obama wars in the Middle East,  we have seen a massive surge of refugeees from those affected nations.  The UN (See: UN.org) estimates there are at present some 65 million displaced people around the world.  Of those, about a third or 22 million are actual refugees.  The tragic war in Syria alone has generated nearly 6 million refugees from that country.

In the United States, our southern border has been overrun for years on end with mostly economic migrants.  These are people who are seeking opportunities for employment and and a better life.  They cross the border illegally and become illegal immigrants (not “undocumented” immigrants).  But these are not refugees threatened with death, torture or imprisonment.  They migrate for economic reasons.  There are specific laws which correctly and justifiably  protect those who are escaping from war-torn regions or from natural disasters.  Recently, some in the political realm have tried to embarrass the new Trump Administartion by attempting to use these protocols for refugees as a political brickbat by claiming to designate Equadoran (and others) economic migrants as real “refugees”.

The convention which controls how refugees are treated had its origin in the  post WWII era.  In 1951 the UN agreed upon and published  a “Convention on the Status of Refugees”.  It was revised in 1967. Other related laws have further codified this protocol , such as the Universal Declaration of Human rights, The American Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man and others.  All of these agreements leave it up to the individual states as to determine wether a person appearing at the border of a state meets the defitinition as a refugee.

NON-REFOULMENT
A common tenet of all these “refugee” laws and general agreements is the prohibition of “refoulment”  (or return).   This means that the state to which the refugee appears has an obligation not to return a valid refugee to the “frontiers of territories where his or her life would be threatened by their race, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group”.  Such and action would be clearly at odds with the humanitarian focus of the refugee agreements.  No one disagrees on that.

But the exceptions to refoulment are very important.

EXCLUDED INDIVIDUALS
Refugees may be excluded from protected status and refoulment (and be returned) if there is serious reason to suspect that the applicant has committed serious crimes.  Another cause for exclusion is for those  who have traveled through a third country,or received protection in a third country.    For example, the caravans of Ecuadorians attempting to enter the USA after passing through Mexico are no longer fleeing persecution.  They are not threatened in Mexico.  They are NOT refugees when they reach our border.  Another reason to deny refugee status is if the individual has aid from the third country.  In the case of the Ecuadorians they have received tacit and direct protection from Mexico to move northward toward our border.  These people  are no longer fleeing conditions which threaten their lives,  but are simply attempting to make a “quality of life” choice:  “Where would I prefer to live north or south of the Mexican-American border? “  These folks are NOT refugees in the legal sense described above.

These migrants have enetered Mexico’s southern border, have received aid and assistance from Mexico on their migration north.  They are not refugees but economic migrants.  We should not be forced to accept them at the border. If Mexico designates thee immigrants as refugees seeking asylum from persecution in Ecuador,,,they become the responsibility of Mexico, not the USA.

If however they want to go through the process of all legal immigrants...they should do so.

BLOOMBERG VIEW ON IRAN: COMPOUNDING ERRORS

BLOOMBERGS VIEW: COMPOUNDING STUPIDITY ON IRAN

The USA has a hatred for Iran.  Perhaps it is because Iran as it exists today is a constant reminder of our failed foreign policies in that region.  After all in 1953 our CIA instigated the assassination of a popular and democratically elected moderate PM— Mohammed  Mossaddegh.  (Perhaps he is just the kind of person who we would prefer today. ). He was assassinated in favor of the so-called and self-described “Shah” of Iran: Reza Pahalvi.  Pahlavi was a tool of the CIA who ran the nation for the financial benefit of himself and his family and to avoid assassination himself he studiously followed the US line on foreign policy. Under his corrupt and brutal rule the nation descended into social and economic chaos.  That disaster of US “foreign policy”  led to the 1973 revolution which in turn resulted in the installation of the “Ayatollahs”..we also love to hate.   

Today(April 24, 2018)  in a Bloomberg opinion piece by Eli Lake entitled: “Trump, Macron, Merkel have an opportunity in Iran crisis” we learn of more stupidity on Iran.  In this opinion piece, author Eli Lake suggests we neither fix nor exit from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by President Obama, but continue the uncertainty of the present.  Lake’s third option is to “keep the deal in limbo”.  Lake argues that such a policy would  discourage foreign investment and help encourage the collapse of the Iranian government.    Lake suggests his plan would permit us to help  “insurgents in the USA” install another Iranian government we might like better.  “Just let the regime crumble” suggests Lake.  Does this all sound a little familiar?  This opinion is a bit painful to read since underscores the fact that our “journalists” have apparently learned nothing over the last two decades. 

After reading his piece, one must assume that Mr. Lake was much in favor of the tragic human, economic and political disasters initiated by, caused, or instigated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen—creating an historically unprecedented regional arc of destruction, death, poverty and chaos.  Those wars of choice by Presidents Bush and Obama not only destroyed nations of the Middle East but they generated either directly or indirectly millions of displaced peoples and refugees who surged into Greece, Italy and central and Northern Europe where they are today causing economic and social disruptions of massive proportions. 

If there is anything wrong with the deal that President Obama signed....let’s hear it.  Let us in good faith attempt to renegotiate to a better deal...if we can.  But our best interests (and those of the world we inhabit) is certainly not another failed state in the Middle East.  

Not a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. 

Not another regional war.  

Not a nuclear war.

GAZA:SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL—EMBARRASSING

GAZA: 

ON BANTUSTANS, SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL, BLOCKADES AND BOYCOTTS

The Benjamin Netanyahu government is at it again— brutally shooting and gassing  Palestinians trapped behind the Israeli fence of the Gaza ‘bantustan” created by the Israeli government.  

 In the process, the Israelis again expose themselves to legitimate criticism from the world at large and at the UN.  In the UN, our embarrassing hypocrite, US Ambassador Niki Haley has (again) cast a security council veto to prevent rightful UN condemnation of Israel—while just minutes after using her position to condemn other nations for alleged similar crimes.  But having no internal restraint for the use of blatant double standards, —-she remains embarrassingly  mum on Israel’s brutality.  The Netanyahu government’s actions at the Gaza fence, characterized accurately by some as “shooting fish in a barrel”  are indefensible.  Since 2007, the Israelis have continued an illegitimate and brutal blockade of Gaza.  Their  policy prevents the  Gazans from leaving or entering the tiny, poverty-stricken territory, resulting in horrible, inhuman, living conditions, scarcities of food and water, limited health care, and only a few hours of electricity a day.  

The demonstrations in Gaza are the legitimate right of an oppressed people.  The demonstrations  also bring attention to the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank  and in Israel proper and remind the world of the Nakba (exodus) of 1948 when hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

It is essential to understand  that these demonstrations are taking place WITHIN the fenced borders of the Gaza territory—where the captive Palestinian population is confined in essentially an outdoor prison.  The demonstrators have been attacked by Israeli snipers, and by troopers  lobbing canisters of tear gas into crowds of protestors.  The protestors are located within the fence.  Over the last few days,  the Israelis  have killed twenty-nine  Palestinian demonstrators (men women and children) and gravely wounded 300 others.   All the killed and wounded were participating in demonstrations, not in Israel, but  behind the Gaza fence and on their own farms and roads.  

The US press should be reporting this story—but the Gaza saga remains in the journalistic stage of rough AP  ticker tapes —-abandoned on newsroom floors .  Here in the USA, there is little knowledge of and sympathy for the besieged Palestinians. And massive perverse restraint in newsrooms limits the knowledge in the USA concerning the gross misuse of force by the powerful Israeli army against a group of trapped civilians armed only with rocks and primitive slings.  Just like the rope sling used by the biblical David in his attack against Goliath.  Today the Israelis are the Goliaths.  The tables have turned.

It is worth noting that the Netanyahu government is always ready to remind the world (when it suits its purposes) of the true and tragic history of the Jewish people at the hands of other even more vicious and brutal regimes.  One wonders how, with the sad history of injustices and brutality the Israelis have experienced over the years, that they can stand mute in the face of the tragedy of other people, and elect and reelect the brutal Netanyahu government—which habitually engages in  atrocities such as we are witnessing now at the Gaza fence line.

One is forced to the conclusion that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum is an economic one.  The Netanyahu regime  would abandon its brutal “rules of engagement” which permit  Israeli snipers to shoot innocent unarmed people trapped behind a fence 

—within 24 hours —- if the world’s nations supported the  the several  divestment and boycott movements growing in strength in certain religious groups and on college campi.  We know form the history of the South African Africanns Regime that bantustans, brutality and blockades can be countered effectively with economic boycotts.

We here in America are eager (some are almost gleeful) to “send a message” in the form of bombs or economic sanctions to nations, which in pursuit of their national aims go beyond the pale of the acceptable, but our close ally Israel always escapes our corrective measures and our “messages” to Israel only encourage self defeating and destructive behavior.

 Our failure to act as  “honest-broker” demeans both nations.