31 January 20
Reader Supported News: For the 99%.
Most of us know that the mainstream media, primarily owned by the right, rigidly controls information and the message. It’s become increasingly difficult to get the truth, backed by scientific thinking, logic and common sense.
Reader Supported News provides reliable, factual information and informed opinion – and offers a forum to intelligently discuss the major issues that affect our lives.
Please help ensure that RSN will be around for a long, long time to do its job for us. Please consistently support RSN to the best of your ability, at whatever level you can afford.
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
31 January 20
Garrison Keillor | What Goes on in Minneapolis on a Winter Night
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "I drove to the grocery the other night and there, near checkout, saw a freezer case with the sign, 'Artisan Ice Cubes,' a bold new step in our march toward Preposterosity."
READ MORE
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "I drove to the grocery the other night and there, near checkout, saw a freezer case with the sign, 'Artisan Ice Cubes,' a bold new step in our march toward Preposterosity."
READ MORE
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, walks through the Senate Subway of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Murkowski to Vote Against Witnesses in Trump Trial, Likely Dooming Dem Push for Bolton Testimony
Christina Wilkie, CNBC News
Wilkie writes: "Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced Friday she will vote against admitting additional evidence in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, a decision that apparently kills Democrats' hopes of winning over four Republicans and adding a witness phase to the trial."
READ MORE
Christina Wilkie, CNBC News
Wilkie writes: "Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced Friday she will vote against admitting additional evidence in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, a decision that apparently kills Democrats' hopes of winning over four Republicans and adding a witness phase to the trial."
READ MORE
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Bernie Sanders Canvassers Are Swarming College Campuses to Turn Out the Youth Vote
Ryan Brooks, BuzzFeed
Brooks writes: "Young voters are vital for Sanders, in Iowa and everywhere else. So college organizers are explaining the basics to students to get them involved."
READ MORE
Ryan Brooks, BuzzFeed
Brooks writes: "Young voters are vital for Sanders, in Iowa and everywhere else. So college organizers are explaining the basics to students to get them involved."
READ MORE
Supporters of Planned Parenthood. (photo: AP)
Trump Administration Gives Texas the Green Light to Limit Family Planning Services for Poor Women
Jordan Smith, The Intercept
Smith writes: "At issue is Texas's long-standing quest to avail itself of federal taxpayer funds to provide contraceptives and basic reproductive care to low-income, uninsured women, while also barring those women from choosing to seek services at Planned Parenthood or other clinics the state believes 'affiliate' with abortion providers."
READ MORE
Jordan Smith, The Intercept
Smith writes: "At issue is Texas's long-standing quest to avail itself of federal taxpayer funds to provide contraceptives and basic reproductive care to low-income, uninsured women, while also barring those women from choosing to seek services at Planned Parenthood or other clinics the state believes 'affiliate' with abortion providers."
READ MORE
A detainee talking on the phone in his pod at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, in 2019. (photo: David Goldman/AP)
Starving for Justice in ICE Detention
Sarah Gardiner, The New York Times
Excerpt: "For immigrants languishing behind bars, a hunger strike is often the sole remaining means of protest against a dehumanizing and unjust system."
READ MORE
Sarah Gardiner, The New York Times
Excerpt: "For immigrants languishing behind bars, a hunger strike is often the sole remaining means of protest against a dehumanizing and unjust system."
READ MORE
Ronald and Nancy Reagan on the day of his first inauguration as president in 1981. (photo: Getty)
Ronald Reagan's "October Surprise" Plot Was Real After All
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Excerpt: "A batch of quietly released documents confirms what many have long suspected: Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign worked behind the scenes to delay the release of US hostages in Iran, for the benefit of Reagan's election campaign."
he 2020s began with such a hair-raising blitz of Iran-related news that you probably missed the bombshell revelation about US-Iranian relations that came with the end of the 2010s. Rather than a potential US-Iran war today, this particular story transports us back to a more innocent time, when politics was about principles and Republican presidents were decent men: the beginning of the Reagan era.
READ MORE
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
Excerpt: "A batch of quietly released documents confirms what many have long suspected: Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign worked behind the scenes to delay the release of US hostages in Iran, for the benefit of Reagan's election campaign."
he 2020s began with such a hair-raising blitz of Iran-related news that you probably missed the bombshell revelation about US-Iranian relations that came with the end of the 2010s. Rather than a potential US-Iran war today, this particular story transports us back to a more innocent time, when politics was about principles and Republican presidents were decent men: the beginning of the Reagan era.
At question is the 1980 presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, specifically the “October Surprise” that is alleged to have handed Reagan the election, long dismissed as a conspiracy theory. The whole saga is lengthy and convoluted, but the core allegation is this: that in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis, the Reagan campaign made a secret deal with the new rulers of Iran to delay the release of the hostages until after the election, dooming Carter’s chances of victory.
The allegation, doggedly pursued by the late investigative journalist Robert Parry, spawned books and even a 1992 congressional investigation, which determined there was “no credible evidence supporting any attempt or proposal to attempt by the Reagan Presidential campaign . . . to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran.” Parry and others looking into the case were attacked in the media, with much of the issue revolving around whether or not Reagan’s campaign manager and (later) free press–hating CIA director William Casey had traveled to Madrid on a particular date to meet with Iranian government representatives.
Well, nearly seventeen years after the House October Surprise Task Force concluded that the whole idea was bunk, an outlet no less venerable than the New York Times has turned that conclusion on its head. Just three days out from a new decade, the Times published what in any other era would have been a bombshell story based on documents donated to Yale from the offices of David Rockefeller, the former chairman of Chase Manhattan Corporation.
Ostensibly a story about how Rockefeller and Chase worked behind the scenes to win their client, the repressive Shah of Iran, safe haven in the United States, this nugget appears about halfway through:
[T]he team around Mr. Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Mr. Carter’s dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an “October surprise” — a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.
The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.
“I had given my all” to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise,’” Mr. Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Mr. Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco.
“Mr. Reed” was Joseph Reed Jr, Rockefeller’s chief of staff, who mandated that the documents should stay sealed until Rockefeller’s death, which came in 2017. It’s not hard to see why.
Critics will quibble that these documents don’t prove the actual specifics of the long-alleged “October Surprise.” This is true. According to the Times, they don’t show Reagan striking a deal with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages until after the election, but simply working behind the scenes to thwart negotiations to free them. Perhaps someone out there exists who thinks this is better.
Of course, these weren’t the only shenanigans Reagan got up to during that election. His campaign also famously got hold of Carter’s debate strategy papers in advance of their one and only debate in 1980, and less famously was alleged to have used retired CIA officials and a mole within the Carter administration to gather information about its foreign policy — mostly, as the Times reported in 1983, in relation to the Iran hostage crisis.
For those counting, that’s now at least four of the last six Republican presidents who have won elections with the assistance of some sort of pre-election skulduggery, including Richard Nixon’s torpedoing of peace in Vietnam, the George W. Bush campaign shenanigans in Florida and the later use of the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” and Donald Trump’s boost from Russia’s hacking of Democratic Party emails (even if that wasn’t coordinated) — not to mention the use of voter suppression that unites them all. And that’s not counting George H. W. Bush getting help from John Major’s government in the UK in his bid to beat Bill Clinton in 1992.
The story is also a perfect example of the way the worlds of capital, politics, and foreign affairs blur together: the head of one of the country’s largest banks helping his right-wing political allies unseat their opponent and saving the skin of one lucrative foreign dictator, all while drawing on the expertise of a team of political elites, from Henry Kissinger and a former CIA director to a member of one of the country’s most prominent political families. Big business and the political establishment have long worked together; they just used to do it more quietly.
As understated as it was, it’s remarkable this story has received as little attention as it has — a hallmark of the Trump era, where even the New York Times publishing secret government files on UFOs barely makes a blip.
READ MORE
Wolf No 9 in Rose Creek pen, 1996. (photo: Barry O'Neill/Defenders of Wildlife)
A Rewilding Triumph: Wolves Help to Reverse Yellowstone Degradation
Cassidy Randall, Guardian UK
Randall writes: "Twenty-five years ago this month, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, America's first national park and an ecosystem dangerously out of whack owing to the extirpation of its top predator."
Cassidy Randall, Guardian UK
Randall writes: "Twenty-five years ago this month, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, America's first national park and an ecosystem dangerously out of whack owing to the extirpation of its top predator."
This monumental undertaking marked the first deliberate attempt to return a top-level carnivore to a large ecosystem. Now scientists are celebrating the gray wolves’ successful return from the brink of extinction as one of the greatest rewilding stories the world has ever seen.
“The pressure was huge with this project,” said Doug Smith, the senior wildlife biologist of the Yellowstone Wolf Project who was hired by the National Park Service (NPS) to head the reintroduction in the 1990s. “If we couldn’t do this here, on our own turf in one of the most famous parks in the world, as one of the richest nations in the world, then who could? This was an example to the globe in restoring nature.”
But because wolves are one of the most controversial animals on the planet, the recovery remains fiercely contested.
Wolves once roamed from the Arctic to Mexico, but they were hunted to eradication across the country from the 1870s onward. By 1926, the last wolf pack had been killed in Yellowstone by park employees as part of the policy of the time to eliminate all predators.
They were mythologized as a danger to humans, a menace to the ranchers settling the west and competition for big-game hunters. That mythology still persists to this day, although wolves very rarely attack people, especially compared with cougars and bears. Wolves kill 0.2% to 0.3% of available livestock.
When the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted in the 70s, wolves were among the original species on the list. The ESA, a landmark piece of legislation to save declining species from extinction, compels the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered or threatened species and develop a plan for their recovery. But because wolves are so polarizing, the reintroduction did not take place until more than 20 years later.
The need for restoration was glaring. In the 70 years of the wolves’ absence, the entire Yellowstone ecosystem had fallen out of balance. Coyotes ran rampant, and the elk population exploded, overgrazing willows and aspens. Without those trees, songbirds began to decline, beavers could no longer build their dams and riverbanks started to erode. Without beaver dams and the shade from trees and other plants, water temperatures were too high for cold-water fish.
In 1995, in collaboration with Canadian agencies, 14 wolves were captured in Jasper national park and brought to Yellowstone. Smith recalls that as they transported the wolves through the park in horse trailers, people lined the roads to be part of the historic event. “Every time we stopped, visitors would come up and ask if they could pose next to the trailer. You couldn’t even see the wolves in there, but people wanted photos. That’s the presence and magic that wolves have, and that’s the first time we all felt that.”
In Yellowstone, the wolves were kept in acclimation pens for several weeks to keep their homing instincts from leading them back to Canada. Shortly after the pens were opened, though, wolf No 10 headed north and crossed the border into Montana, followed by No 9, his mate, pregnant with pups. He was illegally shot by a rancher, but she and her eight pups were rescued and moved back to the safety of park boundaries. Their bloodline can be traced to most of the wolves in the park to this day.
Scientists always knew that as the top predator, wolves were the missing piece in this ecosystem. But they were astonished at how quickly their return stimulated a transformation. The elk and deer populations started responding immediately. Within about 10 years, willows rebounded. In 20, the aspen began flourishing. Riverbanks stabilized. Songbirds returned as did beavers, eagles, foxes and badgers. “And those are just the things we have the time and funding to study,” said Smith. “There are probably myriad other effects just waiting to be discovered.”
While the restoration of wolves in Yellowstone has cost about $30m, wolf ecotourism brings in $35m annually, in an economic boom for the surrounding communities. Yellowstone is unique in the world as the best place to observe wild wolves, which are generally shy, reclusive and favor remote areas. This is as true for scientists as it is tourists, and as a result, wolf research in the park is considered far more advanced than anywhere else.
Wolves have repopulated parts of their historic range as far south as Colorado, where evidence of a pack was just discovered earlier this month, as far west as Mount Lassen in northern California, and to the doorsteps of the Cascades in eastern Oregon and Washington.
“It truly is going to go down in my career as one of those defining moments I was proud of to be part of from the beginning, that’s shaping the politics of conservation,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, which organized political support and legal actions for reintroduction and remains committed to restoring wolves to their historic ranges.
“At the same time, it’s not finished. We have not restored wolves to where they can and should be where it’s ecologically correct. We still have a lot of conflict, and concerns.” If state plans weren’t so “over-controlling, wolves would be running over the spine of the Rockies into the south-west today”.
When wolves were deemed recovered enough to be removed from the endangered species list, management of populations was left to each state. In Wyoming, people are allowed to shoot wolves on sight outside the borders of national parks. In Montana, it is permissible with a hunting permit.
Regardless of the challenges ahead, the thriving wolves in Yellowstone illustrate the success of the Endangered Species Act as a framework to conserve biodiversity, and a hopeful example at a time when the UN has revealed that the planet is on the brink of the sixth mass extinction.
“Absent the ESA, I am certain that wolves would never have come back,” said Clark. “Nearly 2,000 species would likely be extinct if they didn’t have the backstop of the ESA, which is this country’s commitment to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity within our borders.”
“It’s our conscience, our reminder that we’re responsible for maintaining a healthy planet now and in the future.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.