| Should emotional support animals be allowed on planes? Posted: 26 Dec 2019 09:57 AM PST  Emotional support animals are provide comfort to anxious travelers, but can also cause serious disruptions to flights. Is it time for these animals to be banned form planes?
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| Families of Soldiers Fallen or Wounded in Afghanistan Sue Contractors for Allegedly Paying Protection Money to Taliban Posted: 27 Dec 2019 11:49 AM PST  Families of 143 American troops and contractors killed or wounded in Afghanistan have sued U.S. and international contractors involved in Afghan reconstruction projects for allegedly paying protection money to the Taliban.The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, claims certain contracting companies often paid the Taliban through subcontractors, which allowed the the companies to save money on security personnel. The Taliban then used the money, according to the lawsuit, to fund attacks on other companies that didn't make payments to the insurgent group."The defendants are large corporations that had lucrative businesses in Afghanistan," said Joshua Branson, a lawyer for the case, in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. "Those protection payments, as alleged, redirected attacks away from the defendants' own interests while financing a terrorist insurgency that killed and injured thousands of Americans, including our clients."It has been widely known for years that money from American defense contractors has found its way to local Afghan warlords in the wake of the U.S. invasion of the country. A 2010 congressional investigation found that funds from Pentagon-backed contractors were fueling a "protection racket" by bribing local officials and possibly Taliban members in exchange for safe passage of goods.No U.S. or international companies have been successfully prosecuted for aiding the Taliban. The current lawsuit is a civil suit, which will enable a conviction if prosecutors can convince a jury of a preponderance of evidence in their favor, as opposed to a criminal suit which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.The war in Afghanistan, now 18 years old, came under increased scrutiny after the Washington Post published a trove of documents it dubbed the "Afganistan Papers." The records are from a federal investigation into the war effort and contain reflections of U.S. officials and troops in which they express doubts about the success of the war and the clarity of the military's mission. The officials also indicated the U.S. repeatedly misrepresented progress in the war to the government and the American people.The U.S. has been attempting peace negotiations with the Taliban, but talks have proceeded slowly as insurgents have continued to attack American targets.
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| Pete Buttigieg's Christmas tweet inadvertently sparked a war over whether Jesus was a poor refugee Posted: 27 Dec 2019 05:42 AM PST  Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted a Christmas message: "Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee. No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas." In 2019, those are apparently fighting words.Some conservative Christians protested that Joseph, the terrestrial father of Jesus of Nazareth, wasn't poor — though it's hard to see how a carpenter from an otherwise insignificant village in Galilee would be well-off — or faulted Buttigieg for not saying "Jesus" in his tweet. "But it was perhaps Buttigieg's classification of Jesus as a refugee — a common line among the Christian left — that received almost immediate pushback from evangelicals," says The Washington Post's Eugene Scott.The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh tied the criticisms together in one tweet, and he got some pushback from Jack Jenkins, a religion reporter with a master's degree in divinity from Harvard.> Hi! Religion reporter here. > > Christians who argue Jesus was a refugee are typically referring to what happened AFTER Jesus was born, when Mary, Joseph, and the newborn child fled to Egypt. > > This exegesis is easily Google-able. Or you could just, you know, read it in the Bible. https://t.co/DBL1by2maW> > — Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) December 26, 2019Walsh, who is Catholic, argued back that Jesus wasn't a refugee because Galilee and Egypt were both part of the Roman Empire. Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who's nobody's idea of a theological conservative, explained in 2017 why Jesus and his family were clearly refugees, at least according to the Gospel of Matthew. And fellow Jesuit priest Jeremy Zipple noted that Pope Benedict XVI — nobody's idea of a liberal — disagrees with Walsh, as did Pope Pius XII.> What an absurd position to take. Here's Pope Benedict XVI quoting Pope Pius XII on this question. https://t.co/V7WXrIPUJr https://t.co/7Ee8CziytK pic.twitter.com/XTUlm0lXda> > — Jeremy Zipple (@jzipple) December 26, 2019Jesus' citizenship status "has real implications for how Christians on both sides of the aisle conduct policy" and view President Trump's hardline, restrictive immigration and refugee policies, Scott reports. And Buttigieg dropped his Christmas tweet into a tender moment for evangelicals being internally challenged to square their faith with their fealty to an unrepentantly flawed president. Read The Week's Bonnie Kristian on how evangelicals might fix this moral dissonance.More stories from theweek.com A more honest evangelical defense of Trump 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Trump's holiday season Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes
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| Witnesses, police coping with Christmas deaths of woman and 2 kids Posted: 26 Dec 2019 06:17 PM PST  They were found unconscious on the sidewalk in front of a multi-level Boston garage and died at a hospital. Their deaths are under investigation.
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| The 10 Biggest Math Breakthroughs of 2019 Posted: 27 Dec 2019 11:51 AM PST |
| A New Jersey mom bought a 'creepy' mermaid baby doll from Etsy for her 6-year-old daughter. It was filled with cocaine. Posted: 27 Dec 2019 03:43 PM PST  Elizabeth Faidley shipped the doll off to a doll hospital for some "cosmetic work." Weeks later, she got a call from the police department.
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| Mexico reveals webs of corruption in contracts, trafficking Posted: 27 Dec 2019 09:31 AM PST ![Mexico reveals webs of corruption in contracts, trafficking]( "Mexico reveals webs of corruption in contracts, trafficking") Mexico's top financial investigator on Friday reported on the webs of corruption and money laundering that thieves, traffickers and political figures have used to hide their wealth. Santiago Nieto, the head of Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit, said a federal judge took bribes to rule in favor of the violent Jalisco cartel, and then used a lawyer's office to buy vehicles and send as much as $2 million to the United States. Another gang stole fuel from government pipelines and set up trucking companies to use the diesel and launder profits from sales of fuel to third parties.
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| Norwegian woman told to leave India after joining citizenship law protest Posted: 27 Dec 2019 01:09 PM PST  A Norwegian woman on holiday in India's southern state of Kerala has been told to leave the country after she joined a protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new citizenship law, authorities said on Friday.
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| Kansas explosion: 11 people injured in blast at aircraft plant in Wichita Posted: 27 Dec 2019 08:17 AM PST  Officials are responding to multiple reports of an explosion at the Beechcraft aircraft plant in Kansas.Fire crews and emergency units were deployed to the scene as traffic was blocked off near the site of the plant, according to The Wichita Eagle.
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| Iraqi protesters torch buildings, block roads over PM pick Posted: 26 Dec 2019 02:38 AM PST  Iraqi anti-government protesters blocked roads and bridges in Baghdad and the country's south Thursday after torching several buildings overnight. The demonstrators oppose the entire political class and have vented their anger against leaders who are negotiating to nominate an establishment insider as the next prime minister. "The government is hostage to corrupt parties and sectarian divisions", said one activist, Sattar Jabbar, 25, in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
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| Montenegro's parliament approves religion law despite protests Posted: 27 Dec 2019 03:43 AM PST  Montenegro's parliament approved on Friday a law on religious communities despite street protests and a last-minute attempt in the chamber by deputies of the pro-Serb opposition to prevent the vote going ahead. Under the law, religious communities in the tiny Adriatic state would need to prove property ownership from before 1918, when predominantly Orthodox Christian Montenegro joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the predecessor of the now-defunct Yugoslavia. The pro-Serb Democratic Front (DF) and other critics of the legislation say it is an attempt to promote the small Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which is not recognized by other major churches, at the expense of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the dominant church in the country of 620,000 people.
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| 26 children found behind false wall at daycare center Posted: 26 Dec 2019 11:48 PM PST  Officers reported finding most of the children sweating, visibly dehydrated and with wet or soiled diapers.
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| Living the High Life on the Autoworkers' Dime Posted: 26 Dec 2019 05:35 AM PST  On a single day in December 2015, Gary Jones, who resigned last month as president of the United Auto Workers, spent more than $13,000 of the union's money at a cigar store in Arizona. His purchases included a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnums and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs at $274.50 each. "Hi Gary, Thank you & Happy New Year," read a handwritten note from the store.The purchases, documented by a federal complaint filed against a union leader in September, were part of more than $60,000 in cigars and cigar paraphernalia that Jones and other UAW officials expensed to the union between 2014 and 2018. And the cigar purchases were in turn just a small portion of the roughly $1 million in union money that court filings say UAW officials spent on golf outings, four-figure dinners and monthslong villa rentals during regular retreats in Palm Springs, California, and elsewhere.The scandal comes on top of an investigation into company and union officials' improper use of millions of dollars from a joint Fiat Chrysler-UAW training center. Jones' predecessor as president, Dennis Williams, is accused of encouraging the use of Fiat Chrysler funds meant for worker education as a way to pay for the extravagant spending in Palm Springs and other places.In direct financial terms, the scandals don't approach the scale of the corruption that plagued organized labor in the 1960s and '70s.But the stakes are nonetheless enormous, given the UAW's outsize influence over auto manufacturing, a pillar of the U.S. economy that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue and employs hundreds of thousands of workers. The union's 40-day strike against General Motors this year cost the automaker an estimated $3 billion in profit. Last month, GM contended in a lawsuit that Fiat Chrysler had bribed the UAW to help it undermine GM by manipulating labor costs.And no one in the union had more influence over the industry than its two flawed former presidents.Williams, 66, who was president from 2014 to 2018, is a former welder and by most accounts a committed progressive but also a man susceptible to the perquisites of power. According to court documents, Williams and his team celebrated a Fiat Chrysler labor agreement they negotiated in 2015 with a $7,000 dinner paid for by the company. The agreement was so disliked by rank-and-file members that they soon took the highly unusual step of rejecting it.Jones, 62, a union accountant known both for asking colleagues to pray and for lashing them with profanity, is said to have used the illicit Palm Springs spending to win over union power brokers and help him secure the top job in 2018. As president, Jones led the UAW into its recent GM strike just weeks after federal agents raided his house and hauled away more than $30,000 in cash.Of the more than 15 current or former UAW officials interviewed for this article, most declined to comment on the record, citing an ethos of silence at the union or a fear of retribution. But together with government documents, the picture they paint of Jones and Williams suggests a leadership that has at times aspired more to the role of fat cat than defender of workers. The consequences for the rank and file may take decades to tally fully."There was a culture of corrupt activities spanning years. That's what we're trying to turn around," said Matthew Schneider, the U.S. attorney in Detroit, who is leading the investigation into the UAW. "The purpose of the union is not to serve the leadership. It is to serve the members."Jones and Williams have not been charged and appear in court filings only as "Official A" and "Official B," pseudonyms that two union officials told The Times refer to them, a fact that other news organizations have also confirmed. In an email, Bruce Maffeo, a lawyer representing Jones, dismissed the accusations as stemming "from public documents in which Gary was not charged."A person close to Williams rejected the accusation, first reported in The Detroit News, that he urged the diversion and misuse of training center funds.The 'Master Account'At the heart of the UAW embezzlement scandal, which dates back at least to 2013, was an elaborate hospitality tab known as the "master account." Union officials opened such accounts at hotels like the Renaissance Palm Springs, the site of an annual series of conferences. According to the federal complaint, union officials billed to this account not just rooms and food that they bought at the hotel but also a variety of other expenses weeks before and after the conferences.Union officials did conduct work at the meetings, including discussing contract enforcement and upcoming negotiations. But the gatherings also appeared to be a pretext for power brokers to enjoy a comfortable winter getaway.Among the expenses charged to the master account were the villas, which were tucked away in a gated community and cost about $5,000 a month, and dinners that ran into thousands of dollars. The bill for one meal at LG's Prime Steakhouse topped $6,500 and featured a $1,760 charge for four bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne.Union officials also spent more than $80,000 at the Indian Canyons Golf Resort in Palm Springs for green fees, shoes, golf bags, sunglasses, shirts and "fashion shorts," according to the complaint. They shipped many of these items home to Michigan on a semitruck.Williams, who was the UAW president for much of this period, was often the gravitational center of the Palm Springs sabbaticals. According to the federal complaint, the union paid for a monthlong stay for Williams at a villa in the winter of 2013-14. Two years later, the union paid for more than three months.In interviews, union officials said Williams would spend his days in Palm Springs conferring with aides and colleagues on the phone and in person, sometimes while playing golf. Nights were frequently given to socializing.Two former UAW officials recalled a night in which a few dozen people, including the wives of male officials, gathered at Williams' villa for pizza. The men gathered around a fire on the back patio where they smoked cigars, drank whiskey and discussed car restoration projects.The federal complaint said that friends of Williams who had "no legitimate reason to attend" union events joined him in Palm Springs on the UAW's dime.The arrangement helped create an in crowd and an out crowd at the union. Officials who were uneasy with the cigar-and-whiskey atmosphere in Palm Springs were left out and had more limited interactions with Williams. Three former officials said in interviews that they rarely saw him in Detroit during the winter.Other UAW officials, including those tasked with negotiating the union's contract with Fiat Chrysler, spent far more time in Palm Springs over the winter. These officials charged more than $25,000 in Palm Springs meals to the company in January 2015 alone, according to court documents.A person close to Williams said that Williams was frequently traveling away from Palm Springs on union business during the dates in which the villas were rented on his behalf. The person also said that no one enjoyed special influence over Williams as a result of additional face time with him.An Expansive FiefAccording to documents filed by prosecutors, the orchestrator of the master account was Jones, the UAW president who resigned in November.Jones spent more than a decade as an accountant and senior aide at the union's headquarters before 2004, when he became assistant director of the union's Region 5, then one of 11 geographic units.The UAW's regions are often run like fiefs, but Region 5, which was based in Missouri but sprawled all the way to the West Coast, was more fieflike than most.According to two Region 5 officials, the region's longtime director, Jim Wells, had a knack for extracting cash from members and staff, and there were few constraints on how he spent it. They said that under Wells, staff members were expected to buy a Region 5 jacket every four years at a cost of $1,000, ostensibly to support Wells' campaign for reelection as director.Elizabeth Bunn, who served as the UAW's second-ranking officer from 2002 to 2010, said that under Wells, Palm Springs was known as a place where officials could enjoy themselves at union expense for well beyond the length of a conference, although the behavior may have been legal. Bunn also recalled facing internal pressure while investigating wrongdoing in the region."A lot of people saw things and did not react with the moral clarity that they exercised in every other situation," she said.Wells died in 2012. A UAW press officer declined to comment on those complaints.Jones did not appear to blanch at this culture of financial laxness. At least as early as 2010, according to court filings, Jones and a colleague began submitting receipts that had already been reimbursed, or that they had manufactured, to a fund that supports the union's political efforts. The two men would split the reimbursement. Jones personally received hundreds of thousands of dollars from this scheme from 2010 to 2017, according to prosecutors.After Jones became regional director in 2012, he took an active role in directing the Palm Springs spending, prosecutors have asserted. UAW officials who wanted to play golf or buy golf apparel were told to charge the purchase to the Gary Jones "group," and the bill would flow to the master account at the Renaissance Hotel. The hotel declined to comment.A crucial purpose of the spending by Jones was to "curry favor with UAW 'Official B,' who also enjoyed the lavish lifestyle," according to the federal complaint, referring to Williams.In interviews, three union officials said it was clear that Jones was courting Williams in order to succeed him as president. One Region 5 official noted that Jones, who was not previously a regular cigar smoker, turned himself into a cigar aficionado in the mold of Williams after becoming regional director. The official said Jones acquired a few humidors for the regional headquarters in Hazelwood, Missouri.Colleagues said that despite their expensive tastes, Jones and Williams were a study in contrasts. Williams told fellow officials in the 2000s that he was a socialist. As union president, he hired consultants to bolster the union's organizing efforts in areas like higher education and technology, including those at the electric carmaker Tesla.Jones, by contrast, appeared to be more conservative and less interested in new organizing opportunities. He blocked a promising effort to organize thousands of research assistants within the University of California system, according to two officials.The officials said Jones feared that adding members in higher education would threaten his power base among blue-collar workers. When Jones would meet with graduate students, according to two Region 5 officials, he would often joke that "my major was partying" as a way to belittle their academic experience.In the end, the power of UAW regional directors is such that Williams, normally a charismatic leader, was unable to move Jones on some of his top organizing priorities, three current and former officials said. Jones also later pushed to let most of the union's Tesla organizers go."Gary started as a factory worker for Ford and dedicated over 40 years of his life as a member and officer of the UAW to improving the lives of that union's members and their families," said his lawyer, Maffeo.But Jones' intransigence did not stop his ascent within the union.When the union's board discussed whom to back for president in fall 2017, its members were aware that Williams supported Jones, according to several people close to the situation. They said the rest of the board quickly backed Jones as well, all but ensuring that he would take over the union at its convention the following June.These people said in interviews that Jones was the only viable candidate by this point, but two also said that Williams' support had helped ensure that this was the case.'Deliver a Clean Union'Since Jones resigned as president last month, the UAW board has replaced him with Rory Gamble, who previously oversaw the union's negotiations with Ford. Gamble has put forth reforms to "deliver a clean union on solid footing" by the time he retires from the post in 2022.They include regular audits of spending by programs run jointly with automakers, a new ethics officer and an ethics hotline. Gamble also announced that Jones' former region would be split into two pieces that would each be merged into another region.And he has indicated that he intends to press for more, unspecified changes. "We have a lot more stuff we're going to be doing," Gamble said in an interview.But many current and former UAW officials say that to be truly effective, the reforms must reduce the power of the union's board members. They said that cozy relationships among union leaders may have led them to tolerate questionable behavior by one another.Bob King, who was the union's president from 2010 to 2014, confronted colleagues about improper training center spending, according to court documents. He said in an interview that he had not sufficiently scrutinized Jones' former region, partly because he was focused on preserving unity among leadership."I do feel anger and responsibility," King said. "I should have been looking at some stuff more closely. I would really encourage the current board to not make the same mistakes."King said he supported the union's current reform efforts but urged it to go further. "They have to figure out how to create a system that is more open and transparent," he said. "It's not about a few bad apples."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| A prominent British lawyer went viral after he killed a fox with a baseball bat while wearing his wife's kimono, and now animal services are investigating Posted: 27 Dec 2019 02:21 AM PST  Jolyon Maugham tweeted just after 8 a.m. Thursday that he had "killed a fox with a baseball bat," before asking followers how their day was going.
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| Blumenthal: Some GOP 'have very severe misgivings' about McConnell impeachment strategy Posted: 27 Dec 2019 02:33 PM PST  Richard Blumenthal stated he believes some Senate Republicans are concerned with McConnell working with the White House on Trump's impeachment trial.
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| Quake strikes near Iran nuclear power plant Posted: 27 Dec 2019 01:42 AM PST  An earthquake struck Iran on Friday less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the country's only nuclear power plant, monitors said. The US Geological Survey said the 5.1 magnitude quake struck 44 kilometres (27 miles) from the southwestern city of Borazjan and at a depth of 38 kilometres. Its reported epicentre is 45 kilometres east of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, on the southwest Gulf coast.
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| Explosion at Kansas aircraft plant injures 15 people Posted: 27 Dec 2019 10:37 AM PST  Emergency medical services took 11 people to the hospital, one of them suffering potentially serious injuries, Dr. John Gallagher, director of Sedgwick County EMS, told a news conference. Injuries were limited because only a skeleton crew was on duty during the holidays, said Deputy Chief Daniel Wegner of the Sedgwick County Fire Department. The explosion in a 3-inch liquid nitrogen gas line also damaged a storage tank, causing nitrogen gas to vent out of the building, Wegner said.
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| Nigeria condemns executions of captives held by extremists Posted: 27 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST ![Nigeria condemns executions of captives held by extremists]( "Nigeria condemns executions of captives held by extremists") Nigeria's government on Friday condemned extremists linked to the Islamic State group after a video circulated of 11 hostages, most of them Christians, being executed. The extremist group, which calls itself the Islamic State West Africa Province, said the captives were executed as revenge for the killing of Islamic State group leaders in Iraq and Syria in October.
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| China Might Have Stolen The Secrets To Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Posted: 27 Dec 2019 12:22 PM PST  And that has implications for America.
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| Russia and Ukraine drop mutual gas claims worth millions Posted: 27 Dec 2019 11:23 AM PST  The gas companies of Ukraine and Russia have agreed to drop all financial claims worth billions of pounds against each other in the latest rapprochement between the two nations bitterly divided by a separatist conflict. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview broadcast on Russian state television on Friday that the two countries are withdrawing all of their lawsuits against each other after they agreed on a gas transit deal last week. Russian gas giant Gazprom, which relies on Ukraine as its single largest transit route to Europe, last week agreed to pay out $2.9 billion (£2.2 billion) to Ukraine stemming from a previous dispute over transit fees. The parties will now withdraw all financial claims that run up millions of pounds on both sides. Ukraine, for one, has managed to secure a freeze of Gazprom's assets in several countries such as Great Britain, Switzerland and the Netherland. Those assets will now be released. Mr Novak on Friday hailed the deal as "mutually beneficial" and said that courts would otherwise have taken years to rule on those claims. A Gazprom petrol station in Moscow "It's a good thing," he said in the interview. "It was important for us to start our relations with a clean slate on January 1." The two neighboring countries have been hostile to each other since 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine. Moscow still claims the annexation of Crimea was legal and denies reports of sending troops and weapons to back the separatist rebels. Both countries have, however, been making small steps towards rapprochement since Ukraine elected its new president, former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy in April. Mr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiated a major prisoner exchange earlier this year and agreed at a summit meeting earlier this month to release more prisoners by the end of the year.
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| Paramedic charged with poisoning his wife with eye drops to collect a $250,000 life insurance payout Posted: 26 Dec 2019 04:08 PM PST  A paramedic in North Carolina has been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly using eye drops to cause his wife's death and collecting $250,000 from her two life insurance policies.
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| North Korea's 'Christmas Gift' Statement Put the U.S. on Alert Despite No Missile Launch. That May Be the Point Posted: 27 Dec 2019 12:38 AM PST  Observers predicted the North was preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
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| The 20 most dangerous volcanoes in the US, ranked Posted: 27 Dec 2019 03:37 AM PST  A US Geological Survey list of volcano threats has been updated for the first time since 2005. California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii are at risk.
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| Hundreds in Istanbul sign petitions against Erdogan's canal project Posted: 27 Dec 2019 06:16 AM PST  Hundreds of people in Istanbul have signed petitions in the past two days opposing a massive canal project championed by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, which they say will wreak environmental havoc in the city. The proposed 45-km (28-mile) Kanal Istanbul on the western fringes of Turkey's largest city would connect the Black Sea to the north and the Marmara Sea to the south. Erdogan says it will ease traffic and prevent accidents on the natural Bosphorus strait, one of the world's busiest waterways, which cuts through the city.
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| NYC ups policing in Jewish areas after spate of attacks Posted: 27 Dec 2019 07:20 AM PST  New York City is increasing its police presence in some Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Jewish populations after a string of possibly anti-Semitic attacks during the Hanukkah holiday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said after the latest episode happened Friday. Around the city, police have gotten at least six reports this week — and eight since Dec. 13 — of attacks possibly propelled by anti-Jewish bias.
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| Russia Has Reclassified The Tu-22 As A Heavy Bomber (And They Are Heavily Armed) Posted: 26 Dec 2019 11:30 PM PST  What does this mean for the New START treaty?
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| Congress Demands Investigation Into the U.S.'s Nuclear Coffin Posted: 27 Dec 2019 10:30 AM PST  The Runit Dome is leaking radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean.
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| Why Are Academics Ignoring Iran’s Colonialism? Posted: 27 Dec 2019 03:30 AM PST  Academics today are obsessed with colonization, empire, and cultural hegemony, along with postcolonialism, ethnic studies, and intersectionality. Scholarship in many fields has come to be dominated by hegemony-fighting, indigenous-supporting anti-imperialists who attack anyone who disagrees with them. When a journal called Third World Quarterly published an article in 2017 about the benefits of colonialism, the uproar from the social-justice professors led to the article's being withdrawn and 15 members of the editorial board resigning amid threats.So if the profession is so adamant about the evils of colonialism, why is it ignoring Iran?When strong countries exert their (unfair) advantages over weaker ones, imposing their values and cultures and manipulating indigenous economies, academics are among the loudest and most creative critics. Even the most benign influence of a powerful country over a weaker one is excoriated -- hence the long obsession with something called "cocacolonization." Legions of scholar-activists are busy enlisting history to shed light on the present, drawing parallels between a benighted European era of colonization and an ongoing American or Israeli one, looking under rocks for signs of Western, American, and Trumpian oppression and proclaiming a new American empire. Fair enough -- but why ignore the Iranian attempts to do exactly to others what they accuse others of having done to Iran?Journalists and analysts, such as Jonathan Spyer and Seth Frantzman, have been documenting Iran's colonial expansion for many years. But most academics have been reluctant to turn their skills on Iran. Many prefer softer targets, such as Israel and the U.S. Earlier this month, the United Nations' Decolonization Committee pushed eight anti-Israel measures through the General Assembly, showing where its priorities lie.Even without its violations of other countries' sovereignty, Iran itself is an empire, with ethnic Persians dominating the Arabs, Kurds, Balochis, Azeris, Turkmen, Lur, Gilakis, and Mazandaranis. Only a few, notably Daniel Pipes, Ilan Berman, and Shoshana Bryen, are interested in this fact.Khomeini's Islamic Revolution was an imperialist project from the beginning, as one of his first moves after taking power (even before the collapse of the post-shah provisional government in November 1979) was to establish the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to spread his ideas. Shortly thereafter he made moves in Lebanon, dispatching "1,500 IRGC advisers [to] set up a base in the Bekaa Valley as part of [his] goal to export the Islamic Revolution to the Arab world," as Matthew Levitt put it. Those advisers were instrumental in creating Hezbollah, which has served to spread Iran's influence throughout the world.In 1998, the al-Quds Force, the IRGC's unconventional-warfare unit, got a new leader when Qassem Soleimani was appointed commander. Soleimani has ramped up Iran's colonial enterprise, capitalizing on the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to take over Iraq in a way Iran could never have accomplished on its own. The so-called Arab Spring offered Soleimani the opportunity to stake out territory in Syria using Hezbollah and in Yemen using the Shia Houthi rebels, completing the goal of a "Shia Crescent" stretching from the Gulf to the Mediterranean.Books on British and American empire building in Iran and the greater Middle East (real and imagined) come out every year. The topic has earned tenure for many willing to genuflect at the altar of Edward Said by exposing alleged evils of European and American "Orientalism." Yet almost no academics are writing about one of the world's most obvious and bloodiest colonizing projects even as it plays out right under their noses.There are exceptions, of course. Efraim Karsh's Islamic Imperialism (2006) reminded everyone that the Middle East is "where the institution of empire not only originated . . . but where its spirit has also outlived its European counterpart."Another exception is Tallha Abdulrazak, a researcher at the University of Exeter's Strategy and Security Institute, but his interests in Iranian colonialism seem to end at Iraq, and the anti-American and anti-Israel tendencies in his writing at Al Jazeera and the Middle East Eye suggest a lack of interest in the totality of Iranian empire-building. These tendencies were doubtless instrumental in his being awarded the Al Jazeera Young Researcher Award in 2015.Think-tank scholars have not shied away from Iran's interference in other countries. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute notes that "aside from Russia, Iran is the world's most imperialistic country today . . . little different in its quest for political and economic domination of poorer states as its tormentors were in the nineteenth century."Israeli scholars too seem more interested in today's Iran than in yesterday's. Hillel Frisch, professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, calls Iran "the only country whose focus is on political, military, and terrorist intervention and involvement in areas beyond its contiguous borders against states that have not struck the homeland."But where are the clarion calls from the ivory towers? Are all the anti-Orientalists busy stigmatizing the West, privileging victimhood over achievement and finding new ways to use "other" as a verb (perhaps at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute)? Where are the conferences, symposia, and special-issue journals on Iranian imperialism? The Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event dedicated to Iran's imperial foreign policy in February, but if any similar event occurred at an American university in 2019, it wasn't advertised and remains well hidden.The 21st century began with a frenetic deluge of articles and books decrying a new American "imperialism" in the Middle East that had begun after 9/11. But books decrying the rise of Iranian imperialism have not even come in a trickle.So what exactly are the Middle East specialists up to?On the fringes of the profession, where the activists lurk, a counteroffensive is under way. Iran apologist Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University wrote and published a "Letter Against US Imperialism" on December 7 objecting to "the current U.S. imperial project," aided by the IMF, that "seek[s] a return to neocolonial governance in the form of a U.S.-backed regime." Dabashi somehow persuaded 38 academics (12 from colleges in California) to join with an odd assortment of artists, activists, lawyers, and podcasters to sign the desperate and bizarre letter that completely misunderstands the protests in Iran in November.Even the socialists at New Politics find fault with Dabashi's letter for its "dismissal of the Iranian regime's oppressive and violent influence in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq" and its shallow "conceptualization of imperialism [which] does not include and condemn the sub-imperialisms of Iran."Mainstream Middle East specialists prefer to pretend that there is no Iranian imperialism, "sub" or otherwise. When hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them assembled in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) last month, the topic seems to have escaped them. Over the course of four days they convened 20 academic sessions, each comprising between 18 and 24 topics, for a total of 304 events: panels, round tables, thematic conversations, conference papers, and special current-issue sessions. In each of these events at least a half dozen experts presented, chaired, or refereed. And not a single event was devoted to Iran's colonial influence in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen. There was nothing about the ascendant Iranian empire. The Qajar Empire, on the other hand, was covered in multiple sessions. Also popular were events about someplace called either "Palestine/Israel" or "Israel/Palestine," depending apparently on the whims of the moderator.The Iranian colonial project is among the most significant events in modern history, and its contours coincide with the interests and deeply held beliefs of the professoriate. But most academics are remarkably uncurious about Iran's colonialism. Talk about wasting the moment.
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| Netanyahu’s Big Win Means His Party Is in Real Trouble Posted: 26 Dec 2019 05:26 PM PST  JERUSALEM—After weeks of bad news, Thursday was a very good night for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faced the first serious challenge to his leadership of the Likud party since 2005.At the end of a tense, stormy primary day, in which Netanyahu's side emitted text messages with invented commandments—"thou shalt not betray"—and supporters of his opponent, Gideon Saar, cried foul over electoral misbehavior, Netanyahu won, convincingly.The final result was 72.5 percent for Netanyahu, and 27.5 percent for Saar, a former minister who ran on a nationalist agenda a notch harsher than Netanyahu's and argued for a return to civility and decency in politics.The only way to guarantee the continuation of the right-wing's monopoly over the Israeli government was for new leadership to take over in the Likud, Saar said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Will Be Indicted. But Will He Step Down?Netanyahu failed to win a majority of votes in two successive elections held this year, in April and in September, and has presided over the Israeli government as an interim prime minister, with limited powers, for a full year.A ruthless political operator, Netanyahu has never nurtured successors. Most of the men who have served him, including former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and former Education Minister Naftali Bennet found themselves out of the Likud when their popularity began to threaten Netanyahu.Saar is the only prominent Likud figure with the courage to state out loud what the Israeli public already knows: there is no path for Netanyahu to form a new government after the national elections on March 2, 2020.In fact, the exuberance at this victory among the party faithful could fade as early as Sunday, when Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli attorney general, has been forced to produce his opinion on a legal conundrum never before seen here.In November, Mandelblit announced a raft of corruption charges against Netanyahu, including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.In order to protect a legally elected head of government from frivolous legal challenges, an Israeli Basic Law—a constitutional act—allows an indicted prime minister to serve out his or her term in office even while facing trial.But another law legislated by the Knesset, Israel's parliament, does not allow any indicted person to be appointed to high office.Neither of these laws has ever been tested. Israel's Supreme Court, which is grappling with several petitions claiming Netanyahu cannot legally remain in office, has compelled Mandelblit to present his decision on Netanyahu's ability to continue in office, a sort of forced amicae curiae, by Sunday.In the coming months, the court will rule on Netanyahu's fitness for office as a candidate under criminal indictment.Blue and White—the Likud's opposition in the general election, which bested Netanyahu's party in September—is led by the centrist former army chief, Benny Gantz, who ran on clean government platform. Throughout the failed coalition talks, he said his party hoped to form a broad national unity government with the Likud— but would not serve with an indicted criminal.Saar, during the primary, claimed that Gantz would win the March vote if the Likud was not able to renew its leadership, offering a new coalition government, and that Netanyahu's stubborn hold on power would bring defeat.Knowing he faced serious charges, Netanyahu has been scrambling to evade judgement. The law allows him to remain in office, but not to evade trial. During the last year, Netanyahu has tried to pass a personal immunity law through the Knesset and, created an even greater public uproar, tried to pass a law that would override supreme court decisions.But having failed, but he will now run a scorched earth campaign aimed at a single target: a large enough parliamentary majority to pass an immunity law.Before the primary results were even announced, Netanyahu confidant Miki Zohar, a rambunctious Knesset member for the Likud, said, "Netanyahu got the answer about whether he should ask for immunity."But Netanyanhu's big night may result in very bad news for his party, the Likud, who will be running an indicted candidate who's twice lost and wants only one thing: legal immunity, which the voters hate. Israelis are generally indulgent about Netanyahu's various offences and peccadillos, but deeply oppose parliamentary immunity, and Gantz accuses him of seeking only an "immunity government," not a real governing coalition, and of holding the nation hostage to his legal imbroglios. Netanyahu Is Using Trump's Tactics to Try to Survive His Corruption and Bribery ScandalIn May, when Netanyahu presented the initial bills, 62% of the Israel public opposed immunity for Netanyahu. Recent polls show that figure now above 70%, from voters across the political spectrum.Netanyahu has until January 1 to request immunity against the criminal charges, but would need a majority of members to support it—and, for now, he hasn't got it. The primary victory is expected to emboldened him to demand parliamentary support from the entire right wing block.If Netanyahu does not succeed whipping a majority of Israel's 120 lawmakers to support immunity, he will be put on trial in Jerusalem immediately after the next government is formed.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Marines in California took the Corps' new Amphibious Combat Vehicle out for a nighttime test in the ocean Posted: 27 Dec 2019 09:02 AM PST  The Corps has used the Amphibious Assault Vehicle since 1972. But starting in late 2020, the Amphibious Combat Vehicle will carry Marines into battle.
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| The 20 Best Apps of the 2010s Posted: 27 Dec 2019 06:37 AM PST |
| U.S. appeals court voids 'shockingly low' 17-year sentence in NY terrorism case Posted: 27 Dec 2019 07:55 AM PST ![U.S. appeals court voids 'shockingly low' 17-year sentence in NY terrorism case]( "U.S. appeals court voids 'shockingly low' 17-year sentence in NY terrorism case") The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Fareed Mumuni's trial judge abused her discretion in imposing a term that was 80% below the 85 years recommended by federal guidelines, and even below the 18-year term for co-defendant Munther Omar Saleh, who was not accused of attempted murder. In a 2-1 decision, the court said U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie improperly second-guessed whether Mumuni, 25, intended to kill FBI Special Agent Kevin Coughlin in June 2015 by stabbing him repeatedly with an 8-inch kitchen knife in Mumuni's home.
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| Iran shuts down internet again as government protests resume Posted: 26 Dec 2019 11:04 AM PST  Iran wants to make sure what happens in its country stays there.As Iranians prepared to launch another round of anti-government protests on Thursday, the government appeared to start shutting down internet and mobile service to seemingly block protesters' messages from reaching the rest of the world. Internet monitoring service NetBlocks reported an internet outage starting at 6:30 a.m., and Reuters reported it "appear[ed] to be spreading."Iranians gathered Thursday to continue protesting rising gas prices, which influence price hikes across the economy. They also commemorated the estimated 1,500 people who had been killed in previous protests against the government. Reuters recently made that estimate via government sources, and it's about five times as high as the toll Amnesty International has predicted. In at least one case, The New York Times' Farna Fassahi reported that a family mourning the death of protester Pouya Bakhtiari was blocked from visiting his grave, and that some of his family members were arrested.> IranProtests > Pouya Bakhtiari's grave is encircled by security forces. Entrance to cemetery blocked, family ordered out & several people arrested. Helicopters hover above. His parents are in jail. pic.twitter.com/cxd5MdeHq8> > -- Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) December 26, 2019Reporter Yashar Ali, who has family in Iran, tweeted that he'd messaged several of his relatives to check in, but none of his messages were received. > Iranian authorities have shut down or slowed down internet/mobile services in certain parts of the country. > > None of the messages I've sent to relatives have gone through. > > I tried a younger relative who is always glued to their phone. Messages haven't been delivered. > > pic.twitter.com/aArT36gc6u> > -- Yashar Ali (@yashar) December 26, 2019More stories from theweek.com A more honest evangelical defense of Trump 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Trump's holiday season Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes
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| Al Shabaab shoot locusts with machine guns as Somalia battles biggest swarms in 25 years Posted: 27 Dec 2019 11:08 AM PST  Farmers in southern Somalia are shooting at huge swarms of locusts with heavy machine guns in a desperate attempt to save their crops, according to media affiliated to the jihadist group Al-Shabaab. According to the group's media, insects that have infested farmland around the southwestern town of Tiyeglow, an Al-Shabaab stronghold, are being shot at with a PKM rifle — a machine gun version of the Russian Kalashnikov. The news comes as the country experiences its largest locust infestation for 25 years. Since July, swarms of Desert Locusts from nearby Yemen have invaded vast swathes of the Horn of Africa. A typical swarm can contain up to 150 million insects per square kilometre. Each locust can grow up to 4.3 inches long and travel up to 95 miles a day depending on the wind. Every day, an average swarm can consume the equivalent of a year's worth of food for 2,500 people. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the locusts have already destroyed 70,000 hectares (175,000 acres) of farmland in Somalia and neighbouring Ethiopia. Somali boys attempt to fend off desert locusts as they fly across grazing land Credit: REUTERS/Feisal Omar The plague has been far more serious than experts projected it would be and has been made worse by unseasonably heavy rainfall, which has killed hundreds of people across East Africa over the last few months. According to a spokesperson from the FAO, the favourable weather conditions mean that there is a high chance that the locusts will continue breeding rapaciously for the next three months. Somalia's chaotic fighting makes spraying pesticide by aeroplane - which the FAO has called the "ideal control measure" - impossible, the agency said in a statement. The insects have compounded Somalia's dire humanitarian crisis. The east African nation of 15 million people has been struggling to recover from a severe drought that ended in 2017. In August, aid agencies said that over 2 million people were threatened with severe hunger as crop yields continue to fail. Aid agencies now say that the locusts mean that many Somali farmers will face starvation unless relief reaches them over the next few months.
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| Tornado leaves damage at Ventura Harbor, scatters strawberries in its wake Posted: 27 Dec 2019 03:51 AM PST  Wild holiday weather touched down in Ventura County on Christmas night, including a tornado at Ventura Harbor and snow atop local mountains.
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| Rwanda's grand vision for future leaves poor on the curb Posted: 26 Dec 2019 10:44 PM PST  Slum dwellers in Kigali are accusing city authorities of razing their homes without paying compensation, stirring anger among poorer Rwandans who feel marginalised by a government-led push to modernise the capital. This month, the first of thousands of homes slated for demolition in Kigali's unplanned settlements were bulldozed, sparking protests from owners and tenants told to move on. City authorities say the homes were built illegally on wetlands, or areas deemed at risk from landslides and flooding, and those evicted were being offered lodgings elsewhere.
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| UPS expects nearly 2 million package returns in a single day, and it reveals a dark truth about holiday shopping Posted: 26 Dec 2019 09:43 AM PST  People are expected to return 1.9 million packages on January 2, the peak day for returns following the holiday season, UPS said on Thursday.
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| Russia announces a new hypersonic weapon of intercontinental range Posted: 27 Dec 2019 07:14 AM PST  Russia's defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin that a new hypersonic weapon of intercontinental range became operational Friday following years of tests. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle had entered combat duty, the Defense Ministry said.
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| Death toll reaches 28 as Philippines recovers from Christmas typhoon Posted: 26 Dec 2019 07:09 PM PST  The death toll from a Christmas typhoon that tore through the central Philippines rose to 28 on Friday, with 12 people missing, the disaster agency said, as authorities moved to restore power and residents tried to repair damaged homes. Typhoon Phanfone hit late on Tuesday with winds of up to 120 kph (75 mph) and gusts of 150 kph, dumping sheets of uninterrupted rain on a string of islands, damaging hundreds of homes and causing flooding in eight areas. It was the seventh typhoon to strike the Philippines this year and came as millions of people in the predominantly Catholic country were heading home to celebrate Christmas with families.
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