Month: September 2015

by William Skink

The use of drones is increasing, domestically. North Dakota, for example, became the first state to legalize armed police drones. Not with hellfire missiles, of course, so all you paranoid types just chill out. This is all being done for your security.

Sure, there are those who think that the use of drones abroad actually makes us less secure. When we blow up wedding parties, they say, it makes people angry at the United States. Survivors with dead family members may even turn to terrorism to exact revenge on the evil empire raining death and destruction from unmanned killing machines.

When it comes to Bernie Sanders, those obnoxious naysayers need to just shut up. Last Sunday Bernie said he wouldn’t end the drone program, he would just make it so that drones don’t kill innocent people because, you know, it’s that easy. From the link (The Hill, not Counterpunch):

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sanders indicated that he would limit the use of drones so that they do not end up killing innocent people abroad, but declined to say that he would end the targeted killing campaign completely.

“I think we have to use drones very, very selectively and effectively. That has not always been the case,” Sanders said.

“What you can argue is that there are times and places where drone attacks have been effective,” he added.

Boy, it sure would be nice if Bernie could point to a specific incident where a drone attack has been effective. I’m sure he’s not talking about those times Obama murdered American citizens without due process. Is it when those drone strikes take out leaders of Al Qaeda? Is that what he means?

Bernie says he’s going to be talking more about foreign policy. I can’t wait. Maybe he could address why a man who should be in prison for divulging secrets to his lover, David Petraeus, is now advocating for America to work WITH Al Qaeda in the fight against ISIS:

Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast.

The heart of the idea stems from Petraeus’s experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the U.S. persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military.

The tactic worked, at least temporarily. But al Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, and has become the sworn enemy of its parent organization. Now, Petraeus is returning to his old play, advocating a strategy of co-opting rank-and-file members of al Nusra, particularly those who don’t necessarily share all of core al Qaeda’s Islamist philosophy.

Well Bernie, how does that sound? I’ll wait for you to consult your zionist handlers before responding.

It astounds me that David Petraeus can even say what he’s saying without the American public batting an eye. We’ve allowed our constitutional rights to be decimated because Al Qaeda allegedly attacked us on 9/11. Our military has engaged in disastrous (and lucrative, for the MIC) wars of occupation because Al Qaeda allegedly attacked us on 9/11. American foreign policy has created the conditions for the rise of ISIS, and now Petraeus wants America to work with “moderate” Al Qaeda forces to combat the entity we helped create.

And what does the great white progressive hope have to say about this? More Saudi intervention, like the obscene war in Yemen, and continuing to violate national sovereignty to kill terrorists with drones.

Bernie Sanders can get away with this because there is no anti-war movement to speak of in this country. He can get away with this because Democrats are incapable of holding their party accountable for a destructive, self-defeating foreign policy that ensures warfare will continue and expand until the world is dragged in to another global conflagration.

Democrats will bash the other party, like this post mocking Ryan Zinke’s geopolitical expertise in opposing the Iran deal, but they won’t call out Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Democratic National Committee chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for taking essentially the same position.

For Democrats, it is probably a better strategy to remain mum on foreign policy specifics, because when they don’t, it becomes obvious (to those of us paying attention) how little difference there is between the two parties when it comes to how over half of the federal budget is allocated to waging war around the globe.

By Matthew Koehler, WildWest Institute

With so much media and political attention focused on wildfires – and in some cases public lands management and calls to greatly increase logging on national forests by reducing public input and environmental analysis – it may be helpful to take a look at this year’s wildfire stats to see what’s burned and where.

Here’s a copy (http://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf) of the National Interagency Coordinator Center’s ‘Incident Management Situation Report’ from Tuesday, September 1, 2015.

• As of today, a total of 8,202,557 acres have burned in U.S. wildfires. In 1930 and 1931, over 50 million acres burned each year and during the 10 year (hot and dry) period from the late 1920’s to the late 1930’s an AVERAGE of 30 million acres burned every year in the United States. Additionally, the 2001 National Fire Plan update (https://www.nifc.gov/PIO_bb/Policy/FederalWildlandFireManagementPolicy_2001.pdf) indicates that an average of 145 million acres burned annually in the pre-industrial, conterminous United States.

[NOTE: Under the George W. Bush Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal government agencies largely purged all records and information about wildfire acre burned stats from before the period of 1960].

• This year, 63% of ALL wildfire acres burned in the U.S. burned in Alaska, much of it over remote tundra ecosystems. According to federal records, since 1959 the average temperature in Alaska has jumped 3.3 degrees and the average winter temperature has spiked 5 degrees.

• Less than 8% of ALL wildfires that have burned this year in the U.S. have burned in the northern Rockies.

• National Forests account for ONLY 15% of all wildfire acres burned in U.S. this year.

• 88% of all BLM (Bureau of Land Management) acres burned in wildfires this year were in Alaska, again much of tundra, not forests.

This information is not meant to discount specific experiences communities, homeowners or citizens have had with wildfires this year, but just serves as a bit of important, fact-based information and context regarding what land ownerships have burned and where they are located.

Again, this information is especially important in the context of recent statements (and pending federal legislation) from certain politicians blaming wildfires on a lack of national forest logging or a handful of timber sale lawsuits.

If politicians are going to predictably use another wildfire season to yet again weaken our nation’s key environmental or public lands laws by increasing logging (including calls by politicians like Montana’s Rep Ryan Zinke for logging within Wilderness Areas) then the public should at least have some facts and statistics available to help put the wildfires in context.

Finally, please keep in mind that right now the U.S. Forest Service has the ability to conduct an unlimited number of ‘fast-track’ logging projects on over 45 MILLION acres of National Forest nationally – and on 5 MILLION acres of National Forests in Montana. This public lands logging would all be ‘categorically excluded from the requirements of NEPA.’