Parry writes: "Ukraine's post-coup regime is now melding neo-Nazi storm troopers with Islamic militants - called 'brothers' of the hyper-violent Islamic State - stirring up a hellish 'death squad' brew to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine."
Members of a Chechen battalion fighting against Russian-backed rebels in Lysychansk, Ukraine, in February. (photo: Olya Engalycheva/AP)
Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
08 July 15
Ukraine’s post-coup regime is now melding neo-Nazi storm troopers with Islamic militants – called “brothers” of the hyper-violent Islamic State – stirring up a hellish “death squad” brew to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, on Russia’s border, reports Robert Parry.
n a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.
The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:
“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera.
“Another, the Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the ‘Wolf’s Hook’ symbol associated with the [Nazi] SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol, the Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they loved their homeland and hated the Russians.”
As casually as Kramer acknowledges the key front-line role of neo-Nazis and white supremacists fighting for the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, his article does mark an aberration for the Times and the rest of the mainstream U.S. news media, which usually dismiss any mention of this Nazi taint as “Russian propaganda.”
During the February 2014 coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the late fascist Stepan Bandera was one of the Ukrainian icons celebrated by the Maidan protesters. During World War II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement that sought to transform Ukraine into a racially pure state. At times coordinating with Adolf Hitler’s SS, OUN-B took part in the expulsion and extermination of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by anger over political corruption and by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and spearheaded much of the violence against the police. Storm troopers from the Right Sektor and Svoboda party seized government buildings and decked them out with Nazi insignias and a Confederate battle flag, the universal symbol of white supremacy.
Then, as the protests turned bloodier from Feb. 20-22, the neo-Nazis surged to the forefront. Their well-trained militias, organized in 100-man brigades called “sotins” or “the hundreds,” led the final assaults against police and forced Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives.
In the days after the coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively controlled the government, European and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable regime, although four ministries, including national security, were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their crucial role in ousting Yanukovych.
At that point, virtually the entire U.S. news media put on blinders about the neo-Nazi role, all the better to sell the coup to the American public as an inspirational story of reform-minded “freedom fighters” standing up to “Russian aggression.” The U.S. media delicately stepped around the neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of national security chief Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense forces.”
Barbarians at the Gate
At times, the mainstream media’s black-out of the brown shirts was almost comical. Last February, almost a year after the coup, a New York Times article about the government’s defenders of Mariupol hailed the crucial role played by the Azov battalion but managed to avoid noting its well-documented Nazi connections.
That article by Rick Lyman presented the situation in Mariupol as if the advance by ethnic Russian rebels amounted to the barbarians at the gate while the inhabitants were being bravely defended by the forces of civilization, the Azov battalion. In such an inspirational context, it presumably wasn’t considered appropriate to mention the Swastikas and SS markings.
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV) (photo: Consortium News)
Now, the Kiev regime has added to those “forces of civilization” — resisting the Russ-kie barbarians — Islamic militants with ties to terrorism. Last September, Marcin Mamon, a reporter for the Intercept, reached a vanguard group of these Islamic fighters in Ukraine through the help of his “contact in Turkey with the Islamic State [who] had told me his ‘brothers’ were in Ukraine, and I could trust them.”
The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters. But Kramer does bluntly acknowledge the Nazi truth about the Azov fighters. He also notes that American military advisers in Ukraine “are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the Azov group.”
While the U.S. advisers are under orders to keep their distance from the neo-Nazis, the Kiev regime is quite open about its approval of the central military role played by these extremists – whether neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Islamic militants. These extremists are considered very aggressive and effective in killing ethnic Russians.
The regime has shown little concern about widespread reports of “death squad” operations targeting suspected pro-Russian sympathizers in government-controlled towns. But such human rights violations should come as no surprise given the Nazi heritage of these units and the connection of the Islamic militants to hyper-violent terrorist movements in the Middle East.
But the Times treats this lethal mixture of neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists as a good thing. After all, they are targeting opponents of the “white-hatted” Kiev regime, while the ethnic Russian rebels and the Russian government wear the “black hats.”
As an example of that tone, Kramer wrote: “Even for Ukrainians hardened by more than a year of war here against Russian-backed separatists, the appearance of Islamic combatants, mostly Chechens, in towns near the front lines comes as something of a surprise — and for many of the Ukrainians, a welcome one. … Anticipating an attack in the coming months, the Ukrainians are happy for all the help they can get.”
So, the underlying message seems to be that it’s time for the American people and the European public to step up their financial and military support for a Ukrainian regime that has unleashed on ethnic Russians a combined force of Nazis, white supremacists and Islamic militants (considered “brothers” of the Islamic State).
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
Our Media's ISIS Threat Hype Machine: Government Stenography at Its Worst
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29990"><span class="small">Trevor Timm, Guardian UK</span></a>
Wednesday, 08 July 2015 08:50
Timm writes: "Islamic fundamentalists probably aren't going to kill us all, but watching TV news will convince you otherwise."
Terrorism happens, but not nearly as often as television news likes to make viewers think. (photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)
Our Media's ISIS Threat Hype Machine: Government Stenography at Its Worst
By Trevor Timm, Guardian UK
08 July 15
Islamic fundamentalists probably aren’t going to kill us all, but watching TV news will convince you otherwise
f you turned on US cable news at any point last week, you might have thought this July 4 holiday would be our last weekend on earth – the supposed terrorist masterminds in Isis and their alleged vast sleeper cell army were going to descend upon America like the aliens in Independence Day and destroy us all.
CNN has led the pack in whipping Americans into a panic over the Isis threat, running story after story with government officials and terrorism industry money-makers hyping the threat, played against the backdrop of scary b-roll of terrorist training camps. Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell ominously told CBS last week that “I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States.” MSNBC and Fox joined in too, using graphics and maps right out of Stephen Colbert’s satirical “Doom Bunker,” suggesting World War III was just on the verge of reaching America’s shores.
Nothing happened, of course. But it was an abject lesson in how irrational government fear-mongering still controls our public discourse, even when there wasn’t a shred of hard evidence for any sort of attack, only a feeling that one might happen.
The media totally bought into this frenzy, despite the fact that the FBI and other intelligence agencies openly admitted they did not have any “specific” or “credible” threat information to hinge the holiday-weekend warnings on. Naturally, we didn’t find this out until several paragraphs down in any of the articles about the subject, and on television it sometimes wasn’t mentioned at all. Even when it was, the lack of push-back or questioning was startling. For example, this report from NBC News:
You almost have to appreciate the amount of discipline it takes to write two back-to-back sentences like that without expressing even a hint of skepticism: we have no evidence proving you’re in danger, but you absolutely should be very afraid!
It was an incredible turnaround from just a week before, even for the American fear-mongering machine. Following the tragedy in Charleston, where a white supremacist terrorist killed nine innocent churchgoers, there was – finally! – widespread acknowledgement that the Islamic terrorism threat in this country is vastly exaggerated, and that white supremacists actually kill many more Americans than Muslim extremists do.
Bill Maher complained this weekend that, “Cable news is Isis’ best ally.” And he’s absolutely right. While CNN was by far the loudest and most idiotic – the dildo-laden Isis flag at London’s gay pride parade was only a particularly laughable taste of the network’s alarmism – all the cable news channels have happily played along. Yet hardly any of the talking-head “experts” bothered to ask whether our military’s continued bombing of the Middle East might be exacerbating the chances of a terrorist attack on US soil, rather than dissipating it.
Journalist Adam Johnson went back a decade and found 40 other times the FBI and Homeland Security have issued similar threats around national holidays or major events, none of which actually was followed by a terrorist attack. It’s more than a little disturbing how much CNN and others have seemingly grown to rely on these nebulous warnings to keep viewers hooked. As Johnson quipped on Twitter earlier this week, “Can the FBI break its terror-predicting 0-40 losing streak this weekend? Tune into CNN to find out!”
All of this doesn’t mean that a terrorist attack on US won’t eventually happen. Simple math tells us that, no matter the precautions taken or the civil liberties taken away, one may get through. But it is a rare event, and one which human beings have lived with throughout our history. By magnifying it and terrifying everyone, we’re only doing the terrorists’ job for them.
No one is suggesting we ignore the existence of Isis. The savage attack on civilians in Tunisia was a deplorable tragedy, and the group actively threatens many people in the Middle East. But even as we mourn the victims and steel our resolve, the idea that we should upend our way of life based on an extremely remote possibility that we, in the end, have no ability to control is absurd.
As for those vague terror warnings that didn’t materialize over the weekend? They’ve been extended.
Tony Blair and the Self-Exalting Mindset of the West: In Two Paragraphs
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29455"><span class="small">Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept</span></a>
Tuesday, 07 July 2015 13:27
Greenwald writes: "Tony Blair today took a little time off from serving the world's despots in order to exploit the 10th anniversary of the July 7 London train bombing. He did so by casting blame on 'radical Islam' for the world's violence while exempting himself."
Tony Blair. (photo: Getty Images)
Tony Blair and the Self-Exalting Mindset of the West: In Two Paragraphs
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
07 July 15
ony Blair today took a little time off from serving the world’s despots in order to exploit the 10th anniversary of the July 7 London train bombing. He did so by casting blame on “radical Islam” for the world’s violence while exempting himself, pronouncing:
This is a global problem … we’re not going to allow anyone to excuse themselves by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is somehow a response to any decision by any government.
The proposition Blair just decreed invalid — “the slaughter of totally innocent people is somehow a response to any decision by any government” — is exactly the rationale that he himself repeatedlyinvoked, and to this day still invokes, to justify the invasion and destruction of Iraq, as in this example from December 2009:
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public. . . . “If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]”. . . . He explained it was “the notion of him as a threat to the region” because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
“Excusing the slaughter of totally innocent people” — whether in Fallujah or Gaza or Yemen — is a staple of Western elite discourse to justify the militarism of the U.S., the U.K. and their most special allies. It only suddenly becomes inexcusable when carried out by Muslims against the West. It is a stunning testament to Western self-delusion that one of the prime architects and salesmen of the most destructive political crime of this generation — the invasion of Iraq — can stand up with a straight face and to applause and declare: “we’re not going to allow anyone to excuse themselves by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is somehow a response to any decision by any government.”
There will undoubtedly be all sorts of self-loving jingoists in the West, along with those whose overriding political priority is the demonization of Islam, who will find this comparison invalid and even obscene. After all, their own governments’ violence, aggression and slaughter of innocents is kind-hearted, civilized and justified, whereas the violence, aggression and slaughter of innocents by Muslims is savage and barbaric. But that’s precisely the point.
While the leading lights of the West love to celebrate themselves as beacons of civilized, progressive rationality, their overriding mentality is just the crassest and most primitive form of tribalism: when Our Side does it, it is right, and when Their Side does it, it is wrong. No matter the esoteric finery in which it drapes itself, that is the primitive, banal formulation that lies at the heart of the vast, vast majority of foreign policy discourse in the West. So often, those who fancy themselves brave warriors for rationality and advancement by demonizing Islam are just rank tribalists whose own national, religious and cultural loyalties are served by doing so.
One last point while we’re on this topic: the notion that radical Muslims commit violence in response to violence by the West is often characterized as an attempt to deny that they possess agency or autonomy. That claim is just bizarre, the opposite of the truth. Those who deny that Muslims act with agency are, in fact, those who try to claim that they are manipulated by religious dogma into committing violence without any rationale or purpose. To point out that there’s an actual, rational causal relationship between their violence and the West’s — to acknowledge that they choose violence as a calculated course of action they believe to be justified just as the West does — is not a denial of their agency, but rather an affirmation of it.
This causal relationship is the point that Tony Blair and his like-minded comrades are, above all else, most desperate to deny. Blair thus expressly denies that the July 7 bombing in London was largely motivated by his war in Iraq even though his own government’s secret report reached exactly that conclusion; a Pentagon-commissioned report years ago acknowledged the same causal motive for “terrorism” generally. They’re desperate to deny this causation because to recognize it is necessarily to acknowledge that their professed moral superiority is the ultimate delusion, that they in fact are the embodiment of what they love to hear themselves condemning.
It’s always comforting to believe that one’s own tribe is morally superior yet perpetually victimized, so it’s an easy sell. But as Blair’s remarkably self-unaware comments today illustrate, this mentality centrally depends upon a steadfast commitment to blinding oneself to one’s own actions and failings. Nobody is more resolute in that commitment than Tony Blair.
BP 'Got Off Cheaply' With $18.7 Billion Settlement
Tuesday, 07 July 2015 13:05
Juhasz writes: "The DOJ reached a settlement for all remaining civil claims arising from the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last week for $18.7 billion. The federal government had originally sought $18 billion in Clean Water Act (CWA) fines alone. Yet, the $18.7 billion settlement includes not only these fines, but also those meant to address all natural resource damages and restoration."
Is the $18.7 billion settlement a bargain for BP? (photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images)
BP 'Got Off Cheaply' With $18.7 Billion Settlement
By Antonia Juhasz, Rolling Stone
07 July 15
BP had already estimated economic damages resulting from the Deepwater Horizon disaster at some $43 billion
he U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that the United States, together with several state and hundreds of local governments, had reached a settlement for all remaining civil claims arising from the April 20, 2010, BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 men and set off the largest offshore oil drilling spill in history.
If the proposed consent decree is approved after being submitted for public comment and then court-approval, BP will agree to pay $18.7 billion in fines over the next 15 years to the U.S. federal government and the state governments of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
The federal government had originally sought $18 billion in Clean Water Act (CWA) fines alone. Yet, the $18.7 billion settlement includes not only these fines, but also those meant to address all natural resource damages and restoration, as well as economic losses incurred by state and local governments.
—$7.1 for ecological and wildlife harms and restoration, referred to as "natural resource damages" (in addition to the $1 billion BP had already committed);
—$5.9 billion to settle claims by state and some 400 local governments for economic damages; and $600 million for other claims, including claims for reimbursement of Natural Resource Damages Assessment (NRDA) costs and other unreimbursed federal expenses due to Deepwater Horizon activity.
Mark Lyons, regional administrator for Oxfam America, which has been working for economic equity in the Gulf of Mexico for 20 years, tells Rolling Stone that "BP got off cheaply." He added, "The judge had already found gross negligence, and based on the Clean Water Act formulas, BP should have been looking at $13 to $18 billion for the oil spill alone. Add to that the natural resource damages and the fact that there is enough research on oil spills in general and the shock to Gulf in particular to say that a settlement at this level is both premature and cheap. It's a bargain for BP."
BP would seem to agree. BP's chief financial officer, Brian Gilvary, said in a press release, "The impact of the settlement on our balance sheet and cashflow will be manageable." This is because BP has already estimated total costs for all economic damages resulting from the disaster at some $43 billion.
BP now estimates that its total cost will be somewhere around $53 billion — an amount below the predictions of analysts at Moody's rating agency, who in 2011 estimated a total cost to BP of $60 billion.
U.S. Federal District Judge Carl Barbier had previously found BP grossly negligent for causing the April 20th, 2010 blowout of the Macondo oil well, opening BP to as much as $4,300 per barrel of oil spilled under the CWA. Though government scientists had argued that 4.19 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, Judge Barbier ruled that the amount was 3.19 million barrels, reducing the potential maximum CWA penalty from $18 billion to $13.7 billion. (In March, Rolling Stone predicted that Barbier was not likely to impose this full fine).
Meanwhile, federal, state and local government agencies were working with hundreds of scientists on the NRDA required under the Oil Pollution Act to determine how much BP must pay to restore the Gulf Coast back to the condition it was in at the time of the disaster. The vast majority of this analysis has not yet been made public due to the legal proceedings. Yet numerous reports have recorded extensive and ongoing damages likely to reach costs far higher than the $8 billion allocated here.
The settlement, which would be the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history and the largest civil settlement with a single entity ever, comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected BP's bid to insulate itself from any fines under the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) and as Judge Barbier was preparing to release his final finding determining the CWA fines.
Galindez writes: "With the wind at his back following his massive rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa for a three day campaign swing. Before he even arrived, Quinnipiac University released a poll that had Sanders surging to 33% in the Hawkeye State. Hillary Clinton still holds a 19-point lead in Iowa, but that lead was 45% just 1 month ago. Polls in New Hampshire have Sanders within single digits."
Monday night's campaign appearance by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont packed the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, Maine. (photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP)
Bernie Sanders Surge Spreads to Iowa – and Maine!
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
07 July 15
ith the wind at his back following his massive rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa for a three day campaign swing. Before he even arrived, Quinnipiac University released a poll that had Sanders surging to 33% in the Hawkeye State. Hillary Clinton still holds a 19-point lead in Iowa, but that lead was 45% just 1 month ago. Polls in New Hampshire have Sanders within single digits.
The highlight of Bernie’s three day swing in Iowa was a standing-room-only crowd of over 2,500 in Council Bluffs. It was by far the largest crowd any candidate has mustered in Iowa this year. The second and third largest crowds of around 800 were also at Sanders events in Des Moines and Davenport.
Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley was also in Iowa, but his largest crowd was 125 people in a Des Moines suburb. In an interview following a stop Thursday in Waukee, O’Malley said Sanders has been on the rise partly because voters see him for now as a “protest candidate.”
“People feel like big money has subsumed, taken over, their politics, and they’re frustrated by it,” O’Malley said. “People feel like their voices don’t matter. People feel like they’re not being heard, and right now, they want to protest about that. I’m not running as a protest candidate, I’m running for president of the United States.”
O’Malley is also the first candidate to run a negative ad on the Democratic side, and it wasn’t against Hillary Clinton. O’Malley attacked Sanders for his position on gun control, even though the NRA currently gives Sanders a D-minus. O’Malley clearly sees that he has to get past Sanders before he can be a challenger to Clinton.
O’Malley is either spinning or out of touch with Sanders supporters. Sanders crowds are enthusiastic and committed, and they cite his authenticity as one reason. Maybe O’Malley should lose the teleprompter and the speeches about Baltimore’s role in the American Revolution. Bernie is connecting with voters while O’Malley is gaining no traction.
Sanders marched in three July 4th parades, one on the 3rd in Dennison, Iowa, and two on the 4th. RSN caught up with Sanders on the 4th in Waukee, a conservative town 18 miles west of Des Moines. I had a chance to talk to Bernie and his wife Jane following the parade.
I also asked his supporters why they support him. Perhaps Gov. O’Malley should watch this.
Another major boost for Sanders came in a press conference at a firefighters union hall in Council Bluffs. Three weeks ago, Larry Cohen was the national president of the Communication Workers of America (CWA). On July 3rd in Council Bluffs he became a volunteer for Bernie Sanders.
Cohen said it “wasn’t a close call. For working families in a union or not, this is the candidate who not only stands up for us but believes, in his words, that we need a political revolution … Bernie Sanders has showed us in the last couple of months that we can run a campaign, that we can raise money, that we can break turnout records wherever we go, just by standing up for working people … I don’t know that in my lifetime, or anyone’s in this room, that we have had a candidate for president with his viability, who was there his entire life for working people … Every candidate in these primary and caucus states can talk well, they know what we want to hear. This is a guy who for his entire life has been there for working people, who doesn’t back down, who stands up for us when we are in fights with the biggest corporations in the country … He doesn’t back away … He doesn’t avoid the fight.”
Cohen said he will do whatever is needed, in Iowa or anywhere he is needed. He will work to bring in support from other union members and their allies, which is a huge asset to Sanders.
Bernie said that Larry Cohen’s endorsement means a great deal to him, that they have worked together for years, but that it’s not just about Larry and the CWA, that other union members are on board and he is proud to have their support.
On Monday night, the surge spread to Portland, Maine, where more than 7,500 people packed an arena in another big show of grassroots support for Bernie Sanders.Portland is not Madison, Wisconsin, so this number says a lot about the breadth of his support.
“In case you didn’t notice, this is a big turnout,” Sanders told the placard-waving crowd as they cheered his call to take on the billionaire class and rebuild the American middle class. “From Maine to California, the American people understand that establishment politics and establishment economics are not working for America,” Sanders said. “They understand that the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the great middle class of this country, and people from coast to coast are saying, ‘You can’t keep getting away with it.’”
Sanders was introduced by Troy Jackson, a logger from Allagash, Maine, who praised the senator’s willingness to take on “the big corporate structure.” Sanders’ proposals for improving health care, raising the minimum wage, and making higher education tuition-free were also cited by Jackson, a Democratic National Committee member and former Maine Senate majority leader. “What a lot of people are feeling is that there is somebody speaking to their issues,” Jackson told the Portland Press-Herald. “That’s why you’re seeing so many people come out.”
More than 7,500 was the initial estimate from the campaign, but MSNBC reported that arena officials think it’s more likely that close to 9,000 people filled the arena. Either way, Sanders has drawn over 25,000 people in the last week. I don’t think any other Democrat in the race has drawn this many in the whole election cycle. Just a protest vote, Martin? I think it is very clear – Bernie Sanders has launched a movement that traditional electoral campaigns might not be able to stop.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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n a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.
ony Blair today took a little time off from 
ith the wind at his back following his massive rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa for a three day campaign swing. Before he even arrived, Quinnipiac University released a poll that had Sanders surging to 33% in the Hawkeye State. Hillary Clinton still holds a 19-point lead in Iowa, but that lead was 45% just 1 month ago. Polls in New Hampshire have Sanders within single digits.
