Iona Craig wins Polk award for her report on the killing of Yemeni civilians by the US

I linked a year ago to a news story by Iona Craig that described the horrific killings of civilians by the US during a botched raid on the Yemeni village of Al Ghayiil. This was a raid to supposedly capture an al Qaeda leader that was hailed by the Trump administration and much of the mainstream media in the US as a ‘success’ when it was anything but and it was Craig’s report with photographs that revealed the devastation that was wreaked on an impoverished village in a remote area. The Pentagon’s top Middle East commander ‘investigated’ the case US and, despite the evidence, concluded that “he found no signs of “poor decision-making or bad judgment” in a January raid in Yemen that killed 10 children and at least six women, as well as Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens”.
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Data? We don’t need no stinkin’ data! Skin color is enough!

CPAC (The Conservative Political Action Conference) is an annual gathering of nutty and hate-filled right-wingers, aka the Republican party faithful, and it is currently going on. This is where speakers throw red meat to the attendees, the redder the better, attacking all their favorite targets with hyperbolic rhetoric. Alice Ollstein reports on one session on immigration that quickly went off the rails when a speaker tried to buck that trend and persuade the audience, using actual data, that immigrants are actually good for the US.
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The ugly face of Billy Graham

The famous evangelist died last week at the age of 99 and we are now going through an orgy of official mourning that would have delighted the adulation-seeking Graham. I have been sickened by the fawning praise that has been rolling in from all quarters for the so-called ‘America’s pastor’, ignoring the many bad things he said and did. So it was a relief to read this article by Bob Moser that paints a very different picture of the man.
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Stephen Colbert nails it

As we know, Florida senator Marco Rubio got an earful from a stadium full of people outraged by his abject subservience to the NRA. Stephen Colbert has a telling segment about one moment during the event and how many in the media commented on the fact of his showing up for it.

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The failed attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn

A sign of the growing fear among the British elites about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s increasing popularity are the attempts to smear him. Robert Mackey writes about one such attempt by the right-wing British tabloid press led by Rupert Murdoch to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of having been a spy for the Czechoslovakian secret service during the Cold War. This was taken up by Conservative prime minister Theresa May and some of her cabinet members but the attempt failed miserably.
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The importance of hope and the danger of cynicism and pessimism in politics

I am usually optimistic about politics, that however bleak things look at the moment for the causes of equality and justice (and boy are they bleak right now) over time things will improve. But there is one issue where I felt where things would not improve and that is with gun control. My pessimism on that particular issue was sealed with the murders of twenty first grade children in Newton, an event that did not lead to any movement to limit the easy availability of high-powered weapons that pretty much anyone could get with no difficulty. It seemed like the political class was not going to interfere with the ability of any individual to buy unlimited numbers of weapons and ammunition to kill as many people as they can.
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Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons

I am back from my travels and was greeted with the news that Donald Trump seems to have backed off his earlier support for the anti-vaccination movement. At various points, he had expressed support for widely debunked claims that vaccines could cause autism and had even proposed setting up a commission to ‘study’ the issue, which many people feared would provide a highly visible platform for the skeptics to spread their ideas.
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A different response to the latest massacre

There seems to be something different in the reaction to the horrific school shooting in Florida. Students are taking the lead in demanding that something be done to combat the deadly rampages that routinely occur in the US due to the easy availability of high-powered weaponry. They are calling for a massive demonstration on March 24 in Washington, DC and around the country titled March For Our Lives to demand that action be taken.
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