Daily News 07/09
Daily News 07/09
Mass movement of AAC in Pakistan-administered Kashmir defies brutal state repression to write a new chapter in historyHundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, usually referred to as Azad Kashmir, are writing a new chapter in history through their courage and heroism as the Pakistani state unleashes some of the most brutal state repression we’ve seen in the recent period.
The Militant August 18, 1945 Heading There is No Peace!
Since then There has Been Perpetual War for Perpetual for Perpetual Peace!The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil-doers?”
Video: Michael Hudson: How Debt Destroys Empires
Half of Americans struggle to afford groceries and gas, exclusive poll finds About 57% of polled Americans also believe economy is worsening in grim portrait of cost of living crisis, according to Harris survey for the Guardian Ninety-five per cent of Americans believe the US is suffering an affordability crisis, as many report trouble with the rising cost of groceries and gas, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian. The survey, conducted by Harris Poll, paints a bleak picture of how people feel about the US economy amid the war in Iran and ahead of the key midterm elections this fall.
US Resumes ‘Powerful Strikes’ on Iran After Attacks on Strait of Hormuz ShippingLess than two weeks after declaring for the umpteenth time that the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran is over, President Donald Trump on Tuesday approved fresh military strikes on the Mideast country over attacks on three merchant ships off the coast of Oman.
Washington records world’s worst air quality for a city after 850,000 Fourth of July fireworksHourly concentrations of particulate matter rose to 6.7 times their pre-fireworks levels, according to an analysis Washington DC residents breathed in “unhealthy” air for hours after a 40-minute Independence Day fireworks show over the National Mall on Saturday night, with the country’s capital briefly recording the worst air quality of any major city in the world.
Lake Powell, a vital reservoir, plunges toward unprecedented low levels as water crisis deepens in US west Lake Powell, a vital reservoir, plunges toward unprecedented low levels as water crisis deepens in US west
The Deadly Cost of Misguided Federal Wildfire PolicyAt the end of June, the deaths of three firefighters near the Colorado-Utah border put Trump’s new Wildland Fire Service into focus. The firefighters had been deployed by helicopter to a remote area to put out a brush fire and were overwhelmed. But among the tributes and reminders of how wildland firefighters put their lives on the line to protect communities was the question from Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter and founder of the group Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics and Ecology: “Why were they attacking that fire in the first place?” The reason is that the Trump administration has reinstated a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire, resurrecting an almost 100-year-old debate over how to handle wildfires — a debate that science and long-standing indigenous practices had settled by the late 1970s. Combined with the establishment of the US Wildland Fire Service, such policies could cost more lives.
The Fraudulent War on Medicaid FraudThe Trump Administration has launched a novel attack on Medicaid accusing blue state Attorneys General (AGs) of not cracking down on fraud — and using that as an excuse to cut funding for New York State’s Medicaid fraud agency, which has a strong record of stopping fraud. To be clear, allegations of Medicaid fraud do not claim that individual Medicaid beneficiaries have cheated the government and enriched themselves. States have in place rigorous protocols for verifying the eligibility of individuals for enrollment in their Medicaid programs. While an individual who is not eligible may occasionally slip through and receive health care that they are not entitled to, this is fairly rare and does not result in cash payments to the individual. The real Medicaid fraudsters are insurance companies whose Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) overbill the Medicaid program, cheating states and the federal government to enhance corporate profits. And they are vendors and service providers that hatch schemes to falsely bill Medicaid to line their own profits. And by all available evidence, state Attorneys General – most notably New York’s – have successfully pursued these cases, returning billions in recovered funds to the Medicaid program.