June, 08 2017, 04:15pm EDT
Trump and Zinke Must Disavow Plans to Re-Create Troubled Offshore Drilling Agency
Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program
WASHINGTON
Today's Bloomberg Newsreport that President Donald Trump and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke are considering re-creating the ineffectual and corrupt structure of America's offshore oil drilling regulator would be a disaster for environmental and worker safety. Both Trump and Zinke must immediately renounce such an action.
In the years leading up to the April 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the offshore oil regulator - the U.S. Minerals Management Service - was plagued with rampant scandals fed by too-cozy relationships with the oil industry. It was for this reason that the independent National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling specifically recommended splitting the agency's safety regulation and oil leasing functions. The Obama administration acted on this and other commission recommendations.
We cannot afford a return to the days when structural failures of agency design allow oil companies to get a free pass. President Trump and Secretary Zinke must immediately and forcefully reject any effort to merge Interior's safety and leasing operations.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Morehouse Students Show Solidarity With Gaza During Biden Commencement Speech
"It is my stance as a Morehouse man, nay as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip," said valedictorian DeAngelo Fletcher.
May 19, 2024
Advisers for U.S. President Biden reportedly saw Morehouse College, a historically Black men's college in Atlanta where he gave the commencement address Sunday, as a school where the president was unlikely to face protests over his continued support for Israel's assault on Gaza, which has been the subject of mass demonstrations led by students at universities across the country over the past month.
But students and faculty made clear at the ceremony that many of them, like others in higher education, are intent on sending Biden a strong message of disapproval over his Israel policy.
A number of faculty members and students wore keffiyehs, the traditional scarves worn in parts of the Middle East including Palestine, and by some supporters of Palestinian rights to show solidarity with civilians in Gaza. Others displayed the Palestinian flag on their graduation gowns.
ABC News White House correspondent Selina Wang reported that while most of the alumni present at the graduation stood up when Biden was introduced, all but a few of the students remained seated.
The war in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians since October while receiving billions of dollars in military aid from the Biden administration, was directly mentioned by valedictorian DeAngelo Fletcher, who had placed a Palestinian flag motif on his graduation cap.
"It is my stance as a Morehouse man, nay, as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip," said Fletcher as Biden sat behind him and applauded. "From the comfort of our homes, we watch an unprecedented number of civilians mourn the loss of men, women, and children, while calling for the release of all hostages."
Some students and faculty turned their backs when the president gave his address, in which he said he supports "peaceful, non-violent protest." Other students walked out of the ceremony, but Biden's speech was not disrupted like the last time he addressed a group of college students at George Mason University, when protesters interrupted him 10 times.
Biden has been rebuked by First Amendment advocates for suggesting the Palestinian solidarity and anti-war protests that have spread across college campuses in recent weeks are inherently antisemitic, and for failing to speak out against aggressive police responses to protests at schools including Emory University, Columbia University, and University of Texas at Austin.
"It's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That's why I've called for an immediate cease-fire, an immediate cease-fire to stop the fighting. Bring the hostages home," said the president, adding that he is "working around the clock" to secure a two-state solution in the Middle East and to ensure aid is allowed into Gaza, where key border crossings are now closed by Israel.
Middle Eastern policy expert Assal Rad said Biden's call for a cease-fire seven months into Israel's escalation amounts to "nonsense," considering his administration's veto of several cease-fire resolutions at the U.N. Security Council and the $17 billion military aid package Biden signed in April for Israel.
A majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's assault on Gaza, and Black voters, a key constituency who supported Biden in 2020, are no exception.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found last month that 68% of Black Americans wanted the U.S. to demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire, and 59% said conditions must be applied to U.S. military aid to Israel to ensure the Middle Eastern country is using U.S. weapons for "legitimate self-defense and in a way that is consistent with human rights standards."
While 66% of Black Americans overall said their feelings toward Biden had not changed due to his Israel policy, those under age 30 were more likely to say their views on the president had become more negative since October.
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Iranian President Missing After Helicopter Crash
President Ebrahim Raisi had been traveling in Iran's mountainous East Azerbaijan province.
May 19, 2024
This is a developing story... Check back for possible updates...
Update (3:30 pm ET):
Iranian state TV reported that Raisi's helicopter had been found. There was no update on the condition of those aboard.
Earlier:
Dozens of search teams were deployed to Iran's mountainous East Azerbaijan province on Sunday to search for a helicopter that had been carrying the country's president, Ebrahim Raisi, as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, after the aircraft reportedly experienced a "hard landing."
State news agency IRNA and Iran's mission to the United Nations reported that inclement weather, including rain and fog, had prevented the teams from finding the crash site after almost five hours of searching.
The helicopter had also been carrying East Azerbaijan province Gov. Malek Rahmati and Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, representative of the Iranian supreme leader to East Azerbaijan. Raisi had been in the province on an official visit to inaugurate a dam on the Iran-Azerbaijan border.
The term "crash" was used by one government official speaking to an Iranian newspaper, but details of the severity of the hard landing are not yet known.
The incident comes just over a month after Iran launched a drone-and-missile attack against Israel in retaliation for Israel's deadly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Raisi, who was elected in 2021, has been sanctioned by the U.S. for his role in executing thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the Iran-Iraq War.
In the event of the president's death, power would be transferred to the first vice president, the conservative Mohammad Mokhber. An election would then be called within six months.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said "chaotic times in Iran" may be ahead if elections are called.
"And that's not even taking into account if credible evidence emerges that there was foul play involved in the crash," said Parsi.
"The population has by and large lost faith in the idea that change can come through the ballot box," said Parsi. "Real alternatives to Iran's hardliners have simply not been allowed to stand for office in the in the last few elections. At the same time, those alternatives have in the eyes of the majority of the population lost credibility anyways, due to the failure to deliver change."
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Solidarity Marches Held Across Globe to Demand Cease-Fire in Gaza
Organizers held rallies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to mark Nakba Day and condemn Israel's bombing and starvation of Palestinian civilians.
May 19, 2024
As one United Nations official on Saturday said that "brand new words" are needed to adequately describe the devastation Israel has wrought across Gaza in its U.S.-backed military assault, tens of thousands of people across the globe marched in solidarity with Palestinians to demand an end to the "ongoing Nakba."
The marches were held to honor Nakba Day, which was marked on May 15—the 76th anniversary of the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel declared statehood in 1948. The protesters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 35,456 people since October, the majority of them women and children.
Protesters in London carried signs reading, "Solidarity is a verb," and "The Nakba never ended" as they marched through Whitehall, close to the home and office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who covered the first months of Israel's bombardment and evacuated Gaza in January, joined the marchers and told the crowd that mass protests around the world have given Palestinians hope.
"I didn't believe that I would stay alive to stand here in London today in front of the people, who saw me there under the bombing," said Azaiza. "Occupation is using all the weapons against us, the bombs, the killing, the starvation, the apartheid in the West Bank, and now killing the people and forcing them to leave their lands... I did my best to show you, and I believe you will do more, we all together will do more to stop this genocide."
In Dublin, Ireland, where politicians have harshly criticized Israel and its supporters for the assault on Gaza and the near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that has pushed parts of the enclave into famine, more than 100 civil society groups supported a march organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, a researcher and translator who was trapped in Gaza until earlier this month when he was finally granted permission by Egyptian and Israeli authorities to leave, thanked the crowd for choosing "to stand with justice and to stand with an oppressed people."
"I am proud to be an Irish Palestinian," said Hania. "I am proud to see all of you. It is part of my healing... We inherited a dream from our parents. We are trying for all our lives to fulfill our dreams and our parents' dreams. My parents are dead, but I will work to fulfill their dreams. Their dream is to have a free Palestine."
Other protests included a rally outside the German embassy in Bangkok, a march of about 400 people in Washington, D.C., and a demonstration in Brooklyn where police violently arrested at least 34 people, according to The New York Times.
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, told the Times she witnessed "police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk. They were grabbing people at random."
Independent journalists posted videos on social media of police officers punching and kicking protesters.
The latest show of global outrage toward the Israeli government and the Western leaders who have supported its assault on Gaza came as U.N. humanitarian aid officer Yasmina Guerda told U.N. News about her latest deployment to Rafah, where 900,000 people have now been forced to flee following Israel's incursion in the city.
"We would need to invent brand new words to adequately describe the situation that Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in today," said Guerda. "No matter where you look, no matter where you go, there's destruction, there's devastation, there's loss. There's a lack of everything. There's pain. There's just incredible suffering. People are living on top of the rubble and the waste that used to be their lives. They're hungry. Everything has become absolutely unaffordable. I heard the other day that some eggs were being sold for $3 each, which is unthinkable for someone who has no salary and has lost all access to their bank accounts."
"Access to clean water is a daily battle," she added. "Many people haven't been able to change clothes in seven months because they just had to flee with whatever they were wearing. They were given 10 minutes notice and they had to run away. Many have been displaced six, seven, eight times, or more."
The daily reality described by Guerda is continuing to unfold as the Israeli forces have prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The closure of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings for the past 13 days, since Israel launched its new offensive in Rafah, has also prevented nearly 700 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for treatment.
"This constitutes a clear danger in light of the collapse of the health system," said the office.
On Sunday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that the blockade on aid is leading to "apocalyptic" consequences, with the famine that has taken hold in parts of northern Gaza close to spreading across the enclave.
"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more," said Griffiths. "It will be present."
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