Trump’s Supreme Court pick, and his (in)famous mother

Neil Gorsuch, nominated by President Trump to the Supreme Court, bears a name many Republicans would just as soon forget: that of his late mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, a controversial administrator of the Environmental Protection Administration under President Ronald Reagan, and the first Cabinet-level official to be cited for contempt of Congress.

Anne Gorsuch, who died in 2004, was a little-known Colorado state legislator when she was tapped by Reagan in 1981 to head the EPA. Together with her fellow Westerner, James Watt — Reagan’s pick for secretary of the interior — she personified the “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the 1970s and 1980s, an attempt by ranchers, farmers, miners and oil interests to overturn federal land-use and environmental regulations.

She did her part, cutting her agency’s budget by 22 percent, curtailing research and enforcement activities and scaling back regulations on air and water pollution. (Carbon dioxide and climate change, the most contentious issues facing the EPA today, weren’t yet on anyone’s agenda.) She even attempted to relax limits, imposed in the 1970s, on lead additives to gasoline, regulations that are credited now with preventing the poisoning of large numbers of children. A New York Times editorial in 1983 said she had taken one of the most effective government agencies and left it  “reeking of cynicism, mismanagement and decay.”

She lasted less than two years in the job, brought down by a series of congressional investigations — the House was controlled by Democrats then — into her management of the Superfund program to clean up toxic-waste sites. She refused to comply with subpoenas on the grounds of executive privilege, and evidence suggested that key documents had been shredded. In the ensuing showdown, she was cited for contempt of Congress. Months later she resigned, thrown under the bus, she contended, by an administration that lacked the spine to defend her.

In her 1986 book, “Are You Tough Enough?” Ms. Burford called the episode her “expensive mid-life education.”

Trump threatens UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley went into lockdown on Wednesday amid a violent protest over a planned appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Demonstrations broke out and a small group of protesters wearing black and hooded sweatshirts broke windows threw smoke bombs and flares.
"This was a group of agitators who were masked up, throwing rocks, commercial grade fireworks and Molotov cocktails at officers," said UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo Bennett.
Bennett said police determined at that point they couldn't guarantee security, canceled the event and evacuated the Breitbart News editor from the building. School officials said on Twitter that the campus was on lockdown.
There were no immediate reports of arrests or serious injuries, she said.
Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, previously headed Breitbart News and CNN reported that many of the protesters voiced opposition to the Republican president.
Police ordered protesters at the liberal-leaning university to disperse and a short time later at least one fire erupted when protesters ignited a light post outside a building, according to CNN, which broadcast footage of the demonstration.
Protesters shattered windows at the same building and threw firecrackers and rocks, according to CNN. The crowd appeared to number in the hundreds.
Yiannopoulos' scheduled appearance came on the day that his college grant program for white males began taking applications. Critics blasted it as fanning white nationalism. In July, he was banned from Twitter for tweeting abusive comments toward specific users, including African-American comedian Leslie Jones.
In a statement on Facebook, Yiannopoulos said he was "evacuated" from the Berkeley campus and criticized "the Left," saying it was "absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down."
President Donald Trump threatened the University of California, Berkeley with a cut in federal funding after the school canceled a Breitbart editor's speech amid violent protests.

Quebec shooting news

Here is the latest news about the murderer in Quebec shooting inside the mosque.

Netanyahu to Establish First New West Bank Settlement

In a move which sparked multiple clashes, Israeli forces today began the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Amona, a settler outpost established without government position, and which had been ordered evacuated repeatedly by the Israeli High Court. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced intentions of establishing a new settlement in the occupied West Bank for the evacuees, marking the first new settlement Israel has established there in two decades.
Amona was founded in 1995 on privately owned Palestinian land, and was first ruled illegal in 2006, though it took years of eviction orders to get the government to do anything about it, and even now, the expectation is that the new settlement will itself involve some seized privately-owned Palestinian land.
A bill that aims to legalize the Israeli government seizing such land for the purpose of settlement construction or expansion is advancing through the Knesset, with opposition members complaining that the government has blocked a planned filibuster of the bill, limiting all debate on the matter to just three days.
The far-right coalition government should easily pass such a measure, and many see this law as the real goal of the whole effort, and not the relocation of Amona at all. Education Minister Naftali Bennett presented the Amona evacuees as “heroes”whose resistance to evacuation has set the stage for a new legal regime that will end with the full annexation of the West Bank.

Plea from Burma Campaign, UK

Almost 70,000 Rohingya have now fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since the Burmese Army launched a military crackdown four months ago. They are telling horrific stories of the human rights violations taking place.

Children have described how Burmese Army soldiers snatched their brothers and sisters from their mothers and threw them into burning homes.

Women have described watching soldiers kill their husbands before the soldiers rape them until they lose consciousness.

They have told how all the young women from their village were taken by soldiers and raped over and over again.
Under international law, these are crimes against humanity. The United Nations must investigate and hold those responsible to account. The prospect of an international investigation could help stop some of these abuses.

Members of the UN Human Rights Council could decide to set up an inquiry when they discuss Burma soon.

Ask your MP to sign a new motion in Parliament calling on the British government to back a UN Inquiry into the Rohingya crisis. We need the British government to back a UN Inquiry and propose it at the Human Rights Council.

Write to your MP now.

Thank you for your support.

Anna Roberts
Burma Campaign UK

Texas Muslims decry Trump Policies

The news below is from Reuters:
Sadaf Siddiqui

With arms locked and voices joined to sing the U.S. national anthem, more than 1,000 people rallied at the Texas Capitol on Tuesday against Trump administration immigration policies and travel restrictions aimed at seven mostly Muslim countries.
Texas Muslim Capitol Day, designed to show Muslims how the state government in Austin works, has been held for more than a decade when the legislature meets every other year for its regular session.
This year's event held increased significance after Republican President Donald Trump last week imposed the travel restrictions, and a Texas Republican lawmaker held a meeting over what he sees as Islamic threats.
"We are witnessing the unprecedented normalization and legalization of discrimination. We will not stand by and let this happen," Democratic state Representative Victoria Neave told the crowd, which included people waving signs reading, "Muslims, We've Got your Back."
Crowds chanted: "No ban. No Wall," in reference to proposals to ban Muslims and Trump's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
As speakers railed against Trump policies they said run counter to American democracy, a handful of protesters said Islam was a threat against the United States and praised the president for protecting the country.

Houston resident Cheryl Walker came with a handgun strapped to her thigh to denounce the rally.
"I am against Muslims being in our country because if you are a Christian, they believe they have to kill you," she said.
There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Texas and many at the rally were worried about travel after Trump issued a directive that put a 120-day hold on allowing refugees into the country, an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria and a 90-day bar on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

"There has been Islamophobia boiling up for a while, but the ban makes Muslims feel more alienated and afraid of what their futures look like," said Sadaf Siddiqui, an optometry student from Houston.
A day before the travel restrictions that prompted protests at numerous U.S. airports, Republican state Representative Kyle Biedermann held a security conference to guard against what he called "radical Islam terrorism."
Biedermann, who last year made headlines when he dressed as a "gay Hitler" for a costume party fundraiser, this month sent a survey to Muslim leaders demanding a response about their beliefs on issues such as Islamic sharia law. Civil rights groups condemned the survey, saying it promoted Islamophobia.

Trump has blood in his hands

It was clear from the start that Donald Trump’s Muslim ban was vile and unconstitutional. And now, it has caused the death of a 75-year old woman:
Mike Hager said he was returning home with his family that included his sick mom. They were returning home to the United States where his mother has lived since 1995. As they were waiting in line at the airport in Iraq on Friday, he was told that he could pass through because he was a U.S. citizen. But his family members - including his mom - weren't allowed, despite holding green cards. 
"They destroyed us. I went with my family, I came back by myself. They destroyed our family," Hager said. [...]
"The immigration told us that the President of the United States put an order right now - you guys cannot go," he told FOX 2's Amy Lange.
Hager, his niece, and two nephews were traveling with his 75-year-old mother, Naimma, home to Michigan. They traveled to Iraq to visit family and when she fell ill. Hager said he didn't expect it to be a problem for the family to travel since they all had green cards and had lived in the United States for 20 years. [...]
Naimma, lived in the United States since 1995, wasn't allowed to come home. She died in her native country.
Hager, whose family left Iraq during the first Gulf War, and who “returned to Iraq where he worked as a contractor for the United States Special forces between 2003 and 2008 as an interpreter and cultural advisor,” laid the blame for his mother’s death squarely where it belongs:

He blames her death on President Trump. [...]
Hager is mourning more than his mother; he's also mourning the way of life he believes that makes America great.

As are we all.