World News

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>https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/4-gun-control-measures-approved-in-virginia-senate-committee/2199487/

>https://abcnews.go.com/US/weapons-ban-virginia-capitol-planned-gun-rights-rally/story?id=68354594

>https://www.nationalreview.com/news/antifa-group-to-march-with-pro-gun-protesters-at-virginia-rally/

>https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/17/virginia-gun-rally-3-more-suspected-neo-nazis-base-arrested/4499733002/

>A US police officer who was fired after shooting dead an unarmed man was temporarily rehired so he could apply for a pension, local media report.

>legalize marijuana within 100 days of taking office
>nominate AG and HHS secretary who will work to end drug war
>vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions, including those still in prison
>protect marijuana industry from being controlled by big corporations
>incentivize nonprofits
>institute market share caps to prevent consolidation and monopolization
>invest profits into communities hit hardest by drug war
>eliminate barriers to public benefits for those who were fucked by legal system

>A major “Washington Post” investigation released on December 9 is a confirmation of the peace movement’s message that “there’s no military solution in Afghanistan.”

>That assessment is according to Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, replying to The Afghanistan Papers. The report exposes how top officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations waged a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal the total failures of the 18-year war in Afghanistan.

>The bombshell from investigative reporter Craig Whitlock “broadly resembles the Pentagon Papers,” and it is based on over 2,000 pages of notes from interviews with a federal agency that “bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day” and belie comments by officials “who assured Americans year after year” of progress made in the war.

>The paper obtained the cache of documents following a legal battle that lasted three years and included two lawsuits. The documents came out of a project from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an agency now headed by Obama-appointee John Sopko. That project, entitled Lessons Learned, was meant to assess “the U.S. reconstruction experience in Afghanistan.”

>They revealed that officials continually misled the public about the war’s success, there was no strategy, their efforts fueled corruption, and the U.S. was clearly losing ground as well as tens of thousands of lives and at least $1 trillion.

>The trove includes transcripts and notes from over 400 interviewers between 2014 and 2018. SIGAR blacked out names of roughly 85 percent of interviewees.

>“It was impossible to create good metrics” about the troop surge, one unnamed senior National Security Council official said in a 2016 interview. “We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture.” They added, “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”

>Ryan Crocker, who was the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul from 2011 to 2012, said in a 2016 interview, “Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption.”