We now know that Al Gore won Florida in 2000. If a full, fair statewide recount had taken place, he would have become president. Gore lost largely because, unlike Bush, he refused to fight with all the tools available to him.
Arguably the biggest news of all on the marijuana front actually came with Attorney General Jeff Sessions submitting his resignation. He is a staunch opponent of marijuana and rescinded important memos put in place under the Obama administration to not interfere with legal states so that marijuana businesses could have banking access if they followed certain rules.
MEMO | November 10, 2018
Iraqi MP Ahmad Al-Assadi, senior leader of the Iraqi Construction Alliance, revealed on Friday parliamentarian moves to pressure the Iraqi government to evict US forces from the country.
Al-Assadi said that the previous Iraqi parliament had started the calls, but now the new parliament was calling for a clear timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq, Arabi21 reported. He added that US forces had entered the country at the request of the Iraqi government for training purposes and assistance in fighting Daesh.
Yet Al-Assadi stressed that: “After the big victory against these gangs [Daesh], the Iraqi government has the right to evaluate the need for American forces to remain on Iraqi soil”. He also said that the calls for US forces to leave would be doubled during the next parliamentary term, noting that the parliament was likely to accept the existence of advisors and trainers based only on the need specified by the authorities.
Regarding the position of the government, Al-Assadi said: “The government has the right to estimate its need for advisors and trainers. The parliamentary discussions, which called for revealing the number, places and need for the American forces were not closed”.
He stressed however that the parliament is entitled to make the final decision regarding whether US forces remain in Iraq or are asked to withdraw.
The three largest developing nations, namely Russia, China and India, have shown the world how to get rid of dependence on the dollar. Bilateral trade in these countries’ national currencies opens up prospects for other growing economies to be able to get rid of the hegemony of the dollar.
In a major development, India has officially joined the recent announcements of Russia and China; all three parties will entirely eliminate the USD from inter-national transactions.
India has announced it will pay for the supply of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems in rubles, while China plans to make bilateral agreements in national currencies by the end of that year, Russian policymakers said.
The contract for delivery of Russian systems S-400 to New Delhi was closed on October 5 and estimated at $5 billion.
The greatest benefit of transactions in national currencies is the absence of currency fluctuations. An equally important problem in trade involving US dollars is the high probability of sanctions, which Washington “distributes” this year in all directions.
In April, Indian media reported that Delhi’s financial institutions froze about two billion dollars allocated to pay for major projects, including the reconstruction of the Russian nuclear submarine…
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![Sergey Lavrov said the meeting is meant to seek paths to national reconciliation in Afghanistan [Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/11/9/a7f9729f66a5402eb875309fee494280_18.jpg "Afghanistan peace conference kicks off in Moscow")
Russia is hosting talks in Moscow to end the war in Afghanistan, drawing delegates from a body appointed by the Western-backed government in Kabul and a group representing the Taliban, as well as officials from a dozen nations, including the United States.
Opening Friday’s meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the participation of both Afghan leaders and the Taliban was an “important contribution” aimed at creating “favourable conditions for the start of direct talks”.
“I am counting on you holding a serious and constructive conversation that will justify the hopes of the Afghan people,” he said before the talks continued behind closed doors.
Russia hopes “through joint efforts to open a new page in the history of Afghanistan,” the Russian foreign minister said.
He emphasised the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in Afghanistan, saying that it has relied on foreign sponsors in a bid to “turn Afghanistan into a springboard for its expansion in Central Asia”.
Pakistan, which has long been accused of providing support to the Afghan Taliban, would “definitely” attend, foreign ministry spokesman Muhammad Faisal told AFP news agency.
India has also sent its representatives at a “non-official level”, reassessing its policy on talks with the Taliban group.
The conference marks Moscow’s attempt to get the Afghan authorities and the Taliban together at a table. The US Embassy in Moscow has sent a diplomat to observe the discussions.
Russia’s first attempt to hold the conference in September fell through after the Afghan authorities refused to attend.
This time, the Afghan government has not sent its envoys, but members of the government-appointed High Peace Council (HPC) are attending the event. The council was established to lead reconcilation efforts with the Taliban.
Taliban officials and HPC members have met at past forums elsewhere, and while no formal talks were ever held they have had some face-to-face discussions.
The talks come weeks after newly appointed US special envoy for peace in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, held talks with the Taliban group in Qatar. He will visit Afghanistan,Pakistan , the United Arab Emirates and Qatar from November 8 to 20 to push for peace negotiations with the Taliban.
Khalilzad’s meeting with the Taliban, which was overthrown from power by US-led forces in 2001, is part of efforts to find a way to end the 17-year-long war in Afghanistan.
“On his last trip to the region in October, Special Representative Khalilzad called on the Afghan Government and the Taliban to organise authoritative negotiating teams, and has been encouraged to see that both parties are taking steps in that direction,” the State Department said in a statement.
“The United States remains committed to a political settlement that results in an end to the war and to the terrorist threat posed to the United States and the world.”
A US watchdog agency said last week that the Afghan government was losing control of districts to the Taliban while casualties among security forces had reached record levels.
The government had control or influence over 65 percent of the population but only 55.5 percent of Afghanistan‘s 407 districts, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report.
The latest phase of Afghanistan’s decades-old war began in 2001 when the US-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
That F Word: Growing Up Feminist in Aotearoa*
By Lizzie Marvelly
Book Review
The goal of That F Word is to dispel common confusion about the meaning of the word “feminist.” To singer journalist Lizzie Marvelly, the word simply refers to someone who advocates for full women’s equality. She illustrates by demonstrating all the ways in which women aren’t fully equal to men in New Zealand (or the rest of the industrial world).
If women were fully equal, they would enjoy equal pay for equal work, decriminalization of abortion* and equal representation in government, the boardroom and the media and entertainment industry. Domestic violence and rape culture would end because sexual abuse, sexual harassment and domestic violence would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as would the routine exposure of 14-year-old boys to misogynist Internet pornography; the widespread use of soft porn to sell commercial products; the continual media pressure on women to hate their appearance; and the constant verbal abuse and rape and death threats against women who openly express opinions in the public arena.
Marvelly views the advent of social media as a two-edged sword for women. Despite the ubiquitous use of social media by insecure men to verbally abuse, degrade and threaten women, it also offers women a unique opportunity to openly share personal experiences of abusive treatment by men. Even more importantly, social media has brought into the open the extreme level of misogyny women experience in contemporary society.
Presented as an expanded memoir, That F Word is a remarkable achievement for a 29-year-old author. In my view, it should be required reading for all men with a genuine desire to understand the condition of women in the 21st century.
*Aotearoa is the original Maori name for New Zealand
**In New Zealand, abortion is still a crime under the Crimes Act – unless a woman obtains independent certification from two health professionals that proceeding with the pregnancy will seriously endanger her mental health.
Has Bill Gates done something right for a change?
One of the development projects that I keep an eye on is the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation challenge to reinvent the toilet. It launched in 2011 and while I don’t think all the inventions that have come out of it are practical for the poorest who need them most, there’s no doubt that it’s kicked off a wave of new ideas. With each passing year new toilets have been developed, and the most promising are now testing in South Africa.
This week saw the first Reinventing the Toilet Expo in Beijing, and Gates has been talking about what the project has generated so far. It’s an inspiring story, and a necessary one. It isn’t going to be possible to deliver traditional flushing toilets to everyone in the world – they’re just too wasteful of clean water. But what if there are better ways of creating a toilet, ways that…
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In many ways the story of plastics gets to the heart of what’s wrong with capitalism. It is a by-product of the fossil fuel industry — 99 percent of all plastics are produced from chemicals sourced from oil and gas. Its production was driven by the relentless drive for profit at the heart of the system.
9 November 2018 — Climate & Capitalism
A valuable invention is massively misused in the service of profit, producing unprecedented waste and pollution. How can we stop the plastic plague?
Plastic is bad, isn’t it? That is certainly the new consensus. And no wonder there has been a public outcry. Many of us have been shocked by images like those on Blue Planet of a sperm whale with a stomach full of plastic waste, albatrosses feeding their young plastic or turtles trapped in plastic bags.
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The fact they’re still finding votes in Florida and Georgia suggests that something strange is going on.
The Pew Research Center released a poll on Oct. 8 indicating that 62 percent of all Americans supported legalizing marijuana. The results on election day confirm the shift of the American people to support that idea.
The Most Revolutionary Act 