Jan.
26, 2014, Issue 198
HUDSON VALLEY
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
jacdon@earthlink.net
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/
––––––––––––
CONTENTS
1. Quotes Of The Month
2. Editor’s Note: The Other Side Of M.L. King
3. Obama Defends NSA Spying On Americans
4. 85 Richest Equal 3.5 Billion Poor
5. Home $weet Home
6. Denial
About Catastrophic Risks
7. Poll: Creationism Or Evolution?
8. Climate's Seven Deadly Sinners
9. Global Geopolitics In 2014
10.
America’s Secret War In 134 Countries
11. The Race Towards Robotic Warfare
12.
Who’s Actually Fighting In Syria?
13. Ariel Sharon: Serial War Criminal
14. Illusions Of Nuclear Safety
15. Books: Racist Dog Whistle Politics
16.
Slogans Define China’s 2014 Path
17.
Much Of U.S. Fleet ‘Pivots’ To Asia
18.
Big Business Subverts Worker Organizations
19. What NSA Is Capable Of Doing
20. Film Review: “Her”
——————
1. QUOTES OF THE MONTH: Heinrich Heine
(1797-1856)
Heine
was a great German romantic poet, literary critic, journalist and essayist.
German authorities considered him a radical and banned many of his works.
 |
| Heinrich Heine. |
· “Where they have burned books, they will end in
burning human beings.”
· “In dark ages people are best guided by
religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the
roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it
is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”
· “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”
· “When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns
come on.”
· “Wild, dark times are
rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will
have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient
animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in
comparison.”
—————————
2. EDITOR’S NOTE: THE OTHER SIDE OF M.L. KING
January
15 would have been Dr. Martin Luther King’s 85th birthday were he
not assassinated in Memphis April 4, 1968, at the age of 39, four years after
he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
President
Ronald Reagan signed legislation naming the birthday a federal holiday in 1983
and it was first observed in 1986. It took until 2000 for all 50 states to
participate. Since 1992, the day has been observed on the third Monday in
January (the 21st this year). Commemorations took place in schools
and communities throughout America and untold numbers of media writings and
programs honored Dr. King this year.
In
many instances, however, the most important radical aspects of King’s life and
thought were pushed into the background. This is, after all, an extremely
conservative period in American history, and the American political system —
including the present White House and Congress — wouldn’t even entertain a
passing thought of implementing what he actually wanted to happen.
For
instance, King strongly denounced U.S. imperialism by name and excoriated
unjust wars. He declared that the United States was “the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today.” Imagine what this heroic man would have said
about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the drone wars in western Pakistan,
Yemen and elsewhere. And what would he have said about President Obama’s
bullyboy sanctions against Iran, pro-war intervention in Syria and now threats
of sanctions against the Ukrainian government for preferring closer ties with
Russia than with the European Union?
King
supported revolutions around the world. He supported uprisings against racism,
poverty and oppression. Imagine what he would propose to genuinely end poverty
and inequality in America today, and then imagine the response from Washington.
King
was a civil rights leader — and more. We all love to hear Rev. King’s “I have A
Dream” speech, as did I during the March on Washington in 1963 and many times
afterward on the anniversary or the birthday. But of course King’s Dream is not
the biggest part of the story.
On
King’s birthday this year, Democracy Now performed a public service by offering
a look at the other side of this great leader — a video of his extraordinary
speech titled “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered in New York’s Riverside Church in
April 4, 1967. This was followed by a video of King’s talk to exploited
sanitation workers and their supporters in Memphis April 3, 1968, titled
"I Have Been to the Mountain Top." It may make you smile, and cry, and
wish he was with us today. The next day he was murdered. The video is at
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/20/special_dr_martin_luther_king_jr
—————————
3. OBAMA DEFENDS NSA SPYING ON AMERICANS
 |
| One flag wasn't enough to portray the patriotism of the NSA. |
By Jack A. Smith
When
he ran for the presidency in 2007-08, Sen. Barack Obama pledged to dismantle
the most intrusive aspects of President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 surveillance
programs. Instead, since taking office in January 2009, President Obama has
secretly allowed those programs to expand as well as adding a
number of his own measures that increasingly jeopardize American civil
liberties.
Ever
since whistle-blowing NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the elephantine
extent of the Bush-Obama Surveillance State’s domestic and foreign spying last
summer, White House and NSA officials have sought through obfuscation and
fabrication to minimize the impact of these disclosures. Public opinion against
surveillance measures, however, has been slowly gaining in the last several
months.
Opposition
had reached the point when a nationwide speech from Obama was required to ease
growing national distrust. Speaking from the Justice Dept. Jan. 17, with six
large American flags directly behind him to emphasize the importance of
national security and patriotism, Obama declared: “The reforms I’m proposing
today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are
being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain
the tools they need to keep us safe.”
His
effort to convince the American people that the National Security Agency’s mass
surveillance apparatus constituted no danger to domestic civil liberties
evidently failed, according to a Jan. 17-19 poll conducted by the Pew Research
Center/USA Today. They reported, “among 1,504 adults, overall approval of the
program has declined since last summer, when the story first broke. Today, 40%
approve of the government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part
of anti-terrorism efforts, while 53% disapprove. In July, more Americans
approved (50%) than disapproved (44%) of the program.”
Regardless
of public qualms, it is obvious that the NSA’s monumental domestic and foreign
spying will continue with only superficial changes, judging by the proposals
Obama suggested in his defense of domestic and foreign snooping. What will not
change are the worst excesses of all — the bulk collection of phone records and
other sensitive data allowed by the Patriot Act, the dragnet surveillance of
international communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), and warrantless “backdoor” searches of Americans’ international
communications.
After
the speech, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero commented: “The president
should end – not mend – the government's collection and retention of all
law-abiding Americans' data. When the government collects and stores every
American's phone call data, it is engaging in a textbook example of an
'unreasonable search' that violates the constitution.”
Most
of the Senate and House appear to support the NSA surveillance, either as it now
stands or with Obama’s tepid “reforms” intended to deceive and lull Americans concerned
about privacy rights. The continued erosion of civil liberties is further
assured by the composition of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
both of which are in the hands of fanatically pro-surveillance chairs —
Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Many
Republican politicians, aside from libertarians in their ranks, seem content
with the NSA’s spying apparatus. Republican House Speaker John Boehner sees no
need for changes, evidently reflecting the views of most GOP House members.
A
most unusual left-right coalition of 125 House members —almost evenly from both
parties — is demanding substantial safeguards against intrusive domestic
spying, particularly the end of the bulk collection of phone records. They
support H.R.3361 - USA Freedom Act, which probably will never pass if allowed
to reach the floor.
The
bill is sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner Jr., a Republican who originally
championed and introduced the Patriot Act in 2001. He now opposes as grossly
excessive some of the NSA’s usages of the Act. Only two New York State House
members joined the co-sponsors — Democrat Jerrold Nadler (10th CD) and
Republican Chris Gibson (19th CD).
Some
of the main surveillance changes proposed by Obama include the following.
•
While not dismantling the NSA’s bulk collection of billions of records — as
most civil liberties proponents demand — Obama wants to store this
ever-accumulating metadata in a non-government facility, leaving it up to
negotiation with Congress to determine where that would be.
Commenting
on this provision, the New York Times editorialized Jan. 18: “Obama should have
called for sharp reductions in the amount of data the government collects, or
at least adopted his own review panel’s recommendation that telecommunications
companies keep the data they create and let the National Security Agency
request only what it needs. Instead, he gave the Justice Department and
intelligence officials until late March to come up with alternate storage
options, seeking a new answer when the best ones are already obvious.”
•
For the time being the NSA must now seek court approval for obtaining bulk
collection material, but Obama has not made a final decision. This, too, will
emerge from consultation with Congress. Critics point out that 99.7% of
surveillance requests to the secret FISA court over the last 33 years were
approved, and that there is little chance the court in question is going to
block more than a token number of requests.
•
After the U.S. was embarrassed by revelations that it was spying on the private
phones of the German and Brazilian leaders, Obama announced his administration
is no longer tapping the phones of closely allied presidents and prime
ministers. This appears to be the only restraint on massive U.S. spying on
virtually every world government.
•
The president will request that Congress create a panel of “public advocates”
to join government lawyers in in discussing broad policy issues (not requests
for judicial review) before the clandestine FISA court.
Obama
ignored a number of recommendations by the President’s Review Group — some of
which were also backed by provisions in the USA Freedom Act bill. Among them
was a call to strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and
publishing statistics about the numbers of people who have been surveilled
under government spy programs.
Glen
Greenwald, a foremost American critic of government surveillance programs and
the main journalistic recipient of Snowden’s material, was sharply critical of
the speech in a Jan. 17 article in the Guardian, noting that Obama’s “proposals
will do little more than maintain rigidly in place the very bulk surveillance
systems that have sparked such controversy and anger…. Ultimately, the radical
essence of the NSA – a system of suspicion-less spying aimed at hundreds of
millions of people in the U.S. and around the world – will fully endure even if
all of Obama's proposals are adopted. That's because Obama never hid the real
purpose of this process. It is, he and his officials repeatedly acknowledged,
‘to restore public confidence’ in the NSA.”
According
to analyst and MSNBC host Chris Hayes: “Much of this speech was directed to
members of the intelligence community, where [Obama] was like: ‘I'm your
friend, you guys are patriots and you guys are getting beat up, and I hear
you.’”
In
his talk, Obama for the first time mentioned Snowden by name. “Given the fact
of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or
his motivations,” he said, and then proceeded to do just that:
“If
any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own
hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to
keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy,” Obama said. “Moreover, the
sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more
heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact
our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come.”
 |
| Edward Snowdon, speaking out. |
Snowden
remains in Russia and is speaking out more publicly. On Jan. 23 he provided
online answers to recent questions he received mostly from Americans. One
answer was particularly relevant to the NSA’s bulk collecting of data on many
millions of Americans:
“They
effectively create ‘permanent records’ of our daily activities, even in the
absence of any wrongdoing on our part,” Snowden said. “This enables a
capability called ‘retroactive investigation,’ where once you come to the
government’s attention, they’ve got a very complete record of your daily
activity going back, under current law, often as far as five years. You might
not remember where you went to dinner on June 12th 2009, but the government does.
“The
power these records represent can’t be overstated. In fact, researchers have
referred to this sort of data gathering as resulting in ‘databases of ruin,’
where harmful and embarrassing details exist about even the most innocent
individuals. The fact that these records are gathered without the government
having any reasonable suspicion or probable cause justifying the seizure of
data is so divorced from the domain of reason as to be incapable of ever being
made lawful at all, and this view was endorsed as recently as today by the
federal government’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight board.
“Fundamentally,
a society in which the pervasive monitoring of the sum of civil activity
becomes routine is turning from the traditions of liberty toward what is an
inherently illiberal infrastructure of preemptive investigation, a sort of
quantified state where the least of actions are measured for propriety. I don’t
seek to pass judgment in favor or against such a state in the short time I have
here, only to declare that it is not the one we inherited, and should we as a
society embrace it, it should be the result of public decision rather than
closed conference.”
—————————
4. 85 RICHEST EQUAL 3.5 BILLION POOR
By Jon Slater
Wealthy
elites have co-opted political power to rig the rules of the economic game,
undermining democracy and creating a world where the 85 richest people own the
wealth of half of the world's population, the worldwide development
organization Oxfam warned in a Jan. 20 report.
“Working
For the Few,” published just ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
details the pernicious impact that widening inequality is having in both
developed and developing countries, helping the richest undermine democratic
processes and insist on policies that promote their interests at the expense of
everyone else.
The
report says that there is a growing global public awareness of this power-grab.
Polls carried out for Oxfam in the UK, Brazil, India, South Africa, Spain and
U.S. show that most people in all six countries believe that laws are skewed in
favor of the rich.
Oxfam
Executive Director Winnie Byanyima declared: "It is staggering that in the
21st Century, half of the world's population — that's three and a
half billion people — own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit
comfortably on a double-decker bus….
"We
cannot hope to win the fight against poverty without tackling inequality.
Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are
increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to
fight over crumbs from the top table….
“Without
a concerted effort to reduce inequality, the cascade of privilege and of
disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where
equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth
already amounts to little more than a 'winner takes all' windfall for the
richest. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out
of 30 countries for which data are available, meaning that in many places the
rich not only get more money but also pay less tax on it.
“A
recent U.S. study presented compelling statistical evidence that the interests
of the wealthy are overwhelmingly represented by the U.S. government compared
with those of the middle classes. The preferences of the poorest had no impact
on the votes of elected officials.
“This
capture of opportunities by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle
classes has helped create a situation where seven out of every ten people in
the world live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and
1% of the world's families now own 46% of its wealth ($110 trillion).
—
From Oxfam, Jan.20, 2014. Oxfam is “a global movement of people who share the
belief that, in a world rich in resources, poverty isn't inevitable. It's an
injustice, which can and must, be overcome.”
—————————
5. HOME $WEET HOME
 |
| $100 million Chateau des Fleurs (Estate of the Flowers), in Bel Air, Calif. |
Edited from Too Much, L.A. Times,
AlterNet
A surviving
mansion from France’s royal golden age? Not exactly. This nearly completed new
abode, the Chateau des Fleurs (Estate
of the Flowers), sits in Bel
Air, Calif., a deep-pocket haunt in Los Angeles County. The owner, an L.A.
lawyer and real estate magnate, has spent five years on the home’s
construction. The current value: $100 million.
The
60,000-square-foot home features “husband-and-wife wings, with communal rooms
where the couple will meet in the middle,” says local realtor Jeffrey Hyland. The mansion features a ballroom, three
elevators, a catering kitchen, a squash court and a beauty salon, a pool, a
paddle tennis court pavilion, a guardhouse and a guesthouse on over 10 acres.
If $100 million is excessive for
your bank account, how about One Riverside Park, a new “luxury condominium”
apartment house in New York City with a great view and several bedrooms for
“over $25 million” for a unit, plus upkeep?
A new crop of
global super-rich is pouring into the United States, changing the economic
landscape from Manhattan to Los Angeles. They’re driving up the price of real
estate, pushing out the middle class and going on buying binges that would make
Gilded Age robber barons blush.
First they want
the hotel room — perhaps the storied, $15,000-a-night penthouse at the Fairmont
San
Francisco, where guests receive honey made by the Fairmont’s own honeybees.
Next they want the shopping spree, snapping up million-dollar diamond Chanel
watches and $1,000-per-ounce perfume. Then they want to buy a home in their
favorite playground — maybe a $90 million pad at Manhattan’s behemoth One57
skyscraper where they can pay negligible taxes yet enjoy the full menu of New
York City services. If they need wheels, there’s always a $7.5 million
gold-plated Lamborghini. And for the thirsty, drop into Manhattan’s King Cole
Bar for a $760 glass of cognac.
With all the
recent talk about the 1% and the 99% some of America's wealthiest seem
concerned that peasants with pitchforks may be coming. Forbes reports expensive
outlays for home security have “increased markedly over the last five years.”
California’s
American Saferoom Door Company is now selling over 50 Kevlar-lined,
bullet-resistant doors a year, at $20,000 apiece. Another West Coast firm,
Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments, is building multi-million-dollar
bunkers deep underground that come with their own geothermal power and
sustainable food supplies. A wealthy family, notes Forbes, could survive in the
best planned of “these luxurious strongholds for up to three generations.”
—————————
6. DENIAL ABOUT CATASTROPHIC RISKS
[Following
are excerpts from a thoughtful article by Martin Rees, former president of The Royal Society; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology
& Astrophysics, University of Cambridge; Master, Trinity College; and
author of seven books including “From Here to Infinity.” His thesis is that
catastrophe beckons unless human society is finally equipped with the
ability to socially, politically and economically control the negative aspects
of scientific achievements — from nuclear weapons, to global warming, major
biological advances and the like.]
By Martin Rees
Those
of us fortunate enough to live in the developed world fret too much about minor
hazards of everyday life: improbable air crashes, carcinogens in food, and so
forth. But we are less secure than we think. We should worry far more about
scenarios that have thankfully not yet happened — but which, if they occurred,
could cause such world-wide devastation that even once would be too often.
Much
has been written about possible ecological shocks triggered by the collective
impact of a growing and more demanding world population on the biosphere, and
about the social and political tensions stemming from scarcity of resources or
climate change. But even more worrying are the downsides of powerful new
technologies: cyber-, bio-, and nano-. We're entering an era when a few
individuals could, via error or terror, trigger a societal breakdown with such
extreme suddenness that palliative government actions would be overwhelmed.
 |
Synthetic or artificial biology is a fairly new
technology that must be carefully monitored to
avoid dangerous unethical results.
|
The
Anthropocene era, when the main global threats come from humans and not from
nature, began with the mass deployment of thermonuclear weapons. [Activist Newsletter: The Anthropocene is an informal geologic
chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human
activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's
ecosystems.] Throughout the Cold War, there were several occasions when the
superpowers could have stumbled toward nuclear Armageddon through muddle or
miscalculation. Those who lived anxiously through the Cuba crisis would have
been not merely anxious but paralyzed with fear had they realized just how
close the world then was to catastrophe. Only later did we learn that President
Kennedy assessed the odds of nuclear war, at one stage, as "somewhere
between one in three and even."
….
We will always have to worry about thermonuclear weapons. But a new trigger for
societal breakdown will be the environmental stresses consequent on climate
change. Many still hope that our civilization can segue towards a low-carbon
future without trauma and disaster. My pessimistic guess, however, is that
global annual CO2 emissions won't be turned around in the next 20 years. But by
then we'll know — perhaps from advanced computer modeling, but also from how
much global temperatures have actually risen —whether or not the feedback from
water vapor and clouds strongly amplifies the effect of CO2 itself in creating
a greenhouse effect….
Nuclear
weapons are the worst downside of 20th century science. But there are novel
concerns stemming from the impact of fast-developing 21st century
technologies. Our interconnected world depends on elaborate networks: electric
power grids, air traffic control, international finance, just-in-time delivery
and so forth. Unless these are highly resilient, their manifest benefits could
be outweighed by catastrophic (albeit rare) breakdowns cascading through the
system.
Moreover
a contagion of social and economic breakdown would spread worldwide via
computer networks and digital wildfire — literally at the speed of light. The
threat is terror as well as error. Concern about cyber-attack, by criminals or
by hostile nations, is rising sharply. Synthetic biology, likewise, offers huge
potential for medicine and agriculture — but it could facilitate bioterror.
It
is hard to make a clandestine H-bomb, but millions will have the capability and
resources to misuse these dual use technologies. Freeman Dyson looks towards an
era when children can design and create new organisms just as routinely as he,
when young, played with a chemistry set. Were this to happen, our ecology (and
even our species) would surely not survive unscathed for long.
In
a media landscape oversaturated with sensational science stories, "end of
the world" Hollywood productions, and Mayan apocalypse warnings, it may be
hard to persuade the wide public that there are indeed things to worry about
that could arise as unexpectedly as the 2008 financial crisis, and have far
greater impact. I'm worried that by 2050 desperate efforts to minimize or cope
with a cluster of risks with low probability but catastrophic consequences may
dominate the political agenda.
—————————
7. POLL: CREATIONISM OR EVOLUTION?
By the Activist
Newsletter
The
latest figures are in on the perennial argument in the U.S. between believers
in creationism and those who favor evolution. Read it and — unless one is of antediluvian propensity — weep.
It
should be no surprise that most creationists vote Republican, but Democrats and
Independents have a significant share as well, according to a recent poll from
the Pew Research Center. Here are the figures:
· Republicans: 48% believe human beings have existed
in their present form “from the beginning;” 43% subscribe to a form of
evolution. The remaining 9% presumably didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Oddly, the
Republican creationists increased considerably from 39% in 2009.
· Democrats: 27% reject the existence of evolution,
down from 30% in 2009; 67% accept a form of evolution.
· Independents: 28% are creationists, compared to 27%
in 2009; 67% accept a form of evolution.
A
Gallup poll several months ago found that 46% of all Americans believe “God
created humans in their present form,” compared to a total average of 33% in
the Pew Poll.
We
mentioned “a form of evolution” for a reason. In addition to the 46% of strict
creationists, Gallup reports 32% believe “humans evolved with God guiding the process (compared to 38% in 1982); only 15% believe that humans evolved without
mystical intervention (compared to 9% in 1982).
In
total, at least 78% of the American people think that a supernatural being is
responsible for human development, through creation or guidance, a thesis at
odds with scientific knowledge; 14% disagreed; and 7% appear to be unsure or
won’t tell. No one, it seems, has
calculated the degree to which the unscientific beliefs of this religious majority
have impacted upon all aspects of society throughout history — social,
political, economic and cultural — but it’s immense, and rarely progressive.
One
of the more interesting changes in recent years has been the large increase in
Republican creationists noted in the Pew survey. According to Zack Beauchamp in
Think Progress here’s why:
“There
are two keys to understanding what the Pew poll teaches us about Republicans.
First, the drop in belief in evolution is among Republicans and, more or less,
Republicans only. Acceptance of human evolution was basically the same among
Democrats and independents in 2013 as it was in 2009. Second, the share of the
total population that believes in evolution hasn’t changed at all. The drop in
Republican belief doesn’t appear to be people changing their minds about
evolution so much as people who already didn’t believe in evolution becoming
Republicans.
“Why
might that be? The obvious explanation is the changing character of the
Republican base. When Republicans win in recent years, those victories are won
on the backs of old voters, white voters, and religious voters. While race
isn’t super-important in predicting views on evolution, age and religion are.
Each generation of Americans, Pew found, is increasingly more likely to accept
natural human evolution; Americans 18-29 do so by a 68-27 margin, while the number
for seniors (65+) is 49-36. Likewise, white evangelical protestants are the
group most likely to reject evolution, while the religiously unaffiliated are
by far the most likely to accept it.”
—————————
8. CLIMATE'S SEVEN DEADLY SINNERS
By Kate Ravilious
Historically,
global warming's worst offenders, in absolute terms, are the U.S., China,
Russia, Brazil, India, Germany and the UK in that order. New calculations
suggest that these nations are responsible for more than 60% of the global
warming between 1906 and 2005.
Damon
Matthews of Concordia University in Montreal and his colleagues calculated
national contributions to warming by weighting each type of emission according
to the atmospheric lifetime of the temperature change it causes. Using historical
data, they included carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and changes in
land use – such as deforestation. They also accounted for methane, nitrous
oxide and sulphate aerosols. These together account for 1.26°F of the world's
1.332°F warming between 1906 and 2005.
The
U.S. is the clear leader, responsible for 22% of the 1.26°F warming. China
[today’s largest greenhouse emitter] accounts for 9%, Russia for 8%, Brazil and
India 7% each, and Germany and the UK for 5% each.
"It
was surprising to see some of the less-industrialized countries with such high
rankings, but this also reflects their CO2 emissions related to
deforestation," says Matthews.
As
a visual aid, the team produced a map in which the countries are stretched or
shrunk depending on their contribution to warming in relation to their size.
Western Europe, the U.S., Japan and India are bloated beyond recognition;
Russia, China and Brazil stay roughly the same; and Canada, Australia and most
of Africa become stick thin. In this light, the climate contributions of
Russia, Brazil and China don't seem so out of line; they are in proportion to
their landmasses.
Dividing
each country's climate contribution by its population, arguably a fairer
measure, gives a different picture. When calculated this way, the top seven
positions are held by richer nations, and China and India drop to 19th and
20th, respectively.
—From
New Scientist magazine UK, Jan.15, 2014. The maps are at
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129523.100?cmpid=NLC%7CNSNS%7C2014-0116-GLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&#.UthQGhb3DFw
—————————
9. GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS IN 2014
[Following
is the introduction to a very long article forecasting geopolitical
developments throughout the year to come from Stratfor, a private “political
intelligence firm that provides strategic analysis and forecasting to
individuals and organizations around the world.” Stratfor is hardly politically
progressive but its insights often carry weight. These forecasts are, of
course, intelligent guesses and they can go wrong.]
By Stratfor,
Jan. 6, 2014.
 |
| It is sure worth an honest try. |
The
United States has long struggled to resurrect a balance of power in
the region that would allow Washington to once again manage and manipulate
relationships on both sides of the ethno-sectarian divide without directly
entangling itself in every quagmire that arises. Iran, for its part, knows
it has a limited time to negotiate the bounds of its sphere of
influence with an interested party in Washington while Tehran still has a
regional sphere of influence to claim. No party — including Israel, Saudi
Arabia and Iran's own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — will have enough
leverage to block this dialogue. The foundation for the negotiation has already
been laid, but the construction of a settlement that buries 34 years of hostile
relations will necessarily be a loud and trying process.
Even
as the United States takes care to avoid a confrontation with Moscow while
negotiating with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it will only be a
matter of time before a much freer Washington returns its gaze to the Russian
periphery. Russia will spend 2014 reinforcing the gains it has made over the
past decade in neutralizing and reorienting peripheral states toward Moscow.
Germany will quietly moderate Russia's steps in Central and Eastern Europe,
preferring a bargain with Moscow when it comes to thorny issues like EU energy
policy toward Russia.
China
will experience similar frustration in trying to balance deep reforms
against growing social and political constraints. Whereas the
European Union will continue to grapple in negotiations across 28 incredibly
diverse member states, China will gradually shift away from the Party's slower,
consensus-based decision-making to a more decisive model under
President Xi Jinping. Even so, China's underlying structural weaknesses mean
Beijing will have to pursue an incremental and cautious approach, both in
applying reforms at home and in trying to define a sphere of influence in its
near abroad.
By
and large, 2014 will be a year of careful deliberation and preparation
by the world's great powers, in which accommodation will likely prevail over
confrontation in their interactions. By contrast, the countries between these
great powers will grow restive as they try to adapt to their shifting
geopolitical environment, lacking the influence to play a decisive role in the
very issues redefining their neighborhoods.
—————————
10. AMERICA’S
SECRET WAR IN 134 COUNTRIES
They
operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through
the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the
Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of
Africa. They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops of waves
from the turquoise Caribbean to the deep blue Pacific. They conduct
missions in the oppressive heat of Middle Eastern deserts and the deep freeze
of Scandinavia. All over the planet, the Obama administration is waging a
secret war whose full extent has never been fully revealed — until now.
Since
September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every
conceivable way, from their numbers to their budget. Most telling,
however, has been the exponential rise in special ops deployments
globally. This presence — now, in nearly 70% of the world’s nations —
provides new evidence of the size and scope of a secret war being waged from
Latin America to the backlands of Afghanistan, from training missions with
African allies to information operations launched in cyberspace.
In
the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were
reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world. By 2010, that
number had swelled to 75, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the
Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman
Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120. Today,
that figure has risen higher still.
In
2013, elite U.S. forces were deployed in 134 countries around the globe,
according to Major Matthew Robert Bockholt of SOCOM Public Affairs. This
123% increase during the Obama years demonstrates how, in addition to
conventional wars and a CIA drone campaign, public diplomacy and extensive
electronic spying, the U.S. has engaged in still another significant and
growing form of overseas power projection. Conducted largely in the
shadows by America’s most elite troops, the vast majority of these missions
take place far from prying eyes, media scrutiny, or any type of outside
oversight, increasing the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic
consequences.
 |
| Special Ops — a breed apart. |
Formally
established in 1987, Special Operations Command has grown steadily in the
post-9/11 era. SOCOM is reportedly on track to reach 72,000
personnel in 2014, up from 33,000 in 2001. Funding for the command has
also jumped exponentially as its baseline budget, $2.3 billion in 2001, hit
$6.9 billion in 2013 ($10.4 billion, if you add in supplemental funding).
Personnel deployments abroad have skyrocketed, too, from 4,900 “man-years” in
2001 to 11,500 in 2013.
A
recent investigation by TomDispatch, using open source government documents and
news releases as well as press reports, found evidence that U.S. Special
Operations forces were deployed in or involved with the militaries of 106
nations around the world in 2012-2013. For more than a month during the
preparation of that article, however, SOCOM failed to provide accurate
statistics on the total number of countries to which special operators — Green
Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos, specialized
helicopter crews, boat teams, and civil affairs personnel — were
deployed.
“We
don’t just keep it on hand,” SOCOM’s Bockholt explained in a telephone
interview once the article had been filed. “We have to go searching
through stuff. It takes a long time to do that.” Hours later, just
prior to publication, he provided an answer to a question I first asked in
November of last year. “SOF [Special Operations forces] were deployed to
134 countries” during fiscal year 2013, Bockholt explained in an email.
Last
year, Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven explained his
vision for special ops globalization. In a statement to the House Armed
Services Committee, he said:
“USSOCOM
is enhancing its global network of SOF to support our interagency and
international partners in order to gain expanded situational awareness of
emerging threats and opportunities. The network enables small, persistent
presence in critical locations, and facilitates engagement where necessary or
appropriate.”
 |
| Special Ops, special equipment. |
Last
April and May, for instance, Special Ops personnel took part in training
exercises in Djibouti, Malawi, and the Seychelles Islands in the Indian
Ocean. In June, U.S. Navy SEALs joined Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, and
other allied Mideast forces for irregular warfare simulations in Aqaba,
Jordan. The next month, Green Berets traveled to Trinidad and Tobago to
carry out small unit tactical exercises with local forces. In August,
Green Berets conducted explosives training with Honduran sailors. In
September, according to media reports, U.S. Special Operations forces joined
elite troops from the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei,
Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia — as well as their counterparts
from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Russia for a
US-Indonesian joint-funded counter-terrorism exercise held at a training center
in Sentul, West Java.
In
October, elite U.S. troops carried out commando raids in Libya and Somalia,
kidnapping a terror suspect in the former nation while SEALs killed at least
one militant in the latter before being driven off under fire. In
November, Special Ops troops conducted humanitarian operations in the
Philippines to aid survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. The next month, members of the
352nd Special Operations Group conducted a training exercise involving
approximately 130 airmen and six aircraft at an airbase in England and Navy
SEALs were wounded while undertaking an evacuation mission in South
Sudan. Green Berets then rang in the new year with a January 1st combat
mission alongside elite Afghan troops in Bahlozi village in Kandahar province….
Although
elected in 2008 by many who saw him as an antiwar candidate, President Obama
has proved to be a decidedly hawkish commander-in-chief whose policies have
already produced notable instances of what in CIA trade-speak has long been
called blowback. While the Obama administration oversaw a U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq (negotiated by his predecessor), as well as a drawdown of U.S. forces
in Afghanistan (after a major military surge in that country), the president
has presided over a ramping up of the U.S. military presence in Africa, a reinvigoration
of efforts in Latin America, and tough talk about a rebalancing or “pivot to
Asia” (even if it has amounted to little as of yet).
The
White House has also overseen an exponential expansion of America’s drone
war. While President Bush launched 51 such strikes, President Obama has
presided over 330, according to research by the London-based Bureau of
Investigative Journalism. Last year, alone, the U.S. also engaged in
combat operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Recent
revelations from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden have
demonstrated the tremendous breadth and global reach of U.S. electronic
surveillance during the Obama years. And deep in the shadows, Special
Operations forces are now annually deployed to more than double the number of
nations as at the end of Bush’s tenure.
In
recent years, however, the unintended consequences of U.S. military operations
have helped to sow outrage and discontent, setting whole regions aflame.
More than 10 years after America’s “mission accomplished” moment, seven years
after its much vaunted surge, the Iraq that America helped make is in
flames. A country with no al-Qaeda presence before the U.S. invasion and
a government opposed to America’s “enemies” in Tehran now has a central
government aligned with Iran and two [invaded]cities flying al-Qaeda flags.
A
more recent U.S. military intervention to aid the ouster of Libyan dictator
Muammar Qaddafi helped send neighboring Mali, a U.S.-supported bulwark against
regional terrorism, into a downward spiral, saw a coup there carried out by a
U.S.-trained officer, ultimately led to a bloody terror attack on an Algerian
gas plant, and helped to unleash nothing short of a terror diaspora in the
region.
And
today South Sudan — a nation the U.S. shepherded into being, has supported
economically and militarily (despite its reliance on child soldiers), and has
used as a hush-hush base for Special Operations forces — is being torn apart by
violence and sliding toward civil war.
Secret
ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen,
and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well
the end result of clandestine U.S. support for Islamic militants against the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11. Strangely enough,
those at the other primary attack site that day, the Pentagon, seem not to have
learned the obvious lessons from this lethal blowback. Even today in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, more than 12 years after the U.S. invaded the former
and almost 10 years after it began conducting covert attacks in the latter, the
U.S. is still dealing with that Cold War-era fallout: with, for instance, CIA
drones conducting missile strikes against an organization (the Haqqani network)
that, in the 1980s, the Agency supplied with missiles.
Without
a clear picture of where the military’s covert forces are operating and what
they are doing, Americans may not even recognize the consequences of and
blowback from our expanding secret wars as they wash over the world. But
if history is any guide, they will be felt — from Southwest Asia to the
Mahgreb, the Middle East to Central Africa, and, perhaps eventually, in the United
States as well.
In
his blueprint for the future, SOCOM 2020, Admiral McRaven has touted the
globalization of U.S. special ops as a means to “project power, promote
stability, and prevent conflict.” Last year, SOCOM may have done just the
opposite in 134 places.
—
From TomDispatch, Jan. 16, 2014’
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175794/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_secret_wars_and_black_ops_blowback/
—Nick
Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow
at the Nation Institute. He is the author most recently of the New York Times
bestseller Kill Anything
That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (just out in paperback).
—————————
11.
THE RACE TOWARDS ROBOTIC WARFARE
By Sydney J.
Freedberg Jr.
More
robots, fewer people. That’s where the U.S. military is headed in the future.
But what kind of robots?
Army Gen. Robert Cone, four-star commander of
the powerful Training and Doctrine Command (aka TRADOC), said that the
service is studying how robots could help replace 25% of the
soldiers in each of its 4,000-strong combat brigades. That’s
because the current budget crunch is pushing the military to
replace expensive human beings— and the expensive
hardware required to keep them alive — with cheaper and expendable robots.
 |
| Armed battlefield robot — the Pentagon's new toy. |
What’s
hotly debated, however, is what jobs robots should do, under what level of
human control. Should do they the drudge work of war, sparing humans the
“dirty, dull, and dangerous” jobs like clearing roadside bombs? Or should we
trust robots to kill on their own initiative?
The
Army basically wants R2-D2s and mechanized mules, helpful bots that haul
supplies, scout ahead, and provide technical support to the human heroes who do
the actual fighting. They want small robots that trundle alongside the foot
troops, loaded with sophisticated sensors so they can point out potential
dangers, “robots that respond, if you will, like a bird dog,” said
TRADOC’s Maj. Gen. William Hix in a conference call with journalists
this morning.
They
want mid-size robots that carry extra supplies for infantrymen on
long patrols, a concept once officially called MULE. They want
big trucks that drive themselves, entire supply convoys where a long line
of robots plays “follow the leader” behind a single human-driven vehicle at the
front. They want scout drones that fly ahead of manned
helicopters and report back what they find.
But,
as TRADOC Col. Kevin Felix once told me, “No Terminators.” Not so outside the
Army. In a thinktank report released today, 20YY: Preparing
for War in the Robotic Age, former Navy Under Secretary Robert Work and
co-author Shawn Brimley call for developing “autonomous attack systems”
cheap and numerous enough to form “reconnaissance-strike swarms.” Think big,
robotic killer bees that attack with smart bombs instead of stingers and that
coordinate their maneuvers using wi-fi instead of pheromones.
— From Breaking Defense. 01-23-14. This article continues at http://breakingdefense.com/2014/01/bird-dogs-drones-terminators-swarms-the-race-towards-robotic-warfare/
—————————
12. WHO’S
ACTUALLY FIGHTING IN SYRIA?
 |
| Two Al-Qaeda affiliates oppose Syria government. Above, ISIS troops. (AFP photo) |
[It is highly unlikely that the Syrian regime-change talks that opened Jan.21 in Switzerland — based on U.S. insistence that President Bashar Assad must step down — will succeed. Washington seeks to have its client group, the Syrian National Coalition, assume principle command in Damascus, but there is no indication that this organization has a popular following in Syria. At the same time, the Obama Administration is well aware that the main fighting forces opposed to the regime are Islamist jihadists, which it does not want to take power. In all probability the White House prefers that the devastating three-year war will continue indefinitely until the success of U.S. interests in Syria becomes more auspicious. Meanwhile, here is a look at who is actually doing the fighting in Syria, according to Associated Press from Beirut, Jan. 22.]
By Ryan Lucas
Here's
a list of key fighting groups inside Syria:
• SYRIAN
GOVERNMENT:
Despite major defections early in the conflict and the loss of significant
territory to rebels, the Syrian military remains a potent force against an
outgunned opposition. President Bashar Assad's inner circle has largely
remained cohesive and united, avoiding high-level defections that would sap its
strength. The military has successfully exploited its greatest advantage, its
uncontested airpower, to pound opposition-held areas and sustain far-flung
bases holding out in rebel territory. Assad has bolstered his overstretched
military over the past year with the creation of the National Defense Force, a
pro-government militia that draws heavily from Syria's minority communities and
reportedly receives training from Iran.
• HEZBOLLAH: The Lebanese
Shiite militant group has sent its gunmen to fight alongside Assad's forces,
providing a significant boost to the government's overstretched military.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has suggested he would do everything it
takes to save the Syrian government, which has been a patron and ally of the
militant group for decades. Hezbollah's critics say the group's armed
intervention in Syria has stoked sectarian tensions at home and needlessly
dragged Lebanon into the maelstrom next door. Hezbollah's deep involvement in
Syria underlines the regional sectarian aspect of the conflict, in which an Iranian-backed
Shiite axis faces off against Sunnis supported by Gulf Arabs in a proxy war
extending into Lebanon and Iraq.
 |
| Al-Nusra fighters in Syria. Horseman carries a black flag. |
• JABHAT
AL-NUSRA:
An Islamist extremist group affiliated with al-Qaida. Jabhat al-Nusra, or the
Nusra Front, is one of the most powerful rebel factions on the battlefield, but
has been eclipsed to a degree by the Islamic State. In contrast to that group,
activists say the Nusra Front is primarily composed of Syrians, and has shown a
pragmatic streak and ability to compromise with other rebel groups that the
Islamic State has not. The U.S. has designated the Nusra Front a terrorist
organization. The group has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest
suicide bombings targeting regime and military facilities. The presence of
Islamic extremists among the rebels is one reason the West has not equipped the
Syrian opposition with sophisticated weapons, such as anti-aircraft missiles.
• ISLAMIC
FRONT:
An alliance of seven powerful conservative and ultraconservative rebel groups
that merged in late November. Analysts estimate the number of fighters in the
group could number as high as 45,000. The Islamic Front wants to create an
Islamic state in Syria, and rejects the Western-backed Syrian National
Coalition and its military wing, known as the Supreme Military Council. Leaders
of the Islamic Front have publicly criticized the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant for its brutal tactics, and the Islamic Front was among the rebel
factions that have battled the al-Qaida-linked group this month. The Islamic
Front rejects the Geneva conference, and has said it will not abide by any
agreement reached at the talks.
• SUPREME
MILITARY COUNCIL: Syria's more moderate rebel units, known together as the Free
Syrian Army [FSA], regrouped more than a year ago under a unified rebel command
called the Supreme Military Council and headed by Gen. Salim Idris. Idris spent
more than 30 years in the Syrian military and is seen as a secular-minded
moderate. The Supreme Military Council and its FSA brigades have been eclipsed
over the past year by more conservative groups like the Islamic Front (which
contains former FSA outfits) as well as extremist factions like the Nusra Front
and the Islamic State. The fading fortunes of the Supreme Military Council stem
in part from its inability to secure greater support, particularly the delivery
of weapons, from its Western and Arab allies.
—————————
13.
ARIEL SHARON: SERIAL WAR CRIMINAL
By Richard Becker
“Ariel
Sharon: Israeli Hawk Who Sought Peace on His Terms, Dies at 85,” read the headline
in the Jan. 12 issue of The New York Times. The Washington Post called Sharon
“a monumental figure in Israel’s modern history” who “sought to become the
architect of a peaceful future.” This version of Sharon’s life was typical of
the coverage of the U.S. corporate mass media.
Most
of the world knows better, and none know better than the Palestinian and
Lebanese people, thousands of whom were victims of this serial war criminal.
Sharon’s career was built on massacres – from Qibya in 1953, to Sabra and
Shatila in 1982, to Jenin in 2002.
A
virulent anti-Arab racist, Sharon had a long history of murder and repression
against the Palestinian people. In the early 1950s, he commanded Unit 101, a
special forces company that carried out massacres against Palestinian exiles in
Gaza and Jordan.
Despite
having conquered 78% of Palestine in the 1948 war, Israel’s leaders were far
from satisfied. As has been extensively documented by many Israeli as well
as Palestinian historians, Israel sought to provoke a “Second Round” in the
early 1950s, in order to take over the West Bank (then under Jordanian rule),
Gaza and more.
A
main Israeli tactic was “retaliation.” In response to recently expelled
Palestinians coming across the borders back into their homeland from Gaza and
the West Bank, the Israeli army (IDF) would carry out large-scale attacks
and massacres. “Retaliation” was really provocation; the intent was to get
Jordan or Egypt to react militarily to the massacres, which could then be used
by Israel as a pretext for a new war of conquest.
For
diplomatic and public relations purposes, it was extremely important to Israel
to be seen as victim rather than aggressor. This remains true down to the present.
On
Oct. 14, 1953, Unit 101, led by Sharon, attacked Qibya, a small, undefended
village inside the West Bank, and massacred 69 people, many of them burned
alive inside their homes. Unit 101 suffered no casualties. It was an atrocity
sanctioned at the top and carried out for political ends.
The
Qibya raid drew worldwide condemnation, and Jordan, much weaker militarily than
Israel, did not respond as the Israeli leaders had hoped. The conquest of the
West Bank and Gaza would have to wait until 1967.
Following
the 1967 war of conquest, Sharon was the military governor of Gaza, renowned
for extreme brutality in carrying out a policy of systematic torture and
assassination of Palestinians resisting occupation. Sharon is most notorious
for the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra
and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. As Israel's defense minister, Sharon
organized and led, with full U.S. backing, the massive assault on Lebanon. For
three months in the summer of 1982, Israeli bombers, supplied by the United
States, relentlessly pounded Beirut and other cities and towns, killing more
than 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Lebanon had no air defense
system.
The
stated objective of the invasion was to drive the Palestine Liberation
Organization out of Lebanon. There are more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees —
those driven from their homeland to make way for the state of Israel in 1948
and their descendants — living in Lebanon. Altogether, more than seven million
Palestinians today live in exile.
 |
| Shoran's victims of Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre. |
Sharon,
however, publicly stated that 2,000 "terrorists" remained in the
Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut. In reality, those
remaining in the camps were almost all children, women and elderly men. Virtually
all of the young men had been evacuated.
Israeli
tanks surrounded the camps in violation of the cease-fire agreement. Then, on
Sept. 16, 1982, with the full knowledge and consent of Sharon and the Israeli
occupiers then in control of the area, Lebanese Phalangist militias were
allowed to enter Sabra and Shatila in west Beirut.
The
fascist Phalange — open admirers of Adolf Hitler who took their name from
Franco's party in Spain — were Israel's closest allies in Lebanon. The
Phalangists wore Israeli-supplied uniforms and carried Israeli-supplied
weapons.
For
three days, they rampaged through the Palestinian camps, torturing, raping and
murdering. Many of the victims were disemboweled or decapitated. No one was
spared — neither the very old nor the very young. By the end, more than 1,900
Palestinian children, women and men lay dead.
Though
overwhelming evidence showed that Sharon and other Israeli commanders had sent
the fascists into the undefended camps, a 1983 Israeli court of inquiry found
Sharon only “indirectly responsible” for the massacre. One might think that
even “indirect” responsibility for the butchering of nearly 2,000 people would
mean at least an end to the guilty individual’s political career. But not in
apartheid Israel. While Sharon was forced to resign from the Israeli cabinet
following the court of inquiry, he continued to be a key political actor and
came back as a cabinet minister in the 1990s.
On
Sept. 28, 2000, Sharon staged another famous provocation, “visiting” the
Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, an important Muslim holy site. While proclaiming
his “right” to travel anywhere in Jerusalem, he did not venture out alone.
Instead, he was accompanied by 1,500 armed police. Even so, hundreds of
Palestinians fought back, marking the start of the Al-Aqsa intifada or
uprising, which would continue for many years.
Five
months later, in February 2001, Sharon was elected prime minister. In March
2002, the Israeli military carried out a massive operation in the West Bank and
Gaza seeking to suppress the intifada. Among the most brutal attacks was one on
the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Over several days, using
militarized bulldozers along with heavy weapons, the Israel military demolished
much of the camp, burying many people alive.
The same year, Sharon began
building the apartheid wall through the West Bank, confiscating still more
Palestinian land.
The
false claim that Sharon turned into a “man of peace” hinges on his decision to
withdraw military bases and the small, non-viable Israeli settlements from
inside Gaza. And while Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the withdrawal, Israel
continued to keep Gaza surrounded and blockaded.
Sharon’s
decision to withdraw from Gaza, while denounced by some fascist settlers, was
based on a determination to secure even more control of the West Bank. In a
July 21, 2000 interview with the Jerusalem Post, several months before he
became prime minister, Sharon called for Israel to "retain greater
Jerusalem, united and undivided... under full Israeli sovereignty.” This refers
to the Palestinian Old City and all of the surrounding areas that Israel
illegally annexed after the 1967 war.
“Israel
will retain under its full control sufficiently wide security zones — in both
the East and West. The Jordan Valley, in its broadest sense, as defined by the
Allon Plan, will be the eastern security zone of Israel.”
Sharon called for
large areas of the illegally occupied West Bank to be annexed. “Jewish
towns, villages and communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as well as access
roads leading to them... will remain under full Israeli control,” Sharon
continued. “Judea and Samaria” is the Israeli settlers’ name for the West
Bank.
“Israel
does not accept under any circumstances the Palestinian demand for the right to
return. Israel bears no moral responsibility for the refugees’ predicament. As
a vital existential need, Israel must continue to control the underground fresh
water aquifers in western Samaria [the West Bank].... The Palestinians are
obligated to prevent contamination of Israel’s water resources.”
The
Palestinian “state” that Sharon proposed was one that would be unlike any other
country in the world. It would not control its own resources including water,
or its airspace, or even its own borders, and would be a defenseless entity
smack up against one of the world’s most highly militarized states.
False
headlines notwithstanding, Sharon will go down in history not as any kind of
imagined peacemaker, but instead as the racist mass murderer that he was.
—
From ANSWER Coalition, Jan. 13, 2014. Richard Becker is the author of "Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire."
—
Democracy Now devoted its entire Jan. 13 broadcast to a critical appraisal of
Sharon’s life, mainly featuring Professor Rashid Khalidi and Noam Chomsky. http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/13/rashid_khalidi_noam_chomsky_for_peace
—————————
14.
ILLUSIONS OF NUCLEAR SAFETY
[Eric Schlosser, author of the famous bestseller
“Fast Food Nation,” recently authored “Command and Control,” about the horrific
danger of nuclear accidents. Here is an excerpt from his interview in the Jan.
20 issue of The Nation.]
A
single safety switch prevented the detonation of a hydrogen bomb in Faro, North
Carolina, in 1961. That type of switch was later discovered to have been
defective in dozens of cases. Had the weapon detonated, it could have sent
lethal radioactive fallout as far north as Washington, DC, and New York City.
On
September 18, 1980, a couple of workmen were doing routine maintenance at a
Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas. The single warhead on the Titan II
had three times the explosive force of all the bombs used during the Second
World War combined — including both atomic bombs. As one of the workers
prepared to remove a pressure cap near the top of the missile, the socket fell
off his wrench handle. The tool fell about 70 feet, bounced off part of the
silo, struck the missile and pierced its metal skin. Thousands of gallons of
highly flammable, highly explosive rocket fuel began to fill the silo. Had [the
warhead] detonated, the state of Arkansas would have been consumed by
firestorms….
Given
the many close calls that we’ve had, there’s no simple explanation for why a
nuclear weapon has never detonated accidentally in the United States. A great
deal of credit must be given to our weapon designers for their technical
expertise, and to the military personnel who risked their lives (and sometimes
lost them) trying to prevent nuclear catastrophes. But a hell of a lot of good
luck was involved, too. And there’s no guarantee that luck will last….
I
wrote this book to remind people that the danger didn’t vanish along with the
Cold War. I’d like to see a vigorous national debate about our nuclear weapons
— how many we should have, why we need them, how they might be used. The same
sort of activism now directed at climate change should be focused on nuclear
weapons worldwide. Global warming and the detonation of nuclear weapons are the
two existential threats that mankind faces today. And neither one is
inevitable.
[From
The New York Times: “On Jan.15, the Air Force said that 34
officers responsible for launching land-based nuclear missiles were pulled off
the job and their security clearances suspended for cheating, or failing to
report cheating, on tests that assess their knowledge of how to operate and
launch nuclear weapons. They are based at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana,
home to 150 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The cheating was
discovered during an investigation into illegal drug possession in which 11
officers, including two accused in the cheating scandal, were under suspicion.”
—
A review of “Command and Control” is at
http://www.thenation.com/article/176631/eric-schlosser-and-illusion-nuclear-weapons-safety
—————————
15.
BOOKS: RACIST DOG WHISTLE POLITICS
 |
| The old days are gone for good, but "racism in this country is not dead." |
By Darrell Delamaide, MarketWatch
Review:
“Dog Whistle Politics — How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and
Wrecked the Middle Class.” By Ian Haney López. Oxford Univ. Press U.S., 304 pp.
$24.95.
Not only is the U.S. far from achieving a
post-racial society, but dog-whistle politics is reinforcing the role of race
and contributing to the decline of the middle class as whites vote against
their own best interests.
This
is the thesis of Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of
California-Berkeley, who says that racism in this country is not dead, only
taking on new forms as it adapts to changes in society.
While
neither the concept of dog-whistle politics nor the phenomenon of single-issue
voters is new, Haney López re-frames the debate in terms of race and its impact
on our widening political divide and growing economic inequality.
Dog-whistle
politics refers to code words or phrases that carry connotations readily
apparent to a target audience, much as a dog can hear the an ultrasonic whistle
that doesn’t register with humans. The Republican Party, he argues, is using
coded language to rally white voters to its side, even if it means voting
against their own economic interests.
“Over
the last half-century conservatives have used racial pandering to win support
from white voters for policies that principally favor the very wealthy and
wreck the middle class,” Haney López writes. “Running on racial appeals, the
right has promised to protect supposedly embattled whites, when in reality it
has largely harnessed government to the interests of the very affluent.”
Veiled
references to the undeserving poor, illegal aliens and sharia law carry racial
undertones that avoid the stigma of overt racism but nonetheless provoke the desired
reaction.
This
tactic does not concern just the blacks, Latinos and Muslims targeted by these
innuendoes, the author goes on to say, but also the vast swath of the white
middle class, whether they fall in line with this Republican appeal or not.
“Members
of the middle class … typically harbor an unfounded certainty that race holds
little relevance to them or their future,” Haney López writes. “The could not
be more wrong, for race constitutes the dark magic by which middle-class voters
have been convinced to turn government over to the wildly affluent,
notwithstanding the harm this does to themselves.”
Haney
López cites the arguments developed by his professor at Harvard Law School,
Derrick Bell, which he resisted at the time but has now come to accept — that
racism is a permanent feature in American society and politics.
Permanent,
the author came to realize, does not mean fixed and unchanging. The key is that
it adapts in order to maintain white dominance.
“The
bottom line is that Professor Bell was correct,” he says, “racism is not
disappearing, it’s adapting.”
Haney
López’s book, “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented
Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class,” appears as the polarization around the
country’s first black president shows no signs of abating.
Pundits
proclaim that demographics herald the triumph of a multiracial Democratic
Party, but in fact a Republican Party that panders to whites while rejecting
and even insulting most nonwhites continues to win elections.
In
our gerrymandered country, constitutionally skewed to protect minority interest
groups, there is talk of Republicans retaining control of the House in the 2014
elections and even capturing the Senate, despite all the talk of non-white
racial minorities becoming the majority.
President
Barack Obama, in fact, has exacerbated the problem by trying to stand above
race. “But in order to avoid race,” Haney López says, “he apparently calculates
he must keep his distance from liberalism, too.”
This
accounts for Obama’s failure to utilize the financial crisis for a genuine dose
of liberal policies, the author says, instead of accepting “conservative
mythmaking” about tax cuts and deficit reduction.
Haney
López does not buy the argument that Republican obstructionism restricted
Obama’s field of action when he took office. The Republican Party was in
disarray, and its leaders, from outgoing President George Bush to election
losers John McCain and Sarah Palin, were unpopular.
“Far
from being hamstrung by the right, Obama’s refusal to offer a liberal
counterweight to right-wing mythmaking may have contributed to the conservative
resurgence,” the author says. “The vacuum left by Obama’s refusal to embrace
liberal ideas and policies allowed conservatives to offer once again their
standard story of race and betrayal, big government and victimization.”
Haney
López catalogues evolving dog-whistle topics as racism continues to adapt — the
attack on public schools, the xenophobic warnings about competition from China,
and even expanding the definition of “white” to include Latinos much as it
earlier expanded from a narrow Anglo-Saxon base to include southern Europeans.
The
best antidote to this coded racism, the author concludes, is to call it out for
what it is, ignoring the catcalls that doing so is playing the race card.
Civil-rights
organizations must continue to fight for racial justice, which is far from
being achieved simply because the first black president has been elected.
Unions must enter that space where race and poverty intersect.
Above
all, the author contends, there must be an effort to restore liberalism. This
may mean supporting Democrats for the most part, but Democratic politicians
have been known to resort to dog-whistle politics, too.
The
challenge, Haney López believes, is to renew the Democratic Party’s commitment
to liberalism. He blames the fading impact of Occupy Wall Street on the
movement’s failure to engage in partisan politics and force change in the
Democratic Party in the way the tea-party movement pushed the Republican Party
to the right.
Haney
López brings his argument full circle to the current fight against poverty and
inequality. He cites Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union address
urging a “second Bill of Rights” — which included “the right to earn enough to
provide adequate food and education and clothing” — and Martin Luther King
Jr.’s 1968 call for a Poor People’s March on Washington to seek “a new economic
deal for the poor.”
This
is not looking backward, the author says, but is a call “to restore an
interrupted future.” He urges a new commitment “to making sure racism doesn’t
continue to bind our greatest aspirations.”
—
A video and text of Ian Haney López’ interview on Democracy Now Jan. 14 is at
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/14/dog_whistle_politics_how_politicians_use
—————————
16. SLOGANS
DEFINE CHINA’S 2014 PATH
[This article in The Diplomat Dec. 31 notes that several new political slogans have
emerged from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first year in office. As author
Shannon Tiezzi notes: “Political slogans are a key to governing. From Mao
Zedong on, every leader has chosen one or more slogans that come to define his term
in office.” Following are four of the most important slogans that she
identifies.]
By Shannon
Tiezzi
1.
Chinese Dream: The catchphrase of the year award goes to “Chinese dream,”
which was mentioned by Xi almost immediately after he officially assumed power
at the National Party Congress. As Xi’s first political slogan, the term has
the potential to guide China’s development throughout the next 10 years. So
what does it mean? In his initial explanation, in November 2012, Xi said
“Everyone is talking about a China Dream. I believe the revival of the Chinese
nation is the greatest dream of the nation since modern times.” Later,
after the National People’s Congress in March 2013, Xi explained further, tying
the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” to increasing the standard of
living for individual citizens.
 |
| President Xi has a Big Dream for China. |
Now,
the Chinese Dream is used by media outlets to describe almost everything from
Yao Ming’s sports achievements to the success of a popular science website. A
search for the Chinese phrase on People’s
Daily turns up over 80,000 hits, and the word was also named the #1 most
popular phrase of the year by Xinhua
[news agency]. Besides indicating a general sense of prosperity, both
for the nation and for individuals, the Chinese Dream also has foreign policy
implications, with a “rejuvenated” China taking its place as a global power.
The Global Times [newspaper] even
declared 2013 the “year of ‘Chinese dream’ diplomacy.”
2.
New Type Great Power Relations (also translated as New Model Major Power
Relations). More specifically relevant to foreign policy is our number 2
catchphrase, “new type great power relations.” This phrase, like the Chinese
dream, first appeared in 2012 as Xi was setting himself up to take control. [He
is general secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC)]. Since then, the phrase has
expanded to become a cornerstone of China’s foreign policy rhetoric. Although
it has been variously applied to countries like Russia and Japan as well, the
idea of “new type great power relations” is most often applied to the
U.S.-China relationship. As such, the phrase is usually understood as a warning
that the U.S. and China must have a historically “new type” relationship in
order to avoid the Thucydidean trap. [Activist Newsletter: the “trap” occurs
when competition between an emerging power and an established power ultimately
leads to a violent clash, as historian Thucydides wrote of the war between
Athens and Sparta in 411 BC.]
China’s
vision for creating this new relationship involves still more catchphrases — a
Dec. 4 speech by Vice President Li Yuanchao further defined the term as
“implement[ing] the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect
and win-win cooperation in all aspects of the relations between the two
countries.” None of these terms are new in themselves, but rolling them into the
catch-all phrase of “new type great power relations” achieves two things: it
acknowledges relations have not actually achieved these goals, and it asserts
China’s new role as a great power (or major power, which is China’s preferred
translation). Expect this term to stick around — as this concept is expected to
be a priority of China’s foreign policy in 2014.
3.
Reform and Opening Up. The old catchphrase from Deng Xiaoping’s era
is making a comeback in China this year, although in 2013 the components of “reform”
and “opening up” are often used separately. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are
determined to carry out economic reforms to rebalance China’s economy to
increase domestic demand and reduce reliance on exports. These reforms, long
delayed, are seen as crucial for helping China escape the so-called “middle
income trap.” Thus, the “Chinese dream” is dependent on China being able to
continue to reform.
The
report from this year’s Third Plenum, [of the 18th Communist Party
Congress] which generally sets the agenda for a new leadership, was actually
titled “The Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening
Reforms.” The government has promised to let market forces play a stronger role
in the economy (especially the financial sector), to address the chronic
problem of industrial over-capacity, and to deal with the issue of local
government debt. Along with reform, China has promised to also continue the
process of “opening up” to the outside world. After the Central Economic Work
Conference in mid-December, the government promised to emphasize “opening up,”
especially by negotiating free trade agreements and investment agreements. As I
wrote earlier this year, the experimental new free trade zone in Shanghai will
serve as a testing ground for both reform and opening up.
4.
Fighting Both Tigers and Flies. Xi kicked the Party’s anti-corruption battle
into high gear with his January 2013 promise to fight both “tigers and flies.”
By that, Xi meant going after both high-ranking party officials and low-level
bureaucrats. “No exception will be made when it comes to Party disciplines and
law,” Xi said. True to his word, Xi’s anti-corruption battle has netted some
“tigers.”
Since
Xi came to power, new investigations have been started against nearly a dozen
senior leaders, including officials at the oil behemoth PetroChina, a deputy
party chief in Sichuan province, and the mayor of Nanjing. And that’s not
counting the conviction of Bo Xilai on charges of corruption, or the rumored
investigation into China’s former head of public security, Zhou Yongkang. The
“flies” haven’t been neglected either, as China reportedly opened over 30,000
corruption investigations from January to August of 2013. Most outside
observers believe that China can’t ultimately solve the problem of corruption
without strengthening the rule of law and allowing for a free press to serve as
a watchdog. Still, Xi’s emphasis on (and startlingly upfront admissions of) the
problem sets him apart from previous leaders.
—————————
17. MUCH OF U.S.
FLEET ‘PIVOTS’ TO ASIA
[Following
is another of our reports on Washington’s military buildup in East Asia.]
By The
Hankyoreh newspaper (South Korea, Jan. 17, 2014)
 |
| USS Theodore Roosevelt, rebalancing to Pacific. |
On
Jan. 14, the U.S. Navy announced that as part as of the “rebalancing to Asia”
the USS Theodore Roosevelt was being relocated to the Pacific port of San
Diego. The aircraft carrier previously belonged to the 2nd Fleet on the
Atlantic coast, with a homeport in Norfolk, Virginia.
Of
10 aircraft carriers currently available for use, six are now deployed in the
Asia-Pacific region. More than 60% of U.S. nuclear submarines are already
stationed in the Asia-Pacific region. The report also noted that more than 60%
of reconnaissance operations were taking place in the region, which it said
reflected plans for the possible outbreak of hostilities against China, North
Korea, or Russia.
The
U.S. Air Force is also beefing up its Asia-Pacific presence. The military
affairs weekly Air Force Times
reported on Jan. 14 that it was relocating 12 F-22 Raptors and 300 supporting
troops from its 94th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia
to Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa.
Even
while announcing overall defense budget cuts last year, Washington said it
planned to keep in place or increase its defense budget for the Asia-Pacific
region.
[Activist Newsletter: On Jan. 7 the U.S.
Army announced it was sending another combat battalion to South Korea (800
soldiers with heavy weapons and armored vehicles) to strengthen its permanent
garrison of 28,500 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines
already in the country.
In
another development, it was reported in Defense News that the top U.S.
commander in the Pacific, Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, commented in a
speech Jan. 15 that “Our historic dominance (in the region) is diminishing, no
question…. China is going to rise, we all know that.”
[The
next day, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's press
secretary, said: “The secretary understands the larger point Adm. Locklear is
making concerning the relative growth in capabilities of certain states in the
region. There are very real challenges we face in that part of the world, very
real capabilities we need to be able to field. He also believes that America's
continued leadership and influence in the region remains vital, and he is
committed, from a military perspective, to maintaining that position of
strength.”
[Reporting
Locklear’s remarks, China’s Global Times wrote: “Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a PLA
(People’s Liberation Army) navy expert, said that after nearly two decades of
uncontested military superiority, Washington is sensitive toward any change
which may potentially pose a challenge to its security. While China's rapid
development has surprised the U.S., the PLA still lags generations behind the U.S. Navy, Yang said, adding that Locklear
has exaggerated China's military rise to seek budget increases and higher
spending power.”]
—————————
18. BIG
BUSINESS SUBVERTS WORKER GROUPS
By David
Callahan
Over
the past four decades, business leaders have adroitly used that great American
right, freedom of association, to advance their interests. They have banded
together through groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federal
of Independent Businesses, and the Business Roundtable to create a unified
front on a range of issues — pooling hundreds of millions of dollars annually
in membership dues for lobbying and advocacy.
Beyond
this, every last business sector in America has created its own trade
association to push its particular interests. And each of these associations,
too, has its own war chest of membership dues to hire lobbyists and PR firms.
Business hasn't just organized nationally; they've organized in states and
localities — with their paid emissaries buzzing around every state capital and
city hall in the nation.
 |
| Protest called by Coalition of Immokalee Workers. |
“After
ignoring these groups for years, business groups and powerful lobbyists,
heavily backed by the restaurant industry, are mounting an aggressive campaign against
them, maintaining that they are fronts for organized labor.”
In
one case, a business group in Florida asked the State Attorney General to
investigate the finances of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which fights
for some of the poorest and most mistreated workers in the
United States. Indeed, labor conditions are so harsh down in parts of Florida
that one of the Coalition's priorities is to fight modern
day slavery, and with some success. The Coalition also recently
staged a march by 100 workers who walked 200 miles to ask Publix supermarkets
to pay more for tomatoes so farm workers could be paid more. Those workers now
earn a poverty wage….
The
business attack on the new workers organizations has focused on how they are
supposedly sidestepping laws governing union organizing. Business groups
argue that worker centers should face the same strictures as labor unions under
federal law, including detailed financial disclosure, regular election of
leaders and bans on certain types of picketing. Business groups say worker
centers act like unions by targeting specific employers and pushing them to
improve wages.
But
again, what gall: If business hadn't done so much since the 1970s to subvert
the right to organize and hamstring union activities in workplaces — to say
nothing of outright union busting — there wouldn't be the same need for worker
centers. Also, business groups themselves have been geniuses at finding their
way around laws — say, on lobbying and campaign donations -— by creating new
kinds of entities that operate legally to achieve the same result. What, so
loopholes are fine for the powerful but not the powerless? Seems like it should
be the other way around.
Regardless,
back to my original point: freedom of association is not just a quintessential
American right, it's a global human right, protected by international law. The
past few decades have seen every conceivable interest group in U.S. society get
better organized — except for labor, and we're all paying the price for that as
inequality drags down the economy and erodes our democracy.
But
things are finally changing, and business can't stand it. Who can blame them?
While we now live in an age where capital holds all the cards, more signs point
to the rise of labor. It's about time.
—
From Demos, Jan. 17, 2014
—————————
19. WHAT NSA IS
CAPABLE OF DOING
By Jody Avirgan
The trove of documents leaked by Edward Snowden has revealed the elaborate
tricks the NSA can use to monitor communications and data around the world.
Here is a running list of things we now know the NSA can do, based on media
reports and other publicly available documents—so far. There is probably more,
of course.
• It can
track the numbers of both parties on phone calls, as well location, time
and duration.
• It can
hack Chinese phones and text messages.
• It can
set up fake Internet cafes.
• It can
spy on foreign leaders' cellphones.
• It can
tap underwater fiber-optic cables.
• It can
track communication within media organizations like Al-Jazeera.
• It can
hack into the UN video conferencing system.
• It can
track bank transactions.
• It can
monitor text messages.
• It can
access your email, chat, and Web browsing history.)
• It can
map your social networks.)
• It can
access your smartphone app data.
• It is
trying to get into secret networks like Tor, diverting users to less secure
channels.
• It can
go undercover within embassies to have closer access to foreign networks.
• It can
set up listening posts on the roofs of buildings to monitor city
communications.
• It can
set up a fake LinkedIn.
• It can
track the reservations at upscale hotels.
• It can
intercept the talking points for Ban Ki-moon’s meeting with Obama.
• It can
crack cellphone encryption codes.
• It can
hack computers that aren’t connected to the Internet using radio waves.
• It can
intercept phone calls by setting up fake base stations.
• It can
remotely access a computer by setting up a fake wireless connection.
• It can
install fake SIM cards to then control a cell phone.
• It can
fake a USB thumb drive that's actually a monitoring device.
• It is
seeking the ability to crack all types of sophisticated computer encryption.
• It can
go into online games and monitor communication.
• It can
intercept communications between aircraft and airports.
• It can
physically intercept deliveries, open packages, and make changes to devices.
— This listing from The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, 01-17-14.
—————————
20.
FILM REVIEW: “HER”
By The
Economist
The
love interest in Spike Jonze’s new science fiction-tinged comedy drama, “Her,”
is typical Hollywood: a perky hybrid of nursemaid, personal assistant and sex
worker, someone who exists solely to motivate her socially maladjusted
boyfriend. For once the characterization is forgivable; this particular heroine
is not human.
Instead,
she is an artificially intelligent operating system belonging to a sheepish
writer named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). As soon as he uploads her to
his computer, she names herself Samantha and takes on the seductively husky
voice of Scarlett Johansson. Even without Ms. Johansson’s looks — or anyone
else’s, for that matter — she is so chatty and obliging that Theodore falls for
her. Her ability to file years’ worth of emails in a fraction of a second is a
help as well.
“Her” sounds like a satire on male immaturity
and society’s addiction to technology, but Mr. Jonze, who wrote the screenplay
and directed, treats the budding romance between a man and his software with
awed respect. Theodore’s former wife (Rooney Mara) makes the odd waspish remark
about her ex’s inability to engage with a real woman, but the other characters
all congratulate him on following his heart. The pairing is further sanctified
by the film’s dreamy soundscapes and blissed-out cinematography, which entails
shooting half of the scenes just as the sun is setting.
The
film’s rarefied, reverential atmosphere is effective for a while. The viewer is
hypnotized into taking the same leap of faith that Theodore does, and seeing
his affair as something both uplifting and philosophically intriguing. Once the
head clears, though, all that is left is the unacknowledged creepiness of the
central master-slave relationship. Samantha is not just a computer program;
she’s a computer program that has been created specifically to cater to
Theodore’s every whim. Are we really supposed to care whether the two of them
live happily ever after? Stick with the ex-wife on this one. Theodore, and Mr.
Jonze, should grow up.
—————————
