April 15, 2014, Issue 201
HUDSON VALLEY
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/
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CONTENTS
1. Quotes Of The Month: Jimmy Carter
2. Volatile Ukraine
3. Climate Change
Crisis Is Here
4. Air Pollution Kills 7 Million A Year
5. NSA Spies On Human Rights Groups
6. The Red Line And The Rat Line
7. The Status Of Assad’s Forces
8. Carter Blasts Violence Against Women
9. The Most, And Least, Religious States
10. New York Schools:
The Roar Of The Charters
11. Ukraine: And The
Winner Is . . . China?
12. India’s Dilemma
Over Crimea
13. Hungary’s Far
Right Gains In Election
14. The Truth About Venezuela
15. Venezuela
Protests Failing
16. U.S. Twitter Plot
Against Cuba
17. Pentagon
Increasingly Active In Africa
18. NYC Rally
Supports 250 Fired Ups Workers
19. Noteworthy Election In Mid-Hudson 19th
CD
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1. QUOTES OF THE MONTH: Jimmy Carter (1924 - )
 |
| He's aged well, politically. |
· The rest of the world, almost unanimously,
looks at America as the No. 1 warmonger. That we revert to armed conflict
almost at the drop of a hat — and quite often it’s not only desired by the
leaders of our country, but it’s also supported by the people of America.
· Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East
only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law….
The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and
intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting
the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.
· "I
am convinced that discrimination against women and girls is one of the world’s
most serious, all-pervasive and largely ignored violations of basic human
rights…. Violence
against women is the worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights
violation on Earth…. It is disturbing to realize that women are
treated most equally in some countries that are atheistic or where governments
are strictly separated from religion.
· Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In
all of his teachings about multiple things — he never said that gay people
should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be
married in civil ceremonies.
· “Penalties against possession of
a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug
itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear
than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use.
· “Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.”
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| Pro-Russian protest in eastern Ukraine April 10. |
2. VOLATILE UKRAINE
By The Activist Newsletter
Updated, April 17: The four-party Geneva talks on
Ukraine produced an agreement that will mitigate but not yet totally end the crisis that developed
after a U.S.-supported coup ousted democratically-elected President
Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and the European Union
each compromised to lower tensions. Some contentious issues were evidently left for another day.
[However, pro-Russian insurgents who have occupied government buildings in more than 10 Ukrainian cities said April 18 they will not leave them until the country's interim government resigns. Denis Pushilin of the self-appointed Donetsk People's Republic told reporters the insurgents do not recognize the Ukrainian government as legitimate. Donetsk is an industrial city located in eastern Ukraine with a metropolitan area population over 2 million people]
[However, pro-Russian insurgents who have occupied government buildings in more than 10 Ukrainian cities said April 18 they will not leave them until the country's interim government resigns. Denis Pushilin of the self-appointed Donetsk People's Republic told reporters the insurgents do not recognize the Ukrainian government as legitimate. Donetsk is an industrial city located in eastern Ukraine with a metropolitan area population over 2 million people]
According to press reports, all sides in the Ukraine
dispute must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative
actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of
extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism. Russia considered these latter points to be of great importance given the powerful right wing and neo-fascist forces that exist in Ukraine, including within the new government.
The parties agreed illegal armed groups must be disarmed;
all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all
illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities
and towns must be vacated. Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to
those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons,
with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.
It is understood Ukraine will begin decentralizing some state power to the regions but it did not accept the Russian call for federalization of the state. No mention was made of Crimea, which voted to join Russia after the right wing coup. As far as Moscow and Crimea are concerned it is a fait accompli. President Obama's repeated insistence that Russia pull back some 40,000 troops he alleged are on Ukraine's border was likewise unmentioned in the agreement.
It is understood Ukraine will begin decentralizing some state power to the regions but it did not accept the Russian call for federalization of the state. No mention was made of Crimea, which voted to join Russia after the right wing coup. As far as Moscow and Crimea are concerned it is a fait accompli. President Obama's repeated insistence that Russia pull back some 40,000 troops he alleged are on Ukraine's border was likewise unmentioned in the agreement.
According to Stratfor: "The European Union is very divided in its view of what form the next round of sanctions should take, while the United States, despite providing the Ukrainian military with some non-lethal aid in the form of rations, is unlikely to lend the government in Kiev significant military protection. Like many European governments, Washington is hesitant to impose more sanctions on Russia, fearing the potential negative impact on U.S. companies operating in the country. Both sides, therefore, are advocating for de-escalation and willing to make significant concessions in order to stabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine — although the agreement reached April 17 is merely an initial step that is far from a definitive end to the crisis."
April 14 article: The situation is changing every day in Ukraine. The government may crackdown any minute or it may not.
Ethnic
Russian residents of eastern Ukraine are taking over buildings and demanding a
referendum on a federal system of government giving each region more power, and
freedom for arrested pro-Russian
protesters. In some cases, demonstrators seek more
autonomy while others demand independence and association with neighboring
Russia, as Crimea achieved last month.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin is reported late April 14 to be “anxiously watching
events and has received many requests for help from people there,” a Kremlin
spokesman said, according to Radio Free Europe/RL report.
Heavily
armed pro-Russian separatists have captured an airfield in Slovyiansk, eastern
Ukraine, 5 Kanal TV reported April 14. Over the weekend, unidentified
protesters stormed and occupied government buildings in at least six eastern
Ukrainian towns.
In Washington, an
adviser to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that supplying arms to
Ukraine is an option under consideration, Reuters reported. Ukrainian President
Oleksandr Turchynov has said Kiev may use military action against pro-Russian
activists who are occupying government buildings in the east.
 |
| Russian speaker demands change in east Ukraine. |
According to an
analysis by Stratfor: “The occupation of government buildings across eastern
Ukraine demonstrates Russia's ability to destabilize Ukraine through
non-military means and thus gives the Kremlin leverage in its negotiations with
Ukraine and the United States April 17 in Geneva. Pointing to alleged
violations of the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, the Kremlin has been
pressuring Kiev to move toward federalization.”
Following is a report
Feb. 14 from The Economist’s correspondent in Slovyansk,
published under the headline, “The disappearing
country”:
The Kiev authorities' hold on Donbas and much of the wider
region of eastern Ukraine has disappeared. President Turchynov had said that a
military operation was imminent and that anyone who left the seized buildings
by 6am on April 14th would not be prosecuted.
But by nightfall, as fog covered the Donbas, it was clear
that no concerted government action to take back the region was under way. The
region’s police appear to have defected en masse to the pro-Russian side.
Police buildings in the town of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk fell to armed men on
April 12th and there were reports of other municipal buildings
being taken elsewhere. A Ukrainian security services operation to restore
authority in Slovyansk failed. Military or police helicopters flew over the
town and unconfirmed sources said crowds prevented them from landing.
Along the highway leading from the regional capital,
Donetsk, barricades have gone up, manned by men wielding clubs and metal
batons. Some are armed with guns. At the entrance to Sloviansk, bigger barricades
have been erected. In nearby Kramatorsk, small groups of men stood by the
police station and nearby barricades.
On the morning of April 13 Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian
interior minister, announced that a fight-back for the east of the country was
beginning. A few hours later a film was circulating of stalled armored
personal-carriers, a slumped man who appeared dead and another one on the
ground apparently wounded. Avakov said that one had died and five had been
wounded in the shootout.
Another film showed a group of well-organized men in
military uniform storming the police station in Kramatorsk. They are seen to be
followed by men in civilian clothes. On April 13 a few dozen unarmed men
were manning new barricades by the police station. The military unit seen in
the film was no longer in evidence, having possibly moved elsewhere. Ukrainian
officials say they are troops from Russia.
Earlier in the day, at the barricade leading into Slovyansk
the first line of defense was a group of elderly women holding icons and saying
they wanted nothing but peace. Behind them was tire barricade. On the side
Molotov cocktails were being prepared. Behind this were men with clubs, who
appeared to listen to orders being given by two uniformed armed men. Russian
flags and those of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic were flying at all the
barricades and seized buildings.
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3. CLIMATE CHANGE
CRISIS IS HERE
[The world has
reached the point, according to a leading scientist involved in creating the
new UN report on climate change, where "we may already be on the
threshold or over the threshold of the sixth mass extinction in earth's
history." The times call for immediate drastic reductions in the burning
of fossil fuels to sharply reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
responsible for climate change. The United States is a major offender, but
despite deceptive rhetoric and token steps by Washington it is actually
producing more oil and gas today than ever before — earning it the nickname
Saudi America. Following is an article about the new report.]
By David Biello
The rich play with fire and the poor get burned. That sums
up a report issued March 31 by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) about the worsening risks of climate change. Yet even rich nations will
face serious challenges. "Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched
by climate change," said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri at a press
conference releasing the report in Yokohama, Japan.
According to Pachauri and the hundreds of scientists who
prepared the report, climate change is no longer something that will happen in
the future. It is already here, and it is already impacting people on all seven
continents and seven seas. The world now has a different climate than it had only
a few decades ago, thanks to fossil fuel burning, forest clearing and other
human activities.
As a result, the need for nations everywhere to adapt is
already here, according to the report of the second team of IPCC scientists
(known as Working Group II), who assessed more than 12,000 scientific papers to
deliver an authoritative consensus on the impacts of climate change, the
vulnerabilities of society and the natural world, as well as how we might adapt
to a changed climate. "We see impacts from the equators to the poles
and the coast to the mountains," noted biologist Christopher Field of
Stanford University, co-chair of Working Group II at the press event.
The opportunity to prevent catastrophic global warming has
not disappeared, even if the world has burned through half the fossil fuels it
can, according to the first team of IPCC scientists who assessed the
fundamental physics of climate change and released their report in September.
But the world must drop its carbon habit soon. Since 1880, 531 gigatons of
carbon have been emitted, and the IPCC scientists estimate that no more than
800 gigatons should be emitted for a better-than-even chance of keeping global
warming below 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit]. If warming rises
beyond that threshold, the scientists say, serious harm will be done to
ecosystems and societies everywhere. The more warming, the greater the risk of
"severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts," the new report
states.
Unfortunately, in just the time between this report and the
last iteration in 2007, climate change has
In that light, climate change becomes a risk management
proposition, particularly given the uncertainty about exactly how bad impacts
might become and when. The worst risks include sea level rise for small islands
and coasts, flooding, the breakdown of infrastructure in the face of extreme
weather, loss of livelihoods for farmers and fishers, food insecurity and
heat-wave deaths. Expect a big demand for energy for air conditioning as the
21st century continues.
Some of these impacts are already here, from a meltdown of
polar ice and glaciers everywhere to higher rates of sea level rise than the
IPCC predicted in the past. Crops, such as wheat and maize (corn), have been
hurt more by heat waves and drought than helped by higher levels of CO2, which
can sometimes permit more luxuriant plant growth. Some crop yields in places
like northern Europe and southeastern South America where drought has not set
in have actually improved.
[Science Daily reported April 9 “Florida State University
researchers have found new evidence that permafrost thawing is releasing large
quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere via plants, which could
accelerate warming trends. Permafrost is soil that is frozen year round and is
typically located in polar regions. As the world has gotten slightly warmer,
that permafrost is thawing and decomposing, which is producing increased
amounts of methane.”]
The bad outweighs the good to date. Reductions in yields of
wheat and maize have already had an impact on food prices, and some argue on
the stability of nations as well. Extreme weather — from floods to wildfires —
continues to take an increasing toll, and climate change will likely exacerbate
existing health problems such as malaria and heat stroke. The biggest impact
may prove to be changes to the availability of fresh water. All of these
hazards, laid out in detail in the new report, afflict the poorest the most,
particularly subsistence farmers throughout the world who depend on consistent
rains for adequate food. "They are threatened in their very
existence," Pachauri argued at the press conference.
Climate change will also raise the risk of conflict, whether
civil war or fights between nation states over critical resources or
boundaries, according to the new report. In short, climate change will make
remedying existing poverty that much harder.
Opportunities still exist for adaptation, however.
Communities, cities, states and nations have begun to adapt, whether improved
water management in San Diego, Calif., or planting mangroves to stabilize
seashores in the island nation of Tuvalu. Climate change can be ameliorated
both by cutting back on the pollution that causes it as well as by improving
society to decrease vulnerability.
Future adaptation may include, for the poorest people,
moving, either voluntarily or when displaced by disaster. And how societies
choose to adapt will be vital as certain choices — geoengineering with
artificial volcanoes or building sea walls, for example — may prove maladaptive
in the long term.
The natural world has had to adapt as well, with animals and
even plants moving or shifting seasonal behaviors or migration. Some marine
animals have shifted their range by as much as 400 kilometers [250 miles] in
pursuit of equally cold climes, and ocean acidification is accelerating. As the
climate continues to change, species will face even greater challenges, and
many may go extinct as global warming tips them into disaster when paired with
other threats such as habitat loss. Entire ecosystems will be transformed, like
the march of shrubs into the former tundra of Siberia and North America. "We may already be on the threshold or over
the threshold of the sixth mass extinction in earth's history,"
co-chair Field noted.
Undercutting the optimism for ongoing adaptation is the fact
that the IPCC has consistently
underestimated the speed and scale of climate change. Continuing to improve
the data about impacts is an ongoing challenge for the scientific community.
And, in the larger view, as Field put it in his speech to open the session
finalizing the new report: "Dealing effectively with climate change is one
of the defining challenges of the 21st century."
— From Scientific American March 30, 2014. Accompanying the
climate report is a quite useful 12-minute video summing up what is known so
far about climate change. To access, go to
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/press-events/press-kit/, then press
“WGII Video” on the screen.
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4. AIR POLLUTION KILLS 7 MILLION A YEAR
Excerpted from Climate
and Capitalism
 |
| From the big outdoor smokestacks…. |
In new estimates
released in late March, the United Nations’ World Health
Organization (WHO) reported that in 2012 around 7 million people died — one in
eight of total global deaths — as a result of air pollution exposure.
This finding more than doubled previous estimates and
confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental
health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives.
 |
| …. to Africa's indoor foodstove fires. |
In another report last month, the World Meteorological
Organization’s Annual Statement on the
Status of the Climate disclosed that 2013 once again demonstrated the dramatic
impact of droughts, heat waves, floods and tropical cyclones on people and
property in all parts of the planet.
The report confirms that 2013 tied with 2007 as the sixth
warmest on record, continuing the long-term global warming trend. It provided a
snapshot of regional and national temperatures and extreme events as well as
details of ice cover, ocean warming, sea level rise and greenhouse gas
concentrations – all inter-related and consistent indicators of our changing
climate.
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5. NSA SPIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS
By Sarah
Lazare
Speaking
from Moscow, Snowden appeared via video-link before this EU human rights body's hearing on mass surveillance in
Strasbourg, France, during which he revealed that the NSA deliberately spied on
human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch. "The NSA has targeted leaders and staff members of these sorts of
organizations, including domestically within the borders of the United
States," he told members of European parliament.
Furthermore,
Snowden revealed that the NSA is using data-mining tools like XKeyscore
to track "trillions" of private communications. This includes spying
on the travel patterns of EU citizens with connection to wrongdoing. According
to Snowden, "This technology offers the most significant new threat to
civil liberties in the modern era."
“The
screening of trillions of private communications for the vaguest of association
or some other nebulous pre-criminal activity is a violation of the human right
to be free from unwarranted interference, to be secure in our communications
and private affairs – and it must be addressed," he stated.
“These
processes are abusive," he charged. "This is clearly a
disproportionate use of an extraordinarily intrusive authority."
— From
Common Dreams. A brief video news report of Snowden’s remarks is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnv4EDLiF7g.
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6. THE RED LINE AND THE RAT LINE
Obama, Turkey and the
Syrian rebels
[The Activist Newsletter has published several articles in
the last year expressing doubt that the Damascus government deployed chemical
weapons against its own people or rebel forces, as Washington and the
opposition it supports have claimed. Seymour Hersh, the legendary Pulitzer
Prize winning investigative journalist, has written another major article on
this subject — based on his extensive insider news sources — and he presents an
argument contrary to the U.S. version.
[Hersh strongly emphasizes the role of Turkey in
facilitating use of sarin gas by the rebels in order to
blame Assad and bring the U.S. into the war. Given the Obama Administration’s extreme crackdown on whistleblowers and secret government informants, Hersh does not identify his sources in this article, but we have confidence in the veracity of this experienced reporter. The London Review of Books published this article April 4.]
blame Assad and bring the U.S. into the war. Given the Obama Administration’s extreme crackdown on whistleblowers and secret government informants, Hersh does not identify his sources in this article, but we have confidence in the veracity of this experienced reporter. The London Review of Books published this article April 4.]
By Seymour M. Hersh
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in
Libya without consulting the U.S. Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack
on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike,
this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the “red line”
he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons. Then with less than two days
to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional
approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared
for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to
relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia.
Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not
shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the
administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to
war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the
defense laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of
the sarin [gas] used in the August 21 attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known
to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that
the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the
joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a
far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a
wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered
a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to
his cancelling the attack. [Additional considerations included opposition by a
majority of the American people.]
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| Al-Nusra fighter in Syria, killing captives. |
The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s
public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The
American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring
of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On
June 20 analysts for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly
classified five-page “talking points” briefing for the DIA’s deputy director,
David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its
program, the paper said, was “the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s
pre-9/11 effort.” (According to a Defense Department consultant, U.S.
intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons,
and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went
on:
“Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost
entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting
to make its own CW … Al-Nusra Front’s relative freedom of operation within
Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to
disrupt in the future.” The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous
agencies: “Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,” it said, “were
attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for
the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.” (Asked about the DIA
paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: “No such
paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.”)
Last May, more than 10 members of the al-Nusra Front were
arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press was two
kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of
attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and
chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief
detention. The others, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the
prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending
trial. In the meantime the Turkish press has been rife with speculation that
the Erdoğan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement
with the rebels. In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s
ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the
recovered ‘sarin’ was merely “anti-freeze.”
The DIA paper took the arrests as evidence that al-Nusra was
expanding its access to chemical weapons. It said Qassab had “self-identified’
as a member of al-Nusra, and that he was directly connected to Abd-al-Ghani,
the ANF emir for military manufacturing.” Qassab and his associate Khalid Ousta
worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export,
who provided “price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors.”
Abd-al-Ghani’s plan was for two associates to “perfect a process for making
sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an
unidentified lab in Syria.” The DIA paper said that one of his operatives had
purchased a precursor on the “Baghdad chemical market,” which ‘has supported at
least seven CW efforts since 2004.”…
A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013
was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A
person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that there
was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on March 19 in Khan Al-Assal, a village near
Aleppo. In its final report in December, the mission said that at least 19
civilians and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores
of injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but the
person with knowledge of the UN’s activities said: “Investigators interviewed
the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It
was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because
no one wanted to know.”
 |
| Young Syrian victims of sarin gas attack last August. |
The former intelligence official said that many in the U.S.
national security establishment had long been troubled by the president’s red
line: “The joint chiefs asked the White House, ‘What does red line mean? How
does that translate into military orders? Troops on the ground? Massive strike?
Limited strike?’ They tasked military intelligence to study how we could carry
out the threat. They learned nothing more about the president’s reasoning.”
In the aftermath of the Aug. 21 attack Obama ordered the
Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former
intelligence official said, “the White House rejected 35 target sets provided
by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently ‘painful’ to the Assad
regime. The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of
civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the U.S. attack plan
evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to
airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk
missiles were deployed. Every day the target list was getting longer,” the
former intelligence official told me. “The Pentagon planners said we can’t use
only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are
buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound
bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue
teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.”
The new target list was meant to “completely eradicate any military
capabilities Assad had,” the former intelligence official said. The core
targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic
and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known
military and intelligence buildings.
Britain and France were both to play a part. On Aug. 29, the
day Parliament voted against Prime minister Cameron’s bid to join the
intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon
fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable
of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the
2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le
Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale
fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be
in western Syria.
By the last days of August the president had given the Joint
Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. “H hour was to begin no later than
Monday morning [Sept. 2], a massive assault to neutralize Assad,” the former
intelligence official said. So it was a surprise to many when during a speech
in the White House Rose Garden Aug. 31 Obama said that the attack would be put
on hold, and he would turn to Congress and put it to a vote.
At this stage, Obama’s
premise – that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin – was
unraveling. Within a few days of the Aug. 21 gas attack, the former
intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had
recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analyzed it and
passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to
Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: “Many of the samples
analyzed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.” MI6 [the British
Secret Intelligence Service] said that it doesn’t comment on intelligence
matters.)
The former intelligence official said the Russian who
delivered the sample to the UK was “a good source – someone with access,
knowledge and a record of being trustworthy.” After the first reported uses of
chemical weapons in Syria last year, American and allied intelligence agencies
“made an effort to find the answer as to what if anything, was used – and its
source,” the former intelligence official said. “We use data exchanged as part
of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The DIA’s baseline consisted of knowing the
composition of each batch of Soviet-manufactured chemical weapons. But we
didn’t know which batches the Assad government currently had in its arsenal.
Within days of the Damascus incident we asked a source in the Syrian government
to give us a list of the batches the government currently had. This is why we
could confirm the difference so quickly.”
The process hadn’t worked as smoothly in the spring, the
former intelligence official said, because the studies done by Western
intelligence “were inconclusive as to the type of gas it was. The word ‘sarin’
didn’t come up. There was a great deal of discussion about this, but since no
one could conclude what gas it was, you could not say that Assad had crossed
the president’s red line.” By Aug. 21, the former intelligence official went
on, “the Syrian opposition clearly had learned from this and announced that
‘sarin’ from the Syrian army had been used, before any analysis could be made,
and the press and White House jumped at it. Since it now was sarin, ‘It had to
be Assad.”’
The UK defense staff who relayed the Porton Down findings to
the joint chiefs were sending the Americans a message, the former intelligence
official said: “We’re being set up here.” (This account made sense of a terse message
a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: “It was not the result of the
current regime. UKand U.S. know this.”) By then the attack was a few days away
and American, British and French planes, ships and submarines were at the
ready.
— This article,
including Turkey’s role, is continued at:
— Hersh was interviewed on Democracy Now. The video is
available here:
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7. THE STATUS OF ASSAD’S FORCES
By The Activist
Newsletter
 |
| Syrian loyalist army on parade holding Assad's picture. |
led by President Bashar al-Assad, the death toll has reached 150,000 and about 2.5 million Syrian refugees have registered in neighboring countries with the UN Refugee Agency. At this stage there is no end in sight.
Several Sunni Arab
countries, Turkey, the U.S. and its “Western” retinue, back the national and international
rebel forces seeking regime change in Damascus. This support is compromised by
the U.S. fear of supplying heavy equipment to jihadist sectors which seek to
establish a Sunni Islamist regime, particularly those associated with al-Qaeda.
Syria is mainly supported by Shi’ite Iran and Russia.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite self-defense organization, has sent troops. The
Shi’ite-led Iraqi government is sympathetic to the neighboring Syrian regime
but is preoccupied by a virtual war against the Baghdad government by al-Qaeda
and Sunni elements.
Here is a brief account of the condition of the Assad
regime, excerpted from a longer article by Stratfor this month:
The regime holds a clear advantage in the coastal regions,
in the city and province of Homs and in the greater Damascus area. The rebels
have the advantage in the cities and provinces of Raqqah, Deir el-Zour and
Daraa, while Aleppo remains in the balance. The war will continue unabated for
at least the next year….
The Syrian regime was able to reverse a string of early
losses at the beginning of 2013, moving to an offensive posture and making
headway in a number of key provinces. Despite pushing forward aggressively,
various constraints prevented loyalist forces from retaking crucial
swathes of the countryside and significant rebel strongholds.
Government forces remain locked in heavy
combat against rebel elements spread across the western half
of the country. In many cases, this combat has settled into siege warfare
on both sides. In cities such as Aleppo, the fighting has become entrenched
urban combat with hardened and consistent frontlines….
 |
| Rebel fighters prepare for battle. |
The regime greatly benefits from the support of a
considerable portion of the Sunni Arab population. This demographic
base, while not as large as the rebels, enables Damascus to maintain
a solid hold on critical terrain, particularly in the Syrian core and the
cities. While there have been signs of fractures within this population
demographic, the perceived lack of an alternative to al Assad and the
threat of extremist jihadists has ensured continued support for the regime.
Furthermore, major defections from the central Syrian leadership have been
exceedingly rare, indicating few notable schisms after three years of
conflict. There have even been reports of defectors regretting their decision
to join the rebellion.
Despite the weakening of the army, the regime has been able
to depend on a trained force of men with superior equipment and weaponry,
ranging from battlefield communications to artillery and airpower.
This advantage has been crucial in countering rebel advances as well
as staging concerted assaults that have been all but unstoppable by the
underequipped rebels….
There is no easy solution to the conflict in Syria, and a political
solution remains highly unlikely. The stalemate is likely to endure,
potentially for years, until either the regime or the rebellion can deliver a
decisive blow. Assad's regime has shown tenacity and endurance, while the
rebels have struggled through crises that could have undermined the core of the
movement…. Syria's problems will not end with a clear rebel or regime victory;
they will simply evolve into a new phase.
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8. CARTER BLASTS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
[Former President Jimmy Carter left his church, the Southern
Baptist Convention, in 2009 because of its backward stance on women. He wrote
an extremely powerful statement at the time, saying in essence “the words of
God do not justify cruelty to women.” The public largely ignored this
statement. Find it at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jul/12/jimmy-carter-womens-rights-equality.
Now Carter has just published a book on the matter of violence against women
that is receiving considerable attention at a time when the women’s movement
appears to be speaking up once again.]
By Tara Culp-Ressler
 |
| Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter at 30th anniversary Habitat for Humanity work project last October. |
which he refers to as the “worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on Earth.”
Carter issued his strong statements about gender equality in
a recent interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell and in many other interviews
in recent days. The former president is currently doing media appearances to
promote a new book, “A Call To Action:
Women, Religion, Violence, and Power,” which discusses the issue of
women’s victimization around the world.
In his book, released two weeks ago, Carter — a born again
Christian — argues that many conservative faith leaders have contributed to the
ongoing violence against women: “Religious leaders say women are inferior in
the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. When
[people] see the Pope, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others say that
women can’t serve as priests equally with men, they say well, I’ll treat my
wife the way I want to because she’s inferior to me,” Carter told NBC News.
Carter and his wife Rosalynn decided to leave the conservative
Southern Baptist convention because the denomination refused to ordain women as
pastors and believes that wives should remain submissive to their husbands. The
couple now attends a more moderate Baptist church that has a female pastor.
In an interview with NPR, Carter explained that he’s written
to Pope Francis to challenge him on the Catholic Church’s official policy on
women in leadership roles. He’s not optimistic that anything will change
anytime soon. “But at least the pope, the new pope, is aware of it and is much
more amenable, I think, to some changes than maybe some of — or most of — his
predecessors,” he said.
Carter’s book makes the case that the United States is at
least partly responsible for perpetrating the ongoing violence against women
around the globe, since the U.S. wields such great international influence. The
former president also sees issues of violence and abuse occurring within
America’s borders, particularly as the issue of properly handling sexual
assault causes on college campuses and military bases has recently come to a head.
“Exactly the same thing happens in universities in America
that happens in the military. Presidents of universities and colleges and
commanding officers don’t want to admit that, under their leadership, sexual
abuse is taking place,” Carter noted. “Rapists prevail because they know
they’re not going to be reported.”
— From Think Progress, March 24.
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9. THE MOST, AND LEAST, RELIGIOUS STATES
By the Activist Newsletter
Which of our 50 states is the most religious — and the least? Gallup released a poll with the results Feb.
3, based on the percentage of residents who described themselves as “very
religious,” “moderately religious” and “nonreligious.”
Mississippi is the most religious state with 61% “very
religious,” 29% moderately religious and only
10% “nonreligious.” Utah is second with 60% “very,” 14% “moderately” and 26% nonreligious. Third is Alabama, 57% “very, 28% “moderate,” and 15% ‘nonreligious.” Most of the southern states come next.
10% “nonreligious.” Utah is second with 60% “very,” 14% “moderately” and 26% nonreligious. Third is Alabama, 57% “very, 28% “moderate,” and 15% ‘nonreligious.” Most of the southern states come next.
The least religious is Vermont, with 22% “very,” 21%
“moderate,” and 56% “nonreligious.” Second is New Hampshire, with 24% “very,”
26% “moderate,” and 51% “nonreligious.” Third is Maine, with 27% “very,” 28%
“moderate,” and 45% “nonreligious.” The next three states are Massachusetts,
Oregon, Nevada.
Of the 50 states, New York at number 40 is among the less
religious, with 34% “very,” 29% “moderate,” and 37% “nonreligious.
The results were based on interviews with 174,000 Americans
last year. All told 41.4% consider themselves “very religious,” 29.2% “somewhat
religious,” and 29.4% “nonreligious.”
Gallup says it “classifies Americans as very religious if
they say religion is an important part of their daily lives and that they
attend religious services every week or almost every week.” The moderately
religious say “religion is important in their lives but that they do not attend
services regularly, or that religion is not important but that they still
attend services.”
Gallup didn’t explain what constituted the “nonreligious,”
who account for nearly 30% of the people. About half are atheists. Others are
agnostics or hold spiritual beliefs not conventionally categorized as
religious.
The percentage of nonbelievers is higher than most Americans
think. It appears virtually everyone is religious, given the dominant role of
religion throughout the U.S. or from the virtual absence of self-identified
nonbelievers in political office or positions of national power and certainly
from the fact that President Obama has not once — out of perhaps a thousand
occasions — ended a speech without calling upon his deity to “bless America.”
But it’s not true. The broad category of non-religious” is a fairly substantial
minority.
 |
| Kyrsten Sinema, the only religiously unaffiliated Member of Congress out of 533. |
one member of Congress, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), is religiously unaffiliated, according to information gathered by CQ Roll Call. Sinema is the first member of Congress to publicly describe her religion as “none.”
Here is how the 533 members of the Senate and House line up,
according to Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association: “There are
482 Christians, 33 Jews, 3 Buddhists, 2 Muslims, 1 Hindu, 1 Unitarian
Universalist, and 1 religiously unaffiliated member.”
It seems logical to surmise that if members of Congress are
more or less “average” Americans in their thinking, a not insignificant number
of them are concealing their true beliefs in order to get elected by
religiously minded constituencies. This suggests the enormous, unjustified
power of religion in the U.S. political system. In essence, with apologies to
Matthew 19:24, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for a nonbeliever — however gifted and good for the country — to be elected
president of the United States.”
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10. NEW YORK SCHOOLS:
THE ROAR OF THE CHARTERS
 |
| NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio reading Sendak’s 'Where the Wild Things Are' to school kids.
Credit Bryan Smith/ZUMA Press/Corbis
|
By Diane Ravitch
In his speech at Riverside Church March 23, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to end weeks of attacks on his schools policies by striking a conciliatory tone toward the city’s privately managed charter schools. He used the charter sector’s own rhetoric of “crisis” and “failure” to describe the school system that he inherited from Mayor Bloomberg. He spoke of parents eager to escape failing schools and condemned the “status quo” without noting that it was Bloomberg’s status quo. He opposed the idea that public schools and charter schools are competing and called for a new era “in which our charter schools help to uplift our traditional schools.” According to The New York Times, he called some of the financial leaders on Wall Street, the billionaires who have paid millions of dollars for the ads attacking him, to plead for a truce.
In his speech at Riverside Church March 23, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to end weeks of attacks on his schools policies by striking a conciliatory tone toward the city’s privately managed charter schools. He used the charter sector’s own rhetoric of “crisis” and “failure” to describe the school system that he inherited from Mayor Bloomberg. He spoke of parents eager to escape failing schools and condemned the “status quo” without noting that it was Bloomberg’s status quo. He opposed the idea that public schools and charter schools are competing and called for a new era “in which our charter schools help to uplift our traditional schools.” According to The New York Times, he called some of the financial leaders on Wall Street, the billionaires who have paid millions of dollars for the ads attacking him, to plead for a truce.
De Blasio decided he could not win this war. The other side
had too much money and proved it could
drive down his poll numbers. He said that the charter schools could help public schools, but in reality, charter schools could learn a few things from the public schools, like how to teach children with disabilities and second-language English learners. Contrary to popular myth, the charter schools are more racially segregated than public schools and have performed no better than the public schools on the most recent state tests. But what they have behind them is vast resources, and de Blasio capitulated.
drive down his poll numbers. He said that the charter schools could help public schools, but in reality, charter schools could learn a few things from the public schools, like how to teach children with disabilities and second-language English learners. Contrary to popular myth, the charter schools are more racially segregated than public schools and have performed no better than the public schools on the most recent state tests. But what they have behind them is vast resources, and de Blasio capitulated.
When Bill de Blasio was running for mayor of New York City last
year, he set out an ambitious plan
for reforming education. After twelve years of Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with testing, the public was eager for a fresh approach, one that was focused more on helping students than on closing their schools. Bloomberg’s haughty indifference to public opinion did not endear him to parents. He displaced tens of thousands of students from their public schools, with never a show of remorse, as he opened hundreds of new small public schools and nearly two hundred privately managed charter schools.
Bloomberg’s preference for small public schools came at a price; they were unable to offer the full array of advanced courses in math and science, electives, and the choice of foreign languages that larger schools offered. He appointed three chancellors who were not professional educators, one of whom—a publisher—lasted all of ninety days before he removed her. He showed preferential treatment to the hundreds of small public schools that his administration opened, granting them extra resources and allowing them to exclude the neediest students. And he boasted about the explosion of privately managed charter schools, which now enroll 6 percent of the city’s children, on whose boards sit titans of Wall Street, the hedge fund managers who belong to Bloomberg’s social set.
for reforming education. After twelve years of Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with testing, the public was eager for a fresh approach, one that was focused more on helping students than on closing their schools. Bloomberg’s haughty indifference to public opinion did not endear him to parents. He displaced tens of thousands of students from their public schools, with never a show of remorse, as he opened hundreds of new small public schools and nearly two hundred privately managed charter schools.
Bloomberg’s preference for small public schools came at a price; they were unable to offer the full array of advanced courses in math and science, electives, and the choice of foreign languages that larger schools offered. He appointed three chancellors who were not professional educators, one of whom—a publisher—lasted all of ninety days before he removed her. He showed preferential treatment to the hundreds of small public schools that his administration opened, granting them extra resources and allowing them to exclude the neediest students. And he boasted about the explosion of privately managed charter schools, which now enroll 6 percent of the city’s children, on whose boards sit titans of Wall Street, the hedge fund managers who belong to Bloomberg’s social set.
During the campaign, de Blasio wanted to change the subject
from Bloomberg’s boutique ideas to a larger vision. He wanted to address the
needs of the vast majority of New York City’s 1.1 million students. His big idea
was to provide universal access to pre-kindergarten, a research-based program
that would give a better start to the city’s neediest children, and
after-school activities for adolescents in middle schools. During the campaign,
the public widely
supported de Blasio’s plans, while Bloomberg’s education policies
usually registered about 25 percent approval.
 |
| Charter school families protest against New York Mayor de Blasio. Jessica Earnshaw/Demotix/Corbis |
De Blasio’s skeptical campaign comments about charter
schools unleashed the wrath of New York City’s most outspoken charter school
leader, Eva Moskowitz. Her Success Academy chain of twenty-two charter schools
now enrolls 6,700 students. Because she doesn’t have to follow the public
school regulations forbidding political activities on school time, she can turn
her students and their parents out on short notice for political demonstrations
and legislative hearings, dressed in matching t-shirts, carrying posters and
banners. A few weeks before last fall’s mayoral election, she closed her
schools and led a march of students and parents across the Brooklyn Bridge to
protest de Blasio’s criticism of charter schools. She was accompanied by de
Blasio’s Republican opponent, Joe Lhota. Voters were unconvinced, however, and
de Blasio won in a landslide.
After coming to office, the newly elected mayor focused his
energies on trying to persuade Governor Cuomo and the legislature to enact a
new tax in New York City to pay for his goal of universal pre-kindergarten. De
Blasio called for a modest tax increase for those who earn over $500,000 a
year. It would cost each of them, he said, about $1,000 a year, or less than a
cup of soy latte every day at Starbucks. The billionaires were not amused. Nor
was Governor Cuomo, who wants to be perceived as a conservative, pro-business
Democrat who does not raise taxes.
While de Blasio was pressing for universal pre-kindergarten
(or UPK, as it is known), he was faced with a decision about how to handle the
dozens of proposals for co-locations and new charter schools that had been
hurriedly endorsed by Bloomberg’s Panel on Education Policy in the last months
of his term. The panel had approved forty-five new schools, seventeen of which
were charters. De Blasio decided to approve thirty-six, including fourteen of
the seventeen charter school proposals. He did not hold community hearings, as
he had promised, so he managed to enrage public school parents whose schools
would now suffer the unwanted entry of a new school into their building and, in
many cases, an overcrowded building.
The three charter proposals the mayor rejected were part of
the Moskowitz charter chain. She had asked for eight new schools—more than any
other single applicant—and de Blasio gave her five. Most school leaders would
be thrilled to win five new schools. But Eva cried foul and publicly accused
the mayor of “evicting” her students. This was despite the
fact that two of the three rejected schools did not exist, so no
students were affected. The third was Moskowitz’s request to expand her
elementary school that was already co-located with P.S. 149 in Harlem;
Moskowitz wanted to add a middle school. But adding a middle school meant
kicking out students with disabilities in P.S. 149, which de Blasio refused to
do.
Moskowitz was ready. Her friends on Wall Street and the
far-right Walton Family Foundation paid out
nearly $5 million for television ads attacking Mayor de Blasio as a heartless,
ruthless, possibly racist politician who was at war with charter schools and
their needy students. The ads showed the faces of adorable children, all of
them being kicked out of “their” school by a vengeful Mayor who hates charter
schools. The ads never acknowledged that the Mayor had approved fourteen out of
seventeen charter proposals. Moskowitz, whose charter chain pays more than
$500,000 a year for the services of for SDK Knickerbocker, a high-powered D.C.
public relations firm, also made the rounds of television talk shows, where she
got free air time to lash out at de Blasio for allegedly “evicting”
her needy students from “the highest performing school in New York state.”
Meanwhile, the Murdoch-owned media—not only The New York Post but also The Wall
Street Journal and Fox News—kept up a steady barrage of hostile stories echoing
Moskowitz’s claims against de Blasio.
None of the talking heads checked the
facts. None knew or acknowledged that approving the middle school
Moskowitz was denied would have meant the actual eviction of the most needy
students of all—students at P.S. 149 with special needs. Or that her own
existing school in that building has no students with high levels of
disability, in contrast with Harlem’s neighborhood public schools, where such
students account for 14 percent of the school population. Or that Moskowitz’s
school has half as many students who are English learners as the neighborhood
public schools. Or that her school is not the highest performing school in the
state or the city. (In English language arts, Moskowitz’s Harlem Success
Academy 4 ranked eighty-first in the city, with 55 percent of its students
passing the latest state test; in math, the school was thirteenth in the city,
with 83 percent of students passing the state test.) Or that nearly half her
students leave within a few years. Or that her schools spend $2,000 more per
student than the neighboring schools. Or that Moskowitz is paid $485,000 a year
to oversee fewer than seven thousand students.
 |
| Parents and public school advocates protested outside New York City Education Dept. April 8 against a bid, backed by Gov. Cuomo and financed by Wall Street lobbyists, to evict special needs students in order to make room for charter school expansion. Outraged parents and supporters railed against Cuomo's charter-friendly budget. |
All of these facts were known by the de Blasio
administration. But the new mayor seemed helpless. Somehow this man who had run
a brilliant campaign to change the city was left speechless by the charter
lobby. His poll numbers took a steep dive. He never called a press conference
to explain his criteria for approving or rejecting charter schools, each of
which made sense: for example, he would not approve a charter if it displaced
students with disabilities; if it placed elementary students in a building with
high school students; if it required heavy construction; or if it had fewer
than 250 students. Reasonable though his criteria were, they were not enough
for the charter lobby. His speech at Riverside Church offered an olive branch,
all but conceding that the charter lobby had beaten him. He followed up his
conciliatory remarks by creating a committee to review the space needs of the
city’s schools and appointed to it representatives of the charter sector, which
remains hungry for more free space from the Mayor.
Meanwhile, Moskowitz began using political leverage as well.
On the same day that de Blasio organized a rally in Albany on behalf of raising
taxes on the rich to pay for UPK, she closed her schools and bused thousands of
students and parents to Albany for a pro-charter school rally. Governor Andrew
Cuomo stood by her side, pledging to “save” charter schools and to protect them
from paying rent; his ardent devotion to the charter cause may have been
abetted by the $800,000 in campaign
contributions he received from charter advocates in the financial
industry.
For its part, the Republican-dominated State Senate
demonstrated loyalty to Eva Moskowitz by passing a budget resolution with
language forbidding the mayor from displacing a co-located charter school and
forbidding him from charging rent to a private corporation (a charter school)
using public space. Not only had Moskwitz cleverly portrayed herself as a
victim; she had managed to make her narrow cause more important than universal
pre-kindergarten and after-school programs for teens. She demonstrated that she
was more powerful than the mayor or his schools chancellor. She won the battle
of the moment.
But Moskowitz unknowingly taught the public a different
lesson, which may be important in the future. Her schools do not operate like
public schools. They are owned and managed by a private corporation with a
government contract. They make their own rules. They choose their own students,
kick out those they don’t want, and answer to no one. No public school would be
allowed to close its doors and take its students on a political march across
the Brooklyn Bridge or bus them to Albany to lobby the statehouse; the principal
would be fired instantly.
Consider the court battle initiated by Moskowitz that played
out in the midst of the confrontation with the mayor: a judge in New York’s
State Supreme Court ruled,
as Moskowitz hoped, that the State Comptroller has no power to audit her
schools, because they are “not a unit of the state.” Put another way, her
schools are not public schools. And, as the public begins to understand what
that means, that lesson may ultimately be the undoing of this stealth effort to
transfer public funds to support a small number of privately managed schools,
amply endowed by billionaires and foundations, that refuse to pay rent and are
devoted to competing with, not helping, the general school population.
What will it mean for New York City to have two school
systems, both supported with public money, with one free to choose and remove
its students and the other required to accept all students? A recent study
found that New York State has the most segregated schools in the nation, and
that the charters are even more segregated than the public schools. In 2014,
the year that we remember the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of
Education, it is passing strange to find that New York City—and school
districts across the nation—are embarked on the re-creation of a dual school
system.
— From New York Review of Books blog March 27. Diane Ravitch
is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of
education.
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11. UKRAINE: AND THE
WINNER IS . . . CHINA?
[This analysis from the Foreign Policy Research
Institute (U.S), is an expanded version of an article published originally by
the Russian International Affairs Council in March. The author is Deputy
Director for Research at the School of Regional and International Studies, Far
Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia.]
By Artyom Lukin
There is one international player that stands to gain from
the recent turn of events in Ukraine, regardless of its outcome. This player
apparently has nothing to do with the crisis, which has engulfed Russia, the EU
and the United States, and makes a point of staying on the sidelines. The
country in question, of course, is China.
The leadership in Beijing must be secretly delighted
watching the struggle between Russia and the West. The Ukraine mess can seriously
poison Moscow’s relations with Washington and Brussels for a long time to come,
thus reducing their mutual ability to coordinate policies on the major issues
in world politics. One such issue, perhaps the most important, concerns
geopolitical risks associated with China’s rise and its impact on the global
economic and military balance.
Up to the present, Russia has pursued a relatively
balanced and circumspect policy toward its giant Asian neighbor. Although the
Chinese side recently has signaled that it would welcome closer strategic ties
with Russia, even a security alliance perhaps, Moscow so far has been reluctant
to transform their current “strategic partnership” into a full-blown
geopolitical entente. In particular, Russia has not been ready to back
Beijing’s assertive stance on the various territorial disputes in East Asia.
Political and economic sanctions, now threatened against
Russia by the West, will inevitably push Moscow toward Beijing, increasing the
likelihood that the sides will align their policies toward the West. This, in
turn, will reinforce the Middle Kingdom’s strategic positions in Asia. Having
acquired Russia as a safe strategic rear area, as well as privileged access to
its vast energy and minerals base and advanced military technologies, China
would feel far more confident in its rivalry with the United States for primacy
in the Asia-Pacific. For one, just watch Putin’s visit to China in May. The
Ukraine events are likely to finally clinch a Russia-China gas pipeline deal
long delayed by haggling over the fuel price. Western sanctions will certainly
make Moscow more compliant with Beijing, landing China a bargain which will
provide it with a stream of cheap Siberian gas.
 |
| Presidents Xi and Putin — getting closer? |
develop last fall, the Chinese media have tended to blame the Western meddling for what was happening there. After Russia took over Crimea and declared its readiness to use military force, the
Beijing’s abstention at the UN Security Council vote on
Crimea can hardly be interpreted as opposition to Russia. In fact, Beijing has
made it quite clear that it disapproves of using the UN stage to pressure
Russia, with China’s foreign ministry commenting that the Security Council’s
vote on the draft resolution prepared by the United States “will only lead to
confrontation among all parties, which will further complicate the situation.
What really matters is China’s willingness to go along
with the sanctions against Russia. However, there is zero probability that
Beijing will support any political or economic penalties on Moscow. In terms of
international diplomacy, such a stance by China can be interpreted as nothing
other than benevolent neutrality toward the Kremlin. One may suspect that, in
exchange Beijing would expect from Moscow the same kind of “benevolent
neutrality,” for example, regarding its actions in East Asia and the Western
Pacific.
In the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski likened Eurasia to a
grand chess board, emphasizing the geopolitical interconnectedness of various
parts of the supercontinent. That metaphor is now even more relevant, with
Eurasia being geopolitically interdependent more than ever. What is now
occurring in Ukraine and around it will inevitably affect the games being
played out on the opposite side of the board, if only because the players are
oftentimes the same. This is well understood by some American strategists, who
worry that, excessive pressure from the West “may alter the geopolitical
balance by putting Russia closer to China.” However, Washington has not still
made up its mind as to who is America’s top geopolitical competitor in this
grand chess game – Russia or China?
When the US enjoyed its “unipolar moment” in the 1990s and
the first half of the 2000s, Washington could easily pursue a dual containment
policy – against both Russia and China. Since that time, the balance of power
has changed significantly. Now America is hardly in a position to confront two
great powers in Eurasia simultaneously. Americans have to decide which region
is more important to them – the post-Soviet Eastern Europe (whose heart is
constituted by Ukraine) or East Asia. The choice may be unpalatable, but
indefinitely postponing it will have consequences. Today engaging Russia in the
uncompromising battle over eastern Ukraine, the U.S. may, in 10 or 15 years
from now, pay the price of losing East Asia.
It is a cruel irony that the Ukraine crisis should have
broken out at the year of hundredth anniversary of the First World War. That
war was triggered by the mess in the seemingly insignificant Balkans. To
continue with the pre-World War I analogies, Russia’s current stance toward
Crimea and eastern Ukraine is reminiscent of how, in the late 19th
and early 20th century, Austria-Hungary felt about the Balkans,
which it deemed its vital sphere of influence. The fear of losing control over
the Balkans drove Austria-Hungary into the embrace of Imperial Germany, even
though Vienna and Berlin had traditionally vied for control of Central Europe
and fought a war in 1866. The alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary
contributed to Europe’s splitting into two camps and eventually the general
war. Sino-Russian relations, of course, have been historically complicated, but
this may not preclude them forming an entente, as long as they perceive the
common adversary. Hopefully, the current Ukraine situation will not result in
war, but it can well become a major step toward transforming the international
order into a confrontational bipolarity, with the US-led West facing a
Sino-Russian axis. The Western push to “isolate” Russia may prove
self-defeating. Rather than forcing Moscow to withdraw from Ukraine, it will
draw it closer to Beijing.
12. INDIA’S DILEMMA
OVER CRIMEA
By Harshita Kohli
Russia’s annexation of the Crimea last month has caught
India on the horns of a diplomatic dilemma.
On the one hand, New Delhi’s decision not to back the
sanctions levied by the United States and the European Union against Russia is
in line with its policy of only supporting sanctions approved by the United
Nations. This stance, however, could have adverse effects on India’s relations
with the U.S. and EU.
On the other hand, taking an active stance against Russia
could damage relations with a longstanding ally that has been a source of
diplomatic support for India in the international arena, the major arms
supplier for the Indian military and a source of technology transfers for
decades.
When the crisis in the Ukraine unfolded, the Ukrainian
ambassador to India met with senior government officials and asked India to
take a decisive stand against Russia. The silence from India was deafening;
India’s only action was to issue an advisory to Indians in the Ukraine to
register with the Indian Embassy in Kiev.
However, on March 6, India broke its silence only to take an
ambiguous stance. At a briefing for the media, India’s National Security
Advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon publicly acknowledged that Russia had
“legitimate interests” in Crimea. Menon’s statement was interpreted as being
pro-Russia. Yet on the same day, the Ministry of External Affairs issued a
statement calling for a diplomatic resolution of the Russo-Ukraine crisis.
The situation became more complicated following the March 16
referendum in Crimea in which the population voted overwhelmingly in favor of
joining the Russian Federation. Russian President Vladimir Putin singled out
India and China for praise in his address to the Parliament two days later.
Specifically, he thanked India for its “reserve and objectivity” towards
Moscow. Shortly thereafter, Putin conversed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
during which he explained Russia’s point of view on the Ukraine crisis.
As the U.S. and EU ramped up their condemnation of Russia
following the referendum, India issued yet another anodyne statement which
failed to condemn Russia; instead, it pointed to the “close relationship and
mutually beneficial partnership between India and Russia”. Subsequently,
television and other media quoted government sources stating India will “not
support any unilateral measures by a country or group of countries”, adding
that New Delhi is also likely to abstain from voting at the UN General Assembly
(UNGA) session on Crimea if the resolution tabled by Ukraine is condemnatory of
Russia. At the UNGA special meeting that took place on March 27, India did
abstain from voting even as the Ukrainian resolution received overwhelming
support from other countries.
Given the shared history between the India and Russia, Prime
Minister Singh’s lack of condemnation of Putin’s actions can be interpreted as
tacit support. However, should the actions of the West intensify in an effort
to isolate Moscow, India may need to choose between two of its most
strategically important partners – Russia and the U.S.
Bilateral Indo-Russian ties are extensive. Traditionally,
Moscow has backed New Delhi at critical junctures. It supported India in its
war against Pakistan in 1971 when support from the U.S. was not as forthcoming.
Similarly, after India’s nuclear tests in 1998, when other Western countries
were vehemently criticizing India, Moscow continued to engage with New Delhi.
India has also witnessed a referendum similar to the one organized in Crimea
when the state of Sikkim merged with India in 1975 after 98% of residents in
Sikkim voted favorably for a merger with India. Moscow had explicitly supported
the merger.
Currently, India is the world’s largest arms importer and
relies on Russia for 75% of its arms imports. Economically too, Russo-Indian
trade is rapidly rising and there is significant Indian investment in Russian
businesses. India and Russia have also signed a bilateral nuclear agreement
that is worth billions of dollars.
With the U.S. taking a firm stand against Russia, India’s
implicit support for Russia is likely to have an adverse effect on the
Indo-U.S. partnership, which is already besieged with problems.
Many U.S. policymakers have banked on India to play a
critical role in the “rebalance” efforts of the US pivot to Asia. Continuing
bureaucratic hurdles in both states restricting trade and investment, lack of
progress on the civilian nuclear energy deal and, most recently, India’s strong
retaliation to the arrest of the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade have led
many to question whether the strategic bet on India will pay off….
— From Eurasia
Review, April 4, 2014. Harshita Kohli
is an Associate Research Fellow with the U.S. Studies Program at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University,
Nanyang, China. She was previously a journalist based in Mumbai, India.
–––––––––––––––––
13. HUNGARY’S FAR RIGHT GAINS IN ELECTION
[The political far right is becoming more popular in several European countries. The recent election in Hungary, which continued the rule of the reigning right wing Fidesz party, has also seen the increasing rise of the fascist Jobbik party.]
13. HUNGARY’S FAR RIGHT GAINS IN ELECTION
[The political far right is becoming more popular in several European countries. The recent election in Hungary, which continued the rule of the reigning right wing Fidesz party, has also seen the increasing rise of the fascist Jobbik party.]
 |
| Neofascist, anti-Semitic Jobbik Party marches in in Budapest. |
The strong performance of Hungary's far-right Jobbik party in the country's April 6 parliamentary elections presents a challenge both for the ruling Fidesz party and for the European Union. Jobbik's popularity puts pressure on Fidesz to appeal more to far-right constituencies, and the rise of a viable Central European far-right political party will test the willingness of other European countries to continue sidelining extreme-right groups as illegitimate political actors.
However, despite the party's popularity in Hungary, European governments, as well as other far-right parties, will continue to isolate Jobbik, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government will be forced to balance domestic pressure to offer concessions to the far right with international imperatives to comply with European rules.
As Hungary's ruling right-wing party Fidesz won 44% the
popular vote and took control of more than 66% percent of seats in the
country's parliament, the far-right
Jobbik party recorded its best-ever performance, winning 20% of
the popular vote. Under Hungary's new electoral system, this means Jobbik won
11% percent of the seats in parliament. In 2010, Jobbik won about 16% of the
popular vote.
 |
|
Gabor
Vona, Jobbik Party leader.
|
Founded in 2002 by a group of young far-right activists, Jobbik is an openly anti-Roma and anti-Semitic party with ties to illegal paramilitary groups. Its members have been linked to acts of violence against minorities, especially Hungary's Roma population. Jobbik's strong performance in the parliamentary elections makes it one of the most politically successful far-right parties in the European Union.
While Jobbik will probably do well in the upcoming EU
parliamentary elections, similar parties in Western Europe are likely to
exclude Jobbik from their efforts
to unite Euroskeptical parties throughout the continent.
Parties such as France's National
Front have been working to soften their rhetoric and reject links
to violent groups in an effort to reach out to a broader voter base. They are
therefore likely to avoid cooperating with Jobbik or Greece's Golden Dawn
regardless of electoral successes.
Although Jobbik is regarded as an illegitimate radical group
in most European capitals, Orban has demonstrated his willingness to adopt
far-right views in order to achieve his goals. While officially condemning
Jobbik's ideology, Fidesz has used much of Jobbik's nationalist rhetoric and
policy proposals, especially those regarding cultural and economic
policy, since 2010 in an effort to compete for votes. For example,
tightening national control over the energy sector and lowering utility prices
were among the top proposals of the Jobbik election campaign in 2010 and later
became central policy goals of the Orban government.
Moreover, once in power Fidesz introduced to the national
school curriculum interwar-era anti-Semitic writers favored by Jobbik. They
also introduced a national day of commemoration for the 1920 Treaty of Trianon,
in which Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory.
Although votes are still being counted, the April 6
elections are likely to result in Fidesz winning between 133 and 134 votes in
parliament -- just enough for the two-thirds majority required for amending the
country's constitution with little or no support from other parties. Regardless
of whether Fidesz reaches a two-thirds majority, Orban's government will face
increasingly contradictory pressures from domestic constituencies and the European
Union.
 |
| Anti-fasciats picketing Jobbik demonstration. |
far-right constituencies by either continuing to co-opt extreme-right policies or by openly cooperating with some elements within Jobbik. But as Orban moves further to the right, the European Union will be more likely to try to set limits on Budapest to prevent other governments within the union from following a similar path.
Thus far, the European Union has been unable to prevent the
Fidesz government from violating EU rules. As the Orban government solidified
its control of the media, pressured banks and energy companies and limited the
powers of independent institutions, the European Union failed to take action.
However, if Fidesz moves further to the right and takes more steps to increase
national control over key industries, especially
banking and utilities, the European Union may take punitive steps,
such as withholding EU funds. The European People's Party, the center-right
bloc of which Fidesz is a member, will also be under pressure to distance
itself from Fidesz.
With the National Front becoming more popular in France and
with Ukraine's Svoboda party gaining recognition as a legitimate political
group in many European capitals, some far-right parties are moving toward
becoming viable political actors. However, like Greece's Golden
Dawn, Jobbik has remained sidelined as an undemocratic party because of
its overt racism and ties to violent groups. Although Fidesz will compete with
Jobbik by moving further to the right in terms of its rhetoric and policy
agenda, Orban's government will continue to avoid openly embracing the far
right. Fidesz will balance its domestic goals of appealing to far-right voters
with Hungary's need to remain a member of the European Union.
— From Stratfor, April 9, 2014. Stratfor describes itself as “a
geopolitical intelligence firm that provides strategic analysis and forecasting
to individuals and organizations around the world.” It is at http://www.stratfor.com.
— For a 10-minute
video about the anti-Semitic, anti-Roma Jobbik, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOKZ5sYW18
–––––––––––––––––
14. THE TRUTH ABOUT
VENEZUELA
[The United States, under the government of President George
W. Bush and now that of President Barack Obama, has been supporting regime
change in Venezuela for over a decade. Guidance and money from the Bush
Administration in 2002 almost succeeded in toppling the government of elected
President Hugo Chávez. Now, Washington is supporting the right wing forces
seeking to overthrow elected President Nicolas Maduro, successor to Chávez who
died in office last year. The “crime” of Chávez and Maduro is that they
were socialists, trying to create a true democracy for the poor and working
class, not just the upper classes of Venezuela. Following is an Op-Ed that was
published in the April 2 New York Times, written by President Maduro.]
By Nicolas Maduro
 |
| Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. |
Venezuelans are proud of our democracy. We have built a
participatory democratic movement from the grass roots that has ensured that
both power and resources are equitably distributed among our people.
According to the United
Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality:
It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced
poverty enormously — to 25.4% in 2012, on the World Bank’s data, from 49% in 1998; in
the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished
to 6% from 21%.
We have created flagship universal health care and education
programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in
large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil.
While our social policies have improved citizens’ lives over
all, the government has also confronted serious economic challenges in the past
16 months, including inflation and shortages of basic goods. We continue to
find solutions through measures like our new market-based foreign
exchange system, which is designed to reduce the black market
exchange rate. And we are monitoring businesses to ensure they are not gouging
consumers or hoarding products. Venezuela has also struggled with a high crime
rate. We are addressing
this by building a new national police force, strengthening community-police
cooperation and revamping our prison system.
Since 1998, the movement founded by Hugo Chávez
has won more than a dozen presidential, parliamentary and local elections
through an electoral process that former American President Jimmy Carter has called
“the best in the world.” Recently, the United Socialist Party received an
overwhelming mandate in mayoral elections in December 2013, winning 255 out of
337 municipalities.
Popular participation in politics in Venezuela has increased
dramatically over the past decade. As a former union organizer, I believe
profoundly in the right to association and in the civic duty to ensure that
justice prevails by voicing legitimate concerns through peaceful assembly and
protest.
The claims that Venezuela has a deficient democracy and that
current protests represent mainstream sentiment are belied by the facts. The
antigovernment protests are being carried out by people in the wealthier
segments of society who seek to reverse the gains of the democratic
process that have benefited the vast majority of the people.
Antigovernment protesters have physically attacked and
damaged health care clinics, burned down a university in Táchira State and
thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at buses. They have also targeted other
public institutions by throwing rocks and torches at the offices of the Supreme
Court, the public telephone company CANTV and the attorney general’s office.
These violent
actions have caused many millions of dollars’ worth of damage. This
is why the protests have received no support in poor and working-class
neighborhoods.
The protesters have a single goal: the unconstitutional
ouster of the democratically elected government. Antigovernment leaders made
this clear when they started the campaign in January, vowing to create chaos in
the streets. Those with legitimate criticisms of economic conditions or the
crime rate are being exploited by protest leaders with a violent,
antidemocratic agenda.
In two months, a reported 36 people have been killed. The
protesters are, we believe, directly
responsible for about half of the fatalities. Six members of the
National Guard have been shot and killed; other citizens have been murdered
while attempting to remove obstacles placed by protesters to block transit.
A very small number of security forces personnel have also
been accused of engaging in violence, as a result of which several people have
died. These are highly regrettable events, and the Venezuelan government has
responded by arresting those suspected. We have created a Human Rights Council
to investigate all incidents related to these protests. Each victim deserves
justice, and every perpetrator — whether a supporter or an opponent of the
government — will be held accountable for his or her actions.
In the United States, the protesters have been described as
“peaceful,” while the Venezuelan government is said to be violently repressing
them. According to this narrative, the American government is siding with the
people of Venezuela; in reality, it is on the side of the 1% who wish to drag
our country back to when the 99% were shut out of political life and only the
few — including American companies — benefited from Venezuela’s oil.
Let’s not forget that some of those who supported ousting
Venezuela’s democratically elected government in 2002 are leading the protests
today. Those involved in the 2002 coup immediately disbanded the Supreme Court
and the legislature, and scrapped the Constitution. Those who incite violence
and attempt similar unconstitutional actions today must face the justice
system.
The American government supported
the 2002 coup and recognized
the coup government despite its anti-democratic behavior. Today, the Obama
administration spends at least $5 million
annually to support opposition movements in Venezuela. A bill calling for an
additional $15 million for these anti-government organizations is now
in Congress. Congress is also deciding whether to impose sanctions on
Venezuela. I hope that the American people, knowing the truth, will decide that
Venezuela and its people do not deserve such punishment, and will call upon
their representatives not to enact sanctions.
Now is a time for dialogue and diplomacy. Within Venezuela,
we have extended a hand to the opposition. And we have accepted the Union of
South American Nations’ recommendations to engage in mediated talks with the
opposition. My government has also reached out to President Obama, expressing our
desire to again exchange ambassadors. We hope his administration will respond
in kind.
Venezuela needs peace and dialogue to move forward. We
welcome anyone who sincerely wants to help us reach these goals.
––––––––––––
15. VENEZUELA
PROTESTS FAILING
Excerpted from
Stratfor, April 4, 2014
A delegation of South American foreign ministers arrived in
Venezuela on April 7 to lay the
groundwork for a settlement between the government and opposition, but lately the protest situation in the country has been shifting in the government's favor.
groundwork for a settlement between the government and opposition, but lately the protest situation in the country has been shifting in the government's favor.
The wave of protests that began Feb. 12 has so far failed to
seriously threaten the administration of President Nicolas Maduro. The
frequency of protest marches and barricades has tapered off, and Caracas' law
enforcement efforts appear to be effectively disrupting protest activity.
After nearly two months of street
demonstrations and makeshift barricades across Venezuela, the
protesters are no closer to achieving their stated goal of ousting Maduro. The
movement's most visible leaders, opposition legislators Leopoldo Lopez and
Maria Corina Machado, began calling for protests in November. However, the
first major outbreak of protests — which
included a gathering of tens of thousands in the capital alone — did not begin
until the Venezuelan student movement joined Lopez's Voluntad Popular
("Popular Will") for sustained protests in early February….
One problem for the opposition movement is that its protests
have failed to attract the support of a significant amount of the president's
followers. As the results of
the April 2013 presidential election show, the electoral gap
has narrowed between the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, known as
the PSUV, and the opposition coalition, Mesa de Unidad. Still, enough
Venezuelans have remained loyal to the government—or at least conspicuously
absent from the protests.
Venezuela's anti-government demonstrations will continue in
some form for a while. Various events can and will keep the protests alive, but
overall the Maduro administration can handle the unrest so long as the
military, oil workers and other key supporters continue to back it….
––––––––––––
16. U.S. TWITTER PLOT
AGAINST CUBA
By the Activist
Newsletter
 |
| Twitter? What will Uncle Sam think up next? |
latest that has been uncovered, though other subversive programs undoubtedly still, or will in future, exist:
The Associated Press revealed April 3 the existence of a
secret Washington program that established a cellphone-based social network in
Cuba that concealed its true source. The agency said the network — which was
built using secret shell companies and financed through a foreign bank — sought
to build a twitter-type audience of mostly young people and then propel them
toward anti-government dissent.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) managed
the project titled “ZunZuneo” (a Cuban slang term for a hummingbird’s tweet)
from 2009 to 2012 when it suddenly ended. AP reported that 40,000 island
cellphone users signed up and used ZunZuneo to receive and send text messages,
mostly innocuous jokes or snippets of international, sports and entertainment
news.
A day after the revelations, Josefina Vidal, director of U.S. affairs at Cuba's foreign ministry, demanded that Washington halt "its
illegal and clandestine actions against Cuba.” She said the ZunZuneo case
"shows once again that the United States government has not renounced
subversion against Cuba."
The Cuban News agency Prensa Latina reported that "ZunZuneo
joins an extensive list of secret anti-Cuban operations" including the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and scores of plots to assassinate Fidel
Castro. In a speech last January President Raúl Castro warned of "attempts
to subtly introduce platforms for neoliberal thought and for the restoration of
neocolonial capitalism.”
The Cuban news media spread the story throughout the
socialist island of only 12 million people living in the very shadow of the
Yankee colossus. No poll was taken but it’s doubtful many Cubans were
surprised.
In addition to Cuba, it has been reported, USAID has also
engaged in efforts to undermine the democratically elected governments of
Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti, among others. This doesn’t include the CIA,
which has actively overthrown several governments in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
––––––––––––
17. PENTAGON
MORE ACTIVE IN AFRICA
By Nick Turse
 |
| U.S.Special Forces trainer in South Sudan. Pentagon now operates in most African states. |
The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481
security cooperation activities.
For years, the U.S. military has publicly insisted that its
efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs personnel and commanders
have repeatedly claimed no
more than a “light
footprint” on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence
when it comes to military personnel.
They have, however, balked at specifying just what that
light footprint actually consists of. During an interview, for instance,
a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesman once expressed worry
that tabulating the command’s deployments would offer a “skewed image” of U.S.
efforts there.
It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite.
Last year, according to AFRICOM commander General David
Rodriguez, the U.S. military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the
continent -- a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa.
In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day. This
represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the
command was established
in 2008.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee
earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and
481 security cooperation activities made AFRICOM “an extremely active
geographic command.” But exactly what the command is “active” in doing is
often far from clear.
AFRICOM releases
information about only a fraction of its activities. It offers no
breakdown on the nature of its operations. And it allows
only a handful
of cherry-picked reporters
the chance to observe a few select missions.
The command refuses even to offer a count of the countries in
which it is “active,” preferring to keep most information about what it’s doing
-- and when and where -- secret.
While Rodriguez’s testimony offers but a glimpse of the
scale of AFRICOM’s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military
briefing documents obtained by TomDispatch sheds additional light on the types
of missions being carried out and their locations all across the
continent. These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian
officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent
years and reveal U.S. military operations to be more extensive than previously
reported.
They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa
will remain robust in 2014, with U.S. forces expected again to average far more
than a mission each day on the continent.
U.S. troops carry out a wide range of operations in Africa,
including airstrikes
targeting suspected militants, night raids
aimed at kidnapping terror suspects, airlifts of French and African troops onto
the battlefields of proxy wars,
and evacuation
operations in destabilized countries. Above all, however, the U.S.
military conducts training missions, mentors allies, and funds, equips, and advises
its local surrogates.
U.S. Africa Command describes its activities as advancing
“U.S. national security interests through focused, sustained engagement with
partners” and insists that its “operations, exercises, and security
cooperation assistance programs support U.S. Government foreign
policy and do so primarily through military-to-military activities and
assistance programs.”
—This article continues at
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175823/
— FromTomDispatch.com, March 27, 2014, where the author is
managing editor. Nick Turse a fellow at the Nation Institute, 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).
––––––––––––
18. NYC RALLY
SUPPORTS 250 FIRED UPS WORKERS
By Fight Back News,
April 3, 2014
NEW YORK – Hundreds of union members and community
supporters rallied on the steps of city hall here April 3 in support of the 250
UPS drivers who were issued terminations for walking out to defend their fellow
co-worker.
Workers walked out to defend union activist and 24-year
worker, Jairo Reyes, after UPS tried to fire him through an abuse of the
grievance procedure. The procedure is a common practice to retaliate against
workers who are trying to enforce their rights. UPS issued working terminations
to the 250 brave drivers from Teamsters 804, claiming they could maintain the
right to dismiss them at anytime.
Union members from Teamsters locals all across the city were
joined by MTA workers from Transport Workers Union Local 100, SEIU 32BJ and
members of Communication Workers of America and other union supporters.
President of Teamsters Local 804 Tim Sylvester told the
crowd, “UPS is threatening to bankrupt 250 families,” and described the attacks
as a heartless attack on drivers and their families. The crowd responded with
shouts of “shut ‘em down!” and “Save the 250!”
New York Public Advocate Letitia James spoke and threatened
UPS with ending their $43 million in tax breaks provided by New York City. She
pointed out that a sweetheart deal on parking tickets is also on the line. She
went on to proclaim, “This ain’t Wisconsin!”
19. NOTEWORTHY ELECTION IN MID-HUDSON 19th CD
[The website Politico
is publishing occasional articles “on the hottest races of the 2014 midterm
election,” and this month focused on the Mid-Hudson Valley’s 19th
Congressional District campaign between Democrat Sean Eldridge and two-term
incumbent Republican Chris Gibson. A major redistricting in 2012 primarily
merged the 22nd and 20th CDs to become the new 19th. The liberal
22nd district had sent Democrat Rep. Maurice Hinchey to Congress for
20 years, 1993-2013, until he retired and did not run again in 2012. Gibson,
who represented the 20th Republican district, was reelected with
52.9% of the vote in the merged 19th two years ago. Eldridge is
backed by the Working Families Party and is expected to get the Democratic nod
soon.]
By Alex Isenstadt
KINGSTON, N.Y. —
Wealthy people who run for public office typically stick to the same basic
blueprint: Plow millions of their personal fortunes into the campaign. Hire
big-name consultants. Flood the TV airwaves with ads.
Sean Eldridge is
making all of that look quaint. The 27-year-old husband of Facebook co-founder
Chris Hughes has turned his congressional campaign for New York’s 19th District
into a multimillion-dollar start-up — a gambit that veteran election watchers
say is as unique as it is brazen.
It has unfolded in
rapid-fire sequence. After Eldridge decided he wanted to run for office, he and
Hughes in 2011 bought the first of two luxurious homes in the Hudson Valley
region. Soon after, Eldridge set up a venture capital firm, Hudson River
Ventures, that has provided millions in loans and equity lines to local
companies. And now the first-time candidate, who’s running his first business,
is touting the jobs he’s created in the blue-collar district.
 |
| Democrat Sean Eldridge. |
Like no other 2014
candidate, Eldridge is testing the limits of dollars and cents to secure a seat
in the House of Representatives. The Democrat is tapping Hughes’s vast wealth —
estimated at $700 million — to build an elaborate campaign apparatus in a
district where he remains a stranger to many. In addition to his firm’s
investments, Eldridge has spent more than $700,000 on his campaign, and that
figure is sure to rise exponentially because he’s promised to match each
contribution he receives, dollar for dollar.
 |
| Republican Chris Gibson. |
His efforts are all
the more striking in contrast with incumbent GOP Rep. Chris Gibson, a
49-year-old decorated war veteran and former college professor who lives in the
same middle-class neighborhood where he grew up. Gibson’s financial disclosure report filed with the
House lists a savings account of $100,000 to $250,000, and the Center for
Responsive Politics ranks his personal wealth in the bottom fifth of House
members.
Gibson does little to
hide his disdain for Eldridge, whom he calls a “young man with virtually no
experience.” The district, encompassing a vast swath of the northern Hudson
Valley and Catskills, is one of the most evenly divided in the country. Gibson
won there in 2010 on the strength of the Republican wave and secured reelection
in 2012 even as President Barack Obama carried the district by 6 percentage
points.
“This is about him and his political
aspirations, and I think that’s going to be a problem for him. He married well,
he married into money,” Gibson said of Eldridge. “But there are some things
money can’t buy.”
It’s difficult to
size up the person behind the polished image Eldridge and his campaign are
projecting to voters. He’s been running for more than half a year but remains
mostly an enigma.
Congressional
challengers typically seek maximum media exposure; Eldridge allows few chance
encounters with the media. His campaign frequently posts pictures on his
Facebook page of the candidate out and about in the district, but local
reporters say they’re usually not made aware of his public schedule ahead of
time. He declined to be interviewed by POLITICO, and the door to his campaign
headquarters in Kingston was locked on a recent visit. No one answered a call
on an intercom….
— This article is continued at
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/on-the-ground-sean-eldridge-chris-gibson-new-york-2014-elections-105498.html
—————————
