June 17, 2015, Issue 220
ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
Contact us or subscribe to Newsletter at jacdon@earthlink.net
The Hudson Valley Activist Calendar is at (click) 6-2-15
CALENDAR
The Hegemony Games is at (click) 5-31-15
Newsletter Hegemony Games
—————————
CONTENTS
1. Photo of The Month —The Plight of The Rohingya
2. Obama in the Middle
East: From Bad to
Worse
3. Eye-Witness Report: Can Syria
Survive?
4. TPP Panic:
Playing the China Card
5. The Era of
Wealthy Entitlement
6. Norway – The
Best Place to be A Mother
7. Russia Will Retaliate to Obama's Military Moves
8. Sexual Assault In
Military Remains High
—————————
Editor's note: We
have a big project coming up immediately, followed by a couple of vacation weeks in the northern Vermont woods, so our output of calendars and
newsletters will be much fewer until our mid-August issues.
Let us know your opinion of any article in this issue, or on related matters. The
last time I wrote that we received many more replies than it was possible to
answer. Keep up; we read everything and learn from your communications.
—————————
1. PHOTO OF THE MONTH
The
Plight of the Rohingya
Rohingya migrants collect rainwater to fill empty bottles in
a temporary refugee camp near Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). They are among
many thousands of destitute people rescued at sea after weeks adrift in
overcrowded, unsafe boats. Often the crews had fled.
The Rohingya are a poor Muslim minority long resident in Myanmar
but discriminated against by the Buddhist majority and state. Many recently
sought to leave the country in rickety vessels rented from exploitative
traffickers. At first most countries did
not volunteer to rescue the Rohingya, who were starving at sea, but
international pressure produced some action. The main problem is that no
country wants to accept these long-oppressed people who speak their own
language.
Wikipedia reports: "Many Rohingyas have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in
neighboring Bangladesh and to areas along the border with Thailand. More than
100,000 Rohingyas in Burma continue to live in camps for internally
displaced persons, not allowed by authorities to leave..... According
to Rohingyas and some scholars, they are indigenous to Rakhine State, while
other historians claim that they migrated to Burma from Bengal primarily during
the period of British rule in Burma, and to a lesser extent, after the Burmese
independence in 1948, and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.
———————
2. OBAMA IN THE MIDDLE EAST: FROM BAD TO WORSE
 |
|
Houthi militants guard the house of Ali Haidar, a Houthi
leader, destroyed by a Saudi-led
air strike in Sanaa, Yemen. (Photo by Khaled
Abdullah/Reuters.)
|
By Jack A. Smith
President Obama's post-election promise of a "new dawn of
American leadership" began in earnest five months into his first term with
an important speech in Cairo June 4, 2009, appropriately titled, "A New
Beginning." He started his oration by remarking "We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims
around the world.... I’ve come here to
Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the
world."
The packed audience at Cairo University,
including many students, was mesmerized by Obama's rhetoric and the renewal of
hope for a better future. They were not told that his "new beginning"
was based on the geopolitical intention to continue and tighten U.S. hegemony the Middle East. At the time Washington was supporting
authoritarian regimes throughout the region, just as it does today. Further,
Obama today is fighting or supporting more wars in the vicinity than when he assumed
office.
The wreckage of that "new
beginning" is strewn throughout the Middle East in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.
President Obama inherited and approved of former President
George W. Bush's stalemated Afghan war, now in its 14th year. He expanded the war in quest of victory but
failed. He declared it was over, but
10,000 troops remain. It is probable this losing Bush-Obama venture will
continue for many more years. Former President Hamid Karzai is now telling all
who will listen, including the leaders of India, Russia and China, that the
U.S. and its NATO allies plan to remain in Afghan military bases and listening
posts for many years because of its geopolitical proximity to China, Central
Asia, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.
 |
| Iraqi Kurdish soldier and an admiring young friend. |
Obama disapproved of Bush's unjust, unnecessary 2003
invasion and occupation of Iraq, which largely secured his nomination and
election in November 2008.
The U.S. pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011 with nothing
to show for this nine-year misadventure except a million dead Iraqis and
trillions in taxpayer war debts. Two years later the remnant of al-Qaeda in
Iraq began transforming into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now
the Islamic State (IS), without seeming to alarm the Oval Office. Suddenly, in
June last year, IS defeated and occupied Mosul — Iraq's second largest city —
in a matter of hours. By August the U.S. was once again at war in Iraq, but
this time it was confined to an air campaign and retraining dispirited and
poorly led Iraqi troops.
The U.S. campaign to defeat the religio-fascist Islamic
State in both Iraq and Syria is a failure so far. Despite 10 months of American
bombing IS remains strong. It has experienced a couple of big defeats, but has
had several more major victories. Aside
from the U.S. and a few allies, Washington's vaunted 60-country coalition
exists in name only.
The U.S. war against IS — the end product so far of
earlier American interventions beginning in the late 1970s — may last many
years. Currently there are 3,050 U.S. troops in Iraq. Most are "supporting
Iraqi security forces." About 450 are "training Iraqi troops,"
and 200 are in "advising and assisting roles." On June 10 the White
House announced it was sending another 450 troops to train members of Sunni
Tribes. The Pentagon thinks these numbers are far too low. It seems inevitable
that U.S. ground troops eventually will be deployed in large number, perhaps
sooner than later.
McClatchy News reported June 12 that after 10 months of war
"the White House has failed to give
Congress and the public a
comprehensive written analysis setting out the legal powers that President
Obama is using to put U.S. personnel in harm’s way in Iraq and Syria.... The
only document the White House has provided to a few key lawmakers comprises
four pages of what are essentially talking points, described by those who’ve
read them as shallow and based on disputed assertions of presidential
authority."
Antiwar critic Phyllis Bennis wrote June 12: "Almost
nine months after President Obama admitted that 'we don’t have a strategy yet'
to challenge the Islamic State – and just days after he said he still has 'no
complete Iraq strategy' – the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation.... The
Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own
oft-repeated understanding that 'there is no
military solution' to the so-called IS crisis. Instead, the U.S.
strategy has relied almost solely on military action."
While fighting the Islamic State, a contradictory Obama
objective is the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, which at
this stage would require the defeat of the Syrian army and a victory for the
Islamic State, al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda's powerful franchise in Syria) and various
other Sunni jihadist fighting groups who lately have been getting close to
al-Nusra. These two organizations are blood rivals that could end up in a vicious war or merge into the most dangerous jihadi group of all.
 |
| The dependable Iraqi Shia militia units against IS are often led by Iranian officers. |
Obama's desire to bring about regime change in Syria has
nothing to do with democracy, although that was Washington's original
justification three years ago. Syria under Assad is a very close ally to Iran and has been
supported by Russia. Breaking the alliance with Iran by replacing Assad with a
leader acceptable to the U.S. would weaken the influence of both Iran and
Russia — a feather not only in America's cap but those of Saudi Arabia, Israel
and many Sunni states in the region.
The natural allies of Iran (a Shi'ite majority state) are Iraq
(Shi'ite majority), and Syria (Alawite, Shi'ite derived and governed in a 60%
Sunni population). All three have a major stake in defeating IS, al-Nusra and
other Sunni jihadist groups that consider the Shia minority to be heathens. The
Shi'ites are an often-despised minority within Islam, and amount to about
10-13% of the Muslim world.
Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia share the objective of disrupting
the contiguous 1,200-mile East to West Iran-Iraq-Syria coalition that refuses
to succumb to American hegemony and imperialism.
The opposition to Shia influence in the Middle East is led
by the Saudi monarchy, the principal exponent of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi Islam — a faith that has
been embraced by a number of Sunni extremist groups. Saudi Arabia has been
under U.S. protection for almost 70 years because of its enormous oil
resources. Most Sunni states in the
region appear allied with Riyadh (the
Saudi capital) in its desire to limit the regional influence of Shiism.
The reason Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen (with U.S.
backing) for nearly three months is to defeat the Houthi insurgency, mainly
because this group adheres to the Zaidi sect of the Shia religion. (Yemen is 50-55%
Sunni and 42%-47%
Shi'ite.) In addition, the Houthis in power would be unlikely to take orders
from its neighboring monarchy. So far the Saudi air force has killed about
2,500 civilians, largely Shia. The UN says the Saudi attacks have created a
humanitarian disaster for about 80% of the Yemeni population, some 20 million
people. So far at least eight regional Sunni states have sent jets to join the
Saudi onslaught.
Saudi Arabia launched its air war and blockade on March 23
near the end of peace talks between the Houthis and various other Yemeni
factions that seemed to be heading toward a positive resolution. The attacks
ended the talks and the Houthi rebellion is continuing. On June 14 the rebels
seized Hazm, a provincial capital in the northwest. The New York Times reported
that the capture of Hazm "appeared to give the Houthis another bargaining
chip in United Nations-sponsored peace talks that begin June 15 in Geneva."
It has been reported that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),
headquartered in Yemen, has become stronger as a result of the Saudi war,
acquiring more territory and obtaining backing from ome local Sunni groups.
 |
| Nasir al-Wuhayshi. |
Much bigger news about AQAP was released June 15 when it confirmed the death of its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
This raises an odd question: Wuhayshi was
also second in command to al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama
bin-Laden four years ago. Washington has been seeking to assassinate Zawahiri
for years, but there may be a reason to stop, according to Barak Mendelsohn three
months ago in a March 9 article in Foreign Affairs titled "Accepting
al-Qaeda." He wrote:
"If and when Washington succeeds in killing Zawahiri,
the leaders of al-Qaeda’s branches would have the opportunity to reassess
whether to remain with al-Qaeda or join Baghdadi’s caliphate. [The reference is
to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's Caliph.] It is possible that
Zawahiri’s successor will be able to hold al-Qaeda together, particularly if it
is Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al-Qaeda’s so-called general manager and the head of its
Yemeni branch. But it is more likely that in Zawahiri’s absence, al Qaeda would
drift into IS’ camp, offering it manpower, resources, and access to arenas such
as Algeria and Yemen where al-Qaeda’s dominance has so far hindered IS’
expansion." Time will tell.
The struggle against IS would be considerably more difficult
were it not for the fighting by the non-Arab Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Shia
militias, the latter usually led by Iranian officers. Baghdad's demoralized,
poorly led army is being retrained and is not ready take the field, except for
a few special units. The U.S. supplies the Kurds but has not provided support
to the militias and Iranians.
In addition to the Iraqi fighters, the Syrian army is a
strong ground force willing to fight the Islamic State — and is actually doing
so defensively to prevent the Baghdad government from being crushed. So far the
White House extends its air war support to Syrian Kurds in the north of the
country, but refuses to back the besieged Syrian army by extending its bombing
campaign to the jihadi forces battling their way toward Damascus in the south.
The U.S. has reduced its public effusions of support for the
largely jihadist forces that seek to overthrow the Assad government but it
remains involved in trying to destroy the Damascus regime. Stratfor wrote
June 5:
"Washington can see the battlefield momentum lies with
an array of radical Islamists who will demonize the United States along with
the Syrian government. Though the United States is working more closely with
regional players Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in selectively
sponsoring Syrian rebel factions, it cannot effectively channel the direction
of the fight against the Islamic State when that goal is competing with the aim
of toppling Iran's ally in Damascus and strangling Hezbollah in Lebanon — a
tantalizing prospect for the Sunni powers of the region."
As such, the Obama Administration is in effect subverting
the war against the Islamic State. It offers nothing but malice and subversion
to the Damascus government and the Syrian army. Were Obama more interested in
eliminating jihadist violence against Syria and Iraq than in protecting its
geopolitical interests and pandering to powerful anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian
political interests in the U.S. and Middle East, he would aid and support the
Syrian army's battle against invading jihadists.
The Islamic State has made some stunning advances in Syria
since the beginning of this year, culminating with the capture of the ancient
city of Palmyra. The IS now controls half of Syrian territory and is moving
toward the strategic city of Aleppo and a handful of other core territories
leading to the gates of Damascus.
 |
|
The flag al-Qadea's Al-Nusra
Front, the biggest rival to IS in Syria.
|
Simultaneously, Al-Nusra has proven itself to be nearly as
brutal as the Islamic State. Writing in The Independent (UK) June 14, Patrick
Cockburn revealed: "Last week fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda
affiliate in Syria, entered a village in Idlib province in the north-west of
the country and shot dead at least 20 villagers from the Druze community. They
had earlier forcibly converted hundreds of Druze to their fundamentalist
variant of Sunni Islam.
"The incident happened in the Druze village of Qalb Lawzeh in
the Jabal al-Summaq region, a place where al-Nusra fighters have dug up
historic graves and destroyed shrines in recent months, according to the
pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It says Nusra first tried
to confiscate the house of a Druze government official and shot one villager
dead. Another villager then seized a fighter’s weapon and killed him. Nusra
then sent reinforcements into the village and they opened fire....
"A reason why Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, another
hard-line jihadi group, were able to break the military stalemate is the
greater support they are getting from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Since
succeeding to the throne in January, Saudi King Salman, along with other Sunni
leaders, has pursued a more aggressive policy in backing extreme jihadi rebels
in Syria."
It is clear that Nusra is now functioning as the leader of
the non-IS fighters in Syria who are receiving the bulk of support from
America's closest regional allies while the Obama Administration keeps silent.
In effect, U.S. allies, and by extension Washington itself, are
subsidizing al-Qaeda.
One has to wonder what in the world the White House is up to
in the Middle East — unless this, unbelievably, is Obama's missing strategy.
Meanwhile, Syria and Iran's biggest foreign backer, Russia,
appears to be working toward a diplomatic solution if one is possible. It has
been doing so for at least two years but the situation in Syria is so desperate
there may be grounds for a settlement.
Stratfor also noted June 5: "Just as Russia swooped in
with an exit strategy for the United States in 2013 when it presented a plan to
destroy Syria's chemical weapons, it is now trying to draw the United States
into a political settlement on Syria that will preserve an Alawite-heavy
government, even if Assad does not lead it.
To that end, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who owns the
Syria file in the Kremlin, has been trying to organize a Geneva conference that
would include both Sunni regional players and Iran to work toward a
power-sharing agreement."
———————
3. EYE-WITNESS REPORT: CAN SYRIA SURVIVE?
 |
|
An al-Nusra rebel takes down a picture of Syria's President
Bashar al-Assad in Ariha, after a coalition of insurgent groups seized the last
regime-held city in Idlib province. (Photo: Ammar Abdullah/Reuters.)
|
By Robert Fisk, June
13, The Independent (UK)
It’s a dangerous equation in the Syrian war that the further
you are from Damascus, the more Bashar al-Assad’s regime seems doomed. And the
more you drive around the vast area still held by government forces – and I’ve
just completed around 1,100 miles of mountains, desert and battle fronts – the
more you realize that the war will go on. And on. And that the Syrian army,
outgunned and at times frighteningly outnumbered by its Islamist enemies, is
not about to collapse.
But here are a few grim facts. Islamic State and
[al-Qaida's] Jabhat al-Nusra are now attacking the Syrian military in rows of
suicide trucks, and along fronts so wide that the army often doesn’t have the
manpower to withstand them. Rebel logistics are hi-tech and better than the
Syrian army’s, and a lot of their communications systems are American. The
insurgents have hundreds of anti-armor wire-guided TOW and Milan anti-tank
missiles and can afford to fire three – even four – rockets at a single Syrian
tank, knocking out its fire-control circuits so that its ammunition explodes
and its soldiers are burnt to death.
At Palmyra,
in Homs province, between 1,800 and 2,000 IS fighters were confronted by an
army that
could not withstand their constant attacks. In the two days before
they retreated, Syrian troops smashed their way briefly into forward Islamic
State positions, only to discover piles of “tactical vests” – advanced body
armor – thermal missiles, stacks of Muslim prayer books in Russian (apparently
belonging to Chechen fighters), enough sidearm ordnance for each rebel to carry
10,000 rounds of ammunition each, and stacks of Snickers chocolate bars.
American “experts” talk glibly now of how the Syrian army
will make a “planned retreat” to the mountains of the Alawites, the Shia sect
of President Assad, and try to keep open the road from Damascus to the
Mediterranean coast via Homs.
Syrian “experts” – a lot closer to the battle – speak of a
more political strategy. What the regime must do, they say, is hold on to the
major cities in a line from Aleppo south through Hama and Homs to Damascus and
deprive either Nusra or IS of a potential capital in Syria. IS’s present
capital, Raqqa, is an inferior city in the desert and even Palmyra, symbolic
though its loss has been, is no metropolis from which rebels can claim national
sovereignty.
But the loss of Aleppo would give them a capital worthy of
the name, the largest city in Syria, albeit the second metropolis after
Damascus. Thus Aleppo is important, not because the Syrian government must keep
it – which it must – but because its enemies must be deprived of it. The newly
combined “Army of Conquest,” a Nusra-led alliance of Islamist satellite groups,
is the greatest threat to date. And execution is as important to the rebels as
the suicide bomb. Army sources in Damascus say that 250 army families were
taken for execution when Palmyra fell.
[There was some good news for Syria when the press reported:
"IS lost control of Tal Abyad, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey,
which was seized June 16 by a coalition of Kurdish militias and Arab rebels.
The town was a crucial point on the Islamic State's supply route to its
stronghold, Raqqa."]
I came across Iranian military personnel this month,
scattered in twos and threes around the battlefield, learning rather than
fighting, no doubt tapping into the battle tactics used by their fathers in the
titanic eight-year war between Iran and Iraq after Saddam’s 1980 invasion of
the Islamic Republic. They are smart, well-educated; one of them, beside fields
set alight by shellfire, cheerfully apologized to me in fluent English for not
being able to speak. “Wrong place – wrong time!” he laughed.
But the Iranians are in Syria at the right time for Bashar
al-Assad, and so are the Afghan Shia fighters brought in from Kabul, some of
whom were queuing to visit the Umayyad mosque in Damascus last week, several
dressed in military fatigues. With perhaps 50,000 dead, the Syrian army needs
men. Conscripted troops now serve indefinitely. And if that army falters or
ceases to exist, no other force is capable of holding Syria together. No wonder
President Assad uses much of his speechifying to praise the army and its tens
of thousands of “martyrs.”
It was thus necessary last week to make a pilgrimage to the
foreign ministry in Damascus to listen to Dr. Faisal Mekdad – he is a medical
doctor as well as deputy foreign minister – to find out just how confident the
regime claims to be. How does he feel about the Iranians fighting on his side?
And the Lebanese Hezbollah? Or is it true what the American “experts” say, that
there is a “planned retreat” to the coast, to cling on to Damascus and Latakia
and create a “rump” Syria?
“It is our right to
have anyone fight for us,” he says. “Whoever is ready to come and help us is
welcome.... The other party is a party of terrorists, and now we have every
credible information that the French and the British will go to the EU and say
that the Nusra Front is a ‘moderate’ group – they will try to rehabilitate
Nusra, even though Nusra is a part of al-Qaeda....
 |
|
A Syria jihadist member of the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement
takes position on a hill overlooking the last government stronghold in Idlib Province.
(Photo: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters.)
|
“Of course, losing any small village is a big loss for us.
Every square inch of Syria is important to us. But Aleppo is the second major
city of Syria and losing it would be a big loss. But we have never – ever – in
our [cabinet] meetings doubted that we will hold it. All our strategic planning
now is to keep the way open to Aleppo, to allow our forces to defend it.”
That the Syrian cabinet discusses Aleppo is proof of the
city’s political as well as military importance – “all our strategic planning”
is a dramatic phrase to hear in the mouth of any Syrian minister. I travelled
the dangerous main supply route north of Aleppo months ago, with tracer rounds
criss-crossing the road from both sides. The highway south can be attacked at
any time. Nusra uses mountain bikes to spring out of the desert on lonely
checkpoints at night.
“A few months ago,” Dr. Mekdad complained, “before direct
intervention to help Daesh [IS] and Nusra by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, we
were about to achieve a historic advance. The occupation of Idlib [city] would
never have taken place without direct Turkish intervention – thousands of
Turks, Chechens, huge forces were brought in, which attacked Idlib and Jisr
al-Shugour. When we were preparing to liberate Idlib, we lost Jisr al-Shugour.
We have to prepare for losses and gains. This is war.”
Ministers have a habit of saying things like this when the
chips are down, but what Mekdad was to say next was of a different dimension.
“It is clear now that without re-energizing the army, reorganizing it and
enabling its central command to implement all its decisions, then we will not
be able to achieve what we are planning to achieve.” He spoke of new
weapons for the army – it sorely needs them to replace the clapped-out Warsaw
Pact tanks that litter Syria, however much the minister’s promise was born of
hope rather than signed contracts. But Aleppo returned to our conversation like
a persistent mosquito.
 |
|
Syrian Red Crescent transports dead bodies of loyalist solders
for burial.
|
“I agree when you speak about our cities from the strategic
and humanitarian point of view. Yes, Idlib matters, Deir ez-Zour [where Syria’s
surrounded army still holds out] matters, Raqqa matters – but they are not as
important as Aleppo is. Once you have a strong central presence [in the
country], you have every chance that the smaller towns could be brought back
naturally, both militarily and politically... but in no way can we sacrifice a
millimeter of our territory by ‘prioritizing’ – it would absolutely be a big
loss if Aleppo was not in our hands. We have confidence we can defend it.”
The further you travel from Syria, the more imaginative
become the stories to convince you of its destruction, such as: The Americans
have done a deal with the Russians to ship Assad off to exile in Moscow.
The Iranians will “close down” the Syrian war if the nuclear talks are
successful. The Iranians don’t have confidence in the Syrian army. The most
extraordinary theory suggests that the “moderate” rebels will destroy both
IS and Assad.
There is no point in romanticizing any side in this war. The
government militias and the barrel-bombers and the torture chambers eliminate
the utility of rose-colored glasses. But if you have to draw up a list of
priorities for the Syrian regime to survive the coming weeks and months, they
are easy to identify. It does not involve the ruling Ba'ath Party; nor, for
that matter, President Assad. The answer is simple: the Syrian army. New guns.
New tanks. Aleppo.
———————
4. TPP PANIC: PLAYING THE CHINA CARD
By Jeff Faux,
June 13, Economic Policy Institute
Stung by the sudden derailment in the House of
Representatives of their rush to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the
Washington establishment has wasted no time in warning us of the terrifying
menace of a rising China, should the trade deal not be put back on track next
week.
Echoing previous remarks by the president, House Speaker
John Boehner warned “we’re allowing and inviting China to go right on setting
the rules of the world economy.” Pro-TPP Democratic Congressman Jim Hines
(D-Conn.) said that Friday’s vote, “told the world that we prefer that China
set the rules and values that govern trade in the Pacific.”
These remarks are both fatuous and revealing of how weak the
case for the TPP is, even among its own promoters.
As a matter of obvious fact, the rules of the world economy
within which the Chinese have been taking the United States to the economic
cleaners were not set in China. They were set in Washington, DC by our own
American policymakers and fixers who in one way or another were, and still are,
are in the pay of multinational corporate investors.
Under Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now
Barack Obama, the United States government designed and imposed the global model
of “free trade” which promoted the shift of investment from the United
States to parts of the world where labor is cheap, the environment is
unprotected, and the public interest is even more up for sale than it is here.
Not surprisingly, the result has been shrinking job
opportunities, lower wages, and a large chronic trade deficit that Americans
have to finance by borrowing from the countries like China that have earned
surplus dollars by selling us their goods. You don’t have to be an economist to
know that this cannot go on forever.
Playing the China card is also revealing because it shows
the desperation of the TPP promoters. Their claim to members of Congress that
the deal will not harm their constituencies has been been discredited. So the
pro-TPP faction has increasingly tried to use fear of China’s growing influence
in Asia to round up congressional support. But it is precisely the made-in-USA
trade rules that have allowed China to become an economic powerhouse. To argue
now that U.S. workers should further sacrifice their living standards in order
to diminish China’s resistance to the “rules and values” of America’s corporate
elite reflects the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the case for the
TPP.
Indeed, from the perspective of the average American worker,
letting the Chinese set the rules for the global economy may not be so bad an
idea. They could hardly do worse.
———————
5. THE ERA OF WEALTHY ENTITLEMENT
By Paul Buchheit
Because of
irresponsible reporting by conservative sources, many Americans
have been led to believe that social programs are bankrupting our nation. The
mainstream media fawningly concurs, with statements like this from USA Today: “The massive
deficits…[and] chronic underfunding…are largely the result of Washington’s
habit of committing too much money to benefit programs.” States are now
beginning to attack imagined safety
net abuses, such as the use of food stamp funds to pay for fortune tellers and
pleasure cruises.
But hungry people
rarely waste their modest
benefits, and most are eager
to work to support their households. Almost three-quarters of those
enrolled in food stamps and other social programs are members of working
families. And according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture,
only 1 cent of every SNAP dollar is used fraudulently.
The real threat is
the array of entitlements demanded by the very rich. As they get richer,
they’re gradually bankrupting the greater part of America, the middle and lower
classes. The following annual numbers may help to put our
country’s expenses and benefits in perspective.
The Safety Net:
$370 Billion - The 2014 safety net (non-medical) included the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), WIC (Women, Infants, Children), Child
Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families, Education & Training, and Housing. These few
programs, collectively termed “welfare” by those fortunate enough to survive
without them, amount to a lot less than the $1 trillion per year
publicized by the conservative press.
Social Security:
$863 Billion - The threat of
“entitlement,” in the case of Social Security, is more properly defined as an
“earned benefit.” Social Security is the
major source of income for most of the elderly, who have paid for it. As of
2010, according to the Urban Institute, the
average two-earner couple making average wages throughout their lifetimes
receive less in Social Security benefits than they paid in.
Tax Avoidance:
$2,200 Billion - That’s $2.2 trillion in tax
expenditures, tax underpayments, tax havens, and corporate nonpayment. It is
estimated that two-thirds of tax breaks accrue to the top quintile of
taxpayers.
Investment Gains:
$5,000 Billion- That’s $5
trillion dollars a year, the annual amount gained in U.S. wealth
from the end of 2008 to the middle of 2014. In the six years since the
recession, for every $1 of safety net costs, $10 in new wealth went
to the richest 10%.
Investment income
welfare for the well-to-do appears in the form of capital gains tax breaks,
which mean zero taxes on deferred investment gains, and zero
taxes for most of the investment gains passed along to descendants.
Most Extreme: 14
Billionaires vs. 46 Million Hungry Americans - America’s 14 richest individuals made more from their
investments last year than the $80 billion provided for people in
need of food.
Clearly,
conservative sources don’t tell us the full story. They dwell on the cost of
the safety net, emphasizing its accumulating total over several years, while
stubbornly ignoring the real problem.
The super-rich feel
they deserve all the tax breaks and the accumulation of wealth from our
nation’s many years of productivity.
That’s the true
threat of entitlement.
— From
Inequality.org (a project of the Institute for Policy Studies), April 29, 2015. Paul Buchheit is a writer for progressive publications and the
founder and developer of social justice and educational web sites, among them
UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, and RappingHistory.org.
———————
6. NORWAY – THE BEST PLACE TO BE A MOTHER
By Agence France-Presse
Norway ranks as the
world's best place to be a mother, well ahead of the United States, which
dropped to the 33rd spot in the annual scorecard released recently by Save the
Children. Somalia is the worst place, just below the Democratic Republic of
Congo and the Central African Republic.
Save the Children
released its 16th annual Mothers' Index, which rates 179 countries based on
five indicators related to maternal health, education, income levels and the
status of women.
This year, the
United States dropped from number 31 on the list to 33. American women have a
one in 1,800 risk of maternal death, the worst level of risk of any developed
country in the world, according to the report. An American woman is more than 10 times as likely to die
in childbirth than a Polish woman.
[Newsletter: The
U.S. may be the world's richest country, but its poor are shunted aside —
accounting for the comparatively high maternal death rate for developed
countries. For instance, gross national per capita income in the U.S. is
$53,470 and in developing Cuba it is $5,890 — but while America is number 33,
Cuba is fairly close behind at 40. According to CIA figures in 2014, the
under-one year infant mortality rate per 1,000 births in Cuba is 4.7% a
compared to 6.12% in the U.S. In terms of the participation of women in
government — one of the five factors considered in the Save the Children report
— 48.9% of seats in Cuba are occupied by women, double the 19.5% in its Yankee
neighbor.]
Scandinavian
countries have consistently taken the first spots in the Mothers' Index, with
Norway this year beating out Finland, which held the top spot last year. Among
the top 10, Australia is the only non-European country, at number nine. France
and Britain take the 23rd and 24th spot, below Canada at number 20.
The 10 worst places
are all sub-Saharan African countries. Haiti, at 169, was worst in the western
hemisphere. Nine of the bottom 10 countries are wracked by conflict.
The disparity in
terms of infant mortality is striking. In the top 10 countries, one mother out
of 290 will lose a child before the age of five. In the bottom 10, that rate
stands at one in eight.
Save the Children
also looked at infant mortality rates in the world's 24 wealthiest capital
cities and found Washington DC had the highest rate at 7.9 deaths per 1,000 under
one year old. [This largely black city is evidently one of the worst places to
be a mother. Newsweek noted, in a headline: Washington’s Poorest Infants Are 10
Times More Likely to Die Than Richest."]
By comparison,
Stockholm and Oslo had infant mortality rates at or below 2 deaths per 1,000.Save
the Children CEO Carolyn Miles said the data confirmed that a country's
economic wealth is not the sole factor leading to happy mothers, but that
policies need to be put in place.
In the case of
Norway, "they do have wealth, but they also invest that wealth in things
like mothers and children, as a very high priority," Miles said.
Save the Children
also reported that mothers are having a tougher time in the world's expanding
cities, with survival gaps between rich and poor widening. Cities in
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda,
Vietnam and Zimbabwe have the highest gap for child survival, with poor
children three to five times more likely to die than their affluent peers.
———————
7. RUSSIA WILL RETALIATE TO
OBAMA'S MILITARY MOVES
 |
| U.S. tank maneuvers in Latvia, next to Russian border. Is this not a provocation? |
[The notion that Russia might attack NATO and invade the European Union
is preposterous, as the Obama Administration well knows, but it not only
continues to suggest this may happen but takes provocative military steps to
"defend" its client states against the mighty impending menace from
Moscow. Such a policy will only exacerbate tensions in the region, leading to
more trouble.]
By Reuters, June 15,
2015
A plan by Washington
to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia's border would be
the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by
beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said June 15.
The United States is
offering to store military equipment on allies' territory in Eastern Europe, a
proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in
Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin's next target.
Poland and the
Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO
alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the
decision by Washington to take the lead.
But others in the
region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the
middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.
"If heavy U.S.
military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment
really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will
be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," said
Russian defense ministry official Gen.Yuri Yakubov.
He said the Russian
response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles
to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing
up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus. "Our hands are completely free to
organize retaliatory steps to strengthen our Western frontiers," Yakubov
said.
Enough equipment for
a company or possibly a battalion, or about 750 soldiers, would also be located
in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary. The idea was that, in the
event of an attack on NATO's eastern border, the United States could quickly
fly in troops who would use the equipment, cutting out the weeks or months it
would take to transport convoys of gear overland across Europe. All told, about 5,000 European troops will be equipped in this round of the U.S buildup.
However, the U.S.
proposal could cause tensions within NATO, an alliance that often struggles to
accommodate more hawkish members such as Poland or Lithuania alongside other
states that want to avoid a military stand-off with Russia at any cost.
Speaking after talks
in Warsaw with the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, Polish Defense
Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said he expected a final U.S. decision on the
equipment within a few weeks. "They know how important this is to us,
because we want to build a permanent U.S. presence, the allied army here on the
Polish territory," Siemoniak told reporters.
Proposals for a permanent
NATO combat presence in Eastern Europe were blocked by Germany and some other
alliance members. Instead, NATO intensified exercises, rotating troops through
the region and set up a command headquarters for a rapid reaction force in
northwest Poland.
Sources close to the
government in Poland, and other states in the region, said that response persuaded
them they could not fully rely on NATO, and that their best bet in the event of
an attack was that the U.S. military would come to their aid.
At a NATO summit in
Wales last year, agreement was reached on "pre-positioning" military
equipment in eastern Europe, but the Pentagon's plan appeared to go further and
faster than measures envisaged by the alliance.
—
—
From the Activist Newsletter: As we noted in these pages May 30, and it is worth repeating:
"From the Baltics to the Black Sea and now the Caspian, the United States is on the search for recruits to encircle Russia. Romania threw its lot in with the United States last year, but this year, Turkey and Turkmenistan are the ones to watch.
"All along Russia's frontier with Europe, the U.S. military is bustling with activity. Bit by bit, the United States is expanding various military exercises under the banner of Operation Atlantic Resolve. The exercises began in the Baltics and Poland and, as of last week, expanded into Romania with plans to move into Bulgaria. So far, most of these missions are on the smaller side, consisting of only a few hundred troops at any given time, and are meant to test the U.S. ability to rapidly deploy units to countries that can then practice receiving and working with these forces. Additionally, various headquarter units from U.S. Army infantry brigades have been rotating in and assuming control of Operation Atlantic Resolve in order to practice joint command and control. Several hundred American troops are in Ukraine training Kiev's military."
———————
8. SEXUAL ASSAULT IN MILITARY REMAINS HIGH
By the Activist
Newsletter
The number of reported sexual assaults by members of the
U.S. military rose again in 2014, according to the Pentagon's newest annual
report. But, U.S. News reports, the Pentagon office that handles sexual assault
complaints said the crime is often underreported, and its estimate of how many
sexual assaults occurred over that time decreased from last year.
In fiscal year 2014, the military received a total of 6,131
reports of sexual assault involving service members as either victims or
subjects, an 11% increase from fiscal year 2013 reporting, and a 70% increase
from fiscal year 2012. The jump in reporting is part of a trend in recent
years, not necessarily an increase in actual cases.
The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office at the
Pentagon said it estimates that about 20,300 active-component service members were
sexually assaulted during the last fiscal year, but most failed to report the
crime — not least for fear of the consequences. The number is down from about
26,000 in FY 2013. The office estimates that 10,600 men and 9,600 women were
sexually assaulted.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., issued a critique of the
Defense Department's efforts to curb sexual assaults, AP reported May 3. She
said the true scope of sex-related violence in the military communities is
"vastly underreported" and that victims continue to struggle for
justice.
Gillibrand charged in her report that the Pentagon refused
to provide her with all the information she requested about sexual assaults at
several major bases. The material she did receive revealed that the spouses of
service members and civilian women who live or work near military facilities
are especially vulnerable to being sexually assaulted. Yet they "remain in
the shadows" because neither is counted in Defense Department surveys to
determine the prevalence of sexual assaults, the report said. Most of the
uncounted civilian victims are women.
"I don't think the military is being honest about the
problem," Gillibrand said.
———————
