ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016,
Issue #224
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Activist Calendar (click) Feb
1. FEBRUARY CALENDAR
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Let Us Know Your
Opinion Of Our Articles
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CONTENTS
1. Photo of The Month — Refugees Freezing In
Serbia
2. Obama Expands War Spending and Wars
2A. Obama Readies to Fight in Libya, Again
3. What Just Happened In Iowa?
4. China and
India Differ on Middle East, Israel
5. Solidarity With Refugees in Greece
6. Bernie, You Must Fight to Defend Abortion!
7. The Smiling Blind Refugee Woman
8. Nonviolent Resistance in the South Hebron
Hills
9. Flint Poisoning is a 'Racial Crime' (Michael
Moore)
10.
The Police Killing Spree in 2015
11.
Turkey Fights The Kurds
12. Washington Kowtows to Meat Industry
13.
N.Y. Senate, Assembly Mull Repressive Laws
14.
Kids Who Die (Poem)
15.
Syria: Assad's Forces
Gaining Strength
16. What's Next for the
Islamic State?
17.
U.S. And Syria — The Astonishing Hidden Story (Seymour Hersh)
18.
Anti-China Scare Talk in Washington
19.
Check These Out
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From the Editor:
There are many articles in this month's Activist Newsletter and the one we
especially recommend is "U.S. and Syria — The Astonishing Hidden
Story" by the well-known journalist Seymour Hersh. To say it's an eye-opener
is an understatement. It's number 17 below..
———————
1. PHOTO OF THE MONTH — Refugees freezing in
Serbia
Miratovac, Serbia: Migrants walk through a frozen field
after crossing the border from Macedonia. The Reuters photographer, Marko
Djurica, said this:
"Since the beginning of the migrant crisis, my
colleagues and I asked ourselves the same question: what will happen when the
winter comes? We were thinking of a Balkans winter: Below zero and wind so
strong that you have to wa this walk backwards into it. Snow was falling and I headed
to the Serbia-Macedonia border. The wind was so noisy that the migrants weren’t
able to talk to each other. Many of them were crying from the cold. I was
speechless.
"A migrant approached me, 'how much further do we have
to walk.' About three miles, I said. He pointed to a group some 50 yards
behind. 'That’s my family. The one who is walking in pain is my sister. She
broke her leg in Aleppo last year, I am afraid for her.' I tried to calm him
down, saying that there were people here to help. I explained that they had to
catch a train to Croatia, then Slovenia and Austria before reaching Germany. 'Six
of us have $65 left. Will it be enough for us to finish our journey?' I was
speechless again."
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2. OBAMA EXPANDS WAR
SPENDING AND WARS
 |
Another war? More military spending?
Stop the Russian Chinese menace?
And may I compliment you on your smile Sir?
|
OBAMA INTENSIFIES
WARS AND THREATS
By
Jack A. Smith
The
Obama Administration is expanding its military power and threats against Russia
and China as well as increasing its war efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria
while preparing to restart Washington's old war in Libya.
Most
of this has been revealed in the first six weeks of the 2016 election year and
President Barack Obama's last full year in office without any significant new
provocations against the United States. At least part of the White House motive
must be to undercut right wing Republican campaign rhetoric alleging Obama and
the Democrats are "soft on defense," and creating a more robust
martial entry into the president's legacy.
On Feb. 9 the White House revealed that is sending up to 800
more soldiers to Afghanistan to join some 10,000 U.S. troops already in the
country, according to an account in the Guardian, which reported: "In
keeping with Barack Obama’s formal declaration that the U.S. is not
engaged in combat — despite elite forces recently participating
in an hours-long battle in Helmand province — defense officials said
the additional troops would not take part in combat. But they will help the
existing Helmand force defend itself against Taliban attacks, officials said."
Nearly
five years after the U.S., Britain and France launched a bombing campaign
against the Libyan government to bring about regime change, President Obama is now
preparing a second military intervention in that country. Washington's initial
intrusion resulted in the murder of the country's leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi,
and unexpectedly sparked a civil war between two factions that seek to rule the
country. The chaos induced the Islamic State to enter Libya, becoming a
powerful force in recent years. The use of U.S. special forces troops and
airpower are soon expected.
On
Feb. 2 Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the Economic Club of
Washington about the new military budget and its uses, noting: "We don’t
have the luxury of just one opponent, or the choice between current fights and
future fights. We have to do both." This evidently means fighting in the
Middle East now and preparing for a much bigger war in the future against a
more formidable force. Who might that be?
The
Washington Post's Missy
Ryan wrote the next
day: "Carter previewed the Pentagon budget proposal for fiscal 2017,
making a case for why China’s rapid military buildup and Russia’s intervention
beyond its borders pose a bigger danger to U.S. security, and merit larger
investments, than does the immediate threat from the Islamic State.... The
proposal reflects Carter’s attempt to broaden the military’s focus to include
not just the insurgent conflicts of the post-2001 era but also 'higher-end'
threats from Russia and China, whose military innovation U.S. officials
acknowledge has at times out-paced the United States.
"Almost
half of the new investments... are related to what officials see as a growing
threat from Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated his
willingness to employ Russian military might from Ukraine to Syria.... A senior
defense official said the advances made by Russia and China do 'force a
competition that has to be confronted in the next decade.'"
The
proposed Pentagon budget for 2017 is $608 billion and if passed will go into
operation Oct. 1. The separate national security budget, which also includes
war-related expenses, will be about the same size, bringing such expenditures
to over $1 trillion annually.
Money
for "securing Europe" will grow to at least $3.4 billion. There are
presently about 75,000 U.S. military personnel in Europe. On Feb. 2 The New
York Times revealed that Obama "plans to substantially increase
the deployment of heavy weapons, armored vehicles and other equipment to NATO
countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a move that administration officials
said was aimed at deterring Russia from further aggression in the region."
The new war budget for the fight against the Islamic State has jumped to about $11billion.
Speaking on the John
Batchelor Show Feb. 2, Nation contributing editor and long time Russian analyst
Steven F. Cohen argued that the Obama
Administration's actions will further militarize the "new Cold War"
between the countries, making it more confrontational and likely to lead to
actual war with Russia. According to the program notes paraphrasing Cohen's
remarks: "The move is unprecedented in modern times.... Russia will
certainly react, probably by moving more of its own heavy weapons, including
new missiles, to its Western borders, possibly along with a large number of its
tactical nuclear weapons."
Cohen
pointed out that a new and more dangerous U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race has
been under way for several years, which the Obama Administration’s decision can
only intensify. The decision will also have other woeful consequences,
undermining ongoing negotiations by Secretary of State Kerry and Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov for cooperation on the Ukrainian and Syrian crises and
further dividing Europe itself, which is far from united on Washington’s
increasingly hawkish approach to Moscow.
On
Jan. 29 it was reported that President Obama is in the process of intensifying U.S.
military engagement in Iraq. There are further reports Obama has revised the
"terms of engagement" in Afghanistan to enable remaining U.S. forces
to once again undertake combat missions. At the same time, in the name of
"freedom of the seas," Washington sent a Navy destroyer to intrude on
a small China Sea parcel of territory claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam.
The
United States spends far more annually on military matters than the combined war
budgets of the eight other highest spenders, including China and Russia, and
this doesn't include non-Pentagon war and national security spending. While
there may be a need for increasing spending for the Obama Administration's
several ongoing wars, where there have been setbacks and surprises, nothing remotely
justifies the warlike rhetoric and war spending aimed at China and Russia. The
U.S., NATO and other allies are inestimably more powerful in combination than
these two countries — not that Beijing and Moscow have provided any evidence of
an intention to eventually attack Washington.
This
is an election year, and the Democratic Party must display martial prowess in
its confrontation with the same reckless chest-beating Republican opposition
that heedlessly launched the new wave of wars since 2001 that President Obama
has been continuing these last seven years. It is also an escalation of the
U.S. threats to China and Russia, warning of the potential military
consequences of disrespecting the leadership of the global superpower.
———————
2A. OBAMA READIES TO FIGHT IN LIBYA, AGAIN
 |
|
Islamic State militants in Libya have released photos about
their burning musical instruments, due to them being "un-Islamic."
The picture shows soldiers setting fire to drums and saxophones. The
instruments had been seized by the religious police in territory IS occupies,
and were destroyed near the port city of Derna.
|
By Jack A. Smith
Nearly five years after the U.S., Britain and France
launched a bombing campaign against the Libyan government to bring about regime
change, these same countries are contemplating a resumption of the war they
thought was won when rebel forces they supported grotesquely tortured to death
the country's leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi.
The result today in Libya is utter disarray. But at the
time, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — a leading advocate of the bombing
who justifies the deed to this day — was ecstatic when told the news of
Qaddafi's death while she was appearing on a TV talk show. Laughingly she
shouted to the cameras, "We came, we saw, he died!" Ha, ha.
No one is laughing in Washington now.
The U.S. and UN have been striving for months to unite the
two factions in Libya that claim to be the country's government. On Feb. 1 the
faction that that has been recognized by the U.S. and many nations rejected unity with
its opposite number. The bedlam in Libya caused by the 2011 overthrow has
allowed the Islamic State (IS) to grow strong and occupy several territories.
Agence
France-Presse reported Jan. 29: "Barack Obama has asked key
advisors to draw up options for ratcheting up the fight against the Islamic
State group, including opening a new front in Libya.... Potential options are
said to range from intensified air strikes to participation in a UN-backed
ground force that would help take on Libya's estimated 3,000 Islamic State fighters.....
The Defense Department announced it stands ready to perform the full spectrum
of military operations as required."
The U.S. and France are preparing for "decisive
military action" in Libya against the IS, according, to a statement Jan. 22
by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He
said a final decision would be made in a matter or weeks, and that President
Obama "has made clear that we have the authority to use military force."
The New York Times
reported Jan. 23: "United States and British Special Operations teams have
for months been conducting clandestine reconnaissance missions in Libya to
identify militant leaders and map out their networks. Separate teams of
American Special Operations forces have over the past year been trying to court
allies from among a patchwork of Libyan militias that remain unreliable,
unaccountable, poorly organized and divided by region and tribe.
"In recent weeks, military commanders have intensified
their warnings about the threat from the Islamic State in Libya, where Western
officials believe the group now has about 3,000 fighters. Recruits are pouring
into Libya weekly, as the journey to Iraq and Syria has become more difficult
with Turkey tightening its border with Syria, intelligence officials said."
On Jan. 27, the Times
declared in an editorial: "This significant escalation is being planned without
a meaningful debate in Congress about the merits and risks of a military
campaign that is expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American
troops. That is deeply troubling. A new military intervention in Libya would
represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other
countries on the continent."
 |
There is not much this Libyan firefighter can do after the Islamic State set an oil tank on fire.
Stratfor analyst Scott Steward predicted a month before the
first U.S./NATO attack in March 2011 that pandemonium would ensue. Now, on Jan.
27, he wrote:
"As the United States and its European and
regional allies prepare to intervene in Libya, they should be able to reduce
the jihadist's ability to openly control territory. However, they will face the
same challenge they did in 2011 — building a stable political system from the
shattered remains of what was once a country. Now, Libya is a patchwork of
territories controlled by a variety of ethnic, tribal and regional warlords.
The last five years of fighting has led to significant hatred and blood feuds
between these competing factions, which will only compound the challenges
ahead."
On Jan. 28, Aljazeera reported: "Taking advantage of
the chaos and large swaths of ungoverned territory caused by Libya's civil war,
Islamic State has established three separate wilayat (provinces) there since
late 2014 — Tarablus along the west coast, Fezzan in the southwest, and Barqah
in the east, with the key coastal city of Sirte
serving as its Libyan capital. Like its parent group in Syria and
Iraq, IS in Libya has uploaded video proof of its atrocities to the Internet,
including mass decapitations of Egyptian, Ethiopian and Eritrean
Christians."
 |
| The last time President Obama ordered the bombing of Libya in 2011, protests took place across America. This shows demonstrators in Minneapolis opposing U.S. intervention. |
Washington has been politically and militarily involved with
the Middle East for over 70 years. It has overthrown governments and invaded
countries to bolster its regional authority. During that time it has supported
a plethora of dictators, working with them over the years to virtually destroy
the entire political left throughout the region.
In the absence of a strong political left to bring about
progressive political change and to protect their countries from the influence
and depredations of Western imperialism, the religio-fascist IS and other Sunni
fundamentalist fanatics represent a warped opposition to foreign domination. It is certainly not the answer to the grave
problems afflicting the people and countries throughout the region. Indeed, it can
only make their situation far worse.
The U.S. political system, like the Bourbon dynasty in
France, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing after all these decades of
deep penetration in the Middle East, supporting reactionary regimes, causing
the deaths of well over a million people and the destruction of entire
societies.
Judging by the present political situation in the U.S.,
Washington in the foreseeable future will continue supporting the dictatorships
and fighting endless wars to secure its regional "leadership,"
Obama's code word for American domination. Now it looks like U.S.
"leadership" is being disrespected in Libya — so off we go, again. Only
a massive politically enlightened peace movement in the U.S. can stop this
continual cycle of aggression and mayhem.
———————
3. WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN IOWA?
The Economist
By the Activist
Newsletter
Iowa came and went in a few seconds after months of endless
media-spawned speculation, controversy and unnecessary fuss about an initial
presidential primary decision that was rendered by somewhat over 350,000
Republican and Democratic voters combined.
Hillary Clinton "won" the Democratic primary with 49.8%
of the vote (23 delegates), besting Sen. Bernie Sanders with his 49.6% (21
delegates). Martin O'Malley received 0.6% (no delegates). There's probably a
reason why Clinton's 0.2% advantage got her two additional delegates when
O'Malley's 0.6%, was worthless, but we can't figure it out. In any event Sanders did very well with a tie, and he's expected to win in New Hampshire Feb.9. It probably
will be several months before a Democratic candidate is selected.
On the Republican side, desperate Jeb Bush — the supposed
guaranteed candidate up to a few months ago — was humiliated once again with
5,165 votes out of a GOP total of 180,000 cast. This means Bush in effect paid
$2,884 for every vote he obtained vis-à-vis his Iowa campaign expenditures. He
probably will hang on until the money runs out, hoping beyond hope.
The media made a big deal about the insufferable Donald
Trump (24.3% of the vote) coming in second to the menacing Sen. Ted Cruz (27.6%), and the fact that the unbearable Sen. Marco Rubio (23.1%) came in a
close third. Holy Dr. Carson was fourth (9.3%), and inconsistent libertarian Rand Paul was fifth (4.5%), ending his campaign the next day. Other candidates — including Bush, and New Jersey's
Chris Christie — were appropriately listed under "Others," in the Times' tally.
Very little has changed among the top candidates in both
parties, and the remaining bottom people will begin to drop off soon, collecting
IOUs by urging their supporters to back one of the leaders. Yet, there's still
time for a surprise. It's illogical for the Republican bigwigs and wealthy
donors to be content with the far-right-to-a-dangerous-fault Gang of Three: Trump,
Cruz, Rubio. It is probable that party leaders haven't yet abandoned the quest
for a more respectable/electable right wing Deus ex machina. Billionaire former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is probably not the man, but he is
interested and has already tinkered with the idea of an independent candidacy.
And there's still a dubious possibility Bush might be disentombed — but of
course we jest, or perhaps not.
It's good to remember that the combined population of the
first two primaries is about 4.4 million, and that Iowa is 91% white and New
Hampshire is 93%. There are nine more grueling months to go in the election.
Compared to the much shorter and more urbane Canadian and British election
systems, among many others, America's presidential campaign resembles an
unbearably long, no holds barred boxing match.
The big surprise of the election season was when it became
apparent nearly a year ago that the American people were thoroughly fed up with
the punishing status quo and that big sectors of the population were
gravitating further left and right, often for quite different and contradictory
reasons. The only establishment candidate among the leading three Republicans
and two Democrats is Hillary Clinton, whom The Economist this week termed
"as much part of the establishment as the Washington Monument."
Many more Republicans have gone to the far right now,
embracing nativism, race hostility, misogyny, and anti-immigrant/anti-refugee
views heretofore partially concealed until Trump in particular, but Cruz and
Rubio to an extent, challenged them to express their hatreds at least at
rallies and on Election Day. Many Democrats have gone not to the far left or even
to the plain left but to the center left — which the party abandoned decades
ago until it ended up on the center right.
Center-left is a good step, mostly executed by younger voters. Sanders
is more to the left as a social democrat but the twain easily meet.
This is one of the reasons both Obama and Clinton appear to
indulge in occasional liberal rhetoric in recent months — Obama because of his
preoccupation with a more suitable legacy" than his record might suggest;
Clinton because she wants democratic votes. Their "liberalism" is
compromised. Their biggest shortcoming is in foreign affairs. Both are strong
advocates of U.S. world domination, of solving problems with military power,
overturning governments not to their liking and of having close ties with
dictators who do not argue with U.S. authority.
The ruling class establishment wants it that way, so Clinton won't leave
the reservation, as Sanders seems partially prepared to do (though on foreign
affairs he doesn't appear too far from his adversary).
So far, after announcing he was a "socialist,"
with a social democratic domestic program, his candidacy not only has survived
but prospered on small donations from a record breaking nearly 3 million individual
donations. His support, especially from young voters, is excellent and a
positive omen for the future of the American left — if it is willing to take
advantage of the opportunity.
If Bernie is to win the nomination with a left liberal
platform his presidential chances will depend on who is his opponent. He might
conceivably win an election against the bullyboy Trump or the alarming Cruz
even with a multitude of small donations as long as he receives backing from
key constituencies, a large Democratic turnout plus a substantial independent
and crossover vote. But a less disquieting Republican candidate than the Gang
of Three who manages to conceal his more wretched views and is able to saturate
the campaign with currency, false promises, and low blows about
"socialism," will be very difficult for Sanders to defeat.
Clinton has moved an iota to the left because of Sanders,
and is now promoting herself as a continuation of the establishmentarian Obama
regime. As such, she is expected to become the Democratic candidate, given her
significant support from Wall Street, the plutocracy and probably sufficient
votes from rank and file Democrats — but nothing is yet certain and things can
change.
Too late for this election but absolutely necessary in the
next couple of years is campaign finance reform. Our electoral democracy is now dominated by
the plutocracy — a ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth
and how they invest it in the political system to serve their selfish ends.
Both the Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend $1 billion each
electing a president this year. The great majority of this funding will derive
from billionaires and multi-millionaires, most of whom expect a valuable
legislative or other return on their investment.
In addition, the right wing libertarian Koch brothers have
organized a group of billionaires to raise at least $900 million for Republican
presidential and some state conservative candidates, and this doesn't count big
money contributions from other wealthy donors who will deal directly with the
recipient. Democrats also engage in exchanging favors for wads of cash, but the
Koch factor is a worry for their party.
Two of the main elements of this election campaign, in our
view are the ascendancy of the far right wing, and the effective control of the
electoral system by the plutocracy. The best two aspects of the Sanders
campaign are his solidly liberal domestic agenda, and his popularization of the
term "socialism." It has
opened many doors and has made it relatively allowable to advocate socialist policies
in America.
— J.A.S.
— J.A.S.
——————
4. CHINA AND INDIA DIFFER ON MIDDLE EAST, ISRAEL
The Chinese president shakes hands with Palestinian
President
Mahmoud Abbas during ceremony May 2013 in Beijing's
the Great Hall of
the People. (Photo: Xinhua.)
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
The two most populous countries in the world, China and
India, are heading in diametrically opposite directions on the core issue of
the Middle East crisis — the Palestine question.... China under the leadership
of President Xi Jinping has taken a position that is vehemently, unequivocally
supportive of the Palestinian cause. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
fanatically aligning India as Israel’s ally in the region.
Xi is yet to visit Israel. Modi is dispatching a string of
Indian dignitaries to Israel and might be himself packing his bags one of these
days. Xi just concluded a historic tour of the West Asia region, covering the
three regional heavyweights — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. Modi hasn’t been to
any of them; his only visit to the region was to the UAE to tie up the
modalities of extradition of Indian Muslims who might be getting attracted to
the Islamic State.
Xi undertook his regional tour last week with a meticulously
worked-out road map for Chinese diplomacy to travel through the next quarter
century. Skeptics and detractors have been stunned into silence by the sheer
sweep and imagination of the Chinese action plan. Modi's all-consuming passion
for Israel leaves him little interest to look elsewhere. The contrast couldn’t
be sharper.
Xi made a major policy
speech at the Arab League Headquarters last week enunciating the
Chinese policy toward West Asia and underscored that Beijing is determined to
figure as a key player in the politics, economy, security and culture of the
region. The range of proposals for cooperation and partnership — under the
rubric of 'dialogue and development' — is simply breathtaking. In all of it,
one thing that stood out was the high priority Xi accorded to the Palestine
question. Xi said:
"To uphold the lawful national rights and interests of
the Palestinian people is the lofty mission of the Arab League and the shared
responsibility of the international community. The Palestinian issue should not
be marginalized, still less should it fall into oblivion. It is an issue of
fundamental importance to peace in the Middle East. To bring an end to the
conflict, the international community should not only promote the resumption of
talks and implementation of peace agreements, but also uphold fairness and
justice. One cannot do without the other. Without fairness and justice, peace
accord can only bring about a cold peace. The international community should
stick to the principle of fairness and justice, and address historical
injustice as soon as possible.
"In this context, I wish to call on the international
community to take more effective measures; resume peace talks at the political
level and advance reconstruction on the economic front so as to bring hope to
the Palestinian people at an early date. China firmly supports the Middle East
peace process and supports the establishment of a State of Palestine enjoying
full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as
its capital. We understand the legitimate aspirations of Palestine to integrate
into the international community as a state. We are in favor of putting in
place a new mechanism to promote peace on the Middle East question and support
efforts made by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
toward this end. To improve Palestinian people’s well-being, the Chinese
government will provide 50 million RMB yuan of grant to the Palestinian side
and support the solar power station project in Palestine."
 |
| Xi Jinping
is greeted at Saudi Arabian airport by Jan. 19 by defence minister Mohammed bin Salman. (Photo: Reuters.) |
What prompted such forceful articulation of principles?
Simply put, China identifies itself with the strong undercurrent of opinion in
the region. Beijing doesn't buy into Israel’s propaganda that the Sunni Arab
states are queing up to hold its hand. Beijing takes note of the "Arab
Street" as an integral interlocutor in its regional engagement, if its
diplomacy is to be effective and durable.
West Asia is in turmoil and Beijing understands that
stability will elude the region until a resolution of the Palestine question is
reached. Beijing casts its eyes ahead. China is not a member of the Middle East
Quartet, which is supposed to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian "peace
process but is indeed a toothless, mindless body incapable of addressing the
Palestine question. Thus, Xi has proposed the creation of "a new mechanism to promote peace on the
Middle East question." He pointedly drew attention to the marginalization
of the Palestine issue and flagged the centrality of "the principle of
fairness and justice."
The salience of Xi’s speech lies in the Third Way that China
presents to the region, a variant that is bound to attract the region and
become a yardstick against which other external players will be compelled to
perform....
— Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
———————
5. SOLIDARITY WITH REFUGEES IN GREECE
 |
Greek soccer team observes 2 minute silence for drowned refugees.
|
Despite their own well-known economic and political problems, many Greek people have been helping and sympathizing with the refugees who arrive in Greece from Turkey going to northern Europe.
Many deaths of adults and children have occurred in the last two years from choppy seas and rickety, overcrowded boats. Frequent drownings en route to Greece have affected many residents of the country.
On Jan. 29, just after another mass drowning of 10 children and at least 27 adults, a Greek second-tier league soccer match was delayed when players took part in a brief sit-down protest against the death toll of migrants trying to reach the Aegean islands.
The gesture of solidarity took place before the game between AEL Larissa and Acharnaikos in the Thessalian city of Larissa. As the match kicked off all 22 players plus coaches and substitutes sat in silence for two minutes in a show of respect to the hundreds of refugees who have lost their lives in recent months trying to escape conflict or persecution in countries such as Syria and Iraq.
An announcement over the club's PA system stated: "The administration of AEL, the coaches and the players will observe two minutes of silence just after the start of the match in memory of the children who continue to lose their lives every day in the Aegean due to the brutal indifference of the EU and Turkey."
Lifeguard rescues a child as a boat with refugees and migrants sank last month
while crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos.
——————
6. AN ECONOMY FOR THE 1%
[Hardly a month has gone by in the last few years without appalling
new information about increasing U.S. and international economic and social
inequality and the mounting power of the richest 1%. The most shocking recent
news is the Oxfam report Jan. 17 that took the matter to an outrageous new
level. Below we publish an excerpt from the report titled An Economy for the 1% —How privilege and power in the economy drive
extreme inequality and how this can be stopped." Oxfam is an
international human rights confederation of 17 organizations networked together
in more than 90 countries.]
 |
Residents dig through a
trash dump in Beaufort West, South Africa. The photo quietly suggests the
contrast between the un-pictured people who created the waste and those who
must survive by digging through it. It less quietly portrays the victims of the
1%. (Photo: by Mikhael Subotzky Ng.)
|
The global inequality crisis is reaching new extremes. The
richest 1% now has more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Power and
privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between
the richest and the rest. A global network of tax havens further enables the
richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. The fight against poverty will not
be won until the inequality crisis is tackled.
The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes.
Credit Suisse recently revealed that the richest 1% have now accumulated more
wealth than the rest of the world put together. This occurred a year earlier
than Oxfam’s much-publicized prediction ahead of last year’s World Economic
Forum. Meanwhile, the wealth owned by the bottom half of humanity has fallen by
a trillion dollars in the past five years. This is just the latest evidence
that today we live in a world with levels of inequality we may not have seen
for over a century.
An Economy for the 1%
looks at how this has happened, and why, as well as setting out shocking new
evidence of an inequality crisis that is out of control.
Oxfam has calculated that:
· In
2015, just 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.6 billion people – the
bottom half of humanity. This figure is down from 388 individuals as recently
as 2010.
· The
wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44% in the five years since 2010 –
that's an increase of more than half a trillion dollars ($542 billion), to
$1.76 trillion.
· Meanwhile,
the wealth of the bottom half fell by just over a trillion dollars in the same
period – a drop of 41%.
· Since
the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has
received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that
increase has gone to the top 1%.
· The
average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by
less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. Their daily income has
risen by less than a single cent every year.
Growing economic inequality is bad for us all – it
undermines growth and social cohesion. Yet the consequences for the world’s
poorest people are particularly severe.
Apologists for the status quo claim that concern about
inequality is driven by "politics of envy." They often cite the
reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty as proof that
inequality is not a major problem. But this is to miss the point. As an organization
that exists to tackle poverty, Oxfam is unequivocal in welcoming the fantastic
progress that has helped to halve the number of people living below the extreme
poverty line between 1990 and 2010. Yet had inequality within countries not
grown during that period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped
poverty. That could have risen to 700 million had poor people benefited more
than the rich from economic growth.
$7.6 trillion of
individual wealth – more than the combined GDP of the UK and Germany – is
currently concealed
in a global network of tax havens that further enable the richest individuals and
multinational companies to hide $7.6 trillion. Developing countries lose at
least $170 billion in tax revenues each
year because of these tax havens. Poorer countries in particular are
deprived of funds to provide services like health and education, and to tackle
poverty and extreme inequality.
The
fight against poverty will not be won until the inequality crisis is tackled. Oxfam
calls on governments to adopt these seven points:
1. Clamp
down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals
2. Invest
in universal, free public services such as health and education
3. Share
the tax burden fairly, shifting taxation from labor and consumption
towards capital and wealth
4. Introduce
minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers
5. Introduce
equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal
6. Ensure
adequate safety-nets for the poorest, including a minimum income guarantee
7. Agree
a global goal to tackle inequality.
[From the Activist Newsletter: Oxfam has done a magnificent job in assembling the
full report, and we link to it below. Newspapers, TV, and websites throughout world
are reporting the findings. There is a problem, however. Some news accounts in quite recent years finally mention the 1%, powerful elites, corporations, billionaires, tax
havens, etc. But in nearly all the corporate mass media reports the one
essential word that is missing happens to be that of the very socio-economic
system wherein just 62 rich individuals have the same wealth as 3.6 billion poor
human beings. The word is "capitalism" of course. What else could possibly bring about so
indefensible a degree of inequality? In the Oxfam report it is mentioned just
once — in the title of a book in footnote 98. The only place we notice the word associated with poverty or war or recessions and the like is in the small progressive media, which we must support and expand.]
— The entire Oxfam report is available here: http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/an-economy-for-the-1-how-privilege-and-power-in-the-economy-drive-extreme-inequ-592643
———————
.
7. BERNIE, YOU MUST FIGHT TO DEFEND ABORTION!
 |
|
Senator Bernie
Sanders with attendees during a campaign stop Jan. 21, 2016 in
Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he is in the lead to win the primaries.
(Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
By Jessica Valenti
|
When we talk about abortion, everything we say — and the way
that we choose to say it — has an impact. And in a time when abortion is
becoming legal in-name-only because it is largely inaccessible to much of the
country thanks to anti-abortion
activism and policies, the way that presidential candidates talk about
abortion matters even more.
We know, for example, that if you simply ask people if
they're "pro-choice” or "pro-life”, they'll answer fairly equally
down the line (though
for the first time in years, more Americans call themselves pro-choice).
But when you talk to people about reproductive rights in a way that goes beyond
binary labels, a much different picture emerges.
While 44% of Americans consider themselves pro-life, only 19% believe that
abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. And according to a national survey of registered
voters released this week by the National Institute of Reproductive Health,
a whopping 83% believe health care providers should be allowed to “care for
patients based on their best medical expertise without interference from
politicians” and 63% think that the swath of state-level abortion restrictions are
"heading in the wrong direction."
When those surveyed were told about the kinds of hurdles
women have to jump through to obtain abortions, they responded using words like
"wrong," "disgusted "and unfair."
Most Americans Believe Abortions is Legal
These crucial distinctions are in part why Bernie Sanders'
campaign strategy on reproductive rights is so short sighted. Sanders, who has
an excellent
record on women's rights, seems to want voters to trust that his presidency
will be good for reproductive rights simply because he is pro-choice.
But this issue necessitates discussion that goes beyond
being "for" or "against" abortion: the intensity at which
reproductive rights are being attacked requires leadership that is detailed and
full-throated.
While Hillary Clinton has centered her campaign on
women's rights, been vocal about overturning the Hyde Amendment
and has brought up Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in nearly
every debate, Sanders has been much less proactive.
His campaign manager has said that
Sanders' health plan would repeal Hyde, yet the
document contains no mention of the amendment, women's health or
reproductive rights. Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America wrote
this week: "We can assume women's health services are intended to be
covered, based on [Sanders'] past record..... But in a political landscape this
hostile to reproductive rights, words matter – as do their absence."
Sanders has also missed
opportunities to make the link between abortion and economic freedom,
instead talking about the issues as if they're distinct: in a
Rolling Stone interview last summer, he noted, "Once you get off the
social issues — abortion, gay rights, guns and into economic issues, there is a
lot more agreement than the pundits understand."
Then, in an interview this week with Rachel Maddow, he
called Planned Parenthood — an organization under constant attack that provides
healthcare to low-income women — part
of the "establishment."
It's a bad look for Sanders, and one that underestimates
just how important reproductive rights are to voters.
Researcher Tresa Undem, who conducted that national study,
told me that abortion "is the number one engaging issue for Democrats
right now." She said she's never seen anything as powerful as the results
of this survey: when voters were told about the details of abortion
restrictions, they were outraged. "I've never seen anything more
motivating," she explained.
But when we're not explicit about women's rights and
reproductive rights, they're often ignored. For example, the Obama
administration had to issue
new guidelines for the Affordable Care Act specifying all 18 kinds of birth
control that should be covered after insurers used the omission to deny women
various kinds of coverage.
And it's a common trope in the progressive movement for women to be
assured that their rights are a given, even if they're not explicitly
discussed.
That's why it's so important that Sanders talk about
reproductive rights in earnest: being on the right side of this issue isn't
enough. Not when anti-abortion advocates are making the procedure so difficult
to access that tens
of thousands have desperately resorted to self-abortions. Not when last
year alone [state] legislators introduced over 300 anti-choice bills. And
not when abortion
clinics are under literal attack — the target of arsons, sustained
harassment and a deadly shooting.
Sanders has the pro-choice bona fides; now is the time for
him to proactively discuss his plan to protect and expand abortion access.
After all, the senator has never been known for his silence; there's no need to
start now.
— From the Guardian (UK), Jan. 22, 2016.
— A good new 2-minute
video from NARAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoddpXr6D6o.
———————
8. THE SMILING BLIND REFUGEE WOMAN
Amoun,
70, a blind Palestinian refugee who lived in the town of Aleppo in Syria, rests
on a beach moments after arriving by dinghy on the Greek island of Kos,
crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece. This means she's been
twice a refugee. Reuters Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis, who took this
photo, writes:
"I
was on a beach in Kos waiting for rafts containing refugees and migrants to
arrive. When this raft arrived I took some pictures and gave the people
directions to the police station to register, reassuring them, as my colleagues
and I did again and again, that nobody was going to harm them.
"Then
I saw an older lady sitting on the beach looking very comfortable with the
flicker of a smile on her face. She looked very calm. I stayed a few meters
away and shot some frames as the morning sun gently illuminated her face. I was
stunned by the tranquility of the scene and by her presence.
"I
decided to approach and offer her a small sweet, a traditional gesture of Greek
hospitality. I also wanted to ask her a few questions and solve the mystery
that seemed to surround her. I kneeled in front of her and offered the sweet,
saying good morning in Arabic. She seemed lost but her gentle face still had a
beautiful smile. She reached with her hand upwards and then I realized she was
blind. I was overwhelmed by strong emotions. We exchanged some pleasantries in
English and Arabic and then she took the sweet, gave me a warm handshake with
both her hands and thanked me with that divine smile. Her family was watching, some
smiling, some with tears of joy running down their faces."
———————
9. NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE
IN THE SOUTH HEBRON
HILLS
 |
|
You
never know — she may throw a stone. (Photo: Operazione Colomba Photogallery)
|
The worst worries of a child’s school day should be
homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to
school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being
chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live
with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron
Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts
isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.
Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in
the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road
connecting the two villages. During the 1980s Israeli settlers built a
settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze
sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers
established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the
road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to
town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health
care, shopping, and higher education.
Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the
road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception, – children walk behind an
Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to
walk with them.
The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school
day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who
will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the
children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled
every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the
soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before
– shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some
days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable
to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military
escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with
international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.
About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an
estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie
inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military
training.
 |
|
This little girl was injured by two masked settlers who
attacked her with stones as she gathered herbs with a friend on the path between
Tuba and Tuwani. She and her siblings make the same trip on foot each school
day. She is an amazingly smart and tough young girl – insistent that the many
odd volunteers that pass through her life should learn her name and visit her
family’s home. She needed four stitches in a head wound. (Photo: Cassandra Dixon).
|
This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation
looks like.
I’m grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in
Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about
nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers
holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.
U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of
their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget,
at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.
 |
| Palestinian residents and Operation Dove volunteers. |
Protective presence provided by activists is not a
large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into children's’ lives in
Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that it’s
important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers’ nonviolent
efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond
our addiction to militarism and violence.
The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on
to college, and some have families of their own. These young people have every
reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions,
arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their community’s
steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have
supported them well, including them in the community’s struggle for dignity.
Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of
anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love
wins.
— Cassandra Dixon lives at Mary House of Hospitality, a
small Catholic Worker house which offers hospitality to families visiting the
federal prison at Oxford, WI, and works as a carpenter in Madison.
— Read more about Operation Dove’s work
in the South Hebron Hills: http://www.operazionecolomba.it/togetherattuwani
———————
10. FLINT POISONING IS A 'RACIAL CRIME'
 |
|
If you were a Flint, Mich., parent taking this two-month-old
baby for a medical
check-up, you'd be worried, too. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit
Free Press)
|
[Some 9,000 children in the city of Flint, Michigan, have
contracted lead poisoning due to yhr criminal indifference of state officials
who in April 2014 switched the water supply of this city of 100,000 people (57%
black, 40% poor) from Lake Huron to the obviously contaminated water of the
Flint River. They did it to lower costs, and seized the legal power from city
officials to accomplish the state's goal. In the process they refused to pay
$36,000 a year to add anti-corrosives that may have mitigated the problem. Residents complained from the
beginning that their new water looked yellowish brown but they were ignored.
There is no safe level of ingested lead — even low levels of exposure are
harmful. Many of these Flint children may have serious lifelong problems.]
By Michael Moore
The people of my hometown, Flint, Mich., are being poisoned.
Let me not mince words: This is a racial crime. If it were happening in another
country, we’d call it an ethnic cleansing. Flint is a very poor, majority
African-American city, and the Republican governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder,
knows they have no political power, no lobbyists, no money. And they didn’t
vote for him. So when the residents of Flint, many of whom work two or three
jobs for minimum wage, complained about the levels of lead in their water and
told the governor their children were getting sick — two years ago! — he didn’t
have to listen.
Everybody knows that this would not have happened in
predominantly white Michigan cities like West Bloomfield, or Grosse Pointe, or
Ann Arbor. Everybody knows that if there had been two years of taxpayer complaints,
and then a year of warnings from scientists and doctors, this would have been
fixed in those towns.
This started when the governor turned Flint’s authority over
to an "emergency manager," ostensibly to fix the city’s finances. In
order to save a few million dollars, the manager and the governor’s office came
up with the bright idea to unhook the city’s water supply from Lake Huron and
tap into the Flint River.
 |
|
Flint resident at
rally, holding polluted water.
|
So here we are. People need to stop saying that Flint was
using Detroit’s water. It was pure water from Lake Huron, the third largest
body of freshwater in the world. A toxic water crisis is the last thing that
should happen here.
[A coalition of Flint citizens and national groups
filed suit
Jan. 27 to ask a federal court to step in and secure access to safe
drinking water for the people of Flint, Michigan. Alleging violations of the
federal Safe Drinking Water Act, the complaint was filed by the ACLU of
Michigan, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Concerned Pastors for Social
Action and Flint resident Melissa Mays.]
The American middle class was built in Flint. Our grandparents knew that if they worked hard and the company prospered, they prospered. That was the American Dream, and it spread from Flint to the rest of the nation. Then around 1980, General Motors, a company that was making billions, figured out that it could make even more money by sending jobs to the nonunion South or overseas.
This halved Flint’s population and brought along
unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, broken families and other ills. The crime
rate skyrocketed. Wall Street came in and cut Flint’s credit rating, making it
impossible for Flint to recover, to attract jobs, to fix its infrastructure and
schools. Flint went through a three-decade economic and social assault. Those
who could get off the sinking ship—myself included—escaped.
And those who were abandoned and left behind? They got their
water poisoned. And when the governor found out, he kept quiet and let the poor
of Flint continue drinking the poison. Marie Antoinette would’ve been proud.
Except this time, no one offered any cake. “Let them drink the Flint River” has
such a nice ring.
[Activist Newsletter: America's foremost political prisoner,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, speaks (3:34 minutes) on the poison water in Flint Michigan,
headlined "Flint: Crimes of Capital."
— From Feb. 2 Time. Moore is a progressive filmmaker whose
works include Sicko, Roger & Me, Bowling for
Columbine, and Capitalism: A
Love Story, among
others.
———————
11. THE POLICE KILLING SPREE IN 2015
 |
| Protesting police killings of African Americans in Chicago last November. |
In 2015, police in the United States continued to kill at a
rate far higher than every other country in the world for which statistics are
currently available. That year, U.S. cops killed at least 1,200 people, more
than three per day on average, according to the research of the website www.killedbypolice.net.
The exact number is not known. There is no federal agency
that keeps track. The FBI compiles annual statistics for "justified
homicides" by police—but participation in the program by the approximately
18,000 police agencies in the country is completely voluntary, and only about
800 actually provide reports. Most departments, including the notoriously
racist and murderous New York Police Department, do not participate at all.
The FBI reported 444 killings by police in 2014, the latest
report available. The FBI's amazingly broad definition of "justifiable
homicide" by police is: "The killing of a felon by a law enforcement
officer in the line of duty." The FBI classified every one of the 444
killings as "justified."
"The Counted," a project of the U.K.-based
Guardian newspaper, documented the deaths of 1,136 people killed by U.S. police
in 2015. Its extensively researched database confirmed the racist and class
dimensions of police violence.
African Americans were killed at a rate of 7.15 per million
(301 deaths); Latinos – 3.48 per million (193 deaths); Native Americans – 3.4
per million (13 deaths); whites – 2.92 per million (578 deaths); and
Asian/Pacific Islanders – 1.34 per million (24 deaths). No corporate criminals
are in the list.
And while the FBI makes no effort to create a comprehensive
database of annual police killings, the agency has very exact numbers of police
officers "killed in the line of duty." This data comes from the "Officer
Down Memorial Project," which receives funding from the federal Department
of Justice.
The "Officer Down" project includes in its 2015
report six Air Force Special Agents killed in Afghanistan, and even lists all
police dogs that die or are killed "in the line of duty."
Contrary to the demagogic campaign rhetoric from a number of
current candidates for U.S. president, there is no evidence whatsoever of a "war
on police." In fact, the number of police killed in 2015 declined
significantly from the previous year. Police officers who died inside the
United States or its territories (colonies) dropped from 133 in 2014 to 123 in
2015, the majority in both years due to illness or accidents.
Police officers killed by hostile actions—gunfire or
assault—declined from 64 to 49. Given that there are more than 1.5 million
police in the country, those numbers reveal that the claim of a "war on
cops" is truly bogus.
U.S. cops kill at 100 times or more the rate of other
countries
U.S. political leaders frequently promote the chauvinistic
idea of "American exceptionalism," the notion that the United States
is the "one indispensable country," superior to all others. It is
dangerous propaganda employed to justify wars and interventions around the
world.
But in the area of state violence, the United States is
indeed "exceptional," particularly as compared to other developed
capitalist states.
In Britain, also a capitalist country with a long history of
racism, police reportedly fired guns three times in all of 2013, with zero
reported fatalities. Police do not generally carry guns on patrol. From 2010
through 2014, there were five fatal police shootings in Britain, which has a
population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a
population 1 percent of Britain's, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same
time period!
In 2015, German police, who do carry guns, reportedly killed
two people. Germany, another racist, imperialist country with large numbers of
oppressed minorities, has a population about one quarter that of the United
States.
While police killings in Canada, another multi-national
state, have sharply increased in the past two years, U.S. cops were five times
as likely to kill as their Canadian counterparts. Japan had no reported police
killings in recent years.
Contrary to the myths propagated by politicians, mass media
and schoolbooks, extreme racist, anti-worker and anti-poor violence has been a
central feature of U.S. history since the country's founding. U.S. capitalism
was constructed on a foundation of genocidal extermination of Native people and
the unpaid labor and murder of millions of enslaved Africans. The U.S. ruling
class created whole agencies of armed thugs to shoot down and repress striking
workers.
State violence has been an essential element of a system
based on ruthless exploitation inside and outside the U.S. borders. It will
only be eliminated when the system itself is.
—From Liberation News, Jan 12, 2016, https://www.liberationnews.org/.
Richard Becker is the Western Region Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition,
and the author of Palestine, Israel and
the U.S. Empire, and The Myth of
Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
———————
12. TURKEY FIGHTS THE
KURDS
 |
|
A woman and her children stand in the ruins of a house in
the Kurdish town near the border with Iraq. Turkey is waging an all-out
offensive against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party, with military
operations backed by curfews aimed at flushing out rebels from several
south-eastern towns. (Photo: Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images)
|
Silopi, Turkey: A woman and her children stand in the ruins
of a house in the Kurdish town near the border with Iraq. Turkey is waging an
all-out offensive against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party, with
military operations backed by curfews aimed at flushing out rebels from several
southeastern towns. Photo: Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images,)
Instead of aiming the main blow on the Islami State,
Turkey's strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems focused on crushing the
Kurds. He also supports the Sunni jihadist groups seeking to overthrow the
government in Damascus. On Jan. 27, the Guardian reported: "The Turkish
Human Rights Foundation says at least 198 civilians, including 39 children,
have died in combat areas under curfew since August. Today, Human Rights Watch
raised concerns over the civilian casualties, criticizing the government for
not releasing numbers or facilitating urgent medical evacuations for trapped
civilians."
———————
13. WASHINGTON KOWTOWS TO MEAT INDUSTRY
 |
|
Care for a bite? "Big Burger" is the title of
this apparent parody on U.S. fast food in this oil on linen painting
by artist Tjalf Sparnaay, 2015. (Courtesy Bernarducci Meisel Gallery,
New York.)
|
By Janna Herron
Just over two months after processed meats were deemed a
possible carcinogen, the U.S. government unveiled new eating recommendations
glossing over these risks.
The new dietary
guidelines released Jan. 7 recommend a healthy eating pattern that includes
fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and a variety of
proteins, while limiting saturated fats, added sugars and sodium. The
recommendations also quantify what a moderate intake of alcohol is for adult
men and women of drinking age.
But the guidelines only mention "processed meats"
four times, and the term "red meat" doesn't appear at all. The
near-omissions come after the World Health Organization in October classified
processed meats as carcinogenic to people — the same grouping as tobacco and
asbestos — and red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans
A study from WHO's International Agency for Research on
Cancer found that a person who eats 50 grams of processed meat a day — the
equivalent of two slices of Oscar Mayer beef bologna — increases the risk of
colon and rectal cancer by 18%. The study
also suggested — though does not prove — that the risk of colorectal cancer
could increase by 17% for every 3.5-ounces of red meat eaten daily. For
comparison's sake, a Burger King Whopper packs a 4-ounce patty.
These hazards are absent in the U.S. guidelines. But they
weren't always. When the
scientific report that informs the guidelines was released in February last
year, a healthy dietary pattern included the same good foods found in the new
guidelines, but the report went further. It said a healthy dietary pattern is
"lower in red and processed meats." The report also offered the
following evidence:
·
"Diets that are higher in red/processed
meats, French fries/potatoes, and sources of sugars (i.e., sodas, sweets, and
dessert foods) are associated with a greater colon/rectal cancer risk."
·
"Patterns higher in red and/or processed
meats were generally associated with greater age- related cognitive
impairment."
·
"Patterns emphasizing red and processed
meats and refined sugar were generally associated with increased risk of
depression."
·
The scientific report concluded that
"higher intake of red and processed meats was identified as detrimental
compared to lower intake."
The guidelines released Jan. 7 only state that lower intakes
of processed meat, among other foods, are "characteristics of healthy
eating patterns," and went so far to assure the public that eating
processed meats "can be accommodated." Again, the term "red
meat" was not included.
What happened? In March, 71 members of Congress, including
the chair of the agriculture committee Mike Conaway (R-TX), the No. 2 recipient
of political
donations from the livestock industry, sent
a letter to the secretaries of agriculture and health and human services
expressing their issues with the scientific report, which included its
treatment of red meat.
"The DGAC's recommendation on lean red meat directly
contradicts years of peer reviewed scientific research on the benefits of lean
red meat as a high quality source of protein in a healthy diet," the
letter stated. "It is crucial for HHS and the USDA to recognize the need
for flexibility in the American diet that reflects the diverse population of
this country."
During the public comment period, more than
30,000 comments were received, including those with issues on how red meat
was treated in the report. At a
hearing in October in front of the House agriculture committee, Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack backed away from the report's harsher stance on red meat.
"In terms of the issue of red meat, it is fairly clear
that there is a recognition that lean meat is, and should be, part of a healthy
diet," he testified. No one mentioned processed meat.
[Democracy Now reported Jan. 14 that "Health and
environmental experts are accusing the Obama administration of caving in to the
meat industry. The tougher proposals came up against heavy lobbying from such groups
as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Producers
Council, and the North American Meat Institute. They spent untold dollars to
remove the committee’s call to eat less meat. The next set of dietary
guidelines is not due out until 2021.]
In December, Congress mandated a peer review of the dietary
guidelines by the National Academy of Medicine, a step never taken before, in
the 2016 Omnibus Bill.
By mid-January, bacon, boloney and red meat were back on many
kitchen tables.
— From the Fiscal Times .
———————
14. N.Y. SENATE,
ASSEMBLY MULL REPRESSIVE LAWS
 |
|
One of many protests by Jews and their supporters in New York against the Israeli
government's wars in gaza, occupation of West Bank, and the oppression of the
Palestinian people.
|
Bills are pending in both the New York State Senate and the
State Assembly to protect the Israel from being criticized or boycotted. Dozens
of groups from New York State, out of state and national organizations are
behind the opposition to such bills. A link to a petition opposing passage of
the legislation and the name of sponsoring groups is below.
Senate Bill
S6086 and Assembly Bill
8220 seek to penalize and coercively discourage political action. If
passed, this legislation will create a "list" — much like what
happened under Sen. Joe McCarthy — of persons who act in the interest of
Palestinian human rights.
According to N.Y.
Senate majority leader John Flanagan: "New York taxpayers need to be
protected from becoming unwitting supporters of those who are trying to
undermine our greatest ally, Israel, and other critical allies. We are
demonstrating that New York will continue to stand with our international
partners and protect our shared interests."
The legislation would create “A list of persons it
determines boycotts Israel,” and defines boycotting Israel as "engaging in
actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, inflict
economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with the State
of Israel or companies based in the State of Israel or in territories
controlled by the state of Israel.”
Here's who it will it affect: • Individuals or Community
groups that support Palestinian human rights by supporting a boycott of Israel.
• Contractors and other businesses seeking partnerships with New York State. •
Nonprofit organizations that receive New York State grants.
In effect, this law would grant the state the power to
coerce those who wish to support Palestinian human rights and the call for
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) by denying them partnerships with
state agencies. Once implicated, accused persons would be required to submit a
written profession that they are not in fact boycotting Israel. The law will
also prohibit the investment of state pension funds in companies that
boycott/divest from Israel.
— For the petition and
other information:
———————
15. KIDS WHO DIE (Poem)
By the Activist Newsletter
Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old, was playing with a toy gun
in a Cleveland park in November 2014 when two white cops — responding to a call
that a youth might have a pistol — emerged from their patrol car and before two
seconds had passed one of them shot and killed the child. On Dec. 28, 2015, a
grand jury decided that officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback were
justified in using lethal force. Loehmann, who did the shooting, "had
reason to fear for his life." To some cops, black lives, even those of
young children, will never matter.
KIDS WHO DIE
By Langston Hughes (excerpt)
Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together
Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
———————
16. SYRIA: ASSAD'S FORCES GAINING STRENGTH
 |
| Syrian troops on the offensive. |
President Bashar al-Assad is winning in Syria. Russia has shifted the
balance of power there dramatically. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the
UN might insist that Assad
negotiate with his opponents and ultimately cede power to them, but
the Syrian president has no intention of accepting such demands. His advisers
state that he will go to talks in Geneva this month “to listen, but not to
negotiate.” In other words, he is still out for victory on the battlefield. As
the United States enters the now delayed UN negotiating process, it will have
to stay flexible in its expectations and objectives in light of the shifting
military balance on the ground.
The main reason for Assad's renewed confidence is a clear
reversal of military fortune. Three months ago, Assad's army was beleaguered. A
large confederation of jihadist and Islamist militias calling themselves the
Victory Army had achieved something resembling unity. Built around Syria's two
strongest militias — Al-Nusra, al Qaeda's Syria franchise; and Ahrar al-Sham,
the most powerful Salafi militia in the country — the Victory Army conquered
two strategic northern cities, Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour, in quick succession
this spring. These victories attracted many other militias into their orbit and
promised success. The expulsion of regime forces from Jisr al-Shughour not only
meant the independence of Idlib more generally but put Latakia, a regime
stronghold, in serious jeopardy. The new resistance army seemed to overcome the
opposition's chronic fragmentation; it was also well armed and supported by the
region's Sunni states.
 |
| In late December Syrian army and National Defense Forces captured strategic hilltops in southwestern Syria's Daraa province during an advance against Al-Nusra Front militants. |
Meanwhile, Russia's advanced aircraft, helicopters, and
tanks have been pounding the Victory Army for months. Russian aircrews fly
close to 200 sorties a day, allowing Assad and his allies to go on the
offensive in both the north and south of Syria. Ahrar al-Sham has agreed to go
to talks in Geneva, an about-face, after snubbing the UN envoy Staffan de
Mistura as an Assad lackey only months ago. Al Qaeda's Syria leader pronounced
those who head to Geneva guilty of “high treason,” a clear death threat but
also an indicator of clear anxiety. Another sign of desperation was the call
put out by the Victory Army to foreign fighters to come join their ranks.
Non-jihadist members of the coalition were infuriated by this tactic, which
would inevitably associate them with the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as ISIS),
and withdrew from the coalition. Assad, in short, is dividing his enemies and
counting on his ability to pick off one at a time.
[Syrian pro-government forces captured Sheikh Miskeen Jan.
26, a strategically valuable town in Daraa province near the Jordanian border,
according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, AFP reported. The town,
which was taken after weeks of fighting, lies at a strategic crossroads between
Damascus to the north and the government-controlled city of Sweida to the east.
It is also around seven miles from the rebel-held town of Nawa, another target
for government forces. The Syrian troops reportedly had support from allied
militia, fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iranian officers, as well as
Russian and Syrian government airstrikes.]
 |
|
Displaced children, who fled with their
families from the Violence throughout Syria.
To be sure, Assad's
advances have been hard fought and slower in coming than his advisers insisted
they would be. The reason is the state of the Syrian army, which is in
shambles, worn down by years of fighting, poverty, and corruption. All the
same, it is hard to imagine Assad losing or being thrown back to some Alawite
ethnic canton.
|
The real question is how much of Syria Assad can retake.
Assad believes that the Russians will carry him to the finish line, but that is
not at all certain. The Syrian regime already rules over some 75 percent of
Syria's Arab population. Assad seems convinced that he can bully the remaining
25 percent into “accepting” the bitterness of defeat in exchange for the end to
deprivation and war. But that will likely take years. Much depends on Turkey
and the Gulf states, the primary sponsors of the rebels.
Syria's Kurds may also accommodate themselves to Assad. They
constitute 10% of the population and live in a long ribbon of territory
dividing Syria from Turkey that they have named Rojava. Despite wresting the
land from Assad, ISIS, and the rebel militias at great cost, the Kurds may
accept autonomy within a Syrian state rather than independence as the price of
protection against Turkey. Assad, too, may find a Kurdish enclave a useful
buffer against Turkey.
Most important to Assad has been the attitude of the United
States. U.S. President Barack Obama's first reaction to Russia's entry into the
war on September 30 was to state, "We're not going to make Syria into a
proxy war between the U.S. and Russia." This was consistent with the
administration's long-standing reluctance to go beyond its current support for
a small number of armed groups opposed to the Assad regime. Moscow has had a
long and important relationship with Damascus; Washington has not.
 |
A Syrian man with one leg uses crutches as migrants
and refugees
walk on a road after
crossing the Macedonian border into Serbia,
near the village of Miratovac, Jan. 8, 2016.
(Photo Armend Nimani, AFP)
But Obama has not ceded Syria to Russia entirely; rather, he
established a tacit division of labor, by which the United States combats ISIS
in the east of the country while Russia combats Assad's foes in the west.
Moreover, Obama believes Russia will fail in its endeavor to restore Assad's
control over the country as surely as it failed in Afghanistan in 1979. The
fight will become a “quagmire,” he predicted, which will force the Russians to
come back to the United States for a negotiated solution. He might be right.
Although Moscow would doubtless favor a negotiated solution
that preserved the Assad regime, Russian officials dismiss the notion that
Syria can be likened to Afghanistan or even to Iraq; rather, they insist that
the better analogy is Chechnya,
where Russia's superior airpower devastated the rebels at Grozny. After all,
they argue, no one is arming the Syrian opposition with antiaircraft weapons,
as U.S. President Ronald Reagan did the Afghan mujahedeen and Arab jihadists....
— Continued at this site but it usually requires membership:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/assad-has-it-his-way?cid=nlc-fatoday20160120&sp_mid=50505846&sp_rid=amFjZG9uQGVhcnRobGluay5uZXQS1&spMailingID=50505846&spUserID=NTU1MzQ0NTQ3NjYS1&spJobID=842640966&spReportId=ODQyNjQwOTY2S0.
————————
17. WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE ISLAMIC STATE?
Islamic State Troops on parade for the propaganda cameras.
Islamic State Troops on parade for the propaganda cameras.
By ScottStewart, Stratfor 1-7-16
The Islamic State is far more than
just a terrorist group. It is much more accurately defined as a
militant organization that does employ terrorism, but also conducts guerrilla
warfare, hybrid warfare and conventional warfare. Moreover, it has established
a proto-state over a wide swath of Iraq and Syria. Anyone who defines such an
organization as merely a "terrorist group" is going to have a hard
time accurately assessing it.
Despite the Islamic State's pointed criticism of al Qaeda
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organization has roughly followed the plan
al-Zawahiri laid out in a 2005 letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head
of al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Zawahiri wrote: "It has always been my belief that
the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established
in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world." He also
noted that the first step in such a plan was to expel U.S. forces from Iraq.
The second stage was to establish an emirate and expand it into a larger
caliphate. The third stage was then to attack the countries surrounding Iraq
(Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan) in order to bring them into the
caliphate. The fourth step was to use the power of the combined caliphate to
attack Israel.
Although al-Zarqawi died in a U.S. airstrike, al Qaeda in
Iraq renamed itself the Islamic State in Iraq in 2006, thereby declaring the
establishment of a jihadist polity in Iraq. The U.S. surge of forces into Iraq
and the corresponding Anbar Awakening in the Sunni areas of the country that
began in 2007 severely weakened the organization by 2010, but the Islamic State
in Iraq never lost sight of its goals. It rebuilt after the 2011 U.S.
withdrawal from Iraq and took advantage of the civil war in Syria. Following a
successful military campaign to seize large portions of the Sunni areas in Iraq
on June 29, 2014, the Islamic State organization announced not just the
re-establishment of its emirate in Iraq, but the launching of a caliphate.
Although the Islamic State is following the general
guidelines of Ayman al-Zawahiri's plan, there are quickly
proclaim a caliphate after it had captured a large portion of Iraq
and Syria. The group's message to the Muslim world is that the caliphate is a
historical fact, nothing will stop its expansion, and all Muslims should
migrate to the Islamic State to help bolster its growth.
significant differences
between al-Qaeda's timeline and that of Islamic State for the execution of that
plan. Al Qaeda argues that the caliphate can be established only after the
United States and its European allies have been defeated to the extent that
they can no longer interfere in Muslim lands — either because of a lack of ability
or a lack of desire. The al-Qaeda leadershipenvisions a long war
approach that emphasizes the need to attack the United States, "the far
enemy," before focusing on overthrowing local governments. The Islamic
State, however, has adopted a more urgent approach, believing that the time for
taking, holding and governing territory is now. This strategy banks on being
able to use any conquered territory and resources for the purposes of continued
expansion. The direct approach explains the Islamic State's decision to
 |
|
IS leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi July 2014.
|
This message proved quite appealing to jihadists who had
become disenchanted with al Qaeda's more cautious long war approach. Excited by
the prospect of the caliphate's creation and assurances that the Islamic
State's interpretation of apocalyptic prophesies confirmed that the end of the
world was near — and that the final battle was being brought about by the
creation of the Islamic State — the Islamic State was able to energize the
jihadist movement and draw thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks. However,
with the organization proclaiming the caliphate and adopting the mantle of
apocalypticism, both time and space are working against the Islamic State.
One of the advantages that an insurgent organization has
when it is battling a stronger foe is that the insurgents are by definition
mobile. They attack at a time and place of their choosing, optimally in areas
where the enemy is weak and where tactical surprise and numerical superiority
can work in the insurgents' favor. When a superior force confronts them, they
can decline battle, flee and then regroup and wait for more favorable
circumstances before staging their next attack. Mobility gives insurgents a big
advantage over government forces, which must hold and secure population
centers, natural resources and lines of communication from hit-and-run
insurgent attacks. The government must also oversee the population and provide
services. Securing such a wide array of targets from attack and providing
services requires a lot of resources — and these resources are tied down to
protect specific places, so that they cannot be used to conduct offensive
operations against the insurgents elsewhere.
In its transition from an insurgency to a government, the
Islamic State has lost many of the advantages it enjoyed as an insurgent group.
The organization has had to shoulder many of the responsibilities that come
with being a government, such as devoting tremendous resources to securing
cities, governing and providing services. Many people have commented about the
Islamic State's internal security efforts and aggressive work to track down and
execute spies; every fighter devoted to internal security is one less that can
be involved in military operations elsewhere.
Furthermore, by becoming
bound to specific geography, the Islamic State has opened itself up to
months of punishing airstrikes. The past 60 years has shown that the U.S.
military struggles against an amorphous enemy but is very good at attacking
fixed, quantifiable targets. Recognizing the U.S.-led coalition's aversion to
civilian casualties, the Islamic State has attempted to insulate itself from
airstrikes by using human shields. However, when leaders leave insulated
locations, or attempt to mass forces for offensive operations, they open
themselves up to being hit.
 |
|
Islamic State (ISIS) beheads 7 men and 3 women in the Kurdish
region sometime in October, 2014.
|
Since the U.S.-led coalition's bombing efforts began in
August 2014, they have significantly degraded the Islamic State's military
capabilities by destroying large quantities of military equipment and troops.
In addition, the group has found it difficult to spread beyond the Sunni Arab
majority areas into Shiite and Kurdish areas. This, combined with strikes, has
stymied the group's expansion. In areas of northeastern Syria, coalition air
power has played a decisive role in helping local ground forces such as the Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces push the Islamic State back from key border
crossings. Although smuggling in and out of Islamic State territory still
occurs, the volume of goods and people crossing the border is undoubtedly far
less than it was a year ago.
In addition to pinching the Islamic State's supply lines, by
halting the group's advance and destroying its military units the coalition has
also helped curtail the Islamic State's biggest supply of resources: the homes,
farms, business, goods and people that do not belong to the group, and the
taxes levied on conquered citizens. This type of logistical model becomes
unsustainable once conquerors squeeze the population they control dry and can
no longer acquire new territory to plunder and pillage.
Time is working against the Islamic State in that the longer
the group remains on the defensive and are unable to continue the promised
global conquest, the more the
allure of its apocalyptic ideology will fade.
In 2016, the Islamic State will be challenged in several
crucial battlespaces. The first of these is Mosul in Iraq, the largest city
under the Islamic State's control and the place where Islamic State leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the caliphate. Gauging from Iraqi offensives in
Ramadi, Baiji and Tikrit, the operation to cut off and then recapture Mosul is
going to be slow, deliberate and greatly aided by coalition airstrikes — but it
will begin this year.
Beyond Mosul, it will also be important to keep an eye on
the much smaller town of Dabiq, Syria, as well as the Islamic State's capital
city of Raqqa. In the Islamic State's interpretation of Islamic apocalyptic
prophecy, Dabiq will be the place where the armies of the world will gather to
fight the true believers in the final battle, in which the true believers will
be delivered by the return of the prophet Isa (Jesus). These prophecies are why
the Islamic State leaders have shown no reluctance to attack, threaten or
challenge world powers. They truly believe that the armies of the world will
all descend upon them and that they will emerge from the conflict victorious
through divine intervention.
 |
|
Christian Syrian
Lucia, a member of the battalion called the "Female Protection
Forces
of the Land Between
the Two Rivers" fighting the Islamic State. She plays with dogs after
training session in December. (Photo Delil Souleiman, AFP)
|
The Islamic State's position in northern Aleppo province,
where Dabiq is located, is becoming increasingly tenuous, and the group is
being pressured from three directions. First is a coalition of Syrian rebels in
the northwestern part of the region — the rebel front line is now less than 10
kilometers (6 miles) from Dabiq. Second, Syrian government forces are pressing
in from the southwest around al-Bab. Third, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic
Forces are east of Dabiq, near Manbij. The Syrian Democratic Forces are also
now south of Ain Issa and only about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Islamic
State's capital of Raqqa.
Unfortunately for the Islamic State, it appears that Dabiq
is about to be attacked by a coalition of other Muslims and not the combined
armies of the world. Still, it will be very important to watch how the Islamic
State leaders respond to the threat against Dabiq. Although the small town of
some 3,000 people has very little military significance, the ideological
significance of the town is substantial; the Islamic State has even named its
English-language magazine after the town, and a quote from al-Zarqawi regarding
the Dabiq prophecies is regularly featured in a wide variety of Islamic State
propaganda. Because of this, the Islamic State will likely commit a lot of forces
to retaining control of the town. Such concentrations of forces will be exposed
to airstrikes.
Should the Syrian Democratic Forces be able to capture
Raqqa from the Islamic State, the victory would be highly symbolic. The city
was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate from A.D. 769 to A.D. 809, before the
capital was moved to Baghdad. Taking Raqqa would also have clear strategic
value for the anti-Islamic State effort. The area around the city is an
important hub for transporting people and supplies: Raqqa sits on the Euphrates
River and controls critical highways. For the Islamic State, rivers are
essential; waterways and their flanking roads are the geographic core of the
Islamic State's web of control.
 |
|
Shia tribal fighters
raise their weapons against the Islamic State in the
northwest Baghdad's
Shula neighborhood.
|
Outside of Syria and
Iraq
When considering the Islamic State's presence outside of Iraq and Syria, it is important to recognize that most of the Islamic State's "provinces" (called "wilaya" in Arabic) or affiliate groups outside of Syria and Iraq are not new and are simply rebranded versions of existing jihadist groups or splinters of existing groups that have pledged allegiance to Islamic State. For example, the Wilayat al Gharbi al Sudan — meaning West Africa province — is merely a rebranded Boko Haram. And Wilayat Sinai was previously the Sinai portion of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. By contrast, the mainland portion of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis remains in the al Qaeda orbit.
Other than perhaps the Wilayat Barqa in eastern Libya and
Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan, Islamic State affiliate groups departed 2015
weaker than they entered it. For example, more than 100 members of the Yemen
Wilayat, including the group's military commander and several other senior
members, defected in December 2015. Elsewhere, the Egyptian military inflicted
a serious toll on Wilayat Sinai. But that does not mean the regional groups no
longer pose a threat.
[The Voice of America reported Jan. 22: "Over the
waning weeks of 2015, about 500 key Islamic State (IS) officials and commanders
packed up and slipped away, leaving their posts in Syria and Iraq. The move,
according to a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence, was not part of
any sort of retreat. Rather, it appeared to be a calculated move to bolster the
self-declared caliphate’s growing provinces in Libya.... A U.S. intelligence
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, put the number of IS fighters
at "a few thousand," though other Western and North African officials
say the actual figure could be much higher, perhaps 5,000 or more.]
Even as territory is lost, Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi has
lashed out with suicide bombings in Chad, Cameroon and Niger, countries that
are supporting Nigeria's fight against the jihadist group. Despite this rapid
escalation of suicide bombings (the group conducted well over 100 in 2015), and
their spread to neighboring countries, there is no doubt that the group is
considerably weaker now than it was in 2013. Then, it conducted no suicide
bombings, and even in 2014 the group conducted only 26 such attacks. In other
words, the number of terrorist attacks a militant organization launches is not
necessarily an accurate gauge of its overall strength.
On Dec. 26, the Islamic State's Al Hayat Media Center
released an audio message from al-Baghdadi titled, "Wait as we Indeed are
Waiting." The theme of the message was that Islamic State fighters need to
demonstrate patience and perseverance under severe affliction and trials, which
he called inevitable. Al-Baghdadi also appealed for Muslims to rise up and do
their duty to preserve the Islamic State by traveling to join it. This included
liberating jihadists from prisons and conducting attacks in countries fighting
the Islamic State in the region, as well as transnationally. This message
presented a dramatically different message from al-Baghdadi's triumphal 2014
declaration of the caliphate. The themes of affliction, trials and suffering
are certain to be repeated frequently by the Islamic State core and its
affiliates throughout 2016 as they continue to be pressed hard on all sides.
— Original title - Gauging the jihadist movement in 2016:
The Islamic State.
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gauging-jihadist-movement-2016-islamic-state-camp
———————
18. U.S. AND SYRIA —
THE ASTONISHING HIDDEN STORY
 |
|
Islamic State suicide bombers killed 45 people Jan. 29 with
three explosions near a
Damascus shrine revered by Shiite Muslims. This photo shows Syrian pro-government forces and residents gathered at site of an explosion. Damascus is better secured than Baghdad in neighboring Iraq, which is battered almost explosions. IS has suffered some significant setbacks lately in e large sectors of Syria that form part of its claimed state. and may have sought to divert attention with this spectacular attack. (Photo:Louai Beshar, AFP/Getty Images) |
[Seymour Hersh is one of America's finest investigative journalists,
particularly for his decades of exposing government and Pentagon cover-ups,
starting with his 1968 revelations about the U.S. military massacre in the
small village of My Lai in Vietnam.This article is from the Jan. 7 London Review of Books, originally titled "Military To Military," and reveals differences between the U.S. Military Chiefs of Staff and the Obama Administration's demand for regime change intentions in Syria. The Chiefs forwarded important information to top allies military allies who relayed it to the Assad government in Syria. It's a long article, and well worth it for what it uncovers.]
By Seymour M. Hersh
Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must
leave office – and that there are "moderate" rebel groups in Syria
capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even
overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's
Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration's
fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about
Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both
countries share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and
beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
 |
| General Martin Dempsey. He told Obama that a strike on Syriawound end involvement with Russia and Iran. |
By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama's Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, "that what was started as a covert US program to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical program for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey." The assessment was bleak: there was no viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.
 |
| Lt. Genl. Michael Flynn. |
agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn't doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. "If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic," Flynn told me. "We understood Isis's long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria." The DIA's reporting, he said, "got enormous pushback" from the Obama administration. "I felt that they did not want to hear the truth."
"Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact," the former JCS adviser said. "The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration's policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad's got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It's the 'anybody else is better' issue that the JCS had with Obama's policy." The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama's policy would have 'had a zero chance of success." So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing U.S. intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.
Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian
army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad's decisions – it was
through them that US intelligence would be shared. Each had its reasons for
co-operating with Assad: Germany feared what might happen among its own
population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was
concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing
with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the
Mediterranean, at Tartus. "We weren't intent on deviating from Obama's
stated policies," the adviser said. "But sharing our assessments via
the military-to-military relationships with other countries could prove
productive. It was clear that Assad needed better tactical intelligence and
operational advice. The JCS concluded that if those needs were met, the overall
fight against Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn't know, but
Obama doesn't know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that's true of
all presidents."
Islamic State fighters in a military parade in Syrian city last year. IS is one of several dozen
jihjadist groups opposing the Assad regime in Damascus, (Photo: Reuters.)
Once the flow of U.S. intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the U.S. and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, "we provided the information – including long-range analyses on Syria's future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: 'Here's some information that's pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.' End of conversation. The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would arise from it – but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of a sinister Joint Chiefs' plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we did it. It's because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound tactical advice we provided to others."
The public history of relations between the U.S. and Syria
over the past few decades has been one of enmity. Assad condemned the 9/11
attacks, but opposed the Iraq War. George W. Bush repeatedly linked Syria to
the three members of his "axis of evil" – Iraq, Iran and North Korea
– throughout his presidency. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks
show that the Bush administration tried to destabilize Syria and that these
efforts continued into the Obama years. In December 2006, William Roebuck, then
in charge of the U.S. embassy in Damascus, filed an analysis of the "vulnerabilities"
of the Assad government and listed methods "that will improve the
likelihood" of opportunities for destabilization. He recommended that
Washington work with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to increase sectarian tension and
focus on publicizing "Syrian efforts against extremist groups" –
dissident Kurds and radical Sunni factions – "in a way that suggests
weakness, signs of instability, and uncontrolled blowback"; and that the "isolation
of Syria" should be encouraged through U.S. support of the National
Salvation Front, led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president
whose government-in-exile in Riyadh was sponsored by the Saudis and the Muslim
Brotherhood. Another 2006 cable showed that the embassy had spent $5 million
financing dissidents who ran as independent candidates for the People's
Assembly; the payments were kept up even after it became clear that Syrian
intelligence knew what was going on. A 2010 cable warned that funding for a
London-based television network run by a Syrian opposition group would be
viewed by the Syrian government "as a covert and hostile gesture toward
the regime."
But there is also a parallel history of shadowy co-operation
between Syria and the U.S. during the same period. The two countries
collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to the
Joint Special Operations Command said that, after 9/11, "Bashar was, for
years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return,
and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued
among some elements, even after the [Bush administration's] decision to vilify
him." In 2002 Assad authorized Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds
of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and
Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on
the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's
Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a
vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the
informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his
Syrian handlers. Assad also secretly turned over to the US relatives of Saddam
Hussein who had sought refuge in Syria, and – like America's allies in Jordan,
Egypt, Thailand and elsewhere – tortured suspected terrorists for the CIA in a
Damascus prison.
 |
A jihadist member of the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement
takes position on a hill overlooking government forces defending
portion of Province. (Photo: Khalil Ashawi, Reuters.)
|
It was this history of co-operation that made it seem
possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect
intelligence-sharing arrangement with the U.S. The Joint Chiefs let it be known
that in return the U.S. would require four things: Assad must restrain Hezbollah
from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to
reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and
other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections
after the war with a wide range of factions included. "We had positive
feedback from the Israelis, who were willing to entertain the idea, but they
needed to know what the reaction would be from Iran and Syria," the JCS
adviser told me. "The Syrians told us that Assad would not make a decision
unilaterally – he needed to have support from his military and Alawite allies.
Assad's worry was that Israel would say yes and then not uphold its end of the
bargain." A senior adviser to the Kremlin on Middle East affairs told me
that in late 2012, after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks and
military defections, Assad had approached Israel via a contact in Moscow and
offered to reopen the talks on the Golan Heights. The Israelis had rejected the
offer. "They said, 'Assad is finished,"' the Russian official told
me. "He's close to the end." He said the Turks had told Moscow the
same thing. By mid-2013, however, the Syrians believed the worst was behind
them, and wanted assurances that the Americans and others were serious about
their offers of help.
what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad's friends: "Bring him the head of Prince Bandar." The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than 20 years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad's removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by U.S. intelligence last year at $700 million.
what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad's friends: "Bring him the head of Prince Bandar." The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than 20 years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad's removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by U.S. intelligence last year at $700 million.
 |
| A Syrian Army women's detachment is assigned to defend part of the outer perimeter of Damascus.This soldier prepares her weapon for potential action. |
By the late summer of 2013, the DIA's assessment had been
circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community
were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored
weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad's army. Gaddafi's
stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. "There
was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorized by the president,"
the JCS adviser said. "The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook.
The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a
suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals
that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride."
But it wasn't only the CIA that benefited. "We worked with Turks we
trusted who were not loyal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,"
the adviser said, "and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the
obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn't been seen
since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could
understand: "We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its
tracks."'
The flow of U.S... intelligence to the Syrian army, and the
downgrading of the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels, came at a
critical juncture. The Syrian army had suffered heavy losses in the spring of
2013 in fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups as it
failed to hold the provincial capital of Raqqa. Sporadic Syrian army and
air-force raids continued in the area for months, with little success, until it
was decided to withdraw from Raqqa and other hard to defend, lightly populated
areas in the north and west and focus instead on consolidating the government's
hold on Damascus and the heavily populated areas linking the capital to Latakia
in the north-east. But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs'
support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of
Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, which by the end of 2013 had made enormous
gains on both sides of the Syria/Iraq border. The remaining non-fundamentalist
rebels found themselves fighting – and losing – pitched battles against the
extremists. In January 2014, IS took complete control of Raqqa and the tribal
areas around it from al-Nusra and established the city as its base. Assad still
controlled 80% of the Syrian population, but he had lost a vast amount of
territory.
 |
| Syrian Army soldiers in pro-government rally. holding pictures of tAssad. |
In January 2014, despairing at the lack of progress, John
Brennan, the director of the CIA, summoned American and Sunni Arab intelligence
chiefs from throughout the Middle East to a secret meeting in Washington, with
the aim of persuading Saudi Arabia to stop supporting extremist fighters in
Syria. "The Saudis told us they were happy to listen," the JCS
adviser said, "so everyone sat around in Washington to hear Brennan tell
them that they had to get on board with the so-called moderates. His message
was that if everyone in the region stopped supporting al-Nusra and Isis their
ammunition and weapons would dry up, and the moderates would win out. "Brennan's
message was ignored by the Saudis, the adviser said, who "went back home
and increased their efforts with the extremists and asked us for more technical
support. And we say OK, and so it turns out that we end up reinforcing the
extremists."
But the Saudis were far from the only problem: American
intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating
that the Erdoğan government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and
was now doing the same for Islamic State. "We can handle the Saudis,"
the adviser said. "We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue
that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually
assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey
can disrupt the balance – which is Erdoğan's dream. We told him we wanted him
to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is
dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realize the
extent to which he could be successful in this."
One of the constants in U.S. affairs since the fall of the
Soviet Union has been a military-to-military relationship with Russia. After
1991 the U.S. spent billions of dollars to help Russia secure its nuclear
weapons complex, including a highly secret joint operation to remove
weapons-grade uranium from unsecured storage depots in Kazakhstan. Joint
programs to monitor the security of weapons-grade materials continued for the
next two decades. During the American war on Afghanistan, Russia provided
overflight rights for U.S. cargo carriers and tankers, as well as access for
the flow of weapons, ammunition, food and water the U.S. war machine needed
daily. Russia's military provided intelligence on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts
and helped the U.S. negotiate rights to use an airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The Joint
Chiefs have been in communication with their Russian counterparts throughout
the Syrian war, and the ties between the two militaries start at the top. In
August, a few weeks before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
Dempsey made a farewell visit to the headquarters of the Irish Defense Forces
in Dublin and told his audience there that he had made a point while in office
to keep in touch with the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery
Gerasimov. "I've actually suggested to him that we not end our careers as
we began them," Dempsey said – one a tank commander in West Germany, the
other in the east.
When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the U.S.
have much to offer each other. Many in the IS leadership and rank and file
fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that began
in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating Islamist
terrorism. "Russia knows the Isis leadership," the JCS adviser said, "and
has insights into its operational techniques, and has much intelligence to
share." In return, he said, "we've got excellent trainers with years
of experience in training foreign fighters – experience that Russia does not
have." The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is also
believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying huge
sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias.
A former White House adviser on Russian affairs told me that
before 9/11 Putin "used to say to us: 'We have the same nightmares about
different places.' He was referring to his problems with the caliphate in
Chechnya and our early issues with al-Qaida. These days, after the Metrojet
bombing over Sinai and the massacres in Paris and elsewhere, it's hard to avoid
the conclusion that we actually have the same nightmares about the same places."
 |
| Russian President Putin's decision to intervene militarily in Syria to prevent the overthrow of Assad by IS, al-Quaeda and other jihadist forces was a brilliant move on the geopolitical chessboard, and Obama resents it. |
In a speech on 22 November, Obama declared that the '"principal
targets" of the Russian airstrikes "have been the moderate opposition."
It's a line that the administration – along with most of the mainstream
American media – has rarely strayed from. The Russians insist that they are
targeting all rebel groups that threaten Syria's stability – including Islamic
State. The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East explained in an interview that
the first round of Russian airstrikes was aimed at bolstering security around a
Russian airbase in Latakia, an Alawite stronghold. The strategic goal, he said,
has been to establish a jihadist-free corridor from Damascus to Latakia and the
Russian naval base at Tartus and then to shift the focus of bombing gradually
to the south and east, with a greater concentration of bombing missions over
IS-held territory. Russian strikes on IS targets in and near Raqqa were
reported as early as the beginning of October; in November there were further
strikes on IS positions near the historic city of Palmyra and in Idlib
province, a bitterly contested stronghold on the Turkish border.
Russian incursions into Turkish airspace began soon after
Putin authorized the bombings, and the Russian air force deployed electronic
jamming systems that interfered with Turkish radar. The message being sent to
the Turkish air force, the JCS adviser said, was: "We're going to fly our
fighter planes where we want and when we want and jam your radar. Do not fuck
with us. Putin was letting the Turks know what they were up against."
Russia's aggression led to Turkish complaints and Russian denials, along with
more aggressive border patrolling by the Turkish air force. There were no
significant incidents until 24 November, when two Turkish F-16 fighters,
apparently acting under more aggressive rules of engagement, shot down a
Russian Su-24M jet that had crossed into Turkish airspace for no more than 17
seconds. In the days after the fighter was shot down, Obama expressed support
for Erdoğan, and after they met in private on 1 December he told a press
conference that his administration remained "very much committed to Turkey's
security and its sovereignty." He said that as long as Russia remained
allied with Assad, "a lot of Russian resources are still going to be
targeted at opposition groups... that we support.... So I don't think we should
be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only IS targets. That's
not happening now. It was never happening. It's not going to be happening in
the next several weeks."
The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East, like the Joint
Chiefs and the DIA, dismisses the "moderates' who have Obama's support,
seeing them as extremist Islamist groups that fight alongside Jabhat al-Nusra
and IS ("There's no need to play with words and split terrorists into
moderate and not moderate," Putin said in a speech on 22 October). The
American generals see them as exhausted militias that have been forced to make
an accommodation with Jabhat al-Nusra or IS in order to survive. At the end of
2014, Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who was allowed to spend ten days
touring IS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, told CNN that the IS leadership "are
all laughing about the Free Syrian Army. They don't take them for serious. They
say: 'The best arms sellers we have are the FSA. If they get a good weapon,
they sell it to us.' They didn't take them for serious. They take for serious
Assad. They take for serious, of course, the bombs. But they fear nothing, and
FSA doesn't play a role."
Putin's bombing campaign provoked a series of anti-Russia
articles in the American press. On 25 October, the New York Times reported,
citing Obama administration officials, that Russian submarines and spy ships
were 'aggressively' operating near the undersea cables that carry much of the
world's internet traffic – although, as the article went on to acknowledge,
there was 'no evidence yet' of any Russian attempt actually to interfere with
that traffic. Ten days earlier the Times published a summary of Russian
intrusions into its former Soviet satellite republics, and described the
Russian bombing in Syria as being 'in some respects a return to the ambitious
military moves of the Soviet past'. The report did not note that the Assad
administration had invited Russia to intervene, nor did it mention the US
bombing raids inside Syria that had been underway since the previous September,
without Syria's approval. An October op-ed in the same paper by Michael McFaul,
Obama's ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, declared that the Russian
air campaign was attacking 'everyone except the Islamic State'. The anti-Russia
stories did not abate after the Metrojet disaster, for which Islamic State
claimed credit. Few in the US government and media questioned why IS would
target a Russian airliner, along with its 224 passengers and crew, if Moscow's
air force was attacking only the Syrian "moderates."
Economic sanctions, meanwhile, are still in effect against Russia
for what a large number of Americans consider Putin's war crimes in Ukraine, as
are U.S. Treasury Department sanctions against Syria and against those
Americans who do business there. The New York Times, in a report on sanctions
in late November, revived an old and groundless assertion, saying that the
Treasury's actions "emphasize an argument that the administration has
increasingly been making about Mr. Assad as it seeks to press Russia to abandon
its backing for him: that although he professes to be at war with Islamist
terrorists, he has a symbiotic relationship with the Islamic State that has
allowed it to thrive while he has clung to power."
The four core elements of Obama's Syria policy remain intact
today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia
is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and
that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the U.S. to
support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change
the White House's public stance, although many European leaders, including
François Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to
co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to
be more flexible about the timing of Assad's exit from power. On 24 November,
Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate
more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at
the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that "Russia's
strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose
brutality has helped to fuel the rise" of IS. Hollande didn't go that far
but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would "lead to Bashar
al-Assad's departure.... A government of unity is required." The press
conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men
on the matter of Erdoğan. Obama defended Turkey's right to defend its borders;
Hollande said it was "a matter of urgency" for Turkey to take action
against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande's main goals
in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a
mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans
had pointedly not gone to NATO, to which Turkey belongs, for such a
declaration. "Turkey is the problem," the JCS adviser said.
Assad, naturally, doesn't accept that a group of foreign
leaders should be deciding on his future. Imad Moustapha, now Syria's ambassador
to China, was dean of the Information Technology faculty at the University of Damascus, and a
close aide of Assad's, when he was appointed in 2004 as the Syrian ambassador
to the U.S., a post he held for seven years. Moustapha is known still to be
close to Assad, and can be trusted to reflect what he thinks. He told me that
for Assad to surrender power would mean capitulating to "armed terrorist
groups" and that ministers in a national unity government – such as was
being proposed by the Europeans – would be seen to be beholden to the foreign
powers that appointed them. These powers could remind the new president "that
they could easily replace him as they did before to the predecessor … Assad
owes it to his people: he could not leave because the historic enemies of Syria
are demanding his departure."
Moustapha also brought up China, an ally of Assad that has
allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria.
China, too, is worried about Islamic State. "China regards the Syrian
crisis from three perspectives," he said: international law and
legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist
Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China's far west. Xinjiang borders eight
nations – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and India – and, in China's view, serves as a funnel for terrorism
around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known
to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent
separatist organization that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in
Xinjiang. "The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to
move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of
tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence," Moustapha said. "China
is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria
may be extended in the future to support Turkey's agenda in Xinjiang. We are
already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding
these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria."
 |
| Syria has several internal refugee camps safe from the fighting. These children live in one of them. |
China's growing concern about the Uighur problem and its
link to Syria and Islamic State have preoccupied Christina Lin, a scholar who
dealt with Chinese issues a decade ago while serving in the Pentagon under
Donald Rumsfeld. "I grew up in Taiwan and came to the Pentagon as a critic
of China," Lin told me. "I used to demonize the Chinese as
ideologues, and they are not perfect. But over the years as I see them opening
up and evolving, I have begun to change my perspective. I see China as a
potential partner for various global challenges especially in the Middle East.
There are many places – Syria for one – where the United States and China must
co-operate in regional security and counterterrorism." A few weeks
earlier, she said, China and India, Cold War enemies that "hated each
other more than China and the United States hated each other, conducted a
series of joint counterterrorism exercises. And today China and Russia both
want to co-operate on terrorism issues with the United States." As China
sees it, Lin suggests, Uighur militants who have made their way to Syria are
being trained by Islamic State in survival techniques intended to aid them on
covert return trips to the Chinese mainland, for future terrorist attacks
there. "If Assad fails, "Lin wrote in a paper published in September,
"jihadi fighters from Russia's Chechnya, China's Xinjiang and India's
Kashmir will then turn their eyes towards the home front to continue jihad,
supported by a new and well-sourced Syrian operating base in the heart of the
Middle East."
General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office.
General Michael Flynn did not. "Flynn incurred the wrath of the White
House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria," said Patrick Lang, a
retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East
civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. "He thought truth was the best
thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up." Flynn told me his
problems went beyond Syria. "I was shaking things up at the DIA – and not
just moving deckchairs on the Titanic. It was radical reform. I felt that the
civilian leadership did not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I'm
OK with that." In a recent interview in Der Spiegel, Flynn was blunt about
Russia's entry into the Syrian war: "We have to work constructively with
Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there and to
act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic.
So you can't say Russia is bad; they have to go home. It's not going to happen.
Get real."
Few in the U.S. Congress share this view. One exception is Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii and member of the House Armed Services
Committee who, as a major in the Army National Guard, served two tours in the
Middle East. In an interview on CNN in October she said: "The US and the
CIA should stop this illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian
government of Assad and should stay focused on fighting against … the Islamic
extremist groups.
"Does it not concern you," the interviewer asked, "that
Assad's regime has been brutal, killing at least 200,000 and maybe 300,000 of
his own people?"
"The things that are being said about Assad right now,"
Gabbard responded, "are the same that were said about Gaddafi, they are
the same things that were said about Saddam Hussein by those who were
advocating for the U.S. to... overthrow those regimes.… If it happens here in
Syria… we will end up in a situation with far greater suffering, with far
greater persecution of religious minorities and Christians in Syria, and our
enemy will be far stronger."
"So what you are saying," the interviewer asked, "is
that the Russian military involvement in the air and on-the-ground Iranian
involvement – they are actually doing the U.S. a favor?"
"They are working toward defeating our common enemy," Gabbard
replied.
Gabbard later told me that many of her colleagues in
Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have thanked her privately for speaking
out. "There are a lot of people in the general public, and even in the
Congress, who need to have things clearly explained to them," Gabbard
said. "But it's hard when there's so much deception about what is going
on. The truth is not out." It's unusual for a politician to challenge her
party's foreign policy directly and on the record. For someone on the inside, with
access to the most secret intelligence, speaking openly and critically can be a
career-ender. Informed dissent can be transmitted by means of a trust
relationship between a reporter and those on the inside, but it almost
invariably includes no signature. The dissent exists, however. The longtime
consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt
when I asked him for his view of the U.S.'s Syria policy. "The solution in
Syria is right before our nose," he said. "Our primary threat is Isis
and all of us – the United States, Russia and China – need to work together.
Bashar will remain in office and, after the country is stabilized there will be
an election. There is no other option."
 |
| Gen. Joseph Dunford. |
The military's indirect pathway to
Assad disappeared with Dempsey's retirement in September. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, two months before assuming office. "If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford said. "If you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming." In October, as chairman, Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the same committee that Russia "is not fighting" IS. He added that America must "work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria" and "do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces" – i.e. the moderates – "to fight the extremists."
Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no
more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain
for Assad and support for Erdoğan. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified
by Obama's continued public defense of Erdoğan, given the American intelligence
community's strong case against him – and the evidence that Obama, in private,
accepts that case. "We know what you're doing with the radicals in Syria,"
the president told Erdoğan's intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White
House. The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington's
leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey's support for it. The
message was never listened to. Why not?
———————
19. ANTI-CHINA SCARE
TALK IN WASHINGTON
Soldiers
of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) take part in training in temperatures
below minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit at China's border with Russia in Heilongjiang
Province, January 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)
By the Activist Newsletter
The U.S. ruling establishment's war drums against China
continue to reverberate in Washington, this time in a Pentagon-commissioned
Jan. 20 report from the influential think tank Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).
The study, reports the Guardian,
"calls for America to flex its military muscle in the region by...
increasing surface fleet presence, increasing the number of nuclear attack
submarines in Guam from four to six, continuing to diversify air operating
locations, bolstering regional missile defenses, stockpiling critical precision
munitions and enhancing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
cooperation with allies within the region."
Washington actually has never stopped flexing its muscles
against China — not only since President Obama's "pivot" to Asia in
2011 but for decades before. On Feb. 1 AFP reported: "China accused the
United States today of seeking maritime hegemony in the name of freedom of
navigation after a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of a
disputed island in the South China Sea." Beijing considers this a military
provocation, not that it will take action beyond criticism.
Said the report: "Chinese and North Korean actions are
routinely challenging the credibility of U.S. security commitments, and at the
current rate of U.S. capability development, the balance of military power in
the region is shifting against the United States.... Robust funding is needed
to implement the rebalance.
"The Chinese People's Liberation Army's
anti-access/area denial capabilities that many once viewed as Taiwan-specific
are rapidly expanding to the Second Island Chain and beyond, affecting not only
an increasing number of US allies and partners, but also US territories such as
Guam....
"If China's economic, military, and geopolitical
influence continues to rise at even a modest pace during this period, the world
will witness the largest shift in the global distribution of power since the
rise of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.... Moreover, if China surpasses the United
States as the world's largest economy in the next 10 to 15 years, it will mark
the first time in centuries that the world's economic leader will be
non-English speaking, non-Western, and non-democratic."
The Diplomat reported Feb. 2: "China inaugurated five new theater commands of the People’s Liberation Army on Feb. 1a, with Chinese President Xi Jinping presenting flags to the new commanders during a ceremony in Beijing. The new theater commands – which replace the seven previously existing military regions – bring another piece of Xi’s ambitious plan for PLA reform into reality."
.
At issue is the retention of Washington's unilateral global hegemony, even though the U.S. superpower is far ahead of China in military power. Following is an appraisal of this matter we wrote in the May 31, 2015, Activist Newsletter in the article The Hegemony Games — U.S. v. PRC :
"Washington is determined to constrain China by
depriving it of exercising even the East Asian regional power to which it is
entitled on the basis of its huge economy, a population of 1.4 billion people,
and its peaceful rise and intentions. President Obama is quite visibly seeking
to confront China, politically, militarily, and economically in the
Asia/Pacific region. This is what the 'pivot' to Asia is about, containing and
reducing Chinese influence within its own geographical environment.
"The U.S. is at least two decades ahead of China in war
technology, equipment, nuclear weapons, various missiles, planes, ships —
everything.... People's Liberation Army (PLA) leaders certainly want to catch
up and are making progress, but they can only approach near proximity if
Pentagon scientists decide to sleep for the next two decades. Instead,
Washington's immense military, several times that of China, is increasing the
gap in real time.... China's extremely important cyber warfare advances may or
may not be equal to those of the U.S., but it is the only area of relative
equivalence, and it's causing headaches in the Pentagon.
"The U.S. is frantically surrounding China with
military weapons, advanced aircraft, naval fleets and a multitude of military
bases from Japan, South Korea and the Philippines through several nearby
smaller Pacific islands to its new and enlarged base in Australia and, of
course, intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States. The U.S.
naval fleet, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines patrol China's nearby
waters. Warplanes, surveillance planes, drones and spying satellites cover the
skies, creating a symbolic darkness at noon. By 2017, the Pentagon plans to
encircle China with 'the most advanced stealth warplanes in the world,'
according to RT. 'The Air Force's F-22s and B-2s, as well as a fleet of the
Marine Corps' F-35, will all be deployed. This buildup has been going on
for three years and it is hardly ever mentioned in the U.S."
———————
19. CHECK THESE OUT
By the Activist
Newsletter
1. Have you seen the great performance by three teenage girls
reciting their powerful poem "Somewhere in America" that is making
the rounds on the Internet? The girls — Belissa Escobedo, Rhiannon McGavin, and
Zariya Allen — are part of the nonprofit organization Get Lit, a Los Angeles
program that aims to increase teen literacy through poetry. Their poem speaks
of school education, freedom of speech, rape, consumerism, slavery, poverty,
self-confidence, fat-shaming, sexual assault, homophobia, and objectification.
Watch this almost 4-minute video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YshUDa10JYY
2. For readers who love classical music, enjoy the outdoors
and are thrilled by the views from mountaintops, this 8-minute video is for
you. Cellist Ruth Boden, carrying her cumbersome
musical instrument on her back, climbs 10,000 feet to a peak in Oregon’s
Wallowa Mountains to offer a solo performance of the andante movement from a Bach cello suite. Here it is: https://aeon.co/videos/a-bach-cello-piece-played-atop-a-mountain-is-as-exhilarating-as-you-d-expect?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=06021264bf-Weekly_Friday_January_22_20161_22_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-06021264bf-68883557
