ACTIVIST NEWSLETTER
Monday Oct. 24, 2016,
Issue #232
Contact us or
subscribe to Newsletter at jacdon@earthlink.net
———————
CONTENTS:
1. Photo of The Month — Police Kill
Another Unarmed Black Man
2. And the Winner is....
3. African Women Climb Mountain for Land Rights
4. The Black-White Pay Gap
5. Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans
6. Clinton and Putin: An Unexpected Conversation
7. Mosul Braces Itself for Next Bloody Chapter
8. Pentagon Predicts Dystopian Urban Wars
9. Turkey Air Raid Kills 200 Kurdish Fighters In Syria
10. New $100 Million
U.S. Drone Base in Africa
11. It’s Time To
Decriminalize Drug Use and Possession
12. U.S. Hands off
Syria — Unity Statement
13. Activists Foil
Oil Pipelines and Trains
14. Why We are
Singing for Water
15. Climate Change:
Rich Countries Must Help the Poorest
16. U.S. Turns Back on
Palestinians
17. 'Hanoi Hannah' Has
Died
18. Thailand: King
Dies, Military Still Rules
19. Penguins Returned
to the Sea
20. Dogs Comprehend
Human Vocabulary and Tone
21. Bees now are an Endangered
Species
1. PHOTO OF THE MONTH — Police kill another
unarmed black man
Ebonay Lee holds up her fist at a line of El Cajon,
California, sheriff’s deputies during one of several protests this month
against the Sept. 28 killing of Alfred Olango, 38, a refugee from Uganda. Police shot
and killed the unarmed man one minute after arriving at the scene. They claimed
the victim pulled an object from his pocket, pointed it at officers
and assumed a "shooting stance." One officer tried and failed to
subdue the man with a stun gun — Olango was reportedly acting erratically — before
a second officer fired several times. Police chief Jeff Davis said the dead man
was actually holding an electric cigarette in his hands, not a weapon.
Olango’s sister said after the shooting that she had called
police three times to help her brother, whom she described as mentally ill. She
had told police he was sick and not acting like himself. “I just called for
help, and you came and killed him,” she said. One of the officers involved in
the shooting was Richard Gonsalves, who was demoted last year from sergeant to
officer after a colleague, officer Christine Greer, alleged that he repeatedly
made unwanted sexual advances.
Police Cartoon:
august 2016 police cartoon scared
2. AND THE WINNER IS....
 |
| Angry and crude Trump backers aren't going away if he loses. |
By Jack A. Smith, editor
This exceptionally enervating election is almost over but
its political and social implications will last into the future, even if, as
expected, Donald Trump loses to Hillary Clinton.
The conditions that created this shocking national event
will continue regardless. "Trumpism," if not the disgraceful Trump
himself, will remain part of the Republican party — and, of course, he still
has a slight chance of winning. Clinton, for her part, has some dangerous goals
in the Middle East and toward Russia and China
Both the successful uprising in the far right Republican
party and the failed but nearly successful liberal uprising in the center-right
Democratic party shocked the ruling establishments of both organizations. Who
guessed the American people were so upset with the status quo? The government
had mentioned nothing about it beforehand. The two parties had said and
evidently knew nothing. The corporate mass media was silent.
Those to the left of the Democratic party were surprised as
well but they had long been publicly critical of the conditions that finally
drove much of the predominantly white working class and sectors of the poor,
middle class and millennials to demand a new deal from their respective two
political associations.
The biggest cause is an economic system that privileges the
top 10% at the expense of the bottom 90%, particularly those in the lower 70%.
A lesser but real factor is America's continual warfare. Why else does the
white working class behind Trump tolerate his call for peace with Russia as Clinton
becomes ever more threatening to Moscow? Another cause is the extreme dislike
of Clinton by Republicans that allows misogynist Trump to treat so outrageously
the first woman presidential candidate of a major party.
For 40 years the U.S. working class has increasingly
experienced lower wages and benefits as well as fewer jobs at all due to the
free trade and neoliberal policies of the ruling class and its business
component. Hardest hit are workers without a college education or worst of all
those who did not graduate from high school. This writer is old enough to
remember when white students who left high school at 16 without a diploma were
employed fairly quickly. I also know young college graduates today (with large
student debts) in low paying retail or other jobs no matter how energetically
they seek more remunerative positions.
Various studies indicate that the white working class is especially disturbed by the lack of jobs and better pay. An article titled "The Great White Nope" by Jefferson Cowie in the (November-December) issue of Foreign Affairs notes:
".... According to a recent
analysis published by the Brookings Institution, poor Hispanics are
almost a third more likely than their white counterparts to imagine a better
future. And poor African Americans — who face far higher rates of incarceration
and unemployment and who fall victim far more frequently to both violent crime
and police brutality — are nearly three times as optimistic as poor whites.
Carol Graham, the economist who oversaw the analysis, concluded that poor
whites suffer less from direct material deprivation than from the intangible
but profound problems of 'unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope....'
"A stunning U-turn in the fortunes of poor and
working-class whites began in the 1970s, as deindustrialization, automation,
globalization, and the growth of the high-technology and service sectors
transformed the U.S. economy. In the decades since, many blue-collar jobs have
vanished, wages have stagnated for less educated Americans, wealth has
accumulated at the top of the economic food chain, and social mobility has
become vastly harder to achieve.
"Technological and financial innovations have fostered
economic and social vitality in urban centers on the coasts. But those changes
have brought far fewer benefits to the formerly industrial South and Midwest.
As economic decline has hollowed out civic life and the national political
conversation has focused on other issues, many people in 'flyover country' have
sought solace in opioids and methamphetamine; some have lashed out by embracing
white nationalist rage. As whites come closer to becoming a plurality in the
United States (or a “white minority,” in more paranoid terms), many have become
receptive to nativist or bigoted appeals and thinly veiled promises to protect
their endangered racial privilege: think of Trump’s promise to build a wall on
the U.S.-Mexican border and his invocation of an unspecified bygone era when
the United States was 'great,' which many white Trump supporters seem to
understand as a reference to a time when they felt themselves to be more firmly
at the center of civic and economic life."
Trump And Russia
Trump has said he wants to create a better relationship
between the U.S. and Russia, and that as president he would engage President
Vladimir Putin about this matter. He has also remarked that there is no proof
yet that that the Russian government is responsible for hacking a Democratic
party computer and that of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. Both included some embarrassing Emails from
Clinton that were distributed by WikiLeaks, including the contents of her
"secret" speeches to Wall Street and other venues.
As noted in the Sept. 26 issue of the Activist Newsletter I
agree with Trump on the matter of improving relations with Russia and the lack
of proof that the Russian government hacked the Emails. (Check out this
referenced article if you have not already done so because it endeavors to
explain contemporary Russia and Putin as well as Moscow's role in Ukraine,
Crimea, Syria and relations with the U.S. Click on 09-26-16
Newsletter Russia.)
 |
Anti-Russia/Putin Clinton
The Clinton campaign has turned Trump's comments on Russia into its main target. On Oct.20, the day after the third and last debate, the New York Times reported that if she wins the election "she will enter the White House with the most contentious relationship with Russia of any president in more than three decades, and with a visceral, personal animus toward Vladimir V. Putin, its leader.... In a reversal of political roles, Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, is the one portraying Mr. Putin as America’s newest archenemy....
"Much of the Democratic foreign policy establishment
has become as hawkish as Mrs. Clinton on the subject of Russia, a view that
seems almost certain to outlast the campaign. Privately, some of her longtime
advisers are already thinking about what mix of sanctions, diplomatic isolation
and international condemnation they might put together if they take office to
deal with Mr. Putin and the fragile economic state he runs, an update of the
'containment' strategy that George
F. Kennan formulated for President Harry S. Truman in 1947."
The Clinton campaign has turned Trump's comments on Russia into its main target. On Oct.20, the day after the third and last debate, the New York Times reported that if she wins the election "she will enter the White House with the most contentious relationship with Russia of any president in more than three decades, and with a visceral, personal animus toward Vladimir V. Putin, its leader.... In a reversal of political roles, Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, is the one portraying Mr. Putin as America’s newest archenemy....
That strategy was the basis of the Cold War. Who wants a new
Cold War — this time between two capitalist countries with massive arsenals of
nuclear weapons? And we suspect that Clinton's real goal is regime change in
Moscow.
 |
| Could this be Hillary and Vladimir,in better days? |
In general Clinton is recognized as a war hawk. As secretary
of state she argued with President Obama about taking greater military action
against the government of Syria and conviced him to bomb and invade Libya. She
plans to be tougher on both Russia and China.
Regarding the allegations of Russian hacking, Nation
contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime Russia expert, said Oct. 18:
"In fact no actual evidence for this allegation has been produced, only
suppositions or, as Glenn Greenwald has argued, 'unproven assertions.'"
He noted that MIT expert, Professor Theodore Postol, has
written that there is "no technical way that the U.S. intelligence
community could know who did the hacking if it was done by sophisticated
nation-state actors."
Cohen suggested, "the charges, leveled daily by the
Clinton campaign as part of its 'McCarthyite Kremlin-baiting' of Donald Trump,
are mostly political." He also pointed out it is far from clear that the
Kremlin actually favors Trump, despite Clinton’s campaign claims."
Trump's Disgraceful
Campaign
Trump's campaign has been the most disgraceful in U.S.
history, replete with climate change denial, outrageous conspiracy theories,
allegations against Muslims and Mexicans, frequent lies, outright racism, America-first
nationalism, distrust of immigrants, false accusations of ballot rigging and
extreme contempt toward his opponent, among other failings. It finally took a
video of Trump bragging about his of sexual harassment of women to do him in.
If Clinton wins, it will be an advance for the United States
to finally elect a woman president. She remains a powerful part of the
anti-liberal Democratic center right wing and a servant of Wall Street but has pledged to fight for some of
the liberal policies advocated by her primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders. She
did so to defeat him, of course, and her efforts in this case will be superficial.
A Clinton presidency will be haunted by the Republican
party and by defeated Trump and his constituency of millions of fanatics who think "crooked
Hillary" belongs in prison.
Much depends on the composition of the post-election
Congress. It's doubtful the Democrats can win the House given the large number of
gerrymandered GOP seats — a product of Republican control of so many state legislatures. . But there is a possibility Democrats will gain a
majority in the Senate. This will make a difference in terms of the Supreme
Court and other matters that do not require House approval. If both houses of
Congress remain in the hands of the right wing very little can be done
Assuming Trump is defeated, the temporarily displaced
Republican leadership will largely return to power after making concessions to
his devoted followers. After that it's probably going to be total war against
the Clinton government for the next four years, even worse than the GOP's sabotage during the nearly eight years of gridlocked Obama's leadership.
3. AFRICAN WOMEN CLIMB MOUNTAIN FOR RIGHTS
 |
| They climbed Kilimanjaro for women's rights. |
By Activist Newsletter and TELESUR
Twelve women scaled to the top of Tanzania's 19,341-foot
high Mt. Kilimanjaro Oct. 17 to demand land rights.
Thousands of women from across the African continent
converged at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro for a three-day action Oct. 15 that
demanded rights for women, while a contingent of the women scaled up the
mountain, reaching the peak two days later. “We are not just climbing the
mountain,” tweeted Action Aid,
the organizer of the climb. “We are taking the issues of rural women farmers to
the top.”
The gathering coincided with the International Day of Rural
Women and was dubbed "the Kilimanjaro initiative." Uniting behind the
social media campaign #Women2Kilimanjaro, the women demanded governments
implement laws and policies to reverse the barriers women face in accessing
land rights, such as early marriage, poor access to information and unfair
inheritance.
According to the organization TakePart, while women are
responsible for 80% of agricultural production on the continent, only 1% of
land is owned by women, a situation going back to colonial times.
 |
| Thousands rallied at base of mountain as climbers ascended. |
At the convergence, a charter was drafted that will be given
to the United Nations, the African Union, and the African Rural Women Assembly
for implementation of these demands. A petition was also circulated to various
leaders in the days before the meeting.
Last November, four regional caravans from throughout
Africa, saw women from 16 African countries meet in Arusha, Tanzania, to
strategize on land ownership issues. The initiative was first conceived by
rural women in 2012 with support from civil society organizations in a meeting
held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
——————
4. THE BLACK-WHITE PAY GAP
By Valerie
Wilson — From the Economic
Policy Institute, Oct. 4, 2016
As you
can see from the figures below, while a college education results in higher hourly
wages—both for whites and blacks—it does not eliminate the black-white wage
gap. African Americans are still earning less than whites at every level of
educational attainment:
A
recent EPI report "Black-white
wage gaps expand with rising wage inequality" shows that this gap persists even
after controlling for years of experience, region of the country, and whether
one lives in an urban or rural area. In fact, since 1979, the gaps between
black and white workers have grown the most among workers with a bachelor’s
degree or higher—the most educated workers. More school will certainly increase
wages, but education alone is not enough to overcome the effects of racial
discrimination in pay. Closing this part of the racial pay gap begins with
consistent enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in the hiring, promotion,
and pay of women and minority workers, as well as greater transparency around
within-firm pay by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Hourly
Wage Gap White Black
Less than HS $13.57 $11.25
High school $18.00 $14.24
Some college $19.80 $15.85
College $31.83 $25.77
Advanced degree $39.82 $33.51
— From the Economic Policy Institute. The full report: http://www.epi.org/publication/african-americans-are-paid-less-than-whites-at-every-education-level/?mc_cid=49553106f6&mc_eid=cb6b3dc6ea.
5. AMERICANS WORK 25% MORE THAN EUROPEANS
By Ben Steverman, Bloomberg. Oct. 18
Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only
put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They’re also
increasingly retiring
later and taking fewer vacation days.
A new study tries to measure precisely how much more
Americans work than Europeans do overall. The answer: The average person in
Europe works 19% less than the average person in the U.S. That’s about 258
fewer hours per year, or about an hour less each weekday. Another way to look
at it: U.S. workers put in almost 25% more hours than Europeans.
Hours worked vary a lot by country, according to the
unpublished working paper by economists Alexander Bick of Arizona State University, Bettina Bruggemann of
McMaster University in Ontario, and Nicola Fuchs-Schundeln of Goethe University
Frankfurt. Swiss work habits are most similar to Americans, while Italians
are the least likely to be at work, putting in 29% fewer hours per year than
Americans do.
––––––––––
6. CLINTON AND PUTIN: AN UNEXPECTED CHAT
By the Activist Newsletter
After reading through many excerpts from the new trove of disclosures
about the content of the paid speeches Hillary Clinton refused to make public,
the following is the only one that truly caught me by surprise, a not
unpleasant surprise at that. It's from an Oct. 28, 2013, speech to the Jewish
United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago Vanguard Luncheon.
Clinton: "One time, I was visiting with him [Vladimir
Putin] in his dacha outside of Moscow, and he was going on and on, you know,
just listing all of the problems that he thinks are caused by the United
States. And I said, ‘Well, you know, Mr.’ — at that time, he was still
prime minister. I said, ‘You know, Mr. Prime Minister, we actually have
some things in common. We both want to protect wildlife, and I know how
committed you are to protecting the tiger.’
 |
| Putin and a tiger. |
"I mean, all of a sudden, he sat up straight and his
eyes got big and he goes, ‘You care about the tiger?' I said, ‘I care
about the tiger, I care about the elephant, I care about the rhinoceros, I care
about the whale. I mean, yeah, I think we have a duty. You know,
it’s an obligation that we as human beings have to protect God’s creation.’
"He goes, ‘Come with me.’ So we go down the stairs, we go down this
long hall, we go into this private inner sanctum. All of his, you know,
very beefy security guys are there, they all jump up at attention, you know,
they punch a code, he goes through a heavily-armed door. And then we’re in
an inner, inner sanctum with, you know, just this long, wooden table, and then further
back, there’s a desk and the biggest map of Russia I ever saw. And he
starts talking to me about, you know, the habitat of the tigers and the habitat
of the seals and the whales. And it was quite something.”
— According to the World Wildlife Fund: "The endangered
Siberian tiger is making a comeback, a fresh census has found." The numbers have
increased about 10% over the last decade, thanks to the program launched by
Putin and the work of the WWF.
7. MOSUL BRACES FOR NEXT BLOODY FIGHT
 |
| Mother and two children successfully escaping from Islamic State contrtolled Mosel. |
By Patrick Cockburn. The Independent (UK), Oct. 19, 2016
Mosel has been a dangerous place since the US-led invasion of 2003. It is the
greatest Sunni Arab city of Iraq during an era in which the Sunni had lost
their old predominance and have struggled against Shia-dominated governments in
Baghdad and Kurdish rulers next door in Iraqi Kurdistan.
It is a battle that is still going on as the Iraqi army and
Shia paramilitaries advance on Mosul from the south while Kurdish Peshmerga
come from the east. The way is cleared for both by air strikes, predominantly
by the US air force, attacking Isis fighters
dug into ruined villages and hiding in deep tunnels.
If the anti-Isis forces ultimately succeed in recapturing
Mosul it will be the fifth time the city has changed hands in the course of 13
years of war. The first time was in April 2003 when the Iraqi army was breaking
up and surrendering and the Kurdish Peshmerga burst into the city. There was
looting on a mass scale which the Arabs blamed on the Kurds and vice versa, but
in fact both took part. I saw crowds ransack the governor’s mansion, the
Central Bank and the university.
The Arabs, three-quarters of the city’s population of two
million, were appalled by the Kurdish incursion. I visited the biggest hospital
in Mosul where the director Dr. Ayad Ramadani told me that “the Kurdish
militias are looting the city. Today the main protection is from civilians organized
by the mosques.” By the entrance to the hospital, a family was loading the body
of a deceased relative into the back of a truck when there was a burst of
machine gun fire. This frightened the truck driver who sped away leaving the
body behind and the family angrily waving their fists after him.
Relations between Arabs and Kurds did not get much better
over the following years. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) claimed parts
of Nineveh province around Mosul which it said had a Kurdish majority or had
historically belonged to the Kurds. Mosul sits at the heart of a fascinating
but confusing ethnic and sectarian mosaic made up of Arabs, Kurds, Shabak,
Yazidis and Christians of different dominations. Few of these communities had
any liking for the others.
The Kurdish takeover was followed by the Americans and for
the rest of 2003 General David Petraeus commanded the 101st Airborne Division
in the city. He could see how the “de-Baathification” campaign mandated by the
US authorities in Baghdad was alienating former Iraqi army officers and
officials who were now out of a job. A high proportion of the army officer
corps had always come from Mosul and, in keeping with this military tradition,
the defense minister under Saddam Hussein was from the city. Petraeus issued
de-Baathification certificates on his own authority so these unemployed
officers were at least eligible for a job.
It was not enough. The Americans over-confidently thinned
out their troops and then withdrew the remainder to take part in the recapture
of Fallujah. In November 2004, Iraqi armed opposition fighters raced into the
city, the newly reformed Iraqi army fled and the rebels captured arsenals of
weapons. They withdrew after a few days and Baghdad, backed by the US, regained
a shaky control.
But Baghdad’s rule was always contested between 2004 and
2014. There were repeated guerrilla attacks. I would travel from Irbil in KRG
to visit the Kurdish deputy governor whose well-fortified office was on the far
side of the Tigris river. But we either had to drive very fast or go more
slowly in convoys defended by troops and armored vehicles.
 |
Map of Islanic State in Retreat From Stratfor
In 2014 IS insurgents stormed into Iraq spreading toward Baghdad. In recent months Iraqi state forces, militias, Kurdish soldiers, and foreign fighters — with help from a U.S.-led coalition — have been regaining control. An offensive to retake Mosul and expel IS is underway.
|
Al-Qaeda in Iraq never entirely lost its grip on Mosul even
when it was at its lowest ebb before 2011. Local businesses had to pay it
protection money, close down or risk assassination. A Turkish businessman with
several big construction contracts there recalled later that he had to pay
$500,000 (£400,000) a month and, when this was increased and he refused to pay
up, one of his employees was killed. He stopped work, withdrew his staff to
Turkey and complained to the government in Baghdad. But their only proposal was
that he pay the protection money and add the sum to his contract price.
The government was much disliked in Mosul, but even so the
Isis capture of the city in June 2014 was an astonishing victory of a few
thousand fighters against a garrison that was meant to total 60,000 and may
have had as many as 20,000 soldiers and police. The difference between the two
figures was made up of “ghost soldiers” who did not exist or never came to the
barracks but whose salaries were taken by officers. Many other soldiers had
simply gone on leave to Baghdad and never come back as the security situation
deteriorated. When Isis attacked the army and police dissolved.
Isis was never popular in Mosul but they ferociously
suppressed all dissent. They drove out the Christians and murdered and enslaved
the Yazidis. They blew up iconic monuments like Jonah’s Tomb. People may have
disliked them, but there was not much they could do about it.
Isis also benefited from fear among Sunni in the city about
what would happen if the Iraqi army and Shia paramilitary militias came back.
They know that the whole five or six million Sunni Arab population of Iraq, a
fifth of the 33 million population, are under threat and as many as a third
have been displaced. In the sectarian war in Baghdad in 2006-7 the Sunni in
Iraq had been driven into several enclaves, mostly in the west side of the
city, which US diplomats described as “islands of fear”. This is now happening
in the rest of Iraq. Other Iraqis may see them as complicit in Isis’s crimes
and seek vengeance. Whatever conciliatory statements come from Iraqi leaders,
sectarian and ethnic hatreds are running deep and people in Mosul face a frightening
and uncertain future.
8. PENTAGON PREDICTS DYSTOYPIAN URBAN WARS
 |
| German
bombers appeared in the skies over Guernica in the late afternoon of April 26,
1937, and immediately transformed the sleepy Spanish market town into an everlasting symbol of the atrocity of war. Pablo Picasso, through the use of black, gray and white shades, was able to evoke the horrors of war. Now worse wars are on the horizon. |
By Nick Turse, The Intercept, 10-12-16
The year is 2030. Forget about the flying cars, robot maids, and moving
sidewalks we were promised. They’re not happening. But that doesn’t mean the
future is a total unknown.
According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The
Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of “Escape from New York” and
“Robocop” — with dashes of
the “Warriors”
and “Divergent”
thrown in. It will be a world of Robert
Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities
filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal
syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers.
At least that’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban
Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the
Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University (JSOU). All that stands between
the coming chaos and the good people of Lagos and Dhaka (or maybe even New York
City) is the U.S. Army, according to the video, which The Intercept obtained
via the Freedom of Information Act.
The video is nothing if not an instant dystopian classic:
melancholy music, an ominous voiceover, and cascading images of sprawling slums
and urban conflict. “Megacities are complex systems where people and structures
are compressed together in ways that defy both our understanding of city
planning and military doctrine,” says a disembodied voice. “These are the
future breeding grounds, incubators, and launching pads for adversaries and
hybrid threats.”
The video was used as part of an “Advanced Special Operations
Combating Terrorism” course offered at JSOU earlier this year for a lesson on
“The Emerging Terrorism Threat.” JSOU is operated by U.S. Special Operations
Command, the umbrella organization for America’s most elite troops. JSOU
describes itself as geared toward preparing special operations forces “to shape
the future strategic environment by providing specialized (JSOU) professional military education,
developing SOF specific undergraduate and graduate level academic programs and
by fostering special operations research.”
Megacities are, by definition, urban areas with a population
of 10 million or more, and they have been a recent source of worry and research
for the U.S. military. A 2014 Army report, titled “Megacities and the United
States Army,” warned that “the Army is currently unprepared. Although the Army
has a long history of urban fighting, it has never dealt with an environment so
complex and beyond the scope of its resources.” A separate Army study published
this year bemoans the fact that the “U.S. Army is incapable of operating within
the megacity.”
 |
|
"Satan and Son" by Francisco Goya, the Spanish painter
known for his works on the consequences
of war.
|
These fears are reflected in the hyperbolic “Megacities”
video. As the film unfolds, we’re bombarded with an apocalyptic list of ills
endemic to this new urban environment: “criminal networks,” “substandard
infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,”
“open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” and a “growing mass of unemployed.” The
list, as long as it is grim, accompanies photos of garbage-choked streets,
masked rock throwers, and riot cops battling protesters in the developing
world. “Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor,”
the narrator warns as the scene shifts to New York City. Looking down from a
high vantage point on Third Avenue, we’re left to ponder if the Army will one
day find itself defending the lunchtime crowd dining on $57 "NY Cut Sirloin" steaks at
(the plainly visible) Smith and Wollensky.
Lacking opening and closing credits, the provenance of
“Megacities” was initially unclear, with SOCOM claiming the video was produced
by JSOU, before indicating it was actually created by the Army. “It was made
for an internal military audience to illuminate the challenges of operating in
megacity environments,” Army spokesperson William Layer told The Intercept in
an email. “The video was privately produced pro-bono in spring of 2014 based on
‘Megacities and the United States Army.’… The producer of the film wishes to
remain anonymous.”
According to the video, tomorrow’s vast urban jungles will
be replete with “subterranean labyrinths” governed by their “own social code
and rule of law.” They’ll also enable a proliferation of “digital domains” that
facilitate “sophisticated illicit economies and decentralized syndicates of
crime to give adversaries global reach at an unprecedented level.” If the photo
montage in the video is to be believed, hackers will use outdoor electrical
outlets to do grave digital damage, such as donning Guy Fawkes masks and
filming segments of “Anonymous
News.” This, we’re told, will somehow “add to the complexities of
human targeting as a proportionally smaller number of adversaries intermingle
with the larger and increasing number of citizens.”
“Megacities” posits that despite the lessons learned from
the urban battle at Aachen,
Germany, in 1944, and the city-busting in Hue, South
Vietnam, in 1968, the U.S. military is fundamentally ill-equipped
for future battles in Lagos or Dhaka.
“Even our counterinsurgency doctrine, honed in the cities of
Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, is inadequate to address the sheer scale
of population in the future urban reality,” the film notes, as if the results
of two futile forever wars might possibly hold the keys to future success. “We
are facing environments that the masters of war never foresaw,” warns the
narrator. “We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the
force in radically new and different ways.”
Mike Davis, author of “Planet
of Slums” and “Buda’s Wagon: A Brief
History of the Car Bomb,” was not impressed by the video.
“This is a fantasy, the idea that there is a special
military science of megacities,” he said. “It’s simply not the case.… They seem
to envision large cities with slum peripheries governed by antagonistic gangs,
militias, or guerrilla movements that you can somehow fight using special ops
methods. In truth, that’s pretty far-fetched.… You only have to watch ‘Black
Hawk Down’ and scale that up to the kind of problems you would have if you were
in Karachi, for example. You can do special ops on a small-scale basis, but
it’s absurd to imagine it being effective as any kind of strategy for control
of a megacity.”
The U.S. military appears unlikely to heed Davis’s advice,
however. “This is the world of our future,” warns the narrator of “Megacities.”
“It is one we are not prepared to effectively operate within and it is
unavoidable. The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined. The
future is urban.”
— Watch “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity”
at:
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/
9. TURKEY AIR RAID KILLS 200 KURDISH FIGHTERS
 |
| Syrian Kurd fighters on lookout for enemy. |
By Jason Ditz, antiwar.com,
Oct. 20, 2016
Turkey has long insisted they view the Kurdish YPG and ISIS
as basically the same enemy. Overnight incidents around the city of Afrin,
however, show that when the two forces are in close proximity, the Turkish
military is definitely going after the Kurds.
The Kurdish YPG forces were launching an offensive near
Afrin against the ISIS fighters when a flurry of Turkish airstrikes were
launched against them, described as the single biggest attack Turkey has launched
against Kurds since their invasion back in August. Turkish
officials estimated 200 Kurds killed.
Turkey has long objected to
Washington's support for the Kurds in Syria, and particularly complained about
the Kurds taking formerly ISIS-held areas. Afrin is its own sore spot for
Turkey, since it is far west of the rest of Syrian Kurdistan, though it has
been a Kurdish area since at least the 19th century.
Since Turkey’s August invasion, they’ve demanded the Kurds
withdraw from any area west of the Euphrates River, and have also talked of
taking full military control of their entire border region with Syria, which
would include a large amount of Kurdish territory. So far, they’ve not
attempted ground invasions of any Kurdish-held lands, but these airstrikes are
a continuation and escalation of the existing hostility toward the Kurds, and
suggest the invasion may be only a matter of time.
10. NEW $100 MILLION
U.S. DRONE BASE IN AFRICA
By Answer Coalition,
Oct.20, 2016
The U.S. military is building a new $100 million drone base
in Agadez, the largest city in Niger, a land-locked country in Northwest Africa
bordering Libya, Algeria, Nigeria and Mali.
The U.S. military already had a significant presence in
Niger with an air-base in the capital Niamey, which is currently used to
provide intelligence to the French-led invasion forces in Mali. The new drone
base will host the newer and larger models of “Predator” drones, expanding the
deadly drone program of U.S. military with the ability to launch attacks in
neighboring countries such as Libya, Mali and Nigeria.
This is essentially a new milestone in the expansion of the
U.S. military presence in Africa as AFRICOM (African Command) establishes
another major military outpost to be added to an extensive network of more than
60 outposts and access points already present....
— Continued at
http://www.answercoalition.org/a_new_100_million_u_s_drone_base_in_africa
———————
11. IT’S TIME TO
DECRIMINALIZE DRUG USE
By Tess Borden,
ACLU, Oct. 14, 2016
Police arrest more people for drug possession than any other
crime in America. Every 25 seconds someone is arrested for possessing drugs for
their own use, amounting to 1.25 million arrests per year. These numbers tell a
tale of ruined lives, destroyed families, and communities suffering under a
suffocating police presence.
For the past year I have been investigating how the law
enforcement approach to personal drug use has failed. The resulting report, “Every 25
Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,”
calls on state legislatures and Congress to decriminalize personal drug use and
possession. It comes at a time when the country is recognizing that the
so-called “war on drugs” hasn’t stopped drug dependence and that we desperately
need to address the problems of mass incarceration, race, policing, and drug
policy.
For personal drug use, it is time to replace our criminal
justice model with a public health one instead.
The consequences of arresting, prosecuting, and
incarcerating people for personal drug use are devastating. I met people who
were prosecuted for tiny amounts of drugs, in one case an amount so small that
the laboratory could not even weigh it and simply called it “trace.” That man
was sentenced to 15 years in Texas.
On any given day, nearly 140,000 people are behind bars for
drug possession, while tens of thousands more are cycling through jails and
prisons or struggling to make ends meet on probation or parole. Still others
are serving sentences for other offenses that have been lengthened because of a
prior conviction for drug possession. A conviction for drug possession can keep
people from accessing welfare assistance and even the voting booth. It can also
subject them to stigma and discrimination by potential landlords, employers,
and peers.
I met a woman I’ll call “Nicole” in the Harris County Jail
in Texas. Nicole was detained pretrial for months on felony drug possession
charges for residue inside paraphernalia. While she was in jail, her newborn
learned to sit up on her own. When the baby visited jail, she couldn’t feel her
mother’s touch because there was glass between them.
Nicole ultimately pled guilty to possession of 0.01 grams of
heroin. She would return to her children later that year, but as a “felon” and
“drug offender.” She would have to drop out of school because she no longer
qualified for financial aid. She would no longer be able to have a lease in her
name and would have trouble finding a job. And she would no longer qualify for
the food stamps she had relied on to feed her family.
Forty-five years after the “war on drugs” was declared,
rates of drug use haven’t significantly declined, and criminalization hasn’t
stopped drug dependence. In fact, criminalization has driven drug use
underground, making it harder for people who use drugs to access the help they
sometimes really want and need. The “war on drugs” has caused enormous harm to
individuals and families — harm that often outstrips the harm of drug use
itself. And it has made communities less safe by deeply corroding the
relationship between police and communities of color and focusing precious law
enforcement resources on nonviolent drug use instead of violent crimes, less
than half of which result in an arrest.
Our research also reiterates that enforcement of U.S. drug
laws and policy discriminates against communities of color. Although Black and
white people use drugs at equivalent rates, a Black person is 2.5 times more
likely to be arrested for drug possession. In many states that ratio is
significantly higher. In Manhattan, a Black person is 11 times more likely to
be arrested for drug possession than a white person.
As Lisa Ladd told me in New Orleans, the scales of justice
are out of balance. Lisa’s son, Corey Ladd, was sentenced to 20 years in prison
for possessing half an ounce of marijuana. His prior convictions were also for
drug possession, and so under Louisiana law he was treated as a “habitual
offender” because of habitual drug use.
Corey’s only child, Charlee, was born while he was
incarcerated; he held her in his arms for the first time in Angola prison.
Charlee is four now and thinks she visits her father at work. Corey told me,
“She asks when I’m going to get off work and come see her.” Charlee could be a
teenager by the time her father comes home.
It is time for state legislatures and Congress to
decriminalize personal drug use and possession. Decriminalization needs to be
paired with a stronger investment in public health, emphasizing evidence-based
prevention; education around the risks of drug use and dependence; and
voluntary, affordable treatment and other social services in the community. Decriminalizing
personal drug use and possession will improve countless lives.
End the
culture of warrior policing — take action!
It’s the moral responsibility of our government to enact
this change for the health and
—The author is a Fellow at the American Civil Liberties
Union and Human Rights Watch.
12. U.S. HANDS OFF SYRIA: UNITY STATEMENT
The Activist Newsletter is among a growing list
of signatories to the following statement. Below are points of unity for a newly formed Ad Hoc Coalition
to oppose the U.S.-led aggression against Syria.
An Urgent Message for Peace on the Eve of Wider
War
We raise our voices against the violence of war
and the enormous pressure of war propaganda, lies and hidden agendas that are
used to justify this war and every past U.S. war.
We, the undersigned organizations and
individuals, endorse the following Points of Unity and will
work together as an Ad Hoc Coalition to help put an end to the regime change
intervention by the United States, NATO and their regional allies and the
killing of innocent people in Syria:
The continuation of the war in Syria is the result of
a U.S.-orchestrated intervention by the United States, NATO, their regional
allies and reactionary forces, the goal of which is regime change in Syria.
This policy of regime change in Syria is illegal and
in clear violation of the United Nations Charter, the letter and spirit of
international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This policy of forced regime change is threatening the
security of the region and the world and has increased the danger of direct
confrontation between the United States and Russia, with the potential of a
nuclear catastrophe for the whole world.
War and U.S. and EU sanctions have destabilized every
sector of Syria’s economy, transforming a once self-sufficient country into an
aid-dependent nation. Half the Syrian population is now displaced. A UN ESCWA
report reveals these U.S. sanctions on Syria are crippling aid work during one
of the largest humanitarian emergencies since World War II. The one third of
Syrian refugees in surrounding Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have been hit hard by
U.S. cuts to UNICEF. This forces desperate refugees to struggle to reach
Europe.
No foreign entity, be it a foreign government or an
armed group, has the right to violate the fundamental rights of the Syrian
people to independence, national sovereignty and self-determination. This
includes the right of the Syrian government to request and accept military
assistance from other countries, as even the U.S. government has admitted.
Only the people of Syria have the inalienable right to
choose their leaders and determine the character of their government, free from
foreign intervention. This right cannot be properly exercised under the
conditions of U.S.-orchestrated foreign intervention against the Syrian
people.
Our opposition is to forced regime change in Syria by
U.S.-backed foreign powers and their mercenaries. It is not our business to
support or oppose President Assad or the Syrian government. Only the Syrian
people have the right to decide the legitimacy of their government.
The most urgent issue at present is peace and putting
an end to the violence of foreign intervention that has resulted in the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of Syrians
both internally or as refugees abroad.
Based on these Points of Unity, we, as
individuals and organizations—in an Ad Hoc Coalition—agree on the following
demands and commit ourselves to working together to help achieve them:
An immediate end to the U.S. policy of forced regime
change in Syria and full recognition and compliance by the U.S., NATO and their
allies with principles of international law and the U.N. Charter, including
respect for the independence and territorial integrity of Syria.
An immediate end to all foreign aggression against
Syria, and serious efforts toward a political resolution to the war.
An immediate end to all military, financial,
logistical and intelligence support by the U.S., NATO and their regional allies
to all foreign mercenaries and extremists in the Middle East region.
An immediate end to economic sanctions against Syria.
Massive international aid for displaced people within Syria and Syrian refugees
abroad.
Only in a peaceful and independent Syria, free
of foreign aggression, can the people of Syria freely exercise their sovereign
rights, express their free will and make free choices about their government
and their country’s leadership.
We invite all supporters of peace and peoples’
right to self-determination around the world to join hands of cooperation in
this effort to achieve these most humanitarian demands.
We need jobs, healthcare, education and an end
to racist police violence here at home, not U.S. wars abroad!!
If you wish to sign this unity statement go to the
coalition website at http://handsoffsyriacoalition.net.
There is also a list of the organizations that have signed.
———————
13. ACTIVISTS FOIL
OIL PIPELINES AND TRAINS
 |
| Oil trains are being protested as well as pipelines. |
Oil producers and pipeline developers are having a rough time trying to get their product to market, running into resistance from protestors and seeing projects fall by the wayside.
The latest came from Royal Dutch Shell, backed out of
a plan this month to build an oil train terminal in Washington
State. The rail terminal would have received 400,000 barrels per day of oil
from North Dakota's Bakken oil fields, but Shell said that the project no
longer made sense with the ongoing slump in crude oil markets, and crucially,
because capital availability is getting tighter.
The setback is only the latest in a string of defeats for
developers of energy infrastructure around the country. Also this month, city
planners in San Luis Obispo rejected
a proposed rail terminal that would service a Phillips 66 refinery in central
California.
Yet another oil train terminal met defeat in Benicia, CA, a
project that would service a refinery owned by Valero. Moreover, the U.S.
Surface Transportation Board, a federal rail regulator, affirmed Benicia’s
right to reject the terminal. The decision is important because it grants local
communities more power to deny permits for energy infrastructure, which should
raise an alarm bell for energy developers around the country. The
Huffington Post summed up the latest developments nicely with a
headline reading “West Coast Deals Four Major Blows to Big Oil.”
 |
|
The Bakken made Harold Hamm a billionaire. His Continental
Resources, based in Oklahoma, leased the rock beneath the North Dakota prairie
before anyone thought it would pay.
Once fracking technology made drilling
possible, Hamm's fortune climbed
to $16 billion; the fall in oil prices has
reduced it to $10 billion.
|
"This development (with Shell), along with the
developments regarding the DAPL, will hurt Bakken producers' netbacks,"
according to Reuters. In other words, the stoppage of pipelines will hurt oil
producers’ profits.
The problem of infrastructure is not just one for North
Dakota producers. Environmental opposition to oil pipelines and other
infrastructure became a national issue with Keystone XL, but the fight did not
end there. Projects around the country are facing setbacks. For energy
executives, the trend should be alarming because protests are only swelling
with and spreading.
On October 11, environmental activists managed to shut
several major oil sands pipelines traveling from Canada into the United States.
The outage was temporary, but the coordinated efforts disrupted more than 2
million barrels per day across four major pipelines. In Minnesota, activists
used bolt cutters on valves at an Enbridge pipeline that runs from Alberta. In
Montana, protestors interfered with a valve at a Spectra Energy pipeline,
Bloomberg reports.
The original Keystone pipeline (not Keystone XL) saw production shut down by
TransCanada. In Washington State, Kinder Morgan temporarily idled operations at
its Trans Mountain pipeline. The outages are hardly likely to have a material
impact on oil flows, but the coordinated effort, hitting multiple very large
transnational oil pipelines at once, was a PR coup. The disruptions also
illustrate the worsening business climate for fossil fuel companies.
The environmental protest movement has grown more
sophisticated and widespread, and only shows signs of expanding. Their effect
is clearly reaching all the way to Washington. Instead of waiting years, as it
did with the Keystone XL fight, the Obama administration moved to nip the
problem of the Dakota Access pipeline in the bud when it asked its developers
to voluntarily stop construction.
In Canada, activists are putting a great deal of pressure on
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, demanding that he kill off
several major pipelines that seek to take Alberta oil to
international markets. Trudeau is on the verge of making several key decisions
on high-profile pipelines, and several of them will likely be met with defeat.
With so much fossil fuel development – coal, gas, oil –
going on in North America, there is no shortage of targets.
— From Oil Price.com, Oct. 12, 2016. Nick Cunningham is a
Vermont-based writer on energy and environmental issues. You can follow him on
twitter.
14. WHY WE ARE
SINGING FOR WATER
Note: All 4 photos depict the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
By Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw woman
Why are we singing for water in front of men with guns and
surveillance helicopters? We are singing for water and for the protectors of
Earth’s waters. We sing for water. Long-legged birds stand at the edges of
lakes and rivers to watch for fish, their nests hidden in the rushes. A doe
crosses land and stands guard as her little one drinks. All our brother and
sister animals follow their worn paths to needed waters. Trees and plants
subsist with the rain, snow, and groundwater in a place where living Earth
supported large herds of bison for thousands of years.
As for us, we were water beings from the beginning. We
rained from the broken waters of our mothers to enter this world. We drank from
our mothers to thrive. Water is our life-blood, and like all creations on this
blue planet, we were born to its currents and passages. So we sing for those
who pray to protect the wide, long Missouri River on its elemental journey.
Near the Cannonball River, a place of chokecherries,
Indiangrass, and other plants, thousands of people are camped. They know that
by legal treaty rights the Missouri River and the land of this region belong to
the Standing Rock Sioux. Water flows beneath the skin of this Earth body, and
vast clear aquifers lie deeper in the near ground, with rivers and tributaries
above. The “Plains” may be the wrong word to use for places existing in the
midst of all the ground water and watersheds that support life here: animals,
birds, food and medicine plants, expanses of wildflowers in the spring and then
the harsh, cold seasons of winter. The tall grasses live because of waters from
snow and rain.
My own nation, the Chicaza, lived with the Mississippi River
throughout much of our long history. We called that wide rush of water The Long
Person. She was our Grandmother and supplied everything we needed to survive.
With great sorrow, we were removed from our homeland in 1837. We left in order
to avoid future genocide. The U.S. government planned to place all of the
tribes into Indian Territory and build a wall around it, opening the rest of
the country to settlers. Large numbers of Native peoples were chased toward
what is now Oklahoma, but many of the Plains nations managed to remain, avoid
capture, and try to return to their beloved homelands.
While many Northern Plains nations escaped life in Oklahoma,
continuing actions by the federal government resulted in a shrinking land base
for the Dakota and Lakota, including the Dawes Act of 1889, which opened most
land for settlers throughout the country. The Fort Laramie Treaty is the only
treaty that remains unbroken by the United States. Now it is a corporation
breaking the heart of the people, ignoring the treaty rights and the water
guaranteed to the Sioux by that 1868 treaty. The state government of North
Dakota also has not upheld the treaty and backs the corporation, Energy
Transfer Partners/Sunoco.
Most Native peoples and others are hoping the Standing Rock
Sioux Nation will hold steady to all their treaty rights to the Missouri River,
that the land and water will remain healthy and intact, and that the Dakota
Access pipeline will never pass beneath the river nor cross the land in any
way.
Thousands of water protectors have arrived to show their
solidarity. The chiefs and leaders of over 300 tribal nations have appeared to
speak of their own concern for the water and land. Others have sent water,
money, and supplies.
Along these waterways, many negotiations decreased the land
base, but the river system has grown even more important as trail and trade,
especially for survival and subsistence for people who refused to give up their
land for any hundred million dollars offered by the United States.
Other states are also affected by work on the Bakken crude
pipeline. Citizens in Iowa have had their homes condemned by the Texas company
that began fracking the Bakken fields. Fracking makes the land more vulnerable
and more likely to shift and move, affecting tectonic plates. Water is removed
and injected back into Earth with secret chemicals, their exact toxic
ingredients protected by patents. This makes for a vulnerable Earth. The
lawsuits in Iowa have at least slowed operations.
Bakken crude comes from one of the most dangerous work sites now in operation. Working men have been charred to death by explosions and fires, electrocuted. Native women near these “man camps” have been subject to abuse, rape, and sometimes have disappeared, often into the sex trafficking business, sometimes murdered.
Standing Rock, this part of the Plains, is the world of
well-known leader and holy man Sitting Bull. It is land crossed during the time
of the Fort Laramie Treaty, signed in what is now Wyoming. In my mind’s eye as
I’ve studied the history, I see the many leaders of nations crossing this land
to participate in negotiations with the American government. Wearing
beautifully made regalia, most traveled on horseback or with wagons, the chiefs
and the women ambassadors of nations who thought the Fort Laramie Treaty would
be a resolution to their problems. Even those who had earlier disputes came
together with one another in kinship, camping together, sharing meals, and
creating new relationships.
Now the chiefs of many tribal nations and other
representatives have arrived again, this time to join in common protection for
the water of this Earth and in solidarity with the Standing Rock and Lakota.
This is still the land of the Standing Rock Sioux and other Lakota Nations,
still held together by the words and memory of Sitting Bull, who loved and
protected his people. No company or state has the right to take a thin, dirty
business through it, a pipeline certain to break, destroying the water and
contaminating the future.
But the Dakota Access Corporation sent its private,
aggressive militia to declare its own war on the people. With that amount of
harassment, the water protectors could certainly be in danger. We already saw
on the news that, after being told where the burial sites and sacred lands
were, the bulldozers went to those areas and tore through the earth, the
opposite of what was expected. What drives such hostility is hard to imagine.
The planes and helicopters have been flying over the
vulnerable past and future of the land. What look like SWAT teams and men with
assault rifles are set loose to aim the weapons of their anger or use attack
dogs on the people who are only protecting the water, or were chopping wood or
cooking for the others when the armed men arrived.
 |
| Protesters seek to halt bulldozer. |
I am a Chickasaw woman no longer
on the waters of the Mississippi, but my daughters and grandchildren are Oglala
Lakota. We know how many tribes in the South became extinct centuries even
before the fur trappers and gold seekers journeyed to these Northern Plains.
We’ve all survived massacres and hunger from the loss of our food sources, from
freezing winters, even before the time of Custer’s wars in this region.
Photographs from space reveal that
Earth is a water planet. No living thing survives without water. It is for that
reason space explorers search for planets that may contain this element; it is
a sign of life.
Most First People have chants or
songs about the sacred nature of water. Water is even used for baptism in
Christian religions. I hear that even the waters have their distinct songs as
they journey toward the oceans.
We live on a single globe of
water, all of it one entity. It is alive, this elemental force, this yearning
sacred creation, longing to reach an ocean. This is our body, and perhaps we
are a part of its soul. It is always moving away, traveling and then returning,
in its glorious circle. And we know that when we sing for water, we sing for
ourselves.
At this time, we need to pray and sing
for water in other locations as well. To name only a few, the San Juan River
and its Animas tributary is still too polluted for use by the Navajo after the
great wall of pollution from the Gold King Mine spill. The Menominee are fighting a mining site at their water’s source. California
tribes have had water taken by bottling companies and their sacred springs have
dried. The Amazon and other rivers in South America are under duress from
mining, oil, deforestation, and mega-dams.
—From Yes Magazine, Oct. 4, 2016
———————
15. CLIMATE CHANGE: RICH MUST HELP THE
POOR
By Ian
Johnston, Environment Correspondent, the Independent,
Oct. 18, 2016
 |
| One of numerous climate justice protests in Africa. |
A drought in southern Africa affecting 40 million people is
just "a grim foretaste of just the kind of suffering and hunger we are
going to see in the years ahead" unless poor countries get more help with
the effects of climate change, Oxfam has warned after 38 developed countries
claimed they were on track to meet their pledges to provide aid.
As part of the Paris Agreement of Climate Change, rich
states promised to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the poorest ones,
either by providing money directly or persuading private companies to
contribute.
While the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) found earlier this year that they were on course to fall
billions of dollars short of this target, the countries themselves have now
produced a “roadmap”
report saying they are confident it will be met based on a few
"modest assumptions."
However Oxfam warned that instead of giving money, most
countries were lending it, while others were rebranding ordinary aid as climate
finance.
Tracy Carty, climate policy lead for Oxfam, said far too
little money was being given to help countries cope with changes that are
already happening. She pointed to this year’s devastating drought affecting
southern Africa, where more than half a million children are suffering from
"severe, acute malnutrition, 3.2 million have reduced access to safe
drinking water and 40 million need humanitarian aid," according to the United Nations.
Drought conditions have also been experienced further north in places like
Somaliland.
“That is a grim foretaste of just the kind of suffering and
hunger we are going to see in the years ahead unless countries have support to
adapt their agriculture systems in particular, which in Africa and elsewhere
are extremely sensitive to climate change," Carty told The Independent.
[Over half a million children are currently suffering from severe acute
malnutrition in seven priority
countries in Southern Africa, while 3.2 million children have reduced
access to safe drinking water as a direct result of the El Niño-induced
drought.]
 |
| A terrible drought in Africa. |
The fund includes about $20bn a year to help countries adapt
to climate change, rather than attempt to reduce its severity, for example by
switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But Oxfam pointed out the
United Nations had estimated that developing countries would need to spend $140
to $300 billion a year to adapt to climate change by 2030.
And there are other problems with the rich nations’
promises. Carty said most countries were guilty of "over-counting,"
for example by using the full-face value of loans towards the total. "So
in terms of this being a real transfer of finance to developing countries… when
countries are counting the full-face value, that’s inflating their numbers,”
she said.
Some countries also count an overly high proportion or even
the full value of an aid project towards the total. So if they are building a
school with flood defenses, they claim the total sum should be treated as
climate finance, not just the defenses.
"Every dollar that is miscounted or over-counted, it’s
the poorest people in the least developed countries who are suffering the most
– that’s a dollar they are not going to get," Carty said.
In a statement, Oxfam called on world leaders meeting at a
climate conference in Morocco in November to "quadruple
adaptation support by 2020," pointing out that the world’s
poorest people were the “least responsible and most vulnerable to climate
change."
———————
16. U.S. TURNS ITS BACK
ON PALESTINIANS
 |
|
Palestinian protests in Ramallah during President Obama's
visit in 2013. (Photos: Times of Israel)
|
Washington has finally thrown in the towel on its long,
tortured efforts to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You
won’t find any acknowledgement of this in the official record. Formally, the
U.S. still supports a two-state solution to the conflict. But the Obama
administration’s recent 10-year, $38-billion
pledge to renew Israel’s arsenal of weaponry, while still ostensibly pursuing
“peace,” makes clear just how bankrupt that policy is.
For two decades, Israeli leaders and their neoconservative
backers in this country, hell-bent on building and expanding settlements on
Palestinian land, have worked to undermine America’s stated efforts -- and paid
no price. Now, with that record
weapons package, the U.S. has made it all too clear that they won’t have to.
Ever.
The military alliance between the United States and Israel
has long been at odds with the stated intentions of successive administrations
in Washington to foster peace in the Holy Land. One White House after another
has preferred the “solution” of having it both ways: supporting a two-state
solution while richly rewarding, with lethal weaponry, an incorrigible client
state that was working as fast as it could to undermine just such a
solution.
This ongoing duality seemed at its most surreal in the last
few weeks. First, President Obama announced the new military deal, with
its promised delivery of fighter jets and other hardware, citing the “unshakable”
American military alliance with Israel. The following week, at the United
Nations, he declared, “Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy
and settle Palestinian land.” Next, he flew to Israel for the funeral of Shimon
Peres, and in a tribute to the Nobel Prize-winning former Israeli president, spoke of
a man who grasped that “the Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people”
and brought up the “unfinished business” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process. (Peres is remembered
quite differently by Palestinians as an early pioneer
of settlement building and the author of the brutal Operation
Grapes of Wrath assaults on Lebanon in 1996.) Not long after the
funeral, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brazenly approved
a new settlement deep in the West Bank, prompting the State Department to “strongly
condemn” the action as “deeply troubling.”
Such scolding words, however, shrivel into nothingness in
the face of a single number: 38 billion. With its latest promise of
military aid, the United States has essentially sanctioned Israel’s impunity,
its endless colonization of Palestinian land, its military occupation of the
West Bank, and its periodic attacks by F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters
using Hellfire missiles on the civilians of Gaza.
 |
| Anti-Obama protester in Ramallah. |
Now, with Gaza severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians
facing new waves of settlers amid a half-century-long military occupation, the
U.S. has chosen not to apply pressure to its out-of-control ally, but instead
to resupply its armed forces in a massive way. This means that we’ve
finally arrived at something of a historic (if hardly noticed) moment.
After all these decades, the two-state solution, critically
flawed as it was, should now officially be declared dead -- and
consider the United States an accomplice in its murder. In other words,
the Obama administration has handed Israel’s leaders and the neoconservatives
who have long championed this path the victory they’ve sought for more than two
decades....
— From
TomDisspatch.com. Article continued at
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176199/tomgram%3A_sandy_tolan%2C_the_death_of_the_two-state_solution/#more
— The author has reported from more than 35
countries and is a professor at the Annenberg School for Journalism and
Communication at USC. He is the author of the international bestseller, The Lemon Tree, and of the acclaimed Children of the
Stone about one Palestinian’s dream to establish music schools under
Israel’s military occupation. His website is sandytolan.com.
———————
———————
17. 'HANOI HANNAH'
HAS DIED
 |
| "Hanoi Hannah" at 86, and still receiving visitors and photographers. |
From The Economimist and the Activist Newsletter
Trinh Thi Ngo, the broadcaster for the wartime Voice of Vietnam listened to by innumerable GIs, died on Sept. 30th, aged 87. Her pseudonym on the air was Thu Huong, or Autumn Fragrance, but U.S. soldiers called her Hanoi Hannah.
Trinh Thi Ngo, the broadcaster for the wartime Voice of Vietnam listened to by innumerable GIs, died on Sept. 30th, aged 87. Her pseudonym on the air was Thu Huong, or Autumn Fragrance, but U.S. soldiers called her Hanoi Hannah.
The voice was faint, for the signal was weak between Hanoi
and the Central Highlands. Nonetheless, at 8 p.m. Saigon time, after a day
spent avoiding mantraps and pursuing the ever-elusive Vietcong, GIs would try
to unwind by listening to the young woman they called “Hanoi Hannah.” As they
cleaned their rifles, smoked herbs and broke out a beer or two, their precious
radios, strapped up for protection with ragged black tape, crackled with tones
that might have been those of a perky high-school cheerleader.
“GI Joe, how are you today?” asked the sweet-sounding girl,
of men to whom any girl would have sounded sweet. “Are you confused? Nothing is
more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or be maimed for life
without the faintest idea of what’s going on. You know your government has
abandoned you. They have ordered you to die. Don’t trust them. They lied to
you.”
Some soldiers would scoff or talk
loudly for the time the program lasted. They listened, though, to the songs she
played, sent over by Stateside sympathizers: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Elvis
Presley and her own favorite, Pete Seeger’s deeply melancholy “Where Have All
the Flowers Gone?” Upbeat numbers, such as Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” would
have even dog-tired men frenziedly dancing. But then Hannah would switch the
mood again, reading out (courtesy of Stars and Stripes, the soldiers’ own
newspaper) the names of recent American casualties and their hometowns.
“Defect, GI,” she would urge each man. “It is a very good idea to leave a
sinking ship. You know you cannot win this war.”
The range of her knowledge was disturbing. She announced
exactly where units were and, though troops cheered when she mentioned them,
they were chilled to be tracked down. She knew the names of all the crew on
ships that had just arrived, and once wished a wistful happy birthday to a
soldier who had just been killed. Many listened because her information,
written by the North Vietnamese defense ministry, was sometimes more accurate
than what could be gleaned from sanitized US Armed Forces Radio: revealing in
1967, for example, that rioting was going on in Detroit. Some believed she even
knew whether their girls were cheating on them back home, and with whom.
 |
| Trinh Thi Ngo as young broadcaster. |
Of course, she was not omnipotent at all: just a petite,
smiling, lively young woman who translated, and then read faithfully in
faultless American-English, the scripts she was given. Voice of Vietnam had
started, in 1945, with Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of the independence of his
country; but when she joined ten years later, at 25, she was reading
English-language news bulletins rather than full-fledged propaganda. With the
mass arrival of American troops in 1965 her broadcasts, previously 5-6 minutes
once a day, were extended to 30 minutes three times a day. And it was she who
had the exaltation of announcing to the world, on April 30th 1975, that Saigon
was at last liberated and Vietnam unified. [Pro-Vietnamese Australian journalist
Wilfred Burchett taught Trinh Thi Ngo how to conduct her programs. He covered
the war from start to finish in Vietnam and his unique reports in the U.S.
Guardian Radical Newseekly were must reading for many in the U.S. antiwar movement.]
She spoke out for the cause, but also because she adored the
English language: the language, that is, as mediated by Hollywood and spoken by
stars. Her education, in a prosperous family under French colonial rule, had
been in French schools, but she was lured very early by the cinema and, there,
the fascinating “music” of English. She reckoned she went five times to “Gone
with the Wind”, fortified with bread and sausages for the length of the film,
listening intently to the raptures of Vivien Leigh and whatever Clark Gable
drawled from under his pencil moustache. Private English lessons soon followed,
and English at university. As well as perming her hair and applying bright
lipstick to look at least a little like a starlet, she practiced and practiced
her English intonation. In her early days at Voice of Vietnam she had
Australians for mentors; but it was America that echoed in the way she spoke.
This being so, her broadcasts were not aggressive. Ideology
played little part in them; she never joined the Communist Party, feeling
patriotic enough. Her delivery was pitched to be persuasive, neither intimate
nor tough: striving to demoralize each man a little, advising him to go AWOL or
frag his officers, yet evincing concern for him. Only the bombing of Hanoi in
December 1972, which forced them to abandon the studio, made her angry. The
programs were explicitly dedicated “to the American people,” or “our American
friends”, meaning all Americans who opposed the war. Early on, that meant
agitators like Jane Fonda, who sent her good tapes and then, mystifyingly to
her, seemed to abandon the cause. Later, increasingly, she felt she had the
tacit support of most citizens of the United States.
Ex-soldiers who visited her in later years, when she had
given up her broadcasting in Hanoi for domestic calm in hotter, noisier Ho Chi
Min City, found a woman of impeccable manners in exquisite silk blouses and
strings of pearls. She dreamed of following her painter son to America, of
seeing New York and the Golden Gate Bridge. She had no animus against
Americans. Her English, however, was getting rusty, and needed the lubricant of
speaking it. So she was happy to say, laughing, “Let bygones be bygones,” as
often as she was asked.
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18. THAILAND: KING
DIES, MILITARY STILL RULES
 |
| The masses regarded him as a good king. His son as successor wil be another matter. |
The world's longest-reigning monarch, Thai King Bhumibol
Adulyadej, died Oct. 13 after ruling for 70 years. According to Thai junta
leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn will now take
his place on the throne.
The passing of the widely revered king triggers an epochal
transition in Thailand. For more than a decade, Thailand has been locked in an uneasy stasis
regarding the future of its monarchy. The king was seen as a
benevolent and stabilizing force in Thailand, wielding power deftly and
sparingly. The crown prince, on the other hand, is unpopular and considered to
be reckless and prone to scandal. In a society that attaches celestial
importance to the throne and largely views the monarchy as the guardian of Thai
culture and values, the prince is seen as unfit to be king and a danger to the
position's legitimacy with the Thai public.
Moreover, among Thai elites who have used the monarchy to
preserve the establishment's standing, the prince is a threat to material and
political interests. Such concerns are exacerbated by the once-apparent cozy
relationship between the prince and self-exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra. The uncertainty surrounding the royal succession helped fuel the
cycle of violent protests Bangkok found itself trapped in after Thaksin was
ousted in 2006.
However, the king's passing is unlikely to plunge Thailand
into political chaos any time soon, as was once feared. The immediate elevation
of the crown prince signals that the struggle for the throne, which some
worried would be deeply destabilizing, was settled well
in advance. Moreover, after gaining public approval of the
military-drafted constitution in an August
referendum, the [dictatorial] Thai junta is well positioned to
enforce political stability for at least the next year, with Thaksin
neutralized for the time being. [For now, according to the N.Y. Times, "Thailand is formally
headed by Prem Tinsulanonda, 96, a former prime minister and the head of the
powerful Privy Council, who assumed the role of regent pro tempore in the
absence of a king."]
The country will go through a lengthy period of elaborate
state-mandated mourning, and any plans to organize mass protests (say, if the
royal succession gives the junta impetus to delay the August 2017 elections
indefinitely) will not be tolerated. To maintain the monarchy's image of
infallibility, the royalists will heavily promote the public works of the more
popular Princess Sirindhorn while portraying King Bhumibol as a guiding light
even after death.
Nonetheless, the destabilizing effects of succession will be
felt more over the long term as the power landscape in Thailand adjusts to a
weakened monarchy. The king's careful reign helped preserve a delicate balance
of political and business power among the monarchy, military and political
classes. The 64 year-old prince will not inherit his father's prestige or
influence and is unlikely to gain it over time. The military that overthrew an
elected government in 2014 will attempt to fill the vacuum, but it will be
fundamentally ill-suited to play a similarly unifying role once the official
mourning period passes and Thailand's
myriad political divisions begin to return to the fore.
19. PENGUINS RETURNED
TO THE SEA
 |
| Healed penguins return to the sea. |
By the Activist Newsletter
People watch as 15 African Penguins are released into the
sea Oct 8 in Simonstown near Cape Town, South Africa. These penguins were
either injured or sick, and were rehabilitated by an organization called the
Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. The African
Penguin is listed as endangered, with a population only approximately 2.5% the
size of what it was 80 years ago. #
(Photo: Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty)
———————
20. DOGS COMPEHEND
HUMAN VOCABULARY &TONE
 |
| Trained dogs around functional magnetic scanner (fMRI). |
Dogs have the ability to distinguish vocabulary words and
the intonation of human speech through brain regions similar to those that
humans use, a new study reports.
Attila Andics et al. note that vocabulary learning
"does not appear to be a uniquely human capacity that follows from the
emergence of language, but rather a more ancient function that can be exploited
to link arbitrary sound sequences to meanings."
Words are the basic building blocks of human languages, but
they are hardly ever found in nonhuman vocal communications. Intonation is
another way that information is conveyed through speech, where, for example,
praises tend to be conveyed with higher and more varying pitch. Humans
understand speech through both vocabulary and intonation.
Here, Andics and colleagues explored whether dogs also
depend on both mechanisms. Dogs were exposed to recordings of their trainers'
voices as the trainers spoke to them using multiple combinations of vocabulary
and intonation, in both praising and neutral ways.
For example, trainers spoke praise words with a praising
intonation, praise words with a neutral intonation, neutral words with a
praising intonation, and neutral words with neutral intonation.
Researchers used fMRI
imaging to analyze the dogs' brain activity as the animals listened to
each combination. Their results reveal that, regardless of intonation, dogs
process vocabulary, recognizing each word as distinct, and further, that they
do so in a way similar to humans, using the left hemisphere of the brain.
Also like humans, the researchers found that dogs process
intonation separately from vocabulary, in auditory regions in the right
hemisphere of the brain. Lastly, and also like humans, the team found that the
dogs relied on both word meaning and intonation when processing the reward
value of utterances.
Thus, dogs seem to understand both human words and
intonation. The authors note that it is possible that selective forces during
domestication could have supported the emergence of the brain structure
underlying this capability in dogs, but, such rapid evolution of speech-related
hemispheric asymmetries is unlikely.
Humans, they say, are only unique in their ability to invent
words.
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21. BEES NOW AN
ENDANGERED SPECIES
 |
| Bees are important pollinators for various native plants in Hawaii. (Photo: Forest and Kim Starr) |
In a positive move for bees, the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service has added seven species of yellow-faced bees in Hawaii to the
endangered species list.
These are the “first bees in the country to be protected
under the Endangered Species Act,” according to the Xerces
Society, a non-profit organization that petitioned the Food and
Wildlife Service in 2009 to protect the bees. This decision
follows the proposed listing of the rusty patched bumble bee — a once-common
species endemic to North America that has faced a drastic decline in number.
These bees pollinate a variety of native plant species,
including some of Hawaii’s most endangered plant species, which could become
extinct if the bees were wiped out.... Their habitats are rapidly disappearing
due to developmental activities along the coasts, fire, the loss of native
vegetation to invasive plant species, as well grazing by feral ungulates such
as pigs. In fact, the remaining bee populations are so small and rare now that
they are especially vulnerable to the slightest of changes to their habitats or
stochastic event.
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