WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

CAMPAIGN ZERO: Black Lives Matter activists' new, comprehensive policy platform

…with the launch of Campaign Zero. The website details several proposals to limit police use of force, particularly shootings against black people who are disproportionately likely to die at the hands of police. The proposals aren't particularly surprising for anyone who's closely followed the Black Lives Matter movement, but it's the most comprehensive set of ideas ever released by advocates… Campaign Zero, launched by We the Protesters, has a single — but ambitious — goal: Reduce all police violence in the US to zero. To do this, the campaign laid out several policy proposals that it says were "informed by the demands of protesters nationwide, the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, recommendations from research organizations, and comprehensive data on the causes and impact of police violence." … According to the Washington Post's database, police have shot and killed 624 people so far in 2015. Nearly 22 percent of those shot and killed didn't have a deadly weapon, nearly 10 percent were completely unarmed, and more than 26 percent exhibited signs of mental illness. Historically, these types of police killings have been racially

 

KATRINA PLUS TEN: Climate Justice in Action

It is hard to believe it has already been ten years since Hurricane Katrina made devastating landfall on the Gulf Coast. When Katrina hit and devastated the region, New Orleans’ poorly maintained levees broke and flooded the city. The privileged few were able to flee the disaster while thousands more were left in flooded streets and on the rooftops of their homes… Hurricane Katrina was a critical time in the development of climate justice. It was an environmental and human disaster, but also became an occasion to offer no compromise solutions to the power and influence that carbon spewing corporations hold over our lives. It was a series of events that gave birth to new energy around climate and social justice.  More

 

For an account of the catastrophe and the Bush administration’s racist response, see here.

 

Do the Rich Rule the United States?

As of this summer, over half of all donations to Republican super PACs came from just 130 wealthy families and their businesses. Democratic candidates had a wider base of small contributors, but also plenty of big-money donors of their own.  We're now living through the billionaire primary. Six months before a single vote is cast in New Hampshire, the field of candidates is being selected and winnowed by billionaire donors.  Indeed, it seems like a presidential hopeful must have at least one billionaire backer - and ideally several - to be considered a credible candidate. Roofing billionaire Diane Hendricks gave $5 million to the Scott Walker campaign. Houston billionaire Toby Neugebauer gave a $10 million boost to Ted Cruz. Oracle CEO and billionaire Larry Ellison gave $3 million to Marco Rubio.

This political patronage system effectively disenfranchises ordinary voters.   More

 

The Spectacle of American Violence and the Cure for Donald Trump

The cure for Donald Trump is to recognize that he represents a poison in society that has to be expunged. We have to begin to talk about a society that is now ruled by a number of fundamentalisms that I think he symbolizes: a market fundamentalism, one that seems to suggest that all aspects of life should be governed by the rules of the market; a religious fundamentalism, one that seems to suggest that dogmatism around religion can be used to justify almost any vile, virus-like social relationship; an educational fundamentalism in which we can say anything that’s stupid and nonsensical and believe that the more stupid we are, the more relevant it becomes—one that is so anti-intellectual that it dissipates the very foundation of what it means to educate people to be active citizens; and a political fundamentalism in which what we find is that politics has now disappeared—because politics is based on what I call the collective thoughtfulness of a population willing to participate in shaping power in ways that are suitable to the visions that it has for a better life. That doesn’t exist anymore.   More

 

US Military Spending compared to the rest of the World (in $billions)

 

 

Do America's Military Bases Abroad Help Or Hinder Global Security?

The U.S. has around 800 military bases outside of the nation's borders. They're home to hundreds of thousands of troops and family members, and, in many cases, they're a cause of controversy… Largely, people of course don't like their land occupied by foreign troops — and I think it's worth thinking, for American audiences, to think about how it would feel to have foreign troops living next door, occupying your land with tanks. ... There have also been a number of harms that these bases have inflicted on local communities — there have been accidents, crimes committed by U.S. personnel, environmental damage — a whole range of damage that people were quite upset about.  More

 

Watch 4-Min VIDEO: Why does the US have 800 military bases around the world?

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

The War on Syria

The popular narrative in the United States, promoted by the US State Department, is one in which a people in the face of state repression turned to violence only when they had to. But that is not quite true. Violence and militarization from the opposition on the ground began quite early — during the first month of the uprising…  Normally to bring forward such facts is to invite the suggestion that one is offering apologetics for the government of Bashar al-Assad. In fact, that has been a consistent leitmotif of Western and Arab debate over the conflict. As a result, that debate has gone forward without the necessary information to understand what exactly has been going on in Syria over the past four years… In other words, the United States launched a full-scale war against Syria, and few Americans actually noticed… The popular narrative of the People versus the Dictator… elides the reality of varying classes and sects with various social roles and politics… In the United States, our main focus must be struggling against the intervention of our own government, drawing links between its actions in Syria and its broader agenda elsewhere.   More

 

The Wars In Syria And Iraq Are Also Water Wars

Turkey has built many, many dams throughout the country to provide electricity but also for farming… The water newly provided to farmers in Turkey used to flow down the Euphrates and Tigris to Syria and Iraq. Three drought years in Syria, 2006-2009, induced many farmers to leave their dry field and to move to cities where they found little work… The situation is Iraq is similar if not worse. Major regions have lost the basis for their agriculture and the farmers ask for solutions and more support… The lack of water is not the only reason for the wars in Syria and Iraq. But it made these countries prone to inner conflicts and vulnerable to outside meddling.  More

 

I wrote about this here: “The Way the Wind Blows in Syria (and Beyond)”

 

Syrian rebels: Turkey tipped al Qaida group to U.S.-trained fighters

The kidnapping of a group of U.S.-trained moderate Syrians moments after they entered Syria last month to confront the Islamic State was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, multiple rebel sources have told McClatchy. The rebels say that the tipoff to al Qaida’s Nusra Front enabled Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration’s plans for confronting the Islamic State.Rebels familiar with the events said they believe the arrival plans were leaked because Turkish officials were worried that while the group’s intended target was the Islamic State, the U.S.-trained Syrians would form a vanguard for attacking Islamist fighters that Turkey is close to, including Nusra and another major Islamist force, Ahrar al Sham.   More

 

US Shows its Real Face in Choosing Turkey over the Kurds

If the U.S. was serious about fighting IS, it would not only have been providing full support – both in deed and in word – to the YPG and YPJ and its sister organization, the PKK, but it would also confront Turkey on the mountains of evidence that they have in fact been supporting IS, demand that the borders with the Kurdish regions in Syria would be opened, request that the bombing campaign against PKK positions and the terror campaign against Kurdish civilians be ceased immediately, and most importantly, take the PKK of the terror list. Unfortunately, the U.S.’s actions have shown that it is interested in no such thing. Rather than defeating IS, its objective is the preservation and expansion of its influence in the region. For this, Turkey is a much more valuable partner than either the YPG and YPJ or the PKK. Action speaks louder than words, and in choosing its allies the US has shown clearly where its priorities really lie: power over democracy, influence over honesty and war over peace.   More

 

Screwy Mideast Strategy of Empowering Saudi Arabia

You’d think that perhaps someone like Sanders would say that we have to break our decades-long backing of the corrupt Saudi regime — but no, he wants to dramatically expand it… The Saudis have pushed the teachings of the fundamentalist Wahabbism sect that’s been deforming Islam for decades. This extremism helped give rise to Al Qaeda and now ISIS. In other words, the Saudi royals have already been “getting their hands dirty.” It’s a bit like someone saying the Koch Brothers need to get more involved in U.S. politics by “getting their hands dirty.” … If the U.S. further subcontracts control of the Mideast to the Saudi regime, the setbacks and disappointments for peace and justice in the region during the Obama years will be small potatoes by comparison. If Sanders’s plan is implemented – making the Saudi royals and other oil-rich monarchs the enforcers of order in the Mideast – the likelihood is for open-ended warfare.  More

 

Saudis turn a blind eye as Qaeda gains ground in Yemen

Supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, forces loyal to Yemen's exiled government retook Aden last month from Iran-backed Huthi rebels who have seized large parts of the country including the capital Sanaa.  As authorities work to reassert control over Aden, the capital of formerly independent South Yemen, Al-Qaeda has moved into the gap.  The jihadist group's militants, already in control of other parts of southern Yemen, are reported to have taken up positions in several strategic parts of the city… "I don't think Saudi Arabia's main priority in Yemen is Al-Qaeda... The Huthis are more of a high priority," said Ibrahim Fraihat, a senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.   More

 

U.N. Official Says Human Suffering in Yemen ‘Almost Incomprehensible’

With a staggering four in five Yemenis now in need of immediate humanitarian aid, 1.5 million people displaced and a death toll that has surpassed 4,000 in just five months, a United Nations official told the Security Council Wednesday that the scale of human suffering is “almost incomprehensible”.  Briefing the 15-member body upon his return from the embattled Arab nation on Aug. 19, Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O’Brien stressed that the civilian population is bearing the brunt of the conflict and warned that unless warring parties came to the negotiating table there would soon be “nothing left to fight for”.  More

 

The Civilian Toll From the War Against ISIS Is Huge. Why Isn’t the Press Covering It?

As of this month, the US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria for one year. So far, it has carried out over 5,900 strikes. In that time, the Pentagon has admitted to only two civilian deaths, continually insisting that its precision weapons have minimized civilian fatalities to a remarkable level—too remarkable to be believed. In June, Lt. Gen. John Hesterman, former combined forces air component commander, called the current air war against ISIS “the most precise and disciplined in the history of aerial warfare.”

However, in a report published this month, a monitoring group called Airwars has documented at least 459 civilian deaths that it says were likely the result of the coalition bombing campaign—a far cry from the two deaths that have so far been admitted.   More

 

The Myth of a Russian 'Threat'

Containment of Russia – via the expansion of the EU and NATO — has always been a work in progress because the geopolitical imperative has always been the same; as Dr. Zbigniew “The Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski never tired of stressing, it was always about preventing the – threatening — emergence of a Eurasian power capable of challenging the US.  Ultimately, the notion of “containment” can be stretched out towards the dismantling of Russia itself. It also carries the inbuilt paradox that NATO’s infinite expansion eastwards has made Eastern Europe less, not more, safe… The Pentagon’s rhetorical games also serve to mask a real high-stakes process; essentially an energy war – centering on the control of oil, natural gas and mineral resources of Russia and Central Asia. Will this wealth be controlled by oligarch frontmen “supervised” by their masters in New York and London, or by Russia and its Central Asian partners? Thus the relentless propaganda war.  More

 

UN report: Israeli weapons fueling South Sudan civil war

South Sudan has been in the midst of a civil war for the past 18 months, and the United Nations has reported in the past on extensive human rights violations there during the fighting, including the drafting of child-soldiers and the burning of villages. According to the current report, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army has been implementing a scorched-earth policy, and has been involved in indiscriminate killing, rape, pillaging, destruction of infrastructure and uprooting of civilians from their homes.  The panel of experts noted that at least some of the weapons were given to the local national security service before the outbreak of the war, but now the Israeli weapons are in use by what are basically all the security bodies in the country – the SPLA, the local police, the national security service and the bodyguards of senior officers.   More

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND THE US

 

RECOLONISING INTERNATIONAL LAW: Israel’s naval blockade against Gaza

Legal experts have decried the unlawfulness of Israel’s blockade under international humanitarian law (the technical term for the laws of war): because it violates the restriction on blockades with the purpose or effect of civilian starvation; because it violates the prohibition on collective punishment of civilian populations during war; because it violates Israel’s obligation as an occupying power to ensure adequate supply of food and medicine to the occupied. (Israel denies that it occupies Gaza, because it formally withdrew from the territory in 2005. However, due to Israel’s continued exertion of multiple forms of power in the Gaza Strip—including control of the territory’s land crossings, territorial waters, airspace, telecommunications, and electricity; deployment of military incursions, rocket attacks, and sonic booms; management of the Palestinian Population Registry; and regular exercise of its capacity to invade Gaza, and arrest and prosecute its residents—multiple authorities have concluded that Gaza is still occupied.)  But beyond the question of legality or illegality, Israel’s appeal to international law to justify the naval blockade disturbingly, but tellingly, resembles European colonial powers’ use of international law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: to legitimise the violence of the colonisers, and delegitimise the resistance of the colonised.  More

 

From The Modern Traveller, Hilaire Beloc, 1898

Blood thought he knew the native mind;He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

 

“Concentration Camp” would be a better analogy, but that is not allowed in US discourse. . .

Gaza, Gulag on the Mediterranean

Everyone expects Israel to be back for another “trim,” or to “mow the grass,” or whatever deadly euphemism is in vogue the next time Israel deems it time to show us who really controls Gaza.  Our children grow up not in neighborhoods, but in ruins, as Israel continues to block sufficient reconstruction materials from entering Gaza. According to the United Nations, 9,161 Palestinian refugee houses were classified as destroyed and 5,066 others severely harmed. Another 4,085 homes were judged to have suffered major damage, with another 124,782 that had sustained minor damage. Palestinians in Gaza need economic development. Talk to most young people and they will describe circumscribed options and a limited ability to save and plan for marriage and a family. The sense of Gaza as a gulag on the Mediterranean only increases political frustration among Gazan youth, fueling their determination to resist oppression and demand access to the outside world.   More

 

No Exit? Gaza & Israel Between Wars

A solution to Gaza’s problems is unlikely to be found in Cairo or Ramallah. Both view Hamas, or its parent organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, as an existential threat. They do not want to rescue Hamas or help Israel in its years-long policy of severing ties between Gaza and the West Bank. Instead both are content to ignore Gaza and watch Hamas drown in its mounting financial problems. If a new war erupts, they calculate, it will be Israel and Hamas that pay the price… Short of renewed fighting or using large carrots and sticks to push a weakened PA into taking responsibility for Gaza, Israel’s main options are either to improve conditions there unilaterally, so the Hamas-run administration can govern sustainably, thereby giving Hamas greater incentive to continue enforcing the current ceasefire, or to reach a more robust, extended ceasefire with Hamas…  Whatever options Hamas and Israel choose will not resolve the underlying conflict. But allowing Gazans to export goods, tax themselves and freely exit and enter the territory would at least offer Israelis and Palestinians the possibility of less bloodshed, while other possibilities, including unblocking the diplomatic impasse, are explored.     More

 

Petition pushes for end to Israel's Gaza blockade

One year after a ceasefire agreement ended Gaza's 51-day war, hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition urging world leaders to pressure Israel to lift its blockade of the Palestinian territory. The petition - launched by the online activist group Avaaz and supported by dozens of other organisations, including World Vision International and Medical Aid for Palestinians - notes that 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza remain homeless and calls for "urgent action" to allow more construction materials to enter the besieged coastal enclave. "For a whole year the Israeli government has restricted basic and essential construction materials from entering Gaza. Not one of the 19,000 homes that were bombed and destroyed has been fully rebuilt," notes the petition, released on Wednesday.  More

 

US congresswoman calls for sanctions on Israeli unit behind killing of teens

Released on 18 August by Democratic Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the letter calls for sanctions on the Israeli border police unit responsible for killing Palestinian teenagers Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir on 15 May 2014. The boys were shot at a Nakba Day protest near the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank village of Beitunia. In June, McCollum penned a letter, co-signed by 18 other members of congress, slamming Israel’s “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of Palestinian children” in military detention as “an anomaly in the world” that demands US action.   More

 

US passports scoffed at by Israel; US stands by

In the past year Israel has continued to demonstrate that it has no intention of ending their practice of discriminating against persons of Arab descent… George is a professor and a deacon of his church from San Francisco. Habib is a pharmacist and respected community leader from Brooklyn. Both are American citizens of Palestinian descent. George was traveling to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage. Habib was on his way to attend a family wedding in the West Bank. Neither had been back to Israel/Palestine in more than 20 years. And neither was able to complete their journey.  While no American should be subjected to such treatment, the most disturbing element of these cases is the reason they were denied entry and deported. Because both men were of Palestinian descent, Israel would not honor their U.S. passports or recognize the men as American citizens. Both were told they had to acquire Palestinian IDs and then, as Palestinians, enter the West Bank through Jordan…  When George Khoury's daughter wrote a letter of complaint to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, she received a response saying "Unfortunately, the US government cannot assist US citizens in gaining entry into Israel...Should your father wish to travel again in the future, we advise him to contact the nearest Israeli Embassy or Consulate for guidance."   More

 

60,000 American Jews live in the West Bank, new study reveals

Roughly 60,000 American Jews live in West Bank settlements, where they account for 15 percent of the settler population, according to figures revealed Thursday by an Oxford University scholar and expert on this population… In her quest to make sense of the inherent contradiction between liberal American values and the “illiberal” settlement project, Hirschhorn said she reached the following conclusion about this group of immigrants: “They’re not only compelled by some biblical imperative to live in the Holy Land of Israel and hasten the coming of the messiah, but also deeply inspired by an American vision of pioneering and building new suburbanized utopian communities in the occupied territories.  More