A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

Yesterday at the Constitutional Convention, the State Legislature voted to move the Fair Share Amendment forward. Although we only needed 50 of the 200 legislators to vote in our favor, a whopping 135 legislators voted "Yes" on our Fair Share Amendment. This incredible feat is all thanks to the efforts of supporters like you. Together, we collected 157,000 last fall and in the past week alone, thousands of us picked up the phone or took to our keyboards to let our legislators know that voters in their district support the Fair Share Amendment. As the Fair Share Amendment moves forward to the next phase of the Constitutional Amendment process, it is imperative that we keep our momentum rolling. So please take a moment to thank your State Representative and State Senator for voting in favor of giving all Massachusetts residents a Fair Share and for supporting transportation access and public education for all. (All the Dorchester Reps voted YES)

 

Michigan Corporations to Pay $0 in Taxes This Year, Despite Crises in Flint and Detroit

While residents of beleaguered Flint face rate hikes for the city's lead-poisoned water and Detroit sees teachers staging sickouts after lawmakers threatened to withhold their full salaries, the state treasury announced this week that Michigan businesses are to effectively pay nothing in taxes this year.  In fact, Michigan is projected to give corporations a net refund—even while it faces a budget shortfall of $460 million. "Officials are projecting a net loss of $99 million in revenue from the state's principal business taxes," reported Detroit News, as corporations "effectively contribute nothing to the state coffers in 2016."  More

 

House Votes Down Proposal To End 2001 War Authorization

There will be no end to the president’s endless war authority.  In a 138-285 vote, the House rejected an amendment Wednesday night that would have repealed the sprawling 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force passed in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The amendment would have revoked the 2001 AUMF within 90 days of the president signing the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed Wednesday night, 277-147.  As amendment sponsor Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) noted on Wednesday, the Congressional Research Service says the broad war authorization has been used to justify military action in 14 countries a total of 37 times — 18 from President George W. Bush, and 19 from President Barack Obama… The Rules Committee did not allow consideration of a number of amendments to the defense authorization that would have acted as a new AUMF. Instead, they made the Lee amendment in order, knowing that it was destined to fail. (A similar amendment — again from Lee — was rejected last year during NDAA consideration.)  The vote on that amendment was 157-270.   More

  (Voting FOR: Capuano, Clark, Kennedy, McGovern, Tsongas;  AGAINST: Keating, Lynch, Keating, Moulton)

 

THE COMING DEMOCRATIC CRACKUP?

If the Democratic Party presses ahead and nominates hawkish Hillary Clinton for President, it could recreate the conditions that caused the party to splinter in the late 1960s and early 1970s when anti-war and pro-war Democrats turned on one another and opened a path for decades of Republican dominance of the White House.  This new Democratic crackup could come as early as this fall if anti-war progressives refuse to rally behind Clinton because of her neoconservative foreign policy -- thus infuriating Clinton's backers -- or it could happen in four years if Clinton wins the White House and implements her militaristic agenda, including expanding the U.S. war in Syria while continuing other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya -- and challenging Russia on its borders… With Clinton, there's no reason to expect a reversal since she's made no secret about her plans for invading Syria under the guise of creating a "safe zone" and for confronting nuclear-armed Russia along its western borders, from Ukraine through the Baltic States.   More

 

How Democrats Manipulated Nevada State Party Convention Then Blamed Sanders For Chaos

Days after a convention in which leaders incited chaos and disorder, the Nevada State Democratic Party demonized supporters of Bernie Sanders in a letter written to the Democratic National Committee… Nevada State Democratic Party leaders “claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence,'” Sanders said in a statement. “That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence.” … There is a lot more going on here than people upset with not winning more delegates. The Democratic Party establishment, especially the party leadership at state levels, has witnessed supporters pass motions in an effort to end superdelegates, which have gone against the will of the people in multiple states where Sanders won landslide victories. They do not want Sanders delegates to organize effectively and wield the process to advance their agenda. So, leaders, who back Clinton, have decided to engage in manipulation and obstruction at conventions to diminish the influence of Sanders supporters.  On top of that, the Nevada State Democratic Party and others, who militantly guard the status quo, cry out about the “threat” Sanders supporters pose to the Party’s national convention scheduled for July. Their false alarm is dependent on the public not knowing all the shenanigans, which the Party has engaged in to improperly limit the influence of the Sanders campaign. `   More

 

See also: “The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/18/the-faux-fracas-in-nevada-how-a-reporters-pack-of-lies-ran-riot-in-the-fact-averse-media/

 

 

We wasted $113B in Afghanistan, no wonder ‘America First’ resonates

While Donald Trump took a lot of heat for his recent “America First” speech, which foreign-policy experts rejected as “isolationist,” a scathing new Pentagon report on Afghan reconstruction backs his stance against nation-building.  In virtually every category — from infrastructure to education to security — our virtual adoption of that nation has been a costly fiasco. In a report to Congress, the Defense Department reveals that Washington so far has spent an eye-popping $113.2 billion to rebuild Afghanistan — an amount that, adjusted for inflation, tops by $10 billion the total we committed to rebuilding post-WWII Europe under the Marshall Plan… Nation-building in Afghanistan has been a boondoggle for US taxpayers. Yet in his fiscal year 2017 budget, President Obama calls for an additional $4.8 billion for major reconstruction funds there.   More

 

 

Neocon-Bashers Headline Koch Event as Political Realignment on Foreign Policy Continues

In the latest example of how foreign policy no longer neatly aligns with party politics, the Charles Koch Institute — the think tank founded and funded by energy billionaire Charles Koch — hosted an all-day event Wednesday featuring a set of speakers you would be more likely to associate with a left-wing anti-war rally than a gathering hosted by a longtime right-wing institution.  At the event, titled “Advancing American Security: The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy,” prominent realist and liberal foreign policy scholars took turns trashing the neoconservative worldview that has dominated the foreign policy thinking of the Republican Party — which the Koch brothers have been allied with for decades. Most of the speakers assailed the Iraq War, nation building, and regime change. During a panel event also featuring former Obama Pentagon official Kathleen Hicks, foreign policy scholar John Mearsheimer brought the crowd to applause by denouncing American military overreach.  More

 

“THREAT INFLATION”:

The U.S. Army’s War Over Russia

Army leaders before a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee… delivered a grim warning about the future of the U.S. armed forces: Unless the Army budget was increased, allowing both for more men and more materiel, members of the panel said, the United States was in danger of being “outranged and outgunned” in the next war and, in particular, in a confrontation with Russia…  “This is the ‘Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling’ set in the Army,” the senior Pentagon officer said. “These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. What a crock.” … The fight over the Army panel’s testimony is the latest example of a deepening feud in the military community over how to respond to shrinking budget numbers. At issue is the military’s strategic future: Facing cuts, will the Army opt to modernize its weapons’ arsenal, or defer modernization in favor of increased numbers of soldiers? On April 5, the Army’s top brass made its choice clear: It wants to do both, and Russia’s the reason.   More

 

POLICING THE DYSTOPIA

With all this techno-triumphalism permeating our digitally saturated world, it’s hardly surprising that law enforcement would look to technology -- “smart policing,” anyone? -- to help reestablish public trust after the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the long list of other unarmed black men killed by cops in Anytown, USA. The idea that technology has a decisive role to play in improving policing was, in fact, a central plank of President Obama’s policing reform task force… Civil libertarians and civil rights activists, however, are less than impressed with what’s being hailed as breakthrough police technology. We tend to view it instead as a set of potential new ways for the police to continue a long history of profiling and pre-convicting poor and minority youth. We also question whether the technology even performs as advertised. As we see it, the old saying “garbage in, garbage out” is likely to best describe how the new software will operate, or as the RAND Corporation puts it, “predictions are only as good as the underlying data used to make them.” … With little public debate, often in almost total secrecy, increasing numbers of police departments are wielding technology to empower themselves rather than the communities they protect and serve.    More

 

Watch: new 5-minute short exposes the harsh reality of America’s bail system

In today's overcrowded penal system, 60 percent of America's incarcerated citizens are being held in pre-trial detention, or "limbo." This is either because they've been denied bail or because they're among the one in 10 defendants who are unable to post bail at the time of their arraignment. The vast majority fall into the latter category. Those who oppose the system of bail in America argue that it leads to poor citizens who can't pay bail being further exploited by bail-bond agents, who agree to pay the full amount in cash, usually for a percentage fee. Currently, a San Francisco lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of the bail system.   More

 

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

 

For Obama, an Unexpected Legacy of Two Full Terms at War

Publicly, Mr. Obama acknowledged early on the contradiction between his campaign message and the realities of governing. When he accepted the Nobel in December 2009, he declared that humanity needed to reconcile “two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.” … More so than Mr. Bush or President Bill Clinton, Mr. Obama has fought a multifront war against militants. Officials at the Pentagon referred to the situation as “the new normal.” But for those who worked in the Obama administration, it made for an unrelenting experience… It is not clear that Mr. Obama’s successor will take the same approach. The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has been more receptive to conventional military engagements than Mr. Obama. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, has pledged to bomb the Islamic State into oblivion, though he has sent contradictory messages about his willingness to dispatch American ground troops into foreign conflicts.   More

 

What’s the difference between Democratic/Liberal skepticism over the Iraq War and comparative credulity about Middle East interventions now?  Apparently, a Democrat in the White House. . .

HIROSHIMA AND HISTORY

The nearly impossible will soon take place. On May 27, President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima.  “This (visit) is something that we think is important to do,” National Security Adviser Susan Rice explained on CNN the other day. “This is about the future, and about what we… can build together in terms of non-proliferation and a safer world for all of us.”  It is, and it is about much more. It is also about the American bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. That’s why it’s such a big deal.  Put bluntly: three score and eleven years ago the United States dropped a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima. The president will acknowledge this history. He will pay respect to the dead and perhaps meet with survivors and listen to their stories of pain and hope.   More

 

Obama Is All Talk, No Action On Nukes

Of a population of 360,000 residents of Hiroshima — largely noncombatant women, children and elderly — most became victims of the atomic bombing. Many were killed immediately; some, over time. Nearly 71 years later, people are still dying from the delayed effects of the bomb, called Little Boy, considered crude by today’s standards for mass destruction… Of course we appreciate the courage it takes to come to Hiroshima, especially given the current political climate in the United States.  But still we are frustrated by Obama’s eloquent propensity to say one thing and do another…  Why then has the U.S. government, under the Obama administration, pledged $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize its nuclear arsenal? Exactly where is the moral responsibility and leadership in that? …If the President is serious about disarmament, he should have sent a delegation to the UN in Geneva, where, this month, representatives from nearly 100 countries discussed the prospects for a nuclear ban treaty… He may be courageous to visit Hiroshima, but the President’s symbolic and rhetorical courage must be backed up by action for disarmament.   More

 

There is still time for President Barack Obama  to reduce the danger of nuclear weapons, as he promised in Prague in 2009. President Obama has agreed to go to Hiroshima.  We hope he will meet there with some of the Hibakusha, survivors of the U.S. A-bomb attack which began the atomic age.

Please sign their petition to rid our world of nuclear terror.

 

JUAN COLE: Why Is Washington Supporting Fundamentalist Jihadis in Syria?

What’s left of the previous Free Syrian Army in the region is an alphabet soup of fundamentalists, some more moderate Muslim Brotherhood elements, others armed with a blueprint for a puritanical Salafi regime in which there is no room for secularists or religious minorities, or for democracy… The Army of Islam has had an alliance with the Freemen of the Levant (Ahrar al-Sham), a Salafi jihadi group powerful in the north of the country. The Freemen of Syria in turn have an alliance with Al Qaeda… Washington has to stop arming these groups if there is ever to be peace in Syria, and it needs to pressure Saudi Arabia to cease trying to push Syria to the far right. The weaponry sent in by Saudi Arabia on Washington’s behalf in any case often makes its way to Al Qaeda or ISIS. The Army of Islam shouldn’t be the lead negotiator in Geneva! The leftist Kurds need to be brought into the negotiations if the northeast is to remain part of Syria, and their voice on the opposition side is important to offset the powerful megaphone of the minority Salafis.  More

 

90 SECONDS OF FAME: One of the things I did in Syria. . .

(Short remarks at the Damascus restaurant “Gulnar” on April 13, during our recent visit . . . and the response. CLICK TO WATCH)

 

 

Confused?  Read this 2012 memo to Hillary Clinton, August 2012:

WikiLeaks: State Dept. on Syria Strategy and Israel

It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests… Arming the Syrian rebels and using western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high payoff approach. As long as Washington's political leaders stay firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, as they did in both Kosovo and Libya, the costs to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes.   Much More

 

Israeli General: “ASSAD MUST GO”

Beside the moral argument, strategic concerns also indicate that the removal of the Assad regime would be in Israel's interest. The radical axis led by Tehran, and which goes through Assad to Hezbollah, is the most tangible threat to our safety.  There are those who would say that the threat of ISIS is just as strong, and that we need to start there. While ISIS is not to be ignored, our strategic priority must be handling the Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut axis first. This is because the international community has stood up and dedicated itself to handling ISIS, and they've had some success in stopping its progress… Israel must develop a multi-faceted strategy on this matter. A basic condition for this is the creation of a local alliance, even an unofficial one, with Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt. In addition, a partnership with the United States on this issue is needed. Perhaps even a quiet understanding with Russia, which, unlike Iran, doesn't see Assad as a necessary component to a future arrangement in Syria. The Sunni nations of the Middle East have shared interests with Israel as far as combating the radical axis is concerned.   More

 

Congress rolls out red carpet in Washington for “jilted” Gulf Cooperation Council Autocracies

Congress is rolling out the red carpet for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as the six-nation coalition prepares to open shop in Washington.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote May 19 on a bipartisan bill extending diplomatic courtesies to the officials and staff of a potential GCC office. The legislation was requested by the Barack Obama administration, which endorsed the idea during the president's fence-mending visit to Riyadh last month… The effort comes at a time of significant strain between the United States and the Gulf countries following the nuclear deal with Iran and Obama's hands-off approach in Syria. Those tensions erupted into the open in the president's much-discussed interview with The Atlantic magazine in which Obama accused European and Gulf countries of being "free riders" counting on the United States to do all the heavy lifting in the region.   More

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

No, Yemen’s Houthis actually aren’t Iranian puppets

Tehran’s support for the Houthis is limited, and its influence in Yemen is marginal. It is simply inaccurate to claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies.  Instead, the war in Yemen is driven by local grievances and competition for power among Yemeni actors. The Houthis and Saleh want to overturn the political order that emerged after the uprisings of 2011: Saleh wants to return to power, having lost the presidency in the wake of popular protests, while the Houthis want a greater say in national affairs. In other words, the Houthis want in, Saleh wants back in, and the Hadi bloc wants to keep them both out… The irony, of course, is that one of Saudi Arabia’s stated objectives for intervening in Yemen in March 2015 was to roll back a mostly fictitious Iranian influence. The intervention, however, is having the opposite effect: The Houthis are a small non-state actor attacked by a regional power with deep pockets and advanced weaponry. It is then only rational for the Houthis to seek assistance, albeit only small amounts, from the only external power willing and able to support them — Iran.   More