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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
With all the manufactured hyperventilating over alleged “Russian interference” in our elections, Israel, the country that has actually intervened in our politics on a regular basis remains unmentioned in our media.
Israel interferes in our politics all the time, and it’s never a scandal
Israel tried to interfere in that 2012 election, as Chris Matthews sensibly reminded his audience recently: Benjamin Netanyahu tried to help Mitt Romney beat Obama. Sheldon Adelson held a fundraiser in Jerusalem for Romney. Netanyahu didn’t stop there. After Romney lost, Netanyahu came to Congress to tell the Congress to reject President Obama’s nuclear deal. That was an unprecedented interference of a foreign leader in our policy-making, enabled by the Israel lobby; but there were never any investigations about that. Subsequently Chuck Schumer said he was torn between a Jewish interest and the American interest, before voting against the president, and he paid no political/reputational price for it; while President Obama said that it would be an “abrogation” of his constitutional duty if he considered Israel’s interest ahead of the U.S.; for which Obama was called an anti-semite… The Israeli interference in our politics is the conspiracy in plain sight that no one in the media talks about because they’re too implicated themselves. More
A DEVIL WE KNOW
Donald Trump’s victory has become an occasion for soul-searching and fierce debate among liberals, leftists, and their allies. But lost in the mix of all the recriminations and arguments is a clear-eyed attempt to imagine what life for Americans will actually look like under Trump—and then, what we want it to be after he is out of office. If we are to look beyond the next four years, we must create a movement that is not simply anti-Trump, but that presents left politics as a compelling alternative. In preparing to fight the anti-labor, anti-immigrant, racist, and misogynist policies of a Trump administration, history can help us understand how activists and radicals in previous eras of social turmoil fought for a better future… Today, as terrifying as it is to confront, the left needs to consider that white nationalism, misogyny, and xenophobia always lurks underneath the veneer of modern politics. Donald Trump has simply revealed to us the nation that, in more pessimistic moments, many of us knew existed. But rather than succumb to the despair of “this is not the America I know,” we must instead say, “I will fight for the America I want.” More
Resisting Trump: The Great American Awakening
“As the nightmare reality of Donald Trump sinks in, we need to put our resistance in a larger perspective,” Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman wrote recently, describing Trump as “our imperial vulture come home to roost.” The context in which most Trumpnews is delivered is miniscule: more or less beginning and ending with the man himself — his campaign, his businesses, his appointees, his ego, his endless scandals (“what did he know and when did he know it?”) — which maintains the news at the level of entertainment, and surrounds it with the fantasy context of a United States that used to be an open, fair and peace-loving democracy, respectful of all humanity. In other words, Trump is the problem, and if he goes away, we can get back to what we used to be… But the time has come to face the totality of who we are and reach for real change. I believe this is what we are seeing in the streets right now. Americans — indeed, people across the planet — are ceasing to be spectators in the creation of the future. The protests we’re witnessing aren’t so much anti-Trump as pro-humanity and pro-Planet Earth. More
Flynn’s Departure is a Win for Peace
Flynn was dangerous not because he was a political flake but because he combined his troubling worldview with serious military credentials that earned him Trump’s respect. He wrote what is practically a guide book on fighting a global religious war, titled The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies. Flynn has also tweeted that “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL” (his emphasis) and has said that “Islam is a political ideology” and “a cancer” that “hides behind being a religion.” And he was a purveyor of the ridiculous notion that “Shariah law” is spreading in the United States… If you had to bet where Flynn might have helped take Trump into war, your best bet would be Iran. Flynn has argued that Iran is the “linchpin” in the war against “radical Islam.” In a recent White House press briefing, heasserted that Iran’s ballistic missile test violated the Iran nuclear agreement, which it did not. Flynn went on to say, “as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” hinting that another missile test from Iran could lead the United States to take military action. More
America's spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn. That is deeply worrying.
The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down. The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function… Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously. More
STEPHEN WALT: Five Ways Donald Trump Is Wrong About Islam
Donald Trump took up so bandwidth during the 2016 election cycle that we all paid insufficient attention to the people lurking within his campaign operation who have now moved into key policymaking positions… What unites these people — and seems to drive Bannon in particular — is a belief that the United States, and, indeed, the entire Judeo-Christian West, is under siege from an insidious and powerful foe: “radical Islam.” See this article here, or this one. For the most extreme of them (that is, Gaffney), there’s no real distinction between jihadi terrorists and the entire Muslim religion. In this view, a hardened Islamic State killer is no different from that nice Muslim family who lives downstairs, next door, or across the street… There’s only one thing wrong with this view as a template for U.S. foreign policy: It’s completely at odds with reality. Specifically, it ignores the true balance of power, overlooks the deep divisions within Islam itself, exaggerates the danger of terrorism and relies on assorted myths Islamophobes have been ceaselessly spouting for decades. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
A VERY PERSONAL CALL FOR PEACE IN SYRIA
I’m talking to Tima Kurdi [Alan Kurdi’s aunt] around the same time as the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, releases a new report on the battle for Aleppo. The Atlantic Council has long called for regime change in Syria. This report comes out just when new ceasefires have been negotiated and when parts of the armed rebels have decided to hold talks with the Syrian government. The only real fighting groups amongst the rebels that remain of consequence are ISIS and the al-Qaeda portmanteau group Tahrir al-Sham, as I reported a few weeks ago. None of this mattered to the Atlantic Council. The Council calls for three strategies to undercut the peace initiatives afoot in Syria. First, to provide ‘robust support for local allies on the ground’, namely the elusive ‘moderate opposition.’ As Tima Kurdi said to me, ‘there are no moderate rebels in Syria.’ Those days are long gone. Second, for ‘direct kinetic action’ which is military jargon for armed action by the United States. Third, for the creation of safe zones within Syria, which is precisely what a ceasefire initiative and peace process would create. Point one and two are anathema to Tima Kurdi, who urges support for the peace process to ‘stop the war in Syria.’ More
Alan Kurdi lies dead on a beach inTurkey
SIGN PETITION SUPPORTING
'Stop Arming Terrorists Act' H.R. 608
United for Peace and Justice has joined with the U.S. Peace Council, Veterans for Peace and several other national peace organizations to initiate a public campaign in support of Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-Hawaii) STOP ARMING TERRORISTS ACT (H.R. 608), which she originally introduced to the Congress on December 8, 2016.
H.R. 608 is a bipartisan bill, which has been co-sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vermont), Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-North Carolina), and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida).
The Stop Arming Terrorists Act (H.R.6504) has only 5 co-sponsors, none from Massachusetts
PATRICK COCKBURN: 'Donald Trump will spark a war with Iran'
Given the high decibel level of the Trump administrations threats and warnings, it is impossible to distinguish bellicose rhetoric from real operational planning. A confrontation with Iran will probably not come soon; but in a year or two, when previous policies conceived under Obama have run their course, Trump may well feel that he has to show how much tougher and more effective he is than his predecessor, whom he has denounced as weak and incompetent. This administration is so heavily loaded with crackpots, fanatics and amateurs, that it would be optimistic to imagine that they will pass safely through the political swamplands of the Middle East without detonating a crisis with which they cannot cope. More
Yemen: In the Shadow of Death -- George Capaccio
Some critics are calling the January 30 raid in Yemen a botched affair. Insufficient or incorrect intelligence and poor planning, they argue, are responsible for the chaos that erupted when the Navy Seals launched their raid and ended up causing excessive “collateral damage.” Sean Spicer, Trump’s adversarial press secretary, lashed out at anyone — including Arizona Senator John McCain — who calls the raid a failure. In Spicer’s view, such malcontents and naysayers owe an apology to Ryan Owens, the soldier who was killed in the raid: “It's absolutely a success, and I think anyone that would suggest [the raid is] not a success does a disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens." What about the life of Nawar al-Awlaki and the lives of the other women and children whom the soldiers ended up killing? Don’t they deserve an apology? Better than an apology, don’t their families deserve some form of compensation for the loss of their loved ones? More
Lessons and Propaganda From the Botched Raid on Yemen
The Trump administration’s first “kinetic” military action, last weekend’s raid on Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL as well as fifteen women and children, was an operational failure. Aggravating that failure has been the aggressive propaganda spin applied by the White House. According to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, the operation was a major success… Nearly everything went wrong in the Yemen raid. Surprise wasn’t achieved. US troops were killed and wounded. Far too many non-combatants (innocent civilians) were killed, including an eight-year-old girl. A $75 million Osprey malfunctioned and had to be destroyed. To hazard a guess, this raid probably cost the US in the neighborhood of $250 million while failing to achieve its main objective. Meanwhile, the enemy put up fierce resistance with weaponry, mainly small arms and explosives, that probably cost less than $100,000. In brief, the US raid on Yemen was prodigal in cost, profligate in resources, and unproductive in results. More
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