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

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

Petition: SUPPORT AND IMPROVE "OUR REVOLUTION"

At the August 24th event, despite linking the new project to a very broad heritage of feminist, civil rights, ecological, and labor activism, one particular focus was notably absent: International relations and antiwar activism and policy, including such matters as intervention, bases abroad, drones, nuclear danger, disarmament, the military budget, adherence to international law, and more. We believe "Our Revolution" should address these immense violations of human well being as well as their connections to all the other topics already addressed…  We sincerely hope such a discussion will lead to steps that properly include matters of war and military spending, begin to seek democratic and participatory organizational structure, and include support for worthy third party and independent candidates.

Petition here.

 

 

Slavery and the national anthem: The surprising history behind Colin Kaepernick's protest

"I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world."

That's not Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback whose refusal to stand during the national anthem has invited criticism from all corners of the sports world.   That's Jackie Robinson, beloved baseball pioneer and civil rights activist, writing in his 1972  autobiography, "I Never Had It Made."  …It's hard not to notice their words are almost perfectly aligned. But it shouldn't be a surprise when you consider some historical context, namely, that the anthem actually contains a reference to slavery and Kaepernick is far from the first athlete to question its scope…  The American ritual of the national anthem has always been a crucible for patriotism and protest. It presents a particularly fraught dynamic for sports stars, since sports events are often so closely tied with the rhetoric of American pride. When a highly visible opinion comes up against a highly visible symbol, the result is always incendiary.    More

Mother of three survives car crash — only to be gunned down by the other driver

Deborah Pearl was driving to work Saturday morning through the local streets of Solon, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb so serene that Money magazine last year named it one of the top 10 places to live in the United States. It was just after 7 a.m. when the 53-year-old mother of three cruised through an intersection and a man in a sport-utility vehicle ran a red light, slamming into the driver’s side of Pearl’s Ford Taurus, police reports would later say… Both drivers survived; somehow, the man in the SUV was able to walk out of his now-overturned vehicle.

And that is where the tragedy begins…  Rifle in hand, the driver of the SUV walked toward Pearl and — as she held her hands up — shot her several times, the woman told the news site… The driver of the SUV, 29-year-old Matthew Ryan Desha, was taken into custody. Police said they found a Stag Arms AR-15 rifle in his possession.  A military spokeswoman confirmed to The Washington Post that Desha served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008, and was deployed to Iraq twice during that time.   More

 

A Turning Point for the Charter School Movement

A political battle is being waged over charter schools in Massachusetts right now, and it's a microcosm of the state of the charter debate across the country. In the lead-up to a November ballot measure in which voters will decide whether or not to lift the state's cap on charter schools, known as Question 2, Democrats passed a resolution this month opposing charter school expansion. The resolution states that the pro-charter campaign is "funded and governed by hidden money provided by Wall Street executives and hedge fund managers."  … However, public sentiment has actually been turning steadily against charter schools, and not only within the Democratic party. The NAACP recently called for a moratorium on charters, as did the Movement for Black Lives. Over the past year and a half, The New York Times published a series of scathing reports on the high-profile New York City charter chain Success Academy, including a teacher caught on tape screaming at a young student for a math mistake, a principal with a list of difficult students titled "Got to Go," and students peeing their pants out of fear.   More

 

It Takes a Ruling-Class Village to Staff the White House

The revolving door between top corporate/financial and government positions and the promise of heightened remuneration in the “private” sector (after one does Big Business’ bidding while “serving” in the “public” one) is a very big and often underestimated part of this overall system of class rule. Also unduly neglected is the role that elite neoliberal and corporate-financial-networked policy planning bodies play in staffing, socializing, solidifying and doctrinally schooling top U.S. executive branch personnel…  What about Clinton’s widely advertised, Bernie Sanders-influenced “shift to the left” during the recent primary campaign? A report published last year in the widely read insider Washington journal Politico was titled “Hillary’s Wall Street Backers: ‘We Get It.’ ” As Politico explained, “Populist rhetoric, many say, is good politics—but doesn’t portend an assault on the rich. … It’s ‘just politics,’ said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street.”   More

 

The Great Mexican Wall Deception

Twenty-one years before Trump’s wall-building promise (and seven years before the 9/11 attacks), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to replace the chain link fence that separated Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico from Nogales, Arizona, in the United States with a wall built of rusty landing mats from the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. Although there had been various half-hearted attempts at building border walls throughout the twentieth century, this was the first true effort to build a barrier of what might now be called Trumpian magnitude… With a price tag of, on average, $4 million a mile, these border walls, barriers, and fences have proven to be one of the costliest border infrastructure projects undertaken by the United States. For private border contractors, on the other hand, it’s the gift that just keeps on giving. In 2011, for example, the DHS granted Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, one of our “warrior corporations,” a $24.4 million upkeep contract.   More

 

US Arms Makers Invest in a New Cold War

The campaign to portray Russia as a menace, led by contractor-funded pundits and analysts, began soon after the Cold War ended. In 1996, Lockheed executive Bruce Jackson founded the U.S. Committee on NATO, whose motto was “Strengthen America, Secure Europe. Defend Values. Expand NATO.” … The lobbying worked. In 1999, against Russian opposition, NATO absorbed the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. In 2004, it added Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Albania and Croatia joined next in 2009. Most provocatively, in 2008 NATO invited Ukraine to join the Western alliance, setting the stage for the dangerous conflict between NATO and Russia over that country today.  The fortunes of American arms makers soared. “By 2014, the twelve new [NATO] members had purchased close to $17 billion worth of American weapons,” according to Andrew Cockburn, “while . . . Romania celebrated the arrival of Eastern Europe’s first $134 million Lockheed Martin Aegis Ashore missile-defense system.”   More

 

White Billionaire Secretly Funds Surveillance Program Aimed at Baltimore's Mostly Black Population

Over the past few years, billionaires have unilaterally shut down a popular newsite, pushed common core on the Department of Education and steered candidates to a hardline position on Israel. Now one Texas-based billionaire (who began amassing his fortune at Enron) has singlehandedly spearheaded a massive spying program—secret until now—in a city 1500 miles away from where he lives. John Arnold used his foundation to funnel $120,000 for an aerial surveillance program into a police charity, the Baltimore Community Foundation, which covered the costs for the department. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, which broke the story earlier this week, the program was not revealed to Baltimore citizens, and because it was funded by monies outside the normal channels of oversight, it did not need typical approval from elected city officials. The surveillance program, implemented by Persistent Surveillance System’s Ross McNutt, involved a near-total visual surveillance of the population using a combination of on-the-ground cameras and cameras attached to a permanently rolling fleet of Cessna planes.  More

 

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

 

ANTI-SYRIAN PROPAGANDA WAR, Chapter XXXII. . .

Amnesty’s biggest problem is the way in which the data was sourced. The data comes from four impressively named sources: the Syrian Center for Statistics and Research, the Damascus Center for Human Rights , the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), and the Violations Documentation Center.  At least two of these organisations also receive Soros funding: SNHR and Damascus Center for Human Rights are both members of the International Coalition for the Right to Protect, which is partially funded by George Soros and the Open Society Institute via the International Crisis Group.  A look at their websites reveals that all four of Amnesty’s sources for this new report are openly committed to the Syrian ‘revolution’…  In order to ensure the right results Amnesty International has chosen to use organisations which are totally biased against the Syrian government and its forces and totally supportive of the West’s ‘rebels’, who are sectarian by creed and barbaric in culture.  Source    More background here.

 

In coverage of Syrian war, residents of government-held west Aleppo forgotten

When Omran Daqneesh’s picture was taken after what was said to be a pro-government airstrike on a rebel-held neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, it instantly became an icon of Syria’s cruel civil war…  Yet for many residents of the western, government-held part of Aleppo, Omran’s image promotes a one-sided narrative about the conflict. They see it as yet another salvo in a media war that they are losing, their suffering all but forgotten in the eyes of the world.   “The policy of these western countries is to destroy the Syrian government, or the ‘regime’ as they call it, so they don’t mention what happens in government territory… because they don’t want their people to know the truth of what is happening in the country,” said Ayman Oweilah, a 30-year old engineer student living Aleppo…  While aid groups estimate anywhere from 175,000 to 300,000 people still live in eastern rebel-held Aleppo, it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of figures from rebel territory. For example, Darayya, another besieged rebel-held city, was said to have more than 8,000 occupants. But last week, when government forces evacuated the entire town, they found fewer than 2,000 people still residing there.  More

 

Turkey Invades Syria, America Spins The Bottle

So within the space of a few days, the United States has, first, commanded the government of Syria to keep its air force away from part of its own sovereign territory, Hasakah, occupied by American soldiers and their Kurdish “partners”; it then, with applause from other NATO countries, provided air support for a Turkish invasion of Syria and seizure of the Syrian town of Jarablus from those “partners.” These are unambiguous acts of war, and Orwellian acts of doublethink aggression…  If the Turks wanted to close the Syrian border, across which they’ve been trafficking ISIS soldiers, arms, and oil for years, they could just close it, on their side. No need to invade Syria. In fact, ISIS was informed of the attack, and left Jarablus before the brave Turks and their Syrian rebel partners arrived. The Washington Post said: “The rebels encountered almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who fled ahead of the advancing force.”  … ISIS forces turned the city over to the Turkey-supported irregulars and calmly withdrew, many traveling into Turkey. Several reports said that in crossing into Turkey, ISIS cadre donned the uniform of the Syrian Free Army.”  … So this is not about the war on ISIS, although they’ll be an occasional target. It’s about the war on Syria—and for Turkey, the war on the Kurds above all.   More

 

The US is pissing off everyone in northern Syria

So it must have come as a shock to the Kurds when, just a few weeks after they fought a bloody battle to evict IS from the town of Manbij at America's request, Biden showed up in Turkey and said the Kurds would need to withdraw from the town in order to accommodate the Turks, says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.  "Of course the Kurds feel betrayed, and they were betrayed," he said. "I'm sure the US Special Forces who worked with the Kurds over the past two months are feeling very embarrassed, because they feel like they lied through their teeth as they gave encouragement to the Kurds to do the heavy lifting."  The question now, Landis says, is whether this will affect future US plans to use the Kurds as the tip of its anti-Islamic State spear, especially in the battle to take the group's de facto capital, Raqqa. The new US general in charge of the US war against IS has said the US and its allies intend to take Raqqa by next August — and the US is depending on its Kurdish allies to comprise the main ground fighting force in the effort.   More

 

The real US Syria scandal: Supporting sectarian war

The main criticism of US policy in Syria has long been that President Barack Obama should have used US military force or more aggressive arms aid to strengthen the armed opposition to Assad. The easy answer is that the whole idea that there was a viable non-extremist force to be strengthened is a myth – albeit one that certain political figures in London and Washington refuse to give up.  But the question that should have been debated is why the Obama administration acquiesced to its allies funding and supplying a group of unsavoury sectarian armed groups to overthrow the Assad regime. That US acquiescence is largely responsible for a horrible bloodletting that has now killed as many as 400,000 Syrians. Worse yet, there is still no way to end the war without the serious threat of sectarian retribution against the losers…  Could senior Obama administration officials have been unaware that a war to overthrow Assad would inevitably become an enormous sectarian bloodbath? By August 2012 a US Defense Intelligence Agency report intelligence warned that “events are taking a clear sectarian direction,” and that the “the “Salafist[s], Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]” were “the major forces driving the insurgency”. Furthermore, the Obama administration already knew by then that the external Sunni sponsors of the war against Assad were channeling their money and arms to the most sectarian groups in the field.  But the administration did nothing to pressure its allies to stop it. In fact, it actually wove its own Syria policy around the externally fueled war by overwhelmingly sectarian forces. And no one in the US political-media elite raised the issue.

 

Al Qaeda Is Gaining Strength in Syria

Al Qaeda’s presence and influence in Syria was never confined to its formal affiliate, the Nusra Front. It dispatched numerous senior leaders and strategists to oversee the creation of a vanguard for al Qaeda within the Syrian revolutionary movement after the start of the civil war in 2011... The Syrian war now involves U.S.-vetted and armed moderate groups, but also includes a significant component belonging to either Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the successor of the Nusra Front, or its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham. Both are now vital components of the largest opposition coalitions operating in Aleppo, Jaysh al-Fatah, and Fatah Halab… Ahrar al-Sham’s activity demonstrates that its strategy is joined at the hip with al Qaeda, and represents a local vanguard for the transnational jihadi group in Syria. Al Qaeda’s signature is apparent in Ahrar al-Sham’s campaign to transform the religious identity of Syrians… Ahrar al-Sham’s goal is to replace the Assad regime with a theocracy. This vision is a fundamental change from the initial demands of the Syrian opposition in 2011 for a democratic and pluralistic system. Syrian opposition groups nonetheless view Ahrar al-Sham as a “mainstream” actor, because of its major contributions to the war against the Assad regime.   More

 

State Dept. Offers $3Mln For ISIS Leader Trained in US

The US State Department has offered a $3 million reward for any information leading to the arrest of Gulmurod Khalimov, a former Tajik police commander who is currently one of the main leaders of the Daesh terrorist group.  While the press release labels him as a terrorist, it fails to mention that it was the US who actually trained him…  “He is now an ISIL member and recruiter. In May 2015, he announced in a 10-minute propaganda video that he fights for ISIL and has called publicly for violent acts against the United States, Russia, and Tajikistan,” the press release says. The document however does not mention that the person whom it designates as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist had undergone training on US soil. In the same very video where he is sitting against a backdrop of palm trees, brandishing a gun and surrounded by bearded, armed men, Khalimov reveals that he had spent years at US military training bases.   More

 

ACCEPTABLE LOSSES:

Aiding and abetting the Saudi slaughter in Yemen

Saudi Arabia unleashed a bombing campaign in March 2015, which has destroyed warehouses, factories, power plants, ports, hospitals, water tanks, gas stations, and bridges, along with miscellaneous targets ranging from donkey carts to wedding parties to archaeological monuments. Thousands of civilians — no one knows how many — have been killed or wounded. Along with the bombing, the Saudis have enforced a blockade, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, and medicine. A year and a half into the war, the health system has largely broken down, and much of the country is on the brink of starvation… This rain of destruction was made possible by the material and moral support of the United States, which supplied most of the bombers, bombs, and missiles required for the aerial onslaught…  The Obama Administration was already bent on expanding arms sales as part of its drive to boost exports, and now manna fell from heaven. Shocked by their poor performance against the Houthi guerrillas, the Saudis embarked on a massive weapons-buying spree.  At the top of their shopping list were eighty-four specially modified Boeing F-15 jets, along with around 170 helicopters. They also purchased a huge quantity of bombs and missiles — notably, 1,300 cluster bombs sold by the Textron Corporation at a cost of $641 million. Fortunately for Textron, neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia had endorsed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a 2008 treaty already signed by more than one hundred nations, which banned these weapons on the grounds that they caused “unacceptable harm” to civilians.   More

 

64 U.S. Lawmakers Seek Delay of Billion-Dollar Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia

In a sign that frustration is growing in the U.S. Congress over Saudi Arabia, a bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers has signed a letter seeking to delay the Obama administration’s planned sale of $1.15 billion in arms and military equipment to Riyadh. The letter, addressed to President Barack Obama, cites the growing number of civilian casualties in Yemen caused by the Saudi-led military coalition and the Obama administration’s failure to rein in its Arab ally…  The proposed sale, approved by the State Department on Aug. 9, includes up to 153 tanks, ammunition, hundreds of machine guns, and sundry other military equipment. Congress has 30 days to block the sale, but the lawmakers appear irritated that notification of the sale came in the middle of their summer recess.  More

 

A copy of the letter with the members’ signatures can be found here. All the House members from Massachusetts except Kennedy and Moulton signed the letter.

 

Urge Senator Warren and Senator Markey to support a resolution of disapproval against the Saudi arms deal by signing the petition at MoveOn.

 

Last Remaining U.S. Maker of Cluster Bombs Stops Production

The last remaining United States manufacturer of cluster bombs is ending production of the controversial weapon, citing regulatory scrutiny and reduced orders for the internationally banned munition. The decision by Rhode Island-based Textron Systems follows a White House order last May to block the transfer of a Textron shipment of CBU-105 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, a move first reported by Foreign Policy.

The White House had come under intense pressure by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International after those groups documented instances in which Saudi-led forces used CBU-105 munitions in multiple locations around Yemen, including Al-Amar, Sanhan, Amran and the Al-Hayma port… Following media coverage of the White House’s block, peace activists picketed outside the Wilmington, Massachusetts, offices of Textron Systems, calling for an end to the production of cluster bombs.   More

 

Clinton, the Podesta Group and the Saudi Regime:

A Fatal Ménage à Trois

The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000 a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents, uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn’t allow women to drive, and bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.  The Podesta Group’s March 2016 filing, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, shows that Tony Podesta himself oversees the Saudi account. At the same time, Tony Podesta is also a top campaign contributor and bundler for Hillary Clinton. So while one brother runs the campaign, the other brother funds it with earnings that come, in part, from the Saudis… The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” Since then, Tony Podesta’s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC…  The Podesta-Clinton-Saudi connection should be seen in light of the recent media exposes revealing the tawdry pay-to-play nature of the Clinton Foundation. Top on the list of foreign donors to the foundation is Saudi Arabia, which contributed between $10 million and $25 million.  More

 

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE . . . and the U.S.

 

Israel Quietly Legalizes Pirate Outposts in the West Bank

Mr. Netanyahu’s government in 2011 had already quietly introduced what it called a new “combined policy.” The idea was that Israel would remove settlement structures built on privately owned Palestinian land, but, in areas that Israel has declared as state land, would instead “regulate the planning status” — or, in other words, legalize construction after the fact… Hagit Ofran, the director of Peace Now’s settlement watch program, said the government’s message was “build and we will sort it out retroactively.”  The Defense Ministry and the Civil Administration — the arm of the Israeli military that deals with civilian affairs in the West Bank — declined to discuss the outposts or provide any data about their status.   More

 

In the Jewish state, most prisoners are Arabs

Figures obtained by Local Call reveal that the number of Arab prisoners is more than twice the number of Jewish ones, even though they make up only 20 percent of the general population…  A little over a quarter of Israel’s inmate population are Jewish, Local Call has learned.

In response to a freedom of information query that I submitted in conjunction with Physicians for Human Rights, the Israel Prisons Service (IPS) released the following figures: Out of a total of 20,568 inmates, 5,659 are Jewish; more than twice that number – 12,397 – are Arab; and 2,512 are classified as “other” – including asylum seekers held in detention camps, as well as a handful of non-Israelis who are neither Jewish nor Arab.  The proportion of Arab inmates among Israeli citizen (including residents of the West Bank and Gaza) stands at 43 percent – more than double their proportion in the general population.  Among juvenile delinquents the gaps are even more staggering:. Out of a total of 281 minors held by IPS, only 100 are Jewish, and the others are Arabs (160) and “others” (21). If we take into account the number of Palestinian minors in Israeli custody (511, according to B’Tselem), the proportion of Jewish inmates stands at a mere 13 percent.   More

 

BAKER SIGNS ONTO ANTI-BOYCOTT EFFORT

Without any announcement, Governor Charlie Baker has officially joined with the Israel lobby that is campaigning here and around the country to block peace activists and some major church groups from putting economic pressure on Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians… Baker’s signature on the letter was no doubt heartening to backers of state legislation that would prohibit the state from contracting with any corporation that boycotted Israel. Eleven states have so far passed laws implementing the anti-boycott policy.

But it also raises the question of whether he would be within ethical bounds to accept a free trip for his planned junket to Israel if it were funded by Israeli government sources or other groups lobbying Beacon Hill get to anti-boycott legislation to his desk.   More

 

TELL CONGRESS: Oppose 'Combating BDS Act of 2016'

As of yesterday, 29 Senators and 90 Representatives had supported this outlandish legislation. Click here to see if your Members of Congress have cosponsored this bill.  This bill would “authorize” state and local governments to unconstitutionally penalize entities such as nonprofit organizations and corporations for supporting the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).  The Supreme Court has long held that boycotts and related activities to bring about political, social, and economic change are political speech, occupying “the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.” As the Harvard Law Review recently concluded, “Supreme Court precedents make clear that attempts to disqualify contractors for support of BDS are foreclosed by the First Amendment.”  Even though this bill might be unconstitutional, we still need to organize to oppose it. This legislation is designed to further encourage a country-wide effort by the Israel lobby to try to suppress BDS activism at the state and local level.  Check out the RightToBoycott website we recently launched with member groups Palestine Legal and Jewish Voice for Peace. Find out if anti-BDS legislation has been introduced in your state and get the legal and organizing resources you need to mobilize to challenge it.  Contact your Member of Congress today!

There are 89 co-sponsors in the House – so far including NONE from Mass;  28 co-sponsors in the Senate, including Sen. Markey, but not Sen. Warren.

 

Carrot and stick carve-up will not work for Israel

Launched this month, as much of the world was on holiday, Avigdor Lieberman’s plan for the Palestinians – retooling Israel’s occupation – received less attention than it should. Defence minister since May, Mr Lieberman has been itching to accelerate Israel’s annexation by stealth of the West Bank… And finally, his defence ministry will produce a map of the West Bank marking in green and red the areas where, respectively, “good” and “bad” Palestinians live. Collective punishment will be stepped up in towns and villages in red areas, from which Palestinian attacks have been launched. Presumably night raids and house demolitions will increase, while closures will further curtail freedom of movement.    More