Syrian Ceasefire: A Signal that Russia is winning the War?

By Juan Cole | Feb. 27, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Whether or not the cessation of hostilities in Syria holds, it is a major turning point in the revolution and civil war that began in 2011. As of Saturday morning in Syria, the major fronts between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood factions were quiet.

There continued to be some fighting between the Syrian Arab Army of dictator Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaeda in the north of Latakia, and between government forces and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) southeast of Aleppo. Those two groups were excluded by Russia and Syria from the ceasefire, and they themselves denounced it, so fighting with them will continue. Likewise, the besieged towns of Madaya and Zabadani, where the regime has starved out civilians as well as militants, will continue to be attacked, according to Damascus, because a significant portion of their armed guerrillas are Syrian al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front).

Here are the implications of the cessation of hostilities, for the moment:

1. The regime in Damascus is no longer in danger of being overthrown for the foreseeable future. The 4 major means of besieging and getting rid of the al-Assad government were:

b. to take the province of Latakia, including the port, by moving west from militant-controlled Idlib province. But Latakia has been completely retaken by the regime except for some northern pockets, and it is al-Qaeda strongholds in Idlib that are in danger now.

c. To take all of Aleppo, the largest city, in the north, thus reducing the regime to holding only a southern rump city and isolating it in preparation for capture. But regime-held west Aleppo, cut off last October, has been rescued and supply lines for the most part restored. It is rebel-held east Aleppo that was in danger of falling before the ceasefire. Now, at most, the de facto division of the city will be prolonged. But there seems little chance of a rebel takeover of the whole enchilada.

d. For the rebels, both al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood, to move up from Deraa in the south to the capital and take it directly (this was the strategy Churchill tried at Gallipoli, of going straight for the Ottoman capital during WW I, via the shortest landing-point). But the regime has pushed the rebels south from the capital in recent weeks and on Friday took Deraa al-Balad 56 miles south of the capital.

All four pathways to a successful revolution have now been closed off. Unless things change radically on the battlefield, there is no longer any prospect any time soon of a rebel victory. The implications of this situation are that the regime has survived and the rebels are on the ropes. This configuration could change in the future, but for now, the insurgency is on the ropes.

Moreover, if the mainly Muslim Brotherhood remnants of the Free Syrian Army maintain the ceasefire with the regime, then they are freeing up Syrian Arab Army troops to fight al-Qaeda and Daesh. In essence, Putin has managed to divide the opposition into those willing to observe a cessation of hostilities and those who are not, or from whom Russia would not accept such an offer.

Only having to fight the Nusra Front/ al-Qaeda and Daesh gives the Syrian army and its allies an advantage. They don’t have to guard their rear positions as much, and can be more aggressive in targeting the al-Qaeda linked groups.

If the less radical Free Syria Army factions around Homs, Hama and in west Aleppo maintain the ceasefire, they are essentially entering into negotiations with the regime. From there, the step to participating in new elections is not a very large one. Russia has shown a credible interest in coopting them, and it might now be able to do so in some instances. This eventuality would make it actually not necessary for the SAA and Russia to defeat the less radical rebels, a real savings in military resources.

If the remaining fighting to be done in Syria is against al-Qaeda and Daesh, then Russia has a great diplomatic victory and is essentially on the same side as NATO. The West can hardly complain about Russia doing in those two organizations, even if the US has been de factor allying with the allies of al-Qaeda until now. The revived Syrian Arab Army and its Iranian, Iraqi and Hizbullah allies can certainly take Raqqa and polish off Daesh in Syria if they don’t have to worry about Free Syrian Army units attacking Homs or the outskirts of Damascus. If Daesh falls, Russia will get a lot of the credit for it in places like France, which Daesh attacked twice last year in horrible acts of terrorism.

The cessation of hostilities is fragile and could easily fall apart. But it was already more successful Saturday morning than was earlier thought likely. That it is happening at all freezes the board at a point where Russia and the regime hold most of the cards. It could be the beginning of the end of the war.

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Rubio’s 7 Fallacies on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Juan Cole | Feb. 26, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

In last night’s Republican debate co-sponsored by Telemundo, billionaire bigot Donald Trump, usually a resident of Mars, briefly came back to earth long enough to suggest he could broker a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians by being even-handed. It is not a matter, he said, of good guys and bad guys.

Trump appears momentarily to have forgotten that he thinks there is something very wrong with Muslims in general such that they should all be barred from the United States and their places of worship should be closed down until Trump can figure out what it is. Or perhaps he forgot that the majority of Palestinians is Muslims (worldwide, Christian Palestinians are probably 20% of those with this heritage, but the Christians have been absorbed by Lebanon and the West in a way that Muslim Palestinians have not). I’m not sure how he thinks he can do a deal with the president of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, if he won’t let him so much as come to Camp David because he thinks all Muslims are racially suspect.

Marco Rubio is known to be the favorite of corrupt casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who allegedly made his money bribing the Chinese communist party to let him take advantage of people with a casino in Macau. Adelson is a far-right Jewish exceptionalist and the chief backer of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. (Adelson illicitly dumps a free pro-Netanyahu newspaper on the poor Israelis, surely a violation of the WTO, in hopes of driving more even-handed newspapers out of business).

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, unlike repeated also-ran Rubio, had to drop out of the GOP race for lack of deep enough donor pockets. One of the reasons Christie is no longer in the race is because he inadvertently offended Adelson by referring to the Occupied West Bank and Gaza as Occupied by the Israelis, which they have been since 1967. Those territories have 4.5 million stateless Palestinians whose air, water and land is controlled by the Israeli army. But one of the propaganda ploys of the Zionist right wing is to go into high dudgeon if someone so much as speaks this simple truth publicly. The Israeli bully-boys of the Right have gone after everyone from the secretary-general of the United Nations to the US ambassador to Israel, and from President Obama to the foreign minister of Sweden, for daring to say the word Occupation out loud. (In the US, professors have been spied on, smeared as terrorists, blackballed, fired, bullied and even sent death threats by Likudniks for not toeing the imposed party line). It is as though they think they can sweep an epic set of war crimes under the rug by multiple and loud tantrums of passive aggression.

So, to please Adelson and other donors of his ilk, Rubio immediately jumped in to make a series of completely false and self-contradictory pronouncements on the Palestinians, about whom he knows nothing at all.

1. RUBIO: “Because — and I don’t know if Donald realizes this. I’m sure it’s not his intent perhaps. But the position you’ve taken is an anti-Israel position. And here’s why. Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of the sides is constantly acting in bad faith.”

That Adelson would tell Rubio to say that being even-handed on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is anti-Israeli is no surprise. And I guess that Robo Rubio would read his lines the way they were written by lobbyists is also no surprise.

It is, of course, the Israelis who have consistently acted in bad faith. Netanyahu even proudly boasted about this bad faith when he thought he wasn’t on camera:

“Netanyahu: I Deceived the US to Destroy Oslo Accords. English Subtitles”

Rubio 2. “The Palestinian Authority has walked away from multiple efforts to make peace, very generous offers from the Israels.”

Rubio should look at Jeffrey Rudolph’s “The Hamas Quiz” :

“Who stated the following on February 14, 2006? ‘Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.’”

– “Shlomo Ben-Ami: Israel’s Minister of Public Security in 1999, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000-2001, and Israel’s top negotiator at Camp David and Taba negotiations. (What Ben-Ami recognized was that Israel in fact offered the Palestinians an unviable Middle East Bantustan — several blocks of West Bank land with huge Jewish settlements in between.)

“Mainstream commentators continue to reproduce the baseless Israeli claim that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was very generous in the offer he made to the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000. The quote by Ben-Ami should be sufficient to end this harmful myth.”

Rubio: 3. “Instead, here’s what the Palestinians do. They teach their four- year-old children that killing Jews is a glorious thing.”

Here again from Professor Jeffrey’s Quiz:

“True or False: The Palestinian school curriculum incites hatred and anti-Semitism.

-False. Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, after a detailed study on The Palestinian Curriculum, writes: “[T]he Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence, and anti-Semitism.”

Right-wing supporters of Israel, seeking reasons why Palestinians harbor resentment against Israel and Jews, often point to Palestinian textbooks that purportedly instill such hatred. Prof. Brown demonstrates that a better explanation is to be found in the harsh occupation administered by Israel. As Prof. Brown writes in his conclusion, “With the effects of conflict felt on a daily basis, what textbooks and teachers say is probably irrelevant in any case.”

Rubio: 4. “Here’s what Hamas does. They launch rockets and terrorist attacks again Israel on an ongoing basis.”

First of all, Israeli intelligence built Hamas up as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Israel agreed to let it run in the 2006 elections, which it won.

Second, here is what an Israeli newspaper wrote:

“Hamas maintains varying degrees of popularity due to Israel. Israel’s actions have shown “Palestinians that nonviolence and mutual recognition are futile….[H]amas’ greatest asset…is not rockets and tunnels. Hamas’ greatest asset is the Palestinian belief that Israel only understands the language of force….The people of Gaza will win [some] relief [after the 2014 ‘war’] not because Salam Fayyad painstakingly built up Palestinian institutions, not because Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly recognized Israel’s right to exist and not because Bassem Tamimi protested nonviolently in partnership with Israelis. Tragically, under this Israeli government, those efforts have brought Palestinians virtually no concessions at all. The people of Gaza will win some relief from the blockade – as they did when the last Gaza war ended [in 2012] – because Hamas launched rockets designed to kill.”

Further, of course, the little home-made rockets, more or less high school science projects, that Hamas shoots out into the Israeli desert very seldom do any significant damage, though there has been some, and some lives lost. That there have been thousands is no more pertinent to military history than that thousands of rockets are set off on Fourth of July in the US (most of them more powerful than anything Hamas has). The Palestinians shooting the rockets belong to families expelled from what is now Israel in 1948, many of them crowded into refugee camps, who lost their land, their homes, all their money, and were then locked out of their former homeland in the world’s largest open-air prison. Many could walk home in a couple of hours if allowed to. Some are from Sderot, now populated by Ethiopians and Moroccans from abroad who are living in Palestinians’ former homes.

In contrast, Israeli F-16s have murdered thousands of Palestinians from the sky in the past decade, including thousands of innocent women and children and elders.

Rubio: 5. The bottom line is, a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, given the current makeup of the Palestinians, is not possible.

That is because Israel has flooded hundreds of thousands of Israelis onto Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank, and, indeed, keeps announcing more such outright theft on a colonial scale.

In my piece, “Palestine overwhelmed by illegal American immigrants,” I wrote:

“It is strictly illegal for the occupying power to attempt to annex occupied territory or to transfer its citizens into militarily occupied territory. Mussolini’s Italy pulled that stunt with the parts of France he occupied during WW II. When you hear that someone has violated the Geneva Convention, that isn’t just an abstract matter. It means that someone is acting the way the dictators acted during the war, because it is that kind of lawless behavior the conventions were attempting to forestall from happening again.”

Rubio: 6. And so the next president of the United States needs to be someone like me who will stand firmly on the side of Israel. I’m not — I’m not going to sit here and say, “Oh, I’m not on either side.” I will be on a side.

Rubio is just admitting that he is not and cannot be an honest broker in any such negotiations. In this, he is saying openly what the actual policy of the United States has been since 1948.

Let’s quote his own words against him since he is admitting his bad faith: You can’t be an honest broker where one of the sides is acting in bad faith. In this case, both Washington and the Likud government are.

Rubio: 7. I will be on Israel’s side every single day because they are the only pro-American, free enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East.

You can’t be a democracy if you deny 4.5 million people the rights of citizenship or any significant say in how they are governed. The West Bank is ruled by the Israeli military on any issue that matters. Arbitrary imprisonment is routine. Torture has been credibly alleged. Live ammunition is deployed against protesters. Property is confiscated with no shred of legality. Neither the rule of law nor anything that could remotely be termed democracy exists under Israeli Occupation.

As for the Israeli squatter economy, it is heavily subsidized by the Israeli government (which is to say, it is subsidized by American tax dollars), and in some ways is the last bastion of Israeli socialism.

Since Rubio is so hot on free enterprise and on small government, maybe he would like to stop allowing Americans to take their donations to illegal Israeli squatting off their American taxes?

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Kerry warns of break up of Syria; but is that Realistic?

By Juan Cole | Feb. 25, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Amid ongoing talks in Geneva around a cessation of hostilities in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday night in a joint telephone call with other diplomats, “It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer.”

The ‘cessation of hostilities’ worked out by diplomats has little chance of succeeding on the ground. It excludes Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) and al-Qaeda, two of the major forces engaging in combat, and the remnants of the Free Syrian Army often have battlefield alliances of convenience with al-Qaeda. Those in besieged East Aleppo have allegedly begun cooperating with Daesh against the regime, a big change on the ground since earlier they had helped the US target Daesh.

Russia and the regime could only demonstrate their bona fides in this ceasefire by agreeing to dicker with the rebels in East Aleppo and by allowing humanitarian aid into that half of the city. If they make a full court press to take it (at which point they will have won the war for all intents and purposes), then the agreement will obviously fall apart.

It would be in Russia’s interest to dicker with the Free Syrian Army groups in Aleppo and to try to bring them into the elections now scheduled for April. While Russia might be able to bomb them into submission for the moment, likely a sullen and subdued population that had won its freedom from the sordid Syrian police state would go on mounting underground resistance into the future.

A fragile reconstituted state, similar to what has happened in Algeria, could be one outcome of such a situation. Another possible scenario would be Afghanistan, where the central government is just very weak in some provinces and constantly battling insurgents in a low-intensity conflict.

A break-up of Syria, however, on a South Sudan model, seems unlikely to me. What would be the territory involved in such a break-up?

In the far east, the Kurds now have most of Hasaka province, along with some local Arab allies. In the medium term, the Syrian Kurds need allies against Daesh and need to guard against a forceful Turkish intervention They know Turkey would not put up with an independent Syrian Kurdistan, and say they want a postwar federal system a la Canada. They sometimes cooperate with regime forces against Daesh. For all of Ankara’s fears about this northeast tip of Syria breaking off, I don’t think that’s what local actors actually have in mind.

The regime has reconquered northern and western Latakia. It has most of Hama and Homs, and certainly the big urban populations, though there are eastern pockets of resistance in smaller villages. It has most of Damascus province.

Freemen of Syria and Army of Islam Salafi jihadis north and west of Damascus have been pushed back.

In the far south and the far north, the regime still faces serious challenges. In the north, Idlib is in the hands of an al-Qaeda-led coalition.

East Aleppo is in the hands of a mix of Free Syrian Army factions, along with some al-Qaeda.

Raqqa and Deir al-Zur provinces in the east of the country are Daesh territory. Daesh won’t be allowed to keep them. Eventually the Iraqi government will take back Mosul, isolating the small city of Raqqa and cutting off any aid or money from Iraq. Already last weekend Sunni clansmen in Fallujah staged a rebellion against Daesh. Could Syrian Daesh lands fall to other Sunni factions? Maybe, but the best fighters among them are al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda won’t be allowed to take these towns from Daesh (or in some instances, back from Daesh). Russia and Iran can and will prevent this outcome, and nor would NATO or Baghdad or Erbil want it.

Suwayda, Deraa and the Golan Heights in the far south are in the hands of a mix of factions, including al-Qaeda.

What is likely to happen if things go on as they have been for the past two months is that the regime will take East Aleppo militarily. (As I said, I think that would be a mistake, not to mention horrible for its people, but that is where things are going).

If Aleppo falls to al-Assad’s forces, and he keeps control in Latakia, then Idlib becomes an isolated Army of Conquest enclave, cut off from eastern, western and southern supply routes and solely dependent on Turkey; and likely will also fall.

The southern opposition is in easy reach of the capital’s crack troops and would be unlikely to be able to hold out if Aleppo and Idlib fall.

If al-Qaeda and Daesh are defeated on the battleground and deprived of territory, it is true, they could devolve into terrorist organizations again. But that pathway does not lead to a break up of Syria.

In short, I think that the geography, military logistics, and trade and other routes in Syria all tell in favor of a unified victor in the war. It was never likely to be Daesh or al-Qaeda, given the religious and ethnic diversity in Syria (I figure about 60 percent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, and over half of them are secular-minded people who are siding with the regime against the hard line theocrats). Had Russia not intervened last fall, then a partition might well have occurred. But now it seems that the momentum is on the side of Restoration, however horrible that outcome is (and I wouldn’t have believed it, but it is a slightly less horrible outcome than the worst of what could have happened, i.e. a Daesh or al-Qaeda takeover of Syria).

So I think Kerry is bluffing when he speaks of partition. He is just trying to get the regime to make peace with the remnants of the Free Syrian Army, which is in fact the best road forward for Syria. We have had enough, in the Middle East, of the anti-Mandelas who reject reconciliation and insist on total victory and vicious reprisals. That path just ensures violence and turmoil into the next decades.

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How the US went Fascist: Mass media Makes excuses for Trump Voters

By Juan Cole | Feb. 24, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The rise of Donald Trump to the presumptive Republican standard bearer for president in 2016 is an indictment of, and a profound danger to the American republic.

The Founding Fathers were afraid of the excitability of the voters and their vulnerability to the appeal of demagogues. That is the reason for a senate (which was originally appointed), intended to check those notorious hotheads in Congress, who are elected from districts every two years.

But it isn’t only the checks and balances in government that are necessary to keep the republic. It is the Fourth Estate, i.e. the press, it is the country’s leaders, and the general public who stand between the republic and the rise of a Mussolini.

The notables have been shown to be useless. Donald Trump should have been kicked out of the Republican Party the moment he began talking about violating the Constitution. The first time he hinted about assaulting the journalists covering his rallies, he should have been shown the door. When he openly advocated torture (‘worse than waterboarding’), he should have been ushered away. When he began speaking of closing houses of worship, he should have been expelled. He has solemnly pledged to violate the 1st, 4th and 8th Amendments of the Constitution, at the least. If someone’s platform is unconstitutional, it boggles the mind that a major American party would put him or her up for president. How can he take the oath of office with a straight face? The party leaders were afraid he’d mount a third-party campaign. But who knows how that would have turned out? Someone with power needs to say that Trump is unacceptable and to define him out of respectable politics, the same way David Duke is treated (Trump routinely retweets Duke fellow-travellers).

Then there is the mass media. As Amy Goodman has pointed out, corporate television has routinely pumped Trump into our living rooms. They have virtually blacked out Bernie Sanders. Trump seems to have connived to have 10 or 15 minutes at 7:20 every evening on the magazine shows, such as Chris Matthews’ Hardball, who obligingly cut away to Il Duce II’s rants and gave away his show to him on a nightly basis.

Not long ago, extremely powerful television personalities and sportscasters were abruptly fired for saying things less offensive than Trump’s bromides. Don Imus was history for abusive language toward women basketball players. But Trump’s strident attack on Megyn Kelly as a menstruating harridan was just allowed to pass. Jimmy ‘the Greek’ Snyder was fired by CBS for saying African-Americans were ‘bred’ to be better athletes. But Trump issued a blanket characterization of undocumented Mexican labor migrants as rapists, thieves and drug dealers. Of course this allegation is untrue.

I watched the Nevada caucus coverage on MSNBC and was appalled at the discourse. One reporter tried to assure us that Trump voters were not actually voting for racism and bullying politics, they were just upset. But polling in South Carolina demonstrated that Trump voters were significantly to the right of most Republicans on some issues. In SC, 38% of Trump voters wished the South had won the Civil War, presumably suggesting that they regretted the end of slavery.

Another MSNBC reporter helpfully explained that Trump voters feel that ‘political correctness’ has gone too far. But what does Trump mean by ‘political correctness’? He means sexism and racism. So what is really being said is that Trump supporters resent that sexist and racist discourse and policies have been banned from the public sphere. There is ample proof that Trump’s use of ‘political correctness’ identifies it with sexist and racist remarks and actions.

Yet another asserted that ‘some of’ Trump’s positions ‘are not that extreme.’ Exhibit A was his praise for Planned Parenthood. But he wants to outlaw abortion, i.e. overturn the current law of the land, which is extreme. (A majority of Americans support the right to choose, so he is in a minority).

Chris Matthews explained to us that people hoped he would do something for the country rather than for the government.

But Trump has made it very clear that he is not interested in a significant proportion of the people in the country. He is a white nationalist, and his message is that he will stand up for white Christian people against the Chinese, the Mexicans, and the Muslims. Just as Adolph Hitler hoped for an alliance with Anglo-Saxon Britain on racial grounds (much preferring it to the less white Italy), the only foreign leader Trump likes is the ‘white’ Vladimir Putin. That he won the evangelical vote again in Nevada is helpful for us in seeing that American evangelicalism itself is in some part a form of white male chauvinist nationalism and only secondarily about religion.

By the way, the idea that Trump won the Latino vote in Nevada is nonsense. In one of a number of fine interventions at MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out that something on the order of 1800 Latinos voted in the Nevada GOP caucuses, of whom perhaps 800 voted for Trump, i.e. 44% of this tiny group. Trump lost the vote of even this small group of hard right Latinos, since 56% of them voted for someone else.

There are 800,000 Latinos in the state of Nevada (pop. 2.8 million). In 2012, 70 percent of Latinos voted for Barack Obama, while Mitt Romney got 25%. My guess is that Trump can’t do as well among them as Romney did.

It has been a dreadful performance by the press and by party leaders. They are speaking in such a way as to naturalize the creepy, weird and completely un-American positions Trump has taken.

This is how the dictators came to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Good people remained silent or acquiesced. People expressed hope that something good would come of it. Mussolini would wring the laziness out of Italy and make the trains run on time.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked by a lady after the Constitutional Convention what sort of government the US had, he said, “A Republic, Madame, if you can keep it.”

You have to wonder if we can keep it.

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Posted in Featured,journalism,racism,Republican Party | 52 Responses | Print |

Wikileaks: Netanyahu used Italy to pressure US on Illegal Squatter Settlements in Palestine

By Juan Cole | Feb. 24, 2016 |

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By Nadia Prupis, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – –

Among the NSA’s targets was UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon. “If the Secretary General can be targeted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk,” says Julian Assange.

The NSA spied on EU, UN, Israeli, and Japanese officials, new documents reveal. (Photo: File)

New documents published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday reveal more of the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying operations on foreign leaders, including its interception of climate talks between UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The cables, some of which are marked “Top Secret” and which WikiLeaks says are the most highly classified documents ever released by a news organization, show that the NSA spied on Ban’s strategizing on climate change with Merkel ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen Conference, where an attempt to negotiate a climate accord ultimately failed.

“Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies,” said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“The U.S. government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN—let alone its Secretary General,” he said. “It will be interesting to see the UN’s reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targeted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk.”

The 2008 intelligence reports show that Ban was confident the new U.S. administration under President Barack Obama would “have a very engaging and proactive attitude on the issue” of climate change and that “the time is right for the EU and the whole world to create conditions necessary for reaching a meaningful deal at the 2009 UN Climate Talks.”

That endeavor ultimately failed when world leaders were unable to strike an accord following U.S.-led negotiations.

Additional documents show the NSA also spied on a conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; a meeting between Merkel, Berlusconi, and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy; and diplomatic talks between Japanese and European Union (EU) ministers ahead of global trade negotiations.

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The cables show Netanyahu asking Italy for help in repairing Israel’s fractured relationship with the U.S. in 2010.

“Netanyahu insisted that the trigger for the dispute—Israel’s decision to build 1,600 homes in contested East Jerusalem—was totally in keeping with national policy dating back to the administration of Golda Meir, and blamed this mishandling on a government official with poor political sensitivity,” the NSA cable reads. “Berlusconi promised to put Italy at Israel’s disposal in helping mend the latter’s ties with Washington.”

In 2006, the NSA spied on Japanese and EU ministers discussing U.S. and EU participation in the Japanese economy, and the EU’s commitment to avoid “under-the-table” deals with the U.S. at the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Doha, Qatar.

“There was a conviction in both Brussels and Tokyo, according to Japanese reporting, that great care must be taken to avoid falling prey to U.S. moves designed to extort concessions through exaggerated initial demands,” the cable states.

“[EU Agriculture Commissioner deputy cabinet chief Klaus-Dieter] Borchardt also tried to allay Japanese fears that the EU might try again to enter into a bilateral, under-the-table deal with the U.S. (as had happened in Cancun in 2003), saying that Brussels had learned its lesson with respect to such back-door actions,” it reads.

And in 2011, Merkel and Sarkozy held a “tense and very harsh” meeting with Berlusconi to hold the Italian prime minister accountable for his country’s debt problem, during which Sarkozy warned Berlusconi that the Italian banking system “could soon ‘pop’ like a cork in a champagne bottle.”

The report is stamped “REL TO USA, FVEY,” which indicates that the NSA could release the information to other U.S. agencies and to its “Five Eyes” intelligence allies—Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Between 2007 and 2011, the NSA targeted 13 phone numbers belonging to officials in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland. As the Intercept notes, all but one of those phone numbers are still in use today.

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Does Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo go far enough in restoring Constitution?

By Juan Cole | Feb. 23, 2016 |

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TeleSur | – –

President Obama is making his case to the nation to finally close the much maligned detention center in his final year in office.

President Barack Obama presented a four point plan Tuesday to “close Guantanamo once and for all” the president said. The plan now lies in the control of Congress to approve the closure, or not.

H/t Wikipedia

“When it becomes clear that something is not working as intended, that it does not advance our national security its time to change course,” said President Barack Obama at a press conference. “Guantanamo does not advance our national security efforts.

Among the four main elements of the plan are: to ensure those 35 of the 91 detainees that have already been approved for transfer will be transferred; accelerate periodic reviews of remaining detainees to determine weather their remaining detention is necessary; use federal legal tools to deal with to remaining detainees and not military commissions, this includes those 10 detainees still being held under law of war detention that do not currently qualify for federal trials; and to work with Congress to find secure places in the U.S. in which to transfer detainees.

According to testimony from officials before Obama’s speech, the closure plan submitted to Congress references 13 potential sites for detainees to be transferred to U.S. soil but does not endorse one specific facility.

The officials also told reporters that the cost of the transfer of detainees and closure would be $290 million to $475 million. Housing the remaining detainees in the United States would be $65 million to $85 million cheaper than at the Cuba facility, the official said, so costs would be offset within three to five years.

Obama also highlighted the long term savings to taxpayers that would result from closing the military prison, saving $85 million after only one year, $300 million over 10 years and at least $1.7 billion over 20.

The plan has already been criticized by some human rights activists who say it does not go far enough to ensure Guantanamo’s closure.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “The centerpiece of the plan – moving those detainees who have not been and will never be charged with any crime to a prison in the U.S. – does not ‘close Guantanamo,’ it merely relocates it to a new ZIP Code.”

The organization also said there is nothing new in the plan, but it only lays out steps to finally release the men who have already been cleared for transfer, most for year, “and strengthening and speeding up the Periodic Review Board (PRB) process – but talk is cheap,” it said in a statement immediately following the president’s speech.

However, Omar Shakir, a fellow for the Center for Constitutional Rights who works on Guantanamo legal cases, said that Obama could actually bypass Congress with these measures.

“There are many steps in Obama’s plan that he has ample authority to carry out,” Shakir told teleSUR. But he added that “it would be very difficult to have any confidence in this administration following through.”

The plan must now be approved by Congress before it is implemented, which many say will be a hard sell. The Republican-controlled Congress has shown no signs that it will actually be interested in closing the facility once they see Obama’s plan. Some of the leaders, including House speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, have directly said that Guantanamo Bay should remain open.

“I would leave it just the way it is, and I would probably fill it up with more people that are looking to kill us,” Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said in an interviw Sunday.

Nethertheless, throughout his speech President Obama emphasized the bipartisan support that once existed to close the detention center. He reminded the press that even former Republican President George W. Bush said he wanted to close the prison and admitted that most of the detainees who have been released over the years were under Bush’s administration.

Obama also highlighted several reasons for closing the facility and why it should be considered a non-partisan issue.

According to President, Guantanamo serves as “propaganda for terrorists,” is costly for U.S. taxpayers, harms the U.S.’s relationship with allied nations that are pushing for the prison’s closure, and argued that keeping the facility open undermines U.S. values.

“President Bush said he wanted to close Guantanamo … but he didn’t get it done and it was passed to me. I’ve been trying for 7 years to get this closed, and have spent countless hours on this,” said Obama. “Our closest allies have raised this as an issue repeatedly … and I do not want to pass this onto the next president.”

Via TeleSur

Posted in Human Rights | 2 Responses | Print |

Trump must honor the Immigrant & Undocumented Veterans of American Foreign Wars

By Juan Cole | Feb. 23, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Donald Trump, the ultimate chickenhawk, pretends to be a big booster of veterans, but as far as I can tell he’s never done anything in particular for them. Worse, Trump has been deeply offensive toward a significant group of vets– immigrants and the undocumented.

In 2009, there were 100,000 foreign-born individuals serving in the US military. And in 2009 there were hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which they served. Some 12% of them, i.e. 12,000 people, were not citizens. Many green card holders joined up in order to get citizenship (which was automatic if they fought in a war zone), and many of those young men had undocumented spouses or relatives. Some undocumented US residents managed to get into the military. Some of they undocumented almost certainly died fighting for their adopted country, even if they had no proper papers.

Five percent of the US officer corps is Latino, and Latinos typically made up 12.2% of service personnel after 9/11 (they are 17% of the US population).

Sometimes when a Latino servicemen was killed, his wife was denied benefits because she was undocumented. President Obama had intended that a small number of undocumented Americans brought to this country illegally as children, known as Dreamers, would be eligible for military service, but this provision was blocked by the Republicans in Congress.

In maligning Mexican-American undocumented immigrants as rapists, drug dealers and thieves, Trump is putting down veteran families. He is in any case wrong. The evidence is that in recent years more Mexicans have left the US than have come in; and immigrants typically have a low crime rate because they are afraid of being deported).

There are 1.2 million veterans of Hispanic heritage in the United States. Some of them originally came to the US as undocumented, and many of them have family members who did.

The other group that Trump loves to bully and put down is Muslim-Americans. At a minimum, nearly 6000 Muslim-Americans are serving in the US military. The number could be larger, since 18% of the 2.2. million active duty and reservist service people (400,000 persons) do not declare their religion.

Muslim veterans have loudly protested Trump’s call to close down mosques and ban Muslims from coming to the US.

In 2008, former Secretary of State Colin put an end to a similar debate on Muslim-Americans by recalling the image of a bereaved Muslim mother mourning her war-hero son, Kareem R Khan, who died fighting for America. But in this political season, few GOP candidates are decent enough to be swayed by such an image or such a consideration. Hatred and bigotry have for the moment won out.

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Posted in Featured,Latinos,Republican Party,Veterans | 2 Responses | Print |

Gianna Toboni’s Cycle of Terror Debrief (VICE on HBO)

By Nicholas Kolenda | Feb. 22, 2016 |

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Vice | Video Report | – –

Reporter Gianna Toboni gives a brief report on the attitude towards Muslims and Islam following the attacks in Paris.

Vice: “Gianna Toboni’s Cycle of Terror Debrief (Vice on HBO)”

Posted in Islam,Middle East,nationalism,Secular (West) | No Responses | Print |

As Syrian Army advances East of Aleppo, ISIL strikes back with Bombings that kill 140

By Juan Cole | Feb. 22, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) said Sunday that it was behind the horrific bombings that struck Shiites in Damascus and Homs.

Twelver Shiites congregate in the Sayyida Zainab district of Damascus, the Syrian capital, around the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter. Car bombs and suicide bombers wearing bomb vests there killed over 80 and wounded 173. Only last month, 71 were killed in this district by Daesh bombs. Daesh or ISIL deeply hates Shiite Muslims and takes delight in massacring.

In Homs, Daesh car bombs killed 57 in a predominantly Alawite area, Zahra, which has been the site of numerous such attacks in the past 5 years. Alawites, some 10% – 14% of the Syrian population, dominate the top government posts and are much reviled by Daesh and the Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria).

Interestingly, in the wake of the bombing in Homs, residents staged a another protest against the government of Bashar al-Assad for not providing them with as much security as it provided to the army. The city has been protesting in this way for months. The bad news for the Syrian revolution is that the people of Homs mostly fear the opposition (including al-Qaeda and Daesh) and the main complaint of many of them is only that the government isn’t being effective enough in crushing them. The Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria) had controlled part of Homs and seemed poised to take the whole city until the 2013 intervention of Hizbullah, the Shiite Party-Militia, from Lebanon. The last of the defeated al-Qaeda fighters had to leave Homs last year.

Daesh turned to carbombings because it is in danger of being demoted from caliphate to just a run of the mill terrorist organization

In Iraq, it just has two major cities left, Fallujah and Mosul, and the Sunni clansmen of Fallujah are increasingly rebelling against it.

In Syria, it faces a determined push by the Syrian Arab Army of Bashar al-Assad to expel it from the eastern hinterland of Aleppo, the country’s largest city up in the north near Turkey.

The M15 highway stretches from Aleppo to al-Raqqa, with the latter being the capital of Daesh territory.

The Syrian army is extending itself east from Aleppo just south of the highway, and has taken about 19 villages in this area, killing at least 50 Daesh fighters in the process. Others turned tail and ran away to al-Bab northeast of Aleppos, the last major regional center Daesh controls in the immediate vicinity. Rayyan is one of the places captured, just to the east of Aleppo.

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Posted in Featured,Syria | 4 Responses | Print |

Trump’s SC Victory and anti-Muslim Hatred

By Juan Cole | Feb. 21, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Billionaire bigot Donald Trump won the South Carolina primary Saturday with about 32.5 percent of the vote. He was about ten points ahead of his two closest rivals, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who more or less tied at between 22 and 23 percent each.

Trump did much better than his rivals with men, with over-45 voters and with the less educated. He even outdid Cruz with regard to the evangelical vote (self-described evangelicals were 3/4s of Republican SC voters this year, up from 65% in 2012).

But perhaps one unexpected indication as to why he won is Trump’s strident hatred of Muslims. Some 75% of GOP primary voters in South Carolina support his bizarre and unconstitutional idea of banning Muslims from traveling to the United States. That is nearly twice the national average on this issue (46%) and more than the average among Republicans nationally (66%).

A sounding by Public Policy Polling found that SC GOP voters supporting Trump are outliers among Republicans in that state. Some 80% of them want to ban Muslims from traveling to the US, and about a third of Trump supporters want to ban gays from coming here as well. (That was twice the percentage among SC Repubicans in general). Among Trump supporters, 62 percent want to create a database to track US Muslims, and 40% want to ban mosques. 44% of Trump supporters want to ban the practice of Islam entirely (Not sure why 4% of these stupid jingoists want to allow mosques but not Muslims). About 38% of Trump voters said they wish the South had won the Civil War, as opposed to 30% of SC Republicans overall.

The evidence therefore suggests that xenophobia and hatred of Muslims, as well as a yearning for the white supremacist Confederacy, are more common among Trump supporters than among SC Republicans in general. And, it may well be that the margin of racism accounts for Trump’s win.

Moreover, a third of GOP voters in South Carolina see terrorism as the number one issue facing the US, while 28% think it is the economy and 27% are worried about government spending. That is, the hatred of Muslims seems tied to security concerns rather to immigration, and immigration per se is not a big concern there. Likely the large number of southern men who spend some time in the military is one explanation for this unusual concern with terrorism. After the Paris and San Bernardino attacks by fringe radical Muslims, the percentage of Americans who named terrorism as the number one problem jumped from a few percentage points to 16% last December. So South Carolinian Republicans are twice as worried about that issue as most Americans, and are a third more worried about it than Republicans nationally (24%) as of last December. (When there aren’t attacks for a while, the general US percentages on this issue have been slipping to single digits).

South Carolina is a small state of almost 5 million and is the 23rd or 24th largest in the union. Nearly 30% of the population are African-American (roughly 1.2 mn.) Almost all the African-Americans vote for the Democratic Party. A big majority of the over 3 million whites vote Republican. A recent wrinkle is that there are 260,000 Latinos in the state, and some say they may be as many as 400,000, since they are undercounted in official statistics.

South Carolinians are poorer than the average American, with a median household income of $45,238– only 4/5s of the US median. Its poverty rate is 18% as opposed to 15.5% nationally. However, much of the difference is likely accounted for by the big disadvantaged African-American population, and South Carolinian whites are probably closer to the national average. About 86 percent of the state’s residents have completed high school, which is par for the course in the US. But only about 27% have a BA or higher degrees, whereas the average in the US is about 30%.

While some have suggested that South Carolina looks more like the rest of the US than does New Hampshire, in fact it is distinctive on a number of measurements. It is poorer. It has slightly fewer highly educated people. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is hardly gone, and the percentage of African-Americans is 2.5 times that of the national average. It is much more Protestant than the rest of the country, where about a quarter of the population is Catholic. It appears to be much more religious than the rest of the country. While, nationwide, Protestant evangelicals are about a quarter of the population and are down a little over the past decade, some 75% of Republican voters on Saturday were evangelicals.

While South Carolina is a lovely place and its people are warm and friendly, about a fifth of them voted yesterday for a full-on fascist and pro-torture racist, which is surely the most shameful thing so many of them have done since opposing the civil rights movement. That they did so because they are economically insecure and think Trump can whip the economy into shape, and because they seem unusually obsessed with terrorism, and think Trump’s ethnic cleansing policies can protect them, is no excuse for anything. They know better, deep down.

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Posted in Christians,Featured,Fundamentalists,Islam-hatred,Muslim-Americans,Republican Party,White Supremacists | 25 Responses | Print |