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A recent edition of The Current on CBC Radio One in Canada featured a panel discussion of respected, liberal journalists discussing how mainstream media should report on Donald Trump and his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Among those on the panel was Doug Saunders of the Globe and Mail daily in Canada.
The panelists agreed that journalists have a duty to explain how Trump’s views are racist and worse. Ten days earlier, the same program featured a panel discussion of two scholars discussing ‘Is Donald Trump a fascist?’
An article which I wrote summarized that episode of The Current and included an open letter I sent to producers of the The Current. In my letter, I concurred with the views of the two scholars that Donald Trump leads an incipient fascist movement.
Extreme-right in the U.S. and extreme right in Ukraine
As my letter to the CBC commented, there is much irony to a CBC broadcast voicing concern over Trump’s extreme-right views. CBC and the rest of Western, mainstream media have spent the past 21 months ignoring or downplaying the rise of fascism and extreme, right-wing nationalism in Ukraine. Some CBC journalists, including the very host of The Current, have strongly-held, anti-Russia prejudices which they do not hide from their audiences and which obviously influence their decisions to hide the news about Ukraine from their viewers and listeners.
In Ukraine, the extreme right has succeeded in permeating the institutions of government, the military and police. It has played a key role in bringing these institutions into line with extreme-nationalist, social and political ideologies, including deep-going racism and hostility to immigration.
The road blockade was formally declared by Kyiv on November 23. It was preceded by a food-transport blockade which the extreme right initiated on September 20 and which it was able to conduct with impunity.
The electricity blockade was initiated by terrorist bombings of the transmission lines from Ukraine to Crimea on November 20 and 21. The Ukrainian government has refused to reconnect the lines and Western governments and media haven’t uttered a peep of concern.[1] Sadly, too much of the political left in the West has also been silent.
Permanent NATO occupation in western Ukraine
Simultaneous to the Crimea blockade, NATO has turned western Ukraine into a permanent training ground of the Ukrainian army and National Guard by NATO forces. The former, paramilitary battalions of the extreme right have been integrated into Ukraine’s army and National Guard, thus helping to deflect public relations embarrassments and strictures against arming the extreme-right that may arise.[2]
The U.S., Britain and Canada have several thousand troops in western Ukraine conducting permanent training in the how-to’s of modern warfare. Ukraine’s police and armed forces are engaged in civil war against the country’s civilian population, notably the people of the Donbas region (Donetsk and Lugansk) in the east of the country, while a more effective Ukrainian army may someday prove useful for NATO in its historic ambition to weaken and attack the Russian Federation. The September 1 ceasefire-within-the Minsk-2 ceasefire of Feb 12, 2015 has seen a reduction of shellings and attacks by the Ukrainian army against the rebellion in the east of the country, but only to a degree. Meanwhile, the ongoing military training by NATO speaks volumes of the long-term intentions of Kyiv and NATO to subjugate the rebellion and continue to threaten Russia.
The scope of the NATO occupation and military training in western Ukraine is well described in a November 26 article by German journalist Ulrich Heyden. Titled, ‘West Ukraine is now a permanent playground for NATO forces’, the article is translated to English here by New Cold War.org.
Ulrich Heyden co-produced a 45-minute documentary film (sub-titled in English, released in February 2015) on the Odessa atrocities of May 2, 2014 when at least 48 people who were protesting the right-wing, ultra-nationalist government in Kyiv were murdered in an arson attack by extreme-right gangs. Heyden’s book on Ukraine was published earlier this year (in German): War of the oligarchs: The tug of war over Ukraine’.
Revisiting Crimea’s “annexation”
Coincidental to the erecting of the Crimea blockade is the recent publishing of an interview with Ilya Ponomarev, the one deputy in the Russian Duma who voted ‘no’ in the vote of the Russian Duma (Parliament) on March 20, 2014 to accept Crimea’s application to join the Russian Federation. The interview was conducted and published by a blogger on the left-wing website and news service in Canada, Rabble.ca. Ponomarev calls Crimea’s secession referendum from Ukraine an “annexation” by Russia.
Crimea’s application to join (or more accurately, rejoin) the Russian Federation[3] followed a referendum on March 2014 to secede from Ukraine. The vote was conducted by the elected and constitutional government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as today’s Republic of Crimea was constituted under Ukraine. At the time, Ukraine’s elected president had been overthrow in a right-wing coup on February 21, 2014. Crimeans feared that the declared goal of Ukraine’s new rulers to violently suppress any opposition in Crimea and the rest of the country to their coup was more than boasting. What’s more, unlike in Crimea, the new coup regime in Kyiv had no constitutional authority.
Ponomarev has lived in exile in the United States since May 2014. He fled Russia when criminal charges of corruption and bribery dating from events in 2013 were threatened against him. In April 2015, the Russian Duma voted to lift his immunity as a Duma deputy from criminal prosecution.
Since the Crimea secession, Ponomarev has been a darling of the neo-conservative right-wing in the U.S. He is regularly featured by neo-conservative outlets such as the Heritage Foundation, Atlantic Council, Washington Post and New York Times. He also gives lectures advising how Russia’s elected and constitutional government might best be overthrown by the Western powers. To wit, the lightweight interview with him in Rabble.ca was conducted while he was a guest of the annual, pro-militarism Halifax International Security Forum, in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Ukraine’s prospects
Writing on November 28, Russia Insider correspondent Alexander Mercouris catalogued the recent deterioration in Ukraine-Russia relations. Ominously titled, ‘War returns to Ukraine’, his article listed recent increases in ceasefire violations by Ukraine in the east of the country, the blockade of Crimea, the cessation by Ukraine of air travel links with Russia beginning October 25, and a rising drumbeat of demands by ultra-nationalists in Ukraine to sever all ties with Russia.
Since Mercouris’ article, U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden has made another visit to Ukraine on December 7 and 8, promising ongoing financial and military support to the beleaguered and financially bankrupt government and urging it to keep up its hostile posture towards Russia.
Mercouris argued that it’s no coincidence that the hardening of Ukrainian attitudes comes at a time when European attentions are preoccupied with the crisis in the Middle East and some German leaders as well as many business interests are calling into question the ongoing economic sanctions against Russia. He wrote:
For the Maidan movement, any sign Russia is gaining credit with the Western public is like a red rag to a bull. There is no need to look for calculation in Ukrainian behaviour in order to understand it.
The underlying problem – as we have said many times – is that the Maidan movement is inherently incapable of the sort of compromise that Minsk II envisages. To see how that is so, consider what has happened since the October summit in Paris where the Europeans in effect ordered Poroshenko to implement Minsk II within a revised timetable. The Ukrainians have done nothing of the sort, and the new timetable for carrying out the terms of Minsk II is already slipping. Any discussion of the internal aspect of the Ukrainian conflict – as opposed to its external aspect – has to proceed from the fact that the present Ukrainian government is simply incapable of compromise unless overwhelming external pressure is brought upon it.
Should the Russian intervention in Syria turn the tables on the ‘regime change’ intentions of the imperialist powers, the desperation in Kyiv and also in NATO can be expected to grow. There are early signs that thwarting of regime change could be in the offing, namely in the ceasefire reached in the city of Homs on December 9 and in the cautious but hopeful view of the Russian intervention by Kurdish forces, at least those in Syria and Turkey.
These signs may auger broader ceasefires and political agreements between the government and opposing forces in Syria. A new national government in Syria capable of addressing the deep and longstanding grievances of sections of the population would be a very welcome thing.
A lessening or cessation of war in Syria would not put eastern Ukraine and eastern Europe out of the danger zone of NATO war threats and planning. But it would make the sales job for that more difficult for Western capitals.
Notes:
[1] After the bombings of the electrical transmission lines to Crimea on November 20 and 21, Crimea’s emergency electrical backup began providing approximately 30 per cent of normal electrical supply. Russia was already planning to construct large-capacity electrical transmission lines as well as a natural gas pipeline across the Kerch Strait that would make Crimea electricity-independent of Ukraine by later in 2016. That work is now proceeding at breakneck speed. The first of the transmission lines went into service on December 3, providing 200 megawatts of power. A second, 200 MW service will commence on December 20. Crimea’s average electricity usage is 900 MW daily. That that will rise as a result of the significant investments being made by the Russian state and entrepreneurs in transportation, tourism, agriculture and industry. Crimea’s economy stagnated during the 23 years that the region was part of post-Soviet Union Ukraine.
[2] The U.S. Congress voted in June 2015 against any supplying of weapons or other assistance to the ‘Azov Battalion’, one of the many extreme-right paramilitary battalions in Ukraine. Voilà, several months later the ‘battalion’ became a constituent unit of Ukraine’s National Guard.
[3] In 1954, Crimea’s political status in the Soviet Union was changed by an administrative decision of the country’s leadership. The region’s administrative and political affiliation was switched from the Russian Soviet republic to the Ukraine Soviet republic. Government leaders in Moscow argued at the time that this would facilitate post-World War Two reconstruction, but the decision took no formal account of the attitudes and wishes of the Crimean people. A supreme, contemporary irony is that the noisy cabal of ultra-nationalists in Ukraine and warmongers in NATO (not to speak of many left-wing voices internationally) who cry “annexation” of Crimea are effectively upholding the ill-considered and undemocratic decision in 1954 of the Soviet Union whose legacy they profess to hate so much!
Once it fell to politicians and diplomats to solve international conflicts. Now, according to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responsibility lies with social media.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, headed off to Silicon Valley to meet senior executives at Google and its subsidiary YouTube late last month. Her task was to persuade them that, for the sake of peace, they must censor the growing number of Palestinian videos posted on YouTube.
Netanyahu claims these videos spur other Palestinians to carry out attacks, exemplified by the weeks of stabbings and car rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
After the meeting, the foreign ministry issued a press release claiming Google had joined Israel’s “war against incitement”, and would establish a “joint apparatus” to prevent the posting of “inflammatory” videos. Google denied last week that any agreement was reached.
On other fronts of this so-called war, the Israeli army has shut down three West Bank radio stations, accusing them of fomenting unrest. And inside Israel, officials have shut a newspaper and a separate website catering to Israel’s large Palestinian minority.
Meanwhile, Palestinians, including children, are being arrested over their Facebook posts. Others accused by Netanyahu of spreading terror-like incitement include Hamas, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian education system, Palestinian parties in Israel’s parliament and human rights organisations.
There is a deep cynicism at work here.
True, Palestinians are enraged by footage showing their compatriots shot or executed by Israelis, often after they have been disarmed or cornered, or – in the case of two teenage girls last month – badly injured.
But in many cases such videos are posted not by Palestinians but by ordinary Israelis or their government as proof of a supposed Palestinian “barbarism”.
Most Palestinian videos are simply a record of their bitter experiences of occupation at the hands of soldiers and settlers. It is these experiences, not the videos, that drive Palestinians to breaking point.
A “war on incitement” waged through YouTube and Facebook won’t change Palestinian suffering. But it may, Netanyahu presumably hopes, conceal Israel’s brutality from the eyes of the world.
Unrest has escalated of late not because of social media but because Palestinians, faced with an Israeli government implacably opposed to ending the occupation, are losing all hope.
Israel’s generals have warned Netanyahu that without a diplomatic process there will be no end to the attacks. Desperate to obscure this obvious truth, the Israeli right needs to blame everything apart from its own uncompromising ideology.
Israel’s battle against “incitement” is not just meant to deflect attention from the right’s failing policies. It is also a form of incitement itself, and it is no surprise the campaign is led by two masters of provocation: Netanyahu and Hotovely.
Israel has accused Palestinians of incitement for suggesting that Al Aqsa, the much-revered mosque in Jerusalem, is under threat, yet Hotovely recently said her “dream” was to see the Israeli flag flying at Al Aqsa.
There was a reminder, too, of Netanyahu’s own dismal record. An investigation was dropped last month against the prime minister over his warnings, using Israeli terminology for a military emergency, that Palestinian citizens were coming out “in droves” to vote in March’s general election.
A consequence of government-inspired incitement is an ever uglier climate. In many towns, crowds calling “death to the Arabs” barely raise an eyebrow any more.
The justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, has backed a bill to stigmatise Israeli human-rights groups that receive foreign, mostly European, funding. And the culture minister, Miri Regev, demanded that films showing in an Israeli festival about the Nakba, the Palestinians’ mass dispossession in 1948, be vetted for “incitement” and the cinemas showing them threatened with defunding.
Public meetings with groups such as Breaking the Silence, Israeli army veterans who want to shed light on the occupation, are being cancelled under police pressure.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, is giving a free hand to far right news sites as they make false and pernicious claims.
One, Newsdesk Israel, took a four-year-old video of Palestinians revelling at their acceptance into the United Nations and repackaged it as footage of Palestinians celebrating ISIL’s massacres in Paris. Another fabricated report suggested Palestinian citizens were proselytising for ISIL by blasting its songs on their car stereos.
In fact, no target seems too big to avoid the Israeli right’s defamation – not even Europe, Israel’s largest trading partner.
Israeli politicians have misrepresented as a full-blown boycott the EU’s recent tepid move to label products from illegal West Bank settlements and thereby deny them special customs exemptions reserved for Israeli products. The right argues Israel is being uniquely punished by Europe, when in truth the EU has enforced economic sanctions, not just labelling, against 36 countries.
Incitement does indeed pose a threat to the future of Israelis and Palestinians. But it is to be found in the falsehoods promoted by Netanyahu and his ministers, not the bitter truths being posted on YouTube.
The US Congress witnessed new heights of anti-Muslim hysteria and warmongering on Wednesday, as US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs General Paul Selva testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the ongoing escalation of US military operations in Iraq and Syria.
Leading US senators and top US military officials issued fervent calls for yet another round of sweeping escalations of the US air, ground and special forces operations throughout the Middle East, while invoking the prospect of future terror attacks by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in every second breath.
Carter unveiled proposals to send Apache attack helicopters to provide close air support and military advisers for ongoing Iraqi military operations aimed at retaking the city of Ramadi. These deployments would represent a major escalation of the US intervention, further making a mockery of President Barack Obama’s pledges against placing US boots on the ground.
Wednesday’s proceedings underscored that despite minor differences over the precise form of the stepped up operations, the US political and military establishments stand fully united behind an agenda of continuously escalating military aggression.
“We all agree that the intensity [of the ISIS war] has to be increased significantly and rapidly,” Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the armed services panel, noted during his opening statement. Reed vowed to ensure that the Pentagon would receive everything “that the department needs” to expand the fight against ISIS further afield.
Proposals for no-fly zones above Syria, militarized “safe zones” on the ground, stepped up covert operations by US commandos, focused on targeted killings and the mobilization of ethnic death squads and proxy militias, found universal support among the assembled senators and military leaders.
In a familiar pattern, the Pentagon had already begun implementing provocative escalatory moves prior to the “oversight” hearing. US forces are engaged in ongoing operations aimed at massing new military assets along the Jordanian border, Secretary Carter revealed in the course of the hearing.
The Armed Services Committee’s Republican chairman, Senator John McCain, played his usual role Wednesday, speaking on behalf of ultra-militarist sections of the US elite and pushing for a maximum program of US military aggression in the region.
McCain justified his proposals for yet another US military onslaught in the region by reciting a litany of terrorist attacks that would be repeated by every Senator in the chamber, referring to the destruction of the Russian jetliner over Sinai last month, the Paris terror attacks and the San Bernardino mass shooting, all of which he attributed definitively to ISIS.
McCain called for the US military to lead a large invasion force, backed by tens of thousands of troops drawn from allied governments and local forces, in a drive to seize control of the ISIS-held city of Raqqa and broader areas of northern Syria.
The ground campaign should be followed by a “long-term stabilization effort” based on a US “residual force,” McCain said.
McCain also demanded that the Pentagon deploy a “greater forward presence of US military and intelligence” to a range of countries beyond Iraq and Syria where ISIS is alleged to be active.
The Obama administration has publicly resisted the super-aggressive recommendations of McCain and others on the Republican right. Wednesday’s hearing made clear, however, that the distance separating the administration’s Syria polices from those advanced by the more hardline factions is being steadily eroded.
After making the obligatory references to Paris and San Bernardino, attacks which Carter described as “an assault on the civilization we defend,” he went on to outline a comprehensive intensification of an array of US military operations stretching across the Middle East and beyond.
The US “will not hesitate to expand” its ground presence in Syria and Iraq, which already includes some 3,500 ground troops at six locations throughout Iraq, in addition to detachments of hundreds of US commandos deploying in the north, Carter said.
In Syria, US commandos are preparing to orchestrate an offensive against Raqqa by US proxy forces, including Sunni and Kurdish elements, with the aim of “collapsing ISIS control over the city,” Carter said.
US forces in Iraq have been providing “increased lethal fire” in coordination with the Iraqi military, as part of stepped up joint combat operations with local forces. The US is already transferring combat engineering technologies and shoulder fired missiles to the Iraqi army and counter terrorism service units, Carter said.
The Pentagon is standing by to extend other forms of assistance to the Iraqi army, once Baghdad “resolves its political divisions,” Carter said.
The US military is “urging Iraqi government to recruit, train, mobilize and pay, Sunni popular mobilization fighters in their communities,” he said.
If the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi toes the US line, supporting Washington’s efforts to develop Sunni militias as bulwarks against Iranian influence, it can expect new forms of US aid, including new helicopter gunship squadrons, complete with US pilots and advisors to organize their deployment. Abadi should embrace a “decentralized Iraq” in which a patchwork of “ethnic elements” would exercise effective independence within their own areas, Carter said.
Carter made clear that US forces will use Iraq’s territory in part as a staging area for anti-Iranian machinations.
“On the military side, we are continuing unchanged in the need to deter and counter Iranian malign influence,” he said.
Carter reiterated his recent announcement that the US is deploying a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” for covert operations in both Iraq and Syria. The expeditionary forces will focus on manhunting operations and will train Iraqi commandos to carry out similar operations, Carter said.
During the question and answer portion, Carter made clear that the Pentagon has issued itself a legal carte blanche to carry out whatever operations it sees fit in the name of the “war against ISIS.”
Asked whether the US military required an updated Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to carry out the plans he outlined, Carter replied, “I’ll just note with respect to the AUMF, that we have--I’m not a lawyer but I’m told, and I’m glad, otherwise it would be a problem--we have the legal authority to do what we want to do.”
In other words, Secretary Carter “has been told” by the Pentagon’s legal team that his office wields limitless authority to seize and occupy territory at will, carry out black operations anywhere on earth, employ carpet bombing against civilian infrastructure, etc.
Carter’s comments are clearly a reference to the Bush-era AUMFs, laws that President Barack Obama had previously condemned and pledged to end. While the administration has submitted a new ISIS-specific AUMF to Congress, it is not pressing for its consideration and there is little prospect of it being approved.
The sweeping powers invoked by Carter on the basis of the Bush administration’s 13-year-old authorization of a criminal war based upon lies are by no means reserved for ISIS and other terrorist factions. Carter made clear in his concluding comments that. beyond the challenge of ISIS, the US government faces “decades of combating radicalism in general.”
You Cannot Fight Terrorism While You Are Supporting The Terrorists
Full Interview with President Bashar al-Assad by Czech TV - 1/12/15
"You cannot be the police and the thief at the same time. You have to choose either way to stand."
Damascus, SANA- President Bashar al-Assad said that terrorists are coming from more than 100 countries around the world to Syria, they want to make Syria a hub for terrorism.
In an interview with the Czech TV, President al-Assad asserted that you cannot fight terrorism while you are supporting the terrorists directly with armaments and having alliance with most zealous supporters of terrorism in the world; which is the Saudi Kingdom
The President made it clear that you should do everything to protect your country. You cannot protect your country if you do not protect society and the principles and the values in that society, asserting that a country is not a land and borders, it is people and a way of thinking.
Following is the full text of the interview:
Question 1: Thank you. Let me start by a personal question. You are a doctor. In 2011 you said, and I quote you, that you have chosen eye surgery because it is almost never an emergency and there is very little blood. It was March 2011, the very time when the Syrian war broke out, the bloodiest conflict in the world, one big emergency. How do you take that?
President Assad: If you want to make a relation between this job or any surgery job and what is going on in Syria, it depends on the intention. You always have blood in surgery but you have blood to save the life of the patient not to kill him. While the blood that we have in Syria is to kill the Syrians by terrorists; and our job as the government is to save their lives through destroying the terrorists. This is the only link and I hope I understand you question well.
Reporter: Yes, yes I mean …
President Assad: So our job is to save life. If you have blood, it is to defend your country. You use your army to defend your country.
Question 2: But 250,000 people, it is unimaginable in any country.
President Assad: This is the result when you have a lot of terrorists supported by regional powers and by the West. It is not only terrorists coming from within Syria, terrorists coming from more than 100 countries around the world. They wanted to make Syria a hub for terrorism and that is the situation. If we did not defend our country, that number would be many folds.
Question 3: You mentioned terrorism. It seems that in recent days, there have been huge developments in the Syrian crisis. What do you think was the most important date in the Syrian crisis: September 30th and the Russian intervention or November 13th and the Paris terrorist attacks?
President Assad: Now definitely the Russian participation, or what was announced as a front against terrorism, is the most important one. This is the practical thing against terrorism, while in Paris what happened on the political level is just to assuage the feelings of the French, like saying the French are going to attack ISIS in a very different way. What does that mean? Was not France serious before the attack on Paris? So, they are going to only assuage the feelings of the French, nothing serious, while the Russians are very serious in fighting terrorism and there is cooperation between them and the Syrian army.
Question 4: So you think that the increase in attacks by the western coalition or the coalition under the U.S. leadership is not helping?
President Assad: According to the facts, since the beginning of that coalition, if you want to talk about facts not opinions, ISIS has expanded, and their recruits from around the world have increased. While since the participation of the Russians in the same so-called fight against terrorism, ISIS has been shrinking and Al Nusra of course and other terrorist groups. So, this is reality. The facts are telling.
Question 5: Is not that because, militarily speaking, simply the Russian air force could work with the forces of the Syrian army?
President Assad: Because there is cooperation, that is what I said. You cannot kill terrorists or destroy terrorism from the air, you cannot, it is almost impossible, the Americans have been trying this in Afghanistan for how long? More than 12 or 13 years. Did they achieve anything? Nothing. Terrorism is still strong in Afghanistan. So you cannot. You need cooperation from within that country, any power. The major power in Syria is the Syrian army and of course the government.
Question 6: The French president is trying to get together broader coalition against terrorism. Are you skeptical about his effort?
President Assad: Definitely, if they wanted to learn from what had happened recently in Paris, why did not they learn from Charlie Hebdo? The same principle and the same concept. We said at that time that this is only the tip of the iceberg. What is under the water is much bigger. They did not learn. This is first. Second, you cannot fight terrorism while you are supporting the terrorists directly with armaments and having alliance with most zealous supporters of terrorism in the world; which is the Saudi Kingdom. You cannot. This is contradiction. You cannot be the police and the thief at the same time. You have to choose either way to stand.
Question 7: But I did not hear about any western supplies to the Islamic State?
President Assad: You have them very clearly on the internet. French and other of course different parties but the French example existed. How could a country like France sell such weapons to a destination that it does not know, or that they do not know where they will go? That is impossible. They know through the Saudi Kingdom and Qatar and maybe from other countries, definitely.
Question 8: There was an incident on the Turkish borders, the downing of a Russian bomber. Do you think this incident will influence the outcome of this French president’s efforts to create a broader coalition? Do you think it will even complicate the peace talks in Syria?
President Assad: I do not think so, but I think it has shown the relentlessness of Erdogan who let us say lost his nerves just because the Russian intervention has changed the balance on the ground. So, the failure of Erdogan in Syria, the failure of his terrorist groups means his political demise, so he wanted to do anything in order to put obstacles in front of any success. So, he did it, but I do not think it will change any balance. The war against terrorism is continuing. The Russian supportive participation is going to be stronger, it is strong anyway, and I think there is no way back on that regard, whether he does it again, this way or another way.
Question 9: The U.S. president says that he does not want to repeat the same mistake; to make a ground invasion without actually knowing who will fill in the vacuum. Most of the presidential candidates in recent elections are saying that they want to do much more than just bombing. What do you think is the more realistic approach that will lead to defeating the Islamic State?
President Assad: Actually, if I want to talk about terrorism in general not only about ISIS. We have to work on more than one axis and find a multi-aspect solution. Part of it is related to ideology and part of it is related to economy, to the political stances and political cooperation; and the last thing is security cooperation and fighting directly. Because of the situation that we are in now, there is no way but to fight them directly. But this is not enough. If you want to fight and defeat them you have to cut and suffocate their supplies, armaments, money and recruits that are coming mainly through Turkey, and with the support of the Saudis and Qataris, this is the first step you take while you are attacking them on the ground. The problem now is that we are fighting the terrorists but they have unlimited supplies, unwarranted supplies from different countries, mainly regional countries, with the support or overlooking of the West, some of the western countries to be precise.
Question 10: You said that your priority is to fight and defeat terrorists before the political solution. What do you mean by defeating terrorism? That there will not be no armed opposition groups left in Syria?
Defeating terrorism is removing obstacles from the way of any political process
President Assad: You cannot talk about opposition in the political sense while they are holding arms. You know, in your country when you talk about opposition, it is only political movement. Second, if it is political, it should have grass roots. So, when we talk about rebels or militants who are holding guns and any other armaments to attack people, to attack the Syrian people or to attack the Syrian army and to destroy any public or private properties and so on, this is terrorism. There is no other definition. So, we do not accept the term of militant opposition or military opposition or moderate opposition having armaments. This is not opposition, this is terrorism. Opposition for us is a political movement outside or inside Syria. That does not matter. Of course, the other aspect of the opposition is to be patriotic not an opposition that was formed in France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the USA or the UK. It should be Syrian formed in Syria. And we have Syrian opposition. We have real Syrian opposition. How big or how strong, this is not an issue. So, defeating terrorism is removing obstacles from the way of any political process. Now, if you agree upon any steps or procedures with any opposition in the world, the Syrian opposition I mean, what can you achieve? Can you make real elections? Can you bring stability of the opposition? The terrorists have their own world, they have their own goals. They have their own agenda and ideology. It is completely different from the political part. So if you start with the political process, you have to start it, I did not say we do not start it. I said if you want to make concrete steps, it should be after we start defeating terrorism. I did not say after we defeat it, because the defeat is a long process.
Question 11: I see a major problem over here. In Vienna, there have been talks about moderate opposition, even including the armed groups. You are saying no talks with anybody who hold weapons?
President Assad: No, the political process has two aspects: one of them is to deal with the political opposition, the other aspect is to deal with those groups. We in Syria call that reconciliation process, when they give up arms and go back to their normal life, the government offers them amnesty.
Reporter: On your terms?
President Assad: No, it is amnesty if you go back to your normal life, amnesty is full amnesty, you are not charged with any conviction, you are free to live your normal life, peaceful life, do not fight and do not hold machineguns, do not terrorize people. This reconciliation has succeeded in Syria. Actually, it has achieved more than any political process. So we do not say we do not deal with those terrorists because if they change their position of course you have to deal with them, but when you talk about the ISIS and Al Nusra and Al Qaeda offshoots, they are not ready to give up their arms, they are not ready to make negotiations with the government anyway. They do not accept and of course we do not accept, their ideology is against the government and against the whole country. They do not recognize borders; they do not recognize the others who are not like them. So, it is difficult and impossible to do any reconciliation with them; but I’m talking about the other groups who terrorize for money, or maybe for fear, for any other reason, we succeeded in making negotiations with them.
Question 12: So in Vienna talks actually we are mentioning the talks between the government and the opposition groups within maybe one month maybe by the end of the year?
President Assad: Since the beginning of this crisis we said we are ready to make negotiation with anyone, so whether these groups we know that are related to the French not to the Syrians and so on we deal with them as opposition that represents that country, because the Syrians know the reality. So we are not against any kind of cooperation or dialogue or negotiations, dialogue is the most precise one, but at the end, if you make an agreement with those opposition that do not have grass roots in Syria, what will you achieve? That is a simple question. We can make negotiations for months, then at the end who is going to implement if they have no influence on the terrorists, do not have grass roots and do not influence the Syrians? What is the meaning of that meeting? In principle we do not say no, we say yes, but in reality we cannot tell people that this is the hope that we have and this is how we will solve the problem.
Question 13: How do you describe this conflict? Is it like government against freedom fighters? Is it Shiite against Sunnis? Is it Arab against Persia? Is it clash of superpowers? Is it like a fight between a secular state and religious fanatics? What is it?
President Assad: It has every factor that you mentioned but not all of them are real. I mean that if you want to talk about the real feeling of the Syrians, for example, if you take the sectarian factor that you mentioned, it is not true, because if you go now anywhere in Syria, in the areas under the control of the Syrian government, you will see all the ethnic and sectarian colors of the Syrian society. So, that is not true; otherwise people will not live with each other, so this is not the case, but the sectarian hatred has been aggravated because of the Saudis and Qataris; and you always have those fanatics that listen to that kind of rhetoric; but it is not reality. Actually, it is government against rebels who have been supported by different regional and international powers that have nearly the same agenda, maybe different incentive but the same agenda. They want to change the government, to topple the government and the state in Syria and change the president and that government and the whole political system without going back to the Syrian people.
This is the real fight, so when you talk about rebels, they do not have any agenda; and we had negotiations with them. They do not have any political requirement or request, they only like money, they are like mercenary. Most of them wanted to fulfill the agenda of other sides. So, this is the real fight. In appearance, Russia supported the government because they support the international law and the stability in the region, their stability and the stability of the whole region and world. The US always looks for the hegemony over the world because Syria is independent and they do not accept a country that says no to them. But in reality, it is the government with the support of the majority of the Syrian people against those mercenaries supported by those countries.
Question 14: On more personal level, there have been really interesting evolution of you public perception, especially in the West, from being the hope for your country to be one of the world’s chief villains, now becoming again a part of the equation existing in Syria. How did you live through all this evolution?
President Assad: Who’s evolution?
Reporter: Evolution from being the hope for your country to be the …
President Assad: You mean before the crisis?
Reporter: Yes, I mean that now everybody is counting on you again for the future of Syria.
President Assad: If you are talking about the relation with the West. In 2005, I was the killer, in 2008, I was peacemaker, then in 2011, I became the butcher. Now there is some positive change, of course shy kind of change not an explicit one.
Question 15: How did you take it personally, how did you live through that?
President Assad: Personally, it has no influence for one reason, because nobody is taking western official seriously anymore for many reasons. First of all, they do not have credibility. Secondly, they do not have vision; they are so shallow. Third, they are not independent. They follow what the Americans order. So they are not serious; they do not exist on the path now, most of the Europeans. We look at the master, and the master is the USA. So, personally it has no influence. For me, especially when you are in a state of war, what to care about is what the Syrian people want and the way the Syrian people look at you. This is very important for me. I do not care about the others. So, if we talk about the fluctuation of this behavior, the European behavior, towards Syria or towards me personally, this is up and down but I have not changed. I stayed the same one since I became president in 2000. So, you have to ask them why they are fluctuating, not me.
Question 16: So, the message to the West is there was no discriminate killing of the civilians in the beginning of the Syrian war, there was no massive torturing of opponents of the regime?
President Assad: Let us presume that this is correct, according to their propaganda, how could you have public support and stay in your position for five years when you have the strongest country in the world against you, while you have the richest countries in the world against you, and your population that you are killing against you? How can you stand here? That is unrealistic. You should have support. How could you have the support of your people while you are killing them? Can you explain, no. So, that is not true, if you want to talk about the causalities, any war is a bad war, there is no good war, even if it is for a good cause, it is bad war; and you have to avoid it. But when you cannot, war is about killing; armament is about killing. You always have causalities and you always have innocents in any war throughout history, while to have the intention, how do you kill them when you want their support.
Question 17: What do you feel when you see the pictures of hundreds of thousands of your fellow Syrians fleeing to Europe?
President Assad: The feeling is very sad, especially if you think that every person of those Syrians who left Syria has a sad story behind him. It reflects the hardship of Syria during the crisis. From let us say rational way of looking at this situation, it is a lost, everyone of those is a human resource that left Syria, so this will undermine the society in your country definitely, but in the end we have to deal with the reasons. The question that I think every European should ask is why did they leave? For many reasons: the first one is the terrorists that have been attacking them everywhere, either directly or through attacking the basic requirements of living in our country; infrastructure, their way of life, different basic needs and so on, the second one is the European embargo, the European embargo played into the hands of terrorists directly and what was supposed to be with the Syrians became against the Syrians because every embargo is against the population of any country. Many people left Syria because they cannot live here anymore, because they do not have the basic needs of living, so they had to leave to Europe or to Turkey or any other country.
Reporter: They say that you failed them as their leader.
President Assad: I didn’t fail them, I did not destroy their infrastructure, I did not give the arms to terrorists to kill and to destroy. The question is: who did that? The Europeans and the Saudis and the Qataris.
Question 18: What should Europe do now? Like should Europeans fear those people or help them?
President Assad: That depends. First of all, big or large part of them are not Syrians. About the Syrians it is a mixture, the majority let us say are good Syrians, the patriotic, the natural people, but of course you have infiltration of terrorists among them. That is true, how much and how many? We cannot tell, it is difficult to tell, and this is reality, and I think that you have some evidence on the internet, photos, videos that prove that some persons who have been killing people here and beheading sometimes left to Europe as peaceful citizens.
Reporter: But Generally speaking, help or fear?
In our crisis, Europe is exporting extremism to us
President Assad: That depends on how Europe should deal with them, because you are talking not only about terrorism, you are talking about culture, even before the crisis, before this flood of refugees going to your country, the problem in Europe is how to integrate those cultures in your society? And I think Europe has failed, whether it is related to Europe from one aspect to the way they deal with the situation or because the Wahhabi institutions spend their money on screwing the interpretation of the Muslims, I am talking about the Muslims in Europe, and created more problems and extremism in your countries. Actually this region used to export sometimes some extremism to Europe. In our crisis, Europe is exporting extremism to us. So, it depends on how you are going to deal with it and I do not think it is going to be easy to make integration.
Question 19: How do you see yourself in this conflict, you said your enemies are terrorists, fanatics, foreign agents. What is the most precious thing you are trying to protect?
President Assad: In our country?
Reporter: Yes
Secularism in Syria is to have freedom of religions, sects and ethnicities
President Assad: Secularism, because Syria is a melting pot. Of course secularism in Syria is different from the way some in the West, especially in France maybe, understand it to be against religion. Actually, secularism in Syria is to have freedom of religions, sects and ethnicities. Without this, you will not have the Syria that has been known for centuries. So, this is the most important thing that we can try to protect. The second thing is moderation, because of this variety of different factors in this society for centuries, you have moderation. Without moderation you cannot have this melting pot, what the terrorists are working on now is to create a new generation that knows nothing about moderation. They are going to be only killers, extremists, fanatics who do not accept the others, in a few years time this is going to be real danger, how can we deal with the new generation? It is not someone who is twenty or above, it is maybe twenty and below. This is the real challenge that we are going to face.
Question 20: Is there anything that you would not do to protect those values you mentioned?
You should do everything to protect your country
President Assad: No, you should do everything to protect your country. You cannot protect your country if you do not protect society and the principles and the values in that society. A country is not a land and borders, it is people and a way of thinking.
Question 21: If you had the chance to change one decision that you made in the past five years, what would that be?
President Assad: Many people that we trusted we should not have trusted. That is the biggest problem, within Syria and outside Syria, like Erdogan for example in the past. Many Syrians during the conflict we discovered that they were fanatics, that they have extreme ideology like Muslim Brotherhood and some of them belonged to Al Qaeda, and now they are holding guns and fighting. At the very beginning we thought they were working for their country, that is the main issue, while if we talk about strategy, it was based on two pillars: the first one is dialogue, and the second one is fighting terrorism, these two pillars will not change, we will never change that.
Question 22: Even maybe the balance between those two pillars?
President Assad: You cannot talk about the balance because you have reality that changes every day. So, dialogue should continue to the maximum, and fighting terrorism should continue to the maximum, there should be correlation between them, with each other not against each other, so you do not need this balance, you need to go to the maximum with both, in parallel.
Question 23: Let us come for a minute to Czech’s relations. The Czech Republic has been one of the very few countries which kept its ambassador in Syria for the whole conflict, how important was that for you?
President Assad: For many reason important, first of all, before the crisis, the relation with the Czech Republic was not warm, actually we had many differences, most of the relations with most of the European countries were much better than the relations with your country. Actually, what happened during the crisis when most of the European countries adopted the western propaganda against what is happening in Syria, your country kept its balance regarding this relation. That does not mean that you support the Syrian government or support the Syrian president. This means you are playing the natural role that any country should play in keeping the relation even with the adversaries. How can you play a role, how can you know what is going on if you do not have relations? This is one aspect. The second aspect is that the Czech Republic is a small country and is part of the EU and it was under severe pressure from many countries in the West, including the United States, to change its position, which sometimes can be only symbolic by keeping only the embassy open. This could be symbolic in some cases. In spite of that, the Czech Republic wanted to be independent. That is what we are missing in the world now. Most of the countries are not independent; most officials are not independent, especially in the West. So, the other aspect, a small country like the Czech Republic could be independent and that will bring respect, and has brought respect within Syria to the position of your country, whether we agree with their position or not. But at the end we, respect them. So, there is respect, there is a kind of statesman behavior, let us say, regarding your political positions and your officials, which is something that is very important for us. Now, the third aspect, because of the credibility of your positions, because many European governments recognize now and understand that you were right about what is going on in Syria, about keeping this open channel with the Syrian government, I think now they need your help in order to help them go back to the right track, especially regarding the political aspect. So, it has many aspects, this balanced position regarding the situation in Syria.
Question 24: One more aspect, President Zeman actually mentioned the possibility of signing a Syrian peace accord in Prague. Do you support this idea?
President Assad: Of course, any effort supporting the solution of the crisis in Syria, especially from a credible government, we will be very happy to cooperate with, definitely.
Question 25: But the symbolic meaning, I mean like the Geneva talks, there are talks in Vienna, would signing Prague would be realistic?
President Assad: Yes, of course it would be realistic. If you ask the Syrian people, they would say that I cannot have a peace conference in France for example because France supports terrorism and supports the war. They do not support peace. So, for example, if you mentioned Prague, there would be general acceptance of this idea because of the balanced position of your country.
Question 26: After all, what happened in Syria in those past few years, everybody has seen those horrible pictures. Do you have restless nights, do you have bad dreams?
President Assad: You live with this sadness everyday. You live with, how to say, the suffering of the people on a daily basis. Every hour you have this bad news, so it is becoming the atmosphere that you live in. But at the same time, the feeling of the Syrian people that one of the challenges of what is happening not only to fight, not only of political stands, but to live your daily life, and the most important example of that are the families of the martyrs in our country. You visit them, you look at them, they have strong will, and they try to live as much a normal life as they can, so you cannot put yourself in that bubble of sadness. You have to carry on your life and to bring hope to the people, and you should be optimistic that you can solve the problem and bring back Syria to its normality.
Question 27: Is there a space for doubts? For a man in your position?
President Assad: Doubts in what?
Reporter: Doubts about your deeds, about the steps that you made?
President Assad: In the past you mean or?
Reporter: Yes, I mean like if you ask yourself …
President Assad: Of course, you have to revise yourself every day, and if you look at the details, you always have details that you think about, you always say it could be or could have been done in a better way because you do not have maybe full wrong or full right, so what is the percentage? It is something subjective, you change your mind about everything everyday. That depends on the situation, especially when you do not have one separated factor, all the factors are related, so the balance between the different actions that you take is not easy. You keep revising and you keep changing, but I think the only real evaluation and objective evaluation will be after the end of the crisis, because in the middle of the war it is difficult to reach conclusion about everything. So, I think later, after the crisis, we can say exactly where we were wrong. We definitely make mistakes like other humans.
Question 28: Where do you see Syria in ten years?
President Assad: In ten years, the only option that we have is to defeat terrorism. There is no way. Second, to keep the secular society and its different colors. Third, to have reforms in Syria: what the Syrian people want about their political system, and their future, so I think as I said the most important thing is secularism, second more integrated than before the crisis, although it was integrated, but you always have flows in societies. So, that is how I see it and I hope to achieve prosperity.
Question 29: Where do you see yourself in ten years? Can you imagine life outside the presidential office, maybe outside Syria?
President Assad: For me, to be frank, I never cared about the position, and I do not care about it today or in the future. I never thought about it, even before I became president, I never thought about the position. It is about what the Syrian people want. Now in the middle of the war, I am not going to say I am leaving for any reason, unless the Syrian people want me to leave. If there is a war, you have to do your job in order to protect your country; otherwise you are a traitor. That is not accepted for me or for the Syrians. When there is elections, the Syrian people will decide if they want me I will be happy to represent them. If they do not want me I will be happy to leave it, I do not have any problem.
Question 30: For five years, there have been discussions for you leaving the office. Sometimes it seems that it is not a question of if but when. But after five years, yet you are still here. What do you have that leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya did not have?
President Assad: Public support. Whenever you do not have public support, you cannot succeed, you will fail. If you want to talk about those presidents that you mentioned, they did not have public support. And at the same time, they had western support at the very beginning, but when the West noted that there is no public support, they changed their positions and they told them you have to leave, while in Syria the only thing that kept me in this position is public support, nothing else.
Question 31: So, maybe the place in history is the ultimate survivor?
President Assad: Not survivor, I was very honest with the Syrians from the very beginning. I am a very honest person. Second, it is very important for people to know that they are fighting for their country and you are fighting with them, you do not have your own war, they do not fight for me to be president, to be in this position. I do not fight for myself to be in that position. That is something they know very well about me; otherwise if it is my war, if it is to keep my position no one will fight it, you would not have those people fighting and losing their lives for this.
Question 32: The last question, the most difficult one, when will there be peace in Syria?
President Assad: When those countries that I had mentioned: France, the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some others stop supporting those terrorists, the next day the situation will be better and in a few months, you will have full peace in Syria, definitely.
Question 33: Any time frame?
President Assad: I told you in a few months. If they stopped, if they do not stop that, about what the obstacles they are going to put. But in spite of these obstacles, we are going to win, but as to when, this is going to be difficult to answer.
Question 34: Are you optimistic about that?
President Assad: Of course, definitely; otherwise, we would not fight. If we hadn’t got hope we would not have fought all that war as Syrians.
Reporter: Many Thanks Mr. President.
President Assad: Thank you for coming. I enjoyed it very much.
George Desjarlais of West Moberly First Nation speaks at November 2015 Rally against Site C dam in Victoria
by Peace Valley Environment Association/ Sierra Club BC
Dear Friends of the Peace Valley,
Many thanks to the hundreds of you who responded to our request to send letters to Prime Minister Trudeau and his ministers regarding the need to stop Site C. The response was fantastic!
As you know, Site C is not a ‘done deal’ despite the best efforts of BC Hydro and BC’s provincial government.
The fight to Save the Peace River Valley continues to ramp up despite the devastating impacts of the land clearing. In order to keep the momentum of the campaign against the dam going, we need your help.
*P.S. We invite you to enjoy our most recent video which includes footage from the rally in Victoria from last month here:
Treaty 8 First Nations, as well as the farmers and ranchers of the Peace Valley Landowner Association are still fighting through the courts to preserve this beautiful valley for future generations as well as to protect treaty affirmed rights. Not only that, but First Nations’ leaders are in Ottawa *right now*, talking to our new federal government about the need to stop Site C.
*If Canada’s new federal government wants to pass the critical litmus test that it set for itself in the lead-up to the recent election when it promised a new, more respectful relationship with First Nations, saying no to Site C is a great way to begin**.
*- *Grand Chief Stewart Philip, Union of BC Indian Chiefs
One of our steadfast partners in the campaign to stop Site C is *Amnesty International*. Site C was picked as one of the top issues this year for their international *‘Write-for-rights’ letter writing marathon that begins today, December 10th , Human Rights Day*. This means that both the BC and federal government will be getting thousands of letters from around the world asking that Site C dam be stopped!
George Stephanopoulos, ABC News:“You’re increasingly being compared to Hitler. Does that give you any pause at all?”
Donald Trump: “Because what I’m doing is no different than what FDR [did]. FDR’s solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese many years ago. This is a president who was highly respected by all. He did the same thing — if you look at what he was doing it was far worse.”
Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp
When it comes down to core values, you can never make an exception.
This week shows why.
After Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called for a ban against Muslims to enter the United States — all Muslims, including businesspeople, college students, athletes, performers, even U.S. citizens currently living abroad — corporate media and the experts in their contact lists called the idea outlandish.
Primarily, they said it was crazy because it is unprecedented.
For example, NYU law professor Nancy Morawetz told The New York Times: “This is just so antithetical to the history of the United States. I cannot recall any historical precedent for denying immigration based on religion.”
True, there hasn’t been a religious test for admission to the U.S. But in a broader sense, Trump’s idea continues a long tradition of using immigration rules as expressions of American racism and intolerance.
In each case, supporters of blanket exclusions argued that their extraordinary measures were “temporary” (that’s what Trump says) responses to unusual threats, such as the 19th century “yellow peril.” (Asians with “special powers,” Americans were told, were going to crush white culture.) Now we understand that the threats were trivial or nonexistent, that these responses were outlandishly reactionary. At the time, however, idiots and opportunists exploited the masses’ fear and ignorance to whip up paranoia — which set some terrible precedents we’re living with today.
Trump’s no-Muslims-need-apply plan is being criticized harshly. Rightly so, though no one asks the obvious question: If this is about border security, wouldn’t a real Islamic terrorist lie when asked about his religious affiliation, or claim to have renounced Islam, while applying for a visa? After all, some of the 9/11 hijackers were clean-shaven, drank alcohol and hung out in topless bars.
Such weaselry is part the way these things usually go. First there’s some sort of shock. Then a demagogue enters the scene who frames the shock as part of a crisis, followed by overreaction (we must give up some freedoms to stay safe) based on “exceptional times” because “everything has changed. Ultimately sanity returns, thanks to the passage of time, the cooling of passions and moving on to other concerns. This is a pattern we’ve seen before and we will surely see again — mainly because previous overreactions, many of them never renounced, serve as a perfect justification for new crimes against humanity.
“Look at what FDR did many years ago,” Trump said by way of justification, “and he’s one of the most respected presidents.”
So, sadly, true.
During World War II Franklin Roosevelt issued presidential proclamations that allowed officials to declare people of German, Italian and German ancestry to be “enemy aliens” who could be detained without trial. Even though there is no evidence that any Japanese-American ever committed a disloyal act during the war, FDR ordered the internal deportation of tens of thousands from the Pacific Coast to concentration camps. Many lost their homes and their businesses. (Trump hasn’t decided whether he’d create Muslim concentration camps beyond the existing facilities at Guantánamo and overseas.)
There are two problems with FDR’s assault on the basic legal principle that we are innocent until proven guilty: his actions themselves, and the failure of our political and legal culture to repudiate him and what he did.
Had they been reversed and retroactively annulled, the FDR actions cited so approvingly by Trump would nevertheless stand as historical precedent. When something Really Bad happens — a sneak attack on your naval base, planes crashing into buildings, a couple going berserk and shooting up their workplace — all bets are off, including the Constitution.
But they were never annulled, much less reviled. So they also stand as legal precedent.
As Trump says, FDR is considered one of our finest presidents. The New Deal and winning World War II are what we remember. The internment camps, which affected only people with yellow skin, are a minor footnote in history classes. The message is clear: No one cares. If we thought the camps were really so wrong, Roosevelt would stand with Nixon and George W. Bush among our worst leaders, the same way Woodrow Wilson’s accomplishments in World War I and with the League of Nations are now being eclipsed by his racism.
And he should. Send just one kid to a camp, as FDR did to thousands, and yeah, that really does erase the Social Security Act.
The United States has never fully renounced those concentration camps for Japanese-Americans. Forty-three years after the end of World War II, Congress finally issued an apology but only paid token $20,000 payments to each surviving victim. (40,000 of the 120,000 prisoners had died.) No one was compensated for lost property. It’s still a fairly obscure chapter in history; I’d be surprised if 10% of Americans know it happened.
Disgustingly, the legal underpinnings of Roosevelt’s actions remain in full effect, namely the 1944 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the government in Korematsu v. United States. Fear of espionage and sabotage — though completely unsubstantiated — outweighed the right to due process of Japanese-Americans, said a 6-3 majority.
As a rule Americans prefer “to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as Obama said in 2009 about Bush-era torture. The trouble is, the future winds up looking a lot like the past unless that past is truly dead and buried.
Allow the president to fight a war without a formal declaration of war, “exceptionally” violating the Constitution as Congress did in 1950 with Korea, and a future president will do the same in Vietnam. And Panama. And Iraq. And Bosnia. And Afghanistan. And Iraq again.
And now Syria.
Because America never drives a stake driven through the darkest heart of its history, like the Korematsu decision, “exceptions” become precedents that keep coming back.
Several of George W. Bush’s memos calling for the suspension of the ancient right of habeas corpus cited Korematsu in order to justify holding Muslim POWs without charges or access to an attorney at Gitmo. In 2004, the Bush Administration used the precedent to fight a challenge by Gitmo detainees — prisoners who have been languishing under both Bush and Obama. (The Military Commissions Act of 2006 ended habeas corpus, the 800-year-old right to a court trial, for American citizens.)
As recently as 2014, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling remained in effect. It was, he said, “wrong, but it could happen again in wartime.”
Or, under a President Trump, in peacetime.
Just this once.
Because this time is different.
Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower.
TULKAREM - Nine Palestinians were shot by Israeli forces when clashes broke out at the Palestine Technical University in Tulkarem on Thursday, medics said. The Palestinian Red Crescent told Ma'an that the seven were shot in their lower extremities with live fire and taken to the Thabet Ibin Thabet hospital for treatment.
Witnesses said that two youths were also injured with rubber-coated steel bullets, one of whom received fractures to the knee.
Locals told Ma'an that clashes erupted between university students and Israeli forces deployed at a military camp set up on the university’s campus. Sources added that Israeli forces used live fire snipers to suppress the protesters, in addition to firing rubber-coated steel bullets and tear-gas bombs.
An Israeli army spokesperson was not immediately available or comment.
Students of the Palestine Technical University have organized regular marches since the beginning of October to protest Israeli violations and raids onto the university campus. Israeli forces routinely suppress the demonstrations, opening fire on the crowds of students and injuring dozens. They have also detained a number of students during and after clashes.
Campus administrators reported last month that Israeli forces positioned themselves at a temporary base inside the university's campus, from which they open fire on students during clashes.On Wednesday, an alleged Palestinian gunman injured two Israelis in a drive-by shooting in the Tulkarem district. The area has since been put under lockdown by Israeli military forces, who completely sealed the city of Tulkarem, preventing entrance and exit to all residents “except humanitarian cases,” according to an Israeli army spokesperson.
One of those injured in the drive-by was Shaul Nir, a former member of a Jewish extremist group, the Jewish Underground. The group was responsible for carrying out a series of terrorist attacks in the 1980’s and plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to make way for the erection of a Third Jewish Temple.
Fear is the sales pitch for many products: from war on the Euphrates to billion-dollar submarines. Better than toothpaste that makes your teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It’s political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube.
True security for life’s dangers—from a real national health insurance program to protecting teachers' jobs, would take a slice of the profits of the owning classes, the Lockheeds, the JP Morgans. The War on Terror has become class war by other means.
Original Art by Winston Smith,
(updated with Trump)
And who will get us next? Don’t assume they’ll be clutching Korans. Until September 11, 2001, the deadliest terror attack in American history was carried out by an all-American Gulf War veteran.
Outside the war zones we create, organized terror’s power is diminishing, and for politicians, especially The Donald and Ted Cruz, that is a political problem. That’s why this latest mayhem by a sick-o ISIS wannabe couple was such a boon to the panic salesmen in Washington. They needed a new terror fix. Even if it wasn’t the real ISIS, it was enough for candidates to mainline into the body politic a big, fat dose of fear.
Once they have the media all jumped up on a new fear high, some presidential candidates, and sadly too, our President The Drone Ranger, can resume their sales pitch for their two-barrel cure: less liberty, more weaponry.
Our leaders are counting on cowardice in the hearts of the Heart-land. The Republicans’ unstated election campaign slogan is, “They are coming to get us.” Americans, scared for their lives, soil their underpants and waddle to the polls crying, “Donald, save us!”
It began with the September 11 attacks. From his bunker, Dick Cheney created a government that is little more than a Wal-Mart of Fear: midnight snatchings of citizens for uncharged crimes, wars to hunt for imaginary weapons aimed at Los Angeles, DNA data banks of kids and grandmas.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt calmed a nation when he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Today, our would-be presidents all but admit, “We have nothing to sell but fear itself.”
*
Adapted from Armed Madhouse, the New York Times bestseller by Greg Palast.
In Paris COP 21, or what we here at the Real News
is now calling COPOUT 21, is on its tenth day now. Today another draft
of the agreement was released, and you will find our review of the
previous draft with Dimitri on our site under the Global Warning tab.
That's right, Global Warning tab. And today Dimitri's going to be
talking about something quite different, which is Canada. But we will
review the latest draft that was released today tomorrow morning with
Dimitri, and we'll have that available for you. But today with us again
is Dimitri Lascaris, and he's going to take a closer look at Canada's
presence.
Dimitri is a good person to do that, because when he's not doing this he is a [in aud.] class action lawyer with Siskinds in Canada, and he ran as a candidate for the Green Party, and he's also a serving member of the Real News Network board.
Culture shock is something usually associated with a human being feeling a sense of alienation or confusion when arriving in a place that is strange and new.
It would be no surprise then, if difficulty in adapting cropped up as a culture-shock after-effect.
But what if the concept of culture-shock was applied to, say, placing the Beluga whitewhale in a ‘Bubble’ such as an Aquarium setting — whose ancestors had lived in the Ocean Wide for thousands of years?
Without falling into a debate about anthropomorphism, I would like to us to ‘problematize’ the idea of the ‘strangeness’ of having a huge Whitewhale in, arguably, a fishbowl.
An Arctic and sub-Arctic cetacean, this Whitefish is also occasionally referred to, as the melonhead or sea canary.
I do not wish to be delving too deep into a discussion of Anthropology. If you would like to read more on the topic, ‘Beyond the Human’, Samantha Hurn (2012) researches the idea of animal exploitation, animal-rights theory and the anthropological implications of the evolving cultural ideas and concepts about animal personhood. She asks us to think about our own attitudes towards ‘other’ animals on earth (i.e. other-than-human) and relate this to what it might mean to be human. Perspectivism (e.g. Kohn; Descola; De Castro) asks us to take up seeing the world from the point of view of the ‘other’ in the natural world, while at the same acknowledging our thoughts as being, from a human standpoint (Key words; post-humanist, human exceptionalism).
With this all in mind, try and understand the example I have suggested, of ‘the foreignness’ of the fishbowl (Aquarium) from the perspective of the Beluga.
Granted we can never get into a cetacean’s mind, per se, but we can entertain the idea of ‘seeing the world from the perspective of the ‘Beluga’.
Here is an analogy. We’ve all likely observed the poverty and resignation of people who are on the wrong side of the ‘economic divide’. At times I have been there myself. What if this conceptualization of reality was applied to thinking about the Beluga? ‘Seeing’ the Beluga as being on the wrong side of the ‘divide’— whose fate is unlucky enough to have been captured — whose awesome and glorious natural-habitat nature/subjectivity modified into a mere object of money-making and gawk? Might I be able to force an argument that the Beluga is ‘ecologically impoverished’ i.e. trapped in a container?
Is this the Beluga’s ‘Bubble’ reality? It would be no surprise to see the ‘resignation’ of the Beluga in this scenario. I argue that there doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort to connect the ‘poverty’of the Beluga in the Aquarium setting. I mean the poverty of the identity of the Beluga in the Aquarium setting. Is the Beluga not powerless over its fate, resigned to its working conditions?
Applying social theory to an understanding of the captive Beluga might actually prove useful. I could even push for a focus on the idea of ‘discrimination’ against Belugas. Why not? The fate of Beluga has been shown to be ‘poor’. We need to consider Maris’ recent death in Atlanta.
Keeping Belugas in captivity is really more about controlling the population in order to allow money to be made. It is about the circuits of capitalism reaching the Beluga as an object of profit. We don’t hear much of this phenomena at the moment but it underlies much of what is happening. If a Beluga dies, it is always ‘a complete mystery’. Whether it’s Vancouver or Atlanta.
On October 24, 2015, I read, while in Scotland, that “Maris the beluga whale dies suddenly at Georgia Aquarium [emphasis mine] (Source: Faith Karimi, CNN).
We are told that Maris, who was born in the New York Aquarium, in 1994 lived for 10 years at the site in Atlanta and died on October 22, 2015.
It’s well known that Maris had given birth to two babies, both of whom died. The first baby died in 2012 only days after birth, and the second, after less than a month. There are two Belugas left at the Georgia Aquarium – Grayson and Qinu.
Karimi, the reporter from CNN, obtained this quote from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). “Maris was denied her freedom her entire life. She was transferred from one facility to another, and her babies died, one after the other. Whether or not she had a physical ailment that went unnoticed, she was killed by captivity, plain and simple.”— PETA senior vice president Lisa Lange.
Okay, we know the drill. Aquariums argue that belugas in captivity (modified, with the phrase ‘belugas in human care’) enable scientists to better comprehend them in the wild. Latest ‘ethical’ research, needless to say, focuses on how ‘underwater sounds’ affect belugas — including the human-created noise-pollution created by industrial or military activity? The Aquarium is a lab, effectively. Biologists from respected universities are involved in this project and do not have to wrestle with any sort of conundrum relating to ethics. It is taken as a given that this is, ‘good’ research – no questions asked.
Karimi continues to explain that “The data can be combined and applied to help conserve and protect wild belugas from threats in their natural habitats”, according to the Georgia Aquarium website.
It’s clear that the Georgia Aquarium has been very careful to maintain the position that Maris, 21, “showed no signs of illness before her death. She ate and interacted normally with Grayson and Qinu, the other two beluga whales at the aquarium.This is a case of sudden, acute animal death. Our animals receive exceptional care, and our dedicated team of experts responded to her within minutes to render aid.”— Dr. Gregory Bossart, Chief Veterinarian at the Georgia Aquarium.
All the public is told is: “An autopsy is underway”.
End of discussion.
What is curious is that only recently we heard of one Beluga death and then another at Vancouver Aquarium in Canada. It would not have been difficult to put a sentence about that. The second one was said to have been due to pneumonia.
Care2care.com reports “In 2012, the aquarium filed a controversial petition to bring 18 wild-caught belugas here from Russia who would be split up at different facilities under breeding and loan agreements. Unfortunately for those supporting the effort, in September a federal judge shut down the effort”. We’re told there’s pressure on “The National Marine Fisheries Service to declare the population of belugas, suffering from captures in Russia, as depleted, under the Marine Mammal Protection Act”.
In the context of another published CNN news article, “SeaWorld can expand its tank but not breed whales, board rules” all eyes are likely now focused on the Georgia Aquarium’s desire to ‘grow’ belugas.
I have reflected briefly on ‘animal/human’ interaction and the assumptions humans make when beginning to use models of observation. I have asked that readers reconsider the idea of Belugas in labs. I suggest here, that there may be a benefit in actually applying human social theory to the fate of the captive Beluga.
I will leave you with this final thought.The light/colour/frequency spectrum experienced by humans, that, compared with the receptors that cetaceans/animals/birds experience, confines us to a uniquely human world. We can never enter the complete experiential world that enables the ‘others’ in the animal kingdoms and the seas, to exist on the same planet. Technology will never enable us to ‘see’ the colours/frequencies that non-humans experience – not even with Hubble style magnification. To that extent we should understand an inherent disability — so is this the anthropological blind leading the blind?
If we see that our ways of seeing are blind to the ways that the Beluga sees — just one ‘animal’ example — we might be able to better understand their deaths in the aquarium setting. To understand if the Beluga and the baby beluga experiences culture-shock in the Aquarium fishbowl, the ‘Bubble’ must first be burst.
