Monday 1 February 2016

War Is Still Not the Answer

By 

The unelected Saudi monarchy began the year by executing 47 people. It continues to bomb hospitals, homes, and civilians in Yemen as it has done for nearly a year. In October of last year, a few weeks before the election, the Turkish state almost certainly arranged bombings in Ankara that killed more than one hundred people at a peace demonstration. The ruling party won the election, have now accelerated their own war on the Kurdish population of their country, and are targeting anti-war academics. Egypt’s current dictatorship came to power in a coup and cemented its power with a major massacre in August of 2013. Israel has spent the months since October extrajudicially executing Palestinians. When the Swedish Foreign Minister mentioned the possibility of investigating these executions, a former educational secretary in Israel suggested that the Swedish Foreign Minister should be assassinated.
All of this is to say, a quick regional roundup of very recent atrocities suggests that there are few governments in the region that have not lost the moral authority to govern. If Syria’s dictator, Assad, must go, perhaps these other governments must, as well.
But how? What if, in a moment of republicanism, the US decided on regime change in the Saudi Kingdom? What if in a fit of sympathy for the Kurds, Washington were to draw up a plan to bomb Turkey from the air until it withdrew from the Kurdish areas? Or to bomb Cairo, until Sisi resigned and elections were held? Or to bomb Israel until it ended the occupation of Palestinian lands?
Or, if they wanted to avoid open warfare, perhaps Washington could sponsor some republican armed groups in Saudi Arabia, provide advanced weapons and conduct assassinations on behalf of the Kurds and the Palestinians, arm and train the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, all in the name of helping the oppressed?
All of these would be horrible ideas, with horrible outcomes. The result would be tremendous death and suffering, and the intended beneficiaries of these policies, the ordinary people in these countries, would suffer the most. What’s more, it’s not clear – whatever the moral authority of the targeted regimes – that the US (or any other government) has the moral authority to go around deciding, through violence, who governs. Instead, as painful and long as the road to liberation is, it is the task of the oppressed people in the region to liberate themselves from dictatorship and occupation. What outsiders in the West can offer is not war, but solidarity – often in the form of stopping the West from helping (or being) the oppressors.
This used to be somewhat widely understood. After World War II, a body of international law was created and one of the intentions motivating it was to prevent war. International aggression was deemed the supreme crime of WWII, the crime from which all the other crimes flowed. When the US went to war in Vietnam, the antiwar movement spelled out a series of arguments, none of which depended on the angelic nature of the Vietnamese communists that the US was fighting or the Soviet Union that was supporting them. Those arguments included legal (international law), moral (aggression was the wrong means, for the wrong ends, and would cause harm to people), and practical (war would be harmful to US interests, create more enemies, be costly in economic terms and in lives). The US ruling class blamed the antiwar movement for a “Vietnam Syndrome” that constrained the US’s ability to fight wars.
Antiwar arguments held through the 1980s, through decades of covert operations. They were present in 1990/1 when the US first attacked Iraq. There were cracks in the antiwar bloc in 1999, when the US went to war in Kosovo, but among leftists, the antiwar idea remained strong. Even in 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, the opponents of war held to all three lines of argumentation – legal, moral, and practical, despite the horrible nature of the Afghanistan’s Taliban government that was targeted by the US. The movement peaked in 2003, in the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, with millions of people in the streets and the declaration that global public opinion was a second superpower – again, despite the horrible dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Antiwar arguments continued to be made in spite of the nature of the governments targeted. Antiwar movements sought alternatives to aggression, especially the use of international law and diplomacy. They also made a deeper critique of the arms industry and war profiteering, of the power politics of regime change, of racism and indifference to the lives of people bombed, and of war propaganda and deception.
In 2011, the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya faced no meaningful antiwar opposition. Leftists split like they hadn’t in decades over a question that had not arisen even with governments at least as bad or worse than Gaddafi’s (Saddam Hussein, the Taliban) by human rights measures. Hillary Clinton was able was able to quote Julius Caesar (who was writing about a country that his Roman army destroyed and annexed using genocidal warfare, including kidnapping and publicly murdering the opposing general at a parade) and say “we came, we saw, he died”, as a kind of joke. The moves from the beginning of the civil war to the establishment of a no-fly zone to regime change and Gaddafi’s lynching all proceeded with almost no debate or dissent and with amazing speed. A “Libya Cure” was found to the “Vietnam Syndrome”.
Today, the Syria civil war rages with about 10 countries participating, some of whom, including the US, are fighting on both (or perhaps more accurately multiple) sides. The number of people in the West – including leftists – who are arguing that war is not the answer, is almost zero. The number of people – again including leftists – who see war as the answer if it can meet this or that imaginary criterion is much higher. People who oppose regime change through war are ridiculed as naive or unprincipled.
But are they (we) ridiculous? Has the record of war really changed so much since 2011? Did Libya really disprove the many arguments that antiwar movements used to hold to? Is Syria a case of the success of war as a strategy for accomplishing something? Something other than more war and more destruction?
Here are some easy predictions: In the years ahead, we are promised austerity, poverty, violence, and ecological catastrophe. If societies want to deal with any of these problems, they will also have to deal with the problem of war, because through all this, we will also have war. As a result, people will need to develop antiwar movements. The arguments that those movements will rely on will be the same ones that are mocked today, the very same ones that used to be more widely accepted, but have somehow been forgotten.
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based author and blogger.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/War-Is-Still-Not-the-Answer-20160129-0004.html

Top Ten Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Can Win

Not just the nomination. The presidency.


by


Late last year, as I was making my way by Capital Bikeshare across the Washington National Mall on an unseasonably warm December night, the phone in my jacket pocket dinged. It was a text from a longtime pal of mine, Jack Democrat. Jack reads The Washington Post every day. He follows the 2016 presidential campaign closely. He is well-informed, erudite and like me, a lifetime Democrat.
Jack was replying to my invitation to meet up at a December 19th Saturday night debate watch soiree, sponsored by “DC for Bernie Sanders.” He declined my invitation—was not subtle in telling me why: 
Hey Tad. I still think that if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders, they will lose in an historic landslide—45 to 49 states. He is way, way too far left for most of the American electorate. It causes me no joy to say this, but I even think Trump would beat Sanders by a decisive margin. Rubio might win all 50 states. Enjoy the holidays and the debate! Cheers, Jack
Today, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, there are millions of Democratic voters who are thinking just like Jack Democrat. Democratic voters who may like Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton to varying degrees, but who are most interested in nominating a candidate who will retain the White House for the Democrats. Democratic voters whose greatest concern is preventing any Republican president from choosing two or three Supreme Court justices during the next four years. And Democratic voters who—like Jack Democrat not advancing any elaborate explanation or analysis—simply take for granted that if our party nominates a candidate “too far left,” we will lose in “an historic landslide.”

There’s hard polling data to support this assessment as well. While 83% of Democratic-leaning voters see Hillary Clinton as electable, only 54% say the same about Bernie Sanders.

Indeed, the Hillary campaign overtly makes the point—even to the point of admitting that some voters may prefer her opponent. A January tweet sent followers to the tale of 19-year-old Alex Mendola of New Hampshire, who said: “If Bernie won the primary and lost the general election, I think that would be a disaster. So even if (I) don’t like Hillary as much as Bernie, I feel more confident that she would win the general election.”

If Bernie Sanders is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, we need to change the minds of Jack Democrat and Alex Mendola. If we don’t, Hillary Clinton will win that nomination. Jack and Alex’s thesis will never be tested. And we will lose perhaps our once-in-a-lifetime chance to elect the most progressive major party candidate in American history as President of the United States. 

If you are a Bernie supporter today, what you need is ammunition. Not to persuade your Democratic friends that Bernie is desirable—that’s another argument—but to persuade them that he is electable. 

And you can. Because Jack and Alex are wrong. If the Democratic Party nominates Bernie Sanders as its candidate for president, he will win the White House in November 2016.

Here are ten reasons why:


REASON #10: THE POLLS SAY OTHERWISE. 
The most obvious response to Jack and Alex’s contention is that poll after poll shows something very different. In hypothetical November matchups between Bernie and various Republican nominees, it is not the case that he loses in a landslide. Nor is it the case that he loses in a squeaker. Bernie Sanders wins.
Moreover—and this is the most salient point for Democrats deciding whom to support in caucuses and primaries—Bernie often performs far better than Hillary against these hypothetical opponents.
A single example. Here is the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll on January 10th: In Iowa, Bernie Sanders defeats Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by 5 points, and ties with Marco Rubio. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, defeats Trump by only 8 points, loses to Cruz by 4 points, and loses to Rubio by 5 points. The Sanders/Clinton disparity in New Hampshire was even more pronounced. There, Bernie defeats Trump by 19 points, Cruz by 18 points, and Rubio by 9 points. Hillary, however, defeats Trump in New Hampshire by just 1 point, loses to Cruz by 4 points, and loses to Rubio by 12 points. 
So if the primary criterion determining Jack and Alex’s primary vote is the electability of the Democratic candidate in November, these polls—and there are many like them nationwide—unambiguously suggest that Bernie Sanders is significantly more likely to win the general election than Hillary Clinton.
But these polls are not likely to seal the deal with Jack and Alex. And frankly, they shouldn’t. The general election is still nine months away. Too much will happen during the next nine months —in both the dynamics of the presidential campaign and the world beyond. John McCain led Barack Obama by 3 points in exactly this same kind of hypothetical matchup in January 2008—long before either had secured their party nominations.  But in the actual November 2008 election, Obama beat McCain by 7 points.
Fortunately there are many other reasons to believe that if Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic Party nomination, he will also win the presidency in November.

REASON #9: LANDSLIDES ARE FOR INCUMBENTS. 
The scenario that Jack Democrat suggests—not just a Bernie Sanders loss but a landslide loss—is particularly unlikely if history is our guide. Why?
Because since the White House was occupied more than 80 years ago by FDR, the only time we have seen such blowout elections is when the sitting president was running for president. Go ahead and google it for yourself. The only landslides—let’s call that roughly 60%-40%—in modern times? Incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt over Alf Landon in 1936. Incumbent President Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964. Incumbent President Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972. And incumbent President Ronald Reagan over Walter Mondale in 1984.
We can’t say many things for sure about the November 2016 election, but we do know for sure that the incumbent president won’t be a candidate.

REASON #8: LANDSLIDES MAY BE A THING OF THE PAST. 
That last real landslide, in 1984, was nearly a third of a century ago now. Since then, our presidential contests have become dominated by the "red state/blue state" reality. George F. Will recently pointed out that in the 1976 presidential election, 20 of our 50 states were won by five points or less. This means that during the campaign they were essentially up for grabs. That number in 2012? Only four. At least 40 of America's 50 states—driven for the most part by sheer demographics—seem virtually guaranteed now to go reliably red or blue. To choose just one example, here are the last six presidential election vote totals for the largest state in the union, California, with no less than 12% of the country's population and fully 55 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
1992: 46%D – 33%R. 1996: 51%D – 38%R. 2000: 53%D - 42%R. 2004: 54%D – 44%R. 2008: 61%D – 37%R. 2012: 60%D – 37%R.
Traditional battleground states like New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (combined electoral votes: 80) have shown similar patterns of increasing Democratic dominance during the past quarter century. Other states like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York (combined electoral votes: 50) have been for the most part solidly blue for considerably longer than that.
Sure, Marco Rubio might find some way to reverse this trajectory, and to win California. It's perhaps even possible that he or some other Republican could "win all 50 states." But it seems far, far more likely that whether the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or Kim Kardashian for president, they will start the general election race well north of 200 electoral votes. Virtually guaranteed.  

REASON #7: RECENT DEMOCRATIC DOMINANCE IN PRESIDENTIAL CONTESTS. 
It is tempting to conclude that the modern American presidency now runs in pretty regular cycles from party to party. Eight years of Obama (D). Eight years before that of Bush (R). Eight years before that of Clinton (D). Twelve years before that of Reagan and Bush (R).
That’s one way of looking at it.
But let’s try another. Since 1992, the GOP has won only one single non-incumbent presidential race. And when was that? In the year 2000, when—even with many Democrat-leaning voters casting their ballots for Ralph Nader—Al Gore still defeated George Bush by more than half a million ballots in the nationwide popular vote! (And, still in the minds of many, in the Electoral College as well.) The Nader experience, of course, is why the “Run Bernie Run” initiative launched by Progressive Democrats of America in 2014 called explicitly for Sanders to run for president as a Democrat.
It is rarely wise to extend alternative history speculations beyond the boundaries of one’s neighborhood bar. Still, it seems not wholly unreasonable to hypothesize that but for the twin 2000 peculiarities of the Nader candidacy and the butterfly ballots in Florida, the Democrats might have won the last six presidential elections in a row. Rather handily.
That’s another way of looking at it.   
Other than 2004—when their candidate was the incumbent president—the Republican Party hasn’t unambiguously won the White House since 1988. And even in 2004, with all the traditional advantages of incumbency, George W. Bush was only able to defeat John Kerry by 3 points.  The track record of recent history suggests that the Democratic Party may now have forged a solid and enduring structural advantage in presidential contests. Demographics are destiny, they say, and—in national presidential elections at least—the demographics of the American electorate appear to be running more and more favorably toward the Democrats.

REASON #6: WE MAY BE AT THE DAWN OF A NEW WORLDWIDE PROGRESSIVE ERA. 
Or perhaps in the Western world. Or at least in the English and French speaking world!
Last summer a longtime far left backbench MP, Jeremy Corbyn, stunned the UK's political establishment by triumphing in the Labour Party leadership election. The consensus explanation the morning after? He moved people who had never before engaged in political action to show up and participate. (Sound familiar?)
This was, however, was only a party election. And many British pundits make the case today (much like Jack and Alex!) that Mr. Corbyn remains wholly unelectable in a nationwide election for prime minister. Since Tory Prime Minister David Cameron was just re-elected last spring, it will be awhile before we know whether those voices are right or wrong.
Yet in 2012 French voters ousted their center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy, and replaced him with Francois Hollande—the leader of the French Socialist Party. And then just last fall our great neighbor to the north ousted their Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and replaced him with Justin Trudeau—the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Perhaps we can't call this all a broad new transnational progressive wave quite yet. But it doesn’t seem wholly irrelevant to the prospects for a candidacy of the left in this country. Doesn’t it suggest that the winds of world history just may be blowing in our direction? Perhaps we can dare to dream that—after Bernie Sanders takes the oath of office in January 2017—most everyone will be talking about an emerging new worldwide progressive era after that!  

REASON #5: THE LIABILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF HILLARY CLINTON. 
A narrative emerged this past fall, in whispers among the Democratic establishment, that Hillary Clinton may simply not be very skilled and gifted—as a politician. Policy expertise and public affairs acumen, which Hillary possesses in abundance, are not the same abilities one needs to perform successfully as a retail politician. If she’s having this much trouble during the primary season, how do you think she’s going to do against the Republican attack machine next fall?  
There is, too, the giant unknown about the course of the ongoing FBI investigation into Hillary's practices as Secretary of State. Shortly after the New Year the FBI expanded its investigation beyond email—to examine whether the connections between Clinton Foundation donations and State Department actions might amount to “public corruption.” Then, on the Friday before Iowa, the State Department revealed for the first time that Hillary Clinton’s private server contained at least 22 emails classified as “top secret.” AndThe Hill newspaper reported that former FBI officials had begun speculating that an indictment of the former Secretary of State might come “during the heat of the general election campaign.” What if we choose her as our presidential nominee—and then this all blows up?
Although it should bring us no joy to say this, a case can be made that so many years after Hillary Clinton first emerged onto the American scene, she is now both so damaged and so flawed that she is the one who might "lose in an historic landslide" in the November election. The verdict is arguably in. The jury appears to have spoken. Her husband is one of the most gifted politicians in American history. She is not.
Fortunately, the Democratic Party has someone else running who is.

REASON #4: BERNIE IS UNELECTABLE AGAINST ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE?Jack Democrat may be right that Marco Rubio, or another "establishment" Republican, may well have a better chance to win the November election. But for the past several months, in poll after poll, the two frontrunners for the Republican nomination have stubbornly remained the ultraconservative ideologue Ted Cruz and the chauvinistic demagogue Donald Trump. Every day it appears more and more likely that one of these two extreme figures will emerge as the Republican nominee. Brent Budowsky of The Hill has suggested that the “intensity of opinion” of their supporters—motivating them to actually show up—means that they both may do even better than their polling numbers in the early states. But, Budowsky continues, if one of them is actually nominated, the chasm between their views and those of most Americans—and the millions who would passionately turn out to vote not just for the Democrat but against the Republican—may well lead to a landslide, for our side. Indeed, in almost an exact parallel to the Democratic fear that a Bernie candidacy would end up “like George McGovern in 1972,” longtime Republican fundraiser Austin Barbour says: “If we’re not careful and we nominate Trump, we’re looking at a race like Barry Goldwater in 1964.”
Indeed, Bernie himself has said: “I would love, love, love to run against Donald Trump … It would be a dream come true.”
But it won’t come true unless we make him our nominee.

REASON #3: BERNIE HAS DECISIVELY DEFEATED MANY REPUBLICAN OPPONENTS.  
Hillary Clinton has run only two general election races against Republicans in her life. For U.S. Senate, in the state of New York, in the fall of 2000 and again in the fall of 2006. She won them both. Yet it is fair to say in both that she faced only token Republican opposition—non-heavyweights, candidates with perhaps 10% of her own virtually universal name recognition.
Bernie Sanders, by contrast—with hardly the same name recognition (even still) as the former FLOTUS—has fought and won a full 14 general election campaigns against Republicans in the state of Vermont. That's 4 races for Burlington mayor, 8 races for the U.S. House, and 2 races for the U.S. Senate.
Moreover, he has successfully won over Republican and centrist voters in many of these races. And that track record seems to be carrying over to his presidential campaign as well. Want to know the main reason Bernie performed better than Hillary against those various hypothetical Republican opponents ("Reason #10" above)? According to Marist polling director Lee Miringoff, because in each separate matchup he consistently did better with independents! Now there are several Facebook groups that exist exclusively for lifetime Republicans who intend this year to vote for Bernie Sanders. And others for independents. And others for longtime nonvoters.  
Because today, it's hardly only hardcore Democrats who feel ever more tightly squeezed by the economic realities of 21st century American capitalism. It's likely not only liberals who laughed darkly at the recent Onion headline: “Man Dying From Cancer Spends Last Good Day On Phone With Insurance Company.” And it can’t be only citizens “on the far left” who feel alienated and marginalized and completely disengaged from a broken American political system.
So if the Democrats are looking for their most seasoned and proven candidate for the November election? The candidate who has run and won a great many November elections against Republican opponents? And the candidate who, right now, is showing by far the greater crossover appeal?
That candidate is Bernie Sanders.

REASON #2: THE TRIUMPH OF TURNOUT. 
There's a strong argument to be made that more and more elections today are won not by "tacking to the center," but instead by appealing to the base. That is arguably why the Republicans have built such significant majorities in statehouses, state legislatures, and the United States Congress—because they do a far better job at motivating their base in these lower turnout elections.
I know an awful lot of Republicans and I know an awful lot of Democrats. But how many authentic "independents" do you actually know who regularly find themselves genuinely undecided between Republicans and Democrats? It’s hard to believe that there are all that many of these mythical unicorns.
But there surely are, on the other hand, millions and millions of lifetime Democrats and lifetime Republicans—who don't bother to show up when their candidates don't give them a clear, compelling, exciting reason to do so. It’s worth recalling that the last time we chose a candidate based on electability we got John Kerry—whose failure to generate any excitement cost us the 2004 election.  When the Democrats have achieved electoral successes in recent years, the data indicate that these victories were driven by fired up women, powerfully motivated people of color, and unapologetic liberals—not by winning over swing voters.
I know an awful lot of people who are filled with enthusiasm and zeal about the Bernie candidacy. These are the people who will give him not only their votes in November, but their money and shoe leather in September and October as well. But how many people do you know who feel the same kind of passion and intensity about Hillary Clinton?
The fiery progressive Bernie Sanders could fire up the Democratic base in a way that few Democratic candidates have done in our lifetimes. The young people who have flocked in such waves to Bernie’s rallies may actually vote in meaningful numbers this time. Why? Because Bernie is the first candidate who has ever spoken to them in a meaningful way about the multiple failings of what Harold Meyerson calls “the gig economy.” “Young Americans,” says Meyerson, “may have heard their nation once had a middle-class majority, but (they) have never experienced it themselves.” The vastly higher voter turnout rates in so many other countries around the world shows just how many potential American voters are out there—waiting to be mobilized. Bernie is the kind of authentic and inspirational candidate who could move millions and millions of Americans—both hard core Democratic base voters and new voters—to show up in November 2016.
But that will only happen if we nominate him as our candidate for president.  

REASON #1: THIS IS ONE WEIRD YEAR.If anyone tells you they have with complete certainty “figured out what’s going on” in this election cycle, don’t let them sell you a skyscraper at 57th and 5th. “Apparently this is an F you election,” said the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman on the radio, with some exasperation, on the Friday before Iowa. No one really knows what to make of the twin ascendancies of a narcissistic business mogul in one party and an avowed socialist in the other. But surely, for all their differences—one appealing to tribal insularity and the other to the better angels of our nature—both candidates are tapping into a deep societal disaffection and alienation, profound uncertainty about rapid global change, bottomless socioeconomic worries and struggles, a dismissal of the tired old left/right spectrum, fear about the future, and a belief that Washington as it presently operates seems incapable of doing anything meaningful about any of it.  
This suggests strongly that the 45th American president will not be a conventional, centrist, incremental, insider politician. That president will likely be instead someone with a profound authenticity, someone who really gets those profound anxieties, and someone who is offering a vision equal in magnitude to the enormous challenges of our unfolding 21st century.
Isn’t the Democratic candidate with the best chance to win the November election the one who best fits that bill?
So there you go, Jack and Alex. If it turns out you actually prefer Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, based on such things as ethics, character, temperament, honesty, policy positions, leadership capacity, and ultimate potential to improve not just American lives but the universal human condition—then in the primaries and caucuses you should vote for Hillary Clinton. But if, based on those same kinds of criteria, you find Bernie Sanders to be the superior choice—then you should vote for Bernie Sanders.
Because if the framers of our constitution had anything in mind, it was that when you pull that curtain closed behind you, you ought to vote for who you want (today), not for who you think other people will want (nine months from today).
Because as six-time presidential candidate Norman Thomas said, "I am not the champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won."
And most importantly?
Because in the November election, Bernie Sanders can win.
Tad Daley
Tad Daley, a speechwriter and policy advisor to former Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, is author of the book APOCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World from Rutgers University Press. Follow him on Twitter @TheTadDaley.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/31/top-ten-reasons-why-bernie-sanders-can-win

ISIS Suicide Bombings Kill 60 in Damascus


Scores Wounded in Attack Near Key Shi'ite Shrine


by Jason Ditz, 
A car bomb and a pair of suicide bombings targeted the Sayeda Zeinab shrine area of Damascus today, killing at least 60 people and wounding scores of others. Many of the wounded are in serious condition, so the death toll may still rise.
The Sayeda Zeinab shrine is the holiest Shi’ite shrine in Syria. At least 25 of the slain were said to have been Shi’ite fighters from various militias. During the Syrian Civil War, many militias from Iran, along with Hezbollah from Lebanon, have fought alongside the military against Sunni Islamist factions.
ISIS was quick to claim credit for the attack, one of the largest incidents in Damascus in recent months. The attack came amid talks in Geneva which aim for a unity government, uniting them with moderate rebels to fight against ISIS.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the bombings targeted a military bus carrying a militia to the district to change the guard. Many of the foreign militias in Syria are used to guard holy sites.
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/01/31/isis-suicide-bombings-kill-60-in-damascus/

We Can't Let it Be... More Plastic Than Fish in Our Sea

by


Underneath the floating debris in the Pacific Ocean. (Photo: NOAA – Marine Debris Program)
News that plastic pollution will exceed all the fish in the sea by 2050 is beyond appalling -- it's unacceptable. We need bold action to stop plastic garbage from choking out ocean life.

One ocean and two big problems: We need to end overfishing and confront our throwaway society. Both goals are about reducing our consumption and letting our oceans recover.

The statistics -- from a Jan. 19 study by the World Economic Forum -- are alarming. Not only is plastic projected to overtake fish by 2050, but plastic production is also expected to consume 20 percent of all oil by then, up from 6 percent in 2014. So single-use packaging is not only polluting our oceans but it is also driving our oil addiction.

Curbing fossil fuels isn't just about combating climate change. It's also about preventing oil spills, air pollution, and slowing the flow of cheap oil into disposable plastic packaging. Sea turtles, whales, seals and birds are all threatened by destructive fishing and oil production -- and again by plastic pollution.

But wait: It gets even worse. This ocean plastics study came out on the same day as another important one showing that overfishing has depleted the ocean more than three times faster than previously understood. That means plastic pollution could crowd out fish even sooner.

This fishing study for the first time calculated illegal and recreational catch not included in official figures. It found that catch peaked in 1996 at 130 million tons, rather than the 86 million ton total recorded by the United Nations that year. Since then the global catch has declined by 1.2 million tons per year -- three times the rate officials believe -- because of overfishing.

We simply can't keep cranking out plastic packaging without it overwhelming the sources of life as we know it.And we're replacing that displaced ocean life with mountains of plastic that absorb a deadly cocktail of environmental toxins. It swirls into the North Pacific Gyre to create the largest garbage dump in the world, or it's eaten by little fish that are then eaten by bigger fish, working their way onto our plates.

Our oceans and our economy are on a collision course. We simply can't keep cranking out plastic packaging without it overwhelming the sources of life as we know it. The plastics report shows the use of plastics increased 20-fold in the past half-century and is expected to double again in the next 20 years.

"We live in a defining moment in history," Mogens Lykketoft, president of the United Nation's 70th General Assembly, wrote in the foreword of that report.

We can define our world by our consumption, hauling away the fish and replacing them with our plastic waste. Or we can define it by our capacity for conservation and regain the natural balance that we've lost. We need bold leadership that will pledge to keep the oil in the ground, we need strong international fishing rules and enforcement, and we need to ban single-use plastics or force big plastic to deal with its waste. The ocean is sensitive, and it's going to collapse if we use it as a dump or lawless fishing ground.
Miyoko Sakashita is a senior attorney and director of the Oceans Project at the Center for Biological Diversity.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/31/we-cant-let-it-be-more-plastic-fish-our-sea

Why Should Aamir Speak For Muslims?

The careful construction of a monolithic conception about the world of Islam in contrast to the worlds of other faiths make sweeping generalizations and imposition of collective guilt fairly easy.



The victimhood of Muslims in India and in the international scenario is not a figment of imagination. The very identity of being a Muslim, regardless of whether you are a nominal or practicing Muslim, exposes one to myriad difficulties in the current international political milieu. The situation in India is no better. These difficulties range from direct hostility in certain circumstances to thinly veiled charges of complicity in the countless acts of barbarity perpetrated in the name of Islam or Muslims in various parts of the globe. While it is easy to deal with the direct hostility from the many groups whose antipathy towards Islam or Muslims is unmistakably open, the subtle and supposedly well-intentioned allusions one confronts in liberal environs is rather insidious.

The recent conversation between Anant Goneka and Aamir Khan at the Ramnath Goenka Awards ceremony is a perfect example of how the mere fact of carrying a Muslim name confers upon you a universal sense of vicarious accountability for the many abominations that you have had no truck with. After cleverly bringing in the point about terrorism being linked to Islam and Muslims across the world, Goenka asks Aamir: "Do you think it is time that people like you have a more strong voice when it comes to representing the moderate Muslims?."  Visibly discomfited, the actor says: "I feel very uncomfortable when you call me modern Muslim. I feel first of all why should I represent anyone and if I have to, why I should only represent just Muslims and not everyone. You know, so in the capacity of myself as an individual if I am representing my country or society then I am representing everyone. I will stand for everyone. My birth may be in a Muslim household but if I speak it’s for everyone."

Did/will Amitabh Bachchan (or even Anupam Kher) ever face a similar question about representing moderate Hindus against the backdrop of growing Hindu fanaticism? Why is Aamir Khan reduced to his birth identity as a Muslim and asked to represent moderate Muslims while others are accorded identities transcending the accidents of their birth? After all, the things that made Aamir a celebrity had nothing to do with Islam, or Muslims, or his religious identity. In fact; one could even say that he achieved what he did in spite of his religious identity, by the sheer power of his talent and skills. Why should such people, who transcended the specificities of their congenital identities, be repeatedly reminded that they are essentially and inescapably only what the accidents of their birth determined? Why is it that such vicarious sense of accountability is not expected from people who carry other birth marks? Does it not imply that even the custodians of liberal values in our midst are hardly free from some of the prejudices that define the hardcore Hindutva elements?

The reasons for this sad state of affairs are not difficult to identify. First; Barbarities perpetrated and horrendous inanities mouthed by some Muslims in the name of Islam constitute a lion's share of the news in the world today. It makes hardly any sense to claim that the faith had nothing to do with all these, for the wholesale merchants of death and the issuers of horrendous statements and edicts never fail to invoke it every time they act or speak. Second; the careful construction of a monolithic conception about the world of Islam in contrast to the worlds of other faiths make sweeping generalisations and imposition of collective guilt fairly easy. "Malicious generalisations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the west; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot be said about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians," wrote Edward Said in 1996 in a new forward to his 1981 book 'Covering Islam'.
Twenty years later, Said's assertion rings even truer. What is not often taken note of is, however, the fact that the mainstream Muslim organisations of all hues contributed as much as their foes did in the perpetuation of a monolithic conception of Islam and the Muslims. The internecine rivalries and schisms within the faith and the resultant violence and acrimony have historically been more devastating than any conflict involving Muslims and non-Muslims. It is, therefore, crucially important to debunk the monolithic notion about Islam and Muslims in order to fight the now universal tendency to burden all Muslims with collective guilt for the dastardly actions of a few who consistently grab the headlines at the expense of the large majority of Muslims.

In doing so, it is not enough for the Muslims to add their voices to the noises emerging from the world's mealy-mouthed and hollow condemnation industry. Unless the faith is interpreted in ways that are radically different from those of the murderous thugs and misanthropic clerics, there is little hope that the situation will ever improve for the better.

Shajahan Madampat is a writer based in the UAE. 


http://www.outlookindia.com/article/why-should-aamir-speak-for-muslims/296558

Time to heed warnings of Syriza’s ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis

After serving in the Georgia Legislature, in 1992, Cynthia McKinney won a seat in the US House of Representatives. She was the first African-American woman from Georgia in the US Congress. In 2005, McKinney was a vocal critic of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and was the first member of Congress to file articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. In 2008, Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination for the US presidency.

The former finance minister of Greece says people must work to save democracy from capitalism, otherwise the voracious economic system will completely devour the fragile political philosophy, he warned in a recent talk.
I was in attendance at a conference in Beirut last year when it was reported that Syriza, the left-wing Greek party, originally founded in 2004, had just done the impossible—or at least what we all thought was impossible. There was talk about ending austerity measures and Greece leaving the Eurozone: Grexit. Surely, a people’s victory in the US was just around the bend?
At that moment, I felt hope that Athens would lead Europe and finally the United States in a people-focused policy that rejected neoliberalism and the nostrums of banksters. Indeed, after Syriza surged in Greece, Podemos made its appearance in Spain; Jeremy Corbyn won the nod for leader of the UK Labour Party; a leftist governing coalition was voted into power in Portugal. Suddenly, it seemed that the people finally had austerity on the run. The events in Europe gave me hope for a resurgence of progressive politicians in the US.
And then the unthinkable occurred: Syriza dashed my hopes when they sat down at the negotiating table with Germany and the banksters to ease terms on the repayment of Greece’s debts to the EU. Yes, after the Greek people had voted Syriza into power, and then voted a resounding “No” to austerity policies in a referendum, Syriza was now at the bargaining table, agreeing to their demands. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing: A real-time betrayal of its own values as well as the people by a political party created to be anti-austerity.
I asked those around me, “What part of ‘n-o’ don’t they understand?” Confused and disappointed, I reached out to my favorite experts on these matters, Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown, and they comforted me with the opinion that my instincts were right on the money: Syriza did not have to take the course of austerity that it had chosen.
The year 2015 started with hope as a result of the Syriza victory; it ended with the betrayed Greeks throwing firebombs to protest EU-imposed pension reform while Syriza privatized fourteen airports and sold them to the Germans as part of the bailout scheme.
Meanwhile, internally, Syriza was coming apart over the deal; the angst that I felt as an outsider was also shared by some inside the party. Eventually some members left the party and the government. One of those who left was Yaris Varoufakas, who is still fighting for a more equitable economic system, which will ultimately destroy capitalism if things continue the way they are, he has warned.
In a December TED Talk in Geneva (Capitalism will eat democracy — unless we speak up), Yaroufakas asked the audience to imagine two very high piles of money, one representative of debt and the other of idle cash stashed away by the wealthy. He said that there is approximately $5 trillion dollars sitting around doing absolutely nothing to invigorate the economies of the US the UK and the Eurozone; stagnant wages, unemployment, low aggregate demand, increased pessimism are the end result. He says that this is his main complaint about capitalism.
According to Varoufakis, all of the idle cash sloshing around should be invested into people and the things people need to make the economy grow and enhance their well-being. Investments in technology today can protect the Earth today and tomorrow.

Democracy under attack

However, the former finance minister did not limit his talk to discussions about the economy. He also waded into the murky depths of politics, where he issued a wake-up call to democracy.
“Capitalism will eat democracy unless the people speak up,” he warned.
He told the audience that today’s practice of “democracy” preserves the economic sphere for the few and separates it from the political sphere in which the many can participate. This separation of the economic and political spheres has led to, in his words, “the colonizing of the political sphere” by the economic sphere. This, according to Varoufakis, explains why Western democracies no longer work for the people. He believes that power has now migrated from the political sphere to the economic sphere.
I decided to test that theory on the 2016 US Presidential elections, and something unusual emerged: In large measure, individuals of immense wealth are the private backers of the public political personalities vying to win the Presidential election in November 2016.
For example, Marco Rubio has Norman Braman as his closest and most important backer. Hillary Clinton has Haim Sabanas one of her top donors; Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire powerhouse who kept Newt Gingrich’s presidential aspirations alive long after they were comatose, is still trying to decide which candidate he will back in the Republican primary.
At the same time, billionaire Donald Trump is self-financing his Presidential bid and intimates of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg leaked that he is willing to spend one billion dollars in his still-to-be-announced independent presidential run. This is the kind of relationship about which Varoufakis is speaking. He says that the economic sphere has been cannibalizing the political sphere to such an extent that it is even now undermining itself.
"Capitalism is like a population of predators that are so successful at decimating the prey that they must feed on, that in the end they starve," Varoufakis said during his TED Global talk. "Similarly, the economic sphere has been colonizing and cannibalizing the political sphere to such an extent that it is undermining itself, causing economic crisis."
He concludes that the more capitalism succeeds in taking the demos out of democracy the more inequality will rise and the economy will collapse.
His solution? Put the demos back into democracy and reunite the economic and political spheres with the political sphere in charge. In this space, I have called for the transformation of our economy to align more with our values. I have asked the people to dream again and imagine a better political system that actually solves the problems that confront us all today. I am working now for the elimination of the right versus left paradigm and for all of us to try to wrap our heads around a right versus wrong, values-based way of assessing public policy positions today.
In other words, ask: “Is it right for US policy to still be the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet today, as Dr. King characterized it in the 1960s?” And if we can agree that the answer is “No,” then what can we do together to change that? I am willing to work with anyone who wants to change the violence profile of the United States—to the rest of the world and also at home. And therefore, I’m still hoping that Varoufakis’s voice, combined with that of the other leftist parties now governing key countries in Europe, will inspire the people of the US to believe in themselves once again and the better, more peaceful future that we can create—together.
Varoufakis has unleashed a warning; I hope many will heed his call.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/330780-warning-economy-varoufakis-syriza/

I am a Hindu

SHEKHAR KAPUR

I am Hindu, and very proud to be one .. but I have often wrestled with that question. What does it mean to be a Hindu?

 I have spoken to some of the best minds, the most spiritual minds.  I have journeyed to many places in my quest. and I have to come to believe that the best way to describe Hinduism is to say what it is not. For how do you describe a ‘teaching’ that encompasses all possibilities and all of eternity, refusing to describe the infinite in finite terms ? That describes all of life and all thought as both illusion and reality at the same time ? There is no science , no thought, no possibility that Hindu thought does not embrace ? So there is only one way to describe Hinduism for me – although it may mean many things to other people – is that Hinduism is a search, a yearning, to find that which is infinite within ones own self, a yearning to experience that which is Eternal…

…So what is Hinduism not ? It is not centralized, it not an organization, it is not political. It can never be. For every time there has been an attempt to organize Hinduism as a political force, it becomes by nature a finite structured force that bears no relationship to the idea for a search for the infinite.

So to those people that ask why we cannot declare India a Hindu state I ask them to understand and trace back to what a Hindu state is ? And they will soon realize they are looking for an identity. And the very basis of Hinduism negates the idea of identity. For it is a search for ourselves beyond that which is called ‘Identity’.

Which begs the question, why we cannot accept our identity as
 just Indian ?

http://linkis.com/shekharkapur.com/blo/Wa8IY