SitRep: The Generals Take Washington; Russia Hints at War with Ukraine

BY PAUL MCLEARY, ADAM RAWNSLEY-NOVEMBER 30, 2016

Here come the generals. After more than a year of criticizing and ridiculing U.S. military officers for their failures, President-elect Donald Trump has spent much of his time not taken up by Twitter since the election huddling with some of the most famous generals and admirals of the post-9/11 era.

Retired general Mike Flynn has already been tapped as Trump’s national security advisor, and now, David Petraeus appears to be competing with Mitt Romney for the job of Secretary of State. “Petraeus is definitely in the mix, and I believe you’ll have a decision by the weekend,” a person with knowledge of the vetting told FP’s John Hudson.

The diplomatic corps is split on Petraeus, and some have bristled that he doesn’t fully understand what they do. “Petraeus didn’t always give diplomats in war zones as much respect as military personnel — even when the troops were of lower rank,” one current U.S. Foreign Service officer told Hudson, while others who worked with him in Iraq sang his praises.

Another former four-star in the mix, retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, appears to be the frontrunner for the Defense Secretary job. While Mattis “could be a mature voice in the room,” a congressional staffer told FP’sDan De Luce and Paul McLeary, he also shares some hawkish views on Iran with many in the incoming administration.

“But unlike other hawks advising Trump, Mattis is more realistic about U.S. options in the Middle East, former colleagues said. He recognizes that a unilateral bid to dump the Iran nuclear deal — which was negotiated between major powers and Tehran — might harm American interests. Instead, the colleagues said, Mattis probably would argue for enforcing every provision of the nuclear deal, insisting that Iran abide by the agreement “to the letter.”

Mistake in Syria. American military officials admitted Tuesday they mistakenly killed at least 15 Syrian soldiers in a September airstrike near Deir Ezzour, but said the bombing run was the result of a series of mistakes and miscommunications.

U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard “Tex” Coe, the officer who oversaw an investigation into the incident, told reporters at the Pentagon that intel assets followed a car thought to belong to the Islamic State to a position with dozens of troops, and then U.S., Danish, British and Australian aircraft rocked the site with 34 precision-guided munitions and 380 rounds of 30mm cannon fire over the course of an hour. Coe added that the death toll was likely higher than 15, but analysis of video could only confirm that number. Other analysts in Syria have put the toll closer to 80.

Budget battle.  Lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate on Tuesday finalized a $618.7 billion defense policy bill that reduces the numbers of jets and ships included in previous versions of the bill, but adds more troops to the budget submitted earlier this year by President Barack Obama. Army end-strength jumps to 476,000 from the current 460,000 in 2017, and the Marine Corps inches upward to 185,000 from 182,000 under the plan.

Don’t get too excited, though. The bill isn’t a defense budget. The Pentagon doesn’t actually have one of those just yet, after lawmakers failed to reach consensus back in September on a spending package. 

The military has been working off a stopgap spending measure since then, and might until at least May, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has indicated that he wants to give the Trump administration time to work though its agenda for its first 100 days before worrying about defense spending.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter blasted the idea in a letter to lawmakers Tuesday, calling the plan “unprecedented and unacceptable,” as it makes it difficult for the Pentagon to engage in long-term planning without a stable budget.

Moscow’s moves. Remember the Admiral Kuznetsov, the aging and troubledRussian aircraft carrier deployed off the coast of Syria to strike rebels battling the Assad regime? It appears it has lost its planes. Weeks after one of its jets crashed into the sea, Jane’s digs up satellite images that show its warplaneshave been flown to the main Russian air base in Syria, where they’re not in danger of ending up in the drink.

Russia is also making some noise about an upcoming Ukrainian missile test that would fly over Crimea, the territory annexed by Russia in 2014. Chairman of the foreign policy committee in the Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, warned this week that the move could provoke war: “Eight years ago, the leader of another country who was in conflict with Russia — I mean Georgia — tried to test the endurance of our Armed Forces,” Kosachov said. “We know perfectly well what it ended in. I hope the Ukrainian government remembers this well enough, too.”

Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national  security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

Homefront

The Islamic State’s propaganda mouthpiece Amaq news agency has claimedan Ohio State University student’s attempt to run over classmates and attack them with a butcher knife. A police officer shot and killed Abdul Razak Ali Artan in the midst of the attack, which injured other students. The Islamic State often latches onto incidents where attackers have no association or communication with the group or its members, claiming perpetrators as “soldiers.” Authorities have yet to reveal a motive in the attack but a Facebook post attributed to Artan and written before the attack stated that abuses towards Muslims in Myanmar had pushed Artan to a “boiling point.”

PEOTUS

During the campaign, president-elect Donald Trump famously pledged to toss out the Iranian nuclear deal the Obama administration reached with Tehran in 2015 and negotiate a new one. Now CIA Director John Brennan is adding his voice to the chorus of those urging Trump to keep the agreement in place. In an interview with the BBC, Brennan says ditching the deal would be “the height of folly” as well as “disastrous” and “unprecedented.”

Germany

Germany has an election coming up next year and the country’s top spy is worried that Russian intelligence will try to interfere in the election the way it allegedly did in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The Guardian reports on recent comments by Bruno Kahl, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, saying that hackers from Russia are focused on “delegitimising the democratic process” through their attacks. Kahl said the hackers aren’t trying very hard to cover their tracks but instead deliberately leaving them behind to show off their capabilities.

Meanwhile, in Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Daily Telegraphreports that German authorities have arrested an employee of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) for participating in a plot to attack the spy agency. The intelligence officer reportedly converted to Islam, made a pledge of allegiance to Mohamed Mahmoud, an Austrian senior member of the Islamic State, and made contact with Islamist extremists in a bid to get them to smuggle a bomb into the BfV office.

Yemen

A new report from the European Union-funded consultancy Conflict Armament Research (CAR) shines a light on the arms trade between Iran and Yemen. The group took a look at weapons seized by Austrian and French warships from boats traveling back and forth between Somalia and Yemen. The researchers found 100 rocket launchers, 2,000 assault rifles, and 64 sniper rifles with Iranian markings on them. In addition to the Iranian-made weapons, CAR also found Russian anti-tank missiles and North Korean machine guns.

Robots

The Islamic State has littered Syria and Iraq with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), causing headaches and hazards for those trying to dispose of them safely. Defense Tech reports that the Air Force’s 96th Civil Engineer Group is trying a new tool to deal with the homemade bombs: lasers. The unit says it’s managed to get lasers that can burn through an IED and now it wants to strap them to the top of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. The goal is to get to the point where the laser can autonomously target IEDs rather than having troops individually target them.

Army

Army and Marine forces are headed to Texas and New Mexico in order to game out what a war in the Pacific would look like with American troops facing cyber attacks, enemy robots, and electronic warfare. The result, Bloomberg reports, is that the Army believes it has some catching up to do. The Army’s new Rapid Capabilities Office was involved in the exercise and its director Major General Walter Piatt could inform decisions about what the office will buy and develop next.

Charlotte police officer who fatally shot Keith Scott ‘acted lawfully,’ won’t be charged

Protesters raise their arms during a march in Charlotte prompted by the fatal shooting of Keith Scott. (Jeff Siner/The Charlotte Observer via AP)

By Mark Berman November 30 at 3:50 PM

Prosecutors said that the officer who fatally shot a Charlotte man in September will not be charged for the shooting, concluding that the man was armed and that the officer acted lawfully during the encounter.

“It’s a justified shooting based on the totality of the circumstances,” R. Andrew Murray, district attorney for Mecklenburg County, said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

The shooting of Keith Lamont Scott on Sept. 20 set off days of heated, sometimes violent protests in Charlotte, some of the most intense demonstrations seen nationwide amid an increased focus on how police use deadly force.

Police in Charlotte, N.C., released video from one body camera and one dashboard camera on Sept. 24th of the fatal Keith Scott shooting. (Editor's note: This video contains graphic content.) (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department)

Charlotte police officer who fatally shot Keith Scott.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

US urged to stop all Philippine police assistance programs over drug war

A police investigator marks plastic bags containing "shabu" after a police operation in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines Nov 15, 2016. Pic: Reuters/Czar Dancel

30th November 2016

SHOCKED by reports claiming the U.S. may have been indirectly funding Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial crackdown on the drug trade, an international rights group urged the global superpower to cut off all forms of assistance provided to local enforcers in the Southeast Asian country.

The Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Asia division deputy director Phelim Kine also suggested possible violations of the Leahy Law on Human Rights, which bars security force units implicated in human rights abuse cases from receiving U.S. government-supplied training or equipment.

“Training police who are murderers just makes them better murderers,” he pointed out in a statement Wednesday.

“The US – along with other foreign governments that provide funding and training assistance to the Philippine National Police, including the European Union – should signal its concern about Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ by immediately suspending assistance, including training, to the Philippine police.”

Kine was responding to a Tuesday report by BuzzFeed News alleging that although the U.S. has been publicly condemning Duterte’s unorthodox crime-fighting methods, it has continued to train and provide equipment to police units directly involved in the president’s drug-busting campaign.

The report citing government documents as well as former U.S. and Philippine officials claimed that the U.S. State Department sent millions of dollars in aid to programs for police departments nationwide, even as the death toll in the drug war spiked to shocking numbers.

A Rappler report earlier this month said Duterte’s anti-drugs crackdown has so far claimed the lives of 4,897 individuals, 1,896 who were slain during police operations, while 3,001 were said to be victims of vigilante-style killings.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Pic: AP.

SEE ALSO: As body count grows, Philippine groups join hands to stop drug killings

Julia Mason, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told BuzzFeed News, however, that the funds were no longer being used for counter-narcotics training, although she confirmed that other programmes benefiting the Philippine National Police (PNP) have not been changed.

Mason also said the police units said to be involved in the extrajudicial drug-related killings do not receive the assistance but BuzzFeed’s report suggested that this may not necessary be true. It said comparisons made between Philippine police data and internal State Department records show that there are officers at police stations receiving U.S. aid who have played key roles in the drug war.

“It is clear that many of the stations — especially those in the capital city of Manila — are collectively responsible for hundreds of deaths,” the report said.

It is not immediately known how true the claim is. Asian Correspondent has contacted the U.S. State Department for a response to the BuzzFeed article.

On Tuesday, however, a Reuters report quoting department officials said millions of dollars in aid to the Philippines law enforcement have already been shifted away from police drug control programs. Instead, the funding has been diverted to maritime security and human rights training for the PNP, according to department spokesman John Kirby.

SEE ALSO: US shifts money away from Philippines police drug efforts

The Philippines is said to be the third-largest Asian recipient of military aid from the U.S., after Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Southeast Asian nation’s intrepid president has on numerous occasions challenged the U.S. to withdraw aid, also vocalising his intention to revamp his country’s foreign policy, which he says has too long been overly favourable of Washington.

On myths, facts and blogosphere

Uditha Devapriya-2016-11-29

I know a friend who despises opinion pieces. He is a cynic when it comes to commentaries and as such, measure commentators (political or otherwise) on the basis of their fidelity to facts. Now facts, as the saying goes, are sacred, and comment free, but for all he cares this friend tends to disparage certain writers based on their lack of regard for the truth: journalism, for him at least, must be stripped of frill. The truth and nothing but the truth is what he aspires for in whatever he reads (barring the occasional novel or comic book, of course). I can't say I agree with him entirely, but I will say this: I am no fan of opinion columnists, and going by that logic, at least when it comes to such columns, I am no fan of writing them either.

At one level I suppose it has to do with the blogosphere. There are so many writers out there on the net that it's difficult to set some sense of uniformity. It's difficult to standardize, in other words. Those who rant and rave, for the lack of a better way of putting it, rant and rave to their hearts' content, never mind whether or not the extrapolations they make come close to the truth.

The best columnists, to my mind at least, don't indulge in such rants: they are careful to support what they write with what they know. There's a reason, after all, why Keats, despite his saturated paeans and tributes to love, is definitely not the superior of Pushkin: the former was young, too young, to talk of what he talked about with any concreteness.

US foreign policy

All this came to me during the days that followed the American election. I observed in this column two weeks ago that we shouldn't care about the results because whoever wins and whoever loses, it's still the same show when it comes to US foreign policy. There the matter would have ended, if not for the almost ceaseless barrage of comments and opinion pieces that Sri Lankans kept on writing. It would be interesting, I hence thought, to delve into some of these comments and glean from them a sense of the political that their writers exhibit, and how, at the end of the day, they congeal to their awareness (or the lack thereof) of the political in their country.

First and foremost, as Nalaka Gunawardene pointed out in a column last week, Donald Trump is everything the alt-right (or alternative right) could have dreamt of: a global warming sceptic, a panderer to hardcore evangelists and fundamentalists (while being an atheist), and a pragmatist in the world of business. "We can only hope that Trump's business pragmatism would prevail over climate action" is a parting shot Gunawardene takes at the American President. We agree.

In yet another article written before this, he went on to argue that what we saw was a "largely fact-free election choosing a (mostly) fact-resistant winner." What of that? To the extent that Trump's perception as a fact-resistant candidate is based on his crass handling and distortion of facts, I agree. Malinda Seneviratne, on the other hand, who is less prone to dichotomies that characterize the American political scene, argued that it cut both ways: Clinton's bid for the presidency was defeated because of facts (her past record, her husband's devious stances on foreign policy, and her economic views), while Trump worked on the fears of outside invasion which can, as I observed two weeks ago, congeal into a whole electorate unless they are addressed in time.

Popular vote

Who won what? As Paul Krugman puts it, "Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than two million, and she would probably be president-elect if the director of the FBI hadn't laid such a heavy thumb on the scales, just days before the election." That heavy thumb, to put things in perspective, just got heavier when Trump supporters whipped up a campaign against her.
In a context where political preferences are framed by the obsessive need to pick a champion, how is it possible to (de)select candidates based on the (as important) need to choose the lesser of the two evils? It is here, I think, that most commentators are batting for a six and failing miserably, starting with this: dichotomizing candidates based on the perceived lesser evil distorts the truth.

That is why I can't understand why writers (here and elsewhere) consider gender as the predominant factor in the election. I believe the tussle between Trump and Clinton was more dependent on perceptions: on who was standing for the Establishment and who was against it. Democrats who are whining about the winner losing at the Electoral College (for Trump is the fifth President to lose the popular vote) should consider the man they ignored. Gender figured in, but if Democrats are so worried about gender, one can ask, why did they conveniently throw out Bernie Sanders (through the flaws of the system) who stood for gender equality in a less ambivalent way than Clinton?

That's just one fact. Here's another. Unlike in 2000, when Ralph Nader campaigned as an independent candidate and effectively "robbed" key votes which would have ensured victory for Al Gore, neither Jill Stein nor Gary Johnson (the man who did not know what Aleppo was) courted enough popularity for one to conclude that they did for Clinton what Nader did for Gore.

Electing a warmonger

The fact is, not enough young people voted for Clinton: they were either fed up with the system (because of which Sanders was kicked out) or worried about electing a warmonger for a President (for Clinton, despite what her supporters can and will say, was the woman who jubilantly said, "We came, we saw, he died!" of Muammar Gaddafi). They couldn't vote for Trump because he was far away from their ideals, and because of their idealism they decided to stay at home. How close was the fight, then? "If just one in 100 voters changed their votes to Clinton, the electoral college votes would have been 307 Clinton, 231 Trump. Not much of a landslide, really" was what a lecturer in Political Science in Texas observed. True.

Forget all that. I still don't get this gender argument. Trump, so the conventional wisdom goes, courted the mythmakers, the worst elements of a society touted as the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave: homophobes, sexists, and racists. Should we be worried? Of course. But to argue that gender (or for that matter ethnicity) was all that figured in the election would be (and I say this at the cost of irking those arguing otherwise) as reductionist as saying that Trump was an anti-Establishment candidate (which is, by the way, the most common observation made by those vouching for the man, even here).

He made some unseemly comments about women that the mainstream media in the US made use of, only to irk those who supported him even more. But does this make the other candidate progressive? "Progressivism is a disease!" is what Glenn Beck loved to shout out. Now Glenn holds the Founding Fathers in esteem and criticizes if not trashes the likes of Clinton, but reading his rants against liberal politicos, I questioned myself, "Who is progressive in this world? Obama? Clinton? Ralph Nader?"

Progressivism

Besides and more importantly, what is progressivism? Is it being soft on foreign policy, in which case no candidate can be singled out and commended? Or is it being soft on domestic policies, in which case one can cut (only) some slack for the Democrats? The truth, as anyone with any sense of history will tell you, is that the American electoral system cannot and will not promote the likes of Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders, by which I am not criticizing it (after all there have been electoral systems which crowned Hitler and Ferdinand Marcos), but only commenting. And yes, that was a comment for all those who think that the United States is capable of electing a Pierre Trudeau.

Just the other day I came across an article that claimed to explain why so many Sri Lankans (here and there) supported Trump. This article attempted a miracle: to jump from misogyny in the American system to misogyny in Sri Lanka's education system to the politicisation of Buddhism to the chauvinism inculcated in mono-ethnic schools here! Some points were valid, others were not, but all in all I couldn't help but think back on that friend I alluded to at the beginning of this piece, and what he had to tell me at one point: shouldn't such extrapolations be made with a pinch of salt
Nationalism, some say, is over. Wrong. Nationalism is here to stay. Whether you are from the States or from Sri Lanka, if you are a presidential candidate you cannot, will not, and shall not win or clinch the Presidency if you belittle the fears of the majority. Obama was no saint (who is?) but when it came to the final reckoning, his perceived saintliness ticked off the fundamentalists whose fears were not being addressed. Can one blame them? I for one cannot, even though there is much in them that I oppose and will continue to oppose.

Common misconception

Going by that, I can with all sincerity say that the most common misconception made by writers of such opinion pieces as that quoted above is this: in their bid to champion the lesser of the two evils, they forget the tendency of the system to twist and contort the most idealistic candidate.

As Padraig Colman pointed out in a series of perceptive articles on Trump and Clinton (published in Ceylon Today), neither candidate was perfect. Well, the truth is that no one is perfect, not you and not me, but in this rush to commend the less imperfect person we are entranced by personalities so much that we forget that the mere lack of any DISCERNIBLE flaws cannot and will not salvage a person from his or her corruption at the hands of the Establishment. That explains the many U-turns made by leaders both in America and in this country, U-turns that seem to get no press and which depress the idealist into thinking that there's no hope left in a polity.

A prominent political commentator once told me, quite candidly, that there was nothing black about Obama, only the colour of his skin: a contention I subscribe to (with some reservation). What Obama did (and his legacy, whether one likes it or not, is not palatable to the idealist) was basically conceal the deficiencies of a system that couldn't be bottled for long.

To add fuel to the proverbial fire, he was offering as his successor a person who represented everything the American Right wanted in a more aggressive candidate: pushing for interventionism and championing unilateral action in a context where R2P (Responsibility to Protect) is being pointed out as a justifiable alternative to the sovereignty of a country. In this regard, is it a wonder that Trump won? Not really. Blue-eyed idealists, however, will have a hard-time swallowing that.

Combating the myths

Fidel Castro died last Saturday. He was 90. He spent the better part of his life combating the many myths that the West bred and perpetuated about him. I will not spend time on Castro (I leave that for next week's column), but I will say this: for a man beset with so many falsities by the mainstream media, he triumphed and trumped. He never lost. Not once. It says a lot about perception and reality, when it comes to politics that is. Commentators who continue to lament the defeat of 'idealistic' candidates, I believe therefore, should spend more time reading the many op-eds, essays, and articles written on him, mostly by those who see in him the devil and he (almost) never was.

George Santayana once wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He could have been writing of the voter: suckered into supporting a candidate who hides behind a veneer of sophistication and respectability, who upon victory embraces the same values that same voter opposed. In such a context, whom should we blame? Naturally, ourselves.
(udakdev1@gmail.com)

The Left’s Fidelity to Castro-ation — Slavoj Žižek

In the last decades, Cuban “socialism” continued to live only because it didn’t yet notice it was already dead.

by SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK-Nov 30, 2016

( November 30, 2016, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) I am critical of Cuba not because I am anti-Communist but because I remain a Communist.

We all remember the classic scene from cartoons: a cat walks over the precipice and magically goes on, floating in the air—it falls down only when it looks down and becomes aware that it has no ground under its feet. In the same way, one can say that, in the last decades, Cuban “socialism” continued to live only because it didn’t yet notice it was already dead.

It is clear that Fidel Castro was different from the usual figure of a Communist leader, and that Cuban revolution itself was something unique. Its specificity is best rendered by the duality of Fidel and Che Guevara: Fidel, the actual Leader, supreme authority of the State, versus Che, the eternal revolutionary rebel who could not resign himself to just running a State. Is this not something like a Soviet Union in an alternative past in which Leon Trotsky would not have been rejected as the arch-traitor? Imagine that, in the mid-1920s, Trotsky were to emigrate and renounce Soviet citizenship in order to incite permanent revolution around the world, and then die in the highlands of Papua New Guinea soon afterwards. After his death, Stalin would have elevated Trotsky into a cult, and monuments celebrating their friendship, along with iconic t-shirts, would proliferate all around the USSR.

One gets tired of the conflicting stories of the economic failure and human rights abuses in Cuba, as well as of the twins of education and healthcare that are always trotted out by the friends of the revolution. One gets tired even of the really great story of how a small country can resist the biggest superpower (yes, with the help of the other superpower).

The saddest thing about today’s Cuba is a feature clearly rendered by the crime novels of Cuba’s literary icon Leonardo Padura, which features detective Mario Conde and are set in today’s Havana. Padura’s atmosphere is the one not so much of poverty and oppression as of missed chances, of living in a part of the world to a large extent bypassed by the tremendous economic and social changes of the last decades.

All of the above mentioned stories do not change the sad fact that the Cuban revolution did not produce a social model relevant for the eventual Communist future. I visited Cuba a decade ago, and on that visit I found people who proudly showed me houses in decay as a proof of their fidelity to the revolutionary “Event”: “Look, everything is falling apart, we live in poverty, but we are ready to endure it rather than to betray the Revolution!” When renunciations themselves are experienced as proof of authenticity, we get what in psychoanalysis is called the logic of castration. The whole Cuban politico-ideological identity rests on the fidelity to castration—no wonder that the Leader is called Fidel Castro!

The true tragedy is that the very remaining authenticity of the Cuban revolution made it possible for the Castro brothers’ government to drag on endlessly and meaninglessly, deprived of the last vestiges of an emancipatory potential. The image of Cuba one gets from someone like Pedro Juan Gutierrez (in his “dirty Havana trilogy”) is telltale. The Cuban common reality is the truth of the revolutionary Sublime: the daily life of struggle for survival, of the escape into violent promiscuous sex, of seizing the day without any future-oriented projects.

In his big public speech in August 2009, Raúl Castro lambasted those who just shout “Death to the U.S. imperialism! Long live the revolution!” instead of engaging in difficult and patient work. All the blame for the Cuban misery (a fertile land that nonetheless imports 80 percent of its food) cannot be put on the U.S. embargo: There are idle people on the one side, empty land on the other side, and one has just to start working the fields.

Obviously this is true, but Raúl Castro forgets to include into the picture he was describing his own position: If people don’t work the fields, it is obviously not because they are lazy but because the system of economy is not able to convince them to work. Instead of reprimanding ordinary people, he should have applied the old Stalinist motto according to which the mobile of progress in Socialism is self-critique, and exert a radical critique of the system he and Fidel personify. Here, again, evil is in the very critical gaze which perceives evil all around.

So what about pro-Castro Western Leftists who despise what Cubans themselves call “gusanos/worms,” those Cubans who emigrated to find a better life? With all sympathy for the Cuban revolution, what right does a typical middle-class Western Leftist, like too many readers of In These Times, have to despise a Cuban who decided to leave Cuba not only because of political disenchantment but also because of poverty? In the same vein, I myself remember from the early 1990s dozens of Western Leftists who proudly threw in my face how, for them, that Yugoslavia (as imagined by Tito) still exists, and reproached me for betraying the unique chance of maintaining Yugoslavia.

To that charge, I answered: I am not yet ready to lead my life so that it will not disappoint the dreams of Western Leftists. Gilles Deleuze wrote somewhere: “Si vous etes pris dans le reve de l’atre vous etez foutu!”—If you are caught in the dream of the other you’re ruined. Cuban people paid the price for being caught into the Western leftists’ dream.

The gradual openings of Cuban economy towards a capitalist market are compromises that do not resolve the deadlock but, rather, drag on the predominant inertia. After the impending fall of Chavismo in Venezuela, Cuba has three choices: to continue to vegetate in a mixture of Communist party regime and pragmatic concessions to the market; to embrace fully the Chinese model (wild capitalism with party rule); to simply abandon Socialism and, in this way, admit the full defeat of the Revolution.

Whatever will happen, the saddest prospect is that, under the banner of democratization, all the small but important achievements of the Revolution, from healthcare to education, will be undone, and the Cubans who escaped to the United States will enforce a violent re-privatization. There is a small hope that this extreme fallback will be prevented and a reasonable compromise negotiated.

So what is the overall result of the Cuban revolution? What comes to my mind is Arthur Miller’s experience on the Malecon (Havana’s Caribbean ocean-front boardwalk) where two guys were sitting at a bench near him, obviously poor and in need of a shave, and engaged in a vivid discussion. A taxi then pulled up to the curb in front of them and a lovely young woman stepped out with two brown paper bags full of groceries. She was juggling the bags to get her money purse open, and a tulip was waving dangerously close to snapping its stem. One of the men got up and took hold of one of the bags to steady it, while the other joined him to steady the other bag, and Miller wondered if they were about to grab the bags and run. Nothing like this happened—instead, one of them gently held the tulip stem between forefinger and thumb until she could get the bags secured in her arms. She thanked with a certain formal dignity and walked off. Miller’s comment:

I’m not quite sure why, but I thought this transaction remarkable. It was not only the gallantry of these impoverished men that was impressive, but that the woman seemed to regard it as her due and not at all extraordinary. Needless to say, she offered no tip, nor did they seem to expect any, her comparative wealth notwithstanding.

Having protested for years the government’s jailing and silencing of writers and dissidents, I wondered whether despite everything, including the system’s economic failure, a heartening species of human solidarity had been created, possibly out of the relative symmetry of poverty and the uniform futility inherent in the system from which few could raise their heads short of sailing away. (Arthur Miller, “A Visit with Castro,” The Nation, December 24 2003)

At this, the most elementary level, our future will be decided. The reality that global capitalism cannot generate is precisely such “heartening species of human solidarity,” to use Miller’s phrase. So to conclude in the spirit of de mortuis nihil nisi bonum (nothing that is not good should be said about the dead), this scene on Malecon is perhaps the nicest thing I can remember about Castro.

Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the the Institute for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. He has also been a visiting professor at more than 10 universities around the world. Žižek is the author of many books, including Living in the End Times, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously and Trouble in Paradise.

Eastern Aleppo becoming 'one giant graveyard' says UN humanitarian chief

• Stephen O’Brien says 25,000 forced to flee homes since Saturday
• Russia dismisses ‘pointless’ resolutions in security council emergency session

 A Syrian boy, who fled with his family from rebel-held areas in the city of Aleppo, sits inside a shelter in the neighbourhood of Jibrin, east of Aleppo, on Wednesday. Photograph: Youssef Karwashan/AFP/Getty Images

Julian Borger World affairs editor-Wednesday 30 November 2016 

The UN’s humanitarian chief has warned that eastern Aleppo was being turned into “one giant graveyard” as the rebel-held area was being overrun by Syrian regime and Russian forces.

Stephen O’Brien told an emergency session of the UN security council that since Saturday 25,000 people had been forced from their homes in eastern Aleppo, more than half of them children, as the government offensive stormed into opposition districts.

The council sat as what is left of the rebel enclave came under another day of intense bombing, with video footage showing the bodies of dead children being carried off the streets. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said nearly 40% of the opposition area had been captured by government forces, cutting the enclave in two.

O’Brien said that those trying to flee the fighting faced new dangers, as rebel factions sought to stop them leaving, or they were caught in the crossfire and then faced being seized and “disappeared” at government checkpoints.

“For the sake of humanity, we call on, we plead, with the parties, and those with influence, to do everything in their power to protect civilians and enable access to the besieged part of eastern Aleppo before it becomes one giant graveyard,” O’Brien said.

The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, rejected calls for an end to the offensive, which is being spearheaded on the ground by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian-led units, with Russian air support.

Churkin said Russia shared concern for the fate of the civilian population but argued their plight would not be eased by ceasing “counter-terrorist operations” against “bandits” that the UK and France had “coddled and fuelled”. He called the White Helmet civil defence organisation, which digs people out of bombed buildings, a “pseudo-humanitarian” group, and said UN resolutions calling for an end to the bloodshed were “a pointless tactic”.

 Stephen OBrien, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, urged parties to the conflict to protect civilians ‘for the sake of humanity’. Photograph: UN Photo/Manuel Elias/AFP/Getty Images

Matthew Rycroft, the UK ambassador to the UN, pointed to UN figures that a million people are now living under siege across Syria, half of them children.

“Russia has vetoed time and again to prevent the security council from finding the unity necessary to end this war. And so I ask again Mr President, what will it take?” he said.

“Without a change in policy, without a change of heart, that’s exactly what this is – the slow, painful, bitter execution of a million Syrians, cut off from aid convoys, cut off from the world,” he said.

The French envoy, François Delattre, said the crushing of eastern Aleppo was not just a humanitarian calamity but also a strategic mistake.

“What is happening in Aleppo will only fuel chaos and terrorism. Not only is it not a way in our view to combat terrorism, but it is a mechanic way, automatic way, to fuel radicalisation and terrorism,” Delattre said.

Unicef’s regional director, Geert Cappelaere, said six million children in Syria were in need of humanitarian assistance, of which, two million were in hard-to-reach areas and 500,000 were living under siege.

“Some of these children have been living under siege for two years,” Cappelaere said.

“I would like us all to pause for a moment and imagine life through the eyes of a child trapped in that tragic situation. As a boy or girl in Aleppo today, where do you find comfort and hope, amidst the bombs?” he asked the council. “Determined to learn, you attend school whenever your parents allow you to leave the house, but you do not know any more if you will ever come back. It is hard for you as a child to focus because it is cold and you don’t sleep well, haunted by nightmares and hunger.”

O’Brien raised the alarm over the plight of civilians forced out of eastern Aleppo by the fighting, who first had to cross frontlines and then brave government checkpoints.

“As we have seen before, across Syria and throughout the conflict, men, women and children, have been routinely arrested at government-controlled checkpoints, before being transferred to one of dozens of official or secret government-run detention facilities,” he said. “They are often held incommunicado and indefinitely, facing the risk of being subjected to torture and ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings or being disappeared.”

Turkey Alert: Beware of Lies About Natural Growth, Chemicals and Humane Treatment

Photo Credit: Lori Skelton

Here are some turkey facts that are definitely not on the label.

By Martha Rosenberg / AlterNetNovember 22, 2016

As Turkey Day approaches, animal lovers cringe, food safety advocates become vigilante and turkey producers hope you have a short memory. They hope you have forgotten that avian flu and its prevention killed so many turkeys last year—at least 7.5 million—that turkey giant Jennie-O laid off 233 workers. They hope you have forgotten that scientists at the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute found Tylenol, Benadryl, caffeine, statins and Prozac in feather meal samples that included U.S. turkeys—“a surprisingly broad spectrum of prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” said study co-author Rolf Halden of Arizona State University. And finally, Butterball hopes you have forgotten that four of its employees were convicted of sickening animal cruelty and veterinarian Dr. Sarah Mason admits tipping Butterball off about an imminent raid by Hoke County detectives to investigate such humane abuses.

Aware of humane and food safety issues, many buyers are looking to labels to help them in buying their bird. Unfortunately, turkey labels can deceive and even lie. For example “cage free” and “hormone free” are meaningless since cages and hormones are not used in turkey production anyway. Nor does “young” mean anything since all turkeys are young at the time of slaughter—they live just a matter of weeks or months.

Still, here are some turkey facts that are definitely not on the label.

Ractopamine Is Still in Use

Hormones may not be used in turkey production but ractopamine, the asthma-like growth enhancer AlterNet has reported on before, certainly is—and for the same reason: to add muscle weight quickly. Banned in 160 countries and widely viewed as dangerous to animals and humans, ractopamine was approved by the FDA for use in turkey in 2009 under the brand name Topmax. It has never been labeled.

How dangerous is Topmax? This is what its label says:

“NOT FOR HUMAN USE. Warning. The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children... When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling.”

It adds an 800 number.

Monkeys fed ractopamine in a Canadian study "developed daily tachycardia"—rapid heart beat. Rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged hearts.

In its new drug application, Elanco, ractopamine’s manufacturer, admitted that ractopamine produced “alterations” in turkey meat such as a “mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration,” “an increase in the incidence of cysts,” and differences, some “significant,” in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers. Yum.

Antibiotics and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Are Found in Turkey

Antibiotics are widely used in turkey production to produce weight gain with less feed and to stop disease outbreaks from crowded conditions. In fact, when the FDA tried to ban the use of one class of antibiotic—cephalosporins—in 2008, Michael Rybolt, Director, Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, National Turkey Federation said "To raise turkeys without antibiotics would increase the incidence of illness in turkey flocks." Calling 227-acre turkey operations, "small family farms" (right) Rybolt said antibiotics were actually green because less land is required to grow feed, less land is required to house turkeys and less food means there is less... manure! Antibiotics save almost 2,000 tons of feed a year on a turkey farm with five million hens agreed an article in a poultry journal.

Not all the antibiotics used in U.S. turkey operations are legal suggests the research of scientists at the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute. 

They found fluoroquinolones in eight of 12 samples of feather meal in a multi-state study. 

Fluoroquinolones are antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in humans, especially for infections that have become resistant to other antibiotic. They have been banned for livestock use since 2005.

The reason the government and all leading medical groups condemn routine, daily use of antibiotics in livestock is because it encourages the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria which cause potentially lethal infections in people. Almost half of turkey samples purchased at U.S. grocery stores harbored antibiotic resistant infections reported the Los Angeles Times. A serious strains of antibiotic resistant salmonella called Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Hadar forced recalls of turkey products from Jennie-O Turkey. The resistant salmonella strains were so deadly, officials warned that disposed meat should be in sealed garbage cans to protect wild animals. Yes, even wildlife is threatened by the factory farm-created scourges.

Drugs for Turkey Diseases

Industrially produced turkeys are at risk of many disease for which both medicines and vaccines are given. Until 2015, an arsenic containing drug called Nitarsone was FDA approved for the "first six weeks of a turkey’s 20-week life span"; three other arsenic products were rescinded by the FDA in 2012. It is shocking that arsenic has been allowed in U.S. poultry production for almost 50 years since “increasing evidence supports that chronic low-to-moderate iAs [arsenic atoms] exposure levels results in numerous non-cancerous health effects, including cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disease and diabetes, and cognitive and reproductive defects,” says a scientific paper. Inorganic arsenic is an established human carcinogen, causing cancers of the lung, skin and bladder and possibly cancers of the liver and kidney says other scientific literature.

Turkeys can suffer from Aspergillosis (Brooder Pneumonia), Avian Influenza, Avian Leucosis, Histomoniasis, Coccidiosis, Coronavirus, Erysipelas, Typhoid, TB, Fowl Cholera, Mites, Lice, Herpes, Clostridial dermatitis, Cellulitis and much more—and the treatments are often as scary as the conditions. Consider, for example, the anti-coccidial drug halofuginone which the Federal Register says "is toxic to fish and aquatic life" and "an irritant to eyes and skin.” Users should take care to "Keep [it] out of lakes, ponds, and streams" says the Register. A few years ago, scientists even found the endocrine disrupter Bisphenol A (BPA) in fresh turkey.

Cruelty

Even before 2015’s bird flu in which turkeys were euthanized by suffocation in a way even producers called cruel, industrial produced turkeys have tragic lives. Unable to mate because of the huge chests they are bred to have (many barely able to walk) cruel artificial insemination is conducted—“milking” the males and forcing the semen into the hens against their will. Veterinary journals admit that the chemically-induced fast growth on industrial farms puts turkeys at risk for "sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture," (diagnosed by the presence of large clots of blood around the turkey's lungs) hypertensive angiopathy and pulmonary edema. Growth drugs in turkeys may also "result in leg weakness or paralysis," says the Federal Code.

Because turkeys are drugged and bred to grow so quickly, their legs can't support their own weight and many arrive with broken and dislocated limbs, a “live hanger” who worked undercover at House of Raeford Farms in Raeford, NC, the seventh largest turkey producer in the U.S., told me a few years ago. When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, offering no resistance he told me. “The turkeys must be in a lot of pain but they don't cry out. The only sound you hear as you hang them is trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load."

Like other industrial produced birds, the kill conveyer belt at the slaughterhouse moves so fast, turkeys miss the “stunner” that is supposed to render them insensate and thousands are boiled alive. Yes, you read that right. Reports and photos of the helpless, scorched birds are difficult to look at.

While some food safety and animal rights activists have sought to find turkey producers who do not commit such practices, others warn that so called ethical producers may be disingenuous. “Our birds live in harmony with the environment and we allow them plenty of room to roam,” explains a Diestel Turkey Ranch brochure, displayed at Whole Foods meat counters. But a visit to Diestel’s Jamestown facility conducted by Direct Action investigators over nine months reports Slate “revealed horrific conditions, even by the standards of industrial agriculture.” Turkeys were jammed into overcrowded barns, trapped in piles of feces, had swollen eyes and open sores and “dead turkeys strewn across the barn floor.” Harmony?

 

Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter and the author of "Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health (Random House)."