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By Andrew Ashdown

This morning we visited the main IDP Registration centre at Jibrin, for Internally Displaced Persons from East Aleppo. They are registered here for humanitarian reasons and access to services, before they go either to relatives in other parts of Syria if they have them (many do), or to other reception centres where they are provided with accommodation, food and other services. During the past two weeks they have registered 95,000 refugees, but estimate there may be a further 10,000 who have not registered. There were thousands of people there who have arrived within the last couple of days. Let me make clear that we visited in a taxi without Government or Army accompaniment, and without prior notice. We were not expected.

The Centre is well organised. The Syrian Red Crescent have tents available that offer information about all social welfare facilities available, and offer free medical attention. In cases of emergency, ambulances are on hand to transport patients to hospital. Free food is being distributed by the Syrian Red Crescent and the Syrian Army, and we saw a convoy of Russian lorries providing aid. There is also a Russian field hospital on site which offers immediate medical treatment.

The sense of relief amongst the thousands of refugees is palpable.All were keen to talk, and we interviewed several who had arrived only yesterday and today. They all said the same thing. They said that they had been living in fear. They reported that the fighters have been telling everyone that the Syrian Army would kill anyone who fled to the West, but had killed many themselves who tried to leave – men, women and children. One woman broke down in tears as she told how one of her sons was killed by the rebels a few days ago, and another kidnapped. They also killed anyone who showed signs of supporting the Government. The refugees said that the ‘rebels’ told them that only those who support them are “true Muslims”, and that everyone else are ‘infidels’ and deserve to die.

They told us they had been given very little food: that any aid that reached the area was mostly refused to them or sold at exorbitant prices. Likewise, most had been given no medical treatment. (A doctor who has been working with the refugees for weeks told me last night that in an area recently liberated, a warehouse filled with brand new internationally branded medicines had been discovered.) Most of the refugees said they had had members of their families killed by the rebels and consistently spoke of widespread murder, torture, rape and kidnap by the rebels. They said if anyone left their homes, their properties and belongings were confiscated and stolen.

One old man in a wheelchair who was being given free treatment in the Russian Field Hospital said he had been given no treatment for three years despite asking. He said: “Thank God we are free. We now have food. We can now live our lives. God bless the Syrian Army.” They all said they were glad to be out and to be free. All the refugees without exception were visibly without exception clearly profoundly relieved and happy to be free. One woman said: “This is heaven compared to what we have been living.” We asked if the Syrian Army had ill-treated anyone. They said never. One woman said: “They helped us to escape and they provide us with food and assistance.”

I therefore have two key questions:

1. It is now only the Syrian Red Crescent, the Syrian Army, and the Russians who are providing humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands who have fled East Aleppo. Why are none of the international agencies offering to help them now?

2.  Why is it, given that stories about massacres by the Syrian Army are headline news worldwide, and several international media units are in Aleppo, that there is not one international media agency actually at the Registration Centre talking to the refugees themselves? We were the only ones there. Here are people who have lived through it who are keen to talk, yet the media take at face value unverifiable claims by highly dubious sources. The collapse of any form of reliable investigative journalism in a context of global significance is utterly shocking.

Today the agreement for 4000 fighters to leave Aleppo is reported to have collapsed after the fighters had refused to fulfil the agreement. (I don’t know the details, but think about it… There is no reason on earth why the Syrian Government would want this agreement, which would involve the complete liberation of the city, to fail!) It is reported that the fighters refused to leave or let the civilians do so.

The refusal of the western media to report objectively, or to seek informed information from the thousands of civilians from East Aleppo who are keen to share their stories, whilst granting full credibility to terrorists without any on the ground verifiable information on their claims, is nothing short of obscene.

Everything that I have seen and heard in Aleppo; from civilians in East and West from all communities, and from talking with doctors, faith communities and with Army people as well, and witnessing and risking bombardments on both sides, convinces me that the reports in the western media are twisted fabrications of the horrors that are happening in ‘rebel’ controlled areas. And still, the media refuses to listen to the witness of the people themselves.

Postscript: Christmas is coming in Syria. In a country and a city in which people of all faiths are free to worship; where mosques and Churches stand side by side; and where Christmas music is playing in cafes and restaurants. And yet the world is mourning the defeat in Aleppo of extremists who destroy Christian and Muslim places of worship, and slaughter any who do not follow their obscene ideology.

15 December 2016

By rt.com

It was destined to be an iconic image: a small girl holding a teddy bear in a white dress marked by blood splotches with the ruins of Aleppo behind her. But according to Egyptian authorities, it was also a set-up, shot hundreds of miles away in a different country.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry has revealed on its Facebook page that it arrested a group of five people caught in the act of producing images purportedly depicting scenes of suffering in Aleppo that they had planned to pass off as real pictures from Syria.

https://www.facebook.com/MoiEgy/videos/1266875293356131/

The ministry said that the residents of Port Said, a city on the Suez Canal, were caught in the middle of their shoot as the 12-year-old star, Ragd, was posing for 21-year-old Mustafa, who told the authorities that he “normally photographed weddings and ceremonies, but had an idea for something else.”

“In a conversation with them, the suspects revealed that they had shot a series of scenes to be spread on social media, as actual pictures from Aleppo,” said the ministry, which posted a video of the arrest, and interviews with the suspects online.

The stand-in for Aleppo was “the ruins of a house that had been slated for demolition by the authorities some time earlier.” The blood was obtained from a “tin of red paint” that was liberally smeared on the girl, her fake bandages, and her stuffed animal.

The girl herself was known to the photographer beforehand, and came to the session with her mother, the photographer, and three other local men.

Mustafa is being detained in jail for an initial four days, while the others have been set free, and Ragd has been returned to her guardian.

While it is unknown whether Mustafa’s staged photo would have gained social media traction, vivid photographs – some of them fake – have been powerful tools in shaping public opinion since Aleppo was re-captured by Syrian government forces earlier this month.

https://twitter.com/AlkhaterAziz/status/809424481496236032/photo/1

The most notorious hoax picture, which has been shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, features a girl running through a debris-filled street. The caption reads “Girl running to survive, all her family have been killed. It’s not in Hollywood. This real in Syria.” In fact, the image was cut from a 2014 Lebanese pop video.

Another video, called “Executions have begun in the middle of the street in Aleppo,” which has also been widely shared, depicts supposed government forces allegedly taking out retribution on civilians. In reality, the video dates back from 2012, and contains unverified images.

20 December 2016

By rt.com

The top US military official in the Pacific has warned Beijing off taking control over the disputed South China Sea, while an American think tank has published photos it says prove that China has installed weapons on seven separate manmade islands in the disputed maritime route.

“We will not allow a shared domain to be closed down unilaterally no matter how many bases are built on artificial features in the South China Sea,” the commander of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, said during a speech in Sydney, Australia. “We will cooperate when we can but we will be ready to confront when we must.”

Washington has urged Beijing to comply with the ruling of the tribunal, assembled under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which rejected China’s historical claims on the water mass. Beijing does not accept the authority of the tribunal.

Harris said that China “can choose to disregard the rule-based international order, or contribute to it as a responsible stakeholder.” Harris, who was appointed by President Barack Obama last year, promised that America’s “enduring interests” would not change after the inauguration of Donald Trump early next year.

Beijing has rejected US comments as interference in the international standoff, which also involves the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam and Taiwan.

“We hope the United States can abide by its promises on not taking sides on the sovereignty dispute in the South China Sea, respect the efforts of countries in the region to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea region and do more to promote peace and stability there,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a public briefing in Beijing.

On Wednesday, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), a Washington-based research institute, published a report claiming that China is in the process of installing “significant point-defense capabilities, in the form of large anti-aircraft guns and probable close-in weapons systems (CIWS)” on the seven artificial islands it has created in the South China Sea.

These islands, which feature long runways, ports, and communications buildings, have been constructed in shallow waters since 2014, and now have a combined surface area of 1,300 hectares. AMTI says it spent “months” studying satellite photos of military structures that are being erected on the bases before going public.

“This is the first time that we’re confident in saying they are anti-aircraft and CIWS emplacements. We did not know that they had systems this big and this advanced there,” AMTI director Greg Poling told Reuters.

“This is militarization. The Chinese can argue that it’s only for defensive purposes, but if you are building giant anti-aircraft gun and CIWS emplacements, it means that you are prepping for a future conflict. They keep saying they are not militarizing, but they could deploy fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles tomorrow if they wanted to,” he added.

14 December 2016

By Deirdre Fulton

The Syrian government is reportedly in control of eastern Aleppo, according to news reports on Tuesday afternoon, with a deal having been reached to evacuate civilians and opposition fighters.

Damascus confirmed the evacuation deal and the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, reportedly told the Associated Press in a text message that the safe withdrawal of people from the besieged area was now “imminent,” amid reports of attacks on civilians. A senior Turkish official and rebel officials similarly confirmed the news to the Guardian.

“An agreement has been reached for the evacuation of the residents of Aleppo, civilians and fighters with their light weapons, from the besieged districts of east Aleppo,” Yasser al-Youssef, from the political office of the key Nurredin al-Zinki Syrian rebel group, toldAgence France-Presse.

He said the deal was “sponsored by Russia and Turkey” and would be implemented “within hours.”

Reuters reports:

“The fighters are going to leave the city,” Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters in New York.

Rebel officials said fighting would end on Tuesday evening and a source in the pro-Assad military alliance said the evacuation of fighters would begin at around dawn on Wednesday. A Reuters reporter in Aleppo said late on Tuesday that the booms of the bombardment could no longer be heard.

Fighters and their families, along with civilians who have thrown in their lot with the rebels, will have until Wednesday evening to quit the city, a Turkish government source said on Tuesday. The ceasefire was negotiated by Turkey and Russia.

The United States was not involved in brokering the deal, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. did reportedly call for international observers to be allowed in Aleppo to oversee the evacuation of civilians.

According to the Guardian, a “senior Turkish official said Ankara and Moscow would act as guarantors of the agreement, which would allow ‘civilians and moderate rebels with light weapons’ to leave Aleppo for Idlib province.”

The official said: “Once they reach Idlib, they will be free to relocate.”

Amid concerns about alleged attacks on civilians—the UN human rights office said it had reliable evidence that up to 82 civilians were shot on the spot by government and allied forces on Tuesday—Amnesty International warned that Aleppo’s civilian population may still be at risk.

“It is now crucial that independent monitors are deployed to ensure that the civilian population is protected and that humanitarian access is granted so that life-saving aid can reach all those in need,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s Beirut regional office.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein echoed that charge in a statement, saying, “we are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict.”

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First published in CommonDreams.org

14 December 2016

By Ralph Nader

Even for a failed gambling czar, Donald Trump has been surprisingly quick to show his hand as he sets the course of his forthcoming presidency. With a reactionary fervor, he is bursting backwards into the future. He has accomplished this feat through the first wave of nominations to his Cabinet and White House staff.

Only if there is a superlative to the word “nightmare” can the dictionary provide a description of his bizarre selection of men and women marinated either in corporatism or militarism, with strains of racism, class cruelty and ideological rigidity. Many of Mr. Trump’s nominees lack an appreciation of the awesome responsibilities of public office.

Let’s run through Trump’s “picks”:

First there are the selections that will make it easier to co-opt the Republicans in Congress. He has appointed Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for Secretary of Transportation. Ms. Chao does not like regulation of big business, such as those for auto, aviation, railroad and pipeline safety. Next is Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Price wants to dump Obamacare, turn over control of Medicaid to the states – including Governors who dislike Medicaid – and even privatize (eg. corporatize) Medicare itself into the hands of the business sector already defrauding just that program by about $60 billion a year.

Trump selected Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) to be the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Pompeo is a cold war warrior who believes in a militaristic, interventionist CIA, especially toward Iran, taking that agency even further away from its original mission of gathering intelligence.

Then come the Generals. Notwithstanding the Constitutional imperative that there should be civilian control over the military, Trump has placed two generals in charge of foreign and domestic military theatres. For Secretary of Defense, Trump chose recently retired Marine General James Mattis. This “Mad Dog” believes Barack Obama to be too weak, indecisive and without a strategic plan for the Middle East. He looks very much like he is a believer in the American Empire and the U.S. being the policeman for the world.

The next general is retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, chosen to run the Department of Homeland Security. He is seen as a modern believer in the Monroe Doctrine over the Hispanic world south of Florida and the Rio Grande. He shares dangerous views on Iran and Islam with Gen. Mattis.

Inside the White House, retired General Mike Flynn is slated to take the post as national security adviser. His public statements against Islam being an ideological, existential threat to the U.S., and his proliferation of inaccurate conspiracy theories have alienated his former colleagues in the military, including reportedly the incoming Secretary of Defense.

Then there are the Trump nominees selected to run the departments whose numerous missions under existing law they want to dismantle. The proposed Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, is a chain restaurateur adamantly against raising the federal minim wage of $7.25 an hour and his labor views are so extreme that a progressive group of restaurant owners organized to oppose his exploitative positions and argue for a fair minimum wage.  In another flagrant display of bureaucratic obstruction, Trump wants to appoint climate change denier Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, the same agency he, as Oklahoma Attorney General, fought tirelessly to undermine.

Another magnet for Trump’s nominations are those who made big donations to his campaign. For Linda McMahon’s $7 million to pro-Trump Super PACs, she gets to head the Small Business Administration. As a highly controversial professional wrestling CEO, she worked to monopolize the professional wrestling market and stifle competition.

For the Department of Education, school children and their teachers will face Betsy DeVos. From a billionaire family, she is a ferocious advocate of using taxpayer money in the form of vouchers for private schools. She makes no bones about her hatred of public schools and her desire to have commercial managers of school systems.

To lead the Justice Department, Trump has selected Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who is big on police surveillance, weak on civil rights enforcement, a hard-liner on immigration and very mixed on corporate crime.

Add these strong-willed ideologues, coupled with Trump’s easily bruised ego, Twitter-tantrums on trivial matters and his penchant to always be the decision-making strongman, and you’ve got the making of an explosive regime with daily eruptions.

Whatever the media makes of the inevitable intrigue, in-fighting and likely resistance by the civil service to adhere to their lawful missions, it is the people who will be paying the price. President Trump will use the media to sugarcoat, falsify, distract, intimidate, glorify and massify the millions of people who believed, once upon a recent time, that he would “Make America Great Again.”

As the profiteers of Wall Street and the war hawks blend with the corporate statists, the super-confident Trump is telling us what their products will be like and that he’ll be their salesman.

If you think all this sounds predictable, there are going to be more than a few “black swans” (to use Nassim Taleb’s best-selling book title) coming over the horizon. It is time to mobilize as citizens in the Paul Revere mode.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and “Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us” (a novel).

13 December 2016

By Nauman Sadiq

During the last couple of months, two very similar military campaigns have simultaneously been going on in Syria and Iraq, while the Syrian offensive with Russian air support against the militants in east Aleppo has been reviled as an assault against humanity, the military campaign in Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces and Shi’a militias with American air support has been lauded as the struggle for “liberation” by the mainstream media.

Although the campaign in Mosul is against the Islamic State while in east Aleppo the Syrian regime has launched a military offensive against the so-called “moderate rebels,” but the distinction between Islamic jihadists and “moderate” militants is more illusory than real.

Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq, the Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition against the regime and it still enjoys close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria. Keep in mind that although turf wars are common not just between the Islamic State and other militant outfits in Syria, but also among the rebel groups themselves; however, the ultimate objective of the Islamic State and the rest of militant outfits in Syria is the same: that is, to overthrow the Shi’a majority regime of Bashar al-Assad.

It is not a coincidence then that when the regime was on the verge of winning a resounding victory against the militants holed up in east Aleppo, the Islamic State came to the rescue of its brothers-in-arms by opening up a new front in Palmyra from where it had been evicted in March. Consequently, the regime has to send reinforcements from Aleppo to Palmyra in order to defend the city and thus the momentum of the military offensive in east Aleppo has stalled.

It defies explanation that while the US has announced the Phase II of the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have amassed north of the Islamic State’s bastion in al-Raqqah, instead of buttressing its defenses against the SDF in the north, the Islamic State has launched an offensive against the Syrian regime in the south? In order to answer this perplexing question, we need to revisit the ideology, composition and objectives of the Islamic State in Syria.

Unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-West rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.

Moreover, such spin-doctors also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are quite porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to the Syrian militants in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars for the sake of readers, I would divide it into three separate and distinct zones of influence. Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar.

Both of these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to the Sunni Arab jihadist organizations like al-Tawhid Brigade, Nour al-Din Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey.

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus.

Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan. Here let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.

And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqah and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State. Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by the hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

The bottom line is that although the American efforts to stall the momentum of the Islamic jihadists’ expansion in Iraq appears to be sincere, but the Western powers and their regional allies are still pursuing the duplicitous policy of using the Syrian militants, including the Islamic State, to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, energy politics and Petroimperialism.

12 December 2016

By Nile Bowie

President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Taiwan was initially reported as a protocol-shattering blunder initiated by the Taiwanese government rather than Trump himself.

American presidents have not directly communicated with Taiwan’s leadership since 1979 when the Nixon-era shift in policy established formal direct ties between Washington and Beijing.

Though many were skeptical of the administration’s explanation of the exchange as a routine congratulatory call, it has since been established that the conversation had been quietly planned months in advance by Trump’s advisors.

Former senator Bob Dole also played a key role coordinating between Taiwanese officials and the Trump campaign, reportedly lobbying as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan behind the scenes.

This was a calculated signal that the incoming administration, which has associated itself with several prominent Taiwan proponents, is planning to break with the past in pursuit of a tougher recalibration of relations with China.

Trump obviously knew the call would antagonize Beijing but went ahead, reinforcing the gesture with an incendiary string of tweets channeling campaign rhetoric accusing Beijing of currency manipulation.

The president-elect was serving notice to Beijing that it is dealing with a different kind of president, one who seemingly equates traditionally adhered to gestures of respect for China’s interests with kowtowing to their leadership.

He also addressed detractors by pointing out the irony of a phone call being portrayed as controversial when the US has sold billions in arms to Taiwan’s government and long underwritten the island’s security as a matter of policy.

Several leading members of Trump’s transition team, including incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus, are considered hawkish on China and friendly toward Taiwan, with some even supportive of formalizing diplomatic recognition.

At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump’s allies reaffirmed support for Reagan-era assurances to Taiwan in the party platform, using much tougher language against China than the previous iteration four years ago.

John Bolton, the Iraq war-era former US Ambassador to the United Nations, now under consideration for the role of Washington’s top diplomat, is said to have encouraged the Taiwanese leadership to approach the president-elect.

Bolton has advocated a calculated escalation of the Taiwan dispute by officially receiving Taiwanese diplomats at the State Department in a lead-up to full diplomatic recognition to gain leverage over China.

It goes without saying that such a policy prescription would be an unmitigated shakeup of Sino-US relations with the potential even to trigger military tensions that would be detrimental to both countries and the global economy at large.

That Trump’s top advisers and contenders for Secretary of State are flirting with such ideas is very alarming. The United States gains nothing from engaging in polemics with its biggest trading partner and largest holder of US Treasury debt.

It is fundamental to understand that China sees Taiwan as an integral part of its territory, regarding it as a breakaway province and even threatening to use force to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence.

As far as China is concerned, this is an issue of territorial integrity, sovereignty and war-and-peace. Discussion of the issue has always been non-negotiable and Beijing considers the ‘one-China principle’ to be the bedrock of Sino-US relations.

Should the Trump administration pursue a new approach toward China, it is crucial that both sides take care not to overplay their hand. China today is also far less-encumbered to assert to its interests in comparison to previous decades.

China’s state media in recent years has drummed up strong nationalist sentiment over the South China Sea disputes and territory issues. Public uproar on the Chinese government is already extraordinary, giving it little space to maneuver.

The Chinese leadership should remember it is dealing with a figure whose strongest attribute is generating controversy and courting the limelight. Trump is someone with no coherent political ideology and few fixed positions.

Despite his unpredictability, Trump does not intend to overturn international relationships. His appointment of Iowa Governor Terry Branstad – a friend of Chinese President Xi Jinping – as ambassador to China is an olive branch.

Still, there is real potential for an escalation if Trump believes raising political and even military tensions with China would increase US leverage to force Beijing to concede more economic benefits to American interests.

China is thus far taking a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s administration. It lodged a diplomatic protest urging careful handling of the Taiwan issue but has blamed Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen for initiating the call.

Tsai leads the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which has traditionally opposed the one-China policy as a basis for future relations with the mainland but is now increasingly reliant on China as the island’s largest trading partner.

Relations between Beijing and Taiwan’s previous government led by the Kuomintang party, which supports unification, were on their most cordial terms since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 when Tsai took office in May 2016.

Tsai has been ambiguous on the question of Taiwanese independence and has thus far taken care to preserve the status quo between Taiwan and the mainland as the island’s export-dependent economy continues to underperform.

Fearing Trump’s campaign rhetoric, Tsai likely sought affirmation from the president-elect that the US will shoulder its previous defense responsibility for Taiwan, all the more reason for Beijing to distrust Tsai’s administration.

Taiwan, the only ethnic Chinese society that has universal suffrage and democratic elections, is fiercely protective of its political system. The island’s autonomy and self-rule should be respected by Beijing.

It would also be a mistake for the Chinese leadership to place undue pressure on Tsai’s administration in the wake of the phone call. Should the Taiwanese continue open engagement with Washington, the response will be unflinching.

It is not Washington’s place to champion Taiwanese independence, which the vast majority of countries regard as an internal issue.  Doing so will enflame the dispute and upset the cooperation built up between Taiwan and the mainland in recent years.

10 December 2016

By Robert J Barsocchini

Fake news propagated by the US government and collaborating organizations such as the New York Times and Washington Post helped create an environment in which the US was able to illegally invade Iraq in 2003, killing at least one million and possibly upwards of two million people, including the deaths of some 4,500 US soldiers, according to a meta-study by Nobel-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Just this November, nearly 6,000 people were killed in Iraq thanks to the conflicts that are still raging due to the invasion (which is ongoing), and it was not an atypical month – even more were killed in October.

Regarding the fake news that laid the groundwork for the US war of aggression, award-winning journalist Robert Parry notes that, for example, Judith Miller of NYT and Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt “repeatedly stated the ‘fact’ of Iraq’s hidden WMD as flat fact and mocked anyone who doubted the ‘group think.’”

Parry also traces the use of fake news by these outlets and the government to the present, raising interesting legal questions about whether and how the individuals who perpetrate fake news should be punished, and to what extent they are protected by the US first amendment.

Trevor Timm of The Atlantic cites a Supreme Court decision which ruled that speech is protected unless it “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”.

According to the highest UN officials and many others (including most of the world), the invasion of Iraq was a lawless action, which would make statements directed to precipitating it ineligible for protection under US law.

The next question that arises would be how to punish the offenders of the illegal speech.  Sticking to US legal precedent, we may note that the US, at Nuremberg, executed Germans who it determined had issued fake news in service of creating the conditions for Germany to invade other nations.  And though the death penalty has since been eradicated in most of the world, it has not been in the US.

Parry notes that none of the fake-news peddlers have yet faced any legal recourse for their apparent crimes.  Hiatt, for example, “remains the Post’s editorial-page editor continuing to enforce ‘conventional wisdoms’ and to disparage those who deviate.”  Miller and others maintain similar positions.

People at these outlets have recently begun to express that there should be limits on fake news.  However, they have only made such statements in reference to others, not themselves, perhaps illustrating the level of regard they have for the thousands of US soldiers and million-plus Iraqis that have died and are dying thanks in part to the fake news they disseminate.

Robert J. Barsocchini is an independent researcher and reporter who focuses on global force dynamics and has served as a cross-cultural intermediary for the film and Television industry. His work has been cited, published, or followed by numerous professors, economists, lawyers, military and intelligence veterans, and journalists. Updates on Twitter.

9 December 2016

By Sara Toth Stub

On a recent Sunday morning, Adeeb Jawad Joudeh Al Husseini was sitting on a bench just inside the sole public entrance to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The doorway to the sprawling church, founded in the 4th Century, is where the 53-year-old Muslim has spent much of his life. His father, grandfather and dozens of generations of forefathers before them also dedicated most of their lives to sitting on this bench, guarding the church believed to contain the tomb of Jesus, Al Husseini said, pulling a 20cm-long iron key out of his leather jacket’s inner pocket.

This key is the only one that can unlock the church’s imposing wooden doors, a duty that was, according to Al Husseini, given to his family by Saladin, the sultan who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 – just one of many times that control of Jerusalem, coveted for its holiness by Jews, Christians and Muslims, has switched hands. Saladin wanted to make sure that the church was not harmed by his fellow Muslims, something that happened in 1009 when the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim ordered a number of churches in the Holy Land be burned, including the Holy Sepulchre. (Al-Hakim’s son approved the rebuilding of the church in 1128.)

“So Saladin gave our family the key to protect the church,” Al Husseini said. “For our family, this is an honour. And it’s not an honour just for our family, but it’s an honour for all Muslims in the world.”

Members of Al Husseini’s family, along with another Muslim family, the Nuseibehs, have become permanent fixtures in the complicated fabric of the Holy Sepulchre church. The complex is now used by six different ancient churches – Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox – each of which has monks living there. Throughout history, relations have been fraught between the religious communities in this complex, sometimes leading to violence over which church controls which parts of the building. To this day, a 19th-century Ottoman decree attempts to keep these tensions in check by declaring that each church is limited to using the spaces in the building that they controlled back in 1853 when the decree was issued.

Every morning when the church’s doors open at 4 am, members of the two families – or a representative appointed by them – is present for what has emerged as a ceremonial act of cooperation. The Muslim representative unlocks the latch and pushes open one door, then a clergyman from the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Armenian Orthodox church – who take turns on a rotating basis – pull open the other door from inside, while clergy from the other denominations supervise. The same happens in reverse when the church closes at 7 pm.

The tourists and pilgrims who come here to kiss the stone slab revered to be the place where the body of Jesus was washed before burial, and enter the underground chamber believed to contain his tomb, all walk past these Muslim guardians, who sit on the bench much of the day in between tending to family and business. Historians cannot determine how long the role of these doorkeepers goes back, but they also haven’t made serious attempts to disprove the legacy – and most consider it central to the daily operations of the church.

“It’s basically like a lot of things in the church; it’s a tradition,” said Raymond Cohen, professor emeritus of international relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has studied the church and written the book, Saving the Holy Sepulchre. “And I think it’s one of the gems of Jerusalem, really.”

While Al Husseini’s family holds the key, the Nuseibeh family is charged with the physical work of opening and closing the church’s door, a duty they trace back to 637 when the caliph Omar first brought Islam to Jerusalem, explained Wajeeh Y Nuseibeh, 67, who was sitting on the bench next to Al Huseini.

“Our family first arrived to Jerusalem with Omar,” and since then has been entrusted to protect the church from vandals, Nuseibeh said, handing me his business card, which declares he is “Custodian and door-keeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre”.

But Al Husseini insists that Nuseibeh’s family only entered the set-up later.

“This is not true what [Nuseibeh] says,” Al Husseini told me later, adding that shortly after his family received the keys from Saladin in 1187, they asked the Nuseibeh family to open and close the door, which involves climbing a ladder to reach the lock, while Al Husseini’s family remained the holder of the key.

“It was not honourable for our family to be climbing up and down ladders, because we were sheiks,” Al Husseini said.

Al Husseini’s card says he is “Keys Custodian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

Nuseibeh smiled at Al Husseini’s version of the story, then repeated his own version, going back to Omar, who ruled the city more than 500 years before Saladin. Sitting side by side, they told me that the matter is a friendly debate and something they often laugh about, an account confirmed by a mutual friend, Ibrahim Attieh, 75, a retired tour guide who joined them on the bench to chat.

“Yes, they are friends, and I am a friend of both of them,” said Attieh, who was one of the many friends, priests, tourists and even Israeli police officers (who oversee security in the church) to join Al Husseini and Nuseibeh on their bench during the day.

In addition to surviving the whims of Jerusalem’s governing powers, including hundreds of years when the caliphate charged pilgrims large sums of money to enter, the church has also been torn by inner conflict. Throughout history there have been clashes – sometimes violent – between various denominations over control of certain areas of the church, and the local powers, especially during Ottoman times, were often involved in redistributing rights and territories inside the building.

Occasionally, these disagreements even threatened to spark conflict between world powers. In 1853, Russia threatened to invade Turkey if its Ottoman government, which also controlled Jerusalem, granted France’s request to give part of the Greek Orthodox area of the church to the Roman Catholics. This caused the Ottoman sultan Abdulmecid I to issue the decree saying that there would be no more transferring of property and rights inside the church.

Today, this so-called status quo that was imposed on the denominations still governs every facet of life in the church, from the scheduled times of services, to the languages of the Masses, to the route a procession takes. Any change to the routine risks discord and violence, last demonstrated in 2008 when a brawl broke out between Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox clergy over the route of a procession, leading to arrests. The delicate nature of keeping the status quo means that renovations and repairs are rare, Cohen explained.

“It’s no simple task to keep the peace,” he said.

But after decades of negotiations, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Greek Orthodox leaders recently came to a historic agreement to repair the structure covering what they believe is Jesus’ tomb, which architects have long warned is in danger of collapse. The square structure, known as the Edicule, located under the church’s main rotunda, is now covered in scaffolding. Ladders, stone slabs, plywood and other building supplies have been scattered around the centre of the church since June 2016. This is first repair work to be done to the tomb’s chapel in more than 200 years and the first significant project for any part of the building since the edifice was restored, beginning in the 1960s.

But even though the churches may now cooperate better than in the past, and can rely on the Israeli police to keep order, the doorkeepers are an embodiment of how long-held traditions and the involvement of outsiders has determined much of the course of the Holy Sepulchre’s history.

“Things are like a wool sweater here; if you start unravelling it, the whole thing falls apart,” Cohen said.

At 6:30 pm on Sunday evening, half an hour before the church’s scheduled closing, a loud clanging pierced the quiet in the church. This was the sound of Omar Sumren performing the ritual banging of the knocker, then shutting one of the double doors in preparation for the final closing. Sumren and his brother, Ishmael, have worked on behalf of Al Husseini for 25 years, performing the opening and closing duties when Al Husseini is busy.

Just before 7 pm as the last visitors were leaving, Ishmael picked up the ladder resting inside the church’s doors and moved it outside. Two Catholic Franciscans clad in their signature brown gowns with rope belts, along with Greek and Armenian Orthodox priests dressed in black, stood inside the threshold, observing every move. An Israeli policeman, wearing a yarmulke, or Jewish skullcap, was also present for the daily ritual. Ishmael shut the door then ascended the ladder to close the upper latch. He climbed down, folded up the ladder and passed it back to the priests inside through a small hatch in the door.

As the monks began another night inside the church compound, Omar, entrusted with the key from Al Husseini, retired to a small room just off the main courtyard in front of the church. Each night one of these men tasked with the door and key duties sleeps here, ready to perform the regimented opening in the morning.

“This for me is a second house,” Al Husseini said.

28 November 2016

By Mike Ives

HONG KONG — Members of the Rohingya ethnic group face chronic discrimination in access to medical care in Myanmar and other Asian countries, with severe consequences for health and mortality rates, a study has found.

The report, published online by the British medical journal The Lancet on Dec. 1, said the Myanmar government’s role in the situation could arguably be characterized as genocide or ethnic cleansing.

The study analyzed health care indicators in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia and other countries where about 1.5 million Rohingya live. The researchers compiled data from governments, human rights groups and other sources. It found that the indicators were consistently worse for the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, than for other populations living in the same areas.

The researchers were especially critical of the government of Myanmar, which faces international pressure to address a continuing humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State, a region on the border with Bangladesh, where advocacy groups say the authorities have killed dozens of Rohingya after an attack in October on a police border post.

“The part played by the Myanmar government in restricting Rohingya reproductive rights, and in the high morbidity and mortality of the Rohingya people, could arguably be advanced as a charge of genocide, or at the very least as ethnic cleansing,” the report said, referring to what it said was a pattern of health-related discrimination that stretched back decades.

In Maungdaw and Butheetaung townships, in the area of Rakhine State where much of the recent violence against Rohingya people has occurred, there was only one physician per 158,000 people, compared with one physician per 681 people in the Buddhist-majority area around Sittwe, the state capital, the study said, citing the government data from 2013.

Dr. Htun Tin, director of the Disaster and Public Health Emergency Response Unit at Myanmar’s Health Ministry, pushed back against the report in a telephone interview on Monday.

“We never restricted Bengalis reproductive rights,” Dr. Htun Tin said, using a term for Rohingya that is common in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Many there consider the Rohingya to be from Bangladesh, even if their families have been in Myanmar for generations.

“We are trying our best to give health care to all people in Rakhine State,” Dr. Htun Tin added.

Myanmar has denied the Rohingya citizenship under a 1982 law that excludes them from a list of 135 approved “national races.” Between 300,000 and half a million Rohingya are now believed to live in Bangladesh. The government there began its first census of undocumented Rohingya refugees in June.

The Lancet study, by researchers at Harvard University Medical School and the School of Public Health, cited examples in several countries, beginning in the late 1970s, in which the Rohingya suffered from poor access to obstetric care and a high prevalence of waterborne illnesses, among other health problems.

Stunting, or lower-than-normal height because of malnutrition, affects 60 percent of Rohingya child refugees in Bangladesh, a rate 50 percent higher than among the country’s general population, the study said, citing data from 2002 and 2012 collected by Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations. It also documented rates of diarrhea among children that were far higher for Rohingya children in Bangladesh, Malaysia and India in recent years than they were in the general populations of those countries.

Diarrhea is a leading cause of malnutrition in children under 5, according to the World Health Organization. It can also be life-threatening, especially in young people who are malnourished or who have compromised immune systems. It kills about 760,000 children under 5 each year, the agency says.

But the study paid particular attention to health problems in Rakhine State, which has more than one million Rohingya people and where about 140,000 Rohingya have been living in camps for internally displaced people around Sittwe, since a spasm of communal violence in 2012 left them homeless.

In recent weeks, human rights groups have relayed allegations of rape and arbitrary killings of Rohingya people by the authorities in northern Rakhine State, as satellite images show villages burned to the ground. Thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, and the United Nations human rights agency has said abuses against them may be crimes against humanity.

The Lancet study, citing a 2013 government report, said there was just one latrine per 37 people in the Sittwe camps on average, and that diarrheal illness affected 40 percent of Rohingya children under 5 who live in the camps — five times the rate for other children in Rakhine State.

The mortality rate for children younger than 5 in Maungdaw and Butheetaung was 135 and 224 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 77 deaths per 1,000 live births in the Sittwe area, the study added.

In a statement on Monday, Mark Cutts, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar, said that humanitarian organizations in the country had long called for improved access to health services for Muslims and other vulnerable groups that face restrictive policies.

Although access to basic health services was historically low for both Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State, he added, “Muslim people face a number of additional barriers in accessing health care because of movement restrictions” and inadequate emergency referral procedures.

Dr. Thaung Hlaing, the director of the Rakhine State Public Health Department’s Strategic Health Operations Center, said in a telephone interview on Monday that all of the state’s hospitals were functioning well.

But he suggested that the government should not be blamed for not providing health care in the state’s restive northern townships.

“We wouldn’t dare to go and give health services in villages where the conflict happened” because of security concerns, he said. “If villagers from that area can come to hospital, we can give full service.”

Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay, Myanmar.

5 December 2016