Chris Hedges's Blog, page 63
January 3, 2020
U.S. Sending 3,000 More Troops to Mideast as Reinforcements
WASHINGTON — The United States is sending nearly 3,000 more Army troops to the Mideast as reinforcements in the volatile aftermath of the killing of an Iranian general in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump, defense officials said Friday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision not yet announced by the Pentagon, said the troops are from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C. They are in addition to about 700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who deployed to Kuwait earlier this week after the storming of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters.
The dispatching of extra troops reflects concern about potential Iranian retaliatory action for the killing Thursday of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force. But it also runs counter to Trump’s repeated push to extract the United States from Mideast conflicts. Prior to this week’s troop deployments, the administration had sent 14,000 additional troops to the Mideast since May, when it first publicly claimed Iran was planning attacks on U.S. interests.
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The reinforcements took shape as Trump gave his first comments on the strike, declaring that he ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani because he had killed and wounded many Americans over the years and was plotting to kill many more. “He should have been taken out many years ago,” he added.
The strike marked a major escalation in the conflict between Washington and Iran, as Iran vowed “harsh retaliation” for the killing of the senior military leader. The two nations have faced repeated crises since Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions.
The United States urged its citizens to leave Iraq “immediately” as fears mounted that the strike and any retaliation by Iran could ignite a conflict that engulfs the region.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the strike as “wholly lawful,” saying that Soleimani posed an “imminent” threat against the U.S. and its interests in the region.
“There was an imminent attack,” Pompeo told Fox News. “The orchestrator, the primary motivator for the attack, was Qassem Soleimani.”
The White House did not inform lawmakers before the strike. It was expected to give classified briefings to members of Congress and staff in the afternoon. Defense Secretary Mark Esper notified House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the strike shortly before the Pentagon confirmed it publicly.
Pompeo called world leaders Friday to explain and defend Trump’s decision to order the airstrike that has sparked fears of an explosion of anti-American protests as well as more violence in the already unstable Middle East.
The State Department said Pompeo had spoken Friday with top officials in Afghanistan, Britain, China, France, Germany and Pakistan.
In his calls with the British and German foreign ministers as well as China’s state councilor, Pompeo stressed that Trump acted to counter an imminent threat to U.S. lives in the region but also that the U.S. is committed to “de-escalation” of tensions, according to the department’s summaries of the conversations.
De-escalation was not mentioned in the department’s summary of his call with the French foreign minister, nor in his calls with Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani or the Pakistani military chief of staff. In those calls Pompeo “underscored the Iranian regime’s destabilizing actions through the region and the Trump Administration’s resolve in protecting American interests, personnel, facilities and partners,” the department said.
Trump opted not to play a round of golf on Friday, and he was not expected to be seen publicly until he travels to Miami for an afternoon event for his reelection campaign.
___
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Lee contributed.
America Is a Democracy in Name Only
One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote in the United States. The women’s suffrage movement took decades of organizing to achieve success, from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, to mass civil disobedience and protest leading up to the adoption and ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Now, a century later, the right to vote is on perilous ground, with aggressive and systematic efforts to disenfranchise voters in states across the country.
Voter suppression has long been a central strategy of the Republican party. In 1980, Paul Weyrich, a conservative Republican activist who founded right-wing institutions including The Heritage Foundation, said in a speech: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
States in the so-called Rust Belt, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, were critical to Donald Trump’s win in 2016. In each of those states save Ohio, Trump won by less than one percentage point. Now, in Wisconsin, a county judge ruling in a case brought by a conservative organization has ordered that 209,000 people be purged from the voter rolls. The state’s elections commission has delayed the purge while the case is appealed. In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin by just over 23,000 votes.
2016 was the first election in which Wisconsin’s strict voter ID law was in force. The progressive advocacy group Priorities USA reported that the law suppressed the votes of more than 200,000 residents in the 2016 election. Voter ID laws that require people to present photo identification at polling places disproportionately prevent poor people and people of colour from voting.
“The largest drop-off was among Black and Democratic-leaning voters,” investigative journalist Ari Berman said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, commenting on the report. “They found that there was a much larger drop-off in Wisconsin than Minnesota, which does not have a voter ID law, that counties with a large African-American population had a larger drop-off.”
The Associated Press published a report two weeks ago based on a leaked audio recording from a November 21, 2019, meeting of the Wisconsin chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association. “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” Justin Clark, a senior counsel to Trump’s re-election campaign, was recorded saying. “Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.” He was talking about organized poll watching activities, where party operatives position themselves at Democratic-leaning voting precincts to challenge voters, demanding election staff verify their identity or bar them from voting. Clark later said his words were misinterpreted.
In Georgia, the Republican-controlled state government purged 100,000 voters from the rolls in December. The move was approved by a federal judge, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Fair Fight, an organization founded after the 2018 election by Democrat Stacey Abrams to promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country.
The 2018 Georgia governor’s race pitted Abrams against Republican candidate Brian Kemp, who was the secretary of state at the time, responsible for overseeing the election and maintaining the voter rolls. In July 2018, months before the election, Kemp oversaw what has been called the largest mass disenfranchisement in U.S. history, purging over 500,000 voters from Georgia’s list of 6.6 million registered voters. Kemp received about 50,000 more votes than Abrams, out of close to 4 million cast, and claimed victory. Stacey Abrams refused to concede, noting Kemp’s corruption of the election, but did not fight the results.
Despite the aggressive efforts by the right wing to suppress the vote, voting rights advocates are making progress. In Florida, voters passed Amendment 4, restoring voting rights to 1.4 million ex-felons. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill forcing those prospective voters to pay “all fines and fees” associated with their earlier convictions, significantly slowing the restoration of these “returning citizens” to the voter rolls. Many call it a poll tax.
In five Western states from Colorado to Hawaii, mail-in ballots have increased voter participation, reduced costs and provided an auditable, paper ballot trail to allow easy verification of election results. The National Vote at Home Institute is working to expand the practice state by state. And the National Popular Vote project is working with state legislatures around the country to allocate electoral college votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally.
Democracy is a constant struggle. From the suffragettes to today’s voting rights advocates, securing the right to vote should be a common pursuit of us all.
Iran Vows ‘Harsh’ Response to U.S. Killing of Top General
BAGHDAD — Iran vowed “harsh retaliation” for a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport that killed a top Iranian general who had been the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, as tensions soared in the wake of the targeted killing.
The killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, marks a major escalation in the standoff between Washington and Iran, which has careened from one crisis to another since President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions.
The United States urged American citizens to leave Iraq “immediately” following the Friday airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport that Iran’s state TV said killed Soleimani and nine others. The State Department said the embassy in Baghdad, which was attacked by Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters earlier this week, is closed and all consular services have been suspended.
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Around 5,200 American troops are based in Iraq to train Iraqi forces and help in the fight against Islamic State group militants. U.S. embassies also issued a security alert for Americans in Lebanon, Bahrain Kuwait and Nigeria.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that “harsh retaliation is waiting” for the U.S. after the airstrike, calling Soleimani the “international face of resistance.” Khamenei declared three days of public mourning and appointed Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani’s deputy, to replace him as head of the Quds Force.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the killing a “heinous crime” and vowed his country would “take revenge.”
Thousands of worshippers in the Iranian capital Tehran took to the streets after Friday Muslim prayers to condemn the killing, waving posters of Soleimani and chanting “Death to deceitful America.”
The targeted strike, and any retaliation by Iran, could ignite a conflict that engulfs the whole region, endangering U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and beyond. Over the last two decades, Soleimani had assembled a network of heavily armed allies stretching all the way to southern Lebanon, on Israel’s doorstep.
However, the attack may act as a deterrent for Iran and its allies to delay or restrain any potential response. Oil prices surged on news of the airstrike and markets were mixed.
The killing promised to further strain relations with Iraq’s government, which is allied with both Washington and Tehran and has been deeply worried about becoming a battleground in their rivalry. Iraqi politicians close to Iran called for the country to order U.S. forces out.
The Defense Department said it killed the 62-year-old Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the orchestrated violent protests at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The strike, on an access road near Baghdad’s airport, was carried out Friday by an American drone, according to a U.S. official.
Soleimani had just disembarked from a plane arriving from either Syria or Lebanon, a senior Iraqi security official said. The blast tore his body to pieces along with that of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. A senior politician said Soleimani’s body was identified by the ring he wore. Iran’s state TV said Friday 10 people were killed in the airstrike, including five Revolutionary Guard members and Soleimani’s son-in-law, whom he did not identify.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
The attack comes at the start of a year in which Trump faces both a Senate trial following his impeachment by Congress and a re-election campaign. It marks a potential turning point in the Middle East and represents a drastic change for American policy toward Iran after months of tensions.
The tensions are rooted in in Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, struck under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Since then, Tehran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers. The U.S. also blames Iran for other attacks targeting tankers and a September assault on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry that temporarily halved its production.
Supporters of Friday’s strike said it restored U.S. deterrence power against Iran, and Trump allies were quick to praise the action. “To the Iranian government: if you want more, you will get more,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted.
“Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran,” Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, wrote in a tweet.
Others, including Democratic White House hopefuls, criticized Trump’s order. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Trump had “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” saying it could leave the U.S. “on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.”
Trump, who is vacationing at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., said in a tweet Friday the airstrike was ordered because Soleimani was “plotting to kill” many Americans. “He should have been taken out many years ago!” Trump tweeted.
The potential for a spiraling escalation alarmed U.S. allies and rivals alike.
“We are waking up in a more dangerous world,” France’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin, told RTL radio. The European Union warned against a “generalized flare-up of violence.” Russia condemned the killing, and fellow Security Council member China said it was “highly concerned.” Britain and Germany noted that Iran also bore some responsibility for escalating tensions, while Saudi Arabia urged restraint.
Ibrahim Bayram, a political analyst with Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper, said the U.S.-Iran tensions had now entered a new phase, “an open conflict with no horizon.”
While Iran’s conventional military has suffered under 40 years of American sanctions, Iran can strike asymmetrically in the region through its allied forces like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on “the resistance the world over” to avenge Soleimani’s killing. Frictions over oil shipments in the Gulf could also increase, and Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard has built up a ballistic missile program.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it in a statement Friday that it had held a special session and made “appropriate decisions” on how to respond, though it didn’t reveal them.
Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett held a meeting with top security officials Friday, but the Israeli military said it was not taking any extraordinary action on its northern front, other than closing a ski resort in the Golan Heights near Lebanon and Syria as a precaution.
In the United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. ally in the Gulf, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash, called for “rational engagement” and a “calm approach.”
Emirati political analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdullah said the U.S. strike could help restore confidence among Gulf leaders that Washington will push back against their rival Iran. But, he said, they also don’t want to be caught in the middle. “Is the region ready for a sharp escalation?” he said. “We are the closest to the theater than anyone on earth.”
The most immediate impact could be in Iraq. Funerals for al-Muhandis and the other slain Iraqis were set for Saturday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi condemned the strike as an “aggression against Iraq.” An emergency session of parliament was called for Saturday, which the deputy speaker, Hassan al-Kaabi, said would take “decisions that put an end to the U.S. presence in Iraq.”
Ordering out American forces would heavily damage Washington’s influence and make the U.S. troop presence in neighboring Syria more tenuous. But Iraq’s leadership is likely to be divided over such a step. President Barham Salih called for “the voice of reason and wisdom to dominate, keeping in mind Iraq’s greater interests.”
Iraq has been gripped by massive anti-government protests since October, partly against Iran’s influence. But there was little celebration of Soleimani’s death among protesters camped out in a central Baghdad square.
“America and Iran should solve their problems outside Iraq,” said one protester, who asked not to be named for security concerns.
For Iran, the killing marks the loss of a cultural icon who stood for national pride and resilience in the face of U.S. sanctions. While careful to avoid getting involved in politics, Soleimani’s profile rose sharply as the U.S. and Israel blamed him for Iranian proxy attacks abroad.
As the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Soleimani led all of its expeditionary forces and frequently shuttled between Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Quds Force members have deployed in Syria’s war to support President Bashar Assad, as well as in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Soleimani rose to even greater prominence by advising forces fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and in Syria.
U.S. officials say the Guard under Soleimani taught Iraqi militants how to manufacture and use deadly roadside bombs against U.S. troops after the invasion of Iraq. Iran has denied that.
On Sunday, U.S. airstrikes killed 25 fighters from an Iranian-backed militia in retaliation for the killing of a U.S. contractor at an American base in a rocket attack the previous week. The strikes prompted two days of protests orchestrated by the militias at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where their supporters breached the compound and set fires, though no one was wounded.
___
Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Zeke Miller in Washington; Jon Gambrell and Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Bassem Mroue and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; and Joseph Krauss and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
The Real Reason Trump Assassinated Qassem Soleimani
Ann Arbor – The madman in the White House has been sulking and raging for weeks about his impeachment proceedings, tweeting manically on some days more than 100 times. With the release by JustSecurity.org of unredacted emails on the Ukraine scandal showing that Trump personally (and illegally) withheld congressionally mandated military aid to an ally, the Republican defense of the president is collapsing. Some GOP senators such as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski seem to be weakening on calling witnesses and subpoenaing records for the Senate trial, and the Democrats only need four Republican senators to ensure a proper proceeding, which would certainly put Trump’s presidency in peril.
It is extremely suspicious that Trump has abruptly begun trafficking in the sanguinary merchandise of all-out war just at this moment when his throne is on the brink of toppling.
My title is a reference to the 1997 Barry Levinson film, “Wag the Dog,” starring Anne Heche, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert De Niro. Its story line at IMDB is, “After being caught in a scandalous situation days before the election, the president does not seem to have much of a chance of being re-elected. One of his advisers contacts a top Hollywood producer in order to manufacture a war in Albania that the president can heroically end, all through mass media.” Only, Iran is not Albania.
Trump has from the beginning of his presidential campaign appealed to the worst and most fascistic elements in American political life. At a time when the US has no credible peer military rival, he added hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon budget, and the pudgy old chicken hawk lionized war criminals. Up until now, however, Trump shrewdly calculated that his base was tired of wasting blood and treasure on fruitless Middle Eastern wars, and he avoided taking more than symbolic steps. He dropped a big missile on Afghanistan once, and fired some Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Syria. But he drew back from the brink of more extensive military engagements.
Now, by murdering Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Jerusalem (Qods) Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Trump has brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. Mind you, Iran’s leadership is too shrewd to rush to the battlements at this moment, and will be prepared to play the long game. My guess is that they will encourage their allies among Iraqi Shiites to get up a massive protest at the US embassy and at bases housing US troops.
They will be aided in this task of mobilizing Iraqis by the simultaneous US assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces. Al-Muhandis is a senior military figure in the Iraqi armed forces, not just a civilian militia figure. Moreover, the Kata’ib Hizbullah that he headed is part of a strong political bloc, al-Fath, which has 48 members in parliament and forms a key coalition partner for the current, caretaker prime minister, Adil Abdulmahdi. Parliament won’t easily be able to let this outrage pass.
The US officer corps is confident that the American troops at the embassy and elsewhere in Baghdad are sufficient to fight off any militia invasion. I’m not sure they have taken into account the possibility of tens of thousands of civilian protesters invading the embassy, who can’t simply be taken out and shot.
Trump may be counting on the unpopularity among the youth protesters in downtown Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriya and other cities of Soleimani and of al-Muhandis to blunt the Iraqi reaction to the murders. The thousands of youth protesters cheered on hearing the news of their deaths, since they were accused of plotting a violent repression of the rallies demanding an end to corruption.
Iraq, however, is a big, complex society, and there are enormous numbers of Iraqi Shiites who support the Popular Mobilization Forces and who view them as the forces that saved Iraq from the peril of the ISIL (ISIS) terrorist organization. The Shiite hard liners would not need all Iraqis to back them in confronting the American presence, only a few hundred thousand for direct crowd action.
You also have to wonder whether Trump and his coterie aren’t planning a coup in Iraq. In the absence of a coup, the Iraqi parliament will almost certainly be forced, after this violation of Iraqi national sovereignty, to vote to expel American troops. This is foreseeable. So either the assassination was a drive-by on the way out, or Trump’s war cabinet doesn’t plan on having to leave Iraq.
Although Trump justified the murder of Soleimani by calling him a terrorist, that is nonsense in the terms of international law. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is the equivalent of the Iranian National Guard. What Trump did is the equivalent of some foreign country declaring the US military a terrorist organization (some have) and then assassinating General Joseph L. Lengyel, the 28th Chief of the National Guard Bureau (God forbid and may he have a long healthy life).
UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions Agnes Callamard tweeted,
#Pentagon statement on targeted killing of #suleimani: 1. It mentions that it aimed at “deterring future Iranian attack plans”. This however is very vague. Future is not the same as imminent which is the time based test required under international law. (1)
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 3, 2020
2. Overall, the statement places far greater emphasis on past activities and violations allegedly commuted by Suleimani. As such the killing appears far more retaliatory for past acts than anticipatory for imminent self defense.
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 3, 2020
3. The notion that Suleimani was “actively developing plans” is curious both from a semantic and military standpoint. Is it sufficient to meet the test of mecessity and proportionality?
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 3, 2020
4. The statement fails to mention the other individuals killed alongside Suleimani. Collateral? Probably. Unlawful. Absolutely.
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 3, 2020
What American corporate media won’t report is that Trump has put Iran under an almost complete economic blockade after breaching the 2015 nuclear accord that the US had signed. That accord removed economic sanctions on Iran in return for it mothballing 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program. That agreement could have formed the basis for reintegrating Iran into the world system and greatly reduced the tensions in the region for a generation.
Although Iran was certified by UN inspectors as abiding by the accord as long as it was in effect, Trump abruptly trashed the agreement. He then not only put the severest economic sanctions on Iran that have ever been applied to any country in peacetime, he went around the world twisting the arms of South Korea, Japan, India, and even China, pressuring them not to buy Iranian oil. There is no UN Security Council resolution imposing economic sanctions on Iran, so this is a rogue unilateral blockade imposed by Trump alone. It has strangled the Iranian economy, and people can’t afford key medicines for loved ones. A naval blockade is considered an act of war in international law, and Trump’s trade embargo is analogous in every way to such a blockade.
I predicted when Trump started doing these things that it would lead to conflict between Iran and the United States in ways that Trump himself could not foresee (people like Trump with narcissism personality disorder cannot empathize with the pain of other people, so Iran is invisible to him). The economic strangulation of Iran was bound to lead to pushback, as with encouraging Iraqi Shiite militias to target Americans, and to an escalation between the two countries.
If the Middle East now spins out of control, it is on Trump and his desperation to undo every good thing Barack Obama ever accomplished.
Bonus Video:
Floods in Indonesia’s Capital Leave 43 Dead, 397,000 Displaced
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The death toll from floods in Indonesia’s capital rose to 43 of Friday as rescuers found more bodies amid receding floodwaters, disaster officials said.
Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged at least 182 neighborhoods in greater Jakarta and caused landslides in the Bogor and Depok districts on the city’s outskirts as well as in neighboring Lebak, which buried a dozen people.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said the fatalities also included those who had drowned or been electrocuted since rivers broke their banks Wednesday after extreme torrential rains throughout New Year’s Eve. Three elderly people died of hypothermia.
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It was the worst flooding since 2013, when 57 people were killed after Jakarta was inundated by monsoon rains.
Floodwaters started receded in some parts of the city on Thursday evening, enabling residents to return to their homes.
Wibowo said about 397,000 people sought refuge in shelters across the greater metropolitan area as at their peak floodwaters reached as high as 6 meters (19 feet) in places.
Those returning to their homes found streets covered in mud and debris. Cars that had been parked in driveways were swept away, landing upside down in parks or piled up in narrow alleys. Sidewalks were strewn with sandals, pots and pans and old photographs. Authorities took advantage of the receding waters to clear away mud and remove piles of wet garbage from the streets.
Electricity was restored to tens of thousands of residences and businesses.
Jakarta’s Halim Perdanakusuma domestic airport reopened Thursday after its runway was submerged. Nearly 20,000 passengers had been affected by the closure.
The head of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency Dwikorita Karnawati said more downpours were forecast for the capital in coming days and the potential for extreme rainfall will continue until next month across Indonesia.
The government on Friday kicked off cloud seeding in an attempt to divert rain clouds from reaching greater Jakarta. Authorities warned that more flooding was possible until the rainy season ends in April.
The flooding has highlighted Indonesia’s infrastructure problems.
Jakarta is home to 10 million people, or 30 million including those in its greater metropolitan area. It is prone to earthquakes and flooding and is rapidly sinking due to uncontrolled extraction of ground water. Congestion is also estimated to cost the economy $6.5 billion a year.
President Joko Widodo announced in August that the capital will move to a site in sparsely populated East Kalimantan province on Borneo island, known for rainforests and orangutans.
‘A More Dangerous World’: Iran Killing Triggers Global Alarm
PARIS — Global powers warned Friday that the world became a more dangerous place after the U.S. assassinated Iran’s top general, urging restraint on all sides. Britain and Germany also suggested that Iran shared some blame for provoking the targeted killing that dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Mideast.
China, Russia and France, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, took a dim view of the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport early Friday that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani and several of his associates. The 62-year-old led Iran’s elite Quds Force, responsible for the country’s foreign campaigns.
The White House justified the strike with a tweet alleging that Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”
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Oil prices surged on news of the killing, reflecting investor jitters about Mideast stability, and there were immediate threats of vengeance from Iran. Social media flooded with alarm, with Twitter users morbidly turning “WWIII” into the top trending term worldwide.
“We are waking up in a more dangerous world. Military escalation is always dangerous,” France’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin, told RTL radio. “When such actions, such operations, take place, we see that escalation is underway.”
Russia likewise characterized the deadly U.S. strike as “fraught with serious consequences.” A Foreign Ministry statement warned that “such actions don’t help resolve complicated problems in the Middle East, but instead lead to a new round of escalating tensions.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that in ordering the killing, U.S. President Donald Trump had one eye on his re-election campaign.
“The U.S. military were acting on orders of U.S. politicians. Everyone should remember and understand that U.S. politicians have their interests, considering that this year is an election year,” Zakharova said in a TV interview.
Trump’s election opponents characterized the killing as reckless, with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden saying the U.S. president “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”
China described itself as “highly concerned.”
“Peace in the Middle East and the Gulf region should be preserved,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. “We urge all parties concerned, especially the United States, to maintain calm and restraint and avoid further escalation of tensions.”
But while echoing the concerns of other Security Council members about spiraling tensions, Britain and Germany broke ranks, voicing qualified understanding for the U.S. position.
German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer described the U.S. strike as “a reaction to a whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility,” pointing to attacks on tankers and a Saudi oil facility, among other events.
“We are at a dangerous escalation point and what matters now is contributing with prudence and restraint to de-escalation,” she said. Germany currently sits on the U.N. Security Council but is not a permanent member.
The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said “we have always recognized the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani.”
“Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate,” he said. “Further conflict is in none of our interests.”
There were also warnings that the killing could set back efforts to stamp out remnants of the Islamic State group. A top European Union official, Charles Michel, said “the risk is a generalized flare up of violence in the whole region and the rise of obscure forces of terrorism that thrive at times of religious and nationalist tensions.”
Italy also warned that increased tensions “risk being fertile terrain for terrorism and violent extremism.” But right-wing Italian opposition leader Matteo Salvini praised Trump for eliminating “one of the most dangerous and pitiless men in the world, an Islamic terrorist, an enemy of the West, of Israel, of rights and of freedoms.”
Trump also won the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively.”
Behind the scenes, the strike triggered urgent flurries of diplomatic activity. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo worked phones, calling world capitals to defend Trump’s decision. He said the U.S. is committed to de-escalating tensions that have soared since Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor and the U.S. responded with strikes on the militia. That set off violent pro-Iran protests outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which in turn set the stage for the killing of Soleimani.
In the Mideast, the strike provoked waves of shock, fury and fears of worse to come.
Iraq’s most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said in a speech during Friday prayers that the country must brace for “very difficult times.”
In Iran, a hard-line adviser to the country’s supreme leader who led Friday prayers in Tehran likened U.S. troops in Iraq to “insidious beasts” and said they should be swept from the region.
“I am telling Americans, especially Trump, we will take a revenge that will change their daylight into to a nighttime darkness,” said the cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami.
___
Gregory Katz in London, Christopher Bodeen in Beijing, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Daria Litvinova in Moscow, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Matthew Lee in Washington and Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed.
January 2, 2020
With Space Force, Congress Hands Trump a Major Victory
Donald Trump, who will go down in history as the most reviled president of all time, has just won a major victory in the creation of a sixth branch of the military: Space Force. Trump will be able to claim credit for a serious milestone — with the smooth cooperation of both major parties.
On Dec. 20, Trump signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act after both chambers of Congress passed the bill. A major provision of the law was the creation of Space Force, a military unit the president was openly seeking. His achievement was apparently won in exchange for conceding to Democrats’ demands for paid parental leave for federal employees. But for the Democrats to claim this as a victory is curious given that paid parental leave is an issue that Trump’s own daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has strongly supported.
The idea for Space Force started out as a joke by Trump when he flippantly said, during a 2018 speech in San Diego, California: “I was saying it the other day because we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force.’ And I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that.’” A year ago, when Democrats won enough congressional seats to claim victory in the House, the fate of Space Force was in serious doubt. The Atlantic speculated that “[w]ith the House of Representatives flipped and Congress split, the Trump administration’s Space Force will probably never get off the ground.” But just 13 months later, Democrats and Republicans together gave the most unpopular president in memory the approval he needed to fast-track his idea into reality.
In 2018, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island expressed his opposition to Space Force, saying it was “not the way to go.” A year later, Reed capitulated when he voted for the latest NDAA encompassing the creation of Space Force, saying the bill was “a responsible compromise that strengthens our national defense capabilities.” Regardless of the liberal party’s feigned opposition to warfighting, militarism has always been a bipartisan project, and it is no surprise that the militarization of space is as well.
Like the U.S. border wall with Mexico, Trump has been obsessed with the idea of creating Space Force for several years. During his first year in office, he was reportedly fixated on space, and according to an Axios report, the president “would ask random questions about rocket ships and marvel to hear about satellites and the junk floating around in space. His questions were unfocused, like a student trying to learn about a new subject.” Now, with his political victory in hand, Trump will likely tout Space Force as one of his crowning achievements. Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale last year asked Trump supporters to vote on a Space Force logo for the branded gear the campaign planned to sell, and his reelection website now offers Space Force-themed T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers for sale.
Decades of exposure to seductive science-fiction storytelling in movies and TV shows have romanticized the idea of space, space travel and the militarization of space. Hollywood has depicted countless scenes of war with laser-like beams destroying rival spaceships and the “good guys” prevailing in the end. The genre has remained deeply popular, with millions of Americans eagerly devouring Disney’s Star Wars-branded TV series “The Mandalorian” this fall and sharing Baby Yoda memes online. The new Star Wars franchise film, “The Rise of Skywalker,” made its theatrical debut Dec. 20 — coincidentally, the same day that Trump formalized the creation of Space Force.
Whether or not science fiction directly promotes the idea of Space Force, there is a strong conflation between fiction and non-fiction when it comes to space. DefenseNews.com triumphantly announced the creation of the new branch with a Star-Wars-referencing headline, “May the Space Force be with you.” The Washington Post’s David Montgomery took it a step further into popular culture with his laudatory article, “Trump’s Excellent Space Force Adventure,” in which he claimed that the president’s “proposal for a new military branch really could make America safe again.” Netflix even explored the idea of a TV show called Space Force starring Steve Carrell. Reinforcing the fusion of reality and fantasy, the new website for Space Force uses a font strongly reminiscent of the popular “Star Trek” TV series in its headlines.
Perhaps many of us imagine that as in the movies, a military presence in space is justifiable for the noblest of reasons. Just as the idea of nuclear weapons was sold to the American public as a safety mechanism — a “nuclear deterrent” — to discourage other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, Space Force is being explained as a way for the U.S. to prevent rather than promote conflict. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post last March, Vice President Mike Pence — with a heavy dose of revisionism about the U.S.’ military role — wrote, “The United States will always seek peace in space as on Earth, but history proves that peace only comes through strength. And in the realm of outer space, the Space Force will be that strength.”
Brig. Gen. Thomas James, director of operations for Space Command, reinforced this notion, explaining his objective to Foreign Policy as, “No. 1 is to deter conflict to extend into space.” He added, “Then, if it does extend into space, are we able to defend our assets?” Finally, he expressed what is likely the U.S.’ main objective: “And the third is our ability to defeat an adversary, and that could be through any means, not just in space but through multidomain operations.”
Gen. John E. Hyton, one of the originators of the idea of Space Force, spoke in far more honest terms when he said in March 2018, “We must normalize space and cyberspace as warfighting domains.” In his recent speech before signing the NDAA, Trump echoed that hawkish desire, saying, “Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain. … American superiority in space is absolutely vital.”
Currently, Congress has appropriated $40 million to jump-start Space Force as a part of the existing U.S. Air Force. That is just over half of what the Trump administration asked for, and although it is a relatively modest amount, the ensuing costs will likely be higher in line with the steadily increasing budget of the entire U.S. military. At the same time as raging debates over how taxpayers can afford life-saving programs like “Medicare for All” or food stamps, Congress and the president blithely threw even more money at the military and its newest branch. As the devastating impacts of our endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to unfold, lawmakers have casually, without much debate, expanded the arena of war into space.
Pentagon: U.S. Airstrike Kills Powerful Iranian General
BAGHDAD — The Pentagon said Thursday that the U.S. military has killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, at the direction of President Donald Trump.
An airstrike killed Soleimani, architect of Iran’s regional security apparatus, at Baghdad’s international airport Friday, Iranian state television and three Iraqi officials said, an attack that’s expected to draw severe Iranian retaliation against Israel and American interests.
The Defense Department said Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.
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A statement released late Thursday by the Pentagon said the strike on Soleimani “was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”
The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF, Iraqi officials said. The PMF media arm said the two were killed in an American airstrike that targeted their vehicle on the road to the airport.
Citing a Revolutionary Guard statement, Iranian state television said Soleimani was “martyred” in an attack by U.S. helicopters near the airport, without elaborating.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who was vacationing on his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., but sent out a tweet of an American flag.
Their deaths are a potential turning point in the Middle East and if the U.S. carried them out, it represents a drastic change for American policy toward Iran after months of tensions.
Tehran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers. Meanwhile, the U.S. blames Iran for a series of attacks targeting tankers, as well as a September assault on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry that temporarily halved its production.
The tensions take root in Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, struck under his predecessor.
A senior Iraqi politician and a high-level security official confirmed to The Associated Press that Soleimani and al-Muhandis were among those killed in the attack shortly after midnight. Two militia leaders loyal to Iran also confirmed the deaths, including an official with the Kataeb Hezbollah faction, which was involved in the New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Muhandis had arrived to the airport in a convoy along with others to receive Soleimani, whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syria. The airstrike took place near the cargo area after he left the plane to be greeted by al-Muhandis and others.
Two officials from the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces said Suleimani’s body was torn to pieces in the attack while they did not find the body of al-Muhandis. Asenior politician said Soleimani’s body was identified by the ring he wore.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject and because they were not authorized to give official statements.
As the head of the Quds, or Jersualem, Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Soleimani led all of its expeditionary forces. Quds Force members have deployed into Syria’s long war to support President Bashar Assad, as well as into Iraq in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, a longtime foe of Tehran.
Soleimani rose to prominence by advising forces fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and in Syria on behalf of the embattled Assad.
U.S. officials say the Guard under Soleimani taught Iraqi militants how to manufacture and use especially deadly roadside bombs against U.S. troops after the invasion of Iraq. Iran has denied that. Soleimani himself remains popular among many Iranians, who see him as a selfless hero fighting Iran’s enemies abroad.
Soleimani had been rumored dead several times, including in a 2006 airplane crash that killed other military officials in northwestern Iran and following a 2012 bombing in Damascus that killed top aides of Assad. Rumors circulated in November 2015 that Soleimani was killed or seriously wounded leading forces loyal to Assad as they fought around Syria’s Aleppo.
Earlier Friday, an official with the Popular Mobilization Forces said seven people were killed by a missile fired at Baghdad International Airport, blaming the United States.
The official with the group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces said the dead included its airport protocol officer, identifying him as Mohammed Reda.
A security official confirmed that seven people were killed in the attack on the airport, describing it as an airstrike. Earlier, Iraq’s Security Media Cell, which releases information regarding Iraqi security, said Katyusha rockets landed near the airport’s cargo hall, killing several people and setting two cars on fire.
It was not immediately clear who fired the missile or rockets or who was targeted. There was no immediate comment from the U.S.
The attack came amid tensions with the United States after a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The two-day embassy attack which ended Wednesday prompted President Donald Trump to order about 750 U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East.
It also prompted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to postpone his trip to Ukraine and four other countries “to continue monitoring the ongoing situation in Iraq and ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Wednesday.
The breach at the embassy followed U.S. airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. military said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia.
U.S. officials have suggested they were prepared to engage in further retaliatory attacks in Iraq.
“The game has changed,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday, telling reporters that violent acts by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq — including the rocket attack on Dec. 27 that killed one American — will be met with U.S. military force.
He said the Iraqi government has fallen short of its obligation to defend its American partner in the attack on the U.S. embassy.
The developments also represent a major downturn in Iraq-U.S. relations that could further undermine U.S. influence in the region and American troops in Iraq and weaken Washington’s hand in its pressure campaign against Iran.
___
Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed reporting.
Turkish Lawmakers Authorize Sending Troops to Fight in Libya
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s parliament on Thursday authorized the deployment of troops to Libya to support the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli that is battling forces loyal to a rival government seeking to capture the capital.
Turkish lawmakers voted 325-184 at an emergency session in favor of a one-year mandate allowing the government to dispatch troops amid concerns that Turkish forces could aggravate the conflict in Libya and destabilize the region.
The Tripoli-based government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj has faced an offensive by the rival regime in the east and forces loyal to commander Gen. Khalifa Hifter. The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into violent chaos rivaling the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month that Sarraj requested the Turkish deployment after he and Sarraj signed a deal that allows Ankara to dispatch military experts and personnel to Libya. That deal, along with a separate agreement on maritime boundaries between Turkey and Libya, has led to anger across the region and beyond.
Ankara says the deployment is vital for Turkey to safeguard its interests in Libya and in the eastern Mediterranean, where it finds itself increasingly isolated as Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel have established exclusive economic zones paving the way for oil and gas exploration.
“A Libya whose legal government is under threat can spread instability to Turkey,” ruling party legislator Ismet Yilmaz argued in defense of the motion. “Those who shy away from taking steps on grounds that there is a risk will throw our children into a greater danger.”
The government has not revealed details about the possible Turkish deployment. The motion allows the government to decide on the scope, amount and timing of any mission.
Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump held a telephone conversation and discussed the situation in Syria and in Libya, the Turkish president’s office said soon after the vote. A brief statement said they discussed “the importance of diplomacy in solving regional issues.”
Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned “in the strongest language” the Turkish parliament’s authorization to deploy troops, saying Turkey would carry full responsibility for the negative effect it would have on the stability of the Mediterranean region.
Egypt, which neighbors Libya, has backed the regime in the country’s east.
The leaders of Greece, Israel and Cyprus denounced the move as a “dangerous threat to regional stability” and a “dangerous escalation” of the Libyan conflict that violates U.N. resolutions and undermines international peace efforts.
“The repercussions of such a reckless move will be dire for the stability and peace of the entire region,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a joint statement after signing a deal for a pipeline conveying east Mediterranean gas to Europe.
“Ankara should refrain from taking such action, which blatantly violates Libyan national sovereignty and independence.”
Numan Kurtulmus, deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling party, welcomed parliament’s vote, telling CNN-Turk television the mandate “will ensure that the legal government in Libya remains in place and Turkey’s natural rights (in the Mediterranean) are maintained.”
He added that the mandate does not mean that “troops will be quickly sent tomorrow to conduct operations.”
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay told state-run Anadolu Agency that Turkey would send “the necessary number (of troops) whenever there is a need.” But he also said it would not dispatch forces if Libya’s rival government halts its offensive.
Turkey’s main opposition party, CHP, had vowed to vote against the motion arguing that the deployment would embroil Turkey in another conflict and make it a party to the further “shedding of Muslim blood.”
Before the vote, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called on the government to work for the establishment of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Libya.
Kurtulmus, the ruling party official, said the mandate does not exclude a peacekeeping force. He said, however, the government believes that U.N. peacekeeping missions were not successful in ending conflicts in the past.
Two other opposition parties voted against the motion.
“We cannot throw our soldiers in the line of fire of a civilian war that has nothing to do with our national security,” Aytun Ciray, a member of the opposition Good Party, said during the parliamentary debate.
However, Erdogan’s ruling party is in an alliance with a nationalist party, and the two held sufficient votes for the motion to pass.
Fighting around Tripoli escalated in recent weeks after Hifter declared a “final” and decisive battle for the capital. He has the backing of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia, while the Tripoli-based government receives aid from Turkey, Qatar and Italy.
_____
AP writer Menelaos Hadjicostis contributed from Nicosia, Cyprus.
2 Democrats Join Republicans to Ask Top Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade
This article was originally published on Common Dreams.
Reproductive rights advocates on Thursday seized on an amicus brief signed by more than 200 members of Congress, including two conservative Democrats, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider overturning Roe vs. Wade.
The brief was signed by 168 members of the House and 39 senators. The two House Democrats who joined their Republican colleagues, led by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) in the effort, were Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.).
Lipinski drew the ire of progressive Democrat Marie Newman, who is challenging him in the 2020 election.
“His position in Congress jeopardizes the health of women in IL-03 and across the country,” Newman tweeted. “My opponent does not trust women and is not fit to represent us.”
The brief was filed ahead of the court’s hearing on June Medical Services v. Gee, concerning a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital—one of numerous “TRAP” (Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers) laws passed in states in recent years.
Discrepancies over what constitutes an “undue burden” on patients seeking abortion care illustrate “the unworkability of the ‘right to abortion’ found in Roe v. Wade … and the need for the Court to again take up the issue of whether Roe and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey] should be reconsidered and, if appropriate, overruled,” the brief reads.
Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of Planned Parenthood, said the Louisiana law and the amicus brief are both attempts to frame abortion care as unsafe.
“Asking the Supreme Court to reconsider overturning Roe is an assault on our basic rights, plain and simple,” tweeted Johnson. “Abortion is safe and legal, and we’re doing everything we can to keep it that way.”
Anti-abortion politicians are using every trick in the book to ban abortion. Asking the Supreme Court to reconsider overturning Roe is an assault on our basic rights, plain and simple.
Abortion is safe and legal, and we're doing everything we can to keep it that way. https://t.co/7rATmkTbxd
— Alexis McGill Johnson (@alexismcgill) January 2, 2020
Pro-choice advocates condemned the brief, which some saw as the latest sign that President Donald Trump’s remaking of the judicial branch poses a serious threat to Americans’ right to abortion care.
I won't hold my breath waiting for an apology from those who said that abortion rights supporters were being "hysterical" when we decried Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court as the possible end of Roe v. Wade. But here it is. They want to end legal abortion. https://t.co/5MRy8zgwjP
— Lauren Rankin (@laurenarankin) January 2, 2020
BOOM. 200 Republicans ask the Supreme Court to go after Roe v. Wade. It's happening, people. This is what's at stake in 2020. https://t.co/YTwCS7z1tG
— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) January 2, 2020
Along with Newman, a number of Democrats who are challenging some of the brief’s signatories in 2020 pointed to the document as evidence that anti-choice candidates must be defeated in the coming elections.
Shame on @RepDavid for joining in this effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.
As an emergency physician, I've been there when women had to make this heartbreaking decision, and it should remain between her & her physician. I'll fight to ensure women have autonomy over their own bodies. https://t.co/X93jKIktDv
— Hiral Tipirneni (@hiral4congress) January 2, 2020
I can't believe it is 2020 and I have to say this but: ROE v. WADE IS NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION. Stop trying to regulate women's bodies. I mean, seriously. Stop. #OhioMike2020 pic.twitter.com/08Rd77Zqp9
— Mike Larsen for Congress (@MikeLarsenOH) January 2, 2020
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