Sabtu, 19 Oktober 2019
Turkish and Kurdish forces clash despite ceasefire - CBS This Morning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chxFwSNHxL0
2019-10-19 12:30:50Z
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Jo Swinson says Brexit deal will damage British economy and calls for people's vote - Guardian News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OE-L5VUGXc
2019-10-19 11:22:51Z
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Media alarmed by U.S. pullout from Syria — which didn't actually happen - Salon
President Trump’s modification of U.S. policy on Syria has generated a torrent of confusion, so it’s worth reviewing the record.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham announced on Oct. 6:
Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria . The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.
The statement is notable both because it declines to oppose the Turkish invasion — aimed at the Kurdish-led, U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — and because it suggests that the U.S. will stay in Syria, but will move its forces from the “immediate area” that Turkey is attacking; nothing in these remarks can be read as saying that the U.S. would be withdrawing from Syria.
The initial report from AP (10/6/19) described US troops not “pulling out” but “step[ping] aside.”
An anonymous senior U.S. official quoted by the Associated Press (New York Times, 10/6/19) said that the U.S. will “pull back [its troops] from the immediate area” in northern Syria that Turkey is assaulting. The official, however, went on to say that the Turkish onslaught “is expected to trigger a large combat response from the SDF, and U.S. troops will almost certainly withdraw completely from Syria.”
Trump tweeted that of the 1,000 troops the U.S. admits to having in Syria, “we only had 50 soldiers remaining in that section of Syria, and they have been removed.” But he has also framed this development as part of a longer-term process of getting out of wars in Syria and elsewhere, tweeting, for example, that “we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon statement on Syria said nothing to suggest the U.S. would be withdrawing from the country.
To summarize, an anonymous official speculated that the U.S. might eventually leave Syria, while Trump tweeted that the U.S. was merely shifting “50 soldiers remaining in that section of Syria,” at the same time indicating that he eventually wants to bring the troops home and leave Syria alone, without offering anything close to a concrete plan or timeline. Neither of the two official U.S. government statements — the one from Grisham or the one from the Pentagon — can possibly be taken to mean that the U.S. is taking its hands off Syria, and there is simply no evidence that that’s what’s happening.
Yet you wouldn’t know it from media coverage of these developments. Just like last December, when Trump suggested he might soon withdraw from Syria, and when Trump floated the same possibility in March 2018, news outlets consistently and baselessly reported on the issue both as though the U.S. had announced plans to leave Syria, and as though the U.S. has a right and possibly a duty to permanently occupy Syria.
A New York Times headline (10/7/19) described the redeployment of troops within Syria as the “Pulling of US Troops”—helping to spread the misimpression that troops were being pulled out.
The New York Times(10/7/19) ran an article with the headline “Pulling of U.S. Troops in Syria Could Aid Assad and ISIS.” It would be natural to assume that this meant that U.S. troops were being pulled out of Syria, even though that’s not what was occurring.
A report in The Hill (10/7/19) was headlined “Trump Knocks ‘Ridiculous Endless Wars’ Amid U.S. Troop Pullout From Syria,” which suffered from one minor shortcoming, namely that no “U.S. troop pullout from Syria” is taking place.
An Associated Press story (10/7/19) was headlined “U.S. Troops Begin Pulling Out of Syria, Leaving Kurds Without Support.” As noted, there was no evidence that the U.S. was actually “pulling out of Syria.”
USA Today (10/7/19) warned its readers about “’A Reckless Gamble’: Four Reasons Critics Decry Trump’s ‘Impulsive’ Syria Withdrawal.” But those critics can rest easy, since Trump hasn’t withdrawn from Syria.
NBC News (10/8/19) had a segment called “How Allies Are Responding to U.S. Troops Pulling Out of Syria,” but a day earlier, a senior Trump administration official told reporters that the government’s “announcement did not constitute a full U.S. withdrawal from Syria, and that only 50 to 100 U.S. special operations forces were moving to other locations in Syria.” “Moving to other locations in Syria,” clearly, is not the same thing as “pulling out of Syria.”
Still, a Business Insider headline (10/8/19) offered, “Here Are the 5 Major Players That Will Feel the Impact From Trump’s Decision to Withdraw Troops From Syria.”
It’s going to be difficult for Americans to develop an informed opinion about their government’s continuing occupation of Syria, one which lacks a basis in international law, when U.S. media keep wrongly suggesting that the U.S. is exiting the country.
Doctors Without Borders (10/11/19) describes the human cost of the Turkish invasion.
Much of the coverage professes concern for people living in the parts of northern Syria that Turkey is attacking. These worries are well-founded. In the first days of this invasion, Turkish airstrikes and artillery fire hit several villages and towns, already killing dozens and sending thousands fleeing from their homes. In the border town Tal Abyad, shelling has forced the vast majority of people to leave, while Doctors Without Borders
is concerned that the many thousands of women and children living in camps such as Al Hol and Ain Issa are also now particularly vulnerable, as humanitarian organisations have been forced to suspend or limit their operations.
The United States is directly implicated in this, beyond even Trump’s initial greenlighting of the assault. Turkey is a member of NATO, an alliance in which the U.S. is the most powerful member, and NATO declined to suggest that Turkey not invade its neighbor, or even offer explicit criticism of this illegal aggression, with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg offering remarks that served to legitimize the “security” pretext that Turkey is offering as a justification for the attack.
Stoltenberg said on a visit to Turkey on Oct. 11, “While Turkey has legitimate security concerns, I expect Turkey to act with restraint.” He went on to describe “serious concerns about the risk of further destabilising the region, escalating tensions and even more human suffering.”
Moreover, two U.S. military officials told the New York Times (10/11/19):
As Turkish military officials planned the assault, they received American surveillance video and information from reconnaissance aircraft. The information may have helped them track Kurdish positions. Because of an American counterterrorism partnership with Turkey, Turkish aircraft were given access to a suite of American battlefield intelligence in northeast Syria. Turkey was removed from the intelligence-sharing program only on Monday, a Defense Department official said.
One official said that United States warplanes and surveillance aircraft remained in the area to defend the remaining American ground forces in northeast Syria, but said they would not contest Turkish warplanes attacking Kurdish positions.
In 2017, the most recent year for which the numbers have been fully reported, Washington gave Turkey $154 million in aid, the fourth-highest amount of U.S. aid sent to any country in Europe and Asia. From 2011–18, the U.S. sold $3.7 billion worth of weapons to Turkey. Though the U.S. has no right to occupy Syria, it needn’t do so to stop the Turkish attack: If the U.S. said its support and collaboration were at stake, it’s a virtual certainty that Turkey wouldn’t be attacking northern Syria; Turkey wanted to carry out this invasion for months, and didn’t do it until the U.S. gave its blessing.
Calling for the U.S. to get out of Syria and for an end to the Turkish attack is a consistent position: When Turkey attacked largely Kurdish Afrin in Syria in early 2018, plundering the area and driving out 220,000 civilians, the U.S. had forces in Syria, as it does during the present onslaught. The demand that the U.S. keep its forces in Syria to prevent Turkish violence against Kurdish and other Syrian people ignores the fact that U.S. forces in Syria are not an obstacle to Turkish violence.
In fact, U.S. intervention is a central reason for this bloodshed, and much more, in the Middle East. Aiding Turkey in its invasion is the Syrian National Army (SNA), a rebrand of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an umbrella group that the U.S. spent years nurturing to fight the Syrian government. The same scenario unfolded in Afrin, when the FSA also fought alongside Turkey.
U.S. intervention against the Syrian government directly drove violence against minorities in Syria, including Kurds: The U.S. supplied weapons to anti-government groups in Syria that ultimately empowered ISIS, who carried out “attacks on family members of Kurdish fighters and kidnappings of hundreds of civilians on the basis of their ethnic identity.”
The U.S. government can no more be expected to protect Kurds or any other group than can Chevron be expected to undertake green initiatives, because protecting people isn’t the goal of U.S. policy. Seen in the context of longer-term U.S. ruling-class approaches globally and in the Middle East, there is every reason to conclude that U.S. policies towards Syria have been about building military bases, and bleeding and weakening rivals like Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Syrian government.
Thus, Washington’s efforts to control the Middle East are a driving force behind the violence in the region. That points to the conclusion that the answer to violence in the region isn’t more U.S. involvement, but less. Yet my research produces no evidence of discussion of this perspective in U.S. corporate media.
There is, however, a great deal of coverage asserting that the U.S. should continue occupying Syria so as to weaken its government and other U.S. rivals. The New York Times' new headline, “Pulling of U.S. Troops in Syria Could Aid Assad and ISIS” (10/7/19), unambiguously indicates that the U.S. should keep its forces in Syria because removing them would benefit the Syrian government. This perspective assumes that the U.S. has a legitimate right to use its military to shape, and perhaps outright dictate, the relative strength of other countries’ governments. The attached article went on to say that the shift in U.S. policy
could also create a void in the region that could benefit President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Russia, Iran and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. And it would likely further limit the United States’ influence over the conflict.
The article seems to endorse the view put forth by Brett McGurk, a former presidential envoy, that if the Turkish attack forces a Kurdish redeployment, it would put “American objectives at risk” by benefiting “Russia, Iran and ISIS.” According to this point of view, the U.S. should do what it can to keep Syria in a proxy war for as long as possible, because that state of affairs is bad for the U.S. government’s international rivals.
A Times editorial (10/7/19) advocated subjecting Syria to that condition indefinitely — to maintain an open-ended occupation of Syria as a “counterweight to Turkey and Syria’s Russian and Iranian allies” — because otherwise unspecified “foe[s]” will not “look at [America] and fear a determined adversary.” Intimidating unnamed political forces is, to say the least, an unconvincing justification for maintaining an illegal military occupation.
A Washington Post editorial (10/7/19) starts from the premise that "President Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria” — displaying an ignorance that would be stunning if one were unfamiliar with the standards of the Post editorial page.
A Washington Post editorial (10/7/19) opined that
the 1,000 US troops in Syria could be forced to withdraw entirely, which would be a major victory for Russia and open the way for Iran to entrench its forces along Israel’s northern border.
For the Post, Syrians are pawns whose fates the U.S. should hold hostage because of a grander imperial game. Another reason the paper gave for supporting a U.S. presence in Syria is that
the United States was able to partner with the SDF to destroy the would-be Islamic caliphate and gain de facto control over a large swath of eastern Syria. That impeded Iran’s expansion in the country and gave Washington vital leverage over any eventual settlement of the Syrian civil war.
Why it’s “vital” — or even legitimate — for Washington to have “leverage over any eventual settlement” of the war in Syria is unexplained. It’s simply taken for granted that the United States should play a major part in shaping Syria’s future.
Influential sectors in corporate media clearly believe that U.S. policy in Syria should be tailored toward assuring worldwide U.S. hegemony. That’s necessarily going to entail Kurdish and many other peoples winding up in body bags.
https://www.salon.com/2019/10/19/media-alarmed-by-u-s-pullout-from-syria-which-didnt-actually-happen/
2019-10-19 10:00:00Z
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Super Saturday LIVE: MPs debate and vote on Boris Johnson's Brexit deal - The Telegraph
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eidqxI2l_iA
2019-10-19 08:34:52Z
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Erdogan warns Kurds as Syria ceasefire gets off to rocky start - Al Jazeera English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sflhm0pAKtA
2019-10-19 06:48:32Z
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Brexit: MPs set for knife-edge vote on Boris Johnson's deal - BBC News
Parliament will sit on a Saturday for the first time in 37 years to vote on Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.
The PM has been trying to convince MPs to support the agreement he secured with the EU, ahead of what is expected to be a knife-edge vote in the Commons.
His former DUP allies and opposition parties plan to vote against it.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay admitted the vote could be "close" but said the government has "listened to the concerns of MPs across all sides".
"Now it's time for MPs to step up to their responsibility to get this deal passed, and allow the country to move forward," he told BBC Breakfast.
At least nine Labour MPs are expected to rebel and the PM is hoping to be backed by some of the Tory MPs he sacked for opposing him last month.
BBC deputy political editor John Pienaar said numbers for the vote looked "painfully tight", adding Mr Johnson "either has to win round the DUP - which looks close to impossible - or look elsewhere for votes".
Business in the House of Commons will start at 9:30 BST - the first weekend sitting since the invasion of the Falklands in 1982.
Mr Johnson will make a statement to MPs and face their questions before the House moves on to a debate about the deal.
The timing of any votes depends on which amendments are chosen by the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, but they are not expected before 14:30.
Mr Johnson's revised deal with the EU was secured at a Brussels summit on Thursday.
It ditches former PM Theresa May's backstop, the measure designed to prevent a return to physical checks on the Irish border. Instead it will, in effect, draw a new customs border along the Irish Sea.
Ahead of the Commons debate, Mr Johnson urged MPs to "come together" to back his Brexit deal, insisting there was "no better outcome".
A number of Tory MPs who voted against Mrs May's agreement on all three occasions it was put to the Commons have said they will be supporting the deal.
BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said the latest hardline Brexiteer MP to give Mr Johnson his backing was Mark Francois, the deputy chairman of the European Research Group.
Although the ERG has not issued a united statement on whether it will support the deal, some individual members such as Iain Duncan Smith have pledged their backing.
Also crucial to Mr Johnson's hopes of success will be the 21 Tories who had the whip withdrawn for supporting a bill to force the PM to seek an extension to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Sir Nicholas Soames, who is one such former Tory, has indicated he will vote in favour of the deal, adding the other 20 would "by and large vote for it".
However, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists have made clear they will not be voting for the deal and have been trying to persuade hardline Brexiteers to follow their lead.
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Meanwhile, the prime minister told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg he wanted the country to "move on" from Brexit.
And writing in the Sun, Mr Johnson urged MPs to back his deal, saying: "There have been any number of false dawns. Deadlines for our departure have come and gone.
"I ask everyone to cast their mind forward to the end of today - and imagine what it could be like if the new Brexit deal has been approved.
"A difficult, divisive and - yes - painful chapter in our history would be at an end."
However, on Friday evening, Jeremy Corbyn tweeted the Labour Party was "united in opposing" Mr Johnson's "sell-out Brexit deal".
He said his party would "come together and reject it".
Earlier, in a letter to his own MPs, Mr Corbyn said the new agreement was a "worse deal" than the one Mrs May struck with Brussels. He said the proposals "risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections".
Ahead of the vote, the government appears to have moved to allay concerns expressed by some Labour MPs by announcing that workers' rights and environmental standards will be boosted post-Brexit.
Downing Street confirmed its pledges followed discussions held with opposition MPs.
Mr Johnson has repeatedly said Brexit will happen by the end of the month with or without a deal.
However, MPs passed a law in September, known as the Benn Act, which requires the PM to send a letter to the EU asking for an extension until January 2020 if a deal is not agreed - or if MPs do not back a no-deal Brexit.
Former Tory Sir Oliver Letwin - one of the MPs who lost the Tory whip for backing the law - has put an amendment down to ensure the extension is asked for even if MPs back the deal in the Commons later.
He said the government could still leave without a deal on 31 October if Mr Johnson's proposals had not passed every stage in Parliament to become law - so the motion would withhold MPs' approval until that final hurdle is passed.
Sir Oliver said his amendment would make it easier for Labour MPs to support the PM, stressing: "My aim is to ensure that Boris's deal succeeds, but that we have an insurance policy which prevents the UK from crashing out."
'Letwin amendment blurs today's decision'
And after three years of chicanery, on Saturday another decision will be put before the Commons - one that gives MPs what sounds like an elegant way to give only qualified approval to his deal, which might have brutal political effect.
The Letwin amendment is at best is a mere insurance policy that avoids an accidental departure without a formal agreement.
But by the author Oliver Letwin's own admission, it blurs today's decision.
And at worst, it's seen by government as one more rock cast in the path towards departure, another excuse for reluctant MPs to apply the brakes.
So today may not be a moment of saying the simple yes or no the prime minister craves.
The Commons once more will be asked to pick, between this deal, no deal, or another delay.
But the prime minister will keep, and keep, trying to force a moment of clarity.
On Friday, the governor of the Bank of England welcomed the new deal, saying it would take away the "risk of a disorderly Brexit" - but added it would not boost the economy to the same extent as the previous deal struck by Theresa May.
Mr Barclay said he disagreed that the new deal was not as good for the economy, saying it allowed the government to "secure trade deals" around the world.
Asked why the Treasury has not published analysis of the economic impact of the new deal, Mr Barclay replied: "The deal was only reached on Thursday.
"We've only had two days. "
https://bbc.com/news/uk-politics-50104789
2019-10-19 04:32:20Z
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Jumat, 18 Oktober 2019
Majority of Americans believe Trump's Syria move has damaged US reputation: poll | TheHill - The Hill
The majority of Americans said President Trump’s decision to pull troops from northern Syria is damaging the U.S. reputation as a trusted ally, according to a new poll.
Just over half, 54 percent, of Americans said Trump’s decision damages the nation’s reputation as a trusted ally, based on the USA Today/Ipsos poll released Friday.
Even more Americans, 61 percent, said the U.S. had an obligation to protect the Kurds, with whom the U.S. was fighting alongside with before Trump pulled American troops out.
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Broken by party, 72 percent of Democrats said Trump’s decision damaged the nation’s reputation as an ally, as did 50 percent of independents, based on the poll.
Meanwhile, a little less than half of Republicans, 44 percent, agree with that, based on the poll.
The decision to pull troops from Syria was harshly criticized by Democrats as well as some Republicans, including Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Olin GrahamPelosi, Schumer hit 'flailing' Trump over 'sham ceasefire' deal Pompeo to meet Netanyahu as US alliances questioned Overnight Defense — Presented by Boeing — Pence says Turkey agrees to ceasefire | Senators vow to move forward with Turkey sanctions | Mulvaney walks back comments tying Ukraine aid to 2016 probe MORE (R-S.C).
The poll surveyed 1,006 Americans between Oct. 16 and 17, including 380 Democrats, 413 Republicans and 112 independents. The poll has a credibility interval of 3.5 percentage points. The credibility interval for Democrats is 5.7 percentage points, for Republicans is 5.5 percentage points, and for independents 10.6 percentage points.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466432-most-americans-believe-trumps-syria-move-has-damaged-us-reputation
2019-10-18 14:19:23Z
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