The life cycles of flowers and bees are getting thrown out of balance by climate change

bee-pollination

The Guardian reports: Sexual deceit, pressed flowers and Victorian bee collectors are combined in new scientific research which demonstrates for the first time that climate change threatens flower pollination, which underpins much of the world’s food production.

The work used museum records stretching back to 1848 to show that the early spider orchid and the miner bee on which it depends for reproduction have become increasingly out of sync as spring temperatures rise due to global warming.

The orchid resembles a female miner bee and exudes the same sex pheromone to seduce the male bee into “pseudocopulation” with the flower, an act which also achieves pollination. The orchids have evolved to flower at the same time as the bee emerges.

But while rising temperatures cause both the orchid and the bee to flower or fly earlier in the spring, the bees are affected much more, which leads to a mismatch.

“We have shown that plants and their pollinators show different responses to climate change and that warming will widen the timeline between bees and flowers emerging,” said Dr Karen Robbirt, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the University of East Anglia (UEA). “If replicated in less specific systems, this could have severe implications for crop productivity.”

She said the research, published in Current Biology on Thursday, is “the first clear example, supported by long-term data, of the potential for climate change to disrupt critical [pollination] relationships between species.” [Continue reading…]

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Oil politics and the battle for Kobane

By Mika Minio-Paluello, Open Democracy, November 7, 2014

Kobane was supposed to fall. As ISIS assaulted the town, Turkish troops besieged it from the north, preventing reinforcements and arresting hundreds fleeing. US jets bombed ISIS forces elsewhere, driving them towards Rojava: the largely Kurdish region in northern Syria self-administered by the movement for a democratic society (Tev-Dem), headed politically by the PYD, and defended by the YPG and YPJ. A month into the battle, Kerry admitted that defending Kobane was still not a US strategic priority, despite growing pressure for an airdrop.

But Kobane didn’t fall. Unlike the Iraqi Army with its tanks and Humvees, the lightly-armed YPG and YPJ guerillas held firm. Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik argues that, “The people of Kobane were massively outgunned. But their will to fight kept them going. They are fighting for a fundamentally different future.”

Why was the US happy to see ISIS crush Rojava? The heavy violence in Syria is heavily influenced by oil-driven geopolitics. This goes well beyond the smuggling of crudely refined fuel from ISIS-controlled Deir Ezzor into Turkey. For decades, energy colonialism has enabled the repression of democratic movements.

Energy colonialism

Large oil fields and potential export routes contributed to Kurdistan – spread between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria – being subjected to intense violence. For over a century, foreign policy decisions made in Washington, London and Paris aimed to control oil reserves in the region and preserve corporate profits. Borders were drawn, autocrats were supported and weapons poured in. Kurdish movements were used opportunistically and encouraged to revolt – only to be abandoned and slaughtered once short-term goals were achieved.

The 2003 war on Iraq and 1990s sanctions followed a much older pattern: where democratic forces and organised labour grew, British and US governments, corporations and local elites crushed them. When oil workers in Iraq occupied a pipeline pumping station in 1948, the company surrounded them with machine guns and armoured cars, starving them out. The next year, the Syrian parliament refused to ratify construction of the Trans-Arabian pipeline. The oil companies had the CIA organise a coup and the new military government immediately completed the agreement.

Today’s pipeline routes are the product of wars and political struggles, expensive infrastructure, mass displacement, and intensive corporate lobbying. Kurdish communities were seen as a threat, and subjected to cultural assimilation, forced emigration and brutal crackdowns. The enormous twin Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipelines from Iraq to the Mediterranean snakes its way through the Kurdish mountains, carrying 1.6 million barrels of oil every day. Its construction brought thousands of Turkish troops along its the route and into nearby villages.

Oil reserves in both Syria and Turkey – while not enormous – are heavily concentrated in Kurdish areas. 60% of Syrian oil is in and around Rojava, while 99% of crude extracted in Turkey comes from the south-east. Shell recently started fracking for shale gas around Diyarbakir. More reasons why Turkish and Syrian governments opposed any Kurdish autonomy.

The conservative-nationalist Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq managed to leverage its oil resources to attain significant autonomy, largely by making itself an ally to western energy interests and neoliberal power. In contrast, the Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria are aiming for greater social liberation.

Who can decolonise energy?

Kurdish autonomy in Turkey or Syria could threaten western oil interests, especially with the Öcalan-inspired PKK and PYD sister parties both espousing “democratic, ecological, gender-liberated society”. The PYD is the driving force in Rojava, where popular assemblies have seen a “flourishing of a democratic culture that promotes popular participation, social emancipation, gender equality, ecological sensitivity, local self-organization, and ethnic and religious pluralism.”

Rojava’s deliberative politics has created a vision of an ecological society not subjugated to neoliberalism. Its political economy is characterised by community-based production and large-scale cooperatives. The Assad regime’s property was turned over to worker-managed co-operatives. A free Rojava is less open to exploitation for foreign interests, like Gulfsands, the London sanctions-dodging oil company that drilled for crude in Rojava.

The PKK and PYD are the most organised and democratic political forces in the region, and have the best chance to begin democratising and decolonising energy. Energy democracy in the Middle East would be transformative globally. Western elites use the control of oil overseas to weaken democratic forces at home, fearmongering about “energy security” and undermining the power of energy workers.

We need Rojava

This is one more reason why the US and Turkey are relaxed about ISIS and the YPG battling it out. No elite power wants a progressive and democratic revolution that could begin to transform our energy future. Neither the US or Russia, Turkey or Iran, the Israelis or Saudi Arabia.

By delaying meaningful airstrikes on ISIS positions around Kobane, the US ensured that the PYD became dependent on western support. The YPG needs heavy weapons – airdrops have begun and there is potential for more. The US excels at using “aid” to alter movement politics and enforce subservience. Guns come with strings attached and American military advisers to pull them. But the PYD/PKK have deep ideological roots and hopefully won’t roll over.

Whichever way the battle for Kobane ends, the longer struggle for Rojava will continue. We all need Rojava, as an inspirational model to draw on, and as an ally in dismantling energy colonialism that keeps us all weak. Rojava needs us, and we need Rojava.

This article was originally published in the independent online magazine www.opendemocracy.net

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‘ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks’

Newsweek reports: A former member of ISIS has revealed the extent to which the cooperation of the Turkish military and border forces allows the terrorist group, who now control large parts of Iraq and Syria, to travel through Turkish territory to reinforce fighters battling Kurdish forces.

A reluctant former communications technician working for Islamic State, going by the pseudonym ‘Sherko Omer’, who managed to escape the group, told Newsweek that he travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February, in order to bypass their defences.

“ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” said Omer of crossing the border into Turkey, “and they reassured us that nothing will happen, especially when that is how they regularly travel from Raqqa and Aleppo to the Kurdish areas further northeast of Syria because it was impossible to travel through Syria as YPG controlled most parts of the Kurdish region.”

Until last month, NATO member Turkey had blocked Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to aid their Syrian counterparts in defending the border town of Kobane. Speaking to Newsweek, Kurds in Kobane said that people attempting to carry supplies across the border were often shot at.

National Army of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG) spokesman Polat Can went even further, saying that Turkish forces were actively aiding ISIS. “There is more than enough evidence with us now proving that the Turkish army gives ISIS terrorists weapons, ammunitions and allows them to cross the Turkish official border crossings in order for ISIS terrorists to initiate inhumane attacks against the Kurdish people in Rojava [north-eastern Syria].”

Omer explained that during his time with ISIS, Turkey had been seen as an ally against the Kurds. “ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria. The Kurds were the common enemy for both ISIS and Turkey. Also, ISIS had to be a Turkish ally because only through Turkey they were able to deploy ISIS fighters to northern parts of the Kurdish cities and towns in Syria.”

“ISIS and Turkey cooperate together on the ground on the basis that they have a common enemy to destroy, the Kurds,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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‘It was never my intention to join ISIS’: Interview with a former member

A former ISIS member going by the pseudonym Sherko Omer came from a privileged family in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. He went to Syria to fight in the uprising against Bashar Al-Assad and ended up joining ISIS.

I witnessed horrible crimes committed by ISIS. I was so stressed in Al-Raqqa that I thought of suicide on several occasions. I wanted to escape but there was no way out. Only when I was deployed to the Kurdish region did the opportunity come to leave and I immediately surrendered to the YPG [National Army of Syrian Kurdistan] forces as they attacked our ISIS camp in the Kurdish city of Serekaniye.

I was held for several months and finally released after all sorts of investigations proved that I had no part in any crimes. I had been assigned to work in as a communication technician but my two friends became ISIS fighters. They were deployed to A’zaz – and both have been confirmed as dead.

While with ISIS, I noticed that the field captains and commanders spoke fluent Turkish. I rarely heard them speak in Arabic. ISIS commanders in Raqqa openly talked about the best foreign jihadists crossing into Syria from Turkey. Once, I heard that some ISIS foreign jihadists had been stopped by the Turkish border guards and police, but such were the ISIS connections that they were soon freed and safely on their way to Syria.

The last time I talked to one of my friends on the telephone, he had had enough of the whole organisation and he too had witnessed ISIS killing innocent people. He said he was scared to make an escape because he had witnessed ISIS publically beheading its own members who had tried to run. [Continue reading…]

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Obama promised Iran’s Khamenei that U.S. campaign against ISIS poses no threat to Assad

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Barack Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence.

The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.

Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.

The October letter marked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009 and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.

The correspondence underscores that Mr. Obama views Iran as important—whether in a potentially constructive or negative role—to his emerging military and diplomatic campaign to push Islamic State from the territories it has gained over the past six months.

Mr. Obama’s letter also sought to assuage Iran’s concerns about the future of its close ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to another person briefed on the letter. It states that the U.S.’s military operations inside Syria aren’t targeted at Mr. Assad or his security forces. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes on Jabhat al Nusra undermine opposition to Assad

The Daily Beast reports: It’s the clearest signal yet that the U.S.-led military campaign in Syria is widening: American warplanes on Thursday struck at al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who attacked two groups of Western-backed rebels — fighters that the Obama administration is counting on to battle ISIS.

In an apparently improvised effort to relieve the rebels and prevent the loss of more of their strongholds close to the Turkish border, the U.S. bombed positions of Jabhat al Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syria branch. It was a remarkable turnaround, because previously the administration had said it was avoiding attacks on the group, which used to occasionally fight alongside the American-supported rebels.

But it’s a turnaround the White House should have seen coming. In meetings of senior Obama administration officials before the first airstrikes began in Syria on Sept. 22, which hit both ISIS and al Qaeda positions, U.S. intelligence officials warned that any additional American attacks against al Nusra could drive a wedge between the group and their erstwhile allies in the American-backed, moderate opposition.

The U.S. intelligence community’s fear, according to individuals involved in the discussions, was that hitting al Nusra could draw a giant target on the rebels’ backs — which is precisely what appears to have happened. In the initial round of airstrikes in late September, the U.S. struck targets occupied both by al Nusra and a third group, an al Qaeda unit known Khorasan that U.S. intelligence agencies believed was plotting attacks against commercial airliners. Khorasan may have been the target, but Nusra was hit, too, and the impression on the ground was that the U.S. had meant to go after al Nusra all along. (Some Syrian rebel groups maintain that the Americans invented Khorasan as a pretext for the attack.) Soon after, al Nusra turned on U.S.-backed rebels, labeling them in official statements last week as “corrupt” lackeys of the Obama administration.

The administration now finds itself in the very position it had hoped to avoid, fighting a broader war against al Nusra forces and risking further alienation of Syrian civilians.

“The goal of the airstrikes has evolved from combatting ISIS in Iraq to combating ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria, because they pose an increasing threat to the opposition,” said a former U.S. official.

It’s those rebel forces that the Obama administration wanted to train and equip to help destroy ISIS. And it’s those forces that the U.S. military is now trying to save with these latest bombing raids against al Nusra.

“If the U.S. attacks Nusra without attacking Assad, all the average Syrian sees is that the U.S. is enabling, emboldening, and strengthening the Assad regime,” said Christopher Harmer, a former Navy officer and an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, which monitors developments in Syria. “It’s not that the Syrian people love Nusra; it’s that Nusra has been in the fight against Assad, and the U.S. has looked for every excuse to stay out of the fight against Assad.” [Continue reading…]

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The idea that through a ‘$13 billion settlement’ the Justice Dept cracked down on Chase was a carefully contrived fiction

Matt Taibbi reports: The average person had no way of knowing what a terrible deal the Chase settlement [reached in September, 2013] was for the country. The terms were even lighter than the slap-on-the-wrist formula that allowed Wall Street banks to “neither admit nor deny” wrongdoing – the deals that had helped spark the Occupy protests. Yet those notorious deals were like the Nuremberg hangings compared to the regulatory innovation that Holder’s Justice Department cooked up for Dimon and Co.

Instead of a detailed complaint naming names, Chase was allowed to sign a flimsy, 10-and-a-half-page “statement of facts” that was: (a) so short, a first-year law student could read it in the time it takes to eat a tuna sandwich, and (b) so vague, a halfway intelligent person could read it and not know anyone had done anything wrong.

The ink was barely dry on the deal before Chase would have the balls to insinuate its innocence. “The firm has not admitted to violations of the law,” said CFO Marianne Lake. But the deal’s most brazen innovation was the way it bypassed the judicial branch. Previously, federal regulators had had bad luck with judges when trying to dole out slap-on-the-wrist settlements to banks. In a pair of celebrated cases, an unpleasantly honest federal judge named Jed Rakoff had rejected sweetheart deals worked out between banks and slavish regulators and had commanded the state to go back to the drawing board and come up with real punishments.

Seemingly not wanting to deal with even the possibility of such a thing happening, Holder blew off the idea of showing the settlement to a judge. The settlement, says Kelleher, “was unprecedented in many ways, including being very carefully crafted to bypass the court system. . . . There can be little doubt that the DOJ and JP-Morgan were trying to avoid disclosure of their dirty deeds and prevent public scrutiny of their sweetheart deal.” Kelleher asks a rhetorical question: “Can you imagine the outcry if [Bush-era Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales had gone into the backroom and given Halliburton immunity in exchange for a billion dollars?”

The deal was widely considered a good one for both sides, but Chase emerged with barely a scratch. First, the ludicrously nonspecific language surrounding the settlement put you, me and every other American taxpayer on the hook for roughly a quarter of Chase’s check. Because most of the settlement monies were specifically not called fines or penalties, Chase was allowed to treat some $7 billion of the settlement as a tax write-off.

Couple this with the fact that the bank’s share price soared six percent on news of the settlement, adding more than $12 billion in value to shareholders, and one could argue Chase actually made money from the deal. What’s more, to defray the cost of this and other fines, Chase last year laid off 7,500 lower-level employees. Meanwhile, per-employee compensation for everyone else rose four percent, to $122,653. But no one made out better than Dimon. The board awarded a 74 percent raise to the man who oversaw the biggest regulatory penalty ever, upping his compensation package to about $20 million. [Continue reading…]

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From Portsmouth to Kobane: the British jihadis fighting for ISIS

Shiraz Maher, from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), an academic research unit at King’s College London, has over the last year been interviewing dozens of British fighters who joined ISIS in Syria. He says that social media has played a crucial role as a tool for recruitment.

The use of the internet by jihadists is hardly new but the manner in which its potential is being harnessed has vastly changed. During the Iraq war, sympathisers of al-Qaeda needed access to password-protected forums, where they could learn about events on the ground. These forums were not easy to find and access was harder to gain. Crucially, most of the conversations were in Arabic, a language alien to most British Muslims.

Social media has changed all this, empowering individual fighters to become recruiting sergeants in their own right. What makes them so powerful is their sheer ordinariness. Indeed, most fighters tend to stress their unremarkable nature: “There’s nothing special about me,” they might say. “I just decided to come. If I can do it, you can do it.”

The effect of social media is to normalise the experience, while also motivating and inspiring potential recruits. Perhaps most significant is that the conversation runs two ways. In the past, al-Qaeda would issue unidirectional edicts and vague instructions to followers to “do something” at home. Today, you can talk to fighters directly and have a proper conversation.

These interactions help prospective fighters overcome lingering fears and emotional barriers. Fighters are asked, for example, how they broke the news to their parents and how their families are coping with their decision. Others ask what living arrangements are like in Syria, or how to cross the border safely.

Maher classifies the fighters in the following way:

There are those who are principally motivated by the region’s human suffering, whom we call missionary jihadis; there are martyrdom seekers, who regard the conflict as a shortcut to paradise; there are those simply seeking adventure, for whom the supposed masculinity of it all has great appeal; and, finally, there are long-standing radicals for whom the conflict represents a chance to have the fight they had been waiting for.

Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, had been a supervisor at a clothing store in Portsmouth before going to Syria. He craved martyrdom.

Speaking with Rahman was difficult. During our first exchange, he was deeply suspicious of me and recommended that I quit my job in order to join him in Syria. We didn’t talk for several months.

Then, one day, he resumed contact shortly after IS had swept into Iraq and taken Mosul. Despite his obvious excitement and pride, Rahman painted a sober picture of daily life. “One of the hardest things about being here is the waiting,” he told me. “We are trying to build a state. This is why a lot of ribat [guard duty] is required, so the area is secure.”

The downtime is something that a lot of foreign fighters complain about. The reality on the ground is a world away from the glamour of well-produced recruitment videos. Boredom is not just confined to those in IS. Foreign fighters with Jabhat al-Nusra and lesser-known, independent groups complain of the same thing.

At the same time, however, many use the phrase “five-star jihad” to describe their living arrangements on the camps. Some have taken to posting pictures of themselves online, posing with chocolate bars or jars of Nutella to prove that they can still access their home comforts on the Syrian front line.

A callousness towards the concerns of ordinary Syrians had also crept into the attitude of these fighters – the constituency in whose defence they once claimed to be acting. When asked what he thought of those Syrians who opposed Islamic State, Rahman conceded, “There are a number of them that dislike us. However, the lands belong to Allah’s [sic] not them. Also I [came] here to please my creator and not them.” [Continue reading…]

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Was David Drugeon — target of latest U.S. airstrikes in Syria — a French intelligence agent?

The Associated Press reports: American airstrikes overnight in Syria targeted a cell of al-Qaida militants, hitting and possibly killing a top bomb-maker in the group, a senior U.S. official said Thursday, amid widespread reports that other rebel factions were also hit.

It wasn’t certain whether the bomb-maker, French militant David Drugeon, was killed or injured, but the official said the strikes hit their intended targets near Sarmada, in the country’s northwest. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, the Central Command commander in charge of U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East, said separately at a Washington forum that he would not discuss results of the strikes until they had been more fully studied. He suggested, however, the Drugeon may have been hit, or at least targeted.

“He is clearly one of the leadership elements and one of the most dangerous elements in that organization,” Austin said. “And so any time we can take their leadership out, it’s a good thing.”

At the Pentagon, Army Col. Steve Warren said the strikes hit five targets at two locations.

Noting that reports coming out of the region suggest members of other militant groups were hit, Warren that the Khorasan Group was the pre-planned target of the strikes.

The Khorasan Group, he said, “is a group of personnel, some of whom are also al-Nusra affiliated, some of whom are al-Qaida affiliated, some of whom are affiliated with other organizations. But these strikes weren’t specifically targeting any of those other organizations. They were targeting the Khorasan group. If a terrorist happens to be a member of both groups, so be it.”

Austin said none of the airstrikes was aimed at al-Nusra.

But as an earlier AP report notes: [B]y striking groups whose primary focus is fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, the U.S. risks further enraging many Syrians in opposition-held areas who believe Washington is aiding Assad in his struggle to hold onto power in the country’s 3 ½-year-old civil war. Purported civilian casualties have only compounded those frustrations, and activists said Thursday that at least two children were killed in the overnight strikes.

“We are tired of people saying they are coming to help us, and then they kill us,” said activist Asaad Kanjo, based in Idlib.

McClatchy’s Mitchell Prothero published a report in early October claiming that Drugeon was “a former French intelligence officer who defected to al-Qaeda,” but Daveed Gartenstein-Ross casts doubt on that claim.

Many readers have interpreted Prothero’s report as suggesting that the French spy is extraordinarily high-ranking. This interpretation isn’t unreasonable, as Prothero reported that “two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group.” Given the large number of intelligence defectors to jihadist groups in the Arab world, including Syrians and Iraqis, that statement is doubtless incorrect: After all, Drugeon is only in his mid-twenties. However, it is possible that some qualifying context in the European officials’ statement was lost. For example, these sources may have been trying to say that Drugeon is the highest-ranking European defector.

So the question remains: Was Drugeon a French agent who defected? It is worth understanding the distinction between an agent and an asset. The short version of the difference between them is that an agent is given something back from the spy organization for which he is working, such as training or information. In contrast, an asset simply gives the organization information and doesn’t receive anything like training (although he obviously gets paid for his work).

Two articles in the French media elliptically state that Drugeon had received training. A French defense ministry official denied to L’Express that Drugeon had joined the army, but stated that “he trained with a civilian organization,” without specifying which one. (That official also categorically denied that Drugeon was a “French James Bond.”) And a defense ministry official (perhaps the same one, but it is not clear) told Le Monde that “this Frenchman [referred to in McClatchy’s report] exists, but he is neither a former member of secret services nor former military. As far as we know, he merely trained with former members of the French army.”

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Obama to seek new authorization for fight against ISIS

The Washington Post reports: President Obama said Wednesday that he will ask Congress for new authority to combat the Islamic State, replacing the administration’s reliance on laws passed more than a decade ago to justify its current military operations against the militants in Syria and Iraq.

“The idea is to right-size and update whatever authorization Congress provides to suit the current fight rather than previous fights,” the president said at a White House news conference.

“We now have a different type of enemy; the strategy is different,” Obama said. “It makes sense for us to make sure that the authorization . . . reflects what we perceive to be not just our strategy over the next two or three months, but our strategy going forward.”

Obama pledged nearly 18 months ago to work with lawmakers to “refine and ultimately repeal” what he said were the outdated 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against al-Qaeda and the 2002 authority against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Since then, White House engagement with Congress on the issue has been minimal. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish soldiers kill activist Kader Ortakaya at Kobane border

Firat News Agency reports: It came out that the woman killed in the attack by Turkish troops at Suruç-Kobanê border today is 28-year-old Kader Ortakaya, an activist from the Collective Freedom Platform and post-graduate at Marmara University.

Kader Ortakaya has lost her life after being shot on the head as Turkish troops fired real bullets and intense tear gas on artists affiliated to the Initiative for Free Art who formed a human chain at Suruç-Kobanê border today.

Soldiers also fired tear gas and real bullets on the people at the Kobanê side of the border.

The young woman’s body has been taken to the hospital in Kobanê and will reportedly be transferred to the Forensic Medicine Institution in Urfa via the Mürşitpınar border crossing.

Kader Ortakaya was from Siverek district of Urfa and doing master degree at Marmara University in Istanbul after graduating from the department of sociology. Ortakaya was joining the resistance vigil in the villages of Mehser and Miseynter for around 25 days. She had also taken part in the works of women’s academy in Amed, Gezi protests of last year, as a person known to be sensitive towards social events.

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Pope Francis: ‘The Vatican is with the Kurdish people’

Kurdish Question reports: In a gathering of the Global Meeting of Popular Movements hosted by the Vatican in Rome between the dates of 27-29 October, Pope Francis met with Kurdish activists from Kurdish Network.

The event was attended by trade unions, women’s movements and land movements from 50 countries. The discussions revolved around struggling against the structural causes of inequality and how the struggles of the people should unify in order to bring about change that transcends national, continental and religious boundaries.

Pope Francis met with several delegations from different countries. Members of the Kurdish Network based in Rome met with Pope Francis to discuss the situation in Kobane and ask for support for the Kurdish people’s resistance against ISIS. The Pope stated that he was following the situation closely and that the “Vatican is with the Kurdish people”.

The Kobane resistance was included in the final resolution of the meeting. The resolution stated that a corridor must be opened to Kobane, support for ISIS — both financial and logistical — should be ceased and the Rojava autonomous region must be recognised by the international community.

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Latest U.S. airstrikes in Syria target groups fighting against Assad regime

The Associated Press reports: U.S. aircraft bombed al-Qaida’s Syrian branch as well as another hard-line rebel faction in northwestern Syria early on Thursday, activists said, in an apparent widening of targets of the American-led coalition against the Islamic State extremist group.

The series of airstrikes overnight targeted three different areas near the Turkish border, hitting a headquarters and a vehicle belonging to the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front as well as a compound of the deeply conservative Ahrar al-Sham rebel group. It marked only the second time the United States had expanded its aerial campaign against Islamic State militants to hit other extremists in Syria.

There was no immediate confirmation from U.S. officials, but the apparent strikes took place amid a Nusra Front offensive that has routed Western-backed rebel groups from their strongholds in Syria’s Idlib province near the Turkish border. The timing suggests that Washington could be trying to curb the militant assault and destroy weapons supplies of hard-line rebels and al-Qaida fighters.

But by striking groups whose primary focus is fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, the U.S. risks further enraging many Syrians in opposition-held areas who believe Washington is aiding Assad in his struggle to hold onto power in the country’s 3 ½-year-old civil war. Purported civilian casualties have only compounded those frustrations, and activists said Thursday that at least two children were killed in the overnight strikes. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi Sunni opponents of ISIS unlikely to grow in strength

IHS Jane’s Terrorism & Insurgency Monitor: The security situation in Iraq rapidly deteriorated following the fall of Mosul in June 2014 during an insurgent offensive spearheaded by what was then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but has since been renamed the Islamic State. Since then, much discussion has arisen on how the group can either be contained or ‘rolled back’ by reducing its territorial holdings on a substantial scale and thus significantly weakening its power base within the country. However, for such an objective, a fundamental prerequisite is a local Sunni Muslim force on the ground that can contest the Islamic State’s control of Sunni majority areas of Iraq, notably the provinces of Anbar, Ninawa, and Salaheddine, as well as parts of Babil, Diyala, and Kirkuk.

In assessing how realistic a prospect this is, both currently and in the short-to-medium term, it is necessary to examine the existing Sunni initiatives aimed at combating the Islamic State, as well as analysing the dynamics between the group and the other Sunni insurgent organisations in Iraq. Considering that such insurgent groups have their own local support bases within the Sunni population, it may be necessary to attempt to persuade such militants to form a wider, co-ordinated initiative against the Islamic State.

However, this task already faces significant obstacles, most notably because the main Sunni insurgent groups that might combat the Islamic State are generally committed to a path of ‘revolution’ in some form that cannot be reconciled to the present existing order in Iraq. So, rather than merely seeking reform within the system to strive for, for example, greater autonomy for majority Sunni provinces – possibly in the form of a federal system – or seek concessions in the form of reforms to legislation that has widely been perceived by Sunnis as discriminatory, there is a widespread belief among such groups of the need to overthrow the government in Baghdad.

What system should follow that overthrow is of course a defining difference between the different insurgent groups, in particular separating the Islamic State from other actors. However, a significant problem at this juncture – as opposed to the 2005-06 period when the Sunni Awakening Councils were formed – is that with the perceived failure of the political process for Sunnis following the rollback of an earlier manifestation of the Islamic State (the Islamic State in Iraq), from the end of 2006 onwards, Sunni insurgent actors may conclude that consistently rejectionist insurgent groups, particularly those of a Baathist orientation, were correct all along. As a result, they may refuse to countenance engagement with the political process. [Continue reading…]

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Peace Now highlights ‘epidemic’ of incitement in Israel

Mairav Zonszein writes: Peace Now has launched an online video campaign to raise awareness about incitement, intolerance and hate speech directed specifically at “leftists” in Israel and expressed most visibly on Facebook. The organization produced a two-and-a-half minute video entitled, “The writing is still on the wall,” displaying a selection of comments left on its Facebook page. To give you an idea of just a few:

-Leftist whores burn already, you should all be shot in the head.
-You should all be cut up into pieces immediately!!! Israel haters.
-Traitors like you should be hanged.
-Stinky leftists, you should be put in gas chambers, you are worse than the Arabs.
-How great if all the Israeli leftists were kidnapped and killed!

There are also comments specifically calling for the death of Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer as well as his family members, in addition to a fairly large amount of Holocaust references.

According to Peace Now’s new media and campaign manager Yaniv Shacham, the video shows only a small fraction of the comments they receive, which he estimates number in the hundreds of thousands.

“We are talking about an epidemic,” Shacham told +972. “It’s not just a few teenagers; we are talking about women and men, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, old and young.” [Continue reading…]

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Shamsi and Harwood: An electronic archipelago of domestic surveillance

Let me tell you my modest post-9/11 dream.  One morning, I’ll wake up and see a newspaper article that begins something like this: “The FBI is attempting to persuade an obscure regulatory body in Washington to change its rules of engagement in order to curtail the agency’s significant powers to hack into and carry out surveillance of computers.” Now, wouldn’t that be amazing? Unfortunately, as you’ve undoubtedly already guessed, that day didn’t come last week. To create that sentence I had to fiddle with the odd word or two in the lead sentence of an article about the FBI’s attempt to gain “significant new powers to hack into and carry out surveillance of computers throughout the U.S. and around the world.”

When it comes to the expansion of our national security-cum-surveillance state, last week was just another humdrum seven days of news.  There were revelations about the widespread monitoring of the snail mail of Americans.  (“[T]he United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.”)  There was the news that a “sneak and peek” provision in the Patriot Act that “allows investigators to conduct searches without informing the target of the search” was now being used remarkably regularly.  Back in 2001, supporters of the Act had sworn that the provision would only be applied in rare cases involving terrorism.  Last week we learned that it is being used thousands of times a year as a common law enforcement tool in drug cases.  Oh, and on our list should go the FBI’s new push to get access to your encrypted iPhones!

And don’t forget the reports on the Bureau’s remarkably creative attempts to cross various previously forbidden search and surveillance lines.  Last week, for instance, we learned that FBI agents impersonated a media outfit, creating a fake Associated Press article in 2007 in order to implant malware on the computer of a 15-year-old suspected of making bomb threats.  (“The AP said the plan undermined the independence of the press. The story also compromised its credibility to gather news safely and effectively, especially in parts of the world where its credibility relies on its independence.”)  Similarly, news tumbled out about a recent investigation into illegal gambling in which the FBI turned off the Internet in three Las Vegas luxury “villas” that belonged to the Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino and then sent in its agents without warrants as “repairmen,” in the process secretly making videos that led to arrests.

Call it just another week of ho-hum news about American intelligence and law enforcement outfits running roughshod over American rights and the Constitution.  And then, of course, there are those ever-expanding watchlists meant to keep you safe from “terrorism.”  As Hina Shamsi and Matthew Harwood of the ACLU point out, the web of watchlists on which Americans might now find their names circulating is staggeringly, redundantly vast and still expanding.  It essentially adds up to a post-9/11 secret system of identification, they write, that once would have boggled the American imagination but is now just an accepted part of the American way of life. Tom Engelhardt

Uncle Sam’s databases of suspicion
A shadow form of national ID
By Hina Shamsi and Matthew Harwood

It began with an unexpected rapping on the front door.

When Wiley Gill opened up, no one was there. Suddenly, two police officers appeared, their guns drawn, yelling, “Chico Police Department.”

“I had tunnel vision,” Gill said, “The only thing I could see was their guns.”

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Denying problems when we don’t like the political solutions

Phys.org: A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. If they don’t, then they tend to deny the problem even exists.

“Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem. However, we find it does,” said co-author Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. “The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem.”

The study, “Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief,” appears in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers conducted three experiments (with samples ranging from 120 to 188 participants) on three different issues—climate change, air pollution that harms lungs, and crime.

“The goal was to test, in a scientifically controlled manner, the question: Does the desirability of a solution affect beliefs in the existence of the associated problem? In other words, does what we call ‘solution aversion’ exist?” Campbell said.

“We found the answer is yes. And we found it occurs in response to some of the most common solutions for popularly discussed problems.”

For climate change, the researchers conducted an experiment to examine why more Republicans than Democrats seem to deny its existence, despite strong scientific evidence that supports it.

One explanation, they found, may have more to do with conservatives’ general opposition to the most popular solution—increasing government regulation—than with any difference in fear of the climate change problem itself, as some have proposed. [Continue reading…]

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