Archive for month: October, 2014

Amid the rise of civilian deaths in US-led military operation against ISIL, Washington has acknowledged that any strikes in Syria and Iraq are exempt from its “standards” applied to other aerial attacks.

US National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden revealed that the current airstrikes will not be performed in line with a previously announced standard for allegedly minimizing civilian casualties.

Obama announced last year that the highest standard which the US can meet is un-authorizing drone attacks unless there is “near certainty” about the lack of civilian casualties.

The confirmation came a week after a dozen civilians, including children, were killed in a US attack in the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province.

Human Rights Watch says the bombing should be investigated for possible violations of the laws of war.

The US-led coalition has been bombing ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria, but has largely failed to halt militant advances.

The “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time,” Hayden added.

“That description, outside areas of active hostilities, simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now,” Hayden noted.

US current and former officials said that the Pentagon would use satellite, drones and surveillance flights for determining targets for airstrikes, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

They said that the evaluation of the effects of the airstrikes and determining civilian casualties would be performed using the same technologies.

This is while the US used ground-based technologies, spies and military bases during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

SB/AGB

Stelios Kalamiotis, Chief of Roma CampRoma gypsies in the Greek capital of Athens have temporarily blocked the eviction and relocation order issued against their community by government, Press TV reports.

A group of the gypsies set up road blocks on Tuesday for twelve hours, keeping police forces away, although their fate remains highly uncertain.

These young Roma gypsies, some of them underage, barricade themselves from midnight to midday behind roadblocks, protecting their slum compound from being demolished by bulldozers and the police.

The state wants to kick them out for illegal occupation of a land they have lived on for decades, despite Greek law granting ownership rights to anyone who repossesses it for longer than 20 years.

“After 43 years the government wants to knock down our camp. Fifty-four children go to school in this area. We all work nearby. They want to relocate to a remote mountain outside Athens where the nearest road is 15 kilometers far; there are no schools… or jobs nearby,” said Chief of the Roma Camp Stelios Kalamiotis.

This Roma community lives far below the poverty line and it is clearly evident, with broken water pipes flooding the pathways, among piling rubbish and pirating electricity.

For several months local authorities have refused to collect their waste.

Some 140,000 Greek Roma gypsies live in at least 200 make-shift compounds and so far the Greek government has received 12.5 million euros to help these people, but only 10,000 euros found their way to help improve their living conditions and rehabilitate the community.

MFB/HRB

In case there was any remaining confusion with regard to the precise political intentions of the US Supreme Court’s activist majority, things were clarified Monday. The same majority that has made it easier for corporations to buy elections (with the Citizens United v. FEC decision) and for billionaires to become the dominant players in elections across the country (with the McCutcheon v. FEC decision) decided to make it harder for people in Ohio to vote.

Yes, this Court has messed with voting rights before, frequently and in damaging ways. It has barely been a year since the majority struck down key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

But Monday’s decision by the majority was especially blatant—and immediate. One day before early voting was set to begin in Ohio on Tuesday, the Supreme Court delayed the start of the process with a decision that will reduce the early voting period from thirty-five days to twenty-eight days.

Assaults on early voting are particularly troublesome, as the changes limit the time available for working people to cast ballots and increase the likelihood of long lines on Election Day. And changes of this kind are doubly troublesome when they come in close proximity to high-stakes elections, as they create confusion about when and how to vote.

American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Executive Director Freda Levenson decried the ruling, calling it “a real loss for Ohio voters, especially those who must use evenings, weekends and same-day voter registration to cast their ballot.”

The ACLU fought the legal battle for extended early voting on behalf of the National Association of Colored People and the League of Women Voters, among others.

“To make (the Supreme Court ruling) even worse,” Levenson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “this last-minute decision will cause tremendous confusion among Ohioans about when and how they can vote.”

But Ohio Republicans had no complaints. They have made no secret of their disdain for extended early voting, which has been allowed for a number of years and which has become a standard part of the political process in urban areas where voters seek to avoid the long lines that have plagued Ohio on past Election Days.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a top Republican, has taken the lead in efforts to restrict voting. In June, he established a restricted voting schedule. Husted’s scheme was upset by lower-court rulings. In particular, the courts sought to preserve early voting in the evening and on Sundays, which is especially important for working people.

But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision “temporarily” allowed the limits on early voting to be restored. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy voted to allow Husted to limit voting, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan opposed the ruling.

Monday’s ruling was not a final decision; the Court could revisit the matter. But that won’t happen in time to restore full early voting before his year’s November 4 election.

The Court is sending a single of at least tacit approval of controversial moves by officials in other states—such as Wisconsin and North Carolina– to curtail early voting and access to the polls. Legal wrangling also continues over the implementation of restrictive Voter ID rules in those states and others—with special concern regarding Wisconsin, where a September federal appeals court ruling has officials scrambling to implement a Voter ID law that had been blocked by a lower-court judge.

Expressing disappointment that a narrow majority on the Supreme Court has permitted “changes that could make it harder for tens of thousands of Ohioans to vote,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, said, “Courts should serve as a bulwark against rollbacks to voting rights and prevent politicians from disenfranchising voters for political reasons.”

Weiser is right.

Unfortunately, the High Court is focused on expanding the influence of billionaires, not voters.

SB/AGB

Two car bomb explosions in Syria’s Homs have claimed the lives of at least 18 people, mostly children, while leaving 40 others wounded.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the blasts reportedly took place in the Akrameh neighborhood of the city of Homs, on Wednesday.

“Two terrorist explosions near the Akrameh al-Makhzumi school and the Zaim hospital caused deaths and injuries,” Syrian state television said.

The London-based so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed the same death toll, adding that the number was likely to rise as body parts are still being collected and several of the wounded are in serious condition.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the blasts, the deadliest attacks to target the government-controlled area in months.

The district came under attack back in June, leaving six people dead.

The incident emerges as the Syrian army has been making gains in its fight against ISIL Takfiri militants operating in the country.

Most of the city of Homs, except its Waar district, has returned to the government’s control.

Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since 2011. The Western powers and their regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – are reportedly supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

Foreign-backed militant groups have inflicted major humanitarian and material damage on Syria in over three years of turmoil in the country during which more than 191,000 people have been killed and millions displaced.

SZH/AB/SS

The decision by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to join air strikes in Syria reflects an increasingly muscular foreign policy by the Gulf Arab heavyweights that has already started to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East.

With Egypt, Syria and Iraq – where the Arab world’s armed might has usually rested – all now immersed in civil wars or internal political turmoil, the emergence of Gulf states as military players asserting an unremitting hostility to Islamists could alter the region’s political equation.

While neither country appears likely to move towards the habitual use of military power to settle disputes or impose interests, the strikes in Syria demonstrated a growing comfort with the use of hard power alongside diplomacy.

“I doubt they would take steps that are wildly out of line with Western policy, such as bombing Iran, but they might act unilaterally in areas that they calculate aren’t so important to their Western allies,” said Jane Kinninmont of Chatham House.

Both Saudi and the UAE have given money and backing to Egypt’s new rulers since a military takeover last year – ignoring the qualms of long-term ally the United States about the takeover – because they see the country’s new president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a strong opponent to the Muslim Brotherhood, which they fear has regional aspirations.

That worry has now also prompted the UAE to take a bigger role in Egypt’s neighbour Libya, where Washington says the Emirates have intervened in support of militias fighting against Islamist groups. There has been no confirmation of reports that Emirati jets already carried out strikes there.

Both Saudi and the UAE are also applying pressure on Gulf neighbour Qatar blaming it for backing the Brotherhood in Egypt and Islamist groups in Libya. This year the allies, and fellow monarchy Bahrain, pulled out their ambassadors in March, an unprecedented move.

The Saudis are also skittish about neighbouring Yemen, where Shia Muslim fighters have seized the capital and from where al Qaeda’s most active regional wing has plotted attacks on the kingdom’s ruling family.

Long among the world’s biggest defence customers, the Gulf states have amassed lavishly equipped air forces that rival those of any other country in the Middle East.

But their full military capacity has rarely been put to the test. The Saudi and UAE role in the US-led sorties in Syria drew attention because their participation was new at a time when traditional Arab military powers such as Egypt were absent.

They also attracted significant media interest with the details: combatants included a Saudi prince and the UAE’s first woman fighter pilot.

That shows the countries have also thought about the positive associations of a more assertive stance that go beyond just addressing a local threat, some said.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE showed themselves to be closely attuned to the public relations benefits arising from the high-profile participation in military operations by (respectively) a son of the Crown Prince and a female pilot,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Research Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“The Gulf States, at least in the eyes of senior officials in Washington, DC and other capitals, are no longer the counter-revolutionary supporters of a reactionary status quo but critical allies in the new war on terror rapidly taking shape.”

Growing Gulf Arab military confidence also helps to shed old ideas that Gulf armies are unable to play a battlefield role due to limited manpower, said Kinninmont.

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