Speaker relating beauty of naturalization ceremonies is loudly booed at CPAC

There’s more detail about this session at TPM:

The only panel dedicated to immigration at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference quickly went off the rails Thursday, with audience members drowning out panelists’ presentation of data about the benefits of immigration with boos, laughter, and stories of “obvious illegal immigrants defecating in the woods, fornicating in the woods.” […]

When he noted that the U.S. proportionally takes in very fewimmigrants and refugees compared to other nations, a man interjected, “You’re a dreamer!” and much of the crowd broke out in applause and jeers. […]

— talkingpointsmemo.com/..

And in case you think this nativist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic position is somehow new to the Republican Party,

But having attended CPAC for the last six years, Bier conceded that the Republican base’s attitude toward immigrants has not significantly shifted.

“I don’t think it’s that different [from past years],” he said. “There’s always a very large contingent most passionate about immigration—about opposing it. It certainly seems like the passion is always with the side that wants to restrict it and not with the side that wants it to be more open.” — talkingpointsmemo.com/…

A speaker talking about the beauty of naturalization ceremonies at CPAC was loudly booed by the audience.

Now, CPAC is the premier Conservative/Republican conference of the year. Trump, Pence, several cabinet members and governors spoke there. It’s attended by legislative aides, activists, aspiring politicians, the core of the Republican party.

For anyone who has attended a naturalization ceremony, you know there is rarely a dry eye in the room. I was naturalized (became a citizen) 5 years ago, and I remember the ceremony I attended. I was among 170 odd people who became US citizens that day, at that place. They were old and young and from all across the world.

I had lived in the US 18 years, as a student and a worker, before I was eligible. Many in that courtroom had walked a far harder road than I had to come to that place.

I remember the judge who administered the oath/affirmation spoke about his parents who had been first-generation immigrants. He said perhaps one of our children too would become a Federal judge.

There were a lot of people in that room, some poor, for whom the process had meant an expenditure of thousands of dollars. For whom the very idea that their child might one day become a federal judge had been almost unimaginable. Except it was now a little more imaginable, because they were Americans.

And when we were done he reminded us we were all Americans now, and we had the same rights as every other American. That this was a bedrock principle of the nation which welcomed us.

In my mind, and that of all immigrants, that principle is what the Republicans at CPAC were booing. When they are booing, they are pissing on the promise and possibility that judge, standing in place for the nation and our government, shared with us in that courtroom.

And these people booing, along with the president and many, many members of his party are very, very clear that they are booing all immigrants, including those who have never been undocumented.

The thing is, the judge who spoke to us that day was right about one thing, we do have those rights.

And we will be exercising them. I’d vote for a doormat before I vote for a Republican.

 

— @subirgrewal

1947: When even the fruit on the trees tasted of blood.

70 years ago today, the British government, exhausted by the second World War retreated from its largest colony, India. In doing so, the British Empire finally acquiesced to the right of the sub-continent’s peoples to determine their own political fate.

The first, halting steps towards devolution of power were made in response to enormous Indian military and materiel contributions during World War I. It took decades of violent rebellion, non-violent protest and eventually, the cost of the second World War to loosen the British grip on India. After all that, in mid-August 1947, two new nations, India and Pakistan were created. Suddenly, almost 400 million people were free. Decolonization in India eventually led to the collapse of all European colonies across Asia and Africa.

There were a multitude of reasons that the Indian independence movement had split along religious lines and led to demands for two separate nations. But chief among them was identity. As with most places, the people of the sub-continent find their identities in ethnicity, language, culture, politics and yes religion as well.

It was religion and a fear of subordination that divided United India in two. Pakistan for the Muslim majority regions, and India for the Hindu majority regions. Later, in the 20th century, the two geographically separate halves of Pakistan split along ethnic and linguistic lines. East Pakistan became Bangladesh, with some help from the Indian army and much resistance from West Pakistani forces.

The primary Pakistani and Indian leaders at independence almost without exception failed to understand the ramifications of the ethno-religious-nationalism they had set in motion with partition. The New York Times has published two essays to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence, both worth reading. Pankaj Mishra’s India at 70, and the Passing of Another Illusion discusses how India’s political establishment has failed to live up to the democratic ideals expressed at independence. Abbas Nasir’s How Pakistan Abandoned Jinnah’s Ideals give the Pakistani elite the same treatment.

On August 14th, 1947, when Pakistan became independent of the British Empire, it’s precise borders were unknown. On August 15th, 1947, when India became independent, it’s borders were uncertain. For tens of millions of people in Punjab, Sindh and Bengal, the celebrations were colored by a deep uncertainty. Would their homes end up on the “wrong” side of the border, and would they be forced to flee?

Not till August 16th, 1947 was the Radcliffe line defining the borders between India and Pakistan disclosed to representatives of the two new nations. It was published on the 17th. Cyril Radcliffe, an British lawyer with no previous Indian experience was given five weeks to consult with the Boundary Commission and determine the borders based on Muslim, Sikh and Hindu majorities in different areas. Radcliffe left the country before the results were published and reportedly refused payment for the service.

As soon as the Radcliffe line was made public, a great migration was set in motion. Eventually, 15 million people would migrate under panicked circumstances, from homes within India to Pakistan and vice-versa. Over 11 million of those migrations would be in Punjab and Sindh, the vast province in the north-west. Within a few months, a society and culture that had evolved over centuries shattered along communal lines.

Sporadic violence, which had begun prior to independence, spiraled out of control as the ramifications of partition became clear to individuals and communities. Neither the British colonial authorities nor the newly constituted Indian and Pakistani governments were prepared for what ensued. As people left villages and towns that had been home to their families for centuries, theft and extortion grew rampant. Killings were followed by reprisals, rape and abduction by more abduction and rape.

By 1948, over 2 million people were believed to have gone missing. The number murdered was in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps as high as 2 million. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were abducted and new identities forced upon them.

The magnitude and scale of the panicked migration and the violence that ensued is difficult to comprehend. The ferocity and intimacy of the pogroms has few comparisons in history. In many places, neighbors murdered and preyed on people they had known for generations.

In villages where not much had changed for centuries, the migration and blood-letting erased a third or more of their population within a matter of days. Virtually every part of Punjab and Sindh suddenly lost the human element of half their culture.

Across what once was a United Punjab, in thousands of towns and villages, lie the crumbling ruins of unattended temples, mosques and gurudwaras. The people who worshipped there spirited away to the other side of the border, or killed in their homes or along the way.

Not all these abandoned places of worship are neglected. Some are tended by an aging man or woman who does not pray to this particular god. They tend to these physical spaces in the memory of a childhood friend or neighbor. It is, a higher, more human form of devotion.


During the First and Second World Wars, the civilian population of India was rarely threatened directly. The German light cruiser Emden did bombard Madras in World War I.  In World War II, the Japanese advance (aided by Bose’s INA) was stopped decisively in Kohima, though Andaman and Nicobar were occupied. The butchery of civilians that was a feature of WW-II in both Asia and Europe did not reach United India. Nevertheless, India did not remain unaffected. 2 million civilians starved to death during the Bengal famine, many in the streets of Calcutta, within sight of colonial bureaucrats who could have alleviated their suffering. This indifference reached the very top of the British government.

For most Indians and many Pakistanis, the independence celebrations on August 14th and 15th remain joyful celebrations. As the 19th and 20th centuries progressed, British rule was increasingly seen as onerous, capricious and unnatural. At Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar, while hundreds of thousands of Indian sepoys fought across Europe and the Middle-East under the British banner, Indian Army troops were ordered by their British officer to fire on unarmed protesters. A thousand people were killed. That attack on an peaceful gathering led even the most Anglophile of Indians to question continued British presence in India.

The population of United India was just under 400 million on the eve of partition. A small fraction of the population, less than 5%, was forced to migrate. Most Muslim populations across North and South India, far from the borders stayed in place. The migrations were largely restricted to Bengal and the states along the Indus river, Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir.

Bengal remained, for a variety of reasons, relatively free of violence. The sons and daughters of Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir killed each other till the rivers literally turned red. This year again, the anniversary of independence/partition will evoke a mixture of both pride and shame for many in Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir.

The Washington Post has an article on the horrors of Partition with oral histories.

This diary’s title is taken from one of those histories:

Even the fruit on the trees tasted of blood, recalls Sudershana Kumari, who fled from her home town in Pakistan to India. “When you broke a branch, red would come out,” she said, painting an image of how much blood had soaked the soil in India.

The New York Times also asked readers to contribute oral histories. There are millions of such stories.

Several artists have mined the trauma of partition for material, producing books, short stories and movies.

Mohinder Sarna’s short stories on partition are now available in English, a collection titled Savage Harvest. They cannot be recommended highly enough. Intizar Hussein wrote extensively on partition, including in the novel Basti. Jyotirmoyee Devi’s novella Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga was translated into English as The River Churning. Numerous authors approached the vicious violence of partition from a distance, discussing it in the abstract or from a child’s perspective. Bapsi Sidhwa’s novels, especially Ice-Candy Man (later re-titled Cracking India) is a great example. Khuswant Singh’s Train to Pakistan is unflinchingly different in that respect. Saadat Hassan Manto’s short stories are generally superb, and several deal with the partitionToba Tek Singh is the most widely known. Naseem Hijazi’s Khaak aur Khoon is only available in Urdu, but Anis Kidwai’s memoir, In Freedom’s Shade, has been translated into English. Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas is also accesible in English. More recently, Anuradha Roy’s novel An Atlas of Impossible Longing is set across several decades, including the 1940s. Amit Majmudar’s Partitions narrates the story of three children and an old man trying to travel to safety. And of course, there is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

When it comes to movies, Garam Hawa is considered the classic. Shyam Benegal’s Mammo is probably a close second. Khamosh Pani is intense and moving. Kartar Singh was one of the earliest movies on the partition, and featured Amrita Pritam’s poem Aaj Aakhan Waris Shah Nun. The later Bollywood movie Pinjar included the poem too, it is probably the most widely known poe on partition. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan was turned into a movie, as was Sahni’s Tamas. The sprawling TV series Buniyaad aired in the 1980s and continues to find an audience.

Since the violence largely impacted Punjab, Punjabi (on both sides of the current border) authors are over-represented. It is the primary historical topic in Punjabi literature of the 20th century.

When it comes to non-fiction, Collins and Lapierre’s Freedom at Midnight is an accessible and dramatic retelling of partition. I read it as a teenager and I still recall my initial shock at the scale and scope of the violence. In most families, the trauma of partition was not openly discussed. Several non-fiction works have focused on the partition including Yasmin Khan’s The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India relates interviews with a number of people who lived through 1947. Nisid Hajari’s Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition recounts the events with a reporter’s viewpoint.

— @subirgrewal | Cross-posted to NotMeUs.org

 

Did Ivanka Trump flunk world religion or is she asking a deeper question?

While discussing the father’s recent trip abroad, which she accompanied him on, Ivanka said, “To have covered the three largest world religions over the course of four days, it was deeply meaningful.” While referring to her meetings with religious leaders of Islam, Judaism and Christianity in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican last month, Ivanka incorrectly labeled Judaism as one of the world’s three largest religions. In fact, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism all have more believers than Judaism.

The show’s hosts did not comment on her gaffe. — Haaretz

Now, I want to be fair to Ivanka and the good folk at Fox and Friends. There are two rather messy questions that need to be answered before we can say what the “three largest world religions” are.

  1. What constitutes a religion?
  2. Who can be counted as a believer?

These sound like simple questions, but there are several complications. Most faith traditions have several schisms. Is mainline Catholicism the same religion as Unitarianism? What about the Eastern orthodox church, or its several variations (Russian, Greek, Syrian, Albanian, etc. etc.).  Did Jesus intend to found a new religion, or was it Paul’s idea? Is Shi’a Islam the same as Sunni Islam, or was there an irrevocable rift at the Battle of Karbala? A handful of extremly hard-line Sunnis would tell you Sh’ia are not Muslim. What about Sufis, or Isma’ilis, or Yazidis? What constitutes mainline Hinduism? What level of adherence to Vedic texts is required, what about the Puranas? Is Shaivism a sect or a different religion? If you accept an agnostic reading of the Nasadiya Suktam, are you still a Hindu? Are Buddhism and Hinduism two separate faiths or are they part of one tradition? What about Jainism? For that matter, are the three major Abrahamic traditions truly distinct? What distinguishes Halakhic (Jewish) law from Sharia (Islamic) law? When thinking of that question and its implications, this twitter thread is excellent:

How do we treat traditions that are syncretic to varying degrees? When considering the blended/syncretic faiths practiced by many indigenous peoples in IndiaAfrica, the Americas and elsewhere, do we count them as Hindu, Christian or Muslim? Or do we give equal weight to their ancient faith traditions? Several traditional faiths have adherents that number in the tens of millions. Traditional Bantu religions might make it into the top five if we counted them as such.

Why do we start with an Abrahamic mindset along with some allowances for large Asian faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism? Is that a Euro-centric view of faith/religion? What would a non-Euro-centric view look like? How do we treat the fact that the spread of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism was, in many cases, associated with colonization, enslavement and conquest? If a person adopts a religion because they are compelled to out of need or pressure, do we count them as a believer/adherent? When we describe a conflict in religious terms (Sunni/Shia, Protestant/Catholic, Hindu/Muslim), is it truly a religious conflict, or is that a convenient way to avoid asking other questions about how political actors rally troops/support by using religion?

These are all really interesting and important questions. But I don’t believe Ivanka was really thinking about them. I think her narrow parochialism led the senior advisor to the president to assume the “three largest world religions” started in the Middle East.

Lastly, as an agnostic, I want to give a shout-out to this NY Times article: Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game. I may not believe, but I recognize that when it comes to politics, I am on the same side as many who do, and I am glad to be in their company.

As military occupation enters 51st year, Trump administration wants UN to stop “bullying” Israel

Palestinians have lived for 50 years under a military occupation by a foreign government and there are no signs this will end anytime soon. The Israeli government has been busily dispossessing Palestinians as individuals and as a nation of land and resources. Three generations of Palestinians have lived the bulk of their lives (five decades) with their human and civil rights curtailed by the Israeli government.

The Trump administration believes the UN is “bullying” Israel by condemning these policies:

[US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki] Haley arrived in Israel to a hero’s welcome one day after warning that the United States might pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council unless it changes its ways in general and its negative stance on Israel in particular.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who often is touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, has focused heavily on what she calls the mistreatment of Israel during her six months at the United Nations. Her efforts have made her a darling of Israeli leaders, and have endeared her to conservative pro-Israel organizations in the United States. […]

“You know, all I’ve done is to tell the truth, and it’s kind of overwhelming at the reaction,” she said. “It was a habit. And if there’s anything I have no patience for it’s bullies, and the U.N. was being such a bully to Israel, because they could.” — WaPo

Israeli policies towards Palestinians have many parallels with our own treatment of Native Americans. There are other parallels to our history too. For much of the 20th century, towns across the US systematically excluded African-Americans from living there. 

What Palestinians are allowed to do in the settlements is work, assuming they can pass a rigorous security screening and a get a permit. But the workers — mostly in construction and service jobs — are not allowed to drive in, and they can’t spend the night. During my two weeks in the West Bank, I learned that the best way to estimate the number of Palestinians working in a given settlement at any moment is by counting the cars parked just outside the gate. This underscored one of the ironies of the settlements, which is that Palestinian hands built most of them: their houses and synagogues, their community centers and shopping malls. — Washington Post

Palestinians are often building these houses for settlers on public Palestinian lands which the Israeli government or settlers have encroached on. In other cases, Israeli officials will condemn private Palestinian lands, establishing “nature preserves” which then turn into gardens or farms for Israeli settlers.

Across Israel proper, housing discrimination is pervasive and various types of discrimination are codified into law. Most housing is largely segregated, with Jewish Israelis living in separate towns and communities, from their Arab Muslim or Christian fellow-citizens. Of course, in the occupied territories, the Israeli army enforces such segregation, just as law enforcement and vigilante groups did in the US.

Such discrimination and oppression is only possible if you successfully propagate a supporting narrative through schools and media. Gil Gertel writing in +972mag discusses how the Israeli education system has helped sanitize Palestinian suffering:

In the wake of the 1948 War, the list of people we forgot only got longer — refugees whom we continued not to see. This is what students read about that period from the “Artzi” textbook, published in 1950: “It is very good that we found a desolate and abandoned land. It is good that every piece of land we obtained is for us […] none of those who hate us (and their numbers are great) can complain that we took someone else’s land.

This book was published two years after the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. The Israeli government subsequently razed to the ground hundreds of villages to prevent the inhabitants from ever returning. The JNF began a campaign to plant “forests” to erase evidence of Palestinian villages. Palestinian houses in urban areas were reassigned to Jewish persons.

Students, however, were told it was a “desolate and abandoned land”. In a way, this is analogous to the stories we still tell our students about early European colonization of this country and the impact on Native American peoples.

This is what we teach our children, from a fifth-grade textbook: “In 1967, following the Six-Day War, the territories of Judea and Samaria, which were not yet in Israeli hands, came under its control. Today it is populated by both Arabs and Jews. The Arab population, according to estimates, is comprised of 1.5-2.5 million people, who live mostly in urban areas […] the Jewish population is closer to 400,000, who live in approximately 125 settlements.” (pg. 156). How idyllic: those territories “came under our control,” a real miracle. Jews and and Arabs living side by side — the Switzerland of the Middle East.

Labour under Corbyn posts biggest gain in popular vote since 1945

Under Corbyn’s leadership, Labour won a bigger portion of the popular vote than it has in the past 15 years. Turnout was the highest it’s been over the past 20 years. The improvement over the prior result is the best for Labour since the post-war 1945 election.

YEARLABOURTORIESLIB (DEM) *TURNOUTLAB GAINUNEMP
196448.0%41.9%8.5%75.8%+ 3.9%2.3%
197043.1%46.4%7.5%72%– 4.9%2.8%
197437.2%37.9%19.3%78.8%– 5.9%2.7%
197439.2%35.8%18.3%72.8%+ 2.0%2.7%
197936.9%43.9%13.8%76%– 2.3%6.0%
198327.6%42.4%25.4%72.7%– 9.3%13.5%
198730.8%42.2%22.6%75.3%+ 3.2%11.7%
199234.4%41.9%17.8%77.7%+ 3.6%9.4%
199743.2%30.7%16.8%71.3%+ 8.8%7.7%
200140.7%31.7%18.3%59.4%– 2.5%5.2%
200535.2%32.4%22.0%61.4%– 5.5%4.7%
201029.0%36.1%23.0%65.1%– 6.2%7.7%
201530.4%36.9%7.9%66.4%+ 1.4%5.5%
201740.0%42.4%3.0%68.7%+ 9.6%4.7%

* Starting in 1981, the old Liberal party allied with and eventually merged with the SDP. Unemployment data is for Jan of each year.

Labour under Corbyn has done this while being almost universally maligned by the media and much of the party itself, including former party stalwarts from the Third-Way/centrist/New-Labour/Blairite wing. Much of the Labour establishment has spent the past year trying to brand Corbyn as unworthy of being Prime Minister. Over the past couple of years, Labour MPs have said he’s a union radical, an anti-semite and supports terrorism. Some are bothered by Corbyn’s unabashedly left-wing economic agenda, others by this anti-war stance, yet others by his criticism of western intervention and colonialism. A Labour donor and former candidate said Corbyn and his “arriviste followers” were  like Nazi Stormtroopers.

Until recently, most of the British center-left establishment was gleefully anticipating an electoral disaster, privileging their intra-party factional objectives over even a pretense at unity. The forced a leadership vote in 2016, which Corbyn won by over 60%, thanks to solid support from rank-and-file grassroots members.

There are multiple lessons US progressives can learn here:

  1. An unabashedly left-wing plank can be more compelling than one trying to pivot to the center.
  2. The entire third-way wing of your party punching left in unison can slow you down, but it won’t stop you.
  3. Authenticity matters. When people heard Corbyn unfiltered, he outperformed their expectations.
  4. Conviction matters. Voters can smell poll-tested positions or policies of convenience from miles away.

Some focus groups found that voters appreciated Corbyn’s apparent openness, in contrast to more than May’s relatively safe and sterile approach, which saw her rarely deviate from a limited palette of approved catchphrases. — www.theguardian.com/…

NY is one senate vote away from passing Single Payer Health Care

The New York Health Act passed the NY assembly this year, just as it has the past two years. The NYHA would establish a single-payer universal health-care system in New York, covering all New York residents. Every New York resident would be eligible to enroll, regardless of immigration status, age, income, wealth, employment, or other status. Coverage would include all services currently required by the state’s insurance laws and offered in the health-care plans offered to state public employees.

The plan would be funded through a progressive payroll tax/deduction that would replace health-insurance premiums for most employees. The tax would be graduated with surcharges for high-income New Yorkers. NYHA would serve as a base insurance plan for all New Yorkers and private insurance would only be available for additional services. Long term care isn’t covered initially, but the bill required a commission to propose a plan for LTC within two years.

The bill is sitting in committee in the NY senate with 31 co-sponsors. One more co-sponsor and the bill will have a majority of the Senate backing it. The entire Democratic and IDC caucus is sponsoring it, except for Simcha Felder.

Felder is a Democrat but caucuses with Republicans, largely because they redirect enormous amounts of cash to his district (go figure). Felder is getting flack from several sources for his stance:

For two weeks, the Voice called Felder’s office at least a dozen times, and each time his staff insisted they would “get back to us” if we left our number. We decided to drive up I-87 to Albany and find Felder ourselves, to try to get some sort of comment — to find out whether he was undecided, opposed, or in favor. Anything on the record would have been appreciated. — The Village Voice

The Voice was not successful in getting Felder to respond.

State Senator Simcha Felder, who was elected as a Democrat but caucuses with Republicans, currently faces enormous pressure to endorse the bill. Felder did himself no favors by thrusting himself into the spotlight this week when he called on the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference to rejoin the mainline Democrats —without committing to come back to the main Democratic faction himself. Felder ducked the Village Voice in person earlier this week in Albany, making use of the skills he honed in the City Council to avoid making hard or controversial decisions. — Gothamist

broad coalition of progressive organizations is pressuring Felder and moderate Republican senators who haven’t yet come out in favor of NYHA. The coalition includes several unions, dozens of community and faith organization, the Working Families Party, the Green Party and several towns and localities.

Last Friday, progressive organizations including Our Revolution began a “Call your Senator” campaign which resulted in thousands of calls to state senators to bring the last vote on-board for a majority. You can find your senator and their contact information here. The Campaign for NY Health has a sample script you can use for your call.

You can sign a petition to the Senate here.

Additional info on NYHA:

Third official explanation for US airstrike that killed 140 civilians in Mosul is also disputed

Back in March, a bomb dropped from a US aircraft hit a building in Mosul and caused it to collapse. The strike was called in because Iraqi force on the ground saw two snipers in the building. Once the smoke had cleared, neighbors began pulling bodies out of the wreckage and there were reports that 200+ people had perished, including many children. This was the only building in the area with a basement and over a hundred people were sheltering there.

The day the news broke, Iraqi forces told journalists that the building collapse was caused by a car bomb. This story, the first explanation, was immediately questioned since there was no tell-tale car bomb crater on the site. Civil defense officials were quoted as saying the damage was consistent with an airstrike, not a car bomb.

Then, US spokespersons claimed that families had been herded into the building to serve as human shields, by ISIS. Neighbors challenged that claim, saying militia fighting in the region had instead told people to clear the area, but the owner of the building had invited people to shelter in the building, probably believing it was safe. This was the second disputed explanation:

Although the U.S. has no video or eyewitness accounts of IS militants planting the explosives, Isler (the lead Pentagon investigator) said. Enemy fighters warned people in the building next door to leave the area the night before the explosion. IS militants knew there were innocent civilians in the building that collapsed, he said, and possibly gave them the same warning. He said the neighbors refused to leave and, as a result, were told by IS that “what happens to you is on you.” — WaPo

After an investigation, the Pentagon issued a report acknowledging its airstrike, but claiming the bomb, a 500lb explosive device, could not have caused the building’s collapse on its own. Other explosive residue was found on the site and the Pentagon claims militants had stashed explosives in the building, which then caused the collapse. But now neighbors are questioning that claim:

Manhal, who lives across the street from the destroyed house, heard the explosion, as did his father, Sameer. The two deny that the Islamic State moved any explosives into the building, however. Both recalled militants arriving the night before the airstrike, telling those still in their homes to leave before fighting began the next day. The snipers, they said, arrived at the house for the first time the morning of March 17, armed with rifles and little else.

“It was an airstrike,” Manhal’s father said of the incident. “There were no explosives.”

Brig. Gen Mohammed al-Jawari, the civil defense chief for Mosul, also disputed the U.S. report. “We were the first people who went to the site and evacuated all the bodies, and we didn’t find any explosives there, only a few grenades and IEDs that weren’t exploded. . . . What caused that destruction was an airstrike, nothing else,” he said. — WaPo

In its report, the Pentagon said there was no way the 500lb bomb it dropped on the building could have caused the collapse. It also said the 500lb bomb was the “proportionate” and “appropriate” response to two snipers:

The weapon appropriately balanced the military necessity of neutralizing the snipers with the potential for collateral damage. The GBU-38 entered the roof and detonated in the second floor of the structure.

Proportionality. The TEA selected a weapon that balanced the military necessity of neutralizing the two snipers with the potential for collateral damage to civilians and civilian structures. — Executive Summary of report from USAF

This was only one of 81 bombs dropped on the neighborhood of al-Jidada that day. The entire area is about 2 square kilometers, or about 500 acres. That is the size of 92 city blocks in Manhattan or about twice the size of the Washington mall. As per the USAF’s report, these 81 bombs were dropped to “seize the sector from 35-40 ISIS fighters controlling the area”.

The USAF’s characterization of the bomb’s impact on the building is strongly disputed by others.

A U.S. military pilot, who spoke on the condition anonymity because of his active duty status, said the report’s damage estimates for the initial airstrike were low and unrealistic. The pilot, who flew hundreds of combat sorties over Iraq and Afghanistan, said that using a GBU-type bomb on a residential structure ensures that there is an “extremely high probability” that the “entire building will be destroyed and every living entity inside would be killed.” — WaPo

The pilot’s perspective on the impact of dropping this bomb, equipped with a 500lb warhead, does comport to other reported uses of the GBU-38.

In a 2006 airstrike, two bombs, a laser-guided GBU-12 and the GPS-guided GBU-38 with 500lb warheads were dropped on a two story brick structure::

The bits and pieces scattered Saturday through the ruins in Hibhib were the remains of the American airstrike that killed Mr. Zarqawi and five others Wednesday, when a pair of 500-pound bombs obliterated the brick house and left a crater 40 feet wide and deep.

“A big hole, sir,” said Sgt. Maj. Gary Rimpley, 46, of Penrose, Colo., who reached the scene shortly after the bombing. — NY Times 

The house in Mosul was also a two storey structure. This is the third story presented by the US/Iraqi forces about this airstrike to be questioned by people on the ground. What do the neighbors and relatives actually think about the USAF report?

Idriss said the Pentagon investigation released Thursday that acknowledged 105 civilians were killed in the airstrike is relatively insignificant.

“It’s important to hear the Americans apologize,” he said, “but justice would be the government giving the people of this neighborhood money to rebuild their homes.” From where he stood at least five completely destroyed homes were visible. […]

“It wasn’t only this house where civilians died,” said Hamed Salah, approaching the building struck by the U.S. bomb. “In that house over there, more than 30 were killed and another family up there,” he said pointing down one street and up another.

— WaPo/AP

The Pentagon also said it will no longer confirm which airstrikes that kill civilians were caused by US forces.

As the result of a deal struck among the coalition partners, civilian casualty incidents included in monthly reporting will not be tied to specific countries. That means the United States will in the future no longer confirm its own responsibility for specific civilian casualty incidents either — a move toward greater secrecy that could deprive victims’ families of any avenue to seek justice or compensation for these deaths. — Foreign Policy


DNC lawyers say it can pick candidates in smoke-filled back-room

For the DNC, the fallout from the presidential primary is not yet over.

In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and even handedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and even-handedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process. — Democratic party charter/by-laws

That section of the charter is the subject of a class-action lawsuit by Sanders supporters and DNC donors. The plaintiffs claim the DNC violated its own by-laws and was not impartial during the 2016 presidential primary race.

The DNC’s lawyers had an interesting defense at the initial hearing:

“We could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,’” Bruce Spiva, lawyer for the DNC, said during a court hearing in Carol Wilding, et al. v. DNC Services Corp., according to court filings exclusively obtained by TYT Politics. […]

In one of the more strange defense rationales, Spiva evoked baptism to suggest the term “impartial” is too vague and open-to-interpretation to be enforced legally.

“You have a charter that says you have to be — where the party has adopted a principle of even-handedness, and just to get the language exactly right, that they would be even-handed and impartial, I believe, is the exact language. And, you know, that’s not self-defining, your Honor. I mean that’s kind of like, you know, saying, Who’s a Baptist?”

— Jordan Chariton (TYT) on Medium

Now, as an occasional cigar-smoker, I object to the stereotype, but I’ll let it slide, this one time.

The attorney for the plaintiffs pointed out that DNC officials, including chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz repeated the impartiality claim on television numerous times.

The DNC’s lawyers aren’t addressing that. Instead, they’re trying to undermine the expectation of impartiality itself. Claiming that it is too vague and not enforceable.

“There’s no right to not have your candidate disadvantaged or have another candidate advantaged. There’s no contractual obligation here . . . it’s not a situation where a promise has been made that is an enforceable promise,” Spiva said.

— Salon

The DNC lawyer’s argument is this: The charter is crafted in such a way that what appears to the average person to be a promise of impartiality isn’t one at all. It’s all an illusion. What Democrats have is just a “political promise”.

The most recent court hearing on the case was held on April 25, during which the DNC reportedly argued that the organization’s neutrality among Democratic campaigns during the primaries was merely a “political promise,” and therefore it had no legal obligations to remain impartial throughout the process. — Newsweek

An uncharitable view would be that the actions of DNC officials were indefensible, and so this is the only defense their legal team could come up with.

Let’s be charitable for a moment. Maybe this is just a legal tactic, the quickest way for the DNC’s lawyers to get this case dismissed. Let’s accept their claim that there’s no “enforceable promise” so we don’t waste the court’s time trying to figure out whether or not the DNC was actually impartial. Let’s agree with them that impartiality is undefined, and there’s no measurable standard to apply to the DNC official’s actions.

Now, let’s take this line of thought to its conclusion. The DNC claims:

  • the charter authorizes them to pick a candidate in a proverbial cigar smoke-filled backroom.
  • “impartiality” is so vague a concept that DNC officials can, with impunity, take actions to favor whichever candidate they wish.
  • impartiality is a “political promise”, and we all know those are worth squat amiright?

What then, is the purpose of the entire primary charade? To give Democrats the illusion that they have an actual say in who heads the ticket? To lull us into believing Democrats actually stand for democracy?

Does anyone at the DNC understand what calls for “unity” look like in this light?

Does anyone at the DNC understand what this argument does to their credibility in the future?

Does anyone at the DNC understand what happens when politicians break a “political promise”?

Organizers who worked on the Sanders campaign have mobilized to help counterparts in the UK organize and canvass for the snap elections called by Theresa May (the conservative PM) for June 8th. In the process, they’ve brought a new generation of tools to UK elections, including peer-to-peer texting and distributed phone-banking. At the same time, there’s a renewed push for door-to-door-canvassing, GotV operations via training sessions and helping volunteers from safe constituencies travel to marginal constituencies.

Momentum alone has nearly 24,000 members and 200,000 supporters. Were all of them to get out and canvass voters, Labour could win the election, the group maintains.

Uyterhoeven agrees. Corbyn’s campaign, like Sanders’s, is a people-powered one, she said, and there is a lot more interest than the traditional system can handle.

“Every training we’ve held, over 100 people have showed up. When we launched the carpool website [trialled in the Stoke byelection], we had 20,000 unique visitors within 18 hours. Imagine trying to talk to all these people without the tools in place.”

— The Guardian

The Momentum volunteer network has helped register large numbers of new voters in the UK, largely using social media:

In the UK, voters can register online and most do:

UK-voter-reg.png

A last minute surge in people registering to vote has seen a quarter of a million young people under 25 years old sign up on the last possible day before the general election. — The Independent

That’s almost double the number of under-25s who registered on the last day prior to the Brexit referendum or the last general election. As in the US, younger voters tend to skew towards Labour, while older voters are more aligned with the conservatives.

Labour has enjoyed a surge in the polls, closing much of its deficit with May’s Conservative Party. Current polling suggest the Tories still enjoy a lead between 6% or 12 points. The national polling doesn’t translate into an precise margin in parliament since MPs are elected from discrete constituencies. Yet, the Tories should be worried, as Martin Boon who heads ICM Unlimited (a pollster) said:

“Nerves are now certainly jangling in Conservative Central Office, with a YouGov poll last weekend showing a drop to only a 5-point lead, before easing to a 7-point lead yesterday. Survation, with a phone poll this morning split the difference with a 6-pointer for GMTV.

This, from an ICM 22-point Conservative lead just three weeks’ ago.”

— The Guardian

Among other parallels with the US election is Corbyn’s promise that Labour would raise the minimum wage to 10 GBP an hour, instituting a living wage. The current minimum for those under 25 is 7.50. Some of the discussion will seem alien to Americans, including a discussion on whether or not more police officers should be armed. Less than 10% of London’s police force carries firearms, opting to police “by consent” rather than force.

More on the Corbyn/May “debate” below:

Theresa May has refused to debate Corbyn head to head thus far. However, she did agree to a back to back interview with Jeremy Paxman at the BBC. Prior to the interviews, each faced questions from a live studio audience.

The Guardian live-blogged the event and provided this synopsis:

By now it is clear that this “debate” (like most TV election events of this kind) won’t really have changed very much in the campaign. Generally it is being seen as a bit of a draw. (See 10.43pm.) And it probably did not even contain a memorable moment that people will be talking about for months or years to come because it was particularly revealing. If there has been one so far this election, it may be Theresa May’s “nothing has changed” press conference near-meltdown (although, if May does win a decent majority, that may well be forgotten by the end of the summer).

Yet the May v Corbyn showdown did illustrate how the campaign is evolving. At the start of the campaign, some of Jeremy Corbyn’s critics thought he would be so awful that the Labour campaign would collapse. Well, they have been comprehensively proved wrong, and this evening he looked relaxed and confident. His actions and pronouncements from the 1980s continue to haunt him, but, as the BBC’s Nick Robinson suggests (see 10.43pm), it is better to have the toughest questions relating to what you said in the past than what you are saying now. […]

And May seems to have changed a bit, too. When she called the election, her campaign seemed to revolve entirely around offering “strong and stable” leadership. The social care U-turn has torn the legs off that strategy, and tonight she barely, if at all, used the phrase. She also chose not to deploy some of the implausible lines about Corbyn she has used previously (like the false claim that he would raise income tax to 25p in the pound). Instead, we got a more humble and grounded PM, who sounded evasive on social care and winter fuel payments, but robust on Brexit, which many people will like.

— The Guardian

Columnists from ITV and the Financial Times also chimed in:


Corbyn was asked about his personal political positions, many of which did not make it into the Labour party’s election manifesto. This included his opposition to nuclear weapons and opposition to the British monarchy. Among other notable moments, Corbyn would not say whether he would order a drone strike against a terrorist organizing an attack on the UK. He said it was a completely hypothetical question and he would not answer it without knowing the specific facts. He was asked about his engagement with the IRA in the 80s.

May was grilled about her social policies and funding levels for the NHS, some of this came from the audience and many audience members weren’t satisfied with her responses, laughing at her answers on occasion. Paxman had very pointed questions on several of May’s policy reversals, including the decision to call an early election after several statements saying she wouldn’t.

The Brexit vote was discussed at various points, with both May and Corbyn saying they will honor the results of the referendum.

The smaller and regional parties (LibDems, SNP, Greens and UKIP) were left out of the joint TV interview.

What Tolkien can tell us about Merkel’s comment on Europe “fighting for its own destiny”

Mrs Merkel said she wanted friendly relations with both countries as well as Russia but Europe now had to “fight for its own destiny”. […]

“The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Mrs Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany. […]

The relationship between Berlin and new French President Emmanuel Macron had to be a priority, Mrs Merkel said. — BBC

There are multiple threads here. Clearly EU allies were not pleased with the current US administration’s unwillingness to commit to the Paris accords. Nor were they thrilled by the Trump administration’s protectionist rhetoric and railing against German car-makers.

But perhaps the most serious of the breaches was President Trump’s unwillingness to affirm his administration’s commitment to NATO’s Article 5. This is the collective defense portion of the NATO treaty. It obligates all members to respond to an attack on any one member. It was first invoked after the 9/11 attacks, though NATO member states have taken collective defense measures numerous times, thrice at Turkey’s behest after various wars in the Middle-East. More recently collective defense measures are in place after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and concern among Eastern European NATO member states.

The US is treaty-bound to honor its NATO obligations. However, with sole command of the armed forces, the president would decide whether and what resources to commit. When it comes to our nuclear arsenal, the president’s authority is virtually absolute.

So when Angela Merkel says she does not believe Europe can rely on the US, she is at least partly thinking of the scenario below. If she calls for aid, will the US answer?

When troops are outside Berlin’s walls, or missiles in flight, will Donald Trump answer the call? This is an critical question for someone like Merkel, who is tasked with ensuring the safety of over 80 million people, and over 500 million if you include the entire EU. It is a serious responsibility.

Back in March, I’d posted a lengthy diary about the implications of a Trump presidency on nuclear proliferation. For decades, our allies have relied on us and abstained from developing nuclear weapons. This has limited the spread of nuclear weapons.

If Europeans don’t believe they can rely on the US nuclear umbrella, the next obvious step is to develop a credible deterrent of their own. With Brexit imminent, this will not be the UK’s program. It is partly in this light that any discussions between France and Germany must be seen.

But it’s not just Germany or Italy or Poland who are reconsidering what they thought they knew about the US. Other major allies like Turkey, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea will too. Canada is probably still covered, but most Central/South American states have long been skeptical the US will respond to its mutual defense obligations in the Rio treaty. Will they come up with a deterrent of their own?

Will America First end up meaning America alone?