Archive for July, 2017

Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned From Libya War to Never Give Up Nukes – The Intercept

The media is now filled with headlines about North Koreas missile test on Friday, which demonstrated that its ICBMs may be able to reach the continental U.S. What isntmentioned in any of these stories ishow we got to this point in particular, what Dan Coats, President Donald Trumps Director of National Intelligence,explained last weekat the Aspen Security Forum.

North Koreas 33-year-old dictator Kim Jong-un is not crazy, said Coats. In fact, he has some rationale backing his actions regarding the countrys nuclear weapons. That rationale is the waythe U.S. has demonstrated that North Korea must keep themto ensure survival for his regime, survival for his country.

Kim, according to Coats, has watched, I think, what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. In particular, The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you dont have them, get them.

This is, of course, blindingly obvious and has been since the U.S. helped oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafis regime in 2011. But U.S. officials have rarely if ever acknowledged this reality. Heres the timeline:

In December 2003, Libya announced that it would surrenderits biological and chemical weapons stockpiles, as well as its rudimentary nuclear weapons program.

In celebrating Libyas decision, President George W. Bush declared that the rest of the world should take away the message that leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations. Paula DeSutter, Bushs Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, explained that we want Libya to be a model for other countries.

In 2011, the U.S. and NATO conducted a bombing campaign to assist Libyan rebels in overthrowing the Gaddafi government. Gaddafi himself was captured by one rebel faction, who apparently sodomized him with a bayonet and then killed him.

You would definitely expect this to getthe attention of North Koreas ruling clique especially given that Iraq had also disarmed and then been invaded, with its dictator executed by a howling mob.

And, indeed, North Korea said this explicitly at the time. Its foreign ministry stated, The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson, which was that thedeal to rid Libya of weapons of mass destruction had been an invasion tactic to disarm the country.

Yet the Obama administration shamelessly denied this. Areporter told State Department spokesperson Mark Toner that North Koreans are looking at this and it didnt give them a lot of incentive to give up their nuclear weapons. Toner replied that where [Libya is]at today has absolutely no connection with them renouncing their nuclear program and nuclear weapons.

Moreover, North Koreans and other countries can read, and so understand what Americas foreign policy elite has repeatedly explained why we want small countries to disarm. Its not because we fear that they will use WMD in a first strike onus, since nationslike North Korea understand that would immediately lead to their obliteration. Instead, our mandarins explicitly say the problem is that unconventional weapons help small countries deter us from attacking them.

There are many examples. For instance, in a 2001 memo, then-Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld stated:

Several of these [small enemy nations] are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis.

[U]niversally available [WMD] technologies can be used to create asymmetric responsesthat cannot defeat our forces, but can deny access to critical areas in Europe, the Middle East, and Asiaasymmetric approaches can limit our ability to apply military power.

The think tank Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative pressure group that had a heavy influence on George W. Bushs administration, made the same point in an influential paper called Rebuilding Americas Defenses:

The United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military actionby threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority.

In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence andit is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.

In fact, even Dan Coats himself has said this, in a 2008 op-ed he co-wrote. An Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable, Coats said, because it would possessa deterrent against U.S. attack. And to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deter us, he explained, we might have to attack them.

Video of Coats speaking and his full remarks are below:

Source: The Aspen Institute

DAN COATS: It has become a potential existential threat to the United States and it is of great concern.

LESTER HOLT: And in terms of the number of options available publicly we know that there arent a lot of great options there, and a lot of it is trying to see into Kim Jong-uns head and thats I suspect that most difficult kind of intelligence trying to predict someones behavior.

COATS: Well, hes demonstrated behavior publicly that really raises some questions about who he is and how he thinks and how he acts, what his behavior is, but our assessment has come has pretty much resulted in the fact that while hes a very unusual type of person, hes not crazy. And there is some rationale backing his actions which are survival, survival for his regime, survival for his country, and he has watched I think what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up. If you dont have them, get them, and we see a lot of nations now thinking about how do we get them and none more persistent than North Korea

Top photo: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects troops of Unit 534 of the Korean Peoples Army on Jan. 12, 2014.

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Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned From Libya War to Never Give Up Nukes - The Intercept

Good steps in Libya: France’s moves can help stem migrant tide – Manhattan Mercury (subscription)

French President Emmanuel Macron brought together two of the principal rival leaders of Libya and, in Paris on Tuesday, won joint pledges of a ceasefire and elections next year.

There are causes for skepticism of the solidity of the accord and clear barriers still to be overcome. However, there is no question that the agreement is important for Libya and the region and a step in the right direction.

Libya has had a tormented history since its leader, Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed in 2011. Its population of 6 million has known basically nothing but conflict since American, Arab, British and Italian military intervention brought about regime change in the formerly oil-rich, authoritarian state.

It currently has at least three governments: the Tobruk-based eastern one, led more or less by Gen. Khalifa Haftar; a United Nations-based Government of National Accord in Tripoli, the ostensible Libyan capital, led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj; and the National Salvation Government, also based in Tripoli. There are also across the country various tribal and local armed militias, which answer basically to no one.

Apart from what peace and elections can mean to Libyans, there is a more important regional issue that stability in that country could help to ameliorate. With no effective government and an 1,100-mile-long Mediterranean coastline, Libya has become the center of a marketplace for human trafficking from troubled, poor African and Middle Eastern countries. The migrants destination is Western Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea.

It is estimated that some 100,000 migrants have crossed since January, up 17 percent from the same period last year, and that some 2,300 have died in the process, including many women and children. What has occurred is virtually more than the world can bear to see, and the only way to stop it is to somehow restore law and order to Libya.

Prospects for success are shaky. There have been other tentative Libyan agreements. The third government, the National Salvation group, was not at the Paris talks. Gen. Haftar is backed by the governments of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, with a history of support from the CIA. He is ambitious, with his armies controlling two-thirds of the country, including its second city, Benghazi. He had previously threatened to attack Tripoli, the headquarters of the two rival groups. His government also controls most of Libyas oil facilities.

But this new effort is certainly worth a shot, given the stakes for Libyans and the region, including southern Western Europe, especially France and Italy. The Italian government is cross at not having been involved in the negotiations that Macron organized, given its colonial past and oil interests in Libya. However, France, too, once governed part of the country. The Italians had coastal Tripolitania and Cyrenaica; France, the desert Fezzan in the south.

The Libyan accord, if it holds, is clearly a feather in the cap of the new French president. So far, Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is active in the Qatar Middle Eastern dispute, have stepped up to the plate in trying to resolve international conflicts as the United States has stepped back, preoccupied with domestic political issues.

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Good steps in Libya: France's moves can help stem migrant tide - Manhattan Mercury (subscription)

From the Silent Protest Parade to Black Lives Matter: 100 years on, the First Mass African-American Demo Remains … – Newsweek

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black.

On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.

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New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene.

The Silent Protest Parade, as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book Torchbearers of Democracy, African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the Silent Protest Parade indicted the United States as an unjust nation.

This charge remains true today.

One hundred years later, as black people continue to insist that Black Lives Matter, the Silent Protest Parade offers a vivid reminder about the power of courageous leadership, grassroots mobilization, direct action and their collective necessity in the fight to end racial oppression in our current troubled times.

One of the great accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to demonstrate the continuum of racist violence against black people throughout American history and also the history of resistance against it. But as we continue to grapple with the hyper-visibility of black death, it is perhaps easy to forget just how truly horrific racial violence against black people was a century ago.

Prior to the Silent Protest Parade, mob violence and the lynching of African-Americans had grown even more gruesome. In Waco, a mob of 10,000 white Texans attended the May 15, 1916, lynching of a black farmer, Jesse Washington. One year later, on May 22, 1917, a black woodcutter, Ell Persons, died at the hands of over 5,000 vengeance-seeking whites in Memphis. Both men were burned and mutilated, their charred body parts distributed and displayed as souvenirs.

Even by these grisly standards, East St. Louis later that same summer was shocking. Simmering labor tensions between white and black workers exploded on the evening of July 2, 1917.

For 24 hours, white mobs indiscriminately stabbed, shot and lynched anyone with black skin. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled no one was spared. Homes were torched and occupants shot down as they attempted to flee. White militia men stood idly by as the carnage unfolded. Some actively participated. The death toll likely ran as high as 200 people.

The citys surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees.

East St. Louis was an American pogrom. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and collected firsthand accounts of the aftermath. She described what she saw as an awful orgy of human butchery.

The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting Americas singularly unique place on the global stage and his goal to make the world safe for democracy. In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilsons vision and America itself.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People quickly responded to the massacre. Founded in 1909, the NAACP had yet to establish itself as a truly representative organization for African-Americans across the country. With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the NAACPs co-founders and editor of The Crisis magazine, the national leadership was all white. Branches were overwhelmingly located in the North, despite the majority of African-Americans residing below the Mason-Dixon line. As a result, the NAACP had largely failed to respond with a sense of urgency to the everyday horrors endured by the masses of black folk.

James Weldon Johnson changed things. Lawyer, diplomat, novelist, poet and songwriter, Johnson was a true African-American renaissance man. In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as a field secretary and made an immediate impact. In addition to growing the organizations southern membership, Johnson recognized the importance of expanding the influence of the NAACPs existing branches beyond the black elite.

Johnson raised the idea of a silent protest march at an executive committee meeting of the NAACP Harlem branch shortly after the East St. Louis riot. Johnson also insisted that the protest include the citys entire black community. Planning quickly got underway, spearheaded by Johnson and local black clergymen.

By noon on July 28, several thousand African-Americans had begun to assemble at 59th Street. Crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue. Anxious New York City police officers lined the streets, aware of what was about to take place but, with clubs at the ready, prepared for trouble.

At approximately 1 p.m., the protest parade commenced. Four men carrying drums began to slowly, solemnly play. A group of black clergymen and NAACP officials made up the front line. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had recently returned from conducting an NAACP investigation in East St. Louis, and James Weldon Johnson marched side by side.

The parade was a stunning spectacle. At the front, women and children wearing all-white gowns symbolized the innocence of African-Americans in the face of the nations guilt. The men, bringing up the rear and dressed in dark suits, conveyed both a mournful dignity and stern determination to stand up for their rights as citizens.

They carried signs and banners shaming America for its treatment of black people. Some read, Your hands are full of blood, Thou Shalt Not Kill, Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven? Others highlighted the wartime context and the hollowness of Americas ideals: We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six wars; our reward was East St. Louis, Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty, Make America safe for Democracy.

Throughout the parade, the marchers remained silent. The New York Times described the protest as one of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed. The silence was finally broken with cheers when the parade concluded at Madison Square.

The Silent Protest Parade marked the beginning of a new epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain politics of respectability, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a New Negro had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be seen in the parades of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today.

The Silent Protest Parade reminds us that the fight against racist violence and the killing of black people remains just as relevant now as it did 100 years ago. Black death, whether at the hands of a Baton Rouge police officer or white supremacist in Charleston, is a specter that continues to haunt this nation. The expendability of black bodies is American tradition, and history speaks to the long endurance of this violent legacy.

But history also offers inspiration, purpose and vision.

Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson and other freedom fighters of their generation should serve as models for activists today. That the Silent Protest Parade attracted black people from all walks of life and backgrounds attests to the need for organizations like the NAACP, following its recent national convention, to remember and embrace its origins. And, in building and sustaining the current movement, we can take lessons from past struggles and work strategically and creatively to apply them to the present.

Because, at their core, the demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as one of the signs raised to the sky on that July afternoon in 1917:

Give me a chance to live.

Chad Williams, associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis University.

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From the Silent Protest Parade to Black Lives Matter: 100 years on, the First Mass African-American Demo Remains ... - Newsweek

Black Lives Matter leader rips SBA boss for supporting Bronx cop indicted for killing mentally ill woman – New York Daily News

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, July 28, 2017, 12:09 PM

The local president of Black Lives Matter is calling out the head of the NYPD sergeants union for continuing to support a Bronx cop criminally indicted for killing a mentally ill woman.

"Since the hours after Deborah Danner's killing Ed Mullins has been proclaiming Sgt. Hugh Barry's innocence, Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, said in a statement. He has insulted the mayor and publicly degraded the police commissioner.

In May, Bronx prosecutors indicted Barry on murder charges for fatally shooting 66-year-old Danner after she began swinging a bat at cops inside her Pugsley Ave. home in Norwood on October 18.

It is because of people like Ed Mullins that we cannot move closer to healing the divide between police and communities of color," said Newsome.

Members of the Sergeants Benevolent Association have raised over $125,000 to support Barry's legal fees through a GoFundMe page, proclaimed his innocence and received support from officers across the country.

Barry, 31, was sued in 2012 and 2014 for assaulting two New Yorkers. The city settled those cases for $25,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The SBA has launched an online campaign titled, "There's NO We in Barry, that features short videos of cops from Milwaukee to Los Angeles pledging their support for the indicted cop.

"Some officers deserve protection," Newsome said. However, defending this man sends a terrible message to black communities. It sends a message to America that cops are never wrong.

Barry has been suspended without pay, pending the outcome of the criminal case, by the NYPD.

"No different than any American Mr. Newsome is entitled to his thoughts, Mullins said in a statement to the Daily News. If Mr. Newsome is sincerely interested in working toward meaningful solutions that would help bring peace, trust and bridge the divide between communities of color and law enforcement I would be more than happy to meet privately with him.

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Black Lives Matter leader rips SBA boss for supporting Bronx cop indicted for killing mentally ill woman - New York Daily News

Adopted Sebastopol shopkeeper, 62, meets sisters for first time – Santa Rosa Press Democrat

(1 of ) Sisters (from left) Kathy Anderson of Sebastopol, Sue Brooke of Santa Clarita and Lori Brooke, of Scottsdale, Arizona. (Chris Smith/The Press Democrat) (2 of ) The scrapbook of Dolores Thomas, mother of Kathy Anderson of Sebastopol, Sue Brooke of Santa Clarita and Lori Brooke, of Scottsdale, Arizona. (Chris Smith/The Press Democrat)

CHRIS SMITH

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 29, 2017, 4:11PM

| Updated 6 hours ago.

See those three women at a window table at the Sonoma County Airports restaurant?

Theyre leafing through an old photo album and talking and laughing, except for the one who now has her hands over her mouth and weeps.

Two of them are from out of town and just met the one in tears, Sebastopols Kathy Anderson. About a month ago Kathy, the eldest at 62, hadnt yet heard of the other two.

She didnt know theyre her half-sisters.

ITS SOME STORY how Kathy, a 1973 graduate of Analy High who manages the Cultivate Home store, set out to find something, anything about her birth mother.

Relying mostly on the virtual wonder that is Ancestry.com, she learned much about her birth mom, including the sad discovery that she died long ago. On the upside, Kathys genealogical research now has her venturing onto a whole other, richly laden branch of her family tree.

SHE WAS ADOPTED at birth, shes always known that.

The adoptive parents she adored, the late John and Iris Bastida of Sebastopol, knew nothing about her birth father and little about her birth mother.

Kathy grew up, married and had two children. Curiosity about her birth parents and why she was put up for adoption prompted her to do some searching back in 2001.

She uncovered her birth mothers name, Dolores Thomas. But beyond that, she struck out. I let it go, she said.

In time, both Kathys daughter, Becky Gehrett of Sebastopol, and her daughter-in-law, Deanna Gehrett of Cloverdale, became mothers. They told her that as moms theyd love to know more about their family history.

So in 2014, Kathy took a DNA test and submitted the results to Ancestry.com for a search for possible relatives. There were hits but none panned out.

Just last month, Ancestry.com helped Kathy connect with a cousin she didnt know she had, a young Arkansas man named Trey Shields. In an email, she asked him if he knew or knew of Dolores Thomas.

He did, and he emailed Kathy a photo of Dolores late parents. Kathy gazed at the picture and gasped: The woman had to be her maternal grandmother, the two of them look so much alike.

Trey Shields broke the news to Kathy that her mother who was single and living in San Francisco when she had Kathy died of cancer in 1970 at just 38. And, shared Shields, she left behind a husband and two young daughters, both of whom are alive and doing well.

Trey gave Kathy a phone number for one of her half-sisters, Lori Brooke of Arizona.

Lori, whos 52, flew into the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport on Friday. Her sister, Sue Brooke, 54, drove up from her home Santa Clarita.

Kathy had barely met her half-sister as they sat in the airport cafe to get acquainted and look through the photo album Lori brought along.

THERE WAS MOM, a 22-year-old Nebraskan whod moved to San Francisco, smiling on the beach at Santa Cruz with a handsome sailor. Dolores had written the date on the back of the photo: Oct. 10, 1954.

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Adopted Sebastopol shopkeeper, 62, meets sisters for first time - Santa Rosa Press Democrat