Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Pirates and Democracy

Chris Holte at HoltesThoughts - 10 hours ago
I've found compelling evidence that Robert and Governeuer Morris were pirates. And Hamilton was not perfect either. But I've also found evidence they were nationalists, just as patriotic as the Southerners, abolitionists and wanted a unified nation not a confederacy. His work with Madison and Jefferson gave us a Strong nation that still survives. Had we been a loose confederacy, the Civil war would have started sooner and never ended. Fractured states are subject to external predation, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Hamilton wanted direct election of the President. He was able t... more »

Lawyers and Pirates

Chris Holte at HoltesThoughts - 11 hours ago
Lawyers and Pirates Pirates, loot and Lawyers When we think of pirates we don't usually think of lawyers. We think of hard men with eye patches and peg legs. The basis of all piracy is high seas theft and private warfare. The two have always overlapped. We romanticize piracy because the foundation of many wealthy family fortunes is in piratical behavior. All pirates seek loot, wealth, power, and to fight enemies on the Seas. Privateers confine their piracy to enemies of their country. Pirates don't. But it's not that simple. The legalization of private warfare that enables piracy... more »


SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PIRATES




The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Karl Janssen at Old Books by Dead Guys - 3 hours ago
*The Golden Age of Comics and Magic* Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel *The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay* has garnered much critical acclaim, and deservedly so. This remarkable novel tells the story of Brooklyn boy Sammy Klayman and his cousin Josef Kavalier, a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. When Joe moves in with Sammy’s family, Sammy discovers his cousin’s prodigious artistic talents and decides the two should get into the comic book business. Sammy works for a novelty products company, and he persuades his boss to back their publishing venture. The creativ... more »

A Little Trip Along with Gen. Jackson Down the Mighty Missisip

Patrick Murfin at Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout - 2 hours ago
This 1922 illustration show General Andrew Jackson on the breast works in the Battle of New Orleans with his Tennessee Volunteers, Army Regulars, and Jean Lafitte's pirates. Few if any of the Tennesseans would have been in buckskin and coonskin caps, Most had at least fragments of uniforms after months of campaigning against the Creeks and capturing Mobile from the Spanish. Probably the most *important battle* ever fought *after a war ended* occurred on January 8, 1815. Thousands of *British *troops, including *regiments *that had distinguished themselves in the *Napoleonic Wars ... more »

Iran, the United States and Operation Enduring Freedom - Sowing the Seeds of Distrust With Washington

A Political Junkie at Viable Opposition - 54 minutes ago
Let's open this posting with a lengthy quote: "*The Afghan war has produced at least one set of improbable bedfellows: the US and Iran. That is why the battle for Herat in southwest Afghanistan on Monday, November 12, stood out from the Northern Alliance’s other rapid-fire wins. Beyond giving the anti-Taliban movement a key city and control over the main routes to Iran and Turkmenistan, winning Herat may be remembered as a turning point for America’s foreign relations outside Afghanistan too, because it brought the US and Iran together militarily for the first time since the anti-Am... more »
Australia's Wildfires and Climate Change Are Making One Another Worse in a Vicious, Devastating Circle

Tara Law, Time•January 7, 2020

Dead Animals Line the Road in Fire-Ravaged Australia


The hot, dry conditions that primed southeastern Australia’s forest and fields for the bushfires that have been ravaging the country since September are likely to continue, scientists warn — and climate change has likely made the situation much worse.

Over the past few months, the bushfires have already scorched millions of acres, killed two dozen people, and slaughtered an estimated half a billion animals in the country, where it is currently summer. But scientists say that the risk of additional fires remains high. Southeastern Australia has been “abnormally dry” since September, which means that it would need significant rainfall repeatedly over a period of weeks to become damp enough to cut down the risk of fires, says Dan Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.

Unfortunately, such prolonged rain does not appear to be imminent in the next few weeks. Although the region experienced some rain early this week, Pydynowski warns that it has “not been impressive” and is not enough to substantially reduce fire risk. Significant rain from Tropical Storm Blake is also not expected to reach the area most affected by the fires.

“Everything is so dry right now, it doesn’t take much for a fire to spark and blow up and spread,” Pydynowski says.
A cemetery recently hit by bushfires near Mogo, 
New South Wales, on Jan. 5. | Adam Ferguson for TIME

Climate scientists warn that the scale and devastation of the wildfires are clear examples of the way climate change can intensify natural disasters.

The Australian bushfires were exacerbated by two factors that have a “well-established” link to climate change: heat and dry conditions, says Stefan Rahmstorf, department head at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report.

In recent years, Australia has experienced long-term dry conditions and exceptionally low rainfall. Scientists say that droughts in the country have gotten worse over recent decades. At the same time, the country has recorded record high temperatures; last summer was the hottest on record for the country.

“Due to enhanced evaporation in warmer temperatures, the vegetation and the soils dry out more quickly,” says Rahmstorf. “So even if the rainfall didn’t change, just the warming in itself would already cause a drying of vegetation and therefore increased fire risk.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has resisted calls for the country to reduce its carbon emissions, has been accused of deemphasizing the the link between the bushfires and climate change, saying during a November interview that there isn’t “credible scientific evidence” that curbing emissions would diminish the fires.

However, scientists stress that while many sources may ignite fires — including arson — climate change is a major reason why recent the blazes in Australia have been so destructive.

“There are now disingenuous efforts to downplay the clear role of climate change in worsening the intensity and severity of the Australian fires, or to blame ‘arson’ as a way to distract from the growing threat of climate change. These efforts should be called out for what they are: gross climate denial,” Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of Pacific Institute in California.

Gleick says that the bushfires are a “very clear example of the links between climate change and extreme weather.” He points out that these fires are very similar to recent highly destructive fires in Brazil and California.

“It’s not a question of whether climate change has caused these fires. Fires start for natural reasons — or for human cause reasons. What we’re seeing is a worsening of the conditions that make the fires in Australia unprecedentedly bad,” says Gleick. “All of these factors — record heat, unprecedented drought, lack of rain — all contribute to drying out the fuel that makes these fires worse. What we have are fires that might have occurred anyway, but the extent, the severity, the intensity of these fires is far worse than it otherwise would have been without the fingerprints of climate change.”

Rahmstorf also says that climate scientists believe wildfire conditions are worsening because climate change affects the water cycle, which in turn “leads to less rainfall in already dry parts of the world, and more rainfall in the already wet parts of the world.” Australia is especially vulnerable to climate change because the continent is already hot and dry; a large swathe of the country is facing increased risk of drought, says Rahmstorf.

Gleick says that the bushfires can have a ripple effect both on the local landscape and on the global climate. Fires can cause “ember storms,” which can lead to additional fires when embers from smaller fires are picked up by the wind.

Fires also add carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere, which can in turn amplify climate change, Gleick says. “Climate change is making these disasters worse, and these disasters are making climate change worse,” says Gleick. “We’ve only seen a tiny fraction of the climate change that we’re going to see in the coming years and the coming decades. If we’re seeing these disasters with a 1 degree warming of the planet so far, and we know that we’re headed for a 1.5 or 2 or 3 degree warming, we can only imagine how bad these disasters are going to get.”

---30---
Heartbreaking photos show animals impacted by Australia's bushfires
Ben Mack
A kangaroo with burnt feet pads rescued from bushfires
 in the Blue Mountains. Jill Gralow / Reuters
Massive bushfires are continuing to rage across Australia.The fires have claimed dozens of lives, and destroyed thousands of homes. The smoke is even turning the sky in New Zealand orange — about 1,200 miles away.More than a billion animals are feared to have died so far, and thousands have also been receiving hospital treatment.There are several ways to help — many organizations are taking donations to support rescuers and others affected by the bushfires.Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The bushfires raging in Australia have taken a massive toll on animals — more than a billion of them are thought to have died so far, in what is only the beginning of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.


Fires have burned an estimated 25.5 million acres since September, according to Reuters. The fires have claimed dozens of lives, and destroyed thousands of homes. The fires are so massive, smoke from them has been turning the sky in New Zealand orange — which is about 1,200 miles away. By comparison, the massive Amazon Rainforest fires in 2019 burned an estimated 17.5 million acres.
Shayanne Gal/Insider

Celebrities and other well-known figures throughout the world have been calling on the public to join them in helping Australians, while Celeste Barber's Facebook bushfire fundraiser is officially the largest in the platform's history, raising over $28.5 million in just four days.

The fires have had a heartbreaking impact on pets and wild animals too — tens of thousands of koalas are feared dead on Kangaroo Island alone, and last week, the family of late wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin announced that their animal hospital in Queensland had treated more than 90,000 animal patients.

Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Services (WIRES)
 volunteer and carer Tracy Burgess holds a severely burnt
 brushtail possum rescued from fires near Australia's Blue
 Mountains on December 29.
A brushtail possum rescued from fires near Australia's
 Blue Mountains. Jill Gralow / Reuters

WIRES volunteer and carer Tracy Dodd holds a kangaroo 
with burnt feet pads after being rescued from bushfires in 
the Blue Mountains on December 30.

A kangaroo with burnt feet pads rescued from bushfires
 in the Blue Mountains. Jill Gralow / Reuters


A dog visits the burnt-out property of its owner's family
member in Kia, Australia, on January 8.
A dog in Kia following bushfires. Tracey Nearmy / Reuters

A weary kangaroo shelters on a patch of green grass 
surrounded by burnt bushland along the Princes Highway 
near Milton on January 5.
A kangaroo near in Milton. Tracey Nearmy / Reuters


In this image made from video taken on December 22, 
and provided by Oakbank Balhannah CFS, a koala drinks
 water from a bottle given by a firefighter in Cudlee Creek, 
South Australia.

A koala drinking from a water bottle given by a firefighter
 in Cudlee Creek. Oakbank Balhannah CFS via AP

A dehydrated and injured Koala receives treatment at the 
Port Macquarie Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie on November 2.
A dehydrated koala being cared for in Port Macquarie. 
SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images


A pet cat sits quietly in its animal carrier at the evacuation
center in the Bomaderry Bowls Club in Bomaderry on January 5.

A pet cat at the evacuation center in the Bomaderry 
Bowls Club. Tracey Nearmy / Reuters

Bec Winter stands next to her son, Riley, while hugging her
 horse Charmer, who she rode to safety through bushfires
 on New Year's Eve in Moruya.

Bec Winter, son Riley (right) and horse Charmer. 
Jill Gralow / Reuters

Adelaide wildlife rescuer Simon Adamczyk is seen with a
 koala rescued at a burning forest near Cape Borda on
 Kangaroo Island.
Simon Adamczyk rescuing a koala near Cape Borda on 
Kangaroo Island. AAP Image/David Mariuz/via REUTERS

Animals are seen in Cobargo, as bushfires continue in
New South Wales, Australia on January 5.
Bushfires near Cobargo in New South Wales. 
Tracey Nearmy / Reuters


Giraffes at the Mogo Zoo in Mogo on January 8.
Giraffes at the Mogo Zoo. Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters

An injured koala receives treatment at the Port Macquarie
 Koala Hospital after its rescue from a bushfire on November 19.
An injured koala at Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. 
Tao Shelan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

WIRES volunteer and carer Tracy Dodd holds a kangaroo 
with burnt feet pads after it was rescued from bushfires
 in the Blue Mountains on December 30.
A kangaroo with burnt feet pads rescued from bushfires
 in the Blue Mountains. Jill Gralow / Reuters

A cat sits in a makeshift joey pouch crafted for animals affected by Australia's bushfires, seen in this January 6 image obtained via social media, in Tauranga, New Zealand.
A cat in a makeshift joey pouch for animals 
affected by Australia's bushfires, as seen in
 Tauranga, New Zealand. Lara Mackay via Reuters


Chickens mill around a burnt-out property in Kiah on January 8.
Chickens in Kiah, New South Wales. Tracey Nearmy / Reuters

A Red Heeler dog lies on the ground at the Cobargo evacuation center in Cobargo on January 6.
A Red Heeler dog in Cobargo. Tracey Nearmy / Reuters

Local aboriginal man Anthony Thomas is seen at his uncle's property, destroyed by bushfires, in Kiah on January 8.
3 graphics reveal the unimaginable scale of Australia's fires
Aylin Woodward and Shayanne Gal
Cattle in a field under a red sky caused by bushfires in 
Greendale on the outskirts of Bega, in Australia's New
 South Wales state, on Sunday. 
SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images



Since September, bushfires have razed an estimated 25 million acres in Australia. That's an area larger than South Korea, and it's 7 million more acres than burned in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest last year.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate, and more than 1 billion animals are feared dead.
Drought conditions and record-breaking temperatures contributed to the fires' unprecedented size and intensity.
Three graphics show the devastating scale of Australia's bushfire crisis.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

More than half of Australia is choking on smoke, and skies across the country glow orange as bushfires continue to ravage the continent.

Since the start of the bushfire season in September, an estimated 25.5 million acres have burned, according to Reuters, and at least 25 people have died. More than 1 billion animals are feared dead, and an estimated 2,000 homes have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate.

Australia experiences fires during its summer, which runs from December to March, but this year's crisis — which comes on the heels of a heat wave and prolonged drought — is unprecedented. The fires that plagued the Brazilian Amazon this year, by comparison, burned through 17.5 million acres of rainforest.

The smoke plume from Australia's blazes is nearly unfathomable in size: 1.3 billion acres of sky are engulfed in ash and smoke that can be seen from space. That's an area three times the size of Mexico, half the size of Canada, and bigger than the 11 biggest US states combined.

In December, an official in New South Wales said the state was experiencing the "longest" and "most widespread" period of poor air quality in its history.

"I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background," Michael Mann, a US climate scientist who is on sabbatical in Sydney, wrote in The Guardian on Thursday.

Dry conditions in Australia's bushland, wooded areas, and have made the land ripe for sparks. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019. December 18 was the hottest day in the country's history, with average temperatures hitting 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40.9 degrees Celsius.

In the past 15 years, Australia has experienced eight of its 10 warmest years on record. Winter rains, which can help reduce the intensity of summer fires, have declined significantly, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

"We used to see hundreds of thousands of hectares burned in bushfires, but now we are seeing millions on fire," Pep Canadell, the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, told The Herald.

The following three graphics reveal the unimaginable scale of the Australia fires.

Australia's bushfire crisis has burned far more acreage than other recent fires and even the US's worst blaze ever.
Shayanne Gal/Insider

Last year was a year of fire. Blazes cut through 6.4 million acres of the Siberian tundra over the summer, while 2.5 million acres of Alaskan wilderness went up in smoke. More than 100,000 fires started during just 10 August days in the Amazon rainforest.

But Australia's bushfires dwarf all of those events. In fact, this season obliterates the country's record for worst wildfire season; that was in 2009, when the Black Saturday bushfires razed 1.1 million acres.

Added up, the burned land in Australia as of Tuesday was about the size of the US state of Virginia.
Shayanne Gal/Insider

The area of the resulting smoke — 1.3 billion acres — is equal to the areas of Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming, and Michigan combined.

Nearly 70% of Australia is covered by a haze of smoke.
Shayanne Gal/Insider

If that smoke cloud were to hang over Europe, it would engulf half of the continent.

SEE ALSO: Australia's fires have burned more than twice as much land as the summer's Amazon blazes. They're part of an ominous carbon-dioxide feedback loop.


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Backstory: Inside Hong Kong’s protests as a campus became a ‘battleground’
By Jessie PANG, Reuters•January 8, 2020



Hong Kong's 2020 begins with violent protests

Hong Kong's News Years Day saw a peaceful protest in the tens of thousands later spiral into chaos. Protest organizers say over one million people marched on Wednesday (January 1). Police put the figure at 60,000. The march gave way to violence on Hong Kong island. Hundreds of protesters formed road blocks, set fires and threw petrol bombs. Police say they arrested nearly 400 people. (SOUNDBITE) (English) HONG KONG SENIOR POLICE SUPERINTENDENT, NG LOK CHUN, SAYING: "But some of the rioters, they refused to leave and continue to throw hard objects at our officers. At this juncture, some of my officers gave warnings to these rioters not to throw hard objects, including bricks, including paint bombs and also water bottles." Protesters are pushing authorities for more concessions. That includes an independent inquiry into the police and amnesty for those arrested over months of protests. (SOUNDBITE) (English) HONG KONG PROTESTER, 32-YEAR-OLD ELOPETH CHAN, SAYING: "We are still here today because the government is not responding to our five demands, and most importantly I think most of the people are very fed up with the violence of the police, so the five demands is driving us to be here today". Wednesday also saw global bank HSBC targetted by protesters' rage. In the Wanchai and Central districts-some sprayed an HSBC branch with graffiti, its cash machines were smashed and burned. HSBC is the latest brand targeted by the protesters. Last month, police froze millions of dollars of a fund raised to support the protesters. Protesters say there's a link between HSBC, the frozen accounts, and the recent arrests of four people tied to a fundraising group. The bank denies any connection. Demonstrations have increased in violence in recent months. Protesters promise they won't slow down in 2020.


By Jessie PANG

HONG KONG (Reuters) - When protesters took over the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University in November, many felt compelled to make a statement. Sometimes it was personal. I felt it, too.

As I sat on a bridge overlooking campus, I sent a WhatsApp message to my closest friend. I had already told her I was on the campus reporting. This time I typed out another message, saying that as a Hong Konger born and raised, I felt reporting was the only thing I could do for my city.

The campus was encircled by thousands of police, blocking off escape routes. Inside, hundreds of protesters were preparing to fight with improvised weapons, including arrows and petrol bombs.

I stayed put. A police crackdown seemed imminent.

I followed a group of protesters as they attempted to block one of the back routes to the campus to prevent police from storming in. As I ran after the black-clad protesters carrying metal pipes and umbrellas, I passed a library with black graffiti sprayed across its bulletin board.

“Why have universities become battlegrounds?” it read.

I had aspirations of becoming a war correspondent one day, but I never imagined that my hometown would become a conflict zone.

I had already spent almost half a year covering near daily protests and sometimes violent clashes between police and pro-democracy demonstrators for Reuters. I had seen and felt the anger, desperation and fear of the protesters of my generation, people in college, people graduating to an uncertain future.

Not knowing how long the siege would last, Reuters reporters and others converted an empty classroom into a makeshift newsroom. We projected live feeds on a whiteboard to monitor attempts by protesters outside to rescue the students and the encroaching police circling the campus.

As it became clear they were trapped and police would wait them out, protesters tried different ways to flee. Everyone understood they could face prosecution and prison if arrested.

Some abseiled down a bridge, jumping down to getaway motorcycles on the highway. The police began firing tear gas toward the bridge and arrested some escapees.

THROUGH THE SEWERS

There was Ethan, who, like many others, asked to be only identified by his first name. Ethan studied blueprints of the Hong Kong sewer system he found online to engineer an escape for his friends trapped inside campus. He went down the sewers from outside, and waded through raw sludge for half an hour to lead his friends back out the way he had come.

There was Bowie, who had tried to escape on her own through the sewers, crawling for an hour in the dark labyrinth under campus, cutting and bruising herself. She finally found an exit, only to realize that she was still trapped inside. She was carried away in an ambulance.

As the protesters argued about whether they should leave, a teenage protester walked up to me and asked me for a pen and paper.

“I want to write down that I don’t have any severe injuries before leaving the campus,” he said, voicing a fear common among protesters that they could be injured during arrest and detention.

I gave him my pen. I apologized I had no paper with me.

On the morning of Nov 19, after two days inside the campus, I was taking a walk when I came across a rainbow formed when the morning light hit water dripping from a hydrant opened by protesters. It was a rare moment of grace, near the bridge where protesters had earlier fled by night.

Soon, the campus began to feel deserted. The stench of rotting food was everywhere. Conversations became terse and infrequent. Fears of undercover cops spread. Some protesters isolated themselves.

After five days and four nights, I left, swapping out places through the police lines with another Reuters reporter. The siege continued for another week.

Afterwards, the police said they had arrested 1,377 people, 318 of them under 18.

Police fired 1,458 tear gas rounds, 1,391 rubber bullets, 325 bean bag rounds and 265 sponge rounds.

Nearly 4,000 petrol bombs, 1,338 explosives, 601 corrosive liquids and 573 weapons were seized.

The campus will resume classes on January 13, officials said.

(Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Hong Kong politician vows to return to the streets after being pepper-sprayed in the eyes

Nicola Smith,
The Telegraph•January 8, 2020
Anti-government protesters are arrested on New Year's Day - REX

A Hong Kong legislator who was temporarily blinded after a riot officer lifted his protective goggles to fire pepper spray directly into his eyes on New Year’s Day has vowed to return to the frontlines of the months-long pro-democracy movement to record allegations of police brutality.

“It was very painful and I lost my sight for half an hour. Not totally – it was like I can’t open my eyes, I can’t cry. I didn’t lose my sight completely as I could see blurred images, but it was horrible to have someone guide me,” Ted Hui said of the moment he was pepper-sprayed in a downtown shopping district.

Mr Hui, a Democratic Party politician, is one of several members of the city’s parliament, the Legislative Council, who have risked injury and arrest while trying to deescalate conflict between the riot police and anti-government demonstrators who have rallied in the streets since June.

He said it saw it as his duty as a “public officer” to hold the police accountable during the protests, which began in opposition to a controversial extradition bill, and to get firsthand information to follow up on mounting accusations of the excessive use of force by officers.

now : Riot police just attacked Legislative Councillor Ted Hui Chi-fung and then pepper spraying citizens and journalists pic.twitter.com/rGtn2xU5xH

— Studio Incendo (@studioincendo) January 1, 2020

“I want the public to feel that members of parliament are with them. I don’t want them to feel isolated,” he said in an interview.

The altercation began during a police clearance operation after the authorities abruptly cancelled a mass rally of an estimated one million people calling for more democratic rights, ordering them to disperse in under an hour.

According to Mr Hui, he was challenging the police to allow reporters to witness the arrest of a young man they had surrounded and pinned down after riot officers charged through Causeway Bay, a crowded shopping area. Hundreds were detained that night in one of the largest mass arrests since the protests began.

“I told them that if you are not abusing your power then you should allow the world to watch your actions. Of course, they ignored me and started warning me, pointing pepper spray at me,” he said.
Riot police fire tear gas in central Hong Kong on New Year's Day Credit: Kyle Lam/Bloomberg

But he was “astonished” when an officer snapped off his protective plastic glasses to spray his eyes twice with a stinging peppery substance, pushing him and causing him to stagger backwards from the pavement to the road.

The incident, during which spray was also fired into the crowd, was witnessed by multiple media outlets, including the Telegraph, and recorded in videos which have since gone viral.

The police have frequently denied using more force than is permissible during protest operations.

Kong Wing-cheung, a senior superintendent, claimed in a press conference that Mr Hui had refused to leave and refused to go back to the pavement, reported the Hong Kong Free Press.

“He displayed passive resistance and kept on arguing. Our colleague warned him that pepper spray would be used to disperse him,” Mr Kong said.
An estimated one million people marched on New Year's Day Credit: Kyle Lam/Bloomberg

“He was wearing a pair of goggles – we don’t know if that was the reason he wasn’t afraid of our pepper spray. That’s why our colleague pulled off his goggles and used pepper spray to make the dispersal operation more effective,” he added.

For Mr Hui, the pain lasted through the night, causing him to seek hospital treatment. “It’s not only the eyes, but also the hair and the hands because I was trying to cover my face. My hands were sprayed very seriously. It burns the worst in the hands,” he said.

“I felt that the aim was to hurt my eyes, not to disperse people. It was out of hatred, out of anger, totally unprofessional,” he alleged.

Acknowledging that the police were also “overloaded”, he said he would continue to attend the protests undeterred.

“It’s also a gesture that I want the police or the government to know that no matter how you hurt me you can never defeat us, there are still many of us and that we are brave enough, we are not backing down, just like the young ones in the streets,” he said.

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The Other Attack on Americans That Has U.S. Forces Unnerved: Kenya

Margot Kiser, The Daily Beast•January 7, 2020


LAMU, Kenya—One U.S. serviceman and two American private contractors were killed by the Somali militant group al-Shabab in a raid before dawn Sunday here on the coast near the Somali border, according to a statement issued by U.S. Africa Command. In the attack, launched at an airstrip used jointly by U.S. and Kenyan forces, two other American contractors were wounded. The serviceman was 23-year-old Specialist Henry Mayfield, from Chicago.

At a moment of fast-rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran, arguably the world’s most sophisticated state sponsor of terrorism, even if there was no link to the American assassination days earlier of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, the Kenya attack was a grim reminder of the many far-flung locales around the world where American soldiers can be targeted, and the ruthlessness of the forces that have them in their crosshairs.

There was another casualty of Sunday’s attack as well: a civilian. Witnesses near the Lamu County town of Hindi report that at around 3 a.m. Sunday some 20-30 men on foot were ghosting their way through farms and woods, heading east—in the direction of Manda Bay military base. Mwalimu Chengo Ponda, a resident in his mid-thirties, stepped outside to investigate the commotion to find a small group close to his home. The marauders grabbed him and whisked him away. Some hours later, neighbors found Mwalimu’s body lying in the bush, shot in the head.

From the vicinity of Hindi, al-Shabab militants advanced to the Manda Bay naval base and airfield. Even while the attack was underway, the group released a communiqué claiming that its elite “Martyrdom Brigade” had
“successfully stormed the heavily fortified military base” and taken control of one area, where it had inflicted severe casualties on both Kenyan and American personnel. The attack, the statement read, was part of al-Shabab’s “Al-Quds [Jerusalem] Will Never Be Judaized” military campaign.
(Soleimani, one might note, was the head of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, but the quest to put Quds/Jerusalem is as old as Islam, and an especially common reference point for those who claim to wage jihad.)
At 5:30 a.m. that day, the Kenya Defense Forces issued a statement saying that a “security breach” had taken place at “Manda Airstrip,” but that the breach had been successfully repulsed. The statement went on to say four “terrorist” bodies had been recovered.
Witnesses in the area reported loud booms at intervals and plumes of smoke Sunday continuing at 6 a.m.
Because Lamu County’s civil-aviation airport, used by tourists, is also referred to as Manda Airstrip, confusion ensued immediately. Tour operators went into action, frantically trying to organize transport out of the Lamu Archipelago for guests. The commercial airport, much smaller and located on Manda Island, about six miles from the naval base, was not attacked.
There’s been ample speculation as to whether the Manda Bay attack had anything to do with the operation President Donald Trump ordered that killed Soleimani. Analysts say no. It would have been impossible, they note, to stage the coordinated Manda attack just two days after the U.S. drones did their work in Baghdad. The attack on the Kenyan base was, no doubt, long in the works. 
It might also be pointed out that Somalia’s Muslims are Sunni rather than Shia, and al-Shabab is affiliated with al Qaeda, which also follows a Sunni current of Islam.
But in the murky world of terrorism and Iran’s covert operations, the Sunni-Shia divide is not always well defined. Soleimani’s Quds Force minions have worked with the radical Sunni Taliban, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and even al Qaeda when it suited them. Since Soleimani’s assassination, American politicians have emphasized that fact. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence claimed specifically that Soleimani was responsible for “terror attacks” in 2011 and a bomb plot in 2012 in Kenya. Alleged Iranians or Iranian agents have been in and out jail on various charges relating to plans to bomb the Israeli embassy in Nairobi. Vice President Pence tweeted, “Directed IRGC QF (Quds Force) terrorist plots to bomb innocent civilians in Turkey and Kenya in 2011.”
Al-Shabab’s focus on Manda Bay likely was a response to the U.S. use of drones flying out of there, attempting to show that these death-dealing robots in the sky do not guarantee impunity for those controlling them on the ground. 
Drone strikes worldwide have increased under Donald Trump. Last year the U.S. carried a record 63 drone strikes in Somalia—and al-Shabab is striking back.
The Manda Bay attack is the first al-Shabab has carried out on a U.S. military installation inside Kenya. It is also the first attack by Islamic militants made against a U.S. installation in Kenya since al Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 people.
The Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has carried out airstrikes in Somalia for a decade, and has been carrying out clandestine operations against al Qaeda in East Africa, as well as its local ally al-Shabab, at least since the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Al-Shabab attacked a U.S. special forces base in Somalia on Sept. 30 after four of its militants were killed in three airstrikes in Somalia the previous day, according to U.S. Africa Command.
Among the aircraft destroyed at the Manda Bay base were manned surveillance planes that collect data across the border in Somalia, as well as over Kenya’s dense Boni forest, about 10 miles north of the Manda Bay base, where al-Shabab is thought to be hiding.
The intelligence, including the locations of villages, Shabab leaders and members, is then fed to armed unmanned Reaper drones. In the view of recent U.S. operations, it is no surprise that the group specifically targeted surveillance aircraft on the Manda airstrip. 
Also reportedly destroyed were aircraft operated by U.S. Special Operations Command and modified Havilland Canada Dash-8 spy aircraft, which carries the U.S. civil registration code N8200L.
Northeast Kenya is no stranger to al-Shabab attacks, having suffered massacres of civilians at Mpekatoni and Garissa, as well as numerous bus attacks. Al-Shabab’s operations in the region have been directed at both military and civilian targets, including many innocent bystanders like Mwalimu. Sunday’s attack marked a rare event, however: a successful incursion into a military base, and—rarer yet—a U.S. installation. (The only other such attack came in 2016, when al-Shabab penetrated an African Union base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.) 
For all its lack of high-tech apparatus, al-Shabab remains resilient. Analysts attribute the group’s success to its intelligence gathering on the ground, so very unlike the U.S. drones.
Stig Jarle Hansen, analyst and author of Horn, Sahel and Rift: Fault-lines of the African Jihad, puts it like this: “The attack shows that Shabab is still able to hit Kenya inside its borders, and proves they can strike at U.S. personnel. But perhaps the attack mainly illustrates that Shabab can put a dent in the U.S. drone campaign in Somalia.”
That’s a point worth remembering as we gird, it seems, for a new chapter in the war with terrorists. 

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