Dissident Iranian writer Baktash Abtin dies in detention after contracting Covid-19

Dissident Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, who was serving a jail sentence in Tehran on security charges, has died after falling ill with Covid-19, rights groups said Saturday.

© Reporters Without Borders/Twitter

"Baktash Abtin has died," the Iranian Writers Association said in a statement on its Telegram channel after the author was put into an induced coma earlier in the week.

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders confirmed the 48-year-old writer's death in a statement on Twitter, saying it blamed Iranian authorities for failing to save his life.

A respected poet and author of several books, Abtin was sentenced to five years in prison on May 15, 2019 on charges of “illegal assembly and collusion against national security” and one year for “spreading propaganda against the state”, in relation to his joint authorship of a book on the history of the Iranian Writers' Association, which has been critical of successive Iranian governments, according to the Dublin-based NGO, Front Line Defenders.

Unsafe prisons, writers muzzled

Along with fellow writers, Keyvan Bajan and Reza Khandan Mahabadi, Abtin had in September 2021 been given the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award by writers' rights group PEN America.

On Friday, PEN America published an open letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei to demand "the best possible medical care" for Abatin as he battled for his life. "In addition, we urge that: he and all those unjustly detained for their writing or expression be immediately and unconditionally released; that authorities refrain from summoning political prisoners to serve their sentences while the conditions inside Evin and other Iranian prisons remain unsafe," said the letter.

There has been growing concern in recent months among activists over deaths of prisoners in detention in Iran, especially in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic which campaigners fear is raging in Iranian prisons.

Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), called for accountability over Abtin's death. "Baktash Abtin is dead because Iran's government wanted to muzzle him in jail," he said."This is a preventable tragedy. Iran's judiciary chief (Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie) must be held accountable," he added.

Amnesty International in September published a study accusing Iran of failing to provide accountability for at least 72 deaths in custody since January 2010, "despite credible reports that they resulted from torture or other ill-treatment".

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Iran says only 12 Asiatic cheetahs left in the country

Issued on: 09/01/2022 


In this file photo taken on October 10, 2017, an Asiatic cheetah walks in an enclosure at the Pardisan Park in Tehran 

ATTA KENARE AFP/File

Tehran (AFP) – Iran is now home to only a dozen Asiatic cheetahs, the deputy environment minister said Sunday, describing the situation for the endangered species as "extremely critical".

"The measures we have taken to increase protection, reproduction, and the installation of road signs have not been enough to save this species," Hassan Akbari told Tasnim the news agency.

"There are currently only nine males and three females against 100 in 2010 and their situation is extremely critical," he added.

He said the animals had been victims of drought, hunters and car accidents, especially in the country's central desert where the last of them live.

The world's fastest land animal, capable of reaching speeds of 120 kilometres (74 miles) per hour, cheetahs once stalked habitats from the eastern reaches of India to the Atlantic coast of Senegal and beyond.

They are still found in parts of southern Africa, but have practically disappeared from North Africa and Asia.

The subspecies "Acinonyx jubatus venaticus", commonly known as the Asiatic cheetah, is critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Iran, one of the last countries in the world where the animals live in the wild, began a United Nations-supported protection program in 2001.

In 2014, the national football team emblazoned an image of the cheetah on its jerseys for the World Cup tournament.

© 2022 AFP

ATP Cup 2022: Canada stun defending champions Russia to make final

Russia face Spain on Sunday with a big task ahead against the unflappable Roberto Bautista Agut and his teammate Pablo Carreno Busta.

Agence France-PresseJanuary 08, 2022 

Felix Auger-Aliassime (R) and Denis Shapovalov (L) clinched the 

deciding doubles to beat Russia  in the ATP Cup semi-finals. AP

Sydney: Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov stunned defending champions Russia Saturday in a decisive doubles rubber to send Canada storming into an ATP Cup final against Spain.

Their Sydney showdown went to the wire after Shapovalov neutralised Roman Safiullin 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 in the opening singles match.

But world number two Daniil Medvedev then thrashed 11th-ranked Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 6-0 to level it up with a flawless performance in an ominous warning ahead of the Australian Open later this month.

It forced the match into a doubles shootout which looked to be going Russia's way only for Canada to find an extra gear and grind out a 4-6, 7-5, 10-7 win to make their first final in the team event.

They face Spain on Sunday with a big task ahead against the unflappable Roberto Bautista Agut and his teammate Pablo Carreno Busta.

They are both in hot form, each winning all four of their singles encounters so far.

Mother Teresa Charity In India Gets Back Access To Foreign Funds

By AFP News
01/08/22 

The Indian government renewed permission for late Catholic nun Mother Teresa's charity to receive foreign funds, weeks after rejecting it, the organisation said Saturday.

On Christmas Day the Narendra Modi government moved to cut off foreign funding to the Missionaries of Charity and refused to renew its licence under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).

Charities and non-profit firms need to register under FCRA to receive money from abroad.

"The FCRA application has now been renewed," Sunita Kumar, a close aide to Mother Teresa, told AFP.

The Missionaries of Charity, which runs shelter homes across India, was founded in 1950 by the late Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who devoted most of her life to helping the poor in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize and was later declared a saint 

Photo: AFP / Dibyangshu SARKAR

She won the Nobel Peace Prize and was later declared a saint.

India's home ministry issued a statement in December saying it was rejecting the renewal application because the charity did not meet "eligibility conditions" and that "adverse inputs were noticed".

Last week, Oxfam India said the Indian government had blocked its access to international funds, a move which it said would have severe consequences for its humanitarian work.

The Modi government has been accused of cutting off access to funding of charities and rights groups in the country.

Amnesty International announced in 2020 that it was halting operations in India after the government froze its bank accounts.

DR Congo park fetes birth of endangered gorilla species

AFP - 

© DOUGLAS MAGNO


A lowland gorilla, a critically endangered species, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo's famed Virunga National Park, authorities said.

Conservationists have long sought to protect the world heritage site's gorilla population even as violence and instability has plagued the DRC's eastern provinces over 25 years.

"We're excited to announce the first lowland gorilla birth of the year! Rangers discovered the newborn during a patrol in the Tshiaberimu area yesterday," park authorities tweeted late Friday.

"Rangers are working hard to safeguard this vulnerable population which now stands at seven individuals," it added.

The global population of lowland gorillas has plunged from around 17,000 to fewer than 6,000 today and they continue to experience a rate of decline of 5 percent per year, according to the park.

They are often illegally hunted for bushmeat.

Seventeen mountain gorillas -- a close cousin of the lowland gorilla -- were born in the park last year.

Situated on Democratic Republic of Congo's borders with Rwanda and Uganda, Virunga covers around 7,800 square kilometres (3,000 square miles) of the North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital.

Inaugurated in 1925, it is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and a sanctuary for the rare mountain gorillas, which are also present in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.

Virunga has also become a hideout for local and foreign armed groups that have operated in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for around 25 years.

gm-at/ach/ah

Jailed Palestinian activist lands in France after Egypt release

Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath arrived in France Saturday after almost two-and-a-half years in detention in Egypt, after his family said he had to renounce his Egyptian nationality.

The 48-year-old was a figure of the 2011 uprising in Egypt and the coordinator of the Egyptian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

An AFP correspondent saw the activist walk out of Charles De Gaulle Airport outside Paris with his French wife, Celine Lebrun.

Shaath said finally being free was "a bit overwhelming".

"I spent the last two-and-a-half years in between a few prisons, a few forced disappearance spots, some of them underground, some of them solely, some of them with huge numbers of people in a very inhumane way of treatment," he said.


© JULIEN DE ROS

AShaath's wife, French national Lebrun, was deported from Egypt shortly after her husband's arrest in July 2019 on charges of aiding a terrorist organisation

His family said earlier that the son of veteran Palestinian politician Nabil Shaath was on his way to Paris, adding that they were "relieved and overjoyed" at his release after 900 days of "arbitrary detention" by the Egyptians.

But "we regret that they forced Ramy to renounce his Egyptian citizenship as a precondition for his release that should have been unconditional after two and a half years of unjust detention under inhumane conditions," the family said in a statement.

"No one should have to choose between their freedom and their citizenship," they said.

Shaath was released on Thursday evening.

The Egyptian authorities later handed him over to a representative of the Palestinian Authority at Cairo airport, where he took a flight to Amman, the Jordanian capital, before heading onward to Paris, his family said.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter saluted the Egyptian decision to free Shaath.

"I share the relief of his wife," he wrote.

"Thank you to everyone who has played a positive role in this happy outcome."

Shaath's wife was deported from Egypt shortly after her husband's arrest in July 2019 on charges of aiding a "terrorist organisation".

In April 2020, Egypt placed him on a terror list alongside 12 other people.

"They charged me with many things," said the freed activist.

"They told me one day, 'You are accused of being part of a terrorist organisation.' And I asked the guy: 'What was the terrorist organization?' He said: 'Well, we are not going to tell you.'"

In December, five human rights groups had called on Macron to pressure Egypt to release Shaath.

Macron had previously addressed his detention in a news conference in Paris with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in December 2020.

Egypt's space for dissent has been severely restricted since Sisi took office in 2014.

Rights groups say Egypt is holding some 60,000 political prisoners, many facing brutal conditions and overcrowded cells.

Egypt ranks in the lowest group on the Global Public Policy Institute's Academic Freedom Index.

jf/ah/

AFP

How Israel is burying the last prospects for a Palestinian state

Analysis: With house demolitions reaching record highs, the Bennett government has also advanced settlement plans which would be a death blow to the already slim prospects for a two-state solution.

Analysis
Ali Adam
06 January, 2022

For decades, successive Israeli governments have cumulatively worked to expand and deepen control over the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

However, the current government, led by far-right Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, seems to have taken it upon itself to end any remaining prospects for Palestinian self-determination once and for all.

“Since the theoretical ‘government of change’ came to power half a year ago, it has successfully undertaken systematic measures to sabotage any remaining viability of a negotiated political solution and severely undermine Palestinian human rights,” Ir Amim, an Israeli anti-occupation advocacy group, said in December.

"Since Bennett assumed office, there's been an unprecedented escalation by the Israeli government in terms of advancing settlement expansion in the most sensitive areas that impacts the viability of the two-state solution"

Over the past few months, the Bennett government has been advancing settlement construction in locations that would entail a death blow to any future efforts for the establishment of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

According to a recent report published by Haaretz, the Israeli government is currently promoting a new widespread settlement project across East Jerusalem – a move that would result in the eviction of Palestinian residents from their homes.

The six planned settler neighbourhoods would be located in Sheikh Jarrah, Beit Safafa, Sur Baher, Beit Hanina, and near the Old City’s Damascus Gate.

These planned settlements also come on the heels of highly controversial and politically consequential settlement plans which the Israeli government has advanced in recent months.

Israel's home demolition policy: A form of ethnic cleansing
Analysis Emad Moussa

In mid-October, Israel approved the expropriation of land for the Givat Hamatos settlement in southern Jerusalem. Infrastructure work has already begun, with the government planning to construct 1,257 new housing units despite international outcry.

In the same month, the Israeli government also advanced the construction of 3,400 housing units in the E1 area to expand the Maale Adumim settlement.

Any further construction in these two controversial areas has long been considered a red line by the international community as it means effectively dissecting the West Bank in two, rendering a two-state solution impossible.

Construction in Givat Hamatos would surround East Jerusalem and cut it off from the southern West Bank, while settlement expansion in the E1 area would bisect the West Bank and torpedo any prospects of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

“Since Bennett assumed office, there’s been an unprecedented escalation by the Israeli government in terms of advancing settlement expansion in the most sensitive areas that impacts the viability of the two-state solution,” Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada told The New Arab.

“Almost all of the settlement projects that had been shelved by Israel since 2012 due to international pressure, are now being unabashedly advanced by Bennett’s government,” he said.

Israel is advancing settlement construction in locations that would be a death blow to a viable and contiguous Palestinian state, such as the E1 area. [Getty]

“If completed, these settlement projects will terminate any remaining possibilities for Palestinian statehood, and will cantonize the Palestinian territories into isolated enclaves,” Shehada added.

“These settlements projects surrounding Jerusalem, in particular, will isolate the city from the rest of the Palestinian territories, and radically alter its demographic reality”.

Despite decades of impunity for settlement construction, Israel has in the past refrained from building in these sensitive areas for fear of an international response.

But with Bennett, a former head of the settler Yesha council, as prime minister, and a US administration largely indifferent to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that seems to have changed.

Shehada believes the lack of international accountability that Israel has been afforded over the decades is certainly part of its decision to advance these new settlement plans.

"The Bennet government took advantage of international silence and the complicity of certain Arab countries that normalised ties with Israel, to intensify these settlements projects, especially surrounding the city of Jerusalem"

“What has encouraged Israel to advance these sensitive settlements projects is the failure of the international community to translate international resolutions against Israeli settlements into practical steps on the ground, and its failure to impose consequences on Israel,” Shehada said.

“The Bennet government took advantage of international silence and the complicity of certain Arab countries that normalised ties with Israel, to intensify these settlements projects especially surrounding the city of Jerusalem,” he added.

Since assuming office, the Biden administration has been reluctant to engage with Israel-Palestine beyond reinforcing the status quo.

This has included bolstering the Palestinian Authority while refusing to exert any real pressure on Israel at all, whether concerning house demolitions, the Gaza war, or new settlement plans.

As such, even the routine condemnation of settlement plans has been interpreted as diplomatic lip service rather than opposition.

2021 saw a five-year high in Palestinian home demolitions, according to rights groups. [Getty]

At the end of October, a source close to Bennett told Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s sister site, that Israel believed the Biden administration was indifferent to the new settlement plans.

“Contrary to the impression they’re trying to make, the Americans don’t care that much about the Ministry of Construction and Housing’s decision, and they have no problem tolerating it,” the source said

“This construction is not part of the conversation we are having with the Americans. We noticed that,” the source added.

The extent of the impunity Israel feels was reflected by the decision to announce the expropriation of public land for the Givat Hamatos settlement while Israeli FM Yair Lapid was visiting Washington in October.

Indeed, this preferential US treatment of Israel is unlikely to change, despite military aid that could be used as leverage to extract minimal concessions, such as a settlement freeze, from Tel Aviv.

Additionally, the Biden administration is seriously considering adding Israel to the US waiver programme, a benefit being considered without reciprocal concessions.

The lack of US interest in the conflict has tangible repercussions on the ground. In addition to settlement building, recent months have also seen a sharp increase in settler violence against Palestinians, and, notably, the designation of Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organisations.

House demolitions have also escalated, a policy that often works hand in hand with settlement expansion.

Since the Bennett government assumed office in June 2021, 472 structures have been destroyed, including 90 donor-funded structures, affecting 10,273 Palestinians.

Protecting Palestine's olive harvest from settler violence

In-depth Sally Ibrahim

This represents an astounding 143% increase in Palestinians affected by demolitions under the Bennett government compared to a similar period in 2020, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

The total number of house demolitions in 2021 marked a five-year high, according to B’Tselem, while the destruction of non-residential structures, including agricultural, business, or public structures, reached the highest number since 2012.

“Expanding these particularly dangerous settlement projects makes clear that the Israeli government’s ‘shrinking the conflict’ mantra has only ever been about optics, PR, and lip service,” Shehada said.

“What’s more problematic is that the Biden administration is playing along; applauding whenever Israel throws some occasional crumbs of mercy on the occupied Palestinian population, and looking the other way when Israel bulldozes the two-state solution,” he added.

Ali Adam is a journalist and researcher whose work focuses on issues linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Republican Party's Islamophobia shows no signs of abating

Brooke Anderson
Washington, D.C.
06 January, 2022

In-depth: The blatant Islamophobia targeted against Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar shows no sign of stopping as anti-Muslim speech becomes increasingly normalised within the Republican Party.

When Representative Lauren Boebert suggested at a town hall event in October that Ilhan Omar was a suicide bomber, and then promptly apologised for what seemed to be passing off the comment as a misguided attempt at humour, the issue surprisingly seemed to be put to rest. But it was only the beginning.

Days later, following a phone call ostensibly meant to mend fences, Omar hung up after Boebert reportedly asked her to apologise for her own past controversial statements (for which she had already apologised). She then followed up with more Islamophobic comments.

It’s unclear why Boebert had a change of heart, or if she had from the start meant for the call to not go well as a publicity stunt. What is clear is that her Islamophobic attacks on Omar were followed by death threats to Omar and a fundraising boon for Boebert.

“In any normal workplace, engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry against your co-worker would be a dangerous offense,” Edward Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, tells The New Arab. “Islamophobia is one of the last acceptable forms of bigotry in the US.”


"Unfortunately, it's not new to American Muslims to see Islamophobic statements. What's new is the escalation of anti-Muslim attacks that have been coming from influential people in society, such as sitting members of congress"

These ongoing public provocations from Boebert show no sign of stopping anytime soon. Indeed, others have joined the attacks on Omar with similar rhetoric. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has recently used the term “jihad squad” to refer to the group of progressive lawmakers, repeating what Boebert had said back in October.

More recently, in late December, following Omar's criticism of Senator Joe Manchin’s absence of support for the Build Back Better Bill, conservative radio host Ben Shapiro repeatedly stated sarcastically that Omar was “wildly popular” in West Virginia, what appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to her background compared with residents of the majority-white rural state.

GOP's Islamophobic elephant in the room

Voices  Mobashra Tazamal

Why have some of the Republican party’s most extreme – though increasingly mainstream – members chosen Omar as a target?

She is not the first Muslim member, with Keith Ellison (also from Minnesota) predating her by a decade, nor is she the first woman. But she is the first African refugee to be part of the US Congress, and as an outspoken member of the squad (of progressive congress members who began entering office in 2018) whose multiple identities have sparked the disdain of high-profile bigots, she has consistently been a target of hateful rhetoric.

Omar plays a voicemail death threat she received after Boebert's Islamophobic comments during a news conference about Islamophobia on Capitol Hill on November 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. [Getty]

“Unfortunately, it’s not new to American Muslims to see Islamophobic statements. What’s new is the escalation of anti-Muslim attacks that have been coming from influential people in society, such as sitting members of congress. These are supposed to be role models in society. They’ve been trafficking in anti-Muslim hate,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the CAIR, tells The New Arab.

“The new thing is that Islamophobia is being normalised and weaponised and now it’s really inciting hate and violence against member of our community,” said Awad, noting a nationwide spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes, which he sees as inextricably linked to public statements of hate.

In a December opinion piece for The Hill, Fox News political analyst Juan Williams remarked that “Somewhere, former Congressman Steve King must be saying: ‘If only I had waited two years to air my views on white supremacy...’”

The analyst was referring to the former Iowa congressman’s bigoted remarks, which included Islamophobic references to Omar. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy condemned King’s openly racist remarks as “beneath the dignity of the party of Lincoln and the United States of America." McCarthy stripped King of his House committee assignments in January 2019.

For US progressives, the fight has only just begun

Analysis Brooke Anderson

Around the same time, in an incident specifically targeting Omar, a poster for a Republican event at the state capitol in West Virginia showed her face in front of an image of the burning twin towers in New York during the 9/11 attacks. The state party immediately condemned and removed the poster, saying they did not endorse hate speech or hateful views.

These days, it appears that not only are the Islamophobic attacks getting more frequent, but they are also largely going unchecked by the Republican Party leadership.

Indeed, some of the very politicians who have accused Omar of anti-Semitism (comments for which she apologised at the time), have their own habits of anti-Semitic remarks, which include regular references to billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Jewish space lasers (which Greene blamed for the California wildfires), and repeated comments by former president Donald Trump of Jews controlling US politics.

To the extent that there is a modicum of pushback on the right to this ongoing trend of bigoted rhetoric, the few politicians who do speak up are already seeing threats to their own political positions.

Nancy Mace, a representative from South Carolina, considered a moderate Republican and one of the few who has been publicly denouncing the Islamophobic comments against Omar, found herself a target of Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter, accusing her of not being a real conservative. Mace called her a “religious bigot.”

"These days, it appears that not only are the Islamophobic attacks getting more frequent, but they are also largely going unchecked by the Republican Party leadership"

Possibly more telling of the GOP’s dedication to its most extreme base is its plans to run more conservative candidates against Mace in her next primary election, despite her location in a swing district.

In mid-December, the House passed legislation to combat Islamophobia, pledging a special envoy. This followed a resolution by progressive members of Congress to strip Boebert of her committee assignments following her Islamophobic remarks.

But without Republican support against this growing trend of Islamophobic rhetoric, some worry the trend will likely continue.

“I expect this to continue,” Najee Ali, president of the Democratic Club of Southern California, tells TNA.

“It sends a horrible message for those watching what’s going on. They’ll be emboldened, and it will become cancerous. The only way to stop these disparaging comments is to bring everyone together and set the rules of engagement. No one has to agree politically, but they have to respect their fellow colleagues.”

Brooke Anderson is The New Arab's correspondent in Washington DC, covering US and international politics, business, and culture.

Intel reports repeatedly failed to forecast Capitol riot

By ERIC TUCKER and MICHAEL BALSAMO

With the Washington Monument in the background, people attend a rally in support of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Intelligence reports compiled by the U.S. Capitol Police in the days before last year's insurrection envisioned only an improbable or remote risk of violence, even as other assessments warned that crowds of potentially tens of thousands of pro-Trump demonstrators could converge in Washington to create a dangerous situation. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Intelligence reports compiled by the U.S. Capitol Police in the days before last year’s insurrection envisioned only an improbable or remote risk of violence, even as other assessments warned that crowds of potentially thousands of pro-Trump demonstrators could converge in Washington and create a dangerous situation.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, underscore the uneven and muddled intelligence that circulated to Capitol Police officers ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, when thousands of Donald Trump loyalists swarmed the Capitol complex and clashed violently with law enforcement officers in their effort to disrupt the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election. The intelligence reports in particular show how the police agency, up to the day of the riot itself, grievously underestimated the prospect of chaotic violence and disruptions.

The contradictory intelligence produced by law enforcement leading up to the riot has been at the forefront of congressional scrutiny about the Jan. 6 preparations and response, with officials struggling to explain how they failed to anticipate and plan for the deadly riot at the Capitol that day. The shortcomings led to upheaval at the top ranks of the department, including the ouster of the chief, though the assistant chief in charge of protective and intelligence operations at the time remains in her position.

There was, according to a harshly critical Senate report issued in June, “a lack of consensus about the gravity of the threat posed on January 6, 2021.”

“Months following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, there is still no consensus among USCP officials about the intelligence reports’ threat analysis ahead of January 6, 2021,” the report stated.

The documents, known as a “daily intelligence report” and marked “For Official Use Only,” have been described over the last year in congressional testimony and in the Senate report. The AP on Friday evening obtained full versions of the documents for Jan. 4, 5 and 6 of last year. The New York Times highlighted the Jan. 4 report in a story last year on intelligence shortcomings.

On each of the three days, the documents showed, the Capitol Police ranked as “highly improbable” the probability of acts of civil disobedience and arrests arising from the “Stop the Steal” protest planned for the Capitol. The documents ranked that event and gatherings planned for Jan 6. by about 20 other organizers on a scale of “remote” to “nearly certain” in terms of the likelihood of major disruptions. All were rated as either “remote,” “highly improbable” or “improbable,” the documents show.

“No further information has been found to the exact actions planned by this group,” the Jan. 6 report says about about the “Stop the Steal” rally.

The Million MAGA March planned by Trump supporters is rated in the document as “improbable,” with officials saying it was “possible” that organizers could demonstrate at the Capitol complex, and that though there had been talk of counter-demonstrators, there are “no clear plans by those groups at this time.”

Another event by a group known as Prime Time Patriots was similarly described as having a “highly improbable” chance for disruption, with the report again stating that “no further information has been found to the exact actions planned by this group.”

Those optimistic forecasts are tough to square with separate intelligence assessments compiled by the Capitol Police in late December and early January. Those documents, also obtained by AP, warned that crowds could number in the thousands and include members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys.

A Jan. 3, 2021, memo, for instance, warned of a “significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike” because of the potential attendance of “white supremacists, militia members and others who actively promote violence.”

“Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protestors as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th,” the report states.

Adding to the mixed intelligence portrait is a Jan. 5 bulletin prepared by the FBI’s Norfolk field office that warned of the potential for “war” at the Capitol. Capitol Police leaders have said they were unaware of that document at the time. FBI Director Chris Wray has said the report was disseminated through the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, discussed at a command post in Washington and posted on an internet portal available to other law enforcement agencies.

Capitol Police officials have repeatedly insisted that they had no specific or credible intelligence that any demonstration at the Capitol would result in a large-scale attack on the building. Despite scrutiny of intelligence shortcomings, Yogananda Pittman, the assistant chief in charge of intelligence at the time of the riot, remains in that position.

The current police chief, J. Thomas Manger, defended Pittman in a September interview with the AP, pointing to her decision when she was acting chief to implement recommendations made by the inspector general and to expand the department’s internal intelligence capabilities so officers wouldn’t need to rely so heavily on intelligence gathered by other law enforcement agencies.

[Discussion Article] Reflections on the Fascist Threat – From the 1930s to Today

December 9, 2021

https://imhojournal.org/imho_author/barbara-epstein/

Should the Left unite with the center – or the progressive liberals – against fascism? Thoughts from a veteran socialist. First presented at a November 21, 2021 meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization — Editors

I’ve been asked to talk about the danger of fascism in the US. The verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case has just accelerated the danger of fascism in this country. What it means is that the right wing doesn’t need a militia, they can just send out a call and their supporters, including 17-year-olds, can go to demonstrations with guns and shoot if they feel endangered. I don’t know what more to say.

There is more than a danger that the Republicans will gain a clear majority in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections and that the Republican Party will win the 2024 election, possibly putting Trump back in office. If this were to happen the Republicans would control not only the Supreme Court, as they do now, but also the House and the Senate. There would be greater restrictions on who could vote, reactionary laws would be passed, and the Republican Party would gain a lock on power that would be very difficult to overcome.

The danger we face is of fascism, not authoritarianism. Authoritarianism means rule by one person or group. It may not be accompanied by major upheavals or conflict. Fascism, on the other hand, describes a system in which a group comes to power, and maintains its power, by inflaming existing prejudices and conflicts and setting one or more sectors of a population against others. Fascism thrives on internal conflict and violence. In the US, it rests on racism and, to a lesser but growing extent, antisemitism, and it also rests on sharpening the differences between cultural and or political groups, creating crises that escalate and promote violence, inflaming racism, and creating conflicts among whites as well. A fascist system involves violence from above and also promotes violence between groups within the population. An escalation of this sort is a real possibility, which none of us wants. That means that we have to take it seriously, and we have to be smart about how we go about opposing it.

In thinking about how to oppose it we have to recognize the capacity of the left to make mistakes, sometimes mistakes with serious consequences. I want to first talk about a mistake made by the Communist International, and in particular the German Communist Party, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that cleared the way for the victory of fascism. And then I want to talk about an approach being taken by many on the left today that I think increases the chances of Republican victories in 2022 and 2024. The first was a problem of ultraleftism– that is, setting the Communist movement against the rest of the left, the second is a problem of what I would call moralism. Though they are not the same, I think the two have in common that they convey a sense of superiority to others that can get in the way of our efforts to win those who are not part of the left over to our side.

The first case: in 1928 the Communist International, or Comintern, which officially represented all the Communist parties in the world but was dominated by the Soviet leadership, adopted what was called the policy of the Third Period. According to this policy, Communist parties around the world were to refuse to ally with other parties of the left and were to attack social democratic organizations, socialist parties affiliated with the Second International, as social fascists.

The leaders of the Bolshevik Party had expected that the Bolshevik Revolution would be followed by similar revolutions elsewhere in the capitalist world, particularly in Europe. This had not happened. By 1928 signs of economic depression were appearing, soon to be greatly magnified following the US stock market crash of 1929. Soviet leaders concluded that the period of capitalist stability that had followed the Bolshevik Revolution was coming to an end, that capitalism was on the verge of collapse, and that Communist parties should prepare to lead that revolution by discrediting rival socialist parties, especially the socialist parties that, especially in Europe, had gained large memberships and established themselves electorally. The Soviet, or Comintern, view, in 1928, was that the first period had been that of the Bolshevik Revolution, the second period consisted of the stabilization of world capitalism that followed, and the oncoming third period would be that of the worldwide collapse of capitalism.

The purpose of Soviet attacks on all other socialist organizations was to eliminate competition for leadership of the supposedly imminent revolutions, to clear the way for Communist-led revolutions. It was also to discredit and undermine the influence of other organizations, especially socialist or social democratic parties, that wanted significant reform but were ambivalent about the extent to which the existing capitalist system should be dismantled, and thus, in the Communist view, stood in the way of revolution.

In the late nineteen-sixties, a version of this view also took hold: there were many activists who believed that revolution was imminent, that it was liberals who were standing in the way of revolution. In the US the word “liberal” is extremely elastic, ranging from corporate liberals – who were leading the Vietnam War – to those who opposed the war, supported civil rights and civil liberties, but without calling for a fundamental restructuring of society. The view of many on the left was that liberals, a category including both corporate liberals and humanist liberals, were standing in the way of the revolution. Attacks on social democrats by Communists, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, were an earlier version of the same thing.

These views, held by Communists in the early 1930s, and young activists in the late sixties, assumed that the question was, who was standing in the way of the revolution, not whether desire for a revolution was widespread enough for it to take place. In both cases, it was those who were closest to the radical movement – social democrats or liberals – who were seen as the problem, not the right, which was, in both cases, gaining power. But this talk is about Germany in the early 1930s, where the belief that there was going to be a revolution had far more serious consequences than a similar belief among student leftists in the 1960s US.

Third Period policy had different consequences in different countries. In the US, Communists alienated members of the Socialist Party and others on the left with their attacks. But the policy also led Communists to organize ostensibly revolutionary unions, that is, unions outside the American Federation of Labor, and thus to organize workers that the American Federation of Labor would not organize, including Black sharecroppers, Latino farmworkers, and others. The American Communist Party was at that time quite small and had very little if any influence in electoral politics.

In Germany, the consequences were quite different. The German Communist Party was the largest in the world, outside the Soviet Union, and played a significant though hardly decisive role in German elections. In 1928 the Social Democratic Party, the backbone of the Weimar Republic and its social reform legislation, won nearly 30% of votes, the largest percentage among the very large numbers of competing parties. The German National Party, a far-right nationalist party that rejected the Weimar Republic and its reforms, and that wanted Germany for ethnic Germans, came in next, the conservative but not nationalist Catholic Centre Party third, and the Communist Party fourth, with over 10% of the vote. The Nazi Party received less than 3% of the vote. In the next election, of 1930, the Social Democrats still came in first but with a lower percentage of the vote than in 1928, the Nazis shot up to second with over 18% of the vote, and the Communist Party came in third with 13%. The National Party dropped to 7%; many of its former supporters were now voting Nazi. In 1932 the Nazis came in first with over 37% of the vote, the Social Democrats second with 21%, continuing their decline, and the Communists third with over 14%, higher than previously.

What all this means is, the Social Democratic vote remained significant but was declining, the Communist vote had increased enough to alarm right wingers but nowhere near enough to win, and the Nazis were way ahead of any other party. The Nazi plurality enabled President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor.

What made it possible for the Nazis, the vote for whom, in 1928, had been negligible, to become the rulers of Germany in 1932? This is a complex story the details of which are not worth addressing here. But the background was that while the Weimar Republic involved a parliament, and normally the chancellor was a member of the majority party in the Reichstag, there was also a president, not responsible to the Reichstag, and with the power, under certain circumstances, to dissolve the Reichstag and appoint a new chancellor. Hindenburg, the president, was a right winger with no sympathy for the Social Democrats, and he was surrounded by a circle of advisors determined to bring Germany under the control of the nationalist far right. Hindenburg’s advisors did not want the Nazis in power but believed that they could be used to defeat the Social Democrats and eliminate Communist influence (and possibly Communists themselves), while being kept under control.

This turned out to be wrong: the Nazis took over. The Nazi Party won a plurality in 1932, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor, and the Reichstag fire took place soon after. The Nazis blamed the fire on the Communists though it was probably set by the Nazis. The Nazis rounded up, imprisoned and murdered leftists, primarily Communists. By the time Hitler was installed as Chancellor Communists not already in prison fled the country or went underground. The Nazis gained total power.

Some have argued that if the Communists and Social Democrats had formed a joint slate, they would have defeated the Nazis. The combined vote for the two parties in 1932 was close to but did not quite equal the Nazi vote in that election. If the Communists and Social Democrats had not been attacking each other, a joint slate might have attracted more supporters than the Nazis: in the context of depression, nationalism, meaning hostility to and a desire to get rid of Jews and immigrants, was rampant, and this as well as widespread popular anger benefitted the Nazi Party, which was growing very fast. Even if a joint Social Democratic/Communist slate had won in 1932, the Nazis might well have come to power at the next election. A joint slate of the left would have given the left more time, which could conceivably have made a difference. But between the rapid rise of the Nazi movement and the fact that Hindenburg and those around him were doing their best to undermine the Social Democrats and destroy the Communist Party, it is unlikely that a narrow victory of the left in the 1932 election would have eliminated the threat of a Nazi victory the next time.

And the left had its own problems. In their expectation, and advocacy of, an imminent socialist revolution, and in their attacks on the Social Democrats as the obstacle to that revolution, the German Communists were talking to themselves. No one else thought that a socialist revolution was about to take place in Germany, and there was no evidence of it. A united slate of Social Democrats and Communists would have been better that competition between the two, but what was really necessary was the formation of a coalition against fascism including not just the socialist left but others as well. Communists and Social Democrats could have approached the center-of-the-road Catholic Center Party, which had at times aligned itself with the Social Democratic Party. A substantial part of the support for the Nazis came from rural Protestants, who opposed the Weimar Republic and its reforms, and who were repelled by Berlin, with its large population of immigrants and Jews, and its avant-garde culture. The Socialist Party and the Communists would not have been likely to find many supporters for a broad anti-fascist coalition in the countryside, but in Germany’s cities they might well have. Had the German Communists recognized that socialism was not around the corner but that fascism was, and had they been willing to ally with the Social Democrats and other parties and speak to a broad audience, a movement capable of resisting fascism might have been formed.

Instead, the German Communists especially were talking to themselves. No one else thought that a Communist revolution was around the corner, and there was no evidence of it.

I have told this story about the German Communists and what they failed to do in the early nineteen-thirties because I think the US left is now in some ways also engaged in talking to itself rather than to those who need to be won over. The concept of white privilege is fundamentally a moral principle: it calls on white people to recognize that they are better off than Blacks and other people of color. It is not clear what this is expected to lead to, beyond feelings of guilt. Poor and working-class white people, on the whole, and many white middle-class people as well, do not consider themselves privileged and are likely to be offended by this concept. It would be much better, I think, to tell white people that they should join in the struggle against racism because racism is bad for them, too: it creates barriers between them and people of color and empowers the right, which enacts policies that advantage the rich and make life more difficult for everyone else.

The deeper problem, I think, is that much of the left/progressive community has come to define itself more in terms of its culture and its language than in terms of organization or organized struggle. Meanwhile, we are at a turning point in efforts to limit the heating of the earth: if the Republican Party takes power in the US the consequences for the global environment could be devastating. I think that the left needs to shift its focus from culture and language to developing the organizations and strategy that might prevent the right from coming to power