The New York Times: ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse

More than a thousand prisoners determined to be Islamic State fighters passed through that room last week after they fled their crumbling Iraqi stronghold of Hawija. Instead of the martyrdom they had boasted was their only acceptable fate, they had voluntarily ended up here in the interrogation center of the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq.

For an extremist group that has made its reputation on its ferociousness, with fighters who would always choose suicide over surrender, the fall of Hawija has been a notable turning point. The group has suffered a string of humiliating defeats in Iraq and Syria, but the number of its shock troops who turned themselves in at the center in Dibis was unusually large, more than 1,000 since last Sunday, according to Kurdish intelligence officials. [...]

The Iraqi military ousted the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, from Hawija in 15 days, saying it had taken its forces only three days of actual heavy fighting before most of the extremists grabbed their families and ran. According to Kurdish officials, they put up no fight at all, other than planting bombs and booby traps. [...]

Kurdish officials have been perplexed by the number of fighters who have surrendered. Many of the militants said they were ordered by their leaders to turn themselves in to the Kurds, who were known to take prisoners instead of killing them. But Capt. Ali Muhammed Syan, chief of the Asayish interrogators in Dibis, said even the fighters did not seem to know why their leaders were telling them to quit. “Maybe it’s some deal,” he said. “Maybe it’s just bad morale, I don’t know.”

read the article

openDemocracy: Spain: shall we talk?

I am talking about the grassroots organization of citizens across the country who have refused to take sides and instead decided to mobilize to let the parties involved know that “Spain is a better country than those running it”. They have called for citizens to gather in front of their respective town halls to talk, and in so doing, model what they want the independentists in Cataluña and the leaders of the Spanish government to do: enter into dialogue to resolve their differences. [...]

Independent of their views on Catalan independence, many were horrified by the police brutality and the authoritarian stance taken by the Popular Party against peaceful people who were expressing their right to express themselves through a vote. The increase in repression against peaceful protest notably since the mass mobilizations following 15-M is unfortunately not restricted to the recent and most visible manifestation in Cataluña, but has been a source of concern for human rights observers and activists mobilizing against the recent passage of the Law for the Protection of Citizen Security, more commonly known as the Gag Law (or Ley Mordaza).  As if that weren’t bad enough, following the fiasco, neither side showed signs of sitting down and opening dialogue, with Catalan Parliament Carles Puigdemont threatening to carry out his original threat to unilaterally declare independence (DUI) following a favourable outcome in the referendum, despite participation of only 43% of the electoral census under conditions that do not guarantee the validity of the results (contrast with the 75% who voted in the 2015 Catalan elections) and the PP government threatening to invoke the never before used article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which authorizes the state to dissolve the powers of the autonomous community by force if necessary in the case of a threat to the general interest of Spain.

The King further fuelled the fire in a hard-line pro-government speech that did nothing to promote a rapprochement between parties and made no mention of the documented police brutality against his subjects in Catalonia. The scenario bodes ill for the safeguarding of peace and wellbeing of citizens in Cataluña. If over 2 million people were willing to defy the ban on the illegal referendum and express their will to vote on October 1, before they had witnessed the police brutality their fellow citizens faced, how many more would be willing to defend their parliament should it come to that? If in a recent poll only 41.1% of Catalonians want independence (49.4% responded no in that poll in June and July of 2017) before the repression against the referendum, according to another poll conducted by Metroscopia for El País, some 82% want the right to vote in a legal negotiated referendum and see that as the best way forward. 82% also answered yes to the question of whether Rajoy’s handling of the question had contributed to an increase in support for Catalan independence? 

read the article

Haaretz: American Jews: If You Really Want Pluralism in Israel, Drop the Palestinians

But fighting on two fronts simultaneously doesn't work. The time has come for U.S. Jews to make a decision: Push for peace with the Palestinians, or push for a pluralistic Jewish state. There's only room for one item on the agenda.  [...]

By campaigning in parallel on Palestinian human rights and the advancement of the two-state solution the U.S. movements are misaligned, not only with the current right-wing government, but with vast swathes of Israeli public opinion. That public opinion, whilst generally center-right (rather than hard right), certainly holds significantly more hawkish (some might say more realistic) views than those being promoted by the Reform movement and its affiliates (or indeed the New Israel Fund, which also promotes a multi-faceted agenda along similar lines). [...]

Worse than this, liberal Jews' dovish opinions on political issues are frequently used as a rod by Israel's political leaders, as the basis for questioning their support for Israel and/or Zionism, undermining Diaspora Jewish claims to patriotism. [...]

Politics is all about creating influence and shifting the levers of power in order to promote decisions and policies. At the end of the day it has be measured against change and results. It is a hard-nosed game and should be fought out based on being focused on the potential for positive outcomes. 

read the article

Haaretz: In Israel's Eyes, No Palestinian Struggle Is Legitimate

When the Palestinian Authority “unilaterally” joined Interpol – that is, without the Israeli master’s consent – it was framed here as a “diplomatic defeat” on the right, and, shockingly, in the center and the left as well. What reason in the world could there be for people who support the establishment of a Palestinian state to thwart construction of infrastructure and democratic institutions on the Palestinian side?

The minister for environmental protection, who is also minster of Jerusalem affairs, Zeev Elkin, said that “Israel cannot show restraint in the diplomatic war that the Palestinian Authority leadership is waging against us.” Begging your pardon, Elkin, but what does “diplomatic war” mean? The sick logic that has seeped through Israeli political discourse has enabled the appearance of oxymorons like “diplomatic war” and “diplomatic terror.” Diplomacy, after all, is the polar opposite of terror. Those who oppose violent struggle – that is, terror – champion diplomacy. But in Israel, that is also considered terror these days. So what the blazes do Israelis consider legitimate struggle? According to that same superficiality of metaphor with which the concept of terror is treated, we can call what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians “logical terror”: Palestine is not qualified for membership in Interpol because it is not a state, and we’ll never let you be a state. [...]

A historic moment? Don’t make the Israelis laugh. Do wild animals have historic moments? “Fake reconciliations,” Netanyahu disparagingly called the event. “This isn’t Palestinian reconciliation, but rather Abu Mazen [Abbas] cozying up to a murderous terror organization,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett said, as expected. He is a great expert in transferring funds, as the teachers in Israel realized this week. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. That is, it will do everything in its power to prevent the establishment of another democracy.

read the article

The Guardian: ’Independence is not a final destination’ | I am Catalan

The Guardian Published on Oct 9, 2017 Catalonian identity is about more than a yes or no vote. While the north-eastern Spanish region prepares for the potential declaration of independence, many of the 7 million-strong Catalonian population worry that mainstream media are not representing their voice. We went to Catalonia to ask a variety of people about their identity and what independence means for them. 

Jacobin Magazine: Assessing Che

First, he shared with them a revolutionary politics from above that allowed him to retain, along with the Castros, the political control and initiative on the island, based on a monolithic conception of a type of socialism immune to any democratic control and initiative from below.

Like the Castro brothers, Guevara had a deep commitment to the one-party state and to an extreme version of vanguardism, which he sometimes took to the level of absurdity.

For example, his response to the social and political conditions he found in the eastern Congo, which he himself acknowledged lacked any of the necessary conditions for socialist revolution — such as the demand for land on the part of the vast rural population, a working class (which did exist in the Katanga region), and a significant imperialist presence that could provoke a sentiment of national resistance — was to create a vanguard Communist Party that would singlehandedly lead the revolution in that part of the country. [...]

Guevara’s personal and political characteristics — his political honesty and his radical egalitarianism — might have made him better suited to being a Communist oppositionist than a long-term Communist ruler who would have needed to live with the growth of inequality and corruption that has accompanied the Cuban Revolution.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: Podemos’ Alternative for Catalonia

Rajoy’s position on this question is the one that the Spanish Right has articulated for two centuries; namely, a refusal to adapt a centralized state to the existence of the distinct peoples and nations which comprise Spain. There is no question of discussing alternative territorial models or even negotiating within certain parameters: the law is the law and it must be upheld. [...]

First, I would say that the current Catalan administration didn’t have a mandate to hold a unilateral referendum. They framed the regional elections two years ago as a plebiscite on independence but the results fell short of their expectations. They failed to win a majority of votes and have only been able to count on a slender majority of seats with the support of the radical leftwing CUP. To follow this result with a strict timeline for unilateral independence was not legitimate. Also, they passed the two laws in September—one on the referendum and the other on the possible divorce from Spain—without a proper parliamentary debate or time to discuss amendments. [...]

Podemos proposed a referendum at a national level in our 2016 election program, asking all Spanish citizens firstly if they wanted a constitutional change and secondly how far should such a change go, including the option of a new constitution. But we also said that given the existence of the Catalan people as a political subject, they have the right to be consulted, to decide their future in a legally-valid referendum. The alternative constitutional model we want to construct is one in which the peoples of Spain freely consent to being part of a federal state. [...]

PSOE’s current line is that the government has to both negotiate with the Catalan government and defend the territorial integrity of the Spanish state. It is a mixed message. They won’t even make clear the terms on which such negotiations should take place. The question for him and his party is: do you recognize the existence of the Catalan people as a political subject, yes or no?

read the article

Slate: Richard Thaler Wins Economics Nobel for Recognizing People Are Irrational

Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, considered one of the founding fathers of behavioral economics, won the 2017 Nobel prize in economics for his influential work on how human nature affects markets. Thaler won the $1.1-million prize for “understanding the psychology of economics,” Swedish Academy of Sciences secretary Goran Hansson said. Although it may seem like an obvious feat, the truth is economists were once fond of thinking about humans as robots who always made choices that maximized their outcomes. But Thaler showed how very human traits, such as lack of self-control, habits, and fear of losing pushed people toward decisions that were not the most advantageous in the long term. [...]

Thaler is perhaps best known as one of the main proponents of “nudge theory,” the idea that small interventions on how things are presented in the environment can push people to make certain decisions that would benefit them or their environment. The book he co-authored with professor Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, pushed that idea to the mainstream when it was published in 2008. That book had a wide-ranging effect on policymakers as it explained things like how you could get people to eat more healthy foods simply by improving their placement on supermarket shelves and get them to save for retirement by automatically enrolling them in 401(k) plans.

read the article