A cease-fire in Syria, brokered by Turkey and Russia, is set to take effect on Friday. Earlier truces have not held for long in the Syrian civil…
The resolution also calls for the “rapid, safe and unhindered” delivery of humanitarian aid throughout Syria. And it anticipates a meeting of the Syrian government and opposition representative in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana in late January.
The resolution’s final text dropped an endorsement of the Syria cease-fire agreement reached Thursday, simply taking note of it but welcoming and supporting Russian-Turkish efforts to end the violence. Western members of the council sought the last-minute changes to the draft resolution to clarify the U. N.’s role and the meaning of the agreement brokered by Moscow and Ankara.
There are dozens of Syrian opposition or rebel groups, and some told CBS News that they did not agree to the cease-fire, CBS News’ Holly Williams reported.
U. S. deputy ambassador Michele Sison said the Obama administration strongly supports a cease-fire and “unfettered humanitarian access,” but she expressed regret that additional documentation to the agreement with details about its implementation have not yet been made public.
Meanwhile on the ground in Syria, rebels warned on Saturday that cease-fire violations by pro-government forces threatened to undermine the two-day-old agreement intended to pave the way for talks between the government and the opposition in the new year.
Airstrikes pounded opposition-held villages and towns in the strategically-important Barada Valley outside Damascus, activists said, prompting rebels to threaten to withdraw their compliance with the nationwide truce.
Rebels also accused the government of signing a different version of the agreement to the one they signed in the Turkish capital of Ankara, further complicating the latest diplomatic efforts to bring an end to six years of war .
Nearly 50,000 people died in the conflict in 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains networks of contacts on all sides of the war. More than 13,000 of them were civilians, according to the Observatory. Various estimates have put the war’s overall toll at around 400,000 dead.
A mass exodus from Syria’s largest city Aleppo comes amid a government military offensive that recaptured large portions previously controlled by…
If the truce holds, the government and the opposition will be expected to meet for talks for the first time in nearly a year in the Kazakh capital of Astana in the second half of January. Those talks will be mediated by Russia, Turkey and Iran, though Russia’s U. N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has said other key players including the United States are welcome to participate.
Churkin said after Saturday’s vote that the Astana talks will be the first face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition and he expressed hope that 2017 will see a political settlement of the conflict that has claimed over 250,000 lives.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and Major General Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau, were in Tehran Saturday to discuss developments with their Iranian counterparts, according to Iranian state media. They met with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
The Kremlin meanwhile said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed their commitment to negotiations in Astana, in a phone conversation between the two leaders.
Iran and Russia have provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the conflict, while Turkey has served as a rear base and source of supplies for the opposition.
The developments follow months of talks between Ankara and Moscow that culminated in a cease-fire agreement that went into effect Friday at midnight.
But in a statement issued by a coalition of 11 rebel factions, including the powerful Army of Islam group operating in the Damascus countryside, rebels said they could not abide by the cease-fire if the government continued its assault on Barada Valley.
The statement also complained that the government’s version of the agreement signed in Ankara last week had deleted “a number of essential and non-negotiable points.”
It said the opposition had agreed to a cease-fire encompassing the whole of Syria, without any exceptions to region or faction.
The Barada Valley Media Center said Lebanese Hezbollah militants were firing on villages and towns in the water-rich region as Russian and government aircraft carried out raids for the 10th consecutive day Saturday. The Lebanese militant group is a key ally to President Assad’s forces.
The Barada Valley is the primary source of water for the capital and its surrounding region. The government assault has coincided with a severe water shortage in Damascus since Dec. 22. Images from the valley’s Media Center indicate its Ain al-Fijeh spring and water processing facility have been destroyed in airstrikes. The government says rebels spoiled the water source with diesel fuel, forcing it to cut supplies to the capital.
60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley interviews a female White Helmet, gets a glimpse into the future of Syria’s “Miracle Baby,” and shares perspective on hi…
The Observatory reported at least two civilians and five militants have been killed in battles over opposition-held Eastern Ghouta and Barada Valley regions around Damascus, since the truce came into effect Thursday at midnight.
The Syrian military on Friday denied attacking the valley, saying it respected the Russian and Turkish brokered truce.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported the death of an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, commander in a Turkish airstrike near the north Syrian town of al-Bab on Friday. The truce does not cover operations against ISIS or al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Fatah al-Sham front.
Anadolu identified the commander as Abu Ansari. The report could not be independently verified.

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Antonio Guterres has taken the reins of the United Nations promising to be a “bridge-builder” – but facing an antagonistic incoming US administration led by Donald Trump.
The former Portuguese prime minister and UN refugee chief told has said he will engage all governments “and, of course, also with the next government of the United States” and show his willingness to co-operate on “the enormous challenges that we’ll be facing together”.
But Mr Trump has shown little interest in multilateralism, which Mr Guterres contends is “the cornerstone” of the UN and great attachment to the Republicans’ “America First” agenda, saying the world body’s 193 member states do nothing except talk and have a good time.
As Mr Guterres begins his five-year term facing conflicts from Syria and Yemen to South Sudan and Libya and global crises from terrorism to climate change, US support for the UN remains a question mark.
And it matters because the US is a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council and pays 22% of the UN’s regular budget and 25% of its peacekeeping budget.
Immediately after the United States allowed the security council to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank on December 23 in a stunning rupture with past practice, Mr Trump warned in a tweet: “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan 20th” – the day he takes office.
Mr Trump followed up three days later with another tweet questioning its effectiveness, saying: “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad! ”
John Bolton, a conservative Republican and former US ambassador to the UN, said Mr Guterres would be well advised “especially given the incoming Trump administration” to follow the model of his predecessor Ban Ki-moon and do what member governments want.
If he tries to follow what Mr Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, did as secretary general and try to be the world’s top diplomat and what some called “a secular pope”, Mr Bolton said: “I think especially in the Trump administration, he would run into big trouble very quickly. ”
Mr Guterres has made clear that his top priority will be preventing crises and promoting peace.
He has said there is enormous difficulty in solving conflicts, a lack of “capacity” in the international community to prevent them and the need to develop “the diplomacy for peace”, which he plans to focus on.
Mr Guterres has said he will also strive to deal with the inequalities that globalisation and technological progress have helped deepen, creating joblessness and despair, especially among the world’s youth.
“Today’s paradox is that despite greater connectivity, societies are becoming more fragmented. More and more people live within their own bubbles, unable to appreciate their links with the whole human family,” he said after his swearing-in.
Mr Guterres said the values enshrined in the UN Charter that should define the world that today’s children inherit – peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity – were threatened, “most often by fear”.
“Our duty to the peoples we serve is to work together to move from fear of each other, to trust in each other, trust in the values that bind us, and trust in the institutions that serve and protect us,” he said.
“My contribution to the United Nations will be aimed at inspiring that trust. ”
Mr Guterres won the UN’s top job after receiving high marks from almost every diplomat for his performance in the first ever question-and-answer sessions in the General Assembly for the 13 candidates vying to replace Mr Ban, whose second five-year term ended at midnight on December 31.
In an interview during his campaign Mr Guterres said the role of secretary general should be “an honest broker, a consensus builder” who engages as much as possible, in many circumstances discreetly.
“It’s not just to have a personal agenda, because it would be regrettable or ineffective, or to appear in the limelight. No. On the contrary, it’s to act with humility to try to create the conditions for member states that are the crucial actors in any process to be able to come together and to overcome their differences,” he said.
Whether the Trump administration will join him and UN efforts to tackle what he sees as “a multiplication of new conflicts” and the myriad problems on the global agenda remains to be seen.
Mr Trump’s choice as US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley who is the governor of South Carolina, has a reputation as a conciliator, which could be very useful especially in dealing with the security council and the four other permanent veto-wielding members – Russia, China, Britain and France – all of whom have their own national agendas.
But she will be taking instructions from the president.
Richard Grenell, who served as US spokesman at the UN during George Bush’s administration and has been working with Mr Trump’s transition team, downplayed the prospect that Mr Trump will withdraw from or even disregard the UN.
He said Mr Trump was talking about reforming the UN and other international organisations so “they live up to their ideals”.
Mr Guterres also wants to reform the UN to make it “nimble, efficient and effective”, saying it must “focus more on delivery and less on process, more on people and less on bureaucracy” and ensure the more than 85,000 UN staff working in 180 countries are being used effectively.
AP

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Planned Parenthood has asked a federal judge to stop Texas from cutting it from the state’s Medicaid program, which the nation’s largest abortion provider says would reduce health services for nearly 11,000 low-income women.
The request to U. S. District Sam Sparks was filed late Friday in Austin and is part of an ongoing lawsuit filed last year. Texas is one of several Republican-controlled states that have sought to deny Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood following the release of secretly recorded and heavily edited videos by an anti-abortion group last year.
Investigations by 13 states into those videos have concluded without criminal charges, and Planned Parenthood officials have denied any wrongdoing. A Houston grand jury indicted two activists behind the videos over how they covertly gained access inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, but a judge later dismissed the charges.
Federal judges have stopped Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas and Mississippi from similarly excluding Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursements in wake of the videos. Texas is set to cut off Planned Parenthood as early as Jan. 21 unless Sparks grants an injunction.
Sparks had previously set a hearing in the case for Jan. 17.
“Courts have unanimously prevented these terminations and agreed that preventing Medicaid enrollees from obtaining care from the qualified provider of their choice violates federal law,” attorneys for Planned Parenthood wrote in their request for an injunction.
Aides to Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday.
Paxton’s office has said it is still investigating the videos — more than 18 months after launching an inquiry. But Texas health officials in the meantime pointed to the videos in sending a letter earlier this month to Planned Parenthood, which the state accuses of making misleading statements.
President-elect Donald Trump could also move to strip Planned Parenthood of nearly $400 million in Medicaid funds after taking office. Republicans moved through Congress last year legislation to cut taxpayer funds to the 100-year-old organization, but President Barack Obama vetoed it.
Trump sent mixed signals during his campaign about Planned Parenthood but has endorsed calls to defund the group.
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that Planned Parenthood’s court filing is part of an ongoing lawsuit against Texas, not a new lawsuit.
___
Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pauljweber
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Saturday, 31 December 2016 14:27
Forebodings
I have a politically active liberal friend who in the aftermath of the Trump victory believes rather fervently that ‘clarity,’ not ‘hope,’ is the opposite of ‘despair.’ To be awake to unpleasant, even dire, realities and resist the temptations of denial demands increasing resolve in the face of the mounting evidence that the human species is facing a bio-political moment threatening civilizational collapse and species decline and fall as never before.
Wakefulness can give rise to mindfulness, encouraging radical choices of right action individually, and even possibly collectively. My friend’s clarity was more narrowly focused—limited to recovering and carrying on in America after the unexpected electoral victory of Trump. For those of us living here, the fear of what Trump will do ‘to make America great again’ is overwhelming and deeply depressing without taking the slightest account of the bio-political crisis threatening the future of the human habitat as well as already producing the extinction of many species that are being swept away by forces beyond their, and more often, our control.
The wonderful Euromed Team that lends valuable civil society support to the Palestinian people and their prolonged struggle, counsels a different spirit in their holiday message: “Keep Calm, Stay Human.” I will do my best to heed this advice. Calmness rather than hysteria, human as profiled by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially in the often neglected, yet aptly visionary, language of its Preamble. Treat others, near and far, with the dignity they and you deserve, and do your utmost to protect those vulnerable within your reach whether family, community, country, and world.
Another source of insight relevant to this moment comes from the brilliantly progressive Jean Bricmont, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain and author of Humanitarian Intervention: Using Human Rights to Sell War (2006) and other books, who insist that all positive political action rests on a foundation of ‘hope and indignation.’(p.7) I view ‘hope’ as a matter of informed will as contrasted with optimism, which is often an escapist refusal to acknowledge surrounding risks, harms, and dangers. Optimists too often greet the future with a vacuous benign smile as if there is nothing to worry about so long as you meditate twice a day. To be authentically hopeful under current conditions presents a difficult essentially spiritual challenge, which depends on some form of faith, given the depth of the multiple crises that imperil human and non-human futures. ‘Indignation’ is an appropriate response to the pervasive wrongs associated with corruption, exploitation, patriarchy, and unjustifiable discrimination, and serves as a necessary foundation for raising political consciousness, making mobilization feasible and transformation possible.
Right-wing Populism: A Vehicle for 21 st Century Fascism?
Others are sounding various alarms in anxious response to the rise of right-wing populism in a series of countries around the world, warning us that a 21 st century fascist virus is viciously attacking hearts, bodies, and minds, often with a democratic mandate, giving rise to a new generation of popular autocrats. This virus is dangerously contagious imperiling the body politic of an increasing number of societies. It appeals especially, even if unconsciously, to those escaping from the discontents of and alienation brought about by the predatory effects of neoliberal globalization. In Europe and North America, especially, these discontents are being dangerously aggravated by anti-immigration nativism, hysteria, demagoguery, libertarian gun policies, and monetized politics. Some perceive fascism in different guises emerging in a variety of societies, capturing and magnifying state power, scapegoating minorities, reversing feminist gains, encouraging a science-defying consumerism, and diverting attention from the menaces posed by the possession, development, and deployment of nuclear weaponry, as well as by a planetary temperature that is pushing against thresholds of irreversibility.
I found the following cautionary list composed by the eminent Yale historian, Timothy D. Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010) and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015), perceptive, instructive, and above all, a stimulus of further thought. Pondering Snyder’s list of 20 lessons is to be forewarned. The intended audience seems to those of us living in the West, either Europe or North America.
Snyder List of 20 Lessons (dated Dec. 1, 2016)
“Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.
[Snyder suggests that if this list seems useful, print it out and pass it around!
I find this list of concerns to be suggestive and useful, despite not perceiving quite the same trajectory of political threat. In some respects, the vigilance proposed by Snyder is summarized by Pastor Martin Niemoller’s extraordinary poem written beneath the crushing weight of Nazi Germany:
First They Came
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
**************************************
What seems beyond questioning in the present context within the United States is the political imperative to become maximally engaged. It is crucial that there be many highly visible citizens of conscience and that we all remain on high alert with respect to the dangers posed by a governing process dominated by a media oriented demagogue that has mobilized right-wing populism in the US as never before and is surrounding himself with dedicated reactionary ideologues.
Although this last commentary narrows concerns to American forebodings, the intended and unintended consequences are certain to be much broader. The United States acts as a global state. When Washington makes mistakes they tend to reverberate around the world. This is most obvious with regard to the economic, environmental, and security policy agendas, and also there are likely to be various negative impacts on geopolitical behavior raising risks of international warfare, although this is not entirely clear at this stage. If Trump’s opening to Russia is not thwarted by the American national security establishment, which is how I mainly interpret the Obama move to sanction Russia in retaliation for the recent hacking episode. The American reaction of outraged innocence seems wildly overblown considering our own cyber-attacks on Iran and the many flagrant interferences over the years under CIA auspices with foreign elections and even elected governments. Thankfully Putin is so far repudiating the tit-for-tat game, and would deserve credit, along possibly with Trump, for halting this disastrous push by the deep state in the United States to revive the cold war, this time with high hot war risks.
The Calmer Liberal Option
For still others, for whom political activism in a largely liberal mode is the key to avoiding a deeper descent into a planetary inferno the call is: ‘don’t despair, organize and resist.’ The brilliantly attuned filmmaker and cultural critic, Michael Moore, offers Americans a five-point plan for resistance worth reflecting upon:
1) visit local congress representatives to express concerns;
2) insist on the drastic reorganization of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) taking the form of progressive leadership;
3) form local rapid response teams of 5-10, consisting of friends, neighbors, family that can protest adverse developments as they occur;
4) Participate in the protest events in Washington relating to the inauguration of Donald Trump as the next American president, as well as protests elsewhere;
5) Devise a Plan B because as bad as you think things will be, they will actually will be worse. Moore’s proposal is very much responsive to the peculiarities of the current American political landscape, essentially relying on liberal values and associated procedures for energizing constructive forms of participation in this type of constitutional democracy.
Whether it goes nearly far enough to counteract the Trump surge is a question not likely to be answered by the end of 2017 at the earliest, but I have my strong doubts. Without addressing the roots of the malaise, which are shaped by neoliberal capitalism, militarism, nuclearism, and patriarchy, we are, at best, in my view, playing for time. At worst, fiddling while the planet burns.
The Progressive Case for Trump: Abstractions Lost in the Ruins
I have several admirable overseas progressive friends that continue to rejoice in the defeat of Hillary Clinton, equating the rejection of her candidacy with a major defeat for the US national security establishment. It is important not to dismiss these views. It is well to remember that during the electoral campaign most Republican defense stalwarts and high profile neocons denounced Trump and threw their support to Clinton. Added to this were several substantive issues. Trump’s campaign calls for an end to regime-changing interventions and state-building ventures throughout the Middle East. If implemented, this seems to presage a kind of welcome geopolitical retreat from the region. And, of course, Trump’s much publicized support for a cooperative relationship with Russia, despite the crimes of Vladimir Putin, angered and worried the establishment consensus. It should be appreciated that Trump seems to be stepping back from Obama’s irresponsible diplomacy with respect to Russia, a dynamic that Clinton would certainly have accelerated against a background of Beltway applause.
The most telling opposition of security insiders to Trump’s candidacy arose in my view because he seemed to be proposing an abandonment of what I have in the past called the ‘Global Domination Project,’ which was the grand strategy associated with American ambitions to play a hegemonic security role associated that was to be expected of the first global state in human history. Anti-Trump militarists should not be too discouraged as Trump promises ‘to rebuild the American military’ and has appointed a series of notorious militarists to the most critical security positions, making his ‘America First’ rhetoric unlikely to be translated into policies associated with lowering the American security profile around the world. There are likely to be ambiguous and questionable responses to Trump’s encouragement of foreign governments to invest more in their own defense and his seeming complacency about the further proliferation of nuclear weaponry.
Despite these weighty considerations I feel strongly to that Trump’s ascendancy to power is posing apocalyptic risks that all sane persons should act to avoid. Also Trump’s victory overlooks the likely impact of his domestic policies on the vulnerable (immigrants, minorities, women, especially African Americans, Muslims, Hispanics) and poor, a prospect given frightening potency by an irresponsibly right-wing Congress and a supportive Supreme Court. It also fails to take account of Trump’s counter-terrorist extremism (‘crush ISIS,’ revive waterboarding, and authorizing even worse forms of torture) and seeming casual embrace of nuclearism, both by seeming to tell allies to consider developing their own nuclear weapons arsenal and promising to retain a position on top of nuclear weapons pyramid even if means unleashing an expensive and dangerous arms race.
There is bound to be uncertainty and confusion associated with the early stages of the Trump’s presidency. Despite trembling at the prospect, no one knows exactly what to expect. For one thing, Trump contradicts himself frequently, or restates his most provocative proposals with decidedly more moderate ideas about implementation. For another, there is a tension between his primary persona as an exemplary entertainer of the digital age and his hard line cabinet and staff appointees who seem primed to actualize a reactionary agenda. Whether the president as commander-in-chief will turn out this time to be the entertainer-in-chief is at this point anyone’s best guess. And just maybe, given the alternatives, the world will be better off with an entertainer, especially if the political class steps back to let the show go on! What might be most toxic would be a kind of collaborative governing process that provides media performances as spectacular distractions (bread and circuses of our time) while an unfolding assortment of regressive programs, policies, and practices were being enacted.

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