UK steps up militaristic propaganda against Russia

Julie Hyland

A cross-party House of Lords committee has slammed British foreign policy as too inactive and accused the UK and Europe of “sleepwalking” into the crisis in Ukraine.

The report, The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine, has been hailed as the first extensive, “objective” account of Russia-European relations. It is nothing of the sort.

According to Lord Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, a lack of expertise in the UK Foreign Office and the European Union, led to a “catastrophic misreading of the mood” in Russia in the run-up to the crisis.

The report says that member states had “displayed a worrying lack of political oversight” regarding negotiations with Ukraine on the Association Agreement in November 2013. “Having said that, Russia misread the Ukrainian appetite for a trade agreement with the EU. The combination led to the crisis we have today, which neither side saw coming.”

Such claims stand reality on its head. Far from “sleepwalking” into the Ukraine crisis, the EU, alongside the US, actively fomented it.

Former President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement, aimed at subordinating Ukraine to the diktats of the EU and International Monetary Fund, triggered the February 2014 Western-backed coup. With the aid of fascist thugs, the regime of President Petro Poroshenko was installed, which duly signed off on the agreement while instigating a brutal civil war against its Russian-oriented opponents in the east of the country.

The report acknowledges that “the EU knew that the Russians ‘did not like what was happening’ but assumed ‘Ukraine could simply ride over that’.”

It is a moot point as to whether this was really the thinking in foreign office circles. The Russian plutocracy around President Vladimir Putin had been accommodating to the Western powers, desirous only to be admitted to the top table of the capitalist club. But regime-change in the country hosting Russia’s strategic naval base and with a large Russian minority could only be interpreted as a hostile and provocative act by the US and the EU. It made clear that the major imperialist powers had no intention of allowing an independent capitalist Russia, but were working on longstanding geostrategic plans for its encirclement and dismemberment.

The resulting civil war in Ukraine has provided the pretext for a significant expansion of NATO, with the deployment of a 5,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force to be stationed in states on Russia’s borders.

The Lords report was compiled between July and December 2014 and written up in January this year. It does not deal with the failure of the Kiev regime to subdue opposition in the east militarily, nor the threat of martial law in response to rising social and political discontent in the west.

These failures are behind Washington’s threat to directly arm Ukrainian forces. With a potentially catastrophic escalation of hostilities against Russia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande brokered a cease-fire in Ukraine, with Putin’s support. But the deal has resolved nothing, while the humiliating withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Debaltseve has only fuelled US ire.

The Lords committee is concerned at the prospect of a rupture within the EU. While it praises the unity of member states up to this point, it warns that there “seems to be less consensus on a constructive way forward, and a resulting danger that current unity could dissolve.” It notes political divisions within Germany as to relations with Russia.

The report speaks of establishing “ground rules within which the two sides [the EU and Russia] can work to their mutual benefit,” which must include “an understanding of legitimate Russian concerns.” But the real message is to prepare for tougher action against Moscow.

The EU’s “relationship with Russia has for too long been based on the optimistic premise that Russia has been on a trajectory towards becoming a democratic ‘European’ country,” it states. Instead, “Russia is increasingly defining itself as separate from, and as a rival to the EU.”

“The model of European ‘tutelage’ of Russia is no longer possible,” it concludes. The EU should supply massive funds to Ukraine, and extend financial sanctions against Moscow in the event of a breakdown of the Ukraine ceasefire, including against its financial sector.

Of particular note, the report sets out the need to differentiate “between the Russian state and the Russian public,” with the EU playing a “greater role in supporting civil society within Russia.” It cites positively the comments of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Coordinator of Open Russia, on the need to “talk to opposition leaders, to civil society representatives and to people who frankly could be the face of the Russia of tomorrow.”

Open Russia, launched by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is described as aiming to unite pro-European Russians in a bid to challenge Putin’s grip on power.

This is backed up with calls by the Lords committee for NATO and the EU to respond to “hostile actions of any kind” by Russia to be met “with a strong response.”

The report complains that, as a signatory to the 1994 Budapest memorandum, governing security assurances to Ukraine, “the UK had a particular responsibility towards the country and it has not been as active or as visible as it could have been.”

This codifies numerous complaints within military and ruling circles that parliament’s surprise failure to authorise military intervention against Syria in August 2013 has left the UK on the “sidelines.”

The UK government must now develop a “strategic response for the long-term” on Russia, the Lords committee insists.

Simultaneous with publication of the report, government ministers have stepped up propaganda against Russia.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon provocatively compared the “threat” posed by the Putin regime to the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) and warned that NATO had to be ready to respond to any further aggression, “whatever form it takes.”

Prime Minister David Cameron warned of an extension of sanctions against Moscow, that “will have economic and financial consequences for many years to come if you [Russia] do not desist.”

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond pointedly refused to rule out authorising “lethal” weapons for Ukraine, stating that while the decision had not yet been taken, the UK “could not allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse.”

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank Friday, Sir Adrian Bradshaw, second-in-command of NATO’s military forces in Europe, stated that the alliance must prepare for a “Russian blitzkrieg” against the continent.

Two days earlier, Royal Air Force Typhoon jets intercepted a pair of Russian aircraft flying over international waters near Cornwall. British fighter jets have been scrambled more than 40 times against Russian military planes alleged to be encroaching UK airspace since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition took office in 2010.

An essential aim of the sabre rattling against Russia is to provide a rationale for a massive increase in defence spending. The UK is still the largest spender on defence in Europe, at more than £40 billion last year. But the ruling elite are now insisting that military spending must be “ringfenced” from austerity measures to fight the “Russian threat.”

Conservative chair of the Defence Select Committee, Rory Stewart, called for a manifesto pledge to protect defence spending by all the parties in the May election, claiming that “Putin will be looking for” any sign of “weakness.”

Two former defence ministers, Tory Sir Peter Luff and Labour’s Bob Ainsworth are among nearly 30 MPs who have signed a motion demanding the next government maintain defence spending. Writing in the right-wingSpectator magazine, Retired Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon and retired Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham called on all political parties to “weaponise defence” in the election.

Australia: Sydney city council attacks the homeless

Gabriela Zabala

Council officers backed by up to 40 New South Wales police officers confiscated the property of about 20 homeless people living under a Wentworth Park light-rail viaduct in Glebe, an inner-Sydney suburb, earlier this month. The callous attack on Sydney’s poorest and most vulnerable residents is in response to growing numbers of homeless people sleeping in the street in Sydney.

According to local residents, council officers arrived at the viaduct at around 7.30 a.m. on February 11 and began dismantling shelters and tents and seizing property. Chairs, tables and other vital necessities, including food and water, were thrown in large dumpster bins and removed.

Police told the homeless that they were not permitted to erect tents because this was “camping” and in violation of council laws. The residents were also told that they were only allowed to have one sleeping bag and two bags of possessions.

Following the operation, Sydney City Mayor Clover Moore, a so-called independent backed by the Labor Party and the Greens, issued a statement insisting that the council was not evicting the homeless from Wentworth Park and had “no plans to do so.”

The council, Moore cynically declared, was responding to complaints last year about “unauthorised camping” and had been “working with rough sleepers” about “keeping the area tidy.”

The Sydney City Council, in fact, told the homeless residents in January that the area would be subjected to a “clean up.” On February 6, the homeless were given an ultimatum, declaring that unless they removed tents, structures, furniture and other possessions that were “infringing on the public space,” these items would be forcibly confiscated.

Wentworth Park homeless told the World Socialist Web Site that the council seizure of their property was not the first attempt to force them out of the area. Last year Sydney council officers seized residents’ tents, personal belongings and medication, as well as their identification documents and papers.

Jimmy, 68, an art teacher who has post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, heart disease and other chronic illnesses, said council officers took his tent and most of his belongings.

Jimmy

“I’m a human, not an animal,” he said. “If I have a home, I can create. What will my grandchildren say when they see how I live? When I returned to my home, everything was gone except a blanket on the ground. I like to live like a man, not a dog.”

Janet, 50, who has been living at the park for more than a year, previously worked as non-certified carer and a cleaner. She lost her job and became homeless because she could not pay the $200 weekly rent for a boarding house room. A New Zealand citizen, she is not entitled to any social welfare. Before becoming homeless, Janet volunteered with Occupation Sydney, which assists homeless people access social services. She also helps other park residents.

Janet explained that the homeless were forced to submit numerous applications for welfare and housing but they rarely heard back from these agencies. She had assisted one Wentworth Park resident apply for accommodation but four months later he was told by the state’s public housing provider to try and find private rental accommodation.

Janet

Median rent for a two-bedroom house in Glebe is over $770 per week, a two-bedroom apartment $700 and one-bedroom apartment around $430 per week. The unemployment benefit for single people without dependents is only $515 per fortnight.

Janet’s niece Aggie, is unemployed and has lived under the viaduct for seven months. Although interviewed for several jobs, she has been unable to secure employment because she has no fixed address. She said that council operations against the homeless were occurring throughout Sydney.

“We didn’t know our rights and we allowed them to do this. They just took our things and dumped them in the bin,” she said. Without basic identification, she added, many residents had difficulty applying for welfare and jobs.

Aggie explained that there were a number of youth living in Wentworth Park. She said they were picked up once a fortnight by Department of Community Services (DOCS) workers. They were not provided any real assistance but taken for pizza and Coke and then dropped back off at the park in the evening.

Dean, 37, a former farm and hotel worker, was previously employed at a Kings Cross hotel. He lost his job and was evicted from his home by police. “We can’t present for work interviews without clean clothes,” he said.

Dean

Local residents in Glebe were outraged by the council treatment of the homeless and have donated bedding, clothing, food and other items. Margaret, a public housing tenant in the area for more than a decade, said that the homeless were traumatised when council officers and the police arrived. “Tents, mattresses, belongings, one man’s false teeth and another’s passport were all thrown into a garbage truck and taken away,” she said.

Margaret explained that the viaducts were empty when she first moved to Glebe but that “more and more people have made these arches their homes. In the last couple of years it’s the worst it’s ever been. These are desperate, vulnerable people. It’s a terrible situation.”

The growing numbers of homeless, she added, was “an indication of the governments’ housing policy and the shortage of affordable housing…These cities cater for the high end of town. The disadvantaged are being squeezed and more and more people are making the street their home. As the high end of town develops, people are being cast off with little regard for the communities that are shattered.”

The council operation against Wentworth Park residents is a brutal response to the growing numbers of homeless people in inner-city Sydney. Homelessness Australia, the national peak body, estimates that there are over 28,000 homeless people in New South Wales with hundreds sleeping rough.

While Sydney is home to some of Australia’s wealthiest people, hundreds of poverty-stricken people are sleeping rough every night in Belmore Park, Woolloomooloo, St James, Circular Quay, Martin Place and at other city locations.

This month’s Sydney City Council operation runs in tandem with the ongoing cuts to public housing spending, the deliberate run-down and privatisation of state-owned housing by consecutive state government throughout Australia—Liberal and Labor alike.

In New South Wales alone there are over 57,000 eligible applications—or more than 120,000 people—on public housing waiting lists. At the same time public housing in inner-city Sydney such as Glebe, Surry Hills, Redfern, Waterloo and Millers Point is being privatised and opened up for further gentrification with huge profits going to developers and the real estate and finance industry.

The council assault on the homeless follows recent state and federal government cutbacks in homeless welfare spending. Two days before Christmas, the Abbott government slashed $21 million from annual homeless spending, and axed National Shelter, the Community Housing Federation of Australia and other agencies. In November 2013, the state Liberal government slashed $6 million in homeless funding to the Sydney area.

Australian government uses Sydney siege report to ramp up anti-terror laws

Peter Symonds

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has seized on a joint federal/state government review of the December 15–16 Lindt café siege in central Sydney, not only to justify the elevation of the incident into a major national crisis, but to foreshadow draconian new anti-terror measures due to be announced in a speech today.

Abbott, who is under considerable pressure following a leadership challenge just a fortnight ago, playing the anti-terror card for all he is worth. Speaking yesterday after releasing the review, he declared that the “inescapable conclusion” was that “the system has let us down” and indicated that he intended to appoint a counter-terrorism “tsar” to beef up the police and security apparatus.

Abbott branded the hostage-taker Man Haron Monis “a monster” who “should not have been in our community” to justify a further crackdown on asylum seekers, welfare recipients and to tighten or introduce new laws across a range of issues from bail to citizenship and firearms. He also made clear that the Coalition government would introduce new legislation to ban organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, which opposes violent terrorism but is critical of US and Australian military interventions in the Middle East.

The prime minister sought to again wind up a climate of fear and uncertainty, saying that the threat of terrorism was worsening, to justify the new inroads into legal and democratic rights. “Australia has entered a new, long-term era of heightened terrorism,” he said, which meant the country “would need to revisit the debate between the rights of the individual and community protect.”

Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten has already indicated bipartisan support declared that it was not “beyond the wit and wisdom of the Australian parliament to get the balance right. If the prime minister has specific measures in mind then we will study that.” The Labor Party has rubberstamped, with minor amendments, the barrage of anti-terror legislation pushed through by the Abbott government over the past year.

In fact, what the Sydney siege demonstrates is the blatantly political character of the “war on terror.” A standoff involving an unstable, erratic individual, who was well known to police and intelligence agencies, was transformed into full-scale national emergency. Thousands of police locked down much of central Sydney. No serious attempt was made to negotiate Monis’s limited demands creating a highly strained situation inside the Lindt café that ended tragically in a police shoot-out in which Monis and two hostages were killed.

The report of the Joint Commonwealth-New South Wales Review released yesterday is a whitewash designed to cover-up the extensive relations between Monis and various federal and NSW government agencies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and NSW police.

It is necessary to recall that just months before the Sydney siege hundreds of heavily-armed police and ASIO agents had mounted the largest ever anti-terror raids in Sydney on September 18. Fifteen premises were raided and 17 people detained all on the basis of one phone conversation allegedly threatening to kill a person at random. The raids took place as Abbott announced the dispatch of Australian war planes and troops to join the new US-led war in the Middle East.

The claims that the police had thwarted an imminent “terror threat” rapidly fell apart, however. Only one person was charged with a terrorist-related offence—a vague charge of conspiracy. While the media repeated lurid claims that Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “terrorists” were planning a beheading, the police later admitted the word “behead” had not be used over the phone. Moreover, the weapon that was allegedly to be used turned out to be a plastic sword.

From the Abbott government’s standpoint, the raids had failed to create the climate of public fear that it wanted.

The central function of the review is to obscure the lies and contradictions contained in the official account of last December’s events. While some 800 police and ASIO agents were mobilised on the basis of one intercepted phone call in September, Monis who had been on the radar of police and ASIO ever since he arrived in Australia in 1996 as an Iranian refugee, managed to wander into Martin Place in central Sydney—an area bristling with CCTV cameras—and take over a café without anyone in the security apparatus supposedly being alert to such a possibility.

The review concluded that “right up until that fateful day in December 2014, and notwithstanding the fact agencies were familiar with Monis over many years and repeatedly examined his case and any new information that emerged, ASIO and law enforcement agencies never found any information to indicate Monis had the intent or desire to commit a terrorist act.” This claim is simply not credible.

Monis was a mentally unstable individual who had a long history of publicity seeking for his various grievances. He was wanted in Iran on fraud charges, postured as a Shiite cleric and spiritual healer, repeatedly tried to ingratiate himself with ASIO and the police by offering information on various “terrorist plots” and sent insensitive letters to the family of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan blaming them for the crimes of the US and Australian governments.

As outlined in the review, ASIO carried out four investigations into Monis. On two occasions—during the Pope’s tour of Australia in 2008 and the 2011 Royal visit—the AFP identified Monis as “a person of interest” because of his “obsessive preoccupations and fixated interest in High Office Holders and dignitaries.” Indeed, Monis had fired off letters of protest around the world to everyone from the US president to the British queen, always providing copies of his correspondence to ASIO.

The review deliberately obscures the nature of relations between Monis and ASIO which has a track record of exploiting such unstable individuals as spies and provocateurs. No explanation is given as to why ASIO gave Monis an adverse security assessment in January 1999 as “indirect, and possibly a direct, risk to national security” then overturned it the following year. Given his repeated offers to assist, ASIO could well have strung him along as a useful, if unreliable, asset.

The review insists that there were no warning signs that Monis’s previous opposition to violent terrorist acts had changed. In the course of 2013–14, Monis was under intense pressure from a battery of charges that had been brought against him, including charges of sexual assault during his time as “spiritual healer” and accessory to the murder of his former wife. He alleged that he was physically abused while on remand in November 2013. In October 2014, he was charged with 37 further counts of sexual assault.

On November 17, Monis posted a declaration on his web site that he had converted from Shiite to Sunni Islam and pledged his allegiance to the “Caliph”—a reference to the various Sunni extremist groups, including ISIS whose goal is to restore the caliphate. Between December 9–12, the National Security Hotline receives 18 calls and emails relating to Monis and calling attention to his Facebook page. Yet, ASIO, according to the review at least, assessed that Monis had no “desire or intent to engage in terrorism” and took no action.

It is totally implausible that ASIO did not recognise that Monis’s actions represented an abrupt change in his attitudes. His conversion to the Sunni sect, which the review simply notes in passing as “unusual,” meant the embrace of organisations that bitterly denounce all Shiites as heretics and apostates. The danger signs were there but were simply ignored, raising the question as to whether a high-level decision was taken to allow the attack to proceed and provide the needed pretext for ramping up “war on terror.”

Whatever the answer to that question, the Sydney siege succeeded where the September police raids failed. It has enabled the Abbott government to bring forth a new slew of anti-democratic laws and measures while justifying the continued involvement of the Australian military in the criminal US led war in Iraq and Syria.

The Danish roots of the Copenhagen terror attack

Jordan Shilton

The shooter responsible for the deaths of two people in separate incidents in Copenhagen over the weekend, Omar El-Hussein, reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a Facebook post shortly before he launched his terror attack.

The revelation produced renewed warnings of copycat attacks from other ISIS supporters. Danish media reported earlier this week that a group of people had published a message on Facebook hailing Hussein as a hero, and that the intelligence agency (PET) was monitoring their activity.

However, it now appears El-Hussein never received training from ISIS or Al Qaeda forces in the Middle East. His turn to terrorist activity was produced by conditions in Denmark and the depraved militarism of the major powers in the Middle East and Africa, in which the government in Copenhagen has taken full part.

El-Hussein was a member of a violent gang in Copenhagen and was later radicalised during a two-year prison sentence for stabbing a 19-year-old on a subway train in 2013.

The shooting was a reactionary, disoriented response to the right-wing anti-immigrant chauvinism, imperialist militarism, and assaults on the social conditions of the working class which was embraced by all the major Danish political parties. His demoralised embrace of individual terrorism reflects the terrible consequences of the crisis of political perspective in the working class.

El-Hussein was involved in the gang wars that have intensified on Copenhagen’s streets in recent years. Aydin Soei, a sociologist who met El-Hussein and other members of his “brothas” gang in 2011, described conditions confronting immigrant youth in the inner cities.

He told CNN: “It was an environment with a lot of gang wars where you couldn’t move around freely. The gang wars in Copenhagen started back in 2008 when El-Hussein was 15 years old and that’s the environment he’s been a part of. The gang wars meant that the amount of weapons, the amount of violence exploded, so that the generation that he's from has become much more hardcore than any other generation we've seen in Denmark before him.”

The disorientation and lack of perspective that have driven sections of youth into such a lifestyle were the direct outcome of policies pursued by successive Danish governments and the inability of the and pseudo-left parties to offer any opposition to them.

Although the right-wing Conservative-Liberal government under Prime Minister and subsequent NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen began a sharp turn to the right, this project has been carried further since 2011 by a coalition of the Social Democratic and Socialist People’s parties, which received parliamentary backing from the Pabloite Red-Green Alliance during the first two years of the coalition.

These forces have worked constantly to block the a political movement of the working class against the reactionary policies of the Danish bourgeoisie. The absence of a progressive outlet for growing social anger paved the way for some among the most alienated layers of society to view reactionary, Islamist-inspired terrorism as the only available alternative.

From 2002, the Conservative and Liberal parties governed with the support of the far-right Danish People’s Party. During their nine years of rule, an unprecedented shift to the right took place. At the initiative of the DPP, the government reformed Danish immigration laws to make them among the most restrictive in Europe, making it harder for refugees to settle and for families to unite in Denmark.

At his trial in 2012, the fascist Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik explicitly praised Denmark’s immigration regime, adding that had Norway adopted a similar approach, he would not have carried out his terrorist attack.

Anti-immigrant chauvinism was coupled with a brutal assault on the working class. According to a report published in December 2014, Denmark ranked among the top five European Union members for the fastest rise in economic inequality between 2008 and 2012. While the wages of the poorest had declined by over 1,000 kroner per month ($152) in real terms, the wealthy had seen a jump in their pay by an average of 14,000 kroner.

Indicating the extent of the shift, only Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary experienced a greater increase—all countries that faced the near collapse of their banking sector, or that were subject to European Union and IMF bailouts.

Amid this growing social polarisation, immigrants formed one of the most exploited sections of the working class. Immigrants are four times more likely than Danish nationals to be unemployed, and four in ten children from an immigrant background lived in households where both parents were unemployed. A staggering eighty percent of married couples who received Denmark’s kontanthjælp unemployment benefit in June 2014 came from immigrant backgrounds.

El-Hussein, who was born in Denmark to Palestinian immigrants, grew up in this environment. He lived in the impoverished district of Norrebro, a predominantly immigrant area which in recent years has become synonymous with gang violence. In late 2014, the US state department went so far as to warn US citizens in a travel advisory not to visit Norrebro at night.

El-Hussein was not only influenced by dire social conditions. Those who knew him described him as a capable student who had lost his way, and as someone deeply concerned with the plight of the Palestinian people. His initial entry in to gang violence coincided with the NATO bombing of Libya, which led to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime and the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

As he entered prison, the Syrian civil war was in full swing, with the funding of opposition forces by the US and its allies strengthening Islamist extremism in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

El-Hussein witnessed the aftermath of these events from a prison cell, where he increasingly came under the influence of extremist Islam. The authorities acknowledged that his behaviour changed to such an extent during his detention that they reported it to Danish intelligence.

As El-Hussein turned towards Islamism, Copenhagen participated aggressively in imperialist wars operations in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2011, the Danish parliament voted unanimously to back the NATO assault on the Gaddafi regime in Libya, sending six F16 fighter jets to participate in the bombardment. Copenhagen also sent troops to the US-led war in Iraq and to Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission.

In 2011, the Social Democrats were elected to power. Forming a government with the support of the Stalinist Socialist People’s Party and with parliamentary support from the pseudo-left Red-Green Alliance, it took up seamlessly from where the previous government had left off. Social inequality has continued to deepen under the impact of the new coalition’s austerity budgets, and the ostensibly “left” government has been just as willing to stir up anti-immigrant chauvinism in response to virtually every social problem as its right-wing predecessor.

The deeply reactionary climate produced by the combination of relentless anti-immigrant chauvinism, social misery and imperialist aggression is replicated throughout Europe. Governments nominally of the right and left have embraced such policies as part of their reckless drive to defend the interests of the capitalist class around the globe, offering no resistance to social attacks and imperialist war. It is in this environment that the most alienated and demoralised individuals, like El-Hussein, find their way to the reactionary programme of Islamist terrorism.

Massachusetts public transit crisis drags into fourth week

John Marion

As another storm added snow and ice this weekend to the record amounts in the Boston area, the crisis of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) continued to deepen.

Commuters crowd platform at Davis Square station in Somerville, Massachusetts

As of February 17—nearly three weeks after a Red Line subway fire that presaged the system’s breakdown—more than 100 of the 218 Red Line cars were still out of service. Only 48 of 120 Orange Line cars and 102 of 219 Green Line cars were in service. Red Line service beyond North Quincy and Green Line B service beyond Kenmore Square are not expected to resume until Monday.

During the first two weeks of February, only 8 percent of trains on the Fitchburg commuter rail line were on time. On the Newburyport/Rockport line, 14 percent of trains were on time; on the Stoughton line on-time performance was less than 20 percent. Of the four morning trains that usually run into Boston from Stoughton, the only one that wasn’t cancelled last week arrives at South Station after 9 a.m., making it impossible for workers to be on time.

Most station platforms along the MBTA’s commuter rail are not protected from the weather. The local media have not reported any cases of frostbite, but a serious risk exists as wind chill factors drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) and trains are cancelled without warning.

While salaried professionals who are able to work from home have been using that method as a backstop, hundreds of thousands of retail, restaurant, custodial and other hourly workers are losing wages because of the breakdown of public transportation. State law requires that businesses pay at least three hours of wages to workers who report for work when the employer is closed, but travel time to and from work is not paid. Many commutes that are normally less than an hour have been stretched out to several hours since the first blizzard hit at the end of January.

The Boston Globe, citing US Census figures, reported that more than 40 percent of low-wage workers in Massachusetts use public transportation. TheGlobe interviewed a Dunkin’ Donuts worker who lost $148 of gross pay after being forced to miss two shifts. The woman, who has a 6-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter, might not be able to make rent this month.

Those who are able to drive have also faced extraordinarily long commutes because of streets narrowed by snow banks and clogged with traffic. Exorbitant prices for parking have accompanied competition for spaces.Masslive.com interviewed a barber who works on commission and lost five days of work to the storms. His subway commute is normally 25 minutes, but on a day when the barbershop was open he drove into work—a two-hour drive because of traffic—and had to pay $38 at a parking garage.

IHS Global Insight estimates that a one-day shutdown of business in the state would result in $194.11 million in lost wages, $40.45 million in lost retail sales and total economic losses of $265 million.

Last week it was revealed that the state has used prison labor to shovel outdoor subway tracks and maintenance yards. While the state also put out a call through the Boston Building Trades union for volunteers to shovel at $30 per hour, about 50 inmates from the state Department of Correction were added to the crew. According to a report by American Prospect, the median wage for state prisoners in the US is 20 cents per hour. Prison laborers are not eligible for workers’ compensation if hurt in the hazardous job of shoveling snow from subway tracks.

The crisis is affecting school children as young as 6th grade, who were on vacation last week but return to school on Monday, February 23. Following a wildcat strike by school bus drivers in October 2013, the Boston School Committee forced through an austerity measure in March 2014 that replaced dedicated school buses with MBTA passes for some students. While 6th and 7th graders are given the “option” of using school buses, students in 8th grade and above have to take public transportation. More than 15,000 students have been affected by the MBTA’s crisis.

Governor Charlie Baker, who as secretary of administration and finance in the late 1990s was instrumental in saddling the state’s transportation system with debt, made the strange declaration last week that shoppers should turn Valentine’s Day into “Valentine’s Week” in order to increase the revenues of retailers.

On Friday, Baker named a seven-member commission of experts to study the causes of the MBTA’s collapse. While claiming that this body will diagnose the system’s problems and offer practical recommendations, Baker—who recently cut the MBTA’s fiscal year 2015 operating budget by $14 million due to a state deficit—is incapable of addressing the billions of dollars of deferred maintenance that have caused the crisis.

Even if he offers proposals of additional capital bond issuances, these will come with a heavy price. According to the MBTA’s fiscal year 2014 financial statements, it pays about $270 million per year in interest on capital debt. On the operating side of its budget, it receives state revenues from the regressive sales tax, but also issues bonds with future sales tax revenues as collateral. In other words, it borrows against future state revenues that will be paid disproportionately by the working class.

Baker gave his new commission until the end of March to issue a report. In all likelihood, he is hoping that the crisis will have passed by then so that he can bury the issue.

Baker, along with the Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature, will continue the pretense that society does not have enough wealth to fix the MBTA’s infrastructure. In reality, simply expropriating the assets of the state’s billionaires would provide more than enough money.

The 2014 Forbes list of the world’s 400 wealthiest people included six Massachusetts residents, among them Fidelity Investments President Abigail Johnson; her father, Edward C. Johnson III (who has his own fortune) and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

The latter has made his billions through the paper/packaging industry, real estate, and owning a professional football franchise. Like many in his class, he demands public funds be spent to increase the wealth of his empire. Last week, at the height of the MBTA’s crisis, the Foxboro Reporter revealed that MassDOT (the Department of Public Transportation) had signed a secret deal with the Kraft Group in which the state promised to spend at least $23 million on a rail bed that would provide weekday commuter rail trains to the businesses around the Patriots’ stadium.

Cleanup continues after West Virginia oil train explosion

Clement Daly

Cleanup operations continue in southern West Virginia, a week after a massive oil train derailment prompted hundreds of evacuations and a state of emergency declaration by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin. Cleanup crews continued pumping oil out of the derailed cars over the weekend.

Last Monday, A CSX train transporting 109 tankers of crude oil from North Dakota to a terminal in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed near the town of Mount Carbon in Fayette County, West Virginia. The train had just passed through Montgomery—a town of nearly 2,000—only two miles before the accident.

According to CSX, 27 tanker cars, each carrying up to 30,000 gallons of crude oil, left the tracks, causing fires and massive explosions. Nineteen of the derailed tankers were either punctured and leaking or still on fire days after the accident.

No one was killed in Monday’s accident, and the train’s engineer and conductor were unharmed. One resident was treated for smoke inhalation, and one house was destroyed. Morris Bounds told the Charleston Gazettethat he happened to look out his kitchen window at the time of the accident and saw the train cars barreling towards his house. The 68 year-old escaped by immediately running out his door into the snow in his socks.

“The house was blowing up behind me,” Bounds said. “The walls were coming in.”

Bounds’ neighbor Carl Rose saw the scene and told the Gazette, “The cars were still shooting off the track as he was running out his front door.”

Bounds said he was thankful his wife was not at home and 15 family members who were visiting him had left the day before.

Contrary to initial reports, none of the tanker cars made it into the Kanawha River or nearby Armstrong Creek, although it remains unclear how much crude oil might have leaked into the two waterways. West Virginia American Water closed its water intake downstream from the accident, eventually cutting off water to about 2,000 customers serviced by its treatment plant in Montgomery. Water was restored later in the week.

About 200 residents living within a half-mile radius of the accident site were evacuated, some of whom went to stay with friends and family, while others went to emergency shelters and hotels. About 800 households lost power until damaged lines could be restored on Tuesday.

The investigation and cleanup operations have been hampered by severe winter weather in the region. The immediate cause of the accident is not yet known, and it is unclear what role, if any, the severe weather might have played.

The use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the development of horizontal drilling techniques have unleashed an oil boom in the US in recent years. However, inadequate or non-existent pipeline infrastructure has driven oil producers in the newly opened fields to increasingly rely on the nation’s rail network as the most cost-efficient means of delivering their crude oil to refineries and terminals. Since 2009, rail transport of oil has increased from 21,000 barrels a day to 1.1 million, according to federal data.

In particular, the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota and Montana has benefited from these new drilling techniques. The Bakken oilfields were first tapped with the new methods in 2007, and production has soared since then. By 2011, production had already outstripped existing pipeline capacity, and producers turned to railway transport for the extremely volatile form of crude oil.

Federal regulations and oversight of the nation’s railroads have not kept pace with these developments and are woefully inadequate to the new reality of ever-longer trains pulling massive shipments of hazardous materials for hundreds of miles through towns and cities.

An editorial in the Charleston Gazette noted, “[T]he Federal Railroad Administration has only 76 agents, aided by a few dozen state inspectors, to examine America’s 140,000 miles of track, plus bridges. This means that less than 1 percent of U.S. track can be inspected yearly.”

“Railway fines for safety violations are so small they have little effect,” the editorial continued. “In 2013, the Federal Railroad Administration issued $14 million in fines—to an industry whose top seven corporations reaped $84 billion [in] profits.”

The result has been a string of oil train disasters in recent years in Canada, Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Alabama. In 2013, a derailment of a 74-car oil train carrying Bakken crude in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and destroyed some 30 buildings. Last year, a shipment of Bakken crude on the very same CSX route from North Dakota to Yorktown, Virginia, derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Virginia.

There have been at least 21 oil train accidents in the US and Canada since 2006, according to federal data reviewed by the Associated Press, and officials expect these disasters to continue. A study conducted last July by the U.S. Department of Transportation anticipates an average of 10 derailments a year over the next two decades, causing billions in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people.

For its part, the multi-billion dollar CSX Transportation company, which operates 21,000 miles of track in 23 states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, has used its money and influence to push for continued deregulation of the industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), CSX is considered a “heavy hitter,” spending more than $15 million on federal elections since 1990.

The campaign contributions have flowed to both Republicans and Democrats alike, with the company favoring whichever political party is in power. Until the Republican sweep of incumbent Democrats in the last mid-term election, every federal office holder in West Virginia since 1990 had received money from CSX.

Former West Virginia Representative Nick Rahall—the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee until this year—received more than $62,000 from CSX since 2000, including $22,000 last year for his failed reelection bid. Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito has accepted nearly $53,000 from the company since she first entered Congress in 2000. Likewise, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has received $30,700 since arriving in Congress in 2010.

“The company has lobbied heavily to protect its interests,” CRP explains. “CSX has spent millions of dollars lobbying against bills that would strengthen railroad antitrust laws, as well as bills that would give the federal government more power of oversight and regulation.”

Inmates riot against miserable conditions at south Texas prison

Evan Blake

Prisoners being held at the Willacy County Correctional Center in south Texas rioted on Friday, protesting the squalid living conditions and miserable medical care services at the for-profit prison. The prison is located in Raymondville, Texas, less than 50 miles from the Mexican border, and all of the nearly 3,000 inmates are noncitizen prisoners.

The protest began on Friday when prisoners refused to eat breakfast or report for work in protest over the horrendous medical services provided at the facility.

According to the operators of the prison, Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), prisoners “broke through” the prison’s housing structures later Friday afternoon. The inmates allegedly wielded pipes and set ablaze three of the ten 200-foot-long Kevlar tents that house the prisoners.

Local, state and federal authorities quickly surrounded the facility to prevent anyone from escaping, using tear gas to suppress the uprising. The US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) stated on Saturday that the agency is in the process of moving 2,800 inmates to nearby facilities in an attempt to “regain complete control” of the prison.

On Saturday evening, FBI spokesman Erik Vasys said that the protest “is not resolved, though we’re moving toward a peaceful resolution.”

Last June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a damningreport on for-profit Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons, including Willacy. For the report, the ACLU conducted site visits to twelve CAR prisons and interviewed approximately 270 prisoners, using pseudonyms to prevent retaliation from guards.

The report found living conditions at Willacy and all other CARs to be deplorable. Willacy is the second largest of thirteen CAR prisons in the US, five of which are located in Texas. In total, CAR prisons house more than 26,000 noncitizen prisoners. The vast majority of people held in CARs are guilty only of illegal entry or reentry into the US, while most others are in prison for minor drug offenses.

The report notes that CARs are “some of the only federal prisons operated by for-profit companies instead of being run as federal institutions by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP); they house exclusively non-citizens; and they are low-custody institutions with lesser security requirements than the medium and maximum-security institutions run directly by BOP.”

The accelerating growth of prisons since the beginning of the “War on Drugs” in the 1970s has produced enormous profits for private, for-profit prison operators, with the three corporations that own CARs reporting roughly $4 billion in revenue in 2012 alone.

The ACLU report notes that at CARs, “Medical understaffing and extreme cost-cutting measures reportedly limit prisoners’ access to both emergency and routine medical care.” The facilities are often a great distance from prisoners’ families.

Prisoners’ access to education, legal assistance, drug treatment and work opportunities is severely limited compared to citizen prisoners in BOP-operated institutions, despite the fact that many CAR prisoners have lived in the United States for lengthy periods of time.

Nicknamed “Tent City” or “Ritmo” (a portmanteau of “Gitmo,” the nickname of Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and “Raymondville”), Willacy was originally run by MTC as an immigration detention facility under a contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency from 2006-2011.

Following numerous reports of abuses, ICE removed its remaining 1,000 detainees from Willacy in 2011. About a month later, MTC obtained a $532-million contract through BOP to repackage the facility as a CAR prison.

At Willacy, roughly 200 prisoners are packed into each Kevlar tent, with a mere three feet of space separating each bed and no personal space whatsoever for prisoners. The report notes, “There is no privacy between beds, nor in the five bathrooms where toilets and showers are in the open with no partitions.”

The ACLU said prisoners “told us about insects and spiders that crawl in through holes in the Kevlar and bite them. They reported that their clothes are washed without detergent and mixed in the same laundry loads as mops and other cleaning equipment.”

In contrast to many prisons, where isolation units are employed strictly for punishment, at CAR facilities they are frequently used to house any surplus population when there are not enough beds in the larger housing structures. Sergio commented, “They treat us like animals.”

At Willacy, approximately 300 people, or roughly ten percent of the prison’s population, are held in extreme isolation cells, known as the Special Housing Unit (SHU), at any given time. New arrivals to the facility are often held in SHU until space opens up in one of the Kevlar tents.

The ACLU reports that “Prisoners who have been confined in the SHU report that the extreme isolation drives men to the verge of psychosis… Some prisoners reportedly attempted suicide or self-mutilation.”

Friday’s protest marks the third, and largest, protest at Willacy since 2011. In 2012, prison officials shut off the facility’s water for two days without providing any drinking water or usable toilets. When the water began to turn yellowish green, some prisoners protested, with up to 80 taken to SHU isolation cells.

In 2013, prisoners protested again after overflowing toilets leaked sewage throughout one of the prison’s tents. The ACLU writes, “Maintenance repaired the toilets later that evening, but the leaders of the strike were reportedly taken to extreme isolation as punishment.”

The ACLU report documents the types of atrocious medical care that prisoners protested against. According to the report, prisoners said that “Willacy cuts corners on medical treatment by refusing to provide any preventive dental care or teeth cleaning. And when a prisoner has a toothache stemming from a possible cavity or infection, the only treatment Willacy will provide is extraction.”

The case of Santiago, 45, is particularly striking. Born just across the border, but raised in Texas, Santiago was deported to Mexico on drug charges, and has been in the CAR prison system since 2012 for illegal reentry into the US. Four months after arriving at Willacy, he fell drastically ill.

The ACLU writes that, “To see a doctor, he squeezed into a cell with 25 other ailing inmates and waited eight hours. Staffers denied his pleas for blood work.” Several weeks later, he was told by a visiting doctor that he has Hepatitis C. Almost two years later, at the time of the ACLU report’s release, he hadn’t received any type of treatment or advice on how to care for the disease.

In 2012, roughly 300 prisoners at another CAR prison in Natchez, Mississippi, run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), rioted over inadequate access to food, severe mistreatment by guards, and deplorable medical care. That uprising led to the death of one guard and left 20 other people injured.

After that protest, Frank Smith, head of the prison watchdog Private Corrections Working Group, declared, “The big problem is CCA tries to cut corners in every possible way. They short-staff, they don’t fix equipment, and things just get more and more out of control, and that’s what leads to these riots. It’s just about maximizing short-term profits.”

US expands “secret war” in Afghanistan

Thomas Gaist

The Obama administration is considering new proposals from the Pentagon to delay troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and increase the number of US forces to be stationed in the country on a permanent basis, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced this weekend during a joint conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Carter and Ghani indicated that formal arrangements for a larger long-term US troop presence, maintenance of US bases previously planned to close, and stepped up “counterterrorism” operations by US forces in Afghanistan may be finalized as early as the beginning of March.

“President Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani’s security strategy, including possible changes to the timeline for our drawdown of US troops,” Carter said.

President Ghani stressed “the comprehensive nature of the partnership” being worked out between his government and the Obama administration, adding that he was personally grateful for Obama’s executive decree in December 2014 ordering an additional 1,000 US troops to remain in the country on an indefinite basis.

More than 10,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan, and an array of US Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary units are continuing to carry out combat missions against alleged insurgents throughout the country.

Despite the proclamation of an official end to US combat operations in Afghanistan beginning December 31, 2014, recent weeks have seen a “significant increase in night raids" and a “tempo of operations unprecedented for this time of year,” the New York Times reported in mid-February.

“The official war for the Americans—the part of the war that you could go see—that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard,” said an Afghan security official cited by the Times.

The US forces are leading the missions and directly engaging targets, “not simply going along as advisors,” the Times noted.

Assassination teams are regularly dispatched against “a broad cross section of Islamist militants,” the Times reported. The US-led death squads include elite soldiers under the command of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, as well as CIA paramilitary groups, US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.

The raids represent a continuation and intensification of the counterinsurgency strategy implemented by the US during the official occupation, which sought to stabilize the US puppet government in Kabul by murdering anyone suspected of supporting armed opposition to the Karzai regime.

As early as 2005, a top US military general declared that this strategy was leading to the total defeat of the Taliban. When the Obama administration ordered the US military to add 30,000 additional troops to its overall occupation force in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal vowed that the insurgency would be defeated by 2011.

Similar assessments were made by US leaders during the occupation of and then the “surge” of troops into Iraq, along with enthusiasm about the readiness of the Iraqi national army, which has subsequently been shattered by the seizure of large sections of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Unflagging optimism of US commanders and politicians notwithstanding, the US targeted murder programs in Afghanistan have also clearly failed. Taliban forces have regained control over large portions of the country during the past year, inflicting casualties against government and US-led International Security Assistance Force coalition troops, as well as the civilian population, at the highest rate since the US occupation began in October 2001.

In the absence of substantial support from the US military, the Afghan government stands little chance of defeating the resurgent Taliban, according to experts cited by Stars and Stripes.

“The overly positive assessments are repeated so often that the leaders in the military and civilian world start to believe it,” director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network told the Department of Defense-based newspaper.

The Pentagon’s claims that violence is down in Afghanistan is “borderline insane,” International Crisis Group’s lead Afghanistan analyst Graeme Smith told Stars and Stripes.

“You’re saying that the war is getting smaller, and its not; its getting a lot bigger. Policy needs to adjust to deal with the fact that the inferno is growing,” Smith said.

More than 5,000 Afghan security forces, who received their paychecks from the US government were killed during 2014 in fighting with Taliban and other anti-government militants, according to statistics provided by Kabul.

Civilian fatalities have reached their highest levels since 2009, according to a UN report released last week, which confirmed the deaths of at least 3,600 noncombatants and wounding of another 6,800 in 2014.

Amdist the ongoing catastrophe that is a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, US policy makers and generals are clearly determined to intensify operations against its population for years to come.

With reports of growing Chinese political influence in Afghanistan, including the cultivation of ties with sections of the government as well as with the Taliban, Washington is determined to maintain its military grip on the country and Central Asia as a whole, which remain important linchpins in its drive to control the Eurasian landmass.

Turkish troops enter northern Syria

Patrick Martin

A force of 600 Turkish troops entered northern Syria Saturday in the first-ever incursion by Turkey since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. The convoy of nearly 200 military vehicles, including 39 tanks and 57 armored cars, evacuated 40 Turkish soldiers guarding the tomb of Suleyman Shah, an ancestor of the Ottoman dynasty that ruled Turkey for 500 years.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appeared at a press conference Sunday, flanked by military officials, to declare that the evacuation had been conducted successfully and the troops had returned with the loss of only a single soldier, under circumstances that were not explained.

The remains of Suleyman Shah were transported to a new location in Syria, just across the border from Turkey, which will be occupied by Turkish troops from now on. Instead of a group of 40 soldiers serving as semi-hostages deep in Syrian territory, the Turkish military now has a bridgehead on the border with Aleppo province, one of the key battlegrounds in the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad said it was informed of the Turkish incursion ahead of time but did not give its consent. A spokesman for Damascus, which no longer controls the area where the tomb was located, denounced Turkey’s “flagrant aggression” on Syrian territory.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which had surrounded the site of Suleyman’s tomb, made no effort to resist or attack the withdrawal convoy, Turkish officials said. When ISIS forces first surrounded the tomb, the Turkish military reinforced the guards with special forces troops.

The Turkish incursion was made possible by the victory of US-backed Kurdish forces who retook the border city of Kobane earlier this month, after months of air strikes by the US, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sheikdoms that reportedly killed several thousand ISIS fighters. The Turkish military convoy drove straight through Kobane on their way to the tomb, with the agreement of the Syrian Kurdish force, the YGP.

After removing every artifact from the tomb, located on the Euphrates River, the Turkish troops blew up the building, leaving only rubble behind. On their return to the Turkish-Syrian border, in what one news report called “a hugely symbolic move,” Turkish troops raised the Turkish flag over a portion of the Syrian border district of Eshme chosen as the tomb’s new location.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “Our flag will continue to fly in a new place to keep alive the memory of our ancestors.”

The tomb of Suleyman Shah, whose death is dated 1236, was declared a Turkish enclave inside the French colony of Syria under the terms of the 1921 Treaty of Ankara, one of multiple agreements that finalized borders after World War I.

The incursion is of far more than historical or ceremonial significance. Not only did it represent the first military operation by Turkey inside Syria, it was coordinated with the Syrian Kurdish forces who up to now Turkey has treated with hostility because of their links with the outlawed Kurdish nationalist PKK inside Turkey.

In an action that coincided with the Turkish incursion—whose size and scope would certainly have distracted the attention of ISIS forces—the Syria YPG launched an offensive late Saturday night aimed at expanding its control of the northeastern province of Hassakeh, pushing back ISIS forces around the town of Tal Hamis.

Pro-Kurdish media sources claimed that the YPG “managed to advance and took over some 20 villages, farms and hamlets in the area.” Warplanes from the US and its Arab allies carried out strikes against ISIS positions that were coordinated with the YPG offensive.

While Syrian Kurdish forces began pushing eastward, Iraqi Kurdish forces have pushed westward, gaining ground at the expense of ISIS and reportedly cutting the main highway between Mosul, the largest Iraqi city held by ISIS, and the Islamic fundamentalist group’s headquarters at Raqqa, Syria.

In late January, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops captured the town of Kiske, west of Mosul on the highway to Raqqa. They had first attempted to capture Sinjar, another town on the highway, but were stalled there and moved further west.

The Associated Press reported Friday that ISIS troops had been forced to withdraw from the town of al-Bab, in Aleppo province, and that there was heavy fighting between ISIS and Syrian army troops near the Deir el-Zour air base, the last major outpost of the Assad regime in eastern Syria.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that ISIS forces were also under pressure around the city of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and a longtime stronghold of Sunni opposition to the US invasion and conquest of Iraq. Some 10,000 Iraqi Shiite militiamen, together with some regular Iraqi Army troops, assembled south and east of Tikrit on Saturday in preparation for a major offensive.

The Post reported that “Qassim Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was also in the city to oversee the operation, according to local officials.” Iran has been providing military advice and limited air support to the Shiite militias that have done most of the recent fighting against ISIS in central Iraq, north and northeast of Baghdad.

Both the Turkish incursion and the actions of Kurdish, Shiite and Iraqi army troops suggest that major US-backed military operations may already be under way. The highly publicized official leak of plans for a coordinated onslaught on Mosul in April or May may well be deliberate disinformation, aimed at disguising offensive operations that would begin much sooner, including saturation bombing as well as ground assaults.