How Free Eyeglasses Are Boosting Test Scores in Baltimore
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/17/how-free-eyeglasses-are-boosting-test-scores-in-baltimore-215501
It may well be that the solution to the persistent gap in reading proficiency is not instructional, but a simple health issue that could be addressed with a pair eyeglasses that could cost a couple of hundred dollars at the mall.
Israeli Officers : You’re Doing ISIS Wrong - POLITICO Magazine
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/22/israeli-officers-to-trump-youre-doing-isis-wrong-215172
(...) The United States has mishandled the situation in other ways, in the view of the Israelis I spoke with. For example, U.S. efforts to train rebel fighters inside Syria to fight ISIS are widely seen as counterproductive. “The CIA [training] program goes against Assad and the Pentagon program only goes for rebels against ISIS,” the intelligence officer complained. “So what is the U.S. stance is not really clear here.”
Israeli analysts laid out several possible scenarios ahead for the Syrian civil war, including that Assad regains control of his country (not likely) and the regime grants some rebels group autonomy and economic incentives in return for coexistence (already well underway).
What they agree on is that Assad is now unquestionably winning. And he owes Hezbollah, the radical Shia Muslim proxy of Iran, “big time” for it.
The so-called Army of God, which has gone to war with Israel twice and constitutes a state within a state in neighboring Lebanon, has lost an estimated 1,700 fighters bleeding for the Syrian dictator and as payback is now seeking to expand its new base of operations in Syria—which also means a new sphere of influence for the mullahs in Tehran.
“If Assad wins,” one IDF official in the Golan Heights told me, “we will have Hezbollah on two borders not one.”
Yavne, the brigadier general, similarly described the Iranian influence as significantly more worrisome than ISIS or other Sunni Muslim terror groups:
“If I can be frank, the radical axis headed by Iran is more risky than the global jihad one," said Yavne. “It is much more knowledgeable, stronger, with a bigger arsenal.”
As far as these Israeli officers are concerned, the ideal strategy is to sit back and let both types of groups duke it out—and work to contain the conflict rather than trying to end it with military force. As the IDF intelligence officer put it, “the battle for deterrence is easier than the battle for influence.”
But does that mean the United States and its allies should simply allow ISIS to retain its so-called caliphate in parts of eastern Syria and eastern Iraq?
“Why not?” the officer shot back. “When they asked the late [Israeli] Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the Iraq-Iran War in the 80s, who does Israel stand for, Iraq or Iran, he said, ‘I wish luck to both parties. They can go at it, killing each other.’ The same thing is here. You have ISIS killing Al Qaeda by the thousands, Al Qaeda killing ISIS by the thousands. And they are both killing Hezbollah and Assad.”
I asked an IDF official peering out into the Syrian frontier a similar question—about the consequences of America’s war against ISIS in the region.
“There is no lack of Islamic militant groups here,” he said, clutching a machine gun in one hand and a pineapple popsicle in another. “You just haven’t heard of them yet.”
Bryan Bender is POLITICO’s national security editor and the author of You Are Not Forgotten .
via @nidal
CIA Memo: Designating Muslim Brotherhood Could ‘Fuel Extremism’ - POLITICO Magazine
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/cia-memo-designating-muslim-brotherhood-could-fuel-extremism-214757?mc_cid
Trump administration officials pushing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization face at least one significant obstacle: analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency.
CIA experts have warned that so labeling the decades-old Islamist group “may fuel extremism” and damage relations with America’s allies, according to a summary of a finished intelligence report for the intelligence community and policymakers that was shared with POLITICO by a U.S. official.
The document, published internally on Jan. 31, notes that the Brotherhood—which boasts millions of followers around the Arab world—has “rejected violence as a matter of official policy and opposed al-Qa’ida and ISIS.”
It acknowledges that “a minority of MB [Muslim Brotherhood] members have engaged in violence, most often in response to harsh regime repression, perceived foreign occupation, or civil conflicts.” Noting that there are branches of the group in countries such as Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Tunisia, it cautions that some of America’s allies in the region “probably worry that such a step could destabilize their internal politics, feed extremist narratives, and anger Muslims worldwide.”
“MB groups enjoy widespread support across the Near East-North Africa region and many Arabs and Muslims worldwide would view an MB designation as an affront to their core religious and societal values,” the document continues. “Moreover, a US designation would probably weaken MB leaders’ arguments against violence and provide ISIS and al-Qa’ida additional grist for propaganda to win followers and support, particularly for attacks against US interests.”
The CIA declined to comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. But the document threatens to pit the agency against a president who has dismissed its intelligence assessments and angered many in the intelligence community when he appeared before the agency’s Memorial Wall and exaggerated the size of the crowd at his inaugural address.
And it would seem to put the agency’s analysts at odds with its new director, Mike Pompeo, who as a member of Congress co-sponsored a bill to ban the Brotherhood and once warned in a radio appearance that Islamist groups were infiltrating the United States. “There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo told host Frank Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy and often promotes a conspiratorial view of Muslims. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”
Even before President Donald Trump took office, outside groups like Gaffney’s and some members of Congress had been pressuring his team to make the designation, a process that usually takes months and requires teams of analysts sifting through reams of intelligence reports to determine whether an organization fits the legal definition of a terrorist organization.
Liberals On the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/liberals-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown-214727
Sur le #conspirationnisme effréné des « #liberals » généré par (les actions de) Trump.
In the end, Kremlinology said a lot more about the people practicing it than it ever did about the Soviet Union. Like all fantasies, it expressed a desire. A universe that could make sense, if only you were smart enough to understand it. A politics that could be reduced to the competing ambitions of a few graying and liver-spotted men. Above all, a global order that—like the dull machinations of MI6 or the CIA—is always powered by conspiracy. So it’s significant that Kremlinology is back. Except this time, the mysterious closed system to be analyzed is no longer far away on the chilly edge of Europe. America has turned its suspicions inward, on the strange and spooky world of Donald Trump.
faux problèmes Trump tente vainement de lutter contre l’état profond représenté par l’ancienne équipe qui a pris le pouvoir lors du 11 septembre 2001 et on le fait passer pour un fou. Ces ennemis les plus sérieux les services secrets, la COG la NSA Mac Cain, les Clinton, Bush family etLes néocons en général.