5: East Aleppo under heavy attack again despite ceasefire
Syrian government forces renewed shelling on the last holdouts of rebel-held eastern Aleppo, raising fears that a deal to evacuate civilians and fighters from the devastated city may not be honoured.
“There is artillery [being fired] now … as I speak,” Zouhir Al Shimale, a journalist in east Aleppo, told Al Jazeera in a WhatsApp message on Wednesday.
“There aren’t any clashes,” he said, explaining rebel groups were not fighting at the moment. “There are injuries, but we don’t know how many. We can’t go outside because the shelling is indiscriminate.”
Aljazeera
4: Slaughter or Liberation?: A Debate on Russia’s Role in the Syrian War & the Fall of Aleppo
With the aid of Russian airstrikes, Syria has taken near full control of the city of Aleppo in a major defeat for forces hoping to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Before fighting began in 2012, Aleppo was Syria’s largest city with a population of over 2 million. Some of the first major peaceful protests against Assad’s rule broke out in Aleppo in March 2011. But today the city is in shambles after four years of fighting between Syria and rebel groups. A turning point in the battle of Aleppo occurred in September 2015, when Russia began carrying out airstrikes to aid the Syrian government. Russia described the fall of Aleppo as a victory against terrorists and jihadists. But the United States has decried the Russian-backed offensive. We host a debate between Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, and Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
Democracy Now
3: How Is Rex Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State Pick, Going to Handle Russia?
Early Tuesday morning, President-Elect Donald Trump officially announced—via Twitter, of course—his pick for secretary of state: Rex Tillerson, a Texan who has spent his entire career working for ExxonMobil and ran the company since 2004. The 64-year-old oilman’s total lack of government experience is a common trait among Trump’s cabinet-level picks, but what has alarmed most critics is Tillerson’s ties to Russia—as CEO and chairman of Exxon, he’s made many deals with Russian government–owned oil company Rosneft, and was given an award by Russian president Vladimir Putin; some of Exxon’s deals in the country have also been held up by US sanctions.
Tillerson’s relationship with Russia makes sense in context. There’s a lot of oil there, and as Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of a book on Exxon, explained in the New Yorker, oil projects do better in countries where the political situation is unchanging, which often means they flourish under authoritarian leaders. But his Russian connections are striking given Trump’s occasional praise of Putin, his advisers’ links to Russia, and his dismissal of intelligence reports that Russia was behind hacks into the emails of his Democratic opponents.
Vice News
2: HERE’S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC – IT’S NOT ENOUGH
THERE ARE SOME good reasons to believe Russians had something to do with the breaches into email accounts belonging to members of the Democratic party, which proved varyingly embarrassing or disruptive for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean good enough to indict Russia’s head of state for sabotaging our democracy.
There’s a lot of evidence from the attack on the table, mostly detailing how the hack was perpetrated, and possibly the language of the perpetrators. It certainly remains plausible that Russians hacked the DNC, and remains possible that Russia itself ordered it. But the refrain of Russian attribution has been repeated so regularly and so emphatically that it’s become easy to forget that no one has ever truly proven the claim. There is strong evidence indicating that Democratic email accounts were breached via phishing messages, and that specific malware was spread across DNC computers. There’s even evidence that the attackers are the same group that’s been spotted attacking other targets in the past. But again: No one has actually proven that group is the Russian government (or works for it). This remains the enormous inductive leap that’s not been reckoned with, and Americans deserve better.
We should also bear in mind that private security firm CrowdStrike’s frequently cited findings of Russian responsibility were essentially paid for by the DNC, who contracted their services in June. It’s highly unusual for evidence of a crime to be assembled on the victim’s dime. If we’re going to blame the Russian government for disrupting our presidential election — easily construed as an act of war — we need to be damn sure of every single shred of evidence. Guesswork and assumption could be disastrous.
The gist of the Case Against Russia goes like this: The person or people who infiltrated the DNC’s email system and the account of John Podesta left behind clues of varying technical specificity indicating they have some connection to Russia, or at least speak Russian. Guccifer 2.0, the entity that originally distributed hacked materials from the Democratic party, is a deeply suspicious figure who has made statements and decisions that indicate some Russian connection. The website DCLeaks, which began publishing a great number of DNC emails, has some apparent ties to Guccifer and possibly Russia. And then there’s Wikileaks, which after a long, sad slide into paranoia, conspiracy theorizing, and general internet toxicity, has made no attempt to mask its affection for Vladimir Putin and its crazed contempt for Hillary Clinton. (Julian Assange has been stuck indoors for a very, very long time.) If you look at all of this and sort of squint, it looks quite strong indeed, an insurmountable heap of circumstantial evidence too great in volume to dismiss as just circumstantial or mere coincidence.
The Intercept
1: Poland restricts public meetings
Poland’s conservative parliament has passed a law restricting public meetings, which that has been slammed by the opposition as anti-democratic.
The legislation, passed late on Tuesday, introduces the concept of “periodic meetings” for rallies organised repeatedly in the same place and on the same date, giving such gatherings priority over other meetings. Under the new law, unrelated meetings must take place at least 100 metres (yards) away from any meeting designated “periodic”.
The ruling rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party said the law would boost the security of participants at all gatherings by preventing clashes. But opposition lawmakers said the rules prevented “street dialogue” and restricted freedom of speech. They claim the law will allow PiS to organise a monthly meeting, protected from counter-protests, to commemorate the 2010 Smolensk plane crash.
The Guardian
