A delegation of the European Parliament is paying an official visit to Sri Lanka from 1st-3rd November. The delegation is comprised of the Chair Ms Jean Lambert (UK), Vice-Chair Richard Corbett (UK), Ms Ulrike Mueller (Germany) and Wajid Khan (UK).

The visit provides Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) with an opportunity to inform themselves on developments since their last official visit in 2016 and to discuss issues of common interest with the Sri Lankan authorities. The delegation visited the Northern Province on 1st November and met with the Governor and civil society representatives. They also visited an EU-funded resettlement site and held discussions with some of those who have resettled.

In Colombo, MEPs had the opportunity of meeting the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Development and International Trade and the Leader of the Opposition R. Sampanthan. They also met senior officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry for National Integration and Reconciliation. In the evening of 2nd November, the MEPs were received by the Speaker of Parliament, on the occasion of the 9th inter-parliamentary meeting between the European Parliament and the Parliament of Sri Lanka.

The delegation welcomes a number of positive developments that have taken place since their last official visit, such as the decision to readmit Sri Lanka to its preferential trade programme GSP+ and the lifting of the ban on Sri Lanka’s fisheries exports to the EU market. These measures will create more job opportunities and foster bilateral trade.

The goal of Trump and the Republican leaders is to pull off a giant redistribution of over $1 trillion from the middle-class, working-class, and poor to the rich, who are already richer than ever.

They’re selling this to the public with a false claim that the middle-class will benefit from their tax cut plan. It’s a gigantic Trojan horse.

For most Americans, the proposed tax cuts are tiny and temporary. That’s right – temporary. They will shrink in just a few years. And some middle class Americans will actually get a tax increase.

Meanwhile, the top 1 percent will get a gigantic tax cut. The Tax Policy Center estimates that the current plan will save the bottom 80 percent between $50 and $450 in taxes per year, but that it saves each person in the top 1 percent an average of $129,000 a year. For people at the very top, like Trump himself, the tax cuts are humongous. And the corporations they own will also get a massive tax cut.

Republicans say economic “growth” will pay for the tax cuts, so there’s no need to cut social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

But Republicans have just passed a budget that would cut nearly $1.5 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for these tax cuts. Pell Grants, housing assistance, and even cancer research are also on the chopping block.

Now, they say we shouldn’t take their budget resolution seriously. It was just a device to get the tax bill through the Senate with 51 votes.

But once these tax cuts are passed, the budget deficit will explode. The Tax Policy Center predicts that it will cut federal revenue by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

When that happens, the only way out of the crisis will be something dramatic – exactly the cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, and maybe even Social Security – that Republicans have wanted for years.

By this time, any talk of raising taxes on the rich will be dismissed.

Using the promise of middle-class tax cuts as a Trojan horse for a tax windfall for the rich and deep spending cuts is a tactic dating back to the Reagan administration.

But the version they’re aiming for now is “YUGE.”

We must see the strategy for what it is. And it must be stopped.

Now we can see why they initially tried to keep a lid on the content of the infamous “Russia-linked” social media advertisements.

While grilling representatives of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a number of social media ads they claim were taken out by “Russia-linked” accounts for the purpose of interfering in the US electoral process.

The ads were supposed to have swayed Americans away from Hillary and toward Trump…or undermined our confidence in democracy…or…well something bad!

But the truth is they were so strange and even funny (see above) that one might be led to believe someone is having a giant joke on everyone who is pushing the “Russia meddled” story.

This was a sophisticated Russian operation targeting the American electoral system?

But the absurdity of the claim is unfortunately lost on a few dead-enders, namely a majority of the US Congress and seemingly all of the mainstream US media.

To these two groups, the following seemingly-unrelated advertisements taken out on social media were clearly part of an extraordinarily well-planned and successful Russian intelligence operation to massively sway American public opinion.

As the Washington Post breathlessly reports:

These Facebook ads, like several others that had emerged in news reports over the past several weeks, had the apparent goal of needling America’s cultural sore spots. …

Three ads from a group called “Stop All Invaders” showed photos of woman wearing an Islamic religious head-covering, along with calls to action to stop the spread of sharia law. “All face covering should be banned in every state across America!” read one ad, which had been shared more than 4,300 times and drummed up 14,000 likes alone.

Another Facebook ad promoted a “Down With Hillary!” rally in July 2016 outside Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. The ad was targeted to Facebook users, 18 to 65 years old, who had declared interest in Donald Trump or Donald Trump Jr. and lived within 25 miles of New York City.

Yet another ad targeted the other end of the political spectrum with the creation of a “Black Matters” community page, mimicking the language of the popular Black Lives Matter movement.

This is how the Russian government got Trump in power? Paying for anti-Sharia ads, paying for ads promoting Donald Trump to Donald Trump voters, and creating a “Black Lives Matter” support page highlighting police brutality in black communities? That’s what they did?

Again, Americans should be laughing at such nonsense. But not Congress. They’re hysterical! They’ve found the smoking gun!

Sen. Diane Feinstein screeched at the representatives of Google, Twitter, and Facebook at the hearing today:

What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyberwarfare. What we’re talking about is a major foreign power with sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country. We are not going to go away, gentlemen. And this is a very big deal.

Drilling down a little further into the statement made by the witnesses at the Intelligence Committee hearing, the claims are that these ads and many more like them were taken out by “Russia-linked” groups and thus should not have been allowed. But what exactly is a “Russia-linked” group? Has it been positively identified as an arm of the Russian government or an independent entity funded by the Russian government? Is it a group tied to Russian intelligence? Does it have any tie whatsoever to the Russian government?

Twitter’s criteria for determining which accounts were “Russia-linked” should raise some alarm bells. According to a prepared statement by Sean J. Edgett Acting General Counsel, Twitter, Inc., the company considers a user “Russia-linked” if any of the following criteria are met:

(1) the account had a Russian email address, mobile number, credit card, or login IP;
(2) Russia was the declared country on the account; or
(3) Russian language or Cyrillic characters appeared in the account information or name.

This is an incredibly sloppy methodology that relies on major linguistic sleight-of-hand. “Russia-linked” can easily mean that something has some sort of linkage to Russia — its people, culture, language. In that way, a Russian restaurant in New York is “Russia-linked” because it serves Russian food. There is a link. But the way it is being used by those who are obsessed with finding Russian government meddling in the US election is to suggest that “Russia-linked” is “Russian government-linked.” The two things are very different and conflating them is a massive logical fallacy. Would it not sound strange to refer to all American users of Twitter as “America-linked”? Clearly the implication is that “Russia-linked” users are agents of the Kremlin when in fact there is zero evidence to support such an assertion.

How many Twitter users might insert a bit of Cyrillic text into their account information or name who have nothing whatsoever to do with Russia? Who aren’t even Russian citizens or residents? Who may actually despise Russia or its current government? What about American business persons operating in Russia? Might they have a credit card from a Russian bank? A Russian mobile phone number? What about US exchange students? What about European or African or Asian exchange students or business persons?

As Moscow-based Irish journalist Bryan MacDonald Tweeted:

I have a Russian phone, a mail.ru account, a Russian bank card, my location is Russia & I often use Cyrillic. Thus, I am obviously a bot. https://t.co/6jbcFqSaKm

— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) November 1, 2017

We are talking about millions of potential “false-positives” if this is the criteria used by social media to determine who is trying to undermine the American electoral system.

Google released the results of its investigation into “Security and Disinformation in the US 2016 Election” and the results were similarly underwhelming. On YouTube, it identified 18 suspicious channels that “appeared to be political” but that “​also ​posted ​non-political videos, ​e.g., ​personal ​travelogues.”

These must have been incredibly influential YouTube channels if they helped sway the election.

But no, according to Google:

● These ​videos ​generally ​had ​very ​low ​view ​counts; ​only ​around ​3 ​percent ​had ​more ​than ​5,000 views.

● These ​channels’ ​videos ​were ​not ​targeted ​to ​the ​U.S. ​or ​to ​any ​particular ​sector ​of ​the ​U.S. population

So the election was manipulated by 18 YouTube channels of people’s travel videos (presumably in Russia) that didn’t target any particular section of the US population and that no one watched. This is evidence of Sen. Feinstein’s “major foreign power with sophistication and ability”?

Why did not one single Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee ask the witnesses what exactly “Russia-linked” means? How intelligent is that? Why did not one Senator ask why Russia would take out pro-Trump ads targeting pro-Trump voters? Why did no Senator cast a skeptical eye on the real impact of these supposed influence operations, that in fact reached a minuscule fraction of American voters? The answer is that they believe it because they want to believe it. Washington is literally not able to function without an enemy to focus on. The entire US political system is based on threats and enemies.

The military-industrial complex is the lubrication of the wheels of government and without an enemy to generate enormous profits those wheels will seize up. If the Americans understood how they are being played by the elites, being lied to about the “threats” and “enemies” they would rip Washington apart. But if Washington has its way, they will never know. The “solution” to the problem “uncovered” in these hearings is for much more censorship in the social media. Criticism of US foreign policy will be considered subversive and likely serving a foreign power. It will be crushed — or more accurately, “disappeared” with the help of a slight algorithm adjustment. The social media companies declared a willingness to work with Congress to craft new legislation to prevent any “fake news” from getting into their platforms.

Welcome to oblivion.

(BTW does anyone else notice similarities in style between some of these “Russian” ads and the equally bizarre “Innocents of Muslims” film trailer on which the Obama Administration falsely — and knowingly falsely — blamed the attack on a US CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya?)

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

A target of massive Saudi investment, the Maldives severed diplomatic relations with Qatar hours after a Saudi-UAE-led alliance of largely financially dependent states declared in June an economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state. That didn’t stop the Football Federation of Maldives from signing a cooperation agreement with its Qatari counterpart five months later, raising questions of the degree of support for the boycott even within the alliance.

The question is not merely hypothetical. It goes to both the heart of the failure of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to garner significant international support for their effort to force Qatar to drop its independent foreign and defense policies, and the two states’ attempts to persuade world soccer body FIFA to deprive the Gulf country of its 2022 World Cup hosting rights. The international community by and large has called for a speedy negotiated end to the Gulf crisis.

The Maldives’ cutting of diplomatic ties with Qatar was in support of the alliance’s demands that Qatar halt support for militants, shutter the Al Jazeera television network, and reduce its ties to Iran. Qatar and the UAE in particular have, moreover, been locked into a covert war that precedes the boycott by several years in which the government in Abu Dhabi targeted Qatar’s hosting rights.

Dubai’s idiosyncratic police chief, Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan, recently went as far as saying that the UAE and Saudi Arabia would lift their boycott if Qatar surrendered its hosting rights – a demand that was rejected by Qatar out of hand.

Recent German and Austrian media reported that a German campaign to stop extremism by persuading the European Union to take regulatory and punitive action against funders of extremism was funded by the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The campaign, which targets left and right-wing as well as Islamic militancy, identified Qatar and Turkey as the main funders of extremism in Europe. Supported by prominent Germans and Austrians, many with an immigrant background, the campaign has denied funding by Qatar’s detractors.

Businessmen with Qatari interests suspect, however, that the campaign will target Qatar’s hosting rights once it has garnered its targeted one million signatures on a petition demanding tougher EU policies on the funding of extremism. “This initiative is to align with the other German Qatar detractors by next year to agitate for a withdrawal of the hosting rights,” one businessman said.

All of which makes the Maldives soccer federation’s forging of closer ties to Qatar the more remarkable. The move followed not only the government’s breaking off of diplomatic relations with Qatar, but also Saudi efforts to squash criticism of controversial potential investments in the island republic as well as assertions that massive Saudi funding of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative educational and cultural activities has put the Maldives’ traditional adherence to Sufism, a more mystical strand of Islam, on the defensive.

Journalists reporting on a potential $10 billion Saudi-funded real estate project that media reports asserted could involve the acquisition by the kingdom of Faafu, a collection of 19 low-lying islands 120 kilometres south of the Maldives capital of Male, were handed cash-filled envelopes during an event at the Saudi embassy in Mahe to counter the assertion. The project would allegedly involve building seaports, airports, high-end housing and resorts and the creation of special economic zones.

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen denied that the atoll would be sold, and the Saudi embassy said it had no intention “of investing in a megaproject or buying an island or atoll in the Maldives.” But the fact that Mr. Yameen pushed to change the Constitution in 2015 to allow the sale of property to foreign entities has fuelled rumours of potential sales to both Saudi Arabia and China.

Yameen Rashid, a 29-year-old popular blogger and prominent critic of creeping authoritarianism and Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism in the Maldives was brutally stabbed and killed as he walked home from work earlier this year. His killers, believed to be Islamic militants, have yet to apprehended. Militants have also targeted liberals and other critics of the government.

The rise of ultra-conservatism has put on the defensive the Maldives’ long-standing live-and-let-live tolerance that helped make the atolls a high-end vacation destination. It has increasingly been replaced by more intolerant and puritan expressions of Islam. Public partying, mixed dancing and Western beach garb have become acceptable only within expensive tourist resorts.

Cultural change has been paralleled by a change in the Maldives’ political course. The Maldives has moved from being a small state that balances its relations with regional powers to an outpost of the kingdom’s geopolitical and religious worldview. As a result, the Maldives, in addition to subscribing to the boycott of Qatar, has joined a Saudi-led military alliance that nominally seeks to combat terrorism but has an anti-Iranian undertone, and severed ties to Iran, the kingdom’s arch rival.

The Maldives’ move into the Saudi orbit fortified the kingdom in its fierce struggle with Iran for regional hegemony. The atolls’ strategic position in the Indian Ocean, a straight three-hour shot from the Iranian coast, moreover, strengthened Saudi efforts to position itself as a more strategic ally of China in competition with Iran.

Analysts believe that both Saudi Arabia and China see the atolls as a potential host of military bases that would complement their separate outposts in Djibouti, an East African nation on a key energy export route at the mouth of the Red Sea.

They “want to have a base in the Maldives that would safeguard trade routes – their oil routes – to their new markets. To have strategic installations, infrastructure,” said exiled former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, who lost power in 2012 following protests over rising commodity prices and the nation’s poor economy.

The Saudis “have had a good run of propagating their world view to the people of the Maldives and they’ve done that for the last three decades. They’ve now, I think, come to the view that they have enough sympathy to get a foothold,” Mr. Nasheed said.

If soccer is anything to go by, Saudi Arabia’s grip on the Maldives may either be fraying or have been overstated by critics like Mr. Nasheed.

Speaking in Qatar at the signing of the cooperation agreement, Maldives soccer federation Bassam Adeel Jaleel insisted that the government, on which the football body is financially dependent, was “happy” with the forging of closer ties despite the boycott of the Gulf state.

Insisting that the Maldives could learn from Qatari preparations for the World Cup, Mr. Jaleel attempted to shield the government by noting that it adhered to the principle of a “separation of politics from football,” a fiction that governments and sports associations uphold because it gives them license to exploit to their advantage the incestuous relationship between the two. In the Maldives, that appears to amount to hedging the government’s bets as Qatar, five months into the Gulf crisis, has so far been able to resist Saudi and UAE pressure.

Apart from sensual appeals, the chief marketing wave in our country is selling convenience. It has reached a level of frenzy with companies like Amazon and Walmart racing your order to your doorstep (with Amazon now wanting the electronic key to your house).

Ever since the industrial revolution, when the division of labor between consumers and producers widened and deepened, the convenience of not having to grow your own food, weave your own clothes and build your own shelter have become a given of economic progress. Expert specialization has tended to make products better and more standardized as well.

But, in recent decades, adding tiers of conveniences touted by the vendors’ television/radio/print advertisements has rarely mentioned the downsides.

For example, consider the fast food industry. Fast food was sold to the American consumer as convenient, tasty and always available. For these shallow advantages, many consumers chose to give up home-made and nutritious meals for those with heavy doses of fat, sugar and salt—all deadly when taken in such excessive amounts by tens of millions of children and adults. Food that “melts in your mouth,” and “tastes great” usually comes with additives that turn your tongues against your brain and bodily health.

There is the convenience of credit and debit cards. It started in the nineteen fifties when a businessman found it inconvenient in restaurants to have to make sure he had enough cash. Why not sign up restaurants to take the Diner’s Card? Before long the question became, why not take it all the way to enable massive impulse buying, massive invasion of privacy, revolving debt traps, bankruptcies, and the iron collar of unilaterally determined credit scores ratings? Why not deliberately overextend  credit and turn consumers into hooked supplicants who won’t complain  to their car dealers, insurance agencies or landlords for fear of a complaint lowering scores and ratings?

What could be more convenient than signing on the dotted line of fine print contracts or click-on agreements? You don’t have to read, understand, bargain or reject. It’s easy, if you don’t mind having your rights taken away on page after page as fees, penalties and other overcharges plus closed courtroom doors plunge you into contract servitude or peonage.

Like any steps of “progress,” convenience taken too far induces dependency, ignorance of the product and service and more loss of voice, self-determination and self-reliance.  Today, rampant advertising and telemarketers tell  you to sign up to have your groceries be home-delivered. For some people with disabilities, this can be a plus, if you get what you ordered. For most people, the price is a loss of sociability, of going to markets where real people have meaningful interactions with learn from one another.

The promotion of touted quick-fix drugs, when successful, less invasive treatments are available with fewer deadly side-effects (note the pain-killer epidemic that will take 60,000 American lives this year) is accelerating beyond tranquilizers and sleeping pills. The advance of biologics could make Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) an understatement of silent manipulation and mind control.

How about the convenience of online gambling, pay-day loan rackets and cosmetic surgery—all loaded with their unpublicized and underreported costs or r the “convenience” of outsourcing your judgement and self-control by omnipresent apps?

But surely the “free” Facebook and Google do not come with such costs, do they? In return for this “free” service, you surrender your most personal information, which they turn into massive profits without giving you a share. Then they data-mine your buying profile for in-house use or outside sale; they select the news you get and expose you to anonymous, and often fraudulent, solicitations and propaganda. If these violations are invasive and omnipresent for you, just consider how it will affect your children and grandchildren?

Technology driven by narrow commercial interests needs to provoke us into asking, “What’s all this convenience doing over the long run? What kind of community and society is coming out of this unassessed marketing?” For a better future, we must mobilize, community by community, for some inconvenient thoughts and organization. Unless, that is, the corporate future doesn’t need us.

To get started, encourage your friends and neighbors to sign up for Jim Hightower’s Hightower Lowdown newsletter.

Spain has sponsored a Political Declaration by G-5 countries on women in the Sahel region. The main aim of the Political Declaration on Women in the Sahel is to renew efforts to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in relation to number 5 – achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.

The Political Declaration on Women in the Sahel was signed by the Ministers for the Family and Women of Mali, Traoré Oumou Touré; of Mauritania, Maimouna Taghi; of Niger, Elback Zeinabou Tari Bako, and of Chad, Kade Elisabeth, on Tuesday morning at Casa África [Africa House]. This declaration was sponsored by the Government of Spain, which endorsed it in the presence of the Government Delegate in the Canary Islands, Mercedes Roldós.

The effective inclusion of women in peace and security processes, increasing the participation of women at all levels of society and the fight against discrimination, gender-based violence embodied in such practices as female genital mutilation, young marriage, economic and healthcare exclusion and illiteracy are all contained in this document, which reaffirms the commitment of the G-5 Sahel countries to African development through support for women.

On Tuesday morning, Casa África hosted a working day designed within the framework of the International Meeting on Women in the Sahel, which gathered together the four ministers responsible for the portfolio of women’s affairs in Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania (Burkina Faso was unable to attend but guaranteed its support for the initiative), which was inaugurated by the State Secretary for Social Services and Equality, Mario Garcés. The event was also attended by the Director-General for Africa of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Raimundo Robredo; the High Representative of the European Union for the Sahel, Ángel Losada; the Spanish Ambassador on Special Mission for the Sahel, Antonio Torres-Dulce; the Vice-Councillor for Foreign Action of the Regional Government of the Canary Islands, Luis Padilla; the Director of the Women’s Institute, Lucía del Carmen Cerón, and the Director-General of Casa África, Luis Padrón.

The meeting was also attended by Cristina Díaz Fernández-Gil, Director of Cooperation with Africa and Asia of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Spanish acronym: AECID), and, on behalf of civil society, by the former Vice-President of the Government and President of the Women for Africa Foundation, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega; and the Coordinator for International Cooperation of the Entreculturas Foundation, Pablo Funes.

As well as confirming the commitment by the G-5 Sahel to the goals of the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ Agenda and following the implementation of Resolution 1325/2000 and similar resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, the African ministers also thanked Spain for the initiative and undertook to continue their coordination with the aim of boosting equality and the growing participation of women at decision-making levels in their respective countries. They also reaffirmed that they would use the platforms for cooperation and integration to this end at a European and global level and in the Sahel.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated on Jerome H. Powell of Maryland to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years beginning February 3, 2018.

According to the White House, “As a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors since May 2012, Mr. Powell has demonstrated steady leadership, sound judgment, and policy expertise.”

In a statement, the White House said that Powell “will bring to the Federal Reserve a unique background of Government service and business experience”

Powell previously served as Under Secretary at the Department of Treasury in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Powell also has nearly three decades of business experience. He attended Princeton University where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Politics in 1975 and continued his studies at Georgetown University, where he earned a Juris Doctor. While at Georgetown, Powell served as the editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Law Journal.

For the past almost 30 years wealth gains concentrated in the richest households, according to “The Wealth of Households: An Analysis of the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finance,” by economists David Rosnick and Dean Baker, released today by The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). The report incorporates the most recent 2016 Survey of Consumer Finance, the government’s best analysis of wealth, to offer a comprehensive panorama of household net wealth for the last 27 years.

Household wealth rose 95 percent over the last 27 years. In spite of losses during the Great Recession, it’s no surprise that the richest households reaped disproportionate amounts of this growth.

But for households in the middle of the wealth spectrum, home equity, severely damaged during the Great Recession, is an important contributor to wealth. The report puts a spotlight on the net wealth of near-retirees (ages 55-64) where home equity is a key factor in retirement security. For near-retiree households in the middle quintile, net wealth essentially flatlined from 1989 ($181,100) to 2016 ($195,600). This same group averaged a 58.5 percent equity stake in their homes compared to an 81.0 percent equity stake in 1989. “This implies that these households will be paying off a mortgage long into retirement if they stay in their homes,” writes Rosnick.

To better understand the wealth situation for retirees and near-retirees, this report introduces findings from a recent Census Bureau study which indicates that defined benefit pensions are considerably more important in sustaining income in retirement than previously thought.

Near-retirees should take notice of the shift away from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution plans, like 401-K plans. Rosnick concludes, “…today’s workers have little, if any, more wealth than their predecessors, indicating that defined contribution pension plans have failed to makeup for the loss of defined benefit pensions.”

But, it’s not all about those near the end of their working life. Just look at the 18-24 age bracket to see the dramatic increase in student loan debt in the bottom quintile, where the average student loan debt soared from $4,400 (1989) to $51,600 (2016). The average overall debt burden for that age group in the middle of the wealth spectrum more than doubled over the last 27 years. Chief among these debts are installment loans for education.

“Near-retirees are in the most precarious position within this economy where the bulk of the benefits are going to the rich. There is little prospect that their wealth situation will improve before retirement, they will be heavily dependent on Social Security, with little wealth besides their homes, and in most cases no other defined benefit pensions for support,” said co-author Dean Baker.

New York Times reporter Dan Barry tries desperately to affirm the unsubstantiated claims made by Catherine Corless, a secretary with no academic or research credentials, about the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland. He fails. His account is more anecdotal than anything else, breaking no new ground.

Barry has not unearthed one iota of evidence to dispute the charge that I have repeatedly made: There never was a mass grave containing the remains of nearly 800 children. It is a hoax. Perpetrated by Corless, the Irish media, and the American media—especially Irish Central—Barry  has now added his name to this discredited list.

In fairness to Barry, he does not take the fatal leap that Niall O’Dowd of Irish Central has. Barry writes of “the deaths of nearly 800 ‘illegitimate’ children at the since-demolished Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, from 1925 to 1961.” Notice he says nothing about a “mass grave.”

Thus does Barry depart from O’Dowd’s false accusations. To be specific,  Irish Central ran a bogus article earlier this year, “Tuam Mass Infant Grave is Confirmed, Now What Are We Going to Do?” In fact, no mass grave was ever confirmed. Even a government report never confirmed the existence of a mass grave. Does this not count for anything?

I will repeat my challenge to O’Dowd: Where are the pictures? Where are the pictures of the bodies of 800 children? Irish Central has a moral obligation to provide pictures of the bodies found in an unmarked grave.

Barry may not have taken O’Dowd’s bait, but he is guilty of saying that Corless has exposed “this property’s appalling truths.” So what are those truths? Anecdotal musings are not a substitute for evidence. Moreover, the more serious the charge, the more credible the evidence must be.

The closest Barry comes to providing evidence is his discussion of Mary Moriarty, a woman who called Corless about her story.

Moriarty said that in 1975, when she was a young married mother living in subsidized housing on the grounds of the former Mother and Baby Home, she and several neighbors encountered a young boy running around with a skull on a stick. He told them there were many more, and they followed him to the site. When they got there, Moriarty said the ground under her gave way, and she fell into a cave or tunnel.

Barry writes, “As far as she could see were little bundles stacked one on top of another, like packets in a grocery, each about the size of a large soda bottle and wrapped tight in graying cloth.” What were in those bundles? Barry does not say because Moriarty never bothered to find out.

Moriarty then reached out to Julia Carver Devaney, who once lived in the Mother and Baby Home, and later worked there. Speaking about the same site, she said, “Ah, yeah, that’s where the little babies is. Many a little one I carried out in the nighttime.”

Did Moriarty contact the authorities? No. Did she ask anyone to investigate? No. She offered her story in 2014, almost 40 years after her alleged findings. Barry never bothers to question why, or to question those who worked alongside Moriarty to validate her story.

As it turns out, 1975 was the same year when Barry Sweeney, and a friend of his, stumbled on a hole on the grounds of the Mother and Baby Home and found skeletons. In 2014, he was asked by the Irish Times to comment on Corless’ claim that there are “800 skeletons down that hole.”

Sweeney said, “Nothing like that.” How many were there? “About 20.” He later told a reporter for the New York Times there were “maybe 15 to 20 small skeletons.” This eyewitness account contradicts the Corless story, yet is apparently of no interest to Barry.

When the Corless account made a media splash in 2014, Ireland’s Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, said her story was “simply not true.” The local police said at that time that “there is no confirmation from any source that there are between 750 and 800 bodies present.” (My italics.)

Why didn’t Barry mention any of this? Why is he so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the unsubstantiated claims made by a local secretary? Why did he not question Corless about how her story continued to evolve, in a more dramatic fashion, as she became a media sensation? I have written about this before and am awaiting someone to answer me.

The willingness to believe the worst about the Catholic Church in Ireland is what Irish Central is known for—it loves the Irish, but is not exactly friendly to the Church. The New York Times, which has shown it is capable of rendering an honest account of this issue, should know better than to get ensnared in this trap.

The Irish are gifted storytellers. But there is a difference between telling stories and providing empirical evidence about a serious issue.

By Jutta Wolf*

A key solution to saving tropical forests is to secure the land rights of the indigenous peoples and local communities, and to invest in them as an effective strategy for reducing deforestation and slowing climate change, according to the new findings released in Berlin on November 1.

It was no surprise therefore when Mina Setra, Deputy Secretary General of The Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), said: “We are a proven solution to the long-term protection of forests, whose survival is vital for reaching our climate change goals. Yet in return, we face human rights violations, violence to our communities, criminalization of our peoples and the murder of our leaders.” The Alliance represents 17 million people in Indonesia.

“As recently as last year, at least 200 environmental activists were killed, and almost half of them were indigenous leaders. Hundreds of others are in jail because of their efforts to protect forests, while thousands have been evicted from their territories,” Setra told journalists.

He was briefing the press on November 1 together with indigenous and rural community leaders from 14 countries, who joined climate experts from Germany, the United States and Latin America in the German capital to call on the United Nations and national governments to act on a growing body of evidence demonstrating the ability of indigenous peoples and traditional forest communities to outperform all other managers of vulnerable tropical forests.

The delegation of local leaders was in Berlin as part of their tour of European capitals in a massive eco-bus emblazoned with the message, “Help defend the #GuardiansOfTheForest.” On the road since mid-October, they have brought stories of their plight and the promise they offer in combating climate change to people and policymakers Cologne, Brussels, London, Paris and Amsterdam. Their last stop will be the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, on November 6.

In Berlin, the delegation joined researchers from Woods Hole Research Center (Boston, U.S.), the Prisma Foundation (El Salvador) and Ecociencia (Ecuador) to warn of the urgent need to invest in protecting the land and forests of indigenous peoples and rural communities, and to invest in them as a vital strategy for saving tropical forests.

This new research has been released in Berlin as consensus grows among scientists that international climate goals on the table at the upcoming climate talks in Bonn (COP23) cannot be met unless they include the unique role forests play in soaking up carbon. In the lead up to COP23, scientists are demonstrating that, given the limitations of current technology, protecting and restoring forests may be the only way to get the world one-quarter closer to Paris Climate Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degree Celsius.

“Over time, we have developed powerful and peer-reviewed evidence that tropical forests can absorb and store huge quantities of carbon, which slows the pace of climate change by removing a significant portion of our emissions from the atmosphere,” said Richard Houghton, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Research Center and lead author on the global IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports for the UN. “The research also identifies a key way to make it happen—supporting indigenous forest peoples in their guardianship of their ancestral forests.”

According to recent research, for the first time, the world’s forests are a source – rather than a sink – of greenhouse gas emissions, which illustrates the danger of continued, unabated deforestation. Despite the ability of forests to absorb carbon, human activity – from large-scale deforestation from infrastructure projects to piecemeal degradation by illegal loggers – have pushed forests to the brink.

Researchers with PRISMA revealed that many of Germany’s efforts to save some of the world’s most treasured biodiversity hotspots in Central America have fallen far short of their goals – often because conservation funds have favored governments over indigenous and other local forest communities.

A second study, released at the same event by indigenous leaders and scientists from an innovative collaboration of NGOs from Amazon countries known as RAISG and research organizations from the U.S., looks at 15 years of deforestation data in the Amazon (2000- 2015) and concludes that deforestation within indigenous territories is vastly less than it is outside of these lands.

This study found that 83 percent of Amazon deforestation occurs in the 48 percent of the Amazon that falls outside indigenous territories and protected areas. The researchers established as well that 53 percent of the region’s carbon stocks are on indigenous lands, much of it at risk from threats such as agro-industrial expansion and mega-infrastructure projects.

“Together, our research suggests that strategies aimed at reducing emissions and conserving forests cannot succeed without the support of indigenous peoples and other local forest communities,” said Andrew Davis, a researcher with PRISMA. “And climate finance should recognize the importance of forests as a climate mitigation tool, and the role of forest peoples in protecting this vital resource.”

The PRISMA study of Germany’s aid to Mesoamerica concludes that climate funds are most effective and efficient when directly supporting local forest communities, according to Davis, the author. The analysis found that only 15% of US$3.1 billion in German aid aimed at conserving biodiversity projects in Mesoamerica has gone directly to communities on the ground.

“The vast majority of the funds have gone to governments,” Davis said, “and the results of the aid have been less than stellar. Investing directly in the organizations that are legitimate and accountable in the eyes of communities, as full partners in conservation and forest governance, is the key to success. This means ensuring that a greater percentage of international finance for climate and development reaches the local level.”

According to the second report made public in Berlin, Amazonian forests within Indigenous Peoples’ territories in four countries – Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – serve as strong barriers to deforestation, despite facing mounting threats.

The report released by a consortium of scientists, indigenous leaders and climate change policy experts revealed that 83% of gross deforestation in the Amazon Basin from 2001-2015 occurred outside the Indigenous Territories (IT) and Protected Natural Areas (PNA) that cover more than 50% of the Amazon.

“This is the first analysis that has been done in the Amazon Basin over a significant period of time, comparing statistics of deforestation inside and outside indigenous territories and protected areas,” said Jocelyn Therese, vice coordinator of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA in Spanish). “We found that deforestation rates are five times greater outside Indigenous Peoples’ territories broadly than they are inside those areas.”

Of the four countries analyzed in the RAISG report, only Brazil showed a sustained downward trend of deforestation.

“However, there is concern that the downward trend may be reversing in light of recent changes in federal policies,” Josse said. These are aimed at curtailing land rights of indigenous and other rural peoples guaranteed under the Brazilian Constitution.

In light of efforts to reverse land rights already granted to forest peoples in the region, Josse noted a trend of considerable concern in the regional data: A 50 percent rise in the rate of deforestation in indigenous territories that have not been recognized or titled (976 km2 to 1,501 km2).

The solution, and the message the coalition of indigenous leaders hopes to deliver at COP23 in Bonn, according to Therese of COICA, is to address the organization’s list of demands and proposals: The inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the elaboration and implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs); direct access to climate finance; an end to criminalization and violence against indigenous leaders and other environmental defenders; the titling of unsecured indigenous lands; implementation of government commitments to provide free, prior, and informed consent to Indigenous Peoples, regardless of whether the goal of a given project is conservation or development; and recognition of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge as a climate solution.

“Those priorities are essential to mitigating climate change because a significant amount of the forest carbon stocks in the Amazon Basin are in indigenous territories,” said Therese. “Even though there is a significantly lower deforestation rate on our lands, this research reveals that 12% of the total Basin’s forest carbon stocks on our lands are under significant pressures and threats. This means that those forested areas are already directly impacted by current development projects, and we will need help to protect them.”

*This report is based on material provided by #GuardiansOfTheForest.

In the shadowy world of covert proxy wars, Iran is taking centre stage, both as a target and a player. A series of incidents involving Iranian ethnic and religious minorities raise the spectre of the United States and Saudi Arabia seeking to destabilize the Islamic republic. Not to sit back passively, indications are that Iran beyond its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, and Shiite militias in Iraq, may be strengthening its relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In the latest signal of escalating proxy wars, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corp announced that it had “dismantled a terrorist team” that was “affiliated with global arrogance,” a reference to the United States and its allies, in the Islamic republic’s north-western province of East Azerbaijan. The announcement came weeks after Iran said that it had eliminated an armed group in a frontier area of the province of West Azerbaijan that borders on Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey. It also followed Iran’s assertion two months ago that it had disbanded some 100 “terrorist groups” in the south, southeast and west of the country.

To be sure, intermittent political violence in Iran cannot be reduced exclusively to potential foreign exploitation of minority ethnic and religious grievances in a bid to destabilize the Islamic republic. Nor can foreign exploitation be established beyond doubt despite multiple indications that it is a policy option under discussion in the United States and Saudi Arabia.

There is, moreover, little doubt that Iran’s detractors had no connection to a June 7 attack on the Iranian parliament and the grave of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran that killed 12 people and was claimed by the Islamic State, despite Iranian claims that Saudi Arabia was responsible.

Nor can revived agitation by Kurds, Baloch and Azeris be simply written off as foreign creations rather than expressions of long-standing and deep-seated grievances, even if the revival may in part have been inspired by secessionist trends among Iraqi and Syrian Kurds as well as developments in Catalonia.

There is however also no reason to exclude the possibility of the United States and its allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, seeking to exploit those grievances.

Iran is by no means a country wracked by political violence. Nonetheless, violence is gradually mounting. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) announced in January that it was resuming its armed struggle not “just for the Kurds in Iran’s Kurdistan, but (as) a struggle against the Islamic Republic for all of Iran.” PDKI militants, operating from Iraqi Kurdistan, have since repeatedly clashed with Iranian forces.

Pakistani militants in the province of Balochistan reported a massive flow of Saudi funds in the least years to Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative groups while a Saudi thinktank believed to be supported by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman published a blueprint for support of the Baloch and called for “immediate counter measures” against Iran.

For sure, US and Saudi moves to counter Iran go beyond potential exploitation of ethnic and religious grievances. Supported by the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia has recently forged close ties to the predominantly Shiite Iraqi government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi despite Mr. Al-Abadi’s rejection of demands that he roll back the power of Iranian-backed Shiites who played a key role in the fight against the Islamic State.

Similarly, US President Donald J. Trump appears to be goading Iran to walk away from the 2015 nuclear agreement. Mr. Trump earlier this month refused to certify to Congress that Iran was in compliance with the accord. The United States has also sought to limit the benefits Iran should garner from the accord.

The Trump administration, in its latest move, blocked Iranian participation in ITER, a multibillion-dollar fusion experiment in France. Increased scientific cooperation was part of the agreement’s bid to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons.

Included in this week’s release of 470,000 documents captured during the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout in which he was killed, was the Al Qaeda’s leader’s personal diary. The diary and other documents evidence Iran’s complex relationship with the jihadist group and serve to strengthen justification of the Trump administration’s tougher approach towards Iran.

Iran has not restricted its opportunistic, albeit calibrated support for militants, to Al Qaeda, but has played both sides of the divide in Afghanistan. In an indication that ties to the Taliban could strengthen because of US pressure on Pakistan to halt its support for militants, including the Taliban, Taliban fighters are looking to Iran as an alternative safe haven. “Many Taliban want to leave Pakistan for Iran. They don’t trust Pakistan anymore,” an Afghan fighter told The Guardian.

In a bid to counter Saudi influence in Afghanistan that dates back to the US-Saudi-backed jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, Iran played in the wake of the US ousting of the Taliban a key role in the Bonn conference that united disparate Afghan factions behind the government of Hamid Karzai. Iran has since allowed the Taliban to open a regional office in the south-eastern Iranian city of Zahedan. Late last year, Iran hosted several senior Taliban figures at an Islamic Unity conference.

The record of past efforts to engineer regime change in Iran through covert wars is mixed at best and dismal on balance. There is little reason to assume that a potential new round will fare any better. If anything, the attempts persuaded Iran to keep its lines open to Sunni Muslim jihadists, who hardly are natural allies for a Shiite Muslim regime. At the same time, the two-year-old experience with implementation of the nuclear agreement as well as Iranian support for not only the Taliban but also the government in Kabul suggests grey areas in which reduction rather than escalation of conflict may be possible.

By Ja’afar Haqpanah*

Despite all protests and objections from regional and international actors, a referendum on the independence of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region was finally held through insistence of the region’s officials and with cooperation of Kurdish elites and political parties. While proponents of this referendum, that is, the Kurdish people living in the northern parts of Iraq, considered it as a sign of their quest for independence and an effort to realize their right to self-determination, its opponents in Baghdad and elsewhere outside Iraq equated the referendum with a secessionist effort, which was incompatible with fundaments of the international order and the principle, which says countries’ borders cannot be changed. This difference alone is good evidence to show how challenging has been this development.

This challenge, however, is not simply of a legal nature to be solely analyzed on the basis of the Iraqi constitution or international norms and regulations, so that, a solution could be found for it in this way. In fact, this challenge enjoys interconnected societal, political, security and economic aspects, while at the same time, consisting of intertwined intra-Kurdish, intra-Iraqi, regional, international and global levels. Therefore, this challenge seems to be a very complicated phenomenon. As a result, it cannot be compared with such ephemeral phenomena as the emergence of Daesh or announcement of the Daesh caliphate. On the opposite, one can expect that new security arrangements in the post-Daesh Middle East and over medium and long terms will be mostly affected by the Kurdish entity even though it is too soon to consider this independence-seeking or secessionist movement as an independent variable in the power equations of the region.

Apart from the unique role played by Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, Kurdish parties and elites, as well as the central government in Baghdad, there is a plethora of other effective factors among which the role played by Iran and Turkey is noteworthy at a regional level, while special attention should be also paid to the actions taken by the United States of America.

US activism

The role played by the United States of America in shaping or disturbing security arrangements in the Middle East must be analyzed from the viewpoint of this country’s performance as a transregional power, which can affect all aspects and levels of the Kurdish challenge. At the intra-Kurdish level, the United States has an active consular mission in the city of Erbil, which is in interaction with the majority of the Iraqi Kurdish elites and parties. Therefore, since 1992 up to the present time, Iraqi Kurds have especially counted on the United States as well as its support and positive views in order to promote their strategy for creating power balance with Baghdad and reducing the pressure from regional governments. Of course, Kurds themselves are well aware that their independence seeking drive would be aborted without support from the United States and this is why they have been consistently trying to introduce themselves as the most reliable ally for the United States in the Middle East. At the same time, they do not have a high degree of trust in the United States as a result of past experiences and have somehow lost hope in being able to get support of Washington.

To understand this issue, we must pay attention to the second level of the US activism with regard to the Kurdish issue, which is also related to this country’s large-scale strategy with regard to Iraq. Despite spending a total of about one trillion dollars in Iraq in addition to high human casualties since the occupation of the country in 2003, the United States has been blamed for the chaotic situation in the Arab country. Therefore, officials in the White House do not want to be also blamed for the partition of Iraq as a result of their support for the Kurds’ drive to achieve independence. Therefore, they have consistently opposed the independence of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and partition of Iraq and have emphasized the need for Kurds to reach a peaceful solution in cooperation with the central government in Baghdad. Of course, a certain level of tension and rivalry between Erbil and Baghdad will make it possible for Washington to play a role as mediator in Iraq and as such, pursue its own strategy. At any rate, it is clear that the United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump is trying to avoid paying a higher price with regard to the crisis in Iraq, as is also the case with other regional crises. This means that the United States will remain opposed to disintegration of Iraq, but it will not take any inhibitory step, which would impose a high cost on Washington, in this regard. At the same time, the United States is facing serious limitations and obstacles in its effort to achieve its desirable goals.

Meanwhile, the goals, strategies, possibilities and limitations faced by the United States with regard to Kurdish developments and the future of Iraq are also related to the third level of the Kurdish issue, which is the regional level at which the United States is considered to be an active and effective actor. Of course, when it comes to the regional level of the Middle East and West Asia, the United States still seems to be lacking a coherent strategy. Therefore, at the present time, it acts on a case by case basis and in some cases, including in the case of the rising influence of Iran especially in Iraq and Syria, US support for the security of Israel and its other allies as well as the fight against Daesh are more prominent.

According to these priorities, it seems unlikely that at least in medium term, the Kurdish variable will gain more prominence and serious support is offered for the independence of the Iraqi Kurds in a way that it will have an impact on regional security arrangements. Therefore, Kurds are considered a dependent variable for the United States, which can be used as a tool by Washington in proportion to the effect that it can have on other US interests in the region.

Along the same lines, one can expect the current US policy, that is, voicing opposition while avoiding any preventive measure against the rise of the Iraqi Kurds, to continue at international and global levels without having a cost for this country. However, if the United States wants to remain the leader of the free world, it cannot and should not oppose the fundamental principles of international system – including the principle that countries’ borders cannot change and the principle of national sovereignty of countries – and accelerate the domino-like disintegration of regional countries without being able to control and contain it.

* Ja’afar Haqpanah
Visiting Professor of Regional Studies; University of Tehran

Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, U.S. imports of goods from Mexico have grown from about $4 billion per year to about $28 billion (annual rate as of March 2017). Americans have also purchased a lot more services, not counted in this measure, from Mexicans during the past two decades (e.g., tourist services such as entertainment, transportation, and the occupancy of hotel rooms for Americans visiting Mexico). These are goods and services that Americans wanted enough to voluntarily pay for them. These imports represent what trade is for—namely, getting possession of goods and services that foreigners offer for sale on relatively attractive terms. Much of the growth in the volume of imports from Mexico can be attributed to reductions in trade restrictions embedded in NAFTA, which the U.S. government is now trying to scrap or drastically revamp. If NAFTA were such a bad deal, why did Americans voluntarily agree to pay Mexicans for more and more of these goods?

After the 2011 tragic events, when NATO invaded Libya and brought chaos and devastation, it has refused to settle the socio-political crisis.

Having slain the national Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the U.S. under the pretext of promoting democratic values initiated Libya’s division between various tribes and groups.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) created on 27 February, 2011, and its successor General National Congress (GNC) failed to unite the country under a solid ideology. When they were active, neither an effective government nor lasting state foundation was created. In fact the country plunged into anarchy. This freed the hands of various terror and radical groups like ISIS, AQIM, the Muslim Brotherhood and others, which easily gained control over oil fields and drowned the country in blood and violence.

Only in 2014, when the Operation Dignity lead by the Libyan National Army (LNA) Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar started, the real battle against terrorism began. Haftar gathered his brothers in arms and their fellow tribesmen uniting them for one goal – to defeat terrorism.

Recently, the LNA has been successfully fighting the jihadists. In March 2017, the army liberated the strategically important Mediterranean town of Ras Lanuf and the port of Al-Sidr that are the largest hubs of the Libyan oil export. In July, the Haftar-led troops succeeded in securing the country’s second major city – Benghazi.

It is worth saying that the fight against terrorism initiated by the Libyan Field Marshal is an important milestone for a political settlement as well. It is also clear to the Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj who has failed in stabilizing the situation while being in office.

Sarraj is not popular in Libya anymore. The decline of his rating was caused by his inability to control the radical groups he collaborates with. Realizing the importance of increasing his popularity for the future of his political career, the prime minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA) decided to cooperate with Haftar. On July 25, the sides agreed upon a ceasefire and general elections in 2018. However, for the LNA commander, this step is about speeding up the battle against terrorists, while the acting prime minister is only interested in retaining his political weight. A perfect example of it is the Sabratha battle. When the forces loyal to Sarraj and GNA captured the town with the assistance of Haftar’s troops, they proudly announced that Sabratha had been liberated.

The recent events show that Haftar has become a national leader capable of uniting the Libyan people in the fight against terrorism. Today, more than a half of the country’s territory is under LNA control. Obviously, it is Field Marchal Haftar who can put an end to terrorism in Libya starting its revival as a single state.

* Adel Karim is an independent investigative correspondent.

Swiss Re reported Thursday a Group net loss of USD 468 million for the first nine months of 2017, reflecting the USD 3.6 billion expected insurance claims from hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and the Mexico earthquakes. P&C Re’s and Corporate Solutions’ results were both affected by these severe events, with P&C Re reporting a USD 652 million net loss and Corporate Solutions a USD 762 million net loss. L&H Re continued to generate strong results and Life Capital delivered a strong gross cash generation. Swiss Re maintained a very strong capital position and high financial flexibility. As a result, Swiss Re launches its public share buy-back programme of up to CHF 1.0 billion on 3 November 2017.

According to Swiss Re’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Christian Mumenthaler,  “The severe natural catastrophes we have experienced so far this year have clearly impacted our results. At the same time, we are able to absorb these losses and join forces with our clients to help affected people and businesses in getting back on their feet. This shows that our strategy to ensure superior capitalisation at all times is paying off. We believe we have the financial strength to respond to potential market developments and we continue to stay committed to creating long-term shareholder value.”

Group results marked by natural catastrophes

Swiss Re reported a nine months 2017 net loss of USD 468 million, compared to a net income of USD 3.0 billion for the same period in 2016. The decline was primarily driven by the previously communicated expected insurance claims in the aftermath of the recent Atlantic hurricanes, the earthquakes in Mexico as well as Cyclone Debbie in Australia and floods in Peru in the first half of the year.

Overall, Swiss Re said it expects its insurance claims from natural catastrophes for the first nine months of 2017 to amount to approximately USD 4.0 billion at a Group level, with around USD 3.0 billion being incurred by P&C Re and approximately USD 1.0 billion by Corporate Solutions.

Swiss Re generated an annualised return on equity (ROE) of -1.9% in the first nine months while it continued to invest into its business. The Group’s annualised return on investments (ROI) was strong at 3.5% and the fixed income running yield was stable at 2.9%.

Gross premiums written for the first nine months declined 5.1% to USD 26.7 billion, as Swiss Re applied its disciplined underwriting approach in challenging market conditions. Measured at constant foreign exchange rates, the decline would have been 4.2%.

As a result of the large natural catastrophe losses, the Group said it has strengthened Corporate Solutions’ capital position with a USD 1.0 billion capital injection. This underlines Swiss Re’s commitment to this business, given the attractiveness of the commercial insurance market and the confidence in the Business Unit’s long-term strategy.

Swiss Re’s Group Chief Financial Officer, David Cole said,  “Even after such a string of severe natural disasters, we demonstrate the strength of our capital position and financial flexibility by supporting our clients, responding to market developments and strengthening Corporate Solutions’ capital position, while continuing to repatriate excess capital to our shareholders – as shown by the upcoming launch of our share buyback-programme.”

P&C Re result impacted by high natural catastrophe claims

Expected combined claims of USD 3.0 billion from this year’s large natural catastrophe losses led to a strong decline in P&C Re’s results. The net loss for the first nine months amounted to USD 652 million. P&C Re expects losses from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and the Mexican earthquakes to amount to USD 2.65 billion.

The annualised ROE was -7.5%. The combined ratio increased to 114.1%, as the impact from large natural catastrophe losses was well above expected levels for these nine months. P&C Re continued to experience positive prior-year development during the first nine months of 2017.

Swiss Re maintained its strict disciplined underwriting approach, ensuring it receives an adequate price for the protection it provides. This resulted in a 12.6% decline in gross premiums written to USD 13.4 billion in the first nine months.

L&H Re continues to show strong performance

L&H Re delivered strong net income of USD 741million in the first nine months, driven by a good underwriting result and good investment performance. ROE on an annualised basis was 14.3%. The fixed income running yield for the first nine months was 3.3% compared to 3.4% in the first nine months of 2016.

Gross premiums written for the first nine months increased 1.4% to USD 9.7 billion compared to the first nine months of last year, mainly due to new wins and business growth in the US and Asia.

Corporate Solutions result significantly impacted by natural catastrophe events
Corporate Solutions incurred a net loss of USD 762 million in the first nine months. The result was significantly impacted by the recent events in the US, which is Corporate Solutions’ largest market, the Caribbean and Mexico. The Business Unit expects to incur claims of approximately USD 975 million for these recent events. As a leader in excess layers1 and a net capacity provider2 Corporate Solutions’ results are subject to higher volatility, and large losses can be absorbed by the very strong balance sheet of the Swiss Re Group.

The combined ratio for the first nine months of 2017 was 142.6% and the annualised ROE was -56.0%. Gross premiums written3 increased by 1.9% to USD 2.9 billion in the first nine months.

Swiss Re strengthened Corporate Solutions’ capital position, underlining Swiss Re’s commitment to this business and its long-term strategy. With Corporate Solutions, Swiss Re has built a unique platform to access the large pool of commercial risks. The Business Unit is expected to benefit from pricing improvements following the recent natural catastrophe events.

Life Capital delivers strong gross cash generation

Life Capital continued to deliver on its strategy to optimise cash generation. In the first nine months of 2017, gross cash generation amounted to a strong USD 789 million, reflecting the continued emergence of the underlying surplus in ReAssure, its closed book business in the UK, including a benefit from finalising the 2016 year-end statutory valuation and an update to mortality assumptions.

The Business Unit generated a net income of USD 152 million. As expected, large one-off realised gains on the investment portfolio in 2016 were not repeated. The annualised ROE for the first nine months was 2.9%.

Gross premiums written for the first nine months increased 5.5% to USD 1.2 billion, driven by growth in the open book business, which demonstrates how Life Capital is increasing Swiss Re’s access to attractive and growing risk pools in life and health markets.

In October, Swiss Re announced an agreement with Japanese insurance group MS&AD for a minority investment of up to GBP 800 million into ReAssure. The investment strengthens ReAssure’s ability to pursue future transactions and is consistent with the execution of Swiss Re’s previously communicated strategic intentions for Life Capital’s closed book business.

Swiss Re said it will start public share buy-back programme on 3 November 2017
Having received all required regulatory approvals, Swiss Re will launch its public share buy-back programme of up to CHF 1.0 billion purchase value on 3 November 2017, to achieve its objective of returning capital to shareholders when excess capital is available and other business opportunities do not meet its profitability requirements. The public share buy-back programme was previously authorised by Swiss Re’s shareholders in April 2017.

It was made public by the New York Times in a June 2012 article that, by the joint work of the US and Israeli computer scientists, a new secret and special computer virus named “Stuxnet v.0.5” was produced in 2007. In 2009, with the permission of the President of the United States, the virus was infiltrated into Iran’s Nuclear Power Plant control center by using an USB memory stick.

In Bushehr, where the Iranian Natanz nuclear power plants are located, Siemens SCADA control center computers were infected. Most of the nuclear centrifuges were out of work. All computers in the power plant, plus all home PCs of the employees went into the trash. It is reported that this event delayed the plant start-up process of the construction more than two years.

In the meantime, the virus was isolated by Iranian computer engineers. Stuxnet’s software architecture have been analyzed and then with or without intentionally it has been released to the global environment via internet for reprisal.

In early 2013, the US Department of Homeland Security has announced that, two unnamed nuclear power plants in the USA were plagued with a new clone virus. the plants were said to have stayed out of operation for almost three weeks due to virus attack into their computer control centers. We estimate that the cost of loss of electricity generation is to be millions of US dollars at prevailing US electricity prices.

The Stuxnet Virus v0.5 and the new clone virus produced from it (Flame) have become a very dangerous sort of an industrial war weapon. They can be considered as new weapons of industrial mass destruction (WIMD) so to speak, if that is not an exaggeration. In the near future, these viruses may not only stop the operation of a nuclear control system, but may also be able to initiate involuntary operation of a plant.
In case of a fatal accident, some functions may not be performed, or performed without full control, such as opening or closing valves. Security systems may not work, may work improperly, or in an unintended way. Power plants, water distribution systems are most vulnerable systems for such cyber attacks.

In the end, new “Three-Mile Island,” “Chernobyl” or “Fukushima” man-made disasters may be recreated. What-if, such attacks are directed at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant control room computers, and how do we control the necessary cyber security precautions, to repulse the cyber attack? Would we have a defense weakness/ vulnerability in the middle of nuclear calamity? It seems like as a science-fiction disaster, but it’s a cold/ merciless reality.

***

Normal market based bidding methods to acquire nuclear power plant in Turkey could not be finalized in the past. In the end, political power decided to pass a legislation in year 2010, by placing a direct order to our Northern Neighbor for a nuclear power plant. It was a political decision without public scrutiny, and without any market competition.
Northern Neighbor has directly received the contract for Akkuyu nuclear power plant project. The first ball-park project budget was declared as 25 billion US dollars with the completion date of 2023. Revenue would be generated through electric sales to the local market, at treasury guaranteed figures determined upfront. However, most recently project overall cost has been increased, and the commercial operation date seems to be shifted forward.

In the contractor group, we know that there exists Turkish minority shareholder(s). Waste control and central computer controls and plant safety are not clearly laid out for the public. We locals have no share in nuclear design, no direct construction participation, and we do not have a control over the technology, and its safety control mechanism. Moreover there is almost no technology transfer.

We need nuclear power technology. However, we need to ask what extent if the contracted nuclear capacity, technology, its location, and the method is right? It is a political investment project, therefore it can be financed under the terms of a political project financing. Political financing has limitations. Political credit ends in time. Big investment projects also need commercial loan. For political projects, it is difficult- even impossible, to find commercial loans.

There are also questions on basic design of the project, for instance, How do you design the cooling system of this power plant by using the available very hot (Average +32 C) nearby sea water? Is there any contradiction with thermodynamic principles?
How will you control the nuclear waste? How will the nuclear waste be transported, moved, stored or dumped, and to where?

“May God bless and save us all”, in case of any nuclear accident or disaster, how shall we save the local people? Is there any “emergency evacuation plan”? What is it? Where is it?

Every year we send our (100) selected young students for nuclear education to our Northern Neighbor’s nuclear educational facilities. They will receive education/ training on nuclear physics and nuclear power plant operation, but not as nuclear design engineers, scientists, rather as trained operators of nuclear power plants. How shall we assign responsibility of the operation of the new nuclear power plant to our inexperienced new graduates?

Again with the same out of market direct contracting procedures in the past, we previously have contracted industrial installations to our Northern Neighbor. Earlier, Orhaneli 210 MWe coal fired thermal power plant in Bursa, Seydisehir Aluminum Plants, Iskenderun Iron and Steel factory were built in our environment, but they did not work properly, and could not be operated uninterrupted in the long term.
Plants were designed for the very cold climate of the Northern Neighbor, hence they could not be adjusted to our hot environment . They degraded fast in operation without having market compatibility or continuity.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) enforces security measures against such cyber attacks within the union. Agency is formed after deliberate cyber attacks to banking and financing centers of new member state Estonia in year 2007.

In France, almost 79% of the electricity is generated from nuclear plants. All the plants are of French design, built by French engineering, manufacturing, scientific, cyber security capability. Their entire engineering and design staff are French nationals, engineers, scientists. Although their waste management, their plant control system, and waste disposal systems have problems. They solve their problems by themselves. In our case, we are completely alien to the project.

In year 1999, Middle East Technical University (METU) administration in Ankara terminated 30 years of nuclear education. By year 1999, METU graduates had already completed more than 2000 M.Sc. and Ph.D. Theses on the subject, all piled up at the METU Library. METU turned to more environmental and renewable energy education.

Subsequently METU administration publicly announced that it has no intention to reopen the nuclear science engineering department. Nuclear power plant design, engineering, manufacturing, installation and operation are sub-disciplines of mechanical engineering. Working principle of a nuclear power plant highly resembles to that of a thermal power plant. Instead of a fossil fuel, nuclear fuel is used to generate heat and electricity in a nuclear power plant. The core of nuclear fuel aside, a nuclear power plant’s design is identical to a thermal power plant. Therefore we, mechanical engineers, can not distance ourselves from nuclear technology.

We are all outsiders of nuclear technology since ours is totally foreign to us. We still believe that METU could be the center of excellence for educating more scientists and engineers, not only for nuclear technology but also on cyber security.

For some unknown reason, the Soros/Hillary/Obama policy in Macedonia is still in place (let’s call it SHO since Americans seem to like acronyms) and the Republican Party is doing nothing about it. Well, they started to – by launching a Congressional investigation into SHO meddling in Macedonia – but they seem to have gotten distracted by a squirrel or a Trump.

The assumption that a country like Macedonia would be ignored by US foreign policy is an argument made by the naive. American foreign policy is one of foreign interventionism, everywhere, and the examples abound going back seven decades – including a multitude in Macedonia the past several years. We are dealing with something different here and the crucial question is: Why has the GOP completely capitulated to a Democratic Party policy and allowed a SHO-instigated, left-wing coup to go unchallenged? There are only two options – incompetence or complicity.

I never would have imagined that complicity would be possible until Secretary of State Tillerson congratulated the new SHO-installed Macedonian “Prime Minister” on winning a non-existent mandate. His party actually lost the parliamentary election, but the US State Department ensured that a pro-SHO, left-wing coalition would govern Macedonia. Mr. Tillerson, correct me if I’m wrong in suggesting that you’re complicit. Could it be incompetence instead? Better yet, simply direct the State Department to follow YOUR policy and end the unrelenting attacks on Macedonians’ identity and independence.

Excuse my anger – or don’t, quite frankly, I don’t care –  because my country’s name, ethnic origin, language, identity and territorial integrity are being threatened in order to fulfill an American foreign policy objective of denying the existence of Macedonians all to appease our oppressors – Bulgaria, Albania and Greece. BAG, if you will. But let’s not overdo the acronyms, it would just confuse POTUS – if he’s paying attention.

Macedonia is our name. Macedonian is our ethnicity. They always have been. I explain the idiocy of the artificially-created, anti-Macedonian “name dispute”, which is at the heart of the crisis in Macedonia and the region, in this op-ed in The Hill. Defending the existence of my, or any, ethnic group should not be necessary.

Another op-ed of mine in The Hill calls on Donald Trump to reverse the damage done in Macedonia by the previous US administration. Well, unless white supremacists, the NFL, or Bob Corker are involved – Trump won’t act. Mr. Corker, maybe I can teach you a few choice Macedonian words to tweet at Trump to get his attention. Tweet me.

Or how about the GOP actually steps in and finishes its Congressional investigation – a few months ago. Wait, you’ve already wasted enough time and we already know what the outcome would be. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and the others who started the investigation, act NOW. Macedonia and Macedonians need you to literally save our country and ethnic group from extinction. All you have to do is announce that the United States defends Macedonia’s most basic human right – our right to exist – and that the US demands an immediate end to the racist, anti-Macedonian name negotiations. One sentence will save a country. And it can be done in 140 characters or less.

*Bill Nicholov, President Macedonian Human Rights Movement International

By Iana Polianska and Christopher Miller

(RFE/RL) — Ukrainian prosecutors intend to ask the U.S. Justice Department for permission to interview President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, following his indictment earlier this week, an official said.

Prosecutors also want U.S. authorities to share any evidence they might have pertaining to an ongoing criminal investigation of a former justice minister, Serhiy Horbatyuk, prosecutor for special investigations, told RFE/RL.

“Yes, of course, we will do it. We are preparing a request and will ask about [U.S. officials] conducting an interrogation or sharing documents,” Horbatyuk said by phone on November 2.

Manafort, who has not been charged with a crime in Ukraine, is wanted by prosecutors to testify in a corruption case targeting Oleksandr Lavrynovych, who was justice minister under Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-friendly former president who fled to Russia in 2014.

Prosecutors accuse Lavrynovych of illegally funneling more than $1.1 million in government funds to a powerful U.S. law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Lavrynovych was arrested in September on unrelated charges, accused of having participated in a “coup d’etat.”

Lavrynovych had hired the U.S. law firm in 2011 to review the jailing of then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly brokering an unfavorable gas deal with Russia. Her sentence was viewed by much of the international community — including Russia — as political in nature. Tymoshenko was released in February 2014 and later reelected to parliament.

Manafort became involved when he arranged for Skadden Arps to draft a report that was used by Yanukovych’s allies to justify Tymoshenko’s imprisonment.

Court documents in the case against Lavrynovych, seen by The New York Times, alleged that Manafort “designed a strategy” for Skadden Arps to “confirm the legality of the criminal prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko and…reject any political motives of such prosecution.”

In June, Skadden Arps refunded $567,000 to the Ukrainian government, reportedly because the money had been placed “in escrow for future work” that never took place, according to The New York Times.

Horbatyuk told RFE/RL that his office has made several appeals for information regarding the Lavrynovych case to the FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials since December 2014 — each of which contained exactly one question pertaining to Manafort.

“We want to find out Manafort’s role in it,” Horbatyuk said of the Lavrynovych case. “We sent a request for questioning representatives of the firm and also Manafort. We also asked about copies of documents [pertaining to the case].”

Horbatyuk said Washington has not responded to the requests about Manafort.

Horbatyuk also said his office has not provided any documents to Special Сounsel Robert Mueller’s office or U.S. law enforcement for their investigation of Manafort, who was indicted on October 30 on conspiracy and other financial crimes charges. The charges relate to Manafort’s longtime work as a consultant for Yanukovych’s former political party.

“Our cases are related to each other,” Horbatyuk said. “Accordingly, we are interested in cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.”

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, meanwhile, told CBC News during an official visit to Canada on November 1 that his government had not been contacted by Mueller’s office or U.S. law enforcement.

“But if we receive a request we will, of course, provide the information we have,” he said.

Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, turned themselves into the FBI on October 30 as Mueller’s monthslong investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election gains momentum. They pleaded not guilty to all charges and were put under house arrest. A bail hearing was set for November 2.

The indictment focused chiefly on Manafort’s work in Ukraine, alleging that more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts of Manafort and Gates, and that Manafort spent more than $18 million “to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income.”

Yanukovych, for whom Manafort worked for nearly a decade, was driven from office in February 2014 after months of public demonstrations fueled by Ukrainian anger over the corruption that was seen as flourishing during his presidency.

News of Manafort’s indictment was welcomed by Ukrainians, especially those who helped expose Yanukovych’s alleged corruption and the slush fund reportedly used by his political party to make millions in off-the-books payments to Manafort between 2007 and 2012.

Asked whether Ukraine would try to recover any of money Manafort was paid by Yanukovych and his party, Horbatyuk said, “I will be able to answer it, when it will be clear that the money paid to Manafort had a criminal origin.”

“Until then, it’s hard to say,” he said.

By Peter Costantini*

A century ago, Italian immigrants told a joke: “Before I came to America, I thought the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I learned three things: one, the streets were not paved with gold; two, the streets were not paved at all; and three, they expected me to pave them.”

Over the past half-century, Mexicans and Central Americans immigrants haven’t found as many streets to pave. But they’ve been drawn northward by the same voracious demand for their labor in fields like agriculture, residential construction, food services, and lodging. They too have taken hard, low-paying jobs, and stimulated the economy as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs.

The newcomers have been criminalized, unjustly imprisoned, and deported. Nevertheless, many have put down deep roots where they’ve settled. In many dimensions, they’ve enriched the “gorgeous mosaic” that we’re still struggling to become.

In the end, the benefits of this mass migration have far outweighed the costs. But you’d never know it from a debate distorted by decades of anti-immigrant demagoguery. To understand this disjunction, we need to take a hard look back at what actually happened.

You say Rio Grande, and I say Río Bravo

From the last part of the past century through the beginning of the Great Recession, an epochal exodus of Mesoamericans poured across the border into el Norte. The tide rose gradually in the 1970s, accelerated in the 1990s, and crested around 2000. It subsided through the following years, and ended with the bursting of the housing bubble around 2008. Let’s call it the Millennium Migration.

The migrants were driven by powerful push-pull effects: a debilitating depression with 20 percent unemployment following the mid-1990s peso crisis in Mexico, next door to a boom in the United States that raised even low wages and offered plentiful jobs. Meanwhile, the U.S. workforce was shrinking due to low birth rates. The North American Free Trade Agreement and the Mexican government’s elimination of protections for small farmers drove a couple million of them off their land. Many went north.

The Millennium Migration built on what had been going on for over a century: circular migration back and forth across the border to the rhythms of the U.S. and Mexican economies. Some 60 percent of the voyagers did not have papers. Many were driven by what might be called the Mexican Dream — sending home remittances to support their family and returning after a few years to build a house or open a small business. But this time the demand for their labor pulled them into new fields beyond agriculture, like residential construction and food service. And changing enforcement patterns pushed some towards new areas of the Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast.

This migratory surge was probably the largest in United States history in absolute numbers, although proportionately to population it was not as high as the peaks of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It left Latinos the largest minority group in the United States, with 16.3 percent of the population, and shifted demographic and political balances in much of the West and Southwest.

The Millennium influx slowed gradually after the dot-com crash and ended with the Great Recession. The bursting of the housing bubble deflated residential construction, along with other sectors where many immigrants worked. From 2008 on, slightly more undocumented people went back to Mexico than entered the U.S., and the population of undocumented Mexicans plummeted by 18.8 percent from 2007 to 2014. The total Mexican-born and total undocumented population from everywhere both declined, but less steeply. In other words, unauthorized immigration ultimately proved to be self-regulating in response to the economy.

Today, another mass migration from the south is increasingly unlikely. Some of the factors pressuring migrants to leave Mexico receded: Birth and population growth rates shrank, along with numbers of prime-age job seekers, while life expectancy and the economy grew. Now Central Americans and others have surpassed Mexicans entering at the southern border, although in much smaller numbers than before. Overall, immigrants from China and India now both outnumber Mexicans.

The end of the Millennium Migration, however, has left a diaspora of some 11 million undocumented immigrants, more than half Mexican, stranded here at the mercy of a cruel and unusual immigration system. Their average residency is 13.6 years, and two-thirds have been here more than 10 years. Of these long-term settlers, nearly half own their own home. More than four-fifths of their children are U.S.-born citizens, and many of the rest are Dreamers. Many are in mixed families also including citizens and authorized immigrants. They have sunk deep roots into their communities and economies.

The taco-truck multiplier

With nearly a decade of hindsight, it is clear that on balance there never was an immigration crisis in an economic sense. The Millennium Migration produced modest but tangible benefits for the great majority of native consumers and workers.

The preponderance of research shows that native-born workers experienced net gains in incomes and employment from immigration. There was no correlation between the proportion of undocumented immigrants in an area and lower wages or employment. Benefits were stronger for middle and higher-wage workers. But even the 6 percent of the workforce with less than a high-school diploma experienced few to no negative effects on the average. Rather, their falling incomes and rising insecurity were overwhelmingly caused by automation, outsourcing, stagnant minimum wages, and declining unionization. And their wages dropped much further in areas with few immigrants than in areas with many.

Mexican immigrants brought with them a hundred-year tradition of navigating the immense northerly economy. Some returned to places where local farms and businesses had welcomed them back year after year. Grapevines cultivated over decades of annual migrations following the harvests helped them find work and avoid conflicts. New immigrants needed a paycheck right away to eat and send remittances home, so they tended to stay away from areas with higher unemployment, and gravitated to places with plentiful low-wage jobs. If they didn’t find work or encountered competition in one place, they were much more likely than natives to move on and look for work elsewhere.

Labor markets for undocumented workers and for natives were often segmented, complementing rather than competing with each other. Close to half of the undocumented hadn’t finished high school, and many lacked experience transferrable to North American workplaces. Most did not speak much English. Few could compete with, much less “steal jobs” from, native workers. Instead, newcomers often “bumped up” natives into jobs requiring better communications skills in English. The resulting specialization of labor increased efficiency and productivity. The group that experienced the most competition was previous immigrants.

The expanded workforce lowered prices for products such as produce and houses. Many immigrants were necessarily entrepreneurial, and started small businesses more often than natives. All immigrants brought their purchasing power to their new communities, increasing demand for goods and services and helping their economies grow.

Undocumented immigrants are also much less likely to commit crimes or be imprisoned than comparable U.S. natives. All pay local taxes and many pay national ones, but they use very few public services and collect virtually no public benefits.

Most labor unions and low-income community organizations have recognized immigrants as allies, not enemies. The infrequent cases of friction between immigrant and native workers have nearly always been fomented by employers trying to divide and conquer by pitting groups against each other. The best way to prevent abuse of immigrants, most organizers agree, is to join forces to protect everyone’s human and labor rights.

Can the arc of the moral universe cross borders?

The rights of immigrants are nearly the same as those of natives. When people cross a border into another country, they bring their basic rights with them regardless of immigration status. International law and human rights treaties guarantee most human, civil, and economic rights to all, not just citizens.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants strongly criticized the United States in 2007 for failing to comply with international law protecting immigrants against abuse and discrimination. And the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States has delivered two judgements against the U.S. for discriminating against Mexican workers based on their immigration status.

The U.S. Constitution and labor laws also guarantee most rights to all people living and working in the country, not just citizens. Morally, as well, entering the country without permission is clearly not a crime comparable to any of the felonies we often associate with the term. Rather, it’s an administrative infraction not too different from parking overtime, or trespassing for a benign purpose.

Yet despite the widespread benefits brought by the Millennium influx, nativists and restrictionists have long deployed legislative and public relations machinery that manufactures “illegals” out of undocumented human beings.

A 50-year series of law and policy changes have reduced immigration quotas for Mexicans and Central Americans to levels so low that, practically, there is no line they could wait on to migrate legally. They have also criminalized immigration by turning simply re-entering the country, along with other civil infractions and minor misdemeanors, into phony “aggravated felonies.” Enforcement growth on steroids has swept greatly increased numbers into a judicial assembly line which railroads prisoners through in large groups, making a travesty of due process. Excessive prison sentences and deportations mete out disproportionate punishments for non-criminal actions, tearing apart families and communities.

To kids who are afraid to go to school because their mom and dad might be gone when they get home, this must feel a lot like a police state.

Legislation guaranteeing yearly minimums of prisoners has funneled a generous revenue stream into private prison corporations. Their owners have in turn filled the coffers of their legislative enablers.

To overworked parents imprisoned for minor immigration infractions, the detention centers must look a lot like a gulag.

Juan Crow

The whole juggernaut of ICE raids, kangaroo courts, and privatized detention has been dubbed “Juan Crow” by immigrant advocates. In an echo of the Jim Crow system that institutionalized segregation and repression of African Americans, Juan Crow has alloyed racist and xenophobic scapegoating of immigrants with authoritarian repression.

However, in defying unjust laws and enforcement, the immigrant rights movement is following a deep moral tradition of our country, walking in the footsteps of movements for civil, labor, and women’s rights, of abolitionists and the original American revolutionaries. Previous mass migrations, from the Irish and Chinese of the 19^th century to the southern and eastern Europeans of the early 20^th century, also faced demonization by sociopathic movements, from the Know-Nothings to the Klan, with family resemblances to today’s nativists.

The gratuitous cruelty of Juan Crow has been complemented by decades of futile but pricey efforts to militarize the border. Through most of the Millennium Migration, the border-enforcement budget multiplied eight times, but efforts to keep out immigrants grew less effective. A billion dollars was lavished on Boeing for its failed Secure Borders Initiative, a high-tech “virtual fence” that never worked. Further public funds have been squandered calling out the National Guard to the border. Since the end of the migration nearly a decade ago, they keep slathering more gold plating onto the iron fist. But the U.S.-Mexico border has continued to resist efforts to hermetically seal it.

Instead, extreme border hardening has had major unintended consequences. While it may have slightly slowed in-migration, which had already declined sharply, it also discouraged most return crossings to the south. Many undocumented immigrants who would have continued moving back and forth across the border opted to avoid the increased costs and dangers, and stayed put in the States. In many cases, they brought their families over.

As enforcement was broadened, pushing crossers out into the Sonoran Desert, the costs and dangers rose sharply. In effect, border militarization backstopped and subsidized Mexican organized crime. Recognizing a growing profit center, the cartels who control the Mexican side of the borderlands increased their taxation of coyotes and, in some areas, took over their operations. Some narcos may now earn more from trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion than from drug smuggling. The worst have committed mass murders of Central American migrants.

In the face of worsening odds, travelers began to rely more on two methods that made an end run around the border buildup. In recent years, an estimated one-half to two-thirds of migrants have been entering the U.S. by either overstaying a visa, or by crossing at a legal port of entry concealed or with false papers.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”

Despite the millions of deportations carried out by the Obama administration, during his second term President Obama introduced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which offered renewable relief to undocumented people brought to the U.S. as small children — also known as the Dreamers — and another effort to give similar temporary protections to their parents, the latter of which was ultimately defeated in court. With the advent of President Donald Trump, though, Juan Crow has strutted back to the front of the parade.

The border wall is above all a big beautiful decoy, a middle-finger salute to Latin America, immigrants, and refugees, and an embodiment of the mass psychosis of Trump’s followers. It would have little value for border enforcement. (Now that more Chinese immigrants are entering than Mexicans, though, maybe Trump can demonstrate his deal-making artistry by convincing Xi Jinping to pay for a wall across our border with China.)

The real action is in terrorizing, jailing, and expelling immigrants and breaking up their families. As attorney general Jeff Sessions, Kansas secretary of state and Trump adviser Kris Kobach, and Trump protégé Steve Miller oil their repressive machinery, you can catch a sulfurous whiff of Neo-Fascism Lite. It’s redolent in Trump’s pardon of ex-sheriff and convicted racial profiler Joe Arpaio, and in his holding Dreamers hostage to more punitive measures against their communities. Trump has turned the West Wing into a bouncy house for bigots, and they are lighting the torches of the Neo-Nazis and the Klan. Meanwhile, away from the hurly-burly, the congressional right is doggedly pursuing their shared legislative agenda not just on immigration, but also on voting rights, “law and order,” and labor issues.

One sad irony of these circuses without bread is that many displaced manufacturing workers and coal miners share a parallel fate with immigrants: All are cast adrift on neoliberal riptides, the economic flotsam and jetsam of corporate-led globalization. Dollars and pesos flash across the border in fiber-optic cables, goods pour across on trains and trucks, but some of the human “factors of production” have to crawl across through sewers — or watch their jobs being shipped offshore or to “right-to-work” states.

Paths out of the desert

At this point, the old grand-bargain approach to immigration reform has failed twice in Congress. All it achieved was to fortify the immigration police state and gulag. Perhaps, though, its demise will give us a clearer view of more promising paths out of the desert. The policies that can implement real changes will be challenging to craft, but the goals are already clear.

The most urgent priority should be to grant safe status and clear roads to citizenships to the millions of humans without papers who have settled into lives, jobs, and communities here. We will need to develop sensible ways to facilitate the reunification of current immigrants with their mixed-status and transnational families. By running the gauntlet for all these years to become productive and valued community members, they have already demonstrated their commitment to their new home.

To give them security, we will have to thoroughly dismantle Juan Crow’s police state and for-profit gulag, decriminalizing and demilitarizing immigration.

Another mass immigration from the south on the scale of the Millennium Migration is very unlikely to recur. Yet we will need to continue to find ways to responsibly welcome new immigrants from all over, guaranteeing their rights and respecting their economic needs in tandem with those of workers already here. This will involve allowing migrants to move easily back and forth across the border in response to exigencies on both sides. In the long term, a human-centered economy will also require providing much stronger safety nets for all, and resources for resuscitating deindustrialized and depressed communities.

With legal and economic systems in place that correspond to realities on the ground, immigration enforcement should be de-prioritized in favor of immigrant integration. This should enable the country to sharply reduce border and internal enforcement budgets and personnel. These should be refocused away from persecuting ordinary immigrants and refugees, and onto protecting border areas from genuine threats such as organized crime. Beyond the border, we should support immigrants’ “right to stay home” through cooperation with efforts to raise standards of living and protect human rights in immigrant-sending countries.

Today, the streets are still not paved with gold. We expected the Millennium migrants to pick our crops, build our houses, and clean our hotel rooms. The newcomers did all of that and much more. Now many millions of them are raising their families here, and have sunk tenacious roots. They’ve paid their passage in sweat, tears, and sometimes blood. Their elbow grease has helped build their communities and the country as a whole. They’ve earned a freeway to citizenship for themselves and their families.

As to Trump’s wall, Mexican-American comedian George Lopez said that when people ask him how he feels about it, he tells them, “You know what? We’ll get over it.”

At a recent gathering of immigrants, a mother was crying: “I have two daughters who are Dreamers. What’s going to happen to them?” A friend was consoling: “You’re not alone. We’re all in this together.” Then a man in a cowboy hat and a Pancho Villa moustache stood up and chanted: Aquí estamos y no nos vamos, y si nos sacan, nos regresamos.

“Here we are, and we’re not leaving, and if they kick us out, we’ll come right back.”

*Peter Costantini is an analyst and writer based in Seattle. For the past three decades, he has written about migration, labor, Latin America, and international economics. He is currently embedded as a volunteer with immigrant rights groups.

The longer paper on which this commentary is based, with extensive footnotes and references, is available as a download from The Huffington Post.

The American propaganda campaign being waged against the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin has reached a stage of perverse perfection. It is virtually impossible to put forth a dissenting opinion that will be accepted or considered worthy of consideration. The Democrats are leading the charge to silence and censor and they are getting buy-in from people who otherwise consider themselves to be progressive.

This columnist has been interviewed on Radio Sputnik on two occasions. That fact should not be at all noteworthy but in the current atmosphere of Russophobia being pushed by the corporate media and Democratic politicians, it is a risky statement to make. Sputnik International is a Russian government entity, just as the BBC is “state run media” on behalf of the British government and the CBC for Canada. But anyone and anything connected to Russia gets the double standard treatment and is targeted for attack.

Marcus Ferrell was until recently a campaign staffer for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. He resigned after the Atlanta Journal Constitution revealed that he had been a guest on the program By Any Means Necessary which is hosted by Sputnik. Ferrell didn’t discuss Russia at all. Confederate monuments were the topic of conversation. But the level of fear is so great that he felt compelled to resign. His boss made no effort to fight against the tide and she didn’t defend him either.

Every day a new shoe drops in this faux scandal. Twitter announced that it would not accept advertisements from Sputnik or RT, formerly known as Russia Today. Sputnik had never even paid for ads on Twitter but why be bothered by facts when ginned up phony outrage is so readily available.

It is Democrats who demanded that Facebook and Twitter stop telling the truth about Eastern European click bait schemes and instead join in that party’s witch hunt. Now we are told that Russian social media posts meant to influence American politics reached 126 million people on Facebook over a two-year period. Of course the last paragraphs of that story reveal that only one out of 23,000 pieces of content actually reached anyone. That fact is too inconvenient and makes for a bad headline.

While social media giants are submitting to marching orders, the state and corporate sponsored Public Broadcasting System (PBS) produced its second anti-Putin documentary in as many years. First “Putin’s Way” in 2015 and now “Putin’s Revenge” feature so-called experts who outdo one another in stoking anti-Russian flames. PBS can never seem to find any expert who can make counter arguments.

While the corporate media compete to see who can dumb down the country the fastest, the legal wheels are turning to get Trump out of office and Russia is the pretext for the action. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has been indicted for tax fraud. His indictment is just the beginning of the bipartisan effort to end the Trump presidency. They hope to resume doing the elites’ business without hindrance from the man who is so bad for the neoliberal brand.

Nothing matters to liberals more than getting Trump out of office. Their juvenile political understanding was turned upside down by Hillary Clinton’s defeat and they haven’t been the same since. They are obsessed with the man they hate. They have been fed a steady diet of red meat which explains away their illusions about the failed Democratic Party and the fact that millions of their fellow citizens don’t see the world the way they do.

Paul Manafort was a long time Republican Party operative going back to the days of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. He used his connections to become a lobbyist, a hired gun for governments ranging from Nigeria to the Philippines to Kenya to Romania to Ukraine. Manafort would not be facing serious legal jeopardy if he hadn’t taken on that particular gig.

We are told that Ukraine’s former president Victor Yanukovich was “pro Russian” and that Manafort’s representation proves Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Neither statement is true but no one knows outside of the small circle of people who make herculean efforts to educate themselves about world affairs.

As the old saying goes, the fix is in. Manafort is just the first notch on former FBI director Robert Mueller’s gun. He will go after other Trump connected cronies and relatives who have done shady business but that won’t be the reason for the pursuit. There are many sleazy American lobbyists and business people but no one cares until there is a moment when their downfall is politically useful.

Free speech is being undermined, the left are losing their access to media and prosecutors are going after crooks, but not because they want justice to be done. If Putin was trying to destroy America he couldn’t do a better job than the media, crooked politicians and the deluded liberals who all work together.