Category Archives: Government Oppression

Cars line up for food at Utah Food Banks mobile food pantry on April 24, 2020. (Rick Bowmer / AP Photo)

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The pandemic has thrown millions of people out of work while mean-spirited government policies ended emergency Unemployment Insurance benefits. More and more families are left with no choice but to turn to public assistance programs like the dysfunctional Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF).Ad Policy

But built on racist and sexist stereotypes and degrading by design, the harsh TANF program often harms poor people more than it helps, while the more popular food stamps and rental assistance have too many strings and reach too few people.

Rivaling the Great Depression, the twin public health and economic crises have laid bare the dysfunctional safety net. The deepening adversity calls upon us to imagine a strong safety net that will ensure economic security for all. But first, how and why is it that our nations leaders, from the outset, built the system to fail?

The landmark 1935 Social Security Act included both the popular retirement and unemployment insurance programs and the punitive means-tested welfare-type public assistance programs. The latter intentionally stigmatized and humiliated people in exchange for benefits so meager that its almost impossible for recipients to escape poverty. The denial of equal access to people of color and women, the exclusion of immigrants, plus harsh time limits, stiff work requirements, intrusive surveillance measures, and undue state discretion deprives too many people of the income they need to pay the rent and to put food on the table. These are not design flaws. Policy-makers intentionally built these systems to hassle the poor, to make the application process as humiliating as possible, and to prevent people from getting the help they need.

Some 40 years ago, after Republicans and Democrats joined hands to destroy the safety net, things became much harsher. Republican President Ronald Reagan cut the public assistance programs. Democratic President Bill Clinton declared that the era of big government is over and promised to end welfare as we know itpurging millions of women and children from the rolls. And Republican President George W. Bush tried to privatize the beloved Social Security Program. Evoking Reagans welfare queen, the racist and sexist myth that Black women game the system to buy fancy cars and name-brand clothes and pushing Clintons flawed welfare reform to its logical extreme, the Trump administration wants to end the entire safety net. It brutally cuts more funds, cruelly seeks to require work by people seeking Medicaid or food stamps, and to implement the so-called public charge rule to punish immigrants seeking cash support.

Between 1996 and 2018before the pandemicthese stigmatizing and humiliating policies had already reduced the percentage of families eligible for cash welfare from 68 percent to 22 percent. In states like Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, less than 5 percent of eligible poor families get help. All the hassling and threats send a clear message: Do not apply. Fear, exhaustion, and despair further keep too many people away from harsh programs that they nonetheless need to survive. The portion of poor families getting cash help nationwide is the lowest in decades.

We are reaping a bitter harvest of this hardship as 12 percent of all adults in America report not getting enough to eat during the previous week, nearly double that number for Black and Latinx families. One in five renters have fallen behind on rent, and thats true for nearly a third of households of color, many headed by women. Over a quarter of the nations children live in families that sometimes dont have enough food or clothing for school.Current Issue

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As Covid-19 throws more working- and middle-class people into poverty, some for the first time, Senate Republicans and Trump refuse to pass a relief package. This will ensure catastrophic consequences for millions of people living on the brink, sending them to apply for abusive public assistance benefits they never thought they would need. The pandemic recession has exposed the nations deep-seated economic inequality and systemic racism already too well-known and widely experienced by the poor. It has started to open the eyes of others to the stigma and oppression built into safety net programs.

The human consequences have been devastating to people from all walks of life. Mary Reinbold is a single mom of three living in West Virginia who reached the five-year time limit for cash welfare. The loss of welfare forced her to do community service for 40 hours per week for a paltry $301 in monthly cash benefits, plus food stamps and Medicaid for her family. Shes worked on and off, but each time she got a job, welfare reduced her benefits, leaving her to pay 30 percent of her earnings towards rent. When her teenage daughter got a job hoping to save for a car, the state cut the familys food stamps. Her daughter quit. Its a trap with so many obstacles and hurdles that its almost impossible just to escape, Reinbold said. The conservative policies that claim to incentivize people to work have only forced Marys family to quit just while they were starting to get ahead.

Millions more families are now experiencing the red tape, the delays, and the stinginess of our systems. People like Tia Ferguson, a substitute teacher in Ohio who waited for months for unemployment benefits she was entitled to receive, and Thomas Miles, a commercial roofer in Florida, who is still waiting for his. Jeff Quattrone, a now-unemployed artist in New Jersey, applied for housing assistance, but the state lottery allocates just 8,000 vouchers60,000 people applied. Only one in six families eligible for child care get it. This was always wrong, but for essential workers it now creates impossible and unsustainable choices.

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But with these experiences come the need and possibility for something better. Struggling families have a shared view of what we need to do. They are imagining and fighting for a different future. Co-author Tammy Thomas Miles, whose husband is still waiting for unemployment benefits, has been organizing for a better safety net for over a decade, grounded in her lifetime of experience with systems that dont help families, even though their taxes pay for the programs. She radically reimagines governments role and believes that we need a system that doesnt perpetuate stigma and oppression through racist and sexist stereotypes. She fights for a system that provides a solid foundation for everyone and levels the playing field for marginalized people and those down on their luck.

Tia Ferguson joined a community organization, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, to help her navigate the unemployment system. She has since spoken out in a town hall event with Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Tim Ryan and testified before the House Ways and Means Committee about her struggles. Jeff Quattrone believes that the government intentionally disinvests in crucial programs and deliberately discourages people from applying for needed benefits, while giving huge tax breaks to the rich and corporations. Thats why he supports the House-passed HEROES Act and vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harriss proposal to give $2,000 in unconditional cash assistance to people until the pandemic is over. He adds that we should cancel rent and provide massive housing assistance to families. Reinbold wants to see a universal basic income that provides unconditional cash payments to all families.

All of these bold goals are necessary to ring in a Third Reconstruction that replaces our racial and gender caste system with a just and equitable one. These changes will be made by a grassroots movement of people like Mary, Jeff, and Tia who have experienced the brokenness of these systems and who have the courage and radical imagination to replace the old safety net with something new, bold, and available to all.

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The US Safety Net Is Degrading by Design - The Nation

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., continues to sound the alarm about China. This week, Scott applauded President Donald Trump for his warnings and restrictions on traveling to China.

For weeks, Scott has been asking the Trump administration to keep travel restrictions in place on China, even after the pandemic. Scott pointed to human rights abuses as a major concern.

Im glad the administration is heeding my call to recognize the danger every American faces when traveling to communist China. This is a nation that has no respect for human rights, surveils everyone traveling in the country, and will stop at nothing to silence dissidents. There is more we must do to hold communist China accountable, but the administrations decision to issue a new travel advisory to communist China, given the serious security threat, is an important step to protect Americans, Scott said this week.

The latest restrictions from the U.S. State Department advises against travel to mainland China and Hong Kong, stating that the PRC government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including by carrying out arbitrary and wrongful detentions and through the use of exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries without due process of law. The State Department also noted the PRC government uses arbitrary detention and exit bans.

Scott has been taking aim at the Chinese government during his first two years in the U.S. Senate and has ramped up the rhetoric in recent months, asking the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to take the 2022 Olympic games away from that nation.

For nearly a year, Ive been calling on the IOC to put human rights first, stand against the genocide of the Uyghurs and the political oppression of Hong Kongers, and refuse to reward the Communist Party of China with the 2022 Games. This is also about the safety of all athletes and attendees. I am disappointed that the IOC would not commit to moving the 2022 Games out of communist China, but this fight is not over. The IOC has to decide whether the Olympics stands for freedom or stands with communist China and their human rights abuses, Scott said.

Scott is also trying to reduce American economic investments in China for many of the same reasons.

Communist China is flouting U.S. laws, defrauding our citizens and harming American investments. Everything a business does in communist China is shared directly with a government that is jailing its people for their religious beliefs, refuses to respect basic human rights and is building up their industrial and military strength in an effort to dominate the world, Scott noted.

So far, Scott has gained minimum leverage against the Chinese regime but his efforts to keep American dollars away from the worlds most populous nation will continue.

Reach Mike Synan at mike.synan@floridadaily.com.

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Rick Scott Continues to Sound the Alarm on China - Florida Daily

If you were comparing immigrants to the United States from Algeria and Israel and were asked which group had higher levels of education and skills, youd probably assume the answer is the Israelis. After all, the average Israeli has completed 12.5 years of schooling, compared with 7.6 years for Algerians, according to the American Community Survey.

But youd be wrong. Algerian immigrants to the U.S. are not only better educated than those from Israel, they also have completed more schooling than the average, native-born resident of the United States.

What explains this seeming oddity? Its the built-in bias of the U.S. immigration system, which heavily favors applicants who have family ties in the United States, says Stanford Graduate School of Business economist Edward Lazear. Since there are relatively few Algerians living in the U.S., the immigration process requires that Algerians seeking to enter the country must do so primarily on the basis of their skills.

If this unexpected outcome applied only to immigrants from a few countries, it wouldnt be significant. But recently published research by Lazear found flaws in long-held theories of how immigrants with varying levels of educational attainment manage to migrate to the United States and other advanced countries.

Since the 1960s, immigration was understood to resemble market-driven investment decisions. People would weigh the costs and benefits of migration in much the same way they might choose to change occupations. Highly skilled people living in countries where they are underpaid for their abilities were likely to move to countries where their experience would be better rewarded.

When looking at historic migration within the U.S. from one part of the country to another thats a reasonable theory, Lazear says.

In the first half of the 20th century, for example, millions of African Americans migrated from the South to the industrial centers of the North. The move was expensive both in terms of tangible economic costs and less tangible, but still real, social and psychological costs. Why they were willing to uproot themselves was no mystery: There was more economic opportunity in the North and a perceived chance to escape racial oppression and discrimination. And there were no government policies to restrain their movements.

According to Lazear, some economists have adopted similar models to explain international migration patterns.

But today the U.S. is faced with what he calls an excess supply of potential foreign immigrants. Unlike the past, when market forces held sway, government regulations that ration legal immigration now determine who gets to stay legally.

From our point of view, there are no bad countries. Every country ... produces highly skilled, educated people.

Edward Lazear

In any given year, about 25 million people apply for permanent admission to the U.S., 1 million immigrants obtain green cards, and almost 4 million applicants remain on the waiting list, Lazear says. Who is allowed entry to the U.S. is largely determined by what amounts to a rationing system. Policy rather than migrant desire determines who ends up in the U.S. and how well they do, he explains.

Lazear notes that his findings may seem obvious. But he adds that his argument is based on empirical evidence garnered from 129 countries. The important implication is that we can have any group of immigrants or attainment we want, he says. From our point of view, there are no bad countries. Every country, even those with poor educational systems like Algeria, produces highly skilled, educated people.

Lazear, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President George W. Bush and has advocated for replacing the current quota system with a skills-based immigration policy. However, he emphasizes that his recent paper is not an argument for any particular immigration policy and it does not contain policy recommendations.

The U.S. radically shifted immigration priorities when the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 changed the allocation system from quotas based on national origin to one that favored family reunification. The effect was swift and dramatic.

The number of immigrants increased by nearly one-third, and they came from a different mix of countries. Immigrants from Asia, for example, quadrupled in the five years after the laws passage, while the share of immigrants from northern Europe dropped. The share of U.S. immigrants from France fell from 4 percent to about 1 percent in the same time period, because relatively few immigrants from France were already living in the U.S.

The use of family ties as an immigration entry vehicle tends to overrepresent some countries and underrepresent others. Algerians are underrepresented among U.S. immigrants by a factor of 10 compared to their share of the worlds population, while Israelis are overrepresented by a factor of three, according to Lazear.

Mexico is overrepresented relative to India as a country of origin, but Indian immigrants are second from the top in educational attainment while those from Mexico are near the bottom. Historically, the best-educated immigrant group were those who came from the Soviet Union to the U.S. in the 1980s.

You might think that immigrants from countries where they are insufficiently rewarded for their advanced education, skills, and expertise would be the most likely to come to the U.S. But Lazear found no such correlation.

Lazears research indicates that the phenomenon he found in the U.S. lower educational attainment of overrepresented groups holds true in Sweden and other advanced countries. Sweden, Lazear notes, is an interesting comparison because its immigration policy is so different than that of the U.S. it is weighted in favor of refugees but the outcome is similar. The general point is that the more overrepresented [groups are], the lower the attainment.

The U.S., he says, can decide what skills and levels of education or other criteria, such as refugee status it wants to emphasize. This isnt about good or bad source countries. Its how many the U.S. takes from each country relative to the pool in that country.

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The Economics of Prioritizing Family Ties in U.S. Immigration Policy - Stanford Graduate School of Business

The coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic crisis has brought many things to light. It has shown the value of care work, as our essential healthcare system and its workforce have been working round the clock to care for affected Australians. It has shown how shortsighted and problematic the political decision to move manufacturing offshore has been, as our global supply chains have been severed and we have had to scramble to remobilise to accommodate the increased demand for protective personal equipment (PPE), hand sanitiser and other health-related products.

It has also highlighted how reliant Australias agricultural sector is on overseas workers, as the pandemic and borders closures saw farmworkers laid off or return to their home countries. The too often unacknowledged fact is that our food is largely produced off the back of migrant labour, with some workers exposed to exploitation and degradation. An ABC investigation this week revealed fresh allegations of sexual harassment of female backpacker workers.

Recently, these workers have started to voice their concerns and frustration through their union, the newly amalgamated United Workers Union (UWU), who have pushed back against the systemic exploitation that became endemic long before the virus showed up.

Yet there have been a number of proposals to bring increasingly vulnerable communities into the industry amid a shortage of workers. Growcom called on the government to allow workers who have been displaced and made unemployed to pick fruit while receiving jobseeker, effectively turning the whole sector into a work-for-the-dole industry. The Northern Territory Farmers Association has suggested that Hecs discounts should be given to university students who agreed to engage in farmwork. Similarly, the interim report of the of the inquiry into the working holiday maker program has echoed these proposals, recommending that year 12 students spend a gap year at home picking fruit before university, allowing fruit-picking jobseekers to be exempt from activity tests, and a number of subsidies and reforms to visa provisions to encourage more temporary residents to engage in farmwork.

Most interesting has been a recently floated solution proposed by the Refugee Council of Australia and supported by politicians from the government opposition and the crossbench, which would enlist the 17,000 refugees who are without a path to residency with an opportunity to work on farms in exchange for a shot a permanency.

There is little doubt that many of the people desperate to build a safe and secure life here in Australia will leap at the chance. However, the fact that the Refugee Council is proposing this solution speaks to the desperation that many who seek the shelter and safety that so many of us enjoy freely must feel. For many of these potential Australians, the choice on offer is often between complying with unacceptable requests in their new country or returning to persecution or oppression in their country of birth. Just as someone who is drowning will clutch at any object that might keep them afloat, it is unsurprising that vulnerable refugees and those who work to protect and advance their interests will look to get permanent residency by any means.

However, we should think twice before conscripting desperate people to pick fruit for their freedom.

From the Afghan cameleers who helped map our nations red centre and Chinese miners who drove the gold rush, Australias uncomfortable history with an interlinked immigration and employment system has long been discussed by scholars and pundits alike. While weve long since abandoned the official discrimination and racial hierarchies of the infamous White Australia policy, the echoes are still quietly reverberating around the edges of our political landscape.

While the current proposal is seeking to solve two problems, by giving people who want to live and work in Australia a real chance at permanency and by filling the gaps in our supply chain, the implications of using a migrant labour force to solve a problem experienced by the white majority could be used as a dog whistle by less scrupulous politicians and campaigners.

However, there is another way to solve the problem that none of the previously mentioned solutions proposes: turn farmwork into secure, safe and sustainable employment.

If the government and farmers worked with farmworkers and their unions to create a sectoral agreement that guarantees fair treatment, wages and conditions across the supply chain, then many workers, regardless of skin colour or residency status, would be more inclined to work in the industry. By creating a fair employment environment, a path to residency for those who need it, and ensuring that both unions and governmental regulators had the capacity and resources to enforce compliance, we could help create a system where farmworkers are treated with respect, dignity and fairness.

Most importantly, we should ensure that it endures beyond the crisis. We should neither take the refugees who work these jobs in a crisis, or the backpackers who will one day return, for granted. We should use this as an opportunity to further deconstruct the systemic oppression that migrant workers face across our supply chains and to build a fair food system.

Shirley Jackson is the senior economist at Per Capita

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Australia should think twice before asking desperate people to pick fruit for their freedom - The Guardian

** This paper is part of an ARI series seeking to generate debate over the effectiveness of international sanctions on Syria and their impact on Syrians and the future of the country.

A number of countries, notably the US and European countries, have imposed sanctions on the Syrian regime in response to its brutal repression of its population and its repeated violations of international law. The scope of sanctions expanded since the entry into force of the US Caesar Act in June 2020 to include foreign partners of the Syrian government.

So far, sanctions have failed to change the Syrian regime or modify its behaviour. This is because of a lack of a real strategy to ensure that sanctions impact the authoritarian structure in Syria and the regimes extensive experience in coping with and overcoming sanctions.Meanwhile, despite the stated objectives of minimizing harm to the population, many indicators show that sanctions, including the Caesar Act, are hitting ordinary Syrians the hardest.

The international community should explore options outside the dichotomy of maintaining sanctions in their current form or lifting them completely. In particular, a real discussion should be had on how to address the sanctions weak impact on regime behaviour while also adopting measures to counter their negative impact on the population.

On 29 April 2011, the United States imposed the first set of sanctions on the Syrian regime as a punitive response to its brutal repression of the peaceful demonstrations that had erupted in March 2011, calling for freedom, dignity, and human rights. These sanctions froze the assets of top-ranked Syrian officers and imposed travel bans on them. The following month, the EU suspended all cooperation programmes and agreements with the Syrian government. In August 2011, the United States imposed additional sanctions including a ban on all transactions involving Syrian petroleum or petroleum products.

Although the main targets of sanctions were military and security officials and entities, the EU extended the list starting in September 2011 to sanction the Central Bank of Syria, public banks, investments in the Syrian oil and gas sector, regime cronies, and pro-regime activists such as members of the so-called Syrian electronic army. Turkey also imposed trade sanctions, and the League of Arab States agreed to freeze Syrias assets in Arab countries and end all financial transactions with the Syrian government (though its decisions are not compulsory on its members).

The imposition of sanctions aimed to weaken the regimes military and economic foundations by targeting its key entities and individuals located mainly inside the country. The scope of the application of sanctions expanded in December 2019 when President Donald Trump signed the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act that came into force on 17 June 2020. Whereas previous sanctions mainly targeted entities inside Syria, this Act authorized sanctions on any foreign individual and entity with business connections to the regime. This Act was also a direct threat to the regimes allies and supporters, including Russia, and could be read as a warning to the Gulf and some European countries that might be tempted to normalize relations with the Syrian regime and enter into reconstruction contracts.

The Caesar Act aims to sanction transactions related to the military, oil and gas sector, as well as any government-led reconstruction and speed up the regimes already deteriorating economy by limiting its access to international financial networks, including those related to its allies. The Act also raises the economic burden on partners of the Syrian government as they have to intensify their efforts to find ways to avoid being designated by the US Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), leading them to rethink and minimize their business relations with the regime.

Despite the stated objectives of targeting the regime and minimizing harm to the population, many indicators show that sanctions, including the Caesar Act, are hitting ordinary Syrians the hardest. The impact is obvious in the energy and financial sectors as most people inside Syria struggle to access oil derivatives such as diesel and encounter difficulties in conducting financial transactions notably receiving remittances that have become one of the main sources of income for many Syrian households. The Act also has created a chilling effect among foreign companies that prefer to de-risk and avoid dealing with any Syrian individual or entity, even in non-sanctioned activities or sectors.

Since 1979, western countries have imposed different sets of sanctions on the Syrian regime, which has only provided it with accumulated experience in dealing with the current economic bans. The regime has developed different mechanisms to survive sanctions and mitigate their impact on the structure of power in Syria.

At the core of these mechanisms was external support from strategic allies, notably Iran, and to a lesser extent Russia. Iran, for instance, has provided the Syrian regime in addition to unlimited military support with essential goods and services, mainly oil, during the conflict. All non-military support is made through credit lines, which means increasing Syrias financial debt. Iran has reportedly shipped oil to Syria with an estimated annual amount of $1.7 billion US dollars between 2013 and 2018. Assuming the same pattern in 2019 and 2020, the total value of crude oil exported from Iran to the Syrian regime during the conflict would be $13.6 billion US dollars. Additionally, Iran provided $2 billion US dollars in 2013 and 2015 to the Central Bank of Syria to support the Syrian currency and facilitate the imports of Iranian goods other than oil. In June 2020, the Iranian Foreign Minister stated that Syria still has a credit line in Iran but without mentioning the amount. Based on these numbers, Iranian non-military support to Syria during the conflict can be estimated at around $15.6 billion US dollars, which almost equals 8.5 times Syrias budget in 2020.

Russia has also been facilitating business activities and has invested in vital sectors in Syria. It has become the main source of wheat for the Syrian regime that used to have wheat self-sufficiency before the conflict. The annual quantities of Russian wheat to Syria have increased sharply from 650 thousand tons in 2015 to more than 1.5 million tons in 2018. Also, many companies registered in Russia have played an important role in exporting oil to Syria and breaking the sanctions imposed on the Syrian oil sector.

The support from Iran and Russia has not been without consequence as the country has lost its sovereignty over key issues, but the regime managed to prevent a complete economic collapse. The Caesar Act may limit Russian companies involvement with the Syrian government, but the already sanctioned Iranian entities have nothing to lose.

In addition to external support, the Syrian regime has proven adept at changing internal power dynamics to benefit from the rents usually associated with economic sanctions. Networks of wealthy cronies and warlords are enjoying the rents and the black market activities that flourish as a result of sanctions. These profiteers have risen as powerful actors that can influence policymakers to achieve their interests at the expense of other actors, including state institutions, traditional businesspersons, and vulnerable sectors of the Syrian population. But the regime always makes it clear that these new actors should provide it with financial support when needed; otherwise it would use its coercive measures to replace them with more obedient and controllable profiteers.

To overcome sanctions, the new war profiteers have coordinated and created criminal and illegal networks that have their smuggling routes to secure goods and services either from neighbouring countries, mainly Lebanon, or from other areas inside Syria such as the north-eastern region to obtain oil and wheat. In addition, some profiteers have established shadow companies and accounts in different countries to facilitate trading activities with the Syrian government. Once again, the Caesar Act and other economic sanctions will increase the trading risk for these companies though the added risk is often compensated for by higher profit margins. Consequently, Syrian civilians end up having to endure price increases for imported and smuggled goods given that local production was largely damaged during the conflict. This set-up by the Syrian regime ultimately allows it to use sanctions to reallocate resources to the benefit of its cronies and at the expense of civilians.

The Syrian government also seeks to deflect pressure on its performance by blaming sanctions for all the economic failure and collapse in the country. This is typical rhetoric in authoritarian regimes that portray sanctions as an external threat to the state itself, and thus, all Syrians should stand with their state against them. The regimes propaganda, media campaigns, even Assad himself, always present sanctions as a part of an overall conspiracy against the country for its crucial role in fighting imperialism and Israel. Thus, it claims its survival stands like a fortress against a western evil plan. While it is impossible to measure exactly the impact of such efforts, the regime has been able to divert to a certain extent the anger of many Syrians away from its own performance and towards the sanctions, claiming they are the major cause of their misery. This is clear in the last social media campaign managed by the The Syrian Civil Society Facebook page to lift sanctions on Syria using the Covid-19 pandemic to attract more attention. Thousands of Syrians mainly from inside the country have changed their Facebook profile picture to include the sentence of lift sanctions on Syria. Members of parliament, artists, and key religious figures who retain a strong influence over local communities, such as Father Elias Zahlawi, a well-respected priest in Damascus, expressed their support for the campaign and official state media was quick to relay that.

These coping mechanisms have allowed the regime in Syria to reduce the impact of sanctions on itself while people and state infrastructure suffer. As a result, sanctions have indirectly if unwillingly contributed to weakening peoples ability to cope with the war and even to stand up against the regimes oppression as people spend more of their energy and daily efforts to ensure daily subsistence, particularly after the dramatic deterioration of living conditions caused by the sharp devaluation of the Syrian pound in 2020. Thus, it is crucial for countries imposing sanctions to restructure their sanctions on Syria to mitigate their impact on the population and make them more effective against the regime.

After almost 10 years, the current sanctions have failed to achieve their announced objectives of halting the Syrian regimes repression and forcing it to settle the crisis in line with UN Security Council resolution 2254 that calls for a genuine political transition. This failure in meeting objectives should incentivize the international community to analyze and overcome the sanctions ineffectiveness.

The first step is to do a thorough evaluation of the role of the current sanctions in affecting the regime approach to UN resolution 2254 which the EU and US claim to be a strategic framework for their policies in Syria. The evaluation should also include an examination of the impact of sanctions on the behaviour of international supporters of the Syrian regime, notably Russia, Iran and China.

A second step is for sanction-setting countries to update their comprehensive strategy to end the conflict in Syria and fit the use of sanctions within this broader strategy. Western countries should agree on a set of detailed objectives within the agreed framework of 2254 to resolve the conflict and tie sanctions to measurable and attainable goals. One example could be to tie certain sanction policies to specific improvements on human rights issues such as releasing detainees, setting up independent visits to detention facilities, and stopping arbitrary detentions by security agencies to give civil society initiatives an appropriate and safe working environment. Other goals could be more political including progress on key aspects of the constitution or focus on reforms and accountability efforts in the security sector. The regime will resist this but at least the benchmarks and the expectations will be clearer than they are today.

Another weakness in the current approach to sanctions is the lack of coordination between the different countries. The EU is using sanctions as the main tool of intervention in Syria whereas the US administration has also adopted different approaches besides the sanctions, including direct military intervention in the northeast of the country as well economic support for the areas under the authority of the Kurdish-controlled Syria Democratic Forces. Moreover, the EU insists on political transition in Syria as a condition to lift sanctions and provide financial support for the reconstruction process in the country while the USA uses sanctions, including the Caesar Act, to increase its political bargaining power and limit Iran and Russias influence in Syria rather than fulfil vital Syrians needs and aspirations in building a democratic state. A minimum level of coordination between sanction-imposing counties to agree on one main objective, which should be according to UN resolution 2254 a genuine political transition, would limit the political capacity of the Syrian regime to invest in the different agendas of western countries and open several channels of negotiation with each one of them.

The last challenge for sanction policies is the lack of global consensus on the importance of substantial political reform in Syria. Countries like Russia, Iran, and China have been fighting against such a change, and they counter the western sanctions by increasing their support and trade with the Syrian regime. Consequently, these countries are enjoying a growing influence in Syria, which has given them more reasons to protect the current regime. The sanction imposing countries, after agreeing on their final objectives in Syria between themselves, should explore how to provide these foreign backers of the Syrian regime with incentives to accept a political reform in the country. Negative incentives could include sanctions such as the Caesar Act that increase the cost of their support to the regime whereas positive incentives could be by providing guarantees that a democratic state would also protect their economic interests and investments in Syria.

The international community has a range of policy options beyond the simple dichotomy of maintaining current sanctions or lifting them completely.

In thinking of how to minimize the impact on ordinary Syrians, one possibility is to provide direct financial support for traditional businesspersons and SMEs (small & medium enterprises) in Syria by opening parallel financial channels with them as a substitution of the formal ones which are sanctioned and controlled by pro-regime entities and individuals. These channels can resemble the Swiss payment mechanism to Iran launched in January 2020 which allows for humanitarian goods to be traded with Iran without falling under US sanctions. Such mechanisms reduce the chilling effect on foreign companies and organizations that become able to trade with sanctioned countries without being afraid of breaching sanctions. At the same time, they provide the international community with a tool to fulfil peoples needs for basic goods and services without empowering cronies in sanctioned countries.

For Syria, the mechanism may include, besides humanitarian aid, other goods and services needed for local markets such as raw materials and equipment for industrial sectors, including textile, pharmaceutical and agri-food industries. In practice, this needs an independent technical office with the power to decide and approve transactions that can be conducted with Syria without being affected by the sanctions. Such an office should be established through a UN resolution that determines its governance, location, and authority. Syrian traders, foreign companies and banks should send requests for transactions to this office which will study all of them and only approve those that are not serving the regime and its cronies. Thus, this office needs to have a strong and effective monitoring system that is well informed about cronies in Syria and their activities. It could work in coordination with UN agencies and international organizations and be managed by Syrian and foreign technical experts.

Another choice for the international community is to provide technical and financial support to civil society initiatives through direct, flexible, and monitored channels similar to the above-mentioned mechanisms to avoid the bureaucracy of the current UN channels and to give a better opportunity for local civil society initiatives in getting external funds. Currently, only licenced NGOs in regime-controlled areas, that are all pro-regime, have the right to receive funds from international organizations. The Syrian civil society is the only actor that could positively change the internal power dynamics in the country. It understands the actual causes of economic deterioration, and, therefore, it would be able to counter the regimes rhetoric on sanctions as the sole cause of economic failure in the country. It could also build practical economic alternatives to mitigate the economic hardship at the household level.

The above technical suggestions should only be used as temporary solutions to overcome the negative impact of sanctions on the Syrian population. The end goal remains eventually lifting all sanctions provided the country goes through genuine political reform that fulfils aspirations of many Syrians in building a just, fair and democratic society.

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Punishing the Regime, Protecting Syrians: The Dilemma of Sanctions on Syria -

An Ice detention center in Georgia is reportedly the site of a mass involuntary sterilization project. A whistleblower report published by the non-profit Project South alleges that large numbers of migrant women held at the Irwin county detention center, a privately run facility that imprisons undocumented immigrants, received hysterectomies that they did not want and which were not medically necessary.

The allegations reported by Project South were first made in a formal complaint by a nurse working at the detention center, Dawn Wooten, who describes the conditions there and conversations she had with imprisoned women in detail. The hysterectomies were all allegedly performed by the same outside gynecologist, Mehendra Amin, of Douglas, Georgia. Wooten says that one migrant woman referred to Amin as the uterus collector. Amin told The Intercept that he had only done one or two hysterectomies in the past two [or] three years. Responding to the allegations, he said Everything is wrong and urged Intercept reporters to talk to the hospital administrator for more information.

The women say they were not told why they were having hysterectomies, with some saying that they were given conflicting reasons for the procedures or reprimanded when asked about them. Wootens account in the Project South report was corroborated by two lawyers, who told NBC News that four women in the facility whom they represent, had been sterilized without medical cause and without their consent. According to the Project South report, a detained woman at the Irwin county center said: When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like theyre experimenting with our bodies.

As horrific as the allegations are, its not likely that either the Irwin county officials or Dr Amin were experimenting. More likely, they knew exactly what they were doing. If true, the allegations of forced sterilizations would make the Irwin county detention center only the latest in Americas long history of eugenics, which has disproportionately targeted women of color.

In the early 20th century, white American intellectuals were pioneers of race science, advancing the idea that undesirable traits could and should be bred out of the population with government planning and selective, involuntary sterilization programs. Everything the Nazis knew about eugenics, they learned from the United States. The 1927 Buck v Bell supreme court case, in which the court ruled that the state of Virginia had the right to sterilize a 20-year-old named Carrie Buck against her will, led to an era of enthusiastically racist population engineering by state governments. Federally funded eugenics boards were established in 32 states, through which tax dollars were spent to sterilize approximately 70,000 people, mostly women. These programs were used to enforce via state law the racist fiction of America as a white country, and forced sterilization disproportionately targeted Black women.

A separate federal program in the 1960s and 1970s deputized doctors with the Indian Health Service to choose which Native American women they personally deemed fit to reproduce, and to make those womens reproductive choices for them accordingly. They decided that approximately a quarter of Native American women were unfit to have children, and sterilized them. As with the migrant women at the Irwin county center, many of the Native women were lied to about the nature of their procedures, or were sterilized without their knowledge during other surgeries. Some Native women were told, incorrectly, that the sterilizations were reversible; others were told that they were being treated for appendicitis, or needed to have their tonsils removed. They discovered the truth when they woke up.

None of this is distant history. North Carolinas eugenics program, through which 7,600 people were sterilized, did not end until 1977

Nor was it only state actors who forced sterilization on women. Some gynecologists took it upon themselves to sterilize women they didnt think should be having children. In her groundbreaking work on the reproductive oppression of Black women, Killing the Black Body, the legal scholar Dorothy Roberts details the case of Clovis Pierce, the only Medicaid-accepting obstetrician in Aiken county, South Carolina. Pierce allegedly demanded that his pregnant Medicaid patients consent to sterilization before he agreed to deliver their children. He reportedly threatened women who resisted with legal action; once, when a woman currently in labor objected to being sterilized, Pierce allegedly had her thrown out of the hospital. One of Pierces patients, Dorothy Waters, claims that Pierce explained his rationale for enforcing her sterilization in extremely blunt terms. Listen here, young lady, this is my tax money paying for this baby and Im tired of paying for illegitimate children, he told her. If you dont want this sterilization, find another doctor. Dr Pierce reportedly sterilized 18 women at Aiken county hospital in 1972 alone. Sixteen of them were Black.

None of this is distant history. North Carolinas eugenics program, through which 7,600 people were sterilized, did not end until 1977. Dr Pierce moved his practice from Aiken to Greenville, South Carolina, and was still practicing as recently as 2012.

Few fictions are as violently defended as the one that posits that America is for white people, and few things make those who cherish this fiction so angry as the specter of non-white women choosing for themselves when to have children and how many children to have. Forced sterilizations like the ones that happened to women at the Irwin county center and to women throughout the nation during the 20th century are first and foremost human rights violations, cruel abridgements of those womens dignity, autonomy and rights to self determination. But they are also statements of white supremacist hostility, an assertion by white racists of the thing they most hate and fear: new Americans of color.

See the article here:

Ice hysterectomy allegations in line with US's long and racist history of eugenics - The Guardian

Meadowbrook High alumnus Tony Pham (left), the newly appointed acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, speaks with Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard during an Aug. 28 visit to the county jail. ASH DANIEL

The single piece of unlined white paper, neatly folded and tucked away in the inside breast pocket of Tony Phams suit jacket, is a testimony to both how far he has come over the past 45 years and what he left behind.

Its a copy of his familys aircraft boarding pass from April 19, 1975, when the 2-year-old Pham, his mother and his two older sisters fled Vietnam with little more than the clothes on their backs just 11 days before the capital of their war-torn country fell under Communist control.

I carry it with me everywhere I go, because no matter how well I do in life, no matter how high I go or how low I go, thats my anchor, Pham says, sitting at a conference table in the Chesterfield County Jail on the morning of Aug. 28, three days before he officially assumed his new role as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This is what got us on the plane that day and we were blessed and fortunate as a family to have that opportunity. I carry that weight with me, knowing that for that family of four to sit in those seats, we knocked out another family. That drives my vision of doing the best I can because there were folks that gave up a lot for my family to get here, he adds.

Pham, a Meadowbrook High School graduate and friend of Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard, visited the county jail to deliver pizzas to the deputies who run the facility. He spoke to the Observer for nearly an hour about his recent appointment, his personal refugee story and how that experience will guide his leadership of a beleaguered agency, one charged with implementing immigration policies that many advocates say are overly harsh and inhumane, particularly under President Donald Trump.

Pham, an attorney, had served as principal legal adviser to ICE since January. He was named Aug. 25 to succeed the retiring Matt Albence as its top official, responsible for managing a staff of 20,000 and an annual budget of $8 billion.

Less than two months before Election Day, amid nationwide protests over systemic racism and police brutality and a global pandemic that has seen COVID-19 cases surge in many ICE detention centers (including one in nearby Farmville), Pham is now the public face of a Trump administration immigration agenda that has been widely criticized as racist.

Still, when acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf called him last month and offered the job, Pham insists he accepted without hesitation.

The call to leadership has never been convenient, but when the opportunity came up to be that voice of calm and reason and hopefully be able to change [negative perceptions of ICE] simply by being in the seat, how could I say no? he says. My parents didnt raise a coward.

Left behind during the hasty evacuation from Vietnam, Phams father later reunited with his family at a refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where they lived in dormitory-style housing and dreamed of beginning new lives in the United States.

The Phams made their way to Virginia by way of sponsorship from a Presbyterian church in Henrico County, then moved to the Meadowdale area in northeastern Chesterfield in the early 1980s. Pham enrolled at Hopkins Elementary and his sisters at Falling Creek Middle, while their parents sought whatever jobs they could find and struggled to overcome significant language and cultural barriers.

His mother, who had been a teacher in Vietnam, worked at Thalhimers department store and sold tickets at a movie theater. His father, formerly an engineer and military officer, worked as a mechanic during the day and a janitor in the evening.

Anything they could do to keep the family afloat, he recalls.

In 1985, 10 years after they came to the U.S., the Phams were granted American citizenship. Tony graduated from the College of William & Mary in 1995 and added a law degree from the University of Richmond in 1999.

He took a job in the Richmond commonwealths attorneys office and quickly built a record of obtaining convictions in complex homicide, narcotics and firearms cases. In 2006, he was tasked with creating and leading the citys first unit specifically dedicated to prosecuting gang-related offenses. Along the way, he earned the nickname Phammer the Hammer.

His hard-nosed approach gradually softened, though, when he went to work in a correctional facility and learned more about the human condition.

Pham was hired as in-house counsel for the Richmond sheriffs office in 2010, providing legal and operational guidance to newly elected Sheriff C.T. Woody and his staff of 600 full-time employees at the city jail.

I cant say enough good things about Tony, Woody says. Hes a hard worker, hes intelligent and fair and a man of the highest integrity. Hes just an outstanding individual.

Two years after an unsuccessful campaign to become Henricos commonwealths attorney in 2015, Pham took over as superintendent of the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail. He was credited with implementing a series of reforms that improved conditions at the Williamsburg facility, which had faced repeated lawsuits for mistreatment of inmates. He also launched an addiction recovery program modeled after the one Leonard had created at the Chesterfield County Jail.

Hes an extremely compassionate man who is sincere about wanting to help people, Leonard says. He knows the plight of the immigrant first-hand and he sees an opportunity to help make a difference in this country.

He has no time to waste. As a political appointee, Pham knows he could be replaced if Joe Biden wins the Nov. 3 presidential election. Even if President Trump secures a second term, theres no guarantee Pham will retain his leadership position at ICE on a permanent basis.

Because of his background, Pham already faces heightened scrutiny from pro-immigration groups waiting to see if hes able or willing to make any substantive changes at ICE.

OCAAsian Pacific American Advocates, a national civil rights organization dedicated to improving the social, political and economic prospects of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), has called on Pham to release nonviolent detainees, halt the unlawful deportation of refugees and end family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Representation in our government is important in order to uplift the needs of our community and ensure the well-being of AAPIs through policies and legislation, says Roland Hwang, the groups vice president for public affairs, in a press release. We hope Mr. Pham will remember his refugee roots, and the Vietnamese American immigrant community, to counteract the Trump Administrations anti-immigrant agenda.

If Pham has any loyalty left to refugees, he will begin by announcing the closure of ICEs migrant prison camps, halt all deportations during the pandemic, cease ICE collusion with hate groups and immediately release all of those in immigrant detention. To do otherwise would mean turning his back on refugees and siding with a rogue government agency that has only shown itself to be a menace in our communities, adds Tracy La, executive director of VietRISE, a California-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Vietnamese and other immigrant groups, in its official response to Phams appointment.

Without getting into specifics, Pham says hell be rolling out several new policy initiatives over the next few weeks.

I understand when families talk about the horrors of fleeing oppression, he says. Any decision that is made to the application of the rule of law is done with deliberate, thoughtful processes, understanding Do we apply the law in this fashion? Is it fair? Is it just and is it equitable?

ICE, he insists, is not an organization bent on intolerance or racism.

It cant be, not with me at the head, he says, refolding the copy of his familys 1975 boarding pass and putting it back in his pocket. It just cant be with my life story.

The rest is here:

Tony Pham's story: From refugee to head of ICE - Chesterfield Observer

Disneys new live-action film Mulan has become a global sensation, but not just for the reason the storied production company hoped.

Some viewers who paid to stream the movie on Disney+ last weekend found something troubling in the credits: Disney thanked eight government bodies in Xinjiang, a western province in China where around 2 million Uighur Muslims have been forced into concentration camps by the Chinese government. It turns out parts of Mulan were filmed in Xinjiang two years ago, well after the world knew about Beijings plan to reeducate Uighurs with Communist Party doctrine.

Thats simply shocking, as theres no excuse for Disney executives to have been unaware of the human rights abuses taking place just miles from the filming sites. Plus, the film had courted controversy for some time, as its lead actress last year supported Hong Kongs law enforcement over pro-democracy protesters, which led to the #BoycottMulan social media movement.

For several years now, China has been systematically repressing its Uighur Muslim minority in that region subjecting men, women, and children to torture, sexual abuse, forced sterilization, family separation, and brainwashing, among other horrors. They add to the Chinese governments other abuses, such as banning expressions of Islamic faith.

Even worse, the film credits specifically praise the police security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang with a large Uighur population. That bureau is tasked with running some of the internment camps, experts say, and was blacklisted last year along with other Chinese law enforcement agencies by the US Commerce Department, prohibiting US companies from selling or supplying products to them.

Its unclear if Disney and Turpans police bureau or other similar agencies interacted much or at all during filming, but its still not a good look.

A spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry this week insisted the camps are simply vocational skills education and training centers, even though ample evidence suggests that isnt true. Disney didnt respond to a request for comment.

Some whove seen the film say it also promotes Han supremacism (or Han chauvinism, as Mao Zedong, Chinas communist leader and the founder of the Peoples Republic of China, termed it), the idea that all parts of China including native Uighur and Kazakh lands, among others should be governed and dominated by ethnic Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China. Many leaders in the ruling Communist Party, like President Xi Jinping, are Han.

The villain in the new Disney film leads a group of assassins clearly coded as Muslims, said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the Chinese governments oppression of Uighurs. For instance, the characters are dark-skinned, wear turbans, and are dressed eerily like ISIS terrorists in their videos, some experts say.

The film traffics in Islamophobia, Byler argues, and presents Mulan, the protagonist, as a defender of the Chinese colonization of northwest China. He added: It was as if Xinjiang was simply a blank canvas, a land without an indigenous history.

Human rights activists and many regional experts are angry at all of this, with some using the hashtag #BoycottMulan to build a social media campaign around awareness about the film.

In Hollywood movies, they claim to embrace social justice. In fact, they kowtow to autocratic China disgracefully, Nathan Law, an activist pushing for a more democratic Hong Kong, tweeted on Monday. They shamed themselves by upholding values they dont even believe in. Movies, should be more than money.

Law has another reason to be upset about the film. Last year, Liu Yifei the Chinese-born American actress who plays Mulan in the movie came out in support of law enforcement officials in Hong Kong who were cracking down on pro-democracy demonstrators. I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong, she wrote in August 2019 on Weibo, a Chinese social media site. Her statement prompted the initial calls to boycott the film.

Its unclear if the social media campaign will doom the films success, which cost $200 million to make. Its reeled in upward of $6 million so far and will likely make much more when it premieres in China on Friday. Still, #BoycottMulan has shown that the Chinese governments human rights violations will no longer be ignored and even companies as powerful as Disney may need to change how they engage with China going forward.

There is clearly a cost now to companies who remain intentionally ignorant of whats going on in China, said James Millward, a Georgetown University world history professor.

Some major companies now find themselves enveloped in a firestorm, Millward said, whenever it becomes clear that they havent pushed back on Beijing for its mistreatment of the Uighurs.

In 2018, for instance, the consulting company McKinsey held a retreat in Kashgar, China just four miles from a Uighur internment camp. The New York Times reported on that event, calling out the famous firm:

At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the iconic American company has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.

Last year, the Japanese clothing companies Muji and Uniqlo promoted their use of Xinjiang cotton. Made of organic cotton delicately and wholly handpicked in Xinjiang, the mens Oxford Shirts of MUJI are soft and breathable with a clean design, Mujis website read. Uniqlos site at the time also boasted its clothes were Made from Xinjiang Cotton, famous for its superb quality.

Activists publicly shamed both companies. What! Theyre actually using that as a slogan? Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch, told Australias ABC last year. Have they somehow missed two straight years of news about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang?

Now, says Georgetowns Millward, we can put Disney in an elite section of companies caught in this firestorm.

Instead of promoting anti-Uighur, pro-Chinese government narratives, companies like Disney could use their clout to pressure leaders in Beijing to end what Joe Bidens presidential campaign calls a genocide.

For a company like Disney, that could mean not filming in the country anymore, delaying releases for their viewers, or at the most extreme level completely cutting ties with the country. But any one of those options, from the smallest to the nuclear one, are hard for any corporation to take, mainly because China is such a large and lucrative market. And if companies do anything to anger Beijing, like not promote a government-friendly narrative in a movie about China, theres a chance Disney would lose access to that market.

They are caught between a rock and a hard place, Millward said.

Yet human rights groups have urged other major brands to cut ties with suppliers in Xinjiang. As Voxs Terry Nguyen reported, In March, the nonpartisan think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report detailing how 82 foreign and Chinese companies have direct or indirect ties to the Xinjiang region and beyond based on their supply chain. Among those companies: Amazon, Apple, Dell, Nike, Nintendo, Uniqlo, Victorias Secret, and Zara.

Companies could also leverage the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. That kind of event provides a big boost to a nations image just like the 2008 games in Chinas capital did. Corporate sponsorships of the events provide even more international legitimacy. A company may see paying to have its logo featured at the games as just an endorsement of the competition, but others will see it also as an endorsement of the host country.

A lack of corporate sponsors would also mean a lack of funds, and a large public outcry could in theory force the Olympic Committee to pick a new country to host the games. Thats a long shot, experts told me, but those who want China to stop interning Uighurs and other minorities should take advantage of the high-profile event to put Beijing on notice.

For now, though, big movie companies might do better to avoid filming in Xinjiang and not help the Chinese government paper over human rights atrocities.

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The backlash to Disneys Mulan and the connection to Chinas Uighur oppression, explained - Vox.com

WASHINGTON The coronavirus was spreading around the world, and officials at the United States Agency for International Development were anxious to rush humanitarian aid to nations in need. But first, they had to settle a debate over American branding and whether it should be displayed on assistance headed to conflict zones.

Political appointees from the White House and the State Department wanted the aid agencys logo affixed to all assistance packages to show the world how much the United States was sending abroad, even as it grappled with its own outbreak.

Career employees at U.S.A.I.D. argued that the logo and other American symbols could endanger people who delivered or received the aid in countries that are hostile to the United States and where branding exceptions are usually granted.

At the end of the debate this spring, relief workers were allowed to distribute aid without the branding in a handful of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But the discussion, as described by a half-dozen current and former officials at the aid agency and relief workers who were briefed on it, delayed assistance for several weeks to some of the worlds most vulnerable communities as the pandemic began to peak.

It was a cautionary example of the political intervention that has roiled an agency that prides itself as leading the humanitarian response to disasters, conflict and other emergencies around the world.

As far back as I go, working on these programs, U.S.A.I.D. has really been an extraordinary, respected leader in global health and humanitarian responses, said Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. To distort that mission is an insult, and its really outrageous to me.

In an interview, Ms. Lowey said she had never seen the aid agency as vulnerable to partisan politics as it was during the Trump administration. She cited the agencys accusation in May that the United Nations was promoting abortion in its coronavirus response fund as an example of the Trump administration politicizing a global pandemic to appeal to antichoice voters here in the United States.

The aid agencys acting administrator, John Barsa, was selected for the job on March 17, hours before the coronavirus was confirmed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Mr. Barsa, who declined to be interviewed for this article, took extra precautions to prepare for the hurricane season and was quick to assist victims of the deadly explosions in Beirut, Lebanon, last month that have left at least 300,000 people homeless.

But as President Trump campaigns for re-election and the coronavirus has claimed more than 193,000 lives nationwide, the aid agency has been micromanaged by the White House and the State Department. That has prompted critics to say the intervention has slowed pandemic relief efforts to some places, weaponized aid in other areas to chastise Trump administration adversaries and disengaged the United States from the World Health Organizations coronavirus response.

Pooja Jhunjhunwala, the aid agencys acting spokeswoman, said Mr. Barsa was uniquely qualified to lead U.S.A.I.D. during this period, given his past work at the Department of Homeland Security and NASA, dating to the George W. Bush administration.

His strength and experience are in knowing how the U.S. government functions, how the various parts of the executive branch interact with each other and how leadership can make a difference, Ms. Jhunjhunwala wrote in response to questions. He has increased U.S.A.I.D.s cooperation and coordination with other U.S. government entities and streamlined decision-making processes internally to improve our response to the pandemic.

Thomas H. Staal, who worked at the aid agency for 31 years before retiring in 2019, said its relationship with political appointees at the State Department and the White House had historically waxed and waned depending on the scope of a crisis and its effects on the United States.

In Iraq in 2003, for example, the State Department and the White House were very heavily involved in everything we did in the first years of the American-led invasion and occupation, he said.

But Mr. Staal, whose last job at the aid agency was senior counselor to Mr. Barsas predecessor, said he was very concerned about proposed budget cuts and contentious staff appointments at U.S.A.I.D. under the Trump administration. He also noted that the agency did not have a representative on the coronavirus task force that was set up by the White House.

Normally, U.S.A.I.D. would be a major player in that, as we were in all the other major health emergencies around the world, Mr. Staal said. That, to me, demonstrates the lack of the support and lack of understanding of the value of U.S.A.I.D.

Last month, the aid agency distributed a three-page memo to humanitarian aid organizations outlining Chinese government oppression of Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. The information circular, published on agency letterhead, sought to raise awareness about challenges to democracy, human rights and other freedoms, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.

It was sent as diplomatic tensions between the Trump administration and the Chinese Communist Party continued to escalate; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a frequent and sharp critic of Beijing.

Attached to the memo was a 19-page advisory, dated July 1, from the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security warning that businesses, academic institutions, investors and other entities that dealt with products linked to Xinjiang should be aware of reputational, economic and, in some cases, legal risks of doing so.

That concerned relief workers who feared that they could be cut off from U.S.A.I.D. funding or otherwise targeted for relying on products they had no way of knowing were connected to Xinjiang.

Relief organizations were confounded and worried, said Jenny Marron, the director of public policy and government affairs for InterAction, a Washington-based alliance of global aid and advocacy organizations. She noted that the memo had been distributed by grants teams for the aid agency. When confronted by relief workers, the agency later said it merely meant to provide information, not set new conditions for funding.

The circulars were factually accurate, Ms. Marron said. But the real question and concern was, was there a new requirement being asked of partners?

Some agency employees have raised alarms over other policies that appear to deviate from the norm.

In February, the agency released a 56-second video that directly challenged President Nicols Maduro of Venezuela. The video showed burning trucks at the Colombian border that were identified as having been forcibly stopped from delivering humanitarian aid to Venezuela, where widespread hunger and lack of medical supplies are a hallmark of Mr. Maduros authoritarian rule.

The video addressed Venezuelans in English and Spanish. Your perseverance is inspirational and freedom will overcome Maduros tyranny, it said in large type.

The Trump administration has sought Mr. Maduros ouster since his widely disputed re-election in 2018. While promoting democratic values is part of the aid agencys mission, Mr. Staal said it had usually been done quietly, with partners on the ground, to let somebody else in the U.S. government do the politicization, if you will, the public voice of that.

The administration is also considering centralizing efforts for pandemic preparedness under an outbreak response coordinator at the State Department, a role that critics say should be led by U.S.A.I.D.

The immediate response to the pandemic is a humanitarian and disaster response, said Conor M. Savoy, the executive director of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a bipartisan coalition of international development experts. That knowledge rests with U.S.A.I.D. They dont reside at State.

Perhaps the most evident example of the oversight and demands from the White House is the recent parade of political appointees who have been tapped for senior positions at the aid agency.

Bethany Kozma, the agencys deputy chief of staff, spoke out in 2016 against President Barack Obamas transgender agenda. She has since helped draft an update to the agencys gender policy that eliminates mention of transgender people.

The new religious freedom adviser for the agency, Mark Kevin Lloyd, reportedly called Islam a barbaric cult while working as a Trump campaign staff member in 2016.

And before Merritt Corrigan joined the agency as its deputy White House liaison, she declared that the United States was in the clutches of a homo-empire that was advancing a tyrannical L.G.B.T. agenda. She left the agency in August, after three months on the job, saying she was targeted by congressional Democrats and the news media because of her Christian faith.

In June, Mr. Barsa said the criticism of the three staff members was unwarranted and malicious. He also said they were appointed by the White House to carry out the presidents foreign policy agenda at U.S.A.I.D.

Another political appointee at the agency, Peter Marocco, told colleagues he was under pressure from the White Houses Office of Management and Budget to cut U.S.A.I.D. spending, according to another agency official. Mr. Marocco has delayed funding to help Ukraines government ward off Russian interference, the official said, even though he oversees efforts to prevent conflict in countries facing political transition.

To load up an agency with political appointees who do not have the expertise, how then do you expect that agency to perform against its mission? said Gayle Smith, who was the aid agencys administrator during the Obama administration.

U.S.A.I.D. declined to comment about Mr. Maroccos actions, which were first reported by Foreign Policy.

For the first time, and in direct response to the coronavirus pandemic, the aid agencys Bureau for Global Health has begun to procure and distribute thousands of ventilators abroad. The ventilators have gone to at least 40 countries, including Uzbekistan, India, Colombia and South Africa.

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, has demanded to know more about where the ventilators are being sent and the White Houses role in that decision.

Influence by the National Security Council circumvents longstanding U.S.A.I.D. procurement and accountability policies and interjects political agendas into aid delivery, Mr. Menendez said in a letter to Mr. Barsa in June.

At least 200 ventilators were sent in May to Russia, which is trying to interfere in the presidential election to help Mr. Trump, according to American intelligence assessments released last month.

Continued here:

At U.S.A.I.D., Juggling Political Priorities and Pandemic Response - The New York Times

Photo from El Ciudadano

Julian Assange remains in HMP Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, UK.

By DENIS ROGATYUK El Ciudadano | Wire-Progressive InternationalReposted by Bulatlat.com

John Shipton has been at the forefront of defending his son, Julian Assange, from political persecution, false charges, harassment and slander by political figures, the corporate media and the U.S. Government. He shares with us his thoughts and feelings about the struggle to bring his son home.

Denis Rogatyuk: The struggle to bring Julian home has been a monumental challenge since his unjust conviction, but it has certainly become much more difficult since his expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy in March 2019. What are the main actions you and the campaign have undertaken since then?

John Shipton: Julian is a historical artifact. Never has a journalist, editor or publication faced an onslaught of this intensity. He was hit by the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States and Australia, with all the forces they could muster.

They violated every human rights law and due process by trying to send Julian to the United States and destroying him [as a human being]. We have witnessed the gradual killing of Julian through psychological torture, relentless disruption of proceedings, and due process right before our eyes. This is what we are fighting against.

During the last hearing, Judge Baraitser asked Julian to prove that he was unwell because he did not appear on the video. This demonstrates a process that we witnessed over and over again, which is blaming the victim. In the case of Australia, they say they have offered consular assistance, which consists of offering last weeks newspaper and seeing if you are still alive and that is about the extent of it. DFAT maintains they have made 100 offers [in consular assistance]. Well, this is a profound testimony to failure.

It has now been eleven years. Julian has been arbitrarily detained for eleven years.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that Julian was arbitrarily detained and that he should be compensated and released immediately. The last report was in February 2018. It is now 2020 and Julian remains in Belmarsh maximum security prison under 24-hour lockdown.

DR: How would you describe the relationship between the current campaign for his release and the Wikileaks organisation?

JS: WikiLeaks continues its work and maintains the most extraordinary library of American diplomacy since 1970. It is an extraordinary artifact for any journalist or historian, any one of us can search for the names of those who have been involved in U.S. diplomacy in their own countries or with the United States. This is a great resource which continues to be maintained.

WikiLeaks released another set of files, so WikiLeaks continues its work. The people who defend Julian and WikiLeaks include one hundred thousand people around the world who are constantly working to achieve Julians freedom and stop this oppression of the free press, of publishing, of editors and journalists. We are constantly working to do that. There are about 80 websites around the world that publish and agitate for Julians freedom and about 86 Facebook pages dedicated to Julian. So there are many of us and the increase in support will continue until the Australian and UK governments recognize that this is the crime, Julians oppression is the great crime of the 21st century.

DR: The latest accusation against Julian is regarding the alleged conspiracy with unidentified anonymous hackers, which appears to be another attempt to expedite his extradition. Do you think this is a symptom of desperation on the part of the Justice Department?

JS: No, I dont () People who work at the Justice Department get paid whether they succeed or not, if Julian is extradited they get paid, if he is not extradited they still get paid. They still go home, have a glass of wine, take the kids to the movies and then come to work the next day and think of another instrument of torture for Julian. This is their job.

The Justice Department would like to see the trial delayed until after the U.S. elections. So, the courts lawyers will appeal the fact that they have not had time and try to get the judge to change the hearing date. That is what I imagine. But I dont think its an act of desperation at all.

If anything, they are giving those of us who defend Julian more to worry about, so that our energies are not singularly focused on getting Julian out, while the conversation turns to this new charge and who is included in it. It is Siggy and Sabu who are not credible witnesses. Siggy is a famous sex offender or con man who stole $50,000 from Wikileaks, etc. There are no credible witnesses [to these allegations]. I guess its to delay the hearing or to make the conversation go away from whats important.

DR: A lot has been researched and published about Julians life and early days as a hacker in the 1990s. I would like to discuss the aspects of his life that have given him the resilience and strength to resist the challenges he faces now. Julian is incredibly committed to telling the truth in his interviews, is very articulate and very careful to communicate and choose the exact words to describe things. Is this something your family taught him or is it something special about Julian?

JS: You know its a gift that I would like to have myself. So I dont know where it came from. I guess youd have to ask the gods.

Julian is his own man entirely and the path he has forged is different and clearly his own. I admire him and am proud of him for his ability to adapt and his ability to continue to fight despite eleven years of relentless psychological torture, which doesnt come without cost.

However, we believe that we will prevail and Julian will be able to come home to Australia, and maybe live in Mullumbimby for a little bit, or in Melbourne; he used to live here down the corner.

DR: Julian displayed incredible physical and mental resilience over the past 9 years, particularly in the nearly 8 years he spent in the Ecuadorian Embassy and last year in Belmarsh Prison. Where do you think this strength comes from: his moral and political convictions or something he developed in his early life in Australia?

JS: I think its another gift he has. That he will continue to fight for what he believes in. And if there are elements of truth in what he is fighting for, well, then he never gives up. Its an aspect of character.

I dont mind a fight myself, but I am invigorated by fighting for Julian and each insult or offense against Julian increases my determination to prevail and the determination of Julians supporters to prevail. Each insult increases our strength. As when the second lot of indictments were brought down the week before last, his supporters around the world raised their voices in disbelief and began to raise awareness of Julians situation. So its really interesting, the Department of Justice might think one thing causes us to fracture, but what actually happens is that the upwelling of support continues unabated.

DR: John, I wish to ask you a personal question. How does it feel to be the father of a man like Julian, to see his son go through all this hardship and slander, and continue to travel and fight for his liberation all over the world?

JS: Well, some of it is hard to believe, what people say about Julian. Like those American politicians saying theyll shoot him, the UC Global employees in Spain who were supposed to look after the security of the Ecuadorian embassy who speculated on how to poison Julian at the behest of the CIA, the Mossad or Sheldon Adelson.

You know, I ignore it, I dont take the slightest notice of it. Im surprised that people put their energies into calling Julian names and theyve never met him. Theyve never seen him and yet some people find the time and energy to write scurrilous things.

I am very surprised that people put their energies into that kind of thing but I dont count the cost even for a minute. I do what Im doing here with you today, I do what comes before me and then I move on to the next thing, but I never count costs.

DR: Ever since the extradition hearings began, the US government, particularly Trump, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo, have been doubling down on their attacks against Julian and WikiLeaks. Pompeo even called it a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. The US establishment appears to be dead set against them, and both major parties are playing along. So what do you think ought to be the strategy of activists and journalists in the US to challenge this?

JS: Well, first of all, Mike Pompeo is a failed Secretary of State, a failed CIA director, who declared war on WikiLeaks to get CIA support for his future ambitions to run for president.

The secretary of state is an important position. However, Mike Pompeo doesnt strike me as being a historically significant personality. The US establishment must fall in line with what the CIA wants and thinks.

In that address on April 23, 2017, Pompeo wanted to get to all his workers to support him in his bid for the presidency and also to intimidate journalists, editors and publications around the world. His sole aim is to ruin your capacity to bring ideas and information to the public, and our ability as members of the public to talk to each other and sort things out by talking to each other about what we should do and how we should live life. They just want to have it their way, declare war on anyone, kill another million people, destroy Yemen, destroy Libya, destroy Iraq, destroy Afghanistan, destroy Syria, the list goes on. Millions of refugees are flooding the world and moving to Europe.

The Maghreb in turmoil. The Levant in turmoil. Palestinians killed. This is their objective. So, for us, we depend on you to give us accurate information so that we can have fair opinions about how the world is moving around us. What Pompeo wants is for what he says to be believed.

You can see their story, they say there may be as many as five million people since 1991 who died as a result of the United States and its allies invading Iraq in an illegal war. You can watch Collateral Murder and you can see a good samaritan dragging a wounded man to his car to take him to the hospital, driving his children to school. Murdered before your eyes. The helicopter pilots asked for instructions so they could shoot a wounded man: two children and two good samaritans. However, we depend on you, journalists, publishers, publications, to bring us the crimes committed by the government, so that we have the energy to place our shoulders to preventing these murders with all the determination and energy we can muster to prevent the murder and destruction of an entire country.

If I may remind you, in Melbourne a million people marched against the war in Iraq. I think a total of 10 million people in the world. We dont want war. They lie to us to have wars, for whatever satisfaction. Who would want to see and hear the lamentation of the widows, the screams of the children. It is monstrous. And so we need the information to say no.

DR: The new Cold War between the United States (and the EU) on the one hand and China (and Russia) on the other threatens to pull the ordinary people of the world into another confrontation on behalf of the political and economic elites among these countries. From your experience of seeking international support for Julian, what are the best ways of forging solidarity across borders?

JS: I think the best way is to talk to your friends and discuss these things to become aware outside of what the mass media wants us to see and hear.

So, just face-to-face conversations and then conversations on social networks are sufficient. In the last two weeks Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as platforms removed certain discussion topics and certain channels. They are being removed because we are succeeding, not because nobody is watching them.

The Sochi World Cup was a great example of this, a fabulous success. Everybody who went to Russia came back full of admiration for Russia and Russian hospitality. Well, this is what is needed, just ordinary people getting to know each other and discussing important issues, without depending on CNN or anyone else talking about how they should feel about this or that topic. Just talk to friends, talk to groups of people, talk, exchange ideas, exchange where to get good information and things will change. I have an unwavering belief in the capacity and goodness of humanity in general, and I am proved right every time because ten million people marched against the war in Iraq, but a few hundred manipulated nations to destroy Iraq. Ordinary people dont want war. We want to be able to talk to our friends and take care of our families.

DR: The COVID-19 pandemic has not only revealed the inadequacies of the neoliberal economic order, but also its growing instability and desperation to sustain itself. This is also true of the prominent right-wing governments of the United States, Brazil and Bolivia that seek to silence journalists and reports regarding the mismanagement of the pandemic. We are seeing independent journalism under attack around the world, through censorship, intimidation, threats and assassinations. What should be the best way of fighting back against them?

JS: These governments cant even look after their own populations, let alone order the world in a decent way. And their ambitions are to order the world while they cant even look after the people of Seattle () Of course they oppress journalists. Of course they oppress publications. Of course they remove the warrants to allow you to broadcast on a certain spectrum. The platforms are eliminated because we continue to understand and expose their criminal shortcomings.

In fact, they actually consider the phrase herd immunity to be something scientific, they actually contemplate allowing hundreds of thousands of elderly people to die.

You dont get older and get better, you get older and you get a little sicker. The very contemplation of removing the steadying part of a society alters peoples stability the young are full of vigor and the old full of caution, this is a fair balance in society allowing them to die, for whatever reason we cannot discern. It no longer costs money to care for one section of society. You dont lose anything from it, in fact you gain access to the experience and judgment of the older section of your society. So its incomprehensible, like neoliberalism itself, nobody understands why weve got it, but its there. Reposted by

*Denis Rogatyuk is a journalist at El Ciudadano, a writer, contributor, and researcher with a number of publications including Jacobin, Tribune, Le Vent Se Leve, Senso Comune, and others.

Read more from the original source:

An Interview with John Shipton, father of Assange: "Julian's oppression is the great crime of the 21st century" - Bulatlat