| Britain's Johnson to detail tough stance in EU trade talks Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:11 PM PST  Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Monday outline a hardline stance in post-Brexit negotiations with the European Union, arguing Britain does not need to follow various EU rules to strike a trade deal. The British premier will note London has been told in earlier divorce talks with Brussels that it has the option of an ambitious trade deal, "which opens up markets and avoids the full panoply of EU regulation". "There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment, or anything similar," Johnson is set to say, according to excerpts of the address released by his Downing Street office.
|
| China finishes new hospital for virus patients as toll grows Posted: 02 Feb 2020 04:23 PM PST  China completed building a 1,000-bed hospital for treating victims of a new virus that has caused 362 deaths and more than 17,000 infections at home and abroad, according to the latest figures Monday. Reopening of schools was also delayed in hardest-hit central Hubei province, where the specialized hospital in the provincial capital Wuhan was completed in just 10 days. China's new totals of 361 deaths and 2,829 new cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the Chinese total to 17,205, come as other countries continued evacuating hundreds of their citizens from Hubei and imposed travel restrictions affecting Chinese or people who recently traveled in the country.
|
| Libya's neighbors propose tribal meeting to solve conflict Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:40 PM PST  Algeria's president is proposing that Libya's tribal groups hold meetings in a neighboring country to find new solutions to the conflict tearing oil-rich Libya apart. Fighting among militias, arms and migrant trafficking and extremism in Libya are a big concern to neighboring Algeria and Tunisia, whose presidents met Sunday in Algiers. Both leaders were elected in recent months, and are eager to keep Libya's lawlessness from further spilling over their borders.
|
| 'Britain will prosper': PM Johnson sets out tough terms for EU talks Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:30 PM PST !['Britain will prosper': PM Johnson sets out tough terms for EU talks]( "'Britain will prosper': PM Johnson sets out tough terms for EU talks") Prime Minister Boris Johnson will lay out his negotiating terms for talks with the European Union on Monday, saying Britain will prosper even if he cannot strike his preferred trade deal. After marking Britain's departure from the EU at a party in his Downing Street residence on Friday, Johnson will use a speech to ram home his message that Brexit, for him, means that sovereignty trumps the economy. The sides have until the end of the year, when a standstill transitional period expires, to try to secure a deal on trade and future relations - something London and Brussels both say they want to do, but on very different terms.
|
| Wuhan Isn’t China’s Chernobyl Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:00 PM PST ![Wuhan Isn't China's Chernobyl]( "Wuhan Isn't China's Chernobyl") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Both disasters affected millions of people, well beyond their borders. Both occurred in tightly controlled, socialist, single-party states. Both were initially hushed up by zealous officials.The similarities between the current outbreak of novel coronavirus and a 1986 reactor meltdown aren't lost on Chinese netizens, who have drawn unflattering parallels to Chernobyl in online discussions about a 2019 HBO miniseries on the disaster. The political inference is clear: After all, the explosions in reactor No. 4 and the bungled aftermath helped unmuffle public debate and accelerate the decline of the Soviet regime. The comparison is flawed, though. Moscow's grip was faltering well before radioactive debris rained down. Beijing would still be wise to draw lessons from that catastrophe.It's hard to overstate the proportions of the human and environmental disaster at Chernobyl, still the worst in civil nuclear history. The reactor's flawed design meant that a technical test, poorly administered, triggered explosions that destroyed its core and released a cloud of radioactive smoke, dust and debris. Fires burned for days. A stifling culture of secrecy, political pressure to hit economic targets, and a simple disregard for human life caused a cataclysm on April 26, 1986.There are certainly elements of that in the current crisis. China, of course, is not the Soviet Union of the 1980s. It has learned from the SARS outbreak in 2003, when a slow acknowledgement of the problem helped the pneumonia-like illness spread, eventually killing almost 800 people. Beijing has to contend with social media as well, however stifled. Yet early efforts to raise the alarm were silenced this time, too. Doctors in Wuhan were accused of spreading rumors and summoned by police.Add to that a less-than-impressive immediate response, with slow diagnostic testing that, according to Reuters, required samples to go to Beijing. There is ample evidence of overcrowded hospitals, as my colleagues David Fickling and Adam Minter have written. As with Chernobyl, the local authorities – beginning with Wuhan's mayor – have struggled in a system where orders must come from above, limiting their ability to inform the public.According to the Lancet, the first known patient developed symptoms as early as Dec. 1. China alerted the World Health Organization by the end of the month. While the first death occurred in early January, full alarm and lockdown didn't ensue until Jan. 23, days before the Lunar New Year holiday. By that point, millions of students, migrant workers and travelers had already left the city. Better than 2003, perhaps, but hardly exemplary. Much like in Chernobyl, where some 340,000 military personnel were ultimately mobilized to clean up the mess, China has proved better at dramatic gestures, like locking down cities, than effective ones. As with radiation, the virus is both invisible and poorly understood, fueling public distrust at home and abroad. And as with the 1986 explosions, the impact of failings in China will be felt globally.The comparison has its limits, though. The novel coronavirus epidemic is a crisis for public health, for the economy and even for Beijing's upper ranks. That doesn't make it a catalyst in the mold of Chernobyl.One reason is simply economic. The meltdown has been described by many — including then-leader Mikhail Gorbachev, years later — as a turning point, the event that ultimately triggered the fall of the Iron Curtain. Reality is more complex. Soviet Russia was stagnating and in near-irreversible decline by 1986, when a sharp drop in oil prices left it desperately short of hard-currency earnings. Figures vary, but academic estimates put gross domestic product growth at less than 1% around that time; productivity was dismal. China's economic expansion may be slowing, it's still nowhere near this parlous state. A comparison with 2003 also suggests that consumption should bounce back, even if other, trade war-related drags on the economy remain.Consider, too, the political differences. By 1986, Moscow was ready for a shake-up. Gorbachev had ascended to power a year earlier, and by the time of the accident had already spoken of the need for perestroika, or economic restructuring, and glasnost, roughly translated as openness. He nevertheless managed to use the Chernobyl incident to edge out old-school, Brezhnev-era politburo members like Vladimir Shcherbitsky, head of the Ukrainian Communist party. It was the excuse he needed to accelerate his plans.There's no evidence of such winds of change in Beijing, even if it's noteworthy that officials are being placed in positions that make them potential lightning rods for public anger. Premier Li Keqiang is the head of the team in charge of containing the outbreak, not President Xi Jinping.The biggest difference, however, is in the symbolism. Chernobyl battered the very essence of the Soviet state, an entire system built on a myth of outsize military and economic might. The catalog of irresponsibility, careless work and shoddy design at the Ukrainian plant dealt this image a hefty blow, from which it could not recover. It also battered the idea that limited openness would suffice. Moscow was forced to admit its problem because of radioactive readings in Sweden — Beijing has at least delivered its own message.To get a sense of the impact, also consider that Soviet citizens had rarely been told of nuclear failings, however large and fatal. The accident at Mayak in the Urals in 1957, which forced thousands from their homes, was only reported abroad after a dissident scientist discussed it in the late 1970s. Earlier trouble at Chernobyl itself was covered up. The shockwaves were far greater as a result.None of this should diminish the seriousness of the Wuhan crisis, which is still unfolding. To date, more than 300 people have died, and more than 14,000 have contracted the illness. It could get far worse. The timing is also dismal for China, as it comes to the end of a five-year plan with a cooling economy. Beijing, though, is well aware of the risk presented by unexpected events. It's no accident that while cheery videos of doctors heading off to Wuhan have appeared, so too has some mild criticism, especially of local government — pressure valves, of sorts. Officials have turned to hefty fiscal stimulus in the past, and can do so again.Chernobyl should be a warning. Just don't expect Beijing's version of perestroika anytime soon.To contact the author of this story: Clara Ferreira Marques at cferreirama@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachel Rosenthal at rrosenthal21@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
|
| Egyptian officials say militants blow up Sinai gas pipeline Posted: 02 Feb 2020 01:44 PM PST ![Egyptian officials say militants blow up Sinai gas pipeline]( "Egyptian officials say militants blow up Sinai gas pipeline") EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — Security officials in Egypt said suspected Islamic militants on Sunday blew up a natural gas pipeline in the restive norther part of Sinai Peninsula. It transfers gas to el-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai, and a cement factory in central Sinai, the officials said. Egypt is battling an Islamic State-led insurgency in the Sinai that intensified after the military overthrew an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013.
|
| Impeachment trial heads to historic end in frenetic week Posted: 02 Feb 2020 01:40 PM PST  President Donald Trump's impeachment trial heads toward a historic conclusion this week, with senators all-but-certain to acquit him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after narrowly rejecting Democratic demands to summon witnesses. The vote is expected to cap a months-long investigation spurred by a whistleblower complaint that Trump improperly withheld U.S. military aid from Ukraine in a bid to pressure it to launch investigations into 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden. In the Senate, Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage and there's nowhere near the two-thirds needed for conviction and removal.
|
| Al-Qaida in Yemen claims deadly Florida naval base shooting Posted: 02 Feb 2020 12:31 PM PST  Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen claimed responsibility Sunday for last year's deadly shooting at the Naval Air Station Pensacola by an aviation student from Saudi Arabia. The shooter, 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was a member of the Saudi Air Force in training at the base. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, released a video claiming the attack.
|
| China's Israel envoy compares virus travel bans to Holocaust Posted: 02 Feb 2020 11:44 AM PST  China's acting ambassador to Israel apologized on Sunday after comparing the closure of several national borders to Chinese citizens amid fears of a new virus from China to the turning away of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
|
| Uneasy quiet in Mideast, month after Iran strike against US Posted: 02 Feb 2020 11:24 AM PST  Nearly a month after Iran launched a rare direct military attack against United States forces in Iraq, an uneasy quiet has settled across the Mideast. Watching fighter jets roar off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, the top U.S. commander for the region believes he is surrounded by one of the reasons that Iran has dialed back its combat stance, at least for now. "You're here because we don't want a war with Iran and nothing makes a potential adversary think twice about war than the presence of an aircraft carrier and the strike group that comes with it," Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie told the nearly 5,000 service members on board the 100,000-ton ship.
|
| In Iowa, anxiety and unpredictability cloud caucus finish Posted: 02 Feb 2020 10:06 AM PST  On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidates hustled across the state on Sunday trying to fire up voters and make one last appeal to those struggling to reach a final decision about their choice in the crowded field. Campaigns and voters acknowledged a palpable sense of unpredictability and anxiety as Democrats begin choosing which candidate to send on to a November face-off with President Donald Trump. The Democratic race is unusually large and jumbled heading into Monday's caucus, with four candidates locked in a fight for victory in Iowa and others still in position to pull off surprisingly strong finishes.
|
| Trump speech to project optimism at time of bitter division Posted: 02 Feb 2020 09:43 AM PST  Standing before lawmakers in the grand-domed Capitol where his impeachment trial is still underway, President Donald Trump on Tuesday night will declare the state of the union strong, even when it is bitterly divided as he asks Americans for a second term. After becoming just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, Trump will try to move forward, aides say, offering an optimistic message that stresses economic growth in his annual address before Congress. Senior administration officials were tight-lipped about the extent to which Trump would mention his impeachment, which he has denounced as a "witch hunt" orchestrated by Democrats to try to undo the results of the 2016 election and harm his reelection chances this November.
|
| Trump bashes Democratic rivals during pre-Super Bowl show Posted: 02 Feb 2020 09:12 AM PST  President Donald Trump used a Super Bowl pregame interview to rail against Democrats, accusing them of hatred and offering schoolyard insults about his potential 2020 rivals. Trump spent his weekend in Florida as most of the political world has been focused on Iowa, where Democrats on Monday will cast their first votes to choose the party's nominee. Prompted by Hannity, Trump went through most of the major candidates one by one, deriding "Sleepy Joe" Biden, the former vice president, accusing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of telling "fairy tales," and labeling Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, as "a communist," even though he's not.
|
| Fears of new virus trigger anti-China sentiment worldwide Posted: 02 Feb 2020 09:11 AM PST  A scary new virus from China has spread around the world. Restaurants in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Vietnam have refused to accept Chinese customers. Two dozen countries outside of China have reported cases of the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 300 people and sickened thousands of others in China.
|
| Divorce Complete, Britain Faces Next Test: What if Brexit Works? Posted: 02 Feb 2020 08:55 AM PST  LONDON -- Britain's departure from the European Union on Friday drew a mournful reaction from many people who have long viewed Brexit as consigning their country, once the vanguard of Europe, to a future of economic mediocrity and geopolitical irrelevance.But there are many others who view Brexit as a day of liberation, when Britain, unshackled from the bureaucracy of Brussels, will stride into a future of economic innovation and vigorous, clear-eyed politics -- a "moment of real national renewal," in the words of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.That positive case for Brexit will now be tested, and it is prompting even those who ardently opposed it to wrestle with a question they had mostly dismissed during 3 1/2 years of debate: What if it works?"Disruptive change can be beneficial for a country," said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. "That is, in a sense, what Brexit has accomplished."Britain is no stranger to disruptive change, of course. After the end of World War II, it adjusted to the end of empire by embedding itself in an Atlantic alliance and building a European-style welfare state. In the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher led a free-market revolution that dismantled parts of that state and nurtured a British nationalism that fully flowered in the wrenching debate over Brexit.Now Britain is remaking itself yet again, cast off from Europe and facing an uncertain future in which the shape of its society and economy, and its place in the world, are still very much up for grabs.By giving the Brexiteers a chance to put their ideas into action, Travers said, British politics could be reinvigorated. With the country shorn of its links to the EU, Johnson and his aides will not be able to blame Britain's shortcomings on anyone else. British voters will get to hold their leaders accountable.The economic case for Brexit is harder to make. Most experts said Britain's decision to leave the bloc was likely to deprive the country of significant additional growth over the next decade or so. But the warnings of catastrophe are probably overstated, and it is hard for people to miss what they never had.Britain, experts said, is likely to grow in line with the rest of Europe over the next several years -- a growth rate that is hardly sparkling but likely to be a shade higher than those of Germany or France.If that happens, and Britain is able to establish a stable trading relationship with the EU, Brexit's champions may claim a measure of vindication. That is even more likely if, as many experts predict, the bloc enters a bumpy stretch economically."Boris Johnson's argument is that 10, 15 or 20 years from now, we'll look back and say, 'Getting out was in our national interest,'" said Mujtaba Rahman, a managing director at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. "The jury is out on that, but if he can pull this off, there are reasons to think Britain will prosper."The Brexiteers are far less guarded. They speak of a "global Britain" bursting with technological innovation, unencumbered by regulations -- an agile free agent ready to do business with the world. Britain, they said, would strike lucrative trade deals and become a magnet for foreign investment."It starts with free trade," said Patrick Minford, an economist at Cardiff University. "Everyone talks about the EU as if it is a bastion of free trade, but it's not. We want to trade freely with everybody, especially the United States."Minford contends that Britain could add 8% to its gross domestic product over the next decade if it is able to strike down all trade barriers and 4% if it is able only to eliminate a portion of them. There could be further gains from technological innovations in industries like artificial intelligence, he said.Most mainstream studies, though, predict Brexit will cut the rate of Britain's growth by depriving it of gains to gross domestic product it would otherwise have had. Those lost gains could amount to between 1.2% and 4.5% of its gross domestic product, depending on the terms of Britain's exit from the EU.Having taken back control of their affairs from the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the British people will be able to enact rules that suit them, not 27 other countries. They will be rule-makers, not rule-takers, in a popular phrase often used by Brexiteers. That, they said, is a stirring victory for sovereignty."The elemental case for Brexit is the democratic one," said Daniel Hannan, who just stepped down as a Conservative member of the European Parliament. "Having got power back from Brussels, we should not let it fester in Whitehall. This requires not just leaving the EU but reviving our domestic democracy."Even some of those who lobbied to stay in the EU acknowledge that in the post-Brexit era, the debates in Parliament could become more rational -- focused on what kind of society and economy Britain now wants to have.Because it refused to join the monetary union, Britain was always going to feel left out of Europe's innermost councils. After the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 -- which formally established the EU -- Europe became as much a political union as an economic club, something that many in Britain never accepted."We opted out of bits and pieces of it, so we were never at the top table," said Jonathan Powell, who was a chief of staff to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. "If you're going to be a halfhearted partner, then there's no point to being in it at all."Still, Powell said, it was fanciful to assume that by leaving the EU, Britain would be able to discard the bloc's rules and regulations. Other nonmembers, like Norway or Switzerland, adhere to European standards as a condition of trading with it. That will be particularly true in Northern Ireland, which will stay closely aligned with a maze of European rules and regulations.Britain, critics said, will continue to be a rule-taker. It just will no longer have a seat at the table where those rules are drafted.Despite his landslide election victory last December, Johnson has not really articulated the pro-Brexit case. He has spoken in general terms about reunifying and reviving the country but has yet to lay out an agenda for how Britain plans to exploit its independence for economic or political gain.Partly that may reflect Johnson's determination not to be triumphalist after a debate that divided the country. Partly, critics said, it reflects the prime minister's lack of fixed convictions. He used Brexit more as a vehicle to amass power, they said, than to impose a particular worldview.Johnson must also balance the different parts of his Brexit coalition.Voters in the Midlands and the North of England, where many districts abandoned the Labour Party to embrace Johnson's promise to "get Brexit done," have a very different vision of what Brexit means from the free-market evangelists in London, who want to remake Britain as a kind of Singapore-on-Thames -- an enclave with little regulation and low taxes."The pain will be felt differentially," said Powell, the former chief of staff to Blair. "Sunderland and other places that voted for Brexit will be hardest hit," he said, referring to the industrial city in northern England where the early returns from the June 2016 referendum foretold that the country would vote to leave the union.With Britain likely to hammer out some sort of trade agreement with the EU, the most alarmist predictions about Brexit -- food shortages, trucks lined up for miles at ports -- are not likely to happen. Rather than a triumph or a tragedy for the country, Brexit may end up being a long twilight."We're not going to go off a cliff," Powell said. "It will be more of a glide path. Britain is going to have to come to terms with being a small country."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
|
| Police: 2 injured, suspect killed in London terror stabbings Posted: 02 Feb 2020 08:54 AM PST  London police officers shot and killed a suspect after at least two people were stabbed Sunday in what authorities are investigating as a terror attack. Gulled Bulhan, a 19-year-old student from Streatham, told Britain's Press Association that he witnessed the attack. "From the library I saw a load of ambulances and armed police officers arrive on the scene," he said.
|
| After Math: That's something at least Posted: 02 Feb 2020 08:30 AM PST  This week has been a real kick in the teeth. The UK actually stepped off the Brexit precipice while the US Congress barely went through the motions of Trump's impeachment trial. Worst of all Elon Musk released a truly cringeworthy EDM track because sure, it's not like the week was going to be getting any worse at that point. Still there were a few high points, read on for the week's headlines that helped get us to Sunday.
|
| Turkish military convoy crosses into rebel-held NW Syria Posted: 02 Feb 2020 08:18 AM PST  A large Turkish military convoy rumbled into rebel-held areas of northwest Syria on Sunday, witnesses on the ground and activists said. Separately, airstrikes on a rebel-held village in Syria's northwest killed at least seven people, opposition activists said. Elsewhere, rebel shelling killed a woman and wounded at least three journalists, Syrian state TV reported.
|
| Iraqi protesters reject PM-designate picked by ruling elites Posted: 02 Feb 2020 06:50 AM PST  Anti-government demonstrators on Sunday rejected Iraq's new prime minister-designate following his nomination by rival government factions, compounding the challenges he'll have to surmount in order to resolve months of civil unrest. Meanwhile, new divisions emerged among protesters and supporters of a maverick and often inscrutable Shiite cleric, who initially threw his weight behind the uprising but now is re-positioning himself toward the political establishment, after elites selected a candidate for prime minister that he endorsed. On Sunday, Muqtada al-Sadr told his followers camped out among protesters in the capital and in the country's south to unblock roads and restore normalcy, angering protesters who felt al-Sadr had betrayed them and the reformist aims of their movement for political gain.
|
| Confusion over what data schools can provide for 2020 Census Posted: 02 Feb 2020 06:19 AM PST  The U.S. Census Bureau this week starts its process of counting students living in college-run housing, but there's confusion over what demographic information university officials can share with the agency. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education said in a memo to schools that they couldn't, if asked, provide information about students' sex, race and Hispanic origin for the 2020 Census. The 2020 Census form "asks for information about the student's sex, Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin, and race," said the original memo issued on Jan. 14.
|
| New China virus details show challenge for outbreak control Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:34 AM PST  The incubation period is so long that people may not know where or when they picked it up. Details that emerged last week about the new virus from China show how challenging it could be to control this outbreak, health experts say. At first, some were relieved that the virus hasn't proved fatal as often as those that caused SARS, Ebola or some other recent menaces.
|
| The critical fight inside Democrats' establishment primary Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST  Within the Democrats' sprawling presidential contest is a smaller, yet critical competition among a handful of candidates jockeying to secure the backing of their party's establishment wing. The first answers come Monday in the Iowa caucuses when voters begin sorting out the fight between progressive candidates, who are arguing for revolutionary change, and more moderate contenders, who many in the party believe have the better chance to defeat President Donald Trump in November. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have been making the case in Iowa that they can assemble a broader coalition of voters in states essential to denying Trump's reelection.
|
| Preventing Climate Change Is a Human Rights Issue Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST ![Preventing Climate Change Is a Human Rights Issue]( "Preventing Climate Change Is a Human Rights Issue") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Every society in the world is going to pay a price for global warming. But it's the poorest countries and communities who will suffer the most from rising seas and burning lands — and likely also from any drastic measures taken to prevent climate change. The environmental crisis is closely linked to the humanitarian one, and requires the joint action of climate and human rights activists.They'd seem to be natural allies. They both regard (with good reason) today's situation as the worst in their movements' existence. Second, they share common foes: Leading climate change deniers and environmental despoilers tend to be dismissive of human rights (Presidents Rodrigo Duterte, Donald Trump, or Jair Bolsonaro, to name but three). Third, both movements are accused of being "elitist" by their opponents, a charge neither group of activists has done enough to overcome. But the two groups haven't historically worked closely together.The early conservation movement promoted nature at the expense of people (even to the extent of expelling native populations from Yellowstone and Yosemite in the late 19th Century). And while there's much more understanding today that the two movements are complementary, this has not translated into enough concrete joint actions. Human rights must be at the front and center of every effort to fight climate change. Not just because climate change will threaten the rights to food, water, housing, livelihood and health for hundreds of millions of people, exponentially increasing the number of refugees. But also because, sooner or later, world leaders will finally wake up to the scale of the impending disaster. At which point they will likely respond with "states of emergency" that hugely undermine human rights, as with the internment of Americans of Japanese descent in the 1940s or justification of torture after 9/11. In a seminal UN report last spring, Philip Alston castigated the human rights community for its failure to face up to the fact that "human rights might not survive the coming upheaval." The idea that democratic systems failed to prevent global heating may well take hold, with a resulting urge to strengthen state powers at the cost of rights and freedoms. To prevent this from happening, human rights advocates and environmentalists both need to broaden their mobilization campaigns by reaching out to groups who have traditionally not been allies of either movement. From Europe to the U.S. to Australia, an alliance of populist leaders, corporate lobbyists and the Murdoch-owned press have pushed the idea that any gains for human rights or environmental protection will come at the expense of jobs. For example, the "gilets jaunes" protests in France were provoked, in part, by a fuel tax hike designed to reduce carbon emissions. ("Fin du monde, fin du mois" was one rallying cry — stop talking about the end of the world, when we're just trying to get to the end of the month.) Fossil fuel workers, cattle farmers and others need to know that they will still have livelihoods after serious measures have been taken to reduce global heating. Governments, NGOs and the private sector can offer such assurances through reskilling programs and subsidies for alternative land management and carbon sequestration. Without job security, too many people will remain vulnerable to wealthy climate science deniers — such as the Koch brothers — who have been able to convince them that climate change is basically a hoax against the "people" perpetrated by the "elite."Activists and sympathetic local officials must also work harder to win over indigenous people. In many countries, including Brazil, the Philippines and Honduras, there are examples of indigenous groups resisting renewable energy projects. Not because they are politically opposed to renewable energy, but because they have traditionally not been consulted about enterprises inflicted on them within their traditional lands and waters. Climate and human rights activists should be reaching out to these groups to get their buy-in. Governments should be transferring ownership of forested land back to the indigenous communities who have proven time and again to be the most effective guardians of their own ecosystems. Instead, indigenous people are being attacked — literally. In 2017, an average of three indigenous, environmental or land rights defenders were killed every week.Collaboration between human rights advocates and environmentalists will make it more likely that we come together to reduce emissions and mitigate the worst effects of climate change — and that we do so equitably. But the first step is to create far stronger bonds between the leaders and activists of each cause. Until both sides have fully recognized that neither agenda can be achieved without the other, they will continue to under-perform against their powerful opponents.To contact the author of this story: Andrew Gilmour at NYOHCHR@gmail.comTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andrew Gilmour is the United Nations' former assistant secretary-general for human rights.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
|
| Even Democracy Is Partisan Now Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- As it marks its centennial this month, the League of Women Voters shows how difficult it is for a political organization born and bred in nonpartisanship to navigate the cratered road of partisan destruction. The ascendance of President Donald Trump, the decline of the Republican Party and the reaction against them both have rendered "nonpartisan" and "political" as effective antonyms.Not that the league was ever immune to partisan complaint. Too prim and complacent for the left, it was too feminist and fluoridated for the right. When William F. Buckley launched National Review in 1955, he vowed that his new conservative magazine would stand outside the respectable bipartisan consensus of the era — epitomized, he wrote, by such institutions as the New York Times and the League of Women Voters.In the mid-20th century, the league conjured images of affluent suburban women who liked Ike and volunteered at the local polling station. The league was part of the advancing American center, both exemplifying and championing mainstream causes. It supported the creation of the United Nations in 1945. In the 1970s, along with First Lady Betty and President Gerald Ford, it supported the Equal Rights Amendment. As the political center — suburban, moderate, corporate — came under siege, the league held firm to the causes that defined it: good government; progress, however incremental, toward social equality; deference toward expert knowledge; political enfranchisement. Such causes were always political. Today they are overwhelmingly partisan. The Republican Party, currently engaged in a no-holds-barred defense of a self-dealing president, is not only anti-government but increasingly pro-corruption. It approaches internationalism as quasi-treasonous globalism, often slathered with a lumpy smear of anti-Semitism. Instead of working for social progress, the party has promised its base a triumphant return to a more racially and sexually stratified past.Nothing reveals the bitter incongruity of nonpartisanship and contemporary politics like voting rights. The league was founded at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in February 1920, months before the 19th Amendment was ratified and women gained the right to vote. Voting rights are central to the group's identity and mission.Yet there is virtually no issue, or court case, on which voting-rights advocates and the Republican Party are on the same side. GOP elected officials purge citizens from voting lists, erect barriers to voting, gerrymander to empower one group of voters at the expense of another (Democrats have done likewise, just not to the same degree) and spread bogus claims of voter fraud to justify antidemocratic laws.After the 2016 election, the league issued a statement that the vote had effectively been "rigged" by government-sanctioned suppression in multiple states. "It's important to us to stay true to our values and true to ourselves," said Jeanette Senecal, senior director of mission impact at the league. "The league has been working on voting rights for 100 years." Senecal, a 20-year veteran of the league, acknowledges that the hyper-partisan environment has made it harder for a nonpartisan organization to function. But supporting voting rights is essential to the American project. "It's the very foundation of effective representative government," she said in a phone interview. All three terms — "effective," "representative" and "government" — are fighting words in today's Republican Party. With Trump in the White House and the party ever more committed to minority rule, there's little common ground between the GOP and a group committed to advancing democratic values. With their acquittal of Trump this week, Senate Republicans will enshrine the principle that a president (albeit exclusively a Republican president) can commit crimes and gross abuses of power without fear of indictment or impeachment. It is new terrain, not only far beyond the shrunken political center of yore but outside the bounds of democracy and rule of law altogether. In the present era, it's hard to see how any group that supports democratic values — even a group as venerable as the League of Women Voters — can possibly maintain a claim to be "nonpartisan."To contact the author of this story: Francis Wilkinson at fwilkinson1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
|
| Even Democracy Is Partisan Now Posted: 02 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- As it marks its centennial this month, the League of Women Voters shows how difficult it is for a political organization born and bred in nonpartisanship to navigate the cratered road of partisan destruction. The ascendance of President Donald Trump, the decline of the Republican Party and the reaction against them both have rendered "nonpartisan" and "political" as effective antonyms.Not that the league was ever immune to partisan complaint. Too prim and complacent for the left, it was too feminist and fluoridated for the right. When William F. Buckley launched National Review in 1955, he vowed that his new conservative magazine would stand outside the respectable bipartisan consensus of the era — epitomized, he wrote, by such institutions as the New York Times and the League of Women Voters.In the mid-20th century, the league conjured images of affluent suburban women who liked Ike and volunteered at the local polling station. The league was part of the advancing American center, both exemplifying and championing mainstream causes. It supported the creation of the United Nations in 1945. In the 1970s, along with First Lady Betty and President Gerald Ford, it supported the Equal Rights Amendment. As the political center — suburban, moderate, corporate — came under siege, the league held firm to the causes that defined it: good government; progress, however incremental, toward social equality; deference toward expert knowledge; political enfranchisement. Such causes were always political. Today they are overwhelmingly partisan. The Republican Party, currently engaged in a no-holds-barred defense of a self-dealing president, is not only anti-government but increasingly pro-corruption. It approaches internationalism as quasi-treasonous globalism, often slathered with a lumpy smear of anti-Semitism. Instead of working for social progress, the party has promised its base a triumphant return to a more racially and sexually stratified past.Nothing reveals the bitter incongruity of nonpartisanship and contemporary politics like voting rights. The league was founded at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in February 1920, months before the 19th Amendment was ratified and women gained the right to vote. Voting rights are central to the group's identity and mission.Yet there is virtually no issue, or court case, on which voting-rights advocates and the Republican Party are on the same side. GOP elected officials purge citizens from voting lists, erect barriers to voting, gerrymander to empower one group of voters at the expense of another (Democrats have done likewise, just not to the same degree) and spread bogus claims of voter fraud to justify antidemocratic laws.After the 2016 election, the league issued a statement that the vote had effectively been "rigged" by government-sanctioned suppression in multiple states. "It's important to us to stay true to our values and true to ourselves," said Jeanette Senecal, senior director of mission impact at the league. "The league has been working on voting rights for 100 years." Senecal, a 20-year veteran of the league, acknowledges that the hyper-partisan environment has made it harder for a nonpartisan organization to function. But supporting voting rights is essential to the American project. "It's the very foundation of effective representative government," she said in a phone interview. All three terms — "effective," "representative" and "government" — are fighting words in today's Republican Party. With Trump in the White House and the party ever more committed to minority rule, there's little common ground between the GOP and a group committed to advancing democratic values. With their acquittal of Trump this week, Senate Republicans will enshrine the principle that a president (albeit exclusively a Republican president) can commit crimes and gross abuses of power without fear of indictment or impeachment. It is new terrain, not only far beyond the shrunken political center of yore but outside the bounds of democracy and rule of law altogether. In the present era, it's hard to see how any group that supports democratic values — even a group as venerable as the League of Women Voters — can possibly maintain a claim to be "nonpartisan."To contact the author of this story: Francis Wilkinson at fwilkinson1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
|
| Italian-American emerges as new star of Italy's left-wing Posted: 02 Feb 2020 04:20 AM PST  A dual U.S.-Italian citizen who cut her political organizing teeth on two Barack Obama campaigns is emerging as the latest rising star in Italian politics. Inside a week, 34-year-old Elly Schlein, a former European lawmaker who grew up in Switzerland, has gone from relative obscurity as a political operative to the face of Italy's new leftist forces.
|
| America is doing so much better than you think Posted: 02 Feb 2020 04:00 AM PST  The era of great power competition is back, and Washington is worried.Lingering in the new decade are some of the old anxieties. As the United States struggled in Afghanistan and Iraq, endured the Great Recession, and arrived at one of its most polarized political eras, China, Russia, and Iran all seemed to be on the rise. China's economic growth rate looked miraculous. Russia was apparently rebuilding the Soviet Union by occupying Georgia, annexing Crimea, crowning a modern day Stalin, and messing with NATO at every opportunity. Iran was growing into the "Mideast's new superpower" with a stranglehold on Iraq, unparalleled regional influence, and a disruptive military able to fuel strife throughout the region. The rise of these revisionists in the face of a sputtering and impotent America made many commentators assert throughout the 2010s that the unipolar moment was over, and that the time had come for the United States to retire as the world's policeman. Decline, in other words, is destiny.But the pessimists are missing an important point: In today's Great Game, whose hand would you rather play with if not the United States'?Yes, the U.S. has a rough nuclear parity with Russia and a smaller population than China. But on all other fronts, the United States is superior. In many ways, the gaps between it and its competitors have narrowed over the past few decades, but it isn't outrageous to believe they will widen again in the future.First and foremost, China, Iran, and Russia all suffer from a lack of legitimacy, as is always the case with totalitarian regimes.China's communist party managed to overcome this obstacle through rapid economic growth, but scaling back political liberties isn't a sign the regime believes its footing is sound. Last year marked China's lowest growth in 27 years, according to official numbers. Worse, economists estimate that those official numbers are greatly exaggerated. According to Derek Scissors, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, China's economic growth is somewhere between an annual rate of 1 to 3 percent. A paper, published by the Brookings Institution, claims that Beijing has exaggerated its growth rate by 2 percent a year over the course of a decade. According to the two papers, the size of China's economy is about 12 to 30 percent smaller than official reports state. Hysteria in the U.S. over the Chinese economy isn't all that different from how the United States once believed the USSR's economy was booming until Soviet defectors corrected the record. If the Western estimates are correct, China's GDP is less than half of the United States' and is growing as fast as the United States', at best.In Russia, Putin's adventurism is bearing bad fruit. Western sanctions leveled after the annexation of Crimea, as well as rampant corruption, have prevented the Russian economy from living up to its full potential. Meanwhile Russia has been spending a lot of money in Syria and Ukraine, which has led to revenue problems it cannot solve through debt, due to poor credit and hence high interest payments. Putin's solution to raise the pension age to just a year below Russian life expectancy created a public backlash and permanently damaged his image at home. For a long time, Putin and his nationalism were the sources of legitimacy for the Russian government, but, now, Putin's approval ratings have fallen under 50 percent, and protests are becoming a recurring theme (as is violently cracking down on them).Iran, a country that perhaps faces the deepest economic and legitimacy crises out of the three, has been going through a period of violent protests. The economic and political problems have not only damaged the image of the regime but also led to military budget cuts.All three countries also face demographic problems. Aging and declining populations are resulting in fewer workers and more senior citizens who impose financial burdens on their governments.In the United States, things are much better than they feel. Economic growth has been slow post-recession, but it has been sustainable, helped along by a financial system based in law that invites outside investment more than any other country on Earth. The United States might face the same demographic challenges as its rivals, but it offsets this problem by being by far the world's most popular destination for immigrants (a fact the current American president hasn't been able to change, and probably won't).The United States' alliance system is also exceptional. For probably the first time in history, a military has kept bases in many foreign countries for decades at the request of the hosts. As things stand, it is the U.S. that has positions in its adversaries' neighborhoods, not the other way around. And while the current administration has been kicking America's allies, their response so far hasn't been to depart the alliance but to try to sustain it.There is more good news, the best of the bunch: The United States government enjoys greater legitimacy than its rivals. It's true that American institutions get poor marks from the citizenry, but U.S. officials don't fear popular, violent uprisings like their counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran do.All that being said, it's possible to lose with a better hand, and victory is never inevitable. Our adversaries have been much more successful in exploiting the weaknesses in our system through disinformation campaigns or investments in our entertainment media and academia than we have been in exploiting their weaknesses. Failing to turn people against their corrupt governments is both a moral failure and a policy failure.The success of our adversaries over the past many years has been less about America's powerlessness and more about our lack of resolve. As the recent killing of the Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the strike against Russian military mercenaries show, America's calculated projection of power can still punish bad behavior without provoking a war.But the pessimism of the defeatists is still out there, and that pessimism can very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing is inevitable.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Mitch McConnell's rare blunder John Bolton just vindicated Nancy Pelosi All the president's turncoats
|
| Protesters outside US Embassy in Lebanon decry Trump plan Posted: 02 Feb 2020 03:46 AM PST  More than 200 Lebanese and Palestinians held a protest Sunday near the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon against a White House plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. plan heavily favored Israel, granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in parts of the occupied West Bank while allowing Israel to annex all its settlements there and keep nearly all of east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
|
| Top EU diplomat to visit Tehran amid nuclear tensions Posted: 02 Feb 2020 03:29 AM PST  Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell was Monday due to visit Iran, said officials in Tehran and Brussels, on his first trip there since taking office, aiming to reduce rising tensions over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme. The 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and a group of world powers has been crumbling since US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018, and Washington has since stepped up sanctions and a campaign of "maximum pressure" against Iran. Tehran has gradually stepped back from its own commitments under the deal, while military tensions with the United States have brought the arch foes to the brink of full-blown confrontation in recent weeks.
|
| Iraqi cleric Sadr tells followers to clear sit-ins after PM appointed Posted: 02 Feb 2020 03:18 AM PST ![Iraqi cleric Sadr tells followers to clear sit-ins after PM appointed]( "Iraqi cleric Sadr tells followers to clear sit-ins after PM appointed") Populist Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged his followers on Sunday to help security forces clear roads blocked during months of sit-in protests, calling for "day-to-day life" to resume following the appointment of a new prime minister. Sadr, who has alternately sided with the anti-government protesters and the Iran-backed political groups they reject, urged his unarmed supporters known as "blue hats" to work with authorities to ensure schools and businesses can operate normally again. "I advise the security forces to stop anyone from cutting off roads and the ministry of education should punish those who obstruct regular working hours, be they students, teachers or others," Sadr said in a statement published on Twitter.
|
| Sovereignty comes first: Britain lays out tough stance for EU trade talks Posted: 02 Feb 2020 03:12 AM PST ![Sovereignty comes first: Britain lays out tough stance for EU trade talks]( "Sovereignty comes first: Britain lays out tough stance for EU trade talks") Britain laid out a tough opening stance for future talks with the European Union on Sunday, saying it would set its own agenda rather than meeting the bloc's rules to ensure frictionless trade. After officially leaving the EU on Friday, Britain now must negotiate future trade relations with the bloc, to take effect when a standstill transition period expires at the end of the year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has been quick to send Brussels a message before trade talks begin in March: Brexit, for him, means sovereignty trumps the economy.
|
| EU's foreign policy chief to travel to Iran in de-escalation mission Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:17 AM PST ![EU's foreign policy chief to travel to Iran in de-escalation mission]( "EU's foreign policy chief to travel to Iran in de-escalation mission") The head of the European Union's foreign service, Josep Borrell, will travel to Iran next week to meet the country's leaders in a bid to reduce tensions in the Middle East, the EU said in a statement on Sunday. During in his trip on Monday and Tuesday, Borrell will meet Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif among others. "Borrell received a strong mandate from the EU foreign ministers to engage in diplomatic dialogue with regional partners, to de-escalate tensions and seek opportunities for political solutions to the current crisis," the statement said.
|
| Who’s Cheering for Bernie Sanders to Win Monday? Young Lefties—and Donald Trump Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:09 AM PST  Senate Republicans turned President Trump's impeachment trial into a farcical exercise in partisan whitewashing. That leaves the job of canceling Trump's reality show presidency to U.S. voters.A heavy responsibility thus lies on Democratic caucus and primary voters as they start selecting their party's nominee next week. If they make the wrong choice, it means four more years of Trump's corrosive assaults on reason, democracy, and basic human decency. For many, the right choice will require setting aside their ideological druthers and picking the candidate most likely to beat Trump in the Electoral College.It's hard to know at this point which candidate is most electable. It's easier to say who isn't—and Sen. Bernie Sanders tops the list. Despite the devotion he inspires among young left-wing activists, the self-avowed socialist is too far outside the U.S. political mainstream to be considered anything but the longest of long shots against Trump.When Iran Took Americans Hostage, Bernie Backed Iran's DefendersSanders is Democrats' Jeremy Corbyn option, someone who offers ideological catharsis to America's perennially disappointed left but who cannot unite a Democratic Party—or a country—that lies much closer to the political center.A solid majority of Americans (55 percent) have a negative impression of socialism. Young people have moved left in recent years, but the country as a whole hasn't. A New Center survey finds that 34 percent of Americans place themselves on the right of the political spectrum, 23 percent on the left and 43 percent at the center. New Gallup polls also confirm that America remains a moderate country that lists slightly to the center-right. Democrats split down the middle, with 42 percent identifying with the center and 42 percent leaning left. Independents are much more moderate: 60 percent identify with the center, 22 percent with the right and 17 percent with the left. The basic electoral math shows Democrats can't beat Trump with liberal-left voters alone, especially in the older, less educated and diverse Midwest states that decided the 2016 election. They will need a nominee who can make inroads among swing voters in those states: moderate and GOP-leaning independents, college educated suburbanites, and culturally conservative, blue collar whites. For Sanders, however, the first stumbling block would be moderate Democrats. His palpable disdain for them is amplified by zealous supporters who excoriate centrist Democrats as "neoliberals" or "corporate Democrats," presumably because they obstinately refuse to see it's time for America to trade in free enterprise for socialism. No wonder White House aides view Sanders as their dream opponent this fall. Trump lately has been disingenuously defending Sanders in tweets and claiming Democrats are scheming to cheat him out of the nomination again.Sanders has laid out an ambitious—even utopian—agenda for toppling "capitalism" and massively expanding federal power to reengineer a more equal America from the top down. Unfortunately, his "unapologetically progressive" ideas create enormous vulnerabilities for Democrats.Start with his controversial plan to force all Americans into a government health care monopoly. Sanders' backers insist that Medicare for All is popular, but public support quickly dissipates once voters understand what it means. They strongly oppose being compelled to give up the private insurance plans they get from their jobs, as well as the substantial tax hikes entailed in moving everyone into a public program. For example, a recent poll of Democrats in Michigan found only 18 percent who said they'd be willing to pay as much as 10 percent more in taxes for Medicare for All. And it will take a lot more than that to cover the plan's stratospheric cost—estimates range from $32 to $40 trillion over 10 years. Sanders hasn't specified how he'd finance it, other than promising the super-rich will pay the full freight. Not possible, says Rob Shapiro, a prominent Democratic economist. He calculates that Congress could raise income and payroll taxes by 50 percent, and double the corporate tax, and still not cover more than 60 to 74 percent of the cost of moving 228 million more Americans to the Medicare rolls. Sanders' spending ambitions don't stop with single-payer. A partial list includes his Green New Deal proposal ($16 trillion over the next decade); as well as multi-trillion plans to build affordable housing; rebuild infrastructure; make tuition "free" at all public universities; pay off all $1.6 trillion in college student debt; and, create universal preschool.Although the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level since 1969, Sanders also is pushing an unprecedented federal job guarantee for all Americans. Each job would cost taxpayers around $56,000 and would likely wreak havoc in labor markets as low-wage workers flock to make-work public jobs. All told, Sanders' plan would cost about $60 trillion over the next decade, doubling the size of the federal government. It's hard to believe that U.S. voters, already leery of Washington, will support Sanders' redistributive superstate—especially when they learn it will mean punishing taxes on everyone or crushing levels of public debt. Another major political liability is Sanders' call for a ban on fracking. That would shut down the remarkable shale energy boom that over the past decade has made the United States the world's largest producer of natural gas and oil. It's bad climate policy and bad politics. Posturing against fracking might gain Sanders extra voters in deep-blue California and Northeast, but it would hurt him (and Democrats down ticket) in pivotal battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, and Colorado. Shale production has created tens of thousands of good, middle-class jobs for the very blue-collar workers Sanders claims to speak for, not to mention lowering fuel costs for U.S. manufacturers and households. "If a candidate comes into this state and tries to sell that policy (a fracking ban), they're going to have a hard time winning," says Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat. These examples hardly exhaust the list of political flanks a Sanders nomination would expose. His relentless business-bashing—the private sector is always the villain Sanders' economic parables—and his quasi-pacifistic security and foreign policy outlook also would be hard sells to moderate Democrats, never mind swing voters. In fairness, Bernie Sanders is everything Donald Trump is not: honest, decent, and principled.Authentic he is, but all the authenticity in the world can't make Sanders the pragmatic leader Democrats need to build a winning coalition in November. But it would make him the perfect foil for Donald Trump, Fox News, and Republicans eager to deflect accusations of political extremism back onto Democrats. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
|
| The Man Who Enabled the Holocaust Posted: 02 Feb 2020 02:07 AM PST  The last of the Auschwitz survivors to revisit the extermination machine in Poland have left. Now very old men and women, they returned to mark the 75th anniversary of the infamous death camp's liberation last Monday.Kate Middleton's Secret Photos of Holocaust Survivors UnveiledMemory inflicts no greater pain than is theirs. The day they were freed in 1945 was both an end and a beginning: the end of terror and the beginning of remembering.And one of the things to remember is not just the vast horror of the Holocaust but the fact that it was conducted as an industrial enterprise by managers and bureaucrats with a chillingly impersonal attention to detail. Adolf Hitler's demonic program of genocide would have come to nothing without his enablers.* * *On Feb. 6, 1944, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Oswald Pohl, who headed the part of the Nazi terror machine given the bland name Office of Economic Administration, wrote a report with the title "Utilization of Textiles: Used Clothes from the Jewish Resettlement."He complained about the condition of "material so far obtained from the Jewish resettlement in the camps in the Lublin area, and Auschwitz." Much of it, "particularly for men, is much diminished by the fact that many clothes are rags…"The SS controlled the distribution of the clothes and possessions taken from the Jews as they arrived at the death camps. Every train delivering prisoners left on its return journey loaded with those possessions. Items of value, like jewelry, gold, including gold teeth, and foreign currency mostly ended up in the Reichsbank in Berlin, their worth carefully noted in ledgers. The clothes, if at all serviceable, went to the "foreign workers" who were part of a gigantic program of forced labor producing weapons and munitions.That program was designed and overseen with clinical efficiency by Albert Speer, the Reichsminister for Armaments and Munitions, Speer made only one visit to a concentration camp. In March 1943 he was given a carefully restricted tour of Mauthausen, near Linz in Austria. This camp was notorious for its stone quarry, where prisoners worked under brutal conditions and were machine-gunned if they became weak. Speer's tour lasted only 45 minutes. He was spared the sight of actual prisoners, but he was shocked by the quality of the buildings. They were, he said, too lavish. Five days later he wrote to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, complaining that he needed all the steel, wood and manpower he could get for building arms factories: "We must therefore carry out a new planning program for construction within the concentration camps… [that] will require a minimum of material and labor. The answer is an immediate switch to primitive construction methods."Pohl, not Himmler, replied with a furious reminder that Speer had himself signed off on all the plans for building the camps and said a switch to primitive materials was "unrealistic." He continued: "…we have 160,000 prisoners and are constantly battling against epidemics and a disproportionately high death rate, both largely due to impossible sanitary conditions."* * *Of all those involved in the Nazi terror machine, Albert Speer was, literally, the most elusive—elusive because he escaped a death sentence at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, and elusive because until the end of his life (he died in 1981) he was never able to display any guilt about his role as an accomplice to genocide.Late in 1943, when Speer had brought about a dramatic revival of German arms production, the issue of Hitler's succession was being discussed quietly by his generals and some lower level ministers. At this point they were not talking about a coup, but a planned succession with Hitler's consent. They ruled out the founding Nazi psychopaths, Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann and Goering. One minister told Speer he thought Hitler himself favored Speer—nobody else had such a close relationship with him. Speer did not disagree, but the moment never came.Speer's story reminds us in a timely way that it's not only the knowingly depraved who gather around a tyrant. Equally dangerous are those, like Speer, who provide the system with their intellect while in denial about the consequences. Some people do this because the tyrant helps them to advance their own agendas; others do it just because being in the same room delivers the craved-for embrace of power.Speer had first endeared himself to Hitler as an architect. They shared a taste for the Greco-Roman style of triumphal buildings. This culminated in Speer's plan to replace Berlin with a new capital city called Germania for the thousand-year Reich. At its center—roughly where Berlin's Reichstag now sits—there was to be a Great Hall with a massive dome nearly 1,000 feet high (the U.S. Capitol dome is 284 feet high).Speer was always resistant to self-doubt. Once he fell within Hitler's spell he enjoyed his proximity to absolute power, no matter how vile its actions. And Hitler clearly enjoyed his frequent communion with Speer. In these moments of spiritual kinship, talking of art and architecture, Hitler was flattered by Speer into thinking that he was an aesthete at the head of an Aryan empire purged of all racial impurities.As the war ended, Speer was captured in northern Germany by American troops—a U.S. intelligence team was keen to get to him before the Russians could, in order to understand how he had been able to double weapons production while under constant Allied air bombardment. Then he was handed over to the United Nations war crimes commission and put on trial at Nuremberg.On the night of Oct. 16-17, 1946, ten of Hitler's closest associates were hanged in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison, having been found guilty of war crimes. Speer was there and heard their names being called out. But he was spared, given a 20-year sentence to be served in Spandau. (Oswald Pohl was executed in June 1951.)Afterward it emerged that the principal American judge, Francis Biddle, and the Soviet Union's judge, General Iona Nikitchenko, had voted to sentence Speer to death, but another American judge, John Parker, and a British judge, Norman Birkett, argued for clemency, apparently because he seemed to them too refined to be a mass murderer. Also taken into consideration was his cooperation with Allied intelligence. The jail sentence was a compromise reached after a two-day argument among the judges.Speer was released in 1966. He published a self-serving best-selling version of history, Inside the Third Reich, and became wealthy, considered by many as the rare "Good Nazi" who had done what he could to curb the worst of Hitler's instincts. He had always acknowledged that his industrial plan had depended on slave labor, including many Jews, working under appalling conditions, often dying on the job, but denied any knowledge of the scale of the Holocaust. He claimed that he had not been present at a conference in 1943 when Himmler spoke of "wiping Jews from the face of the earth." But 25 years after his death a newly discovered cache of letters revealed that he had, indeed, been present. The master dissembler was finally exposed as the monster he was.* * *It's always questionable to introduce the Nazi regime as a caution when looking at our own present carelessness with the values of our republic. The Holocaust was a crime of such enormity and singularity that we can too easily trivialize it by invoking any historical comparison. Nonetheless the message from Auschwitz was reinforced by its anniversary: Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, said he was worried that the lessons were being forgotten: "Auschwitz is a beacon of where anti-Semitism can lead, we can't rewrite history but we can be much more forceful today."A wave of anti-Semitic attacks and hate crimes in the U.S. has followed the massacre of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. Three people were killed last December in a shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City and at least 10 anti-Semitic incidents took place in the New York area over Hanukkah.One issue raised by several of the Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz was how such a barbaric crime could happen in a country that, until then, was regarded as both civilized and an intellectual powerhouse. It seemed all too easy for the Nazis to operate with the silent consent of a majority of the German people.Speer addressed this in an interview with the British journalist Gitta Sereny, who spent 10 years studying his life for a riveting book, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. He was responding to a charge that he tried to present himself as the prototype of the new technological man while he had conveniently overlooked the connection between technology and a program of mass extermination. He argued that the machinery of murder had nothing to do with technology, it was too primitive. And then he said:"Eighty million people were not persuaded to follow Hitler because they knew he was going to murder people in lime ditches and gas chambers; they did not follow him because he seemed evil, but because he seemed extraordinarily good. And what convinced them of this was Goebbels' brilliant propaganda, his unprecedented use of modern means of mass communication."It's terrifying to think what Goebbels could have done using today's means of mass communication. But perhaps we already know. Behind The Auschwitz Commemorations, A Raw Putin Power PlayRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
|
| Pennsylvania groundhog declares early spring 'a certainty' Posted: 02 Feb 2020 12:45 AM PST  At sunrise on Groundhog Day, members of Punxsutawney Phil's top hat-wearing inner circle revealed the cuddly oracle's prediction — his 134th, according to the Pennsylvania Tourism Office. Awoken by the crowd's chants of "Phil!" the groundhog was hoisted in the air for the assembly to hail before making his decision. In reality, Phil's prediction is decided ahead of time by the group on Gobbler's Knob, a tiny hill just outside Punxsutawney.
|
| EU top diplomat expected in Tehran Monday Posted: 02 Feb 2020 12:04 AM PST  Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell is expected in Tehran Monday, Iran's foreign ministry announced a day ahead of the visit, amid new tensions over the Iranian nuclear issue. Moussavi gave no details on when Borrell would arrive or how long he would remain in the country.
|
| A Climate Change Lesson from Scotland's Little Ice Age Posted: 02 Feb 2020 12:00 AM PST  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- We've heard a lot over the last few years about what Brexit might mean for the future of Britain and the United Kingdom. Rather than prognosticate (enough people have already made enough bad predictions) let's instead look at what history teaches us about such a divorce might mean in a time of climate crisis.The place: Scotland. The time: 1695. Already, much of the Northern Hemisphere was shivering its way through the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1850. The decade from 1695-1705 was the coldest of all, though, according to a recent study in the Journal of Vulcanology and Geothermal Research. In fact, it's still Scotland's coldest decade in the last nearly 800 years. The century 1612-1711 is the coldest hundred-year period on record (1911-2010 is the warmest). Looking at rings from centuries-old trees in the Cairngorms in northern Scotland, the researchers and determined that this particular cold spell was caused by a few significant volcanic eruptions in the tropics and Iceland from 1693-1695, and possibly a shift in the North Atlantic/Arctic Oscillation, the atmospheric pressure pattern that affects the climate of the northern hemisphere.The study's authors lay out some of the consequences: Population loss in Scotland of around 10-15% (25% in some places) because of crop failure and ill-advised export laws, and over-enthusiasm about Darien, a proposed colony in Panama, which was a spectacular failure. It lasted less than two years and resulted in the deaths of about 2,000 colonists and the loss of about a third of Scotland's wealth.The effect of all of this — population loss, economic and agricultural collapse — was that Scotland united with England in 1707 after centuries of resistance, the authors write. And while no decades were as bad, climate-wise, as the 1690s, once unified with England, Scotland never saw the same kind of desperation again. "By joining England, Scotland became more resilient," said Rosanne D'Arrigo, the lead author and a tree-ring scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "The bigger message for today is arguably that as the climate changes, nations will be stronger if they stick together and not try to go it alone." There's an obvious parallel to Brexit: going it alone in difficult climatic times can result in disaster, particularly for smaller countries with fewer resources, which is relevant for both the United Kingdom's relationship with the E.U., and for how its members relate to each other.But it has relevance beyond the U.K. and Europe, since the climate is changing not only on a regional or hemispheric scale, but a planetary one. Though effects may be worse in some places and for some people than others — namely for poor black, brown and indigenous women in the Global South — there are no parts of the world that the climate crisis will leave untouched. There isn't really a way to go it alone — emissions anywhere have consequences everywhere.The work these scientists have done suggests that we consider ourselves and our economies separate from nature at our own peril. And we err when we don't understand the history of climate change, pollution, and resource exhaustion.The need to take from nature and the belief that more can always be taken are part of what drove settlers to the "New World," and once in North America, pushed them to expand across the continent. The American sense that natural resources have no limits — there has always been more — has allowed us to think of nature and its limits as an abstract idea rather than a physical reality, as much as our economic and geographic growth has physically depended on our resources.We have our own cautionary tales too: the near-extinction of the buffalo and wild Atlantic salmon in U.S. waters, and the actual extinction of the passenger pigeon and the eastern elk. We can't (or shouldn't) understand the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 without considering the environmental costs and transformations that came with coal mining. Taking this long view helps us understand that while climate change may be an especially intense and relatively recent problem, we've been dealing with versions of it for centuries. We take the stability of our natural world for granted, but it is always changing, both on its own and in response to how we scramble time — burning ancient fuels to melt ancient ice to alter our future.We're already seeing the imprint of the climate crisis on events that may otherwise seem unrelated to it: Mass migration to Europe following the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War can be attributed in part to climate change. The arrival of immigrants in Europe has often been met with hostility, and has triggered political changes — influencing the rise of right-wing populism on the continent as well as in the British Isles. We may be able to change the climate, but we should remember that the climate changes us, too.To contact the author of this story: Tatiana Schlossberg at tatiana.schlossberg@gmail.comTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tatiana Schlossberg, a former New York Times science reporter, writes about climate change and the environment.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
|
| Japanese warship heads to Middle East to protect tankers Posted: 01 Feb 2020 10:20 PM PST  A Japanese warship departed Sunday for the Middle East to ensure the safety of the country's oil tankers in waters where tensions between the U.S. and Iran are high. The destroyer Takanami with some 200 sailors left Japan's main naval base in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. Its main task is primarily to gather intelligence in the Gulf of Oman and nearby waters.
|
| New EU foreign policy chief to make his first visit to Iran Posted: 01 Feb 2020 10:16 PM PST  The European Union's new foreign affairs chief is traveling to Iran to meet with the country's leaders, the Iranian official news agency said on Sunday, amid high regional tensions. The visit is seen as the latest move by the EU to save the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have steadily risen since President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement and re-imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018.
|
| Japan destroyer heads to Middle East as Iran-US tension lingers Posted: 01 Feb 2020 09:45 PM PST  Japan sent a naval destroyer to the Middle East on Sunday for a rare overseas mission to ensure the safety of its ships amid lingering tension between Iran and the US. The vessel left the Yokosuka naval base, south of Tokyo, for an information gathering mission in the Gulf of Oman, northern parts of the Arabian Sea and parts of the Gulf of Aden. Japan earlier decided not to take part in the US-led Operation Sentinel to protect shipping routes in the region.
|
| Pompeo, in Kazakhstan, warns of China's growing reach Posted: 01 Feb 2020 09:11 PM PST  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday pressed Kazakhstan to be wary of Chinese investment and influence, urging the Central Asian nation and others to join calls demanding an end to China's repression of minorities. Bringing a message similar to the one he has delivered repeatedly to other countries, Pompeo told Kazakh officials that the attractiveness of Chinese investment comes with a cost to sovereignty and may hurt, instead of help, the country's long-term development. "We fully support Kazakhstan's freedom to choose to do business with whichever country it wants, but I am confident that countries get the best outcomes when they partner with American companies," he said.
|
| Researchers become prime targets in Mideast power plays Posted: 01 Feb 2020 07:34 PM PST  Authoritarian governments in the Middle East are increasingly willing to seize researchers and academics, who are seen as valuable bargaining chips in their joustings with Western nations, analysts warn. "The risks now facing researchers in the Middle East are unprecedented," said Jean-Pierre Filiu, a historian at France's Sciences Po university. Filiu was speaking on Friday at a forum dedicated to two French colleagues, Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, who have been imprisoned in Iran since their arrest last June.
|
| High-profile Iowa poll won't be released Posted: 01 Feb 2020 06:38 PM PST  The Des Moines Register, CNN and its polling partner have decided not to release the final installment of its presidential preference poll, fearing its results may have been compromised. Carol Hunter, the executive editor of the Iowa newspaper, posted the announcement Saturday night at the same time the results of the highly anticipated survey were supposed to be released. Hunter said that one of the poll respondents reported concerns earlier in the day, which raised questions about the integrity of the results.
|
| Sad Britons mourn Brexit in French region that became home Posted: 01 Feb 2020 06:01 PM PST  Verteillac (France) (AFP) - "Shameful!" "A sadness!" "Disgusting!" In Verteillac, a small village in southwest France's picturesque Dordogne region that has become a home for many Britons, emotions may vary over Brexit but all share a sense of bitterness and worry for the future. On what would otherwise be a regular Saturday, the Welsh barman hosts the mostly British customers of Le Calice pub in the centre of this village of 700 inhabitants, with Brexit the main talking point. Resident in France for some 39 years already, Edwina de Tonary said she "feels a deep sadness".
|
| Philippines reports world's 1st virus death outside China Posted: 01 Feb 2020 04:27 PM PST  The first death outside China from the new coronavirus was recorded Sunday in the Philippines, as countries around the world evacuated hundreds of their citizens from the infection zone and Chinese authorities completed a new, rapidly constructed 1,000-bed hospital for victims of the outbreak. Chinese authorities also delayed the reopening of schools in the hardest-hit province and tightened the quarantine in one city by allowing only one family member to venture out to buy supplies. The Philippine Health Department said a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan, the city at the center of the crisis, was hospitalized Jan. 25 with a fever, cough and sore throat and died after developing severe pneumonia.
|
