 |
| President Nana Akufo Addo |
200 delegations from 80 countries across the world met
in the Iranian capital of Tehran to express solidarity with the people of
Palestine struggling against harsh colonial occupation.
The conference organised under the auspices of the Speaker
of the Iranian Parliament was addressed by President Hassan Rouhani and the
spiritual leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayattola Ali Khamenei.
Ghana’s official Parliamentary delegation was the only
one at the conference which failed to declare support for the struggles of the
people of Palestine.
It stayed firmly in the middle, urging all sides to end
hostilities and smoke the so –called peace pipe.
In an address at the prelinary session, Ghana’s
delegation boldly declared that both Israel and Palestine have used terrorist
methods against each other.
Notwithstanding Ghana’s strange stand, all other
delegations unanimously approved the final resolution which called for an end to
the colonial occupation of Palestine by Israel.
The conference affirmed the rights of the Palestinian
people to resist colonial occupation and the apartheid –like racism of the
Zionist regime in Israel.
It called for an end to Israeli settlements on occupied
Palestinian lands and insisted on the rights of Palestinian refugees to return
to their home land.
The conference reaffirmed its belief in the two state
solution to the conflict which will lead to the establishment of a
fully-fledged Palestinian state.
Editorial
PALESTINE!
The Insight is deeply embarrassed by reports that a
Parliamentary delegation from Ghana refused to declared full solidarity with the
people of Palestine struggling against harsh colonialism.
In our view, Palestine today is in worse circumstances than
Rhodesia and South Africa of old that were battling against the worse form of
colonialism and settler-racist domination.
Ghana, under Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah served as the
nerve centre of the national liberation movement in Africa South of the Sahara.
Over the years, Ghana has always seen the Palestinian
issue as a case of colonial occupation and used all her foreign policy
instruments to back the oppressed.
The sudden turn against the interest of the people of
Palestine is not only shocking but a blatant betrayal of Ghanaian values.
Even the administration of President John Agyekum Kufuor
stoutly supported the cause of Palestine and its people.
AVEDZI REFUSES TO COMPROMISE
 |
| James Avedzi |
By Delali Adogla-Bessa
The Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi believes
using the Heritage Fund component in the Petroleum Management Act to fund some
policies, only six years after it was set up, could compromise the fund.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has hinted of
reviewing the Petroleum Management Act to allow for the use of the Heritage
Fund to finance its ambitious Free Senior High School (SHS)
policy.
The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, at a forum in
Accra on Tuesday said the Heritage Fund, which receives nine percent of the
country’s annual petroleum revenue, will be used to sustain the program.
The fund was set up to support the country’s future
generations when the oil reserves are depleted. Nine percent of the country’s
annual petroleum revenue is paid into the fund.
However similar proposals were made by the previous
National Democratic Congress administration and fiercely opposed by the
NPP as noted by the Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi spoke on
the Citi Breakfast Show.
“This is a government that says it has the men. This is
a government that says it has the solution. Not knowing their mind was on the
Heritage Fund without telling Ghanaians that when they come to power, all
promises were going to fall on the fund that has been built up for the
following generations. So I am completely confused about what it is. I don’t
think that it is a proper thing because when the General Secretary of the NDC
said we should us that fund, they were the same people that were up in arms
against that proposal.”
Mr. Avedzi wondered further if the NPP were against the
NDC’s proposal to use the Heritage Fund because they held the fund “as their
hope in fulfilling their campaign promises. That was why they were against it.”
“You are in power for less than two months and you are
falling on the fund that has been put together for the future generations which
was done by the NDC government who was thinking about this government, but you
want to destroy it as this early stage.”
DON'T BLAME US FOR
DUMSOR
 |
| President John Dramani Mahama |
By Nathan Gadugah
The opposition National Democratic Congress has washed
its hands off the looming power crisis in the country claiming it bequeathed to
Nana Akufo-Addo a robust, resilient power sector.
The former Deputy Power Minister John Jinapor said under
no circumstance must the John Mahama led government be blamed for the power
paralysis popularly called dumsor which is rearing its ugly head.
If anything, Mr Jinapor said the NPP must be blamed for
the recent dumsor the country is going through because of its decision to do
away with key heads of institutions in the energy sector.
He said the energy experts in the NDC are available to
help the NPP.
Parts of the country are beginning to endure power
outages, something that was a common phenomenon for over four years under the
erstwhile NDC government.
The country was at some point subjected to a
24-hours-off-12-hours-on load management schedule which led to loss of lives,
loss of jobs, collapse of businesses and a general slump in economic
performance.
The situation however improved dramatically in the last
quarter of 2016 shortly before the elections even though some energy think
tanks, including ACEP predicted that dumsor will return in 2017.
The power situation became a key campaign issue with the
then opposition New Patriotic Party accusing the John Mahama government of
being incompetent.
The then vice presidential candidate Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
was convinced the challenge facing the energy sector was more a financial
problem than technical.
Three months after the December election which saw a
peaceful transition of government from the NDC to NPP, the power crisis appears
to be returning.
Many residents are complaining of unannounced power
outages and the discomfort it brings.
The president in his first state of the Nation Address
to Parliament said the sector is indebted to the tune of $2.4 billion. But its
immediate headache will be how to restore power at least on a regular basis.
The matter came up for discussion on the floor of
Parliament, Tuesday, with John Jinapor insisting that the NDC cannot be blamed
for the power crisis.
"I wish to state on authority and I am convinced
that under no circumstance should dumsor revisit us. The prevalence of dumsor
today cannot be attributed to the past administration.
No in the least. no way. We took all the difficult
decisions. The whole of last year we worked tirelessly," he said.
"We are available to help them [NPP]," he
suggested.
In an interview with Joy News' Parliamentary
correspondent, Mr Jinapor said the NDC government solved the power challenges
before it left office on January 7, 2017.
"We bequeathed to the NPP a resilient, robust,
strong energy sector. So there is no excuse, absolutely no excuse for us to go
back to dumsor," he stated.
The Occupation of
Western Sahara by Morocco: An Albatross on the African Union’s Conscience
By Nizar K. Visram, Global Research
At the 28th Summit meeting of the African Union (AU)
held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 January 2017, Morocco’s readmission to the
continental body generated heated discussion.
At the end of the day the Kingdom of Morocco managed to
win over sufficient member states on its side and it was allowed to join the fold
unconditionally.
Morocco left the Organization of African Unity (OAU),
precursor to the AU, in 1984 after the OAU recognized the right to
self-determination and independence for the people of the Western Sahara and
admitted the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) that was proclaimed in
1976 by the Sahrawi people’s Polisario Front.
It was in keeping with the OAU principle not to
recognize the occupation of any part of the continent that it admitted the SADR
to its membership. While SADR claimed sovereignty over the Western Sahara
territory, Morocco saw it as an integral part of its own territory. Thus,
rather than accept SADR’s independence, Morocco left the OAU.Since then Morocco
has refused to join the AU unless the organization withdraws the membership of
SADR.
The Occupation of Western Sahara
The area of Western Sahara has
been occupied by Morocco since 1976 when Spain pulled out and relinquished its
claim as a colonial power over the territory. This former Spanish colony was
then annexed by Morocco. Sahrawi people, who fought Spanish colonial
oppression, were now forced to fight Moroccan occupation. They conducted
resistance struggle under the leadership of Polisario Front until 1991 when the
United Nations (UN) brokered a truce.
A UN-supervised referendum on independence of Western
Sahara was promised in 1992 but it was aborted by Morocco. A UN peacekeeping
mission that was to organize the referendum has remained in the territory ever
since, while Morocco built a 2,700km-long sand wall, with landmines.
SADR, headed by the Polisario Front, has been recognized
by the AU as the legitimate government in exile. For decades Morocco made
futile attempts to delegitimize SADR and Polisario. Eventually it applied to
rejoin AU without precondition.
AU member states argued that Morocco should not be
readmitted unless it accepts the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which states that, “All peoples
have the right to self-determination; and by virtue of that right they freely
determine their political status.”
Morocco was also asked to accept unconditionally the
OAU/AU African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights which provides that:
Nothing shall justify the domination of a
people by another. All peoples shall have the unquestionable and inalienable
right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political
status.
Thus, before readmission Morocco should have accepted
all the 33 Articles of the Constitutive Act of the AU with Western Sahara as a
founding member. Morocco should also accept the AU Act which recognizes African
colonial boundaries, thus making its continued occupation of Western Sahara
illegal.
All this was thrust aside and Morocco was readmitted to
the AU when 39 out of the 54 African member states voted for Morocco. They
tacitly endorsed the longstanding occupation of Western Sahara, while Morocco
refuses to comply with the successive UN resolutions on the holding of a
referendum on self-determination.
Western Sahara thus remains the continent’s last
colonial outpost, occupied by another African state. It is an albatross on the
African Union’s conscience, since it was a departure from its founding
principles.
Morocco’s Goodwill Tour
Morocco’s readmission was reportedly influenced by
Morocco’s King Mohammad’s affluence. This became evident when he demonstrated
his largesse while touring the continent, lobbying for support from African
heads.
It is said he will now bankroll the AU in line with what
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi used
to do. The two are, of course, poles apart. Gaddafi, arguably, had a pan-Africanist
and anti-imperialist vision, while the King aims at continued annexation of
Western Sahara.
That is why prior to the AU vote the King embarked on a
charm offensive by touring African countries, seeking support for his AU bid.
In February 2014 he set off on a tour of Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Gabon.
This was his second regional trip in less than five months.
He took with him a contingent of advisors and business
executives who negotiated a pile of agreements covering practically everything –
from religious training to agriculture and mining projects.
In December 2016, the King concluded the second leg of a
nearly two-month, six-country Africa tour, resulting in some 50 bilateral
agreements. The visits came on the heels of trips to Rwanda, Tanzania, and
Senegal in October, when more than 40 bilateral agreements were signed.
This is how the monarch wound up his whirlwind tour of
Africa prior to the AU Summit meeting in January 2017. For those who say the
royal expeditions to African countries had altruistic motive, suffice it to
quote his official who said:
Aside from west and central Africa we must
open up to east Africa and that is what is under way. The context of Morocco’s
return to the African Union is there too of course, and these are important
countries in the AU.
The tour of east Africa “is also a way to get closer to
countries which historically had positions which were hostile to Morocco’s
interests,” said the Moroccan source.
In some circles it is argued that Morocco’s readmission
was a ‘positive’ step in that, as full member of the AU, it will now have to
recognize the independence and sovereignty of SADR. If that is so then the
readmission should have been conditional.
In any case, Morocco has no intention to give in on its
occupation. Its return to the union is intended to eventually push for the
removal of Western Sahara out of the AU, thus silencing the voice of the
Sahrawi people in connivance with ‘friendly’ member states.
Yet while the AU fails to stand by such principles, the
kingdom of Morocco is under pressure in the international diplomatic arena
where Polisario is gaining global support. In fact, on 21 December 2016, a few
days before the Addis Ababa Summit, the European Court of Justice (ECJ)
dismissed Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara. The ruling means the European
Union’s trade deals with Morocco do not apply to the occupied territory of
Western Sahara which is endowed with its fish stocks, mineral deposits,
agricultural produce and oil reserves.
The UN and the European Union
The ECJ ruled that Western Sahara cannot be treated as a
part of Morocco, meaning no EU-Morocco trade deals can apply to the territory.
The ruling confirms the long-established legal status of Western Sahara as a
non-self-governing territory, and upholds existing international law. The EU
member states and institutions have been asked to comply with the ruling and
immediately cease all agreements, funding and projects reinforcing Morocco’s
illegal occupation of Western Sahara.
The Court also ruled that a trade deal between the EU
and Morocco should be scrapped because it included products from Western
Sahara. Morocco had to accept that any free trade deal would have to exclude
Western Sahara. This includes the fruits and vegetables grown by companies such
as Les Domaines Agricoles, which is partly owned by King Mohammed VI.
On top of this there have been more than 100 UN
resolutions calling for self-determination for the Western Sahara. In March
2016, the then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the situation in
Western Sahara as an “occupation.” The UN, however, has to go beyond rhetoric
by enforcing its resolutions. It formally recognizes the occupation of Western
Sahara as illegal, and has maintained a peacekeeping mission (MINURSO)
commissioned to hold a referendum in Sahara since 1991. But it has a skeleton
staff, with no mandate to even monitor human rights abuses, thanks to France’s
Security Council veto.
And so the French oil company Total is active in Western
Sahara, while others have pulled out. Also big investors such as the Norwegian
government’s pension fund avoid any deals which involve Western Sahara. And the
EFTA free trade association, a group of non-EU countries including Norway,
Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, excludes Western Sahara goods from its
free trade deal with Morocco.
Morocco’s return to the AU is an affront not only to the
people of Western Sahara but to African people, for Morocco is a country that
once refused to host the African Cup of Nations on flimsy grounds that
Moroccans would be infected by African teams bringing in Ebola virus.
Some African heads claim that the admission of Morocco
will now resolve the question of Western Sahara’s occupation. Such argument is
always pushed with some foreign machination. In fact Morocco is now emboldened.
That is why those who voted for readmission of Morocco should have demanded an
end to the illegal occupation as a precondition.
That did not happen at the AU Summit meeting in Addis
Ababa. Instead we see the AU blatantly violating its own Constitutive Act, and
the principle for African countries to respect each other’s territorial
boundaries.
We witness a violation of both the AU and the UN
declarations on the inalienable right of the people of Western Sahara to
independence and self-determination.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Sahrawi people are
disenfranchized. It is estimated that up to 200,000 have fled to refugee camps
in the neighbouring Algeria and Mauritania. They are separated by a 2,700km-long
wall going through Western Sahara, surrounded by landmines. •
IAEA says Iran
remains committed to JCPOA
 |
| International Atomic Energy Chief, Yukiya Amano |
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) has once again confirmed that Iran is implementing the landmark nuclear
agreement it signed with the P5+1 group of countries in 2015.
“Implementation is very important and that requires
efforts by all and ... we have a very robust verification tool,” IAEA
Director General Yukiya Amano told reporters on the sidelines of a summit in
Dubai on Tuesday.
“There is nothing political that will change our
implementation," he added.
Iran and the five permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China
plus Germany - started implementing the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - on January 16, 2016.
The deal, which was later enshrined in a legally-binding
UN Security Council resolution, rolled back nuclear-related sanctions against
Iran, which, in turn, put limits on its nuclear program.
However, on his campaign trail, US President Donald
Trump threatened to annul the deal, which he has lambasted as “the worst accord
ever negotiated” and “one of the dumbest” ones he has come across.
Washington has taken a tougher stance on Iran since
President Trump took office on January 20. It said it had put Tehran "on
notice" last month over carrying out a ballistic missile test.
The IAEA chief said the new US administration has so far
not contacted the agency, which is monitoring the JCPOA implementation.
“This is a very early stage of the Trump administration
but we are very willing to have interaction with them as soon as
possible," Amano said.
He added that the UN nuclear agency remains in
"constant interaction" with US civil servants.
"Nuclear activities by Iran is [sic] reduced and so
this is a net gain. What is important is to continue to implement" the
JCPOA, the IAEA director general said.
Also in an interview with The Associated Press on
Tuesday, Amano said Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium remained below the
level required in the nuclear accord.
“The IAEA is functioning as the eyes and ears of the
international community," he added.
Iran has denied media reports suggesting that it has
agreed to reduce its stockpile of uranium enriched to up to 3.67 percent purity
to less than 300 kilograms as part of the JCPOA.
Two States
Or One State?
By John Chuckman
Israel has created a terrible problem which it is
incapable of solving. That is why it has always been the case that the United
States must pretty much dictate a solution, but it is unable to do so,
paralyzed as it is by the heavy influence of Israel and America's own
apologists and lobbyists.
Trump's suggestion of a one-state solution to the
Israel-Palestinian conflict is welcomed by some because Israel's settler policy
is said to have made two states impossible, as it was most certainly intended
to do. However, a little reflection on hard facts makes it clear that a
one-state solution is just as impossible.
A single-state solution would be acceptable to all
reasonable minds, but you only have to follow the news to know that Israel
contains a good many unreasonable minds. Its early advocates and founders were,
quite simply, fanatics, and its policies and attitudes were shaped by that
fanaticism.
The Israeli establishment could simply not accept a
Palestinian population with equal rights and the franchise as part of Israel.
They could not do so because they have embraced an almost mystical concept of
Israel as "the Jewish state." Of course, the de facto reality of
today's combined population of Israel and its occupied territories is that
Palestinians, who importantly include not just Muslims but many Christians, are
already about half of the total.
And there are physical realities forming huge barriers
against a single state, things of which many people are not aware. Very
importantly, fertility rates in Arab populations are considerably higher than
in the European Ashkenazi population which forms Israel's elite. That has
nothing to do with ethnic characteristics. It is a result of much lower levels
of affluence influencing the behavior of people having children. It is a
universal reality we see.
That's why Arabic populations are such relatively young
populations with a high proportion of children. When Israel bombs a place like
Gaza or Lebanon, as it does periodically, it always kills many hundreds of
children because they make a big share of the population. An advanced country
like Japan has low fertility and traditionally is averse to much migration. It
faces a future with an aging and declining population.
All older European and North American countries have
fertility rates too low to replace their otherwise declining populations.
America or France or Israel or similar states simply do not have enough babies
to replace their populations. That's a fundamental reality of advanced,
affluent society. People with rich, demanding lives do not have large numbers
of children, anywhere, knowing, as they do, that the few they do have will
almost certainly survive and will better thrive with more concentrated
resources.
That's the real reason behind most countries'
immigration policies, not generosity or kindness. But, of course, Israel has a
serious problem with immigration, too. As the "Jewish state" it is
open to only one category of migrant, and that category of people makes a tiny
fraction of the world's population. Further, most of that tiny fraction live in
comfortable, affluent places, far more desirable to live in than Israel -
places like America, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, etc.
A single-state Israel would combine low fertility
Europeans with higher fertility Arabic people, thus creating a long-term
trajectory for a minority-Jewish state, a reality which would be repellent to
all conservative Jews and many others, in light of the founding notion of
Israel as a refuge from believed widespread anti-Semitism, plus the vaguely-defined
but emotionally-loaded notion of a "Jewish state," and, still
further, the biblical myths of God's having given the land exclusively to Jews.
You simply cannot make rational sense out of that bundle
of attitudes and prejudices, yet you cannot get a rational solution to a
massive problem otherwise, a problem, it should be noted, of Israel's own
deliberate making in the Six Day War. Likely, when Israel's leadership started
that war, they calculated that Palestinians would come to feel so miserable under
occupation that they'd just pick up and leave over time. Moshe Dayan, one of
the architects of the war, actually spoke along those very lines of keeping the
Palestinians miserable so they would leave. But their calculations were wrong.
Most people, anywhere, do not pick-up and leave their native place. Otherwise
the world would a constant whirlwind of migrations.
Although Israel does not discuss the relative population
growth rate situation in public, authorities and experts there are keenly aware
of the reality. It is difficult to imagine them ever embracing a single state
for this reason. When you found a state on ideology and myths, as Israel was
founded, you very soon bump up against some unhappy realities.
So, if there is not to be a Palestinian state, what are
Israel's other options? There seem to be only two.
One is to deport all or most Palestinians, an ugly idea
which is probably also unworkable, although it has very much seriously been
discussed among educated Israelis periodically. Apart from the Nazi-like
connotations around such an act, who, on earth, is going to take literally
millions of people from Israel? In the past, Israeli ideologues have seriously
suggested both the country of Jordan and parts of Egypt contiguous with Israel
as possibilities.
Can any realistic person believe those states stand
ready to take millions of people in? No, of course not, but that hasn't stopped
the ideologues of Israel from going back to the idea again and again. Of
course, there is the pure ethical problem of moving millions against their
wills and seizing all their property, but ethics have not never featured large
in Israel's policies from the beginning.
The other solution is to re-create apartheid South
Africa's Bantustans, little enclaves of land with often undesirable
characteristics into which you crowd all the people that you don't want and
declare that these are their new countries. We see this already in Israel,
notably in Gaza, which really is a giant refugee camp much resembling a
concentration camp with high fences and automated machine-gun towers
surrounding it, the residents being permitted almost no freedom of movement or
even economic activity, as for example Gaza's fishermen being fired on by
Israeli gunboats if they stray even slightly beyond tight boundaries in the
sea.
The world would not long tolerate that approach no
matter how much influence the United States might unfairly exert. After all,
for a long time, the United States protected and cooperated with apartheid
South Africa, always regarding it as an important bulwark against communism,
anti-communism being the fervent secular religion of the day in America. This
was so much the case that it even overlooked what it absolutely had to know
about, apartheid South Africa's acquisition of a small arsenal of nuclear
weapons with the assistance of Israel, Israel always being keen to keep good
access to South Africa's mineral wealth.
Clearly, those two options are not solutions. Realities
absolutely demand either a legitimate two-state solution - which Israel's
leaders have never truly accepted while giving it time-buying lip-service - or
a one-state solution which is probably even more unacceptable to Israel's
leaders and much of its population, guaranteeing, as it does, the eventual minority
status of Jews.
Israel has itself created a terrible problem which it is
incapable of solving. That is why it has always been the case that the United
States must pretty much dictate a solution, but it is unable to do so,
paralyzed as it is by the heavy influence of Israel and America's own
apologists and lobbyists.
So, in effect, the world just goes around and around on
this terrible problem, never doing anything decisive. The macabre dance of
Israel and the United States we've had for decades yields today's de facto
reality of Israel as nothing more but nothing less than a protected American
colony in the Middle East, one in which all kinds of international norms and
laws are completely suspended, one where millions live with nor rights and no citizenship.
But, after all, colonies have never been places where the rule of law and human
rights prevail, have they? Never.
John Chuckman
But I Thought the
Cold War was Supposed to Have Been About Ideology
By Eric Zuesse
Was the Cold War against communism,
or against Russia? Russia was our ally in World War II, and we’d have a Nazi
world today if 26 million Russians hadn’t
died from Hitler’s bombs and attacks while Russia fought on with courage amidst
desperation, finally to crush his regime.
But Russia was communist, so the Cold
War developed after that alliance (the Allies in WW II) ended. Then, Russia
abandoned communism in 1990, and ended its own Warsaw Pact military alliance in
1991, while America’s military alliance NATO expanded right up to
Russia’s borders — and yet the West claims that Russia and not NATO
are the ‘aggressor’ here? Sorry: I don’t get it. I really do not. Not
at all.
The Cold War should have ended in
1991 when communism and the Warsaw Pact did, but instead it continued on in the
form of NATO (very profitable for what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial
complex” — and its U.S. military is also the employer, direct or indirect, of
much of our workforce, especially when arms-manufacturers are counted in). And
now Donald Trump is being called by haters-of-Trump (who are almost exclusively
lovers-of-Hillary) a U.S. national-security risk because he wants to end the
Cold War on the U.S. side — 25 years after it had ended in 1991 on the
communist side. Oh, it’s still too soon to do that? Really?
On December 12th, appeared a call for a re-do of the election (technically
it was a letter to the CIA urging an immediate report to members of the
Electoral College on whether Trump is a secret Russian agent or won by means of
Russian manipulation of the election), and it was signed by 9 Electoral College
electors for Hillary Clinton, and by 1 Electoral College elector for Donald
Trump (the latter of whom, Chris Suprun of Texas, had written in
the New York Times on December 5th pouring hatred against Trump and
lauding George W. Bush, who “led us through the tragic days following the
[9/11] attacks. His leadership showed that America was a great nation” — so we
won’t need to wonder what type of President he admires).
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues
involving our national security,” Clinton
campaign chair John Podesta said.
‘Bipartisan’ — my foot!
Democrats (the Party I left during
Obama’s second term, as he ratcheted-up fake charges against Russia, and
cooperated with the neocons — most of whom then were Republicans — to bring the
Cold War back to a boil) are trying every trick they can to un-do the
election’s result, and this is merely their latest such tactic.
The only valid claim they can make
(but they don’t) is that Hillary Clinton (she’s their candidate — the Obama
Administration’s super-neocon and the bloodthirsty hawk who had famously said
upon learning of Muammar Gaddafi’s gory ending, “We came, we saw, he died. Ha
ha!” — oh, wasn’t that a wonderful victory ‘we’ can all be proud of!) beat
Trump by 2% in the popular vote. But that claim is irrelevant under the
Constitution. (We’re supposed to be a nation under laws, under the U.S.
Constitution — right?)
This isn’t the first time in our
nation’s history when a President was elected who had lost the popular vote.
Unless and until we amend our Constitution to impose a popular-vote Presidency
(and so to remove the existing regional-state role in the selection of our
President and Commander-in-Chief), Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Any
Electoral College elector who was sworn prior to the election to vote for a
candidate but who after having been elected on that basis, has gone turncoat
against that candidate, is turncoat against our nation. He (or she) should
consider, in this light, what he has done. He’s turncoat not against Russia,
but against America, and against the voters whom that person represents (or is
supposed to represent). But, above all, he’s turncoat against the Constitution
itself, whose 12th Amendment says
of members of the Electoral College:
… They shall name in their ballots
the person voted for as President. … The President of the Senate shall, in the
presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates
and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of
votes for President, shall be the President. …
The presumption is that each person
who “pledged” to vote there for a particular candidate will write that
person’s name onto one of the 538 ballots and hand it in to be counted for that
person, once all of the 538 ballots have been collected and the final tally of
the 538 is publicly counted in Congress, in Washington DC.
If Mr. Suprun fails to honor that
commitment or “pledge,” then his only punishment — if any — for having done so,
will be his own conscience (presuming that he has any), but as far as the law
is concerned, he will have committed no crime, and not even a misdemeanor, even
though his action on that occasion (his vote in the Electoral College) will
have violated his very solemn “pledge,” on the very basis of which pledge he
had acquired this awesome right, and extraordinary privilege, in our
‘democracy’. As an Elector he represents around 600,000 voters, maybe none of
whom have even heard his name, and yet he will be their lone voice in selecting
America’s next President.
Though Suprun, and the nine other
signatories (among the 538 Electoral College members), might actually believe
that, as their letter says, this is about “a foreign power, namely Russia,
[which] acted covertly to interfere in the presidential campaign with the
intent of promoting Donald Trump’s candidacy,” it’s really about America —
what type of nation we really are, not what
type of nation Russia is.
Investigative historian Eric
Zuesse
U.S. Should Ship The
“Statue of Liberty” Back to France
By Eric Zuesse
Today’s America is a mockery of it. Lady Liberty weeps
now. So, let’s ship her back from whence she came, and maybe Europeans will
like the symbolism of it. After all: we got it from Europe, just like we
got the immigrants from there.
Donald Trump might not be able to get Mexicans to pay
for his wall that the U.S. is building to keep Mexicans out, but would
Europeans pay to receive back this symbolic statue, which France gave to an
America that deserved it, but that no longer does?
This monument for compassion, and against bigotry, is
now merely a metaphorical sore thumb here, but maybe France would be happy to
receive her back, and perhaps millions of Europeans will proudly pay to see
her, touch her, and stand at her base, to welcome her back to Europe, which
ironically consists of the same countries from which almost all of America’s
immigrants used to come, before France had gifted the U.S. with Lady
Liberty, back on 28 October 1886.
America’s Department of Homeland Security reports that,
for the latest available data-year, 2015, the U.S. granted asylum to 69,920
people. By law since 2012, an annual limit had been established for refugees
into the U.S.: 70,000.
During that same year in Europe, there were 1,322,825 applicants
for asylum, and 69% of them were granted asylum.
Eurostat’s asylum
statistics display vastly bigger figures than
America’s, for the vast majority of the vastly smaller countries of Europe, as
Eurostat described:
For first instance decisions, some 75% of all positive
decisions in the EU-28 in 2015 resulted in grants of refugee status, while for
final decisions the share was somewhat lower, at 69%. …
The highest share of positive first instance asylum
decisions in 2015 was recorded in Bulgaria (91%), followed by Malta, Denmark
and the Netherlands. Conversely, Latvia, Hungary and Poland recorded first
instance rejection rates above 80%. …
The highest shares of final rejections were recorded in
Estonia, Lithuania and Portugal where all final decisions were negative…
The number of first time asylum applicants in
Germany increased from 173 thousand in 2014 to 442 thousand in 2015…
Hungary, Sweden and Austria also reported very large increases (all in
excess of 50 thousand more first time asylum applicants) between 2014
and 2015.
In relative terms, the largest increases in the
number of first time applicants were recorded in Finland (over nine times
as high), Hungary (over four times) and Austria (over three times), while
Belgium, Spain, Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland and Sweden all reported
that their number of first time asylum applicants more than doubled. By
contrast, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Latvia reported fewer
first time asylum applicants in 2015 than in 2014.
Germany’s share of the EU-28 total rose from 31% in
2014, to 35% in 2015, while other EU Member States that recorded
a notable increase in their share of the EU-28 total included Hungary
(up 6.6 percentage points to 13.9%), Austria (up 2.2 percentage points to
6.8%), and Finland (up 1.9 percentage points to 2.6%). Conversely, France and
Italy’s shares of the EU-28 total each fell nearly 5 percentage points
between 2014 and 2015, to 5.6% and 6.6% respectively. …
Syrians accounted for the largest number of
applicants in 12 of the 28 EU Member States, including 159 thousand
applicants in Germany (the highest number of applicants from a single
country to one of the EU Member States in 2015), 64 thousand applicants
in Hungary and 51 thousand in Sweden. Some 46 thousand Afghan
applicants were recorded in Hungary, 41 thousand in Sweden and 31 thousand
in Germany. A further 54 thousand Albanians, 33 thousand Kosovans and
30 thousand Iraqis also applied for asylum in Germany; no other EU Member
State received 30 thousand or more asylum applicants in 2015 of a
single citizenship. …
In 2015, there were 593 thousand first instance
decisions in all EU Member States. By far the largest number of decisions
was taken in Germany, … constituting more than 40% of the total first instance
decisions in the EU-28 in 2015. In addition, there were 183 thousand final
decisions, with again the far largest share (51%) in Germany.
The much larger country, United States, under its new
President Donald Trump, is promising to cut sharply the number of annually
admitted refugees, downward from its present meager 70,000.
On a per-capita basis, Europe is taking in seven times
as many refugees as the U.S. does. Both America and Europe are widely expected
to reduce, not to increase, the acceptance of refugees.
So: Does the Statue of Liberty still represent America —
or does it instead represent only an America that once was, but no longer
is?
When considering this question, one might also
consider what precisely caused the refugees
to become refugees. Syria was the largest source of 2015’s
refugees into Europe. What have they been fleeing from? According to
Western-sponsored polls of Syrians throughout that country, they have been
fleeing mainly from U.S. bombs and bombers, which were supporting
Al-Qaeda-backed jihadist groups that have been
trying to take over their country. Of course, as was being reported in the
Western press, they were fleeing mainly from Syrian government and its allied
bombs and bombers that have been trying to kill ‘moderate rebels’ against that
government.
Those were figures from 2015, when the U.S. was bombing
throughout the year in Syria (where it was, in fact, an invader), and when
Russia (which was no invader, but instead was invited in by Syria’s government,
to help it prevent an overthrow by that U.S.-Saudi alliance) started bombing
there only late, on September 30th of 2015. Mainly, Syrians were fleeing both
from jihadists who were trying to take over their country, and from American
bombs that were supporting those Saudi-financed jihadists. (And,
overwhelmingly, the residents there were fleeing from what Obama
euphemistically called ‘rebel controlled areas’, to the areas that were still
under the Syrian government’s control.)
The second and third largest sources of refugees into
Europe during that year were Iraq and Afghanistan, two
countries that America started bombing in 2001 in retaliation for the Saudi royal
family’s 9/11 attacks inside America. The new Trump
Administration is retaliating against refugees from seven countries, on account
of the 9/11, and also other, jihadist attacks, which likewise weren’t
perpetrated by people from any of these seven: Syria, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
In fact, at the very moment of that U.S. announcement
about those seven countries, the Saud family were not only supporting both Al
Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, but were dropping American-made bombs onto Shiites in
Yemen. And Trump was terminating refugees both from Syria and from Yemen, thus
cutting off any escape to the U.S. for those victims of U.S. aggression against
those two countries that the Saud family and
the U.S. aristocracy want to conquer. Will Europe take
these refugees in?
U.S. aggression combines now with a tightening
closed-door policy, and neither reality fits the Western myth. So, might Lady
Liberty be crying also because of Western lying? She has become alien to this
country as a misfit here, as being both a refuge and a model for the world. She
no longer belongs in this country, in spirit. She might as well be officially
included on President Trump’s banned list, a resident alien that’s being
returned to sender.
Maybe if Trump sends her back to France, he’ll try to negotiate
with France’s leaders, some sort of price that they will be billed — not, of
course for creating the statue (since it was created by the French), but, like
he plans to get Mexicans to pay for building his wall to keep them out.
How far will Trump go in his ‘politically
incorrect’ new form of ‘Americanism’?
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