Spain: Catalan regional parliament votes next steps to independence

Alejandro Lopez

Last Wednesday, the Catalan regional parliament voted in support of the report of the Committee to Study the Constituent Process laying out 11 conclusions and three steps towards Catalonian independence.

The first step foresees the convening of a forum to discuss a future Catalan constitution. The second initiates “three laws of disconnection” from Spain “not subject to control, suspension or challenge from any other power, court or tribunal.” The third creates a Constituent Assembly in charge of drafting a constitution that would be put to a referendum.

The report was passed by the separatist parties—the “Together For Yes” coalition, comprising the Republican Left (ERC) and Democratic Convergence (CDC), and pseudo-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP)—that together hold 72 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament.

The regional front of Podemos in Catalonia, “Yes We Can,” voted against the report, the regional wing of the Socialist Party (PSC) abstained and the anti-separatist Citizens party and the Popular Party (PPC) walked out of the chamber before the vote took place.

Following the vote, ERC leader Oriol Junqueras declared, “We have the democratic mandate to build a new country, clean and fair, and a mandate, for us, it is a duty!” CUP deputy Gabriela Serra said the decision was about “disobeying the 78 regime”—a reference to the 1978 Spanish Constitution brought in following the end of the Francoist dictatorship.

Acting Popular Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy instructed the Attorney General to stop the independence process and launched an appeal to the Constitutional Court—moves fully supported by Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez.

On Monday, the court declared that the Constituent Process violates the constitution and has given the Catalan parliament 20 days to inform all deputies and lodge an appeal. It will decide by the end of August whether to charge the parliament’s speaker, Carme Forcadell, which could lead to her imprisonment.

Madrid, Spain’s capital, has threatened to retaliate economically, including freezing the Liquidity Fund that would leave many services bankrupt and civil servants without pay, and invoking article 155 of the constitution, which would effectively suspend the regional autonomy of Catalonia.

The independence vote has deepened the political crisis in Spain, which has now been without a government for eight months. Two general elections have produced hung parliaments with no party or coalition of parties able to assemble a majority. The PP, which secured the largest number of Congress seats—137 of the 350 total—has been unable to obtain the parliamentary support of any other political forces to form a new government.

In addition to the parliamentary deadlock, Madrid is under pressure from the European Commission to implement a massive austerity package targeting the working class. Although Brussels has cancelled threatened sanctions against Spain (and Portugal) for missing deficit reduction targets, Spain must now bring its 4.6 percent deficit below three percent by 2018, imposing up to €28 billion in budget cuts.

The decision of the Catalan parliament to approve the Constituent Process report is tied up with a vote of confidence called by regional premier Carles Puigdemont for September 28. This is aimed at putting pressure on the CUP to support the approval of the 2017 austerity budget. Up to now, the pseudo-left group has voted against the budget but this has led to its fracturing between the most pro-“Together for Yes” elements and those who tactically see that support for austerity would expose them in front of the eyes of workers and youth.

The no-confidence vote is an expression of the breakup of the European Union (EU) along national lines produced by the capitalist crisis. This has been accelerated by the Brexit vote in Britain, and poses the danger of increasingly sharp national antagonisms, fascism and world war.

The call for independence is led by right-wing forces who want to establish Catalonia as a capitalist state within the EU to act as a low-tax, cheap labour investment and production platform for the banks and transnational corporations, freed from paying subsidies to the poorer regions of Spain. They use separatism to split the working class along national lines and conceal the socio-economic concerns of workers and youth, Spanish and Catalan alike, under a heap of nationalism.

The Constituent Process vote will be used by the Spanish bourgeoisie to pressure the PP, PSOE and Citizens to cobble together a government that will confront Catalan separatism and impose EU diktats on the backs of the working class. An El País editorial this week, under the headline “A Government Now!” declared, “the absolute priority in the following days must be a pact that guarantees a stable executive and as soon as possible. The steps taken last week by the Catalan separatists close the path to future hypothetical collaboration…Thus all the weight to form a government lies on the PP, in the first place, and second, also on Citizens and the PSOE.”

If the ruling class is able to exploit Catalan nationalism to divide and rule, it is because of the role of the pseudo-left. The CUP has emerged as the most aggressive advocate of independence. It puts pressure on the CDC and ERC to take a more confrontational and chauvinist line with central government and then uses the anti-democratic response of Madrid to urge separatism. This was the case with the recent revelations over Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz’s attempt to unearth real or alleged wrongdoings by Catalan government officials in order to discredit them. He also conspired with the security services to topple CDC leader Artur Mas and replace him with someone controlled by Madrid. CUP politicians claim the interior minister’s activities were a significant factor in the rise in support for independence from 42.4 percent in March to 47.7 percent, revealed in a poll last week.

Podemos’ Catalonia Yes We Can, by taking part in the Committee to Study the Constituent Process, is complicit in the regional bourgeoisie’s manoeuvres vis á vis Madrid. Its own programme calls for a referendum on independence. But it seeks to combine this opportunist orientation in Catalonia with efforts such as last month’s no vote to make clear its overarching loyalty to the Spanish bourgeoisie—combining empty “left” rhetoric with calls to form a government with the pro-austerity, pro-EU, pro-NATO PSOE.

US homeownership rate falls to lowest level in 51 years

Gabriel Black

The United States’ household home ownership rate fell to its lowest level in a half-century in the second quarter of 2016, according to statistics released by the US Census Bureau last week.

During the months of April, May and June, the percentage of American households that owned a home decreased by 0.6 percent, or about 750,000 households, down to 62.9 percent. This is the lowest percentage of home ownership since the Census Bureau began recording the home ownership rate in 1965. The 5l-year low comes despite record low interest rates for mortgages.

The home ownership rate in the US has been declining since June 2004, when it reached a peak of 69.2 percent. If Americans owned homes at the rate they did in 2004, then roughly 7.9 million American households who do not own homes would.

The decline in homeownership is one sign of the deep social crisis in the United States. As rents and housing costs have soared, spurred on by financial speculation that has enriched the ruling elites, incomes and jobs for most Americans have shriveled.

This national phenomenon is bound up with a broader global housing crisis facing large sections of the world’s population, particularly workers and youth.

Rent and housing costs in most major cities around the world have skyrocketed since the financial crash of 2008, cuttingly deeply into workers’ standard of living and prompting concerns about an unsustainable global housing bubble. Amid economic stagnation, workers are being laid off and their wages and benefits cut. High costs and low wages put large sections of the population, particularly urban workers, youth and sections of the middle class, in an impossible position.

In the United States, housing prices increased by 5.2 percent between May 2015 and May 2016, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index. Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, told National Mortgage News, “One of the biggest hurdles now is affordability. Home prices are rising so much faster than incomes, so it’s hard for buyers to save for a down payment.”

Between 2001 and 2014, median household income dropped by nine percent in the US. At the same time rental prices have increased, on average, by seven percent, according to a Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University study published this year.

Young adults have been particularly hurt. The rate of homeownership for Americans aged 18 to 34 fell 0.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016, dropping to 34.1 percent. This is the lowest rate recorded for this age group going back to 1992. For the first time in 130 years, Americans in this age group are more likely to live with their parents than another living situation, according to a May 2016 Pew Research Center report.

This is part of a global trend. In the United Kingdom, home ownership rates are at the lowest level in 30 years. A little less than 64 percent of households own homes, a rate not seen since 1986. In Australia, less than half of all adults are expected to own homes in a few years, according to University of Melbourne Professor Roger Wilkin’s research. Ownership rates declined by 3.5 percentage points between 2002 and 2014, he found.

The Swiss bank UBS estimated earlier this year that the majority of the world’s urban real estate markets are now “significantly overvalued.” In London, the average home price has doubled since 2009, from about £300,000 ($437,600 USD) to £600,000 ($875,100). Hong Kong’s average home price more than tripled between 2004 and today.

Meanwhile, incomes have declined or stagnated for about two-thirds of the population in the advanced economies, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report released last month. The study found that between 540 million and 580 million people either saw their incomes stagnate or decline in 25 of the most advanced countries.

This trend is unprecedented. Historically, rent and housing costs have risen and fallen in accordance with wages and the interest rate. A higher interest rate, or higher wages, would tend to push housing costs up. Today, this trend has reversed. Despite a decade-long decline in wages, and interest rates at near zero in many countries, housing prices are increasing substantially.

Financial speculation is the cause of this reversal. As UBS noted in its 2015 Global Real Estate Bubble Index, “Loose monetary policy has prevented a normalization of housing markets and encouraged local bubble risks to grow.” According to the report, much of the “overvaluation” in the global housing market comes from a “dependence on low interest rates.”

Due to low interest rates, banks and other financial institutions are receiving billions in virtually interest-free loans from the world’s central banks, only further encouraging them to invest in the stock market and real estate. It is these purchases of real estate by financial speculators that drive up the cost of rent and housing when the large majority of the population is losing its income.

More airstrikes in new US war in Libya

Peter Symonds

US airstrikes on the Libyan coast city of Sirte, which began on Monday, continued yesterday as part of what American officials have made clear will be an ongoing military campaign. While nominally directed against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militias, the fresh eruption of American militarism is more broadly aimed at ensuring US dominance in the region.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis told the media that the US had hit five locations in Sirte on Monday and two yesterday, targeting tanks, vehicles, a rocket launcher and ISIS positions in the city. According to Associated Press, Marine Corps strike aircraft based on the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship in the Mediterranean, participated in the raids.

The UN-backed puppet regime in Tripoli, the Government of National Accord (GNA), gave Washington the fig leaf of its formal approval to conduct the airstrikes. GNA units drawn from various militia groups are currently engaged in an offensive to drive ISIS fighters out of Sirte.

Davis declared that the US military was simply assisting the GNA to retake Sirte, saying that “the duration of the operation will be measured based upon the length of time it takes for them to do that objective.” He claimed that the US airstrikes would likely last “weeks not months.” Davis indicated, however, that the commitment to the GNA “absolutely will endure”, even though “for right now” the target was Sirte.

Unnamed US officials told Reuters that Monday’s raids marked the start of a sustained air campaign rather than another isolated strike. The previous US airstrikes took place in February on an ISIS training camp in the western city of Sabratha.

Washington has been preparing a new military intervention in the oil-rich North African nation for months. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in late May that a “long term mission” involving thousands of US troops was imminent. The delay has been in securing the GNA’s seal of approval.

Speaking to the Military Times, US officials would not say whether there were US soldiers on the ground in Libya. However, they did acknowledge that small “contact teams” of special operations troops had gone into and out of the country in recent months to gather intelligence and forge alliances with local militias. British, French and Italian special forces have also been active in Libya.

While Washington is justifying its new military operations in the name of the “war on terror”, the US-led military intervention in Libya in 2011 is directly responsible for creating ISIS and giving it a foothold in the country. The US and its allies relied heavily on militias linked to Al Qaeda to topple the Libyan government and murder its leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The same Islamist militias, along with large quantities of Libyan arms, were then shipped off to take part in the new US-sponsored regime-change operation in Syria. The ISIS forces that seized control of Sirte last year are the US proxies that returned from the bloody Syrian civil war.

The US claim to be acting in the name of a legitimate government is a sham. The unelected pro-Western GNA regime headed by Fayez al-Sarraj was patched together out of competing factions as part of an agreement signed just last December with the approval of the UN Security Council. It was only installed in Tripoli in March.

A rival government based in the eastern city of Benghazi is headed by General Khalifa Haftar, a long-standing CIA asset who was prominent among the American proxy forces that ousted Gaddafi and is bitterly opposed to the GNA. Yesterday, Ahmed Mesmarri, a spokesman for Hafter’s forces, denounced the US airstrikes, declaring that Washington “had no permission, even under the cover of fighting extremism.”

A parliamentarian representing the eastern government Abubaker Baira told the Wall Street Journal: “Unfortunately all sides of the Libyan conflict happily open their doors to this so-called military or political support, even if covertly, in the hope it will empower them against their domestic enemies.”

Like Tripoli, Benghazi is a cesspool of international intrigue. Even though formally recognising the GNA, France has provided support to the Haftar regime along with Egypt and some of the Gulf States. French involvement was graphically exposed last week when President Francois Hollande acknowledged that three French security agents had been killed when their helicopter was shot down near Benghazi earlier last month.

Yesterday, France attempted to mend relations with Tripoli by declaring its full support for the GNA and its efforts to unify the country.

The new US military intervention in Libya takes place amidst rising tensions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe with Russia as well as in the Asia Pacific with China. The airstrikes in Sirte, which are undoubtedly the opening shot of a far broader operation, are not only designed to consolidate Washington’s grip over Libya and its oil fields but are meant as a warning to Moscow and Beijing.

The decision to launch a new war was taken behind the backs of the American population with no attempt to secure congressional approval. The Obama administration absurdly cited the 2001 Authorisation for Use of Military Force that approved military action against those who had planned and carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ISIS not only did not exist in 2001 but is now the sworn enemy of Al Qaeda.

Obama issued no formal statement on the launching of another war, but made a few perfunctory remarks at a joint press conference yesterday with Singapore’s prime minister. After justifying the 2011 intervention as necessary to prevent a bloodbath, he declared that the new military operations were “to begin what is going to be a long process to establish a functioning government and security system there.”

In reality, as in Iraq and Syria, the latest front in US imperialism’s never-ending “war on terror” will only spell new disasters for the Libyan people as Washington resorts to ever more desperate and reckless measures to secure its economic and strategic interests against its rivals.

IITA Youth Agripreneurs Training Programme for Nigerians 2016

Brief description: IITA Youth Agripreneurs is partnering with Hello Tractor to train young Agripreneurs in Nigeria on the use of a ‘Smart Tractor’ designed by the company.

Application Timeline: Training holds on 5th September, 2016

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country):  Ibadan, Abuja, and Kano in Nigeria

Eligible Fields of Interest: ICT and mechanization in agriculture 

About the Award: The training which will commence in September after the project launch in Abuja on Monday, July 18, will bridge the gap in the use of ICT and mechanization in agriculture. The Hello Tractor project funded by USAID is another self-developed proposal of IITA Youth Agripreneurs after the Community Youth Agripreneurs project. The Hello Tractor which is a two year project will give IYA the opportunity of providing training for 100 youths on the business of owning, maintaining, utilizing and promoting services for a fleet of smart tractors. IYA will also support the participants in facilitating formation of individual and group-based enterprises to ensure more engagement of youth in the agricultural sector.

Type: Training

Eligibility: Candidate must meet the following criteria.
i. Youth between age of 18-35
ii. Interested in practicing Agribusiness and developing the capacity of others.
iii. Educational Qualification(NCE, OND, HND, Bsc)
iv. Interested in owning and rendering services with Fleet of SMART tractors.

Number of Awardees: 100

Value of Programme: The training workshop will range from lectures, case studies, brainstorming, discussions, group exercise, demonstrations, debates, and videos. Training contents for the workshop will include curriculum, such as agribusiness value chain, use of ICT in agribusiness, mechanization in agriculture, networking skills, entrepreneurship, introduction to tractor and implement maintenance, business management, risk management, organizational/administrative development, business model/plan and marketing. . All these are expected to aid the youth in sustaining a productive and competitive tractor agribusiness enterprise.

IYA will also support the participants in facilitating formation of individual and group-based enterprises to ensure more engagement of youth in the agricultural sector.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: IITA

General Electric Undergraduate Scholarships for Ghanaian Students 2016

Brief description: The Students Financial Aid Office (SFAO) General Electric is accepting 2016/17 applications from undergraduate University of Ghana students in need and reading BA Computer Science and Applied Sciences.

Application Deadline:  14th October, 2016

Offered annually? Yes. Till 2018

Eligible Countries: Ghana

To be taken at (country): Ghana

Eligible Field of Study: BA Computer Science and any of the following BSc Applied Sciences:

School of Engineering:

1.      Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering

2.      Bachelor of Science in Material Science and Engineering

School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences

1.      Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

2.      Bachelor of Science in Earth Science

3.      Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

About the Award: General Electric will provide a flat-rated scholarship support through the “the GE Scholarship”, for the benefit of certain University of Ghana under-graduate students in the areas of BA Computer Science and some BSc Applied Sciences during the next three years of  2016, 2017 and 2018 (individually the“Scholarship Year”). Scholarships are renewable annually provided they maintain a Grade Point Average of (GPA) 2.5 or better.

Offered Since: 2016

Type: Under-graduate taught

Eligibility: Candidate is eligible to apply if he/she:

1. is a Ghanaian.

2. is a Level 100 student.

3. Obtained an aggregate of 15 or better at the WASSCE.

4. is able to demonstrate limited family income and/or insufficient funds to cover most or all educational related expenses.

5. has the will to succeed (determination, perseverance and success in other pursuits).

6. is reading BA Computer Science or Basic Applied Sciences in the following areas:  BSc in Information Technology, Material Science and Engineering, Earth Science, Computer Engineering or Computer Science.

7. Will maintain a 2.5 CGPA

8.  is of a Good Conduct.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The Scholarship covers:

• Academic and residential fees
• Book allowance and out of pocket.
• Leadership training and limited Internship (If candidate maintains excellent academic standard and need is demonstrated)

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of course

How to Apply:  Interested candidates should provide the following to apply:

For need:

• Official pay slip or payroll record of parents/guardians or the applicant.
• Recent school receipts/ bills of siblings of school going age.
• Tax return receipts– IRS, VAT, tabletop hawking receipts, etc.
• Birth Certificates (of siblings).
• Death Certificate or Burial permit (in case of death of a parent).
• Pension letter for retired parents/guardians.
• Bank Statements / Ghana Cocoa Board Farmers Association Passbook.
• SSNIT contribution statements.
• Money transfer receipts.
• National Health Insurance receipts (showing premium paid).
• Evidence of other dependents of parents/guardians.
• Any other supporting documents that you believe will assist in the processing, of your application.

For Academic
• High School Transcripts (Terminal Reports)
• West African Senior School Certificate Exam Results (WASSCE)
• University Acceptance Letter
• Records regarding achievement tests, academic awards, honors, and substantive assessments by teachers, including letters of recommendation.
• Confirm That you are not currently receiving support through any other scholarship program

Interested candidates should download and submit a completed GE- FUND SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION FORM  and the required essays, a copy of candidates academic records (WASSCE grades), letters of recommendation and supporting need documents.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: General Electric

Europe’s “Bought Journalists”

Thomas S. Harrington

Not that long ago in Europe, one had to go to a church, a temple or a mosque to imbibe industrial quantities of religious doctrine.

Since the beginning of the 21^st century, however, it has become possible to access it in a great and self-satisfied profusion on the editorial pages of the continent’s “serious” and nominally progressive dailies, papers like The Guardian, El País, La Repubblica, Le Monde,and Suddeutsche Zeitung.

 The particular brand of theology being pushed?

Neo-Liberal Imperialism, something the faith’s leading clerics—people like Timothy Garton-Ash, Niall Ferguson. Moisés Naim, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hermann Tertsch, Antonio Caño, Joseph Joffe, and that erstwhile philosopher-clown, Bernard Henry-Levi—prefer to describe in terms of “promoting trans-Atlantic partnerships” and creating and maintaining “Open Societies”.

One day, historians will wonder how it was that the EU, a wealthy and ostensibly unified polity with a population of over 500 million people and an extremely deep and sophisticated history of indigenous intellectual production, came to have its public discourse dominated by the narrow and often quite parochial concerns of the elites of another country (right down to their absurd and largely unconditional devotion to a small and bellicose apartheid state in the Middle East) located halfway around the globe.

And if these historians are sharp, they will zero in on whatever it was that took place in newsrooms and other centers of media production (or perhaps more germanely, the boardrooms that set their policies) in Europe during the first decade of the 21^st century.

The US desire to spread the Atlanticist creed, which essentially holds that life for Europeans is best when sublimate their economic and strategic interests to those of the US security and financial establishments, is nothing new. Indeed, it has been one of the primary thrusts of US diplomatic and intelligence activity in Europe since the end of World War II.

The career of Joffe, marked by residencies at the Stanford’s Hoover Institution and appearances on the US establishment’s pre-eminent venue for self-promotion and the consolidation of US-Israeli official talking points, The Charlie Rose Show, provides eloquent testimony to the benefits that accrue those willing to promote the American view of reality to their European countrymen on a daily basis.

What is different today is the relative weight of this ideology, with its love of military force and fiscal bullying, on one hand, and crass indifference to the clear long-term interests of the great bulk of the European population (e.g. establishing vigorous cultural and commercial interchanges with Russia, the basic physical health of Greeks) on the other, within the continent’s opinion-making landscape. Whereas slavish pro-Americans like Joffe used to constitute one voice among many, they and their views on foreign policy are now predominant in most major European papers.

How did this happen?

For those with a need to believe—and there are, sadly, still many—in the essentially benevolent nature of the US foreign policy and the existence of a more or less free and unfettered “marketplace of ideas” within the US and Europe, the answer is simple. As they got older and more prosperous Europeans became more conservative and began to demand the presence in major outlets of people whose ideas reflected these changing views.

However, for those that understand the enormous importance that the post-war US establishment has always put on “perception management” and how information warfare was and is an enormously important element of the Rumsfeldian notion of “Full Spectrum Dominance”, such an explanation strains credibility.

For example, are we really supposed to believe that of all the intelligent, experienced and well-traveled people available in the traditionally pro-Palestinian country of Spain, the person best equipped to serve as El País’ weekend foreign policy guru was Moisés Naím, a Zionist former minister of the arch-corrupt Venezuelan government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, former executive director of the World Bank, and long-time editor of the in-house bible of mainstream US imperialism Foreign Policy? Do we really believe that the paper’s core socialist readership, which is traditionally pro-welfare state and very solidly anti-interventionist was pining for that?

Lest this all seem too speculative, I suggest you watch an interview with conducted with Udo Ulfkotte, a veteran German reporter and former assistant editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,conducted in 2014. In it, he speaks of how he and other European journalists were, and are, routinely bought off by American operatives of one sort or another, going so far as to describe his country, Germany, as a “banana republic” and also a “colony of the Americans” where journalists who serve the interests of “trans-Atlantic” organizations are rewarded handsomely and where those that do not play along suffer dire consequences.

The interview took place on the occasion of the release his book Gekaufte Journalisten which is to be translated, I am told, as “Bought Journalists”, in which he goes into great detail about these matters. It is interesting to note that despite having been published two years ago and quickly rising to the status of a best-seller in Germany, it is still not available in English or any other European language. There has been talk for a while now of a “forthcoming” English version of the text. But every time I check up on it, the release date seems to have been pushed back another few months.

Think there is any pressure being applied to the people in charge of bringing the English translation of the book to market?

Save Yourselves, Women Of India, As The Republic Will Not

Samar

Delhi, the national capital of India, has witnessed another gory incident involving the rape-murder of a minor. This time, a 16-year-old was allegedly raped, strangled, and then set on fire in her own house in East Delhi. The police reportedly tried to pass off the crime as suicide, filing a case of rape and murder only after the autopsy proved them wrong.

The police, incidentally, had motive in trying bury the case. The girl had complained to them about her stalkers, who had been harassing her, and it was their inaction that led to her murder. The police have now easily apprehended the suspects that had been on their radar for months; alas they had to wait till the girl was murdered to act against the suspects.

The rape-murder comes hot on the heels of another – that of a 14-year-old Dalit girl – who died on 24 July 2016. A daughter to parents who work as sweepers in a hospital, she had seen it all in a small life span. In December 2015, someone named Shivshankar, “allegedly” raped her; and her family had dared to seek justice despite knowing the odds.

They approached the police and got a First Information Report filed under Sections 363 and 376 of the Indian Penal Code and 4/6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, in Burari Police Station on 2 December 2015. Inexplicably, the police did not press the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Preventions of Atrocities) Act in this case, despite the girl being from the Dalit community.

That said, perhaps this is all rather routine in a country with a deadly mix of no witness protection mechanism, both inefficient and corrupt policing, and impunity that criminals with means enjoy. Not imposing the Act ensured that the accused was out on bail soon, and he promptly started threatening the family to withdraw the case.

The family did not relent, however, and complained to the police about the threats on 15 May 2016. The police, however, did not take any action. Emboldened by this, the accused allegedly abducted the girl on 19 May 2016, just a couple of days before the first hearing in the rape case was scheduled.

The girl was recovered on the night of May 26-27, profusely bleeding from the head; she narrated her ordeal to the police and parents. She told them that the accused had abducted her and kept her in captivity, repeatedly having her gang-raped, and even forced her to drink an acidic, corrosive substance. This substance led to severe damage to her internal organs. The police, still unfazed, reportedly sent the girl to a Nari Niketan (shelter home). They did this instead of sending her to a hospital, where she could avail immediate emergency medical help, and instead of filing a medico legal case, as mandated.

She was rushed to a hospital only after a couple of days later, when her condition deteriorated rapidly. Her parents took her there; subsequently the Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) learned of the incident, and also intervened. In her statement to the magistrate, the girl narrated how the Delhi police forced her to change her statement. Despite all the failings of the police, and what appears to be in spite, after the girl’s death, the police booked the Chief of the DCW for disclosing the girl’s identity. The police have had the gall to do this despite their inaction being a primary factor in the murder, and even as all accused barring one still roam free!

One can easily guess the status of safety of women in the rest of India, if this is the predicament of those living in the capital city, which is under constant media attention. One may also easily guess how the police in the hinterlands respond to distress calls of women, if their cohorts in national capital are responding in this fashion.

The criminal apathy of the police forces across India in terms of women’s safety was exposed further hours before the 14-year-old was raped and burned in Delhi, when criminals abducted a family on a highway in Uttar Pradesh. They robbed the family and then gang-raped the mother and her teenage daughter for three hours just 2 kilometers away from a police post in Bulandshahr. To add insult to injury, the police failed to respond to the family’s distress calls on 100, the universal police helpline number in India.

One may explain away this sorry state of affairs with hundreds of tried and tested excuses that the State and other stakeholders keep offering. The political parties in power often bring out crime statistics and show how they are performing “better” than other states. The ones in opposition, on the other hand, slam them hard without explaining how the same situation prevails in the states ruled by them. A few heads in law enforcement agencies roll, from time to time, with some officers transferred and some suspended.

Further, some civil society activists “outrage” over some such select cases, though this outrage often depends on media coverage of the issue. The rape-murder of the Dalit girl in Delhi was not covered that well by media, so there was not much of an outrage. Yet another similar repeat gang-rape of a Dalit girl was also largely ignored by the media, so the ensuing outrage died down soon as well.

The Bulandshahr case, however, happened to take place in a poll bound state ruled by an opposition party, so the outrage sustains, at least for now, with angered media debates, politicians’ bites, and everything that comes in such a package.

The real questions, however, get lost in both cases- the cacophony of such faux outrages and in the eerie absence of any outrage in others. Why must a victim of crime, any crime for that reason, need an outrage to get redress in a republic that claims to adhere to the rule of law? A rule of law jurisdiction would treat violent crimes against its citizens as crimes against the society as a whole. It obligates the State to prosecute the culprits and get redress to victims. A State that fails to do that can only be a lawless state.

Also, how can police officers in a rule of law jurisdiction, clearly guilty of serious dereliction of duty, as is evident in all three cases discussed here, escape scot-free? Suspensions (often involving restoration with full salary) and/or transfers are not punishments. Furthermore, what emboldens them to ignore the complaints of the victims coming from marginalized section of society? Is it not the rampaging rule of impunity devoid of fixed command responsibilities that makes them behave the way they do?

History bears witness that many of the changes are not brought from the top; societies get what they proactively seek and deserve. India has shown its penchant to seek everything under the sun but justice, even if the society is under the influence of divisive forces with vested interests of their own.

India, for instance, has demanded cow protection and is getting that. No police officer in most Indian states can ignore the distress call of a cow vigilante, not unless he is okay with rioting mobs taking over his area.

Indians have never demanded justice institution reforms with any seriousness. Whenever they have, they have gotten a step close to justice. Remember the protests across country against atrocities on Dalits, which ushered in the SC & ST (POA) Act and helped in the struggle against caste-based atrocities.

One can also remember the protests after the infamous 16 December gang-rape-murder in Delhi. In this case, the protests were fierce but they did not sustain, so all they achieved was a few cosmetic changes, some even regressive, in terms of statutes, and nothing else.

There is no one in sight seeking justice institutions reforms to ensure safety of women in India, and so there is no pressure on the political and justice institutions to offer any such safety. Women should take note and ensure their own safety; the Republic is too busy saving cows, as demanded by a section of its citizens.

When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, The News Is Grim

Nick Turse

It’s rare to hear one top military commander publicly badmouth another, call attention to his faults, or simply point out his shortcomings. Despite a seemingly endless supply of debacles from strategic setbacks to quagmire conflicts since 9/11, the top brass rarely criticize each other or, even in retirement, utter a word about the failings of their predecessors or successors.  Think of it as the camouflage wall of silence.  You may loathe him.  You may badmouth him behind closed doors.  You may have secretly hoped for his career to implode.  But publicly point out failures?  That’s left to those further down the chain of command.

And yet that’s effectively exactly what newly installed U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chief, General Thomas Waldhauser, did earlier this year in a statement to the Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC).  It’s just that no one, almost certainly including Waldhauser himself, seemed to notice or recognize it for the criticism it was, including the people tasked with oversight of military operations and those in the media.

Over these last years, the number of personnel, missions, dollars spent, and special ops training efforts as well as drone bases and other outposts on the continent have all multiplied.  At the same time, incoming AFRICOM commanders have been publicly warning about the escalating perils and challenges from terror groups that menace the command’s area of operations.  Almost no one, however — neither those senators nor the media — has raised pointed questions, no less demanded frank answers, about why such crises on the continent have so perfectly mirrored American military expansion.

Asked earlier this year about the difficulties he’d face if confirmed, Waldhauser was blunt: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and ISIL in Libya.”

That should have been a déjà vu moment for some of those senators.  Three years earlier, the man previously nominated to lead AFRICOM, General David Rodriguez, was asked the same question.  His reply was suspiciously similar: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of Mali as an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb safe haven, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al-Shabaab in Somalia.”

All that had changed between 2013 and 2016, it seemed, was the addition of one more significant threat.

In the midst of Rodriguez’s 2016 victory lap (as he was concluding 40 years of military service), Waldhauser publicly drew attention to just how ineffective his run as AFRICOM chief had been.  Some might call it unkind — a slap in the face for a decorated old soldier — but perhaps turnabout is fair play.  After all, in 2013, Rodriguez did much the same to his predecessor, General Carter Ham, when he offered his warning about the challenges on the continent.

Three years before that, in 2010, Ham appeared before the same committee and said, “I believe that the extremist threat that’s emerging from East Africa is probably the greatest concern that Africa Command will face in the near future.”  Ham expressed no worry about threats posed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or Boko Haram.  ISIL in Libya didn’t even exist.  And even that “greatest concern,” al-Shabaab, was, Ham noted, “primarily focused on internal matters in Somalia.”

In other words, over these last years, each incoming AFRICOM commander has offered a more dismal and dire assessment of the situation facing the U.S. military than his predecessor.  Ham drew attention to only one major terror threat, Rodriguez to three, and Waldhauser to four.

His Own Worst Critic

That said, Waldhauser isn’t the only AFRICOM chief to point a finger at Rodriguez’s checkered record.  Another American general cast an even darker shadow on the outgoing commander’s three-year run overseeing Washington’s shadow war in Africa:

“AFRICOM’s priorities on the continent for the next several years will be… in East Africa to improve stability there.  Most of that is built around the threat of al-Shabaab.  And then, in the North and West Africa is really built around the challenges from Libya down to northern Mali and that region and that instability there creates many challenges… And then after that is the West Africa, really about the Boko Haram and the problem in Nigeria that is, unfortunately, crossing the boundary into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.  So those are the big challenges and then just the normal ones that continue to be a challenge are the Gulf of Guinea… as well as countering the Lord’s Resistance Army…”

That critic was, in fact, General David Rodriguez himself in an AFRICOM promotional video released on multiple social media platforms last month.  It was posted on the very day that his command also touted its “more than 30 major exercises and more than 1,000 military to military engagements” between 2013 and 2015.  It was hardly a surprise, however, that these two posts and the obvious conclusion to be drawn from them — just how little AFRICOM’S growing set of ambitious continent-wide activities mattered when it came to the spread of terror movements — went unattended and uncommented upon.

Waldhauser and Rodriguez have not, however, been alone in pointing out increased insecurity on the continent.  “Terrorism and violent extremism are major sources of instability in Africa,” Assistant Secretary Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May.  “Terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab, Boko Haram (which now calls itself the Islamic State in West Africa), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al-Murabitoun are conducting asymmetric campaigns that cause significant loss of innocent life and create potentially long-term humanitarian crises.”

National intelligence director James Clapper, who called the continent “a hothouse for the emergence of extremist and rebel groups” in 2014, spoke of the dangers posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army and al-Shabaab, as well as terror threats in Egypt, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and Tunisia, and instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Burundi, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.

And then there’s Brigadier General Donald Bolduc who heads Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA), the most elite U.S. troops on the continent.  He painted a picture that was grimmer still.  Last November, during a closed door presentation at the annual Special Operations Command Africa Commander’s Conference in Garmisch, Germany, the SOCAFRICA chief drew attention not just to the threats of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, ISIL, and the Lord’s Resistance Army, but also another “43 malign groups” operating in Africa, according to another set of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

The growth of terror groups from the one named by Ham in 2010 to the 48 mentioned by Bolduc in 2015 is as remarkable as it has been unremarked upon, a record so bleak that it demands a congressional investigation that will, of course, never take place.

Questions Unasked, Questions Unanswered

U.S. Africa Command boasts that it “neutralizes transnational threats” and “prevents and mitigates conflict,” while training local allies and proxies “in order to promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.”  Rodriguez’s tenure was, however, marked by the very opposite: increasing numbers of lethal terror attacks across the continent including those in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Tunisia.  In fact, data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland shows that attacks have spiked over the last decade, roughly coinciding with AFRICOM’s establishment.  In 2007, just before it became an independent command, there were fewer than 400 such incidents annually in sub-Saharan Africa.  Last year, the number reached nearly 2,000.

While these statistics may be damning, they are no more so than the words of AFRICOM’s own chiefs.  Yet the senators who are supposed to provide oversight haven’t seemed to bat an eye, let alone ask the obvious questions about why terror groups and terror attacks are proliferating as U.S. operations, bases, manpower, and engagement across the continent grow.  (Note that this is, of course, the same Senate committee that Rodriguez misled, whether purposefully or inadvertently, earlier this year when it came to the number of U.S. military missions in Africa without — again — either apparent notice or any repercussions.)

In an era of too-big-to fail generals, an age in which top commanders from winless wars retire to take prominent posts at influential institutions and cash in with cushy jobs on corporate boards, AFRICOM chiefs have faced neither hard questions nor repercussions for the deteriorating situation.  (Similar records — heavy on setbacks, short on victories — have been produced by Washington’s war chiefs in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 15 years and they, too, have never led to official calls for any sort of accountability.)

Rodriguez is now planning on resting at his northern Virginia home for a few months and, as he told Stars and Stripes, seeing “what comes next.”

U.S. Africa Command failed to respond to multiple requests for an interview with Rodriguez, but if he follows in the footsteps of the marquee names among fellow retired four-stars of his generation, like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, he’ll supplement his six-figure pension with one or more lucrative private sector posts.

What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come.  If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead.

During his final days in command, AFRICOM released several more short videos of Rodriguez holding forth on varioius issues.  In one of the last of these, the old soldier praised “the whole team” for accomplishing “a tremendous amount over the last several years.”  What exactly that was went unsaid, though it certainly wasn’t achieving AFRICOM’s mandate to “neutraliz[e] transnational threats.”  But what Rodriguez said next made a lot of sense.  He noted that AFRICOM wasn’t alone in it — whatever it was.  Washington, D.C., he said, had played a key role, too.  In that, he couldn’t have been more on target.  The increasingly bleak outlook in Africa can’t simply be laid at the feet of AFRICOM’s commanders.  Again and again, they’ve been upfront about the deteriorating situation.  Washington has just preferred to look the other way.

Israel adopts powers to suspend members of parliament

Jean Shaoul

Within weeks of Avigdor Lieberman and his nationalistic Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party joining Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition, the government has authored a raft of legislation that is little short of fascistic.

Last week, the Knesset passed legislation that will allow a three-fourths majority, 90 of the 120 members, to suspend serving legislators (MKs). The law is one of a number that allow disqualification of candidates and candidate lists for incitement against the state of Israel or “support” for the armed struggle of an enemy state or terror group against Israel.

The law is so loosely written that any verbal expression of sympathy for Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza could be interpreted to justify expulsion of a member of the Knesset.

It is aimed initially at Hanin Zoabi, who is one of the 13 members of the Joint Arab List, a coalition of the four Palestinian parties in Israel, and who joined the Knesset in 2009. She has been prominent in opposing Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinians.

She became the bête-noire of the ultra-nationalists for joining the Turkish flotilla as it tried to breach the naval blockade of Gaza in 2010, witnessing the Israeli commandos’ raid on the Mavi Marmara that killed 10 activists on board.

There have been repeated attempts to strip her of her parliamentary immunity and disqualify her for election. In July 2014, she was suspended from the Knesset for six months as retribution for saying five days after the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinians, “Is it strange that people living under occupation and living impossible lives, in a situation where Israel kidnaps new prisoners every day, is it strange that they kidnap? They are not terrorists. Even if I do not agree with them, they are people who do not see any way to change their reality, and they are compelled to use means like these.”

Zoabi said she encouraged the Palestinians to “declare a popular uprising” and “impose a siege on Israel instead of negotiating with it.” Earlier this year, she was fined and given a six-month suspended prison sentence for accusing Arab-Israeli police officers of being traitors.

Zoabi also said that Israel’s agreement to pay compensation to the families of the flotilla raid victims as part of a deal to restore full diplomatic relations with Turkey amounted to an admission that Israel’s soldiers were “murderers.”

Earlier, Ayman Odeh, leader of Hadash and chairman of the Joint Arab List, had threatened to resign from the Knesset if any members of his coalition are expelled. He said that Netanyahu “wants politics for Jews only” by alienating and infuriating the Arab public to the extent that it boycotts the next elections and thus no longer constitutes a political force capable of joining other opposition parties to bring down the government.

The bill follows Netanyahu’s remarks during last year’s election about “Arabs streaming to the polls in droves” last Election Day, the outlawing of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement and the uprooting of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran. A few days ago, the authorities seized 325 acres of Bedouin land around the village of al-Araqib in the Negev for the construction of Jewish homes, and detained several residents who were protesting the bulldozing of their land.

Two weeks ago, the Knesset approved the so-called Transparency Law, which requires nongovernmental organizations that receive more than half their financing from foreign governments to disclose their donors’ identities in their publications, advertising and meetings with public officials. The new law targets some two dozen human rights and left-wing groups, including B’Tselem, Peace Now, Breaking the Silence and Yesh Din, critical of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians within the occupied territories and Israel.

Last year, then-defence minister Moshe Ya’alon banned Breaking the Silence from any contact with the military, accusing its members of being “traitors.”

The Transparency Law leaves the far more numerous settler and ultra-nationalist groups untouched, since they largely get their funding from private donations from abroad. According to Ha’aretz, American donors, including the late Irving Moskowitz, a casino mogul, and the Christian evangelical preacher John Hagee, channelled at least $220 million in tax-deductible payments over a four-year period to settler NGOs.

Netanyahu made the claim that the Transparency Law was necessary “to prevent an absurd situation, in which foreign states meddle in Israel’s internal affairs by funding NGOs without the Israeli public being aware of it.”

He himself is subject of a police investigation because all of his recent election campaign contributions have come from overseas sources. US billionaire Sheldon Adelson funds the loss-making free daily newspaper Israel Hayom that operates as the mouthpiece of the Netanyahu government.

The original version of the law would have required groups in receipt of funding from overseas governments to wear special tags when visiting the Knesset, implicitly branding them as traitors.

These efforts come amid Israel’s brutal crackdown on the unrest provoked last summer by right-wing elements, with the support of the security forces, over access to the Al-Aqsa mosque complex. Since October, more than 220 Palestinians have been killed, thousands injured and hundreds arrested in response to the attacks by lone Palestinian youths in the West Bank and Israel, who have killed some 30 Israelis and two Americans with stones, screwdrivers and knives, or their cars.

While the number of attacks has fallen, the Israeli security forces have continued to respond with extreme brutality, killing Palestinians on a weekly basis, including 26 Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza, and implementing collective punishment—illegal under international law. This has included demolishing the family homes of the alleged attackers, expelling Palestinian residents from Jerusalem, revoking the work permits of Palestinians who work in the settlements or in Israel, and imposing curfews and lockdowns.

A third measure is Israel’s new Anti-terrorism Law, which dramatically widens the range of offences to include sympathising with, encouraging and failing to prevent terrorism, gives Israeli police sweeping new powers to arrest suspects and deny them access to lawyers, and mandates long jail sentences.

The legislation is legitimised under the rubric of opposing terrorist activities of both Palestinians and Jewish extremists. However, its real immediate targets are Israel’s own Palestinian citizens, some 20 percent of Israel’s 8 million-plus population, and East Jerusalem residents. They can be penalized for any political activity in solidarity with the Palestinians in the occupied territories, who are subject to a separate system of Israeli military courts. More generally, these measures are aimed at preventing and suppressing any united opposition on the part of Jewish and Palestinian workers and youth to government policies.