Trafficking Desperate Black Africans from Israel to Rwanda to Libya

Ann Garrison & Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko

On November 14 CNN shocked the world with its video news report of Black African migrants being sold into slavery in Libya. Eight days later the Rwandan government issued a press release headlined “Rwanda’s door is open for migrants held captive in Libya.” The day after that, the New York Times reported that Rwanda would welcome their “African brothers and sisters still held in captivity” and quoted African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat praising Rwanda’s offer “to resettle up to 30,000 African migrants languishing in Libya.”

The same story was reported across the Internet and in daily newspapers in the metropolitan US, Europe, and Africa. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is grandstanding as Papa Africa on the world stage, but nothing could be further from the truth or more preposterous than his proposal. Here are four reasons why:

Rwanda is a brutal totalitarian surveillance state

President Kagame and his ruling party run a brutal, totalitarian, US-backed regime with the ninth highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. Many Rwandan prisoners are convicted of speech crime—daring to disagree with the government’s legally enforced description of Rwanda’s 1994 massacres as “genocide against the Tutsi.” Victoire Ingabire, who attempted to run for president against Kagame in 2010, is instead serving 15 years for saying that “before, during, and after the genocide, other Rwandan people were killed. Hutus and Tutsis were killed.”

The African Court of Human and People’s Rights recently ruled that Ingabire’s free speech rights were denied and that she did not receive a fair trial, but Rwanda hasn’t even acknowledged the ruling much less released her.

In “Bad News: Last Journalist in a Dictatorship,” Anjan Sundaram describes extreme poverty among Rwanda’s rural majority and a surveillance state so pervasive that Rwandans fear to trust their own family and neighbors. Does this sound like a government ready to open its arms to its “African brothers and sisters”?

Rwanda is already densely populated and “food insecure”

Rwanda is the second most densely populated nation in Africa and the second poorest in East Africa. Land is scarce. In July 2016, a headline in The East African read “Famine hits over 100,000 Rwandan families in Eastern province.” The report said that rural Rwandans were fleeing famine across the Ugandan border. Howard Buffett, multibillionaire, agribusinessman, and friend of President Kagame, has displaced many of them to grow export crops on land they need to grow food.

President Kagame is a war criminal

President Kagame is a war criminal with the blood of millions of his “African brothers and sisters” in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on his hands.

In October 1990, he led Ugandan troops invading Rwanda. Many of them were the children of the Rwandan Tutsi minority who had fled the country during the 1960s after the Hutu majority came to power. After a four-year war and the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, Kagame’s army overthrew the Rwandan government and established a de facto Tutsi dictatorship, which falsely claims to have ended competition between the Hutu and Tutsi. The last 100 days of the war included the massacres of half a million or more Rwandans that came to be known as the Rwandan Genocide. Most of the world has never heard of the invasion and four-year war, only the last 100 days depicted in the oversimplified, decontextualized story told in the movie “Hotel Rwanda.”

In 1996, and then again in 1998, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the vastly resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, enabled by US weapons, logistics, and intelligence. They massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees, expelled one president, assassinated another, massacred Congolese people, and drove them from their homes to plunder their resources. Today, after the death of more than six million Congolese, parts of the country remain under de facto occupation by Rwanda. Rwandans have become officers in the Congolese army and many Congolese believe that Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is himself a Rwandan Tutsi.

The “2012 UN Group of Experts Report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo” reported that the Rwandan Minister of Defense, who answers to President Kagame, commanded the M23 militia then rampaging through Congo’s North Kivu Province bordering Rwanda. This week Human Rights Watch reported that Kabila had recruited former M23 militia men from Rwanda to suppress Congolese protests of his refusal to hold an election and relinquish power. Sixty-four protesters have been killed and many more injured.

African migrants have already been severely abused in Rwanda

The most immediate argument against sending 30,000 African migrants from Libya to Rwanda is that migrants deported from Israel to Rwanda in 2014 and 2015 have not found a home there and have instead been horrifically abused and trafficked back to Libya.

Israel does not give the migrants documents certifying their status as refugees, asylum seekers, or any other legal status in Israel. They tell them that they will be given documents in Rwanda, but that hasn’t happened, and those who arrive with documents certifying their legal status anywhere else have been deprived of them upon arrival. This means they cannot seek political asylum or legally cross borders no matter what happens to them. Then they’re trafficked through a smuggling network from Rwanda to Uganda, Uganda to South Sudan, South Sudan to Sudan, Sudan to Libya, and Libya to Italy or other European shores if they make it that far and survive the perilous boat ride, but many don’t. Traffickers all along the smuggling route know that they arrive in Rwanda with $3500 that the Israeli government paid them to leave, and each takes a cut for their leg of the smuggling route if they don’t take it all. For the 10,000 deported migrants deported in 2014-2015, that added up to $35 million dollars spread out along the smuggling route one migrant and one border at a time. Benjamin Netanyahu is now determined to deport 10,000 more despite the objections of Haaretz, the UNHCR, and religious groups.

Journalists for the Israeli publication Haaretz have completed two investigative reports about this with the help of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an NGO. Haaretz published the first, “Asylum Seekers Who Left Israel for Rwanda Describe a Hopeless Journey,” in May 2015, and the second, “Theft, Extortion and Death: The Agonizing Stories of Refugees Israel Deported to Africa” in November 2017.

Ha’aretz journalists are also campaigning to stop Israel from deporting another 10,000 Eritrean and Sudanese migrants to Rwanda. Israel once again proposes to pay the Rwandan government $5000 per migrant—for a total of $50 million—and $3500 to each migrant for a total of $35 million. Had Ha’aretz not investigated the fate of those deported earlier, the world might believe they’re all alive and well in Rwanda.

Anyone who still imagines that Rwanda will welcome 30,000 African migrants from Libya with open arms should read the Ha’aretz reports.

Migrants who survived the entire treacherous route and reached safety in Europe saw many die and disappear along the way. They were beaten, robbed, raped, and barely fed by their traffickers, and some were kidnapped into forced labor. They tell their migrant friends still in Israel that they’re better off going to prison—their other option as unwanted migrants in Israel— than going to Rwanda.

Opioid and Heroin Addiction in the US: the Perfect Storm of Greed and Medical Malpractice

Julian Vigo

As a child, one of the many tasks we were given on a daily basis was to run to the local pharmacy to pick up Vicodin at the local pharmacy for my parents. It was New Orleans in 1970s and we were nine, ten and fourteen-year-old children “running errands” for our parents. The local pharmacist saw cute kids with a prescription in hand, written by a doctor who happened to be our father, for Vicodin. What could be wrong with that? Between running to the pharmacy for Vicodin and the supermarket for Dixie beer, our common errands throughout childhood, it was not until many years later, well into adulthood, that we realized that our parents were not only Vicodin addicts, partially the reason behind much of the abuse we suffered as children, but we discovered that our father was an Indian version of Gregory House. And years later, watching the television show, House, depicting of a physician who harmed the self did not task in the least my suspension of disbelief.

Now, many years later, we are living in a collective hyper-real world where the addictions once cast as something of the past, secured behind the rhetoric of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign and specifically racialized images of the “crack addict,” are very much with us in the present. Just like the “abstinence-only sex education” programs did nothing to lower the rates of teen pregnancy, “saying no” to one form of drug only resulted in a saying yes to another, and a market being created just for those individuals who sought a “legitimate high.” In today’s world, the reality is quite daunting when we scratch the surface to see how this form of opioid addiction was manufactured and not at all an oversight of governmental agencies.

On 7 May, 2016, former F.D.A Commissioner (1990-1997), David A. Kessler, elaborated the opioid epidemic in the United States at a time when the crisis was mounting, yet still under-reported. In the New York Times, he writes: “Beginning in the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies selling high-dose opioids seized upon a notion, based on flimsy scientific evidence, that regardless of the length of treatment, patients would not become addicted to opioids. It has proved to be one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine.”

Nayvin Gordon takes Kessler to task for these comments, stating:

We beg to differ. This was no mistake. The reality is that physicians in the leadership of the F.D.A., A.M.A., and The Federation of State Medical Boards, willfully abandoned their scientific integrity and over 150 years of wisdom regarding the dangers of opioids. This was simply a catastrophic violation of their duty to “do no harm.” In their complicity with the Pharmaceutical Companies, many physicians and nurses abandoned their responsibility to their patients by writing prescriptions for addiction. The consequences are now staring us in the face. Well over a hundred thousand people have overdosed and died, and there are now 3 million addicts as the epidemic continues to devastate families across the nation.

How did the F.D.A. so miserably neglect its duty of care while allowing pharmaceutical companies to dictate the policies that have led to the greatest numbers of opioid addicts in recent history? We are living through a major health crisis where the facts are chilling: since 1999 over two hundred thousand Americans have died from overdoses related to oxycodone and other prescription opioids; 37% of Americans know someone addicted to prescription opioids or painkillers; approximately one in four Americans know someone who has overdosed on these drugs; and roughly 1,000 people a week are dying in the U.S. as a result of drug overdoses. And of those who are surviving, many are getting involved in drug-related crimes, losing their families, and some are amassing credit card debt. And it has reached epic proportions where the crisis has hit communities so severely, that in Middleton, Ohio, for instance, politicians like Dan Picard are now advocating a “three-strike” policy where overdose victims, on the third call to 911, are left to die due to the economic toll on community resources.

This tragedy in American history is linked to the rise of oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid which is loosely related to morphine and based on certain elements of the opium poppy. Strong painkillers like oxycodone were traditionally used to ease and end-of-life palliative care pain, but from the mid-1990s, pain killers based on oxycodone and a similar compound, hydrocodone, were being branded and aggressively marketed for chronic pain instead of uniquely for pain resulting from cancer. This is where oxycodone became the “ground zero” for the current addiction crisis. While there addiction crises historically in the U.S. with other drugs such as Valium in the 1960s and early 1970s, primarily among housewives who were being shut down medically from participating in civil society, the rise of oxycodone is unique in the way that this addiction was orchestrated by a wide range of marketing campaigns which set the rich terrain for long-time dependency and lifelong clients for big pharma.

And here is the tie-in as to how these addictions were choreographed through a vast marketing campaign which enlisted the help of medical practitioners. Between 1996 and 2001, the American drug firm, Purdue Pharma, hosted more than 40 national “pain management symposia” at resorts around the United States, inviting thousands of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to take part. It is well-documented how oxycodone (also written as Oxycontin) was marketed, creating a future army of medical practitioners who would advocate for this drug, despite the belief that such enticements to luxurious retreats would not alter the doctor’s prescription habits. The goal of these conferences was clear: to influence legions of doctors to over-prescribe pain medication, as noted in “The promotion and marketing of OxyContin: commercial triumph, public health tragedy”:

One of the cornerstones of Purdue’s marketing plan was the use of sophisticated marketing data to influence physicians’ prescribing. Drug companies compile prescriber profiles on individual physicians—detailing the prescribing patterns of physicians nationwide—in an effort to influence doctors’ prescribing habits. Through these profiles, a drug company can identify the highest and lowest prescribers of particular drugs in a single zip code, county, state, or the entire country. One of the critical foundations of Purdue’s marketing plan for OxyContin was to target the physicians who were the highest prescribers for opioids across the country. The resulting database would help identify physicians with large numbers of chronic-pain patients. Unfortunately, this same database would also identify which physicians were simply the most frequent prescribers of opioids and, in some cases, the least discriminate prescribers.

And if this were not aggressive enough, Purdue encouraged its sales reps to oversell oxycodone to such lengths that even beyond the average salary of $55,000 per sales rep, the annual bonuses ranged from approximately $15,000 to $240,000:

Purdue paid $40 million in sales incentive bonuses to its sales representatives that year. From 1996 to 2000, Purdue increased its internal sales force from 318 sales representatives to 671, and its total physician call list from approximately 33 400 to 44 500 to approximately 70 500 to 94 000 physicians. Through the sales representatives, Purdue used a patient starter coupon program for OxyContin that provided patients with a free limited-time prescription for a 7- to 30-day supply. By 2001, when the program was ended, approximately 34 000 coupons had been redeemed nationally.

Prescriptions written for OxyContin in the US alone increased ten times from 1996 to 2002 with revenue rising from $670,000 a year to more than $6m. While Purdue had entirely elided the risks of addiction in its conferences over the years, in May 2007 the company was fined in more than $600m for misleading and defrauding the public. U.S. Attorney John Brownlee stated, “With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public. For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice.” Still, Purdue was raking billions from high-strength opioids for years and this was a tiny economic hit for the company.

And who had the foresight from the 1990s to see how addictive these drugs were? In 2014, Michelle Lofwall, Associate Professor in the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine, told the Guardian, “At the time, it wasn’t understood how addicting these prescription pain medications were…But they really hurt people here and across the nation.” And in the new millennium, addiction spread widely and quickly across the country as the distribution of pills moved from the hands of primary-care doctors’ offices and hospitals to street corners and “pain treatment centers” in places like Florida, which became known as “pill mills.” In 2015 alone more than 250 clinics were shut down in Florida.

Florida, a place my own father spent his final years in retreat from his own addiction, was the the epicenter of addiction. Even the prescribed “therapy” to overcome substance abuse and opioid addiction was overstated. I remember going with my father once to his therapist’s office. I brought a book, excited to read a piece of fiction for the first time in years. His name was called, I sat back, found my first chapter with the title taking up half the page and I started reading. I didn’t even get to finish that half-page when my father walked back out of his doctor’s office with a prescription for pain killers. Indeed, like many others who found themselves in the clutches of medical intervention when seeking to leave its clutches, there is a familiar pattern with opioid addiction in the U.S. where as Robert Eaton also came to realize,“that the doctor wasn’t so much treating him as taking his money, writing a prescription, and getting him out of the door as fast as possible in order to get the next patient in.” In short, there is no economic incentive to stop this practice of addiction medicine.

These conferences training healthcare professionals to overprescribe oxycodone and the vast misuse overprescribing of this medication are just part of the problem. All of this “misinformation” was engineered since the sales campaigns of OxyContin dictated that this medication should not be prescribed only for severe short-term pain that is often associated with recovery from surgery or cancer, but Purdue put emphasis on its sales campaigns that OxyContin should be prescribed for less acute and longer-lasting pain such as arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia and any sort of minor injury. According to Patrick Radden Keefe’s research, he discovered that “[t]he number of conditions that OxyContin could treat seemed almost unlimited. According to internal documents, Purdue officials discovered that many doctors wrongly assumed that oxycodone was less potent than morphine—a misconception that the company exploited.” This was a perfect storm where just the right amount of under or mis-information led to a medical culture of doctors operating outside the speciality of pain management were made to feel as if their mini-training in oxycodone would actually help, not harm, their patients.

Where pharmaceutical companies were allowed a bird eye’s view into how medical institutions and hierarchies functioned, Purdue set its sights not on the experts of pain management within the medical institutions across the country, but rather they honed in on the generalists who had little to no training in pain management. In this way and according to Purdue’s 2002 budget outline, their aim was to “broaden” the use of OxyContin: “Future growth of OxyContin Tablets will be achieved through targeted efforts to penetrate: primary care, rheumatology, OB/GYN, surgical, oncology and sports/physical medicine/rehabilitation.” The FDA labelled Purdue’s techniques as “aggressive marketing” with the U.S. General Accounting Office report stating that “OxyContin prescriptions, particularly those for noncancer pain, grew rapidly, and by 2003 nearly half of all OxyContin prescribers were primary care physicians.” This mirrors very recent trends of medical practitioners who are not experts in a certain field, but who get quick “qualifications” in a certain area at the behest of pharmaceutical companies looking to extend their field of patients or more indirectly through lobby groups who are in turn heavily funded by big pharma.

While there is a modern opioid epidemic facing countries like the US and the UK, the solution to the problem of opioid addiction has only worsened the situation, creating a new market of addiction—heroin. Where patients are prescribed strong opiates in response to an illness or accident, the opiates are eventually either not enough or the prescription comes to a sudden end due to a doctor’s intervention in shutting down future prescriptions or medical insurance fails to pay due to a limited coverage on opioid prescriptions and the refusal to cover alternative non-opioid treatments. Dependent upon pain relief, these patients are forced to turn to heroin just to survive. As the prescription and use of opioids surged from late 1990s through 2010, the numbers of people seeking addiction treatment and experiencing overdoses went through the ceiling. The problem remains: how to treat such widespread addiction, especially when current “treatments” are merely creating newer addictions?

Places like Huntington, West Virginia are home to some of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the US. with one in four addicted to heroin in that town alone. In August, the city had twenty-seven heroin overdoses in the within four hours. Yet, there are measured approaches to this crisis being undertaken by many in the field of care work are notable and stand out in respect to the severe countermeasures being invoked in Ohio. With the number of opioid overdoses in the U.S. now equal to gun deaths, it is important to understand the causes behind substance addictions as well as the businesses and industries invested in making a profit from human life.

In West Virginia, the rates of unemployment are a huge factor in this region’s opioid crisis. But the analysis must go much further, as we are seeing similar rates of addiction amongst demographics far wealthier than these West Virginians from the coal mining country. Indeed, this is perceived by many specialists as a primarily middle-class epidemic. But what if the roots might be much more deeply rooted in lack of community and capitalism? What if it is not the amount of money one does not have, but rather the measure of human worth through money in a society largely disemboweled by virtual reality as a surrogate for the social, with the masses, rich and poor, largely driven down by debt which fuels some of the dependency we are currently witnessing?

Rather than take a measured approach, government officials instead pursued policies aimed at restricting access to prescription painkillers, criminalizing and arresting doctors and patients in the process. The continued rise in overdose deaths only indicates these approaches haven’t worked to curtail abuse or death from opioid use and misuse.

Instead, individuals who previously used pharmaceutical opioids have increasingly been pushed towards heroin use, with heroin use in the United States the highest its been in 20 years. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “Ninety-four percent of opioid-addicted individuals who switched from prescription opioids to heroin reported doing so because prescription opioids ‘were far more expensive and harder to obtain.’” Of course, for people who have switched from pharmaceuticals to heroin due to lack of access to legal pain medication, or those who abuse either pharmaceuticals or heroin for whatever reason, government policy has only made them less safe.

So over the past 18 months we have been fed headlines about “America’s heroin trail: A new generation of heroin addicts” with accompanying image of seedy bedroom with a man preparing his injection, the subtitle reads: “More Americans now die from drugs than from guns or in car accidents, and increasingly, reports Ian Pannell, the victims are young, white and middle class.” And the reality is that heroin is a cheaper option for those who suffer from opioid dependency. It is not, however, a solution to what has been an elaborately structured culture of addiction.

We need to demand that the F.D.A. hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the proper education, testing, and marketing of their products. The F.D.A. also needs to look beyond these companies as big pharma knows how to throw off investigations. For instance, out of the patient advocacy organizations in the U.S. who participated in this survey, more than two-thirds indicated that they had received industry funding in the last financial year with 12 percent stating that the monies received was more than half of what they received from big pharma. This means that the network of infiltration goes far beyond direct donations, sponsoring of doctors in luxurious resorts, bizarre online training that can be completed within an hour or two, and even the backdoor sponsorship of lobby groups.

While Trump gave the appearance of cracking down on this crisis through the sharing of his personal experiences of his own brother suffering due to this tragedy, there were virtually no measures taken. The interim report that was delivered was in fact stalled from its original June delivery date to 31 July which means that the words of this administration do not correspond to its actions. With drug overdoses in the U.S. being the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50, it is no surprise that politicians and advocacy groups have urged Trump to declare the opioid crisis a “national emergency” for months.

If this had been declared a national emergency, this would have allowed the Secretary of Heath and Human Services to place affected persons on Medicare and to reduce the price of primary prescription medication to ease off the addictive medications in addition to providing countermeasures to protect patient privacy and reporting requirements. Instead, Trump did just the opposite. He hedged on the language of this crisis and called it a “health emergency” which merely calls attention to the crisis while allowing no federal funds to be diverted towards helping those caught within this situation.

It is imperative that we hold big pharma and the U.S. government accountable for the bodies they have amassed while demanding a tighter regulation of opioids and more strict controls placed on pharmaceutical companies. Now!

Trump, Netanyahu and Israel’s Capital

Robert Fantina

When considering United States President Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, we learn many things about him:

+ He is desperate to hold onto his base, which includes so-called Christian fundamentalists, who unquestioningly support Israel;

+ His interest in ‘the ultimate deal’ between Palestine and Israel is non-existent;

+ He has no regard for the opinions of the U.S.’s closest allies;

+ His knowledge of international law is limited, at best;

+ He holds the safety of U.S. personnel abroad in disdain;

+ His understanding of the complexities of the Middle East are far beyond his interest or ability to comprehend, and

+ His belief in human rights is selective.

The list of nations whose leaders expressed their extreme displeasure prior to Trump’s announcement includes both important allies, and countries the U.S considers ‘enemies’. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Russia, the Vatican, Turkey, Germany, France and the European Union all have condemned the move. Even U.S. government experts have cautioned of the potential of increased violence around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a result.

What, one might ask, is the advantage to anyone other than Israel of making this change? Without exception, experts say this decision will only exasperate current tensions, increase the risk of violence, make the goal of a two-state solution even more difficult, recruit anti-U.S. terrorists, alienate allies and reduce the U.S.’s already tattered reputation on the world stage. Only in Israel is this seen as good news.

And what of international law? Israel declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in 1980, which the United Nations Security Council condemned, calling it a violation of international law. That resolution has never been revoked or changed. So Trump, by agreeing with Israel’s 1980 declaration, is putting the U.S. firmly in violation of international law.

Bowing to pressure from the various Israeli lobbies, the U.S. Congress in 1995 voted to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but included in that legislation the ability of the president to sign a waiver every six months, delaying the move. Every president since then – George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – have signed the waiver every time, citing security concerns. Trump has not said anything to indicate that those concerns are no longer valid, yet he is proceeding with this ill-advised move.

Trump, like his Israeli counterpart, Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu, is not in an enviable position. A special prosecutor has indicted some of Trump’s former campaign officials, and his former National Security Advisor pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Netanyahu is under investigation for a variety of potential crimes. Trump’s approval rating is consistently below 40%. For both of these corrupt, egotistical men, this move serves as a temporary distraction, one that will excite and motivate their base. For Netanyahu, this is the rabid, racist Zionist population of Israel. For Trump, it’s the racist fundamental Christians who believe God is a real estate agent, granting certain properties to Jews.

This embassy move has long been sought by Israel’s leaders; Netanyahu may see it as his crowning achievement. Since it had such importance to Israel, why did Trump not demand major concessions in exchange? An immediate cessation of all settlement construction for a period of five years; the end of the blockade of the Gaza Strip; removal of all checkpoints in the West Bank are all demands the U.S. could have made, but didn’t. Trump has repeated, ad nauseam, that he is the ultimate deal-maker. When, one wonders, will he ever realize that Netanyahu has made a complete fool of him?

What happens next is anyone’s guess. It’s unfortunately possible that other nations may decide to please the U.S. by moving their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Their leaders may feel that, with the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it’s to their advantage to do the same. This would be a new tragedy for the Palestinians. Yet other countries’ respect for international law may preclude this action.

But other moves may not be so disadvantageous. It is also possible that some Arab nations that are currently working with Israel on business ventures and anti-Iran intelligence will eliminate these connections, or greatly reduce them. These initiatives are vitally important to Israel, not only for military and financial purposes, but also for public relations reasons. These advantages to Israel could be lost.

Violence against U.S. personnel and facilities may erupt, which would cause Trump to once more condemn Muslims, but would also be a public relations nightmare for the U.S. The source of these potential incidents would be traced directly to the U.S. president; they would have been caused solely because of his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

This decision only underscores not only Trump’s gross, innate incompetence, but also his belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he knows best. His own advisors, and the opinions of allies throughout the world, mean nothing to him.

The United States was never an honest broker between Palestine and its brutal occupier, Israel. Perhaps now other nations will step forward to bring justice to the Palestinians. Doing so doesn’t require negotiations; it simply requires Israel to abide by international law, which means removing all Israelis from lands stolen any time after 1948, dismantling all checkpoints, ending the blockade of the Gaza Strip, granting all Palestinian refugees the right of return, and opening the border between Egypt and Palestine. There are many nations whose leaders could step forward and accomplish what the U.S. has never wanted: justice for the Palestinians. Now is the time for those leaders to act, and assure their place in history.

Jerusalem Explained

Patrick Cockburn

I lived in Jerusalem for four years in a flat with a fine view of the Mount of Olives, which will supposedly split apart on Judgement Day and the dead in the vast cemetery on its slopes will rise again.

I found parts of the city like the Dome of the Rock exquisitely beautiful but overall it was a city filled with hatred.

One day a nurse was knifed to death at the bottom of Elisha Street where I was living. Several times there were bombs on buses or in markets on Jaffa Road, which lay a couple of hundred yards in the other direction.

The violence ebbed and flowed, never as great as many other cities in the Middle East, but never entirely absent.

Three religions

There was always a contrast between Jerusalem as a small shabby city and its status as a great symbolic centre for three religions. It seemed to be dwarfed by its history.

The main friction was between Jews and Muslims, but also within communities as the ultra-orthodox Jews grew in number and secular Jews moved to cities on the coast.

Hopes of a compromise peace were at their height after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, but were always undermined by the disparity in strength between the two sides.

Israel simply had no reason to compromise to a sufficient degree to satisfy the Palestinians, unless it was put under great and sustained pressure by the US – and this was never likely to happen.

Such hopes flickered out after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist religious zealot opposed to the peace terms.

After a brief hiatus, Rabin was followed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is back in the prime minister’s office today.

The embassy

The issue of the US embassy being moved to Jerusalem or even US recognition of Jerusalem has been raised at election time in America for decades.

It served as a diversion or smokescreen concealing the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Though Israeli governments regularly raised the issue as one of their grievances, it never seemed to be a major concern.

Capital of the sovereign state of Israel

I arrived in Jerusalem just as the right-wing mayor Ehud Olmert was opening a festival to celebrate 3,000 years since King David captured it from the Jebusites.

Olmert said that the purpose of the celebration was to highlight Jerusalem as “the eternal, united capital of the sovereign state of Israel and of the Jewish nation”.

Palestinians worried about the impetus this would give to new settlements, and with good reason as 20 years later there are 200,000 Israeli settlers and 370,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

What chance of a resolution?

The mood of rancour and intolerance has worsened over the years. It is difficult to see what good it will do Israel to have President Donald Trump recognise Jerusalem as its capital or move the US embassy there.

Its most likely impact will be to help revive the moribund Palestinian cause in the Muslim world. It will make it more difficult for states such as Saudi Arabia to cultivate closer relations with Israel and President Trump to unite regional Sunni powers against Iran.

It might have been a good idea from the point of view of Israel and the White House to let the issue lie.

Further signs of looming US war with North Korea

Peter Symonds

In another indication of the advanced US preparations for war against North Korea, the Trump administration has suggested that US athletes might not participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February for security reasons.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told Fox News on Wednesday that the US team’s participation was “an open question.” While Haley denied she had heard anything concrete, she intimated that “conversations are happening daily” about the protection of US citizens, “whether it’s about Jerusalem or North Korea.”

Far from clarifying the issue, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that “no official decision has been made” about whether the US will compete in the Winter Olympics. She said a decision would not be made until later and would involve multiple agencies, “but I think ultimately the president would certainly weigh in.”

Minutes later, Sanders sought to downplay the issue, tweeting that “the US looks forward to participating in the Winter Olympics.” Of course, prior to Haley’s remarks, no one had suggested that the US would not compete, and Sanders’ tweet hardly answered the question raised definitely.

Taken by themselves, the comments could appear innocuous. However, amid the extreme tensions on the Korean Peninsula generated by the Trump administration’s reckless and provocative threats against North Korea, the remarks point to a hothouse in the White House as war is being discussed daily.

Trump has repeatedly declared that he will not allow North Korea to build a nuclear missile capable of reaching the continental United States. Pyongyang has now tested long-range ballistic missiles that could potentially have that range.

Despite the many questions that remain about the viability of North Korea’s limited nuclear arsenal, Trump has created the conditions where to back down would damage his political standing and that of the US in the world.

An article in the Guardian on Tuesday by Mark Seddon, a speechwriter for former UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was headlined “Have we got just three months to avert a US attack on North Korea?”

Seddon warned that “the drumbeat for a potentially devastating war on the Korean Peninsula, and one that could quickly spread with calamitous consequences, has grown louder” following North Korea’s most recent test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week.

The article noted that John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, had visited Britain last week, saying: “His mission, whether official or not: to relay that CIA chiefs have told Donald Trump that he has a “three-month window” in which to act to halt the North’s ICBM program.”

Seddon continued: “This apparent March deadline, for what can only be considered a pre-emptive strike, was also mentioned to a former European parliamentarian by a senior US commander a few days ago at Panmunjom on Korea’s demilitarised zone, which separates the North from the South.”

US ambassador Nikki Haley last week responded to North Korea’s ICBM test by warning that “if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.” Such a threat can only mean that the US is preparing a monstrous crime that will involve the leveling of North Korea’s military, industry and infrastructure and the killing of millions of people through conventional or nuclear weapons or both.

The US military have just completed another major joint war games with South Korea and Japan involving around 230 war planes and 12,000 military personnel. The presence of the latest American stealth fighters—the F-22 Raptors—as well as other hi-tech aircraft such as the F-35 underscore the purpose of the drills—a rehearsal for all-out war against North Korea.

The exercise—the largest of its kind—featured flights by B-1B supersonic strategic bombers on Wednesday and Thursday. Two of the B-1Bs that can carry a payload of more than 30 tonnes flew from the US Air Force base in Guam on Thursday to take part in simulated bombing runs in South Korea. Japanese and South Korean fighter jets have taken part in the exercises.

During a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Vienna on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that US military exercises were raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and undermining any move towards negotiations. He indicated that Pyongyang was willing to hold direct talks with Washington as long as the US provided security guarantees.

Lavrov noted that Russia had condemned the latest North Korean missile launch, but blamed the US for creating the tense situation and suggested that the Trump administration wanted to goad Pyongyang into taking rash action. Following North Korea’s nuclear test in September, he said, “[T]he United States acted as if they wanted to provoke them [Pyongyang] for a new risky venture. And so they did.”

To restart talks, Russia and China have both urged a so-called freeze-for-freeze—a halt to US-South Korean war games in return for a North Korean freeze on missile and nuclear testing. Washington has repeatedly rejected the proposal. Far from easing tensions, South Korean Defence Minister Song Young-moo this week said the joint drills would be conducted “two to three times a month.”

The Trump administration has deliberately created a powder keg on the Korean Peninsula in which a relatively minor incident or miscalculation could trigger a conflict that spirals out of control and drags in other powers. China and Russia are both deeply concerned that the US will provoke a devastating war on their doorstep.

Amid the joint US exercises in South Korea, the Chinese navy and air force has been conducting its own military drills. On Monday air force spokesman Shen Jinke announced that Chinese aircraft recently conducted exercises drills over the Yellow and East China seas near the Korean Peninsula using “routes and areas it has never flown before.”

The South China Morning Post reported that more than 40 warships from China’s navy took part in a major exercise in the East China Sea on Thursday. The vessels, from China’s North Sea, East Sea and South Sea fleets, demonstrated the navy’s growing anti-missile and emergency response capabilities in “all-weather conditions.”

Brexit talks with EU to proceed after climbdown by UK prime minister

Chris Marsden

The European Union (EU) will likely allow the UK to move on to the next stage of discussion on the terms of Brexit, focusing on a future trading relationship.

President Jean-Claude Juncker signed a 15-page “progress report” yesterday, allowing EU negotiators to recommend negotiations proceed next week. This followed UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to accept all the central conditions demanded by the EU.

Friday’s early morning meeting between May and Juncker took place after hours of horse-trading with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the main unionist party in Northern Ireland, to arrive at a formulation also acceptable to the Republic of Ireland.

In the process, May fudged the question of relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic in a way that gives the Democratic Unionist Party the ability to determine the viability of any final agreement reached.

May first went to Brussels on Monday, but could not secure an agreement with Juncker because the DUP--on whose 10 MPs the Conservatives rely for a majority--rejected a formulation designed to prevent the establishment of a “hard” customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The DUP regarded May’s proposed negotiating position--that there would be “regulatory alignment” with the EU post-Brexit—as a threat to Northern Ireland’s unity with the rest of the UK.

A subsequent declaration by Brexit Secretary David Davis that this formula would apply to the whole of the EU, did not satisfy DUP leader Arlene Foster, who insisted on six “substantive amendments” to the proposed agreement. The most important are contained in paragraphs 49 and 50, which seek to satisfy all negotiating parties—Dublin, Belfast and Brussels—along with hard-line Brexiteers and former Remainers in the Tory Party.

Paragraph 49 now explains that the UK is committed to leaving the Single European Market and the Customs Union, while "avoiding a hard border." Even if no agreement can be reached, the UK “will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 [Good Friday] Agreement."

Paragraph 50, insisted on by the DUP, states that there will be “no new regulatory barriers” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and that the UK “will continue to ensure the same unfettered access to Northern Ireland's businesses to the whole of the United Kingdom internal market."

This is effectively a pledge for a “soft Brexit”, i.e., the UK leaving the single market and customs union while securing a deal that gives unfettered access to European markets. Paragraph 49 might speak of “specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland,” but regulatory alignment, as Davis made clear, is a policy for the entire UK--even in “the absence of agreed solutions.”

May has essentially agreed that this means accepting EU trade rules--with all that this implies for other aspects of EU legislation.

The hard-Brexit wing of the Tories, including Davis, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, have nevertheless welcomed the deal. This is in tacit recognition that European trade is vital to the UK and is a primary concern of finance and business circles, who would respond ruthlessly to any political brinksmanship at this dangerous stage.

For the same reason they have made no substantive criticism of May’s other concessions to the EU which have crossed every “red line” they once proclaimed as the reason for Brexit.

The “progress report” puts paid to nationalist Brexit pledges that the UK would “free” itself from EU judicial authority and halt EU immigration. The authority of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is upheld--firstly over preserving the rights of EU citizens now living in the UK who are guaranteed the right to stay, along with their partners and children.

However, the ECJ is accepted as “the ultimate arbiter of the interpretation of union law,” so that UK courts must “have due regard to relevant decisions” of the ECJ after departure from the EU for at least another eight years. According to EU council president Donald Tusk, this also includes all ECJ rulings made during the specified two-year transition phase after departure. Even after the eight years, he added, future participation in EU programmes “will require the UK to respect all relevant union legal provision.”

According to British officials involved in the talks, the “divorce settlement” agreed with the EU is estimated to be between €40 and €45 billion. The UK is committed to honouring outstanding EU liabilities over at least a decade, as if it “remained a member state”.

Writing in the Financial Times, Philip Stephens was scathing, describing “a humiliating and yet wholly predictable rendezvous with reality.” He predicted that in phase two “the discussions on a framework for the future relationship will be more brutal still.”

Stephens attributes this to “fundamental asymmetry” between the UK and the EU that “has emptied of all meaning any description of the process as a balanced negotiation.”

This is the scenario feared by the most powerful sections of the British bourgeoisie, which opposed Brexit in the June 2016 referendum. Many in ruling circles hope that Brexit can be stopped, or at least that the EU will agree terms that are not punitive due to mutual economic and political interests. Prior to the renewal of talks, Juncker made it known that he would do all he could to secure an agreement as he feared May would not survive. Germany was made more anxious by its own political crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel seeking a renewed grand coalition with the Social Democrats to form a government.

But the EU is setting an agenda in its own interests and not those of the UK. Tensions between the imperialist powers will inevitably deepen, particularly if the government continues efforts to play off its alliance with the Trump administration in the US against Berlin and Paris.

The speech this month by Germany’s acting foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, urging European nations “to define our own position and, if necessary, draw red lines” in relation to the US, underscores the dilemma facing British imperialism. With Gabriel warning that “as a matter of course” the EU will be seen “as a competitor” by Washington, the UK’s efforts to straddle the Atlantic cannot be met favourably. The EU will insist that Britain decide where its political, economic and ultimately its military loyalties lie.

In such conditions, no one should believe that the pro-Brexit wing of the Tories has surrendered to the inevitable collapse of their perspective.

Foster has expressed the DUP’s continued reservations about the final text, stressing how she had “cautioned the Prime Minister about proceeding with this agreement in its present form given the issues which still need to be resolved and the views expressed to us by many of her own party colleagues ” [emphasis added]. She pledged to work with “like-mind colleagues across the House of Commons” and said, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed…”

The leading figures in the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP), all with close relations to President Donald Trump and his fascistic adviser, Steven Bannon, were scathing. Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has urged the Tories to move against May. His co-thinker and financial backer, Arron Banks, urged, “If anyone in the Conservative party has any integrity or sense of duty left, we call on them now to save Brexit by triggering a leadership contest. Tory backbenchers, get writing to the 1922 Committee and help save your country. She has got to go.”

Australia: Lowest consumer spending since global financial crisis

Nick Beams

The impact of historically low wage rises, coupled with the rising costs of electricity and housing, on working class families is reflected in the Australian national accounts figures for the September quarter published on Wednesday.

Consumer spending on almost all discretionary purchases, after payments for essentials, was down. The result was that overall consumption spending rose by just 0.1 percent, the smallest increase since the global financial crisis of 2008.

There was a 2 percent rise in private investment spending on buildings and capital equipment and a 7 percent increase in government capital investment. These produced an overall expansion in the economy of 0.6 percent for the quarter and an annual growth rate of 2.8 percent—lower than market expectations. Gross domestic product per capita, accounting for population growth, increased by just 0.2 percent.

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver welcomed the rise in non-mining investment, but said consumer spending was “being dragged down by low wages growth, slowing wealth accumulation, poor sentiment, high debt levels and rising energy costs.”

In the recent period, consumer spending has only been maintained by households using their savings but there are indications even this is coming to an end.

BIS Oxford chief economist Sarah Hunter said the weak consumer spending was a sign that many households were struggling with anaemic wage growth and rising prices for essential items.

The annual growth rate of 2.8 percent over the past year was an improvement over the June quarter, when it was just 1.9 percent. However, it is now five years since the economy grew at 3 percent, which used to be the long-term average.

Overall wage payments showed a rise of 1.2 percent in seasonally adjusted terms, the best result since 2013. But once this is analysed more closely a somewhat different picture emerges.

As Guardian economic journalist Greg Jericho noted, while the growth of wage payments was an improvement, the average growth per employee was just 0.9 percent.

“As 0.9 percent remains well below inflation, it means that real compensation per employee has gone backwards in the past 12 months and remains at a point below 2010 levels. This translates into a similarly poor result for household disposable income … In the past year, real household disposable income fell 1.9 percent, and it also means that the level of income households have at their disposal is lower that it was five years ago.”

While the national accounts figures deal with averages over the economy as a whole, a breakdown of economic data by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics and Planning shows that it is highly concentrated and that many areas are stagnant or even going backwards.

According to his analysis, Sydney accounts for 41.2 percent of Australian economic growth, with the other major growth centre being Melbourne. Together the two cities accounted for more than two thirds of Australian economic growth in 2016–17.

Analysis conducted by SGS in February this year revealed a higher level of concentration than even these figures indicate. Three Sydney districts accounted for almost one quarter of economic growth in the financial year 2015–16 and there is no indication that the situation has changed since then.

According to the SGS data, Sydney’s CBD area, the inner northern suburbs and the north-western Ryde district accounted for 24 percent of gross domestic product growth in that year. The lowest economic growth rates in Sydney, no greater than 2.5 percent, were in the predominantly working class statistical districts of Parramatta, Outer West and South West.

The economies of five statistical districts in NSW, covering regional areas, actually contracted in the year 2015–16, a trend also reflected elsewhere. The SGS noted that the disparity in growth rates across the country was now greater than at any time during the mining boom.

Other data show that growth is increasingly concentrated in a narrow range of economic activities in Sydney. Financial services is now the most important economic sector, accounting for 15 percent of the economy, up from 11 percent 20 years ago. The next most important is professional services at almost 10 percent, up from 6 percent in 1997.

The impact of the so-called “transition” in the Australian economy, arising from the destruction of large sections of manufacturing industry, is starkly revealed by data for Melbourne.

Had manufacturing not rapidly fallen with the closure of the Ford and General Motors Holden plants, Melbourne’s GDP would have been 0.6 percentage points higher. Manufacturing now accounts for only 6 percent of the city’s economy, compared to 16 percent 20 years ago.

Financial services are now Melbourne’s most important industry, accounting for 12 percent of output with professional services accounting for 9 percent.

When the city’s population growth is taken into account, GDP per capita fell by 0.1 percent in 2016–17 and has declined in six out of the past 10 years. Brisbane, Perth and regional Western Australia are also showing falling levels of GDP per capita.