Month: September 2018

‘Kite Runner’ Author Pens Tribute to Refugees Who Die Fleeing War

Posted on by SeeEU

Kite Runner” author Khaled Hosseini urged world leaders to “act with compassion” towards refugees as he launched his new book inspired by a Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Greece.

Hosseini said on Wednesday there was a “deeply concerning” shift in attitudes in Europe — where several countries have closed their borders — and called for greater efforts to resettle those fleeing violence and reunite divided families.

“I wrote “Sea Prayer” to pay tribute to those who have perished or gone missing at sea coming to Europe,” said Hosseini at a book launch in London.

The Afghan-American novelist, himself a former refugee, said that while the numbers arriving on European shores had fallen since the height of the refugee and migrant crisis in 2015, the Mediterranean had become more treacherous.

One in 18 people have died attempting the central crossing this year, up from one in 42 last year.

“Sea Prayer” is inspired by Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015, sparking a global outcry.

“When I saw those devastating images … my heart shattered,” Hosseini, a father of two, wrote in a U.N. report this week on migrant deaths.

“Yet, just three years on and despite thousands more people losing their lives at sea, our collective memory and urgency to do better seems to have faded.”

“Sea Prayer” is an imagined letter from a Syrian father to his son, on the eve of crossing the sea to Europe, who does not know if they will still be alive the next day.

“The experience of being a refugee often is escaping one nightmare and falling into another,” Hosseini said.

Agonizing decision

The writer, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), said he hoped to show the despair that pushes families to leave everything and hand their life savings to smugglers who have little regard for human life.

“It’s agonizing to leave your home,” he told a public event on Tuesday night. “Those boats are vessels of desperation.”

“I think much of what we’re seeing [in Europe] is based at least in part on a poor understanding of who refugees are … and why exactly they are coming.”

He said there was a common misconception that refugees were opportunists seeking better jobs, but all the refugees he had met wanted to go home.

Hosseini was particularly struck by one Afghan refugee he met on a recent trip to Lebanon who told him: “Even heaven is not home.”

The vast majority of refugees did not head west but chose to stay in countries neighbouring their own, Hosseini said, adding that one in six people in Lebanon was a Syrian refugee.

He said governments must keep their borders open and do more to tackle the root causes of displacement, which would increasingly include climate change as well as conflict.

Hosseini, whose novels have sold over 55 million copies, said stories like “Sea Prayer” could help humanize the issue.

“We’re a species hardwired to respond to storytelling. For us to understand something we have to care first, and for us to care first we have to feel something,” he said.

“If you just watch the news and just look at stats … they have a way of blunting our emotional response.”

Hosseini said he was “really proud” that “The Kite Runner” — the book that made his name — had brought a more human face to Afghanistan.

The novel, which tells the story of the friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy and the son of the family servant, was made into a film in 2007.

Proceeds from the sale of “Sea Prayer,” his fourth book, will go to the UNHCR and Hosseini’s own foundation.
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Ethiopia PM Makes First Visit to Eritrea Since Peace Deal

Posted on by SeeAF

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed traveled to Eritrea on Wednesday, his first visit since the Horn of Africa neighbors ended a 20-year state of war in July.

Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane Meskel, said on Twitter that Abiy flew into the port city of Assab and was greeted by President Isaias Afwerki. They later went to the capital, Asmara.

VOA’s Horn of Africa service reports Abiy also visited Massawa, where the first Ethiopian vessel to dock at an Eritrean port in many years was loading Eritrean mining products.

The Ethiopian prime minister is making a two-day stop in Eritrea while traveling home from the China-Africa summit in Beijing.

Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed also visited Asmara to take part in a three-way summit with Abiy and Afwerki.

Ethiopia and Eritrea have seen rapidly warming ties since Ethiopia agreed to drop territorial claims that sparked a war in the late 1990s. 

Ethiopia is to officially reopen its embassy in Asmara on Thursday.

Tewelde Tesfagabir, Winta Kidane and Berhane Berhe contributed to this report.
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Collapsing Emerging-Market Currencies Spark Concerns

Posted on by SeeEU

First it was Argentina, quickly followed by Turkey. Now anxious investors and policy-makers are watching with alarm the plummeting currencies of several emerging-market economies, most of which have borrowed heavily in dollars.

The nosediving currencies are prompting fears of a repeat of the 1997 Asian financial crash or the “Tequila Effect” of Mexico’s 1994 financial crisis. Or is something even worse coming — a financial contagion to compare with 2008?

Argentina’s peso dropped 29 percent against the U.S. dollar in August, the worst performer among major emerging-market currencies. Turkey’s currency followed closely, with a 25 percent slide.South Africa’s rand saw an almost 10 percent drop. The Indonesian rupiah fell to its weakest level since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, while India’s currency slid into unprecedented territory against the dollar.

September has seen no major uplift in those currencies. The Turkish lira is down 40 percent to the U.S. dollar this year, sparking mounting alarm over the sustainability of the country’s sizable dollar-denominated debts held primarily by its banks and businesses rather than the government.

The foreign exchange markets are jittery with traders watching to see if more countries start joining the troubled list, which would indicate contagion is underway. African countries like Angola, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Mozambique could be vulnerable. And in a worst-case scenario even more developed economies like Chile, Poland and Hungary, which are also shouldering large foreign-currency debts above 50 percent of their GDPs, could be impacted, say some financial analysts.

Corporate debt in emerging and developing economies is significantly larger than it was before the 2008 global financial crisis.The bigger the debt, the harder the fall.

“The risk is increasing in those countries,” Bertrand Delgado, director of global markets for Societe Generale in New York, has warned.

There is general consensus why emerging markets are in turmoil. Three main developments are blamed:

1 – The impact on market sentiment from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat trade war with China and others

2 – Rising U.S. interest rate that has prompted global investors to exit emerging markets to chase yield in dollar investments

3 – The winding down of post-2008 quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, which has reduced liquidity and the availability of cheap money for governments and businesses in emerging markets to borrow.

A global financial crash?

Marcus Ashworth of Bloomberg cautioned last week the emerging-markets sell-off looks contagious.

“The difficulties for emerging markets have entered a new phase.What were once clearly country-specific crises, well contained within their borders, are bleeding across the world,” he warned.

Ashworth, a columnist and a veteran of the banking industry, most recently as chief markets strategist at Haitong Securities in London, added, “One emerging country’s problems have become other emerging countries’ problems, and it’s hard to see how to break the cycle.”

Other analysts dispute that contagion is underway, saying each of the troubled states have their own idiosyncratic problems and country-specific challenges, although they acknowledge the turmoil could mount with the U.S. Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates several times this year.

In a note to investors, DBS, a Singapore-based international financial services group, warned the currencies of Argentina and Turkey “have been struggling with rising U.S. rates since the start of the year, due to deficits in their fiscal and current account balances.

“Heightened trade tensions threatening to erupt into a full-blown trade war could prompt, DBS said, disorderly capital outflows leading to “financial instability, especially in countries that have high external debt levels.”

Britain’s The Economist magazine argues the weakness in emerging-market currencies “is not fundamentally contagious” and the fallout can be contained.Western lenders including banks will be impacted, it said, as emerging-market borrowers struggle to repay dollar and other foreign-currency debts now worth more in terms of their own currencies. “But it would not threaten their [Western lenders’] solvency,” it said.

Optimists say for all the wider currency woes and the economic weakness of Argentina and Turkey, many major emerging-market countries are doing well.

India’s GDP was growing at an 8 percent rate ending June. Mexico’s peso is steady and it appears to have concluded trade negotiations with the Trump White House, which markets are viewing favorably.

The optimists say the global scare is being fanned by screaming, doom-laden headlines, pointing out that in 2013, when the U.S. Federal Reserve started to cease Quantitative Easing, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa all suffered from currency depreciation, but they soon regained their footing.

The biggest emerging-market risk, though, is that rattled global investors could be so alarmed by currency turmoils that they ignore economic fundamentals and stampede away from emerging-market countries, compounding currency falls, triggering indirect contagion, and adding to debt burdens.
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US Warns Syria Against Using Chemical Weapons in Idlib

Posted on by SeeEA

The White House has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against using chemical weapons in an upcoming offensive against the last rebel-held enclave in Syria. The Assad government and its allies are expected to launch a massive bombardment of the northwestern Idlib province. The United Nations special envoy for Syria is making a last-ditch effort to prevent massive bloodshed and is urging all sides in the Syrian war to find a peaceful solution. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Verbal Senate Brawl Erupts at Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing

Posted on by SeeUS

Chaos, protests and partisan discord marked the first day of Senate confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, minority Democrats repeatedly sought to postpone the proceedings, but majority Republicans were determined to plow ahead.
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No Let Up in Cyberattacks, Influence Campaigns Targeting US

Posted on by SeeUS

Top U.S. intelligence and defense officials caution the threat to the U.S. in cyberspace is not diminishing ahead of November’s midterm elections despite indications that Russia’s efforts to disrupt or influence the vote may not match what it did in 2016.

The warnings of an ever more insidious and persistent danger come as lawmakers and security officials have increasingly focused on hardening defenses for the country’s voter rolls and voting systems.

It also comes as top executives from social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Google prepare to testify on Capitol Hill about their effort to curtail the types of disinformation campaigns used by Moscow and which are increasingly being copied by other U.S. adversaries.

“The cyberthreat to the U.S. is not limited to U.S. elections, a point that is too often missed,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a conference outside of Washington Tuesday. “The weaponization of cybertools and the relative lack of global guardrails in a cyber domain significantly increases the risk that a discrete act will have enormous strategic implications.

“Foreign influence efforts online are increasingly being used around the globe,” he added.

Others ramp up attacks

Government officials as well as those from private cybersecurity have said repeatedly over the past few months that they have not yet seen a repeat of what Coats himself described as the “robust” campaign Moscow launched in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Still, there are concerns that even if the Kremlin has eased its efforts, other countries and a variety of nonstate actors have ramped up their own campaigns, often learning from Russia’s 2016 exploits.

“I remain deeply concerned about threats from several countries to upcoming U.S. elections — the midterms this year, the presidential elections in 2020 and beyond,” Coats said.

While the director of national intelligence did not name any countries in particular, other officials have previously pointed to China, Iran and North Korea as the main culprits.

Two weeks ago, social media giants Facebook and Twitter announced they had removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to a disinformation campaign that originated in Iran and targeted the U.S. as well as other countries.

​Once major attacks now normal

U.S. cybersecurity officials warn that hacking, phishing attacks and disinformation campaigns have become increasingly popular tools for so-called bad actors’ and that they often escape the attention of the general public.

One reason is that what might have been described as a major cyberattack 10 years ago is often seen now as part of the normal threat landscape.

“We’ve crossed that threshold many, many times,” said John Rood, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy. “We are in that environment where on a near daily basis we are being challenged with those activities.”

What worries him, he said, is not the cyberattacks on their own but the prospects of someone combining cyber with a more traditional type of attack on the U.S. homeland.

“Some of our allies or friends have experienced a combination of cyberactivities, manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum and physical — air, land, sea — domain [attacks], whether that be Ukraine or Georgia.”

​Small attacks just as worrisome

Yet other U.S. officials believe it is not the prospect of large-scale cyberattacks that should be the sole reason for concern.

“While I don’t see a dramatic cyberattack coming at us, every day there are small ones,” according to National Security Agency Deputy Director George Barnes.

“The problem is we focus on the big and the slow drip happens out the back,” he said. “And the slow drip is the continued theft of intellectual properties from our industries.”

Part of the problem, according to Barnes and other officials, is the extent to which government and industry in the U.S. in connected to and dependent on cyberspace, creating what they describe as a large and vulnerable “attack surface.”

And despite government efforts to reach out to private companies to share information about the threats, and even about ongoing or imminent attacks, U.S. officials fear the current level of cooperation is still not enough.

As a result, the U.S. is “continually pummeled by nation state and non-nation state sponsored malicious cyber activity,” Barnes said.

In response to the growing pace of attacks, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have become ever more vocal in identifying the perpetrators and calling attention to their exploits.

Increasingly, they are also talking out loud about hitting back.

“We are not standing idly by,” Coats said.

“Every kind of cyberoperation, malicious or not, leaves a trail,” he said. “Persistence on our part has enabled us to identify and publicly attribute responsibility for numerous cyber attacks and foreign influence efforts and then prepare for the response.”
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Pressley Wins Fight for ‘Soul’ of Party in Massachusetts House Race 

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Ayanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and progressive politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era.

The 44-year-old’s upset victory against longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano in Tuesday’s primary sets the stage for Pressley to represent an area once served by Tip O’Neill and John F. Kennedy. Her win comes at the tail end of a primary season in which black politicians have made a series of advances.

In nearby Connecticut, Jahana Hayes is on track to become that state’s first black woman to win a congressional seat if she prevails in November. And black politicians in three states, Florida, Georgia and Maryland, have won the Democratic nomination for governor, a historic turn for a country that has elected just two black governors in U.S. history.

Unabashedly progressive

Greeting voters at a Boston polling station, Pressley spoke of “the ground shifting beneath our feet and the wind at our backs.”

“This is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our democracy,” she told reporters. “This is a disruptive candidacy, a grassroots coalition. It is broad and diverse and deep. People of every walk of life.”

For Pressley, as with many other ascendant candidates of color, unabashedly progressive credentials smoothed her path to victory in the primary. No Republicans were running, so only a write-in campaign in November could possibly stand between her and Washington.

She was endorsed by fellow congressional upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who knocked off veteran Rep. Joe Crowley of New York in June. Pressley backs Medicare-for-all, the single-payer health care proposal, which helped her garner backing from Our Revolution, the offshoot of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

Pressley called for defunding the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, which helped her draw support from Massachusetts’ popular attorney general, Maura Healey, who’s gained a national following for repeatedly suing President Donald Trump in an attempt to block his policies on immigration, gun control and other issues.

‘Be disruptive in our democracy’

“We have to be disruptive in our democracy and our policymaking and how we run and win elections,” she said in an interview this summer with The Associated Press, adding that Ocasio-Cortez’s victory challenged “narratives about who has a right to run and when, and who can win” in American politics.

“My mother did not raise me to ask for permission to lead,” she added.

Pressley tapped into growing cries within the Democratic Party for newer, more diverse leadership. She and Ocasio-Cortez both defeated older, white congressmen who were reliable liberal votes, but who didn’t look like many voters in their districts.

“With so much at stake in the era of Trump, tonight’s results make clear what Ayanna Pressley knew when she boldly launched her campaign against a 10-term incumbent: Change in the country and Congress can’t wait,” said Jim Dean, chair of the liberal group Democracy for America.

The district she’s competing in includes a wide swath of Boston and about half of Cambridge as well as portions of neighboring Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville and Milton. It includes both Cambridge’s Kendall Square, development there is booming, and the neighborhood of Roxbury, the center of Boston’s traditionally black community.

Pressley has bristled at the notion that race was a defining issue in her campaign.

“I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color,” she said in one debate. “I happen to be black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both, but that is not the totality of my identity.”

Massachusetts’ last Democratic primary upset came in 2014, when Seth Moulton defeated Rep. John Tierney in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
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US Supreme Court Nominee Kavanaugh: ‘I am a Pro-Law Judge’

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U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh faces a day of questioning Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he has already told members his philosophy is that judges should interpret the law and not make the law.

Those words were part of the opening statement he gave Tuesday at the start of the confirmation process that President Donald Trump hopes will result in Kavanaugh becoming the ninth member of the Supreme Court.

Senators are expected to raise issues such as abortion, affirmative action, executive power and the conflict between religious beliefs and gay rights as they try to determine whether they believe Kavanaugh should join the court.

Protesters and calls to postpone

The proceedings got off to a raucous start Tuesday with Democrats trying to postpone the hearing and loud disruptions by protesters in the crowd, drawing insults from some of the senators.

Kavanaugh sat for nearly seven hours, listening to Republicans and Democrats speak for and against his joining the court before he finally got his chance to address the panel.

 

WATCH: Verbal Senate Brawl Erupts at Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing

“The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution,” Kavanaugh said. “A good judge must be an umpire — a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy.”

He said during his 12 years as a federal appeals judge, he decided more than 300 cases.

“I have ruled sometimes for the prosecution and sometimes for criminal defendants, sometimes for workers and sometimes for businesses, sometimes for environmentalists and sometimes for coal miners.”

In each case, Kavanaugh said, he followed the law and did not let any personal or policy preferences get in his way.

“I am a pro-law judge,” he declared.

Hearings to last days

The nomination hearing is expected to last several more days, during which Democrats will likely try to portray Kavanaugh as someone too tied to Trump and who will push a conservative agenda on the high court. Republicans are expected to try to paint the nominee as an independent thinker and a principled jurist. Wednesday, the hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 UTC).

Kavanaugh’s Republican supporters say he is one of the most qualified jurists ever to be considered for the nation’s highest court.

They pointed to endorsements from fellow judges and Kavanaugh’s legal associates, liberals and conservatives, including a number of women.

 

​Presidential power

Democrats say they have a lot of misgivings about Kavanaugh’s pledge to be nonpartisan, saying he has a history of conservative political activism. They said they fear he may rule against a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion. And, at a time when President Trump is facing his own legal troubles, Democrats are concerned about Kavanaugh’s views on executive authority. Kavanaugh has argued that presidents should be free from civil lawsuits, criminal prosecution and investigations while in office.

The matter could be significant to Trump if the high court is called upon to render judgment on matters arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia-related investigation into the Trump administration and several civil lawsuits pending against Trump.

If he is approved by the panel, his nomination goes to the entire Senate, where Republicans will hold a very slim 51-49 majority when Republican Jon Kyl fills the seat of the late Arizona Senator John McCain.

So far, no Republicans have said they plan to vote against Kavanaugh.

WATCH: What’s Involved in Confirmation Process?
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US, Rights Groups Denounce Iran’s Arrest of Detained Lawyer’s Husband

Posted on by SeeEA

The U.S. State Department and human rights groups have expressed shock and outrage at Iran’s arrest of the husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a detained rights lawyer whose release he campaigned for.

Rights groups said security agents detained Reza Khandan at his home early Tuesday and took him to Tehran’s Evin prison. The groups quoted Khandan’s lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, as saying Iranian authorities charged Khandan with national security offenses and promoting nonobservance of the compulsory wearing of veils or hijabs by women in public.

A Tuesday tweet by the State Department’s Farsi Twitter feed said the Trump administration is “deeply shocked and alarmed” by Khandan’s arrest. It said Washington also is monitoring reports of the arrest in recent days of three Iranian lawyers, Farrokh Forouzan, Payam Dorafshan and Hoda Amid. The tweet ended with a question: “We have to ask the Iranian government, what are you really afraid of?”

In a Monday Facebook post, Khandan said an intelligence agent called him that day and asked him to report for questioning Tuesday. He said he objected to being summoned without a written warrant from the judiciary but was told in response to his objection that he would be arrested.

Campaigned for wife’s release

Khandan had publicly campaigned for the release of his wife, Nasrin Sotoudeh, since her June imprisonment to serve a five-year sentence for a national security-related conviction handed down in absentia. In the months before her arrest, Sotoudeh had defended Iranian women arrested for removing their compulsory hijabs or headscarves during public protests against the Iranian government. She began a hunger strike Aug. 26 to protest her detention and government harassment of her family and friends.

Before his arrest, Khandan also criticized the Iranian government’s treatment of human rights defenders such as his wife and its prosecution of women who campaigned against forced veiling.

In an interview for the Tuesday edition of VOA Persian’s NewsHour program, Reporters Without Borders activist Reza Moini said it appeared that Khandan was arrested for publicizing information about his wife, who has defended journalists and citizen-journalists in recent years.

“We assume that, in regards to political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, the Iranian government always fears the spread of information about them, and this fear has led the government to take actions to instill dread and fear in the families of these prisoners and force them into silence,” said Moini, who is based in France.

Iranian state media had no immediate comment on Khandan’s detention.

Rights groups call out ‘callous act’

Rights advocate Philip Luther of Britain-based group Amnesty International issued a statement denouncing the arrest of Sotoudeh’s husband as a “callous” act.

“The Iranian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release both Nasrin Sotoudeh and Reza Khandan,” Luther said. “They must drop all charges against them and stop their harassment of this family once and for all.”

The U.S.-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said multiple elements of the Iranian establishment were to blame for the situation.

“The intelligence ministry, which reports directly to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and was responsible for Khandan’s arrest, has become one of Iran’s major human rights violators while Rouhani stands by silent,” CHRI executive director Hadi Ghaemi said in a separate online statement.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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Facebook, Twitter to Face US Lawmakers Over Politics, Internet 

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Top Twitter and Facebook executives will defend their companies before U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, with Facebook insisting it takes election interference seriously and Twitter denying its operations are influenced by politics.

But no executive from Alphabet’s Google is expected to testify, after the company declined the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to send one of its most senior executives, frustrating lawmakers.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, appearing alongside Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, will say that her company’s efforts to combat foreign influence have improved since the 2016 U.S. election, according to written testimony released Tuesday.

“The actions we’ve taken in response … show our determination to do everything we can to stop this kind of interference from happening,” Sandberg said.

The company is getting better at finding and removing “inauthentic” content and now has more than 20,000 people working on safety and security, she said.

Technology executives have repeatedly testified in Congress over the past year, on the defensive over political influence activity on their sites as well as concerns about user privacy.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has been looking into efforts to influence U.S. public opinion for more than a year, after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Kremlin-backed entities sought to boost Republican Donald Trump’s chances of winning the White House in 2016.

Moscow has denied involvement.

Google offered to send its chief legal officer, Kent Walker, to Wednesday’s hearing, but he was rejected by the committee, which said it wanted to hear from corporate decision-makers.

​’Don’t understand the problem’

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, said he expected the hearing would focus on solutions to the problem of foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections and sow political discord, with a jab at Google.

“You don’t understand the problem if you don’t see this as a large effort from whole of government and the private sector,” Burr told reporters at the Senate.

Google said Walker would be in Washington on Wednesday and be available to meet with lawmakers. On Tuesday it released written “testimony” describing the company’s efforts to combat influence operations.

Twitter’s Dorsey also will testify at a House of Representatives hearing on Wednesday that the company “does not use political ideology to make any decisions,” according to written testimony also made public Tuesday.

Dorsey will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, addressing Republican concerns about how the social media platform polices content.

“From a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said.

Conservative Republicans in Congress have criticized social media companies for what they say are politically motivated practices in removing some content, a charge the companies have repeatedly rejected.

Trump faulted Twitter on July 26, without citing any evidence, for limiting the visibility of prominent Republicans through a practice known as shadow banning.

Democratic Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island blasted Wednesday’s hearing and his Republican colleagues, calling claims of political bias baseless.

“There is no evidence that the algorithms of social networks or search results are biased against conservatives. It is a made-up narrative pushed by the conservative propaganda machine to convince voters of a conspiracy that does not exist,” Cicilline said.
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Poll: British Opinion Still Deeply Divided by Brexit

Posted on by SeeEU

British public opinion on leaving the European Union is still deeply split, according to a survey on Wednesday, indicating only a slight increase in support for remaining a member despite growing pessimism about the outcome of negotiations.

Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019 but has yet to secure an exit agreement to define future relations with Brussels and manage the economic impact of ending over four decades of integration with the world’s largest trading bloc.

Polling showed 59 percent of voters would now vote to remain in the bloc, versus 41 percent who would vote to leave. The findings were published in an academic-led report on Wednesday by research bodies NatCen and The UK in a Changing Europe.

That is the highest recorded support for ‘remain’ in a series of five such surveys since the 2016 referendum and a large reversal of the actual 52-48 percent vote to leave.

But the author of the report, polling expert John Curtice, added a note of caution, saying that their panel of interviewees reported they had voted 53 percent in favor of remain in the original vote – a higher proportion than the actual vote.

“Nevertheless, this still means that there has apparently been a six-point swing from Leave to Remain, larger than that registered by any of our previous rounds of interviewing, and a figure that would seemingly point to a 54 percent (Remain) vote in any second referendum held now,” Curtice said in the report.

The government has ruled out holding a second referendum.

The survey interviewed 2,048 subjects between June 7 and July 8. That means the survey does not fully reflect any change in opinion brought about by the publication of Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiating strategy, published in early July.

That negotiating strategy has split May’s party at every level and drawn heavy criticism from both Brexit supporters and those who want to retain close ties to the EU.

Nevertheless, the poll shows voters thought the negotiations were going badly even before the publication of May’s so-called Chequers plan.

“Both Remain and Leave supporters have become markedly more critical of how both the U.K. government – especially – and the EU – somewhat less so – have been handling the negotiations,” Curtice said. “They have also become markedly more pessimistic about how good a deal Britain will get.”

Curtice said the results of the polling showed that the most influential factor over whether voters will support the conclusion of the negotiations is their perception of its economic effect rather than the details of any deal.
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Haley: Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan ‘Getting Close’

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U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she has read the Trump administration’s much-anticipated Middle East peace plan. And while it is “getting close,” it will not be rolled out later this month during the U.N. General Assembly, as some had predicted.

“I can tell you that Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt have done unbelievably detailed work in it,” Haley said of the two presidential advisers tasked with coming up with a plan to resolve one of the world’s most intractable crises. “I have read the plan. It is thoroughly done. It is well-thought-out from both sides — the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

Haley, who is also a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, said she couldn’t “say enough good things” about the proposal and warned that “there are a lot of false statements” circulating about it. She added that the proposal would only work if both sides would hear it, and urged the international community to put particular pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to come to the table.

“For the good of the Palestinian people, the region, the international community, we have to put pressure on Abbas and say it’s time. It’s time for a better life for the Palestinians,” Haley said. “And only he can deliver that.”

The Trump administration has seen its relations go from bad to worse with the Palestinian Authority, peaking in December over the White House’s decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have also been infuriated with the administration’s decision to cut off funding to the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees and efforts to redefine who is a Palestinian refugee.

Haley told reporters at a news conference marking the United States’ monthlong presidency of the U.N. Security Council that Trump would chair a meeting of the council on Sept. 26 on Iran. It will take place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly leaders’ week.

“It’s hard to find a place that has conflict where Iran isn’t in the middle of it, and we think that’s a problem,” Haley told reporters. “They’ve been ignored and given a pass for too long.”

Haley said it is time that Iran explains its actions in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

“That’s the biggest reason for this meeting — is that the world is watching,” she said. Haley added that the administration would like to see Iran come into the mainstream and “be a valid country that wants to do good in the world.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will be in New York for leaders’ week. Under the rules of the Security Council, he could attend the session. Haley said she would not have a problem with that.

Earlier, Russian deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said in a council meeting that he hoped the discussion of Iran would take place within the framework of the Iran nuclear deal, which the council endorsed after it was signed in 2015. The Trump administration received international criticism when it withdrew from the agreement in May.

“We very much hope that there will be views voiced and aspects voiced in connection with the U.S.’s withdrawal from the JCPOA,” Polyanskiy said, referring to the deal by its acronym.
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France’s Macron Encounters Obstacle Course at Home

Posted on by SeeEU

French President Emmanuel Macron planned to focus this month on promoting his policies to reshape the economy. Instead, he’s encountered obstacles.

The resignations of two popular Cabinet ministers, snags in a pending income tax system, and anger over cuts in family and housing benefits greeted Macron as France returned from summer holidays.

Last week, the 40-year-old leader branded the French as “Gauls resistant to change.” He made the remark while reaffirming his intent to push for loosening France’s rigid labor rules despite such resistance.

Missing ministers

Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot’s resignation last week was an unexpected blow. Hulot, the well-known host of a television nature show, personified Macron’s agenda for greener policies.

Hulot’s decision to quit raised questions about the president’s commitment to “Make our planet great again” — a verbal jab at U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

An experienced politician and environmentalist, Francois de Rugy, was named as the new environment minister Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Sport Minister Laura Flessel, who holds two Olympic gold medals in fencing, tendered her resignation Tuesday for “personal reasons.” She was replaced by swimmer Roxana Maracineanu, world champion in backstroke at the 1998 World Aquatics Championships.

Taxing times

A major change in French life is set to take place in January with the introduction of a new schedule and system for paying income taxes.

Macron suggested last week that potential technical bugs could be an issue. His comments made the government look unprepared to the public.

Yet Prime Minister Edouard Philippe confirmed on Tuesday night that the measure, launched under Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande, will be implemented as planned.

The measure would require workers to have taxes automatically and immediately deducted from their salaries each month. French workers currently pay taxes on what they earned the year before with one or several payments.

The switch has raised concerns about taxpayer privacy since employers and not tax authorities would be responsible for overseeing the automated deductions.

The government also fears a negative psychological impact on French workers who would see lower monthly earnings on their pay slips even though their annual tax liability would be the same.

Growing pains

The French government recently lowered its economic growth forecast for next year to 1.7 percent — down from the previous estimate of 1.9 percent — and unveiled plans to cut public spending.

Pensions and family and housing benefits would no longer be pegged to inflation. That means they would increase at a more moderate pace and the purchasing power of retirees and families would decrease.

Philippe, the prime minister, said the government would not cut benefits for France’s poorest residents.

Macron has pledged to pursue labor changes in the coming months, with a focus on small businesses, to boost growth.

Sliding popularity

Two recent opinion polls by French institutes Ifop and BVA showed Macron’s popularity rating at 31 and 34 percent respectively — the lowest since his election in May 2017.

Meanwhile, labor unions are considering more strikes to protest policies of Macron’s they see as weakening hard-won workers protections.

Worker unions CGT and FO and student unions Unef and UNL have called for an “action day” on Oct. 9.

Macron’s government struggled in the past year to pass labor reforms and a revamping of national railway company SNCF. The initiatives prompted large protests and months-long rolling strikes from railway workers.
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Chemical Weapons Watchdog Confirms Novichok Use in Amesbury

Posted on by SeeEU

Laboratory tests by the chemical weapons watchdog confirmed British conclusions that two people in Amesbury, southwest England, were exposed to a Novichok-type nerve agent, it said Tuesday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said analysis by designated laboratories of samples collected by its team “confirm the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical.”

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she and her partner were exposed to the toxin near the city of Salisbury where Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were struck down with the same poison in March.

The OPCW said “it is also the same toxic chemical that was found in the biomedical and environmental samples relating to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal.”

The U.K. has accused Russia, which developed the toxic agent in the Soviet Union era, of poisoning the Skripals. Moscow denies all involvement.

Britain is ready to ask Russia to extradite two men it suspects of carrying out the nerve agent attack on Skripal.
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Videos of Masked Militia Alarm Slovenia

Posted on by SeeEU

Videos of a group of masked, armed men being led in military-style drills by a right-wing former presidential candidate has raised considerable concern in Slovenia. 

Slovenian police said Tuesday they have launched an investigation after video footage and photos appeared on social media. 

Nationalist politician Andrej Sisko has confirmed the existence of the group, but he denied that it was doing anything illegal, telling Reuters news agency it was a voluntary defense force consisting of “several hundred people.”

Sisko told Reuters his group would secure order if necessary.

Interior Minister Vensa Gyorkos Znidar said authorities will not tolerate the existence of any parallel armed groups in Slovenia. 

Sisko, who won some two percent of votes in last year’s presidential election, is known for his nationalist and anti-immigrant stance. His United Slovenia Movement party didn’t make it to parliament in June’s election. 

He lost to President Borut Pahor, who has expressed concern about the existence of Sisko’s armed group.

“President Pahor stresses that Slovenia is a safe country in which no unauthorized person needs or is allowed to … illegally care for the security of the country and its borders,” Pahor’s Cabinet said in a statement. 
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Syrian Minister: Kurdish-Led Northeast to be Treated Like Rest of Country

Posted on by SeeEA

Syria’s Kurdish-led northeast will not be given special treatment and will be dealt with in the same way as other parts of Syria, a government minister said Tuesday.

“We cannot give any Syrian province something which differentiates it from other provinces or ethnicities, or [allow it] any situation which strikes at the idea that Syria is one country and one society,” Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar said in an interview with Russia’s Arabic-language Sputnik news agency.

A Kurdish-led administration in Syria’s northeast now holds more territory than any other group in Syria apart from the government itself. The Kurds have mostly avoided direct conflict with government forces during Syria’s civil war, while saying they seek autonomy in a decentralized state.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has recaptured most areas from rebels opposed to his rule, frequently using what Damascus calls “reconciliation” deals under which insurgents agree to give up territory in return for safe passage out, often after intense air and ground campaigns. Assad has repeatedly pledged to take back “every inch” of Syria.

The main Kurdish groups have so far emerged as among the few winners of the conflict in Syria, carving out autonomous rule over large parts of the north under the control of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia.

In recent months they have begun trying to forge ties with Damascus, seeking to protect gains made in seven years of war and wary of their unpredictable U.S. allies.

“The solution to the problem now is for the Kurdish groups dealing with America to turn their backs on this and turn to the Syrian state,” Haidar said.
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Palestinian Refugees Fear for Future After US Pulls Funds

Posted on by SeeEA

Like children across the Northern Hemisphere, young Palestinian refugees went back to school this week after their summer break. How long they

will be able to stay is an open question.

The U.N. agency that funds schools for Palestinian refugee communities has said it may run out of money to keep them going by the end of this month after Washington, its biggest donor, halted its funding.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank and Gaza — among them Ziad Shtewi, a 63-year-old father of 10 who lives in a camp in north Lebanon.

“Many Palestinian refugees can’t find work, or get paid little. How will we educate our kids?” said Shtewi, who has two children at UNRWA schools.

“These kids will be in the streets,” he said. “It will be a generation of uneducated kids. It would be a horrible life. Education is critical for their future.”

UNRWA runs 66 free schools across Lebanon, which it says is home to nearly half a million registered Palestinian refugees, most of them descendants of those who were driven from their homes or fled the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.

Schweti said the impact of the funding cuts would be “catastrophic” for the community — a view echoed by fellow refugee Fuad Ashool.

“We have our hands on our hearts and are really afraid of the future — I am worried about where my kids are going to go,” said the 53-year-old father of four, who like Schweti lives in the Nahr al-Bared camp.

Ashool used to paint apartments, but can no longer work because of back pain. He said he feared losing UNRWA’s financial assistance, and worried for Palestinians who were even worse off.

“Our people will have to become beggars,” he said. “We are a group of people that want to go back to our homeland, and in Lebanon we are thankful for being here, but this stress that we are living in is so uncertain and

difficult.”

‘Passport to dignity’

UNRWA has said it faces a shortfall of more than $200 million after the United States slashed funding earlier this year, having promised $365 million for the whole year.

Washington said the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and called on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

UNRWA-run schools in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip got under way last Wednesday.

“All eyes are on the end of September when, if things continue as they are, we will not have enough money to keep our schools open,” said spokesman Chris Gunness.

“Palestine refugees see an UNRWA education as a passport to dignity, and if they lose that, they lose their future,” he said. “If UNRWA services close down, the situation of a deeply marginalized community will get significantly worse.”

Barred from taking up most jobs in Lebanon, the refugees depend on UNRWA for basic services. Many live in overcrowded camps with frequent electricity and water cuts.

For Lora, who relies on UNRWA for the blood pressure medication she needs, it is a question of survival.

“Without UNRWA we can’t live. It will be devastating for our people,” the 43-year-old Palestinian told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone, declining to give her full name.

“We could die at the doors of hospitals because we can’t afford it.”
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Catalan Leader Urges Show of Strength to Clinch Independence

Posted on by SeeEU

Catalan President Quim Torra on Tuesday urged his separatist supporters to ensure a massive turnout at upcoming public gatherings, saying large numbers on the streets will help compel the Spanish government to grant the region a vote on self-determination.

 

Torra said in Barcelona that he is ready to enter talks on Catalonia’s future with the central government in Madrid and that he rejects violence, but added he will only settle for “freedom” —  a reference to secession.

 

Catalonia “is at a crossroads” in its drive for independence, Torra said in a much-anticipated speech at Catalonia’s National Theater.

 

The region’s national day, called the Diada, on Sept. 11 and the Oct. 1 commemoration of an illegal referendum on secession on the same day last year present an “enormous challenge” for the separatist movement as it tries to gain traction again after a series of legal setbacks, Torra said.

 

“At the Diada, our success is at stake,” Torra said as he called on people to fill the streets in a show of support for secession, injecting new momentum into the struggle.

 

“Only an agreed, binding and internationally recognized referendum on self-determination will resolve the conflict” between Barcelona and Madrid, he said.

 

Nine prominent separatist leaders are in Spanish jails awaiting trial on charges that include rebellion for their role in last October’s illegal referendum and a declaration of independence that was thwarted by Spanish courts.

 

Meanwhile, former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is living in exile in Belgium after Spain’s bid to extradite him from Germany on rebellion charges failed.

 

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose center-left government came to power in June, has adopted a change in tone on the Catalan issue, taking a less confrontational stance than the previous conservative administration of Mariano Rajoy.

 

But Sanchez’s offer to broaden the Catalan region’s self-ruling powers is spurned by the secessionists, who say they won’t back down from their demand for self-determination on their terms.
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Ethiopia Opens Logistics Sector to Foreign Investment

Posted on by SeeAF

Ethiopia will open its logistics sector to foreign investors but cap their participation, the state investment body said on Tuesday in the latest reform to loosen the government’s control of the economy.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has presided over a shake-up of one of the most heavily-regulated economies in Africa since his appointment in April.

But while Ethiopia has introduced incentives such as tax holidays and subsidized loans to boost investment, bureaucracy and logistics constraints leave it at a low ranking in World Bank global trade logistics indexes.

The latest move by the Ethiopian Investment Board – a body headed by Abiy and comprised of several ministers and the central bank governor – lifted restrictions on foreign investment in packaging, forwarding and shipping agency services.

Those sectors were previously reserved exclusively to Ethiopian nationals. Foreign firms will now be allowed to take stakes of up to 49 percent in logistics businesses.

The Ethiopian Investment Commission, a government body that handles investment issues such as licensing and promotion, said opening up this sector to foreign investors had become necessary.

This will “improve the provision of high-end logistics services while local firms acquire world class knowledge, expertise, management, and systems by working jointly with globally reputed logistics providers,” it said in a statement.

The ruling EPRDF coalition, in power since 1991, has long supported deep state involvement. But it said earlier this year that Ethiopia needed economic reforms to sustain rapid growth and boost exports amid a severe hard currency shortage.

Abiy, 42, was appointed by the EPRDF after his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned in February after three years of unrest in which hundreds of people were killed by security forces.

   

 
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Mali President Keita Sworn In to Second 5-Year Term

Posted on by SeeAF

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has been sworn in to a new five-year term in the presence of former rebels and several other personalities although the opposition continues to dispute his election win.

Keita, 73, was inaugurated Tuesday following his August 20 election victory, which was later confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

“I reach out to all those who want Mali to succeed, all who want to believe in this beautiful nation, without exception,” said Keita in his inaugural speech.

Keita vowed to maintain a secular state and to strengthen national security against extremist violence by improving the training and equipping of the national army.

Since 2012, Mali has faced attacks by Islamic extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and Tuareg separatist rebels. In 2015, a fragile peace agreement was signed between the Malian government and separatist groups but attacks by Jihadist rebels have intensified and spread from the north to the center of the country.

Keita was first elected president in 2013, a year after a military coup that ushered in a period of chaos that allowed the extremists to control parts of northern Mali. French and Malian forces regained control of the urban centers in the north in 2013 but the rebels continue to launch attacks in the area.
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Banned Bemba Denounces DRC Vote as ‘Parody’

Posted on by SeeAF

Former Democratic Republic of Congo warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba on Tuesday denounced a long-delayed December presidential election as a “parody” after he was banned from contesting and accused President Joseph Kabila of trying to hand pick a successor by eliminating serious rivals.

Bemba was one of six presidential hopefuls who was excluded by the election commission from the December 23 vote.

He appealed the decision but the Constitutional Court late Monday upheld the ban due to his conviction by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for bribing witnesses at his war crimes trial.

“The fact that one is choosing opponents… is very worrying,” Bemba told France 24 television, adding that the restive nation would witness “a parody of an election.”

“The Constitutional Court follows the government’s orders … all this is to ensure that the government’s candidate does not have a serious challenger,” he said.

The former Belgian colony has not seen a peaceful transition of power since 1960.

Kabila, who has held office since 2001, has finally said he will not run again after keeping silent on the issue for months, fueling tension and deadly unrest in the volatile nation.

Kabila’s second and final term ended two years ago and he has named his former interior minister Ramazani Shadary as his chosen successor.

Bemba had declared his candidacy after making a triumphant return home from Belgium, with tens of thousands of supporters turning out to greet him after the ICC based in The Hague acquitted him of war crimes charges.

Controversial ruling

In June, a sharply divided five-judge ICC bench overturned Bemba’s 2016 conviction and 18-year jail term for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his troops in the neighboring Central African Republic in 2003.

However, Bemba and five co-accused were convicted on appeal of bribery, corruption and coaching 14 defense witnesses in his main trial.

Later this month, the international court will sentence the former vice president for bribing witnesses.

Kabila who took over in 2001 after his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, was assassinated by a bodyguard, is an arch-foe of Bemba. His tenure over the vast mineral-rich country has been marked by allegations of corruption, inequality and unrest.

Bemba lost presidential elections to Kabila in 2006 and was later accused of treason when his bodyguards clashed with the army in Kinshasa.

In 2007, he fled to Belgium, where he had spent part of his youth.

He was then arrested in Europe on an ICC warrant for war crimes committed by his private army in the Central African Republic from 2002-2003, when its then-president Ange-Felix Patasse sought his help to repel a coup attempt.

Mobutu link

Bemba, who became vice president of an interim government from 2003 to 2006, was born on November 4, 1962, at Bogada in the northwest Equateur province.

His father was a rich businessman close to dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled from 1965 until he was ousted in 1997.

He left the country in 1997 after Laurent-Desire ousted Mobutu. A war followed a year later and lasted till 2003 and drew foreign support on rival sides.

Bemba became leader of the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) rebels, a 1,500-strong force backed by neighboring Uganda and opposed to the Kabila regime.

The MLC, now a political party, on Tuesday urged the ICC to be more “precise” on its ruling, saying Bemba had been unfairly banned by the Constitutional Court. It also called an emergency meeting to review the situation.

“The final word does not rest with the Constitutional Court but with the Congolese people,” said Jean-Jacques Ntula, a resident of Mbandaka, the main city in Equateur province, a Bemba stronghold.

After the Congolese war ended, Bemba laid down his arms and was awarded one of four vice-presidential posts shared out among war-time rivals in a transitional government.

 
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Anti-Migrant Mood Boosts Far-Right Party in Swedish Poll

Posted on by SeeEU

For Monica and Bengt Borg, a retired Swedish couple, Flen doesn’t feel like Sweden anymore. As they sit on a bench on the town’s main street, an Iraqi man nearby watches a Kurdish television program on his phone. Arabic pop music pulses from a girl’s phone. A constant flow of Somalis, Ethiopians and Syrians pass by, the women in headscarves.

“We don’t recognize our country as it is today,” said Bengt Borg, 66. His wife, 64, says she no longer feels safe walking alone at night due to reports of rapes by immigrants. Both plan to join a growing number of Swedes voting for a nationalist and anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, in Sunday’s general election.

The vote will be the first since the nation of 10 million accepted 163,000 migrants in 2015 — the largest number relative to the total population of any European state during the massive migrant influx into Europe that year. In the town of Flen, with just 6,000 residents, asylum-seekers now make up about a fourth of the population.

On a broader scale, Sunday’s balloting is also set to be the latest test for populist far-right forces as much of Europe shifts to the right amid a backlash to immigration. Far-right parties have made gains in several countries that shouldered a large share of the migrant burden, including Germany, Italy and Austria.

The Sweden Democrats have their roots in a neo-Nazi movement. Despite working for years to soften their image, many are not convinced, fearing the party’s rise could erode the country’s longstanding democratic and liberal traditions and identity as a “humanitarian superpower.”

Others, however, worry that the egalitarian ethos of Sweden — the first country to make gender equality a foreign policy priority — is threatened by the large number of Muslim newcomers.

Support for the once-fringe party has swollen to around 20 percent — up from the 13 percent it won in 2014. Part of that success reflects disillusionment with the governing coalition between the Social Democrats and the Green Party, which has run the country for the past four years. The coalition’s earlier open-door policies toward migrants are now widely denounced.

While 20 percent would not be enough for the Sweden Democrats to lead a government, a strong show of support will give the party greater power to pressure the next government and could deprive the Social Democrats or the center-right Moderates, the country’s other major party, of a clear mandate.

The narrative of Sweden as a failing experiment of multiculturalism is backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who caused a stir in early 2017 when he suggested an extremist attack had happened overnight in Sweden. The night, in fact, had been quiet; Trump had seen a Fox News report about crime by immigrants in Sweden. But he insisted his overall picture of the country was still correct: as one where large migration has brought crime and insecurity.

New narrative

David Crouch, a British journalist and author of “Bumblebee Nation: The Hidden Story of the Swedish Model,” said Sweden’s unique high-wage, high-welfare social model and emphasis on progressive policies had long given the country a wonderful reputation as “a country which does things differently and gets things right.” That has changed dramatically in the past two years.

“Particularly with Donald Trump in power, a different, much darker, narrative has emerged of Sweden on the brink of some sort of social catastrophe, with talk about violence, shooting, rape, and so on,” he said.

Crouch believes that view is “not representative of the country as a whole.” Sweden’s economy is booming and creating jobs, meaning there is potential to bring newcomers into the labor market, he argued. He added that much of the message about a Sweden on the verge of apocalypse is a product of media with a racist agenda.

“If you are a racist and you hate immigrants, you don’t want immigrants coming to your country. So you take a country which has got a lot of immigrants and you say: that country is going down the toilet, this country is failing,” he said. Some with that agenda have reported “downright lies, things that didn’t happen.”

Voices supporting the Sweden Democrats have been amplified on social media. The Swedish defense research agency said last week that automated Twitter accounts, or bots, were 40 percent more likely to support the Sweden Democrats than genuine accounts. Swedish officials had earlier warned of Russian interference in the elections, saying Russia is seeking to create divisions by stressing the problems of immigration and crime.

A police officer in a southern Stockholm suburb who supports the Sweden Democrats acknowledged that it is an exaggeration to portray Sweden as so overrun by crime that there are “no-go zones” where police dare not enter, a common refrain by the European far-right.

Stifled debate

Still, he sees real problems in migrant neighborhoods and blames mainstream political parties for a climate of political correctness that long prevented Swedes from openly debating them.

“If five years ago you had said that we should consider how many migrants we take in, you would have been considered a racist,” the officer told The Associated Press. He refused to be identified because people “can lose friends and jobs” for supporting the party.

The Sweden Democrats have benefited by distancing themselves from their origins as a white supremacist movement. Years ago they changed their symbol, a flaming torch in the blue and yellow national colors, to a pretty blue-yellow flower.

Party leader Jimmie Akesson has also cracked down on open expressions of xenophobia, though some question how deep the changes are. Last week the Expressen newspaper reported that nine people left the party for voicing pro-Nazi sentiments. One had reportedly posted a manipulated image of Anne Frank in a sweatshirt saying “Coolest Jew in the Shower Room.”

Many Swedes don’t agree with the backlash against migrants. Some volunteer to teach Swedish to the newcomers, and some politicians even argue that as the national population ages and shrinks, the country needs even more to maintain what is one of the most generous welfare states in the world.

That’s the position of Hakan Bergsten, head of the local government in Flen, where an ice cream producer and a Volvo maintenance plant provide some of the only industrial jobs in a rural area 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Stockholm.

For Bergsten, the election can be summed up by a choice between parties “only focusing on the problems today, while others are trying to explain why we need to take this step” of welcoming migrants for the future.

Crouch, the author, said the nature of debate surrounding immigration in Sweden has changed so radically in the past years that “it’s hard to imagine how the issue of immigration was almost taboo.”

 
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Egypt Police Arrest Man with Homemade Bomb Near US Embassy

Posted on by SeeEA

Police on Tuesday arrested a man carrying a crude explosive device near the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, according to security officials.

They said the man, whom they did not identify, was intercepted outside the concrete blast barriers that encircle the U.S. and nearby British embassies in the leafy district of Garden City.

 

The U.S. Embassy said in a tweet that it was “aware of a reported incident” near the embassy and advised American citizens to avoid the area.

 

​

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

 

The area around the embassy has for decades been heavily policed, with concrete barriers blocking vehicular traffic in its immediate vicinity. The British Embassy is located across the road from the U.S. embassy building.
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‘Shame on you’: Man Interrupts Washington Archbishop at Mass

Posted on by SeeUS

As the embattled archbishop of Washington asked parishioners to show loyalty amid the Catholic Church’s latest child sex abuse scandal, a man yelled “Shame on you” before storming out.

News outlets report cellphone video shows the interruption of Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s post-Communion remarks Sunday at Annunciation Catholic Church.

 

A Pennsylvania grand jury report says Wuerl allowed priests accused of sexually abusing children to be reassigned or reinstated when he was the bishop of Pittsburgh. Wuerl asked the parishioners to forgive his own “errors in judgment,” and then concluded by asking them to pray for Pope Francis. That’s when the man yelled “shame on you.”

 

An archdiocese statement acknowledges the dissenter, but says other parishioners applauded the archbishop.

 
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