INDIA
Muslim Law Board says women are free to pray in mosques – but most women have been told the opposite

The Law Board has admitted in the Supreme Court that Islam permits women to enter mosques. But the reality on the ground is starkly different.

Muslim women praying.

Feb 01, 2020 · Aarefa Johari

All her life, Shakira Sheikh believed that as a woman, she was not allowed to pray namaz inside a mosque. A housewife with four young children, Sheikh grew up in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, and moved to a slum in Mumbai five years ago. In both places, she had never seen or heard of a woman entering a mosque.

This is why Sheikh did a double take when she heard that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board had stated that Islam allows women to pray in mosques.

“It does?” she asked in wonder. “If we are really allowed, I would like to go.”

Sheikh’s ignorance about her religious right to worship in a mosque highlights the irony of the official statement that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board submitted in an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. In the statement, the Law Board – a non-profit organisation claiming to represent all Indian Muslim sects – claimed that Islamic texts do not restrict women from entering and praying in mosques.

“A Muslim woman is free to enter Masjid for prayers. It is her option to exercise her right to avail such facilities as available for prayers in Masjid,” the statement said, adding that previous fatwas barring the entry of women in mosques must be “ignored”. While it is considered mandatory for Muslim men to offer Friday prayers in a congregation at a mosque, the statement said that there is no obligation for women to do the same.

The Law Board’s affidavit was in response to a petition filed by a Muslim couple from Pune, seeking legal rights for Muslim women to pray in mosques. A nine-judge Supreme Court bench will begin hearing this matter in the first week of February, along with other cases pitting religious freedom against fundamental rights. This includes the right of Hindu women to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, the right of Parsi women in interfaith marriages to enter fire temples and the practice of female genital cutting among Dawoodi Bohras.

In its affidavit, the Law Board’s main argument was that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to adjudicate on a religious matter that is dealt with in Islamic texts. However, it is the Board’s other statements that have caught the attention of many Muslim women.
Women kept in the dark

“If the Law Board is admitting that women are allowed to pray in mosques, then why isn’t it making any arrangements for women to do that?” said Shaista Ambar, president of the All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board, an organisation that Ambar founded in 2005 in response to the Law Board’s patriarchy. “Most women in India don’t have any idea that they have the right to enter a masjid, because the clerics have always told us that we are not allowed.”

The question of whether women can pray in mosques has been frequently asked to Islamic scholars and priests, who then respond to those questions with fatwas – non-binding legal opinions based on an interpretation of Islamic texts.

Darul Uloom Deoband, the seat of the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam, has issued numerous fatwas on this topic over the years. The closest that any of these fatwas have come to admitting that women are, in fact, allowed to enter mosques, is one in which it claims that it is “better” for women to pray at home rather than in a mosque. Other fatwas have categorically claimed that it is ”prohibited” for women to visit mosques, and that if any Muslim sect allows women to pray in mosques, it is a “wrong practice” that “should be stopped”.

“I too had got a fatwa from Deoband long ago, telling me I could not go to a mosque,” said Ambar, who chose to ignore the fatwa. “I tried to go to pray in a masjid along with my child, but the men there did not even let me get close – they told me it was a pure place where people were praying.”

In 1997, Ambar bought land in Lucknow to set up her own unique mosque which is open to women and men of all Muslim sects. “If men and women can pray together in Mecca [holy Islamic city in Saudi Arabia], then why not here?”

Besides the Ambar Mosque in Lucknow, there are a few other mosques in India that allow women to offer prayers, although they are few and far between.

“I have prayed in Sunni mosques in Solapur and Jaipur, where they have small, separate enclosures for women,” said Noorjehan Safia Niaz, the co-founder and trustee of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a non-profit group that has previously fought for Muslim women’s right to enter dargahs or mausoleums, and for a legal ban on triple talaq.

Making room for women

Some Islamic sects, like the Bohra Shias, have traditionally allowed women to pray in mosques, and their masjids are built with separate halls or floors for women. In most Sunni mosques across India, however, even small prayer rooms for women are not made available. Given this lack of infrastructure, activists like Niaz see the Muslim Personal Law Board’s claim that women are “free” to pray in mosques as mere lip service.

“The Muslim Personal Law Board is deeply patriarchal, so it will not go out of its way to create space for women to pray in all mosques,” said Niaz.

Scroll.in spoke to several Muslim women in suburban Mumbai and found that even though most of them were unaware that Islam allows them to pray in mosques, almost all of them claimed they would like facilities to be created for them.

“I would not like to pray in the same room as men, but I hope the Supreme Court tells masjids to make rooms for women,” said Shakira Sheikh.

Arifa Aslam, a 33-year-old housewife from a suburban Mumbai slum, was among the women who was aware of Islamic rules on this topic. “As such, it is jaiz [permissible] for women to pray in mosques, but no one goes because confusion is created about it,” said Aslam. “But if space is created and other women start going, I would love to go – why not?”

In sharp contrast to the women, Muslim men in the same slum as Aslam offered a glimpse into the thick wall of patriarchy that has distorted Islamic rules to impose restrictions on women.

“Islam has very strict rules against women praying in the same place as men,” said Mohammed Hanif, a daily-wage labourer. “Even if women are given separate prayer rooms in mosques, there could be incidents that could lead to all kinds of cases of harassment. And then everyone will point fingers at the women.”

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Bangladesh allows formal education in Rohingya camps to reduce risk of child trafficking
DUH OH
The move is a reversal of an earlier order and has been welcomed by child rights experts.

Rohingya children at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar. | Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Jan 31, 2020 Naimul Karim, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Some 10,000 Rohingya children in the world’s largest refugee camp will start formal schooling in April, reducing their risk of trafficking and exploitation, officials said on Wednesday.

Bangladesh, which hosts some 900,000 Rohingya who fled persecution and a military crackdown in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, believes education can protect the young refugees from traffickers’ false promises of work and better lives.

“It will definitely help,” said Mahbub Alam Talukder, the government’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner. “When they start studying the [Myanmar] curriculum, parents will be more serious about sending their children to school...The decision to put more focus on education is a positive change. It will help the Rohingya children in the future.”

United Nations figures show that more than 700,000 Rohingya – 400,000 of them children – arrived in Bangladesh in 2017, in a mass exodus from Myanmar, which regards the Muslim minority as illegal migrants.
Exploitation at camps

Trafficking is on the rise in the sprawling 6,000-acre camps with more than 350 cases identified in 2019, about 15% of which involved children, according to the UN migration agency.

Human rights campaigners say the figure is just a fraction of the actual numbers. According to police records, 529 Rohingya were rescued from trafficking last year in the camps near Cox’s Bazar, some 400km south of the capital, Dhaka.

On Sunday, the police said they rescued 13 Rohingya girls in Dhaka from two suspected traffickers. The children, who had been living in Cox’s Bazar, were promised jobs in Dhaka but instead were going to be trafficked abroad, police said.

Bangladesh had forbidden charities and the UN from giving formal teaching in the camps as it could give the impression that the refugees would be there permanently, raising fears that a generation would miss out on education. This week’s reversal was welcomed by child rights experts.

“[This] will help strengthen their sense of purpose in life, build hope for the future, reduce frustration and despair and thereby reduce associated protection risks,” said UN children’s agency, UNICEF, spokeswoman Yenny Gamming.

“With no hope or access to learning...refugees may take risks. Children and adolescents may be sent out to work or face child marriage or other forms of exploitation and abuse, as their families struggle to cope.”

Hundreds of informal learning centres in the camps officially offer early primary school lessons but it is mostly unstructured learning and playtime, children and parents say.

“Once formal education begins, things will be more orderly and children and parents will be more serious about school,” said Shamima Bibi, a refugee who founded the Rohingya Women’s Education Initiative, which runs several schools in the camps. “They will have hope for their futures and that will deter traffickers.”

This article first appeared on Thomson Reuters Foundation News.

BOOK EXCERPT
How India’s British rulers prevented Muslims from joining the Congress to seek independence
An excerpt from ‘Republic Of Religion: The Rise And Fall Of Colonial Secularism In India’ by Abhinav Chandrachud.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jan 31, 2020 · Abhinav Chandrachud

In 1906, Viceroy Minto and Secretary of State John Morley were getting worried that the Congress, which they saw as a predominantly Hindu body, was becoming too powerful. They believed that the British Empire in India would weaken if Muslims joined the Congress movement. Against this backdrop, they possibly devised a scheme to exploit the schism between Hindus and Muslims to consolidate the British hold over India, all in the name of secularism.
On 28 May 1906, Minto wrote to Morley and said that though “we must recognise [the Congress] and be friends with the best of them, yet I am afraid there is much that is absolutely disloyal in the movement and that there is danger for the future”. “I have been thinking a good deal lately,” he continued, “of a possible counterpoise to Congress aims.”

At this time, Minto thought that the Indian princes and landholders could be organised as an opposition to the Congress. On 6 June, Morley wrote back and said that his advisors were worried that Muslims would soon join the Congress movement, which would spell doom for the British Empire. “Everybody warns us that a new spirit is growing and spreading over India”, he wrote. “Lawrence, Chirol, Sidney Low”, who were his advisors, “all sing the same song...Be sure that before long the Mahommedans will throw in their lot with the Congressmen against you,” they had said to Morley. On 27 June, Minto wrote to Morley about the “disloyal tone of the Native Press” with which Congressmen were “so largely connected”.

On 26 July 1906, Morley made a speech in the House of Commons in which he hinted at reforms in the Indian legislative councils. A few days later, on 4 August, the secretary of Aligarh College, Nawab Mehdi Ali Khan (better known as Mohsin-ul- Mulk), wrote a letter to Mr WA Archbold, the British principal of the college, who was at the time spending his summer vacation in Simla. In it, he asked whether it would be advisable for a delegation of Muslims to meet Viceroy Minto in order to speak to him about the rights of Muslims in India.
“You are aware,” he wrote, “that the...young educated Mohammedans seem to have a sympathy for the ‘Congress’, and [Morley’s] speech [in the House of Commons] will produce a great tendency in them to join the ‘Congress’.” He also wrote that if elections to the legislative councils were introduced under the new proposals, “the Mohammedans will hardly get a seat while the Hindus will carry off the palm by dint of their majority”.

A few days later, this letter reached Viceroy’s Minto’s desk. On 8 August, Minto forwarded the letter to Morley and told him that he was inclined to grant the “proposed deputation” an audience. This was unusual because very rarely, if ever, had a viceroy met a deputation consisting of only one religious community or group. In 1901, for instance, Viceroy Curzon had refused to meet a deputation consisting only of Muslims, and no viceroy had met a deputation consisting only of members of the Congress.

Between 9–10 August, Archbold and JR Dunlop Smith, the private secretary to Viceroy Minto, exchanged letters, in which Dunlop Smith informed Archbold that he had obtained permission for the Muslim delegation to visit Viceroy Minto. On 10 August, a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council by the name of Denzil Ibbetson advised Minto to receive the deputation. It could be a “calamity”, said Ibbetson, if the younger generation of Muslims were driven into the “arms of the Congress party...for at present, the educated Mohammedan is the most conservative element in Indian society.”

On 10 August, Archbold wrote back to Mohsin-ul-Mulk, and advised him to prepare a memorial to ask Viceroy Minto for special privileges for Muslims in elections to legislative councils. He wrote that the memorial must begin “with a solemn expression of loyalty”, perhaps to address Minto’s unhappiness with the disloyal tone of the Congress. The memorial was to say that elections “would prove detrimental to the interest of the Muslim minority.

“It should respectfully be suggested”, he wrote, “that nomination or representation by religion be introduced to meet Muslim opinion”. However, he warned Mohsin-ul-Mulk that Archbold’s role in this process must not become publicly known. “[I]n all these views I must be in the background”, he wrote, “[t]hey must come from you”.

“I can prepare for you the draft of the address or revise it,” he wrote, since “I know how to phrase these things in proper language.” A formal letter requesting an appointment with the viceroy should be prepared, he wrote, which “should be sent with the signatures of some representative Mussalmans”. The deputation which goes to meet the viceroy, he added, must “consist of the representatives of all the Provinces”.

On 1 October 1906, thirty-five Muslim representatives from different provinces and princely states met Minto at his Viceregal Lodge in Simla. The memorial, which had probably been edited by Archbold, was read out to the viceroy by the Aga Khan. Among other things, the memorial asked the viceroy for special privileges in elections.

Muslim seats in the legislative councils, said the Aga Khan, “should be commensurate, not merely with [the] political strength [of Muslims in India], but also, with their political importance and the value of the contribution which they make to the defence of the Empire.” “[D]ue consideration” must also be given, he said, “to the position which [Muslims] occupied in India, a little more than a hundred years ago, and of which the traditions have naturally not faded from their minds”.

In other words, the Muslim delegation requested Viceroy Minto to give Muslims weightage in legislative councils because the Muslim community was politically important, because it contributed to the defence of the British Empire, and because Muslims were, before the British arrived, the ruling race in India.

Minto had been advised by Dunlop Smith and Archbold to give the deputation a “reassuring reply”. He responded by agreeing with the deputation’s demands on the subject of elections and said that “any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure” if this were not so. Later that day, Minto’s wife received a letter from an official (probably Dunlop Smith) which said that Minto’s decision was a “work of statesmanship” which prevented “sixty-two millions of people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition”, ie it prevented Muslims (there were 62 million Muslims in India at this time, according to the 1901 census) from joining hands with the Congress.

Dunlop Smith wrote a letter to another British official the following day in which he said that “the [Muslims] declared to the [viceroy] that they would not join the Congress, [and] that they preferred appealing to their Ma Bap.” The Muslim League itself was founded ninety days after this deputation met Minto (though Muslim opposition to the Congress was decades old, spearheaded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan).

Tellingly, on 15 September 1909, Chief Justice Lawrence Jenkins wrote a letter to Morley, in which he said, “[F]rom all I hear...I incline to the view that the Muhammedan demand was prompted in the first instance from other sources, and has been skilfully engineered.”
There is, therefore, some evidence that the Muslim demand for special protection in elections was devised by colonial officials as part of a divide and rule policy. This was certainly the view taken by nationalist leaders and observers. On 4 October 1906, the Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote that this entire episode appeared “to be a got-up affair and fully engineered by interested officials”.

In 1923, a Khilafat leader and president of the Congress, Maulana Muhammad Ali, called the Muslim deputation’s visit to the viceroy a “command performance”, akin to a play being put up at the request of the royal family. These words were repeated by Vallabhbhai Patel in the Constituent Assembly in May 1949.

Another member of the Constituent Assembly, KM Munshi, called this an “unholy alliance” between “British rulers” and “the leaders of a section of the Muslims in North India”, and a “command performance” planned by Archbold and Dunlop Smith, “among others”.

Of course, it cannot be said that the colonial British administration manufactured Mohsin-ul-Mulk’s fears that Muslims would be left behind in the reformed legislative councils. However, colonial officials like the viceroy bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of the Simla deputation. In the words of historian BR Nanda, ‘[W]hat is surprising is not that the Muslim leaders should have wanted to lead a deputation and submit a memorial to the Viceroy, but that they should have been so warmly welcomed and given such wide-ranging assurances so hastily on constitutional issues of which the full implications were yet to be worked out by the Viceroy and his advisers.” 

Excerpted with permission from Republic Of Religion: The Rise And Fall Of Colonial Secularism In India, Abhinav Chandrachud, Penguin Viking.Support our journalism by subscribing to Scroll+. 

COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM

Leila Janah Dies; Companies Hired Thousands of the Poor

Entrepreneur tapped world's 'biggest untapped resource'


By Bob Cronin, Newser Staff
Posted Feb 2, 2020


Leila Janah, far right, in a panel discussion in New York in 2015. (Stuart Ramson/AP Images for UN Foundation)


(NEWSER) – "Let’s build an export industry but only for poor women," Leila Janah said on a trip to West Africa, after seeing people growing nuts that can be used in skin-care products. "We can solve poverty while also making our skin better." That led to projects in which Janah, who died Jan. 24 in New York of cancer at age 37, employed thousands of poor people in India and Africa, the New York Times reports. The child of Indian immigrants, Janah had another epiphany in Mumbai about 15 years ago. Working as a management consultant at an outsourcing center, she realized the staff was educated and middle-class and didn't include anyone from the nearby slums. "Couldn't the people from the slums do some of this work?" she wondered. The minds of the world's poorest people are its "biggest untapped resource," Janah said. She put her belief that employment was the best route out of poverty to work.

One of the companies she started, Samasource Impact Sourcing, employs people in Kenya, Uganda and India, per the Wall Street Journal, on contracts with Microsoft, Google, Facebook and other companies. The workers handle tasks for artificial intelligence projects, such as tagging photos and choosing focal points for face-recognition software. "Leila had a vision about bringing the dignity of work and the promise of a living wage to the world’s most vulnerable," said the founder of an organization in Kenya that works with Samasource. "Young people began to see different possibilities for their futures." In a 2018 blog post, Janah wrote about the challenges her startups face. "We are fighting the battle of birthing a new venture," the social entrepreneur wrote, "while at the same time trying to show the world that we can inject a sense of justice into the business itself, rather than merely trying to rack up profit."

Trump Promises To ‘Look At’ Social Security And Medicare Cuts


Josh Israel January 23, 2020


Donald Trump ran on an absolute promise not to cut entitlement and social safety net programs. On Wednesday, he said he hopes to do just that — and soon.

Asked by CNBC if entitlement cuts were something he would consider, Trump said he would “toward the end of the year

“At the right time we will take a look at that,” he said. “You know that’s actually the easiest all things, if you look, because it’s such a low percentage.”

Mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security actually make up about half of the federal government’s spending each year.

BULLSHIT

Trump also dismissed concerns that he would follow through on past promises not to cut Medicare and other mandatory spending programs, claiming the economy under his administration was the world’s “hottest.”

“We also have assets that we never had. I mean we never had growth like that. We never had a consumer that was taking in through different means over $10,000 per family,” he claimed. “African American, Asian American, Hispanics are doing so incredibly. Best they’ve ever done. Black, best they’ve ever done. African American, the numbers are incredible.”

Where Trump admits to CNBC’s Joe Kernen this AM that he is looking to CUT Social Security and Medicare at the end of this year. https://t.co/Ce1mkhB2RA pic.twitter.com/pV6AuNAtcm— Jennifer Baty (@JenBaty) January 22, 2020

Trump’s has repeatedly promised not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, never once conditioning that promise on a good economy.

In 2011, Trump tweeted that a “robust growing economy is how to fix Social Security and Medicare—not cuts on Seniors.”

Throughout his 2016 campaign, he used it to differentiate himself from the rest of his party and even Democrats.

“Every Republican wants to do a big number of Social Security. They want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid,” Trump said in an April 2015 speech, not long before launching his White House bid. “And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years.”

In May 2015, he once again claimed, “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”

And days later, he told the conservative Daily Signal, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”

“Every other Republican is going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do,” he said.That June, upon launching his campaign, Trump boasted that he could save those programs — with no cuts — by getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

“The Republicans who want to cut SS & Medicaid are wrong. A robust economy will Make America Great Again!” he tweeted in July that year.

Days before the 2016 election, Trump once again claimed that “Hillary Clinton is going to destroy your Social Security and Medicare. I am going to protect and save your Social Security and your Medicare.” Again, in December 2017, Trump’s then-legislative affairs director Marc Short reaffirmed that the campaign promise not to cut Medicare would be honored, though he embraced cuts to Medicaid to “protect the program.”

As recently as October 2018, Trump claimed that he alone could defend Medicare from attacks, tweeting, “Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!” he said.

In addition to contradicting his past promises, Trump’s suggestion now, that the robust economy makes it easier to cut entitlements, also makes little sense.
While Medicaid provides healthcare to poorer Americans, Medicare and Social Security provide health and retirement income for older Americans of all economic levels.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

FROM THE RIGHT


President Donald Trump called Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders “a communist” and blasted other Democrats in an interview that aired Sunday before Super Bowl LIV.

Speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump was asked to respond to some of the names of Democrats who are seeking their party’s presidential nomination. When asked about Sanders, Trump replied, “Well, I think he’s a communist. I mean you know, look. I think of communism when I think of Bernie. Now you could say socialist, but didn’t he get married in Moscow?”

EVER HELPFUL HANNITY

Hannity reminded the president that Sanders and his wife honeymooned in Moscow. 

(RELATED: Billionaire Democratic Donor Calls Bernie ‘A Communist’ And ‘A Disaster Zone’)

“I’m not knocking it, but I think of Bernie sort of as a socialist but far beyond a socialist.”

But Trump allowed that Sanders is “true to what he believes,” which is more than the president could say about Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“You mention now, Elizabeth Warren. She’s not true to it. I call her fairy tale because everything is a fairy tale. That’s how Pocahontas got started. Everything is a fairy tale. This woman can’t tell the truth.”

As for fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who was just cleared to enter the next Democratic presidential debate when the Democratic National Committee changed its rules, Trump dismissed him as diminutive.


Democratic presidential candidate, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks about affordable housing during a campaign event where he received an endorsement from District of Columbia Mayor, Muriel Bowser, on Jan. 30, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

“I just think of little. You know, now he wants a box for the debates to stand on. Okay, it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong. You can be short. Why should he get a box to stand on, okay? He wants a box for the debates. Why should he be entitled to that? Really. Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

Trump also went after the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter, who has been scrutinized for accepting a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, while his father was then-President Barack Obama’s point man in that country. Hunter has said his only regret for fulfilling that role is that people believe “ridiculous conspiracy theories.”

(RELATED: Trump Lawyer Pamela Bondi Delivers Indictment Of Joe And Hunter Biden’s Role In Ukraine)

“Where’s Hunter?” Trump asked.

“He made millions of dollars, he went from having no job, no income. He had nothing. As you know, he had a very sad experience in the military. He had nothing. To making millions and millions of dollars a year. Not just from Ukraine, but from China and from other countries. How can you do this? This is crooked as hell. What they did is very dishonest.”

DAVID KRAYDEN  DAILY CALLER 2/2/2020

ON BERNIE SANDERS

ON BLOOMBERG

 

TRUMPLICAN

Lawmaker: The Constitution Says You Can Shoot Socialists

State Rep. Rodney Garcia claims it's in the US Constitution

By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff
Posted Feb 2, 2020


State Rep. Rodney Garcia. (State of Montana)
(NEWSER) – A Montana state lawmaker claims that the US Constitution approves of jailing or shooting anyone who identifies as socialist. State Rep. Rodney Garcia framed his remark as a question at a state party gathering in Helena on Friday, then confirmed it to a reporter the next day: "So actually in the Constitution of the United States [if] they are found guilty of being a socialist member you either go to prison or are shot," he told the Billings Gazette. "They're enemies of the free state. What do we do with our enemies in war? In Vietnam, (Afghanistan), all those. What did we do?"

The Montana Republican Party promptly condemned the remarks, saying that "under no circumstance is violence against someone with opposing political views acceptable." The state's Democratic Party added that Garcia "has brazenly flaunted his conviction for a domestic dispute, called single moms deadbeats, and was only elected because he created an illegal campaign cash scam. Now he's publicly calling for people to be shot." Garcia later said he believed socialism was rising in Montana because he'd seen it in Facebook ads, per the Washington Post. His opponent in the House District 52 race, Amelia Marquez, said she wished Garcia "would continue to focus on the issues rather than this constant worry over things that are somewhat ludicrous." (Read more socialism stories.)

F-35's Gun That Can't Shoot Straight Adds to Its Roster of Flaws

Thursday, 30 January 2020 12:45 PM

Add a gun that can’t shoot straight to the problems that dog Lockheed Martin Corp.’s $428 billion F-35 program, including more than 800 software flaws.

The 25mm gun on Air Force models of the Joint Strike Fighter has “unacceptable” accuracy in hitting ground targets and is mounted in housing that’s cracking, the Pentagon’s test office said in its latest assessment of the costliest U.S. weapons system.

The annual assessment by Robert Behler, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, doesn’t disclose any major new failings in the plane’s flying capabilities. But it flags a long list of issues that his office said should be resolved -- including 13 described as Category 1 “must-fix” items that affect safety or combat capability -- before the F-35’s upcoming $22 billion Block 4 phase.

The number of software deficiencies totaled 873 as of November, according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of its release as soon as Friday. That’s down from 917 in September 2018, when the jet entered the intense combat testing required before full production, including 15 Category 1 items. What was to be a year of testing has now been extended another year until at least October.

“Although the program office is working to fix deficiencies, new discoveries are still being made, resulting in only a minor decrease in the overall number” and leaving “many significant‘’ ones to address, the assessment said.

Cybersecurity ‘Vulnerabilities’

In addition, the test office said cybersecurity “vulnerabilities” that it identified in previous reports haven’t been resolved. The report also cites issues with reliability, aircraft availability and maintenance systems.

The assessment doesn’t deal with findings that are emerging in the current round of combat testing, which will include 64 exercises in a high-fidelity simulator designed to replicate the most challenging Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian air defenses.

Despite the incomplete testing and unresolved flaws, Congress continues to accelerate F-35 purchases, adding 11 to the Pentagon’s request in 2016 and in 2017, 20 in fiscal 2018, 15 last year and 20 this year. The F-35 continues to attract new international customers such as Poland and Singapore. Japan is the biggest foreign customer, followed by Australia and the U.K.

By late September, 490 F-35s had been delivered and will require extensive retrofitting. The testing office said those planes were equipped with six different versions of software, with another on the way by the time that about 1,000 planes will be in the hands of the U.S. and foreign militaries.

A spokesmen for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office had no immediate comment on the testing office’s report.

Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed (LMT), said that “although we have not seen the report, the F-35 continues to mature and is the most lethal, survivable and connected fighter in the world.” He said “reliability continues to improve, with the global fleet averaging greater than 65% mission capable rates and operational units consistently performing near 75%.”

The Mattis Test

Still, the testing office said “no significant portion” of the U.S.’s F-35 fleet “was able to achieve and sustain” a September 2019 goal mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: that the aircraft be capable 80% of the time needed to perform at least one type of combat mission. That target is known as the “Mission Capable” rate.

“However, individual units were able to achieve the 80% target for short periods during deployed operations,” the report said. All the aircraft models lagged “by a large margin” behind the more demanding goal of “Full Mission Capability.”


The Air Force’s F-35 model had the best rate at being fully mission capable, while the Navy’s fleet “suffered from a particularly poor” rate, the test office said. The Marine Corps version was “roughly midway” between the other two.

The Air Force and Navy versions are also continuing to have cracks in structural components, according to the report, saying, “The effect on F-35 service life and the need for additional inspection requirements are still being determined.”

Gun Woes

The three F-35 models are all equipped with 25mm guns. The Navy and Marine versions are mounted externally and have acceptable accuracy. But the Air Force model’s gun is mounted inside the plane, and the test office “considers the accuracy, as installed, unacceptable” due to “misalignments” in the gun’s mount that didn’t meet specifications.

The mounts are also cracking, forcing the Air Force to restrict the gun’s use. The program office has “made progress with changes to gun installation” to improve accuracy but they haven’t been tested yet, according to the report.





© Copyright 2020 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.

George Soros speaks to the media at the Swiss resort of Davos on Jan. 25, 2012. 

(VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images)

US NEWS

New Soros-Funded University to Combat Climate Change, Nationalism

BY MATTHEW VADUM

 

February 2, 2020 

EPOCH TIMES IS A RIGHT WING CHINESE PUBLICATION OF THE FALUN GONG CULT

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Billionaire currency speculator George Soros says he plans to spend $1 billion to found a global university to combat climate change and burgeoning nationalism in the world, two things he claims in a recent speech are “threatening the survival of our civilization.”

The preeminent funder of the activist left in the United States and a major contributor to the Democratic Party, the 89-year-old, Hungarian-born financier announced his ambitious new plan Jan. 23 at the annual globalist gathering of elite business leaders known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Soros is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump.

This project, called the Open Society University Network (OSUN), will “integrate teaching and research across higher education institutions worldwide,” while offering courses and joint degree programs and bringing students and faculty from different countries together by way of in-person and online discussions, according to Soros’s philanthropic organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF). Soros is hoping that others will also donate to the endeavor.

OSF’s president is Patrick Gaspard, who was then-President Barack Obama’s White House political director. Before that, he was executive vice president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199 in New York.

OSUN is to provide an international platform for teaching and research and will be launched by a partnership of the Soros-founded Central European University (CEU) and Bard College of Annandale-On-Hudson, New York. CEU and Bard will, in turn, work with distance learning-focused Arizona State University, and other schools such as American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and BRAC University in Bangladesh.

Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, will become the chancellor of OSUN.

As of press time, OSF spokeswoman Laura Silber hadn’t responded to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

CONSERVATIVE CONSPIRACY THEORY ABOUT SOROS

Conservative activist and scholar Tina Trent, a former candidate for the Georgia General Assembly, told The Epoch Times that Soros’s announcement is part of his long-term plan to advance his radical politics.

“Soros’s strategy has always been to enlist universities as Trojan horses in his worldwide crusade to undermine the rights of citizens to define and defend their own national interests,” Trent said.

“In Europe, he founded CEU as his base of operations, funding the school, its scholars, faculty, and students in order to blanket the continent with his pet ambitions: one world government, run by unelected bureaucrats drawn from his stables of select academics,”  said Trent, a former academic.

Soros said at Davos, “Our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasizing academic freedom.”

“I consider the Open Society University Network to be the most important and enduring project of my life and I should like to see it implemented while I am still around,” Soros said.

According to OSF, Soros has donated more than $32 billion over the past 30 years “to education and social justice causes.”

In his Swiss speech, Soros outlined a litany of concerns that OSUN could be used to address, and offered caustic criticism of President Donald Trump.

Nationalism, “the great enemy of the open society,” is ascendant, he said. This has led, among other things, to Brexit, which he described as “harmful both to Britain and to the EU,” as well as to Hindu nationalism in India, and to the rise of Italian politician Matteo Salvini, whom he called “the would-be dictator of Italy.”

Soros described Trump as “a con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him.” He also attacked the president’s supporters in the United States, accusing them of buying into “his alternative reality,” which “has turned his narcissism into a malignant disease.”

Soros’s views on the People’s Republic of China have been evolving in recent years.

In 2010, he said, “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States.”

However, at Davos this year, he expressed concerns about that country, noting that China’s economic policy has lost its flexibility and inventiveness.

Soros also warned of the use of “artificial intelligence to achieve total control.”

The full implementation of the social credit system “will bring into existence a new type of authoritarian system and a new type of human being who is willing to surrender his personal autonomy in order to stay out of trouble. Once lost, personal autonomy will be difficult to recover,” he said.

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Declassified CIA Files Reveal Encounter With 'Green Circular' UFO Over Soviet Union During Cold War

The area where the alleged UFO was spotted nearly five decades ago was apparently used by the USSR to test experimental missiles and laser weapon systems.

A recently declassified CIA report sheds light on an alleged UFO encounter that took place at the height of Cold War in Kazakhstan in 1973, back when it was part of the Soviet Union.

The document, whose redacted version was first released in 1978 and which has now been made available on The Black Vault, a website that publishes declassified government files, mentions how the witness, identified in the paper as "Source", "stepped outside for some air" and spotted "an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass" hovering "above cloud level".
"Within 10 to 15 seconds of observation, the green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass. Within minutes the coloring disappeared. There was no sound, such as an explosion, associated with the phenomenon", the document states citing the witness’ observations.

According to the website, the sighting took place in the vicinity of the Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range that was allegedly used by the USSR back then to secretly launch "experimental missiles" and to test "laser weapon systems utilizing powerful antennas".

During a telephone interview with Newsweek, The Black Vault’s founder John Greenewald compared the encounter with the so called USS Nimitz UFO incident which took place in 2004.
"This is very much simliar to the context we see today, with threats on military facilities," he said. "The US Navy has gone on the record saying whatever this is, it's a concern. They're being encroached upon by this unidentified phenomena."

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