TRUMP LOSES ANOTHER ONE
Federal judge overturns Trump admin's 'third-country' asylum rule

Migrants wait in line for food in front of the makeshift migrant shelter at Unidad Deportiva Benito Juarez Stadium Tijuana, Mexico, on November 26, 2018. File Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

July 1 (UPI) -- A federal judge has invalidated a Trump administration rule requiring that refugees seeking asylum at the southern U.S. border must first apply in a "safe" third country.

In a 52-page ruling late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington, D.C., agreed with migrants and rights groups that the administration's "third-country asylum rule" violated U.S. law.

The rule was implemented after a number of Central American migrants from Honduras and Guatemala sought asylum in the United States, due to gang violence in their native countries. The caravans traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border.

The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security rolled out the rule after President Donald Trump vowed to stop the migrant caravans headed toward the United States.

Administration officials said the measure was aimed at reducing pressure on the immigration system "by more efficiently identifying aliens who are misusing the asylum system to enter and remain in the United States."

In his ruling Tuesday, Kelly vacated the rule and said it had been quickly imposed without the "notice-and-comment" procedures required under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires a public commentary period for rule changes.

Kelly also denied the government's plea to stay the ruling pending an appeal.

Tuesday's was the administration's second legal setback on immigration in less than a month. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on June 18. The administration, however, has already begun to prepare a new challenge.

TEAR GAS CS GAS CANISTER USED AT THE BORDER AGAINST FAMILIES AND CHILDREN SAME AS WHAT BARR USED AGAINST PROTESTERS IN WASHINGTON DC\

CS GAS IS CONSIDERED A CHEMICAL WEAPON OF WAR BY THE GENEVA CONVENTION AND IS OUTLAWED FOR USE AGAINST CIVILIAN POPULATIONS

Children of the Central American migrant caravan

ALL PHOTOS HERE https://tinyurl.com/y86pevmm

Albert Yared stands near the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown San Diego on Saturday. Albert traveled with his parents in the migrant caravan from Honduras hoping to seek asylum in the U.S., crossing from Tijuana to San Diego on December 21. They spent their first night in CBP custody, but are now wearing ankle bracelets and headed to Mississippi where they hope to begin their new lives. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

A family from Honduras traveling with the migrant caravan gets ready to climb the fence in Tijuana, Mexico. Frustration has been growing in the last few weeks at the length of the asylum process so instead of continuing to wait some migrants are trying to climb the border fence. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


A child from the caravan looks at the border fence from Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. His face is lit by lights from the U.S. side so border agents can monitor illegal crossings at night. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


Yeison (L), Johana, their 3-year-old son, Albert Yared, and Yeison's cousin Milson (R) traveled from Honduras with the migrant caravan. They were staying at the El Batteral shelter for families in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


Johana hugs her 3-year-old son, Albert Yared. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


Children entertain themselves by watching a show on a cellphone at the El Barretal shelter. The shelter is an abandoned concert hall that has the capacity to house 7,500 people. It was about half full on Sunday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


Children who crossed illegally into San Ysidro, Calif., wait under detention from U.S. Border Patrol on December 2. With growing frustration at the length of the asylum process, a dozen migrants decided to jump the border fence that divides the U.S. and Mexico. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

Read More

Migration downturn hurts business in tiny Guatemalan town

Teen recounts horror of ambush on family in Mexico

Squalid migrant shantytown forms in Mexican border city

Mississippi Gov. Reeves signs bill stripping Confederate emblem from flag

June 30 (UPI) -- Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday signed a bill mandating the removal of the state flag and banning future use of the Confederate emblem.

Reeves said in a speech the state would begin the process of selecting a new flag that will be emblazoned with the words "In God We Trust" after lawmakers voted to remove the Confederate emblem from the flag over the weekend.

"This is not a political moment, it is a solemn occasion to come together as a Mississipi family, reconcile and move forward together. Now, more than ever, we must lean on our faith, put our divisions behind us and unite for a greater good," he said.

The flag with blue, white and red stripes and the Confederate emblem in its corner was adopted in 1894 and both the state House and Senate voted to alter the design on Sunday.

Reeves acknowledged the need to "commit the 1894 flag to history and find a banner that is a better emblem for all Mississippians but condemned protesters throughout the country who have torn down monuments to Confederate figures."

"There is a difference between monuments and flags, a monument acknowledges and honors our past, a flag is a symbol of our present, of our people and of our future," he said. "For those reasons, we need a new symbol."

The presence of the Confederate emblem on the flag has long been a source of tension in the state, but has come under increased scrutiny following worldwide protests in response to the police-involved killing of George Floyd, a black man in Minnesota.

In Memoriam: Moments from Carl Reiner's career 
(12 images)

The legendary comedian, actor, writer and producer, Carl Reiner, died on June 30, 2020 at the age of 98. Here's a look back at his career through the years.

Slide show  Thumbnails View all

Left to right, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar and Howard Morris perform as “The Haircuts” on Sid Caesar’s TV hour on September 7, 1955. Caesar died in 2014 at the age of 91. UPI File Photo | License Photo

The Pandemic Must End Our Complacency

With an economic downturn as severe as the Great Depression and political conditionssimilar to those in the run-up to World War I, an international system built on globalization now hangs in the balance. The world desperately needs effective collective leadership – and not just to contain COVID-19. 

Phil Roeder/Getty Images

June18, 2020

BERTRAND BADRÉ, YVES TIBERGHIEN

PARIS – A sudden shock upends routine decision-making and forces leaders to take urgent action. A combination of mistrust, misperception, and fear dissolves the bonds that sustain modern civilization.

The year is 1914, when Europe spent its summer mobilizing for war. But the description could just as well apply to the summer of 2020. The worst pandemic since the 1918-20 influenza outbreak is rapidly morphing into a systemic crisis of globalization, potentially setting the stage for the most dangerous geopolitical confrontation since the end of the Cold War.

In the space of just weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down one-third of the global economy and triggered the largest economic shock since the Great Depression. Looking ahead, the most important factor that will shape how this crisis evolves is collective leadership. But that crucial component remains absent. With the United States and China at each other’s throats, global leadership will have to emerge from somewhere other than Washington, DC, or Beijing.


Moreover, to pave the way for renewed international cooperation, three myths need to be debunked. The first is that COVID-19 qualifies as an unexpected “black swan” event for which no one could have prepared. In fact, public-health advocates like Bill Gates and epidemiologists such as Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota have been sounding the alarm for years about the systemic risks posed by coronaviruses and influenza, as have leading intelligence agencies.

The sheer depth of the current crisis is the product of our collective failure to think in non-linear terms or to heed scientists’ clear warnings. Worse, COVID-19 is probably just a dress rehearsal for the disasters that await us as a result of climate change – especially after we pass the warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, starting in the early 2030s.

The second myth is that COVID-19 has discredited globalization. To be sure, international air travel did spread the coronavirus around the world much faster than older travel methods would have. Yet globalization has also furnished us with the information, medicine, technology, and multilateral institutions needed to defeat not just viruses, but all other collective threats, too.

Because there is now a global scientific community linked through information and communication technologies, the genome of the novel coronavirus was sequenced and made publicly available by January 12, within two weeks of China’s report of a cluster of cases. And now, researchers around the world are sharing their findings in pursuit of a vaccine. Never before have so many people across so many countries collaborated on the same project.


The third myth is that our current policy tools and institutional arrangements can see us through the crisis. In fact, international organizations can mobilize only a fraction of the resources required to contain the virus and its economic fallout. Unless we change how institutions like the World Health Organization operate and do more to leverage the resources of private actors, our expectations will not be met.

The COVID-19 pandemic has come at a critical moment, accelerating a deeper crisis of international cooperation. Resolving both will require significant innovation, and a massive cooperative effort to achieve a stable equilibrium between economic growth and social wellbeing. This will not be easy. Not only must we change our institutions and broader economic systems, but we also must change ourselves.

The agenda we need includes five parts. First, we need to work toward more inclusive leadership at the global level. Given the current difficulties in the US-China relationship, the rest of the G20 must come together to generate new ideas for addressing the crisis in the global trading system, the intensifying zero-sum competition over technology, and the collapse of trust in multilateral frameworks. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Indonesia, India, South Korea, and Brazil, in particular, must play a bigger role in filling the leadership vacuum.

Second, we need new multilevel leadership coalitions comprising civil-society organizations, the private sector, think tanks, and others. When the usual top-down leadership is not forthcoming, others must rise to the occasion.

Third, we need to ensure a smooth process of developing and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine. G20 member states must build on their previous pledges to work with the relevant international organizations and willing private-sector partners in creating a platform for delivering a vaccine fast and equitably. This is an unprecedented challenge that demands an unprecedented coalition.

Fourth, we need more firepower to address the looming financial crisis in emerging and developing economies. The International Monetary Fund should immediately issue a new tranche of its Special Drawing Rights, and the Paris Club of sovereign creditors, coordinating closely with China, must address debtor countries’ increasingly unsustainable debt levels.

Finally, the international community must start building the coalitions needed to ensure success at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, and at the UN climate conference (COP26) next year. The world desperately needs more engagement on climate and environmental issues, not least to sever the link between habitat loss and zoonotic-disease outbreaks.

The historian Margaret MacMillan concludes her analysis of the world’s march to war in 1914 with a crucial message: “[I]f we want to point fingers from the twenty-first century, we can accuse those who took Europe into war of two things. First, a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be, and second, their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left but to go to war. There are always choices.”

The costs of inaction today have already been staggering. Rather than simply accepting the collapse of the multilateral system, we must start imagining the new mechanisms of solidarity that this crisis demands.

BERTRAND BADRÉ
Bertrand Badré, a former Managing Director of the World Bank, is CEO of Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital and the author of Can Finance Save the World?


YVES TIBERGHIEN
Yves Tiberghien, co-chair of the Vision 20 Initiative, is Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia.

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The COVID Class War

Jun 30, 2020   YANIS VAROUFAKIS


The European Union's proposed recovery fund to counter the pandemic's economic fallout seems destined to leave the majority in every member state worse off. Finance will again be protected, if badly, while workers are left to foot the bill through new rounds of austerity.


ATHENS – The euro crisis that erupted a decade ago has long been portrayed as a clash between Europe’s frugal North and profligate South. In fact, at its heart was a fierce class war that left Europe, including its capitalists, much weakened relative to the United States and China. Worse still, the European Union’s response to the pandemic, including the EU recovery fund currently under deliberation, is bound to intensify this class war, and deal another blow to Europe’s socioeconomic model.

If we have learned anything in recent decades, it is the pointlessness of focusing on any country’s economy in isolation. Once upon a time, when money moved between countries mostly to finance trade, and most consumption spending benefited domestic producers, the strengths and weaknesses of a national economy could be separately assessed. Not anymore. Today, the weaknesses of, say, China and Germany are intertwined with those of countries like the US and Greece.

The unshackling of finance in the early 1980s, following the elimination of capital controls left over from the Bretton Woods system, enabled enormous trade imbalances to be funded by rivers of money created privately via financial engineering. As the US shifted from a trade surplus to a massive deficit, its hegemony grew. Its imports maintain global demand and are financed by the inflows of foreigners’ profits that pour into Wall Street.

This strange recycling process is managed by the world’s de facto central bank, the US Federal Reserve. And maintaining such an impressive creation – a permanently imbalanced global system – necessitates the constant intensification of class war in deficit and surplus countries alike.

Deficit countries are all alike in one important sense: whether powerful like the US, or weak like Greece, they are condemned to generate debt bubbles as their workers helplessly watch industrial areas morph into rustbelts. Once the bubbles burst, workers in the Midwest or the Peloponnese face debt bondage and plummeting living standards.

Although surplus countries, too, are characterized by class warfare against workers, they differ significantly from one another. Consider China and Germany. Both feature large trade surpluses with the US and the rest of Europe. Both repress their workers’ income and wealth. The main difference between them is that China maintains huge levels of investment through a domestic credit bubble, while Germany’s corporations invest much less and rely on credit bubbles in the rest of the eurozone.

The euro crisis was never a clash between the Germans and the Greeks (shorthand for the fabled North-South clash). Instead, it stemmed from an intensification of class war within Germany and within Greece at the hands of an oligarchy-without-frontiers living off financial flows.




For example, when the Greek state went bankrupt in 2010, the austerity imposed on most of the Greek population did wonders to restrict investment in Greece. But it did the same in Germany, indirectly repressing German wages at a time when the European Central Bank’s money-printing was sending share prices (and German directors’ bonuses) through the roof.

Class warfare is arguably more brutal in China and the US than it is in Europe. But Europe’s lack of a political union ensures that its class war verges on being pointless, even from the capitalists’ perspective.

Evidence that German capitalists squandered the wealth extracted from the EU’s working classes is not hard to find. The euro crisis caused a massive 7% devaluation of the surpluses that the German private sector had accumulated from 1999 onwards, because capital owners had no alternative but to lend these trillions to foreigners whose subsequent distress led to large losses.

This is not only a German problem. It is a condition afflicting the EU’s other surplus countries as well. The German newspaper Handelsblatt recently revealed a notable reversal. Whereas in 2007, EU corporations earned around €100 billion ($113 billion) more than their US counterparts, in 2019 the situation was inverted.

Moreover, this is an accelerating trend. In 2019, corporate earnings rose 50% faster in the US than in Europe. And US corporate earnings are expected to suffer less from the pandemic-induced recession, falling 20% in 2020, compared to 33% in Europe.

The gist of Europe’s conundrum is that, while it is a surplus economy, its fragmentation ensures that the income losses of German and Greek workers do not even become sustainable profits for Europe’s capitalists. In short, behind the narrative of northern frugality lurks the specter of wasted exploitation.

Reports that COVID-19 caused the EU to raise its game are grossly exaggerated. The quiet death of European debt mutualization guarantees that the gigantic increase in national budget deficits will be followed by equally sizeable austerity in every country. In other words, the class war that has already eroded most people’s incomes will intensify. “But what about the proposed €750 billion recovery fund?” one might ask. “Is the agreement to issue common debt not a breakthrough?”

Yes and no. Common debt instruments are a necessary but insufficient condition for ameliorating the intensified class war. To play a progressive role, common debt must fund the weaker households and firms across the common economic area: in Germany as well as in Greece. And it must do so automatically, without reliance on the kindness of the local oligarchs. It must operate like an automated recycling mechanism that shifts surpluses to those in deficit within every town, region, and state. In the US, for example, food stamps and social security payments support the weak in California and in Missouri, while shifting net resources from California to Missouri – and all without any involvement by state governors or local bureaucrats.

By contrast, the EU recovery fund’s fixed allocation to member states will turn them against one another, as the fixed sum to be given to, say, Italy or Greece is portrayed as a tax on Germany’s working class. Moreover, the idea is to transfer the funds to national governments, effectively entrusting the local oligarchy with the task of distributing them.1

Strengthening the solidarity of Europe’s oligarchs is not a good strategy for empowering Europe’s majority. Quite the contrary. Any “recovery” based on such a formula will short-change almost all Europeans and push the majority into deeper despair.

YANIS VAROUFAKIS a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

The Main Street Manifesto

NOURIEL ROUBINI

Jun 24, 2020 

The historic protests sweeping America were long overdue, not just as a response to racism and police violence, but also as a revolt against entrenched plutocracy. With a growing number of Americans falling into unemployment and economic insecurity, while major corporations take bailouts and slash labor costs, something had to give.

NEW YORK – The mass protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer are about systemic racism and police brutality in the United States, but also so much more. Those who have taken to the streets in more than 100 American cities are channeling a broader critique of President Donald Trump and what he represents. A vast underclass of increasingly indebted, socially immobile Americans – African-Americans, Latinos, and, increasingly, whites – is revolting against a system that has failed it.

This phenomenon is not limited to the US, of course. In 2019 alone, massive demonstrations rocked Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, France, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Malaysia, and Pakistan, among other countries. Though these episodes each had different triggers, they all reflected resentment over economic malaise, corruption, and a lack of economic opportunities.4

The same factors help to explain populist and authoritarian leaders’ growing electoral support in recent years. After the 2008 financial crisis, many firms sought to boost profits by cutting costs, starting with labor. Instead of hiring workers in formal employment contracts with good wages and benefits, companies adopted a model based on part-time, hourly, gig, freelance, and contract work, creating what the economist Guy Standing calls a “precariat.” Within this group, he explains, “internal divisions have led to the villainization of migrants and other vulnerable groups, and some are susceptible to the dangers of political extremism.”

The precariat is the contemporary version of Karl Marx’s proletariat: a new class of alienated, insecure workers who are ripe for radicalization and mobilization against the plutocracy (or what Marx called the bourgeoisie). This class is growing once again, now that highly leveraged corporations are responding to the COVID-19 crisis as they did after 2008: taking bailouts and hitting their earnings targets by slashing labor costs.

One segment of the precariat comprises younger, less-educated white religious conservatives in small towns and semi-rural areas who voted for Trump in 2016. They hoped that he would actually do something about the economic “carnage” that he described in his inaugural address. But while Trump ran as a populist, he has governed like a plutocrat, cutting taxes for the rich, bashing workers and unions, undermining the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and otherwise favoring policies that hurt many of the people who voted for him.

Before COVID-19 or even Trump arrived on the scene, some 80,000 Americans were dying every year of drug overdoses, and many more were falling victim to suicide, depression, alcoholism, obesity, and other lifestyle-related diseases. As economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton show in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, these pathologies have increasingly afflicted desperate, lower skilled, un- or under-employed whites – a cohort in which midlife mortality has been rising.

But the American precariat also comprises urban, college-educated secular progressives who in recent years have mobilized behind leftist politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It is this group that has taken to the streets to demand not just racial justice but also economic opportunity (indeed, the two issues are closely intertwined).

This should not come as a surprise, considering that income and wealth inequality has been rising for decades, owing to many factors, including globalization, trade, migration, automation, the weakening of organized labor, the rise of winner-take-all markets, and racial discrimination. A racially and socially segregated educational system fosters the myth of meritocracy while consolidating the position of elites, whose children consistently gain access to the top academic institutions and then go on to take the best jobs (usually marrying one another along the way, thereby reproducing the conditions from which they themselves benefited).

These trends, meanwhile, have created political feedback loops through lobbying, campaign finance, and other forms of influence, further entrenching a tax and regulatory regime that benefits the wealthy. It is no wonder that, as Warren Buffett famously quipped, his secretary’s marginal tax rate is higher than his.

Or, as a satirical headline in The Onion recently put it: “Protesters Criticized for Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” Plutocrats like Trump and his cronies have been looting the US for decades, using high-tech financial tools, tax- and bankruptcy-law loopholes, and other methods to extract wealth and income from the middle and working classes. Under these circumstances, the outrage that Fox News commentators have been voicing over a few cases of looting in New York and other cities represents the height of moral hypocrisy.

It is no secret that what is good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street, which is why major stock-market indices have reached new highs as the middle class has been hollowed out and fallen into deeper despair. With the wealthiest 10% owning 84% of all stocks, and with the bottom 75% owning none at all, a rising stock market does absolutely nothing for the wealth of two-thirds of Americans.

As the economist Thomas Philippon shows in The Great Reversal, the concentration of oligopolistic power in the hands of major US corporations is further exacerbating inequality and leaving ordinary citizens marginalized. A few lucky unicorns (start-ups valued at $1 billion or more) run by a few lucky twenty-somethings will not change the fact that most young Americans increasingly live precarious lives performing dead-end gig work.

To be sure, the American Dream was always more aspiration than reality. Economic, social, and intergenerational mobility have always fallen short of what the myth of the self-made man or woman would lead one to expect. But with social mobility now declining as inequality rises, today’s young people are right to be angry.

The new proletariat – the precariat – is now revolting. To paraphrase Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto: “Let the Plutocrat classes tremble at a Precariat revolution. The Precarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Precarious workers of all countries, unite!”

NOURIEL ROUBINI
Writing for PS since 2007
Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and Chairman of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. His website is NourielRoubini.com.

Israel’s Trumpian Unilateralism

Nir Keidar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Jun 23, 2020 DAOUD KUTTAB

Under the cover of a sham "peace plan" put forward by the Trump administration earlier this year, Israel is rushing to seize occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The Netanyahu government's cynical strategy not only violates longstanding international law, but also undermines Israel's own long-term interests.

AMMAN – Since the end of World War II, the international community has embraced a simple but powerful principle: No country, no matter how powerful, may take land from its neighbors by force. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, the world voiced few objections to the United Kingdom’s military intervention to retake its territory. When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations authorized military action to expel them. And when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the UN imposed heavy sanctions that remain in place today.


For 53 years, Palestinians have placed their hopes in this principle. In 1967, it was codified in the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which established a roadmap for peace between Israel and Palestine, and further affirmed “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Although living under occupation has always been unacceptable to Palestinians, it was made tolerable by the hope that right would overcome might, and Israel’s “inadmissible” occupation eventually would end.

Moreover, unlike the Falklanders, the Kuwaitis, or the Ukrainians, Palestinians have shown flexibility in trying to negotiate an acceptable settlement with Israel. But instead of being rewarded for this good faith, Palestinian offers of land swaps (equal in size and quality) have been twisted by policymakers in Israel to legitimize the theft of occupied Palestinian territory.

And now Israel is moving to annex much of the West Bank. Of course, the Israelis would never be this brazen on their own. They are exploiting an opening created by the sham “peace plan” unveiled in January by US President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Conceived by the Israelis and presented by the United States, the plan would give large parts of the occupied territories – including the strategically vital Jordan Valley – to Israel. Palestinians will be left, literally, out in the desert.

While the Americans have stated that their “vision” must be accepted fully or not at all, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, facing a court trial on multiple charges of corruption, has been happy to pocket whatever political handouts Trump offers him in the meantime. With the unconditional support of the world’s leading superpower, Israel can now pursue land grabs without any regard for past agreements with the Palestinians, Jordanians, or Egyptians, let alone objections from the rest of the world.

To be sure, at the poorly prepared Camp David II summit in 2000, the Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, accepted the basic idea of land swaps; but Palestinians have since made clear that any such exchange must be equal in size and quality. And this year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas informed the Quartet (the UN, the US, the European Union, and Russia) that Palestinians acknowledged the need for some slight border modification so long as an independent Palestinian state is actually established.


Palestinians have accepted that some of the more populous illegal Jewish settlements that have been built on Palestinian land just across the 1967 Green Line could be incorporated into Israel in exchange for, say, a land corridor connecting Gaza and the West Bank. The problem is that the Israelis and some American officials regularly misrepresent this position by claiming that Palestinians have rejected peace offers and refused to negotiate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In recent years, as former US Secretary of State John Kerry explained in April 2014, the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians primarily reflected Israel’s greenlighting of new settlements in Palestinian territory. And, since 2018, when the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (in violation of UNSC resolutions), Palestinian leaders have boycotted negotiations sponsored by the overtly pro-Israel Trump administration, while remaining open to multiparty talks.

In fact, the Palestinians have already indicated that they would participate in negotiations sponsored by a “Quartet-plus” group that could also include US allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. Picking up on this opening, Russia has invited the Palestinians and Israelis for talks in Moscow. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused.

Moreover, in June, Palestinian officials submitted a four-page counter-proposal to the Trump plan, wherein they agreed to accept a demilitarized Palestinian state with minor border adjustments. But the pro-Israel hawks in the White House have ignored these offers.

In their rush to annex Palestinian lands, Israeli officials are justifying their illegal behavior on the grounds that they are only seizing territory demarcated in the Trump administration’s plan. But even the naive Kushner, the architect of that plan, has rejected the idea that such transfers should occur unilaterally. The point of negotiations, after all, is to facilitate a give and take. If one side gets to take what it wants before talks have even begun, the process is pointless.

Such unilateralism is not only unfair and unjust; it is unworkable. Peace is achieved, and legitimized, not when political leaders sign some piece of paper (potentially under duress), but when the agreed terms have garnered support from the populations that will be affected by them. Without broad-based buy-in, peace will not endure.

Netanyahu’s attempts to annex Palestinian occupied lands unilaterally will only create the conditions for more bloodshed, anger, and bitterness. No wonder most American Jewish leaders, a majority of the US Congress, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and hundreds of Israeli foreign-policy and security experts oppose the Netanyahu government’s reckless approach.

The situation demands a return to talks on clearly defined, mutually agreed terms, with the aim of producing a settlement that both sides can live with now and in the future. Short of that, unilateral acts will make the possibility of peace only more remote.

The first right whale calf born in 2019 has been found dead off the coast of New Jersey

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Clearwater Marine Aquarium The first calf of the 2019-2020 season, and right whale #3560's first calf, was found dead off the coast of New Jersey.

On June 25, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received reports of a deceased floating whale off the coast of New Jersey.

Sunday, the whale was identified as the male calf of North Atlantic right whale #3560.

READ MORE: Vessel strikes blamed for at least four of nine right whale deaths in 2019

According to a NOAA release, he was the first of 10 reported calves in the 2019/2020 calving season.

“We were encouraged to learn of this right whale calf’s birth last year, marking the first calf born of the season,” said Philip Hamilton, a New England Aquarium researcher, in the release.


“The news of its death is distressing and yet another setback for an endangered species we are working tirelessly to protect.”

The calf and its mother were first spotted in mid-December, and were last seen April 6 this year. They were photographed together in the Gulf of Mexico in March.


The mother is 15 years old and this was her first calf, the release says.

In the last decade, she has travelled from Canada to Florida.

Her current status is unknown.

Read more: Endangered dead right whale known as ‘Wolverine’ reported drifting in Gulf of St. Lawrence

NOAA says in the release these animals need their space.

Earlier this year, a different right whale calf was struck by a vessel and injured. They were last seen alive Jan. 15, but the calf’s current status is unknown.

“The law requires keeping a safe distance of at least 500 yards by sea and air (including drones) from North Atlantic right whales because of the dire status of the species,” reads the release.

NOAA completed a necropsy of the calf of right whale #3560.

According to the release, it hopes to share results early this week.

Administration skips hearing on violence against protesters

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press

© Thomson Reuters US Navy veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Kishon McDonald (L) and George Washington University Law School Law Professor Jonathan Turley (R) watch a video footage of clashes between police and protesters, during a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee hearing on "The U.S. Park Police Attack on Peaceful Protesters at Lafayette Square", on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 29, 2020. Michael Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the U.S. Park Police refused to appear Monday to answer lawmakers’ questions on violence against demonstrators and journalists outside the White House, saying he couldn’t as long as the federal force remains on highest alert for protests and attacks against monuments.

The White House, however, trumpeted the administration's continuing support of law officers in the now subsiding protests. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that President Donald Trump's vision was “for law and order, for peace in our streets, and against anarchy.”

The Trump administration at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Monday on official use of force at this month's street protests did provide a written count and details on federal statues that had suffered lasting damage in the nation’s capital -– two. But Democratic lawmakers charged officials again failed to provide any evidence justifying the Park Police’s subjecting protesters and news media to chemical agents, clubbing and punching while clearing Lafayette Square in front of the White House on June 1.

“If there was a shred of evidence,” the administration would have presented “fact witnesses to support this gaslighting,” Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said.

Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah said the committee hearing, which featured an Australian journalist and a military veteran injured in authorities’ routing of demonstrators, but no administration officials, amounted to “political theater” and “good drama.”

The forceful clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square came during weeks of massive street demonstrations around the country against police killings of Black Americans. More recently, sporadic protests nationally have sought to take down statues of Confederate generals and other monuments that are seen as glossing over historic wrongs to U.S. Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

The clearing of Lafayette Square is the subject of an Interior Department inspector-general’s review and at least one lawsuit brought by those wounded. One of those, Navy veteran Kishon McDonald, told lawmakers Monday of being hit by the shrapnel from flash-bang grenades that authorities fired to chase away what he said were peaceful protesters.

“It hurts as a Black man to see that it’s 2020 and we still have a government who would do this to us again over something that seems so right to protest about,” McDonald said.

The acting chief of the U.S. Park Police, Gregory T. Monahan, wrote lawmakers that it would be impossible for him to appear to discuss his force’s actions because of “ongoing protests and accompanying violence and destruction of memorials and monuments.” Monahan suggested mid-to late July instead.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt earlier this month said law officers and other security forces in Washington were under a “state of siege." Bernhardt in a letter to lawmakers then cited unspecified injuries to 50 Park Police officers, and said protesters brought on the forceful response by lobbing bricks, Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at authorities.

Democratic lawmakers say witness and journalist accounts and videos don’t support that, and say the administration has yet to detail the alleged wounds suffered by officers.

McEnany said federal officials have arrested over 100 of what she called “anarchists” for alleged rioting and destruction of federal property.

The National Park Service, part of the Interior Department, in a report Monday detailed structural damage to two statues — the toppling of a statue to Confederate officer Albert Pike, and the scratching of paint and the bending of a sword, along with damage to the wooden carriages of cannons, of a statue of President Andrew Jackson in front of the White House. Jackson was a slaveowner who presided over the large-scale uprooting of Native American communities to take their land.

Other statues had graffiti scrawled on them, since removed, the park service said.

At a separate briefing Monday, a House Oversight subcommittee addressed the treatment of protesters and journalists at demonstrations across the country, including Lafayette Square.

The administration has denied that authorities forced protesters from the square that day so Trump could stage a law-and-order photo op nearby, clinching an upheld Bible. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said Trump and Attorney General William Barr unleashed pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets on a crowd of peaceful protesters — many of them constituents from his suburban Washington district — in order to clear a path so Trump “could perform the most grotesque photo op in American history, waving someone else’s Bible upside-down and above his head.″
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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Darlene Superville contributed. Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.