Thursday, April 04, 2024

Taliban says Pakistan has deported over 535,000 Afghan migrants since last November

A group of Afghan migrants in border near Pakistan. November 2023. File Photo.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation has reported that Pakistan has deported more than 535,562 Afghan migrants since initiating the deportation process last November.

According to the ministry, these refugees constitute 92,286 families, primarily re-entering Afghanistan through the Torkham gate in Nangarhar and the Spin Boldak crossing in Kandahar.

An official from the migrant affairs department in Nangarhar noted that 70% of these refugees have been processed.

Amidst Pakistan’s plans to deport documented Afghan refugees, the ministry has called on aid organizations to enhance their efforts in addressing the challenges faced by these individuals.

In a related development, Amnesty International on Thursday pressed the Pakistani government to consider international pleas to cease the unlawful deportation of Afghan refugees.

James Jennion, a campaigner for refugee and migrants’ rights at Amnesty International, voiced concern over the Pakistani government’s expedited deportation plans post-Eid al-Fitr.

“The Pakistani authorities’ indifference to the grim futures Afghan refugees could face upon deportation to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is profoundly troubling,” Jennion remarked.

He underscored the risks to over 800,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan, including the likelihood of increased harassment and detentions.

Lebanon’s billionaire prime minister denies allegations of money laundering in France


 Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati speaks during a conference announcing a French reconstruction plan for the Beirut Port, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Mikati has denied all allegations of money laundering after a complaint was filed in France by two anti-corruption groups this week. The complaint against Najib Mikati was formally filed Tuesday, April 2, 2024, to France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s office by French anti-corruption non-governmental organization Sherpa and the Collective of Victims of Fraudulent and Criminal Practices. 
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

April 4, 2024

PARIS (AP) — Lebanon’s billionaire caretaker prime minister has denied all allegations of money laundering after a complaint was filed in France by two anti-corruption groups this week.

The complaint against Najib Mikati was formally filed Tuesday to France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s office by French anti-corruption non-governmental organization Sherpa and the Collective of Victims of Fraudulent and Criminal Practices.

In a statement, Sherpa said the objective is to “shed light on the conditions under which Lebanese political figures like Najib Mikati accumulated considerable wealth and on the role of financial intermediaries who facilitated these acquisitions.”

No detail was immediately available about the sums of money involved.

The group said it drew the attention of French prosecutors to the conditions under which Mikati “has accumulated significant assets in France. The complaint also questions the origin of the funds that transited through the French banking system.”

Mikati said he and members of his family have always acted in accordance with the law, in a statement published Wednesday by Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. The statement defended the family’s “integrity” and said its business is characterized by “complete transparency.”

French prosecutors have yet to decide whether to launch an investigation.

One of the richest men in Lebanon, Mikati, 68, has served as prime minister since 2021.

He founded the telecommunications company Investcom with his brother Taha in the 1980s and sold it in 2006 to South Africa’s MTN Group for $5.5 billion.

Mexico's likely next president is a scientist. 

Politics has her mostly quiet on climate 

threats

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The López home kept filling with seawater as the Gulf of Mexico rose and winter storms got worse.

Cristina López and her family decided to leave after one bad storm in November, knowing the ocean would eventually devour their home in the fishing town of El Bosque.

“There was nowhere else to go," said López, who now lives about a 20-minute drive away.

Driven by climate change, sea-level rise and increasingly ferocious storms are eroding thousands of miles of Mexico's coastline facing both the Gulf and the Pacific Ocean. Around this country of nearly 130 million, drought is draining reservoirs dry and creating severe water shortages. Deadly heat is straining people and crops. Aging infrastructure is struggling to keep up.

But don't expect the leading presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist and a co-author of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, to make climate a central part of her campaign ahead of the June 2 election.

That is because as many countries move away from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas, which cause climate change, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, one of Mexico’s most popular leaders in generations, has moved his country in the opposite direction.

Sheinbaum is often seen as the mentee of López Obrador, who is restricted by law to one term. As president, he has pumped billions of dollars into Mexico’s indebted state oil company and has been pushing an overhaul of the country’s energy sector that has boosted fossil fuel production and stymied investment in renewable energy projects. That has resulted in Sheinbaum, who until last June was Mexico City's mayor, having largely gone quiet on global warming in Mexico, the world’s 11th-largest oil producer.

At the heart of her silence appears to be the conundrum facing many leaders in the face of climate change: should they sacrifice immediate political and economic needs to grapple with the longer-term changes necessary for human survival?

Sheinbaum has told The Associated Press that she believes in science, technology and renewable energy but also has said that if she wins she would continue increasing power generation by state-owned companies, which often run power plants with oil and coal.

Her main opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, a former opposition senator, has said she would promote private investment in the energy sector, if elected. The businesswoman has promised to permanently close refineries in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states within the first six months of her presidency, and has proposed transforming the country’s state-run oil and gas company into one that could also produce electricity using renewable sources such as geothermal energy.

Whoever wins will be the first female president of Mexico.

WATER SHORTAGES

As the election approaches, a worsening water crisis is making it harder for Sheinbaum and her main opponent to ignore Mexico’s climate threats.

Sprawling Mexico City gets its water from overtapped underground aquifers and a vast network of canals, dams and reservoirs called the Cutzamala System. Persistent drought intensified by climate change and El Niño has drawn the system to record lows.

Neighborhoods not connected to the system are feeling the pinch of hot temperatures and delayed water deliveries by trucks. Laundromats have gone weeks without water and shortages have even hit restaurants and businesses in affluent neighborhoods like Polanco, sometimes called the “Beverly Hills of Mexico.”

In Xochimilco in the city’s south, Ana Maria Sandoval worries about how much worse the water cuts will get and what her 10-year-old grandson will face someday because of climate change.

But she has some hope for Sheinbaum, who belongs to López Obrador’s Morena party.

“I think she’s going to do something,” Sandoval said. “I’m going to vote for her to see if she follows through and at least helps us store rainwater.”

LÓPEZ OBRADOR’S FOSSIL FUEL AGENDA

Under López Obrador, Mexico has prioritized fossil fuel production in a quest to nationalize power generation in a country still deeply dependent on fuel imports. That's exemplified by his flagship — still not operational — Olmeca oil refinery located just 50 miles west (80 kilometers) of the mostly disappeared town of El Bosque in Tabasco.

López Obrador’s government also purchased a refinery in Texas and passed legislation — part of which Mexico’s Supreme Court recently struck down — to limit how much electricity private gas and renewable energy facilities can sell. The policy would have favored the state-owned electrical power company over private power firms.

When confronted about his administration’s environmental record, López Obrador has pointed to hydroelectric plants that have been renovated, his oft-questioned reforestation program and a solar energy project in the state of Sonora, among others.

At a White House climate summit last year, López Obrador listed his administration’s efforts to address climate change, telling world leaders that "next year, we will be fulfilling the commitment to produce more clean and renewable energies in our country."

Yet scientists at Climate Action Tracker, a group that scrutinizes nations’ pledges to reduce emissions, have criticized Mexico’s backtracking on its already modest climate targets, downgrading its rating in 2021 and 2022 to “critically insufficient,” the lowest level.

SHEINBAUM'S CAMPAIGN

Sheinbaum has said she supports the president’s goal of keeping 54% of Mexico’s electricity generation under state control, a vision that effectively casts aside more renewable energy production in favor of dirtier fuels.

But there are also some indications that Sheinbaum could take a more science-driven approach than her predecessor. Many point to her performance as mayor of Mexico City during the coronavirus pandemic for clues.

As mayor, Sheinbaum emphasized mask-wearing, testing and vaccination while López Obrador often minimized the dangers of the virus that ravaged Mexico.

Decades prior, Sheinbaum worked on plans to measure Mexico City's air pollution. As mayor, she boosted the city’s public electro-mobility and cycling infrastructure, and initiated a large solar power park on the rooftops of a major wholesale market.

As for water, Sheinbaum has repeatedly said that Mexico needs a 30-year plan, an idea she has reiterated on the campaign trail. She recently laid out a plan in which she said her administration would prioritize better measuring water use in Mexico across sectors, especially agriculture, which uses the vast majority of the country's water. But the plan was light on details about how her government would do so.

In Iztapalapa, a borough of Mexico City with almost 2 million people, Juana Acosta and Jose Luis Perez recently waited 15 days, a week longer than usual, for a water delivery. Residents of the poor, dense borough aren’t new to water problems, but residents like Acosta said they are getting worse. She has complained of longer wait times and stricter rationing due largely to shortages and higher demand.

“They didn’t used to leave us like this for a long time without water,” Acosta said.

___

Naishadham reported from Washington, D.C.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

AMLO Spends Like Never Before to Set Up Successor’s Victory in Mexico





Maya Averbuch
Thu, April 4, 2024 

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s once-frugal president has ratcheted up spending, resulting in the biggest budget deficit since the 1980s and potentially leaving his successor in a financial bind.

It’s a departure for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who kept a grip on the public purse all through the pandemic, as leaders elsewhere spent freely. Now, the president is boosting stipends for students and retirees, showering the state oil company with cash, and trying to get landmark construction projects finished.

The popular agenda looks set to help Lopez Obrador’s party retain the presidency with a landslide win in the June election. His party’s chosen candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor, has a commanding poll lead — especially in poorer southern states like Oaxaca, where public money is driving an economic boom.

“No other government has done as much work,” said Maria Alicia Jimenez Ibañez, a resident of Oaxaca, as she waited to buy tickets for a new train service that connects towns in the Pacific coast state to Veracruz, on the Atlantic side. “Before, the money just disappeared. Now, we’re seeing it.”

Among voters who receive social programs or whose family members do, 64% say they intend to vote for Sheinbaum, while only 21% say they will vote for the leading opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez, a far greater divide than in the general population, according to newspaper El Financiero.

For Sheinbaum, who’s flagged plans of her own including investment in health care, the concern is that funds will get harder to come by. Debt-service costs this year are expected to reach 3.7% of economic output, the most in at least three decades. Adding more spending commitments could put Mexico’s investment-grade credit rating at risk. Increasing taxes to offset that would be politically unpopular, but so would deep spending cuts.

With less debt than many peers, Mexico can afford Lopez Obrador’s final budget, according to Carlos Serrano, chief economist for Mexico at BBVA. It hasn't always been that way, with a history of leaders setting up their successors for spending crunches — a phenomenon Mexicans refer to as “crisis sexenal,” for being a problem for new presidents every six years.

Now, markets are largely unfazed by the fiscal U-turn: The peso has been the top emerging-market currency this year. S&P, Fitch and Moody’s all view Mexico’s sovereign rating as stable despite the boost in spending and the strain it might put on the country’s finances.


Still, the budget deficit comes during “a year in which things are going well,” said Serrano. “Every year we have to spend more on pensions and on servicing the debt, which is leaving the country without any margin.”

Oaxaca’s Boom


Oaxaca, long a stronghold of the opposition party known as the PRI, serves as a gauge for how the president and his Morena party have cemented control over Mexican politics.

The Morena party took over leadership of the state in December 2022. Even the previous governor defected from the PRI opposition group after his term ended and endorsed Sheinbaum — turning him into the kind of politician Mexicans call a “grasshopper” for their ability to leap to a more promising perch.

Indeed, Oaxaca’s economy grew 10% in the first nine months of last year, the most in the country, largely thanks to public spending.

Those improvements have won over locals like Jimenez Ibañez, 42, whose mother — who sells handmade totopos, a crunchy tortilla that’s a southern specialty — got enrolled in the new universal pension program.

“Even older people get paid,” she said. “We used to say, ‘where’s the help for them?’ You couldn’t find it anywhere.”

The government set aside some $43 billion for social programs this year, more than half of it for the elderly. They can collect pensions every two months, at new public banks set up all over the country. Payments have more than doubled over the six years of Lopez Obrador’s government.

Benefits like those are one major part of Lopez Obrador’s budget. The other is infrastructure investments, including a $30 billion tourist train that snakes through southern states, a nearly $20 billion oil refinery in Tabasco State, and a new airport for the capital — after he canceled plans for one started by the last president.

He also started a state-run airline, which like many projects is not expected to make money in the short term. The infrastructure works are not yet completed, which means seeing any returns on investment could take longer than originally expected.

“The bigger debate about the projects is about the return on the investment, and if perhaps the government should have used that money in other projects less likely to be developed by private companies and with higher social and economic returns,” said Felipe Hernandez, a Latin America specialist at Bloomberg Economics.

The Oaxaca train service is part of a bigger project to link Mexico’s two coasts by using the line to rival the Panama Canal for cargo, while serving as a comfortable form of transit for local residents. Major shipments have yet to begin, but the government already expanded the ports at both ends.

That helped Arturo Labias Hernandez get a better job than his old one in the local salt industry, breaking apart salt that had caked on the land and shoveling it into 50-kilo bags. He switched jobs and worked for about a year and a half building new breakwaters as part of the improvements in the port of Salina Cruz, before he came to see Lopez Obrador inaugurate them in February.

“It allowed me to do many things, like start building a house,” said the 22-year-old, whose wife has a baby on the way. “You earn less in salt than I do now, and the work is hard. There’s no shade.”

The idea is that private money will follow the public spending, as businesses invest in new industrial parks along the rail route. There’s not much sign of it yet, though Javier Aguilera Peña — whose PROISTMO company won a contract to build a park near the Atlantic end of the railway — says he’s seen “high demand” from firms that want to sell to the US’s east coast market.

Promises of Austerity

Not everyone in Oaxaca is happy about such projects. A common theme among critics is that they’re slipshod and ordered up by a faraway central government that ignores local issues.

Indigenous groups who live near the remodeled rail line, and raised concerns about the environmental effects, say they weren’t properly consulted. Salt workers protested that the breakwater would keep tidal waters from reaching the lagoons, ruining the local seasonal harvests of both salt and shrimp — though the government eased the tension by contracting them for multi-month shifts.

Farmers, already struggling with water supplies, aren’t sure they want the new factory jobs anyway, and they worry about losing access to common lands where they collect firewood for cooking and wild pitaya fruit.

But when one farmer who is a civic leader joined a protest against a planned industrial park, he was accused of setting fire to the cars of surveyors who’d come to measure the land, an allegation he denies. He was sentenced to 46 years in jail.

Jesus Luis Lopez, another local farmer, says he appreciates the way Lopez Obrador is distributing public cash. “I see people who I’ve grown up with, who I’ve seen working since I was a child, receiving help. And I’m happy, because they deserved it.”

But he supports the protesters, too: “We’re not defending our land just out of selfishness, but because we need the land. It’s our means of survival.”

Sheinbaum has vowed to maintain “republican austerity,” which is how Lopez Obrador describes his cost-cutting program for government business, like trimming salaries and scrapping the presidential plane. She’s been vague about her wider fiscal plans — promising to keep debt levels in a “reasonable equilibrium” and ensure that benefits for children, the disabled and pensioners never fall behind inflation.

Drastic spending cuts in 2025 “are unlikely to materialize because they would have a very high economic and political cost,” said Hernandez, the Bloomberg economist. “In the end the most likely scenario is one in which the government delivers some fiscal adjustment,” but not enough to take care of its debt problem.

Regardless of how AMLO’s successor chooses to address the tab he’s leaving, the next administration will have to factor in debt-service payments that will be substantially larger than when Lopez Obrador took office. The central bank’s borrowing costs are at 11%, near a record high, which drives up the rate for the government as it issues new local debt.

The issue might push a future president to consider tax increases, something Lopez Obrador pledged to avoid. One of Sheinbaum’s top Mexico City officials said in February that the municipal government’s success in widening its tax base — by boosting collection and chasing evaders — might be replicable nationwide.

But even if Mexico’s first female president seeks to reel in spending next year, it might not be enough to make up for the high-interest-rate debt or better the country’s debt-to-GDP profile.

“There's upward pressure on the total debt and on the cost of financing debt, which leaves less room for spending on health, education and security,” said Jorge Cano, an analyst at the think tank Mexico Evalua. “It's tying the hands of the next administration in fiscal terms, since they'll have to make large modifications to revenue, or large spending cuts, to keep the debt stable.”

AMLO’s spending is resulting in the biggest budget deficit since the 1980s

April 4, 2024





Mexico’s once-frugal president has ratcheted up spending, resulting in the biggest budget deficit since the 1980s and potentially leaving his successor in a financial bind.

It’s a departure for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who kept a grip on the public purse all through the pandemic, as leaders elsewhere spent freely. Now, the president is boosting stipends for students and retirees, showering the state oil company with cash, and trying to get landmark construction projects finished.

The popular agenda looks set to help Lopez Obrador’s party retain the presidency with a landslide win in the June election. His party’s chosen candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor, has a commanding poll lead — especially in poorer southern states like Oaxaca, where public money is driving an economic boom.

“No other government has done as much work,” said Maria Alicia Jimenez Ibañez, a resident of Oaxaca, as she waited to buy tickets for a new train service that connects towns in the Pacific coast state to Veracruz, on the Atlantic side. “Before, the money just disappeared. Now, we’re seeing it.”

Among voters who receive social programs or whose family members do, 64% say they intend to vote for Sheinbaum, while only 21% say they will vote for the leading opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez, a far greater divide than in the general population, according to newspaper El Financiero.

For Sheinbaum, who’s flagged plans of her own including investment in health care, the concern is that funds will get harder to come by. Debt-service costs this year are expected to reach 3.7% of economic output, the most in at least three decades. Adding more spending commitments could put Mexico’s investment-grade credit rating at risk. Increasing taxes to offset that would be politically unpopular, but so would deep spending cuts.

With less debt than many peers, Mexico can afford Lopez Obrador’s final budget, according to Carlos Serrano, chief economist for Mexico at BBVA. It hasn’t always been that way, with a history of leaders setting up their successors for spending crunches — a phenomenon Mexicans refer to as “Crisis Sexenal,” for being a problem for new presidents every six years.

Now, markets are largely unfazed by the fiscal U-turn: The peso has been the top emerging-market currency this year. S&P, Fitch, and Moody’s all view Mexico’s sovereign rating as stable despite the boost in spending and the strain it might put on the country’s finances.

Still, the budget deficit comes during “a year in which things are going well,” said Serrano. “Every year we have to spend more on pensions and on servicing the debt, which is leaving the country without any margin.”

Oaxaca, long a stronghold of the opposition party known as the PRI, serves as a gauge for how the president and his Morena party have cemented control over Mexican politics.

The Morena party took over leadership of the state in December 2022. Even the previous governor defected from the PRI opposition group after his term ended and endorsed Sheinbaum — turning him into the kind of politician Mexicans call a “grasshopper” for their ability to leap to a more promising perch.

Indeed, Oaxaca’s economy grew 10% in the first nine months of last year, the most in the country, largely thanks to public spending.

Those improvements have won over locals like Jimenez Ibañez, 42, whose mother — who sells handmade totopos, a crunchy tortilla that’s a southern specialty — got enrolled in the new universal pension program.

“Even older people get paid,” she said. “We used to say, ‘Where’s the help for them?’ You couldn’t find it anywhere.”

The government set aside some $43 billion for social programs this year, more than half of it for the elderly. They can collect pensions every two months, at new public banks set up all over the country. Payments have more than doubled over the six years of Lopez Obrador’s government.

Benefits like those are one major part of Lopez Obrador’s budget. The other is infrastructure investments, including a $30 billion tourist train that snakes through southern states, a nearly $20 billion oil refinery in Tabasco State, and a new airport for the capital — after he canceled plans for one started by the last president.

He also started a state-run airline, which like many projects is not expected to make money in the short term. The infrastructure works are not yet completed, which means seeing any returns on investment could take longer than originally expected.

Source: El Financiero


Mexico's likely next president is a scientist.


AMLO Spends Like Never Before to Set Up Successor’s Victory in Mexico

















Mexico Climate Elections

A water truck delivers water in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, Thursday, March 7, 2024. Around this country of nearly 130 million, drought is draining reservoirs dry and creating severe water shortages.

 (AP Photos/Eduardo Verdugo)




















The World’s Moral Failure in Gaza

AFP via Getty Images

Apr 4, 2024
GRAÇA MACHEL

The still-deteriorating situation in Gaza cries out for a broad coalition of countries that are committed to a just and permanent peace in line with international law. Without immediate action to alleviate the suffering and stay Israel’s hand, the worst may be yet to come.


JOHANNESBURG – The relentless siege on Gaza is a dark reflection on humanity. Well over 100,000 Palestinians have been declared killed, injured, or missing over the past six months, and the overwhelming majority are innocent civilians who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s appalling attack on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations Security Council has finally passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas. Now, all UN member states – particularly Israel’s political and military allies – must do everything in their power to ensure that the resolution is implemented in full as soon as possible.

For Gazans who survive Israel’s military assaults, a lethal combination of displacement, hunger, and disease awaits. Israel’s blockade of humanitarian supplies, food, and clean water has made life in the enclave a nightmare. Aid agencies report mothers giving birth without anesthetics, babies dying from dehydration and malnutrition, and sickness ravaging entire communities. With no one in Gaza safe from massacre, we have reached the threshold of population-scale annihilation.

The trauma is now reverberating across the whole region. Gazans are haunted by post-traumatic stress disorder and grief, and more than one million children are in dire need of psycho-social support. The latest devastation adds to the suffering inflicted by Israel’s 18-year-old blockade of Gaza. And in the West Bank, Palestinians face multiple threats, from unconstrained settler violence and forced displacement to the constant threat of arbitrary detention. At the same time, more than 100 Israelis are still held hostage by Hamas, in contravention of international humanitarian law, prolonging the pain felt by their families and those of the civilians killed on October 7.

Worse may come if Israel defies warnings from its closest allies and moves ahead with its plans for an assault on Rafah, which is currently host to 1.5 million people, including over 600,000 children. Many of those seeking refuge in this border city have already endured the trauma of multiple displacements over the past half-year. A full-scale Israeli military incursion must not be allowed to happen.

I write these words as someone who looked into the eyes of young Palestinians while preparing the 1996 UN report The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. Speaking to children in refugee camps, we promised that their suffering would end. Not only have we failed to make good on that promise; we have left an even more hostile world for children who happen to be born Palestinian. I carry this haunting failure with me.

I also write these words as a member of The Elders, the group of independent global leaders that I co-founded with my late husband, Nelson Mandela, and which was chaired in its early years by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Madiba (Mandela) gave us a mandate to work for peace, justice, and human rights worldwide, and he always considered Palestinian liberation to be key to achieving a just and free world for all. How can any of us speak credibly of universal human rights and the international rule of law when we permit brutality and occupation to continue for decades?

Amid such despair and lack of moral courage by those with the power to stop the current carnage in Gaza, I am proud of the exceptional leadership that South Africa has shown in bringing a complaint against Israel for violating the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ’s preliminary ruling, on January 26, and the additional measures ordered on March 28, explicitly condemn the atrocities taking place in Gaza and are unambiguous about the steps Israel must take to protect innocent Palestinians, including unhindered provision of humanitarian assistance at scale.

Israel and the countries providing it with military and financial assistance must heed the court’s findings and adhere to their obligations under international law. But we are not helpless in the face of this monumental suffering. As members of one human family, we have an ethical duty to speak out against these injustices in our own circles of influence. We can wield power through our own individual and community activism. With our votes and protests, we can – and must – demand accountability from our political leaders.

Here is what we must demand. First, additional humanitarian land routes urgently need to be opened to meet the overwhelming need for life-saving aid. The safety of aid deliveries must be guaranteed at all times. Air drops and the recently proposed maritime corridor are insufficient, and must not be allowed to absolve Israel of its own responsibility to civilians in Gaza.

Second, world leaders must use military and financial leverage to compel Israel to cease its violations of international law and comply with the ICJ’s orders. All countries providing military assistance to Israel should immediately put these shipments under review and set new conditions for future provision. Those that continue supplying arms are enabling the carnage and may be complicit in war crimes.

Third, decision-makers must provide full financial and political support to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Many donors have rushed to suspend funding for the organization, pending the outcome of investigations into Israel’s allegations that some UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 attack. This premature, disproportionate response is now irresponsibly endangering the rights and well-being of millions of Palestinian refugees. The Israeli government has made no secret of its desire to dismantle UNRWA once and for all. Will we allow it to become yet another casualty of the war?

The situation cries out for concerted action by a broad coalition of countries committed to a just and permanent peace that enables Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist under conditions of mutual respect, self-determination, dignity, and security. Palestinian and Israeli lives and security are of equal worth. If this fundamental truth does not prevail on political leaders and ordinary citizens, we will continue to forsake generations of innocent children.




GRAÇA MACHEL , Deputy Chair of The Elders, is Founder of the Graça Machel Trust.
Leading American medical journal faces down its own history of endorsing Nazi race science

Titled “Nazism and the Journal,” the article is part of a series written by independent historians that focuses on biases and injustices that New England Journal of Medicine has historically countenanced

By JACKIE HAJDENBERG (JTA)April 4, 2024, 

A special exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," explores how the Nazis developed racial health policies that began with the mass sterilization of individuals considered to be "biological threats." (Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

A leading American medical journal praised the Nazi Party’s medical practices in the 1930s and was slow to acknowledge Nazi Germany’s antisemitic abuse, according to a historical retrospective the journal is publishing this week.

The article, which has been published online and will appear in the Thursday print edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, addresses the publication’s history of endorsing Nazi race science.

“We hope it will enable us to learn from our mistakes and prevent new ones,” write authors Joelle M. Abi-Rached and Allan M. Brandt, both historians of medicine affiliated with Harvard University.

Titled “Nazism and the Journal,” the article is part of a series written by independent historians that focuses on biases and injustices that NEJM has historically countenanced. Previous entries have addressed eugenics and racism in medicine as well as diversity in medical residency programs.

The article concludes that the journal “paid only superficial and idiosyncratic attention to the rise of the Nazi state” until the end of World War II, even as competitors dealt forthrightly with the health implications of the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews.

According to the article, NEJM first mentioned Adolf Hitler in a 1935 article by Michael M. Davis, a leading figure in American health policy, and Gertrud Kroeger, a preeminent German nurse who was later revealed to be a Nazi sympathiser. In that article, the two praised the reorganisation of national health insurance in Nazi Germany uncritically and in a detached manner, Abi-Rached and Brandt write.

By that time, Jews were already banned from a range of prestigious jobs, including at public universities, and Jewish doctors faced restrictions on their ability to practice medicine.

“There is no reference to the slew of persecutory and antisemitic laws that had been passed after the Nazis assumed power in January 1933,” Abi-Rached and Brandt write. “Davis and Kroeger sympathetically described the requirement that insurance physicians complete 3 months of compulsory service at newly established labor camps in rural areas.”

Abi-Rached and Brandt also found that the Journal “enthusiastically praised German forced sterilisation and the restrictive alcohol policies of the Hitler Youth.” A 1934 article about sterilization, titled “Sterilization and Its Possible Accomplishments” is still available in the journal’s online archive.

The Third Reich had enacted the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseasesin 1933, requiring the forced sterilisation of people with certain mental and physical disabilities. By 1935, the Marital Health Law banned marriages between those deemed “hereditarily healthy” and those who were not — the same year Nazi Germany stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited them from marrying non-Jews.

The medical journal did not acknowledge Nazi war crimes until 1944, with the publication of an editorial titled “Epidemic Starvation” about the dire conditions in concentration camps in Eastern Europe.

“Mass starvation has rarely, if ever, been distributed so ruthlessly or so systematically to civilian populations as has been the case in occupied Europe in the present struggle,” the authors wrote in the 1944 article.

By contrast, Abi-Rached and Brandt found that a competing publication, the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, “frequently informed its readership about the detrimental impact of Nazi rule on medical practice,” including by “detailing the persecution of Jewish physicians, including the restriction of their practice and access to medical education.”

NEJM only issued one “explicitly critical piece” in 1933 titled “The Abuse of the Jewish Physicians,” which was a short notice appended to an article about a surgical treatment for tuberculosis.

Abi-Rached and Brandt note that Davis and Kroeger’s article was challenged by a letter to the editor which, they said, “showed sympathy for the Jewish doctors.” (They also note that despite praising Nazi practices, Davis himself had Jewish ancestry.) But the letter in question primarily focused on the threat of socialized medicine. Other articles published in NEJM at the time, they noted, were “overwhelmingly about the compulsory and oversubscribed sickness insurance system, ‘socialised medicine,’ and ‘quackery,’ not the persecution and mass extermination of Jews.”

The publication’s first overt condemnation of the Nazis’ medical abuses did not appear until 1949 after Leo Alexander, a Viennese-born American Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist, compiled evidence to use against Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg trials. Alexander also wrote part of the Nuremberg Code, which provides legal and ethical guidance for scientific experimentation on humans following revelations about Nazi experiments on Jews.

In the 1960s and onward, the New England Journal of Medicine published additional articles documenting the medical atrocities committed by the Nazi medical establishment, as ethical standards became increasingly widespread.

Reflecting on the journal’s omissions during the Holocaust, Abi-Rached and Brandt grasp for explanations and arrive at ones that they say have implications for contemporary scholarship about medicine.

“Part of the answer lies in denial, compartmentalisation, and rationalisation, all of which depend on structural and institutional racism — deep historical, often unrecognised, bias and discrimination that serve the status quo,” they write.



The Moscow Terrorist Attack: Pro-Islamic State Narratives and their Wider Implications


By Meili Criezis
3rd April 2024


Introduction

On 22 March 2024, four gunmen entered Crocus City Hall in Moscow, Russia and carried out an attack killing 139 people. Later that same evening, Amaq News Agency released a short announcement stating that “Islamic State fighters attacked a large gathering of Christians in the city of ‘Krasnogorsk’…and they killed and wounded hundreds and inflicted great damage on the place before safety withdrawing to their bases.” On 23 March, Amaq produced a more detailed follow-up statement (along with a blurred image of the terrorists) saying the concert venue location had been surveilled prior to the attack and that four “Islamic State fighters” carried out the operation with “machine guns, pistols, knives and incendiary bombs” among other details. The Moscow attack also received a mentioning in Islamic State spokesman Abu Hudhaifa al-Ansari’s recent Al Furqan audio speech release. [Translations provided by Aymenn Al-Tamimi]

IS central media also released an official claim repeating the information shared from the Amaq releases, and as Aaron Zelin emphasised, the claim itself did not attribute the attack to Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP/IS-K) or indeed any IS province. However, Zelin additionally states that the lack of a more specified claim at the province level “doesn’t mean ISKP networks weren’t involved,” suggesting that “the way IS does its external operations claims are a bit more nuanced than its regional attack claims.” A US official shared with the Associated Press that “US agencies said that IS-K was responsible for the attack.” The Kremlin, on the other hand, accused Ukraine, the United States, and Britain of being behind the attack. Two weeks before the attack, the US abided by its ‘duty to warn’ tenet and tried to warn Russia of an imminent attack. Central Asian migrants in Russia, especially Tajik nationals, have also faced further heightened xenophobia, discrimination, and violence following the 22 March attack.

Following the terrorist attack and IS’s official claim, pro-IS supporters expressed excitement and circulated propaganda. This Insight examines some prominent responses expressed across their public social media channels and analyses their wider implications.

Countering Mis/Disinformation

Pro-IS supporters have made efforts to counter conspiracies that entities other than the Islamic State were responsible for the attack, highlighting an instance where supporters must confront the spread of dis/misinformation. This is not meant to overlook the fact that IS has previously disseminated its own disinformation narratives but instead serves as a reminder that the circulation of false information can pose serious issues for IS and its supporters if it gains enough traction. In the context of the Moscow terrorist attack, countering such narratives remains crucial for the following primary reasons: The attack invigorated supporters globally and attracted significant international attention to both IS Central and IS-K. As a result of this notoriety, IS and its supporters understand that the group must maintain its image and reputation following a high-profile attack.
Successful large-scale operations may potentially draw in more recruits (directly and in a more decentralised manner), and pro-IS supporters note the propaganda value that such incidents hold, meaning they cannot allow conspiracies to detract from their propaganda momentum.
Implications by the Kremlin and the FSB that Ukraine, the United States, and/or Britain ultimately orchestrated the attack come into direct opposition with IS’s long-standing position that it will never cooperate or take sides with State actors. As a reminder, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, official IS media sustained, as Lucas Webber et al stated, a “Ukraine-focused media campaign in its weekly al-Naba newsletter under the headline ‘Crusader Against Crusader Wars’…”. Pro-IS supporters have also spent their energy emphasising their hostility toward both Russia and Ukraine before while reminding fellow sympathisers that one cannot be a “martyr” if the person provides support for either Ukraine or Russia.

To counter efforts to detract from IS’s official claim, supporters are pushing the following points: Supporters are posting reminders of previous IS-claimed attacks from around the world as proof of IS’s capabilities to launch operations in countries near and far from what once was the so-called territorial Caliphate.
Supporters state that efforts to invalidate IS’s claim constitute their enemies’ attempts to “question the capabilities of the Islamic State.” Some narratives say the reasoning behind this is their adversaries not wanting to believe that IS remains capable of organising attacks. Other narratives assert that it is a deliberately calculated attempt to make IS appear weak so their enemies can save face.
Pro-IS channels and accounts across platforms continue resharing the official claim from IS central media as well as the Amaq statement releases and the attackers’ bodycam footage recorded during the operation.

On a more general and related note, when official claims by IS media are not released as quickly, IS supporters often remind one another to avoid speculating (seemingly to prevent the growth of dis/misinformation in their own online networks) and maintain patience while waiting for official statements.

Historical Memory

Although anti-Russian IS narratives may not be as widely well-known, researchers have discussed these viewpoints and the ways in which the group draws on historical memory. For example, IS propaganda has stated Russia must pay for its involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War, its atrocities in Chechnya during both Chechen wars, and its support of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Pro-IS supporters have echoed IS propaganda narrative patterns about Russia in their own posts and comments with special emphasis on Russian war crimes in Chechnya as well as a general disdain for the Russian State.

The attention given to Russian historical contexts reflects the same tailored approach IS media and IS supporters apply to other countries, demonstrating the importance of incorporating specific and more localised historical narratives into wider propaganda designed to resonate with target audiences.

Promises of Future Violence

Supporters and pro-IS/IS-affiliated media continue posting propaganda promising future violence. This behaviour is neither surprising nor unexpected. However, wider public engagement with and attention to this genre of IS content is notable in that it reflects ongoing issues with the amplification of their violent threats. Although IS supporters have circulated these threats widely throughout their own social media networks, they arguably reached a much larger general audience once individuals unaffiliated with pro-IS online spaces began posting screenshots and sharing them within their own networks. Perhaps most notably, threats directed toward the outgroup (ie IS’s adversaries) are exactly the type of content that IS hopes reaches the wider public. Supporters seek to not only invigorate one another with displays of bold and threatening rhetoric but also to project a dynamic that Amanda Rogers describes as “an inflated threat capacity to enemy and competitor in the global attention economy…”. This is something of which we must remain mindful. For a more in-depth report about harmful amplification, see Data & Society’s report titled ‘The Oxygen of Amplification’.

Conclusion

The Moscow terrorist attack demonstrates the ongoing serious threat posed by IS and its IS-K branch, and it undoubtedly hopes to expand its reach. But as Sara Harmouch, Amira Jadoon and Munira Mustaffa highlight, we must consider that it also serves the dual purpose of obscuring from the international view “local setbacks for IS-K” by obfuscating the obstacles the branch faces at the ‘Khorasan Province’ level. Setbacks include “military defeats, loss of territory and leadership, and diminishing resources.” Such on-the-ground realities further underline the importance propaganda (whether official or unofficial) plays in portraying IS (and, in this case, its IS-K branch) as strong and capable on an international level.

In other words, it is a strategy that centres on a projection of reach, power, and psychological fear that IS seeks to induce in adversaries. In the meantime, we must also continue working toward long-term solutions to reduce risks posed by the unstable situation concerning the camps in Eastern Syria and ongoing threats posed by other IS branches.

On a final note, Russian law enforcement’s use of torture on the suspects of the Moscow attack and subsequent promotion of related photo and video evidence demonstrates what Tanya Lokshina at Human Rights Watch said is a “level of violence that has become normalised in Russia over the past two years of the war” where it had once been “unthinkable for them to proudly publicise the video evidence.” In response, Al Azaim media published in multiple languages a direct response stating: “stop [the] abusing and torturing of Islamic State captives,” followed by promises of revenge and declarations that it only increased desires for retaliation against Russia. The IS terrorists must face justice for their crimes, but in addition to being a human rights violation, torture also undermines the “value of testimony extracted by law enforcement agents.” As demonstrated by the Al Azaim media response, it creates a self-reinforcing dynamic where brutality feeds further brutality while opening a new regional-level propaganda narrative avenue for IS to justify future violence.
ZIONIST APOLOGETICS
Unintentional killings of WCK workers is tragic, but Hamas is still to blame for war - editorial

Yes, these incidents do happen in the less-than-sterile conditions of battle. They have happened to every country that has ever engaged in warfare.

APRIL 4, 2024 
A Palestinian inspects near a vehicle where employees from the World Central Kitchen (WCK), including foreigners, were killed in an Israeli airstrike
(photo credit: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)

The unintentional killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) organization in Gaza on Monday was a horrible tragedy.

It is one of the innumerable tragedies of the war in Gaza, a war callously triggered by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, its murder of 1,200 people, and its kidnapping of 240 hostages.

The tragedies of this war include the death of dozens of Gazans as they swarmed toward an aid convoy in February, the IDF’s accidental killing of three hostages seeking to escape in December, the friendly fire or military accidents which have led to some 15% of all IDF fatalities in Gaza, and the unintentional killing of Palestinian civilians used by Hamas as human shields – caught in the crossfire of a devastating urban war.

Quickly taking responsibility for the WCK accidental deaths was the correct move

Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi was correct in quickly apologizing for the WCK deaths, labeling the firing at the aid convoy as a grave mistake caused by misidentification, pledging a swift and transparent investigation of what exactly went wrong, and establishing a new Humanitarian Command Center under the IDF’s Southern Command to better coordinate between the work of the various aid organizations inside Gaza and with the IDF.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, was correct in saying that the unintentional harming of non-combatants “happens in war,” though – considering the attention this incident has generated around the world – he could have opted for more empathetic terminology
.
World Central Kitchen (WCK) barge loaded with food arrives off the Gaza coast, March 15, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Yes, these incidents do happen in the less-than-sterile conditions of battle. They have happened to every country that has ever engaged in warfare.

For instance, the US, during its war in Afghanistan in July 2008, accidentally struck a wedding party, believing those in the party to be insurgents. Forty-seven civilians, including the bride, were killed. In November of that year, another strike at a wedding in Afghanistan killed 37.

And these were not isolated incidents. As recently as 2021, a US drone shot and killed 10 civilians in Kabul – an aid worker and seven children– mistakenly believing they were terrorists.

As of May 2003, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, an estimated 432,903 civilians were killed in America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan.

It is with those numbers in mind that US President Joe Biden’s chastising of Israel Tuesday in a White House statement over the WCK killings rings somewhat disingenuous.

“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” Biden said, adding, “Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”

As if the US or any other country has in the past – or can in the future – do a better job avoiding civilian casualties under similar conditions.

There are two main problems with Biden’s statement.

The first, as pointed out in a social media post by Jason Greenblatt, a former adviser to then-president Donald Trump on the Middle East, is that “saying that Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers and other civilians is simply untrue and reckless. It gives fuel to those who spread lies about Israel.”

The second is that the president does not once, in his 314-word statement, acknowledge Hamas’ responsibility for the entire situation. It is Hamas who attacked Israel; it is Hamas who is prolonging this war by not releasing the hostages and surrendering. Hamas terrorists are the ones who have both hidden behind and disguised themselves in the past as journalists, ambulance drivers, and humanitarian workers, thereby placing those genuinely acting in those capacities at risk.

All civilian casualties in Gaza, even those mistakenly caused by Israel, need to be laid at Hamas’ doorstep. Had Hamas not attacked on October 7, or had it released the hostages shortly thereafter and surrendered, none of this would be happening.


Israel will investigate and learn the lessons of this tragedy because this is what it does and because this is what is right. It does not need any prodding to do so. What Israel does need, however, is for the international community to rein in its hypocrisy and stop treating battle zones as crime scenes, something it only inexplicably seemingly does when the Jewish state is involved.

AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YE FREE


Israel targeted WCK aid workers 'systematically, car by car' — Jose Andres

World Central Kitchen founder strongly rejects Israeli and US claims that the strike was not deliberate, saying "This was not just a bad luck situation where 'oops' we dropped the bomb in the wrong place."



REUTERS

World Central Kitchen founder Chef Jose Andres in an online Reuters interview from Eastern Shore, Maryland. Photo: Reuters

Celebrity chef Jose Andres — founder of World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity group — has revealed a chilling account of the Israeli attack that killed seven of his food aid workers in Gaza, saying the assault targeted his team, "systematically, car by car."

Speaking via video to Reuters on Wednesday, Andres said the global charity group that provides meals in the wake of disasters had clear communication with the Israeli military, which he said knew his aid workers' movements.

"This was not just a bad luck situation where 'oops' we dropped the bomb in the wrong place," Andres said.

"This was over a 1.5, 1.8 kilometres, with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof, a very colourful logo that we are obviously very proud of," he said. It's "very clear who we are and what we do."

Andres said the Israeli military was aware of the convoy's whereabouts. He called for investigations of the incident by the US government and by the home country of every aid worker that was killed.

"They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF [Israeli military]. They knowing that it was our teams moving on that road ... with three cars," he said.

The aid workers were killed when their convoy was hit shortly after they oversaw the unloading of 100 tonnes of food brought to Gaza by sea.



'Weapons provided by America ... are killing civilians'

Andres said there may have been more than three strikes against the aid convoy. He rejected Israeli and US assertions that the strike was not deliberate.

"Initially, I would say categorically no," Andres said when asked if he accepted that explanation.

"Even if we were not in coordination with the [Israeli military], no democratic country and no military can be targeting civilians and humanitarians," he added.

Asked for comment on Andres' remarks, an Israeli military spokesperson referred to prior comments by chief of staff Herzi Halevi in which he called the incident a grave mistake and said the attack "was not carried out with the intention of harming WCK aid workers."

Andres said he was personally supposed to be there with his team but was not able to go back to Gaza at the time.

The US needs to do more to stop the war, he said . Andres spoke to President Joe Biden on Tuesday.

"The US must do more to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu this war needs to end now," he said. He questioned Biden administration moves to supply aid in Gaza while also arming Israel.

"It's very complicated to understand ... America is going to be sending its Navy and its military to do humanitarian work, but at the same time weapons provided by America ... are killing civilians," he said.

The chef also wondered aloud how Netanyahu could wage a war to save Israeli hostages "when they may be dying under the rubble of the same weapons" that Israel used against Palestinians.





Killed 'car by car'



Andres said his organisation was still studying the safety situation in Gaza as it contemplates starting aid deliveries again.

Australian, British and American citizens were among seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed as it was leaving its Deir al Balah warehouse.

At least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the United Nations, and Hamas has previously accused Israel of targeting aid distribution sites.

Andres described how he learned of the attack, saying first his group lost contact with its team in Gaza and did not realise what happened until seeing images of the bodies.

He said that after the Israeli forces attacked the first armoured car, the team was able to escape and move to a second car which was then attacked, forcing them to move to the third car.

The aid workers tried to communicate to make clear who they were, he said, adding Israeli forces knew they were in the area which it controlled.

Then the third car was hit, "and we saw the consequences of that."

World Central Kitchen began last month moving food aid to starving people in northern Gaza via a maritime corridor from Cyprus, in collaboration with Spanish charity Open Arms. The charity coordinated closely with Israel's military, Arab nations, and others, Andres said earlier.

Biden said he was "outraged and heartbroken" by the deaths. But the US sided with Netanyahu's assertion that the strikes were not deliberate.

Founded by Andres, 54, in 2010 after a Haiti earthquake, World Central Kitchen has tried to sidestep red tape around the world to rush aid to disaster-hit areas, including Ukraine.

Andres condemned the war as a whole.

"This it seems is a war against humanity itself. And you can never win that war. Because humanity eventually will always prevail," he said.

‘There are almost 100 journalists being killed in this war.


 So many medical teams, people with white flags were shot dead. 

Why do you think this one is an exception in this war?’

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy told the BBC it’s very clear Israel’s attack on clearly marked World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles was not a mistake, and an investigation will only conclude the name of the commander who gave the order. ‘How can it be a mistake when the cars are so signed? You saw the photos of the car from the roof. There is a huge sign of the organisation,’ he said. Levy said Israel has continuously targeted journalists, healthcare workers and civilians raising white flags over the course of this war, stating that the targeting of aid workers would be no exception. ‘For me, there's no difference between two weeks of shooting and bombarding Shifa Hospital and this. Same case. And when Al-Shifa was bombed for two weeks, most of the world kept silent,’ he said.


April 4, 2024
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