Monday, November 28, 2016

Show of support for activist facing Israeli military trial

Settlers use mobile phones to film Palestinian anti-settlement activist Issa Amro, in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, 15 April 2016.Oren ZivActiveStills

Charlotte Silver-25 November 2016

Supporters of Palestinian activist Issa Amro filled the Ofer military courtroom in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the first day of his trial on a number of accusations related to his nonviolent political organizing in Hebron.

Amro, 36, is the founder of Youth Against Settlements, a group that organizes demonstrations and direct actions against the violent settler encampments in Hebron in the southern West Bank.

He is facing a lengthy list of charges, some stemming from incidents more than six years old.

At the hearing, Amro’s lawyer Gaby Lasky asked the military court to dismiss 14 of the 18 charges on the basis that they refer to incidents that are several years old and in some cases were already investigated and closed without indictment.

Lasky said it was very unusual for the Israeli army to reopen cases that have been closed, as it has done against Amro.

Representatives from the the embassies and consulates of the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland attended Wednesday’s hearing. Also in attendance were representatives from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and other international organizations.

Eran Efrati, the executive director of the International Committee Against House Demolitions-USA, spoke to Amro on the phone after the hearing. Efrati told The Electronic Intifada that Amro was pleased the court saw the international support he receives.

Efrati believes the army is trying “to put a serious case against him.”

“They want to do it the right way, to really put him away,” Efrati added.

A sustained campaign of harassment

Amnesty International has demanded that the Israeli military drop all charges against Amro, and rather investigate the beatings he sustained while in custody and physical abuse by settlers.

The human rights organization accuses Israeli authorities of prosecuting Amro to “silence him and stifle his human rights work.”

“Issa Amro has faced a sustained campaign of harassment and assault at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers because of his activism,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, a deputy regional director for Amnesty International.

“We believe that he is facing trial solely for the peaceful exercise of his rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Imprisoning Issa Amro would be a travesty of justice and would silence yet another important critical voice in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Amro is charged with several counts of incitement, which Israel defines as trying “to influence public opinion in the area in a manner that might harm the public safety or public order.”

In one count, Amro is alleged to have called on a group of protesters in 2010 to defy the Israeli army by yelling “we are not going back.”

In another incident from 2012, Amro is alleged to have used a loudspeaker to direct a crowd not to obey the orders of soldiers.

He is also charged with multiple counts of participating in a march without a permit. At a protest in 2013 to coincide with US President Barack Obama’s visit to the region, protesters wore shirts with the words “I have a dream” printed on them.

Amro is also charged with taking part “in a rally with a political goal or a rally that could be perceived to have a political goal, and that [sic] without obtaining a license from the military commander.”

Amro has also been charged with breaking a settler’s camera during a protest. However, a video from the incident shows clearly that Amro, who is wearing a bright yellow vest, is not responsible for breaking the camera.

Other charges include insulting a soldier in March 2013 and entering a “closed military zone” in February this year.

In addition to running Youth Against Settlements, Amro documents violations in Hebron and is a point person for international travellers, journalists and diplomats who visit Hebron to learn about the attacks Palestinians endure from settlers, who are enabled by Israeli soldiers.

His international stature is reflected in the massive show of support for Amro on social media.

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Twitter for #IssaAmro reached 1.8 million and 6.6 million impressions. Wake up @JohnKerry @UNHumanRights we are here, we support @Issaamro

4:43 PM - 22 Nov 2016

Activist group CODEPINK is circulating a letter addressed to US Secretary of State John Kerry, urging him to call on the Israeli government to drop all charges against Amro.

The letter notes that Israeli military courts have a 99 percent conviction rate.

Suez: The End of Europe’s Empires

Israel turned its future strategic attention from Sinai to the Jordanian-ruled West Bank. The Suez invasion made Nasser into a hero to the entire Arab and Third World. America ranked right behind as the Arabs saw the US as a liberator from colonialism.

by Eric S. Margolis-Nov 27, 2016

( November 27, 2016, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sixty years ago, I was home after school, sitting in our living room on New York’s Central Park West, reading a history of Rome and listening to Dvorak’s splendid cello concerto when the announcer on WQXR broke into announced, “Israeli armored forces are thrusting deep into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.”

So began the 1956 Arab-Israeli Suez war, a conflict that is now all but forgotten though it was a major historic turning point for all concerned.

Algeria has risen up against French colonial rule. A ferocious guerilla war was raging. The Socialist government in Paris was too arrogant to admit that anyone could revolt against the glories of French rule.

Instead, Paris blamed the revolt on machinations by Egypt’s nationalist strongman, Gamal Abdel Nasser. In fact, Egypt’s role was minor.

Great Britain believed its last remaining colonies and protectorates in the Mideast – Iraq, Kuwait, the emirates, Oman, Libya, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia – were being threatened by a rising tide of Arab nationalism inspired by Egypt’s fiery Nasser.

The new state of Israel worried that Nasser might indeed unite the Arabs and champion the recently expelled Palestinians.

France’s Socialists led by Guy Mollet took the lead in plotting with Britain and Israel to seize the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalized in July 1956, overthrow Nasser and impose joint Franco-British rule on Egypt.

A secret plan called for an Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula and a phony Franco-British ultimatum to Egypt that was designed to be rejected. Then the British and French would attack Egypt, march on Cairo, and depose Nasser. Israel would occupy Sinai and parts of the Suez Canal.

The British and French imperialists never asked themselves how they planned to garrison populous Egypt when they could not control much less populous Algeria. Guy Mollet and British PM Anthony Eden were both steeped in the colonial era: they could not understand that the world had changed. Nor that Britain and France were no longer major military or economic powers.

Meanwhile, France secretly supplied Israel with large quantities of modern arms and nuclear weapons technology that laid the basis of Israel’s current large nuclear arsenal, estimated at 100-200 warheads.

A vicious, British-led propaganda attack was launched against Nasser, calling him ‘Hitler on the Nile’ and a threat to mankind. We would hear similar propaganda against subsequent Mideast enemies of the western powers: Khadaffi, Saddam, Ahmadinejad, bin Laden.

In the event, the tripartite attack on Egypt proved a monumental fiasco. Paris and London didn’t know what to do after their troops seized the Canal. The bombastic Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, threatened to launch nuclear-armed missiles at London and Paris if they didn’t stop their invasion. Only Israel could claim military success against the feeble Egyptian Army – but even that was short-lived.

A national uprising in Hungary against Soviet rule had erupted on 23 Oct 1956. London and Paris chose to invade Egypt as the world was seeing horrifying pictures of Soviet tanks crushing Hungarian freedom-fighters.

Even worse, US President Dwight Eisenhower was outraged that his nation had not been consulted by the British and French about the planned invasion. The normally unflappable Ike warned London and Paris that he would wreck their currencies if they didn’t withdraw from Egypt at once.

The deeply humiliated British and French pulled out of Egypt with their tails between their legs as the Arabs hooted derision at their former masters. Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet were show up as the fools that they were. Their political careers ended in ignominy.

Israel, their accomplice, wasn’t as quick to retreat from Sinai, which it had long coveted. After a lot of foot-dragging, Israel reluctantly withdrew from Sinai after Eisenhower ordered it to get out…or else. This was the last time a US president was able to give orders to Israel.

After 1956, a powerful US pro-Israel lobby was created to ensure that Israel dominated Congress, the media, and US Mideast policy.

But America would later suffer its own Suez-style fiasco and humiliation under George W. Bush when he invaded Iraq. In the Mideast, lessons are seldom learned, or quickly forgotten.

Battle for Aleppo: Chaos in the streets as civilians flee army onslaught

Thousands of civilians flee fighting as battle for city nears endgame. But those in the rebel-held east do not find safety, only more violence

Syrian civilians walk over rubble with their belongings to flee fighting in Sakhur (Reuters)

Zouhir Al-Shimale-Monday 28 November 2016

Sakhur, Aleppo, SYRIA - The sound of bombs and gunfire is close and unrelenting as the refugees pick their way through the rubble littering the streets. Laden with suitcases, they arrive in the Sakhur district of Aleppo from areas to the north now engulfed in fighting, only to find yet more violence.

Others have already decided this district of eastern Aleppo is a place in which they can no longer hide - amid the chaos on the streets, long-time residents are moving out as others move in, trying to beat the rapid advance of pro-government forces as they inflict defeat after defeat on the rebels who have held this area since 2012.

Civilians have begun to flee the onslaught in their thousands - 10,000 are said to have crossed into either government or Kurdish held areas over the weekend. The tide of humanity shows no sign of relenting. But no one knows where or when this will end - they are simply running.

From his apartment window in Sakhur, one resident describes a new wave of destruction over the weekend, and a flood of refugees from the northeast of the city where rebel lines have collapsed.

"Hundreds of people are outside on the streets unsure of where to go for food and shelter," said the resident, who did not wish to be named. "People are leaving their homes with suitcases and whatever they can carry because they are desperate and afraid for their lives."

And all the while, the bombs continue to fall. Abu Modar, who lives in the same block, said the building was hit twice yesterday by artillery fire. "We don't know where to go and just want the bombing to end so we can figure out where to go and live our lives normally," he said.

In Ansari, another area in the east of Aleppo, the situation is the same: "Disastrous," said Ibrahim Abu al-Leith, a spokesman for the White Helmets rescue group.

"There is mass displacement and morale is in the gutter. People are sleeping in the streets. They don't have anything to eat or drink, but neither do we," he told the AFP news agency.

'There is mass displacement and morale is in the gutter. People are sleeping in the streets.'

What many residents of eastern Aleppo had feared for so long is beginning to happen - according to the government's Russian allies, almost half of rebel-held areas have fallen in the last few days, buckling under the pressure of a siege warfare, air attacks, starvation, and, many have said, abandonment by the international community.

Yasser Youssef, an official from the Nureddin al-Zinki rebel group, said the government's advance was the result of support from Russia and Iran, both staunch allies of Damascus.

"For all the past years, we have resisted with the primitive means we have had, but today we're resisting Iran and Russia," he said.

"The regime was over five years ago, but today we're fighting armies and militias from every corner of the globe."

The question of whether to run hangs heavy in the air for many civilians spoken to in Sakhur. Speaking about whether they'll consider living in the city, Modar fears that his family will become homeless like many Syrians who decided to stay in east Aleppo.

Fatima Zehra, Modar's neighbour, stands in her doorway as her five children cry in the background. The family have endured another sleepless night because of constant shelling. What can she do?

"The kids do nothing but cry because they are too hungry and afraid of the bombs," Zehra said. "I have nothing to give for them to eat and the schools are all closed meaning the kids do nothing but stand in these corridors waiting for this hell to end."

Perhaps the end is coming. But it is not the end that many had hoped for, and endured so much for in the long months of siege warfare. With government forces inflicting the worst defeat on the opposition in four years of fighting, rebel forces have retreated to secure their frontlines. But their enemies are showing no signs of resting.

Food rations given by the World Food Programme before UN access was cut off in July ran out in November with aid workers saying that people in the city's east are "just days" from starvation.

Winter has also forced many to build makeshift fires in their homes with many burning whatever they can get their hands on in a bid to cook food and keep warm.

On Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that, along with Sakhur, the rebels had lost Haydariya and Sheikh Khodr.

Syria's al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the government, said the army was advancing quickly.

It said the next stage of the operation would be "to divide the remaining area into security districts that will be easily controlled and to capture them successively".

The advance would then "push the gunmen to turn themselves in... or accept national reconciliation under the terms of the Syrian state".

For the people of eastern Aleppo, as well as the gunmen, the offer of "national reconciliation" has been often been offered, and always refused.

But for the tide of humanity on the streets of Sakhur, Ansari and other districts in the east, the breaking point appears to be coming.

100 years of the ‘gender gap’ in American politics

The grave of women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony is covered with ‘I Voted’ stickers. REUTERS/Adam Fenster--Suffragists march on the eve of Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural in March 1913. AP Photo

Anya Jabour-November 24, 2016

Men and women did not vote the same way in 2016.

In fact, the Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton contest yielded the largest gender gap – the difference between women’s and men’s voting behavior – in U.S. history. Clinton won women by 12 points and lost men by the same amount – a 24-point gap. The gap is growing. Twenty points separated the sexes in 2012.

Women’s support was expected to help Clinton shatter “the highest glass ceiling” to become the nation’s first female president.

Seeing themselves as heirs to the suffrage movement, Clinton supporterseven made pilgrimages to Susan B. Anthony’s grave to place their “I Voted” stickers on the suffrage leader’s tombstone.

But despite garnering the most popular votes, Clinton lost in the Electoral College.

The fact that 53 percent of white women cast their ballots for Trump threatens to obscure the importance of gender to U.S. politics.

What’s needed is a broader – and longer – lens.

So let’s start at the beginning. How did the gender gap become so important to American politics?

Women’s clubs and woman suffrage

Suffragists march on the eve of Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural in March 1913. AP Photo

My current research convinced me that the gender gap has its roots in women’s political activity in the Progressive era, which began around 1880 and ran until about 1920.

During these decades of massive immigration, rapid industrialization and tremendous poverty, many Americans hoped to use the political process to address social problems in the nation’s growing cities.

Women didn’t yet have the right to vote, but they joined the Progressive movement by organizing clubs devoted to civic reform. The women’s club movement provided millions of American women with an alternative route into the political process.

One animating issue for club women was revitalizing the campaign for female suffrage. Launched in 1848, the movement for women’s voting rights had achieved only a handful of victories, all in the West, since the Civil War.

Women sought the vote for many reasons, but in turn-of-the-century America, many suffragists argued that women were ideal voters because they weren’t corrupted by party politics. Instead, they argued, women were more interested in sound policies.

Women’s political culture

As political outsiders, women brought a new perspective to Progressive politics. While not all women shared the same beliefs, many female activists participated in a distinctive “women’s political culture.”

Using their traditional domestic role to justify their unconventional political activity, many suffrage supporters argued that as “social housekeepers,” women would use the vote to “clean up” both “dirty” politics and equally dirty city streets.

In addition, many “social justice feminists” saw themselves as advocates for the nation’s disadvantaged and dispossessed, including women, children, workers, immigrants and African-Americans.

As a result, women made unique contributions to urban reform. For instance, in Chicago, male politicians established “red light” districts. By contrast, women activists defended the rights of accused prostitutes.

The Woman’s City Club of Chicago

The Woman’s City Club of Chicago, while not the first or the only such organization in America, was especially important in terms of the history of women’s political activism.

The club was founded in 1910 to combat the city’s legendary political corruption. According to club member Louise de Koven Bowen, the organization began when a businessman told the club’s first president: “I wish you women would form some kind of a club to fight our civic evils; we men have tried it and failed, perhaps you women can do something.”

By waging a successful campaign giving Illinois women the right to vote in both national and local elections and encouraging women to use their votes to promote reform, the club made women a force to reckon with in electoral politics well before the adoption of the federal woman suffrage amendment in 1920.

‘Good government’ and the gender gap

In 1913, Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi River to grant voting rights to female citizens.

Prior to the citywide elections of 1914, Chicago women’s first significant voting opportunity, the Woman’s City Club sponsored a massive voter registration and citizen education campaign. In addition, six women, including four club members, ran for local office.

Women voters went to the polls in high numbers, disproving skeptics’ claims that women would not exercise the right to vote. Moreover, female voters consistently voted for “good government,” creating one of the nation’s first “gender gaps.”

When the votes were counted, however, women were disappointed by the results. None of the female candidates garnered enough votes to gain office, leaving male politicians to continue business as usual. Undaunted by this setback, women activists launched a new campaign to reform Chicago politics.

The Women’s Municipal Platform

In 1916, the Woman’s City Club sponsored a mass meeting in downtown Chicago to protest the “spoils system” in city government and to promote progressive social policies. Women activists adopted a “Women’s Municipal Platform” dedicated “to the promotion of the welfare of all the citizens and to the securing of equality of opportunity to all the children of all of the people.” Club leaders demanded reforms related to public schools, health and safety, city parks and playgrounds, and the criminal justice system.

Chicago’s female activists displayed a keen awareness of their distinctiveness as politically active women. According to the preamble to the platform, “women citizens” were ideal voters because they prioritized the common good over party politics.

Club women also understood their importance as pioneering female voters. The club president observed: “The attention of suffragists and anti-suffragists throughout the United States is now directed to the women of Illinois in order to determine how fully they are using their newly acquired franchise and with what results.”

In fall of 1916, Chicago women turned out in impressive numbers to vote for political change.

As Progressive Party politician Charles Merriam put it in the Woman’s City Club Bulletin, “What finer tribute could be paid to the intelligence of woman’s vote!”

The ‘women’s vote’ today

A hundred years later, Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election of 2016 indicates that despite important gains in the U.S. Senate, women in some ways remain political outsiders – but outsiders who continue to play a special role in the nation’s politics.

Like Chicago club women a century before, American women activists are responding to defeat by planning a mass protest. As journalist Jill Filipovic remarks, “We fix this with more feminism, not less.”

The gender gap may not have gained Clinton the presidency, but it is just as salient today as it was a century ago.

Cuba faces renewed tensions with U.S., but without Fidel Castro, its field marshal

The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung explains Fidel Castro's legacy in Cuba, and how it will affect the country politically. (Peter Stevenson, Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

By Nick Miroff November 28 at 10:33 AM

HAVANA — Fidel Castro once called George W. Bush a “functional illiterate.” President Ronald Reagan was “the worst terrorist in the history of mankind,” Castro said, with ideas “from the Buffalo Bill era.”

Castro thrived on confrontation with U.S. leaders, and he almost surely would have enjoyed facing off against America’s next one. In his statement Saturday on Castro’s death, President-elect Donald Trump denounced him as “a brutal dictator,” and that’s the sort of dig that wouldn’t have gone unanswered in the past.

But brinkmanship and barb-throwing are not the forte of his successor, Raúl Castro, who replaced his elder sibling as president a decade ago. Raúl Castro, 85, has refrained from criticizing Trump and even sent congratulations after his win.

Raúl Castro’s plans to secure the legacy of his brother’s 1959 Cuban Revolution appear to be on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, whose top members said Sunday that Cuba would have to make significant “changes” in order for the normalization path charted by President Obama to continue. Both Castros have long insisted they would never kneel to American pressure.

If tensions between Cuba and the United States ratchet up again under a Trump presidency, it would be a new stress test for Raúl Castro and his quieter, more austere leadership style. Cuba will enter the Trump era with Fidel Castro’s one-party socialist state firmly in command but without the supercharged politics and nationalist fervor he relied on to sustain it.

The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung explains Fidel Castro's legacy in Cuba, and how it will affect the country politically. (Peter Stevenson, Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

A return to more hostile relations with the United States could also bring a new crackdown in Cuba and further slow the pace of Raúl Castro’s modest liberalization measures at a time of stalling economic growth. Hard-liners in Cuba’s Communist Party would gladly take the country back to a simpler time, when the antagonism of the United States — not the failure of government policies — was to blame for the island’s problems, and the threat of attack, real or imagined, was used to justify authoritarian political control.

In a possible warning shot, Trump tweeted Monday that he could revisit the landmark pact cut by the Obama administration to end the diplomatic estrangement with Cuba.

“If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal,” Trump wrote, without offering specifics on his concerns.

On Fox News Sunday, Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, said, “There’s going to have to be some movement from Cuba in order to have a relationship with the United States.”

Castro would have to take steps to allow more political, economic and religious freedoms, Priebus said. “These things need to change in order to have open and free relationships, and that’s what President-elect Trump believes.”

Obama announced in December 2014 that the United States would reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, which were severed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Obama said that engagement with Cuba, including fewer restrictions on U.S. travel and trade, would facilitate the type of long-term democratic changes Washington had failed to bring about during a
half-century of punitive sanctions.

[Facing new test, Cuba’s revolution circles back]

But Trump said during his campaign that Obama didn’t get a good “deal” and that Cuba must do more.

While only the U.S. Congress can lift the Cuba embargo, Trump could reverse many of the executive orders that have brought a surge of U.S. visitors here and a rush of new interest from U.S. companies.

If Trump moves to roll back those measures and attempts to apply more economic pressure, the Castro government could dig in. During the last major peak in U.S.-Cuba tensions in March 2003, when Fidel Castro was still in charge, he ordered the roundup of 75 dissidents, sentencing them to harsh prison terms.

A few weeks later, Castro crushed a spate of boat and airplane hijackings by Cubans trying to get to the United States, executing three men who commandeered a Havana passenger ferry and tried to steer it to Florida.

But Cuba was a tighter-run ship then, where few dared to criticize the government in public. The government’s security services are still pervasive, allowing no organized opposition, but the constant marching and mass rallies of Fidel Castro’s Cuba have mostly disappeared under the rule of his younger brother.

Also, the government’s monopoly on information has been broken. Millions of Cubans have cellphones, and more than 100 new WiFi hotspots across the island allow Cubans to go online and chat with friends and relatives abroad. Foreign television shows and news programming circulate widely on portable memory sticks.

Fidel Castro’s soaring rhetoric is no longer the soundtrack of Cuban public life. Raúl Castro delivers a speech every few months, choosing his words carefully and reading from a prepared text. A lifelong military man, he praises planning, modesty and preparation, and uses the word “improvisation” as a pejorative.

Those qualities helped facilitate the secret negotiations with the Obama administration on restoring relations, but they may not help him counter more aggressive language from President Trump. Raúl Castro doesn’t tweet, doesn’t give media interviews and shows no enthusiasm, unlike Fidel, for being in the spotlight. He could have a hard time leading younger Cubans back into the trenches of his older brother’s “anti-imperialism” with calls for more sacrifice and obedience.

[Cubans worry about what comes next after Fidel Castro’s death]

Then again, Cuban national pride remains a powerful force on the island, and nothing stirs it like a perceived threat from a swaggering American leader, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban intelligence analyst who teaches at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.

“Even if there is no Fidel, do not underestimate the power of mobilization of Cuban nationalism,” Lopez-Levy said. Intense Cuban nationalism “preceded Fidel,” he said, “and it will survive as a major actor in Cuban politics well beyond his passing.”

At a small snack bar called “Los Afortunados” (“the Lucky Ones”) a group of young Cubans said Sunday that they feared Trump would take U.S.-Cuba relations into the past just as it seemed as though their lives were getting easier. If he restricted travel and the ability of Cubans in the United States to visit their relatives, “it would be terrible for our families,” said Yosbel Benitez, 30.

His friend Ricardo Marrero, 28, who emigrated to the United States in 2013, was back for a visit. Marrero hadn’t seen his wife and 4-year-old daughter in a year. But with the WiFi hotspots, he now sees them every day using the popular video chat app IMO. Two years earlier, it would have cost him $2 a minute to talk to them on the phone.

“It’s what gives me the strength to keep working hard to bring them over,” Marrero said.

Air travel is easier, too. On Monday the first commercial flight from Miami in 50 years will land in Havana, and fares are less than half the price they are on the restrictive charter flights that have been the only option until now.

Marrero wasn’t eligible to vote in Florida, but he said he liked Trump and told his friends and family members not to fear the president-elect’s plans for Cuba. “He’s a businessman,” he said. “He understands.”

The snack bar, one of the types of privately run businesses permitted under Raúl Castro, is directly across from the U.S. diplomatic compound, which Obama restored to full embassy status last year.

Canada, Mexico and other nations had lowered the flags Sunday at their embassies in Havana in tribute to Fidel Castro, but the U.S. flag was snapping in the wind at the top of the pole.

Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.

Documentary History - Biography of President Barack Obama Full Documentary

Published on May 25, 2016

Documentary History - Biography of President Barack Obama Full Documentary

Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States, and the first African American to serve as U.S. president. First elected to the presidency in 2008, he won a second term in 2012.

Born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. He was a community organizer, civil-rights lawyer and teacher before pursuing a political career. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 and to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was elected to the U.S.

presidency in 2008, and won re-election in 2012 against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born on an Army base in Wichita, Kansas, during World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the military and marched across Europe in General George Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, ended up in Hawaii.

Modi Plunders India’s Cash. Indians Cheer.

BY JAMES CRABTREE-NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Prime Minister Narendra Modi projects a stern, unbending public image. But the strain of leading the most dramatic and disruptive political change introduced in India for a generation seems to be getting even to him.

“I know that forces are up against me,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion, in the aftermath of his sudden move on November 8th to junk India’s two largest denomination rupee bills overnight, launching shock therapy for the country’s cash-driven shadow economy. “They may not let me live, they may ruin me,” he added darkly, “because their loot of 70 years is in trouble.”

That sounds dramatic, but the scale of Modi’s gamble invites hyperbole. The sudden scrapping of the Rs500 and Rs1000 notes — worth roughly $7 and $15 respectively, and accounting for nearly 90 percent of the value of cash in circulation — has plunged India’s economy into chaos. For two weeks, newspaper front pages have pictured long lines snaking around banks, as rich and poor alike queue up to exchange old notes for new. 80 billion dollars has been deposited so far. The final total will be much higher.

Strict limits on cash withdrawals have left hundreds of millions short of funds, and the government has been issuing almost daily clarifications to the replacement process, aiming to help those badly affected, from farmers and hospital patients to brides-to-be, unable to marry for lack of cash to pay wedding bills. Meanwhile, according to economists, the big-time criminals and corrupt businesses who were the ostensible targets of the new policy may be least affected by its fallout.

Criticism over haphazard implementation is growing louder. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the opposition Congress party attacked the move in a rare speech last week, describing it as “a monumental management failure” and “legalized plunder of the common people.”

But what’s really remarkable is, despite the chaos, how popular the move has been. Indians are not known for their quiet suffering, often taking to the streets to protest far less sweeping political changes than these. That a measure this intrusive has been met with little more than mild grumbles is unusual, to say the least. Modi trusted his instincts that both the boldness of the move, and perhaps even the pain it introduced, would win him support. Here he has been proved right. India’s anger runs deep over ill-gotten wealth, and the cast of villains who represent it in the public mind: the bribe-taking policeman; the inexplicably wealthy politician; the real estate developer who asks for half the price of a house again in cash.

“Psychologically, this is seen as a slap in the face of the all the cronies and the corrupt, which pleases the middle class so much,” explains Rajiv Kumar of the Centre for Policy Research think tank in New Delhi. “For once those who got rich by all the wrongs means have gotten their comeuppance, and people are delighted.”

All this speaks to Modi’s finely-tuned populist instincts. After his landslide 2014 election, many analysts hoped the new prime Minister would rejuvenate a struggling economy by pushing structural reforms that were effective but unpopular, such as removing cumbersome labor laws or privatizing sclerotic public sector banks. He proved reluctant to do so, skirting controversial policies in favor of grand symbolic gestures, including a national campaign to sweep up India’s squalid streets.

Now, however, he has picked as the defining battle of his premiership a measure of questionable effectiveness but remarkable popularity, especially given the massive inconvenience it is still causing. If that public sentiment holds, Modi’s gutsy (and arguably reckless) move will secure a remarkable political victory.

While demonetization came as a shock, the problems of what is widely known as “black money” are only too familiar.India is one of the world’s most cash-dependent nations.Estimates suggest the grey economy accounts for between a fifth and a quarter of gross domestic product. Only a tiny fraction of workers pay income tax. Sectors such as real estate and jewelry retail, not to mention the funding of political parties, rely extensively on illicit cash.

Whether Modi’s shock-and-awe effort will clear any of this up is less clear. His backers argue the move will wipe out stockpiles of dirty money, jolting illegal activity back into the formal economy. They claim the difficulties of getting cash will push millions to use digital payments, boosting e-commerce. Further unspecified anti-corruption reforms in future will then stop the same black money problems recurring all over again once new notes are in place.

Many economists are doubtful. Serious racketeers and criminals rarely keep large cash holdings, instead parking it in real estate or stashing it in banks abroad. Legitimate traders and small holders — who tend to be strong supporters of Modi — do hold stockpiles, however. “The minor entrepreneur, the shopkeeper, the farmer will be hurt by this,” says Pranjul Bhandari, an economist at HSBC in Mumbai. “And even among the bad guys, the risk is you catch the minnows, but the big fish escape. ”

Effective or not, the policy is going to force the economy to take a short-run hit. Bhandari thinks output may fall by as much 1 per cent next year. Ambit, a Mumbai-based broker, predicts a more dramatic fall, bringing growth close to zero over the next few quarters. Either way, India risks losing, albeit temporarily, its recently-won position as the world’s fastest growing major economy.

“This is by far the most sweeping change in currency policy that has occurred anywhere in the world in decades,” Harvard University’s Larry Summers wrote in a blog post this week. But all that pain, he argued, would deliver little: “Corruption will continue, albeit with slightly different arrangements.”

Given all this uncertainty, why did Modi do it? India loves a conspiracy theory, and rumors have spread that the prime minister was motivated by narrow electoral calculations. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party faces a run of vital regional elections over the next six months, including in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state. All political parties rely on off-the-books money to fund campaigns and pay workers, so the BJP’s campaigns will take a hit. But given its large financial resources, the theory went, it might be better able to absorb the damage than its rivals, giving it an advantage.

There is more than a grain of truth to this, but the more important political calculation stems from anxiety over Modi’s previously wishy-washy approach to corruption. Rooting out graft was his signature campaign issue in 2014. A leader of unquestioned personal integrity, he remains seized by the issue. “Did you vote for me to abolish corruption?” he asked rhetorically during his emotional press conference earlier this month. ”If you asked me, should I do it or not?” .

Despite that, until now, his record was mixed. The mega scams that besmirched India’s reputation under its previous government have stopped. But Modi has done little to demonstrate that India’s wider plague of routine bribery and endemic rule-bending is being brought under control. Earlier measures, including a black money amnesty, were low profile, and only moderately successful.

This created a risk. Rival politicians were unlikely to castigate his government for its failure to introduce disruptive structural reforms, as economists might have hoped. But those same rivals were very likely to attack the BJP for doing too little on black money, as Modi discovered when he was handed a surprise defeat by an anti-corruption party in elections in New Delhi last year. A bold, far-reaching step was needed to ram home his government’s bona fides. Demonetization was perfect.

In this, Modi’s approach closely resembled that of his counterpart Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose anti-corruption drive against corrupt officials is widely viewed as questionably effective and politically driven, but is enduringly popular with the public.

Whether that support continues in Modi’s case now depends less on whether demonetization actually works, and more on how quickly banks lines shorten and ATMs fill up. If opinion does turn, it will be a serious blow to Modi’s leadership, although not a fatal one. But given the stoic public reaction thus far, it it is more likely that Modi will be rewarded. Finally, India’s public has the Prime Minister they thought they voted for in 2014: a populist strongman taking dramatic measures on corruption. It is clear they like what they see.

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