Four dead, dozens injured in clashes as Palestinians protest against Trump

Dozens injured in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, as casualties mount following violent clashes

Israeli security forces detain a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday (AFP)

Lubna Masarwa- Friday 15 December 2017

JERUSALEM - Four Palestinians were killed with dozens reported injured during clashes between protesters and Israeli soldiers in the second Friday of protests against Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed in a statement that Yasser Sokhar, 31 and Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, 29 were both shot in the head in Gaza during clashes with Israeli soldiers. 

While Basil Mustafa, 24 was shot dead by Israeli forces in Anata, a town between the West Bank and Jerusalem in protests against the US move to Jerusalem. 

Mohammed Amin, 18, was also shot multiple times by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh. He died after succumbing to his wounds on Friday evening. 

According to figures released by the Palestinian Health Ministry, up to 164 people had been injured in the Gaza Strip after being hit with tear gas and live ammunition by Israeli security operatives 

Five of them were critically injured during clashes that began after Israeli soldiers attempted to violently disperse protestors. 

The ministry also reported that 103 people were injured in Jerusalem and the West Bank after Israeli security threw tear gas at protesters in a bid to disperse them. 

In Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli security forces fired tear gas, while a few protesters among about 3,000 people threw stones, the AFP news agency reported.

Clashes in East Jerusalem 

Several protesters near the Damascus Gate entry to the Old City in East Jerusalem were knocked over, and others ran away when riot police on horseback charged into the crowd.

Video footage also showed Israeli security forces pushing protesters back in the Old City.

Several others were beaten with batons and arrested by members of the security forces.

Crowds chanted "Jerusalem is an Arab city" and "Free Jerusalem".

Palestinians protesting on 15 December in Sakhnin Trump move to recognise Jerusalem as capital of Israel (MEE)

A Palestinian man, wearing a suspected suicide vest, was also severely injured after he was shot by Israeli forces for allegedly stabbing a soldier in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh. 

Palestinian organisations have called for "day of rage" protests after Friday prayers amid continuing anger since Trump's announcement earlier this month.

Niyaha Qawasmi, a 50-year-old Palestinian woman who joined protests in the Old City, told Middle East Eye that residents would not "accept" this decision. 

"I was born in this city and like many others will not remain silent and allow the US to do what they want in a city that does not belong to them," Qawasmi told MEE from outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. 

"We will not accept this and are not afraid of Israeli brutality against us. We have been protesting for more than a week and will keep on going."

Another man in his 50s who did not want to give his name told MEE that he believed the protests would grow.

"It very hard to see how the occupiers can use this violence against us. This is a new and historic time, and the people will not remain silent," he said.

"Trump is stupid to play around with something like Jerusalem which is a religious as well as a political issue." 

Palestinian women protest in Jerusalem's Old City (AFP)

Call to boycott the US after Trump decision

Thousands of Palestinians had amassed in the northern Israeli city of Sakhnin to protests Trump's actions.

Jamal Zahalka, an MP in the Israeli Knesset, told MEE that Jerusalem is an "issue for all Palestinians" and went as far as calling for a "boycott of the US" after last week's announcement.

"It's true that 300,000 Palestinians live in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is in the hearts of the 10 million Palestinians. Palestinians without Jerusalem are like a body without its soul," said Zahalka.

"The US declared war against the Palestinian people by standing by Israel. They cannot be a mediator between us. We have to look at new alternatives and increase popular activism."

Additional reporting by Hind Alkhudari in Gaza and Yumna Patel in Bethlehem. 

Jerusalem: Let’s rebuild it on the principles of justice 

2017-12-15

Warning: This article may contain ideas that religiously sensitive readers may find disturbing, despite efforts to keep the article balanced.

When religion and politics mix, the combination can produce either a just socio-political-and-economic order or a hypocritical world order that justifies oppression, injustice and racism.

In the United States, the First Amendment which seeks to keep Church and State separate was introduced to protect religion from the corruption of politics -- and politics being abused by some corrupt religious leaders.

Yet, secularism in politics is a myth not only in the United States but also in states such as Turkey and India where secularism is constitutionally promulgated. Religious beliefs and prejudices do play a major role in shaping world politics.  The most recent example is the United States President Donald Trump’s statement recognizing Jerusalem, the whole of it, as the capital of Israel, with no regard for international law, world public opinion and, above all, the Palestinian people’s right to live. 
His decision was not based on justice or international law. Rather the maverick President was apparently seeking to appease a Zionist casino mogul, who made a multimillion dollar political investment in Trump’s presidency, and some of the pro-Zionist Evangelical Christians, Trump’s core vote base. 

For these evangelicals, the Trump statement was a fulfillment of a prophecy regarding the second coming of Jesus Christ. According to their theology, God still loves the Jews, despite their rejection of Jesus’ mission and their role in the crucifixion. These orthodox or hardcore evangelicals say that as the end time nears, the Jews will experience a religious rebirth and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This would spark a series of cataclysmic events culminating in the Battle of Armageddon, the last war of humanity. But it would also cause the Jews to finally accept Jesus as their savior. After all this occurred, Jesus would return in glory and God’s kingdom -- a thousand-year reign of peace. And it would begin in Jerusalem. (http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/08/opinions/jerusalem-israel-evangelicals-end-times-butler-bass-opinion/index.html).

Most Catholic and mainstream Christian theologians, especially churches embracing liberation theology and espousing social justice, do not subscribe to this apocalyptic interpretation. 
More than a dozen patriarchs representing Palestinian Christians and Jerusalem’s main churches have, in a letter to Trump, rejected his Jerusalem declaration. 

“Our oppressors have decided to deprive us from the joy of Christmas,” Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the former archbishop and Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, told his congregation.

“The Bible originated in Palestine, not in the Bible Belt (in the US), but people in the Bible Belt read the Bible in a way that really makes our lives difficult,” said Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem.

Pope Francis, last week, reiterated that East Jerusalem was an occupied territory. He appealed to the international community to respect the city’s status in keeping with “the relevant resolutions of the United Nations.”

The Catholic Church, Protestant churches, the Egyptian Coptic Church, Iraq’s Chaldean Christians, the Greek Orthodox Christians and several other US denominations have expressed their opposition to Trump’s move. 

Yet, some influential Christian groups in the US are seeking to fast track the second coming of Jesus. If Jesus were to come today, whom will he support – the oppressed Palestinians who live a life of humiliation under the Israeli gun or the Zionists who have usurped the Palestinian land, their freedom and their dignity? See Mathew 25:31 onwards.

If the Zionists and their US supporters could interpret their scriptures and history the way they want in their attempt to justify their stance on Jerusalem, should not the Palestinian Muslims and Christians also have the right to interpret the scriptures and their history to assert their claim for Jerusalem? 
The Quran in reference to Jerusalem says: “Glory to (God) Who did take His servant (Muhammad) for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque (in Makkah) to the farthest Mosque (in Jerusalem), whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things).” - Chapter 17 Verse 1.

The Muslims also believe in a prophecy regarding the second coming of Jesus and has a narration of Jerusalem vis-à-vis events leading to end times. 

Which interpretation or which religion does international law recognise? 
The Zionists say Jerusalem has been their historic capital for 3,000 years.  Famous Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, linguistic professor at the Colombia University, said the Zionist claim was not the only claim to this land. “It’s a claim among many others.”

He insisted that the Arabs had a much greater claim to the land of Palestine because “they have a longer history of inhabitance, of actual residence in Palestine than the Jews did.” The overall Jewish actual inhabitance in Palestine throughout history, according to him, amounted to 200 to 260 years, much less than the Arabs’ 1,192 years.

The professor, who wrote “Orientalism”, a highly acclaimed critique on Western prejudice of matters East, would say the land of Palestine was inhabited or conquered by many other peoples throughout history and they included the Canaanites, Jebusites, the Assyrians, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Israelites, the Archaemenids, the Seleucids and others.

So history has many versions. 
Laws are based on principles of justice, equality and human rights.  A legal system is just only if it is applied without discrimination, be it economic status, social standing or religious beliefs of the people. 
Issues subjected to law’s intervention -- especially a matter as contentious as Jerusalem, with followers of different religions making rival claims -- should be sorted out in terms of principles of a ‘universal religion’ accepted by all. The universal religion – call it humanity -- comprises core values every established religion seeks to promote – core values such as compassion, love, justice, peace, equality and the truth without contamination. 

Legends like Mahatma Gandhi believed in the universal religion. That is why Gandhi could say “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.”

In this abstract universal religion, there is no place for claims such as a people being “chosen”.  Chosen does not mean superiority over other humans. If one insists that Jews are the chosen people, and therefore superior to others, aren’t they advocating racism, instead of eliminating it, as the universal religion demands? God cannot be a racist God. God’s universal religion dictates that no one human being is superior to another. Superiority is not judged by one’s birth into a particular race, caste, tribe or economic class, but by one’s righteous action. The more one is righteous and just, the more she or he is close to God.

In terms of the universal religious values such as compassion and cohabitation, the Jews have the right to live in Palestine and Israel has a right to exist within the 1967 borders, side by side with the state of Palestine -- but certainly not as colonialists to continue the imperialistic projects of, first Britain, and now the United States.

The Third Temple should not be and cannot be built on oppression and injustice.

An alternative human rights paradigm: Beijing consensus on human rights

China’s New ‘South-South Human Rights Forum’

By SANJA DE SILVA JAYATILLEKA--December 14, 2017, 12:00 pm 

The very first ‘South-South Human Rights Forum’ was held in Beijing on the 7th and 8th of December this year with the participation of over 300 delegates from more than 70 countries, according to Xinhua , China’s state news agency . It reported that Mikhail A. Lebedev, Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council, also spoke at the meeting.

True to President Xi Jing Ping’s promise at the 19th Party Congress this year to play a central role in world affairs, China offered an alternative to the established discourse on human rights. While not rejecting the existing values of human rights, China’s intervention proposed the idea of combining the ‘universality’ of human rights with what it termed the ‘particularity’ of national conditions. China noted that it regarded "the right to subsistence and the right to development as the primary basic human rights".

The Diplomat reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who attended the Forum "made China’s point clearer in his opening speech" claiming that "China’s experience shows that human rights can be protected in more than one way. Countries can find their own models of human rights protection in light of their national conditions and people’s needs."

The new South-South Human Rights Forum said in a joint statement that human rights should "take into account regional and national contexts, and political, economic, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds." It said that "The cause of human rights must and can only be advanced in accordance with the national conditions and the needs of the peoples." This is an emerging alternative paradigm of Human Rights.

The idea of "South-South cooperation" emerged from the Bandung Conference 1955 with its theme of Afro-Asianism. The Diplomat reports that Beijing regards Bandung 1955 as "a landmark in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomatic history" where Zhou Enlai — the iconic first Premier of China "called for developing countries to unite."

At the conclusion of the South-South Human Rights Forum,a statement called the "Beijing Declaration" was adoptedwhich contained 9 articles around the topic "Building A Community of Shared Future for Human Beings: New Opportunities for South-South Human Rights Development". They are as follows:

"Article 1

In order to ensure universal acceptance and observance of human rights, the realization of human rights must take into account regional and national contexts, and political, economic, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds. The cause of human rights must and can only be advanced in accordance with the national conditions and the needs of the peoples. Each State should adhere to the principle of combining the universality and specificity of human rights and choose a human rights development path or guarantee model that suits its specific conditions. States and the international community have a responsibility to create the necessary conditions for the realization of human rights, including the maintenance of peace, security and stability, the promotion of economic and social development and the removal of obstacles to the realization of human rights.

Article 2

Human rights are an integral part of all civilizations, and all civilizations should be recognized as equal and should be respected. Values and ethics of different cultural backgrounds should be cherished and respected, and mutual tolerance, exchange and reference should be honored. All governments and peoples should work together to build a community of shared future for human beings based on the principles of mutual benefit and sharing, build a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, tolerance and cleanness, so that humanity is free from fear, from poverty, from disease, from discrimination and from isolation. The community of shared future for human beings represents the yearning of peoples of the world for peace, development and prosperity. 

Article 3

The right to subsistence and the right to development are the primary basic human rights. The main body of the right to development is the people. In order to maximize the overall interests of mankind, it is necessary to uphold the unity of the right to development at individual level and the right to development at collective level, so that all peoples have equal opportunities for development and fully realize the right to development. Developing countries should pay special attention to safeguarding the people's right to subsistence and right to development, especially to achieve a decent standard of living, adequate food, clothing, and clean drinking water, the right to housing, the right to security, work, education, and the right to health and social security. The international community should take the eradication of poverty and hunger as the primary task, and strive to solve the problem of insufficient and unsustainable development and create more favorable conditions for the realization of the people's right to development especially in the developing countries.

Article 4

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Human dignity is not only related to human freedom, but also decisive to the all-round development of human beings. Human rights are the unity of individual rights and collective rights. The right to subsistence and the right to development, the right to peace, and the right to the environment are both important collective human rights and the prerequisite and basis for the realization of individual human rights. All human rights are indivisible and interdependent. The acquisition of civil and political rights is inseparable from the simultaneous acquisition of economic, social and cultural rights, which are equally important and interrelated.

Article 5

Human rights are inalienable, and all countries should make efforts to promote the legal guarantee of human rights. Restrictions on the exercise of human rights must be determined by law, and only for the protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of other members of society (including freedom from religious desecration, racism and discrimination) and meet the legitimate needs of national security, public order, public health, public safety, public morals and the general welfare of the people. Everyone is responsible to all others and to society, and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms must be balanced with the fulfillment of corresponding responsibilities.

Article 6

States should, in accordance with their national laws and international obligations, focus on guaranteeing the human rights and fundamental freedoms of specific groups, including ethnic, national, racial, religious and linguistic groups and migrant workers, people with disabilities, indigenous people, refugees and displaced persons. States have an obligation to respect and protect religious minorities, and religious minorities have the same obligation to adapt to their local environment, and this includes the acceptance and observance of the Constitution and laws of their localities, as well as their integration into the local society. Everyone has the right to choose his or her own beliefs, including the choice of believing or not believing a religion, and the choice of believing one religion or another, without being discriminated.

Article 7

South-South cooperation is an important way to promote development and human rights progress in developing countries. The South-South countries should adhere to the spirit of solidarity, sharing of responsibilities and obligations, mutual help and win-win cooperation, and insist on promoting cooperation with unity, advancing development through cooperation, and promoting human rights through development, making efforts to achieve more adequate human rights protection. The international community should, in line with the principles of balance, inclusiveness and sustainability, actively support better development of developing countries and constantly improve the protection of human rights in those countries.

Article 8

The international community's concern for human rights matters should always follow the international law and the universally recognized basic norms governing international relations, of which the key is to respect national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of states. All countries should adhere to the principle of sovereign equality, and all countries, big or small, have the right to determine their political systems, control and freely use their own resources, and independently pursue their own economic, social and cultural development. The politicization, selectivity and double standards on the issue of human rights and the abuse of military, economic or other means to interfere in other countries' affairs run counter to the purpose and spirit of human rights. The relevant actions of the international community to protect human rights must be in strict compliance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and should respect the views of the concerned states and regional organizations.

Article 9

The realization of human rights is never-ending and the development of human rights is always ongoing. In terms of human rights protection, there is no best way, only the better one. The satisfaction of the people is the ultimate criterion to test the rationality of human rights and the way to guarantee them. It is the responsibility of governments to continuously raise the level of human rights protection in accordance with the demands of their peoples. The international community should promote human rights cooperation through dialogue and exchange, mutual learning and mutual understanding and consensus-building on the basis of equality and mutual respect." 

This is an opportunity for developing countries to support a collective effort to build a world free of fear, poverty, disease and discrimination with adequate food, clothing, and clean drinking water, housing and public health as important human rights, in an alternative paradigm to the hypocritical politicization of human rights such as the 2015 and 2017 Geneva resolutions on Sri Lanka.

Warning to Congress: Bad Iran Legislation Is Worse Than No Iran Legislation

President Trump can’t let the House and Senate play politics with Iranian nuclear deal.

The U.S. capitol building on Sep. 27, 2013. (Getty Images) 

BY RICHARD GOLDBERG-DECEMBER 11, 2017, 12:20 PM

In October, President Donald Trump took an important step toward countering Iran’s ever-expanding list of illicit activities by refusing to certify to Congress that the flawed nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration remained in America’s national security interest. Now he needs to stop Congress from giving away the leverage he established.

In unveiling a new U.S. policy toward Tehran, the president delivered a forceful indictment of both Iran and the nuclear agreement. From Iran’s continued development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to its refusal to allow international inspections at key military sites to its regional military expansion in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, the nuclear deal’s fundamental deficiencies made Iran stronger at the expense of U.S. national security. The president concluded his presentation with a clear warning to the world — fix this bad deal or America will bring back the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a foreign state in history.

The president’s threat sent diplomatic and economic shockwaves throughout the Middle East and Europe.

 Black-market traders inside Iran halted sales of foreign currencies due to a sudden crash in the value of the Iranian rial to levels not seen since before the nuclear deal came into effect. Iran is now significantly discounting its oil in the spot market, trying to weather the period of sanctions uncertainty.

French energy giant Total put a hold on efforts to develop Iran’s South Pars natural gas fields until it knows what kind of new sanctions may be coming from the United States. European diplomats are storming Capitol Hill begging members of Congress not to reimpose sanctions, while French President Emmanuel Macron is publicly acknowledgingfundamental flaws with the existing agreement with respect to sunsets and ballistic missiles.

Despite warnings from former Obama administration officials that a presidential decertification would be ignored by U.S. allies and leave Washington isolated, the evidence is clear that decertification created a chilling effect on European re-investment and shook Iran’s economy. The events of the last month should reassure the president that he made the right decision — despite misgivings from some members of the interagency who either lack strategic vision or moral certitude.
Having failed to dissuade the president, supporters of the nuclear deal have a new target: the U.S. Congress. While the executive branch has total authority to unilaterally force changes to the nuclear deal by strengthening the conditions for waiving U.S. sanctions, Trump punted to Congress with an ultimatum: fix the deal legislatively or face the agreement’s termination.

At first, it seemed Congress might respond to the president’s call for action. Draft legislation circulated on Capitol Hill that would force an immediate snapback of all U.S. sanctions on Iran unless the regime halted its ballistic-missile program and allowed inspectors into key military sites where covert nuclear work may be taking place. It also used the threat of U.S. sanctions to erase the many sunsets contained in the original nuclear deal, which established a path toward an internationally recognized Iranian nuclear weapons program within a decade.

Now, almost two months after the president’s decertification, it’s increasingly clear we are headed for a legislative train wreck.

 Supporters of the nuclear deal are locking down Senate Democrats, ensuring there could never be enough votes to break a filibuster on meaningful legislation that actually “fixed” the agreement. Gone would be any requirements that Iran halt its development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles — even though the U.N. Security Council resolution implementing the nuclear deal calls on Iran to do just that. Gone would be air-tight enforcement of inspections at Iranian military sites. Gone would be any automatic snapback of sanctions if the Iranians broke their obligations. Gone would be the president’s requirement to certify the deal every 90 days. The only thing left would be a de facto legitimization of the deal tied to meaningless, non-binding policy statements designed to give political cover to senators who don’t want to look weak on Iran.

Given the executive branch’s unquestioned prerogative to change U.S. policy on the Iran deal and reimpose sanctions whenever the president wants, the leadership of the House and Senate should remember that bad Iran legislation is worse than no Iran legislation. Congress should not act unless it can pass legislation that increases U.S. leverage to change Iranian behavior by holding the sanctions sword of Damocles over the regime and its would-be trading partners in Europe.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a long-time Iran hawk, could always invoke the Senate’s nuclear option to prevent Iran’s nuclear option. But if such a move is off the table and a filibuster of meaningful legislation cannot be defeated, Congress should punt the issue back to the White House and let the president’s unpredictability be an asset in a comprehensive effort to roll back Iran.

Trump judicial nominee fumbles basic questions about the law

 President Trump’s U.S. District nominee Matthew S. Peterson could not answer routine law questions during a hearing on Dec. 13. (Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse/Twitter)

By Derek Hawkins December 15 at 6:17 AM

Nomination hearings for U.S. district judges tend to be dry affairs that offer little in the way of mass entertainment — in other words, they’re not typically the stuff of viral videos.

But a clip of one of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees struggling to answer rudimentary questions about the law garnered well more than 1 million views in a matter of hours on Thursday night and stoked speculation that another of the president’s nominations might get derailed.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) shared footage of Matthew Petersen, a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, getting quizzed by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) on basic aspects of trial procedure during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

For five painfully awkward minutes, Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Commission and a lawyer with no trial experience, fumbled with Kennedy’s questions, visibly uncomfortable as the lawmaker pressed him about how things work in a federal courtroom.

“Hoo-boy,” Whitehouse wrote in a widely circulated tweet of the exchange, seizing on the moment for maximum political effect.

[PowerPost Grassley: Two controversial federal bench nominees won’t be confirmed]

In Wednesday’s hearing, Kennedy started by asking Petersen and the four other nominees who appeared with him: “Have any of you not tried a case to verdict in a courtroom?”

Petersen alone raised his hand.

Kennedy, a first-term Republican who has challenged some of  Trump’s previous judicial nominations, bore down.

Had Petersen ever handled jury trial?

“I have not,” the nominee responded.

Civil? No. Criminal? No. Bench trial? No. State or federal court? No.

How many depositions had he taken — fewer than five?

“Probably somewhere in that range,” Petersen said.

Had he ever argued a motion in state court? Federal court? No on both counts.

Kennedy then asked the last time Petersen had read the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — the standards that govern civil cases in U.S. District Court, where Petersen is hoping to get a lifetime appointment.

“In my current position,” Petersen stuttered, “I obviously don’t need to stay as invested in those on a day-to-day basis, but I do try to keep up to speed.” He added that he oversees a number of attorneys in the FEC’s litigation division and advises them on legal strategy.

How about the last time he read the Federal Rules of Evidence, which regulate the use of evidence in civil and criminal trials, Kennedy asked. The rules are amended and republished every year.
“All the way through? Well, comprehensively, would have been in law school,” Petersen said.
Kennedy kept digging.

“As a trial judge, you’re obviously going to have witnesses. Can you tell me what the ‘Daubert standard’ is,” the senator asked, referring to a critical and well-known rule on using expert testimony in federal court.

“I don’t have that readily at my disposal,” Petersen said. “But I would be happy to take a closer look at that. That is not something that I had to —”

Kennedy cut him off. “Do you know what a motion in limine is,” he asked. A motion in limine is a widely used request for certain evidence to be excluded at trial.

Petersen said yes, then tried to sidestep the question. He reminded the senator that his background wasn’t in litigation and said he hadn’t had time to “do a deep dive.”

“I understand the challenge that would be ahead of me if I were fortunate enough to become a district court judge,” Petersen said. “I understand that the path that many successful district court judges have taken has been a different one than I have taken.”

Kennedy said he was familiar with Petersen’s résumé, then asked again what a motion in limine was.
“I would probably not be able to give you a good definition right here at the table,” Petersen said.
Petersen received his law degree from University of Virginia School of Law in 1999 and spent three years at the law firm Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, where he specialized in campaign finance law. After that, he worked briefly as counsel to the Republican National Committee and served as counsel for two congressional panels.

He was appointed to the Federal Election Commission in 2008 by President George W. Bush. There, he served for five years alongside Donald McGahn, the current White House counsel.

Trump tapped Petersen in September to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, one of the most important federal trial courts in the nation. Until now, his nomination has drawn little attention, and Trump’s other nominees to the court in Washington have breezed through the confirmation process with bipartisan support.
When video of the interrogation made its way onlin
e, several high profile law professors tweeted their surprise.

“Don’t want to beat up on the guy but the questions he was being asked could be answered by a second year law student,” wrote Aderson Francois, a professor at Georgetown Law. “Even if you know zero about evidence the one doctrine every law student knows is Daubert because it’s a very famous case about standard to admit expert testimony.”

Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said it was unreasonable to expect Petersen to have recently studied the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a lengthy and complex document. “But,” Kreis added, “if you have little or no trial experience, I’d hope you could speak a little bit about the law with some degree of sophistication. Daubert is pretty basic.”

Others put their concerns more bluntly. “Seems like FEC Commissioner Petersen may not be leaving the FEC for the federal district court after all,” wrote University of California at Irvine professor Rick Hasen. “This is pretty devastating.”

Petersen’s testimony drew scrutiny one day after Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that two of Trump’s nominees would not be confirmed to the federal bench following questions about their qualifications, disrupting an otherwise smooth streak of federal judicial confirmations for the president.

Brett Talley, nominated for a federal district court seat in Alabama, was thwarted after he was reported to be the author of a 2011 message board comment defending the Ku Klux Klan. Democrats had objected to his nomination from the beginning, noting that he had never served as a judge nor tried a case.

Jeff Mateer, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, was also blocked after speeches surfaced in which he advocated discriminating against members of the LGBT community and called transgender children proof that “Satan’s plan is working.”

No one is accusing Petersen of making controversial or insensitive remarks. But in Wednesday’s hearing, Kennedy probed anyway, just to be sure.

“Any of you blog? Any of you ever blogged in support of the Ku Klux Klan?” he asked.
Petersen and the other panelists shook their heads no.

The two Koreas have tried to make peace before – and they could do so again



Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il greets then-South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in June 2000. Their meeting resulted in the North and South Joint Declaration. Source: YouTube

15th December 2017

WITH tension on the Korean Peninsula higher than it’s been for years and fears are surging on all sides that a full-blown conflict is nearer than ever.

But as the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang gets ever more lurid, with missile and warhead tests on one side and military exercises and flypasts on the other, it’s easy to forget that North and South Korea have made serious efforts to defrost their relationship before.

On July 7 1988, with the Cold War coming to an end, South Korean President Rho Tae-woo announced his plan to “actively promote exchanges of visits between the people of South and North Korea, including politicians, businessmen, journalists, religious leaders, cultural leaders, artists, academics and students”. This South Korean policy, called Nordpolitik, was modelled on West Germany’s Ostpolitik. But it took more than ten years to begin these exchanges.

SEE ALSO: ‘Let’s just meet’: US ready for talks with North Korea, no pre-conditions

In 2000, the two leaders of South and North Korea met in Pyongyang for the first time since the division of the Korean peninsula. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung reassured North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il, who was worried that North Korea would meet a fate similar to East Germany, that the South Korean proposal for a peacebuilding process was not to absorb North Korea, but to promote peaceful coexistence.

After their first summit, the South and North Korean governments expanded several cross-border peacebuilding activities, such as humanitarian, development, and economic cooperation, business, and socio-cultural exchanges. Within a few years, as part of these activities, more than half a million people crossed the border between North and South Korea. Almost 2m South Korean tourists visited North Korea.

And yet today, the inter-Korean peacebuilding of the 2000s looks like a long-lost dream. What went wrong?

Portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung are displayed at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva, Switzerland, November 17, 2017. Source: Reuters/Denis Balibouse

Pushed to the limit

Some say the breaking point was the hardline changes in US and South Korean policy toward North Korea after 9/11, epitomised by George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech. Others say the north is to blame because of its nuclear ambitions. But what both arguments have in common is North Korea’s deep sense of insecurity, which goes back more than 60 years.

When Japan was defeated in World War II, the Korean independence movement and its provisional government, who had long fought Japanese colonial rule, were not recognised as victors. Instead, the northern half of Korea was put under Soviet control and the south was occupied by the US, effectively dividing the Korean peninsula in two.

The first North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, seemed convinced he could resolve this division by force, but his attack on South Korea in 1950 and the ensuing Korean War almost cost North Korea its existence. Only Chinese intervention saved it, and the war was suspended (though not ended) by the Armistice Treaty of 1953.

Song of General Kim Il Sung

But North Korean memories of how US bombers destroyed their country and how close the US came to using the atomic bomb on North Korea, are still very much alive, and may be stronger after the end of the Cold War.

North Korean leaders have for decades used the spectre of an American attack to justify their authoritarian rule. The continuous economic sanctions and displays of military power by the US and South Korea did not deter North Korean plans to develop nuclear weapons in order to ensure its survival, and instead seem to have given the North Korean dictatorship fodder for its rhetoric.

Not backing down

As if to validate the rhetoric of the North Korean regime, the US president, Donald Trump, successfully persuaded South Korea to purchase more American weapons during his recent visit to East Asia. The US and South Korea are planning yet another joint military drill from December 4-8, in which about 230 warfare aircraft will participate in a show of force.

Meanwhile, North Korea fired another ballistic missile on November 28, once again claiming that their development of nuclear and missile technology is not “to pose any threat to any country”, but to defend North Korea from the US threat.

Putting aside debate around the nature of the North Korean regime, the insecurity experienced by a conflict party is not a phenomenon unique to the Korean conflict. Several contemporary peace processes, such as the Northern Ireland peace process, show that without addressing the issue of insecurity, any agreement would not be possible.

Protesters demonstrate against leaders who possess nuclear weapons in Central Park, New York on July 4, 2017. Source: Ralf Schlesener / ICAN

SEE ALSO: No war: Kim Jong Un and Trump just ‘love control’, says Dennis Rodman

Would peacebuilding mean simply appeasing a regime that is playing with nuclear fire – or is it perhaps a better option than “smart sanctions” and military exercises? For South Korean civil society groups, who can remember crossing borders, building relationships, and re-humanising each other, peacebuilding is still regarded as the best way to neutralise the nuclear ambitions of the North Korean leadership and improve the human rights conditions of the North Korean people.

After all, it is about coming up with a more effective strategy for peace in the Korean peninsula, and beyond. If war is not an option, the inevitable process to build peace must resume.

By Dong Jin Kim Research Fellow, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. Originally published on The Conversation. 

Future of ANC and South Africa at stake as party meets to choose new leader

Secret ballot pits deputy-president Cyril Ramaphosa against party stalwart and ex-wife on incumbent, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Delegates make hand gestures calling for a change of leadership before the start of the ANC conference on Friday. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Jason Burke in Johannesburg-Friday 15 December 2017 11.35 GMT

Thousands of delegates from across South Africa will gather on Saturday in a conference centre south-west of Johannesburg to choose a new leader for the African National Congress (ANC), the party that led the freedom struggle against apartheid and has governed for 23 years.

The mundane surroundings belie the significance of the decisions the men and women gathered there will make. They are likely to determine South Africa’s next president and the trajectory of the troubled “rainbow nation” for decades.

Competing to replace Jacob Zuma, the beleaguered president of the ANC since 2007 and of South Africa since 2009, are his ex-wife and party stalwart Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy-president and a wealthy businessman.

The battle could split the party. There have been bitter clashes in the run-up to the conference, with fists, furniture and lawsuits employed as weapons by rival factions.

The conference threatens to be acrimonious, forcing both candidates to issue last-minute calls for unity. “This is a democratic process … it is not a fight among enemies,” said Dlamini-Zuma at her final major speech before the conference. Ramaphosa has stressed the party “should rally behind whoever is elected”.

The winner will be chosen by a secret ballot of about 5,000 delegates, most selected by local branches around the country. An announcement is expected on Sunday morning, but it may be delayed.

The two candidates have very different styles, and offer party members dramatically contrasting visions of the future of South Africa.

Ramaphosa, broadly seen as the favourite to win, is relaxed and conversational in public. A former trade union leader, the 65-year-old was born within a mile or so of the conference centre where he may take the final steps to the highest political office in South Africa.

Favoured by the business community and international investors, Ramaphosa played a key role in historic negotiations in the 1990s to end the racist and repressive apartheid regime before launching a business career that made him one of South Africa’s wealthiest men. He is seen as a centrist who is neither corrupt nor committed to disruptive economic change.

Though this may please a growing number of middle-class, urban South Africans, it may play against him among grassroots ANC members.


President Jacob Zuma, president of the ANC since 2007 and of South Africa since 2009. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

“Cyril is a multibillionaire and he got that money from the very same people who oppressed us so we are afraid that he will more serve the people who gave him what he has today than the people on the ground,” said Billy Tsotetsi, a veteran ANC activist from West Rand, as he queued for accreditation to the conference.

Dlamini-Zuma, 68, who was chair of the African Union until earlier this year, is a former home, foreign and health minister. She lacks her rival’s charm and has made clear her intent to pursue a radical programme to redistribute wealth and resources in what remains a deeply unequal society.
“The delegates must elect leaders that are going to use the ANC as an instrument for the oppressed to make sure they can get into the mainstream of the economy,” she said last week.

Dlamini-Zuma’s critics say she is committed to an outdated ideological dogma and would pursue her former husband’s failing economic and political policies. Many suggest the 68 year-old, who had four children with the president before divorcing in 1998, would seek to protect the outgoing leader from a series of criminal prosecutions for corruption.

But Carien du Plessis, a respected political journalist who recently published a biography of Dlamini-Zuma, said the former medical doctor might well forge her own path if elected.

“She is a very experienced and shrewd politician. A lot of people support her because she is seen as a proxy for Zuma and a continuation of Zuma’s regime. But I think she sees it as a political vehicle she has to use,” Du Plessis said.

Branches account for 90% of the conference delegates. The remainder comes from the ANC’s women’s, youth and veterans leagues, as well as a handful of provincial party officials.
There are widespread fears that rival factions will attempt to sway delegates through bribery and intimidation.

Officials close to Ramaphosa said they would “lock down” loyal delegates in hotels with security guards hired to prevent “untoward advances”.

“There is so much at stake and the two candidates are very close in the race,” Amanda Gouws, a politics professor at Stellenbosch University, said.

The ANC still dominates the South African political landscape, but polled only 54% in local elections last year in its worst result since 1994.

Any new leader will have to move fast to bolster a flagging economy and convince voters their lives can improve under further ANC government.

If Ramaphosa wins the party leadership battle, many analysts believe Zuma will be forced out within months. If he loses, the ANC could split.

South Africa’s principal opposition parties – the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters – hope to exploit the ANC’s weaknesses in the 2019 election, with one possible outcome being a coalition government.

“Going forward, it is less a question of who becomes president of the party than if the party can mount a united campaign for the elections. If it can’t, then it will be in deep trouble,” said Du Plessis.